Podcasts about mac ios

Apple is finishing October with a bang. Monday brought the official release of Apple Intelligence with iOS 18.1 and also for iPads and Macs. Apple also announced a new iMac with an M4 processor on Monday. Tuesday brought the new, smaller, redesigned Mac Mini with M4. What will Wednesday bring? Good chance of MacBook Pros. Plus, there's other tech news to catch up on and some tips and picks to help you tech better! Watch on YouTube! INTRO (00:00) Vote (04:10) MAIN TOPIC: Trick or Treat? Apple Intelligence and new Macs (06:50) Apple Intelligence is available today on iPhone, iPad, and Mac iOS 18.2 with new Apple Intelligence features coming in December, Apple confirms Apple updates the iMac with new colors and an M4 chip Apple announces redesigned Mac Mini with M4 chip DAVE'S PRO-TIP OF THE WEEK: Select the camera type by long long-holding camera icon in the Control Center (22:20) JUST THE HEADLINES: (27:30) Britain to axe up to 1.5m lampposts Researchers say an AI-powered transcription tool used in hospitals invents things no one ever said NASA reveals prototype telescope for gravitational wave observatory San Francisco's Muni's rail system will spend $212 million to upgrade from floppy disks Hacker returns $19.3 million to drained US government crypto wallet DTrace for Linux comes to Gentoo TAKES McDonald's restaurants finally have a solution to their busted McFlurry machine problem (29:20) Astropad Launches 'Bookcase' for Turning an iPhone Into an E-Reader (31:30) Vimeo brings spatial video sharing to everyone with new Apple Vision Pro app (35:00) Astronauts return from nearly eight months on ISS after Starliner problems (36:45) Adobe made its painting app completely free to take on Procreate (38:00) BONUS ODD TAKE: Kasso - Bonkers Japanese Skateboarding Show (39:45) PICKS OF THE WEEK: Dave: Mic Cover Foam Microphone Windscreen, Condenser Microphone Size A, 1 Pack (41:05) Nate: SmallRig 51" Cell Phone Selfie Stick Tripod with Wireless Remote, Aluminum Portable Cellphone Tripod Freely 10 Meters Bluetooth Remote Control Tripod for iPhone 16 Pro Max/15/14 Pro/14/13, Samsung S22/ S23 Ultra/Android Smartphone via TikTok (43:20) RAMAZON PURCHASE - Giveaway! (50:25)

I think this is the first time I actually made Dave yell on the podcast and it was hilarious. That comes as I give one of my final updates on my quest for a perfect cup of coffee. Has someone every told you about a feature in an operating system that you had no idea even existed? Dave and I talk about discoverability on the Mac. We also take a look at some of the new features in iOS 18. Show Notes: Jura Z10 Diamond Black iOS 18: Replace or Remove Lock Screen Camera and Flashlight Icons iPadOS 18 adds a new tab bar US social security–Freeze your credit Shows and movies we're watching Homicide, Peacock Slow Horses, Apple TV+ Catch Me A Killer, BritBox

This week, I delved into whether to embrace or avoid new APIs in Apple's upcoming operating systems. I encountered a few challenges while working on my Mac iOS app, which I aimed to have a modern look. Inspired by Apple developer videos, I wanted to incorporate features like a navigation split view and fancy backgrounds, similar to the design of CleanMyMac.However, I hit a snag when they were in a part of the app's window. Even AI couldn't solve it. Finally, I found a solution in a video on the Apple developer portal, which involved using modifiers only available in macOS 15. Faced with a choice, I implemented conditional code to keep compatibility with macOS 14 while enabling new features for macOS 15 and beyond.Using conditional code, such as #if available(macOS 15, *), I can target specific OS versions and ensure my app remains functional across different versions without cutting off users. This technique can be applied to various scenarios, not just API availability, making it a versatile tool.Become a Patreon member and help this Podcast survivehttps://www.patreon.com/compileswiftPlease leave a review and show your supporthttps://lovethepodcast.com/compileswiftFollow me on Mastodonhttps://iosdev.space/@Compileswift Thanks to our monthly supporters bitSpectre Arclite ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Thu, 13 Jun 2024 23:30:00 GMT http://relay.fm/mpu/749 http://relay.fm/mpu/749 The Year of Apple Intelligence 749 David Sparks and Stephen Hackett WWDC24 brought updates across Apple's platforms and was used to announce the company's move into the AI era. David and Stephen hit the highlights of what's new. WWDC24 brought updates across Apple's platforms and was used to announce the company's move into the AI era. David and Stephen hit the highlights of what's new. clean 6736 Subtitle: Unpacking WWDC24WWDC24 brought updates across Apple's platforms and was used to announce the company's move into the AI era. David and Stephen hit the highlights of what's new. This episode of Mac Power Users is sponsored by: 1Password: Never forget a password again. Sanebox: Stop drowning in email! KRCS: Apple Premium Reseller. Get free next-working-day delivery. ExpressVPN: High-Speed, Secure & Anonymous VPN Service. Get an extra three months free. Links and Show Notes: Sign up for the MPU email newsletter and join the MPU forums. More Power Users: Ad-free episodes with regular bonus segments Submit Feedback Steve Jobs Says "Jump!" and Phil Schiller Does - YouTube macOS Sequoia: The MacStories Overview - MacStories macOS Sequoia's Default Wallpaper (Updated) – 512 Pixels macOS Sequoia's Macintosh Wallpapers – 512 Pixels The Meaning of the Term “Sherlocking” – 512 Pixels Mac Power Users #705: macOS Window Management - Relay FM Bezel - Show your iPhone on your Mac iOS and iPadOS 18: The MacStories Overview - MacStories Michael Tsai - Blog - Dark Mode iOS 18 App Icons NEW! iOS 18 iMessage via Satellite demo! - iJustine watchOS 11: The MacStories Overview - MacStories visionOS 2: The MacStories Overview - MacStories Apple Intelligence: The MacStories Overview - MacStories Hope Springs Eternal for Apple Intelligence - MacSparky Apple Details Its AI Foundation Models and Applebot Web Scraping - MacStories Siri's AI Era Arriving Soon – 512 Pixels Report: Apple isn't paying OpenAI for ChatGPT integration into OSes | Ars Technica WWDC24: Tim Cook, on AI and Apple's Values – 512 Pixels WWDC24: System Requirements for iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia, Etc… – 512 Pixels Private Cloud Compute: A new frontier for AI privacy in the cloud - Apple Security Research Matthew Green's Mastodon Thread on Private Cloud Compute

Thu, 13 Jun 2024 23:30:00 GMT http://relay.fm/mpu/749 http://relay.fm/mpu/749 David Sparks and Stephen Hackett WWDC24 brought updates across Apple's platforms and was used to announce the company's move into the AI era. David and Stephen hit the highlights of what's new. WWDC24 brought updates across Apple's platforms and was used to announce the company's move into the AI era. David and Stephen hit the highlights of what's new. clean 6736 Subtitle: Unpacking WWDC24WWDC24 brought updates across Apple's platforms and was used to announce the company's move into the AI era. David and Stephen hit the highlights of what's new. This episode of Mac Power Users is sponsored by: 1Password: Never forget a password again. Sanebox: Stop drowning in email! KRCS: Apple Premium Reseller. Get free next-working-day delivery. ExpressVPN: High-Speed, Secure & Anonymous VPN Service. Get an extra three months free. Links and Show Notes: Sign up for the MPU email newsletter and join the MPU forums. More Power Users: Ad-free episodes with regular bonus segments Submit Feedback Steve Jobs Says "Jump!" and Phil Schiller Does - YouTube macOS Sequoia: The MacStories Overview - MacStories macOS Sequoia's Default Wallpaper (Updated) – 512 Pixels macOS Sequoia's Macintosh Wallpapers – 512 Pixels The Meaning of the Term “Sherlocking” – 512 Pixels Mac Power Users #705: macOS Window Management - Relay FM Bezel - Show your iPhone on your Mac iOS and iPadOS 18: The MacStories Overview - MacStories Michael Tsai - Blog - Dark Mode iOS 18 App Icons NEW! iOS 18 iMessage via Satellite demo! - iJustine watchOS 11: The MacStories Overview - MacStories visionOS 2: The MacStories Overview - MacStories Apple Intelligence: The MacStories Overview - MacStories Hope Springs Eternal for Apple Intelligence - MacSparky Apple Details Its AI Foundation Models and Applebot Web Scraping - MacStories Siri's AI Era Arriving Soon – 512 Pixels Report: Apple isn't paying OpenAI for ChatGPT integration into OSes | Ars Technica WWDC24: Tim Cook, on AI and Apple's Values – 512 Pixels WWDC24: System Requirements for iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia, Etc… – 512 Pixels Private Cloud Compute: A new frontier for AI privacy in the cloud - Apple Security Research Matthew Green's Mastodon Thread on Private Cloud Compute

From DuckDuckGo's innovative approach to secure synchronization of user data across devices, to Appdome's cutting-edge Geo Compliance suite aimed at combating location spoofing, and the alarming resurgence of the Bumblebee malware loader in a new phishing campaign, we explore the implications of these advancements and threats. Join us as we unpack the significance of end-to-end encryption, the fight against location-based fraud, and the continuous battle against sophisticated cyber threats. Discover how these developments impact our digital lives and what measures can be taken to enhance security in the digital realm. DuckDuckGo's Privacy Innovation: Learn about DuckDuckGo's end-to-end encrypted Sync & Backup feature, providing users with a secure way to synchronize their data across devices without compromising privacy. Read more. Appdome's Battle Against Location Spoofing: Dive into Appdome's Geo Compliance suite, offering mobile brands a robust solution to verify user locations and detect fraudulent activities to uphold the integrity of mobile commerce. Read more. The Return of Bumblebee: Uncover the details of Bumblebee's comeback in a sophisticated phishing campaign, posing significant threats to organizational security and how these developments signal a broader wave of cyber threats. Read more. Stay informed about the latest in cybersecurity and digital privacy with our in-depth analysis and discussions on the most pressing issues facing the digital world today. Thanks to Jered Jones for providing the music for this episode. https://www.jeredjones.com/ Transcript: [ 00:00:00] Good morning listeners today is February 15th, 2024. And you're listening to the daily decrypt. I've got a quick episode for you today. We're just going to touch on a three stories. One duck, duck go has some new updates, which we're pretty excited about. A company called app dome is re-inventing geo compliance for mobile security. And for the nerdier folk, the bumblebee is back. This is a new wave of cyber threats. So let's dive right in. [00:01:00] All right. So our first article comes from bleeping computer and it discusses duck. Duck goes introduction. Of an end to end encrypted sync and backup feature for their privacy centric browser. Dr. Goh has been a beacon for those seeking to protect their online activities from prying eyes. And it's known for its search engine that promises not to track users. Its latest update, introduces a sync and backup feature, which allows users to securely synchronize bookmarks passwords and email protection settings without the need for an account. Or by revealing any sensitive information to duck, duck go. We love this. This is a huge step towards separating your identity from what you do on the internet. So what sets this feature apart is its use of end-to-end encryption. And for those of you who aren't super savvy in the tech field, this means that. The data is encrypted in such a way that only the user can access it. Not even duck duck go can peek into the transferred information. This [00:02:00] ensures that personal data like passwords and bookmarks remain private and secure. Which is a significant step forward in preserving user privacy online. Duck duck go employs local encryption to store sensitive data on the user's device. And during synchronization between devices, this data remains encrypted. And because the decryption key is stored locally on your devices, your information is inaccessible to anyone, but you. Little caveat to that is. Your information is inaccessible to anyone, but you or anyone who has access to your devices. Make sure your devices are password protected. And go to sleep or lock after a reasonable amount of time. One minute might be too quick. Five minutes might be too quick, but. Get in the habit of locking your devices when you walk away from them. Another feature of this is the easy setup. Users can sync their data by scanning a QR code or entering a text code, bridging their digital life across windows, Mac iOS, iOS, and Android devices seamlessly. duck Duck go provides recovery codes in a PDF document, ensuring that [00:03:00] users can retrieve their data, even if their device is lost or stolen. We don't love QR codes overall, but if it's being provided by duck, duck, go. You should be pretty safe. Attackers will also have this information, so they might try to generate fake QR codes or fake PDFs, but I've never really seen syncing across devices without creating an account. So I'm pretty excited to give this a try if you're also excited to give this a try. The duck duck go browser is available for download on various platforms. Though the browser is still in beta. It's still very accessible. So go out there, give it a shot and let us know what you think on Twitter or Instagram. We'd love to hear from you. So up next, we're talking about a company. called app dome, which might be behind many of your apps already on your phone. They. Provide security features for apps across Android and iOS. This can mean security features such as end-to-end automation. [00:04:00] Mobile apps, security anti-fraud anti-malware anti-China antibody and geo compliance. Their sites are focused on the geo compliance part of that. they've come up with a groundbreaking feature set, which is designed to help mobile brands, verify user locations and detect fraudulent activities such as location spoofing. Or fake GPS, app usage, VPNs, and SIM swaps. These are common methods that are often employed to bypass geographical restrictions and mobile applications, which can pose a significant challenge to maintaining the integrity of mobile commerce and transaction data. This is great, but. I have to point out the irony of discussing this right after talking about not being tracked online. By duck, duck go. Geolocation is a tough thing to nail down. IP addresses are wildly inaccurate. And yeah, your location can be mapped using different apps. Like VPNs or. All kinds of other things. So this is huge for. Government regulation of data, [00:05:00] privacy, but might be bad news for protecting yourself and your privacy online. Tom Tovar, who is the CEO of abdom discusses? The struggle mobile brands face. In achieving true geo compliance. Traditional products in this space have suffered from a fragmented approach requiring complex software development, kit integrations, and a heavy lift from engineering teams. solution. A unified automated platform that integrates geo compliance with over 300 other mobile app defense features, streamlining the process and ensuring compatibility across the board. this next piece is drawing attention to recent activities of the notorious malware loader and initial access broker known as bumblebee. Bumblebee is back and its resurgence is marked by a sophisticated phishing campaign targeting us organizations with cleverly disguised. Voicemail themes, lures leading to malicious one drive URLs. So watch out for. Suspicious looking voicemails. And if you do [00:06:00] happen to click on one. it opens one drive. You know what to do. Proof point and enterprise security firm has traced these activities. Noting that the malicious URLs guide unsuspecting victims to a word document that impersonates the consumer electronics company humane. That's not very humane of them. These documents named in a deceptive manner like release Evans, hashtag 96 dot doc. Employ VBA macros to execute a chain of commands that eventually download and run the bumblebee loader. This development is particularly alarming considering Bumblebee's reputation for downloading and executing ransomware among other malicious payloads. bumblebee was first identified in March of 2022 and has been a tool for various crime where actors replacing older loaders, such as Basel loader. It's development is suspected to be under the wings of the Conti and trick bot cyber crime syndicates showcasing a continuous evolution in cyber crime tactics. Interestingly the return of bumblebee coincides with the [00:07:00] reappearance of malware variants, like crackpot, Xeloda, and Pika bot. Which is highlighting a broader wave of cyber threats. There's a lot of vulnerabilities that involve Microsoft office macros. So keep an eye out for. A office template you might download for free on the internet that when you open it, it prompts you to enable macros. It is going to try to convince you that you need to enable these macros to use this template. But I would advise against enabling macros since that pretty much gives. The word document. The ability to launch other programs to run code, to do anything that malware would need to do. Download a template. It asks you to enable macros, probably delete that template and look on a different site. Microsoft has also taken steps to disable macros in an unsecure way, but there's always ways around it. The article we're referencing also touches on a broader context with Malwarebytes uncovering phishing campaigns that mimic financial institutions. Tricking individuals into [00:08:00] downloading legitimate remote desktop software. Like any desk under false pretenses further enabling cyber criminals to exploit unsuspecting users. All right. So that's all we got for today, Thank you so much for listening. Give us a tweet if you like, what you've heard. We'd love to hear from you on Instagram. We're posting little highlight reels. And Yeah, your recommendation means a lot to us. So send this podcast to a friend. If you thought it was fun or valuable or anything. Talk to you more tomorrow.

Pour découvrir l'écosystème Pro-Blade de SanDisk Professional : https://bit.ly/43IQnKw Découvrez le Pro-Blade en vidéo juste ici : https://youtu.be/giIthQjxxHE Historique ! Après le Mac, l'iPod, l'iPhone, l'iPad et la Watch, Apple s'apprête à lancer ce soir des lunettes de réalité mixte. Un sacré pari à l'heure où la planète tech ne jure que par l'intelligence artificielle, surfant sur le succès de ChatGPT. Autant dire que Tim Cook est attendu au tournant lors de l'ouverture de la WWDC .Va-t-il également en profiter pour lancer de nouveaux Mac ? Le MacBook Air va-t-il se voir greffer une dalle de 15 pouces ? Le Mac Studio une puce M2 Pro ? Sachant que le Mac Pro n'a toujours pas adapté le processeur Apple Silicon ? Quid des nouvelles versions d'iOS, MacOS, iPadOS et WatchOS ? Toutes les réponses en direct ! Avec Laurent Pantanacce, Christophe Degraeve, Stéphane Zibi, Didier Pulicani & Olivier Frigara Rendez-vous chaque vendredi sur YouTube pour découvrir une nouvelle émission ! #Apple #WWDC #tech #mac #iMac #iOS17 #lunetteVR Notre boutique en ligne enfin ouverte ! orlmtv.myspreadshop.fr Rejoignez le Club ORLM pour bénéficier d'avantages exclusifs : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUanZckNyJODHBdqtMzYMpA/join Les coups de cœur : Stéphane : Le dernier épisode de Succession Lien : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UdLrRbHmr8&t=1s Christophe : Tilt Five Lien : https://www.tiltfive.com/ Laurent : Série Canal+ Omerta Lien : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WW_wcLTWlS0 Olivier : Actiyon - Crowdtesting plateform for everyone Lien : https://actiyon.com/

Pour découvrir l'écosystème Pro-Blade de SanDisk Professional : https://bit.ly/43IQnKw Découvrez le Pro-Blade en vidéo juste ici : https://youtu.be/giIthQjxxHE Historique ! Après le Mac, l'iPod, l'iPhone, l'iPad et la Watch, Apple s'apprête à lancer ce soir des lunettes de réalité mixte. Un sacré pari à l'heure où la planète tech ne jure que par l'intelligence artificielle, surfant sur le succès de ChatGPT. Autant dire que Tim Cook est attendu au tournant lors de l'ouverture de la WWDC .Va-t-il également en profiter pour lancer de nouveaux Mac ? Le MacBook Air va-t-il se voir greffer une dalle de 15 pouces ? Le Mac Studio une puce M2 Pro ? Sachant que le Mac Pro n'a toujours pas adapté le processeur Apple Silicon ? Quid des nouvelles versions d'iOS, MacOS, iPadOS et WatchOS ? Toutes les réponses en direct ! Avec Laurent Pantanacce, Christophe Degraeve, Stéphane Zibi, Didier Pulicani & Olivier Frigara Rendez-vous chaque vendredi sur YouTube pour découvrir une nouvelle émission ! #Apple #WWDC #tech #mac #iMac #iOS17 #lunetteVR Notre boutique en ligne enfin ouverte ! orlmtv.myspreadshop.fr Rejoignez le Club ORLM pour bénéficier d'avantages exclusifs : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUanZckNyJODHBdqtMzYMpA/join Les coups de cœur : Stéphane : Le dernier épisode de Succession Lien : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UdLrRbHmr8&t=1s Christophe : Tilt Five Lien : https://www.tiltfive.com/ Laurent : Série Canal+ Omerta Lien : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WW_wcLTWlS0 Olivier : Actiyon - Crowdtesting plateform for everyone Lien : https://actiyon.com/

Que va présenter Apple, lors de la WWDC 2023 qui ouvre ses portes lundi 5 juin à 19:00 et que nous couvrirons en direct ? Beaucoup d'annonces à commencer par l'arrivée de Reality Pro, des lunettes de réalité mixte. Sa présentation sera-t-elle digne de l'introduction du premier iPhone ? Quid des Mac ? Le MacBook va-t-il épouser une dalle de 15 pouces ? Le MacStudio va-t-il adopté à la puce M2 Pro ? Et où sont passés les nouveaux iMac et Mac Pro ? Qu'attendre également d'iOS 17, de sa déclinaison pour iPad, sans oublier de la dernière mouture de macOS ? Débats ! Avec Laurent Pantanacce, Christophe Degraeve, Didier Pulicani & Olivier Frigara Rendez-vous chaque vendredi sur YouTube pour découvrir une nouvelle émission ! #Apple #WWDC #tech #mac #iMac #iOS17 #lunetteVR Notre boutique en ligne enfin ouverte ! orlmtv.myspreadshop.fr Rejoignez le Club ORLM pour bénéficier d'avantages exclusifs : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUanZckNyJODHBdqtMzYMpA/join Les coups de cœur : Christophe : La Logitech G Cloud Amazon : https://amzn.to/43jN7W4 Fnac : https://tidd.ly/3OLCEye Didier : SolarMobil Lien : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O10Vx6CQR_Y Laurent : dbrand Lien : https://dbrand.com Olivier : 5G Shosh Lien : https://shop.sosh.fr/mobile/forfaits-mobiles

Que va présenter Apple, lors de la WWDC 2023 qui ouvre ses portes lundi 5 juin à 19:00 et que nous couvrirons en direct ? Beaucoup d'annonces à commencer par l'arrivée de Reality Pro, des lunettes de réalité mixte. Sa présentation sera-t-elle digne de l'introduction du premier iPhone ? Quid des Mac ? Le MacBook va-t-il épouser une dalle de 15 pouces ? Le MacStudio va-t-il adopté à la puce M2 Pro ? Et où sont passés les nouveaux iMac et Mac Pro ? Qu'attendre également d'iOS 17, de sa déclinaison pour iPad, sans oublier de la dernière mouture de macOS ? Débats ! Avec Laurent Pantanacce, Christophe Degraeve, Didier Pulicani & Olivier Frigara Rendez-vous chaque vendredi sur YouTube pour découvrir une nouvelle émission ! #Apple #WWDC #tech #mac #iMac #iOS17 #lunetteVR Notre boutique en ligne enfin ouverte ! orlmtv.myspreadshop.fr Rejoignez le Club ORLM pour bénéficier d'avantages exclusifs : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUanZckNyJODHBdqtMzYMpA/join Les coups de cœur : Christophe : La Logitech G Cloud Amazon : https://amzn.to/43jN7W4 Fnac : https://tidd.ly/3OLCEye Didier : SolarMobil Lien : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O10Vx6CQR_Y Laurent : dbrand Lien : https://dbrand.com Olivier : 5G Shosh Lien : https://shop.sosh.fr/mobile/forfaits-mobiles

Joes MagicBeans app is getting there! Erin is starting to test things with an Audio Precision unit, first up amps and preamp processor from McIntosh. Michael gets his snow fix for a little bit!!! Upmixing to front wides and native content for front wides. Do you think old or new speakers are the da bomb? Size of resistors that Erin uses for testing are massive, + a giant heatsink! Thanks for listening!!! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dailyhifi/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dailyhifi/support

Uppföljning/uppvärmning Midsommar – vilka är våra måsten? Det görs sjukt mycket fint Lego numera Stage Manager och kravet på M1. En följetong Ämnen Jocke migrerar sin mailserver inför uppgradering. En 13 timmars mardröm. Lets Encrypt och äldre Mac/iOS-enheter. “Version 10.15: “Catalina” eller tidigare kan få problem i Safari. Christian borde snart köpa ny Mac hem. Firefox Total Cookie Protection Proxmox-kluster på Raspberry Pi, del 2: konfiguration och slutsatser Film & TV Top gun: Maverick - Fredrik har plötsligt sett ⅘ (F) Kärlek & Anarki SE01-02 på Netflix. 3,5/5 (C) All the Devil's Men. Ännu en film som suger på IMDB. 5,1/10 på IMDB. 1,5/5 BMÅ (J) Länkar Mannerströms gubbröra Jockes trynröra Fint legoslott Millennium falcon - stora versionen LED-kit för Lego-Millennium falcon - stora versionen Stage Manager och kravet på M1. En följetong Iredmail Rocky Linux Let's encrypts rotcert gick ut i höstas Firefox Total Cookie Protection Pimox Top gun: Maverick - Fredrik har plötsligt sett ⅘ (F) Hot shots! Kärlek & Anarki SE01-02 på Netflix. 3,5/5 (C) All the Devil's Men. Ännu en film som suger på IMDB. 5,1/10 på IMDB. 1,5/5 BMÅ (J) Sniper-serien Fullständig avsnittsinformation finns här: https://www.bjoremanmelin.se/podcast/avsnitt-313-jira-ar-stangt.html

Szevasztok hej hej! A 276. részben Zoli, Geri, Atás és XaB gyűltek össze ismét az https://okosotthonlabor.hu stúdióban, hogy megvitassák a világ állását. - Zoltán valamit félrehallott? - iPhone 13 Pro Max és Watch 7 Bangkokból - az iPhone videózásra alkalmatlan - a világ Apple Storejai - Ferrari a szeméttelepen - Vodka és szárított hal - AirPods Max - lehet iPaden dolgozni? - hogyan lesz valakiből csöves? - hol vagy Laci bácsi? - iOS 15.4 mit fog tudni? - mikor lesz a Mac iOS és az iOS Mac? - beszaladt a gatyába? - lehet a panelban nyugisan trónolni? - fingtesók - ALF??? - Minimax VS. Duck TV VS. Duna TV akvárium - te melyik diszkóba jártál? - Cobblers https://madeinpecs.hu/lokal/cobblers - 5G és wifi a repülőn - Melyik a legjobb légitársaság? - ausztrál fing - legjobb babzsák Blup https://blup.hu - hogyan lehet egy babzsákból kiszállni? - milyen motort vett Atás? - Zero motorok https://www.zeromotorcycles.com - egy kis covid tudomány - melyik nép hogy töröl segget? - DJI Action 2 távirányító - milyen apple pólód van? - pöcök vagy bimbi? - upsz Kam megtörte a sorozatot! - rezeg a pillangó szárnya - mindenki meg lesz találva

Just in case you were wondering, you definitely wear all the hats now. In today's modern at-home recording world, you're the voice, engineer, customer service department, and tech wizard of each session; and some of those hats can get pretty cumbersome. In this episode, Anne and Laya discuss what it takes to be a BOSS in the booth, and how to maximize your potential success with tools, tech, and processes that work. It's not enough to just have a great voice or be an excellent performer anymore, but being a #VOBOSS in your booth is achievable. Learn how in this episode, jam-packed with ideas from these savvy bosses… Transcript >> It's time to take your business to the next level, the BOSS level! These are the premiere Business Owner Strategies and Successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a BOSS, a VO BOSS! Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. Anne: Hey everyone. Welcome to the VO BOSS podcast. I'm your host Anne Ganguzza along with my very special guest co-host BOSS Laya Hoffman. Hey Laya, how are you? Laya: I'm great. Anne. How are you? Anne: I'm doing good. It's been a hectic week in the booth here, which is a good thing. I'm very grateful about that, but hectic in terms of I had clients who are asking a lot of me. Laya: Oh yeah? Anne: Not just voicing. Laya: Aren't they always? Anne: Yeah. Not just voicing in the booth, but they wanted playback. They wanted to invite the client in. And so I thought it would be a good day to talk about how to be the BOSS in the booth and handle these, handle the tech, handle these situations when a lot is being requested of us these days. Laya: So much, you know. Gone are the days of just stepping into the studio and all you have to do is focus on your acting -- Anne: Remember that? Laya: -- the copy and what it feels like to deliver, you know, the message. Now you have to have all the hats on -- Anne: Yup. Laya: -- simultaneously while keeping your cool and still delivering an outstanding performance. And it is harder than we realize -- Anne: Oh my gosh -- Laya: -- especially when the going gets tough. Anne: Yeah. And shout-out, okay, before anything else, a big shout-out to all the studios out there -- Laya: Yes. Anne: -- and pre-pandemic too. Like I always appreciated studios and sometimes even more so now, you never realized what a luxury it is to walk into a studio and to be directed. Laya: Yes, I miss it. Anne: Right? It is a wonderful thing. And I think there's always a place for studios, but during the pandemic, when we had to kind of up our game and get our tech in place and be able to engineer and do all that, oh, that was tough. So thank you to all of those studios. Some of my favorite studios shut down, and it's so sad, and I hope that they, you know, we're now coming back to a different place. I'm so glad when I see people in studios, and they're like, oh my gosh, I'm so happy to be back in studio, seeing people, so. Laya: Well, and it's true because even the engineers -- Anne: Yeah. Laya: -- like I have great respect for these engineers and the sound designers that are manning the board and the client in one ear. Anne: Yup. Laya: And they've got another client patched in from somewhere else. And they have really been the lead for all these years -- Anne: Oh yeah. Laya: -- to really help craft a comfortable setting for -- Anne: Yeah. Laya: -- so many of us that are dealing with our own insecurities or -- Anne: Sure. Laya: -- our own demands or our own needs that are happening on every angle of the table or the studio. And so I have a whole new respect having really had to shift that in house, but now it's, you know, it's a new skill learned, and I really haven't seen anywhere where you can learn the art of how to be your own BOSS in the booth -- Anne: Right? Laya: -- so this should be an interesting conversation. Anne: Well, I think, first of all, you have to educate yourself on some of these technologies that are -- Laya: Yep. Anne: -- that may be required of you. So number one, first of all, you've got to connect to a studio if you're doing a live direct, right? Or you have to be able to connect a client to be able to hear you. And so -- Laya: Yeah, your studio, right? Anne: Yeah. There are a lot of ways to do that. I know that prior to the pandemic, we were doing, a lot of people were doing stuff via Skype, and then Zoom kind of became a thing. I've had people connect via Zoom. Laya: Yeah. Anne: And I'm going to give a shout-out to, you know, our sponsor ipDTL, because I've always been able to connect other people to me via ipDTL and a very easy -- Laya: Yeah, flawlessly. Anne: Flawlessly, seamlessly, in a wonderful -- and the cool thing is, is that I even have a phone number, like my ipDTL, somebody can call a phone number and connect up with me via ipDTL. So on the other end, if you've got a client who's not technical -- Laya: Yep. Anne: -- at the very least, just give them a phone number and they can connect. Laya: Always. Anne: Now -- Laya: That's awesome. I didn't realize that about them. Good share, for sure. Anne: Yeah. Laya: For sure. Anne: But even before that, if you want to get even more elementary, right -- Laya: Of course. Anne: -- I used to have people connect to me in the studio by having my phone and earbuds. And so I'd have them call my cell phone, put my earbuds in my ear, and then my headphones over, right, my ears. Laya: Oh wow. Anne: And they would be in my ear. And it was like before you had to do a complicated -- there were people that would talk about having complicated phone patch in to your studio. And then thank goodness for cell phones with earbuds. Laya: Right. We still call it phone patch -- Anne: Right? Laya: -- but it's like, we're actually, we've upped the tech a little bit. Right? Anne: Yup. Laya: It's not necessarily a phone, but yeah, you're right. There's so many clients and partners out there that need to pass it on to somebody that isn't used to this program, you know, is used to just going into a studio and letting somebody else handle it. So you gotta make it easy for them with something as simple as a phone number -- Anne: Yeah. Exactly. Laya: -- or a Zoom link or something that they're used to. You got to meet them where they are. Anne: Yeah. I think that's your client non-technical person that needs to be able to hear what you're doing with their copy -- Laya: Yeah. Anne: -- is a phone patch, the cell phone number, the Zoom connection, Skype connection. And that's just something that you want to make sure that as a talent, when they are connected, they are either muted when you are obviously voicing the copy or, you know, you are muting them so that you're not getting the feedback. Or even if they're in your ear, you don't want that to bleed through. So -- Laya: Yeah. Anne: -- make sure that you have a good mute system or you know how to mute clients when you are speaking the copy. Laya: Yeah. Anne: And that I would say the very elemental client connect to us in our studio, those are some viable methods. Now what about connecting to studios? We have a couple of different options here. Laya: Yeah, we do. And I even want to go back a step if, if that's all right with you, Anne. Anne: Sure. Laya: Because I found that more and more of my clients who are used to into a studio may not be used to connecting now virtually with a studio. And so they're just coming straight to me as the voice talent saying like, how do we get this done? And so I offer a few solutions, right? I say, you know, um, I have multiple connectivity options. You can connect with me via the digital methods, which would be Skype, Google Hangouts, Zoom -- funny story as a side, I offered just to Zoom and Skype to a client that works with Google. And so they were like -- Anne: Oh wow. Laya: -- oh no, we do Google Hangouts. And I was like, oh yeah, of course -- Anne: Got to offer that. Laya: That's now, don't want to offend Google. So of course that's in the mix or phone patch, you know, I say, if you've got a conference line -- Anne: Sure. Laya: -- but right from the jump I say, you know, or I would prefer to connect with a studio of your choice, or I can recommend one for SourceConnect or ipDTL -- Anne: ipDTL. Laya: -- or anything like that that makes it easy on them. So I first put it in their court when approached with it, because I do find that so many times, they're like, uh, how do we do this? You know, at least that was the case in the very beginning. Anne: Well, I want to add to that list, in addition to your visual hangouts, if they just need an audio hangout, there's also Bodalgo Call. There's also -- Laya: Yes. Anne: Right? That they can just connect up audibly. And by the way, I had some international clients that Zoom did not work. And so they had to use Skype. And that was the only thing that -- Laya: Skype is another one, yeah. Anne: -- will work. Really depends on certain protocols, I know, of security. Laya: Yep. Anne: And so one was Skype. Another person could only connect via Zoom. The other, if it's audio only, it could be, but Bodalgo Call. There's also Open Connection. I'm trying to think what else is -- I think now, um, I'm just trying to think. There is a new capability of I -- maybe it's Mac iOS that you can connect an audio call. I'm gosh, I'm now, I'm going to, I'm going to go crazy trying to think of it. But anyways, there are those other options where if you just need an audio connection where they listen in, you can offer that, where they don't have to dial a number, but they can join in via computer. Laya: Yes. Anne: And there's audio options for any of these. Laya: Oh for sure there is. Anne: Yeah. So obviously if you don't have to have video, which I recommend, to be honest with you. I don't know if I really want people that in my booth, you know, when I'm performing -- Laya: I agree with you. Anne: -- like you don't have to look at me. Laya: I agree with you. In fact, I want to touch on that a little bit, because in addition to that, like I hear Zoom and I'm like, oh my gosh, I got to like, look presentable. Anne: Gotta do my hair. Laya: But a couple of key points there for me have been, well first, I'll ask them what their preferred connectivity, but I'll asterisk with, if you find that playback during our session is going to be essential -- Anne: Oh yes. Laya: -- for decision-making with your client -- some clients are just like, no, just send me -- I just want to listen in. And they're very low hassle, I don't know. Anne: Yep. Laya: They're easy to deal with. And so that you've worked with them in the past. It's no big deal. They just want to listen in. And sometimes they've got a lot of people on the line, and a lot of personalities and they definitely want playback. And I said, well, hey, unless we're connecting to a studio, which can absolutely engineer that -- Anne: Sure. Laya: -- the only way that my capabilities are going to allow playback are through Zoom. I haven't found any other playback capabilities, albeit I haven't looked very hard, but I'm like you, have an Apollo. I use Adobe Audition. And I have found that the only thing I can do playback on is through Zoom, if they're not using SourceConnect, of course. What are your options? Have you found any? Anne: So that's really interesting because I have an Apollo, and I use Twisted Wave. So my Apollo acts as a virtual audio output device -- Laya: Interesting. Anne: -- because I can play it within Twisted Wave, and they'll be able to hear it, which is something I didn't have until I got the Apollo. Other interfaces, they did not act as that. There's some software that you can load on your computer that can act as a virtual audio output device, like Sound Flower. The other thing too, if I need to play back for a client or a studio, I use ipDTL, which allows me to -- Laya: Right, perfect. Anne: -- play it back. But it's always like, oh, can we get playback? And I'm like, all right, but it's the raw audio. Laya: Yeah, I haven't cleaned it. Anne: I haven't edited anything out. But that's my paranoid, non-engineer, you know -- Laya: Yeah. Anne: -- going, oh my God, all right, I can play it back, but you're going to hear that mouth or something. Laya: And those curveballs can really throw you off your performance games. Anne: Yeah, yeah. Laya: So it's important to know all these avenues. And I'm so glad you pointed out those playback options. It might just be in my lack of knowledge or education -- Anne: ipDTL. Laya: -- on the matter. So I'm going to look that up, but yeah, of course. So I'm going to offer that. They're my partner now too. Anne: But if I had my choice, if I had my choice, if I am on the line with a studio, and I'm connected via ipDTL, SourceConnect, Connection Open, and I think there's another high quality audio connection option out there right now. Forgive me that I can't think of it right now, but ipDTL and SourceConnect are the two big ones, but I -- Laya: And SessionLink, I think I've done -- Anne: Oh, SessionLink. Laya: Yep. Anne: That's it. That's the one I was thinking of. So those are options when you want to connect up to a studio, and when that happens, I love it because the studio engineer can typically do the playback. Laya: Same, same. Anne: Yeah. Laya: I'm like, yes, I can finally just focus on me -- Anne: Being an actor. Laya: Yes. Uh, I wish buyers knew what a better performance they probably get -- Anne: Right? Laya: -- and a smoother transition when they get, when you're dealing with a studio and an engineer. It really does take the pressure off. So let's talk about what happens when it doesn't go so well. Anne: You're flustered. Laya: Yeah. Anne: So number one, I'm going to say this, just from experience and just from a tech experience as well. Not just voice over, but being, being a techhead for 20 years, always have a backup plan -- Laya: Always. Anne: -- because things can fail. Connections can fail. I've been noticing recently there's been some conversations about one of the providers not working so well. I've had my days where, you know, things just happen. Like ipDTL is slow or weird or something doesn't connect, or SourceConnect, right? It's just not working the way -- maybe SourceConnect Now. Oh, that's the other one, by the way, they can do playback, probably, SourceConnect Now. Laya: Okay. Anne: So those things, what do you do if one thing doesn't work? You always have to have your backup. And you know, in the heat of the moment when the client is there, and you don't know when you can reschedule that session, you certainly don't want your interface failing. You don't want your Internet network to fail. So if you can have backup points all along the way, meaning what if your microphone, I don't know. All of a sudden your microphone like dies, right? Do you have another microphone? Can you swap it out quickly? Do you have another audio interface? Do you have another network, Internet network, like a backup Internet connection? Those are things that I think as a professional, you need to have those in place. So that during an important session, usually when it's a live directed session, I'm going to say it's probably a pretty important, not that our self-directed sessions aren't important, but when it's a live directed session, there's that added pressure. You've got the client usually on the line or the studio on the line that you're trying to make a good impression. Like, hey, I got this. And you certainly don't want to seem any less than professional or prepared -- Laya: Yes. Anne: -- when something bad might happen. So that's my first, my first advice. Laya: I can't agree with you more. And let me just share from experience. Anne: Yes. Laya: First of all, it happens to all of us -- Anne: It does. Laya: -- and we're all human. So just admitting calmly and in control to whoever may be affected -- Anne: Calmly. Laya: -- you know, we're having an issue -- exactly. Oh my God, freaking out, is not the way to go with your clients. But if you can admit, hey, you know what, I'm experiencing something that's unusual right now. Give me just a few minutes. And if we can break for five, I'll get right back to you. Sometimes -- Anne: You are like the epitome of calm. I'm just saying, like the way you just said that, I just love it. I'm not quite sure I could say it so coolly, but you just -- that was awesome. Laya: You know, just give me a moment. Anne: Just a moment. Laya: Get your meditation voice on. No, so to me, I've actually had this happen on two occasions where the power surge has gone out, like a brown-out in the middle of the afternoon for no reason. There's not even -- it's like a rolling blackouts. You know, sometimes, city's done -- that has happened to me once before. And let me tell you, I had a plan and I had a backup. Now I wasn't able to use the Apollo because that's powered, but I have -- Sound Devices has another DAW system that I use. And I was able to use -- my power was backed up -- Anne: Nice. Laya: -- and flipped on a candle. And I was able to conduct a session -- Anne: Careful in the booth with that candle. Laya: Exactly. Right, right. Having a power outage. Anne: Yeah. Laya: I mean, something as crazy as that. Anne: Yeah. Laya: And of course everyone understands, but you know, they may have a lot riding on the session as well, under deadline, with a new client and what have you. So you got to have a backup. Anne: Can I just say that absolutely the power is super important, and you may not even realize until you're live, right, and with a client, your Internet connection failing -- Laya: Yes. Yep. Anne: -- or especially when you're connected wifi. And if you're connected directly to a studio or to a client, it really does help to have that dependable, reliable Internet connection that doesn't have dropouts. Laya: Yep. Anne: And wifi, I'm sorry, guys. I know wifi is convenient and easy and not a lot of people are necessarily technical or know, but it helps to be directly connected -- Laya: Definitely. Anne: -- to your router, to your Internet at all possible costs because that is going to be one less point of failure. So. Laya: Yep, hard-wired in is the way to go for sure. As soon as you can, uh, establish that connection with your studio or with your home Internet, and even upgrade to a business Internet system where you've got more bandwidth, hopefully you, you know, maybe even got fiber in your area. Anne: Sure, yeah. Laya: That's just some key stuff. And that way you can use, if -- as your backup can be your wifi hotspot on your cell phone, if need be. That's happened to me before as well. Anne: Oh yeah, that's always my second. My second Internet connection is my wifi hotspot, which is great to have that Internet connection. Now, what about, okay, mentally, right? Technically, look, you just have to be prepared with backups, and you have to understand hopefully enough to know how to disconnect, reconnect. I always, by the way, if I'm going to finish up on the technical aspect of being prepared, take a picture of your connections into your DAW and you know what I mean? And, and into, into the whole booth, right? Your monitor's connected this way, your microphones are connected here into your audio device. And so take pictures of the back of it -- Laya: Great tip. Anne: -- label your cables and -- Laya: Oh, label my cables, that's absolutely key. Anne: Label your cables. Laya: Label the cable should be like hashtag. Anne: Label the cables. Laya: I love it. Anne: And also, well, computer backup too doesn't it hurt. So always have that second. And I use my travel rig as my backup, right? So I have a laptop, and I've got a different interface, and I've got another microphone at the ready pretty much so that I can go there. And, but if you don't, make sure that you're taking pictures of how things are connected. 'Cause even me being a technical person, you know, in the heat of the moment, you want to make sure that you can react quickly. Laya: Yeah. Anne: So now mentally, I had an experience where I had a live directed session with a very large client. One of the clients that -- a client I've always -- a dream client that I've always wanted to be connected to. And I actually experienced an engineer who was trying to, I don't even know how to say it, was trying to impress the client in his own way and made me do like, I'm going to say, three takes of every single line of a fairly large medical narration project. And it became very stressful for me because every single -- and I didn't know, he had planned on doing three takes of every line, and this what should have been an hour session turned into three and a half hours. And by the time that was done, I was exhausted. And mentally I was really frustrated, and it was starting to affect my performance. So -- Laya: Absolutely. Anne: -- mentally you need to be prepared for that kind of a pressure. And sometimes I say, it's good to have a practice session with somebody. If you've got a close connection, even a voiceover talent that you are -- have an accountability group or something, do some test sessions and have things go wrong, and see how you can react. It does help at least the preparedness or feeling better, because mentally, if your performance is suffering, that's tough. What are your -- Laya: Yeah. Anne: -- do you have some suggestions, Laya -- Laya: Oh gosh, sure. Anne: -- for mental, you know, how to recover mentally? Laya: Yeah. Well, sure, and again, that happens to everybody also, right? Anne: Yeah. Laya: Even the pros of the pros, the top people -- Anne: Yep. Laya: -- there's always sometimes just somebody in the group that's either trying to establish themselves -- Anne: Yes. Laya: -- because they're posturing for whatever reason is going on for them, maybe they haven't had the best day, or they're trying to prove themselves -- Anne: Exactly. Laya: -- in the room. And you know what? You just have to remember, you're the hired gun. Anne: Yep. Laya: You're the hired -- you, you're just there to listen and just take orders -- Anne: Yep. Laya: -- and leave your ego at the door -- Anne: Exactly. Laya: -- and just try to serve them and the copy and the client to the best of your ability. But I have been in that situation several times before, and it really doesn't come down to -- if you can remember, it really is not about your performance. Sometimes it's easy to recognize these people sometimes in a session. Anne: Yep, yep. Laya: You know, first sometimes even taking a step back, there's a lot of people coming at you. And so when I'm in a self-directed session or not a self-directed, but when I'm engineering the session myself, and I'm not connected to a studio, and if I am, sometimes there's a lot of cooks in the kitchen, and there's a lot of people coming at you with all different opinions. Anne: Sure. Laya: And sometimes I'll listen to them all. If it calms down, you know, maybe it's bubbling up for a minute or two -- if it calms down, I'm able to get the focus again. I usually come back and say, okay, so-and-so, so tell me, this is how I thought I heard that. This is my translation of that. But to keep it super clear, moving forward, do you think I can get that direction from just one person? And sometimes it's a reframe, and that sets a neutral tone -- Anne: Sure. Laya: -- for all the personalities that are on the phone. Right? Anne: Yeah. Laya: And so, because that can mess with you mentally as well. Anne: Oh yeah. Laya: And so I think establishing that and like re-getting control of the session, that can help when all those personalities are chiming it, or they're asking for multiple retakes, and you're just, you're like, well, but I'm doing it. You know? You start to second guess yourself. Anne: That's the thing that's such an -- I'm glad you brought that up because it's so important when they're asking for a different take. And sometimes the people that are asking for it, they don't know how to ask for it. Laya: Yep. They don't know the language to use. Anne: They don't know the language. Laya: Right? Anne: And hey, sometimes even people that do know the language don't know how to ask for that. And so you have to be very aware that this is something that will happen to you. And at one point, if they're asking you for so many retakes, then your confidence level starts to really fluctuate. Laya: Yeah. Anne: And I like in my head, I'm like, oh my God, did I not give them what they want? Well, I just gave them that. What, how did that not work? Really? And so that sort of conversation that you have in your head, that can really start to affect your performance. My go-to is breathing, just breathe, you know, in through the nose and exhale. I just heard my nose [phonetic]. Laya: Yeah. Anne: Breathing in deeply. And that helps a lot. Laya: Even on top of that shaking, like sometimes it's okay to say, hey, you know what? Anne: I need a minute. Laya: I needed just a moment. If you can take a break for just a few minutes, let me shake it off real quick -- Anne: Yup. Laya: -- and come right back to you with a fresh set of ears on my own, you know, in my own headphones. Anne: Yup. Laya: And maybe that will help. Anne: Yeah. Laya: 'Cause I want to make sure that you're getting exactly what you want out of this session. Anne: Exactly. Laya: And as long as you continue to put it back on them, but are humble and human enough to say, you know what? I just need a moment. Um, let me get some water, step out for just a second. And I'll be right back with you. Anne: Yeah. Laya: And sometimes that's enough to break up even them in their own headspace. Maybe they didn't even realize that's like a good way to send a signal. Like, you're overdoing it. Anne: Yup. Laya: And the talent needs to regroup. And that's a very professional thing to do. Anne: Yeah. Laya: And it's totally acceptable. Anne: And sometimes, sometimes they'll either say too much or they won't say anything and you'll be like, oh, okay. Or they'll just, you'll do a number of retakes. And then there'll be like, okay. And then you'd be like, oh my God, I didn't give them what they need. That's it. I'm done. They're never hiring me again. That's the other kind of like, self-deprecating language that might happen -- Laya: Oh, for sure. Anne: -- in your head, is like, oh, okay. They didn't react. And so what are they thinking? And so that can make it a little bit scary -- Laya: Yeah. Anne: -- in your head. So just, you know, for me, I love how, you know, let's take a moment. That always helps me and the breathing, and understand that sometimes you may be giving them exactly what they need, and they're just not responding. Laya: Yeah. Maybe they're distracted. They're something else. Anne: That's right. Laya: They're scrolling on their phone or another email's come through. Anne: That's right. Laya: That can be a challenge -- Anne: Yeah. Laya: -- when you're working virtually like this, you don't know what the other person is experiencing. Anne: Yeah. Laya: I remember one time recently I was on a call with two producers that were partners in two different states, and they clearly did not gel up. They were neck and neck. Anne: Yup. Laya: One of the producers had her kids screaming in the background. So it's in those moments that you have to kind of quickly empathize and identify where the energy source is and the chaos that may be happening for them. Anne: Sure, absolutely. Laya: Bring the calm to the mic and say, you know, what, what I'm hearing from you is this, what I'm hearing from you is this. Would you agree that it's more like this, and you want -- this is the end result here? And then also, like you said, kind of command the room to the best of your ability. You know? Anne: Yeah. Laya: Sometimes it's easy to say, to get the best performance today and I want to deliver what you want, I'm going to need everybody to mute their microphones, and let me get one source of direction or feedback going. And if they don't give it to you, like you're saying, say, okay, so can I get some feedback? You're welcome to ask the questions. And I think sometimes we forget that we can take control of those sessions. Anne: Yeah. Laya: It's one of the most empowering things to feel when you finally feel confident enough to do so. Anne: And the other thing too is just to know that these things do happen, right? It's so hard to predict what can happen in the booth when you have multiple people, what kind of like -- did you mention -- what kind of day they're having, too many people like that are hearing it differently than their head. Remember that we all hear the copy differently in our heads. The best thing you need to do is try to align that sound to what the client wants, right? And that client can differ. You could have a, I don't know, you could have a one, a marketing director or the, that hears it one way. And you could have a producer that hears it a different way. And as you mentioned, the two are clashing, and they might be at the same time directing you or even not. Let's say you've done the session. And then they come back and ask you for something different. So understand that that's absolutely something that can happen. And it has nothing to do with your performance. Laya: Right. Anne: And you could have given them exactly what they asked for. And a lot of times, I say this all the time, the way that you got the job is not always the way that you'll be directed to do the job once called upon to do it. Laya: So much so. Anne: Right? Laya: Right? That happens all the time. Anne: Because you have a different director, you have a different set of ears, and you have somebody that hears it differently directing you. So it is always very subjective to the person that is directing. And also, I'm just going to say, if you get the check, that's it. Consider it an amazing day. Laya: Yep. Anne: Consider you've given the client what they've wanted. It may not be what you agree or think is the way it should be. Right? But you've given the client what they wanted. And that's the most important thing. Laya: Yeah. And I would say that the -- in the end, no matter how the session goes, I always like to close with a big thank you. Thank you. I -- first of all -- Anne: Yes. Laya: -- I write, and I forgot to say this in the very beginning, but I've always got a notepad with me. As people are making their introductions, I always write down everyone's name so that I -- Anne: Good idea. Laya: -- call of them by name throughout the session, to the best of my ability I can call the director or the producer, whoever's calling the shots by their name, repeat their names again and again so they know that you're very focused on who you're dealing with, even though you're not in the same space. Anne: Sure. Laya: And then at the end close by being, you know, thank you very much for having me. I'm so proud that you selected me for this project. I really hope to have the opportunity to work with you again in the future. Anne: Absolutely. Laya: Good luck on your project and thanks again. Anne: And bam. Laya: And then I think the engineer, if there is one and, you know, wrap it in a nice bow -- Anne: Yep, yep. Laya: -- so they know no matter what, you left with a big smile -- Anne: Sure. Laya: -- and very grateful for their time -- Anne: Yes. Laya: -- and for selecting you. And then, you know, maybe they'll remember, you know, it, wasn't just an awkward, like, okay, thanks. Thanks, guys. Bye. Anne: Yeah. End it professionally gracefully, and you know, again, it's one of those things, then don't stay too long either at the very end. Laya: No, yeah. Anne: Don't expect -- there should be nothing, except thank you. It was a pleasure working with you and good luck with the project. They do not owe you anything else. They don't owe you praise. They don't owe you, hey, well, you know, we'll contact you for the next job. They owe you nothing -- Laya: Yeah. Anne: -- because that is a job. And ultimately, if you've done it to their satisfaction, you'll get paid for it. And so don't be, don't be emotionally affected by any of it at the end. Just close it warmly with a nice little bow. I like that. Wrap it up with a bow and onto the next one. Laya: Yep. And I would say the other thing, and I've -- I made this mistake early on. I realized very quickly it was inappropriate, but the end of the session is not a good time to say, hey, I'd love a copy of that spot when you're done. Anne: Yeah. Oh gosh. Yes, yes, exactly. Laya: Unless you really know the person -- Anne: Good point. Laya: -- or like, it's just, you one-on-one, I'd love to see what you come up with. You know, when this is thing is done. Anne: Yep. Laya: If it's not that easy and comfortable, that is not the time to be asking for anything. Just bow out gracefully. Anne: I totally agree with you right there. Totally. That makes you look a little bit, I don't know, desperate, maybe? Laya: Hungry. Yeah, a little hungry. Anne: And I would say it's a good opportunity for you maybe a month or two down the road when you know the spot's been released to maybe reconnect and then say, hey, thanks so much. Just wanted to say it was a wonderful opportunity. And by the way, if, at that point, if, hey, if you wouldn't mind, is there a way that I might be able to see the finished product? I love it when engineers and producers send me the -- that's the best when they send it to me when it's done. And I'm like, oh my God, like too few people do that. Laya: Yeah. I wish they knew how valuable that was, that currency is. Anne: Yeah. Laya: You know? Anne: I have a couple of really awesome producers that I work with who will just send me the spot, like on, I don't have to ask for it. They send me the spot when it's done. And I'm like, oh, this is so awesome. So that gives you that permission to share it. And just, it's just a good thing to see your finished product. But -- Laya: Yes. Anne: -- yeah. Laya: And I would like to mention too, that part of that follow-up process, only when appropriate -- Anne: Yes. Laya: -- but it helps to write down those names because a -- Anne: Sure. Laya; -- few weeks later, or even a few days later, in some instances -- you got to feel it out and trust your gut -- if it was appropriate for you to make contact, meaning your agent didn't book that for you -- Anne: Right. Laya: -- and there's not a middleman or anything like that -- Anne: Yeah. Laya: -- having their name or their studio affiliation, it'll at least allow you to find them or follow their studio on Instagram. Sometimes we are given the name of the studio or their production company that's working with it or the agency that's creating the piece -- Anne: Sure. Laya: -- not necessarily the client. Great time to make a followup connection, be it LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, and follow their work, continue to champion them and cheer them on. Anne: Yes. Laya: Or just drop them a line on LinkedIn and say, hey, I had a great session with you last week. Just wanted to say and take care of yourself. Hope all is well. Anne: Yes. Laya: I look forward to keeping an eye on your creative output, you know, in the months to come or something like that. It's a great way to follow that up too. Anne: Excellent point about if you get this work through an agent, and I just want to reiterate this, if you get work through your agent, I strongly recommend reconnecting with your agent first, before. Laya: Yes. Anne: Like don't connect the client directly -- Laya: No. Anne: -- connect to the client directly after the job or at any point, really, if it came through your agent, because that's a relationship that that agent has worked probably for a number of days, months, years, whatever, to connect and to secure. And you don't want to just kind of go in between that. So handle that professionally. Always go through your agent if the agent is the one that set that up for, if you have any questions or if you want to connect or say, do you think it would be okay if I sent them a thank you or ask for a copy of it? So excellent point. Wow. It was a great discussion today, Laya. Laya: Yeah, love these BOSSes in the booth. Anne: BOSSes in the booth. Laya: I know our listeners are going to be able to take control of those situations -- Anne: Yeah. Laya: -- because all of them can crop up. But in this day, this modern times, you really need to wear multiple hats -- Anne: That's right. Laya: -- in the booth. And that comes down to client relations, to engineering, to tack -- Anne: Yep. Laya: -- to being your actor, your best performance self, all those things with eloquence and grace, and then you'll win. Anne: There you go. Laya: You know, you'll be the BOSS in the booth. Anne: Modern BOSSes in the booth. All right, I'm going to give a great, big shout-out to my modern connectivity -- Laya: Yes. Anne: -- through ipDTL, our sponsor. We love them. Thank you so much, ipDTL, for always connecting me with BOSSes like Laya. You too can be a BOSS connected ipDTL person. Find out more at ipdtl.com. All right, guys, have an amazing week. Laya: Thanks, everybody. Anne: We'll see you next week. Bye. Laya: Bye-bye. >> Join us next week for another edition of VO BOSS with your host Anne Ganguzza. And take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at voboss.com and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies, and new ways to rock your business like a BOSS. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via ipDTL.

Bosses, your time is money. Don't waste a second of it! Anne + Laya dive deep into all the things that keep their businesses on track every day. From adding personal time to the calendar to automating follow up emails, you'll want to try it all. Transcript >> It's time to take your business to the next level, the BOSS level! These are the premiere Business Owner Strategies and Successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a BOSS, a VO BOSS! Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. Anne: Hey everyone. Welcome to the VO BOSS podcast. I'm your host Anne Ganguzza, along with the amazing, happy new year, very special guest cohost Laya Hoffman. Laya, yay! Laya: Hey Anne, happy new year. Anne: Happy new year to you. How are you, Laya? Laya: Did you rock it? I'm great. I'm like ready to seize this year. Anne: Did I rock it? Like every new year's -- Laya: Did you rock it? Anne: I'm getting older now, so it's harder and harder. Laya: It's slower rocking. Anne: It's slower rocking for me, but you know what? I celebrate it just as much, however, I may not be awake exactly. Laya: Yeah. I mean, well, it's funny. I used to run nightclubs for a living, and so New Year's Eve was the biggest thing that we did all year long. And I can't even tell you the planning and the hours awake that I stayed. Anne: Oh, I can imagine. Laya: It's probably not something I would admit publicly. And here I am, but now I'm like to me, a rocking new year is in bed by 10. Anne: And you were probably the thing about that is you were probably working at the stroke of midnight. Laya: Oh working, oh, for sure. I was, I was on stage commanding the audience, doing the thing popped in the balloons. Oh yeah. The whole nine yards. Anne: The whole nine yards. Laya: These days, my rocket new year is much more low key. Yeah. Anne: And it got very confusing when my husband and I moved from the east coast to the west coast. Cause now we're like, well, okay, can we celebrate it at 9:00? Laya: Yes, you can. Yes, you can. Because the ball drops at 9:00. Absolutely. Anne: The ball drops at 9:00 out here. Laya: Yes, it does. Anne: And I still get confused. I don't know. We've been out here forever and I still get confused, but anyway. Laya: You can do it. You can do it. Anne: We go on. Laya: I say so. Anne: We go on. Laya: We go on to a better, brighter year, hopefully. Anne: That's right. Laya: Because gosh, I mean, we've had some success. We talked about this in the last episode. Anne: Yeah. Laya: There was a lot to look back on last year as being positive, and with this new growth mindset, we're walking into the new year, but we've got some good -- Anne: We've got work to do. Laya: -- ideas to share. Yes, we do. Anne: That's right. Laya: And we have to make this year the best yet. Anne: Yeah. So with all this work that we've already kind of like, here's what we want to do for our new year -- and of course, you know, over the actual time that you've had to think if you've had some time off, you might've come up with some more things that maybe you want to do for this new year, get yourself pumped up. So I think it's a great time to talk about, oh, how can I get this all organized? How can I be more productive with my time? Because I had a lot to do last year. And if I want to continue those, if I want to continue my brand and my parallel income streams, I still have a lot to do this year. So I want to know how can I do that more productively? Laya: That is a great question. I'm asking myself that all the time, but as a Virgo, A-typical personality, super organized and a little OCD, I think that for me, it starts with a bit of a daily checklist. And I mean, I don't always stick to it, but at least it's in my framework of which buckets of the business can I dip into and touch a little bit every day? So that's where my productivity window starts. How about you? Anne: Well, okay. So yeah, old school, old school, I have a to-do list. Laya: Your pen and paper. Anne: Yes, my pen and paper. And because I have to continue to make sure that I can actually write with a pen. It's interesting because when I write checks now like hand write checks, it's -- Laya: Oh yeah, your signature is all crazy. Anne: Yeah! Laya: Calligraphy is off. Anne: My calligraphy is off. Laya: Yeah. Anne: I feel like the pen doesn't fit right in my hand anymore. Laya: Yeah, isn't that crazy? Anne: And that's with my to-do list. I'm constantly scratching on my to-do list. And literally I have saved my to-do list for the past five years. And they're just these little, I have these wonderful, thin notebooks that I love to write in, lined. And I basically every single day, actually the night before, this is what helps me, I write down what I want to accomplish the next day or what I need to do for the next day. Laya: Love that. Anne: It doesn't always get crossed off because sometimes those tasks are, you know, multiple day tasks. But for me, what I love is, and I, and I remember you telling me, you like to cross those things off. I mean, that is like a -- Laya: I do. Anne: -- it's like a feel-good, I'm done, cross it off. I like that. I check beside it because I like to be able to see what I've done throughout the year. I still use that as kind of a checkpoint, but I also like to flip the page, right? To a new day, a clean -- Laya: A new day. Anne: -- slate. Laya: A clean slate. Absolutely. Anne: A clean slate, absolutely. And I make sure that that is the first thing that I do. Plus as I'm telling you, I'm getting a little older, my brain doesn't always remember everything that I have to do. Laya: Sure. Anne: So writing it down really helps cement this is what I have to do. It helps remind me of what I have to do. And the check mark is like so satisfying. Laya: Yes, it is. Well, speaking of that check mark, I actually have something maybe we are able to share with the BOSSes, like the actual document, but I created a VO business daily checklist for myself that is in those buckets. It has a few things. The buckets are, what do I do in my voice work? it's warm up stretch, vocalize, then all the way down the list into check emails, record and edit and deliver jobs, file all the work, you know, digital folders, et cetera, and make sure that -- Anne: Write the invoices. Laya: -- it's not all cluttered on the -- yes, the invoices, all of that. Then there's a bucket for business development. Then there's one for social, like stay active, but -- Anne: Love it. Laya: -- don't waste time here. That's a huge asterisk next to everything. Learn something new is another bucket and health and wellness is a bucket -- Anne: Nice. Laya: -- as we've talked about a lot before, so maybe I'll polish this thing up, and we can share it with our BOSSes. Anne: Yes, that sounds amazing. Laya: It's helpful. It's equal parts -- I print them out. I have it digitally, but then I can check them off and start a new page when everything's accomplished. Helps my mind stay focused and stay productive. Anne: Well, you know, what's really nice too, is if any of you guys are Mac users, the Notes, just the simple Notes application works great. You can create a checklist. Laya: Yes, it does. Anne: Yup. And what I love about it is you can check those things off and then you can see it nicely and neatly checked off. So if you aren't enthralled with your handwriting. Laya: No handwriting required. Anne: No handwriting required for the Notes version. And yeah, I think that that for me is the number one thing that helps me stay organized and be productive. And I'm going to talk a little bit about, 'cause you mentioned it, social media. I literally cannot have a social media window open when I am trying to be productive. I just -- Laya: Nope, nope, no notifications either for me. Anne: -- can't. Laya: Yeah. Anne: And even though I say to myself, I am advertising on social media, right? 'Cause I have events through my VO Peeps and my VO BOSS episodes I'm posting out there, and I want to make sure that I'm responding and engaging with the community. I cannot have the windows open for LinkedIn, for Facebook, for Instagram, for anything, if I'm trying to get something done. So I make sure that I have specific times during the day that I will open them up and check and then respond. Laya: Yes. I actually agree with that. And here's a tip for BOSSes. I use my social media, meaning Instagram and Facebook, the real, you know, schleppy social media channels, but are equally as important. I only check those in the morning over coffee, 8:00, 9:00. And then again in the evening, 5:00, 6:00. The reason I do is because those are peak times for engagement. And so if you are going to post, and people are going to engage, the chance of them seeing it is higher in those time points -- Anne: Oh yeah. Laya: -- as opposed to you posting it 2:00 in the afternoon or 9:00 at night. So those are great windows of opportunity for exposure and to compartmentalize. And then I check LinkedIn at lunchtime because that's when my business colleagues and people are most active on LinkedIn is straight in the middle of their day. It's going to trickle out on its own time, as we know about all these platforms. But for me, that's where I compartmentalize that time to make sure that I don't stay off. I'm not great at it, but that's where I like to stay. Anne: And I think it's been, I think that those specific times are really good. And you know, it's been an adjustment, I will say, because I know that people were more used to me being like immediately engaging on social media. And I know the past couple of years, I just cannot be immediately there to respond or comment when things come in, and it's okay. I've had to kind of be okay with that myself to not be as available out there. And I've always like stressed and worried. Well, if I don't respond, will I lose my audience? Laya: Oh gosh. Anne: But I think that that has been one of those things that I have had to really try to test out and see, okay, how many times do I need to revisit and engage with my audience before they figure, oh, this is just, nobody's really here. And I do know that I have certain social media avenues where people think I'm not there, and that I'm a robot. And that has been something that I've been really consciously trying to test out and rectify and figure out what is the -- is there a magical formula for when and how often I should revisit that? So that has been the last couple of years, it has been a definite like test on my part, and I've realized that I don't have to be there. And in reality, I think the way social media has gotten in the past where it's been a little more toxic, a little more frustrating, there are more people who are taking time off from social media. And it's a little more accepted that -- Laya: Oh, it's beyond accepted. Anne: -- I'm not there. Laya: And let me give you a perspective flip on the mindset of that. If I see somebody that's constantly on social media, like throughout the day, the first thing I think of is they're not busy in their work. Anne: Oh my goodness, yes. Laya: They're not successful because they're -- Anne: Absolutely. Laya: -- wasting their time here if -- they wouldn't be here if they had jobs in the booth. So when I see people that are super active all day long, I think what are you doing in your business? You're just chatting or responding to people. Anne: I love that you say that. Laya: So the mindset flip there is like, hey, the perception, maybe to others, if I am responding so much, is that I don't have enough work in my business. Anne: Well, yeah. Laya: And nobody wants to feel that way. Anne: Nobody wants that. Laya: But that candidly is sometimes what I see when I -- and not in our industry necessarily, when I see other people that I think are successful creatives. I'm like, what are you, how do you have time to be on this at 2:00 in the afternoon? You know? And so that's just a different way to shift your perspective. Maybe that'll help. I don't know. Anne: No, I actually, I love that you said that because there will be times I will see certain people, if they're continually commenting, continually posting, and I'll be like, what? Like, and this sounds horrible, but like, stop, like, just be quiet. Like just want to say, why are you here so much? Laya: Yes. Anne: Like if you're that busy, why are you still talking? Laya: Or if you're that successful, how are you that -- there's no way you're that successful if you were spending half your day or you're checking in every hour or whatever it is. And it's a willpower thing. Right? And so I'm like, maybe you're a little weak in your willpower, or maybe you're a little weak in your self-esteem that you've got to be on this all the time -- Anne: Interesting. Laya: -- looking for re-encouragement or looking for engagement when you should just be in your business. So that's kind of where I stuck in my head when I felt the same way about you. I started to notice how I felt when I saw that type of activity. Anne: Yeah, I think it's always -- Laya: Maybe that's a hack. Anne: I think it's always good to look inward. So how you -- it's similar to, let's say emails, right? So if I got an email from somebody, and it was unsolicited and they're trying to sell me something, and I look at it and inside I go really? Like, and that is my initial reaction. I think that all BOSSes should look to that. In terms of before you post something, before you email something, before you do anything, how would you react if it was done to you? That kind of thing, you know? Right. I mean, it's just, it's like life lessons 101. Laya: Sure, sure. Anne: If that happened to you, how would you feel? And so there are so many people that are silently doing that to every move possibly that you make on social media or in an email. They're silently making assessments. That's how I'll put it, they're making assessments. Laya: Sure. Anne: And so -- Laya: That's what I was doing. I, so I totally agree with that. Yeah. Anne: I think it's a good check to find out should I post, should I say that? Should I do that? So in terms of helping me be more productive, it actually has helped me to be more productive to limit myself -- Laya: Good for you. Anne: -- limit my input on social media. So that is definitely a number two productivity hack so that I can get my job done and not be distracted. Laya: Time management. Anne: Yes. Laya: You know, it's about everything. And it also kind of comes down to how you format your day. I don't know about you, but a typical day for me will be I get up and I'll do my wellness exercises, my meditation, we've talked about that. Get some fresh air, take care of my kid, get right down to work. I'll usually address -- and I, and I do this in stages and kind of in blocks. And I've learned this through some of my other voiceover mentors, because it's very easy to get wrapped up and scattered in your brain as to, oh, I should. I got to just get these invoices. And I just take a little bit of time every day, but I keep it organized, right? I'll handle all my top priority clients and agent auditions first or jobs, but usually a job isn't -- for me because I work shortform, is not usually left to the next morning unless it has to be. But the warmups for me tend to sit there, and then I'll continue to block the day where if there's jobs, in between those jobs or those sessions, I know I've got invoicing later this afternoon, I'm going to do all my invoicing in one block. And so those block mentality, as you compartmentalize your day, can help you stay productive. And there's a lot of thought about that, like work for 50 minutes and then take that 10-minute break, get up, walk around, get a snack, get a drink, what have you. And so if you can block your day -- Anne: That's important. Laya: -- that also helps with productivity. Anne: Well, as a matter of fact, my sessions are 50 minutes long. So I have 10 minutes to just relax and/or prep for my next session. And I wanted to kind of go back in terms of communication with clients, right? In terms of any type of communication with clients that you might do over and over again, there's a really cool feature that I love in, well, I have two ways that I do it. One is in Gmail. Gmail has templates now. So if you have a certain message that you send over and over to, let's say, a new contact, "hi, thanks so much for contacting. It's a pleasure to meet you. I'd be thrilled to be the voice for your next project." And so those types of templates can be automatically filled through the Gmail templates. I also had another thing that I purchased before the Gmail template came out and that was called Type 4 Me. And that's on a Mac. Laya: Oh, okay. Anne: T-Y-P-E, 4, the number four, Me. And that allows me to have all of these little like clips of the same type of emails, even my response, like my "warm regards, comma, you know, new line, new line, Anne Ganguzza." Laya: Right. Anne: That is, that is a clip. And I can just in a keystroke and with one, I'll do it. Like, thank you. I think I do, uh, TYWR, then it pops in those words for me into the email. And that helps me so immensely. Laya: Thanks for that hack, Anne, because I am a Mac user, and I'm slightly jealous. I know there's a way to convert into using your email to, or Apple Mail to Gmail, but I missed from my old days, those canned email responses. And so what I do is -- Anne: Yup. Laya: -- I have a document for that, but thank you for helping me to the Type 4 Me, for Mac. I knew there was something. Anne: There is. Laya: Because I do use canned email templates for a lot of things. I do -- I have one for generic inquiries, for generic corporate work or just what my kind of standard rates are. And that helps you streamline the process. Of course, I tweak and personalize where I need to and when I need to, but just like you see some templates features in some of the pay-to-plays, it's very helpful to -- Anne: Oh yeah. Laya: -- just continue to go back to that. I like to keep mine in Google docs, that way I can pull it from anywhere or in my notes, and it can be on my phone in case I'm on the go. And that makes sure that you don't miss anything when communicating quickly to a new client or sending -- Anne: Oh, it's so helpful. Laya: -- inquiry, right? So it's so key. Thanks for that, Type 4 Me. Anne: Type 4 Me. And I think also on the Mac, there is an auto-complete. If you type a few characters, there is an auto-complete, and you can set that up, and that's just comes with the operating system. However, I'm so used to -- and you might want to look into that. Laya: Sure. Anne: Just look into Mac iOS auto-complete, and see how you can enact that or enable that. But I love the type, the Type 4 Me is, it just pops up. It's a little application and I can just say, assign these few characters to this snippet. You know, so it's actually a snippet. Laya: Sure. Anne: And I love, love, love it, because it totally helps me. And I'll tell you another thing that helps me, which I found out a couple of years ago, because I do schedule meetings, and I'm in meetings quite a bit, not just with clients, but also with students. And so my other is a scheduling system, which is done through my Wix website that schedules on my calendar, integrates with my Google calendar, which by the way, I would not be able to live without my Google calendar. Laya: Same. Anne: Everything is scheduled into my Google calendar, and there's a lot of programs out there. Laya: My whole life. Anne: Yes, my life is Google calendar, and everything, there are lots of programs out there that integrate with a Google calendar. Laya: Yeah. Anne: So that is like another one of my hacks. Like literally here, if you want to talk to me or you want to get in touch with me, bang, go sign up for a free consult or just get on my calendar here. And those types of automations really help me to schedule when I can talk to people. Like I literally am scheduled out probably -- my days are pretty darn busy, but this is an ongoing thing with me. You literally need to get me at least a week or two in advance before I can fit you in. 'Cause I've got it so blocked out. Laya: Yeah. Anne: The biggest problem that I have is that if I don't block out time for me, then I have no time for me. That is an issue. Laya: Exactly. So you gotta be number one on your calendar. Anne: Yep. Laya: I agree with you in that I use Calendly, which I've found to be incredibly helpful, especially if you get into the customization. Because for me, I've got, of course I just spoke, I've got an Apple calendar and that does integrate with the Gmail calendars and things of that. I share a calendar with the household. My kid's got a calendar, you know, all of those things. If you're laser connected to Calendly and you can have your own VO calendar, from there, I compartmentalize whether you need a 15 minute precession chat or a SourceConnect test, or maybe you just need to talk about a project that's coming up. Maybe that's a 30 minute block. I've got my session blocks as well for an hour or 50 minutes. And that's helpful to send to my agents for instance -- Anne: Yes. Laya: -- where they're like, hey, we just need to know your schedule. Like what's your general availability for the next two weeks? I'm like, here's my link to Calendly and -- Anne: Oh my God. That's a perfect idea. I love that. Laya: Send that over. Now the thing is though for me, I've chose not to add it to my website. The con for me -- pro would be that it's super easy. The con is that then I would have no control over who's booking. And so I have it embedded in a private link on my website. That private link also has my revisions policy -- Anne: Yup. Laya: -- my professional services guarantee, and my resume in case somebody needs any of that old school, the old school resume information. Anne: Yup, yup. Laya: So I'll send that link to clients that are asking, or I'll just send the Calendly link for this specific time slot they're asking for which can be its own independent link. Like, hey, we just need a SourceConnect test. Well, here's all the 15 minute blocks that you could get in my schedule over the next infinity. So that to me has been a huge bonus hack as far as keeping things easy. And then you're not going back and forth with the well, yeah, 2:00 on Thursday -- Anne: Oh gosh, that takes up -- Laya: -- from this time to this time. Anne: -- so much time. Laya: You're actually -- and it makes you look way less professional and like you've got a system for your schedule, and that you're in demand. And so -- Anne: Well, yeah. Laya: -- I think that has, it serves many purposes. Anne: And I actually have it linked to my signature on my email. Laya: Nice. Anne: Here, set up a consult or whatever, schedule a chat with me. And so it just links to my scheduler, which is so, so helpful for me because you're right, the back and forth, "okay. So when are you available?" And I'm like, honestly, the best way to get in touch with me is here. Laya: Yeah. Anne: And I'll give them a link to my calendar to get on my calendar, and that just helps. And what's nice is it's automated. It has like, thank you. Here's how we're going to connect. You know -- Laya: Yes, same. Anne: -- it might be ipDTL, or it might be via phone call. It might be via Zoom. I've got all the different ways that you can connect with me. And it just makes my life so much easier. I'm going to say that when I implemented my schedule or my calendar, it literally saved me -- and it automated like sent out the emails. Laya: Yeah. Anne: Thank you for connecting. Here's your automated reminder. Laya: Yes, the follow-up on those are awesome. Anne: Oh, gosh, you can do follow-up. And the fact that it automated all of those emails saved me 50%, at least, of the time that I used to try to schedule people in at times and going back and forth with email. It just became really, really frustrating. Laya: Yeah. And the effort to become more accommodating to your clients, to your students, to whoever, even your friends, you end up wasting more of your time. Anne: Yeah. Laya: And so that's kind of a boundary set. That's really nice. And I love that you spoke to the automation on the backend. Anne: Yeah. Laya: Like I mentioned with Calendly, I can send an immediate reminder 15 minutes prior to session. Anne: Yup, yup. Laya: I can send a follow-up message two weeks after or a week after, or what have you, that says, hey, just checking in, making sure everything is clean with the audio, if you had any other needs. And so it takes that extra wheelhouse off of my mind. Of course, I still have my own method for following up with the client personally, but this just adds like this extra layer. And sometimes I'll get the response back, and they'll be like, oh, thank you so much for checking back in. And to be honest, I may have even forgotten and you know, to follow up or got so busy and something else. Anne: Yeah. Laya: So it saves just peace of mind and professionalism. It takes it to the next level. Anne: And I think also there are those programs or CRMs that can help you to -- Laya: Sure. Anne: -- once you connect with your contact, after you've done the job, it can send out an automated email that said "thanks so much again, it was a pleasure working with you and keep me in mind for any additional projects. If you have any questions in the meantime, feel free to contact me here" and boom, and then are actual like on a Wix platform, I have a few drip campaigns that are set up that will automatically contact my clients. So if anybody's on a Wix platform, it is part of the Ascend platform that you -- it's an add-on for email marketing. And basically, so after you connect with a client, you can have a "if then" statement that says, if they open this email, then three days later, send this email or send a followup. And there's lots of different scenarios. So it's really great. So I'll give an example for a VO BOSS interview. If somebody inquires about I want to be on the veal BOSS show, it goes through a whole campaign. Here, sign up here, fill out this form here. The form then sends me all the information, and then it gives them a link to the calendar, which then allows them to schedule, which then there's an automated email that says, thank you so much. Here's how you're going to connect with Anne. It'll send a reminder right before the connection. And then a couple of days after the actual scheduled session, there'll be a thank you that goes out. So it's really awesome the way that it can automate. Laya: I love that. Anne: And there's more than just -- that's the Wix platform. I also have an Active Campaign that I send emails out from to my lists. I also have client lists that can also do automations like that. Laya: Yeah. I've seen some of that same functionality in using HubSpot, which is a free CRM solution. You can connect Zapient to MailChimp. Anne: Yes. Laya: You can connect it to -- Anne: Is it Zapient? Laya: Zap -- Zapient? Anne: Or is it Zapier? Is it Zapier or Zay-pier? I can't remember. Are they two different things? Laya: I think they may be one in the same. Anne: Okay. Laya: I'm not going to fact check myself in this moment, but -- Anne: if you start with zap -- Laya: There's a zap somewhere. There's a zap somewhere out there. Anne: I've used it myself. And it's great. Laya: It's great. Anne: So if this happens, then do that. It's a really wonderful free app that you can do things like that with. Laya: And you can pull content too. Like if you have a hard time pulling all your email addresses because you've got multiple email accounts, or you're trying to create more of a contact list -- in fact, I recently found out an automation was in that cog wheelhouse that pulls my contacts from QuickBooks and put it into MailChimp. So I don't have my CRM solution fully vetted out by any means. I need all the help in the world, but trying these different productivity hacks for automation, there are many solutions out there that can make your life easier and less laborious, you know? Anne: Absolutely. And one other thing I'm going to oh, totally, totally recommend is go ahead, be brave and outsource things that you just -- Laya: Yes. Anne: -- don't want to spend your time doing, or it's too com -- I'm going to say like for me, accounting, I say it all the time. Everybody that's listened to any, to just one episode, I might say it every episode. I'm not sure, but outsourcing my accounting was the best thing I ever did for my business. Laya: Yeah. If you don't love it -- Anne: Don't love it. Laya: -- pay someone that does. Anne: And she's great. She's fast. She loves it. And I trust her. I trust her with my life. You know, she'd been doing my accounting for gosh, at least five years. So. Laya: And that's a great hack too. And I use somebody not for my voiceover business, but for the podcast. I have partnered with a very talented, very savvy copywriter, and she knows my style of I, and she creates a social media posts for the podcast that I do with my daughter, She Sounds Like Me. And I love it because it just takes that off my plate. But also we use a platform called Later, which is a social media scheduler. And what I love about that is that I can see what's coming. She can do a cross platform integration and schedule. I can approve it ahead of time. And then if I don't like where she's got it, or it doesn't feel quite right, or it's not timely, I can very easily shift the tiles. So it's either aesthetically pleasing or it's more on topic point or what have you. And that's become a seamless integration into my social media management. I've often thought about integrating it into my voiceover business page, but for me that's still very in the moment, very real time, very personal -- Anne: Oh yeah. Laya: -- and not exactly all that consistent at the moment because of just the last year of burnout. But I have found that Later is a great platform. And I feel like I've tried them all over the years, as far as social media scheduling goes. Anne: Yeah. Laya: So that one's pretty efficient. Yeah. Anne: I have a social media scheduler for, 'cause I have so many Facebook business pages, and Facebook for a while was really where a lot of my clients were. And so I have a Facebook scheduler, which also integrates with Twitter and LinkedIn. I can have so many social media to -- it's called Post Planner. Laya: Okay. Anne: And so I've been using that for years. And then also Facebook now has become, and/or Instagram, one in the same now, have their own scheduler now. Laya: Sure, they do. Anne: And so that has become fairly decent in terms of you can't schedule too far, but you can schedule out. So with the combination of those, I'm able to schedule the majority of my stuff out there. And then I will follow up with the engagement. Like I said, I can't be connected to social media every hour of the day, but when I do connect, that's when I engage and comment and respond and also post some interesting finds to my own timeline or add to what I've already posted before to keep it kind of fresh and not too predictable. Laya: Yeah. Absolutely. Another great resource that I've been loving because my days of graphic design or my experience there is limited -- I know what I like aesthetically, but there's no way I'm going to spend time creating unique graphics, whether it's for the show or for promoting the business or promoting something within the voiceover business, like we've done with the podcast. I love using Canva and I use Canva Pro for graphic design for so many things. Anne: Yay! Canva's amazing. Laya: And it's actually, yeah, speaking of integration and scheduling, Canva just introduced a scheduler within their platform. Anne: [gasps] Yes. Laya: And what I love to deep -- and take it to a next level, everyone asks who may not be savvy in those audio grams, where you're seeing how you've maybe just done a radio commercial, and you've gotten full permission from the client, you can use the spot on social or to promote your business, but they don't have moving imagery. So you grab the picture that represents the brand best or the concept or the campaign. And you overlay that audio on top. People are always asking, how did you do that? I use Headliner for that. Anne: Yup. Headliner's awesome. Laya: Love that. I use it for the podcast as well. And sometimes for some of my voice work or for my demos to make a moving image. But Canva now integrates with Headliner. Anne: Oh, amazing. Laya: So these, some of these systems are working together to not only plan, create, schedule, but overlay -- Anne: Yup. Laya: -- all in an effort to be more productive, more cohesive, and save you time. Anne: I have to plus like 21,000 for Canva because that literally, you don't have to be a graphic artist -- Laya: No, it's so easy. Anne: -- which not many people I know. Laya: It's intuitive. Yeah. Anne: And so I would struggle with Adobe because I have the Creative Suite -- Laya: Same. Anne: -- but it's not something I use every single day. I'm not a graphic designer, and neither are necessarily anybody that's working with me to do to post social media. But Canva has just joined us together in happy, joyous unity. Laya: Oh, I love it. I love it for my teams too. Anne: Yup. Laya: Like I was saying about my social media manager, we have folders that are specific to that brand. Anne: Yup. Laya: I have folders that are specific to my voiceover business or Cyla's voiceover business. And so to go in there and have this asset library -- Anne: Oh yeah. Laya: -- and the membership is very inexpensive. Anne: It is. Laya: There is a free version -- Anne: Yup. Laya: -- and then an inexpensive version. I just make sure -- Anne: I use Pro. Laya: -- that these are part of my -- yeah, me too, to integrate that as part of my business cost, because those memberships can save you so much time, energy, and effort and up-level the look and feel of your brand and your professionalism. Anne: I didn't know they had scheduling. Now I'm going to have to check that out. Laya: Yeah. Anne: That's awesome. Laya: I don't know what it integrates with or if it's a standalone scheduler, but I love that it's there. It's, everybody's thinking along those same lines, you know? Anne: God, good stuff. Laya: For sure. Anne: BOSS productivity hacks. Laya: Love it. Anne: You guys BOSSes, we would love to hear your productivity hacks. So we've given you the best of ours. And I think I am really, really excited for an amazing year this year, Laya, and I know you are too. Laya: Yes, let's work smarter, not harder -- Anne: There you go. Laya: -- and be smart and productive in our VO BOSS businesses. Anne: And I'll tell you what else is smart. Our sponsor, ipDTL. Laya: Yes. Anne: I love, love, love ipDTL. It allows me to connect with Laya, with all of my clients and with every BOSS out there. So you can find out more at ipdtl.com. You guys, have an amazing, productive week. And we'll see you next week. Laya: And happy new year, absolutely. Anne: Yes. Happy new year. Bye, guys. Laya: Bye-bye. >> Join us next week for another edition of VO BOSS with your host Anne Ganguzza. And take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobss.com and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies, and new ways to rock your business like a BOSS. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via ipDTL.

Exploring Tech Webinar for DEC 22 2021, the year in review   Having a tech look at all the hardware and software that caught my attention in 2021.   Register at:   https://visionaustralia.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_XMyRcnXdSVOHD9WCg2ng2w    Seeing AI iOS app as of the recent update now supports the Australian currency.   Finally finally finally, you can identify Australian notes via the currency mode in the Seeing AI iOS app. I just wish they would have put in QR code reading given what we have had to use with COVID-19.   New Fully Accessible Recording App for iOS, Pocket Recorder   Nice to see another recorder for iOS, and fully compatible with VoiceOver. I always think it is great when a developer goes that extra step and works on an app to make sure everyone can use it.   https://www.applevis.com/forum/ios-ipados/introducing-pocket-recorder-accessible-audio-recorder   Grid Frame Studio - Every Classic needs to be Framed   This company frames classic hardware to put up on your wall to display it proudly. Amongst other stuff, for me, I'm going to order the iPhone 3GS as this was the phone that supported VoiceOver, and the iPhone 4s for Siri support. Simply it is a deconstructed iPhone in this case. Other classic hardware is also available, I just focused on the iPhone. For the tech geek. https://gridstudio.cc   Apple Makes Maps more Useable in Australia   Apple Maps has finally been updated in Australia with a new UI, navigation, and public transport integration. Like all changes, I'm still getting used to the new interface, but so far so good, especially for public transport.   https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2021/12/apple-maps-australia/   Life 360 The Company Reported to be Bying Tile is Selling Location Data   This company allows family members to keep track of each other. As Life 360 already states in their privacy statement, they sell data to 3rd party's to keep the service free on anonymous location data, phone battery usage etc. Problem is, how much of Tile data if any will be sold to 3rd party data brokers, and can we be sure that it is perfectly anonymous. Just something to keep an eye on.   https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2021/12/life360-the-company-buying-tile-is-purportedly-selling-the-location-data-of-millions-of-families-and-kids/   Voice Access in Windows 11 Insider Build Note - Insider builds are beta versions of Windows before the commercial release of the next version. This sounds very similar to Voice Control on Mac/iOS, and nice to see it come to Windows 11 beta. Haven't tried it myself, but here is hoping it will work with Narrator and Windows Magnifier.   https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2021/12/08/announcing-windows-11-insider-preview-build-22518/   5 predictions for the Near Future from Bill Gates   The one that stood out for me was virtual conferences using VR glasses and haptic gloves to be “present” in an actual virtual meeting. Like the author states, not sure why we would want to do this in the first place.   https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2021/12/5-predictions-for-the-near-future-from-bill-gates/  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Could Using the Right Multi-Factor Authentication Save You? I had a good friend who, this week, had his life's work stolen from him. Yeah. And you know what caused it? It was his password. Now, you know what you're supposed to be doing? I'm going to tell you exactly what to do right now. Let's get right down to the whole problem with passwords. I'm going to tell you a little bit about my friend this week. He has been building a business for. Maybe going on 10 years now, and this business relies on advertising. Most companies do so in some way; we need to have new customers. There's always some attrition. Some customers go away. So how do we keep them? We do what we can. How do we get new customers? For him, it was. Advertising, primarily on Facebook. He did some Google ads as well, but Facebook is really where he was focused. So how did he do all of that? Here's the bottom line you have to, if you are going to be advertising on Facebook, you have to have an advertising account. The same thing's true. Google. And then, on that account, you tie in either your bank account or your credit card. I recommend a credit card so that those transactions can be backed up. And on top of all of that now, of course, you have to use a pixel. So the way the tracking works is there are pixels on websites, about those already. And the bottom line with the pixels. Those are also. Cookies are about the pixels are used to set a cookie so that Facebook knows what sites you've gone to. So he uses those. I use those. In fact, if you go to my website, I have a Facebook pixel that gets set. And the reason for all of that is so that we know with. I'd be interested in something on the site. So I know that there are many people interested in this page or that page. And so I could, I have not ever, but I could now do some advertising. I could send ads to you so that if you were looking at something particular, you'd see ads related to that, which I've always said. It is the right way to go. If I'm looking to buy a pickup truck, I love to see ads for different pickup trucks, but if I don't want a car or truck, I don't want to see the ads. It isn't like TV where it sometimes seems every other ad is about. Car or a pickup truck. It drives me crazy because it's a waste of their money in advertising to me. After all, I don't want those things. And it's also not only just annoying in money-wasting. There are better ways to do targeting. And that's what the whole online thing is. Anyways, I told you about that because he had set up this pixel years ago. Basically, the Facebook pixel gets to know you. All of the people who like you that might've bought from you. Cause you can have that pixel track people through your site, your purchase site, they know what you purchase on the shopping cart, et cetera. And you can identify these people over on Facebook and their ads because they abandoned the cart or whatever it is you want to do there. So there's just a whole ton of stuff that you can do for these people. And it's so bad. It is so valuable. It takes years to build up that account. Years to put that pixel in place. And our friend here, he had done precisely that. Then he found that his account had been compromised. And that is a terrible thing in this case because the bad guy used his account to place ads. So now there are really two or three problems here. We'll talk about one of them. Why was the bad guy going after him? He has been running ads on Facebook for a long time. So as far as Facebook is concerned, his account is credible. All of the ads he runs don't have to be reviewed by a human being. They can go up almost immediately. He doesn't have to wait days for some of these things to go up. So our bad guy can get an account like his that has years' worth of advertising credibility and now start advertising things that are not correct. So there again is part of the value of having one of these older accounts for advertising. And so the bad guy did that use his credibility. And then secondly, he used 25 grand worth of my friend's money to run ads. Also, of course, very bad, very bad. So I sat down with him. In fact, it was this last week, and I was out on a trip with just a vacation trip. It was absolutely fantastic. I never just do vacation. It's always business plus work whenever I do anything like this, but I was on a trip last week. And so my eldest son who works closely with me, and he's also part of the FBI InfraGard program. So I had him reach out to my friend, and he helped them out, and they talked back and forth. So here's the problem that he has. And I'm trying to figure out a perfect way to solve this. And I haven't figured that out yet. And if you guys have an idea because you are the best and brightest, you really are. So go ahead and drop me an email at me@craigpeterson.com if a good way around this particular problem, which is he has. This Facebook could count and many other accounts, including his website, hosting account, email account, et cetera. And. He has people who manage his ads for him. Who operates his website for him, who put up some promotions, advertising, and everything else. So these are third-party. This is what we generically call a supply chain, risk people who are not him have access to his stuff, his private property. And how does he do it, or how did he do it? Is he went ahead and gave them. Access by giving them accounts or passwords. How well were they guarding their passwords and their accounts? So the first thing I had my friend do was going to haveIbeenpwned.com. I had him put in his email address, the one he uses the most, and it showed up in five different. Hacks data dumps. So these are five various sites where he had used that same email address in this case. And he found out that in those five cases, the bad guy's got his passwords and personal information. All bad. And he went ahead and cleaned it up. So I said put in the password because have I been, pwned also let you check your password, just see if it has been used by someone else and then stolen. So there are billions of passwords in this database. It's incredible of all of these known passwords. So he put in his password, and no, it had not been stolen, but the problem is how about the people that were managing his ads on Facebook and managing his Facebook ad. We're the usernames, which are typically the email addresses and the passwords kept securely. That's a supply chain thing I'm talking about, and that's where I'd love to get him. But from you guys, me@craigpeterson.com. If you think you have a good answer, What we've been doing. And our advice to him was use one password. That's the only one to use. I don't trust last pass anymore. After their last big hack where they got hacked one password, the digit one password. And go ahead. And set it up. And in a business scenario, you can have multiple vaults. So have a vault. That's just for people that are dealing with your Facebook ad account, maybe have another vault for people who are posting for you on Facebook. Or better yet when it comes to Facebook, go ahead and have an intermediary that is trusted the, if this, then that, or there's a few of them out there that can see that you put the post up on the website and automatically posted on Facebook. So you don't have to get. All of these people, your passwords, but again, it's up to you. You got to figure out if that makes sense to you that those are the types of things that I think you can do. And that is what we do as well. Now, one of the beauties of using one password like that, where you're not sharing all of your passwords to everything you're sharing, the minimum amount of login information that you possibly can share is that if they leave your employees, All you have to do is remove their access to the appropriate vault or vaults, or maybe all of your vaults. And this is what I've done with people that worked for me in the US and people would work for me overseas, and there have been a lot of them and it has worked quite well for me. So with one pass, We can enforce password integrity. We can make sure the passwords on stolen. One password ties automatically into have I been postponed. If a password has been exposed, if it's been stolen online, it's a great way to go. Now I've got an offer for you guys who are listening. I have a special report that I've sold before on passwords, and it goes through talks about one password. He talks about the last pass, which I'm no longer really recommending, but give some comparisons and how you can use these things. Make sure you go and email me right now. Me, Me@craigpeterson.com. That's ME at Craig Peterson dot com and just ask me for the password special report, and I'll be glad to get that on-off to you. There is a lot of good detail in there and helps you, whether you're a home user or a business. So the next step in your security is multi-factor authentication. Interesting study out saying that about 75% of people say that they've used it for work or for business, but the hard numbers, I don't think they agree One of the things that you have to do is use good passwords. And the best way to do that is to use a password manager. I was talking about a friend of mine who had been hacked this last week and his account was hacked. His Facebook ad account was hacked. We asked him if we could reach out to. BI and he said, sure. So we checked with the FBI and they're looking to turn this into a case, a real case, because they've never seen this type of thing, the hijacking of an advertising account who hijacked it. And why did they hide jacket? Was this in preparation maybe for. Playing around with manipulating our next election cycle coming up. There could be a lot of things that they're planning on doing and taking over my friend's account would be a great way to have done it. So maybe they're going to do other things here. And our friends at the FBI are looking into it. How now do you also keep your data safe? Easily simply. When we're talking about these types of accounts, the thing to look at is known as two factor authentication or multifactor authentication. You see my friend, if he had been using multi-factor authentication. I would not have been vulnerable. Even if the bad guys had his username, email address and his password, they still would not be able to log in without having that little six-digit code. That's the best way to do multi-factor authentication. When we're talking about this code, whether it's four or 5, 6, 8 digits long, we should not be using our cell phones to receive those. At least not as text messages, those have a problem because our phone numbers can be stolen from us and they are stolen from us. So if we're a real target, in other words, they're going after you. Joe Smith and they know you have some, $2 million in your account. So they're going after you while they can, in most cases, take control of your phone. Now you might not know it and it doesn't have to be hacked. All they have to do is have the phone company move your phone number to a new phone. Once. So that means one of the things you need to do is contact your telephone vendor, whoever it is, who's providing new that service. That's a company like Verizon sprint T-Mobile a T and Tone of those companies that are giving you cell service, you have to contact them and set up a pass. So that if they have a phone call coming in and that phone call can be faked. So it looks like it's coming from your phone, even if there was a phone call coming in, whether it's coming from your phone or not, they have to get that password or passcode that you gave them. And once they have that passcode now, and that's great, but if you don't have that in there targeting you specifically, then you're in trouble. So for many of us really it may not make a huge difference. But I would do it anyways. I have done it with every one of my cell phone carriers now. A couple of decades set up a password. So the next step is this multifactor authentication. If I'm not supposed to get it via text message to my phone, how do I get it? There are a couple of apps out there. There's a free one called Google authentic. And Google authenticator runs on your phone. And once it's there on your phone and you are setting it up on a website, so Facebook, for instance, your bank, most websites out there, the bigger ones, all you have to do is say, I want to set up multi-factor authentication, and then it'll ask you a case. So how do you want to do it? And you can say, I want an app and they will display. A Q R code. That's one of those square codes with a bunch of little lines inside of it. You're seeing QR codes before they become very common. And you take your phone with the Google authenticator app. Take a picture. Of that little QR code on the screen, and now it will start sinking up so that every 30 seconds Google authenticator on your phone will change that number. So when you need to log back into that website, it's going to ask you for the code. You just pull up Google authenticator and there's the code. So that's the freeway to do it. And not necessarily the easiest way to. Again, going back to one password. I use this thing exclusively. It is phenomenal for keeping my passwords, keeping them all straight and then encrypted vault, actually in multiple encrypted vault it's so that I can share some of them. Some of them are just strictly private, but it also has that same authenticator functionality built right into it. Microsoft has its own authenticator, but you can tell Microsoft that you want to use the standard authenticator. Of course, Microsoft has to do everything differently. But you can tell it. And I do tell it, I want to use a regular authenticator app, not Microsoft authenticator. By the way. That's why I advise you to don't use the Microsoft authenticator, just use one authenticator for all of the sites, and then Microsoft will give you that same QR code. And then you can take that picture and you're off and running. Next time you log in, it asks you for the code and instead of texting it to you to your phone smarter, otherwise it will not. That require you to open up your authenticator. So for me, for instance, when I'm logging into a website, it comes up and asks for the username, asked for the password. Both of those are filled out automatically by one password for me. And then it asks for that code identification code and. One password automatically puts it into my pace to buffer copy-paste, buffer, and I just paste it in and they've got the code. So I don't have to remember the codes. I don't remember passwords. I don't have to remember usernames or email addresses. One password remembers them all for me. Plus it'll remember notes and other things. So you can tell, I really one password. We use it with all of our clients. That's what we have for them. And it does meet even a lot of these DOD requirement on top of. Depending again, how much security you need. We will use duo D U O and it also has this authenticator functionality and we will also use UBI keys. These are those hardware key. They do oh, can provide you with hardware tokens. Those are those little tokens that can go onto your key ring. That show a changing six-digit number every 30 seconds. And that's the same number that would be there in your smartphone app. Your one password or Google authenticator smartphone. Hopefully, I didn't confuse you too much. I think most of the reason we're not using the security we should is because we're not sure how to, and we don't know what we're going to be. And I can see that being a big problem. So if you have questions about any of this, if you would like a copy of my password security, special report, just send an email to me. M e@craigpeterson.com. That's me M e@craigpeterson.com. That's S O N.com. I'll be glad to send it to you. Also, if you sign up for my newsletter there on my website@craigpeterson.com, you are going to get. I was hold little series of the special reports to help you out, get you going. And then every week I send out a little bit of training and all of my articles for the week. It's usually six to 10 articles that I consider to be important so that, what's going on in the cybersecurity world. So you can. With it for yourself, for your family, for your business. Craig peterson.com. According to researchers. 32% of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse. And you know what Facebook knew and knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls. There's a great article that came out in the Wall Street Journal. And I'm going to read just a little bit here from some of the quotes first. When I went on Instagram, all I saw were images of chiseled bodies, perfect. Abs and women doing 100 burpees in 10 minutes, said, Ms.  Now 18, who lives in Western Virginia. Amazing. Isn't it. The one that I opened now with 32% of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram, I made them feel worse. So that is studies again, that looks like yeah, these were researchers inside Instagram and they said this in a March, 2020 slide presentation that was posted to Facebook's internal message board that was reviewed by the wall street journal quote comparisons on Instagram can change how young women view and describe themselves. Apparently, for the past three years, Facebook has been conducting studies into how Instagram is affecting its millions of young users. Now, for those of you who don't know what Instagram is, it allows these users to create little stories, to have. Pictures videos of things that they're doing, and it's a lifestyle type thing you might've heard, of course, of how this I don't know what it is. Kidnapping murder plot. These, this young couple and the body I think was found up in Wyoming. I'm trying to remember, but of her and it's yeah, there it is. It wasn't my OMI. And I'm looking up right now, Gabby potato. That's who it is. She was what they called a micro influence. And I know a lot of people who can loom, that's what they want to be. There's a young lady that stayed with us for a few months. She had no other place to live. And so we invited her in here and we got some interesting stories to tell about that experience. And it's, a little sad, but anyhow, she got back up on her feet and then she decided she was going to become an influence. And what an influencer is someone that has a lot of followers. And of course, a lot means different numbers. You get these massive influencers that have tens of millions of people that quote, follow unquote them. And of course, just think of the Kardashians they're famous for. Being famous, nothing else. They have subsequently done some pretty amazing things. At least a few of them have. We've got one of those daughters who now was the first earliest billionaire. I think it was ever youngest. So they have accomplished some amazing things after the fact, but they got started. By just becoming famous by posting on these social media sites. So you get a micro-influencer, like Gabby Petito, who is out there posting things and pictures. And you look at all of these pictures and, oh my gosh, they're up at this national park. Oh, isn't she so cute. I'll look at her boyfriend. They'll look so good together and people. Fall for that image, right? It's just like Photoshopping these pictures of models, changing them. There've been some real complaints about those over the years. So Instagram sets these kids up with these pictures of people that are just totally unrealistic. One of the slides from a 2019 presentation says, quote, we make body. Excuse me. We make body image issues worse for one in three teenage girls teams, blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety. And depression said another slide. This reaction was unprompted and consistent across. Groups among teens is this according to the wall street journal who reported suicidal thoughts, 13% of British users, and 6% of American users trace the desire to kill themselves to Instagram. Again, according to one of these presentations, isn't this just absolutely amazing. And you might've heard it discussed a little bit. I saw some articles about it, obviously in the news wall street journal had it, but this is a $100 billion company, Instagram. That's what their annual revenues. More than 40% of Instagram users are 22 years old and younger. And about 22 million teens log into Instagram in the US each day, compared with 5 million that log into Facebook, the younger users have been declining. Facebook it's getting the population there is getting older and older on Facebook. In average teens in the us spend 50% more time on Instagram than they do on Facebook. And also tick-tock, by the way I took talk has now surpassed YouTube in some of these metrics. Quote, Instagram is well-positioned to resonate and win with young people said a researcher's slide posted internally. Inside Facebook. Another post said there is a path to growth. If Instagram can continue their trajectory. Amazing. So Facebook's public phase has really tried to downplay all of these negative effects that the Instagram app has on teens, particularly girls, and hasn't made its research public or available to academics or lawmakers who have asked for it. Quote, the research that we've seen is that using social apps to connect with other people. Positive mental health benefits said Mark Zuckerberg. He's the CEO of course of Facebook. Now this was 2020. In March one at a congressional hearing, he was asked about children and mental health. So you see how he really lawyered the words that they can have positive mental health benefits, but Facebook's own internal research seems to show that they know it has a profound negative effect on a large percentage of their users. Instagram had Adam Moseri told reporters in may of this year, that research he had seen suggest the app's effect on team's wellbeing is likely quote quite small. So what the wall street journal seems to be pointing out here is that Facebook is not giving us the truth on any of this stuff. It's really sad. We've got to be careful. No, apparently Mr. Moseri also said that he's been pushing very hard for Facebook to really take their responsibilities more broadly. He says they're proud of this research. I'm just summarizing this before we run out of time here, but it shows the document. Internal documents on Facebook show that they are having a major impact on teen, mental health, political discourse, and even human trafficking. These, this internal research offers an unparalleled picture. Courtney told the wall street journal of how Facebook is acutely aware that the products and systems central to its business success routine. Fail great article. I've got it in this week's newsletter. You can just open it up and click through on the link to the wall street journal. They have a paywall and I hate to use payroll articles, but this one's well worth it. And they do give you some free articles every month. So if you're not on that newsletter, you can sign up right now. Craig peterson.com. You'll get the next one. If you miss a link today, if you want some, the special report on passwords, et cetera, just email me directly. Give me a few days to respond. But me M e@craigpeterson.com. That's me M e@craigpeterson.com. We've all worked from home from time to time. At least if we're somehow in the information it industry, I want to talk right now about why you need a personal laptop. Even if the business is providing you with a laptop. Laptops are something that was designed to be personal, but many of us are using them as our main computer. I know I often am using my laptop, a couple of my kids and my wife. It's really their main computer, even though they all have other computers that they could potentially be using, laptops are just handy and you have them with, you can take them with you. We've got workstation set up that are kind of. Workstations, if you will, where there are three screens set up and they're all hooked up into one central screen controller that then has a USBC connection that goes right into the, your laptop. So you can be sitting there with four screens on your Mac laptop on your mac pro if you need four screens, it's really handy. No question. Many of us have a laptop for home and a laptop for business. And many of us also look at it and say, oh wow, this is a great laptop I got from work. It's much better than my home laptop. And you start to use the business laptop for work. At home. Okay. That's what it's for. Right. But then we start to use that business laptop for personal stuff. That's where the problems start. We've seen surveys out there that are shown. Then half of workers are using work issue devices for personal tasks that might be doing it at home. They might be doing it at the office. Things like personal messages, shopping, online, social media, reading the news. So the prospect of using your work laptop as your only laptop, not just for work, but also for maybe watching some movies, group chat and messaging, reading, fan fiction, paying bills, emailing to family or friend. It just seems not. It's so tempting. It's just natural. I'm on it. I'm on it all day long. Why wouldn't I just use it? And this is particularly true for people who are working from home, but we have to be careful with that. It's really something that you shouldn't be doing for a couple of reasons. One that. Top that's a business. Laptop is the property of the business. It's just like walking home with boxes, full of pencils and paperback in the old days, it is not yours to use for personal use. We also have to assume, assume since it is the company's laptop that hopefully it's been secure. Hopefully they haven't set up. So it's going through a special VPN at the office and it's going through special filters, maybe snort filters or something else. That's doing some deeper inspection on what's coming through your laptop. Well, there are also likely on that laptop. Tools that are monitoring your device. Things like key loggers, biometric tracking, Jill location, software that tracks your web browser and social media behavior, screenshot, snapshot software, maybe even your cam. Is being used to keep track of you. I know a number of the websites that I've used in the past to hire temporary workers. Those workers have to agree to have you monitor what they're doing. These hourly workers, subtle take screenshots of their screen, unbeknownst to them. Pictures from the cameras at random intervals. Again, unbeknownst to them, it'll track what they're doing. And so I can now go in and say, okay, well he billed me five hours for doing this. And I look at his screen and guess what? He wasn't doing that for all of those five hours that he just billed me. Well, the same thing could be true for your company, even if you're not paid by the hour. Right now, we're looking at stats that show over half of the businesses that are providing laptops for the employees to use more than half of them are using monitoring software. And through this whole lockdown, the usage of these different types of monitoring systems has grown. Now there's some of the programs you're using. You might be VPN in, you might be using slack or G suite enterprise, all good little pieces of software. They can monitor that obviously, but it goes all the way through to the business. And using your slack access as paid for, by the businesses also idiotic to do things like send messages to your buddies, set up drinks after work, complain to other people about someone else in the business, your boss, or otherwise your it, people at the business can see all of that. They can see what you're doing with slack. Even if you have a separate personal account. It's still more likely that you'll end up mixing them up if you're logged into both on the same computer. So the bottom line is if you are on a work computer, whether it's a laptop or something else, you can reasonably assume that I T can see everything. That's not. They own it. Okay. And they have to do some of this stuff to protect themselves. We put software on laptops for companies not to spy on employees. That's none of our business, but we put software on computers for employees. To make sure they stay safe. Think of what happens when your computer, your laptop, whatever it might be, connects to the company's network. Now that can be through a VPN. It can be because you take your laptop home or on the road when you're traveling and you bring it back into the office. If that computer is infected, somehow now you've brought that infection into the office. And that's how a lot of the malware works. It goes from computer to computer. So once they get in that front door where there's through a website and email that you clicked on or in a computer that you're bringing into the office, they can start to move around. Now it's not just your activity. And this is an interesting article from the verge by Monica chin. It's not just your activity that they can see on your laptop, but in many cases, they're also able to look at anything you're downloading any of your photographs or videos that you might've sinked up from your smart. Laura loading these types of things, your text messages on your work device for safekeeping, or just because it's your primary device might seem harmless, right? Cause you're just going to remove them before you hand it in. But some companies such as Apple won't allow you to wipe your device before handing it in regardless of how personal the contents are. And that makes sense too, because many times an employee leaves. And they don't give the company all of the information that they have, that they're obliged to give back to their employer. Things that they've been working on, customer information, et cetera. So Manalive, there are plenty of other devices out there. Hopefully if you leave your company with plenty of notice, moving a bunch of things off your work device in the last few days, uh, might raise some eyebrows at the. And I'm saying hopefully, because they should notice that sort of thing, because it could be malicious activity. It could be an insider risk that maybe they're not even aware of. There's so much you could go wrong here. So bottom line don't use the work laptop for home. So what should you use? You know, my personal recommendation. Almost always is get a Mac. They are safer to use the patches that they get are usually not destructive. You know, sometimes you can install a patch for windows and now your machine just won't work anymore. Right. You've had that happen. I know every last one of us out there that are tried to install Microsoft patches for a while have had that happen to them. All of a sudden the patch has completely messed up your computer and you are so out of luck, it's ridiculous. Right? So don't, you know, hopefully don't do that, but I like the max because they are basically safer than windows. And also because the patches just work on them, apple tends to get them out in plenty of time to try and protect us the next level. If he can't afford an apple and. Apple laptops really are not expensive when you consider how long they last and the quality that components, they are not expensive at all. But if you can't afford that, the next thing I would look at is getting a Chromebook. There are a lot of companies that make Chromebooks Chrome is an operating system from Google. It's similar to Android. Google keeps the Chromebooks up-to-date. They patch them quite regularly and make sure that there aren't nastiness is going on. You just have some of the same issues and Android has patches might take a while to get to you because it has to go through the vendor that made the Chromebook. You might have a Chromebook for Sam from Samsung, for instance, it's not Google's even though it's called a Google Chromebook. Now Chromebooks rely heavily on the cloud services that Google provides, but they can also run just locally. So with a Chromebook and you can get them for as little as 150 bucks, but remember you get what you pay for. Or as much as I've seen them in the $2,000 price range with fancy GPU's, local storage and other things, but at 150 bucks, it could be well worth it for you. It lets you do the regular word processing. Just think of what you can do with Google docs, spreadsheets against Google docs, spreadsheets, all of those types of things are built into it. You can. Cruz the web, obviously using Google Chrome on your Chromebook. And send and receive email, which is what most people do. That's really kind of all, most people do at home. So consider that as well. I also like iPad. They are quite safe again, but they tend to be more expensive and they can do pretty much everything. And now with Android support built right into Google Chromebooks, you can even run Android apps. So there you go. Keep safe and be safe out there. Right. Have a hack free life. Make sure you get my newsletter. Craig peterson.com/subscribe. Craig peterson.com/subscribe. The national cyber director, Chris Inglis said that we need cyber bullets, that cyber bullets are part of the war on hacks. And it makes sense on one level. But when you get into the reality, it's a much different story..  I had an interesting email this week from a listener. Actually he sent it about two weeks ago when I finally was able to get to it this week and responded, and he was pointing out how there are some things that I talk about on the show that I put into my newsletter that are really good. And. I'm paraphrasing here but theoretical to so many people, there's some things that you can figure out pretty easily yourself. Some things you can do yourselves and other things that are just different. To do still. And a lot of that has to do with the websites you go to in order to maintain your passwords. And he was complaining specifically about bank of America and how you can, according to what he has found here in the real world, you can come up with a. Password a 20 character long password that is going to keep everything nice and safe at trend to be generated. You're using one password and great. So you set your password up in bank of America's account, and then you try and log in later, and it doesn't work because it lets you put 20 character passwords and when you're creating it, yeah. But the login screen only takes the first 16. So of course they'd home match. You see it's things like that really are pushing us back, holding us back. But I'd say pushing us back from being secure as a country, there, there just aren't enough people paying enough attention to make sure this cyber security, even the basic stuff like passwords and two factor authentication are being done properly. So one of the things I wanted to make sure you guys were aware of is I need to know when you're having these problems, because what I want to do is put together some trainings to show you exactly how to do it. Because on some websites you were saying, it's pretty hard to use one password he's paying for it, but it's kinda difficult for him. And I think in some ways, a lack of understanding. Then, it can be difficult to spend a bunch of time trying to watch some training videos for some of the software. And so I want to hear when you're having problems so I can do what I did for him this week and spend a little time, write some stuff up, and I even am reaching out to some of this website. People like bank of America who are really messing up cyber security for people who are trying to do the right thing and writing them and saying, Hey, listen, I'm part of the FBI InfraGard program. I'm a member of it. I paid a lot of attention to cybersecurity. Heck I ran the training for the FBI InfraGard program for a couple of years, and there are some real things lacking. In the login anyways, and this one particular case of the cybersecurity, but I don't know all of this stuff. I'm not using all of these things and I have a disadvantage over you guys, and that is that I've been doing this for so long. I've forgotten what it's like to not know it. Does that make sense? So if you have something that I've talked about on the show, that's appeared in my newsletter and you're having some confusion over, let me know. Just email me M e@craigpeterson.com. What he did is he just hit reply to my newsletter. And of course, that goes to me and me@gregpeterson.com and it tracks it. So I know I need to reply, so I can sit down and go through and answer people's questions. I sent out a lot of the copies of my password, special report to people you guys had requested specifically some of the. People out there had requested a little bit of help. And I had sent out an email to most of the people that I could identify as being business people. I sent out a little thing saying, Hey, listen, if you could use half-hour my help, let me know myself or my team. And then, again, you can just send me an E Craig. So I answered a lot of those questions this week. And in fact, that's how I come up with much of what I cover here on the show. You guys ask the questions and that's how I know that it's a real problem. If I understand it, that's one thing. But for the people who don't do cybersecurity as their primary job or a strategy, I get it. I can get why you guys are confused. So make sure you get my weekly newsletter. So you can find out about all of the trainings, the free stuff, the paid courses, and. It's easy. Just go to Craig peterson.com/subscribe. That's Craig Peterson, P E T E R S O N. Craig peterson.com/subscribe. And I'm more than glad. Add you to that list. And there are now thousands of people on that list to get my email pretty much every week. If you miss it one week, it's probably, cause I just got too busy, but I put out all my show notes. I put it all a little bit of training notes, all. The us government is supposedly getting ready to fire what they're calling cyber bullets in response to these significant hacking attacks. This is what they're calling a comprehensive strategy to dissuade. Adversaries. And this is all from the national cyber security director, Chris Inglis. This is from an article in American military news.com by Chris Strome. That was out this week. And of course I included that in my newsletter this week as well, coming out. Today or tomorrow, depends on how this all goes right with the weekend. I got to help a buddy out today, but president Joe Biden has been really talking about how do we use cyber weapons to retaliate. For instance, he gave a list of industries that Russia should not be. As though Putin himself is running all of these hacks or come out of Russia. Yeah, certainly there are some that are part of their military, but there many of them that are just bad guys that are trying to make some money, we should feel sorry for them. So Biden gives him this list and says, Hey, listen, if you attack any of these various industries or actually portions of our economy, We are going to retaliate. We have seen the us retaliate under President Trump and the retaliation. Of course he did all kinds of economic stuff to stop it. And much of which has been reversed by president Biden's administration, but also he attacked them directly in. Down some power systems there in the Moscow area, which I thought was really kinda cool. So kudos to President Trump for doing that and for president and Biden now to say, Hey, we are going to attack back. Of course. The biggest question is. What would we be attacking? How would we be attacking it? And for what reason, for instance, the red Chinese have gone after our office of personnel management, OPM records and got them all back in 2015. So they now know everything about everybody that had a secret security clearance or the took a paycheck from the federal government. All of those records, they would get their hands on them and get them on all of the records a lot. So Inglis was in front of the let's see here, the, yeah, he was a former director of the national security agency. He's the first to hold his Senate-confirmed position at the white house, this national cyber director position. And he says there is a sense that we can perhaps fire some cyber bullets and shoot our way out of this English set at the conference. It was hosted by the way, by the national security agency and a nonprofit group, he said that will be useful in certain circumstances. If you had a clear shot at a cyber aggressor and I can take them offline, I would advise that we do so as long as the collateral effects are acceptable. Yeah. What we have done here under president Biden administration is we have shut down some people who were operating illegally, we have shut down some cyber actors that were attacking us. So we've been doing that, but it isn't exactly. Wow. We just saw a muzzle flash over there. And so we are returning fire to the area of that muzzle flash, because as I've said many times before, we just don't know. Where in fact that bullet is coming from, it makes it a lot more difficult. English went on to say there's a larger set of initiatives that have to be undertaken. Not one of those elements is going to be sufficient to take this. Out let's see here, the us should make clear to Russia now their adversaries, what kinds of attacks would prompt a response, which is what president Biden did when he was talking with, of course, President Putin over there, red lines of both good and bad red lines are clear and crisp. Although I got to say many of our administrations have. Really done anything about it. It's the red line in the sand and Syria president Obama didn't do anything when they stepped over that red line. So yeah. And then with what we just finished doing in Afghanistan, where we drew a red line and said, we're going to protect all of you who helped us. And then we not only abandoned them, but we abandoned Americans behind there. I don't think a lot of people aren't going to believe us. So here's the last statement here. And again, this is an article in American military news from our cyber chief is the government actions. Aren't always going to be broadcast. In some cases, it's not helpful to broadcast those for all of mankind to see another one. We are doing some things behind the scenes. And I have certainly seen some of the results of those over the last few years. Stick around.  You're listening to Craig Peterson online@craigpeterson.com. You've got a smartphone and there are some new versions out, right? New hardware, new software, Android iOS. How long should you keep that device? How long can you stay safe with that older device? Apple has now done something. Different something they've never done before. One of the reasons that apple equipment tends to be safer than almost anything else out there is that they have, what's known as a closed ecosystem. There's arguments both directions here on whether that's safer or not. But the real advantage when it comes to cybersecurity is there are only. So many versions of the iPhone out there. What are we now in a couple of dozen versions of the hardware platform that makes it easier for apple to be able to support older versions of the software and multiple pieces of hardware, much easier than for, let's say Microsoft windows. It doesn't even have a single. Platform or Android, where there are hundreds of hardware platforms out there and tens of thousands of versions of the hardware, because one model phone can contain many. Changes different types of hardware to talk to the cell towers or the screen you name it. So it's very hard to keep up. Android has for quite a while now supported three versions of their operating system. Of course, we're talking about Google, but Android operating system. So they support the current release. Of Android and the Breviary release is two previous releases in fact of Android. Now that is frankly a pretty good thing to know, but there's over a billion Android devices out there that are no longer supported by security updates. We've got Android 10, nine, and eight that are fairly supported right now. We're actually up to Android 12. So here's how it works. If you've got Android version 10 out, if that's the main one, then you can continue to do. Eight and nine and get updates, security updates. But then here's the problem, everybody, those security updates are coming out of Google, but that does not mean that they are making it all the way to you. So there you go. It's one thing for Google to provide updates, but if you can't get them because your phone manufacturer is not supporting them, you've got trouble Samsung. Is probably the best company other than maybe Google and the Google Pixel phone. Samsung's the best company to go to. If you want some longer-term support. Many of these other companies just don't provide support past the current version. So keep that in mind as well. Android 12 was the 12th major version of Android announced by Google, February, 2021. And it is starting to roll out a Android. The 11th, 11 is the one that was out in February of last year. At least it was announced then. And we're, they're coming out, they're getting pushed out. So basically Google is saying the current version plus two prior versions. And that usually gives you about a four or maybe even a five year window. So if you're. An Android device from a major manufacturer, particularly Samsung on the Android side, your device is going to be good for at least four years, maybe five years now on the, and by the way, you don't necessarily have to upgrade the. You could be continuing to run an older release saw, as I mentioned earlier, if it version 11 is the current one that's out there being supported, which it is right. 12 is early still, but version 11, that means two prior versions still get security updates. You don't get featured. Dates, you don't get the new stuff, but you get security updates. So Android 11, the current one that means 10 and nine get security updates. So you don't, you're not being forced to do an upgrade. Most people don't upgrade their phones from an older major release to a newer major release. In other words, they don't try and go from Android eight to Android 11. Because in fact, most of the time, the hardware manufacturer doesn't support it. That's why there's over a billion Android devices out there right now that cannot get security updates. So have a look at your phone and your vendors. See what you're running. You probably want to do an update because most phones cannot get any support on the, in the apple side. Things are a lot different with Apple iOS, which is the operating system used on the iPhone and the I pad apple has always forced you to move to the next major version. No, they only force you to do that. If they support the hardware. And I've got to say kudos to them, they're still supporting the iPhone six S which came out quite a while. The iPhone success is something that my wife has been using and that I had as well. In fact, she got my old iPhone success, but that's a six-year-old. Phone came out in September of 2015. So it is still getting security updates, and we'll probably continue to get them. Not only is it getting security update this six-year-old iPhone success is getting the latest and our iOS operating system. It's getting iOS 15. Isn't that just amazing? Yeah, exactly. And so not just security updates, like you might get from some of the other vendors out there, Android vendors. So the apple keeps their arms around you for quite a while. Here's, what's changed now with Apple and iOS, the, for the first time ever in the iOS world, Apple is not forcing you to upgrade. So you're not being forced to upgrade to iOS 15. You can continue to run iOS 14. And that's how apples got around the security patches in the past, because what happens is you get the updates and installs them. Basically. There's no reason for you not to upgrade your phone. And so you do so apple never had to worry about releasing some of these fixes for really old versions of iOS. Although they have done that from time to time. In the Mac iOS side, Apple has done a couple of good things. The, where they always have supported basically three releases, what Google's doing with Android. So you now have a new feature. If you will, with iOS, here's a PSA for everyone. Public service announcement. You don't have to take the iOS 15 upgrade. Now I did. I put it on my iPhone and I seem to have some sort of a problem with messages where it's telling people that my phone has notifications turned off, which it does not. So I haven't figured that one out yet. I'll have to look into that a little bit more, but. This is nice because that means you're not going to have to upgrade your iPhone to iOS 15. You'll still get security updates for iOS 14, something Apple's never done before. We'll see if they continue this. We will see if they match Google going back. Three releases in Android. It just never been done before over on the iOS. So good news for them. Also course in the windows world and the Mac world, you really should upgrade the operating system as much as you can. Windows 11 though, man, windows 11. And I said this to my newsletter. I warned you guys is going to be a nightmare. For many people. You are not going to be able to do an automatic upgrade unless you have the newest of hardware, with the highest end of features, Craig peterson.com. One of the very big ransomware operations is back online. And now we have some inside information from one of the contractors working for this ransomware organization and oh yeah, there's an FBI tie, too.. This organization, ransomware gang, almost business, whatever you might want to describe them as is known as revolt. They have a few other names, but that's the really big one. And they are basically the 800 pound gorilla in the ransom. Business, you might be using cloud services right now. Maybe you use Microsoft's email service. Their Microsoft 360, I think, is what they call it now and use it for email and various other things pretty handy. It's mostly in the cloud. Computers you own or operate or have to maintain. I think that makes some sense too, but here's the bottom line it's software as a service right now, salesforce.com software as a service, Oracle has their accounting stuff. QuickBooks online, all software as a service. It isn't just those legitimate businesses that I just mentioned. That are using the cloud that are providing software as a service where you're paying monthly or however frequently. And you're getting this software as a service. That's what that means. Typically it means it's in the cloud and you don't have any real control over it. That's what this ransomware gang has been doing. This gang known as rebill. They all appear to be in. And there's some interesting stuff. That's come out. A transcript was released of an interview with one of their contractors. Now the original interview was in Russian. So I read through a translation of the Russian. I have no idea how good it is, but it is being quoted by a bank. Insider magazine that you might be familiar with bank info, security. That's one of the places that I follow. And there's a few interesting things that he talked about that I want to get into, but these are the people who have been behind things like the colonial pipeline attack and some of the other very large attacks, the way they work, their business model is. You can license their software, their ransomware software, and you go after a business or a government agency, whatever it might be, you get that ransomware software inside. And the reveal gang will take a percentage of the money that you have in rent. Now, how is that for a, an interesting business model, right? Taking something that the rest of the world has been using, and then take that model and put it into the legal side of the world. For three weeks, during this whole reveal ransomware attack, this summer turns out that the FBI secretly withheld the key that could have been used to decrypt. And computers that reveal had infected with ransomware and looks like kids up to maybe 1500 networks. Now those are networks, not just computers. That includes networks run by hospitals, schools, and businesses, including critical infrastructure businesses. The way the FBI got their hands on this decryption game. Is by penetrating reveal gangs servers. So they got into it. They were able to grab the keys and then the FBI waited before. Did anything with it. See, what they were trying to do is catch the people behind reveal. And so they didn't want to release information, get information out there to the press that might tip off those bad guys over there in Russia. And then shut down their operations. But as you might know, because I mentioned it here before the reveal gang went offline on July 13th, before the FBI could really track them down. And then the FBI didn't release the key until July 21st. And then I think it was Malwarebytes released a decryption tool. So if you had been hacked by the gang, you could. Now, remember it isn't reveal itself. That's doing most of them. Ransomware hacking if you will or a placement it's small guys. And that's why some people, including this contractor that apparently worked for the reveal gang itself says, people think that it's the Russian government, that it's Putin, that's doing this. He said, in fact, it's not it's small guys. And people like me are getting four or five hours a night. Because we're working so hard trying to make a whole of this work, come up with the new software approaches. We have to provide code tech support unquote to our affiliates, as well as tech support to the people who have had their computers and their data ransomed. So it a real interesting mix. Absolutely. Interesting mix. Now Christopher Ray here a couple of weeks ago, he's the FBI director told Congress that cool. We make these decisions as a group, not unilaterally. To the FBI and working with other government agencies, these are complex decisions designed to create maximum impact. And that takes time and going against adversaries, where we have to marshal resources, not just around the. But all over the world. So this Russian based gang first appeared in 2019, they've been around, they've been exporting large amounts of money from businesses for a very long time. One of the interest he'd things I think about all of this is that this reveal gang has their software as a service, and they provide it to quote affiliates, quote that, go ahead and then install the software, get you to install it on your computers in order to ransom you a double whammy ransom you, but there's now reports out there that there's a secret back door in the ransomwares code that allow. Rebill to go around their affiliates and steal the proceeds. How's that for hilarious, you've got a bad guy who goes in and gets the software from revolt, pays them a commission, and then reveal apparently has been jumping in on these customer support chats. In other words, you just got nailed and because you got nailed with ransomware, you have to go to. Chat room. And so you go in there and you're getting customer support on how to buy Bitcoin and how to transfer to their wallet. And apparently revival is getting right in the middle and is extorting money from these people directly instead of having the affiliates do it pretty amazing. So here's this part of this interview? It was aired on the Russian news outlet, London. And was trans translated by yeah. Flashpoint. Here are the guys that got the full transcript of the interview. He says in the normal world, I was called a contractor, doing some tasks for many ransomware collectives that journalists considered to be famous. Money is stolen or extorted with my hands, but I'm not ashamed of it. I do. And again, this goes into the thinking of many of these bad guys of Americans are all rich and they don't deserve what they have. He said, let's put it this way. This is a very time consuming job. And if you've earned enough, then you can quit the game. But chronic fatigue, burnout, deadline. All of these words from the life of ordinary office workers are also relevant for malware developers. So there you go. You should feel sorry for these malware developers who are developing software to steal millions from you and. Down our critical infrastructure. Hey, join me online. Craig peterson.com. And if you subscribe to my weekly newsletter right there on the site, I'll send you a few of my special reports. The most popular ones will come to you right there in your email box. Craig peterson.com/subscribe. We all pretty much have some form of insurance. And we're going to talk right now about the types of cyber insurance you may have. Now this might be through your homeowners policy or perhaps a rider on a business policy.  Many of our homeowners policies have started coming with cyber insurance. So we're going to talk about that. What is it? Businesses as well are also using cyber insurance and I'm sure you've heard of insurance basically called LifeLock and what that's all about. So let's kind of start. When we have a breach in a business, usually what happens is information about our customers is stolen. Look at some of the biggest breaches in history where we. Hundreds of millions of our personal records stolen Equifax breach is an example of a huge breach where we had all kinds of personal information that was stolen by the bad guys. Now, some of this information gets stale pretty quickly, but of course, other parts of it like our address, our social security number, they are probably not going to change for years. If for. No, of course our social security number will never change the social security administration. Just doesn't reissue them for very many reasons at all. And they do not reissue a social security number was stolen online because. Just about everybody's has, so what does a company like LifeLock do? They keep an eye on your credit report for you. And they're looking at what's going on new accounts that are open. They look at various other things, just related to that. And they, at that point say, wait a minute, something weird is happening. Now my credit cards, for instance, I have a credit card that if let's say I buy two of the same thing, one after the other and the, both the same price that credit card company pops a message right up on my phone saying, Hey, did you just buy two? Of these $15 things from and I can say yes or no, if I'm out on the road and I am purchasing gas, the credit card can pop up on my phone and it does and say, Hey, will you just trying to buy gas at this gas station? Because what'll happen as you use the credit card at the pump. And the pump says it was denied and then up at pops and yeah. Okay. No, that was me. And they said, okay, we'll try the transaction. Okay. And we'll approve it next time. And that's all automated. And that has nothing to do with LifeLock. LifeLock is there to more or less detect that something happened and if something happened and it was a bad guy and basically your identity was stolen. So they might be trying to buy a Ferrari in your name or maybe a 10 year old, four Ford focus, whatever it might be. And. They will help you try and clean it. That's what they do. So that's why it's cheap. And I don't know that it's terribly useful to you if you're really concerned. Go ahead and do that, but do keep an eye on your credit report. I do as well. My bank has free credit reporting for me, my credit card. Same thing. Free credit reporting that lets me know everything that's going on. So that's an easy way to tell WhatsApp. And there are different types of cyber insurance beyond this sort of thing, beyond the LifeLocks of the world. And many of us just get our cyber insurance through our homeowner's policy. It's a little rider. And businesses can buy cyber insurance as well. We have cyber insurance, that's underwritten by Lloyd's of London and we provide a $500,000 or million-dollar policy to our clients. As well, because that's what we do is cyber security, right? So the idea is if one of our clients gets hit, we have some insurance to back us up, but of course we go a lot further. It's almost like the LifeLock where if you do get hit by ransomware or something else, we will help you get back in business. We'll help restore your data. We'll help you with providing you. The information you need in order to do press releases, which agencies you need to contact, which of your customers you need to contact. And we've got scripts for all of that. So you can send it all out and just take care of it. So the idea is you don't want ransomware. So you hire us. We are extremely likely to keep ransomware out of your systems. And on top of that, if you are hit with ransomware, we restore everything. LifeLock does not do that. Obviously they all, I'll only do stuff after the fact and the cyber insurance you buy from an insurance agency is much the same, and there's a huge caveat with these policies that we're buying for our businesses and for our homes. And that is. They have a checklist at the insurance companies. Did you do this and this? And if you did, then they might payout if you did not, they may not payout. In fact, pay outs on cyber insurance policies are not known because. Bottom line. They really don't payout. Okay. I'm looking at some numbers right now and about paying ransoms and everything else. You may or may not. You got to have a look at it. Many of these policies are never paid out by the cyber insurance covers. They usually just regular insurance companies, but it's a special rider. And what they do is they say, Hey, listen, you did not follow the rules, so we're not going to payout. And there are many cases. If you go online and do a search, just use duck, go and say cyber insurance, payout. Lawsuits I'm doing that right now is. And it'll come up and show. Oh, okay. Does it cover lawsuits? Why are liability claims so costly? Yeah, exactly. A 2% payouts is talking about here. I'm invoicing, the most common cyber insurance claim denial. Yeah, it goes on and on. There are a lot is an act of war clause could nix cyber insurance payouts. That's another big one that they've tried to use. So the cyber insurance company will say, Hey, that was China attacking you. Therefore it was an act of. And you can bet if there is a big hack, they will use that. Think of what happens with the hurricanes coming onshore. How much do they push back on payouts? Especially with the real big one, it would bankrupt them. So we gotta be very careful. There are some different types of  cyber insurance. Policies do which have different types of coverages. You've got the first party lost loss, I should say. So that's you to covering you and your loss, your first-party expenses, third party liability. Each one of those has specific parameters. So sub-limit retention and others. First-party losses are usually including the loss of revenue due to business interruption. First party expenses would include all of the services and resources that you needed to use to recover from attack like forensic or system rebuilding services. These third-party liabilities. May cover expenses and legal fees related to potential damage caused by the incident to third parties like partners, customers, or employees whose sensitive information may have been compromised. So read them carefully. Be very careful. There are next-generation, cyber insurance policies are going even further and make these types of services. Prior to any incident to reduce exposures and prevent incidents in the first place. Now we don't provide insurance. We are not an insurance company, but that's basically what we're trying to do here. Not become an insurance company, but to make sure. The businesses have the right services so that the likelihood of anything happening or is extremely low. And then following up after the fact it's different obviously than insurers in and insurance, the guardians, Jessica Crispin had a great article about a couple of weeks ago that I've been hanging on. And it's talking about this tattle where that's been incorporated into the computers we're using at home. Now we're specifically talking about employers that are putting this. The software on computers, they belong to the companies. A lot of businesses are worried. If workers are at home or where we can't see them, how do we know that they're actually working, not watching Netflix or something else on. They have, of course, come up with software that can reassure your boss. It does things like take snapshots of what you're doing. Record your keystrokes grabs photos from. Picture from your camera. There's a new program called sneak, which makes your webcam take a photo of you about once a minute and makes available to the supervisor to prove you're not away from your desk. There's no warning in advance. It just takes that photograph catches your doom. Pretty much anything can be absolutely anything. Then, it's the type of thing you'd expect the national security agency to do. So there are some good reasons for this lack of trust because sometimes employees have not been doi

It's another podcast news special as we close out the first year of the Q'd Up Podcast on Podcasting. On this week's episode, Matt and John break down some recent podcast tech news, further pointing to the changing industry landscape and how it'll impact independent podcasters.  John and Matt kick off the show by flying high with Virgin Atlantic after they inked an exclusive deal to make the “Celebrity Catchup” podcast a part of its in-flight entertainment options. YouTube is launching its first original podcast, which could speak to Google's desire to become a bigger name in podcasting after Google Podcasts' poor beginnings. Finally, the guys break down some news that Apple Podcasts is aiming to improve podcasts discoverability with the iOS 15 release, but will it truly help or will it be taken over by podcasts with big marketing budgets? Listen as John and Matt discuss the latest podcast news: Podcasts on a plane (1:25) The folks on Virgin Atlantic flights will now be able to get podcasts while thousands of feet in the air. Virgin Atlantic has signed an exclusive deal with the “Celebrity Catch Up” podcast, formally adding podcasting to its in-flight entertainment. YouTube is getting into podcasting (9:25) Potentially marking their entry into the podcasting game, YouTube is launching their first original podcast, “The Upload The Rise of the Creator Economy.” John and Matt discuss what this could mean for YouTube and if this is Google's path to a larger marketshare in podcasting. Apple Podcasts getting key new features (25:33) With the update to iOS 15, Apple Podcasts will begin giving personalized recommendations. However, Matt and John wonder just how good the recommendations will be or if this will be a pay-to-play situation that caters to the biggest budgets over functionality. Follow Q'd Up:https://www.qd-up.com/ (Q'd Up - Website) https://www.instagram.com/qdupaudio/ (Q'd Up - Instagram) https://twitter.com/QdUpAudio (Q'd Up - Twitter) John - Email https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-luckenbaugh (John - LinkedIn) https://twitter.com/MatthewS_NFL (Matt - Twitter) https://twitter.com/Izzys_ink_ (Izzy - Twitter) Izzy - Email Links from the show:https://podnews.net/press-release/virgin-atlantic-celeb-catch-up (Podnews - Virgin Atlantic signs exclusive deal with podcast Celebrity Catch Up) http://www.insideradio.com/podcastnewsdaily/for-the-first-time-youtube-won-t-just-distribute-a-podcast-it-will-create-one/article_9484082a-1705-11ec-807d-3fea5e4d6af5.html (Inside Radio - For the first time YouTube won't just distribute a podcast, it will create one) https://9to5mac.com/2021/09/20/ios-15-apple-podcasts-personalized-recommendations-listen-now-tab/ (9 to 5 Mac - iOS 15 adds personalized recommendations to ‘listen now' tab in podcasts)

Google's Being Sued by the States -- And it doesn't look good for them Craig Peterson: We talked earlier about Amazon and how much trouble they're in right now, Google apparently is in a similar boat. We had just this week, dozens of state attorneys, general suing Google on antitrust grounds. [00:00:16] You can reach me online. Just me. M E Craig peterson.com or what most people do is they just hit reply to my newsletter. [00:00:25] Hopefully you're on my newsletter, right? That goes out every week. If you're on that newsletter you can just hit reply and ask me questions. Any questions you want? I'm more than glad to answer them. I know most of you guys, you're not business people. I am still glad to answer your questions for you to keep you on the right track. [00:00:42] The whole idea here is it's to keep you going. Safer. And if you're a business person, what the heck, maybe I can help you out as well while the here is a problem. And it's a very big problem. We have these absolutely huge companies that are using their market position in order to really control the entire world. [00:01:09] Now it's a very big problem because you have companies that are sitting on billions of dollars in cash who can and do keep their competition out of the market. Now, one of the ways that keep them out, and I've mentioned this before, Microsoft has done this multiple times as lost lawsuits about it, particularly over in Europe, but they find somebody who might be a competitor and they basically squeeze them out of them. [00:01:39] Even though they're not necessarily even a direct competitor. One of the things Facebook does is they buy companies for 10, a hundred times sometimes more. Then they're actually worth, would you take 50 million for your company? That's worth 50 million? You might not. [00:01:56] Would you take 500 million for the company? How about a billion dollars? That's where it starts becoming very questionable about what they're doing. One of the things that Google is allegedly doing right now is preemptively squashing com competing app stores. When you look at Google and the Google Android ecosystem, who sells the most Android devices out there, right? [00:02:24] The high-end devices, the number one seller of Android phones is of course, Sam. And Samsung started to put a store too. An app store. So you could buy Samsung, Sam sung apps now, apple and Google, both charge about the same rates as a general rule. It's 30% for these bigger companies that they have to pay the app store, okay. I'm okay with that. They both spent the time to build the platform, to monitor it, to try and keep the app store clean and guides. That's definitely worth something. But what if Samsung came along and said, okay, we're only going to charge 10% royalty. In our app store and the apps will run on all of our Samsung Android phones. [00:03:13] So it's still using the Google operating system. It's still Android. It will probably run on other than Samsung phones as well. That's the whole nature of, but that hasn't happened. And why hasn't it happened? These state attorneys general are saying that what has happened is the Samsung galaxy store got squashed by Google. [00:03:41] So it could maintain its monopoly on Android app distribution. So it says that Google engaged in a bunch of different anti-competitive practices. They offered large app developers, profit share, and agree. In exchange for exclusive exclusivity. Okay. I can see that the apple iPhone came out. Do you remember this exclusively on ATN T's network? [00:04:08] Is that a problem? They're saying also the Google created unnecessary hurdles for what's called sideloading. So sideloading is where you might go to another app store in order to install something. Or maybe it's something that you want to put on your site. It's not fully approved by the Google play store. [00:04:29] So that's the basics of what the side loaning is all about. So saying that they made that even harder. Okay. From Google standpoint, do we really want to. Allow anything to run on our phones. And here's the question, here's why, right? What do I do for living cyber security? What is one of the things you have to do for cybersecurity? [00:04:51]You've got to put in special routers, special firewalls and software on servers and computers. Whoever touches a computer last owns the next problem. That's been my mantra forever. So if we installed some software on a computer or we had the customer installed some software on a computer, and there's a problem who they get. [00:05:14] They're going to call me, right? Because I was the last one to touch their computer. And at that point now I have to show, okay, it wasn't me. It was this other piece of software. QuickBooks is a piece of junk, you know what, whatever it is, I'm going to have to justify it. And frankly, I'm probably going to have to fix it. [00:05:33] So Google is saying. We don't want all of these app stores that might have apps that are not secure apps, that crash apps that might cause problems with the Android ecosystem. I think that's perfectly legitimate. Apparently these state attorneys general don't think it is. And here's the last one. This is a. [00:05:56] Attempting to buy off Samsung to limit competition from the Samsung galaxy app store. Now, Google is saying that this lawsuit is merit lesson. I can see a whole bunch of legitimate argument on their part. They also said, quote, and this is an article from ARS Technica. It's a strange, it's strange that a group of state attorneys general. [00:06:21] Chose to file a lawsuit, attacking a system that provides more openness and choice than the others. In other words, are taking a jab at apple because apple is very closed for the reasons I just decided to hear that Google I'm sure is going to argue as to why they are closed. Okay. Apparently the state attorneys general are saying, quote, Google promised repeatedly that Android would be the basis for an open ecosystem in which industry participants could freely compete. [00:06:56] Google has not kept its word. Instead. Google has taken steps to close the ecosystem from competition and insert itself as the middleman between app developers. Consumers. Okay. Can, so can you see that they're also complaining this 30% commission. It's a monopoly rent that unfairly burdens consumers and developers, and K-12, you could argue that I don't fall for that one personally. [00:07:24] Now the buy-off is where I think that there's a lot. Yep. Teeth in this particular lawsuit. Cause they're saying that we've got the commission rate argument, right? We've got those. It's not as open as you said, it would be. But these attorneys general have spent a lot of time dissecting Google's alleged efforts to keep competing app stores at bay by, and they said Google was willing to offer Samsung myriad benefits and concessions in order to prevent Samsung's galaxy store from being built out. [00:08:00]Again, Is that a huge problem. If you've got a big customer or a potential partner coming to you and saying, okay, I want a few concessions here. I'm not going to pay 30%, or I want to have some of you, my developers in house with your people so that they can short circuit some of the problems that always develop those are. [00:08:25] In the business in business period. And when it comes to software development, right? People, businesses have we'll use apple again as an example jam, which is a really great set of software to help manage your devices. Jan PF, you might want to check it out. So jam had their engineers camp out at Apple's headquarters, apparently four months while they were working on. [00:08:52] Some of the, their software for the next release of Apple's iOS and Mac iOS. Is that unfair? Yeah, in a way it is right because here I am little Mr. Small developer and I'm not gaining access to Apple's top engineers and able to send mine out there to live with apple engineers and ask questions and help them debug my software. [00:09:18] But it happens every day. Makes sense. So it says though the galaxy store was not nearly as popular as the play store. Google feared that Samsung would develop into a strong competitor, especially since the company sells a majority of high-end Android phones in the us ARS Technica says Google was particularly concerned that Samsung would get an exclusive game. [00:09:43] For the store to attract more users, which Samsung did do in 2018, when it partnered with epic to launch fortnight exclusively on the galaxy store. And that one, move that one game. That one app. Costs Google millions of dollars in revenue. So we'll see what happens here. They make other claims in there. Apparently it even offered a Google offered to white label, the play stores, the galaxy store, so that Samsung could maintain its branding, all kinds of negotiations, the types of things I've seen before, the types of things that are. [00:10:23] Particularly uncommon, but a European commission is also going after them with an antitrust investigation. They've done that a few years ago with this is a problem. These companies are huge and we don't let them fail. Look at what happened. GM and Chrysler, both got bail and the federal government Chrysler got bailouts twice. [00:10:45] The free market. You never would have had that happen. The best part of Chrysler would still exist and those weak parts would have been gone. That's what bankruptcy law is all about GM. The same thing, the best parts of GM would have remained. We would have probably had better cars today. Then we have, if DM GM had been allowed to go bankrupt and yeah, it's going to hurt people, but guess what? [00:11:11] It's hurting people right now from the other side. And when I see this happening as well at Google and Amazon, of course they haven't gone bankrupt, but they both along with Facebook and a few others, they're both huge. Huge and they control so much of the market. So what's the best way forward. What do you think I'd love to hear from you? [00:11:32] Just drop me an email. me@craigpeterson.com. What is the solution to this? Hey, make sure you get my newsletter. We got all of this information, of course, a whole lot more comes out every week. May be semi-weekly here fairly soon. See how it goes, but go to Craig, Peter sohn.com/subscribe. You'll get my free newsletter and you'll keep up to date on what you need to do to keep yourself safe. [00:12:02] Craig peterson.com.

2021-07-17 1122 Craig Peterson (2): Reporting on your neighbors is something you would expect from a socialist government, right? A communist government, a fascist government, any form of a socialist government. Now Facebook is doing exactly that, and it's going to interfere with our lives. [00:00:16] Facebook has now confirmed what it's calling a test of its "do-you-know" an extremist prompt, and that's got me really rather worried. [00:00:28] And it has a lot of other people worried as well. I was talking to a friend of mine who was also in the media biz, who was saying just over the last couple of weeks. He's received this a bunch of times. And I mentioned this to another friend of mine who is not in the media business. And he said that he got it as well. [00:00:48] And he said it was: are YOU an extremist? Which I think is interesting. First of all, an extremist is not defined. And of course, with these people who are monitoring accounts on Facebook, announce where their definition of extremist is going to be. The definition of an extremist by the government going to very political parties is going to Berry very, and we're talking about this anti-extremist prom, not just asking you if you are an extremist, like my friend said he got, but it's asking if you know someone else who is an extremist or who may become an extremist. [00:01:28] That is absolutely amazing to me. Amazing. It's bad enough that the government has picked winners. It has this whole section to 10, you've heard about before in the FCC rules that say we know if you're Facebook or Google, no one can Sue you for anything that you do. That is absolutely insane as far as I'm concerned, but there will be lawsuits on this they've already been filed. [00:01:58] Why would Facebook block thought that it didn't think was appropriate? The whole idea behind the first amendment? It isn't just that it applies to the federal government. It is a code of conduct for all of us. It's a code of conduct for these massive multimedia platforms. We should be allowing all kinds of speech, and we should not allow people to hide because what they've done now is they've moved to other platforms. [00:02:29] They don't do this kind of monitoring, and they are currently carrying on their speed. If someone comes out and says something that is racist, that is violent, that is, is threatening to commit a crime. We know about it. If it's out there in the open, we all have the crazy neighbor that everybody in the neighborhood knows about because they are, and they're saying it, Facebook is starting to block it. [00:02:55]We're just not going to know. And then what do they do? If you report someone who is saying some things that you think might be extreme, things like you should check voter ID at the voting booth. There are people that think that's extreme, and they report to you what's likely to happen. We know already that one of the things that many people who have been doing online is reporting people. [00:03:22] They don't like someone who is posting things that are violent or extreme and getting their stuff blocked and demonetized in some cases, but just plain old blocked. It's a great little tool for people to shut up. Other people, just shut them down, shut them up. They can't say it anymore just because they disagree with the content that's already in place. [00:03:48] Now, what's going to happen. If someone is reported as being not an extremist or on the road to extremism, what liability is there on Facebook's side? What liability is there with, for instance, the FBI or local one force. There are obvious things that should be reported to law enforcement. If someone's saying they're going to harm themselves or harm someone else, then we need to have a closer look at that. [00:04:14] If you actually have the belief that they will and can do that. I was a mandated reporter for 10 years because I was in emergency medical services. If I thought someone was trying to commit harm to themselves or someone else, I was mandated to report, but I have to think that I can't just use the reporting tools as a way to shut up my political opponents. [00:04:43] So someone reports another person as being an extremist of Facebook; Facebook then sends it to who are they going to send it to the FBI? What's the FBI going to do well. The FBI is mandated to report again in their reports and investigate. So what are they going to do for the investigation? It needs to rise to a level of the FBI thinks that this might be an illegal activity so that they can investigate it. [00:05:11] They can hopefully stop something before it happens. Something violent, something nasty. But what does the investigation take ground? I'm taking you all the way down the road here. The investigation is going to include them having a look at what you said, looking at the people who are within your social network. [00:05:32] So who do you. Two. Who do you follow? Who follows you? They may start looking at your phone. Who are you calling? What SMS messages are you receiving? Where are you hanging out? Where's your phone going every day? Who goes to that bar that you like to hang out at? Oh my goodness. You went to a gun range. [00:05:50] Who's at that gun range and so very quick. The investigation is all of a sudden roping everybody and all of your family members, all of your closest friends, anybody that might've liked something that you had said recently, even though it might not have been extremist. And so now, by having Facebook looking for extremists and people who might be on the road to extremism and counting on you to report them, they have opened up a can of worms. [00:06:22] Huge can of worms and remember too, with the FBI and with others, including the NSA and the CIA, they have this multi-hop rule. I think it's three hops now. So if they suspect you of something and what is suspect you, is it the fact that someone reported you as being an extremist, just because they disagree with you politically, they disagree with your religion. [00:06:48] Is that enough for them to suspect it. So now they can monitor not just your stuff, but anyone that has talked to you or liked you and anyone that has talked to them or It doesn't take long. I think that whole Kevin bacon thing, right? Everybody in Hollywood's within five degrees of Kevin bacon. In fact, I think everybody in the United States is within five degrees of Kevin bacon. [00:07:12] In other words, they can hop through opt to five people and connect to anyone in the country. That is absolutely huge. Absolutely huge. According to the verge. Facebook is doing this in response to the Christ church call for action campaign Christchurch. Remember in New Zealand, and there was an atrocity that was committed there. [00:07:41] These hate and dangerous organizations. That's what they're up to. They're trying to stop all of this. And it went back to March 2019. I think it was this attacking Christchurch. Obviously a terrible thing. People knew about this person and their radical approaches. The police have been informed, but nothing happened. [00:08:05] So now we want even more monitoring to go on. At least Facebook does. This is really a problem. There are all kinds of bad behavior online. We hide behind our supposed anonymity. Look at the terrible thing. Some people say online about you name it, right? Different people, kids in high school, either people in other walks of life. [00:08:33] It is terrible. So Facebook has this support page titled what I can do to prevent rattling? Radek  radicalization. There we go. I knew I could say it. It's a really good question. Yeah. They've got links on that page to the life after hate exit USA program, which Facebook says help people find a way out of hate and violence. [00:08:57] I'm all great with that. I think that's a good thing. It's not a bad thing, but now having them report people that someone. In their non-inferior wisdom, decides might be hate speech or might be on the road to extremism because remember anybody that voted for Donald Trump is considered to be someone who's on the road to extremism or is an extremist. [00:09:22] For voting for him, the worst president ever. How many times have you heard that sort of thing? It has happened all of the time. And so we've got to be very careful about these open reporting things that are online. We have to be careful about reporting. Other people, it brings to mind two things. [00:09:41] One is two TV shows. One is one. That apple produced and you can watch, and it's all about this guy. You were a reporter, a news anchor, and he was supposedly sexually harassing someone, and yeah, he was to a degree, but the crime and the punishment were just totally out of whack. And one of my wife's favorite shows It was the good wife, and now it's a good fight. [00:10:12] That's what it is in season five, episode three. It is delving into this in a very big way. What happens when you report someone? Should they be reported? You've got to think twice about that. Even when, again, I was in EMS, what happens if I report someone potential neglect potential child abuse here, they can go through hell. [00:10:37] So be very careful. I don't like this move by. But you probably figured that out already, right? Hey, you stick around. We've got a lot more to talk about today, and I also want to encourage you. If you haven't already, go to my website, sign up for the newsletter. Craig peterson.com/subscribe and get all of the latest and most important technology news in your mailbox. [00:11:04]Craig Peterson: We're all excited about the upcoming Olympic games. And so are the hackers. Oh my goodness. I just finished reading a report by the cyber threat Alliance about what they're expecting to happen at these Olympic Games in Tokyo.  [00:11:22] The Olympics have always been a huge target when it comes to the bad guys. [00:11:28] You might remember there have been abductions at the Olympics before where some of the Olympic competitors were held at gunpoint. Of course, we're not going to forget that one anytime soon. And looking back through the last few Olympics, there have been many different types of attacks, some more successful than others, frankly, but looking at this report, they were talking about the 2008 Beijing Olympic. [00:11:56] The attacks then were relatively limited. There were about 12 million cyber alerts per day. Now, this is part of the problem with cybersecurity. You get so many alerts. What do you do? How do you? Bond and none of those 12 million cyber alerts per day resulted in a successful attack. Now that was back in 2008; there were some scams like ticket scams are always are, but nothing big. [00:12:27] The next one was the London Olympics. In 2012 and the London Olympics, they had pretty much low-level attacks, and they didn't result in any real high-impact cybersecurity event. And the most significant event back in 2012 was evidence. The credible cyber threat against electrical infrastructure. That was, of course, in place for those Olympic games. [00:12:55] There was a distributed denial-of service attack on the power systems. Nothing much really happened, no real impact. Then 2016 Rio de Janeiro. They were starting to pay more attention to cybersecurity for very good reasons. Frankly, there was a large-scale denial of service attack that was carried out by this botnet. [00:13:21] Let me explain what that is. A denial of service attack is where you might have a website, for instance. Providing service to your customers that might be going there to look at your catalog, maybe buy some things. It might be a government agency. It might be an important part of the Olympics in this case and their critical infrastructure. [00:13:42] So denied service means you either knock it off the air, or so people can't get it. Or there's also the distributed denial of service attack. Now DDOS are the distributed ones where you have hundreds or thousands of computers out on the internet, all over the place that are trying to get to maybe the home page, maybe the purchase page. [00:14:09] And because they coming from all over the internet, they're very hard to shut. And that's where we have the botnets coming in, too. Botnets are groups of computers that have been compromised by hackers. So what they do now is they command, for instance, you're a home computer that you don't even know is under the control of one of these bad guys, your home computer now, issues or requests. [00:14:37] Hey, yeah, give me the home page of Olympics 2020. And off it'll go dutifully and try and get the homepage. That's all well and good. Suppose the load on the server is what they're expecting. You've been to sites, right? You hear something mentioned on the radio and like Craig peterson.com now, because I mentioned my website, Craig Peterson, S O n.com. [00:15:03] And there are people listening. Some of you guys are going to go to my website. Now the normal traffic of having dozens of new people go to my website is not going to bring the site down. However, here's the other side of this? What happens if maybe two or three times as much traffic as I expect is going to come to the site? [00:15:27]I've compensated for that. We should be able to handle that just fine. But what happens if all of a sudden it's a thousand times what we're expecting because there are 20, 30, 40,000 cases. Peter is out there that are trying to get my homepage or, in this case, the Olympic. Homepage. Obviously, the server's not going to be able to respond, and it's either going to crash or and I'm sure they set this up the right way. [00:15:53] It's going to deliver a message saying the servers overloaded right now. Try a little bit again. And by the way, if you get that message on a website saying, Hey, try it in a few minutes, please try it in a few minutes. Don't just hit reload because that's going to put even more load on that poor little overloaded server. [00:16:15] Now what they had here coming in 2016 at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics was a staggering 540 gigabytes. Per second worth of people requesting homepages. That is insane. That is a lot of bandwidth. And the fact that they apparently had that much bandwidth available coming in is also amazing, but also remember people are looking at videos. [00:16:46] Am I. To get the insider scoop, add some stuff happening behind the scenes. Now, many of the attacks in 2016 started before the Olympic games even. And what they were doing is attacking different parts of the Olympics infrastructure operationally. So it's a problem. It's a very big problem. They survived that whole thing. [00:17:14] And by the way, the Brazilian government ended up trying to protect the world cup back in 2014 as well by spending a whole lot of money and time on this. But remember, Even back in 2008, we were talking about 12 million cyber alerts per day. How can you staff up for that back then? It was back then. [00:17:37] We're seeing some of our clients being hit with hundreds of cyber attacks a minute and multiple per second, sometimes 10, 20, 30 per second. It's just incredible. What happens? In fact, divide those numbers out 12 million divided by how many seconds in a day. It just shows you how amazingly huge it is. [00:18:01] Now we have seen time. Past where a country like North Korea, for instance, doesn't like what Sony pictures are doing. So North Korea then attacks Sony pictures. And in the case of Sony, they downloaded a bunch of confidential information. They released it. They embarrassed some people now; hardly anybody got fired. [00:18:21] It's absolutely amazing. But anyway, What's happening right now is Russia. Think about all of the Russian attacks against our businesses and our critical infrastructure as a country; they have been huge, massive attacks. We have now Russia at a point where they are getting massive amounts of.  built up. [00:18:50] Why? Because they submitted doped samples in 2019 to the Olympic committee. Yeah. So this was a the McLaren report released by the world anti-doping agency. Describe what we're really systematic effort by the Russian government to really undermine the drug testing process. We've also seen the Russians in the past because they've been caught doing this. [00:19:19] And the Chinese as well, putting in some of the competitors, particularly into things like gymnastics that were too young to compete based on the Olympic rules that were in place. So we had all of this happen during and after the 2014 Sochi winter Olympics. Guess what? Those restrictions on their athletes are still in place, and in place in a very big way; they will not play the Russian national Anthem at the ceremonies at the Olympics. [00:19:53] And they will not allow the Russian flag to be carried. In fact, their athletes have to carry a neutral. Flag. So expect some serious attacks from Russia against the Olympics. And remember the Olympics. There are no spectators. Everybody's going to be watching this thing on a line. So it's going to be interesting. [00:20:19] We'll keep an eye and let you know how things go. Stick around. Visit me online. Craig peterson.com. [00:20:27]We have really in front of us a critical warning. We're trying to figure out what we should do or to stop people from attacking us. That's a problem. What should we do? Many of us have gone out to managed services providers, and now they have let us down.  Did you hear about the Kaseya hack? [00:20:47] It has been a huge impact on people. It's absolutely crazy. Or you heard about a thousand companies that got together, and they have hired a negotiator in order to negotiate the ransom with the bad guys that have ransom there. It is huge. It's huge. But let's talk about why this happened, because I think there are many things that you and I have overlooked here over the years; this ransomware God guy, gang called REvil, R E V I L has targeted cause say, or customers through. [00:21:32] Say, but it isn't just kissy customers. It's really cause, say, it is customers for the most part. Now your head might be spinning a little bit, but here's what's happening. I'm a business owner. You guys know that right now. Let's say that I don't do cybersecurity for businesses. That's what I do. [00:21:52] But let's say I make a widget. I was a widget maker, do not have enough knowledge about computers, to really do it myself. So let's say I've grown and I've got 20 employees. The odds are very good that my office manager is the one in charge of the computer. The office manager probably orders. [00:22:17] Computers probably tries to figure out what's going wrong. By the time of it at 50 computers or 50 employees, I've probably got a full-time it person who goes around and tries to take care of things. But before I've got that full-time IT person I'm probably going to outsource it. And by the way, a lot of companies, it's more like a hundred to 200 employees before they get someone who's really dedicated to it. [00:22:46] So then that awkward teenage stage between where the office managers trying to do it. And finally the office manager can try and hire an it professional. Is where they go and outsource it. You talk to various types of companies. What are in the industry called break, fix shops. That's usually the first stop which is calling them up saying I've got a broken computer. [00:23:12] Can you fix it? And maybe they can, maybe they can't. And then a lot of break fix shops have tried to level out their income so that they have predictable monthly income so that they can hire the right number of people for the number of customers that they have. Although I've got to say most of them are badly overbooked. [00:23:32]Now that they've hired those people, they this outsource break fix shop. They come in and say, okay here's what we can do for X amount per month per computer or employee, we will take care of those computers for you. One of the things that they'll promise to do is that they will take care of your cybersecurity for you. [00:23:53] Now, cybersecurity is frankly, a specialty. It is not something that everybody can do. Even if you're using some of the best stuff in the world, like what we do, we have Cisco hardware, we have Cisco software that we run advanced malware protection. So that's the best of the top of the line. [00:24:13] Most smaller businesses aren't going to want to pay for it, even though they might be able to afford it. Push those people out right now, because we're talking about, you were talking about a smaller business. So what does that outsourced it provider do for you? They might change their name and call themselves a managed services provider. [00:24:34] And that's all well and good, but they need help as well. So I'm making widgets. I have this break fix shop that came in and fixed my computers a few times. And now they're handling my cyber security. Isn't that wall well, and goods was wonderful. So now they're handling, supposedly my cybersecurity. But they know they can't do it themselves and it would be too expensive to do it because they went cheap. [00:25:01]You bought the least expensive option or, close to the least expensive option. So wait, and by the way, cheap in this case means that it's under $150 per. Person slash workstation per month. That's what it costs to get this stuff done. So you might be paying 25 or maybe even $50. They can't do it for that. [00:25:25] So what do they do? They go to a company like. Now they also have some others. They have what are called arm AMS that keep track of some basic stuff for you, but they go to Garcia and say, okay, Casia we want you to monitor the computers, keep them up to date, et cetera for. Now did I, the widget manufacturer go ahead and hire  to take care of stuff. [00:25:51] Did Kasiah even do it themselves or did they outsource it? Do I even know the Kaseya exists because it's really Kaseya that is managing my computers doing. We have, there has a software that doing the upgrade on my computers. This is a real problem because the widget maker, Nope, I didn't hire KSA. I didn't even know they existed. [00:26:17] I trusted my local. Your local guy is not taking care of your cybersecurity. Almost completely guaranteed. There's very few companies like mine out there that we actually do it ourselves because we have looked at Kaseya. We've looked at all of these platforms. Every last one of them has had major problems. [00:26:40] So here comes Casia with over a hundred thousand customers that gets hacked and distributes the hack to all of its customers that are running some of these on-premise devices that are trying to manage the networks for not Cassias clients, but for KSA as clients, client. Okay. Do you see how this is the level of indirection? [00:27:03] You see how this is going to affect? This is a huge problem. And Casia not only have we warned some of these companies, like Kaseya about major design flaws in their software, but cause say his own engineers apparently about three years ago, warned Cacia about major design flaws in the software that they were using. [00:27:29] So they knew about this. They were warned months, if not years in advance about it. So what does it say you do? They're concerned about profit and features, so they just keep adding features as alleged by their former employees instead of fixing the security problems. Cause it would be too hard to fix, take too long cost too much, and it isn't going to increase our revenue. [00:27:54] Are you sitting down? Can you believe this is one of the major operators out there, major operators that is, is behind your manager services provider and your break fix shop that's who's doing it out there. So there are probably far more than that this thousand Kaseya clients that have gathered together to try and negotiate the ranch. [00:28:25] And I got to say, I, I would be extremely disappointed if Kaseya customers didn't gather together and Sue them in a very big way. Curly sins, people claiming to be former Cacia employees are saying they warned the company about major flaws in their software. And that is what hit all of Cassias customers. [00:28:52] Customers. This is incredible here. This is a much different style of relationship that companies have typically, right? Yeah. Okay. Law firms they'll outsource stuff, right? So let's say there's some maritime law. They'll go to a maritime law firm. They'll outsource it. So yeah, there are some models where this is done, but this is done routinely. [00:29:17] In the cybersecurity space. It's not something we do. We stuck our toe toes into that pond and we didn't like it. We didn't want our customers to be hurt by this sort of thing. But anyways, there you have it. Okay. There, you have it all about profit and not about you. And by the way, it's also about how much you're willing to pay. [00:29:41]Did you know that Amazon has a new CEO? I remember back in the nineties, I pledge that I would never use Amazon again because they filed and were awarded a patent on technology everybody was using.  Jeff Bezos is out of a job. [00:30:00] This is a guy that grew a company that all they did initially really was book sales and they had a warehouse the size of the Amazon, right? Because they wanted to represent everybody. They had every book ever published and to a large degree. They did. They had a whole lot of bucks and then I've expanded of course, beyond that. [00:30:28]And beyond that, to the point today where they are doing some well, again, shady things I mentioned in the intro that I was concerned about what Amazon was doing with pat. They got a patent on this one click purchase. Now I have been a fan of patents for a long time. I do not like the patent law as it exists today. [00:30:55] And in fact, I haven't liked it for quite some time, but this patent law where you don't have to show that there was no prior art and frankly, the prior art does not matter at all. I think that's a huge. And I've had a number of patent attorneys on my show, talking about it and talking about what we may want to change. [00:31:18]Jeff Bezos grew it to today where it really is the number one provider of online services is. You might in fact, almost certainly are using Amazon's services, whether you realize it or not to go to most, any website, any of the big ones they're probably using Amazon's web services. They're probably using Amazon storage and Amazon has dozens and dozens of different services. [00:31:50] So it's a very big deal. And Jeff Bezos, who's the guy that started all of that sat down stepped on. I should say. Now it's rare that the founder of a company ends up taking the company public. Public, basically, that just doesn't really happen because all of a sudden, when you're public, your whole job changes and no longer can you make a decision, a snap decision about something, and then go ahead and do it. [00:32:18] You've got to be very careful about what you do when you do it, how you do it, you have to announce it and everything, but just an amazing man being able to take it. All of that. And by the way, have the largest settlement, a divorce settlement in history with his ex wife. It's amazing, but he is still the world's richest human. [00:32:40] Now he has this company called blue origin, which is his rocket company. He's got the Bezos earth fund and he's still chairman of Amazon's board. So he's not going anywhere. However, we've got this new guy, Andy Jassy, who has stepped in as the CEO of Amazon. He was the the head of Amazon's. [00:33:06] Online services, which is absolutely huge. It's their most profitable arm by far. So he's taking this whole thing over when Amazon frankly, is in a lot of trouble. Now they're basics of, Hey, there, the money that they're making, their profits and everything, that's all well and good, but there's ongoing antitrust investigations. [00:33:33] There's battle with labor. And we're talking about, of course, big labor here. The unions. There's increased competition in the cloud space. Just look at what happened with the us military in there. I think it was at least a billion dollar. I can't remember the exact number, a cloud contract because Amazon was battling Microsoft Azure and it was awarded. [00:34:01] And then just a couple of weeks ago it was pulled back again. They're also seeing increased competition in their online services from Google. And I use some of those Google services. In fact, if you go to Craig peterson.com, it's actually right now using some of those Google services. So they are really getting nailed from a whole bunch of different directions. [00:34:26] And this guy Jassy has worked there since 97. But he may be the perfect person to guide Amazon through. W really now we're talking about the middle-aged, that's the time when you're supposed to buy your convertible, buy your motorcycle, et cetera. The middle aged years. And in this case, there's some problems. [00:34:51] Here's a quote I want to read from this Yahoo article is actually I think AP yeah. Yahoo finance. This Yahoo article and it's from Harvard business school, because we've got regulators who are circling, and this may be the main reason Jeff stepped down. I don't know, but quote, you may want somebody who has the confidence of the chair. [00:35:16] And the board you want somebody who understands the strategy and was part of it and knows where the bodies are buried and the mistakes that have been made and how to move forward. This is from Harvard business school, professor of business administration. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, and I think she's right. [00:35:39] Absolutely because this road ahead for him is going to be tough. But the fact that he ran their most profitable division tells you something, it tells you a lot and he might be the exact right guy to be able to do that. Amazon's now got a market capitalization of about $2 trillion, which is huge. [00:36:01] And it's certainly enough to get some of these regulators. Paint a lot of attention to what's going on. We've got the Washington DC attorney general, who has accused them of violating the district of Columbia's antitrust act. And that has to do with, for bidding third-party resellers, from offering cheaper rates for their products on competing sites. [00:36:24] Cause remember what Amazon does. About half or more. In fact, I think now of their products are not actually sold by Amazon. They're certainly not Amazon products. They are products from resellers who are just selling on Amazon. They're using Amazon is their platform. And that way Amazon will manage the inventory. [00:36:47] It'll warehouse a little ship it out. It'll handle the returns. Yeah. What Amazon is doing is charging these sellers for the space in the warehouses, which is perfectly legitimate and taking a percentage of the deals. Are there other websites that might give these sellers or resellers or stuff they're importing from China or wherever. [00:37:12] Might there be other sites that give them better deals? Will you bet there are sites out there. So that's why she's suing them. Federal regulators look like they might be coming in as well. The federal trade commission's newly appointed chairman. She's a fierce critic of the. Amazon way of doing business and she made herself a name by publishing an article for Yale's law journal titled Amazon's antitrust paradox. [00:37:42] So before she was even appointed to the federal trade commission, she was already calling for changes in the current antitrust regulatory framework. And that might be widely invited administration has appointed her, but there's six antitrust bills. Targeting big tech right now that are working their way through the house of representatives. [00:38:05] And we've talked about some of those already, and, I do not like these huge tech companies that are making crazy profits and using those profits to keep other people out. And Amazon's one of the largest employers in the country. And after years of complaints from somewhere house workers, we've got the labor unions now in the mix trying to take action. [00:38:30] Now, I don't have a single problem with labor unions while at some of their tactics, I have problems with, I don't have a problem with the labor union. In the private space. I have a huge problem with I'm in government space. And we could talk about that at some point, but I don't have a problem with them trying to organize inside Amazon. [00:38:53] So the international brotherhood of Teamsters. Yeah. I remember the guys that drive the horses. They announced that they're going to begin working to organize Amazon workers. So that might succeed. There was another one in Alabama that had failed. So are you getting the hint here? This is huge. It's huge. [00:39:13]By the way, Amazon's offering warehouse workers starting pay at $15 per hour plus benefits. So that doesn't seem too bad. If you ask them. But again, with the pandemic, all of the stuff going on there been a lot of calls for Amazon to quote, treat its workers better. So we'll see. We'll see what happens. [00:39:34] Other problems with Amazon that we've talked about before are things like fake reviews. You and I, we look at the reviews, it's critical in us buying things. Isn't it. We look at the reviews and say, oh, wow. Jeepers. There's 500 reviews here and it's four and a half stars. Okay. So I can have confidence that this product is good. [00:39:58] It's going to work. And yet some of these sellers, what they're doing is bribing people to give a good review. So they'll say, Hey, you buy my product. And then they send the product in with, along with the product is a little note saying, Hey, if you give me a review and send me a link, I'll send you an extra battery or whatever it might be. [00:40:20] That has been a real problem for Amazon, even worse than that, because at least those people might give an honest review, right? Worse than that is that some of these reviews are paid for. So some of the sellers it's alleged are going out there. They are hiring. People and paying them to give reviews. Now, those ones are very obvious. [00:40:45] If you look at the reviews, so don't just look at there's 500 and the average is 4.5. Look at some of the reviews in the wording. So I've seen reviews where it was for a massager, and there was talking about what a great. A set of wheels that has on it. And they work really well. And it's very smooth when you're out, riding it on the trails. [00:41:08] Wait a minute wait, we're talking about a massager here. We're not talking about a bicycle, so that's one of the ways to tell if the reviews are fake, they're don't even talk about the product at all, or any of its real features. The other one is look at the wording because most of these fake reviews. [00:41:26] Don't use English, so good. All right. Okay. Thanks for being with me. I want to make sure you stick around and visit me online. In the meantime, go to Craig peterson.com. If you sign up for my free newsletter, you'll be getting that every week with all of the details. I'll try and catch you up and you can listen to my podcast, right from there. [00:41:50] Craig peterson.com. That's Peterson with an O. [00:41:56]If you look into buy a used Google pixel for a I got some news for you. The FBI has been very busy and they've conned the con man. I love this story.  The FBI has, been trying to track bad guys for a very long time and there've been a number of ways they've done it. [00:42:19] We know obviously about phone taps, right? We've seen those before the old days. I don't know if you've ever been to one of the original. Telephone switching stations, all not even original, but the types they had in the late sixties, early seventies. I remember going to see one and all of these switches were just going [00:42:40] People were dialing the phones and everything. It was just so cool. And back then, in order to trace a phone call, what they had to do is find the original. Sore. So they would go to that row, that column, that exact little unit that was hooked up directly to your phone. And then they would see, okay, this is in position this, and then go to that next switch. [00:43:04] Okay. Position that next switch, position that and go all the way through. That's the really older days, not the old days where you had somebody that was at a switchboard doing it. Nowadays, of course, it's all done by computers. The telephone company turns your voice into a digital signal and it's usually done right in your local neighborhood. [00:43:26] It isn't even done at the central office anymore. So by the time your voice is outside the central office, it's digital it's hauled on nowadays, even partially an internet protocol. Network. They used to use different protocols back in the day. And so it makes it quite easy for them to tap your line. Now, of course, there's the legal side of this. [00:43:50] Do they have the legal right to do it to the need a court order or what kind of a court order? Do they need right. All of that stuff. But that is side. It's very easy to find out where call went, where it came from and to listen in because it's just digital. Data's completely completely copyable with absolutely no particular problems at all in copying it. [00:44:14]Last month. The FBI and the Australian federal police acknowledged that they had indeed been working on this encrypted device. And the company was called a nom, which is a fake company and a nom sole. 12,000 smartphones to criminal syndicates around the world. That's the wording that the police used. [00:44:42] So these were being sold as secure devices. They did things like they removed the cell leader, modem functionality they'd changed the boot ROMs. They removed the GPS. So the idea was, Hey, you missed your badge. You can use one of our Anom phones and it's using a special version of the Android operating system and you can send messages back and forth. [00:45:07] It's a completely secure messenger service end to end encryption, right? Like we're always being promised. And so what happened is bad guys started referring. Bad guys to this, right? Cause if they wanted to talk to the other guy, they both needed these Anom phones. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to talk to each other. [00:45:28]And so they were recommending the use of these phones, to their friends that were in the illegal businesses as well. So this I'm just chocolate is so great. So the FBI weaponized. Android phones, at least this particular model of it. And there's a whole community in the Android world. It doesn't exist in the iPhone world because this is much harder to do in the iPhone world, but they call themselves the model. [00:46:00] Community. And so they'll get a phone from some vendor. They'll make some changes to it that led to maybe change networks or do other fancy things. So they, after BI used some of this technology. The modding community and did some just amazing things with this custom rom. Now you're going to love this part. [00:46:21] Okay. So when you boot this phone up, this is according to ARS Technica. The phone will have of course, a little boot screen and. The highest custom rom here, which is the boot loader as well as other things, but it showed an arcane, oh, S boot screen that's the name, arcane O S and every place, the normal Android distribution that comes from Google with the. [00:46:48] B I's arcane. Oh, west green. It's just absolutely phenomenal that these guys would do this and would fall for it. So the FBI told the criminals, Hey alleged criminals, Hey, these are secure devices, the really focused on security and there is a pin scrambling fee. What would happen is on your phone? [00:47:11]You might enter pin some phones, you might use a fingerprint, or he might use a face ID. This was a security feature. And what happened is normally you've got what, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0. And you type in your pin and off you go, what this did, is it scrambled it? So it might be nine to. [00:47:31]Just the scramble of the digits up so that when you enter your pin, you're not always touching the screen in the same place so that people could not guess your code from the fingerprints you're leaving behind. Now, this is also interesting. It, this is a great way to do it. If you're doing it for real, having to run an anonymous phone, they had two different interfaces on the phone and it a different one would pop up depending on. Pin you typed into the lock screen. So the first pin would show a bunch of non-functional apps that are pretty popular in the app store, like Tinder, Instagram, Facebook, Netflix, candy crush games. [00:48:15] So if somebody is checking out your phone, forcing you to unlock it, they're not going to find budge. And by the way, none of those things work. But. I would have, if I had designed it, I would have made them so that they would work. So you can fool some of us trying to Rob you and steal your phone. [00:48:28] The second pin that you could enter in, tell you chose your pins, but it was supposed to be the secure section. She didn't have the phone. So it had a clock, a calculator, and the settings. But the calculator app actually opened a login screen to a nom as an anonymous. And that, again, the bad guys are told all that's a secure, encrypted way to chat. [00:48:54]This is just amazing. So they will do use that. So they go into the calculator app and now allowed them to chat with their friends. But what they did not realize. Is, it was actually sending all of the messages also un-encrypted to the FBI. Okay, absolutely amazing. Amazing. So now some of these bad guys are selling their phones online. [00:49:25] I remember I warned you at the very beginning. If you're going to buy a pixel for a you want to listen to this first because the bad guys are selling. Their phones online. And so a number of people have been trying to figure it out. Some posts on Reddit and elsewhere. You guys know how to deal with this arcane. [00:49:44] S how can I reset this? What should I do? Okay. A lot of confused people. How do I fix this thing? You're not going to be able to fix it. Okay. By the way, this thing I think is really cool because the guy who he bought it legit guy bought it use. You said the installed operating system is arcane O S 10. [00:50:03] The system updater says that Archana, YC 11 is available for download, but I don't want to do it in case it makes something even harder to fix. So maybe the FBI is bad. At sending out updates and fixes, then most of the Google Android vendors that are out there and I'm just laughing all the way through here. [00:50:24]So there are some things that a tech savvy user should know. So I want you guys to pay attention to this, particularly if you're using an Android device. So the first thing is when you start up a newer Android phone, when it's made in the last few years, The first thing that happened is that Google runs something called verified boot, and that makes sure the operating system has not been modified. [00:50:55] So the operating system from the manufacturer of the device will be signed using a cryptographically secured. What was happening here is these devices were failing verified boot of course, because FBI had modified the boot ROMs. And if your device fails, verified boot, your Android device either could be an unlocked boot loader or a relaunch boot loader with tampered software. [00:51:24] It's going to show a message. And in, in this case, the FDA FBI devices just have a message that says your device is loading a different operating system, complete with their yellow exclamation point icon and a link for Google support pages. Absolutely phenomenal. And by the way, the article I'm sending this out in my newsletter, but it says. [00:51:51] How resistance changes. Google has an order. So it sent them to the legitimate Google support. So there you go. There's a really good little piece of advice right now. The FBI changed a lot of the Android operating systems, tripped out a whole bunch of Android settings that might've revealed something about the fact that it really was a spy device system settings for app storage and accounts have been removed. [00:52:19] So pay attention, right? If the machine, if your machine boots up, plane's about the bootloader, you've got a problem and it isn't just Android. Obviously apple will do that. The newer versions of windows are starting to do that as well with TPMS and windows 11 is really going to bring a lot of that to the forum. [00:52:41] Hey, you're listening to Craig Peterson and you can find me online. Craig peterson.com. Check it out and stick around. [00:52:50]Work from home is a very big deal, especially for a couple of segments of our society. And I want to talk a little bit about that now, as employees are returning to work, should they be returning to the office? [00:53:06] There is a great article here this last week in Forbes magazine by Dana Brownley. And it was one of their editors pick and it was picked I think for very good reason. And that is so many of us have been working from home. And for many of us. [00:53:24] Bennett godsend. I've worked from home now for over 20 years. And for me, it's been a godsend because my priority was helping to raise our eight children. And it's hard to do that, and it's hard to homeschool to them if you are not at home. So that's what I had done. And I was very privileged to be able to do that. [00:53:45] And our kids have all turned out amazingly. Many people are caregivers and it isn't necessarily just of kids. But right now I'm looking at a survey that was conducted. It's called the Prudential May, 2021 pulse of the American worker survey. And they're showing the 2000 respondents that 38% identified themselves as caregivers with nearly 40% of those providing care. [00:54:16] For school, age children when you are starting to look at benefit packages, it is important for many families to be able to have some form of childcare. And what has snuck in because of the lockdown is that many of us actually can work from home. Many of us have been more productive at home. And then on top of it, all we can take. [00:54:43] Of our family. So let's look at the stats. We told you about school age children. That's about 40%, 32% are taking care of young children. And this is the 40% of all workers. Okay. People 30% are caring for someone with a disability, some sort of a health issue. And 23% are taking care of an older adult. [00:55:10] That's 40% of the workforce. That is a lot of people. A lot of people, 38% is the exact number. So there, many of these care givers are returning. Really a traditional work environment where they're going to the office, but they have very unique needs. And I think every last one of us have to consider that and have to look at it and figure out how can we make things work. [00:55:41] And when we look at the numbers again for the caregivers, 45% say that they've considered leaving the workforce entirely. Due to personal demands. And 53% are saying that they would retrain for a career in a different field or industry. If they had the opportunity, we have some of our best people out there that are taking care of our kids of our loved ones. [00:56:12] Our parents. And again, look at mine, a situation here where I was at home helping to take care of our kids along with my wife. Neither one of us could have carried on a regular job and homeschooled, eight kids. Neither one of us could have done that. What kind of talent might we be losing? By squeezing these people out of our workforce, particularly when we've now proven that most businesses can allow their workers to work from home. [00:56:48] Now they found in the survey that there were three primary types of support caregivers and these types are looking for different types of flexibility. Number one, they're saying that 42% wanted increased workplace flexibility. No, that makes a whole lot of sense, right? So they can work from home. [00:57:11]Maybe some of your best employees or people who want to work in another part of the country. I have a friend, his brother-in-law is a real good programmer in this one particular type of programming. I think it's sales and he is living there now in a completely different country on the other side of the world. [00:57:33] And yet. He's still doing programming for these people here in the United States, talking about workplace flexibility. He is sitting over there not far from China and is enjoying himself. He loves it there. And of course his costs are much lower, et cetera, et cetera. So consider that, not just that there might be working from home, but maybe they want to take the kids over to Europe, live there for six weeks. [00:58:01] There's a lot of things people want. So that's 42% of our people that are working. Okay. Increased workplace place. Flexibility. The number two increased paid time off 38%. Again, something we got to seriously consider. Now I know how hard it is to be able to fill in for someone that's on vacation or. Maybe they're caring for a loved one. [00:58:28] Maybe they just had a baby, et cetera, but it's very important when you get right down to it. Because again, who's better for raising our children, us, or a stranger who's going to more or less warehouse them. You have to keep a look at that. There's a great article from the Harvard business school. [00:58:50] It's titled. COVID killed the traditional workplace. What should companies do now? That's a very good question because now the lockdown is mostly behind us. Executives can't expect the offices to run the same way they did people to come in and do the same things that they always did. But in reality, Harvard business school, faculty members are saying there are ways to keep our employees happy and productive. [00:59:22] And that is exactly what we're talking about. No for many caretaker takers caregivers, I should say paid time off is more valuable than a pay increase. And that's particularly true for those who are at the higher end of the pay scale. It gives them a lot more flexibility. They can get away sometimes from all of their responsibilities and obligations, which is just so important. [00:59:48] There's here's another one. This is a job list survey from CNBC. The articles entitled here's how much money workers would give up for better. Life balance. And they go in, in that particular article and say that the average worker who says they currently have work life balance, it would take an extra $10,000 in pay per year for them to give up their personal time. [01:00:11] I'm not sure that's right. I think it would be a lot more than that. And it also says just 30% of workers said, they'd give up part of their pay for better work-life balance. And the threshold varies by the type of worker that's where we, I think really get into it now. So those are the first two, the third one is 37%. [01:00:32] So these are all within 4% of each other. Greater commitment to health and wellbeing. Now I've seen studies before that are saying businesses that put in a gym and put in workout rooms, et cetera. They never actually see them use. The way they expect for them to be used. And I don't think that's what people are talking about here, but we really are thinking a lot more about health and wellbeing since so many of us have been scared because of the COVID outbreak, but maybe I should be paying more attention to our health. [01:01:07]But we also have the mental health look at all of the problems we've seen from so many mental health issues because of the. Down. So Harvard again, came out and said for employers, it means that we need to signal the health of facilities. It's crucial to attracting people back. So again, The right kinds of air filters, right? [01:01:30] Kinds of lighting, make sure people feel safe while they're in the office and maybe cut back the number of days that they have to be there. Hey, stick around. We'll be right back. We got a lot more to cover. You're listening to Craig Peterson, of course, and visit me online. Craig peterson.com. [01:01:50]Hey, we got another emergency patch out from our friends at Microsoft. And in this case, it has to do with printers and remote printer access. Do you have employees working from home? [01:02:05] Microsoft has their big monthly patches that they release. They also have weekly patches that they released that are for slightly more critical vulnerabilities. And then they have. Patches that are released because there is a severe problem going on right now while that's what we are staring down. [01:02:31] There is a vulnerability called print nightmare, and this is located in the windows print. Spooler serve. Now the windows print spooler services, what it sounds like. This is the service that handles all of your print jobs. So if you are using this service, Turns out there's a serious bug and Microsoft tried to patch it once and failed. [01:03:01] And they've got another patch out right now seems to be working, but organizations are really urged to deploy these patches as soon as possible or deceased. Inbound remote printing until they can be applied. So that's why I said, if you have people who are working from home, because many of us turned on remote desktop and you better make sure that's properly patched up so that people could. [01:03:28] Then and get a desktop. Although Microsoft has an interesting solution that is going to be announced in early August about having your own windows machine there in their cloud. So it looks like you'll be able to have windows machine for about 35 bucks a month. Microsoft will have to keep it up to date. [01:03:47] I think that's a very cool thing, but they're coming out with that here very shortly. Within the next month or so, we'll see what happens, but this is a problem because if it's exposed to the internet, We're expecting to actually already be seeing active exploit. Now here's the problem Microsoft's trying to solve. [01:04:10] We have three different types of patches. You have the monthly patches that they release. You have your, which of the patch Tuesday. You also have patches that are released every week, which are more critical. And then these types of patches, these are patches for what are called. Zero day attacks. There is nothing normal out there, a regular stuff that would catch this and stop it. [01:04:37] Now, the advanced malware protection that we use from Cisco, it will catch this sort of thing, but it'll only catch it after it's been seen a few times and then identified, obviously by now it's been identified. So it's pretty darn cool. So Microsoft's monthly updates. Last month included a patch for another vulnerability in the windows print spooler service. [01:05:02] And it was initially called a local privilege ex escalation issue. That means that you had to be on that computer in order to gain access to these advanced privileges and features. Turns out that it wasn't entirely just local. And now there is a new one where it can be exploited to get remote code execution and not just privileged privilege, escalation. [01:05:30] That means that they can now run programs on your computer. And with privilege escalation, they can run those programs as whomever they might want to do. So this is pretty big Blackhat USA conference coming right up and they are going to be hosting one of their talks called diving into spooler and what they did to discover these local and remote. [01:06:00] Vulnerabilities in the windows print spooler Hey, it's definitely a problem. There is a proof of concept exploit out there, and that means that the bad guys are not too long from coming up with their own. So there you go. Again, patch it up close and remote access, at least for the time being. To your print spooler because it could be a very big deal. [01:06:25] Another thing you could do is disable the prince Pooler service. You can just use stop service dash name spooler dash force, and that will. Pop it right on down. Okay. And then by the way, in case your machine reboots, you probably wouldn't do a set service dash named spooler dash start-up type disabled in order to make sure it doesn't restart, but there'll a lot to worry about right now, a whole lot, frankly, to worry about right now because of the Russians are coming. [01:06:57] Here's another one. This is Chevy bolt. Now, I have had some major complaints about Tesla and the way Tesla has these door handles that recess in entirely and how it has happened that during an accident, those door handles don't pop out and people cannot be extracted from cars. And the biggest problem you have in an accident with a car full of batteries is. [01:07:24] Of course the high voltage and current that's stored in the batteries that now when they, it out, it starts a toxic fire. Very nasty. Just this week, the national highway traffic safety administration issued an alert for all 2017 to 2019 Chevy. Owners now I know a lot of these bolt owners are actually government agencies. [01:07:50] They're not individuals, but I thought I'd bring it up. Anyways. There was a fire in a Vermont state representatives. Car's name's Timothy Brown. And his Chevy bolt decided it was going to catch on fire. Now, there was a recall by GM of these Chevy volts that had this problem, and apparently it doesn't entirely. [01:08:17] Fix it, they are still plaguing GM. And man, in this particular case this rep of course in Vermont being a I don't know, leftist, I have to assume, but a fan of electric cars, his car. Sad they're burning, which is pretty bad, ironic, but this happened when was this? Oh, it looks like this happened just a couple of weeks ago. [01:08:43] He's the state chairman in Vermont of the house committee on energy and technology. I've been supporting electric vehicles go sponsor bills relating to electric. And plug-in. So now his 2019 Chevy bolt course caught in fire, caught on fire, and there are others out there. 68,000 cars. All right. So two phases to the recall first phase is a temporary solution. [01:09:11] The second one is a more permanent one. Apparently this has to do with the batteries spontaneous. Catching fire. So this isn't something that's related to a car accident. It's a spontaneous combustion problem. That's not too good. It's a defect in the LG chem battery packs that are in these cars. So here you go. [01:09:34] If you drive to work every day and you charge your Chevy bolt every night, the United States, federal government is telling you to stop doing that. Yes. If you have a Chevy bolt, they're advising you to not charge it at night. I'm not sure when you're going to charge it. Cause the idea is you charge it at night. [01:09:54] You drive in the day, right? So they're saying there's, you can't do that. If you have to charge it at night, make sure you park the car away from any structures and definitely do not park your Chevy volt. That might be part of this. Recall inside a garage. How's that for bad, the original recall, by the way, came out in November, 2020 for potential fire hazard in the, again, the high voltage battery pack, those cells could possibly heat up and ignite internally. [01:10:26] Yeah. And if that fire spreads of the rest of the car and spreads to the building it's parked in or nearby building. Yeah. So keep an eye out. If you have a Chevy bolt, this is the type of problem in a phase as we start more and more to move into the electric vehicle realm. Yeah. Eventually it'll all get worked out, but it isn't perfect today. [01:10:48] Hey, visit me online Craig peterson.com and keep up with the latest in what you have to do with technology. [01:10:56]We talked earlier about Amazon and how much trouble they're in right now, Google apparently is in a similar boat. We had just this week, dozens of state attorneys, general suing Google on antitrust grounds. [01:11:13] You can reach me online. Just me. M E Craig peterson.com or what most people do is they just hit reply to my newsletter. [01:11:22] Hopefully you're on my newsletter, right? That goes out every week. If you're on that newsletter you can just hit reply and ask me questions. Any questions you want? I'm more than glad to answer them. I know most of you guys, you're not business people. I am still glad to answer your questions for you to keep you on the right track. [01:11:39] The whole idea here is it's to keep you going. Safer. And if you're a business person, what the heck, maybe I can help you out as well while the here is a problem. And it's a very big problem. We have these absolutely huge companies that are using their market position in order to really control the entire world. [01:12:06] Now it's a very big problem because you have companies that are sitting on billions of dollars in cash who can and do keep their competition out of the market. Now, one of the ways that keep them out, and I've mentioned this before, Microsoft has done this multiple times as lost lawsuits about it, particularly over in Europe, but they find somebody who might be a competitor and they basically squeeze them out of them. [01:12:35] Even though they're not necessarily even a direct competitor. One of the things Facebook does is they buy companies for 10, a hundred times sometimes more. Then they're actually worth, would you take 50 million for your company? That's worth 50 million? You might not. [01:12:53] Would you take 500 million for the company? How about a billion dollars? That's where it starts becoming very questionable about what they're doing. One of the things that Google is allegedly doing right now is preemptively squashing com competing app stores. When you look at Google and the Google Android ecosystem, who sells the most Android devices out there, right? [01:13:21] The high-end devices, the number one seller of Android phones is of course, Sam. And Samsung started to put a store too. An app store. So you could buy Samsung, Sam sung apps now, apple and Google, both charge about the same rates as a general rule. It's 30% for these bigger companies that they have to pay the app store, okay. I'm okay with that. They both spent the time to build the platform, to monitor it, to try and keep the app store clean and guides. That's definitely worth something. But what if Samsung came along and said, okay, we're only going to charge 10% royalty. In our app store and the apps will run on all of our Samsung Android phones. [01:14:10] So it's still using the Google operating system. It's still Android. It will probably run on other than Samsung phones as well. That's the whole nature of, but that hasn't happened. And why hasn't it happened? These state attorneys general are saying that what has happened is the Samsung galaxy store got squashed by Google. [01:14:38] So it could maintain its monopoly on Android app distribution. So it says that Google engaged in a bunch of different anti-competitive practices. They offered large app developers, profit share, and agree. In exchange for exclusive exclusivity. Okay. I can see that the apple iPhone came out. Do you remember this exclusively on ATN T's network? [01:15:05] Is that a problem? They're saying also the Google created unnecessary hurdles for what's called sideloading. So sideloading is where you might go to another app store in order to install something. Or maybe it's something that you want to put on your site. It's not fully approved by the Google play store. [01:15:26] So that's the basics of what the side loaning is all about. So saying that they made that even harder. Okay. From Google standpoint, do we really want to. Allow anything to run on our phones. And here's the question, here's why, right? What do I do for living cyber security? What is one of the things you have to do for cybersecurity? [01:15:48]You've got to put in special routers, special firewalls and software on servers and computers. Whoever touches a computer last owns the next problem. That's been my mantra forever. So if we installed some software on a computer or we had the customer installed some software on a computer, and there's a problem who they get. [01:16:11] They're going to call me, right? Because I was the last one to touch their computer. And at that point now I have to show, okay, it wasn't me. It was this other piece of software. QuickBooks is a piece of junk, you know what, whatever it is, I'm going to have to justify it. And frankly, I'm probably going to have to fix it. [01:16:30] So Google is saying. We don't want all of these app stores that might have apps that are not secure apps, that crash apps that might cause problems with the Android ecosystem. I think that's perfectly legitimate. Apparently these state attorneys general don't think it is. And here's the last one. This is a. [01:16:53] Attempting to buy off Samsung to limit competition from the Samsung galaxy app store. Now, Google is saying that this lawsuit is merit lesson. I can see a whole bunch of legitimate argument on their part. They also said, quote, and this is an article from ARS Technica. It's a strange, it's strange that a group of state attorneys general. [01:17:18] Chose to file a lawsuit, attacking a system that provides more openness and choice than the others. In other words, are taking a jab at apple because

[Weekly Show #1119 2021-06-26] We've got some really cool news that some people have interpreted as bad news. And this has to do with general motors and their hydrogen fuel cell. This is a very interesting story. [00:00:13] I've always been fascinated with the Hindenburg and what happened there. And I did a lot of investigations. And of course the, there was the initial investigation that happened back in 1937. When the Hindenburg actually crash, I found online, you can buy pieces of the Hindenburg online. [00:00:35] There's this kind of an auction house. You can get a small square of the fab. Of the Hindenburgs outer shell for 99 bucks. I found them online. I didn't buy any, although I was thinking, that might actually be cool, but what am I going to do with it? Rights to get on a wall then what w what was interesting about it and about the fabric was what the German engineers had. [00:01:01] Now we know that you can use helium and helium is a great little gas it's inert. It's not going to catch fire. It is also lighter than air. There's a lunch, a lot of others, great properties that has, you can use it for super cooling things that you can't with. Most other gases, helium is much better for super cooling than oxygen is. [00:01:23] And hydrogen is Excel. Helium is getting hard to find the United States had a strategic reserve of helium. Now, to me, that makes sense because we did at one point need helium. We had dirge bubbles. We still do. We still use helium to send weather balloon. Been various other things, but then the federal government decided ELA. [00:01:48] We don't need to keep this reserve anymore. So they sold it off. As of next year, there won't be anything left in that strategic reserve. So where do we get helium? We get it from regular old oil mine. So they drill a hole it's created by the breakdown of various elements in the soil, primarily some of the hard rocks. [00:02:14] And as they break down and decay, they produce helium as one of the byproducts. Now what's been happening in the reason we are in. A helium shortage. Number three in fact, is that we are now fracking. Fracking Lutz is extract a lot more natural gas and a lot more , which is what we're really trying to do and keep some of those costs down. [00:02:44] But it also does not create as much helium and that's. And it's a really big problem when you get right down to it and you're trying to figure out if we're going to fill up a balloon, that's going to go up. What are we going to do now? Approximately a quarter of all of the helium that's news out there goes into these birthday balloons. [00:03:09] Okay. So yeah, it's it's kinda cool, but it's not an absolutely necessary thing, frankly, but it is used in all kinds of other things, including experiments. You remember? I said that helium is used to super cool thing. Think of these massive hydraulic colliders, some of the other experiments that are going on, where we have a magnet. [00:03:37] Now, one of the biggest, most important things we're doing with magnets right now is trying to create a container for nuclear fusion. Now nuclear fusion doesn't have the byproducts of nuclear fusion. Although we've solved most of those vision problems, you don't have this highly radioactive stuff anymore that we used to have in the old reactors. [00:04:01] Although we haven't been building new ones for what, 40 years now. But those particular types of containers, if you will, are built by these big magnets. So these magnets hold it in place. And in order to get the amount of power we need to, to these magnet, we have to super cool them. We have to super cool, the power supplies, and that is typically using helium. [00:04:27] So we've had to shut down some of these experiments. Because we don't have enough helium so much for the strategic reserve, that is almost completely depleted. And by the way, the federal government in its infinite wisdom sold that helium off at a fraction of fair market value. That's a problem because it just went crazy. [00:04:52] People were using it for things that just weren't that important. And now many of our experiments are getting shut down, but in the world war two era and pre-World war II era Germany had a problem trying to get helium itself. Germany doesn't have a whole lot of oil reserves and it had to buy everything. [00:05:12] And the United States really didn't want to sell here. To Germany. So what Germany did and you guys probably all know this from your history lessons, cause you are the best and brightest hydrogen was used. And because hydrogen was used it was a flammable gas. And when there was a spark, when it was trying to land. [00:05:36] It went up, it caught fire. Now what's really interesting is if you look at the pictures that were taken of it burning, there were obviously elements other than hydrogen, because hydrogen burns beautifully pure. You can't really even see it. And what would normally happen is you wouldn't have. Poof. [00:05:58] And the whole thing just burns up. You'd have a hole and that hole be shooting a flame out as it was ignited, right as the hydrogen was ignited and the whole, my discontinue to get a a little bigger until there's no pressurized hydrogen anymore. And the fire's over, but that's not what happened with the Hindenburg. [00:06:18] She caught fire. Because of that spark and it had that spark because of the weather conditions at the time, they just weren't being cautious enough. In fact, that was the very last large dirigible Airship. Ever made, frankly it's crazy, yeah. We got the Goodyear blimp, we got some of these others and they need the helium to fill them up. [00:06:43] And then over time it was kinda like a swimming pool. You filled it up and you, all you have to do is just add a little bit more now, and then you don't have to, because of leakage, you don't have to completely refill it all of the time. So what ended up happening is they had hydrogen on board. [00:07:02] Had the spark started a flame and then the cloth material that coated this massive container holding all of the hydrogen caught fire, but it didn't just catch fire. What happened was it caught fire and. It burned very quickly because effectively the entire outside surface of the Hindenburg was coated with rocket fuel. [00:07:30] Some of the same components that go into gunpowder aluminum powder, which gave it that kind of silver shine. They really messed up. So people are looking at what is happening now with general motors. Tech fuel cell technology and other a little bit worried because this technology was developed for cars. [00:07:51] It is being used in some parts of the world, in some parts of the country. I know California has some hydrogen cars on the road with a fuel cell. Now they're not burning hydrogen. In order to transport the car, they're actually allowing a chemical process to occur. So the hydrogen atom is attracted to the oxygen atom and they use a membrane so that they're trying to get together. [00:08:18] And that's what produces electricity. And then what is the result when you have two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom and they combine H two O so the only. Final end product here coming out of that car is pure. Which is cool. So GM says wait a minute. Now we have this technology, why don't we try and make airplanes a little bit more efficient? [00:08:45] And so they're saying you don't, you're taking off with two tons of water on board. How about we put a hydrogen fuel cell in there. You will be well to generate electricity. Now that's a very big deal because now that electricity doesn't have to be generated by the turbines of the gas engine. And on top of it all, you don't have to take off with two tons of water on board because we can generate water as your. [00:09:16] And of course, they're not going to coat it with a rocket fuel. They are going to put it in one of these really cool containers that is considered to be very safe. So it's very cool. So the litmus test, according to our friends over at general motors, he this is a GM executive. Director Charlie frees. [00:09:36] He says our technology can address customer needs in a wide range of uses on land, sea, air, or rail. And this collaboration we could open up new possibilities for aircraft transitioning to alternative energy, power sources. Now I don't expect a plane to be actually flying on this any time soon. [00:09:58]Hydrogen is a great little fuel, but it doesn't provide enough energy to get that jet off the ground at all, but it does provide enough energy to supplement it so good for them. I think this is a good use frankly, of the hydrogen fuel cells, as long as we can avoid it leaking and causing other major problems. [00:10:21] But I think that can be solved. Look at what we've been able to do now. These containers for the pretty much everything that can be hit by a train at full speed and not. So I think we got this covered. All right, everybody stick around. We'll be right back. And we're going to talk about it. A new type of vigilante that you may not have heard of before. [00:10:46] Of course, you're listening to Craig Peterson. Check me out online. CraigPeterson.com. [00:10:52]Well, you probably know again here, because you're the best and brightest, what a vigilante is. Well, I bet you haven't really heard about this type of vigilante before, and it is causing havoc for as many as 40% of computers. [00:11:10]Well, vigilantes have throughout history decided that they were going to take the launch of their own hands. [00:11:16] Now, way back when there wasn't law enforcement, et cetera, that's just what you did. And then we ended up with the tribes and our tribes would decide, okay, what's going to happen to this person. And you know, one of the worst things that could possibly happen way back. Caveman days. And after frankly, the worst thing that could happen to you is getting banished because having a group of people who are living together, cooperating together, working together makes all of the difference when it comes to survive. [00:11:53] And being kicked out of that tribe out of that group meant you had a very low chance of long-term survival. And if you went into another group, they'd really be suspicious about you because where did you come from? Did somebody kick you out because you did something really, really bad? You know, I kind of wonder if that's not deeply ingrained inside of us from all of those. [00:12:19] Centuries millennia with that whole type of process in place where we see someone that's different than us. And we kind of wonder, right. If you think that's where that might've come from. Interesting thought. I don't know that I've ever seen any studies about that. So vigilantes, nowadays are people who they're not going to the chieftain. [00:12:40] They're not going to the local police department or the prosecutor who a, whoever it might be. They are taking the law as it were into their own hands. Now it's not necessarily even the law, they just decide that they want something to happen in a particular way. And by having that happen in that particular way, they now have control. [00:13:06] Right. They're making the law as it were not just enforcing it. We have a lot of malware out there and there's a lot of different types. You might remember what Sony did, Sony. Decided they didn't like people ripping their CDs. And so they went ahead and installed an automatic installer for windows computers. [00:13:29] So if you tried to play your favorite Sony CD, right. Audio CD, listen to some music, it would automatically install some what. You and I would call malware on your computer and it would look at everything you were doing on your computer. To try and make sure that you were not trying to make a copy of the desk, not just a copy, but what we call ripping it. [00:14:00] In other words, you have a CD and you have an MP3 player. How do you get the CD on the MP3 player? Cause you can't just stick it into an MP3 player, so you have to rip it and that converts it from the CD format into an MP3 format. So it's all digital. You can take it away. And I have really griped about the music industry before, because they make way more money off of CDs than they ever did off of records. [00:14:28] Just because of how cheap it is. It costs them like 10 cents, not even to make a CD. And it costs them a couple of bucks to make a record back in the. So they decided they would do digital without thinking twice about while digital means you can a perfect copy, perfect coffee copy of that desk. And so it's only, he said, I'll go, well, here's what we're going to do. [00:14:53] We're going to make this. And so it installed itself. Way down deep inside the operating system. It watched as you loaded up desks and watched what you did that is malware. And that was Sony being frankly, a vigilant. Yeah. They said, Hey, it's for copyright protection, but there was no encryption on CDs. [00:15:16] There still isn't on compact discs. When we're talking about music desks, there is encryption on DVDs and that's what they did in order to say, well, you can't rip it because it's an encryption. Past the digital communications millennial act. And then from that act, they were able to now have controls. Hey, listen, if it's something's encrypted, you can't even try to dig. [00:15:40] Okay. Pretty, pretty big deal. So there's a whole lot to this whole vigilante thing. And someone is added again, in this case, we found a researcher who has found something you just don't really see very often, you know, outside that sone thing, but it's booby trapped file. Yeah, there's these files that are out there on the internet on a bunch of torrent sites and others that are pirated software and they have a booby trap inside. [00:16:18] Now the pirated software is typically things like a Microsoft windows or all of their different software, right word. And you name it all the way across the line. They also, by the way, have put some of this malware into games because there's a lot of people that run games and they grabbed these cracked games from the inside. [00:16:45] So we're talking about boob bootleg talk. And so what this person or people, or whoever it is, is doing according to Sofos labs, principal researcher, his name is Andrew Brandt is get getting these people to install this software that has. A booby trap and that what it does is you think you're just installing the game or whatever it might be. [00:17:15] But in reality, you're installing software that sends. The file name that was executed to an attacker controlled server. So it knows, oh, you're trying to run Microsoft word and it sends along your IP address of your computers. And then what it does is this vigilante software. It tries to modify the victim's computers so they can no longer. [00:17:43] Access some, 1000 other pirate sites, like the pirate bay.com, which is a very popular site out. Oh, out there. So this is obviously not your typical malware, not at all. And they are doing this same type of thing. That's so needed way back in the day, modifying your computer so that you can not do something that may be illegal. [00:18:11] It may be mostly, most of the time, he illegal, hard to say, but in reality, they're modifying it without you knowing. It's a very, very big deal. So people are using software, kind of like this vigilante software to steal stuff. Usually it's passwords, or maybe your keystrokes or cookies or your intellectual property access Eve, the people are even using ad networks, advertising networks to deliver software. [00:18:44] But that will mind cryptocurrency for them. Okay. But those are all theft. That's what the motive is, but not in this case. These samples really only did a few things and none of them follow the motive for malware criminals. It's fascinating. He had a thing that he posted over there on Twitter, kind of talking about it, but once the victims executed this Trojan file, it gets sent out to a server and I'm sure the FBI is tracking down this server. [00:19:16]It's one flourish. She drew.com in pronounceable. And it's it's not the one fee share, which is the name of a Cod storage provider, but it's pretty close to it. And it sends it out. I'm looking at the list of all of these websites that it tries to block by going into your hosts file. But it's an interesting way to approach it. [00:19:41] Isn't it, frankly, by mapping the domains for all of these torrent sites and pirate site. To your local host, the malware is making sure that your computer, I can't access those websites. Okay. Anyways, if it happens to you just go in and edit the host file. It's really quite that simple. All right. Stick around everybody. [00:20:03] But while you're waiting, go ahead, go online, go to CraigPeterson.com. Once you're there. You can easily subscribe to my newsletter and keep up-to-date on everything. CraigPeterson.com. [00:20:18]We've been worrying about what is happening with ransomware with a cyber attacks and where is it coming from? We've got a new study out, did showing that one in five manufacturing companies are not only targeted by cyber attacks, but are getting nailed and getting nailed back. [00:20:38]This is a bigger problem, and I think most of us realize, and I have a few manufacturing clients who have been nailed badly by cyber attacks. Very badly. There is a new study out that looked at this it's called the manufacturing cybersecurity. Index. And this is a report that has the results of surveys of 567 manufacturing employees. [00:21:08] Now that is quite a few and most of these people were in fact, in the it side of things, some of them were specifically in the cyber securities. That one was most interesting about this. Isn't the fact that just that one out of five manufacturing companies is targeted by cyber attacks, but what the response, what the thoughts of these people that run the companies are. [00:21:37] And I say that because I am just constantly amazed at how businesses just are not paying attention to this, and this is proof again, and here's what it is. Information stealing malware makes up about a third of attacks, but companies are worried about what ransomware, the worried about ransomware shutting down production. [00:22:05] That is a very big deal because of course it does, but what is going to hurt you more? And that's what you got to figure out. That's what companies have to really look. These numbers that we're looking at are according to this article I'm reading at a dark reading, which is a great site. If you haven't been there before, and you'd like to follow some of these things in the cybersecurity world, definitely check it out. [00:22:34] Dark reading, very easy to very easy to look at lots of good stuff. But Robert limos is a contributing writer over there. And he's the guy that wrote that. And so he is saying that more than one third of all manufacturing firms are attacked every month. That's absolutely amazing. Now, of course not all manufacturing employees really know when a company is being attacked, but ransomware attacks that they know, because usually that means much of the company is shut down when it happens. [00:23:12]Because ransomware attacks have this major impact on the business and the other types of attacks.  information most of the time companies never find out unless it's too late again, it's usually ransom or extortion. They're two sides of the same coin. So an extortion attack might be where they get onto a network. [00:23:37] Exfiltrate data. And then they say, Hey, listen, we've got all of this data. Do you want us to post your bank, account numbers, customer information, your intellectual property, your plans, whatever it is, you want us to post them online? Huh? And if not pay out. Okay. So this is, I think a very big problem. [00:23:58] There are major blocks between it information technology and security teams. And I also have to point out that most it decisions nowadays most what would normally be an information technology decision is actually being handled by a line of business matters. Who chose the software you're using to track your customers? [00:24:25] It was probably the sales guy, right? There's the, it's not, the CEO is not the it director. It's the director of sales or marketing or the accounting people who decided to use QuickBooks online as opposed to using something else. All of these types of decisions are out of the hands of it and are way out of the hands of the cybersecurity. [00:24:52] That's because of this massive changing landscape out there. It's absolutely huge. Now there's a survey also of 250 information technology workers, and they found that 61% of the companies experienced a cybersecurity incident affecting their factories. 61%. Of manufacturers had a cybersecurity incident that affected the factories and three quarters of those incidences took production offline. [00:25:26] That's according to another report that came out in March, just mindblowing. Isn't it. So ransomware accounts for only 13% of these attempted attacks on devices. But the information thieves account for 31% of the attacks and file us attacks account for 28%. So here's a quote from morphous sec. These are the guys that produced the first report. [00:25:56] I mentioned, although these sobering threats are certainly not limited to the manufacturing industry, cyber attackers are acutely aware of the data manufacturing facilities have on hand, right? Think about all of that data, think about all of the intellectual property. So it goes on. In fact, some cyber crime groups have even been using ransomware as a smoke screen for cyber attacks, designed to steal intellectual property, increasing the damage they can inflict in the long run as they bully victims. [00:26:31] By threatening to leak data if they don't pay. Now, I've warned about that before. If you've got something that looks like a ransomware attack happening, pops up on your screen, it's got that classic red screen ransomware page. That may just be a smoke screen. You may not have ransomware. [00:26:49] Your files may not be encrypted because what most of these guys nowadays are doing is making additional money offers, stealing your files solid. It depends on the group and this isn't what dark side does, but some other groups do and they can really socket. Ever since the authorities disrupted the emo tech network in January, we've seen attacks split into and smaller groups are increasingly working together in new ways. [00:27:19] And these highly targeted groups are very dangerous because they can execute multi-faceted attacks, giving the collective expertise. Again, it's just like business. If you're trying to sell something, you need to narrow down and you need to get as narrow as possible. And that means the cyber groups are specializing in a specific industry and they're specializing in a specific way. [00:27:48] To attack. This is really fascinating. And there's a few reports that come out every year. Verizon has a very good one on cyber attacks. Statistics. IBM has one gardener of course always does their little thing on the side. Those tend to be, and more narrowly focused, but this is the first time we've seen this report. [00:28:09] So we don't have any sort of comparative data from prior years. But what the, what these guys are saying is that in that the pandemic has shifted attack trends and ransomware has grown from single digit percentages to 13%. As I mentioned already, almost two thirds of surveyed employees believe that the chance of a breach increased because of remote work. [00:28:37] And we know that's true. BI has been warning about that. We've seen it again and again. So be very careful. Okay. Most of these manufacturing companies have had people working from home during the lockdown, nearly two thirds said that it has increased the risk of a breach. And let me tell you, it really has. [00:28:58] And so keep all of that in mind, if you are in manufacturing or if you're concerned about our manufacturing base here in the us man, is there something to be worried about? And that's a shame. How do we conduct business? How do we keep our economy going? If our manufacturers are getting knocked down or getting knocked out of the game, Hey, visit me online. [00:29:23] CraigPeterson.com. You'll find all of this all on my podcast and much more. [00:29:28]We've had some good news this year about the bad guys and law enforcement. That's why it's good news because we've been shutting a bunch of them down. They're still out there and there's more and more, and it's getting more expensive, but I'm going to share some other good news. [00:29:45] Ukraine has had a lot of cybersecurity problems. [00:29:49] You might remember this tax program. That was the number one program used in the Ukraine, or I guess they just say Ukraine now. And it had a major piece of malware. And near, as we can tell, it was designed to attack the Ukrainian users of this tax software. Now, not just because, why would someone outside of Ukraine use the tax software? [00:30:19]No. What happened was the software gets onto a computer and so much Maltz in the militia software game. It goes and tries to infect other computers and then other computers, it goes on and on. So what happened here was it looked like the we're trying to really wreck havoc with Ukraine and with the government's money supply coming from TAC. [00:30:47] Remember this whole thing where you crane was invaded and we didn't do anything right. And Russia took it over that portion of trying to get down to some more, again, see access using Ukraine. So it an X part of Ukraine on it was, Hey, it isn't does it. It is nothing yet. It was Russian special forces. You had that airplane that went. [00:31:11] Down apparently also by Russian special forces. So Ukraine has had. Enough and the Ukrainian police now have arrested members of this noon Torrijos ransomware gang that also has targeted American universities and other businesses here in the United States. This is a very big deal because it's bigger than it might appear. [00:31:37] At first. This was the last Wednesday. The Ukrainian national police made an announcement that they were working with Interpol and the U S and south Korean authorities. Now why all of those different places? Obviously they might want to use a little bit of expertise, maybe. BI, maybe from some of these others, but as it turned out, the most of the damages were in the us and South Korea and the bad guys were there as well. [00:32:13] This is also because they're having trouble, these ransomware people and people that are trying to spread other types of malware, their hands. Trouble finding the right employees. Yeah. Yeah. Employees sometimes their gig. And they'll hire people to launder money, unbeknownst to them many times, it says, Hey, I don't have a PayPal account. [00:32:37] Can you I'll transfer some money to you on PayPal and I'll let you keep 50 bucks or whatever it is. And if you could just wire it into this bank account. So those are called mules and they're part of the money laundering. If you've done that you might've been involved in something illegal, some of those people were here in the U S cause that's again, they're trying to get the money out nowadays. [00:33:01] They are also courts using Bitcoin primarily, but other cryptocurrencies as well. But these guys were, it was called Klopp. They had, or  depending how we went. They had stolen a half a billion dollars. Basically half a billion dollars in damages. So everybody really wanted them. But this is the first time that a national law enforcement agency has carried out mass arrest of a ransomware game. [00:33:34] That is a very big deal. So Ukraine is now doing more basically than Russia has. Russia is a hub for ransomware gangs. We know that right? Whether Putin has control over them as directed them or not, that is up to debate, but there are a lot of ransomware gangs over and run. And you think about Russia and how big it is you realize its economy is about the same as New York state. [00:34:02]Yeah, it's a decent sized economy, but it's nothing compared to the other major economies in the world. They have Russia been blamed for harboring cyber criminals because they have not been prosecuting them and they don't extradite them. Remember president Biden was going to ask for extraditions and they're trying to figure out a deal and. [00:34:28] President Putin said sure. We'll extradite them. If you extradite people, we want to, which of course isn't going to happen. So who have they been going after and what have they been doing? This group is one of several ransomware. Cartels is what the call-in on. Now that sees the target state. And then encrypted and demand a ransom to release it. [00:34:55] And then they also do the double extortion where they say, Hey, if you don't pay the ransom to decrypt your files, we are going to leak sensitive information on it. So the targets they've included shell oil company, the international law firm Jones day. You might've heard of that one as well as several us universities, including Stanford in the university of California. [00:35:25] Think of how big that is. I'd be shocked if university of California, wasn't the biggest. In the country. So in most cases, these hackers used a vulnerability in this file transfer product by company called a . So if you're using that's ACC E L I O N S  in your business or to connect to your business or file transfers, double check it and make sure it's up to date because that's how they compromise their Vixen. [00:35:55] But they're a victim. Obviously ransomware is in the spotlight right now. There've been a lot of these huge attacks hitting our critical infrastructure. We've got the colonial pipeline. We've also got a course them, big meat processing plant. We've seen them hit some of these water filtration, plant electric grid. [00:36:19] All over the place. So governments, not just the us, but worldwide now are under a lot of pressure to try and stop these cyber criminals. So we'll see what happens, a small country like Ukraine. It is it's just amazing to me that they are taking the lead. It's a, it's just incredible. So let's look them up right now. [00:36:46]Ukraine size financial see what it has to say here on duck. Duck go their economy. So they rank per capita GDP, gross domestic product, a hundred and 19th, not so good. And their GDP rank is 56. So in other words, most of their people are on the very poor side. And a number one looks like sector is agriculture. [00:37:13] So they are a head of Russia. They are ahead of most countries except really Eastern European and the United States. So congratulations to Ukraine on that one. Very big. I'm trying to find out here how many people there were. Okay. So part of this take down Ukrainian police on Wednesday, and this is an article from ARS. [00:37:38] Technica said that it had conducted 21 searches in the. Kiev, I guess it's pronounced region of homes and cars of those arrested seasoning equipment, 5 million Ukrainian here, Venus, which is around 200 grand and property video footage shared by the police shot officers ready in homes and what appeared to be wealthy neighborhoods and towing luxury cars, including Tesla. [00:38:06] The police said, had managed to shut down some of the group's digital infrastructure. And it's unclear whether those arrested were core members of the group or affiliates. And the defendants here face eight years in Ukrainian prison does not sound like a fun time for you. That's for sure. I want to encourage everybody to take a few minutes if you haven't already and get my newsletter. [00:38:31] Now, when you sign up for it, I'm going to send you a few special report talking about some of the things you can do. Right now in order to secure your computer, whether it's a home computer just one office, computer, or a whole office, I go through some of the most important things. Also you'll find on my home page, a video on how. [00:38:57] To thwart most of the Russian ransomware. And it's really simple. So it's like a five minute, not even video shows you exactly what to do, and you are going to be ahead of those Russian hackers. So how's that for really good news. Now you can get my newsletter, which comes out every week and I try and keep you up to date on the goings on by going to Craig Peter sohn.com/subscribe. [00:39:25] Now that's where you're going to find links to my podcast, which you can also find right there on my website. You can find all of the interviews or people are interviewing me. You can find this radio show, all two hours worth of my weekly podcast. You can find it all or right there on the homepage@craigpeterson.com. [00:39:46] Now, if I could ask a favor. The way to get a podcast out into more and more hand is to get the subscription numbers up, not just the downloads, those are important, but the subscription numbers and to have people obviously listening to it or watching it did, by the way I post this up on YouTube as well. [00:40:10] So you can watch it there. Listen, really. I am not posting much video right now. Do post some. But I, if I could encourage you to go to the 800 pound gorilla or even your favorite podcasting platform, go to Craig peterson.com/itunes. That will then take you directly to my iTunes podcast. Page Craig Peterson, that's Craig Peterson, P E T E R S O n.com. [00:40:40] And. Put a slash and then I tuned ITU NES, and that. Get you to my iTunes podcast page. I hope I've earned five star review from you. So if you would leave a review and give me the five stars, hopefully, as I said, I've earned it. I'm also on a whole bunch of others. You can go to Craig peterson.com/spotify and many others. [00:41:07] So check it out. Please do subscribe to the podcast, whatever your favorite podcast app is, and that will help. The word out, we can get a few more listeners here. I really do want to help these people out, help you out. Particularly Craig peterson.com. You'll find everything you need to get started right on the homepage. [00:41:31] All right, everybody take care. [00:41:32]Apple and Google are changing the way they are delivering privacy in a very big way. Have you ever spoken to your device and giving it a command? Yeah, the smartphones, et cetera. That's all changing for the better. [00:41:48]Apple and Google have for very long time now been trying to do something that just fascinates me way back when in college, in the seventies, I was working on some software that did handwriting recognition and. [00:42:05]It was just beyond, incredibly hard to do back then. And so we narrowed it down the scope down and just signature recognition. Is this the same person signature? And, we got somewhere, but it wasn't like very good, frankly. Today we have come a very long way. I am still amazed at how well computers can speak to us, but it isn't just them speaking. [00:42:31] Now, of course our computers, our smartphones, or our watches can go ahead and listen. To what you're saying. Absolutely. Listen and listen closely and understand it. But the big question is how, what are they understanding? And from a privacy standpoint, where are they doing the understand? No. I wrote some software that takes meetings or other things like my radio shows and sends it on abit, packages it up and it sends it on up to Google are not Google. [00:43:10] I should say Amazon. And has Amazon transcribe it for me. Now that software didn't take me very long to write because Amazon has these services that you can use using what are called API APIs, application programming interfaces. So I was able to write some software. That transcribed radio shows and transcribed meetings in the matter of Wembley, less than an hour, including all of the debugging and testing and everything else, to make sure everything was going to work and it wasn't going to fail. And it didn't keep stuff up in Amazon longer than it needed to and tied into my right accounts, everything. And. And our, I remember in the early eighties, trying to come up with a system that could take a phone call inbound and walk people through a menu and let them hit a button. [00:44:03] So they, press one for this two for that, et cetera. And this was on an apple too. I was writing it in assembler and in basic, oh my gosh, bringing back all kinds of memories. We now have these great, incredibly smart devices. And since the Dawn of the iPhone, a decade plus ago, many of the smarts in our smartphone in our computers have come from somewhere else. [00:44:28] Just like I have transcriptions done by Amazon. That's up in the cloud. They have all of their data centers in some amazing software that can trend transcribe almost anything even with kind of batteries. So the mobile apps and our phones, or sending our user data in this case, our voices that were recorded up to the cloud, and that would transcribe speech, or maybe giving you some ideas of what the next word is, you're trying to type. [00:45:01] So you only have to hit one. Where it's changing now is where it's being processed. Apple has for quite a while done processing as much as possible in the local phone set the handset. So you wake it up. That processing is done locally. Same. Thing's true for Amazon. Google has been doing much the same thing and apple has added to its devices machine learning. [00:45:28] That's designed to be able to do this more and more so that your question. So you might say, Hey Siri, what time is it can be processed locally in the device. That's exactly what Google is doing as well, because these smart phones, even the ones without machine learning, like a lot of these Android phones are smart enough. [00:45:52] To do some real crucial and frankly sensitive machine learning tasks, like asking very simple questions or even doing the speech transcription. So at Apple's big event this month, apple said that its virtual assistant is going to be able to transcribe speech without using any cloud resources. Ella depends on the language. [00:46:19] Obviously English is where they're probably are going to focus. And maybe a few other European languages. Future iPhones and iPads are going to be doing all of that locally. And if you pay close attention to the releases of Mac OOS, you'll see that future, like the next release of Mac iOS, that's already embedded. [00:46:42] Is using special processing. That's only available using the apple chips because apple again is embedding machine learning into some of these. It's just amazing what they're doing. And Google is following suit. Google said the latest version of Android has a feature dedicated to secure on device processing of sensitive data. [00:47:09] So they're calling that the private compute core that's Google's name for it. And initially it's going to be used to keep the smart reply feature. The Android has built into its mobile keyboard that can suggest responses to incoming messages, keep it local on the phone. So that's a good thing, right? [00:47:30] This wizardry is going to give you more privacy because even though apple and anonymize. Anything that's going up to the cloud. Anything. If it is being, if your voice, for instance has been sent up so that it can be processed and it happens, like fad, it's just amazing how quickly it all happened. [00:47:50]Google is doing much the same thing. They're just going to say we're just going to process it locally. So you might not notice a difference because of how fast both companies are able to process your voice, but on-device machine learning offers more privacy and even faster apps. Just really, again, using the old snap trick here a much snappier than they ever were before. [00:48:20] And by not transmitting your personal data, it's cutting the risk of exposure. It's also saving time, because right now, again, it has to record it. It's often streaming it live so listens for its wake up word, which might be, Hey Siri or hello, Google or whatever you've got to set up to be. And my phone just woke up and it sends started streaming it up to the cloud. [00:48:49] So you have to wait for the data to be sent then processed and then sent back. But it's amazing how fast it is. So this is very. Apple has always had your privacy and your security is one of their main focuses. But when it comes to our friends over at Google prying on your spine, on you, Brian eyes is really the name of their game. [00:49:15] They want to know everything about everyone. My mom, one of my sons was over at his girlfriends and she has these face book. Devices, which I've always argued against people getting, cause there's nobody worse than Facebook. Even Google isn't as bad as Facebook and they were talking, he and his girlfriend about a hammer. [00:49:41] And then within minutes they started getting advertisements for hammocks. Now they weren't talking through this Facebook portal, which is kinda like an the Alexa or the Google home with the camera and a screen on it. They weren't talking through it. They were just talking. Around it and they weren't looking it up on Facebook or anything. [00:50:03] So they have their strong suspicions. They were being spied on. And frankly, I do too. Cause my son, this particular son knows tech extremely well. Okay. So Google started gathering data on the Chrome browser. And how much are we using it? What you're using it for through a technique, they call differential privacy, which adds what's called noise to harvest the data. [00:50:28] Now you can get plugins for your browser, that issues randomly. Queries searches. So Google thinks, okay, so you just searched for size 13 socks, but you didn't, your browser did that in the background on purpose to basically poison Google's harvesting of your data, because they can't really tell the difference. [00:50:52] So that Google has started doing this themselves in 2014 a little bit. So that the information about you. Really wasn't that accurate? Google's now trying to put you into a box. So rather than gathering all the information they can about you specifically about you just long-tailed about you, what they're doing. [00:51:16] Is putting you in a box. So you are a 40 year old, white guy from new England who likes cars, right? So you'll be in that box as opposed to specifics about you. And that part of the reason for that is because they keep getting nailed by all kinds of lawsuits. Apple has a technical. On data gathered from phone phones to inform them well, what emojis people are using and type in predictions and apple completely. [00:51:43] Anonymizes it. So it's interesting to see. I am glad to see both apple and Google out there in the forefront. Now, trying to anonymize stuff, trying to keep the processing on your device, which is going to save you a lot of time. And. Provide a little bit of privacy. So there you go. Major update to privacy coming first from apple, and then it looks like Google is going to follow suit. [00:52:14] Hey, have you visited me online? You can get my newsletter for free. I have a free one. Go to Craig peterson.com/subscribe. [00:52:26]I came across this article in Fox businesses week that I knew I had to talk about. And this is about ransomware and how a ransomware attack can really begin in some pretty simple ways. So we're going to talk about that, right now. [00:52:43]You I'm sure heard of the colonial hack. You guys really are the best and brightest. If you're listening to this show and you are a regular, you are among the top 5%. Let me tell you, so you know about the colonial hack and colonial pipeline, of course. Down. We didn't really get nailed by up here in the Northeast, because the way of the way the pipeline works to see the pipeline sends fuel and stuff, sends all kinds of things. For all the way from down in the Gulf coast, the basically all the way up through new England and they ship different types of fuel and they can't ship them all at once and they don't ship to all areas at once. So let's say new England need some home heating oil. They will schedule a time and they'll say, okay. [00:53:35] So from 8:00 AM on Monday until five, a 5:00 PM on Thursday. The pipelines are going to be full of home heating oil, headed up to noon. And all of those big oil tanks that you see, particularly in like north Western or Northeastern New Jersey, those our holding tank. So our friends at colonial pipeline will ship at op we'll, hold it. [00:54:00] And then from there, it gets distributed by a trucks, to our homes and et cetera, et cetera. So they do the same thing for jet fuel, car fuel, gasoline, diesel, et cetera. Here in the Northeast, we had just been delivered a whole load of fuel and then the ransomware attack hit and colonial pipeline decided to. [00:54:26] Down the whole pipeline. Now there's people who say they shut it down because they didn't want to lose money because their billing systems were offline and they didn't know who was getting, which fuel, et cetera. That might be part of it. But it's not a bad idea at all. If you're getting ransomware to shut the machine off. [00:54:47] Just shut it off. So it doesn't spread to other machines and shut off the other machines as well. So they don't pick it up. Now we have some automated systems. So we had a client who they, one of their employees. In fact, it was one of the C level people, which of course they always demand exceptions to their security protocols. [00:55:07]They managed to pull in some ransomware, bring it in. And we're looking at it, they're on their computer and it started to install itself and immediately our systems cut them off from the rest of the night. So they weren't able to the bad guys who are able to spread it all. It was on that one machine and we stopped it before it started doing anything really bad. [00:55:33] Even on my max, I'm running some software. No, I should do a training on this, some free software that keeps an eye out for apps that are opening a lot of files and doing something that might be encrypting them. Sometimes it's hard to tell if your program, if something's being encrypted or not. [00:55:50] So it tracks all of that and tries to, stop it. And it does a good job. Sometimes it stops legitimate software too. But when it stops at a pop has a little pop up, Hey, us, this program, it gives you the names doing this. Tells you the folders. And he said, okay that's fine. Just let it go. And in the, in Microsoft are not Microsoft in the Mac world, just like in the Unix world, you can suspend a process that's running. [00:56:15] So it just sends a suspend signal to it until such time, as you either say, no, it's bad, kill it or let it continue. So they did the right things by shutting it all down and then trying to figure out, okay, so what's happened, where is it? What do we have to do? And they ended up paying the ransom. Do you remember that as well? [00:56:35]We also had this problem with JBS and JBS of course, was that massive meat processor. It's actually a foreign company, but it had a huge. Us meat plant. And we've got a wonder, is this a real war? Is this a war we're starting to fight online? We're not at a kinetic war right now, but is China behind? [00:57:00] This is Russia behind us. And I got to say it sometimes. It's really hard to tell they might be using. Russian tools, but it could be Chinese hackers. There are so many questions here. It's just hard to know. So how do these guys get it in? With my client, they brought it in thinking, oh, okay I'm going to put this on my thumb drive. [00:57:21] I'll bring it in to look at it in the morning. And it was an email and it was supposedly from the better business bureau and they needed to do some follow-ups. So he brought it. That is referred to as social engineering. It is a kind of a phishing attack where they know, okay this company is obviously going to be concerned about a better business bureau thing and complaint, and they're going to want to respond because they want to keep the reputation up. [00:57:47] Cause they were a retail operation. Makes sense. That's what social engineering is all about. Just looking for cracks in the human shielded organizations is the human shield, really doing what they should be doing. Have they been trained and it's so easy to get tricked. I don't like some of these companies that go ahead and send out emails that are phishing emails, seeing if they can get an one of their own employees to click on it. [00:58:23] And then what they do is they reprimand. No initially might be okay. We got to go through another training and you, so you sit through the training. Okay, great. Great. Okay. I get it. Yeah. Yeah. Bad boy. Slap on the wrist. All so it might be that it might be something much more critical, much nastier where some of these businesses are in fact firing. [00:58:47] You do it two times you're fired. Okay. Or three times that I've seen that more in Europe than in the us, but some of the companies are doing that. I could totally disagree with it. And anybody can be fooled, which is why you've got to have a multi-layer set of protection. Okay. But what this is doing is letting the attackers in the door. [00:59:12] Once they're in the door, they try and get higher privileges, which is basically more security access so that they can start going into various files and machines and start spreading. We call it east west, right? Spreading laterally within your neck. And that's a key to carry out a ransomware attack. He can be that simple. [00:59:36] Now most cyber attacks about 70% are related to email phishing. So phishing emails, which appear to come from a trusted source are very simple but effective. For them to conduct social engineering, ransomware virus attacks on a computer. They are all tied together and we're not going to get into a lot of depth here. [01:00:00] I certainly do some webinars and some other trainings on this. In fact, my thinking of releasing my improving windows security training again, for people that want it where. Through. Okay. Here are the main configuration things you need to do on your windows, computer or did to help secure it. There's no perfect security, but improving it. So I've got that course out there. A lot of you guys have already taken. And I appreciate you and your support. Let me tell you because it helps to cover some of my costs, but I think I might do that again. Send a little thing to everybody letting them know about the improving windows security, the course. [01:00:39] All right. So I want to invite you again, go to Craig peterson.com/subscribe. Now you may not know. So I'm going to explain right now what my newsletter is. Every week, I find six to 10 articles that I think are very important and I'm reviewing literally thousands of articles every week. Some of it's automated review and the rest is me sitting there looking at them, trying to find what are the ones I think you'll be interested in. [01:01:12] Those from me every weekend, ish. I emailed this, go to Craig peterson.com/subscribe. CraigPeterson.com/subscribe. Stick around. [01:01:25]A lot of us have been complaining about cookies and tracking for a long time and Google who has finally heard us. I'm I'm not sure I heard about this, but we're going to talk about third party cookies right now. [01:01:40] Third party cookies are where you go to a website and that web browser kind of squeals on you. Shall we say. And what happens is Google, for instance, is trying to track you. Would you go online as you go between websites, they're calling this kind of an advertising surveillance industry on the web. [01:02:07] And frankly, this third party cookie has really been an important part. Of this whole surveillance industry. What it does now is it allows a website to have a look at where you have been online. And when I say it allows a website, it's really Google, that's doing the tracking. Obviously you're going to a website, Google doesn't own every website out there. [01:02:36] And in fact it barely owns any. When you look at the number of websites that are out there, Internet. So Google has this whole concept of if you're visiting this site and you have visited this site and this other site, I know something about them. And so it sells that information. So because it's seen the pattern, right? [01:03:03] That's the whole idea behind the advertising. Phasing out these tracking cookies and these other persistent third party identifiers has been something people have been trying to get rid of for a very long time in the electronic frontier. The foundation you'll find them online@eff.org has been jumping up and down, trying to get everybody to pull up their socks. [01:03:28] If you will. One of the first players to really jump into this as apple and apple has pretty much told the whole industry. Got to stop doing some of this tracking, some of the tracking is okay. Again, how many times have I said, if I'm looking for a Ford F-150 then I don't mind seeing ads for the Ford F. [01:03:53] D, but why would I want to see ads for a motor scooter when I'm looking for a pickup truck and frankly, if I'm looking for an F-150, I expect to see ads maybe for a Chevy Silverado or a Dodge truck. Does that make sense to you? Because I'm looking for something and that's what I'm interested in seeing. [01:04:17] While Google is now jumping onto this bandwagon, because apple has said we are going to be doing a couple of things. We are going to be forcing you app developers to tell everybody exactly what you are doing with their information, what you're tracking, who you're selling it to, what it's being used for. [01:04:40] That's a very big deal. And it's got the whole advertising industry. Very. Worried and Google is coming along saying, okay, apple will do you a little bit of one better. And of course the biggest complaint, or, from Facebook who ironically has been buying newspaper ads, if you can believe that, google has been destroying the newspaper industry. Now it's going to newspapers to try and get people to stop apple from destroying Facebook's industry, right by blocking some of the advertising tracking that Facebook has been doing. Now, what they are doing is what Google is doing is looking to replace these third party cookies. [01:05:30] And how were they going to do that? They are already doing a few rather sneaky things. For instance, they fingerprint your brow. Now your browser has a fingerprint because you have certain extensions on your browser that you've added. You have your computer, that which has an operating system that has a certain version. [01:05:54] It has a certain amount of memory. It has a certain amount of disc storage, a lot of the private information, the personal information about, so your computer can be gleaned by a website. So one of the things they've been doing this, you okay, you're blocking cookies. No problem. I can still figure out who you are and they do now. [01:06:17] They don't necessarily know exactly who you are, but they have a very good idea. One of the proposals the Google has come out with is called the federated learning of cohorts, which is very ambitious. Could be the replacement. If you will, for these third party cookies, that could be the most harmful. And what it is a way to make your browser do the profile. [01:06:49] Itself. So historically they've been able to track your browser as you go around and then they have to pull all of that information together. They pull it together and they come up with a picture of you and who you are. Yeah. You're interested in buying a pickup truck, particularly a man. Okay. Is an example that picture gets a cat gets a detailed about you, but it's something that the advertisers have to put together. [01:07:20] What this flock or federated learning of cohorts is doing is it's boiling down your recent browsing activity into a category. They're calling this a behavioral and behavioral label, and then they're sharing it with websites and advertisers. So the idea is basically your web browser. It self is going to put you in one or more buckets and the websites that you're visiting and the advertisers that are advertising on those websites will be able to get that label that your browser has put on. [01:08:06] You. Yeah, you like that. So what eff is saying is that this could exacerbate many of the worst non privacy problems with behavioral ads, including discrimination and predatory targeting. You can guess what those things mean. So they're calling this a privacy sandbox, right? It's always the opposite. If Congress is passing a bill, that is a COVID relief bill, you can bet that there's very little to do with COVID relief in the bill. Wait a minute, actually. That's true. There's only 9% of the money in this almost $2 trillion spending plan. The night last 9%. That actually goes to COVID relief, instant COVID relief bill. [01:08:53] Same thing here with Google. Privacy sandbox and it's going to be better. So Google says in the world we have today where data brokers and ad tech giant track and profile everybody with complete impunity, just like Equifax has just like cat. Kofax lost our personal identity. Bio level information, our social security numbers, or addresses or names or date of birth, et cetera, et cetera. [01:09:20] Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We pay a small fine. Yet. We go on, I, are they out of business? Have they lost business? In fact, they gained business because people have been paying that Kofax too. Monitor their credit. Oh my gosh. But that framing and the Google is talking about is based on a false premise that you have to choose between old tracking and new tracking. [01:09:45] Does that sound familiar? Yeah. So it's not an either or. We really should be rejecting this whole new federated learning of cohorts proposal. The Google has come out with, you can bet that apple is going to reject this outright because it's really rather terrible. If you care about your privacy on the other hand again, I look at it and say, I want an F-150. [01:10:14] I don't mind ads for pickup trucks, so what's wrong with that? Okay. There's two sides to this. I just don't like them calling me by name. When I walked past a billboard. [01:10:25]We really, aren't going to talk about Bitcoin in this segment. So stick around. I had to talk about Russia this last time around, but Bitcoin, the prices are surging. People are mining. What does that mean? And why are they using more electricity than the country of Argentina? Bitcoin has been around for a while. And I don't think anybody out there has not heard about Bitcoin. It is a power in and of itself. We don't know who actually came up with this whole concept. There's a concept behind Bitcoin called blockchain technology and blockchain technology is based on. The concept of ledgers, where you have ledgers, just like a bank ledger that keeps track of every transaction. [01:11:16] And there are hundreds of thousands. There's just so many ledgers in the world. And in order to verify transactions, half of those ledger entries have to agree. Pretty basic on that level, but what is the Bitcoin itself, which sits on top of this blockchain technology? If you want to look at it, simply take a look at prime numbers. [01:11:42] Hopefully you can name the first five prime numbers, right? 1 3, 5, 7 11. There you go. Ta-da those are the first five of I think I got those right prime numbers and applying numbers and number that is only divisible by itself. And why. Which is why one is a prime number and we use prime numbers a lot. [01:12:06] Nowadays, most of the encryption that you're using is based on prime numbers. If you go to a secure website, you're using something called SSL, which is the secure socket layer. And that's what shows up in your browser, in that URL line as a little lock, if you see that lock, that you have. [01:12:27] Effectively a VPN, a virtual private network between your browser and that remote server. Yeah. Guess what? You already have a VPN, right? Why use one of these VPNs that spies on you? So that is encrypted data and it's very difficult to encrypt in between. How does it do that? It's using something known as public key technology, the RSA algorithm. [01:12:55] We're not going to go any further down that, but basically it's a allows someone to have a public. And use that public key to encrypt a message. And then you, the person who's receiving the message whose private key was used to do the encryption can decrypt it using their private key. So the public key side, the private keys side, it allows the encryption from end to end. [01:13:24] That's what the SSL is. Okay. When we're talking about Bitcoin, we are talking about something that goes and uses some of the similar technology, because what it's doing is using the. Prime numbers. That's what the RSA algorithm is using this encryption algorithm, using these very large, very complicated prime numbers because you get past 11 and see 12. [01:13:50] That's not a prime, right? Because it's divisible by two and six and three and four, and then let's see 13. Okay. That's a prime 14, no 15, no 16. No. Okay. It gets more difficult. I remember way back when writing a little program that just found prime numbers and it looked for prime numbers and the easiest way to do it was I would start. [01:14:22] First of all, you take a number. Divide it into, there's no reason to go any higher than that when you're trying to figure out if it's prime or not. And then I would start looking at some of the base numbers to try and figure it out. And then of course, real mathematicians were able to figure out better ways to find primes. [01:14:39]When we're talking about Bitcoin and some of these other cryptocurrencies, they are also using these very large prime numbers, just like you're being used for this public key encryption. And they also have some other parameters around some of these prime numbers. So to have a Bitcoin is to have this digital number that represents a unique prime number. [01:15:06] If you want to mind what you're doing is you are trying to find a prime number that no one has ever found before, just to oversimplify things a little bit. So you find that pine number and Tonna. Now you have a Bitcoin sounds easy enough sounds quick enough. It is not easy and it is not quick. And it's not just the based on the prime number algorithm, but we're keeping this simple here. [01:15:33]We have found millions now of these Bitcoins. I should look that up and find out exactly how many, but there are many Bitcoins. The whole algorithm, the whole system is set. To do some restrictions here. There's only a certain number of these Bitcoins that will ever be mined. It's estimated that something like 20% of the Bitcoins that were found have been lost because the encryption was Jews to keep the keys. [01:16:08]People forgot it. You probably heard about this guy that has. A quarter of a billion dollars in Bitcoin in this wallet. And he only gets eight tries before it auto destructs, and he hasn't found them yet. So there's a quarter of a billion dollars that's unreachable, but that's what we're talking about here. [01:16:27] Bitcoin. In this day and age, Bitcoin mining is so hard and it takes so much computing power that it is using up a couple of things. First of all, the thing that bothers me the most is it's using up these GPU's these graphical processing units, because GPU's, which we typically use for graphics processing are set up so that we have are hundreds, thousands. [01:16:58] Processes that can be happening on that card simultaneously, various small little tiny processes that can be set up to somewhat be optimized for Bitcoin mining or mining, any of these other cryptocurrencies. And then the people who really want to make money on money. And these cryptocurrencies have machines that are special machines. [01:17:22] They are designed specifically to mine, one type of coin, one of these crypto coins. So we're talking about Bitcoin. So there are machines that are designed to mine. Bitcoins, go to eBay and look for Bitcoin miner. They used to have all my on Amazon. I haven't checked in a while, but you'll find them in both places. [01:17:45] At least you used to be able to, you can certainly still find the money. And you'll find some that are old, that are used and some brand new ones. It is expensive to mine them. One of my sons and I, we decided years ago to try and do a little mining. We probably should have tried harder. But we gave up because it was a, who knows what's going to happen with Bitcoin. [01:18:08] There are so many cryptocurrencies. Then today, there are people introducing new cryptocurrencies all of the time. And I avoid those like the plague, because you never know what's going to happen. Bitcoin is definitely the 800 pound gorilla out there. We were able to mine, I guess my son, he mind a couple of other little currencies, they're worth a penny or two, not a very big. [01:18:33] We have now so many people in China, for instance, that were doing Bitcoin mining, the China could not produce enough electricity to mine, the Bitcoins. So China went around and shut down anybody that was mining Bitcoin, and we have something called the Cambridg

News On Apple #62 Edição Especial - Bate papo sobre a keynote de abertura da WWDC 2021, a Conferência Mundial e Anual de Desenvolvedores, evento realizado pela Apple em 7 de junho de 2021 para o anúncio dos novos sistemas operacionais do iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch e Mac: iOS 15, iPadOS 15, watchOS 8 e macOS Monterey (versão 12), entre outras novidades, sempre com muitas dicas e um bate papo descontraído com as curiosidades do mundo Apple. Apresentação: Rafael de Angeli (@rafangeli) e Pedro Celli (@pcelli). Oferecimento/Parceiros: Hospital Mais Phone (@hospitalmaisphone) e Mundo Apple BR (@mundoapplebr). Saiba todos os rumores e novidades do mundo Apple em www.newsonapple.com

The latest In Touch With iOS with Dave he is joined by guest Kelly Guimont. #WWDC21 is coming next week. We give our predictions to what could get announced including, HomeOS and a new iMessage upgrade. The iPod celebrates its 20th anniversary this year and could there be a new iPod Touch that supports lossless audio? iOS 14.6 has had complaints about battery drain we give tips on iOS battery life. iWork app updates for iOS & new wallet app website that does a great job explaining its benefits plus more. The show notes are at InTouchwithiOS.com 
Direct Link to Audio News Apple Highlights Benefits of the Wallet App, Apple Pay, and Apple Cash on New Webpages connect your Apple Cash card to the app store. Discontinued HomePod now widely unavailable at Apple Stores, but still in stock online Apple TV App Now Available on Android TV OS Check out Ted Lasso - a sub-podcast of TeeVee iPhones are the most popular devices for trade-in, upgrade programs : Apple World Today Topics Beta this week. iOS 14.7 Beta 2  Apple Seeds Second Betas of iOS and iPadOS 14.7 to Developers Apple Seeds Second Beta of watchOS 7.6 to Developers Apple Seeds Second Beta of tvOS 14.7 to Developers WWDC Predictions and we will compare on next weeks show.  Apple WWDC 2021: How to watch and what to expect Kelly and Dave give their predictions.  HomeOS could this be a standalone OS for HomePod and maybe a HomePod with video? homeOS to join Apple's macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, tvOS? : Apple World Today Messages Apple's iMessage to Finally Get Major Update at WWDC? Airpods 3 could they announce these?  It is the 20th anniversary of the iPod. Could the iPod Touch be upgraded? Maybe with cellular data? You could wish for those who don’t want an iPhone. Concept: Meet iPod Max with Apple Music Lossless and AirPods Max focus New OS’s of course. Will iPadOS be revolutionary? Tips Some Users Reporting Excessive Battery Drain Following iOS 14.6 Update iOS 14.6 Battery Life Draining Issues? 8 Tips to Help - FaceTime video calls can also drain the battery. 15 Features Low Power Mode Disables or Reduces on Your iPhone Apps Firefox launches major Mac/iOS update with refreshed design Apple Updates iWork for iOS and macOS With New Linking Features and More Our Host Your Host Dave Ginsburg  is an IT Professional With over 22 years experience working with Mac and Windows as well as iOS devices. He is also President of The Suburban Chicago Apple Users Group
 About our Guest Kelly Guimont writes for The Mac Observer and is the host of The Daily Observations Podcast. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram @verso About our Co-Host Co-Host Warren Sklar @Wsklar is an IT Consultant and moderator of the Mac To The Future FaceBook Group with over 3000 members talking about all things Apple. Request to join this group to be among people who love Apple

[Following is an automated transcript of Week 1115 podcast aired 2021-05-29] Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] We've got these semiconductor shortages. What that means is various types of chips are just not available and it's been hurting us all the way across our economy. And that's where we're going to start the day with today. Semiconductors. [00:00:15] Man, this has been so bad, these semiconductor shortages, because what it means is we just cannot get the types of devices that we want because those raw components just aren't available. I was talking with a gentleman earlier this week and he was telling me how he has a special little app that tells him when there is a Sony PS five available for sale anywhere online. [00:00:45] It's gotten that bad. First of all, Why does he want a PS five so bad? I've never owned one or an X-Box or any of those gaming consoles? Since the original Nintendo, we had a we as well. Cause we had all the exercise stuff that went along with the week. But anyways, that's a different story entirely. [00:01:04] I'm sure a lot of you guys play a lot of video games, but. There really are not Sony  available. And we're finding much the same problem in even the car industry where some of these major manufacturers here in the U S have had to shut down lines. They've had, gone from three shifts down to a single shift every day. [00:01:30] And in some cases it's gotten even worse where vehicle manufacturers are only. Making vehicles of few times a week. It is incredible. What's been happening and there a number of reasons for it. This isn't just one reason, but it does bring up the real problem we could have with our critical infrastructure. [00:01:53] How critical is it that we have computers that can run our businesses, drive our cars, and fly our airplanes. I think it's pretty darn critical when you get right down to it. Yeah. You can probably get an extra year out of that computer, if you really need to many times that computer's just plain broken, you just can't use it. [00:02:15] So you do need to replace it. But in reality, we've gotten a little bit soft. We are not making most of the chips here in the U S anymore. Yes, it's us technology. But most of this is in Southeast Asia, particularly in Taiwan. And do you remember what's happening with Taiwan with the threats from China? [00:02:38] China is flying over Taiwan right now with military jets in Taiwanese air space, because China has never officially recognized that Taiwan is independent from the people's Republic of China. And do you know how socialists are? They're just going to go ahead and take that land. What would happen if they did. [00:03:00] Remember China really wants to get their hands on our top chip technology because that helps them in the military. It helps them with all of these facial recognition systems they have in China, the social credit systems that they have in China, by the way, all built primarily by us companies and sold to China to track their people. [00:03:23] Including the nasty things have been happening with the Wiggers over there. It's just absolutely incredible as well as Christian communities and others in China. So all of this tech has stuff they want to get their hands on. If they were to invade Taiwan, what would happen? The Biden administration. [00:03:40] There they've been a little soft on this. Unlike president Trump, who said, yeah, the Trump administration, we're not going to tolerate any of this. And the Trump administration shipped all kinds of military systems to Taiwan, so they could potentially defend themselves because we don't really want to get drawn into a hot war, but. [00:04:00] Oh, if they had taken over Taiwan, they would now have access to the U S technology on chip making. Now let me explain what that means from a technology standpoint, the chips that we have are.  into a wafer of silicone. I'm going to try and keep this pretty simple. And then, and that silicone is grown. Cause you think of a crystal or maybe think of a still-life tight or it's like titers to leg might that you'd find in a cave. [00:04:34] Those crystals are grown. They're humanly grown, and obviously you don't want any defects in them. So it's very hard to do to grow them. And we need those crystals for all kinds of things, including these solar panels that some people are so hot to trot about. I, Hey, I love the idea. Don't get me wrong. [00:04:52] It's just right now, again, with solar panels, like so many other things, don't think you're green because you. Are or putting up solar panels. You're not right. There's certainly other advantages to it, but you're not being green by doing that. But what really matters is how much power does that chip use in order to do a certain number of computations? [00:05:17] And how much heat is given off by the chip. Think again about the old Edison light bulbs that we've had and still have in some places and those Edison light bulbs, by the way, one of the original ones still burning in New York city and the fire department after over a hundred years, that one light bulb just incredible. [00:05:37] But think about that Edison light bulb, it gives off light. Sure. But it also gives off heat. And the same thing is true with. Anything electronic the movement of the electricity through that conductor or semiconductor create heat. Heat is a waste. That's part of the problem with Edison bulbs. It'd be one thing if they were giving off just straight light, the, but so much of that energy is used to generate heat that we don't want. [00:06:06] And then we have to dissipate that heat somehow, but that's another story. The same thing is true. When we're talking about these chips, the chips have a resistance to them. In fact, that's what a semiconductor does. It provide some resistance, so that resistance is going to. Do what create heat. So you feel your laptop when you're running it and so hot to get over time, the laptops have gotten faster and have actually created less heat, certainly poorer computational unit. [00:06:44] They created a lot less heat. What we're looking at now is if we can make these chips even smaller. We can decrease the amount of electricity they need, because it doesn't have electricity. It doesn't have to flow as far through the conductors or semiconductors inside these chips. So that's what the race has been over the years. [00:07:09] The race has been how small can we make them? And by making them smaller, You're doing a couple of things. You're making them faster because electricity has to travel less distance. Even though electricity is really fast. When you're talking about a billion transistors inside one of these chips or more, you are traveling through a whole lot of conductor and semiconductor. [00:07:32] So you can make that chip faster by making it smaller and you can reduce the amount of power it needs, because you're not going to be giving off as much power via heat and heat generation. And that's important for everything, but particularly important for our mobile devices. Look at your apple watch or your iPhone or your laptop or your desktop. [00:07:56] All of them need to consume less and less electricity as time goes on. So what we're talking about now are just teeny tiny measurement. We're talking about nanometers. So if you go online, you look up nano meter. Which is a foul. Yeah, there you go. 10 to the negative nine meters. It's a billionth of a meter. [00:08:21] Isn't that something looking it up right now, sell it a 1E-9.000000000. Give or take, and it's a unit of measurement that is being used now in chips and chip designs. And we're seeing these faster and faster chips getting down into the five nanometer process that is incredibly small, incredibly. [00:08:49] Fast potentially, but likely incredibly fast and uses a lot less electricity right now. We're seeing seven nanometers out of Taiwan and we're working on five nanometer, but we have such a shortage of chips right now that they're bringing some of these old 15 nanometer. Chip fabs online, even 22 nanometer. [00:09:14] I'm looking right now online at some of these old chip fabricators that are being brought online and China really wants to get their hands on some of this technology, because at this point anyways, they really can't get to the seven nanoliter chips. China right now. I think is pretty much limited to 14 nanometer. [00:09:39] So we're still, I had in that race, but because they're being made in Taiwan, these chips that we're using here in the us using us technology, and because we had the lockdown in Taiwan and pretty much worldwide, the whole supply chain got interrupted and these big car manufacturers just. Shut off the orders. [00:10:01] So there's no reason for the manufacturers to continue to make these things are a little reason for them to make them for the car industry in the current street, he thought we can just turn it back on and we'll have the chips. And of course they didn't, but it's also been compounded by the conditions in Taiwan right now. [00:10:19] Because the Taiwanese centers for disease control this week raised it's epidemic warning level and is strengthening their containment measures and making things even worse. Taiwan is in the midst of a severe drought. So they are. Rationing water in Taiwan. They're looking at cutoffs of two days a week. [00:10:42] And water reduction plans are expected to decrease supply to all major manufacturers by as much as 15%. So there you go. In a nutshell, that's why we care. Nanometers and we're talking about chips. That's why we need to start making them back here in the U S. And the good news, apple and others are doing exactly that. [00:11:03] Starting to bring some of this technology back from Taiwan, into the U S and I think that's going to help keep us safer in the long run [00:11:12]All electric vehicles are I think very cool. And some people give me a hard time because I am not a fan of it. [00:11:20] If you think you're being green, because you're not. And I went through the whole science behind that the life cycle of an electric vehicle is much more. Dangerous and hazardous and polluting in the environment. Then even a diesel truck is just to give you an idea of small truck. So that's, let's put that aside, but in reality, these things I think are potentially the future. [00:11:50] Now there's a lot of things we've got to take care of, for instance. Our electric grid is not set up for electric cars. Our electric grid is not set up for us to have windmills in our backyard or to have solar panels on our roofs. It's set up to have a main power station of some sort, whether it's nuclear, which by the way is green or whether it might be. [00:12:17] Be coal or natural gas or wood or trash. That's what the grid is set up for. So we have some problems there and there's another big problem. And that has to do with how much power one of these vehicles can hold, because I don't know about you, but having a, what is it? The brand new car that came out a Fiat or somebody and his electric vehicle and its range is 78 miles. [00:12:46]In some places that might be okay, but progress. The problem is I'll write, let's say I'll put up with stopping every hour to recharge these cars, unless it's a rapid recharger, you're going to be there for an hour and a half or more. And even with the rapid recharger, you're going to be there for a least 20 minutes. [00:13:07] Now Tesla had some innovative ideas on how to deal with that. Like the, I don't know if you ever saw it a battery pack, so you'd pull into the station and it would just trade battery packs for you. The idea was it's right in the center. GM has this concept of the roller skate, where the entire car really is built into this frame. [00:13:29] That kind of looks like roller skate. And then on top of that, Goes your car and there's some thinking maybe we can make it so that you can just swap out your rollerskate. Make it nice and simple and hopefully relatively inexpensive, but we still don't see the range on the vehicles. And as of yet, we haven't seen any huge forays by any of the big auto makers. [00:13:54] Of course, Nissan had it to leaf, which. Pretty well accepted GM had their entry. And I chuckled because it was in a lot of ways. It was a joke. And of course they're up with better stuff here in the future, but I want to play a little bit here. I'm going to play about 25 seconds worth of an ad. [00:14:12] And then we're going to talk about it a bit. [00:14:16] Unknown: [00:14:16] It's got a targeted 775 pound feet of torque. It's targeted to go from zero to 60 in the mid four second range. It's a driving experience. That's pure unfiltered exhilaration from the moment you hit the accelerator. Oh, and it's an F-150 introducing the all electric F-150 [00:14:40] Craig Peterson: [00:14:40] lightning. [00:14:41] So you noticed there were no mentions in there of no birds were harmed in January generating electricity here. And of course, a little tongue in cheek because of course birds are harmed in generate electricity, particularly windmill, but anyways, they're not going for the eco greeny. They're not going for the Prius driver. [00:15:01] You remember the stats on the Prius where they surveyed the drivers of Prius's. This was probably five. Maybe a little more years ago. And the number one reason they found people drove a Prius. 70% of the time in fact, was they drove a Prius because of what they thought other people would think of them. [00:15:23] So there they are driving this car that they're driving it for one reason, because they, I think it's going to make other people think that they're just fantastic people. I obviously I disagree with that. I think that's little bit of a problem, but what is what they're doing here with that Ford commercial is they are working on mainstreaming. [00:15:46] Yes. Electric vehicles. Can you imagine this a 700 plus foot point foot pound torque in a sub $40,000 truck? It's just amazing. And you can even use the batteries that are in this truck. Of course, there's a lot of batteries in that truck to run power tools while you're out at a work site. Which I think is a great idea. [00:16:12] And you can even use it to power your house. They have a special adapter you can use to hook up to your house so that you can get up to three days. They say of electricity in your house. If the power goes out, No mention in here of, any of these greeny things, right? Oh, none of oases talking points are in that ad. [00:16:37] At least I didn't hear him on, did you guys hear them, but this is going to be amazing. This of course is Ford's best-selling vehicle, the F-150 and I drove one for years. It was very handy with the horses and chickens and everything here. And I'm looking forward to this thing coming out. I don't think I'm going to buy one, by the way. [00:16:58] They've also got this Mustang mark II, which is this electric Mustang thingy. And then they have an electric transit van. And the reason I don't think I'm going to buy one is it just doesn't have the range. Now you can get better equipped lightening trucks in that sub $40,000 one. You can also go ahead and get bigger batteries. [00:17:22] You can do a whole bunch of things, but this range is a combined output here, a 426 horsepower estimated range of 230 miles. And the extended range of this F-150 lightning is going to get an even. Bigger horsepower rating, 563 horsepower and an estimated range of 300 miles. And 775 foot pounds of torque, which is just stump polling. [00:17:56] It's absolutely amazing. So I don't know about you. I'm not in the mode for pain, 60 ish grand for an electric truck that is only going to take me 230 miles. That, but maybe that's me. And then looking further into the stats on this thing, it can do a bunch of towing. It can have a 77, a hundred pounds of towing. [00:18:22] You can get Reduce cargo, excuse me, reduce cargo course. If you're getting the bigger battery and looking at an illustration of the F-150 lightening, what they're doing is similar to what GM had proposed way back with the roller skate. The entire drive train is underneath the truck. And it's just like an old frame. [00:18:44] You remember, trucks used to have frames now? The F-150 is, I think still do have frames underneath, but the whole bottom of the truck is one piece. If you will, obviously there's little pieces to it, but one major component and then the cab and bed and everything else just sits right on top of it. [00:19:03] It's amazing. Now with this truck, if you connected to 150 kilowatt fast charger, you're going to get 41 miles in 10 minutes. So how long does it take you fill up with gas? Probably about 10 minutes. How long is it good for? It was my car 400, 500 miles in this case that 10 minute stop. At the fuel station is going to get you 41 miles. [00:19:29] And if you can find the, just the 50 kilowatt fast charger, it's going to take you 91 minutes to get 41 miles of range. It's not there yet, but it's very obvious that Ford is aiming for the truck driver. And more particularly if I was a construction guy and I was taking my truck out and I needed to plug in tools and I don't have to drive very far. [00:19:56] I look seriously at that new F-150 lightning. [00:20:00]President Biden .  I've got an article in my newsletter this week about what he's been doing when it comes to the hackers, China, is it Russia? What's going on? He's been blaming. It looks like. Russia for some of the hacks that China has actually been carrying out, but no matter what the bottom line is, we are getting hacked and this is a very big problem. [00:20:28] We have to modernize our technology strategy. Because this ideological divide between these authoritan or authoritarians, whether it's a dictatorship like the socialists have in China, where you have chairman Mao, who is chairman for life now, or Putin. President Putin, who is president for life over in Russia. [00:20:53]It's absolutely amazing. They are coming after us. And so is North Korea, of course, again, socialist dictator for life over there as well, Iran not so socialist, but a very fascist in many ways, which is typically a form of socialism anyways. We need to be able to protect ourselves. It's a real problem, frankly. [00:21:18] 1947 world war two was over and George Kennan, R yeah. Kennan introduced this concept of containment and that containment concept was used throughout the entire cold war. And of course you probably know what that is. At least, excuse me. I hope you do. But today we don't have that cold war anymore. [00:21:45] What is it that we have? Why would China be attacking this? We know, for instance, a China comes after our intellectual property and they w they come after it because it helps them militarily. If they know what we're doing, what we're ordering. What's going on that we know they come after us as well, because they want to cause some havoc. [00:22:11] There's no question about that. Some of these other smaller countries come after us because they need the hard currency. Ultimately they want to trade in those Bitcoin for us dollars, which of course can be spent here. But. This whole system that we have right now is really on the brink of a new economy. [00:22:34] Look at the technology we've been using. Look at the number of people that have been working from home. We're sitting on the edge of three simultaneous bubbles. Right now we have the housing bubble. We have the stock market bubble and we have the cryptocurrency bubble and we've seen downs in all of those just over the last week or so. [00:22:56]We'll see what happens, but there's no denying that they're bubbles are home values adjusted for inflation, have not been higher than the last 100 years as an example. So there's a lot for us to look at. And when these bad guys are under the same types of financial pressures we are under, because, collapses tend to be worldwide. [00:23:21] What are they going to do? What's ultimately going to happen? Here is what president Biden thinks should happen with these two executive orders that came out really It, it has to do with federal government supply chains. And that is people who obviously are selling to the feds. And I want you to think mostly about department of defense here, and we deal with the department of defense contractors and tightening them up. [00:23:50] But in getting them to the point they should be at. And there's a lot to be concerned about it from that standpoint, but they have been releasing some details over the last few months, really. They started in April this year, and they're saying that because of the supply chain problem that we had with solar winds, they are now. [00:24:15] Pushing out some rules that require the people who sell to the federal government to keep a certain level of cybersecurity. We've talked a little bit before about CMMC, which is. Again, it's a cyber security maturity model that's out there and they are requiring certain federal contractors to meet that. [00:24:40] We've also talked about some of the NIST standards, which is the national Institute of science and technology. In fact, we talked about their password standard and how a year and a half or so ago, they changed the way we need to do passwords. And if you don't know what that is, have a look at my. A special report on passwords. [00:25:02] And I go through that in some detail, but there's an executive order on American supply chains that came out in February and it's leaning pretty heavily on these newer emerging technologies, including secure access to semiconductors. And we talked about them earlier in the show today, the high capacity batteries. [00:25:24] Because again, if we're not innovating. In the, you name it. But in end in the automotive field, we're going to fall behind what's important automotive. We just talked about it. Last segment here. Batteries. So it's covering batteries and materials that are used to create them. So they both of these orders address the need for us to really work closely together with our allies economically, as well as national security. [00:25:55] But that's exactly what we've been doing. Isn't it? What it really boils down to in my mind is democracy versus authoritarianism. It was so funny that they called president Trump and authoritarian a decade, her right. He was liking to Hitler constantly. I thought if you brought him up, you automatically lost the argument. [00:26:18] But in reality, now we're seeing more of a hands-on from the federal government more authoritarianism. And I got a question whether or not that's what we really want. Do we need a digital politic. This guiding doctrine, that places digital considerations at the forefront of our national strategy. Is this something that should be handled by the state or the businesses involved? [00:26:47]We've seen all kinds of mixed. Pros and cons to each one of those strategies over the years, we know government controls, centralized government control, ultimately causes serious problems serious as in the deaths of over a hundred million people in the last century alone. So I'm not sure that's the best idea. [00:27:09] And I have to say work. I With defense contractors, even not really a defense contractor, someone that makes something that's sold to a defense contractor. Having a one size fits all cybersecurity policy, a cybersecurity czar, and these executive orders pushing everything down does not make sense. It doesn't make sense for a real small company that makes a wiring harness to have to meet the same. [00:27:38]Cyber security requirements as a big BAE systems, they don't have the time. They don't have the money. It can cost a million dollars over the course of three years for even a small company to meet these federal standards that are required. If you take a contract from the federal government or from one of these contractors. [00:28:04] So you are a subcontractor, all of those requirements that are put on that huge military contractor, all of those requirements get pushed down to you. So this just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. I'm very concerned about it. There's a bipartisan bill. That's moving right now called the democracy technology partnership act. [00:28:26] And they're trying to get some collaboration and innovation amongst democracies. I think it's good now that there are rules in place that have changed, that allows competitors to talk with each other when it comes to cyber security. [00:28:43]Internet Explorer was Microsoft's first major foray into the internet browsing world internet browsing didn't really take off until almost the mid nineties. And it was really cool. I remember when I first started using. Web browsing and websites and building them with NCSA mosaic. Oh my gosh. Those were the days heady days back then. [00:29:09] And we were just thinking about everything that could happen, how great it would be. And there were no hackers to speak of online. You didn't have to worry about drive by downloads or so many of the other problems that we have today. And Microsoft took that NCSA mosaic browser code base and created something. [00:29:33] They called internet Explorer. Now the history of internet Explorer, frankly. Is rather interesting when you get right down to it. Internet Explorer. Yeah. It's been around for a long time, but in genetics, Explorer was one of the worst browsers out there for a very long time. It was just terrible. [00:29:57] And one of the things that Microsoft did that really got. With the whole internet community upset with them is they built it right into their operating system. Absolutely. They used the code here from again, mosaic, which was this early commercial web browser back in 2003. It, the whole project started in 1994. [00:30:25]I'm looking right now, Wikipedia. I remember these things happening. It's just nuts to think about how far it's gone, but they took internet Explorer and they bolted it into the operating system. So the operating system now supposedly was dependent on internet Explorer. Now it's an interesting concept to think about if all they have to do is maintain a user interface. [00:30:51] That's web based for the operating system. That's really cool. Microsoft internet Explorer is some 5 million lines of code that is a lot of programming to maintain. And then on top of that, of course you have all of the user interface code that's sitting there in the operating system. So I think this is my suspicion. [00:31:12] What Microsoft is trying to do is make their life a little bit easier. But by doing that by hard wiring in internet Explorer, into the operating system, they ended up making it so that other companies like the Firefox guys, Mozilla, they could not run independently on inch, on a windows. And a third party, like Dell could not decide, Hey, I don't want to use internet Explorer because Google's paying me to install Google Chrome. [00:31:43] So I want to put Chrome on windows. So you just couldn't do any of that. So they got a whole bunch of flack. The industry came after them and because of that, so did the department of justice. And the United States versus Microsoft case, very fundamental. And it was absolutely, it was essential, I think because Microsoft never would have done anything about this, but they developed Microsoft this thing called ActiveX technology, which is a security nightmare and remains one to this very day where you could effectively as a website. [00:32:25] Tell the internet Explorer to do almost anything you wanted to do. And there were bugs after bugs. I don't have a count. It might be interesting to see what the actual count would be, but it was, it had to be in the thousands of bugs that were fixed security bugs that were fixed and internet Explorer because of active X and because of some of these other things. [00:32:48] So it's just been absolutely terrible. One of the questions I get asked most often to this day. What do we do when we don't want to use internet Explorer or more commonly, what is the best browser to use while I'm online? And the answer to that kind of varies. It depends, right? That's the answer, but as a general rule using Firefox is a good idea. [00:33:20] Now, one of the things I like about Firefox for an individual or for a, an extremely small business, like a small office home office, where you're not tying into a corporate network at all. One of the things that's really good is Firefox. Uses a version of DNS, which is the main name, service. It's what your computer uses in order to find websites online, Firefox uses a version of DNS that is. [00:33:50] Encrypted and protected so that your internet service provider cannot see the website names you're looking up and cannot intercept it. And that's the bigger thing. You don't want it to be intercepted because one of the major hacks, and this is affected millions of people. Homed and businesses. [00:34:10] One of the major hacks is let's just go in. We can hack the router and then we'll change the router DNS settings so that it uses our DNS and our DNS by the way is great because it redirects you. If you think you want to go to bank of America, it takes you to bank of America dot China. Okay. A fake site, not a real site. [00:34:31] And you may not even know. You may not even be able to tell unless you look really closely. So that is a big plus for Firefox as well as it has all kinds of anti-trafficking technology. Anti-malware technology built right in, they've just done a bang up job. The reason I do not like it for bigger businesses is that same. [00:34:54] Feature that DNS feature because what we do when we go into a business, and one of the things we do is we change their DNS servers to use some commercial DNS servers that we have from Cisco that get updated minute by minute for the sole purpose of trying to stop the bad guys. And they're very good at it. [00:35:16] It stopped being ransomware just by DNS. If you're using Firefox inside one of these networks, the problem is Firefox is going to try and hide the DNS request. So it was not so much as I care that they're being hidden, except that might be going to a malicious site. It said, I can't see any of them. [00:35:36] And I cannot tell your web browser or your computer not to go to that website because that particular site or that particular internet server is actually malicious. So there's the two sides for Firefox. So if you're a regular little home user, get Firefox, it's free. It's a great little browser. If you are a business, you can still use Firefox with things like Cisco's umbrella. [00:36:04] But what you need to do is turn off the DNS over HTTPS or TLS in which gets a little advanced. You can probably find it. If you'd duck, duck, go search it online. And that'll get you the answers you need. So turn that off so that all of your DNS requests are going through the filter, whatever it might be. [00:36:24] A Barracuda has a DNS filter. I don't like Barracuda. Don't think I'm endorsing them, but it's better to use the Barracuda DNS filter. If that's all you have, then nothing. Let me tell ya. And then there are also free DNS servers that are going to be fantastic for you to check them out. I talked about them this last week. [00:36:44] I got a lot of emails, open dns.com open ope, N D N S the letters, DNS domain name service, or. Dynamic name server or whatever you want. How are you going to remember it? Open dns.com and there it's easy enough. You just set it up on your ad drought or, and you're off and running. So that's my general favorite. [00:37:10] If you want something that's more secure, you can take a look at our friend, the epic browser, epi C. It has been very good in the past, and I assume it's going to continue to be pretty good in the future. Microsoft's newest ed edge browser. I think there's been three different browsers. They call ed just under what Microsoft, they call them all the same thing, even though it's entirely different code basis. And what were there? Seven different versions of windows that were entirely different? I was just, ah, drives me crazy. The current version of the edge browser from Microsoft is based on Google's Chrome browser. So keep that in mind, if you're using edge, Microsoft is looking over your shoulder. [00:37:55] Google may be looking over your shoulder as well. A little bit. The edge browser also uses Google chromium base, but they've gone through and Labatt itemized it pretty seriously. If you're on a Mac, you can even do this on a windows computer. The fastest browser, generally speaking is safari, which is an apple product and it's available for free S a F a R. [00:38:18] I. And it also like most apple products doesn't like you being tracked. And so it has a lot of anti-trafficking stuff. Built-in. And it also not this too. The safari browser has a whole bunch of anti-malware stuff built in. So whether you're using iOS on your iPhone or I panned or Mac iOS or windows, you can get safari. [00:38:46] And I had recommended that. So Fari frankly, is the browser I use for a little bit more secure stuff. And then I also use opera, the opera O P E R a browser. You might want to have a look at it as well, but if you're looking for ease of use and compatibility, I think you're probably about right. Sticking with the Firefox browser. [00:39:09] I do use that. So I actually use all of these browsers in different circumstances. I also use the brave browser and others. I just don't want to confuse you guys. Firefox stick with Firefox and you're probably going to be pretty well off on rare occasions. Firefox is not going to work for you. And in that case, you might consider a Google Chrome or the edge browser. [00:39:34] If you're using a cloud-based to service a website that is obviously a website for something you're doing. And it does not work with Firefox. It might not even work with the default on the Microsoft edge browser. And that's because that website might've been poorly coded, had not written right. And requires the old Microsoft engineer Explorer. [00:40:04] If so you can turn on compatibility mode so that the edge browser will act just like the insecure bug ridden internet Explorer, but try and force the vendor to upgrade their site so that it works with modern browsers rather than having to stick with that old piece of software. That's dangerous as can be internet Explorer. [00:40:29]I have always been fascinated by it ever since I saw people who were communicating, using computers and it, I always thought it just. It would be so wonderful if we could help people out, particularly people who are locked in who have a brain that's functioning fully, and yet their body isn't cooperating, they can't communicate, or they can't communicate well. [00:40:54] And of course, that comes to mind. Of course, one of the greatest scientific minds of our generation, Stephen Hawkins, who was in a wheelchair, he was unable to move. And later in life, other than just a little bit with his face and mouth, and he used that to communicate. And it's just an incredible thing. I can't imagine being in a position like that. [00:41:19] So when I see these technological advances that help people out, even in a minor way, I am just overjoyed, really overjoyed. So we've got to, I want to talk about right now. One is a brain implant that ARS Technica is John Timmer was talking about here about a week ago. And he was talking about robotic arms. [00:41:42] Now you might've seen them before. There's various types of robotic arms and they have different types of functionality depending. Right. Well, one of the problems that we've had with robotic arms is how much force can you put on them? I, again, I remember the first time I saw someone who had lost, uh, the forearm and of course the hand and he had on one of those kind of captain hook things, appliances with a rubber band on it to close it. [00:42:13] And he was able to pull one of the muscles in his arms in order to open it and close it. I thought, well, that's really cool. Those have advanced now, and there are projects with 3d printers. I forget the name of the company. I had them on my radio show. Maybe a decade ago now been awhile and they were selling 3d printers. [00:42:34] And when you bought their printer, they would give you the plans to make a specific artificial prosthesis for. Child that couldn't afford one. So it might be for a leg or an arm or so I guess something else. And you bought the printer, they would provide you with the material that you needed as well as the design specifically for that person. [00:43:01] And that you could print it up. It might take a couple of days and you ship it off. And many of these kids were in Africa. There are some here in the us, and of course in Russia, and this was, I thought an amazing project. It was just so cool again, because they're helping these kids get a little bit of mobility. [00:43:21] Then we came out with some of these robotic arms that can be controlled through your brain. I don't know if you've seen these. Arms, there's been also some major advancement in just thinking about moving a cursor on a computer screen and the computer can track your brain enough to be able to move that cursor around. [00:43:46] And basically what you're doing is you've lost a limb or you've lost mobility. You think about moving your hand or a leg, and usually it's your arm and your hand. And that can be picked up. Of course, that's per person, that's programmable per person. Then they figure out what the pattern is in your brain. [00:44:06] And then they tie it all in so that now you can control a cursor on a computer, which means you can communicate. Robotic arms a little bit different because what you have now is something that can reach out. These things have all of the joint and the flexibility and functionality of a regular hand, except for. [00:44:30] The feedback loop and that's been really important. How do you know if you are actually touching something? How do you know if you're squeezing it too hard? Like that egg and early robotic arms? It was very visual. So you watch that arm and you'd see, okay. It now has a grip on that ball or that pencil or whatever you pick it up and you all visual. [00:44:58] And so you're able to pick it up and you know that you've got it. Maybe you don't know how hard you're holding it, but that's okay. You had to track the arm visually as you moved it around and estimate really when you had that grip, that was strong enough on the object by looking at it. And obviously that's just an incredible improvement over a missing limb or potentially paralysis, but it's not very intuitive. [00:45:25] And the question is how do you make things intuitive for the brain when they're obviously foreign? We're going to talk about an extra thumb here in a minute too, but this is just absolutely phenomenal. It's called propyl. Yeah. Prope re O ception proprioception. And it's a sense that we have, this has been difficult to reconstruct that ties the sense of touch and pressure and. [00:45:55] Knowing where something is. So you can close your eyes. And on the side of the road, when the police offers is there and close your eyes, hold your arm out and touch your nose. Right. Hopefully you can do that. I'm doing that right now, here in the studio. I'm touching my notes with my eyes closed with my arm, starting out fully extended. [00:46:16] That's the sense we're talking about. That's very, very difficult. How do you build that in? Because we've been able to build in a little bit of sense of touch feedback for these arms, a little bit of pressure feedback, but we haven't been able to really understand how the brain processes, all this information that's sent by these sensory nerve cells in the hand, in order to let you know where it is. [00:46:42] And what it's doing. So for this new research at team and planted two electrode arrays into the part of the brain that specifically handles information coming from the skin, and they're able to activate these electrode and produce the sensation of something, interacting with the Palm of the hand, as well as the finger. [00:47:04] So they've made a whole lot of progress here, and this is very cool. They were able to tie it into a robotic arm. They got a study together, got some funding for it. And they got a participant who had been paralyzed from the neck down. And this doesn't save as male or female, but. Default gender right in English. [00:47:29] As he sold, say, he'd been controlling this robotic arm for about two years by using brain implant in the motor control region of the brain. And he could successfully use the arm even without sensation. He'd gotten pretty good at it. Uh, so for these experiments, they had some different tests because they wanted additional, tactile feedback. [00:47:53] They wanted to be able to somehow tie into this perception that your body has, of where your body parts are. Have you ever tried to tickle yourself? Usually it doesn't work. Right. But a third person or a second person tickling you may, it's definitely going to work. That's all party, these same systems. So they come up with a whole bunch of tests. [00:48:16] I'm not going to go into a lot of detail on the tests, but they did say that having a sense of. Touch and the ability to understand where that arm and hand were in space, dramatically improve performance. And that makes sense. Hold on a sense to me, it w it really increased or decreased actually the time it took to pick up something to move something, to drop it in every case. [00:48:43] So. I am pretty darn excited about this, and I hope it's going to be able to help a lot of people very, very soon. This is the university of Pittsburgh medical center, by the way, that's been conducting these experiments. Now there's another one I want to talk about. And I thought this was really cool. I saw this about a couple of weeks ago. [00:49:02] I think it was, and this is a robotic extra thumb. What they did is they placed a robotic thumb on a hand underneath the little finger. So if you're looking at your hand right now, I got my left hand out in front of me. I've got my thumb here on the far left side. I've got my four fingers pointing up and on the right hand side opposite where your real thumb is, they put. [00:49:30] An extra thumb, like a robotic thumb that can, can bend up and down and a little other lateral movements. This study, I think was phenomenal. And there were 36 people that were part of the experiment. This was at Danielle Clode, university, college, London, and her colleagues. Uh, and it's, it's phenomenal. So when we get back, I'm going to play a little bit of audio. [00:49:57] That is from a story over there in the UK about this. I'm going to tell you a little bit more about this thumb and the. Impact to the hat on the brain. One of the things I think it was fascinating to me anyways, was it did change the brain in unexpected ways, basically the brains of these people. And this was determined by cat scans and watching the activity when they were moving their hand, the brains were changed. [00:50:27] Two, if you will, uh, look at the hands and as more of a single unit than individual units. I thought that was really fascinating and that extra thumb became part of the brains understanding of the hand. So this is the kind of thing we can be looking forward to. Now, this one is it's kind of cool. It's kind of fun. [00:50:53] We're going to find a lot of different uses for, and it's part of what's fun is what they did in the experiments. So we'll talk about that as well. Hey, I want to point out if you have questions about cyber security, I might have the answers for you and you'll get those answers in the form of some stuff. [00:51:13] Special reports. I wrote, if you subscribed to my email list, just go to Craig peterson.com/subscribe, and I'll make sure I send them all to you and get you on the right track. [00:51:25]this is augmenting a human and I think this is the future. We are going to be augmented. And how many movies have been made about that movies where they're saying model? Yeah, we'll just tie basically Google into your brain and have Google site into your brain. [00:51:41] That have as a thought. And you'll get a response from Google, which I think is scary. Look at Google now and how they're tracking you. Imagine if they get a copy of every one of your thoughts, but things like this that make us super human. I think are going to become more mainstream. So Google, for instance, had the Google glass, you might remember that these glasses type things that you wore, Apple's done some work on something similar. [00:52:11] And the idea is they can project in front of you an artificial reality. Maybe that our official reality is just telling you to turn left, to get to grandma's house or where the best food in town is. Or maybe you're playing a game. All of which are cool. This that's going to happen. This is really something that is going to happen. [00:52:30] And it's going to talk to you with a set of speakers that are right on those glasses. And it's going to be, I think, potentially amazing not reading your brain, but helping you to navigate a, read an audio book to you, do all kinds of things, and you can already get Alexa. Which is, of course Amazon's digital assistant in a lot of different configurations from your car all the way on out through these little mobile devices. [00:52:59] In this case, we're talking about a third thumb and that third or second thumb, I should say, it's really a third one because you have two hands, right? Two thumbs, but a second thumb on one hand. And the pictures I'm looking at from the experiment had it on the right hand. I don't think it really matters, but it's opposite your normal thumb. [00:53:20] It's not a fancy thing. It doesn't look human. It's close to the wrist. W on your hand, but it still is on your hand and you control this thumb and how it moves based on why our wireless sensors that are on your big toes. So you wiggle the toe and you can move the thumb in different directions and also have it clench the grip. [00:53:49] And these experimenters gave the thumb to people for about five days and the participants were. Told to use the thumb in regular, old things in the world. So they use it in the labs, of course, and they wanted the participants to really push the envelope about what was possible. And they didn't want the lab to just think of all of the different experiments they wanted the participants to think of things. [00:54:17] Maybe they hadn't thought of. So I'm looking at a video that's really cool people think of this guys. You can hold a cup of coffee and stir it all with the same hand, because you use that third thumb to grab onto the coffee and then your right thumb and forefinger. In order to stir the coffee. I think that's cool. [00:54:42] There were other people did things like bloom bubbles, right? You hold the little bottle of the bubble soap, water. And in the fake thumb. And then again, use your fingers to hold the little thing that you are blowing into. So it's really cool. And it did change the brain. What this showed us, I think more than anything else was our brains are capable of controlling limbs and dependence pended, GS dependencies. [00:55:14] Yeah, appendages. There you go. That, that you don't normally have, and it leads him into think about cats here in the Northeast. I don't know if you've ever noticed cats with a thumb. Have you ever noticed that it's really a Northeast phenomenon? And apparently the captains of these old boats loved these cats because they could go on the ship and chase the rats and kill the rat and hold on really well in the heavy weather and even climb up on the ropes because I had a thumb, we had a cat like that. [00:55:52] And it wasn't the brightest cat one, a Fox caught it when it was in our yard one time, but that cat could pick things up off the floor and using the thumb. Now, cats don't normally have a thumb, but some of these cats here in the Northeast, they have a thumb. It's a real thumb. They really can pick things up. [00:56:12] So they, this experiment proved that we can, as humans control an appendage, like an extra thumb. So let's play a little bit here about what happened a little bit of the report. The [00:56:26] Unknown: [00:56:26] additional thumb could cradle a cup of coffee while the same hands, four fingers held a spoon to stare in milk. While some participants use the thumb to peel a banana, blow bubbles, or even play the guitar to understand how the extra thumb effected people's brains. [00:56:40] The researchers gave them an MRI scan before and after the experiments. [00:56:45] Craig Peterson: [00:56:45] Is that cool or what. And you can find more online. I duck goat it, you can just duck, duck go a robotic extra thumb, and you'll be able to find the video and more reports on it, but we will see what ends up happening. With our appendages what are we going to be attaching to our bodies in the future? [00:57:07] We know we are going to be using those glasses like Google glass. We'll see what it ends up looking is it going to project right? Enjoy your eyes. What's going to happen here. We're seeing heads up displays in our cars where the speed you're going, the maps, et cetera, are projected right on. [00:57:25] The windshield. So you don't have to move your head a big direction, in order to see what's going on. So lots of stuff. And we're starting to understand the brain a little bit better when it comes to some of this stuff, dark side. My gosh a little bit of, a little bit about the dark web, because you guys are the best and brightest, right? [00:57:47] So the dark web of course, is that part of the internet that was created to keep things secret. No, not totally secret, but the identities of people posting things on the dark web are hard to determine. And it is in fact, something that is maintained by our military and was developed in order to allow people in other countries to communicate effectively with the CIA, with the military, et cetera, without. [00:58:19] Being caught by their government. So the dark web is a pretty secure place, but because of that, it's a place where people go to conduct illicit transactions. This is the place where the. The major site that was out there that it's called silk road was man, I can't remember how many billions of dollars they say went through the silk road website, but they were selling everything you can think of for drugs or drug running, a gun running some of these military weapons. [00:58:58] you name it? I don't even want to talk about some of the stuff that was being sold there on that website. Now there's other websites and taken over, but we caught that guy by the way. And all the transactions were in between. Coin. So those people that think that Bitcoin is somehow impossible to track you are wrong. [00:59:19] And those who think that the dark web is a place where you can go and really be anonymous. Again, you are wrong. More technically we're talking about something called the onion network, the Tor browser, and it is an interesting thing. So when we get back. We're going to talk about a court case, a really weird court case involving the dark web. [00:59:47] You've heard before about trust amongst thieves, this kind of throws it entirely out the window, shall we say [00:59:56]You might've heard of DarkSide. I mentioned them here on the show before. DarkSide is a bad guy, right? It's a group of people that got together who had been experts at ransomware. And so what they ended up doing is deciding, Hey, we want to make a business. We're going to do ransomware. And because we're so good at it, we're going to sell ransomware as a service. [01:00:28] And this ransomware is a service. All they did was they would take a cut of what you made off of their ransomware. They do things like provide tech support. So you ran some poor guy, some poor, small business, and that small business now is, a really hurting and you say Pay up sucker. [01:00:50] It's going to be whatever it is. I think most of the time for very small businesses, about $40,000 and you need to buy Bitcoin and you can't how to have a lot. I don't know. Why do I buy Bitcoin? So you contact. To the DarkSide, a webs support site, and guess what they do at that point? They can help you. [01:01:13] Okay. So go to this site. This is what you're going to see. Click on this. They have little user guides. They will help you when you're encrypted. Do you just give them the key and they'll tell you, okay. So use this key and this software to decrypt it. Just like a real business bottom line. They disappeared. [01:01:32] You might've heard about this. Of course, DarkSide attacked the colonial pipeline. And if you live in the Southeast United States, you were hit perk too. Darn hard by this, because that shut down over a thousand gas stations, they ran out of gasoline because it was not getting shipped via the pipeline. So off they went and a DarkSide said there, I think there's a little too much heat here. [01:02:03] At least that's what we were thinking. Initially DarkSide was trying to avoid prosecution. And so they shut down their website. Where was the website? Obviously? Wasn't out there for you on DarkSide.com. No, it was on the dark web while they shut down. And apparently they were not paying out these people that they were providing ransomware services to. [01:02:32] Isn't that kind of interesting. So Russian speaking person, you use the handle darks up for DarkSide support had XSS dot IIS. Guess what that is. Yeah, a recruiting site for these bad guys. Now, you're not going to be able to get there. If you're not on the dark web, you shouldn't be able to get there just in general, but he was trying to recruit him affiliates for DarkSide and DarkSide was the new ransomware as a service kid in town. [01:03:05]And it was looking for business partners until a partner could come along and say I have a hundred million email addresses or. I'm going to go after a company X like colonial pipeline. And so they become an affiliate of DarkSide. And as an affiliate, now they can send out the ransomware, try and get somebody at colonial to click on it. [01:03:29] And then once inside then DarkSide takes over and they go ahead and download important files from the machines that are compromised. That's part of the one-two punch that they were doing. And the punch that we saw that happened on Metro PD down in Washington, DC, where the bad guys got in down there and threatened to not decrypt stuff unless a paid up. [01:03:57]And then secondarily, you said. Since you're not paying that ransom, pay us this ransom and you have so many days, or we're going to start releasing information from the private police records. And they actually did end up releasing some of that information. All of that sort of stuff is part of the ransomware as a service. [01:04:16]This is interesting and DarkSide has made a bunch of money. There's some newly released figures from a company called chain analysis and they track cryptocurrency. Trading. Yeah. Guess what? It's not completely private. So chain analysis said the DarkSide netted at least $60 million in its first seven months. [01:04:44] That's a small fortune. Actually that's a pretty big fortune 46 million of it. Came in the first three months of 2021 and Darkseid made another $10 million this month with about 5 million coming from colonial pipeline. You probably heard about that. Colonial paid the ransom. And I saw an interview with the CEO of colonial, who said we didn't know if we'd be able to recover. [01:05:13] And it's basically, it's a small business, my words, small price to pay to know we can get back in business. So they made the 5 million from colonial and 4.4 million from the chemical distribution company known as Brenntag. And then last week, DarkSide went dark. And I mentioned that on the show as well. [01:05:37] And this guy, dark sub said that his group had lost control of the infrastructure and it Bitcoin. Does that mean that maybe Interpol the S somebody shut them down because. We have verified that there was a huge transaction where all of the money was taken out of their bit coin account. Okay, so the servers can the access to anymore the hosting panels to see panels been blocked and the hosting support service isn't providing any information, except quote, you ready for this at the request of law enforcement authorities. [01:06:25] Okay. Yeah. And within a couple hours of the seizure funds from the payment server were withdrawn to an unknown account. And Darkseid hasn't been heard from since now DarkSide is supposed to be paying affiliates 75% of ransoms that are less than $500,000. And that cut rises to 90% for ransoms higher than $5 million. [01:06:55] So DarkSide gets the money, right? Cause they're doing this whole thing. It's a service it's service provided to the bad guys out there, but apparently these affiliates have not been paid. Apparently the ransomware as a service provider of  did not honor its commitment and the affiliates, these bad guys, I feel so sorry for them. [01:07:22] Not they've been asking to be reimbursed from a deposit about a million dollars. The DarkSide was required to make with this website X access, which is one of these sites on the dark web, where they are setting up these deals. Okay. So there's three posts on the site. Where there are plaintiffs who have filed charges against the defendant against DarkSide. [01:07:53] So here you go, honor. Amongst thieves, DarkSide did not honor its financial commitments. It did not pay the bad guys. The ransomed people. Like they were supposed to they've disappeared and apparently their servers have been seized and all have DarkSides, holdings have been taken. All right. Interesting. [01:08:19] That's what you get DarkSide disrupted gasoline supply for the huge swaths of the U S about two weeks ago. And no doubt, the FBI brought full force of its might onto DarkSide. And I also know personally that historically the secret service has gotten involved too. [01:08:40]Electric vehicles. We've talked about a lot. I had a lot of fun talking about, of course, that great Ford electric vehicle in the first hour of today's show. [01:08:52] And they've got some cool looking cars, but they're coming out of everywhere. Now. You've got Italy with a few manufacturers that are now right. Pushing out the cars GM of course has had them for quite a while. The volt Nissan has had theirs. Ford has a couple, including the Mustang, the new electronic Mustang. [01:09:14] There is some good things to say about them. I love the technology myself. I prefer to have something that can go a long distance. I can't really have two or three cars right now. And they might make a nice little car. If I was commuting just a few miles or maybe if it was cheap enough, I would use it to run to the grocery store. [01:09:37] But looking at the cost of these vehicles like that, that Ford pickup truck fully maxed out, fully loaded. I looked it up. During the break it's $90,000. That's crazy money. And even though it starts at 40,000, well $39,999 95 cents. Even though it's a $40,000 start. That's a lot of money to pay for a car is especially with these batteries, there's next generation stuff coming out. [01:10:09] That's going to be just phenomenal. That's what I'm waiting for, but here's part of the problem. We're looking at electric vehicles and there's so many things to talk about, but electric vehicles do not pay the taxes that are used to construct our roads and maintain our bridges and our roads. [01:10:30] There is a per mile tax that is added on by the federal government and by the state governments. But it isn't computed as a per mile tax. It's computed as an add on to the price of gasoline and the price of diesel. What they're doing is they figure okay your fuel mileage may vary. And they had a big hit, of course, when fuel injectors came into cars, because they basically doubled the fuel mileage, but they say, okay, so the average car is getting 20 or maybe 25 miles a gallon and his pain anywhere from about 50 cents to a buck, a gallon in. [01:11:14] Road taxes and those road taxes are supposed to be used to build new roads, maintain existing roads and bridges by the states and by the feds. And again, that's a topic for another conversation. So how about electric cars? They're not buying gasoline, they're not buying diesel. So those vehicles are really putting a major dent in the road budget for the feds and the state government. [01:11:46] We've got states like California, Massachusetts, and New York who want to completely phase out any fossil fuel vehicles by 2035 and Washington state plans to follow the California rules and phase out sale of gas powered cars by 2035. But there's a huge hitch in those plans. How do you have these electric vehicles, including that Ford F-150 lightning hit the road? [01:12:18] Because gas sales will continue to decline along with the revenue from taxing them. It's a very big deal. So what do you do while there are some bills that have been moving in? All of those states had just named, including Massachusetts, where they're saying we need to charge people. Per mile when they're driving within our state, how do you do that? [01:12:48] Charging per mile means, how many miles they're traveling? You could certainly set up something like easy pass that covers the major highways, but the major highways are not where everyone's always driving. Think of the state routes we're on all of the time that have no toll ability. And of course, all of the side roads, how do you tax it while there are things that say maybe we use an easy pass type thing only on the bigger roads and we're charging by the mile. [01:13:21] That's just going to drive people off of those bigger roads that are meant for traffic onto the side streets. I've seen that happen before in my own town. There are other things that are being proposed that include having the car report on miles driven within a state. So the car would have to have GPS information would know when it has crossed state lines and then keep. [01:13:51] Tabs on how many miles it drove in the state and [01:13:55] then [01:13:56] Craig Peterson: [01:13:56] report that to the tax authority for you to be charged. How would that be to have at the end of the year, right? This additional tax burden based on how many miles you drove. Yeah, that would be a lot of fun. And then there are other proposals while we'll just look at all of the vehicles that are registered in our state. [01:14:16] So again, in mass it would be when you go in for that mandatory vehicle check every year at your birthday, we will read. Your car's mileage every year and we'll discharge you by the mile. They don't care if you drove up and down to Florida most of the year or out to Texas, or most of the year back and forth to California from mass. [01:14:40]All of that would be charged against you. So there are a lot of debates going on to try and figure it out. How can we make this work? The feds have a gas tax that hasn't changed since 1993. So the federal gas tax is 18. 0.40 cents per gallon. And then you have the state taxes and most states have increased their fuel taxes since 2010 to beginning to, to bring in more money and fix the roads. [01:15:15] But this is going to be difficult. Some states, including California, Hawaii, Minnesota, Oregon, Utah, and Virginia have implemented road, user fees. A lot of questions there. It's so easy to collect a gas tax. It's hidden away in the price of the gasoline. Are they just going to put an extra tax on electricity and say, the average home is using so many kilowatts for their cars and do it that way. [01:15:43] We really don't know. We just don't know. And our roads I think, are going to suffer until we figure that whole thing out. We've talked about some of these big hacks. And I was talking with a client this week about the whole solar winds hack. And where did it come from and what did they do? The solar winds hack. [01:16:07] It looks like came in through Microsoft exchange server. There are a lot of patches out there for exchange server. If you don't have it. Pay close attention, try and figure that whole thing out. Okay. It this is a very big deal, but these reasons, cyber security instances in incident are really a reminder to all of us that public and private sector entities are being attacked from nation state actors and these big cybercriminals, like what we were just talking about. [01:16:44] Here's our big question, who was behind the solar winds hack. Remember we talked about it here. The reports coming out of the federal government in the U S were, that was Russian intelligence was to be hunted it's Poot and blame Puente. Oh no. It's a Russian. Hacker gang, nothing to do with Putin. [01:17:06]Maybe Putin was, giving them a little bit of a nod, it was a Russian hacker guy, gang. Things have changed a little bit. They announced here, but Microsoft being there. Microsoft announced in March that a detected multiple zero day exploits being used to attack the exchange se

Welcome!   I am sure that most of you know about the problems Texas experienced with its energy infrastructure well there is more bad news for our nations' infrastructure and that comes from a vulnerability in the programmable logic controllers that many of these large infrastructure providers use to control the flow of product. (i.e., water, electricity, natural gas, etc.). Also this week Google Chromebooks outsold Apple but that is not the whole story.  We also dug into processors and the importance of them and how it affects what you do daily. Then we discuss Clubhouse and why it may not be the best platform to get on and there is more so be sure to Listen in. For more tech tips, news, and updates, visit - CraigPeterson.com. --- Tech Articles Craig Thinks You Should Read: Embracing a Zero Trust Security Model Turns out Most Manufacturing, Water Supply, and Power Companies Use Controllers with a Security Severity Score of 10 out of 10 Chromebooks outsold Macs worldwide in 2020, cutting into Windows market share Clubhouse is the New Up-and-Comer but  Security and Privacy Lag Behind Its Explosive Growth New York sues to shut down 'fraudulent' Coinseed crypto platform Former SolarWinds CEO blames intern for 'solarwinds123' password leak WhatsApp will basically stop working if you don't accept the new privacy policy TikTok breaching users’ rights “on a massive scale”, says European Consumer Group --- Automated Machine-Generated Transcript: Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Apple just got passed by Google's Chromebook. We'll tell you more about that. Clubhouse the app everybody seems to want, and it's invite-only. Sound familiar? That's happened before has got some serious privacy problems. Hi everybody. Craig Peterson here. Thanks for joining me today. There are a lot of things to talk about and I'm going to start with this article from ARS Technica, talking about programmable logic controllers. Now I can see you sitting there saying, what are you talking about, Craig? Who cares? Here's, what's going on. You heard about the solar winds hack? It's been something we've talked about pretty much every week here for the last Oh a month or so since it really happened. And we found out some more stuff about it this week, by the way, we know who the group is that actually did the hack very professional group. This means, of course, nation-state, but. They were going after different types of companies, that help the different types of companies, as well as government organizations. In other words, they were targeting MSPs managed services providers. And unfortunately, most of them failed because it's rare, very rare to find an MSP that actually takes care of security. And I'm not going to blame them. I'm not going to blame you for using one of these MSPs that got compromised. Because ultimately, security is a long tail thing. It is an industry in and of itself. It's hard to keep up. It's hard to keep moving forward. But I brought this up because I wanted to tie it into something we also talked about a bit for the last two weeks, and that is that water plant in Florida. This water plant in Florida had the amount of lye added to water, turned up 100 fold. Not 100%, a hundred times more lye in the water and somebody noticed and all well and good. Who did it? We don't really know, but here's the problem I want to talk about today. And that is the SCADAs systems, these PLCs, in other words, The computers that are controlling the valves in these various businesses and government agencies, the water plants, the electric plants, et cetera. You had valves. Those were these tubes. Remember that, and then transistors for a little while. Anyhow. This is something that's a very real problem because Rockwell automation you've heard of Rockwell before. I am sure of that because Rockwell has been a government contractor forever. They've done a whole lot of stuff in the military space and they do a ton also in the civilian space. Rockwell makes hardware that's used to control equipment in factories, a lot of equipment in a lot of factories, as well as all of these other places out there. And it is what's called generically a "programmable logic controller." They're selling them under this logix brand. You'll see them everywhere. They control everything you can think of out there. Some of them are very small. There might be a, like a toaster that you'd have on the countertop for instance, or something as big as one of those little pizza ovens you can put on the counter, but then they can be a whole lot bigger than that. But they help control equipment. And. Oh, the manufacturing and the processes on assembly lines and other manufacturing environments. You might remember what happened in Iran, where they had these PLCs, programmable logic controllers, that were part of this whole SCADAs system. It's all together. And in Iran, they were using them to control centrifuges and those centrifuges were being used to refine nuclear material eventually to make nuclear bombs. At least that's what we said. That's what the UN said, et cetera, et cetera. And then it makes sense, right? They have to refine the yellowcake. So that's what they were doing. And what did we do? Apparently, we got together with this country called Israel. It's over there in that same neck of the woods. And with them, we came up with some software to break into the computers at the Iran facility. Now, these computers were what we call air-gapped. They were not directly connected to the internet. So how did we hack it? We hacked the old-fashioned way. No, we didn't use a little honey bait. What happened with rep Swalwellout in California, who I don't understand how he's still sitting on the number one top secret committee in Congress, even though he spent years with this Chinese spy who obviously would have been feeding all of this information that he got back to China. I don't understand Nancy Pelosi. Sometimes this is just crazy. What's going on in Congress? It wasn't that? Okay. It wasn't a honey trap. It was a honey trap. I guess what they did is they developed this piece of malware, knew that they had to get it on to the machines that controlled the manufacturing process there in the plant that did the refining in order to make the nuclear bombs. How can you get it in if it's air-gapped, how can you get it in if those machines are not connected to the internet? But it doesn't matter if you break into the firewall because they're not behind the firewall. They're not on a network that is accessible from the outside. However, they were networked and they have to be networked inside the building so that you can have one computer that's monitoring the spin rates of all of these different centrifuges and just kind of keeping tabs on everything. So they went ahead and they put this little virus onto a thumb drive. And then, in fact, they made dozens of these thumb drives. They found out where the engineers who worked at the plant went for coffee, where they went for lunch and they scattered these around. And then a coffee spot at the lunch spot. And so now all of this stuff is scattered around these little thumb drives people, pick them up, Oh, a free thumb drive and they take them into the office. And this particular piece of malware was specifically crafted for this programmable logic controller. So if you plugged it into your computer as an accounting puter computer, it would say, Oh, wait a minute this is an accounting computer. I don't care. But these guys brought it back into their manufacturing facility and it did work there and it took over control of the machine that controlled all of these centrifuges. And fuges, it keeps saying fuses, centrifuges and it spun them out of control. And while it was spinning them out of control, it was showing a perfectly Greenlight status to the people who were trying to monitor it. They resist, it was a stroke of brilliant, but that is the type of system that we're concerned about. That's what we're talking about right now. These kinds of logic controllers that are used all over the place you can use them for almost anything you used on ships. They're used in government facilities. They're used everywhere. There was a vulnerability found and it was a, "I can't believe you did this" vulnerability. Now with solar winds, we found out it was a, I can't believe you did this vulnerability because apparently, solar winds had a password of solar winds one, two, three. Who wouldn't guess that perfectly good password? And man, we see these types of passwords all of the time. That's why I use a password manager. That's why you generate passwords or you come up with key phrases. Three or four words strung together with maybe a digit or something else in the middle somewhere and some upper lowercase characters. Right? That's how you generate a password. It's not supposed to be solar winds one, two, three. So that's problem. Number one, that's a big problem. This particular vulnerability has a severity score of 10 out of 10. Why? Why is this the worst level it could possibly be? Number one, it requires a very low skill level to be able to exploit it. Now that's interesting. Why is that? It turns out that these program, programmable logic controllers have a hard-coded key built into them. In other words, whoever programmed these things, and I'm looking at this list, there are a lot of them. Logix is the name of the company, the name of the product, and you'll see Logix in their names. And it is a whole bunch of compact Logix control, Logix drive, Logix a guard, Logix, guard on me. Now that wasn't supposed to provide cybersecurity support. All of those, okay. Then they have a hard-coded password. What that means is built right into the software is a back door with a password that can not be changed. Now, even if you bought one of those cheap firewalls from the big box retail store, you are going to be safer. Because at least it lets you change the password and you should be changing the password on your firewall. And in some cases, it also lets you change the username and you should change the username as well. But no. These Rockwell devices have a hard-coded password and Rockwell apparently is not going to issue a patch that directly addresses the problems that come from having a hard, coded key. So instead of that, they're saying, Oh, use these mitigation techniques. Isn't that what Iran did, isn't that? Why they had themselves? Nice little air gap network that was still breached? Oh, man. Oh, man. So it's a problem. It's a very big problem and they're just not paying much attention to it. Hey, stick around.  We're going to talk about Chromebooks versus Mac and Windows right here. It looks like the Wintel monopoly continues to die on the vine because of what Apple's been doing, what Google has been doing. In fact, Google is really stepping up their game here, getting rid of Intel. Hi everybody. Craig Peterson here. Thanks for joining me. We know that Intel's been around for a long time. You probably remember Intel used to brag about it. There were ads where Intel would kick in a couple of bucks if all they'd said was Intel inside. In fact, they are still doing it on machines. You buy a machine it'll probably have a little sticker if it has an Intel processor saying Intel inside. Intel had a problem, they made components that people didn't buy. Well, they bought them, but they bought them as part of something else. They did not buy an Intel processor for the fact it's an Intel processor. Makes sense. Some of them did. I certainly looked at them. I bought AMD and some others instead,. Some of the power PC stuff from IBM, just absolutely incredible, as well as others. I have done a whole lot over the years when it comes to processors, you've heard already I helped develop operating systems and implement them and the internet protocol. I've got a lot of experience with processors, no doubt about it. A lot of machine coding and assembly work over the years. I wrote C, which is a programming language used largely for a high-speed stuff like operating systems. I did a lot of that. I look at this processor from Intel as a massive failure. Marketing-wise. In the industry, it's been really great, but when I get into it from the prospect, or from the side of being an architect, of operating systems, and an architect of user interfaces. I cannot believe Intel. It's just been terrible. Part of the problem with the Intel processors and their instruction sets. The way they do the memory access and the way they do all of their IO to other devices has to do with their legacy code. They've tried to remain compatible with all kinds of older processors over the years. I can understand that I can see why they might want to do that. They're afraid that people might leave them. They started out as a memory company and through. I was going to say no fault of their own, but no luck of their own or anything else. I don't know. Another company came to them and said, Hey, can you make a cheap processor? Remember IBM looking for a cheap processor to put into this PC right. A personal computer that they didn't think would sell very many, certainly wouldn't be a great business thing. They went and said, okay what are the cheap processors we can get and put into here? Intel, 8080. That's what we'll do. All of a sudden is born the XT and the PC XT and the PC AT came. Some of these others over the years on the 8286 and the other chipsets. Anyhow, I'm getting awfully geeky on ya. Started really falling behind.  One of the ways they fell behind was in 64-bit design. In fact, Intel is AMD compatible. Now, if you can believe that. Talk about falling behind.  I don't think it's the engineers, there's some brilliant people there. It's entirely business decisions that drove them to the point they're at. They continued to increase the price of the processors. They were getting a little faster, but they still had the corner on the market because people bought Wintel they bought Windows. If they're going to get Windows, they're going to get Intel. Make sense. There were some others over the years that competed including AMD, which is Intel-compatible for the most part. They really managed to keep people out of the marketplace so they could jack-up the cost. The price structure, just keep jacking up, jacking up, jacking up. Many companies got fed up with it, including some companies that had the ability to do something about it. One of those companies is Apple. I mentioned in my newsletter last week, I had an article talking about how Apple is now apparently about to make 6G chips. 6G at the next generation of wireless and Apple's getting rid of Qualcomm and gonna make in themselves.  A company like Apple, when they want a million parts, they want them to arrive. They want them to be there on the day they ask for them and they want them to do what they asked for. Qualcomm has fallen down on that. They have not been able to meet Apple's demand. Intel has fallen flat on that. They have not been able to meet some of Apple's demands that have to do with the amount of energy they use the temperature they give off of course cause they want them on mobile devices. What did Apple do a decade ago? They said fine, forget about it. We're going to not use your Intel processors in our iPhone. They started using some other processors, some arm processors. Apple joined this community like an open-source manufacturing alliance that came up with a chip design that they could use as a basis.  Apple took that and ran with it. Today it has run so far with it that Apple has an amazing chip. Now you can see these amazing chips in your newest I-phones and your newest iPad. That's what they have in them these new Apple processors, but Apple also now has their new M series processors, which are effectively the same things they've been using in the iPhone, iPad, but beefed up in order to handle the load you'd expect to have on a laptop or a desktop with a Mac mini. I'm just so impressed with these. I was playing with both of those. One of our clients wanted them. We had them ordered and shipped to our place.  We put them on benches and we loaded them up and got them all running.  We played with them a little bit just to see what they were like. Very impressive machines.  They don't have Intel processors. Apple has switched processors a few times over the years, it went from the Intel or the Motorola over to the power PC then to the Intel, and now to its own chip design. It looks like completely new chipsets for the iPhone 13 hopefully, maybe the 14, hopefully, when that comes out. That'll probably be later this year. By the way, the 13 is just going to be an incremental update to the iPhone 12. They're saying is probably going to be like an iPhone 12S, really. Processors.  Apple doesn't need to pay the Intel tax on these processors out there.  I'm going to look right now, purchase price, Intel, a laptop CPU, just to get an idea.  I'm on there right now and I see coming right up, here's an Intel core i9 $400. Just for the CPU and that's from B&H photo and B&H has a lot of this sort of thing. Most of these Intel CPUs that are on laptops cost over $400. They're branded as core this, that, or the other things. The real expense of one, just start getting into the Xeons. Those Xeon processors can be just through the roof. Here's one here right now an Intel Xeon platinum, 8180 $11,000 while actually, it's 10,995. If Apple can make its own processor, do you think they can do it for less than 400 bucks? Of course, they can, and that's going to save them a lot of money in making some of these devices. We're going to get into those devices, like the laptops. What do you need in a laptop? Why would you go with Windows, maybe one of these other operating systems, including Mac iOS? We'll talk about that. That's going to lead us into the conversation about Chrome. Why is Chrome OS becoming so popular? Why has it surpassed now market share of Apple and where did that market share come from? People have been buying PCs, but what's going on? Stick around, you're listening to Craig Peterson and you can find me online. Craig peterson.com. We're talking about chips. Yeah we're getting maybe slightly technical, but chips matter nowadays in a way that they haven't before and yet they matter even less. I'm going to explain that. Hello everybody. Craig Peterson here.  I just said something that might've sounded confusing. Cause I said, CPU's matter more than ever. Yet they matter less than ever. Here's why. If you're looking at an Apple computer, you are looking at either an Intel processor, at least for the next couple of years or the Apple processor. If you're looking at a Windows machine for a little while Microsoft was really on a bit of a kick, trying to get Windows running on multiple platforms. In fact, it actually did.  There were some amazing things they were able to do, but really if you're getting Windows, you are going to be on an Intel platform. How about your phone? Do you have a clue as to what kind of processors in your phone? Now, you guys are the best and brightest. So yeah, you, you might, okay. You might know the exact model number and CPU clock rate and everything else about your phone, but the vast majority of people have no idea and you don't need to know. You don't need to know because it is now like a utility. You don't really know how that electron is delivered to your house. Where that came from? How that was produced? You just turn on that light switch and hope it works, right? Unlike when there's big wind storms and your power goes out, that's what you're hoping for. That's what's happening now, you buy a phone, you don't care if there's Intel inside. The same thing's true with tablets. You buy a tablet, if it's an Apple tablet guaranteed it doesn't have an Intel CPU. If you buy a Surface tablet, you can get them with Intel or without Intel. A lot of times you can tell just based on the price of the tablet now. As we move forward, we're starting to see more and more devices powered by arm chips and others. You see the idea behind Unix, which is this operating system that's underneath all of them. Unix lives underneath MacOS. Unix lives underneath Android. It lives underneath pretty much every cell phone and every device programmable device that exists today has Unix underlayment, which is the main operating system. It's fantastic. The whole goal behind that when it was designed by At&T was to make it so that this one operating system could run on anything and it did. Universities adopted it because it would run on anything and universities were getting equipment donated to them from everybody. That was anything, right? This mini-computer, that mainframe, all of these pieces of equipment got donated. They standardized on this Unix platform and the whole thing worked out quite well.  Linux is a type of Unix for those who are wondering.  The whole idea behind it is that the processor doesn't really matter because there's a version of Unix that will run on really pretty much any processor that's made today or has been made for the last 40, 50 years. Now, when you start getting into the useful computers that you and I use every day. What's underneath it? If you run a Mac, I don't think you really care. If you're on a Windows computer, I don't think you really care. What you care about is can I do that task at hand? Can I go ahead and open word, document editor. Even then you don't even care if it's Word for the most part. Word, you're going to get around it a little bit easier, but if you are over on a Mac, you could use pages. It doesn't have to be word and it doesn't have to be Windows and it doesn't have to have Intel inside. I am not giving stock advice, but I can tell you, I would not be out there buying Intel right about now. Hopefully, they got some other stuff going on. I know they're looking at some new chip designs that they can provide to people that make it pretty darn simple. Now there is another big player we haven't talked about yet and that is Google. Google's got Android, which is underneath again, a Unix operating system.  It has also on top of that, this big Java virtual machine, which has been the source of many headaches, a lot of chagrin here for developers. The beauty of it is again, Java was designed so that you can write your program once and run it on anything. You see where I'm going. We're getting to the point where the competition is going to be crazy. When it comes to the devices we use to get online or the devices that we are using for work, and it's going to get cheaper and cheaper.  I'm not talking about the cloud. The cloud is not cheaper. In most cases, the cloud can present all kinds of additional problems. We just got an email from a listener Danny today. In fact, he bought one of the little packages that we'd put together for the listeners. About 18 months ago of a special, it was a little Cisco firewall and Wi-Fi switch with security built into them, something you can't buy off the shelf. It had the firepower basic stuff in it. Anyhow. So Danny was asking because he uses G suite. How does he do a three, two, one backup? You can't with Google's G Suite.  With office three 65 or Microsoft three 65, in both cases, they have lost their client's data. So Danny was asking, so what do I do? How do I do a three, two, one backup, like you advise we do? Basically what we said is you've got to download all of your data from those cloud services, back them up properly at that point, and do it all in a format so it can be restored. So if it has to go back to the cloud, it can. It keeps your data safe. All of that stuff is, again, just it's everywhere. It's cheap. There are pros and cons to different ways of doing it. Dan is not there thinking I'm using G suite or I'm using Microsoft three 65. What processors behind it, right? You don't care. Google has said here's what we're going to do. We make a phone now, the Google smartphone isn't well adopted. It's more of an example of here's a way you can implement the Android operating system. It's a proof of concept for them. It's not a bad phone. They've tied in with some other carriers in order to provide cell phone service. They are coming out with a system on a chip. You used to have this big motherboard and if you go way back, I have a very big motherboard with all kinds of discrete components. Nowadays, all of that gets squeezed into one chip and Google has decided that they are going to make their own chip. They call it the white chapel. That's the name of the whole program.  It was reportedly made using Samsung's nine millimeter process technology. In other words, it's going to be fast. It's going to be power efficient, and initially, they are going to be putting it into their smartphones. That's not a bad idea. In their pixel smartphone sometime late this year. We haven't quite made it yet to Chromebooks, but I promise we'll get to that in just a couple of minutes. I wanted to make sure everybody had a decent understanding so that you can make the right decision for yourself and your business when it comes to what kind of computing to use. Stick around. So what kind of computer should you get? What's gonna work for you? Should you worry about the chip that's inside of it? What do you do? It just gets so confusing sometimes. That's what we're going to get into finally right now. Hi everybody. Craig Peterson here. Thanks for joining me today. Now, there are options when you are looking at a computer and I know some people don't even have a regular computer anymore, so let's start there. Really quickly many people are just using their iPad and that's what the goal was behind the iPad. I think that's what Steve Jobs had in mind. Apple always wanted it to be a replacement for your computer. It is not as flexible as a computer is by any stretch. Frankly, it's gotten a lot better, especially the iPad pro because of the faster CPU and it has a few more capabilities.  It's a good little unit.  That's what I use by the way is the iPad pro. If you are just going online and you're doing a little browsing, maybe editing a few documents, getting on a zoom call or a WebEx call, whatever it might be, doing all kinds of the regular stuff that iPad's going to work for you.  If you have an iPhone, you can link your iPad to the iPhone.  If someone calls you on FaceTime, you can actually answer, take the call on your iPad. If someone calls you on with a regular phone number, if someone does that anymore you can take that as well, right there on your iPad. iPads are inherently very safe. They have done a great job in trying to keep things pretty tight from the cybersecurity standpoint on the iPad. If you need to use Windows applications, then that's where the surface tablet might come in for you. I know some people who like their surface tablets and I know people who really don't like their surface tablets. Personally, I don't think I would buy one. There's not a huge win, but again, some people like them. They're more portable than some laptops. Now, you can get laptops in the Windows world that are as small and lightweight as an Apple laptop. Now, which would I get the Apple laptop versus a Windows? I would absolutely without a doubt, no question get the Apple. The main reason for that is that it's cheaper. Yes. I said it was cheaper.  It's cheaper because that Apple laptop is designed using high-quality components and is manufactured using high-quality stuff versus that PC. You might find a laptop PC laptop for maybe 350 bucks, and you look at the Apple laptops and they start at just under a thousand dollars. They're small the Apple ones and they are very functional and they will last. If you get the same component in your windows laptop, the same quality, the same speed, the same buses, IO, everything else, same display. You are going to pay more in the Windows world than you would on a Mac. If all you can afford or all you want is something inexpensive then I've got an option and it isn't Windows. Okay. Unless you have to have Windows, if there's a specific program you have to use that only runs on Windows while you're stuck aren't you. There is another option out there and it is called a Chromebook. It has been doing very well. 2020 was the first year that these Chromebooks outsold Apple Macintoshes. Now, that's a big deal because Apple's always been a kind of a minor player, seven to 10% of the marketplace. To see Chromebooks actually beat Apple is impressive. Now, part of the reason they're beating the Apple is what I just explained to you. They are inexpensive. Many kids are at home, right? They're going to school from home virtually and the schools need them to have a computer. What do they say? Get a Chromebook. Here's a $300 Chromebook. Go ahead and get this for your kid or here's $300 and or $300 Chromebook. In some cases, the school just buys it for the kid. Great for that. Now, remember it's Google, you're storing most of your documents up in Google's cloud. Depends on how you feel about Google and having Google with full access to all of your information. I have a big concern with Google having access to my kids' information, but that's a wholly different story out there. No question about that. Chrome is an operating system again, that is based on Unix. It's actually Linux, which is again, a version. It is something that you just won't see. The odds of you directly interacting with the operating system just keeps going down and down. Now, Windows, you still got a muck around sometimes you got to get into the registry editor. You got to do weird-ass stuff. With your Chromebook or with your Mac, you're not going to have to do that. It's not an antiquated design. It is a very modern design. Very easy to use. Now, I started the segment out by saying that CPUs matter more than ever, and yet they matter the least they've ever mattered. Here's why I said that the manufacturers now are able to choose the CPU they want to use. Unless, of course it's a Windows target, but for anything else for Chromebooks, they can use any CPU from any manufacturer. They might have to do some porting and do some work involved in that, but it's moderately minor. You can't say the same thing for Windows. Windows is locked into a couple of different architectures and you can bet Microsoft is pretty busy trying to make it so that it will run across even more CPU architectures.  It matters more to the manufacturers and matters more to you what CPU they're using, because it keeps costs under control. It gives you longer battery life. It lets them put a smaller battery in and still have longer battery life. Lots of good things. It doesn't matter at all anymore because you only care about the web browser. You only care about the text editor, right? What is it that you care about? It isn't, what's underneath all of this. Chromebooks, you can find for 150 bucks at a big box retail store and you get what you're paying for. That hardware is not going to be stellar that's for sure. But it's going to work and is going to do a decent job for you.  If you don't have any money, really, but you can afford to crack 150 bucks, look at a Chromebook. Chromebooks go all the way up into the $2,000 range. Those higher-end ones have more local storage. They're faster. There's a bunch of different benefits to them. Now, you've got the options. Apple is going to almost certainly stay with its own chipsets. It lets them keep control over the entire investment. Now,  you might say that's bad. I don't want to get locked into Apple. Well is not really going to matter that much, but you are going to get locked into Apple. The reason it's not such a bad deal is looking at the marketplace, Apple has a few dozen different designs. They have to maintain the operating system for all of their software, their device drivers, everything has to work across a few different, a few dozen models. Think about it. You've got how far back your iPhones', I know they still put out some patches for iPhone fives and sixes, they might have even older ones. So there you go. Then they had the larger versions of some of the iPhones and they had the ASCE versions. Look at that. Compare that to the Android space. Where you have hundreds of manufacturers using Android and building smartphones with it. Thousands of different models of phones each with their own device drivers and all kinds of little things. Some of these manufacturers will  go ahead and grab whatever's in the parts bin today and throw that in. Okay. This is true too, not just to the smartphone manufacturers, but if some of these PC manufacturers. Dell has been known to do this. Where it's okay, we're making a laptop today. Okay, we promise them this CPU, but this USB controller that we normally put in, we don't have it right now. I'm going to put this other one in there. It gets very confusing when you're trying to repair these things each one of those USB controllers has a different driver for Windows. So Apple, the part of the beauty of this is they only have to worry about the security and reliability of just a few dozen different designs versus Google having to worry about again, thousands and thousands of them. That's why also with Android you do not get the patches when they come out. If they come out, it can take an easy six months for a patch that's issued by Google to show up available for your phone. It typically takes Apple a matter of a week or so. It's just there. There's no comparison. That means your cybersecurity is going to be better when you can get patches. If you have an Android phone, that's more than two years old, forget about it. You're not going to get patches.  If you really are insistent, like some people I know in fact, Danny were just talking about it. He really likes his Android. Don't first of all, always buy the top model. It should probably be as Samsung.  It should be never any more than two years old. You got to trade it in every one to two years so that you're pretty sure you're going to be getting security updates in a timely fashion. There you go. That's the explanation of it. I love my Microsoft stuff for specific Microsoft apps. I really love my Mac for all the graphics and everything. It just works. It doesn't crash. The applications all just work. I use my iPad for some just general basic stuff, and Chromebooks are probably the way to go for most home users.  As we just talked about for schools as well. Hey, visit me online, CraigPeterson.com. You'll find all kinds of great information there. Craig peterson.com, Look for my podcasts. I guess this is a little bit of good news. If you're a home user, not a business or some other organization, like a state or County or city office, but we've got some breach numbers that have just come out for 2020. We're going to talk about right now. Hi, everybody. Thanks for joining me.  Of course, you can always go to my website. Yeah. Pick up all of the podcasts in case you missed something today or another week, you'll find them right there@craigpeterson.com. You can also sign up for my email list and we're going to be doing a couple of different things here. I think in the near future, we're going to be sending out some reports that we made as part of the security summer thing I did a couple of years ago, and each one of these reports and there's 30 something of them. Some of them are like five to seven pages long, but it's a checklist of all the security things you should be worrying about. Now, if you are a home user, you'll find a lot of these to be interesting. But if you're a business person, you work in an office, you help to run an office. You own a business. You need to make sure you get all of them. So make sure you are signed up Craig peterson.com and we'll be glad to get those out too. Plus we're also going to start something new every week. I usually have six to eight, sometimes as many as 10 articles in the week. I spend hours going through finding what I think are the most important things that interest me as well, but that I think will interest you guys. I put them in an email, it is it's not very long, but it's just a few sentences from each one of the stories and I have a link to the story as well, right there.  I'm going to start sending that out as well to everybody cause some people want my actual show notes. We're going to have the newsletter once a week. Then we're also planning on having a little video training as well. So it might just be straight, like straight audio. That's part of a video, but it'll be training on a specific security task or problem that's out there.  Then the course improving windows security. It's been taking us a long time. Blame it, mostly on me. Karen's also busy with babysitting grandkids at least a couple of days a week, and I'm trying to run a company as well. So it's, forgive us, but it is taking some time, but you're going to love this. I think it's turning out really well. I am about halfway done with the final edits. So I'm recording them. We go back and forth. They ended up recording them twice so that we get all of the points I wanted to cover into them. Karen's come up with a whole bunch of great screenshots and other pictures to go in with it so it's not one of these death by PowerPoint things. And we've got 21 different talks, if you will, on locking down windows and I go into the why's as well as the hows. I think that's really important, because if you don't understand why you're doing something. You're much less likely to do it. I picked that up from Mr. Tony Robbins, none other, the Anthony Robbins man. It's been over 20 years. Karen and I went to an event he had down in Boston and this was one of  his firewalk or events.  We actually got to walk on hot coals it was the weirdest thing ever. Karen was totally freaking out and I was just, wow, this is going to be weird, but we both did it. It was phenomenal. Cause it of gave you an idea of, even if you have this mental block that you can't do something you probably can. We actually did and nobody's feet were burned or anything. It was real coals. It was really hot. They were really red. It was really something that at the very end they had grass, a little square . Grass, maybe two, three feet by three feet and they had a hose running onto it. So you'd walk over it all. Then you'd just walk in on the grass and the idea there being if you had any hot coals stuck to your foot. You probably didn't want those just to stay on your foot. You'd probably want those, they get put out and taken off, so that's where that did. Anyhow. One of the things I learned from Tony was you need to have a strong reason why. We see this all of the time, Stephen Covey, if you read his stuff, you know it as well, you got to know why you're doing something. When it comes to computers and technology and security, you need to understand the why. Because it isn't just a rote thing. There are so many variations on what to do, but if you understand the why you're doing it, then I think it opens up a whole new world. You can explain it to your friends. You can help them understand it because finally you will understand it.  You'll be more motivated to do the things that you should be doing because you know why you're doing them, what it involves, what it's going to solve for you. This should be a really great course. And I spent some time in it going through the whys, give you some examples of problems people have had and what that solves. It's available hopefully here within a couple of weeks, man. I thought I'd be done by the end of January and here it's looking like it'll be the end of February. But be that as it may, keep your eyes out. If you've already emailed me to let me know, you're interested. That's great. I've got you on a list. I'll have to try and send out an email this week or sometime soon to let you guys know it that we've got it ready for you?  We will have it already for you, hopefully with the next couple of weeks. So that's that I'm told the different way of doing things that's me. I like explaining things I've been told I'm good at it. So let's I think a good thing too. I started out the segment by talking about this probably good news for end users. Because in 2020 breaches were down by 19% while the impact of those breaches fell by nearly two-thirds when we're measuring it by the number of people affected. Now, of course, if a company is breached and an organization is breached, it's counted as one. One person, if you will affect, obviously it can affect hundreds of thousands, millions of people, depending on what happens like a breach of Equifax. Are you counting that as one or you counting that as 300 million? Because that's how many records were stolen? I'm not sure it doesn't say it doesn't go into that much detail, but because the number of data breaches went down and the number of individuals affected by the data breach plummets. It's telling us something, then that is okay. That these hackers have moved away from collecting massive amounts of information and are targeting user credentials as a way to get into corporate networks to install ransomware. We've got even more news out this week about the solar winds hack. We talked about this before, and this is a company that makes software that's supposed to help manage networks, which means it's supposed to help make those networks safer. No, as it turns out, they weren't making it safer and it looks like maybe four years bad guys were in these networks. We're being managed by solar winds, not with software, right? It's not as though solar winds was managing the network is solar winds sold software services so that you could manage your own networks or in many of these cases, they were actually managing networks of third-party businesses. I do work as well for high valued in value individuals, people who have a high profile that needs to keep all of their data safe and they are constantly being gone after. They're trying to hack them all the time and the way they're trying to do it. And I talked about this really the first hour today is by this password stuffing thing. So they're trying to get in and they were successful and now it looks like it wasn't just Russia. Apparently, China knew about this hack potential knew about this bug and was using it. And apparently, it also was not. Just solar wind software. Now they're blaming some of this stuff on Microsoft office. If you have an office three 65 subscriptions, apparently they were using that to get in. So the bad guys are getting very selective. They want to go against companies and organizations like government agencies that have information there's really going to help them out. That is absolutely phenomenal. So these are stats from the identity theft resource center. And I was thumbing through as I was talking here. So it's saying that more than 300 million individuals were affected by data breaches in 2020, which means they must be counting the people whose. Information was stolen, not just the people that were hacked but it is a huge drop of 66% over 2019. And the number of reported data breaches dropped to about 1100, which is about. 20% less than 2019. So it's good. It's bad. I think the mass data collection thing is over with now. They're not as interested in it, but they are very interested in strategic attacks as opposed to just these blankets. Let's grab as much data as we can because they want to get it into these government networks, which now we've, we know they've gotten into. And then you've got this double extortion thing going on with the ransomware, where again, the going after businesses and people who they know can pay. So that's good news for the rest of us, right? The home users. It's not good news so much for some of my clients, that's what we take care of. That's why we get paid the big bucks. Now how that works. Downright stick around. When we get back, we're going to be talking more about the news this week in particular, of course, security, Facebook, and their Supreme court. Stick around. The United States has a Supreme court. Our States each have their own Supreme courts. In fact, there's probably Supreme courts all over the world. But did you know that Facebook now has something that people are calling a Supreme court? This is interesting. Craig Peterson here. Thanks for joining me. People have been complaining about Facebook and what they've been doing for years. One of the things people have really been complaining about lately is how Facebook has been censoring people, particularly according to them anyways, conservatives.  I've certainly seen evidence of that. No question don't get me wrong, but there's also left-wingers who are complaining about being censored. Facebook decided it needed to have its kind of its own version of the Supreme court. You see what happened? Bins are you have a post on Facebook that is questioned. And usually what has to happen is somebody reports it to Facebook as being off-color or whatever it is, the reporting it as. And if two or three people report it, then it goes to the moderators. That same thing is true for some of the artificial intelligence. Some of it's reviewed by moderators as well. Here's your problem. Particularly when it comes to conservatives because you post something conservative on Facebook. And if you are noticed by some of these liberal hacks that are watching Facebook accounts, they will gang up on you. And they use these bots to pretend that there is an incredible rage that there are hundreds of people who are very upset by what you just had on Facebook. When in reality, no, one's upset and they're just trying to shut you down. And there might only be two or three people who actually know about it, but they'll use these kinds of artificial intelligence, bots to flood Facebook with complaints. And they're doing that on Twitter. The left is doing it all over the place. So what happens next? The big challenge for Facebook is there are 2.7 billion users. Can you even wrap your head around a number like that? That is just massive. So they've got 2.7 billion users, and now, obviously, not everybody's on every day. But some percentage of them. And I've seen it's in the hundreds of millions of posts every day on Facebook and they log in and look around. Facebook only has 15,000 moderators. So for 2.7 billion people, 15,000 moderators just isn't a lot. And the other problem is that the moderators are suing Facebook. And they came up. This was about a year ago. With a $52 million settlement with moderators and the moderators are saying, Hey, first of all, we're crazy overworked. And then secondarily, we've got PTSD. Post-traumatic stress disorder. And they're saying that they have this because of the stuff that they've had to see, they alleged that reviewing violent and graphic images, sometimes stuff. My gosh, I might've gotten mentioned here on the air, but they had to view these. For Facebook. And they said, this just led us to PTSD. I can see that particularly since they have to have so many every day. So many of these different posts that they have to look at. And they are clocked and they are third-party contractors. They're just, all this stuff adds up. Doesn't it? Moderators who worked in California, Arizona, Texas, and Florida from 2015 until last year, every moderator will receive a minimum of a thousand dollars as well as additional funds if they are diagnosed with PTSD or related conditions. So they're saying there's about 11,000 moderators that were eligible for this compensation. But this is a very big deal. It's difficult. How do you deal with that? They've got now 15,000 moderators who are reviewing the posts of these 2.7 billion users. There is a little bit of an escalation procedure, although it's a very difficult and because there are so many people who are. Complaining and trying to take care of everything. It is a very tough situation, really for everybody involved. So they've decided what Facebook needs Facebook's decided this themselves is they've got to moderate themselves a little bit better, and the way they are going to do all of this moderation is they're going to have this kind of Supreme court that supervises. All of the moderation going on within Facebook. So they call him the new to an oversight board and. Obviously with just one board, without very many people on it, it is only going to be able to handle a small number of cases. So they have been paying attention to some of the cases. And they're trying to set precedents that will be followed by the moderators and millions of other cases. It's basically the same thing that the U S Supreme court does, where they review cases that come up from the federal district court. They can have cases that are coming up from individual States as well. And then they set standards and, without going into all of the detail of disputes between district courts, et cetera, we'll see what happens in Facebook, but lower courts are treating these us Supreme court. Rulings and dicta as binding precedents for everything in the future. So it's not easy to do in our courts. We're certainly not great at it. And there are a lot of complex procedures. And even if you're talking about moderation where you bring a moderator in. And there are some standards for that in disputes between businesses where you'll pull in a neutral third party. And they'll just usually split things down the middle. But those are going to be difficult for Facebook to put in how they reviewed five decisions. These are pretty substantive. Sixth case apparently became moot after the user deleted the post. We have an uprising and Miramar right now. You might've seen it on TV. If you're paying attention. I know a couple of channels have been talking about it. But this is an interesting problem because the military has overthrown the potentially properly democratically elected government. What do you do if there is massive cheating going on in the election? We faced that question here ourselves. In Miramar, they went ahead and the military took over and imprisoned the president. There was a post talking about that and talking about Muslims in France and China. Another one about Azerbaijanis. I don't know if you've seen what happened with Armenia and Azerbaijan and lots of history going back there with the Soviets and they created this whole problem because they didn't like the Armenians, but anyways, of all of these five, they disagreed with the lower moderators opinions and they overturned them. I think it's really good. I looked at these cases and I was shocked. I think they're doing the right thing here. Isn't that weird? Hey, you're listening to Craig Peterson. Visit me online Craig peterson.com. Hey, did you know, there is a war, if you will, between Facebook and Apple? It is getting nasty. What's going on over there. That's what we're going to talk about right now. Your privacy, Facebook, Apple, and Android. Craig Peterson here. Thanks for joining me. My golly. You know what I think about Facebook when it comes to privacy, right? Facebook and Google. I think Facebook is worse than Google, frankly. They just don't respect your privacy. They will go ahead and look at anything that they can get their hands on. We'll at that point, just go ahead and pull it together and sell it to anybody that's willing to pay. I am not fond of that. And I think you can probably guess why, and I doubt your fond of that at as well. You're not fond of that either. Apple did something. If that has really upset. Facebook and Zuckerberg have been making a lot of noise about this, but Apple announced plans about a week ago to finally roll out a change that they were putting into place in iOS 14, which is the operating system for the iPhones and iPads that Apple has. They had announced that they were going to add it the late last year. And there was huge pushback from Facebook and a few others as well. What's going on here? Bottom line is that Apple is trying to force. Apps to be transparent. What privacy do you have? What data are they taking? And in the case of iOS, as well as Android and windows, and Macs, there has been the ability for certain applications to be able to look at other apps that are on the device. And by doing that, it can get data from it. They can figure out who you are. They can give a unique fingerprint based on what apps you have and what versions they are. They're pretty clever about what they've been doing in order to harvest your information. Now you might have noticed if you go in. To the app store that there's been actually a big change already. This is the Apple app store. If you go in there and you pull up an app, any app, so let's pull up Facebook and then in the app store, and then you click, obviously on Facebook, you scroll down the app store page about Facebook. And partway down, it already has privacy information. You want to click on more info project early if it's Facebook because it doesn't fit on that homepage for the Facebook app. And it will tell you everything. Everything that Facebook wants access to. Now, some of it's self-reported by the app developers. Some of it is the stuff that happened. Figure it out either electronically or by getting people involved. I would like to think that when it comes to something as big as Facebook, they really are going that extra mile. And making sure that yes, indeed, this information is valid, it is what it is. They may not, and I'm not quite sure, but look at all of the stuff Facebook is gaining access to with you. So that was a bit of a hit people were pretty excited. Oh, wow. This is great. And although Google doesn't do what we're talking about here quite yet, I'm sure they will be not in the way that Apple is doing it, but because remember Google makes money off of you and your information, Facebook makes money off of you and your information. So if you want privacy, you cannot use Google products like Android or. Chrome. And if you want privacy, you can't use Facebook. So it's as simple as that. Of course, the big question, and we talked about this earlier in the show is how much privacy can you expect? How much do you want? What's legitimate, right? All of those types of questions. So what Apple's doing now is they said that in early spring of 2021, they are going to release this new version of iOS. And here's what happens. They've added something and this is according to a white paper and Q and a that Apple sent out. They added something called app tracking transparency, and this is going to require apps to get the user's permission before tracking their data across apps or websites owned by other companies. Under settings users will be able to see which apps have requested permission to track so they can make changes. As they see fit. You might have noticed that already under settings as you can look at the microphone settings, it'll tell you. Okay. Here's the apps that I have asked about the microphone and you can turn them off. Here's the apps that have asked about the camera. You can turn them off. So they're adding more functionality. They also, in the FAQ, they said that app developers will not be able to require users to allow tracking in order for those users to gain access to the full capabilities of the app. Now, you know how I've talked before extensively about how, if it's free your, the product. So what Apple is doing is they're saying, Hey guys if the user says, no, you can't try it. Track me across apps. No, you can't get it. This privacy information, which Apple's letting you do, they cannot Labatt automize. The app is what it comes right down to. So it was in September last year that they first said they were going to do that. Then they delayed the implementation of this tracking policy. So the businesses and app developers could get more time to figure this out. One of the things that I think is fascinating here is what Facebook's doing with fighting back. Oh, and by the way, Apple has not just gotten complaints from Facebook. There are other marketers and tech companies that frankly it makes Apple more vulnerable to some of these antitrust investigations that have been. Started really against some of these big tech companies. Although, I don't really expect much to happen under the current administration in Washington because frankly, big companies love big regulations. Because they can afford to comply with them, but startup little companies who are competitors of theirs cannot afford the lawyers for the paperwork and everything out. I look at the CMMC, we do a lot of work for the DOD, department of defense contractors, where we secure their networks. We secure their computers, we secure everything. We put it all together. And we also, for some of them there's guys, there's a 50, $50,000 upcharge for this. And that's because we're cheap. Believe it or not, it is a lot higher for other companies to do it, but we do all of the paperwork, putting together all of the policies, all of the procedures, what they have and. Auditing everything for them. And we're talking about a case and a half of paper thinking of the big cases of paper, right? 500 sheets and the ream and how many reams in a box? 10 20. I'm not even sure, but literally cases. And we. Printed it up, we wrote it all up, printed it all up, delivered it to a client just a few weeks ago. And it was a huge box of three-inch ring binders. It was all in and they didn't all fit in there. They're the big guys in the department of defense probably love this because they pay a million bucks to the people, the generate the paperwork for them internally. And they know the little guys can't afford to have full-time paper pushers. And so that's why, even though we're talking about months worth of work, why we charge 50 grand, which is a heck of a lot cheaper, believe it or not. And it's a huge discount for us. So I don't expect that the fed you're going to come up with a solution. That's truly going to help the little guy here, but Apple's announcement praised by privacy advocate nonprofits as well. And Facebook apparently has been buying full-page newspaper ads claiming it's going to hurt small businesses in a way it will cause it can make advertising. Just a little bit harder. And apparently, also Facebook has decided to rewrite its apps. So no longer even requests to access, cross-app access to your personal information. We're going to wrap up, talk a little bit about Comcast data cap, and some of these SolarWinds hack victims that didn't use SolarWinds, and ransomware payoffs have surged, even though the number of people affected has gone down. Make sure you get on my email list so that you get all of the important news. You're going to get some of this little training I'm doing and the courses that we've developed. The only way to do that is to go to Craig Peterson.com/subscribe. That's how you get on those lists and I'm not sitting there and pounding you or anything else, but I want to keep you informed. So there you go. We're probably going to increase our volume from one email a week to three so that we can provide you with a little bit more training. I want to keep these down to something that just takes you a few minutes to go through, but could save you millions of your business and tens of thousands, your retirement, if you are a home user. So make sure you are on that list. Craigpeterson.com/subscribe. Comcast. I know many of us have Comcast, I certainly do, is imposing data caps on many people in many parts of the country. That includes people to the South here, Massachusetts residents. What do you think they're doing down there? The state lawmakers have proposed a ban on data caps, a ban on new fees, and a ban on price increases for home internet services. The idea from their standpoint is we have a lot of people who are working at home because of a lockdown. What are they supposed to be doing? I'll take my daughter, one of my daughters, as an example, she's working at home. She used to work in a call center she'd go to every day. Now she's working at home. Are they paying a wage differential for her? Are they paying for the electric bill? They're not even paying for the phone bill or the phone. She has to provide her own phone. She takes inbound calls for a call center. Can you believe that? It's just amazing what's happened. The company is saving just a ton of money because people don't have to go into work. You can bet they're going to dispose of some of this space that they've been. What's happening here, we are using more bandwidth than we've ever used because more people are at home and it isn't all business related many are watching Netflix or you've got Netflix on in the background while you're working on stuff. It's just so common to do that. What data caps are doing is they say you can only use so much data a month. Then there's usually a penalty of some sort. In Comcast's case, they said for the first quarter of 2021, I believe is what they had come up with. We'll just warn you that you go over your data cap then they'll charge extra. I have a friend who has Comcast and he said, I think it took him like three days before he went over the data cap. That's not long.  It's because they're streaming TV. They've got kids working from home. Then you've got meetings that they're going to, that are now streaming. So I can see this, but from Comcast side, they now have to handle more data than they've ever had to handle before. Because we are using it, like for my daughter, she actually has a cell phone, but all of the calls are routed over the internet. Cause her cell phone hooks up to the wifi in the house and the calls come in and go out via that wifi.  It goes through the internet, it goes to her phone carrier's network. Then it goes to the call centers network. So there you go. What does that need? That needs to make sure there's no jitter. You don't want voice packets to be dropped because then it sounds terrible. It's very obvious when audio is dropped. I don't know if you've noticed if you're streaming something from one of these online streaming video services, but sometimes. It will hiccup a little bit, but have you noticed that with the smaller hiccups, the audio is fine and the problem is in the video. Now they do that for a couple of reasons, obviously video uses more bandwidth than audio uses, but the other reason is people tend to get more annoyed by audio fallout and audio problems. Comcast is saying, Hey guys, look at what we have to do with our networks. We have to expand them. We have to increase them. Now I've got to bring up again the Biden administration because of what they're planning on doing with this fairness doctrine on the internet. What they're planning on doing is saying, Hey, Comcast, just because this person uses five terabytes of data a month, you should not be charging them more than grandma that uses 10 gigabytes a month. Thousands of times more bandwidth requirements, you're not allowed to bill them differently. Cause a bit is a bit which is absolutely insane. I don't know how they can justify this sort of thing. So what's going to happen is you get companies like Comcast or other internet providers who are going to say. We are not going to invest any money into expanding our capacity because we can't charge for it. Doesn't that make sense to you? It makes perfect sense to me. By getting the FCC involved, it's just going to be crazy. Ajit Pi resigned when President Trump was leaving, he used to be the chairman. He actually had a head on his shoulders, but these new people President Biden put in there, it's insanity what they're trying to do with our networks. It's going to make it much worse. Comcast is putting data caps in. You hit the data cap it, they're just going to slow you way down. That happens too, with a lot of our cell phones, our cell phone carriers, if you use more data than they've allotted to you, they'll drop you back. So most people have 4g. Yeah. Okay. Your phone's 5g, but really guess what? You're not getting 5g. It's very rare unless you are on the T-Mobile slash Sprint plan. T-Mobile more specifically because nobody else has the coverage that T-Mobile has for 5g. So you're using 4g LTE, you hit your data cap. They're going to drop you back to 3g, which is really slow comparing the two together, all the three of them, frankly, but it's very slow compared to a 4g LTE. In mass, by the way, I should mention Verizon files and RCN. Do not impose the data caps. It's just our friends at Comcast that are doing that Vargas and Rogers. They let a group of 71 different Massachusetts lawmakers urged Comcast to halt the enforcement. By the way, the data cap is 1.2 terabytes per month, which is actually quite a bit of data. You'd have to spend a lot of time streaming TV. The cap does hurt low-income people is no question about it. If you are being forced to work from home because of the lockdown, the government's forcing you to work from home. They put their fingers in anything, and that just never seems to work out anyhow. We'll see what happens down in mass with Comcast and these guys.

After Automattic released their experiment with selling $5,000 websites, I published a video, I spell it wordpress now. A video which has been viewed over 1,400 times and caught the attention of today's guest, Matt Mullenweg co-creator of WordPress & Founder of Automattic. I've had the pleasure of interviewing Mullenweg back in 2015, and have consumed nearly every other podcast he's been featured on since. I thought about doing a more in-depth analysis on Matt's responses to my questions, but I'd rather let the content speak for itself, allowing you to digest our discussion then arrive at your own conclusions. Though there is one word that sticks with me, and that's: vulnerable. There are some vulnerable moments when discussing topics relating to blue collar digital workers — or builders/implementors — that could spark a change in Matt's long-term regard to a group of WordPress users that I feel control the under current of the CMS's adoption. Matt is also responsible for nearly 378,000* products under Autoamattic's umbrella, to which he informed there's a new internal initiative rolling out to help disperse some of the responsibilities not only from him, but the 1,400 other Automattician's. As for me, I do get very passionate about WordPress and my response to moments like these might do better if I sit on them a little longer or reach out to Matt directly. Who knows, maybe we'll get more podcast episodes out of it. I hope you enjoy today's episode, please share it with the world, and leave a comment on the post. Subscribe to my newsletter for more. ⭐️ THANK YOU to the sponsors!! ⭐️ The WP Minute – A new audio experience for WordPress news coming soon. Easy Support Videos – A fun way to support your customers inside WordPress with videos and text. show transcript show lessMatt Medeiros and Matt Mullenweg[00:03:42] Medeiros: [00:03:42] I'd say 99.999% of the folks listening today know who you are and what you do is there one thing people don't know. That you do.[00:03:51] Do you practice like jujitsu or are you a culinary master behind the scenes? Anything else that's new that people just might not know is like a hobby or something that you do really [00:04:00] well on the aside from work[00:04:01]Mullenweg: [00:04:01] Some people might know, but it's been so long now, but I know I want a jazz musician and that was how I got into building websites. And it's why releases a WordPress are named after jazz musicians.  Don't know if I can still call myself that, but I definitely was for a long time. And it's what I thought I was going to do professionally before.[00:04:18]I got into this web stuff.[00:04:20]Medeiros: [00:04:20] Look, I think a lot of folks think about this conversation and I don't know why, but they're there. I see comments. Like I can't wait for Matt to talk to Matt about this stuff and like really roll up their sleeves and get at it. I don't feel that way at all. In fact, I highly regard your position.[00:04:39] I think I've told you before. I wouldn't want your position. I know I wouldn't want to have to thwart the the comments that come at you every day and run a thousand ish person company. A lot of work. So I applaud you and really respect that position. I'm really interested to chat today and maybe see both sides of [00:05:00] our views and opinions and have a better understanding at the end of the day.[00:05:05]Mullenweg: [00:05:05] I think the mat squared report is a great recurring feature. So I'm sorry that we had some scheduling trouble, but glad that we could make it back on. Probably they thought that because I did leave that a pretty lengthy comment on your, I spell it WordPress video. Cause I disagreed with some points there, but it didn't feel thank you for responding.[00:05:23] I felt like you, you listened and you read it and maple loop to some of that as well.[00:05:28]Medeiros: [00:05:28] Before I get there, I want to tell you, I love simple note. Simple note is the app I use every single day of my life. I'm dying for more simple notes stuff. And this is a bigger question. Look, you're responsible for, by say you're responsible and maybe you can enlighten me. Maybe you're not responsible, but I feel like man, there's so much product.[00:05:54] Under Matt Mullenweg, WordPress, Automattic, .com all the offerings, [00:06:00] jetpack simple note, Tumblr, the list goes on happy tools, Jetpack CRM. there's so much where do you find yourself focusing that attention for like crazy simple note users like myself to say give us more.[00:06:15]Mullenweg: [00:06:15] The good news for something like simple note is it happens without me having to think about it. Cause I to a minute, 20 times a day, at least, and on all of the different devices. So I'm a very passionate user. Simpler does not where I. I consciously focus my time, but I was just talking to the team the other day about like changing where the search is on desktop, because we moved it to be more like a Mac iOS standard, but it's a little more confusing.[00:06:38] It's, that's like a fun thing for me. Maybe after hours. Some of the other products you mentioned tumbler, Woo, wordpress.com are more of an official part of my day. And the way I cover so much is just by having really fantastic teams and and folks I work with on every side of it whether that's Josepha on the .org side of things Paul Miorana on WooCommerce, the list [00:07:00] goes on and on.[00:07:00] Try to think of automatic as a fractal organization. We're about 1400 people. Now let's say a VIP's run running around 200 this week. That looks a lot like Automattic did when we were 200 people and Nick who runs that has a similar executive structure underneath him that I did when we were doing to people for the whole company or that rather Tony Schneider did.[00:07:20] So there's a lots of ways to approach it. And we found that form of scaling is a very effective and I really don't see a ceiling on it. We'll hire. And onboard probably 400 people this year. And it's that if you had told me that 10 years ago, that would seem completely crazy. And I wouldn't even know, I couldn't name 400 people in my life, let's just hire them.[00:07:44]And now it actually seems like a very natural progression of what we've been doing the past few years in terms of scaling the business.[00:07:51]Medeiros: [00:07:51] Do you look at these endeavors? And I think when I, of course now I'm forgetting the gentleman that I interviewed about simple note [00:08:00] I think you call them is it, are they called long bets? Is that like the code name internally?[00:08:04] Mullenweg: [00:08:04] internally we other bets.  The long bets would also be a great name and I'm part of the long now foundation. So that would be a good one. They are often long-term but there are things other than our main areas, which is basically consumers, subscriptions e-commerce and enterprise are the three main areas.[00:08:21] Automattic focuses on.[00:08:22] Medeiros: [00:08:22] And when you look to hire, is it primarily just Automattic, VIP? Folks are going to be focusing on your core focus other than let's say a simple note or a happy tool or something like that.[00:08:35]Mullenweg: [00:08:35] Much like we, we try to follow a five for the future for.org. Something we built into Automatic's culture is having a five for the future for our products. So that's other bets. So we try to have about 5% of the company focused just on contributing.org and then about 5% of the company working on things that are going from zero to one.[00:08:54] So they're there in that pre-product market fit phase of building things. [00:09:00] It's a little less right now. I think we're good on the.org side, but we're a little low on the other beds and that's just cause it's a, it's a. It's been a busy year. And particularly with things like the turnaround for Tumblr and others, we want to make sure that we have enough people on things to to see like an acquisition through it's. The biggest mistake companies usually make with acquisitions is it's been a ton of time leading up to it and buying the company and then they don't pay as much attention to it afterwards. And for example, for DME, what we want to make sure that we have. Yeah, the best team possible to grow that potential, which is it tens of millions of monthly active users blogging, which is really cool.[00:09:39] So let's get them the best are blogging capabilities. And then and see what happens.[00:09:44]Medeiros: [00:09:44] Is that something that when you look at Tumblr, do you look at. This might be getting it. I don't know, maybe into too much of the secret ingredients of all of this stuff. But does that look when you make an acquisition, like tumbler, do you say, yeah, we're going to run Tumblr as an independent business and [00:10:00] we will focus on that.[00:10:01]I, on his business model to monetize tumbler, or do you see that more of how do we integrate this more into a.com feature like tumbler powered by.com tumbler powered by Gutenberg? Like how do you see that synergy happening? If there even is one.[00:10:16] Mullenweg: [00:10:16] Yeah. We try to have kind of three or plans for every business where the first year is fairly high resolution and it gets a little fuzzy or there's further educate, which is okay. Same thing with acquisition, we try to say, okay, what step was the three applying for this on the three-year plan for Tumblr?[00:10:34]The initial parts are very much advertising focused since that's been their business model thus far. But as we get into year two, which we are now and three. I think there's a very interesting e-commerce and membership opportunity for tumbler and some really passionate creators, so much happening there.[00:10:50]So much culture is still happening on Tumblr and originate down tumbler. And then I have said publicly, and it's still on the roadmap to switch tumbler to be powered by WordPress. [00:11:00] So imagine I, how we have Calypso for wordpress.com, which is a JavaScript. Essentially clients to talk to multiple WordPress sites at once.[00:11:08] And it's what you load when you visit wordpress.com. It's totally open source is an equivalent. They call red pop, which is again, a react power JavaScript client to their API. Imagine that API or that client. So you have the exact same tumbler interface, but it's talking to a WordPress API instead.[00:11:24] That would be. Probable first step for how we start to switch over their sites, but there are a massive number of blogs, I think over half a billion. So obviously not all active, but it is a fairly large migration task. How will we do that?[00:11:39] Medeiros: [00:11:39] Yeah, certainly not just pick it up, throw it on your S3 bucket and off to the races you go for any stretch of the imagination. Let's talk more about the recent shift, or it's not even a shift, really, because as you said, this might just be an experiment with the I don't even know what your proper title of it is.[00:11:59] Is [00:12:00] website services by Automattic  or.com or something like that. I will try to quickly preface this to give you hopefully a bird's eye view of. my take and my reasoning for being so passionate about this stuff. First and foremost, love WordPress, defend WordPress, It doesn't matter what Hill I'm dying on.[00:12:21]It's old, he's WordPress. I'm a mentor in a local accelerator and, I see all these people going Wix and Squarespace, and I'm just like, you gotta use WordPress. And as painful as it might be for very beginner users, it's getting better. When I see in the impetus behind the original video, I spell it.[00:12:39] WordPress now. You have to take a look back at me years ago, as somebody who was trying to monetize WordPress plugin, trying to break into the space. There's a lot of threads of thought here, but it's just many years of. just not feeling appreciated is not the right word. It's the first one that comes to my [00:13:00] head.[00:13:00] But you try to submit a theme to the theme team. And you remember, this is decade ago. We don't like ads. We don't like upsells. There's this, you look@wordpress.org repository from a 50,000 foot view and wow, isn't this just themeforest now, tax me to be here. Happily pay the tax to be, to have an ecosystem that I can tap into Alyse Shopify in web flow and things like that.[00:13:26] And then I also see from the Shopify and Webflow side partnerships, open app store, like that kind of thing, being a lot more open, and what I feel is a constant shift into moving all things. The best WordPress experience, moving all things to jet pack and to wordpress.com. And then the icing on the cake is we'll build your website now.[00:13:52]So then I[00:13:53] Mullenweg: [00:13:53] lot going on there. I don't know if I agree with all those assumptions, but we can talk through[00:13:57] Medeiros: [00:13:57] there. There's a lot of deep roots here, Matt. So [00:14:00] I have this [00:14:00] Mullenweg: [00:14:00] we start 10 years ago[00:14:01] when you submitted the theme? [00:14:02] Medeiros: [00:14:02] 10 years ago. Blue collar, digital worker. That's the phrase that I use, I feel as a very underrepresented segment of even when automatic looks at the community, designers, developers like is probably like what, 80% of the core community. And then there's folks, [00:14:23] Mullenweg: [00:14:23] like the term [00:14:24] Medeiros: [00:14:24] to build, trying to build a business, trying to do things with WordPress and. It's that frustration. It's the weight of all of that,[00:14:34] I tweeted out the other day I was working on a friend site, had jet pack. It went to install a plugin and the message that on the plugin install screen said, Oh, by the way, I forget what the exact word is, but you could get exploited or malware through the plugins. Yes, but it's but Jetpack, you came from wordpress.org, who do I trust?[00:14:54]And it's those types of things that it's not these big things that happen. It's death by a thousand [00:15:00] paper cuts. And that's the feeling. It's a feeling that I think a lot of people, I know a lot of people feel and are frustrated by. And all of that bubbles up to, like me making a video, that thousand people watch and most of them agree.[00:15:18] That's how we got here at this moment in time, and that's the level of frustration. There's a lot to even like attack at that point or to respond to at that point. But I just wanted to lay it all out on the table for you. Is that how I've gotten to this point of feeling. Man, maybe it's the implementer.[00:15:38] Who's not very valuable in this community. And if it isn't that's okay. I'll leave the floor up to you to figure out which bone you want to pick out first.[00:15:47] Mullenweg: [00:15:47] to start. Let me start with what you called implementers, which I have to call builders. I do agree that they're not always the most prominent and like core discussions. Sometimes these [00:16:00] people are busy, they're building sites for people, so they might not be in our Slack or things like that.[00:16:05] I take it as a personal responsibility to stay very connected to that community and try to represent their needs and the core direction. I would argue that Gutenberg itself was largely in response to what I was hearing from, I would say smaller builders, shops, people one to 10 employees, building sites for five to $20,000.[00:16:35]It was that the numbers are going to be different internationally as well. So I, these numbers aren't necessarily useful, but No. I was hearing from them that they were starting to use third-party tools to build things, to save time for clients that clients they were having to build very complex things with advanced custom fields and other kind of like interfaces that weren't very WYSIWYG to help people create about pages or make it easier for [00:17:00] their clients to update.[00:17:01] And that was part of what brought us to Gutenberg. I was saying, there is a easier WYSIWYG ish way to approach some of these problems that doesn't need someone on a random database form fields is something that looks like PHP, my admin to update their about page versus, something where you're actually seeing the images and like it's more one-to-one with What you're building, what the other good news is that I hear a lot from this community. So for whatever reason, they find my contact form and Twitter handle, and I get a lot of DMS. And  that's obviously not fully representative, but I do feel like I get a little more feedback from that section of the many stakeholders that WordPress has.[00:17:40]A good mountain. I would love more. So there's anyone listening to this that wants to just share with me your story about how WordPress is working or not for you, your favorite plugins, all this stuff like what's beautiful is every story is valid and whatever someone's feeling is what they're feeling.[00:17:57] So it's true. And these [00:18:00] antidotes one we can digest enough of them so often can show patterns that can be really useful. For determining what is a future focus for WordPress,  the four phases of Gutenberg post and page editing, full site editing essentially workflow.[00:18:16] And then multi-lingual a hundred percent. And for the feedback I've gotten from various constituents, since the WordPress community now WordPress is not one thing over another. We are open source, everyone can and does use the software and. I think one of the beautiful tension that we maintain how I like to put it is every single release, making it more accessible and easier for people new to WordPress and more powerful and flexible for those who are familiar with WordPress already.[00:18:46]I think a lot about interfaces, not just being easy, but being intuitive so that whether you're seeing, what have you been using WordPress for one day or 10 years? When you come across a new feature, a new interface, you can [00:19:00] have some guideposts to how to use it. That addresses very one small part of what you said, but I don't want to talk for 10 minutes, so I just I'll throw it back to you.[00:19:08]Medeiros: [00:19:08] There's a camp of people who are like, man, something happens  my video or this, tiny little blip on the radar, this jet pack thing, but jet pack is much larger. It is the monetization play. I'll say it, I guess you could say no, but it's the monetization play from automatic to say we've got all of these free WordPress sites out there.[00:19:29] How do we monetize it? Yes. How do we make the experience better for the consumer, but also how do we monetize this? It's a perfectly finding that the thing is quite obvious at this point, but anything that ever happens in this space to defend you, people go, it's just, it's, he's just going to make money with this stuff.[00:19:45] I don't really care about that side of it. You an Automattic, there's nothing wrong with that. In my eyes, it is, the lack of that connection to looking at the community members [00:20:00] and saying, how will this impact, how will this impact them? And I think. People forget that, like now you are a 1500 person company.[00:20:10]Matt is no longer in the room with us building WordPress with us anymore. It's a totally like it was maybe 20 years ago. It's a totally different ball game. Now there's a lot of things at play. When you look at what Shopify does, and I guess here's a more direct question when you look at what Shopify does or what Webflow does with their.[00:20:28] Partnerships in their communities. Do you ever see yourself going in that direction or even formalizing a marketplace on wordpress.org to just have a component that I can just bolt into and say here's 30% for automatic. Here's 70% for me. And we do business that way.[00:20:48]Mullenweg: [00:20:48] Good set of questions there. One for the staying in touch point of view, one thing I think, which has allowed WordPress to be a lot more adaptable is the accessibility of the people building it, no matter, [00:21:00] even if you're a very large store on Shopify, you can't join Shopify, Slack where they're building it.[00:21:06] And DM Toby, he's a nice guy, but there's not the level of flexibility, but if you wanted to join a WordPress out of work, Slack and DME, and you can. And by the way people do that. So don't be shy there. I also tried to be on the post status Slack, that I tried to be very accessible because I love to learn.[00:21:23] I love to read. So those are just things that are part of a good feedback loop. And I would say that applies to, if you look at the 500 plus people who were part of the last word, press release You could get in touch with pretty much any of them. And that's pretty special. There's very few things like that on internet.[00:21:42] Certainly the scale of the WordPress is [00:21:45] Medeiros: [00:21:45] yeah, when I'm mad at my iPhone, I can't, Hey, Tim want to be on my podcast, like that's not happening. So I totally appreciate this connection. And the value of that in the community.[00:21:57] Mullenweg: [00:21:57] And it's things like the podcast, but it's also the little [00:22:00] things,  The one thing you said was the marketplace. We've always kept wordpress.org in particular free Joe people pay 0% and there's businesses making tens of millions of dollars a year on there. And they're not paying anything to automatic or anyone else.[00:22:16]There's so there's not really any plans to. To build a billing system or charge for things I think is also perfectly fine that third-party marketplaces like at the forest spring out and they take their 30% or whatever the percentage that's fine. Again, tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollar businesses built on top of WordPress and they that's one of the freedoms to do I don't see WordPress being held back by the lack of our marketplace on the automatic side. There we do run marketplaces. So there's the marketplace, there's a WooCommerce marketplace. So there are different areas where we can provide access to a lot of users, maybe a one-click checkout experience.[00:22:57] And then there's a revenue share for that. I love those [00:23:00] models because it's like what you said, people make money together. Hopefully we're selling things that we're in, we're selling to customers that would be hard to reach otherwise. And hopefully the customer's getting value to that.[00:23:10] And there can be a win-win. I don't see it again, Shopify you could ask a lot of the partners and they're not crazy about that. Remember famously MailChimp and Shopify did that big break up that was around very onerous terms from Shopify.  The participation in the marketplace and what that rev share with even MailChimp.[00:23:28]Shopify is also, I think a good example of almost an Amazon like marketplace, which allows a bit of freedom in the marketplace and then copies it and crushes the people in the community. That I haven't really seen happen in the WordPress community, even when automatic has moved into something like a WooCommerce.[00:23:47] Easy digital downloads still seems to be doing great. And the other e-commerce plugins in the marketplace. So I don't look to them as models as a good thing,  and also like the Apple app store, like the [00:24:00] fact that WordPress itself almost got banned from the store. Like I really much prefer the more open source open access.[00:24:06]There is some trade off there in terms of if someone does want a commercial solution, they might need to sign up for a new site and put their credit card in again. But to me that's getting easier and easier with Apple pay and other things.[00:24:19]Medeiros: [00:24:19] Would you say that? And I think one of the statements that came out of our last conversation almost five years ago was, and I think it's even more true today is. Jet pack is the best way to experience WordPress[00:24:33]Mullenweg: [00:24:33] I think of WordPress plus Jetpack is really compelling.[00:24:37] Medeiros: [00:24:37] because if I were your marketing person, that's what I'd be saying. A jet pack is the best way to experience WordPress and. So now let's lay a foundation to that.  If all of a sudden .org had a marketplace tomorrow, it would probably impact, people maybe even turning to jet pack or potentially even utilizing some of the features of jet pack.[00:24:57]The feeling of [00:25:00] frustration that a user has, I think, is a benefit to jet pack. I've got 10 plugins from 10 different authors. And now I have to go and knock on Pippin's door. I have to knock on Yoast's door, I have to go to Syed's for opt-in monster. And I'm like, Hey guys, what? It's not working on my site.[00:25:17] How do I get this working? [00:25:18] Mullenweg: [00:25:18] Yeah. [00:25:19] Medeiros: [00:25:19] Your longterm success with Jetpack is to smooth all those edges out and say, you know what? We have everything here. So it's almost that Amazon model where it's like, Hey, we see forms are working really well. Let's get forms in here. We see CRM. This is the craziest one of,  I'll admit we see CRMs are working.[00:25:38] Let's bring CRM jet pack in, and it's a fair statement to say that all roads leading to jet pack is to make that experience. It's better. True. False.[00:25:47]Mullenweg: [00:25:47] trying to follow. But I would say is part of what jet pack was created was what the common complaint of things not working together with each other. The vast majority of plugins that people use are free [00:26:00] plugins, not the commercial ones. The commercial ones are the small minority. And so it's not necessarily paid things, interrupting but it's really just stuff working together.[00:26:11]The other thing that Jetpack was created for it is to, important things that need a SAS service How can we provide those? Anti-spam being a great example. We're plugging approaches to anti-spam had been ineffective, but the kind of, AI approach that kismet takes, which is part of Jetpack has been very effective over now, 15 years.[00:26:32]So how can we essentially fund those and a Robin Hood's been in the news for the wrong reason, but let's go back to the story of Robin hood.  Like what's the bare minimum we can charge for, to subsidize providing a service for free. To 99% of users. And maybe that's another differentiation from like Amazon prime, where everyone pays dues, Amazon prime, 99% or more of Jetpack users are free.[00:26:56] So really it's a little bit of a hack in that. [00:27:00] There are certain SAS things that I think make WordPress a lot more compelling that if we charged for it, probably make a lot of if we charged for stats or some of the things that are built into free Jetpack probably make a lot of money. But WordPress would be smaller.[00:27:14] And my goal, which means it's Automattic's goal and also a lot of WordPress, the goal  We want as many WordPress's in the world and I think it's good to put in context. And like you mentioned there were some people that were took the conclusion that you did around like the Jetpack notice.[00:27:32] That got fixed really quickly, but maybe  the build it for me program, or they do it for me program. The 5k we'll build a site for you as like some sign of a larger conspiracy or that we're being evil or that we're holding back this important part of WordPress, or we don't care about that anymore.[00:27:49]But over the past 12, 13 months, there've been over 400,000 sites in the top 10 million that have been come onto WordPress. That's 400,000 high end [00:28:00] sites. Each one of those spending probably at least 10,000 a year to build, to maintain, to hiring people. And that's, when you get into the likely millions of people who are making their living in and around WordPress yeah, a few of 'em get worked up on Twitter and by the way, I'm part of this too, I'll reply to quickly.[00:28:17] And then that kind of escalates. And but if we zoom out a little bit and look at. What's happened? What are the large numbers happening? Even the most controversial video or something like that is probably two or three orders of magnitude smaller than just the number of sites built in the past year.[00:28:36] And the thing I just ask people to remember as well is that Twitter is a little bit designed to get people worked up. That is his business model. And by the way, I know this, but it happens to me too. And it's just I think it's the length, it's short, it's hard to have a nuanced conversation like we're having now and even 280 characters.[00:28:55] It is the algorithm for promoting these hot takes and controversy. [00:29:00] It's the context, meaning that I maybe saw like a political thing or an environment, like something that got me really rattled up. Two tweets before I saw the screenshot of the Jetpack notice. And yeah, maybe I do believe that there's a vast conspiracy by oil companies to.[00:29:16] Trick is that recycling is a thing when it's really just a way to sell more plastic and like we have to fight this. And I'm really worried that personally about that. It's a true thing, by the way. And then I see this Jetpack notice and I'm like, Oh, there's another one. This is just as bad as Exxon and Chevron and all the, all the kind of like grand conspiracies and the Davos and the Illuminati or whatever it might be like.[00:29:37] It's easy to draw lines between things that. Things that might be large and small can seem really large on Twitter. And and then things happen quickly. The what's the old saying like disinformation can get, make its way around the world before the truth has a chance to put his pants on.[00:29:53] There's just the. What it rewards moving quickly versus the [00:30:00] truth, which gets out there very slowly. I experienced that really toughly. There's something really tough. It might've been definitely in the past 18 months where there was someone who tweeted accusation that automatic had fired our African-American editor of one of our publications and this got over a thousand retweets more than that likes it was yeah, it was around the time that there was all social unrest and riots and everything like that.[00:30:28] And so there was a huge pile on to this. It was factually untrue. The person replied, she had actually taken a job. Preserved foods left for a higher, more prominent job. And the original person who tweeted this actually replied a correction as well. So to their credit, like corrected this misinformation that correction got five retweets. So it was literally like a 200 to one ratio of the. The controversial, but untrue thing, so that true, but maybe a little less [00:31:00] of a salacious story thing that went out there. And that really broke my heart as well, because that's obviously an issue that's near and dear to the hearts of many people.[00:31:10] And especially over the past year. And to know that there might have been folks who might've applied for automatic and then saw that and said, Oh, this isn't a place that's going to be welcoming to me.  Was just despondent. So it's just a good example of that. There's also someone usually on the other end of these tweets, like in the jet pack example, like someone who made that example, the person who fixed it, like within 24 hours, like we should remember this humans on the other side,[00:31:36] Medeiros: [00:31:36] right. Yeah. And definitely appreciate the team that, that adjusted that I would say for the record that I'm not spreading disinformation or cosmetic conspiracy[00:31:45] Mullenweg: [00:31:45] do use your crushers. I appreciate.[00:31:47]Medeiros: [00:31:47] That I tried to do this stuff. I am very passionate about it. Yes. And I can only make assumptions. The  what I will say is I think that in the longterm where you might not [00:32:00] call jet pack a direct competitor, I would say that there will be a market correction.[00:32:06]As Jetpack solves things like grab like forms better or galleries better, or I dunno, some other feature in there better than let's say Pippin's plugins. Eventually. I feel like the advantage that Jetpack has in both a brand and positioning that we'll see a correction of maybe losing three of these smaller product companies.[00:32:30] In the longterm as jet pack becomes much more mature, much more fortified. Is that fair?[00:32:36]Mullenweg: [00:32:36] I do worry about that, but it is a very, long-term worry. Meaning at the point when we're unable to add new users have worked for us[00:32:45] Medeiros: [00:32:45] Right?[00:32:46] Mullenweg: [00:32:46] and that's remember, there's still 6.9, 9 billion people who haven't used WordPress yet. So we have a ways to go, but for extremely mature technology companies, Facebook has 2 billion people, daily active users, they're running out of people.[00:32:58] And so it is much more zero sum. [00:33:00] One thing that it was cool about all the year-end wrap-ups that got posted from the different commercial companies, the volunteers, everything of the people in WordPress community last year, which by the way, it was a challenging year for humanity. Was a pretty good year for all of the businesses you just mentioned and also a good year for automatic.[00:33:17]As we expand the pie, everyone's portion of the pie can also keep growing without a necessarily be a zero sum between them. We can work in these economics of abundance versus economics of scarcity. And that's why if I get ever criticized. For really prioritizing growing the number of numbers of users of WordPress.[00:33:38]It is true. It is very important to me that we at in our mission to democratize publishing that we bring more people on the WordPress, the platform. I think it's, is it a trailing indicator of us doing our job of creating good product? Also keeps the companies from it allows us to work together a lot more.[00:33:54]Even one thing that's beautiful and WordPress direct competitors work together all the time. Hosting companies that are literally selling [00:34:00] the exact same thing. We'll have developers coordinating on a new feature. I also will say yourself included that WordPress is blessed with a really great media.[00:34:09]We have had in the past say a few years, some of the polarization where the, of the world seep into our communities where we're fast to jump to conclusions or create sides on things. But at the same time I've never run into someone in the WordPress kind of public space or things like that, that didn't really care about the truth as well.[00:34:31] And was, it was willing to update their worldview based on new information. And I hope myself included. I can demonstrate that I'll have strong opinions, but loosely held if new information is there, I want to update my, my view of reality because. If I am far from reality, that's going to be bad for myself and everyone involved, everyone that have influence over where the closer I can be to understand reality the better and my [00:35:00] role in responsibility as a leader within this community, I can help navigate and focus my attention and my contributions to whatever's most con  constructive for all the stakeholders and WordPress community.[00:35:13] Medeiros: [00:35:13] I'd say that I have a good understanding of your view of jet pack so far I'm not fully convinced that maybe not maybe saying even reached the resolution on the implementer or the builder's space and the connection there and that's okay. What I want to[00:35:29] Mullenweg: [00:35:29] a good question to ask though. Automatic is a business and does move into business areas. Has any business automatic moved into so far, the elimination of all its competitors. Have the host grown or shrunk since wordpress.com started are the other foreign plugins doing better or worse than Jetpack forum started?[00:35:49] Like you can almost look at every single example. We, my experience has been that automatic entering a place generally grows the market. Doesn't operate in a zero sum way. [00:36:00] Enterprise is the same way.  Think this came up, actually, it was a great tweak correction. It might've been Bridget or someone who said, automatic copy the, I forget what it was and I don't want to misquote it.[00:36:08] But basically the implication was we moved into enterprise space and took the oxygen out of the room from these companies I 10 up and others. And in fact, all those companies started after cross hybrid, et cetera, started after VIP. And I think VIP has been a big contributor to their business growing and scaling.[00:36:24]Medeiros: [00:36:24] One of the things that I think that I've often talked about again, when for some reason people ask me like, what your thoughts are. I don't know I don't know what[00:36:30] Mullenweg: [00:36:30] You are an influencer.[00:36:32] Medeiros: [00:36:32] name. The people say don't you think it's just because,  they want to IPO and they want to do all of this and they have this investments and they need to pay back the investors and that kind of thing.[00:36:43] My hunch is that you've had tyranical capitalism knocking at the door to try to do something with core WordPress, wordpress.org and with Woo commerce, and the only like real painting I've [00:37:00] illustrated to myself and to maybe others is that, that you are actually defending. From, the monetization of core WordPress or, this aggressive capitalistic play on monetizing WordPress.[00:37:12] I think that you might be actually defending, I can't imagine the amount of emails you've deleted, where people wanted to throw money at you for the sake of the greater good being WordPress of course. And it's four freedoms. But there has to be some loss there. And I think maybe the loss is we're going to defend this thing called WordPress and to appease investors.[00:37:34] And it's not even a piece, it's not even the right word, but we're going to show them. We have this thing called Jetpack. That is Matt's defense. Your defense to say, look, we don't look guys. Don't worry about trying to monetize wordpress.org or WooCommerce directly. Let me show you Jetpack instead as a way to defend WordPress with the unfortunate cannon fodder being the implementer or the business person.[00:37:58] And I don't even at [00:38:00] not even saying that this is a bad thing, because I can't even imagine how many times you've had to defend and put a fence around people who have said, if you just put an ad right here, you could make $5 million a month by putting a buy now on the install, WordPress page or something like that.[00:38:16]It's, that's a feeling of mine. I have obviously, no. Insight into that, but you can either speak to that or not, but I feel like that is Jetpack is is a great way for you to say save the core WordPress open source. This is what I focus on. If we're not talking about Jetpack, we're not talking about investing in, in, in automatic or even looking at WooCommerce, that kind of thing.[00:38:39] Do you think that's fair?[00:38:40]Mullenweg: [00:38:40] Yeah, there. Yeah. So I would say a weakness of mine is I'm not building websites anymore for $25 an hour.  I've been very fortunate even outside of WordPress with my investments and everything like that to essentially be a lottery winner. And so since. My early twenties. I have not been motivated by [00:39:00] more money cause I have more than any one person could need, but really motivated by the impact of my work and the things I'm supporting in a part of in the world.[00:39:11] And the toughest thing within any open source or any open community is essentially commercial interests. That take too much for themselves without putting enough back. That's why we have the fire for the future program. It's amazing that all it takes is 5% 95% could be doing whatever. But if every company in the WordPress community did put that 5% in WordPress would actually be, I would say three to five times larger than it is today.[00:39:42]We have some amazing companies, the tinnitus, the Yost automatics that do a lot of this. And I hope that more and more joining the suture as they see those companies also do really well. But. That is my motivation. So that, I guess the bright side of that is it would be really hard to bride me.[00:40:00] [00:40:00] The downside of that is that I do need to do extra work, to stay in touch with the builders with everyone else that you talked about the other companies. And so that's why I just try to have that open door policy and know I had a zoom with one of the With a large agency folks yesterday and just hearing like, how's your business going?[00:40:18] How's, what's the latest, what's the, what are they hearing from their clients? What are they building on Gutenberg versus others? How are they bidding against other things in the market? How's Adobe experience manager doing? So these things are really helpful because I do have the part of the world that I work in every day.[00:40:33] And and so I need help to stay connected to all the rest of the things going on in WordPress.[00:40:37]Medeiros: [00:40:37] You said your one week, that was one week. I think, man, you do a lot. You do too much, Matt. You do too much like that. You let it go. Like you said, you were very, you felt very personally responsible for the builders. When I jokingly, maybe it doesn't come off as a joke and I'd say things like a PR agency or stuff like that, like I think.[00:40:54] You need to just give someone that role to really stay grounded [00:41:00] to that, and then maybe report to you or something like that. I feel like you, I, this is just me speaking bluntly. I feel like you wear too many hats but kudos to you for balancing it for 20 years.  [00:41:10] Mullenweg: [00:41:10] So I'm always putting hats on and taking hats off.[00:41:13]A good example is I was actually personally running wordpress.com last year. And so that was a lot of work. [00:41:19] Medeiros: [00:41:19] Yeah. [00:41:19] Mullenweg: [00:41:19] And, part of doing that was also identifying someone I could pass that hat to. Actually we just started a new framework inside automatic called hats. That sort of shows that like many roles, especially in a fast growing company, you might take on and put off without necessarily a title change or something like that. So we need to be flexible to do things differently. I really do look up to, these are flawed role models, but folks like.[00:41:45]Elon Musk or bill Gates, or, folks who are, can say highly, technically connected to every single part of the business, and then use that knowledge to help navigate, because I do believe that the more layers of [00:42:00] abstraction you're dealing with the further away from reality you are and the harder it is to understand what's really going on.[00:42:06]So we do, we do obviously hire lots of people that do the things I used to do things instead of me But occasionally I feel, and for any leaders listening to this it's it's good to dive down into the details. I was doing some live chat support last week. Yeah. I'm hoping to do some more this week.[00:42:20] So if you chatted with wordpress.com support, you might've gotten me is that the most valuable use of my time? If it were 40 hours a week now, but if it were a couple of hours a month, Oh it's invaluable. I think it's actually one of the most valuable things I do. So it's I would say, think about even when you scale to thousands of people, how you can stay connected to the core of your business, which is really the customer[00:42:42]Medeiros: [00:42:42] I think maybe one of the things that be coming out of 90, and we're not even out of the pandemic yet, but we're go through those that this whole last year and seeing so many.  People that I've seen on Twitter saying, look, the client business has dried up I say, man, wouldn't it be great. If [00:43:00] instead of automatic launching their division of $5,000 websites, there was this collection  of building and boutique agencies that could satisfy the needs of a $0 to $5,000 website.  And lift these people up. Who've been, cheerleaders for WordPress for many years.[00:43:19] Mullenweg: [00:43:19] I a hundred percent agree with you there.[00:43:21]So I think we're in total agreement. It's just an order of operations, to, to launch the test, we've done things like Jetpack pro and other things to pick up pro and others that essentially build an agency list. Obviously the enterprise side of the business works with dozens of partners there and sends all that out.[00:43:38]But for this, which is literally a test with one or two people working on it, it was easier to work with an Upworker, a codeable to try to see if we'd get that funnel. Because it's no good for us to bring in 20 or a thousand agencies, if there's only five clients a month going through it. We need to flow first.[00:43:53] And so just from the order of building it, like to test this concept, to see whether this is even something people signing up for wordpress.com want [00:44:00] it was just, what the resources, this thing was, I really did mean it was an experiment when it's very much to go. I think that's when you start to say, okay, how do we open this up?[00:44:09] It is very clear. And I've said this before automatic is not a consulting company. We're not a people shop and we're very much all about technology and engineering and algorithms and that sort of deep tech and SAS services and that sort of stuff is where we're always going to focus. So any place where we're able to send out consulting or building or something that we're going to look for the opportunities to do because that's just how we've.[00:44:37] Define the business. It is pretty core to our identity. There's also things like jobs.wordpress.net that we do need to loop back on and do a better job of I noticed actually as part of that discussion that the LinkedIn jobs, that word presented had fallen off the footer of wordpress.org, by the way, for those who don't know, which probably almost everyone, this is a free job listing site where people can list.[00:44:58] People they want to hire or look for [00:45:00] jobs in the WordPress world. That's, you're probably be  way better. Maybe also someplace where we charged the minimum amount to keep out spam and stuff. So that might be, someplace where we say it's $5 to list your job or something that just goes to the WordPress foundation.[00:45:12] But again, if we ever charge for things, it's usually for They keep the quality high, like why do we charge for our camp tickets it's so we can properly plan for how much food to buy and how many t-shirts to order, because when you make a totally free, a lot of people sign up and don't show up.[00:45:26] So if we charge 20 to 25 bucks, it's not going to keep anyone from going, you get by the way, probably $500 or a thousand dollars worth of value from that. But allows for less wastage in the planning. So sometimes if you do see a charge on the.org side of things, it's usually for that reason then necessarily trying to.[00:45:44] Create a marketplace or something. And a lot of people don't know this, but.org doesn't have the WordPress foundation has no full-time employees. There's zero. And so that is a design goal. So when you say make a marketplace, it's already even a small marketplace, I need to hire 20. Or [00:46:00] twenty-five people building the billing systems, handling refunds, doing support, all these sorts of things.[00:46:03] And we do try to keep the employee base of the word presentation. Totally zero. Now we have lots of people working full-time on WordPress, but they are generally. Sponsored or volunteering or doing that as part of they're employed by someone else. So that's just also something good to put out there because a lot of people don't realize that[00:46:21]Medeiros: [00:46:21] Let me just drill down on that one that one specifically, because it was a note that I had, but I skipped over it, the quick story is I remember years ago.[00:46:28] And let's talk about some of the, the frustration of a product person. This should have gone earlier in the conversation, but the frustrations of a WordPress product person, stemming from some of the experiences we, it's not just me, it's many others openly blogged about it.[00:46:42]Spending a theme to wordpress.org many years ago. I remember the theme that I put in was called journal, right? We're writing it, we're making a journal. And someone said. Now that name is too too vague, too ambiguous, right? We have to get something tighter and then Mo and then months later, I saw a theme get approved [00:47:00] called paper, and I was going, wait a minute, journal paper.[00:47:04] What's the difference? So it's these, this is a small blip in the galaxy  of events, but it's those types of things where it's largely led by volunteers. And people should not be upset of the volunteers. It's the nature of the structure. And this is where I think people turn to and say if you made it a paid marketplace, there would be.[00:47:26] There's probably, and you probably know this better than I do. It's probably a billion dollars that flows through wordpress.org. There's probably something in there where we could carve out some money to pay for a team. It's not an easy task, but one that I think would still be very profitable.[00:47:40] I could be totally wrong. So that is a feeling and it's not just me. This is many people echo this feeling of why is it free? Why is it volunteered? Why are they making decisions? Commercially based decisions, those types of things. [00:47:53] Mullenweg: [00:47:53] It's it's a, it's one of the, I think biggest mistakes I seen as a meme, the WordPress world that [00:48:00] free can not mean high quality. And I think WordPress itself. Largely developed by volunteers. Again, 95% of the contributors are not paid or sponsored by any company that you can actually have something that's world-class, the equivalent of millions of dollars of value.[00:48:17] If you were paying Adobe or someone for a CMS that wasn't as good as WordPress developed for free by volunteers, Wikipedia, like there's so many examples, Bitcoin, gosh doing that, never underestimate, underestimate. The power of people, passionate about an area working on it together for love, not money and doing so in a way where the ownership is shared.[00:48:41]So if anything, I want to encourage a lot more of that. It doesn't mean people can't make money. It just means that let's never assume that just because something is free. A free theme. Can't be the best darn theme in the world. The free page builder, can't be the best darn page builder, not just in the WordPress world, but in the entirety of all CMS, it's a with [00:49:00] Gutenberg.[00:49:00] So there's ways to do it. And so if you ever find yourself saying that, just question that assumption. Cause there's so many counterfactuals to it.[00:49:06]Medeiros: [00:49:06] Do you ever feel like. You're just getting started with WooCommerce. Like when you just take a step back and you look at, and you go, man, I haven't even done anything. And again, people ask me all the time. What do you think Matt is doing with WooCommerce? Like I know, I feel like you have the same challenges.[00:49:26] A lot of us product people have where you have money. But you just can't get enough darn people on this thing at the same time to get this thing moving. It's a very similar challenge to maybe even Pippin's plugins and SIADH and Yoast. It's not the money. It's the time. It's the people and getting that all in sync.[00:49:47]What are your thoughts on WooCommerce? Just getting started or however you see it.[00:49:54] Mullenweg: [00:49:54] it's day one with all commerce, the, when you look at the potential there [00:50:00] I often say that we're WooCommerce is where WordPress was in 2008. I would say that's for software maturity in terms of like where sort of percent of the market that it's captured, it's where WordPress wasn't like 2003, what?[00:50:14] It was like B2, plus some hacks. There's just so much there and probably a good place to mention that automatic is hiring for 30 or 40 open roles. So whatever is, you're a copywriter. If you're a support person, if you're person like, we are hiring as fast as possible. And and a lot of those new hires are going into the WooCommerce side of things.[00:50:33] So if you're interested in that, it is it's the largest rocket ship I've ever been a part of. And if we do it right, it is not just bigger than all the rest of automatics businesses combined, but probably maybe like a. Two to 10 X bigger.[00:50:51]Medeiros: [00:50:51] That's tremendous. One of the things. Speaking of products. I wish you put more money into things like video press was a [00:51:00] phenomenal product, but it's all integrated into Jetpack. Now with this rise in a video and all of this stuff is that just going to be a long-term bet or is, do you not see like that chunk  of Jetpack or the business being something that's a very alluring right now?[00:51:17] Mullenweg: [00:51:17] Yeah, just to give two little previews for your audience.  Cool update the video press conference. It is very eminent, good player, especially is so much cooler so much nicer. It feels even more modern than like a YouTube player. Continuous updates to the infrastructure. So we're making as automatic builds out its global network.[00:51:35] I think we're 30 plus points of presence globally. If you look at DNS perf we're usually second to only CloudFlare or Google for how fast the network is, it's a kind of hidden part of automatic. Then I'm really proud of that. Not a lot of people know about. So look for that to be a lot faster.[00:51:51] And then finally as you probably see with Jetpack CRM, Jetpack backup, a few things is we're making it so you can both buy and [00:52:00] install these things. All a cart.  Don't think video press is still standalone plugin right now, but essentially what we've been doing with Jetpack is architecting it.[00:52:07] So if people just want one of these features, they could just install that, add on a plugin much like Jetpack backup for CRM or how kismet and Jetpack interact.  We want to get people the flexibility. To pick and choose just what they want because I do it's not entirely true because Jetpack has its own internal plugin system.[00:52:27] So if you're only using one module, the rest of the code has been loaded. It's not somebody on your side at all. But I do get the perception where people will like, does 20 things while using five of them. So yeah, ways that we can break it up, I think are are helpful. Aye. There still is.[00:52:41]The truth is that if you install Jetpack and the CD and everything go make your site faster, though. And I think a lot of people, I appreciate that people can start different benchmarks and things to overcome the the myth that Jetpack slows your site down. When in fact it actually speeds it up.[00:52:54]Medeiros: [00:52:54] I don't do bonus rounds anymore, but here it is. I totally side with you on the [00:53:00] The other Matt and Matt feud with the JAMstack stuff. Look, I, again, diehard a WordPress fan. When I start to see all of these points of services connecting together, just for me to publish a website, I'm like, what's the point?[00:53:13] I can do it all with WordPress. And the note. And so they're getting to the question the no code, low code movement. Is phenomenal right now. I feel it's again, like you were saying, like it's like WordPress 2004, when everyone was like, look what I can build with advanced custom fields in WordPress.[00:53:30]Arguably WordPress, probably the best no-code low-code tool that's that's been in existence for for 20 years. [00:53:37] Mullenweg: [00:53:37] But maybe we have the worst marketing team. So we've got some things we can learn there.[00:53:41]Medeiros: [00:53:41] And I see all these people putting,  Hey, I'm using web flow, I'm using air table. And then I'm coupling that with a gum road and MailChimp. And and I'm looking at it, just, my head is hurting but you don't own any of these points in your stack that you could do with WordPress.[00:54:00] [00:54:00] And I guess the frustration. Is that a lot of people look at it and go, geez. I don't think I can do this with WordPress or WordPress is too slow, too. Yada, whatever they have to say. It's an amazing time. Do you feel like the no code, low code movement is a fad? Do you see all of these things going away to a degree[00:54:19] Mullenweg: [00:54:19] some of the companies are fats. The movements is basically the movement. It's a multi-decade movement that WordPress has been surfing, which is this idea that things you used to have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to do. Sometimes software, I can make it with a few clicks you can do.[00:54:39] And that's so empowering. That's a promise where to see technology at its best when it essentially gives super powers to people. That's what we mean by democratization is it's providing a freedom of expression capabilities that wouldn't be there without the software. And so that, it's been rebranded recently.[00:54:58] He's like low-code or no-code [00:55:00] you are correct that WordPress is. In many ways, a low-code or no-code tool we don't get credit for it. There was basically, I just saw a website builder report and I was like, Shopify is 50%. I was like, what? And then I looked and they weren't counting WordPress as a website builder.[00:55:15] And I was like, Oh, okay. [00:55:18] Medeiros: [00:55:18] This is where your angry tweet comes in. Why did you do this?[00:55:21] Mullenweg: [00:55:21] okay. They have a very specific reason where it basically like, as Gutenberg gets further on, I think they'll count us as a website builder. So the methodology was consistent if even if I didn't agree with it. And it is true that Shopify is really the only other platform other than WordPress that's growing in a meaningful way.[00:55:40] So I think it was interesting to look at,[00:55:41] Medeiros: [00:55:41] Yeah.[00:55:43] Mullenweg: [00:55:43] go ahead.[00:55:44] Medeiros: [00:55:44] I was going to say to your note about like empowering, like feeling empowered through software the biggest. Revelation to me as a quote, unquote developer many years ago was Drupal version four with the combination of CCK and views. My mind [00:56:00] was blown. Like I could build a view of data without having to write a query and knowing, back then and how to write SQL and stuff like that.[00:56:09] And I was like, wow, this is magical. Those are moments that you feel powerful when you're able to do that kind of thing.[00:56:17] Mullenweg: [00:56:17] I think where there's a huge opportunity for word press community, including individual bloggers is an education and tutorials. So let's say that something, when you just listed the Webflow plus air table and come road. What's each one, each name you listed. There is a business with sometimes hundreds of employees.[00:56:36] That's making millions and millions, probably tens of millions of dollars. And so they invest a lot into essentially user education, tutorials conferences, things like that. We need to do a lot better job. At writing the walk-throughs did you ever see a video game walkthrough? It's like curious how to get through super Mario or something like that.[00:56:56] Like, all these things are possible with WordPress, but some of those [00:57:00] levels, the boss monster is really hard and people don't make it fast enough. So if there's a little bit of a tutorial or walkthrough, that's really valuable. And I think it's also important for these to come from folks without necessarily commercial interests.[00:57:13] There are a lot of. A lot of the tutorial, if you Google for a lot of things around WordPress, you end up on affiliate sites and people are just trying to sell you a particular thing. And, we need a lot more of that. Here's the best way to do it. Maybe it says you should buy something.[00:57:29]Maybe it doesn't, maybe there's a free alternative. And so I think that's a downside as well as almost every WordPress company has an affiliate program. Sometimes the sort of free and unbiased tutorials and things are. Are just shelling for one [00:57:43] Medeiros: [00:57:43] Let, let Let me step in as your PR coach, Matt. Nope. Let's avoid. That is a lot of people listening to this who are WordPress YouTubers myself included, but I don't use a lot of affiliate links. [00:57:52] Mullenweg: [00:57:52] I'm not saying there's anything wrong with affiliate links, but I think what's beautiful is you want to promote the best solution and you don't have the [00:58:00] integrity to say that maybe something's not paid. It might be the best solution for this particular thing.[00:58:05]Medeiros: [00:58:05] A hundred percent Matt Mullenweg. Thanks for taking some time out of your day to, to reach out and have this discussion. Obviously folks can find you everywhere. Twitter, your blog, M a T [00:58:17] Mullenweg: [00:58:17] made that TT. Yeah. Fotomat pho, T O M a T on Tumblr, Instagram and Twitter. I'll try. I'm trying. One of my resolutions is to fight less on Twitter. So I'm trying to [00:58:28] use that one a little less. I could do a lot more if I use Twitter less. So watch out 2021.[00:58:36] Medeiros: [00:58:36] Take to by someone everyone else. mattreport.com. mattreport.com/subscribe to join the mailing list. We'll see you in the next episode.[00:58:43] Mullenweg: [00:58:43] Hey Matt, thank you so much. I really appreciate this.[00:58:47] Medeiros: [00:58:47] I appreciate it as well. Matt. Thanks a lot. ★ Support this podcast ★

Happy New Year, everyone! We jump right in talking about Zoom filters

En @NotiPodHoy ✅ Encuesta mundial revela que la experiencia en audio y video serán las habilidades más exigidas para trabajar en los medios en 2021. ✅ WordPress.com lanza curso de podcasting. ✅ Podimo lanza su primera campaña de televisión para fomentar el consumo de podcasts y audiolibros en español. ➽ Tendencias del pódcast de marca B2C para 2021.  ➽ Triton Digital publicó su informe LATAM Podcast Report más reciente.  ➽ M-Audio lanza dos nuevas interfaces de audio para Mac/iOS y PC de un precio bajo.  ➽ Neon Hum Media se asocia con Sony Music Entertainment para hacer crecer la producción de podcasts. 

Welcome to the tech podcast. Assignment 19 was a complete fail, and I know that I had a lot of failure but not all was my fault. You can search out this write up on the blog, but I talk about it here. Next, a company may be getting themselves in some trouble Forget going to a hotel … especially since records go back to 2013 … were you effected is the blog post I wrote, are you effected? Next, JFW 2021 and MAC version 11 are out and I taklk about both. Finally, I found some good news in the security field and I even have one more. Finally, a laugh and contact info at the end. Hope that you enjoy the program and I'll see you all later!

Craig continues his explanation of what you need to do if you have to take your computer to a shop to be repaired. This segment covers encryption. For more tech tips, news, and updates, visit - CraigPeterson.com --- FBI, DHS says hackers have gained access to election systems The IRS Is Being Investigated for Using Location Data Without a Warrant Clear Conquered U.S. Airports. Now It Wants to Own Your Entire Digital Identity. 5G in the US averages 51Mbps while other countries hit hundreds of megabits IRS may put cryptocurrency question at the top of 1040 to catch cheaters Publishers worry as ebooks fly off libraries’ virtual shelves 25% of BEC Cybercriminals Based in the US What's Really Happening in Infosec Hiring Now? --- Automated Machine-Generated Transcript: Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] We're going to talk right now a little bit more about removing that personal data before you send it in for repair and a couple of other things that you need to know about your rights when it comes to repairs. Hey, you're listening to Craig Peterson. Thanks for joining us today. Next up is probably pretty obvious to everybody make sure you're very selective about who you trust. What's the reputation of your work with them before? If you're dealing with a managed services provider, They have a fair deal, in fact, of responsibility for your data.  If they are a federal compliant managed security services provider, then there are federal laws to help protect some of your data. But if you leave that data on that computer, it's like not paying for the guy that did all of the yard work outside who brought in the bulldozers and the trucks full of soil, et cetera. They have a mechanics lien on your home. They can take that right out of you and even force the sale of the home in order to get paid. Kind of similar in the computer world. They did put in the time to fix a computer, they might've added parts, et cetera. So when you sign that contract, when you're dropping that thing off, remember that you kinda are signing your computer away. That is not a good thing for you if you don't come back in the 90 days, because that computer and all of the data on it becomes not yours.  It becomes the repair shop's data and computer. They can do with it, whatever it is they want to do with it. That's, what's gotten Hunter Biden into some serious trouble here and Joe Biden as well. Remember this, isn't a Hunter Biden problem. It's now showing some major corruption on the part of Joe Biden. So if it's true, Where did this all start? Well, he's kept his head down pretty well for 47 years in the US Senate, et cetera. But, this one thing just dropping the computer off for repairs could be a problem. Encryption is important. Remember most of us are just using what's called encryption at rest. In other words, the data is encrypted while it's on the disk. That does not meet some of the higher standards of various regulations, but it's okay. It's a start.  So you use encryption on the disk, you use the builtin windows encryption or the built-in Apple encryption as well. Now there are some very good tips here as well. That has to do with your keys. I keep all of my keys, my software keys, my log-in keys, license keys in a vault. An encrypted vault. There is another level of that. It's something that we are trying to convince our clients that they need to do because some regulations are requiring it now. Although most companies are not doing it. That is, it has to not just be kept in an encrypted vault, but half has to be kept in an encrypted vault that will self-destruct if someone tries to get into it. So keep your software keys, separate, keep them off of your main computer. Nowadays put them in your smartphone in an encrypted vault. I use one password there. You can use LastPass, which is another good one. There are many others, but keep them on a separate device. This again is the next step ultimate insecurity. We get into this in our cybersecurity mastery program. When we're talking about some of these different levels that you have to comply with, but you can have a unique key for each disk, that's stored on a separate machine so that when your computer boots up, it has to go to the separate machine in order to get the keys in order to decrypt and use your hard disks. Okay. That's way above and beyond what home users are going to do. It's way above and beyond what a SOHO, a small office home office business is going to do. It is absolutely required for government contracts here in the next three years, it's already required today for some vendors.  There's one more step here we've got to remember. That the repair guys have to be able to repair your computer. You're going to want to make it easy for them to access your device. A word of caution. We've had stories, and I have personal knowledge of people working at some of these big companies. Many of us look at it and say, I'm not going to take it to Joe's repair shop, because who knows if they're going to repair properly or what's going to happen to my data, et cetera, et cetera.  There was a great article we talked about when it came out a couple of years back from one of the bigger companies out there that have a squad of people that go around and install equipment, fix equipment, et cetera. Where some of their stores were being paid a bounty. What would happen is you'd bring your computer in and they would look at the data on the computer. They would check to see if they could find kiddie porn or anything else illegal, such as well pictures of you smoking crack cocaine, which is what's alleged here on Hunter Biden's computer. They would get paid a few hundred dollars, that technician, for finding it. How's that for scary? They would work with the police. The police had a bounty program. It was just absolutely nuts. So how easy do you need to make it for these people? Don't go crazy with making it easy for them. In fact, in many cases, before I would possibly take a computer in for repair,  of course, I don't, right? We repair them ourselves. Or we have a repair company come out and we watch them repair every step of the way.  What I would do is remove that drive, no matter what kind of computer it is, and then take it in for repairs. The company that's doing the repairs, they've got bootable USB drives that they can just plug right in, boot it up, it's up, it's running. Life is good and they give it back to you. Hopefully, the problem isn't that, that hard drive was bad. But again, hard drives are easy enough to replace. But what you going to do to make it easy for them to repair, if you're going to ship it to them or give it to them with the hard disk intact, is to remove the password. Now I've done that before with my Apple computers, taking them into Apple for repairs. I also make sure that there's nothing on the machines. We'll make sure the backups good, which you should be doing anyway. Then we wipe the computer by destroying the key, the encryption key for that computer. Then we reinstall the operating system and we test the machine again because sometimes it's just the operating system got messed up. Particularly if you're dealing with a windows computer. So that's always a good thing to do anyway. Then when we give the computer to the repair guy. She's going to be able to just run it and it's not going to require a password and life is good, right? She's often running. That's what I would recommend as opposed to just removing the password on the computer. Remove the password, destroy the address by simply deleting the key and you can do that with these disk and full disk encryption programs, and then reinstall windows or Mac iOS, whatever it is. Check your machine again, make sure it's still not working the way you want it to, and then take it in for repairs. Things do break. It doesn't matter what kind of computer it is. It doesn't matter if it's a smartphone or a laptop or a server, they are going to break. There's your basic tip. Make sure you got the backups. Make sure everything is as it should be. So that you're not going to get nailed and your data's not gonna get stolen if the bad guys did hack into your computer and use it as a store and forward for illegal materials, they will no longer be on that computer. Stick around. We'll be right back and make sure you get my newsletter. 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

WWDC 开完了，我们聊了聊 arm 的 Mac 和“更安卓”的 iOS 14听歌的介质听歌的耳机音乐流媒体哪家强

Ya han pasado 36 años desde que Steve Jobs presentara el primer Mac, en la emblemática keynote del Macintosh en 1984. Desde entonces Mac ha cambiado enormemente y poco a poco se ha convertido en una herramienta imprescindible en nuestra productividad. En este programa repasamos los años macqueros y tiramos de nostalgia para contaros cual fue nuestro primer Mac.También os hablamos de lo que esperamos de iOS 14 y de la privacidad en iCloud.Esperamos que os haya gustado y si queréis acceder a los EXTRAS de iSenaCode podéis haceros miembros VIP aquí: https://isenacode.com/vip¡Gracias por escucharnos!

Special guest Jason Snell returns to the show. Topics include BBEdit’s 25th anniversary, the saga of Word 6 for Mac in the 1990s, Mac iOS user interface differences (including an extensive discussion of Mojave’s craptacular “Marzipan” apps, and a few varying theories on what those apps portend), Photos on Mac and iOS, and, of course, keyboards.

RIP iPhoto & Aperture.  Apple has just release Yosemite 10.10.3 which not only includes the usual set of bug fixes and optimizations, it includes a brand new application, Photos.  Photos is the new application that replaces both iPhoto and Aperture. Although both of those applications will no longer be updated, they will continue to work for the foreseeable future.  We'll review some of the features and requirements of Photos and we'll discuss the consequence of moving to the new program. If you have questions, we urge you to not migrate your existing Library until you attend out meeting so you can ask them. We'll also talk about a few new utilities on the social apps scene that seem interesting and we'll show a tool that will help you determine if some of those phishing (scam) email messages you get once in a while are real or not.    And, of course, we'll go over some other current events in the OS X world as well as review some cool Mac & iOS apps and leave some time for Q&A.

In 2014, Apple announced a few new products coming in early 2015. Well, it's now early 2015 and these products are getting closer to being released. The Apple Watch is reportedly in production and the upcoming Photos application for OS X (replacing iPhoto and Aperture) hsa been reported to be in the next update to Yosemite.  We'll talk about these upcoming releases and show you what we know (including some videos of Photos). Since there are a lot of utilties to help you clean up your iPhoto library, we'll talk about the things you can do to prepare your library to make the transition a little easier.  We'll also talk about some tools you can use on the Mac to access and extract data from your iOS devices that will allow to you get at data you normally won't be able to access with Apple's tools. Sometimes, this will be the quickest or only way to get at this data. This will be very handy part of our meeting.And, of course, we'll go over some other current events in the OS X world as well as review some cool Mac & iOS apps and leave some time for Q&A.

January is CES month! Ben, Phil and other LAPUG members that attended will review what was shown in the iLounge area as well as the coming trends in consumer electronics for 2015.  We'll also focus on Sandvox. This is a really easy to use web site development tool. We'll show you how to create a web site and how to upload it to a web server. We'll also how you how easy it is to post updates and we'll do it live with our own LAPUG web site. And one more thing….Are you a slow typist? Are you tired of entering appointments and reminders in your iPhone with the keyboard? Want to know if you need an umbrella this weekend? Want to know how the Lakers or Clippers are doing? Want to know how Apple stock is doing? What about making a restaurant reservation for tonight? All that stuff can easily be done on the iPhone and iPad. But, you've got a personal assistant to do that for you and all you need to do is ask. One of Apple's most innovative features in iOS is also one of the most underused. This month, we'll spend some time going over all the ways you can use Siri to enhance your iOS experience and make your life a little easier. You already carry around your personal assistant. Why not talk to it once in a while and have it do things for you?   And, of course, we'll go over some other current events in the OS X world as well as review some cool Mac & iOS apps and leave some time for Q&A.

OS X Yosemite has been out for a while and we're discovering new things it can do every day. This is a great release and it promises to be the best version of OS X yet. Join us at our next meeting as we review not only some great new features in Yosemite but also some must-have Yosemite add-ons you can use to supercharge your Mac.  Bring your Yosemite questions and we'll enjoy some Q&A to cap off a great 2014 in the Apple world.And, of course, we'll go over some other current events in the OS X world, review some cool Mac & iOS apps and leave some time for Q&A.

OS X Yosemite is here! Not only that, we've got an update to iOS 8 that enables the collaborative functions of Yosemite and iOS working together even more closely. New iMacs and Mac Minis have been released, too!  We'll review all this news and we'll spend the most of our meeting going over lots of new Yosemite features and how they work in conjuction with iOS.  This will be the Mac meeting of the season as we all dive into two new operating systems! Don't miss this meeting!   And, of course, we'll go over some other current events in the OS X world as well as review some cool Mac & iOS apps and leave some time for Q&A.

Wow! Lots of cool new stuff this month. iOS 8 has finally been released and we've got a pair of gorgeous new iPhones. Apple promises that Apple Pay will replace our credit cards and be the future of digital payments. Also, the mythical Apple Watch has been announced and we'll talk about what features we can expect from it.  We'll spend a good portion of our meeting going over a bunch of new features found in iOS 8 and how you can take advantage of them!   We'll also talk about why some graphics and images on screen don't always print out with the same colors. Color calibration is essential to make sure that what you see is REALLY what you get. Our hero, Garry Margolis, will give us an overview of color calibration and explain a few ways you make sure you get the best possible colors out your computer.     And, of course, we'll go over some other current events in the OS X world as well as review some cool Mac & iOS apps and leave some time for Q&A.

Apple must be teasing as, once again, they've chosen the morning after our September LAPUG meeting to make some big announcements. They'll be doing the big show from the Flint Center for the Performing Arts in Cupertino and this is only the 4th time Apple has made an announcement from this location (with the first being the introduction of the Mac in 1984). The Flint Center seats 2,300 -- over seven times the capacity of Apple's on-Campus theater and over three times the capacity of the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco which have been the locations of most of the non-conference events Apple has hosted in the last decade. In addition, many in the non-computer industry press have been invited to this event including many in the fashion industry.  All of this, along with the other rumors of what may be released, leads us to wonder how big of an impact these new products may have.   We'll spend our meeting discussing not only what we know about Yosemite and iOS 8 but also some speculation on what hardware products they Apple might and might not release this week.     And, of course, we'll go over some other current events in the OS X world as well as review some cool Mac & iOS apps and leave some time for Q&A.

At our last meeting, we took a little survey of topics members would like us to cover at future meetings. One of those topics had to do with networking and the explanation of IP numbers, how they're given out, gateways, DNS, switches, routers, bridges, IP port numbers, port forwarding and all the mysterious stuff that Internet companies make you go through. It's important you understand what all these things are so that you'll be better equipped to troubleshoot networking issues with your computer equipment.  This could be a full day class for technical folks but we'll condense it into a short presentation in English for all to understand. Creating web sites can be an overwhelming experience. When Apple discontinued iWeb a few years ago, many people started looking for alternative tools. There are many out there like Rapidweaver, Dreamweaver and Everweb. This month, we'll talk about Sandvox and show you a quick and easy way to get great looking web sites with a bunch of bells and whistles. In light of recent discussions on the LAPUG list, we will once again talk about the importance of unique and strong passwords. And, of course, we'll go over some other current events in the OS X world as well as review some cool Mac & iOS apps and leave some time for Q&A.

We're going to look at a few applications to help you get a little more productive in your personal and work lives. Apple provides some apps like Reminders to help you make lists of things to do. But, if you need to keep track of more things than simple to-do lists can handle, or if you need to manage multiple projects, there are lots of apps that can do that sort of thing. This month, we'll look at OmniFocus and how its ecosystem works between OS X and iOS devices.  We'll also look at streamlining things that need to be typed over and over to save you time and help make your typing consistent.  In addition, we'll review things you can do to keep your Mac lean and clean like cleaning out old apps and making sure that all your apps (including non-app store ones) are easily kept up to date.     And, of course, we'll go over some other current events in the OS X world as well as review some cool Mac & iOS apps and leave some time for Q&A.

Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) announcements brought lots of new stuff for the Apple world. Announcements for OS X Yosemite, iOS 8 and more! Join us for a recap and discussion of what we will be looking forward to playing with in the coming months. Bring your questions about the new stuff and how it all might affect you and we'll put it all in perspective. This stuff is cool!!!!And, of course, we'll go over some other current events in the OS X world as well as review some cool Mac & iOS apps and leave some time for Q&A.

Moving forward with new releases of OS X sometimes means leaving things behind. With the introduction of Lion, Rosetta went away and we lost the ability to run old PowerPC apps (some of which never got updated to Intel). With the introduction of Leopard, we lost the ability to run Classic (OS 9) apps. Of course, pretty much everything is available to us in modern versions of OS X. But, what if you have data that needs to be read from some old app in an unsupported operating system or you need to run some utility that hasn't been written for a modern Intel-based Mac? You might feel stuck. Fortunately, there are some solutions. We'll talk about and demonstrate how to run PPC apps, Classic OS 9 apps as well as old Mac apps from the old days (like on a Mac Plus) all on a current Mavericks-based Mac. While we're on the subject, we'll also talk about running operating systems on the Mac making it the most universal computer available.   We'll also review some more products seen at Macworld | iWorld in March.     And, of course, we'll go over some other current events in the OS X world as well as review some cool Mac & iOS apps and leave some time for Q&A.

The Busy Creator Podcast episode 10, with guest Web Designer Erica Heinz Erica Heinz (@ericaheinz) is a web designer in Brooklyn, NY. As a veteran freelancer, she's work for a variety of clients and sectors, lately focusing on fast development around humanitarian and public sector projects. She's also a teacher of web design, and of yoga. Together, Prescott and Erica discuss tools of the trade, best practices for web designers, how to continue to learn, and how to avoid becoming overwhelmed by systems. This episode features the most in-depth show notes to date, with a ton of links to websites, tools, and tips. Show Notes & Links Previous web designers on The Busy Creator Podcast, Niki Brown Erica does Humanitarian Work and Rapid-Responce work Occupy Sandy, built in 6 Days Peace Talks in Ireland for the Council on Foreign Relations A microsite for Richard Branson's B Team, done in 3 weeks Prototyping Prescott hates the term “Product Designer” in the realm of Web Design “Visual Designer” is a term that was fast outdated Description vs. Rank in terms of job titles Erica started in illustration, switched to design for the problem-solving Terms like “New Media” for early Internet instruction From fashion to packaging to software, Erica's freelance career Erica is an early adopter, but not bleeding edge Studiomates, bunch of smart people Using SASS to streamline a web workflow BusyCreator.com is really just the basics A Book Apart‘s books Parsons, The New School for Design ADOCHD (ADHD with OCD thrown in there) “I have CDO …” Blister pack of pills … for OCD “The Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone“ Not everything is a checkbox (I'm looking at you, Basecamp.) Getting Things Done philosophy “GitHub is the new View Source.” “HTML elements are like the alphabet.” Jen Simmons on Drupal.org Jonnie Hallman on Ruby on Rails “Do things the long, hard, stupid way.“ So-called “Hacker/Garage Culture” “A really good website lasts two years, and then it's gone.” Agile development EricaHeinz.com Tools SASS Digital Typography on the web: Adobe Typekit, @font-face, etc. HTML5 (with fallbacks) Codekit, a way to compile code locally on your Mac Coda, a text editor SublimeText, another text editor Emmet, CSS shorthand Chrome, and its extensions Safari, fewer extensions but many the same Awesome Screenshot, extensions 1Password, a Mac/iOS utility to store passwords Pinboard, social bookmarking for introverts Instapaper Dropmark, quick-saving of images, links Pocket, formerly Read It Later Stylebot, add a new CSS Bit.ly, for shortening Gimme Bar, for random stuff Browser Resize, for viewing your site in multiple sizes Pepperplate, for recipes Momentum, for new tabs Basecamp Kanban Flow Dragdis, a browser add-on to quick-save items Sprint.ly, collaboration for development Waffle.io, a Kanban board for GitHub issues TeuxDeux Multiple Inboxes for Gmail Coloured Stars add-on Pivotal Tracker (which Erica refuses to use) Slack, combines IRC and file changes, great for team communication Subversion LayerVault, version control for Photoshop Editorial.ly, collaborative writing Dropbox, with previous revisions Google Drive Skillshare Bourbon/Bourbon Neat CSS Mixins Code Academy Techniques Clarify team roles as to who does what (e.g. UX, front-end design, back-end dev.) Stay ahead of the curve to avoid headache later Use Post-Its on a wall; colour-code for different aspects Keep a postcard wall (outside of the computer) Rearrange your Top 3 on the board, use small Post-Its on top of the index cards Find a set of tools that work for you. You don't have to be up-to-date on everything. Go for 80%; let go of the compulsive tweaking of the last bit. Use three-letter client codes Use bullets to indicate time requirements (e.g. •••big effort, •not so much) Learn how to build stuff from scratch Be honest about what you should be doing in each moment Try yoga or breathing techniques Habits Systematize your projects for sharing and collaborating. Maintain the system, but not to a crippling degree. Keep email separated by inboxes Keep learning. Keep updating your workflows and skills. Erica's workflow Phase 1. Content and Site Map, Brand Erica's workflow Phase 2. Visual expression, typography, and details Erica's workflow Phase 3. Development, frameworks Comment your own HTML and CSS code (e.g. “// Trust me, keep this.”) Change your routines every once in a while Erica is a night owl, enjoys being “out of sync” Break your day into 2- or 3-hour chunks Keep “busy” work for later in the day, when your brain is tired

For those of you who have finished your taxes and won't be up all night, come on over and join us. We'll review the events from Macworld | iWorld and we'll talk about new products from the show. This is one of our highlights of the year as our week in San Francisco gives us an idea of what 2014 will bring us for third party products in the OS X and iOS worlds.And, of course, we'll go over some other current events in the OS X world as well as review some cool Mac & iOS apps and leave some time for Q&A. What we discussed: OpenSSL/HeartbleedChange Passwords / 1Password on saleMacworld roundupThe RoostBakBone (Tablet Ring)Square Jellyfish (tripods)BodyGuardz Glass Screen ProtectorSKIVA USB Duo Micro and Lightning CableThe Glif TRIPOD Mount & StandContact Patch (http://www.contactpatch.biz/home/)FUZ Designs EverdockCloak (get cloak.com)Vivoprint.com (HbxFn14)LumoLift (lumobodytech.com)Robots & Pencils PencilCase (robotsandpencils.com)Geometrical Pocket Tripod (geometrical-inc.com)Tru Protection (truprotection.com)Moshi Versakeyboard (http://www.moshistore.com/versakeyboard-ipad-air-bluetooth-keyboard-stand-case#black)Parle DockIT (parleinnovation.com)FaceTune (facetuneapp.com)Prong Case (goprong.com)Super iPad Apps for Work — Macworld | iWorld Session given by Phil & Ben

Having an issue with your Mac or iPad? It happens sometimes and, generally speaking, it's not your fault. We'll go over some tips and tricks the troubleshooters use to help keep your devices in good working order. This is also an opportunity for your to come on by and ask some questions that have been stumping you so that you can get over that nagging OS X or iOS issue that's been hounding you for a while. And, of course, we'll go over some other current events in the OS X world as well as review some cool Mac & iOS apps and leave some time for Q&A.

If Internet Companies were Countries http://jaysimons.deviantart.com/art/Map-of-the-Internet-1-0-427143215   North Korea's Red Star OS http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/right-click/north-korea-imitates-apple-os-x-latest-red-152414963.html   iOS Tips (forwarded by Dave Whitby) http://overbidme.com/questions_and_answers/amazing-tricks-every-iphone-and-ipad-user-should-know   Skybell Doorbell http://www.skybell.com   Haiku Premium Themes free (2/day Mon-Sat) In-app purchase   Olympics App   Adonit Jot Script   Pages2PDF   Michael Bateman Projector   Apps for Connecting to the Cloud DropBox SugarSync Box.net Documents Good Reader Files Connect Files United HighTail Office2 OnLive Desktop   And, of course, we'll go over some other current events in the OS X world as well as review some cool Mac & iOS apps and leave some time for Q&A.

It's a brand new year and, with it, comes brand new stuff. Of course, the new MacPro is now shipping and some LAPUG users may have already received theirs. Within hours of it going on sale in late December, shipping dates were showing delivery in February so it may be some time before we get some real hands-on experience with it. Nevertheless, we'll discuss what it offers and if it's good time to get one. The 2014 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas is the week right before our meeting and since Ben, Phil and a few other LAPUG members attended, we'll have a wrap-up of new stuff that's relevant to iOS and OSX users. There's a whole area of the expo floor dedicated to iOS so we expect a lot of new products to be announced and shown. We'll bring the show to you! And, of course, we'll go over some other current events in the OS X world as well as review some cool Mac & iOS apps and leave some time for Q&A.

Isolation, etc. Pressed for time. "Off the cuff," uncut, unedited but brilliant. Mac iOS issues, but excellent quality. -The Real Me.