Tech News: The Sun is Angry

hit the Earth tomorrow. In case you're listening from the future, tomorrow would be Wednesday, August three, twenty two. And if you are from the future, how did it turn out? Are the zombies as bad as we heard? I'm kidding. So this news could sound a bit concerning, So I am here to tell you what this actually means. And right at the top, there is no need to worry.

There's no cause for panic here. This is a mild solar storm, g one solar storm, and it's quite probable that tomorrow will come and go and most of you won't even notice anything unusual. However, solar storms do have the potential to cause some disruption here on Earth. So

here's what's going on. The Earth has a strong magnetic field, and that's great because it helps protect us from being bombarded by stuff like solar debris, such as what is recently erupted from the Sun. These particles can carry a lot of energy. They could be harmful if they were to collide with us here on Earth. In fact, life would not really be possible if it weren't for the fact that we had this magnetic field that helps protect us. The magnetic field and the and the atmosphere together are

like a force field for us here on Earth. Well, when the debris makes contact with Earth's magnetic field, that field ends up contracting a little bit. It gets you know, constricted, It absorbs energy, and the result is we get geo magnetic storms. Now, those can actually be gorgeous, They can be spectacular if they're strong enough. Fluctuations on Earth's magnetic field are sometimes visible. That's what the Aurora borealis is, right, the aurora at the polls. That's from these fluctuations of

the magnetic fields, so the northern and southern lights. In other words, well, during a very powerful geomagnetic storm, those aurora can sometimes be visible much further away from the source. Than is typically possible. Like normally, for the Northern Lights, for example, you have to be pretty far north to see them, but in times of real geomagnetic storm activity, it might be possible to see them as far south

as the Caribbean, which is unbelievable. So in places like Atlanta, Georgia, where I am, you know that's it's it's almost unheard of to be able to see the Northern Lights. Now, to be clear, that kind of activity is not going to happen tomorrow. Again, this is a mild solar storm. People in places like Michigan and Maine might be able to see the Northern Lights, but folks as far south

as I am are not going to see it. These storms are electromagnetic in nature, so you get these electromagnetic surges and as a result, they can interfere with larger electronic systems and devices, um stuff like power grids. You can see surges and power grids because these are enormous systems, right, so you can almost think of them as a huge antenna for electro magnetic surges and that can then be

detected within those systems. Generally speaking, the larger the system, the more prone it is to at least being affected a little bit by solar storms. Now, are really powerful electromagnetic surge is something from a massive solar eruption or maybe something you know, more terrestrial in in nature, like a blast from a nuclear warhead for example. That would be powerful enough to affect things like personal electronics. But again,

that's not what's happening tomorrow. The solar storm will see tomorrow will be very mild in nature, so there might be some power surges here and there, but it's not going to be anything massive at least that's not what anyone's predicting. So, uh, chances are most people are going to go through the day tomorrow and not even notice that there was anything weird happening. We are entering into an era of increased solar activity. This is not unusual.

This happens in cycles. The full cycle lasts eleven years, and we're coming back round to the part of the cycle where there's increased solar activity. Now, could this mean that in the future there is a solar flare coronal mass ejection that's large enough to have a noticeable effect

on systems here on Earth. Yes, that is possible. Way back in the nineteenth century, I believe it was eighteen fifty nine there was a solar storm that was so powerful that it ended up causing surges in telegraph lines here on Earth and caused issues. Then that is not what we're gonna see tomorrow. Doesn't mean that we won't see it in the future. It's another reminder that we have to be very careful in how we prepare and design our systems so that they can handle these kinds

of surges. As it stands, power grids on Earth typically aren't built to survive massive spikes like that. We would likely see outages in a in a truly large solar storm, So we can really think of this more as a warning, but not anything to be alarmed about for the time being. Okay,

let's go for another Elon Musk Twitter update. So when last we met, Twitter had sued Musk for trying to back out of his acquisition deal for the company, and a judge has now schedule a day five day court case that's going to take place in October, and Twitter still has to hold a shareholder vote to get shareholder approval for Musk purchasing the company. That vote will happen

later this year. Now, I suspect that the shareholders are going to approve of the acquisition because Musk agreed to buy Twitter at fifty four dollars and twenty since per share, and right now Twitter stock is currently trading, you know, somewhere around the forty one mark, so shareholders would stand to make a good amount of money if they sold their shares to Elon Musk. But the latest update is that last Friday, Musk filed a counter suit against Twitter,

so he has countersued Twitter. Now we know that the filing is more than a hundred sixty pages long, but we don't know what's in it. It was privately filed. Only the court knows what's in it. Up to this point, the analysts whose work I've been reading about this haven't been terribly impressed with the arguments made by Musk's team of lawyers as to why he should be allowed to back out of the deal without any issue. But then it may be that the countersuit contains more compelling arguments.

I just don't know. Now. We might get a redacted version of the countersuit before too long, and then we'll learn a bit more. I still don't know how this whole thing is gonna go. So my gut tells me the musk is kind of up the creek due to the nature of that initial agreement to acquire Twitter, But I am no legal expert, and anyway, sometimes court cases

defy logic, or at least what I call logic. Fast Company has a report on how the tech sector continues to cut back on costs, which includes stuff like hiring freezes and layoffs. So the Fast Company says that Oracle reports are saying that thousands of employees will be laid off in the coming months in places like the United States and Canada, India, and Europe. Shopify laid off around

ten percent of its work force last month. Lift has reorganized its business and in the process eliminated sixty jobs in its rental division. Netflix, which is a company that's been in and out of the news a lot this year due to issues with subscriber loss, has laid off around three hundred employees this year so far, and has also canceled a bunch of projects that I was personally looking forward to. So sad that the world is not going to get an animated movie version of Bone phenomenal

uh comic book series. You can get the full collection and I highly recommend it, and it is sad that we're not going to get the animated version of it. Fast Company also notes that coin Base, which is a cryptocurrency exchange, is going to lay off nearly twenty percent of its workforce, and while it wasn't part of Fast Company's report, we've also heard about companies like Microsoft and Meta and Apple putting hiring freezes in place for certain departments.

We've also heard Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg indicating that the company is going to reduce headcount and try to do more with less, saying things like they're probably people working here who shouldn't be working here. Fun times. Well, we've also got a few Apple related news I ams to talk about that I am eager to get to. We're gonna take a quick break when we come back. I'm

going to talk about these Apple stories. We're back. So Apple story number one, it's that Apple has sent out an email to all employees saying that the company is lifting its mask mandate for employees at quote most locations end quote. In fact, I'm going to expand on that. Apple employees received an internal email that had one part of it saying quote in light of current circumstances, wearing a face mask will no longer be required in most locations.

End quote. Now I'm curious what those current circumstances are because we're kind of in another COVID nineteen surge, and then there's an increased concern for other diseases, like you know, monkey pocks is a growing concern. And now I should still add that doctors are still working out to what extent monkey pocks could transmit from person to person through you know, respiratory excretions. Uh, there's there's not a full understanding of that. There's some evidence to suggest that it

can happen, but we don't know to what extent. However, I would think that would be enough to raise concerns in certain areas like you know, California, for example, and suggest that maybe masks would be a good idea. So I don't I don't understand. In fact, over in San Francisco, which is not too far from where Apple headquarters is, I mean it's not like super close, but it's not super far either, BART, which is also known as the Bay Area Rapid Transit System, has reinstated it's mask mandate.

So weird that Apple would remove its mask mandate just as you down the road, Bart is putting it back in place. I guess it just feels like odd timing to me. I am not sure what is going on here now. I will say that Apple's email reiterated that if employees feel more comfortable wearing a mask, they should do so. Uh, and that the company wants all employees to respect each other's decisions about whether or not to wear a mask. Um. Again, just odd timing. I don't

know what prompted that, but there you go. Next up, Apple reported a decline and its profits last week. The company's profits were down by more than ten percent compared to the end of the second quarter of last year. Revenue, however, is up. The company is growing at a slower pace than it was last year, so it's still growing, just not growing as quickly. Uh. Insert rant from Jonathan here about how using growth as a prime metric for business

is ultimately destructive. I'm sparing all of you all that this time. Just imagine that I'm ranting about it now. Anyway, Despite the fact that Q two of two thousand twenty two didn't perform as well as Q two of two thousand twenty one, Apple still beat expectations, and so it saw its stock price increase as a result. The company

also reported that Apple's services division saw twelve growth. Now that's something that I would be a little bit concerned about, given what's going on with Apple in the world right now. So Tim Cook has been guiding Apple into becoming more of a services company for years. That's that's been the path, the trajectory that Apple has been on for quite some time now. But we're seeing more regulatory agencies around the

world pushing back against Apple's processes. At the heart of the matter for most of these is whether or not Apple's approach is ultimately anti competitive, namely that the company requires all in app purchases to use Apple his own payment processing system, which automatically gives Apple a fifteen to cut of each in app transaction. Uh, it gets a little more tricky than that, but that's the general gist

of it. So if we see Apple lose ground on that matter, that would have a potentially massive impact on an increasingly important revenue source for the company, and it could force Apple to have to pivot again. But it's early days and I expect we're gonna see Apple perform well, at least in the short term. It's just the question of when is the other shoe going to drop? And now for some weird Apple news, the company has requested emergency relief from a U S court over how it

cannot sell five G iPhones and iPads in Colombia. And you might say, Colombia is not in the United States. That's a different country entirely. What is going on? All right, let's sort all this out. So Apple's five g iOS products rely on ed technology that's out from Ericsson. So Ericsson holds the patent on these technologies. Apple does not dispute this. This is something that all parties agree upon. And until recently, Apple was paying a licensing fee to

Ericsson to make use of that technology. So far, so good. But then Apple decided, Yo, this is expensive and I'm not gonna pay it anymore, and so Apple stopped paying Ericson. So Ericsson started reaching out to various markets, with Columbia being a very earlier one, and and said, hey, Apple is illegally selling these products. They are violating our patents,

so do not sell five G products in your stores. Really, Ericson said this to Colombian courts, and the courts in Columbia ordered stores there not to sell these five G Apple products. So then Apple goes in files an emergency motion in the Eastern District of Texas, arguing that Ericsson owes Apple damages for disrupting its operations and Colombia. Now

the judges said, you're on your cotton picken minds. One, Apple, you're in the wrong here by refusing to sit down with Ericson and negotiate a licensing fee to Ericson is within its rights to defend its patents. Three, this is not an emergency situation. And if you do this again, I'm gonna make you go out there and get me a switch. I am paraphrasing, I should add anyway, Now Apple's filing another emergency motion, so it might be a switch time. Uh, And I'm sure that's gonna get a

fun response from the courts. And the argument is that Apple's making is get this, It's human rights are being violated, as an Apple's human rights are being violated. So Apple, or maybe It's arguing its products have had human rights that have been violated by this action by Ericsson. Now you might be saying, but that none of those things that you talked about are actually human You are right now.

You could potentially argue that corporations in the United States are granted a legal form of personhood, but that doesn't necessarily extend human rights to them. Plus, experts are arguing that even if it did, there are no human rights violations happening here anyway. So we'll have to see how

this plays out. It might just be that Apples trying to wait out Ericson and hope that the loss of revenue will be enough to make Ericson go belly up and they won't have to pay anything anymore because no one will be around to own those I p um. I don't know. It's just bizarre. It's this is one of those stories where as I read it, I was thinking, am I awake or is this a fever dream? Uh? Turns out I was awake. Amazon released its sustainability report

and the news isn't great. Now, the company did try to spin it into a positive direction. So here's the quote unquote good news. Amazon has managed to decrease the amount of emissions it generates on a more US per dollar level, so meaning the amount of emissions produced for every dollar of merchandise sold fell by just under two percent. Uh. They referred to this as carbon intensity, So from that perspective, things are moving in the right direction. Right Like per operation,

Amazon's emissions are decreasing. But here's the big issue. Amazon also saw an enormous boom in business, and the volume of these operations increased dramatically. So while the carbon intensity of each individual operation dropped slightly, the total number of operations meant that carbon emissions ballooned by eighteen percent in twenty one. That means Amazon generated more than seventy one

million metric tons of carbon dioxide last year. As The Verge points out, that's roughly equal to the amount of carbon dioxide that a hundred eighty gas fired power plants would generate over the course of a full year. The Verge also rightfully points out that companies like Amazon us stuff like carbon offsets to push toward being a net

zero carbon company on paper. But here's the thing offsets. Really, what that means is that you're pouring money into projects that are at least intended to remove carbon from the atmosphere in some way, Like it might be a program where you're planting lots of trees for all, for certain amounts of carbon that you're emitting, and you get credits for that right because you're spending money, you get credits that allow you to emit that carbon. Here's the problem.

You're dumping all that carbon now, and the solutions can take years to mature and start to make an impact. So in the in between that you've got this growing issue of of increasing amounts of carbon being emitted into the atmosphere with the quote unquote solution for the problem not really even making an impact until years later. You can't do that that there's a there's a recipe for disaster.

It's heading toward collapse. But that is how a lot of these companies deal with trying to look like they're being carbon neutral. They're not actually carbon neutral. They're essentially buying the right to emit more carbon. And since these companies have enormous amounts of money, they can do that because in the end, the money they spend in order to appear carbon neutral on paper is way less than the money they would have to spend to actually overhaul

operations so that it truly was carbon neutral. Dark times, y'all, it's it's tough, and this is something It's not just Amazon that does this, So I don't want to give that impression. It's not only Amazon that is guilty of kind of doing this sort of bait and switch or or juggling numbers around on a piece of paper to make it look better. This is something that's problemat throughout multiple industries, not just the tech industry. So it's something that we really do have to pay more attention to

and make sure that we address in a responsible way. Alright, We've got a few more stories to cover before we conclude this episode, but first let's take another quick break. We're back. So, the chairman of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, better known as t s MC, released a statement that I think kind of says the obvious, like it's something where everybody knows this, but I guess by saying it

out loud, you make it more ominous. What he said was that if China were to invade Taiwan, that would cause huge economic turmoil in the entire region, it would change global economies, and it would render t s MCS semiconductor factory's nonoperable. Now, this has been something that's been a huge concern for a long time. So so let's do a very quick cliffs notes version of what's going on here. Taiwan is off the coast of mainland China. The two entities, China and Taiwan have had a long

and complicated history. Way back in the nineteen forties, the Republic of China, which was the government that was in place of the entire nation at that time, was being pushed out by the People's Republic of China, a totally different group, and the Republic of China fled to Taiwan. The People's Republic of China assumed control of the Chinese mainland. Essentially, both governments more or less claim that they're the rightful

power for all of China. So, uh, you have these two different entities that that essentially say, yeah, we're in charge of everything. Um well, effectively they operates separately. Although China and Taiwan have a lot of connections, obviously there are people who go back and forth. China has been accused of stealing talent from Taiwan for years now in order to bolster its own semi conductor industry in China,

and there have been tensions there for ages. So this has been a huge reason why places other places around the world, like particularly here in the United States, we've seen a real push to create semiconductor fabrication facilities in order to reduce the dependence upon Taiwan. Right now, Taiwan produces nearly half of all semi conductors that are used in the world, and and more than half if you're

looking at the really advanced semi conductors. That's because you know, Taiwan poured billions of dollars into developing this industry, and companies in other places like the United States, chose to outsource manufacturing to Taiwan because it made more economic sense. But now when you start looking at it and you look at the vulnerability of putting, you know, all of your semiconductor eggs in Taiwan's basket, you start to get a little nervous, especially when China seems to get a

little more aggressive and it stands towards Taiwan. So an invasion would be a massive disruption to the entire tech sector and beyond. And I think the reason why this even came out in the news at all is because the United States Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, has announced a planned visit to Taiwan, which in turn prompted China to warrant that, you know, Western interference in Taiwan

would raise tensions in the region. So there's this general worry that this is going to precipitate into a cascading event that will upend the entire semiconductor industry. My hope is that that doesn't happen, because obviously if it did, it's going to be incredibly disruptive across everything. Um it would be terrible for for millions of people uh directly affected by such a thing, and then indirectly billions more. So, obviously, here's hoping that we don't see, uh, this rhetoric grow

into more drastic action. On the United States side, the government is placing more restrictions on what companies are able to export to China when it comes to chip making tools. So China has been investing billions in building more semiconductor facilities within China itself, and it has been importing some of the the advanced chip making tools from other countries like Japan and the United States. So you can kind of look at this as a political approach to trying

to slow China's progress a little bit. The U s government is essentially saying to come needs within the US that you cannot sell current tools to China. You can sell much older tools, tools that are essentially obsolete when when you compare to the state of the art of what's what we're capable of making, But you can't sell China any tools that would allow China to stay up

to date on manufacturing processes. So again it's another another case of trying to slow down China's march towards global domination, at least in the technology technology sector. Over in Spain, there's some concerning news about a pair of hackers who disrupted a significant number of radiation detection sensors that are part of a radioactivity alert system there. Moreover, these two hackers apparently previously served as contractors who were put in

charge of maintaining that network. So the people who were meant to take care of the network, we're dismantling it. Here's what happened. So Spain has several nuclear power plants, so in a in an effort to assure safety, Spain also has this mesh network of around eight hundred gamma detection sensors. That network is meant to provide an early warning in case of something going wrong at one of these nuclear facilities, so that we don't have a catastrophic

disaster on the order of Chernobyl. Also, it means if the Hulk goes out for Paea, will know about it right away. Anyway, apparently these two contractors were purposefully sabotaging those sensors. They were effectively severing the connection between the censor and the control center that monitors everything, and they did it to more than three hundred of the eight hundred censors. They also allegedly tried to delete a program

that was designed to manage this network at the control center. Now, this was all happening last year between March and July, and investigators cut onto the fact that something was going on and they launched an investigation that lasted a full year. Now, the two unnamed individuals have been arrested. Uh no motive has been shared with the media, so there's no word

if there was more to this plan or not. As it stands, the two hackers greatly reduced the detection capacity of the network, so if something had gone wrong with one of these nuclear facilities, it might have taken longer to detect it, which in turn could have been disastrous. But the question is, is this just part of a bigger plan. Maybe there was something far more destructive planned

for the future. Maybe dismantling the warning system was step one to make sure that this more destructive plan would have a maximum effect. I don't I don't know if that's the case. Maybe I've just watched too many James Bond films. Finally, Logitech is working on a handheld gaming system with ten Cent games. It sounds like the games themselves will be mostly running in the cloud. Logitech announced that the device will support Xbox Cloud Gaming and G

four Now, which is from Nvidia. There is an enormous lack of details about this. Logitech did not mention a release date. It did not mention what sort of price range this might be at, or whether there will be different models of the device. We actually didn't see any pictures or illustrations of the things, so we don't even know what it's going to look like. But there's definitely

been a huge demand for handheld PC gaming systems. Valve came out with the Steam Deck and demand was so high that they could not meet it, like the supply was way too low, and in fact for a while there was concern about you know, people had put in reservations for one of these things, they didn't know if

they were ever going to get one. Valve has said recently that people who had a current reservation as of four days ago would get their steam Deck by the end of twenty twenty two, and I think they're going in a first come, first serve basis, so in other words, the earlier you made your reservation, the earlier you will be able to get yours. I made a reservation for one, but I didn't get until relatively recently, so I expect if I do get one this year, it will be

at the tail end of the year. But that's on me because I was slow to act on that. So Logitech getting into the space makes sense. Having competition in handheld PC gaming is great. It's going to drive innovation for all parties concerned. So I think this is a good thing, especially if you do like having portable gaming systems.

I've heard great things about the Steam Deck, you know, people talking about certain titles that are just a joy to play on steam Deck, and I'm really hoping that I get a chance to try that out sometime towards the end of this year. So Logitech coming out with another model I think is nothing but good news and hopefully it means that we'll see other ones also join in the market, uh that are well designed so that ultimately the consumers benefit. And that's it for the news

for Tuesday, August two, two thousand twenty two. If you have suggestions for topics I should cover in future episod is a tech Stuff, please reach out to me. There are a couple of ways to do that. One is you can download the I Heart Radio app. It's free to download. You can just navigate over to tech Stuff and there's this little microphone icon that if you click on you can leave a voice message up to thirty seconds in length and let me know what you would

like me to cover. Or you can always reach out on Twitter. The handle I use on Twitter for the show is tech Stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Y. Tech 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.