Tech News: Chinese Rovers and Musky Rascals

to have landed rovers successfully on the planet. Other countries have sent missions to Mars, but these are the only two countries that have landed rovers that have landed safely. The rover arrived housed in a lander which used a parachute and retrorockets to slow its descent through the Martian

atmosphere before touching down on Martian soil. So this is a different approach from what NASA was using with the Perseverance Rover and the Curiosity Rover before that, both of which used a sky crane technique in which the descent stage of the spacecraft used rockets to kind of hover over a landing zone and then lower the rovers down

to the surface on cables. The Chinese lander touchdown at around eight pm Eastern time on Friday, but it was another hour before China scientists could confirm a successful touchdown. This really illustrates just you know, how hard it is to get a successful landing on Mars. The delay between when something happens and when we can know about it is significant, even if everything is working properly, it's significant.

That's partly because the distance between Earth and Mars is great enough that it actually takes light or you know, radio communications, seven role minutes to make the journey from one point to the other. The rover named you're wrong after a Chinese got a fire, and I apologize for my pronunciation. I tried looking it up, but the source I could find had middling responses from people as to whether or not it was accurate. So my apologies for

for butchering that anyway, you're wrong. Will rove across Mars for about three months if all goes well, possibly beyond that if things go really well. NASA has had a history of missions lasting well beyond their projected lifespan. The rover will use various instruments to look for evidence of the past existence of life on Mars. In other Chinese space program news. Back in April, China launched a rocket

carrying a module for China's space station. The country plans to assemble that station and have it ready for occupation by the end of next year. The rocket that carried that module up, unfortunately, had an un controlled return to Earth, which caused a lot of concern along the various paths of potential descent before it ultimately plummeted into the ocean. But for a while, people along those pathways were a little worried that perhaps a Chinese rocket might just fallen

and collide with the Earth and cause massive damage. So while China has a big win with the landing on Mars, the country also has faced some criticism because of that rocket issue. You might remember a story from last week about how Elon Musk, who has been a big supporter of cryptocurrencies, helped send bitcoin values into a downward spiral after announcing that Tesla, the company you know that makes

electric vehicles, would no longer accept the cryptocurrency bitcoin as payment. Now, the reasoning behind that decision, according to Musk, was because of the environmental impact of bitcoin mining. Now I've covered this in the past, but that is definitely an issue. Bitcoin mining requires an enormous amount of electricity to run the powerful computers that rush to solve the guessing game

that ultimately determines which computer gets the next batch of bitcoins. Now, some of those computers are getting electricity from renewable energy sources like wind power, which is you know, good, except it is taking up electricity that could potentially be going to other places. However, some bitcoin mining operations are sucking down juice from power plants that rely on fossil fuels, so these are helping to contribute toward climate change and

carbon emissions. For a company that sells electric vehicles, which depend partly upon at least marketing that you know, electric vehicles are an environmentally cleaner alternative to gasoline or diesel powered combustion engines, you know, it wasn't a good look hard to sell an electric vehicle as being environmentally friendly if you're also accepting a cryptocurrency that is perceived as

being environmentally unfriendly musk SA. At the time that Tesla, the company had no plans to divest itself of its own bitcoin investment. It had a substantial amount of bitcoin, but even so, the announcement meant that bitcoin took a hit and value after already having a dip earlier in the year. Then over the weekend, Musk had a Twitter exchange that some people thought implied that Tesla had divested itself of its bitcoin, and then the cryptocurrency took another hit.

So at the height of its value this year, a single bitcoin was valued at around sixty five thousand bucks. As I write this, the value is closer to forty three thousand dollars. Now, don't get me wrong, forty thousand bucks is a lot of money, and if you got in on the bitcoin train at the very beginning, you're still looking at a pretty amazing return on your investment, just less than what it was a couple of weeks ago.

But this does mean that bitcoin's value has dropped more than twenty thousand dollars per bitcoin in the span of a few weeks, and that kind of volatility shows that bitcoin can be a very dangerous investment. It's definitely not a good currency as it stands right now, like you wouldn't really be able to use this to make purchases in any effective way. It also indicates that Elon Musk has way too much influence when, even if he didn't mean to, his tweets can send a commodity's value into

a sharp decline. On Monday, Musk clarified that the company Tesla had not divested itself of bitcoin. But as I record this, the currency hasn't seen much of a recovery. So what is going on here? Well, if I were to give an armchair analysis, and let me start this by saying I am, by no means an expert in these matters, I would say that what's probably happening is you've got a sizeable group of bitcoin investors who probably

hold a relatively all percentage of bitcoin collectively. We're not talking about the whales who owned enormous amounts of bitcoin. But they see must tweet something, and they perceive the possibility of bitcoin's value dropping, so they rush off to sell off their bitcoin assets to you know, minimize the amount of loss they might experience, and that in turn actually causes the dip to go lower. The dip becomes

something of a self fulfilling prophecy. Because so much of Bitcoin's value is based in perception and speculation, you could argue that the real people at fault here are those investors who panicked in response to something that Musk tweeted, and not Musk himself. But however you assign the responsibility, the outcome is pretty much the same. Now, will Bitcoin recover Probably, I'm guessing it will at some point, but I would be foolish to predict how low the value

will go when it does turn around. Some people think we're still in a bowl market, which means that will see the value go up. Others think we have entered a bear market and that the value is going to continue to go down. There doesn't seem to be any sort of agreement on that, and far be it from me to be able to make any kind of pronouncement. Sentiment could change quickly enough to make any guess. I

could hazard a total whiff. Anyway, this is a continuation of my series that I'm calling Jonathan is Old, and he thinks cryptocurrencies are inherently unstable investments, and more importantly, they're very lousy currencies. Plus, the proof of work style cryptocurrencies are just incredibly wasteful. Proof of steak has its own problems. Again, I'm gonna have to do a full episode about these in the future. In mergers and acquisitions news.

It looks like a T and T is planning to spin off Warner Media, which will then merge with Discovery Communications. Now I find the story particularly interesting since once upon a time I worked for Discovery Communications how Stuff We're x the company that I started at when I started tech Stuff, Uh, that was part of a private company called the Convex Group way back in the day. So this was two thousand seven was when I joined How Stuff Works. Discovery acquired Convex and thus How Stuff Works

the following year two thousand eight. A few years after that, Discovery sold off how Stuff Works to a different company called Blue Cora. Then Blue Cora sold us to another company, which took on the name System One. System one spun off the podcast arm of How Stuff Works as a separate podcast media company, which was then acquired by iHeart Media. So I've been in the same career path this entire time, the same you know, like job path. However, the names

at the top of the organ charts kept changing. But that wild ride is nothing compared to the various properties that are under Warner Media that includes HBO, Cinemax, Warner Brothers, and much much more. A T and T appears to be moving away from the vertical strategy in which a single company serves as the delivery system that is a telecommunications style company, uh and content generation or you know,

like a studio. This is what we see with other companies, though, I mean, like NBC Universal is owned by Comcast, and that's like a unified approach, so it is interesting to see a T and T split off from that. The announcement came as a surprise not just to folks like myself, but apparently it also surprised Warner Media CEO Jason Keeler. The Verge reports that Keiler is negotiating his departure from

Warner Media. He became CEO of the company in April of last year, so he served as leader for just over a year now, and according to sources who spoke with The New York Times, he was kept in the dark about the decision to merge with Discovery. The announcement makes it sound as though Discovery CEO David Zaslov is going to oversee this new merged entity, which would mean that,

you know, Keiler's role would largely have become redundant. Anyway, most estimations say the merger will take more than a year to complete, so we're looking at twenty two before this all settles in. What this means for the media landscape in general is a big open question. It'll be interesting to see how things shift around. Uh. I know that Discovery has got to be really interested in this. They were looking for digital solutions when they purchased How

Stuff Works. I mean, that was a big reason why they purchased the company back in the day, and I get the feeling that they never quite nailed it. So I'm wondering if this is another approach to not just adding an enormous amount of of you know, capability to the company, because Warner Media is huge, but also get

that digital delivery system tightly integrated into Discoveries practices. Moving on, So, one of the stories that's been developing in tech is that Bill and Melinda Gates are divorcing and that this process has been going on for a while now that

you know, at least since two thousand nineteen. And I wasn't initially going to report on any of this because while Bill Gates is an important person in tech, you know, he was the co founder of Microsoft and served as the CEO for many years and then was chairman of the board for years more and still on the Board of Directors up until but I figured the personal struggles of a married couple making the decision to end their marriage wasn't something I should cover in a tech podcast.

But the plot has considerably thickened as more details have

emerged during this process. For one, Bill Gates apparently pursued a romantic relationship with the Microsoft employee back in two thousand and just in case you're curious, Bill and Melinda Gates married in n Beyond the extra marital affair aspect of this is the huge issue of a man who had been serving as CEO until January two thousand and who remained on as chairman of the Board of Directors for Microsoft while simultaneously pursuing a relationship with a Microsoft employee.

Even if Bill Gates had been single, that would have been an enormous problem. The Board of Directors initiated a probe after receiving a letter from an employee who stated that Gates had sought an intimate relationship with her in two thousand and that the relationship that resulted had lasted several years. Bill Gates resigned from the board of Directors in twenty before that investigation was concluded. It was also only three months after he had been re elected to

the Board of directors. Now, I'm not here to speculate on things, but according to various sources, at least six current or former and Microsoft employees have said that his actions in the workplace made them uncomfortable and that language is open to a lot of interpretation. But again, I'm not going to, you know, speculate as to what that might actually mean. I feel like that's a disservice to

all parties involved. Another element to this sordid proceeding is that Bill Gates had met with Jeffrey Epstein at least as early as two thousand eleven and as late as two thousand eleven was three years after Epstein had already been found or had pled guilty to charges for soliciting an underage girl, which is truly horrifying, and of course, Epstein would later be linked to sex trafficking operations and trafficking of underage girls, and Gates's meetings with Epstein reportedly

contributed to Melinda Gates's decision to seek a divorce from from Bill. The whole thing paints a very ugly picture that is still unfolding as I recorded this, and it appears to have had large consequences regarding Gates's association with Microsoft. Now, I say a pears because Bill Gates as representatives have issued numerous denials regarding the various speculations and allegations linking Bill Gates to Epstein, as well as allegations that Gates

created an uncomfortable atmosphere for Microsoft employees. So this story I'm sure will continue. It doesn't look good, um and I'm certainly more inclined to believe the accusers. But at the same time, you know, obviously you want to try and maintain objectivity as best as possible. Um. So, yeah, complicated issue and a terrible, terrible story. We have a

couple of Apple stories to cover today as well. One is that Apple and Amazon Music have both announced services that would allow subscribers to their music services to listen to lossless audio for no extra cost. So that means we should quickly go over what lossless even means. When it comes to digital audio. There are a few ways to go about encoding data. Some encoding formats are lossy formats. This helps keep file sizes down. Essentially you are losing

some of the data associated with that sound file. Raw sound files get pretty big, which you know, until recently, meant that streaming them was a nonstarter just because most people didn't have the broadband throughput that you would need to be able to do that effectively. They were also so large that they would take up a ton of storage space if you were trying to save them to

a device or something. So there are sound formats that can serve file size by getting rid of some of that data in an effort to compress the file sizes. These are lossy formats, and the process means that depending on what hardware you're using to listen to the music, you might be able to tell the difference between lossy versions and the lossless version. The goal of lossy versions is to only eliminate data that, in theory at least

doesn't affect the listening experience of the audio file. In practice, it can affect it. So generally speaking, lossless just means you get a better quality of audio, but you do have to have the right kind of equipment to listen to it, or else it won't pick up on that well.

Apple Music subscribers will be able to listen to more than seventy five million songs in lossless audio and Amazon Music, as I mentioned as doing something similar, Apple also announced spatial audio support, which sounds a lot to me like bin arl or three D audio. Essentially, it's a way for producers to create sound mixes that make it sound as if audio is coming at you from specific directions around you, assuming again that you're listening on appropriate hardware.

So let's talk about that hardware thing. Apple says that if subscribers want to listen to the top tier of loss less audio, so the best of the best, you would need to have a USB digital to analog converter to thus convert the signal properly before feeding that to a pair of wired headphones. Now, such a converter would be an external gadget that you would have to plug

into whatever device you're using to access Apple Music. But this also means that Apple's own air Pods, AirPods Max, and air Pods Pro gadgets won't support this level of

lossless audio playback, at least not wirelessly. These devices typically pair with an iPhone over Bluetooth A a C codec that does not support this lossless audio format, So you can technically listen to lossless audio on an iPhone, but you will need to connect the iPhone to some sort of external USB digital to analog converter, and then use a different pair of wired headphones to be able to

experience it. That being said, nine to five Mac reports that air Pods Max will support high resolution lossless audio if you're using them as wired headphones, not wireless ones. That takes a little wind out of the sales of this announcement. But on the flip side, both Apple and Amazon are putting a lot of pressure on Spotify, which is also beginning to offer lossless audio. But Spotify is doing it at a premium subscription, so you have to

actually pay extra to get that access. Apple and Amazon using lossless audio as a free upgrade is a kind of a big kick in the teeth to Spotify. Now. I'm just sitting off to the side over here. I'm just eating my popcorn and watching this whole you know. Shake it Loose, also related to Apple Parley or Parlor if you prefer, is once again available on the Apple

app Store. Parlor, for those who do not know, is a social media platform that positions itself as a champion of free speech, but funding for the service, leadership for the service, all these things that are a key to the service being in operation come from sources that are either the right wing political appointees or or politicians, or they're coming from people who have funded right wing political efforts, and Parlor's user base skewed pretty hard toward the right

wing of the political spectrum and certainly was dipping pretty hard into extremism. The platform saw itself ousted from Google and Apple app stores, as well as from Amazon Web Services UH and their hosting system after the January sixth assault on the US Capitol, and the company repeatedly failed to moderate content that included hate speech and calls for violence.

Mark Meckler, who was an interim CEO who stepped in to replace a former CEO who got fired from Parlor, is now leaving the company to be replaced by George Farmer, who since March has been the chief operating officer for the company and previously who was a candidate for the Brexit party over in the UK. To get back into the app store, Parlor had to update its app and content moderation policies, and it looks like there will effectively

be a different flavor of Parlor on iOS. iOS users will see a more paired down version of the content of the app, material that would violate the terms that Parlor has had to agree to in order to come back to Apple's App Store. All that content has to be hidden away from iOS users. Those who are on the web based version or who have sideloaded the Android app on their devices would see everything, not just the stuff that iOS would allow. Sideloading is the process of

adding an app outside of an authorized app store. Apple does not allow for this. You cannot sideload apps on a not out of the box Apple device without altering it. Google, however, does allow for sideloading apps. It advises against it, but says, if you want to, you can load apps that we will not carry in our app store, but we kind of disavow ourselves of what might happen to you if you do it. So, while Parlor is still not in the Google Play Store officially, Android users can sideload it

onto their devices. Parlor had a spike of popularity in the fall of twenty twenty, but it was kind of in decline even before it started getting banned from app stores and hosting services. I'm not sure what it's numbers look like now, but from what I understand, uh, it's you know, not nearly as popular as it was leading into the election. Stuff of and that's it for the tech news for Tuesday one. We'll be back later this week with more news updates, as well as other episodes

of tech Stuff. If you have suggestions for topics I should cover on tech Stuff, reach out to me let me know what those are. The best way to do that is on Twitter. Our handle is tech stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Y tex Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.