CTRL+T podcast: From Tide Pods to the blockchain

Blockchain has become the latest buzzword in the technology industry, but many people are still in the dark about just what exactly it means. Thanks to Raine Revere, we have a bit of a better grasp on what the blockchain entails as well as some of its implications.

As Revere so eloquently put it, “blockchain is a technology that allows for peer to peer transactions,” she explained on CTRL+T. With the blockchain, instead of relying on a company, a bank, the government or some other third-party to keep your data safe, you rely on cryptography behinds the scene to transact person-to-person.’

“So there’s less risk of your data being made insecure and there’s also reduced costs for the end user in a well-designed peer to peer system because you’re not paying thee middlemen to keep your data safe and handle all the coordination of transactions,” Revere said.

Later in the conversation, Revere discusses the need to ensure the blockchain industry is diverse. That’s partly what led her to co-create Maiden, a blockchain education company.

“If we want this technology to actually have a positive effect on society, we need these economic improvements to be accompanied by improvements to the accessibility and the inclusivity of this technology,” Revere explained.

But before we dive into the blockchain, we kick off the episode with a couple of stories out of Europe. A hospital in Sweden is blaming an app that has been approved in Europe as a contraceptive method for 37 unwanted pregnancies — they’ve reported it to Sweden’s Medical Products Agency, which is asking the company questions. Until there’s a clearer picture of whether this is within a standard margin of error or not, the 500,000 of you in about 160 countries who have downloaded it to prevent pregnancy might want to tread carefully.

And in what seems like a good common-sense move, the UK is going to cap the number of hours that a driver can be logged in to the app at 10. After drivers hit that magic number, they have to take an uninterrupted six-hour break. Seems smart.

And finally in the latest dumb-trend-on-the-internet news, people are popping pods of poison in their mouths. Because that sounds like a great idea! These people have decided that internet infamy is worth a potential trip to the emergency room and have been eating those convenience packets of laundry detergent. We’ve not seen this for ourselves because YouTube has taken down the videos that have been reported. Here we are!

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