Tech News of the Week - 10/14/2024

[01:00:00.00]
Announcer: Welcome to Tech News of the Week with your host, Fart Noises.

[01:00:09.02]
Ned: Welcome to Tech News of the Week. This is our weekly Tech News podcast, where Chris and I delve into four things that we found interesting. Oh, God, Chris, I used the word delve. Well, I'm clearly AI now. Damn it. Why don't you get us started?

[01:00:23.20]
Chris: Companies making the mistake of thinking hard disks will work forever. Spoiler alert. They do Backups are a challenge. And the larger your organization and the more complex and sensitive the data that you're trying to back up is, the more challenging it becomes. Last month, backup giant Iron Mountain released a report stating that they estimate 20 % of all hard disks that's sent to them by customers are no longer functional. This is emphasized by Iron Mountain talking about Music Masters, which is music that was recorded to a hard disk, especially back in the '90s, and sent to Iron Mountain for safekeeping. Unfortunately, in many cases, that was the end of the backup interaction. Those hard drives went there and sat on a shelf. They were never tested, and the data was never moved to newer disks or to a different, more reliable medium. And so that now 20% of music that was on those masters is estimated to be gone forever. It is another reminder that you want your data backed up using at least the three, two, one rule. So you want three total copies of the data spread across two different kinds of media, and one of those copies stored off-site.

[01:01:53.10]
Chris: Sounds like the music companies only followed that last rule, the off-site one, and just called it good. I mean, the trouble is, entropy always wins. Hard drives degrade. What's the new hard drive that doesn't have moving pieces?

[01:02:11.11]
Ned: Ssds?

[01:02:12.05]
Chris: Ssds degrade faster. Hell, even tape degrades, but it takes a hell of a lot longer. In any case, just as a fun side point, long term backups is an interesting use case for cloud provider, because even if we don't know precisely what the backup medium is for things like AWS Glacier, let's be honest, it's probably tape. At least we know that the data is rehydrated periodically and old mediums and old tapes replaced.

[01:02:48.12]
Ned: Robotaxi and Robovan, début at Tesla event. Wild promises were made. On October 10th, Tesla held their cleverly named We Robot event. As anticipated by the press, the muscanator introduced a fully self-driving taxi called Robotaxi or CyberCab. For someone who is allegedly a marketing genius, he sure is terrible at naming stuff. These are names that my 10-year-old self would be embarrassed by, and I regularly fought imaginary aliens called Zaxlons. The two-door Robotaxi features gullwing doors, a stainless steel finish, and no steering wheel or pedals at all. Musk claimed that the vehicle would be available in 2026 and cost under $30,000. But that's not all. He also promised that Model 3 and Model Y vehicles would be ready for unsupervised, fully autonomous driving in California and Texas next year. Sure. Not enough. He also showed off a minibus he's calling a Robo Roboven, or Robovan, capable of transporting about 20 people that will drastically transform traffic and turn parking lots into parks for cities. It's a bus. He's invented the bus. Lastly, Elon brought onto stage robots that weren't simply a human in a robot suit, claiming that this would be the biggest product for Tesla, ney the world, ever, and that it would cost a mere $20,000 to $30,000 and be delivered eventually.

[01:04:34.27]
Ned: That is a lot of big promises, and a quick look back at Musk's track record on them, keeping promises that is, doesn't exactly inspire confidence. How are investors feeling about the bombastic reveals? They are not exactly swept up in the fervor. The stock price is down almost 12% in the last day. Perhaps Elon needs to focus a little more on shoring up the current crop of EVs and less on his bad sci-fi references.

[01:05:08.24]
Chris: All sports purists hide. Wimbleton is moving to automated line judges. I know. The argument about the human element and what role should it play in judging sports? Why just this past week, completely unremarkedly, we saw an egregiously terrible call in the midst of judging sports, that one of the baseball variety, where a first base umpire, a real human person, called a ball foul that was unquestionably fair. That call, of course, even wrong, not changeable. I'm sure it's no big deal to anyone that this happened in a crucially tense moment in a playoff deciding game for a team that was struggling the amount of comeback. No, we can't use machines for this. We've got the human element. Not upset about it. Why do you ask? Well, anyway, another sport that has problems with the human element but is actually trying to deal with them is tennis. And this week, the biggest tournament in professional tennis, Tenemis? Tenemis. Yeah. Wimbledon announced that they would be using the Hawk-Eye system to call balls in or out starting next year. Unlike in baseball, where people actually seem to enjoy the human element and/or suffering, in tennis, everybody seems pretty fine with the Hawk-Eye system, and they should be.

[01:06:46.20]
Chris: Modern tennis balls are hit at speeds of, and I am swearing that I am not making this up, 163.7 miles per hour. And if you think that your eye can track that and say with absolute certainty whether the ball hit the line or not, you are fool yourself. Now, admittedly, 163.7 has only ever happened once. And other times, the radar reported that one Ryan Harrison, hit a serve at 42,874.6 miles per hour, which I don't think he did.

[01:07:20.28]
Ned: No.

[01:07:22.01]
Chris: But servers are regularly hitting speeds of 140 to 150 many, many times a That's bananas. Yeah. Hawk-eye has been used for many years all over the tour, also at the US Open. And now with Wimbleton picking it up, it leaves the French as the only tournament, the major tournament, I should say, not using the machines to check line in or out in some capacity. Progress, I say. Now then, back to that whole strike zone thing.

[01:07:56.29]
Ned: Good luck with that. People that That love baseball also famously love change. Starlink free service, not actually free. Now, I apologize for two Elon articles in the same week. Proper contrition will be made. After Hurricane Helene devastated Asheville, North Carolina, thousands of people were looking for a way to help, and Elon Musk was looking for some good PR and a chance to drum up some more Starlink customers. In a tweet sent by the official Starlink account on October second, it promised, For those impacted by Hurricane Helene, Starlink is now free for 30 days. I know that Twitter messages need to be short and all, but that tweet leaves out a lot of context. For starters, if you're an existing customer, you don't get that out of the gate. You need to put in a support ticket to get the free 30 days. That's fine, though. I mean, I get that. It's not like they know exactly where your Starlink equipment is at all times and could easily determine if you're in the impacted area. New customers need to get Starlink equipment, which costs about $300 plus shipping if you order it from the website, assuming you can get to the website, or you can go to Best Buy, assuming you can get to Best Buy.

[01:09:19.03]
Ned: Of course, if your local Best Buy has power and can process a transaction, then you likely already have internet service. Also, after 30 days, you are automatically He automatically switched over to the $120 a month plan. If you decide to return the device, there's a $120 restocking fee. In fairness, Musk has allegedly donated Starlink gear to public buildings, but his helicopters were being blocked by FEMA for not following proper procedure. Shocker. That has since been resolved, and terminals are functioning in some of those locations. I appreciate the philanthropic gesture, Starlink, but next time, maybe you could be a little more transparent and think through the logistics of what you're actually offering. Or just promise magic robots will save everyone like you usually do. Save me. Hold me? All right, that's it. We're done. Go away now. Bye.