Tech News: Billionaires in Spaaaace

and another billionaire going to space. Earlier this month, Richard Branson took a very short jaunt out to the edge of space board Virgin Galactics space Ship two, which is a single rocket engine vehicle that actually piggybacks on a mothership, a larger air vehicle called White Night too, so then it detaches from White Knight to ignites its rocket engine and thus does not have to take off from the

surface of the Earth. Now this morning, as I was writing this, I was writing it just as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos had finished his similarly short trail in the New Shepherd Blue Origin space vehicle, which is a capsule that sits on top of a launch vehicle. He was part of the first crew to ride that vehicle to space, so the first people to actually be in a Blue Origin space vehicle. He went along with his brother Mark

and an aviation legend, Wally Funk. She has now become the oldest astronaut to go to space, and Oliver Damon, the eighteen year old who took the spot of some anonymous person who purchased a twenty eight million dollar ticket to go to space but then had to back out due to what we're called scheduling difficulties, which is pretty wild, right, kind of wonder what's in your schedule where you're like, oh, man, I can't go to space today. I gotta go buy

milk or whatever it is. Anyway, Damon is now the youngest person to have gone to space. So in the same little space capsule, they had the oldest astronaut and the youngest astronaut to ever go to space. And Damon's father, by the way, runs a private equity firm in the Netherlands. So this is not the case of some like Ragamuffin finding a golden ticket and a Wonka bar or something. No, because space, it turns out it's not just trying to kill you. It's also freaking expensive. Most of us will

never be able to afford to go. Now, you could say that I've got a case of sour grapes, and I admit it, You're right, I do have a case of sour grapes. I'm absolutely grouchy about this. But moreover, there has been a growing backlash against Branson, Bezos and Elon Musk as well, because the billionaires were publicly racing toward getting into space, and meanwhile we have these massive problems that continue to balloon out of control back here on the ground. This is led some to say, you know,

why are you seemingly running away? Even though they were only up in space for like a minute and less than a minute in some cases, it's not like it's them saying peace out and flying off to some luxury planet in the Solar System. But a lot of the critics say, why not use some of that money, the enormous amounts of money it took to send you to space to address critical problems like, you know, the pandemic, or income inequality, or poor working conditions or the exploitation

of the poor. Why spend all that money on an endeavor that contributes to enormous amounts of carbon emissions. The aviation industry in general is a really big source of carbon emissions, and it means that a very small percentage of people are responsible, either directly or indirectly, for a large percentage of carbon emissions. These and other questions have been asked many times over the past few days. They also point out that these billionaires often have an association

with some of those problems. I mean, Amazon in particular has been in the news quite a bit about things like unfair working conditions with Elon Musk. His other company, Tesla, has been in the news about pushing to open up manufacturing facilities, even as the states that those facilities were in we're ordering lockdowns. Like there have been some pretty negative news reports about these companies that are are run

by these billionaires. Now, on the other hand, there is a lot of good things to be said with regard to human ingenuity and engineering and the countless hours that thousands of people put into making this achievement a possibility. We should not ignore that. And I think it is possible to both be critical of the motivations and implications of the billionaire space race and also still be able to laud the achievements of people who made it all possible.

But you know, hearing rich people yell woo who on a space joy ride does get my dander up. I reckon anyway, I guess the ball is now in Elon Musk's court, as he's the one billionaire of those three who has not yet gone to space, though his car did. Speaking of Elon Musk and space, SpaceX tested the enormous booster rocket for its Starship spacecraft on Monday night. So this is a booster rocket that were part of the

launch vehicle to get Starship into space. The booster is called the Super Heavy and it has several rocket engines. They're called raptor engines to be precise, and this particular test involved igniting three of those engines in a test burn, but the booster was tethered firmly to the ground. This wasn't launching. The booster was really testing the engine is

making sure that everything was working in the future. Assuming that everything goes well, a full launch of the Starship, for example, if you were to try and send it to Mars, could involve more than thirty engines during that process. The company has already conducted a suborbital test of Starship last May, and the plan was to carry out an orbital test during this summer, but you know time is

starting to run out for that. If it happens, the Starship will launch from Texas, it will reach an orbital altitude and then it will descend to land near the island of Kawaiti, you know as part of Hawaii. And the ultimate plan for the starship program is again to send astronauts to distant places like the Moon or Mars, and that's why you need such powerful engines for a

full launch. We've still got a long way to go before we ever try something like that, and more tests will be needed to ensure that the tech is reliable and safe. The spy where Pegasus is back in the news this week, and in case you're not familiar with this, Pegasus is a spyware project headed by an Israeli company called the n s O Group. This company makes spyware for smartphones and that gives a remote administrator access to

that device. That actually includes the ability to activate the smartphones camera and microphone, so you can use it as a surveillance tool. This is the sort of stuff that hackers want in order to gain information about targets. It's the same stuff that Nations used to keep an eye on various people. And the NSL group has sold this

spyware technology as a weapon. Is classified as a weapon, so they actually have to get the consent of the Israeli government before they sell it to anyone, but they've sold it to various countries in the Middle East, though typically not two countries that have an outright antagonistic stance against Israel, which makes sense. You wouldn't think that the Israeli government would sign off on a sale of a surveillance tool that's classified as a weapon two enemies of

the state. Critics have suggested that the ns A group is effectively acting as sort of a vanguard for Israeli diplomacy, the idea being that, you know, providing this powerful surveillance tool to various governments gives Israel a foot in the door for diplomatic negotiations moving forward, and critics have also alleged that some of these countries, notably Saudi Arabia, have used the Pegasus spyware, not to you know, identify crime groups or terrorist groups, which is the stated purpose for

this surveillance technology, but rather to persecute human rights activists or critics of the state and journalists. The NSO group cut off Saudi Arabia's access to the tool following the murder of Jamal ka Shogi, but later reinstated it upon direction by the Israeli government, which raises some pretty ugly questions.

And this is all according to an article in the Guardian. Recently, n S Group shut off Saudi access to the tool again after Al Jazeera journalists came forward with Amnesty International saying that they had been targeted by the spyware. Amnesty International has published several extensive reports about this spyware and how various governments have used and abused it. Uh The organization has also released a tool kit to help people determine if their devices have been compromised and have Pegasus

spyware on them. The organization also says that Pegasus is much easier to detect on iPhones than it is on Android phones, as the spyware leaves more traces on iPhones. Amnesty also found that the spyware could transfer through a zero click attack through I message, meaning it's a particularly powerful attack. It doesn't require the target to you know, click on a malicious link or download any software. It can just be done through I message, which is pretty

pretty nasty stuff. While we're talking about Apple, the company recently decided that it was going to delay a return to office they originally were planning on doing it in September, but a rise in COVID cases has made them change their minds. The idea was that employees would be returning to the office for three days a week and then remotely work the other two days of the week. But now Apple says it's going to hold off to at

least October. And to be clear, the return to the office was not a comeback three days a week if you feel like it. It was more like a you will come back to the office for three days a week. It was a mandate, and it was one that you know, some Apple employees were protesting. They were saying that the message they received was that they were going to be forced to choose between their health and safety and that

of their families and their careers. Apple CEO Tim Cook sent out a memo in June, and a memos said that workers really did need to return to offices and and get the hum of activity back in the hallways of Apple. And just to be clear, while I'm specifically talking about Apple here, it is not unique in this at all. Google and Amazon have similar planned policies with returns. In September. I believe both of those companies also planned to do a three days in the office kind of approach.

We'll see if those companies also adjust their plans in the wake of rising COVID cases. The delta variant is really wreaking havoc in the United States. Um even vaccinated people can catch it, and while their symptoms might be minor, in fact they might be asymptomatic, there's still a concern about the possibility of them passing that on to unvaccinated people, which that could lead to actual disaster, you know, and death, the bad things. I'm just coming out and saying it

that I think people dying from COVID is bad. I know it's a controversial thing to say for some reason. Anyway, it's really at this point that I want to express how thankful I am for our leadership. At my heart, I'm incredibly fortunate that I am. My co workers are all given the freedom to continue working from home with no mandate in the foreseeable future right now to return to the office. Now, some of us do go into

the office occasionally. So for example, I will sometimes go into the office to record interviews for my show The Restless Ones. If you haven't heard The Restless Ones, you should go check it out. Uh. And the reason why I do that the all the interviews I do are remote, but the office is internet connection is much more reliable than my home internet connection and I don't want to, you know, have a connection dropped during an interview, So

I go to the office for those occasions. Um, And it's pretty rare that I see anyone else in that office. Occasionally I do, like on a on a really busy day, I might see as many as for other people. But most days I'm the only one there. And considering that at least one of my co workers has announced that they were diagnosed with COVID not too long ago, this

is a pretty big deal to me. Now. To be clear, my co worker announced this on a public forum, but in respect for their privacy, I'm just gonna leave it at that. I'm not gonna say who it was. If you know, you know, if you don't know, it doesn't really matter. The point is that because of my company's policy, I feel pretty safe, and I feel a lot of empathy for the people who are working for Apple and

Google and Amazon who might not have that same reassurance. Anyway, we'll keep our eyes on these stories as they continue to develop. Ideally, I would just like to see the COVID numbers come down, people go back to the office and everything be fine. That's just not the reality we're working with right now. Next year, the three major cellular service providers in the United States, those being Verizon, Team of and A T and T, will all preload Android

Messages as the default texting app on all Android phones. Now. This marks a shift to the RCS chat standard, which Android Messages uses. Our RCS stands for Rich Communications Services, and it's a replacement for the antiquated SMS, or Short Messaging Service standard that we've relied on for years. We typically think of SMSs text messages. So why are we upgrading? Well, SMS has some pretty major drawbacks. It does not support

end to end encryption. For example, it doesn't support group messaging. It doesn't support red receipts, so that means you never know if someone actually saw the text message you sent them. Though on the flip side, that also gives me plausible deniability that you know, I ever even saw the text message, because I'm notorious or not answering them anyway. RCS also supports features like video and audio, something that SMS can't

really handle. But there's a big drawback, and that is you have to make sure that the r r c S implementations of each of these carriers are compatible with one another. Otherwise you could end up with services that would allow for communication within one carrier but not beyond it, or within one handset manufacturer but not beyond that. So, in other words, you could find yourself able to communicate with anyone else who was on the same carrier or was using the same phone that you were using, but

you couldn't do it with anyone else. Now, the carriers in the US say that they are working to ensure compatibility, and the fact that they're defaulting to Google's Android Messages really falls in line with that. Now, the only major player in the space that hasn't announced a move to r CS is Apple. Apple's Eye Message is a different kettle of fish, being far more feature rich and secure

than old SMS. It also supports end to end encryption, but if you need a message someone who isn't on an Apple device, then you have to fall back to SMS messages. Android is rolling out into end encryption for Android messages, and I message, like I said, hast end encryption in place as well, but any messages that would be sent between an Android device and an Apple device would have to revert to SMS and thus be less secure,

so it represents a weak link. It's hard to imagine Apple inviting rcs to occupy a space on the iPhone, and similarly, Apple doesn't appear to be keen to allow I message apps on the Android platform, so we're kind of at a bit of an impass. Well, we have a couple more stories to cover, but before I get to that, let's take a quick break. We're back. A T and T is reportedly in talks to offload and add division that has been hemorrhaging money for a few

years and is not looking any better right now. And this is all according to Axios. So back in two thousand eighteen, A T and T acquired an ad exchange company called app Nexus for one point six billion dollars that's billion with a B, and it also purchased a TV ad company called Clipped. Not sure how much that acquisition was for, but it was significantly lower than one point six billion. But the idea was to combine these two things and create an automation solution for television advertising

and pair that with Warner Media. The media division within A T and T, the ad division was renamed zander x A N d R. Now, in my fanciful brain, and automation solution for television advertising means that we would get ads with robots selling us stuff, which at first I'm totally into. But then I remember those terrifying Dura cell commercials from decades ago where you had these plastic robot people. Do you guys remember those? They were the stuff of nightmares. Go to YouTube and search Dura sell

robot people. If you don't know what I'm talking about, And I'm sorry, but halloweens around the corner. It's a great costume anyway. No, that's not what this is about. I was like totally off based on that. The plan was to incorporate the automated ad division with Warner Media and to have these two work together and to optimize

advertising and just generate revenue out the wazoo. Really, But now A T and T is famously ditching Warner Media, or rather spinning it off, and Warner Media is scheduled to merge with Discovery Communications and become a new media company again and without the media side of the business.

Then Zander's kind of a hammer, but there are no nails, right There's it's a tool, but there's nothing to use it with because now A T. T doesn't have the media arm that would go hand in hand with the advertising arm, so it's missing inventory side of the ad business. So it has no real place with a T and T. And apparently there have been some major mismanagement issues with the division from the get go, with annual losses somewhere in the fifty to ninety million dollar range. Again, this

is according to AXIOSS sources. At the moment, an Indian company called in Mobi, which is another big AD technology company, is in talks to potentially acquire the division, but it's early days. We don't know if that's actually going to move forward. An organization called Common Cause and a union called the Communications Workers of America recently released a joint report titled Broadband Gatekeepers. How i SP lobbying and political

influence shapes the Digital Divide. The report examines the telecommunications industry in the United States, the political power that that industry wields, and the consequences that create an uneven and unfair broadband distribution here in the US. The report opens by pointing out how the pandemic really highlighted the necessity of having broadband access in the US just for being

able to carry out like simple daily functions. You really benefited if you have access to a broadband connection all the way to participating in the democratic process. The election was a big deal. You know, it was going on during a pandemic, and the internet access was playing a big part in being able to participate in that process. Also signing up for COVID vaccinations that is largely an online process in a lot of places as well. So having broadband access is pivotal to playing a part in

being a part of society in the United States. The report lays out that the industry spends hundreds of thousands of dollars every day to lobby politicians and an effort to more or less maintain an advantageous position in regional marketplaces.

So the report pretty much spells out stuff that I think most people know just through their own experience that big companies frequently have a near monopoly on specific regions, which means the average person is fortunate if they have even a second option when it comes to choosing a broadband service. And it also points out that a lot of people, particularly people in vulnerable or poor populations, often lack any broadband options at all, and so there are

these massive gaps in connectivity in the US. And the report is essentially saying these companies are behaving as companies do, right. These companies are capitalistic organizations. That's there, you know, raison d'tre, and that as a result, if a company identifies a particular region as being unprofitable, then there's no financial incentive for that company to extend services out to that area.

That's kind of the gist of the reports saying that without any other influence in here, these populations are going to continue to be underserved compared to areas that are

deemed to be profitable by these companies. And again, like it's it's kind of making the companies out to be the bad guy, but to be fair, you could argue that it's the system that enables this, that that facilitates this kind of behavior, these kind of choices that it would be antithetical to the corporate uh philosophy to do otherwise.

And the report also explains how the FCC went from an organization that was laying out rules and regulations under the Obama administration that would have really made broadband a utility. In fact, that did happen, and that this would help address things by creating mandates that the companies would have to follow, thus removing that decision from the companies themselves. But then all of that flipped when Trump became president

and the FCC leadership completely changed. Now, I would say it pretty much confirms a lot of common beliefs about the telecommunications industry, and I'll also point out it clearly has its own bias that is evident upon reading just the executive summary for this report. Now, I'm not saying the report is wrong. I'm just saying that the report does not attempt to present itself as being, you know, objective and unbiased. But it's pretty upfront about that. It's

not like it's trying to be something it's not. Anyway, if you are curious about why broadband access is the way it is in the United States and you want to know more about the links that companies will go to in order to maintain the status quo, I recommend reading the report. It's free to read at common Cause dot org. And again, the title of that is broadband gatekeepers, how I sp lobbying and political influence shapes the digital divide. I might have to do a full episode about that

at some point. Finally, last week, a cryptocurrency mining operation was rated by the Ukraine's Security Service, and the reason for the raid was that this group was allegedly using devices to mine cryptocurrency, specifically bitcoin, and in the process they were stealing electricity from the power grid, so they're

taking electricity without paying for it. Obviously, one of the things that is a barrier to entry and cryptocurrency mining is that you have to have a super powerful computer computer system, like multiple super powerful computers in order to stand a chance at being successful at at mining cryptocurrency, which means you have to consume a lot of electricity, which means your operations are expensive unless you steal that electricity.

If the electricity is free, well then it's not as big a deal and you've got more profit for yourself. So this particular operation was very odd because it wasn't full of super powerful mining rigs using various like parallel processing components. It was using thousands of PS four consoles PlayStation four. This raises some questions. I mean PS four consoles are cool and all. I've got one myself. I like it. But they're not exactly the most sophisticated computers

out there, and they are not optimized for mining cryptocurrency. Now, you could argue that using free electricity would mean that they don't have to be that good, but if they never are successful, then there's not much point to it. Right now, there was a time back with the PS three, which had a totally different semiconductor processor architecture, where you could network a ton of PS three's together and you could create the equivalent of a supercomputer, which, by the way,

not necessarily is better at cryptocurrency mining. But that's a very different thing than the PS four, which has a less I guess ambition is processor architecture. It's more like a typical computers processor. So what gives why would you use PS four consoles to mine cryptocurrency because they surely are not very effective. Well, new report suggests that the consoles were not mining cryptocurrency at all. They were doing something that I thought was far more ludicrous. They were

farming in game currency in a FIFA video game. And here's where the ignorant American that that being me I'm the ignorant American here is reminded that the FIFA video game franchise is truly enormous. In fact, the Guinness Book of World Records lists it as the best selling sports video game franchise in the world. And um, for fellow Americans who might not play FIFA might not be aware of what it is. It's a soccer game. Wait, I'm sorry, I'm sorry everybody else, it's a football game, but you

know it's that foreign football which we call soccer. Just keep it on the down low, Americans. Anyway, the people who are running the operation, apparently we're using these consoles to farm in game items. In FIFA twenty ones Ultimate Team Mode, Allegedly they had created these programs that would allow bots to play in game games and just generate tons of in game currency, which the group then could sell on the black market to other players. And all

of this just blows my mind. I mean, I understand that in game stuff can have real world value. It has to, like otherwise, downloadable content wouldn't be a thing. And I've purchased in game stuff on occasion for some titles, but it always surprises me to hear about the scope of these kinds of things and an operation that used like three thousand, eight hundred PS four consoles to do

this is just hard for me to visualize. I might have to do a full episode about this story in the future to kind of talk about what got us to this point, because it's more than just a group of hackers exploiting a system. It's really also about the system itself and how that system facilitated the scenario that

allowed this crime to even be a possibility. In a way, it's similar to what I was talking about with the I s p s and the broadband gatekeepers, right, because there you have a capitalist system that kind of creates the environment that enables this disparity to happen, and here we have a video game monetization strategy that also facilitates

bad behavior. So I think that I may need to do some episodes about kind of like the underlying business strategies behind some big tech companies and how that, as a consequence, leads to negative outcomes that don't necessarily depend upon the tech. The tech is just a component here, but it means that when we look at these things, were like, oh, that's not totally cool anyway, that's for a future episode. This episode is now concluded, so thank

you very much for listening. If you have suggestions for topics you would like me to cover on future episodes of tech Stuff, do what several of your fellow listeners have done and reach out to me on Twitter. The handle to use 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.