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[00:00:00] This is SpaceTime Series 27 Episode 44 for broadcast on the 10th of April 2024
[00:00:06] Coming up on SpaceTime
[00:00:08] New clues about Mars' ancient water
[00:00:11] NASA's new moon buggies
[00:00:13] and the largest digital camera ever built for astronomy
[00:00:17] All that and more coming up on SpaceTime
[00:00:21] Welcome to SpaceTime with Stuart Gary
[00:00:30] NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has arrived at an air-air in Galcratis Mount Sharp that may
[00:00:47] be showing evidence of liquid water having flowed on the red planet for much longer than
[00:00:52] previously thought.
[00:00:53] The six world-sized mobile laboratory has begun exploring a new region of Mars, one
[00:00:58] that may reveal more about when liquid water disappeared once and for all from the red planet's
[00:01:03] surface.
[00:01:05] We know that billions of years ago Mars was a much warmer and wetter world.
[00:01:10] Curiosity is getting a new look into that more Earth-like past as it drives along and
[00:01:15] will eventually cross the Gedeys Valley's channel, a winding snake-like feature that
[00:01:20] from space at least appears to have been carved out by an ancient river.
[00:01:25] And that possibility has sighted intrigued.
[00:01:28] The rover team are looking for evidence that would confirm how the channel was carved into
[00:01:32] the underlying bedrock.
[00:01:34] In fact, the formation sites are steep enough that the team doesn't think the channel could
[00:01:38] have been made by wind.
[00:01:40] However, debris flows, that is rapid wet landslides, or even a river carrying rocks
[00:01:45] and sediment along with it would have had enough energy to chisel into the bedrock.
[00:01:49] After the channel was formed, it was then filled with boulders and other debris.
[00:01:54] These are also where you get to find out whether this material was transported by debris flows
[00:01:58] or by dry avalanches.
[00:02:01] Since 2014, Curiosity has been ascending the foothills of Mount Sharp, a 5km high central
[00:02:07] peak in the middle of Gale Crater.
[00:02:10] Mount Sharp contains many different geological layers.
[00:02:14] That's why Curiosity is there.
[00:02:16] Because reading those layers is like reading a geology book on the history of Mars, or
[00:02:21] at least the history of the Gale Crater region.
[00:02:24] The layers in the lower part of the mountain formed over millions of years amid a changing
[00:02:28] Martian climate, providing scientists with a way to study how the presence of both water
[00:02:33] and the chemical ingredients required for life may have changed over time.
[00:02:37] For example, a lower part of the foothills include a layer rich in clay minerals where
[00:02:42] a lot of water once interacted with rock.
[00:02:45] Now however, the road is exploring a different layer, one enriched with sulfates.
[00:02:49] These are salty minerals often formed as water evaporates.
[00:02:53] It will take months to fully explore the channel and what scientists learn could revise the timeline
[00:02:58] for the mountain's formation.
[00:03:00] Once the sedimentary layers for lower Mount Sharp were deposited by wind and water, erosion
[00:03:05] whittled them down to expose the layers visibility today.
[00:03:10] Only after these lengthy processes, as well as intensely dry periods during which the
[00:03:14] surface of Mount Sharp was a sandy desert, could the Gadese Valleys channel have been
[00:03:18] formed.
[00:03:20] Scientists think the boulders and other debris that subsequently filled the channel came from
[00:03:24] high up on the mountainside, elevations where curiosity would never be able to reach.
[00:03:29] And so by studying this debris it will give mission managers a glimpse of what kinds of
[00:03:33] materials may be lying up there.
[00:03:36] Curiosity project scientist Aswin Vasavada from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
[00:03:41] in Pasadena, California says that if the channel or the debris piles were formed
[00:03:45] by liquid water, it would mean that fairly late in the story of Mount Sharp after
[00:03:49] a long dry period, water came back and in a big way.
[00:03:53] And that explanation would be consistent with one of the most surprising discoveries
[00:03:57] that Curiosity's made while driving up Mount Sharp.
[00:04:01] Water seems to have come and gone in phases rather than gradually disappearing as the planet
[00:04:05] grew drier.
[00:04:07] These wet and dry cycles could be seen in evidence of mud cracks, shallow salty
[00:04:11] lakes and directly below the channel, cataclysmic debris flows that piled up to create
[00:04:17] the sprawling Gettys Valley's ridge.
[00:04:20] Last year Curiosity made a challenging ascent to study the ridge which sort of drapes over
[00:04:24] the slopes of Mount Sharp and seems to grow out of the end of the channel, suggesting
[00:04:28] that both were once part of the same geologic system.
[00:04:32] Curiosity's now documented the channel with a 360 degree black and white panorama from
[00:04:37] the rover's left navigation camera showing dark sands that filled one side of the channel
[00:04:42] and a debris pile rising up behind the sand.
[00:04:46] In the opposite direction is the steep slope that Curiosity climbed to reach the side.
[00:04:51] The rover takes panoramas with its navigation cameras at the end of each drive.
[00:04:56] Now the science teams have to rely on the navcams even more while engineers continue
[00:05:01] their efforts to try and resolve the ongoing issue which is limiting the use of one
[00:05:05] imager belonging to the colour mass cam camera.
[00:05:09] This space time.
[00:05:11] Still to come.
[00:05:12] NASA has selected three companies to help develop its new moonbuggies and the largest
[00:05:17] digital camera ever built now ready for installation.
[00:05:21] All that and more still to come on space time.
[00:05:39] NASA has selected three companies to help it develop a proposed new moon buggy, the lunar
[00:05:44] terrain vehicle or LTV.
[00:05:47] Intuitive Machines, Lunar Outpost and Venturi Astrolab have been awarded $4.6 billion in
[00:05:53] contracts to develop the capabilities Artemis crews will need in a future moonmobile for
[00:05:58] transport across the lunar surface.
[00:06:00] These vehicles will not only need to provide a mobile platform for manned scientific
[00:06:04] exploration of the lunar surface but that also set the stage for future man vehicles
[00:06:09] to operate on Mars.
[00:06:11] And when it's not being used to transport astronauts around the lunar surface it would
[00:06:15] operate remotely as a science platform.
[00:06:18] Current plans would see the first lunar terrain vehicle transported to the moon in time for
[00:06:23] the Artemis 5 mission.
[00:06:25] Each of the three companies will spend a year to develop specific capabilities
[00:06:29] as directed by NASA mission managers.
[00:06:32] That will be followed by a demonstration flight to deliver the vehicle to the
[00:06:35] lunar surface and then validate its performance and safety ahead of the Artemis 5 mission.
[00:06:40] And no, there's no word yet as to whether or not the STIG will do the testing.
[00:06:45] NASA will also issue additional task orders to provide
[00:06:48] unpressurized rover capabilities for the agency's moon walking and scientific
[00:06:52] exploration needs through to 2039.
[00:06:55] The lunar terrain vehicle will need to handle the extreme conditions of the moon's
[00:06:59] South Pole.
[00:07:01] It'll feature advanced technologies for power management, autonomous driving
[00:07:05] capabilities and state-of-the-art communications and navigation systems.
[00:07:09] Crews will use the lunar terrain vehicle to explore, transport scientific
[00:07:14] equipment and collect samples from the lunar surface much further than they could
[00:07:17] on foot thereby enabling increased scientific returns.
[00:07:21] Now between Artemis missions when crews are not on the moon the lunar
[00:07:24] terrain vehicle will operate remotely undertaking scientific missions as needed.
[00:07:29] Now outside those times it will be made available for commercial lunar
[00:07:33] activities unrelated to NASA missions.
[00:07:37] NASA hopes to send a four-person crew aboard the Artemis 2 mission into orbit
[00:07:40] around the moon next year.
[00:07:43] That'll be followed by Artemis 3 in 2026 which will see humans return to the
[00:07:47] lunar surface.
[00:07:49] The Artemis 3 Orion capsule will rendezvous in CIS lunar orbit with a
[00:07:53] preposition SpaceX Starship HLS which will then take two of the crew
[00:07:58] down to the lunar surface near the South Pole with or spend several days
[00:08:02] before flying back up into orbit to rendezvous with the Orion capsule for
[00:08:06] the return to Earth.
[00:08:08] The Artemis 4 mission will see an Orion capsule rendezvous with a new
[00:08:11] lunar gateway space station in CIS lunar orbit from where crew will
[00:08:15] transfer to the SpaceX HLS for the journey down to the moon and back.
[00:08:20] From then on, lunar gateway will act as a jumping off point, a sort of base
[00:08:25] camp for excursions down to the moon's surface with the HLS and
[00:08:29] other lunar descent vehicles doing the transporting.
[00:08:32] Certainly exciting times ahead.
[00:08:35] This space time.
[00:08:37] Still to come, the largest digital camera ever built for astronomy and
[00:08:41] later in the science report could volcanoes hold clues about the
[00:08:45] first building blocks of life on Earth?
[00:08:49] All that and more still to come on Space Time.
[00:08:59] Well after two decades of work, scientists and engineers with the US
[00:09:11] Department of Energy's Stanford Linear Accelerator Center's National
[00:09:15] Accelerator Laboratory have finally completed the legacy survey of Space
[00:09:20] and Time Camera, the largest digital camera ever built for astronomy.
[00:09:25] As the heart of the ViraSea Rubin Observatory, the 3200 megapixel
[00:09:30] camera will help researchers observe the universe in unprecedented detail.
[00:09:35] Over 10 years it'll generate an enormous treasure trove of data on the
[00:09:39] southern night sky which researchers will then mine for new insights into the
[00:09:44] universe.
[00:09:45] The data will aid in science's quest for understanding dark energy, a
[00:09:49] mysterious force which is driving the accelerating expansion of the
[00:09:53] universe and which will determine the universe's ultimate fate.
[00:09:57] It'll also hunt for dark matter, another mysterious substance which
[00:10:00] makes up about 85% of all the matter in the universe.
[00:10:05] Although it's invisible and scientists have no idea what it is,
[00:10:08] they know dark matter exists because they can see its effect on
[00:10:11] surrounding normal material, what we call baryonic matter.
[00:10:15] The thing stars and planets and trees and cars and dogs and cats
[00:10:19] and people are made out of.
[00:10:20] Researchers also have plans to use the Rubin data to better understand
[00:10:24] the changing night sky, the Milky Way Galaxy and our own solar system.
[00:10:29] With the completion of this unique camera, the Stanford Linear Accelerator
[00:10:33] Center and its imminent integration with the rest of the Rubin Observatory
[00:10:37] systems in Chile, scientists will soon start producing what really
[00:10:41] when you think about it will be the greatest movie of all time and
[00:10:44] the most informative map of the night sky ever assembled.
[00:10:49] To achieve this goal, the team have built a camera as big as a car.
[00:10:53] The 3000 kilogram instrument has a front lens more than one and a half meters wide.
[00:10:58] That's the largest lens ever made for this purpose.
[00:11:01] Another meter wide lens had to be specially designed to maintain
[00:11:04] the shape and optical clarity while also sealing the vacuum chamber
[00:11:08] that houses the camera's enormous focal plane.
[00:11:11] That focal plane houses some 201 individual custom designed CCD sensors.
[00:11:17] The pixels themselves are only 10 microns wide.
[00:11:21] The camera's most important feature will be its resolution.
[00:11:24] It'll be so high it could resolve a golf ball's dimples from around
[00:11:27] 25 kilometers away while still covering an area of the sky
[00:11:31] seven times wider than the full moon.
[00:11:34] These images with billions of stars and galaxies will help
[00:11:37] unlock the secrets of the universe.
[00:11:40] Most notably, the camera will look for science of weak gravitational
[00:11:43] lensing. This happens when massive galaxies suddenly bend the
[00:11:47] pathway of light from background galaxies causing it to refract on
[00:11:51] its way to us.
[00:11:53] Weak lensing reveals something about the distribution of mass in
[00:11:56] the universe and how that's changed over time.
[00:11:59] And that will help cosmologists better understand how dark energy
[00:12:02] is driving the expansion of the universe.
[00:12:05] Under the rules of dark energy, eventually we'll live in a dark
[00:12:08] cold universe where all the nearby galaxies will move so far away
[00:12:13] they'll be out of sight beyond the cosmic horizon.
[00:12:16] And so other than the stars in our own galaxy, the universe will
[00:12:19] seem cold, dark and empty.
[00:12:22] Scientists call this the big freeze.
[00:12:24] A more disturbing possibility, however, is the big rip.
[00:12:28] You see if dark energy gets powerful enough, not only will
[00:12:31] it cause the expansion of the universe to move all the
[00:12:33] galaxies away from each other, but it'll cause the stars in
[00:12:36] our own galaxy to move away from each other.
[00:12:39] And it will cause the planets orbiting those stars to move
[00:12:41] away from the stars.
[00:12:43] And eventually, the planets themselves will start to
[00:12:45] break up under the same force.
[00:12:48] The ultimate conclusion of this would see dark energy
[00:12:51] becoming powerful enough to even rip atoms apart,
[00:12:54] releasing quarks and gluons to float freely in space,
[00:12:57] essentially creating a big rip.
[00:13:01] But the truth is we don't know what's going to happen
[00:13:04] yet.
[00:13:05] Scientists want to study the patterns of the distribution
[00:13:07] of galaxies and those that have changed over time,
[00:13:10] identifying clusters of dark matter and spotting supernovae,
[00:13:14] all of which will help astronomers develop a better
[00:13:16] understanding of dark matter and dark energy.
[00:13:19] And these same images will also reveal new details
[00:13:22] about distant galaxies.
[00:13:23] And that'll help researchers studying something closer
[00:13:25] to home, our own galaxy, the Milky Way.
[00:13:28] Many Milky Way stars are small and faint,
[00:13:31] but with the camera's incredible sensitivity,
[00:13:33] astronomers expect to produce a far more detailed map
[00:13:36] of our galaxy.
[00:13:37] You'll the insights into its structure and evolution,
[00:13:40] as well as the nature of the stars
[00:13:42] and other objects within it.
[00:13:44] Even closer to home, astronomers are hoping to create
[00:13:46] a far more thorough census of many of the small objects
[00:13:50] in our own solar system.
[00:13:52] According to Rubin Observatory estimates,
[00:13:54] the project may increase the number of known objects
[00:13:57] in our solar system by a factor of 10.
[00:13:59] That would lead to a new understanding
[00:14:01] of how our solar system formed
[00:14:03] and perhaps even help identify threats from asteroids
[00:14:06] that could end up on trajectories
[00:14:07] taking them a bit too close to the Earth.
[00:14:10] Finally, Rubin scientists will look at
[00:14:12] how the night sky is changing.
[00:14:14] For example, how stars live and die
[00:14:17] and how matter falls into supermassive black holes
[00:14:20] at the centers of galaxies.
[00:14:22] There's some of the ultimate big questions of science.
[00:14:26] This report from the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.
[00:14:29] Our story today starts in the late 1990s
[00:14:32] when the idea for what would become
[00:14:34] the Vera C. Rubin Observatory started to emerge.
[00:14:37] At the time, researchers were looking for ways
[00:14:40] to explore dark matter.
[00:14:41] Dark matter is a substance that only interacts
[00:14:44] with ordinary matter like the matter here on Earth
[00:14:47] gravitationally.
[00:14:48] As researchers were trying to find new ways
[00:14:51] to explore dark matter,
[00:14:52] they made observations of supernova explosions
[00:14:55] that hinted that the expansion of the universe
[00:14:57] is actually accelerating.
[00:14:59] These observations implied the existence
[00:15:01] of a mysterious dark energy that permeates all of space.
[00:15:05] If we take all the forces that shaped the universe,
[00:15:08] scientists currently believe that the universe
[00:15:11] is made up of about 5% ordinary matter,
[00:15:15] 27% dark matter, and 68% dark energy.
[00:15:18] In this case, the term dark applies
[00:15:21] because it doesn't appear to emit, reflect,
[00:15:23] or absorb light, and scientists aren't yet sure
[00:15:26] about how to directly detect it.
[00:15:28] In order to get some more insights
[00:15:30] into dark energy and dark matter,
[00:15:31] astrophysicists realized that they would need to map out
[00:15:34] the large-scale structure of the universe
[00:15:36] and its changes over time.
[00:15:38] Where were they gonna start?
[00:15:40] In 2003, Steve Kahn, an astrophysicist
[00:15:43] working on the subject joined Slack.
[00:15:46] He brought with him the idea
[00:15:47] that Slack and the Department of Energy
[00:15:49] should engage in the development
[00:15:51] of a large aperture wide field telescope
[00:15:54] that could probe at the very nature
[00:15:55] of dark energy and dark matter.
[00:15:57] Along with his fellow researchers,
[00:15:59] Kahn spent the next decade
[00:16:01] building out an international network of scientists
[00:16:04] and researchers to begin working on how they could
[00:16:07] bring the telescope to life.
[00:16:09] While the telescope itself is being built in Chile,
[00:16:12] the centerpiece camera module
[00:16:14] is being assembled right here at Slack,
[00:16:16] using parts developed at Slack
[00:16:18] and at other institutions around the world.
[00:16:20] The coordinated effort it took
[00:16:22] to bring together so many widespread teams
[00:16:24] was an enormous feat.
[00:16:26] The centerpiece of the telescope
[00:16:27] would be its camera module.
[00:16:29] In the early 2010s, after all their preparation,
[00:16:32] Slack researchers and their collaborators
[00:16:34] in the US and in Europe began prototyping the camera.
[00:16:37] The camera was designed with a sensor of 3,200 megapixels,
[00:16:41] making it the largest camera ever built for astronomy.
[00:16:45] For comparison, the smartphone has around 12 megapixels.
[00:16:49] Using this powerful new camera,
[00:16:51] researchers plan to capture one image every 30 seconds.
[00:16:55] Now, I know that may not sound very fast,
[00:16:58] but remember they're photographing into deep darkness.
[00:17:01] They need a longer shutter speed for this.
[00:17:04] Once they have all these images,
[00:17:06] scientists will produce a very high-resolution image
[00:17:08] of the southern sky every three nights.
[00:17:11] Ultimately, the plan is to run it as a 10-year project.
[00:17:15] That means that over the course of those 10 years,
[00:17:17] the camera will capture the entire southern sky
[00:17:20] over 1,000 times.
[00:17:22] This process will create a detailed map of the night sky,
[00:17:25] revealing how matter is distributed throughout the universe,
[00:17:28] as well as charting changes in the sky and matter over time.
[00:17:31] These observations will help researchers
[00:17:33] understand the nature of dark matter and dark energy,
[00:17:36] but that's not all.
[00:17:37] The telescope and its camera will help astronomers
[00:17:40] map out a lot of transient phenomena,
[00:17:43] like exploding stars and asteroids
[00:17:45] whose positions change from night to night.
[00:17:47] A helpful way to think of it
[00:17:49] is kind of like a 10-year long movie of the universe.
[00:17:52] This 10-year survey is called
[00:17:53] the Legacy Survey of Space and Time, or LSST,
[00:17:57] and the camera module itself has come to be known
[00:17:59] as the LSST camera.
[00:18:01] In order to design electronics for the new detectors,
[00:18:04] LSST camera researchers collaborated with teams at Slack
[00:18:08] and at the Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Lab.
[00:18:11] They also worked closely with the Department of Energy's
[00:18:14] Lawrence Livermore National Lab
[00:18:15] to develop some of the largest camera lenses ever built.
[00:18:19] Now, after two decades of work,
[00:18:21] the LSST camera is complete.
[00:18:24] Then it'll be shipped to Chile
[00:18:27] and finally ready to take the most detailed images
[00:18:29] of the night sky ever produced.
[00:18:32] Over its 10-year run, the LSST camera
[00:18:36] and the Vera Rubin Observatory
[00:18:37] are gonna have a huge impact on the field of astronomy
[00:18:41] by cataloging roughly 20 billion galaxies.
[00:18:45] That's around 10% of all galaxies estimated
[00:18:47] to exist in our observable universe.
[00:18:50] And no one knows for sure what we'll discover,
[00:18:52] but it's a really exciting time for astronomy.
[00:18:54] This is Space Time.
[00:18:57] MUSIC
[00:19:11] And time out atek another brief look
[00:19:13] at some of the other stories making use in science this week
[00:19:16] with a science report.
[00:19:18] A new study has shown that high blood pressure
[00:19:20] has been the leading risk factor for death in Australia
[00:19:23] for the past three decades.
[00:19:25] A report in the journal PLAS ONE
[00:19:27] used data from the Global Burden of Disease study
[00:19:30] between 1990 and 2019
[00:19:33] finding that high blood pressure
[00:19:34] persisted as the leading risk factor
[00:19:36] for both cardiovascular disease deaths
[00:19:38] and for deaths from any other cause.
[00:19:40] Dietary factors and tobacco use
[00:19:43] rounded out the top three risk factors.
[00:19:45] The authors warn that blood pressure control rates
[00:19:48] in Australia lag wall behind
[00:19:50] many other high-income countries
[00:19:52] and they're finding support actions
[00:19:53] to improve the prevention, detection, treatment
[00:19:56] and control of race blood pressure.
[00:20:00] A new study combining genetic,
[00:20:02] paleo-ecological and archaeological evidence
[00:20:04] has shown that the Persian Plateau
[00:20:06] was a pivotal geographic location
[00:20:08] serving as a hub for homo sapiens
[00:20:10] during the early stages of their migration out of Africa.
[00:20:14] The findings reported in the journal
[00:20:15] Nature Communications highlights the period
[00:20:18] between 70,000 and 45,000 years ago
[00:20:21] when human populations did not uniformly
[00:20:23] spread across Eurasia.
[00:20:25] The findings help fill a gap
[00:20:27] in scientists' understanding of homo sapiens
[00:20:29] were about during this period of time.
[00:20:34] Volcanoes may hold clues
[00:20:36] as to how the first building blocks of life
[00:20:38] may have formed into complex chemical mixtures.
[00:20:42] The hypothesis reported in the journal Nature
[00:20:45] is based on laboratory experiments
[00:20:46] which found that heat flows moving through cracks in rocks
[00:20:49] can purify molecules relevant to the chemical origins of life.
[00:20:54] The study's authors used specially built chambers
[00:20:56] with minuscule cracks in them
[00:20:58] to isolate and purify specific molecules
[00:21:00] necessary for building life.
[00:21:03] Now, similar cracks can be found in the Earth's crust
[00:21:06] and a thought will have been abundant on Earth
[00:21:08] before life formed.
[00:21:11] Well, it seems tech giant Google's
[00:21:12] facing more controversy
[00:21:14] when the details were joined by technology editor
[00:21:16] Alex Harrof-Royd from Tech Advice Start Life.
[00:21:19] Yeah, there was a lawsuit, a class action lawsuit in 2020
[00:21:22] over the privacy controls that were built into Google Chrome
[00:21:25] and there was the accusation that Google was tracking people
[00:21:27] when they were using incognito mode
[00:21:29] which of course is meant to be private
[00:21:31] and Google actually settled with the plaintiffs
[00:21:35] back in December last year
[00:21:37] but the details only became public in the last week or so
[00:21:40] and although they don't have to pay any damages
[00:21:43] they have to delete the records of 136 million Chrome users
[00:21:48] of the Chrome browser users
[00:21:49] but only in the US that I can see.
[00:21:52] So that means there are potentially billions more Chrome users
[00:21:55] whose surfing habits have been surveilled
[00:21:58] and that could be things you've searched for
[00:22:00] and Google is saying, look, we never identified anybody
[00:22:03] specifically and Google has said
[00:22:04] we never associate the data with users
[00:22:07] when they use incognito mode.
[00:22:08] They say we are happy to delete old technical data
[00:22:10] that was never associated with an individual
[00:22:12] and was never used for any form of personalization.
[00:22:15] Isn't that the same sort of excuse Cambridge Analytica
[00:22:18] Yeah, look, it's the same sort of excuse.
[00:22:19] I mean, the number one thing to do when you're on the internet
[00:22:22] is to use both an ad blocker.
[00:22:25] I use something called one blocker
[00:22:28] on my Mac, iPhone and iPad.
[00:22:30] It's a paid service but there are free ones
[00:22:34] well, Ghost 3, but Ghost 3 has been accused
[00:22:36] of allowing ads that it deems to be good.
[00:22:39] There's a thing called Ublock Origin
[00:22:42] which works on Android phones and Chrome browsers
[00:22:45] and that's meant to be totally open source.
[00:22:47] In fact, on my website I have links
[00:22:49] to the various alternatives to Ghost 3
[00:22:52] but Ghost 3 is good as well.
[00:22:53] Ghost 3 blocks not just ads but also the trackers.
[00:22:56] So you want an ad blocker and a tracking blocker
[00:22:58] and you often find that your browsing experience
[00:23:02] is a lot faster because all of this extra code
[00:23:04] loading ads and tracking your every move on the internet
[00:23:07] is no longer running on your computer.
[00:23:09] So you can't really trust anybody.
[00:23:11] I mean, there is a private browser called Brave
[00:23:14] and there are private search engines like a duck duck go
[00:23:16] but even duck duck go was accused of working with Bing
[00:23:20] and sending some information to them.
[00:23:21] So, you know, there really does need to be
[00:23:23] some sort of a parallel internet
[00:23:24] where privacy is something that is advertised
[00:23:27] you might most likely gonna have to pay for it
[00:23:29] but if you don't pay and you're accessing service for free
[00:23:32] then that famous saying is that
[00:23:34] if you access a free product
[00:23:35] then the product is you and it's your surfing behavior.
[00:23:38] So be very careful what you're searching for online
[00:23:41] where you're searching use VPNs
[00:23:43] use blocking software tracking software
[00:23:45] and even consider using a virtual machine
[00:23:48] you can download virtual bot on your PC
[00:23:50] and you can run other copies of Windows
[00:23:52] or copies of Linux.
[00:23:54] Linux is free to use it's an open source operating system
[00:23:56] it's a lot of hassle to do all of this
[00:23:58] but these are the sort of games we need to play
[00:23:59] in modern era to preserve our privacy.
[00:24:02] What about things like Tor?
[00:24:04] Well, Tor is stands for the onion router
[00:24:06] and it's also a way of surfing the internet
[00:24:09] inverted commas anonymously
[00:24:11] but some of the end points
[00:24:13] that people use to jump from one jurisdiction to another
[00:24:16] the endpoint is claimed to have been run by the CIA
[00:24:20] or other organizations that are then looking at what you're doing
[00:24:22] if you're gonna do that
[00:24:23] I mean normally people access Tor
[00:24:25] because they're trying to find things on the dark web
[00:24:27] so whatever nasty things you can think of
[00:24:29] drugs, terror, and that sort of stuff.
[00:24:32] Yeah, and how to create bombs
[00:24:34] and all sorts of things it's all there
[00:24:36] I personally have actually visited the dark web
[00:24:38] but I've seen plenty of TV stories about it
[00:24:39] and talk about how you can hire hit men
[00:24:41] even there was the famous Silk Road
[00:24:43] which was a drugs marketplace
[00:24:45] and eventually the guy that was running that
[00:24:46] got caught and still behind bars at this day
[00:24:48] but if you're gonna do that sort of thing
[00:24:50] you need to run VPNs
[00:24:51] and it's all a lot of trouble
[00:24:53] I mean there's more legitimate ways
[00:24:54] to make money than running around the dark web
[00:24:56] but Tor is another way that people do use
[00:24:58] to try and stay anonymous online
[00:24:59] but for every anonymous way
[00:25:01] there's somebody else trying to figure out
[00:25:03] how to break through that encryption
[00:25:04] or break through to find out who you really are
[00:25:06] they used to say that nobody on the internet knows you're a dog
[00:25:09] but I bet some of these three letter agencies
[00:25:11] know exactly who you are
[00:25:12] and what you're doing online
[00:25:13] and sometimes you wonder why more people aren't being caught
[00:25:15] Now there's a new story out about Facebook and Netflix
[00:25:19] having a bit of a get together and swapping data
[00:25:22] Yes, well there were claims on X
[00:25:23] that Facebook gave Netflix
[00:25:25] all your private messages on Messenger
[00:25:27] in exchange for all of your watch history
[00:25:29] while Netflix paid them $100 million plus for ads
[00:25:34] and the claim here is that
[00:25:35] Metta will sell your data at a heartbeat for profit
[00:25:38] but Facebook will met a spokesperson
[00:25:39] Andy Stone said, shockingly untrue
[00:25:42] Metta didn't share people's private messages with Netflix
[00:25:45] he says the agreement allowed people to message their friends
[00:25:47] on Facebook about what they were watching on Netflix
[00:25:50] directly from the Netflix app
[00:25:51] such agreements are commonplace in the industry
[00:25:54] So I mean look there's probably a grain of truth
[00:25:56] on both sides in the sense that
[00:25:57] Facebook has been on a 20 year apology tour
[00:26:00] they have been very fast and loose with our data
[00:26:03] and of course the Cambridge Analytica scandal
[00:26:05] I mean you see these things on Facebook
[00:26:06] that want you to put down information about
[00:26:09] what's your favorite color and here's 31 numbers
[00:26:12] each number has a certain funny name
[00:26:15] each month of the year has another funny name
[00:26:17] and if you put these two names together
[00:26:18] you're gonna be Indigo Starship or something
[00:26:20] and they do that because
[00:26:21] they can then comb through that data
[00:26:23] people just, oh yeah I'm the song headed grongo
[00:26:25] whatever the latest words are to go with that
[00:26:27] Indigo Starship was cool, I like that
[00:26:29] but they use that to then figure out
[00:26:31] what your date of birth is
[00:26:32] you know your birthday then your birth month for example
[00:26:35] and they're able to collect all this information about you
[00:26:37] and you think it's just some sort of silly funny game
[00:26:39] which for most people it is
[00:26:40] but people are actually tracking what people are sharing
[00:26:43] on social media and then building profiles
[00:26:44] now Google is meant to be doing this
[00:26:46] about what you're surfing online Facebook
[00:26:47] certainly meant to be doing it
[00:26:48] and all these little tracking cookies across the internet
[00:26:51] are being used by different organizations
[00:26:53] including the government to build profiles on you
[00:26:55] so again that's why it's very important
[00:26:57] to use ad blocking software
[00:26:59] and use tracking blocking software
[00:27:01] so that your footprint on the internet
[00:27:03] is as small as you can possibly make it
[00:27:04] so there's a strong possibility
[00:27:06] people out there in the real world
[00:27:08] know that I've actually watched the Barbie movie
[00:27:10] ha ha ha ha ha
[00:27:11] the Barbie people probably do know that
[00:27:13] that's Alex Sahar of Royd
[00:27:15] from Tech Advice Start Life
[00:27:17] and that's the show for now
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