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Do You Know How Crypto's Nose-dive Will Even Hurt Your 401K? Hey, it looks like if you did not invest in "Crypto," you were making a smart move! Wow. We got a lot to talk about here. Crypto has dived big time. It's incredible. What's happened? We get into that and more. [Following is an automated transcript] Hi everybody. Craig Peterson here. Appreciate your joining me today. Spend a little bit of time with me. It's always a fun thing to do thanks for coming in. And Thanks for sticking around.  [00:00:29] Crypto currencies. It's a term for all kinds of these basically non-government sanctioned currencies. [00:00:39] And the idea behind it was I should be able to trade with you and you should be able to trade with me. We should be able to verify the transactions and it's nobody's business as to what's happening behind the scenes. And yet in reality, Everybody's business because all of those transactions are recorded in a very public way. [00:01:03] So crypto in this case does not mean secret or cryptography. It's actually referring to the way the ledgers work and your wallet. And in fact, the actual coins themselves, a lot of people have bought. I was talking with my friend, Matt earlier this week and Matt was saying, Hey, listen I made a lot of money off a crypto. [00:01:29] He's basically a day trader. He watches it. And is it going up? Is it going down? Which coin is doge coin? The way to go? Because Elon Musk just mentioned it. Is it something else? What should I do? And he buys and sells and has made money off of it. However, a lot of people have. And held on to various cryptocurrencies. [00:01:51] Of course, the most popular one. The one everybody knows about is Bitcoin and Bitcoin is pretty good stuff, bottom line, but 40% right now of Bitcoin investors are underway. Isn't that incredible because of the major drop-off from the November peak. And this was all started by a problem that was over at something called Terra Luna, which is another cryptocurrency now. [00:02:22] Already that there is a ton of vulnerable vol a ton of changes in price in various cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin being of course a real big one where, we've seen 5,000, $10,000 per Bitcoin drops. It really is an amazingly fluid if you will coin. So there's a number of different people that have come out with some plans. [00:02:47] How about if we do like what the us dollar used to do, which is it's tied to a specific amount of gold or tied to a specific amount of silver. And of course, it's been a while since that was the case. President Nixon is the one that got us off of those standards. Having a gold, for instance, back in your currency means that there is going to be far less fluctuation and your currency means something. [00:03:16] See, the whole idea behind currency markets for government is yeah, you do print money and you do continue to increase the amount of money you print every year. Because what you're trying to do is create money for the. Good product services that are created as well. So if we created another million dollars worth of services in the economy, there should be another million dollars in circulation that's the basic theory. [00:03:46] Monetary theory, really boiling. Down now of course, already our government is printed way more than it. Maybe should have. It is certainly causing inflation. There's no doubt about that one. So they're looking at these various cryptocurrencies and say what can we do? How can we have a gold standard where the us dollar was the currency the world used and its value was known. [00:04:10] Having a stable currency is incredibly important for consumers and businesses. The business needs to know, Hey, listen, like we signed a three-year contract with our vendors and with our customers. And so we need a stable price. So we know what's our cost going to be, what can we charge our customer here? [00:04:30] Can the customer bear the price increases, et cetera. The answer to most of those questions of course is no, they really can't is particularly in this day and age. So having a. Fixed currency. We know how much it's worth. I know in two years from now, I'm not going to be completely upside down with this customer because I'm having to eat some major increases in prices. [00:04:55] And as a consumer, you want to look at it and say, wow, I've got a variable rate interest rate on my mortgage. And man, I remember friends of mine back in the eighties, early eighties, late seventies, who just got nailed by those. They had variable rate interest loan on their home because that's all they could get. [00:05:14] That's all they could afford. So the variable rate just kept going up. It was higher than credit cards are nowadays. I remember a friend of mine complaining. They had 25% interest and that's when they lost the house because 25% interest means if you have a hundred thousand dollar loan, you got $25,000 in interest that year, let alone principal payments. [00:05:36] So it, it was a really. I think it was really hard for people to, to deal with. And I can understand that. So the cryptocurrency guys. I said, okay, let's tie it to something else. So the value has a value and part of what they were trying to tie it to is the us dollar. That's some currencies decided to do that. [00:06:00] And there were others that tried to tie it to actual. Assets. So it wasn't just tied to the dollar. It was okay. We have X dollars in this bank account and that's, what's backing the value of our currency, which is quite amazing, to think about that. Some of them are backed by gold or other precious metals. [00:06:24] Nowadays that includes a lot of different metals. This one coin called Terra Luna dropped almost a hundred percent last year. Isn't that amazing. And it had a sister token called Tara USD, which Tara Luna was tied to. Now, this is all called stable coin. The idea is the prices will be staying. [00:06:46] And in the case of Tara and Tara USD, the stability was provided by a computer program. So there's nothing really behind it, other than it can be backed by the community currencies themselves. So th that's something like inter coin, for instance, this is another one of the, there are hundreds of them out there of these cryptocurrencies. [00:07:13] Yeah. The community backs it. So goods and services that you can get in some of these communities is what gives value to inter coin money system. Now that makes sense too, right? Because the dollar is only worth something to you. If it's worth something to someone else, if you were the only person in the world that had us dollars, who would want. [00:07:36] Obviously the economy is working without us dollars. So why would they try and trade with you? If you had something called a us dollar that nobody else had, or you came up with something, you made something up out of thin air and said, okay, this is now worth this much. Or it's backed by that. [00:07:56] Because if again, if he can't spend it, it's not worth anything. Anyhow, this is a very big deal because on top of these various cryptocurrencies losing incredible amounts of money over the last couple of weeks, We have another problem with cryptocurrencies. If you own cryptocurrencies, you have, what's called a wallet and that wallet has a transaction number that's used for you to track and others to track the money that you have in the cryptocurrencies. [00:08:29] And it's pretty good. Function or feature it's hard for a lot of people to do so they have these kinds of crypto banks. So if you have one of these currencies, you can just have your currency on deposit at this bank because there's a whole bunch of reasons, but one of the reasons is that. [00:08:50] There is a run on a bank, or if there's a run on a cryptocurrency, currencies have built into them incredibly expensive penalties. If you try and liquidate that cryptocurrency quickly. And also if there are a lot of people trying to liquidate it. So you had a double whammy and people were paying more than three. [00:09:13] Coin in order to sell Bitcoin. And so think about that and think about much a Bitcoin's worth, which is tens of thousands of dollars. So it's overall, this is a problem. It's been a very big problem. So people put it into a bank. So Coinbase is one of the big one called Coinbase, had its first quarter earnings report. [00:09:37] Now, this is the U S is largest cryptocurrency exchange and they had a quarterly loss for the first quarter of 2022 of $430 million. That's their loss. And they had an almost 20% drop in monthly users of coins. So th that's something right. And they put it in their statement. Their quarterly statement here is to, WhatsApp. [00:10:07] Here's the real scary part Coinbase said in its earnings report. Last Tuesday that it holds. $256 billion in both Fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies on behalf of its customer. So Fiat currencies are things like the federal reserve notes are U S dollar, okay. Quarter of a trillion dollars that it's holding for other people think of it like a bank. [00:10:36] However, they said in the event, Coinbase we ever declare bankruptcy, quote, the crypto assets. We hold in custody on behalf of our customers could be subject to bankruptcy proceedings. Coinbase users would become general unsecured creditors, meaning they have no right to claim any specific property from the exchange in proceedings people's funds would become in accessible. [00:11:06] A very big deal. Very scary for a very good reasons. Hey, when we come back a website, no, you go, you type stuff in my email address, do you know? You don't even have to hit submit. In most cases, they're stealing it. [00:11:23] I'm sure you've heard of JavaScript into your browser. This is a programming language that actually runs programs right there in your web browser, whether you like it or not. And we just had a study on this. A hundred thousand websites are collecting. Information upfront. [00:11:40] Hi, I'm Craig Peterson, your chief information security officer. This is not a surprising thing to me. I have in my web browser, I have JavaScript turned off for most websites that I go to now, Java script is a programming language and then lets them do some pretty cool things on a webpage. [00:12:02] In fact, that's the whole idea behind Java. Just like cookies on a web browser, where they have a great use, which is to help keep track of what you're doing on the website, where you're going, pulling up other information that you care about, right? Part of your navigation can be done with cookies. They go on and on in their usefulness. [00:12:23] Part of the problem is that people are using them to track you online. So like Facebook and many others will go ahead and have their cookies on the other websites. So they know where you're going, what you're doing, even when you're not on Facebook, that's by the way, part of. The Firefox browsers been trying to overcome here. [00:12:48] They have a special fenced in mode that happens automatically when you're using Firefox on Facebook. Pretty good. Pretty cool. The apple iOS device. Use a different mechanism. And in fact, they're already saying that Facebook and some of these others who sell advertiser in from advertisers information about you have really had some major losses in revenue because apple is blocking their access to certain information about you back to Jarvis. [00:13:24] It's a programming language that they can use to do almost anything on your web browser. Bad guys have figured out that if they can get you to go to a website or if they can insert an ad onto a page that you're visiting, they can then use. Your web browser, because it's basically just a computer to do what while to mine, Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. [00:13:51] So you're paying for the electricity for them as your computer is sitting there crunching on these algorithms that they need to use to figure out the, how to find the next Bitcoin or whatever. And you are only noticing that your device is slowing down. For instance, our friends over on the Android platform have found before that sometimes their phones are getting extremely hot, even when they're not using them. [00:14:18] And we found that yeah, many times that's just. Bitcoin miner who has taken over partial control of your phone just enough to mind Bitcoin. And they did that through your web browser and JavaScript. So you can now see some of the reasons that I go ahead and disable JavaScript on most websites I go to now, some websites aren't going to work. [00:14:40] I want to warn you up front. If you go into your browser settings and turn off JavaScript, you are going. Break a number of websites, in fact many of the websites that are out there. So you got to figure out which sites do you want it on? Which sites don't you want it on? But there's another problem that we have found just this week. [00:15:00] And it is based on a study that was done as reported in ARS Technica, but they found. A hundred thousand top websites, a hundred thousand top websites. These include signing up for a newsletter or making a hotel reservation, checking out online. You probably take for granted that you nothing happens until you hit submit, right? [00:15:25] That used to be the case in web one dot O day. It isn't anymore. Now I want to point out we, I have thousands of people who are on my email list. So every week they get my insider show notes. So these are the top articles of the week. They are, usually six to 10 articles, usually eight of them that are talking about cybersecurity, things of importance. [00:15:51] The whole radio show and podcasts are based on those insider show notes that I also share with the host of all of the different radio shows and television shows that I appear on. It's pretty, pretty cool. So they get that, but I do not use this type of technology. Yeah. There's some Java script. [00:16:11] That'll make a little signup thing come up at the top of the screen, but I am not using technology that is in your face or doing. What these people are doing, right? So you start filling out a form. You haven't hit cement. And have you noticed all of a sudden you're getting emails from. It's happened to me before. [00:16:31] Your assumption about hitting submit, isn't always the case. Some researchers from KU Leuven university and university of Lu sane, crawled and analyze the top 100,000 websites. So crawling means they have a little robot that goes to visit the web page, downloads all of the code that's on the page. [00:16:55] And then. Analyzed it all so what they found was that a user visiting a site, if the user is in the European union is treated differently than someone who visits the site from the United States. Now there's a good reason for it. We've helped companies with complying with the GDPR, which are these protection rules that are in place in the European union. [00:17:21] And that's why you're seeing so many websites. Mine included that say, Hey, listen, we do collect some information on you. You can click here to find out more and there's some websites let you say no. I don't want you to have any information about me where you collect information, just so that you can navigate the site properly. [00:17:39] Okay. Very basic, but that's why European union users are treated differently than those coming from the United States. So this new research found that over 1800 websites gathered an EU users' email address without their consent. So it's almost 2000 websites out of the top 100,000. If you're in the EU and they found. [00:18:07] About well, 3000 website logged a U S users' email in some form. Now that's, before you hit submit. So you start typing in your email, you type in your name and you don't hit cement. Many of the sites are apparently grabbing that information, putting it into the database and maybe even started using it before you gave them explicit permission to do. [00:18:36] Isn't that a fascinating and the 1800 sites that gathered information on European news union users without their consent are breaking the law. That's why so many us companies decided they had to comply with the GDPR because it's a real big problem. So these guys also crawled websites for password leaks and made 2021, and they found 52 websites where third parties, including Yandex, Yandex is. [00:19:11] Big Russian search engine and more we're collecting password data before submission. So since then the group went ahead and let the websites know what was happening, what they found because it's not necessarily intentional by the website itself. It might be a third party, but third-party piece of software. [00:19:33] That's doing it. They w they informed those sites. Hey, listen, you're collecting user data before there's been explicit consent to collect it. In other words, you, before you hit the submit button and they thought, wow, this is very surprising. They thought they might find a few hundred website. In the course of a year now they've found that there were over 3000 websites really that were doing this stuff. [00:20:01] So they presented their findings that use neck. Oh, actually they haven't presented them yet because it's going to be a useful. In August and these are what the cold leaky forum. So yet another reason to turn off JavaScript when you can. But I also got to add a lot of the forums do not work if JavaScript's not enabled. [00:20:23] So we got to do something about it. Maybe complain, make sure they aren't collecting your. Maybe I should do a little course on that once you can figure out are they doing it before I even give them permission? Anyhow, this is Greg Peterson. Visit me online, Craig Peter, som.com and sign up for that. No obligation insider show notes. [00:20:44] We are shipping all kinds of military equipment over to Ukraine. And right now they're talking about another $30 billion worth of equipment being shipped to what was the world's number one arms dealer. [00:21:00] I'm looking right now at an article that was in the Washington post. And some of their stuff is good. [00:21:07] Some of their stuff is bad, I guess like pretty much any media outlet, but they're raising some really good points here. One of them is that we are shipping some pretty advanced equipment and some not so advanced equipment to you. To help them fight in this war to protect themselves from Russia. [00:21:31] Now, all of that's pretty common. Ultimately looking back in history, there have been a lot of people who've made a lot of money off of wars. Many of the big banks financing, both sides of wars. Going way, way back and coming all the way up through the 20th century. And part of the way people make money in war time is obviously making the equipment and supplies and stuff that the armies need. [00:22:03] The other way that they do it is by trading in arms. So not just the supplies. The bullets all the way through the advanced missile systems. Now there's been some concerns because of what we have been seen online. We've talked about telegram here before, not the safest webs, app to use or to keep in touch. [00:22:28] It's really an app for your phone. And it's being used by. Ukraine to really coordinate some of their hacker activities against Russia. They've also been using it in Russia to have telegram that is in order to communicate with each other. Ukraine has posted pictures of some of the killed soldiers from Russia and people have been reaching out to their mothers in Russia. [00:22:57] They've done a lot of stuff with telegram. It's interesting. And hopefully eventually we'll find out what the real truth is, right? Because all of a sudden hides in the military, he uses a lot of propaganda, right? The first casualty in war is the truth. It always has been. So we're selling to a comm country, Ukraine that has made a lot of money off of selling. [00:23:22] Then systems being an intimate intermediary. So you're not buying the system from Russia? No. You're buying it from Ukraine and it has been of course, just as deadly, but now we are sending. Equipment military grade equipment to Ukraine. We could talk about just that a lot. I mentioned the whole Lend-Lease program many months ago now teams to be in the news. [00:23:50] Now it takes a while for the mainstream media to catch up with us. I'm usually about six to 12 weeks ahead of what they're talking about. And it's so when we're talking about Lynn Lee sent me. We're not giving it to them. We're not selling it to them. We're just lending them the equipment or perhaps leasing it just like we did for the United Kingdom back in world war two, not a bad idea. [00:24:16] If you want to get weapons into the hands of an adversary and not really, or not an adversary, but an ally or potential ally against an adversary that you have, and they have. But part of the problem is we're talking about Ukraine here. Ukraine was not invited in Donato because it was so corrupt. You might remember. [00:24:39] They elected a new president over there that president started investigating, hired a prosecutor to go after the corruption in Ukraine. And then you heard president Joe Biden, vice president at the time bragging about how he got this guy shut down. Yeah, he got the prosecutor shut down the prosecutor that had his sights on, of course hunter Biden as well as other people. [00:25:03] So it's a real problem, but. Let's set that aside for now, we're talking about Ukraine and the weapon systems who we've been sending over there. There have been rumors out there. I haven't seen hard evidence, but I have seen things in various papers worldwide talking about telegram, saying. The Ukrainians have somehow gotten their hands on these weapons and are selling them on telegram. [00:25:32] Imagine that a effectively kind of a dark web thing, so we're saying the byte administration okay. There, that none of this is going to happen. Why? Because we went ahead and we put into the contracts that they could not sell or share or give any of this equipment away without the explicit permission of the United States, governor. [00:25:57] Okay. That kind of sounds like it's not a bad idea. I would certainly put it into any contract like this, no question, but what could, what happened here? If this equipment falls into the hands of our adversaries or our other Western countries, NATO countries, how do you keep track of them? It's very hard to do. [00:26:18] How do you know who's actually using. Very hard to do so in forcing these types of contracts is very difficult, which makes the contract pretty weak, frankly. And then let's look at Washington DC, the United States, according to the Washington post in mid April, gave Ukraine a fleet of M 17 helicopter. Now, these are my 17 helicopters are Russian, originally Soviet designs. [00:26:51] Okay. And they were bought by the United States. About 10 years ago, we bought them for Afghans government, which of course now has been deposed, but we still have our hands on some of these helicopters. And when we bought them from Russia, We signed a contract. The United States signed a contract promising not to transfer the helicopters to any third country quote without the approval of the Russian Federation. [00:27:23] Now that's according to a copy of the certificate that's posted on the website of Russia's federal service on military technical cooperation. Russia has come out and said that our transfer, those helicopters has grossly violated the foundations of international law. And you know what they think it has, right? [00:27:43] Arms experts are saying the Russia's aggression Ukraine more than justifies you. I support, but the violations of the weapons contracts, man, that really hurts our credibility and our we're not honoring these contracts. How can we expect you crane to honor those contracts? That's where the problem really comes in. [00:28:07] And it's ultimately a very big problem. So this emergency spending bill that it, the $30 billion. Makes you crane, the world's single largest recipient of us security assistance ever. They've received more in 2022 than United States ever provided to Afghanistan, Iraq, or Israel in a single. [00:28:33] So they're adding to the stockpiles of weapons that we've already committed. We've got 1400 stinger and the aircraft systems, 5,500 anti-tank missiles, 700 switch blade drones, nine 90. Excuse me, long range Howard. There's that's our Chellora 7,000 small arms. 50 million rounds of ammunition and other minds, explosives and laser guided rocket systems, according to the Washington post. [00:29:03] So it's fascinating to look. It's a real problem. And now that we've got the bad guys who are using the dark web, remember the dark web system that we set up, the onion network. Yeah. That one they can take these, they can sell them, they can move them around. It is a real problem. A very big problem. What are we going to do when all of those weapons systems come back aimed at us this time? [00:29:32] It's one thing to leave billions of dollars worth of helicopters, et cetera, back in Afghanistan is the Biden administration did with her crazy withdrawal tactic. But at least those will wear out the bullets, missile systems, Howard, a different deal. [00:29:51] It seems like the government calls a war on everything, the war against drugs or against poverty. Now we are looking at a war against end-to-end encryption by governments worldwide, including our own. [00:30:07] The European union is following in America's footsteps steps again, only a few years behind this time. [00:30:16] But it's not a good thing. In this case, you might remember a few have been following cybersecurity. Like I have back in the Clinton administration, there was a very heavy push for something called the clipper chip. And I think that your whole clipper chip. Actually started with the Bush administration and it was a bad thing because what they were trying to do is force all businesses to use this encryption chip set that was developed and promoted by the national security agency. [00:30:52] And it was supposed to be an encryption device that is used to secure voice and data messages. And it had a built-in. Back door that allowed federal state, local law enforcement, anybody that had the key, the ability to decode any intercepted voice or data transmissions. It was introduced in 93 and was thank goodness. [00:31:19] Defunct by 1996. So it used something called skipjack, man. I remember that a lot and use it to transfer Dilley or defi, excuse me, Hellman key exchange. I've worked with that maybe for crypto keys that used it. Use the Dez algorithm, the data encryption standard, which is still used today. And the Clinton administration argued that the clipper chip was. [00:31:46] Absolutely essential for law enforcement to keep up with a constantly progressing technology in the United States. And a lot of people believe that using this would act as frankly, an additional way for terrorists to receive information and to break into encrypted information. And the Clinton administration argued that it would increase national security because terrorists would have to use it to communicate with outsiders, bank, suppliers, contacts, and the government could listen in on those calls, are we supposed to in the United States have a right to be secure in our papers and other things, right? That the federal government has no right to come into any of that stuff unless they get a court order. So they were saying we would take this key. We'll make sure that it's in a lock box, just like Al gore social security money. [00:32:41] And no one would be able to get their hands on it, except anyone that wanted to, unless there was a court order and you know how this stuff goes. And it just continues to progress. A lot worse. There was a lot of backlash by it. The electronic privacy information center, electronic frontier foundation boast, both pushed back saying that it would be. [00:33:05] Only have the effect of have not, excuse me, have the effect of, this is a quote, not only subjecting citizens to increased impossibly illegal government surveillance, but that the strength of the clipper Chip's encryption could not be evaluated by the public as it's designed. It was classified secret and that therefore individuals and businesses might be hobbled with an insecure communication system, which is absolutely true. [00:33:33] And the NSA went on to do some things like pollute, random number generators and other things to make it so that it was almost impossible to have end-to-end encrypted data. So we were able to kill. Many years ago. Now what about 30 years ago? When they introduced this thing? It took a few years to get rid of it, but now the EU is out there saying they want to stop and end encryption. [00:34:00] The United States has already said that the new director of Homeland security has, and as well as Trump's again Homeland security people said we need to be able to break the. And we've talked about some of those stories, real world stories of things that have happened because of the encryption. [00:34:20] So the EU is now got our proposal forward. That would force tech companies to scan private messages for child sexual abuse material called CSM and evidence of grooming. Even when those messages are supposed to be protected by indenting. So we know how this goes, right? It starts at something that everybody can agree on, right? [00:34:48] This child, sexual abuse material abductions of children, there's still a lot of slavery going on in the world. All of that stuff needs to be stopped. And so we say, yeah. Okay. That makes a whole lot of sense, but where does it end? Online services that receive detection orders. This is from ARS Technica under the pending European union legislation would have obligations concerning the detection, the reporting, the removal, and blocking of known and. [00:35:20] Child sexual abuse material, as well as the solicitation of children. So what we're starting to see here in the us is some apps, some companies that make smartphones, for instance, looking at pictures that are sent and shared to see if it looks like it might be pornographic in. Because again, we're seeing the younger kids who are sending pictures of each other naked or body parts and they get to others. [00:35:46] If you can believe that. Absolutely incredible. But what happens when you send them using an end-to-end encrypted app? Now, my advice for people who want to keep information private, you're a business person you're working on a deal. You don't go to Twitter like Elon Musk and put it out there for the world. [00:36:08] Although, I'm sure he's got some ulterior motives in doing that. You use an app called signal. That's certainly the best one that's out there right now. It provides a whole lot of encryption and privacy, and even has some stuff built in to break the software. That's often used to break into the end to end encryption systems. [00:36:29] So they're trying to get this in place here. They're calling it an important security tool. But it's ordering companies to break that end to end encryption by whatever technological means necessary. It's going to be hard because it's, frankly, it's going to be impossible for them to enforce this because you can take encrypted data and make it look like. [00:36:53] Anything, and man has that happened for a long time? Think of the microdots way back when, certainly in rural world war two and on, they were very popular there's techniques to encrypt data and embedded in a photograph and make it almost impossible to detect. So again they're not going to get to do what they're hoping to do. [00:37:18] And I think that's an important thing for everybody. Please pay close attention to, so they do want to get rid of end-to-end there's WhatsApp out there, which I don't really trust because it's owned by Facebook, but that's supposedly end to end. There's end to end encryption on apple. I message. Although. [00:37:38] Apparently, there are some ways to get into that. I think apple is now maintaining a secondary key that they can use to decrypt, but the back doors that the us has called for and other people have called for. I have been pushed back by companies like apple CEO, Tim cook, oppose the government mandated back doors. [00:38:01] Of course, apple got a major backlash from security experts when in veiled, a plan to how I phones and other devices, scan user photos for child sexual abuse images. That's what I was referring to earlier. And apple put that plan on hold and promised to make changes. But this is apple all over again. And it's hard to say what's the least privacy intrusive way, because if the ISP can read them all, if the company that's providing new with the app that you're using to send the message. [00:38:34] I can read them all, how much privacy is there and if they can read it, who else can read it and what can be done with it? Blackmail has happened many times in the past because someone got their hands on something. So what happens when a Congressman or the military or someone in the military uses that's another problem. [00:38:54] Because if we don't know the way the encryption is being used or is made just like, was true with a clipper chip. And then we move on to the next step, which is okay. So what do we do now with this data that we're storing? Are they going to keep that data confidential? Can they keep it out of the hands of the criminals. [00:39:17] We've certainly found that they just haven't been able to. And if you're talking about grooming, which is what the European union wants. In other words, someone that's trying to get a child to the point where they're doing something that would be important. You've got two. Look at all of the messages, you have to have them analyze by some sort of an AI artificial intelligence, and then ultimately analyzed by people. [00:39:42] It's just going to get worse and worse. This is the most sophisticated mass surveillance machinery. That has ever been deployed outside of China in the USSR. It's absolutely incredible when you look at it from a crypto graphic standpoint. And again, we understand protecting the children. We all want to do that, but how far will this end up going? [00:40:06] I also want to point out that. Nu insider show notes that I've been sending out over the last few weeks have had some amazing responses from people. I've had people saying that this is what they look for in their mailbox. It's the first piece of email they read that it's the most relevant news. But you can only get it one way and that's by going to Craig peterson.com, you can sign up there. [00:40:33] It's easy enough to do. There's no obligation on your part, right? This is not my paid newsletter. This is absolutely free. And it's incredibly valuable. Plus I'll also be sending you once a week. Ish, a small training, just, it takes you a few minutes to read. I just last week went through the firewall in your windows machine, the firewall. [00:40:56] And gave you step-by-step instructions. Is it turned on? What is it doing? What should it do? How do you turn it on and how do you use it? So you can only get that one way and that's, if you are on my email list, so it's important to be there. And if you have any questions, you can hit reply. Any of those emails where there's a training, or if it's the insider show notes, just hit reply. [00:41:22] And I'll go ahead and answer your question. You might have to wait a few days cause I can get pretty busy sometimes, but always answer. So me M e@craigpeterson.com. Anybody can send me email and you can also text me at 6 1 7 503 2 2 1 6 1 7 5. 3, 2, 2, 1 with any questions? That's it for right now, there is so much more. [00:41:51] Make sure you sign up right now. And of course there's more coming right up. So stick around. . [00:42:04] Jam packed today. We're going to start with non fungible tokens. If you don't know what those are, this is a very big deal because so many people are investing in them right now. Are they really investments? I've got a bit of a blow back here. Most people think that Bitcoin is anonymous. We're going to talk about how it absolutely is not. [00:42:24] We're going to talk about anonymous. In fact, the Russians, Microsoft, what they're doing against the Russians and this little comedic thing about cars. [00:42:32] NFTs or very big deal. [00:42:34] I'm going to pull up here on my screen right now. This is a picture of Mr. Jack Dorsey. We'll go full screen, an article from a website called CoinDesk. CoinDesk is one of these sites that really tries to track what's happening out there in the Bitcoin community. Of course, nowadays it's much more than Bitcoin. [00:42:57] Isn't it? We're talking about all kinds of. Different currencies that have a blockchain backend. They're called cryptocurrencies basically. But the big one was of course, Bitcoin. And there is a whole concept. Now, when we're talking about things like cryptocurrencies and these non fungible tokens. People have been investing them in them. [00:43:23] Like crazy people are making millions of dollars every week. Now, remember, I am not an investment advisor and particularly I'm not your investment advisor. So take all the. To your investment advisor. I'm not telling you to buy them. I am telling you to be cautious here though, because these non fungible tokens are designed to give you the ability to be able to just, own something in the digital world. [00:43:52] What might you own in the digital world? We've had a lot of different stuff. We've seen some just crazy monkey things. Have you seen those, these little pictures of monkeys there? Graphic designed and it's all animated. If you will. It's like cartoons and people pay money for them. One of the things that people paid money for was the rights to the first tweet ever on Twitter. [00:44:20] So that's what you're getting. When we're talking about an NFT on a non fungible transaction, it is now yours. So this particular NFT we're talking about was of our friend here, Jack Dorsey. We'll pull it up again, this article, and he had a tweet that was sold last year for $48 million. That is a lot of money. [00:44:47] So people look at this as an investment, but it's not the same as hanging art on the wall. You've got a Picasso that has some intrinsic value. It's a painting. It has all the oil paint on that, it was designed by and painted by a crazy man years ago. And you can take that Picasso and you can. [00:45:11] Turn it around and sell it. It has some real value. If you own the rights to something, let's say it's one of these monkey pictures. It reminds me of a postage stamp and you paid real money for it. Some of these things are going, as I said, for over a million dollars and this Jack Dorsey first tweet went for $48 million. [00:45:31] So let's say that's what you did, right? You bought this thing for $48 million. Really? What do you have? Because anybody can go online and look at that tweet. Anybody can print it up and stick it on a wall. Anybody can go out and get that picture of the monkeys right there. The guy drew, and you can look at it. [00:45:54] In fact, I can pull it up right now, if you want to do. But people paid real money for that. So they've got what really? What do they have? You can't take it off the wall, like you're Picasso and salad, right? Or Banksy, if you're into the more modern art, it's just not. What is doable? How do you make this work? [00:46:15] Only the NFT only gives you bragging rights in reality. That's what it does. You have bragging rights because you could take that digital picture and make a hundred quadrillion copies. Yeah, you'd still own the NFT you would still have in the blockchain for whatever NFT company you're using the rights to it. [00:46:41] They would say this, you owned it. So let's talk about the blockchain behind it. There are a lot of companies that are trying to give you that. Okay. All right. I get it. Yeah, I get to to own it. But who's running the blockchain behind it. Who's validating that you own it with Bitcoin and many of these other blockchain currencies that are out there. [00:47:08] There are various. Companies and individuals who are registered, who have all of the paperwork, if you will saying who owns, how much of what, and who paid, who and everything. And that by the way, is why it takes so long for some of these Bitcoin and other transactions to occur. But how about the NFT? There are tons of companies out there that say they will certify the NFT. [00:47:38] So it gets to be real problem. And when we get into this Jack Dorsey tweet and this article about it, which are let me pull it up again here for you guys. This guy Sina bought the very first tweet ever from Twitter founder, Jack Dorsey for $2.9 million last year. And he decided that he wanted to sell it. [00:48:07] So he listed it for sale again at $48 million last week. Real. He put it up for open bid and this article and CoinDesk is talking about that. And you can see that if you're watching me on rumble or YouTube, I'm showing you my screen here right now. But this Iranian born crypto entrepreneur named of again. [00:48:32] As TAVI purchased it for $2.9 million in March, 2021. Last Thursday, he announced on Twitter where out, that he wanted to sell this and Ft. And he said, Hey, listen, I'm going to put 50% of the proceeds to charity while the auction closed. This was an open auction. People could go and bid on it and head auction closed. [00:49:00] With a, an offer of basically $288, $277 at current prices when this article was written $277 and the lowest bid was $6. And as I recall, this is not in this article, but there were only. I handful of bids. Like when I say handful, I mean a half a dozen beds. Crazy. This is a real problem because the deadline is over. [00:49:31] He paid how much for it, right? How much did he pay? Pull that up again. $2.9 million last year. And his highest bid was in the neighborhood of $280. Isn't that crazy. So did he get money on this? Did he win money on this? I don't know. I'm looking at those saying is it worth it to buy something like that? [00:49:59] That you might think, oh, the very first apple computer, an apple. While that's going to be worth some serious money. Yeah, it is. It's something, you can grab onto, you can hold onto it, it's something and you can sell it. You can trade it. You can take a picture of it. You can't make digital copies of it. [00:50:20] You, you, it's a physical thing. That's worth something. Same thing with that Picasso on the wall, it's really worth something that has some basic intrinsic. Jack's true tweet. The very first tweet. How much is that thing worth? It basically nothing. So the tweet is showing he'll pull it up on the screen again that he's selling ad Jack 2000 6 0 3 21 at eight 50 14:00 PM. [00:50:50] Just setting up my Twitter. So there you go. There's Jack is very first to. And it's absolutely amazing. Is it worth it? Let me pull up some other stuff here for you guys. I'm going to pull this up here is Coinbase launching an NFT marketplace in hopes of appealing to crypto on mainstream users. So here's some examples from a man and FTEs. [00:51:16] I'm going to zoom in on this for those of you guys watching on rumble or on Twitter. All right. Mean. Yeah actually you can see it on Twitter too, but YouTube, here you go. Here's some NFTs it's artwork and it's a creature. So you can buy creature number 7, 8 0 6 right now for six Eve. So let me see. [00:51:39] Value of six. Ethereum is what ether, M two us dollars. So for 3000. And $84. As of right now, you can get a crappy picture that even I could have draw okay. Of this guy and look at all of the work this artist has put in. There's how many of these up here? 1, 2, 3, 4, or five, 10 of them. And it's the same head. [00:52:08] Each time it looks like this almost the same eyes. He changes colors and he's got different background. It's absolutely not. So that's what they're trying to do right now, trying to sell these NFT. So who's going to buy that. Who's going to pay $3,000 for artwork that hunter Biden could have done with a straw. [00:52:30] Anchored around. Here's another one. This is from ledger insights. NBA's launching dynamic NFTs for fans, baseball cards for the NBA that are basically just worthless. They're NF. Non fungible tokens. It has taken the crypto world by storm and people are losing millions as you look, but it really is changing the e-commerce world. [00:52:58] Stick around. We'll be right back. [00:53:02] Bitcoin blockchain. All of the rage, a lot of people are talking about it, but I got to say most people who are talking. I don't know much about it. And when it comes to anonymity, Bitcoin is probably the worst thing you could possibly do. It's amazing. [00:53:20] There are a lot of misconceptions out there when it comes to technology, you have almost any kind of technology and blockchain and Bitcoin are examples of a very misunderstood technology. [00:53:35] Now I'm not talking about how does it work? How are these ledgers maintained? How does this whole mining thing work? Why has Chan. Bandit. Why are a lot of countries going away from it, one country. Now the dictator said, yeah, we're going to use Bitcoin as our we're official currency. In addition to the U S dollar what's going on. [00:53:57] It is complicated behind the scenes. It's complicated to use. Although there are some entrepreneurs that have made some great strides there. I saw a documentary on what has been happening in that one country. I mentioned. They are able to pay in us dollars using Bitcoin. So they'll go up to a vendor on the street. [00:54:22] Quite literally they'll have their smartphone with them. The vendor has their smartphone. They type in 15 cents for the taco and a hit send. It goes to the other person and they have 15 cents worth of Bitcoin. By the way, these types of micro-transactions with the way Bitcoin is structured behind the scenes, make things even less manageable in the Bitcoin world than they have been in the past. [00:54:50] And that's why in case you didn't know, Bitcoin is making some major changes here fairly soon. They've got to change the way all of this ledger stuff works because it takes too long. To record and authorized transactions. And these ledgers just get way too long when it comes to all of these kinds of microtransaction. [00:55:14] So there's stuff going on, Bitcoin, there, there are many of these types of currencies out there. Theories comes one. You've heard about doge coin because of course that's Elon Musk has been talking about and many others and they're all different somewhat, but the main concepts are the. One of the big concepts, I'm going to pull an article up here on the screen for those watching on YouTube or also on rumble. [00:55:39] But this is an article from our friends at wired magazine. And now you have subscribed to wired for many years. This particular one is about what wired is calling the crypto. Trap now that's a very big deal. It is a trap and it's a trap and a lot of different ways. And that's what we're going to talk about right now. [00:56:05] Crypto is not what its name implies. A lot of people look at it and say, oh, crypto that's cryptography. That's like the German enigma machine in world war two and all of this new, great crypto that we have nowadays. And there are some pretty amazing new cryptographic technologies that we've been using, but no, that's not. [00:56:26] What's really going on. You see the basic premise behind all of these technologies is the concept of having a. And this wallet has a unique identifier. It has a number assigned to it. So if I'm sending money to you, I'm going to have your wallet, ID, your wallet number, and I'm going to now send you some amount of fraction, most likely of a cryptocurrency. [00:56:55] It's certainly if it's Bitcoin, it's almost certainly a fraction. And so I'm going to send you $100 worth of, let's say. What ends up happening now is these ledgers, which are public, are all going to record the Craig's sent you a hundred dollars worth of Bitcoin. Of course, it's going to be in a fraction of a Bitcoin. [00:57:16] So sometimes there's rounding errors is not going to be really exactly a hundred dollars. Plus there's the amazing amount of. Tivoli volatility in the cyber currencies. So even though I meant just hitting a hundred dollars, mine ended up being 110 of it goes up. It might be 90. If it goes down you get that. [00:57:34] You don't understand how that works. So the problem now is I have sent you a hundred dollars. And public ledgers that anyone can gain access to now say wallet number 1, 2, 3, 4 cent, a hundred dollars, two wallet, number 5, 6, 7, 8. Obviously the wallet numbers bruises a lot longer than that. So then it's fine. [00:57:58] And there's a degree of anonymity there it's really called pseudo anonymity because in reality, it's not completely anonymous because people know the transaction occurred and they know the wallet numbers. Correct. It's like a bank account, and if I'm putting money into your bank account, that bank account number knows that the money came from a check that I wrote. [00:58:21] Can you imagine that someone writing a check and that check I had a number on it, a bank account number, right? So it can all be tracked while much. The same thing is true when it comes to cryptocurrencies, these cryptocurrencies are in public ledgers and those public ledgers can be used with a little bit of work to figure out. [00:58:42] Who you are. So this article here from our friends at wired gets really hairy. And it might be of interest to you to read, but this is talking about a take-down that happened, and this is a massive take down. This take down was of a whole group of people who were involved in some really nasty stuff. [00:59:09] In this particular case, what it was kitty. Just a terrible thing and the abuse surrounding it. So this logical goes into not a lot of detail. I'm not going to read it because here on the air, because I don't want to upset too many people. Cause it's some of the details of this evening to think about them are incredible. [00:59:29] But. This the police broke into this middle-class suburb home in the outskirts of Atlanta. And he there was Homeland security. It was a guy from the IRS and they came in, they took all of their electronic devices. They separated the family, putting the father who is an assistant principal at the local high school assistant printers. [00:59:57] And he was the target of this investigation. So they had him in one room, they had his wife and another room and they put the two kids into a third room and they started questioning him. Now, this is part of a takedown of a, as I said, a whole ring of these people, including this assistant. Principal at a school. [01:00:20] Can you believe that? So this IRS guy had flown in from Washington DC to have a look over what was going on, but this agent from the IRS and his partner whose name is let's see, his name was Jenn S Scouts. I probably got that wrong. And Tigran GAM bar Yan, Cambodian, and they had a small group of investigators and they were at a whole bunch of different federal agencies, not just the IRS. [01:00:48] What once seemed to be. Untraceable was no longer traceable. Now I've talked on this show before about a lecture I went to by the secret service about how they had tracked down and shut down the world's largest website that was being used to sell illegal materials online. And it's fascinating what they did. [01:01:12] But frankly, they're calling this particular boss to proof of concept and that's why they are IRS was in on this as well, but it was huge. Here's a quote from the IRS agent in this wired magazine article. He's saying he remembers how the gravity of this whole thing. Let me pull this up on the screen too. [01:01:32] So you can read along here, but this was a high school administrator, a husband, and a father of two, whether he was guilty or innocent. The accusations, this team of law enforcement agents were leveling against him. There are mere presence in the home would almost certainly ruin his life. And he, as well as these other people were counting on anonymity from Bitcoin. [01:01:59] Now, obviously I'm glad they got taken down, but listen, folks, if you think that it's safe, that it's anonymous, it ain't Bitcoin just ain't there. Craig peterson.com stick around. [01:02:15] I've been blamed for really complaining about people not updating their software. And that includes things like firewalls. The FBI has stepped in and they are going ahead and doing updates for you. [01:02:30] So once you get into this, because this is, I think something that should concern all of us, what should we be doing as a country? [01:02:40] People are. Updating their software. They're not updating their hardware. And particularly our hardware take a look at what's been happening with the firewalls and the firewall concerns. Everybody has some sort of firewall will almost everybody, but enough people that we can say, everybody has a firewall, you get your internet from you, name it. [01:03:05] And because of the fact they're using something called Nat network address translation, they've got some sort of firewall in front of you. So for instance, You've got your phone, right? You're using your phone and it's got internet on it. You're going through whoever your carrier is. And that carrier is giving you internet access, right? [01:03:28] They don't have enough IP addresses, particularly IPV four, in order for you to get your very own unique little address out on the. No they do. When it comes to V6 things a little bit different, but your device is not completely exposed on the internet. Windows comes to the fire. And by default, the windows firewall is turned on. [01:03:50] Now this gets more than a little concerning because that firewall that's turned on. Isn't really doing anything because I've got a firewall turned on and yet every service is accessible from outside, which is defeating the purpose of the firewall. Again, it's a complaint I've had about Microsoft now for. [01:04:10] Decades, which is they have features that are just check boxes. Yes. Yes. It's got a firewall. Yeah, it's turned on, but the features don't work. So having a firewall and having everything open defeats the purpose of a firewall max do not have a firewall turned on by default, but they do have their services disabled. [01:04:33] Which is just as effective if not more effective. So one of the things we advise people to do is go into your windows system, into the firewalls and your security settings, and turn off any services that you're not using. If you're not sharing file systems, then turn that off. In other words, You're mounting the G drive or whatever you might call it from another computer, then you don't need it. [01:04:59] If you're not as server for what's called SMB, then you don't need to share it. So turn off everything that you don't need. That's going to happen is one of your programs isn't going to work, right? And the, what you did last year, you're going to turn it back on and you can do a lot of research online to find out what they are. [01:05:18] We have over 200 settings that we change in windows. When we get a customer. Now on the Mac side, you can turn it on. I liked turning it on. I liked turning off the ability to see my machine. So in other words, the ability to be able to. So I turned it on and I enable specific services. And again, you can do some research on that. [01:05:44] I've got an improving windows security course that people have taken, and we should probably do that again, if not just have some free webinars on how to do this. So you guys can learn how to do it, but not that hard to do. Anyhow, bottom line is. People aren't updating their computers, even the Macs and windows. [01:06:06] We have a client that would just started a new client and we're tightening things up and we've been finding Mac computers that are major multiple major revisions behind. And that to me is shocking. Apple Macs are just so easy to update. It is extremely rare that an apple update will make your computer break unlike in the windows world, where it's pretty common. [01:06:32] So windows guys, I can understand, but your even more exposed, your bigger target, you need to keep up to date. So how about all of the other equipment that we. I've had warnings again and again, with you guys about what's happening with our smart devices that are out there, right? Our security cameras we have up in the corner, right? [01:06:56] We have these smart thermostats, people are using the list goes on and on of all of this equipment that we're using that is exposing us because when was the last time you have. How about the firmware in your router or your wifi, right? Some of the devices that I recommend to people, and if you have any questions, just email me M e@craigpeterson.com. [01:07:19] I can give you recommendations, even if you're a home user. Although my business obviously is working with businesses on what kind of wifi to buy, what you should get, what you should do. I don't charge for any of that stuff. Okay. You get it. But you have to ask. Me@craigpeterson.com. So you get this information and you go ahead and you buy whatever it is, but you don't keep it up to date, which is why I tend to only recommend stuff that automatically updates. [01:07:48] But that also means every few years you're going to have to replace it because unless you're using the good Cisco equipment where you can get a seven year life out of it you're not gonna find that in consumer grid. So what's happened here. I'm going to pull this up on my screen for people watching this on YouTube or on rumble. [01:08:07] But here is a thing that came straight out of our friends here from the FBI. This is from CSO. This is a a magazine that I do follow. But they're talking about what they call psych clock. Blink. So the article says for the second time in a year, the FBI has used search and seizure warrant to clean malware from devices owned by private businesses and users without their explicit approval. [01:08:40] The FBI used this approach to disrupt a botnet, believed to be the creation of right. Government hackers. So the calling this SYEP clock cycle clubs, blink malware discovered earlier this year. So here's the problem. What do you do if you're the federal government, how do you try and keep your country safe? [01:09:05] Now we know. We've got these military contractors. They make missiles that take out missiles, right? The provide defensive systems. You've heard of iron dome from years ago, all the way through all of the current stuff. That's what they do, but what do they do? What can they do when there's a botnet? A botnet is where there are multiple computers in this case, probably tens of thousands of computers located in the United States that are acting like sleeper. [01:09:36] They sit there and they wait for commands as to what they should do. Should they try and attack a machine? Should they try and spread more? Malware, what should they be doing? And the, these things are vicious. They are absolutely nasty. And in this case, we're looking at Russian malware. So Russia effectively like the Americans. [01:09:59] You might remember that TV show. It was great show, but that. Computers that are owned by you and me and our businesses and government agencies that are under the control of the Russians. Now you don't even know it. You're using your computer or you're playing games. You're going to Facebook, whatever it is you do on your computer. [01:10:20] Your computer is under command and control of the Russians. So the FBI goes to a court and says, Hey, we've got to go ahead and shut this down. We need a warrant. They get the warrant and the search and seizure warrant lets them now. Get on to these machines that are part of the bot net or the controlling machines for the bot net, and either remove the malware or go ahead and take control of the botnet themselves. [01:10:49] So it can't be used. And by the way, our friends at Microsoft they've gotten involved in this too, which is really frankly, cool in shutting down some of these botnets, Hey, I want to encourage everyone. Take a couple of minutes, go to Craig peterson.com/subscribe. That's Craig Peterson. CREI G P T R S O N. [01:11:12] And subscribe, and I'll be sending you a special report on passwords. Plus two more. I send out the most popular special reports that anybody has ever asked for. [01:11:25] Hey, I've got a little bit more to discuss on what's happening with Russia and Microsoft and more, but I'm also going to talk about QR codes. There is a great explanation. That's in your newsletter from Monday about why you shouldn't trust him. [01:11:41] Let's finish up this Russian thing. And then we're going to get into why you cannot trust QR codes and a brand new way. [01:11:51] The bad guys are using QR codes to really mess with us. Now, if you're watching over on either YouTube or on rumble, you'll see this. Let me pull up my screen for you. But here we go. Okay. This is very interesting. Then the last segment, we talked a little bit about what our friends over at the FBI had been doing, which is they have been removing malware from people's computers because people haven't been keeping their computers up-to-date right. [01:12:26] Part of the botnets. So we explained. At the FBI, isn't the only one out there trying to stop these Russians and the hackers anonymous has been very big at it. In fact, let me pull up this other article. This is from security affairs. And here we go. And it's talking about this whole army of these anonymous hackers. [01:12:50] Now none of us have been a nightmare for many businesses that they didn't like. I had an anonymous we'll go ahead and they'll do usually pretty basic stuff. They'll do denial of service attacks and some other things, so they don't like you because of. The don't say gay bill in Florida, and, without bothering to do any research, they'll just start attacking organizations that support it, or organizations that don't support it depending on how they want to do it. So this is an interesting article here, because it's talking about these various. Websites that they've hacked. Now, some of them are government site and some of them are private industries. Now, one of the cool things, bad things about hacking private industry and releasing the emails is now the competitors to these businesses know what they're doing. [01:13:46] And in some cases there's proprietary technology that's being released. Now, when it comes to Russian proprietary technology. The Western world doesn't care a whole lot about some of it, but here's some examples of what these hacktivists of GoDaddy. This is a company called forest 37,000 emails stolen from the company, Russian logging and wood manufacturing firm. [01:14:09] Again, it would give a little bit of an idea into the whole Russian, what are they doing? In the forest industry. This one, I think is a little more concerning for the Russians Aero gap. This is an engineering company that focuses in the oil and gas industry. Their clients include a whole bunch of Russian companies. [01:14:30] They've leaked approximately 100,000 emails from Aero gas. That is a huge deal because so much of the country's revenue, the number one industry in Russia is oil and gas. Petro Fort one of the largest office space and business centers in St. Petersburg, the hackers have leaked approximately 300,000 emails from Petro fork. [01:14:56] Again, you can use that to find out what's happening in your economy. What. Doing how are businesses doing? Are they going to go under so you can see some tweets here. I've got them up on my screen on YouTube and rumble anonymous. What they're saying that they've done and you can follow anonymous directly on Twitter. [01:15:14] Particularly fond of them. They've done a lot of things that I disagree with. This is really telling us about a whole new approach to warfare, right back in the day, you and I couldn't get involved, we could potentially take up arms and go and fight right there and think about the Spanish American war. [01:15:33] Think about what's happening now in Ukraine, where Americans have just gone over there. Taken up firearms in order to help them defend Ukraine. People who are maybe of Ukrainian descent, maybe not right. We have never seen this type of involvement by average citizens because anonymous is not like some big fancy company or government agency anonymous is a bunch of people who are trying to be anonymous and do something. [01:16:05] So they stole 145 gigabytes. Look at this. It's just crazy. So here. The anonymous Twitter thread itself, right? Talking about what. It's absolutely incredible. Incredible. So that's what anonymous is up to. They are hacking Russia and they're hacking Russia in a big way. Now, next stop. We have our friends at Microsoft. [01:16:30] Microsoft has been seizing Russian domains that they are accusing of having been linked to these Russian hackers that have been going after think tanks and government agencies in the U S and the. He kn

Go all out on Global Running Day and celebrate your personal best with Under Armour and the Badass Lady Gang! That's right GANG! We've partnered with Under Armour to spend the next two weeks gearing up for the UA All Out Mile! Between June 1-5, we will be coming together to celebrate Global Running Day by facing our fears and daring to give ourselves our personal best by running an all-out mile! Not only is the all-out mile fun AND free, but the team that has the most runners complete the all-out mile between June 1-5 will win $10,000 for the charity of their choice! So JOIN US and help us win that $10,000 for I Support the Girls, a non-profit that collects and distributes essential items, including bras, sports bras, underwear, and menstrual hygiene products, allowing women and folx experiencing homelessness, impoverishment, or distress to stand tall with dignity. The Badass Lady Gang is WORLDWIDE so join our team and let's win $10K for I Support The Girls! Here's how you join us: Step 1: Sign up for the All Out Mile! Signing up is free and takes less than 5-minutes. Step 2: Link your UA MapMyRun™ account with FitRankings for automatic results uploads.  Use code AOM2022 for 3-months free of UA Map My Run MVP subscription. Valid for first-time subscribers only. Step 3: Join the Badass Lady Gang group in FitrRankings and help us raise $10,000 for ‘I support the girls'. To join: After registering, navigate to "Leaderboard" on UAALLOUTMILE.com Click "Teams" Search for Badass Lady Gang. Click "Join" Having trouble? Try this: Log into FitRankings after registering. In the sandwich/toolbar, click ‘challenge'. Click this UA All Out Mile (highlighted in Gold) under ‘ACTIVE'. Navigate to teams. Search for Badass Lady Gang and click join! Then, RECRUIT YOUR family, friends, and Badass Lady Gang! Step 4: Join our ua all out mile group in our online community! Step 5: TRAIN! When you register for the UA ALL OUT MILE, you'll have access to training routines and workouts from UA's elite coaches, athletes, and Human Performance experts. UA MapMyRun™ has the right tools to help you reach your peak fitness. Scan the QR codes (or tap on mobile) to view some of our favorite routines in the app. UA Human Performance workouts are only available via mobile and only in English Use code AOM2022 for 3-months free of UA Map My Run MVP subscription. Valid for first-time subscribers only. Step 6: Race your 1-mile (1609m) with UA MapMyRun™ as many times as you want during the competition window (June 1 - June 5). Your personal best effort will automatically appear on the official leaderboard! We will be hosting BALG x UA All Out Miles in all 9 of our BALG local chapters. Stay tuned for more info on how you can run in person with your local BALG. I know the mile can be scary but we're all in this together. The only way you can fail is if you fail to try. Personal best effort. That's the goal!

Verizon hikes prices; how hackers get your password and how to protect yourself; Google unveils Pixel 6a and Pixel Watch; Amazon updates Fire 7 tablet; Apple lets apps charge more within reason; Wyze debuts Cam Plus Pro security subscription; Amazon Freevee launches on Apple TV; Uber Eats delivers food with autonomous cars.Listeners ask why Spectrum requires a 5G phone, which password manager to use, how to transfer custom ring tones to an iPhone, how iCloud photos work when deleting pictures, how to create a QR code and whether to use a VPN for online banking.Follow Rich!richontech.tvSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

非常開心地，Queerology在今年迎來了部落格創刊10週年、播客開播2週年的慶祝。為此，我們在5/14當天舉辦了一場小小的直播活動，非常感謝當天一起加入我們的朋友！而在當天的直播中，我們回答了現場和事前的聽眾提問。因此本週我們釋出當天直播的錄音，讓有興趣但當天無法參與的朋友，也可以一起聽聽，我們聊了些什麼。   本集重點： →　Queerology十年了？這條路如何開始，又怎麼走到了今天？ →　BL裡的性呈現代表女性情慾的解放嗎？ →　女性的生殖權益：墮胎權與代理孕母 →　嬰兒的身體自主權：倡議過程中「過度代言」與簡化的風險 →　強尼戴普的家暴羅生門是MeToo的失敗嗎？ →　跨性別女性和順性別女性的權益必然互斥？ →　溝通好難：如何在職場上開啟性別討論？面對「冒犯」的言論，如何不感到氣餒而持續溝通？ 更多內容相關資訊請參考：http://queerology.net/2022/05/podcast-q026/ 支持我們：感謝你的收聽。如果你喜歡我們的節目，歡迎你透過以下的方式支持我們。你可以點下訂閱，期待我們下一集的節目；留下五星評價，讓我們知道你的喜歡；也可以將我們的節目分享給更多人知道。如果你願意給我們更多支持，歡迎你前往 http://queerology.net ，點擊頁面上的QR碼 ，或是透過這裡 https://tinyurl.com/5xsecc9z 請我們喝杯咖啡。

It's a small world after all, especially after corporate conglomerates bought up every media company and entertainment provider.  Plus, smoke'em if you got'em! The House of Mouse drops the hammer on Super7's series 2 cigarette accessories. So sorry! And, Ronald goes back to the well for another Mickey-themed Happy Meal. We'll take double fries but hold the QR code. It's The Reluctant Adult Podcast! TikTok @TheReluctantAdultPodcast Instagram @TheReluctantAdultPodcast Twitter @Reluctant_Pod Facebook Toy Sale Boat YouTube The Reluctant Adult Podcast Paul's Amazon Wishlist Bill's Amazon Wishlist

Episode #9 of Kantar's Retail Sound Bites, hosts Barry Thomas, Senior Retail Thought Leader, and Rachel Dalton, Head of Retail Insights, explores our retail forecast and projections. In this session, Barry and Rachel also cover timely news and notes in retail, including elevating online grocery, female CMOs, Tesco meal deals, and much more. This episode also features Kantar's leading industry experts Karl Berner, Amar Singh, Simon Johnstone, Celia Van Wickel, Karen Kelso where they discuss Kantar's North American retail predictions. Have a topic you would like to see us cover? Share your request by emailing Switchon@kantar.com. News & Notes: 3 ways grocers are elevating online order picking in their stores | Grocery Dive What retail gets right—and wrong—about Gen Z, according to a Gen Z investor (retailbrew.com) Female CMOs overtake male ones for the first time, report says | Retail Dive 'This has pushed me over the edge': Workers' despair as Tesco puts price of £3 Meal Deal up by 50p | Daily Mail Online Krispy Kreme finds that Twix can lift sales (restaurantbusinessonline.com) To simplify resales, Samsøe Samsøe sews QR codes into its garments (trendwatching.com) Barry's contact information: barry.thomas@kantar.com Barry's LinkedIn Rachel's contact information: rachel.dalton@kantar.com Rachel's LinkedIn

With QR codes popping up everywhere from restaurants to Superbowl ads to everything in between, how can you as an everyday horse business owner use them in your marketing? In this episode, you'll learn a simple way to create your own QR codes plus explore 10 creative ideas to use them to build connections and sales within your business.Show Notes (also known as “Where to read a quick summary of what we talked about here and get links I mentioned.”) are over at Stormlily.com/78 

En la provincia de Chaco, Argentina, nace un zapallo distinto. Su tamaño aumenta de forma inaudita a punto tal que no se sabe qué es zapallo y qué no. No es que despierta miedo, pero entre la sorpresa y la necesidad de tomar cartas en el asunto, pasa un tiempo valiosísimo en el que el fruto sigue creciendo. ¿Hasta cuándo se extenderá el efecto? ¿Podremos vivir fuera de él o mientras lo pensamos quedamos atrapados dentro? +++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 📚 Qué es POR QUÉ LEER Por qué leer es un proyecto multiplataforma que promueve el placer por la lectura. La idea es contagiar las ganas de leer mediante recomendaciones, reseñas y debates. ¡Cada vez somos más! 📚 Sobre CECILIA BONA Soy periodista, productora y creadora de contenidos. Trabajé en radios como MITRE, VORTERIX y CLUB OCTUBRE. Amo leer desde pequeña, incentivada especialmente por mi mamá. En Por qué leer confluyen muchas de mis pasiones -la radio, la edición de video, la comunicación- y por eso digo que está hecho con muchísimo amor. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 💰 ¿Te gustaría patrocinar POR QUÉ LEER? 📙 PATREON: http://bit.ly/patreonporqueleerok (¡incluye recompensas!) 📙 MERCADO PAGO: Primer estante: https://mpago.la/1rk7hyY Pequeña biblioteca: https://mpago.la/1m4SFj7 Colección: https://mpago.la/2TE7pP4 Si escaneás el QR del video podés patrocinar por el monto que quieras. 📙 PayPal: https://paypal.me/porqueleerok

A special live gathering where we will be having some beverages and giving away Jetskis! Patrick is feeling very philanthropic and will be giving away things through QR codes all show long, so get in on the fun! Kenan is cancelled! The stock market is tanking and Patrick isn't happy about it. This will have a significant impact on any future car shopping deals. Learn why NFT's and garbage coins are a scam, and how the creators make money. In another iteration of The Tweets I Seen, someone tries to sell Patrick weed, and of course the latest nonsense from Thai. Leaked footage from Agent O shows what really happens at Ocha Bar during open mics. ...

On this episode of SmartBug on Tap, Hannah Shain talks trending campaigns, specifically QR codes, and how you can bring QR codes into your B2B marketing. Stay tuned as we go beyond the infamous Super Bowl ad to explore actionable insights. 

Laugh with our daily morning show podcast!Meetup in ATL - Sunday, May 22nd at Park Tavern 6PMMeetup in PDX - Thursday, June 30th (place still TBD)Today: • It's Toot Your Horn Tuesday!• We listen to your IVN's (instant voice notes) including-• The creepiest story yet involving a man with a knife in Ashley's kitchen• Jax checks in with JOKES... will Duryan 'get them'?• We debate the 'hiccup trick'• Denise read's your DM's and we find out which city is most popular with the QR scans• Ricardo C. from Fresno and Duryan take on “Match 2” • Denise shares her “Top 3 Things” including; UFO hearings and a trend inspired by the kool-aid man • Denise talks about that one time she went JELLO WRESTLING AT A CHURCH • Today is Pinot Grigio Day, and PK takes us back with an old prank• Duryan releases the 'worm lava'• We make it up to guess 355 for “What's that Noise” winner will receive $500!• Turn your road trip into an adventure with today's final thought• We rundown our new merch shop (available at pkanddk.com)• And so much more!Subscribe for ad-free listening (plus uncensored option): https://bit.ly/3AVvltaGuess 'What's That Noise': https://bit.ly/3hsl4hcGames, pictures and videos: www.PKandDK.com

The Bad Brothers podcast has ruined marriages recently, now you can listen to one die in real time. Michael makes a list of gripes. Will whips out his phone for QR codes and some Latin. Also: Zac Efron, the zeitgeist, IP Freely, White Claws,  beef, Target and/or Walmart, and a classic Port Orchard song. Instagram https://instagram.com/badbrotherspodcast  Apple https://apple.co/2JeSUIr Spotify https://sptfy.com/badbrotherspod   Bad Brothers Pod Michael and Will Browning Port Orchard (& Gig Harbor), Washington's Finest Podcast 

Good morning friends! Happy Monday, we're here and so are you. We have coffee, water, news and poetry. Our guest today is Aurora's Poet Laureate Karen Fullett-Christensen live in studio. Let's get ready for a great show! Here is today's news: - Monday, May 23rd will be the next social justice committee meeting hosted by the office of Representative Barbara Hernandez. This month's guest will be Katrina Baugh of the People's Lobby to discuss the Pretrial Fairness Act. This will be more helpful information, and is open to the community. To register click this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUldOuopzkoEtxo7SqfB9x3jhUOVp8_qDZU - Our friends of Hotel Indigo Naperville Riverwalk are hiring for many great positions such as: front office, bartender and maintenance. The hotel is located at 120 Water Street in Naperville on the riverwalk. Also offered are great full and part time benefits and perks including a 401(k) and discount plan. For more information contact our friend Liz Borunda at (331) 401-5510. Scan the QR code on the flyer for additional details. - Last but not least, Thursday, May 26th from 9 am to 3 pm the Kane County Sheriff's Office will be hosting another forklift driver certification class. Registration is now open for this one day training class. Card certification is good for 3 years. Scan the QR code on the flyer shared to our social media. There is a registration fee of $25 which also covers your lunch! The link to register is: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/forklift-driver-certification-class-tickets-330823440817 This was a great episode and discussion and a fantastic way to start the week. Thank you to everyone who came out to our 2 year anniversary party. Special thanks go to McCarty Mills Taproom Ana's Custom Treats Corinne's Kitchen and the Soto Family. Be blessed and we'll see you all tomorrow morning. Subscribe to the show on YouTube with this link: https://www.youtube.com/c/GoodMorningAuroraPodcast The second largest city's first daily news podcast is here. Tune in everyday to our FB Live from 8 am to 9 am. Make sure to like and subscribe to stay updated on all things Aurora. Twitter: goodmorningaur1 Instagram: goodmorningaurorail Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6dVweK5Zc4uPVQQ0Fp1vEP... Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/.../good-morning.../id1513229463 Anchor: https://anchor.fm/goodmorningaurora #positivevibes #positiveenergy #downtownaurora #kanecountyil #bataviail #genevail #stcharlesil #saintcharlesil #elginil #northaurorail #auroraillinois #auroramedia #auroranews #goodmorning #goodmorningaurora #comedy #news #dailynews #subscribe #youtube #podcast #spotify #positiveenergy #morningnews #morningshow #monday #atownppetics #poetry --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/goodmorningaurora/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/goodmorningaurora/support

Kara Connon has experience developing and delivering inspirational and interactive educational STEAM programs for pupils of all ages, to raise young people's aspiration and knowledge of future STEAM careers and develop the skills of the future workforce. Kara has successfully engaged with Boards of Directors and Executive Leadership teams to gain their confidence in the development of a strategy that will support them in achieving ambitious KPIs for global STEAM engagement. In November 2020, Kara was appointed Jacobs STEAM Lead for Europe, coordinating over 800 STEAM Ambassadors in the UK alone, with a remit of developing and delivering Jacobs' global STEAM launch and an ambitious STEAM strategy, to maximize the social value and impact Jacobs will have on pupil and community STEAM education throughout the world.As a communicator, Lainie Harber is passionate about storytelling and building relationships. In her nearly 10 years in communications – starting in public relations, social media and crisis communications eventually transitioning to executive communications and strategy work – she's had the pleasure of helping people and companies reach their communications and marketing goals. Currently, she serves as a Communication Project Manger at Jacobs where she oversees large company projects that support and drive the company strategy forward. Lainie is a Kansas girl and earned her Masters of Journalism and Strategic Communication from the University of Kansas. In her spare time, Lainie likes to travel, cook and have adventures with her husband, Scott, her son, Max and their Australian Shepherd, Marlow.Samuel Stanford is a 24-year-old Physicist and Structural Engineer for the Jacobs Electronics Team, as well as the host of his own STEAM education podcast called Everything STEAM. He is also a STEAM Ambassador for Jacobs and spends his free time educating individuals through social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok and the Wisdom app. Just recently with the help of a local business partnership, Sam has launched a sustainable clothing line called Ecolite. He writes ecological research blogs such as saving the bees, commercial fishing and much more. These research blogs are directly linked to Ecolite clothing via a QR code. With the drive for a circular fashion approach and the incorporation of green clothing alternatives, he has been able to combine fashion, sustainability and learning, all in one purchase. Throughout his college years, he had developed his teaching abilities through tutoring people in advanced Physics and Mathematical concepts. He was also given the opportunity to conduct material science research while running a fully functional 3D Printing laboratory, and he conducted research into Organic Electrochemical Transistor nanofabrication for a healthcare company. In the future, Sam has aspirations to continue his college career by pursuing a Master's program consisting of Structural Engineering and Mechanics of Materials. 

  We work hard to get every customer in the door. Lets make sure we are serving them and turning them into buyers, not browsers.    In this rapid-fire session, I am giving you a few suggestions to try in your own shop to help turn those browsers into buyers! I recently spoke at a conference and answered this very question and wanted to share with you.   Are you converting browsers into buyers? Before we try a new strategy - get a baseline on how you are doing so you will know what's working. Let's understand our customer conversion rate. (It's easy once you know how). Let's understand the numbers and metrics to get the data you need to increase your conversion rate. (Because we can't grow what we don't measure - right?)    Once you know that, you can dive into the following ideas:   Understand why people buy - Really pay attention to your customer's needs. Educate your staff and make sure they understand the mission. Have a flexible return policy - Don't leave money on the table! Having a return policy will break down so many barriers. Product hesitancy - Show your customers the value of the product and how it can improve their life. Have demos and free demo days! Use your signage as a silent salesperson, provide samples, etc. Make customers feel confident - Know your products thoroughly, and provide tutorials, QR codes, and YouTube videos. Make the customer feel good about the product they are thinking about. You are the expert - Have a customer appreciation wall or bulletin board that shows other customers doing exactly what some are hesitant to do. Share customer WINS on social media! Be the expert and guide them.   Put yourself in your customer's shoes and break that barrier!   More show notes at https://wendybatten.com/107/            

Looking for a way to take your storytelling to new heights? Well, you're in the right place! Lori Marini is going to inspire you with some tips and tactics - and she might even convince you to invest in some new learning opportunities!IN THIS EPISODE, LORI DISCUSSES:How her willingness to take risks landed her in a role of managing social media for her school districtWhy she invested her time and money into a digital marketing course and how it has transformed the way she thinks about social mediaVideo and its impact on connecting with her communityOne simple tip of marking time off in her calendar that enables her to uncover great storiesSPECIAL GUESTLori MariniDistrict Learning Coach/Media SpecialistNorthern Ozaukee School District, WisconsinEmail: lmarini@nosd.edu Website: https://www.nosd.edu   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NorthernOzaukeeSchoolDistrict  Elementary Instagram Page: https://www.instagram.com/oeslearning/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCounHTq8Vq5Rsa6vZORhApQ USEFUL INFORMATIONCheck out Lori's amazing room with the inspirational wall here: click here.Here is just one example of Lori's video skills: NOSD VideoArtwork with QR codes that included a video with the student artist: click hereProfessional Certificate in Digital Marketing from Northwestern KelloggInterested in our membership program? Learn more here: https://socialschool4edu.com/ MORE RESOURCESFree Video Training: Learn the simple secrets behind social media for K12 schools!Sign up for our free e-newsletter - click herewww.SocialSchool4EDU.com

Spike Cook, Ed.D., Principal, Lakeside Middle School, Millville, NJ. In addition to being a Principal, Dr. Cook published two books through Corwin Press (Connected Leadership: It's Just a Click Away; Breaking Out of Isolation: Becoming a Connected School Leader). He is the co-host of the popular PrincipaPLN podcast and a regular on the Unlock the Middle Videocast. His blog, Insights Into Learning, was recognized as a finalist for Best Administrator Blog by the EduBlog Awards. Spike earned his Doctorate from Rowan University and is an Adjunct Faculty member in the Masters of School Administration Program He is featured in Twinkl's 30 Education Influencers You Need to Follow and Klear's Top Ten Middle School Influencers. Dr. Cook is also on the Education Advisory Board for Whole Health Ed. Connect with @drspikecook via Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram. Spike and Jethro discuss how to set goals as a school around test scores related to academics. Using surveys to assess culture. Climate data based on discipline records Got to be collaborative how2be: Learning walk through school. Sponsors Transformative Principal Mastermind Lead a school everyone can be proud of. Being a principal is tough work. You're pulled in all kinds of directions. You never have the time to do the work that really matters. Join me as I help school leaders find the time to do the work they became principals to do. I help you stop putting out fires and start leading. Learn more at https://transformativeprincipal.com Just Right Reader Just Right Reader Decodables are a great way to help your students learn how to read, with research-based strategies that are proven to be effective. Each grade level has over 100 books. Send books home in packs of ten, with video lessons accessible via QR codes on each book, with lessons in Spanish and English. Learn more at https://justrightreader.com

It's been well over 3 years but we got Chris Robinson back on the show. Chris talks about going to NYC and doing comedy. Erick and Chris talked about Comedy Festivals but Erick couldn't get on one. Chris and Zack got trapped by people in New York City who sale CDs. 2519 Soul Food and More just opened this week so Erick and Zack are making plans. How you feel about QR codes? Well there are a ton of things you can do with them. Learn what Erick and Chris used them for in this Episode. Chris goes to the bathroom and comes back to tell Erick he needs to turn his place into something for gamer girls. Chris gave tips and ideas of what to add to the place and put on the walls. Anyways a very long awesome show this time around and it was good to have Chris back again.     Music: Prison Slam   Links: Chris Comedy Page 2519 Soul Food and More Erick Feiling IG Zack Stack IG Comedian Erick Feiling

Dai piatti pronti al gelato, passando per gli accessori, i medicinali, la spesa di tutti i giorni, ordinata via app e ritirata nel negozio automatico con un QR code. Guarda alle nuove abitudini post-pandemia il mondo della distribuzione automatica, le amate macchinette, orfane in parte - causa smartworking e lockdown - della pausa caffè. Un settore che in Italia conta 3 mila imprese per 30 mila addetti, un miliardo e mezzo di giro d'affari, 820 mila vending machine installate: rappresenta la più importante catena distributiva automatica alimentare d'Europa ed è anche leader nella produzione ed esportazione. Tutti i numeri e le novità da Venditalia, fiera numero uno al mondo per il settore che si è tenuta a Milano dall'11 al 14 maggio. Focus sui trend dedicato al settore dell'energia, alle prese con i rialzi che preoccupano famiglie e imprese: dagli impianti per il consumo collettivo alle campagne per l'energia pulita fino alle iniziative dei movimenti consumeristi, il tema energetico entra prepotentemente non solo nel dibattito pubblico ma anche nel mondo dei consumi, dei brand, del marketing.

Facebook Has No Idea Where Your Data Is and What They Do With It?! Facebook's about 18 years old coming on 20 Facebook has a lot of data. How much stuff have you given Facebook? Did you fall victim for that? Hey, upload your contacts. We'll find your friends. They don't know where your data is. [Following is an automated transcript] [00:00:15] This whole thing with Facebook has exploded here lately. [00:00:20] There is an article that had appeared on a line from our friends over at, I think it was, yeah. Let me see here. Yeah. Yeah. Motherboard. I was right. And motherboards reporting that Facebook doesn't know what it does with your data or. It goes, no, there's always a lot of rumors about different companies and particularly when they're big company and the news headlines are grabbing your attention and certainly Facebook can be one of those companies. [00:00:57] So where did motherboard get this opinion about Facebook? Just being completely clueless about your personal. It tamed from a leaked document. Yeah, exactly. So we find out a lot of stuff like that. I used to follow a website about companies that were going to go under and they posted internal memos. [00:01:23] It basically got sued out of existence, but there's no way that Facebook is going to be able to Sue this one out of existence because they are describing this as. Internally as a tsunami of privacy regulations all over the world. So Gores, if you're older, we used to call those tidal waves, but think of what the implication there is of a tsunami coming in and just overwhelming everything. [00:01:53] So Facebook, internally, their engineers are trying to figure out, okay. So how do we deal with. People's personal data. It's not categorized in ways that regulators want to control it. Now there's a huge problem right there. You've got third party data. You've got first party data. You've got sensitive categories, data. [00:02:16] They might know what religion you are, what your persuasions are in various different ways. There's a lot of things they might know about you. How were they all cat categorize now we've got the European union. With their general data protection regulation. The GDPR we talked about when it came into effect back in 2018, and I've helped a few companies to comply with that. [00:02:41] That's not my specialty. My specialty is the cybersecurity. But in article five this year, peon law mandates that personal data must be collected for specified explicit and legitimate purposes and not further processed in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes. So what that means is that every piece of data, like where you are using Facebook or your religious orientation, Can only be collected in use for a specific purpose and not reused for another purpose. [00:03:19] As an example here, that vice has given in past Facebook, took the phone number that users provided to protect their accounts with two factor authentication and fed it to its people, feature as well as. Advertisers. Yeah. Interesting. Hey, so Gizmodo with the help of academic researchers caught Facebook doing this, and eventually the company had to stop the practice because, and this goes back to the earlier days where Facebook would say, Hey, find out if your friends are on Facebook, upload your contacts right now. [00:03:54] And most people. What did you know back then about trying to keep your data private, to try and stop the proliferation of information about you online then nothing. I think I probably even uploaded it back then thinking it'd be nice to see if I got friends here. We can start chatting, et cetera. [00:04:12] According to legal experts that were interviewed by motherboard who wrote this article and has a copy of the internal memo this year, PN regulation specifically prohibits that kind of repurposing of your phone number of trying to put together the social graph and the leaked document shows that Facebook may not even have the ability to live. [00:04:37] How it handles user's data. Now I was on a number of radio stations this week, talking about this. And the example I gave is just look at an average business from the time it start, Facebook started how right? Wildly scraping pictures of young women off of Harvard university. Main catalog, contact page, and then asking people what do you think of this? This person, that person. And off they go, trying to rate them. Yeah. Yeah. All that matters to a woman, at least to Courtney, to mark Zuckerberg girl, all the matters about a woman is how she looks. Do I think she's pretty or not? [00:05:15] It's ridiculous. What he was doing. It just, oh, that's zackerburg who he is not a great guy anyways. So you go from stealing pictures of young ladies asking people to rate them, putting together some class information and stuff there at Harvard, and then moving on to other universities and then open it up even wider and wider. [00:05:42] And of course, that also created demand because you can't get on. If you're not at one of the universities that we have set it up for. And then you continue to grow. You're adding these universities, certainly starting to collect data and you are making more money than God. So what do you do? You don't have to worry about any efficiencies. [00:06:02] I'll tell you that. Right? One thing you don't have to do is worry about gee. We've got a lot of redundant work going on here. We've got a lot of teams working on basically the same thing. No, you've got more money than you can possibly shake a stick at. So now you go ahead and send that money to this group or that group. [00:06:24] And they put together all of the basic information, that they want. Pulling it out of this database and that database in there doing some correlation, writing some really cool CQL queries with mem credible joins and everything else. And now that becomes part of the main code for Facebook. [00:06:45] And then Facebook goes on to the next little project and they do the same thing. Then the next project, then the next project. And then someone comes along and says, Hey, we. This feature, that feature for advertisers and then in that goes, and then along comes candidate Obama. And they, one of the groups inside Facebook says, yeah here we go. [00:07:09] Here's all of the information we have about everybody and it's free. Don't worry about it. And then when Trump actually bought it and hired a company to try and process some of that information he got in trouble. No but the. The whole campaign could get access to anything they wanted to, again, because the data wasn't controlled, they had no idea who was doing what with the data. [00:07:34] And according to this internal memo, they still don't know. They don't even know if they can possibly comply with these regulations, not just in Europe, but we have regulations in pretty much all of the 50 states in the U S Canada of course, has their own Australia and New Zealand think about all the places. [00:07:57] Facebook makes a lot of. So here's a quote from that we build systems with open borders. The result of these open systems and open culture is well-described with an analogy. Imagine you hold a bottle of ink in your hand, the bottle of ink is a mixture of all kinds of user data. You pour that ink into a lake of water and K and it flows every year. [00:08:22] The document read. So how do you put that ink back in the bottle? I, in the right bottle, how do you organize it again? So that it only flows to the allowed places in the lake? They're totally right about that. Where did they collect it from? Apparently they don't even know where they got some of this information. [00:08:43] This data from reminds me of the no fly list. You don't know you're on it and you can't get yourself off of it. It's crazy. So this document that we're talking about, it was written last year by. Privacy engineers on the ad and business product team, whose mission is to make meaningful connections between people and businesses and which quote sits at the center of our monetization strategy. [00:09:06] And is the engine that powers Facebook's growth. Interesting. Interesting problems. And I see this being a problem well into the future for more and more of these companies, look at Twitter as an example that we've all heard about a lot lately. And then I've talked about as well along comes Elon Musk and he says wait a minute. [00:09:29] I can make Twitter way more profitable. We're going to get rid of however many people over a thousand, and then we are going to hire more people. We're going to start charging. We're going to be more efficient. You can bet all of these redundancies that are in Facebook are also there. And Twitter also has to comply with all of these regulations that Facebook is freaking out about it for a really a very good reason. [00:10:00] So this document is available to anybody who wants to look at it. I'm looking at it right now, talking about regulatory landscape and the fundamental problems Facebook's data lake. And this is a problem that most companies have not. As bad as Facebook does the button. Most companies you write, you grow. I have yet to walk into a business that needs help with cybersecurity and find everything in place as it should be because it grew organically. [00:10:32] Do you started out with a little consumer firewall router, wifi, and then you added to it and you put a switch here and you added another switch behind that and move things around. This is normal. This is not total incompetence on the part of the management, but my gosh, I don't know. Maybe they need an Elon Musk. [00:10:52] Just straighten them out as well. Hey, stick around. I'll be right back and sign up online@craigpeterson.com. [00:11:02] Apparently looting is one of the benefits of being a Russian soldier. And according to the reports coming out of Ukraine, they've been doing it a lot, but there's a tech angle on here that is really turning the tables on these Russian Looters. [00:11:19] We know in wars, there are people that loot and typically the various militaries try and make sure, at least recently that looting is kept to an absolute minimum. [00:11:32] Certainly the Americans, the British, even the Nazis during world war II the the socialists they're in. Germany they tried to stop some of the looting that was going on. I think that's probably a very good thing, because what you end up with is just all of these locals that are just totally upset with you. [00:11:57] I found a great article on the guardian and there's a village. I hadn't been occupied for about a month by Russian troops and the people came back. They are just shocked to see what happened in there. Giving a few examples of different towns. They found that the alcohol was stolen and they left empty bottles behind food wrappers, cigarette butts, thrown all over the place in apartments in the home. [00:12:26] Piles of feces blocking the toilets, family photographs torn, thrown around the house. They took away all of the closes as a code from one of the people, literally everything, male and female coats, boots, shirts, jackets, even my dresses and laundry. This is really something. The Sylvia's didn't do this, but now Russia. [00:12:49] The military apparently does. So over the past couple of weeks, there have been reporting from numerous places where Russian troops had occupied Ukrainian territory and the guardian, which is this UK newspaper collected evidence to suggest looting by Russian forces was not merely a case of a few way, word soldiers, but a systematic part of Russian military behavior across multiple towns. [00:13:17] And villages. That's absolutely amazing. Another quote here, people saw the Russian soldiers loading everything onto your old trucks. Everything they could get their hands on a dozen houses on the villages. Main street had been looted as well as the shops. Other villagers reported losing washing machines, food laptops, even as sofa, air conditioner. [00:13:41] Being shipped back, just you might use ups here or they have their equivalent over there. A lady here who was the head teacher in the school, she came back in, of course, found her home looted and in the head teacher's office. She found an open pair of scissors that had been jammed into a plasma screen that was left behind because if they can't steal it, they're going to destroy it. [00:14:07] They don't wanna leave anything behind. They found the Russian to take in most of the computers, the projectors and other electronic equipment. It's incredible. So let's talk about the turnaround here. You might've heard stories about some of these bad guys that have smashed and grabbed their way into apple stores. [00:14:27] So they get into the apple store. They grab laptops on iPads, no longer iPods, because they don't make those anymore. And I phone. And they take them and they run with them. Nowadays there's not a whole lot of use for those. Now what they have been doing, some of these bad guys is they'd take some parts and use them in stolen equipment. [00:14:52] They sell them on the used market, et cetera. But when you're talking about something specific, like an iPhone that needs specific activation. Completely different problem arises for these guys because that iPhone needs to have a SIM card in order to get onto the cell network. And it also has built in serial numbers. [00:15:15] So what happens in those cases while apple goes ahead and disables them. So as soon as they connect to the internet, they didn't say they put them on wifi. They don't get a SIM card. They don't. Service from T-Mobile or Verizon or whoever it might be. So now they just connect to the wifi and it calls home. [00:15:33] Cause it's going to get updates and download stuff from the app store and they find that it's been bricked. Now you can do that with a lot of mobile device managers that are available for. All kinds of equipment nowadays, but certainly apple equipment where if a phone is lost or stolen or a laptop or other pieces of equipment, you can get on the MDM and disable it, have it remotely erase, et cetera. [00:16:00] Now, please have had some interesting problems with that. Because a bad guy might go ahead and erase a smartphone. That's in the evidence locker at the police station. So they're doing things like putting them into Faraday cages or static bags or other things to try and stop that. So I think we've established here that the higher tech equipment is pretty well protected. [00:16:25] You steal it. It's not going to do you much. Good. So one of the things the Russian stole when they were in a it's called a, I think you pronounced. Melad Mellott DePaul which is again, a Ukrainian city is they stole all of the equipment from a farm equipment dealership and shipped it to check. Now that's according to a source in a businessman in the area that CNN is reporting on. [00:16:56] So they shipped this equipment. We're talking about combine harvesters were 300 grand a piece. They shipped it 700 miles. And the thieves were ultimately unable to use the equipment because it had been locked remotely. So think about agriculture equipment that John Deere, in this case, these pieces of equipment, they, they drive themselves. [00:17:23] It's atonomous it goes up and down the field. Goes to any pattern that you want to it'll bring itself within a foot or an inch of your boundaries, of your property being very efficient the whole time, whether it's planting or harvesting, et cetera. And that's just a phenomenal thing because it saves so much time for the farmer makes it easier to do the companies like John Deere. [00:17:49] Want to sell as many pieces of this equipment as they possibly can. And farming is known to be a what not terribly profitable business. And certainly isn't like Facebook. So how can they get this expensive equipment into the hands of a lot of farmers? What they do is they use. So you can lease the equipment through leasing company or maybe directly from the manufacturer and now you're off and running. [00:18:16] But what happens if the lease isn't paid now? It's one thing. If you don't pay your lease on a $2,000 laptop, right? They're probably not going to come hunting for you, but when you're talking about a $300,000 harvester, they're more interested. So the leasing company. Has titled to the equipment and the leasing company can shut it off remotely. [00:18:41] You see where I'm going with this so that they can get their equipment in the hands of more farmers because the farmers can lease it. It costs them less. They don't have to have a big cash payment. You see how this all works. So when the Russian forces stole this equipment, that's valued, total value here is about $5 million. [00:19:02] They were able to shut it all off. And th the, obviously if you can't start the engine, because it's all shut off and it's all run by computers nowadays, and there's pros and cons to that. I think there's a lot of cons, but what are you going to do? How's that going to work for? Isn't going to work for you. [00:19:22] And they were able to track it and had GPS trackers find out exactly where it was. That's how they know it was Tara taken to Chechnya and could be controlled remotely. And in this case, how did they control it? They completely. Shut it off, even if they sell the harvesters for spare parts to learn some money, but they sure aren't gonna be able to sell them for the 300 grand that they were actually worth. [00:19:48] Hey, stick around. We'll be right back and visit me online@craigpeterson.com. If you sign up there, you'll be able to get my insider show notes. And every week I have a quick. Training right there. New emails, Craig Peterson.com. [00:20:05] If you've been worried about ransomware, you are right to worry. It's up. It's costly. And we're going to talk about that right now. What are the stats? What can you do? What happens if you do get hacked? Interesting world! [00:20:20] Ransomware has been a very long running problem. I remember a client of ours, a car dealership who we had gone in. [00:20:31] We had improved all of their systems and their security, and one of them. People who was actually a senior manager, ended up downloading a piece of ransomware, one of these encrypted ones and opened it up and his machine all of a sudden, guess what it had ransomware on it. One of those big. Green's that say, pay up and send us this much Bitcoin, and here's our address. [00:21:00] All of that sort of stuff. And he called us up and said, what's going on here? What happened? First of all, don't bring your own machine into the office. Secondly, don't open up as particularly encrypted files using a password that they gave. And thirdly, we stopped it automatically. It did not spread. [00:21:20] We were able to completely restore his computer. Now let's consider here the consequences of what happened. So he obviously was scared. And within a matter of a couple of hours, we actually had him back to where he was and it didn't spread. So the consequences there, they weren't that bad. But how about if it had gotten worse? [00:21:47] How about if the ransomware. Also before it started holding his computer ransom, went out and found all of the data about their customers. What do you think an auto dealership would love to hear that all of their customer data was stolen and released all of the personal data of all of their customers? [00:22:08] Obviously not. So there's a potential cost there. And then how long do you think it would take a normal company? That thinks they have backups to get back online. All I can tell you it'll take quite a while because the biggest problem is most backups don't work. We have yet to go into a business that was actually doing backups that would work to help restore them. [00:22:35] And if you're interested, I can send you, I've got something I wrote up. Be glad to email it back to you. Obviously as usual, no charge. And you'll be able to go into that and figure out what you should do. Cause I, I break it down into the different types of backups and why you might want to use them or why you might not want to use them, but ransomware. [00:22:58] Is a kind of a pernicious nasty little thing, particularly nowadays, because it's to two factor, first is they've encrypted your data. You can't get to it. And then the second side of that is okay I can't get to my data and now they're threatening to hold my data ransom or they'll release. So they'll put it out there. [00:23:22] And of course, if you're in a regulated industry, which actually car dealers are because they deal with financial transactions, leases, loans, that sort of thing you can lose your license for your business. You can, you lose your ability to go ahead and frankly make loans and work with financial companies and financial instruments. [00:23:45] It could be a very big. So there are a lot of potential things that can happen all the way from losing your reputation as a business or an individual losing all of the money in your operating account. And again, we've got a client that we picked up afterwards. That yes, indeed. That lost all of the money in their operating account. [00:24:09] And then how do you make payroll? How do you do things? There's a new study that came out from checkpoint. Checkpoint is one of the original firewall companies and they had a look at ransomware. What are the costs of ransomware? Now bottom line, I'm looking at some stats here on a couple of different sites. [00:24:29] One is by the way, Conti, which is a big ransomware gang that also got hacked after they said we are going to attack anyone. That doesn't defend Plaid's invasion of Ukraine, and then they got hacked and their information was released, but here's ransomware statistics. This is from cloud words. First of all, the largest ransom demand is $50 million. [00:24:55] And that was in 2021 to Acer big computer company. 37% of businesses were hit by ransomware. In 2021. This is amazing. They're expecting by 2031. So in about a decade, ransomware is going to be costing about $265 billion a year. Now on average. Ransomware costs businesses. 1.8, $5 million to recover from an attack. [00:25:25] Now that's obviously not a one or two person place, but think of the car dealer again, how much money are they going to make over the year or over the life of the business? If you're a car dealer, you have a license to print money, right? You're selling car model or cars from manufacturers. And now you have the right to do that and they can remove that. [00:25:48] How many tens, hundreds of millions of dollars might that end up costing you? Yeah. Big deal. Total cost of ransomware last year, $20 billion. Now these are the interesting statistics here right now. So pay closer attention to this 32% of ransomware victims paid a ransom. So about a third Peter ransom demand. [00:26:12] Lastly. It's actually down because my recollection is it used to be about 50% would pay a ransom. Now on average that one third of victims that paid a ransom only recovered 65% of their data. Now that differs from a number I've been using from the FBI. That's a little bit older that was saying it ends it a little better than 50%, but 65% of pain victims recovered their. [00:26:41] Now isn't that absolutely amazing. Now 57% of companies were able to recover their data, using a cloud backup. Now think about the different types of backup cloud backup is something that can work pretty well if you're a home user, but how long did it take for your system to get back? Probably took weeks, right? [00:27:05] For a regular computer over a regular internet line. Now restoring from backups is going to be faster because your downlink is usually faster than your uplink. That's not true for businesses that have real internet service like ours. It's the same bandwidth up as it is down. But it can take again, days or weeks to try and recover your machine. [00:27:28] So it's very expensive. And I wish I had more time to go into this, but looking at the costs here and the fact that insurance companies are no longer paying out for a lot of these ransomware attacks, it could be credibly expensive for you incredibly. The number one business types by industry for ransomware attacks, retail. [00:27:59] That makes sense. Doesn't it. Real estate. Electrical contractors, law firms and wholesale building materials. Isn't that interesting? And that's probably because none of these people are really aware or conscious of doing what a, of keeping their data secure of having a good it team, a good it department. [00:28:24] So there's your bottom line. Those are the guys that are getting hit. The most, the numbers are increasing dramatically and your costs are not just in the money. You might pay as a ransom. And as it turns out in pretty much every case prevention. Is less expensive and much better than the cure of trying to pay ransom or trying to restore from backups. [00:28:52] Hey, you're listening to Craig Peterson. You can get my weekly show notes by just going to craig peterson.com. [00:29:00] You and I have talked about passwords before the way to generate them and how important they are. We'll go over that again a little bit in just a second, but there's a new standard out there that will eliminate the need for passwords. [00:29:16] Passwords are a necessary evil, at least they have been forever. I remember, I think the only system I've ever really used that did not require passwords was the IBM 360. [00:29:31] Yeah, 360, you punch up the cards, all of the JCL you feed the card deck in and off it goes. And does this little thing that was a different day, a different era. When I started in college in university, we. We had a remote systems, timeshare systems that we could log into. And there weren't much in the line of password requirements. [00:29:58] And, but you had a username, you had a simple password. And I remember one of our instructors, his name was Robert, Andrew Lang, and his password was always some sort of a combination of RA Lang. So it was always easy to guess what his password was. Today. It has gotten a lot worse today. We have devices with us all the time. [00:30:22] You might be wearing a smart watch. That requires a password. You course probably have a smartphone that also maybe requiring a password. Certainly after it boots nowadays they use fingerprints or facial recognition, which is handy, but it has its own drawbacks. But how about the websites? You're going to the systems you're using in you're at work and logging in. [00:30:49] They all require password. And usernames of some sort or another well, apple, Google, and Microsoft have all committed to expanding their support for a standard. That's actually been out there for a few years. It's called the Fido standard. And the idea behind this is that you don't have to have a password in order to. [00:31:15] Now that's really an interesting thing, right? Just looking at it because we're so used to have in this password only authenticate. And of course the thing to do there is to make sure you have for your password, multiple words in the password, it should really be a pass phrase. And between the words put in special characters or numbers, maybe. [00:31:41] Upper lower case a little bit. In those words, those are the best passwords, 20 characters, 30 characters long. And then if you have to have a pin, I typically use a 12 digit pin. And how do I remember all of these? Cause I use a completely different password for every website and right now, Let me pull it up. [00:32:03] I'm using one password dot coms, password manager. And my main password for that is about 25 characters long. And I have thirty one hundred and thirty five. And trees here in my password manager, 3,100, that is a whole lot of passwords, right? As well as software licenses and a few other things in there. [00:32:30] That's how we remember them is using a password manager. One password.com is my favorite. Now, obviously I don't make any money by referring you there. I really do like that. Some others that I've liked in the past include last pass, but they really meant. With some of their cybersecurity last year and I lost my faith in it. [00:32:51] So now what they're trying to do is make these websites that we go to as well as some apps to have a consistent, secure, and passwordless. And they're going to make it available to consumers across all kinds of devices and platforms. That's why you've got apple, Google, and Microsoft all committing to it. [00:33:15] And you can bet everybody else is going to follow along because there's hundreds of other companies that have decided they're going to work with the Fido Alliance and they're going to create this passwordless future. Which I like this idea. So how does this work? Basically you need to have a smartphone. [00:33:33] This is, I'm just going to go with the most standard way that this is going to work here in the future, and you can then have. Passkey, this is like a multi-factor authentication or two factor authentication. So for instance, right now, when I sign into a website online, I'm giving a username, given a password, and then it comes up and it asks me for a code. [00:33:57] So I enter in a six digit code and that code changes every 30 seconds. And again, I use my password manager from one password. In order to generate that code. So that's how I log into Microsoft site and Google sites and all kinds of sites out there. So it's a similar thing here now for the sites for my company, because we do cyber security for businesses, including regulated businesses. [00:34:24] We have biometrics tied in as. So to log into our systems, I have to have a username. I have to have a password. I then am sent to a single sign-on page where I have to have a message sent to my smart device. That then has a special app that uses biometrics either a face ID or a fingerprint to verify who I am. [00:34:49] Yeah, there's a lot there, but I have to protect my customers. Something that very few it's crazy. Actual managed security services providers do, but it's important, right? By the way, if you want my password. Special report, just go to Craig peterson.com. Sign up for my email list. I'll send that to you. [00:35:13] That's what we're sending out right now for anyone who signs up new@craigpeterson.com. And if you'd like a copy of it in you're already on the list, just go ahead and email me. At Craig peterson.com and ask for the password special report where I go through a lot of this sort of thing. So what will happen with this is you go to a website and I might come up with a QR code. [00:35:37] So you then scan that QR code with your phone and verify it, authorize it on your phone. You might again to have it set up so that your phone requires a facial recognition or perhaps it'll require a fingerprint. And now you are. Which is very cool. They fix some security problems in Fido over the last few years, which is great over the coming year. [00:36:02] You're going to see this available on apple devices, Google Microsoft platforms, and it really is simple, stronger authentication. That's sort of Fido calls it. But it is going to make your life a lot easy, easier. It is a standard and the passwordless future makes a whole lot of sense for all of us. Now, I want to talk about another thing here that just bothered me for a long time. [00:36:30] I have a sister. Who is in the medical field and gives prescriptions, doctor thing. And I think she's not quite a doctor. I can't remember what she has. She's an LPN or something. And anyhow, so she. We'll get on a zoom call with someone and they'll go through medical history and what's happening right now and she'll make prescriptions. [00:36:57] And so I warned her about that saying, it is very bad to be using zoom because zoom is not secure. Never has been, probably never will be right. If you want secure. To go and pay for it from one of these providers like WebEx, that's what we use. We have a version of WebEx that is set up to be secure. [00:37:20] So I talked to her about that and said, Hey, listen, you can't do this. You've really got to go another way here. And so she started using one of these mental or. Medical health apps. What I want to talk about right now specifically are some checks that were just performed some audits on mental health apps. [00:37:45] That's why I messed up a second ago, but what they looked at is that things are a serious problem there. And then fact, the threat post, just calling it a. Frankly, just plain old creepy. So they've got some good intentions. They want to help with mental health. You've probably seen these or at least heard them advertise. [00:38:06] So you can get on the horn with a mental health professional, a doctor or otherwise in order to help you here with your psychological or spiritual wellness. And people are sharing their personal and sensitive data with third parties and have 32 mental health and prayer mobile apps that were investigated by the open source organization. [00:38:32] 28, 28 of the 32 were found to be inherently insecure and were given a privacy not included label, including others here. So this is a report. That was released here by the open source organization, tied into Mozilla. Those are the Firefox people. They have what they call their minimum security standards. [00:38:56] So things like requiring strong passwords, managing security, updates, and vulnerabilities, et cetera. 25 of the 32 failed to meet. Even those minimum security standards. So these apps are dealing with some of the most sensitive mental health and wellness issues people can possibly have, right? Depression, anxieties, suicidal fonts, domestic violence, eating disorders. [00:39:23] And they are being just terrible with your security Mozilla researchers spent 255 hours or about eight hours per product pairing under the hood of the security, watching the data that was going back and forth, right between all of these mental health and prayer apps. It was just crazy. So for example, eight of the apps reviewed, allowed weak passwords, that range. [00:39:52] One digit one as the password to 1, 1, 1, 1, while a mental health app called a mood fit only required one letter or digit as a password. Now that is very concerning for an app that collects mood and symptom data. So be very careful. Two of the apps better help a popular app that connects users with therapists and better stop suicide, which is a course of suicide prevention app have vague and messy, according to Mozilla privacy policies that have little or no effect on actual. [00:40:30] User data protection. So be very careful. And if you're a mental health, professional or medical professional, don't just go and use these open video calls, et cetera, et cetera, find something good. And there are some standards out there. Again. Visit me online, get my insider show notes every week. Get my little mini trends. [00:40:56] And they come up most weeks. Just go to Craig peterson.com. And I'll send you my special report on passwords and more. [00:41:06] We know the Russians have been attacking us. I've talked a lot about it on the radio station, all kinds of stations. In fact, here over the last couple of weeks, and I am doing something special, we are going through the things you can do to keep safe. [00:41:23] Last week we started doing something I promise we would continue. [00:41:27] And that is how can you protect yourself when it comes to the Russians, right? When it comes to the bad guys, because the Russians are definitely the bad guys. There's a few things you can do. And there's a few things, frankly, you shouldn't be doing. And that's exactly what we're going to talk about right now. [00:41:45] So last week he went over some steps, some things that you can look at that you should look at that are going to help protect you. And we are going to go into this a whole lot more today. And so I want you to stick around and if you miss anything, you can go online. You can go to Craig peterson.com, make sure you sign up there for my email. [00:42:08] And what I'm going to do for you is. Send you a few different documents now where we can chat back and forth about it, but I can send you this. Now I'm recording this on video as well as on audio. So you can follow along if you're watching either on YouTube or. Over on rumble and you can find it also on my website. [00:42:32] I've been trying to post it up there too, but right now let's talk about what we call passive backend protections. So you've got the front end and the front end of course, is. Stuff coming at you, maybe to the firewall I've mentioned last week about customers of mine. I was just looking at a few customers this week, just so I could have an idea of their firewalls. [00:42:59] And they were getting about 10 attacks per minute. Yeah. And these were customers who have requirements from the department of defense because they are defense sub subcontractors. So again, Potential bad guys. So I looked up their IP addresses and where the attacks were coming from. Now, remember that doesn't mean where they originated because the bad guys can hop through multiple machines and then get onto your machine. [00:43:28] What it means is that all, ultimately they ended up. Coming from one machine, right? So there's an IP address of that machine. That's attacking my clients or are attacking my machines. That just happens all the time. A lot of scans, but some definite attacks where they're trying to log in using SSH. [00:43:48] And what I found is these were coming from Slovakia, Russia, and Iran. Kind of what you were expecting, right? The Iranians, they just haven't given up yet. They keep trying to attack, particularly our military in our industry. One of the things we found out this week from, again, this was an FBI notice is that the Russians have been going after our industrial base. [00:44:15] And that includes, in fact, it's more specifically our automobile manufacturers we've already got problems, right? Try buying a new car, try buying parts. I was with my friend, just this. I helped them because he had his car right. Need to get picked up. So I took him over to pick up his car and we chatted a little bit with this small independent automotive repair shop. [00:44:40] And they were telling us that they're getting sometimes six, eight week delays on getting parts and some parts. They just can't. So they're going to everything from junkyards on out, and the worst parts are the parts, the official parts from the car manufacturers. So what's been happening is Russia apparently has been hacking into these various automobile manufacturers and automobile parts manufacturers. [00:45:10] And once they're inside, they've been putting in. A remote control button net. And those botnets now have the ability to wake up when they want them to wake up. And then once they've woken up, what do they do? Who knows? They've been busy erasing machines causing nothing, but having they've been doing all kinds of stuff in the past today, they're sitting there. [00:45:31] Which makes you think they're waiting, it's accumulate as much as you possibly can. And then once you've got it all accumulated go ahead and attack. So they could control thousands of machines, but they're not just in the U S it's automobile manufacturers in Japan. That we found out about. [00:45:50] So that's what they're doing right now. So you've got the kind of that front end and back end protections. So we're going to talk a little bit about the back end. What does that mean? When a cybersecurity guy talks about the backend and the protections. I got it up on my green right now, but here's the things you can do. [00:46:10] Okay. Remember, small businesses are just getting nailed from these guys, because again, they're fairly easy targets. One change your passwords, right? How many times do we have to say that? And yet about 70% of businesses out there are not using a good password methodology. If you want more information on passwords, two factor authentication, you name it. [00:46:37] Just email me M e@craigpeterson.com. I want to get the information out now. You got to make sure that all of the passwords on your systems are encrypted are stored in some sort of a good password vault as you really should be looking at 256 bit encryption or better. I have a vendor of. That I use. So if you get my emails every week, when them, there's the little training. [00:47:06] And so I'll give you a five minute training. It's written usually it's in bullet point for, I'm just trying to help you understand things. That provider of mine has a big database and there's another provider that I use that is for. So the training guys use the database of my provider. [00:47:27] In using that database, they're storing the passwords and the training providers putting passwords in the clinics. Into the database, which is absolutely crazy. So again, if you're a business, if you're storing any sort of personal information, particularly passwords, make sure that you're using good encryption and your S what's called salting the hash, which means. [00:47:53] You're not really storing the password, just joining assaulted hash. I can send you more on this. If you are a business and you're developing software that's, this is long tail stuff here. Configure all of the security password settings so that if someone's trying to log in and is failing that, and you block it, many of us that let's say you're a small business. [00:48:15] I see this all of the time. Okay. You're not to blame. You, but you have a firewall that came from the cable company. Maybe you bought it at a big box retailer. Maybe you bought it online over at Amazon, as hurricane really great for you. Has it got settings on there that lets you say. There's 20 attempts to log in. [00:48:38] Maybe we should stop them. Now, what we do personally for our customers is typically we'll block them at somewhere around three or four failed attempts and then their passwords block. Now you can configure that sort of thing. If you're using. Email. And that's an important thing to do. Let me tell you, because we've had some huge breaches due to email, like Microsoft email and passwords and people logging in and stealing stuff. [00:49:06] It was just a total nightmare for the entire industry last year, but limit the number of login retries as well as you're in there. These excessive login attempts or whatever you want to define it as needs to lock the account. And what that means is even if they have the right password, they can't get in and you have to use an administrative password in order to get in. [00:49:31] You also want to, what's called throttle, the rate of repeated logins. Now you might've gotten caught on this, right? You went to your bank, you went to E-bay, you went to any of these places and all of a sudden. And denied you write it blocked you. That can happen when your account is on these hackers lists. [00:49:51] You remember last week we talked about password spraying while that's a very big deal and hackers are doing the sprain trick all of the time, and that is causing you to get locked out of your own account. So if you do get locked out, remember it might be because someone's trying to break. Obviously you have to enforce the policies. [00:50:16] The capture is a very good thing. Again, this is more for software developer. We always recommend that you use multifactor or two factor authentication. Okay. Do not use your SMS, your text messages for that, where they'll send you a text message to verify who you are. If you can avoid that, you're much better off. [00:50:36] Cause there's some easy ways to get around that for hackers that are determined. Okay. A multi-factor again, installed an intrusion. system. We put right at the network edge and between workstations and servers, even inside the network, we put detection systems that look for intrusion attempts and block intrusion attempts. [00:51:02] A very important use denied lists to block known attackers. We build them automatically. We use some of the higher end Cisco gates. Cisco is a big network provider. They have some of the best hardware and software out there, and you have to subscribe to a lot of people complain. I ain't going to just go buy a firewall for 200 bucks on Amazon. [00:51:24] Why would I pay that much a month just to to have a Cisco firewall? And it's like praying pain for the brand. I've got by logo chert on here. Oh, I wouldn't pay for that. No, it's because they are automatically providing block lists that are updated by the minute sometimes. And then make sure you've got an incident response plan in place. [00:51:50] What are you going to do when they come for you? What are you going to do?  [00:51:55] Now we're going to talk about prevention. What can you do an order to stop some of these attacks that are coming from Russia and from other countries, it is huge. People. Believe me, this is a very big problem. And I'm here to help. [00:52:12] We've reviewed a number of things that are important when it comes to your cyber security and your protection. [00:52:20] We talked about the front end. We talked about the backend. Now we're going to talk about pure prevention and if you're watching. Online. You'll be able to see my slides as they come up, as we talk about some of this stuff and you'll find me on YouTube and you'll also find me on rumble, a fairly new platform out there platform that doesn't censor you for the things you say. [00:52:44] Okay. So here we go. First of all, enabling your active directory password protection is going to. Four's password protection all the way through your business. Now I've had some discussions with people over the months, over the years about this whole thing and what should be done, what can be done, what cannot be done. [00:53:09] Hey, it's a very big deal when it comes to password protection and actor directory, believe it or not, even though it's a Microsoft product is pretty darn good at a few things. One of them is. Controlling all the machines and the devices. One of the things we do is we use an MDM or what used to be a mobile device manager called mass 360. [00:53:34] It's available from IBM. We have a special version of that allows us as a managed security services provider to be able to control everything on people's machines. Active directory is something you should seriously consider. If you are a Mac based shop. Like I am. In fact, I'm sitting right now in front of two max that I'm using right now, you'll find that active directory is a little bit iffy. [00:54:04] Sometimes for max, there are some work around and it's gotten better mastery. 60 is absolutely the way to go, but make sure you've got really good. Passwords and the types of passwords that are most prone to sprain the attacks are the ones you should be banning specifically. Remember the website? Have I been poned? [00:54:28] Yeah. It's something that you should go to pretty frequently. And again, if you miss anything today, just email me M e@craigpeterson.com. Believe me, I am not going to harass you at all. Okay. Now, the next thing that you should be doing is what's called red team blue team. Now the red team is a group of people, usually outside of your organization. [00:54:54] If you're a big company they're probably inside, but the red team is the team that attacks you. They're white hat hackers, who are attacking you, looking for vulnerabilities, looking for things that you should or shouldn't be doing. And then the blue team is the side that's trying to defend. So think of, like war games. [00:55:12] Remember that movie with Matthew Broderick all of those decades ago and how the, he was trying to defend that computer was trying to defend that it moved into an attack mode, right? Red team's attack, blue team is defend. So you want. To conduct simulated attacks. Now w conducting these attacks include saying, oh my let's now put in place and execute our plan here for what are we going to do once we have a. [00:55:44] And you darn well better have a breach plan in place. So that's one of the things that we help as a fractional chief information security officer for companies, right? You've got to get that in place and you have to conduct these simulated attacks and you have to do penetration testing, including password spraying attacks. [00:56:04] There's so many things you can do. The one of the things that we like to do and that you might want to do, whether you're a home user, retiree or a business is go and look online, you can just use Google. I use far more advanced tools, but you can use Google and look for your email address right there. [00:56:23] Look for the names of people inside your organization. And then say wait a minute, does that data actually need to be there? Or am I really exposing the company exposing people's information that shouldn't be out there because you remember the hackers. One of the things they do is they fish you fish as in pH. [00:56:47] So they'll send you an email that looks like. Hey let me see. I know that Mary is the CFO, and I know that Joe's going to be out of town for two weeks in The Bahamas, not a touch. So while he's got. I'm going to send an email to Mary, to get her to do something, to transfer the company's funds to me. [00:57:06] Okay. So that's what that's all about. You've got to make sure, where is our information? And if you go to my company's page, mainstream.net, you'll see on there that I don't list any of the officers or any of the people that are in the company, because that again is a security problem. [00:57:24] We're letting them know. I go to some of these sites, like professional sites lawyers, doctors, countenance, and I find right there all, are there people right there top people or sometimes all of them. And then we'll say, yeah, I went to McGill university, went to Harvard, whatever my B. It's all there. So now they've got great information to fish you, to fish that company, because all they have to do is send an email to say, Hey, you remember me? [00:57:56] We're in Harvard when this class together. And did you have as a professor to see how that works? Okay. You also want to make. That you implement, what's called a passwordless user agent, and this is just so solely effective. If they cannot get into your count, what's going to, what could possibly go wrong, but one of the ways to not allow them into the count is to use. [00:58:24] Biometrics. We use something called duo and we have that tied into the single sign-on and the duo single sign-on works great because what it does now is I put in, I go to a site, I put it into my username and. Pulls up a special splash page that is running on one of our servers. That again asks me for my duo username. [00:58:48] So I've got my username for the site then to my dual username and my duo password single sign on. And then it sends me. To an app on my smart device, a request saying, Hey, are you trying to log into Microsoft? And w whatever it might be at Microsoft, and you can say yes or no, and it uses biometric. [00:59:11] So those biometrics now are great because it says, oh, okay, I need a face ID or I need a thumb print, whatever it might be that allows a generalized, a password, less access. Okay. Password less. Meaning no pass. So those are some of the top things you can do when it comes to prevention. And if you use those, they're never going to be able to get at your data because it's something you have along with something, it works great. [00:59:45] And we like to do this. Some customers. I don't like to go through those hoops of the single sign-on and using duo and making that all work right where we're fine with it. We've got to keep ourselves, at least as secure as the DOD regulations require unlike almost anybody else in industry, I'm not going to brag about it. [01:00:09] But some of our clients don't like to meet the tightest of controls. And so sometimes they don't. I hate to say that, but they just don't and it's a fine line between. Getting your work done and being secure, but I think there's some compromises it can be readily made. We're going to talk next about saving your data from ransomware and the newest ransomware. [01:00:36] We're going to talk about the third generation. That's out there right now. Ransomware, it's getting crazy. Let me tell ya and what it's doing to us and what you can do. What is a good backup that has changed over the last 12 months? It's changed a lot. I used to preach 3, 2, 1. There's a new sheriff in town. [01:00:58] Stick around Craig peterson.com. [01:01:02] 3, 2, 1 that used to be the standard, the gold standard for backing up. It is no longer the case with now the third generation of ransomware. You should be doing something even better. And we'll talk about it now. [01:01:19] We're doing this as a simulcast here. It's on YouTube. It is also on rumble. [01:01:27] It's on my website@craigpeterson.com because we're going through the things that you can do, particularly if you're a business. To stop the Russian invasion because as we've been warned again and again, the Russians are after us and our data. So if you missed part of what we're talking about today, or. [01:01:50] Last week show, make sure you send me an email. me@craigpeterson.com. This is the information you need. If you are responsible in any way for computers, that means in your home, right? Certainly in businesses, because what I'm trying to do is help and save those small businesses that just can't afford to have full-time. [01:02:15] True cyber security personnel on site. So that's what the whole fractional chief information security officer thing is about. Because you just, you can't possibly afford it. And believe me, that guy that comes in to fix your computers is no cyber security expert. These people that are attacking our full time cybersecurity experts in the coming from every country in the world, including the coming from the us. [01:02:44] We just had more arrests last week. So let's talk about ransomware correctly. Ransomware, very big problem. Been around a long time. The first version of ransomware was software got onto your computer through some mechanism, and then you had that red screen. We've all seen that red screen and it says, Hey, pay up buddy. [01:03:07] It says here you need to send so many Bitcoin or a fraction of a Bitcoin or so many dollars worth of Bitcoin. To this Bitcoin wallet. And if you need any help, you can send email here or do a live chat. They're very sophisticated. We should talk about it some more. At some point that was one generation. [01:03:29] One generation two was not everybody was paying the ransoms. So what did they do at that point? They said let me see if they, we can ransom the data by encrypting it and having them pay us to get it back. 50% of the time issue got all your data back. Okay. Not very often. Not often enough that's for sure. [01:03:49] Or what we could do is let's steal some of their intellectual property. Let's steal some of their data, their social security number, their bank, account numbers, et cetera. They're in a, in an Excel spreadsheet on their company. And then we'll, if they don't pay that first ransom, we'll tell them if they don't pay up, we'll release their information. [01:04:10] Sometimes you'll pay that first ransom and then they will hold you ransom a second time, pretending to be a different group of cyber terrorists. Okay. Number three, round three is what we're seeing right now. And this is what's coming from Russia, nears, everything we can tell. And that is. They are erasing our machines. [01:04:31] Totally erasing them are pretty sophisticated ways of erasing it as well, so that it sinks in really, it's impossible to recover. It's sophisticated in that it, it doesn't delete some key registry entries until right at the very end and then reboots and computer. And of course, there's. Computer left to reboot, right? [01:04:55] It's lost everything off of that hard drive or SSD, whatever your boot devices. So let's talk about the best ways here to do some of this backup and saving your data from ransomware. Now you need to use offsite disconnected. Backups, no question about it. So let's talk about what's been happening. [01:05:17] Hospitals, businesses, police departments, schools, they've all been hit, right? And these ransomware attacks are usually started by a person. I'll link in an email. Now this is a poison link. Most of the time, it used to be a little bit more where it was a word document, an Excel document that had something nasty inside Microsoft, as I've said, many times has truly pulled up their socks. [01:05:45] Okay. So it doesn't happen as much as it used to. Plus with malware defender turned on in your windows operating system. You're going to be a little bit safer next step. A program tries to run. Okay. And it effectively denies access to all of that data. Because it's encrypted it. And then usually what it does so that your computer still works. [01:06:09] Is it encrypts all of you, like your word docs, your Excel docs, your databases, right? Oh, the stuff that matters. And once they've got all of that encrypted, you can't really access it. Yeah. The files there, but it looks like trash now. There's new disturbing trends. It has really developed over the last few months. [01:06:31] So in addition to encrypting your PC, it can now encrypt an entire network and all mounted drives, even drives that are marrying cloud services. Remember this, everybody, this is really a big deal because what will happen here is if you have let's say you've got an old driver G drive or some drive mounted off of your network. [01:06:57] You have access to it from your computer, right? Yeah. You click on that drive. And now you're in there and in the windows side Unix and max are a little different, but the same general idea you have access to you have right. Access to it. So what they'll do is any mounted drive, like those network drives is going to get encrypted, but the same thing is true. [01:07:20] If you are attaching a U S B drive to your company, So that USB drive, now that has your backup on it gets encrypted. So if your network is being used to back up, and if you have a thumb drive a USB drive, it's not really a thumb drive, right? There's external drive, but countered by USP hooked up. [01:07:45] And that's where your backup lives. Your. Because you have lost it. And there have been some pieces of software that have done that for awhile. Yeah. When they can encrypt your network drive, it is really going after all whole bunch of people, because everyone that's using that network drive is now effective, and it is absolutely. [01:08:10] Devastating. So the best way to do this is you. Obviously you do a bit of a local backup. We will usually put a server at the client's site that is used as a backup destiny. Okay. So that servers, the destination, all of the stuff gets backed up there. It's encrypted. It's not on the network per se. It's using a special encrypted protocol between each machine and the backup server. And then that backup servers data gets pushed off site. Some of our clients, we even go so far as to push it. To a tape drive, which is really important too, because now you have something physical that is by the way, encrypted that cannot be accessed by the attacker. [01:09:03] It's offsite. So we have our own data center. The, we run the, we manage the no one else has access to it is ours. And we push all of those backups offsite to our data center, which gives us another advantage. If a machine crashes badly, right? The hard disk fails heaven forbid they get ransomware. We've never had that happen to one of our clients. [01:09:29] Just we've had it happen prior to them becoming clients, is that we can now restore. That machine either virtually in the cloud, or we can restore it right onto a piece of hardware and have them up and running in four hours. It can really be that fast, but it's obviously more expensive than in some. [01:09:51] Are looking to pay. All right, stick around. We've got more to talk about when we come back and what are the Russians doing? How can you protect your small business? If you're a one, man, one woman operation, believe it. You've got to do this as well. Or you could lose everything. In fact, I think our small guys have even more to lose Craig peterson.com. [01:10:16] Backups are important. And we're going to talk about the different types of backups right now, what you should be doing, whether you're a one person, little business, or you are a, multi-national obviously a scale matters. [01:10:32] Protecting your data is one of the most important things you can possibly do. [01:10:36] I have clients who had their entire operating account emptied out, completely emptied. It's just amazing. I've had people pay. A lot of money to hackers to try and get data back. And I go back to this one lady over in Eastern Europe who built a company out of $45 million. By herself. And of course you probably heard about the shark tank people, right? [01:11:07] Barbara Cochran, how she almost lost $400,000 to a hacker. In fact, the money was on its way when she noticed what was going on and was able to stop it. So thank goodness she was able to stop it. But she was aware of these problems was looking for the potential and was able to catch it. How many of us are paying that much attention? [01:11:34] And now one of the things you can do that will usually kind of protect you from some of the worst outcomes. And when it comes to ransomware is to backup. And I know everybody says, yeah, I'm backing up. It's really rare. When we go in and we find a company has been backing up properly, it even happens to us sometimes. [01:11:59] We put them back up regimen in place and things seem to be going well, but then when you need the backup, oh my gosh, we just had this happen a couple of weeks ago. Actually this last week, this is what happened. We have. Something called an FMC, which is a controller from Cisco that actually controls firewalls in our customer's locations. [01:12:26] This is a big machine. It monitors stuff. It's tied into this ice server, which is. Looking for nastiness and we're bad guys trying to break in, right? It's intrusion detection and prevention and tying it into this massive network of a billion data points a day that Cisco manages. Okay. It's absolutely huge. [01:12:48] And we're running it in a virtual machine network. So we. Two big blade. Chassies full of blades and blades are each blade is a computer. So it has multiple CPU's and has a whole bunch of memory. It also has in there storage and we're using something that VMware calls visa. So it's a little virtual storage area network. [01:13:15] That's located inside this chassis and there are multiple copies of everything. So if a storage unit fails, you're still, okay. Everything stays up, it keeps running. And we have it set up so that there's redundancy on pond redundancy. One of the redundancies was to back it up to a file server that we have that's running ZFS, which is phenomenal. [01:13:40] Let me tell you, it is the best file system out there I've never ever had a problem with it. It's just crazy. I can send you more information. If you ever interested, just email me@craigpeterson.com. Anytime. Be glad to send you the open source information, whatever you need. But what had happened is. [01:13:57] Somehow the boot disk of that FMC, that, that firewall controller had been corrupted. So we thought, oh, okay, no problem. Let's look at our backups. Yeah, hadn't backed up since October, 2019. Yeah, and we didn't know it had been silently failing. Obviously we're putting stuff in place to stop that from ever happening again. [01:14:27] So we are monitoring the backups, the, that network. Of desks that was making up that storage area network that had the redundancy failed because the machine itself, somehow corrupted its file system, ext four file system right then are supposed to be corruptible, but the journal was messed up and it was man, what a headache. [01:14:51] And so they thought, okay, you're going to have to re-install. And we were sitting there saying, oh, you're kidding me. Reinstalling this FMC controller means we've got to configure our clients, firewalls that are being controlled from this FMC, all of their networks, all of their devices. We had to put it out. [01:15:07] This is going to take a couple of weeks. So because I've been doing this for so long. I was able to boot up an optics desk and Mount the file system and go in manually underneath the whole FMC, this whole firewall controller and make repairs to it. Got it repaired, and then got it back online. So thank goodness for that. [01:15:33] It happens to the best of us, but I have to say I have never had a new client where they had good backups. Ever. Okay. That, and now that should tell you something. So if you are a business, a small business, whatever it might be, check your backups, double check them. Now, when we're running backups, we do a couple of things. [01:15:57] We go ahead and make sure the backup is good. So remember I mentioned that we h

Good morning friends! We made it to Friday and there's a lot going on this weekend. First we'd like to say thank you to all of our listeners, fans and supporters. Don't forget about our 2 year anniversary party taking place tomorrow at McCarty Mills Taproom at 5 pm. And now here is the news: - Tomorrow will be the 17th annual Health Festival, from 7:30 to 11:30 am at the Prisco Center, located at 150 W. Illinois avenue in Aurora. Vaccines will be available, as well as screenings for glucose, hepatitis C and blood pressure. Activities, breakfast and a whole lot of resources: this will be a fun and helpful community event! For more information or to register, call (888) 352-7874. Shouts out to our friends of Companeros En Salud, the Fox Valley Park District and the City of Aurora. - Roosevelt-Aurora American Legion 84 will be presenting their 13th Annual Car Show this year on Sunday July 3rd from 11 am to 3 pm. The lineup begins at 9 am and this will honor local veterans. Taking place on historic Auto Row (LaSalle street) here in Aurora, come enjoy a good time with a fantastic organization. There will be a 50/50 raffle as well. For more information you can call (630) 474-5084! - Last but not least Lilo Productions Spring Fling Market is taking place Saturday May 14th from 10am to 3 pm at 3 N. Smith street here in Aurora. The event will be in remembrance of our armed forces and honor mothers. Booth fees and proceeds will benefit our friends of Mutual Ground. This will be a kid friendly event with raffles, prizes and lots of fun. Scan the QR code on the flyer and follow Lilo's Productions on Facebook. Have a blessed and safe weekend. Come and party with us and get to know us on Instagram and Twitter. Stop by McCarty Mills tomorrow evening for fun and celebration. Subscribe to the show on YouTube with this link: https://www.youtube.com/c/GoodMorningAuroraPodcast The second largest city's first daily news podcast is here. Tune in everyday to our FB Live from 8 am to 9 am. Make sure to like and subscribe to stay updated on all things Aurora. Twitter: goodmorningaur1 Instagram: goodmorningaurorail Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6dVweK5Zc4uPVQQ0Fp1vEP... Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/.../good-morning.../id1513229463 Anchor: https://anchor.fm/goodmorningaurora #positivevibes #positiveenergy #downtownaurora #kanecountyil #bataviail #genevail #stcharlesil #saintcharlesil #elginil #northaurorail #auroraillinois #auroramedia #auroranews #goodmorning #goodmorningaurora #comedy #news #dailynews #subscribe #youtube #podcast #spotify #positiveenergy #morningnews #morningshow #friday --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/goodmorningaurora/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/goodmorningaurora/support

To support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Starting in June, paid subscribers will receive podcasts three days before free subscribers.WhoDoug Fish, President and Founder of the Indy PassRecorded onMay 9, 2022About the Indy PassHere’s an overview of the 2022-23 Indy Pass suite:And here’s what that gets you access to:Why I interviewed himIt’s unfortunate that Steamboat, a personal favorite and one of Colorado’s most amiable mountains, has become the avatar for sticker-shock skiing, but there it is: $269 peak-day walk-up lift tickets last season. Any collateral pain is self-inflicted, and they seem committed to the process, so I don’t feel too bad hammering on them about it. Still, for readers of this newsletter, most of whom have next year’s Ikon Passes tucked into their jacket pockets by Easter, my ceaseless yammering about walk-up ticket prices can probably seem tedious and abstract, like detailing the logistical challenges of sustainable asteroid mining or the tolerable viral load of a brontosaurus: who cares?Which is a fair question. But as the three dozen or so mega-resorts that have mainlined this triple-digit ticket tactic race toward $300 for a day of skiing, a cartoonishly absurd double universe has materialized. One that makes comparisons like this possible: for $10 more than an Ikon-oblivious skier would pay for one day at Steamboat, they could have skied 162 days at 81 ski areas with a $279 Indy Pass. Which is probably more days than most skiers rack up in a decade, and more ski areas than they visit in a lifetime.It’s a hell of a bargain, is what I’m trying to say here, and an amazing product that the greater skiing public has, so far, failed to appreciate in large numbers. Indy predicted 400,000 redemptions this past season. The number came in at 125,000. That’s a 68.75 percent miss, which Fish attributes, in this interview, to overzealous predictions coming off the bomber Covid-induced boom season of 2020-21. What that means, for us skiers, is that this thing probably has plenty of room left to grow.“Growth” means a couple things here. First, more resorts are incoming. Fish promised as much in this interview, even in already crowded New England. The smaller-than-expected number of redemptions means the 85 percent cut of Indy revenue that goes to the resorts was not as diluted as Fish feared it could have been (he explains how the pass operates in the interview). Plus, the new Allied Resorts discount program is broad enough that this thing could easily reach a total of 200 downhill partners (it’s not unthinkable that the addition of cross-country ski areas could push that number toward 300).Second, more skiers are likely coming too. That’s a good thing. Numbers bring stability. Wouldn’t more skiers mean more redemptions? Yes, but it means more revenue, too, and since it’s likely that the most hardcore skiers – i.e. those most likely to redeem 30 days – are already in. Fish was comfortable enough with the average number of redemptions that he held prices steady for next season – and sales are strong as a result.For all the attention The Storm lavishes on the Indy Pass, the product is an industry minnow, not even three years old. Yet somehow this little pass with as many annual visits as an Eagle County weekend has stapled itself to the marquee alongside the Epic and Ikon passes, a toddler in size 14 boots. It’s been astonishing to watch it grow, but it will be more amazing still to see what happens when it grows into those knee-high kicks. Fish is the first three-time guest on The Storm Skiing Podcast. Yes, because he’s generous with his time and humble in his approach, but also because he keeps coming up with new things to say, keeps making the story more compelling, keeps making us believe that this is something worth talking about.What we talked aboutContinued discussion on whether any of the Mt. Hood ski areas would ever land on Indy; redemption and sales totals versus expectations for this past ski season; how the Indy Pass works from a business point of view; how Indy is able to sign headliners like Powder Mountain and Jay Peak, which could easily align with the Epic or Ikon passes; how Cannon kept visits high even as the mountain added an enormous number of blackout dates; White Pass finds the Epkon refugees; the power of Brundage and Tamarack as a combined destination; other popular Indy combos; the New England state that will definitely get a new full Indy Pass partner before next season; expansion potential in New York; the chances of Jay staying with Indy post-sale (whenever that happens); why Indy Pass prices will stay steady for 2022-23; why the Indy Pass processing fee exists and why it’s here to stay; the Indy Switch Pass; untangling the spaghetti bowl of last year’s blackout dates; fixing the Saturday problem; thoughts on the recent additions of Kelly Canyon, Bluewood, and Ski Sawmill; the surprising appeal of Swain; finally breaking into Colorado, with Sunlight; the number of Indy Pass visits that originate out of state; thoughts on Japan; dispensing with the resort target number; losing Marmot Basin; the genesis and purpose of the Allied Resorts program; begging Doug to shift Burke to full partner status; and why Indy began including cross-country ski areas and how the response has been so far.          Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewSince it debuted in 2008, the Epic Pass has both held steady and constantly evolved. Its premise, from the beginning, was fairly basic: unlimited access to all Vail Resorts, all the time. It launched with six mountains, and now includes access to 9,000. But almost annually, Vail has added some innovation or another: the Epic Local Pass, various versions of the Epic Day Pass, local and midweek passes, a massive lodging and on-mountain discount program, the Epic Mix tracking app, a payment plan, etc. Some of these innovations were more useful than others, but every year, we can expect something new. And that’s in addition to all the extra ski areas.Vail, skiing’s imperial fleet, rippling with aircraft carriers and battleships and submarines, is well equipped to dream up such annual salvos of newness. It’s impressive that Indy, with a staff that would be insufficient to captain a 30-foot fishing boat, has orchestrated a commando version of this evolution. The 2019 Indy Pass cost $199 and delivered two days each at 34 ski areas. There were no blackouts and no product variation (a few partners offered an add-on pass). The next year: 52 ski areas, plus a $99 kids pass and a $129 add-on pass, available uniformly across all partner ski areas. The Indy+ Pass and a payment plan also debuted. 2021 brought a (probably too large, Fish now admits) price increase, but access to 66 ski areas at launch and an additional 17 by December, including four in Japan.  By the time Indy confirmed its 2022-23 lineup last month, the roster stood at 83 downhill partners. An ambitious cross-country initiative seeks to add more than 30 Nordic partners by winter, and the standalone XC pass is just $69 (all Indy Pass holders get the XC days). And the Allied Resorts program, announced earlier this week, ensures that nearly any ski area that’s interested can fold itself into this nationally marketed network. Fish also held prices steady, upped the renewal discount, and introduced the Indy Switch Pass to encourage Epkon snobs to reconsider.There was plenty to talk about, is my point. And Fish, as always, accommodated, on one condition: for the love of God can we keep it to an hour?Questions I wish I’d askedI had meant to ask Doug about the possibility of pre-loading Indy tickets onto resort’s RFID cards, but I didn’t get to it. While he said that such integrations were “not practical,” he did provide the following statement, teasing a pretty cool tech upgrade coming for the season after next:In partnership with our tech partner Entabeni Systems, we will be rolling out an app for the 2023-24 season [I incorrectly indicated on Twitter earlier this week that this feature would be available for next ski season] that will allow our passholders to carry their pass on their phones. Among other features, it will contain a scannable QR code that can be read at the ticket window, eliminating the need for looking them up in our system.This app can be deployed without passing any additional costs on to our customers which we’d have to do if we issued a physical pass.What we got wrongI intimated that Powder Mountain was outside of the Wasatch Mountains, but the ski area in fact lies within this mountain range. I also suggested that Winter Park was a blacked-out mountain on the Ikon Pass, which it is not (on any version of the product other than the Ikon Session Pass). Doug also referred to “Wintergreen,” West Virginia. He meant Winterplace. Wintergreen is in Virginia, and is not an Indy Pass partner. Doug also referred to the marketing director of Sunlight, Colorado as “Tony Hawks” – his name is Troy Hawks, and you can (and should) follow him on Twitter here, since he’s the man who brough Indy Pass to Colorado.Why you should buy the Indy PassIn my head, gas is always a dollar a gallon. Even decades after that fleeting era when I pushed shopping carts for $4.35 an hour and drove a rusty pick-up, any sum over $15 to fill my gas tank baffles me. Candy bars are forever lodged at 35 cents, Hostess cupcakes at 55 cents – such were the prices when I would peddle my Huffy to the neighborhood Total in the 1980s.I’m sure there’s a name for this pricing nostalgia. Whatever it’s called, the first best thing about the Indy Pass has become a liability, as It-Used-to-Cost-$199 Bro forever peppers social media with his waxings of this bygone era. “When the Indy Pass came out, it was under $200 and there were no blackouts,” he will complain. “And it came with a pair of Volkls and a free Subaru. Now it costs $279, there’s all kinds of blackouts, and the courtesy ‘vehicle’ is just a Shetland pony without a saddle. It’s all going to hell!”Bros across America need to let it go. Yes, last year’s price jump was a little extreme. Fish admits as much in the interview. But it is still a very good deal – had it debuted at $279 with its current roster, it would seem like the greatest thing ever. That’s because it is. The glory in the Indy Pass is not in what it was – a coalition of 34 broadly distributed resorts – but in what it has become and is transforming into. We’re closing in on 100 partners, and we’ll likely blow right past that by the Fourth of July. God bless America. This is one damn fine product.There is one more dumbass Bro out there that befuddles Indy’s ascension: It’s-Not-Worth-It Bro. It’s-Not-Worth-It Bro’s narrative goes something like this: yes, it’s cool that Indy put all these mountains on one pass, but they’re not the sort of ski resorts that are “worth” traveling to Montana/Idaho/Utah for or anything.I beg your pardon? Scroll back to the chart at the top of this article. Red Lodge: 2,400 vertical feet, 1,635 acres, 250 inches of annual snowfall. Powder Mountain: 2,205 vert/8,464 acres (3,000 lift-served)/400 inches. Brundage: 1,921/1,920/320. Castle: 2,833/3,592/354. Exactly which district of Narnia do you call home if these numbers leave you yawning?There are a lot of good reasons to buy an Indy Pass: you live within a few hours of a half dozen or more partners and are looking for a reasonably priced family winter. You have an Epkon pass but are leary of voyaging through the gates of Mount Snow/Keystone/Mammoth/Crystal on a midwinter Saturday. You’ve already visited every high-speed demo center on the continent and are looking for something different. You’re Van Life Bro and want to ski an entire winter for less than five dollars. You want to support skiing’s equivalent of craft beer (only, in this case, the indie label is a lot less expensive). Or you just love skiing and everything about it, and you want to understand this dynamic world to the fullest extent possible.There are good reasons not to buy the Indy Pass, too: you don’t travel much, the mountains are too far, you are happy with your local, you dad’s private plane is too big to land at any mountain town airport other than Eagle. But if your goal is lots of skiing, and if you don’t exactly need a home mountain and have a little flexibility to travel, if you value novelty and don’t mind the occasional mile-long Hall double chair ride to the summit, then lock this thing in before prices increase on May 18.More Indy Pass on The Storm Skiing Podcast:Snow Ridge, New York GM Nick MirBeaver Mountain, Utah owner Travis SeeholzerLittle Switzerland, Nordic Mountain, The Rock Co-Owner Rick SchmitzTamarack, Idaho President Scott TurlingtonShawnee Mountain, Pennsylvania CEO Nick FredericksChina Peak, California CEO Tim CoheeLutsen and Granite Peak Owner Charles SkinnerCaberfae Peaks, Michigan Co-Owner and GM Tim MeyerWhaleback Executive Director Jon Hunt (recorded pre-Indy)Titus Mountain Co-Owner Bruce Monette Jr. (recorded pre-Indy)Indy Pass Founder Doug Fish (April 27, 2021 – 2nd appearance)West Mountain, New York owners Sara and Spencer Montgomery (recorded pre-Indy)Montage Mountain Managing Owner Charles Jefferson (recorded pre-Indy)Granite Peak, Wisconsin GM Greg FisherWaterville Valley, New Hampshire GM Tim SmithBolton Valley, Vermont President Lindsay DesLauriersBousquet GM and ownership (recorded pre-Indy)Saddleback, Maine GM Andy Shepard (recorded pre-Indy)Jay Peak, Vermont GM Steve WrightCannon Mountain, New Hampshire GM John DeVivoIndy Pass Founder Doug Fish (May 31, 2020 – 1st appearance)Berkshire East and Catamount, Massachusetts Owner Jon SchaeferBurk Mountain GM Kevin Mack (recorded pre-Indy)Magic Mountain, Vermont President Geoff HathewayThe Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 51/100 in 2022. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane). You can also email skiing@substack.com. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

Good morning friends, family and neighbors! It's Thursday, one more day before what looks to be a great weekend. Our guest today is our friend Nick Thompson who will be part of a great event this evening benefitting Simply Destinee Youth Center. Mental health, community, resources and taking care of each other are the topics of discussion today. Here is the news: - Thursday, May 26th from 9 am to 3 pm the Kane County Sheriff's Office will be hosting another forklift driver certification class. Registration is now open for this one day training class. Card certification is good for 3 years. Scan the QR code on the flyer shared to our social media. There is a registration fee of $25 which also covers your lunch! The link to register is: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/forklift-driver-certification-class-tickets-330823440817 - Aurora's Juneteenth celebration will be taking place on Saturday June 18th from 3:30 to 7:30 pm. This will be held at Martin Luther King Jr. park on the city's east side at Farnsworth & Grand boulevard/ Free admission and the public is invited! There will be prizes, poetry, live entertainment and a whole lot more. This event is sponsored by the African American Men of Unity, Aurora African-American Heritage Advisory Board and City of Aurora, IL, Government. Come out and have some fun this summer! #juneteenth - Last but not least, Saturday May 21st there will be a free community shredding event, hosted by the KCT Credit Union and the Aurora Public Library. You can also donate food items to the Aurora Area Interfaith Food Pantry & meet Representative Barbara Hernandez! This will take place from 9 to 11 am, and the downtown Aurora Santori branch of the public library is located at 101 S. River street. Only paper materials will be accepted. Have a wonderful day dear people. Get to know us by sending us an email to: goodmorningaurorail@gmail.com with any questions you have. Subscribe to the show on YouTube with this link: https://www.youtube.com/c/GoodMorningAuroraPodcast The second largest city's first daily news podcast is here. Tune in everyday to our FB Live from 8 am to 9 am. Make sure to like and subscribe to stay updated on all things Aurora. Twitter: goodmorningaur1 Instagram: goodmorningaurorail Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6dVweK5Zc4uPVQQ0Fp1vEP... Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/.../good-morning.../id1513229463 Anchor: https://anchor.fm/goodmorningaurora #positivevibes #positiveenergy #downtownaurora #kanecountyil #bataviail #genevail #stcharlesil #saintcharlesil #elginil #northaurorail #auroraillinois #auroramedia #auroranews #goodmorning #goodmorningaurora #comedy #news #dailynews #subscribe #youtube #podcast #spotify #positiveenergy #morningnews #morningshow #simplydestinee #thursday --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/goodmorningaurora/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/goodmorningaurora/support

Today on The Travel Agent Podcast, Chelsey and I talk about the NEW free software Proxi.co. This is going to be a game-changer for Travel Professionals. For more information read her bio below.  If you are looking for a more immersive experiential FAM that allows time for meaningful relationship building, gathering high-quality content, and a solid marketing strategy to increase your sales, Apply to The TAP FAM to South Africa 2022 TODAY! https://TheTravelAgentPodcast.com/famtrips    If you like the podcast you'll LOVE our Amazing Travel Agent Facebook Community: Join here: https://www.ttapgroup.com/     Bio: Chelsey Roney brings her business-building and strategy experience to Proxi, where she serves as COO and leads a team of 5, growing the business through sales and marketing. After graduating from Texas A&M, Chelsey joined Boeing where she worked in financial planning and analysis and Microsoft where she worked in a demand center that focused on B2B omnichannel marketing. She grew and sold two businesses: a SaaS business in the University space, and a local services business. Chelsey is also an active member of her community, dedicated parent, and passionate supporter of women and business.   Proxi - Proxi is the best way to engage clients with a highly engaging, interactive visualization of map of local hot spots or points of interest.We make it easy for travel agents to head to our site and create custom, interactive maps that you can embed on your website, send to clients or behind QR codes in print. These maps are highly beneficial in creating travel diaries and itineraries.   https://www.instagram.com/proxico/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/proxi-co https://www.tiktok.com/@proxi.co https://www.facebook.com/ProxiMaps https://mobile.twitter.com/proxi_co  

Woolies is going to let customers pay with QR codes, as it tries to turn up the heat against card giants like Mastercard and Visa.   Instagram will begin testing NFTs user profiles this week, so that you can now have your Bored Ape in your profile picture (but not everyone in the decentralised world of Web3 is happy about Zuck coming in).   UST, one of the largest crypto stablecoins, has just sank below 70 cents in value - which is very interesting... since it's meant to remain at its intended $1 peg.   ---   Download the free app (App Store): http://bit.ly/FluxAppStore Download the free app (Google Play Store): http://bit.ly/FluxappGooglePlay Build the financial wellbeing of your team with Flux at Work: https://bit.ly/fluxatwork   ---   The content in this podcast reflects the views and opinions of the hosts, and is intended for personal and not commercial use. We do not represent or endorse the accuracy or reliability of any opinion, statement or other information provided or distributed in these episodes. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bennifer is engaged again, Britney Spears is pregnant and Lindsay Lohan has three movie deals. Long live Y2K! This week, we're welcoming late 90s makeup mogul, the legendary Stila Founder Jeanine Lobell. We get the scoop on her brand new line, Neen, a Gen Z-inspired, monthly makeup subscription card that allows you to brilliantly test out formulas with throwback, peel-away samples like those found in the pages of fashion magazines. Plus, QR-coded peer-to-peer tutorials allow you to test your hand at lewks before you commit to buying.    But first, we're getting nostalgic, tracing Jeanine's journey from London club kid to Hollywood makeup artist, working with A-listers like Mariah Carey and Natalie Portman before creating Stila in 1994. We find out which part of Stila's iconic formulas have carried through to Neen - along with details on the first refillable compact that you can toss into your dishwasher (!!!) Plus, Jeanine reveals which products have stood the test of time in her own makeup routine, as she unveils her personal favorites for achieving an everyday slay.    Get social with us and let us know what you think of the episode! Find us on Instagram, Tiktok, Twitter. Join our private Facebook group, or give us a call and leave us a voicemail at 1-844-227-0302.    For any products or links mentioned in this episode, check out our website: https://breakingbeautypodcast.com/episode-recaps/ PROMO CODES: When you support our sponsors, you support the creation of Breaking Beauty Podcast!  Gladskin Gladskin with Micreobalance treats inflammatory conditions including eczema, rosacea and acne in a new, smarter and safer way. Get 15% off plus free shipping on your first order at gladskin.com/beauty   Nutrafol Grow thicker, healthier hair and support our show by going to Nutrafol.com and entering the promo code BREAKING to save $15 off your first month's subscription. This is their best offer anywhere and it is only available to US customers for a limited time. *Disclaimer: Unless otherwise stated, all products reviewed are gratis media samples submitted for editorial consideration.*   Hosts: Carlene Higgins and Jill Dunn Theme song, used with permission: Cherry Bomb by Saya
 Produced by Dear Media Studio

Hebe Uhart dedicó parte de su vida (y obra) a escribir crónicas de viajes. Pero como bien nos aclara Mariana Enríquez en el prólogo de la edición Crónicas completas (Adriana Hidalgo editora) estos textos más que describirnos el lugar buscan hablar del lenguaje. En resumen: un viaje hacia y por el camino de la palabra. Eso podrán notarlo claramente en la crónica que les leo hoy, en la que la narradora viaja a Tapalqué a buscar refraneros que, aparentemente es un oficio muy popular en la ciudad bonaerense. Aunque el resultado de su exploración resulta ser muy distinto al planeado. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 📚 Qué es POR QUÉ LEER Por qué leer es un proyecto multiplataforma que promueve el placer por la lectura. La idea es contagiar las ganas de leer mediante recomendaciones, reseñas y debates. ¡Cada vez somos más! 📚 Sobre CECILIA BONA Soy periodista, productora y creadora de contenidos. Trabajé en radios como MITRE, VORTERIX y CLUB OCTUBRE. Amo leer desde pequeña, incentivada especialmente por mi mamá. En Por qué leer confluyen muchas de mis pasiones -la radio, la edición de video, la comunicación- y por eso digo que está hecho con muchísimo amor. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 💰 ¿Te gustaría patrocinar POR QUÉ LEER? 📙 PATREON: http://bit.ly/patreonporqueleerok (¡incluye recompensas!) 📙 MERCADO PAGO: Primer estante: https://mpago.la/1rk7hyY Pequeña biblioteca: https://mpago.la/1m4SFj7 Colección: https://mpago.la/2TE7pP4 Si escaneás el QR del video podés patrocinar por el monto que quieras. 📙 PayPal: https://paypal.me/porqueleerok

There is no better way than to start the morning listening to Good Morning Aurora on this beautiful day. It's a lovely day outside! We have water, coffee and each other. Here's today's news items: - Going to the 17th of May, the disabilities listening tour will meet at various locations in Aurora. Hosted by the Seniors & Disability Services department of the City of Aurora, IL, Government, this initiative aims to connect individuals with direct resources. This is a very helpful way to voice the concerns of all members of our community. Scan the QR code on the flyer or call (630) 256-4636 for more information. - Lilo's Spring Fling Market is taking place Saturday May 14th from 10am to 3 pm at 3 N. Smith street here in Aurora. The event will be in remembrance of our armed forces and honor mothers. Booth fees and proceeds will benefit our friends of Mutual Ground. This will be a kid friendly event with raffles, prizes and lots of fun. Scan the QR code on the flyer and follow Lilo's Productions on Facebook. - Saturday May 21st there will be a free community shredding event, hosted by the Kane County Teachers Credit Union and the Aurora Public Library. You can also donate food items to the Aurora Area Interfaith Food Pantry & meet State Representative Barbara Hernandez! This will take place from 9 to 11 am, and the downtown Aurora Santori branch of the public library is located at 101 S. River street. Only paper materials will be accepted. Tomorrow Buenos Días Aurora returns for another great episode. We hope you all enjoyed today's news. Have a great day and enjoy this weather. We will see you all Thursday! Subscribe to the show on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/c/GoodMorningAuroraPodcast The second largest city's first daily news podcast is here. Tune in everyday to our FB Live from 8 am to 9 am. Make sure to like and subscribe to stay updated on all things Aurora. Twitter: goodmorningaur1 Instagram: goodmorningaurorail Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6dVweK5Zc4uPVQQ0Fp1vEP... Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/.../good-morning.../id1513229463 Anchor: https://anchor.fm/goodmorningaurora #positivevibes #positiveenergy #downtownaurora #kanecountyil #bataviail #genevail #stcharlesil #saintcharlesil #elginil #northaurorail #auroraillinois #auroramedia #auroranews #goodmorning #goodmorningaurora #comedy #news #dailynews #subscribe #youtube #podcast #spotify #positiveenergy #morningnews #morningshow #tuesday --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/goodmorningaurora/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/goodmorningaurora/support

The famous Green Bay Packers Coach Vince Lombardi often referred to the importance of the basics in the American Football game, the blocking and tackling.  Being an Aussie and a Rugby fan, I sort of know what he is talking about.  The brilliant plays, full length of the field returns, Hail Mary throws, the tactics and strategies are all important, but if the basics are not being done properly, it all comes crashing down and you will never win.  Sales is the same.   Blocking and tackling is boring, grinding, not flashy and not exciting.  There are many aspects of sales which are dead boring, painful, annoying and irritating, but they have to be done.  For some salespeople though, landing the whale client is a much more scintillating idea.  I have had a number of salespeople, who were very talented, smart individuals, who found all that blocking and tackling was for lesser mortals.  They decided to start at the top and work up from there.  Their intelligence proved to be a stumbling block to success in sales. That big deal would be the game changer.  This client is going to be a huge contributor to profits, once the deal is landed.  Except I am still waiting years later for that deal to be landed.  That revenue they trumpeted never turned up and they are gone, gone, gone.   Recently a friend of mine asked me to coach someone whose business was struggling.  In the course of the conversation, it became clear that the blocking and tackling of sales wasn't exciting for him.  Here is a revelation – it isn't exciting for anyone!  Nevertheless, the business needed income and he was the one designated to go out and get the deals.  Our mindset can work against us, as well as for us.  If we want to pursue bright shiny objects, because that is exciting and we want to avoid the slog of sales because that is boring, we will be out of a job or out of our business.  We have to change our mindset and there is nothing like survival to focus your attention where it needs to be.   The pandemic has not negatively affected all industries, but it has hammered most, mine included.  This is the most difficult time in business I have ever experienced, due to a catalyst we haven't seen in play since the Spanish Flu in 1918. There is no corporate memory on how to deal with this existential threat to corporate survival.    Clients are now working from home.  You call their office and all you get is subordinate obscurantism regarding their email address or their phone number or any other details about how to get in contact with them.  The blocking and tackling of cold calling has become so irritating in Japan.    Maybe it is the same everywhere, but here there is a definite mindset that anyone calling the company is an enemy and they must be thwarted at every turn.  The boss's minions who answer the phone probably imagine they are doing a good job keeping their boss away from callers, but are they really helping?  The wheels of commerce need to turn and nothing happens in business until a sale is made.  We need new and better services than we did pre-pandemic, but it is proving very hard to get that message out.   Consequently, cold calling is in remission for most salespeople.  Blocking and tackling still has to move forward and we need to think of different ways of grabbing buyer attention.  In normal times, turning up to the office and trying to see the buyer would be thought to be inefficient.  Tobikomi eigyo (飛び込み営業) needs to make a comeback.  It is much harder to eject people from the office reception than on the phone or over email.  Companies are getting back to the office at least a couple of days a week, so there is a chance the buyer will be there and guess what?  They are not meeting other sellers because the guard dogs are keeping salespeople at bay and no one else is just dropping in.  Naturally, many of the newer buildings have elaborate entry procedures requiring QR codes etc., but not every buyer is thus shielded from us dropping by.    Is it efficient?  Compared to just getting blocked all of the time, it is slightly better than nothing.  At least it gives us a chance to meet the buyer and set up a formal appointment for a later stage.  Is it enjoyable, just suddenly barging into the reception area and trying to meet the buyer?  Not really, but you need a thick hide, if you want to be in sales, so you have harden up.  By the way, if anyone ever complains to you about your tactics to see the buyer, just say, “Yes, I can completely understand your viewpoint and I am also sure that this is the type of mindset and approach you would want to see from your own sales team, when facing these tough times due to the pandemic”.  Believe me they will quickly get the point and even if you are still blocked, there has been no brand damage.   Sending something interesting by mail is another good idea.  The guard dog will block your call but will diligently deliver the mail package to the boss's desk.  Put together some contents which will get the buyer interested.  Make the package slightly lumpy, so that it doesn't look like a bunch of boring documents.  What ever you need to put in there, it better answer the buyer's most pressing need and be able to inform the buyer of that fact in two seconds.  The window of attention is only showing a sliver these days, as everyone is so busy.  We have to make the most of the chance we have manufactured.   Blocking, tackling and grinding drives us all crazy, but we cannot defy the truth of the importance of mastering the basics in sales.  You can talk up a storm, project the arrival of the whale any moment now and make all manner of excuses, but either the deal gets done and the money gets banked or it doesn't.  Back to basics everyone, if you want to survive what the world is throwing at us all right now.     

Katie Notopoulos (technology reporter for Buzzfeed) joins Kurt and Scotty to talk about Dallas getting Rick-Rolled by a massive QR code, pizza shop workers that took down a robber only to realize it was their former boss, giving lions oxytocin and a man who got his nose broken when a paraglider crashed into him! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

NOTE - Podcasts normally come out on Wednesdays, but as a favor to Intuiface - which is at this week's ISE trade show in Spain - I moved it up a day to coincide with the show's opening day ... The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT One of the big trends in the software world is the whole idea of no code development - the premise that both programmers and mere mortals can create applications without getting their typing fingers dirty and brains fried doing traditional computer programming. The proposition is that no code development platforms can cut out a lot of time and cost associated with pulling applications together, and also deal with the reality that good programmers are in high demand and therefore scarce. The French software firm Intuiface is in the interesting position of having offered a no code platform long before no code was a discussion point, so the folks there are a great resource for discussing the implications for the digital signage and interactive display market. I spoke with Geoff Bessin, the CMO and main voice for Intuiface, about the distinctions between no code and low code development platforms, and how they differ from the simple drag and drop, what you see is what you get user interfaces that are common in digital signage content management systems. We also dig into the benefits, the limitations, and more than anything, why you should know and care about no code. Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS TRANSCRIPT Geoff, thank you for joining me. Can you give me the rundown first on what Intuiface is all about?  Geoff Bessin: Will do, Dave, thank you for having me. So Intuiface is a no-code platform dedicated to the creation of interactive digital content. That includes digital signage, but really it can anything in the venue. It could be a museum exhibition, could be a sales pitch for a movie sales team, could be anything at a trade show, something in a real estate office, et cetera. So you create it, you deploy it, you can do analytics with it. It's all good. And the company is based in France, correct?  Geoff Bessin: We are headquartered in a town called Labège, which is right outside Toulouse in France. Although I'm not, but it's funny, my name is Geoffrey Besson, so both my first and last name look French. So people always assume it's French, but that's not the case. I'm in Boston. Can you speak a lick of French? Geoff Bessin: Oui. Yes.  Good for you! I wanted to talk about no-code software, cause you guys have been no-code before people were even using that term and no-code is one of these trends, just like headless CMS, that seems to be bubbling up and maybe people don't understand a lot about it yet. Geoff Bessin: Yeah, you could go back to the 80s and find things like HyperCard where you were enabling non-developers to create an application of some sorts. So it goes back a long way, but in terms of a movement, generating notice, gaining investment and having companies spend money on it, it's only been the past few years.  I can tell you that statistics are now saying that the market size, the amount of money being spent on no-code software used to create apps is almost $14 billion. It's a lot of money being pumped into these apps. And in fact, more than 65% of apps are now created using no-code tools. So more than 50%, more than half of apps are being built with no-code software. It is the predominant means of delivering applications these days.  What's the distinction between no-code and low-code, because I've heard both terms. Geoff Bessin: There's no formal distinction. You can't point at it and go, “Oh, this one's no-code” like you just went over the line. But the idea is that with low-code, there are back doors. There are means to enhance, to extend, to facilitate integration that might involve a little bit of coding. Even that coding could be simplified based on maybe either a scripting language that is native to the tool or a public scripting language like Ruby.  Whereas no-code is just 100%, you're not going to see code anywhere, and so you are in a way limited to the sandbox provided by the no-code platform, what it is you're able to deliver is limited by what you can piece together with the Lego blocks of that platform. no-code gives you those little back doors to branch yourself out.  So what does it mean for development? Does it distance or mediate the need for application developers completely, and just any old end-user can produce an application without having to engage developers or is it more something that accelerates the development process and just gets some cost and time out of the way? Geoff Bessin: I think that question brings us to who's doing it, and why are they doing it? As I mentioned, no-code has exploded recently, and it is due to a set of developments that have driven application development to what is now called the “citizen developer.”  Trends such as a shortage of developers, it's not that we're trying to get rid of them. It's that there's not enough. I saw one statistic that back in 2020, there were 1.2 million unfilled developer jobs in the United States, just the US but 1.2 million developer jobs unfilled in the US and colleges and universities were only cranking out about 400,000 developers. There's a shortage. So it's not that we don't want them, we don't have them. What do you do about that? There was also COVID, which has greatly accelerated investment in these no-code platforms, because everything moved online, and when everything moved online, everything needed to be digitized and companies realized we have to move now but we don't have enough resources, so how the heck are we going to digitize these things?  And then there's also tangential, but influential, the fact that even in our own home, we're not coders, but we are programmers. If I'm working with my Nest thermostat, that's programming. I just got a puppy and they have these apps that you can then program to see how many steps they've taken and how much water they drink, that's programming, and the digital native is used to controlling their environment digitally. There are tools out there that enable them to realize their ideas as an application, and somebody has to build it because there's not enough developers to go around. That's what really kicked the no-code market in the butt. What we're seeing subsequently is that the developer shortage is being filled by these citizen developers producing applications, maybe for personal use, maybe for internal employee use, maybe for customer us, it depends. Those developers are now being transitioned to work on larger projects, more intricate projects. They have more time arguably to focus on the big tickets stuff that still needs the hardcore development, offloading their responsibility from the simpler things that can now be handled by that citizen developer. Are there trade offs that you have to accept, to use no-code instead of just doing your own thing? Geoff Bessin: Certainly. There are obvious advantages, there's speed and there's costs benefits. There's a big productivity boost, but of course there's trade offs. I like this notion of Legos. You have these prebuilt blocks and this is a finite number of block options that you can combine in an infinite number of ways. At the end of the day, you're still limited to those blocks, right? And so if I'm using a no-code platform and I need a block that doesn't exist, I'm stuck.  Now, I suppose if it's a low-code platform, depending on what I need to achieve,okay, maybe I can put something together if I have the skill, maybe I don't, but if I don't have the skill or if the opportunity with the platform doesn't exist, I am limited, and I think that might be the fundamental challenge is what can I do? What can I realize? Cause recognize that a lot of these platforms are built to be generic, to address sort of breadth, not always depth, and so that can be a challenge. You are also, of course, relying on them to be responsible for performance and reliability. You are handing over that duty, that responsibility to the provider, the no-code platform. I hope they're doing a good job. Because it's out of my hands, I can't control that, and so those are the big risks: can I achieve exactly what I want or am I making compromises? Am I achieving the level of performance? My ability to deploy? My ability to collect data analytics? My ability to manage that deployment?  There's 150-200 platforms across the spectrum offering no-code and low-code options. You might be making some compromises on the way, certainly are, but as I shared with you, 65% of apps are now built with no-code platforms. So companies have decided it's worth the risk.  What's the distinction between no-code and what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) user interfaces? Geoff Bessin: No-code, I think it's more of a connotation, not a denotation. I think you could argue that a lot of no-code platforms are WYSIWYG. Intuiface is a no-code platform, it's a drag and drop tool. It's a WYSIWYG. The connotation of WYSIWYG, it could be for a developer. It could be for anybody of any skill set. So it's more of a generic catchall for applications enabled to create other applications by dragging components and you can see what they look like at design time and development time.  No-code connotes the non-developer, the citizen developer that you don't have coding skills and you're not expected to have those skills. So I think that's it.  You sent me a white paper that kind of goes into this and you're making the argument that while no-code is out there, it's exploding and growing and everything else, there's really no application, I think you called it a ‘no-code blind spot' in terms of in-venue applications. What do you mean by that?  Geoff Bessin: So let's define in-venue because that is exactly our contention. In-venue is an encapsulation of any digital deployment out of the home. It could be digital signage, could be all those things I mentioned with Intuiface as well, the museum exhibition, the sales presentation, real estate office, et cetera. It is out of the home. It is not my phone though. It is not my PC. I'm not browsing the web at home. I'm out of my home, I'm in a venue and there is some digital content trying to communicate to educate, to promote, to sell to me.  That domain has been, I think with the exception of Intuiface, untouched by the no-code movement. For sure, if you look at the landscape of companies delivering solutions to address the needs of the citizen developer, there is nothing out there addressing these in-venue deployments. It's all about web and mobile apps and some websites, that's it. So if you want to create digital signage, if you want to create that museum exhibition, the sales pitch, there is no option out there now, and which brings us David, I know you're going to want to ask this, which is, will, aren't all digital signage platforms, no-code? Which is great question, Dave, by the way... You are a psychic! Geoff Bessin: That's a yes, but, it is absolutely true that you don't write code, but there are certain expectations of a no-code platform that the traditional digital signage CMS cannot fulfill, and it's interesting if I take a step back, really by definition, it has always been the non-developer on the digital signage side, hasn't it? You buy a platform, there's a CMS, the user of the content management system is the content person. They're not coding anything. They're working with the CMS, they're assigning content to zones and they're day partying. By definition from day one, digital signage was always a non-developer domain, whereas web and mobile apps and these sorts of things were always the developer domain.  The no-code movement was, “Hey, this complicated stuff, we gotta make it simpler. We need the citizen developer involved.” So they brought no-code to the domain that started with developers, which I think is one of the explanations for why it didn't really come over to the in-venue side yet, because it was always non-coder users, but there are certain expectations of the no-code platform, that is not really in scope of the platform delivering in-venue content. A simple example, just to give you one would be the notion of context. To react to the user, react to the environment, in real time in that context, and do something as a result that is inherently this notion of logic. If this, then that. That's coding, right? It's got the whiff of coding and how do you do that? And there's a list of things we can discuss about what makes in-venue unique. But it requires the accommodation of additional concerns that are beyond the scope of what a traditional CMS does and that no other no-code platform does across the no-code spectrum.  I guess what you're saying in certain respects is you can develop a playlist, do all the basic functionality of a digital sign, you can target content and everything else, but the moment you get into a request to do something different, that's interactive, that as you say, maybe responds to triggers and so on, that gets a lot more complicated, and at that point you're putting in, if you're an end user, you're putting in a request to your reseller or to the software company directly saying, can you do this? And they'll say, yes, we can, but it's going to take this amount of time, this amount of money and, we can't get this to you for six months cause it's off of our roadmap or whatever… Is that one of the arguments you'd make?  Geoff Bessin: I would say that for sure. You see, a lot of companies have libraries. Here's our template library, here's our plugin library, here's our integration library. Oh, you want something we don't have? We can build that for you. Here's the cost. Here's how long it's going to take. That's one example. I can tell you that from a Intuiface perspective, we don't have any libraries. We haven't really prebuilt anything. Our paradigm is to enable integration with any web service, to create any UI, to integrate with any content management system, to have that ubiquity, which means that we don't have to build anything for our clients. The customer can do that. But it also means that, well, you better have a good idea and you better need to know what you. Because you're starting with a tabula rasa, but yes, that is certainly one good example of how you fulfill these sort of unique needs you might have thought about. I'll give you another example, which is retail point of sale. How would you build that thing? To me, that qualifies as an in-venue application. That's in the venue, right? I can order through a website, but do I want to put a website on a kiosk? It's a different domain. It's a different paradigm. It has different design requirements, different expectations, different issues about security, about being able to run potentially offline. But having to work with peripherals, having hyper-local context dependence, there are all of these concerns that will impact that user experience in the venue that may not be relevant or at all to a web experience. If I want to build that thing, how much flexibility am I going to have? Now there are companies like Grubber, which are pretty much pre-built everything, right? All you do is you push your menu into their back office system, and you're good to go. You just have to hope it does exactly what it is you want because you're constrained within the confines of what they offer for design, with the offer for business process, what they offer in terms of context, awareness, and reaction and if you need to make any kind of changes, you're dependent on them to make those changes, and that has a cost and a time penalty to it.  What kind of skillsets do you realistically need to use a no-code particularly in the context of Intuiface? I'm assuming the proposition is anybody can sit down, but you still have to plan out, you have to have some methodical thinking about what you want to do with what the decision tree is on all that stuff, right? Geoff Bessin: You do, and that gives me an opportunity to give you just a brief history of Intuiface because we were never a no-code company, that wasn't how we were oriented. The company was actually founded back in 2002. It was founded by a couple of PhDs with expertise in touch technology. And from day one, it was about bringing user experiences to a lot of it was, believe it or not, the defense industry, but also retail, touch-driven user experiences for something, to accomplish something. The company was always about the user experience.  At the end of the day, as great as your touch technology might be, nobody cares if it's not usable. If it doesn't make it easy to achieve some goal, and so Intuiface, when it was born it was all about the user experience, and in fact, most of its early hires were focused on that, on how to make something intuitive and that where the company name comes from, an intuitive interface. To make intuitive user experiences that we're driven by interaction like touch. What happened was we were servicing all of these organizations, again, a lot of defense, Intuiface is headquartered just outside the Toulouse, as i mentioned. So you have the big aerospace and defense industry located in Toulouse like Airbus. So a lot of those clients, but also retail, commerce. Focused on user experience, and it was hard to scale the business because you had this deep technical dependency underneath because it's driven by touch and we're going back 15 years, so expensive hardware, challenging technology, and at the same time, trying to come up with these really intuitive user interfaces, it was a challenge, and we decided internally, I say we, but I wasn't here yet. Intuiface decided internally that we need to come up with something that can accelerate our ability to deliver good user experiences on top of this touch technology. The company builds something called Intuikit, it was used internally by user experience experts, designers, and people good at aesthetics, people good at thinking about the customer. They were not developers. Ultimately, we decided this thing called Intuikit is pretty awesome, maybe that's our business, and so we're. It's a short story about how the software platform Intuiface was born. We were always about the user experience. It is our expectation that our users are experts in the users, creating intuitive interfaces, not In having any necessary knowledge about development. So that is our expectation, and that's what we think is appropriate. You need to be creative. You need to understand the user. You need to understand the domain. You don't have to worry about the platform you're building it on. That should not be your problem. You should be all about solving the customer's problem. I realize you work with a bunch of industries, but a lot of your activity is in digital signage. If I am an end-user and I'm using ACME digital signage software, can I use the Intuiface with it? Does it plug into it or are there restrictions? Do you have to go through door number one or door number two, you can't use both doors? Geoff Bessin: Probably, you can't do. Typically the content management system used by the DS platform is proprietary. It's a closed system. It doesn't have a published API. So we couldn't read from it. Intuiface conversely has its own runtime as well. We can run side by side. In fact, on Windows, we have the ability to run side by side with other applications, we have had customers who are not ready to transition off their existing DS investment. So they were sort of a cohabitating interactive Intuiface based content at one part of the screen and traditional DS content and others were cohabitating that screen. But normally no, that wouldn't be how one would do it.  Certainly Intuiface is positioned around interactivity. We believe that by definition, once you introduce interactivity and the need to be responsive and context, and to accommodate not just touch, but sensors and voice and computer vision, when you need to account for all of these things, you need to be very good at that if-when, right? And that notion of conditional responses to events which are completely typically outside the realm of the traditional DS platform. That's where we start, and then clients can decide, do I want these Intuiface to co-exist with this DS platform? Or do we need to make some sort of transition. If I'm an end-user and I start with Intuiface and have a series of interactive screens that are doing some sort of functionality, whatever it may be and then I decide, I want to also have an expanding network of “dumb screens” that are just running traditional digital signage content in some sort of a sequence. Can you do that too?  Geoff Bessin: Sure, the content doesn't know it's in a dumb playlist, right? The content is fine. Certainly you can do that. The Intuiface was born, solving the interactive problem. And it's interesting, Dave, because in the early days of selling our platform, digital signage was something else. You didn't touch signage. So our communication to the marketplace was not interactive signage. There wasn't such a thing. There was interactive content for kiosks. That was the world when we first walked in, you were touching something such as a table or a kiosk. There were touch screens, very expensive touch screens. You could be bound on a wall, never a perceptive pixel from a million years ago. Like those CNN screens and that sort of thing. You spend $2,500, you can have a touchscreen, but bylarge, it was kiosks and that sort of thing.  What happened was that they had this largely commoditized, digital signage space, hundreds of companies offering traditional digital signage and customers had iPhones in their pocket and they had iPads at home, and they started thinking about interactivity. They see the voting coverage on CNN and people tapping screens. So can you do that? That's why we started getting questions about traditional digital signage. Can you fulfill that as well? We were like yeah, we can, and over the years we developed additional capability to accommodate it.  The paradigm is still different. We don't have a traditional notion of a playlist for example, but you can create a playlist within Intuiface. We're using our Lego blocks, not just to build interactive content, but non-interactive content as well. You can do both.  So it was something you could do, but it's not your focus?  Geoff Bessin: I would say, we'res interactive first, but the traditional broadcast signage, and I don't mean this in a judgy way, it's not typically that complicated. So if it is a playlist of stuff, images, videos, documents, it's very easily done, but people very rarely come to us, Dave, with traditional first. They're coming to us because they need to solve an interactive need, and oh, by the way, long-term you can transition to traditional content as well. I agree that, the conventional side of digital signage, the meat potatoes, run this stuff at this time and these locations and all that is commoditized and pretty simple, and I always say that the complicated stuff is behind the scenes, the device management, the API integrations and all that sort of stuff. Are you at a level now where you can provide the building blocks, the Lego blocks to do the interactive piece, but also enable the end user to monitor and remotely manage all that?  Geoff Bessin: We do offer that, and in fact we offer both of what you mentioned, cause you also mentioned the API integration, we can accommodate that as well. On the device management side, certainly we have an awareness of the devices in the field and you can set up notifications if things are going wrong, that sort of thing, you can see what's running on those devices. On certain platforms, you can remotely update on runtime, that sort of thing. We're not averse to working with a device and platform management options, to collaborate with them in a deployment, but we do offer some of that. And with API integration, we've actually offered for six years. It's been a long time and it's one of those things, Dave, where, as I said, we weren't born with no-code. We were born worried about user experience and we realized we looked in the mirror and wen, oh, we're actually no-code.  We've been offering a software called API Explorer.  You can automatically create an integration, an integration with a web API without writing code And it is a real time integration reading from writing to that web API. It could be a back office system, ERP application, CRM application could be a database wrapped in an API, could be a device on the internet of things, all of these options can be integrated with a running Intuiface experienced by a non-developer, using API Explorer. So we've offered that for some time.  We now have our own CMS but you don't have to use it. Our original value prop is to use whatever you want. We have API Explorer, you can plug into whatever you want. We have now introduced our own because depending on the scenario and the requirements of the project, it just makes better sense to use ours. But we still have customers that would rather use that other thing, or Dave, they're integrated with the ERP application. They're building a retail point of sale application with Intuiface, and they have integrated with the ERP system, they need to work with the API and you can do that. Who would you describe as your kind of core end-users, core customers?  Geoff Bessin: I would say 50 to 60% of our customers are agencies and integrators. So we can discuss with the actual user might be, but I would say more than half of our installed base are agencies and integrators with their own clients. And there is a spectrum of reasons why they're using Intuiface. Some of them, they don't have the development skill, but they want to offer interactivity. Others have men and women on the bench with the skill, but they don't have the scale. That's the problem with people is that they can work on one thing at a time. And what we find is that a lot of the integrators in particular will be taking Intuiface so they can scale. They can take on a larger volume of maybe small and mid-sized projects that they can do with Intuiface, and then put the men and women on the bench onto the bigger high value projects. We find that customers are saving 80% of time and 60% of costs versus customer that don't use Intuiface. So it's very easy for them, and it's an easy pitch. Conceptually, if you can build an interactive application, doing exactly what you want with a no-code platform is probably cheaper and faster than if I wrote code, so it's an easy idea to wallow and it is what our customers experience. So that's what you'll find. I would say the majority 60%-55% agencies and integrators, the rest are the small and midsize museums, schools, retailers, sales offices, marketing, and sales teams, they want to do it themselves. And do they want to do it themselves because of cost or control? Geoff Bessin: Often it's because of cost. They have ambition or they've been bitten, Dave, where they have outsourced it. You don't see this going in, but you meet an agency. You tell them what you want, they agree and deliver something in two months that doesn't resemble what you wanted, so you ask for revisions, and this cycle continues while you pay for the time. It's not an agile process, and again, I'm not casting aspersions at the agency, they are our customers. But their sales pitch is we use Intuiface so we can deliver what you want faster than the other guys that do exactly what you want, and by the way, if you don't like the work we did, you can take it with you. If I pay an agency to write custom code and I'll be dissatisfied, I'm starting from zero with another agency. So you have that kind of portability benefit as well. So yes, a lot of the small and midsize, it's budget driven or based on their experience, they have limited budgets. They outsourced it, and they were just satisfied. We do have the occasional large enterprise. They want to have maybe an interactive sales pitch. So the marketing and sales team is driving the creation of the collateral, hiring a developer to make. I could use PowerPoint. Why am I hiring? It's hard to justify this pay developers to code a sales pitch, I can just use PowerPoint. Hold on a second, here's this thing called Intuiface. I can build an interactive sales pitch for my Salesforce. I'm still using the tool. I'm the creative team on the marketing sales team. But I'm creating something that is far more novel and engaging than a PowerPoint. When the pandemic hit, I speculated and I'm sure many people speculated that this was going to be a difficult time for people who were in the touch and interactive business. What happened instead is that touch actually went up in demand and self service applications became very much a big development initiative. Have you seen that happening in the last couple of years?  Geoff Bessin: We have, and then ultimately it turns out people are more afraid of other people than touch screens. And our business has rebounded quite well. What we were hoping for, and it seems to be the case is that demand didn't drop. It got stuck behind a wall. There was a dam and the demand was building behind the dam, and you couldn't open the dam cause nobody was out of the house and the waters were rising, people are finally out of the house, and you opened up the floodgates. So we're seeing a really nice rebound that is complimented, not just by the building interest anyway, but the kind of renewed interest in facilitating a non-human interaction, which sounds horrible culturally, in their place of business or what have you. And again, it's not just touch. Yes, I think probably most people would rather take a little Purell. They're fine with that, but still some people are not, and maybe they can use their mobile phone or scan a QR code.  But it's also a labor issue. It's harder to hire people and if you can use self service, then you don't have to worry so much about staffing. Geoff Bessin: There's that whole other thing too which is the cost of staffing and training and enabling and equipping and there's that as well. So for sure, there is certainly a perceived increase in interest, and interactivity of any kind and Intuiface has always been focused on any kind of interactivity, not just touch, and certainly this ability to use my mobile phone to interact with content is an increasingly interesting example, using gestures to interact, using voice to interact. So I'm not touching but I'm still working with technology directly rather than mediating through somebody else. So all of that is going on.  Last question: you guys have certainly in the last few years had a presence at ISE and at other trade shows, what are you doing in the next few weeks and months? Is Intuiface going to be something that people can walk up and get demos for?  Geoff Bessin: We will be at ISE, so that'll be our first trade show in however many years we'll be there. So you and I are speaking on April 26th and that's why I say in just a couple of weeks, we will be there with a booth, and we certainly hope we'll see others there.  We used to actually have our user conference in parallel with ISE, in-person and the pandemic put the kibosh on that. We've done virtual user conferences every year since then, and we like that because you don't have to travel, and so our user conference will be forever more be virtual. We actually have our user conference in three weeks that people are welcome to join. It's free, it'll be online, but we plan to be at ISE. We plan to be a DSE in the US and I think it's now November, and we'll be participating when your colleagues at Avitas are running DSE in parallel and ISE will be participating in that as well. So we're starting. We're treating this as back to normal. It's interesting, Dave working on my travel plans, flying into Spain. But you can't just get on a plane, you need to jump through certain things because of COVID. But it looks as of today, they're not even requiring masks onsite. That doesn't seem to be a requirement. Just the honor system that you are vaccinated or recovered and we'll see how that goes, but we're excited to be there. We'll have a big booth and about eight of us, we'll have a lot of people there.  And where can people find Intuiface online?  Geoff Bessin: Dave, thank you for asking, Intuiface.com. They can also just contact us. You are listening to Jeff Besson. You can just email me bessin@intuiface.com. The product can be tried for free, Dave. No credit card required. People can poke at it and see if what we're saying is true.  All right, thank you. Geoff Bessin: Dave. It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me.