Podcasts about fairpoint

TNG's beginningIs it possible to view something from long ago in the Trek canon as a new viewer might? The trio attempt to make the old come to life again by re-examining the pilot episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation."It is hard to begin a Star Trek series re-watch. Which one? Where to start? Do you go 20th or 21st Century shows? After a mix of picking their own series recently, the trio come together for a TNG rewatch. That means starting with that two-hour special "Encounter at Fairpoint." The introduction of the U.S.S. Enterprise-D, its crew, the look and feel of the 24th Century ... and Q! There is a lot to take in, even if we ultimately know what production approaches (and characters) don't make it very far. They try to imagine all questions and mysteries this first episode would bring to either a new viewer or die-hard TOS fan. So join them and revisit 1987 with the re-birth of a Star Trek TV series!

With Paulo Bento dropping his official World Cup Squad on Nov. 12, we collaborated with the Fairpoint Podcast to break down the squad. Joining Taegeuk Tavern host Michael and Gordon are Fairpoint's Steve Han and Joon Lee! The most important topics including an analysis of what young player Lee Kangin brings to the squad, how Son Heungmin's facial fracture injury will impact the squad, and a discussion of Hwang Uijo's struggles at Olympiakos and how that hopefully will motivate him to succeed in Qatar. We also presented some tactical analysis of Korea's midfield selections with the inclusion of Son Junho, a heated argument about Kwon Changhoon, and our best XIs for the group stage matches. If you want to hear more from the Fairpoint Podcast, visit their show page here : https://apple.co/3fX94XH Thanks so much for listening to our podcast. Stay tuned for next week's episode with experts on each of our Group H opponents. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/taegeukwarriorspod/support

Conviction and staying in your lane. This week Tim and Victoria Giovenelli share that whole gammit of their church planting journey. What it means to stick to your guns when things seem tough, the transience of people and when it just feels overwhelming. But also what it means to create a space where the important things of prayer, evangelism, and life-giving community are prioritised. Furthermore, Tim and Victoria share on how the local church can maintain that pioneering spirit in reaching the lost, and the exhilitaring adventure of ongoing planting. https://exponential.org.au/

The Art of Daring to be Flawless: Is it Carl Phillips or Philip Seymour Hoffman? The answer will surprise you!Buy Carl Phillips's incredible books (including his newest book, Then the War: New and Selected Poems) at Loyalty Books, a terrific Black-owned bookstore in DC.Carl Phillips Bio:Born on July 23, 1959 in Everett, Washington, Carl Phillips is the author most recently of Then the War (Feb 1, 2022) and of Pale Colors in a Tall Field (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020). He has been a finalist for the National Book Award three times (for Speak Low, The Rest of Love, and From the Devotions) and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award (for Cortège). His awards include the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award (for The Tether), the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Male Poetry, the 2006 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Pushcart Prize, the Academy of American Poets Prize, induction into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Library of Congress. Phillips served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2006 to 2012. He is Professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis. Carl Phillips's poems have  been chosen eight times for the annual Best American Poetry series.You can follow Carl on Instagram @ pinestereo (where he also sometimes does a very popular and fun cooking show!) Phillips is also the author of two book of prose on poetry: Coin of the Realm: Essays on the Art and Life of Poetry (Graywolf Press, 2004) The Art of Daring: Risk, Restlessness, and Imagination (Graywolf, 2014)Philip Seymour Hoffman was born on July 23, 1967 in Fairpoint, NY. He was nominated three times for Academy Awards as Best Supporting Actor: as a priest under suspicion of sexual predation in Doubt (2008); as a C.I.A. agent in Charlie Wilson's War (2007); and as a  cult leader in The Master (2012). He won the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of the titular character in Capote (2005).See Carl talk about and read from his new book, Then the War, released with Carcanet Press in the UK and FSG in the US, on YouTube here. See Carl Phillips read his poem "Dirt Being Dirt" here (~3 min). Watch Sumita Chakraborty reads Phillips's poem "As From a Quiver of Arrows" here (~3 min).Carl Phillips interviewed by Ron Charles @ The Washington Post (1 hour). Watch this interview with PSH ("Philip Seymour Hoffman: A Life in Pictures" from the BAFTA Archives) here. (~30min)

Welcome!   This week I am spending a bit of time discussing Bitcoin and other crypto-currency and their tie to Ransomware and a couple of things the Feds are doing from the IRS to DOJ.  Then we go into the Gig Economy and thru the ramifications of CA Prop 22 and More so listen in. For more tech tips, news, and updates, visit - CraigPeterson.com. --- Tech Articles Craig Thinks You Should Read: The feds just seized Silk Road’s $1 billion Stash of bitcoin Uber and Lyft in driving seat to remake US labor laws The One Critical Element to Hardening Your Employees' Mobile Security Ransom Payment No Guarantee Against Doxxing Connected cars must be open to third parties, say Massachusetts voters Tracking Down the Web Trackers Apple develops an alternative to Google search San Diego’s spying streetlights stuck switched “on,” despite a directive Paying ransomware demands could land you in hot water with the feds Windows 10 machines running on ARM will be able to emulate x64 apps soon 'It Won't Happen to Me': Employee Apathy Prevails Despite Greater Cybersecurity Awareness Rise in Remote MacOS Workers Driving Cybersecurity 'Rethink' A Guide to the NIST Cybersecurity Framework --- Automated Machine-Generated Transcript: Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] The silk road is back in the news as a billion dollars was just taken from their account. We're going to talk about mobile security, ransom payments, and doxing. And of course, a whole lot more as you listen right now. Hi, everybody, of course, Craig Peterson here. Thanks for spending a little time with me today. We have a bunch to get to. I think one of the most interesting articles, what kind of start with this week because this is a very big deal. We're talking about something called cryptocurrency, and I'm going to go into that a little bit. So for those of you who already know, just maybe there's something you'll learn from this little part of the discussion and then we'll get into Bitcoin more specifically. Then the secret service, what they have been doing to track down some of these illegal operators and also how this is really affecting ransomware. Those two, by the way, are just tied tightly together, Bitcoin and ransomware. So I'll explain why that is as well. Cryptocurrency has been around for quite a while now.  There's a concept behind cryptocurrency and it's the most important concept of all, frankly, when it comes to cryptocurrency and that is you have to use advanced to mathematics in order to prove that you have found a Bitcoin. Time was you'd go out and go gold mining. Heck people are still doing it today. all over New England. It isn't just the Yukon or Alaska or Australia, et cetera. They're doing it right here. And they have proof that they found something that's very hard to find because they have a little piece of gold or maybe a nugget or maybe something that's like a huge nugget man. I saw a picture of one out of Australia that was absolutely incredible. Takes a few people to carry this thing. That is proof, isn't it? You can take that to the bank, ultimately. You sell it to a gold dealer who gives you cash. That you can then take to a bank.  Then the bank account information is used to prove that you can buy something. You give someone a credit card, it runs a little check. Hey, are we going to let this guy buy it? Or a debit card? Hey, does he have enough money in the bank? So along with that pathway, you have something that is real. That's hard and that's the gold that was mined out of the ground. Then it very quickly becomes something that's frankly, unreal. Time was our currency was backed by gold and then it was backed by silver. Now it's backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government. not quite the same thing, is it? So we're dealing with money that isn't all that real, the United States agreed to not manipulate its currency. We became what's called the petrodollar. All petroleum products, particularly crude oil are sold on international exchanges using the US dollar. China is trying to change that. Russia's tried to change that. They're actually both going to change it by using a cryptocurrency. At least that's their plan. The idea behind cryptocurrency is that your money, isn't real either, right? You sure you've got a piece of paper, but it's not backed by anything other than the acceptance of it by somebody else. If you walk into Starbucks and you drop down a quarter for your coffee. Yeah, I know it's not a quarter used to be a dime. I remember it was a dime for a cup of coffee, not at Starbucks, but you dropped down your money. Okay. Your $10 bill for a cup of coffee at Starbucks, they'll take it because they know they can take that $10 and they can use it to pay an employee and that employee will accept it and then they can use that to buy whatever it is that they need. It's how it works. With Bitcoin, they're saying what's the difference? You have a Bitcoin.  It's not real. Ultimately represents something that is real, but how is there a difference between accepting a Bitcoin and accepting a $5 bill? What is the difference between those two or that $10 bill that you put down at Starbucks? In both cases, we're talking about something that represents the ability to trade. That's really what it boils down to. Our currencies represent the ability to trade. Remember way back when, before I was born that a standard wage was considered a dollar a day. So people would be making money at a rate of a dollar a day. I remember that song, old country song. I sold my soul to the company's store and they made enough money just basically yet buy in to pay the company for the room and board and everything else they had. Interesting times, not fun, that's for sure for many people caught up in it. When you dig down behind Bitcoin, once you ultimately find at the root,  was a computer that spent a lot of time and money to solve this massive mathematical equation. That's the basics of how that works. That's what Bitcoin mining is. Right now, it costs more to mine a Bitcoin. In most areas, then it costs for the electricity to run it and the hardware to buy it. There are computers that are purpose made. Just to create these Bitcoins, just to find them just to mine them.  If you're sitting at home thinking, wow, I should get into a cryptocurrency and I'll just go ahead and mine it on my computer, that's really fun. It's a fun thing to think about. But in reality, you are not going to be able to justify it. You'd be better off to go and buy some gold or another precious metal. So that's how cryptocurrency has, how Bitcoin, that's how all of these really begin is just with the computer, trying to solve an incredibly complex math problem that can take weeks or months for it to solve. For those of you that want to dig a little bit more, basically, it's using prime numbers. You might remember messing with those in school. I remember, I wrote a program to determine prime numbers a long time ago. 45 plus years ago, I guess it was, and it was fun because I learned a lot about prime numbers back then. But we're dealing with multi-thousand digit numbers in some of these cases, just huge numbers, far too hard for you or I to deal with and that's why I take so incredibly long. Now we know how the value was started and that was with somebody running a computer finding that Bitcoin and putting it on the market. Now, normally when you're looking at market and market volatility, markets are supply and demand based except for government interference. We certainly have a lot of that in the United States. We do not have a completely free market system, not even close. The free market says I had to dig this hole and in order to dig that hole, I had to have a big backhoe. Before that, I had to have a bucket or maybe some other heavy equipment to move all of the earth out of the way, the bulldozers, et cetera. Then I had to run that through some sort of a wash plant and all of these things cost me money. So basically it costs me whatever it might be, a hundred bucks, in order to find this piece of gold, and then that hundred bucks now that it costs him to do it is the basis for the value of that piece of gold. Obviously, I'm not using real numbers, but just simple numbers to give you an idea of how cryptocurrency works. So it's a hundred bucks for me to get that piece of gold out of the ground. Then that piece of gold is taken and goes to some form of a distributor. So I'm going to sell that piece of gold to somebody that's going to melt it down. They're going to assay it and say, yeah, this is a hundred percent pure gold, and then they'll sell it to someone and then they'll sell it to someone and then they'll sell it to a jeweler who then takes it and makes jewelry. Every time along there they're adding stuff onto it. But the basic value of gold is based on how hard it is to get and how many people want to get their hands on it. The law of supply and demand. You've seen that over the years, it's been true forever. Really? That's how human trade works. Capitalism, in reality, is just the ability of strangers to trade with each other is just an incredible concept. What we're talking about here with the cryptocurrency is much the same thing. The value of cryptocurrency goes up and down a lot. Right now, one Bitcoin is worth about 15,000, almost $16,000 per bitcoin. We'll talk about that. What is Bitcoin? How can I even buy it? Pizza for the silly things were 16 grand, right? It's like taking a bar of gold to buy a pizza. How do you do that? How do you deal with that? So we'll get into that, and then we'll get into how the tie between cryptocurrencies, particularly Bitcoin, and the criminal underground. That tie is extremely tight and what that means to you.  It is tied directly into the value of Bitcoin. Right now the basis is it costs me 16 grand to mine, a Bitcoin. Therefore that's where I'm going to sell it for, of course, there are profit and everything else that you put into that $16,000 number. We've got a lot more to get to today. We're going to talk about this billion dollars, which is, that's a real piece of money here that the feds just seized. Right now talking about Bitcoin. What's the value of it? How is it tied into criminal enterprises and what's going on with the FBI seizure this week? Bitcoin's value has been going up and down. I just pulled up during the break, a chart showing me the value of Bitcoin over the last 12 months. It has been just crazy. going back years it was worth a dollar. I think the  Bitcoin purchase was for a pizza, which is really interesting when you get right down to it. The guy says, Oh yeah, what the heck, take some Bitcoin for it. Okay. here we go. May 22nd, 2010 Lasso Lowe made the first real-world transaction by buying two pizzas in Jacksonville, Florida for 10,000 Bitcoin. 10,000 Bitcoin. So let me do a little bit of math here. Let me pull it up here. Today's price is about $15,750,000. So he bought it. Two pizzas for the value today, Bitcoin of $157 million. That's actually pretty simple math, $157 million. Okay, that was 10 years ago. The first Bitcoin purchase. So it has gone up pretty dramatically in price. I think the highest price for one Bitcoin was $17,900. It was almost $18,000 and then it's dropped down.  It has gone up and it has gone down quite a bit over the years. It seems to have had a few really hard drop-offs when it hit about 14,000. Right now it is above that. So I'm not giving investment advice here, right? That's not what I do. We're talking about the technology that's behind some of this stuff, but one Bitcoin then. Is too much for a pizza, right? So he paid 10,000 Bitcoin for his first pizza. That's really cool, but, ah, today where it's another word, the Bitcoin was worth just a fraction of a cent each back then. Today you can't buy a pizza for one Bitcoin. So Bitcoin was designed to be chopped up so you can purchase and you can sell them at a fraction of a Bitcoin. That's how these transactions are happening. Now there's a lot of technology we won't get into that's behind all of this and how the transactions work and having a wallet, a Bitcoin wallet, and how the encryption works and how all of these logs work. The audits, basically the journals that are kept as accountants and how a majority of these have to vote and say that particular transaction was worthwhile. The fact that every Bitcoin transaction is not only stored but is stored on thousands of computers worldwide. Okay. There's a whole lot to that, but let's get into the practical side. If you are a bad guy. If you are a thief. If you're into extortion. If you're doing any of those things, how do you do it without the government noticing? In reality, it's impossible when you get right down to it. Nothing is completely anonymous and nothing ever will be most likely, completely anonymous. But they still do it anyway, because, in reality, they, the FBI or the secret service or whoever's investigating has to be interested enough in you and what you're doing in order to track you down. If they are interested enough, they will track you down. It really is that simple. Enter a convicted criminal by the name of Ross Ulbricht Ross was running something online, a website called the silk road.  It was what's known as the dark web. If you've listened to the show long enough, the history of the dark web and that it was founded by the US government. In fact, the dark web is still maintained by the government. I'm pretty sure it's still the Navy that actually keeps the dark web online. The thinking was we have the dark web. It's difficult for people to track us here on the dark web and if we use something like Bitcoin, one of these cryptocurrencies for payment, then we are really going to be a lot safer. Then they added one more thing to the mix called a tumbler. And the idea with the tumbler is that if I'm buying something from you using Bitcoin, my wallet shows that I transferred the Bitcoin to you. All of these verification mechanisms that are in place around the world also know about our little transaction, everybody knows. The secrecy is based on the concept of a Swiss bank account. When with that Swiss bank account, you have a number and obviously you have a name, but it is kept rather anonymous. The same, thing's true with your wallet. You have a number, it's a big number to a hexadecimal number. It is a number that you can use and you can trade with. You've got a problem because, ultimately, someone looking at these logs who knows who you are or who I am or wants to figure out who either one of us is probably can. And once they know that they can now verify that you indeed are the person who made that purchase. So these tumblers will take that transaction instead of me transferring Bitcoin directly to you, the Bitcoin gets transferred to another wallet. Then from that wallet to another wallet and from that wallet to another wallet and from that wallet to a number of another wallet.  Now is much more difficult to trace it because I did not have a transaction directly with you. Who is in the middle? That's where things start getting really difficult. But as Russ Ulbricht found out, it is not untraceable. He is behind bars with two life sentences plus 40 years. What they were doing on the silk road is buying and selling pretty much anything you can think of. You could get any hard drug that you wanted there, you could get fake IDs, anything, really, anything, even services that you might want to buy. There are thousands of dealers on the silk road. Over a hundred thousand buyers, according to the civil complaint that was filed on Thursday this week. Last week, actually, the document said that silk road generated a revenue of over 9.5 million Bitcoins and collected commissions from these sales of more than 600,000 Bitcoin. Absolutely amazing. Now you might wonder, okay. Maybe I can buy a pizza with Bitcoin or something elicit with Bitcoin, but how can I use it in the normal world while there are places that will allow you to convert Bitcoin into real dollars and vice versa? In fact, many businesses have bought Bitcoin for one reason and one reason in particular. That reason is insurance. They have bought Bitcoin in case they get ransomware. They just want it to sit in there, to use to pay ransoms. We'll talk more about that. We're turning into the Bitcoin hour, I guess today. we are talking a lot about it right now because it's one of the top questions I get asked. The IRS is saying that they may put a question on your tax return next year, about cryptocurrency specifically Bitcoin. So what's that all about? And by the way, the IRS had a hand in this conviction too. Your listening to Craig Peterson. We just mentioned, gentlemen, I don't know if he's a gentleman, by the name of Ross Ulbricht and he is behind bars for life. He was buying and selling on the. A website called the silk road. In fact, he was the guy running it, according to his conviction and two life terms, plus 40 years seems like a long time. In other words, he's not getting out. The internal revenue service had gotten involved with this as well because you are supposed to pay taxes on any money you earn. That is a very big deal when you're talking about potentially many millions of dollars. So let's figure this out. I'm going to say, some 9.5 million. So 9 million, 500,000. There we go, Bitcoin. What do we want to say? Let's say the average value of that Bitcoins over time, there was about $5,000 apiece. Okay. So let's see times 5,000, Oh wow. That's a big number. It comes back to 47 billion. There you go. $500 million dollars.  Almost $50 billion. That's just really rough back of the envelope math. We have no idea. So that's a lot of money to be running through a website. Then the commission that he made on all of those sales is said to have been more than 600,000 Bitcoin. So again, 600,000 times let's say an average price of $5,000 per Bitcoin. So that's saying he probably made about $3 billion gross anyways, on these collected commissions. That is amazing. The IRS criminal investigation arm worked with the FBI to investigate what was happening here as well as, by the way, the secret service.  I got a briefing on this from the secret service and these numbers are just staggering, but here's the problem. The guy was sentenced a few years ago. 2015  he was prosecuted successfully. where did all of his money go? His money was sitting there in Bitcoin, in an unencrypted wallet, because part of the idea behind your Bitcoin wallet is there are passcodes and nobody can get at that your wallet information unless they have the passcode. So they might know what your wallet number is, which they did. The secret service and the IRS knew his wallet number, but how can they get at that Bitcoin and the money it represents? They did. This is like something really from one of these, TV shows that I don't watch right there. What is it? NCU? The crime investigator unit CIU or whatever it is on TV. I can't watch those because there's so much stuff they get wrong technically, and I just start screaming at the TV. It's one of those things. What they found is that the wallet hadn't been used in five years. They found that just last week, people who've been watching his Bitcoin wallet number, found that they were about 70,000 Bitcoins transferred from the wallet. So people knew something was going on. Then we ended up having a confirmation. The feds had admitted that it was them. They had gone ahead and they had a hacker get into it. So here's a quote straight from the feds. That was an ARS Technica this week, according to the investigation, individual X was able to hack into silk road and gain unauthorized and illegal access and thereby steal the illicit cryptocurrency from silk road and move it into wallets and individual X controlled. According to the investigation, Ulbricht became aware of individual X's online identity and threatened individual X for the return of the cryptocurrency to Ulbricht.  So Ulbricht had his cryptocurrency stolen, which by the way, is if you are dealing with Bitcoin, that is very common, not that it's stolen. It does get stolen and it's not uncommon. It's very common for the bad guys to try and hack into your Bitcoin wallet. That's part of the reason they install key loggers so they can see what the password is to your wallet. So apparently that unknown hacker did not return or spend the Bitcoin, but on Tuesday they signed consent and agreement to forfeiture with the US attorney's office in San Francisco and agreed to turn over the funds to the government. Very complex here. There are a lot of links that the Silkroad founder took to really obfuscate the transfer of the funds. There's tons of forensic expertise that was involved and they eventually unraveled the true origins of Bitcoin. It is absolutely amazing. Earlier this year they used a third-party Bitcoin attribution company to analyze the transactions that had gone through the silk road. They zeroed in on 54 trends and actions, the transferred 70,000 Bitcoins to two specific wallets. I said earlier, by the way, that it was hex, it isn't hex. It's mixed upper lower case. characters as well as numbers. And, so it's a base. What is it? 26, 40, 60 something. The Bitcoin is valued at about $354,000 at the time. I don't know about you. I find this stuff absolutely fascinating. There's a lot of details on how it was all done and they got the money back. So with a cryptocurrency, you're not completely anonymous. As the founder of the silk road finds out. You end up with criminal organizations trying to use it all the time. Just having and using Bitcoin can raise a red flag that you might be part of a criminal organization. So you got to watch that okay. In addition to that, The IRS is looking to find what it is you have made with your Bitcoin transactions because almost certainly those are taxable transactions. If you've made money off of Bitcoin. Now you'd have to talk to your accountant about writing off money that you lost when you sold Bitcoin after it had dropped. I do not own any Bitcoin. I don't. I played with this years ago and I created a wallet. I started doing some mining, trying to just get to know this, so I'm familiar with this. I've done it. I haven't played with it for a long time. If you have made money on Bitcoin and you sold those Bitcoin, or even if you transferred Bitcoin and the profits as Bitcoin, you all money to the IRS. Now the feds have their hands on almost a billion dollars worth of Bitcoin, just from this one guy. that's it for Bitcoin for today. We're going to talk about Uber and Lyft and how they're in the driver's seat right now to maybe remake labor laws in about two or three dozen States almost right away. Are you, or maybe somebody driving for Uber or Lyft, or maybe you've been thinking about it? There are a lot of problems nationwide when it comes to employee status. We're going to talk about the gig economy right now. Hey, thanks for joining me, everybody. You are listening to Craig Peterson. Hey, Uber and Lyft are two companies that I'm sure you've heard of. If you heard about the general category here, it's called the gig economy. The gig economy is where you have people doing small things for you or your business. That's a gig. So during this election season, for instance, I turned somebody on to a site called Fiverr, F I V E R R.com, which is a great site. I've used it many times.  I turned them on saying that because they wanted a cartoon drawn there is no better place than to go to Fiverr. Find somebody who has a style you like, and then hire them.  It used to be five bucks apiece, nowadays not so much, it could be 20, it could be a hundred, but it is inexpensive. When you hire somebody to do that as a contractor, there are rules and regulations to determine. If you are an employee versus an independent contractor, there are a lot of rules on all of this, including filing 1099s. But can you decide whether or not they are a contractor? So let's look at the rules here. I'm on the IRS website right now and they have some basic categories. So number one, behavioral control, workers, and employee, when the business has the right to direct and control the work performed by the worker. Even if that right is not exercised. Then they give some reasons for behavioral control, like the types of instructions given, when and where to work, the tools to use the degree of instruction. I think the big one is training to work on how to do the job, because frankly, even if you're hiring somebody to do something for you, that takes an hour. You have control over their behavior. But how about an Uber driver or Lyft driver? Are you telling them where to go? Duh, of course, you are. are you telling them, Hey, don't take that road because the Westside highway so busy this time of day, of course, you are? It looks like they might be employees but under behavioral control. Next step financial control. Does the business have a right to direct or control the financial and business aspects of the worker's job, such as significant investment in the equipment they're using unreimbursed expenses, independent contractors, and more likely to incur unreimbursed expenses than employees? there you go. Okay. So no that Uber Lyft driver, that person making the cartoon, I don't have any financial control over their equipment. Relationship. How do the worker and the business perceive their interaction with each other in written contracts? Or describe the relationship? Even if the worker has a contract that says they are a contractor does not mean that they aren't a contractor. By the way, if you're not withholding the taxes and paying them as an employee, and then they don't pay their taxes and the IRS comes coming after somebody they're coming after you as well for all of those that you did not pay taxes on. Then it goes into the consequences of misclassifying an employee goes on. So there are people who could maybe they're an employee, maybe their contractor, but with Uber and Lyft, California decided to put it on the ballot because both Uber and Lyft were saying, we're pulling out of California. California has a state income tax and they want to collect that income tax. Plus California, we're saying, Oh, we care about the drivers. Maybe they do. Maybe they don't. I'm a little jaded on that.I might say because I had a couple of companies out in California, way back in the day. So the California voters had it on the ballot just here. What a week ago? A little more than a week ago, maybe two almost now isn't it. They decided to let Uber and other gig economy companies continue to treat the workers as independent contractors. That is a very big deal. Because now what's happened because of this overwhelming approval of proposition 22, these companies are now exempt from a new employment law that was passed last year in California. So what goes out the window here the well minimum rate of pay, healthcare provisions, et cetera. And by the way, They still can get this minimum pay and healthcare provisions. Okay. They can still get it. It's still mandated out there, but it's absolutely just phenomenal. Apparently, the law that was passed last year was started because these gig people can really cut the cost of something and other people just weren't liking it. Frankly, gig companies also outspent the opposition by a ratio of $10 to $1, which is amazing. 10 to one on. Trying to get this proposition to pass. So it's a very big deal. And what it means is in California, these gig workers are independent contractors, but there's a couple of dozen states that are looking at this, including to our South, or maybe the state you're listening in. If you're listening down in mass right now, but South of where I am. In Massachusetts, the state attorney general has sued Uber and Lyft over worker classification. And this, of course, is going to have nothing to do with what happened in California right now. There are other States who are looking into this right now and you'll be just totally surprised. They're all left-wing States. I'm sure. I hope you were sitting down, New York, Oregon, Washington state, New Jersey, and Illinois. Okay. so we'll see what happens here. The companies have tried to make a good with the unions. Unions, pretty upset about this, good articles. So you might want to look it up online. Now I want to, before this hour is up, talk about ransom payments. I have mentioned before on the show that the department of justice now looks at people and businesses, paying ransomware as supporting terrorist operations. Did you realize that it's like sending money off to Osama Bin Laden, back in the day? Because if you do pay a ransom, the odds are very good that it is going to a terrorist organization. Oh, okay. It could be Iran. Are they terrorists? No, but they do support terrorism, according to the state department. Is Russia terrorist. no, but are they attacking us? Is this okay? Is there an attack of the United States, a terrorist attack? This is bringing up all kinds of really interesting points. One of them is based on arrests that were made about three weeks ago where some hackers were arrested on charges of terrorism. It is affecting insurance as well. I've mentioned before that we can pass on to our clients a million dollars worth of insurance underwritten by Lloyd's of London. Very big deal. But when you dig into all of these different types of insurance policies, we're finding that insurance companies are not paying out on cyber insurance claims, they'll go in and they'll say, you were supposed to do this, that, and the other thing. You didn't do it, so we're not paying. We've seen some massive lawsuits that have been brought by very big, very powerful companies that did not go anywhere, because again they were not following best practices in the industry. So this is now another arrow in the quiver, the insurance companies to say. Wait a minute, you arrested hackers who were trying to put ransomware on machines and did in many cases and charged a ransom. You charge them with terrorism. Therefore, the federal government has acknowledged that hacking is a form of terrorism. Isn't that kind of a big deal now. So it's an act of terrorism. Therefore we don't have to payout. It's just if your home gets bombed during a war, You don't get compensation from the insurance company, and ransomware victims now that pay these bad guys to keep the bad guys from releasing data that they stole from these ransomware victims are finding out that data that was stolen is being released anyways. So here's, what's going on. You get ransomware on your machine. Time was everything's encrypted and you get this nice big red and warning label and you pay your ransom. They give you a key and you have a 50% chance that they are in fact, going to get your data back for you. Nowadays, it has changed in a big way where they will gain control of your computer. They will poke around on your computer. Often an actual person poking around on your computer. They will see if it looks interesting. If it does, they will spread laterally within your company. We call that East-West spread and they'll find documents that are of interest and they will download them from your network, all without your knowledge and once they have them, they'll decide what they're going to charge you as a ransom. So many of these companies, the bad guys. Yeah. They have companies, will ransom your machines by encrypting everything, and the same pay the ransom, get your documents back. Then what'll happen is they will come back to you, maybe under the guise of a different, bad guy, hacker group. They'll come back to you and say, if you don't pay this other ransom, we're going to release all your documents, and you're going to lose your business. Yeah, how's that for change? So paying a ransom is no guarantee against them releasing your files. Hey, we've been talking about how computers are everywhere. What can we expect from our computerized cars? What can we expect from computers? Intel has had a monopoly with Microsoft called the Wintel monopoly. So if you missed part of today's show. Make sure you double-check and also make sure you are on my newsletter list. I'm surprised here how every week I get questions from people and it's great. That's it. I love to help. I was asked when I was about 19 to read this little book and to also to fill out a form that said what I wanted on my headstone. That's it heady question to ask somebody at 19 years of age, but I said that this was pretty short and sweet. I said, "he helped others." Just those three words, because that's what I always wanted to do. That's what I always enjoyed doing. You can probably tell that's why I'm doing what I'm doing right now is to help people stop the bad guys and to make their lives a little bit better in the process, right? That's the whole goal. That's the hope anyway. If you need a little help, all you have to do is reach out. Be glad to help you out. Just email me M E at Craig Peterson dot com. Or if you're on my email list, you'll get all of my weekly articles, everything I talked about here on the show, as well as my during the week little emails that I send out with videos that I've been doing. I've been putting more together. Didn't get any out this week I had planned to, but I probably will get them out next week.  I was able to make a couple of this week and we'll queue them up for the coming week, but you'll get all of that. So just go to. Craig peterson.com/subscribe. You'll find everything there. As part of all of that of course, you will also be getting information about the training that I do. I do all kinds of free pieces of training and webinars, and I've got all kinds of reports. One of the most popular ones lately has been my self-audit kit. It's a little tool kit that you can use to audit, your business and see if you are compliant. It's just a PDF that you can take from the email that I send you. If you ask for it, all you have to do is ask for an audit kit, put that in the subject line, and email me@craigpeterson.com and we'll get you going. So I've had a few people who have this week said, Hey, can you help me out?  What do I do? I help them out and It turns out when I'm helping them out, they're not even on my email list. So I'll start there. If you're wondering where to start, how to get up to speed a little bit, right? You don't have to know all of this stuff like the back of your hand, but you do have to have the basic understanding. Just go online. And a signup Craig peterson.com/subscribe would love to have you there. Even when we get into ice station zebra weather here coming up in not so long, unfortunately, in the Northeast. When you're thinking about your computer and what to buy. There are a lot of choices. Of course, the big ones nowadays are a little different than they were just a few years ago. Or a couple of years ago, you used to say, am I going to get a Windows computer, or am I going to get a Mac now? I think there's a third choice that's really useful for most people, depends on what you're doing. If what you do is some web browsing, some email, and also might do a couple of things with some video and pictures and organizing you really should look at the third option. Which is a tablet of some sort and that is your iPad. Of course, the number one in the market, these things last a long time. They retain their value. So their higher introductory price isn't really a bad thing. And they're also not that much more expensive when you get right down to it and consider the resale value of them. So have a look at the tablet, but that's really one of the three major choices also today when you're deciding that you might not be aware of it, but you are also deciding what kind of processor you're going to be using. There is a lot of work that's been done going on arm processors. What they are called A R M. I started working with this class of processor, also known as RISC, which is reduced instruction set processors, many years ago, back in the nineties. I think it was when I first started working with RISC machines. But the big difference here is that these are not Intel chips that are in the iPads that are in or our iPhones, they aren't Intel or AMD processors that are in your Android phones or Android tablet. They're all using something that's called ARM architecture. This used to be called advanced RISC machine acorn risk machine. They've been around a while, but ARM is a different type of processor entirely than Intel. the basic Intel design is to try and get as much done with one instruction as possible. So for instance, if you and I decided to meet up for Dunkin donuts, I might say, okay, so we're going to go to the Duncan's on Elm Street, but the one that's South of the main street, and I'll meet you there at about 11 o'clock. And then I gave you some of the directions on how to get to the town, et cetera. And so we meet at dunks and to have a good old time. That would be a RISC architecture, which has reduced instructions. So you can tell it, okay, you get to take a right turn here, take a left turn there. In the computing world, it would be, you have to add this and divide that and then add these and divide those and subtract this. Now to compare my little dunk story. What you end up doing with an Intel processor or what's called a CISC processor, which is a complex instruction set, is we've already been to dunks before that dunks in fact, so all I have to say is I'll meet you at dunks. Usual time. There's nothing else I have to say. So behind all of that is the process of getting into your car, driving down to dunks the right town, the right street, the right dunks, and maybe even ordering. So in a CISC processor, it would try and do all of those things with one instruction. The idea is, let's make it simple for the programmer. So all of the programmers have to do, if the programmer wants to multiply too, double-precision floating-point numbers, the programmer that if he's just dealing with machine-level only has to have one instruction. Now those instructions take up multiple cycles. We can. Get into all the details, but I think I've already got some people glazing over. But these new ARM processors are designed to be blindingly fast is what matters. We can teach a processor how to add, and if we spend our time figuring out how to get that processor to add faster. We end up with ultimately faster chip and that's the theory behind risk or reduced instruction set computers, and it has taken off like wildfire. So you have things like the iPad pro now with an arm chip that's in there designed by Apple. Now they took the basic license with the basic ARM architecture and they've advanced it quite a bit. In fact, but that Ipad processor now is faster than most laptop processors made by Intel or AMD. That is an impressive feat. So when we're looking a little bit forward, we're no longer looking at machines that are just running an Intel instruction set. We're not just going to see, in other words, the Intel and AMD inside stickers on the outside of the computer. Windows 10 machines running on ARM processors are out already. Apple has announced arm based laptops that will be available very soon. In fact, there is a scheduled press conference. I think it's next week by Apple, the 15th. Give or take. Don't hold me to that one, but they're going to have a, probably an announcement of the iPhone 12 and maybe some delivery dates for these new ARM-based laptops. So these laptops are expected to last all day. Really all day. 12 hours worth of working with them, using them. They're expected to be just as fast or faster in some cases as the Intel chips are. So ARM is where things are going. We already have the Microsoft updated surface pro X. That was just announced about two weeks ago, which is ARM-based. We've gotten macs now coming out their ARM base. In fact, I think they're going to have two of them before the end of the year. Both Apple and Microsoft are providing support for x86 apps. So what that means is the programs that you have bought that are designed to run on an Intel architecture will run on these ARM chips. Now, as a rule, it's only the 64-bit processes that are going to work. The 32-bit processes, if you haven't upgraded your software to 64 bits yet you're gonna have to upgrade it before you can do the ARM migration. We're going to see less expensive computers. Arm chips are much cheaper as a whole than Intel. Intel chips are insanely high priced. They are also going to be way more battery efficient. So if you're looking for a new computer. Visual studio code has been updated optimized for windows 10 on ARM. We're going to see more and more of the applications coming out. And it won't be long, a couple of years now, you will have a hard time finding some of the Intel-based software that's out there. "it won't happen to me." That's our next topic. We've got companies who are investing a lot of money to upgrade the technology, to develop security processes, boost it. Staff yet studies are showing that they're overlooking the biggest piece of the puzzle. What is the problem? Employee apathy has been a problem for many businesses for a very long time. Nowadays, employee apathy is causing problems on the cybersecurity front. As we've talked about so many times, cybersecurity is absolutely critical. For any business or businesses are being attacked sometimes hundreds of times, a minute, a second, even believe it or not. Some of these websites come under attack and if we're not paying close attention, we're in trouble. So a lot of companies have decided while they need to boost their it staff. They've got to get some spending in on some of the hardware that's going to make the life. Better. And I am cheering them on. I think both of those are great ideas, but the bottom line problem is there are million-plus open cyber security IT jobs. So as a business, odds are excellent that you won't be able to find the type of person that you need. Isn't that a shame? But I've got some good news for you here. You can upgrade the technology that's going to help. But if you upgrade the technology, make sure you're moving towards, what's called a single pane of glass. You don't want a whole bunch of point solutions. You want something that monitors everything. Pulls all of that knowledge together uses some machine learning and some artificial intelligence and from all of that automatically shuts down attacks, whether they're internal or external, that's what you're looking for. There are some vendors that have various things out there. If you sell to the federal government within three years, you're going to have to meet these new requirements, the CMMC requirements, level three, four, level five, which are substantial. You cannot do it yourself, you have to bring in a cybersecurity expert. Who's going to work with your team and help you develop a plan. I think that's really great, really important, but here's where the good news comes in. You spent an astronomical amount of money to upgrade this technology and get all of these processes in place and you brought in this consultant, who's going to help you out. You boosted your IT staff. But studies are starting to indicate that a lot of these businesses are overlooking the biggest piece of the puzzle, which is their employees. Most of these successful attacks nowadays are better than 60%, it depends on how you're scoring this, but most of the attacks these days come in through your employees. That means that you clicked on a link. One of your employees clicked on a link. If you are a home user, it's exactly the same thing. The bad guys are getting you because you did something that you should not have done. Just go have a look online. If you haven't already make sure you go to have I been poned.com. Poned is spelled PWNED Have a look at it there online and try and see if your email address and passwords that you've been using have already been compromised. Have already been stolen. I bet they have, almost everybody has. Do you know what to do about that? This is part of the audit kit that I'll send to you. If you ask for that. Kind of goes through this and a whole lot of other stuff. But checking to see if your data has been stolen, because now is they use that to trick people. So they know that you go to a particular website that you use a particular email address or password. They might've been able to get into one of these social networks and figure out who your friends are. They go and take that information.  Now a computer can do this. They just mine it from a website like LinkedIn, find out who the managers in the company are. And then they send off some emails that look very convincing, and those convincing emails get them to click. That could be the end of it. Because you are going somewhere, you shouldn't go and they're going to trick you into doing something.  Knowledge really is the best weapon when it comes to cybersecurity. A lot of companies have started raising awareness among employees. I have some training that we can provide as well. That is very good. It's all video training and it's all tracked. We buy these licenses in big bundles. If you are a small company contact me and I'll see if I can't just sneak you into one of these bundles. Just email me @craigpeterson.com in the subject line, put something like training, bundle, or something. You need to find training for your employees and their training programs need to explain the risk of phishing scams. Those they're the big ones. That's how most of the ransomware it gets into businesses is phishing scams. That's how ransomware gets down to your computers. You also need to have simulations that clarify the steps you need to take when faced with a suspicious email. Again, if you want, I can point you to a free site that Google has on some phishing training and it's really quite good. It walks you through and shows you what the emails might look like and if you want to click or not. But there's a lot of different types of training programs. You've got to make sure that everybody inside your organization or in your, family is educated about cybersecurity. What do you do when you get an email that you suspect might be a phishing email? They need to know that this needs to be forwarded to IT, or perhaps they just tell IT, Hey, it's in my mailbox, if IT has access to their mailbox, so IT can look at it and verify it. You need to have really good email filters, not the type that comes by default with a Microsoft Windows 365 subscription, but something that flags all of this looks for phishing scams, and blocks them. There's been a ton of studies now that are showing that there is a greater awareness of cybersecurity dangers, but the bottom-line problem is that employees are still showing a lax attitude when it comes to practicing even the most basic of cybersecurity prevention methods. TrendMicro, who is a cybersecurity company. We tend to not use their stuff because it's just not as good. But TrendMicro is reporting that despite 72% of employees claim to have gained better cybersecurity awareness during the pandemic 56% still admitted to using a non-work application on a company device. Now that can be extremely dangerous. 66% admitted uploading corporate data to that application. This includes by the way, things like using just regular versions of Dropbox. Do you share files from the office and home? Dropbox does have versions that are all that have all kinds of compliance considerations that do give you security. But by default, the stuff a home user does not get the security you need. They're doing all of this even knowing that their behavior represents a security risk. And I think it boils right down to, it's not going to happen to me. Just apathy and denial. So same thing I've seen, being a security guy for the last 30 years, I've seen over and over, apathy and denial. Don't let it happen to them. By the way, about 50% believe that they could be hacked no matter what protective measures are taken. 43% took the polar opposite. They didn't take the threat seriously at all. 43% didn't believe they could be hacked. We're going to talk about Mac OS is driving cybersecurity rethink. By the way to follow up on that last segment. So Millennials and Generation Z are terrible with security. They keep reusing passwords. They accept connections with strangers. Most of the time. If that's not believable, I don't know what it is. They've grown up in this world of share everything with everyone. What does it matter? Don't worry about it. Yeah. I guess that's the way it goes. Right? Kids these days. Which generation hasn't said that in the past? We were just talking about millennials, generation Z, and the whole, it won't happen to me, employee apathy and we've got to stop that. Even within ourselves, right? We're all employees in some way or another. What does that mean? It means we've got to pay attention. We've' got to pay a lot of attention and that isn't just true in the windows world. Remember we've got to pay attention to our network. You should be upgrading the firmware on your switches, definitely upgrading the software and firmware in your firewalls and in your routers, et cetera. Keep that all up to date. Even as a home user, you've got a switch or more than one. You've got a router. You've got a firewall in many cases that equipment is provided by your ISP internet service provider. If you've got a Comcast line or a FairPoint, whatever, it might be coming into your home, they're providing you with some of that equipment and you know what their top priority is not your security. I know. Shocker. Their top priority is something else. I don't know, but it sure isn't security. What I advise most people to do is basically remove their equipment or have them turn off what's called network address translation. Turn off the firewall and put your own firewall in place. I was on the phone with a lady that had been listening to me for years, and I was helping her out. In fact, we were doing a little security audit because she ran a small business there in her home. I think she was an accountant if I remember right. She had her computer hooked up directly to the internet. She kind of misunderstood what I was saying. I want to make clear what I'm saying here. People should still have a firewall. You still need a router, but you're almost always better off getting a semi-professional piece of hardware. The prosumer side, if you will, something like the Cisco GO hardware and put that in place instead of having the equipment that your ISP is giving you. We've got to keep all of this stuff up to date. Many of us think that Macs are invulnerable, Apple Macintoshes, or Apple iOS devices, like our iPhones and iPads. In many ways they are. They have not been hit as hard as the Windows devices out there. One of the main reasons is they're not as popular. That's what so many people that use Windows say you don't get hit because you're just not as popular. There is some truth to that. However, the main reason is that they are designed from the beginning with security in mind, unlike Windows, that security was an absolute afterthought for the whole thing Don't tell me that it's because of age. Okay. I can hear it right now. People say, well, Mac is much, much newer than Microsoft Windows. Microsoft didn't have to deal with all of this way back when. How I respond to that is, yeah. Microsoft didn't have to deal with it way back when because it wasn't connected to a network and your viruses were coming in via floppy desk. Right? They really were. In fact, the first one came in by researchers. The operating system that Apple uses is much, much, much older than windows and goes back to the late 1960s, early 1970s. So you can't give me that, it is just that they didn't care. They didn't care to consider security at all. Which is something that's still one of my soapbox subjects, if you will. Security matters. When we are talking about your Macs, you still have to consider security on a Mac. It's a little different on a Mac. You're probably want to turn on some things. Like the windows comes with the firewall turned on however it has all of its services wide open. They're all available for anybody to attach to. That's why we have our windows hardening course that goes through, what do you turn off? How do you turn it off? What should you have in the windows firewall? Now the Mac side, all of these services turned off by default, which is way more secure. If they're not there to attack, they're not going to be compromised. Right.  They can't even be attacked the first place. So I like that strategy, but you might want to turn on your firewall on your Mac anyways. There are some really neat little features and functions in it. But the amount of malware that's attacking Apple Macintoshes, nowadays, is twice as much as it used to be. We've got these work from home people. We've got IT professionals within the companies, just scrambling to make it so that these people who are working from home can keep working from home. It's likely a permanent thing. It's going to be happening for a long time. But these incidents of malware on the Mac is pretty limited in reality. The malware on a Mac is unlikely to be any sort of ransomware or software that particularly steals things like your Excel files or your Word docs on a Mac, I should say it is much more likely to be outerwear. It's much more likely to be. Adware or some other unwanted programs and that's, what's rising pretty fast on Macs. Mac-based companies are being concerned here about cyber security issues. They are paying more attention to them. They're windows based counterparts have had to deal with a lot of this stuff for a long time because they were targets. So we've got to divide the Mac really into two pieces, just like any other computer. You've got the operating system with its control over things like the network, et cetera. Then you have the programs or applications, right? That is running on that device. So you want to keep both of them secure. The applications that are running on your device, Apple's done a much, much better job of sandboxing them. Making them so that they're less dangerous. The latest release, in fact, Catalina had a lot of security stuff built into that. Microsoft and Windows 10 added a lot more security. So that's all really, really good. Now, if you have to maintain a network of Macs, we like IBM software. They have some great software for managing Macs, but if you want something that's inexpensive and very usable to configure Macs and control the software on them. Have look at JAMF, J A M F. They just had their user's conference this last weekend. They were talking about how the landscape has changed over on the Mac side. All right. We've got one more segment left today and I'm going to talk about these cybersecurity frameworks. What should you be using? If you are a business or a home user, what are those checkboxes that you absolutely have to have to use? You might've heard about cybersecurity frameworks? Well, the one that's most in use right now is the NIST cybersecurity framework that helps guide you through the process of securing your business or even securing your home. That's our topic. It's a great time to be out on the road and kind of checking in. We've got security threats that have been growing quite literally. Exponentially. They are really making a lot of money by extorting it from us, stealing it from us. It's nothing but frustration to us. It's never been more important to put together an effective cybersecurity risk management policy. That's true if you're a home user and you've got yourself and your spouse and a kid or two in the home. Have a policy and put it together. That's where NIST comes in handy. NIST is the National Institute of standards and technology they've been around a long time. They've been involved in cryptography. These are the guys and gals that give us accurate clocks. In fact, we run two clocks here that we have for our clients, which are hyper-accurate. It's crazy it down to the millionth of a second. It's just amazing. That's who NIST is. They've put all these standards together for a very, very long time, but just before March, this year, It was reported that about 46 percent of businesses had suffered cyber attacks in 2019. That was up 10% from the year before.  Of course, we've all been worried about the Wuhan virus, people getting COVID-19, it is a problem. The biggest part of the problem is everybody's worried about it. Nobody wants to go to work. They don't want to go out to a restaurant. They don't want to do any of these things. You as a business owner are worried about how do you keep your business doors open? How do you provide services to the customers you have when your employees won't come in or cooperate or were paid more to stay at home than they would be to come back to work. I get it right. I know I'm in the same boat. Well, because of that we just have not been paying attention to some of the things we should be doing. One of the main ways that business people can measure their preparedness and their progress in managing cyber security-related risks, is to use the cybersecurity framework that is developed by NIST. It is a great framework. It provides you with different levels. The higher-end, the framework that is used by military contractors. Nowadays, we've been helping businesses conform to what's called NIST 800-171 and 800-53 High, which are both important and cybersecurity standards. So if you really, really, really need to be secure, are those are the ones you're going to be going with. Right now, no matter how much security you need I really would recommend you checking it out.  I can send you information on the NIST framework. I have a little flow chart. I can send you to help to figure out what part of the framework should you be complying with. It also helps you figure out if you by law need to be complying with parts of the framework. It will really help you. It's well thought out. It's going to make you way more efficient as you try and put together and execute your cyber risk management policy.  Remember cyber risk, isn't just for the software that you're running, or the systems you're running. It's the people, it includes some physical security as well. Now President Trump has been very concerned about it. I'm sure you've heard about it in the news. As he's talked about problems with TicTok and with Huawei and some of these other manufacturers out there. Huawei is a huge problem. Just absolutely huge. One of these days I can give you the backstory on that, but how they completely destroyed one of the world leaders in telecommunications technology by stealing everything they had. Yeah. It's a very sad story company you may have heard of,  founded over a hundred years ago. They're non-regulatory but they do publish guides that are used in regulations. So have a look at them, keep an eye on them. They have to help federal agencies as well. Meet the requirements is something called the federal information security management act called FISMA and that relates to the protection of government information and assets. So if you are a contractor to the federal government, pretty much any agency, you have physical requirements. So think about that. Who do you sell things to? When you're also dealing with the federal government they look at everything that you're doing and say, are you making something special for us? If you are, there are more and higher standards that you have to meet as well. It just goes on and on, but this framework was created by NIST ratified by Congress in 2014. It's used by over 30% of businesses in the US and will probably be used by 50% of businesses in the US this year. So if you're not using them you might want to have a look at them. It's big companies like JP Morgan, Chase, Microsoft, Boeing, and Intel who meet a much higher standard than most businesses need to meet. For a lot of businesses all you need to meet is what's called the CMMC one standard. You'll find that at NIST as well. And there are much higher levels than that up to level five, which is just, wow. All of the stuff that you have to keep secured looks like military level or better, frankly security. There are other overseas companies that are using it too, by the way in England, in Japan, Canada, many of them. I'm looking at the framework right now. The basic framework is to identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover. Those are the main parts of it. That's you have to do as a business in order to stay in business in this day and age, they get into it in a lot more detail. They also have different tiers for different tiers that you can get involved in. Then subcategories. I have all of this framework as part of our audit kit that I'll send out to anybody that asks for it that's a listener. All you have to do is send an email to me, M E @craigpeterson.com, and then the subject line, just say audit kit and I'll get back to you. I'll email that off to it's a big PDF. You can also go to NIST in the online world and find what they have for you. Just go to NIST, N I S T.gov, The National Institute of Standards and Technology, and you'll see right there, cybersecurity framework, it's got all of the stuff there. You can learn more here if you want. If you're new to the framework they've got online learning. They are really working hard to try and secure businesses and other organizations here in the U S and as I said used worldwide. It's hyper, hyper important. It's the same framework that we rely on in order to protect our information and protect our customer's information. So NIST, N I S T.gov, check it out. If you missed it today, you're going to want to check out the podcast. Now you can find the podcast on any of your favorite podcasting platforms. It is such a different world. Isn't it? We started out today talking about our cars. Our cars now are basically big mechanical devices ever so complex with computers, controlling them. But the cars of tomorrow that are being built by Tesla and other companies, those cars are absolutely amazing as well, but they're frankly, more computer than they are mechanical car. So what should we expect from these cars? I'm talking about longevity here. We expect a quarter-million miles from our cars today. Some of these electric vehicles may go half a million or even a million miles in the future. When they do that, can we expect that? Our computers get operating system updates and upgrades, for what five years give or take? If you have an Android phone, you're lucky if you get two years' worth of updates. Don't use Android, people. It's just not secure. How about our cars? How long should we expect updates for the firmware in our cars? So that's what we talked about first, today. Ring has a new security camera that is absolutely cool. It's called the always home cam. I talked about it earlier. It is a drone that flies around inside your house and ties into other Ring equipment. I think it's absolutely phenomenal and it's not quite out yet, but I'll let you know more about that. If you get ransomware and you pay the ransom, the feds are saying now that you are supporting terrorist organizations. You might want to be careful because they are starting to knock on doors, and there's jail time behind some of these things. So watch it when it comes ransomware and a whole lot more as well. So make sure you visit me online. Go to Craig peterson.com/subscribe. It's very important that you do that and do that now. So you'll get my weekly newsletter. I've got some special gifts, including security, reboot stuff that I'll send to you right away. Craig peterson.com/subscribe. --- More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

Craig discusses the oversharing attitudes of Millennials and Generation Z, and the importance of paying attention to our networks, how it can lead to malware in businesses, and what can be done to stop it. For more tech tips, news, and updates, visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Right To Repair Or A Fight For Survival? Ring’s latest security camera is a drone that flies around inside your house Malware Attacks Declined But Became More Evasive in Q2 Elon Musk reveals plans to slash electric battery costs, build $25,000 Tesla Paying ransomware demands could land you in hot water with the feds Windows 10 machines running on ARM will be able to emulate x64 apps soon 'It Won't Happen to Me': Employee Apathy Prevails Despite Greater Cybersecurity Awareness Rise in Remote MacOS Workers Driving Cybersecurity 'Rethink' A Guide to the NIST Cybersecurity Framework --- Automated Machine-Generated Transcript: By the way, to follow up on that last segment. So Millennials and Generation Z are terrible with security. They keep reusing passwords. They accept connections with strangers. Most of the time. If that's not believable, I don't know what it is. They've grown up in this world of share everything with everyone. What does it matter? Don't worry about it. Yeah. I guess that's the way it goes. Right? Kids these days. Which generation hasn't said that in the past? You're listening to Craig Peterson. Thanks for joining me today. We were just talking about millennials, generation Z, and the whole, it won't happen to me, employee apathy, and we've got to stop that. Even within ourselves, right? We're all employees in some way or another. What does that mean? It means we've got to pay attention. We've' got to pay a lot of attention, and that isn't just true in the windows world. Remember, we've got to pay attention to our network. It would be best if you were upgrading the firmware on your switches, definitely upgrading the software and firmware in your firewalls and your routers, et cetera. Keep that all up to date. Even as a home user, you've got a switch or more than one. You've got a router. You've got a firewall in many cases, that your ISP internet service provider provides equipment. If you've got a Comcast line or a FairPoint, whatever, it might be coming into your home, they're providing you with some of that equipment, and you know what their top priority is not your security. I know. Shocker. Their top priority is something else. I don't know, but it sure isn't security. What I advise most people to do is basically remove their equipment or have them turn off what's called network address translation. Turn off the firewall and put your own firewall in place. I was on the phone with a lady that had been listening to me for years, and I was helping her out. In fact, we were doing a little security audit because she ran a small business there in her home. I think she was an accountant if I remember right. She had her computer hooked up directly to the internet. She misunderstood what I was saying. I want to make this clear what I'm saying here. People should still have a firewall. It would be best if you still had a router, but you're almost always better off getting a semi-professional piece of hardware. If you will, the prosumer side, something like the Cisco GO hardware, put that in place instead of having the equipment that your ISP is giving you.  We've got to keep all of this stuff up to date. Many of us think that Macs are invulnerable, Apple Macintoshes, or Apple iOS devices, like our iPhones and iPads. In many ways, they are. They have not been hit as hard as the Windows devices out there. One of the main reasons is they're not as popular. That's what so many people that use Windows say you don't get hit because you're just not as popular. There is some truth to that. However, the main reason is that they are designed from the beginning with security in mind; unlike Windows, security was an absolute afterthought for the whole thing. Don't tell me that it's because of age. Okay. I can hear it right now. People say, well, Mac is much, much newer than Microsoft Windows. Microsoft didn't have to deal with all of this way back when. How I respond to that is, yeah. Microsoft didn't have to deal with it way back when it wasn't connected to a network and your viruses coming in via floppy desk. Right? They really were. In fact, the first one came in by researchers. Apple's operating system is much, much older than windows and goes back to the late 1960s, early 1970s. So you can't give me that it is just that they didn't care. They didn't care to consider security at all, which is still one of my soapbox subjects if you will. Security matters. When we are talking about your Macs, you still have to consider security on a Mac. It's a little different on a Mac. You're probably want to turn on some things. The windows come with the firewall turned on; however, it has all of its services wide open. They're all available for anybody to attach to. That's why we have our windows hardening course that goes through, what do you turn off? How do you turn it off? What should you have in the windows firewall? Now the Mac side, all of these services turned off by default, which is way more secure. If they're not there to attack, they're not going to be compromised. Right.  They can't even be attacked in the first place. So I like that strategy, but you might want to turn on your firewall on your Mac anyways. There are some elegant little features and functions in it. But the amount of malware that's attacking Apple Macintoshes, nowadays, is twice as much as it used to be. We've got these work from home people. We've got IT professionals within the companies, just scrambling to make it so that these people working from home can keep working from home. It's likely a permanent thing. It's going to be happening for a long time. But these incidents of malware on the Mac is pretty limited in reality. The malware on a Mac is unlikely to be any ransomware or software that particularly steals things like your Excel files or your Word docs on a Mac, and I should say it is much more likely to be outerwear. It's much more likely to be. Adware or some other unwanted programs, and that's what's rising pretty fast on Macs. Mac-based companies are being concerned here about cybersecurity issues. They are paying more attention to them. They're windows based counterparts have had to deal with a lot of this stuff for a long time because they were targets. So we've got to divide the Mac really into two pieces, just like any other computer. You've got the operating system with its control over things like the network, et cetera. Then you have the programs or applications. That is running on that device. So you want to keep both of them secure. The applications running on your device, Apple's done a much, much better job of sandboxing them. Making them so that they're less dangerous. The latest release, in fact, Catalina had a lot of security stuff built into that. Microsoft and Windows 10 added a lot more security. So that's all really, really good. Now, if you have to maintain a network of Macs, we like IBM software. They have some great software for managing Macs, but if you want something inexpensive and very usable to configure Macs and control the software on them. Have a look at JAMF, J A M F. They just had their user's conference this last weekend. They were talking about how the landscape has changed over on the Mac side. All right. We've got one more segment left today, and I'm going to talk about these cybersecurity frameworks. What should you be using? If you are a business or a home user, what are those checkboxes that you absolutely have to have to use? You're listening to Craig Peterson. Stick around. --- More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

Vækst ideologier og forretningsplaner er godt, men hvad gør du når krisen rammer. Når det hele brænder sammen og du kan glemme alt om planer, for istedet at trække i arbejdstøjet og løse problemerne et efter et. Har du en beredskabsplan og ved du og din ledelse hvem der gør hvad?Hør Kenneth Aabenhus dele sin viden og erfaring med netop krisehåndtering og hvor vigtigt kommunikationen er i denne situation.

On this week's edition of the Free Form Rock Podcast, we review “Unhalfbricking” by Fairpoint Convention . Marc really makes Lee’s blood boil on this one.  Before we get into that album we share with you a new song by Lee Gerstmann titled, “Pick.” We play you out with our tracks of the week which include "Marianne" by Steven Stills and”Resurrected” by The Dead Daisies. Like what you hear? Do us a favor and subscribe and give us a 5 star review on iTunes, follow us on Podbean and tell a friend about this podcast. Until next week, stay cool, stay hydrated and stay Rockin! Links For Artists: https://www.amazon.com/Unhalfbricking-FAIRPORT-CONVENTION/dp/B00007J36V/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=fairport+convention+unhalfbricking&qid=1565040655&s=gateway&sr=8-1  

In this episode I share how I process the unfairness of life.Point #1: Life isn't fairPoint #2: Look for the LessonPoint #3: It's making you strongerPoint #4: Contrast is powerful

When Fairpoint wouldn’t give folks in Crestone, Colorado, what they needed after repeated requests, they decided to take care of it themselves. By 2012, Ralph Abrams and his band of Internet pioneers had created Colorado Central Telecom, providing affordable, dependable fixed wireless service to premises throughout the region at much faster speeds than Fairpoint could ever … Continue reading "Colorado Community WISP Picks Up Slack When Incumbent Fails to Deliver – Community Broadband Bits Podcast 325"

In this trip into the Hyperbolic SPOOKchamber, we finally finish off the saga of F.E.A.R. The Wade Family legacy continues to terrorize the city of Fairpoint as the tortured spirit of Alma is back at it again, but this time, she's pregnant. Her sons, the ghostly cannibal Paxton Fettle and the mute protagonist known only as Point Man, descend into the chaos of the ruined city to find their ghost mom before the evil company Armacham does. What is their goal? What is Armacham's goal? How does a ghost pregnancy work? Many questions like these will not be answer by FEAR 3! Content warning: Sexual assault is a plot point in this game, and we do talk about it. Support the show at https://www.patreon.com/HyperbolicGameChamber And pick up Jared's new adventure novel at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07H9JYZTQ

    Law Smith is a SMB Consultant, Digital Strategist, Stand Up Comedian and President of Tocobaga Consulting, “TocoWorks”, a small-to-medium business consulting firm + digital agency located in Tampa's historic district, Ybor City.   Eric Readinger is a Website Producer*, Video Editor, Sketch Performer, self proclaimed Super Nerd and Partner at Tocobaga Consulting, and Partner and Producer at Tampaniac Pictures..    * Website Developer and Website Designer   Please Support Our Sponsors That Support Our Girthy Show! This episode's girthy sponsor is FreshBooks, the best cloud accounting software for hustlers, entrepreneurs or anyone with a side piece business.     Sweat Equity listeners get a free 30 day trial of FreshBooks. TO HELP THE SHOW, PLEASE USE OR SHARE OUR UNIQUE LINK GoFreshBooks.com/Sweat   Like any young, plucky business or passion project, any revenue from our sponsors will be reinvested right into the podcast and streaming show.      Subscribe, 5 ⭐ And Please Write A Review! The funniest or biggest hater reviews are likely to get a shout out on the show.   Where To Listen, Watch, Review, and Share With A Friend! Spotify http://bit.ly/swequity iTunes http://bit.ly/se-it Laughable http://bit.ly/2k7y6Ff YouTube: http://bit.ly/se-yt Facebook: http://bit.ly/se-fbp   What happening whatever you talk about this, much modified was running I was like oh yeah GM.security song it's going right on our sweat equity podcasts and streaming show playlist if you want to follow that aunts modify spot if I were on their got podcasts modified yeah that's cool yeah we will not be at school that we didn't know and it just showed up magic populated I like that automation just that little technology you can't pitch about no no offers of technology am pretty much sure if everything was done for me anyway automated I'd still find some bits about yes that's just how I like the role yeah we've got going iTunes give us that five-star gives that review you write a funny review will probably say it on air yeah but it's gotta be actually funny gas the Drupal ship to be a hater but be a funny hater yet know you make fun of us to write a roast joke right yeah do something don't be weak right something totally insane it's fine we had Stan Tripoli on we like insane people yes that uses of the illuminati all that were on Facebook were to start engaging with that group a little bit more illuminati this illuminati group were applicant real Facebook group attach the sweat equity page free to phoria that that's a big thing to increase engagement with your audience in pages might be devaluing while they might be phot fake Facebook might be. Focusing on groups right I'm always on time you decide what pages are going bye-bye pages you have to pay very much every time you post is the things so your organic unless you're one of the top guys was retirees that's like the celebrities a get free meals when they go into the reference writers of the last people to need the free meals right they get the free shoes and that the movie screeners yeah will pay for nothing here we are for your storm bit torrent enough let's give some love to our sponsor fresh books cloud accounting rent taxis a man going through it I heard I heard from RI networking group that 2018 entertainment category like tax expenses no good anymore used to be meals and entertainment you can get like 50% right off or some like that yeah Summer 5700 doesn't matter that's for my CPA to figure out not not so much more what was now so if we if we were going to go see Bass ballgame suppressant clients it's a nachos got a pocket well that's a travel meal probably now get to specific I just don't want someone to just they want they have a natural charge sorry if I'm not yo charge so 2018 the entertainment expenses not right off anymore I will I was always surprised it was how back in the day yet is kind of stupid so what you need learn those things you need accounting system you need to do your books need to do it easy if it integrates with about 100 apps I think go fresh books.com/sweat that's go fresh books.com forward/sweat only a $50 off the 30 day free trial our listeners get that hook up holler if you hear me and is making up numbers and turning as well thanks Facebook it's hard to keep all the advertiser copy together, have three main dollars three numbers I got a remember and I'm forgot and then working to do were continuing from last by customer to when not to devalue the fresh book said that Sir that's her presenting sponsor what we do a quick shout out for free kinda Pete's pics I'm still in this section from Pete's pics brought to you by law Smith you made it weird one of my favorite podcasts were just he just tells people something he likes that he uses in his life he loves it the same thing here mu.com were to put our referral code on this episode description we'll talk some business cards because Erica Eric Scott did you bring with you know is going to grab it now is in my office I want to get actually of the cards I were talking about we posted on the on the episode okay I'll do it for you take it we can take you want to explain it well my way let's go move, first yet talk about what submittal servers or go to note mous or go to stationary printer business cards invitations thank you cards that's a big thing if you write handwritten thank you cards that goes a long way I'm behind on my got a stack I got to do today tomorrow for clients that thank you for doing this but it's got that thick that thickness you want to say girth he only wanted to say it all to use their their term called lux so if you look at the lux collection our cards are really thick real great and it does make a difference when I have my card out and it's thick like that nine times out of 10 I have a conversation about it yeah that's true than the ones we got that you can mean you want to double as coasters but they're thick enough to be coaster like people make the coaster joke a lot of people like the outcast lyric on the back yes without so fresh and so clean to buy fresh books exactly and then that they did it's it's one of the things I thought business cards I thought all things are to be digital I thought all the stuff dying in we have to put money into a it's one of the things we paid a little bit more I'm not big on like we need look fancy with everything I mean look at our set up if you're watching the the video but it was one of those all things pay a premium for this it's giving us a lot more return on the investment so it's conversation starters good summary.com I will put our company referral code, like the refer a friend affiliate link thing yet no timeout share with a friend yeah we'll you always asked me if I have one for every app it's always no yeah because you're always you will I used to just say screw it I'm lazy about it I know I just got a stress free money it takes five seconds to just sit there and might figure it out if if there is one or not you know it's the pull of thing of you know what it is it's like I don't know my password is yes yeah exactly it takes me longer than five seconds I cut my thumb opening a can because I'm an idiot like old machete the green beans with using hand can opener I'm doing I'm going dad yeah I'm doing handcrank line break I'm going hard-core daddy I'm trying to help with dinner and watch both babies there doing their thing and open it like the the generic green beans one your life this company this is not the solution to my kids that they love the canned version instead of like fresh green beans sweet slick $0.40 is nice but it's weird so I'm opening it up in its it's because it's crusty doesn't open like that for the good stuff your thumb the Kennedy fellowship so you just I have to like get some torque on it a try to use a knife as a fulcrum MI this is stupid on I could do that in mice to hear my sunlight cough like almost sounds like it's choking a turnaround of Scott it look like I was bleeding like will it look like us try to commit suicide like that's on the sly lowest way possible right that that's how much blood was coming out just a tiny cut my thumb the detective said he was too stupid to kill himself and then went all dad have true Detective three nothing bad happened dad some we and it's one of those Wednesday I need stitches now I went down I went hard-core damage stitches. Superglue well I didn't think that you were like I think one of the glues is medically acceptable to use on your body yeah although I'm not a doctor so don't listen to me yeah I'll tell him to do it yeah I've done it before it were it works but I'm not can advise anybody do that because were all soft my thing was so I can even I can't use the touch idea my phone I didn't realize how much is that yeah and I had to get the other thumb on there but it doesn't do it for every app that you associated with you can add your other thumb but this coming this hand basically there for show doesn't do much it's there for the wedding ring oh that's weird I Exodus got a new wedding ring what you get it's from Quay low Pete's pics quail Q ALO to silicone wedding ring this is my second one because I got the men say men's and women's versions the men's versions all the they look like O-rings on a torpedo for a nuclear submarine working so I had the men's version and I hated it is it was humongous I didn't know how hard they wanted me to be married so I got the win version and it's half the size and it fits a lot better what golf check is rock and that that I know some say and it looks like a mentoring I went straight you went but you went that the the the comet cost-effective; cheap method that I did to just like I want to find a ring that is probably going to lose this thing you know you take it off to go out at night you know everything how this got us it makes her so uncomfortable as I you don't bring me into this this thing you're doing right if they go out of their way to say that they're doing it are like make a big deal out of it that's really creepy I just forget it all the time I know I'd then never taken off will now I got a silicone one I don't like the metal so the silicone I don't mind washing my hands with it and stuff doing things yeah yeah this is hot men's ring talk to and it was well done I back to my wife's business card is what I want to say I do hate the guys that have a really expensive wedding ring yeah for that aren't millionaires and even if you are doing right doesn't matter I don't like that only those yet for some reason usually I can't hang with that kinda it's just you come across more like a sucker than anything that you got suckered into buying this this declaration the whole diamond the whole diamond ring thing is a total funking snake oil salesman bull ship thing anyway I know I feel like we've talked about it would we get a lot of new listeners and how yeah I don't buy diamonds the bull ship yeah what was it do beers basically inflated the cost and then they said it was the perfect gift for engagement that it didn't exist any tradition before right this minute up diamonds like super common in caves where the diamond they get to get like that they're not like that rare of a thing to come across the not they really aren't Colton's monopoly for your for your batteries and all your devices that's like the new member like that's the new hotness of blood diamond mineral that's in your blood mineral basically right Colton so I'm in a move on from now on with that that's what it up that's the mineral it's just we have some mineral riffs of the batteries were using all these devices were they go right same with the the Honda like the electric cars yeah try not to say and I'm trying not to say like this I heard myself on the pad is paralyzing as good on the minerals once they start mining those asteroids get all minerals we need yeah will get to Mars man anyways tell you about this tachycardic so my wife sent me a screenshot of her business cards and they were not good in my opinion she liked him a lot coming in so much trouble for Fairpoint but I love your wife I was friends with her before syringe with you nowadays she has known her forever she's awesome she's got a good sense he is my dentist Yep she is a dentist so you know not design is not her thing and I were talking about what we want to talk about the podcast and it's the subject that came up was how to tell somebody that they're not good at design or maybe they don't have a good eye for design because I heard her business cards look like decoration at a nursing home that a good way to put it I was going party city best of the shady invites to a birthday party and let the 50% off any idea it's just too much right your meeting someone now if she was an event coordinator for kids parties blankets to give what you get paid like this if she eat out issues the GM of celebration station or Chucky cheese any of those hello this would be appropriate card I would say yeah she had a Nazi store your fine it's like the worst ways the $10 of ever say maybe Skip the beer she won't good thing I don't think she listens the party knowingly my wife does either it's all right two however she's not give a picture of great love you babe the worsening women love the backpedaling cabinet out of nowhere from not the conversation topic what would you not just beautiful so great a little flustered what will rid you of our you've got about this so no I would just I would've brought it with me as well that we do video I don't actually have physical copies of them yet is was this picture that she had sent me and put it on our slacks if you can pop that up to maybe put it towards the Meebo camera I don't know okay but will put will put it with the description yeah you'll see the is you'll look at it for too long her dress it reminded me of like glorious turning 50 cut invitation sangria party Lordy Lordy yeah laws 40 so how do you tell someone bad design right and it's really tough it's it's similar to sense of humor you come from the commie world like we do it's it's tough to be like look The Big Bang Theory isn't funny a lot of people watch that show I can't say that it's not funny I can just say hey I can… I mean like when you're talking to someone that you don't know that well you know you will be like I don't give it to socks it out to be fair I've never watched it but II can tell it's not primary goodwill if you think The Big Bang Theory is funny need to go online and watch the diversions that somebody's made really take up the laugh track how really gets dark very quickly really well it's just that the personalities of all the people are just so weird and you know asked burgers the yet it's like oh this seems like some kind of school for special and the hot the hot chicks the the like she's the fish out of water and all these other people around her right that's the model for every sick and anytime the talk tours comes across super creepy without the laugh track it hopefully we can find out I hope I ruin The Big Bang Theory for about 500 looks really find that URL to put on the on the post yeah that after the show so I kind of rely on stats because I have I know I have a bad pallet so I'm not a good chef not a good cook right I know what I don't know we work on this I think individually as it's in a self-help you kinda wager I think it's important to go I'm pretty good here, too 10 here, 9/10 over here on this note encounter it's never yes or no binary, thing it's tough to tell everybody just like a sense humor thinks they have a good aesthetic and now it's at I can do it with a little bit of math so we had a we had some weird talking to I said let me just send you a strategy video on its own the house also new strategy digital strategy when your business, a film in an hour or whiteboard room and I'll go over it as I can do that pretty quickly and here's one thing that happens a lot of people really attached to shady logos Julia like I can relate this looks I know fear shirt from 1993 plot let's let's let's move provable to salute right or I or he decided or he or she desires in that they get really attached to bad design so we have this conversation kind of a lot I would say and you can't go it's absolute yeah I just go let's look at some of the competition who's the best in your industry and then you can kind it go through it go look three these out note no 3D that's a start, a simple rule of thumb yeah look at all the big brands out there what are the top Forbes 500 and overshadowing shut it you can do it but yeah it's not contest contemporary and they do that so that it's easier across the board for I guess I'm guessing and asking for printing in like branding on so as many things as possible yeah is the way to think about it yet will indelible so need to be unique you need to stand out the adjective I thought I try to use to sound smart is indelible I do look that up one time ago I put in a PowerPoint ever was and what is that mean I like yeah all I know is indelible ink yeah so it's unique undeniable so you want to have a brand it's so we talked about this and previous episodes branding brain is kind of that crazy elastic term the last couple years so it's that thing that defines you what people think of when they hear your name or see your logo and so the logos in brand names and slogans are really tough to do because it's squeezing all this stuff all this orange Jews are the orange to get you get just a little bit right you just want you have to economize everything away like a diamond write the center you go yeah like Colton know so with the logo the logo sets the tone for everything in your design guide basically most people I bring guides find recommended that I would save my thing is I just go on return investment I go okay let's use transit property like college football teams right this team bit distant this team so they could probably beat the state yeah so transit proper edge go look look look at the best in your business or the restoration is does not should've got a bunch of dental business cards for the whole industry is really bad with this stuff is then asserted by Dennis have this weird marketing company thing all over the country there's these companies that always used dental yeah and they drive they drive the sick they don't value design either because it it's it's hard to do yeah and it just dentists in general are not your normal they're not like doctors because there also they tend to be mechanically inclined or tactfully using their hands more because they accept to get in there and do these things that require fine motor skills and stuff like I flick they're just so unique mentally and in like what they're trying to do and are all driven in other all opinionated most of the time your wife likes to talk to me while I have all everything in my mouth I like all these tools right off the you understand this I try to like a light try to use my hands like to the side but anybody in the coach you know yeah exactly Telex the whistle apparently I sit do know that I've had a chipped tooth in the front for like 2 1/2 three weeks now that I told her Megan affixes it was my good look tooth now I have to get it fixed by her I hope you listen to this beforehand though she knows a nice chip I put in a podcast and listen and to start zone out on everything I listen are pico students get a bonus yes okay so how do you tell someone they have bad design it to same thing how you tell someone the address or it you don't speak to me simplistic never goes out of style general rule of thumb you can just look who's the best people are the best dressed people around you like almost kind of everybody knows like this the celebrity we can all agree is good to come over the celebrities will bring a bird out a pretty burned out P Diddy now just the aviator Julia in a NBA draft you did see the best suits clearly what the style should be that's actually the future style so you be ahead I don't know if there's there going crazy with the draft a TOTALLY okay got it wound suits yeah the pinstripes are like huge so to think about is like double-breasted coming back like giant bowties so I have I look at stuff and I just go what's going to be the best return on investment simplifying your designs a lot of the time the more exotic you get the more the more yet the yeah the more it drifts the eye of the user we try to keep things as pretty minimalistic as we can although I like I like detailed stuff and it has its place but for the most part if you want to make a bigger brand or you want to have a business card all that stuff distracting everybody is ADD now yeah almost like start small with the building of it and then if something helps functionality or whatever add on to it then but yet it's in the margin of error the more stuff your writing on there the more distracting it is more like the less likely it is to achieve what you're trying to do whether it's get new client whatever and in little things like I rehang her card out right her name is big because I want them to see that first we have a little hidden puzzle in there of like we called total body consulting toco works is because we need a shorthand name so we have it cut hidden some negative space in their but the main thing is I want them to see my name entitle your name and title and I'm not trying to oh I could overload them with a lot information believe I want to yeah as our titles have we have like five different things I want to put on their like shrinks like those dictators who put all of the metals on the third yeah well again I want to fire a shot I do want to badge system that fits her camping Brand theme, going on like that we could dress up like Boy Scouts we could Artie do no pants though I know but this time for real I just where the sash around the house that's it your family hey guys will focus on the badges of my thumbs waiting but he's my use my sash first aid badge so the thing of just changing font size relative to each other like this is small this minute this is not super sexy but this is almost mathematically you can look at some of the things and go right I did make a call to action bigger than the rest of information yeah care about our address on her business card like I can will lose it because this matter yeah but I like I like that people see were in the historic part of town it does pick up some conversation will I think for Arduino digital stuff that's good because you can see that it's a physical place that were a little bit legit you know where it's like if you have a store whatever something that obviously has a needs an office building then you will need your address yet we were talking to I was talking to our our our mustache client the mustache somebody data since you keep talking about it to sound like a guy with a mustache so must it's it's like we gotta figure out a pitch it it's a way to conceal blunts and joints right well I to the big that it will the tube is this two story but the little thing on the bottom he got the tube in a foot a little footer thing that inserts into the tube that you can ask into that's fireproof let your you have a way to put something out pages you put a cigarette out we've all been there right can I put this out of my hand tongue so not that good we were going over his business card and I like what he did use hemp ones rigging the center over here right now is excited because I go I'm not huge on those but you're it what you're going to be doing this business card is basically always selling yeah to that person even at the end user or you really trying to sell it to the person at head shop in Colorado that wants to buy a bunch of them yeah because you wouldn't be doing a lot of sweat equity getting around there trying to trying to get get this out there guerrilla style and get some feedback as we went to new product totally invented by him and I like that because that fits the brand theme the card might suck the design might suck but the the bill carry around this hence got a little little weak yeah Lori – I was like that so you have say we had a dentist that we talk to his business card with loss had floss in it do it all or do you do things what he thinks about branding yet he thinks like what can I hand out the people just to toss in their wallet or throw away immediately right and I say flaw it's not as though he's given a big plastic tube fly it's a business card size floss thingy that they've come up with yeah very convenient it's got utility I love it so I like if you Vista print cards no don't talk to me hopefully will fix what bad design those are and just the actual texture think of that in like this would I want to extrapolate this kind of stuff out a little bit from a business card out right to design design matters we have to agree on that principle design is undervalued I would say yes like graphic design severely undervalued big time because people think nowadays you just get stuck anything which you can but it doesn't really work the way you think it does right now you get into a new life that's not what it's my head what our big thing is were extracting your brain were trying to get your opinion because you don't know how to articulate it right I heard that it's almost only benefit the stock thing if you like everybody knows somebody who does design start sure so just the fact that everybody knows somebody who does it is it's kind of devaluing in itself the goal line you can always do I can always as this person under nothing to go back to sense of humor so it's like people think oh you should talk to Todd bro Todd's like the funniest book God used in our golf group my I deftly don't want me to write it's not the same kind of comedy yeah it's deafly probably pry references like wedding crash I know five minute he's the guy that is not funny just times movie lines at the right time right but it did work for that group they don't know it's redundant yes do they don't know it's duplicative so that's that they know they don't care if your prospective client was in this this is, how we really feel work in the room try to be very polite around it and run it, just miss you like well that's okay but let's list looks let's try to beat that I was try to say that if anything creative can we beat that holds true that's that's how it start out with that though the city one so be it some easy things are just like just no 3D no patterns that are confusing no symbols that are confusing you have to take a step back I I like to go around like 10 people I trust ago how does this look this design look just in case I am you get too mired in it you don't know if it's good or not where does your I go that's a big one that is a huge one for marketing materials and websites and apps people don't get it light right so there's UX UI the user experience that you ask and user interface that UI so the 30 that's why there, grouped together because her the pin diagram is very is overlapping pretty big UX and UI can increase sales front for your site or app it can increase whatever call action you have if you do it correctly I'm in ship if you put a Moji's in social media post copy or email marketing title subject lines you can increase open rates or or views of that post by a 5 to 8% I believe it I mean when our podcast pops up on our phones that yet subscribed my own pocket I got government down the judges one by one devil he catches your eye Julie I forget to post it with it yeah but it helps know for sure that's a universal language to the same Tyra glyphs and were going backwards it but that's the thing of like I just go right let me find a study to prove this point if I need to II know intuitively and I knew that because I I can cut it see behaviors and tendencies and trends and stuff yeah but I was like I was on the back this up so I'm not spouting out like I'm a creator of the view that I feel it in my bones yeah exactly so it's one of those things were II want to extrapolate to IKEA it like design of your store of your office your office that you're seeing a lot more stuff about office space design becoming way more involved it's all psychology all the stuff it's all psychology you basic psychology what what's the end goal of all of this design so that IKEA you have church go through a falcon labyrinth dip to get out if you're smart you going through the exit like I do go by whatever you buy right most people do that then we know you can do that I didn't know into the dolmen you get sent about you go get cinnamon buns aren't you worried about the IQ offer lease don't delay her police how they know no I think that a lot of weird rules feeding give other software's the Swedish learner do you think you know the the IKEA owner died the guy who invented it is the 94 years old is like two days ago.I saw a lot of Hakki joke hello yeah I was trying to doing about his gas building is candidate Haskins that's right remove his eye with my was his casket was partially built because the Allen wrench broker sent Mike that I that's all I got I don't where there's an angry dad build this poor guy's casket what about Walgreens versus CVS the way Walgreens was set up at a certain point in time if it may be different now consumer behavior you have pharmacy in the back your baby in the back because those are the two things impulsively like pharmacies moneymaker that's good bring people in so they have to go to that that look every time you go into one now diagonally usually from the door oh yeah at Walgreens for sure yes that sometimes a bit depends on drive-through but generally because it can't they want to drive through every time but sometimes buildings can't help it in Florida we just we love Shady orchid that's another shady architecture all over here things like retail centers help our chest I'm not getting it today also it will really know they do the thing when you go to check out where the they wrangle you into that the cow pen you know you have a run you through the lines that has candy on both sides and all that stuff it's all around us and yet we all come to know yet the end caps of a grocery store of the aisles it's good to be promoted stuff I know it and I've I've read a lot about it I still go boom cool yeah hot Doritos this is sweet the pig gave Scott yeah the big game this Sunday I guess you would add suitable ads work on me and I know the ads and I'm online I might yeah that's fine out the design of it we talk about squatty party with the video visually so stimulating that you have to stop and go away would like it if we didn't have ads would all still be wearing potato sacks you know it's kind of one of those things you don't want to say it tells you what's what's good or what's new or whatever but it without an ad for you wouldn't know about a lot of stuff so here's how I can come to tell mathematically quantitatively why design matters is I got into this world this nerd world from the from the online ad side it all you do when you do like product advertising campaigns is it's because there's no kind of emotion in it there's no people involved it's not lead generation for just selling stuff you want to get anything any human involved rights until the transaction happen for the lead generation then you gotta worry about how the calls made do people pick it up on time you know did the other did your client pick it up how it would how they talk to them all that stuff that's worth humans get involved in funk it up were we help we help clients with that but understanding e-commerce you look at it just pure math campaigns we do creative media okay rooted these 10 creative campaigns were to see which ones are stars and which ones are dogs and you can tell because you keep everything else even every all 10 campaigns of a budget of a thousand each in the same target audience so you're just you make in this trial and error test the most impairment is maybe castling is what they call everything so usually due to an UAB split and you go okay now Asian doing better than be now we need to have another one coming ago is that what's the reason why okay so it basically breaks down creative and a math way by like deductive deductive logic from the performance of the ad so to add your doing well and all things are equal right that it's the creative that is being that the variable so that's how you tell you can to mathematically tell good creative and then you over time this was called wisdom knowledge trust plus experience I would say I'm a wise owl but I would say I have enough experience and knowledge to go here's the kind of designs that work and here's the kind that don't you that for a time there used to be a thing we put a yellow upper right little outline of whatever the image was in and it would increase sales by 3% that's sounds negligible the 3% what is not I mean the road outside know it's huge it's that mean like if you do 1% conversion rate for ad campaigns for like a privacy around hundred dollars you were talking digital yeah that's that's huge yeah like good conversion rates three of not retargeting people like to straight campaigns anyway I just I just look at the mass out of it go okay does this I don't have a dog in the fight for clients either I just go hey this is prop this is better just aesthetically personally ago informally this tousled blonde veteran contemporary formally this is the time to start breaking this out to be bad guy good guy with formerly the phone is a informal off the record whatever you want to good cop my boss wants would want me to say this is yet some like that because I have to start have to be both guys a lot of time right it's really tough until we get a snappy gay guy to be our client service head okay what you can put it on LinkedIn I hope you love LinkedIn so much I do I do what I can pull I can plug them out you can't find out okay that's the that's for Facebook so so we can I just go look here's my style here's what I think doesn't matter but here's my opinion keep it out on the side on the mass side of this here's why we want to do this this and this for the design here's what your website can't have 13 sections to it because it loads to slowly the pattern people people so now if you have a similar pattern throughout yeah so if you three columns that another three call him in another yet nothing is more important than the other thing yes switching it up this is a loser like easy things like changing font size relative to what's important I mean I don't want to say of Clayton Pfeiffer design but it's like one of those things were I can look at something like I don't miss really know why you know and that's really annoying thing to say but i.e. could look better this way or the it's not working you know and most I forget that people don't always have that are you for what's what's wrong with her I know it's hard to say but I mean it's hard to articulate that side of it the other side were were sitting yeah I would say we I think what you're trying to say is theirs was the judge that convicted someone is like a federal case I don't know what pornography is but I know it when I see it right yeah some like that it says so that's kind of but the quota, sticks in my craw about design I just go I just go basics that a lot of people know hey on the website bright yellow button whatever you whatever bright color we have in our pallet are you free to bring guide call to action yeah called called Hilliard I know one thing is you want to do make that that color stick it right on the front pretty simple stuff so like there's you can always go back to the basics and then work up from their minimalistic simplistic is always the safest then you can get advance like IKEA and do that, stuff you can get advance like like Adobe does it too much I feel I further their branding me almost everything they have they have too much stuff that it's too much yet overwhelming will there their software's notoriously slow kind of pain in the ass right right II that's functionality of the slow part lately and just overwhelms me when I let people get overwhelmed when they open Excel you know because this is that if it's not there thing if it's super confusing that's why I view Squarespace is a good example we handed out to clients the the admin side what a lot of people incorrectly referred to as the backend is a simple menu it looks like an Apple product yeah right super simple the iPhone is a simple product that is so intuitive to-year-olds can play with it really work it people don't think about that stuff the someday there's this thing where I think people will think the more the better and get this little bit of information out there make it over hereto and then you know that it's not that way since I think about it like a wedding a wedding toast but I've seen so many horrible most are horrible there all bad especially the sorry ladies but if you do the thing words like I thought we got Redland bad leg when I can and they just they don't explain it limit is wink remember the dating, forever try yeah I remember I remember the notes cool inside joke at the wedding I'm sure I'm trying to bring up some hub hub spot has a lot of good information I love statistics I laughed and can I love stats man I love Moneyball extra 2% all these things the biggest one I want to bring up was how visual things are changing online for for just digital marketing would say trends you mean yeah trends yeah I was looking at that and I had to look up at the word brutalism meant what is mean is an architecture I guess but raw is basically the idea so here's a good example infographics are liked and shared on social media three times more than any other type of content now is why people like stats I think is my theory people like reading like quick stats yeah DZ content right cartoon stats yet we are all adults or children to do so you have to make a cartoon out of what would be back in the day and abstract to research paper writer marketing research because most people look they on time to read everything but if it some on social media tunic with all articles with an image once every 75 to hundred words could double the number of social shares than articles with fewer images now people want to look at stuff II heard the 90% of like posting content is the image to get the click for sure I think headlines become bigger now I think we go to them because are more salacious now visual content is 40 times more likely to get shared on social than any other type of content I believe it 100% I'm just try to pick and choose a few something I saw that we had talked about that's on this list of trends as cinema graphs you don't know a cinema graph is if you ever seen a it basically is a picture with a small part of it moving as though it's a video oh those are cool though like a still picture with the fire and it were only the fire is moving I love those those are cinema graphs and I learned how to do it one day and then for will there either is I've been advertise to a lot by one company that does it really well yet both perfect for us to fire campfire we could do it I think we could do it ourselves which got a set of that we have 28 monkeys in animation I   but in no we want to bother him but you go over there knowing I can hold them like I do disco hey any change they do with us hey you how to do this is in the so it's really easy to go no it's not that hard yeah I know that sand the do I the part parts film and it I believe gift of the letter no I will break it down but I'm trying to look at a few other things in them will close it out current we've got there's a lot of stats on here help up with this link and there's well look at things as saturated ingredients house at a gradient saturated oh this is the other link I gave you yeah website design yeah just want to mess with you on the 15 web design trends Yep saturated gradient Little give any definition of anything I don't like the trending web design stuff because we don't do a lot of lifestyle brands yet I guess we read we do a lot more professional services I guess just not by just happenstance yes so we do a lot more timeless design classic cleaning featherbed like a suit right not to be a suit just a regular "ties these yet to clean always looks good it if you don't have a lot of money to buy suits like I was was you just go simple simple pinstripe symbol of Navy Sue goes back to everything even talking about minimalistic simplistic list mess up serif fonts are big city like a lot of the stuff is like cool lifestyle luxury items we don't live in that large like the stuff were the clients we have don't have a luxury product or service usually a dimension serif fonts that's that's all the people don't know what that means I had learned about the other day I may have little decorations on the little the bottoms are ends of the sticks that are making the letters know that it's the creative fonts basically yeah well so if you have a low lawyer work we do a lot of law firms were not used a lot of serifs stuff right usually I guess a serif font is used because it's easier to read it makes the letters more distinguishable yeah I mean the act depends on blah blah let's originally I think that's where they came from I went to look that way I think I I am browsing the Internet are not my stats I had a lot and then I got the rent mode can't figure out where my spot okay we got we got a big day in this is where to start banking episodes and professional so but not too far in advance don't need me making the good references for Ebola verbal or black plague go all the way back any of them I hope you have fun if you did if you didn't write it right a five star review but you can tell us what you didn't like just don't give us one start is your city because I use the word shady I had that in my other podcast I caused a lot one of them and some guy gave us one start I was like really you in any way to do that if you're our friends that her listen to this that I found out secretly listen to it don't tell me yeah or helps out share this data out there if your new friends we don't know you yet you are you can submit questions either on social media words posted on YouTube comments we read them WERE narcissistic every last one and if it's good even if you don't want to get the sweet sponsored fresh books for your accounting software always click on that link this gives us little is this little leverage sometimes maybe can get better days everything that comes in from this podcast goes reinvesting into the podcast which better guest maybe a step away good that be awesome I love someone that could just google talk about is going another person to do this so much stuff that you get one more set of hands beef testing right right tiny hands to the guys know I can really small but oddly small hands please rate subscribe review tell a friend tell your friend that has that side hustle that at sea store that that all I got an FIDI get to do this how I do it hey we try to keep the ones Eric and I do we try to keep them a little bit timeless to help out so the training stats there to be relevant about 10 years anyway yes they will grill it will be a little different but will be about the sam

EP100 - Get to Know Our Listeners To celebrate our 100th episode, we decided to put the focus on the most important element, the listeners.  So we invited three of our most active listeners to be on the show. Radz Mpofu @RadzMpofu Kevin Harmon @imadness Facebook  Ted Fifelski  @ted_gives Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 100 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday, September 7th 2017. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, SVP Commerce & Content at SapientRazorfish, and Scot Wingo, Founder and Executive Chairman of Channel Advisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.   New beta feature - Google Automated Transcription of the show: Transcript Jason:  [0:25] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 100 being recorded on Thursday September 7th 2017 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot & Guests:  [0:40] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason and Scott show listeners Jason how are you doing. Jason:  [0:47] I am doing awesome it's super exciting to be at episode 100. Scot & Guests:  [0:52] It really isn't before we jump into it too deep I wanted to announce that we will be podcasting again at the shop. Org digital Summit, this year the Summit is being held in Sunny Los Angeles on September 25th to 27th. Jason Scott show listeners receive a 10% discount when they register using the code js-10 that's js-10 and we will put a link to the registration in the show notes where you can enter that code, we hope to see everyone there Jason as we mentioned that we've had a pretty big milestone here with 100 episodes. Jason:  [1:31] I know I know I have to be honest when we started this 100 episodes we're not on my radar screen I had to read a podcast primer and it mentioned that like. If you get past episode 7 you've sort of survived the mortality rate so I think my big goal was, was 7 and I've since then read that the average podcast on iTunes only ever gets 24 episodes. Scot & Guests:  [1:56] Yeah yeah and we officially have more episodes in listeners now just kidding we actually we actually. Jason:  [2:01] Yeah that's that's because I have a small family if I had a bigger family we'd have more listeners. Scot & Guests:  [2:05] That's actually it's kind of fun to break down some numbers so we started this I don't know about you but I really didn't have any expectations I just thought we would do it for, the fun aspect of it and looking back it's kind of, ballon my expectations I would share admittedly low so we've had over 200,000 downloads since we started the show, the record months had over 18,000 that was over the summer in June cuz we had so much Amazon news going on, the most popular episode is the June 17th hot take we did which is episode 89 where we talked about the Amazon and Whole Foods acquisition and then as reminder for every one we actually started this whole Adventure on November 13th 2015 with episode 1, do you have a quiz for you Jason how many how many episodes have we recorded. Jason:  [2:57] This will be our 101 including the one I screwed up and we didn't get to publish. Scot & Guests:  [3:04] Boomkin answer inside info but yeah 100 episode soon so pretty exciting. Jason:  [3:09] I share your Your Enthusiasm seems like we should be doing something special for the hundred show. Scot & Guests:  [3:17] Yeah yeah and couple months ago we were pretty good at math so we kind of saw this coming on the calendar and we started thinking about what we should do to celebrate a hundred episodes. Jason:  [3:28] Yep and obviously one of the first things that come up is is with many listeners know, chupitos is constantly hounding us to be on the show and so for while we're thinking hey that's a perfect opportunity to finally Jeff on the show but then you know we thought about it and the reality is this show is for the listeners it's not really about the fancy guest so we turned him down. Scot & Guests:  [3:51] Yeah you know we, Basils cuz of stuff to talk about both at listeners who who would care so what we did is we decided to really kind of turn the microphone around, so we we went to Twitter and and looked at the social engagement that we get and we really active Community here for the show that we really enjoy and, what causes a lot of back and forth and it went challenges us and recommends things and ask questions so we we thought what we would do is have a listener appreciation event in celebration of episode 100, so we somewhat randomly picked three listeners from different geographies all over the world if you will these folks work at all kinds of different size companies and have different kinds of rolls and we invite them tonight to be on the show, to hear about their e-commerce experience and where they think e-commerce is going and just kind of turn it over to the listeners for, for a bit and give everyone a little bit of break from hearing from us for the last hundred episodes. Jason:  [4:50] Yeah yeah I'm super excited about this idea and you know frankly pleasantly shocked that it when we invited accepted our invitation so Scott who's the first guest. Scot & Guests:  [5:02] Well Jason let's kick it off excited to have our first guest here for the listener appreciation show we know him best by his Twitter handle which is RADS radz and that's at radz mpofu on Twitter, what's up rats not much just wrapping up the day here how about you. We're super excited we hit 100 episodes Jason didn't think we'd make it past 5 and I had the long money on going the long haul in the sinks the red 100 we're pretty excited. Yeah I have to say that I would have to agree with you because when I first remember seeing the Jason and Scott Show come out I was just like oh my gosh I have needed this for so long that was like I'm starting my retail career. Yeah I told you guys 100 I don't know why Jason would say that, check two boxes for us here for the first time you're you're the first kind of super listener we've had on the show and then also you're the first International correspondent so you're you're not in the United States of America. Nope I'm in the Toronto or the six as Drake would say okay and is it snowing there. No not yet but it is raining a lot okay interesting summer where it's just been. I bet Seattle and BC weather where this raining a lot. Jason:  [6:26] And in the long run does that mean it's good or bad for the ice wine this year. Scot & Guests:  [6:31] No idea. Jason:  [6:34] Those are mine I mainly focus on the food of every venue so for me Toronto is ice wine and poutine even though I know pooting is really Montreal but you can get it in in Toronto. Scot & Guests:  [6:47] Yeah that's true but you forgot you got to check out Uncle tetsu's cheesecake as well as smoke smoke signals barbecue those are two really good spots those in the true true true Toronto Staples. Jason:  [7:01] Nice I am adding those to the list that the show has already paid off for me. So Reds you mentioned that you you were start listen to show you were starting a retail career you want to tell us a little bit more about what that was and what you're doing now. Scot & Guests:  [7:20] Yeah for sure so even though like rewind a little bit vacuum before that I actually started my. E-commerce sales career in at a company called Ashley Bridget, so I was there when we were still like in a basement making maybe if you know a few hundred thousand dollars and a scale to over a million so that. Being part of that company like they double grabbing use like every year since after that but that experience I think really. Help me get to become a part of tulip which is where I started started my retail. Retail career that don't know a tulip was founded by the founder of well. CA. Oh yeah yeah yeah he was involved in doing that as well so yeah I started my career at tulip that was in. March 2015 and I think a few months after that you guys started the Jason and Scott show and then where is your career taking you now. So now shifted to a company called pagerduty and a lot of people especially in the it the it and devops were all day they definitely know about picture to be it's almost like a household name. We were actually mentioned on Silicon Valley recently some I think it was Guilfoyle he told the Nash that he was on pager to the until we got back at the house he was leaving to go somewhere. But yeah basically Patriot Duty Autumn eats the incident resolution process from end-to-end so a lot of that stuff is being done manually right now so you know I have like an Excel spreadsheet. [9:01] I'm the psychos down you call somebody on it for there's too many modern tools to. Really get the key incidents that you need to resolve resolved so page Diddy animates all of that. Google every e-commerce site wants to be up 24/7 so I think you know you say you're out of the retail business but I think you just kind of dawn to a broader addressable market and I'm sure our vehicle it's probably interesting to your folks. Oh yeah I know definitely we actually just it's funny that you mention that we just started. Retail all of my coworkers are all pinion me for people's contacts so yeah definitely I am still very much plugged into the retail game only doing it through all my coworker. Get in touch with me get in touch with retail Executives Through Me podcast you can recommend they want to learn more. It's how I've already been said I've been telling them don't worry I would cover. Jason:  [9:56] We we have a vested interest in pagerduty tracking the retail Market because you know it's it's going to be sad to go to the industry shows like shop.org and not see you. Scot & Guests:  [10:07] Exactly I think you needed to tell our CEO and her had some marketing that Jennifer Tejada if you ever end up listen to this please we should go to shop talk next year. Jason:  [10:16] Exactly. Scot & Guests:  [10:17] Shop.org. Jason:  [10:20] That both good shows both good shows. Scot & Guests:  [10:22] Oh yeah both really good shows. Jason:  [10:24] The actually have a photo of you and it I think act technically it's from neither I think it was probably from NRF and you you had your then employers Logo shaved into the side of your head. Scot & Guests:  [10:36] Oh yeah okay okay I thought you were going to go in a different direction with that there's another photo of someone who's on stage didn't Maeve look like me I don't know maybe but that was. That was that was in January and I think Dominique actually mentioned that from bonobos on on the previous show I think I got to shut up because of that. Although we never saw you put Jason and Scott show logo in your in your head. Jason:  [11:09] That's going to take a more talented Barber than the to it. Scot & Guests:  [11:13] I fixed I was always thinking maybe just a j plus s but I don't do it at all. Jason:  [11:21] Yeah I know you need portraits of two portly dudes. Scot & Guests:  [11:24] Two rats two quick ones Have you listened to every episode. I wish I could say that I have but. The last one that I listen to since I've been ramping up at pagerduty was are the one with the Accel partners and then one that was either just before that or just after that was with. The CEO of the CEO of Kohl's and ModCloth I remember listening to those when so I think I'm about 20 episodes behind at this point. Cool you'll have to just drive to Florida and you could pick them all up. Yeah exactly exactly or I'll do it on my next plane trip to San Francisco. [12:10] What were what were a couple of your favorite shows so I think my favorite show obviously I can't, I can't not do it but Danza episode on bonobos that was my favorite one but also the ones with Rob Schmaltz from Talbots as well as Faisal masud, I'm from Staples, those were like really those are I think those are probably with my top three favorite ones all the a lot of the retail executive. Interviews were like I'm on my favorite ones those ones you know I got to learn so much about you know what's going on in retail and all the changes that if you know what happened this year and I'm sure that will continue so I think those are all my favorite ones. Jason:  [12:56] Very cool that being said any as one of our super listeners were we're always looking to make the show better anything you feel like we could be doing better or any tips for things we should think about trying. Scot & Guests:  [13:10] So I thought about this and. I think what you guys have done is really cool you know you have the Deep Dives as well as. The the retail executive interviews so I'd love to see maybe a little bit of a panel you know between and I'll maybe not people that are like opposing and Views but would love to find out. Maybe get like the behind-the-scenes story from what happened at Sears maybe not like. Anything like bad that happened but like to know where did. They live like missile I'm so like maybe a previous executive from there and then you know maybe get somebody from. Walmart or one of the opening or tomorrow off and coming retail brands. Could have done better or there now fallen by the wayside in the ones that are doing really well and see if they can. Meet in the middle and what can be done. [14:13] Where do you where do you see the future of retail and e-commerce. I think right now it's still very much in a state of upheaval. Get out like I'm actually keeping tabs of all the retailers that either went belly-up or like we're struggling really. Really tough out there was like it's the year started off with like BCBG and then the Limited, then actually remember seeing HMV Yonge and Dundas Square here in Toronto that's kind of like the Union Square Toronto onto the San Francisco people out there so I remember seeing that one shut down as well and then all American Apparel. I think all of these a lot of these retail Brands I'm hoping it doesn't continue but it looks like it well I think there's still going to be a lot more. A lot more unfortunate seems like that I put on top of that too kind of. You know balance that I would say that there might even be more consolidation that's going to happen at a lot of people are saying that it might not happen but from. What we've seen from Walmart this year with the acquisition of Moosejaw and the novo's band also more recently with some of the shoe retailers I think. Michael Kors just acquired Jimmy Choo and then on top of that Vince Camuto was acquired by although or vice versa so yeah I think there's definite going to be a lot more retailers that are. Going under if they don't figure out how to go digital and no kind of modernize their with their in-store experience and then on top of that. Jason:  [15:50] That's very cool I don't want to get one question in that we've actually ask every guest but Scott keeps making me edit the answer out so so hopefully for the 100th episode I'll finally get to get it in there. Would you say that you like Jason a little better than Scott or way better than Scott. Scot & Guests:  [16:10] I would say that the two of you I hold you both very near and dear my heart and there's no way I could pick them from the two of you. Jason:  [16:17] So you lied you're willing to be honest about everything else and then you I on that one alright. Scot & Guests:  [16:22] Good answer he's he's texting me right now saying that I'm his favorite. You weren't supposed to say that I have a kind of sales question which is you're there in Canada in Toronto and your imagine. You have territories that are boom across the continent is it hard to be in the sales rep in candidates Ellington us or doesn't feel different at all than if you were in New York or something. No I don't think it's that big it's that different at all I think it actually might even play to your advantage we're kind of seen as the we had this running joke on my previous company and to love that, everybody always sauce in the in the states as the friendly Canadians we are always just really do a comedy versus you know kind of like that. I don't want to generalize but you know the ones that play hard ball in New York or something like that so I definitely plays to word Vantage I would say that it's probably tougher to sell, in Canada versus outside of Canada Canadians sometimes don't like buying from Canadians I will say that much. Jason:  [17:29] Interesting I feel like we do have the perception that that Canadians are super friendly I mean it it's like I'm sorry a sort of a catch phrase for Canadians. Scot & Guests:  [17:39] Yeah I know right I actually had was made fun of in an Uber I took Uber pool for one of the first times, on a recent business trip and the gentleman the back just what he found out that it was from Canada he was just like, or you going to say I'm sorry a lot and even put on the Canadian accents it's definitely known across America. Jason:  [18:03] I totally get it this may offend you but I am frequently mistaken as a Canadian that people feel like I have a Canadian accent. [18:13] Which I have never lived in Canada but. Scot & Guests:  [18:17] Can you say a boat. Jason:  [18:18] I definitely can go a boat but that's because you know did a lot of work in Minneapolis which is little known fact but it's actually north of Canada is a lot of Minneapolis. Scot & Guests:  [18:28] Yeah yeah I've heard that. Jason:  [18:30] Culturally I used to make that joke and then I married a woman from Detroit and I warned that Detroit actually is. Scot & Guests:  [18:37] Canada. Jason:  [18:39] You you drive south to go to Windsor to drink when you're 18 that's the whole that's all gig when you grow up in Detroit apparently. Scot & Guests:  [18:46] Yeah yeah I've heard a lot of people say that and even on the opposite end, back in I'd say what the seventies and eighties a lot of people would drive down from Toronto and Windsor to the states to go check out Hip Hop shows because there was nothing in Canada. Jason:  [19:03] Wow certainly not true anymore Toronto is like that got a lot of great Hip Hop. Scot & Guests:  [19:08] Yeah yeah Drake in the weekend and all those guys. Jason:  [19:14] Very cool what was red we greatly appreciate your. Royal falling and the suggestions you sent all along and we look forward to getting you back in the industry and getting you all caught up on the show so thanks very much for being part of the episode 100. Scot & Guests:  [19:33] Yeah thanks a lot for having me guys and hopefully I'll sing me up a lot more retail shows I'm going to use this as leverage internally at pagerduty. Awesome thanks for as we really appreciate it. Okay Jason are next listener on listener and 100 is Kevin Harmon I've known Kevin 415 of the longest term. Ebayers I've met I think if we met at one of the early eBay live shows and he has been a huge fan of the show welcome to the show Kevin. Text Jason how are you guys. Jason:  [20:14] We are terrific 100 episode what could be better. Scot & Guests:  [20:19] Boom that's right yeah so yeah we really appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to join us so I'll let Jason Kick It Off. Jason:  [20:29] Yeah so Kevin Scott mention you been a long time eBay so do you want to give us the the background about how you got into the account Biz and what you're doing today. Scot & Guests:  [20:40] Sure I've been an e-commerce for a long time I think 2001 is when we started and for about 10 years I stayed in the media side we sold DVDs and CDs and video games and books. On eBay and Amazon other places did that for a long time and for some weird reason books and CDs and DVDs of again stop selling so well so. We moved on to another couple things are doing then and then now what we do is I have another company that sells clothing and books now. Jason:  [21:16] Very cool and predominately as a Marketplace seller. Scot & Guests:  [21:20] Yes 100% so we're sort of you know eBay phds Amazon phds we know a lot about both and we do the best we can. Jason:  [21:31] Nice and are you mostly focus on North America so those are the two two big platforms for you. [21:38] Gotcha and we do often talk about the Walmart marketplace as well if you looked at that at all or. Scot & Guests:  [21:46] Yeah we are looking into that Walmart in and Jed as well so we think that that might be a pretty viable saying coming down the road here. Cool so I know you listen to a lot of episodes you can listen to every episode I listen to. Show me episodes of the Jason I'm going to call you out on this I think you said that welcome to the Jason's not show about 6 times now. I didn't even catch that. Jason:  [22:24] That's a special service to the fans that I give to that the loyalist. Scot & Guests:  [22:28] Yep. Jason:  [22:31] That's all I mean to Beyonce it's a it's a Freudian slip my other podcast is called the Jason and snot show. Scot & Guests:  [22:38] Oh that's so strange it's for its for ents. Jason:  [22:40] Deaf deaf. Scot & Guests:  [22:42] What are several times I know it's hard to pick but what are a couple of your favorite shows. I think my favorite one was the one with Melissa Burdick from the Mars agency just because you know my Amazon experience and that she seemed, super knowledgeable about Amazon and it was a really good conversation you guys had with her I really enjoyed the the whole thing about you know crap which is hilarious. It was good crap joke the most I have to have like 6 I can't listen that fast normally get pumped up. Yes you super knowledgeable. Jason:  [23:25] And since we're talking about her I should give her a plug she's actually no longer with the Mars agency Melissa and another of our guests. Have started their own business which is now called the laying verdict which is of an Amazon consultancy so that's Andrea way right Scott am I remembering correctly. Scot & Guests:  [23:47] Yeah I think they should call it like Mel B and Andrea or something help her but I didn't ask me I was debating with Scott. Just trying to find an end and acronym for a crap for that. Amazon Canada and I can't for the great ones got didn't like it but I might tell you guys anyway which is it's it's not crap its poop which is probably only offline profit. Jason:  [24:13] Okay I'll. Scot & Guests:  [24:15] PG-13 know you're gone now. Jason:  [24:22] Well you know. One of the things we're always trying to do is improve the show and so as a one of our best listeners that is heard the majority of our shows any feedback you have anything we should be doing different or the drugs you nuts. Scot & Guests:  [24:40] Know the address to the Scott unbridled enthusiasm for Amazon domination. Minutes I wish I was more Counterpoint to that every once in awhile it's. It's cool to watch a hurricane make landfall not sure unless you want to people on the land as falling on butt. I think it'd be great to have like a I don't know what chat room or I'll take take live Twitter questions except her a little more often just just just involve your audience. Jason:  [25:13] Yeah I know that's great feedback we definitely are looking for ways it's actually one of the the deficiencies of the podcast format is you know. We don't have a way for example to email all of our listeners and get questions or those sorts of things do you have to use a parallel to like Facebook or Twitter and you know it. A very loyal but small subset of our podcast listeners are following us on those other platform so. Love to find more ways to engage more customers and get more feedback but that is only a great suggestion I do feel the need to slightly defend us though. Totally hear you on the Amazon world domination and I would love to be the the Counterpoint more loudly. But I continue to be shocked I work with all these. Our big Fortune 100 retailers and it's still more often than not that I walk into a retailer that dramatically underestimates Amazon as the competition and so like. They absolutely have flaws in their absolutely ways to thrive in in the market against them in all those sorts of things but it still turns out that like more of the people in our industry then I would expect. Underestimate them rather than overestimate them so so you know maybe we err on the side of hitting that a little hard but I, I often feel like I have to be in evangelist for a half serious at threat they are so much so that one of my biggest clients that they think they have a funny nickname for me they call me Paul Revere. Scot & Guests:  [26:48] Know he was right I mean the that is actually very amazing. When you see me look at what I've done I mean they're an amazing amazing company that has effort on their own set of rules they know that. I start unique in the world and yeah they're gone disrupt everything sooner or later probably sooner. That's a good transition you you've been common the marketplace Biz 4. Pussy 2001 you 15 20 years what are some of the big trends that you've seen in and where do you where do you think the marketplace part of the world goes. I think the marketplace continues but it seems to me like it's a lot easier to start a business than it used to be for sure you know 15 years ago when we started that was quite an effort. And now with all the tools available now it's a lot easier to get into a business but I also think that there's a lot of consolidation going on so I think it's harder to grow a business and you know grow into a large business in particular. I think because these large sights Amazon Facebook. Google the beginning on more and more of the entire end and process and so the more pieces they don't have that the lesson Advantage you have. I even if you saw on those platforms it can still sometimes be a disadvantage so. I think e-commerce continues and grows like crazy I don't I have concern for the really small business owners though going forward. Yeah and it's Russian cuz I have that same concern and you know you and I have known. [28:20] Know more people that have gotten out of the business owner still in it and then put then what kind of countercyclical e happens there, is baffalo like some of these small business platforms like Magento Bigcommerce and Shopify there exploding so there's these it seems like there's these Merchants out there that have, yeah that are doing well like Shopify just hit I think the 500,000 small store owner, what's a kind of Wonder like who are those people and you know that that seems to be where things have shifted the marketplaces if that so competitive that the a lot of folks have gone to just creating there a little, but then I don't quite understand how there, going to differentiate themselves and get their name out there wifey that's exactly right so 15 years ago the easiest way to start with on eBay. So every small company in the world start on eBay and then they sorta grew or didn't grow a coordinate the eBay's growth are Amazon's girls and now the Shopify and the other. Consolidated sites we can do a lot of different things on one place now everything is Shifting to calm and that's a that's a big change I don't know. I can't I can't judges level success over anything else yet I being too soon but it's definitely a big change in the marketplace in the last 2 or 3 years. Jason:  [29:42] Yeah it's it is fascinating I mean, play I would argue the eat of your really successful Amazon Seller that like or or any plat Marketplace seller like that that shouldn't be your only platform that you should you should have a presence on a platform you own into the. The extent that you do earn your own traffic and aren't you know and earn your own customers. Like you don't want to be actively driving them to the marketplace you you do want to be driving them to that that platform you own so I totally get why. The the shopify's of the world would be successful alongside the the big marketplaces but is you guys are both aware like. You know painfully difficult and expensive to grow a meaningful audience on that on that digital property that you own versus. Nina taking advantage of the the incredible traffic that that Amazon in particular has belt. Scot & Guests:  [30:40] Is there a true and you know I've always go to Amazon and eBay Caesars. As a market expenses an advertising expense and you're paying those fees they bring you the customers. And so you know on your own. It's you're on your own until you bring customers to you it's a much different situation and much more difficult situation but if you can if you can achieve it I think you have a lot better chance of surviving long-term. Jason:  [31:05] Yeah for sure we will use the I used to have this kind of derogatory term for people that. Brands that tried to use Facebook as their only digital platform in Fitchburg Facebook's a wonderful tool. But I used to call them digital sharecroppers because they're you know you're you're planting your crop shirt you're putting all your equity in this land that you don't own and you know in the early days. Facebook change the terms and conditions of how you could use that land. Very frequently in that you know was a huge disruption to to all those Brands and you know it does feel like. The marketplaces today are are very similar to that like there's huge opportunities there but you are a digital sharecropper like you know if the day that Marketplace decides that they've hit some critical mass and don't need you anymore. You know that your your your business is definitely in Jeopardy so it's. Scary to have all those eggs in that in that one basket is good to own some land of your own. Scot & Guests:  [32:04] Yep and that's been a major change the last couple years as well so so back in the day. EBay wooden Scott can attest to this I think even said one time that it seems like people just kind of flavors over there sometimes wear any 6 months. They can make it a complete change the marketplace that really disrupted louder seller base. Can I get used to that and then or later something else will come along and just kept going like that what you could never really establish eBay presents Amazon. Another hand they watch the products the truck didn't change at all the solid for a long long time. Until the last time say couple years and now Amazon surround to the point with her information. A new Rose new changes that you know can hurt some sellers I can help other sellers but but it's almost like Amazon let you grow your business bigger before they decided I didn't need you and I don't know witches. What the worst scenario is there you know you can get shaken off by eBay or you can get kind of gets trampled on by Amazon at some point. Either either have those risks which again why I'm sure every consultant tells people to sell in multiple marketplaces and make sure the doc is a priority. Jason:  [33:13] Yep. So keeping the fan show light let's turn to a much more important topic I heard a rumor that you rival Scott as a Star Wars fan. Scot & Guests:  [33:29] Boy that depends on what metric you're talking about but I'm a huge Star Wars fan absolutely. I have a big question what's your favorite movie. Thesaurus really starting to warm to that one. Tricky question is what's the best one of the three new ones that's the tough one. Yes another one another tricky 1ru if you could only watch one more movie this year, would you do Blade Runner or pussy we've got is there another Marvel and coming up and then then you have Last Jedi. Is it Last Jedi Bar None or would you consider some the others. Man that's a tough one I mean it's definitely Last Jedi but I am really looking forward to Blade Runner. I think Ridley Scott if you got the right guy I've got the right directors you got the right characters again. I'm really really hopeful that they could do something spectacular with that. Jason:  [34:48] So the question I always like to ask and this may be the the wrong audience for this but so I have A2 year old son what order should I be showing him the movies. Scot & Guests:  [35:00] Machete Star Wars movies I would say 4 5 6 7 8. Jason:  [35:08] Okay I get 456 first a lot but that that's. The skip the prequels is a good one there is like there's some fan edits of the prequels that are much better like I wonder could we replace the could we make one of those the official Canon instead of the the George Lucas versions. Scot & Guests:  [35:28] What you can probably edit those three movies together to make one pretty good movie I mean that's definitely cool things happened but how to pick one that's hard to even recommend them. Jason:  [35:40] I think none of the fan edits that I've seen that are you know some of these have had millions of hits on on YouTube none of them have Jar Jar Binks in the middle. Scot & Guests:  [35:48] But that's alright uh I think the woman Darth Maul I'm sure you guys have seen that at your fan is amazing really good really good fanfiction there. Jason:  [36:00] And I apologize for digressing but like perhaps my the funniest Star Wars thing I ever saw on television as you guys remember when Stephen Colbert did the. The contest for the the lightsaber green screen fight. Scot & Guests:  [36:17] Yeah that's good I did I was good. Jason:  [36:22] So super super quickly for listeners they may not be as big a Geeks as as Scott and Kevin the. Tons of people on the internet where do I. Making your own videos of lightsaber fights and so Stephen Colbert decided hey he would do this funny contest he would pretend to be fighting with a lightsaber in front of a green screen and make the video available this fans. And he would have a contest with prizes for the free the three fans that made the best scene using his. His greensaver is green screen lightsaber fight and so they they show the the two finalists on on this Colbert show and the first one is this you know woman Lisa from. From the you know I like Minneapolis or whatever and she's she's got this great video that she made featuring Stephen Colbert fighting the video and then. The the other finalist is George from. Marin County California and as as they're talking like it becomes obvious that it's George Lucas. Scot & Guests:  [37:31] Yes it was hysterical. Jason:  [37:32] And he's he's like in his own thing and they've like you know they've like. Cut new scenes for the movie this thing but the best question was you know Stephen is asking them both like do you own all the movies and George George's like I own all of them except the first one there's some dispute about the first. [37:53] Which I thought was a funny line. Scot & Guests:  [37:55] Yeah that that in like that the SNL auditions for Star Wars 7 was great too that's so cool. Star Wars is the entire ecosystem around it is also awesome. Jason:  [38:08] Would you say that something that Star Wars has in common with a Jason and Scott show that it's a sort of that kind of cultural phenomenon. Scot & Guests:  [38:15] Yeah I think you guys just need to add a conference right you need to have a Jason Scott convention and. Bring a bunch of your gas there and everything else in a certain place and I don't know is there I know Scott's wearing a red jumpsuit right now probably I don't know what you're wearing Jason but you know some sort of attire for the show we could all wear it would be cool. Yeah we get wicked mix in a Star Wars convention at the same time how awesome would that be. Jason:  [38:39] I'm thinking it's going to be at your that that at Scott's new residents which is that that the new hotel. Scot & Guests:  [38:46] Absolutely I can't wait for that. Jason:  [38:51] So I do before we get out I just want to wrap up like we had a good conversation about where the future of marketplaces are going I'd be curious if you had a maybe. SAE more General POV about you know how what what retail looks like in the future like does this digital. Disruption like you don't continue to play out how it's playing out now to see any big changes coming that the other listeners be thinking about. Scot & Guests:  [39:20] Personally I think that we're honestly really only beginning to see the beginnings of the acceleration. Honestly I don't know that's not good news for people but I think these large companies that are getting much larger much faster are described in. On a scale that that we've never seen before and will probably accelerate so I worry about things for example like even Brands themselves you know I worry. I worry that when you get when when is going to come in like Amazon starts doing a ton of private-label stuff I just a time and way more than we even even know about. And then answer to something with that like a voice product like Alexa. The combinations to it is really deadly and when you fit when he think about how deadly it is it's a little scary you know if you ask Alexa to buy something Alexis probably not suggest you it's on Amazon brand suggestions. And when you can when you take those you know brand spend billions of dollars on. On marketing and their packaging and they're looking their feel and when you remove all of that I'm invoice removes all of that so. I get this weird thing that Amazon is attempting to. Accelerates the death of Brands but but taking a lot of that margin that Brands used to enjoy and sort of shipping over to itself. So I definitely that Trend coming and maybe accelerating Scott yeah it's it's their stuff only you know when you ask. Her can't say it cuz she's right here. [40:52] For Alexa when you ask her for her batteries you know that's going to be an Amazon basic battery I think there's definitely rust there I think, brands are not really putting all that together I don't think you know Jason's earlier point they take Amazon seriously it off and then I don't think they get the voice thing and how it really, is a different way to shop where all the packaging and all that looking field doesn't really matter. [41:24] The decisions you have to make tonight bet exciting if you want to space not have toothpaste. I think Amazon is realize that and I think they're going to do their best to sell you Amazon toothpaste instead of your own and by the way they'll give it to an in an hour right so. Amazon has been spending all this time building this gigantic ecosystem in the background and I think you're just now beginning to see if that's it. Yeah yeah and then you know the Counterpoint, to that which I feel is ironic but I'll I'll do this is that you know when we first started Channel advisor it when was kind of like you had to be able to answer the Google question you know, how is Google now you have to answer the Amazon question so these things tend to go and 10:15 year cycle so, we'll see you know I think they'll be there's some company we probably don't know the name of yet you have some some dudes in the garage somewhere and there will be another competitor to Amazon that, the tides so it probably won't be as game over it feels like when you're in the in the heart of it but it is a little scary. [42:30] Yeah I mean if you think about brand searches right so they used to be all Google now it's it's got to be pretty split between Google Amazon and eBay. And in Facebook I should say Facebook in particular so even that even the even way to find products is draft dramatically changing. [42:49] Absolutely well we really appreciate you sharing your thoughts Kevin and and of course being such a long-term listener we really appreciate it and you give us a lot of great feedback, we will try to integrate your feedback here tonight and do more kind of live questions and those kinds of things and we hope you listen to the next hundred episodes. I love the show I love it and thanks for let me find next we be on. Jason:  [43:14] Thanks so much for being on. Scot & Guests:  [43:16] Discontinuing with episode 100 listener preciation we are excited to welcome on to the show Ted for felski Ted is on Twitter as Ted, TD underscored gives gives and he's always one of the first people to start a conversation after we put a show out there so not only is he an avid listener but he's also very, timely on on his downloads mustn'ts, Ted lives in Austin Texas and is part of the e-commerce startup Community there he is the father of 3 boys and co-founder of simplytapp welcome to the show 10. Hey guys will thanks for having me I always enjoy your show so I'm glad to be here on your podcast as well. Jason:  [43:58] We are thrilled to have you Ted Scott mentioned that you're currently the co-founder simply tap and we're going to get to that in just a minute, do you know when we have guests on the show we always like to get a little bit of the color about their career matriculation and how they got where they are so can you. Can you give us the Reader's Digest of a of how you got here. Scot & Guests:  [44:20] Yeah definitely so my career kind of started. You're out of college with a degree in finance going straight into International Business Development for the World Trade Center so I did that for about a year-and-a-half and then found my way. Down to Texas on a Consulting gig which. Ultimately led me to my actual degree in finance over the boutique firm here in Austin Texas called Arthur Financial Services. Doing technology evaluation for the energy and oil and gas Industries. And so I always knew I wanted to start my own company and you know. God willing and gave me a opportunity when my co-founder of simplytapp move down here from Knoxville in about 6 years ago and so we. Yeah we kind of met. Online it away before tender was big or before meet up with big I just threw some some blogs and we hit it off and he had a great idea I had a great idea we mashed them together and started a company in off at once. Cool what would really appreciate you listening to the show when when did you hear about the show and when did when did we kind of pick you up as a listener. Well I've been I think I've listened to every episode for the last say. Maybe April 2016 so coming up on a year and a half or so and. [45:50] What I was looking for when I found your your show was some smart guys with some opinions around the. E-commerce and commerce space so when I found yours not only did I find it interesting but I also enjoyed listening to. Take the given take you both hat and so obviously you guys spend a lot of time covering the world of Amazon because it's such a big part of the current ecosystem right now. At least how it affects everyone both from an employment standpoint to an idea standpoint to it infrastructure standpoint and so. I thought that was something that I had necessarily heard the level of detail and so that's really gravitated me towards Georgia podcasting. You would come out with with good episodes one after another and so I can listen to them. At normal speed where is most of them they you know you stood him up a little bit you get to about 1.7 maybe 2 x. And you get some faster but I've set through a regular speed with you guys since the beginning so and then obviously I started following guys on Twitter. And your website reached out to try to. Find out as much about you guys as possible to make sure the stuff I'm hearing your podcast is legitimate and I think it is, devious plan is working with pulled you into the the evil web that we have one. [47:32] And it your your diction to. Starbucks though Jason is a little bit over-the-top I hear that mentioned every so often and I just wonder how much Starbucks this guy drink if he takes it with him on trips and mouth isn't it everywhere already sell. Jason:  [47:46] Yeah it's it's a little bit of a problem I actually had a moment this morning I huge line at the Starbucks so I thought I'd be really Advanced user and do Mobile Pay to skip the line. So I do Mobile Pay and I'm sitting there waiting and I never comes and never comes and then I go to the phone and realize I sent the mobile pain to a different store. Scot & Guests:  [48:05] Oh yeah I actually saw your Tweet there but they were nice enough I thought that was a real. Jason:  [48:09] Oh my God they were rock stars they when they realize what I did they made my drink for me anyway didn't charge me in save my day. Scot & Guests:  [48:17] Bullets I think the price they probably was in your show so they're like. India favorite guess that we've had on the show that that's kind of come to mine favorite guests. You know you guys have had so many good ones over the years while since I posted over the year and a half. Not really you know everyone seems to be pretty good and I'm not a big names guy so. I really don't remember anyone that jumps jumps out that's like why I'm glad you guys had that on there because I was to a couple of them and I always match him up so. So no sorry. Jason:  [49:00] Know where they're all so good that you can't pick up it's like picking when your favorite. Scot & Guests:  [49:04] It's a Neverfull a while honey I can pick that but I'm kidding. You know what one of the episodes I really enjoyed was when you guys decided to put a token name on the new checkout process or shopping experience from Amazon. Seems like every time that they come out with a new way to deliver a product or service. You know you guys come up with another acronym for it that is really hard to explain or or remember or say it but you guys use it as if it's a thing so. Jason:  [49:36] #j Scot & Guests:  [49:37] Appreciate that yes that's the one. Yeah... Was I think here in Texas I think of JJ Watt which is the football. Little bit bigger deal than Jay water itself or maybe someday lumpy you know he'll retire Hill go into the announcer booth and JWoww still be around. Jason:  [50:00] I feel like it's always going to be safer to say to Jeff Bezos the Jay Watts not a big deal than it's ever going to be to say to JJ Watt that he's not a big deal. Scot & Guests:  [50:08] Well you know I mean there for people who follow just Beason Amazon me he has been bulking up there has been a lot of memes lately with him you know looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger so I mean. Jason:  [50:20] Know know know he looks totally fit but he still looks like maybe JJ's right arm. Scot & Guests:  [50:24] Yeah fair enough fair enough so it's working obviously as you guys cover Amazon. An undercut of all the to do and how they affect the rest of the industry is obviously here in Austin Texas Whole Foods has been a staple of one of the corporation's at kind of the Hallmark for what it means to be Austin right it's this. Upstart started neon 25 30 years ago from hey I just want to produce and Supply Wholesome foods that are well. You can't find in general Grocers and so obviously with the news of them acquiring them I was really excited because my office is about a block-and-a-half from their headquarters and I go there quite frequently for lunch so I know the prices of everything another people. Know when the announcement was made that Amazon was essentially going to a choir Whole Foods. I walked in there and the place was some pins and needles but to be fair you know the day that the acquisition actually went through. And I'm sailing back I was expecting maybe a sign or you know everything to be saying free on it because it's. Our delivery for something you know I didn't see any of that but the people. We're in good spirits and so I thought that was at least initially a good sign. The communication between Amazon and Whole Foods is going to be. [51:58] Good enough or you know smooth enough to wear. What makes Whole Foods Whole Foods and experience hopefully won't get washed away by technology day one it's going to maybe gradually going to go in that direction so nice. Turn off people are scared at least here in Austin for the for that acquisition Bill actually go through. Jason:  [52:24] No I think that is true and I only have to say. The day one experience was remarkable I think we've all been super impressed with how much they got done in terms of integration on that on you. That that first day of the. Under Amazon control this Monday. Scot & Guests:  [52:44] I don't know what you guys experience but headquarters never moves you know they put a new payment systems they put in terminal they put in new ideas that app never works like, this'll last post ever touch so it's weird because it is headquarters it should be you know of a flagship you think they would get that one right, straight away but there was nothing integrated in nothing to headquarters was just nothing at all, so except for some commentary about why why the employees couldn't use Alexa for something so. Jason:  [53:19] That's funny it that's a common thing so that the headquarters Store the store that's closest to the headquarters for almost all retailers like. Always has this unique character and like one of the things is it's almost always run by a totally cynical manager who's not impressed by anything right because. Can you think about it every vendor that ever called on Whole Foods has gone to that store and they explore that store and they probably like stopped and talked to the manager about how important they were to Whole Foods and all that sort of stuff. And you know of course all the Senior Management from the company shop there and all those things in like if you were going to be Star Struck by by the executives coming into your store. You wouldn't do very well in that that. Headquarter store so that the surviving manager there 10 tends to usually be a guy that walks to the beat of his own drummer. Scot & Guests:  [54:12] Yeah I think that's definitely true you know I've met quite a few of their their Executives being so close and you calling on them from time to time whether it be something that I would working on that I want to show them we're just in general curiosity they, they've all been pretty open even though they do get solicited constantly but even pretty open I've been able to. Have some pretty good conversations and coffee and what not have lunch with them so I haven't in a while obviously they've had other things on their mind. But they've been really great Bunch for as large as I've become so I'm excited to see what happens to them not to make this an episode about. About Amazon and Whole Foods but. I think it's going to be exciting and I think there's going to be some Growing Pains But ultimately it's going to really Drive. The industry as a whole towards better things from a consumer perspective. Jason:  [55:11] No I totally agree I do want to change topics to we mention you're the co-founder of Simply tap and tell us a little bit more about that. Scot & Guests:  [55:21] Absolutely so simply tap is a cloud-based payments company the idea was born from. My desire to want to do something in a meaningful industry. I'm being in finance specifically in the energy world I thought it was just phenomenal how you can take this material and it just runs everything right and I still looking at the world around me I said you know what there's there's something very similar to, two oil and gas and that is currency that's a meal money basically its Financial systems and so. With a degree in finance I said well that's pretty perfect than I do about three years of research and finally went Doug came down. On to Austin he had been working on us a specific. Not to get too confident but a specific architecture software architecture for doing cryptographic based payments. And today that that system is the one we've created and it's used on over 500 million devices worldwide mainly Android it's called host card emulation or agency in so when we came together. I saw that and I said this is this is what you've made hear your idea here is in phenomenal so I you know put my business development had onto my marketing hat. You know we started the company and since then you know we've had a large Bank clients and small Bank clients around the world. [56:53] But ultimately you know over the last year we've said well there's a whole lot of Green Space here in the United States and so we are going to create a new. A new mobile payment in a new shopping experience called game g a n e and so that's really what we as a company have been working on this past year and so we're looking forward to to launching yet. Star over the next month or so and see where it goes. Know it's it's been fun ride we were venture-backed we have great gravy C's and fries and Ventures and Lightspeed Ventures and blue sky from Canada. It's been fun and it's exciting and I know Scott you have gone down this path in your previous life and honestly now with spiffy and you've been around the block. But it's this is my first time accepting someone else's money and then requiring to return that back to them. 100 fold if you will so it's something that I'm very. Thankful of had the chance to experience and grow team build a product in Market that Prada. It's all been is open very exciting and it's all been very kind of. Nice to do it here in a place like Austin or there so many resources to to learn and to grow and to kind of pull from. That's awesome congrats on the funding the we just had I don't know if you heard it or not but we had Shane from Zola on and I believe Lightspeed was an investor in those guys they're they're very active in the e-commerce space as I'm sure you know. [58:32] We were a core Payments Technology and and the patents we have around it RR. Are very very strong however has a small company it becomes. Delicate to put the least and how you how you handle yourself. So unlike many of the things a light speed run Commerce invests in which is more on on platforms that are to enable Commerce or speed up Commerce or grow Commerce from. Cat facilitating position this one was was more of a linchpin to make Mobile payment actually happen. I'm so it's a very technical technology that we use now Visa NASCAR DMX and everyone around the world leverages. But yeah Lightspeed is a is a wonderful Venture Capital firm how to see the not Basin Austin we are fortunate for them to seek us out at the time. That doesn't usually happen but we were in a space that they really liked I want individual there and. Notice women introduce themselves if we want to give you a bunch of money we said I don't know if we can trust you you know and the dance began you know over 6 months and then finally they convince us that they work or not, we're going to steal everything from us and you Story Goes On so. Jason:  [1:00:09] That that's a great story and just just to make sure I have it right so simply tap. Which is almost a B2B play that would have license technology to other folks that would use it for for mobile cloud-based payments and then game which is Gano is a. Consumer-facing app that you guys have lunch that fits art of the echo system that leverages that technology do I do I have that right. Scot & Guests:  [1:00:35] Yeah you got that right so it's it's Gane . But that's that's fine I mean you got softener so it's just me going to be listening as my own. Jason:  [1:00:49] Now Jeff Bezos isn't going to find your app. Scot & Guests:  [1:00:51] All good I don't need him find anything that you can worry. Jason:  [1:00:55] And when you guys say host card emulation. I'm taking a wild guess but so you're using NFC chip in the Android to sort of spoof the NFC antenna that would be in a nfc-enabled piece of plastic is that. [1:01:12] Kind of true or no am I totally wrong. Scot & Guests:  [1:01:15] Know your you're quite right with a couple technical differences so an NFC radio is simply just a radio it can it can pass just been any protocol NFC. Is a particular protocol that everyone leverages. Or I should say what people know as of NFC and so what we essentially do is we take that cryptographic element which is typically considered a secure element. And we host that in a remote server so at the time you want to make a payment what we've done is we've we've incremented the cryptographic element a number of times. And then sent those essentially loaded transactions ready to be used down to the device for storage, a time of payment over NFC or really any means we deliver that, that cryptographic element that send merged with the transaction itself so it can then be validated on the back and buy a large processor. Stop a process that would process that particular issued product so it works with just about any. Every it's a universal standard now. But yeah it's it's on Android devices it was on Windows devices and blackberry but obviously those aren't around anymore so it's now Android. Jason:  [1:02:44] So one burning question so obviously the newer Apple devices have an NFC radio in them but likes. Heretofore they haven't opened up that radio 2. What are useful things we'd like to do it almost sounds like they're starting to an I thought I had read that they were going to start opening that up in some some Limited Format are you up to speed on that at all is there any any hope in the future of. I'm getting NFC functionality out of the the Apple. Scot & Guests:  [1:03:13] Well I'd like to preface this common by no one knows what Apple do until Apple does it but we do know Apple quite well. And what I would I'd like to say is it was great to see them it help the entire ecosystem when they chose to adopt. NFC technology as for payment. There's great advantages to opening it up and leveraging a architecture that we've you know. What created the industry called height post-credit Malaysian it would offer all the things that you might like to do with that particular type of radio or frequency. Making the experience that you have with the device in the world around you much more interactive and much more powerful potentially now they have recently opened up what they would say the readability for their NFC chip. Which allows you to Simply hit a tag and RFID tag. And then if there's a URL based there it will then pull the oral up just like you were to go to a website or provide you with information. Based off the products so one of the examples of this is RFID lock tags on very expensive bottles of wine typically this is seen in China or areas where. You can simply refill a bottle with bad wine charge the good one prices and so what this. Opening up in the way of Apple allows them to do is now you can just a simply walk up to the the bottle of wine in the store. [1:04:52] Wherever they'll go is to stop hearing about a product and it will then either provide you information about that particular part. Or it can potentially allow your mobile device to download a coupon or a code. Or take you to a website where you can learn more about that particular product where it came from maybe it could be pulled directly into a health app where, hey if scans it says no this is no good for you because it has XYZ and we know you're allergic to XYZ so it's a great step forward. It's going to be used pacifically for marketing and it's not necessarily. Fully opening their NFC stack as as people in the industry. Cool all this fancy payments talk is over my head but, makes me ask how you feel about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency cuz I'm assume you have a lot of time thinking about that when we were giving to last session say. Bitcoin was all the rage on in Silicon Valley and you couldn't get through one meeting without them asking what your Bitcoin play. And I'd scratch my head and say look you know if the government doesn't take it as this is my general stance if the government doesn't take. You can't pay your taxes with it and the government can't regulate it then it will never exist here in the United States as a main form currency not to mention that. [1:06:22] There are very large incumbents like visa and MasterCard on the banking system as a whole that will not allow a cryptocurrency as a de-facto currency to exist because they already have the compute power they already have the infrastructure. So for Bitcoin as a currency to become mainstream and many of my friends with hate me for this because their Bitcoin. I'll put that way it just won't be supporting the ecosystem and the incumbents can simply squash it through regulation what screw do just. Bearing it throughout marketing dollars so. You have the currency know what chain is more interesting there's other Alternatives but you look at and you have to compare the Computing cost of walk chain with the existing cost of computing a cryptographic keys. It's kind of you know it's not Cheaper by any means the decentralized. Essential system is not cheaper here just spreading off the cost across the notes. And if those nodes one day decide that it's too expensive for them will guess what your your network of nodes gets you no crappier. Because now you're losing computer power so I know it's going to be a big fight it's better suited for countries with currencies that are have wild. Deflation or inflation. [1:07:53] So I won't most likely won't hear work here in the United States for ever until these except sit as their defacto. Jason:  [1:08:02] It's interesting in general with wood agreed with you and share your skepticism but the one thing I didn't see coming that seems like it's helping to make it slightly more mainstream is ransomware. Scot & Guests:  [1:08:13] Very fair very fair you know the problem is you can as an organ well I see the problem is and you're right ransomware offers this. This way but you know. Anna silly want to go and find and hold Bitcoin and no one does right so if it if it's not an everyday occurrence and the payment systems as they stand today no this very very well. If you can get someone to change their habits and Amazon in anyone else will notice to then you really have no chance write a one-off purchase from a retailer I'll let Kohl's. Even if they give you a deep discount and you never go back, you didn't win anything you just discounted your products and services and you're not you're not making any moment towards them adopting your brand or knowing your brand any better you just trick them or force them to. Of the economics of it to experience what you want to experience. It's going to be a long fight ransomware will always exist being in people with cryptocurrencies at hopefully. You know I obviously it's not a good use case come mainstream use case your fraud and theft and blackmail but it is a use case and you know it maybe if it keeps growing and. Everyone's like hell yeah I need to have a little jingle of Bitcoin in my pocket. Cuz I know I'm vulnerable and someone's going to hack me and all my pictures are going to be frozen or stolen or my business whatever. [1:09:49] That does a use case. Jason:  [1:09:51] If you had some of the pictures on your phone that Scott has on his you'd want to carry a little bit coin. Scot & Guests:  [1:09:56] I think it wouldn't I think you just leaving locked forever that what you couldn't get back to him because yeah. When one quick, final question you're at you're there and Austin. Quite a hotbed of metal e-commerce but but high-tech can, investing in things like that do you is there a kind of a community of e-commerce people do you get the shipping guys down there like shipstation you've got that coremetrics bazaarvoice, Bret Hart and his kind of crew or down there how does that work in and did you pick Austin or you just kind of ended up there. Well so I didn't pick Austin I was actually living in Chicago before I moved down to Austin and it was College buddy before you got married at 4 months I had some time so I took that Consulting gig here in Texas and I can live anywhere. So he was an awesome I said sure sounds like a good place. But as far as the I mean I'm here there's a ton of opportunity and it's a great great Community but as far as the Commerce Committee goes you know what. It's definitely here. Because the size of Austin is so much smaller more accessible than say so can Valley or New York. It's easy to get in touch with and have conversations with but I can't really say that there is a. [1:11:28] Yeah I don't go out and play poker with with five other you know individuals who are all in the payments or e-commerce space even though it's there's so much of it here it doesn't happen as much as you would think. I've often thought about starting a you know I'm morning Club of some form around e-commerce but what I found is. [1:11:52] There's there's anecdotal stuff that everyone runs into when you're selling things online when your building logistics for whatever product you're selling and everyone has a little bit of different take which is nice but the end of the day Commerce is Commerce, and you know the tools that emerge as as best. Best use case tools or advantageous tools they all seem to be in your hands all the same time. Time for whatever reason the sales guys are getting those tools you know how to the businesses. Have have a good Rolodex to call on in so you know I think that the individuals here in Austin are are quite. You're in tune with the heartbeat of e-commerce and since th

Chief O'Brien.Husband. Father. Soldier. Bored transporter chief. He goes by many titles, but Chief Miles Edward O'Brien made an impression on Next Generation viewers from the first moment he piloted the stardrive section of the new flagship in "Encounter at Fairpoint." Even though Miles changed from red to gold (and changed ranks even more often!), this secondary character was a vital part of the Enterprise-D crew. Daniel, Darren, and Phillip lay out a character profile that follows Miles from his wedding to Keiko, to the birth of his first child Molly, and all the way until his last moment in Transporter Room 3, before he disembarked on a seven-year adventure on Deep Space Nine.Join Earl Grey as they go through Chief O'Brien's many episodes, analyzing his "every man" role, his unique role as a Starfleet non-commissioned officer, and how his reactions to "boldly going where no one has gone before" made the series even stronger. So cuddle up with your pet spider, get your ship ready to be placed in a bottle, and enjoy this character profile on Chief O'Brien.  HostsDaniel Proulx, Phillip Gilfus, & Darren MoserEditor / ProducerDarren MoserExecutive ProducersNorman C. Lao, Matthew Rushing, & C Bryan Jones Production Manager Richard Marquez   Content Manager Will Nguyen ChaptersOverview (00:04:07)Everyman (00:08:15) Uniform/Rank (00:15:52) Favorite Moments (00:26:15) Movie O'brien? (00:44:16)Worf/O'brien Dynamic (00:47:30) Final Thoughts (00:50:59) Send us your feedback! Twitter: @trekfm Facebook: http://facebook.com/trekfm Voicemail: http://www.speakpipe.com/trekfm Contact Form: http://www.trek.fm/contact Visit the Trek.fm website at http://trek.fm/ Subscribe in iTunes: http://itunes.com/trekfm Support the Network! Become a Trek.fm Patron on Patreon and help us keep our shows coming to you every week. We have great perks for you at http://patreon.com/trekfm

Alliance for Justice President Nan Aron joins us to discuss AFJ's work building opposition to provisions in the Trans-Pacific Partnership that circumvent U.S. courts. We also hear from CWA activists who are building local coalitions against the TPP in Arizona and North Carolina, and CWA Local 1400 President Don Trementozzi discusses the 131 day strike against Fairpoint Communications in New England.

Women in TNG.   From the pilot "Encounter at Fairpoint," The Next Generation signaled that it wanted to update the way Star Trek would handle gender roles - it was no longer "where no man had gone before" but "where no one had gone before." The first season featured three female characters - Security Chief Tasha Yar, Counselor Deanna Troi, and Dr. Beverly Crusher. However, two of those three characters did not return in the second season. The full run of TNG and the feature films contain many female characters, both primary cast and guest stars, and created episodes that focused on women, from "The Child" to "The Perfect Mate." @FirstTimeTrek Andi VanderKolk joins Daniel, Darren, and Phillip to discuss the successes and disappointments in how women were portrayed in TNG.   Hosts Daniel Proulx, Phillip Gilfus, & Darren Moser   Guests Andi VanderKolk   Production Manager Richard Marquez   Content Coordinator Will Nguyen   Chapters Is TNG Better in It's Portrayal of Women? (00:05:00)   Where No ONE Has Gone Before (00:12:02)   Tasha Yar (00:22:10)   Deanna Troi (00:29:28)   Ro Laren (00:34:10)   Dr. Leah Brahms (00:36:30)   Lal (00:41:00)   Admiral Nechayev (00:46:21)   Mae Jemison (00:50:20)   Kathryn Janeway (00:53:27)   Lwaxana Troi (00:57:58)   Closing (01:02:22)     Send us your feedback! Twitter: @trekfm Facebook: http://facebook.com/trekfm Voicemail: http://www.speakpipe.com/trekfm Contact Form: http://www.trek.fm/contact Visit the Trek.fm website at http://trek.fm/ Subscribe in iTunes: http://itunes.com/trekfm   Support the Network!   Become a Trek.fm Patron on Patreon and help us keep our shows coming to you every week. We have great perks for you at http://patreon.com/trekfm

A short episode this week, running through some of the tech news from last week.  There was a major outage around Washington and Rutland counties due to a fiber line that was blasted by a shotgun.   Fairpoint may go into bankruptcy, but not to worry there are alternative ISPs in Vermont and Fairpoint won’t [...]

The first few days with the iPhone 3.0 software has been fairly good.  I lost my contacts and calendars when I tried to turn on Push, but I restored them from backup.  I still don’t fully understand the relationship between the Mac applications, .mac (or as it’s know now-a-days MobileMe *ick*) and the iPhone. I mentioned [...]

I didn’t change the episode tag at the front of the podcast, I know it says episode 4 then after the music I start into episode 5…. Sorry for the confusion, this is really episode five. Don’t forget to check out www.vtsda.org.  The Vermont Software Developers Alliance is hosting a lunch and learn on the 17th. Enhanced [...]

After a long break the podcasts are back.  I received an email from Verizon about some comments that were posted on the Concord Monitor’s web site.  I cover some of the hightlights from E3 and talk about the troubles with Conficker seen in certain hospitals.  Short show this week, working on getting back into a [...]

I talk about how the iPhone handled being used as a GPS on my road trip.  Some more Fairpoint information about the transition from Verizon.  Good luck to the Green Team, team 885 at the Granite State Regional.  Check out http://www.baesystemsfirst.org/regional/ or http://www.thebluealliance.net/ For a taste of what the Lego League is all about, check [...]

In addition to talking about the past weeks blog posts, I cover my Fairpoint service call.  I’m part of the 28,000 people that WCAX is talking about in this news story http://www.wcax.com/global/story.asp?s=9793260  For the security corner we talk about how to prevent having your credit card compromised and I introduced the FIRST organization, check them out at [...]

Not what you think! (did I mention Fairpoint sucks?)

Episode one is a quick introduction to the podcast, the podcaster, and a survey of the iPhone mania that swept Vermont this month.  The purpose of technewsvt.com is to talk about tech in Vermont.  The best place to get Vermont iPhone news is at radmacdaddy’s blog http://iphonevt.wordpress.com/ In the security corner I talked about Downadup and you [...]