Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio, and I love all things tech and good golly, so much has happened this past year. Uh. This is the third episode in our retrospective look at the big text stories of twenty one, some of which obviously go beyond just technology, but tech played an important role. I promise not all of the stuff that happened one was bad. It's just I mean, obviously, news headlines tend to gravitate toward that. It all gets back to what drives clicks, right, and the good stories get a lot of share on social networks, but not so much on like news sites. But um, we do have some more bad stuff that we do have to go through in this episode. So, for example, was a banner year from malicious hackers. Back in twenty the general public first learned about the Solar Winds hack. That's the one where hackers were able to compromise a software vendor and insertain malicious code into an update on one of that vendor's products, and then the vendor pushed out the update which included the malicious code to its customers. Those customers included US governmental agencies as well some notable Fortune five companies that supply. Chain hack was a preview for bad stuff to follow in. One really big trend in one was ransomware attacks, And just in case you're not familiar with that term, the general idea is that the hackers get access to a target system in some way. Maybe they infiltrate the system technologically, maybe they use social engineering to fool someone into handing over access, maybe it's a combination. Anyway, once they gain access, they locked down the targeted system. Typically they do something like they use an encryption scheme that bricks the system so it's all encrypted. The system's owners can no longer longer access their systems or their data, not without unencrypting it or decrypting it. And if the encryption is good, it could mean that trying to find a solution outside of just the official decrypt key could take centuries unless, well unless the victim ponies up the cash to the hackers, who, upon payment, promised to decrypt the system. We usually hear about these demands being made in the form of cryptocurrency because that stuff is harder to pin down, though not impossible. There are actually a few ransomware stories from the past year that end with an agency like the FBI seizing money from the hacker is even when it was in crypto formats. And as I always say, paying the ransom is a bad idea for several reasons. One, it sends the message to the hackers that hey, this works. Then we see more groups engage in that same activity. Also, a lot of this is coming out of hacker groups that are states sponsored or state sanctioned. That means the hackers are receiving support from or at the very least are being ignored by the governments of the countries they are based in. We mostly hear about hacker groups out of Russia and China, um sometimes North Korea, and there are others as well. Of course, Also, there's no guarantee that the hackers will actually decrypt your stuff, right. You could end up paying them and then they just run off with the money. So there are a lot of reasons why it's not a good idea to pay the ransoms. The ransomware attacks this year included ones on Colonial pipeline, which is responsible for the transportation of an enormous amount of fuel for the East coast of the United States, and that attack meant that for short all we saw gas prices go up, and we saw a lot of folks engage in a little good old hoarding, and that was a big story over in my area. In fact, where gas stations had no gas, they were out and people were just rushing around like maniacs filling up garbage cans full of gasoline, which I don't think I need to tell you is a bad idea at any time. Anyway, that happened. Colonial Pipeline paid a ransom worth around four million dollars, but law enforcement was able to get some of that money back. Another big ransomware attack hit a company called jbs U s USA that as a meat processing company that located in Brazil. I think this was a huge hit in the meat supply chain and it caused issues all along from the farmers who raised raised livestock. Some of those farmers actually had to reclaim livestock that had been sent to the processing facilities, so they had a little stay of execution, I guess, and it went all the way to the end customers. The Russian hacker group Revel was busy this year. For one thing, they were able to take note of the Solar Winds attack and they pulled off a similar stunt with a company called Kassa, which counts thousands of companies and organizations among its customer sports Virtual System administrator product. The REvil group was able to compromise that product and push out an update that contained malware, allowing them to lock down systems with encryption, holding them for ransom. One person allegedly connected to that attack has since been arrested and is awaiting extradition to the United States. On a similar note, a Chinese hacking group called Hafnium targeted vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Exchange Server product, which affected email systems and thousands of organizations. Microsoft issued a fixed pretty quickly, but whether organizations actually did the work to install that fixed, that's another matter. And any way, at that point they were dealing with hackers snooping on emails. And then there was the n s O group. This company, based in Israel produces hacking tools that it markets to customers like governments, including authoritarian and autocratic governments. In fact, mostly those kinds. The hacking tools are meant to allow the person using them to compromise specific target devices and then use those devices like surveillance tools. The story that got the most attention was an exploit called Pegasus that could turn an iPhone into a spy on behalf of the hacker. So the hacker could send a message through I message and it would include the the the malware string, and because of how Apple processes I messages at the time, the target device would be compromised. All you had to do is have the person's phone number and have the Pegasus software installed, and you could send one of these malicious messages and it would infect the target phone. The hacker could then look at information on the target phone, or even use that phone's camera and microphone to spy on the device's owner. N s O Group uh They marketed this as a way to keep tabs on folks like terrorists, but experts pointed out that customers were using it on all sorts of people, including activists, politicians, journalists. I believe one leader used it on his wife allegedly. Moreover, NSO Group could only sell this product to customers that the Israeli government approved of, and it began to look like this was a really nasty case of money, politics, and authoritary and tendencies getting really cozy with one another. For its part, the ns A group has denied claims that its tool has been sold far and wide to parties that would abuse it, but organizations like Amnesty Internationals say otherwise. One other big hackings story, though this didn't involve ransomware or political surveillance, involved the live streaming service Twitch, known primarily for video game streamers. In October, Twitch publicly acknowledged that hackers had breached the service and copied a ton of data, like around a d twenty eight gigabytes of information. Of course, this came after someone had released that information, so at that point, you know, we all knew it had happened, and then Twitch said, oh, yeah, no, that happened. The data included the source code for Twitch, but it also included information about how much money streamers were making from the service. This meant that the public could find out who on Twitch was really pulling in the big bucks. But by big bucks, I don't mean the crazy estimates you occasionally see bandied about online. I mean it's a lot, but not millions of dollars a month, and only the top top earners are seeing revenue over the million dollar mark. And to be clear, uh, the information we were looking at was accumulated earnings between August two thousand nineteen and September two thousand twenty one. So that's two years worth of of earnings. Still a lot of money, it's just not you know, the ludicrous amounts you would sometimes see listed online. Okay, let's talk about Tesla, because y'all, Tesla's a company that has a great track record for tacking me off. Now, it's not that I don't like the idea of electric vehicles, because I'm all for them, and I like Tesla's aesthetics. I think the style is kind of cool apart from that weird truck thing. And they also want to see autonomous vehicles realize their potential. But Tesla takes steps in the space that I frequently find incredibly irresponsible. Now this is not a new thing. I have complained many times about how the company named its early driver assist features autopilot, because Okay, the word autopilot suggests a technology that can completely take over for a person. I mean, that's the common interpretation, right, you might still have a person there in order to look over stuff, but the main tasks all fall to a machine, presumably one that is more than capable of handling those tasks. But Tesla wanted to have it both ways. They wanted to call the features autopilot, but they also had to tell drivers, Oh yeah, but you toads need to keep your hands on the wheel and be absolutely prepared to take over because this is not an autonomous mode, it's a driver assist feature. Now, I would argue that the company was selling one concept and then saying, oh no, no, that's not what we meant. You misunderstood. Well this year we saw that continue with the rollout of the full self driving feature. All right, full self driving. That sounds pretty darn cut and dried, right like. It seems like it would be hard to misinterpret the phrase full self driving, except that Tesla again says this isn't autonomous driving. Well, Tesla, stop naming things that mean other things. Anyway, The rollout of one f s D update really made headlines in July, so Tesla pushed out this update to FSD version nine beta software to a selection of Tesla owners. Now these were owners who had passed a safety score driving test. Though there were other news stories that said that that test was pretty easy to fool in order to get a score high enough to be considered for this program, and then the update ended up causing us some pretty massive problems. So drivers found out that their cars were erroneously detecting an oncoming crash, like a front end crash, and so they would slam on the brakes. The cars would just automatically. This would happen even if the Tesla was behind, you know, the next vehicle, and the next vehicle was like, you know, like like several hundred yards ahead, or even in cases where there was no other vehicle on the road at all. Sometimes the the Tesla would just uh detect something that wasn't there and break very hard. Now, obviously a car breaking suddenly is itself a safety hazard, as anyone behind the car might not be able to react in time to avoid rear ending the vehicle that's that's doing the breaking, and if there's no reason for the car to break in the first place, that increases the odds of an accident. Well, some drivers went so far as to say that the update made their Tesla's completely undrivable, that they couldn't get down a street without their cars, you know, applying the brakes multiple times. Elon Musk would later tweet that the company had rolled back the software update, and Tesla would issue an actual recall, which was a process required due to safety regulations in the United States. A little later on. Musk also, by the way, really downplayed this whole thing. It was kind of like, you know, software, sometimes stuff happens that we didn't anticipate. That's just the way it works, and we'll just roll it back. Um. And it's that attitude, combined with rolling out features that potentially could end up harming people, that infuriates me. Another big story that happened last year was that a Tesla Megapac battery in Australia caught fire. Now, the Mega Pac isn't a battery that fits into a car or a house. This is meant to store electricity as part of a renewable energy utility plant. So let's say you've got a giant solar farm you're generating electricity, Well you've got to do something without electricity, and m if you're generating more electricity than there is demand, well a lot of the electricity is just going to go to waste unless you store it. That's what the mega PAC is for. It's it's you know about energy storage strategy. Apparently, in this case, there was a coolant leak in the system, which allowed things to overheat and even caused a megapac to catch fire. The fire was so intense that it took firefighters four days to extinguish it. Once out, regulators began to talk about possible changes to megapact facilities to allow for better monitoring and more easy access for first responders in the event of a fire. Oh and, as we've seen with several other companies recently, former Tesla employees alleged that the work environment at the company is toxic as all heck. Jessica Barazza, who worked at a Tesla factory, filed a lawsuit against the company along with several other coworkers, claiming that she was harassed and worse while working for the company and that the human resources department failed to do anything about it. And a man named O N. Diaz sued his former employer, being Tesla, saying he had been subjected to racist abuse while at work. San Francisco court found Indias his favor and ordered a one hundred thirty seven million dollar five going to be paid to DAS. Now, normally this sort of thing wouldn't have made it to the court system so quickly. But Daz did not sign one of the mandatory arbitration agreements that Tesla regularly includes in the employee contracts, and we talked about those earlier this week. It's a pretty low tactic that companies use in an effort to prevent employees from seeking legal recourse to internal issues. Okay, that was a lot. How about we take a quick break. Okay, we're back. Let's talk about space because there were a lot of space news stories this year. Of course, we need to talk about billionaires and their obsession with getting into space. The three billionaires in question are Richard Branson had a Virgin Galactic, Jeff Bezos, the founder and former seat EEO of Amazon and the founder of the space company Blue Origin, and Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX. Of those three, two have kind of sort of been to space. First up in mid July was Richard Branson, whose Virgin Galactic uses a mother ship approach to getting up into space. So you've got your really big airplane and strapped to your really big airplane is a smaller rocket plane, and once the really big airplane is at the right altitude, the rocket plane can detach ignited's engines and continue up to the peak of its suborbital flight. And the word suborbital is why I said, kind of sort of been to space. Branson's flight took him and the crew up to an altitude of about fifty three miles above the Earth. Bezos, however, said that means Branson didn't actually go into space. He said that he sided with the Federation Aeronautique Internacinal, which uses the Carmen Law line as the border for space. That's one kilometers above the Earth, which is around sixty two miles. So uh, Branson, according to Bezos, didn't go to space. He just got, you know, kind of close to it. So then Bezos gets on a spaceship shaped like a well you probably you probably know what folks say Bezos is spaceship was shaped like I won't repeat it here, but I'm thinking it pretty hard. Anyway. The ship, called the New Shepherd, blasted off just over a week after Branson's flight, and Basis went up to around the carbon line. He got up to around sixty three miles above the Earth, and that means he actually did go to space, which means he is an astronaut. Nanni Nanni boo boo to you, Branson. But then the Federal Aviation Administration or f a A. That agency says the beginning of space is really more like eighty one miles in altitude, So aquit the f a A. Bezos didn't go to space either. The f a A calls the that area of the beginning of space because that's the altitude where you can enter into an orbit around Earth and remain there at least for a short while before being pulled back down to Earth. What Bezos did was more like one of those carnival rides where you sit in a seat that's attached to a tower at the base, and then it slings you up to the top of the tower really fast, and then you come down really fast. That's what they said Bezos was doing. Essentially. By the way, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or in o a A, Noah, they get even more strict about space. They define the beginning of space at six hundred miles above the Earth, because that's where you would actually escape the Earth's atmosphere. Now, even one miles up there is a tiny bit of atmosphere, and that's far too thin to breathe or do anything like that, but there are particles of Earth's atmosphere at that altitude. However, if we accepted Noah's definition that space only begins six miles above the Earth, that would mean that the International Space Station isn't actually in space because it's at an altitude of two twenty seven miles above the Earth. So I guess it all just depends upon which definition you want to follow. Now, there's been some fallout from these launches, and for lots of different reasons. One big one is just the extravagance of it all. For years, one of the many selling points of private space industry has been the promise of space tourism. And sure enough, you could actually buy a ticket to go up on a Blue Origin ship William Shatner, you know, Captain Kirk did that, But this would set you back several million dollars. So space tourism has become another way to illustrate the vast divide between the wealthy and really the ultra wealthy and you know the rest of us, I mean some of you listening might be able to shell out millions of dollars and fly to space, but I sure as heck can't. This also played into something I touched on in an earlier episode this week, the growing animosity towards the uber wealthy and the heads of various corporations. There have been folks asking why billionaires are spending money to go on a joy ride up to the edge of space rather than to address real world problems here on Earth. Though I should point out that solving problems requires a lot more than just throwing money at the problems. It's not as simple as that, but I get their frustration. On top of that, there's the issue of the carbon footprint of these trips. Now, this is a subject that needs some context because a lot of media misrepresented this issue or maybe just misunderstood it. So a lot of this comes from people who are trying to boil down what a report called the World Inequality Report had to say about the carbon released into the environment as a result from space launches. Essentially, it says a flight to space like the one Bezos took would amount to at least seventy tons of carbon released per passenger. Now that doesn't mean the spacecraft was spewing out carbon dioxide. It was actually using hydrogen as a fuel, which doesn't produce C O two. It does produce nitrogen oxides and water vapor, and water vapor can be pretty dangerous at higher altitudes too. I mean, it's it is a greenhouse gas as well, but the production of the fuel itself, it can be a very carbon intensive process. So while burning the fuel doesn't necessarily generate a lot of carbon dioxide, generating the fuel in the first place can. So you have to take a really big picture look at this stuff. You're not just saying, oh it was you know, how much fuel did you use to get from point A to point B. It's taking the full chain into account. So one thing we could say is that the amount of car have been generated in order to send one person to space is at least seventy five tons per person. Now, the other bit of that report they got misinterpreted says that if you look at people who are on the lowest end of the financial spectrum, so there are a billion people who are in this category, well, one person from that group will generate less than one ton of carbon per year. So one trip to space can produce more carbon than a person from this billion or so folks who fall into the lowest financial spectrum could potentially produce in their entire lifetime. Now that got twisted into the claim that bezos is flight into space generated more carbon emissions than one billion people could produce in an entire lifetime. That is a misrepresentation or a misunderstanding. Uh no, it did not. Bezos Is trip produce more carbon emissions than one person from the lowest financial spectrum will produce in their lifetime. That's still not good, mind you, but it's not as dramatic as the misinterpretations made it sound. And again, the World Inequality Report, the whole purpose of that is to show the disparity between what the the wealthy or even just well off folks are doing compared to the most impoverished people's. So when it comes to carbon emissions, as no surprise, the wealthier the person is, the more carbon they typically are producing through their activities, because poor people aren't hopping onto jets to fly to Milan over a weekend or anything like that. As for Branson, the f a A launched an investigation into his flight to space because the rocket powered plane, he was in veered off course when returning to you know, come back to a landing strip. The f a A grounded Virgin glad Dick and said it would not be allowed to conduct space flights until the f a A had completed an investigation into the incident. The f a A said it had to determine that the issue could potentially impact public safety. They ruled that while the spacecraft deviated from its course, and furthermore that Virgin Galactic failed to alert the f a A of that deviation. The company had subsequently made changes to its policies to make sure nothing like that happens again, that it communicates properly with the f a A, and also made some other changes and tweaks so to improve their processes. Also, it was noted that the pilots performed exactly how they were supposed to in that kind of situation, and the f a A subsequently lifted the flight restrictions on the company by the end of September. One really neat thing that happened was that NASA flew a helicopter on Mars for the first time. The Ingenuity Aircraft, a helicopter style a ton must drone hitched a ride with the rovert Perseverance. Ingenuity's mission was kind of a bonus to the Perseverance mission. The goal was to see if the little copter that could would attain flight in Mars's atmosphere, which is much more thin than Earth's atmosphere. Ingenuity weighs less than five pounds on Earth. Anyway, we would actually have to remember that Mars's gravity is about one third of what we have here on Earth, and because of the distance between Mars and Earth, communication takes several minutes to travel from one planet to the other. That means the chopper would have to fly autonomously because there'd be no way to control it in real time using a human operator here on Earth. The lag would just be way too long. The copter could have crashed before we would even get a picture of it. NASA initially had a modest plan to get the chopper flying for about ninety seconds and attain an altitude of perhaps as much as fIF teen or sixteen feet before it would come back down and touch down again. And the hope was that Ingenuity, if it could manage it, would do this up to five times. Flash forward today, and that little Sucker has taken eighteen flights so far. The first flight was on April nineteenth, and the most recent was on December fift at least the most recent as of the recording of this episode. The Ingenuity does not carry sophisticated scientific equipment because honestly, we had to be sure we could actually get the ding dang durn thing to fly in the first place. It wouldn't have made sense to load it down with scientific instruments only to find out that we couldn't attain lift off. But now the Ingenuity has proven that flight is possible, at least on a limited scale at Mars. We should see scientists send future aircraft to the Red planet and outfit those aircraft with more robust instrumentation. It's pretty nifty. Another thing that happened was that over the summer, a Ussian spacecraft attached to the International Space Station had an oopsie that sent the entire I S S into a somersault. The module was the Naka, which docked with the I S S and then a few hours later mysteriously fired its thrusters. The entire station rotated one and a half times a full five forty degrees, coming to a stop upside down, which I mean doesn't mean much when you're on board the space station because up and down are really subjective. Anyway, NASA had a heck of a time dealing with this because the I S S was out of range of the Russian ground control and wouldn't be back within range for another hour. And of course the Russians were the only ones who could actually send a remote command to the KNAKA to stop firing thrusters, So NASA used other modules to counteract naka's error and bring things back under control. Then there's NASA's double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART. Alright, so we know that sometimes stuff what's out in space ends up heading Earth, right like that has happened before, and it could lead to extinction level events, which has also happened before. And so scientists have dedicated time and resources to identify near Earth objects and determine the likelihood that one of them might you know, decide to come in for a little visit. And more work has gone into figuring out ways to divert any such objects so that you know, it doesn't hit the Earth. That's where DART comes in. This is an experiment to see if we can use a spacecraft to nudge an asteroid out of its normal path. NASA shows an asteroid that's actually an orbit around another asteroid, and neither of these bad babies have any plans to visit Earth soon, so this is really just to see if this would actually work. They've shot up a spacecraft into space that will journey out to those asteroids and hit the smaller one to see it can change the smaller asteroids path. The mission launched on November twenty four, but it will not get to the asteroids until late next year, so we'll find out next year whether or not this works. The James Webb Space Telescope, after numerous setbacks and delays, finally launched into space on Christmas Day one. The telescope traces its origins back to when it was originally proposed as the next generation space telescope, and twenty five years later it's finally in space. It will still take about a month for the telescope to make its way to its final destination, which is an orbital point behind the Moon, and that will allow the telescope to operate without having light from the Sun mess everything up. The telescope has an array of massive, highly polished mirrors that will collect light and direct it to the telescope's sensors. The sensitivity of the telescope should allow astronomers and unprecedented and look at celestial bodies, and it will play into scientific projects ranging from studying the origins of the stars to looking for exoplanets that could potentially support life. Now, because the telescope is going to be so far out there, there's no way, at least not currently, that we could send a team of astronauts out there should the telescope need repairs. NASA hopes to develop process to refuel the telescope by sending robotic spacecraft to do it, but that's a bit further off in the future. I should also mention that there was a move to push NASA to rename the telescope. It's named after James E. Webb, who served as the second administrator of NASA. Now, the controversy stems from the fact that Webb's career coincided with an era in the United States referred to as the Lavender Scare. This was a nasty period in American history where there was a moral panic centered around homosexuality and various agents these departments and divisions within the US government began to fire anyone who was thought to be gay or lesbian. So the protests were essentially saying that Webb presided during that time when the US government was persecuting homosexuals. NASA later said there was no evidence that Webb himself participated in the that and so the name has stuck. On November fifteenth of this year, Russia blew up a satellite and that created a big mess, both in space and here on Earth. This was part of a missile test, you know, the kind of most frequently meant to show everyone else in the world what a big, dangerous country you are. In this case, it was about showing off the capability of taking down a satellite in orbit by launching a missile at it from Earth. The explosion created a lot of debris, which became a potential threat to the astronauts aboard the International Space Station. They were told to suit up and make their way to the ships that were docked at the station, just in case they might to perform an emergency evacuation in the event of a collision with the debris. Fortunately, no such collision happened, but the space junk created from that explosion is likely to remain a threat for years to come and adds to the already concerning issue of stuff flying around at insane speeds in low Earth orbit. Several countries, including the United States, condemned Russia for the test and for putting people in space projects in jeopardy. All right, talked about space for a long time. Let's take another quick break before we wrap this up. One movement that gained momentum this past year is the right to repair crusade. I've talked about this a lot over the last year, but in case you've missed out, the whole movement is about pushing companies to allow users to repair the products that they purchase. It has become a pretty common practice in tech to use proprietary connectors, industrial strength glue, and lockdown repair ecosystems that discourages or prevents people from actually repairing their own stuff, or to take their stuff to a repair shop of their own choosing instead. You either end up with some gear that's you know, impossible to repair, so you have to throw it out and get a new one, which just adds to the problem of e waste, or you are funneled into a company owned or company licensed repair system and you have no options. The Right to Repair movement seeks out a change in that approach, with companies providing access to tools and parts that are needed to repair their products so that a technically inclined person could reasonably take on repairs themselves. It might mean companies sell tool kits with specialized tools for those connectors I was talking about, or to stop using industrial glue to hold stuff together, because sometimes just opening up a device can be pretty dark, tricky, and you might end up causing more damage in the process of process of opening it than it had already you know, suffered from whatever the initial problem was. There are several companies that have been pretty infamous for creating this kind of closed off system. Apple was one. They have recently started to make changes to this, but Apple has been known to use a few different approaches, including those connectors I was talking about, or really restrictive warranties, and all of this is to push people into paying for stuff like Apple Care and only going through groups like the Apple Genius Bar to seek out help when something goes wrong. But this is also a practice that John Dear, a company known primarily for its farming equipment, has adopted. Farmers want the ability to make repairs on their own equipment, or the very least have the option to use a mechanic of their own choosing rather than a mechanic that has you know, paid to have an official license from John Year, since that might mean that you have to go well out of your way to get anything done. I mean, if you are if you are a farmer of a large area and you are not anywhere close to a John Dear licensed repair operation, you kind of you kind of stuck. Now, the right to repair movement has won a few victories around the world, notably in Europe and then a couple of states, but here in the US that records a little more spotty. There haven't hasn't been you know, uh victories all down the line. Some state governments have voted against right to repair legislation after some pretty intense lobbying from you know, big stakeholders like John Deere got involved. So it's still an ongoing thing. Now, let's look forward for a second before we wrap up. I am personally curious to see what comes out of a pretty slimmed down c e s in early January. In case you are not familiar with c e S, it's an enormous trade show centered around tech in general and electronics in particular, though in recent years it has kind of migrated away from what it used to be. It was the Consumer Electronics Show. Now it's just called c e S because a lot of companies that come to showcase products are more software and app based and not so much electronics BACE, so the trade show has tried to adapt with the times. Normally, thousands of companies take over Convention Center Space and Las Vegas, Nevada, showing off their latest or upcoming products to tens of thousands of attendees. But as the amcron variant of COVID is spreading like wildfire, several big name companies have chosen to bow out of appearing in person. Those companies include Microsoft, Amazon, GM, Google, T Mobile, Lenovo, which typically has a pretty big, uh you know, presence at CEES, Meta Slash, Facebook, Twitter, and of course I Heart Radio. They have all reversed course on going to c S in According to the Consumer Technology Association that's the group that organizes c e S, forty two exhibitors have canceled at least as I record this episode. Now, that is just a tiny drop in the bucket. And the organizers still intend to hold the event, citing that they will require proof of vaccination and that all attendees will have to wear a mask, plus they will have rapid tests available on site. Now, y'all, I know anecdotal evidence ain't really worth anything, as folks around me would say, but I know personally at least five people who have caught breakthrough aces of COVID even after they got vaccinated, even after they got a booster in a couple of cases. So the vaccine is not a bulletproof vest. It reduces your chance of catching COVID, and it also can mean that if you do catch COVID, your symptoms might not be as bad as they would be otherwise. But vaccinations and boosters they're not a full proof solution. They are a very important part of fighting against COVID, but they don't make you immune. So for anyone heading out to c e S or any other big in person event over the next few weeks, be extra careful. Get yourself a supply of in nine masks. Those are more important to use than say cloth masks make sure you wash your hands a lot, practice social distancing wherever you can, and be careful. Then you know, get tested too, because it's good to know both before and after the fact that you're clear. Uh. And some of these rules, like you know, washing your hands and social distancing, those are just playing good rules to follow at c E S even if there isn't a pandemic going on. Because you cut folks from all over the place all in the same indoor space, handling technology and stuff, you can get pretty gross to just be careful. This is why, by the way, when I go to C E S, I never test the VR or a R stuff while I'm there, because y'all, I don't know how many heads that stuff has been on, and I know that companies disinfect or clean between times, but you just need to have that one person who's been working at c S for three days and they're just totally burnt out and checked out, and they're not even paying attention, and they're just kind of dabbing slightly at the VR headset with a with a sanitary wipe of some sort, and you're like, no, you know what, I can I can skip this one anyway. C E S is supposed to be a hybrid event this year, so some elements of it will be presented virtually online rather than you know, in person on the showcase floor. So I will try to check out some of that stuff when it happens. Okay, those were some of the really big text stories of twenty twenty one, and we just scratched the surface. There were tons of others, but these were big ones that I think not only made headlines but also in many cases are indicators of things that are going to continue into the next year. I think we're going to see a continuation of employees organizing and unionizing and pushing back against companies. We're going to see more companies trying to create a uh AN office strategy to get people back in the office in a way that doesn't reflect poorly on the company, promotes productivity and ingenuity, and is safe. I think we're gonna see a lot more stuff about space, which is exciting, but m yeah, I think this is like an indicator of what two is gonna be. I used to do episodes where I would do a prediction about stuff that was going to happen in the next year. I have not decided if I'm gonna do that if I am, I'm I'm gonna be working on that later today. So we will see, because I kind of got away from it just because it got a little overwhelming. But I might dip my toe and say some stuff that I think might be important next year. Kind Of hard for me to to do that because I feel like a lot of the stuff we've covered in these past three episodes pretty much are you know, a window into what is going to be like. I hope you are all well and safe and happy and healthy and all that stuff. Be careful out there. I wish you all a happy new year. We will continue to have new episodes of Tech Stuff as often as I can make them. And yeah, if you have any suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes of Tech Stuff, please reach out to me and let me know. The best way to do that is through Twitter. The handle for the show is tech Stuff h s W. Also, for those who are still listening, there's might be two of you. Uh, don't forget that. There are some other shows that have yours truly on them if you want to check them out. Occasionally I show up on the show Ridiculous History as a character called the Quister. It's just as cringe worthy as it sounds. In fact more so, I would argue. I also appeared on this past season's Thirteen Days of Halloween. If you have not checked out that show, it's a binaural uh, spooky story anthology show. Highly recommend you check that out. There's some really good episodes, and then there's mine. My episode is really good. I just I feel uncomfortable tuting my own horn. I was really impressed with how I came out though. Uh. And also my show Large Nerd Drawn Collider with my friend Ariel. Actually really it's aerial show and I'm on it. But it's a show where we talk about geek pop culture news and then we do crazy mash ups of unrelated stuff and say, what would it be like if you know, I don't know, he man was mashed up with my little Pony. That's the kind of stuff we talk about on that show. So you should check that out too. That's it, and I will talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio, and I love all things tech and good golly, so much has happened this past year. Uh. This is the third episode in our retrospective look at the big text stories of twenty one, some of which obviously go beyond just technology, but tech played an important role. I promise not all of the stuff that happened one was bad. It's just I mean, obviously, news headlines tend to gravitate toward that. It all gets back to what drives clicks, right, and the good stories get a lot of share on social networks, but not so much on like news sites. But um, we do have some more bad stuff that we do have to go through in this episode. So, for example, was a banner year from malicious hackers. Back in twenty the general public first learned about the Solar Winds hack. That's the one where hackers were able to compromise a software vendor and insertain malicious code into an update on one of that vendor's products, and then the vendor pushed out the update which included the malicious code to its customers. Those customers included US governmental agencies as well some notable Fortune five companies that supply. Chain hack was a preview for bad stuff to follow in. One really big trend in one was ransomware attacks, And just in case you're not familiar with that term, the general idea is that the hackers get access to a target system in some way. Maybe they infiltrate the system technologically, maybe they use social engineering to fool someone into handing over access, maybe it's a combination. Anyway, once they gain access, they locked down the targeted system. Typically they do something like they use an encryption scheme that bricks the system so it's all encrypted. The system's owners can no longer longer access their systems or their data, not without unencrypting it or decrypting it. And if the encryption is good, it could mean that trying to find a solution outside of just the official decrypt key could take centuries unless, well unless the victim ponies up the cash to the hackers, who, upon payment, promised to decrypt the system. We usually hear about these demands being made in the form of cryptocurrency because that stuff is harder to pin down, though not impossible. There are actually a few ransomware stories from the past year that end with an agency like the FBI seizing money from the hacker is even when it was in crypto formats. And as I always say, paying the ransom is a bad idea for several reasons. One, it sends the message to the hackers that hey, this works. Then we see more groups engage in that same activity. Also, a lot of this is coming out of hacker groups that are states sponsored or state sanctioned. That means the hackers are receiving support from or at the very least are being ignored by the governments of the countries they are based in. We mostly hear about hacker groups out of Russia and China, um sometimes North Korea, and there are others as well. Of course, Also, there's no guarantee that the hackers will actually decrypt your stuff, right. You could end up paying them and then they just run off with the money. So there are a lot of reasons why it's not a good idea to pay the ransoms. The ransomware attacks this year included ones on Colonial pipeline, which is responsible for the transportation of an enormous amount of fuel for the East coast of the United States, and that attack meant that for short all we saw gas prices go up, and we saw a lot of folks engage in a little good old hoarding, and that was a big story over in my area. In fact, where gas stations had no gas, they were out and people were just rushing around like maniacs filling up garbage cans full of gasoline, which I don't think I need to tell you is a bad idea at any time. Anyway, that happened. Colonial Pipeline paid a ransom worth around four million dollars, but law enforcement was able to get some of that money back. Another big ransomware attack hit a company called jbs U s USA that as a meat processing company that located in Brazil. I think this was a huge hit in the meat supply chain and it caused issues all along from the farmers who raised raised livestock. Some of those farmers actually had to reclaim livestock that had been sent to the processing facilities, so they had a little stay of execution, I guess, and it went all the way to the end customers. The Russian hacker group Revel was busy this year. For one thing, they were able to take note of the Solar Winds attack and they pulled off a similar stunt with a company called Kassa, which counts thousands of companies and organizations among its customer sports Virtual System administrator product. The REvil group was able to compromise that product and push out an update that contained malware, allowing them to lock down systems with encryption, holding them for ransom. One person allegedly connected to that attack has since been arrested and is awaiting extradition to the United States. On a similar note, a Chinese hacking group called Hafnium targeted vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Exchange Server product, which affected email systems and thousands of organizations. Microsoft issued a fixed pretty quickly, but whether organizations actually did the work to install that fixed, that's another matter. And any way, at that point they were dealing with hackers snooping on emails. And then there was the n s O group. This company, based in Israel produces hacking tools that it markets to customers like governments, including authoritarian and autocratic governments. In fact, mostly those kinds. The hacking tools are meant to allow the person using them to compromise specific target devices and then use those devices like surveillance tools. The story that got the most attention was an exploit called Pegasus that could turn an iPhone into a spy on behalf of the hacker. So the hacker could send a message through I message and it would include the the the malware string, and because of how Apple processes I messages at the time, the target device would be compromised. All you had to do is have the person's phone number and have the Pegasus software installed, and you could send one of these malicious messages and it would infect the target phone. The hacker could then look at information on the target phone, or even use that phone's camera and microphone to spy on the device's owner. N s O Group uh They marketed this as a way to keep tabs on folks like terrorists, but experts pointed out that customers were using it on all sorts of people, including activists, politicians, journalists. I believe one leader used it on his wife allegedly. Moreover, NSO Group could only sell this product to customers that the Israeli government approved of, and it began to look like this was a really nasty case of money, politics, and authoritary and tendencies getting really cozy with one another. For its part, the ns A group has denied claims that its tool has been sold far and wide to parties that would abuse it, but organizations like Amnesty Internationals say otherwise. One other big hackings story, though this didn't involve ransomware or political surveillance, involved the live streaming service Twitch, known primarily for video game streamers. In October, Twitch publicly acknowledged that hackers had breached the service and copied a ton of data, like around a d twenty eight gigabytes of information. Of course, this came after someone had released that information, so at that point, you know, we all knew it had happened, and then Twitch said, oh, yeah, no, that happened. The data included the source code for Twitch, but it also included information about how much money streamers were making from the service. This meant that the public could find out who on Twitch was really pulling in the big bucks. But by big bucks, I don't mean the crazy estimates you occasionally see bandied about online. I mean it's a lot, but not millions of dollars a month, and only the top top earners are seeing revenue over the million dollar mark. And to be clear, uh, the information we were looking at was accumulated earnings between August two thousand nineteen and September two thousand twenty one. So that's two years worth of of earnings. Still a lot of money, it's just not you know, the ludicrous amounts you would sometimes see listed online. Okay, let's talk about Tesla, because y'all, Tesla's a company that has a great track record for tacking me off. Now, it's not that I don't like the idea of electric vehicles, because I'm all for them, and I like Tesla's aesthetics. I think the style is kind of cool apart from that weird truck thing. And they also want to see autonomous vehicles realize their potential. But Tesla takes steps in the space that I frequently find incredibly irresponsible. Now this is not a new thing. I have complained many times about how the company named its early driver assist features autopilot, because Okay, the word autopilot suggests a technology that can completely take over for a person. I mean, that's the common interpretation, right, you might still have a person there in order to look over stuff, but the main tasks all fall to a machine, presumably one that is more than capable of handling those tasks. But Tesla wanted to have it both ways. They wanted to call the features autopilot, but they also had to tell drivers, Oh yeah, but you toads need to keep your hands on the wheel and be absolutely prepared to take over because this is not an autonomous mode, it's a driver assist feature. Now, I would argue that the company was selling one concept and then saying, oh no, no, that's not what we meant. You misunderstood. Well this year we saw that continue with the rollout of the full self driving feature. All right, full self driving. That sounds pretty darn cut and dried, right like. It seems like it would be hard to misinterpret the phrase full self driving, except that Tesla again says this isn't autonomous driving. Well, Tesla, stop naming things that mean other things. Anyway, The rollout of one f s D update really made headlines in July, so Tesla pushed out this update to FSD version nine beta software to a selection of Tesla owners. Now these were owners who had passed a safety score driving test. Though there were other news stories that said that that test was pretty easy to fool in order to get a score high enough to be considered for this program, and then the update ended up causing us some pretty massive problems. So drivers found out that their cars were erroneously detecting an oncoming crash, like a front end crash, and so they would slam on the brakes. The cars would just automatically. This would happen even if the Tesla was behind, you know, the next vehicle, and the next vehicle was like, you know, like like several hundred yards ahead, or even in cases where there was no other vehicle on the road at all. Sometimes the the Tesla would just uh detect something that wasn't there and break very hard. Now, obviously a car breaking suddenly is itself a safety hazard, as anyone behind the car might not be able to react in time to avoid rear ending the vehicle that's that's doing the breaking, and if there's no reason for the car to break in the first place, that increases the odds of an accident. Well, some drivers went so far as to say that the update made their Tesla's completely undrivable, that they couldn't get down a street without their cars, you know, applying the brakes multiple times. Elon Musk would later tweet that the company had rolled back the software update, and Tesla would issue an actual recall, which was a process required due to safety regulations in the United States. A little later on. Musk also, by the way, really downplayed this whole thing. It was kind of like, you know, software, sometimes stuff happens that we didn't anticipate. That's just the way it works, and we'll just roll it back. Um. And it's that attitude, combined with rolling out features that potentially could end up harming people, that infuriates me. Another big story that happened last year was that a Tesla Megapac battery in Australia caught fire. Now, the Mega Pac isn't a battery that fits into a car or a house. This is meant to store electricity as part of a renewable energy utility plant. So let's say you've got a giant solar farm you're generating electricity, Well you've got to do something without electricity, and m if you're generating more electricity than there is demand, well a lot of the electricity is just going to go to waste unless you store it. That's what the mega PAC is for. It's it's you know about energy storage strategy. Apparently, in this case, there was a coolant leak in the system, which allowed things to overheat and even caused a megapac to catch fire. The fire was so intense that it took firefighters four days to extinguish it. Once out, regulators began to talk about possible changes to megapact facilities to allow for better monitoring and more easy access for first responders in the event of a fire. Oh and, as we've seen with several other companies recently, former Tesla employees alleged that the work environment at the company is toxic as all heck. Jessica Barazza, who worked at a Tesla factory, filed a lawsuit against the company along with several other coworkers, claiming that she was harassed and worse while working for the company and that the human resources department failed to do anything about it. And a man named O N. Diaz sued his former employer, being Tesla, saying he had been subjected to racist abuse while at work. San Francisco court found Indias his favor and ordered a one hundred thirty seven million dollar five going to be paid to DAS. Now, normally this sort of thing wouldn't have made it to the court system so quickly. But Daz did not sign one of the mandatory arbitration agreements that Tesla regularly includes in the employee contracts, and we talked about those earlier this week. It's a pretty low tactic that companies use in an effort to prevent employees from seeking legal recourse to internal issues. Okay, that was a lot. How about we take a quick break. Okay, we're back. Let's talk about space because there were a lot of space news stories this year. Of course, we need to talk about billionaires and their obsession with getting into space. The three billionaires in question are Richard Branson had a Virgin Galactic, Jeff Bezos, the founder and former seat EEO of Amazon and the founder of the space company Blue Origin, and Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX. Of those three, two have kind of sort of been to space. First up in mid July was Richard Branson, whose Virgin Galactic uses a mother ship approach to getting up into space. So you've got your really big airplane and strapped to your really big airplane is a smaller rocket plane, and once the really big airplane is at the right altitude, the rocket plane can detach ignited's engines and continue up to the peak of its suborbital flight. And the word suborbital is why I said, kind of sort of been to space. Branson's flight took him and the crew up to an altitude of about fifty three miles above the Earth. Bezos, however, said that means Branson didn't actually go into space. He said that he sided with the Federation Aeronautique Internacinal, which uses the Carmen Law line as the border for space. That's one kilometers above the Earth, which is around sixty two miles. So uh, Branson, according to Bezos, didn't go to space. He just got, you know, kind of close to it. So then Bezos gets on a spaceship shaped like a well you probably you probably know what folks say Bezos is spaceship was shaped like I won't repeat it here, but I'm thinking it pretty hard. Anyway. The ship, called the New Shepherd, blasted off just over a week after Branson's flight, and Basis went up to around the carbon line. He got up to around sixty three miles above the Earth, and that means he actually did go to space, which means he is an astronaut. Nanni Nanni boo boo to you, Branson. But then the Federal Aviation Administration or f a A. That agency says the beginning of space is really more like eighty one miles in altitude, So aquit the f a A. Bezos didn't go to space either. The f a A calls the that area of the beginning of space because that's the altitude where you can enter into an orbit around Earth and remain there at least for a short while before being pulled back down to Earth. What Bezos did was more like one of those carnival rides where you sit in a seat that's attached to a tower at the base, and then it slings you up to the top of the tower really fast, and then you come down really fast. That's what they said Bezos was doing. Essentially. By the way, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or in o a A, Noah, they get even more strict about space. They define the beginning of space at six hundred miles above the Earth, because that's where you would actually escape the Earth's atmosphere. Now, even one miles up there is a tiny bit of atmosphere, and that's far too thin to breathe or do anything like that, but there are particles of Earth's atmosphere at that altitude. However, if we accepted Noah's definition that space only begins six miles above the Earth, that would mean that the International Space Station isn't actually in space because it's at an altitude of two twenty seven miles above the Earth. So I guess it all just depends upon which definition you want to follow. Now, there's been some fallout from these launches, and for lots of different reasons. One big one is just the extravagance of it all. For years, one of the many selling points of private space industry has been the promise of space tourism. And sure enough, you could actually buy a ticket to go up on a Blue Origin ship William Shatner, you know, Captain Kirk did that, But this would set you back several million dollars. So space tourism has become another way to illustrate the vast divide between the wealthy and really the ultra wealthy and you know the rest of us, I mean some of you listening might be able to shell out millions of dollars and fly to space, but I sure as heck can't. This also played into something I touched on in an earlier episode this week, the growing animosity towards the uber wealthy and the heads of various corporations. There have been folks asking why billionaires are spending money to go on a joy ride up to the edge of space rather than to address real world problems here on Earth. Though I should point out that solving problems requires a lot more than just throwing money at the problems. It's not as simple as that, but I get their frustration. On top of that, there's the issue of the carbon footprint of these trips. Now, this is a subject that needs some context because a lot of media misrepresented this issue or maybe just misunderstood it. So a lot of this comes from people who are trying to boil down what a report called the World Inequality Report had to say about the carbon released into the environment as a result from space launches. Essentially, it says a flight to space like the one Bezos took would amount to at least seventy tons of carbon released per passenger. Now that doesn't mean the spacecraft was spewing out carbon dioxide. It was actually using hydrogen as a fuel, which doesn't produce C O two. It does produce nitrogen oxides and water vapor, and water vapor can be pretty dangerous at higher altitudes too. I mean, it's it is a greenhouse gas as well, but the production of the fuel itself, it can be a very carbon intensive process. So while burning the fuel doesn't necessarily generate a lot of carbon dioxide, generating the fuel in the first place can. So you have to take a really big picture look at this stuff. You're not just saying, oh it was you know, how much fuel did you use to get from point A to point B. It's taking the full chain into account. So one thing we could say is that the amount of car have been generated in order to send one person to space is at least seventy five tons per person. Now, the other bit of that report they got misinterpreted says that if you look at people who are on the lowest end of the financial spectrum, so there are a billion people who are in this category, well, one person from that group will generate less than one ton of carbon per year. So one trip to space can produce more carbon than a person from this billion or so folks who fall into the lowest financial spectrum could potentially produce in their entire lifetime. Now that got twisted into the claim that bezos is flight into space generated more carbon emissions than one billion people could produce in an entire lifetime. That is a misrepresentation or a misunderstanding. Uh no, it did not. Bezos Is trip produce more carbon emissions than one person from the lowest financial spectrum will produce in their lifetime. That's still not good, mind you, but it's not as dramatic as the misinterpretations made it sound. And again, the World Inequality Report, the whole purpose of that is to show the disparity between what the the wealthy or even just well off folks are doing compared to the most impoverished people's. So when it comes to carbon emissions, as no surprise, the wealthier the person is, the more carbon they typically are producing through their activities, because poor people aren't hopping onto jets to fly to Milan over a weekend or anything like that. As for Branson, the f a A launched an investigation into his flight to space because the rocket powered plane, he was in veered off course when returning to you know, come back to a landing strip. The f a A grounded Virgin glad Dick and said it would not be allowed to conduct space flights until the f a A had completed an investigation into the incident. The f a A said it had to determine that the issue could potentially impact public safety. They ruled that while the spacecraft deviated from its course, and furthermore that Virgin Galactic failed to alert the f a A of that deviation. The company had subsequently made changes to its policies to make sure nothing like that happens again, that it communicates properly with the f a A, and also made some other changes and tweaks so to improve their processes. Also, it was noted that the pilots performed exactly how they were supposed to in that kind of situation, and the f a A subsequently lifted the flight restrictions on the company by the end of September. One really neat thing that happened was that NASA flew a helicopter on Mars for the first time. The Ingenuity Aircraft, a helicopter style a ton must drone hitched a ride with the rovert Perseverance. Ingenuity's mission was kind of a bonus to the Perseverance mission. The goal was to see if the little copter that could would attain flight in Mars's atmosphere, which is much more thin than Earth's atmosphere. Ingenuity weighs less than five pounds on Earth. Anyway, we would actually have to remember that Mars's gravity is about one third of what we have here on Earth, and because of the distance between Mars and Earth, communication takes several minutes to travel from one planet to the other. That means the chopper would have to fly autonomously because there'd be no way to control it in real time using a human operator here on Earth. The lag would just be way too long. The copter could have crashed before we would even get a picture of it. NASA initially had a modest plan to get the chopper flying for about ninety seconds and attain an altitude of perhaps as much as fIF teen or sixteen feet before it would come back down and touch down again. And the hope was that Ingenuity, if it could manage it, would do this up to five times. Flash forward today, and that little Sucker has taken eighteen flights so far. The first flight was on April nineteenth, and the most recent was on December fift at least the most recent as of the recording of this episode. The Ingenuity does not carry sophisticated scientific equipment because honestly, we had to be sure we could actually get the ding dang durn thing to fly in the first place. It wouldn't have made sense to load it down with scientific instruments only to find out that we couldn't attain lift off. But now the Ingenuity has proven that flight is possible, at least on a limited scale at Mars. We should see scientists send future aircraft to the Red planet and outfit those aircraft with more robust instrumentation. It's pretty nifty. Another thing that happened was that over the summer, a Ussian spacecraft attached to the International Space Station had an oopsie that sent the entire I S S into a somersault. The module was the Naka, which docked with the I S S and then a few hours later mysteriously fired its thrusters. The entire station rotated one and a half times a full five forty degrees, coming to a stop upside down, which I mean doesn't mean much when you're on board the space station because up and down are really subjective. Anyway, NASA had a heck of a time dealing with this because the I S S was out of range of the Russian ground control and wouldn't be back within range for another hour. And of course the Russians were the only ones who could actually send a remote command to the KNAKA to stop firing thrusters, So NASA used other modules to counteract naka's error and bring things back under control. Then there's NASA's double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART. Alright, so we know that sometimes stuff what's out in space ends up heading Earth, right like that has happened before, and it could lead to extinction level events, which has also happened before. And so scientists have dedicated time and resources to identify near Earth objects and determine the likelihood that one of them might you know, decide to come in for a little visit. And more work has gone into figuring out ways to divert any such objects so that you know, it doesn't hit the Earth. That's where DART comes in. This is an experiment to see if we can use a spacecraft to nudge an asteroid out of its normal path. NASA shows an asteroid that's actually an orbit around another asteroid, and neither of these bad babies have any plans to visit Earth soon, so this is really just to see if this would actually work. They've shot up a spacecraft into space that will journey out to those asteroids and hit the smaller one to see it can change the smaller asteroids path. The mission launched on November twenty four, but it will not get to the asteroids until late next year, so we'll find out next year whether or not this works. The James Webb Space Telescope, after numerous setbacks and delays, finally launched into space on Christmas Day one. The telescope traces its origins back to when it was originally proposed as the next generation space telescope, and twenty five years later it's finally in space. It will still take about a month for the telescope to make its way to its final destination, which is an orbital point behind the Moon, and that will allow the telescope to operate without having light from the Sun mess everything up. The telescope has an array of massive, highly polished mirrors that will collect light and direct it to the telescope's sensors. The sensitivity of the telescope should allow astronomers and unprecedented and look at celestial bodies, and it will play into scientific projects ranging from studying the origins of the stars to looking for exoplanets that could potentially support life. Now, because the telescope is going to be so far out there, there's no way, at least not currently, that we could send a team of astronauts out there should the telescope need repairs. NASA hopes to develop process to refuel the telescope by sending robotic spacecraft to do it, but that's a bit further off in the future. I should also mention that there was a move to push NASA to rename the telescope. It's named after James E. Webb, who served as the second administrator of NASA. Now, the controversy stems from the fact that Webb's career coincided with an era in the United States referred to as the Lavender Scare. This was a nasty period in American history where there was a moral panic centered around homosexuality and various agents these departments and divisions within the US government began to fire anyone who was thought to be gay or lesbian. So the protests were essentially saying that Webb presided during that time when the US government was persecuting homosexuals. NASA later said there was no evidence that Webb himself participated in the that and so the name has stuck. On November fifteenth of this year, Russia blew up a satellite and that created a big mess, both in space and here on Earth. This was part of a missile test, you know, the kind of most frequently meant to show everyone else in the world what a big, dangerous country you are. In this case, it was about showing off the capability of taking down a satellite in orbit by launching a missile at it from Earth. The explosion created a lot of debris, which became a potential threat to the astronauts aboard the International Space Station. They were told to suit up and make their way to the ships that were docked at the station, just in case they might to perform an emergency evacuation in the event of a collision with the debris. Fortunately, no such collision happened, but the space junk created from that explosion is likely to remain a threat for years to come and adds to the already concerning issue of stuff flying around at insane speeds in low Earth orbit. Several countries, including the United States, condemned Russia for the test and for putting people in space projects in jeopardy. All right, talked about space for a long time. Let's take another quick break before we wrap this up. One movement that gained momentum this past year is the right to repair crusade. I've talked about this a lot over the last year, but in case you've missed out, the whole movement is about pushing companies to allow users to repair the products that they purchase. It has become a pretty common practice in tech to use proprietary connectors, industrial strength glue, and lockdown repair ecosystems that discourages or prevents people from actually repairing their own stuff, or to take their stuff to a repair shop of their own choosing instead. You either end up with some gear that's you know, impossible to repair, so you have to throw it out and get a new one, which just adds to the problem of e waste, or you are funneled into a company owned or company licensed repair system and you have no options. The Right to Repair movement seeks out a change in that approach, with companies providing access to tools and parts that are needed to repair their products so that a technically inclined person could reasonably take on repairs themselves. It might mean companies sell tool kits with specialized tools for those connectors I was talking about, or to stop using industrial glue to hold stuff together, because sometimes just opening up a device can be pretty dark, tricky, and you might end up causing more damage in the process of process of opening it than it had already you know, suffered from whatever the initial problem was. There are several companies that have been pretty infamous for creating this kind of closed off system. Apple was one. They have recently started to make changes to this, but Apple has been known to use a few different approaches, including those connectors I was talking about, or really restrictive warranties, and all of this is to push people into paying for stuff like Apple Care and only going through groups like the Apple Genius Bar to seek out help when something goes wrong. But this is also a practice that John Dear, a company known primarily for its farming equipment, has adopted. Farmers want the ability to make repairs on their own equipment, or the very least have the option to use a mechanic of their own choosing rather than a mechanic that has you know, paid to have an official license from John Year, since that might mean that you have to go well out of your way to get anything done. I mean, if you are if you are a farmer of a large area and you are not anywhere close to a John Dear licensed repair operation, you kind of you kind of stuck. Now, the right to repair movement has won a few victories around the world, notably in Europe and then a couple of states, but here in the US that records a little more spotty. There haven't hasn't been you know, uh victories all down the line. Some state governments have voted against right to repair legislation after some pretty intense lobbying from you know, big stakeholders like John Deere got involved. So it's still an ongoing thing. Now, let's look forward for a second before we wrap up. I am personally curious to see what comes out of a pretty slimmed down c e s in early January. In case you are not familiar with c e S, it's an enormous trade show centered around tech in general and electronics in particular, though in recent years it has kind of migrated away from what it used to be. It was the Consumer Electronics Show. Now it's just called c e S because a lot of companies that come to showcase products are more software and app based and not so much electronics BACE, so the trade show has tried to adapt with the times. Normally, thousands of companies take over Convention Center Space and Las Vegas, Nevada, showing off their latest or upcoming products to tens of thousands of attendees. But as the amcron variant of COVID is spreading like wildfire, several big name companies have chosen to bow out of appearing in person. Those companies include Microsoft, Amazon, GM, Google, T Mobile, Lenovo, which typically has a pretty big, uh you know, presence at CEES, Meta Slash, Facebook, Twitter, and of course I Heart Radio. They have all reversed course on going to c S in According to the Consumer Technology Association that's the group that organizes c e S, forty two exhibitors have canceled at least as I record this episode. Now, that is just a tiny drop in the bucket. And the organizers still intend to hold the event, citing that they will require proof of vaccination and that all attendees will have to wear a mask, plus they will have rapid tests available on site. Now, y'all, I know anecdotal evidence ain't really worth anything, as folks around me would say, but I know personally at least five people who have caught breakthrough aces of COVID even after they got vaccinated, even after they got a booster in a couple of cases. So the vaccine is not a bulletproof vest. It reduces your chance of catching COVID, and it also can mean that if you do catch COVID, your symptoms might not be as bad as they would be otherwise. But vaccinations and boosters they're not a full proof solution. They are a very important part of fighting against COVID, but they don't make you immune. So for anyone heading out to c e S or any other big in person event over the next few weeks, be extra careful. Get yourself a supply of in nine masks. Those are more important to use than say cloth masks make sure you wash your hands a lot, practice social distancing wherever you can, and be careful. Then you know, get tested too, because it's good to know both before and after the fact that you're clear. Uh. And some of these rules, like you know, washing your hands and social distancing, those are just playing good rules to follow at c E S even if there isn't a pandemic going on. Because you cut folks from all over the place all in the same indoor space, handling technology and stuff, you can get pretty gross to just be careful. This is why, by the way, when I go to C E S, I never test the VR or a R stuff while I'm there, because y'all, I don't know how many heads that stuff has been on, and I know that companies disinfect or clean between times, but you just need to have that one person who's been working at c S for three days and they're just totally burnt out and checked out, and they're not even paying attention, and they're just kind of dabbing slightly at the VR headset with a with a sanitary wipe of some sort, and you're like, no, you know what, I can I can skip this one anyway. C E S is supposed to be a hybrid event this year, so some elements of it will be presented virtually online rather than you know, in person on the showcase floor. So I will try to check out some of that stuff when it happens. Okay, those were some of the really big text stories of twenty twenty one, and we just scratched the surface. There were tons of others, but these were big ones that I think not only made headlines but also in many cases are indicators of things that are going to continue into the next year. I think we're going to see a continuation of employees organizing and unionizing and pushing back against companies. We're going to see more companies trying to create a uh AN office strategy to get people back in the office in a way that doesn't reflect poorly on the company, promotes productivity and ingenuity, and is safe. I think we're gonna see a lot more stuff about space, which is exciting, but m yeah, I think this is like an indicator of what two is gonna be. I used to do episodes where I would do a prediction about stuff that was going to happen in the next year. I have not decided if I'm gonna do that if I am, I'm I'm gonna be working on that later today. So we will see, because I kind of got away from it just because it got a little overwhelming. But I might dip my toe and say some stuff that I think might be important next year. Kind Of hard for me to to do that because I feel like a lot of the stuff we've covered in these past three episodes pretty much are you know, a window into what is going to be like. I hope you are all well and safe and happy and healthy and all that stuff. Be careful out there. I wish you all a happy new year. We will continue to have new episodes of Tech Stuff as often as I can make them. And yeah, if you have any suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes of Tech Stuff, please reach out to me and let me know. The best way to do that is through Twitter. The handle for the show is tech Stuff h s W. Also, for those who are still listening, there's might be two of you. Uh, don't forget that. There are some other shows that have yours truly on them if you want to check them out. Occasionally I show up on the show Ridiculous History as a character called the Quister. It's just as cringe worthy as it sounds. In fact more so, I would argue. I also appeared on this past season's Thirteen Days of Halloween. If you have not checked out that show, it's a binaural uh, spooky story anthology show. Highly recommend you check that out. There's some really good episodes, and then there's mine. My episode is really good. I just I feel uncomfortable tuting my own horn. I was really impressed with how I came out though. Uh. And also my show Large Nerd Drawn Collider with my friend Ariel. Actually really it's aerial show and I'm on it. But it's a show where we talk about geek pop culture news and then we do crazy mash ups of unrelated stuff and say, what would it be like if you know, I don't know, he man was mashed up with my little Pony. That's the kind of stuff we talk about on that show. So you should check that out too. That's it, and I will 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.