Podcasts about so danny

Speaker 1 (00:03):Welcome to the Solarpreneur podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail. I teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bringing the top solar dogs, the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals. What is a Solarpreneur you might ask a Solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery. And you are about to become what's going on. Solarpreneurs. We are backSpeaker 2 (00:45):With another fantastic episode and I'm super excited today because we have one of the OGs of knocking on the show today. His name is Danny Pessy. Thanks for coming on Danny. What's up guys? How you doing? Oh yeah. So we're excited to have Danny on and if you haven't heard of him, you're probably living under a rock cause this guy is a producing awesome content. He's got 11,000 followers on Instagram. He's all over the place. You've been the door to order Connors or anything like that. You've seen him in all his, uh, his, uh, you know, like mob outfits he's wearing like tiger skins and stuff like that, showing up to events. So you can't miss this guy, but beside the flyer that he brings to the industry, he is definitely a top producer. Um, I mean you've sold thousands and thousands of alarm accounts, Danny, and doing tons of solar now.Speaker 2 (01:40):So, uh, yeah. What was your top summer like 350 alarm counts accounts 456, 456. Ooh, okay. Fire. So you're crushing a man and then now you're doing some solar deals, right? Yeah. So we, uh, so we we've trained, we've pivoted our business, um, from, uh, security to solar. So, you know, for the last, uh, 60 days I've been heavy doing solar and it's been, it's been a fun transition and we've, uh, we've started a setter closer model and a self-gen model. And, uh, we've transitioned our alarm sales reps to solar and we are converting our alarm technicians into solar installations and the company I worked for Titanium, we're transitioning now into being installation company. So we're going to control the whole process. Yeah, it's been, it's been fun. And you know, it's been, it's been mentally, uh, emotionally challenging to shift industries. Cause alarms have been great to me. I never had, I've never had a bad year and it's because of the environment that I grew up in and, you know, working for good. And for so long, I felt myself to a very high standard. And, you know, obviously that is like the standard of top performing reps and you, a lot of, uh,Speaker 3 (03:00):A lot of, uh, you know, what I've been able to accomplish just because of the identity that I held as, you know, a top performing rep. And so with me identifying as that, it was hard to make that transition into solar. And so I've had to do a lot of work to do it. Cause, you know, it's kind of like leaving a girlfriend that's been successful and you know, it's unfortunate, but a lot of people don't realize that like emotional attachments to your business can be devastating to you. And, you know, a perfect example, my uncle, he used to run, um, an art deco decor company and he was crushing it in the nineties and two thousands. And what he would sell was his high ticket item, um, sculpture. So he'd make brass sculptures and, uh, you know, beautiful light fixtures. And there were thousands of thousands of dollars, high-quality brass.Speaker 3 (03:52):And what happened was the marketplace show. It slowly shifted from high ticket, high cost items to Ikea. Cheap would buy it for a couple of years, throw them away when you're done and he never pivoted his business. And then eventually, um, you know, all the money that you've accumulated over the years, uh, kinda went, you know, down the drain. And he was held emotionally to his attachment of the art that he was creating rather than shifting with the industry. And, you know, he was pretty fortunate because he made a couple of good real estate investment deals and they panned out for him more than in business ever did. So that's a good lesson. That's a good lesson right there for everybody watching this. And you know, the, the other lesson that it taught me was making sure that you're pivoting with the marketplace. And even though you want something to work so bad, you have to realize you have to follow with the trends. And that led me to, you know, be more, uh, comfortable making the shift over towards solar because obviously it's a, government's paying you to do it. It makes sense. And you know, that's, that's, that's where I had to go. And so now I've had a great transition doing it. I think I did, uh, you know, I think my first 30 days on the doors, I sold like 30 to 35 systems, so wow. It was insane. Yeah. So it was good. Nice man. I sold it to transition.Speaker 2 (05:11):Yeah. Well it's awesome. And yeah, I mean, we've had tons of alarm guys on the show and you know, even one year old homie's Rob Bramer, he was one of the OGs of alarms. He's doing solar. So I mean, I think, I think everyone's seen that solar is the way to go and um, I mean, alarms, Zoe going to be there, but slower, you've got a great product. You're saving people money. Um, you're making awesome commissions. So yeah, I don't blame you. Um, but yeah, I know you're doing a ton with, you know, coaching consulting. Now you guys got your knock star, which by the way I had just, I'm in their group, that's just finishing up here and, um, it's been some awesome content. So I've got to thank you and Taylor McCarthy for that definitely brought them the value and I've learned a ton from you guys. So it's part of the reason I wanted to get you on the show here. Um, yeah. So we'll go and do a couple of things that, you know, you taught me, but I guess for you and Taylor, why'd, you guys decide to start on rockstar and kind of go towards that and consulting and coaching too.Speaker 3 (06:10):Well, it it's, it's been fun. Me and Taylor, we, you know, this is our 13th and 14th year knocking doors. And so, you know, there's a lot of, lot of younger guys that are coming into the industry right now. And, you know, we were very blessed. I started at 18 years old, I'm 31 now. And so, um, when we got into the doors, like we were kids man, and then door to door, honestly shaped my life. I didn't know what I want to do with my life. And, you know, I was a stand-up comic and improv common performing down in LA, not making any money and literally door to door has paved the path for me to, you know, achieve my dreams. And so, um, that, that, um, attachment or that like, uh, reward the door doors that they've rewarded me like the industry. I'm trying to figure out how the best way to put it.Speaker 3 (06:56):But, you know, I was blessed by this opportunity and I was trained by some of the best in the industry. And you know, now that I'm starting to get on, you know, being one of the oldest guys, still doing it and you know, it's these young guys that are coming in, that we want to share the same opportunity that we had with them and being able to pass on some of the information that's made us, you know, have a great life. And so, you know, these kids that are coming in there's there's information that they might not know. And you know, a lot of guys don't want to go work for a vivant for 10 years and, you know, learn all the tricks of the trade. And so for me and Taylor, we've been able to take what we've learned. We're, we're passing on to the next generation.Speaker 3 (07:37):Cause you know, we've had our time to shine and of course we're still gonna do it, but there's a lot of young guys out there. And there's a lot of people that are coming into the space that, you know, this is a chance for them to change their lives. This is a chance for them to buy a home. This is a chance for them to invest money and you know, the information that we give them, they're able to take that and create a good lifestyle for them. And nothing, nothing feels better than being able to pass on, you know, what you've done. And so for me, how I look at it is for me selling and managing my team that's for income and for KNOCKSTAR with coaching that's for impact. And so for me, I get more fulfillment from doing the impact stuff, but what a lot of people don't realize, you still have to have the income income aspect of it.Speaker 3 (08:19):You can't just go into just coaching people all the time. You still have to get out there and do the work so that you can take the information and pass it on. You can't just pass it on from, you know, books that you've read or stuff that you've done 10 years ago. You know, for me, it's very important to be able to continue practice what I preach. And so here learning how to do it so that when I do talk to these guys, there's validity and that's the cool part about door to door. Like you can't hide, you can't be some Jay Shetty out here making stuff up and you know, not having the validity, like you can go back and look at the numbers that we've been able produce. And so, you know, that's, that's where the trust has been super high in the industry because people have known us for years.Speaker 3 (09:00):And Taylor is by far the best door to door trainer out there, hands down, like I've been learning from Taylor for years. And for the fact that I get to work with the guy it's phenomenal. So he's, he just thinks that another level. And so, you know, he's, he's going to be where the next Tom Hopkins, he's going to be one of the next, uh, you know, Jay Jeffrey get immerse and stuff like that. And so it's really exciting for our space to be able to get to learn from a guy like that. And you know, when you combine it with some of the things that I've learned in, we have a really good dynamic. And so that's where we're able to making such a good impact for our guys because a lot of coaches, you know, they, they don't have anything else to do. So they jump into coaching and it's like, it feels really good from our places because we're coming from a place. So they were already achieving at a high level. How can we bring other people up with us? And so not only in our organizations, but we want to have a bigger message and impact a bigger space. And right now it's the door-to-door community. And you know, we look to expand out of that in the future too, as well. And so for the time being, we want to start with where we're strongest at and then see if we can make a thing in the universe.Speaker 2 (10:08):Yeah. A hundred percent. And what I love about what you guys are doing is you, um, like the competitions you got your 12 week program or whatever we do with yen. Um, I think it's cool because all of these guys were with smaller, like solar dealers, stuff like that. We're not all with like the vivid solars in these huge companies that are having the tournaments. So I liked that you guys combine that you're combining the training with like an industry-wide kind of like competition tournament, um, getting people motivated. So especially for guys at smaller companies, things like that, they can see what these top producers are doing. I mean, we have this dude, Jared, he did what like 25 deals that first week.Speaker 3 (10:45):Yeah. Sold, I think 24, seven, he said an industry record and the seating and I had a conversation with him like, look, dude, you can go into this program and you can just be average or you can go make an, you can make a name for yourself. And so it's a great opportunity for guys to go out there and not only get good content, but when you take the good content you're, you're held to the, you're held to the standard of achieving and then putting into competition. We felt those are the biggest things that help make impact and reps. Like we don't want just guys to pay us. They want guys to make changes in their bottom line because you know, to be honest, we're not making, we're not taking any money out of Knockstar. Like we have a fleet, we have a staff and everything.Speaker 3 (11:24):And so we're, we're paying our staff with that money, but we're not taking money out of the business and paying us a big bunch of bunch of money. Like this all goes to continuing our mission and you know, our mission as we want to, we want to move the needle. Like, you know what we get, you know, whatever we sell a coaching back for. Like I sold two solar deals yesterday. Like I make more money doing that than I did coaching. So it's just, it's, it's, it's fun because you get to come from a place of, you know, truly providing value without like having to sell coaching programs to an income. So it sort of comes in authentic. And so for me, that's been really nice because you know, you get to teach these guys and, and help them. And we set the, we set the container where, you know, Hey, this is a place for us to grow.Speaker 3 (12:05):This is a place for us to be uncomfortable. And we're going to give you the tools, but you have to do to work. And so for the guys that pick up the tools and do the work, they get the progress. And you know, it's not one of those things, you just pay money and the change happens. You have to do the work. And so that's what we tried to do as best we can developing the program. So guys come in and do the work and we've seen some great results. I mean, we've had some guys break the best industry records. Um, we've had guys, um, you know, break their personal records and we've had guys that make more money in the competition and they have, you know, their entire careers during that short of a time period. And so it's exciting to see that man. And that's, that's, that's really, what's the fulfilling part behind it. Yeah,Speaker 2 (12:45):No, that's incredible. Yeah. I mean, I gotta, thank you guys. I did this last month, I did 11 deals and most of them self chance, which for me, that was the most I'd done in awhile. Um, so you guys definitely pushed me, motivated me and got my money back, pride x10, for what I paid you guys for the coaching. And I think I can speak for everyone that goes through the program. That's a great thing you're doing. And yeah, I love that you guys are putting your money where your mouth is. Like you said, you're going out there, you're still doing this stuff like Taylor, he's going out and still knocking with guys. Um, you're still doing solar deals. Like not only were you, you and Taylor coaching us, but we're seeing you guys post in the chat. Hey, we just got done closing this deal. This is what helped me. So I think that's super powerful because like you said, a lot of these coaches trainers that maybe were in door to door, if they're not doing it actively every day. So they don't really know what it's likeSpeaker 3 (13:36):In the industry and the industry shifts, man. And I mean, I appreciate anybody. That's trying to bring value to the door door space. And that's why, you know, what feels really good about Knockstar is like, Hey, anybody that's trying to help door to door. We appreciate it. And like anybody that's trying to help this next generation get better. Like they're cool in my book. And I that's, that's one of the differences with us is we're happy that people are coming in and providing value. And I think there's enough space where there's multiple people that can come in and, and provide value. And I think obviously there's no, there's no shortage of, you know, uh, good content. And I think people will naturally gravitate to the guys that moved the needle the most for them. And, you know, that's where I've been super pro uh, impressed with our program because, you know, not only is guys coming in and getting progress, but we're creating a community and that's, that's the big thing is because, you know, when you get into door to door, you know, you're out there alone a lot of the time and you know, you, you sacrifice a lot.Speaker 3 (14:32):And for me, I know personally from firsthand experience, like it was a hard transition for me because in high school I was, you know, the man on campus and, you know, I had a lot of friends, but I had to leave a lot of my relationships behind. Cause dude, I spent 12 years to my life living in a hotel room and traveling around the country selling and I lost it. Friendships, I've lost, loved ones, you know, vacations trade off, uh, weddings, like I've met, I've sacrificed pretty much my whole life to be at where I'm at. And you know, and I don't say that to brag, but that's sometimes that's, that actually sounds not like a brag. It's kind of crazy. People would do that, but you know, for, um, needed to make that sacrifice, to be able to pass it back on to the next generation of what I've learned.Speaker 3 (15:17):That's, that's what makes it feel worthwhile. And that's what makes me feel like we're coming from a genuine place because we've done the work we've put the time in. And dude, if I can help one guy make an extra 10, 20 grand, 30 grand, like then I feel more fulfilled than I would have, you know, making myself another 20 or 30,000. And it's so exciting to see these guys step up and, you know, creating that community around, you know, high level of achievement. And at the end of the day, it's like, dude, how long are we going to do door to door? And it's like, once we leave that, like what are we going to have left? It's like, the money is going to be gone, but the relationships are going to be there forever. And you know, the community that we're creating, like do I hope one day in 34 years we get together and you know, a big group of our core clients and you know, Hey man, remember when you did that door to door stunt, man, now I run my own company.Speaker 3 (16:05):This just happened. That's what it's about, man. And then that's what we're hoping to achieve is, you know, this, your life is broken up into chapters and this is the chapter of our lives, where we got to go out and produce. We have to go out and get that kill. And you know, when you're doing it, that's, let's try to build a community behind the other people that are out there. And just because they worked for another company, it's like, bro, we're all people and things change. And who knows after, you know, door-to-door dies out, we all go out and create a business or some other form of, you know, job together. And it's just, that's, that's the big picture that, you know, excites me and you know, with what we're creating and the community that's behind it, it's just, it's really powerful. And that's, that's been a big thing. That's been exciting for me.Speaker 2 (16:46):Yeah, no doubt. Yeah. You guys are pulling the curtains back. What I really like too is every, after every training you and Taylor gave it, wasn't like, all right, guys, don't share this. Or like, you know, don't tell her when you guys were like, all right, go teach your teams is now. Cause that's the best way you're going to learn yourselves in that really solidify this content. So I'm like, wow, these guys are dropping by and they actually want us to like share their stuff with their teams. They're not saying like, don't share anything. And then yeah. And then like you said, as you and the some very cool thing as we are sharing it more solidifies it for us. I'm sure you and Taylor. I've seen that too. You guys are sharing their stuff and it's making you guys better cells and now making the connections and everything.Speaker 3 (17:25):Yeah. A hundred percent, man, you know, that's, that's one thing. First you take it in and then you teach it and then that's how you master it. That's the second piece of the puzzle that, you know, provides, uh, the results is, is once they start teaching it and then they pass it on their guys, then they, they master it. And so that's one of the things that we incorporate with our training is this, the guys get to master it. And so that's why for us like, dude, we're, we're happy to share the message and we know what we'll come back around and you know, it'll be reciprocated, but you know, it's been, it's been fun to see it man, big time,Speaker 2 (17:59):A hundred percent. So Danny, I know we don't have a ton of time. Um, but I want to give our listeners a few tactical things. That's um, some cool tips you shared with us, um, that we can kind of leave our listeners with here, if you're cool with that. So I know when your specialties is selling to older folks and you gave a talk, I think it had door to door con a few years back about that. Um, so that was something that, uh, stood out to me is like you kind of approach them differently. And you talked about kind of finding your target customer on the doors. We all know who we're good with. And um, we all know kind of who our strengths are out there, or at least we should be figuring that out. So what are your some, uh, key things? I think that's one of your specialties, what's some key things you do when you're out there selling to like older folks where you're uh,Speaker 3 (18:47):Yeah. And so with solar, it's a little different, like with alarms, it doesn't matter the deal size with alarms, you get paid at the same. And so with solar I've, I've found that obviously seniors, they don't use as much electricity on average. And so, um, I've been figuring out how to work a deal where it's profitable for them and makes sense for seniors. Like you have to be very careful, like with some seniors that they don't have taxable income, like loans don't make sense. And so for me it must, they want to pay cash or something and they want ownership. I bring up the option of PPA. So for seniors, I've been really focusing on PPA forum. And what I do is I find them during the day. Cause when, when reps go out and sell and they go out and find clients, they have to understand that during the beginning of the day, you have to start finding older folks that are home.Speaker 3 (19:32):They have good credit and they pay their bills. So those are typically the best demographics to find during the day, because those are the ones that you can warm up on. And once you get the deal, your confidence goes up and you get that sellers high so that when you go see the big fish at night, your confidence is already up. And when you go to present to those guys, they feel that like you've already gotten a deal. So they're more likely to purchase perfect example yesterday I sold, uh, I think a two points, two, three kilowatt system, super tiny. So, and then, you know, I was getting crushed all day and then finally at seven 30, eight o'clock at night, this guy comes home, the younger kid, 30 years old, uh, super cool dude. And uh, he ends up, uh, Todd said, Hey dude, yeah, I've actually looked into getting solar.Speaker 3 (20:14):We're getting a pool, we're getting a Tesla. And we're getting GC, let's get a system. And it turned out to be a, like a six kilowatt system, five, six kilowatt system. And he was pumped. So it's like realizing that, you know, when you go find seniors during the day and you get your sellers high up, you feel more confident when you go see these people at night that are home, that are going to be bigger systems. You have that seller's high on there because you've already warmed up at the beginning of the day with a senior. And so, and the cool part is with the PPA with seniors is if they're not on the care program or anything like that, they're in California. They're paying anywhere from 23, 24 cents on tier one, up to 30, 32 cents and tier two. And then up to 37 cents in tier threeSpeaker 2 (20:58):In San Diego, man come down to San Diego, they start at 32 cents tier oneSpeaker 3 (21:06):Crushing down there. And so, yeah, cause I'm an Edison and I don't want to say their name cause they're been very angry with me lately. Like they, they know I've been stealing all their clients. So like I keep getting hate mail from Edison. Like they keep sending me crank phone calls, like stay away from our customers because they know, you know, what can you do? So yeah,Speaker 2 (21:29):Especially calling in and getting like energy usage. You get some people, I don't know if you've gone through that, but I call in and they know who I am. I go, Taylor, they give me a hard time, man.Speaker 3 (21:39):She's back going. Yeah, we know this is a new Steve. So yeah, but that's what I'd say. Find it, find a senior, utilize it, make sure that you serve them, make sure that you cause right now understand that after this pandemic thing is this kind of finishing up and guys are kind of getting over it. I'm realizing that these seniors have been underserved. They've been in the home. They've been, you know, the private human connection and for us to go there and not only provide them a service, but to be able to connect with them, like understand that our interactions with these people could probably be the highlights of their months, their weeks, their years. And if you treat them like your own family and treat them as somebody that like they are, uh, like, uh, almost like a friendship and make that connection with them.Speaker 3 (22:22):They'll appreciate that. And it makes a difference. And that's why it's been so wonderful to see this because you know, people sometimes forget about seniors. They don't see their grandkids or kids don't go out and see him. And then it's there by themselves and for you to go over there and not only give them a great value of product and service, but give them the piece of yourself and listen to their stories. It's like, it's incredible. Some of the stuff that these people have gone through, like world war two, that's Vietnam. That's like, man, everybody has a story. And you know, for you able to see that and you build these stories over a lifetime and you just meet all these amazing people. And you know, when you're sitting there as a senior, you can look back and remember all of the people that you touched and all the people that you've made an impact on their life for providing them a great value in service. Like that's really the sweet spot. Um, you know, obviously you get a commission for it, but not only do you get a commission, but you get to make a friend out of it and you know, your friendship, you know, for them meeting, you might be the highlight of their week, month or a year. And if you show up with that authenticity and you show up with a, a willingness to serve these people and provide them value, they can feel that. And they're more, much more likely to buy. Yeah,Speaker 2 (23:27):Sure. In a cool secret, you taught me too is, um, you know, looking for clues, like you said, have a hard stop to knock them, the seniors at, you know, what, four 35, right. When people are getting home and then save those people for the next afternoon. And like Danny said, get your wins. Um, and then yeah, it was cool. I was looking for clues because all of these senior Beaver, when you see the walkways, maybe they're in wheelchairs, you'd see the handicap stickers on their cars. So it's like, if you see that they have handicapped sticker, you don't need an octopus. People are five odds are, they're going to be there in the afternoon. Right. You hit those people up tomorrow, we'll get those wins and then use those golden hours, get the people they're home from work and done on their zoom calls and stuff like that at that house. Yeah.Speaker 3 (24:09):Cool tip you shared with us. Yeah. So I was talking about that. There's the macro and there's the micro, the macro is the big picture, which was, I was sharing in the micro there's the little, how to things that we've talked weight more on too in our coaching program. But yeah, ideally the golden rule with seniors is it's after five 30, do not talk to them, stop. And then if you were walking up to a door and you notice it's a senior by either, you know how they take care of their yard, their car, um, ramps, you save that for the next day. That's the first person you're going to talk to. I have two seniors right now. I'm going to, after this, I know exactly where they are. And like I'm already visualizing me with the panels on their roof. So it gives me a really good frame to when I'm going out to area, I'm not nervous.Speaker 3 (24:48):I know a woman to talk to and I'm envisioning myself putting those panels on their roof. And so when I get there, I'm able to, you know, already have, they've already had it in my mind. They've already purchased it. I just have to walk them through the process. And so, you know, when I'm out, when I'm on tour, I'm always looking for seniors at the beginning of the day, the whole day, I'm networking and looking for senior citizens. And then, um, after five 30, I shift to everyone. That's getting home off of work and I try to memorize where cars are in the neighborhood. I try to see who's home at what time, every person that says, no, I get as much information from them about the neighborhood. Hey, what do you know about this neighborhood? Hey, what do you know about this guy? Because if I can, like what a lot of reps don't do is they don't do the work to be known in the neighborhood.Speaker 3 (25:30):If you come to somebody's home and give them a bit of information about themselves, that there'd be no way that th that you would know without getting somebody out there. Like, for example, like one of my deals yesterday, I came up to the house and I was like, Hey man, your yard looks good. Ben did a good job. And they were like, huh? Well, Ben was the son of my customer that I sold two weeks earlier. And Ben referred me to that client. So when I came there, there was instant rapport and trust. And then she talked to solar guys six or seven times already, but I did the work I found out about her and did my homework. And then finally, when I got to her home, the credibility was there. So she heard me out and I put together an amazing presentation and the trust was high because I did the homework and she bought.Speaker 3 (26:19):And so that, that's, that's the thing is if you can find a little bit of information about each homeowner from other neighbors that might not have told you, yes, that's going to build that credibility. Hey, you're the guy with the Harley Davidson. Right? I heard you got a big muscle car before we go into what I'm doing. You got it. Let me check this thing out. And they're like, wait, how'd you know that? Oh, wow. Okay. So this is not random, dude. All right, cool. And then, so then they start showing off what they've got and they feel prideful of what they're known for in the neighborhood. And then they're more likely to listen to you. SoSpeaker 2 (26:53):Yeah, that's my nugget right there. That's awesome. Yeah. I love it. Best music to my ears on the doors. Wasn't people are like, dang, you know, my neighborhood better than I know it. If I hear that and it's like, all right, I did a pretty good job getting to know some people. Yeah.Speaker 3 (27:09):Google Googling the neighborhood that you live in, find out about the city, find out like how it works, the demographic, they have Virgin income. Where do people work? Like doing your homework on these neighborhoods that you work into is going to build you a lot more confidence so that when you're out there working, like, did you, you're the, you're the expert. So that's, that's one of the biggest things. And you can find that either by looking it up. But also it helps, like, you know, to ask the people, if they tell, you know, get something out of them, get some information. Boom. Who do you know? Hey, we're giving a hundred bucks. Anyone that signs up with, you know, out here and then, boom, Hey, if you were me, sir, who would you go talk to right now about this? Okay. Yeah. Who do you know? That has a really big house out here. What's his name? Okay, cool. What's he do for work? Oh, okay. Nice. Who do you have? His phone number? Cool text. And let them know a goofy white guy is going to be stopping by a little bit, talking about saving money. So yeah, little, little things like that. Help.Speaker 2 (28:07):Yeah. Nugget nugget. I love that. Yeah. It's money. And then the other thing that I want to touch on real quick is your testimonial videos. That was another game changer that you talked about for us in the group. And I think you've been using those. He's been getting videos just with the customers and showing those to people in the neighborhood, right?Speaker 3 (28:27):Yeah. And so once you're, once you're at the sitting at the table, a lot of guys get stuck. Well, Hey, I need to think about it. Right? And so a lot of the times it comes down to trust. And so what can you do once the deal makes sense? Now it's about getting them to trust you. What are the things you can do to make them trust you? Like another really easy tip is, Hey, my name's Danny, here's my name. Badge. You show them the name, badge of your picture and your name subconsciously. They're getting into the pattern of youth saying the statement and then providing evidence. So I show them my name badge, Hey, I'm Danny. Hey, I'm licensed by the city. You show them the city patch with your name on it. And then you hand them something that says, yeah, I don't know if you saw this, but Edison just recently raised their rates.Speaker 3 (29:09):Because if they read it, you say something and they read it, it frames the customer to whatever you say is true. And so if you can start building that trust at the beginning, you set the frame right off the bat with the conversation with the customers, like you're here, providing value, everything that you say, you back it up with something. You do that at the beginning, everything that you have going forward, they start to trust it more. So when you come from, you know, setting the frame right off the bat of trust, when you get to that kitchen table, a lot of people that say they need to think about it, or, Oh, I'm just not ready. Those excuses start going away. And then to help build that. What I do is with previous clients that I've sold, I'll get a testimony video with them.Speaker 3 (29:50):So that's what Taylor was talking about is you get a recording with the client and you say, Hey guys, I'm here with Mr. Smith and Mr. Smith, why don't you tell us what we're doing here today? And then Mr. Smith said, well, I'm getting solar right now. Oh, cool. Why did you, why were you thinking about getting solar? Well, because my bill keeps going up. Cool. What kind of deal are we able to do? Did you have to take out a bunch of, did you have to put a bunch of money down for this? Nope. He was able to get me with zero money down. Nice. How much money do you think you're going to save this year by going solar? Oh, this, this and that. Perfect. Where do you live? Oh, I live in Los Angeles. Cool. And if you could rate your experience with me on a scale of one to 10, where would you place me?Speaker 3 (30:29):Oh, I'd give you a 10. Thank you. But I'm gonna stop recording. And then, you know, when you're at that kitchen table sharing these presentations, you're like, Hey, do you know Mr. Jones? Do you know Mr. Smith? Oh, okay. Yeah, the guy that lives right down the street pool. Here's a video of me and him. Oh, I know that guy. Yeah. Wait, he's having the same. He was worried about the, to take it out the upfront money. Cause I was worried about putting money down. Oh my gosh. He just said he didn't have to do that. And that's my neighbor. Oh my gosh. Yes, let's do it. Yeah. How do I do it?Speaker 2 (30:59):Oh my gosh. Yeah. That's gold right there. The guys take notes of that if you're not, because that was like a game changer for me. I've been trying to get that whole, my customers because they didn't hear the objections overcome by people. They know it's like, what can they say to that? Objection anymore.Speaker 3 (31:16):Yeah. Cause it's just, it's just, it's just like ecology. What you're doing is, is there's a wall. These customers build up a wall of trust. And when you can find strategic ways of breaking that down and putting that barrier up, there's less objections. And I honestly think with solar, the only reason people don't do it is they don't trust you. Or they don't have all the information. And for them to get all the information, they have to have some level of trust. So if you can set the frame off the bat by building trust, right? When you communicate and come to the door, then, then when you start billing information, they start to believe it. And then when they get to that point where they're like 70% trust, w and then you show them a video of a neighbor that went, that's having the same questions in their mind on why they don't want to go solar.Speaker 3 (31:59):And that person overcomes it for them. That brings you up to a hundred percent. They're ready to move forward and then stop talking. They start taking the order. And so it's, it's playing on, you know, psychology of humans and understanding that that's, that's the big thing. That's holding people back. And if you can progress through it through a tactful meaningful way, you're going to get more deals. And that's why, you know, you're selling solar. There's going to be five or six reps that are talk to the client before, but they just didn't build the trust. How can you break that? Because honestly, who wouldn't want to go solar? I mean, in California, it's like, dude, if you're buying a house, you have to get it. So there's no choice. And I tell customers like right off the bat, sir, unfortunately, you'd you live in California.Speaker 3 (32:38):You live wherever. You probably realize solar. Isn't a matter of if you get it. It's when and three reasons why people haven't gotten solar in so far is number one, that costs two. They don't know what company to go with. And three, the hassle of just getting it done. So like with Mr. Jones, we took care of all the upfront costs. There's a thousand solar companies. The cool part with me is I work with multiple providers so I can find out which inverter, which panel, which installation company works best for you. So I worked for all of them. And then the last thing is, is the hassle like with me being at your home right now, you don't have to take off work. And I get to piece together, which one we want. I, I work out of like an insurance agent. If I get you Geico, I get you Geico.Speaker 3 (33:14):If I get your nationwide, I get your nationwide. Or if I get you the general, then you know, that's what I can do. So when you bring that trust to them, they realize that, Oh, I want to shop around you just overcame that fear of shopping around because you are now the expert advisor. And so when you go from a salesman to an expert advisor, that's when you start getting more details. And that's why you start seeing guys getting more success than others. It's because you have to bridge that graph gap of trust. And it comes from providing Bolivian. What you're doing, handing them things, saying stuff, and then them reading it. Oh, that is true. Oh, if you just said his name's Danny. Oh, there's a picture of him. And his name says Danny, Oh, city picture tech, boom. Oh, prices went up. There's a print out of it.Speaker 3 (33:56):Oh yeah. Didn't even realize. Yeah. You've probably noticed on your electricity bill, all the distribution charges, have you really paid much attention to that? No, you haven't. Oh boy. Why don't you go grab your bill really quick? And then you show them that, Oh, I didn't even realize that. Oh dude, this guy is, yeah, shoot. He just taught me something high trust, high trust. And then when I trust the speed of trust by Stephen Mr. Covey, or I think that's his initials is that the higher, the trust, the lower, the resistance. And so your job as a salesman is to try to get his trust and credibility as fast as possible. And you do that by doing your homework reps, get lazy. They don't want to do that part. And they wonder why they don't get the results. And then they bounce to the next industry, the next industry, the next industry, the next hot ticket.Speaker 3 (34:40):And if you want to be a professional, you got to realize you're in the people business. That's why the transition from security to solar, hasn't been tough for me because I understand people like, you know, that's it. If you understand how they work, like think about it as like for my mom, if I told her to do something, she would do it because it was high trust. Those people you're talking to there's somebody's parents. And you have to realize that there's a trust that has to get built and you know, it comes with providing value. But the next thing is, is, um, after you provide trust or the clients, the step before that, and this is where it takes a little bit of work on your side is how do you trust yourself? And you know, a lot of reps get endured or because they feel like they're not worthy of achieving much in life.Speaker 3 (35:21):Oh, I can't get a job as a lawyer. I'll just be a door-to-door salesman. And that's one of the missions that I want to retrieve that, uh, uh, share is like, we're more than solicitors. Like I had a t-shirt, you know, a little Ron James, more than an athlete. And so I have a t-shirt for knock star it more than a solicitor. And you know, we're, we're out here. We're not just door to door salesman. We're young entrepreneurs trying to make a difference, not only in our lives, but the people that we love. And when we start taking this job serious like that, and we start acting like it. That's when you're going to start seeing the world that you want to create manifest itself. Like we're not door to door salesman because that's all we can do. We're doors are salesman because that's what we want to do.Speaker 3 (36:01):And this just happens to be the Avenue that we're able to generate wealth. And you know, that's why we need to be taking pride in that, like guys, we are the Spartans. We are the 300. We are the elite of the salesman, car salesman, real estate agents. These guys are nothing compared to a door door salesman. I put my money on a door to door salesman over the most polished real estate agent in the world. I don't care what you do. You get a hustler. That's willing to go door to door, hands down. He's just going out. We'll work on. And he's going to have the skill set that takes it over. And that's why we got to start changing the way people perceive to wear your salesmen. We are the elite of the elite. We are the Spartans. We have the skillset that people are afraid to do.Speaker 3 (36:43):We can pick up a notebook, walk into a neighborhood and get a contract in a couple hours. A lot of people can't do that. And that's why, you know, when you're a knock start, that's what you're about. And that's, that's the message that we want to deliver to these guys is we're not just salesmen. Like we are the future of the marketplace. We are the movers and shakers. We are the, we are the Mark. Uh, you know, [inaudible], we are the Dallas Mavericks coach, Mark Cuban. Like guys, we are the future. And we started acting that way. We're going to run the marketplace and it starts now it starts making that decision that, you know, we're not just salesmen, like trust, trust, division, trust in your vision, trust in your North star, what do you want to accomplish with your life? This is one step. And this step is going to lead you to other steps in your life and you have to figure it out or you're going to live a life of mediocrity. And don't let that happen. Because the last thing you want to do is looking back on your life, realizing that, Hey, if I maybe would've worked a little bit harder on the doors, I would have made more money and bought more assets that would have provided me a better lifestyle.Speaker 2 (37:41):Boom. That is serious value add there. So yeah, I love that, man. So just to summarize, yeah, I've showed them proof of what you're doing because people want to not only hear it, but see it in something you guys also talked about is activating all the senses. Right? You need to get them, see it, taste it, smell it, hear it. And that's going to cause that trust, if you can do all those things. So what Danny is saying is the game changer. That's why people have been able to take it up to another level. And then, um, yeah, again, just bring value to what you're doing. So we're trying to do here at solar preneurs is take it to another level. Um, you know, be value, create value as salespeople bring honor to the industry. So Danny love what you're seeing here. And you just drop some stuff that a lot of guys paid thousands of dollars. You just shared it here for free. Obviously we went into way more detail and way more content in the course, but that's the last thing I wanted to have you, I know where to go. We got to wrap up here pretty quick, but can you share some, just some details about the next event you guys are doing and where people can find out more about DocStar star and stuff.Speaker 3 (38:41):Yeah. Guys, and, and, you know, understand, you know, uh, w w we as a coaching program, a lot of guys that are talented, they, they don't really need help, but, you know, they feel like they don't need help. And that's when it really changed for me is when I started going out and paying other people for their expertise and their advice. And that's what made the difference. Cause in life, you, you have a short amount of time here. And the goal of investing into your education is this taking the time, the learning curve and shortening it, and how much more money could you have if you had, you know, more information in a shorter amount of time. And that's basically what coaching is, is paying other people for their expertise. And by all means, you could go out and live in a suitcase for 12, 13 years of your life and learn what I've learned, or you can pay to be a part of our program and, you know, pay somebody else for their knowledge.Speaker 3 (39:26):And so for me, you know, I've always felt that if what I value I pay for, and I value getting better, a lot of people say they want to get better, but you can look at their checking accounts and the two don't line up, you're not spending money on getting better. And so they say it, but they have good intentions, but they're not intentional. And the best reps are intentional because they talk it, they walk it and they swipe it. And so paying for coaching is one of the best things that I think I've done. So to kind of transition on that, we have an event coming up in Dallas, we've been able to bring the number one recruiter in the industry river Skinner the number one fastest solar growing company, uh, Mo fall from simple solar. He's been able to grow from like 20 reps to over, I think, a hundred or 200 deals in a week now.Speaker 3 (40:09):So the guy's crushing it. And you're able to learn that guy's experience and learn his nuggets for a couple hundred bucks. Like he spent his lifetime learning this stuff and you get to pay to get it for a few hundred dollars. And it's like, it's incredible that, you know, people are in the field and they don't take time to Polish their Polish, their swords and get better. And it's like, this is a great opportunity. It's in Dallas, Texas. So it's in the solar Mecca right now. Um, May 6th, seventh and eighth. And, uh, tickets are a couple of hundred bucks. They're super cheap and you get to learn from the best in the industry. And so, you know, there's solar companies there, solar owners, uh, Chris Lee speaking, he's runs a hundred million dollar solar company. And so, you know, there's, there's a lot of high value guys that are there and you get to learn what they've taken a lifetime to learn, and a couple hours and a small investment.Speaker 3 (40:55):You don't have to pay the pay the years on the field like they have. And so, you know, if you guys are, you know, have resonated with the message and you want to be a part of the movement and be part of the community, this is a great opportunity for you to get involved, to see what it's about. Like, we're not just here to make a quick buck, like we're here to make a difference. And so, you know, that's, that's what I'm really excited about in Dallas May 6th, seventh, and eighth door to door Fest is where it's going to happen. And I think there's going to be a lot of trans, uh, transformation that happens at an event. And, you know, all I'm thinking about is providing value and providing, you know, uh, uh, a way for when guys come in that weekend, they leave with three, five things that are going to help them make a million dollars.Speaker 3 (41:35):And so that's all I've been thinking about. And, you know, I'm in the field right now, thinking about how I can get better and provide those tools to the guys that show up the event. So yeah, if you guys want to get involved, uh, you go to my Instagram at Danny underscore PESI or knock star university on Instagram. There's a lot of information out there. And, you know, I think that's going to be a great place for you guys to come and see what this is all about. And if you've never been to something like this, this is going to be a great opportunity. And a lot of, uh, curtains are going to be pulled back and you can see the big picture of the opportunity that's truly in front of us. And so hope to see you guys there.Speaker 2 (42:09):Love it, love it. And yeah, I went to these guys' event in January. We did the park city one, and I will say the best, best event hands down. I've been to for door to door solar, especially, you know, solar specific stuff, learn them from Mikey said the top guys in solar. So yeah, you don't want to miss out. And Danny worked and they go to get tickets for that. So just DDD fest.com,Speaker 3 (42:29):That's it you'd be fest.com guys. So you can head over there, check out my Instagram. And, uh, yeah, man, I mean, this is, this is a great opportunity. Obviously everybody wants to get better, but you know, it's about putting yourself in the game and this is a great chance for you to go out and actually be intentional about you getting better. This is the first step. And so yeah. Will be anywhere from beginner stuff all the way to the advanced nitty-gritty. So anyone that shows up leadership management, if you're growing a team, this is, this is a place where you have to be. And if you're trying to be a regional, you've got regional. If you want to run your own company, this is, this is where you're going to come and really learn. Cause you know, running a company is all about getting production and that's what the events focused on getting more deals and getting more recruits. That's awesome.Speaker 2 (43:10):Yeah. And a couple hundred bucks guys. I mean this stuff that can make a million dollars, so go a mess, a couple hundred bucks show up to the event, few days, change your life. Um, so Danny, thanks for coming on the show today. I know we gotta wrap up here, but um, do you have any final words of advice for our solar printers or before we say goodbye?Speaker 3 (43:30):Yeah. I mean, guys, don't, don't get upset with the results you didn't get from the work you didn't do and do the work, get out there, make it happen. We're in a booming industry. And the more that you take it for granted, the more you're going to look back on it and be like, dang, I really wish I would have taken a bigger, a bigger piece of the pie for the solar thing, because unfortunately one day it's going to be gone and you know, you're going to either be left with a bunch of money or regrets and you know, that's, that's the worst thing you can do in life is, is looking back on something and wish you would have tried harder. So what I challenge you guys today is take, make the commitment to, um, go out there and achieve at the highest level, because not only are you making good income, but you're making an impact like the solar is going to make a huge difference in the world. And that's what I would say is, Hey, look, you guys have a chance to make a good income and make a good impact. So it's a two for one and you're saving people money. There's people out there right now waiting for you to come to their door and save them money. And by you fooling around, you're not taking it seriously. You're being selfishSpeaker 2 (44:32):And somebody out there that is taking it seriously is going to get that market share. So I'll get out there and make it happen. Guys, love it, Danny. Thanks for coming on sharing some freaking buyers, some golden nuggets with us, and I'm sure people will be connecting. We'll look forward to seeing you at the event and with that. Thanks again. And we'll talk to you soon. My man, rock out boys. Peace. Thank you.Speaker 1 (44:55):Hey Solarpreneurs. Quick question. What if you could surround yourself with the industry's top performing sales pros, marketers, and CEOs, and learn from their experience and wisdom in less than 20 minutes a day. For the last three years, I've been placed in the fortunate position to interview dozens of elite solar professionals and learn exactly what they do behind closed doors to build their solar careers to an all-star level. That's why I want to make a truly special announcement about the new solar learning community, exclusively for solar professionals to learn, compete, and win with the top performers in the industry. And it's called Solciety. This learning community was designed from the ground up to level the playing field and give solar pros access to proven mentors who want to give back to this community and to help you or your team to be held accountable by the industry's brightest minds. For, are you ready for it? Less than $3 and 45 cents a day currently society's closed the public and membership is by invitation only, but Solarpreneurs can go to society.co to learn more and have the option to join a wait list. When a membership becomes available in your area. Again, this is exclusively for Solarpreneur listeners. So be sure to go to www.solciety.co to join the waitlist and learn more now. Thanks again for listening. We'll catch you again in the next episode. 

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

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.It's a big day in tech because the US Federal Government is going after Google on anti-competitive grounds. Sure, the timing appears crassly political and the case is not picking up huge plaudits thus far for its air-tightness, but that doesn't mean we can ignore it.So Danny and I got on the horn to chat it up for about 10 minutes to fill you in. For reference, you can read the full filing here, in case you want to get your nails in. It's not a complicated read. Get in there.As a pair we dug into what stood out from the suit, what we think about the historical context, and also noodled at the end about what the whole situation could mean for startups; it's not all good news, but adding lots of competitive space to the market would be a net-good for upstart tech companies in the long-run.And consumers. Competition is good.You can read TechCrunch's early coverage of the suit here, and our look at the market's reaction here. Let's go!

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.It's a big day in tech because the US Federal Government is going after Google on anti-competitive grounds. Sure, the timing appears crassly political and the case is not picking up huge plaudits thus far for its air-tightness, but that doesn't mean we can ignore it.So Danny and I got on the horn to chat it up for about 10 minutes to fill you in. For reference, you can read the full filing here, in case you want to get your nails in. It's not a complicated read. Get in there.As a pair we dug into what stood out from the suit, what we think about the historical context, and also noodled at the end about what the whole situation could mean for startups; it's not all good news, but adding lots of competitive space to the market would be a net-good for upstart tech companies in the long-run.And consumers. Competition is good.You can read TechCrunch's early coverage of the suit here, and our look at the market's reaction here. Let's go!

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.This time around we're recording what we call an Equity Shot, a single-topic show that we pull together whenever there's a news item of sufficient weight that it demands we break our regular cadence and record a little more.So Danny and Tash and Alex got together to discuss the recent Vroom IPO and Lemonade filing to go public. These are topics that TechCrunch has covered quite a lot lately, so here's a chronology to help you keep it all straight:We dug into Vroom's economics detailed in its IPO filingTechCrunch covered hoped-for price rangeWe reported on Vroom's raised IPO pricing rangeLemonade filed to go public and we dig into its numbersA bit more on the Lemonade IPO filing and what we can learn from itAnd here's our coverage on Vroom's final IPO pricingSo you can catch up as you need to. What matters is that public investors have swooned over the Vroom IPO, pushing its pricing and, today, more than doubling its value as a public company. It's a huge debut, and that bodes well for other gross-margin light businesses -- unicorns, even -- that might want to go public.The IPO window is pretty open, it appears. And best of all, we three disagreed quite a bit this week. It's a fun show,Ok, that's enough from us We are back on Friday. Take care, and keep up the good fight. 

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.This time around we're recording what we call an Equity Shot, a single-topic show that we pull together whenever there's a news item of sufficient weight that it demands we break our regular cadence and record a little more.So Danny and Tash and Alex got together to discuss the recent Vroom IPO and Lemonade filing to go public. These are topics that TechCrunch has covered quite a lot lately, so here's a chronology to help you keep it all straight:We dug into Vroom's economics detailed in its IPO filingTechCrunch covered hoped-for price rangeWe reported on Vroom's raised IPO pricing rangeLemonade filed to go public and we dig into its numbersA bit more on the Lemonade IPO filing and what we can learn from itAnd here's our coverage on Vroom's final IPO pricingSo you can catch up as you need to. What matters is that public investors have swooned over the Vroom IPO, pushing its pricing and, today, more than doubling its value as a public company. It's a huge debut, and that bodes well for other gross-margin light businesses -- unicorns, even -- that might want to go public.The IPO window is pretty open, it appears. And best of all, we three disagreed quite a bit this week. It's a fun show,Ok, that's enough from us We are back on Friday. Take care, and keep up the good fight. 

Episode 149 of the John1911 Podcast.    Freeze is out on FMLA. Here's to hoping everyone gets better soon in his household. So Danny gives his second time ever doing a podcast a whirl.    Was Jeffery Epstein Murdered? ETS mags for VP9 are terrible.  Making burn barrels the old world way: Shooting them.  And the strange European bolt head that almost derailed a custom gun project.    Marky & Danny www.John1911.com "Shooting Guns & Having Fun"

Craig is on with Danny Farrantino once more on the Jim Polito show. They talked about the GPS security flaw that is worse than the Y2K bug which could cause havoc in a lot of computer systems on April 6th.  These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Related Articles: 'Gps Systems Will Be Struck By Y2k-Like Bug On April 6': Security Expert Says He Will Not Fly On 'Day Zero' After Governments Warn Global Devices Will Reset Due To Calendar Glitch Google Recommends Windows 7 Users To Upgrade To Windows 10 If Possible, As A Kernel Vulnerability Allows For Local Privilege Escalation On The Operating System. No Guns Or Lockpicks Needed To Steal Modern Cars If They're Fitted With Hackable 'Smart' Alarms ---  Transcript: Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors. Airing date: 03/19/2019 Major Problems With GPS - Car Security Systems Hackable Craig Peterson: 0:00 Good morning. Craig Peterson here. I was on this morning with the Jim Polito show. It was actually Danny because Jim is on a tour. He is over touring in Italy. He was in Venice yesterday. And he's going on to Ireland. He sounds like he's just having a great time. So Danny and I chatted this morning, and I did some explanations here of GPS, what it is, how it works and how it's going to affect you. I think this is much better explanation than I did last time on the radio. Oh, well. Anyways, here we go with Mr. Danny Farrantino. Danny Farrantino 0:35 Yes, by now. You know what that music means? Time for Tech Talk expert, Craig Peterson. And Craig. GPS systems are going to be struck by a Y2K bug. Come on, this can't be real. Craig 0:48 Hey, good morning, Danny. Yeah, this is a real problem. And most people don't understand what's going on. And this is something I wasn't even aware of just a week and a half, two weeks ago, before I came across this. You know, we've been having these issues with the airplanes, right? And, and the Boeing jet that has been grounded pretty much worldwide. And the reason for that seems to be new software, some new systems and things on board. But you know, how long ago that base airplane was designed, Danny? Danny 1:23 I do not, Craig, know. But I'm sure you do. Craig 1:27 About 60 years old. 6 zero years old. Yeah. And what's been happening. And this is common for airplane manufacturers. But what's been happening is they make small changes to the airplane and they get it approved. So the whole plane doesn't have to be rechecked. And they eventually end up with a situation like today, where it's no longer the pharaohs boat, for those of you from law school, remember that story. But we will get into that right now. But the here's the problem we're looking at today. GPS has been around for many, many decades now. And of course, it works by having satellites up in the air above us and and in in space, and they send a signal down and our GPS units pick it up. Well, that signal is actually a primarily a clock signal. Craig 2:25 Have you ever been ever heard something loud in the distance, like lightning? For instance, right? Danny 2:31  Yep. Craig 2:31 And you see it before you hear it usually, right? What happens with lightning? If you see it and hear it at the same time? How far away is it? Danny 2:42 Pretty, pretty damn close. Craig 2:45 Exactly, you know, the closer it is between seeing it and hearing it, the closer that lightning is. So that's the same basic way that GPS works. All of these satellites are in orbit, they're all in a fixed spot. The software knows exactly where they are. So the satellite identifies itself, and then sends a high precision time code. So satellites that are further away the time code is going to be older than satellites that are closer to you, they're going to have a newer time code. So that's how GPS works. And sitting there listening to those times code and deciding, oh, that satellite is further away than that satellite. And it's so much further based on this real high precision time code. So there you go. There's a geek moment of the morning. But the problem that we're looking at right now is these older devices, including older airplanes, bridge control systems, systems that change traffic from one direction to another direction at a certain time of day, many of those relies heavily on GPS, not to position themselves necessarily, but to get an accurate time. So they will they want to know when 3pm is why not listen to those high precision atomic clock that are being broadcasted all over the world? Danny 4:14   We have one here. Craig 4:16  And you do exactly. Now I have one at my house, do we use them to synchronize all of our computers' clocks. Well, older GPS systems have an overflow problem. I know you mentioned earlier this morning Y2K. And we were very worried about Y2K, because many programmers like myself programming in the 70's and the 60's, we were too worried about whether or not 70 meant 2070 or 1970. We knew that 70 meant that our clock or our timestamp was really 1970. And so we had that two digit year, here comes 2000 that rolls over, there were some problems but it wasn't catastrophic. Well, how about all of these embedded systems, when was the last time you upgraded the firmware in your car? Craig 5:09 When was the last time you updated the firmware in your firewall or your router. And hopefully, you do that pretty frequently. But I can tell you 99% of people never ever touched them. So about two weeks ago, in San Francisco, there was a conference, a security conference, and there was an expert out there saying that he will not fly, he will not get in an airplane on April 6. And the reason for that. And this by the ways of VP over at Trend Micro and Bill Malik is his name. And the reason is because the counters in the older GPS systems are going to overflow on April 6. It is going to reach the end of their counters are going to ramp back to zero. Danny 5:57 So in theory the GPSs might not be set up properly. And you,yeah, I know, it makes sense why you might not want to fly that day. Craig 6:03 Exactly. So there's more than him that just isn't going to fly that day. But this is a warning that was initially issued in April 2018. We have all of these older systems, and then some of them are guaranteed to have problems on April 6th. Hopefully, none of our airplanes do. But this could this could be real catastrophe. He's saying, now Trend Micro, they deal a lot with computer security systems. And, and, you know, maybe, maybe he's trying to get a little bit of news. But I know personally that the GPS systems that were made 20 years ago were very primitive. They're embedded in all kinds of devices. And the risk here is substantially greater than the risk we had with Y2K because the Y2K bug, there were very few systems that could, if they failed, cause people to die. These GPS systems that are embedded could cause people to die. And April 6 is the day. So fingers crossed, the manufacturers and owners of all these systems have taken care of it. Danny 7:10 So that was my next question then. So here's the big question is what's being done to either prevent this, or we just waiting till April 6 and saying waiting to see what happens? Craig 7:20 Well, there are a lot of companies that waited until January 1, 2000, to figure out if anything was going to happen. This time around. I think there's a lot of companies that aren't even aware, including government agencies that aren't even aware that there could be a problem. So there's certainly a lot of companies that have taken care of this already, some government agencies that have but if there is 20 year old hardware out there somewhere and think about military systems. And again, think about airplanes, 20 year old hardware, is it going to have this problem. Commercial airlines, I would expect to all of them have taken care of this problem. They've looked into it, these aren't idiots out there. But when it comes to some of these systems that are sitting in the back corner, just plugging away every day. That's where I'm getting really worried. Craig 8:09 Well, that's it. You have that from Craig. Moving on though, I do want to hit a couple more topics before we have to let you go. The hackable smart alarms turns out, thieves may not even need a key or tools to steal your car from that one. Craig 8:22 Yeah, this goes back again to so many businesses, just not being aware of the security implications of what they're doing. Car security alarm companies for years and decades. I remember buying these things in the 80's right and earlier, they were very simple. And if a switch was thrown, the alarm went off. Nowadays, they're putting APIs, application programming interfaces into their software, and just all kinds of smart technology. And we now have some penetration testing companies, including one over in the UK called Pentest Partners. They've been looking at these smart alarms after they heard about a problem. So they found that the Viper smart alarm and products from Pandora who makes alarms were riddled with all kinds of security flaws. And they found that they could steal a car fitted with any of these affected devices. They could steal them, they could shut off the engine and talking about wrecking havoc, they could cause the cars to go into full throttle mode while they're out on the road. Which means if you want to kill a lot of people and create a lot of havoc, sounds like it's simpler than we would hope. Danny 9:42 There's a lot more than just stealing a car. It's taking complete control of that cars there, Craig. Craig 9:48 Exactly. without doing anything, you know, we had the Chrysler problem where you could hack their entertainment system and take over the whole car, but you had to have physical access to that Chrysler car in order to do it. This doesn't require any physical access to the car. It can all be done remotely.  Danny 10:09 It's certainly scary stuff Craig. Thank God, we have people like you keeping us safe. As always, we have so much stuff here. We never didn't get to somebody wants to hear more. What can they do? Craig 10:18 Well, they can text me and I want to put one more quick warning in. Google's warning, everyone that's using Windows 7 to abandon it immediately. Windows 7. This is a warning out of Google and their security department. They say you need to upgrade to Windows 10 immediately. There is a huge security flaw with Windows 7. But you can text me 855-385-5553. That's 855-385-5553. Danny 10:50 Standard data and messaging rates do apply. Craig, appreciate the time and we'll talk again next week. Craig 10:55 Hey, thanks Danny. Take care. Danny 10:56 As always. Craig Peterson there with some great stuff for us here on a Tuesday morning. Craig 11:03 Hey, everybody. If you enjoy my podcast, make sure you let me know and subscribe. subscriptions is how we move up in the charts. That's how other people find us. So go to  http://CraigPeterson.com/iTunes. That'll take you directly to the 800 pound gorilla, which of course is Apple and you can subscribe right there. You can subscribe on almost anything frankly, I'm out there all over the place. And then once you subscribe. If you think I'm worth five stars, by all means, please put in a five star rating. I'd appreciate it. All right, everybody take care of we'll be back tomorrow from Maine. --- Don't miss any episode from Craig. Visit http://CraigPeterson.com/itunes. Subscribe and give us a rating! Thanks, everyone, for listening and sharing our podcasts. We're really hitting it out of the park. This will be a great year!  More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

Special Guest: No One.    We are sorry to say, Colton was not able to be on this episode with us. So Danny and Jason tackle the world wide sensation of Stranger Things: Season 2.    Don't worry, if you havnt seen it, the first portion of the episode is spoiler free. This is were we talk about how we felt the show did overall.  Then, after the announcement break, we go into spoiler teritory and talk about our favorite moments in season 2!   Come Join Us!

In the third vlog episode, Danny talks about his morning routine with his wife, Melissa, in the car with him on their way to the office. Don’t forget, all of the vlog episodes (and more) are available on the FlippingJunkie YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/FlippingJunkie   Danny’s morning routine got started when he found Hal Elrod’s Miracle Morning. Basically, the start of anyone’s day should be used to set up the rest of the day for success. So Danny talks about how he used his mornings for self reflection, exercise, and breakfast (or course).   Is your morning routine like Danny’s? Are you setting up your day for success from the moment you get out of bed, or are you pushing through everything instead of taking your time? Your morning should be a time to make sure your day will be a success, use it wisely!   Stay tuned and be sure to subscribe to the FlippingJunkie Youtube channel: http://youtube.com/flippingjunkie

Danny Gonzalez is 8 years old. For most of his life he has been fighting stage 3 Acute Lymph-mo-blastic Leukemia. This has been going on since he was 1 years old. He has been in and out of the hospital and getting chemotherapy every day for 6 1/2 years. As of September the 9th, he has had his last day of chemotherapy. So this is going to be the first time in a long while he gets to spend his holidays at home. So since he is out, he wants to care for the other kids and friends that he knows that will still be in the hospital during the holidays. A whole lot of them still have treatments and everything that goes along with that. So it is a real bummer. Imagine being a kid stuck in the hospital during the times kids are usually super excited for Christmas and all that. So Danny is trying to raise money to get his buddies some presents. And he wants to give those out with his good friend Batman.  He knows what its like. His family really benefitted from others helping them out. They were given, toys, beanies, food cards, gas cards and so much more during Danny’s time in the hospital. His parents has to take time off of work and drive all them time so there was a real stress.  That is where all the Let's Go! Podcast listeners can help! Danny is going to pass out gifts to all his friends on Friday Dec. 9th. so our time line is really short. Please visit his Go Fund Me page at gofundme.com/dannyschristmasdrive  Thank you to all that have already given and have been apart!  

Hello and welcome to Mansion Interviews, a podcast which gives me an excuse to talk to interesting people while at the same time improving your English. Today I'm speaking to a good friend of mine, Danny. I've known Danny for many years and he happens to be North American which is good news for you because many listeners have been asking me about the differences between American and British English. So Danny jumped on Skype and we compared vocabulary differences between US and UK English. Acually, I tested him to see how much British English vocabulary he knows. So what do you think? Did he pass the test? More importantly, do you know these vocabulary differences? Let's see. There are no comprehension questions becuase this isn't an interview listening practice, but you will find a complete list of the vocabulary we talk about at http://www.inglespodcast.com/danny/     Where do you live and where is your accent from? Danny has a mid-western accent from Detroit, Michegan. He now lives in Ann Arbor, Michegan. Test your British-American English vocabulary. Do you know the American word for the following common British English vocabulary? We'll start off easy to warm you up. I say the British English word, you say the American English word lift - elevator (asensor)flat - apartment (piso, apartamento)holiday - vacation (vacaciones)autumn - fall (otoño)a queue / to queue up - a line / to stand in line (cola / hacer cola) - to stand/wait 'on line' on the East Coast of the USA.bill - check (cuenta)quid - buck (50 quid - 50 bucks / a 50-pound note - a 50 dollar bill - billete) shopping centre - shopping mall (centro comercial) CLOTHEStrainers - gym shoes/sneakers (zapatillas de deporte)tights - panty hose (medias)knickers - panties (bragas)vest - undershirt/T-shirt (chaleco) ALCOHOLbarman / barmaid - bartender (barman)stag night / hen night - bachelor/bachelorette party (despedida de soltero/a)pub crawl - bar hop (ir de chateo, ir de copas, recorrido por bares)beer mat - coaster (posavasos) BABIESnappy - diaper (pañales)dummy - pacifier (chupete)pram - baby buggy / baby carriage (cochecito de niño) FOODcrisps - (potato) chips (papas)take-away (food) - carry-out (food) (comida para llevar) IN THE HOUSEcooker - range, stove (cocina (los fuegos)tap - faucet (grifo)rubbish bin / dustbin - garbage can / trash can (cubo / contenedor de basura)estate agent - real estate agent / realtor (inmobilario/a)post code - zip code (codigo postal)torch - flashlight (linterna) IN THE STREETpavement - sidewalk (acera)zebra crossing - pedestrian crossing / pedestrian crosswalk (paso de cebra)roundabout - roundabout / traffic circle (rotonda)car park - parking lot (parking)petrol station - gas station (gasolinera)motorway - highway, freeway, expressway (autopista)flyover - overpass (paso elevado)busker - street performer (músico callejero)skip - dumpster (contenedor)lorry - truck (camión)cash point (machine) - ATM (cajero automático) WORKCV - resumé (curriculum)to sack - to fire (despedir)redundancy - layoff (desempleo / to make (s.o.) redundant - to lay (s.o.) offpublic limited company (plc) - LLC / incorporated company (inc.) (sociedad anónima (s.a.) Feeling confident? Now they get harder! anorak - raincoat / windbreaker (anorak)rubber - condom or eraser (goma)wellies (wellingtons) - rubber boots (botas de goma)wally - jerk, idiot (tonto)off licence - liquor store (bodega)fish slice - spatula (paleta) SLANGbrolly - umbrella (paraguas)loo, bog - john (lavabo, water)toilet - restroomknackered - tired, whipped, exhausted (agotado)mate - friend, buddy, pal (amigo) Many thanks to to my good friend, my old mate, my long-time pal, buddy and all round good guy Danny from Detroit, Michegan. Thanks, man! And thank you for listening. If you have any comments or questions, or if you just want to say 'hi' you can send an email to craig@inglespodcast.com or send me a voice message at speakpipe.com/inglespodcast . There's a detailed list of American and British English Vocabulary with Spànish translations at mansioningles.com and there is a link to this on the website at inglespodcast.com/danny http://www.mansioningles.com/vocabulario63.htm 

This week on Revenge: the Graysons are fighting again in that Grayson way that's less like fighting and more like doing your own thing while being snide to everyone around you while waiting for someone else to break first; see, whoever escalates the passive aggression to aggressive aggression is the real loser. So Danny is doing a sulk crawl through every room in Grayson manor hoping his mom will notice, Charlotte is spending money on Amanda in quantities just high enough to annoy Victoria, Ashley is around, Conrad is making time with his weirdly forceful whisper-insults, and they’re all pretty pissed at Victoria. To be fair, she did individually plan three separate and slightly different conspiracies with each of them. Starting from the top: as we know, she faked her death and then planned to run away with Charlotte, she then faked her kidnapping and the beating that allowed her to return from the dead with Conrad. Wait thats only two.............................. Oh yeah! The conspiracy with Danny is where he pretends to be able to read and Victoria pretends to be proud of him. Anyway! Everything starts getting messy when it turns out Danny did learn how to read somewhere along the line and he finds a note left by Aden that says “your mom is a big liar and was planning to run away with Charlotte and wasn’t even kidnapped.” Victoria declares a lockdown at Grayson Manor and officially bans Emily from the premises for her own good, so Emily resorts to using the faked-not-faked paternity test to force Amanda to start hanging out with the Graysons even though Jack explicitly forbade it. So yeah Jack is being a dick and Declan is stealing stuff and ughhhhhh fuck Declan I might just pretend he doesn’t exist for the rest go the show please is that ok?

After The Union The Peelers - Repeal Of Licensing Laws (the closest we could get to a Repel Of The Union) Roll on the 1800's. Things can only get better. Right? One of the intentions of British Prime Mister, William Pitt (rhymes with shit) was to bring in Catholic emancipation with the union (the right to vote and take a seat in parliament). He believed it would be easier to achieve emancipation for Catholics if they were a minority in a United Kingdom rather then a majority in the Kingdom of Ireland - though what's the point of your vote means nothing? Unfortunately the king was George lll. Remember him? The loonie German that lost the Americas - well Georgie Porgie was as king also head of the Anglican church and would not allow emancipation so Pitt quit (rhymes with shit). Within 4 years Pitt was back but the moment had passed and he was busy dealing with a short French trouble maker. George III lays down the law. No friend of freedom or democracy Daniel O'Connell and Catholic emancipation: AD 1823-29 While the penal laws were still in effect they had diminished in severity since the late 1700s - Catholics could now serve in the army, property rights improved and importantly some Catholics could vote....men with certain property rights. This was seized up by a crafty (a cute whoore in local speak) Kerry born lawyer called Daniel O'Connell - Danny Bhoy knew there was nothing in the law that could stop him running for election, the problem was if he won as a Catholic he could not take the oath of allegiance to the inheritor of the bollox of Henry the 8th as Defender of the Faith. So Danny throws his hat in the ring and faces off against the hand picked candidate of the Duke of Wellington and whips his arse. The Brits have a problem now, there is an elected member of Parliament who won't take the oath and his core supporters a generation before rebelled massively and bloodily. The Brits blink and the oath is gone. DOC in MP for county Clare. O'Connell - The original Kerry politician Healy Rae- Today's Kerry Politician Daniel O'Connell and the monster meetings: 1842-1844 With O'Connell now in the Houses of Parliament others were elected and soon O`O'Connell was heading up the movement to repel the Act of Union. O'Connell was quite the political organizer and through church gate collections a war chest of funds was build that would put an American presidential candidate to shame, he also organized in-conjunction with the Young Ireland movement monster meetings to agitate and show support for repel of the union. The first Million Man March was to be organized at Clontarf in 1843 (see part 1 for the significance of Clontarf) a good 150 years before Spike Lee. Peel the then Prime Minister wasn't going to let this happen and sent in troops with cannons. DOC being the Gandhi like statesman backed down and for his trouble was arrested, tried and jailed along with the leaders of the Young Ireland movement. He spent almost a year in the can before the House of Lords had him sprung. The Great Famine: 1845-1850 Neck - The Fields of Athenry Black 47 - Black 47 The Woods Band - The Grosse Isle Lament Economically things were crap. In the1820s famine came close and there was the first large scale Irish emigration to the new word. But the population continued to grow as it shot up from 2.5 million in 1800 to 8 million 1845. Ireland was essentially an agricultural economy and expected to be the breadbasket for the rapidly industrializing England (industry competition with England was not allowed going back to the 1400s and the Statutes of Kilkenny). Now while parts of Ireland are very rich in agricultural land other parts are poor especially the boggy midlands and the poor lands of the West of Ireland. The main reason for the increase in population was the potato. Now despite the fact the average Irish man looks like a potato this tumor is native to the Americas and introduced to Ireland by the Elizabethan planter Sir Walter Raleigh - famous for covering a puddle with his cloak for Lizzie so she wouldn't get her feet wet though fat lot of good it did him in the end as his head ended up in a basket. The old potato became the staple diet of Paddy and Biddy and not just because of the taste. It was a high yield crop that could be cultivated on poor land and small holdings - by 1845 90% of Irish farms were 10 acres or less and many thousands more had mere patches of mud to grow their all important crop. Eviction - Landlords took advantage of the famine to clear the land of tenants In 1845 the crop failed because of a blight that came in from America, the crop failed again in 1846 and 1847 (Black 47) and the great hunger became the great famine. The policy of the government in London exacerbated the famine and when public works projects were put in place it was to little too late, corn was brought in from America to be sold to the starving while Ireland was still exporting more food produce then was coming in. Lord Trevelyan, the British administrator in Ireland did not believe in government assistance and personally believed the famine was a punishment from God upon the lazy Irish peasant class and the feckless landlord class.  God's curse upon you Lord Trevelyan May your great Queen Victoria rot in hell - Black 47 "The judgement of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too much mitigated. …The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people". Sir Charles Edward Trevelyan, Assistant Secretary to HM Treasury, official in charge of famine relief, December 1846. By 1852 Ireland's population was reduced to 6.5m with an estimated one million dead and one million left the country with the bulk of the exiles outta the clutches of Britannia and now in the United States. Irish America The Wakes - St Patrick's Battalion The Mickey Finns - The Ballad Of Duffy's Cut Kilmaine Saints - Brave Yankee Boys Black 47 - Five Points The BibleCodeSundays - DixieLand Dropkick Murphys - The Fighting 69th Circle J - Molly Maguires The famine not only changed the course of Irish history but also America where the potato and the blight originated. While there was Irish emigration to the US prior to the Great Famine this was the first wave of massive non-Anglo emigration to America. The US was open to the immigration as it need the labor to dig canals, build the railroads, work in the mills and fight in its wars - the war of 1848 was underway and the US was screaming our for cannon fodder (though things didn't always go to plan like when Jon Riley took his Irish troops over to the Mexican side cos he didn't think the war was just and disliked the poor treatment of the Irish in the American army) The Irish were exiled and angry. Poor, excluded and exploited. They were most likely to be found in the slums of the Yankee east coast doing the jobs the Yankee didn't want. There were anti-Irish riots in Philadelphia and New York and a catholic convent was burned down by an angry mob in Boston. The Irish used the political experience learned in Ireland and within a generation most big East coast American cities were under Irish political control. The American Civil War was a huge turning point for the Irish, and while many Irish were against emancipation of the slaves- how quickly they forget - and feared free slaves coming north and undercutting them for jobs, the Irish did show their loyalty to their adopted homeland and fought with valor (for both sides) Winning respect in America - the hard way A Molly Maguire executed The Fenians Seanchai - Fenians Larkin - A Nation Once Again Muirsheen Durkin & Friends - God Save Ireland   One group that was to use the Civil War for its advantage as The Fenians Brotherhood. Formed in New York City in 1858 the Fenians were a secret society whose aim was to drive the Brits outta Ireland. The Fenians knew the war would be a good source of trained and armed solders. With the war over the Fenians staged a rebellion in Ireland (it failed), they invaded Canada (three times), invented the submarine and undertook a dynamite campaign in England. The Fenian were the boogie man of Victorian Britain and condemned by the Church. "when we look down into the fathomless depth of this infamy of the heads of the Fenian conspiracy, we must acknowledge that eternity is not long enough, nor hell hot enough to punish such miscreants" - Bishop Moriarty of Kerry The Fenian flag The Battle of Ridgeway