Tech News and Commentary



Dave and Chris discuss cybersecurity threats faced by airlines from a teen hacking group, the impact of AI models on phones versus in the cloud, TVs and "non-viewing activities", and more.







“News Pick of the Week” with Ralph Bond







It seems like every day we hear about amazing advancements in the world of battery technology. But here’s a real twist – what if there was a lithium battery that was super powerful and could suck in harmful carbon dioxide as it works! Here with more on this breakthrough is our Science and Technology reporter, Bond, Ralph Bond.







Read more here.









Our guest this show: Dr. Emily Trunnell, Director of Science Advancement and Outreach - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)







Harrison in Gray Court, South Carolina asked: "Is it true what my friend said? He told me there is a wall of lava lamps in San Francisco that helps keep the Internet safe from hackers. That seems kinda crazy. What do you think?"Harrison, its true. It is kind of crazy, sure, but its true.The company that does it is Cloudflare and they do it as a vehicle to generate random numbers for encryption purposes.The problem with generating random numbers on computers is that they are ultimately generated by an algorithm so there may be hard to guess patterns, but there WILL be patterns.Cloudfront set more or less 100 lava lamps on a wall and a camera to take pictures of them. Since the patterns of the fluids in the 100 lava lamps are random, Cloudfront just takes a picture of them, the picture is digital so its ultimately stored as numbers, and they get a randomized seed for their encryption.Its a creating solution to a difficult problem, and the answer is yes. Cloudfront actually does use a wall of lava lamps in their efforts to secure the internet.They even have an article on their website about it, which you can read here.William in Phoenix, Arizona asked: "I was wondering what information you might have about that Abilene, Texas Stargate thing they got going on. Seems like it's gonna be the biggest Ai data center in the world and I was wondering if you guys had any additional info about that."William, Abilenes Stargate project is a collaboration between OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank that seeks to invest around $500 billion over 4 years with the goal of enhancing AI systems and applications.The first site of the project is an 875 acre data center with 4.5 gigawatts of compute capacity. That is expected to expand to 20 buildings and around 500,000 square feet of space.There is talk about a potential expansion to other locations in other states as well, but its still early days so that promise and the rest of the buildings may or may not materialize.Either way, it is the largest Ai project so far so you will likely be more about it in the coming years.



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