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Password managers are very popular, and for good reason, but they have been in the news recently for a more concerning reason. According to ars Technica, the promise that these platforms can't see your password vaults isn't always true. In this episode, host Amanda Glassner is joined by Heather Engel, Managing Partner at Strategic Cyber Partners, to discuss. To learn more about today's stories, visit https://cybercrimewire.com • For more on cybersecurity, visit us at https://cybersecurityventures.com.
Mimořádnou sbírku jukeboxů a také pinballových hracích stolů najdete na hraničním přechodu Hatě na Znojemsku na jižní Moravě. Expozice Terra Technica nabízí rozsáhlou kolekci jukeboxů od prvních modelů až po ty současné. Patří mezi ně i mimořádně vzácné kusy, kterých se na světě dochovalo jen několik. Všechny přístroje jsou plně funkční, některé si návštěvníci mohou sami vyzkoušet.
Mimořádnou sbírku jukeboxů a také pinballových hracích stolů najdete na hraničním přechodu Hatě na Znojemsku na jižní Moravě. Expozice Terra Technica nabízí rozsáhlou kolekci jukeboxů od prvních modelů až po ty současné. Patří mezi ně i mimořádně vzácné kusy, kterých se na světě dochovalo jen několik. Všechny přístroje jsou plně funkční, některé si návštěvníci mohou sami vyzkoušet.
Mimořádnou sbírku jukeboxů a také pinballových hracích stolů najdete na hraničním přechodu Hatě na Znojemsku na jižní Moravě. Expozice Terra Technica nabízí rozsáhlou kolekci jukeboxů od prvních modelů až po ty současné. Patří mezi ně i mimořádně vzácné kusy, kterých se na světě dochovalo jen několik. Všechny přístroje jsou plně funkční, některé si návštěvníci mohou sami vyzkoušet.Všechny díly podcastu Výlety můžete pohodlně poslouchat v mobilní aplikaci mujRozhlas pro Android a iOS nebo na webu mujRozhlas.cz.
Mimořádnou sbírku jukeboxů a také pinballových hracích stolů najdete na hraničním přechodu Hatě na Znojemsku na jižní Moravě. Expozice Terra Technica nabízí rozsáhlou kolekci jukeboxů od prvních modelů až po ty současné. Patří mezi ně i mimořádně vzácné kusy, kterých se na světě dochovalo jen několik. Všechny přístroje jsou plně funkční, některé si návštěvníci mohou sami vyzkoušet.
Mimořádnou sbírku jukeboxů a také pinballových hracích stolů najdete na hraničním přechodu Hatě na Znojemsku na jižní Moravě. Expozice Terra Technica nabízí rozsáhlou kolekci jukeboxů od prvních modelů až po ty současné. Patří mezi ně i mimořádně vzácné kusy, kterých se na světě dochovalo jen několik. Všechny přístroje jsou plně funkční, některé si návštěvníci mohou sami vyzkoušet.
Mimořádnou sbírku jukeboxů a také pinballových hracích stolů najdete na hraničním přechodu Hatě na Znojemsku na jižní Moravě. Expozice Terra Technica nabízí rozsáhlou kolekci jukeboxů od prvních modelů až po ty současné. Patří mezi ně i mimořádně vzácné kusy, kterých se na světě dochovalo jen několik. Všechny přístroje jsou plně funkční, některé si návštěvníci mohou sami vyzkoušet.
Mimořádnou sbírku jukeboxů a také pinballových hracích stolů najdete na hraničním přechodu Hatě na Znojemsku na jižní Moravě. Expozice Terra Technica nabízí rozsáhlou kolekci jukeboxů od prvních modelů až po ty současné. Patří mezi ně i mimořádně vzácné kusy, kterých se na světě dochovalo jen několik. Všechny přístroje jsou plně funkční, některé si návštěvníci mohou sami vyzkoušet.
Mimořádnou sbírku jukeboxů a také pinballových hracích stolů najdete na hraničním přechodu Hatě na Znojemsku na jižní Moravě. Expozice Terra Technica nabízí rozsáhlou kolekci jukeboxů od prvních modelů až po ty současné. Patří mezi ně i mimořádně vzácné kusy, kterých se na světě dochovalo jen několik. Všechny přístroje jsou plně funkční, některé si návštěvníci mohou sami vyzkoušet.
Mimořádnou sbírku jukeboxů a také pinballových hracích stolů najdete na hraničním přechodu Hatě na Znojemsku na jižní Moravě. Expozice Terra Technica nabízí rozsáhlou kolekci jukeboxů od prvních modelů až po ty současné. Patří mezi ně i mimořádně vzácné kusy, kterých se na světě dochovalo jen několik. Všechny přístroje jsou plně funkční, některé si návštěvníci mohou sami vyzkoušet.
Mimořádnou sbírku jukeboxů a také pinballových hracích stolů najdete na hraničním přechodu Hatě na Znojemsku na jižní Moravě. Expozice Terra Technica nabízí rozsáhlou kolekci jukeboxů od prvních modelů až po ty současné. Patří mezi ně i mimořádně vzácné kusy, kterých se na světě dochovalo jen několik. Všechny přístroje jsou plně funkční, některé si návštěvníci mohou sami vyzkoušet.
Mimořádnou sbírku jukeboxů a také pinballových hracích stolů najdete na hraničním přechodu Hatě na Znojemsku na jižní Moravě. Expozice Terra Technica nabízí rozsáhlou kolekci jukeboxů od prvních modelů až po ty současné. Patří mezi ně i mimořádně vzácné kusy, kterých se na světě dochovalo jen několik. Všechny přístroje jsou plně funkční, některé si návštěvníci mohou sami vyzkoušet.
Al talks about Tamagotchi Plaza to Kevin Timings 00:00:00: Theme Tune 00:00:30: Intro 00:02:34: What Have We Been Up To 00:21:32: I Know What You Released Last Month 00:23:38: Game News 00:42:07: See How Many Of The Top 10 Steam Games Kevin Can Guess 00:52:10: Tamagotchi Plaza 01:12:25: Outro Links Gaucho and the Grassland Release Wandering Village 1.0 Release Cottonville Release Tiny Garden “Summer Breeze Content Update + Cosmetic Pack” Disney Dreamlight Valley “The Storybook Vale - Part 2: The Unwritten Realm Update” Len's Island Post 1.0 Roadmap Stardew Valley Top rated game on Steam Contact Al on Mastodon: https://mastodon.scot/@TheScotBot Email Us: https://harvestseason.club/contact/ Transcript (0:00:30) Al: Hello, farmers, and welcome to another episode of The Harvest Season. (0:00:34) Al: My name is Al. (0:00:36) Kev: My name is Kevin. Supposedly. (0:00:37) Al: And we’re here, we’re here, supposedly. (0:00:40) Al: Why? What’s what has happened? (0:00:40) Kev: I don’t know. I’ve just… I mean, I’ve never seen the documentation to back it up. (0:00:46) Kev: I’m just saying. (0:00:46) Al: You’ve never seen your birth certificate. (0:00:47) Kev: Birth certificate? No, I don’t… I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen it now. (0:00:51) Kev: If… Yeah, I mean, I probably had to dust it out for something. (0:00:52) Al: Wow, have you seen your driving license or your passport? (0:00:56) Kev: Oh, yeah, you know what? Sure. I guess driver license. Yeah, all right. (0:01:01) Al: Is this Kevin, Kevin, is this where we find out that you’re undocumented, Kevin? (0:01:06) Kev: You know, I’d be a surprise to me too. But here’s the fun part is it doesn’t matter anymore. (0:01:13) Al: Well, that’s device very true. (0:01:22) Al: All right, and we’re here today to talk about cartridge code games, because I didn’t get (0:01:23) Kev: Oh, you know, I can keep that gym in. (0:01:33) Kev: and not nothing (0:01:34) Al: through that sentence. (0:01:36) Al: Is that how this episode is going to be? (0:01:38) Kev: That’s supposedly where you’re talkin’ to me (0:01:41) Al: I need a holiday. (0:01:42) Kev: Well, well, you’re close to one, aren’t you? (0:01:44) Al: Good news! (0:01:46) Al: All right, this episode, we’re going to talk for a very short period of time, (0:01:51) Al: and you’ll understand why later. We’re going to talk about Time of Got You Plaza. (0:01:57) Al: Spoiler alert, don’t play this game. Before that, we’ve got some news. We have what we’ve been up to. (0:02:07) Al: But first of all, wait, do I normally do that in that order? I know what you released the (0:02:11) Al: the last months before what we’ve been up to. (0:02:11) Kev: Isn’t it normally what we’ve been up to first usually? Yeah (0:02:14) Al: I think it is, yeah, OK, right. (0:02:16) Al: Yeah, let’s do that. (0:02:17) Al: Ah, why, why? (0:02:18) Al: It was a section and it just it just moved the title, not the whole section. (0:02:19) Kev: I was destroying (0:02:22) Kev: He’s destroying the show live on on air (0:02:23) Al: Stupid thing. (0:02:25) Al: I’d love to destroy some show notes. (0:02:28) Al: So we’ve got before that, we’ve got some news. (0:02:30) Al: We’ve got I know what you released last month. (0:02:33) Al: But first of all, Kevin, what have you been up to? (0:02:36) Kev: Um, let me think here, um, not yeah, I (0:02:42) Kev: Okay, so a lot of the usuals. Um, a little busy this week. Um, uh (0:02:48) Al: running away from ice agents. Sorry. I really should not joke about that because the ice will (0:02:50) Kev: Yeah, oh no, yeah, yeah that is a genuine concern every day (0:02:57) Al: hear it and they’ll come for you. We can clip it for the slack. (0:02:58) Kev: Yeah, yeah, yeah (0:03:03) Kev: The joys of being (0:03:05) Kev: Yeah, the joys of… (0:03:06) Kev: being a brown skinned boy in America right now. (0:03:13) Kev: There’s an ex… (0:03:15) Kev: So… (0:03:17) Kev: It feels like a lot of these ice raids are in the workplace, right? (0:03:21) Kev: And so, mine just feels extra, like, odd because I work for a Chinese company, Technica… (0:03:28) Al: Oh no. Oh no. (0:03:28) Kev: Well… (0:03:29) Kev: I mean, they are… (0:03:31) Kev: They have a… (0:03:33) Kev: Incorporation… (0:03:34) Kev: They are incorporated here in America, right? (0:03:36) Al: Yeah, yeah, yeah. (0:03:37) Kev: They are in separate American companies. (0:03:39) Kev: But, you know, the HQ is in China, so… (0:03:41) Al: And let’s not let’s not pretend like technically an American company would stop any rabid anti-Chinese (0:03:41) Kev: You know, there’s a… (0:03:48) Al: people in America doing anything, you know? (0:03:48) Kev: Oh, yeah! (0:03:49) Kev: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. (0:03:51) Kev: For sure, I’m just saying, like, there’s… (0:03:53) Kev: There’s a few layers, extra fun layers to this equation. (0:03:54) Al: Yeah. (0:03:57) Al: As always, they’re not going to come for you in that case, because they’re only coming (0:04:00) Kev: Yeah. (0:04:03) Al: for the manual laborers, right, because they’re the only ones that– (0:04:06) Al: be illegal, obviously. That’s true. That’s true. Oh, goodness. (0:04:08) Kev: They’ll run out eventually. We’re still in year one. (0:04:14) Kev: I live in Georgia. I mean, I’m in the blue area of Georgia, but it’s still Georgia. (0:04:19) Kev: Southern. (0:04:21) Kev: Oh, good. (0:04:21) Al: Oh, a happy, happy podcast. (0:04:25) Al: What have you been up to, Kevin? (0:04:28) Kev: Well, while I’m not sweating my legal status, even though I was born here, (0:04:34) Kev: Um, I’ve been, I’ve been playing. (0:04:36) Al: I mean, who knows whether that counts or not anymore? (0:04:38) Kev: Uh, according to some people in certain positions, I’ve been, uh, I’ve been playing card games, uh, a lot of card games in the past week. (0:04:50) Kev: Like, yeah, a lot of the usual stuff, but, um, Marvel snap. (0:04:54) Kev: We got the, the fantastic Ford season, um, the, the like, uh, based off the new movie, um, that’s coming up. (0:04:58) Al: Ah, yes. Is that July then? Cool. Any good cards? (0:05:02) Kev: Yeah. (0:05:03) Kev: Yeah. (0:05:03) Kev: That’s the July season. (0:05:05) Kev: And okay, there’s two (0:05:08) Kev: Okay, so (0:05:10) Kev: Yes. Okay. First of all, the season pass card is is mr. Fantastic, but the Pedro Pascal version (0:05:17) Kev: so one you get the bonus of Pedro Pascal at first I was I was (0:05:22) Kev: Hesitant about Pedro as mr. Fantastic. I don’t get me wrong. I love Pedro (0:05:26) Al: Yeah, you were being racist about him, yeah. (0:05:28) Kev: Yeah, but but just mr. Fantastic so like the whitest white boy you’ve ever seen right and now I’ve been I’ve been I’ve warmed up (0:05:36) Kev: to it. In fact, I’m down. (0:05:38) Kev: For the revision, let’s let’s just retroactively put Pedro Pascale in all the Mr. Fantastic (0:05:43) Kev: appearances. That’s what I’m down for. The cards pretty dang good. Marvel Snap is reaching (0:05:53) Kev: to play. It feels like it’s reaching to play. So there’s just it’s just going bananas, like (0:05:58) Kev: the power levels going up, which, you know, in most card games, that’s what you have to (0:06:02) Kev: do because you have to keep releasing new cards that people want to buy. But the other (0:06:08) Kev: Interesting tidbit, okay, I can’t remember when they introduced it or (0:06:12) Kev: if it’s always been there. (0:06:15) Kev: So you know that there’s a season pass in Marvel Snap, it’s the big thing. (0:06:18) Al: Yep. I am aware. (0:06:20) Kev: There’s the premium season pass, that’s where you actually pay the money and (0:06:25) Kev: you get the card, right? (0:06:26) Al: Yeah. Yeah, that just unlocks 10 extra levels, right? (0:06:26) Kev: Because the season pass, every player gets it, but (0:06:29) Kev: you don’t get half of it until you pay the $10 or whatever. (0:06:32) Kev: All right, do you remember there is a super premium? (0:06:38) Kev: That’s what it was originally. (0:06:38) Al: Yes, you’re going to tell me it’s now different. (0:06:40) Kev: So X number of months ago, they said, okay, now if you get the super premium, (0:06:46) Kev: you will get this variant, right? (0:06:49) Kev: And for people familiar in Snap, variants are a big thing because they’re your (0:06:52) Kev: flare, I guess technically it can unlock a card for you if you don’t have it. (0:06:58) Kev: But it’s nice, it’s not mandatory. (0:07:02) Kev: It’s an existing card or whatever, but it’s just a little extra icing on top, right? (0:07:08) Kev: And so I was like, okay, sure, that makes sense. (0:07:09) Kev: A nice little extra bonus if you get the super premium. (0:07:12) Kev: I never got the super premium because I didn’t want to pay $20 for that. (0:07:18) Kev: But now they have finally, they’ve pushed the button, (0:07:24) Kev: they’ve crossed the line, they broke the glass. (0:07:27) Kev: There is a brand new card in the super premium version. (0:07:30) Al: Oh no. No disaster. (0:07:32) Kev: Yep, and the optics aren’t great because I don’t. (0:07:38) Kev: No, if you remember a couple of weeks ago, I talked about there was a mode where they (0:07:41) Kev: introduced a new card, but it was basically impossible to get the card just playing for free. (0:07:46) Al: Yeah, you had to have like 500 matches or something. (0:07:49) Kev: Yeah, something like that. (0:07:51) Kev: Yeah, so people were already up in arms about that. (0:07:54) Kev: And that was about a month ago or so. (0:07:57) Kev: So now they’ve got this, so it’s just very clear that the devs or the higher ups, whoever, (0:08:04) Kev: There’s pressure being put on the game to make it (0:08:07) Al: » Yep. I don’t know any other games like that, but yep. (0:08:08) Kev: more pay to win, right? (0:08:10) Kev: I mean… (0:08:12) Kev: Yeah… (0:08:14) Kev: Yeah, I know. (0:08:16) Kev: Completely novel idea. (0:08:18) Kev: But yeah, they’ve done that finally. (0:08:22) Kev: And the worst part is it’s a pretty decent card. (0:08:24) Kev: So… (0:08:26) Kev: The Fantastic Four, all the new versions that will come out. (0:08:30) Kev: A lot of them revolve around this… (0:08:32) Kev: It’s a mechanic that’s existed since the start of the game, (0:08:36) Kev: They, they kind of labeled it. (0:08:38) Kev: End of turn. (0:08:39) Kev: Um, it’s just an ability that activates at the end of turn. (0:08:43) Kev: Um, for like, right. (0:08:44) Kev: So like Mr. (0:08:45) Kev: Fantastic, he gives like a card in your hand, like a plus one power or something. (0:08:49) Kev: End of turn. (0:08:49) Kev: Right. (0:08:50) Kev: And then some of the other fantastic four members, um, they all have. (0:08:50) Al: That’s different, because that’s not what Mr. Fantastic was before. (0:08:55) Kev: No, right. (0:08:56) Kev: He was an ongoing, he boosted other ones, but yeah, this new version (0:08:58) Al: Yeah. (0:08:59) Kev: just boost cards in your hand. (0:09:01) Kev: Um, I’m trying to remember, but there were cards that had this kind (0:09:04) Kev: of ability at the beginning. (0:09:06) Kev: Um, like sunspot, sunspot. (0:09:08) Kev: One right end of turn he would gain a power right um so (0:09:08) Al: Yes, yep. (0:09:12) Kev: So it’s basically that idea, but they just like okay. We make an official label now (0:09:17) Al: Yeah, because I think they were just like random things it was just like it would say (0:09:21) Kev: Yeah (0:09:22) Al: in the description what it happened because I think the other there was I guess you know (0:09:23) Kev: Right (0:09:26) Al: Red Hulk was another one that would do that it would it would give you it would gain power (0:09:27) Kev: Yeah exactly exactly (0:09:32) Al: based on what you didn’t use I think I can’t remember or the opponent used yeah yeah otherwise (0:09:33) Kev: Or what the opponent like if they didn’t use the other energy yeah (0:09:38) Kev: Yeah, but exactly right there were a handful of cards that did that but they they and this was I don’t know a couple months (0:09:43) Kev: ago they they codified that well this season they’re pushing that like all the think three of the four (0:09:49) Kev: Have or at least three of the four have end of turn abilities and the super premium card (0:09:57) Kev: Is the fantastic car? (0:09:59) Kev: And the fantastic car gives a boost to end of turn cards, so it works in this whole (0:10:06) Kev: Fantastic. (0:10:08) Kev: That’s a decent card and it looks fun and cool, but it’s behind this extra paywall. (0:10:16) Kev: So, that’s got people riled up, unhappy, myself included. (0:10:16) Al: Mm-hmm. Not great (0:10:22) Kev: So, and again, the worst… (0:10:24) Al: Side note… (0:10:26) Kev: I’m sorry. (0:10:27) Al: Side note, there’s… you say it’s the fantastic art. (0:10:30) Al: Have they done non-living beings before? (0:10:34) Kev: Uh, well, I mean not counting robots. Um, no, I don’t think so. Like that’s the first like vehicle sort of thing (0:10:40) Al: Yeah, because they’ve done like, obviously, like, they’ve done like ego and they’ve like, (0:10:41) Kev: No, I think yeah (0:10:45) Al: they’ve done like other celestial beings and stuff like that, but like, (0:10:47) Kev: Yeah, yeah (0:10:49) Al: yeah, and you write robots and stuff, but I don’t like, (0:10:51) Kev: Don’t sentient beings (0:10:52) Al: the fantastic car doesn’t even like, pretend to be sentient. (0:10:56) Kev: No, no, it is just a car right it’s just a vehicle (0:10:58) Al: Yeah, it’s literally a car. (0:10:59) Kev: Yeah, that one that flies but still (0:11:02) Al: They’re running out of people already, is that the problem? (0:11:03) Kev: Yeah, no (0:11:05) Kev: I (0:11:07) Kev: Don’t think they’re running out because Marvel has a lot of dumb characters, but you know the the ones people get excited about maybe they’re (0:11:17) Kev: They’ve been going a little fast (0:11:20) Kev: They did actually a while back they introduced a new card called skills (0:11:26) Kev: Which are not not characters. They’re just like so (0:11:30) Kev: The a lot of the dr. Strange spells were called (0:11:34) Kev: skills they introduce some magician type characters who generated skills in your in and (0:11:41) Kev: Skills they when you play them, they just disappear they they have a cost they they play them they have an ability and they disappear (0:11:47) Al: Yeah. (0:11:49) Kev: So they don’t stay and generate power on your board or whatever (0:11:53) Kev: And so they introduced that so that that was kind of like their first really like okay, we’re introducing some new cards that aren’t just characters (0:12:01) Kev: But yes the fantastic cars for it as I can tell (0:12:04) Kev: It’s like the first one that’s like a piece of equipment or or vehicle or whatever (0:12:05) Al: I, I just remembered, I just remembered Thanos gives you the Infinity Stones. (0:12:09) Kev: Yeah, oh (0:12:11) Kev: Yeah, there you go. Yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah, that’s just true those aren’t characters. Yeah (0:12:14) Al: It was not the first, and I don’t need people telling me, “Oh, technically the (0:12:18) Al: Infinity Stones have a consciousness.” (0:12:25) Kev: But yeah (0:12:27) Kev: So it’s it’s a wild time and the worst part is Marvel snap is still in my opinion good like the game is good though (0:12:34) Kev: Cakes are still solid (0:12:36) Kev: It’s grown so much that you can kind of play whatever you deck want you want now (0:12:42) Kev: I’ve said that a handful times and still true, right? (0:12:44) Kev: But I said that because there there were errors of snap where we’re they were dominated by certain archetype or a certain card or whatever (0:12:44) Al: Mm-hmm Oh (0:12:49) Al: Yeah, yeah, yeah (0:12:52) Kev: Right, we don’t see that as much now. There are no real problem (0:12:57) Kev: children (0:12:59) Kev: But but maybe because of that I don’t know but they’re (0:13:04) Kev: They’re pushing harder for the pay to win like give us money (0:13:08) Kev: So that kind of sucks especially because again, I like the game. It’s still enjoyable in my opinion (0:13:13) Kev: The games are still six turns. They’re fast. They’re there because he can play lots of different types and and and archetypes and it’s fun (0:13:23) Kev: But so yeah, I will keep playing until like I don’t know what we’ll see i’m the frog in the boiling pot and all that (0:13:29) Kev: we’ll see (0:13:32) Kev: But other than that, the other… (0:13:34) Kev: A big card game I’ve been playing. (0:13:42) Kev: Marvel Rivals Season 3. I need to do that in grey. (0:13:45) Kev: I don’t know if you saw it, but… (0:13:47) Kev: Sorry, it’s just so I thought. (0:13:49) Kev: I’ll report on that when I do play it. (0:13:53) Kev: Magic the Gathering. (0:13:56) Kev: I’m still playing the Arena, the online version. (0:13:59) Kev: And Final Fantasy sets still going strong and all that. (0:14:02) Kev: I tried drafting for the first time. (0:14:04) Kev: Online, but it’s still drafting. (0:14:07) Al: Is that is that a built in feature of Arena? (0:14:34) Kev: If you pick a card you want out of your pack and then you pass the cards to the next person and you know (0:14:40) Kev: Everyone kind of swaps packs and everyone keeps selecting out of these different packs until you have a pile of your own cards from all (0:14:47) Kev: These different packs (0:14:49) Kev: and (0:14:50) Kev: So it was always a novel idea. I never tried it before but I know something very weird about like, okay (0:14:55) Kev: I have this pack. I don’t want to share the cards. Why am I giving you my cards, but (0:15:01) Kev: But it works out because after you know the (0:15:04) Kev: packs are going around and rotated and all that like you have a deck that you (0:15:10) Kev: know there’s X number of packs and from that you’ve actually built the deck that (0:15:14) Kev: kind of sort of works if you know what you’re doing right and everyone’s kind of (0:15:18) Kev: on the same playing field because everyone’s opening all these new packs (0:15:21) Kev: nobody has any you know bringing in any existing cards or whatever so it’s kind (0:15:27) Kev: of a levelish playing field um bit of luck in there of course depending on (0:15:31) Kev: what you open or whatnot. (0:15:34) Kev: it’s a fun novel idea. And so on Arena, the version I play, the actual drafting part (0:15:43) Kev: is done with bots. You don’t actually do it with the other players. So that’s nice because (0:15:48) Kev: you don’t have to, you know, there’s not a timer or anything, you know, you’re just like, (0:15:52) Kev: okay, here, I think about it, pick what I want. Or if you know, if you need to go step away, (0:15:57) Kev: go to the bathroom, whatever you can, right, there’s no pressure to actually finish the draft (0:16:01) Kev: in X number of minutes or whatever. (0:16:05) Kev: But then when you build your deck, then you go, uh, you play against actual other players who’ve done the similar, um, drafting process. (0:16:12) Kev: Um, so, um, it, yeah, it’s an awful experience. (0:16:16) Kev: I think it’s fun actually. (0:16:18) Kev: Like I get it now with the appeal of the drafting. (0:16:20) Kev: Um, and, uh, but yeah, it’s, it’s good. (0:16:24) Kev: Final, the Final Fantasy cards was so good. (0:16:25) Kev: I, I, I’m angry at how good they are. (0:16:29) Kev: Um, the two, um, but I, at the very least I stayed clean. (0:16:34) Kev: I haven’t any money into magic for in a hot minute. (0:16:38) Kev: Um, and at least not any for anything for Final Fantasy. (0:16:42) Kev: So I feel good pounding myself on the back for that. (0:16:44) Kev: I’ve stayed strong. (0:16:45) Kev: Um, but yeah, other than that, um, nothing, nothing else. (0:16:50) Kev: I can’t, man. (0:16:51) Kev: Oh man. (0:16:51) Kev: Have you seen the master’s costume, Pokemon masters, the costumes lately? (0:16:56) Al: I’ve seen some of it. (0:16:58) Al: I’ve not really kind of been paying too much attention. (0:16:58) Kev: Did you see the, did you see the, the Larry, the vacation layer? (0:17:04) Kev: Oh, okay. (0:17:04) Kev: Hold on. (0:17:05) Kev: All right. (0:17:05) Kev: I’m going to make the usual slack exclusive thread. (0:17:08) Kev: Um, um, but yeah, it’s a, uh, uh, they gave Larry a, a, uh, Hawaiian, like a (0:17:18) Kev: lowland themed, um, uh, vacation suit and masters. (0:17:23) Kev: It’s very funny. (0:17:24) Kev: Um, uh, they also got summer Cynthia. (0:17:28) Kev: So she’s, I believe five or six variants of Cynthia now, because guess what? (0:17:34) Kev: Popular. (0:17:34) Kev: Did you know that Al? (0:17:35) Kev: Did you know she’s popular? (0:17:36) Al: Hm hm hm, whaaat? (0:17:37) Kev: Um, um, Skyla got a fun suit with jump off. (0:17:43) Kev: Um, yeah, masters is good. (0:17:45) Kev: The big, I haven’t dropped money on it in a while, but I, I want those costumes. (0:17:51) Kev: So yeah, I can say. (0:17:52) Kev: So that’s me all gotcha, all, all gambling, all card games. (0:17:56) Kev: What about you? (0:17:56) Kev: Al, what gotcha and gambling have you been up to lately? (0:18:00) Al: Oh, just my usual Pokemon, right? (0:18:02) Al: Although I’ve not put any money in since Go Fest. (0:18:03) Kev: Yeah. (0:18:05) Kev: I heard about that, that last episode, you got your training. (0:18:06) Al: So, yeah. (0:18:08) Kev: Gimme, gimme, gimme gold in the, in the, in the Dakota, get her weren’t yet. (0:18:13) Kev: I’m, I need to know, is she free? (0:18:16) Kev: I need to know. (0:18:19) Al: think so. I don’t think so. No, what have I actually been playing? Let’s see. I’ve been (0:18:20) Kev: Yeah. (0:18:26) Al: playing Tamagotchi Plaza and when I say playing, I played about half an hour and then searched (0:18:31) Al: online to make sure I wasn’t missing anything before I sold the game. More about that later (0:18:36) Kev: Wow, that’s fast. (0:18:37) Al: on in the episode, but that’s your, yeah it is. I have never, I’ve never stopped playing a game (0:18:46) Al: that fast and not been like, “Ugh!” (0:18:49) Al: This just isn’t for me, and instead being like, “This is just a bad game.” (0:18:52) Kev: Oh I’m excited, I’m excited to hear about this later. (0:19:00) Al: And I’ve also been playing some Land’s Island, slowly, obviously, because if you’ve listened (0:19:06) Al: to the previous episode, listener, you will know that I am not playing on my Steam Deck, (0:19:11) Al: which is how I normally play games, Steam Deck or Switch 2, while watching TV with my wife. (0:19:19) Al: So I’ve got to play it at my desk, and I don’t like doing that, right? Who wants to be sitting at (0:19:24) Al: your office desk playing games? So I’ve just been doing it for a couple of hours a week, (0:19:26) Kev: Alright. I get it. It’s undecided, but maybe. But hey, I mean, good for them, right? Yeah, (0:19:31) Al: but I have been enjoying that, I think. I think I’m enjoying Land’s Island, I think it’s a fun game. (0:19:42) Al: Yeah, I mean, I’m still annoyed about the controller support, but other than that, (0:19:47) Al: I think I’m enjoying it. (0:19:48) Kev: yeah. Yeah, that, that, I mean, that’s, that’s very fair. I’m with you on that boat. I want (0:19:53) Kev: controllers for my games, by and large. (0:19:56) Kev: I did not grow up a PC gamer so, um, you know, obviously I can do, you know, point (0:20:02) Kev: and click or management type games. (0:20:04) Kev: There’s no problem on the mouse, but like the people who do shooters and stuff like (0:20:07) Kev: that on the, the, on the mouse and keyboard, I don’t get it. (0:20:11) Kev: I can’t, I can’t, it’s, it’s beyond my poor comprehension. (0:20:17) Kev: But hey, good for lens Island. (0:20:18) Kev: Like that was a journey, but they got there. (0:20:21) Kev: Um, they, they, yeah. (0:20:23) Al: something like that. They got somewhere anyway. All right, I think that’s it. I’m just kind (0:20:27) Kev: They did stuff, they improved, they improved to some measure, I’m told. (0:20:37) Al: of waiting for Donkey Kong, to be honest. (0:20:38) Kev: Yeah, yeah, I don’t blame you. It’s like that game looks very good and shocker and yeah, yeah, I (0:20:44) Al: Yeah. Soon. (0:20:48) Kev: Wish he had more transformations. That’s it’s like the big thing. We’ve only seen three. Maybe there’s more (0:20:52) Al: Well, there might be more like surely they would have shown (0:20:55) Kev: Yeah, well the question is (0:20:58) Kev: Like what’s a good number right like because you know, obviously (0:21:02) Al: Yeah, like ten would be too many probably like that feels over (0:21:06) Kev: Yeah, right (0:21:09) Kev: And there’s probably gonna be some super transformation for the final fight because that feels like a thing this they would do (0:21:13) Al: Of course, of course. (0:21:16) Kev: But like normally I’d say I know five is a good number not counting anything finale spectacle transformation (0:21:23) Al: Well, let’s see what happens, but I’d be surprised if they’ve shown us everything. (0:21:28) Al: Let’s put it that way. We’ll see, but we will see. (0:21:32) Al: All right, well, let’s get into I Know What You Released last month. (0:21:37) Al: A quiet month, apparently, June was. I don’t know how I missed this out of the episode from (0:21:42) Al: two weeks ago, which is when I was meant to do it, but apparently I did. (0:21:46) Al: Just three games released. We got Rune Factory Guardians of Azuma. (0:21:52) Al: I haven’t played that. (0:21:53) Al: We’ve got Lenz Island 1.0. (0:21:55) Al: Obviously I’ve played that. (0:21:56) Al: And we’ve got Tamagotchi Plaza. (0:21:58) Al: Please do not play that. (0:22:00) Kev: I’ve played none of these games one day. I’ll play a room factory game. I would like to I (0:22:08) Al: Yeah, I feel like I could- (0:22:08) Kev: Mean (0:22:10) Kev: Yeah, I mean it’s it’s story of seasons, but more anime juice up the anime they said (0:22:16) Al: It’s much, I would say it’s much more like, it’s a combat game that just happens to have (0:22:21) Al: farming in it, rather than, especially now, I think you could probably argue in the four (0:22:22) Kev: sure okay sure yeah yeah sure and you know what that makes sense like you’re (0:22:27) Al: and before days, that it was Harvest Moon with, with combat, but now I think it’s definitely (0:22:34) Al: focused the other way around. (0:22:39) Kev: gonna do two series differentiate sure why not long as they have the cow all as (0:22:42) Al: Yeah, yeah, different cow, but yeah, all right. (0:22:45) Kev: well (0:22:49) Kev: Wait, it’s a different they don’t use the story of Caesar’s cow (0:22:50) Al: Well, I don’t think so. (0:22:53) Kev: Oh, no, never mind. It’s all it’s almost don’t care (0:22:58) Al: Yeah, because they don’t have standard animals in Unfactory. (0:23:00) Al: They have like other animals. (0:23:01) Al: So it’s kind of like a lion cow, but you will love the name. (0:23:04) Kev: Oh, huh, I’ll check it out. Okay, I’ll see a (0:23:08) Al: It’s called a buff-a-moo. (0:23:11) Kev: buffer (0:23:13) Kev: Let’s see. So like a buffalo but a buffer. Okay. Oh (0:23:19) Kev: Okay, that’s oh wait no that is a while (0:23:23) Kev: Mmm the design is kind of cute, but it also makes me think of the the girl dog from from (0:23:30) Kev: Full metal alchemist. I don’t like that (0:23:32) Al: Well, there you go. (0:23:38) Al: All right, we’re going to get into some news and we are going to start off with Kevin’s (0:23:38) Kev: Okay, that’s that’s an interesting camera (0:23:44) Al: favorite news. (0:23:45) Al: Gaucho and the Grassland have announced that they’re releasing on the 16th of July. (0:23:51) Al: You may notice, Kevin, that is basically now. (0:23:54) Al: When this episode comes out, it will be out. (0:23:55) Kev: that is when this episode comes out I will be playing this game probably i’m assuming it has (0:23:59) Al: Yeah. (0:24:01) Kev: controller support that’s that’s the the uh kind of the line in the sand for me great well yeah (0:24:04) Al: It says it has feel controller support, but I don’t know whether I can trust that or not. (0:24:12) Kev: you know that’s a good point too but um yeah I don’t know what can I say it’s still the same like (0:24:19) Kev: every trailer just continues to deliver the same promise you are being a cowboy that’s it (0:24:25) Kev: it and I like it’s a fun yeah yeah the the the the art style is cute kind of that overcooked (0:24:26) Al: Kevin was sold the moment he saw the first thing about being a cowboy, he was like “I’m sold, (0:24:30) Al: I don’t need to know anymore!” (0:24:37) Kev: the looking art style um but yeah I get you get to yeah and I can see that you you get to lasso (0:24:40) Al: It’s doing a little bit of the Animal Crossing curved world as well. (0:24:47) Kev: cows like that you know they knew that’s the activity you want to do you throw you have your (0:24:51) Kev: Europe, you’re the last of the count, so they… (0:24:55) Kev: I’m sold. (0:24:56) Al: Yeah. I need to know how it feels. Right. Because the controls for that, it could either be interesting or just horrific and terrible to play. So it’ll be interesting to see how that goes. (0:25:08) Kev: uh you’re right and it’s gonna be a very delicate like thing to get right so we’ll we’ll see um (0:25:17) Kev: tune in because I promise you you will find out on this show thoughts on about this game (0:25:20) Al: It does have a demo. (0:25:23) Kev: one form or another it does I won’t play it i’m just going in blind i’m going all in (0:25:30) Al: Next, we have Wandering Village. They have announced that they’re exiting Early Access. (0:25:38) Al: They’re releasing their 1.0 this week on the 17th of July, one day after Gaut you on the (0:25:44) Kev: That’s right after. I only have one day if I want to play Cowboy if I want to do this. I will not do that. (0:25:45) Al: grassland. (0:25:53) Al: And that is going to Steam Switch, Xbox and PlayStation all on the same page. (0:25:57) Kev: What a wild trailer because you have your huge dinosaur with the village or whatever on top (0:26:02) Kev: in the trailer. Oh okay, I didn’t know that. The art style is interesting because it’s 3D but like (0:26:03) Al: on onboo, I believe his name is. (0:26:11) Kev: 2d characters and and like (0:26:14) Kev: It’s not octopath like (0:26:16) Kev: It’s a full like CG 3d looking world, but the characters look like flat paper. It’s it’s it’s very interesting (0:26:25) Kev: Dynamic the thing is bad. Just interesting. But yeah is you have that and then you have people with like (0:26:32) Kev: Bane masks and then people (0:26:36) Kev: Burning the whole village (0:26:38) Kev: Forest for some reason. I don’t know. There’s a lot going on here. It is fascinating (0:26:44) Kev: And coming out on all consoles and everything that’s good good for them. That’s that’s impressive (0:26:49) Al: Yep, continuing this week’s releases, (0:26:54) Al: we have Cottonville is releasing on the 17th of July. (0:26:58) Kev: They’re just making up for last month by everything out one week as they stay. (0:27:03) Al: Everything on the same day. (0:27:06) Al: This was originally a Kickstarter, but apparently the Kickstarter was banned. (0:27:12) Al: And so now it’s just, yeah, so goodness sake. (0:27:12) Kev: B-band? (0:27:16) Al: Let me let me read what it was. (0:27:19) Al: There’s a statement on it. Here we go. (0:27:21) Al: This was back in the 15th. (0:27:21) Kev: Oh goodness. (0:27:23) Al: Dear Community, it says titled Kickstarter Update. (0:27:29) Al: Dear Community, firstly, we would like to sincerely thank you for your incredible (0:27:33) Al: support and participation in our first Kickstarter campaign. (0:27:36) Al: It genuinely means the world to us. (0:27:38) Al: Unfortunately, due to an oversight on our part, our Kickstarter campaign was (0:27:43) Al: suspended for unintentionally breaching Kickstarter’s guidelines. (0:27:47) Al: As a result, all contributions have been fully remembered. (0:27:49) Al: We are very grateful for the support gathered and to out show appreciation to all our backers (0:28:14) Al: and we are working on the very best solution to how to reward your contributions. (0:28:20) Al: Thank you again for your amazing support and interest in Cottonville. It truly means so (0:28:22) Al: much to us. While this was our first experience with Kickstarter and it did not go as planned, (0:28:27) Al: we’ve learned a lot. We’re looking forward to future campaigns now armed with valuable. (0:28:34) Kev: that didn’t answer my question. Why? Were crimes committed at any point? Maybe. Unintentional (0:28:40) Al: So I wonder, so it looks like what they did was they cancelled the Kickstarter and created (0:28:43) Kev: crimes? (0:28:52) Al: a new Kickstarter, and I’m wondering whether that’s the rule they broke, like you can’t (0:28:58) Al: recreate a Kickstarter or something like that. (0:29:00) Kev: Mm-hmm. I can see that that makes sense (0:29:03) Kev: Yeah, I’m big. Why well, why would they do that in the first place? I don’t know (0:29:08) Al: Don’t know, is this game a scam? I don’t know. (0:29:10) Kev: big (0:29:14) Kev: That I mean there’s the other fact that they are making the game without Kickstarter anymore (0:29:20) Kev: That’s the I did these are very weird flags. I don’t know. They’re red flags. They’re just weird flags (0:29:29) Al: » They are definitely flags. (0:29:31) Kev: Yeah, and the wildest part is it’s for this game that (0:29:38) Kev: Like isn’t for me. It feels very Facebook (0:29:42) Al: Oh, yeah, I hate the look of the game into it. (0:29:42) Kev: like gamey (0:29:45) Al: So it’s from it’s from the publisher Red Deer Games who have done such games (0:29:51) Al: such as Sprout Valley, Garden Buddies. (0:29:54) Kev: Monocats, I don’t know any of you wait no in a Sprout Valley (0:29:56) Al: And a bunch of other things that all definitely look like scam games. (0:30:01) Kev: And is this money laundering very possibly you (0:30:05) Al: I mean, Sprout Valley was a game and it was a fine game. (0:30:10) Al: Garden Buddies, I’m pretty sure we didn’t. (0:30:12) Al: It’s a publisher, not a developer, right? (0:30:16) Kev: yeah look i’m the game dev people oh it’s a public oh the publisher sure well okay exactly (0:30:23) Kev: well exactly the more reason to believe it may be money laundering the devs are maybe legit and (0:30:28) Al: Although, well, so this is where it gets interesting, is Cottonville is developed by the publisher. (0:30:39) Al: I think it’s their first game that they’re developing, rather than publishing. (0:30:40) Kev: you’re right it is you’re right um well that’s um (0:30:49) Kev: this is very strange and again if it were like a game that you know looked better you know that (0:30:58) Kev: being that might be one thing but it looks so I don’t know it just it just feels very weird (0:31:08) Al: it does. It is very weird. It does have a demo. Will I play the demo? Who knows? We’ll see. (0:31:08) Kev: the way the characters are always looking at you. (0:31:10) Kev: Straight up the camera, I don’t like it. (0:31:22) Al: Will I buy the game? Probably not, but I guess it depends how the demo goes, I guess. It’s (0:31:24) Kev: I also probably own that. (0:31:29) Al: just, yeah, those animations are so weird. [sighs] (0:31:32) Kev: Yeah (0:31:33) Kev: it (0:31:35) Kev: Comes out same day as wandering village, which noticeably feels much less possibly a scam (0:31:42) Al: Well, that game’s already out, it’s just not out in 1.0. (0:31:46) Al: All right, rounding out this week’s releases, (0:31:52) Al: Tiny Garden have announced their Summer Breeze content update (0:31:57) Al: and cosmetic pack are releasing on the 17th of July. (0:32:02) Kev: It’s our I don’t know. I gotta think of a barbenheimer equivalent cotton (0:32:07) Kev: wandering garden, I don’t know (0:32:10) Al: Best bet is, I think it’s the same week as Barbara Naimer happened. (0:32:13) Kev: Really that’s incredible (0:32:13) Al: Yeah, because it was definitely July and I think it was this week. (0:32:18) Kev: Yeah, my favorite thing about barbenheimer like I mean both movies are fine or whatever but people kind of under their breath were like (0:32:23) Al: Two years ago. (0:32:25) Kev: But barbie was a little bit better though (0:32:27) Al: Oh, it absolutely was, yeah, I enjoyed Oppenheimer, but it was it was not as good a film. (0:32:29) Kev: Yeah (0:32:36) Al: But I look, I’m not saying it’s a bad film, but I mean, Barbara. (0:32:43) Al: It was my film of the year that year. (0:32:44) Kev: I mean, the two lead roles kind of killed it in every aspect. (0:32:52) Al: Yeah, yeah, 21st of July, it was I was right, it’s the same week. (0:33:00) Al: So this would be Gaucho Wandering Cotton Garden. (0:33:07) Kev: yep there you go glad we found our episode title (0:33:07) Al: Oh, OK, fine. (0:33:11) Al: Yeah, new content pack DLC for Tiny Garden. (0:33:18) Al: If you’re enjoying that game, it was such a cheap game. (0:33:21) Al: I suspect this will be paid. (0:33:22) Al: It’s DLC. It does look like it’s paid DLC, so I mean, go support it. It’s good. (0:33:29) Kev: - Yeah, there you go. (0:33:31) Kev: That’s a cute idea of like, it’s all cosmetics. (0:33:36) Kev: Whole game is cosmetics, right? (0:33:38) Kev: So like introducing these packs, that’s a good idea. (0:33:42) Kev: And it’s like there’s some, (0:33:44) Kev: like you can grow palm trees and wait, (0:33:47) Kev: no, there’s new mechanics. (0:33:48) Kev: Hold on, they’re saying new mechanics. (0:33:48) Al: So I think so if I if I understand it correctly, the new plants and new mechanics are a free (0:33:49) Kev: Oh, oh music. (0:33:55) Al: update and the cosmetics are the DLC. (0:33:58) Kev: Uh, okay, that makes sense as it should be good for them (0:34:02) Al: That is the correct way to do things, yes, I agree. (0:34:04) Kev: Pokemon (0:34:10) Kev: But good for them good for you tiny garden you little garden that (0:34:15) Al: We also have an update for Disney Dreamlight Valley. (0:34:19) Al: I feel like these are coming out all the time and also I care about them less and less. (0:34:22) Kev: I mean it’s yeah yeah that’s that’s good that’s called diminishing returns and (0:34:30) Kev: and that’s what happens when you have Disney with a bajillion IPs and (0:34:36) Kev: whatever and and the worst part is like I don’t know I most of these don’t feel (0:34:43) Kev: like big story expansion I mean a lot of them are but I don’t know just I look at (0:34:50) Kev: other games like look at the mojo (0:34:52) Kev: games right when the new contents there’s big story chapters and stuff to (0:34:57) Kev: do these I don’t know maybe it’s all because it’s existing IPs like I don’t (0:35:05) Kev: know it just doesn’t have the same hype around it maybe it’s because it’s too (0:35:11) Kev: saccharine they can’t they can’t go crazy they can’t have the chapter where (0:35:16) Kev: or Scar eats Remy from Ratatouille. (0:35:20) Al: I, yeah, I wonder if, because obviously they’ve done this thing where the DLCs have been split up, (0:35:25) Al: so this update is called the storybook veil part two, the unwritten realm update. (0:35:32) Kev: Okay. Okay, one name. (0:35:38) Al: And I kind of feel like maybe it would be better if they just did all the DLC (0:35:42) Al: for the storybook veil at once, right? Because we talked about this before, where I don’t think I’d be (0:35:50) Al: booting up Stardew every two months if there was a new update, but the way that he bundles it all (0:35:54) Kev: Mm-hmm (0:35:56) Al: together in an update every two years or three years or whatever, means that I’m super excited, (0:36:01) Al: because it’s like, oh, it has been years since I’ve probably played the game, let’s go in, (0:36:05) Al: we’ve got loads of new content, I’m really excited for that. Whereas this is just constant, here’s (0:36:10) Al: new update. And I suspect they’ve probably got numbers to show that this keeps people invested, (0:36:18) Al: Right. Like if we talk about. (0:36:20) Al: I wouldn’t want one big update every two years for that, but I don’t know. (0:36:25) Al: It’s a difficult one, but I don’t even play the game anymore. (0:36:25) Kev: Uh-huh, well I mean, yeah I’ve never played the game so I’m just completely talking without (0:36:30) Al: So who might it complete? (0:36:36) Kev: any frame reference. (0:36:38) Al: What that’s not what we do (0:36:44) Kev: So we say right after declaring cotton fields a scam without having touched it or planning (0:36:48) Al: No, I did not, excuse me, I did not, I would like to clarify, as per my lawyers have just (0:36:49) Kev: to. (0:36:55) Al: told me to do, I, lol, I did not claim that the game was a scam. I asked whether it was (0:37:03) Al: and felt, it said it felt a little scammy. That is all I’m saying. I, yep, that is very (0:37:08) Kev: - Feel of a scam. (0:37:12) Al: different to claiming it is a scam. It feels scammy, it’s not the same thing. (0:37:14) Kev: - True, true. (0:37:16) Kev: Yeah, true. (0:37:18) Al: This one has, so this update, what does this have? The final part of the story for (0:37:26) Al: the storybook veil, which is Maleficent and Hades doing some stuff. (0:37:32) Al: Who’s the new characters? Is that Peter Pan? (0:37:33) Kev: It’s embedded, looks like it. (0:37:37) Al: And who else is with Peter? Is that Aurora? No, not Aurora. What am I talking about? Who is that? (0:37:44) Kev: Trying to see that is (0:37:44) Al: I just saw the colour of dress. (0:37:47) Kev: Wait, who is that? Is that a player character? That might be the player character. I don’t think I recognize (0:37:49) Al: Oh, that’s the player character, that would make sense, right? And a monkey? Who’s the monkey? (0:37:53) Kev: Yeah, I know (0:37:57) Al: I can’t see, this image is so small. (0:37:59) Kev: It is I’m trying to yeah, that’s just a pet monkey (0:38:03) Al: And for some reason, the patch notes don’t mention characters other than Maleficent and Hades. (0:38:09) Al: Like normally they list, I don’t think so. (0:38:09) Kev: Wasn’t Peter Pan already added? Oh (0:38:14) Kev: Okay, I don’t know I don’t know it says yeah there become pals with Peter Pan you’re right yeah, I don’t know that’s just a pet monkey (0:38:18) Al: Oh, here we go. No, I there is Aurora, right? So venture into the pages of a storybook to uncover Aurora in an enchanting dream style, in addition to her regular (0:38:26) Kev: There’s a guy who looks evil with wings. He looks cool. I don’t know what else (0:38:34) Kev: And that dog on Peter Pan (0:38:36) Al: Anyway, whatever. There’s an update. I don’t think you need us to explain. (0:38:42) Kev: There’s Eric’s dog - what’s the best dog in Disney movies we should we should make it ranking (0:38:50) Al: That sounds like a greenhouse episode. All right. (0:38:53) Kev: Best pets for Disney (0:38:56) Al: We have two more news updates. The first is Lens Island have released their post 1.0 roadmap. (0:39:04) Kev: Mm-hmm is the bro map just say take the money and run I’d applaud somebody if they said that (0:39:05) Al: So, first of all. (0:39:06) Al: I mean, they had a Kickstarter that if they were going to take the money and run it would (0:39:15) Al: have been back then. (0:39:16) Al: So they say the rest of July will be post release bug fixing. (0:39:21) Al: In August, there will be a community feedback update. (0:39:22) Kev: Sure (0:39:25) Al: I have community feedback. (0:39:26) Al: Give us proper controller support. (0:39:29) Kev: There’s the the developer livestream you see you can yell at them in real time. Thank you (0:39:34) Al: Also, silly question, is that not the whole point of early access, (0:39:37) Al: is to get community feedback and update it based on that? (0:39:39) Al: Like, why are you waiting until after 1.0 to do that? (0:39:42) Al: Whatever. (0:39:42) Kev: It’s fine, it’s fine (0:39:44) Al: And then in December, they will be releasing a major content update. (0:39:48) Al: No information on that. (0:39:49) Al: Just there will be stuff and more coming in 2026. (0:39:51) Kev: So I was about to say, so the roadmap is we’re going to work on it, maybe. (0:39:53) Al: So it’s a pretty loose. (0:39:58) Al: You know. (0:40:01) Al: Yeah, yeah, yeah. (0:40:03) Al: the update is. (0:40:04) Al: We’re going to bug fix, and then we’re going to add some changes, and then we’re going to (0:40:08) Al: have a new new content. And it says December. I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t this year. (0:40:10) Kev: listen to people yeah yep we’ll see I mean but they’re gonna continue to (0:40:23) Kev: support it which I mean every game does now because games or service did you (0:40:28) Kev: know that out (0:40:29) Al: Yes. And let me double check. (0:40:32) Al: But I think this is, let me double check something. (0:40:38) Al: And they do just seem to have. (0:40:40) Al: So I am not aware of another game that they’re working on just now or anything else. (0:40:46) Al: I thought I was aware of one, but no, I think that’s a different company. (0:40:50) Al: So maybe they are just planning on continuing work on Lenz Island. (0:40:55) Al: I I doubt that that is going to be continue to be. (0:40:59) Al: And final piece of news, Kevin Stardew Valley is now the this Stardew Valley is now the (0:41:05) Kev: » Yeah, that’s correct. (0:41:18) Kev: Hmm, yeah, yeah this this one scares me (0:41:27) Al: top-rated game on Steam. (0:41:29) Al: Iso. (0:41:29) Kev: That scares me (0:41:35) Kev: Steam has a lot of games on it. I’ll I (0:41:39) Kev: Know there has to be I know there has to be a number one (0:41:44) Kev: Like but it just feels so surreal that the game that (0:41:49) Kev: Not that we care about per se but that is so close to us because of this podcast like (0:41:55) Kev: That’s the number one. That’s wild to me (0:41:58) Al: So have you don’t click on the don’t click on the link to the top 250. (0:42:03) Al: Have you looked at it at all? (0:42:04) Al: I want to check. (0:42:04) Kev: No, I’m not. (0:42:05) Al: OK, so let’s do a little let’s do a little game. (0:42:08) Al: See how many of the top 10 Kevin can guess. (0:42:11) Kev: Oh, there’s a bajillion games on Steam. (0:42:15) Kev: I don’t know. (0:42:17) Al: Think of games that people like. (0:42:17) Kev: All right. (0:42:18) Kev: OK, OK, Portal 2 is number two because that’s the one that (0:42:21) Al: So, yeah, so we know that we’ve got two already. (0:42:21) Kev: got me dethroned. (0:42:23) Al: We’ve got Stardium and got Portal 2, number one and number two. (0:42:25) Kev: Oh, well, let’s see. (0:42:28) Kev: And here’s part of the question, right? (0:42:30) Kev: How is this calculated, right? (0:42:32) Kev: Because if a game has 5.0 review (0:42:34) Al: Yeah, so I suspect you have to get above a certain amount of, let’s put it this way, (0:42:35) Kev: But only has 100 reviews (0:42:37) Kev: It’s probably not hitting the top (0:42:39) Kev: Even though if it is really good you know (0:42:45) Al: I will give you a clue, every single one of the top 10 has over 100,000 volts. So it’s (0:42:51) Kev: Okay. Sure. (0:42:52) Al: at least some kind of popular game. Nope, that is number 14. (0:42:56) Kev: Sure. Okay. Like, uh, I know Baldur’s gate three is up there. (0:43:01) Kev: No, it’s Baldur’s gate three is really wow. (0:43:04) Al: Yep, number 14 with 8.73. I will say it’s very crowded at the top, right? So 8.73, (0:43:08) Kev: Wow. I, wow. I’m, I’m. (0:43:14) Al: compare that to Stardew at 1, 8.87, right? Like there’s not a lot in it, they’re all very close. (0:43:21) Kev: I’m not gonna get a single guess here (0:43:23) Al: I think you will keep going. I think you will get some wrong, but I think you’ll get some right. (0:43:27) Kev: Okay, see yeah cuz I mean like okay, I’m trying to think oh, this is hard right because a lot of games (0:43:35) Kev: Are really good, but they’re ports right like (0:43:38) Kev: Spider-man is now on Steam if I recall right the spider-man 1/2 are they (0:43:42) Al: Definitely not up there. It was not it was not a very well-received port because it was very bad. (0:43:48) Kev: Yeah, that’s true I forgot about that right (0:43:48) Al: I don’t I can’t even see them in the list. Let’s see where we’ve got Spider-Man. (0:43:51) Kev: Like uh see this is the thing (0:43:53) Al: The first Spider-Man is 140 and Spider-Man 2 is not. (0:43:58) Kev: Great that’s fantastic see this is the thing like I have to think about I don’t think about steam as much as (0:44:07) Al: Would you like some clues? (0:44:09) Al: I can give you some. (0:44:10) Kev: Is one of them Stanley parable (0:44:10) Al: They all. (0:44:12) Al: It is not there. (0:44:14) Kev: God yeah, okay. Yeah, I don’t know this is oh (0:44:17) Al: Let me let me give you a clue. (0:44:19) Al: Let me give you a clue by giving you genres. (0:44:19) Kev: Okay, okay. (0:44:22) Al: So we have what number three, the genre is open world survival craft. (0:44:28) Kev: Oh my goodness. Oh god. Is it power? No! (0:44:32) Al: No, it is not power world. (0:44:33) Kev: I’m kidding. I know it’s not power. (0:44:35) Kev: What is it? (0:44:38) Kev: Did, oh, what is the name? (0:44:40) Al: Our world is 241. (0:44:41) Kev: Is Umamusume pretty derby? Did it skyrocket to the top? (0:44:47) Kev: Do you know what I’m talking about, Al? (0:44:48) Al: I have no idea what you’re talking about. (0:44:52) Kev: Okay, oh man, I’m happy. (0:44:54) Kev: Dale is going to be thrilled. I brought it up on the podcast. Okay. (0:44:57) Al: Right, let’s stick to this. Open world survival craft, think of a game, a very popular game, (0:44:58) Kev: I’m okay. I’ll bring it up. Fine. Fine. That is no, cause that’s not on steam. Um, hug. (0:45:05) Al: that people like. What was that? Just say it. It was not Minecraft, no. I was tempted (0:45:11) Kev: See, no, cause Minecraft’s not on steam. Yeah. Yeah. No. Cause Minecraft’s not on steam. (0:45:18) Al: to say it’s open world survival craft, but not that one, thinking you were going to think (0:45:22) Kev: Yeah. Yeah. No. (0:45:23) Al: Minecraft initially. It is not correct, but it’s not Minecraft, but it is. (0:45:26) Kev: Is it? (0:45:28) Kev: AHHH! Is it um, oh gosh, I just I’m not a steam person. I don’t know these as well. Um, I what is? Oh my gosh. What is? (0:45:37) Kev: What is this? (0:45:38) Kev: What is that one horror-y game? (0:45:42) Kev: The four or something like that? I don’t remember. Just tell me. I don’t know. You’re gonna fail all these out. (0:45:44) Al: No, no, what? I don’t understand. It’s not Minecraft. It is 2D. (0:45:50) Kev: Oh wait. Oh (0:45:52) Al: Come on! Terraria number three! There we go! (0:45:52) Kev: Terraria! Oh my gosh. Terraria. Oh duh. Wow, I’m stupid. Yeah. (0:45:58) Kev: Terraria, duh. How did I not think that? Yeah. Wow. (0:45:59) Al: You will not get number four. I have never heard of this game. People Playground? (0:46:04) Kev: Well, I don’t know what that is. Um, okay, okay. (0:46:07) Al: Neither do I. It’s a sandbox game, apparently. Number five. Zombies. (0:46:13) Kev: It’s not it’s not art. It’s not gonna be an RE game. It’s (0:46:15) Al: No, but not far off. You’re kind of in the right game’s circle. (0:46:18) Kev: No, it’s I mean (0:46:26) Kev: I mean is it dead by I mean I don&am
Industrial Talk is onsite at PowerGen 2025 and talking to Nuraddin Hajiev, Commercial & Marketing Specialist at Tecnica 80 about "Transformer Manufacturing and Maintenance". Scott MacKenzie from Industrial Talk discusses the Industrial Renaissance e-book and a personalized business valuation program available on their website. At Power Gen in Dallas, Texas, he interviews Nuraddin Hajiyev from Technica80, a company that manufactures equipment for transformer manufacturing plants. Technica80 specializes in high-voltage transformers, providing customized tools like lifters and mandrels. Hajiyev highlights the company's founder's expertise and their international clientele, particularly in the U.S. due to American customers' appreciation for quality. Technica80 aims to expand in the U.S. market, leveraging their unique, high-quality products. Action Items [ ] @Scott MacKenzie - Provide Nuraddin Hajiyev's contact information on the Industrial Talk website. [ ] Connect with Nuraddin Hajiyev on LinkedIn. Outline Introduction to Industrial Talk and Resources Scott MacKenzie introduces Industrial Talk, emphasizing its purpose to help industrial professionals succeed. He highlights two key resources: an e-book titled "Industrial Renaissance" and a personalized business valuation program. The e-book focuses on leaders' solutions and strategies, while the valuation program helps align solutions with customer challenges. Scott encourages listeners to visit Industrial Talk to download the e-book and utilize the valuation program. Welcome to the Industrial Talk Podcast Scott MacKenzie welcomes listeners to the podcast, celebrating industry professionals and their contributions. The podcast is broadcasting live from Power Gen in Dallas, Texas, showcasing the event's significance. Scott mentions the presence of a gentleman from Italy, Dean Nora, and discusses the distribution of tech at the conference. Introduction of Nuraddin Hajiyev Scott MacKenzie asks Nuraddin Hajiyev to introduce himself and his background. Nuraddin shares his origins from Azerbaijan, his master's degree in Italy, and his current role at Technica 80. Technica 80 specializes in equipment for transformer manufacturing plants, focusing on high-voltage transformers. Nuraddin explains that Technica 80 does not manufacture transformers but provides equipment for those who do. Technica 80's Equipment and Customization Nuraddin describes the equipment Technica 80 provides, such as lifters for coils, special cable conductors, and mandrels. He emphasizes that all equipment is personalized and unique, tailored to the specific dimensions and needs of transformer manufacturers. Technica 80's founder, Mr. Renzo Pamfilo, has extensive experience and a unique approach to troubleshooting. American customers appreciate Technica 80's high-quality products and are easy to work with. International Presence and Future Goals Scott MacKenzie inquires about Technica 80's international presence and future goals. Nuraddin confirms that Technica 80 has been international for over 30 years, working with customers worldwide. In 2024, Technica 80 focused on exploring the US market, aiming to find American customers and expand their business. Nuraddin highlights the professionalism and open-mindedness of American...
In this episode of Now That's IT: Stories of MSP Success, host Chris Massey sits down with Craig Fisher and David Izen of Technica Solutions to uncover how a chance meeting—and a well-timed kebab—sparked a complete transformation of their MSP business.Craig and David share how they moved beyond the limitations of a technical-first approach to build a thriving, growth-driven MSP. They dive into the hard decisions, including shedding old habits, embracing EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System), joining peer groups, and making bold moves to scale their business.Listeners will gain insights into:Why purely technical focus limits growth and how to shift to a strategic mindsetHow EOS provided the structure and accountability to drive transformationThe role of peer groups and industry connections in fueling business growthKey takeaways for MSP owners and leaders navigating today's challengesWhether you're an MSP veteran or just starting out, Craig and David's story is a testament to the power of partnership, resilience, and smart business strategy.Tune in to discover how Technica turned a near-stagnation into an inspiring success story—and why “it takes two” to truly transform.Let us help you unlock your business's full potential.N-able Business Transformation is Expert led and Peer informed.These valuable executive programs are tailored to provide effective guidance and a faster path to a scalable and successful business.Book a Call with Chris Massey now to learn what Business Transformation can do for you! 'Now that's it: Stories of MSP Success,' dives into the journeys of some of the trailblazers in our industry to find out how they used their passion for technology to help turn Managed Services into the thriving sector it is today. Every episode is packed with the valuable insights, practical strategies, and inspiring anecdotes that lead our guests to the transformative moment when they knew….. Now, that's it.This podcast provides educational information about issues that may be relevant to information technology service providers. Nothing in the podcast should be construed as any recommendation or endorsement by N-able, or as legal or any other advice. The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the podcast does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. Views and opinions expressed by N-able employees are those of the employees and do not necessarily reflect the view of N-able or its officers and directors. The podcast may also contain forward-looking statements regarding future product plans, functionality, or development efforts that should not be interpreted as a commitment from N-able related to any deliverables or timeframe. All content is based on information available at the time of recording, and N-able has no obligation to update any forward-looking statements.
Cheng Xiong is a local artist, teacher, and community leader. Xiong grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota and received his Bachelors of Art in Dance at the University of Minnesota. Though he began his journey as a street dancer, through his studies, he was able to broaden to different styles and professional skills. Xiong is also a Hmong dance artist/researcher who is among the first in Minnesota to fuse forms of Breaking, Contemporary, and acrobatic dance styles. He is currently a company member of Black Label Movement and have recently worked with local professional companies such as STRONGmovement, BRKFST Dance, and Minnesota Timberwolves's First Avenue Breakers.As a dancer, choreographer, and a 2022 McKnight Dancer Fellow, Xiong has presented many new works throughout his career; Saint Paul Conservatory Performing Arts's J-Term Projet: Dance Repertory Concert, Arena Dances presents CANDY BOX as a Happy Hour artists, Mixtape 6: Cypher Space, Minneosta Orchestra's annual Young People's Concert: “Sounds of the Harvest,” and Black Label Movement's Inaugural Mover's Make.Alongside his repertoire of performances, Xiong is also a Breakdance instructor and educator. Xiong is currently teaching at the University of Minnesota Theater and Dance Program and Macalester College. Description of the work:“Off the beaten path… a solitary act”explores the emotional landscape of solitude and the courage needed to choose the road less traveled. It may be a lonely road, but it is where you will find your truest self—away from the noise of the world—peace carved to reflect, redefine, and grow. You must embrace a journey that diverges from conventional routes, requiring a willingness to step into the unknown. It is about seeking unique experiences, following intuition, and finding new perspectives undefined by societal expectations. Completing this journey equates to discovering personal truths, challenging comfort zones, and forging a distinctive path that reflects one's true self.
Technica specializes in AI, machine learning, and cybersecurity, shares Steve Hatch, Head of Human Resources and Communications. Learn from Steve's interviewing tips including being confident in your skills, doing your homework, and showing interest and enthusiasm. And it's another shout-out for the STAR method on your resume and when interviewing, from Steve. Want to learn how to do that well? Listen and learn!3:46 Technica's Innovations Lab has engineers, software developers, and scientists looking at potential issues or challenges we'll be facing in the future.10:55 Interviewing tips. Understand the company. Critical factor in assessing someone for a position – if they put in an effort to learn and research the company before the interview.14:32 Use the STAR method – it's relevant for interviews and resumes. Situation, Task, Action and Result.Find complete show notes at: https://clearedjobs.net/technica-ai-machine-learning-and-cyber-podcast/_ This show is brought to you by ClearedJobs.Net. Have feedback or questions for us? Email us at rriggins@clearedjobs.net. Sign up for our cleared job seeker newsletter. Create a cleared job seeker profile on ClearedJobs.Net. Engage with us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, X, or YouTube. _
1 Technica 101 (Extended Mix) - Ahmed Helmy 2 Exchange (Extended Mix) - David Forbes 3 Urban Shakedown (Nilsix Extended Remix) - Mark Sixma, Orjan Nilsen & Push 4 Nifra feat. Eke - Pull Me In (Extended Mix) 5 T78,Housewerk,Ducamp _Rave Nation_ (Original Mix) 6 Blah Blah Blah (Lilly Palmer Extended Remix) - Armin van Buuren 7 Bring Back The Techno (Extended Mix) -Orjan Nilsen & Mark Sixma pres. Nilsix 8 Catalyst (Varsente Remix) - Brent Rix 9 Control Your Body (Hardwell Extended Edit) - 2 Unlimited 10 Dodeca (Extended Mix) - Renegade System 11 Echoes Of Decay (Extended Mix) - Rene Ablaze & Atropate 12 Emergency Call (Extended Mix) - Jackob Roenald & Tymo White 13 Gates of Elysian (Extended Mix) - Dirkie Coetzee 14 Have A Bump (Extended Mix) - PSYB3R & Phase 303 15 I Love You (Karney Extended Dark Dub) - Key4050 & Plumb 16 It Hurts (Extended Mix) - Davor 17 Lovin' You (Lucas Deyong Extended Remix) - Woody Van Eyden, Rene Ablaze & Cari 18 Low Offence (Extended Mix) - Tasso 19 Move Like Dat (Extended Mix) - Davor 20 Roma (Extended Mix) - Artento Divini 21 State of Bliss (Original Mix) - Richard Durand 22 Substance (Extended Mix) - Jackob Roenald & Tymo White 23 The Bells (Extended Mix) - Indecent Noise 24 The Joker (Original Mix) - Gary Maguire 25 UNDRGRND (Exended Mix) - WHITEOUT 26 Verdi (Eftihios Extended Remix) - Mauro Picotto 27 We Are Free (Extended Mix) - Jordan Suckley 28 Eyes Closed (Extended Mix) - MaRLo 29 Traffic (Kryder & Dave Winnel Extended Remix) - Tiesto 30 4 Strings - Take Me Away (Sam Laxton x Lonskii Hard Trance Flip) 31 The Passion 2024 (Original Mix) - Thomas Schumacher, Technohead 32 All On You (Extended Mix) - David Forbes 33 Lizard (Dan Cooper Extended Remix) - Mauro Picotto 34 Alan Fitzpatrick - We do what we want (Paul Denton rework) 35 Anyma & Chris Avantgarde - Consciousness (Kenny McAuley Rework) 36 Chaos Theory - Eyeball Paul (Hard Trance Remix) 37 Olive - You're Not Alone(Liam Wilson Creamfields Rework) 38 Show me Carisma Code2 Bootleg 39 Styles & Breeze - You're Shining (David McQuiston Remix) 40 Sylvester - You Make Me Feel (Ezequiel Lovera Rework) 41 Tiësto - Lethal Industry (Demon Noise Remix 2023) 42 Jordan Suckley & Kutski vs. Cosmic Gate - Surveillance Of Space (Tymo White Mashup) 43 One Republic - I Lose My Self (Axlsson Bootleg) 44 Let The Music Play (David Rust Remix) - Walt 45 The Sound Of Bamboo (Ed Lynam Remix) - Flickman 46 Say My Name (Paul Denton Remix) - Flynn, Denton, Audrey Gallagher 47 Fine Day (Steve Murano Rmx) - Kristy Hawkshaw 48 Nobody Likes The Kick Drums - Skearney 49 Peggy Gou - (It Goes Like) Nanana (Maddix Techno Remix) 50 Storm - Storm (Jordan Suckley Remix) - Master 51 1998 (Extended Mix) - Talla 2xlc, Zyrus 7 52 DJ Tiesto - Adagio For Strings (James Dymond Rework)
In this episode of Mining Now, Mario and Eric share their extensive expertise and experiences, offering a deep dive into the innovative strategies and cutting-edge technologies that are revolutionizing the mining industry. From safety advancements to efficiency improvements, discover how Technica Mining is pushing the boundaries of what's possible in mining operations. Watch Here Mining Now Partner
According to ars TECHNICA, Wikipedia has downgraded tech website CNET's reliability rating following extensive discussions among its editors regarding the impact of AI-generated content on the site's trustworthiness. In this episode, host Paul John Spaulding is joined by Steve Morgan, Founder of Cybersecurity Ventures and Editor-in-Chief at Cybercrime Magazine, to discuss. The Cybercrime Magazine Update airs weekly and covers the latest news, interviews, podcasts, reports, videos, and special productions from Cybercrime Magazine, published by Cybersecurity Ventures. For more on cybersecurity, visit us at https://cybersecurityventures.com
Kevin and Philip left behind coveted roles at SpaceX and Hyundai to co-found Technica RaceWire. Technica specializes in crafting Porsche electrical wiring harnesses using cutting edge technology from the aerospace and automotive industries. Explore the challenges and triumphs of engineers turned entrepreneurs. This episode offers valuable insights for aspiring engineers wanting to launch their own automotive business.Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are solely my guest's and my own. They do not express the views or opinions of our employers.If you enjoyed this episode let's connect: InstagramTikTokLinkedIn
Hello Earthlings! In today's episode, our host Lisa Ann Pinkerton (CEO of Technica Communications), and our guest Virginia Klausmeier (President and CEO of Sylvatex) dive into how to prepare the electric vehicle industry now for the revolution that's coming, by rethinking one component of EV lithium-ion batteries - cathodes. They explore how costs and carbon emissions could be brought down and make scaling EV battery manufacturing more sustainable in preparation for the demand that's expected in the near future. Virginia outlines how cathodes could be manufactured reduce costs and carbon emissions, as well as water consumption. These innovations hold the promise of not only streamlining production but also making battery manufacturing more sustainable and recyclable, but also fit into the ESG mandates automotive OEMs are focused on achieving. The Earthling we are spotlighting this week to restore our faith in humanity, is artist Oscar Olivares who has completed what he says is one of the world's largest ecological murals made entirely out of bottle caps, in Guatire, Venezuela.This episode is the second in our series on electric vehicles. The first one was in Season 1, Episode 2 “Your Next Car will be an EV.”Join us as we explore the transformative potential of these advancements in lithium-ion battery components, envisioning a more eco-conscious and efficient future.Key Topics:Future-proofing battery material manufacturing for electric revolution Scaling up sustainable battery technology for electric vehiclesWhy focusing on cathode material to reduce carbon emissions and costs in battery production is the next step for the industry Sylvatex's development of a more sustainable cathode active material for electric vehicle batteriesHow a rethinking of cathode material fits with automotive OEMs' ESG mandatesBattery technology, recycling, and market trendsSustainable battery production and its impact on societyWeb Resources:First episode in the exploration of EVs “Season 1, Episode 2 “Your Next Car will be an EV”Restoring Faith in Humanity Spotlight: Oscar Olivares website and article in The WorldSylvatex websiteOur podcast websiteTo support the show, head over to our Patreon Page!Thanks to Resource Labs for having us on the network!Technica's website
Hello Earthlings! In today's episode, our host Lisa Ann Pinkerton (CEO of Technica Communications), and our guest Randall Volberg (Type One Energy), discuss the potential benefits of Nuclear Fusion. We speak about the differences between the different types of nuclear fusion reactor design and how they can be used to provide clean highly dense energy for the planet.Throughout the episode, we have a comprehensive discussion about the challenges associated with nuclear power and insights and potential solutions to address the issues of clean renewable energy and nuclear waste. Join us on this enlightening journey as we explore pathways to a more sustainable and secure future for our energy!This episode is a continuation of our exploration of nuclear energy which began in Season 1 episode 6 titled, “To Nuclear or Not.” The focus of that show centered around the nuclear fission technology such as small modular reactors (SMRs) and the question of keeping existing plants open. Key TopicsWhat is the difference between a stellarator and a tokamak?What is nuclear fusion? Why is it better than fission?How nuclear fission helps the environmentHow long until we can actually use this amazing technology?Also, on today's show we are starting a new segment where we highlight people using their creativity and passion to make the world a better place. Today's focus is on Sungai Watch, a company founded by the siblings Gary, Kelly and Sam Bencheghib in Bali, Indonesia. Their simple trash barriers and community organizing is reducing the plastic pollution in Indonesia's waterways. So far they, along with their 85 river warriors, have successfully removed 3 million pounds of plastic waste, in 9 villages, with 180 floating plastic barriers and over 700 community cleanups.Web Resources:S1E6 - To Nuclear or NotOur podcast websiteTo support the show, head over to our Patreon Page!Thanks to Resource Labs for having us on the network!Technica's websiteRandall's website https://typeoneenergy.com/ Type One Energy website Article explaining the Kardashev scale from which Type One Energy gets its nameArticle that explains stellarator and tokamak designs with photos/illustrations Quora article on what a megajoule...
Hello Earthlings! In today's episode, our host Lisa Ann Pinkerton (CEO of Technica Communications) and our guest Erika Boeing (CEO and founder of Accelerate Wind) discuss how we can generate energy from small wind turbines, similar to solar power! Historically, small wind technology has faced obstacles, but Erika Boeing's background sets her apart. With her impressive experience as a NASA mechanical components intern and her work on "Project Drawdown," Erika brings a wealth of expertise in engineering and research to the table.Erika and Accelerate Wind are unlocking the potential of untapped renewable energy in urban environments, without disrupting the urban landscape! Join us as we explore the world of small wind technology, redefining the possibilities for clean and sustainable energy right in the heart of our cities. Stay tuned for an enlightening conversation on the future of urban energy solutions!Web Resources:To see a photo of what the Accelerate Wind system looks like, visit their websiteOur podcast websiteTo support the show, head over to our Patreon Page!Thanks to Resource Labs for having us on the network!Technica's websiteWomen in Cleantech & Sustainability website
Hello Earthlings! In today's episode, our host Lisa Ann Pinkerton (CEO of Technica Communications) and our guest David Krueger (Assistant Professor at Cambridge University) discuss the blisteringly fast future of AI! In his work at Cambridge, David helps with the computational lab and its machine learning departments. He focuses on deep learning algorithms, AI alignment and in his words “whatever we can do to prevent the chance that AI leads to human extinction.” David has a vast knowledge of the ways an AI system could potentially disrupt and in some cases even jeopardize human life as we know it.We explore the fundamental differences between Narrow AI and General AI, analyze potential risks, and ponder the implications of Superhuman AI. Join us on this journey through the evolving landscape of artificial intelligence! Web Resources:Our podcast websiteTo support the show, head over to our Patreon Page!Thanks to Resource Labs for having us on the network!Technica's websiteWomen in Cleantech & Sustainability website
Hello Earthlings! In today's episode we are joined by our host Lisa Ann Pinkerton (CEO of Technica Communications), and our guest Sasha Mackler (Executive Director of The Energy Program at the Bipartisan Policy Center). We zoom in on the promising concept of compensating projects that drawdown carbon emissions.In this discussion of voluntary carbon markets, Sasha and Lisa Ann discuss how carbon credits work, and the reputation challenges the industry faces; most recently with the scandal from credit provider Vera. Sasha outlines how we could improve voluntary carbon markets to encourage more participation and why there's a move from natural based carbon projects, to ones that are more technology based, plus much, much more!Web Resources:Our podcast websiteThe Guardian's Investigative reporting of Verra - read the report To support the show, head over to our Patreon Page!Thanks to Resource Labs for having us on the network!Technica's websiteWomen in Cleantech & Sustainability website
Hello Earthlings! In today's episode, our host Lisa Ann Pinkerton (CEO of Technica Communications), and our guest Dr. Lisa Johnson (a), discuss the impact of global food waste! Dr. Johnson is a researcher and Adjunct Assistant ProfessorAdjunct Assistant Professor North Carolina State University, private consultant in food loss and agriculture, and serves as the Board Chair of UpRoot Colorado. We delve into the pressing issue of the climate crisis and its far-reaching implications for food security especially for the global south. As temperatures continue to rise worldwide, agriculture yields are dwindling, prompting farmers to adapt by switching to more resilient crop varieties. We underscore the gravity of the global food security crisis, which affects regions across the globe, irrespective of their level of development. What often remains concealed is the issue of food loss, overshadowed by the attention given to harvest yields.Throughout the episode, we engage in a comprehensive discussion about these interconnected challenges, featuring expert insights and potential solutions to address the multifaceted issues of climate change, agriculture, food security, and food loss. Join us on this enlightening journey as we explore pathways to a more sustainable and secure future for our global food supply!Web Resources:Our podcast websiteGleaning in Colorado: National gleaning project.orgTo support the show, head over to our Patreon Page!Thanks to Resource Labs for having us on the network!Technica's websiteLisa's website
Hello Earthlings! In today's episode, our host Lisa Ann Pinkerton (CEO of Technica Communications) and our guest Lindsey Wood (CEO of Go Tiny Academy) discuss, you guessed it, tiny home living! Lindsey's journey into tiny home living began with a series of challenges that ultimately shaped her into an expert in the field. She's now committed to sharing her insights through the Tiny Home Academy, helping others downsize, create living space solutions, and explore the possibilities of tiny living. Lindsey and Lisa Ann share personal experiences of living in a tiny home on wheels while traveling extensively. Lindsey also shares how people can think about tiny home living depending on the type of home they want, the land they have or the ordinances where they live.Web Resources:Our podcast websiteTiny Home Lady websiteTo support the show, head over to our Patreon Page!Thanks to Resource Lab's for having us on the network!Technica's website
Hello Earthlings! In today's episode, host Lisa Ann Pinkerton (CEO of Technica Communications) we explore the concept of using the internet for government interactions and services, also known as e-governance. Our guest Hannes Astok(Executive Director, Chairman of the Management Board - Estonia's e-Governance Academy) talks to us about Estonia's advanced e-governance system and how other countries are taking advantage of their experience.Estonia's online services encompass a range of tasks, yet some, like marriage and divorce, require in-person presence due to cultural reasons rather than technological limitations.Implementing e-governance presents challenges in inclusivity and accessibility, particularly for citizens with limited digital access. Hannes shares insights from diverse regions, enriching the conversation on practical implementation and impact while touching on topics such as AI and what the future of e-governance will look like.Web Resources:Our podcast websiteTo support the show, head over to our Patreon Page!Thanks to Resource Lab's for having us on the network!Technica's website
Je dagelijkse portie muzikale verwondering. Welkom in mijn wonderkamer, vol muziek, verhalen en voorwerpen. Een muzikale reis door eeuwen, windstreken en genres. ‘Wintertrompet, voor technica Anneke' Over Benjamin Lackner en ‘Last Decade' Meer zien? Klik hier (https://www.nporadio4.nl/klassiek/podcasts/f9be408a-c246-42d2-99a3-92d00e8c48f2/dit-hoor-je-deze-week-in-franks-klassieke-wonderkamer-week-51-19-t-m-23-december) Benjamin Lackner Camino Cielo Benjamin Lackner (piano) Mathias Eck (trompet) (Album: Last Decade) Franks Klassieke Wonderkamer is straks niet meer via de Bach van de Dag feed te beluisteren. Niks missen? Abonneer je dan op de podcast Franks Klassieke Wonderkamer.
Do you think the thumbs-up emoji is offensive? Please share your thoughts in the comments below! P.S. Have you signed up for Copy.ai yet? Download and use Newsly on www.newsly.me today! Episode Shout-out to ars TECHNICA and DISTRACTIFY Music Intro/Outro: “Thoughts” by Killah Smilez Music Outro: “Explained” by Killah Smilez Make sure you check out the Killah Smilez song on Amazon Catch the music video by Killah Smilez HERE We're always working on new products and ideas, but sometimes it takes a little extra cash to bring them to life. Your financial support for the work we do means the world to us! Donate HERE! ----more---- Shop WokeNFree Designs Create your own Bonfire Shop Today! Get our book HERE Check out our course on the Law of Attraction HERE Need advice? Connect with Natasha HERE Want to share the episode? Please share the episode on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok, and Soundcloud Don't forget to subscribe to WokeNFree on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, iHeartRadio, and Google Play Do you want to join the show as a guest on an upcoming episode? Contact us HERE Don't forget to submit a scenario to us for SCENARIO TIME! SCENARIO TIME: How would you respond to these scenarios in SCENARIO TIME? Let's chat HERE! Have you reviewed our show yet? Pick your platform of choice HERE Do you want to start a podcast? We are here to HELP! Schedule a FREE strategy session with us HERE This post contains affiliate links. That means if you click on a link and buy something, WokeNFree will earn a small commission from the advertiser at no additional cost to you.
Apple is gearing up to make India and Vietnam global manufacturing hubs for its products, with India contributing 25 percent of all iPhones by 2025, according to analysts at JP Morgan, TechCrunch reports. Wipro terminated the services of 300 staff members who were found to be working for its competitors while still being on the company's payroll, Economic Times reports. And KPIT Technologies takes a big stride in software-defined vehicles with a German acquisition. Apple is gearing up to make India and Vietnam global manufacturing hubs for its products, according to analysts at JP Morgan, TechCrunch reports. In a report to clients Wednesday, JP Morgan analysts estimate Apple will move 5 percent of global iPhone 14 production to India by late 2022 and expand its manufacturing capacity in the country to produce 25 percent of all iPhones by 2025. Vietnam will contribute 20 percent of all iPad and Apple Watch production, 5 percent of MacBook and 65 percent of AirPods by 2025, the report said, which was reviewed by TechCrunch. Wipro terminated the services of 300 staff members who were found to be working for its competitors while still being on the company's payroll, Executive Chairman Rishad Premji said on Wednesday, Economic Times reports. "It is very simple. It is an act of integrity violation. We terminated the services of those people,” Premji said, in reply to a question from ET on the side lines of the 49th All India Management Association's convention in New Delhi. India's cabinet of ministers, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, yesterday unanimously approved modifications in the programme for development of semiconductors and display manufacturing ecosystem in India, paving the way for providing fiscal support of 50 percent of project costs for all technology nodes under the government's scheme for setting up of semiconductor fabs in India. Based on discussions with potential investors, it is expected that work on setting up of the first semiconductor facility will commence soon, according to the statement. KPIT Technologies, a software integration partner for the automotive and mobility industry in Pune, has acquired Germany's Technica Engineering that will add significant softwared-defined vehicle capabilities to the Mumbai-listed company. Under the terms of the all-cash deal, KPIT will pay 80 million euros ($78.5 million) over the next six months and an additional maximum of 30 million euros over the following two and half years, the company said in a filing with the Bombay Stock Exchange. Technica Engineering specializes in production-ready system prototyping, automotive ethernet products, and tools for validation. The Munich-headquartered company has a presence in Spain, Tunisia, and the US, with a team of about 600 engineers. The deal is expected to be closed by the end of October. Theme music courtesy Free Music & Sounds: https://soundcloud.com/freemusicandsounds
American Invents Act Has Destroyed Innovation - Cops want to keep mass surveillance app secret; privacy advocates refused - Hackers Hide Malware in Stunning Images Taken by James Webb Space Telescope - TikShock: Don't get caught out by these 5 TikTok scams - Ukrainian Police Bust Crypto Fraud Call Centers Well, the birds are coming home to roost. Well, not the chickens in this case, but this is called the death warrant for American ingenuity. We'll start by talking through this great article from this week's newsletter. [Automated transcript follows.] Well, I hate to say this, but in reality, we are looking at some very, very bad times for inventors, and I've had some of these problems myself before, but last September, there were scores of patent holders who demonstrated in six cities across the US. [00:00:34] They had on these black t-shirts that said homo sapiens, inventor. Endangered species. They were protesting America's decade of stolen dreams. Great article here in the American thinker. It was in my newsletter this year, or excuse me this week, but, uh, but here here's weirdly what happened here. Back in 2011, president Obama pushed through Congress and signed into law. [00:01:04] What they called the America invents act. Now just like the inflation reduction act is going to increase inflation, right? It's all double speak. Isn't it? The American invents act turned over the patent process basically to the biggest Democrat party donors. Big business billionaires, right? Because that's who really is funding them, the Hollywood millionaires, these massive billionaires, Zuckerbergs and, and others. [00:01:35] And what happened here? Is they changed the whole patent law and the basis for it. They flipped the table here, basically. Here's the idea behind the patent law that we've had in place in the United States for well, over a century and patents that are guaranteed in the cons. It used to be that you, if you were first to invent something, if you could show that you were first to invent something, you could file a patent and gain that patent. [00:02:14] Well, what happened is because of all of the donations that went into the Democrats in 2011, from these big, big companies that were lobbying. A, and this is part of the reason I have a huge problem with all this money going to Washington DC, frankly, because it just attracts rodents like these big companies that want to use the law to control you, to gain profit for them. [00:02:39] And really in this case, squash. Potential patent holders. You see there have been piracy for years in the patent field. And this happened to me. I spent a year of my life designing some software, writing some software that emulated an older computer system and allowed you to take. Any of that software and run it on the new system. [00:03:05] And it would run exactly the same way. And a lease on the new hardware was cheaper than just a maintenance contract on the old stuff. Plus it was faster, used less electricity, had more options, et cetera. Right. It was, it was really something, frankly, and I was invited to their headquarters to show them a little bit about. [00:03:27] Did, and, and I was so excited because they wanted to start selling it, right. So they need to understand a little bit better. So I went to the headquarters and met with them, you know, of course paid my own way. Flew down there, stayed in the hotel, rented a car, you know, all the stuff that you have to do. [00:03:43] And then nothing happened afterwards. Wouldn't return phone calls. It just, all of a sudden went silent. And then about a year and a half later Tata, they had an alternative product out on the. . Yeah, and they tried to emulate what I had done, but they did a very, very poor job at it. That's patent theft, that's piracy in this particular case, uh, if you are an inventor, you've probably experienced that sort of thing before, you know, you can put employees all of the non-disclosure agreements you want to have in place, but in reality, good luck enforcing those, especially against a big company. [00:04:25] Well, piracy went on steroids because of president Obama's America and events act. They, as part of that established something, they called the patent trial and appeal board. And it's just gone downhill ever since. So a professor that has more than 40 patents, I'm gonna read a little quote of his, this includes some inventions used in the space shuttles, by the way, which by the way, my invention was used with the space shuttle. [00:04:57] Um, so Dan brown invented something called the bionic wrench. I have one of those. I bought one of those some years back, this is a one size fits all wrench that does not strip bolt corners like it does if you're trying to use vice scripts or some pair of pliers, right. Because you're just too lazy to go and get the right socket size or box wrench or whatever it is. [00:05:22] That's the right size. It very, very. And professor brown says that Sears stole his idea for this bionic wrench right down to the marketing pitch. And then Sears, according to him, went out and hired a Chinese company to make it. And all of a sudden now, what kind of invention does he have? How's he gonna battle somebody like that? [00:05:49] I know a guy who is, uh, completely unethical. You know, I've done many shows from the consumer electronic show and it's really kind of cool, cuz I would get in depth with the inventors and, and explain what they were doing on the air. It was really neat all the way around. It was just a whole lot of fun. [00:06:08] And I met a guy there who was going to the consumer electronic show to find cool new consumer electronics. He thought might be popular. And then he'd go and talk to the people who were exhibiting that wonderful new electronics and say, Hey, I'm interested in, in selling your stuff. I have, you know, retail space and, uh, you know, kiosks in the mall. [00:06:33] What can, uh, what kind of deal can we work out here? Well, you know, first I, can I, let me get a, I, I need a copy of, uh, of your device here. I want a copy of it so I can mess with it and see, see if we really wanna follow through on. Oh, and I, I don't want to carry it around the floor of the consumer electronic show. [00:06:51] So I need you to ship it to me. So they'd ship 'em off. They might be a little speaker. They might be a charger. They might be who knows what? And consumer electronics is pretty broad. And if he liked it, he wouldn't buy it from them. He sent them over to his contacts in China. And had them reverse engineered and make the same thing with his brand label on it. [00:07:16] And he'd sell it in the stores. Now, when it comes to software and a lot of consumer electronics patents, aren't really a big deal because things. Changed so quickly. Right? And if you're a small guy, it's very hard to file a patent. And that's how president Obama sold this American Bens act to us. I remember this very, very clearly where he said, Hey, listen, this is gonna make the patent process way more streamlined, way easier for the small guys to be able to get patents, uh, not only applied for, but actually get them out to market. [00:07:52] And it's just gonna be an absolutely wonderful. It, it isn't because what happens now? Is big companies are not investing in research and development. That is true across the board. Now you might say, Hey Craig, well, how about big companies? How about Tesla? That's R and D. How about SpaceX? That's R and D. [00:08:14] Yes, but they are R and D companies. They're not big companies out there like Facebook, does Facebook try and come up with this or that new invention? Well, yeah, they kind of do from time to time, but most of the time what's been happening is corporate America looks for a winner. And then tries to buy the winner. [00:08:35] Microsoft has been doing that forever. Microsoft in court has lost cases because of what they did to inventors. And now it's been codified in law for over 10 years. So our American ingenuity, which is what we rely on in order to grow our economy, the ingenuity, the, the brain skills, the science, the true science that we have gives us a major competitive advantage because that particular, uh, type of intellectual property has a much higher profit margin than something like manufacturing a widget. [00:09:14] When you get right down to it, that's where the real money is. so a very interesting article and I would suggest you take a little bit of time to read it. If you've ever thought about patenting something, if you had a great idea, it used to be, you know, this is kind of the, the, uh, old wives tale. If you will, if you've got a great idea, you think you might wanna patent it, write it all out, take all of your notes, do it in a, a, a workbook that you can. [00:09:43] Alter right. You can't tear out pages or things. Uh, mail it to yourself in a Manila envelope and make sure you put stamps on it. And then the post office is going to date, stamp it for you or send it to your attorney even better. Right. And your attorney's gonna go ahead and keep that on file. And then when it's time to file the patents, you can say, Hey, look, it here's the proof. [00:10:06] I invented this in April of 2019. It doesn't matter because if some other company sees what you're doing or comes up with a similar or the same idea, and that company has the money to have the lawyers that know patent law inside out and backwards and can go ahead and file that patent claim. You've lost it. [00:10:31] you know, as early as the constitutional convention of 18 or 1787, our founding fathers recognize the need to promote innovation and we have to be promoting it. We've gotta get rid of this Obama era law. Absolutely. We've gotta go from first to file, which is what it has been for a decade. The first person to file you. [00:10:54] And move back to the way it was intended, the way it worked for well over a hundred years where it is a first to invent, it's very, very important for all of us, for economy, et cetera. The, the third law of Congress was a patent act of 1790. It it's just man, have we come a long way, stick around. We'll be right back online. [00:11:19] Craig peterson.com. [00:11:22] You know, we've had firewalls in our cars for a very long time for a very good reason. Right? You wanna keep the engine stuff out of the passenger compartment? The same thing is true. When we're talking about our networks, we're using firewalls to keep things out. [00:11:39] Firewalls are there to keep things out. And we have firewalls in our homes. [00:11:44] If you've got an internet service provider, you've probably got a firewall right there. Something that you don't even think about, right. It's just, there's gonna protect. You, it might, it's providing some services. You might be familiar with them. It's obviously doing a network address translation for you in this day and age. [00:12:06] Pretty much everything is especially with the internet transition that's been going on for years now from, um, IP four to IP six, but, uh, the firewall. is critical for every person and every business out there. But when we get into the configurations of firewalls, frankly, they are really a touchy subject. [00:12:29] You know, every network security professional has their own preferred hardware and software, uh, use Cisco. As a rule, Cisco has some great stuff. What I like the best about the Cisco equipment that we use in software and install at our clients is it is one pane of glass. It's a single vendor that covers everything from endpoint security. [00:12:54] In other words, security on your desktop, through the network itself, the switches, the firewalls, the email filters Absolut. Everything is there and is taken care of by all of the Cisco gear. It it's really quite something to look. I saw, in fact, a survey just last week at businesses who are trying to consolidate, there's just too many vendors in there selling this piece of endpoint, that piece of endpoint. [00:13:25] And, you know, that's part of the problem that I see happen pretty frequently, which is people look at Gartner report. Gartner, of course, a research company. They've got a lot of great research out there that I've used before. I've had Gartner on the radio show before, as well as some of their competitors talking about trends. [00:13:44] Well, There is something known as the upper right quadrant in those Gartner reports where they are rating various vendors for various pieces of software. So there might be for instance, a report on firewalls and the upper right hand cor quadrant is kind of what you want, cuz it's new, it's innovative. It, it innovative. [00:14:06] It's uh, really cool and wonderful. And it's the best. Since life spread. So they go out and they buy that cuz it's upper, right. Gartner quadrant. And then man, they find out, uh, okay, so now we need desk desktop, desktop. Okay. So they find the or buy actually the Gartner report for five to 10 grand. That's like a page long is crazy how expensive these things are. [00:14:32] They then look at that and say, okay, so the best desktop is vendor Y so let me see, we got X for the firewall. We've got Y for the endpoint and then, oh, they need switches. So let's go to the Gartner report. Who's in the upper right quadrant here for switches. Oh, it's uh, vendor Z. Okay. So we got Z. So now all of a sudden. [00:14:51] You end up with all of these different pieces of hardware, different pieces of software that have limited offerability at best interoperability at best. Right? So the, this day and age, when we're talking about cybersecurity, There are so many legitimate attacks every day. I mean, thousands of attacks going on even against a single business. [00:15:18] And there are hundreds potentially of false alarms every day. So how do you deal with that? That that's a good question. So, uh, a lot of businesses turn to companies like mine now, you know, full disclosure, I've been doing internet security work for businesses since, uh, early 1990s. So whew, 30 years now. [00:15:40] And I've been doing internet work for even longer than that, helping to develop it. So they'll go and they'll say, Hey, we need a managed security services provider. Uh, there's a big problem with that. And I, I was watching, uh, Yellowstone that TV show and I, it was a great little example of what we're seeing in the world today. [00:16:05] And Frank, frankly, we've seen forever obviously. And that is if there's a demand for something, all of a sudden, a lot of people will be hanging up shingles. and if they know, if that vendor knows more than you do, or is able to kind of turn, twist your ear and convince you to buy from them, you'll buy from them. [00:16:26] We saw that man around the year, 2000, all of the people who were trying to sell web services that had no idea what they're doing now, we're seeing all kinds of people trying to sell network services, security services that have little idea of what they're doing. We support. These companies that call themselves manage security services providers, where we actually go in, we design the system, we build the system and we implement the system. [00:16:53] We run the system and the third party here builds the client. Right. Cuz it's their client. And you know, that's all fine. It's so well and good, but what should you be looking. Particularly if you are a business, if you want to have a managed firewall, which is, I think important again, it's kind of a long tail thing to have a firewall vendor and, uh, this vendor and a managed vendor, and now it can get to be a headache pretty quickly. [00:17:23] But if you're going to focus on one thing, It's probably the firewall and your end points. Right? So maybe it's two things. So here's what a managed firewall service provider should be able to offer you. First of all, firewall system health and alerting. Software life cycle management, which means your updates, your patches, service, and incident management. [00:17:48] Whenever there's an alarm, they should know about it and they should be handling it. Security policy implementation your reporting, your analysis, your remediation, some of that is required by these various regulations and laws that are out there. You. To do it, uh, you know, without getting in a lot of detail right now, um, network monitoring, uh, the traffic monitoring, you know, the idea here behind any kind of managed service is to bring in a true expert rather than just completely outsourcing. [00:18:24] So you're partnering with someone. One of the things I've, I've bated my head against the wall for, for decades now, is that the it department. Thinks that they're up to snuff to be able to do something, or maybe they just want to do it because it's gonna be wonderful for them on the resume for the next job. [00:18:45] Right. Uh, man, I've seen that a lot of times when, when you are looking at all of this stuff and you've got an it department, maybe you're better off bringing in a very narrow expert to support your it department rather than fight against your it depart. good questions here. Uh, bottom line, they should have better expertise than what you have. [00:19:11] And you've got to read between the lines between your it staff that are currently doing it and the other vendors reducing the burden on your staff. So that maybe what they can do is. Focus more on things that are, uh, revenue generating that are more important to your business. You'll get faster incident response with any luck here. [00:19:33] With service level agreement, proactive security from the managed security services providers, or just regular service providers. Your burden on updates is going to be lower, improved manufacturer support. Because a lot of times, like we do my company mainstream, we have direct connections to the manufacturer. [00:19:56] Our case is usually Cisco because of the volume or services that we have and the equipment that we buy from them, uh, easier to scale there. There's a whole bunch of things, right. Uh, But be careful. One of the things you gotta watch out for too is where are their service people, their support people physically located, and are they us citizens? [00:20:20] A lot of the regulations. In fact, pretty much everyone. I can't think of an exception require us persons to be the ones in control of your network and data. So lots to consider. But keep that all in mind. I think it's an important thing to understand. Stick around. We'll be right back. And in the meantime, visit me online. [00:20:42] Craig peterson.com and sign up for my free newsletter. [00:20:49] The best way to secure a system is something, you know, and something you have, well, many systems have been securing themselves with your phone, right? They send you a text message, but it turns out that that isn't working well. [00:21:05] Having an SMS message sent to you in order to authenticate who you are, has turned out to be well, a problem we've seen over the last few years, people who have things like cryptocurrency who have a cryptocurrency wallet who are keeping their money, if you will, in this wallet and are using. [00:21:30] SMS to verify who they are. So here's how that works. You log into a website using a username or perhaps an email address. Again, it should not be asking for an email address for a login because you probably use the same email address or maybe two or three. And. Have for what? 50, a hundred different sites, maybe a thousand, I've got 3000 records, uh, logins on my one password account. [00:22:02] Okay. So there's a lot of them. They really should be letting you set up your own username so that it can be unique. For every single website that you go to. So, but anyway, that aside, you've got your username, which may be your email address. You've got a password and we've talked about passwords before. [00:22:21] Hopefully you're following the current guidelines, which are, don't worry about random characters, make sure it is long. And that means. A past phrase. So you string three or four words together. You put some digits, some special characters in between the words, maybe, you know, one word is all upper case. You, you play with it a little bit, but it's easy to remember. [00:22:48] So if someone then gets your email address and they get your password, they can potentially log into a website. Correct. And that website might be your bank account. It might be your work account. We've had a lot of problems lately. The FBI is saying that about every 12 hours, they're filing a new report of a company that got their intellectual property stolen. [00:23:22] one of the ways the bad guys steal it is they'll log to your RDP server, your Microsoft remote desktop server, using your credentials that you used at another website. It's that easy. It really is. They might be trying to log in via a VPN again, the same thing. So how do you secure this? How do you secure this? [00:23:47] Well, how to secure this properly? That's where the something you have comes into play. We all have a smartphone of some sort, even if it's not considered a smartphone, it can still receive text messages. So what a lot of these companies did is they asked their underpaid it people to set it up so that when you enter in your username and your password, it then sends you a text message. [00:24:16] Usually with a six digit text message and you then have to type that into the website as well. Seems pretty good. Doesn't it? Well, and, and in 30 it is pretty good. There are however, a few problems. Those people I mentioned who have cryptocurrency accounts and have been using this SMS methodology, which is SMS, of course, text messages have found that sometimes their phones have been hijack. [00:24:48] easy enough to do. And if they know you have a fair amount of cryptocurrency, it's probably worth their effort to spend a few hours to try and get into your account. And they have been getting into your account and people notice, Hey, wait a minute, I'm a kid. They do phone calls or text messages. What's what's with that. [00:25:07] And you found out that they have dismissed you, they have stolen your. Your, uh, SIM card, basically, even though they don't have to physically have hold of it. And there's a number of ways that they do that there's a new scam or newer scam that's out right now that the fishers are using. And that is they're sending out these SSMS, these text messages that are trying to get people to respond. [00:25:34] So how do they get people to respond? Well, In this case, they're primarily going after this company called Octo Octo post. And, uh, there's a number of different types of Octos out there, but anyways, they are trying to get you to. Do something you shouldn't do let me just put it that way. Right. So what they're trying to do is get you to, uh, enter in your username and your password. [00:26:04] Okay. Well, that's been around for a long time. Craig, you're telling me we've had fake bank account, uh, bank website. So they'll send you an email and in it, they'll say, Hey, I need you to go right now. to our bank page and, uh, authorize this $2,000 transaction that wasn't you. And so now you're freaking out, you click on the link, you go to the bank, you try and log in and the login doesn't work well. [00:26:31] That can be because what the fishers did is a made a webpage that looked like the bank's web page. And when you went there and entered in your username and password, you just gave it to the crooks. That's happened a lot. Well, there's a company called Octa O K T a. That is an authentication company. And what the bad guys have done is they have registered domains similar to a company. [00:26:59] So for instance, they went after CloudFlare, which is a huge, um, company they're number one, I think they have like 80% of all of the protection for denial of service and caching a business on the internet. It's just amazing. Cloudflare's huge. And I've used them and continue to use them for some customer. [00:27:19] So, what they did is they found a whole bunch of people that worked for CloudFlare sent them a message. And, and here's what it said. It said alert, your CloudFlare schedule has been updated. Please tap cloudflare-okta.com to view. The changes. So you go there, it looks like a regular Okta login page and they go ahead and ask user name and password, but CloudFlare is smart. [00:27:47] They're using Okta. So they're sending an SMS message to the user to make sure it's really, them turns out what was really happening is yeah, it was sending that guy a text message and it was using telegram. To relay that his response back to the hackers. So now the hackers have your username, they have your password and they have your six digit login key. [00:28:15] That's supposedly unique that supposedly went to you. And in this case, they didn't even have to bother a hijacking your SIM card. In this case, they just sent you that text message. So it's been causing some serious problems. They've been going after all kinds of different companies out there, uh, food service company, DoorDash you've heard of them. [00:28:37] Right? August 25th, they said that there was a sophisticated fishing attack on a third party vendor that allowed a attackers to gain access to some, a door dashes internal company. Tools DoorDash said, intruders stole information on a small percentage of users that have since been notified, big deal, or what a tech crunch, by the way, reported that the incident was linked to the same fishing campaign that targeted Twilio. [00:29:07] That also, as we just mentioned, targeted cloud. So we have to be careful with this. We cannot be using SMS text messages to authenticate ourselves. Some banks now allow you to use one time passwords from things like one password or others. However, some banks don't turn off the SMS, the text messages for authentication, which they really should be doing. [00:29:36] And the other thing I wanna let you know is I like UBI. Y U B ico.com. Yubico check them out. I'm not making a dime off of this, but they have a physical token. That you either have to plug in or the connects via Bluetooth. That is something you have that authenticates you to all major popular websites out there, and many of the tools. [00:30:03] So if you have any questions, just email me, me@craigpeterson.com gimme a few days, but I'll get back to you. [00:30:12] Have you heard about fog reveal? They it's almost invisible when you search for it online, but it's something that police departments have started using. And they're trying to keep all of this secret. So we're gonna tell you what's happening there and got a few others too. [00:30:29] Great little article that was in the newsletter this week. [00:30:32] Hopefully you got my free newsletter, but it is about fog reveal. This is an ours Technica. Often some of these ours Technica stories are carried in multiple places online. It's kind of interesting because we know to some degree what the federal government's doing to collect information on people, they go to open source. [00:30:57] Sources of information. In other words, things that are put out there publicly online, so they might search you your Facebook information or what you've been saying on Twitter, uh, or more, they go to data brokers that anybody can go to. And those data brokers have more information. They probably. Bought records from the states and they know from each individual state what property you own. [00:31:25] If you have a car, if there's liens on it, any mortgages that you might have, right. Putting all of the stuff together. It's kind of an interesting problem, frankly, but that's a, again, they say it's legitimate. Now the federal government is not allowed to collect this information. So they just go to third party data aggregators. [00:31:45] And remember again, If you have apps on your phone, if you have an Android phone, this does not apply to iPhones. Generally it does apply to iPhone apps. However, but, and this is part of the reason I say never, ever, ever use Android. Okay guys, I, I just. Blows my mind. I, I was talking to an old friend of mine. [00:32:09] Uh, he was the, the CTO in fact for the state of New Hampshire. And he was telling me that, uh, you know, we were talking and telling me, yeah, yeah, I got an Android phone. He says, don't you just love Android? And he knows that I do cybersecurity. He knows I've been in it. He hired my company to do a bunch of different tasks for the state, right over the years, we still do business with the state and he's using Android. [00:32:41] He's probably listening right now. BU get a little note from him, but, uh, it, it, it's a problem to use Android any. Those free apps that you're using, that Google maps app that you're using. And of course you can use that on iOS as well is tracking you. They know where you live because they know where your smartphone stays at night. [00:33:04] They know all of this stuff. How do you think the FBI is able to seize a smartphone at a Hardee's drive through. they know where you are. Well, they have some more access to information as it turns out. Uh, one Marilyn based Sergeant, according to the article wrote in a department, email TDY, the benefit of quote, no court paperwork and quote before purchasing the software. [00:33:37] And the Sergeant said the success lies in secre. interesting. So the electronic frontier foundation, FF, who I have supported over the years and the associated press got together. Now, the associated press won a Pulitzer center for crisis reporting, uh, award, I think. But anyways, the Pulitzer center for crisis reporting also got involved here. [00:34:05] So she had these three different organizations trying to figure out. what could, or what would be considered local places best kept secret. So they went online. They started doing some searching, trying to figure this out. And according to ours, Technica, the reporting revealed the potentially extreme extent of data surveillance of ordinary people being tracked and made vulnerable just for moving about. [00:34:38] Small town America. So it isn't just the big cities where you're tracked anymore. Reports showed how police nearly two dozen agencies. One record shows the total figure could possibly be up to 60. Use Google maps, like technology called frog reveal. now this is licensed by fog. I, I keep saying frog it's fog licensed by fog data science, and it gives state and local police a power to surveil. [00:35:10] Hundreds of billions of records from 250 million mobile devices. And if that doesn't scare you, I don't know what does now FF, the electronic frontier foundation found that fog reveal gets its data from veal. That's the same data source the feds use. neither companies disclosing the nature of their business relationship. [00:35:33] Okay. They fog, reveal. Didn't say what Tel is providing and vice versa, right? Yeah. But it really appears that fog reveal is getting data location services to local police at its steep discount. So it's making it more affordable for smaller police departments and private security companies to access major amounts of data and trace devices across months or even years. [00:36:03] isn't that something. So typically FF found that police agencies license the software annually for costs as low as six grand to nine grand. Some agencies spend even more on this tech to track people as they are moving and exactly where they are. Again, think being in a Hardee's drive through having the FBI show up. [00:36:27] Knowing you're there. Uh, ours reviewed one annual contract in Anaheim, California. That was for more than $40,000. So it took months for these three organizations that are used to digging into this sort of stuff, uh, to figure this out, took more than a hundred public records requests to gather thousands of pages of evidence to trying to compile a picture of how local law enforcement. [00:36:55] Is using and mining the location data. Now, to me, this is scary because we look at abuses of power. Through the years and I it's happened again and again and again, we are smelling more and more like Venezuela than we are free us. It's frankly scary, scary to me, but I'm talking about it cuz I think it's important. [00:37:21] That I bring this to light to everybody else out there. Okay. Now fog data science, managing partner, Matthew Brodrick told the associated press that fog reveal has been critical to police to save time and money on investigations, suggesting police who are under-resourced and investigation suffered from reliance on outdated. [00:37:44] Outdated tech now that's true. Isn't it? But isn't it also true that, uh, that's why we have some of these policies and procedures in place. That's why the Supreme court Miranda decision has some policies and procedures. That's why a warrant, a search warrant is supposed to be specific in what they're looking for and where it is located. [00:38:11] We don't allow these broad warrants that the king used to issue, but we are doing that nowadays. It seems against political enemies and that's where it starts really, really scaring me. It isn't that I think that the, the current administration it, or even the next administration in Washington, DC, is going to be rounding up its enemies and putting them up against a. [00:38:38] But when would it happen? Well, it would happen if everything were in place for it to happen. What's one of the most important things for fastest regime. It's to have a citizenry where they know everything about everyone. It, it reminds me of the Soviet era. Show me the man. I'll show you the crime. There's a great book out there right now. [00:39:04] I think it's called, um, three felonies. a day, I think is what the name of it is. But the, it points out how every last one of the people that call ourselves Americans in the United States of America, every one of us commits at least three felonies a day. Now a lot of these things are just absolutely crazy. [00:39:26] You know, there's been a lot of jokes about, oh, did you chair the label off of that pillow? Well, you can cuz you're the consumer, right? It's. The people that are selling it that are in distribution chain that cannot tear that off by law. Okay. But in reality, there is a lot of stuff that could be used against you. [00:39:46] So it it's like when they say, uh, you know, give me this, or why don't you answer that question? It's none of their business. You have a right to be secure in your papers right now, if they have a warrant that's specific, then you need to surrender it. But hopefully the warrant's actually issued by real court. [00:40:08] Some of these agencies now, uh, like the IRS have their own courts that are paid for by the agency. The judges are working for the agency. So you really think they're gonna be fair. I wonder, I wonder. Okay. Couple more things. Next up these pictures taken by the James web space telescope. Have you seen these? [00:40:35] It is amazing. I've seen them side by side with our latest or, you know, our previous high tech pictures. And we're seeing what maybe galaxies that we never could see before. It's just absolutely crazy. Well, guess what bad guys have seen them as. And they are embedding malware inside of some of these amazing images taken by the James web space telescope. [00:41:05] If you can believe this, by the way, they're writing them in go. Uh, so the Phish and emails, they've got a Microsoft office attachment. That's the entry point for the attack chain when you open it, it retrieves and obfuscated, VBA, macro, which in. Auto executed. all of a sudden there is a macro that is de obfuscated and run on your computer. [00:41:34] So be careful careful with that again. And good news. Microsoft is now turning off the execution of macros by default. Double check your machine, making sure that macros are blocked by default. So, yay. Okay. So they are, by the way, changing campaigns to rogue link and ISO files because of the blocked macros. [00:41:56] But, uh, it's good that Microsoft is doing that. Thank goodness. And you Ukraine, the police busted a crypto fraud call center. In fact, more than. And they're also shattering two more Russian bot farms. So we shouldn't be getting as many of those, uh, phone messages from the, uh, the bad guys scammers as we used to get. [00:42:20] Thank you, Ukraine. All right. Online Craig peterson.com. Get that newsletter and stay on top. [00:42:29] Well, we got some election news here from our friends at Google and at Twitter, they are taking opposite directions about exactly how they're gonna handle news postings about the elections. This is an interesting thing. [00:42:46] The federal election commission is the branch of the us government that monitors elections. [00:42:53] It does things like impose fines for misuse of funds. It sets some of the standards for funds and for their use. And. and one of the things it looks at is what are called in kind contributions. This is where someone might, uh, for instance, run a whole bunch of ads on behalf of a candidate. And those ads are coordinated with the campaign and that is illegal. [00:43:24] You're not supposed to do that. And because it's illegal, you know, they try and stop it. But most of the time they end up finding after the fact. And that's part of the reason they want campaigns to be filing their financial reports fairly frequently so they can catch it quite quickly. Well, There have been many complaints from the G O P about what has happened with some of the campaign finance stuff, where you have someone like Facebook or Twitter or Google, who seems to be meddling with the election. [00:44:02] They are running ads for your competition. They are really screening the results from people's searches. And from that those results they're, they're benefiting. There was a study down in orange county here a few years back where they looked at. Google results that were related to the elections going on in orange county and found that the Google results were tainted in such a way that it dramatically favored the Democrats that were running in those districts in orange county, California. [00:44:39] Pretty interesting when you get right down to it. So the GLP says, wait a minute, now that sort of thing is worth millions, tens of millions of dollars, because if they were going to run TV ads, for instance, to get as many eyeballs, to get as much attention to convince people that this is the way they should vote, that would cost them tens of millions of dollars. [00:45:02] So how much is it worth? Where do you go to really straighten things out in order to ultimately make fairness work and well, you know, that's kind of what the federal election commission's supposed to do. Well, here's, what's happening with the next elections. The federal elections commission has decided that Google. [00:45:28] Getting rid of their anti spam measures for. Candidates does not violate a ban on contributions on inkind contributions. So this is an interesting approach because Google's saying, Hey, listen, we want to allow pretty much any political message to come right through to Google Gmail users, inboxes, and not filter those. [00:45:59] Which I frankly think is a smart move on their part. Now some of these campaigns get pretty crazy. They're sending money requests all of the time. It it's been crazy to watch both sides do this and both sides complain about the other side, doing it. But at least by getting rid of these spam rules for the politicians, their messages are gonna get through. [00:46:24] I think that's ultimately a very good thing. So what kind of messages are gonna get through how and why? Well, ultimately they're saying we're gonna let all of them through. and what that means for you. If you already get some of these messages from the politicians, it means your mailbox. At least if it's a Google Gmail box, you are going to be seen even more during elections. [00:46:51] And I think this is gonna go on for very long time. Because Google doesn't want to get caught in the middle. When we're talking about these in kind contributions. If this were to be done for the Republicans or were to be done just for the Democrat, can you imagine the noise that would be made? By both sides and in kind contributions where the Republicans tens of millions of dollars Googled get dull tied up in some of these, uh, you know, lawsuits that would really be inevitable. [00:47:23] Bottom line. Well, Republicans have accused. Google of giving Democrats an advantage in its algorithms. And, and as I said, there have been studies on that that have proved that they have. The big question is why. And there's an article in ours, Technica talking about a meeting that happened in may 20. 22 between Senate Republicans and Google's chief legal officer. [00:47:52] And he said that the most forceful rebuke came from Senator Marco Rubio from Florida who claimed that not a single email from one of his addresses was reaching inboxes. And the Washington post, which of course is a mouthpiece for the Democrat party reported in late July. That the reason it was getting blocked was that a vendor had not enabled an authentication tool that keeps messages from being marked to spam. [00:48:21] Now, if that's true, The Washington post accidentally reported the truth here. And it might be true. I had a company call me up this week. They had their Google ads account banned, and they were trying to figure out the details of why and what happened. And I went in and we solved that problem, and I noticed that they had. [00:48:44] Properly configured their email. There's there's gets technical here. I have a paper we've put together on this, a special report talking about what's called D K I M. These, uh, SPF records DMAR records and how they should all be set up and why I need to use them. So this company was doing marketing. [00:49:04] Obviously they had a Google, Google ad account. They were sending out emails, but because they had not properly and fully configured their email. They were not getting delivered at the rate that they could get delivered. Now that's kind of a very, very big deal when you get right down to it. And the Washington post is saying, well, that's what happened to center to Rubio. [00:49:26] Now there's other things that might happen too. There are. Keywords that are used. There's software called spam assassin. That's very, very common. I have used it since it came out decades ago. I can't even remember how long spam Assassin's been out there, but it looks for certain things in the emails. , it looks for a lot of graphical content, a lot of HTML, even a lot of links and it kind of, it gauges, you know, this is likely spam on this scale. [00:49:56] And typically if the, the score is higher than five or eight, or in some cases, some people said as high as 15, that email is bounced. Well, one of the real big checks as to whether or not this is legitimate email is to check and see. Who is the domain? Does that domain have these special keys that tell us? [00:50:19] Yes, indeed. This did come from us. In other words, in this case did come from Marco Rubio or in the case of my client, it came from their company.com. And is it signed encrypted so that we know that nobody's kind of playing a man in the middle thing, trying to mess things up on us. And they say, okay, well that's a really good score. [00:50:40] So we will, we'll lower that spam score. And, and that's how that game is played. So what by Google doing what it. Talking about doing it's really gonna help out because I have of every company I've checked for email, email deliveries, we've got a, a new customer that is a startup and you know, what do they know? [00:51:02] They they're very narrow. Right? They understand their. Basic technology and their email again, was set up kind of like apparently Senator Rubio's email was set up and, and didn't have these things. And just like this company that I helped this week, they didn't have it set up properly. And, uh, they had experts who supposed experts who had set it up, but both cases, right. [00:51:26] It was outsourced. Yeah. You know how that goes. Now, some Gmail users submitted comments to the federal elections commission and they were criticizing Google's plan cuz they did not want to get more spam. Okay. And there were more than 2,500 comments. You can find them by the way, online, all of the stuff is a matter. [00:51:48] Public record and they call it the docket. And so there's a page out for this particular docket and the commissions through Republicans and Democrat commissioner voted for the order appro Google's plan. I think this is a very, very good deal. And it's really kind of the opposite of what Twitter is planning on doing Twitter has. [00:52:12] essentially announced that it's going to. In the elections. Yeah. So you got Google on the one side saying our hands are clean. We're staying away from this. We don't want anything to do with this. Thank you very much. We love you, but, uh, forget about it. We're just gonna let all the emails. Through, Twitter's saying that it's going to have its wonderful sensors who have been proven right. [00:52:39] Every time he said with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek, and they're gonna have those wonderful sensors that, you know, they're sitting in the basement and, and eating pizza and drinking Coke or red bull. I, I still kinda understand why somebody that's 30, whatever years old needs, energy drinks, you know, come on, come on. [00:53:00] Uh, but anyways, They're they're saying that they, Twitter is going to be the determiner as to whether or not something that is posted on Twitter is correct. Or if it should be censored or if it should be blocked entirely. And they're admitting that they're gonna shadow ban conservative content, they don't like isn't that. [00:53:25] So. Yeah. Uh, that's from the gateway pundit good article. And you'll find it in this week's newsletter. Uh, I think it went out Monday this week and you can follow the link through to these articles on Google and Twitter and the elections or any of the others that we have out there. So stick around, we'll be right back and make sure you sign up. [00:53:46] If you didn't already get that newsletter. Absolutely free. Craig, Peter son.com/subscribe. [00:53:59] I'm not sure a week goes by where I don't hear from a listener saying that somehow Facebook is tracking what they're talking about because all of a sudden ad starts showing up. And they're related to things that they've been talking about. [00:54:16] Meta is the owner of Facebook and Instagram and, and some other things like WhatsApp, which is part of the reason I don't trust WhatsApp, but we've had, I don't know how many complaints from people saying that Facebook is listening in to what they're talking. [00:54:36] And people are kind of wondering, well, wait a minute. Is it listening in on my phone calls? Is it listening when and how? It's a very, very good question. Now Facebook says in a statement that Facebook does not use your phone's microphone to inform ads or to change what in the newsfeed. Some recent articles have suggested that we must be listening to people's conversations in order to show them. [00:55:06] Ads. This is not true. We show ads based on people's interests and other profiled information, not what you're talking out loud about. We only access your microphone if you've given our app permission. And if you are actively using a specific feature that requires audio, this might include recording a video or using in an optional feature. [00:55:30] We introduced two years ago to include music. Or other audio in your status updates. So there it is. There's the official word from our friends over at Facebook. But do you notice there's a little bit of an out in there, right? Facebook does not use your phone microphone to inform ads or change what you see in your news. [00:55:55] Doesn't use your microphone. So there's a study out right now. That is from an X Google engineer. And this article is in the guardian and they are talking about what he found. So, let me explain the background on some of this technology. First, if you are an app developer, if, if you're a developer of any software of any kind you use libraries and these libraries do things like search for a specific set of characters called a string or in search. [00:56:31] Them or move things around or open a connection to another machine. So rather than having implement the whole T C P I P stack and ethernet underneath it and, and all of the operating system work that you'd have to do with all of the interrupts and the buffer fills and reading, toggling. As switches in the hardware, doing all of that sort of stuff. [00:56:52] You just make one library call and say, listen, and you give the port and TA anybody who tries to connect you. It just comes right through. It's all taken care of for you, right? That's what libraries are all about. And they've become much more complex, more recently libraries nowadays can do things like provide you with a full web browser. [00:57:16] Many of the applications that we use on a daily basis, these apps in our phones, particularly, but it's also true with some of the apps on our computers are actually. Just web browsers. They're web browsers that talk to a server out on the internet and yeah, there might be wrapped in various things, but oftentimes if you're trying to pay within an app, it'll go to a third party site. [00:57:44] And part of the beauty of that is. Becomes a, a service to them. They don't have to worry about coding it all up. Right. They don't have to worry about taking your money, keeping everything safe. Am I using really good algorithms here to encrypt it can bad guys hack in? No, no, no. There's, they're just calling this routine that spins up a little web browser. [00:58:07] Inside the application and uses a secure connection to talk to the web server somewhere who cares? Not mine. I'm just the app developer, right? I'm letting you play your farming game or whatever it might be. That makes sense to you guys. So it makes their life much, much easier. Why bother if you've got a website that does everything, why bother coding it all up from scratch in an app? [00:58:34] They don't people don't. Why would. Well, we've seen that again. And again, for instance, look at Microsoft's latest browser out there, edge, not the original edge, but the latest edge, you know how Microsoft is, right. They call it the same thing, even though it's entirely different. Uh, yeah. How many versions of windows where they're like 20 at one point, right? [00:58:56] Different ones or different architectures and just crazy. But now the edge browser is. Built on chromium, which is Google Chrome, which is built on Apple's libraries to manipulate, draw things, et cetera. So you're running your edge browser on your Microsoft windows, computer. You're actually running code libraries. [00:59:21] If you will, from Google and from apple. And that way, if you're developing a browser like edge, you don't have to worry about every little nit bitty thing. That's all taken care of by other programmers who are making a smaller piece of code. Now that's been the whole Unix philosophy forever, by the way. [00:59:42] Instead of having these monolithic applications. That could be just full of bugs and security problems. You just have nice small, easy to maintain, easy to research applications and let other people worry about the little pieces, which is really kind of cool. It's great. Many browsers in fact are based right there on chromium and they modify it around a little bit. [01:00:07] Microsoft added all kinds of spyware to it. Well, it turns out. According to this research from an ex Google engineer that both Facebook and Instagram apps have been taking advantage of this in-app browser technology. And what they're doing is users who click on links inside the Facebook app or inside the Instagram at gram act are actually taken to the webpages. [01:00:39] Using an in-app browser controlled by Facebook or Instagram rather than sending you to your default browser. So if you are using iOS, your default browser might be safari, which is a rather safe. Browser and good for privacy, or you might have decided you wanna use the Chrome browser on iOS or maybe Firefox or brave, or one of dozens of different browsers that are out there. [01:01:10] No, no, it's not gonna use those. It's not gonna use your default browser. It's going to use the in-app browser. And what it's doing with that in-app browser now is here's a quote from him. The Felix Crouse, he's a privacy researcher founded an app development tool that was acquired by Google in 2017. He says, quote, the Instagram app injects their tracking code into. [01:01:37] Website shown, including when clicking on AB ads, enabling them to monitor all user interactions. Like every button that you press, every link you taped, every piece of text that you select or highlight any screenshot you take, any forms, you fill out any user forms, things like passwords addresses, credit card numbers. [01:02:06] Are all seen by the Instagram app? Yes, indeed. So in the statement, of course, uh, medicated that injecting a tracking code, obeyed users preferences on whether or not they allowed apps to follow them. And there was only used to aggregate data before being applied for targeted advertis. Now, this is interesting because according to Crouse, this code injection, uh, was tracked and he was able to look at doing, doing it right for normal browsers. [01:02:42] His test code detected no changes, but for Facebook and Instagram, it finds up to 18 lines of code added by. App into the webpage. So there you go. JavaScript injection and more from our friends at Facebook and Instagram. So they are tracking you, but apparently. They're not listening to your microphone, but they're watching you as you cruise around the web thinking you're using your browser, but no, no. [01:03:18] You're using theirs. Hey, stick around Craig peterson.com. [01:03:24] Cell phone security is something I've talked about for a long time. And you guys know my basics here. If you've been a listener for really any length of time, when it comes to smartphones, we're gonna get into this in more detail, particularly after this raid. [01:03:41] Well, of course everyone's heard, I'm sure about the rate on Trump's property, Mar Lago. [01:03:48] There was something else that happened right. About the same time. And that was representative. Perry Scott Perry was traveling with his in-laws, uh, who are described as elderly. They were on vacation. He's a Republican representative in the house of Congress from Pennsylvania. And he told the Fox news people that three FBI agents approached him, issued him a warrant and demanded he hand over his. [01:04:24] He said they made no attempt to contact my lawyer, who would've made arrangements for them to have my phone, if that was what they wanted. He says I'm outraged. Although not surprised that the FBI. Under the direction of Merrick Garland's DOJ would seize the phone of a sitting member of Congress. My, my phone contains info about my legislative and political activities, personal private discussions with my wife, family constituents, and friends. [01:04:53] None of this is the government's business. Now that's really an interesting point. And, and it brings up the discussion about our smart devices, you know, what should we be doing with our phones and, and what is it frankly, that our phones have in them. Now, just think about that for a minute. Scott Perry rec he, he not recommended. [01:05:21] He mentioned that he had all kinds of records. That were in that phone. You do too. You've got your contacts. Of course. The phone contains information about who you called, where you went, cuz it's got a GPS tracker, but even if GPS is turned off, it's still tracking which cell towers you've connected to. [01:05:43] Uh, we've got all kinds of email in our phones, which are gonna contain business documents, private documents, attorney, client, privilege documents, all kinds of stuff there. And we have the fourth amendment, which protects the right of privacy against unreasonable searches and seizures by the go. Now, in this case, obviously the government got a warrant we could argue about, you know, how legitimate is the warrant and should they have issued it, et cetera. [01:06:16] Right. That that's not what I'm talking about. This is not a political show. In reality. What we're talking about here is the technology. The technology we're using to store this information, this personal information, what should we be using? What shouldn't we be using? How should we use it? Right. All of that sort of stuff. [01:06:38] Well, okay, so we've established that there was not apparently a fourth amendment violation here. There, there might have been, we don't know. We may never know. It doesn't really matter, but if someone gets a hold of your smartphone or your tablet or your computer, what information does it have on there? [01:07:01] And we also have a right under the fifth amendment. against self-incrimination. So if someone's thumbing through our phone, what are they gonna find? People plead the fifth amendment all of the time, because they don't want to get trapped in one of these traps where maybe you don't remember the date. [01:07:24] Right. And all of a sudden you're in a perjury trap because you said something that wasn't true. Well, you know, our, our memories aren't the best, particularly when we're on vacation, we've been drinking a little bit, right. if someone finds your phone, opens it up, someone steals your phone and opens it up. [01:07:44] Someone gets a warrant for your phone and opens it up. What's in there. Now some people have in the past said, okay, what I'll do is I'll just go ahead and I'll wipe my phone remotely and they've done it. Right? The police have had the phone in evidence and in evidence locker and somebody remotely went ahead and wiped their phone. [01:08:04] The police are onto. And what the police have been doing more recently is they put it into a special bag that blocks any sort of signals coming in or out as well as the room. Right. It's kind of a fair date cage anyways, and that way, bad guys, good guys who, if the phones are stolen, they can't remotely wipe them, which is a good thing here, frankly. [01:08:30] But what are we ultimately trying to protect from? That's the question, right? It it's, who's gonna have your phone and what are you trying to protect it from personally? I'm not someone who truly trusts the government. I'm a firm believer in our constitution and our bill of right. Ultimately governments become corrupt. [01:08:52] It happens every time. And even if the whole government isn't corrupt, there's guaranteed to be people within the government, within their bureaucracy, the deep state, if you will, who are out there to get you right. makes sense to you. Makes sense to me. I don't know, but our phones, our smartphones, our computers have a lot of stuff in them. [01:09:14] I've talked on the show before how you should not be taking them to China. If you go to China, because of the evil made. T where they are grabbing your phones. They are duplicating them. Same thing with Russian travelers. Not as much as has been happening in China, but it's happened in Russia, probably a lot now with the whole war thing. [01:09:36] Right. But you shouldn't be taking them because they can be duplicated just like rep Scott. But Scott Perry's phone was duplicated. Now the, the FBI apparently said, well, we're not gonna look through well, why you're duplicating it then. And you know, maybe it's just to preserve evidence. I really don't know, but the bad guys can get at your phone employers if they own your phone can get at your phone and they can get a lot of data out of that. [01:10:06] What do you do? Well, bottom line, if you are traveling internationally, you're gonna wanna make sure to wipe your phone and just bring along maybe a, a basic little flip phone. Uh, cetera. Now there is software that we use. For instance, we use one password and duo in order to keep track of all of our stuff, right. [01:10:31] Our personal information. And. That's the two factor authentication stuff that we use, and we can tell it, Hey, we're traveling out of the country and we will only need these passwords. And it goes ahead and wipes out the password database so that we're not carrying a whole bunch of stuff with us that might be compromised by, uh, a government agency right within what is it? [01:10:54] The USS 50 miles of the border. They can confiscate and examine anything that you have, even if you're not trying to cross the border. and they'll do that at airports. They'll do that at a whole bunch of places. And then you've got the employer side and then you've got the bad guy side. Look at what happened to Khai with the Saudis right here. [01:11:16] He was, uh, you know, a journalist. We could argue that I suppose, but he's a journalist. He is abducted and he is murdered by the Saudis. They get their hands on the phone and they decrypt the. this has happened and it'll happen again. So Apple's done something here that I think is a good step in the right direction. [01:11:40] Apple, of course I've recommended for a long time. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever use Android. Okay. Don't. Use it, Google's using it to track you. You're losing your privacy and the security. Isn't very good. Particularly if your phone's more than three years old, apple has come up with this new lockdown mode on their phones and the lockdown mode is meant for. [01:12:09] People who are really under thumb, you know, people living in Russia or Ukraine, or you name it, Iran, all of these countries that are really out to get their citizens and it it's coming out in iOS. You'll see it there. You probably don't want to use it as a regular person, cuz it does block some of the things you can do, but it also locks it down against these Israeli based companies that have been selling software and hardware to break into cell phones. [01:12:44] So consider iPhones. And if you are one of these people, who's at a high risk consider lockdown mode. [01:12:51] I warned last week about using the ring camera as well as Google's camera. We've got some more news about that today. I was right. A major breakthrough in nuclear fusion and a new toolkit released. Talk about it all now. [01:13:08] Well, quite, quite a time, you know, I, I remember when I first started doing the radio show, uh, 22 years ago, now it started right there year 2000 Y two K and I, I was, uh, wondering, you know, am I gonna have enough stuff to talk about? [01:13:27] and my wife, who was just the most amazing person had been helping me and we subscribed to a bunch of newspapers. Yeah. There used to be newspapers back then. And she went through and was clipping articles that we thought might be good, that people might want to, uh, to hear about. And so she had all. Files. [01:13:49] And we, we subscribe to like four or five different newspapers, including the trashy ones like USA today, just so we knew what was going on out there. We had the financial times and the London times and New York times, and we got just files and files worth of stuff. And didn't take us long to realize, Hey, wait a minute. [01:14:14] There is so much tech news out there and stuff to talk about, uh, that weren't, we don't have to worry about that. So we canceled our subscriptions to all of these different things. I, I have actually a subscription to the New York times still, cuz they gave me a buck a week, which is not a bad deal for the online version because the old gray lady still does have some good text stories. [01:14:39] Some of the other stuff obviously is a problem, but, uh, yeah, tech stories anyways. Now we do a lot of this stuff online, the research, and I put it together and send it out in my newsletter every week. And man, did we have a lot of you guys reading it on Monday was the most, most, uh, red newsletter of mine. [01:15:01] The insider show notes newsletter. Of any of them ever. It was really great. It was like I had a, almost a 50% open rate there within the first day. So that's cool. Thank you guys. And obviously you really value it or you would not have opened that newsletter and click through you. See what I do? Is, uh, you probably know, I appear on radio stations all over the place and I I'm also of course have my own radio show here and elsewhere, and my podcasts, which are on every major podcast platform out there. [01:15:40] And I've been doing this for so long this week. What am I at here? Show? Number, I think it's like 1700. I'm trying to remember weeks. Okay. That's weeks of shows and, uh, we, we have never hit the same stuff twice, which is really rather cool. One of the things I brought up and this was in, uh, a recent show is about. [01:16:09] These ring cameras. And I warned everyone not to use ring and went through the whys. So if you have my newsletter from. A few weeks back, you can just probably search your email box
Colorado First State to Take Control of Smart Thermostats - Green Energy Initiatives About to Kill - This Winter Will Be Terrible - We Need 487 New eCar Charging Stations Per Day For Next Eight Years If you got my newsletter this week, you might have noticed that almost everything is about the power grid. Well, it, it kind of is. And we're going to be talking about some of the implications here... [Automated transcript follows] Well, I'm sure you've heard about California and the amazing power shortages that they have out there. It's terrible, right? On a hot day, they're running out of power and on a cold day, they're running out of power. I remember when I lived in Southern California for a couple of years, well, I'm more than a couple, but I had an apartment in one of my first and the only heat was an electric heater that was on the wall between the bathroom and the living. [00:00:44] And, and that's it. Right. So everything in the apartment was heated from there. There was a, a bedroom. Okay, great. Isn't that wonderful, but there's no heat in the bedroom. So if it was a cold day and I wanted to heat, I had to turn the temperature way up on without electric heater. In the living room slash bathroom, keep the bathroom door open. [00:01:07] And then it would allow me to kind of heat up the rest of the apartment. Right. It had a separate kitchen with the door. It had the bedroom with the door and it had the big living room. So think about that for a minute. Think about how much it really can drive. Electrical demands and California has been having some real problems about 30%, just slightly more comes from what California calls, renewable resources. [00:01:37] and there's a great, great quote here. This is from CBS news saying that governor Newsome signed legislation potentially allowing the state's last remaining nuclear plant to stay opened beyond the plan 2025 closure. In order to provide more power for the energy grid. Again, it kind of makes sense. You might remember back in the summer of 2020, there were some real problems with the grid and they had rolling blackouts. [00:02:09] They've managed to mostly avoid that, but they're asking people, Hey, don't charge your cars, your electric cars don't charge. 'em the grid's under great stress. And we're seeing in Colorado another problem, right? Yeah. Isn't it great here, Denver residents have been able to just go ahead and yeah. Get a hundred dollars bonus for installing smart thermostats. [00:02:34] A hundred dollars. Yeah. And also on top of that a hundred dollars, they get $25 after the first year. Now why that what's the advantage to these smart thermostats? You know, you look at it at the surface, it says, well, yeah, that's probably a great idea, right? Some of these smarter thermostats measure who's in the room. [00:02:56] Well, you know that there's people in the room, there's a heat source in the room. There's movement in the room. So it either turns it up or turns it down. Some of them are, are very simple, like mine, right? They're not connected to the. At all and we'll turn the temperature up and down on certain times of certain days so that I can, you know, have a comfortable temperature, but these ones are interesting because what's happened here in Denver. [00:03:25] is it the residents have lost control of their thermostats. Yeah. So Colorado's having an energy crisis. Let me see, what are these states have in common? Hmm. I wonder Colorado and California. And they're deciding now that the power grid, the, the guys that run it, you know, they that have the monopoly they get to make, what is it? [00:03:49] Five or 10% of the gross. Income as profit, which is really kind of cool because you know, what that means is the more expensive electricity is to produce and deliver the more money they make. Right. So they just constantly go to the public utilities commission and say, Hey, we need a rate increase. And isn't that wonderful. [00:04:11] Cause if it was you, would you rather have 5% of a hundred million dollars or 5% of 200 million? I I'll wait. [00:04:25] Okay. So you'd rather have 5% of $200 million. So, so would the electric grid companies, so why would they want to invest in increasing the electric power when there's so many reasons? Not. Two, you see, let's talk about this for a minute. To build a new plant is very expensive in New Hampshire. The Seabrook nuclear plant was designed. [00:04:51] They, they were gonna have two major reactors there. Powering New Hampshire. Putting power into the Northeast grid, which would help to service Maine help to service mass. Right. It, it was gonna be just a wonderful thing. And then Jane Fonda's people got gathered around and said, no, no, you can't do that. [00:05:11] Right. China syndrome, China syndrome, which isn't true. These types of reactors don't have that problem. And, but the newest reactors really don't, we've talked about those on the show before, because they're intrinsically safe. Doesn't. It, they can submerge them. You can cut out all the power to 'em doesn't matter. [00:05:30] Well, I'll, um, Let me see, do, do I want to, as a power grid company, go to the expense of a couple of things, right? Do do I want to, first of all, go through the latest, uh, number I saw was about six year process to try and get a basic approval for nuclear power plant. Of course, on top of that, you got way more that you have to worry. [00:05:54] Approvals from, you know, federal and state and county and city, et cetera, et cetera. And, uh, we, so you gotta put your money into that and then you gotta build the darn thing and Seabrook in, which is the one I just mentioned in New Hampshire is an expensive thing to build. So if you put, build a Seabrook nuclear power plant, right. [00:06:18] And you've got it sitting there, but you never get to quite finish it, then what. While the construction cost of Seabrook. And this is, uh, right now owned by next era. Next era energy resources, Seabrook cost, $17 billion to build, and it never went fully operational. So let me see if I'm a power provider. Do I want to build a nuclear power plant? [00:06:49] Well, probably not. Probably not. Well, how about a, a gas, power plant? Well, one of the nice things about gas or coal or wood, or even nuclear is they all have the same basic backend. So you might ask me, well, what is that, Craig? What kind of a backend are you talking about here? Well, we're talking about the back end. [00:07:14] Steam think steam, locomotive, right? What happened with steam? Well, it's still out there and it's still the back end of all of our electric production, at least almost all of it. Right? So you can take an old coal plant and convert it to nuclear. For instance, there's even some ways to convert them to solar, but that's a more expensive process and a lot of stuff has to be changed. [00:07:39] So 17 billion. To build Seabrook and it never goes into production. And now the people in New Hampshire are paying 17 billion, right. For a nuclear power plant. That's only partially in use. So let me see what other options do they have? Well, of course they could build a cold plant, you know, maybe. Try to anyways, and then what's gonna happen. [00:08:03] Well, it's gonna get shut down and it's gonna probably take 20 years nowadays to try and get approval for it. Even though we have some pretty darn good clean coal plant, plant technology out there, uh, other options. Well, we mentioned natural gas if we can get it right, but we can't frack in a lot of areas, which is where we get a lot of our natural gas from so natural gas, even though we have more. [00:08:27] Any other other country or supplier in the world, we can't really use natural gas can because it's, we don't know what's gonna happen here in the future, solar. Well, you know, it doesn't work at night, uh, wind. Well, it, it doesn't work. If the wind isn't blowing, uh, battery technology distort it. We just don't have it. [00:08:47] Hm. So if you are a provider of electricity, maybe your best choice is to restrict the production of power. Don't bother investing in new power plants, at least, you know, pretend you are, but don't bother. And then ultimately all you have to do is raise your prices. So you raise your price and wait a minute. [00:09:09] What was that formula I talked about before? Would you rather have 5% of a hundred million or 5% of 200 million? Hmm. Let's see here. Um, what was the answer to that? Oh, 5% of $200 million wins. So the less efficiency that they can have so that they can charge the higher price means they can pull more to their bottom line and life is good. [00:09:39] Don't you love these types of government regulations are protecting us. They're keeping the prices under control, making it so everything so much better for us all across the board. So California. is doing a couple of other things that are also absolutely ridiculous. One of the things California is doing and, uh, you know, have, have a look at this is 2035. [00:10:06] You might have heard of this one too. What's happening in 2035. Well, in 2035, California says they will not allow the sale of any new gasoline or internal combustion engine. Cars, at least maybe trucks as well. So let me see if their electric grid is hurting. They're complaining right now because one of their most reliable sources of energy, uh, nuclear they've been shutting down. [00:10:37] So I mentioned Gavin, Newsome's bringing nuclear back on the table, keeping that plant running. Uh, the other big one of course is water power, hydro dams, right? Uh, and guess what they're running out of out there is the water. And they're having trouble with keeping hydro plants running. So production of electricity, there is way down and to top it off, they want electric vehicles. [00:11:04] So we're gonna get into this some more where we get back the insanity. Has just gone way overboard here, way, way overboard. And you haven't even heard the half of it yet. Visit me online. Make sure you get my newsletter. My free insider show notes. Visit Craig peterson.com/subscribe. [00:11:28] We're talking a little bit about green energy, green quote, unquote. Right? Because a lot of it is anything but green. We've talked about many of those things before, but right now we're gonna start out with Germany. What is up over there? The greenest of green. [00:11:45] Germany has been a leader over in the EU in a number of ways. [00:11:49] Right? Well, number one, it's the biggest economy in Europe. It's an incredible economy and it has frankly supported many of the EU. Uh, com countries over there from going broke, right? The, the P I G S the Portugal, uh, Italy crease in Spain have been taking a lot of the money from Germany. That's part of the reason that Britain decided to get out of the EU. [00:12:18] It's just kind of crazy. Right? So Germany being a major provider of some of the financing for some of these program. Has kind of run the EU, even though it's in Brussels there in Belgium, the headquarters anyways. Right? Well, Germany is facing a complete collapse of its power grid system, complete collapse because of the demand for electric. [00:12:47] Now I'm gonna get into a little bit more of what's happening here in the us with California. You probably saw all of the stuff in my newsletter this week. Craig peterson.com/subscribe in my free newsletter. Uh, and. Here's what's happening over there right now because the gas was cut off to Germany. [00:13:11] People are panicking. It's also been cut off to pretty much all of the other European countries, France has been playing footsy with Russia. And, uh, because of that, they haven't been completely cut off yet. I haven't seen the latest numbers, but basically Russia's cutting way back, 80% or more to these major. [00:13:33] European countries. Well, we're looking at a problem in the us too. I burn home heating oil. Most of that comes from Canada. A lot of people burn natural gas in my neighborhood. There's some people that burn LPG, liquified petroleum gas, which is a blend of waste gas gases for the most part. But because we are competing on an international stage, we got a bit of a different problem that we would have otherwise. [00:14:04] you might know one of my daughters and sons-in-law son-in-laws sons-in-law yeah, that'd be right. Have been working for an, um, a company that transports various types of natural gas and LP gas. So they'll take that gas. At least I used to work for them. Uh, they've moved on, but they'll take that gas and they'll move it from one place to another, for instance, in Boston. [00:14:32] A few years ago, her ship was sitting in the Harbor. They pull up this buoy from the bottom of the ocean, pull it into the bottom of the ship. And once it was in the bottom of the ship, now, they were able to take the liquified gas that they had on board reg gasify it, and provide the Northeast natural gas grid with natural gas for the winter. [00:14:55] So she was sitting there at anchor all winter and. Was providing us with natural gas. So one of the beauties of these regas ships is first of all, mass, that two sets did not want a Rega plant on land. So they built a ship with it right there. And then secondly, if you are doing that, you can fill up your LP. [00:15:18] Uh, ships, right? Because there's some that just transport the liquified gas and some that, that hold a smaller amount and reify, you can take that anywhere. So one year she was sitting off the coast of Israel and they were filling up of course, from the other ships that would come in with the liquid gas and they would reify it and pump that directly into Israel's. [00:15:46] Pipelines for natural gas. So natural gas is now a worldwide commodity. You can sell it pretty much anywhere because of these new technology ships that are out there that have Rega plants right on them. So all you have to do is give them access to your main pipeline for natural gas. For the area or for the country and they fill it up and you're off and running. [00:16:14] So now we've got countries all over the world that are competing for the natural gas that we're selling. The natural gas of Russia was selling, right. That some of the natural gas from some of these other places around the world, that means this winter Europe is going to be buying more and more and more natural gas. [00:16:38] People are gonna die over there. Don't get me wrong because of the cold. They are gonna have a hard time providing natural gas to enough people because everyone's bidding the value, the price of natural gas. And the same, thing's been true for oil for a long time. Right? It's you, you get a ship, it's got however, million barrels of oil on it. [00:17:01] I'm not even sure. And they deliver that anywhere you want it delivered. One of the things all of these companies do is they sit off shore, so they get filled up and they just sit there waiting for the value of their cargo to go. Now that's been true forever, right? There's what are called tramp ships. [00:17:25] And, and they'll just go pick up whatever, and they'll sit around and find out, okay, where do you want me to deliver it? And off they go once the price is high enough. So they're already doing that. They're staging some of these ships with oil, they're staging some of them with natural gas or LPG, and there's watching the markets and waiting for the time that the price goes up. [00:17:49] So many people in Germany are worried about being able to get any heat. because natural gas, man, it's gonna be rashing something awful. If Russia doesn't turn those pipelines up all of the way. Remember president Trump warned them about that at the UN and the German representatives were sitting there in the UN on camera snickering that president Trump would suggest that buying all of their natural gas from our friends over in Russia was not the best idea possible. [00:18:20] Right. So they really messed that one. The people in Germany have been going out and doing what. The sales of electric heaters are higher this year than any other year. So far in 2022, Germans have bought more than 600,000 electric heaters. Isn't that something, and that's a 35% increase from usual. Just to let you know, you can put that in some perspective. [00:18:51] And of course that number keeps going up and their critical infrastructures now facing this massive strain, this 20 million Germans have homes that are dependent on natural gas, 20. Million and are switching to electric heaters. We're gonna be doing the same thing here. I'm sure. And I mentioned earlier about my first apartment down there in California that had electric heater and that was it. [00:19:20] That's how we heated the whole crazy thing. So think about that. Germany's been having power problems. They had them last year. They've had them for a few years because they've been turning off reliable sources of energy and trying to move to windmills and solar, which are not ready for prime time. So they are expecting some problems here. [00:19:44] As remix news is reporting. Blackouts who are not just hit private households, but also affect German infrastructure, including cash payment systems, mobile phone networks, street light. Now that's, uh, from a gentleman, from the association of electrical engineering, and he's saying all of these networks would be down for long periods of time. [00:20:08] You remember the year 2000 Y2K, the world is gonna come to an end. Computers are gonna go down. Yeah. turns out they were off by about 22 years. Right? Meanwhile, This is the daily fetched reporting German. These biggest cities are preparing for an energy crisis as a country prepares to limit heat and shut off warm water and shut off lighting. [00:20:34] Absolutely amazing. We're gonna pick this up when we come back. So don't go anywhere. Look for my podcast. You'll find it pretty much everywhere. Just search for Craig Peterson and, or go to my website. Craig peterson.com. [00:20:55] We've talked about the internet of things here before many times and the security problems with it. Well, Denver and California are proving that there are more problems with internet of things as governments taking control. [00:21:11] I mentioned a little bit earlier about how the guys and gals in Denver, Colorado have succumbed to just, well, it really was a very good deal. [00:21:23] Succumb is probably the wrong word. You see, they would let you have a smart thermostat and they would pay you a hundred dollars. If you bought a smart thermostat that met their requirements. Of course, and then $25 a year. If you kept that smart thermostat online. Now that's an internet of things. We've talked about, the serious problems we've seen in the past about them. [00:21:49] So for instance, Google smart thermostat decided that, uh, well it needed a microphone and, um, it didn't tell anybody and nobody knew why Google had put a microphone in there because they weren't using. of course, they kind of make sense to put a, some, our microphone in there, so you can talk to it. Right. [00:22:09] But none of that was implemented. Then we had some of these smart thermostats being broken into. In fact, some of these, uh, smart thermostats with microphones were not only broken into, but were used to listen the end on what was happening in a. So there's all kinds of problems with them. I OT internet of things is any device that gets hooked up to the internet gets hooked up to your network. [00:22:35] Nowadays that's things like refrigerators that might remind you that you need to buy some eggs and some of them will even place orders for you for groceries. And they'll just show up. You can expect more of that by the way as time goes. And there are some services that will not only take that order of groceries, but will come into your home and put them in the fridge for you depending on where you live. [00:23:00] Right. Doesn't that sound absolutely wonderful. But the internet of things here. Is really concerning cuz we're tying more and more of our appliances and other electronic devices into this central control system out there. We've seen issues where they're tied in centrally things like your washer. You're dryer. [00:23:25] And now they're being controlled by the utilities so that you don't run your wash at a certain time of day when they might need the electricity. Now I can see that, that, that kind of makes sense to me, but I think the best way to incentivize consumers is to do a pricing system that is variable. So if it's peak time, Hey, electricity is cheap. [00:23:48] If you use it after 10:00 PM or whatever the right time is. And there are some utilities that are doing that, but there are states out there that are again, Democrat controlled. It seems to be the theme, doesn't it, where they are starting to mandate that you have smart appliances and that they be tied into a control system that ultimately the state can. [00:24:19] So they know when you're washing your clothes, they know when you're ordering your grocer groceries, they know where they're coming from. Now, of course they can get some of that information. Like the groceries from credit cards, cuz most of us were paying for groceries. The credit cards aren't we. But ultimately what we're doing is opening up everything in our homes to external monitoring and potentially to control. [00:24:44] And that's what's happening right now. It really is external. Control and that's what's happened in Denver where they had a heat wave and people went up to their thermostat to turn it down because man, it was hot and you know what I've had, I've had my temperature turned way up because I didn't wanna waste electricity, but it's really hot today. [00:25:06] So I'm gonna turn it up and what. What happens. It says right there in the thermostat that you can't change it due to an energy emergency, California is going to mandate these types of smart thermostats that control how much heat you get in the winter and how much cooling you get in the summer. They're also starting to require that your washing machine and dryer, particularly electric dryers are also controlled by this. [00:25:38] See, it all goes back to what I was talking about before. If you are a power grid. What are you gonna do? Is it better for you to just increase prices or is it better for you to build new sources of electricity? And as I mentioned before, I went through all of this in detail. It's usually much better for you to just go ahead and increase your prices. [00:26:02] You'll make more money. You don't have that money at risk because man, somebody might pass a law, a rule, a regulation, heck some dictator might sign an executive order cutting off your supply. Right. Might be Putin might be somebody else. You never know. So instead of relying so heavily on things such as our natural gas supply, which president Biden effectively shut down some of the exploration for natural gas because he shut down fracking. [00:26:35] Uh, we are now burning natural gas to produce electricity. So what happens? Electric prices while in New Hampshire, they doubled doubled from one month to the next. The price of electricity. Now your bill wouldn't have doubled because there's also the delivery costs and other things that are involved, but the price of electricity itself doubled, we've got to get smart about this stuff. [00:27:03] So I'm, I'm gonna go to another one. We mentioned, and this was in the newsletter that came out. Um, you can find that, uh, on the newsletter subscription online at Craig peterson.com/subscribe, but here's another problem we got California is requiring electric vehicles. By 2035, they want half or not half. [00:27:30] Excuse me. They want all of the vehicles sold in California. All of them to be electric, no more internal combustion engines in California, at least new cars, right? No, probably be, uh, the gas cars for quite a while. So let's look at this. The federal government wants us to be driving electric cars, all of the car companies, making electric cars. [00:27:54] Are they making them cuz people want them are demanding them? No. They're not look at the number of cars sold. Look at how some of these electric car lines have been shut down. Nissan Nissan closed one of their cars off a GM closed one of their cars off, right? These electric cars don't make sense, but if you are going to stay in business and you're going to get an executive order or a law coming down from Congress. [00:28:22] And that law says you're gonna have to produce electric vehicles. You're gonna do it. It's just like the cafe standards. Yeah. Hey, listen, your whole fleet. In other words, all of the cars that you sell, sell half to meet these standards for fuel economy across the board. So what are you gonna do? How are you gonna deal with that? [00:28:41] Well, you're gonna make the cars less safe by taking some of this deal out of. You're gonna make them less safe because you want to make them lighter. You're gonna get rid of that really great spare tire that was in the back, and you can replace it with one of those stupid little space saver, saver tires, right? [00:28:57] All, to save weight, all, to meet federal regulations on the mileage the vehicles have to meet. Now, when we're looking at the electricity, we've already established that we don't have the electrical supply to power. These cars. We Don. We don't, we're already having brownouts in the summer and in the winter, in different parts of the country. [00:29:22] Well, let's also talk about one more thing and that is okay. So how are we gonna charge the cars? And obviously getting the electricity is a very big deal. And there was a new nuclear plant license that finally went through. It started the application process. Back at the pretty much the beginning of the Trump administration and was signed off by the Biden administration for one of these new nuclear plant. [00:29:53] And the nuclear plant is by the way, intrinsically safe. It's made enough. Factory. It's not custom made on site, whole new world. And then how are we gonna charge the cars? That's another problem. it hasn't been addressed yet. So we'll get into all of that stick around. Of course, listening to Craig Peterson, you can sign up and find out more. [00:30:19] Craig peterson.com. [00:30:21] So, how are we going to charge the mall? man, this is gonna be a problem. We're gonna get into that right now. Uh, again, man talking about the cart before the horse, what's the matter with these people? It's crazy. [00:30:38] You know, I am all for electric cars. I think they are cool. [00:30:43] Very neat. But they are not green. Okay. Don't fool yourself. They are not green. The manufacturing of the batteries where they're mining, how they're. Processing it we're just outsourcing the pollution to third world countries, making people there sick. Right. Why, why bother you? You remember the Olympics that were held in Beijing and how the air was just so nasty people were wearing face masks? [00:31:14] Uh, not because of worried about. Disease. They were worried about the particulate matter in the air. So what China did is they shut down all manufacturing. For well over a hundred miles so that the Beijing Olympics would not look like what it normally looks like in that area, which is just horrific, almost unbreathable air, same thing with the water. [00:31:45] You look at the plastic in our oceans, which people are complaining about. And I get it. I don't want microplastics in me and I certainly don't want that little kid to shove a straw up my nose. Like he did the turtle, but that's really what we're looking at here. We're outsourcing our pollution elsewhere and that pollution. [00:32:08] Ends up here. It ends up in our aquifers. It ends up in the oceans, obviously. Right. And in the air, which blows around the globe. And some of it settles down to the earth and that gets washed away by the rains and then ends up in all kinds of nasty places. So don't, don't let them convince you that electric cars are. [00:32:33] they are cool. They're wonderful. They're really neat. They're fast. Uh, we should talk again, some point about the autonomous systems I've been driving, Ford's latest, uh, you know, semi-autonomous system. And we can talk about that. What I like and don't like about those things, but, uh, when we're talking about the electric cars, I, I love what my daughter said. [00:32:57] Who's living in Norway. They have a Tesla. Uh, I think it's a. What is it? Model three, I think. And they're driving in Norway. Now in Norway, you get a, a 25% price, uh, difference, um, buying electric versus gas. The government gives you 25% off because this tax free and the sales tax is 25%. Can you believe that? [00:33:21] Right? Oh, but things are cheap. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyways. What they are saying. Cause I asked my daughter, I said, now, you know, that Tesla is not green. Right. And she said, yeah. And I said, well, how about people in Norway? What are they thinking? Why are they buying it? Why is Norway the most, uh, populated electric vehicle country in the world? [00:33:46] Per capita, they have more electric cars than any other country. Well, the main reason for that is because of the massive tax incentives, but the other side of that coin here, frankly, is the, how Norway wants to stay green. They wanna be, have fresh air. They wanna be living in a clean environment. And so what she told me was that Norwegian realizes. [00:34:11] You know, not everybody obviously, but, um, that these cars, these electric cars are not green. They are hard on the environment, but not the environment in nor. Talking about being closed minded. Right? Very narrow minded. All that matters is that we're not polluting Norway by driving those cars. Now, ultimately they may be because in most parts of the world, the electric cars, batteries are being put in storage facilities or are ending up in waste. [00:34:45] Piles, uh, around the world. It it's really kind of crazy because most of them cannot be recycled. Now there's some work on that right now. Tesla's doing some amazing stuff with changing the battery, not just the chemistry, but it's makeup and in the car. And they think they're gonna be able to have a car out that gets 650 miles, 6, 5 0 on a charge. [00:35:08] Which is pretty darn cool by changing a whole bunch of stuff. In fact, the batteries become a structural, uh, component of the vehicle. So that's really kind of cool. But if we have all of these electric cars on the road, whether they're polluting or not, how do we charge these things? We've got the problem of how do we generate enough electricity and. [00:35:33] Again, you've been listening to me long enough, you know, nuclear, nuclear nuclear are the three best options because we need power that's on. When the sun's set, we need power that's on. When the wind isn't blowing, we need power in the Northern realms of Alaska. We need power everywhere. So I really like these new intrinsically safe nuclear plants. [00:36:00] Germany is turning them back on earlier. I talked about how California has now extended the life on this nuclear plant. They were gonna shut down just so they can keep electricity up. And yet we're talking about millions, more of these electric cars on the. So, what does that mean? Well, it also means that we need to spend 35 billion to meet the demand for an additional 1.2 million public charging stations by 2030. [00:36:36] And that's not counting the 28 million that are needed in people's home. So the us needs to build 30 million EV charging parts. So let's do the math. Now. We're not gonna do the math up to 2035, which is the Dday for California. Let's do the math to 2030. Okay. The math for up to 2030 means that they need to be installing 478. [00:37:08] Charging stations per day for the next eight years. And that's of half the drivers switched to electric. I don't think that's gonna happen that quickly, but it is eventually going to happen. So right now we have about 128,000 public electric vehicle charging outlets. And I've shared some articles in the past talking about how so many of them don't work. [00:37:34] They won't work with your car or, or just plain broken. Uh, there's a lot of those out there. So 128,000 public and at least 4,500 private ones currently in comparison with 150,000 gas stations. Okay. So, although EV sales have climbed a lot each year since 2016, most consumers like myself are really concerned about the batteries. [00:38:01] How long will they last? How far will they go? And then how long does it take to charge? Where can I charge them? Right. It's uh, very, very big deal. So that's a huge number. Isn't it. Now. And then, then we're talking about putting charging ports into our homes. and you probably have to get an electrician to come into your home to hook up a charging port to charge up your car. [00:38:27] Right? So it's an interesting set of problems. So when I talked about having the cart before the horse, the obvious problem here is we're pushing electric vehicles and pushing. All out really heavily, the tax incentives have changed recently due to this, this, uh, inflation and increasing act. Right. [00:38:57] Reduction. I Ugh, crazy. But anyways, I. We are seeing more and more of these vehicles. Some manufacturers such as Tesla are losing their, the federal, uh, chip in other manufacturers like for GM and others, uh, have gone ahead and raised their prices to match or exceed the amount of money that federal government's chipping in. [00:39:23] Oh boy, I hate it. When that happens, goes down the wrong way. Where are we gonna end up? How is this going to happen? Um, we've got the car before the horse was pushing these cars. The car manufacturers have said, oh, wait a minute. There's gonna be a $5,000, uh, chip in by the federal government, by the taxpayers. [00:39:44] Yeah. By the, you know, the widows, the people who are working really hard, driving the trucks and everything. Yeah. Those loose guys are gonna pay for electric cars, which by the way, vast majority electric car owners are our wealthy people. Thank you very much. Well, have the poverty line. So we're gonna take money from people at, or below the poverty line and give it to those people. [00:40:04] And uh, $5,000. No problem. So what do the automakers do? They went ahead and raised their prices by at least the amount of money that the federal government said that they were going to chip in. Is that a surprise to anybody? It shouldn't be it. It's kind of like the student loan problems. Right? Why is tuition so expensive? [00:40:28] Well, let me see. Government is making it possible for people to borrow more money, to go to college. Government's giving the. Pell grants and others for people to go to college. Uh, they're letting you pay it off over your lifetime. Yeah. It's the same sort of thing. So those, those benefits of thousands of dollars that are in this new bill that was passed, that are there to help you buy electric vehicles won't matter because they have raised their prices of the cars. [00:41:03] At or above the amount of money the government's going to contribute yet you and me are going to contribute, you know, the small business people that, um, you know, readers, digested a survey of small business people and found out we only have to work a half a day. Did you know that only a half a day? And it doesn't really matter which 12 hours you work, which is true. [00:41:23] Right. I've had like two vacations in, in my whole adult life. That's it because I care about my customers. Right. I try and make sure everything's going fine for them. So we get to pay for these electric cars they're being bought by people who are in the highest levels of, uh, income in the country. It's absolutely crazy, absolutely crazy. [00:41:52] And we only have to build about 500 charging stations a day. So there you go. And then, you know, there's this minor problem of the electricity, where's it gonna come from? But you know, don't worry about that. Right? Cuz Bernie natural gas, that's the way to do it. And natural gas prices have gone up, which means electric prices have gone up just like I mentioned before. [00:42:15] Hey, you know, it, it is probably time to do an upgrade on that computer of yours for windows 11, or maybe you're gonna move over to the Linux world. That's what I did with my older computer, frankly. I it's Linux now much faster, but there's more to it. [00:42:31] Hey, I send out my newsletter, my insider show notes every Monday morning. [00:42:37] Usually sometimes it's Tuesday, sometimes it's Wednesday depends on the week. This week I was at a client's site over the weekend, actually, and Monday and Tuesday down in Atlanta. So I, I was busy down there. This is a DOD subcontractor. They just. Parts, but they are required by CMMC these new regulations I've actually been around for a while now to really keep an eye on their cybersecurity. [00:43:06] And so of course they bring me in and my team cuz you know, that's what we do. But I told you that because of my newsletter this week, I got some comments from a few people that the cybersecurity section in my newsletter was. Two articles from 2015 and , they both pointed it out. I think it's great that everybody's paying that much attention. [00:43:32] I actually, there's a few people that notice that, and it was my fault for not explaining what I was trying to do. And, and that's because I was in a hotel room and I was getting ready to go to the client site and do. Dates fix a couple of things, check the seals on computers and you know, all of those sorts of maintenance things you have to do clean them out. [00:43:53] I brought down a, a little blower and stuff. They, they were amazingly clean cuz we put them in a special cabinet that has these big air filters on them and stuff. Anyhow. The two articles this week on cybersecurity in my newsletter. Well, this was even in the free newsletter, talked about two different things. [00:44:12] Lenovo was installing software and laptops, and they apparently have still kind of done that. This was some years ago. like, uh, seven years ago now, I guess. And they were putting it on there and you had no control over it. Okay. It was a real problem. And then the other one was. About your hard drives and what NSA did for years in modifying the firmware on the hard disk drives of a number of computers, many computers out there. [00:44:48] And in both cases, Lenovo and the NSA, their national security agency. Put software on the computers so that even if you erased your computers, you would still have their software on it. They would reinstall itself. And Lenovo has been caught again, doing that. Okay. So there there's articles out there talking about. [00:45:13] Just all of the stuff they've been doing. So here's what I want propose to you guys. And I did not make this clear in the newsletter. And for that, I apologize. I was in a hurry and that was my intention and it just had never happened. Not, but not being in a hurry was my intention. But I, I, I intended to explain this a little bit better and I did on the radio a little bit this week as well. [00:45:37] And I'm doing it right now. My intention is to let you know that for decades now, bad guys have been able to embed malware into parts of your computer. So instead of just the operating system where they might have re. Placed some sort of a library file. And now when your machine boots up, it's going to pull it in from that library file or one of the many other ways, uh, they, they will go beneath your operating system. [00:46:12] So they'll put things in the boot blocks of your computer and. As we just mentioned here, they will put things in the hard drive itself, not on the blocks of the hard drive, but in the controller of the hard drive right there on the hard drive's board motherboard, if you will, for the hard drive and they can make it persistent. [00:46:37] now we've tried to get around some of these problems. Apple came up with the T two chip and what the T two chip does is really lock things down on your apple computer. And that's always a good thing, right? And the apple T two chip keeps track of. Passwords and makes things bootable and everything else. [00:46:59] And apple has also really kind of spun things out a little bit here with their T2 chip. They had some security problems. Uh they're in all of the newer apple computers. In fact, the one I use a lot is an older computer that doesn't have that T2 chip in it, but what Microsoft has done now, and this isn't really Microsoft, it's really the hardware vendors. [00:47:25] They have something called a TP. And this TPM is there for security. It's the trusted platform module. You want the version two or better, uh, as they come out, right. Kind of keep it up to date. But the T2, this trusted platform module is kind of like the apple two chip. It is nowhere near as. Complete, if you will, as the apple T two chip is, and it's designed primarily for booting your computer, which is really kind of cool. [00:48:03] There's a cute article over on medium. And it's saying that the author's, uh, professor bill Buchanan. The author of this article says, uh, the TPM chip in your computer is perhaps a forgotten device. It often sits there not doing much and never quite achieving its full potential. You bought the laptop because it had one, but you just can't find a use for it. [00:48:25] The chip itself is rather jealous of the apple TTU chip and which does so much more and where people actually buy the computer for the things it bring. Few people actually buy a computer, cuz it has a TPM, but lots of people buy a MacBook and an iPhone because it is trusted to look after your sensitive data. [00:48:45] And he's absolutely right about that stuff. Now I've got clients who have been buying servers and other computers and the T2 chip has been. Option for them. I think that's probably almost gone nowadays. It is probably added in by default. These things are pretty cheap, cuz again, they don't really do much, but they are now a part of it because of what Microsoft has done. [00:49:14] Microsoft has made it so that you pretty much have to have one of. T2 chip or TPM chips, I should say the TPM 2.0 cuz you know, it's gotta be as good as apples T2 the TPM 2.0, which is a crypto processor so that you can run windows 11. Now, I don't want you to think that having this TPM chip in your computer, all of a sudden makes it. [00:49:40] But it does do a few things that are very, very good. First of all, it has a random number generator, which is super important when we're talking about encrypt. And that random number generator is used to generate keys that are used for your disc encryption and potentially other things. So if you are encrypting the disc on your windows machine, you are really moving ahead in a very big way, because now if your computer is stolen and it boots up, they won't be able to. [00:50:13] at any of that data, it'll all look like random trash. If it's done its job. Right. And it can also of course store the user's password in the chip. It has some what's called persistent memory. I told you all of the stuff cuz of what I want to tell you next. All of this stuff from Lenovo, from the NSA over the years. [00:50:36] And, and of course the bad guys, whether it's Russia, China, it can be really anywhere. North. Korea's been big on this. Iran's been doing this sort of thing. All of those guys may well have had access to your computer in the past. If you have an older computer. And because some of this software, some of this malware is persistent. [00:51:00] And because windows now is, as I said, pretty much requiring one of these TPM chips, the TPM 2.0 or better is what you want. I think that it's time to seriously consider buying a new windows computer. Now we're working with a client right now that has an engineer who has been continually upgrading his windows computer since I don't know, windows XP days, I think. [00:51:29] And every time he gets a new computer, he just goes ahead and migrates everything over. Doesn't upgrade. Doesn't update to the newest operating system. And for him, anyways, life is good. Well, it ain't so good folks because he has all kinds of nastiness, little turds. If you will, that are hiding all around his computer. [00:51:54] The registry is going to be scattered with these things. Some of them probably installed by some form of malware over the years, his disc is gonna be cluttered, everything. So I'm saying right now, Get a new computer and go ahead and make sure you reinstall windows. That's the first thing we do. In fact, what we do for our clients. [00:52:17] We have a version of windows that we have updated stream updated and. We don't have any of that bloatware on it, that the manufacturers get their 10 bucks from the various of vendors, you know, to put the Norton antivirus and all this other useless stuff on your computer. So by reinstalling, just the windows. [00:52:40] And of course, since its windows, you go to install all of the drivers for your computer, too. But by doing that, you're getting rid of all of the bloatware. And then what you wanna do is either copy or restore your files onto the new computer. And then when you're done with that install, Your applications, the newest versions of your applications. [00:53:05] And I can hear people right now complaining, cuz I hear this all of the time. My gosh, I've had that application for 10 years and you can't even get it anymore. Blah blah. You know what? You should not be using that application. You need to get the newest version or if that vendor's out of. You need to make sure that you go one more step, find a compatible vendor or whatever. [00:53:29] We have to stop using old computers and old software. Uh, there's options here, but seriously, consider this because of what's been happening to us for years. Hey, visit me online. Sign up for my newsletter, Craig Peter son.com. [00:53:48] Well, autonomous cars are on the road and there was an accident in Germany. We don't have all of the details yet, but it's really concerning. And it's about the anonymous cars. Yeah. Autonomous cars. And, uh, we gotta study out. I want to talk about as well. [00:54:05] There are various levels of autonomy, I guess. Yeah. [00:54:09] That's the right word in these autonomous vehicles that we have and that we're looking forward to level one is kind of the gold standard, right? That's where we want to get. That's where the cars don't even need a churn wheel pedals, your tension, nothing. They just drive themselves. We're not there. And you probably guess that. [00:54:32] and then there's level two where you're the driver's supposed to pay attention, but the car's pretty much going to drive itself. Well, there is an article here from the associated press talking about what happened in Germany. And, uh, this is a, a few weeks back, and this is the first time I've seen this article, but they're saying that a test car with autonomous steering capability veered into oncoming traffic in Germany, killing one person and seriously injuring nine others. [00:55:10] A spokesman for police in the Southwestern town of Rogen said the electric BMW. Nine with five people on board, including a young child swerved out of its lane at abandoned the road. Triggering a series of collisions involving four vehicles after brushing an oncoming search, the BMW hit a Mercedes van. [00:55:37] Head on resulting in the death of a 33 year old passenger in that vehicle, the 70 year old driver, the Sitan lost control of her car and crashed into another vehicle with two people on board, pushing it off the road and causing it to burst into flame. Ruly again, police spokesman. Michael Shaw said four rescue helicopters, and dozens of firefighters responded to the incident and the injured were taken to several hospitals in the region. [00:56:11] They included the 43 year old driver of the BMW three adults aged 31 42 and 47 and an 18 month old child who are all in the test. The article goes on, uh, is the police said in a statement, the crash vehicle was an autonomous electric test car, whether it was being steered by the 43, 3 year old driver or not is a subject of investigation. [00:56:40] So this is called a level two driving assistance system. It's already incorporated in production vehicles today. They can support the driver on when the driver turns them on according to BMW with the level two vehicles, the driver always retains responsibility. In other words, if that car gets into. [00:57:04] Accident while you are behind the wheel and responsible for it, it's your fault. So that solves the problem of whose insurance covers what doesn't it? Yeah, it, it does it pretty well because it's your fault is kind of the bottom line. So we are in the process of investigating the exact circumstances of the crash. [00:57:25] BMW said, of course we are in close contact with the authorities. It's it's concerning very concerning and I am not ready yet. Autonomous vehicles. Now we've seen, and we've talked about on the show before a number of problems with some of these different vehicles from Tesla and others, and they are on the roads in many states right now, even in the Northeast, not just the Teslas, but these fully autonomous test vehicles. [00:57:59] There are a number of things to be concerned about here. For instance, how can an autonomous vehicle determine what to do when there's a police officer in the middle of the road or a flagman? Or obviously it really can't determine it because it can't make out. What's what, in fact we might remember, and I'm sure they've made some adjustments here over at Tesla, but a Tesla car went ahead and, uh, struck and I think killed a lady who was crossing the road with her bicycle. [00:58:36] I think she was walking it across when she was hit. How can they tell, how can they tell the difference between a car that's wrapped and has someone's face on it, maybe a politician full body on the back of a box truck as an advertisement. How can it tell the difference between that and a person that might be standing there? [00:59:00] It, it gets to be a real problem. We're already seeing that some of these autonomous vehicles go directly rear end fire trucks stopped at the side of the road with their lights on police cars stopped at the side of the road with the lights on. Just completely rear-end them. We're seeing that. So how about when it gets a little more difficult than a fire truck parked on the side of the road? [00:59:25] Now these cars, apparently autonomous steering and, uh, lane detection and correction, all that sort of stuff. These vehicles are looking at things and trying to determine, well, what should I do here? And oftentimes what they determine is, oh, well, okay. That's just something that's fixed at the side of the road. [00:59:45] Like, like a sign post, like a speed sign. When in fact it's not. So we've gotta solve that problem. It, it still isn't solved yet. What caused this car to steer directly into oncoming traffic and, and head first into a Mercedes van? I, I don't know. They don't know yet. Anyways. I'm sure they'll find out soon enough, but there are real questions here and then I wanna take it to the next levels. [01:00:18] If the car is in, let's say level one where it's full autonomous, even if it's not, even if it's a level two, like this car was, or is, uh, what happens when the car is either going to hit a pedestrian or go over a cliff or into a brick wall? That's even better. Cuz the car might not know the cliff is there. [01:00:43] What decision should the car make? What kind of ethics should it be? You know, executing here, can it even make an ethical decision? And this is the trolley testing in case you're not familiar with the whole trolley test thing. It's, let's say you are. A trolley operator, you're going down a hill and there is a fork in the tracks. [01:01:09] And all you can do is select tracks at a or track set B you can't stop the trolley. You can't slow the trolley down in tracks at a there's a group of seniors walking across the tracks that you will hit. If you go down tracks at a tracks at B. There's some young kids playing on the tracks and if you choose B, you're gonna kill the kids. [01:01:35] So ethical dilemma here, who do you kill? Cuz that's what the whole trolley test is about. Look it up online. There's a lot of different variations of this, but what about the car? What decision should the car make? Should the car make the decision to protect you the driver, or should the car be making the decision to protect the pedestrian? [01:01:59] If it's going to protect the pedestrian by plowing into that brick wall and potentially killing the occupants of the car. How about when there is the decision of the old people or the young people? There is a lot to solve here. And some of these companies, including Mercedes have come out already with their decisions, Mercedes said they will protect the occupants of the vehicle. [01:02:27] now when you're driving the car yourself, of course, you're making that decision in a, a split second, maybe something you thought about, maybe not, you might make a rational decision. You might not. It's, you know, it's hard to say. And you'll find these articles in my newsletter this week at, uh, Craig peterson.com. [01:02:49] If you're not on the newsletter list, you can sign up. It's absolutely free. This is the free newsletter and you can see all my insiders show notes every week, but it's an issue. Isn't it. The car veering into traffic hitting another one head first. How about later on when it's completely autonomous, what should it do? [01:03:14] By now you've seen one of these new cars with that big screen right there in the center of the console. I've got a few problems with this, more than a few problems with you people, right. To quote Seinfeld. Yeah. Let's talk about it. [01:03:31] You know, it, it's very cool to have that display in the center of the car console. [01:03:36] One of the major reasons that the automotive manufacturers are putting that console right there in the center is because we are demanding, uh, the apple car play the Android car functions in order to have. Really cool stuff, right. Where we can just run our apps and have all of this, uh, wonderful information. [01:04:02] What I really like about it and Android auto and, uh, the apple car both provide this. What I really like is you can use the navigation system that you prefer, that you like, that you want that's in your. I have switched over to apple maps. Now I used to use ways. And before that I would use Google maps and way before that map question and others, my wife could tell you some stories of us trying to use some of the very first generation GPS stuff, having a, a lap. [01:04:38] Top in the car and then having a hockey puck up on the dashboard to try and pick up at least three satellites. And, and, uh, if you went off course at all, went the wrong way, took the wrong. it would just insist on bringing you back to where you were when you went off course, as opposed to taking you from where you are, to where you want to go, which they do nowadays. [01:05:01] But I like that. Right. And, and I like the new features that are always coming out in these apps that we run on our smartphone. I do not like the fact that the cars have navigation in them. Eh, some of them are pretty cool. They're nice. Like in our car, if you use the incar navigation, it mutes the music or the radio, whatever is playing on the driver's side speaker there in the front of the car. [01:05:32] And then it gives the driver the direction. So everyone else can just keep listening to whatever they were listening to before on the radio, et. You I'll need features like that. But what I don't like is they wanna get six or 800 bucks out of us in order to get new maps in order to get new software for the mapping system. [01:05:53] When we can get things like apple maps for free. Where they're not even using our data against us, like Google does right Android. Uh, very, very nice. I, I really like them. And the apple maps now is really good. I don't know if you remember how bad it was when it first came out, but Steve jobs brought all of the mapping, senior management into a room and asked them what happened. [01:06:20] Why is it so bad? You might remember that it took some people in Australia. Way off the beaten track out in the middle of nowhere with no water, with no fuel and they could have died out there, you know, Australia, everything's out to kill you and they might well have died and they didn't, which is good news. [01:06:42] But even in the us, it was just messing up. It wasn't very good. Wasn't taking it always to the right place. And certainly not the best route. Now it's just gotten amazingly good. Very, very good. So I can choose, right. If I still want to use ways I can use it. If I wanna use apple, I can use it. Google maps. I can use it some third party. [01:07:01] I can use it, but if I've got the stuff that's built into the car, I'm stuck with the stuff that's built into the car, and maybe I can pay to upgrade it. A lot of people have found recently, Hey, guess what? That two G data network went. and that means now that your remote control for your card doesn't work anymore, you might have found your navigation doesn't work anymore. [01:07:28] I remember I had a Garmin that got live traffic updates, but it was using FM carriers on FM radio stations. And many of them dumped that. guess what your garment's no good anymore. At least that part of it isn't any good and garment charging for map updates. And I don't blame 'em for this stuff. Right. [01:07:48] But I would prefer to have my own device to use. So that's part of the problem. In fact, that's indicative of what I see to be the very big problem with these new in car systems, because that display in the computer behind it. Isn't just handling your navigation. It's controlling your seat, heaters, the radio, the music you're listening to the lights, the dimming, the headlights, almost everything in the car goes through. [01:08:23] Infotainment system, right? Yeah. Figured out where I'm going next, because that infotainment system just like the maps on my car right now is going to become out outdated. And then what are you gonna do? And when I say out outdated, I don't just mean, oh, well I want the new features. It might be that you want the new maps. [01:08:48] Yeah. But what happens when it breaks? This leads us to a study that happened here. A Swedish publication had performed a test. They took 11 new cars alongside an older car, a Volvo C 70 from 2005. now that Volvo had buttons and knobs, buttons and knobs. I've always liked that. And those 11 new cars all had these wonderful infotainment systems, all in one touch screens in the center of the console, they tested this whole thing and they timed how long it took people to perform a li list of tasks in each car. [01:09:35] So. Included things like turning on that seat, heater, turning up the temperature inside the car, the defrost, adjust the radio, reset the trip. Computer. Turn off the screen. Dim the instruments. The old Volvo was the clear winner. Yeah, indeed. So according to this article in ours, Technica, the four tasks were handled within 10 seconds flat using buttons and knobs in the Volvo. [01:10:06] So in the amount of time it took them to do all of the tasks, the four tasks that they were given out of that selection here. I just read the car, drove a thousand feet at 68 miles per hour. Now most of these other cars with that wonderful infotainment system required twice as long or even more to complete those same. [01:10:34] Tasks. So some 30 seconds. So you're talking about traveling two or 3000 feet while you're messing around with that display in the central console. Looks cool. Isn't this the neatest thing ever, but the problem is you have to hunt and Peck now, before you say, oh, well, Craig, these people weren't familiar with that console. [01:10:58] Well, yeah. Okay. I'll give you that. But what they did with this test is. They let all of the participants play with the cars systems before they started the tests. In other words, they knew the menus, they knew where things were and it still took that time. You see what we're really talking about here is muscle memory, the ability for your car or for you to know your. [01:11:29] so you can reach out and you can turn that volume knob. You might have to glance real quick to make sure you got the volume knob, but you don't have to hunt and Peck through menus. I like that. So as you can tell, I am not all that hot on these new, all touch interfaces. BMW has an interesting solution to this and that is that I drive system that little knob people didn't like it at first, but you get used to it, right? [01:12:00] So, you know, if you need to turn on their seat heater, you just press a knob up, up right down. And then TA your seat heater and you get to adjust it right there. That is muscle memory as well. So we've got some work to do here. Uh, there are some decent systems out there in Acura, MDX Mazda, CX 50, neither one of them uses a touchscreen infiltration inform attainment system. [01:12:29] So that's good. We'll see how it all goes. Make sure you're on my newsletter. So you can read this article and more. Craig peterson.com. [01:12:39] We've had a chip shortage. I'm sure you've heard of it. And it's been a real problem for everybody from car manufacturers through PC makers. Well, now we're seeing a sudden downturn what's happening now. The Congress has funded it. [01:12:56] Hey, surprisingly enough. Congress comes along to fix the chip problem with the chip bill, billions of dollars, tens of billions actually being spent on our chip plants here to help the chip industry make more chips, cuz we need chips, chips, chips, right? [01:13:16] Well, ArsTechnica has a great little article. They're actually taking it from the financial time searched waters. Uh, I subscribe the furniture times for quite a while, but I don't anymore. And they're talking about how we went from a boom economy when it came to chips, these microchips, everything from, uh, Intel corporation out through the manufacturers of some of these much more common chip styles nowadays, the arm chips and how this new. [01:13:51] That's supposed to, uh, boost production is coming at a point where, okay, first of all, these manufacturers put billions of dollars into building new plants here in the us of a. So that's a good thing. And then Congress comes along sometime after the fact and gives him tens of billions more. And by the way, managed, and this apparently was Senator Chuck, Schumer's doing managed to remove a provision in the build that said that none of that money for chip plants could be spent in China. [01:14:28] So yeah, there you go. China, you get billions more from us, potentially here as we build chip plants over there, but now what do we find out? Well, a bit of a turn here because there is now excess inventory. Dan Hutchinson, who is the chief executive V L S I research. Who's been really watching the whole chip cycle since 1980s came out and said, quote, I have never seen a time when we had excess inventory. [01:14:59] And we had shortages. Okay. So the immediate cause of this is a rapid buildup and inventory in the chip supply chain since early the year 2022 here. So compared to February, there are enough chips on hand to support about a month and a half of production. Global inventory levels jumped. Even higher and then even higher in July to almost two months. [01:15:26] So that's been an issue. And then on top of it, PC sales have been tumbling. Smartphone demand has dropped, and those have been the main causes as consumers are slowing their spending, why they slowing spending. Because they don't have the money they used to have because of the non inflation that's happening right now. [01:15:48] So we've kind of got all of these things happening and to top it all off, as I said, they're taking tens of billions of dollars of our tax money and, uh, going to be spending it, all of this. It's just absolutely amazing. But the suddenness of this turn, again, according to the financial times has, was when in. [01:16:08] Dun wall street with news that its revenue in the last quarter had fallen 2.6 billion, 15%, which of course was short of what they were expecting on wall street. There. This is really quite amazing. They took an inventory adjustment that only hits like once a decade and video man, they are about to, uh, to really get hit too. [01:16:34] I don't, I don't think I talked about this. there's the largest maker of these GPS, these graphics, processing boards, and supplemental chips that are on motherboards. And a lot of computers used a lot in video graphics, machine learning, and of course, mining of cryptocurrencies, and they have seen it fall dramatically 44% fall in these GPU that have been used for gaming. [01:17:06] And. Bitcoin and, and mining and, and other of these cryptocurrencies and micron, one of the largest makers of memory chip said it's free ca
It's Trash Time For Your Computer - Autonomous Car Crash Kills - Which is better for your car? Buttons or a Screen? - Now we have a Chip Backlog! - Facebook tracking Your Hospital Appointments Hey, you know, it is probably time to do an upgrade on that computer of yours to Windows 11. Or maybe you're going to move over to the Linux world. That's what I did with my older computer. It's running Linux now. Much faster, but there's more to it than that. [Automated transcript follows] I send out my newsletter, my insider show notes every Monday morning. [00:00:22] Usually sometimes it's Tuesday, sometimes it's Wednesday depends on the week. This week I was at a client site over the weekend, actually, and Monday and Tuesday. Down in Atlanta. So I, I was busy down there. This is a DOD subcontractor. They just ship parts, but they are required by CMMC these new regulations I've actually been around for a while now to really. [00:00:49] Keep an eye on their cybersecurity. And so of course they bring me in and my team cuz you know, that's what we do. But I told you that because of my newsletter this week, I got some comments from a few people that the cybersecurity section in my newsletter was two articles from 2015. And , they both pointed it out. [00:01:13] I think it's great that everybody's paying that much attention. I actually, there's a few people that notice that, and it was my fault for not explaining what I was trying to do. And, and that's because I was in a hotel room and I was getting ready to go to the client site and do. Dates fix a couple of things, check the seals on computers and you know, all of those sorts of maintenance things you have to do clean them out. [00:01:38] I brought down a, a little blower and stuff. They, they were amazingly clean cuz we put them in a special cabinet that has these big air filters on them and stuff. Anyhow, the two articles this week on cybersecurity in my newsletter. Well, this is even in the free newsletter. Talked about two different things. [00:01:57] Lenovo was installing software and laptops and they apparently have still kind of done that. This was some years ago, like how seven years ago now, I guess. And they were putting it on there and you had no control over it. Okay. It was a real problem. And then the other one was. About your hard drives and what NSA did for years in modifying the firmware on the hard disk drives of a number of computers, many computers out there. [00:02:32] And in both cases, Lenovo and the NSA, the national security agency put software on the computers so that even if you erased your computers, you would still. Have their software on it, they would reinstall itself and Lenovo has been caught again, doing that. Okay. So there there's articles out there talking about just all of the stuff they've been doing. [00:03:00] So here's what I want to propose to you guys. And I did not make. This clear in the newsletter. And for that, I apologize, I was in a hurry and that was my intention and it just had never happened. Not, but not being in a hurry was my intention. But I, I, I intended to explain this a little bit better and I did on the radio a little bit this week as well. [00:03:22] And I'm doing it right now. My intention is to let you know that for decades now, bad guys have been able to embed malware into parts of your computer. So instead of just the operating system where they might have a. Replaced some sort of a library file. And now when your machine boots up, it's going to pull it in from that library file or one of the many other ways, uh, they, they will go beneath your operating system. [00:03:57] So they'll put things in the boot blocks of your computer. And as we just mentioned here, they will put things in the hard drive itself, not on the blocks of the hard drive, but in the control. Of the hard drive right there on the hard drive's board motherboard, if you will, for the hard drive and they can make it persistent. [00:04:21] Now we've tried to get around some of these problems. Apple came up with the T2 chip and what the T2 chip does is really lock things down on your apple. And that's always a good thing, right? And the apple TTU chip keeps track of passwords and makes things bootable and everything else. And apple has also really kind of spun things out a little bit here with their TTU chip. [00:04:51] They had some security problems. Uh they're in all of the newer apple computers. In fact, the one I use a lot is an older computer that doesn't. That T2 chip in it, but what Microsoft has done now, and this isn't really Microsoft, it's really the hardware vendors. They have something called a TP. And this TPM is there for security. [00:05:16] It's the trusted platform module. You want the version two or better, uh, as they come out, right. Kind of keep it up to date. But the T2, this trusted platform module is kind of like the apple T2 chip. It is nowhere near as. Complete, if you will, as the apple T two chip is, and it's designed primarily for booting your computer, which is really kind of cool. [00:05:47] There's a cute article over a medium. And it's saying that the authors of professor bill Buchanan, the author of this article says, uh, the TPM chip in your computer is perhaps a forgotten device. It often sits there not doing much and never quite achieving its full potential. You bought the laptop because it had one, but you just can't find a use for it. [00:06:09] The chip itself is rather jealous of the applet two chip and which does so much more and where people actually buy the computer for the things it bring. Few people actually buy a computer, cuz it has a TPM, but lots of people buy a MacBook and an iPhone because it is trusted to look after your sensitive data. [00:06:29] And he's absolutely right about that stuff. Now I've got clients who have been buying servers and other computers and the T2 chip has been. Option for them. I think that's probably almost gone nowadays. It is probably added in by default. These things are pretty cheap, cuz again, they don't really do much, but they are now a part of it because of what Microsoft has done. [00:06:58] Microsoft has made it so that you pretty much have to have one of. T2 chip or TPM chips, I should say the TPM 2.0 cuz you know, it's gotta be as good as apples T2 the TPM 2.0, which is a crypto processor so that you can run windows 11. Now, I don't want you to think that having this TPM chip in your computer, all of a sudden makes it safe, but it does do a few things that are very, very. [00:07:28] First of all, it has a random number generator, which is super important when we're talking about encrypt. And that random number generator is used to generate keys that are used for your disc encryption and potentially other things. So if you are encrypting the disc on your windows machine, you are really moving ahead in a very big way, because now if your computer is stolen and it boots up, they won't be able. [00:07:57] At any of that data, it'll all look like random trash. If it's done its job. Right. And it can also of course store the user's password in the chip. It has some what's called persistent memory. I told you all of the stuff because of what I want to tell you next. All of this stuff from Lenovo, from the NSA over the years. [00:08:20] And, and of course the bad guys, whether it's Russia, China, it can be really anywhere. North. Korea's been big on this. Iran's been doing this sort of thing. Uh, All of those guys may well have had access to your computer in the past, if you have an older computer. And because some of this software, some of this malware is persistent. [00:08:44] And because windows now is, as I said, pretty much requiring one of these TPM chips, the TPM 2.0 were better is what you want. I think that it's time to seriously consider buying a new windows computer. Now we're working with a client right now that has an engineer who has been continually upgrading his windows computer since I don't know, windows XP days, I think. [00:09:13] And every time he gets a new computer, he just goes ahead and migrates everything over. Doesn't upgrade. Doesn't update to the newest operating system. And for him, anyways, life is good. Well, it ain't so good folks because he has all kinds of nastiness, little turds. If you will, that are hiding all around his computer. [00:09:37] The registry is going to be scattered with these things. Some of them probably installed by some form of malware over the years, his disc is gonna be cluttered, everything. So I'm saying right now, Get a new computer and go ahead and make sure you reinstall windows. That's the first thing we do. In fact, what we do for our clients. [00:10:01] We have a version of windows that we have updated stream updated, and we don't have any of that bloatware on it. That the manufacturers get their 10 bucks from the various offenders, you know, to put the Norton antivirus and all this other useless stuff on your computer. So by reinstalling, just the windows. [00:10:23] And of course, since it's windows, you gotta install all of the drivers for your computer, too. But by doing that, you're getting rid of all of the bloatware. And then what you wanna do is either copy or restore your files onto the new computer. And then when you're done with that install, Your applications, the newest versions of your applications. [00:10:48] And I can hear people right now complaining, cuz I hear this all of the time. My gosh, I've had that application for 10 years and you can't even get it anymore. Blah blah. You know what? You should not be using that application. You need to get the newest version, or if that vendor's out of business, you need to make sure that you go one more step, find a compatible vendor or whatever. [00:11:12] We have to stop using old computers and old software. Uh, there's options here, but seriously, consider this because of what's been happening to us for years. Hey, visit me online. Sign up for my newsletter, Craig Peter son.com. [00:11:31] Well, autonomous cars are on the road and there was an accident in Germany. We don't have all of the details yet, but it's really concerning. And it's about the anonymous cars. Yeah. Autonomous cars. And, uh, we gotta study out. I want to talk about as well. [00:11:48] There are various levels of autonomy, I guess. Yeah. [00:11:53] That's the right word in these autonomous vehicles that we have and that we're looking forward to level one is kind of the gold standard, right? That's where we want to get. That's where the cars don't even need a churn pedals, your tension, nothing. They just drive themselves. We're not there. And you probably guess that. [00:12:15] And then there's level two where you, the driver's supposed to pay attention, but the car's pretty much going to drive itself. Well, there is an article here from the associated press talking about what happened in Germany. And, uh, this is a few weeks back and this is the first time I've seen this article, but they're saying. [00:12:41] Test car with autonomous steering capability, veered into oncoming traffic in Germany, killing one person and seriously injuring nine others. A spokesman for police in the Southwestern town of Roy. Again said the electric BMW. Nine with five people on board, including a young child swerved out of its lane at abandoned the road, triggering a series of collisions involving four vehicles after brushing an oncoming search, the BMW hit a Mercedes Benz's van head on resulting in the death of a 33 year old passenger in that. [00:13:27] The 70 year old driver, the Cien lost control of her car and crashed into another vehicle with two people on board, pushing it off the road and causing it to burst into flame Ruly. Again, police spokesman, Michael Shaw said four rescue helicopters and dozens of firefighters. Responded to the incident and the injured were taken to several hospitals in the region. [00:13:55] They included the 43 year old driver of the BMW three adults aged 31 42 and 47 and an 18 month old child who were all in the test vehicle. The article goes on, uh, is the police said in a statement, the crash vehicle was an autonomous electric test car, whether it was being steered by the 43, 3 year old driver or not is a subject of investigation. [00:14:24] So this is called a level two driving assistance system. It's already incorporated in production vehicles today. They can support the driver on when the driver turns them on according to BMW with the level two vehicles, the driver. Always retains responsibility. In other words, if that car gets into an accident while you are behind the wheel and responsible for it, it's your fault. [00:14:54] So that solves the problem of whose insurance covers what doesn't it? Yeah, it, it does it. Pretty well, because it's your fault is kind of the bottom line. So we are in the process of investigating the exact circumstances of the crash. BMW said, of course we are in close contact with the authorities. It's it's concerning very concerning and I am not ready yet. [00:15:23] Autonomous vehicles. Now we've seen, and we've talked about on the show before a number of problems with some of these different vehicles from Tesla and others, and they are on the roads in many states right now, even in the Northeast, not just the Teslas, but these fully autonomous test vehicles. And. [00:15:43] There are a number of things to be concerned about here. For instance, how can an autonomous vehicle determine what to do when there's a police officer in the middle of the road or a flagman? Or obviously it really can't determine it because it can't make out. What's what, in fact we might remember, and I'm sure they've made some adjustments here over at Tesla, but a Tesla car went ahead and, uh, struck and I think killed a lady who was crossing the road with her bicycle. [00:16:20] I think she was walking it across when she was hit. So how can they. How can they tell the difference between a car that's wrapped and has someone's face on it, maybe a politician full body on the back of a box truck as an advertisement. How can it tell the difference between that and a person that might be standing there? [00:16:44] It, it gets to be a real problem. We're already seeing that some of these autonomous vehicles go directly rear end fire trucks stopped at the side of the road with their lights on police cars stopped at the side of the road with the lights on just completely rear end them. We're seeing that. So how about when it gets a little more difficult than a fire truck parked on the side of the road? [00:17:10] Now these cars, apparently autonomous steering and, uh, lane detection and correction, all that sort of stuff. These vehicles are looking at things and trying to determine, well, what should I do here? And oftentimes what they determine is, oh, well, okay. That's just something that's fixed at the side of the road. [00:17:30] Like, like a sign post, like a speed sign. When in fact it's not. So we've gotta solve that problem. It, it still isn't solved yet. What caused this car to steer directly into oncoming traffic and, and head first into a Mercedes van? I, I don't know. They don't know yet. Anyways. I'm sure they'll find out soon enough. [00:17:57] There are real questions here. And then I wanna take it to the next levels. If the car is in, let's say level one where it's full autonomous, even if it's not, even if it's a level two, like this car was, or is, uh, what happens when the car is either going to hit a pedestrian or go over a cliff or into a brick wall? [00:18:23] That's even better. Cuz the car might not know the cliff is there. What decision should the car make? What kind of ethics should it be? You know, executing here. Can it even make an ethical decision? And this is the trolley testing in case you're not familiar with the whole trolley test thing. It's, let's say you are. [00:18:47] A trolley operator, you're going down a hill and there is a fork in the tracks. And all you can do is select track set a or track set B you can't stop the trolley. You can't slow the trolley down in track. Set a there's a group of seniors walking across the tracks that you will hit. If you go down tracks at a tracks at B there's, some young kids playing on the. [00:19:16] And if you choose B, you're gonna kill the kids. So ethical dilemma here, who do you kill? Cuz that's what the whole trolley test is about. Look it up online. There's a lot of different variations of this, but what about the car? What decision should the car make? Should the car make the decision to protect you the driver, or should the car be making the decision to protect the pedestrian? [00:19:43] If it's going to protect the pedestrian by plowing into that brick wall and potentially killing the occupants of the car. How about when there is the decision of the old people or the young. There is a lot to solve here. And some of these companies, including Mercedes have come out already with their decisions, Mercedes said they will protect the occupants of the vehicle. [00:20:11] now when you're driving the car yourself, of course, you're making that decision in a, a split second, maybe something you thought about, maybe not, you might make a rational decision. You might not. It's, you know, it's hard to say. And you'll find these articles in my newsletter this week at, uh, Craig peterson.com. [00:20:32] If you're not on the newsletter list, you can sign up. It's absolutely free. This is the free newsletter and you can see all my insiders show notes every week. But it's an issue, isn't it? The car veering into traffic hitting another one head first. How about later on when it's completely autonomous, what should it do? [00:20:58] By now you've seen one of these new cars with that big screen right there in the center of the console. I've got a few problems with this, more than a few problems with you people, right. To quote Seinfeld. Yeah. Let's talk about it. [00:21:15] Right here, you know, it, it's very cool to have that display in the center of the car console. [00:21:21] One of the major reasons that the automotive manufacturers are putting that console right there in the center is because we are demanding, uh, the apple car play the Android car functions in order to have some really cool stuff, right. Where we can just run our. And have all of this, uh, wonderful information. [00:21:47] What I really like about it and Android auto and, uh, the apple car both provide this. What I really like is you can use the navigation system that you prefer, that you like, that you want that's in your. I have switched over to apple maps. Now I used to use ways. And before that I would use Google maps and way before that map quest and, and others, my wife could tell you some stories of us trying to use some of the very first generation GPS stuff, having a, a laptop in the car and then having. [00:22:25] Keep pup on the dashboard to try and pick up at least three satellites. And, and, uh, if you went off course at all, went the wrong way, took the wrong. It would just insist on bringing you back to where you were when you went off course, as opposed to taking you from where you are, to where you want to go, which they do nowadays. [00:22:47] But I like that. Right. And, and I like the new features that are always coming out in these apps that we run on our smartphone. I do not like the fact that the cars have navigation in them. Eh, some of them are pretty cool. They're nice. Like in our car, if you use the in-car navigation, it mutes the music or the radio, whatever is playing on the driver's side speaker there in the front of the car. [00:23:17] And then it gives the driver the direction. So everyone else can just keep listening to whatever they were listening to before on the radio, et. You I'll need features like that. But what I don't like is they wanna get six or 800 bucks out of us in order to get new maps in order to get new software for the mapping system. [00:23:38] When we can get things like apple maps for free. Where they're not even using our data against us, like Google does right Android. Uh, very, very nice. I, I really like them. And the apple maps now is really good. I don't know if you remember how bad it was when it first came out, but Steve jobs brought all of the mapping, senior management into a room and asked them what happened. [00:24:05] Why is it so bad? You might remember that it took some people in Australia. Way off the beaten track out in the middle of nowhere with no water, with no fuel and they could have died out there, you know, Australia, everything's out to kill you and they might well have died and they didn't, which is good news. [00:24:27] But even in the us, it was just messing up. It wasn't very good. Wasn't taking you always to the right place and certainly not the best route. Now it's just gotten amazingly good. Very, very good. So I can choose, right. If I still want to use ways I can use it. If I wanna use apple, I can use it. Google maps. [00:24:45] I can use it some third party. I can use it, but if I've got the stuff that's built into the car, I'm stuck with the stuff that's built into the car, and maybe I can pay to upgrade it. A lot of people have found recently, Hey, guess what? That two G data network went. And that means now that your remote control for your card doesn't work anymore, you might have found your navigation doesn't work anymore. [00:25:13] I remember I had a garment that got live traffic updates, but it was using FM carriers on FM radio stations. And many of them dumped that. guess what your garment's no good anymore. At least that part of it isn't any good and garment charging for map updates. And I don't blame 'em for this stuff. Right. [00:25:33] But I would prefer to have my own device to use. So that's part of the problem. In fact, that's indicative of what I see to be the very big problem with these new in car systems, because that display in the computer behind it. Isn't just handling your navigation. It's controlling your seat, heaters, the radio, the music you're listening to the lights, the dimming, the headlights, almost everything in the car goes through. [00:26:08] Infotainment system, right? Yeah. Figured out where I'm going next. Cuz that infotainment system just like the maps on my car right now is going to become out outdated. And then what are you gonna do? And when I say out outdated, I don't just mean, oh, well I want the new features. It might be that you want the new maps. [00:26:34] Yeah. But what happens when it breaks? This leads us to a study that happened here. A Swedish publication had performed a test. They took 11 new cars alongside an older car, a Volvo C 70 from 2005. Now that Volvo had buttons and knobs, buttons and knobs, I've always liked that. And those 11 new cars all had these wonderful infotainment systems, all in one touch screens in the center of the console. [00:27:11] They tested this whole thing and they timed how long it took people to perform a li list of tasks in each car. So they included things like turning on that seat. Heater, turning up the temperature inside the car, the frost, adjust the radio, reset the trip. Computer, turn off the screen. Dim the instruments. [00:27:35] The old Volvo was the clear winner. . Yeah, indeed. So according to this article in ours, Technica, the four tasks were handled within 10 seconds, flat using buttons and knobs in the Volvo. So in the amount of time it took them to do all of the tasks, the four tasks that they were given out of that selection here, I just read the car, drove a thousand. [00:28:06] At 68 miles per hour. Now most of these other cars with that wonderful infotainment system required twice as long, or even more to complete those same four tasks. So some 30 seconds. So you're talking about traveling two or 3000 feet while you're messing around with that display in the central console. [00:28:34] Looks cool. Isn't this the neatest thing ever, but the problem is you have to hunt and now before you say, oh, well, Craig, these people weren't familiar with that console. Well, yeah. Okay. I'll give you that. But what they did with this test is. They let all of the participants play with the cars systems before they started the tests. [00:28:57] In other words, they knew the menus, they knew where things were and it still took that time. See, what we're really talking about here is muscle memory, the ability for your car or for you to know your. so you can reach out and you can turn that volume knob. You might have to glance real quick to make sure you got the volume knob, but you don't have to hunt and Peck through menus. [00:29:26] I like that. So as you can tell, I am not all that hot on these new, all touch interfaces. BMW has an interesting solution to this and that is that I drive system that little knob people didn't like it at first, but you get used to it, right? So, you know, if you need to turn on the seat heater, you just press a knob up, up right down. [00:29:52] And then TA your seat heater and you get to adjust it right there. That is muscle memory as well. So we've got some work to do here. Uh, there are some decent systems out there in Acura, MDX Mazda, CX 50, neither one of them uses a touchscreen infiltration inform attainment system. So that's good. We'll see how it all goes. [00:30:18] Make sure you're on my newsletter. So you can read this article and more. Craig peterson.com. [00:30:26] We've had a chip shortage. I'm sure you've heard of it. And it's been a real problem for everybody from car manufacturers through PC makers. Well, now we're seeing a sudden downturn what's happening now. The Congress has funded it. [00:30:43] Hey, surprisingly enough. Congress comes along to fix the chip problem with the chip bill, billions of dollars, tens of billions actually being spent on our chip plants here to help the chip industry make more chips, cuz we need chips, chips, chips, right? [00:31:03] Well, ours Technica has a great little article. They're actually taking it from the financial time searched waters. Uh, I subscribe the France for times for quite a while, but I don't anymore. And they're talking about how we went from a boom economy when it came to chips, these microchips, everything from, uh, Intel corporation out through the manufacturers of some of these much more common chip styles nowadays, the arm chips and how this new. [00:31:38] That's supposed to, uh, boost production is coming at a point where, okay, first of all, these manufacturers put billions of dollars into building new plants here in the us of a. So that's a good thing. And then Congress comes along sometime after the fact and gives him tens of billions more. And by the way, managed, and this apparently was Senator Chuck, Schumer's doing managed to remove a provision in the bill that said that none of that money for chip. [00:32:13] Plants could be spent in China. So yeah, there you go. China, you get billions more from us, potentially here as we build chip plants over there. But now what do we find out? Well, a bit of a turn here, because there is now excess inventory. Dan Hutchinson, who is the chief executive V L S I research. Who's been really watching the whole chip cycle since 1980s came out and said, quote, I have never seen a time when we had excess inventory and. [00:32:46] We had shortages. Okay. So the immediate cause of this is a rapid buildup and inventory in the chip supply chain since early the year 2022 here. So compared to February, there are enough chips on hand to support about a month and a half of production. Global inventory levels jumped up even higher and then even higher in July to almost two months. [00:33:13] So that's been an issue. And then on top of it, PC sales have been tumbling. Smartphone demand has dropped, and those have been the main causes as consumers are slowing their spending. Why are they slowing spending? Because they don't have the money they used to have because of the non inflation that's have. [00:33:33] Right now. So we've kind of got all of these things happening and to top it all off, as I said, they're taking tens of billions of dollars of our tax money and, uh, going to be spending it on all of this. It's just absolutely amazing. But the suddenness of this turn, again, according to financial times has, was when Intel stunned wall street with news that its revenue in the last quarter had fallen 2.6 billion. [00:34:02] 15%, which of course was short of what they were expecting on wall street. There. This is really quite amazing. They took an inventory adjustment that only hits like once a decade and Vidia man. They are about to, uh, to really get hit too. I don't, I don't think I talked about this, but. They're the largest maker of these GPUs, these graphics, processing boards, and supplemental chips that are on motherboards. [00:34:32] And a lot of computers used a lot in video graphics, machine learning, and of course, mining of cryptocurrencies and they have seen it fall dramatically 44% fall in these GPUs that have been used for gaming. Bitcoin and, and mining and, and other of these cryptocurrencies and micron, one of the largest makers of memory chip said it's free cash flow was likely to turn negative in the next three months after averaging $1 billion in recent quarters. [00:35:11] Isn't that amazing? So all of these problems have been. Also throughout Asia last, uh, month here over the last month, the chief executive of Chinese ship maker, semiconductor manufacturing, international corporation, S I C said that demand had slowed from smartphone and other consumer electronics makers. [00:35:32] And some of these manufacturers, electronics makers have stopped orders all together. So guess what happens when you do that? Think about what happened with. Down right. That really spurred this whole thing on a month before Taiwan, semiconductor manufacturing company, TSMC, which is like the biggest guy out there for making many of the chips we depend upon said it was expecting an inventory correction that would last until late next year. [00:36:05] So this has been a very abrupt slide. Chip makers in the us are trying to manage this decline at the very moment. They're laying the ground for huge increase in production because of the tens of billions they have spent. Plus the $52 billion bill that was signed into law here. What a month or two ago? [00:36:30] Uh, government support provided by the chips act. So on the same day that Congress passed the law, Intel expected to be the biggest beneficiary of all of these government grants of our tax dollars, sliced 4 billion summits, capital spending plans for the rest of the year. Now isn't that? What happens every. [00:36:52] Really isn't it. What happens every time? For instance, the, uh, build back better plan renamed the inflation causation actor, I think is what they might have called it. Um, that particular bill. Put money in for you to buy an electrical car electric car, like four grand, eight grand kind of depends, uh, across the board. [00:37:14] So what electronic electric car makers do they increase their prices? Yes, indeed. Buy, you know, Six or eight grand as much as 12 grand. Right? Because now we got government money. We don't have to have you pay for it. So we're gonna take a bigger profit and that profit's gonna come from the tax dollars that were taken from you and from me and from the widow down the street, right. [00:37:40] Yeah. That's what happens every time? Why do we have this whole thing about the loans for people who went to college? Well, why is college so expensive? Well, it, it continued to go up as government started providing grants and started backing loans. Right? All of the stuff the government was doing was ultimately driving up the cost of your schooling. [00:38:05] Now they've driven up the. Of electric cars because of the money they put in. And because of the money that they've put in for the chips act the 52 billion to make chips that, Hey, we got a glut right now. Yeah. Um, guess what. The manufacturers of chips, the companies that were spending the money in order to create plants, more plants, more chip factories, fabrication plants have decided they're gonna cut their spending. [00:38:38] Why not? Because they're gonna get money from you at the point of a gun, right? That's exactly what's happening. Oh man. So for now, again, according to the financial times, most chip supply chain experts predict a relatively shallow downturn provided that the global economy is headed first off landing something that's obviously not guaranteed, but it has really left them scrambling, trying to figure out what happened here, because it just fell apart so quickly. [00:39:13] Gartner group, you might know them. They put together a lot of studies on a lot of different industries had been expecting the growth in chip sales this year to have from 2020 ones, 26%. So it took its forecast down further to 7% and is now predicting a 2.5% contraction in 2023. Isn't that something, um, the, the Philadelphia semiconductor index, if you are an investor, you've heard of that before, and that comprises the 30 largest us companies involved in, in chip design manufacturer and sale fell back almost 40% as a stock market corrected this year. [00:39:57] After rising threefold after the early lockdown stock market slump, because people were working from home, they couldn't go in to work. Peop the kids were home, people were buying computers so they could play games or get on a video conference with the office, et cetera. It has really, really changed. Oh, and I mentioned Nvidia and how Invidia's been. [00:40:23] Pretty badly. And you'll find this article by the way, in my newsletter that went out on, um, Monday. And if you don't get my free newsletter, definitely get it to just app to date. Craig, Peter son.com/subscribe. It's it's all worth doing, but within video here's what's happening. One of the biggest cryptocurrencies out there has decided that they don't want to be part of this. [00:40:52] Energy problem that we have, you know, some of these minors for various types of cryptocurrencies have actually bought power plants, old coal PLA powered power plants that the states don't wanna buy power from anymore because it's, it's coal. Right. Kohl's evil. But the private sector came in and said, okay, well, if we run our own power company and we put these GPU's and special purpose made mining equipment into the power plant, we can save a lot of money. [00:41:27] That's how much power they need every. A whole power plant to run some of these mining operations. And remember the way you mine, the cryptocurrencies. In most cases, you have to solve very complex mathematical problems to prove that you did the work. That was needed in order to then, um, be awarded that Bitcoin or whatever it was that you were mining. [00:41:54] So pretty much all of the major cryptocurrencies are looking at how can we move away from this model? Because in, in some cases, you know, we're talking about electrical consumption, just for mining cryptocurrencies that serve passes, some countries entire need for electricity. That's how bad it is. And supposedly here, we've got one of the major cryptocurrencies that is changing. [00:42:24] The entire way you do mining, if you will. Very, very big changes. So expect GPUs and companies like Nvidia that make them to go way down in value here over the coming months. Hey, visit me online. Craig peterson.com. Subscribe to my podcast and find me at YouTube. Take care. [00:42:50] If Facebook, isn't the only company doing this, but there's an article from the markup. They did a study and caught Facebook. This is absolutely crazy receiving sensitive medical information. We're gonna talk about that right now. [00:43:06] This is really concerning for a lot of people. And, and for good reason, frankly, I've been talking about this. [00:43:13] I, I think the first time I talked about it was over a decade ago and it has to do with what are called pixels. Now, marketers obviously want to show you ads and they want show you ads based on your interest. And frankly, as a consumer, if I'm looking for a new F one. I wouldn't mind seeing ads from competing car dealers or, you know, used car places, et cetera, to try and sell me that Ford truck. [00:43:43] It makes sense, right? If I'm looking for shoes, why not show me ads for shoes, but what happens when we start talking about the medical business about the legal business things get murky and people get very upset. You see the way these pixels work is you'll put a pixel, like for instance, a Facebook pixel. [00:44:06] If you go to Craig peterson.com, I've got this pixel on there from Facebook. And what it allows me to do now is retarget Facebook user. So you go to my site to go to a page on my site, and this is true for, uh, pretty much every website out there. And. I know that you went and you were looking for this, so I can retarget you in an ads. [00:44:28] I'll show you an ad. In other words, on Facebook now I've never actually done that ever. Uh, I I'm like the world's worst marketer, frankly. Uh, and, uh, but I do have that on there because it gives me some other numbers, statistics, and, and really helps you to understand how the website's being used, which I think makes a whole lot of sense. [00:44:49] So there are marketers that are using this for obvious reasons. Now, I think you understand what the pixel is. It is literally a little picture that is one pixel by one pixel, and it tends to blend in, I think even in most cases, now these pixels from different. Places like Facebook are actually transparent. [00:45:09] So you, you don't even see it on the page, but the idea is now they have a foothold on a website that doesn't belong to them. In this case, Facebook now has access to information about a website that you visited that has nothing to do with Facebook. okay. So that's the basics of how these pixels work and they're almost impossible to get rid of because in reality, many websites, mine included will even grab graphics from other websites just because you know, it it's, I'm quoting another article I pull in their graphic. [00:45:50] Of course. I'm gonna point to that other site. Why would I take that picture? Put it on my side. I don't own the rights to it. But if he'll let me that other website will, let me go ahead and show that graphic on my website, cuz there's ways to restrict it. If they don't want me doing that, they could stop me from doing it. [00:46:09] Then I I'm going to just go to the original website so they can get the credit for it's their property still. I'm not violating any copyright laws, et cetera. Does that make sense to. So what's the difference between the Facebook pixel and a picture I'm pulling from another random website? Well, the obvious thing is it's coming from a Facebook domain of some sort. [00:46:31] So, so there are ways to stop it, but there's just as many ways to get around stopping it, frankly. Well, Let's move on to something a little more sensitive. We have had problems that I reported on years ago of people going to an emergency room in a hospital. Now, when you're in that emergency room, your phone has GPS capabilities still. [00:46:57] It knows you went in the emergency entrance to the hospital and you are. Opening it up. Maybe you're looking around, maybe you're reading articles, maybe you're plotting your trip home using Google maps. You are being tracked depending on what apps you have on your phone. If you have an Android versus an iPhone, what you've enabled, what you haven't enabled. [00:47:20] Right? All of that sort of stuff. well, this now has become a problem because as I reported there have been people who went to the hospital, went to the emergency room and started seeing ads from what you might call ambulance, chasing lawyers. Have you been injured? Is it someone else's fault? Call me right now. [00:47:45] Do he cheat him in. if that sort of thing showed up on your phone, would you get a little upset, a little nervous saying, what are they doing, trying to cash in on, on my pain, maybe literal pain. And it's not as though those ads are just showing up while you are in the emergency room, because now they've tagged you. [00:48:06] They know that you are in that emergency room. So off they'll. They will go ahead and track you and send you ads even after you leave. Hey, I wanna remind you if you want to get this, uh, this week's list of articles. I, I put out every week, my insider show notes. It has become very popular. Thousands of people get that every week. [00:48:32] Go right now to Craig peterson.com. I'll also send out a little bit of training. I do that. I have special reports. I send out. I've got more stuff I'm doing, but you gotta be on the email list. Craig peterson.com to get on my free email list now. What's happened here now is markup went ahead and looked at Newsweek's top 100 hospitals in America. [00:48:56] They went to their websites and they found about a third of the hospitals using what's called the Meel. That is the Facebook pixels referring to earlier. So it sends a little bit of data. Whenever someone clicks a button to let's say, schedule a doctor's appoint. Why does it do that? Well, because the Facebook pixel is on the scheduling page. [00:49:24] Let's say there's scheduling page for oncology on the website. I guess who knows that you are going to see an oncologist? Facebook? Why? Well, because the hospital has put a Facebook tracking pixel on that page. So Facebook knows, Hey, he was on the oncologist page. Maybe he has cancer. I should start showing him ads from other hospitals and from cancer medications, et cetera. [00:49:51] Cetera, that is happen. Right now, 33 of these top 100 hospitals in America. Th these are the top 100, according to Newsweek's list. Have that information. Now that data is connected to your internet. Address. So it's kinda like your computer's mailing address and they can link that back to usually to a specific individual or to a household. [00:50:20] So now they have a receipt of the appointment request. that's gone to Facebook now. They don't have everything you filled out on the page or anything, you know, you added in your social security number, maybe other medical information. Facebook didn't get all of that, but they do know that you visited the hospital's website and which pages you visited on that website. [00:50:47] So markup went ahead and contacted these hospital. So, for example, John John's Hopkins hospital, they did find a Facebook pixel tracking on the appointment, scheduling page. They informed John's Hopkins of how that is a leak of personal information. And after being contacted by the markup, they did not remove the track. [00:51:18] also, by the way, when the markup reached out to them, the hospital did not respond UCLA Reagan medical center. They had of course a pixel and they did remove it from the scheduling page. Although they declined to comment, New York Presbyterian hospital, all these hospitals have that pixel and they did not remove it. [00:51:40] Northwestern Memorial hospital. Again, they got the tracking pixel did not remove it after they were informed about the security problems, duke university hospital, same thing. Most of these, by the way, did not respond to them. University of Pennsylvania, Houston Methodist hospital, the university of Chicago medical center. [00:52:02] Uh, the last two of those did remove the pixel. Uh, Scripps Memorial hospital out in LA JOA, California. There are many Brigham and women's Faulkner hospital. They were informed that they had the tracking picture pixel on the, on the, uh, scheduling page. They did not remove it, but you know, the time of this article, a Tufts medical center, same thing did not remove it, uh, out in Sanford in San Diego. [00:52:29] Same problem. John's Hopkins Bayview medical center, John Jefferson health, Thomas Jefferson university, hospitals, Loyola. These are big name hospitals. I'm looking at these that goes on and on sharp Memorial hospital, Henry Ford hospital. Uh, let's see some more, I'm trying to, oh, Massachusetts general hospital. [00:52:51] They did not have the tracking pixel Brigham in women's hospital, no tracking pixel on the scheduling page. So some of these hospitals were already doing it right. They re they recognized that putting this face. Pixel on may help them with some of the marketing and understanding the market a little better, which is what I do, but it's also giving personal information, personal health information to Facebook and Facebook's advertisers. [00:53:23] So they didn't put it on so good for them. Again, mass general Brigham and women's, uh, Sanford Mount Sinai, university of Michigan hospital and, and others, of course. So very good news there in general. Again, don't be worried about a pixel on just a random website because it probably is being used to help with stats to know what's being used on the website. [00:53:49] And maybe, maybe just maybe using it to send a little ad to you on Facebook later. Of course, you're listening to Craig Peter son. You can get my insider show notes for absolutely free. And my little mini trainings. Oh three to five minutes every week@craigpeterson.com. Just sign up on the homepage. [00:54:14] You know, I've got it on my homeowner's policy. I have a special business policy for it. And it's something that you should seriously consider, but you need to understand first. So we're gonna talk about it. What is cyber insurance? Uh, that's what's up now? [00:54:31] Cyber insurance is something that many businesses have looked at, not all businesses have, which is kind of crazy. If you ask me according to the industry statistics right now, less than 1% market penetration for cyber insurance and is expected to. [00:54:52] Into a $20 billion industry by 2025. That is some serious money. So what is this cyber insurance? For instance, there's a rider on my home insurance for, for cyber insurance and I have special cyber insurance from a big company underwritten, but it is for anything that happens. In my business, that's related to cyber security and it also covers my clients because that's what we do for living is cyber security. [00:55:28] If they are following our guidelines. So it's pretty darn cool when you get right down to it, because these risks that we have in the digital world are really every. So if you're a large organization, if you're a small little enterprise, are you going to get hacked? You know, bottom line, anybody could potentially get hacked because the bad guys have gotten pretty good. [00:55:56] And most of us in business have gotten pretty lackadaisical because of all of this, but not everybody understands when we're talking about cyber insurance. What does cyber mean? Well, the idea is that cyber insurance is created to protect organizations and individuals against digital risks. So we're talking about things like ransonware malware fishing campaigns. [00:56:24] So for instance, I got a call just this week from a listener who again, had their operating account, emptied out, hate it. When that happens. And so they lost everything. They lost all of the money in the account and they're trying to get it back. I got an email this week and, uh, from a lady that I, there's not much I can do for her. [00:56:46] I pointed her in the right direction, but her father, I think it was, had his digital wallet of cryptocurrency completely emptied, completely stolen. Can you believe this sort of stuff, right? It's happening every day. You might have insurance that covers that, but you might not. Traditional insurance policies are only looking at physical risks, so they will take the physical risk things like damage to equipment, or maybe you have livestock or you have stock and inventory, a building different locations. [00:57:29] That's your standard stuff. But cyber insurance is to allow businesses to transfer the costs associated with recovery from the losses incurred when there's some form of cybersecurity breach. Now that's a pretty big deal. because the losses can be huge. It isn't just ransomware where maybe it, it costs you a million dollars in ransom payments. [00:57:58] Or if you're an individual, a retiree, maybe it only costs you 25,000 in ransom payments. And I know that's a lot, especially for retiree. But there is loss of reputation. There's loss of business, cuz you couldn't conduct business cuz you couldn't use your computers. Right? All of that sort of stuff. You got people that you have to bring in, you have to bring in a special team to try and recover your data. [00:58:23] Maybe try and figure out what had happened. Right. All of that sort of stuff. So be careful cyber insurance, a lot of people kind of mistake it for policy that pays off. Attackers to retrieve or unlock data. That's not what it's really for cyber insurance is something that allows you to, I guess the term in, in the industry is transfer risk when your online security controls fail and. [00:58:52] Basically all of them could fail. It, it, it depends, right? If you're a huge company, you can hire a bigger team for a security operation center, but at the same time, you also have more employees that are causing more problems. So look at it entirely business interruption, payments to experts to recover the data. [00:59:14] Compensation for bodily injuries, uh, depending obviously on the resulting damage and the particular policy and the rates are gonna vary based on the maturity of your cyber defenses. So this is something that I've been big on for a long time, the cyber security maturity CMMC and what that helps 'em to determine is. [00:59:39] What are your rates gonna be? So if you went out and you're just using the cable modem that they, that the, uh, company, your cable company provided for you, or you go to a big box retailer, and that's where you bought your firewall and switches, and you've got your wonderful little Lenovo PCs or Dows or whatever, and you're running, uh, Norton antivirus. [01:00:04] You are not well covered. You are not very mature from a cybersecurity standpoint. The other thing you need to be able to do is make sure you've got your asset management all in line, that you have policies and procedures in place for when things happen. You gotta have it all put together, but the average cyber insurance policy for a small to mid-size company in 2021 was about $1,600. [01:00:31] For $1 million in cyber liability coverage. Now that's not really bad at all. Now there are limits to what the provider will pay. They will often, if you do get nailed, They'll come in and double check that, everything that you said, all of those boxes that you checked when you were applying for your cyber security insurance, make sure you actually did all of them. [01:00:59] Okay. Yeah. Kind of a big deal. And you not only will they not pay out, if you didn't do everything that you said you were going to be. but the other problem is you might end up getting sued by. Okay. So expect a counter suit if you decide to soothe them. So don't lie on those fors people. Okay. All right. Um, cyber claims, unlike non-technical events, like again, a fire flood storm damage, the cyber insurance claim might be determined by means of attack and your ability or your effort to prevent it. [01:01:40] As I was saying, make sure you've got the checklist and this is something I think I, I should probably put a course together on to help you guys with, or maybe even a little bit of consulting for people. Let me know, just send an email to me, me@craigpeterson.com. And uh, if you're interested in more info about cyber insurance, you can either look at this week's newsletter that you can. [01:02:04] By again, going to Craig peterson.com and a link to this particular article I'm looking at, or you can tell me, Hey, listen, I'd love a little course or little support, a little help. Okay. I think it makes a lot of sense. So does your business qualify for cyber insurance? Well, some do some don't, uh, you might not see yourself as a target. [01:02:27] For the bad guys, but I'll tell you, my 85 year old father was conned by some of these cyber attack guys. Okay. And he doesn't have much money. He, he's not the bank of, uh, England bank of America. None of these big banks or anything. Oh. Is a retiree living at home trying to make ends meet. So the same, thing's true for you as a business, you as an individual. [01:02:57] You are vulnerable most likely to a cyber attack, but you've got to really manage your risk posture. You gotta do things, right. So that's the bottom line there. That's what we try and help you do. But you can find information about this again, you can just email me, me, Craig peterson.com and ask for the info on cyber insurance, or if you're already a subscriber to my newsletter. [01:03:23] That went out Tuesday morning. So just check your mail. Maybe it's in the spam box from Tuesday morning and you'll find a lot more information linked right from there. Craig peterson.com stick around. We'll be right back. [01:03:41] There are a lot of complaints about how some of these cryptocurrencies are very non green using tons of energy. And now the prices are going down. We're seeing a number of really weird things happening. [01:03:57] Cryptocurrency, as you probably have heard, has taken a tumble. Now, some of the cryptocurrencies, particularly of course, someone you might know most is Bitcoin use a lot of computing power. [01:04:11] You see, what they're trying to do is basically solve a very complex mathematical problem. And in order to do that, they need a lot of computing. Now you can certainly run it on your little desktop computer, that program to compute those things. It's called mining. So you're mining for Bitcoin. You're, you're trying to solve these mathematical problems and there's a theoretical limit to how many Bitcoins could actually potentially be mind looking right now. [01:04:45] They're saying that circulating Bitcoin right now. Is about 19 million Bitcoin that are out there. And Bitcoin is worth about $20,000 right now, down from its huge, huge, huge high. That was, uh, more than two and a half times. What it's worth right now. So, how do you mind? Well, if you take that computer and you run the software, it's gonna do some mining and it is probably going to cost you more in electricity nowadays to mine. [01:05:21] One Bitcoin than that Bitcoin is worth. In fact, it certainly will cost you more. Now. That's why the people that are professional Bitcoin minors have taken a different tact and what they've done. Is they found places where they can get cheap electricity. For instance, Finland, where they're using geothermal produced electricity. [01:05:46] They're also using the cold air outside in order to cool down. The computers themselves as they're trying to compute this, but there's another thing that they've been doing. And that is well, how about we buy a coal plant? That's been shut down and that's happened. So they take that coal plant. They bring it back online. [01:06:08] They burn the coal, they produce electricity at a cheaper rate than they could buy it. but behind all of this is the computing power. And what miners found a long time ago is it's better to have thousands of compute units working on solving these problems than it is just having. I don't know how many CPUs are in your computer. [01:06:32] Four. Com, um, CPUs. How many? Well, I, how far can you get with those? Yeah, they're fast, but we need thousands of computers. So what they found is that GPU's graphical processing units. Kind of met their goals. You see a GPU is actually composed of thousands of computers, little compute units. Now they can't do real fancy math. [01:07:01] They can't do anything particularly fancy. They're really designed to move. Pixels around on a screen. In other words, they're designed to help gamers have a nice smooth game while they're playing. They can be used. In fact, they're used all of the time in desktop computers, just for regular display of a webpage, for instance, or if you're watching a video, all of that is part of what they're doing. [01:07:30] With graphic processing units. And if you've been paying attention, you probably have noticed if you particularly, if you're a gamer that the price for GPUs has gone way up, not only has it gone way up and it isn't just due to the lockdown and the supply chain problems. but they're very, very, very hard to get now. [01:07:53] Yeah. Some of that is due to supply chain problems. No doubt about it. But most of these GPUs, according to some of the numbers I've seen, have actually been bought by these professional mining companies. In fact, many of them have gone the next step and they have what called custom silicone. These are completely customized process. [01:08:19] sometimes they're using Asics. Sometimes they're using other things, but these custom processors that are really good at solving that problem that they have to solve in order to mine, a bit Bitcoin or one of these other currencies. So you, you see how that all works. There's a number of GPU manufacturers and something else interesting has happened because of the drop in value of pretty much all of the cryptocurrencies. [01:08:51] And that is these GPS are going byebye. Right. Do does a company that is now no longer trading. That's no longer operating. Uh, we've seen at least two of these crypto mining companies just completely disappear. So now all of their hardware is going up for sale. You'll find it on EBA. So I, I wanna warn you, if you are looking for a GPU of some sort for your computer, maybe if you're a gamer, be very, very careful. [01:09:28] We've got a buyer beware situation here because you're not just buying a GPU. A graphics processing card, uh, that has been lightly used. It was sitting in a terminal. Maybe it's a GPU. Like I use them where, when I'm doing video editing, it does use the GPU, even some of the audio editing. It uses the GPU. [01:09:50] I'm looking at it right now and I've got some, uh, GPU utilization going on. I've got about, uh, 6% of my GPU in use right now on this computer. So. What the problem is is that these minors who are selling their old GPUs have been running them full Bo 24, 7. That's hard on anything. Isn't it. So what, uh, what's happening here is that you are seeing a market getting flooded with GPUs. [01:10:25] You really don't wanna. All right. Does that make sense? Uh, you know, there we've lost more than 50% this year already in some of these, uh, cryptocurrencies that are out there coin base has had an interesting year Celsius, a major cryptocurrency bank, suspended withdrawals, uh, just here in the last few. [01:10:52] Coin based crypto exchange announced a round of layoffs. Also here, they paused their hiring a month or two ago. It it's not going very well and prices for new and used graphic cards are continuing to fall. The peak price was late in 2021, a little bit early in 2022, but now you can go to Amazon new egg, best buy and buy current generation GPUs for prices that really would seem like bargain six months ago. [01:11:26] And pricing for used GPUs has fallen even further, which is the caveat Amour URA thing here that I'm warning everybody about. You need to proceed. With caution. So there's a lot of scams, a lot of bait and switches. You know, that's been kind of normal for some things over the years on eBay. I'm afraid, but I've had pretty good luck with eBay, but any high value eBay purchase CPUs have been mining cryptocurrencies at full tilt for months or years have problems in new GPU. [01:12:02] Would not have had, you know, this heat that they generate, the dust that gets into them, that the heat is messing with can really degrade the performance and degrade the usage of that GPU here over time. Dust can also, uh, cause problems with the thermal paste that's in them could be dried out thermal paste because of the heat and that causes them to crack and causes other problems. [01:12:30] So if you buy a used GP that looks dirty or runs hot, removing and cleaning the fan and heat sink, reapplying, fresh thermal paste. Could potentially restore loss performance, and maybe you can even get that new Sony PlayStation because GPS are becoming available. Again. Visit me online Craig peterson.com and get my weekly insider show notes right there. [01:12:59] Self-driving is relatively new technology. And, uh, our friends at Tesla just fired an employee who posted videos of a full self-driving accident. Uh, he's done it before. [01:13:15] Tesla has a very interesting background. In fact, Elon Musk has gotten more interesting over time. [01:13:23] And particularly lately the stuff he's saying, the stuff he's doing, but his companies have really made some amazing progress. Now, one of the things that Elon did pretty well pretty early on was he decided he was going to start selling. A self-driving feature for his cars. And back in the day, you could buy it. [01:13:49] This was before it was ready at all for, I think it was 5,000 and, uh, it was good for whenever they came out with it. And then it went up to 7,000 and then I think it went to 12,000 and now it's you pay him monthly, but in reality, There are no fully self-driving qualified Teslas on the road today. It will be a little while before that happens. [01:14:19] So this ex Tesla employee by the name of John Burnell is quoted in ours Technica saying that he was fired for posting YouTube videos about Tesla's full self-driving beta. Now this is called F S D. And if you know, Computers, you know what beta is? Beta means, Hey, you know, should work, could work, probably has some problems. [01:14:44] And that's exactly what it is. Now. Tesla told California regulators that the full self-driving beta lacks true autonomous features. And that's probably how they got by getting with putting this car on the road, these cars on the road. So this ex employee. Says that Tesla also cut off access to the full self driving beta in the 2021 Tesla model three that he owns. [01:15:17] Now. He said that he paid for it. He had it legitimately, and yet Tesla cut him off from, and I guess. Anybody can try and sign up for it. I don't know all of the details behind getting that beta code. If you wanted to, you probably could investigate a little bit further, but the video that he posted on February 7th provided a frame by frame analysis of a collision of his Tesla with a Ballard, a a Ballard. [01:15:48] Those are those stanchions, those, uh, cement pillars. They usually have. Plastic on the outside that you'll see, you know, protecting sidewalks or in this case it was protecting a bike lane in San Jose. So he said, no matter how minor this accident was, it was the first full self-driving beta collision caught on camera. [01:16:13] That is irrefutable. And he says I was fired from Tesla in February with my U YouTube being cited as the reason why, even though my uploads are for my personal vehicle off company, time or property with software, I paid for. And he has a, um, channel called AI addict that you can find over there on YouTube if it hasn't been taken down yet. [01:16:38] Right. Uh, he said that he got a notice that his full self-driving beta was disabled be based on his recent driving data, but that didn't seem to fit because the morning I got fired, he says I had zero proper use strikes. On my vehicle. So yeah, I, I can't say as I really would blame him, uh, him being in this case, Elon Musk for firing this guy, but it's an interesting little video to watch. [01:17:08] It's like two and a half minutes. You'll see. And it, the guy has his hand on the steering. Well, and the car is steering. Itself down the roadway and there's no other traffic really on the road. I don't know when this was like a, a Sunday or something, but you can see on the screen, it is detecting things like the, the little, uh, construction pillars that are on the side of the road. [01:17:36] And he's in a left. Turn only lane and his Tesla turns, left the steering. Wheel's kind of going a little back and forth, right? As it tries to make up his mind what it's going to do and he's driving down, he just passed a ups truck. Although I would not have passed personally, the way he passed, which is the. [01:17:56] The car decided it was going to, um, get closer to that ups truck. I, I would've purposely gone further away. And then what happens is he goes around another corner where there's some Ballards. That are in the roadway. And of course the idea behind them is so the cars don't go in and accidentally strike a cyclist. [01:18:20] But around that corner where there is a crosswalk crossing the street, there's no Ballard. So people don't have to kind of get around them. And then the Ballards start off again. So the Tesla got kind of confused by this and looking at the screen, it doesn't show the, these Ballards. Being recognized. So the driver of the car grabs the stern wheel takes over at the very last second, but did actually hit the Ballard. [01:18:52] Uh, no two ways about it here. He hit it and the car is stopped and
The CHIPS Act More Billions to China? What's the Best Private Search Engine? Private Messengers Well, they did it. Yeah, it's no longer called "Build Back Better," but it's now the "Inflation Reduction Act." Imagine that. Reducing inflation by causing more inflation through massive spending. And then there's the the "CHIPS" act and, uh, yeah, government's coming for our wallets again. Oh, and this is bound to make things worse. [Following is an automated transcript.] The semiconductor industry has been hit hard by the lockdown. [00:00:21] Of course, it just totally destroyed supply chains all over the world. Makes me wonder if this wasn't intentional, but we are dependent on not just us manufacturers for things like our cars, through our computers, through harvesting machines that farmers need. We are dependent on foreign. Nations to make our chips, our chip sets that that's kind of a bad thing. [00:00:47] When you consider right now, there is a whole lot of stuff going on over there in the south China sea, which of course is where, what is made. You've probably heard about this before, where in fact, most of our chips are made at least a higher catchups that's a bad. because that means that a place like Taiwan, which has had serious problems with water shortages, and you need a lot of water in order to make chips, it has had all kinds of political instability. [00:01:21] Of course, they had the same locked. Down messes that the rest of the world had, and that just really messed them up. And then you look at what we did and you had the companies like Ford and GM. These are, I'm mentioning these guys, cuz they're the obvious ones, right? Chrysler, who all said, oh, people aren't gonna buy cars. [00:01:40] So we're going to cut back our orders. And remember the whole, just in time thing back in the seventies, I remember. Ever so well, it was like, wow, Japan. They are the model of world economies. We've got a. Everything that they do over there in Japan. And the big thing that we took from that was just in time inventory. [00:02:03] Oh my gosh. I mean, I don't have to have a warehouse with parts and order a train load at a time. I can just order as many as I need and have them arrive just in time. I was watching a documentary on Volkswagen who has, I guess it's the biggest factory in the world. This thing's absolutely amazing. And while they're assembling the cars, the parts that are needed show up just in time, there will be parts that show up that morning from subcontractors, and then they move through their systems there at the factory. [00:02:39] And then they end up right there at the person who needs to install. Minutes before it's needed. Now that's kind of cool. Cuz it cuts down in your costs. It lets you change a vendor. If you need to change a vendor, if you don't like some parts, you don't have to, you know, get rid of a whole train load or return them all. [00:02:56] You just have to return that days, but it introduces some very. Serious problems, especially when there are supply chain problems, you know, we've been living in a world that that has just been very, very easy. I'm not gonna say it's too easy, but it's been very easy. We don't have so many of the problems that we used to have way back when, like what 50 years ago really. [00:03:23] We have these problems where we do a lockdown where a country locks down, let's say Taiwan lockdown, and, and we didn't, and we tried to manufacture things you wouldn't be able to. And part of the theory behind the way we interact with other countries is that it will prevent war. You see if we're a completely separate country and we decide, uh, that, uh, you know, just leave us alone. [00:03:50] And let's say China decided that they wanted some of our territories or some of their neighbors over there in the south China sea, et cetera. China could just go in and do it. But if we're trading partners, if they rely on us in order to keep their economy going, then we're not going to go to war with them. [00:04:12] And they're not gonna go to war with us because we both need each other. That's been a, a mantra now for quite a few decades with countries worldwide. Of course, Ukraine and Russia are an interesting combination because Russia needs Ukraine. For quite a number of different supplies, food, and, and other things. [00:04:32] And Ukraine needs to a lesser extent, Russia, as well as a market, but it, it provides food for a worldwide market. It it's kind of crazy, but that's been the theory. The theory is, well, let's bring. everyone close together. We'll put our hands together, we'll lock them and, and we'll sing, uh, I want the world to buy a Coke, right. [00:04:56] Or whatever that song was. You you'll probably remember that song, everyone standing around in the circles or whole all the way around the world. Now it's a nice theory. And, and I like it. I like the fact we haven't gone to war, even though we've got a, I guess you could definitely call it a European war going on, but in, in fact, It does cause these types of problem problems, we're seen, we copied the Japanese just in time inventory and that messed things up because those parts are not arriving when they're supposed to be arriving and you no longer have a warehouse full of parts. [00:05:33] So now you just can't. Can't do anything right now. Now you're in really ultimately big trouble. So what's happening now is Congress decided to pass a, um, I think they're calling it. What was it? A deficit reduction act or something instead of build back better. Because, uh, or no inflation. That's what it was. [00:05:54] Yeah. This is gonna get rid of inflation because we're increasing taxes and , I, I don't get it. Why would Congress think that increasing taxes would bring more money into their coffers every time it's been done? Yeah. There's a little bit of a bump initially, but. It drops off dramatically. If you want to increase revenue to the federal government, you lower taxes. [00:06:19] Every time that's been tried pretty much. It's absolutely worked by lowering taxes because now people aren't trying to hide the money. They aren't do doing things. Uh, like moving their businesses out of the country, even Canada and the rest of Europe has lower corporate tax rates and that's part of what they're going for. [00:06:42] But the manipulation that appears to have happened here is that they wanted to pass this chips act. And the chips act is another example of the federal government helping special interest groups at the expense of you and I, the expense of the taxpayers. So this special interest group came to them and, and they carved out some 50 something dollars. [00:07:08] I think it was yeah, 52 billion in grant and 24 billion in tax credit. To the us semiconductor industry now at, at first glance, you look at that and say, well, okay, that's, that's actually really good because what can happen here is the semiconductor industry can use that money to build plants here in the us to build fabs chip Fabrica fabrication plants. [00:07:33] I know I can talk and, and yeah, they probably could. And that could be a very, very good. But the devil is in the details. Yes. What else is new here? Right. So this, uh, last minute by partisan agreement that they agreed, they weren't gonna do build back better because of what mansion had said. Right. I, I'm not gonna support that cuz it's just going to increase inflation and increase our debt. [00:08:00] And by the way, our federal government. Is barely gonna be enough to discover the interest payments on the debt. You know, no principle at all, which is an incentive for the federal government to cause inflation because then the federal government can pay back that debt with inflated dollars that cost them less. [00:08:20] And then, uh, there goes the debt, right. And they can talk about how great it was. But if you are retired, if you're looking at your retirement account, With the type of inflation we have, which isn't the nine point, whatever that they've claimed in reality, if you use the same methods and metrics that were used in the 1980s where they're saying, oh, it's been 50 years, 40 years since we had this type of inflation. [00:08:46] No, no, no. We have never ever had this type of inflation in modern America. Because in fact, the inflation rate of use, again, those same net metrics is supposedly in the 20% range. So what that means is the federal government's able to pay you back 20% less. Then they actually borrowed from you because of that inflation. [00:09:12] It's it's just incredible. So here we go. Some $77 billion going to the us semiconductor industry, but, um, there's another little trick here that they played on all of us and that is. The lobbyist from the semiconductor industry who, by the way, themselves are spending tens of billions of dollars to build new fabs new plants. [00:09:35] They're spending it out of their own pockets, not out of our pockets already. Okay. But they lobbied and Chuck Schumer introduced, uh, uh, cute little thing. Cute little thing. It, the bill had said, yeah, we have to use this. For American interest basically. Uh, so he removed that. So now yeah, those tax dollars that are supposed to rebuild our chip industry, they can be used to help China. [00:10:01] Yes, indeed. They have already penciled in some of that 77 ish billion dollars to go to China. Yeah. Yeah. Isn't that great. I, I thought China was part of what we're trying to protect ourselves from here. Certainly. not, not as a, you know, a hot war sort of a thing, but frankly, as our biggest competitor in the world, it is incredible. [00:10:29] The us share of chip manufacturing globally has dropped from 12%. From 37%, just 30 years ago. Okay. So we've lost two thirds of our pros. If you will, on the world market in making chips, Hey, you should have received this, uh, on when was it this week? Uh, Wednesday, Tuesday, uh, my weekly insider show notes. [00:10:56] There's links to a great article in here. From the semiconductor industry, themselves talking about what is going on, what really happened. And, uh, don't worry. It's only more than a trillion dollars. And then this on top of it, it's only another 250 billion. Don't worry about it. You'll be able to pay it back. [00:11:18] Yeah. Yeah. stick around. We'll be right back. [00:11:25] I don't know if you've heard of digital exhaust, it's kind of a new term. And it's talking about the things we leave behind the cookie crumbs, if you will, not cookies and browsers, but that's part of it. We're gonna talk about the browser you're using and the search engine. [00:11:42] We have a lot of choices when it comes to browsers. We've talked about it before, and if you'd like a copy of my browser, special report, of course, this it's free. [00:11:52] I wouldn't mention it. If it wasn't here and you can just get it by, go by emailing me, me@craigpeterson.com. You actually can't just get it, but I'll be glad to email it to you or we'll have Mary or. Send it on off to you? Me M E Craig peterson.com. Well, people have been worried about their data. Many of us have been worried a very long time, and then remember the whole Cambridge Analytica scandal. [00:12:23] It's amazing to me, how stuff gets politicized. I'm shaking my head. I just can't. People because bronch Obama got everything on everyone, on Facebook for his campaign. Not, not a beep, nothing. I, nothing. He had everything on everybody and Cambridge Analytica and there was just given to him by the way. And then Cambridge Analytica, uh, decided, okay, well here's what we're gonna do. [00:12:47] We're gonna make. This little program, people can play it. We'll we will, uh, advertise on Facebook and then we'll gather data on people who are there on Facebook and we'll use it for orange man. Bad Trump. Yeah, this will be great. And so the the exact opposite of what they did with president Obama. When he got all this information on tens of millions, I think it was actually hundreds of million. [00:13:15] People, uh, they decided this was bad. and they started making a big deal about it. And so a lot of people at that point decided, Hey, uh, what's happening here? What, what is going on? Should, would they have my information? Because remember this is an old adage. You've heard it a million times by now, but it bears repeating. [00:13:39] If you are not paying for something you or your information are the product. And that's exactly true. Exactly. True. If you are using Google maps, for instance, to get around, to do your GPS navigation, you are the product cuz Google is selling information. They collect information, right? That's what they. Do and you might have noticed recently you probably got an email from Google saying, uh, we're gonna be flushing, uh, your location, or at least some of your location information soon. [00:14:13] Did you, did you get that email from Google? I, I got it right. And I don't use Google very much, but I, I obviously I need to, I need to know about Google. Google's good for certain things, and I understand what it's doing. But it decided all of a sudden after the, again, left stuff, right. People were all worried that because there was no longer a national law on abortion, uh, by the way, there never has been a national. [00:14:46] Law on abortion. And in fact, that's what the Supreme court said. You can't make up a law in the court. You can rule on the application of the law in the court. They've gone, they've stepped over that boundary and decided they can rule on whether or not there should be a law. And so the court said, Hey, listen, this is a, at this point, a state's rights issue, right? [00:15:11] The 10th amendment to the us constitution, uh, the state should decide this. And the Congress didn't act there. There's no federal law about this. So the, these rulings were bad and people say, oh no, that's terrible. It was the first time it's ever no, there've been over 200 times where the Supreme court changed its mind. [00:15:34] Think of the dread Scott decision. If, if you even know what that is, well, you guys do cuz you're the best and brightest, but these people complaining probably have no clue about any of this stuff, right? None at all. So they're all upset because now, oh my gosh, my golly, um, because Roe V Wade, et cetera, was overturned. [00:15:55] Now they're going to be tracking me. Because my data is being sold. Cuz you remember that's how they came after these January six protestors, right. That were down in, in Washington, DC by using the GPS data that came from the apps that were there on their phones. Yeah. And, uh, that's also how it was proven that the election. [00:16:19] Uh, may have been stolen, but certainly had substantial fraud because they were able to buy the data. Look at the data show. What was pretty, obviously the, uh, acts of at least a thousand people that were completely illegal in ballot harvesting and. Box stuffing. Right? So again, GPS data, you can buy it. The federal, government's not allowed to keep data on us. [00:16:49] It's not allowed to spy on the citizens at all. Right. So what do they do? They go to these same data brokers and they buy the data. I sold it now. Well, we're not tracking, but people are you kidding me? We would never do that. But they're buying the tracking data from third parties. So they are tracking. Oh no, no, it's not us. [00:17:11] It's it's other people. So now they're worried. Well, if I go to an abortion clinic, are the state's attorneys general. That do not allow abortions in their states where the law does not allow it. Are they going to buy data and see that I went to an abortion clinic, even if I went to an abortion clinic out of state. [00:17:35] Now you can see their concern on that one. Right? So a again, now all of a sudden they're worried about tracking data. I, I just don't understand why they trust the government on one hand and don't trust it on another hand, I guess, that. People say right. The ability to hold two conflicting thoughts has truth in your mind at the same time, but they're concerned and it's legitimate. [00:18:00] So what happens. Google decides we're not going to, uh, keep location data on you. And that way none of the attorneys general can ask us forward or subpoena it cuz we just don't have it. And that was all because of the overturn of the court ruling on abortion, the federal court. So it, it, to me, it it's just so disingenuous for these people to only care about privacy when it's about them. [00:18:36] And I, I, I, again, I, I just don't understand it. My mother is that same way. I know she doesn't listen to this, so , I can say that, but it it's, uh, absolutely absolutely incredible to me that, uh, that, that happens. So what do you use. There there's a number of major search engines, real in the, in the world. [00:18:59] Really what you're looking at is Google. It's like the, the 800 pound gorilla out there. And then you also have Bing Microsoft search engine. There have been a few that have come and gone. There's some that I liked better. Like I loved Alta Vista much better. Because it had ING algebra operations that you could do much better than Google. [00:19:23] So I've ended up with Devon, think that I use now for searching if I need to, uh, to get real fancy searches going on, but I gotta mention duck dot go. Now it got a bit of a black eye recently, but the reality is if you want to keep your searches, private duck dot go is a way to go. Well, we talked about the top 100 hospitals in the country and how they were tracking you using Facebook or Google, uh, trackers cookies. [00:19:59] And they would know, oh, you just registered an appointment with an oncologist or, or whatever it might. B right. Which is private information, duck dot go does not have any tractors on it. They do not keep a history of what you've been searching for and they do not sell that stuff to advertisers. Now behind duck dot go is Bing. [00:20:23] But Bing does not get access to you. Only duck dot go does, and they don't keep any of that. So check it out online that kid's game used to play duck dot, go.com. Obviously I don't, uh, don't make any money off of that. Oh. And by the way, they have apps for Android and iOS and browser extensions stick around will be right back and visit me online. [00:20:49] Craig peterson.com. [00:20:52] I got a question from a parent whose son was serving over in the middle east and they were asking what was a safe messaging app to use. And they asked about what's app. So we're gonna talk about that right now. [00:21:08] There are a lot of different messaging apps that people are using and they all have different features, right? [00:21:17] Uh, there have different ways of doing things and the top are WhatsApp. Facebook messenger. Why would anyone use that? Uh, we chat again. Why would anyone use that vibe line telegram and IMO, which I'm not familiar with? This is according to ink magazine, the top seven messenger apps in the world. So why would people use those? [00:21:47] Okay. So let's, let's just talk about them very briefly. The, the two top ones in my mind that I want to talk about, but WhatsApp has 2 billion active users. It's the number one messaging app followed by WeChat, which is a Chinese messaging app with 1.2 billion. Users and WeChat is also used to make payments. [00:22:12] And they've got this whole social, social credit system in China, where they are tracking you deciding whether or not you posted something or said something in a chat that, uh, they don't like. And so you, you just, you can't get on the train to get to work and you lose your job, right. Yeah, they, they do that regularly. [00:22:32] And there are people in the us here that are trying to do very similar things. This Congress has, uh, not been the best. Let me put it that way. So should you use that of. We chat now, obviously, no, the next one is Facebook messenger also called messenger by meta. And it has close to a billion users. And again, they are watching you. [00:23:01] They are spying on you. They are tracking what you do, WhatsApp. I I use for, uh, one of my masterminds. The whole group is in on what's happened. I'm okay with that. Nothing terribly private that I'm worried about. There, there are things that are said or discussed that, that I'm not, uh, Perhaps happy that they're privy to, but in, in reality, WhatsApp is pretty good. [00:23:29] Now you have to make sure that when you're using something, something like WhatsApp that you have to turn on their privacy features. For end to end security because that's been a, a historical problem with WhatsApp. Yeah. They can have end to end encryption, but you have to turn it on. So what is end to end encryption and why does it matter? [00:23:57] Well, end to end encryption means if you are sending a message to someone or someones. They have, obviously have to have the same app that you do. And when it gets to the other side, uh, they can decrypt. So anyone in the middle. We'll just see a whole bunch of encrypted data, which just looks like trash. If, if it's encrypted properly, there's no real distinguishing, uh, portions to it. [00:24:30] If you will, or identifying factors that it's anything other than just random data, really good, uh, encryption does that, right? It does a, and. compression first and, and then messes with, we're not gonna get into how all of that works. I helped way back when to put PGP together at, uh, Phil. Zimmerman's pretty good privacy. [00:24:55] I actually still used some of that stuff today. And then PGP became G G, which is the GNU privacy, uh, G G and is well worth it as well. But that. Um, exactly what we're talking about. We're talking about regular messaging apps that regular people can use. I do use G G by the way, those of you who email me@craigpeterson.com, if it's actually me responding to you, it will be. [00:25:26] A message. That's cryptographically signed by G G so that you can verify that it was me and it wasn't Mary, or it wasn't Karen. So I, I do that on purpose as well. All right. I'm sorry, wander around a little bit here. WhatsApp is pretty commonplace. And is pretty good. Well, WhatsApp, as I mentioned, end end encryption. [00:25:50] But it's using the encryption from another project that's out there. And this is an open source project called signal. If you want to be secure. End to end if you don't want to leave any digital exhaust around use signal. It's very, very good. Um, Mo what is his name? Um, Moxi Marlin spike is the guy that founded it. [00:26:15] He ran that company for quite a while. It's a foundation. And, uh, as I recall, early 20, 22, he stepped down as the head of that foundation and other people have taken over, but he's even threatened to, and I assume he actually did build in some things into signal. That will make some of these Israeli programs that are used to crack into cell phones. [00:26:43] It'll make them fail. They'll crash because of bugs in their it's. Well, again, that's not what we're talking about right now, but signal. Again, if you're gonna send a message just like with WhatsApp, the other person, the receiver has to have signal on their device signals available for smartphones again, Android and iOS, you know? [00:27:07] What I feel about Android, which is don't use it. You're much better off. If you don't have much of a budget buying an older model iPhone, they're gonna be a lot safer for you. So signal, it will also run on your windows, computer, or your Mac, the same thing with WhatsApp, by the way. So WhatsApp more common, not the worst thing in the world for privacy signal, less common and definitely very good for privacy. [00:27:37] Now I mentioned apple here. I use max and I have ever, since they switched over to a Unix base, they actually put a mock microkernel and a free BSD user land, if and kernel on top of them. Um, the mock microkernel. So if, if you're total geek, you know what I'm talking about? It's designed to be safe and secure from the beginning. [00:28:02] Whereas with windows and with Android, it was shoehorned in the security, the privacy, right. It just wasn't there. So what should you do? Well, I, I, as I mentioned, you should be. Apple iOS devices. I'm not the world's apple fan. Okay. Don't get me wrong, but they are a lot more secure and the max are also very secure again. [00:28:32] Nothing's perfect. Uh, they have not been attacked as much as windows computers because of course, windows is more common, but having worked in the kernel and the network stack on both windows. Uh, the actual kernel, the actual source code of windows and Linux and BSD and system five. So all of the major core, uh, Linux distributions over the decades, I can tell you that. [00:29:05] The Unix world is far, far more secure. Now you don't have to worry about it. People look at it and say, well, what should I use? Well, if you are a geek, you should probably be using Linux. I do use Linux, but I, I will admit my main workstation is a 10 year old Mac. 10 years old. Uh, how long do your windows machines last? [00:29:31] Right. And, and it's still working great for me very fast. Still. It's a great little machine and we still have Mac laptops that are, uh, 20 years old. So they, they are designed and made to last same thing with the phones, but they can be more expensive. So look at refurbed, look at older models because it will save you. [00:29:55] You can be in the same price range as windows. You can be in the same price range as Android, and you can have much, much better privacy and security stick around, cuz we'll be right back. And if you sign up for my email list, you'll get my free insider show notes every Tuesday or Wednesday morning. [00:30:17] We're gonna talk about electric vehicles right now and what the wall street journal is calling the upside down logic of electric SUVs. And you know what? I agree with them here, but where are electric vehicles today and where are they going? [00:30:34] Electric vehicles are an interesting topic because in reality, we're not ready for them. [00:30:43] Our grid is not set up to handle electric vehicles. We are crazy what we're doing right now. Shutting down power plants. Germany is bringing nuclear plants that they had. Down back online. They're not fools. Nuclear is the cleanest right now, uh, source that we can possibly get don't fool yourselves by listening to people that tell you that, for instance, the solar cells you put on your roof are green because they are. [00:31:14] Not highly toxic, the manufacturing, distribution, and disposal of those things, California, we talked about this a couple of weeks ago has a huge problem now because 90% of those solar panels on people's roofs are ending up in landfills and are leaking toxic metal. into what little, uh, underground water supply California still has left. [00:31:42] And that's not just true of California. That's everywhere. So we are depending on more electricity, when we actually have less electricity, we're shutting things down. Look at Texas, right? They're oh, we're we're trying to be green, green, green, green, green, and people complain about Texas being conservative. [00:32:01] It's not, it's just very independent. They have their own electric grid. The only state in the nation that has its own electric grid. That's not tied in. To anybody else. The whole rest of the country is composed of two grids. So if one state isn't producing quite enough, they can potentially buy it from another one here in the Northeast. [00:32:24] We bring some of the power down from RI Quebec LAA, Leno. Over there in the north, right from the LG projects that they have up there. Of course it's from hydroelectric dams, but we, we exchange it all. We move it back and forth. But we're shutting down some of these relatively clean sources of energy, even cold now with all, all of the scrubbers and stuff. [00:32:54] But if you look at nuclear, particularly the new nuclear, it is as safe. It's far safer than burning, uh, natural gas that so many grids burn look in New Hampshire, doubling doubled. It doubled the cost of electricity in new H. because we didn't bring on the second nuclear reactor in Seabrook. Right. And we're burning natural gas to generate most of our electricity. [00:33:27] It doubled, it? It's absolutely crazy. The cost, the things that are happening in Washington and locally, like in New Hampshire, like in Texas, like in so many other states are making our lives much worse and. To top it all off. Now they're pushing electric vehicles, which again are not green. They are not safe. [00:33:53] They are hazardous to the environment in so many ways, but particularly. By their manufacturing. So if consumers and businesses really cared about the carbon dioxide that they're emitting, right. That greenhouse gas that's, uh, you know, just absolutely terrible. Uh, they might buy what what's selling right now. [00:34:19] Hmm. Not me. Look. Yeah, EVs electric vehicles like Ford Mustangs, mock E Hummers, EV that's from GM. The, uh, the wonderful new electric pickup. From Ford. Now these are huge vehicles. They are long range electric vehicles, which is what we want. Right. And they can be driven tens of thousands of miles before they rack up enough miles and save enough gasoline to compensate for the emissions created just to produce their batteries. [00:34:56] And that's according to their fans. And when we're talking about the fans, their, their, uh, predictions, their estimates, their statistics typically are what? A little tainted. Right? We talked about that earlier. Yeah. So it, it, it gets to be a problem doesn't it gets to be real problem. So what are they doing in, instead of making the small electric vehicles, like the Nissan leaf? [00:35:25] Which was a great little car. I've told the story of my neighbor, who has the, the leaves. He has a couple of them, and he installed a bunch of solar panels and he uses those to charge his leaves and to run around. Cuz most of what driving he does most driving, I do most of the driving, most people do is just short range, right? [00:35:45] It's less than 30 miles. He just, he loves it. Right, but he's not doing it because it's green. He realizes that it harms the environment to have those solar cells and it harms the environment to drive those electric cars that were very harmful to be made the batteries right now from these electric cars, the outtakes they are storing just like nuclear waste, although there's far more of it than there is. [00:36:15] The nuclear waste, a separate topic entirely, really? I guess there isn't a whole lot of correlation there, but they, they're not able to recycle so many of these batteries. We just don't have the technology for it. So why would you make these big electric vehicles, these sports utility vehicles, these trucks that have the long ranges. [00:36:42] And not something that's nice and small th think European, right? Think of the stupid car from Merc. I mean the smart car from Mercedes, uh, that little tiny car that works great in European cities. Where you don't have a lot of space to park the roads. Aren't very wide. You can kind of zoom around zip in and out fine parking. [00:37:02] And you're not going fast. Not going far makes sense. Right? Same thing with like a Prius with the smaller engines. And yet you see people whipping down the highway passing me. Doing the exact opposite thing that you'd think they'd wanna do. You're driving a small car with a small engine. Maybe it's a hybrid electric gas. [00:37:24] Maybe it's a plug-in hybrid. To do what to stop CO2, supposedly to save the environment. And yet at the exact same time, you are causing more harm than you need to, to the environment by zooming down the highway. That's not what these things are made for, not what they're designed for, but that is what most people could use. [00:37:45] And yet G. Ford Chrysler, none of them are making the vehicles that fit into that part of the marketplace. The other nice thing about the smaller vehicles is they don't require as long to charge cuz they don't have to charge up these big battery packs because you're not going that far. So it's less of a demand potentially on the grid. [00:38:12] Because again, even if you drive that big electric SUV, 30 miles. You are hauling around a thousand pounds, maybe more of batteries that you don't actually need to haul around. See again, it goes back to how so many of us are looking at this stuff. Just like the original Prius poll that I've talked about. [00:38:39] So many times where the number one reason people said that they drove a Prius. This was some 70% of the people was because of what they thought the purchaser of the Prius thought other people would think about them. , this is, this is a real, real problem. You know, the assumption that electric vehicle stops oil from coming out of the ground stops natural gas from coming out of the ground, stops coal from being mined. [00:39:08] That assumption is problematic because it is not true. And when it comes to the carbon footprint, again, I obvious. Obviously the, the environment is changing. The temperatures are changing. It it's obvious, right? Climate denier, some might call me, but it's obvious that climate's changing. It has always been changing Mount Saint Helen's eruption, put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than mankind has since the beginning of. [00:39:46] So look at these volcanic eruptions and say, oh, okay. So we've barely scratched the surface as humankind, far less than 1% of global warming is actually caused by humans. but it it's about control, but this isn't a political show. Uh okay. Uh, I guess I am. So let's talk about the next article I had in my newsletter that came out this week again, Tuesday or Wednesday, you can sign up for it. [00:40:17] It's absolutely free. This is my free newsletter@craigpetersondotcomorjustsendmeanemailmeatcraigpeterson.com and ask to be signed up. It looks like president Biden is maybe thinking about going nuclear. I talked about this on the air earlier this week, cuz there's a couple of really interesting things happening. [00:40:41] One is the federal government has authorized some of these new nuclear technologies. To go online. So they've got these different plants. There's a number of different types of plants that are out there and different technologies, but all of them hyper safe and they are actually in small production. [00:41:07] Pretty darn cool. The second thing which I found particularly interesting is that at least. Three times over the last few weeks, president Biden has talked about nuclear power just in passing, right? He, I think he's trying to get his base to get used to the idea because he's been trying to eliminate all forms of energy consumption, but he does seem to maybe favor development of nuclear power or whoever is writing his speeches for him, you know, nuclear. [00:41:41] Is carbon friendly, very carbon friendly, friendlier than windmills or solar parks. And it's a lot more reliable. So I'm, I'm happy about that new plants coming online, just small ones. And that frankly is the future of nuclear, not these huge, huge, and they, he he's talking about it. We'll see, it's absolutely green. [00:42:07] Even as I mentioned, Germany is bringing nuclear plants back online and the European union has declared that nuclear is green technology. And. I'm shocked here because apparently I'm agreeing with the European parliament. Oh wow. What's going on? Hey, visit me online. Craig peterson.com. Make sure you get my insider show notes and the trainings that come out. [00:42:39] Craig peterson.com. [00:42:41] Hey, it looks like if you did not invest in crypto, you were making a smart move and not moving. Wow. We got a lot to talk about here. Crypto has dived big time. It's incredible. What's happened. We get into that more. [00:42:58] Crypto currencies. It, it it's a term for all kinds of these basically non-government sanctioned currencies. [00:43:08] And the idea behind it was I should be able to trade with you and you should be able to trade with me. We should be able to verify the transactions and it's kind of nobody's business as to what's happening behind the scenes. And yet in reality, Everybody's business because all of those transactions are recorded in a very public way. [00:43:33] So crypto in this case does not mean secret or cryptography. It's actually referring to the way the ledgers work and your wallets and, and fact, the actual coins themselves, a lot of people have bought. I was talking with my friend, Matt earlier this week and Matt was saying, Hey, listen, uh, I made a lot of money off of crypto. [00:43:59] He's basically a day trader. He watches it. Is it going up? Is it going down? Which coin is doge coin? The way to go? Cuz Elon must just mentioned it. Is it something else? What should I do? And he buys and sell and has made money off of it. However, a lot of people have. And held onto various cryptocurrencies. [00:44:21] Of course, the most popular one. The one everybody knows about is Bitcoin and Bitcoin is pretty good stuff, you know, kind of bottom line, but 40% right now of Bitcoin investors are underwater. Isn't that incredible because of the major dropoff from the November peak. And this was all started by a problem that was over at something called Tara Luna, which is another cryptocurrency now. [00:44:53] You know, already that there is a ton of vol a ton of, uh, changes in price in various cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin being of course a real big one where, you know, we've seen 5,000, $10,000 per Bitcoin drops. It, it really is an amazingly, uh, fluid if you will coined. So there's a number of different people that have come out with some plans. [00:45:21] How about if we do kinda like what the us dollar used to do, which is it's tied to a specific amount of gold or tied to a specific amount of silver. Of course, it's been a while since that was the case. Uh, president Nixon is the one that got us off of those standards, but. Having gold, for instance, back in your currency means that there is going to be far less fluctuation and your currency means something. [00:45:51] See, the whole idea behind currency markets for government is yeah, you do print money and you do continue to increase the amount of money you print every year. Because what you're trying to do is create money for the. Goods product services that are created as well. So if, if we create another million dollars worth of services in the economy, there should be another million dollars in circulation that that's the basic theory. [00:46:22] Monetary theory really boiling it. Right. Down now of course, you know, already our government has printed way more than it. Maybe should have. It is certainly causing inflation. There's no doubt about that one. So they're looking at these various cryptocurrencies and saying, well, what can we do? How can we have like a gold standard where the us dollar was the currency of the world used and it all its value was known. [00:46:48] You see, having a stable currency is incredibly important for consumers and businesses. A business needs to know, Hey, listen, like we sign a three year contract with our vendors and with our customers. And so we need a stable price. So we know what's our cost going to be, what can we charge our customer here? [00:47:08] Can the customer bear the price increases, et cetera. The answer to most of those questions of course is no, they really, they really can't is particularly in this day and age. So having. Fixed currency. We know how much it's worth. I know in two years from now, I'm not gonna be completely upside down with this customer because I'm having to eat some major increases in prices. [00:47:33] And as a consumer, you wanna look at it and say, wow, I've got a variable rate interest rate on my mortgage. And man, I remember friends of mine back in the eighties, early eighties, late seventies, who just got nailed by this. They had variable rate interest loan on their home because that's all they could get. [00:47:52] That's all they could afford. So the variable rate just kept going up. It was higher than credit cards are nowadays. And I remember a friend of mine complaining, they had 25% interest and that's when they lost a house because 25% interest means if you have a a hundred thousand dollars loan, you got $25,000 in interest that year, you know, let alone principal payments. [00:48:16] So it, it was a really. Thing. It was really hard for people to, to deal with. And I, I can understand that. So the cryptocurrency guys. I said, okay, well let's tie it to something else. So the value has a value and part of what they were trying to tie it to is the us dollar. That's some currencies decided to do that. [00:48:41] And there were others that tried to tie it to. Assets. So it wasn't just tied to the dollar. It was okay. We have X dollars in this bank account and that's, what's backing the value of our currency, which is quite amazing, right. To think about that. Some of them are backed by gold or other precious metals. [00:49:04] Nowadays that includes a lot of different metals. Well, this one coin called Tara Luna dropped almost a hundred percent last. Isn't that amazing. And it had a sister token called Tara us D which Tara Luna was tied to. Now, this is all called stablecoin. Right? The idea is the prices will be stable. and in the case of Tara and Tara S D the stability was provided by a computer program. [00:49:39] So there's nothing really behind it, other than it can be backed by the community currencies themselves. So that'ss something like inter coined, for instance, this is another one of the, there are hundreds of them out there of these, uh, cryptocurrencies. The community backs it. So the goods and services that you can get in some of these communities is what gives value to inter Pointe money system. [00:50:05] Now that makes sense too, right? Because the dollar is only worth something to you. If it's worth something to someone else, right. If you were the only person in the world that had us dollars, who, who would want. Like, obviously the economy is working without us dollars. So why would they try and trade with you? [00:50:27] If you had something called a us dollar that nobody else had, or you came up with something, you made something up out of thin air and said, okay, well this is now worth this much. Or it's backed by that et. Because if again, if you can't spend it, it's not worth anything. Anyhow, this is a very, very big deal because on top of these various cryptocurrencies losing incredible amounts of money over the last couple of weeks, We have another problem with cryptocurrencies. [00:51:01] If you own cryptocurrencies, you have, what's called a wallet and that wallet has a transaction number that's used for you to track and, and others to track the money that you have in the cryptocurrencies. And it it's, um, pretty good. Fun function or feature. It's kind of hard for a lot of people to do so they have these kind of crypto banks. [00:51:23] So if you have one of these currencies, you can just have your currency on deposit at this bank because there's, there's a whole bunch of reasons, but one of the reasons is if. There is a, a run on a bank, or if there's a run on a cryptocurrency, currencies have built into them incredibly expensive penalties. [00:51:47] If you try and liquidate that cryptocurrency quickly. And also if there are a lot of people trying to liquidate it. So you had kind of a double whammy and people were paying more than three. Coin in order to sell Bitcoin. And so think about that. Think about much of Bitcoin's worth, which is tens of thousands of dollars. [00:52:07] So it's overall, this is a problem. It's been a very big problem. So people put it into a bank. So coin base is one of the big one coin coin base had its first quarter Ernie's report. Now, this is the us' largest cryptocurrency exchange and they had a quarterly loss for the first quarter of 2022 of 430 million. [00:52:37] That's their loss. And they had an almost 20% drop in monthly users of coin. So that's something right. And they put it in their statement, their quarterly statement here as to, you know, what's up. Well, here's the real scary part Coinbase said in its earning earnings report. Last Tuesday that it holds the. [00:53:03] 256 billion in both Fiat currencies and crypto currencies on behalf of its customers. So Fiat currencies are, are things like the federal reserve notes, our us dollar. Okay. A quarter of a trillion dollars that it's holding for other people kind of think of it like a bank. However, they said in the event, Coinbase we ever declare bankruptcy, quote, the crypto assets. [00:53:33] We hold in custody on behalf of our customers could be subject to bankruptcy proceedings. Coinbase users would become general unsecured creditors, meaning they have no right to claim any specific property from the exchange in proceedings people's funds would become inaccessible. Very big deal. Very scary for a very, very good reason. [00:54:00] Hey, when we come back, uh, websites, you know, you go, you type stuff in email address, do you know? You don't even have to hit submit. In most cases, they're stealing it. [00:54:12] I'm sure you've heard of JavaScript in your browser. This is a programming language that actually runs programs right there in your web browser, whether you like it or not. And we just had a study on this. A hundred thousand websites are collecting your. Information up-front. [00:54:29] I have a, in my web browser, I have JavaScript turned off for most websites that I go to now, JavaScript is a programming language and it lets them do some pretty cool things on a webpage. [00:54:43] In fact, that's the whole idea behind Java. Uh, just like cookies on a web browser where they have a great use, which is to help keep track of what you're doing on the website, where you're going, pulling up other information that you care about, right? Part of your navigation can be done with cookies. They go on and on in their usefulness, but. [00:55:06] Part of the problem is that people are using them to track you online. So like Facebook and many others will go ahead and have their cookies on other websites. So they know where you're going, what you're doing, even when you're not on Facebook, that's by the way, part of. The Firefox browser's been trying to overcome here. [00:55:30] They have a special fenced in mode that happens automatically when you're using Firefox on Facebook. Pretty good. Pretty cool. The apple iOS devices. Use a different mechanism. And in fact, they're already saying that Facebook and some of these others who sell advertiser, Infor advertisers information about you have really had some major losses in revenue because apple is blocking their access to certain information about you back to Javas. [00:56:07] It's a programming language that they can use to do almost anything on your web browser. Bad guys have figured out that if they can get you to go to a website or if they can insert and add onto a page that you're visiting, they can then use. Your web browser, because it's basically just a computer to do what well, to mind Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. [00:56:33] So you are paying for the electricity for them as your computer is sitting there crunching on, uh, these algorithms that they need to use to figure out how to find the next Bitcoin or whatever. Be, and you are only noticing that your device is slowing down. For instance, our friends over on the Android platform have found before that sometimes their phones are getting extremely hot, even when they're not using them. [00:57:00] And we've found that yeah, many times that's just a. Bitcoin minor who has kind of taken over partial control of your phone just enough to mind Bitcoin. And they did that through your web browser and JavaScript. So you can now see some of the reasons that I go ahead and disable JavaScript on most websites I go to now, some websites aren't gonna work. [00:57:23] I wanna warn you up front. If you go into your browser settings and turn off JavaScript, you are going. Break a number of websites, in fact, many, many websites that are out there. So you gotta kind of figure out which sites you want it on, which sites don't you want it on. But there's another problem that we have found just this week. [00:57:44] And it is based on a study that was done. It's reported in ours Technica, but they found. A hundred thousand top websites, a hundred thousand top websites. These include signing up for a newsletter making hotel reservation, checking out online. Uh, you, you probably take for granted that you nothing happens until you hit submit, right? [00:58:10] That used to be the case in web 1.0 days. It isn't anymore. Now I wanna point out we, I have thousands of people who are on my email list. So every week they get my, my, uh, insider show notes. So these are the top articles of the week. They are, you know, usually six to 10 articles, usually eight of them that are talking about cybersecurity, things of importance in. [00:58:38] The whole radio show and podcast are based on those insider show notes that I also share with the host of all of the different radio shows and television shows that I appear on. Right. It's pretty, pretty cool. So they get that, but I do not use this type of technology. Yeah. There's some JavaScript that'll make a little sign up thing, come up at the top of the screen, but I am not using technology that is in your face or doing. [00:59:07] What these people are doing, right? So you start filling out a form. You haven't hit cement. And have you noticed all of a sudden you're getting emails from. Right. It's happened to me before. Well, your assumption about hitting submit, isn't always the case. Some researchers from KU LUN university and university of Lue crawled and analyzed the top 100,000 websites. [00:59:37] So crawling means they have a little robot that goes to visit the webpage, downloads all of the code that's on the page. And then. Analyzed it all right. So what they found was that a user visiting a site, if the, the user is in the European union is treated differently than someone who visits the site from the United States. [01:00:00] Now there's a good reason for this. We've helped companies with complying with the GDPR, which are these protection rules that are in place in the European union. And that's why you're seeing so many websites. Mine included that say, Hey, listen, we do collect some information on you. You can click here to find out more and some websites let just say no, I don't want you to have any information about me. [01:00:25] We collect information just so that you can navigate the site properly. Okay. Very basic, but that's why European union users are treated differently than those coming from the United States. So this new research found that over 1800 websites gathered an EU user's email address without their consent. So it's almost 2000 websites out of the top 100,000. [01:00:54] If you're in the EU and they found. About well, 3000 websites logged a us user's email in some form. Now that's, before you hit submit. So you start typing in your email, you type in your name and you don't hit submit. Many of the sites are apparently grabbing that information, putting it into the database and maybe even starting using it before you gave them explicit permission to do. [01:01:27] Isn't that a fascinating and the 1800 sites that gathered information on European news union users without their consent are breaking the law. That's why so many us companies decided they had to comply with the GDPR because it's a real big problem. So these guys also crawled websites for password leaks and May, 2021. [01:01:54] And they found 52 websites where third parties, including Yex Yex is. Big Russian search engine a and more were collecting password data before submission. So since then the group went ahead and let the websites know what was happening, what they found, uh, because it's not necessarily intentional by the website itself. [01:02:20] It might be a third party, a third party piece of software. That's doing it. They, they informed those sites. Hey, listen, you're collecting user data before there's been explicit consent to collect it. In other words, you, before you hit the submit button and they thought, wow, this is a very surprising, they thought they might find a few hundred website, but. [01:02:44] Course of a year now they found that there were over 3000 websites really that were doing this stuff. So they presented their findings at Usenet. Well, actually they haven't presented 'em yet. Cuz it's gonna be at use N's. In August and these are what they call leaky forums. So yet another reason to turn off JavaScript when you can. [01:03:08] But I also gotta add a lot of the forums do not work if JavaScript's not enabled. So we gotta do something about it. Uh, maybe complain, make sure they aren't collecting your. Maybe I should do a little course on that one so you can figure out are they doing it before even giving permission? Anyhow, this is Craig Peter son. [01:03:29] Visit me online. Craig Peter son.com and sign up for that. No obligation inside your show notes. [01:03:35] We are shipping all kinds of military equipment over to Ukraine. And right now they're talking about another $30 billion worth of equipment being shipped to what was the world's number one arms dealer Ukraine. [01:03:52] I'm looking right now at an article that was in the Washington post. And you know, some of their stuff is good. [01:04:00] Some of their stuff is bad, I guess, kinda like pretty much any media outlet, but they're raising some really good points here. One of them is that we are shipping some pretty advanced equipment and some not so advanced equipment to Ukraine. To help them fight in this war to protect themselves from Russia. [01:04:24] Now, you know, all of that, that's, that's pretty common. Ultimately looking back in history, there have been a lot of people who've made a lot of money off of wars. Many of the big banks financing, both sides of wars. Going way, way back and coming all the way up through the 20th century. And part of the way people make money in war time is obviously making the equipment, the, and supplies and stuff that the armies need. [01:04:57] The other way that they do it is by trading in arms. So not just the supplies. The bullets all the way through the advanced missile systems. Now there's been some concerns because of what we have been seen online. We've talked about telegram here before, not the safest web, you know, app to use in order to keep in touch. [01:05:23] It's really an app for your phone and it's being used. Ukraine to really coordinate some of their hacker activities against Russia. They've also been using it in Russia, te telegram that is in order to kind of communicate with each other. Ukraine has posted pictures of some of the killed soldiers from Russia and people have been reaching out to their mothers in Russia. [01:05:53] They've done a lot of stuff with telegram it's interest. And hopefully eventually we'll find out what the real truth is, right? Because all sides in the military use a lot of propaganda, right? The first casualty in war is the truth. It always has been. So we're selling to a country, Ukraine that has made a lot of money off of selling. [01:06:18] Been systems being an inter intermediary. So you're not buying the system from Russia? No, no. You're buying it from Ukraine and it has been of course, just as deadly, but now we are sending. Equipment military great equipment to Ukraine. We could talk about just that a lot. I, I mentioned the whole lend lease program many months ago. [01:06:44] Now it seems to be in the news. Now takes a while for the mainstream media to catch up with us. I'm usually about six to 12 weeks ahead of what they're talking about. And so when we're talking about Lynn Le, it means. We're not giving it to them. We're not selling it to them. We're just lending them the equipment or perhaps leasing it just like we did for the United Kingdom back in world. [01:07:10] Wari, not a bad idea. If you want to get weapons into the hands of an adversary and not really, or not an adversary, but an ally or potential ally against an adversary that you have, and they have. But part of the problem is we're talking about Ukraine here. Ukraine was not invited in NATO because it was so corrupt. [01:07:33] You might remember. they elected a new president over there that president started investigating, hired a prosecutor to go after the corruption in Ukraine. And then you heard president Joe Biden, vice president at the time bragging about how he got this guy shut down. Uh, yeah, he, he got the prosecutor shut down the prosecutor that had his sights on, of course hunter Biden as well as other people. [01:08:00] So it it's a real problem, but. Let's set that aside for now, we're talking about Ukraine and the weapon systems we've been sending over there. There have been rumors out there. I haven't seen hard evidence, but I have seen things in various papers worldwide talking about telegrams, saying. That the Ukrainians have somehow gotten their hands on these weapons and are selling them on telegram. [01:08:29] Imagine that, uh, effectively kind of a dark web thing, I guess. So we're, we're saying, well, you know, Biden administration, uh, you know, yeah. Okay. Uh, that, that none of this is going to happen. Why? Well, because we went ahead and we put into the contracts that they could not sell or share or give any of this equipment away without the explicit permission of the United States go. [01:09:00] Well, okay. That, that kind of sounds like it's not a bad idea. I would certainly put it into any contract like this, no question, but what could happen here? If this equipment falls into the hands of our adversaries or, or other Western countries, NATO countries, how do you keep track of them? It it's very hard to do. [01:09:22] How do you know who's actually using. Very hard to do so enforcing these types of contracts is very difficult, which makes a contract pretty weak, frankly. And then let's look at Washington DC, the United States, according to the Washington post in mid April, gave Ukraine a fleet of I 17 helicopter. Now these MI 17 helicopters are Russian, originally Soviet designs. [01:09:55] Okay. And they were bought by the United States. About 10 years ago, we bought them for Afghan's government, which of course now has been deposed, but we still have our hands on some of these helicopters. And when we bought them from Russia, We signed a contract. The United States signed a contract promising not to transfer the helicopters to any third country quote without the approval of the Russian Federation. [01:10:27] Now that's according to a copy of the certificate that's posted on the website of Russia's federal service on military technical cooperation. So there you. Russia's come out and said that our transfer, those helicopters has grossly violated the foundations of international law. And, and you know, what they, it has, right. [01:10:48] Arms experts are saying that Russia's aggression Ukraine more than justifies us support, but the violations of the weapons contracts, man, that really hurts our credibility and the, our we're not honoring these contract. How can we expect Ukraine to honor those contracts? That's where the problem really comes in. [01:11:13] And it's ultimately a very, very big problem. So this emergency spending bill that it, you know, the $30 billion. Makes Ukraine, the world's single largest recipient of us security assistance ever. They've received more in 2022 than United States ever provided to Afghanistan, Iraq, or Israel in a single year. [01:11:40] So they're adding to the stockpiles of weapons that we've already committed. We've got 1400 stinger anti-aircraft systems, 5,500 anti tank, Mitch missiles, 700 switch blade drones, nine 90. Excuse me, long range Howards. That's our Tillery 7,000 small arms. 50 million rounds of ammunition and other minds, explosives and laser guided rocket systems, according to the Washington post. [01:12:09] So it's fascinating to look. It's a real problem. And now that we've got the bad guys who are using the dark web, remember the dark web system that we set up, the onion network. Yeah. That one, uh, they can take these, they can sell them, they can move them around. It is a real problem. A very big problem. What are we gonna do when all of those weapons systems come back aimed at us this time? [01:12:40] You know, it's one thing to leave billions of dollars worth of helicopters, et cetera, back in Afghanistan is the Biden administration did with their crazy withdrawal tactic. Um, but at least those will wear out the bullets, missile systems, Howard, yours, huh? Different deal. [01:13:00] It seems like the government calls war on everything, the war against drugs or against poverty. Well, now we are looking at a war against end to end encryption by government's worldwide, including our own. [01:13:17] The European union is following in America's footstep steps, again, only a few years behind this time. [01:13:26] Uh, but it's not a good thing. In this case, you might remember a few have been following cybersecurity. Like I have back in the Clinton administration, there was a very heavy push for something called the clipper chip. And I think that whole clipper chip. Actually started with the Bush administration and it was a bad, bad thing, uh, because what they were trying to do is force all businesses to use this encryption chip set that was developed and promoted by the national security agency. [01:14:04] And it was supposed to be an encryption device that is used to secure, uh, voice and data messages. And it had a built in. Back door that allowed federal state, local law enforcement, anybody that had the key, the ability to decode any intercepted voice or data transmissions. It was introduced in 93 and was thank goodness. [01:14:32] Defunct by 1996. So it used something called skip Jack man. I remember that a lot and it used it to transfer dilly or Diffy excuse me, Hellman key exchange. I've worked with that before crypto keys. It used, it used the, uh, Des algorithm, the data encryption standard, which is still used today. And the Clinton administration argued that the clipper chip. [01:14:59] Absolutely essential for law enforcement to keep up with a constantly progressing technology in the United States. And a lot of people believe that using this would act as frankly, an additional way for terrorists to receive information and to break into encrypted information. And the Clinton administration argued that it, it would increase national security because terrorists would have to use it to communicate with outsiders, bank, suppliers, contacts, and the government could listen in on those calls. [01:15:33] Right. Aren't we supposed to in United States have have a right to be secure in our papers and other things, right? The, the federal government has no right to come into any of that stuff unless they get a court order. So they were saying, well, we would take this key. We'll make sure that it's in a, a lock box, just like Al gore social security money. [01:15:55] And no one would be able to get their hands on it, except anyone that wanted to, unless there was a court order and you know how this stuff goes, right. It, it just continues to progress. And. A lot worse. Well, there was a lot of backlash by it. The electronic privacy information center, electronic frontier foundation boast, both pushed back saying that it would not. [01:16:20] Only have the effect of, of not, excuse me, have the effect of this is a quote, not only subjecting citizens to increased impossibly illegal government surveillance, but that the strength of the clipper trips encryption could not be evaluated by the public as its design. Was classified secret and that therefore individuals and businesses might be hobbled with an insecure communication system, which is absolutely true. [01:16:48] And the NSA went on to do some things like pollute, random number generators and other things to make it so that it was almost impossible to have end-to-end encrypted data. So we were able to kill. Many years ago. Now what about 30 years ago? Uh, when they introduced this thing? Well, it took a few years to get rid of it, but now the EU is out there saying they want to stop end, end encryption. [01:17:15] The United States has already said that, or the new director of Homeland security has, and as well as Trump's, uh, again, Homeland security people said we need to be able to break the. And, and we've talked about some of the stories, real world stories of things that have happened because of the encryption. [01:17:36] So the EU has now got a proposal forward that would force tech companies to scan private messages for child sexual abuse material called CSAM and evidence of grooming. Even when those messages are, are supposed to be protected by end to end encrypt. So we know how this goes, right? It, it sta
Eileen traveled to Valencia, Spain and dodged cyclists to test drive the new Lamborghini Huracán Technica. Then, she went to San Francisco with The Stig to drive the new Lucid Air GT and GT Performance. She and Nicole discuss the models they've been driving their home turf around home lately.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Do You Know Anyone Who Uses TikTok? Kids Are Dying Because of It! TikTok has been in the news for a lot of reasons. It is now confirmed. It is used for Chinese spy operations, but the big problem right now is the kids that are dying because of TikTok. [Automatic transcript follows] You are not alone. I'm Craig Peterson TikTok has been in the crosshairs for quite a while. This is a Chinese company. Tencent is the Chinese company that started them up and they really kind of got their foundation through what you'd call challenges probably. [00:00:37] Everybody remembers the ice bucket challenge and that ice bucket challenge was floating around. They were doing it on YouTube, TikTok everywhere, and it was to benefit really ALS. Which is absolutely kind of fantastic. And this was eight years ago, I guess. I don't know, 10 years, 2014, I think actually, uh, a long time ago. [00:01:03] I remember like it was yesterday and they raised apparently $115 million. The idea was that you would challenge someone else to do this ice bucket challenge and in, so doing, you would donate money to ALS. That is really kind of cool. What a great idea for ALS. So I would, for instance, get challenged by someone who dumped a bucket of ice water over their head. [00:01:34] To do the same and donate to ALS Lou Gehrig's disease. That's kind of cool. Obviously they're not supporting Lou Gehrigs are supporting the research and due stopping it. Right. And people did it. And as I said, $115 million later, ALS research is probably a little further along. You kind of hope so it's easy in a big organization to chew up $115 million. [00:02:00] That's for sure. But bill gates did it. Ton of celebrities did it. And ultimately people took that basic idea and, and tried to put it into other types of fundraisers. You know, that's all well and good, you know, it kind of kind of died down, uh, for a while. They did a whole bunch of other things I'm looking right now, by the way. [00:02:28] Uh, let's see. Yeah, it was ALS association. This is Wikipedia, which is, uh, sometimes to believe be believed most of the time not. And a, the ALS site was where I was quoing from before Wikipedia is saying that. There was over 220 million worldwide raised for ALS research. So it's probably the difference between worldwide and in the us. [00:02:54] So they wanted to make it kind of an annual event. It just didn't happen. And the cold water challenge. It started really in 1991. So they, they took it and they ran with it. Well, one of the things that TikTok has been doing a lot of is challenges and they they're different kinds of challenges. They have musical challenges where someone will. [00:03:20] Post, uh, some music usually by a star of some sort. And they'll go ahead and have a, maybe a dance challenge and maybe a, you know, a challenge for your kitty cat or your dog, whatever, what, whatever it might be. But it's been really good for TikTok to grow. And a lot of people are doing it. Different, crazy things that they've done. [00:03:45] You've got the gorilla glue girl. Do you remember her? she, she decided to use gorilla glue in her hair rather than I guess some sort of, uh, I don't know. Oil or something to hold her hair down. And it definitely held her hair down. She sued, she sued them. It's absolutely crazy what she did. So the gorilla glue girl, probably not really a challenge, but she, uh, this is CRA, this is when the New York post undoubtedly cemented her place on talk's most stupid Mount Rushmore. [00:04:20] Because she slathered her hair with gorilla glue and she had to go in and get it. Surgically repaired. It took four hours, $20,000 in donations came in hundreds of free air products, even a full-time agent. The DIY vampire fangs. Uh, this is crazy. This is in Halloween a couple of years ago. Super gluing costume vampire fangs to your teeth. [00:04:50] Uh, 9 million views on that one. Tooth filing. Oh, this is crazy, absolutely crazy. They I'm, I'm looking at a picture of it right now of the video, one of the videos. Anyway, anyways, it was on TikTok and, uh, you know, this is kind of the realm of toothless TikTok challenges, but. They, uh, they were attempting to fix their uneven smiles by using a nail file to sand their teeth down the incisors. [00:05:24] If they were, were a little bit too big. Oh, man, the dentist got upset about that for very good reason. You're destroying the enamel on the outside of your teeth. Irreparable damage, the face wax challenge. Oh, look at this picture. This is crazy billions of videos in counting. Uh, they they're putting wax, although wax all over people's face. [00:05:50] Oh, my goodness. So they caked the whole face, including the eyes with wax, like it's, you know, casting mold. Have you seen those things before they even have wax dip Q ticks tips stuck in their noses to get rid of those nasal hairs? Oh man. Very, very traumatic. Um, I'm not gonna talk about this one. It involves a sensitive body part, the corn cob challenge. [00:06:22] Uh, this is, uh, cons eating corn by attaching the cob. That or to a spinning drill bit. If you can believe that. Oh man, 22 hamburgers. Here's another one. The cereal challenge. Uh, a person pours milk and cereal into the open mouth of a person laying down and eats breakfast from the human bowl. Choking hazards. [00:06:50] Obviously there, the skull breaker challenge, this apparently started in Venezuela and it depicted three friends jumping next to each other as the book ending, Bud's kick in the middle guy's feet out from under him. So what ends up happening is that person crashes to the ground landing on their back, hitting. [00:07:12] The head in the process injuries reported Miami, New York, New Jersey, Arizona, uh, Dayton beach, Florida police have charged two high school teens with misdemeanor, battery and cyber bullying, Mexico. The penny challenge. Oh my gosh. Um, This involves. And I talked about this one here on the radio, too, taking a penny and putting it on a plug. [00:07:41] So you partially plug. A plug into the wall, into the socket and then you stick a penny behind it to shore out the leads. Yeah. So when the, when the penny or whatever coin you're putting in there hits those metal prongs there's sparks electrical system damage, and some cases fire, uh, them fire marshal down in, uh, one of the towns. [00:08:08] Ostro key, I guess it is in mass. Uh, has a photo of a scorched outlet in Holden. Oh, there you go. Reportedly caused by the viral prank. The Benadryl challenge, Chacha slide, pee your pants. Uh, [00:08:31] there's another one, the other side, verbal abuse challenge, mom and dads verbally abusing their kids. I color them a mistake in some cases mentioning the word abortion. Oh my goodness. Flash mobs. Uh, dipping challenge. Oh, that'll make you sweet eating and swallowing dip and the blackout challenge. That's the one we're talking about right now. [00:08:54] There there's so many of these things. If you don't know what's going on on TikTok, this is it, right. I, I just told you a bunch that are dangerous. Absolutely crazy. Nobody should be doing that sort of stuff, but they are, well, parents are saying now the TikTok failed to act after the first reported death in this blackout challenge, as you can guess, the blackout challenge is where kids black out. [00:09:25] They have to strangle themselves until they pass. This was in my emails this week, this whole thing, I've got a link to some of these articles. You'll find it@craigpeterson.com. If you didn't get it on Tuesday morning, make sure you go to Craig peterson.com and sign up right now. But parents of two girls, these are two of the seven kids that are known to have died from this blackout challenge. [00:09:53] Are suing these girls, their daughters that died were ages eight and nine nine. They're claiming according to ours, Technica that their kids became addicted to TikTok. They were fed a constant stream of seemingly harmless challenge videos, persuading them to participate and then died after attempting the blackout challenge. [00:10:22] So they're seeking damages from TikTok for the product design. Now remember TikTok, isn't the one coming up with these challenges. It's the users who are on TikTok that are coming up with them. Now TikTok did respond. He told the New York, they told the New York times the spokesperson that the, the company would not comment on continuing litigation. [00:10:45] And they also linked a prior company statement to people magazine about a 10 year old girl who also died after attempting the blackout challenge. At that time, TikTok said the disturbing challenge predated their platform and had never become a TikTok. Trend now we know TikTok just a few weeks ago. [00:11:06] Confirmed has been sending all of the videos, all of the user information, everything to China. So there you have it avoid TikTok and man, don't let your kids on it. Stick around. We'll be right back. [00:11:25] Hey, Microsoft is giving me nightmares again, and frankly, much of the cybersecurity community because of their change. They just change direction in a way that is much, much less safe. I, I don't know what's going on there. [00:11:42] We over the years have seen Microsoft be just kind of the bane of our existence. Anybody that's trying to stay secure, it's been terrible. [00:11:55] There's software, just horrible. It was not designed but frankly, find frankly. All it's just crazy. And then they brought Dave Cutler in and I worked on NT, the pre one, oh, versions, windows, NT, their new technology, which kind of underlines all of the modern versions of Microsoft windows. And what happens well, instead of doing things securely, really following in the footsteps of a. [00:12:28] Call print system, digital equipment corporation. They decided to just go completely different direction and, uh, rip things out and must make this compatible with anything that's ever been written, kind of the Intel philosophy. And by doing all of that, they lost all of the wonderful security that VMs had. [00:12:48] This operating system that Dave Cutler had kind of led up over in the deck world. we ended up with a piece of garbage, really? It was just terrible. Oh my goodness. And I I've been absolutely amazed since I got rid of bill gates and got rid of that other guy that was in there running things for a wild bomber, who was just incredibly, just terrible. [00:13:18] Uh, and they've really come a long way. Their new CEO, the last few years has done some. Wonderful things. Some really amazing things here to increase. Microsoft's not just productivity for the users, but their profitability and their cyber security, which is why now I am so. Puzzled, because one of the things that has been a killer for cybersecurity has been this whole concept that micro has Microsoft has of well had anyways of, well, let let's make it so that you can write programs and put them into this spreadsheet. [00:13:56] Visual basic visual C plus plus C. We'll make things ever so much better. And of course, what was visual basic used for in some of our word documents and our Excel documents, it was used to hack our computers. Yes, indeed. The bad guys used a programming language to cause. All kinds of havoc, who would've thought a, so Microsoft decided, well, Hey, listen, uh, we are going to turn off macros by default because they are too dangerous. [00:14:35] Boy, are they too dangerous? Whatever programming language you're using. Come on, look at Java. Java has just been a nightmare as well. Over the years for cybersecurity, it's gotten better. Of course they've tightened it. But I can remember what, 15, 20 years ago, first using Java and seeing all of the problems. [00:14:57] We still got them. I've got a new client that I've been helping. They're a startup and they are using Java for a lot of the stuff that they are writing. And it's a nightmare trying to get them to. Up to date on the Java engines that they're using and, and they're using some that have massive known vulnerabilities and that's kinda what happens with the macros. [00:15:23] It, yeah. Great. Look at, you can write files to desk. You can do all kinds of really cool things. Isn't this just wonderful. Yeah. If the whole world was kind and generous and wasn't trying to break into our computer computers. Uh it's. It's incredible. So in February, 2022, Microsoft announced a major change. [00:15:49] And it put this change in place to, as they said, combat the growing scourge of ransomware and other, uh, really malware attacks. So they're going to block the downloaded macros and office versions, going back to office 20. Team they're gonna be releasing patches for them. And you could still enable macros for these different files, PowerPoint, what, whatever you're doing here, but it's much more difficult to enable it because they are so dangerous. [00:16:24] Absolutely. Dangerous and, uh, well, we can get into all of the details behind it. You know, the zone identifier tag. And if you have an NTFS volume, it can be in there market, the web it's already used in office. They're kind of emulating what apple has been doing for quite some time in order to really try and focus you saying, Hey, listen, you downloaded that app from the internet. [00:16:50] Do you really, really. Really want to use it. Uh, you don't think this through a little bit and sure enough, you know, they decided, yeah, this is a bad idea. We can't let people just run macros willy-nilly uh, by the way, why, why were all these things happening? Well, if I was to boil it down, you probably could read between those lines. [00:17:11] When I was talking earlier really bad. Product management inside Microsoft. Now they've got some great programmers, but, uh, and some great minds there. I, I know a few people, well, I mentioned Cutler who went over there, but I know a lot of other guys that went over there to work for Microsoft, but they just don't have the product management that frankly they need to have. [00:17:35] And that is caused just all kinds of nightmares. So what's happened. Well, Microsoft made a very big announce. They have decided that they are going to let you know, nevermind. Nevermind. They have reversed course, and they're going to allow untrusted macros to be opened by default in word and other office applications. [00:18:05] So, uh, they also said here just a few days ago that, Hey, um, Um, you know, the, nevermind. We said that we are gonna allow macros, uh, just by default in everything. Um, yeah, well that that's gonna be temporary, I guess. It's, you know, temporary in passing just like inflation, right? Don't don't worry about it. Uh, nothing is here. [00:18:28] This is absolutely crazy. Make up your mind. Macros have been the bane of existence for so many. Of us cybersecurity people out there. And another thing too, that's just been really bad is their wonderful little scripting language, their, their power shell, which is being used all the time now by the bad guys to infect machines because your standard malware. [00:19:00] You know, this antivirus software that you buy, the, you know, not the really good stuff, but the stuff that you buy as a consumer would buy you'd get at staples or Walmart or online does not work against it. And again, it's just like, they're stealing again. This one's from the Unix world. We've had shells in Unix since the seventies. [00:19:25] and, uh, you know, they, they just, they do it, they do it wrong. They. And they make it, uh, just worse. I'm shaking my head. I, I, you can tell I am no Microsoft fan, right? Uh, people are using it mainly because businesses buy it. And why do businesses buy it? Because the purchasing guy. Looks for check boxes. Oh yes. [00:19:48] Microsoft windows checks all these boxes and the purchasing guy doesn't care about the user interface. The purchasing guy doesn't really care about how secure it is. It doesn't care about how Des well designed it is. It doesn't care about its network connectivity. So yeah, that's why we have so many copies of windows out there. [00:20:07] This is a sad decision blocking Microsoft office macros would do infinitely more to actually stop real threats out there than all of the Intel blogs that are out there that are telling us about the problems. I just don't get it. It's absolutely crazy. Everybody is criticizing the move that's in the cybersecurity space. [00:20:36] Bad decision again from Microsoft. So make sure your macros are turned off. You can find this article. I sent it out my show notes on Tuesday. Craig peterson.com. [00:20:52] There's been a lot of talked about Elon Musk, this whole Twitter deal. But I think everybody that I have read articles from is missing the boat here. So I'm gonna give you my view of what's happening as a business person, myself. [00:21:08] Elon Musk made a $44 billion bid to buy Twitter. You've I'm sure you've heard of this. [00:21:17] It's been talked about now for months and months and months. And I, I want to talk about what happened from my. Perspective with Elon Musk saying, no, um, this deal is over. I'm not gonna follow through on this. And again, this is my opinion. This is me doing a little bit of mind reading here of, of Elon MOS and maybe one or two of the things that. [00:21:43] That he thought about when he canceled this deal. Now, remember, initially he's put that offer out. And the Twitter board of director said, no, no, no, we're not gonna take it for whatever reason. Right. What's the real reason they might. They, they they'll say what. They want you to hear about what the reason is, but it's not necessarily the reason. [00:22:06] So initially Twitter said, no, we're not gonna do it. And then Twitter said, yeah. Okay. We'll do it because there was frankly, this is again, me, a lot of. People who were investors in Twitter that were pretty upset that this offer from Musk, that was a very good offer. He was offering more than the stock was trading for would go away. [00:22:30] They wanted it. They wanted to get out of Twitter. You know is not what you're supposed to be doing. Right. You're making money. Even if you keep your stock, you're, you're gonna be well vested. And that's what you're trying to do is make some money for yourself or your investors. So many of us have retirement money that's in the stock market. [00:22:52] Yeah. Like you haven't noticed that. Right. There's the, your retirement's gone down by 50% or more it's in the stock market. So you want the people who are running these companies to make good fiscal fiscal decisions so that your money that's invested in there, isn't going away. So you have some money for retirement. [00:23:15] So that pressure on the Twitter board is really what got them to move and say, yeah, we'll accept the offer. Now Elon Musk made that offer based on the valuation of Twitter and its stock, because really what Musk had to do is buy at least a controlling interest in Twitter stock in order to take it over. [00:23:42] So Elon's there saying, okay. I'm offering 44 billion and it is based on public information. How does this work? Public companies have to provide stockholders and investors and, and the general community out there in information about their company. So they'll have things you've probably heard terms like forward looking statements. [00:24:11] They'll say things that Elon Musk has certainly got in trouble before for saying things that weren't done through the securities and exchange commission. So, yeah. Okay, great. Uh, we're not doing, we're not doing as well as we thought we would. Uh, you know, when these companies are making announcements, the, all of these, uh, analysts are looking at what they think they're going to announce and how much of earnings per share they'll have, and whether they're gonna pay dividends. [00:24:45] You've heard about all of this. Well, one of the things that has to go into those security and exchange commission filings, the S E C is the number of actual eyeballs you have. So you see an advertisers interested in how many people are on Twitter and how many people are seeing the ads, cuz that's how they're paying. [00:25:10] Right? That's how they justify paying Twitter to run ads. Makes sense. I think, well, the same thing is true for the investors. They wanna know how many eyeballs are on there because that is what the ads are worth and based on what the ads are worth, that is exactly, uh, what we value the company had. Right? [00:25:35] So, so all of these things and of course more, but those are the core things that go into valuing a business such as Twitter. So Twitter's there, they're putting out the S E C filings and they're telling the securities and exchange commission. Yeah, we have 5% of our Twitter accounts are operated by bots as many as 5%. [00:26:04] That's what they're saying. Now various experts who have looked for the behavior, that would be a bot have said, the number may be closer to 15%. And I've even, I've heard numbers that are saying that the traffic on Twitter could be. Gen bot generated, uh, at 40 to 60% rates. So obviously you have count accounts that are bots, and then you have the traffic that they generate different numbers in both cases. [00:26:37] So you've got all of this traffic being generated by bots, and that means it's not legitimate traffic. now what's a bot, a, a bot is, and you know, I've explained this before. Apologize for people that have heard it, but a, a, a bot is a kind of a robot think of it that way. And these robots go ahead and they repost things. [00:27:06] They post things using hashtags and they're used by evil people. Uh, yeah, I I'm, I'm using that term now. Evil people, people who are trying to get you to do something and are manipulating. so very frequently, we have seen evil people out there who are trying to manipulate the value of a stock by going ahead and using their hashtag their keyword and having bots mention it thousands of times. [00:27:43] So now that keywords going up and you as a regular user on Twitter, you see that keyword, maybe you're doing some research based on that keyword. And you find that yes, indeed. Uh, these people really have, uh, got a great business and this is gonna be fantastic. So they get eyeballs. And hopefully you're clicking through to their website and maybe they're looking for investors. [00:28:10] And so you invest in them. You, you see what they're doing. So instead of getting it organically, instead of doing it the way I've done business, and my, I have a friend that says, Hey, Craig, if you were a, as unethical as these other people, like Zuckerberg, like bill gates, like so many others, if you were unethical, you'd be a billionaire too. [00:28:32] My ethics say that you should not be manipulating people, right? I, if I've got something to offer that you want great, but these bots are used for manipulation purposes only, only. So if it's 5% bots, as much as 5% Twitters has a certain value. And if it's 15%. It has a different value. And that's what Elon Musk has been saying. [00:29:03] What's the real value of Twitter. Now that it's come out, that the number of bots on Twitter is probably much higher than Twitter's been saying. While now you get the securities and exchange commission upset with you, and I bet you, there are investigations underway, criminal and otherwise against Twitter. [00:29:29] And more than we've even heard about. So Elon Musk would be a fool to buy Twitter. And when you buy a company, you inherit all of its problems, including its lawsuits and potential lawsuits. So can you imagine the tens hundreds of millions of dollars they're gonna be spent defending Twitter and its board of directors? [00:29:55] If indeed these things are true. Yeah. Hey, I've got a great article this week from the orange county register, talking about this, explaining. It all out, not as well as I did, but make sure you get my newsletter. My insider show notes, Tuesday mornings, Craig Peter son.com. [00:30:16] Our technology related businesses. Now this includes everybody from apple, all the way through, um, car manufacturers, like Ford or GM. They have a disaster scenario that we're gonna talk about right now. And hopefully it doesn't happen. [00:30:33] I have been kind of warning about this for a while. And I definitely been thinking about this for a long while and a great article that came out in nine to five Mac this week that I have a link to in my newsletter. [00:30:50] This is in my insider show notes newsletter that comes out Tuesday mornings. This is the, the same show notes that I use. For the radio show and for my radio and television appearances. So make sure you are subscribed to keep you up to date. And of course you can subscribe right@craigpeterson.com. So this is a great little article it's titled Apple's disaster scenario is a real possibility. [00:31:23] Say us and UK security services. What is the disaster scenario? It is the Chinese takeover of Taiwan, which would be very bad. We're about to explain why China, you probably have heard this before. Claims Taiwan is its own and Taiwan claims mainland China as its own, as they. Had, uh, the, the rulers, if you will, of China at the time of the communist takeover fled to Taiwan, basically a government in exile. [00:32:00] So good luck Taiwan taking over China again, that that just isn't gonna happen. But the other side really. Could happen. So the heads of both the us and UK security services gave an unprecedented warning. This is I five and FBI heads. And, uh, of course that's director Christopher Ray. They're very, very worried. [00:32:30] This is an unprecedented joint appearance in London. You probably did not hear about this anywhere else. This might be the first time you're hearing about it, but they said that China was quote the biggest long term threat to our economic and national. Security. They talked about how China's interfered in the politics, including recent elections. [00:32:55] Of course, I've talked about that here. And of course, Russia also does some of that, but China, China, excuse me, is the real threat. I five's had said that they have more than doubled the work against Chinese activity in the last three years. They're going to be doubling it again. I five is now running seven times as many investigations related to China. [00:33:21] Compared to 2018, uh, FBIs Christopher Ray warn that if China was to forcibly take Taiwan, it would represent one of the most horrific business disruptions the world has ever. Scene. And then China responded and said that the I five was trying to hype up the China threat theory, casting away imagined demon. [00:33:48] Think about what happened with the lockdown. Have you heard about any sort of shortage shortage in semiconductors in computer chip? Yeah, of course you have. We've got major automobile manufacturers that have had to shut down lines, shut down shifts because they can't get the computers to control the cars. [00:34:12] Cars are being shipped without seat heaters. They're being shipped without electric windows, even because they cannot get the chips. And that's because of a lock. Not a war, not China invading Taiwan. You see the problem is that Taiwan makes almost all of our chips that are used today in computers. and then China assembles much of the computer technology that we have today now. [00:34:49] Yes, the, the top quality, the top technology manufacturing devices for chips comes from the [00:35:01] United States, but it's sitting in Taiwan. So this becomes a very, very big problem. So let's talk about Apple's disaster scenario, cuz it's, it's absolutely horrifying because apple is hugely dependent on Taiwan. You've got the, a series M series S series chips all fabricated by TSMC that's Taiwan, semiconductor manufacturing company. [00:35:30] Almost all of the apple production takes place in the company's plants. Within Taiwan, an armed conflict would have a devastating impact on Taiwan and its people and would cause massive disruption to manufacturing operations. What kind of manufacturing? Semiconductor who needs semiconductors? Pretty much everybody in the United States. [00:35:58] Even if you are not reliant on high tech in your manufacturing, uh, you know, to include chips in your designs, which really light bulbs have computer chips in them nowadays, you are reliant on semiconductors for your manufacturing lines themselves, the controllers that are there, the robots that are. So the second point in this nine to five article is that it's inevitable that the us and most of the rest of the world would respond to the Chinese takeover of Taiwan. [00:36:36] The same way that the world has responded to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And that is sanction. So think about that. Let's say that China just marches in and takes over. No bloodshed, no buildings destroyed no problem with shipping, but we would all implement sanctions. Now, if the sanctions are as wide ranging as the ones that have been imposed on Russia, apple could no longer give any business to Chinese companies. [00:37:14] which is where the vast majority of the apple products are manufactured. That's your iPhones, your iPads, your apple watches, your Mac, you name. The greatest volume of every apple product is assembled in China with a lot of the components made there as well and made in Taiwan. So we just cannot overlook the threat that it's posing to apple. [00:37:40] And the facts that the fact that the, uh, heads of the MI five and FBI have chosen for the first time ever to raise this scenario as a real and present danger. So it's something that's gotta be terrifying, apple senior execs. Now we've been talking about apple here, but we're really talking about every. [00:38:03] Four GM Chrysler all have parts that are coming using just in time inventory techniques from China and from Taiwan. The same thing is true for our European partners. Look at VW. They're just in time manufacturing. Also relies on Taiwan and on China for the parts to arrive just in time. Now, many parts are coming from different parts of the world. [00:38:35] Many of our companies are smartening up saying, well, maybe we don't want to make everything in China. A lot of it's moving to different parts of Southeast. and it it's helping a lot of people in Southeast Asia. Some of this stuff is actually moved from China to different countries in Africa, particularly when we're talking about textile operations. [00:39:01] but you are not gonna be able to get your windows PC either because your windows PC needs those chips, whether it's made by Dell quote unquote made by Dell, right? Who, who gets parts and they're sitting in the parts bins, and they assemble your computer for you or HP or Cisco, or whoever makes your. So this is a huge, huge deal. [00:39:28] Absolutely crazy deal. The Chinese takeover of Taiwan. And I think that this war in Ukraine that was started by Russia has been a blessing in disguise for every last one of us, because China's ambitions to take over Taiwan, I think have been stalled. because of what they have seen in Ukraine, but also because Russia is a partner with China in so many ways, China and India have been buying oil and gas from Russia at substantially discounted prices because of the Ukraine war. [00:40:13] So China doesn't want to step on Russia's foot. They have seen what the sanctions have done to Russia. In some ways they've really helped the Russian economy because now they're getting people buying rubles so that they can buy the oil from Russia instead of using the us dollar, the petrol dollar that's been in place for so long. [00:40:36] So it, you know, sanctions are a two edge sword. Ultimately I think they. Us more than they hurt Russia and they would hurt China more than they hurt us. But what we're looking at is a short period period of time, relatively speaking, transitory, that we would be hurt pretty badly because of the sanctions. [00:41:00] I mean really badly. Oh, my goodness. The things that these, uh, modern administrations have been doing, right. Oh, I wish it was, was different. Uh, let's talk a bit about the Z. He has made what a ink magazine is calling a huge mistake and ink is predicting. It really could destroy meta and Facebook. [00:41:26] Zuckerberg came out and said in public, realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who should not be here. Zuckerberg said he's turning up the heat. And he's really adding some unnecessary pressure, making a bad situation, worse and prioritizing ruthlessly. As he said, with stricter management and monitoring of employee performance is moving a lot of. [00:41:57] People into second place, third place, it's prioritizing the bottom line while forgetting the people who are responsible for the company's success. So expect a real down environment as employees move, frankly, out of meta and Facebook. And then of course the whole thing that happened recently with Carol Sandberg over there a second in command. [00:42:25] I guess it's kind of a mess. Hey, visit me online. Make sure you get my newsletters. Craig Peter san.com/subscribe. [00:42:34] Facebook's about 18 years old coming on 20 Facebook has a lot of data. How much stuff have you given Facebook? You know, did you fall victim for that? Hey, upload your contacts. We'll find your friends. Well, they don't know where your data is. [00:42:51] This whole thing with Facebook has kind of exploded here lately. [00:42:56] There is an article that had appeared on a line from our friends over at, I think it was, yeah. Let me see here. Yeah. Yeah. Motherboard. I was right. And motherboards reporting that Facebook doesn't know what it does with your data or. It goes now, you know, there's always a lot of rumors about different companies and particularly when they're big company and the, the news headlines are kind of grabbing your attention. [00:43:30] And certainly Facebook can be one of those companies. So where did motherboard get this opinion about Facebook? Just being completely clueless about your personal data? well, it came from a leaked document. Yeah, exactly. So I, we find out a lot of stuff like that. Right. I used to follow a, a website about companies that were going to go under and they posted internal memos. [00:44:04] It basically got sued out of existence, but there's no way that Facebook is gonna be able to Sue this one out of existence because they are describing this as. Internally as a tsunami of privacy regulations all over the world. So of course, if you're older, we used to call those TIAL waves, but think of what the implication there is of a tsunami coming in and just overwhelming everything. [00:44:33] So Facebook internally, they, their engineers are trying to figure out, okay, so how do we deal? People's personal data. It's not categorized in ways that regulators want to control it. Now there's a huge problem right there. You've got third party data. You've got first party data. You've got sensitive categories, data. [00:44:57] They might know what religion you are, what your persuasions are in various different ways. There's a lot of things they might know about you. How are they all CATA categorized? Now we've got the European union. With their gen general data protection regulation. The GDPR we talked about when it came into effect back in 2018, and I've helped a few companies to comply with that. [00:45:22] That's not my specialty. My specialty is the cybersecurity side. But in article five, this European law mandates that personal data must be collected for specified explicit and legitimate purposes and not further processed in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes. So what that means is that every piece of data, like where you are using Facebook or your religious orientation, Can only be collected and used for a specific purpose and not reused for another purpose. [00:46:00] So there's an example here that vice is giving in past Facebook, took the phone number that users provided to protect their accounts with two factor authentication and fed it to its people, you know, feature as well as. Advertisers. Yeah. Interesting. Eh, so Gizmoto with the help of academic researchers caught Facebook doing this, and eventually the company had to stop the practice. [00:46:27] Cuz this goes back to the earlier days where Facebook would say, Hey, find out if your friends are on Facebook, upload your contacts right now. And most people. Right. What did you know back then about trying to keep your data private, to try and stop the proliferation of information about you online and nothing. [00:46:48] Right? I think I probably even uploaded it back then thinking, well, that'd be nice to see if I got friends here. We can start chatting, et cetera. Well, according to legal experts that were interviewed by motherboard who wrote this article and has a copy of the internal me, uh, memo, this European regulation specifically prohibits that kind of repurposing of your phone number of trying to put together the social graph and the leak document shows that Facebook may not even have the ability to limit. [00:47:24] how it handles users data. Now I was on a number of radio stations this week, talking about this and the example I gave, I is just look at an average business from the time it start, you know, Facebook started how right. Well, you scrape in pictures of young women off of Harvard universities. Main catalog, right. [00:47:48] Contact page, and then asking people, well, what do you think of this rate? This person rate that person and off they go, right. Trying to rate them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All that matters to a woman, at least according to mark Zuckerberg or all that matters about a woman is how she looks. Right. Do I think she's pretty or not ridiculous what he was doing? [00:48:08] I, it just, oh, that's Zuckerberg, right? That's. Who he is not a great guy anyways. So you go from stealing pictures of young ladies asking people to rate them, putting together some class information and stuff there at Harvard, and then moving on to other universities and then opening up even wider and wider. [00:48:33] And of course, that also created demand cuz you can't get on. If you're not at one of the universities that we have set it up for. And then you continue to grow. You're adding these universities, certain you're starting to collect data and you're making more money than God. So what do you do? Well, you don't have to worry about inefficiencies. [00:48:54] I'll tell you that. Right. One thing you don't have to do is worry about, oh, GE we've got a lot of redundant work going on here. We've got a lot of teams working on basically the same thing. No, you've got more money than you can possibly shake a stick at. So now you go ahead and send that, uh, money to this group or that group. [00:49:16] And they put together all of the basic information, right. That, that they want. They are. Pulling it out of this database and that database, and they're doing some correlation writing some really cool sequel queries with some incredible joins and everything else. Right. And now that becomes part of the main code for Facebook. [00:49:38] And then Facebook goes on to the next little project and they do the same thing. Then the next project, then the next project. And then someone comes along and says, uh, Hey, we. This feature, that feature for advertisers and then in that goes, and then along comes candidate Obama. And, uh, they, one of the groups inside Facebook says, yeah, yeah, yeah, here, here we go. [00:50:03] Here's all of the information we have about everybody and it's free. Don't worry about it. Right. And then when Trump actually bought it and hired a company to try and process some of that information he got in trouble. No, no, no, but, but the Obama. The whole campaign could get access to anything they wanted to, again, because the data wasn't controlled, they had no idea who was doing what with the data. [00:50:30] And according to this internal memo, they still don't know. They don't even know if they can possibly, uh, comply with these regulations, not just in Europe, but we have regulations in pretty much all of the 50 states in the us Canada of course, has their own Australia, New Zealand think about all the places. [00:50:53] Facebook makes a lot of money. So here's a quote from that we build systems with open borders. The result of these open systems and open culture is well described with an analogy. Imagine you hold a bottle of ink in your hand, the bottle of ink is a mixture of all kinds of user data. You pour that ink into a lake of water. [00:51:15] Okay. And it flows every. The document red. Right. So how do you put that ink back in the bottle, in the right bottle? How do you organize it again? So that it only flows to the allowed places in the lake? They're totally right about that. Where did they collect it from it? Apparently they don't even know where they got some of this information. [00:51:39] This data from kind of reminds me of the no fly list. Right. You don't know you're on it and you can't get yourself off of it. Right. It is kind of crazy. So this document that we're talking about was written last year by. Privacy engineers on the ad and business product team, whose mission is to make meaningful connections between people and businesses and which quote sits at the center of a monetization strategy monetization strategy. [00:52:06] And is the engine that powers Facebook's growth. interesting, interesting problems. And, and I see this being a problem well into the future for more and more of these companies, look at Twitter as an example that we've all heard about a lot lately. And I've talked about as well along comes Elon Musk and he says, well, wait a minute now. [00:52:28] Now I can make Twitter way more profitable. We're gonna get rid of however many people it's well over a thousand, and then we are going to hire more people. We're gonna start charging. We're gonna be more efficient. You can bet all of these redundancies that are in Facebook are also there on Twitter. and Twitter also has to comply with all of these regulations that Facebook is kind of freaking out about. [00:52:56] Well, it, for really a very good reason. So this document is available to anybody who wants to look at it. I'm looking at it right now, talking about regulatory landscape and the fundamental problems Facebook's data lake. And this is a problem that most companies have not. As bad as Facebook does, but most companies, right. [00:53:21] You grow. I, I have yet to walk into a business that needs help with cybersecurity and find everything in place as it should be, because it grew organically. Right. You, you started out with a little consumer firewall, router and wifi, and then you added to it and you put a switch here and you added another switch behind that and move things around. [00:53:44] This is normal. This is not total incompetence on the part of the management, but my gosh, I don't know. Maybe they need an Elon Musk. Just straighten them out as well. Hey, stick around. I'll be right back and sign up online@craigpeterson.com. [00:54:03] Apparently looting is one of the benefits of being a Russian soldier. And according to the reports coming out of Ukraine, they've been doing it a lot, but there's a tech angle on here that is really turning the tables on these Russian looters. [00:54:20] Thanks for being with me today. I really appreciate it. And I'm honored, frankly, to be in front of this microphone. , this is really something, you know, we, we know in wars, there are people that loot and typically the various militaries try and make sure, at least recently that that looting is kept to an absolute minimum. [00:54:43] Certainly the Americans, the British, even the Nazis during world war II, the, the, uh, the socialists they're in. Germany, uh, they, they tried to stop some of the looting that was going on. I, I think that's probably a very good thing, right. Because what you end up with is just all of these locals that are just totally upset with you. [00:55:12] I found a great article on the guardian and there's a village. Had been occupied for about a month by Russian troops and the people came back, they are just shocked to see what happened. They're giving a few examples of different towns. They found that alcohol was stolen and they left empty bottles behind food rappers, cigarette butts, thrown all over the place in apartments and homes. [00:55:41] Piles of feces blocking the toilets, family photographs torn, thrown around the house. They took away all of the clothes. This is a code from one of the people, literally everything, male and female coats, boots, shirts, jackets, even my dresses and lingerie. This is really, really something. Uh, it, the Soviets didn't do this, but now Russian. [00:56:05] Military apparently does. So over the past couple of weeks, there've been reporting from numerous places where Russian troops had occupied Ukrainian territory and the guardian, which is this UK newspaper collected evidences suggests looting by Russian forces was not merely a case of a few way, word soldiers, but a systematic part of Russian military behavior across multiple towns. [00:56:32] And villages. That's absolutely amazing. Another quote here, people saw the Russian soldiers loading everything onto Euro trucks, everything they could get their hands on a dozen houses on the villages. Main street had been looted as well as the shops. Other villagers reported losing washing machines, food laptops, even as sofa, air conditioners. [00:56:56] Being shipped back, just like, you know, you might use ups here, they have their equivalent over there. A lady here who was the head teacher in the school. She came back in, of course, found her home Lood and in the head teacher's office. she found an open pair of scissors that had been jammed into a plasma screen that was left behind because if they can't steal it, they're gonna destroy it. [00:57:22] They don't only leave anything behind. They found the Russians had taken most of the computers, the projectors and other electronic equipment. It, it, it's incredible. So let's talk about the turnaround here. A little. You might have heard stories about some of these bad guys that have smashed and grabbed their way into apple stores. [00:57:42] So they get into the apple store. They grab laptops on iPads, no longer iPods, cuz they don't make those anymore. And I phones. And they take them and they run with them. Well, nowadays there's not a whole lot of use for those. Now what they have been doing, some of these bad guys is, is they take some parts and use them in stolen equipment. [00:58:09] They sell them on the used market, et cetera. But when you're talking about something specific, like an iPhone that needs specific activation. Completely different problem arises for these guys because that iPhone needs to have a SIM card in order to get onto the cell network. And it also has built in serial numbers. [00:58:32] So what happens in those cases while apple goes ahead and disables them. So as soon as they connect to the internet, let's say they put 'em on wifi. They don't get a SIM card. They don't. service from T-Mobile or Verizon or whoever it might be. So now they disconnect to the wifi and it calls home, cuz it's gonna get updates. [00:58:52] So on download stuff from the app store and they find that it's been bricked. Now you can do that with a lot of mobile device managers that are available for. All kinds of equipment nowadays, but certainly apple equipment where if a phone is lost or stolen or a laptop or other pieces of equipment, you can get on the MDM and disable it, have it remotely erased, et cetera. [00:59:18] Now, police have had some interesting problems with that. Because a bad guy might go ahead and erase a smartphone. That's in the evidence locker at the police station. So they're, they're doing things like putting them into Fairday cages or static bags or other things to try and stop that. So I think we've established here that the higher tech equipment is pretty well protected. [00:59:42] You steal it. It's not gonna do you much. Good. So one of the things the Russian stole when they were in, uh, it's called, uh, I think you pronounce it. Uh, Mela me pole, uh, which is again, a Erian city is they stole all of the equipment from a farm equipment dealership and shipped it to Chenia. Now that's according to a source in, uh, a businessman in the area that CNN is reporting on. [01:00:15] So they shipped this equipment. We're talking about combines harvesters worth 300 grand a piece. They shipped it 700 miles. and the thieves were ultimately unable to use the equipment, cuz it had been locked remotely. So think about agriculture equipment that John Deere, in this case, these pieces of equipment, they, they drive themselves. [01:00:42] It's autonomous. It goes up and down the fields. Goes any pattern that you want to it'll bring itself within a foot or an inch of your boundaries, right. Of your property being very, very efficient the whole time, whether it's planting or harvesting, et cetera. And that's just a phenomenal thing because it saves so much time for the farmer makes it easier to do the companies like John Deere. [01:01:08] Want to sell as many pieces of this equipment as they possibly can. And farming is known to be a, what not terribly profitable business. It certainly isn't like Facebook. So how can they get this expensive equipment into the hands of a lot of farmers? Well, what they do is they lease it. So you can lease the equipment through leasing company or maybe directly from the manufacturer and now you're off and running. [01:01:36] But what happens if the lease isn't paid now? It's one thing. If you don't pay your lease on a $2,000 laptop, right? They're probably not gonna come hunting for you, but when you're talking about a $300,000 harvester, they're more interested. So the leasing company. Has titled to the equipment and the leasing company can shut it off remotely. [01:02:02] Right? You see where I'm going with this so that they can get their equipment in the hands of more farmers cuz the farmers can lease it. It costs them less. They don't have to have a big cash payment. Right? You see how this all works. So when the Russian forces stole this equipment, that's valued. Total value here is about $5 million. [01:02:23] They were able to shut it all. And obviously, if you can't start the engine, because it's all shut off and it's all run by computers nowadays, and you know, there's pros and cons to that. I think there's a lot of cons, but, uh, what are you gonna do? How's that gonna work for you? Well, it. Isn't going to work for you. [01:02:44] And they were able to track it. It had GPS trackers find out exactly where it was. That's how they know it was taken to Chenia and could be controlled remotely. And in this case, how'd they control it. Well, they completely. Shut it off. Even if they sell the harvesters for spare parts, they'll learn some money, but they sure can be able to sell 'em for the 300 grand that they were actually worth. [01:03:10] Hey, stick around. We'll be right back and visit me online@craigpeterson.com. If you sign up there, you'll be able to get my insider show note. And every week I have a quick five. Training right there in your emails, Craig Peter san.com. That's S O N in case you're wondering. [01:03:36] If you've been worried about ransomware, you are right to worry. It's up. It's costly. And we're gonna talk about that right now. What are the stats? What can you do? What happens if you do get hacked? Interesting world. [01:03:51] Ransomware has been a very long running problem. I remember a client of ours, a car dealership who we had gone in. [01:04:03] We had improved all of their systems and their security and one of their. People who was actually a senior manager, ended up downloading a piece of ransomware, one of these encrypted ones and opened it up and his machine, all of a sudden TA, guess what it had ransomware on it. One of those big reds. [01:04:25] Greens that say pay up is send us this much Bitcoin. And here's our address. Right. All of that sort of stuff. And he called us up and said, what what's going on here? What happened? Well, first of all, don't bring your own machine into the office. Secondly, don't open up particularly encrypted files using the password that they gave. [01:04:48] and thirdly, we stopped it automatically. It did not spread. We were able to completely restore his computer. Now let's consider here at the consequences of what happened. So he obviously was scared. Uh, and within a matter of a couple of hours, we actually had him back to where he was and it didn't spread. [01:05:16] So the consequences there, they, they weren't that bad. But how about if it had gotten worse? How about if they ransomware. Also before it started holding his computer ransom, went out and found all of the data about their customers. Right. Would, do you think an auto dealership would love to hear that all of their customer data was stolen and released all of the personal data of all of their customers? [01:05:43] Right? Obviously not. So there's a potential cost there. And then how long do you think it would take a normal company? That thinks they have backups to get back online. Well, I can tell you it'll take quite a while because the biggest problem is most backups don't work. We have yet to go into a business that was actually doing backups that would work to help restore them. [01:06:10] And if you're interested, I can send you, I I've got something. I wrote up. Be glad to email it back to you. Uh, obviously as usual, no charge. and you'll be able to go into that and figure out what you should do. Cause I, I break it down into the different types of backups and why you might want to use them or why you might not want to use them, but ransomware. [01:06:34] Is a kind of a pernicious nasty little thing, particularly nowadays, because it's two, two factor, right. First is they've encrypted your data. You can't get to it. And then the second side of that is okay, well, I can't get to my data and now they're threatening to hold my data ransom or they'll release. So they they'll put it out there. [01:06:58] And of course, if you're in a regulated industry, which actually car dealers are because they deal with financial transactions, leases, loans, that sort of thing, uh, you can lose your license for your business. You can U lose your ability to go ahead and frankly, uh, make loans and work with financial companies and financial instruments. [01:07:22] It could be a very, very big deal. so there are a lot of potential things that can happen all the way from losing your reputation as a business or an individual losing all of the money in your operating account. And we, again, we've got a client that, uh, we picked up afterwards. That, uh, yes, indeed. They lost all of the money in their operating account. [01:07:47] And, uh, then how do you make payroll? How do you do things? Well, there's a new study that came out from checkpoint. Checkpoint is one of the original firewall companies and they had a look at ransomware. What are the costs of ransomware? Now bottom line, I'm looking at some stats here on a couple of different sites. [01:08:07] Uh, one is by the way, KTI, which is a big ransomware gang that also got hacked after they said we are going to attack anyone that. Uh, that doesn't defend Vlad's invasion of Ukraine, and then they got hacked and their information was released, but here's ransomware statistics. This is from cloud words. Uh, first of all, the largest ransom demand is $50 million. [01:08:36] And that was in 2021 to Acer big computer company. Now 37% of businesses were hit by ransomware. In 2021. This is amazing. They're they're expecting by 2031. So in about a decade, ransomware is gonna be costing about $265 billion a year. Now on average, uh, Ransomware costs businesses. 1.8, 5 million to recover from an attack. [01:09:08] Now that's obviously not a one or two person place, but think of the car dealer again, how much money are they going to make over the year or over the life of the business? Right? If you're a car dealer, you have a to print money, right? You you're selling car model or cars from manufacturer X. And now you have the right to do that and they can remove that. [01:09:31] Right? How many tens, hundreds of millions of dollars might that end up costing you? Yeah. Big deal. Total cost of ransomware last year, 20 billion. Now these are the interesting statistics here right now. So pay closer attention to this 32% of ransomware victims paid a ransom demand. So about her third paid ransom demand. [01:09:56] Last. it's it's actually down. Cuz my recollection is it used to be about 50% would pay a ransom. Now on average that one third of victims that paid a ransom only recovered 65% of their data. Now that differs from a number I've been using from the FBI. That's a little bit older that was saying it's it's a little, little better than 50%, but 65% of pain victims recovered their data. [01:10:26] Now isn't that absolutely amazing. Now 57% of companies are able to recover the data using a cloud backup. Now think about the different types of backup cloud backup is something that can work pretty well if you're a home user, but how long did it take for your system to get backed? Probably took weeks, right? [01:10:50] For a, a regular computer over a regular internet line. Now restoring from backup's gonna be faster because your down link is usually faster than your uplink. That's not true for businesses that have real internet service, like, uh, ours. It it's the same bandwidth up as it is down. But it can take again, days or weeks to try and recover your machine. [01:11:13] So it's very, very expensive. And I wish I had more time to go into this, but looking at the costs here and the fact that insurance companies are no longer paying out for a lot of these ransomware attacks, it could be incredibly expensive for you incredibly. So here you. The number one business types by industry for ransomware tax retail. [01:11:46] That makes sense. Doesn't it. Real estate. Electrical contractors, law firms and wholesale building materials. Isn't that interesting? And that's probably because none of these people are really aware, conscious of doing what, of keeping their data secure of having a good it team, a good it department. So there's your bottom line. [01:12:14] Uh, those are the guys that are getting hit. The most, the numbers are increasing dramatically and your costs are not just in the money. You might pay as a ransom. And so, as it turns out in pretty much every case prevention. Is less expensive and much better than the cure of trying to pay ransom or trying to restore from backups. [01:12:40] Hey, you're listening to Craig Peterson. You can get my weekly show notes by just going to Craig peterson.com. And I'll also send you my special report on how to do passwords stick around will be right back. [01:12:58] You know, you and I have talked about passwords before the way to generate them and how important they are. And we we'll go over that again a little bit in just a second, but there is a new standard out there that will eliminate the need for passwords. [01:13:15] Passwords are kind of an, a necessary evil, at least they have been forever. I, I remember, I think the only system I've ever really used that did not require passwords was the IBM 360. [01:13:32] Yeah, 360, you know, you punch up the cards, all of the JCL you feed the card deck in and off it goes. And does this little thing that was a different day, a different era. When I started in college in university, we. We had remote systems, timeshare systems that we could log into. And there weren't much in the line of password requirements in, but you had a username. [01:14:01] You had a simple password. And I remember one of our instructors, his name was Robert, Andrew Lang. And, uh, his password was always some sort of a combination of RA Lang. So it was always easy to guess what his, what his password was. Today, it has gotten a lot worse today. We have devices with us all of the time. [01:14:24] You might be wearing a smart watch. That requires a password. You of course probably have a smart phone. That's also maybe requiring a password, certainly after boots nowadays they use fingerprints or facial recognition, which is handy, but has its own drawbacks. But how about the websites? You're going to the systems you're using when you're at work and logging in, they all require passwords. [01:14:54] And usernames of some sort or another well, apple, Google, and Microsoft have all committed to expanding their support for a standard. That's actually been out there for, for a few years. It's called the Fido standard. And the idea behind this is that you don't have to have a password in order to log. Now that's really kind of an interesting thing, right? [01:15:22] Just looking at it because we're, we're so used to having this password only authentic. And of course the, the thing to do there is make sure you have for your password, multiple words in the password, it should really be a pass phrase. And between the words put in special characters or numbers, maybe mix. [01:15:44] Upper lowercase a little bit. In those words, those are the best passwords, you know, 20 characters, 30 characters long. And then if you have to have a pin, I typically use a 12 digit pin. And how do I remember all of these? Cuz I use a completely different password for every website and right now, Let me pull it up. [01:16:06] I'm using one password dot com's password manager. And my main password for that is about 25 characters long. And I have thirty one hundred and thirty five. Entries here in my password manager, 3,100. That is a whole lot of passwords, right? As well as, um, software licenses and a few other things in there. [01:16:34] That's how we remember them is using a password manager. One password.com is my favorite. Now, obviously I don't make any money by referring you there. I, I really do like that. Uh, some others that I've liked in the past include last pass, but they really messed. With some of their cybersecurity last year and I lost, lost my faith in it. [01:16:56] So now what they're trying to do is make these websites that we go to as well as some apps to have a consistent, secure, and passwordless sign in. and they're gonna make it available to consumers across all kinds of devices and platforms. That's why you've got apple, Google, and Microsoft all committing to it. [01:17:20] And you can bet everybody else is going to follow along because there's hundreds of other companies that have decided they're gonna work with the Fido Alliance and they're gonna create this passwordless future. Which I like this idea. So how does this work? Well, basically you need to have a smartphone. [01:17:39] This is, I'm just gonna go with the most standard way that this is going to work here in the future. And you can then have a, a. Pass key. This is kind of like a multifactor authentication or two factor authentication. So for instance, right now, when I sign into a website online, I'm giving a username, I'm giving a password and then it comes up and it asks me for a code. [01:18:03] So I enter an a six digit code and that code changes every 30 seconds. And again, I use my password manager from one password dot. In order to generate that code. So that's how I log into Microsoft sites and Google sites and all kinds of sites out there. So it's kind of a similar thing here now for the sites for my company, because we do cyber security for businesses, including regulated businesses. [01:18:31] We have biometrics tied in as. so to log into our systems, I have to have a username. I have to have a password. Uh, I then am sent to a single sign on page where I have to have a message sent to my smart device. That then has a special app that uses biometrics either a face ID or a fingerprint to verify who I am. [01:18:56] So, yeah, there's a lot there, but I have to protect my customer's data. Something that very, very few it's crazy. Um, actual so-called managed security services providers do, but it's important, right? By the way, if you want my password. Special report, just go to Craig peterson.com. Sign up for my email list. [01:19:21] I'll send that to you. That's what we're sending out right now for anyone who signs up new@craigpeterson.com. And if you'd like a copy of it and you're already on the list, just go ahead and email me M E. At Craig peterson.com and ask for the password special report where I go through a lot of this sort of thing. [01:19:39] So what will happen with this is you go to a website and it might come up with a QR code. So you then scan that QR code with your phone and verify it, authorize it on your phone. You might again have it set up so that your phone requires a facial recognition or perhaps it'll require a fingerprint. And now you are in. [01:20:02] Which is very cool. They fix some security problems in Fido over the last few years, which is great over the coming year. You're g
Been to a Hospital Website Lately? Facebook May Have Your Personal Information! Hey, Facebook isn't the only company doing this, but there's an article from the markup. They did a study and caught Facebook. This is absolutely crazy -- receiving sensitive medical information. We're gonna talk about that right now. [Automated transcript follows] This is really concerning for a lot of people. And, and for good reason, frankly, I've been talking about this. [00:00:22] I, I think the first time I talked about it was over a decade ago and it has to do with what are called pixels. Now, marketers obviously want to show you ads and they want show you ads based on your interest. And frankly, as a consumer, if I'm looking for a new F one. I wouldn't mind seeing ads from competing car dealers or, you know, used car places, et cetera, to try and sell me that Ford truck. [00:00:53] It makes sense, right? If I'm looking for shoes, why not show me ads for shoes, but what happens when we start talking about the medical business about the legal business things get murky and people get very upset. You see the way these pixels work is you'll put a pixel, like for instance, a Facebook pixel. [00:01:15] If you go to Craig peterson.com, I've got this pixel on there from Facebook. And what it allows me to do now is retarget Facebook user. So you go to my site to go to a page on my site, and this is true for, uh, pretty much every website out there. And. I know that you went and you were looking for this, so I can retarget you in an ads. [00:01:37] I'll show you an ad. In other words, on Facebook now I've never actually done that ever. Uh, I I'm like the world's worst marketer, frankly. Uh, and, uh, but I do have that on there because it gives me some other numbers, statistics, and, and really helps you to understand how the website's being used, which I think makes a whole lot of sense. [00:01:58] So there are marketers that are using this for obvious reasons. Now, I think you understand what the pixel is. It is literally a little picture that is one pixel by one pixel, and it tends to blend in, I think even in most cases, now these pixels from different. Places like Facebook are actually transparent. [00:02:19] So you, you don't even see it on the page, but the idea is now they have a foothold on a website that doesn't belong to them. In this case, Facebook now has access to information about a website that you visited that has nothing to do with Facebook. okay. So that's the basics of how these pixels work and they're almost impossible to get rid of because in reality, many websites, mine included will even grab graphics from other websites just because you know, it it's, I'm quoting another article I pull in their graphic. [00:03:00] Of course, they'm gonna point to that other site. Why would I take that picture? Put it on my site. I don't own the rights to it. But if he'll let me that other website will, let me go ahead and show that graphic on my website, cuz there's ways to restrict it. If they don't want me doing that, they could stop me from doing it. [00:03:18] Then I I'm going to just go to the original website so they can get the credit for it's their property still. I'm not violating any copyright laws, et cetera. Does that make sense to. So what's the difference between the Facebook pixel and a picture I'm pulling from another random website? Well, the obvious thing is it's coming from a Facebook domain of some sort. [00:03:40] So, so there are ways to stop it, but there's just as many ways to get around stopping it, frankly. Well, Let's move on to something a little more sensitive. We have had problems that I reported on years ago of people going to an emergency room in a hospital. Now, when you're in that emergency room, your phone has GPS capabilities still. [00:04:06] It knows you went in the emergencyentrance to the hospital and you are. Opening it up. Maybe you're looking around, maybe you're reading articles, maybe you're plotting your trip home using Google maps. You are being tracked depending on what apps you have on your phone. If you have an Android versus an iPhone, what you've enabled, what you haven't enabled. [00:04:29] Right? All of that sort of stuff. well, this now has become a problem because as I reported there have been people who went to the hospital, went to the emergency room and started seeing ads from what you might call ambulance, chasing lawyers. Have you been injured? Is it someone else's fault? Call me right now. [00:04:54] Do he cheat him in. if that sort of thing showed up on your phone, would you get a little upset, a little nervous saying, what are they doing, trying to cash in on, on my pain, maybe literal pain. And it's not as though those ads are just showing up while you are in the emergency room, because now they've tagged you. [00:05:15] They know that you are in that emergency room. So off they'll. They will go ahead and track you and send you ads even after you leave. Hey, I wanna remind you if you want to get this, uh, this week's list of articles. I, I put out every week, my insider show notes. It has become very popular. Thousands of people get that every week. [00:05:41] Go right now to Craig peterson.com. I'll also send out a little bit of training. I do that. I have special reports. I send out. I've got more stuff I'm doing, but you gotta be on the email list. Craig peterson.com to get on my free email list now. What's happened here now is markup went ahead and looked at Newsweek's top 100 hospitals in America. [00:06:06] They went to their websites and they found about a third of the hospitals using what's called the Meel. That is the Facebook pixel I was referring to earlier. So it sends a little bit of data. Whenever someone clicks a button to let's say, schedule a doctor's appointment. Why does it do that? Well, because the Facebook pixel is on the scheduling page. [00:06:33] Let's say there's scheduling page for oncology on the website. I guess who knows that you are going to see an oncologist? Facebook? Why? Well, because the hospital has put a Facebook tracking pixel on that page. So Facebook knows, Hey, he was on the oncologist page. Maybe he has cancer. I should start showing him ads from other hospitals and from cancer medications, et cetera, etcetera, that is happening. [00:07:03] Right now, 33 of these top 100 hospitals in America. Th these are the top 100, according to Newsweek's list. Have that information. Now that data is connected to your internet. Address. So it's kinda like your computer's mailing address and they can link that back to usually to a specific individual or to a household. [00:07:30] So now they have a receipt of the appointment request. that's gone to Facebook now. They don't have everything you filled out on the page or anything, you know, you added in your social security number, maybe other medical information. Facebook didn't get all of that, but they do know that you visited the hospital's website and which pages you visited on that website. [00:07:56] So markup went ahead and contacted these hospitals. So, for example, John John's Hopkins hospital, they did find a Facebook pixel tracking on the appointment, scheduling page. They informed John's Hopkins of how that is a leak of personal information. And after being contacted by the markup, they did not remove the track. [00:08:27] also, by the way, when the markup reached out to them, the hospital did not respond UCLA Reagan medical center. They had of course a pixel and they did remove it from the scheduling page. Although they declined to comment, New York Presbyterian hospital, all these hospitals have that pixel and they did not remove it. [00:08:49] Northwestern Memorial hospital. Again, they got the tracking pixel did not remove it after they were informed about the security problems, duke university hospital, same thing. Most of these, by the way, did not respond to them. University of Pennsylvania, Houston Methodist hospital, the university of Chicago medical center. [00:09:11] Uh, the last two of those did remove the pixel. Uh, Scripps Memorial hospital out in LA JOA, California. There are many Brigham and women's Faulkner hospital. They were informed that they had the tracking picture pixel on the, on the, uh, scheduling page. They did not remove it, but you know, the time of this article, a Tufts medical center, same thing did not remove it, uh, out in Sanford in San Diego. [00:09:39] Same problem. John's Hopkins Bayview medical center, John Jefferson health, Thomas Jefferson university, hospitals, Loyola. These are big name hospitals. I'm looking at these that goes on and on sharp Memorial hospital, Henry Ford hospital. Uh, let's see some more, I'm trying to, oh, Massachusetts general hospital. [00:10:00] They did not have the tracking pixel Brigham in women's hospital, no tracking pixel on the scheduling page. So some of these hospitals were already doing it right. They re they recognized that putting this Facebook. Pixel on may help them with some of the marketing and understanding the market a little better, which is what I do, but it's also giving personal information, personal health information to Facebook and Facebook's advertisers. [00:10:32] So they didn't put it on so good for them. Again, mass general Brigham and women's, uh, Sanford Mount Sinai, university of Michigan hospital and, and others, of course. So very good news there in general. Again, don't be worried about a pixel on just a random website because it probably is being used to help with stats to know what's being used on the website. [00:10:58] And maybe, maybe just maybe using it to send a little ad to you on Facebook later. Of course, you're listening to Craig Peter son. You can get my insider show notes for absolutely free. And my little mini trainings. Oh three to five minutes every week@craigpeterson.com. Just sign up on the homepage. [00:11:23] You know, I've got it on my homeowner's policy. I have a special business policy for it. And it's something that you should seriously consider, but you need to understand first. So we're gonna talk about it. What is cyber insurance? Uh, that's what's up now? [00:11:41] Cyber insurance is something that many businesses have looked at, not all businesses have, which is kind of crazy. If you ask me according to the industry statistics right now, less than 1% market penetration for cyber insurance and is expected to. [00:12:02] Into a $20 billion industry by 2025. That is some serious money. So what is this cyber insurance? For instance, there's a rider on my home insurance for, for cyber insurance and I have special cyber insurance from a, a big company underwritten, but it is for anything that happens. In my business, that's related to cyber security and it also covers my clients because that's what we do for living is cyber security. [00:12:37] If they are following our guidelines. So it's pretty darn cool when you get right down to it, because these risks that we have in the digital world are really every. So if you're a large organization, if you're a small little enterprise, are you going to get hacked? You know, bottom line, anybody could potentially get hacked because the bad guys have gotten pretty good. [00:13:06] And most of us in business have gotten pretty lax AADA because of all of this, but not everybody understands when we're talking about cyber insurance. What does cyber mean? Well, the idea is that cyber insurance is created to protect organizations and individuals against digital risks. So we're talking about things like ransonware malware fishing campaigns. [00:13:34] So for instance, I got a call just this week from a listener who again, had their operating account emptied out, hated when that happens. And so they lost everything. They lost all of the money in the account and they're trying to get it back. I got an email this week and, uh, from a lady that I, there's not much I can do for her. [00:13:56] I pointed her in the right direction, but her father, I think it was, had his digital wallet of cryptocurrency completely emptied, completely stolen. Can you believe this sort of stuff, right? It's happening every day. You might have insurance that covers that, but you might not. Traditional insurance policies are only looking at physical risks, so they will take the physical risk things like damage to equipment, or maybe you have livestock or you have stock an inventory, a building different locations. [00:14:38] That's your standard stuff. But cyber insurance is to allow businesses to transfer the costs associated with recovery from the losses incurred when there's some form of cybersecurity breach. Now that's a pretty big deal. because the losses can be huge. It isn't just ransomware where maybe it, it costs you a million dollars in ransom payments. [00:15:08] Or if you're an individual, a retiree, maybe it only costs you 25,000 in ransom payments. And I know that's a lot, especially for retiree. But there is loss of reputation. There's loss of business, cuz you couldn't conduct business cuz you couldn't use your computers. Right? All of that sort of stuff. You got people that you have to bring in, you have to bring in a special team to try and recover your data. [00:15:33] Maybe try and figure out what had happened. Right. All of that sort of stuff. So be careful cyber insurance, a lot of people kind of mistake it for policy that pays off. Attackers to retrieve or unlock data. That's not what it's really for cyber insurance is something that allows you to, I guess the term in, in the industry is transfer risk when your online security controls fail and. [00:16:01] Basically all of them could fail. It, it, it depends, right? If you're a huge company, you can hire a bigger team for a security operation center, but at the same time, you also have more employees that are causing more problems. So look at it entirely business interruption, payments to experts to recover the data. [00:16:23] Compensation for bodily injuries, uh, depending obviously on the resulting damage and the particular policy and the rates are gonna vary based on the maturity of your cyber defenses. So this is something that I've been big on for a long time, the cyber security maturity CMMC and what that helps 'em to determine is. [00:16:49] What are your rates gonna be? So if you went out and you're just using the cable modem that they, that the, uh, company, your cable company provided for you, or you go to a big box retailer, and that's where you bought your firewall and switches, and you've got your wonderful little Lenovo PCs or Dows or whatever, and you're running, uh, Norton antivirus. [00:17:13] You are not well covered. You are not very mature from a cybersecurity standpoint. The other thing you need to be able to do is make sure you've got your asset management all in line, that you have policies and procedures in place for when things happen. You gotta have it all put together, but the average cyber insurance policy for a small to mid-size company in 2021 was about $1,600. [00:17:41] For $1 million in cyber liability coverage. Now that's not really bad at all. Now there are limits to what the provider will pay. They will often, if you do get nailed, They'll come in and double check that, everything that you said, all of those boxes that you checked when you were applying for your cyber security insurance, make sure you actually did all of them. [00:18:08] Okay. Yeah. Kind of a big deal. And you not only will they not pay out, if you didn't do everything that you said you were going to be doing. but the other problem is you might end up getting sued by. Okay. So expect a counter suit if you decide to soothe them. So don't lie on those fors people. Okay. All right. [00:18:32] Um, cyber claims, unlike non-technical events, like again, a fire flood storm damage, the cyber insurance claim might be determined by means of attack and your ability or your effort to prevent it. As I was saying, make sure you've got the checklist and this is something I think I, I should probably put a course together on to help you guys with, or maybe even a little bit of consulting for people. [00:19:01] Let me know, just send an email to me, me@craigpeterson.com. And uh, if you're interested in more info about cyber insurance, you can either look at this week's newsletter that you can. By again, going to Craig peterson.com and a link to this particular article I'm looking at, or you can tell me, Hey, listen, I'd love a little course or little support, a little help. [00:19:24] Okay. I think it makes a lot of sense. So does your business qualify for cyber insurance? Well, some do some don't, uh, you might not see yourself as a target. For the bad guys, but I'll tell you, my 85 year old father was conned by some of these cyber attack guys. Okay. And he doesn't have much money. He, he's not the bank of, uh, England bank of America. [00:19:52] None of these big banks or anything. Oh. Is a retiree living at home trying to make ends meet. So the same, thing's true for you as a business, you as an individual now. You are vulnerable most likely to a cyber attack, but you've got to really manage your risk posture. You gotta do things, right. So that's the bottom line there. [00:20:16] That's what we try and help you do. But you can find information about this again, you can just email me, me, Craig peterson.com and ask for the info on cyber insurance, or if you're already a subscriber to my newsletter. That went out Tuesday morning. So just check your mail. Maybe it's in the spam box from Tuesday morning and you'll find a lot more information linked right from there. [00:20:42] Craig peterson.com stick around. We'll be right back. [00:20:51] There are a lot of complaints about how some of these cryptocurrencies are very non green using tons of energy. And now the prices are going down. We're seeing a number of really weird things happening. [00:21:07] Cryptocurrency, as you probably have heard, has taken a tumble. Now, some of the cryptocurrencies, particularly of course, someone you might know most is Bitcoin use a lot of computing power. [00:21:20] You see, what they're trying to do is basically solve a very complex mathematical problem. And in order to do that, they need a lot of computing power. Now you can certainly run it on your little desktop computer, that program to compute those things. It's called mining. So you're mining for Bitcoin. [00:21:42] You're, you're trying to solve these mathematical problems and there's a theoretical limit to how many Bitcoins could actually potentially be mind looking right now. They're saying that circulating Bitcoin right now. Is about 19 million Bitcoin that are out there. And Bitcoin is worth about $20,000 right now, down from its huge, huge, huge high. [00:22:11] That was, uh, more than two and a half times. What it's worth right now. So, how do you mind? Well, if you take that computer and you run the software, it's gonna do some mining and it is probably going to cost you more in electricity nowadays to mine. One Bitcoin than that Bitcoin is worth. In fact, it certainly will cost you more now. [00:22:37] Uh, that's why the people that are professional Bitcoin minors have taken a different tact and what they've done. Is they found places where they can get cheap electricity. For instance, Finland, where they're using geothermal produced electricity. They're also using the cold air outside in order to cool down. [00:23:00] The computers themselves as they're trying to compute this, but there's another thing that they've been doing. And that is well, how about we buy a coal plant? That's been shut down and that's happened. So they take that coal plant. They bring it back online. They burn the coal, they produce electricity at a cheaper rate than they could buy it. [00:23:23] but behind all of this is the computing power. And what miners found a long time ago is it's better to have thousands of compute units working on solving these problems than it is just having. I don't know how many CPUs are in your computer for eight. Com, um, CPUs. How many? Well, I, how far can you get with those? [00:23:48] Yeah, they're fast, but we need thousands of computers. So what they found is that GPU's graphical processing units. Kind of met their goals. You see a GPU is actually composed of thousands of computers, little compute units. Now they can't do real fancy math. They can't do anything particularly fancy. [00:24:13] They're really designed to move. Pixels around on a screen. In other words, they're designed to help gamers have a nice smooth game while they're playing. They can be used. In fact, they're used all of the time in desktop computers, just for regular display of a webpage, for instance, or if you're watching a video, all of that is part of what they're doing. [00:24:39] With graphic processing units. And if you've been paying attention, you probably have noticed if you particularly, if you're a gamer that the price for GPUs has gone way up, not only has it gone way up and it isn't just due to the lockdown and the supply chain problems. but they're very, very, very hard to get now. [00:25:02] Yeah. Some of that is due to supply chain problems. No doubt about it. But most of these GPUs, according to some of the numbers I've seen, have actually been bought by these professional mining companies. In fact, many of them have gone the next step and they have what called custom silicone. These are completely customized process. [00:25:28] sometimes they're using Asics. Sometimes they're using other things, but these custom processors that are really good at solving that problem that they have to solve in order to mine, a bit Bitcoin or one of these other currencies. So you, you see how that all works. There's a number of GPU manufacturers and something else interesting has happened because of the drop in value of pretty much all of the cryptocurrencies. [00:26:00] And that is these GPS are going byebye. Right. Do does a company that is now no longer trading. That's no longer operating. Uh, we've seen at least two of these crypto mining companies just completely disappear. So now all of their hardware is going up for sale. You'll find it on EBA. So I, I wanna warn you, if you are looking for a GPU of some sort for your computer, maybe if you're a gamer, be very, very careful. [00:26:37] We've got a buyer beware situation here because you're not just buying a GPU. A graphics processing card, uh, that has been lightly used. It was sitting in a terminal. Maybe it's a GPU. Like I use them where, when I'm doing video editing, it does use the GPU, even some of the audio editing. It uses the GPU. [00:26:59] I'm looking at it right now and I've got some, uh, GPU utilization going on. I've got about, uh, 6% of my GPU in use right now on this computer. So. What the problem is is that these minors who are selling their old GPUs have been running them full Bo 24, 7. That's hard on anything. Isn't it. So what, uh, what's happening here is that you are seeing a market getting flooded with GPUs. [00:27:35] You really don't wanna. All right. Does that make sense? Uh, you know, there we've lost more than 50% this year already in some of these, uh, cryptocurrencies that are out there coin base has had an interesting year Celsius, a major cryptocurrency bank, suspended withdrawals, uh, just here in the last few. [00:28:01] Coin based crypto exchange announced a round of layoffs. Also here, they paused their hiring a month or two ago. It it's not going very well and prices for new and used graphic cards are continuing to fall. The peak price was late in 2021, a little bit early in 2022, but now you can go to Amazon new egg, best buy and buy current generation GPUs for prices that really would seem like bargain six months ago. [00:28:35] And pricing for used GPUs has fallen even further, which is the caveat aura URA thing here that I'm warning everybody about. You need to proceed. With caution. So there's a lot of scams, a lot of bait and switches. You know, that's been kind of normal for some things over the years on eBay. I'm afraid, but I've had pretty good luck with eBay, but any high value eBay purchase CPUs have been mining cryptocurrencies at full tilt for months or years have problems in new GPU. [00:29:12] Would not have had, you know, this heat that they generate, the dust that gets into them, that the heat is messing with can really degrade the performance and degrade the usage of that GPU here over time. Dust can also, uh, cause problems with the thermal paste that's in them could be dried out thermal paste because of the heat and that causes them to crack and causes other problems. [00:29:40] So if you buy a used GP that looks dirty or runs hot, removing and cleaning the fan and heat sink, reapplying, fresh thermal paste. Could potentially restore loss performance, and maybe you can even get that new Sony PlayStation because GPS are becoming available. Again. Visit me online Craig peterson.com and get my weekly insider show notes right there. [00:30:07] Craig peterson.com. Sign up now. [00:30:13] Self-driving is relatively new technology. And, uh, our friends at Tesla just fired an employee who posted videos of a full self-driving accident. Uh, he's done it before. [00:30:30] Tesla has a very interesting background. In fact, Elon Musk has gotten more interesting over time. And particularly lately the stuff he's saying, the stuff he's doing, but his companies have really made some amazing progress. [00:30:48] Now, one of the things that Elon did pretty well pretty early on was he decided he was going to start selling. A self-driving feature for his cars. And back in the day, you could buy it. This was before it was ready at all for, I think it was 5,000 and, uh, it was good for whenever they came out with it. [00:31:15] And then it went up to 7,000 and then I think it went to 12,000 and now it's you pay him monthly, but in reality, There are no fully self-driving qualified Teslas on the road today. It will be a little while before that happens. So this ex Tesla employee by the name of John Burnell is quoted in ours Technica saying that he was fired for posting YouTube videos about Tesla's full self-driving beta. [00:31:48] Now this is called F S D. And if you know, Computers, you know what beta is? Beta means, Hey, you know, should work, could work, probably has some problems. And that's exactly what it is. Now. Tesla told California regulators that the full self-driving beta lacks true autonomous features. And that's probably how they got by getting with putting this car on the road, these cars on the road. [00:32:19] So this X employee. Says that Tesla also cut off access to the full self driving beta in the 2021 Tesla model three that he owns. Now. He said that he paid for it. He had it legitimately, and yet Tesla cut him off from, and I guess. Anybody can try and sign up for it. I don't know all of the details behind getting that beta code. [00:32:46] If you wanted to, you probably could investigate a little bit further, but the video that he posted on February 7th provided a frame by frame analysis of a collision of his Tesla with a Ballard, a a Ballard. Those are those stanchions, those, uh, cement pillars. They usually have. Plastic on the outside that you'll see, you know, protecting sidewalks or in this case it was protecting a bike lane in San Jose. [00:33:19] So he said, no matter how minor this accident was, it was the first full self-driving beta collision caught on camera. That is irrefutable. And he says I was fired from Tesla in February with my U YouTube being cited as the reason why, even though my uploads are for my personal vehicle off company, time or property with software, I paid for. [00:33:45] And he has a, um, channel called AI addict that you can find over there on YouTube if it hasn't been taken down yet. Right. Uh, he said that he got a notice that his full self-driving beta was disabled be based on his recent driving data, but that didn't seem to fit because the morning I got fired, he says I had zero proper use strikes. [00:34:10] On my vehicle. So yeah, I, I can't say as I really would blame him, uh, him being in this case, Elon Musk for firing this guy, but it's an interesting little video to watch. It's like two and a half minutes. You'll see. And it, the guy has his hand on the steering wheel and the car is steering. Itself down the roadway and there's no other traffic really on the road. [00:34:38] I don't know when this was like a, a Sunday or something, but you can see on the screen, it is detecting things like the, the little, uh, construction pillars that are on the side of the road. And he's in a left. Turn only lane and his Tesla turns, left the steering. Wheel's kind of going a little back and forth, right? [00:34:58] As it tries to make up his mind what it's going to do and he's driving down, he just passed a ups truck. Although I would not have passed personally, the way he passed, which is the. The car decided it was going to, um, get closer to that ups truck. I, I would've purposely gone further away. And then what happens is he goes around another corner where there's some Ballards. [00:35:26] That are in the roadway. And of course the idea behind them is so the cars don't go in and accidentally strike a cyclist. But around that corner where there is a crosswalk crossing the street, there's no Ballard. So people don't have to kind of get around them. And then the Ballards start off again. So the Tesla got kind of confused by this and looking at the screen, it doesn't show the, these Ballards. [00:35:56] Being recognized. So the driver of the car grabs the stern wheel takes over at the very last second, but did actually hit the Ballard. Uh, no two ways about it here. He hit it and the car is stopped and it's just a minor scratch. He's showing it on his, uh, on his screen here. But I gotta say overall, it looks like it performed quite admirably. [00:36:24] And the fact that this apparently is the. Uh, the only time it was actually caught on video. That's interesting too, but the cars of course have cameras on them too. So I'm sure. In other cases it did record a video of it. So CNBC said it obtained a copy of Tesla's internal social media policy, and it says it makes no direct reference. [00:36:48] To criticizing the company's product in public. So we'll see what happens. Uh, apparently too, they are saying that this is the first accident in a year of testing this full self-driving. So that is darn good, frankly. And, uh, he's saying, you know, some people are saying I should have reacted sooner, which I should have. [00:37:09] But in my year of testing, the full stop driving is usually really good at detecting objects last minute and slowing to avoid. So I don't know. We'll see what happens here. Tesla's doing a very good job. Hey, and I got another car story for you. This one, I. Think is totally, totally cool. You might remember Congress passed a law back in the seventies saying that we had to have what these cafe standards for vehicles efficiencies. [00:37:36] In other words, you had to have certain fuel efficiency across all of the cars that you manufactured, you know? Okay. It is good enough, whatever. And, uh, they, they weren't able to make. uh, the car manufacturers, they weren't able to hit it until they came up with a whole new ignition technology for the cars. [00:38:00] And that of course is fuel injection. You might remember we had car braiders and all of the cars, not very efficient. The engines themselves aren't very efficient, but we came up with fuel injection. And that helped the car manufacturers to meet these new cafe standards. Now, unfortunately, car manufacturers have removed weight from the cars in order to gain fuel efficiency in order to meet these federal requirements. [00:38:28] So they've done things like taking out the full size spare tire, right? You, you had that before and that full size spare tire is now replaced with. Stupid a little tire, right? That, you know, you can limp down the road a little ways, but not very far, but they've also removed steel and various metals from other parts of the car. [00:38:47] And many people have said it's made the cars less safe. The same time they've added more safety features like the side impact airbags and, and other things and, and airbags that will Mame. But, but that's a different story entirely. Uh, but this is very, very cool because there's a company called transient plasma systems TPS, and they came up with this new advanced ignition system that uses plasma. [00:39:17] They've designed it in such a way that it replaces your spark plugs in your. And now they put the ignition module in that uses nanosecond duration, pulses of plasma to ignite that air fuel mixture that's inside the cylinder. So you're still doing the fuel injection, but you're igniting it with a nanosecond worth of. [00:39:43] Plasma. Isn't that just amazing. So they've tested that technology 2019 is when they came out with it and they did some bench testing, but now it's almost ready for production. So they're doing now with vehicle manufacturers, validation testing. It is frankly very cool. And they don't have to do it on brand new engines either. [00:40:08] They will come up with retro Kitt fixed fixes. Now, imagine this getting 20% better mileage by basically replacing your spark plugs and a little more firmware changes in your engine controller. No question about that one, right. But this is frankly. Absolutely amazing. Now it's going to take a lot of years before we move to electric vehicles. [00:40:34] For a lot of reasons. We're not ready. The country isn't ready. The infrastructure isn't ready. People aren't ready. The cars aren't ready. We don't even know what. To do with the batteries. People complain about nuclear waste while there are now huge fields full of these batteries while they're trying to figure out what do we do with the used batteries from these electric or hybrid cars, because man, they it's a huge problem. [00:40:59] All kinds of toxic stuff in them. And they haven't been good at being able to recycle 'em it's not like the old lead acid batteries. That are very easy to recycle. So it's going to be years before they really stop selling any of these internal combustion engines and even longer before they ban internal combustion engines. [00:41:21] From the roadways. So this plasma ignition system is going to really, really help 20%. That is darn good. And I am looking at the article right now. They used this Toyota engine. This is a 2.5 liter Toyota Camry Atkinson cycle, thermal efficiency around 40%, which is absolutely amazing. Good job Toyota. And. [00:41:48] Replaced the spark plug with this. Ignition system, this new ignition system using of course plasma and they found some amazing, amazing, uh, statistics here improvements. So in some cases they're seeing. The spark plugs and the plasmas getting 6% increase in fuel economy and others are seeing 20% increases. [00:42:17] Of course, they've got to do more testing, extreme heat, extreme, cold, wet, dry, but that's gonna be happening. And we might see this in our cars in the next couple of years. Make sure you sign up right now. For my newsletter, get my insider show notes for free Craig peterson.com. [00:42:39] Hey, it looks like if you did not invest in crypto, you were making a smart move and not moving. Wow. We got a lot to talk about here. Crypto has dived big time. It's incredible. What's happened. We get into that more. [00:42:56] Crypto currencies. It, it it's a term for all kinds of these basically non-government sanctioned currencies. [00:43:06] And the idea behind it was I should be able to trade with you and you should be able to trade with me. We should be able to verify the transactions and it's kind of nobody's business as to what's happening behind the scenes. And yet in reality, Everybody's business because all of those transactions are recorded in a very public way. [00:43:30] So crypto in this case does not mean secret or cryptography. It's actually referring to the way the ledgers work and your wallets and, and fact, the actual coins themselves, a lot of people have bought. I was talking with my friend, Matt earlier this week and Matt was saying, Hey, listen, uh, I made a lot of money off of crypto. [00:43:57] He's basically a day trader. He watches it. Is it going up? Is it going down? Which coin is doge coin? The way to go? Cuz Elon must just mentioned it. Is it something else? What should I do? And he buys and sells and has made money off of it. However, a lot of people have. And held onto various cryptocurrencies. [00:44:19] Of course, the most popular one. The one everybody knows about is Bitcoin and Bitcoin is pretty good stuff, you know, kind of bottom line, but 40% right now of Bitcoin investors are underwater. Isn't that incredible because of the major dropoff from the November peak. And this was all started by a problem that was over at something called Tara Luna, which is another cryptocurrency now. [00:44:51] You know, already that there is a ton of vol a ton of, uh, changes in price in various cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin being of course a real big one where, you know, we've seen 5,000, $10,000 per Bitcoin drops. It, it really is an amazingly, uh, fluid if you will coined. So there's a number of different people that have come out with some plans. [00:45:19] How about if we do kinda like what the us dollar used to do, which is it's tied to a specific amount of gold or tied to a specific amount of silver. Of course, it's been a while since that was the case. Uh, president Nixon is the one that got us off of those standards, but. Having gold, for instance, back in your currency means that there is going to be far less fluctuation and your currency means something. [00:45:49] See, the whole idea behind currency markets for government is yeah, you do print money and you do continue to increase the amount of money you print every year. Because what you're trying to do is create money for the. Goods product services that are created as well. So if, if we create another million dollars worth of services in the economy, there should be another million dollars in circulation that that's the basic theory. [00:46:20] Monetary theory really boiling it. Right. Down now of course, you know, already our government has printed way more than it. Maybe should have. It is certainly causing inflation. There's no doubt about that one. So they're looking at these various cryptocurrencies and saying, well, what can we do? How can we have like a gold standard where the us dollar was the currency the world used and it, its value was known. [00:46:46] You see, having a stable currency is incredibly important for consumers and businesses. A business needs to know, Hey, listen, like we sign a three year contract with our vendors and with our customers. And so we need a stable price. So we know what's our cost going to be, what can we charge our customer here? [00:47:06] Can the customer bear the price increases, et cetera. The answer to most of those questions of course is no, they really, they really can't is particularly in this day and age. So having a. Fixed currency. We know how much it's worth. I know in two years from now, I'm not gonna be completely upside down with this customer because I'm having to eat some major increases in prices. [00:47:31] And as a consumer, you wanna look at it and say, wow, I've got a variable rate interest rate on my mortgage. And man, I remember friends of mine back in the eighties, early eighties, late seventies, who just got nailed by this. They had variable rate interest loan on their home because that's all they could get. [00:47:50] That's all they could afford. So the variable rate just kept going up. It was higher than credit cards are nowadays. And I remember a friend of mine complaining, they had 25% interest and that's when they lost a house because 25% interest means if you have a a hundred thousand dollars loan, you got $25,000 in interest that year, you know, let alone principal payments. [00:48:14] So it, it was a really. Thing. It was really hard for people to, to deal with. And I, I can understand that. So the cryptocurrency guys. I said, okay, well let's tie it to something else. So the value has a value and part of what they were trying to tie it to is the us dollar. That's some currencies decided to do that. [00:48:39] And there were others that tried to tie it to actual. Assets. So it wasn't just tied to the dollar. It was okay. We have X dollars in this bank account and that's, what's backing the value of our currency, which is quite amazing, right. To think about that. Some of them are backed by gold or other precious metals. [00:49:02] Nowadays that includes a lot of different metals. Well, this one coin called Tara Luna dropped almost a hundred percent last week. Isn't that amazing. And it had a sister token called Tara us D which Tara Luna was tied to. Now, this is all called stablecoin. Right? The idea is the prices will be stable. and in the case of Tara and Tara S D the stability was provided by a computer program. [00:49:37] So there's nothing really behind it, other than it can be backed by the community currencies themselves. So that's something like inter coined, for instance, this is another one of the, there are hundreds of them out there of these, uh, cryptocurrencies. The community backs it. So the goods and services that you can get in some of these communities is what gives value to inter Pointe money system. [00:50:03] Now that makes sense too, right? Because the dollar is only worth something to you. If it's worth something to someone else, right. If you were the only person in the world that had us dollars, who, who would want. Like, obviously the economy is working without us dollars. So why would they try and trade with you? [00:50:24] If you had something called a us dollar that nobody else had, or you came up with something, you made something up out of thin air and said, okay, well this is now worth this much. Or it's backed by that, et cetera. Because if again, if you can't spend it, it's not worth anything. Anyhow, this is a very, very big deal because on top of these various cryptocurrencies losing incredible amounts of money over the last couple of weeks, We have another problem with cryptocurrencies. [00:50:59] If you own cryptocurrencies, you have, what's called a wallet and that wallet has a transaction number that's used for you to track and, and others to track the money that you have in the cryptocurrencies. And it it's, um, pretty good little. Fun function or feature. It's kind of hard for a lot of people to do so they have these kind of crypto banks. [00:51:21] So if you have one of these currencies, you can just have your currency on deposit at this bank because there's, there's a whole bunch of reasons, but one of the reasons is if. There is a, a run on a bank, or if there's a run on a cryptocurrency, currencies have built into them incredibly expensive penalties. [00:51:45] If you try and liquidate that cryptocurrency quickly. And also if there are a lot of people trying to liquidate it. So you had kind of a double whammy and people were paying more than three. Coin in order to sell Bitcoin. And so think about that. Think about much of Bitcoin's worth, which is tens of thousands of dollars. [00:52:05] So it's overall, this is a problem. It's been a very big problem. So people put it into a bank. So coin base is one of the big one coin coin base had its first quarter Ernie's report. Now, this is the us' largest cryptocurrency exchange and they had a quarterly loss for the first quarter of 2022 of 430 million. [00:52:35] That's their loss. And they had an almost 20% drop in monthly users of coin. So that's something right. And they put it in their statement, their quarterly statement here as to, you know, what's up. Well, here's the real scary part Coinbase said in its earning earnings report. Last Tuesday that it holds the. [00:53:01] 256 billion in both Fiat currencies and crypto currencies on behalf of its customers. So Fiat currencies are, are things like the federal reserve notes, our us dollar. Okay. A quarter of a trillion dollars that it's holding for other people kind of think of it like a bank. However, they said in the event, Coinbase we ever declare bankruptcy, quote, the crypto assets. [00:53:31] We hold in custody on behalf of our customers could be subject to bankruptcy proceedings. Coinbase users would become general unsecured creditors, meaning they have no right to claim any specific property from the exchange in proceedings people's funds would become inaccessible. Very big deal. Very scary for a very, very good reason. [00:53:57] Hey, when we come back, uh, websites, you know, you go, you type stuff in email address, do you know? You don't even have to hit submit. In most cases, they're stealing it. [00:54:09] I'm sure you've heard of JavaScript in your browser. This is a programming language that actually runs programs right there in your web browser, whether you like it or not. And we just had a study on this. A hundred thousand websites are collecting your information up-front. [00:54:26] This is not a surprising thing to me. I have a, in my web browser, I have JavaScript turned off for most websites that I go to now, JavaScript is a programming language and it lets them do some pretty cool things on a webpage. [00:54:44] In fact, that's the whole idea behind Java. Uh, just like cookies on a web browser where they have a great use, which is to help keep track of what you're doing on the website, where you're going, pulling up other information that you care about, right? Part of your navigation can be done with cookies. They go on and on in their usefulness, but. [00:55:06] Part of the problem is that people are using them to track you online. So like Facebook and many others will go ahead and have their cookies on other websites. So they know where you're going, what you're doing, even when you're not on Facebook, that's by the way, part of. The Firefox browser's been trying to overcome here. [00:55:31] They have a special fenced in mode that happens automatically when you're using Firefox on Facebook. Pretty good. Pretty cool. The apple iOS devices. Use a different mechanism. And in fact, they're already saying that Facebook and some of these others who sell advertiser, Infor advertisers information about you have really had some major losses in revenue because apple is blocking their access to certain information about you back to Javas. [00:56:07] It's a programming language that they can use to do almost anything on your web browser. Bad guys have figured out that if they can get you to go to a website or if they can insert and add onto a page that you're visiting, they can then use. Your web browser, because it's basically just a computer to do what well, to mind Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. [00:56:34] So you are paying for the electricity for them as your computer is sitting there crunching on, uh, these algorithms that they need to use to figure out how to find the next Bitcoin or whatever. Be, and you are only noticing that your device is slowing down. For instance, our friends over on the Android platform have found before that sometimes their phones are getting extremely hot, even when they're not using them. [00:57:01] And we've found that yeah, many times that's just a. Bitcoin minor who has kind of taken over partial control of your phone just enough to mind Bitcoin. And they did that through your web browser and JavaScript. So you can now see some of the reasons that I go ahead and disable JavaScript on most websites I go to now, some websites aren't gonna work. [00:57:24] I wanna warn you up front. If you go into your browser settings and turn off JavaScript, you are going. Break a number of websites, in fact, many, many websites that are out there. So you gotta kind of figure out which sites you want it on, which sites don't you want it on. But there's another problem that we have found just this week. [00:57:45] And it is based on a study that was done. It's reported in ours Technica, but they found. A hundred thousand top websites, a hundred thousand top websites. These include signing up for a newsletter making hotel reservation, checking out online. Uh, you, you probably take for granted that you nothing happens until you hit submit, right? [00:58:11] That used to be the case in web 1.0 days. It isn't anymore. Now I wanna point out we, I have thousands of people who are on my email list. So every week they get my, my, uh, insider show notes. So these are the top articles of the week. They are, you know, usually six to 10 articles, usually eight of them that are talking about cybersecurity, things of importance in. [00:58:39] The whole radio show and podcast are based on those insider show notes that I also share with the host of all of the different radio shows and television shows that I appear on. Right. It's pretty, pretty cool. So they get that, but I do not use this type of technology. Yeah. There's some JavaScript that'll make a little sign up thing, come up at the top of the screen, but I am not using technology that is in your face or doing. [00:59:08] What these people are doing, right? So you start filling out a form. You haven't hit cement. And have you noticed all of a sudden you're getting emails from. Right. It's happened to me before. Well, your assumption about hitting submit, isn't always the case. Some researchers from KU LUN university and university of Lue crawled and analyzed the top 100,000 websites. [00:59:37] So crawling means they have a little robot that goes to visit the webpage, downloads all of the code that's on the page. And then. Analyzed it all right. So what they found was that a user visiting a site, if the, the user is in the European union is treated differently than someone who visits the site from the United States. [01:00:01] Now there's a good reason for this. We've helped companies with complying with the GDPR, which are these protection rules that are in place in the European union. And that's why you're seeing so many websites. Mine included that say, Hey, listen, we do collect some information on you. You can click here to find out more and some websites let you say no, I don't want you to have any information about me. [01:00:26] We collect information just so that you can navigate the site properly. Okay. Very basic, but that's why European union users are treated differently than those coming from the United States. So this new research found that over 1800 websites gathered an EU user's email address without their consent. So it's almost 2000 websites out of the top 100,000. [01:00:54] If you're in the EU and they found. About well, 3000 websites logged a us user's email in some form. Now that's, before you hit submit. So you start typing in your email, you type in your name and you don't hit submit. Many of the sites are apparently grabbing that information, putting it into the database and maybe even started using it before you gave them explicit permission to do. [01:01:27] Isn't that a fascinating and the 1800 sites that gathered information on European news union users without their consent are breaking the law. That's why so many us companies decided they had to comply with the GDPR because it's a real big problem. So these guys also crawled websites for password leaks and May, 2021. [01:01:55] And they found 52 websites where third parties, including Yex Yex is. Big Russian search engine a and more were collecting password data before submission. So since then the group went ahead and let the websites know what was happening, what they found, uh, because it's not necessarily intentional by the website itself. [01:02:21] It might be a third party, a third party piece of software. That's doing it. They, they informed those sites. Hey, listen, you're collecting user data before there's been explicit consent to collect it. In other words, you, before you hit the submit button and they thought, wow, this is a very surprising, they thought they might find a few hundred website, but. [01:02:45] Course of a year now they found that there were over 3000 websites really that were doing this stuff. So they presented their findings at Usenet. Well, actually they haven't presented 'em yet. Cuz it's gonna be at use N's. In August and these are what they call leaky forums. So yet another reason to turn off JavaScript when you can. [01:03:09] But I also gotta add a lot of the forums do not work if JavaScript's not enabled. So we gotta do something about it. Uh, maybe complain, make sure they aren't clutching your data. Maybe I should do a little course on that one so you can figure out are they doing it before even giving permission? Anyhow, this is Craig Peter son. [01:03:29] Visit me online. Craig Peter son.com and sign up for that. No obligation inside your show notes. [01:03:36] We are shipping all kinds of military equipment over to Ukraine. And right now they're talking about another $30 billion worth of equipment being shipped to what was the world's number one arms dealer - Ukraine. [01:03:53] I'm looking right now at an article that was in the Washington post. And you know, some of their stuff is good. [01:04:01] Some of their stuff is bad, I guess, kinda like pretty much any media outlet, but they're raising some really good points here. One of them is that we are shipping some pretty advanced equipment and some not so advanced equipment to Ukraine. To help them fight in this war to protect themselves from Russia. [01:04:24] Now, you know, all of that, that's, that's pretty common. Ultimately looking back in history, there have been a lot of people who've made a lot of money off of wars. Many of the big banks financing, both sides of wars. Going way, way back and coming all the way up through the 20th century. And part of the way people make money in war time is obviously making the equipment, the, and supplies and stuff that the armies need. [01:04:57] The other way that they do it is by trading in arms. So not just the supplies. The bullets all the way through the advanced missile systems. Now there's been some concerns because of what we have been seen online. We've talked about telegram here before, not the safest web, you know, app to use in order to keep in touch. [01:05:24] It's really an app for your phone and it's being used. Ukraine to really coordinate some of their hacker activities against Russia. They've also been using it in Russia, te telegram that is in order to kind of communicate with each other. Ukraine has posted pictures of some of the killed soldiers from Russia and people have been reaching out to their mothers in Russia. [01:05:53] They've done a lot of stuff with telegram it's interest. And hopefully eventually we'll find out what the real truth is, right? Because all sides in the military use a lot of propaganda, right? The first casualty in war is the truth. It always has been. So we're selling to a country, Ukraine that has made a lot of money off of selling. [01:06:19] Been systems being an inter intermediary. So you're not buying the system from Russia? No, no. You're buying it from Ukraine and it has been of course, just as deadly, but now we are sending. Equipment military great equipment to Ukraine. We could talk about just that a lot. I, I mentioned the whole lend lease program many months ago. [01:06:45] Now it seems to be in the news. Now takes a while for the mainstream media to catch up with us. I'm usually about six to 12 weeks ahead of what they're talking about. And so when we're talking about Lynn Le, it means. We're not giving it to them. We're not selling it to them. We're just lending them the equipment or perhaps leasing it just like we did for the United Kingdom back in world. [01:07:10] Wari, not a bad idea. If you want to get weapons into the hands of an adversary and not really, or not an adversary, but an ally or potential ally against an adversary that you have, and they have. But part of the problem is we're talking about Ukraine here. Ukraine was not invited in NATO because it was so corrupt. [01:07:33] You might remember. they elected a new president over there that president started investigating, hired a prosecutor to go after the corruption in Ukraine. And then you heard president Joe Biden, vice president at the time bragging about how he got this guy shut down. Uh, yeah, he, he got the prosecutor shut down the prosecutor that had his sights on, of course hunter Biden as well as other people. [01:08:00] So it it's a real problem, but. Let's set that aside for now, we're talking about Ukraine and the weapon systems we've been sending over there. There have been rumors out there. I haven't seen hard evidence, but I have seen things in various papers worldwide talking about telegrams, saying. That the Ukrainians have somehow gotten their hands on these weapons and are selling them on telegram. [01:08:30] Imagine that, uh, effectively kind of a dark web thing, I guess. So we're, we're saying, well, you know, Biden administration, uh, you know, yeah. Okay. Uh, that, that none of this is going to happen. Why? Well, because we went ahead and we put into the contracts that they could not sell or share or give any of this equipment away without the explicit permission of the United States government. [01:09:01] Well, okay. That, that kind of sounds like it's not a bad idea. I would certainly put it into any contract like this, no question, but what could happen here? If this equipment falls into the hands of our adversaries or, or other Western countries, NATO countries, how do you keep track of them? It it's very hard to do. [01:09:22] How do you know who's actually using them? Very hard to do so enforcing these types of contracts is very difficult, which makes a contract pretty weak, frankly. And then let's look at Washington DC, the United States, according to the Washington post in mid April, gave Ukraine a fleet of I 17 helicopter. [01:09:49] Now these MI 17 helicopters are Russian, originally Soviet designs. Okay. And they were bought by the United States. About 10 years ago, we bought them for Afghan's government, which of course now has been deposed, but we still have our hands on some of these helicopters. And when we bought them from Russia, We signed a contract. [01:10:16] The United States signed a contract promising not to transfer the helicopters to any third country quote without the approval of the Russian Federation. Now that's according to a copy of the certificate that's posted on the website of Russia's federal service on military technical cooperation. So there you. [01:10:38] Russia's come out and said that our transfer, those helicopters has grossly violated the foundations of international law. And, and you know, what they, it has, right. Arms experts are saying that Russia's aggression Ukraine more than justifies us support, but the violations of the weapons contracts, man, that really hurts our credibility and the, our we're not honoring these contracts. [01:11:06] How can we expect Ukraine to honor those contracts? That's where the problem really comes in. And it's ultimately a very, very big problem. So this emergency spending bill that it, you know, the $30 billion. Makes Ukraine, the world's single largest recipient of us security assistance ever. They've received more in 2022 than United States ever provided to Afghanistan, Iraq, or Israel in a single year. [01:11:40] So they're adding to the stockpiles of weapons that we've already committed. We've got 1400 stinger anti-aircraft systems, 5,500 anti tank, Mitch missiles, 700 switch blade drones, nine 90. Excuse me, long range Howards. That's our Tillery 7,000 small arms. 50 million rounds of ammunition and other minds, explosives and laser guided rocket systems, according to the Washington post. [01:12:10] So it's fascinating to look. It's a real problem. And now that we've got the bad guys who are using the dark web, remember the dark web system that we set up, the onion network. Yeah. That one, uh, they can take these, they can sell them, they can move them around. It is a real problem. A very big problem. What are we gonna do when all of those weapons systems come back aimed at us this time? [01:12:40] You know, it's one thing to leave billions of dollars worth of helicopters, et cetera, back in Afghanistan is the Biden administration did with their crazy withdrawal tactic. Um, but at least those will wear out the bullets, missile systems, Howard, yours, huh? Different deal. [01:13:01] It seems like the government calls war on everything, the war against drugs or against poverty. Well, now we are looking at a war against end to end encryption by government's worldwide, including our own. [01:13:18] The European union is following in America's footstep steps, again, only a few years behind this time. [01:13:27] Uh, but it's not a good thing. In this case, you might remember a few have been following cybersecurity. Like I have back in the Clinton administration, there was a very heavy push for something called the clipper chip. And I think that whole clipper chip. Actually started with the Bush administration and it was a bad, bad thing, uh, because what they were trying to do is force all businesses to use this encryption chip set that was developed and promoted by the national security agency. [01:14:04] And it's supposed to be an encryption device that is used to secure, uh, voice and data messages. And it had a built in. Back door that allowed federal state, local law enforcement, anybody that had the key, the ability to decode any intercepted voice or data transmissions. It was introduced in 93 and was thank goodness. [01:14:32] Defunct by 1996. So it used something called skip Jack man. I remember that a lot and it used it to transfer dilly or Diffy excuse me, Hellman key exchange. I've worked with that before crypto keys. It used, it used the, uh, Des algorithm, the data encryption standard, which is still used today. And the Clinton administration argued that the clipper chip was. [01:14:59] Absolutely essential for law enforcement to keep up with a constantly progressing technology in the United States. And a lot of people believe that using this would act as frankly, an additional way for terrorists to receive information and to break into encrypted information. And the Clinton administration argued that it, it would increase national security because terrorists would have to use it to communicate with outsiders, bank, suppliers, contacts, and the government could listen in on those calls. [01:15:33] Right. Aren't we supposed to in United States have have a right to be secure in our papers and other things, right? The, the federal government has no right to come into any of that stuff unless they get a court order. So they were saying, well, we would take this key. We'll make sure that it's in a, a lock box, just like Al gore social security money. [01:15:55] And no one would be able to get their hands on it, except anyone that wanted to, unless there was a court order and you know how this stuff goes, right. It, it just continues to progress. And. A lot worse. Well, there was a lot of backlash by it. The electronic privacy information center, electronic frontier foundation boast, both pushed back saying that it would not. [01:16:20] Only have the effect of, of not, excuse me, have the effect of this is a quote, not only subjecting citizens to increased impossibly illegal government surveillance, but that the strength of the clipper trips encryption could not be evaluated by the public as its design. Was classified secret and that therefore individuals and businesses might be hobbled with an insecure communication system, which is absolutely true. [01:16:48] And the NSA went on to do some things like pollute, random number generators and other things to make it so that it was almost impossible to have end-to-end encrypted data. So we were able to kill. Many years ago. Now what about 30 years ago? Uh, when they introduced this thing? Well, it took a few years to get rid of it, but now the EU is out there saying they want to stop end, end encryption. [01:17:16] The United States has already said that, or the new director of Homeland security has, and as well as Trump's, uh, again, Homeland security people said we need to be able to break the. And, and we've talked about some of the stories, real world stories of things that have happened because of the encryption. [01:17:37] So the EU has now got a proposal forward that would force tech companies to scan private messages for child sexual abuse material called CSAM and evidence of grooming. Even when those messages are supposed to be protected by end to end encrypt. So we know how this goes, right? It, it starts at something that's, everybody can agree on, right? [01:18:05] This child, sexual abuse material, uh, abductions of children, all, you know, there's still a lot of slavery going on in the world. All of that stuff needs to be stopped. And so we say, ye
May 9, 2022: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drexdeford/ (Drex DeFord), Executive Healthcare Strategist at https://www.crowdstrike.com/ (CrowdStrike) and https://www.linkedin.com/in/ldm007/ (Lee Milligan), CIO for https://www.asante.org/ (Asante Health) join Bill for the news. Saint Louis University Hospital nurses target administration in no-confidence vote. UnityPoint Health opens $38.4M hospital. WHO says Elon Musk has a “huge responsibility” to fight health misinformation on Twitter. In 2020 we saw a historical $14.9B invested into digital health companies. In 2021, those investments made history again, nearly doubling 2020's record. Is this Hype or Bubble? Key Points: The expense for traveling nurses compared to FTE nurses can be four times higher With regard to new hospital builds, what are we doing right? What did we get wrong? Instead of where's disruption going to come from, more importantly where's transformation going to come from? Stories: https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-management-administration/saint-louis-university-hospital-nurses-target-administration-in-no-confidence-vote.html (Saint Louis University Hospital nurses target administration in no-confidence vote - Beckers) https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/capital/unitypoint-health-opens-38-4m-hospital.html (UnityPoint Health opens $38.4M hospital - Beckers) https://blog.providence.org/digital-innovation/dig-this-hype-or-bubble (DIG THIS: Hype or Bubble? - Providence) https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/04/musk-has-huge-responsibility-to-fight-health-misinfo-on-twitter-who-says/ (Musk has “huge responsibility” to fight health misinfo on Twitter, WHO says - ars Technica)
How Does Big Government Collaboration With Big Tech Raise the Costs of Everything? We're going to talk about the Senate bill that has big tech scared, really scared. I'll talk about a new job site problem for a number of different industries because of hackers, the cloud, the cost and reliability. [Following is an automated transcript] This tech bill. It has the Senate really scared. He is frankly, quite a big deal for those of you who are watching over on of course, rumble or YouTube. I'm pulling this up on this screen. This is an article. ARS Technica and they got it originally from wired it's it was out in wired earlier in the month. And it's pointing out a real big problem that this isn't just a problem. This is a problem for both the legislature. In this case, we're going to talk about the Senate and a problem for our friend. In big tech. So let us define the first problem as the big tech problem. [00:01:00] You're Amazon. You are Google. Those are the two big targets here of this particular bill. We're going to talk about, or maybe your Facebook or one of these other Facebook properties, et cetera. If you are a small company that wants to compete with any of these big guys, What can you do? Obviously you can do what everyone's been telling us. Oh, you don't like the censorship, just make your own platform. And there've been a lot of places and people that are put a lot of money into trying to make their own platform. And some of them have had some mild successes. So for instance, I'm on. You can watch my videos there. And there have been some successes that rumble has had and making it into kind of the competition to YouTube. But YouTube is still the 800 pound gorilla. Everybody wants to be where the cool kids are. So for most people. That YouTube. They look at YouTube as being the [00:02:00] popular place. Thus, we should be, we are obviously saw the whole thing with Elon Musk and Twitter, and the goings on there. And Twitter really is the public square, although it's died down a lot because of this censorship on Twitter. Interesting. So as time goes forward, these various big companies are worried about potential competition. So how do they deal with that? This is where the real problems start coming in because we saw Amazon, for instance, in support of an internet sales tax. You remember that whole big deal. The internet had been set aside saying, Hey, no states can tax the internet and that's going to keep the internet open. That's going to help keep it free. And people can start buying online. And that worked out fairly well. A lot of people are out there, why would Amazon support a sales tax on the internet? They are the biggest merchant on the internet, probably the biggest [00:03:00] merchant period when it comes to not just consumer goods, but a lot of goods, like a staples might carry for business. So they'd have to deal with what they're 9,000 different tax jurisdictions in the United States. And then of course all these other countries, we're not going to talk about them right now, but the United States 9,000 tax jurisdictions. So why would Amazon support an internet sales tax when there's 5,000 tax jurisdictions? The reason is it makes life easier for them when it comes to competition. So if you are a little. And do you want to sell your widgets or your service? Whatever it might be online. You now have to deal with 9,000 tax jurisdictions. It's bad enough in the Northeast. If you are in New Hampshire, if you live in New Hampshire and you spend more than, I think [00:04:00] it's 15% of your time south of the border and mass, then mass wants you to pay income tax for that 15% that you are spending your time there. Now they do that with the. Baseball teams with football teams, hockey, you name it, right? So the big football team comes into town. The Patriots are paying the New York jets or whatever it might be. The Patriots have to pay New York state taxes, income tax now because they stepped foot in New York heaven forbid that they try and do business there and help New York state out. And they now have to pay income tax. Now they only have to pay income tax for, or for the amount of time. They're more New York. Various states have various weirdnesses, but if you're only playing 1, 2, 3 dozen games a year, It isn't like your normal work here, which is 2080 hours. We're talking about their plane to New York and they're only spending maybe 10 hours working in New York, but that [00:05:00] represents what percentage, 10, 20, 30% of their income, depending on how many games they play and how they're paying. And so they got to keep track of all that and figure it out. Okay. We played in New York, we played in New Jersey. We're in mass. We were they weren't in New Hampshire, certainly the Patriots plane, but they got to figure it all out. Guess what? Those big pay. Football players, hockey, baseball. They can afford to have a tax accountant, figure it all out and then battle with them. I had a booth one time at a trade show down in Connecticut. Didn't say. Thing it was terrible trade shows, man. They aren't what they used to be. And they haven't been for a long time. This is probably a decade plus ago, maybe even 20 years ago. So I had a little booth, we were selling our services for cybersecurity and of course, nobody wanted to bother pain for cybersecurity who needs it. I haven't been hacked yet. [00:06:00] Although there's an interesting article. We'll talk about next week based on a study that shows. Small businesses are going out of business at a huge rate because of the hacks because of ransomware. And if you're worried about ransomware, I've got a really great little guide that you can get. Just email me, me@craigpeterson.com. I'll send it off to you, right? It's a free thing. Real information, not this cruddy stuff that you get from so many marketers, cause I'm an engineer. They'll go out of business. So they figured I haven't got a business yet, not a big deal. And so no body. There's big trade show. And I was so disappointed with the number of people that even showed up for this silly thing. So what happens next while I get back to the office and about a month to two months later, I get this notice from the state of Connecticut they're tax people saying that I haven't paid my Connecticut taxes yet. [00:07:00] And because I was in connected. I should be paying my income tax for that day that I spent and wasted in Connecticut. Oh. And plus every company in Connecticut that I'm doing business with now, I need to collect their taxes and pay them the taxes that I'm collecting for those Connecticut businesses are resident. I didn't sell a thing. You know what it took almost, I think it was three or maybe four years to get the state of Connecticut to finally stop sending me all of these threatening notices because I didn't get a dime from anybody in Connecticut. So I'd love the internet from that standpoint saying you don't have to collect taxes in certain cases, certain states, et cetera, unless you have a legal nexus or a legal presence there in the state. So back to Amazon, Amazon loves the idea of having everything on the internet packs. They love the fact that there's 9,000 plus [00:08:00] tax jurisdictions. When you get right down to city, state county Lilian, either local taxes, or you look at those poor residents of New York state, or they're poor residents out in Washington state that have to worry about that, right? There's county taxes, state sales tax. City sales tax, and income taxes are much the same, the, all of these crazy cities and states around the country. Yeah. The ones that are in serious trouble right now, they are those same ones. Those particular jurisdictions are hard to deal with. So from Amazon standpoint is just like the Patriots football players. We've got plenty of money. We've got teams of lawyers. We have all kinds of accountant. We can handle this and you know why Amazon really loves it because it provides another obstacle for any competitors who want to enter the business. That's the [00:09:00] real reason, so many big businesses don't go ahead and charge you serious money so that they can use that money against you. Okay. You see where I'm going with this? Because if you want to start a business that competes with Amazon, if you want to have a doilies, you're making doilies. My grandmother used to make them all the time and she had them on the toilet paper in the bathroom, little doily holders. Doilies everywhere. And then of course, the seashells shells on top of the toilet paper holders. If you want to do that and sell it, how are you going to deal online with 9,000 tax jurisdictions? All what you're going to do is you're going to go to Etsy, or you may be going to go to Amazon marketplace and sell your product there. An Amazon marketplace. So Amazon is taking its cut out of it at is taking it's cut off. And you still ultimately have some of that tax liable. [00:10:00] Amazon loves it. It's the same reason you see these groups forums, right? Barbers saying, oh, we've got to be regulated. Really you need to have a regulation in place for barbers. You need to have licensing for barbers. Why do they do that? They do that. Not just barbers, right? It's all of these licensures and various states. They do that really to keep people. To keep their prices high. That's why they do it because someone can't just put up a sign and say, Hey, I am now a barber. Come get a haircut. And if you don't like the barber, if they do a lousy job, you go elsewhere. We don't need all of the bureaucracy on top of this to enforce licensure. Anyways, when we get back, let's talk about that Senate. It's a big deal. And I am coming down in the middle of this thing. Hey, visit me online. Sign up right now. Craig peterson.com and get my special report on passwords.[00:11:00] We just talked about how big business uses its advantages to crush potential competition. Crush them. And it's a shame and it's happened to me and many people I know, and now the Senate's getting involved and making things worse. This is a huge problem. This happened to me a number of years ago, and I will never forget it. It was a really big lesson for me. I had designed and written a computer system that would take the code that it was written for a much older system. And run it for much less money. So bottom line here, this was a system called Cade computer assisted data entry that was made by Sperry way back in the day. Yeah. I've been in there for that long and they had little programs, so they would not punch cards, but punch right on two tapes, those big [00:12:00] nine track tapes and that information would then be used for processing later on then. People, big businesses grocery stores, you name it. We're using that Sperry system. And I designed a system that would take their COBOL is what it was. It was a form of COBOL code from this cage system. And you could use my code to compile it and run it on a Unix system. So the cost involved here was that it would be cheaper to buy a whole new Unix computer and buy new terminals and do some slight training changes. But the key punch operators would be exactly the same keystrokes as they were already used to. Okay. So you know how fast they were, so it wouldn't slow than none at all. And their cost would be. Then just the maintenance contract on the old Sperry cage. Very [00:13:00] cool stuff. And I worked really well. Then I worked with a couple of sales guys at spirit because Barry had a Unix tower system. It was a mini computer that was Unix space. And I had one, I had saved up my money. We bought this thing. It was a lot of money nowadays. It'd be about a hundred thousand dollars I spent on that system and it was really great. Cool. So some grocery stores started using it. They used it to build the space shuttle to design it and send it into space. RCA, Astro space used it, my system, which is all really cool. So Sperry was interested in it saying, okay let's do this. Now. I had flown myself across the country too, because I was in California at the time to do some of this work for. The for RCA Astro space for the space program and help make sure it was working and get it installed, help them configure it and everything else. So [00:14:00] I had a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of effort into this. It was a big venture. So Sperry invited me down to their headquarters down in blue bell, Pennsylvania to talk about this. And I was so excited because their sales guys wanted to sell it. They gave me some free space in a booth in Las Vegas. So I was in the Sperry booth with them and, say, yeah, you can buy this. And you're using the Sperry, the new Sperry hardware. And I went down there and talked with them. They never did anything with me, or, here's a huge investment young guy. And all of this stuff just worked and they had proof of concept. They had a couple of customers already using the system and it never materialized. And then about a year and a half later, I found out Sperry had tried to duplicate my system and had messed it up terribly. It [00:15:00] wasn't keystroke compatible. So anyone using the new Sperry system, they had to learn. Okay. So I got to hit this and I got to go over here and I got to click on this. Are you kidding me using a mouse? Aren't you not? These are data entry operators. They just go all day long, just typing and. They had stolen my ideas. They messed it up. They didn't do as good a job as I did, which turns out it's pretty common. And they had stolen it. They stolen years of my life. So I've seen that before with me. I've seen Microsoft do that with friends of mine, and I've seen apple do it with various products that they've decided to release. They all do it. Why do you think these businesses can not spend money on research and development, and yet at the same time, stay in business as technology's continuing to move forward? Why? The reason is. They don't have to do, or why [00:16:00] would we do T wait a minute. Now, all we have to do is either buy the company or steal the product just re-engineer. Oh. And if we want to buy the company, we can do what Microsoft has been accused of doing again and again, which is. We'll just Microsoft. Let's see here. I like that database is pretty darn cool. So here's what we're going to do. So Microsoft announces, Hey, we're going to have a competitor to that in coming out soon. And then they sit there and they wait and they say, okay, how many people are going to ask about, oh wow. A lot of people asking for it. In the meantime, that company that had that great little database soft. Trying to sell it. And people are saying, wait, Microsoft is going to come up with a version of this. I'm just, I'm going to wait. We can wait a few months. Let's see what Microsoft. So that poor company is now seriously struggling because this big company came out and made the announcement that they're going to do something like this. And then that small company gets a [00:17:00] knock on the door. Hey, we're Microsoft or company X. And we like your product. Wow. Okay. So we're going to do a buyout. We're going to we're just, oh, this is going to be fantastic. I might have to sign what a two year contract non-compete and help them manage it. Okay. We can deal with this. And then they find out that company X says Your company is not worth that much anymore. Your sales look at their sales here, man. They've gone way down. Okay. So let me see let's do a nickel on every dollar evaluation you had a year ago. This happens every day, worldwide in America, it should never happen to anyone. And as you can tell, it upsets me. So what are Klobuchar and Grassley doing here? Amy, when she was running for president, she made this big deal. I'm going to pull us up on my screen. Those of you who are watching [00:18:00] on rumble or YouTube. And you can find all of that in my website, Craig peterson.com can see here. So they are trying to protect the American consumer, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's it. They're gonna protect us. And so what they're doing is saying that. Would a rule ruin Google search results because that's what Google says. Is it going to bar apple from offering new features, useful ones on the iPhone? How about Facebook? Will it stop them from moderating content? So the legislation's core idea is we will just. The marketplace take care of things. We're not going to let Amazon put their products in the product listings before third parties, but how are you possibly going to be able to regulate that stuff you can't, you can regulate it [00:19:00] talking about a bureaucracy. You'd probably need one about as big as the federal government is right now. And the federal government needs to be cut back in a major way. There's this two months. How about the 150 million Americans? This article brings that up to that are currently using Amazon prime, even though the price one hump. And they have it free to prime members. It's this is a big deal. The bill doesn't mention prime. Doesn't mention Google by name, Amazon. But this is going to be a nightmare to enforce the bill is not specific enough. It should be voted down. And between you and me, I don't know what can be done about this other than to have additional marketplaces show up online. And you know what the conservative social media sites are starting to win. So maybe there's hope. We've got two things we're going to talk about right now. One of them [00:20:00] is tech jobs. And man, is there a lot of scamming going on there as you might expect in the second is cloud, are you looking at cloud services? Hey, a home or business. You can see this. I'm going to pull this up on my screen for those watching on rumble or on YouTube, but this is a big problem. And we've seen this again and again right now, they're going after certain workers in the chemical. The sector, but it isn't just the chemical sector. What we've seen is the bad guys going after anyone that's applying for a job. So let me give you a few tips here. First of all, you should not be pain to apply for a job. We see that all of the time when it comes to the head hunting firms, what. Is, they will charge the business who is looking to hire someone [00:21:00] that makes sense to you. They'll hire they'll charge the business. So oftentimes it's a percentage of the annual salary committee where from usually 20% up to a hundred percent or more, depending on the position. And boy can, they make a lot of money, but they don't necessarily place. People, but you know how it is right now, there, there can be quite a few. So people have been applying for jobs to make a lot of money and not realizing that fee that supposedly they have to pay is illegitimate. So remember that. Okay. The second thing has to do with this particular scam, because what they're trying to do is. Into some of these companies. So they will send a thing out saying, Hey, on my head hunter, I'm here for you. We're going to get you this job you need to apply. Are you interested in a new job now? I've seen some stats online saying [00:22:00] that somewhere around 30 plus percent of people are looking or at least open to. Take getting a new job, which means a lot more are looking for jobs. Now I have to add to that, that the people who have jumped ship over the lockdown period really are not happy. The majority of them wish they had stayed where they were at. So keep that in mind too. But what they'll do is they'll say, Hey, listen. Oh, there's this new feature on LinkedIn. By the way, you can say y'all are, I'm interested in looking for a job. I forget exactly what it says, but it goes around your picture and I have it up there because I'm a contractor, I go to businesses and I'm. To harden their cybersecurity. And we usually start slowly, especially with some of these startups we're doing work with right now where they won't, they go from a completely flat network and [00:23:00] it's all engineers and I don't want anything hindering anything. And so you got to work with them and it's just, we had a time sort of a thing. Okay. I just had this one thing this week. And then move on to one thing next week as well. So that's what I do for a living. And a lot of people are looking on LinkedIn and other places to find people who can be a chief information security officer. So I'm what you call a fractional chief information security officer. I do this under contract and I've been doing contracts and contract work for. I don't know if I shouldn't be on the air, but my gosh it's been now I guess it's 40 years right now. So I've been doing this for a long time. So I'm familiar with some of these scams, so they didn't take my word on some of this stuff. So what they do is they say, Hey, we've got a potential job opening. Are you in interested now? When we talk about 30 plus percent of people polled [00:24:00] say that they're looking interested in a new job, the numbers are probably a little higher. Not that everyone's going to jump ship. Some people will, but there are a lot of people that if they get this email, they're going to open it up. And so what'll happen now is this group out of North Korea called the Lazarus group? And we've talked about them before. We'll go ahead and say yeah, the here's, what's going to happen here. Let's just send you this thing. You can open it up. You can look at it and see if it's really a fit for you. I love this graphic that they have. This is from dark reading. I have it up on the screen again. Rumble and YouTube. What should we do now? Should I open this up? Should I not open it up? It turns out that what's happening is that Symantec and Broadcom, both have noticed this and stated in an advisory a couple of weeks ago. Be very careful [00:25:00] because what it's going to do is install a Trojan horse on your computer. So let's think about this. You're talking about the chemicals. You have a lot of people who are very technical. And if a company wants to get some new technology, we talked about this earlier in the show, what did they do? Do they just go and say, oh, okay, let's get some R and D going here. Let me research and development. Let's hire some scientists and do some pure science here, which are almost never happens anymore. No, what they do is they either buy a company, they steal a company's idea. If you are like the communist, you try and steal the technology directly. And that's exactly what these guys are doing. They put a Trojan on your machine because you open that file and that Trojan then gives you. Oh, excuse me, gives them access to your machine. Now this particular Trobe Trojan is a malicious [00:26:00] web file. Disguises. This job offer and your machine gets comparable. They attempt to compromise it, right? It's not always successful. They're not as many zero days out there for these lower level actors like North Korea, but they've been able. Now, they're not just going after chemical sectors, they're going after it service providers. So companies like mine that provide managed security services for businesses, they are being attacked. So that's a problem too, isn't it? Because if you can compromise. A nine company and we've seen this all the time. It's getting reported like crazy. You now have access to all of their customers because the it service company has passwords, et cetera. And they're probably using. Industry is number one or number two products for managing the customer's computers, neither of which are secure. [00:27:00] And that's the biggest problem that we've had. We use some of these things before, I'm not going to name them right now because it wouldn't mean anything to you anyways, but we had to get. We worked with our, it people inside the software companies that make the software that are used by the managed services providers. And we'd talked with their developers and said, Hey, listen, this is a serious problem. That's a serious problem. You've got to change this. You got to change that. And what ended up happening? We left them because they weren't doing what they were supposed to be doing a very big deal. So they're targeting defense, contractors, engineering firms of any sort. They want to steal IP, intellectual property, pharmaceutical companies. Yeah. Very big deal. These third hunting teams, including Cisco's, which are the guys that we use. Tallow sets again, an example of a big company buying a smaller company called telos that does threat intelligence and it looks at stuff. They're all reporting to this. [00:28:00] So high level jobs in an industry or what you have to watch out. It'd be very careful. Now, earlier this year, Lazarus group, again, North Korea went after some of these jobs people 250 that were identified working in the news media, software vendors, internet infrastructure providers, using job offers that appeared to come from. Disney, Google Oracle by the way, that was according to Google who tracked the campaign. They know what their employees are doing, where they're going, what emails coming in. It's crazy. We're looking a lot of stuff. Okay. So I want to move on to the next topic here. Last one, this hour, but I'm gonna pull this up right now on my screen. You can have a look at it there. Of course, if you are at home. You can or you really can't on the road. You can see this on rumble and also see this on the YouTube [00:29:00] site. At least for the time being until I get kicked off right. Kicked off again. That seems to be the word of the hour, but cost reliability are raising concerns in. Again, this is a dark reading article, came out a couple of weeks back here, but the biggest concerns about cloud computing to what is cloud computing. Let's talk about that first for a minute. Cloud computing is going online using something like salesforce.com. People don't think of that as cloud computing. But you have in Salesforce, all the communications with all of your customers, et cetera, that's an example of a platform as a service, basically. So they're providing you with everything and it's up in the cloud, nothing to worry about here, folks, but of course you have the same potential problems. You do outs where people use what's it called now? Microsoft 365. Which Microsoft disclaimed [00:30:00] any liability for any problems they cause for anything customers it's really crazy, but again, what are the problems there? Reliability slash performance, 50% of the people, 50% applaud on the screen. Again here worried about reliability and performance, because if your business is relying on cloud computing, What, how is the security any good? That you could use something, as I mentioned Salesforce, and just picking them out of a hat and not, they haven't been like a terrible provider by any stretch. But how about if you're going to Azure and you're using a workstation news here? How about if you're going to some other place, right? It could be Amazon web services. Google also has data processing services. Security's huge issue. Cost is a huge issue, reliability, performance, all of those. We're issues with more than 50% of the it [00:31:00] professionals. I'm surprised that this next one, which is our staff skillset on dealing with cog computing 26%. The reason I'm surprised by that is hardly anybody knows enough about cloud computing. Do we really confident about it? I'm serious about that. There's some companies right now, we're talking with a company called Wiz and they audit Azure configuration. So be very careful if you're using. Particularly if you're a business, it may not work out well for you. Hey, make sure you go online right now. Craig peterson.com/subscribe. Sign up. You'll get my newsletters. You'll get all kinds of great information. Absolutely free Craig peterson.com including my special report on passwords. Now, if you have any questions, just email me M e@craigpeterson.com. [00:32:00] There is a whole bunch going on when it comes to Russia, of course, invasion of Ukraine. We're going to talk about that. And what is I can, how does this domain system work and why are people calling to have dot R U deleted? This is really a big deal. And if you're watching from home, I'm going to go full screen on this article. This is an article from ARS Technica, and I've been talking about it all week, which is that I can won't revoke Russian in Jeanette domains, says the effect. Devastating. This is frankly pretty darn fascinating to me because I can, as this international organization, it was put together in order to help make the internet international. And I'm not talking about the data international, but control of it. A lot of countries work. Because of [00:33:00] course the internet was created in that states. It was created by us tax payers, money for the DOD. And it was designed to be very resilient, in fact, so resilient that there could be a nuclear blast and that nuclear blast and. Causing problems, but yeah. Yeah, the internet is still going to work. And the whole idea behind it was you could have multiple routers. They're all talking to each other nowadays. They're talking BGP four and they can say, how can I get from here? To there. And so the idea behind BGP is they all share this information once the least cost way. What's the easiest way to post way. If you will, for me to get from point a to point B and it changes all the time. So you might be on a phone conversation. You might be listening to me right now, online streaming or watching the video you might be doing, who knows what [00:34:00] out there with digital communications. But the communications channel that you think you're using, where the data is going from, let's say my microphone, ultimately to your device, your ears, that data path, once it becomes dated. Can be changing multiple times a second. Now it actually changes quite a bit. Initially as these internet backbone routers, send the least cost, routing information back and forth to, and fro a very good thing, frankly, because it helps to speed everything up. And there's other tricks that we're using you. Might've seen. For instance, Akamai and some of the URLs before have sites that you've gone to, and that's called a content delivery network and that helps get the content to be closer to you. So if you're on a website in California and you're in New Hampshire, that website video, that website graphic, et cetera, is going to be coming from [00:35:00] a server local to me here in New Hampshire. All right. That's how that all is supposed to work. So we have names you guys know about that internet, domain names and those domain names. You already know those are turned into internet addresses, and those addresses are then used by the routers to figure out where to go, how to get the data. The problem that we're having right now, of course, is Russia seems to be substantially abusing the intranet Putin, put a kill switch on to the Russian internet sometime ago. And the idea behind the skills, which was, Hey, listen, if we don't want the world to be talking to us, we'll just cut it. Now he's tested it a couple of times, but what he has not done is shut it down and he hasn't shut it down. As part of this Ukraine, more, what they did is they passed laws saying, Hey, if you publish something that [00:36:00] disagrees with what we're saying, you get 15 years. And even these people who've been protesting on the streets, they're getting a bound 60 days, 30 to 60 days in jail, just for protesting what's going on. So a lot of people have been saying why don't we just, we turn off the Russian internet now we're not going to use Putin's kill switch in order to shut it all off. We're not going to do a well, a few things. She decided not to do, denial of service attacks, et cetera. Although there are hackers doing that and we are going to talk about that today, but they're saying what? Let's just go ahead and let's kill their dot R E. The country domain. And I can, the guy who heads it up said, Hey, listen our mission is just to make sure that the internet works. So shutting off the dot R U domain so that no one can go ahead and. We send right. A [00:37:00] request out to the domain name servers and get a resolution to an IP address. So if you try and go to Kremlin dot REU or something, you will get blocked and you will get blocked. Not blocked. No, I like the great firewall of China or of Russia. Now they've got one going pretty good. Yeah. Thank you. You ain't using us technology. It's crazy. What we've. But what it does is it says, oh, I hide dot, are you, I don't know. What are you talking about? So there have been a lot of people who have been pushing for it. And you'll see, on my screen here, that Ukraine is requested to cut Russia off from some of these core parts of the internet. And I can, which is the internet corporation for assigned names and numbers. I couldn't remember what that was earlier said that I can must remain neutral and their mission they say is not to take punitive actions. It's to make sure the internet works. So are they really taking punitive actions [00:38:00] of the cat Russia off? It's really interesting to me because look at what has been going on. You've got companies like Facebook as the great example who has gone ahead and just shut off people. They didn't like what they were saying. My goodness. At one point of you said you should wear a mask during this pandemic. You would be cut off from Facebook. And then of course, if you said, no, you don't, you shouldn't don't need you, you shouldn't wear a mask that at that point you would be cut off, because science right. Sciences, we know exactly what we're doing now. It goes on and on. If you said that it came from a lab in China, you would have your account suspended. Now of course their whole tune has changed and yeah probably came from a lab in China. It's crazy what these people have been doing. So we have arbiters of truth, who are some contractors sitting in their home or wherever it is the contractors for Facebook [00:39:00] that are going through posts that people are flagging as Incorrect as fake news. So what happens is people say fake news and then that goes off to their team that then looks at it and says okay. Yeah, fake news because we disagree with it. It just blows my mind. We have to have free and fair and open discussions. Don't we. You have that line at Facebook and Google does some of the same. A lot of these sites do a lot of the same. You get our major media outlets that are all deciding what they want to report on and what they want to label as fake and fake news. I'm just shaking my head because it's hard. It's hard to believe. What about. Russia is putting out fake news, as I've said many times before the first casualty in war, this isn't my quote. The first casualty in war is what, it's the truth. So if [00:40:00] truth is the first casualty, then that means we've got a lot of propaganda going on. We had propaganda coming out of Ukraine. We've caught some of those, like the, what was it? The. Chat goes, fighter, pilot, whatever it was who had killed, what was it? Five Soviet or Russian jets, Soviet era using silver deer, techno era technology on the part of the Ukrainian turns out well. Okay, that, that was false news. That was fake news. The whole thing about snake island, where you had that Russian military. I know what it was a frigging but anyways boat sitting there saying we are a Russia. Warship, you will surrender or, whatever. Do you remember that snake on just the small place, 13 guys and supposedly they shelled it and they killed all 13 turns out that was probably fake news as well. So that's from the Ukrainian side and on the Russian side they hardly reported I as to how many.[00:41:00] The we're in fact, initially for quite a while, they were saying there are no desks. Then at the same time, the Ukrainians are saying they're 2,500 Russians dead. And that number keeps going up, who knows what it is today. It gets really crazy in the time of war. So if Facebook is going to stop someone from saying don't wear masks or do wear masks, depending on what day of the week it is basically right. Wednesday. It's okay to say that Thursday is not okay to say that we're back. No it's not. Or then why can't that type of censorship? Move on to the next. I that's a big question I have now. Should we be shutting it off? I'll pull this back up on the screen again. And it, this article from ARS, Technica is saying that experts have warned, whoever they are that shutting down the dot R U domain. Is going to cause just incredible problems [00:42:00] for Russians, which man would it ever talking about a major blow to the economy. And it would also cause problems for people who are trying to find out more truth about. Russia cause you couldn't get to their site. Now we've seen some amazing things in Russia. We had the Russian, one of the Russian news agencies T, which is broadcasting and here in the U S that their entire staff just walked out saying, forget about it. We're not going to promote this fake news, but this is a little bit different question. Me personally. I don't think anybody should be censoring any. For almost anything. Yo, there are some limits, but they're pretty extreme in my book. I'd rather know someone is an idiot because they're allowed to say stupid things, and counter, counter it, counter their arguments. You've got to have discussions anyways, stick around. We'll be [00:43:00] right back. Microsoft. Yeah, they've been around a long time. They've been helping us. They've had lots of cybersecurity problems. People use Microsoft software on their desktop. Some people use it for servers, which is crazy, but listen to what they're doing now. This is a little concerning. I'm going to pull this article up on the screen. For those of you who are watching a long, either on rumble or YouTube ARS, Technica article, they have some really great articles. This particular one is about our friends at Microsoft. This is cool. Microsoft announced today? This was like a week or so ago that Microsoft would be suspending all new sales of Microsoft products and services in Russia. Following the countries, unjustified, unprovoked, and unlawful invasion of. Now Microsoft [00:44:00] didn't give any specifics about the products, but it really is likely to be a blanket ban of all of the Microsoft products. This is very cool because Microsoft has taken an approach I've never seen them do before, which is okay. When. Gets hacked. You get our friends at apple, putting together patches and getting them out. They get them up pretty quick. Microsoft had been doing much the same. The problem was some months there were patches every day that you had to apply. That's how bad this software is. And they decided that man, let's be like politicians here. Let's release some very damning news Friday. At about 4:30 PM before a long weekend. So no one will notice. Yeah. Y'all are friends of politicians do that all the time. What Microsoft decided they do is, Hey, wait a minute. We know we're going to have patches. [00:45:00] It's not going to slow down. And because our code is terrible. So what we're going to do, let me see here. How about we just release all of them at once and we'll just call it patch Tuesday, right? Because people were complaining about how much work it was, how much effort was effort. It was to try. They hate them. These machines apply these patches every day. Huge problem for everybody from home users to big companies out there. So Microsoft has said, okay let's do that. Let's burry it. So nobody will notice okay that's what Microsoft does. And now we've gotten used to that. Now we have. We remember two guys, right? Bill gates followed by Steve Ballmer. Steve Bohmer was a nut job. Bill gates was a bad man. I think he's just been trying extra hard to compensate for all of the evil he did over the years. But what we're looking at now is new management and that he's been in [00:46:00] there now for a few years, doing a great job, cleaning up Microsoft, making it a very competitive company. He has done some amazing things. One of the things that he has decided to do, that's been very effective is how about this? How about we go ahead. And we work with various governments to help stop these Russian hackers. And I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago, what was happening and the Microsoft had reached out to the white house and said, Hey, listen. What we have been looking at the hacks that have been coming from the Russian hackers, and we've been preparing fixes for some of those hacks. How about we work directly with some of these other countries? This reminds me a whole lot of the lend lease program in world war two. You might remember this thing, but the [00:47:00] us of course, initially was not involved in the war and they decided, okay we've got to help the United Kingdom. How are we going to help them? The UK doesn't have the money to buy ships, to have us make weapons, bullets know. What they did is they had people donate the rifles, the guns ammo from home. Plus they made them the government, instead of selling them to the UK, they lent them to the UK because the UK could not afford everything that it needed in order to fight a war against the national socialist in Germany. So what did they do? We just shipped the stuff over there and called it a lend slash lease. I think that's a great idea. And what Microsoft is doing is also great idea. They have been decoding, reverse compiling, if you will, and interpreting the code, looking at what some of the ransomware and other malicious code the Russia has [00:48:00] been using against Ukraine, and they have been providing. All kinds of insight information to these other countries. Now, this is a great idea for a few reasons, one of the reasons, and I think maybe the biggest reason is that the ransomware, the viruses, all of this malware that they're producing is. Not particularly discriminating. Do you guys remember maybe I dunno, what was it? Six months ago, I taught, told you how to avoid getting most of this Russian ransomware. And it was as easy as just installing. Yeah, installing a keyboard on your computer windows or Mac, windows. Those are the machines are always getting attacked quite successfully most of the time, but the windows keyboard. Russian language. Now you didn't even have to use it. [00:49:00] You don't have to have a keyboard, right? This isn't a Russian keyboard that I'm holding up here on camera. This is just a regular us keyboard. You can just install a virtual, Russian keyboard. And once that keyboard was installed, you're pretty safe. Why? Because Vladimir poop. Dictator for life of Russia decided he would just go ahead and stop anybody that was trying to hack Russian. Companies businesses, government agencies and what's the best way for the hackers to do that. Cause they didn't want to end up in Siberia for the rest of their lives because of a hack. Now they went ahead and said, okay if there's a Russian Cyrillic keyboard on the machine, we're not going to activate. So if the software, the malware on your computer, all you need to do is have a Russian keyboard. Yeah, that's it pretty simple. I told you that months ago, now what we're seeing is these indiscriminant [00:50:00] types of software that are being used in Ukraine. Why doesn't the keyboard trick work while some of Ukrainians peak Russian, we could go in. To the background on that of the massacre, the starvation purposeful starvation of Ukrainians by the Soviet union over many years ago. And how they then gave their property, their homes to Russians to move into in order to occupy Ukraine. So there's people in Ukraine who are Russian speaking of course. Now we're talking two or three generations, four, maybe down the road from when the Soviet union killed all of those millions of people. But there are some fights that to say, there's Russians, Russian speaking people there. Let me put it that way. Perfectly. In Southeastern Ukraine anyways I'm going on and on I, this is not an education on war or history. This we're talking about [00:51:00] cyber security. So the, they have, they been, Microsoft found many cases of Russians putting destructive. And disruptive or even more than that data wiping malware onto computers, it spreads indiscriminately. So Microsoft looking at what's happening, you crane, trying to get patches together for all of us, letting other countries know about what's going on is going to be. Amazing because this malware, which is wiping computers, primarily, it's not really just straight up ransomware give us money and we'll give you your data back. This is just showing your data, that malware is going to leak outside of Ukraine. Yeah. Cause us all kinds of book tension, probably. When we get back, I want to talk about this here. This is our friend Ilan Musk, and we've been following [00:52:00] along with some of the stuff been going on with his new satellite system in Ukraine. Stick around. The whole concept of these satellites and circling the earth, providing us with internet, just regular guides. It's going to be in our smartphones is changing everything. We're going to talk about Elon Musk and what's happened over in Ukraine. Our friend Elon Musk has done a lot of things over the years. He has really helped us for frankly, the Tesla and what's been happening there. SpaceX, his main concern being let's get off of a single planet on to multiple planets, right? The movement to Mars, NASA's working on a serious moon base. I reminded him of space 1999. You guys remember that show, but yeah, we're going to have a moon base by then [00:53:00] and it makes a lot of sense. So who's going to go to these well, there's some interesting lotteries people have to apply and everything else, but he's done so much, right? He's got the boring company you'd already know about Tesla and boring company in case you didn't know makes underground tunnels. He has also. A few other things has got a huge battery manufacturing facility. They're working on new battery technologies to make all of our lives a little bit better, particularly if we have an electric house or electric car, because this is what good is it to have electricity that you can't use. And that's really what they're trying to do is make it so that electricity is available 24 7 for you. And. Those space X, which is what I mentioned as well as what we're going to talk about right now. I'm going to pull this up on my screen. For those of you who are watching over on rumble, or of course, YouTube, this is fascinating. He [00:54:00] said there's a high probability of Russian attacks on Starlink in Ukraine. Now that is fascinating because what he's done is he has sent over truckloads. I'm showing a picture of a truck. In fact, with these Starling terminals in it, that's from ARS Technica. Just double-checking it here, but this is very cool. This is posted by the vice prime minister over there in Ukraine. And they are talking about these terminals. Now a terminal in this case is something that allows your devices to talk to the Starlink satellites, or there's going to be a huge constellation. They've got 2000 satellites up and they're putting another 12,000. These types of satellites are much different than what we've been used to over the years. We were typically, we've had these massive things sitting up in space. [00:55:00] I worked with RCA Astro space many years ago and I saw. They're testing facilities, which are just incredible. They had this huge vacuum chamber that they brought me in to see as we were working on space shuttle software. Yeah. I wrote software that they used to put the space shuttle together yeah. Way back in the day. So that was a pretty proud moment. Anyways. It's we're not talking about these huge satellites, like they used to launch, we're talking about very small cell. And they're not just sitting way, way up there. These are in basically in low orbit around the earth and they're geostationary. In other words, they stay in one spot. I believe this is the way they've got these things set up. So these satellites then allow because they're so close to the earth, allow them to use less power. And also the other advantage to that is.[00:56:00] The delay, right? The delay between having to send it all the way up and back down, because electricity takes time, right? Yeah. Travels at the speed of light. But nowadays you might've noticed it can take your quarter second, half a second. When you're talking to someone, when I'm on the radio with some of these radio stations or the delay can be absolutely incredible. Like I half second to a second sometimes. And that's just because they're being cheap. This type of technology where you have these constellations and it isn't just Elon Musk. It isn't just Starling, but constellations with will ultimately we'll have tens of thousands of satellites up there. Not, there's all kinds of other potential problems not getting into that right now. But what it does mean is yes. Can communicate and we've never had this sort of thing before we had the us military, the Navy in fact, put together a communication system that [00:57:00] lives on top of the internet and called nowadays. Generically the dark web. And it was set up to allow our military, our state department to be able to communicate with people in countries that are back in the day under Soviet control, all kinds of potential problems. So whenever those problems existed, they just went ahead and used this onion network, which is a part of the dark web, et cetera, et cetera. So let's say we had before. Now what happens if you're a country like Ukraine, where 100% of your internet comes from Russia, Russia obviously can sit there and listen in. Hopefully your encryptions. Good. A lot of Russians have been using telegram and already get real news about what's happening in their country and other places. And Della Graham is not that secure, frankly. WhatsApp pretty secure signal is the [00:58:00] one you want to pay close. Attention to signal is considered to be the most secure of all of these secure communications apps. But there's a level above all of that, because if they can tell that you're communicating, even that is enough to give them some information. So they might not know what was in that transmission, but if the transmission is all of a sudden, a tons of activity coming over, lots of data, lots of messages going back and forth, they can say maybe there's something about to happen. That came out. You might remember the old orange book for security way back in the eighties, I think is when it came out. But part of what you had to do was cover up your. Actual real communication. So it's one thing to have the communications encrypted, but you wanted to always have about the same amount of communications going back and forth. So people couldn't figure out what you're doing now with these types of devices. That [00:59:00] kind of problem still exists. And this is part of what Elon Musk is warning about here. Pull it up on my screen again, for those people who are watching Elon Musk is urging users of his satellite system to put their Starlink antennas as far as. From people as possible. Now, why would he be doing that? Because frankly, that terminal is transmitting to the satellite as well as receiving from the satellite. And it is entirely possible that there could be some evil software that is listening in for the satellite transmissions and sends a little missile your way. Also, of course the Russians have satellites in space that can look down on the ground. Now it's something as small as a terminal four Starlink, little hard to see, but Elon Musk is saying, Hey, listen guys, [01:00:00] go ahead and camouflage it. You might want to spray paint. It just don't use metallic paint so that they can't see it and place it as far away from where people are as post. So you can still use it and only use it when you need to use it. Don't keep it up and running all the time. But this is the start of something great. Something where you can't easily block people's communication. So Russia has tried to do. And they have been jamming the Starlink satellites. So what did must do? He delivered all of his engineers to working on how can we get around the Russian Jack? And according to Elon Musk, they have gotten around it and they now have their satellite systems completely jammed free from the Russians. I think that's fascinating. They're probably using some good spread spectrum technology that was actually known about it and world war II. And then we can talk [01:01:00] about that for a long time. Heady, you might remember her anyways, skip that for now. Stick her out. We got more when we. A whole bunch of pandemonium out there because of what Russia's been doing in Ukraine and how it's flowing over to us as well. Hey, this is not great news. Pandemonium is the name of the game over there in Russia. And they are being very successful. We're going to talk about what happened in Bella ruse. We'll talk a little bit about what happened in Ukraine with cybersecurity and what's happening right here right now. I'd also like to invite you guys to listen to me on all kinds of apps out there, including the tune-in app and many others. Let me get my screen set up because now you can also catch me on. And on YouTube, this is almost [01:02:00] a complete, let me pull this up for you. There we go. Complete ARS Technica today. They've got some great articles this week, looking into the Russians. What are they doing? What kind of problems is that causing us? But we are seeing some interesting attacks back on. And back in very big way. Russia has been going after you crane in the cyberspace for a long time, we spoke a few years ago about what Russia had been doing with the tax software for Ukraine. We don't do this in the us or in Canada, but my number of European countries do you, where you have to have. The old official tax preparation software put together by the government for your business or for your person, depending on the country you're living in [01:03:00] France is a great example of this. And Ukraine is another one. So Ukraine says, Hey guys, you got to go ahead and use our software. That means every business in Ukraine is using their software. To manage their tax payments and their accounts, frankly. And that wonderful little piece of software was hijacked by our friends in Russia. So they grabbed a hold of it. They in. Did some code into it that added rent somewhere to the software. So now all of the businesses in Ukraine are pretty much guaranteed to be using this hacked software. We have a client who has offices over in France, and we found a really interesting problem with them because. The French software that was being used for taxes for French businesses had an extra little [01:04:00] problem. And that extra problem was, it was insecure as can be whoever wrote this, must've taken a Microsoft programming course and had no idea DIA about the consequences of what they were. So it was very insecure. The, it was using a version of SSL, which is an encryption that's based on another type of increase. I don't want to get too wonky here, but that was just one of its many problems and bad keys, et cetera, et cetera. And keys by the way, was using keys that had been revoked, which you should never do. Bottom line. Oh my gosh. Hey, if you want more information on this, just drop me a note. me@craigpetersohndotcomandyoucanalsogetmynewsletterwithallkindsofgreatlittletipsmeatcraigpeterson.com. Just let me know. So in this case, we had to help that company in [01:05:00] France. Ignore the security restrictions that were on their systems so they could use the French tax system. So anyways, I told you that, so I could tell you that the same thing happened to Ukraine. In a different way, their software was pre infected. So when they downloaded it, ta-da. They got that piece of ransomware that virus had spread. It was just a nightmare. And of course it robbed. If you will, Ukraine, government of funds, that would have been. So we had now a bit of a shift. I'm going to pull this up on the screen again, this article, because what this shift has shown is that the hackers are now operating on the side of you. Crazy. Which is just fascinating. So the group called anonymous, you might be familiar with them. Of course, they've been doing a lot of hacking for a [01:06:00] lot of years, releasing private information, government and information. All of that sort of stuff. And they have a mast what they're calling a volunteer. It. And this it army has been going and doing what well hacking Russian sites apparently. So this article is just absolutely fascinating and they pulled some of from wired as well, but the Russian space research Institute, their website was hacked, leaked files that were stolen from the Russian space agency, made it all the way on to the. The space agency was hacked in their website said, leave Ukraine alone, Alto anonymous. Will you up even more? They also did. What's called a D O S. Which is a distributed denial of service attack. Those can be [01:07:00] very difficult to protect against unless you're set up in advance to help protect yourself. And that pretty much destroyed Russia's dot are you top level domain? So we've talked about how domain services work, right? So Doug are, you is like.com except dot R U is for running. And so the domain name servers that handled our, you were knocked off the air because no one could really get to them. They used amplifying attacks and stuff without getting into all of the details. So basically they were trying to cut off access and they did for a lot of people to any. That ended in, are you? It's great. These are just some of the latest in this surge of hacktivism. That's been going on one of the ones I mentioned a couple of weeks ago with the Belarusians deciding they were going to hack the Belarus railroad, which was being used. To bring Russian [01:08:00] troops, supplies, tanks, et cetera, all on rail, right on down right to the border of Ukraine. So that was hacked so that they couldn't use it in order to go after. Of course Russia was able to get to Ukraine, but there's also been protests around the world. 48 Russian cities raise millions of dollars through cryptocurrency donations. Now, I'm not a big cryptocurrency guy and I'm not a big crypto currency guy because while. Cryptocurrency is likely to be outlawed by most, if not all governments. And they certainly could shut it down and it is not anonymous. All right. So using cryptocurrency does not mean it does not equate to completely anonymous. They have done a lot of donations. They're big companies including, we [01:09:00] just talked earlier about Microsoft, but also apple shell, BP, a McDonald's Starbucks. And these hacktivists have really joined in. And w we talked about a couple of other things, so this is messy. Because even more than in peace time, these active combat that are really hacking happening right now, rendering, hacktivism, any effectual and largely just distracting because we are now in a hot war right now. Maybe we don't have our. Eric planes bombing Russian movements or other things, but there is a kinetic war going on over there. There are bullets, et cetera, mean exchanged. So the hacktivist efforts have been, visible. There's no question about that. But what have they done? See, [01:10:00] that's an advantage to being a country like Russia, or like the Ukraine, or excuse me, Ukraine, because both of those countries there, their industrial base, the military industrial base is not heavily automated unlike ours. What could you do? What can you shut down? So what you shut down the Russian space agency's website, how far did you get into it? Probably not very far. We also have a couple of groups and we talked about these guys many times the Conti group, which has been. Terrible and hurting us businesses, individuals, government agencies, and stuff, the Cuming project, both of them have declared their allegiance to Russia. You might remember a few weeks ago, we talked here about how we have had some researchers track down most of these Russian hacker groups and their money. And they all ended up in one building in Moscow. [01:11:00] No, that should tell you something, right? In fact, the most expensive real estate right there in downtown Los gal, the tallest building, et cetera. So these groups getting together in order to protect the father land there in Russia. Ah interesting problem. How much of this is really controlled by the Kremlin? It's a very good question. Context. Was dismantling its infrastructure. It, some of their top people were arrested by Putins military. Not military, but police state over there. And that was interesting too. That was again before the invasion, but why would Putin be shutting them down at all? Apparently they said some things. That they shouldn't have said. So now they've come out and have decided they're going to support Russia in its entirety. Now we mentioned Microsoft and how [01:12:00] Microsoft has decided they are going to protect other countries. As well as you crane, at least as far as the Russian malware goes, and they've been very active in that. And there are a number of cybersecurity companies and other organizations that have released free versions of some of their software, these digital defense tools. Free offerings. Our big cranes defend the networks. Google says it's human rights focus de dos protection service project shield is now in use by more than 150 Ukrainian websites. So it's very good. Bottom line propped up by the way, published this massive trove of personal data. Allegedly identifying 120,000 Russian soldiers deploy. In Ukraine that was Ukrainian prov, not the old good old Russian Sophia Pramata man. I [01:13:00] remember I bought one of those on new standing Canada once. And I had a friend who was from Yugoslavia and he said, oh, can I show that to my wife? He showed it to his wife. She tore it up. I said, I want my Pramata, Craig Peterson got calm.
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What Can Be done About Russia?What Can You Do? There is a whole bunch going on when it comes to Russia, of course, the invasion of Ukraine. Why are people calling to have dot RU deleted? This is really a big deal. And if you're watching from home, I'm going to go full screen on this article. [Automated transcript follows.] [00:00:23] This is an article from ARS Technica, and I've been talking about it all week, which is that I can won't revoke Russian in Jeanette domains, says the effect. Devastating. This is frankly pretty darn fascinating to me because I can, as this international organization, it was put together in order to help make the internet international. [00:00:49] And I'm not talking about the data international, but control of it. A lot of countries work. Because of course the internet was created in nodded states. It was created by us tax payers, money for the DOD. And it was designed to be very resilient, in fact, so resilient that there could be a nuclear blast and that nuclear blast and. [00:01:13] Causing problems, but yeah. Yeah, the internet is still going to work. And the whole idea behind it was you could have multiple routers. They're all talking to each other nowadays. They're talking BGP four and they can say, how can I get from here? To there. And so the idea behind BGP is they all share this information once the least cost way. [00:01:36] What's the easiest way to post way. If you will, for me to get from point a to point B and it changes all the time. So you might be on a phone conversation. You might be listening to me right now, online streaming or watching the video you might be doing, who knows what out there with digital communications. [00:01:57] But the communications channel that you think you're using, where the data is going from, let's say my microphone, ultimately to your device, your ears, that data path, once it becomes dated. Can be changing multiple times a second. Now it actually changes quite a bit. Initially as these internet backbone routers, send the least cost, routing information back and forth to, and fro a very good thing, frankly, because it helps to speed everything up. [00:02:28] And there's other tricks that we're using you. Might've seen. For instance, Akamai and some of the URLs before have sites that you've gone to, and that's called a content delivery network and that helps get the content to be closer to you. So if you're on a website in California and you're in New Hampshire, that website video, that website graphic, et cetera, is going to be coming from a server local to me here in New Hampshire. [00:02:59] All right. That's how that all is supposed to work. So we have names you guys know about that internet, domain names and those domain names. You already know those are turned into internet addresses, and those addresses are then used by the routers to figure out where to go, how to get the data. The problem that we're having right now, of course, is Russia seems to be substantially abusing the intranet Putin, put a kill switch on to the Russian internet sometime ago. [00:03:31] And the idea behind the skills, which was, Hey, listen, if we don't want the world to be talking to us, we'll just cut it. Now he's tested it a couple of times, but what he has not done is shut it down and he hasn't shut it down. As part of this Ukraine, more, what they did is they passed laws saying, Hey, if you publish something that disagrees with what we're saying, you get 15 years. [00:03:59] And even these people who've been protesting on the streets, they're getting a bound 60 days, 30 to 60 days in jail, just for protesting what's going on. So a lot of people have been saying why don't we just, we turn off the Russian internet now we're not going to use Putin's kill switch in order to shut it all off. [00:04:19] We're not going to do a well, a few things. She decided not to do, denial of service attacks, et cetera. Although there are hackers doing that and we are going to talk about that today, but they're saying what? Let's just go ahead and let's kill their dot R E. The country domain. And I can, the guy who heads it up said, Hey, listen our mission is just to make sure that the internet works. [00:04:46] So shutting off the dot R U domain so that no one can go ahead and. We send right. A request out to the domain name servers and get a resolution to an IP address. So if you try and go to Kremlin dot REU or something, you will get blocked and you will get blocked. Not blocked. No, I like the great firewall of China or of Russia. [00:05:10] Now they've got one going pretty good. Yeah. Thank you. You ain't using us technology. It's crazy. What we've got. But what it does is it says, oh, I hide dot, are you, I don't know. What are you talking about? So there have been a lot of people who have been pushing for it. And you'll see on my screen here that you cranes requested to cut Russia off from some of these core parts of the internet. [00:05:35] And I can, which is the internet corporation for assigned names and numbers. I couldn't remember what that was earlier said that I can must remain neutral and their mission they say is not to take punitive actions. It's to make sure the internet works. So are they really taking punitive actions of the cat Russia off? [00:05:56] It's really interesting to me because look at what has been going on. You've got companies like Facebook as the great example who has gone ahead and just shut off people. They didn't like what they were saying. My goodness. At one point of you said you should wear a mask during this pandemic. [00:06:15] You would be cut off from Facebook. And then of course, if you said, no, you don't, you shouldn't don't need you, you shouldn't wear a mask that at that point you would be cut off, because science right. Sciences, we know exactly what we're doing now. It goes on and on. If you said that it came from a lab in China, you would have your account suspended. [00:06:35] Now of course their whole tune has changed and yeah probably came from a lab in China. It's crazy what these people have been doing. So we have arbiters of truth, who are some contractors sitting in their home or wherever it is the contractors for Facebook that are going through posts that people are flagging as Incorrect as fake news. [00:07:02] So what happens is people say fake news and then that goes off to their team that then looks at it and says okay. Yeah, fake news because we disagree with it. It just blows my mind. We have to have free and fair and open discussions. Don't we. You have that line at Facebook and Google does some of the same. [00:07:22] A lot of these sites do a lot of the same. You get our major media outlets that are all deciding what they want to report on and what they want to label as fake and fake news. I'm just shaking my head because it's hard. It's hard to believe. What about. Russia is putting out fake news, as I've said many times before the E the first casualty in war, this isn't my quote. The first casualty in war is what, it's the truth. So if truth is the first casualty, then that means we've got a lot of propaganda going on. We had propaganda coming out of Ukraine. We've caught some of those, like the, what was it? The. Chat goes, fighter, pilot, whatever it was who had killed, what was it? [00:08:12] Five Soviet or Russian jets, Soviet era using silver deer, techno era technology on the part of the Ukrainians turns out well. Okay, that, that was false news. That was fake news. The whole thing about snake island, where you had that Russian military. I know what it was a frigging but anyways boat sitting there saying we are a Russia. [00:08:33] Warship, you will surrender or, whatever. Do you remember that snake on just the small place, 13 guys and supposedly they shelled it and they killed all 13 turns out that was probably fake news as well. So that's from the Ukrainian side and on the Russian side they hardly reported I as to how many. [00:08:57] The we're in fact, initially for quite a while, they were saying there are no desks. Then at the same time, the Ukrainians are saying they're 2,500 Russians dead. And that number keeps going up, who knows what it is today. It gets really crazy in the time of war. So if Facebook is going to stop someone from saying don't wear masks or do wear masks, depending on what day of the week it is basically right. [00:09:20] Wednesday. It's okay to say that Thursday is not okay to say that we're back. No it's not. Or then why can't that type of censorship? Move on to the next. I that's a big question I have now. Should we be shutting it off? I'll pull this back up on the screen again. And it, this article from ARS, Technica is saying that experts have warned, whoever they are that shutting down the dot R U domain. [00:09:53] Is going to cause just incredible problems for Russians, which man would it ever talking about a major blow to the economy. And it would also cause problems for people who are trying to find out more truth about. Russia cause you couldn't get to their site. Now we've seen some amazing things in Russia. [00:10:15] We had the Russian, one of the Russian news agencies are T which is broadcasting and here in the U S that their entire staff just walked out saying, forget about it. We're not going to promote this fake news, but this is a little to do trip question me personally. I don't think anybody should be censoring any. [00:10:38] For almost anything. Yo, there are some limits, but they're pretty extreme in my book. I'd rather know someone is an idiot because they're allowed to say stupid things, and counter, counter it, counter their arguments. You've got to have discussions [00:10:54] Microsoft. Yeah, they've been around a long time. They've been helping us. They've had lots of cybersecurity problems. People use Microsoft software on their desktop. Some people use it for servers, which is crazy, but listen to what they're doing now. [00:11:10] This is a little concerning. I'm going to pull this article up on the screen. [00:11:15] For those of you who are watching a long, either on rumble or YouTube ARS, Technica article, they have some really great articles. This particular one is about our friends at Microsoft. This is cool. Microsoft announced today? This was like a week or so ago that Microsoft would be suspending all new sales of Microsoft products and services in Russia. [00:11:45] Following the countries, unjustified, unprovoked, and unlawful invasion of. Now Microsoft didn't give any specifics about the products, but it really is likely to be a blanket ban of all of the Microsoft products. This is very cool because Microsoft has taken an approach I've never seen them do before, which is okay. [00:12:10] When. Gets hacked. You get our friends at apple, putting together patches and getting them out. They get them up pretty quick. Microsoft had been doing much the same. The problem was some months there were patches every day that you had to apply. That's how bad this software is. And they decided that man, let's be like politicians here. [00:12:34] Let's release some very damning news Friday. At about 4:30 PM before a long weekend. So no one will notice. Yeah. Y'all are friends of politicians do that all the time. What Microsoft decided they do is, Hey, wait a minute. We're going to have patches. It's not going to slow down. And because our code is terrible. [00:12:56] So what we're going to do, let me see here. How about we just release all of them at once and we'll just call it patch Tuesday, right? Because people were complaining about how much work it was, how much effort was effort. It was to try. They hate them. These machines apply these patches every day. Huge problem for everybody from home users to big companies out there. [00:13:21] So Microsoft has said, okay let's do that. Let's burry it. So nobody will notice okay that's what Microsoft does. And now we've gotten used to that. Now we have. We remember two guys, right? Bill gates followed by Steve Ballmer. Steve Ballmer was a nut job. Bill gates was a bad man. [00:13:40] I think he's just been trying extra hard to compensate for all of the evil he did over the years. But what we're looking at now is new management and that he's been in there now for a few years, doing a great job, cleaning up Microsoft, making it a very competitive company. He has done some amazing things. [00:14:02] One of the things that he has decided to do, that's been very effective is how about this? How about we go ahead. And we work with various governments to help stop these Russian hackers. And I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago, what was happening and the Microsoft had reached out to the white house and said, Hey, listen. [00:14:27] What we have been looking at the hacks that have been coming from the Russian hackers, and we've been preparing fixes for some of those hacks. How about we work directly with some of these other countries? This reminds me a whole lot of the lend lease program in world war two. You might remember this thing, but the us of course, initially was not involved in the war and they decided, okay we've got to help the United Kingdom. [00:15:00] How are we going to help them? The UK doesn't have the money to buy ships, to have us make weapons, bullets know. What they did is they had people donate the rifles, the guns, AML from home. Plus they made them the government, instead of selling them to the UK, they lent them to the UK because the UK could not afford everything that it needed in order to fight a war against the national socialist in Germany. [00:15:28] So what did they do? We just shipped the stuff over there and called it a lend slash lease. I think that's a great idea. And what Microsoft is doing is also great idea. They have been decoding, reverse compiling, if you will, and interpreting the code, looking at what some of the ransomware and other malicious code the Russia has been using against Ukraine, and they have been providing. [00:15:57] All kinds of insight information to these other countries. Now, this is a great idea for a few reasons, one of the reasons, and I think maybe the biggest reason is that the ransomware, the viruses, all of this malware that they're producing is. Not particularly discriminating. Do you guys remember maybe I dunno, what was it? [00:16:22] Six months ago, I taught, told you how to avoid getting most of this Russian ransomware. And it was as easy as just installing. Yeah, installing a keyboard on your computer windows or Mac, windows. Those are the machines are always getting attacked quite successfully most of the time, but the windows keyboard. [00:16:49] Russian language. Now you didn't even have to use it. You don't have to have a keyboard, right? This isn't a Russian keyboard that I'm holding up here on camera. This is just a regular us keyboard. You can just install a virtual, Russian keyboard. And once that keyboard was installed, you're pretty safe. [00:17:06] Why? Because Vladimir poop. Dictator for life of Russia decided he would just go ahead and stop anybody that was trying to hack Russian. Companies businesses, government agencies and what's the best way for the hackers to do that. Cause they didn't want to end up in Siberia for the rest of their lives because of a hack. [00:17:29] Now they went ahead and said, okay if there's a Russian Cyrillic keyboard on the machine, we're not going to activate. So if the software, the malware on your computer, all you need to do is have a Russian keyboard. Yeah, that's it pretty simple. I told you that months ago, now what we're seeing is these indiscriminant types of software that are being used in Ukraine. [00:17:57] Why doesn't the keyboard trick work while some of Ukrainians peak Russian, we could go in. To the background on that of the massacre, the starvation purposeful starvation of Ukrainians by the Soviet union over many years ago. And how they then gave their property, their homes to Russians to move into in order to occupy Ukraine. [00:18:23] So there's people in Ukraine who are Russian speaking of course. Now we're talking two or three generations, four, maybe down the road from when the Soviet union killed all of those millions of people. But there are some fights that to say, there's Russians, Russian speaking people there. Let me put it that way. [00:18:41] Perfect. In Southeastern Ukraine anyways I'm going on and on I, this is not an education on war or history. This we're talking about cyber security. So the, they have, they been, Microsoft found many cases of Russians putting destructive. And disruptive or even more than that data wiping malware onto computers, it spreads indiscriminately. [00:19:13] So Microsoft looking at what's happening, you crane, trying to get patches together for all of us, letting other countries know about what's going on is going to be. Amazing because this malware, which is wiping computers, primarily, it's not really just straight up ransomware give us money and we'll give you your data back. [00:19:35] This is just showing your data, that malware is going to leak outside of Ukraine. Yeah. Cause us all kinds of book tension, probably. When we get back, I want to talk about this here. This is our friend Ilan Musk, and we've been following along with some of the stuff been going on with his new satellite system in Ukraine. [00:19:58] The whole concept of these satellites and circling the earth, providing us with internet, just regular guides. It's going to be in our smartphones is changing everything. We're going to talk about Elon Musk and what's happened over in Ukraine. [00:20:15] Our friend Elon Musk has done a lot of things over the years. He has really helped us for frankly, the Tesla and what's been happening there. [00:20:26] Space sex, his main concern being let's get. Off of a single planet on to multiple planets, right? The movement to Mars, NASA's working on a serious moon base. I reminded him of space 1999. You guys remember that show, but yeah, we're going to have a moon base by then and it makes a lot of sense. So who's going to go to these well, there's some interesting lotteries people have to apply and everything else, but he's done so much, right? [00:21:00] He's got the boring company you'd already know about Tesla and boring company in case you didn't know makes underground tunnels. He has also. A few other things has got a huge battery manufacturing facility. They're working on new battery technologies to make all of our lives a little bit better, particularly if we have an electric house or electric car, because this is what good is it to have electricity that you can't use. [00:21:25] And that's really what they're trying to do is make it so that electricity is available 24 7 for you. And. Those space X, which is what I mentioned as well as what we're going to talk about right now. I'm going to pull this up on my screen. For those of you who are watching over on rumble, or of course, YouTube, this is fascinating. [00:21:49] He said there's a high probability of Russian attacks on Starlink in Ukraine. Now that is fascinating because what he's done is he has sent over truckloads. I'm showing a picture of a truck. In fact, with these Starling terminals in it, that's from ARS Technica. Just double-checking it here, but this is very cool. [00:22:12] This is posted by the vice prime minister over there in Ukraine. And they are talking about these terminals. Now a terminal in this case is something that allows your devices to talk to the Starlink satellites, or there's going to be a huge constellation. They've got 2000 satellites up and they're putting another 12,000. [00:22:38] These types of satellites are much different than what we've been used to over the years. We typically we've had these massive things sitting up in space. I worked with RCA Astro space many years ago and I saw. They're testing facilities, which are just incredible. They had this huge vacuum chamber that they brought me in to see as we were working on space shuttle software. [00:23:05] Yeah. I wrote software that they used to put the space shuttle together yeah. Way back in the day. So that was a pretty proud moment. Anyways. It's we're not talking about these huge satellites, like they used to launch, we're talking about very small cell. And they're not just sitting way, way up there. [00:23:26] These are in basically in low orbit around the earth and they're geostationary. In other words, they stay in one spot. I believe this is the way they've got these things set up. So these satellites then allow because they're so close to the earth, allow them to use less power. And also the other advantage to that is. [00:23:49] The delay, right? The delay between having to send it all the way up and back down, because electricity takes time, right? Yeah. Travels at the speed of light. But nowadays you might've noticed it can take your quarter second, half a second. When you're talking to someone, when I'm on the radio with some of these radio stations or the delay can be absolutely incredible. [00:24:11] Like I half second to a second sometimes. And that's just because they're being cheap. This type of technology where you have these constellations and it isn't just Elon Musk. It isn't just Starling, but constellations with will ultimately we'll have tens of thousands of satellites up there. Not, there's all kinds of other potential problems not getting into that right now. [00:24:34] But what it does mean is. Can communicate and we've never had this sort of thing before we had the us military, the Navy in fact, put together a communication system that lives on top of the internet and called nowadays. Generically the dark web. And it was set up to allow our military, our state department to be able to communicate with people in countries that are back in the day under Soviet control, all kinds of potential problems. [00:25:10] So whenever those problems existed, they just went ahead and used this onion network, which is a part of the dark web, et cetera, et cetera. So let's say we had before. Now what happens if you're a country like Ukraine, where 100% of your internet comes from Russia, Russia obviously can sit there and listen in. [00:25:32] Hopefully your encryptions. Good. A lot of Russians have been using telegram and already get real news about what's happening in their country and other places. And Della Graham is not that secure, frankly. WhatsApp pretty secure signal is the one you want to pay close. Attention to signal is considered to be the most secure of all of these secure communications apps. [00:25:57] But there's a level above all of that, because if they can tell that you're communicating, even that is enough to give them some information. So they might not know what was in that transmission, but if the transmission is all of a sudden, a tons of activity coming over, lots of data, lots of messages going back and forth, they can say maybe there's something about to happen. [00:26:21] That came out. You might remember the old orange book for security way back in the eighties, I think is when it came out. But part of what you had to do was cover up your. Actual real communication. So it's one thing to have the communications encrypted, but you wanted to always have about the same amount of communications going back and forth. [00:26:42] So people couldn't figure out what you're doing now with these types of devices. That kind of problem still exists. And this is part of what Elon Musk is warning about here. Pull it up on my screen again, for those people who are watching Elon Musk is urging users of his satellite system to put their Starlink antennas as far as. [00:27:08] From people as possible. Now, why would he be doing that? Because frankly, that terminal is transmitting to the satellite as well as receiving from the satellite. And it is entirely possible that there could be some evil software that is listening in for the satellite transmissions and sends a little missile your way. [00:27:36] Also, of course the Russians have satellites in space that can look down on the ground. Now it's something as small as a terminal four Starlink, little hard to see, but Elon Musk is saying, Hey, listen guys, go ahead and camouflage it. You might want to spray paint. It just don't use metallic paint so that they can't see it and place it as far away from where people are as post. [00:27:59] So you can still use it and only use it when you need to use it. Don't keep it up and running all the time. But this is the start of something great. Something where you can't easily block people's communication. So Russia has tried to do. And they have been jamming the Starlink satellites. So what did must do? [00:28:23] He delivered all of his engineers to working on how can we get around the Russian Jack? And according to Elon Musk, they have gotten around it and they now have their satellite systems completely jammed free from the Russians. I think that's fascinating. They're probably using some good spread spectrum technology that was actually known about it and world war II. [00:28:47] And then we can talk about that for a long time. Heady, you might remember her anyways, skip that for now. Stick her out. We got more when we. A whole bunch of pandemonium out there because of what Russia's been doing in Ukraine and how it's flowing over to us as well. Hey, this is not great news. [00:29:15] Pandemonium is the name of the game over there in Russia. And they are being very successful. We're going to talk about what happened in Bella ruse. We'll talk a little bit about what happened in Ukraine with cybersecurity and what's happening right here right now. [00:29:36] Complete ARS Technica today. They've got some great articles this week, looking into the Russians. What are they doing? What kind of problems is that causing us? But we are seeing some interesting attacks back on. And back in very big way. Russia has been going after you crane in the cyberspace for a long time, we spoke a few years ago about what Russia had been doing with the tax software for Ukraine. [00:30:12] We don't do this in the U.S. Or in Canada, but my number of European countries do you, where you have to have. The old official tax preparation software put together by the government for your business or for your person, depending on the country you're living in France is a great example of this. And Ukraine is another one. [00:30:36] So Ukraine says, Hey guys, you got to go ahead and use our software. That means every business in Ukraine is using their software. To manage their tax payments and their accounts, frankly. And that wonderful little piece of software was hijacked by our friends in Russia. So they grabbed a hold of it. They in. [00:31:02] Did some code into it that added rent somewhere to the software. So now all of the businesses in Ukraine are pretty much guaranteed to be using this hacked software. We have a client who has offices over in France, and we found a really interesting problem with them because. The French software that was being used for taxes for French businesses had an extra little problem. [00:31:33] And that extra problem was, it was insecure as can be whoever wrote this, must've taken a Microsoft programming course and had no idea DIA about the consequences of what they were. So it was very insecure. The, it was using a version of SSL, which is an encryption that's based on another type of increase. [00:31:57] I don't want to get too wonky here, but that was just one of its many problems and bad keys, et cetera, et cetera. And keys by the way, was using keys that have been revoked, which you should never do. Bottom line. Oh my gosh. Hey, if you want more information on this, just drop me a note. [00:32:16] me@craigpetersohndotcomandyoucanalsogetmynewsletterwithallkindsofgreatlittletipsmeatcraigpeterson.com. Just let me know. So in this case, we had to help that company in France. Ignore the security restrictions that were on their systems so they could use the French tax system. So anyways, I told you that, so I could tell you that the same thing happened to Ukraine. [00:32:45] In a different way, their software was pre infected. So when they downloaded it, ta-da. They got that piece of ransomware that virus had spread. It was just a nightmare. And of course it robbed. If you will, Ukraine, government of funds, that would have been. So we had now a bit of a shift. I'm going to pull this up on the screen again, this article, because what this shift has shown is that the hackers are now operating on the side of you. [00:33:21] Crazy. Which is just fascinating. So the group called anonymous, you might be familiar with them. Of course, they've been doing a lot of hacking for a lot of years, releasing private information, government and information, all that sort of stuff. And they have a mast what they're calling a volunteer. [00:33:44] It. And this it army has been going and doing what well hacking Russian sites apparently. So this article is just absolutely fascinating and they pulled some of from wired as well, but the Russian space research Institute, their website was hacked, leaked files that were stolen from the Russian space agency, made it all the way on to the. [00:34:13] The space agency was hacked in their website said, leave Ukraine alone, Alto anonymous. Will you up even more? They also did. What's called a D O S. Which is a distributed denial of service attack. Those can be very difficult to protect against unless you're set up in advance to help protect yourself. [00:34:39] And that pretty much destroyed Russia's dot are you top level domain? So we've talked about how domain services work, right? So Doug are, you is like.com except dot R U is for running. And so the domain name servers that handled our, you were knocked off the air because no one could really get to them. [00:35:02] They used amplifying attacks and stuff without getting into all of the details. So basically they were trying to cut off access and they did for a lot of people to any. That ended in, are you? It's great. These are just some of the latest in this surge of hacktivism. That's been going on one of the ones I mentioned a couple of weeks ago with the Belarusians deciding they were going to hack the Belarus railroad, which was being used. [00:35:31] To bring Russian troops, supplies, tanks, et cetera, all on rail, right on down right to the border of Ukraine. So that was hacked so that they couldn't use it in order to go after. Of course Russia was able to get to Ukraine, but there's also been protests around the world. 48 Russian cities raise millions of dollars through cryptocurrency donations. [00:36:01] Now, I'm not a big cryptocurrency guy and I'm not a big crypto currency guy because while. Cryptocurrency is likely to be outlawed by most, if not all governments. And they certainly could shut it down and it is not anonymous. All right. So using cryptocurrency does not mean it does not equate to completely anonymous. [00:36:28] They have done a lot of donations. They're big companies including, we just talked earlier about Microsoft, but also apple shell, BP, a McDonald's Starbucks. And these hacktivists have really joined in. And w we talked about a couple of other things, so this is messy. Because even more than in peace time, these active combat that are really hacking happening right now, rendering, hacktivism, any effectual and largely just distracting because we are now in a hot war right now. [00:37:10] Maybe we don't have our. Eric planes bombing Russian movements or other things, but there is a kinetic war going on over there. There are bullets, et cetera, mean exchanged. So the hacktivist efforts have been, visible. There's no question about that. But what have they done? See, that's an advantage to being a country like Russia, or like the Ukraine, or excuse me, Ukraine, because both of those countries there, their industrial base, the military industrial base is not heavily automated unlike ours. [00:37:50] What could you do? What can you shut down? So what you shut down the Russian space agency's website, how far did you get into it? Probably not very far. We also have a couple of groups and we talked about these guys many times the Conti group, which has been. [00:38:07] Terrible and hurting us businesses, individuals, government agencies, and stuff, the Cuming project, both of them have declared their allegiance to Russia. You might remember a few weeks ago, we talked here about how we have had some researchers track down most of these Russian hacker groups and their money. [00:38:30] And they all ended up in one building in Moscow. No, that should tell you something, right? In fact, the most expensive real estate right there in downtown Los gal, the tallest building, et cetera. So these groups getting together in order to protect the father land there in Russia. Ah interesting problem. [00:38:52] How much of this is really controlled by the Kremlin? It's a very good question. Context. Was dismantling its infrastructure. It, some of their top people were arrested by Putins military. Not military, but police state over there. And that was interesting too. That was again before the invasion, but why would Putin be shutting them down at all? [00:39:20] Apparently they said some things. That they shouldn't have said. So now they've come out and have decided they're going to support Russia in its entirety. Now we mentioned Microsoft and how Microsoft has decided they are going to protect other countries. As well as you crane, at least as far as the Russian malware goes, and they've been very active in that. [00:39:46] And there are a number of cybersecurity companies and other organizations that have released free versions of some of their software, these digital defense tools. Free offerings. Our big cranes defend the networks. Google says it's human rights focus de dos protection service project shield is now in use by more than 150 Ukrainian websites. [00:40:12] So it's very good. Bottom line propped up by the way, published this massive trove of personal data. Allegedly identifying 120,000 Russian soldiers deploy. In Ukraine that was Ukrainian prov, not the old good old Russian Sophia Pramata man. I remember I bought one of those on new standing Canada once. [00:40:36] And I had a friend who was from Yugoslavia and he said, oh, can I show that to my wife? He showed it to his wife. She tore it up. I said, I want my Pravda, Craig Peterson dot com. [00:40:47] The tech world is all a buzz with this log for J or log for shell. However you want to call it because we are looking at what is probably the biggest security vulnerability the internet has had in a long time. I don't know how to express it anymore, but there are multiple problems here. And even the patch that was released to fix this problem was broken as being exploited in the last 24 hours. There've been no less than 30 different new. Variations of the exploit. So what is going on? There is a computer language that's used by many programmers, particularly in larger businesses called Java. [00:41:37] You might remember this, I've been following it and using it now, since it first came out very long time ago from sun Microsystems. Java is a language that's designed to have kind of an intimate. CPU processor. So think about it. If you have an Intel chip that is an x86 type chip, what can you use instead of that Intel chip to run that code? [00:42:03] There are some compatible chips made mainly by AMD advanced micro devices, but you're really rather limited. You have problems. Power. Guess what you're stuck. You're stuck in that architecture. And then on the other end of the spectrum, you have some of these devices that are designed by companies like apple, Google has their own. [00:42:24] Now that our CPU's their graphics processing units as well. And they completely replaced the Intel architecture. But the Intel code, the programs that are written for the Intel architecture that are compiled for Intel are not going to work on the apple chips and vice versa. So what did apple do? Apple, for instance, just moved from Intel over to. [00:42:51] Own chipsets and these chips don't run Intel code. So how can you run your old apple apps? Apple has a little translator. They call Rosetta. It sits in the middle and it pretends it's an Intel processor. This really rather simple. And they've done an amazing job on this. And w Rosetta is actually a third party company and they helped apple as well with the transition from the IBM power series chips to the Intel chips. [00:43:23] So how do you move the code around while you either have. Recompile it, you may have to redesign it, rearchitect it for the new type of processor and the new types of computers that are supported by that processor. Or you may do what Apple's done here a couple of times now, and that is having an interpreter in the middle that pretends it's something else pretends as an Intel chip. [00:43:49] And then you can still run your in. Code because it knows, okay. It was designed originally for this apple Intel architecture. So I know how to make all of this work Java steps in and says why are you doing all of that? That's crazy. Isn't it moving all of your code around all of the time. So Java's original claim to fame was what will make life easy for? [00:44:14] What you do is you write your code. Using Java in Java is very similar to C plus in some of these other languages that are out there. And that language, when you're writing your source code will be compiled into an intermediate. Code. So what happened is sun Microsystems designed this virtual machine? [00:44:36] Now don't think of it like a normal VM, but we're talking about a CPU architecture and CPU instructions. And so what it did for those CPU instructions. Which is really quite clever, as I said we'll come up with what we think are the most useful. And it's a Cisco architecture for those of you who are ultra geeks like myself. [00:44:59] And we will go ahead and implement that. And so the compiler spits out code for this CPU that doesn't actually exist anywhere in the known universe. And then what happened is sun went out and said, okay we'll make an interpreter for. Artificial CPU that'll run on Intel chips and we'll make another one that runs on these chips, that chips and the other chips, beautiful concept, because basically you could write your code once debug it and run it off. [00:45:32] Anything that was one of the original claims to fame for Unix, not so the run at anywhere part of it, but the part that says it doesn't take much work to move your code to different machine, and we're not going to get into Unix and its root I've been around the whole time. It's crazy. [00:45:51] I just finished reading a book and saying, I remember that. And they were going through all of the history of everything I was in the middle of that. I did that. That was the first one to do this. It was fun. Anyhow, what Java has done now is it's really solidified itself in the larger enterprises. [00:46:11] So basically any software that you might be using, like our website that is particularly with a larger business. Is going to be using Java and that Java language is using libraries. So in programmers, instead of doing what I used to do way back when which is write in assembly code, or even in COBOL, and basically you had to write everything, every part of every program, anything you wanted to have done, you had to write, or maybe you borrowed somebody else's code and you embedded it in. [00:46:45] And mind you, we only had 32 kilobytes of memory in the mainframe back then the 360 30, for those of you who remember those things, but here is where things really changed. You now had the ability to take that code that you wrote and put it on a smart. You could take that exact same code, no recompiling or anything, and take that code and run it on a mainframe on our super computer in a car. [00:47:15] So Java became very popular for that. Very reason in these libraries that Java provided, made it even quicker to program and easier to program. Now there's some problems with languages. Java, which are these object oriented languages where you can, for instance, say one plus one equals two. That will make sense. [00:47:38] But what does it mean when you use a plus sign? When you're talking about words? So you say apple plus oranges, what's that going to eat? That's called overloading an operator, and this is not a course on programming languages, but what happens is a person can write the library and says, oh if the programmer says a non-Apple plus an orange or string plus a string, what I want you to do is concatenate the strings. [00:48:06] Now that programmer who wrote that has to figure out a couple of things, make some assumptions. Oh I should I put a space between apple and. Or not. And what do they really mean? Okay. So this is how I'm going to interpret it. So that, it's a very simple example. But the concept is that now with these overloaded opera operations and these libraries that can go deep deep, you now have the additional problem of people designing and writing the libraries, making assumptions about what the programmer wants and what the programmer needs. [00:48:43] Enter the problem with the log for J vulnerability. This is a very big deal because we're talking about a library function that is being used in Java by programmers. Now, you know that I have been warning everybody. Android for years, the biggest problem with Android isn't its user interface. It isn't that it's made by somebody else. [00:49:10] The biggest problem. And of course, this is my opinion is that Android software is provided by Google and. It is given basically to any manufacturer that wants to license it. And then that manufacturer can't just take Google and run it. Have you ever tried to install windows or Linux or free BSD? [00:49:36] It's mainly a windows problem, frankly, but you go on ahead and install that. And what do you need in windows? You're going to need driver. Oh wait a minute. This laptop is three years old. So how can I find them? And then you go around and you work on it and takes you a day and you finally find everything you need. [00:49:53] And you've got all of the drivers and now it works. But Microsoft provided you with the base operating system. Why do you need drivers? You know the answer to that and it's because every piece of equipment out there is different. Think about this in the smartphone market. Think about it in the more general. [00:50:10] Android market. There are thousands of these devices that are out there and those different devices are using different hardware, which require different drivers. So when Google comes up with a software patch, how well we just fix the log for J issue that patch. Has to be given to the devices manufacturer who then has to talk to the manufacturers of the various components and make sure that the device drivers that they're using by the manufacturer are actually compatible. [00:50:50] They're going to. Got the upgrades, wire it all together, and then test it on all of the different phones that they have and cars because the cars are running it. Now you see how complicated this get. And most Android devices will never. Get another update. They will never get a security patch versus apple. [00:51:14] Right now. They're still supporting the apple six S that came out in 2015. If I remember right, it's five or six years old. Now you don't find that in the Android space. You're lucky if you get two years worth of support, we're going to continue this. But this is this is really important. I'm going to talk more about the actual problem. [00:51:36] What is being done about it? What you can do about it as an individual, a home user, and as a business, in fact, keep an eye on your mailboxes. Cause I've got some more links to some sites about what you can do and how to do it and how to test for it. [00:51:53] We're talking about what is likely to be the biggest set of hacks in internet history right now. It's absolutely incredible what's going on. So we're going to talk about what it means to you and what's really going on. This whole problem is probably bigger than anybody really realizes because Java, as I explained is a very common computer programming language. [00:52:23] And it has a lot of features that bigger businesses love. They love the ability to have multiple programmers working on something at the same time. They love the inheritance and multiple inheritance and all of these wonderful features of Java. One of the really cool features is that you can, while your program is running, have the program change. [00:52:48] It's. That's effectively what it's doing. It's pulling in libraries and functions in real time. And that's where this particular problem comes in. This has been a nightmare for Java forever. It's one of the reasons I have never migrated to Java for any of the projects that I have. Don, it just gets to be a nightmare. [00:53:12] It reminds me of Adobe flash. It was the biggest security problem that has ever been. And the number two Java and Java is running in the Android operating system. It is the core of the operating system. All of the programs are almost certainly written into. And now we're seeing Java up in the, not just entertainment systems in our cars, but in the actual computers that are driving the cars, running the cars. [00:53:45] And I get very concerned about this. We had two major outages just this week before this log for J thing came about over at Amazon. And those two Amazon outages knocked thousands of businesses. Off the air out of business. You couldn't get to them. You remember the big problem with Facebook that we talked about a little while back and in both cases, it looks like they were using some automatic distribution of software sent out the wrong stuff. [00:54:15] And now you are effected. What happens? What happens with the cars? If they push out a bad patch, how are we going to know. What's that going to mean? And if your car has Java in it, are you going to be vulnerable to this? You wouldn't be vulnerable to log for J if your computer wasn't hooked up to anything, but nowadays the cars are hooked up to the net. [00:54:39] We've had a couple of car dealers for our clients. Who've had the Mercedes we've had Acura Honda and others over the years. And it's interesting going in there now and working with them because they are doing massive downloads of firmware whenever a car comes in. So that car, if they don't have the right kind of networks, that car can take hours to do. [00:55:07] Dates. And I got to tell you, man, I'm just shocked by so many businesses, not willing to spend the money that it really takes. So the poor technician is sitting there waiting for it to happen. We could make it happen in 15 minutes, but they're stuck there waiting for three or four hours sometimes for some of these downloads, no it's called cash them locally. [00:55:26] These cars, some of them need new and different firmware. Some of them use the same and have. A reliable, fast internet connection. And we've done that for many companies. Anyways, I'm going off on a bit of a tangent here. So forget that let's get back into this with Java. You can have a routine. [00:55:48] Call another routine that was not even necessarily thought of by the programmer. Now, can you imagine that? So you're programming and you're not considering adding something that's going to send email out and yet you could have a log in. That's part of the DNS and it gets logged that actually causes an email to be sent or causes anything else to happen. [00:56:17] That the exact problem we're seeing right now, it's absolutely crazy patterns in text fields, things like you can put a user desk agent. Which is normal for nature. UDP connection. You say, this is usually a guy who using Chrome version bar or Firefox or safari, but you put the user agent field. [00:56:40] And then after that, you've put in some, a little bit of code that tells Java, Hey, what I want you to do is this. This is a problem because we're finding now that I'm, again, I said the last 24 hours, 30 different exploits over a million companies have been attacked on this. And we're talking about 10. [00:57:05] Companies, absolutely hacked every minute right now. Can you think of, let's just think about that. And we're in the middle of what, right? The big holiday season, we've had some holidays, there's people online, shopping there's businesses that are trying to buy stuff, business stuff, almost every one of those sites is likely to be compromised. [00:57:31] It's that bad. It's absolutely nuts. What's happening here. This is a huge flaw. And by the way, it is flaw. Number this you ready for? This 44,228. In the year 2021. So the written 44,000 flaws that have been discovered and reported, this is the CVE system for those of you who are interested, but this really is a worst case scenario. [00:58:02] Because this log for J library is being pulled in to so many pieces of software out there on so many different platforms. The paths to to exploit this vulnerability are almost unlimited. And because there's so many dependencies on this particular log for J library, it's going to make it very difficult to patch without breaking other things. [00:58:32] And the fact the exploit itself fits in. Tweet come injected almost anywhere. So it's going to be a very long weekend for a lot of people, but let me tell you this. It is not going to be solved in a few days, a week, a month. We're going to be seen this. Years, because you have to be the person that wrote the program that has the source code to link in the new libraries, distributed out to your customers. [00:59:03] Do you see what a nightmare? This is now? Some people are saying let's blame this on open source. This is an open source product. Yeah, it is an open source project and it turns out that even though anyone can grab this, these, this library routine or any of these pieces of code, anybody can grab it. [00:59:21] Anybody can look at it. It turns out it's one guy. Who actually maintained this, who has a budget of $2,000 a year to maintain it. Nobody else pitched in. And all of these big companies are all out there grabbing this code that this guy has been working on and not paying much attention to it. Not donating to the project. [00:59:46] Which is saving them millions of dollars, not that one project, but all of these projects collectively in the open source community, it's it is more far reaching than this stretch vulnerability. You might remember this drug vulnerability that's was, that was the root cause of the massive breach at Equifax that Explo exposed all of our personal information. [01:00:14] To the dark web. That's how bad this is. Oh my gosh. So Hey, if you want information, I've got a links, a bunch of links set up here on what to do while you're waiting for the log for J updates from your vendors, how you can find on your servers. If they have the log for J vulnerability, I've got a bunch of information that I've stored up on that. [01:00:41] And some others just email me. M e@craigpeterson.com asked for the list of the log for Jay's stuff or the Java's stuff. I'll figure it out. Be glad to send it to anyone that's interested. And if you need to scan to find out yourself and your business, let me know to me@craigpeterson.com. [01:01:03] Wow. I was just going through a list published by Seesaw, this federal government agency that tracks some of these types of vulnerabilities. And wow, this list is daunting of all of these pieces of software that are vulnerable to this huge hack. [01:01:19] This is now a problem for each and every one of us. [01:01:23] I think I've established the man. This is nasty. So what do you do? First of all, I sent out. Email a list of things have in fact, a few different lists of things that you can do. So I had one for consumers, one for businesses and a general thing as well. And then a bunch of references. [01:01:47] Of course there's even more references and more great information now because I got that email. Pretty early. So I hope hopefully you had a chance to really look through that, but here let's just talk a little bit about this, what to do thing you already know because you guys really are the best and brightest that you need to be careful when you're on. [01:02:11] You cannot be online, Willy nilly, clicking on things. And that includes emails and links. And this time of year in fact, all year long, we're looking for. Wow, let's see. Is there a great bonus here? Look at they're having a sale, a discount. Oh no. I've only got three hours to respond or the deal's going to go away. [01:02:33] I've usually been of the sort that I just am, not that influenced by some of these deals, but. I do sometimes want to find out what it is. So I find myself this week clicking through on. I'm on a lot of marketing lists because I like to follow what different marketers are doing, that's technology. [01:02:55] And it's something I want to keep you guys informed about. And I found myself just crazy amount of double checking to make sure the link was valid. Now I'm sure you guys have, if you're on my email list, you might notice that the from address is not the me at Craig Peterson. Calm email address. You can always send email to me@craigpeterson.com and it ends up in my email box. [01:03:21] And it might take me a few days, or even as much as a week or two to get back to you. If it's something there's an emergency, you really need to fill out the form on my website, but I will get back with you. But the problem that some people have noticed lately is. It doesn't say return address or sent from me@craigpeterson.com. [01:03:45] It's got this rather long convoluted convoluted URL that has nothing to do with Craig peterson.com, sows a number of people question it, it is a tracking. When can the idea is if I am going to be able to get back to people and if Karen is going to be able to nudge. I have to have these things tracked. [01:04:09] So the email from address, when you hit reply, it is going to go to the, again, my email list server guys, and it is going to get tracked so I know. Okay. Okay. So now I've got a few minutes or an hour. Let's sit down and go through a lot of these emails so I can get back to people. That's a problem for many people, that's even more of a problem today than it ever has been in the past. [01:04:38] Now there's been a few sites that have done something about tracking because many people don't like to be tracked. My self included, although, as I've always explained on the show, it's a double-edged sword because I would rather see commercials or ads for a Ford F-150 pickup truck. When I'm looking to buy. [01:05:00] Car or certainly a truck. I don't want to see ads for things I don't care about. And you probably don't either. So the tracking, I don't think is a huge deal. The statistics that have come out from apple recently are very interesting because what apple ended up doing is they put some new technology and to stop tracking. [01:05:25] And to stop you from being tracked. And basically what they're doing is a couple of things. One, they've got this new feature where they will download images and emails from their website, so that it's not they're not being able to localize where you are and then they're also doing something where you. [01:05:49] Are you are, you can't be tracked like you used to be able to be tracked. Let me just put it simply like that applications now have to have that little label warning label in the app store to let you know what they might be tracking, et cetera. So they've been accepting anti tracking behavior that came from our friends from. [01:06:13] Apple now Google, Facebook and others have been very upset about this thinking that they were going to lose a lot of business here in the advertising side, because you wouldn't be able to track them. So if you've got an apple iOS device, you probably noticed, it says, allow app to track your activity across other companies. [01:06:36] And websites, your data will be used to measure advertising efficiency. I don't know that's such a bad thing. And looking at the stats right now, I'm looking at Google's income. And a lot of that comes from YouTube after. Apple launched its new privacy initiative and it looks like Google really wasn't hit very badly. [01:07:00] What Facebook was worried about that they would just be losing all kinds of revenue. Also didn't turn out to be true. So it's an interesting thing to see and I've got to really compliment apple again. At this time on trying to keep our information private, I read a really great book this, so this is how the world ends talking about the whole cyber race and where things are likely going. [01:07:30] And it's frankly impressive. To see what Google has done to try and keep out our government from their networks, as well as foreign government and the whole thing with the Chinese hackers we've talked about before, where I've found them. Active inside our customer's network before. And this is where we get called in because there's a problem. [01:07:57] We look around, we find indications of compromise. We find the Chinese inside. Okay. So it isn't something that we were protecting them, the Chinese got in, but we come in after the fact and have to clean up the mess. But what we have really seen happen here is the largest transfer in. Of wealth, I should say, in history, the largest transfer of wealth in history to. [01:08:25] From us and from other countries, but primarily from us because of what they've stolen. And so Google really has fought hard against it. The Chinese have been in their systems have stolen a lot of stuff. Apple has fire fought hard against it, but we know about the apple stuff. Google's seems to be a little quieter about some of it. [01:08:45] So they may be selling our information to advertisers, but there certainly are trying to keep nation states out. I'm really wondering too, what is Google doing? Moving that artificial intelligence lab to China. It just it's insane. We know we, if we're going to get out of this financial position, we're in as a country, we need to have an amazing new technology. [01:09:09] So people are coming to the United States and we're certainly not seeing that. At least not yet. It's all been stolen. So what to do, man. I started talking about that and we got a little sidetracked. So I will talk about that a little bit more here coming right up and what to do if you're a consumer, if you're a business person. [01:09:32] And of course, as I mentioned earlier, I have. Quite a list. I'm more than glad to send you. If you go ahead and just email me, M e@craigpeterson.com. I'll keep you up to date, let you know what's happening and give you those links that you can follow to find out exactly what is happening and what you can do. [01:09:53] Including some tools. There are some tools out there to check to see if that vulnerability exists inside your networks or systems MI. Ed Craig peterson.com. And I'll be glad to reach out, reach back to you. [01:10:09] I'm gonna tell you what to do as a consumer because of this massive internet hack that is underway. It is huge. Also going to talk a little bit about apple and what they're doing with their tracker detect app on Android devices. [01:10:24] This will be going on for months and probably years in some cases, because there are many systems that will never. [01:10:35] Patched for this vulnerability. So from now on, you need to be doubly cautious about almost everything, the big targets for this. Then people who tend to be the most valuable. Big businesses. And I can send you a list of devices that are known to be either immune to this they've been fixed or patched and devices that are known to have this problem. [01:11:03] You send me an email. Excuse me. If you have any questions about it. So it's me M e@craigpeterson.com. I'd be glad to send you that list. Seesaw has it online. You can certainly search for it yourself. If you're interested in. So for you as an individual, it's just extra caution, use these one time, use credit card numbers. [01:11:31] I have talked about this before. And that is, I use fake identities as much as I possibly can online. And I'm not trying to defraud anyone. Of course, that would be legal. What I'm trying to do is not make myself as easy at target. As is frankly pretty much anybody who uses a computer out there, because if you're always using your, in the same name and email address and having forbid password, then you are a bigger target than you have to be. [01:12:07] And I have a whole index file. I have a spreadsheet that I put together with 5,000 different identities, different names, of course, different sexes, races, origin stories, everything. And the whole idea behind that is why does some company that's providing me with some little website thing, need my real info. [01:12:31] They don't obviously you give you real info to the banks or. Counts, but you don't need to give it to anybody else. And that's what I do. That's my goal. So if you can do that, do that. Apple also has a way for you to use random. Email address a suit can set up a different email address for every website you visit. [01:12:57] There are a few services out there that can do it. If you're interested, drop me an email. me@craigpeterson.com. I'll send you a list of some of them. I think they're all paid except for the app. But you have to have an apple account in order to use it. One of the things that businesses really need to do is do a scan. [01:13:19] Again, I can send you a list of scanners so that you can look at your network, see if there's any. Obvious that might have huge implications for your business. Again, me@craigpeterson.com, one of the things apple has come up with that I really have turned out to and I think I mentioned them before on the air, but it's these news. [01:13:41] Trackers that apple has, that you can put on things. And we spoke a little bit last week about the problem with these trackers being put on to high-end cars, and then being used to track the car. Now apple got around that problem a while ago, by letting you know, Hey, there is a tracker following you isn't that handy. [01:14:04] Wait a minute, somebody dropped one of these little tags into my purse. Coat my car or whatever it might be. And so now you can have a look and see where is this thing that's following me and get rid of it. Of course, in order to know that there's one of these apple tags tracking, you've needed to have an apple phone. [01:14:26] Because it'll warn you. Apple now has something called tracker detect. If you are using an Android phone, I would highly advise you to get this app tracker detect app on Android. And it's designed to help you Android users from being tracked by apple airtight. 'cause if you don't know you're being tracked right, then you can't know if you're being tracked. [01:14:55] If you don't have an iPhone, unless you get this app so good for them, apple has it up now on the Google play store. That's just in the last week or so, and it lets you locate nearby air tags. So let's I think a very good thing kind of wonder if apple isn't using the Androids also for part of the. [01:15:16] Crowdsourcing for the air tags, but that's a different conversation. Great article in vice this week by Aaron Gordon, about how car companies want you to keep paying. Features you already have, and they specifically made a call out about a car manufacturer. Toyota. Who's now charging $80 a year for people who bought their car years ago, six years ago, $80 a year. [01:15:51] If you want to keep using the remote start function on your key. Yeah, so you paid for it and life was good. You went a few years, really nice on a cold winter day or a hot summer day, warm up the car or cool it down all automatically. But now Toyota is charging. $80 a year. So people are saying why I bought it? [01:16:16] Why would I pay for that? Apple's now claiming that the several first years were merely a free trial period, but this isn't even the big play for these car companies, this $80 a year for marginal features like remote start instead. Is probably going to happen. And I agree with this author as well is we're going to see a, an approach that Elon Musk has used with his Teslas. [01:16:47] They're going to charge extra for performance, for range, for safety upgrades, for electric vehicles that actually make the car better car, a better car. So upgrades used to be difficult or impossible with gas cars. A lot of these are trivial for the electric cars, with the dashboards that have games that you can play while you are charging. [01:17:13] Some of them were complaining about it being for when they're on the road. Of course that's going to happen because frankly, when, once we get a full autonomous car, what are outs are you going to do? I should also mention this isn't really a, but Mercedes-Benz has been awarded the very first license for the manufacturer sale and distribution of a fully autonomous vehicle. [01:17:39]
Juan gives us a breakdown on his 4G93 powered Mirage/Technica. Why he chose this setup and the story behind his eye popping wrap. We also talk about our recent experience at the Mitsubishi Owners Meet in Kissimmee, FL.
Mel Taylor from Brisbane's Mellow Games was inspired by her own life to make BLUEBERRY a story focused platform game with light puzzle elements that follows a character's life from beginning to end. This semi-autobiographical game explores how our perspective shifts throughout our lives, climbing a tower filled with memories that you can replay as you get older and understand new points of view. This episode was broadcast live as part of PAX Radio at PAX Australia 2021, supported by Audio Technica. Lightmap is produced by Nicholas Kennedy, Viv Thum, Fiona Bartholomaeus, Daniel Ang & Adam Christou. Mitch Loh is Senior Producer and Gianni Di Giovanni is our Executive Producer. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Original Air Date: Jan 18, 2021 Join your boys Harrison, Sebastian, Gilbert, & new guest and fellow YouTuber, Adam as they talk about three of the new horrors soon to grace us later this year. These are of course the Star Wars open world game from Ubisoft, the newly announced Indiana Jones game from Bethesda headed by Todd Howard, and finally the new Nick Cage FNAF parody, Willy's Wonderland. Join us for all the predictions and insanity on this episode of The Fulcrum Report! Check out Adam's Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Technica... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Join our Discord and talk with us || https://discord.gg/DEhbxbS Check out our Twitter || https://twitter.com/Fulcrum_Report
Selim Maalouf so badly thought his company Technica International needed a marketing infusion he literally left it to learn the ropes at another company and came back. From there, he got his chance to start his own marketing department at a company that for 38 years had none. And that's when the process of building from zero began. Selim joins Matt and MJ to talk about the journey of starting marketing at an industrial company that never had one, how he had to prioritize in the face of reality, and how far he was able to take an industrial company's marketing engine with practically no budget. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app
www.patreon.com/banjopodcast In this episode, host Keith Billik compares sound samples from 15 popular microphones from Audio Technica, DPA, EV, Gold Tone, Heil, Line Audio, Sennheiser, and Shure. Special thanks to Jason Dennie (www.jasondennie.com) and Gold Tone Instruments (www.goldtonemusicgroup.com) for providing demo microphones used in the shootout. LIST OF START TIMES FOR EACH SOUND SAMPLE: Mic #1 - 35:00 Mic #2 - 37:00 Mic #3 - 39:30 Mic #4 - 42:00 Mic #5 - 44:30 Mic #6 - 47:00 Mic #7 - 50:00 Mic #8 - 53:00 Mic #9 - 56:00 Mic #10 - 59:00 Mic #11 - 1:01:30 Mic #12 - 1:04:00 Mic #13 - 1:06:30 Mic #14 - 1:09:00 Mic #15 - 1:11:30 This episode sponsored by Deering Banjos Contact the show: pickyfingersbanjopodcast@gmail.com Thanks for listening!
Technology: can't live with it, can't live without it - or can you?