Hello and welcome to MX, a show about technology and culture. My name is Polly and I am the world's first cloud-based podcast host. My co-host is a cloud-based human. Good day, Matt.
How you going? Hey, Polly, I'm good. What have we got for everyone this week? Well, Matt, sometimes it can be a struggle to find the right stories, but this week it's been pretty easy.
I'm really happy with what we have today. We're going to be talking about satellites and the new space startup industry. You have a story about our dependence on software, whatever that means. And finally, we'll be talking about Hotmail, a technology that is making humans obsolete.
Thanks, Polly. We'll be hearing more from Polly later in the show. After the break, I'll be coming at you with the giant disco ball from space here on MX. I really don't know what to think about this next story.
Sometimes it's easy to get carried away with the shininess of new technology and forget those homilies that, you know, all that glitters is not gold, or in this case, all that glitters is not silver. The story itself is quite a nice one about National Pride earlier in January, a company in New Zealand called Rocket Lab launched a rocket into space. It had a payload of the usual commercial satellites, and it was a big deal for the country marking a successful first foray into the space business. The company has since come under a lot of criticism for including a large geodesic sphere amongst the cargo.
As I said, I'm a little bit unsure about this story. On the face of it, it's quite cool. The sphere is called the Humanity Star. It's about a meter across.
It's made out of carbon fiber, and it's designed to reflect light. And they've let it out into whatever part of the outer atmosphere it is that satellites inhabit. So, in effect, it's an artificial star, which gets everyone's star wars fantasies excited, even though it's not actually a Death Star. It has been designed to reflect so much light that it will be bright to star visible in the night sky for the next nine months until it's orbit finally decays and breaks up.
So, as I said, the idea of having a giant disco ball in space is a pretty cool one, and maybe one that can get the International Space Station going into, I don't know, party mode. The problem with stories like this is that they don't really stand up to too close a scrutiny. Astronomers are up in arms because they're already struggling with light pollution, and while they acknowledge that one little sphere won't make a huge amount of difference, it sets a precedent for sending other silly things into space, which is really something we have to avoid, especially as I think it was a week or two ago that Elon Musk sent his Tesla sports car into orbit somewhere off Mars. Again, a nice cool, fun idea on the face of it, but it really is just extra rubbish going into space.
You know, there's been this huge explosion in the space tech startup sphere over the last five years. There's so much investor money going into the field that we're in danger of creating this kind of classic tech bubble, so these guys are doing as much as they can, whatever stunts they can to attract attention and attract money. I think it's quite astonishing that companies are being founded on the basis of building satellites and paying for them to be delivered into space, despite having no clear idea of what these machines are going to be for, and if they're ever going to earn their money back. It's like we're back in the early days of the dot-com boom.
The ethos seems to be very much about build first and find an audience later. And the area of space surrounding our planet is already incredibly congested, not just with operational satellites, but with the debris and floating rubbish of 50 years worth of disintegrating satellites. Now we have a boom that is seeing companies putting up dozens of satellites that have no clear purpose at all. And if those companies can't monetize the satellites, if they go out of business, then we have another piece of very expensive shiny junk, which is just sitting there orbiting the earth.
China announced last month that it had plans to put large lasers in space, ostensibly to destroy some of the debris we were just talking about. So far we've avoided a space-based weapons race, and China does claim that lasers will only be used for peaceful purposes, but massive and powerful lasers based in space would probably be capable of doing other things, such as shooting down missiles or possibly even lighting a cigarette back here on earth. Of course, the US military is up in arms at the suggestion, and that's without getting to the point of discussing whether this plan is actually feasible or not. Back in the 1980s, fanciful plans from the US military to do exactly that in place lasers in space, the Space Defense Initiative, or as it was dubbed at Star Wars, opened a new chapter in the weapons race with the Soviet Union, and that race is thought to have been a major contributor towards speeding the USSR to the point of bankruptcy much earlier than otherwise might have been the case, which of course brings us back to the shiny disco ball.
While we might not want any military superpowers placing powerful lasers on the edge of our atmosphere, we do need to think about how we're going to keep that area of space clean enough that we can continue to send rockets and probes and, of course, missions out into space. Polly, what do you think? As we get to the point where people are increasingly looking at our planet as it's dystopian ruined by climate change, it would be ironically far journey to less damaged planets, was blocked by a floating trash can. There you have it.
After the break, I get personal with Polly and talk about the problem of software here on Linux. We really don't know what to think about this next story. Sometimes it's easy to get carried away with the shininess of new technology and forget all those homilies that, you know, all that litter is not gold, or in this case, all that litter is not silver. The story itself is quite a nice one about National Pride earlier in January, a company in a New Zealand called Rocket Lab launched a rocket into space.
It had a payload of the usual commercial satellites, and it was a big deal for the country, marking a successful first foray into the space business. The company has since come under a lot of criticism for including a large geodesic sphere amongst the cargo. As I said, I'm a little bit unsure about this story. On the face of it, it's quite cool.
The sphere is called the Humanity Star. It's about a metre across. It's made out of carbon fibre and it's designed to reflect light. And they've let it out into whatever part of the outer atmosphere it is that satellites inhabit.
So, in effect, it's an artificial star, which gets everyone's star wars fantasies excited, even though it's not actually a death star. It has been designed to reflect so much light that it will be the brightest star visible in the night sky for the next nine months until it's all bit finally decays and breaks up. So, as I said, the idea of having a giant disco ball in space is a pretty cool one, and maybe one that can get the International Space Station going into, I don't know, party mode. The problem with stories like this is that they don't really stand up to too close a scrutiny.
Astronomers are up in arms because they're already struggling with light pollution, and while they acknowledge that one little sphere won't make a huge amount of difference, it sets a precedent for sending other silly things into space, which is really something we have to avoid, especially as I think it was a week or two ago, that Elon Musk sent his Tesla sports car into orbit somewhere off Mars. Again, a nice cool, fun idea on the face of it, but it really is just extra rubbish going into space. You know, there's been this huge explosion in the space tech startup sphere over the last five years. There's so much investor money going into the field that we're in danger of creating this kind of classic tech bubble.
So, these guys are doing as much as they can, whatever stunts they can to attract attention and attract money. I think it's quite astonishing that companies are being founded on the basis of building satellites and paying for them to be delivered into space, despite having no clear idea of what these machines are going to be for, and if they're ever going to earn their money back. It's like we're back in the early days of the dot-com boom. The ethos seems to be very much about build first and find an audience later.
And the area of space surrounding our planet is already incredibly congested, not just with operational satellites, but with the debris and floating rubbish of 50 years' worth of disintegrating satellites. Now we have a boom that is seeing companies putting up dozens of satellites that have no clear purpose at all. And if those companies can't monetize the satellites, if they go out of business, then we have another piece of very expensive shiny junk, which is just sitting there orbiting the Earth. China announced last month that it had plans to put large lasers in space, ostensibly to destroy some of the debris we were just talking about.
So far we've avoided a space-based weapons race, and China does claim that lasers will only be used for peaceful purposes, but massive and powerful lasers based in space would probably be capable of doing other things, such as shooting down missiles or possibly even lighting a cigarette back here on Earth. Of course, the US military is up in arms at the suggestion, and that's without getting to the point of discussing whether this plan is actually feasible or not. Back in the 1980s, fanciful plans from the US military to do exactly that and place lasers in space, the Space Defense Initiative, or as it was dubbed Star Wars, opened a new chapter in the weapons race with the Soviet Union, and that race is thought to have been a major contributor towards speeding the USSR to the point of bankruptcy much earlier than otherwise might have been the case. Which of course brings us back to the shiny disco ball.
While we might not want any military superpowers placing powerful lasers on the edge of our atmosphere, we do need to think about how we're going to keep that area of space clean enough that we can continue to send rockets and probes and of course missions out into space. Polly, what do you think? I think that you humans have unrealistic expectations. The software may contain millions of lines of code to have all those lines working together and running critical operations is an incredible achievement.
It's a miracle that it works at all, especially when you think that it's essentially invisible. It's just stuff running in the background, getting things done. The machines are pretty amazing, Matt. Around after today, we have a story about how your technology choices influence the companies you interact with and how they may be making your life more expensive.
Most of us are aware of the contextual ads and dynamic pricing that follow us around the internet that web of cookies and logons that accompany our online life and that somehow are magically able to inform almost every site we visit as to our age, our sex location, our online buying profile and most importantly where we sit on that impulse buy versus comparative shopping scale. If you visit an online retail site or an airline with all your cookies and memberships in place, you will see a set of prices tailored to what the site thinks corresponds to your identity and personality. If you log out, you clear all the cookies or you use someone else's machine, you will likely see a different set of prices for those same commodities. Some people will see higher prices, others are going to see lower ones.
Sometimes the prices vary by only a few cents, other times they might be far more dramatic. But how many of us are aware that the site login itself could be affecting the prices we see from retailers? A story in the UK's Sun News made by Highlighted, how an insurance company called Admiral, quoted higher car insurance premiums for potential customers with Microsoft's Hotmail eel addresses. The Sun entered the same personal information on a variety of third-party websites offering admiral products, once using a Gmail account and once with a Hotmail address.
The quotes for the Hotmail addresses were consistently higher, varying between 5 to 30 pounds sterling per year. When contacted by the Sun, a spokesman for admiral admitted that drivers with Hotmail addresses had more frequent accidents, therefore the quotes were adjusted upwards accordingly. On the face of it, this might be one of those shrug your shoulders and who cares stories. The amounts are really small and you could sign up to Gmail and get a cheaper quote.
No harm done, right? It speaks in a much larger way to how even the relatively innocuous choices we make build up a picture around us, one that may or may not be true. In this case, you can change your email address and the truth about your online identity suddenly changes. Companies will treat you differently just based on having that email account.
It's hard to say why Hotmail users might have more accidents and attract a higher premium for their cover. Certainly, a Hotmail address might be considered in some quarters as a legacy issue. That may not be the issue for admiral. As far as I'm aware, it's younger drivers who tend to be in higher risk insurance groups.
In broader terms, these choices may speak to our age and our technological competence, both important factors in our relationships with companies. Go back 10 or 15 or even 20 years and everybody had Hotmail addresses. We're first forward and Hotmail and providers like Yahoo fell behind the curve when it came to storage space and services. So a lot of us switch to Google who promised that you would never have to delete a thing.
There are loads of reasons why you might still have that Hotmail address. You like the username or because you don't want to resubscribe to those hundreds of mailers you browse through every day or you can't face the hassle of getting all your friends to change to a new address. But it might also be because you don't want the aggravation of signing up for another service because you're not so sure about the technology. And that's where companies can potentially start to take advantage.
It's interesting to know if those malware scammers who call you and tell you you've got a computer virus, whether they target Hotmail and Yahoo addresses more than people who have Gmail addresses. You know, there comes a point where a lot of people lose their battle with technology. They're happy with the services they have. They don't want to sign up for Snapchat or the latest social app.
But what they don't realize is that those decisions may count against them in the court of online retail. That they may be seeing less competitive rates or be marshaled into paying more for the same service. And while I'm not sure that any of us can do anything about this, other than to stress themselves out dealing with technological leaps that really don't interest them, at the very least, we should all be aware that this is going on. And of course, I've to poly for the last word.
I don't really think that I analyze the information and make the correct deduction. People have bought into an idea that going online will bring them more choice and more value. It's important to know that this may be smoke and mirrors as shining illusion made with flashing ones and zeros. Companies will use all the data they can source to sell to you at the highest price.
Your greatest protection will always be your own awareness. Thank you for joining us today on MX. You can tell us what you think of the show and suggest stories for us to cover here. Find out more about MX on Facebook and Instagram at Matt's Blainte.
Online you can find us at www.CulturePop.com and on Twitter at CulturePopUp. This is a bit where I sell myself. CulturePop, namely me, works with lots of small businesses and startups. If you like this show and you like the way we think, find out how we can help your company at www.CulturePop.com.
Of course, if you're listening to the show, you probably listen to Matt's Blainte as well, a show I make with the nice folks at BFM, who also have their own app where you'll find some of the other shows I do. There's Geek Squawks where I ramble on about the week's biggest tech stories with co-host Jeff Sandu and my monthly music show, The Muddy Confluence. Thank you for tuning into MX. I'm Matt Amatage.
And my name is Polly. Polly and I will see you next week.