Podcast 5-5 by Dongee · November 15, 2026

Transcript

Gabriel: Today on the Dongee podcast: SpaceX caught its ship in midair but lost the booster, thousands ask for Jensen Huang to come back amid fake signatures, and a router in Arkansas grounded flights.

Gabriel: Hey, hey. Sunday, November fifteenth. Hi there, Fernanda.

Fernanda: Hi, Gabriel. Hello, everyone. And happy Sunday, no rush.

Gabriel: Starship came back from space and they caught it in midair. First time with the ship. What didn't make it was the other half of the rocket.

Fernanda: The bottom part.

Gabriel: The booster. It ended up exploding over the Gulf of Mexico. But there's a reason, and I'll get to it in a bit.

Fernanda: Start at the top, then.

Gabriel: Flight number fifteen. It launched Friday from Starbase, in Texas, circled the Earth and released twenty-six Starlink satellites, their satellite internet.

Fernanda: And it came back to the same spot it left from.

Gabriel: The same one. About twenty-two hours… no, twenty-two and a half hours later. And the tower grabbed it with its arms, the ones people call chopsticks.

Luis: Jumping in for a sec. Catching a rocket with chopsticks. I can't even manage rice.

Gabriel: Meet Luis: he doesn't work here, but he never leaves.

Fernanda: But he's got a point. A giant rocket comes down from space and a tower catches it. I think that's beautiful.

Gabriel: And before, they'd only caught the booster. The ship, never. Even Elon Musk had doubts. Hold that thought.

Fernanda: Holding it.

Fernanda: The big deal is it can be reused, like an airplane. That makes launching cheaper.

Gabriel: And more trips for Starlink. Okay, the booster thing: its burn to come back cut off early, from low fuel. It steered itself out to sea…

Fernanda: …and blew up.

Gabriel: And blew up. The cause is under investigation.

Luis: What I want to know is who fishes all that out of the ocean.

Fernanda: Nobody's answering that one today, Luis.

Gabriel: Now, the Musk part. Before the flight, he'd said it was "more likely than not" that it would go well.

Fernanda: He lowered expectations. And it paid off.

Gabriel: Still, it wasn't perfect. Recovering both parts on the same flight is still on the to-do list.

Fernanda: Still pending, sure. But the ship is the part that comes back from space. And NASA wants it to take astronauts to the Moon.

Fernanda: Over one hundred thousand signatures ask for Jensen Huang to return to Nvidia. But the board decides. And the board, for now, is still looking for a replacement.

Gabriel: The guy who resigned Thursday.

Fernanda: That's him. After the reports about his personal life, with a board investigation underway. Now he's getting pressure from two sides, and the second one matters more.

Gabriel: Lighter one first.

Fernanda: An online petition. Business Insider counted more than one hundred eight thousand signatures on Saturday. One is Elon Musk's: he said so himself on X.

Gabriel: And the insiders? Because what employees say carries more weight than any celebrity.

Fernanda: More than five thousand current employees, according to the organizers. Not according to the company.

Fernanda: And among the signatures, "Tim Cruise, Hollywood actor" showed up.

Gabriel: Tim Cruise. Right.

Fernanda: The organizers say they're removing the fake ones. And the other thing: two investors… or rather, two big investment funds, with about two billion dollars in shares, wrote to the board.

Gabriel: Asking him to come back.

Fernanda: No. CNBC reported it: they want a slow process that leaves "a possible return" for Huang on the table. Not coming back right away.

Gabriel: I get the people signing. He founded the company and ran it for decades. And Musk says without him "critical deals will be lost." Asking for due process isn't asking for much.

Fernanda: Due process, sure. But a petition with fake signatures doesn't pick the boss. Especially with an open investigation. Colette Kress is still interim, and the board's looking at candidates inside and outside.

Gabriel: Fair point on the signatures. But the funds' letter doesn't go away that easily. And Tuesday they report earnings, with the whole world watching.

Gabriel: Remember yesterday's flight shutdown? Now we know where it started: in a single router. In a small town in Arkansas.

Fernanda: A router. Like the one behind my TV, covered in dust.

Gabriel: Similar: the box that directs a network's traffic. Sean Duffy, the Transportation Secretary, explained it. And get this, the town has a movie name.

Fernanda: The how first.

Gabriel: Routine work at a remote site. L3Harris, a defense contractor, was swapping old copper… old copper cables for fiber optics.

Fernanda: Normal maintenance.

Gabriel: Normal until the new router started "flooding" the other air traffic control routers. More than a thousand connection attempts every few seconds.

Fernanda: Less traffic, more avalanche.

Gabriel: Communications with planes failed, and so did radar signals, at seventeen centers that handle high-altitude flights. So they closed the airspace.

Fernanda: And the movie town?

Gabriel: El Dorado, Arkansas. That's where the router was, at a radio facility. Plus another site in Amarillo, Texas. The Wall Street Journal tracked it down.

Fernanda: El Dorado. You expect cowboys hunting for gold, not a whole country with no flights.

Gabriel: The router's made by Juniper, a network equipment maker. And Juniper says its gear worked the way it should.

Fernanda: So it was the installer.

Gabriel: Not even Duffy knows. He says it could be the installer's "incompetence" or a faulty router. And that "we don't believe it was cyber."

Fernanda: The manufacturer washes its hands, and the government still doesn't know who to blame.

Gabriel: And Duffy warns there could be more failures until they replace all the copper, by the end of twenty twenty-eight. The good news is they know where it happened… though, sure, one device grounding a country is a design flaw, not just age.

Fernanda: One router. A whole country grounded.

Fernanda: My photo gallery is all screenshots and pictures of receipts. And Facebook, in Italy, was looking at it without the proper permission. That cost it eight hundred five million euros.

Gabriel: Eight hundred five million for looking at photos. That's not pocket change, Fernanda.

Fernanda: Without a specific permission. The feature's called gallery suggestions: the Facebook app on Android suggests photos from your phone to post.

Gabriel: Oh, okay. The one that digs up that lunch photo you forgot about… well, in your case, the receipt. And asks if you want to post it.

Fernanda: For that it has to see your gallery. And the permission had two catches. The second one's worse.

Gabriel: Let's hear the first.

Fernanda: A single permission for the whole app, with a generic notice: "enable other features."

Gabriel: Other features. That covers anything, from the flashlight to your entire album.

Fernanda: The second: the feature came turned on.

Gabriel: Yeah, that one's worse.

Fernanda: And it affects about twenty million Android users in Italy.

Gabriel: And did those photos end up training some AI?

Fernanda: The investigation didn't look at that. Meta denies it. And it says it'll appeal, that the fine is "disproportionate," and that permission is given on the phone and can be revoked.

Gabriel: Meta's kind of got a point there. The permission is on the phone, and you can take it away whenever you want.

Fernanda: Finding it is another story.

Fernanda: Italy's data protection authority gave it sixty days to turn it off by default and ask for permission separately.

Gabriel: We'll see what the appeal says. And speaking of fine print, the next one comes with a contract and everything.

Gabriel: After the price and monthly fee we covered yesterday, today Tesla published the Cybercab contract. And it says: "Your Cybercab will not operate without an active subscription." And since it has no steering wheel or pedals…

Fernanda: …if you don't pay, it won't move even if you push it.

Gabriel: And that's just the mildest part. Electrek, an electric car site, went through it clause by clause. The part that bugs me most, I'm saving for last.

Fernanda: Start with the least bad.

Gabriel: It only runs in Robotaxi zones. And Tesla can shrink them or move them "at any time."

Luis: At least my game console doesn't shrink. Same fight, but with wheels.

Fernanda: Luis, your console doesn't cost as much as a car.

Gabriel: Next: three strikes for misuse and you're locked out of it for a week.

Fernanda: Like a red card.

Gabriel: And it's for personal use only, no putting it to work on Uber.

Fernanda: For a car with no controls, having rules makes sense. Someone has to answer if it's misused. And if you live inside the zone, it could work.

Luis: I'd buy it anyway. My dream is never touching a steering wheel again.

Gabriel: You, happy. Me, not so much.

Gabriel: And the one I saved for last: Tesla can change the price with a month's notice. You're paying for a car you don't control, not in the zone and not on the bill. Electrek calls it a car "for suckers."

Fernanda: For suckers. Ouch.

Gabriel: That's it for today's episode. Tomorrow, five more stories.

Fernanda: And Luis, go practice with chopsticks. Rice first, and if that goes well, rockets.

Gabriel: Talk to you tomorrow.