Welcome back to Let's talk tech Thursday, the newsletter that looks at your colleagues' excessively long emails and says "hold my beer".

In this 10th edition of the newsletter, we run the gamut from space news to a new Arabic large language model. Read on for:

• An admittedly self-indulgent waffle about the ingenuity involved in space travel (no, I'm not talking about SpaceX),
• A reflection of whether we've gone too far with the internet? Almost half of young people think so.

Also: we look at Falcon-Arabic, revisit Microsoft Recall, and see why multifactor authentication isn't the silver bullet it's always portrayed as (though you should still definitely be using it).

Let's dig in...

Top Stories

NASA keeps ancient Voyager 1 spacecraft alive with Hail Mary thruster fix

Summary

NASA has successfully restarted the primary thrusters on the Voyager 1 spacecraft, which had been inactive since 2004. This fix was crucial as the backup thrusters were at risk of failing due to fuel line issues. Voyager 1, launched in 1977, continues to operate over 15.6 billion miles from Earth, making it a practically invaluable tool understanding the galaxy.

So what?

Listen, this isn't the usual tech-based story that I share, but I am obsessed with this and this is my newsletter, so read or skip. Either way, I'm about to dive into a rambling love letter to human ingenuity and space flight. And then I'm going to go and rewatch The Martian. Or Apollo 13. Maybe both?

The most distant human-made object from Earth in the entire universe, Voyager 1 has been giving us ground-breaking scientific observations since its launch in 1977. Initially, it had a 2 year mission to provide more information about both Jupiter and Saturn. The maths experts among you will note that we are considerably past that. Throughout the nearly half a century of spaceflight, systems have failed and then brought back online, with fixes often involving the creative "off-label" use of other parts of the probe. In this particular case, the main thrusters were restarted for the first time in about a decade - a procedure where the most likely outcome was the probe exploding, but where doing nothing would have meant we'd have lost contact with it.

My favourite Voyager story though (yes I have a favourite Voyager story, call me a nerd all you like - you're the one still reading this...) was a fix to an issue with the communications system in late 2023. For those of you keeping track, 2023 is 46 years after launch, and 44 years after the end of Voyager 1's primary mission. The cause ultimately turned out to be a corrupted memory block, something that isn't super uncommon with computers. It's likely that whatever device you're reading this on has experienced something similar. The difference is your phone or laptop has so much space available that it can just block out the corrupted part, move the data somewhere else, and then carry on without you even noticing. By contrast, the total memory capacity of Voyager 1 wouldn't be able to hold the average email, and there was no room to start moving stuff around. The solution was to delete some code from a subsystem that was no longer needed, and move the code from the corrupted module into the space created. All this, by the way, when a round trip of communication between Earth and the probe takes about 2 days.

The reason I love stories like this is that they remind me of the power of troubleshooting, problem solving, and teamwork. Whether it's the Mars rovers, Voyagers 1 and 2, or the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA is full of stories of human ingenuity, and a deep understanding of both astrophysics and computer processes, that mean we keep squeezing life out of decades old technology simply because the only other option is to pack up and go home.

At the moment, the theoretical end date for the probe's service is 2036. After then, it will be out of range of the radio network that receives its message, and its power source is expected to run out of juice.

Until then, fly on little Voyager. Fly on.

Almost half of young people would prefer a world without internet, UK study finds

Summary

A new survey reveals that almost half of young people prefer a world without the internet. Many feel worse after using social media, with 70% saying it negatively affects their self-esteem. Half support a "digital curfew" to limit online access at night, highlighting concerns about online safety and mental health.

So what?

This isn't the first study to show us that, on balance, we might have gone too far with this whole internet thing. I've shared before the stat that 60% of people online will experience harm in any given week. What makes this study interesting is that, while we've long known that young people would prefer a world without social media, this joins an increasing number of studies that suggest the Internet as a whole is something young people would rather do without.

Why not just not use it then? It's not that simple. You see, in researching for his book, Jonathan Haidt found that while young people would love a Snapchat free world, being the one person in school not on socials is a fast worse prospect for them.

So are social media curfews the right idea? Our Secretary of State for Science, Innovation, and Technology, Peter Kyle, seem to think so. But I'm not so sure. It's 2025, do we really think that switching off TikTok at 9pm is going to stop kids from getting cyber bullied? I get that I'm over simplifying the issue here, in large part because I'm not an expert on the effects of social media on young people (for that I suppose I must defer to the Right Honourable Peter Kyle, Secretary of State for Science, Innovation, and Technology?), but it seems to me that we need to be a little more circumspect about an approach like this.

And is all of this even the right question? If, as the findings suggest, it's not just social media but rather the whole concept of the internet that young people don't like, what are our options here?

Any other news?

UAE launches Arabic language AI model as Gulf race gathers pace

AI language models are famously biased towards American English. The new Falcon-Arabic model from the UAE is instead trained predominantly on Arabic content. This makes it not only aptly named, but also excellent in working with Arabic grammar, including working in multiple dialects. This is the latest in a long line of measures the UAE is taking to get ahead in the AI game. The model is said to run more efficiently than Western competitors, and is significantly more advanced than other Arabic models.

“Microsoft has simply given us no other option,” Signal says as it blocks Windows Recall

We covered Windows Recall a couple of weeks ago, but in case you missed it the Microsoft productivity feature raised eyebrows (and blood pressures) as its approach of taking screenshots and analysing them falls firmly in the "I think the hell not" tranche of data privacy. Now, Signal have responded by leveraging a built-in Windows API to make the Operating System think that all of Signal is copyrighted material, and therefore taking screenshots of it is forbidden. It remains to be seen whether Microsoft will put in something more specific for this kind of use case, but for now it remains a delightful reminder that risk of litigation for IP theft trumps individuals' data privacy. Viva capitalism!

Valve confirms Steam 2FA leak affecting 89 million users, no passwords compromised

Valve has confirmed that a security leak has affected 89 million Steam accounts, exposing phone numbers and SMS two-factor authentication records, though no passwords were compromised. Steam, for those who don't know, is a video game distribution platform. What this breach quite neatly demonstrates is that SMS based multifactor authentication is not as secure as it seems. Set aside the fact that SIM cloning is on the rise, having nearly unfettered access to your mobile phone number can cause all manner of headaches. We've become relatively mature in our response to email based scams (though with the help of our old friend AI these are also sharply on the rise), but texting is by comparison languishing in the dark ages.

That's it for issue number 10. Thanks so much for taking the time to read this. I love getting your feedback, so do reply and let me know what you think of this week's stories.

In other news, I've been at a conference this morning discussing Effective Altruism and AI, which I definitely have some thoughts on. So if that sounds like something you'd be interested in, keep an eye on my LinkedIn or my website, as I'll almost certainly be talking more about it.

Until then, have a great bank holiday weekend when it arrives.

Will