Gadgetory

I welcome to on the verge I'm your host Joshua Topolsky and you're a rhesus monkey named Mallory we've got a cool show today Colin hoback the director of terms and conditions may apply a new documentary sat down with Nilay Patel and in just a little bit I will be talking to our writer TC Sadiq who took a trip to NASA's Jet Propulsion lab in Pasadena we're gonna take a look at that and when we come back I'll be here in the studio with TC so let's get to it we're standing here on Mars with NASA's Curiosity rover okay we're not really on Mars so this is really curiosity's sister robot but we are at curiosity's home base NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena California and while Rovers like this one have captured the imagination of humans across the planet scientists at JPL have even more ambitious goals to one day have more than a billion human beings in space my name is Scott Davidoff I'm responsible for delivering the user interfaces for the systems that command the JPL spacecraft and the challenge is that the next generation of Rovers and exploration vehicles are going to be tasked with doing many many things as opposed to just one thing I mean sounds like you're describing basically remote-controlled robotic avatars for people well sometimes that's what it's like though the avatars aren't always like humanoid and so the mapping isn't always as real as natural as a hand to a hand so what are the biggest challenges you're you're facing right now trying to translate human embodiment to robot embodiment probably the hardest is the delicacy of certain manipulations and then being able to not have a full picture of the environment so what are you doing with occulus when I show you three demos today the first one is seeing through the eyes of the rover so this is the first experience we're showing you basically stereo paired image warped on to a cylindrical display you can see or your arm you can see the pebbles on the distance a more textured environment the more really pops out at you from something like this it's much easier to discern whether the objects in front of you or it's the left or behind you as opposed to just looking at it in a 2d window this is incredible detail from these photos hopefully you get a good feel what it's like to be on lunch makes me want to take a hike here now this is an International Space Station so I've taken all the US modules put them in here all right so I'm a campus robot now that's Robonaut 2 it's a humanoid robot astronaut that's on the space station to have helped astronauts do work that's a copula it's one of the windows to look outside well now you're outside this is the entire space station there you're looking at earth if you swim around and you see the Sun of the moon this one's a little simpler we're gonna start you out at Gale Crater again but this time it's a thirty interactivity environment this is one of the ones where we think multiplayer could be really cool is if a lot of people could be in the same environment exploring that environment alongside this robotic avatar which is our Rover it's very cool I can just feel my stomach drop when I go up and down so we're standing here in front of one of the athletes one of the triathletes actually athlete is a six legged vehicle it's actually two robots that combine together to make one six legged vehicle right now we have it in the single three-legged position it was originally designed as a a multi-purpose robot to do things like cargo offloading on the moon so if you imagine you have a lunar lander that comes down and your cargo is usually on top of the lander you need to get that cargo off the top the two triathletes can come up alongside take that cargo up move it to wherever you want and put that down what that enables you to do is to build a larger base on the moon from smaller pieces one of the challenges of you know landing on an asteroid is that bastards have very low gravity and if you come down and as you come to a close approach if you use your thrusters to slow yourself down you can kick up all kinds of dust and debris and that will you know confuse your sensors cause all sorts of trouble the other thing is that because they're low gravity as you come down you have a tendency to really really bounce and these bounces can have really long periods and asteroids are generally on these these really long periodic orbits of the Sun so you don't have that much time to do your science because if that asteroids on a 60-year trajectory you've got to land on that asteroid do your science and get off otherwise you're not coming back for another sixty years believe it or not landing a robot on an asteroid isn't the most difficult problem nASA has to solve how do you control a robot that's so far away that it might take as much as 20 minutes for a signal to reach it we have systems that help an operator to predict what the robot is going to do and understand the uncertainty and what it might accomplish that's that uncertainties being introduced by that that delay but still accomplish their goals in an efficient fashion this is a prototype that we've designed to allow people to control robotic spacecraft like the athlete more intuitively what's sort of unique about this demo is that it's rendering a 3d model in stereo much like if you go to a 3d movie you can see how things pop out at you but one of the differences is it's actually tracking where I put my head so it creates a much more holographic feel and I have a pin here that's also tracked and so I can reach into the space and I can actually grab the robot and manipulate it around I can grab it slims so we have joint by joint control so I can sort of fly the robot around and I can grab a single limb then I can move a single joint you click on its head and then click on the ground you can actually laser things on the ground so no demo would be complete without being able to fire the laser I'm feeling good about this projector a name's Riley I've run and I've been an intern here for now there's my fourth summer and you developed this iPhone app which makes this thing yeah exactly so last summer that was my project they said to me well controlling this thing is kind of hard right now and kind of confusing it takes a lot to keep people in there a lot of different parties who have an interest and driving the rover around so making it you know easy enough for like a media correspondent to drive is a good is a good thing for us to do so they said what's a good choice while an iPhone is very ubiquitous the lab hands them out if you don't have one so you can you can get one real easily so we use the iPhone this is a platform if you guys have any positions open for Rover pilots let me know this is my resume so this is one of our robots it's the lemur robot and it has these micro spine claws we use that to climb rocks it's the world's first rock climbing robot this is a micro spying wheel each of these little limbs here or legs has a hook in it and those hooks grasp asperities in the surface a little pips ledges bumps protrusions and allow the the robot to grip that surface and and climb the lemur robot is related to the to the two-wheeled climber the difference here is that this robot lemur is designed to climb in any orientation so it goes upside down it goes on vertical walls and we're also talking about using it for asteroids which would be zero gravity so that's kind of how they're related this one is we call it a power tool for astronauts you know drilling in microgravity is a really hard problem because the normal drills that we would use on Mars are not able to be used in microgravity there's no weight on bit you know normally when you drill you're pushing into the surface so on an asteroid with no gravity you're just as likely to push yourself away as you are to push force onto the bit and it gets even worse when you turn the drill on you're just as likely to start spinning around the drill as the drill bit is to start spinning on the rock you know this is kind of an early stage prototype of what astronauts might one day use that at an asteroid to acquire samples obviously there's a lot of work to do before a billion humans are controlling robotic avatars of distant planets but the work is beginning here and someday you might be an observer in space using technologies like those you might already have in your home including the Kinect the oculus rift or the leap motion and if NASA's vision comes true it won't just be robots or humans exploring space independently it will be an intimate partnership between two very cool stuff from TC and from the lovely people at JPL and joining us now in the studio to talk about NASA and and maybe TC is the delightful TC Sadiq TC thanks for being here thanks so so explain to me what just talk about what what makes JPL unique I mean how is it different than other parts of NASA or you know frankly other government sort of run or controlled experiment it's pretty well what is what am I trying to say a laboratory I could well it's a very big area actually laboratories in the name yes it's the only NASA Center that's federally funded but not officially part of the government it's managed by Caltech California University and they get to experiment they get to do you know some things a little looser yeah bring in technologies from companies like Microsoft and oculus is this stuff that they're working on is it is it it's private is it going to private industry at all I mean are they doing is that that eventually trickles down I mean NASA in general is working with private space industry so that's definitely a possibility but JPL is working on a bunch of NASA missions exploration science missions that includes Spirit and Opportunity Rovers curiosity which landed last year yeah a lot of excitement yeah so they are working on federally funded NASA projects so so my impression was watching that piece it reminded me of when I went to Microsoft they are their R&D labs and they were just kind of it seemed like there were projects going on where they were just like dumping some money towards a researcher and just going like just do some weird stuff just make something crazy like people would just come up with crazy ideas and they found a corner somewhere in a building and they went off and did it was that the impression you got when you were there um I think some of their methods look like that like they definitely throw stuff at the wall and have crazy ideas but they do ultimately have to report to Congress you were saying that you you told me before that there was a guy who ordered who got a bunch of fish hooks there yeah they have different it's like a college campus yeah basically they have 5,000 plus employees there and then a bunch of contractors but they have different labs and projects going on all over the campus and one of them was just this crazy like mad workshop or they're making climbing robots and they just they found out that they could use fish hooks on the legs to climb surfaces with very small aspirations so there's like a dam is on prime order right for 10,000 fish hooks whenever I imagine some be ordering something I just think like well they must have gotten it I understand a problem appreciate it I just I literally just ordered soil from my backyard from Amazon Amazon Prime they came in two gigantic boxes this is uh totally unrelated to NASA so so they're using a lot of consumer technology there that's something I was actually surprised by I mean the oculus rift is not straight up consumer at this point but it is basically it's something that anybody can own how much in the of course they had this iPhone app I mean how much consumer technology is being used and is it just because it's cheaper or you know is this stuff just not available in some other form or what is there you know there's a couple of reasons they they're using these technologies that are available first of all it's cheaper because they don't have to build them themselves available off the shelf and the other part of the mission is to educate the public and bring the public into to what NASA is doing and they see you know things like connect and oculus which a lot of people are gonna get their hands on as an opportunity to connect with the public right so you think that that part of the appeal of using something off the shelf is that it's more understandable to the public to the sort of audiences go like oh I have a Kinect in my living room right now they're using for this or I've seen the oculus rift for video games in there I mean that oculus rift stuff did seem really crazy to me I mean I don't know what the experience is like but watching you look at those the pictures of Mars you seemed pretty blown away by it I mean is it is that a very different experience than just just looking at them on the screen just zoom in you know it is and part of it is knowing what they want to do with it you know when they said they want to bring a billion human beings into space it's not that everybody's gonna get a little blue man to control on some other planet right it's more like you might be sitting in your living room and you put an oculus rift on your face and suddenly you're looking at alive 20 minute delay they literally get them into space right I mean you know you could be in their words standing on the shoulders of curiosity in the future do they seem I mean NASA has had a lot of funding issues in the in the over the last couple of decades really did you get a sense that they're underfunded they're that they're struggling to do some of these projects I think you know they're not government employees but they're close to the government and they tend to be wary of suggesting that but I think they obviously could do a lot more if they had more funding right um one of the interesting things having been there is that you know a lot of people have been kind of outraged that the shuttle programs are gone and that they they don't see human beings going into space but from their perspective robot exploration really is the future of human exploration in space it's in their words it's a it's going to be a human robot partnership not one or the other right but the robots actually gonna be there in the humans be sitting at home well our first human explorers to Mars might be sitting in something similar to the ISS the International Space Station above Mars controlling robots right below still not on the surface of Mars themselves though but it's a stepping stone they have it do they have a timeline for humans to get to Mars I mean what is their current timeline I don't actually know I would have been the first thing I asked well I think I'm going to watch it now you can tell hello to anybody and just said when do you when our humans gonna be on Mars well if you'd elected Newt Gingrich Gingrich yeah right he could he could have built his colony his space colony so what's the what's the future of would you what was your take away here do you have a sense of the future of space exploration obviously it's this robot human partnership do you get a sense that they want to go further faster and are there projects that they're working on that are gonna put us further out into space or does it feels like Mars has become sort of a stopping point right I mean there's so many so but there are so many challenges to solve on both ends you know getting the robots there is hard enough but being able to control them in real time when you have a 20-minute signal delay is a ridiculous problem to be resolved so they have to solve things like that before space but you know even the private missions that have proposed going to Mars have had everyone up against things like you know radiation which will kill people on the way there potentially so yeah there's a lot they have to figure out but for me the universe is really working against us when it comes to trying to get to Mars well T see the piece is awesome and thanks so much for being here to talk about it really appreciate it up next something very exciting earlier this week Nilay Patel sat down with director Colin Howe back he's the director of a film called terms and conditions may apply which is very interesting and analyzed conversation is fascinating we've got a clip from the movie and after that and he'll I will be talking to Colin check it out doing a privacy change for 350 million users yeah is is a really you know it's it's not of him so I would take the thing that a lot of companies would do we decided that these would be the social norms now and we we just went for it Google is effectively a $500 a year service because that's the value of the data that you're providing if they use 10 percent of that data they're going to be the most valuable company ever how many's that you've never claimed to have about 1,500 points of data on the average American citizen is it hard to go through it and actually find specific details about a person no that's super easy within a couple of minutes you can figure out what people voted for about psychological problems they have what party stuff things you Center have been contract decisions they've held that these terms and conditions are valid and what if your phone came with these long terms that condition said well if you use the phone the government can wiretap you that would be insane but that's the kind of world we're living in anything that's been digitized is not private and that is terrifying for the government to get information from a Google or Facebook is a lot easier than the government doing it itself and putting a wiretap on our phones you have to put these powers into somebody's hands like social networks in recent times if you have something that you don't want anyone to know maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place that's always what scared me was if there's some sort of automated system and just red flags you based on the search term you can see that surveillance measures are being used to silence protests before they even happen boom NYPD smart bulletproof vests under guns drawn I was like are you being serious are you actually holding me because of a tween so we were locked away in the police station for 25 hours all these powerful institutions they're not subject to the same the same invasions of privacy as the rest of us are so far the population seems fine with it if they weren't I they know who to call straining out got Colin ho back director of terms and conditions may apply how you doing good good well you see seem surprised well I'm just I'm just I had to sign this agreement just to come into your building right yes I'm a little I'm a little honored about that actually it wasn't too bad it's nothing like the the one you have to sign to get into Google's building so well we just asked for the your first run child Google wants two or three children at least so let's talk about this movie I used to be a lawyer so the fact that you've made a movie about contracts speaks to me not a lot of people make a movie about contracts why why did you decide this movie anyway because there's a contract associated with everything we do in the digital world now and I think that that's been happening over time and we just ignore them you know but most contracts in our lives of you if you're presented with and you actually understand that you're legally agreeing to something you might actually gloss over it especially something that is taking such personal information from you do you think the services are acquired because once you think the services are acquired it's like operate in the world then that contract I think becomes way more important yeah I mean I think you know the situation right now is either you get the service you don't and to be a modern participant in society in many cases you need to be using these services well so you don't put some of these services and I just I guess my question is if you're gonna run a photo-sharing service like an Instagram which comes up in your movie if you're gonna run a photo sharing service like Facebook or Google+ or whatever at some point you need a license to like take people's photos and use them to run your service and copy them among your servers and like show them to other people which is kind of the point of the services so you need some kind of contract sitting there how would you run an Instagram without like putting that kind of contract in place like is that even possible first off they don't need to be designed to be totally illegible or readable you know completely impossible to to navigate and that's what I'm really getting out with the film you know the films not really about contract so the film is really about is the underlying intent of those contracts what we're giving to the corporation's how they share our information what's going on in the background and what the government can do with that information the film is coming out you know it's kind of like a blessing and a curse the films coming out into this environment of like these leaks about prism and the NSA right which is like it's I guess great for your movie bad for society that like these things are happening well the bad things have been happening for a long time I mean I made the film before these things were even revealed right you know and I think that the film shows that the NSA has actually been going much further than even what these recent revelations have shown us right so the question I had was at the beginning of your movie you point out that in 2001 there was a wave of privacy legislation in Congress mhm and then obviously September 11th happened it you know towards the end of 2001 and all of that legislation like died on the vine went away and instead we got the Patriot Act and you draw kind of a line directly from the Patriot Act and that sort of sponsored surveillance to face with Google pretty specifically Google changing their privacy policies a well we we actually will keep data about you and share when required do you think are we still feeling those effects like that I mean that the prism stuff the NSA stuff that feels like a direct lineage of the Patriot Act but to to draw the line from that to how Google keeps your data these companies point of the Patriot Act they point advice' and they say look we we have to retain this data because of because of these laws and and that's been going on for a long time now but as long as we have to retain this information let's make some money on it in the meantime so I think that's why we haven't seen any pushback from from the big tech companies that have make a maid of fortune off of user information because in reality is undermining of civil liberties that's gone on it has has produced billions and billions of dollars and then you see legislators who may really care about civil liberties in the state of California for instance going walking around in and oh my gosh this is really important revenue to the state so then they don't make any changes and I think that you know asking the question does the surveillance work is it stopping terrorism we're asking the question does the data that these tech companies are collecting make a ton of money those are not the right questions to be asking the first question should be our civil liberties being violated if the answer to that question yes then something is how did you go about answering that question these are all independent companies at some point shadow profiles on Facebook aside I do get to choose what service I use okay and the people seem to be overwhelmingly choosing this small handful of companies and there isn't really a market for a more private search engine there isn't really a market for a more privacy focused social network I've seen 100 so I think I mean I've seen lots of startups show up and like we're gonna be the privacy phobia social network but do you burn out because people didn't understand the implications up until right now I don't know the film will help them understand the implications a little bit more I mean I do think that the next 10 years are going to show us that a lot of innovation can occur in the privacy space because even if a collection of the data for Google makes also their service better right I mean isn't that kind of the important piece there we should have a much easier choice in that like do you want to participate do you want to grant them that information so that you can get the the benefit as an opt-in instead of an opt-out I really think that there are solutions to these things obviously a lot of them are smart people graduating right now I may not have all of the answers but I do think one idea is this idea of data mobility the idea that you could basically take your entire data set from a Facebook to somewhere else I think that's actually one of the things that's really limiting people from being able to leave Facebook is they feel trapped do you think that it's literally your data that's keeping you there or is it the fact that everyone else is there I think it's your ability to reach out to people I mean in some ways it's becoming more and more of an advertising tool the Facebook's and the googles of the world ultimately what we're giving them is granting access to this this third party and it's it's which is the government and it's hard at this point to separate the two how do we how do we fix that right I think one technique is to pressure the corporations into pressuring the government the problem is that right now their business models rely on this data so I think that user is open push that's the problem with the business models rely on the data or is the problem that the government can get it without due process and warrants and so at some point don't you want these corporations to be able with it to give you the benefits of the big data and give you the benefits of like Gmail having endless cloud storage but then prevent the government from doing something intrusive that violates our civil liberties I think it's finding a balance yeah you know and right now we've gone way too far and I think that there are trade-offs convenience and security are a trade-off for privacy right like Obama said recently you can't have a hundred percent of security and 100% privacy I think the best sort of analogy is how many people die from cars every year right we like in America alone it's around 30,000 but we keep using cars because we really love cars so these are things that are a trade-off and in order to have a responsible government I think that privacy is necessary okay so let's talk about maybe for a second comes out Friday Friday July 12 in New York but then it opens up more widely after that and then we also have something going on right now which is designed to get congressmen to watch the movie so there is a petition that you can go to and sign it track off dot us we're working with demand progress on that and the objective is yet to get as many people on Capitol Hill to watch it because I don't think that they really understand these issues many of them you know it's funny because I we do every hearing on privacy we cover in advance it's always just a show it's partially it's like a legal story and especially it's like a technology story and they clearly don't understand other aspect of it right I mean and that's what I'm really trying to do with this film the show how that you know this sort of evolution of the the tech and the and the government worked and and and how it's not like they were working together necessarily to make this current state it's that they were both benefiting from it so much so the film really does chronicle the death of privacy and how we got to where we got and I think that a lot of people ask this question right I have nothing to hide so why does it matter right if it's it's stopping terrorism then what's the big deal and I think that the film answers that question there's a lot of cases in the movie of perfectly innocent people's lives being upended because of some tweet they made right writer from cold gas it's a really great example right ER from cold case who was searching for things like decapitated bodies and how to kill my wife wife killer and all this stuff steak and steak and cheese happens in the middle and you know he's a writer a cold case and it's very easy for the things we do in a digital space to be taken out of context and something that can be taken out of context is problematic especially when these systems are designed to be preventing crime from happening right at home thank you so much the film comes out July 12 go to attack my net and request a screening which you definitely should also search for it on Google and post for it on social networks to let the man know you care thank you so much if you that is our show I want to thank Collin Hoback for being here Nilay and TC NASA for just letting us walk into their labs and you the human being who used their eyes to watch this we'll be back next week with more on the verge and until then there is no until then