Podcasts about uefi

Tony: -Things heating up with AI usage in Video Games: https://www.polygon.com/clair-obscur-expedition-33-indie-game-awards-controvsery-gen-ai-explained/?link_source=ta_bluesky_link&taid=6949aa663265bb00019eb313&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=bluesky Larian got in trouble too: https://wccftech.com/larian-studios-will-refrain-from-using-genai-tools-to-develop-concept-art-will-use-it-elsewhere/ -The Division Definitive Edition: https://www.ign.com/articles/it-looks-like-the-division-definitive-edition-is-on-the-way-10-years-after-its-initial-release -What is Gamestop even doing?... https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2026/01/is-this-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-gamestop/ -Arc Raiders Aggression Based Match Making: https://www.ign.com/articles/this-is-like-a-whole-new-world-arc-raiders-players-are-using-aggression-based-matchmaking-to-retire-from-pvp Jarron:  -DLSS 4.5 https://www.digitalfoundry.net/news/2026/01/nvidia-announces-dlss-4-5-new-transformer-model-already-live -New Strix Halo chips for gaming: https://www.theverge.com/tech/855463/amd-strix-halo-ai-max-plus-388-392-handheld-gaming -Intel is going to release a custom Panther Lake CPU for handhelds: https://www.theverge.com/tech/857252/intel-handheld-gaming-pc-panther-lake-custom-cpu -Gamesir made the weirdest controller that I kinda want: https://www.theverge.com/news/851259/gamesir-switch-turbo-drive-controller-steering-wheel-wireless-force-feedback -Star Wars can jailbreak a PS5: https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playstation/prices-for-an-old-star-wars-game-have-ballooned-because-of-its-role-in-a-ps5-jailbreak-230604276.html?src=rss Owen: -Here's a game for you. UEFI boot game. https://www.tomshardware.com/software/dev-creates-uefi-games-compendium-where-you-have-to-win-to-access-your-computer-10-month-project-will-shutdown-your-pc-if-you-lose -Brandon Sanderson AAA Game? Well it's in the works. https://wccftech.com/mistborn-author-is-talking-to-aaa-game-studios-adapt-fantasy-saga/ Lando: -Pay Attention! Free games! https://kotaku.com/steam-sale-team-17-hidden-codes-free-games-deal-secret-artwork-2000658974

Happy New Year! In this episode, Automox cybersecurity experts Ryan Braunstein and Seth Hoyt break down the security vulnerabilities you need to know heading into 2026.First up: a ticking time bomb. Microsoft's 2011 Secure Boot certificates expire in June and October 2026, making this your top patching priority for the year. If your BIOS and OS aren't both updated, you're leaving the door wide open for rootkit attacks. Start auditing your hardware now. You have six months.Next up: a Windows Installer Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability that exploits a time-of-check to time-of-use (TOCTOU) race condition. Think of it like swapping wristbands after the bouncer checks you at the door.Finally, an actively exploited flaw in Desktop Window Manager that can leak sensitive information and even break out of sandboxes.Patch your systems. Patch your BIOS. See you next month.

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professorjrod@gmail.comA census solved with cardboard, a company remade by a $5 billion gamble, and a tiny firmware layer that cracked open the PC market—this is the human story behind how computing became a platform, not a product. We go from Hermann Hollerith's 1890 insight to IBM's sales-first system that taught the world to think in fields and records, and then to the cultural and ethical crosscurrents that come with scale. Those punched holes didn't just count people; they trained generations to quantify work, plan logistics, and make decisions with data.The narrative turns at a crossroads in the early 1960s. Thomas J. Watson Jr. sees a maze of incompatible machines and bets the company on a single, compatible architecture: System/360. It demanded new chips, code, factories, and nerve. Launch day lands with shock and relief—orders flood in for a family of computers that finally speak the same language. That choice redefined the industry's economics: software could live longer than hardware, upgrades didn't mean rewrites, and customers stopped fearing growth. Architecture became destiny, and IBM set the standard that everyone from Apple to ARM would later emulate in their own ecosystems.Then the stage shifts again to 1981, where a humble BIOS turns one machine into a platform. IBM documented how its firmware behaved; Compaq legally reimplemented it; the clone market ignited. Prices dropped, innovation surged, and the Wintel era took shape. IBM lost tight control but the world gained a common PC standard that carried software across brands and borders. From punch card schemas to UEFI, from batch jobs to cloud migrations, the same lesson repeats: design for compatibility, bet on continuity, and accept that openness can multiply impact.If the story made you think differently about the architecture beneath your apps and devices, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review to help others find Technology Tap. What bold standard—or act of openness—should today's tech leaders champion next?Inspiring Tech Leaders - The Technology PodcastInterviews with Tech Leaders and insights on the latest emerging technology trends.Listen on: Apple Podcasts SpotifySupport the showArt By Sarah/DesmondMusic by Joakim KarudLittle chacha ProductionsJuan Rodriguez can be reached atTikTok @ProfessorJrodProfessorJRod@gmail.com@Prof_JRodInstagram ProfessorJRod

Erotic Chats, UEFI, F5, Cisco, Doug Sings, Insiders, Lastpass, Sora, Aaran Leyland, and More on this edition of the Security Weekly News. Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/swn for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/swn-521

Erotic Chats, UEFI, F5, Cisco, Doug Sings, Insiders, Lastpass, Sora, Aaran Leyland, and More on this edition of the Security Weekly News. Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/swn-521

Erotic Chats, UEFI, F5, Cisco, Doug Sings, Insiders, Lastpass, Sora, Aaran Leyland, and More on this edition of the Security Weekly News. Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/swn for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/swn-521

Erotic Chats, UEFI, F5, Cisco, Doug Sings, Insiders, Lastpass, Sora, Aaran Leyland, and More on this edition of the Security Weekly News. Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/swn-521

First up is a technical segment on UEFI shells: determining if they contain dangerous functionality that allows attackers to bypass Secure Boot. Then in the security news: Your vulnerability scanner is your weakest link Scams that almost got me The state of EDR is not good You don't need to do that on a phone or Raspberry PI Hash cracking and exploits Revisiting LG WebOS Hardening Docker images Hacking Moxa NPort Shoddy academic research The original sin of computing Bodycam hacking A new OS for ESP32 The AI bubble is going to burt Mobile VPNs are not always secure Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/psw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/psw-896

First up is a technical segment on UEFI shells: determining if they contain dangerous functionality that allows attackers to bypass Secure Boot. Then in the security news: Your vulnerability scanner is your weakest link Scams that almost got me The state of EDR is not good You don't need to do that on a phone or Raspberry PI Hash cracking and exploits Revisiting LG WebOS Hardening Docker images Hacking Moxa NPort Shoddy academic research The original sin of computing Bodycam hacking A new OS for ESP32 The AI bubble is going to burt Mobile VPNs are not always secure Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/psw-896

First up is a technical segment on UEFI shells: determining if they contain dangerous functionality that allows attackers to bypass Secure Boot. Then in the security news: Your vulnerability scanner is your weakest link Scams that almost got me The state of EDR is not good You don't need to do that on a phone or Raspberry PI Hash cracking and exploits Revisiting LG WebOS Hardening Docker images Hacking Moxa NPort Shoddy academic research The original sin of computing Bodycam hacking A new OS for ESP32 The AI bubble is going to burt Mobile VPNs are not always secure Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/psw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/psw-896

First up is a technical segment on UEFI shells: determining if they contain dangerous functionality that allows attackers to bypass Secure Boot. Then in the security news: Your vulnerability scanner is your weakest link Scams that almost got me The state of EDR is not good You don't need to do that on a phone or Raspberry PI Hash cracking and exploits Revisiting LG WebOS Hardening Docker images Hacking Moxa NPort Shoddy academic research The original sin of computing Bodycam hacking A new OS for ESP32 The AI bubble is going to burt Mobile VPNs are not always secure Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/psw-896

professorjrod@gmail.comA dead PC at the worst moment is a gut punch—unless you have a roadmap. We walk through the exact thinking that turns “no lights, no fans, no display” into a calm, step‑by‑step recovery, starting where every system truly begins: firmware. BIOS and UEFI aren't trivia; they decide how your machine discovers drives, validates bootloaders, and applies security like Secure Boot and TPM. That's why a simple post‑update check of boot order, storage mode, and firmware toggles can rescue a lab full of “no boot device” errors in minutes.From there, we get brutally honest about power. PSUs age, rails sag, and idle tests lie. You'll learn the outside‑in “power ladder,” why a line‑interactive UPS prevents ghost errors, and how unstable XMP profiles masquerade as OS problems. We demystify boot and drive failures—wrong boot entries, NVMe lane conflicts, cloning driver mismatches—and show how SMART data, free space, cooling, and firmware updates revive sluggish SSDs. Then we cut through RAID mythology: 0 for speed, 1 for uptime, 5 for read‑heavy with risk, 6 for double‑parity safety, and 10 for fast resilience. And we repeat the rule that saves careers: RAID is not backup. Verify restores, keep copies offsite or offline, and schedule tests before disaster strikes.Video issues get the practical treatment too. No display? Check inputs and connect to the discrete GPU, not the motherboard. Blurry or artifacting under load? Validate refresh rates, cables, thermals, and PSU capacity. We close with a field checklist and a case study where a quality PSU upgrade stabilized 3D renders instantly—proof that systems thinking beats screen-chasing every time. If you want a technician's mindset—evidence over assumptions, one variable at a time—this guide will sharpen your process and speed your fixes.If this helped you think like a tech, follow the show, share it with a teammate who's on call this week, and leave a quick review so more builders and troubleshooters can find it.Support the showIf you want to help me with my research please e-mail me.Professorjrod@gmail.comIf you want to join my question/answer zoom class e-mail me at Professorjrod@gmail.comArt By Sarah/DesmondMusic by Joakim KarudLittle chacha ProductionsJuan Rodriguez can be reached atTikTok @ProfessorJrodProfessorJRod@gmail.com@Prof_JRodInstagram ProfessorJRod

Can't get enough Linux? How about multiple kernels running simultaneously, side by side, not in a VM, all on the same hardware; this week it's finally looking real.Sponsored By:Managed Nebula: Meet Managed Nebula from Defined Networking. A decentralized VPN built on the open-source Nebula platform that we love. 1Password Extended Access Management: 1Password Extended Access Management is a device trust solution for companies with Okta, and they ensure that if a device isn't trusted and secure, it can't log into your cloud apps. Unraid: A powerful, easy operating system for servers and storage. Maximize your hardware with unmatched flexibility. Support LINUX UnpluggedLinks:

We've been tinkering with a lot of esoteric PC hardware stuff lately, so we're here with a roundup on what we've been up to this week that you'll hopefully find informative. We get into Microsoft's crackdown on the vulnerability in FanControl and other popular monitoring software, attempting to corral fan settings in UEFI as an alternative, and doing battle with the dreaded beat frequencies that can result from adjacent fan placement. Brad also gives a full trip report on his attempt to power a stack of hard drives with an external ATX power supply, with a detour into handy tips for de-pinning a modular power supply cable, stacking multiple hard drives, and more. And Will touches on his recent experience building a new studio PC in a rack-mounted case, plus some tidbits about the last electronics flea market of the year, Linux thread scheduling, Brad's first trip to Micro Center, Will's shiny new CRT (yes, another one), and more!Links for this episode:WinRing0: Why Windows is flagging your PC monitoring and fan control apps as a threat: https://www.theverge.com/report/629259/winring0-windows-defender-fan-control-pc-monitoring-alert-quarantineNoctua on fan placement and beat frequencies: https://noctua.at/en/fan-speed-offset-explainedStackable hard drive feet Brad bought: https://sednashop.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=95Seasonic pinout and cable compatibility info: https://seasonic.com/cable-compatibility/How to de-pin a power supply cable with two staples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6gQ5ie2Dw0Brad's NAS/hard drive setup and de-pinned cable: https://imgur.com/a/WKPwhCQ Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, a monthly bonus episode, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod

This week's technical segment is all about the T-Lora Pager from Lilygo, and really cool Meshtastic device that can also be used for some hacking tasks! In the security news: Your safe is not safe Cisco ASA devices are under attack VMScape HybridPetya and UEFI attacks in the wild Eveything is a Linux terminal Hackers turns 30 Hosting websites on disposable vapes NPM worms and token stealing Attackers make mistakes too AI podcasts Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/psw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/psw-892

This week's technical segment is all about the T-Lora Pager from Lilygo, and really cool Meshtastic device that can also be used for some hacking tasks! In the security news: Your safe is not safe Cisco ASA devices are under attack VMScape HybridPetya and UEFI attacks in the wild Eveything is a Linux terminal Hackers turns 30 Hosting websites on disposable vapes NPM worms and token stealing Attackers make mistakes too AI podcasts Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/psw-892

This week's technical segment is all about the T-Lora Pager from Lilygo, and really cool Meshtastic device that can also be used for some hacking tasks! In the security news: Your safe is not safe Cisco ASA devices are under attack VMScape HybridPetya and UEFI attacks in the wild Eveything is a Linux terminal Hackers turns 30 Hosting websites on disposable vapes NPM worms and token stealing Attackers make mistakes too AI podcasts Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/psw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/psw-892

This week's technical segment is all about the T-Lora Pager from Lilygo, and really cool Meshtastic device that can also be used for some hacking tasks! In the security news: Your safe is not safe Cisco ASA devices are under attack VMScape HybridPetya and UEFI attacks in the wild Eveything is a Linux terminal Hackers turns 30 Hosting websites on disposable vapes NPM worms and token stealing Attackers make mistakes too AI podcasts Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/psw-892

This week we celebrate Linux turning 34, check out a plugin that makes GIMP great for thumbnails, look at a powerful new Jetson dev kit, and try out UEFI on the Rock 5 ITX+ for easy USB Linux installs.

In the security news: Hacking washing machines, good clean fun! Hacking cars via Bluetooth More Bluetooth hacking with Breaktooth Making old vulnerabilities great again: exploiting abandoned hardware Clorox and Cognizant point fingers AI generated Linux malware Attacking Russian airports When user verification data leaks Turns out you CAN steal cars with a Flipper Zero, so we're told The UEFI vulnerabilities - the hits keep coming Hijacking Discord invites The Raspberry PI laptop The new Hack RF One Pro Security appliances still fail to be secure Person Re-Identification via Wi-Fi Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/psw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/psw-885

In the security news: Hacking washing machines, good clean fun! Hacking cars via Bluetooth More Bluetooth hacking with Breaktooth Making old vulnerabilities great again: exploiting abandoned hardware Clorox and Cognizant point fingers AI generated Linux malware Attacking Russian airports When user verification data leaks Turns out you CAN steal cars with a Flipper Zero, so we're told The UEFI vulnerabilities - the hits keep coming Hijacking Discord invites The Raspberry PI laptop The new Hack RF One Pro Security appliances still fail to be secure Person Re-Identification via Wi-Fi Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/psw-885

In the security news: Hacking washing machines, good clean fun! Hacking cars via Bluetooth More Bluetooth hacking with Breaktooth Making old vulnerabilities great again: exploiting abandoned hardware Clorox and Cognizant point fingers AI generated Linux malware Attacking Russian airports When user verification data leaks Turns out you CAN steal cars with a Flipper Zero, so we're told The UEFI vulnerabilities - the hits keep coming Hijacking Discord invites The Raspberry PI laptop The new Hack RF One Pro Security appliances still fail to be secure Person Re-Identification via Wi-Fi Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/psw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/psw-885

In the security news: Hacking washing machines, good clean fun! Hacking cars via Bluetooth More Bluetooth hacking with Breaktooth Making old vulnerabilities great again: exploiting abandoned hardware Clorox and Cognizant point fingers AI generated Linux malware Attacking Russian airports When user verification data leaks Turns out you CAN steal cars with a Flipper Zero, so we're told The UEFI vulnerabilities - the hits keep coming Hijacking Discord invites The Raspberry PI laptop The new Hack RF One Pro Security appliances still fail to be secure Person Re-Identification via Wi-Fi Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/psw-885

We chat with Material Security about protecting G Suite and MS365. How else are you monitoring the most commonly used cloud environments and applications? In the security news: Google Sues Badbox operators Authenticated or Unauthenticated, big difference and my struggle to get LLMs to create exploits for me Ring cameras that were not hacked Malicous AURs Killing solar farms Weak passwords are all it takes Microsoft's UEFI keys are expiring Kali Linux and Raspberry PI Wifi updates Use lots of electricity, get a visit from law enforcement Sharepoint, vulnerabilities, nuclear weapons, and why you should use the cloud The time to next exploit is short Sonicwall devices are getting exploited How not to vibe code SMS blasters This segment is sponsored by Material Security. Visit https://securityweekly.com/materialsecurity to see purpose-built Google Workspace and Office 365 security in action! Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/psw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/psw-884

We chat with Material Security about protecting G Suite and MS365. How else are you monitoring the most commonly used cloud environments and applications? In the security news: Google Sues Badbox operators Authenticated or Unauthenticated, big difference and my struggle to get LLMs to create exploits for me Ring cameras that were not hacked Malicous AURs Killing solar farms Weak passwords are all it takes Microsoft's UEFI keys are expiring Kali Linux and Raspberry PI Wifi updates Use lots of electricity, get a visit from law enforcement Sharepoint, vulnerabilities, nuclear weapons, and why you should use the cloud The time to next exploit is short Sonicwall devices are getting exploited How not to vibe code SMS blasters This segment is sponsored by Material Security. Visit https://securityweekly.com/materialsecurity to see purpose-built Google Workspace and Office 365 security in action! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/psw-884

We chat with Material Security about protecting G Suite and MS365. How else are you monitoring the most commonly used cloud environments and applications? In the security news: Google Sues Badbox operators Authenticated or Unauthenticated, big difference and my struggle to get LLMs to create exploits for me Ring cameras that were not hacked Malicous AURs Killing solar farms Weak passwords are all it takes Microsoft's UEFI keys are expiring Kali Linux and Raspberry PI Wifi updates Use lots of electricity, get a visit from law enforcement Sharepoint, vulnerabilities, nuclear weapons, and why you should use the cloud The time to next exploit is short Sonicwall devices are getting exploited How not to vibe code SMS blasters This segment is sponsored by Material Security. Visit https://securityweekly.com/materialsecurity to see purpose-built Google Workspace and Office 365 security in action! Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/psw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/psw-884

We chat with Material Security about protecting G Suite and MS365. How else are you monitoring the most commonly used cloud environments and applications? In the security news: Google Sues Badbox operators Authenticated or Unauthenticated, big difference and my struggle to get LLMs to create exploits for me Ring cameras that were not hacked Malicous AURs Killing solar farms Weak passwords are all it takes Microsoft's UEFI keys are expiring Kali Linux and Raspberry PI Wifi updates Use lots of electricity, get a visit from law enforcement Sharepoint, vulnerabilities, nuclear weapons, and why you should use the cloud The time to next exploit is short Sonicwall devices are getting exploited How not to vibe code SMS blasters This segment is sponsored by Material Security. Visit https://securityweekly.com/materialsecurity to see purpose-built Google Workspace and Office 365 security in action! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/psw-884

In the security news: The train is leaving the station, or is it? The hypervisor will protect you, maybe The best thing about Flippers are the clones Also, the Flipper Zero as an interrogation tool Threats are commercial and open-source Who is still down with FTP? AI bug hunters Firmware for Russian drones Merging Android and ChromOS Protecting your assets with CVSS? Patch Citrixbleed 2 Rowhammer comes to NVIDIA GPUs I hear Microsoft hires Chinese spies Gigabyte motherboards and UEFI vulnerabilities McDonald's AI hiring bot: you want some PII with that? Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/psw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/psw-883

In the security news: The train is leaving the station, or is it? The hypervisor will protect you, maybe The best thing about Flippers are the clones Also, the Flipper Zero as an interrogation tool Threats are commercial and open-source Who is still down with FTP? AI bug hunters Firmware for Russian drones Merging Android and ChromOS Protecting your assets with CVSS? Patch Citrixbleed 2 Rowhammer comes to NVIDIA GPUs I hear Microsoft hires Chinese spies Gigabyte motherboards and UEFI vulnerabilities McDonald's AI hiring bot: you want some PII with that? Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/psw-883

In the security news: The train is leaving the station, or is it? The hypervisor will protect you, maybe The best thing about Flippers are the clones Also, the Flipper Zero as an interrogation tool Threats are commercial and open-source Who is still down with FTP? AI bug hunters Firmware for Russian drones Merging Android and ChromOS Protecting your assets with CVSS? Patch Citrixbleed 2 Rowhammer comes to NVIDIA GPUs I hear Microsoft hires Chinese spies Gigabyte motherboards and UEFI vulnerabilities McDonald's AI hiring bot: you want some PII with that? Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/psw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/psw-883

In the security news: The train is leaving the station, or is it? The hypervisor will protect you, maybe The best thing about Flippers are the clones Also, the Flipper Zero as an interrogation tool Threats are commercial and open-source Who is still down with FTP? AI bug hunters Firmware for Russian drones Merging Android and ChromOS Protecting your assets with CVSS? Patch Citrixbleed 2 Rowhammer comes to NVIDIA GPUs I hear Microsoft hires Chinese spies Gigabyte motherboards and UEFI vulnerabilities McDonald's AI hiring bot: you want some PII with that? Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/psw-883

A BIOS password provides a surprising amount of security on a computer -- so much that if the password is lost, chances for recovery are slim.

This week: You got a Bad box, again Cameras are expose to the Internet EU and connected devices Hydrophobia NVRAM variables Have you heard about IGEL Linux? SSH and more NVRAM AI skeptics are nuts, and AI doesn't make you more efficient Trump Cybersecurity orders I think I can root my Pixel 6 Decentralized Wordpres plugin manager Threat actor naming conventions I have the phone number linked to your Google account Fortinet flaws exploited in ransomeware attacks (and how lack of information sharing is killing us) retiring floppy disks fault injection for the masses there is no defender AI blackmails Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/psw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/psw-878

This week: You got a Bad box, again Cameras are expose to the Internet EU and connected devices Hydrophobia NVRAM variables Have you heard about IGEL Linux? SSH and more NVRAM AI skeptics are nuts, and AI doesn't make you more efficient Trump Cybersecurity orders I think I can root my Pixel 6 Decentralized Wordpres plugin manager Threat actor naming conventions I have the phone number linked to your Google account Fortinet flaws exploited in ransomeware attacks (and how lack of information sharing is killing us) retiring floppy disks fault injection for the masses there is no defender AI blackmails Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/psw-878

This week: You got a Bad box, again Cameras are expose to the Internet EU and connected devices Hydrophobia NVRAM variables Have you heard about IGEL Linux? SSH and more NVRAM AI skeptics are nuts, and AI doesn't make you more efficient Trump Cybersecurity orders I think I can root my Pixel 6 Decentralized Wordpres plugin manager Threat actor naming conventions I have the phone number linked to your Google account Fortinet flaws exploited in ransomeware attacks (and how lack of information sharing is killing us) retiring floppy disks fault injection for the masses there is no defender AI blackmails Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/psw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/psw-878

This week: You got a Bad box, again Cameras are expose to the Internet EU and connected devices Hydrophobia NVRAM variables Have you heard about IGEL Linux? SSH and more NVRAM AI skeptics are nuts, and AI doesn't make you more efficient Trump Cybersecurity orders I think I can root my Pixel 6 Decentralized Wordpres plugin manager Threat actor naming conventions I have the phone number linked to your Google account Fortinet flaws exploited in ransomeware attacks (and how lack of information sharing is killing us) retiring floppy disks fault injection for the masses there is no defender AI blackmails Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/psw-878

In this podcast, Jon Westfall and I discussed: A significant portion of our conversation centered on the continuing proliferation of AI in consumer products. We noted an increasing sense of "AI fatigue"—the saturation of artificial intelligence in nearly every product and announcement. Although I am personally intrigued by developments in AI-generated video and imaging, especially from Google and Meta, I also find the AI trend overwhelming at times. I am even considering subscribing to Google One's AI Premium offering to further explore these capabilities, particularly for personal creative projects. We also speculated on potential announcements from Apple's upcoming WWDC, especially regarding artificial intelligence and whether Apple will finally deliver tangible AI features, following a less-than-smooth rollout of “Apple Intelligence.” I expressed hope for hardware updates, such as a refreshed Apple Watch Ultra or a more affordable version of the Vision Pro headset—rumored to be called the Vision Air. I noted that I recently began revisiting older episodes of this podcast, some dating back to 2008. I've started re-editing and publishing select episodes as audiograms. One of these featured an interview with the developers of Google Earth for iPhone, recorded in early 2009—just six months after the App Store's debut. It was particularly meaningful to hear the voice of my late friend Mike Morton, one of the app's original developers. We also touched on some of my ongoing technology experiments. I've been attempting to repurpose a 2019 AMD laptop that no longer supports Windows 11. My initial plan to install ChromeOS Flex was thwarted by hardware incompatibility, so I've shifted my attention to Linux Mint. Although I encountered issues related to UEFI preventing boot from a USB drive, I plan to revisit this project soon Jon offered a compelling perspective on the evolving role of AI in higher education. He discussed how he and other faculty are adapting to student use of AI tools such as ChatGPT, emphasizing the importance of transparency, responsible use, and pedagogical innovation. Jon's work in this area demonstrates a balanced, practical approach that integrates emerging technology while preserving academic integrity. We concluded the episode with a broader reflection on the societal implications of AI, particularly the concern that up to 50% of entry-level jobs may be impacted in the coming years. As someone no longer in the workforce, I observe these shifts with a mix of concern and curiosity, especially regarding how younger generations will navigate such disruptions. We acknowledged the historical cycles of technological change—from calculators and word processors to broadband and mobile computing—and how each brought both fear and opportunity.

We are calling for the world's best AI Engineer talks for AI Architects, /r/localLlama, Model Context Protocol (MCP), GraphRAG, AI in Action, Evals, Agent Reliability, Reasoning and RL, Retrieval/Search/RecSys , Security, Infrastructure, Generative Media, AI Design & Novel AI UX, AI Product Management, Autonomy, Robotics, and Embodied Agents, Computer-Using Agents (CUA), SWE Agents, Vibe Coding, Voice, Sales/Support Agents at AIEWF 2025! Fill out the 2025 State of AI Eng survey for $250 in Amazon cards and see you from Jun 3-5 in SF!Coreweave's now-successful IPO has led to a lot of questions about the GPU Neocloud market, which Dylan Patel has written extensively about on SemiAnalysis. Understanding markets requires an interesting mix of technical and financial expertise, so this will be a different kind of episode than our usual LS domain.When we first published $2 H100s: How the GPU Rental Bubble Burst, we got 2 kinds of reactions on Hacker News:* “Ah, now the AI bubble is imploding!”* “Duh, this is how it works in every GPU cycle, are you new here?”We don't think either reaction is quite right. Specifically, it is not normal for the prices of one of the world's most important resources right now to swing from $1 to $8 per hour based on drastically inelastic demand AND supply curves - from 3 year lock-in contracts to stupendously competitive over-ordering dynamics for NVIDIA allocations — especially with increasing baseline compute needed for even the simplest academic ML research and for new AI startups getting off the ground.We're fortunate today to have Evan Conrad, CEO of SFCompute, one of the most exciting GPU marketplace startups, talk us through his theory of the economics of GPU markets, and why he thinks CoreWeave and Modal are well positioned, but Digital Ocean and Together are not.However, more broadly, the entire point of SFC is creating liquidity between GPU owners and consumers and making it broadly tradable, even programmable:As we explore, these are the primitives that you can then use to create your own, high quality, custom GPU availability for your time and money budget, similar to how Amazon Spot Instances automated the selective buying of unused compute.The ultimate end state of where all this is going is GPU that trade like other perishable, staple commodities of the world - oil, soybeans, milk. Because the contracts and markets are so well established, the price swings also are not nearly as drastic, and people can also start hedging and managing the risk of one of the biggest costs of their business, just like we have risk-managed commodities risks of all other sorts for centuries. As a former derivatives trader, you can bet that swyx doubleclicked on that…Show Notes* SF Compute* Evan Conrad* Ethan Anderson* John Phamous* The Curve talk* CoreWeave* Andromeda ClusterFull Video PodLike and subscribe!Timestamps* [00:00:05] Introductions* [00:00:12] Introduction of guest Evan Conrad from SF Compute* [00:00:12] CoreWeave Business Model Discussion* [00:05:37] CoreWeave as a Real Estate Business* [00:08:59] Interest Rate Risk and GPU Market Strategy Framework* [00:16:33] Why Together and DigitalOcean will lose money on their clusters* [00:20:37] SF Compute's AI Lab Origins* [00:25:49] Utilization Rates and Benefits of SF Compute Market Model* [00:30:00] H100 GPU Glut, Supply Chain Issues, and Future Demand Forecast* [00:34:00] P2P GPU networks* [00:36:50] Customer stories* [00:38:23] VC-Provided GPU Clusters and Credit Risk Arbitrage* [00:41:58] Market Pricing Dynamics and Preemptible GPU Pricing Model* [00:48:00] Future Plans for Financialization?* [00:52:59] Cluster auditing and quality control* [00:58:00] Futures Contracts for GPUs* [01:01:20] Branding and Aesthetic Choices Behind SF Compute* [01:06:30] Lessons from Previous Startups* [01:09:07] Hiring at SF ComputeTranscriptAlessio [00:00:05]: Hey everyone, welcome to the Latent Space podcast. This is Alessio, partner and CTO at Decibel, and I'm joined by my co-host Swyx, founder of Smol AI.Swyx [00:00:12]: Hey, and today we're so excited to be finally in the studio with Evan Conrad from SF Compute. Welcome. I've been fortunate enough to be your friend before you were famous, and also we've hung out at various social things. So it's really cool to see that SF Compute is coming into its own thing, and it's a significant presence, at least in the San Francisco community, which of course, it's in the name, so you couldn't help but be. Evan: Indeed, indeed. I think we have a long way to go, but yeah, thanks. Swyx: Of course, yeah. One way I was thinking about kicking on this conversation is we will likely release this right after CoreWeave IPO. And I was watching, I was looking, doing some research on you. You did a talk at The Curve. I think I may have been viewer number 70. It was a great talk. More people should go see it, Evan Conrad at The Curve. But we have like three orders of magnitude more people. And I just wanted to, to highlight, like, what is your analysis of what CoreWeave did that went so right for them? Evan: Sell locked-in long-term contracts and don't really do much short-term at all. I think like a lot of people had this assumption that GPUs would work a lot like CPUs and the like standard business model of any sort of CPU cloud is you buy commodity hardware, then you lay on services that are mostly software, and that gives you high margins and pretty much all your value comes from those services. Not really the underlying. Compute in any capacity and because it's commodity hardware and it's not actually that expensive, most of that can be sort of on-demand compute. And while you do want locked-in contracts for folks, it's mostly just a sort of de-risk situation. It helps you plan revenue because you don't know if people are going to scale up or down. But fundamentally, people are like buying hourly and that's how your business is structured and you make 50 percent margins or higher. This like doesn't really work in GPUs. And the reason why it doesn't work is because you end up with like super price sensitive customers. And that isn't because necessarily it's just way more expensive, though that's totally the case. So in a CPU cloud, you might have like, you know, let's say if you had a million dollars of hardware in GPUs, you have a billion dollars of hardware. And so your customers are buying at much higher volumes than you otherwise expect. And it's also smaller customers who are buying at higher amounts of volume. So relative to what they're spending in general. But in GPUs in particular, your customer cares about the scaling law. So if you take like Gusto, for example, or Rippling or an HR service like this, when they're buying from an AWS or a GCP, they're buying CPUs and they're running web servers, those web servers, they kind of buy up to the capacity that they need, they buy enough, like CPUs, and then they don't buy any more, like, they don't buy any more at all. Yeah, you have a chart that goes like this and then flat. Correct. And it's like a complete flat. It's not even like an incremental tiny amount. It's not like you could just like turn on some more nodes. Yeah. And then suddenly, you know, they would make an incremental amount of money more, like Gusto isn't going to make like, you know, 5% more money, they're gonna make zero, like literally zero money from every incremental GPU or CPU after a certain point. This is not the case for anyone who is training models. And it's not the case for anyone who's doing test time inference or like inference that has scales at test time. Because like you, your scaling laws mean that you may have some diminishing returns, but there's always returns. Adding GPUs always means your model does actually get. And that actually does translate into revenue for you. And then for test time inference, you actually can just like run the inference longer and get a better performance. Or maybe you can run more customers faster and then charge for that. It actually does translate into revenue. Every incremental GPU translates to revenue. And what that means from the customer's perspective is you've got like a flat budget and you're trying to max the amount of GPUs you have for that budget. And it's very distinctly different than like where Augusto or Rippling might think, where they think, oh, we need this amount of CPUs. How do we, you know, reduce that? How do we reduce our amount of money that we're spending on this to get the same amount of CPUs? What that translates to is customers who are spending in really high volume, but also customers who are super price sensitive, who don't give a s**t. Can I swear on this? Can I swear? Yeah. Who don't give a s**t at all about your software. Because a 10% difference in a billion dollars of hardware is like $100 million of value for you. So if you have a 10% margin increase because you have great software, on your billion, the customers are that price sensitive. They will immediately switch off if they can. Because why wouldn't you? You would just take that $100 million. You'd spend $50 million on hiring a software engineering team to replicate anything that you possibly did. So that means that the best way to make money in GPUs was to do basically exactly what CoreWeave did, which is go out and sign only long-term contracts, pretty much ignore the bottom end of the market completely, and then maximize your long-term contracts. With customers who don't have credit risk, who won't sue you, or are unlikely to sue you for frivolous reasons. And then because they don't have credit risk and they won't sue you for frivolous reasons, you can go back to your lender and you can say, look, this is a really low risk situation for us to do. You should give me prime, prime interest rate. You should give me the lowest cost of capital you possibly can. And when you do that, you just make tons of money. The problem that I think lots of people are going to talk about with CoreWeave is it doesn't really look like a cloud platform. It doesn't really look like a cloud provider financially. It also doesn't really look like a software company financially.Swyx [00:05:37]: It's a bank.Evan [00:05:38]: It's a bank. It's a real estate company. And it's very hard to not be that. The problem of that that people have tricked themselves into is thinking that CoreWeave is a bad business. I don't think CoreWeave is explicitly a bad business. There's a bunch of people, there's kind of like two versions of the CoreWeave take at the moment. There's, oh my God, CoreWeave, amazing. CoreWeave is this great new cloud provider competitive with the hyperscalers. And to some extent, this is true from a structural perspective. Like, they are indeed a real sort of thing against the cloud providers in this particular category. And the other take is, oh my gosh, CoreWeave is this horrible business and so on and blah, blah, blah. And I think it's just like a set of perception or perspective. If you think CoreWeave's business is supposed to look like the traditional cloud providers, you're going to be really upset to learn that GPUs don't look like that at all. And in fact, for the hyperscalers, it doesn't look like this either. My intuition is that the hyperscalers are probably going to lose a lot of money, and they know they're going to lose a lot of money on reselling NVIDIA GPUs, at least. Hyperscalers, but I want to, Microsoft, AWS, Google. Correct, yeah. The Microsoft, AWS, and Google. Does Google resell? I mean, Google has TPUs. Google has TPUs, but I think you can also get H100s and so on. But there are like two ways they can make money. One is by selling to small customers who aren't actually buying in any serious volume. They're testing around, they're playing around. And if they get big, they're immediately going to do one of two things. They're going to ask you for a discount. Because they're not going to pay your crazy sort of margin that you have locked into your business. Because for CPUs, you need that. They're going to pay your massive per hour price. And so they want you to sign a long-term contract. And so that's your other way that you can make money, is you can basically do exactly what CoreWeave does, which is have them pay as much as possible upfront and lock in the contract for a long time. Or you can have small customers. But the problem is that for a hyperscaler, the GPUs to... To sell on the low margins relative to what your other business, your CPUs are, is a worse business than what you are currently doing. Because you could have spent the same money on those GPUs. And you could have trained model and you could have made a model on top of it and then turn that into a product and had high margins from your product. Or you could have taken that same money and you could have competed with NVIDIA. And you could have cut into their margin instead. But just simply reselling NVIDIA GPUs doesn't work like your CPU business. Where you're able to capture high margins from big customers and so on. And then they never leave you because your customers aren't actually price sensitive. And so they won't switch off if your prices are a little higher. You actually had a really nice chart, again, on that talk of this two by two. Sure. Of like where you want to be. And you also had some hot takes on who's making money and who isn't. Swyx: So CoreUv locked up long-term contracts. Get that. Yes. Maybe share your mental framework. Just verbally describe it because we're trying to help the audio listeners as well. Sure. People can look up the chart if they want to. Evan: Sure. Okay. So this is a graph of interest rates. And on the y-axis, it's a probability you're able to sell your GPUs from zero to one. And on the x-axis, it's how much they'll depreciate in cost from zero to one. And then you had ISO cost curves or ISO interest rate curves. Yeah. So they kind of shape in a sort of concave fashion. Yeah. The lowest interest rates enable the most aggressive. form of this cost curve. And the higher interest rates go, the more you have to push out to the top right. Yeah. And then you had some analysis of where every player sits in this, including CoreUv, but also Together and Modal and all these other guys. I thought that was super insightful. So I just wanted to elaborate. Basically, it's like a graph of risk and the genres of places where you can be and what the risk is associated with that. The optimal thing for you to do, if you can, is to lock in long-term contracts that are paid all up front or in with a situation in which you trust the other party to pay you over time. So if you're, you know, selling to Microsoft or something or OpenAI. Which are together 77% of the revenue of CoreUv. Yeah. So if you're doing that, that's a great business to be in because your interest rate that you can pitch for is really low because no one thinks Microsoft is going to default. And like maybe OpenAI will default, but the backing by Microsoft kind of doesn't. And I think there's enough, like, generally, it looks like OpenAI is winning that you can make it's just a much better case than if you're selling to the pre-seed startup that just raised $30 million or something pre-revenue. It's like way easier to make the case that the OpenAI is not going to default than the pre-seed startup. And so the optimal place to be is selling to the maximally low risk customer for as long as possible. And then you never have to worry about depreciation and you make lots of money. The less. Good. Good place to be is you could sell long-term contracts to people who might default on you. And then if you're not bringing it to the present, so you're not like saying, hey, you have to pay us all up front, then you're in this like more risky territory. So is it top left of the chart? If I have the chart right, maybe. Large contracts paid over time. Yeah. Large contracts paid over time is like top left. So it's more risky, but you could still probably get away with it. And then the other opportunity is that you could sell short-term contracts for really high prices. And so lots of people tried that too, because this is actually closer to the original business model that people thought would work in cloud providers for CPUs. It works for CPUs, but it doesn't really work for GPUs. And I don't think people were trying this because they were thinking about the risk associated with it. I think a lot of people are just come from a software background, have not really thought about like cogs or margins or inventory risk or things that you have to worry about in the physical world. And I think they were just like copy pasting the same business model onto CPUs. And also, I remember fundraising like a few years ago. And I know based on. Like what we knew other people were saying who were in a very similar business to us versus what we were saying. And we know that our pitch was way worse at the time, because in the beginning of SF Compute, we looked very similar to pretty much every other GPU cloud, not on purpose, but sort of accidentally. And I know that the correct pitch to give to an investor was we will look like a traditional CPU cloud with high margins and we'll sell to everyone. And that is a bad business model because your customers are price sensitive. And so what happens is if you. Sell at high prices, which is the price that you would need to sell it in order to de-risk your loss on the depreciation curve, and specifically what I mean by that is like, let's say you're selling it like $5 an hour and you're paying $1.50 an hour for the GPU under the hood. It's a little bit different than that, but you know, nice numbers, $5 an hour, $1.50 an hour. Great. Excellent. Well, you're charging a really high price per GPU hour because over time the price will go down and you'll get competed out. And what you need is to make sure that you never go under, or if you do go under your underlying cost. You've made so much money in the first part of it that the later end of it, like doesn't matter because from the whole structure of the deal, you've made money. The problem is that just, you think that you're going to be able to retain your customers with software. And actually what happens is your customers are super price sensitive and push you down and push you down and push you down and push you down, um, that they don't care about your software at all. And then the other problem that you have is you have, um, really big players like the hyperscalers who are looking to win the market and they have way more money than you, and they can push down on margin. Much better than you can. And so if they have to, and they don't, they don't necessarily all the time, um, I think they actually keep pride of higher margin, but if they needed to, they could totally just like wreck your margin at any point, um, and push you down, which meant that that quadrant over there where you're charging a high price, um, and just to make up for the risk completely got destroyed, like did not work at all for many places because of the price sensitivity, because people could just shove you down instead that pushed everybody up to the top right-hand corner of that, which is selling short-term. Contracts for low prices paid over time, which is the worst place to be in, um, the worst financial place to be in because it has the highest interest rate, um, which means that your, um, your costs go up at the same time, your, uh, your incoming cash goes down and squeezes your margins and squeezes your margins. The nice thing for like a core weave is that most of their business is over on the, on the other sides of those quadrants that the ones that survive. The only remaining question I have with core weave, and I promise I get to ask if I can compute, and I promise this is relevant to SOF Compute in general, because the framework is important, right? Sure. To understand the company. So why didn't NVIDIA or Microsoft, both of which have more money than core weave, do core weave, right? Why didn't they do core weave? Why have this middleman when either NVIDIA or Microsoft have more money than God, and they could have done an internal core weave, which is effectively like a self-funding vehicle, like a financial instrument. Why does there have to be a third party? Your question is like... Why didn't Microsoft, or why didn't NVIDIA just do core weave? Why didn't they just set up their own cloud provider? I think, and I don't know, and so correct me if I'm wrong, and lots of people will have different opinions here, or I mean, not opinions, they'll have actual facts that differ from my facts. Those aren't opinions. Those are actually indeed differences of reality, is that NVIDIA doesn't want to compete with their customers. They make a large amount of money by selling to existing clouds. If they launched their own core weave, then it would be a lot more money. It'd make it much harder for them to sell to the hyperscalers, and so they have a complex relationship with there. So not great for them. Second is that, at least for a while, I think they were dealing with antitrust concerns or fears that if they're going through, if they own too much layers of the stack, I could imagine that could be a problem for them. I don't know if that's actually true, but that's where my mind would go, I guess. Mostly, I think it's the first one. It's that they would be competing directly with their primary customers. Then Microsoft could have done it, right? That's the other question. Yeah, so Microsoft didn't do it. And my guess is that... NVIDIA doesn't want Microsoft to do it, and so they would limit the capacity because from NVIDIA's perspective, both they don't want to necessarily launch their own cloud provider because it's competing with their customers, but also they don't want only one customer or only a few customers. It's really bad for NVIDIA if you have customer concentration, and Microsoft and Google and Amazon, like Oracle, to buy up your entire supply, and then you have four or five customers or so who pretty much get to set prices. Monopsony. Yeah, monopsony. And so the optimal thing for you is a diverse set of customers who all are willing to pay at whatever price, because if you don't, somebody else will. And so it's really optimal for NVIDIA to have lots of other customers who are all competing against each other. Great. Just wanted to establish that. It's unintuitive for people who have never thought about it, and you think about it all day long. Yeah. Swyx: The last thing I'll call out from the talk, which is kind of cool, and then I promise we'll get to SF Compute, is why will DigitalOcean and Together lose money on their clusters? Why will DigitalOcean and Together lose money on their clusters?Evan [00:16:33]: I'm going to start by clarifying that all of these businesses are excellent and fantastic. That Together and DigitalOcean and Lambda, I think, are wonderful businesses who build excellent products. But my general intuition is that if you try to couple the software and the hardware together, you're going to lose money. That if you go out and you buy a long-term contract from someone and then you layer on services, or you buy the hardware yourself and you spin it up and you get a bunch of debt, you're going to run into the same problem that everybody else did, the same problem we did, same problem the hyperscalers did. And that's exactly what the hyperscalers are doing, which is you cannot add software and make high margins like a cloud provider can. You can pitch that into investors and it will totally make sense, and it's like the correct play in CPUs, but there isn't software you could make to make this occur. If you're spending a billion dollars on hardware, you need to make a billion dollars of software. There isn't a billion dollars of software that you can realistically make, and if you do, you're going to look like SAP. And that's not a knock on SAP. SAP makes a f**k ton of money, right? Right. Right. Right. Right. There aren't that many pieces of software that you could make, that you can realistically sell, like a billion dollars of software, and you're probably not going to do it to price-sensitive customers who are spending their entire budget already on compute. They don't have any more money to give you. It's a very hard proposition to do. And so many parties have been trying to do this, like, buy their own compute, because that's what a traditional cloud does. It doesn't really work for them. You know that meme where there's, like, the Grim Reaper? And he's, like, knocking on the door, and then he keeps knocking on the next door? We have just seen door after door after door of the Grim Reeker comes by, and the economic realities of the compute market come knocking. And so the thing we encourage folks to do is if you are thinking about buying a big GPU cluster and you are going to layer on software on top, don't. There are so many dead bodies in the wake there. We would recommend not doing that. And we, as SF Compute, our entire business is structured to help you not do that. It's helped disintegrate these. The GPU clouds are fantastic real estate businesses. If you treat them like real estate businesses, you will make a lot of money. The cloud services you can make on that, all the software you want to make on that, you can do that fantastically. If you don't own the underlying hardware, if you mix these businesses together, you get shot in the head. But if you combine, if you split them, and that's what the market does, it helps you split them, it allows you to buy, like, layer on services, but just buy from the market, you can make lots of money. So companies like Modal, who don't own the underlying compute, like they don't own it, lots of money, fantastic product. And then companies like Corbeave, who are functionally like really, really good real estate businesses, lots of money, fantastic product. But if you combine them, you die. That's the economic reality of compute. I think it also splits into trading versus inference, which are different kinds of workloads. Yeah. And then, yeah, one comment about the price sensitivity thing before we leave this. This topic, I want to credit Martin Casado for coining or naming this thing, which is like, you know, you said, you said this thing about like, you don't have room for a 10% margin on GPUs for software. Yep. And Martin actually played it out further. It's his first one I ever saw doing this at large enough runs. So let's say GPT-4 and O1 both had a total trading cost of like a $500 billion is the rough estimate. When you get the $5 billion runs, when you get the $50 billion runs, it is actually makes sense to build your own. You're going to have to get into chips, like for OpenEI to get into chip design, which is so funny. I would make an ASIC for this run. Yeah, maybe. I think a caveat of that that is not super well thought about is that only works if you're really confident. It only works if you really know which chip you're going to do. If you don't, then it's a little harder. So it makes in my head, it makes more sense for inference where you've already established it. But for training there's so much like experimentation. Any generality, yeah. Yeah. The generality is much more useful. Yeah. In some sense, you know, Google's like six generations into the CPUs. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, cool. Maybe we should go into SF Compute now. Sure. Yeah.Alessio [00:20:37]: Yeah. So you kind of talked about the different providers. Why did you decide to go with this approach and maybe talk a bit about how the market dynamics have evolved since you started a company?Evan [00:20:47]: So originally we were not doing this at all. We were definitely like forced into this to some extent. And SF Compute started because we wanted to go train models for music and audio in general. We were going to do a sort of generic audio model at some points, and then we were going to do a music model at some points. It was an early company. We didn't really spec down on a particular thing. But yeah, we were going to do a music model and audio model. First thing that you do when you start any AI lab is you go out and you buy a big cluster. The thing we had seen everybody else do was they went out and they raised a really big round and then they would get stuck. Because if you raise the amount of money that you need to train a model initially, like, you know, the $50 million pre-seed, pre-revenue, your valuation is so high or you get diluted so much that you can't raise the next round. And that's a very big ask to make. And also, I don't know, I felt like we just felt like we couldn't do it. We probably could have in retrospect, but I think one, we didn't really feel like we could do it. Two, it felt like if we did, we would have been stuck later on. We didn't want to raise the big round. And so instead, we thought, surely by now, we would be able to just go out. To any provider and buy like a traditional CPU cloud would sell offer you and just buy like on demand or buy like a month or so on. And this worked for like small incremental things. And I think this is where we were basing it off. We just like assumed we could go to like Lambda or something and like buy thousands of at the time A100s. And this just like was not at all the case. So we started doing all the sales calls with people and we said, OK, well, can we just get like month to month? Can we get like one month of compute or so on? Everyone told us at the time, no. You need to have a year long contract or longer or you're out of luck. Sorry. And at the time, we were just like pissed off. Like, why won't nobody sell us a month at a time? Nowadays, we totally understand why, because it's the same economic reason. Because if you if they had sold us the month to month or so on and we canceled or so on, they would have massive risk on that. And so the optimal thing to do was to only to just completely abandon the section of the market. We didn't like that. So our plan was we were going to buy a year long contract anyway. We would use a month. And then we would. At least the other 11 months. And we were locked in for a year, but we only had to pay on every individual month. And so we did this. But then immediately we said, oh, s**t, now we have a cloud provider, not a like training models company, not an AI lab, because every 30 days we owed about five hundred thousand dollars or so and we had about five hundred thousand dollars in the bank. So that meant that every single month, if we did not sell out our cluster, we would just go bankrupt. So that's what we did for the first year of the company. And when you're in that position. You try to think how in the world you get out of that position, what that transition to is, OK, well, we tend to be pretty good at like selling this cluster every month because we haven't died yet. And so what we should do is we should go basically be like this broker for other people and we will be more like a GPU real estate or like a GPU realtor. And so we started doing that for a while where we would go to other people who had who was trying to sell like a year long contract with somebody and we'd go to another person who like maybe this person wanted six months and somebody else on six months or something and we'd like combine all these people. Together to make the deal happen and we'd organize these like one off bespoke deals that looked like basically it ended up with us taking a bunch of customers, us signing with a vendor, taking some cut and then us operating the cluster for people typically with bare metal. And so we were doing this, but this was definitely like a oh, s**t, oh, s**t, oh, s**t. How do we get out of our current situation and less of a like a strategic plan of any sort? But while we were doing this, since like the beginning of the company, we had been thinking about how to buy GPU clusters, how to sell them effectively, because we'd seen every part of it. And what we ended up with was like a book of everybody who's trying to buy and everyone is trying to sell because we were these like GPU brokers. And so that turned into what is today SF Compute, which is a compute market, which we think we are the functionally the most liquid GPU market of any capacity. Honestly, I think we're the only thing that actually is like a real market that there's like bids and asks and there's like a like a trading engine that combines everything. And so. I think we're the only place where you can do things that a market should be able to do. Like you can go on SF Compute today and you get thousands of H100s for an hour if you want. And that's because there is a price for thousands of GPUs for an hour. That is like not a thing you can reasonably do on kind of any other cloud provider because nobody should realistically sell you thousands of GPUs for an hour. They should sell it to you for a year or so on. But one of the nice things about a market is that you can buy the year on SF Compute. But then if you need to sell. Back, you can sell back as well. And that opens up all these little pockets of liquidity where somebody who's just trying to buy for a little bit of time, some burst capacity. So people don't normally buy for an hour. That's not like actually a realistic thing, but it's like the range somebody who wants, who is like us, who needed to buy for a month can actually buy for a month. They can like place the order and there is actually a price for that. And it typically comes from somebody else who's selling back. Somebody who bought a longer term contract and is like they bought for some period of time, their code doesn't work, and now they need to like sell off a little bit.Alessio [00:25:49]: What are the utilization rates at which a market? What are the utilization rates at which a market? Like this works, what do you see the usual GPU utilization rate and like at what point does the market get saturated?Evan [00:26:00]: Assuming there are not like hardware problems or software problems, the utilization rate is like near 100 percent because the price dips until the utilization is 100 percent. So the price actually has to dip quite a lot in order for the utilization not to be. That's not always the case because you just have logistical problems like you get a cluster and parts of the InfiniBand fabric are broken. And there's like some issue with some switch somewhere and so you have to take some portion of the cluster offline or, you know, stuff like this, like there's just underlying physical realities of the clusters, but nominally we have better utilization than basically anybody because, but that's on utilization of the cluster, like that doesn't necessarily translate into, I mean, I actually do think we have much better overall money made for our underlying vendors than kind of anybody else. We work with the other GPU clouds and the basic pitch to the other GPU clouds is one. So we can sell your broker so we can we can find you the long term contracts that are at the prices that you want, but meanwhile, your cluster is idle and for that we can increase your utilization and get you more money because we can sell that idle cluster for you and then the moment we find the longer, the bigger customer and they come on, you can kick off those people and then go to the other ones. You get kind of the mix of like sell your cluster at whatever price you can get on the market and then sell your cluster at the big price that you want to do for long term contract, which is your ideal business model. And then the benefit of the whole thing being on the market. Is you can pitch your customer that they can cancel their long term contract, which is not a thing that you can reasonably do if you are just the GPU cloud, if you're just the GPU cloud, you can never cancel your contract, because that introduces so much risk that you would otherwise, like not get your cheap cost of capital or whatever. But if you're selling it through the market, or you're selling it with us, then you can say, hey, look, you can cancel for a fee. And that fee is the difference between the price of the market and then the price that they paid at, which means that they canceled and you have the ability to offer that flexibility. But you don't. You don't have to take the risk of it. The money's already there and like you got paid, but it's just being sold to somebody else. One of our top pieces from last year was talking about the H100 glut from all the long term contracts that were not being fully utilized and being put under the market. You have on here dollar a dollar per hour contracts as well as it goes up to two. Actually, I think you were involved. You were obliquely quoted in that article. I think you remember. I remember because this was hidden. Well, we hid your name, but then you were like, yeah, it's us. Yeah. Could you talk about the supply and demand of H100s? Was that just a normal cycle? Was that like a super cycle because of all the VC funding that went in in 2003? What was that like? GPU prices have come down. Yeah, GPU prices have come down. And there's some part that has normal depreciation cycle. Some part of that is just there were a lot of startups that bought GPUs and never used them. And now they're lending it out and therefore you exist. There's a lot of like various theories as to why. This happened. I dislike all of them because they're all kind of like they're often said with really high confidence. And I think just the market's much more complicated than that. Of course. And so everything I'm going to say is like very hedged. But there was a series of like places where a bunch of the orders were placed and people were pitching to their customers and their investors and just the broader market that they would arrive on time. And that is not how the world works. And because there was such a really quick build out of things, you would end up with bottlenecks in the supply chain somewhere that has nothing to do with necessarily the chip. It's like the InfiniBand cables or the NICs or like whatever. Or you need a bunch of like generators or you don't have data center space or like there's always some bottleneck somewhere else. And so a lot of the clusters didn't come online within the period of time. But then all the bottlenecks got sorted out and then they all came online all at the same time. So I think you saw a short. There was a shortage because supply chain hard. And then you saw a increase or like a glut because supply chain eventually figure itself out. And specifically people overordered in order to get the allocation that they wanted. Then they got the allocations and then they went under. Yeah, whatever. Right. There was just a lot of shenanigans. A caveat of this is every time you see somebody like overordered, there is this assumption that the problem was like the demand went down. I don't think that's the case at all. And so I want to clarify that. It definitely seems like a shortage. Like there's more demand for GPUs than there ever was. It's just that there was also more supply. So at the moment, I think there is still functionally a glut. But the difference that I think is happening is mostly the test time inference stuff that you just need way more chips for that than you did before. And so whenever you make a statement about the current market, people sort of take your words and then they assume that you're making a statement about the future market. And so if you say there's a glut now, people will continue to think there's a glut. But I think what is happening at the moment. My general prediction is that like by the winter, we will be back towards shortage. But then also, this very much depends on the rollout of future chips. And that comes with its own. I think I'm trying to give you like a good here's Evan's forecast. Okay. But I don't know if my forecast is right. You don't have to. Nobody is going to hold you to it. But like I think people want to know what's true and what's not. And there's a lot of vague speculations from people who are not that close to the market actually. And you are. I think I'm a closer. Close to the market, but also a vague speculator. Like I think there are a lot of really highly confident speculators and I am indeed a vague speculator. I think I have more information than a lot of other people. And this makes me more vague of a spectator because I feel less certain or less confident than I think a lot of other people do. The thing I do feel reasonably confident about saying is that the test time inference is probably going to quite significantly expand the amount of compute that was used for inference. So a caveat. This is like pretty much all the inference demand is in a few companies. A good example is like lots of bio and pharma was using H100s training sort of the bio models of sorts. And they would come along and they would buy, you know, thousands of H100s for training and then just like not a lot of stuff for inference. Not in any, not relative to like an opening iron anthropic or something because they like don't have a consumer product. Their inference event, if they can do it right. There's really like only one inference event that matters. And obviously I think they're going to run into it. And Batch and they're not going to literally just run one inference event. But like the one that produces the drug is the important one. Right. And I'm dumb and I don't know anything about biology, so I could be completely wrong here. But my understanding is that's kind of the gist. I can check that for you. You can check that for me. Check that for me. But my understanding is like the one that produces the sequence that is the drug that, you know, cures cancer or whatever. That's the important deal. But like a lot of models look like this where they're sort of more enterprising use cases or they're so prior to something that looks like test time inference. You got lots and lots of demand for training and then pretty much entirely fell off for inference. And I think like we looked at like Open Router, for example, the entirety of Open Router that was not anthropic or like Gemini or OpenAI or something. It was like 10 H100 nodes or something like that. It's just like not that much. It's like not that many GPUs actually to service that entire demand. But that's like a really sizable portion of the sort of open source market. But the actual amount of compute needed for it was not that much. But if you imagine like what an OpenAI needs for like GPT-4, it's like tremendously big. But that's because it's a consumer product that has almost all the inference demand. Yeah, that's a message we've had. Roughly open source AI compared to closed AI is like 5%. Yeah, it's like super small. Super small. It's super small. Super small. But test time inference changes that quite significantly. So I will... I will expect that to increase our overall demand. But my question on whether or not that actually affects your compute price is entirely based on how quickly do we roll out the next chips. The way that you burst is different for test time.Alessio [00:34:01]: Any thoughts on the third part of the market, which is the more peer-to-peer distributed, some are like crypto-enabled, like Hyperbolic, Prime Intellect, and all of that. Where do those fit? Like, do you see a lot of people will want to participate in a peer-to-peer market? Or just because of the capital requirements at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter?Evan [00:34:20]: I'm like wildly skeptical of these, to be frankly. The dream is like steady at home, right? I got this $15.90. Nobody has $15.90. $14.90 sitting at home. I can rent it out. Yeah. Like, I just don't really think this is going to ever be more efficient than a fully interconnected cluster with InfiniBand or, you know, whatever the sort of next spec might be. Like, I could be completely wrong. But speaking of... I mean, like, SpeedoLite is really hard to beat. And regardless of whatever you're using, you just like can't get around that physical limitation. And so you could like imagine a decentralized market that still has a lot of places where there's like co-location. But then you would get something that looks like SF Compute. And so that's what we do. That's why we take our general take is like on SF Compute, you're not buying from like random people. You're buying from the other GPU clouds, functionally. You're buying from data centers that are the same genre of people that you would work with already. And you can specify, oh, I want all these nodes to be co-located. And I don't think you're really going to get around that. And I think I buy crypto for the purposes of like transferring money. Like the financial system is like quite painful and so on. I can understand the uses of it to sort of incentivize an initial market or try to get around the cold start problem. We've been able to get around the cold start problem just fine. So it didn't actually need that at all. What I do think is totally possible is you could launch a token and then you could like subsidize the crypto. You could compute prices for a bit, but like maybe that will help you. I think that's what Nuus is doing. Yeah, I think there's lots of people who are trying to do things like this, but at some point that runs out. So I would, I think generally agree. I think the only thread in that model is very fine grained mixture of experts that can be like algorithms can shift to adapt to hardware realities. And the hardware reality is like, okay, it's annoying to do large co-located clusters. Then we'll just redesign attention or whatever in our architecture to distribute it more. There was a little bit buzz of block attention last year that Strong Compute made a big push on. But I think like, you know, in a world where we have 200 experts in MOE model, it starts to be a little bit better. Like, I don't disagree with this. I can imagine the world in which you have like, in which you've redesigned it to be more parallelizable, like across space.Evan [00:36:43]: But assuming without that, your hardware limitation is your speed of light limitation. And that's a very hard one to get around.Alessio [00:36:50]: Any customers or like stories that you want to shout out of like maybe things that wouldn't have been economically viable like others? I know there's some sensitivity on that.Evan [00:37:00]: My favorites are grad students, are folks who are trying to do things that would normally otherwise require the scale of a big lab. And the grad students are like the worst pilots. They're like the worst possible customer for the traditional GPU clouds because they will immediately turn if you sell them a thing because they're going to graduate and they're not going to go anywhere. They're not going to like, that project isn't continuing to spend lots of money. Like sometimes it does, but not if you're like working with the university or you're working with the lab of some sort. But a lot of times it's just like the ability for us to offer like big burst capacity, I think is lovely and wonderful. And it's like one of my favorite things to do because all those folks look like we did. And I have a special place in my heart for that. I have a special place in my heart for young hackers and young grad students and researchers who are trying to do the same genre of thing that we are doing. For the same reason, I have a special place in my heart for like the startups, the people who are just actively trying to compete on the same scale, but can't afford it time-wise, but can afford it spike-wise. Yeah, I liked your example of like, I have a grant of 100K and it's expiring. I got to spend it on that. That's really beautiful. Yeah. Interesting. Has there been interesting work coming out of that? Anything you want to mention? Yeah. So from like a startup perspective, like Standard Intelligence and Find, P-H-I-N-D. We've had them on the pod.Swyx [00:38:23]: Yeah. Yeah.Evan [00:38:23]: That was great. And then from grad students' perspective, we worked a lot with like the Schmidt Futures grantees of various sorts. My fear is if I talk about their research, I will be completely wrong to a sort of almost insulting degree because I am very dumb. But yeah. I think one thing that's maybe also relevant startups and GPUs-wise. Yeah. Is there was a brief moment where it kind of made sense that VCs provided GPU clusters. And obviously you worked at AI Grants, which set up Andromeda, which is supposedly a $100 million cluster. Yeah. I can explain why that's the case or why anybody would think that would be smart. Because I remember before any of that happened, we were asking for it to happen. Yeah. And the general reason is credit risk. Again, it's a bank. Yeah. I have lower risk than you due to credit transformation. I take your risk onto my balance sheet. Correct. Exactly. If you wanted to go for a while, if you wanted to go set up a GPU cluster, you had to be the one that actually bought the hardware and racked it and stacked it, like co-located it somewhere with someone. Functionally, it was like on your balance sheet, which means you had to get a loan. And you cannot get a loan for like $50 million as a startup. Like not really. You can get like venture debt and stuff, but like it's like very, very difficult to get a loan of any serious price for that. But it's like not that difficult to get a loan for $50 million. If you already have a fund or you already have like a million dollars under your assets somewhere or like you personally can like do a personal guarantee for it or something like this. If you have a lot of money, it is way easier for you to get a loan than if you don't have a lot of money. And so the hack of a VC or some capital partner offering equity for compute is always some arbitrage on the credit risk. That's amazing. Yeah. That's a hack. You should do that. I don't think people should do it right now. I think the market has like, I think it made sense at the time and it was helpful and useful for the people who did it at the time. But I think it was a one-time arbitrage because now there are lots of other sources that can do it. And also I think like it made sense when no one else was doing it and you were the only person who was doing it. But now it's like it's an arbitrage that gets competed down. Sure. So it's like super effective. I wouldn't totally recommend it. Like it's great that Andromeda did it. But the marginal increase of somebody else doing it is like not super helpful. I don't think that many people have followed in their footsteps. I think maybe Andreessen did it. Yeah. That's it. I think just because pretty much all the value like flows through Andromeda. What? That cannot be true. How many companies are in the air, Grant? Like 50? My understanding of Andromeda is it works with all the NFTG companies or like several of the NFTG companies. But I might be wrong about that. Again, you know, something something. Nat, don't kill me. I could be completely wrong. But the but you know, I think Andromeda was like an excellent idea to do at the right time in which it occurred. Perfect. His timing is impeccable. Timing. Yeah. Nat and Daniel are like, I mean, there's lots of people who are like... Sears? Yeah. Sears. Like S-E-E-R. Oh, Sears. Like Sears of the Valley. Yeah. They for years and years before any of the like ChatGPT moment or anything, they had fully understood what was going to happen. Like way, way before. Like. AI Grant is like, like five years old, six years old or something like that. Seven years old. When I, when it like first launched or something. Depends where you start. The nonprofit version. Yeah. The nonprofit version was like, like happening for a while, I think. It's going on for quite a bit of time. And then like Nat and Daniel are like the early investors in a lot of the sort of early AI labs of various sorts. They've been doing this for a bit.Alessio [00:41:58]: I was looking at your pricing yesterday. We're kind of talking about it before. And there's this weird thing where one week is more expensive of both one day and one month. Yeah. What are like some of the market pricing dynamics? What are things that like this to somebody that is not in the business? This looks really weird. But I'm curious, like if you have an explanation for it, if that looks normal to you. Yeah.Evan [00:42:18]: So the simple answer is preemptible pricing is cheaper than non-preemptible pricing. And the same economic principle is the reason why that's the case right now. That's not entirely true on SF Compute. SF Compute doesn't really have the concept of preemptible. Instead, what it has is very short reservations. So, you know, you go to a traditional cloud provider and you can say, hey, I want to reserve contract for a year. We will let you do a reserve contract for one hour, which is the part of SFC. But what you can do is you can just buy every single hour continuously. And you're reserving just for that hour. And then the next hour you reserve just for that next hour. And this is obviously like a built in. This is like an automation that you can do. But what you're seeing when you see the cheap price is you're seeing somebody who's buying the next hour, but maybe not necessarily buying an hour after that. So if the price goes up. Up too much. They might not get that next hour. And the underlying part of this of where that's coming from the market is you can imagine like day old milk or like milk that's about to be old. It might drop its price until it's expired because nobody wants to buy the milk that's in the past. Or maybe you can't legally sell it. Compute is the same way. No, you can't sell a block of compute that is not that is in the past. And so what you should do in the market and what people do do is they take. They take a block. A block of compute. And then they drop it and drop it and drop it and drop into a floor price right before it's about to expire. And they keep dropping it until it clears. And so anything that is idle drops until some point. So if you go and use on the website and you set that that chart to like a week from now, what you'll see is much more normal looking sort of curves. But if you say, oh, I want to start right now, that immediate instant, here's the compute that I want right now is the is functionally the preemptible price. It's where most people are getting the best compute or like the best compute prices from. The caveat of that is you can do really fun stuff on SFC if you want. So because it's not actually preemptible, it's it's reserved, but only reserved for an hour, which means that the optimal way to use as of compute is to just buy on the market price, but set a limit price that is much higher. So you can set a limit price for like four dollars and say, oh, if the market ever happens to spike up to four dollars, then don't buy. I don't want to buy that at that price for that price. I don't want to buy that at that price for that price for an hour. But otherwise, just buy at the cheapest price. And if you're comfortable with that of the volatility of it, you're actually going to get like really good prices, like close to a dollar an hour or so on, sometimes down to like 80 cents or whatever. You said four, though. Yeah. So that's the thing. You want to lower the limit. So four is your max price. Four is like where you basically want to like pull the plug and say don't do it because the actual average price is not or like the, you know, the preemptible price doesn't actually look like that. So what you're doing when you're saying four is always, always, always give me this compute. Like continue to buy every hour. Don't preempt me. Don't kick me off. And I want this compute and just buy at the preemptible price, but never kick me off. The only times in which you get kicked off is if there is a big price spike. And, you know, let's say one day out of the year, there's like a four dollar an hour price because of some weird fluke or something. If there are other periods of time, you're actually getting a much lower price than you. It makes sense. Your your average cost that you're actually paying is way better. And your trade off here is you don't literally know what price you're going to get. So it's volatile. But your actual average historically has been like everyone who's done this has gotten wildly better prices. And this is like one of the clever things you can do with the market. If you're willing to make those trade offs, you can get a lot of really good prices. You can also do other things like you can only buy at night, for example. So the price goes down at night. And so you can say, oh, I want to only buy, you know, if the price is lower than 90 cents. And so if you have some long running job, you can make it only run on 90 cents and then you recover back and so on. Yeah. So what you can kind of create as like a spot inst is what other the CPU world has. Yes. But you've created a system where you can kind of manufacture the exact profile that you want. Exactly. That is not just whatever the hyperscalers offer you, which is usually just one thing. Correct. SF Compute is like the power tool. The underlying primitives of like hourly compute is there. Correct. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. I've often asked OpenAI. So like, you know, all these guys. Cloud as well. They do batch APIs. So it's half off of whatever your thing is. Yeah. And the only contract is we'll return in 24 hours. Sure. Right. And I was like, 24 hours is good. But sometimes I want one hour. I want four hours. I want something. And so based off of SF Compute's system, you can actually kind of create that kind of guarantee. Totally. That would be like, you know, not 24, but within eight hours, within four hours, like the work half of a workday. Yes. I can return your results to you. And then I can return it to you. And if your latency requirements are like that low, actually it's fine. Yes. Correct. Yeah. You can carve out that. You can financially engineer that on SFC. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think to me that unlocks a lot of agent use cases that I want, which is like, yeah, I worked in a background, but I don't want you to take a day. Yeah. Correct. Take a couple hours or something. Yeah. This touches a lot of my like background because I used to be a derivatives trader. Yeah. And this is a forward market. Yeah. A futures forward market, whatever you call it. Not a future. Very explicitly not a future. Not yet a futures. Yes. But I don't know if you have any other points to talk about. So you recognize that you are a, you know, a marketplace and you've hired, I met Alex Epstein at your launch event and you're like, you're, you're building out the financialization of GPUs. Yeah. So part of that's legal. Mm-hmm. Totally. Part of that is like listing on an exchange. Yep. Maybe you're the exchange. I don't know how that works, but just like, talk to me about that. Like from the legal, the standardization, the like, where is this all headed? You know, is this like a full listed on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange or whatever? What we're trying to do is create an underlying spot market that gives you an index price that you can use. And then with that index price, you can create a cash settled future. And with a cash settled future, you can go back to the data centers and you can say, lock in your price now and de-risk your entire position, which lets you get cheaper cost of capital and so on. And that we think will improve the entire industry because the marginal cost of compute is the risk. It's risk as shown by that graph and basically every part of this conversation. It's risk that causes the price to be all sorts of funky. And we think a future is the correct solution to this. So that's the eventual goal. Right now you have to make the underlying spot market in order to make this occur. And then to make the spot market work, you actually have to solve a lot of technology problems. You really cannot make a spot market work if you don't run the clusters, if you don't have control over them, if you don't know how to audit them, because these are super computers, not soybeans. They have to work. In a way that like, it's just a lot simpler to deliver a soybean than it is to deliver it. I don't know. Talk to the soybean guys. Sure. You know? Yeah. But you have to have a delivery mechanism. Your delivery mechanism, like somebody somewhere has to actually get the compute at some point and it actually has to work. And it is really complicated. And so that is the other part of our business that we go and we build a bare metal infrastructure stack that goes. And then also we do auditing of all the clusters. You sort of de-risk the technical perspective and that allows you to eventually de-risk the financial perspective. And that is kind of the pitch of SF Compute. Yeah. I'll double click on the auditing on the clusters. This is something I've had conversations with Vitae on. He started Rika and I think he had a blog post which kind of shone the light a little bit on how unreliable some clusters are versus others. Correct. Yeah. And sometimes you kind of have to season them and age them a little bit to find the bad cards. You have to burn them in. Yeah. So what do you do to audit them? There's like a burn-in process, a suite of tests, and then active checking and passive checking. Burn-in process is where you typically run LINPACK. LINPACK is this thing that like a bunch of linear algebra equations that you're stress testing the GPUs. This is a proprietary thing that you wrote? No, no, no. LINPACK is like the most common form of burn-in. If you just type in burn-in, typically when people say burn-in, they literally just mean LINPACK. It's like an NVIDIA reference version of this. Again, NVIDIA could run this before they ship, but now the customers have to do it. It's annoying. You're not just checking for the GPU itself. You're checking like the whole component, all the hardware. And it's a lot of work. It's an integration test. It's an integration test. Yeah. So what you're doing when you're running LINPACK or burn-in in general is you're stress testing the GPUs for some period of time, 48 hours, for example, maybe seven days or so on. And you're just trying to kill all the dead GPUs or any components in the system that are broken. And we've had experiences where we ran LINPACK on a cluster and it rounds out, sort of comes offline when you run LINPACK. This is a pretty good sign that maybe there is a problem with this cluster. Yeah. So LINPACK is like the most common sort of standard test. But then beyond that, what you do is we have like a series of performance tests that replicate a much more realistic environment as well that we run just assuming if LINPACK works at all, then you run the next set of tests. And then while the GPUs are in operation, you're also going through and you're doing active tests and passive tests. Passive tests are things that are running in the background while somebody else is running, while like some other workload is running. And active tests are during like idle periods. You're running some sort of check that would otherwise sort of interrupt something. And then the active tests will take something offline, basically. Or a passive check might mark it to get taken offline later and so on. And then the thing that we are working on that we have working partially but not entirely is automated refunds, which is basically like, is the case that the hardware breaks so much. And there's only so much that we can do and it is the effect of pretty much the entire industry. So a pretty common thing that I think happens to kind of everybody in the space is a customer comes online, they experience your cluster, and your cluster has the same problem that like any cluster has, or it's I mean, a different problem every time, but they experience one of the problems of HPC. And then their experience is bad. And you have to like negotiate a refund or some other thing like this. It's always case by case. And like, yeah, a lot of people just eat the cost. Correct. So one of the nice things about a market that we can do as we get bigger and have been doing as we can bigger is we can immediately give you something else. And then also we can automatically refund you. And you're still gonna experience it like the hardware problems aren't going away until the underlying vendors fix things. But honestly, I don't think that's likely because you're always pushing the limits of HPC. This is the case of trying to build a supercomputer. that's one of the nice things that we can do is we can switch you out for somebody else somewhere, and then automatically refund you or prorate or whatever the correct move is. One of the things that you say in this conversation with me was like, you know, you know, a provider is good when they guarantee automatic refunds. Which doesn't happen. But yeah, that's, that's in our contact with all the underlying cloud providers. You built it in already. Yeah. So we have a quite strict SLA that we pass on to you. The reason why

Three Buddy Problem - Episode 38: On the show this week, we look at a hefty batch of Microsoft zero-days exploited in the wild, iOS 18.3.2 fixing an exploited WebKit bug, a mysterious Unpatched.ai being credited with Microsoft Access RCE flaws, and OpenAI lobbying for the US to ban China's DeepSeek. Plus, discussion on a Binarly technical paper with new approach to finding UEFI bootkits, Mandiant flagging custom backdoors on Juniper routers, and MEV 'sandwich attacks' front-running cryptocurrency transactions. Cast: Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade (https://twitter.com/juanandres_gs), Costin Raiu (https://twitter.com/craiu) and Ryan Naraine (https://twitter.com/ryanaraine).

Our thoughts on Zero Trust World, and just a little bit of news. Of course we covered some firmware and UEFI without Paul! Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/psw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/psw-862

Our thoughts on Zero Trust World, and just a little bit of news. Of course we covered some firmware and UEFI without Paul! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/psw-862

Our thoughts on Zero Trust World, and just a little bit of news. Of course we covered some firmware and UEFI without Paul! Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/psw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/psw-862

In this episode, we cover how to use honeypot data to keep your offensive infrastructure alive longer, three critical vulnerabilities in SimpleHelp that must be patched now, and an interesting vulnerability affecting many systems allowing UEFI Secure Boot bypass. Leveraging Honeypot Data for Offensive Security Operations [Guest Diary] A recent guest diary on the SANS Internet Storm Center discusses how offensive security professionals can utilize honeypot data to enhance their operations. The diary highlights the detection of scans from multiple IP addresses, emphasizing the importance of monitoring non-standard user-agent strings in web requests. https://isc.sans.edu/diary/Leveraging%20Honeypot%20Data%20for%20Offensive%20Security%20Operations%20%5BGuest%20Diary%5D/31596 Security Vulnerabilities in SimpleHelp 5.5.7 and Earlier SimpleHelp has released version 5.5.8 to address critical security vulnerabilities present in versions 5.5.7 and earlier. Users are strongly advised to upgrade to the latest version to prevent potential exploits. Detailed information and upgrade instructions are available on SimpleHelp's official website. https://simple-help.com/kb---security-vulnerabilities-01-2025#send-us-your-questions Under the Cloak of UEFI Secure Boot: Introducing CVE-2024-7344 ESET researchers have identified a new vulnerability, CVE-2024-7344, that allows attackers to bypass UEFI Secure Boot on most UEFI-based systems. This flaw enables the execution of untrusted code during system boot, potentially leading to the deployment of malicious UEFI bootkits. Affected users should apply available patches to mitigate this risk. https://www.welivesecurity.com/en/eset-research/under-cloak-uefi-secure-boot-introducing-cve-2024-7344/

In this episode: Justin goes to a birthday party, drives a Tesla, and configures your BIOS. The compliments department is, as always, available at podcast@searls.co. Have some URLs: This is the combination air fryer / grill I bought Microsoft dropped support for non-SecureBoot PC updates last month Aaron's puns, ranked Nobody Cares Things we learned about LLMs in 2024 Judge ends man's 11-year quest to dig up landfill and recover $765M in bitcoin The Consensus on Havana Syndrome Is Cracking (News+) Meta kills diversity programs, claiming DEI has become “too charged” Google kills JavaScript-free searches Sonos still seems kinda fucked 5090s seem kind of like a scam The official Elder Scrolls: Oblivion remake leaked Switch 2 was unveiled Guy with 200bpm heart rate complains his watch isn't working (before admitting his heart isn't working) The Diplomat Conclave Severance Season 2 is out Marvel Rivals is a hit (with the Thirstlords) Indiana Jones and the Great Circle P.T. A Short Hike Transcript: [00:00:29] Well, good morning, everyone. If it's evening, where you are, well, it's not here. So that's just what you get. You get a good morning. You can save it for later, put it in your pocket, and then the next time the sun comes up, you can just remember, ah, yes, someone did wish me a good morning today. [00:00:48] You are currently, your ears are residing inside of Breaking Change, which is an audio production. Not to be confused with Breaking Bad, certainly not Breaking Good, just broken. [00:01:03] You know, now that officially, officially or unofficially, TikTok is down. It's unreachable in the U.S. Aaron has reported, our Seattle correspondent, for the broadcast, that even over his VPN, he can't get to TikTok. [00:01:24] His arms are itchy. He's scratching. He, ah, I hope, wherever you are, I hope that you and your loved ones and your teenagers are okay. [00:01:33] But yeah, anyway, now the TikTok is down. Maybe some of you are here, because you've got nothing else to do, and you need something to fill that void. So thank you for joining. [00:01:45] Something that I've been meaning to do at the beginning of this, of the show, for the last, well, seven versions, has been to kindly ask that you go into your podcast player of choice, and you rate and review the show. [00:02:02] I would prefer five stars on a five-star scale, but if it was a ten-star scale, you know, ten stars would be better. [00:02:10] Thumbs up, or whatever. Write a little review explaining why the fuck somebody would want to listen to an explicit language, you know, tech-adjacent programmer-ish gaming movie, whatever the fuck this is. [00:02:23] Dialogue, uh, because, uh, I have found that breaking change is a really hard pitch, you know, when, when, when, when explaining to people, it's like, oh, this is me talking, just like drive-time AM radio used to be, except instead of talking about a bunch of politically charged propaganda, uh, we're just hanging out, uh, and instead of having a commute, you know, you're walking a dog, or you're doing the dishes. [00:02:50] Although, I guess, you know, maybe you listen on a commute. [00:02:53] I, I, I've heard, I've heard from, from listeners on road trips, listening to entire episodes all in one stretch, and that's something else. [00:03:03] Uh, I have not heard from a lot of commuters, so if you listen to this while you're commuting, shout out at podcast at searles.co, uh, you know, if you're driving, don't, don't try to rate and review, you know, in a distracted fashion. [00:03:16] But, but next time you think of it, you know, you, you, you slam that five-star button. [00:03:20] You know what, it's, it's, I got a lot of subversive elements, you know, in my cadre of people, because I am a total piece of shit, and I attract, I attract the good and the bad, everyone in between. [00:03:32] But some of us, you know, we, we, we appreciate a good troll. [00:03:35] There is no better way to stick it to the man and, and confuse the hell out of people than for all of you to go and give this five stars in, in, in iTunes and, in your podcast player. [00:03:46] And then have a whole bunch of people, you know, have it surface in the algorithm for others. [00:03:51] And then they listen to this, and then they're like, what, what, what the fuck is going on to my ears right now? [00:03:55] Uh, I am very confused. [00:03:57] And if that's you, hell, you know what? [00:03:59] Oh, shoot. [00:03:59] But I'm, I'm speaking from the past. [00:04:01] Maybe this is the, the future where this is a lot of five-star reviews and some, some, some rando outside of Argentina is, is, is getting this put into their feed for them. [00:04:11] And now they're like, four minutes have passed. [00:04:14] What am I doing with my life? [00:04:15] Well, hello. [00:04:16] You are also welcome. [00:04:17] Good morning to you as well. [00:04:18] Uh, by the time you're listening to this, you know, I'm recording Sunday morning. [00:04:24] First thing, uh, I know from experience that it can be hard to pretend to work during a Trump inauguration. [00:04:33] So, uh, I figured that instead of pretending to work, you could be here with me instead if you're listening on Monday. [00:04:41] And if you're, if you're fortunate enough to have Monday off, um, you know, I guess one difference between the, uh, uh, the previous Trump inauguration. [00:04:51] And this one is that the, you know, inclusivity backlash against the Trump admin, you know, that has now recently receded. [00:05:02] If you're to believe the Bezos and billionaire class, uh, uh, has resulted in way, way more people who don't work at post offices getting MLK junior day off. [00:05:13] So I suppose many of us are not working on Monday, but regardless, this is a version 29 of the program titled super switch. [00:05:24] Which, you know, depending on the audience, I think a lot of, you know, probably what I mean by that. [00:05:29] We'll, we'll talk about it later. [00:05:30] Uh, in life news, it feels like it's been a way more than two weeks since I talked to y'all. [00:05:37] Uh, uh, uh, when you live in a theme park, there's just a lot going on. [00:05:42] People coming and going stuff to do, uh, uh, stimulation overload. [00:05:49] That's why I sound so just, you know, demure downbeat chill here is because I am exhausted permanently all the time. [00:06:02] Cause every time I leave the house, I am, I am just overstimulated. [00:06:05] Uh, last night we went to a birthday party of a friend, uh, in the, uh, Orlando proper part of Orlando, [00:06:12] whereas we live in theme park, Orlando. [00:06:14] So we had to, uh, drive over the, uh, the treacherous terrain known as I four, the deadliest stretch of highway in the United States in terms of, uh, only in terms of the number of people who die on it. [00:06:26] And the party was, uh, it was funny cause our, our friends, uh, they're building a house on this beautiful lake, huge property. [00:06:34] It's, it's absolutely gorgeous. [00:06:36] It's going to, the house is a custom build. [00:06:39] And a couple of years ago, uh, the one who's, whose birthday ended up being said, you know, we're going to have my 45th birthday party here at the house. [00:06:47] After it opens the water slide, you're going to DJs. [00:06:50] We're going to have, it's going to be a big blowout fest. [00:06:52] It's going to be awesome. [00:06:53] And then his husband was like, you know, it's, it's not going to be ready yet. [00:06:57] Don't get your hopes up. [00:06:58] And, uh, uh, sure enough, uh, both things came to pass. [00:07:04] The house is nowhere near ready. [00:07:05] It is an active construction site. [00:07:07] And they trolled us hard. [00:07:08] They said, Hey, come to this hotel. [00:07:09] We're going to have, you know, uh, uh, free valet or whatever. [00:07:12] And then like, like we go into like a normal kind of like typical ballroom thing and you get a cocktail. [00:07:19] And then these construction workers show up and they, they, they, they heard us into buses. [00:07:24] Uh, and so people are in their cocktail attire, you know, Becky wore, uh, I don't know if you'd call them heels, [00:07:32] but elevated shoes for, for first time in a while, more of a flats person, which I respect. [00:07:39] Cause I'm also a flats person and, uh, we all get into the bus and everyone's dressed up. [00:07:44] And then, uh, they, they, they drive us to, uh, the active construction site. [00:07:47] That is our friend's house. [00:07:49] And, uh, they had, uh, the events planners and everyone like, like actually just decorate the shit out of, you know, what, what is a lot of concrete block first floor of most homes around here is concrete. [00:08:01] And so the bones of the house are up and they just decorated it with kind of construction paraphernalia, orange cones. [00:08:07] All of the staff had, uh, you know, orange vests on, uh, we were all given hard hats. [00:08:11] Uh, the theming was truly on point. [00:08:15] Weather was perfect. [00:08:16] Uh, and, uh, you know, it was a big raucous affair, raucous raucous, you know what I mean? [00:08:23] So that was great. [00:08:24] Uh, we didn't even stay out that late, but I feel like I got hit by a truck, uh, this morning. [00:08:29] Uh, I, I kept it to a two drink maximum, which is my new go-to rule of thumb. [00:08:34] Uh, uh, cause I always end up barely regretting the third from a, from a, an ability to sleep perspective. [00:08:43] Afterwards, uh, other life stuff, you know, like the logistics following the death of my father. [00:08:48] First of all, thank you very much for many of you wrote in to express sympathies, uh, probably don't, don't need to put them all in the mailbag. [00:08:55] Cause that after a certain point, it started reads like, you know, reading birthday cards on air, uh, in terms of they all, you know, not to diminish anyone's, uh, extension of grief, uh, or, or, or sharing their own stories. [00:09:08] But there's a certain, you know, beginning, middle and end format to, to, to, to, to, no one knows what the fuck to say. [00:09:15] I don't know what to thank you. [00:09:18] Um, but yeah, like I know just sort of like finances and, and forensics front of trying to figure out how to tease out all the complexities of his life that he never really told anyone about and didn't certainly didn't document, uh, that the work continues still trying to help my mom consolidate her situation. [00:09:36] It's been, you know, just a lot of very procedural. [00:09:42] All right, find all the stuff, organize the stuff, come up with a to-do list, figure out how to like approach this, make all the phone calls that you need to make to all these institutions to, to, to, to, to iron it out and to, to continue fact finding or to, to, to give, you know, furnish whatever documentation they need. [00:09:57] And, and, and because it's been so, uh, I guess transactional wrote, like not to say it's colored my perception of dad or anything, you know, one way or another. [00:10:11] Uh, but it's definitely, when I look back on this era of my life, of course, his passing is going to stand out in sharp relief, but like, that was like a week of stuff. [00:10:21] And then the rest of it is going to be like three months of stuff. [00:10:25] Uh, and so I wonder how that's going to affect how I, how I, how I look back on it. [00:10:28] But one of the things I noticed is a lot of different service providers, uh, like banks, for example, that have, uh, uh, you know, bills coming up, you know, you got a credit card bill and let's say it's due. [00:10:45] Uh, I, I don't know why I'm blanking, but January 25th and then January 18th comes around and it says, Hey, you have a statement due January 25th. [00:10:54] Or you got an upcoming bill or you, your bill is ready to be paid. [00:10:58] And when I get an email like that, so I just got one from dad or, you know, for dad's account from us bank. [00:11:05] And I was like, shit. [00:11:07] Cause I know he didn't have auto pay set up in a lot of places. [00:11:09] Uh, and like, do I have that login? [00:11:12] Like, you know, do I have to coordinate with mom to get the SMS thing? [00:11:15] Like I get into it. [00:11:16] And then sure enough, like, cause I thought I'd set up auto pay. [00:11:19] I even had a to-do list that said, set up auto pay for this. [00:11:21] And, uh, auto pay was set up. [00:11:23] It was just emailing me unnecessarily anyway. [00:11:25] You know, if you're going to have a recurring payment or an auto payment set up, it, you know, it's, it's okay to notify the customer that there's another bill coming, but it would be really sweet. [00:11:36] If like auto pay is enabled, just so you know, you're going to, you're set to auto pay this on X and X date, uh, because if you got, you know, as many cards as some people have, uh, it can get kind of exhausting to, to just worry about, uh, well, I hope that's, that's all set up. [00:11:53] So it's, uh, things like that are just like random nonsense stressors and the amount of context switching, because you're constantly getting emails and calls from different, from all corners. [00:12:03] I normally screen my calls really aggressively, but you know, this month I've got a pretty much [00:12:08] answer it no matter who's calling, which is not my favorite. [00:12:10] And I've, I've found myself falling into something that I never thought I would do. [00:12:17] Uh, maybe it's cause I turned 40 this week, but I'm, uh, I've always associated this with like [00:12:24] an old, a generational thing. [00:12:26] When somebody asks me a yes, no question, I've started saying yes or no. [00:12:31] Like the literal word, yes. [00:12:33] And that might sound mundane to you, but in my family growing up, the word, yes, always felt [00:12:41] violent because everyone always had more to say, or they had a compulsion to soften it, you know, [00:12:49] like, yeah, sounds a lot, um, neutral, accepting, open, soft. [00:12:58] Then yes, there's a certain like hardness to yes. [00:13:01] You ask a yes, no question. [00:13:02] The person says, yes, it feels like there's a period at the end of that. [00:13:05] And when you say, yeah, or okay, or all right, or, you know, you give some sort of like, you know, [00:13:11] like an invitation to either continue with a follow-up question or, you know, be, be open to maybe a retort or something. [00:13:20] And so I had a colleague once who is, you know, the previous generation who is my superior. [00:13:25] And, uh, his name was Daryl. [00:13:28] Daryl's a lovely person. [00:13:29] But every time I asked Daryl a question and I was asking him a lot of questions because I didn't know shit about fuck. [00:13:34] And he knew a lot of things about everything he would, he would answer every yes, no question with just the word yes or the word no. [00:13:43] And it felt so stifling and cruel and like, you know, like, why is he shutting me down like this? [00:13:51] Even though he's literally answering in the affirmative, there's something about the word yes. [00:13:55] When unadorned with any sort of softeners or explanation or exposition or, or, or, or, or justification or, or invitation to, to, to follow up that feel there's the finality of it feels just rude, even though it is very literally fine. [00:14:12] So I caught myself doing that and I guess I've become a yes man. [00:14:16] Other life stuff. [00:14:22] Our ninja, we have a, uh, we seem to have like every ninja kitchen appliance, um, just in some sort of rotation around, uh, you know, our, our kitchen and it feels to me like every modern home that every year, the, there's like a, a counter surface inflation where the counters keep getting bigger. [00:14:44] The kitchen islands keep getting bigger. [00:14:46] And then the, almost a, um, sort of like how a, a gas will expand to fill its container. [00:14:54] Like ninja appliances will continue getting invented to fill all available counter space in every home. [00:14:59] Uh, and the reason that ninjas been so successful is that unlike Hamilton beach and Cuisinart and stuff like their, their products are actually pretty good and do what they say on the tin. [00:15:09] But we had a, uh, one of the air fryer units that can also, you know, pretend to be a grill, even though like all that's really happening is a hairdryer is blowing downward onto your food and any sort of heating element underneath is indirect. [00:15:20] Uh, we had one of those and, you know, it just kind of got grody and gross from lots of oil and, and repeat washings and, you know, food stuck to the basket. [00:15:31] And it was, it was, it was no longer, you know, how sometimes you use one of these appliances, you don't clean it as intentionally or as frequently as maybe the instruction manual tells you to. [00:15:42] And eventually your food starts tasting like, you know, the bottom of the, uh, the, the, the, the, the deep fryer at, at McDonald's, like, just like that oil tarry kind of like, you know, afterglow. [00:15:55] Which makes, it takes, it really takes the shine off of, uh, whatever the omega threes that you're trying to get out of your fishes. [00:16:00] Uh, so, so we, we bought a new one and what I really wanted out of a new one was one with like multiple heating elements. [00:16:08] Like where, where there was an actual grill that could sear stuff and cook from the bottom up, but also a convection oven that could crisp it up and, and, and, and sort of dehumidify. [00:16:18] And amazingly, Ninja does sell this product. [00:16:22] Uh, it was called, uh, see if I can link to it. [00:16:25] The Ninja convection plus grill. [00:16:27] Oh no, that wasn't it. [00:16:28] It's, it's got a name. [00:16:29] Uh, something, something, grid IG 651. [00:16:35] Okay. [00:16:35] There you go. [00:16:35] I'll put a link in the show notes. [00:16:37] Uh, so the IG 651, whatever, it's got like a barbecue griddle on it. [00:16:41] It seems, it seems nice. [00:16:43] Uh, and it does exactly that. [00:16:46] It's got like a big wide surface element. [00:16:48] You can, you, you plug it in. [00:16:49] It's a very complicated, unnecessarily. [00:16:51] So a complicated thing where it's, it looks like you kind of take a George Foreman style griddle. [00:16:55] It's angled forward, meaning like it's got, you know, uh, I said griddle at just like the slabby kind of, of, of metal slats, slats, you know, where you, you put the burger on it. [00:17:07] And then it's like, you know, remember the George Foreman marketing? [00:17:10] I'm sure you do like, you know, like it's like at the, like, like the, the squeezing iconography to, to indicate like the fat is coming out and then that will make this healthier, even though the fat is often the best part. [00:17:20] Uh, so it's, it's got that it plugs into some like electrical, you know, electrode input thing with two little donguses. [00:17:28] I don't know why I'm even trying to explain this. [00:17:30] It's fine. [00:17:30] And you plug that in, you can wash it separately, but you can put a griddle on top that kind of maps to it. [00:17:36] So it'll pick up that heat. [00:17:37] And that is a flat surface, which can be nice. [00:17:40] If you're, if you're maybe, you know, toasting a sandwich or something. [00:17:46] And yeah, the thing about it, the thing about that search was that trying to answer the question of what heating elements are in this smart cooking appliance proved to be extremely difficult. [00:18:00] You go to the Amazon listing, you go to the product page. [00:18:03] I read up on every single Ninja product that does this. [00:18:06] I started looking at other products that do this. [00:18:09] I started looking at things that ran themselves as smart ovens that, you know, advertise having, uh, multiple heating elements, you know, like the June oven did this. [00:18:16] I think that's out of business now. [00:18:18] Tovala did this. [00:18:18] I think that's going out of business now where they would have, you know, like, um, maybe a microwave element plus a steam cooking element, or maybe they'd have a convection fan inside and also, um, an induction plate underneath. [00:18:31] And none of them have really taken off in the U S unfortunately, uh, such that. [00:18:39] It is a product category that the consumers are educated about, like what they're getting into in Japan. [00:18:45] There's a product called health. [00:18:46] You know, like literally like health EO, but THs are hard and it's got like the basic models have four or five different ways to heat your food. [00:18:56] And then like, it's really smart in that you, you punch in a code, like a recipe code, and it'll just do everything cradle to grave for you with the advanced sensors that it has. [00:19:04] And kind of move between whatever combination at whatever point in the cooking process, all of those heating elements need to be arranged. [00:19:11] And so things come out almost better than a human could do them because they never have to be removed from this hermetically sealed environment, you know, for people's hands to come in and, and, and adjust how the thing is being heated. [00:19:26] Because in Japan, that product has been so successful that the two or three different tiers of that product, not only are they all good, but like, no one needs to be explained what's there. [00:19:36] Like the, the, the, the, it could just be like the higher level of literacy and, and, and education generally in Japan. [00:19:42] But in general, like, it's just, it's really straightforward. [00:19:46] And here, it seems to be that like people just want a device that they can throw food in. [00:19:52] And then as long as they're picking off a menu and it has words like grill, they will feel good about it. [00:19:58] And no one's going to ask, where's the heat coming from? [00:20:01] How is this getting cooked? [00:20:02] Which now that I say it, of course, like Americans don't give a fuck how the thing gets accomplished or without it gets accomplished well, typically, uh, just that, uh, you know, they know what box to put the food in and then the button to hit, which is, you know, a little bit condescending, but, you know, y'all have earned it in my opinion. [00:20:20] Uh, so yeah, we got it. [00:20:22] It works. [00:20:22] Uh, uh, as far as I know, I turned it on the preheating started. [00:20:26] We have not yet, you know, broken the seal and actually cooked with it yet, but I'm glad, I'm glad to have that because I think, I think, I think. [00:20:32] Shit will turn out better, especially salmon, which is increasingly the number one thing that we were using our air fryer for, which was an inefficient, uh, use case. [00:20:40] Speaking of the parks being really busy, uh, and, and life here being overstimulating on Friday, I found myself really testing the fences on this new being 40 year old thing. [00:20:55] I, uh, got up at 5am with Becky. [00:20:59] We had a special event at Disney's Hollywood studios that started at six. [00:21:03] We got there. [00:21:04] There were other people there. [00:21:05] We went to bed early, you know, to, to, to, to be able to, to do this and not be super groggy and miserable, had a great time. [00:21:13] And then we had some friends coming into the park just about an hour after that, that, that event wrapped. [00:21:18] And so we went and visited with them for a little bit. [00:21:20] Then we came home and tried to recover some sort of a productive day by then it was noon. [00:21:25] Uh, and then that evening, cause the same friends that they had their big day, I wanted to debrief with, uh, uh, my buddy before he, uh, John, his name is John. [00:21:35] He is a listener of the program. [00:21:38] So hi, John. [00:21:38] Hello. [00:21:40] Uh, when to do debrief with him. [00:21:43] So we went over to a bar called trader Sam's, which is a grog grotto. [00:21:47] It's in the Polynesian resort hotel. [00:21:49] And it's one of my favorite bars because it's got like a lot of like little imagineering knickknacks and stage elements that, that have since become very common at Tiki bars. [00:21:58] But we got in there, we spent a couple hours and then pretty soon I realized, Oh fuck, it's midnight. [00:22:03] And I've literally been Disney it up to some extent, uh, since 6am. [00:22:10] And so, you know, I actually, I got a second wind in there, but I ultimately didn't get, get to bed until like two. [00:22:16] Uh, so that was a, it was a big day. [00:22:19] I feel like I did all right. [00:22:20] Uh, from an energy level perspective, I think I, I was the person that I needed to be in all of the interactions I had that day. [00:22:28] And that's probably the most I can say. [00:22:29] Uh, I'm simultaneously finding that my body is falling apart. [00:22:33] My, my, uh, left hip is pretty grumpy. [00:22:38] Uh, it's just some sort of like a constant dull discomfort, uh, feels like a dislocated shoulder, but no matter how much PT I do, [00:22:46] I, I, I seem to never fully, fully beat it. [00:22:49] Um, I need a smart, the smart oven equivalent for, for, uh, you know, muscle therapies that people do. [00:23:00] It's like, Oh, you can get some of the, it'll, it'll apply the icy hot and also, you know, drill you with a Theragun and also massage you and also use the, you know, resistant bands exercises to strengthen it. [00:23:09] Uh, just all simultaneously. [00:23:10] Cause it's like this round robin of, of attempts I've had to, to restore this fucking hip. [00:23:17] Uh, it has been great. [00:23:19] So that's been a constant thing. [00:23:21] New things are like my right knee now hurts like hell. [00:23:23] My left, my left heel, just the skin started cracking from how dry it's been here. [00:23:28] And of course it's still way more humid here than the rest of the nation, but apparently my skin is so used to the humidity, uh, that I just woke up one morning and it hurt to walk because all my skin was exposed because all my skin and my foot had cracked. [00:23:40] You know, like what the hell's going on? [00:23:42] So, uh, if you're, uh, approaching 40 and you're worried about it, good. [00:23:48] I don't know that I recommend it so far, uh, but I'm still here, still kicking. [00:23:53] Uh, uh, well, I, so far I almost didn't make it to be honest. [00:23:59] Uh, you know, well, I, if I'm going to talk about this next topic, uh, it's something that's come up in the show before. [00:24:09] And so I think that technically makes it follow up. [00:24:11] So let me hit this button right here. [00:24:13] Yeah. [00:24:20] So speaking of dying right before you turn 40, I, I'd mentioned that I four interstate four that runs east, west in, uh, through bisecting Orlando. [00:24:37] It's, uh, known to be, and I fact checked this against GPT cause I knew I'd probably end up talking about it. [00:24:45] Deadliest stretch of highway in the U S and you know, I'm a, I'm an experienced driver insofar as I've been driving for 24 years. [00:24:54] I don't like love it. [00:24:56] I'm not a car guy. [00:24:57] Uh, I, I feel like I drive fine, relatively safely, probably more on the conservative side. [00:25:05] Overall. [00:25:06] I do speed from time to time, but you know, as long as if you're in America and you're speeding, as long as you use the phrase flow of traffic, uh, you can do whatever you want. [00:25:17] And the problem is that when you live in theme park Orlando and you need literally anything that is not entertainment and hospitality related, uh, like for example, you know, I, I, and this is what puts this into the followup bucket of content. [00:25:35] Uh, I've been talking on and off about having, uh, struggling with snoring. [00:25:38] You know, I've been, uh, uh, doing that thing that a lot of middle-aged husbands start doing and deciding to interrupt their spouse's sleep by, by, by suddenly picking up this cool new habit. [00:25:49] That is just making wheezing sounds all night long. [00:25:53] And mine's really inconsistent. [00:25:56] It's clearly triggered by something. [00:25:57] Couldn't really tell what, you know, is it diet or whatever. [00:26:00] It's like clearly like none of the symptoms of apnea. [00:26:03] So that's probably not it. [00:26:04] Given that I feel fully rested after like four hours and I've never feeling short of breath. [00:26:08] Uh, you know, the new Apple watch has an apnea detection and it seems to not be detecting any apnea. [00:26:16] So I finally got a sleep study ordered and the doctor who is a very nice lady, she, you know, she's just like the reality of insurance right now is, uh, I will put in a request for an in, in a let in lab sleep study. [00:26:33] So we can watch you because the alternative is an at home sleep study. [00:26:36] And based on everything you're saying, there is a 0.0% chance that that at home sleep study is going to find anything. [00:26:44] Uh, and then I was like, well, then let's just do the in lab. [00:26:46] Like you're saying, well, she's like, oh, the insurance will surely deny based on what you're saying, uh, an in lab sleep study. [00:26:53] Uh, you have to do, you have to go through the motions of this at home sleep study first, and then it has to show nothing. [00:27:00] And then I can put in a script again for the in lab. [00:27:04] Uh, and, and then the prior authorization will go through and then you'll be able to do that. [00:27:09] And so I have to kind of do this performative nothing operation, just nothing like procedure, operation procedure. [00:27:18] It's over, you know, like diagnostic, you know, just to check some boxes and money is changing hands invisibly to me at every step. [00:27:27] Of course, for the most part, thanks, thanks to having health insurance. [00:27:30] So I, I, I schedule this and it's an at home sleep study. [00:27:36] Like there are services that mail these units, you know, they could ship it. [00:27:40] I could, I don't know, find a courier or something, but nope, this one, I have to drive to the other fucking side of Orlando, which is, you know, it's 20 miles, but it's like a 45 minute hour long adventure. [00:27:49] And I have to calling them the rules of the game were that I had to, uh, drive there Sunday night to pick it up, come back Tuesday night to drop it off. [00:28:00] And they, because of sleep study locations, this is like an actual, you know, testing center. [00:28:07] Uh, they literally open at 6 30 PM in the evening. [00:28:10] Uh, you know, so that's when their shift starts. [00:28:13] So I had to get there at 6 30. [00:28:15] So that means like, I'm basically fighting through rush hour into town and then pick it up and now I'm coming back home and now it's like eight. [00:28:22] So I guess I'll just eat dinner by myself or whatever. [00:28:25] Uh, and it's not like in a part of town where it's like, Hey, we can go downtown and like make a date, make a night date night out of it and go to like a fun restaurant. [00:28:33] It's like, this is a, I don't know what I, I have many times in this program suggested you should move to Orlando. [00:28:41] Orlando's great. [00:28:41] I love life in Orlando, but like whenever I leave the bubble of like theme park party time, Orlando, where everything's just really, really nice and customer service is incredible. [00:28:50] And the food's really great. [00:28:52] And, and it's just a party. [00:28:53] Uh, and I go to like real Florida. [00:28:56] I'm like, Oh yeah, I need to stop recommending people move to Orlando. [00:28:59] Cause this is like the median experience. [00:29:01] And I wouldn't, I would not, I can't do this for an hour. [00:29:05] I don't know how I would possibly live here. [00:29:07] No offense to Orlando, but I, uh, I went and I picked it up. [00:29:12] I drove my car there on Sunday night and traffic was pretty bad, but it's always pretty bad. [00:29:18] I had numerous cases of people jumping in front of the car on the way onto the highway. [00:29:23] Once I was on the highway, I get into the new express lanes, which do make things easier. [00:29:27] You pay a toll and you get, uh, you know, expedited traffic. [00:29:30] Um, and somebody had pulled over into the shoulder. [00:29:34] And as soon as he pulls over, he just whips open his, his driver's side door off of the shoulder. [00:29:41] And now the door is in my lane. [00:29:43] And there's of course, somebody on my left causing me to, uh, flip out and have to slam the brakes to, to the point of like, you know, bad enough that smoke is happening. [00:29:53] Right. [00:29:53] Like you can smell the burnt tire because this dude is just like, I'm on the highway. [00:29:57] I can open my door. [00:29:58] I'm a, I'm a big man. [00:29:59] I'm driving a truck. [00:30:00] So I chose not to blow his door off. [00:30:05] Uh, then on the way home, it was one of those ordeals where, uh, it's a, a sign said congestion, like eight, four miles ahead. [00:30:16] I was like, oh, four miles. [00:30:17] Okay. [00:30:17] Maybe I'll find an opportunity to take, get off the highway or I'll get onto the express lane and try to avoid it. [00:30:21] And, uh, Apple maps was saying I should turn right at the Kia center, which is like where the Orlando magic play. [00:30:27] And then take three more rights and then get back on the highway. [00:30:30] And I was like extremely convinced that this was just some sort of, you know, Apple maps fuckery. [00:30:36] Uh, and, and the nav and the computer being wrong because it often is, I was like, I'm going to stay on the highway. [00:30:42] I'm a smart guy and the instant that I passed that exit that it wanted me to take, everything became a parking lot and, and such a parking lot that it became road ragey pretty quickly with people driving and shoulders and honking and trying to edge each other out and motorcycles going between lanes. [00:30:58] And, and, and there's just a, you know, there's probably a metric that you could use for any civilization called like, uh, TTMM time to Mad Max. [00:31:10] And Florida has a very low TTMM, you know, it doesn't take long at all for every man for himself, uh, instincts to seemingly kick in. [00:31:22] So I, I did the rerouting and now, now the phone is telling me, all right, well, you know, literally it's so demoralizing. [00:31:32] You see the ETA to your home arrival move literally 40 minutes immediately because I chose not to take it's very wonky prescription of three right turns. [00:31:42] And now I realized in hindsight, the reason it wanted me to do that is there's a direct entrance onto the express lane. [00:31:47] And so not only did the ETA go up, not only do I have the regret that I didn't listen to the computer for, for telling me to do a stupid thing, but I also now am shamed by the insult on wounds here. [00:31:58] The left of me, the express lanes are wide open and there's just like five cars just having a great time going 80 miles an hour to get to where they want. [00:32:05] And everybody else is left in just this, this, this, this absolutely falling down style, uh, traffic jam, uh, or just after dark. [00:32:17] I did get home, I, I took a side street and it was one of those ordeals where you, you know, you take the side street, go up a couple of blocks, you go, you know, uh, turn left, kind of go, I don't know, maybe a half mile just past wherever, whatever accident was causing the congestion. [00:32:34] Then you get back on the highway. [00:32:34] And the problem was, of course, we all have automated navigation systems. [00:32:41] They all reroute us. [00:32:42] And so that was immediately backed up there that it was three traffic lights of people in the left lane, trying to, to turn onto that third traffic light. [00:32:52] And I, it would have been another 20 minutes just waiting for those light changes. [00:32:56] And so I just, you know, fortunately I had a brain and I was like, all right, I'm going to just blow past this and go in the right lane and drive forward three, three intersections and then do a U-turn turn right. [00:33:08] And then I, I successfully beat the rush and I got home and I, it merely only wasted 20 minutes of my time, but here, this story has already wasted five minutes of your time. [00:33:16] So it was death defying because even once off the highway, virtually none of those drivers had ever been on those side streets or in that neighborhood before. [00:33:27] And they were all driving like it and they were all driving like it and it was dark and there were not adequate streetlights. [00:33:31] So, uh, you know, it's not just that like Florida drivers are bad, but like you are surrounded by a certain number of frazzled dads who just picked up rental cards, cars from MCO, who are trying to get to their Disney hotel, who just had a flight delay, whose kids are screaming. [00:33:48] And nobody's happy like that is the default and that is the best case energy because like, you know, that's before you consider the, the, the capital F capital M Florida men and the tweakers and everyone else that just kind of contributes to this diverse fabric of society that we live in. [00:34:08] So, uh, that was a bad experience. [00:34:12] I, I did get home, you know, I am still with us, but by the time I got home, I was, I was so fried. [00:34:18] Like I, I, I, I, I didn't want to hang out. [00:34:22] I didn't want to talk to Becky. [00:34:22] Just wanted to like pour a whiskey and collapse. [00:34:25] Uh, the stress level is so high. [00:34:28] Like, and you can, I looked at my watch, right. [00:34:30] And I was looking at like the heart rate history and I was like, you know, I was white knuckling it. [00:34:34] Um, and that's, and that's partly on me, right? [00:34:36] Like I just, I don't, I don't like that kind of driving. [00:34:39] I don't like that stress. [00:34:39] Two days later, when I had to drop this device off, uh, the device itself was terrible, by the way, it was probably less sophisticated than my Apple watch and probably reading like less accurate, uh, heart rate. [00:34:57] And, and even the, the modern Apple watch like does track breathing. [00:35:00] That's how it does a sleep apnea thing, uh, uh, through the magic of gyroscopes. [00:35:05] And, uh, this device is a piece of shit and I'm sure somehow the rental fee for, for a one-time use was $1,500 to my insure. [00:35:12] Uh, and I'm sure it found nothing. [00:35:15] I can totally, like, I don't know how it would find anything. [00:35:17] Uh, it looked like it was built out of, you know, Teddy Ruxpin era, you know, technology in the mid eighties with, with the, the quality of the, the, the straps and the plastic. [00:35:29] I could just, but when I had to, when it, when time came to drop it off, I really did not want to repeat that experience on a weeknight when you, you know, traffic would be even worse. [00:35:41] And so I, I humbly asked my brother who has a Tesla, I said, Hey, uh, there's another follow-up item. [00:35:48] We, we, we, we picked it up together just in October. [00:35:51] I think, uh, I said, Hey man, like, can I swing by or you swing by drop off your Tesla? [00:35:59] He did some stuff to do at our house anyway. [00:36:01] And he's got the full self-driving like, like, uh, they keep renewing a 30 day trial for him. [00:36:09] And, uh, you know, full self-driving isn't, it is, uh, the car will drive itself. [00:36:14] You don't have to touch the wheel. [00:36:16] It, it, it, it, it's very conservative. [00:36:18] It has three modes, chill, uh, normal and hurried or hurry. [00:36:23] I've never tried hurry. [00:36:24] I don't need to try hurry. [00:36:26] I just stick on chill because at the end of the day, as long as I get to where I'm going, [00:36:29] I sort of don't care. [00:36:30] I'm not in a big rush. [00:36:32] Uh, I have the luxury of not needing to be anywhere in any particular pace. [00:36:37] As long as I leave on time, you know, I'm, and I'm going to get there by the time I promise [00:36:41] the chill is good with me and the, you have to supervise it. [00:36:48] And it was the case when the full self-driving crap and Tesla's first hit that people were, [00:36:55] you know, at first it was just like pressure testing the steering column. [00:36:58] And so people would like use like, uh, uh, weights, like, like weighted wristbands and [00:37:04] stuff to like make it trick the steering column into thinking that somebody was holding onto [00:37:08] the wheel. [00:37:08] Uh, and now they have cameras that look at you like inside the cabin and that, that camera [00:37:15] is using some amount of intelligence to determine that you're distracted or not. [00:37:19] So if you are looking a lot at the central, uh, tablet, it'll bark at you and say, Hey, pay [00:37:23] attention to the road. [00:37:25] If you're looking at your phone, it'll do the same. [00:37:26] If you're looking at a watch, you know, like I've had it even like when I'm talking to the [00:37:30] watch and looking forward, have it bark at me. [00:37:31] And as soon, as soon as it does it, it makes a beep and then it gets increasingly aggressive [00:37:36] and beeps louder. [00:37:37] You impressively. [00:37:39] I say this because like, you know, I'm sure that the reason it's like this is because Tesla [00:37:43] is trying to minimize it's like legal liability for accidents caused by its system. [00:37:47] If, if, if, if you ignore its beeps three times in a day, uh, you, you get a strike, the system [00:37:56] will disengage and you will be forced to manually drive your car like a plebeian for the rest [00:38:01] of the day. [00:38:01] At least that's how Jeremy explained it to me. [00:38:03] If you get five strikes, I want to say it is, um, you're just exited from your, you're ejected [00:38:12] from the full self-driving program. [00:38:14] And I am impressed not only that it's as aggressive as it is, like, you know, if you got to look [00:38:22] at the screen for something, you've got to adjust it. [00:38:23] You basically have seven or eight seconds to, you know, fix the mirrors or whatever it is [00:38:28] before you got to be looking at the road again. [00:38:29] I'm also like finding myself that when I'm driving his vehicle, I actually am significantly less [00:38:36] distracted than in my own Ford escape, which has car play. [00:38:39] And I typically don't touch the phone itself, but I, um, you know, I tune out a little bit [00:38:44] or, uh, you know, might look at something or might be tapping away at the, uh, you know, [00:38:49] the eye messages and, and, and, and whatnot seemingly longer in those cases than like what the Tesla [00:38:55] would let me get away with. [00:38:56] So I'm paying more attention to the road because the computer is telling me to, or forcing me [00:39:01] to, and I am also doing less of the driving. [00:39:05] So, you know, my foot's off the pedal, my foot, my hands are off the steering. [00:39:08] And when they say supervised, it's actually like the right word, like it is doing the [00:39:14] driving, but like the, it feels almost like a pilot co-pilot thing where I, your head's [00:39:22] on a swivel. [00:39:23] Like I can look to the left and I can look to the right and I have far greater situational [00:39:27] awareness as the car is driving. [00:39:28] Now, granted a lot of these like semi-autonomous and, and adaptive, you know, uh, uh, uh, assistance [00:39:35] in cars will for most people lull them into a false sense of security and result in further [00:39:44] driver inattentiveness and unsafety, right? [00:39:46] Like people will, you'll train them out of the vigilance that you need at all times when [00:39:52] you're the one driving a vehicle or being driven in a vehicle. [00:39:55] However, like the particular, and maybe it's just cause I'm kind of coming in and chapter [00:40:00] four of this particular saga of full self-driving and robo taxis will be here in six months as [00:40:05] Elon Musk. [00:40:06] And of course they're not there, but it seems like at least the way that I've experienced [00:40:13] full self-driving when I've used it, it seems to me like I feel a thousand times safer because [00:40:21] the combination of the car, mostly doing the right thing, mostly making the conservative [00:40:25] choice, absolute worst case. [00:40:27] It haunt, it blares at you and you need to take over, uh, combined with my own hypervigilance [00:40:35] of not, you know, I constitutionally do not trust computers and you know, Jeremy doesn't [00:40:41] either. [00:40:42] And so when we're driving these things, we're looking around all the time where we're, we're, [00:40:45] we're sort of, because we have a curiosity and how the technology works, like trying to think [00:40:49] about how is it thinking through this? [00:40:51] Like, like we have a lot of, for example, um, automated gated communities where like the, [00:40:56] the gates will open and closed when you're, when you're entering and exiting. [00:41:00] It's like, we, we look at the little like computer screens, like how does it, how does it, what [00:41:04] does it think is in front of it right now? [00:41:05] It sees that there's an obstruction. [00:41:07] Uh, and if it opens too slowly, is it thinking it's a permanent obstruction or is it going to [00:41:11] wait and then proceed after the thing opens automatically? [00:41:14] Like there's a lot of little moments like that, where it's actually kind of interesting [00:41:17] to see how, you know, how the car reacts and then it gets a software update and then how [00:41:22] the car reacts after that. [00:41:23] And then additionally, there's the typical ebb and flow of software updates generally where [00:41:28] there's regressions, right? [00:41:29] Like there was a version of this, uh, system that, that the ability, like it used to blow [00:41:35] past this one particular speed bump, uh, uh, near our neighborhood, uh, because it didn't [00:41:41] have sufficient paint on the road to indicate that it was a speed bump. [00:41:45] And then there was a software update and then it perfectly negotiated all four speed bumps [00:41:49] just right in a row every single time. [00:41:52] And then there was another update and now it blows past the third speed bump again. [00:41:56] And so, uh, I think that people who are technology enthusiasts who maybe follow this stuff and [00:42:05] understand how, what software is, how it works, that updates are not a pure linear, you know, [00:42:11] march of progress, I think the idea that there would be regressions in software releases or [00:42:18] even, uh, non-determinism in how the, how the computer car operates, that's totally natural [00:42:24] to me. [00:42:24] And I expect it now. [00:42:25] I, I grown at it and I think like, this is, this is probably a bad idea in aggregate and [00:42:31] at a population level. [00:42:33] I suspect that the average driver would be confused by that the same way that like the [00:42:38] average person is terrified of updating their phone or their computer because they associate [00:42:43] software updates with, uh, uh, you know, newness and unawareness and, and, and, and, and, and all [00:42:51] the things that they finally had working, no longer working. [00:42:54] And when they, but when you talk about the, the march of progress and technology, they sort [00:43:00] of have a, what it is, is whenever anything goes wrong with technology, if you're not, if [00:43:08] you're not primed to know that it's burning you is, it seems like people mostly blame themselves [00:43:13] instead of blaming the technology. [00:43:15] And if that's your, if that's the way you use your phone or your computer, uh, you [00:43:21] know, when, when the car makes a mistake, you might not realize it as a car making mistake [00:43:26] and you might not have the hypervigilance. [00:43:27] That's like, you know, a more adversarial, like, like, I feel like I'm constantly spot checking [00:43:31] it. [00:43:31] And I, and while I am surprisingly impressed with how well it's been negotiating everything [00:43:37] that we've thrown at it so far, it's made one or two mistakes and I've, I've, I've, [00:43:41] I've, I've dealt with it, but on net, like it's driving waste. [00:43:45] Way more safely than I am way. [00:43:47] And it's, it's taught me a few things. [00:43:49] It's like, Oh yeah. [00:43:49] Like whenever I do this at an intersection, like that's really dumb. [00:43:52] Like it's doing this way better. [00:43:53] Uh, I can't think of a specific example, but like, I'm pretty impressed. [00:43:58] And so I thought, well, I'll ask Jeremy to borrow the car because I've got this natural [00:44:03] experiment now, same time of day, uh, same location. [00:44:07] So I already know how to get there. [00:44:08] It's a, it's a little bit goofy, but like, because I was just there, I'm not going to feel [00:44:12] like I'm learning how to get, get there and also learning how to use this. [00:44:15] Auto driving system simultaneously. [00:44:17] And, uh, holy shit. [00:44:20] Like, yes, I had people jump out in front of the car. [00:44:23] It was even worse this time at the particular intersection before you get to the, to, to [00:44:27] I four and the car like saw them out of its blind spot while it was turning, right. [00:44:32] It saw them on the left camera and breaks perfectly. [00:44:37] Uh, and I, uh, my first reaction was like, I would not have caught that. [00:44:40] I probably would have cut it real close. [00:44:44] Uh, almost hitting these people. [00:44:45] Uh, you get onto the highway and then this is why I emphasize like I four is like the deadliest [00:44:51] highway in America because it's, it is, it is not like driving on the highway, wherever [00:44:59] the fuck you live like anywhere I was ever in Michigan or Ohio or anywhere else in the [00:45:04] U S or certainly anywhere I've driven in Japan. [00:45:06] Those are the only places I suppose I've driven or Canada. [00:45:09] Like, yes, sometimes it's a little stressful driving on the highway. [00:45:12] Like that's not what this is. [00:45:14] This is, you have to practice extreme defensive driving. [00:45:18] And if you actually want to get where you're going, you also have to practice offensive [00:45:21] driving. [00:45:21] Uh, so having, uh, you know, nine cameras and nine directions is just necessary for basic [00:45:28] like assurance of survival. [00:45:31] Like when I'm on I four, I, I feel constantly under threat. [00:45:35] Uh, and something happens every time. [00:45:39] So we get on the highway and that stuff does happen. [00:45:42] Uh, you know, the car on its own decided to take the express lanes by itself, which was [00:45:46] incredible, but like people were like, I was trying to merge into a lane. [00:45:50] And then as, as the things, well, it was trying to merge into a lane. [00:45:53] And as it was changing lanes, somebody who didn't even have a blinker on starts edging in [00:45:58] and the car knows I'm going to back off. [00:45:59] Uh, there was another case of somebody swerving into our lane, like very close to the car and [00:46:05] the car, you know, defensively, you know, switch to the right lane, which was wide open [00:46:11] to prevent the risk that like, you know, it might have to break. [00:46:14] Suddenly there wasn't enough distance between the cars. [00:46:16] And that was stuff that like, I only was actually even able to piece together. [00:46:19] What the fuck was it doing after the fact? [00:46:20] Like looking at the map and looking around me, it's just, it went great. [00:46:28] Got there, dropped the shit off, turned around, you know, the parking is wonderful too, because [00:46:34] it'll back into every parking spot. [00:46:36] You just tap the screen. [00:46:37] Like it'll see the parking spots. [00:46:38] You just tap which one you want and just, it handles it for you. [00:46:40] It parks way better than I park. [00:46:42] I don't know, man. [00:46:43] And on the ride home, not only, you know, everything around me felt like it was on fire and chaos, [00:46:50] but because I had a buddy who was doing the driving and I could just kind of be, you know, [00:46:54] patrolling and looking around, I actually got a, a low heart rate notification on my watch, [00:47:00] which I get, I get them frequently. [00:47:01] Cause I have a low resting heart rate, but like it would say, Hey, your, your heart rate's [00:47:05] been under 40 beats per minute for the last 10 minutes. [00:47:08] And, uh, which I, if that's not you, that's like, if that's not typical for you, that might [00:47:14] sound scary, but like, no, my, my resting heart rate when I'm actually like de-stressed and, [00:47:17] and just chill is like typically like 38. [00:47:20] So the fact that I could be on I4 with a heart rate under 40 feeling completely safe more than [00:47:27] anything, it's not about going fast or whatever. [00:47:29] It's like feeling like I've got a team of two that are dedicated to getting me home safely, [00:47:32] me and this computer. [00:47:34] Uh, it was a revelatory experience now that look, I realized it's a complicated situation [00:47:44] because Elon is a big old bucket of assholes and the politics of it are all fucked. [00:47:50] Uh, you know, the right time to buy a Tesla was, was when, uh, everyone agreed that, that [00:47:54] they were cool and EVs were good and the planet deserves saving. [00:47:57] Uh, but yeah, I got, I totally saw where, where my brother was coming from and all of his friends [00:48:03] who, who, who, who are similar technologists who, who have these things and who are, you [00:48:07] know, who got on board in the very recent hardware three or hardware four era of Tesla. [00:48:12] Um, particularly with like the, the, the entry level models that are higher volume and therefore [00:48:17] kind of more, uh, consistently produced, you know, the cyber truck, for example, more, most [00:48:26] expensive, but lowest volume and has the most problems. [00:48:29] The model Y at this point is pretty boring and dull, but like, you know, if, if you, if [00:48:34] you are like me and just kind of think of cars, the modern day car is just a tablet with wheels. [00:48:40] This is a, you know, and I, yes, I had, I had low expectations. [00:48:46] I had a high level of suspicion, but it went great. [00:48:48] And, uh, uh, I, I, I successfully dropped off my snoring thing. [00:48:55] I can't wait to get the results. [00:48:57] That'll tell me that, uh, you know, nothing happened. [00:48:59] Another bit of follow-up. [00:49:01] I think I'd mentioned that I, uh, I had used rocket money. [00:49:05] So, you know, it used to be called true bill and then quick and loans bought it. [00:49:08] And, uh, the, as quick and loan started branding itself as rocket and having this rocket suite [00:49:13] of products, rocket money became, it's, you know, a consumer entree into upselling it to [00:49:18] other products and rocket monies, you know, promises. [00:49:21] It's going to help you, uh, visualize all your subscriptions and even negotiate a tiny, tiny [00:49:27] sliver of those subscriptions. [00:49:28] And the one that I yielded to it was my spectrum account. [00:49:32] So my ISP had, had gradually been charging me more and more to the point where it was [00:49:36] like $145 after tax every month for the same internet program. [00:49:39] That was like a hundred dollars when I moved here. [00:49:41] And I was very skeptical when rocket money said, Hey, we just saved you $893 a year, uh, by, [00:49:48] by lowering your monthly bill to 70 bucks. [00:49:50] And they sent me a new modem as well. [00:49:53] And I was like, I don't need a new modem. [00:49:55] It's the, it's, it's the model number. [00:49:56] It looks almost identical. [00:49:57] And I, I was actually at UPS returning that modem. [00:50:01] And I just thought to myself, what if this modem is somehow better? [00:50:04] Cause I had not been super blown away by the performance of my current one. [00:50:09] And so I, I went to the trouble of unplugging the old one, plugging in the new one, setting [00:50:13] it up, calling to activate and it, my, my connection now is rock solid. [00:50:19] So, so just by doing this price hack thing, I now have a modem that works way better. [00:50:23] I was able to activate it myself without having some tech come over here. [00:50:25] So that's a, that's a win, but the statements were still showing up $140. [00:50:29] And I was really skeptical that like this would materialize, but sure enough, this week I got [00:50:35] a statement for $70. [00:50:36] Uh, and I guess that means I owe rocket money 35% of whatever it saved me. [00:50:42] And I don't know how that's, I don't know how that's paid or when that works. [00:50:45] I'll figure it out. [00:50:47] But if you're, if you're willing to, basically I would recommend rocket money to anyone who [00:50:52] is currently paying sticker price for whatever utilities, it's probably mostly ISPs and cell [00:51:00] phone bills. [00:51:01] If you're paying for like a normal plan that is still available and you're paying top dollar, [00:51:06] uh, call them, give it a try. [00:51:08] But if you're like, you know, like I am with T-Mobile grandfathered in on some 12 year old [00:51:13] plan that has been replaced five times. [00:51:15] And there's no like, like the most likely case then is it's going to put me on the latest plan [00:51:19] and sign me up for all of the new throttling and four ADP video and the shit that you don't [00:51:24] want, uh, in terms of limitations. [00:51:26] So check out rocket money. [00:51:30] I, I, I was extremely skeptical and now this is, this is a rocket money ad. [00:51:34] Uh, although it is unpaid. [00:51:36] If you want to be a sponsor of the program podcast at seerls.co, uh, another followup item. [00:51:47] I, let me tell you what it took to connect. [00:51:53] My Xbox controller to my, to my gaming PC. [00:51:58] So, uh, I have an Xbox series elite to whatever you call it. [00:52:04] A nice, the fancy Xbox controller that costs like $170. [00:52:07] And I like this controller. [00:52:09] It's got the little paddles in the back. [00:52:11] It's got, you know, a nicer grip, uh, interchangeable thumb sticks and D pad and stuff. [00:52:16] It's a very nice product, but it's, it's, you know, talk about low volume things that [00:52:21] aren't as reliable. [00:52:21] It has a lot of reliability issues and my right bumper button, like next to the right [00:52:27] shoulder, it had been like very, very, um, it would miss like 70% of the clicks. [00:52:36] And because the right bumper isn't the most important button in the world. [00:52:39] Like it just meant like, uh, I guess I'm just not the kind of guy to throw grenades or whatever [00:52:43] the right bumper is typically assigned to, I got a replacement relative, like a, a, a cheap [00:52:50] replacement through Microsoft support channel. [00:52:52] I think they charged me $70. [00:52:53] They didn't require me to ship back the old one. [00:52:55] Uh, the replacement came and I plugged it into the computer to start set up and pairing. [00:53:00] And the Xbox accessories app was like, this is too out of date to be able to configure your [00:53:06] controller, which was weird because windows update, which I checked frequently had said [00:53:10] that I was up to date, but there was a little message at the bottom saying, uh, windows is [00:53:16] up to date. [00:53:16] Important security updates have not been applied. [00:53:19] Make sure that your computer is turned on, which is weird because if I'm manually updating [00:53:22] and nothing's saying that it's like, where are these secret security updates that aren't [00:53:26] happening? [00:53:26] And when I dug into my actual windows version, it said I was on 21 H two. [00:53:32] So the naming scheme for these major windows releases seems to be the, the two digit year [00:53:39] followed by H one for first half of the year and H two for second half of the year, which [00:53:44] is, um, real dumb. [00:53:47] I'm going to say just a dumb way to name things, you know, numbers are good. [00:53:52] You know, I, I, I get it now why it's named that. [00:53:56] But 21 was, uh, if you, if you decode the version several, several numbers ago, it was [00:54:02] three, at least it was at least two H one ago. [00:54:05] And why was I on such an old version? [00:54:10] It turns out I'll share like a, an article from, from just December, the, the windows 11 [00:54:16] required computers to have secure boot enabled using the trusted platform module or TPM equivalent [00:54:22] encryption. [00:54:23] And that's to certify or to be able to attest that like the, the operating system has not [00:54:28] been tampered with and so forth. [00:54:29] And then this has all sorts of like DMCA, DR, DRM, um, uh, and, uh, HDCP, all this sort [00:54:36] of a content encryption, copyright protection, uh, ostensibly it's quote unquote security. [00:54:41] And it, and it's the, like making sure from a malware perspective that the veracity of [00:54:45] the system files are all in place and so forth. [00:54:47] But like a lot of nerds were not on board because they want to rip blue waves or whatever it is. [00:54:51] And this might make it marginally more difficult, but gaming motherboards were like the last ones [00:54:57] to the party to support secure boot. [00:54:59] And even though I built my gaming PC, well, after windows 11 launched the BIOS that it [00:55:04] shipped with did not support secure boot. [00:55:06] Um, it didn't support, uh, I don't think like booting from UEFI drives correctly either. [00:55:13] So I'd set it up just like a normal basic fucking computer and it worked for however long it [00:55:18] worked. [00:55:18] But apparently in December, Microsoft was just like, and you get no more updates at all. [00:55:22] No more security updates, no more, nothing, which is why I started getting that message. [00:55:25] Uh, if you want to be on the latest and greatest version of windows 11, you must have secure boot. [00:55:30] Problem now is like, it's been several years. [00:55:34] And so figuring out what kind of motherboard I even have, I'm too lazy to like open the case [00:55:38] up and look at it. [00:55:39] And so I, I found the particular model number in my Amazon orders. [00:55:42] So step one, you know, I figured out what was happening. [00:55:45] I guess step, step zero is I get this new controller and I immediately regret it. [00:55:49] Uh, step two, figure out what's happening. [00:55:52] Step three, check my Amazon orders, identify the motherboard. [00:55:55] Uh, step four, I went to the motherboard website. [00:55:58] I find that there, a BIOS update is available and it's, it adds the secure boot functionality [00:56:03] because apparently the encryption software hardware is on the device, which is great. [00:56:07] So I download the BIOS and then I start flashing it. [00:56:12] Uh, not, you know, not that kind of, get your head out of the gutter. [00:56:15] I, it, it requires, uh, you know, identifying there's a, there's a particular USB port on [00:56:23] the back of the, of the motherboard. [00:56:25] That is the only one that can flash the BIOS and you have to look for it. [00:56:30] This is like M dash flash on it. [00:56:31] So you put it in there, you know, you restart, you, uh, boot into the BIOS and I, uh, got [00:56:39] it to update that, that part was actually pretty easy. [00:56:41] Then you go into the, the BIOS and it, you know, I don't know what BIOS stands for. [00:56:45] So if you're not like a PC person, this might not make sense, but you, you, the, the, it's, [00:56:49] it's the little bit of software that runs before the computer really starts. [00:56:52] And you can typically get there by hitting a key like F12 or delete. [00:56:55] And it's, you know, if you weren't raised on windows, uh, it's, it's, it's a weird [00:56:59] under, underbelly that sometimes you have to go into. [00:57:02] It's got a lot of arcane settings. [00:57:04] None of them make any sense. [00:57:05] It's a lot of acronyms that aren't explained, even though modern BIOS systems typically have [00:57:09] tooltips, it'll be like, what is, you know, what is MDR? [00:57:12] And it's like this, this option determines whether you have MDR turned on and off. [00:57:16] And there's like room for two more paragraphs to just maybe spell out what the fuck MDR is. [00:57:20] Uh, I turned on the secure boot, figure that out. [00:57:25] Uh, chat GPT is wonderful for stuff like this. [00:57:27] Like it gave me step-by-step directions because like, there's probably 800 forum, forum posts, [00:57:31] like detailing the same thing. [00:57:33] Uh, after reboot, nothing worked and like the computer would not boot. [00:57:39] I turned on secure boot, which required turning on UEFI, which is like a related technology of [00:57:44] like a more modern boot system for computers. [00:57:46] And it turns out it's because that my drive partition map is master boot record MBR, which [00:57:51] is like from the DOS era. [00:57:53] And that was the default when I set it up in 21 or 2020. [00:57:56]

AIs in Love, UEFI, Fortinet, Godaddy, Juggalos, Aaran Leyland, and More. In this edition of the Security Weekly News. Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/swn for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/swn-443

AIs in Love, UEFI, Fortinet, Godaddy, Juggalos, Aaran Leyland, and More. In this edition of the Security Weekly News. Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/swn-443

AWS DShield Sensor + DShield SIEM https://isc.sans.edu/diary/SANS%20ISC%20Internship%20Setup%3A%20AWS%20DShield%20Sensor%20%2B%20DShield%20SIEM%20%5BGuest%20Diary%5D/31480 From a Regular Infostealer to its Obfuscated Version https://isc.sans.edu/diary/From%20a%20Regular%20Infostealer%20to%20its%20Obfuscated%20Version/31484 Credit Card Skimmer Malware Targeting Magento Checkout Pages https://blog.sucuri.net/2024/11/credit-card-skimmer-malware-targeting-magento-checkout-pages.html LogoFAIL Exploited to Deploy Bootkitty, the first UEFI bootkit for Linux https://www.binarly.io/blog/logofail-exploited-to-deploy-bootkitty-the-first-uefi-bootkit-for-linux Stickers: https://isc.sans.edu/stickers.html (code PODCAST)

This week we pontificate on Gnome OS and whether KDE and Gnome really need their own distros, the much-delayed progress in Wayland development that's finally happening, and whether here's really a trend from Ubuntu back to Debian. We discuss the Pi CM5 announcement, the new UEFI bootkit announcement, and the leaked steam controller designs. For tips we have dstat for system monitoring, and SSH agent forwarding to forward your SSH keys on remote systems. The show notes are at https://bit.ly/4idT1Qb and until next week! Host: Jonathan Bennett Co-Host: Rob Campbell Want access to the video version and exclusive features? Become a member of Club TWiT today! https://twit.tv/clubtwit Club TWiT members can discuss this episode and leave feedback in the Club TWiT Discord.

We had the pleasure of finally having Dave Lewis on the show to discuss shadow IT and security debt. Dave shared some fascinating insights from his long career in cybersecurity, emphasizing the importance of addressing fundamental security issues and the human aspect of security. We delved into the challenges of managing shadow IT, the complexities of security debt, and the need for organizations to prioritize security practices. Overall, it was a great conversation that highlighted the ongoing struggles in our industry and the importance of learning from past mistakes to build a more secure future. Google's cookie encryption drama, Microsoft accusing Google of shady antitrust tactics, AI shenanigans, the rejected Defcon talk and hacking traffic lights, vulnerabilities in Realtek SD card readers, the never-ending debate on quantum computing vs. cryptography, backdoors are not secrets and where we are pushing attackers, firmware leakage, more on Windows Downgrade (and UEFI locks), super nerdy Linux things, EDR is dead, well not really but more on how to make it not phone home, bypassing memory scanners, couple of Bluetooth hacking things, and a really awesome article about an IoT 0-Day that is no longer on the Internet. Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/psw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/psw-849