40 Burst results for "Mgm F"
Awards Chatter
A highlight from 15 Authors of Titles on THR's List of the 100 Greatest Film Books of All Time
"Please welcome to the stage President and CEO of the American Film Institute, Bob Guzzale. Phone rings. It's Scott Feinberg from The Hollywood Reporter. He has an idea. And he's thinking about celebrating the 100 greatest film books of all time. I am immediately offended because top 100 movie lists are the AFI's real estate. But I did not say that to him. And the truth is I was just jealous because it was such and is such a good idea. And I thought anything AFI can do to help shine a proper light on this imperative work, well, we're in. But I did say to Scott, it's got to be A plus. It's no fake in this one. You have to have the most informed, the smartest jury. And he said, I got this. And he did. And today is a moment to celebrate that effort and the inspired writers who have brought history to life. Here to take his bow and to moderate the discussion, the executive editor of The Hollywood Reporter, Scott Feinberg. Now Scott is going to bring out the honorees today, but he has given me the gift of introducing you to the first. For he is the founder of the American Film Institute. He was there in the White House Rose Garden when President Lyndon Johnson first announced the creation of AFI. He was there to write the very words that define the Institute's national mandate. And he was there to lead the organization through its early years. And it was then that he planted the seeds for the AFI Center for Film Studies, now the AFI Conservatory. And it was then that he instituted the Harold Lloyd Master Seminar Series at AFI, so named because the seminar's first guest was Harold Lloyd. Across 50 years, these seminars have proved a rich historical record of the art form and have inspired several books on THR's 100 greatest list, including two of his. Conversations with the great movie makers of Hollywood's golden age and conversations at the American Film Institute with the great movie makers the next generation. Please welcome George Stevens Jr. Welcome George Stevens Jr. and we are excited to hear from you in just a second. Now joining you up here, please welcome the author of 2020's The Big Goodbye Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood and with Janine Basinger, 2022's Hollywood The Oral History, Sam Wasson. Next up is the author of 2016's Powerhouse, The Untold Story of Hollywood's Creative Artists Agency, James Andrew Miller. Next up, we are going to have two authors coming to the stage because they are the co -authors of 1996's Hit and Run, How John Peters and Peter Goober Took Sony for a Ride in Hollywood. Please welcome Nancy Griffin and Kim Masters. Next up, he is, as you will guess from the title, his name. He is from 1969 and for many years thereafter the author of Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide. Please welcome Leonard Maltin. Here we are. Welcome. Next, we have the author of 1998's The Last Mogul, Lou Osterman, MCA and the Hidden History of Hollywood, Dennis McDougall. Next, we have the author of 1977's The Making of the Wizard of Oz, Movie Magic and Studio Power in the Prime of MGM and the Miracle of Production number 1060. Please welcome Algene Harmetz. Next, he is the Czar of Noire, the author of Dark City, The Lost World of Film Noire from 1998. Please welcome Eddie Muller. He is the author of the 1996 book Spike, Mike, Slackers and Dykes, a guided tour across a decade of independent American cinema, John Pearson. From 1988, the book The Player. Please welcome Michael Tolkien. From 1989, the author of Goldwyn, a Biography, A. Scott Berg. She is the author of the 2006 book A Killer Life, How an Independent Film Producer Survives Deals and Disasters in Hollywood and Beyond, Christine Vachon. We're going to give an extra warm welcome to this gentleman because it is his birthday. Please join us in welcoming George Harrell's Hollywood Glamour Portraits 1925 to 1992 author from 2013, Mark A. Vieira. From 1999, the book Conversations with Wilder, the author Cameron Crowe. Ladies and gentlemen, take it in because this has never been seen before and I don't know if anyone will be lucky enough to gather this amazing group again in one place. I'm so grateful to all of you for making the time to be here. Many of you came from great distances and congratulations on your work being on this list chosen by 322 people from the industry. We're talking about filmmakers like Steven Spielberg, executives, David Zaslav and many others, authors including just about everybody up here plus many others, academics. You can see the whole list online but the point is it is a cross -section of the business. There have been versions of this list that were chosen by film critics. There have been versions by other constituencies but this reflects the taste of our global film community. So thank you again for being here and I want to also just quickly thank Bob Guzzale, Julie Goodwin and everyone at AFI not only for going through all the efforts to make today possible but also for their other lists that Bob referenced because were it not for the original AFI Top 100 list. I don't think I would be here in a career as a film journalist because that really made me fall in love with the movies in the way that I hope this list inspires many other people to check out these books and the others on the list. So thank you to them and to the folks at The Hollywood Reporter for supporting the list and Terry Press for helping us put everything together and all of you for being here. So the way this is going to work is we are going to go down this line a few minutes with each author about the origin and impact and revelations of their book and then we are going to have a looser group conversation afterwards but we're going to begin with Mr. Stevens Jr. These two books that you wrote drawing from the seminars that Bob referenced are you know just fascinating looks at generations of filmmakers who have spoken to students at the AFI, what you know they've shared about their lives, their careers, tips for filmmaking. I wonder if you can just talk about how early on, well again just a little bit more actually about how those seminars started because you were there at the beginning and when it occurred to you that they might make good books.
WTOP 24 Hour News
Fresh "Mgm F" from WTOP 24 Hour News
"Hills, and Oxon Hill, and some fog thrown in there too. We've got the crash cleanup on the Interloop after St. Barnabas Road had the right lane getting by. This is before the local and through lane split, and still with volume Landover through from the lots at FedEx, with delays starting to thin out a little bit on the outer loop from Arena Drive off and Route on toward 1. Interloop delays starting to break up a little bit from 202 toward Route 4 Pennsylvania Avenue. Had some volume heavy at times. That's still the case on the outer loop headed toward Silver Spring between New Hampshire Avenue and Georgia Avenue. News reported nothing in the roadway, yet VW Parkway had some volume north of Greenbelt south before it made the crash south near I -195 cleared from the roadway entirely 270 -95 looking good on the Maryland side. Route 50 had some fog across the Bay Bridge that was causing a little bit of problem. Still moving issue without though. Three lanes west and two lanes east across the bay. Keep those speeds down a little bit please. All southbound lanes of Route 29 are still blocked at Route 108 with the crash cleanup from last hour through Columbia. Blades have eased between routes 175 and 100 and on the Virginia side I -95 the only down slow is south before the Occoquan headed toward Woodbridge just volume. Cirque dreams holidays lights up the stage December 15th through the 17th at the theater at MGM National Harbor. Get the ultimate holiday gift for the whole family at mgmnationalharbor .com Rick McClure WTOP traffic. 2 -7 News first alert meteorologist Mark Pena. Finally seeing some improving conditions as clouds decrease across the area tonight and so we're looking at temperatures falling into the upper 30s to low 40s
SI Media Podcast
A highlight from Radio host Dan Patrick + Traina Thoughts
"Kick off the football action with BetMGM, the king of sports books. Simply download the app today to make every game and every plane mean more than ever. When you wager at BetMGM, you can also earn BetMGM rewards points that can be redeemed for online bonus credits like bonus bets and bet insurance tokens. Planning your trip to Vegas? You can also convert your BetMGM points into MGM rewards points that you can use towards dining, shows, and hotel rooms and over 20 MGM Resorts properties located on the Las Vegas Strip and nationwide. Play, earn, and enjoy with BetMGM rewards. Please gamble responsibly. BetMGM .com for T's and C's. 21 plus to wager, DC only. New and existing customer offer. All promotions are subject to qualification and eligibility requirements. Rewards issued as non -withdrawable bonus bets. Bonus bets expire seven days from issuance. And again, please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem? Call 1 -800 -GAMBLER.
WTOP 24 Hour News
Fresh update on "mgm f" discussed on WTOP 24 Hour News
"It's time for another visit to MGM national harbor monumental happens here must be 21 please play responsibly for help visit MD gambling help dot org or call 1 800 gambler do people judge you by your missing broken or teeth you should know there is one great solution from the cascade center for dental health in sterling cascades one revolutionary is a full mouth implant solution pioneered by Dr. Sriyash Ruparelia with cascades one you receive the highest quality full mouth dental restoration we do it all one doctor one office one price all backed by our amazing guarantee call today to learn more call 866 25 sleep or cascades one dot com in order for small businesses to thrive they need to be smart efficient staying savvy ahead of the market at every turn finding ways more to do with less and taking advantage of every opportunity that comes their way that's why Comcast business is introducing the small business bonus for a limited time you can get up to a $1 ,000 prepaid card the with qualifying gig bundle when you switch to Comcast business the company with the largest fastest reliable network yep you
SI Boxing with Chris Mannix
A highlight from Boxing with Chris Mannix - What's Next, PBC?
"And over 20 MGM Resorts properties located on the Las Vegas Strip and nationwide. Play, earn, and enjoy with BetMGM Rewards. Please gamble responsibly. BetMGM .com for Ts and Cs. 21 plus to wager, DC only. New and existing customer offer. All promotions are subject to qualification and eligibility requirements. Rewards issued as non -withdrawable bonus bets. Bonus bets expire seven days from issuance. And again, please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem? Call 1 -800 -GAMBLER. Well, you might be a pro when it comes to what you do, but we can't all be pros at everything. Take home repairs, remodeling, and renovations. That's not something you want to trust to anyone but a skilled professional. For me, it is getting someone to fix the leak on the roof of my house in this place. I have been through multiple different construction workers, roof repairmen, everything, and I can't seem to get the damn thing fixed. So, Angie's List is now Angie, where you connect with a local pro to tackle jobs big and small inside and out. Whether it's fixing a leaky faucet, building a deck, even pest control and lawn services, Angie gets you in touch with the right pro for the task at hand. Angie provides robust digital tools and innovative solutions to make it easier than ever to get anything you need for your home done right. Me? The next time that roof starts to leak, and there will be a next time, you better believe I'm going to be on Angie. With the Angie app or on angie .com, you can research and connect with local pros who come highly rated and recommended by people right in your neighborhood. Compare prices, get clear and upfront pricing, and hire a pro all with a few taps of a button. And with Angie, they'll work around your schedule and show up when it's most convenient or even that same day. Download the free Angie mobile app or visit angie .com. That's angie .com. Whatever your project is, you can just Angie that and connect with skilled professionals.
WTOP 24 Hour News
Fresh update on "mgm f" discussed on WTOP 24 Hour News
"Compared to to just one quarter of one percent for prime or better borrowers a huge difference unfortunately high interest rates and increasing costs are expected to stick around for a while continuing to make affordability a i'm challenge mark hammering stick around coming up on w two p more on how to avoid the regret tends that to come with overheating during the holiday season it's five twelve when your was last visit to MGM national harbor did you dance the night away after some salsa lessons at diablo's Tina were you one of our hundreds of daily jackpot winners did you see your favorite star up close in our three thousand seat theater or did you indulge in the seafood tower in parker house rolls at voltaggio brothers steakhouse maybe
The Crossover NBA Show with Chris Mannix
A highlight from Bucks Extend Giannis & Pre Season Storylines
"Upgrade your listening with Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones. Breakthrough Bose immersive audio makes everything sound more natural than ever. World -class noise cancellation gets quieter than any Bose headphone yet, and the high -fidelity audio is tailored to your ears only. So highs hit harder, bass drops deeper, and you fill every note of the track. This is Leveled Up Listening. Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones. Dive in deeper at Bose .com forward slash iHeart. Kick off the football action with BetMGM, the king of sportsbooks. Simply download the app today to make every game and every play mean more than ever. When you wager at BetMGM, you can also earn BetMGM rewards points that can be redeemed for online bonus credits like bonus bets and bet insurance tokens. Planning a trip to Vegas? You can also convert your BetMGM points into MGM rewards points that you can use towards dining, shows, and hotel rooms at over 20 MGM Resorts properties located on the Las Vegas Strip and nationwide. Play, earn, and enjoy with BetMGM rewards. Please gamble responsibly. BetMGM .com for T's and C's. 21 plus to wager, DC only. New and existing customer offer. All promotions are subject to qualification and eligibility requirements. Rewards issued as non -withdrawable bonus bets. Bonus bets expire seven days from issuance. And again, please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem? Call 1 -800 -GAMBLER. Oh, come on now. You know you deserve it. A steak patty on any McDonald's breakfast sandwich. I mean any breakfast sandwich. Biscuit, McMuffin, bagel, McGriddles. A juicy steak patty on any breakfast sandwich. And when you order through the app, buy one and get one free. Now go get them. Valid for product of equal or lesser value. Limited time only at participating McDonald's. Valid one time per day. Excludes $1 to $3 menu. It's the crossover. Sports Illustrated's NBA show. Breaking down the latest news, rumors, and everything in between. Here's your host, Chris Mannix and Rohan Nadkarni. This is the Crossover NBA Podcast. I'm Chris Mannix joined this week by my colleague at Sports Illustrated, Rohan Nadkarni. And Rohan, it's always good when we have some breaking news on the podcast. We are recording this on the day the NBA returns. Tuesday night, double header, Warriors Suns, Lakers Nuggets. That's going to be a lot of fun to watch on Tuesday. But the big story over the weekend was Giannis Atentecumpo once again saying, Milwaukee, you are my home. Giannis agreeing to a three -year, $186 million contract extension. We'll get into kind of the nuances of why this extension makes sense financially right now. And why he would do it now. And what kind of contracts he can sign in the future. But this was something I think that Bucs fans and the Bucs front office was optimistic about in the aftermath of Milwaukee acquiring Damian Lillard. But now, here we are with Damian Lillard under contract for the next four seasons. Giannis Atentecumpo under contract for, I believe, three of the next four seasons. I'll get the numbers right. But the last year's a player option of that deal. But he's under contract at least until his early 30s, putting him through his prime years in Milwaukee. Your reaction to this deal getting done at the 11th hour before the start of the season? Pretty surprised only because Giannis himself kind of mentioned early this summer why financially it wouldn't make the most sense for him to do it now. As you alluded to, there is some kind of not quite complicated math, but a series of steps that Giannis can undergo to kind of maximize the financial impact of taking this deal now. So he's still coming out ahead money -wise. I mean, I wrote when the Damian Lillard trade went down, I should say, that this was a huge win and it only becomes a bigger win for Milwaukee if Giannis signs. And that's what happened. And I think, listen, this team, the expectations still win a title, all those things. But for the city of Milwaukee, for the franchise, even if they don't win a title now, if you get another three or four years of Giannis at Centecumpo, you get his entire prime in Milwaukee. You put off the conversation, at least for a couple years, about whether he's leaving, etc. That's a huge win. It makes the Lillard trade a win already. It's really incredible work by their franchise. I mean, we sat here, Chris, I'd say at the beginning of the summer, kind of wondering aloud what moves are on the table for the Bucks because they looked a little bit boxed in at the start of the summer in terms of what they could do to improve the roster around Giannis. To go around and get Damian Lillard and then sign Giannis to an extension the same summer, when no one was expecting either of those moves, it's an unequivocal, unqualified, total home run for the Bucks. No, I tweeted this in the immediate aftermath. This was an executive of the year stretch for John Horst. Not only does he get Damian Lillard into the fold, which makes the Bucks better in the short term, he ensures long -term viability by getting Giannis' name on a contract. Just to clear up the math here and sort of explain what kind of deal Giannis has signed. He is under contract now for the next four years. This year's age 28 season, he's going to make $45 .6 million. Next year, he'll make $45 .8 million. The new deal kicks in in the 25 -26 season, which will put Giannis at $57 .6 million that year, $62 .2 million in 26 -27. He has a player option for 22 -28, which would be year five of this new deal that he's operating under, which is worth $66 .8 million. The reason that he signs this contract right now, and I want to give credit to Bobby Marks, the ESPN front office insider, because he's been able to explain this in a way even idiots like you and me can't understand. It's mutually beneficial for the two sides to do a deal like this right now. Because of that over 38 rule that exists, Giannis could sign a short -term extension again with Milwaukee in 2026, and then a four -year extension with the Bucks in 2028. What this deal is effectively doing, or the message it's sending, is that Giannis is a buck for life. He's going to be alongside Damian Lillard for the next four seasons. That's a guy we've talked about a lot. He likes Damian Lillard, and he wants to play with Damian Lillard. Not only is Giannis getting himself financially set up for the short term by signing this three -year extension, he is putting the dominoes in place to make the max possible amount of money over the next 10 years of his playing career. Anyone that might have been wondering if Giannis is going to be a buck over the long term, it sure looks right now that Giannis is going to be playing in Milwaukee for the entirety of his NBA career. I think we're looking, Rohan, at another Dirk Nowitzki. I think this is kind of a Dirk -like situation where the Bucks have shown Giannis enough. They've shown Giannis enough that he is willing to commit to this team long term. Absolutely. And I'll just leave a little bit of room. Our old friend Howard Beck wrote about it today for The Ringer that everything is great right now. Up until things change, if this flames out, whatever, we've seen stars request trades, etc. I'll leave a little room for that, but I'm with you. And I think it's great for the NBA. I really do. I want to see Jokic in Denver for his entire career. I want to see Giannis in Milwaukee for his entire career. We've kind of lost that the last few years with guys moving around teams so much. There's been this conversation this week, should Kevin Durant have his jersey retired in Golden State? I think it'll happen and I think it's fine, but it's just not the same. It's not the same as a guy like Giannis staying in one place for his entire career. It's refreshing to see. I think it's just so good for the league. I'm excited, man. I'm excited to see him battle with the Celtics this year. I miss the days when it felt like you could think these two teams are going to have to get through each other for the next few years. We're setting up for that with Giannis and Tatum for the next few years. As a basketball fan, I'm just really excited. I think you hit the nail on the head. I think he's going to be kind of remembered as this generation's Dirk for just how synonymous he is with Milwaukee. The fact that Giannis said the things he said earlier this summer, he said he wants to play for a winner, and backed it up, I just think says a lot about the kind of person he is. That was not just posturing or whatever. Milwaukee made some good faith moves, and he signed a good faith extension in return. To contrast this with Lillard's situation in Portland, Lillard committed to the Blazers, but he didn't demand action out of them before he committed to them. Giannis came out this offseason in multiple interviews and said, I'm paraphrasing, of course. You've got to make sure that you have a championship roster around me. He put a lot of pressure on the Bucs to get something done. To the Bucs credit, for the second time in three years, they pulled off a deal that made Giannis happy. Drew Holiday, his acquisition a few years ago, that made Giannis happy. Now, Damian Lillard bringing him in, that makes Giannis happy. He was able to use his status with the team to push them to go all in for a championship. Once they did, he committed. He was true to his word, and said he would commit to the Milwaukee Bucs. I do think that's commendable for Giannis as well. I think, short term, if you're looking for questions about the Bucs, there are a couple of them. Chris Middleton is the most glaring. I have no idea what to expect from Chris Middleton this year. He missed half the season last year. Then there's that weird, vague pre -season talk for me. Well, I'm going to get to that. I'm going to get to that. I like the coaching stuff. Chris Middleton, his status is a big variable here. I think with a healthy Chris Middleton, the Bucs are the number one team in the East. It's still close, because I think Boston is really good, obviously. But with Middleton, I think they're number one. Without him, I think they're number two. I'm anxious to see how healthy he is at the start of the season, and how healthy he can be throughout the season. The other part of it is coaching. This Terry Stotts story has kind of gone away over the last couple of days. Frankly, who really cares about an assistant coaching change on an NBA team? This is a real thing. Terry Stotts was given a hands -on role to effectively be the architect of this Bucs offense. We know this, because Damian Lillard came out last week and said, Look, this is the same offense I ran in Portland. The guys that are veterans on the Milwaukee team were coming to him and saying, Well, what about this? What about that? What's the right way to run this particular play? Terry Stotts was not just a sage voice on Adrian Griffin's bench. He was someone that was intimately involved and integrally involved in what this team does offensively. We've seen the reporting that there was some kind of public blow up at a shoot around or a practice between Terry Stotts and Adrian Griffin. I had not heard about that. I had heard in the hours after Stotts decided to leave the team that he just wasn't comfortable being Adrian Griffin's assistant coach. That's kind of what it came down to. Terry Stotts has been head coach in the NBA for a long time. He has had some levels of success as a head coach. Adrian Griffin came in and Adrian Griffin, people have told me he rides his assistants out there. He makes them work pretty hard. Adrian Griffin worked under Scott Skiles for a while, worked under a number of different coaches in different situations. Adrian Griffin had high expectations and demanded a lot from his assistant coaches. The way I was explained to me was Terry Stotts just wasn't comfortable with the dynamic, didn't like the dynamic with Adrian Griffin. Maybe that dust up in practice was the straw that broke the camel's back, but it felt like the people I talked to that it was coming. I don't think this is inconsequential. I really don't because now everybody else on that Bucs staff gets bumped up a seat. Now you don't necessarily have the guy on the bench with that kind of gravitas is the right word, but certainly experience that Terry Stotts brought to the table. I don't think we can dismiss his exit as nothing because I do think it's something. Yeah, not to mention his relationship with Damian Lillard, right? I mean, that's something that I think was probably providing Dame some level of comfort. He obviously posted a photo of them together on Instagram after. Take that for what it's worth. I mean Terry Stotts and Damian Lillard will always have a great relationship. Terry Stotts empowered Damian Lillard over nine years. Like took him on as a rookie and helped develop him into the player he became. So I can understand the loyalty between Lillard and Stotts. The one interesting thing about the Bucs and Celtics, I'd say, is the questions around their coaching staffs. You know, Missoula had to deal with it a lot last year, especially during the playoffs. Now listen, at the end of the day, he came within a game seven and Jason Tatum maybe not turned his ankle of making it to the finals. So maybe that stuff was overblown. But, you know, there's been a lot of talk about the assistance the Celtics added this summer and the reasons they needed to do that. Bringing in a guy like Jeff Van Gundy, for example, to consult with them. And the importance of that experience that it's a lot of pressure on Adrian Griffin in his first year to deliver a team with title expectations. And now he's losing his most experienced assistant coach. It's going to be very interesting. I think that's a serious variable for the Bucs. We've seen it cut both ways. I mean, we've seen Nick Nurse have a lot of success. We've seen Emei Yudoka have a lot of success. Other times it doesn't go as well. So I think it's going to be very interesting keeping an eye on just how the coaching staff in both Milwaukee and Boston ultimately affects what those teams do. I think one of the undercurrents of the Celtics summer, for example, was maybe moving on from some of the guys that didn't fully buy in with Missoula. Guys who necessarily didn't have the best relationship with him. So I don't know that it's going to make a huge impact because they're just so much more talented than the rest of the conference. But I'm interested to see how that plays out. Yeah, it certainly adds a wrinkle to what Milwaukee's trying to do this season. I think with such a slim margin between the Celtics and the Bucs, anything can make a difference. So that's worth keeping an eye on this year.
WTOP 24 Hour News
Fresh update on "mgm f" discussed on WTOP 24 Hour News
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SI Boxing with Chris Mannix
A highlight from Boxing with Chris Mannix - Showtime Bows Out
"Kick off the football action with BetMGM, the king of sports books. Simply download the app today to make every game and every plane mean more than ever. When you wager at BetMGM, you can also earn BetMGM rewards points that can be redeemed for online bonus credits like bonus bets and bet insurance tokens. Planning your trip to Vegas? You can also convert your BetMGM points into MGM rewards points that you can use towards dining, shows, and hotel rooms and over 20 MGM Resorts properties located on the Las Vegas Strip and nationwide. Play, earn, and enjoy with BetMGM rewards. Please gamble responsibly. BetMGM .com for T's and C's. 21 plus to wager, DC only. New and existing customer offer. All promotions are subject to qualification and eligibility requirements. Rewards issued as non -withdrawable bonus bets. Bonus bets expire seven days from issuance. And again, please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem? Call 1 -800 -GAMBLER.
Bloomberg Business of Sports
Fresh update on "mgm f" discussed on Bloomberg Business of Sports
"You Do think he could possibly be ill because he's also leaving Shark Tank at the same time? I mean, what's going on here? Yeah, you know, I feel really uneasy speculating. I mean, that's one of the things that came up. I've heard people say babies get a virus. I mean, we, you know, it's just chronicling. We did a piece in a business sports letter about, you know, this is setting itself up to kind of, I think, the potential fight because a guy like him doesn't really totally give up. And the sort of signaling from his side seems to he's be that going to still control basketball operations. The Addison family put out a statement of we're the governor. means That we control the team. You know, you can't have a majority owner that doesn't have the ability to fire the coach or whatever. You know, it's so I have a feeling that we're just seeing the beginning of what's likely to be a soap opera here. And, you know, when I look back, I mentioned, you know, all the billions of dollars he's been fined over the years for his comments, gestures and a $750 ,000 fine earlier this year for tanking the game. I almost wonder, I almost wonder if the league didn't give them a push. Interesting. Well, I tell you, you know, Chris, you know, the one thing that, you know, you know, you mentioned it about about, you you know, legalizing gambling in Texas and the whole casino play by Maria Madelson. you You know, know, my question is this, you know, maybe possibly. I mean, the answer is right in front of us that Mark Cuban just felt there was no way he alone could get that done. I .e. Stevie Cohen here in New York. Right. I .e. you know, the, with you know, what the Sands is trying to do out in Long Island. Right. They're trying to get a license there. So, you know, talk to us about the challenges that, you know, I guess any owner of the Mavericks is going to have if they want to, you know, kind of build a casino down there, Hard Rock Sands, whatever you have. Well, there's multiple challenges. One of them is the evolving nature of sports betting and the rules. Now, initially there's very a handful of people. Gary Gilbert, Gilbert with the Cavaliers and Tillman Fertitta with the Rockets, most notably of casino owners that own sports franchises. And, you know, you can't bet on your own teams. I mean, just accept bets on your own teams. It's very awkward. And that whole regulation of that is evolving. And so that's sort of issue number one. And issue number two is the big work that involves legalizing casinos and winning licenses. And this is part of the cost of doing business. If you're a casino company, you hire armies, lobbyists, and transit has been working in New York and Georgia, in Texas, in Florida, and they're not alone. They all are. MGM, Caesars, and New York's cases are vying for three downstate casino licenses. Hard Rock ultimately partnered with Steve Cohen and the Mets. Sans, as you mentioned, has got a copy of the old Nassau Coliseum on Long Island. They hope to develop. There's really one only sort of free license, so a dozen companies fighting over that. Texas, a whole other story.
Telecom Reseller
A highlight from A Deep-dive into CallMiners 2023 CX Landscape Report Fostering the Super Agent Era, Podcast
"This is Doug Green, and I'm the publisher of TR Publications, and I'm very glad to have with us today Jeff Galino, who's the CTO and founder of CallMiner. Jeff, thank you for joining us today. Thanks for having me, Doug. Really appreciate it. To give you a little bit of background, like you said, I am the CTO, Chief Technology Officer and founder of CallMiner. CallMiner is a little over 20, almost 22 years old at this point, so I've been doing this for a while. What we do at CallMiner is we have a platform that is for understanding and providing insight and guidance around interactions between an enterprise and its downstream customers, whether that is a bot talking to a human, whether it's a human talking to another human, whether they're chatting, whether there's email involved, direct messaging, or multimodal. They could be talking on video like this, as well as typing, as well as sending information back and forth. And all through that, our software monitors those conversations, can give information to the agent in real time, so that they can be more efficient, but also give them training and guidance in the background, here's how you can become just a better person at your job. In addition to that, it brings in all the feedback that we're hearing in those conversations. So if I'm calling a wireless provider, let's say Mint Mobile, new customer, and so let's say I'm calling Mint Mobile and during that conversation, I say, boy, I really want that new titanium iPhone, I just wish they sold that damn thing in Aquamarine or something like that. Now, the marketing and product folks for Mint and Apple want to know that, but there's really no simple way to capture something as seemingly innocent as that. Let alone, I might say, I can't pay my bill because I'm a vulnerable person, or your product doesn't work for me, or stop calling, anything that you can imagine, we're going to capture everything that's said, and then provide insight on that. So Jeff, you talked about bots, so let's ask the question of the hour, is AI going to replace the contact center agent, is that going to really happen? There's a simple answer where you could go, of course it is, this is the way of automation, and then there's a much more accurate and complex answer, which is, I believe this will go the way of robotics in manufacturing, yes, robotics replaced a lot of people doing manufacturing, but not everybody, because there are just some tasks that you want a human or you need a human on, and we're going to see the same thing with contact centers, what they're going to do is they're going to start moving, in my opinion, they're going to move that bot -like behavior further back in the conversation toward the IVR, they're going to try to keep you contained in a bot environment, but these bots are a heck of a lot smarter, they're interacting, they also know how to raise their own hand, they know how to say, I need help, because they know if they have an answer to a question or not. So we're going to see a lot more sophisticated workflows, I think what this is driving, and we like to talk about it, is the rise of the super agent, the rise of the skill agent, the knowledge worker agent, and kind of almost the death of the mundane, I'm not going to call and change my pen with a human, I'm not going to call, probably, and do most things with a human when I have a problem, when I say, hey, I'm calling, it's the middle of the night, the gas went off, and I know I paid my bill, what the heck, then I want to talk to a human, you better not give me a bot if I'm in an extreme situation, that's the kind of thing that these contact center managers and owners are struggling with, they're like, okay, what level of automation, and quite frankly, according to what we call our CX landscape report, which we just did, it's an astoundingly high number of people are saying, we know we need AI, and I'm talking over 43 % have said we know we need it, but we don't know what, and we're not sure when we can put it in. And so there's still a lot of people out there that are stuck in the hype curve that don't know what it actually means, and so I know there's a lot of people out there looking and saying, hey, instead of trying to automate the agent all the way through, what if we start picking off activity, and so I'll give you my favorite example, when we look at agent assistance with knowledge base, what you can do is you can make sure that the agent, when they're asked a difficult question, you can present knowledge to them, and in fact, it can be very clever knowledge based on how others have answered it that day, because the AI gets to hear all the conversations, and so when it hears positive responses to a particular answer, it starts to prioritize, it starts to actually say, okay, that might be the better answer, and so you could focus it on, let's say, authentication, you could do it all, all the authentication with an AI, you could do all payment stuff with an pure credit card number, and you could say it, and the thing can hear you and recognize it, but we're still keeping the human out of the loop. Then you can start saying, okay, well, what else can we do? How about we look at, here are the 50 things that we ask our agents to do, and the bottom 10 are hard, and they're not requested a lot, so you know what, let's not train anybody on that anymore, let's get them on the phones faster, so you're lowering cost to kind of train and produce, you know, nesting with an AI as opposed to nesting with a supervisor, you can do a lot of really interesting things there, and the idea is that it becomes kind of almost a backstop to the agent, and as the agent gets better, they don't need to pay attention to the AI as much, and the AI then starts to work and say, okay, they know this stuff, so I know I can route to this person because of that, and when they get a question that they don't know, then I can start stacking and lining up training for them and giving them better QA, so this is gonna be a gradual evolution as we slowly, in my opinion, slowly automate a lot, and there will be a lot, like, I think it'll be probably 80, 85 % in maybe five years, and you say, we're gonna lose 85 % of people in contact centers in five years, I don't think it'll be that much, but I think the tasks in the high -end, heavy -spending call centers, yeah, they're gonna start really moving those to automation, however, the agents that remain, those knowledge workers, man, they are gonna be paid well because they really do know what they're doing, they're almost to rise to the level of kind of engineer status in terms of being able to troubleshoot, being able to solve problems, because they're only given the hard problems, they won't be giving any of the mundane stuff, that's what the AI will actually be for, that's how I see it, sorry, that was a very long answer. No, no, no, so what you're saying, I think, is that you actually see AI as benefiting contact center agents in the future, because they will have a very different kind of role, that they might become the sort of super agent that you've been discussing, and to draw on that analogy, manufacturing people used to say that before automation took over the automotive plants, it was almost a dehumanizing process, that repetitive task work, no matter how you tried to mitigate it, was very hard on people, and it's no secret, turnover historically in contact centers has been very high, it's basically the same problem, the repetitive, you know, not very interesting task, you're saying, you know, people will be able, contact center agents will be able to dive into more complex, more informed, will be kind of almost a kind of different job. It will, and don't forget that after the call, that AI can then also, and it's, you know, it's obvious, well, maybe not obvious to everybody, but it's a different AI, but it's an AI that just does QA, and will then say, hey, you just had a really great call, we'd really like you to use more empathy when a person talks about vulnerability, right at that moment, then, as they go through the next two or three calls, if they encounter that same situation, the bot's looking to say, did they respond like we trained them, if not, then maybe I need to enroll them in some training, and start the idea of escalated training as well, so that you, then the supervisor, the coach, can really focus on behavioral activity to improve and not have to say, oh, okay, there's 100 things I wanted you to do, you did 99 really well, let's talk about this one. They have to go through the 100 things, whereas when we're bringing a lot of this automation to bear, they get to focus on the one thing, so you could have your best agent, and they're agent, is really quite important. So here comes the practical question, can we really do this, can we, how can organizations actually integrate AI into their contact center? So they can do it with products like ours, so I can describe a really simple thing, I was using the agent assistant as an idea before, so let me give you kind of a deeper scenario, in the agent assistant, the agent is using the desktop tools they normally do, whether they're remote or they're sitting in a contact center, wherever they are, they tend to have a presentation from a CRM system, ticket system, something like that, where they can interact with the data that the caller is calling about. Now imagine in that same screen, there is a spot where an AI who is listening into the conversation, so let's pretend it's a call, it's using speech recognition in real time, and it's literally writing down everything said by both parties, the customer doesn't know that that AI exists, the agent is there, and they're able to read the output, they're able to see where maybe if the customer says, yeah, I need to do this thing, and whatever that thing is, the AI could just present a button to the agent that I think you need this button, and then the agent goes, yep, that's the button, and presses it. And so it can, little things like that really add up in terms of efficiency, and it makes the agent, to your point earlier, that dehumanizing, redundant process, it's slowly just trying to make it a little easier. I mean, ultimately, when AI showed up, I hoped what we would see is everybody going, this is going to be great, now we don't have to do those mundane jobs, and instead everybody's going, oh no, they're going to take my job, and you're like, yeah, that's the way of the world. So eventually the crap jobs get automated so that we can go and do better, more interesting things. I mean, an area of automation is farming, right? They're still a human, you're still driving the tractor for right now, but think about how complex those machines are and how they compare to 100 years ago when you were out there literally cutting down corn by hand and shucking and pulling, and all of that work. Now it's mostly been automated to the benefit of both the consumer and the user, and ultimately that's what we hope, is that this makes customer service easier, more transparent, and therefore that savings, that lower dollar, we hope gets passed on to the downstream customer. So Jeff, do these thoughts that you've just shared, your vision there of where we're going with all this, does that jive with the comminer's CX landscape report that I think you recently issued? It does, and thank you. Yeah, absolutely. What we see, and it's very much emphasized and supported by the CX landscape report, which is available to anybody, you can just go to our website and download it, it's really quite interesting. We got 700 plus CX leaders, so people that had the main CX title in their organizations to respond to a series of questions, both about contact centers as well as AI's influence in the contact centers. And I think the thing that was interesting to me is that when we asked those people, hey, what are you looking at? Where are you focused in the next six months on your purchases and research? 43 % said Gen AI, an additional 34 % said conversation intelligence. They want to add in generative AI and they want to look at adding bots and then analytics on top of those bots. I mean, that's a lot of their next what's happening. Another fun stat is of those that said, we're definitely going after AI, more than half said, but we don't know what we're looking for. We are so ignorant to this technology that we're starting from ground zero. We're having to educate ourselves first on what the heck it is. And a lot of that's going to come from the vendors. The vendors are going to show up and go, we've got this great technology, here's the ROI, here's the reason you'd use it. And they'll manage that for those organizations. Because honestly, almost every organization that I've spoken to in the last six months has told us, yeah, we're investigating AI, we're investigating Gen AI, those sorts of things. And we'd say, okay, toward what end? Most of them honestly would cross their eyes a little bit and they're like, we're not sure yet. We just know we need to know. And so we're in kind of a great learning mode, which is ironic considering all of this AI has really learned things. It's not programmed things like those of us more, let's say, experienced. We're used to programming systems to do things, prescriptively saying, if, then, then this. Whereas now, we're teaching it so that when it is stuck with information that's never heard of, it can fall back on that training and go, okay, I think this is the right answer. Generative, it can come up with those answers. So did that answer your question? I mean, there's so much information in there that's really fascinating to people. Like for instance, another fun stat is people evaluating AI are overwhelmingly worried about security and data privacy because they keep hearing on the news, this group's being sued and this, and it was built using this copyrighted material. And that is a challenge and all of those CX professionals have a duty to protect their own company and protect their client's data. So a big part of where we spend a lot of our time with AI is not building generative AI. Honestly, not that hard. There's so many good base and foundational models out there. It's not that much to go. It's what kind of bias detection, guardrails, security, data protection that you put in is really, in my opinion, what's going to differentiate people. Then you have to deal with scale. So as they're thinking about this, when you're talking to a company with 100 people in their contact center, don't take this the wrong way. That's not a huge scaling problem. But when you're talking to a BPO that has 150 ,000 people around the world and they want to make sure they're giving singular answers, that's where AI is really going to help a lot of people is it it'll scale up and provide that replacement to mundaneity. And you want that to be consistent and safe. So, you know, Doug, that statistic of 45 percent are concerned about exposing their company to security compliance risks based on Gen AI and that sort of thing. There's something else that they need to think about, which is that hacking and a lot of these breaches that happen through social engineering are happening in contact centers. And AI represents both an opportunity and a risk. The is, opportunity first off, if you can shift a lot of mundane conversation with no rights off to an AI, then that basically becomes unhackable until we figure out a way to hack that. And that leaves that super agent that we've talked about, they can be that line of defense. You know, if you think about what happened with MGM, where they did a social engineering and they skipped their own zero trust process. And you can't emphasize that enough. This wasn't the technology thing. This was just people that get too comfortable. They hear what they expect to hear and then break out of the process. You could put an AI in there whose only job is to listen to those conversations and basically just say, nope, you can't say that and just stop the call or, oh, you're trying to get this person access, but I don't see where you follow the zero trust process. So, no, I'm not going to let you do that until you follow the process. And that might seem like a trivial thing and it'll probably piss a bunch of people off because, you know, you got a machine saying, no, you can't do that. But think about how much effort and angst and just challenges that would have saved somebody like MGM.
The Crossover NBA Show with Chris Mannix
A highlight from Harden Reports To Camp & Nuggets/Lakers Beef
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SI Media Podcast
A highlight from Bears Bright Spots & Week Five Picks
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SI Media Podcast
A highlight from Bryan Curtis on Sports Media + Traina Thoughts
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Telecom Reseller
A highlight from CXPA Marks CX Day, A Global CX Celebration, Podcast
"This is Doug Green, and I'm the publisher of Telecom Reseller. And I'm very pleased to have with us today, Graham Clark of Amcor CX. Graham, thank you for joining me today. Hey, it's great, Doug. Good to be here. And we also have with us Patty Soltis of Upwork and also of the Florida Network and CXPA. Patty, thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. I'm delighted to be here. And we have with us once again our friend, Mark Daly, who's helped us with many different things, been involved in many projects and also a co -host at the MSP Expo. Mark, thank you for joining us this afternoon. Always a pleasure, Doug. Great to be here. Well, you know, we were just talking about before the podcast began about this is sort of a pleasure to talk about a fresh topic, at least fresh in the last few weeks. The topic of CX and how, you know, this is such an important issue, actually, for so many of our readers, even if day to day, that's not always the central part of their day job or their mission or what they're thinking about and so on. So we're going to be diving into that. We're going to be talking about CX. We're going to be talking about something called CX day and something called CXPA. But, you know, agreement, Patty, let's first just take a look at what CX means. What do we really mean when we're talking about CX? I would take that, Patty. I would say that. Yeah, I'll take that one. Customer experience, when we talk about that, that's every experience and interaction that a customer has with an organization. It starts from when the customer first realizes or has the awareness of some kind of need or want and goes through that entire cycle, like everything in between, coming out on the other end where hopefully the customers ending up in an advocacy state. It's everything that flows through all of those pieces. It's funny because a lot of people will typecast customer experiences, customer service, or typecast it as the user experience. It's that and everything more. It's the marketing that happens. It's the technology that they use as they go through this. It's the digital contact that they have. It's literally every interaction that that customer has with the organization as they go through that whole customer journey with it. And the thing I always like to add in when I talk about customer experience is the importance that customer experience can have to an organization. Because when an organization is strong in customer experience and they understand how important that customer is to them, they end up with just much better financial results. And the other thing that always gets me about this is when somebody asks me, why is customer experience important? I always want to say to them, because your business can't exist without a customer. Without customers, you don't have revenue. Without revenue, you don't have a business. So it makes perfectly good sense to pay attention to the customer. And it's kind of interesting that it's so obvious and yet, you know, it's, I like what you're saying that you're basically telling me, because it's ubiquitous inside the company, it needs to be ubiquitous and everyone's job inside the company. It sounds like everybody should be thinking about how their work inside a firm or an organization impacts CX. Yeah, that's really true. I've actually seen some other podcasts and speaking engagements and things like that where people, we've played the game where give me a job and I'll tell you how it's connected to CX. Because there is literally every role inside an organization on that customer experience. And that's, you know, some of it's direct, some of it's indirect. Some of it is in how a product is designed. Some of it is in how feedback is taken in. Some of it is in what kind of setting does someone work in. But there is a way to connect every single part and every single person in an organization back to the customer experience. Now, with that said, what is CXPA? Maybe I'll take that. So CXPA is the CX professionals organization. So in addition to customer experience, which Paddy defined, right, which is the customer's perception of how they relate to an organization. There's a thing called CX and CX is or CX management is kind of the discipline. So about 20 years or so. Some people started to put kind of methods and practices around how do you make this CX thing work. And then, of course, 2008, Apple changed the world with the launch of the iPhone and real mobile became a thing and smart apps and social media, I mean, all that stuff. Right. So so CXPA is the global professional organization that sits at the heart is think of us as the IEEE of the CX movement. And so CXPA is an organization that exists globally. We own the most important CX professional certification, the CXP, which Paddy and I are both CXP certified. That's the CX, CXB, what does CXB stand for? Certified customer experience professional. Yes, they get one of those. But it is the most widespread and recognized customer experience certification in the world. And so CXPA's role is to be the gathering place for information, networking, meeting other like minded professionals. We like to say that the CX world is like a cult or religion. And if you believe, you believe. And as Paddy said, you know, fundamentally, companies survive unhappy customers and we all have customer experiences that we rave about. We're raving fans of people. I mean, I'm a raving Amazon fan and Amex is a big fandom of mine in the sense of they're one of my brands. And then we all have customer experiences. We tell our friends about it on the other side, like dealing with our media company about a trouble problem. Or you mentioned this was coming out at the same time as the MGM hack and all the misery that people went through somewhat at the part of the company, somewhat not the company's ability. But people will talk about what happened on their once in a lifetime vacation to Vegas. Right. For a long time to come. And so how do companies recover from that? So CXPA is just the gathering place, the professional association that sits at the heart. We sometimes call it the heartbeat of the CX movement on a global basis. Graham, you actually have CX in the name of the company M -Corp CX. We do. So M -Corp CX is we are a boutique CX consulting company. We were we were founded at what's generally recognized as the birth of the modern CX movement, which is 2002. CX has two birthdays like the king of England or queen of England, king of England now. One is around 1968 when a bunch of crazy marketing people came up with a thing called C -SAT for the American automotive industry. Right. They were called J .D. Power. And that worked very well until a guy by the name of Fred Reichheld in Bain decided C -SAT wasn't a good enough score. And he came up with a thing called net promoter score that people might have heard of thrown around. And Bain created a piece of software, floated that company out as a company called Satmetrics in 2002. And the two other big technology players in the movement, Qualtrics and Medallia were formed at the same time. And then that date is kind of one of those change dates where the last 20 years have been the movement. So in the last five, six, seven years, where every technology company, integrator, agency, BPO consulting company have formed a CX practice. And every company has realized this is a foundational thing that impacts their long term success. You know, most of those companies got into the business the old fashioned way by buying something like us. So in North America, we're the last of the companies. We're about 40 people strong. And so we have been we've been a core part of this of this journey for the last 21 years. And it's certainly an honor to be to be still here fighting the good fight with, for example, a company up there in the northwest where you're from. Microsoft is one of our biggest clients helping Satya Nadella move that company from a product obsession to a customer obsession. Intel, which has a big operation of Portland, we were talking about similarly big client, a lot of pharmaceutical clients, life sciences clients, financial services clients. So we're so it's what we do. We're not just a practice attached to another consulting company who will leave the CX movement the day it becomes not quite so popular. That's the reason and rationale that we exist and all we do. Patty, could you connect the dots for us between Upwork and also the work you do on CX and for CXPA? Sure. So just in case people don't know, Upwork is an online platform at the tech company. And what we do is we match organizations with freelancers. So we are a global organization. We have clients and we have freelancers literally all over the world. What we do inside the organization is we really work on what kind of experience are we providing to our clients and to our freelancers? And this gets connected on many, many levels. There's the the analytics group, there's the product marketing group, there's the user experience and user experience research group. Then there's the customer experience division. And we all co -mingle with each other, taking a look to see what can we do to improve that? The interesting thing is that when successful organizations are working inside a customer experience, what they do is they connect what's happening in that customer experience world and they connect it back to financial metrics. So one of the big things that we do is we take a go in and take a look at what is happening with churn and retention inside the organization. And we will take a look at that piece. Then we'll go in and take a look at what it is the customer saying, what it is that they need. It's called voice of the customer. And we will co -mingle all of that data to come together. And then we can go back to the organization and say, if the platform can do A, B and C, we think retention can improve by X and that will ultimately overall improve our profitability by this much money. So that's really what we do inside the organization. CXPA has been really good. CX has been around for, as Graham said, about 20 years now, but it's still very much a growing field. You look at how long other parts of organizations have been around, things like finance, things like HR, things like marketing, innovation. Those kind of areas have been around a lot longer than the CX division. So the CXPA really comes into pretty much our organization and every organization. And one of the big things they offer is professional development for us. And they offer that through a variety of different things. There's a really great mentor mentee program inside of the CXPA. There's a lot of webinars that are offered. There's the local networks that are out there for people to mix and mingle. And there's an annual event that the CXPA does. So there's a wide variety of different things that organizations can become involved with, inside the CXPA to help that development grow and to really help use CX as a tool to drive the organization. So Mark, you have had a front row seat for a long time in sort of both worlds, in the technology world and the CX world in large and small companies. You've with worked firms to try to organize both sides of that house to work together better and to have better outcomes. So what can you tell us about what this all looks like from the point of view, especially of the IT people that we reach? Sure, I appreciate that, Doug. Yeah, so I've got a technical background, former engineer, but also former sales manager, professional services consultant, that type of world. And one of the reasons why we're here today is I met these folks at the Florida CXPA and was very intrigued because customer experience to me has been around a long time. And using technology and doing it the right way gives that great experience to keep that customer for a long time. And we used to call it the lifetime value of a customer. And if you work with big, bold and old companies like I have in my career, some of the larger ones, they look at generational value of a customer. So not only did I capture you as a client and a customer, I'm now focused on your children as a customer. So I've been with the same insurance company for 40 years. My three children use the same insurance company as I do. And so it was a natural transition. Not all companies have that culture of CX. And so when I saw the advertisement on LinkedIn for Florida CX having a local meeting, I jumped on board and I was fortunate enough to that white paper that I did on AI last February, that was read by several people. So these kind folks asked me to present on AI and really around the customer support, autonomous support using AI. And we just did that a couple of weeks ago. And so I'm very much a big proponent of what they're doing. There's a CX day globally that's happening. I think it's on Tuesday, October 3rd. And these are the reasons why I want to introduce you to these guys, because it's all about the customer. And I learned that early on in my career. And they're the ones that pay you. Your managers come and go. It's about the customer. So I was at the point one time in my career, we used to use a secret shopper and we would call up an agent, not to try to trick them to try to get valid answers, but record the conversation. And then sometimes it was a horrible conversation. They just were not prepared correctly enough. But then I would play that for an executive in the company and I would say, OK, this is how your current state. Imagine technology. This is what it would be like using technology and IVR, for example. And there's a lot of different ways to use technology. And I mentioned AI a moment ago, but there's a lot of different ways to use technology to enhance the customer experience. And that's what I'm all about. So I'll turn it back to you. Thank you for inviting me. No, no. You know, this is the type of thing that I'm hoping to facilitate with this podcast that to connect. They're not necessarily separate worlds, but I think in large companies, they're often separate divisions, people reporting to separate organizations and getting it to work together. Patty made a marvelous point about it being really every or every person in the organization from the newest hire all the way up to the CEO. You know, whether you're washing the windows or or, you know, running the accounting or whatever you're doing, even if it's not customer facing, you're facing the customer. It seems to me, so, you know, so with that said, you know, I want to hear, you know, from from you guys, you know, we have we have a large community of carriers and companies out there that serve certain types of customers. The relationship has always been very stable, but it hasn't been poor. But they're now having to make a transition to probably a more customer facing, more active role in talking to their customer and new technologies, new things, introducing new connectivity and so on. And maybe you guys could tell me a little bit about how do you make that transition to to making sure CX remains there as you roll out, roll out the new technologies and the new products? That's a really interesting question, Doug, because a lot of people for a lot of people, it's a shiny object when a new technology of some sort comes along. And the most important thing that an organization can do is look at what is their strategy and how does the technology fit into their strategy? And the unfortunate part is that what most organizations do is they do it the other way around. There's something out there. It's a new, bright, shiny object and everybody wants to have it. But how does it fit inside the organization? And it's really important for organizations to be aware of what customer experience can do for them. I read a study recently and it said that 80 percent of customers will stay with an organization when they have a good customer experience. Eighty six percent of customers will leave an organization after one poor experience. There's a lot at risk there. I loved listening to Mark talk about the 40 years that he's been with his insurance company and now his children are part of. And that's what organizations should be striving for. It's a pretty well -known number. It costs five times more to acquire a customer than it does to keep a customer. So for an organization to be able to do what Mark's insurance company has done, that's really pretty valuable to an organization. So when you're looking at those technology pieces and you're considering how are you going to leverage A .I., how are you going to really make that part of your organization? You have to look at how does it fit in your company's strategy? How does it fit in how you're going to acquire and retain customers and really drive that customer experience? That's a slightly different spin on that, which I agree with everything you said. So thinking about, you know, the telecom reseller audience. Right. I mean, I come out of that world. Here's working with cable and wireless AT &T. I built I built a telecom reseller, which was a partner with AT &T and SBC and Verizon and Cisco and a boatload of other people supporting small businesses. And so thinking about it from a company in that market, bringing bringing new technology to market rather than inside. So the absolute foundational essence of customer experience is to understand your customer. And one of the biggest challenges that organizations that we work with from from tiny companies, like I mentioned, Guadalupe Valley Telecommunications down in southern Texas, amazing organization, very much a rural telecommunication provider to huge companies that we work with is how they manage. Customer change and customer expectation change. So one of the biggest challenges a lot of companies have got, Mark, you mentioned being with the same insurance carrier for 40 years. When you turn that on the insurance company, one of the things a lot of companies struggle with is that their customers changed in those 40 years. I mean, look at demographic shifts in the United States. Right. We're eight to 10 years away from being a non -primarily white nation. Right. Those things matter when you're a company trying to do business. So understanding the changing expectations of your customers that one day after Apple makes their new iPhone announcement a few weeks ago, everybody's running in going, why can't you do this? Amazon does this. Everybody's like, why can't you do this? And so and you're, you know, Gen Z is acting differently to your baby boomers. So customer personas, customer segments are becoming much more segmented. And you need to think about how do you deliver that magical, personalized experience to that customer as they change. An example of one of our clients over the years who's a retailer that I won't mention because they let us is one of the things they saw happening was the aging of the population. So they sell a lot of electronics products. And so they realized that their customers who used to be, you know, 30 year old, mostly nifty guys to be brutal about it 30 years ago. Right. Who were into the tech stuff are now 60. Right. And they're trying to figure out what to do with their smart TV that's on the wall that they have integrated with FaceTime on their Apple iPhone so they could talk to their grandkids on the other side of the country. And it don't work. Right. And so how do you service that? So I think understanding how your customers are changing, how their expectations are changing and how do you bring all the components to the table to serve that and then really getting into the telecom world. Right. Some of these things are foundational. Companies are focused on the nifty self -service chatbot leveraging chat, GPT, whatever other words you can come out of. Guess what happens when the phones don't work? When the customer can't get through, when the hold time is inadequate. Right. When the IVR scripting in a medical business takes you through nine options before they say, by the way, if you're having an emergency dial 911 as the seventh or eighth or ninth option as opposed to the first one. Right. So so things like, you know, voice and even the other types of telecom interaction and the connectivity and the service and quality of service are absolutely foundational to a company even having a hope of doing all these more esoteric things. And so smart companies recognize how their customers are changing, recognize what their customers want, including things like different languages of service. Right. We have a bank that basically 25 percent of their calls are now answered in non -English languages. Portuguese for Brazilians, Russians for Russians, Spanish. Right. And Indian, I mean, in Hindi for us, they have to service customers because that's what their customers want. So I think starting with the who is the customer? What does the customer want? How's that changing? And then how do you use what you have as a company in order to connect with those customers as they change and drive those segments is really the essence. And that is not easy to do, but it is straightforward and it is basic and it is, you know, eat your vegetables, exercise, don't drink too much, don't smoke. Right. And you will live a relatively long and hopefully relatively happy life. And I think CX is a lot like that. Telecom means everything to us. We can't exist without it. Good point. It's all digital. Everything's digital. It's all bonding together.
The Bitboy Crypto Podcast
A highlight from Congress Demands Bitcoin ETF NOW! (Gary Gensler Accusations)
"Good morning. It is time to discover crypto. Today is September 27th. It's my late mother's birthday today and it is 11 .31 Eastern Standard Time. How are you doing today? We got Tim and someone else at Andrews, BJ on the ones and twos today. How are y 'all doing? I'm doing fantastic. Great, great morning so far. Excited about this show. Excited to have BJ sitting in our production seat. Looking forward to it. Yeah, BJ. BJ, how was Vegas? BJ just got from Vegas for Magic the Gathering. How was it? I mean, it was epic. It was fun. Were you the one hacking the casinos for $100 million? No, but I do have some very funny footage when we went to the MGM. Okay. We might do something with that later. All right. Did you jump into the lion pit and you rode a lion? I don't want PETA coming after me. All right, guys, make sure you hit the like button if you haven't already. We're going to talk about Gensler's speech in front of Congress, what's going on. We got a couple clips from that as well. We also have a breakdown of his speech. We're going to talk about Bitcoin jumping in price. We're going to talk about CCP. We're going to talk about Binance as well and Ethereum staking as well. All right, let's just get right into it, folks. All right, so we do have, you know, Gary, he's in front of Congress right now. There's a harsh notice to the SEC from a large group of US representatives led by Tom Emmer, approved Bitcoin spot ETFs, immediately. He said, I like to think there was an exclamation point after the end of that as well. Representatives Mike Flood, Tom Emmer, Richie Torres, and Wiley Nickel. What the heck is up with the name Wiley Nickel? That is a cartoon character that's going to shoot you at the saloon, correct? That or it's a superhero's, you know, real name. I would take superhero sidekicks, real name. You know, Batman and his sidekick, Wiley Nickel, because Robin fell down the shaft. But no, yeah, Wiley, we love Wiley, I guess, maybe, I don't know. They sent a letter to Gensler on Tuesday arguing that a regulated spot Bitcoin ETF would increase investor protection. Congress has the duty to ensure that the SEC approves investment products that meet the requirements established by Congress. Here are requirements. Okay, crypto ETF fits that. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if we can prove that you're not doing your job representatives here, or you're not doing your job, SEC. The court specifically addressed the SEC's disparate treatment of spot Bitcoin ETFs and similar funds based on a regulatory approved futures contracts. Representatives point out this inconsistency saying a spot Bitcoin ETP is no different than a Bitcoin futures ETP. Therefore, the SEC's current stance is untenable going forward. So that was the statement. Okay, then. So what did the SEC say in response? Well, the SEC is delaying a decision on Art21's proposed spot Bitcoin ETF until January 2024. They also postponed the decision on GlobalX's Bitcoin ETF until October. This isn't saying a no, this is just a classic kick the can down the road here. So Cebo BZX had earlier proposed a rule change aiming for approval listing of the Art21's ETF, although they submitted April 25th. It was not published for comment until May 15th. They then designated a longer approval period on June 15th. Well, you fast forward to today, they're expected to approve or reject within 181 days or by November 11th. However, the regular setting is current. Finally, it is allowed to extend the approval deadline by an additional 60 days. So not only do they get to increase the amount of time, hey, guys, we need 180 days. All right, we're on 179 days. Oh, yeah, I need another 60 days. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. As such, they have now postponed until January 10th, 2024. Many asset management firms submitted similar filings for ETFs after BlackRock submitted its own application in mid -June. However, ARK submitted considerably earlier. They can only delay until January of next year where it can delay some of these other ones until March of next year. But then you know what happens on February 28th? Wait, is next year a leap year? February 29th, what's going to happen? Oh, we need another 60 days. So even though you're seeing March 24 is the latest deadline there, I wouldn't be surprised if March 2024 gets increased. If I have a video clip from the SEC hearing chat, they can hear it, right? The audience can hear? Yeah, we can play around or if you send it to me. Okay, well, I have to hit refresh here. This is breaking. I haven't had time to send it to you. This is just getting uploaded within the last hour. This one, Matt will we know? Do we know? Let's try. Let's try.
The Financial Guys
A highlight from Rising Auto Theft Rates: Urban Consequences and Solutions
"Well, you see how easy this is now. Now you look at how they move money around and how the in your face money laundering folks, this is what this is. This is corruption and fraud. Some of the Bidens are great at the money laundering part. They got 20 shell corporations, but guess who's getting the guess who's going to be controlling the funding to rebuild Ukraine. We pay to destroy it. And guess what? The Hillary Clinton Foundation gets paid the rebuild Welcome right. to the podcast. We are in the same studio today, which is kind of nice. So thanks again for downloading. If you're just listening, if you're watching or watching the clips, uh, thanks for watching as well. And just for a quick mention, so I don't forget, if you haven't downloaded our app yet, I'm noticing we're getting a lot of downloads and the cool thing is when the morning Mike's program is going Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I'm the, seeing the view count go up and up and up, which is awesome. So I know we're only, you know, we're still in the dozens. I'd like to get into the hundreds and eventually thousands, um, but it's a cool program. If you haven't listened to it, it's a quick 15 minutes to quick by morning, run down three days a week of the top five topics, three minutes each. Do a great job. They do an awesome job when we're, when we fill in the stuff. We screw the whole thing up. Yes. Yeah. We, we blow the whole, the whole, uh, the schedule, but, um, but they do awesome and they're funny. I love it. It's a quick, you know, down and dirty 15 minutes, top five items of the day. And now you get your day started off on the, uh, they, you know, I think on the right foot, they were saying this week, like, Oh, it's so negative all the time, but I think they're hilarious. They take the negative stuff that's going on, but of course the negative stuff isn't the news. Yeah. Yeah. That's what we're seeing. I mean, carjackings again, Rochester had another, you know, record night. I mean, it's incredible how that was going on. And so it's amazing is, is like the Democrats just sit around and watch this happen in every city and every city. It's insane. Yeah. I sent you an article earlier this morning about Philadelphia. Let's see. I can find it. It's, uh, not that it's anything out of, you know, anything that we don't know about, but let's see here. Philadelphia swarmed by alleged juvenile. Come on, come on. Juvenile looters targeting the Apple store, Lulu lemon and footlocker. Yeah. So, cause they're starving. They're starving. They just, just need a little piece of ham and some Turkey. They need clothes and food. That's, that's only fair. I mean, they, you know, and once again, I know we've all heard this joke, but footlocker is not missing one pair of working boots. No, no, all the Nike's, all the Nike. Yeah. Well, some of those Nike's, I mean, Oh my God. Crazy. You know, talking about like, you know, thousands of dollars for a pair of, thousands, thousands of dollars. I was talking to my daughter and she said to one, one of her friends has a, as a pair of shoes were $1 ,200. I'll never forget the most expensive pair of shoes I ever bought. We were just starting a business. This was like 30 years ago now. Right. Crazy to think. And I remember somebody told me that maybe my dad was like, you got to have a decent pair of shoes. Right. And so I went up and I bought a pair of Justin and Murphy's. They're like 120 bucks at the time. Yeah. The most money I have ever spent on a pair of shoes. Now boots, I've spent more money on since because boots are more expensive, you know, hunting boots. Well, there's a purpose to them. I still don't spend more money on shoes. Like I'm wearing like Skechers or like $40. Like some of these Nike's $500. You can't tell me you're running faster. It's different when you're going to go out and buy a pair of like waders or something. You're going to use them. First of all, you're going to use them for the next 30 years. Right. And there's a purpose to them, right? Like, okay, they're more expensive, but I can walk through the water with them. Right. But if I bought like, if I had five, 600 hour pairs of shoes, I'd be afraid to leave the house. I wouldn't, I wouldn't get off the carpeting. Well, they're targeting the Apple store here, Glenn, because they'll buy jobs. And that's the only way to get a job is to make sure you've got an Apple iPhone. So it'll be like Chicago. We talked about this the other week with, with, uh, with Mike Speraza, Chicago is now forced to open or, or just talking about opening, you know, a, a government run grocery store in the inner city because they've all that. Well, they're going to, so they're going to, they're going to, the plan is to fight the communism with more kind of communism, right? That's going to work really well. But could you imagine how inefficient, first of all, Walmart's pulled out, Costco's pulled out, all the stores have pulled out because now target, have you heard targets now closing stores across the country? So target is now going through and discussing all the stores across the country, liberal target, liberal target. They put a black lives matter that they ripped down the smash of the window. I thought that'd be some sort of a shield or that we're just going to put up this, uh, this plywood and we're going to spray black lives matter on it. Hashtag hashtag BLM. And we'll be safe as they rip it out and use that same plywood to smash the window with. It's pathetic. There'll be nothing left in these inner cities. The problem is when it starts to spill over into the, into the, Oh yeah. This is, this is where it gets ugly. Well, they want it. That's what they want. That's, that's why people like, uh, the governor of New York, uh, you know, Kathy, the ice queen, Kathy Hochul is, is, you know, they first tried the push for section eight housing in the suburbs because that was only fair. Yeah. Now they couldn't get that through because the people in the suburbs are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Now they're busing in illegal immigrants in the middle of the night. And I tell you something, if these Democrats like Mark Poland cars were proud of what they were doing, they would have a welcoming party at noon at noon, high noon. They'd have a press conference welcoming our newest community members off the bus so that the whole community could see these family units that are getting off. You got the husband, the wives, the two kids, you know, the things that we see in our country, right? No, it's not happening. They're bringing them in at two o 'clock in the morning. So nobody sees, they're all, they're all 23 year old males, right? Or 18 to 25 year old males. Some of which are from the Congo. I don't know about the, uh, you know, the, some of the social norms in the Congo, but I'm just thinking that maybe they're a little bit different than the Western world. I don't know. I'm just thinking maybe not. Maybe they're exactly like us. I don't know. But they're exactly like us. Why would they want to come here? Why are they aspiring to come here? I don't know. Anyway, it's a fentanyl fentanyl up again, by the way, there was another report. I think it was on a Fox news. Well, good for the Republicans. I mean, at least part of them, I should say good for the five or six Republicans that are the extreme right wing, according to the media, that's holding this garbage up. No, shut the government down, shut it down, shut it down until there's no more money. Take the money, go into Ukraine and send it to Texas, which they did right to the border, which they didn't do last time. Right. Kept it open. That's what do you need? What do you need? We're out of control. The founding fathers gave the power of the purse to Congress and the, and the Pentagon, the Pentagon goes, yeah, you know what? We're just going to exempt Ukraine funding from the budget. So ha ha. We just went over 33 trillion. If you go online and look at the clock, it's moving fast, right? So we're on our way to 34 or 35. Can you even see the numbers anymore? They just blur blur now. So, so fast. Oh no. And, and good news, by the way, we're refinancing this debt at 5 % now, not at 1 % or zero like we were doing. Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. Yeah. It'd be great. Yeah. The fence talk about keeping rates higher for longer. I don't know. They're not going to be able to do that. They'll be cutting interest rates by next year. Mark by where? And the number one reason I say that is because when you talk to every economist, I say, that's not going to happen. And they are typically wrong. So if you take the, it's like saying betting against the casino, it's like saying, you know what? I don't think MGM is going to make money in the sporting books next year. Ma, they're going to figure out a way to make money. They'll rechange the lines, right? Well, you, all you need to do is look at it and get a bunch of economists in a room and ask them where they think the market's going to be and then do just the opposite and you would be way better. Yeah. Pretty much that's usually the way to go. No doubt about it. So the, the, the, the Pelosi, we were talking earlier about the Pelosi stock trader. Yeah. You can follow online. Now, some of these folks, we did the game show game last week. We talked about the, uh, the net worth. I picked the poor ones too. They were like 23, 21, you know, $20 million. Some of these folks are amazing. I mean, really just, you know, the wizards of smart on some of these are just really, timing is impeccable up here. This is somebody who is selling some software that I'll track it, which you can, you, you've pointed out, you can get it for free online, but, but the, the numbers are really astonishing. This Democrat Senator sold her Aspen vacation home for $25 million. That was just after she sold her Lake Tahoe vacation house for $36 million. Well, by the way, why, why do they own these big $25, $36 million homes? Well, a big, big part of it is because the taxation of it, right? So a Feinstein who's telling you your ordinary income tax rates are too low. She's shifting that to a capital asset, which is going to create a capital gain in the future or no gain. Or no gain. I mean, they're 10, 10 31. This is why when Donald Trump looked at Hillary Clinton right in the eye and said, you will not get rid of the carry interest deduction and you know it because all of your, I use it, of course, all of her bigger donors donate money to Hillary Clinton. And this is exactly the truth, right? They will never get rid of some of these things. Like they talked about, we're going to get rid of the 10 31 exchanges. Yaha. Yeah. Uh huh. Yeah. So the big developer strokes a giant check to the, to the Democrats off the table. Let's listen to her success though. Amazing. A Senator sold her Aspen vacation home for $25 million just after she sold her Lake Tahoe vacation house for $36 million. Only two years earlier, Diane Feinstein has been a member of the political scene for 32 years and her salary is only $130 ,000 per 130 grand a year. Now it's more now. That's a little bit dated, but it's up, it's up to probably 180 now. But, but listen to this. First of all, if it was up to 580, you're not buying $23 million homes, $36 million homes. No, no, we're going to put in multiple homes. We're going to, we're going to put the Paul Pelosi onto our research committee. You make a million dollars a year. First of all, most of, most business owners that make that kind of money, they didn't make it throughout their whole life, right? They didn't start making a million dollars at 20 years old. They started making a million dollars at 50 years old and it took 30 years to get to that point. Right? So my point is, you're not at a million dollars a year at age 50. If you did it the right way, the hard way, and you did it yourself, you're still not affording a $23 million home, right? Multiple ones. Yeah. Multiple, multiple. Right. Those aren't even her primary residence. Those are her vacation homes. She lives in, she lives in California. Listen to this though. And it's, it's all of them. It's all of them now. This is a, this is from Nancy Pelosi, stock trader. Uh, this is a tweet, uh, a Twitter feed. You can follow Pelosi tracker is what it's supposed to track or underline or something like that. You'll find it. Anyway, uh, three weeks ago, sitting politician bet against the U S economy so far. He's been right. Tom Carper bought $45 ,000 of PSQ and inverse ETF on the tech sector on eight 23, August 23rd. Since then he's plus 3 % while the market is negative 4%. Go figure. Wow. Go figure. Man, these guys are so good. Yeah. And they're not by, they're, I mean, these are, that's some pretty technical strategy. You started getting into options strategies and stuff. I mean, yeah. Yeah. These guys have become very, very slick. It's not just about buying a, you see, it used to be, okay, I'm going to buy X, Y, Z. Then I'm going to vote for or against something. You know, I'm going to short the stock and then I'm going to vote against them for both that, that, that. So the stock goes down or I'm going to vote for something, knowing that it will benefit the company. The stock will go up and in a sense front running. No, they're, they're in the options strategies now. They're in the market. Yeah. They're doing butterfly spreads. Yeah. Crazy stuff going. They're very sophisticated. They shouldn't be allowed to two things. When you go into Congress, I, you know, I would love to have a Congress person run on or present around the following platform, right? Number one, term limits, term limits, top of the list. Number two, though, while you're in Congress for the eight years, or wherever we allow you to serve 10 years, 12 years, whatever it is, you could not invest in a stock market at all. All your investments are frozen or your choices, a model, some kind of a model liquidated go to cash, or you could buy the fidelity balance to counter. You could buy the, you could buy the T -rope price, you know, target retire, whatever, you know, or you go to goes into a blind something or other where you have no idea. Right. It just goes into what you picked a one through five tolerance for risk and somebody else invest. Maybe it's just broad indexing. Maybe that's it. Right. Something that doesn't allow this kind of garbage to go on where, you know, they buy, you know, Tesla stock and then approve a huge, you know, oh, we're going to, guess what? We're going to build a, you know, for government funded battery stations all the country. Of course, Elon comes out and goes, we already got those, you idiots. I did that like four years ago, you morons. Amazing what Elon can do and what the, what the government can. Going back to target for just a second, not to digress, but I found WGRZ, thankfully came up with a list of the, uh, the target stores that will be closing, Mike, the full list of locations all in, all in Republican run. You'll be shocked. Yeah. Yeah. Right in the, uh, the thriving, the, uh, you know, thriving, the Minneapolis, uh, location, the retailer said the decision, the close was really difficult. I wonder if that was after half. That was the one they put the BLM on. Yeah. Oh, that was the one they put the sign on that said, please don't burn our store down. We love you. I hashtag BLM lit it on fire. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Uh, let's see. I'm shocked though. I wouldn't, I'm surprised you wouldn't stay. I mean, you know, like just collecting, you love them. You love, you support them. This is what you supported. Remember you, you, you raised money, you gave money. Yeah. And guess what they did with that money. They agitators hired to whip up people in the community to smash and burn down your store. You idiots. So there you go. There you go. Nice, nice work. What else do you think, Mike? Uh, New York city's East Harlem neighborhood. That's going to be one that's goes down. I wonder why. Chicago, San Francisco for sure. San Fran. Yeah. San Fran. Uh, by the way, before I forget San Fran, Democrat San Francisco mayor, announces plan to require drug testing, which is good in an effort to, if you're going to receive homeless benefits. Right. But the funny thing was in this same passage, they're going to Texas to try to recruit police officers. The funny thing is is that the people they sent from San Francisco to try to recruit people. They didn't come back. They defected like North Koreans. Some of them got jobs. They get over the wall. They come out, they get over the wall. It was hilarious. No, they didn't go back. Well, the other five stores, Mike, three in Portland, Oregon and two in Seattle, five, three in Portland. They're pulling out of Portland together. All of these inner cities folks will be food deserts. You're going to hear that term. It'll be business deserts. It'll be nothing. Well, business deserts, nothing left, but there'll be, but target, don't forget target. Does target sell food? Yeah. Well, yeah. They sell food. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Well, I don't go on target. So Walmart I know does Costco for sure. Costco is a food store. I don't think target is as big as Walmart as far as like fresh fruit, but definitely frozen food, all that kind of stuff. You know, aisles of pop and water and chips and right, right, right. And all that kind of stuff. But you can definitely frozen food. You can buy bulk frozen food there. So, so there's going to be food deserts, all over the place, business deserts, whatever you want to call them. You know, it's amazing because you know, the, there's no policing. And the sad thing is that is the problem. It's not, there's no policing. I shouldn't say that. Excuse me. No, you're policing your asses off. I get it. There's no ability. There's no prosecution. There's no bill. You guys are arresting people, putting them in and they go right back on the street. They're getting, they're getting appearance tickets. It's a joke. Your point is no, there is no policing anymore because of the system, the Democrats put together where the police officers aren't going to bother. If you're a police officer and you know that somebody is going to be this, this carjacking or whatever is robbery. And you know that there's a potential, you're going to get an altercation where you're in New York state. There's two police officers that have been brought up on charges recently with almost a hundred percent chance that if you do catch that person, that person will be right back. Yeah. A hundred percent. Why would you bother? Why would you bother? You're not going to put your life in line. No way. You want to go home to see your wife and kids too, and your mother or your husband or whatever. You want to be able to spend your Christmas with your family. Why would you do that? And they know that, right? The Democrats know that. This is, you can't be this stupid. I mean, who allows these people to go right back on the streets and say, this is a good idea without correcting this right away. You can say, okay, bail reform. Our intentions were one thing, but when you look at the fact that in New York state, we are now breaking records in towns like Rochester and Buffalo for the most amount of vehicles being stolen. We can say, okay, look at bail reform, put it in place. It clearly did not work. It's been a total disaster. These towns have turned to shit. We absolutely need to go back in the other direction. They're not doing that. They don't care. They want to, and they're doubling down, tripling down on it, tripling down. We invited this liberal on, you actually were on the show with him and he said, things are actually safer since bail reform. That's what his argument was. His argument was, and by the way, his argument was if we have even less police officers, cities like Buffalo will get safer. Well the thought was less police officers, less arrests. Less arrests means less crime. Dude, you got the whole thing backwards, bro. And not only that, but now we know that, right? Now we know, now you can, I mean, literally auto thefts are up 360 % in Rochester. They're not up 3%. You can say, well, you know, in Buffalo and we're in second place. And they can't play, they can't play in COVID. They're trying to like, well, it was a lockdown. People were at pent up, whatever. Remember that was the, that was the reason for the rioting and the ballooning and burning like, well, people had a lot of pent up. We probably should have locked them down. That was a little bit of the reason for the increase in suicides. You guys, you guys increased suicides because you locked kids in their homes, but it wasn't the reason that they went and decided to steal Nike sneakers from a footlocker. So check this out. Speaking of COVID, this is huge. This is, I don't know if you saw this or not, but this is absolutely ginormously huge. Dr. Fauci was smuggled into CIA headquarters without a record of entry where he participated in the analysis to influence the agency's COVID -19 investigation according to the house select subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic. Did he need to do much with these left -wing CIA agents? Probably not. No, no, no. That's what they're smuggling him in for. Well they smuggled him in because they didn't want anybody to know that he was part of the PSYOP operation, which was hydroxychloric. By the way, the I think it was a Mayo clinic and some other hospitals now have come out as well as the CDC and said hydroxychloroquine, yes, indeed is an effective treatment for COVID. Oh, by the way, ivermectin also an effective treatment. The CDC now approving that. Now mind you, we're going to keep in mind that if there was any other treatments that couldn't get the emergency use authorization for these vaccines that clearly don't work. Amazingly, I'm still seeing people online go signing off my sixth booster on our way for the sixth shot, proud to get our sixth shot. How about how about one the other day, local left -wing nut job got her sixth booster shot, six shot and she still got COVID and then she said, well, I was so good hiding and it got all my shots and then I went to a concert and I got it at this concert. Well, first of all, you don't know that, but second of all, if you have six shots and you six shots and you still got COVID and you actually think that was a good idea, you don't need a vaccination. You need a mental, you need a mental check. I tell you, I know people during the during the COVID, the height of the COVID that were older, some of our clients actually that were prescribed by a doctor a hydroxy quirk when they were taking it once a week as a as a preventative measure. Yeah. And they, to this day have never had COVID. Yeah. And it's, it's, I mean, so it, but the sad thing is again, you know, we couldn't, it's all about the money now. And that's, you know, when people talk about the evils of capitalism, you're seeing some of that. Now, capitalism is the best thing on the planet, right? As far as, you know, lifting the masses out of poverty and creating amazing amounts of wealth. But the problem is this isn't, this isn't capitalism. What's going on. This is cronyism is what's going on. It is, Hey, look at, I will give you these government dollars. You're going to get this patent. You're going to get this. Unholy marriage between business and government. Mark my word. We were talking about Feinstein selling 25, $30 million homes. This Fauci will be on the board of Pfizer. He'll be on the board of Moderna. He's going to get shares of those companies. He will be blessed with with with millions and millions of dollars. His family watch and see, we'll be talking if we're, if you and I are fortunate enough to be around 20, 30 years from now, we'll be talking about the Fauci trust and watch and monitor that trust and see how big that family trust. Well, you see how easy this is now. You look at how they move money around and how the in your face money laundering folks. This is what this is. This is corruption and fraud. Some of the Bidens are great at the money laundering part. They got 20 shell corporation, but guess who's getting the, guess who's going to be controlling the funding to rebuild Ukraine. We pay to destroy it. And guess what? The Hillary Clinton foundation gets paid to rebuild it. Right. And guess who's going to get the contracts to rebuild. Oh, that'll be probably one of the Biden family members or somebody else's politically connected. Right. Remember it was, it was a Joe Biden's brother who got the contract, the multi -billion dollar contract to rebuild Iraq. No building experience, never been a contractor, right? No idea. Right. This is why these projects cost 500 times what they're supposed to cost. This is why when money comes into Buffalo, for example, $25 million to build homes, five get built. And you were, wait a minute, five, are these $5 million homes in the East side? Each of those homes would have been built for a quarter million dollars or less. And yet where did the rest of the money go? And the, the answer is never, we don't know. We don't know. We can't account for it. Or we'd have no idea. Or I mean, how many times have we've seen that in so many places that whether right down the local level or God forbid at the federal level between, you know, Iraq and others. I was telling you last week on the radio, I was reading an article about the grants that were coming into the city of Buffalo to plant trees. And I thought, okay, wow, like this could be sweet. Okay. You know, like I'm a big tree guy. I love trees. I plant trees every year. I do think, okay, that's one way to, first of all, I think it's one way to make a community look great. When you, when you drive around, let's say North Buffalo, all the streets are all tree. They look beautiful. You drive around the East side, it looks like shit, right? So, okay. You're going to take some of my tax money and you're going to directly plant trees. Okay. It's a win for the environment. It looks nice. It's going to bring things together. I'm like, well, where's the catch? This is a government agency. Where are they going to screw it up? You read through and you find out that they're paying $1 ,000 a tree. Now you and I both know that if they're saying it's $1 ,000 a tree, by the time it's done, it'll be two to $3 ,000 a tree. Now you, you're talking about $13 million worth of trees. You and I just planted trees. Every year we plant a few trees around our office, you know, three, four in the spring, three, four in the fall, just so they can start to grow and work their way in. And then, you know, plant more. We pay $250 a tree, plant it. Right.
The Breakdown
A highlight from Huobi Changes Name to HTX and Almost Immediately Gets Hacked
"Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. What's going on, guys? It is Tuesday, September 22nd, and today we are talking hacks, hacks, hacks. Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying The Breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit .ly slash breakdown pod. Well, friends, today we start this show talking about Ben Armstrong, better known as BitBoy, who was arrested last night after he won, posted to his YouTube that he was going to confront a former business partner about the Lamborghini that he said was his, two, went to said person's door and rang the doorbell, three, did this with a gun and illegal narcotics in the back of his car, along with another business and affair partner to boot, and then four live streamed himself getting arrested. Just kidding. I'm not going to talk about that ever at all. In fact, I will only say this. The crypto space gets exactly the level of influencers it deserves. So perhaps as we think about where we want to be heading into the next bull market, we might want to choose who we listen to with just a hint more discernment. Now, what we're actually going to be talking about today is the plague of this bear market. Well, outside of Gensler, of course, and that is hacks. A wave of hacks impacted crypto firms starting over the weekend. On Friday, Nansen disclosed a security breach at a third party software vendor. The attacker was able to gain access to admin rights of a Nansen account in charge of facilitating client access to the platform. Nansen claims it, quote, managed to stop the unauthorized access shortly after learning about it and launched an immediate investigation. According to Nansen, wallet funds were unaffected. All affected users had email addresses exposed, while smaller user cohorts had password hashes accessed and wallet addresses revealed. Nansen urged all users to double check emails claiming to be coming from the company and be vigilant for phishing attempts. So that was Friday. Then on Saturday, OpenSea disclosed that one of its third party vendors, quote, experienced a security incident that may have exposed information. They warned that user API keys were compromised. The company noted that the incident was not expected to impact any programs which use an OpenSea API key, but that external parties using exposed keys could experience rate and usage limits. OpenSea plans on shutting down existing keys by next Monday and asked users to rotate their keys. A third exploit was disclosed early on Monday morning. Mixin Network, which is a nominally decentralized wallet service, said it lost $200 million in customer assets during an attack early on Saturday morning. Crypto developer Lawrence Day at Function Zero writes, Also, respectfully, how are you losing $200 million from a cloud breach? So this company Mixin was founded in 2017 and had nearly $400 million in protocol funds across 48 chains. The service allows users to send digital assets assigned to phone numbers and its biggest market appears to be Hong Kong. Now the firm said that it can guarantee the safety of around half of user assets, but that guarantee seems to be in the form of a corporate backstop rather than the product of successful threat mitigation. During a livestream on Monday addressing the attack, Mixin founder Feng Xiaodong said, No matter what your assets are, whether it's Bitcoin or Ethereum, we will ensure that half of it is unaffected. We're trying to find a way to recover the compromised money, but that is very difficult. For the other half of the assets, Mixin is considering offering what they are calling bond tokens for users to claim. The firm would later buy back the tokens, making them similar to other token -based recovery schemes seen in the past during events like the Bitfinex hack. A security firm called Slowmist is involved in the investigation and stated that the incident occurred when a cloud service provider database was attacked. Now if this feels like just the latest in a string of big hacks, that's because it is. In 2022, we had the record of $3 .1 billion in funds lost from hacks. And estimates this year include TRMLab saying that $400 million was stolen in Q1, Immunify saying that $700 million was lost in the first half of the year, and then just in Q3 we've had a 126 multi -chain hack in July, a $61 .7 million market -based protocol exploit of Curve Finance in July, $41 .3 million hacked from Stake .com in September, and another July hack of $37 million at CoinsPaid. So from estimates, it looks like this might be the largest hack of the year, roughly the same size as Euler in March. Still, even though it wasn't the biggest, the most high -profile hack of the weekend was disclosed on Monday as well, and that was from HTX. HTX, formerly known as Huobi, suffered the loss of 5 ,000 ETH worth around $8 million on Sunday evening. Justin Sun claimed in a Twitter thread that, quote, HTX has fully covered the losses incurred from the attack and has successfully resolved all related issues. Sun added that, quote, all user assets are SAFU and the platform is operating completely normally. Now, in addition to disclosing the loss, Sun downplayed the impact of the attack, stating that, quote, $8 million represents a relatively small sum in comparison to the $3 billion worth of assets held by our users. It also amounts to just two weeks of revenue for the HTX platform. Sun disclosed the wallet address of the hacker and added, We are willing to offer 5 % of the stolen amount, $400 ,000 USD, as a white hat reward to encourage the hacker to return the stolen funds. If the hacker returns the funds, we will also hire them as a security white hat advisor for HTX. However, they said, if the funds are not returned within seven days, we will transfer the information to law enforcement authorities for further action and to prosecute the hacker. In an on -chain message to the hacker, HTX claimed to have discovered their, quote, true identity. Now, according to Arkham Analytics, the attack affected an HTX hot wallet, which was created in March. Since then, the wallet has received $500 million in deposits from Binance, and on -chain analysts confirmed that funds have now been migrated to a new wallet. Now, there were a lot of comments relating to the name change of this exchange. Crypto Kaleo writes, Huobi changes its name to HTX and gets hacked for $8 million in the first month? Coincidence or tempting fate? Lawrence Day again said, I'm sorry, but renaming Huobi to HTX and then immediately losing millions of dollars is so effing funny that I might have a stroke. Even Binance's CZ said, A week after you rename your exchange after FTX... Jokes aside, our security team will help in tracking hacker funds in all cases where we can. Now, in addition to just the jokes about the HTX name, there are lots of questions floating around about Huobi solvency. To get a sense of some of those theories, go check out Adam Cochran's account. It's a little bit out of the scope of this particular episode, but it's obviously something that we're watching closely. Now it's unclear at this stage whether these attacks had any sort of links, but the small amount of detail available does show some common features. The first three hacks all blamed a third party service provider. While the provider was not named, Nansen did urge them to disclose the security breach. These attacks come just weeks after crypto custody firm Fortress Trust suffered a $15 million attack, which was also related to a security failure at a third party cloud provider called Retool. In that attack, an employee at the software provider was the victim of a phishing attack. The attacker used an AI -synthesized voice clone of an IT support worker to replicate the employee's credentials to access Retool's systems. In their write -up of that attack, Retool said that 27 customer accounts were compromised. All 27 were crypto companies. So the method of attack here, which uses a combination of social engineering and a bypassing of security measures, also bears a striking resemblance to the write -ups of the recent cyber attack on MGM and Caesars casinos. The casino's systems were hacked two weeks ago with customer and corporate data compromised. Postmortems of the attack claimed that hackers used a voice replication of IT workers to gain access. Identity management firm Okta confirmed that the casinos had been using their systems to credential employees. In an August blog post, Okta said that their customers were seeing, quote, consistent pattern of social engineering attacks against their IT service desk personnel, in which the caller's strategy was to convince service desk personnel to reset all multi -factor authentication factors enrolled by highly privileged users. The casino attacks were attributed to a threat actor known as Scattered Spider using malicious software developed by Alfie or Black Cat. Now if these attacks are all part of the same cybercrime spree, it could speak to a group of hackers going after high -value targets like crypto firms. The vulnerability seems hard to address as it involves security training for employees at third -party software providers. And one of the implications is, if these kind of attacks become a systemic threat to the industry, it could mean more crypto firms need to bring sensitive software in -house. That higher barrier to secure operations could make it more difficult for smaller startups to compete in the industry. Now of course for any of you who are listening to the AI breakdown, you'll also recognize that this is not going to be a problem that's unique to the crypto industry. The casino attacks speak to that as well, but the reality is that voice cloning technology is incredibly advanced and just getting more so all the time. Individuals and companies are going to need to develop entirely different modes of operation that recognize the fact that you simply can't trust a voice on the other line of a call anymore. Now when it comes to the impact of these hacks on the industry outside of just the ramifications for the people who lost money themselves, it's hard exactly to know what the real impact is. On the one hand, it certainly lends to a perception of immaturity overall, but at the same time, when it comes to the geopolitics and regulation of crypto, the hacks that are most important to keep an eye on are those that have some sort of geostrategic ramifications, particularly those emanating from the Lazarus Group in North Korea. Still, being this deep into a bear market and trying to match all -time records for hacks is not necessarily the place we want to be overall. The one other story that I wanted to cover on today's show is a bit of a dust -up around the Celsius restructuring. In short, the Celsius bankruptcy could be coming to a close after creditors have voted in favor of the current recovery plan. 98 % of creditors gave the thumbs up to a plan which would see the sale of assets to crypto consortium Fahrenheit Holdings. The acquiring group includes Errington Capital and miner US Bitcoin Corp. Fahrenheit plans to retain and operate mining equipment owned by Celsius under a new corporate structure. The new company also plans to stake Ethereum and monetize other Celsius assets. Some large creditors will receive equity in this new company. And in addition, another $2 billion in liquid crypto will be distributed to creditors. Overall, the plan is projected to provide a 76 -85 % recovery. Now one remaining snag in the plan is an objection from the SEC. The regulator filed its objection last Friday to express concerns with Coinbase's involvement in the process. Celsius receivers plan to use Coinbase as an intermediary to distribute crypto to creditors. The SEC claimed the agreement could require Coinbase to The SEC filing claimed that However, this court should not be asked to approve a deal where their material terms are missing or inconsistent. The regulator also appears concerned about an additional agreement with Coinbase, which Celsius have attempted to file under seal and have not yet disclosed. Coinbase's Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal hit back at the SEC's objection in a Twitter post stating, Now, Wayne Vaughn had a very simple explanation, saying, And of course, this isn't the first time we've seen the SEC stand in the way of a bankruptcy distribution agreed to by creditors. In March, the SEC objected to Voyager using Binance US to distribute crypto to its creditors, which was of course months before the regulator had filed its lawsuit against Binance but still based their objections on claims that the exchange was an unregistered securities brokerage. A very unimpressed judge in the Voyager case called it This time around, of course, the SEC at least does have an ongoing lawsuit that they can point to regarding Coinbase's brokerage services, but the objection does still seem odd given that the regulator didn't seek an injunction to prevent Coinbase from operating as normal in the interim. The Celsius case will return to court next Thursday to hear the SEC's argument and see if the judge is inclined to allow the plan to go ahead. Now one interesting line of discussion are the implications for the spot ETF applications that are outstanding. Adam Cochrane writes, Now, speaking of ETFs, Bitwise filed an amendment to its spot Bitcoin ETF application on Monday, adding 40 pages of research on Bitcoin market structure. The research aimed to preempt arguments from the SEC, which could be used to reject the current batch of ETF applications. Bitwise claimed to show that Bitcoin futures are the primary market for price discovery with spot prices following futures. According to Bitwise, this would mean that the well -regulated CME futures market should be the primary consideration when looking for evidence of market manipulation. They argued that this trading venue should count as a regulated market of significant size for market surveillance purposes. As part of their argument, Bitwise also cited a previous study from 2019, which suggested that Bitcoin's spot market mainly consisted of fake volume, making the relative size of the regulated futures market much larger in comparison. Regarding the price impact of futures, Bitwise found in 2021 that futures markets accounted for between 52 .97 % and 68 .03 % of Bitcoin's price discovery. Now this isn't the first time Bitwise have dropped large amounts of Bitcoin research on the SEC to dispute their claims. They have produced at least two 100 -page -plus reports in support of previous Bitcoin ETF applications. Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hogan explained his firm's strategy in a Twitter thread stating, That's the happy case. The question is, what happens if the SEC appeals the court decision? In short, we return to the status quo. We're back to needing to prove that the CME Bitcoin futures market leads price discovery over the spot market such that it can serve as a regulated market of significant size for the purpose of surveillance. Unfortunately, existing filings do not include substantively new arguments or research addressing this question head on. Until now, today's amendment aims to address point by point each of the major objections the SEC has raised in prior disapprovals for spot Bitcoin ETFs. In particular, we try to clear up the significant confusion around the growing body of academic literature on price discovery in the Bitcoin market and demonstrate that every well -designed academic study supports the finding that the CME is significant. So friends, there you have it, a little bit of hacks, a little bit of the SEC objecting to something that seems reasonable from the outside. In other words, a quintessential 2023 crypto day. Appreciate you guys listening, as always. And until next time. Peace.
Home Gadget Geeks
"mgm f" Discussed on Home Gadget Geeks
"Watch Watch out when we have AI acting like an angry, entitled, disrespectful, moody teenager. I love it. I love it. You and I will both be making tinfoil hats at that point. It's, it's, it's, listen, there's some things it's really good at. It's just a work calculator right now. I mean, it's just really good. There are some areas of where it can be super helpful, especially in the areas of like translations, it compiling things, having some basic ideas around stuff, getting, you know, getting like, Hey, give me a list of, you know, I want to, I want to make nachos, but I don't want regular nachos. Give me four different nacho recipes. And man, it will just, it will just crank that, you know. It's really good at that. So it'll be interesting to see what co-pilot, just to bring this back around, like, I'm really interested, like, what's that really gonna do for the average consumer? Listen, the co-pilot they use in Visual Studio writes code. What are we, like, is the average consumer in Windows really ready for? Not that we're gonna expect it to write code. I don't put co-pilot in everything. Like, here's a mouse with co-pilot. You're like, I don't need co-pilot in the mouse. You know? So, I don't know. Jim Harter. You'll find out when you do. It'll, it'll, it'll tell you why you need, why you need it in the mouse, Jim Collison. You're like, I don't know, maybe, maybe they'll have co-pilot-enabled monitors, you know, since John's hanging out out there. Co-pilot-enabled monitors where it'll tune itself to the color thing and do, you know. Jim Harter It's just gonna help you move your mouse cursor to the buttons you really need to be clicking, Jim, and, and you don't know what those songs are. Jim Collison It'll have shock, shock response. It's like, No, no, go that way. No, no, no, no, no, no. It'll just say move. That's what it'll do. It'll sit there, move, and then it'll just start moving the mouse for you so you can have it do its thing. Well, anyways, good conversation, Christian. Always great to have you, have you on. Can you hang out for one second as I close this thing up? Jim Harter Yeah, absolutely. Jim Collison All right. Couple reminders on the way out. We do this every show, but of course, you know, The AverageGuy.tv, and we made it all the way through a show without talking about Maple Grove Partners. So we'll throw it in here. If you need high, if you need reliable, high-speed hosting from people that you know and you trust, of course, that's Christian. Check out MapleGrovePartners.com. Plan's still starting at 10 bucks. Is that 10 bucks? 10 bucks a thing, and Christian can do just about anything. So check it out. If you need something, give them a call. Or check it out on MapleGrovePartners.com. If you want to send me an email, jimattheaverageguy.tv, you can join the Discord group, theaverageguy.tv slash Discord. You can leave a message if you're looking for a, just an easy way, 30-second message. You can call it in and leave a question or whatever comment. Go out to homecadgetgeeks.com. There's a little voice button down on the bottom right-hand corner, a little microphone. Click it and leave me a message. Love to hear from you on that as well. We are live every Thursday, 8 p.m. Central, 9 Eastern, out here at theaverageguy.tv slash live. I got a couple shows lined up. I know Bob and Ryan are coming back here pretty quick. Let me bring that up really fast just to, I've been keeping track of shows since Show 100, and we're at 585. So it takes me a while to get there. Christians, this week, I actually have an opening next week. I may be calling, if you're listening to this, Jay, I may be calling to fill in for next week. Bob and Ryan, the week after that, Dave McCabe is checking in after that. So we've got some shows coming up. We'd love to have you out there in the show and us live. Big thanks, Katie, Jay, Brian, John, Tony. I saw Ken out there a little bit earlier. Joe was out there. Thank you guys for coming out in the chat room. Appreciate you guys. And we'll do it again, I think, next Thursday. Thanks for coming out, everybody. With that, we'll say, Goodbye.
Home Gadget Geeks
"mgm f" Discussed on Home Gadget Geeks
"Jim Collison, ER, PhD Yeah, I think the development of AI is following human development in a lot of ways and that, you know, we began with just in, put stuff in, get stuff out, it's a baby. Put food in, you poop out, right? Whatever. Right. It just, it responds to don't, you know, stop, don't, you know, direct commands. We may be in this early childhood phase where it's starting to learn to talk. It's starting to make things like, it's starting to put concepts together. It has ideas. But when it gets lost, it's smart enough just to start making things up or to, to try to say, well, I know this. I'll try to make that like this, even though that's experience would say that's, that's horribly wrong, right? Don't do those kinds of things. And I still think it doesn't, it doesn't, because it, the human experience is pain. And that we learn from that. It's a response back, right. And it's not, all learning's not that's not built in in any way. It has no good, I think we're struggling with the feedback. Like, what's good feedback? I also wonder if having humans teach it is the right thing, right? I mean, we're, we're, we wonder why the software is flawed, because we're training it, and we're horribly flawed, you know, in a lot of ways. And so we're expecting this perfect, like, Oh, this should be perfect. Well, wait a minute, who, who, who trained it on this horribly complex problem that we're, we're working on? Are you perfect? Like, do you, you know, so anyways, I think we're, we're at this 7- or 8-year-old kind of thing. And maybe the next phase is an angry teenager. Watch out.
Home Gadget Geeks
"mgm f" Discussed on Home Gadget Geeks
"Yeah, and what does it mean when AI data sets begin to become localized again? Because we know that's going to happen, right? We know right today, they're in the cloud, or they're somewhere else. We know there's going to be situations where they're, those are going to get pushed farther to the edge to be used, right? Yeah, I think it's inevitable. Really, I do. Yeah. So what is that? Because we always think, Oh, processing power at the local level is not going to be needed anymore. Well, maybe not this cycle. But when it cycles back around, and we need to get some of that processing power back to the edge, and there's an advantage to it, that always drives it, right? When there's an advantage to the end user to have that power on the edge, and to be able to do things with it, OK, well, that becomes a little bit of a different, I mean, game streaming has changed. What they've done to get good at game streaming has certainly changed the way we look at remote desktop, or remote computing in that way, right? But that doesn't mean it's always best to think about cars and planes. And planes. You want the computing power on the edge, right? Yeah, and you have to be able to run it in environments where you're not always going to have a persistent connection. Right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's interesting, to say the least. Tony, a couple of comments. Joe, Joe says the, the, some of the changes in Windows have driven him to use keyboard shortcuts. Because the, the mouse experience has gotten kind of jankety in Windows. Yeah, yeah, it's, and it's a little less, I'm, like, I think I'm pretty intuitive with this stuff. And I'm kind of like, OK, where did that go? Like, where did they remove that thing to? Now search, search for those things has never been better, right? There's, you can easily go down and search for it, type it in and find it pretty easily. But there's a lot of changes going on. Tony said, worked part time in the mountains recently. They didn't have my dictation account set up. I used dictation from Windows, copied and pasted it to the EMR, adapt and overcome. Yeah, you can do that. You certainly can do that as well. He goes on to say they're switching to a new electronic record. So it's not a lot of effort to troubleshoot the old one. And boy, it's old. Looks like Windows 2000, or 2000 Mac software. And, yeah, well, there's some, there, I think there's some pretty sizable changes coming on the Windows side. And they're, they're doing some things, depending on who you are. You like it or you hate it, just like everything else, you know, from that perspective. But I think it just came out today. So it's, I think it's, it's brand, it's brand new. But Panos apparently wasn't happy with some of the cutbacks on Surface. I think eventually Microsoft's going to abandon Surface. But, so maybe he saw the writing on the wall. So he's hanging out over there. Yeah, good for him, get swallowed up by the giant, by the giant. Well, Christian, we did it. We got through it once again. Anything, anything you're looking ahead on that, that is that you haven't, you know, you haven't put all this stuff together yet, but that you're keeping an eye on ahead? Generally speaking, in a topic area or ... Yeah, just generally, like, what are you keeping your eye on that, that's going on? I'm watching to see if OpenAI continues to lose or gain market share. And I think because that is the default thing everyone gravitated towards, it'll be really interesting to watch now the bifurcation of what I call the spin-off technologies of that. So I am watching that pretty closely. I'm also watching how they're evolving, what they offer in their free version from their premium version and understanding like those distinctions and those differences. I think that's really important. And I'm also starting to look more seriously at how are we in the computing industry going to deal with the hallucination problem? Because when you look at what's going on with AI, there's some areas where you really don't have to worry about hallucinations. So if you're having the AI write code from known open source libraries, like I don't, I never just outright trust the code, but I can independently verify it very quickly. And it can save hours of time, especially if you're trying to learn something new by only reading documentation as a human versus studying examples that are working backwards from questions. It's incredibly effective. But one of the challenges that AI is going to have to overcome in the next couple of years to really move to the next level is handling the hallucination problem. And for those not familiar with that terminology, it really is just a fancy way of saying that AI seems to be very good at making stuff up. And it does it more so in some areas than others. A good example of this is in the legal community. There have been all sorts of wild stories you can go read or hear about, where lawyers have been submitting documents to the court. And instead of writing their legal briefs, they have the AI write it. It's almost like classic school plagiarism, right? And then when I was going through school, they had launched a service called Turnitin.com to catch the cheaters, right? It's like, we're doing this in our legal system now, but with open AI writing the legal briefs. And so it's been a big problem. But one of the reasons it's been so easy to catch is that the AI was making up entire legal theories based on case law that didn't exist, or precedents that didn't exist, and extrapolating in a way that would never make sense in a legal argument. And this applies to many other areas. The legal example is a good one, though, because it shows how, in that topic area, the AI is much more vulnerable to inaccuracy than in other areas. And so I think this is a matter of when, not if, but it's an open question to me how we're going to go about solving that problem while also dealing with the traditional concerns around how do you bias or not bias training algorithms and making the AI reflect certain personas or certain viewpoints. And that is a problem. But the hallucination problem is almost a subset or an add on problem that I think is going to need to make much more progress in the next couple of years before it reaches the next level of trust by the end user. And currently, there aren't any silver bullet strategies out there that address this problem. So I'm watching to see early movers in this space that say they're starting to tackle that problem head on. And I think that'll be a good indicator that we're moving past just the concept of generative AI into generative AI that has high degrees of accuracy.
Home Gadget Geeks
"mgm f" Discussed on Home Gadget Geeks
"Isn't that crazy? He has no idea we're talking about, we're talking about him on this podcast right now. And I just showed his picture online. So he's a real estate guy. I'm sure he appreciates the, out of, out of Hillsboro, Oregon, sure he appreciates the, the advertising. So anything else on that, Christian, before we, before we start? I think that's, that's a good wrap for, for email. I think, I think you had a great suggestion. I think we'll wrap this on Christian's Corner. Now, if you had to be listening for a long time to know Christian's Corner, this was where we would let Christian just kind of go on, on a particular topic, oftentimes around windows. I mean, I think that's funny, we spent some time, and we haven't talked about windows in a long time. But you, you, when we were talking about ideas of things to talk about on the show, you said, Well, we can talk about Windows 11. And I knew if you wanted to talk about it, there was probably something we should know about it. And I've been listening to, you know, I still listen to Windows Weekly. So I've been keeping up. I have two Windows 11 boxes here. I've actually got the, the, one of the main machines. I moved over to Windows 11 because it has the TPM capabilities. And so I can do Windows 11 VMs as well. But talk a little bit about why did you bring that up? And as we think, because we're going to, listen, support for Windows 10 ends in 2025. Now it's going to get extended a couple times. We know that, right. But, but eventually we got to move. What do you, what do you know that we don't know? Well, so first, I got really excited because I read something that after like 38 years of the MS Paint app, they finally decided to add layers and transparency. And I was like, I was like, if I'm reading a news article like this, what else is going on in Windows 11 that I've just filtered out of my life for the last three years? But I actually almost fell out of my chair when I read that. So that was an interesting enough investment that I'm like, okay, like what else is going on these days? And today, Microsoft announced that they are bringing Microsoft Copilot as a new offering within Windows 11. And it works as an app or kind of works as probably like a super sophisticated version of Clippy for your desktop. And what it's really, it's powered off of OpenAI Dali E3 model. And I think it's the next evolution of the kind of weird Cortana experience of Window 10 era, which I was never about. I was like, get that stuff out of my operating system, disable all the things, block all the endpoints in PFSense. I could never want to deal with it. But one of the things I discussed in the post show on last time on Gadget Keeks was how I thought that operating systems had really not progressed in many respects at the speed that I would have hoped for the consumer. And an example is like, you think about File Explorer in Windows and how that's just pretty, probably if you really stop and think about it, File Explorer is probably one of the most commonly used apps that there is in Windows. You probably use it as much as you do your browser and don't even really think about it. But how much has File Explorer really evolved in the last 10 years? Like, yeah, Windows search has gotten better. Windows ability to index has gotten better. But like, fundamentally, File Explorer has not changed a lick. And you would think that with all the evolution, especially in the AI, the NLP, the text analysis, the sentiment analysis, that I'd be able to go to File Explorer and search something like, show me pictures of my daughter's 16th birthday as the search term. And it would know how to pull that data back and show you those images. And not because you had to sit there doing data tagging and being a data scientist, but because, no, it's using AI. It's integrating it within the metadata. It's automatically generating the metadata and it's indexing that. And Apple, in some ways, has gotten somewhat close in certain select areas. For example, if you own an iPhone or a Mac, it's very good at you just throw photos at it. And once it knows who someone is once, man, it goes on a tear. And before you know it, if someone says, hey, can you get me photos for so-and-so for this event coming up? Or maybe it's a wedding, maybe it's a graduation party. And you go on an Apple-based system and you can do that exercise in 30 seconds. Windows, you still can't do that in 30 seconds, by the way. So I thought to myself, gee, Copilot, it's like all things Microsoft. It's a double-edged sword. I'm excited that they're finally bringing AI to the client and the consumer. I'm sad that I really think this is moving Windows 11 towards the kind of what I call the cloud portal to Microsoft Azure. I really see it as we're hitting that full cycle again where everything used to be on the mainframe, then everyone had to have their personal computing revelation and now everything's swinging back. But we're finding a lot of these AI models, once they're well-trained and understood and tested, you can run much smaller versions of the model with much less compute and get 90% of the bang for your buck. And we've seen this in Def Con, for example. A gentleman did a demonstration of video transcription, which, as you know, like you upload a podcast or whatnot and you're paying some premium service, you're uploading the file, you're giving the data to them. It's pretty accurate. It gets it wrong sometime, et cetera. But like, okay. But this guy is running a 256 kilobyte binary that has the limited trained data model based on open AI spec. You can go and download it yourself. And it does video transcription locally without an internet connection. Like he pulled his internet, he disabled it, proved it as part of his demo. And it's rock solid. Like it gets it right. And I'm like, damn, if we can compile that into less of a megabyte executable, why aren't we pushing this stuff in native libraries and making these operating systems, you know, really get to the next level? And of course, the corporate interest is a big answer in all of that, right? Like they want you to be interactive with their cloud. They want you to have to upload your data to those environments so that they can make their products better. They want you to be buying into the subscription ecosystem. So, you know, we say, oh, well, Windows is basically free these days. And like, yeah, your entry into the operating system is free. And that's about it. And, you know, it's like Spirit Airlines. They'll let you cross the threshold into the airplane for about 60 bucks. And then about another 240 bucks later, they might think about letting you off that airplane too. So, I'm excited by some of the announcements. There's no way in hell that I'm getting off a Windows 10 until I go kicking and screaming. It'll be much the way I went straight from Windows 7 to Windows 10 on my main workstation. It looks like I'm set up to be kicking and screaming all the way to the Windows 10 end of life. I shed several tears when Windows Server 2012 R2 is, you know, rest in peace. It's got about a week to go before it hits its end of life for security patching. And so, we're starting to hit that turning point. And, you know, my rant is to say I feel mixed feelings about these announcements. And it's certainly not at a place yet where it appeals to me by any point or any stretch of the imagination. But I find it interesting that they are actually starting to focus on features again, which feels good. For a while, I was like, why do I need to use Windows 11? Like, what does it do for me? Like, oh, you got frame rates faster on DirectX, whatever number Windows 11 is on. It's like, great. Good for you guys. But fundamentally to me, it didn't seem like anything more than Microsoft's grab to the next thing to move you towards their subscriptions and their cloud services. So, we'll see. We'll see what happens with this co-pilot. They keep, you know, tinkering around. Like, it still amazes me that we're in Windows 11 and you have the classic control panel that, you know, goes all the way back to Windows XP. You can still get to it. And there's still things that are not in the native new UI that you can only get to going through that old control panel. Now, dinosaur in my brain that like gloms big dis-congruities there are in the, in the OS, and so ... But listen, we have tabbed File Explorer now, right, but we don't have Edit in the right, in a right-click. You know, you got to go right-click, Show More Options, then it brings up the Windows 10 dialog box, where you can click Edit. Now I'm sure that's going to change. And at some point, we're going to, listen, Windows 11 is going to be 12 here before we know it. Co-pilot will probably change. The full rollout of that will probably be Windows 12, just to be, just to be transparent. I don't think there's much life for 11. It's a weird number to begin with. It's, you know, it's odd. It's 11. Like, nobody, nobody wants to be ... right, you know, from that, from that regard. So yeah, I mean, as I'm looking at it right now, I was like, Oh, yeah, it's got tabbed File Explorer. That's pretty, no, they didn't fix anything about File Explorer. It's still the clunky, slow, like, it literally is the same code that it has been since probably Windows 7, right? I just don't know if they've that made, they've made that many changes. But yeah, you got to right-click, Show More Options, Edit. I want to edit a batch file, right-click, Show More Options, Edit. Are you kidding me? Like, now, is it that big of a deal to do one more click? No. But is it that clunky? Yeah, it's pretty clunky. You know, so it's, now, is it for me, does it change my mind about upgrading to Windows 11? No, I'm going to go to it because it's the next thing. I'll go to 12 when that, when that comes up. I've got it on a limited, like I said, I think I have it on 3 computers now. Everything else is running 10. I'll run those until I absolutely can't run them anymore. You know, which I don't And the Windows 7 model was 3 years beyond that. So, you know, you're like, OK, so we still have 5 probably. So, yeah, yeah, I kind of, kind of interesting. I think, Christian, some of the interesting stuff, too, is there's some rumors that Windows 12 and ARM will be a better implementation. They've working, been working behind the scenes to make that a better experience. And what, what are your thoughts on cutting Intel out and going ARM from an operating system standpoint, knowing we're doing more things in the cloud? You know, I think Intel's been in a kind of precarious position in my mind over the last year. You know, it's, it's consumer retail side. It's very clear that ARM is a growing market share, both in the enterprise and in small fab computing. And so I think it's, you know, Intel really was the giant in the room for such a long time that the diversification you're seeing in chip manufacturing is pretty stunning. And you're already seeing ARM on a variety of platforms. I think it's, it's a natural choice to see Windows come to ARM. And so that wouldn't surprise me really in the least bit. And I think for traditionally, you think about ARM and you're thinking about phones and laptops or iPads and, you know, handheld stuff as it's, wow, this is really coming a long way. But now you're starting to see that even in the desktop and server environments, ARM is starting to have an answer at a much cheaper price point. So I personally think that the more diversification there is in the chip manufacturing process, the better technology we're going to get at better prices. So I think they're doing amazing work. It remains to be seen. You know, I've felt this way in the past where AMD has come out with something great, but then Intel kind of, you know, let them do that a little bit until they came back and crushed them and resoundingly. But, you know, in many ways, I thought they were, I thought they were going to do that after Ryzen. Like AMD had a big win with Ryzen and I thought, gee, Intel's just holding back their next crushing blow. And it really is more of a soft whimper, which was really the first time I thought, huh, like maybe the Intel giant has found its peak finally. And I think as you see ARM and also as you see what we're doing with the AI chips and building chips specifically focused on AI computing, I think ARM has a huge opportunity there. If you look at what the cloud companies are doing and building their own chips and customizing them to the types of workloads that run, I think the days of x86-64 Intel being the dominant platform, yeah, their market share is going to take a long time where they're an equal player. But I definitely think that these kind of alternative brands are going to grow and eat quite a bit of market share, especially driven by the fact that with AI, people are looking at how do we stand out as unique? And I think what chips and what hardware the algorithms run on is a big area where people are going to try to distinguish themselves. And so absolutely having something that's not a Intel or Nvidia answer is going to be something that a lot of people try to make a play for. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's, that's good thoughts. I mean, you talk about the diversification on the chipset side. And of course, you have Apple doing, it's completely its own thing in a lot of ways. And then you just mentioned Nvidia. And they're, I mean, they're kind of in a place, they got some, they have a little bit of money. They've got, they're doing some interesting things. I think they're, they're part of this AI equation. And in a lot of, I mean, in a lot of ways, right, they're powering a lot of AI. So that, it's, well, and even, you know, even Intel trying to come out with a GPU is an interesting move in some regards, right? You know, and so there's some, you know, what will, what will we be talking about from an OS standpoint? And is, does ARM change things from a security posture? Certainly you and I have talked about Intel's problems in the past, right, from a security standpoint. Does ARM change that at all? Does that, does it reduce the attack surface if we begin to go that direction from a device's perspective? Are we going to get to a spot where really our phones just power, like we've been talking about this for a long time. Microsoft was there a while ago. Didn't work. Maybe it'll take some more time. But our phones power our desktop experience, for the most part, you know? Yeah, no, absolutely. And if, and if folks are really successful in making desktops less and less prevalent for the average guy, ARM chips being the kind of primary compute on the mobile platforms will play all a bigger role as they continue to get faster and faster and interact with AI both on and off platform.
Home Gadget Geeks
"mgm f" Discussed on Home Gadget Geeks
"And a lot of times what I'm doing now is I've set up a domain and I have all these different inbox aliases, so to speak. So, like, let's say you have, like, orders at Jim Collison dot com. Right. And you start putting orders at Jim Collison dot com and anything where, like, you're going to buy something. That's cool. But if your email gets, like, leaked or data breached or whatever, and then you start getting spam and all these other things, you can't really track, like, where did it come from because I've given this email out everywhere. So then you start doing what's called aliasing, which is you don't need to create creating inboxes or aliases in the actual system. You can use the plus sign character, the period. Like, you have to look at what your mail provider supports. But for example, I use a plus sign. So then it'll be like orders plus Best Buy at Jim Collison dot com. And that wasn't I didn't have to set anything up on my mail server. I didn't have to add any new inboxes or any new aliases. But when all of a sudden I start getting weird stuff showing up in my inbox that I know I didn't sign up for, I didn't deal with, I know exactly where that email got leaked from. And I can basically zilch that entire email alias in my mail configuration to say never deliver anything that comes in over this again. And so increasingly, I've moved to a system where I only am handing out aliases to people. And then I control and protect my underlying mailboxes because all the stuff that's auto consuming my address information is coming through an alias. And it doesn't look, you know, I was never really a big fan of some of the like the temp email boxes or the weird aliasing services. They just were kind of cheap. But it's a whole nother service you got to go check in or switch over to or whatever. Right. But, you know, if you're on a commodity mail provider like Gmail, or if you even you're on your hosting your own domain, right, you point your domain to Google Mail Services, and you can do kind of the same capabilities. So it is something that I have really taken to heart in the last few years. And it's helped tremendously manage my understanding of how my email is getting out there and how I can best filter and protect my information coming in. Such a great way. That's such a great way to do that. I need to start doing that as well. By the way, jimcollison.com, I don't own it. So if you want to spam that as much as you can, this poor guy, and he's a real estate guy. I've been, I've been trying to get jimcollison.com forever. I thought at one point, I even set one of those alerts to watch, see if the domain ever, but he's, no, he's, he's, here he is right here. You just have to make him an offer he can't refuse, Jim. There he is. That's, there's, that's the other, that's the other Jim, not the real JC.
Home Gadget Geeks
"mgm f" Discussed on Home Gadget Geeks
"So SPF and DKIM is a really just simple way to shut that down. But you know, a lot of the Google Workspace tools are including things now that are commonly deployed in enterprises, right? So one of the example kind of simple things that I think is really effective is having companies and or Google Workspace add the external badge to either email subject lines or it's like a tag that will show up in the Gmail interface. And what that really does is it lets you know as someone visually consuming that email message that like, hey, this email is coming from external to your organization. Because now what a lot of people are doing is they're compromising some email or figuring out names and making very similar mailboxes where they'll still represent themselves as someone in your organization with the email that's clearly not from your organization, but it may look like, oh, he's deciding to use his personal Gmail today instead of his corporate address. And so that external badge really helps because then you can train your employees to say basically, hey, when I see the external tag, I should at least have some cautioned or heightened alert that this message didn't come from within my organization and that what I might be receiving in this message is not something I should act on, right? So and then there's things that are more just common sense, right? I've seen a lot of local churches and parishes in the area be impacted by staff that didn't have these tools, were very easily convinced to do something on behalf of what they thought was someone else in their organization. And before you know it, they're changing bank account and routing number information to go to places it shouldn't. And again, kind of same concepts as like the MGM attack, for example, it is rumored that it took about 10 minutes on a phone call after the hacker group found the appropriate employee on LinkedIn, used that to create their persona, call in the help desk and get the initial foothold. I mean, most of those tests that they're doing with phishing, they're a bit obvious. A lot of the ones that are out there are very sophisticated. They're going to do a lot of research to make it super personalized when they're going after high value targets. And so, you know, a common practice should be use these tools to basically, yeah, continue to receive emails from whoever you want to receive. But whenever someone is telling you to do an action over email, you should have some tools that either tell you that it's safe to act upon that or, hmm, I don't have enough here to be confident. I'm going to just pick up the phone and call. And so an example I give to a lot of the organizations I work with is like, anyone's telling you to do anything with money, no matter how legit it does or doesn't look. Because a lot of times it's not stuff about gift cards. It starts out as small innocuous administrative stuff like, hey, you're overdue on this invoice or, you know, hey, we need to move the funds here for this purchase. And they know it's a real purchase coming up, right? That's your spidey sense to just say, okay, I'm going to pick up the phone. And if so and so really does want me to do this, they're not going to be angry or upset if I call to verify, right? So I think common sense goes a long way. But the tools are getting better in the email space. It's still amazing, though, how much we trust doing privileged actions or things based on email or even in some cases a phone conversation I wouldn't trust, right? Like, depending on what's involved in that negotiation, like, do it in person. And it's much harder to fool people in person. Not impossible, but helps avoid a lot of this. And I think it's, it's an interesting statement in social psychology, how trusting we are of people and how trusting we want to be of people over the technology platforms that we use. Well, it's so complicated. Sometimes we go the oversimplified route of, OK, I'm just gonna trust it because I don't want to think about it. It's just too much to think about. And then, or we don't do anything. I mean, I, I know folks, they won't, they don't, won't and don't trust anything. I mean, I'm, and I'm being really even careful. I mean, I do have an account that I sent all the ads to. And, you know, there's sites I trust, and I know, and I see their marketing. I'm pretty sure they're not going to get spoofed, but I don't know for sure. And so that's probably one of those reminders, be a little more careful about, you know, the deals, the deals that are coming in. I haven't seen a lot of those being spoofed. Oftentimes, it's, I get this one, Hey, Microsoft, from Microsoft, air quotes. Someone's trying to change the phone number on your, on your account, right? That's been one real, real common lately. And, yeah, so it's, it's, well, it's, it's a good reminder. And I, you know, we went through an era where we, we just opened up a bunch of email accounts because they were all free. You know, and I think I probably have 6 or 7. You know, I'm down to 6 or 7, and changing from them is painful sometimes, you know. We, we, you know, it's like, I'm still, I'm still, I shouldn't admit this, but I'm still working on the cutover from last pass to bid award. And there's just so much. There were like 600 things I had to, literally, right. And I'm getting to the point now where I'm just getting ready to export it out of last pass, close that account. I have all the, all the important things moved over, but I had all these ancillary things. Now, the other thing is, you could just always go back and say, Well, I'll just reset the password if I need it. You could do that as well. So, yeah, it's super complicated, man. No, it absolutely is. At least on the password storage front, Bitwarden has continued to be a game changer. It's been a great win this year in terms of technology improvement for the average guy. But, you know, when you talk about the free email services or any email service, one, one other suggestion that I have for folks that I don't know that I've actually ever talked about on our show before is email aliases are a damn powerful tool in your toolkit.
Home Gadget Geeks
"mgm f" Discussed on Home Gadget Geeks
"So pretty impressive, pretty surprising, fascinating how long it took the media to care about covering it. This was a 10-day outage for MGM, so about 80 to 90 million have lost. I don't know if that's revenue or profit, but I mean, just insane. So I thought this was a very splashy, not really a data breach in the kind of the classic sense. Maybe there is data that's been stolen that we don't even know about yet that would make it more of a data breach. I don't think we really have that information. They have that kind of lateral access. Yes. What got downloaded? Everything probably. Absolutely. And I just think that it's fascinating that we still have headlines in the space that ransomware, you know, we see so many different enterprise products around ransomware this. You buy an AV product even for the home, and it talks about all the ways it's going to protect ransomware. But yet, here we are, and it's still very effective at major institutions. Well, it's not going to stop ransomware if you ignore it. Like, that's the thing. Like, you install this stuff maybe locally, and then it tries to. The other, the other night, a few, a few warnings popped up for me. And I'm like, OK, I click them off. And then I'm like, Wait, wait, wait a minute. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's open that back up. I should probably go through and see what those warnings are, you know. And so the human, you know, we become the weak link. Is there, I mean, we haven't talked about this in a while, a year or two maybe. Are there any, as we think about, like, I just don't even answer my phone. So no one's going to get me that way. But, but as we think about maybe that the, the email, you know, that's, that seems, seemingly getting more and more sophisticated. Are there things from an average consumer perspective? You know, I feel fairly protected at work. We're doing a lot of things. We test ourselves all the time. You know, part of pen testing has become, I get, I get these crazy texts. You know, it's like, Hey, this is the CEO. Can you send me some gift cards? Right? They're just testing us, right, at that point. The first time I got that, it was really weird. I'm like, because my first thought was, Why is he, why is he calling me on a holiday? Why is he asking me for gift cards? And then it, for a minute, I was like, I'm not doing this stuff. I was like, Oh, wait a minute. I, this is a, this is one of those automated, or this is one of those attacks, right? When we think about those, Christian, are there better tools? Have we gotten, do we have some things to help us with that? Especially in the world of email. Email is terrible. Like, it's awful. It is. And you know, I, there's a lot of easy, easier sets of options that are now coming in with a lot of the managed email services. So even like Google Workspaces, like if you're using that to host your own domain and then email, they have a lot of nice features to make it easy to help customers turn on SPF and DKIM signing, which I highly recommend anyone validate that either they've turned that on or their mail provider is doing that for them. Because what that does is actually prevents your email from being directly spoofed. So like if I wanted to try to spoof like Jim at the average guy.tv and those records weren't exact email. Now, if you apply to that spoof, it's going to go to actual Jim, but I may have gotten you to do something by sending you something looking like I'm the real Jim.
Home Gadget Geeks
"mgm f" Discussed on Home Gadget Geeks
"How long do they last, generally, for you? You know, it's interesting. It depends on use, right? Mine did not last as long as I think, and I wonder if I had accidentally left it on after one of the trainings. So that's something that's kind of easy to do because they say it should last, you know, for dozens of hours. But yeah, you can see the Sport is the USB rechargeable model, the Premier and the Sport, and then the other two are battery replaceable. And you can see, yeah, the rating on the Flex, which would be pretty comparable. They're saying 350 hours. I definitely did not make it to even a third of that. So even if you want to say the Classic is half as good as the Flex, I did not make it to 150 hours. So I think I must have left it on accidentally one day, so. No, that's cool. Well, it looks like the Flex is the upgraded Classic. And then they've added Sport and Premier to it. So cool. Well, no, that is a, that's a very, that's a very cool gadget I didn't anticipate. You know, you're like, Huh, I have to keep that. Well, especially for people that struggle with motion sickness. And it's awful. I mean, it was just awful. So, so very cool. Well, let's transition a little bit into maybe something not so cool. And we'll do a little Cyber Frontiers segment here as we think about the world of what's going on at MGM right now and kind of the madness. For those who don't know, give us a little synopsis and then maybe a little commentary what's happening in MGM. Yeah, it's funny because we were out for our annual haunt at DEF CON this year. And my experience checking into an MGM owned property was interestingly within like 20 minutes of being there. Their automated kiosk systems were not working. So you would go to check in and scan your driver's license. It would find who you were. And then the system was just like lost. And so we managed to get there earlier enough that like we were able to get a person before the line like out across the the casino started forming. But I was like, huh, DEF CON starting early this year. You know, we've already arrived and automatic check in isn't working. But yeah, within a month, this this article kind of comes into the full four where really all the classic things that we've talked about so many times on cyber frontiers. Right. Okta was the identity management vendor for MGM Resorts. And so they were running a lot of key systems that run the casino network, the hotel reservation network, like pretty much core business functions of this company. And this all started with basically very poor reporting in American media in the sense that this was happening for several days and no one was covering it. And it was like it blew my mind how hush hush all this was. But essentially, you know, classic story of a sophisticated phishing campaign, social engineering, working the phones. They were able to compromise MFA related credentials for super administrators, move laterally through the system. And I haven't had a chance to study the full amount of information that is out there. But what some of the initial reporting is saying is that, you know, there was lateral movement in their systems in ways that were novel, that weren't just traditional. You know, once they got the foothold, what came next was not traditional at all. And what's really fascinating about it is that if you've ever been to Vegas, most of the properties on the strip now are pretty much owned by one of two major companies, MGM Resorts or Caesar Forum. So if it's not Caesar, it's not MGM. I'm not saying there are other big names on the strip, but they own a lot of the real estate on the strip. And Caesar's got hit with this kind of same thing several weeks prior to MGM. And no one heard about it. It wasn't reported at all. And why? As we come to find out only after the fact, Caesar's like, this is above our pay grade. We're paying these guys off because we're not dealing with this. So they paid off the ransomware and they walked, you know, I don't want to say scot-free, but clearly whatever amount they paid is much less than the 8.7 million estimated per day that MGM has been losing in trying to deal with this. So MGM was like, we're not negotiating with the hackers. So their response was to shut down all of their systems. And I mean, pretty much all of their systems, which meant you were only playing in the casinos on machines that took cash. No one was booking in or doing online reservations. I mean, pretty crippling for a resort and entertainment industry like MGM. And so it's still just, you know, my commentary is pretty simple on this one. It still amazes me how effective phishing is and really the social engineering piece. And I kind of remember every year, you know, at least every two or three years, we try to go to the social engineering village at DEF CON and they go into the soundproof phone booth and they call random company and they see how far they can get. And it's just, you sit there and you're so impressed how many people, it's just like a, I don't know, it's like almost an automated natural response for people to want to provide information for a variety of different social pressure points that that adversary can apply, right? Sometimes it can be, you know, job-related stress of like, you know, I'm going to escalate this to your supervisor so it can be that type of like veiled threat. Other times it can be just, you know, I'm a harmless, nice guy. I'm looking for information. I'm running a survey for your company. I mean, the quantities and different types of ways that people get creative and really hacking human social capabilities for lack of a better phrase is pretty unbelievable. And if you're good at it, there seems to be ample amounts of zero-day ammunition in the toolkit for attackers to leverage once they get that initial foothold.
Home Gadget Geeks
"mgm f" Discussed on Home Gadget Geeks
"The, I looked up this vagus nerve, because I hadn't heard it before, and it said, The vagus nerve is involved in regulating important body functions, including breathing, heart rate, digestion and immune response. It also plays an important role in controlling mood, I'm sorry, mood, emotions and social behavior. Did you see any positive side effects beyond, you know, helping you, and maybe this was part of getting through it, but did you sense any of those other benefits of it as you were, as you were wearing it as well in those areas? You know, I think it's certainly mood, not, not particularly. I mean, my mood was very focused on trying to fly the aircraft, trying to control the, the response. But I would say I wouldn't be surprised if it helped quite a bit with the actual, that, it's like the anxiety climax drop off phase of the motion sickness. And so if that's kind of the contour in which they mean mood, I think absolutely, because that is a big part in what holds you back from feeling like you can go through that experience again. Social behavior, not so much, emotions, not so much. Definitely, though, the breathing and the ability to handle the kind of, that stomach response. Yeah, they say in this article here, and I'll have all these links in the show notes if you want to go out and look at them, but it says the vagus nerve is sometimes called the wandering nerve because of many of the different parts of the body it interacts with. Stimulating vagus nerve can also have calming effects on the body, which I think is what you were looking for, right? That recovery, because you were going into it while it was still happening, you were going into it. Man, I think about, for folks who, you know, in boating or in, you know, maybe any of those situations where that's debilitating, this could be, you know, this could be one of those things. And so how long, how long did you use the watch? You're off of it now, right? At this point, you're not, you're not using. Would you consider bringing it back for, for any reason at some point? Or, or you're good, you feel like you're good at this point? I mean, unless I was like in hurricane conditions out at sea and felt like, gee, this might be a good thing to have just in case, like maybe. But I mean, my goal with it was to not have it become a crutch where, Oh, I'm only going to be in the plane if this thing is zapping my arm. But I keep it in the flight bag as like an honorary, like it's there. It's pretty small to stow. So like, there's no harm in having it and keeping it. But no, I mean, for me personally, like I said, it was about 20 to 25 hours of use of flight time of the 61 hours that I've logged. So about a third of my journey. And if I were to put out on like a chart, because my pilot journey has been around November 16th of last year was my first flight. And I did a couple of flights in November and December. The first kind of experiences with motion sickness were a bit enough for me. So work and other stuff was pretty busy and that on top, I was kind of thinking about, OK, what's my next move here? So I took January, February and most of March off. And then in the last week of March, I got back into it and had the relief band. And, you know, you can plot out like what was my kind of productivity or advancement against the hours I was doing the logbook. And you can see just how much the relief band accelerated that. So even though I've been flying for almost a year in November, really my core training to get where I've gotten today has been six months of very focused two times a week. I'm out there flying. I'm working with the instructor. I'm doing ground instruction at home, et cetera. And that definitely wouldn't have been possible without the relief band. But definitely for a good third of that journey, it was the way that I was able to get to that six months of really core focus in, in doing the pilot training. Yeah. Now, that sounds cool. I wonder if you could compare that to your, do you, do you get any watch data? Are you wearing any kind of, any watch that's doing any kind of health? I'm not. You know, it's funny. My wife wears the Apple Watch every day and loves it and has all the health data. And I guess I'm, I'm an old fart in that respect. I just don't have one. It would be interesting to correlate, you know, to have the relief band on one side and the Apple Watch on the other, whatever. There's, there's a variety. Apple's not the only one in this space. But to kind of see what kind of health conditions that would, that would bring. Maybe even, oh, yeah, can you get, you got me kind of thinking on this thing now. It's kind of cool. From like, even from just a regular wear on a regular basis of, or you're sleeping with it. I wonder what that, you know, if that, maybe first time it would keep them awake, right? Because obviously, do you feel it? Do you feel the physical stimulation as it's happening? On the higher power settings, definitely. It's, you know, if it's on like full power setting, it might even be a little uncomfortable, depending on your weight, how tightly you have it installed, how much gel you have, etc. But certainly on a low power setting, it, you know, after a while, you would, you would forget it's there. Yeah, I just think of maybe for individuals who have, and sometimes I have a tendency, I'll mess with my, like I'll pinch my fingers in a, in a response to just, if I'm agitated or if I'm stressed, you know, I kind of, and that's a obvious pain response. I'm doing that to stimulate something in, on my body, wondering if this could be one of those devices for stress, where, you know, you might, if you're feeling, if you're feeling stressed, that may be one of those things with something like this and a little meditation practice or something along those lines. I don't know. Sounds interesting. Yeah, no, right on. But it was a, it was a cool gadget to introduce, only because I just feel that a lot of people, even in my own life, didn't know about it. And it certainly has a lot of applications outside of flying. Well, and you've got a story, like, I mean, just think, fill in bags to, to not at this point. Yeah, I think John asked, John asked earlier if the, if the CFI charged extra for that service. And yeah, he's been very kind and patient and Zip it up and put it back in the bag. Oh, cool. Just can't imagine. Brian says, figure if you buy meds for nausea enough, buying this device would pay for itself. And, and to your point, I mean, man, if you can have a mechanical device that would help you overcome that, as opposed to, to, to, you know, to drugs, right? I, yeah, I mean, I, for me, the drugs was really like, it was a red line for me. I mean, maybe if I really got beat down that like nothing else is working, I would try one of the FAA-approved drugs just to see if that would be enough to jumpstart me. But it's really so awesome that, yeah, you don't have to ingest anything in your body to get the benefits. It's like, there's really not many things out there that, that can do that for you. So. A little bit of gel, put it on, set, set the, dial it in. I'm assuming those numbers are what, what, yeah, the power level. How does it charge? Is it a, it's got the batteries? Is that where you were showing earlier? Yeah, so there's different models. So the higher-end models have like a USB-C charger, and the base model, like the one that I have, is just two CR2032 batteries. So once they're done, you're replacing them much like you would replace a CR2032 battery in your watch.
Home Gadget Geeks
A highlight from Christian Johnson with Reliefband, the MGM/Caesars Hack and an Update on Windows 11 HGG585
"The, I looked up this vagus nerve, because I hadn't heard it before, and it said, The vagus nerve is involved in regulating important body functions, including breathing, heart rate, digestion and immune response. It also plays an important role in controlling mood, I'm sorry, mood, emotions and social behavior. Did you see any positive side effects beyond, you know, helping you, and maybe this was part of getting through it, but did you sense any of those other benefits of it as you were, as you were wearing it as well in those areas? You know, I think it's certainly mood, not, not particularly. I mean, my mood was very focused on trying to fly the aircraft, trying to control the, the response. But I would say I wouldn't be surprised if it helped quite a bit with the actual, that, it's like the anxiety climax drop off phase of the motion sickness. And so if that's kind of the contour in which they mean mood, I think absolutely, because that is a big part in what holds you back from feeling like you can go through that experience again. Social behavior, not so much, emotions, not so much. Definitely, though, the breathing and the ability to handle the kind of, that stomach response. Yeah, they say in this article here, and I'll have all these links in the show notes if you want to go out and look at them, but it says the vagus nerve is sometimes called the wandering nerve because of many of the different parts of the body it interacts with. Stimulating vagus nerve can also have calming effects on the body, which I think is what you were looking for, right? That recovery, because you were going into it while it was still happening, you were going into it. Man, I think about, for folks who, you know, in boating or in, you know, maybe any of those situations where that's debilitating, this could be, you know, this could be one of those things. And so how long, how long did you use the watch? You're off of it now, right? At this point, you're not, you're not using. Would you consider bringing it back for, for any reason at some point? Or, or you're good, you feel like you're good at this point? I mean, unless I was like in hurricane conditions out at sea and felt like, gee, this might be a good thing to have just in case, like maybe. But I mean, my goal with it was to not have it become a crutch where, Oh, I'm only going to be in the plane if this thing is zapping my arm. But I keep it in the flight bag as like an honorary, like it's there. It's pretty small to stow. So like, there's no harm in having it and keeping it. But no, I mean, for me personally, like I said, it was about 20 to 25 hours of use of flight time of the 61 hours that I've logged. So about a third of my journey. And if I were to put out on like a chart, because my pilot journey has been around November 16th of last year was my first flight. And I did a couple of flights in November and December. The first kind of experiences with motion sickness were a bit enough for me. So work and other stuff was pretty busy and that on top, I was kind of thinking about, OK, what's my next move here? So I took January, February and most of March off. And then in the last week of March, I got back into it and had the relief band. And, you know, you can plot out like what was my kind of productivity or advancement against the hours I was doing the logbook. And you can see just how much the relief band accelerated that. So even though I've been flying for almost a year in November, really my core training to get where I've gotten today has been six months of very focused two times a week. I'm out there flying. I'm working with the instructor. I'm doing ground instruction at home, et cetera. And that definitely wouldn't have been possible without the relief band. But definitely for a good third of that journey, it was the way that I was able to get to that six months of really core focus in, in doing the pilot training. Yeah. Now, that sounds cool. I wonder if you could compare that to your, do you, do you get any watch data? Are you wearing any kind of, any watch that's doing any kind of health? I'm not. You know, it's funny. My wife wears the Apple Watch every day and loves it and has all the health data. And I guess I'm, I'm an old fart in that respect. I just don't have one. It would be interesting to correlate, you know, to have the relief band on one side and the Apple Watch on the other, whatever. There's, there's a variety. Apple's not the only one in this space. But to kind of see what kind of health conditions that would, that would bring. Maybe even, oh, yeah, can you get, you got me kind of thinking on this thing now. It's kind of cool. From like, even from just a regular wear on a regular basis of, or you're sleeping with it. I wonder what that, you know, if that, maybe first time it would keep them awake, right? Because obviously, do you feel it? Do you feel the physical stimulation as it's happening? On the higher power settings, definitely. It's, you know, if it's on like full power setting, it might even be a little uncomfortable, depending on your weight, how tightly you have it installed, how much gel you have, etc. But certainly on a low power setting, it, you know, after a while, you would, you would forget it's there. I Yeah, just think of maybe for individuals who have, and sometimes I have a tendency, I'll mess with my, like I'll pinch my fingers in a, in a response to just, if I'm agitated or if I'm stressed, you know, I kind of, and that's a obvious pain response. I'm doing that to stimulate something in, on my body, wondering if this could be one of those devices for stress, where, you know, you might, if you're feeling, if you're feeling stressed, that may be one of those things with something like this and a little meditation practice or something along those lines. I don't know. Sounds interesting. Yeah, no, right on. But it was a, it was a cool gadget to introduce, only because I just feel that a lot of people, even in my own life, didn't know about it. And it certainly has a lot of applications outside of flying. Well, and you've got a story, like, I mean, just think, fill in bags to, to not at this point. Yeah, I think John asked, John asked earlier if the, if the CFI charged extra for that service. And yeah, he's been very kind and patient and Zip it up and put it back in the bag. Oh, cool. Just can't imagine. Brian says, figure if you buy meds for nausea enough, buying this device would pay for itself. And, and to your point, I mean, man, if you can have a mechanical device that would help you overcome that, as opposed to, to, to, you know, to drugs, right? I, yeah, I mean, I, for me, the drugs was really like, it was a red line for me. I mean, maybe if I really got beat down that like nothing else is working, I would try one of the FAA -approved drugs just to see if that would be enough to jumpstart me. But it's really so awesome that, yeah, you don't have to ingest anything in your body to get the benefits. It's like, there's really not many things out there that, that can do that for you. So. A little bit of gel, put it on, set, set the, dial it in. I'm assuming those numbers are what, what, yeah, the power level. How does it charge? Is it a, it's got the batteries? Is that where you were showing earlier? Yeah, so there's different models. So the higher -end models have like a USB -C charger, and the base model, like the one that I have, is just two CR2032 batteries. So once they're done, you're replacing them much like you would replace a CR2032 battery in your watch.
Home Gadget Geeks
"mgm f" Discussed on Home Gadget Geeks
"This is the Average Guy Network, and you have found Home Gadget Geek Show No. 585 with guest Christian Johnson, recorded on September 21, 2023. Here on Home Gadget Geeks, we cover all the favorite tech gadgets that find their way in your home news reviews, product updates and conversation all through The Average Tech Guide. I'm your host, Jim Collison, broadcasting live from theaverageguy.tv studios here in a beautiful Bellevue, Nebraska. Spring is on its way. Woo-hoo! No, what am I saying? Fall is on its way. Spring in Australia, maybe. Of course, we post a show with the world-class show notes. I have no idea where my mind is tonight. Out at theaverageguy.tv. Big thanks to Paul Brairn, who joined us last week. He's always good. He's a fan favorite. And everybody loves to have Paul on. Paul did a great job. Paul, thanks for jumping in here. He's, he's had quite a busy last 18 months. They haven't caught it yet. Home Gadget Geeks 584. Get that checked out today. Big thanks to our Patreon subscribers as well if you're finding value in the podcast and you want to give back. You want to join that, that helps us kind of do some stuff around here. Theaverageguy.tv slash Patreon will get you there as well. Christian is back. And Christian, always great to have you on Home Gadget Geeks. It's a lot easier. Welcome back. Right on. Good to be back. Always glad that the remnants of Christian's Corner and, or cyberfrontiers and, or the other esoteric topics that I like to get into still have a home here. So it's good to be here. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and tonight, I think we're gonna cover all of those things. So it's kind of, kind of reminiscent of the old home tech days when you're on and some cyberfrontiers before that, but, but always good to have you back. OK, a major event happened in your life. Between last show and this show, you, and I don't even know how to say it, you got your pilot's license or something. You alluded to that, I think we talked, but you got it. Talk, talk a little bit about that experience. Update it. Yeah, right on. It's, it's been a great adventure. I completed my student solo in mid-August, which is essentially the first time that you are out there on your own. The actual student solo is fairly simple, though, in a sense. It's three take off and landings in the pattern. And that kind of makes you current for the license that you hold. So the actual flying part of your first student solo is fairly straightforward. But then, you know, once you have that, and you're properly endorsed in your logbook, that allows you to be exercising the privileges of a student pilot, which pretty much means you can fly by yourself, but you can't carry passengers yet. And so, since then, I've been working both my full private pilot license. And so that's flying across country sounds really impressive big, but really, it's just a minimum of 50 nautical miles between two different airports. So I've actually done two 70 nautical mile trip practices with my instructor, one to Lancaster and one to Harrisburg. Really cool approaches, especially the Harrisburg approach, because as you approach Harrisburg, you have Three Mile Island on the right hand side, where the nuclear kind of event took place in the 80s. There's a really good documentary on Netflix, if you haven't caught it, that kind of goes into that whole craze. But then, as you cut left away from the nuclear plant, if it's a clear, sunny day, you just get this beautiful overlook on the Susquehanna. You got the Harrisburg city skyline right there. You're coming right into the airport and the main runway is about maybe 12 feet from the river. And so it's really cool. Toward Airport, I would say it's like a small terminal version of BWI. So it's a true regional airport. And yeah, within like 20 or 30 seconds of landing, Boeing 737 from Allegiant came in right behind me. So it's just it's been a really great experience. It's been a hobby that the best way I can describe it is you can do a lot of hobbies in life where you might be going through the motions of doing that hobby, but your brain might be elsewhere. And for me, it's really easy to be thinking about work while I'm still doing something else. But if you're thinking about work while flying an airplane, it's probably not going to go too well for you. I'm not going to be up there very long. So it's been a really great hobby in the sense that totally out of my elements, learning how to fly didn't have any background and know anyone that was previously a pilot, you know, just kind of jumped into a whole new world cold. And I thought one of the fun things to do not because I think this is like average tech or average gadgets that people are going to be going out and buying, but that'd be kind of fun to walk through some of the gadgets that have made my piloting journey so far successful. Just because I think it's a cool testament to how much technology is also impacting general aviation. And I'm not really talking about your, you know, ATP airline captains and your big, you know, United Southwest, etc. But I am talking about the people that are gadgets to replace things that were very manual, if you were learning how to be a private pilot, you know, 30, 40, 50 years ago. So it is a cool technology space in and of itself, as well as a lot of cool practical skills that come out of having to learn how to fly. Jim Collison. Yeah, I remember flying Omaha to Centennial in Denver. The airport there was going out to do some speaking. A buddy, I said, I could, you know, I was telling him I was going out there. And he, he said, Well, I could fly you out there. And I, I was like, Oh, really? He's like, Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he flew me out there. That's the last time I've ever been in a small aircraft like that again. It scared the daylights out of me. Like, I just was not the, you know, and I know it was, what kind of aircraft was it? Do you remember? Cessna, four-seater, you know, you know, so it's pretty, not, not slow, but not fast. And then, you know, it rode every, you could feel every bump. And I just, that, it just, that was unsettling to me. And, you know, and then on the way back, he was like, Well, I'm not ready to do equipment landing, and Omaha's fogged in, so we're gonna have to, we're gonna have to wait. So spend the night in Centennial. What are you gonna do, right? Your aircraft is there. So well, congrats, congrats on getting that. It's a big deal. And you got, you've got some things to, I mean, you've still got some things to go until you can take passengers, right, and some of that stuff. Yeah, so I'll be doing what's called a Stage 2 check in October. And that's essentially making sure all your navigation skills and some of the latter, later-stage maneuvers, like short and soft field takeoff and landings are all looking good. Making sure your radio navigation is solid. And that pretty much gives you the green light to then get the endorsements in your logbook to repeat your cross-country's solo. And that's really the last major solo activity before you can take the final check ride with the FAA. So I'll get those two knocked out here in the fall. And I have one nighttime flight left to finish. And then I'm good for the check ride. So nighttime flight's actually misunderstood, because a lot of people assume that you need to be instrument-rated to fly at night, but you can fly at night under VFR rules and conditions. So you're not required. Meaning you can see everything visual. Yeah, you, right. There's no obstructions. Right, right. And so, you know, that is a privilege you can exercise as well as a private pilot. And you can, there's daytime currency and nighttime currency as a VFR pilot. But yeah, you can fly as long as you're within those currency regulations. And so I'm kind of hoping by December, we can complete the check ride for the full private pilot license. And then, in parallel to that, depending on how long it takes to get the check ride scheduled, I'll be starting my instrument training in parallel. So we're just gonna keep on going through. Cool. Yeah, good work. John, wanted to know if you, in Harrisburg there, if you took off over the river. Yeah, absolutely. We came in on approach on Runway 31. And then when you take off, it's right back over this Susquehanna heading back towards Maryland. So it's a really cool, both approach and departure. Cool. Brian checking in with a, with a congratulations. And then he wants to know, what, what plane are you flying? Are you? Yeah, everything I'm flying right now is a Cessna 172. I normally fly the M model, which is a 1975-76 aircraft. Pretty cool. The M model is a, you know, like manual carburetor heat, and you're controlling, you know, priming the fuel, etc. I've also flown the S model, which is much newer. Those have the, this, this particular one has the full Garmin 1000NXP avionics panels, it has autopilot, it is a much newer aircraft, maybe late 90s, early 2000s. And it is fuel injected. So the start sequence is a bit different, but, but newer spec for sure. So even within, you know, when someone says a 172, that can mean a lot of different things based on what letter is at the end of that statement. But really, most of the fleets that you'll see in the greater DC area, M model is probably going to be on the oldest side. And most of them are, you know, you'll see M and R, P, S are pretty common for trainer aircraft in a Cessna 172. And then moving in next year, we're looking at a couple options. One would be to upgrade to a 182T, which is a turbocharged, much larger on the inside, you're going to get much better cruise performance, has much greater carrying capacity, easy to maintain, well known aircraft, basically the 172, but I've started a small group of copilots who are interested in potentially doing things together long term or either have their private pilots are starting to work on their instrument. So all kind of in a similar place on the training. And also looking at Cirrus, which has become the most popular general aviation brand and took that title from Cessna when they created the first Cirrus G1 back in 99, I think was when the first one was out maybe a little earlier. But they are through six different generations of Cirrus at this point, and they have two models, they have an SR20 and an SR22. And then they also have a turbocharged version of the SR22. And those things are blazing fast. So like for comparison, a 172M, you're lucky at max cruise performance, if you get a good headwind, maybe you're doing 120 knots. In a Cirrus SR22, you can do anywhere from 200 to 220 knots. So it's it's about double in terms of what you're going to do for personal travel. And it's all full glass, you know, much newer aircraft, composite material, composite paint, much newer, just newer everything pretty much from Cessna. And Cessna took a stab at trying to be like Cirrus, they released a, they created an aircraft called the Cessna TTX in about 2014. And it just, it didn't pick it didn't take off, I think the way they had hoped. And so you can find them on the market. And they do they have retained their value. But really, in terms of who is selling the most new airframes right now, I mean, Cirrus walks away with it. One of the things that Cirrus is best known for, or was kind of uniquely invented was the CAPS system, which is, you know, literally, if if you're in trouble, you can pull a double safety handlebar overhead and a parachute is going to bring the whole aircraft down to the ground safely. So it's a parachute system for the airplane, they very tightly pack and compress that parachute into the plane. The only maintenance required is every 10 years, they have a what's called a CAPS repack where they repack the parachute and make sure everything is in working order. And so you know, that is one of the areas that I think people really got captivated by Cirrus when it first came out, but they've made major substantive improvements in each subsequent generation. And what's also impressive is that for the speed the aircraft gets, it's a fixed landing gear aircraft, so you can't retract the landing gear to get more speed airspeed. So it's impressive that, you know, really it is the, I would argue it's the fastest single piston aircraft that is in that four seater size that doesn't have a retractable landing gear, and is a very high tech kind of way to do aviation. It is a low wing aircraft. I have loved flying high wing, to be honest, really, because just the view angle is really awesome. There's obviously easy, you know, that's easily addressed by, you know, tilt your nose, change your heading a little bit, you'll get the angle you want to get. But I've really enjoyed flying the high wings. It's a very cool experience. But Cirrus has definitely become a very popular aircraft. And I think one of the things that people really are surprised to hear about who are not, you know, on a particular basis is just how long these airframes last. And that's one of the leading reasons why you can fly a plane that's 50 or 60 years old. And, you know, people might think like, gee, like, I'm not driving a car that's 50 or 60 years old. Why am I getting in an airplane that's 50 or 60 years old? And like, it's a little bit unsettling at first, but you kind of learn and realize that the airframes are rated for just incredible number of hours. So like a Cessna 172 airframe is rated for, I think, up to like 12,000 hours of flight. And the engines are rebuilt in their entirety. Every single piece is taken apart and put back together as part of the maintenance requirements about every 2000 hours. So in a way, the airframes are retaining their value long term. And if you're taking care of the furnishings, the paint job, etc, you know, it's amazing how much you can upgrade these planes in terms of their avionics and their instrumentation. So, you know, really, like I have a partial glass display in that 172M. You wouldn't have had that if you were flying it back in 1976. But it's a bit of a different aircraft when you're flying it with those types of instruments. And, you know, Jim Collison, Right. And so, you know, one, one thing that's been really interesting to see is just how these, you know, much older aircraft have retained their value, and they're going up in value, and flight schools are competing for them on the open market to try and grab up as many of them as they can because they're not being produced in the quantities that used to be produced in. And some might argue that there's a lot more value in learning how to fly in a Cessna first before learning how to fly something like a Cirrus. It's a bit of a different way to start out flying. And so Cirrus actually has a Cirrus transition program. It's only about 10 hours of training. But the idea is to kind of accustom you to the differences flying between a traditional aircraft like a Piper, a Cessna, and the Cirrus, especially because, you know, one of the big control differences is the Cirrus is much more like a joystick. You're literally controlling a joystick on the pilot side, whereas, you know, a Cessna or Piper is traditional control. So, yeah, some nuances there that would be interesting to start flying. There's plenty of pilots that do. They start right from the beginning on Cirrus, but I have really enjoyed flying like, gee, this is what they were flying 56 years ago, this is still what they're flying and training in today. And then here are all the ways that we've retrofitted these planes or retrofitted training or understanding to make these planes more fun, more safe to fly even today. And so, like the plane I fly, I think has total engine time around 4600 hours. And yeah, that means they're going to be able to rebuild it and it's made it 60 years and probably could be rebuilt another four or five times before they're like, okay, we really got to put this thing in the trash, it's done, which is just unbelievable. Jim Collison. Well, the airspeed doesn't put as much stress on the, on the body, because it's pretty low airspeed, right, for the most part. And so, right? Ian Flannigan. Well, yes. I mean, one of the important things, though, is there are, of course, dumb ways you can make that airspeed be higher than what it should. So like, if you're staying below maneuvering speed, and you're not like trying to pull G's or donuts in the sky or spin it out of control, like, it's like, it's like a car, right? Like, you could take a Junker and beat the heck out of it, and make it go probably way down the road. It's going to go way faster than it should. Similar things with the plane. However, yeah, generally speaking, you're not going to see the same types of load factors on a 172 trainer that you're going to see on either larger or faster aircrafts. Jim Collison Yeah. I mean, if you took a 74, a vehicle built in 74, and you treated it like they treat their aircraft, keep them indoors, keep them clean, rebuild the engine from time to time, right? Do all those maintenance things. It would probably last just as long, right? I mean, so it's, it's cool. You mentioned some gadgets. Let's, let's talk, or some things from a technology perspective. What else? You mentioned a few, but have you bought anything for this that you've been using? Ryan Wolf Yeah. Well, one of the things that you realize with aviation is that it's a burning-a-hole-in-your-wall exercise like you wouldn't believe. But it's, you just go to bed smiling every night, how much fun you had. So you know, you just try not to think about that part. But I think I mentioned this maybe on the last post-show on Home Gadget Geeks. I don't know if it caught the recorded edition or not. But one of the big personal challenges that I've been able to overcome in learning how to fly has been motion sickness. I've just been historically always very prone to motion sickness, put me on a spinny ride, or put me out to sea, and I'm like dead. I guess I should have been surprised the first time I got up in the sky, and it was not much better of an experience. And when you're motion sick, it's not like you're, there's a difference between motion sickness, the type of reaction you have with motion sickness, and the type of reaction you have in like, oh, I'm ill, like I caught a bug, and I'm, and I'm vomiting, right? There's definitely a, an anxiety response that happens. You're, you're being sick. Your brain is pretty out of it when you get deeply motion sick, and you just physically feel like I, you know, I'm done. And that's obviously pretty distracting when you're like trying to learn how to fly. Okay. So I wasn't sure how I was going to get through it at first. And yeah, I did a fair amount of research on this, that, and the other thing. And so, you know, some of the common things that people will tell you are like, well, have you looked at these, you know, FDA approved medications? But like, you have to be really careful. Number one, because there's a very, of those list of medications, there's very few that are going to be approved by the FAA, if you're going to be a pilot. And then number two, like, I, I didn't like the thought of having to be dependent on something to be in the sky as a pilot safe. So I thought about this for a while. And I thought, well, exposure therapy doesn't sound like the most, you know, enticing thing in the world, but let's give it a try. So, you know, we would go up there on both calm days and brutal days. I mean, we're talking like north of 20 knots, which doesn't sound like a big deal. But if you're motion sick, it feels like you're on the worst ride of your life at Disney World. Especially when you're doing a landing approach, and you feel like the aircraft's going like this, and you have your horizon is it doesn't matter how many times someone tells you to stare at the horizon, like it just isn't working for you. And so one of the first big changes I made, which, you know, maybe is obvious for some, but is very similar to what they tell you if you get seasick is focus on eating and drinking a ton before you get in that plane or on that boat. It seems so counterintuitive. And it seems really, it seems really counterintuitive, especially because for the first while, all I would do is throw up, you know, like have a good breakfast, like stay really hydrated, go out early in the morning when it's still cool. But I would say that actually delayed getting motion sick by a bit, not like anything that was going to be game changer, but it bought me a little bit more time in the sky. Then I started realizing like, gee, I need to come better prepared to like, you know, lose the entire inner contents of my body. So I would start bringing boxes of Ziplocs in my airbag, or in my, you know, my go bag basically for flying. And yeah, only like one time, one bag and I was done, you know, we turned back. And so I was like, huh, I have to figure out how can I get more exposure without having to, you know, turn back and go in, but push through it. So two things, one, breathing makes a huge difference. How you're controlling your breathing during that kind of anxiety climb to the motion sickness and even after can play a big role in how long it takes you to kind of go through a cycle of motion sickness. And that's not something that people really tell you, really tell you to focus on. But it was something I noticed is that when I could catch deeper breaths for more concentrated periods of time, I could defer some of the worst side effects of motion sick. But again, none of this stuff I'm talking about. I mean, most people would hear me come back talking about this stuff and think this dude's like actually, you know, batshit crazy at this point. Like I would never do this. So I was like, okay, like what's a real aid that I can deploy that is not a drug, is not, you know, anything mental that can help me work through this. And so the first, this was a very long introduction to the first gadget. But the first gadget is this really cool little watch looking widget and it's called a relief band. And it has, it's a very simple interface, has a power button on front, has five different light indicator and power modes from one to five. And on the back of the device, you have two basically electro stimulating pads and what it just comes in a simple pouch. And what comes with the device is this basically hypoallergenic gel. And so the way it works is inside the gadget, if I were to open this compartment and pull this up tab out, you can see it's two CR2032 batteries that powers the device. And what it does is it actually sends a continuous pulse of electro activity through the device. And it's, you know, not too dissimilar from shocking your dog, except it's a little bit of a different modulation we're going for here. And you use this gel and you actually position it on your wrist and you're looking to place it in these two kind of main nerve veins that are going up of your arm. And the electric signal is actually going to go up your arm into your brain neurologically and then travel down to your stomach. And what it actually is doing is it's stimulating your vagus nerve. And so it's calming this kind of, if you think of your stomach as having these unstable waves, it's calming that type of behavior and that type of signaling in your body. And so this is a non-drug approach to trying to get some motion sickness relief, which it was very interesting to find out that a lot of pilots, like when they're first starting out, this is not an uncommon issue for a lot of folks. But of all the people that my flight instructor has had quit because of motion sickness, none of them had, he had never heard about this device. He had never tried it, et cetera. And it really is for all types of motion sickness. It's not really just for, hey, I'm going to be up in a plane. It's for boats. It's for amusement rides, et cetera. And so the FDA has rated and approved the device. It has an 85 percent effectiveness in the studies and the clinical studies of having some amount of relief for motion sickness. So I was like, OK, it's about one hundred fifty dollars on Amazon. I was like, well, at one hundred sixty five dollars an hour of flying this thing in the sky, I may as well see if I can turn that one hour into two hours. So seems like pretty decent investment. And what was fascinating about it is that starting out, it didn't stop the motion sickness, which is at first it was a bummer. But what I realized was I felt great after like 30 seconds. I was like, wow, that's a game changer. And usually after after vomiting, you felt like a full vomit, full experience, like, oh, that was awful. And then 30 seconds I was like, oh, I feel fine again. Let's go. And I just like that was such a breakthrough moment that this gadget got me to. It really allowed my idea of exposure therapy to take off. So then, I mean, at some of the peaks of the exposure therapy, I'm talking flights where like four or five different bags had to be deployed. And, you know, people are completely grossed out and like, dude, you're insane at this point. But like that device got me through the motion sickness. And because it has those different power intensity levels, as I was progressing through my training, right. My end goal is I don't want to be dependent on anything to be able to fly, not even a relief band. So I would slowly start backing down the power increments as I was getting less and less motion sick over time to the point where I just stopped wearing the wristband altogether. And somewhere around, you know, as a student pilot right now, I've done 113 landings and I've done 61.3 flight hours. And I would say somewhere around the 20 to 25 hour mark, it was like that switch finally flipped in my brain where didn't matter what the wind speed was. Didn't matter what the conditions were, didn't matter what angle the horizon was, like it was gone. And so I haven't worn that relief band in over 40 hours of flying. And that motion sickness is just it's not something I even think about anymore, which would have been a kind of a quick end to the whole hobby if this type of gadget didn't exist. So I love telling people about it who, you know, yeah, they might not be going on a plane anytime soon. But like, there's a lot of other situations and a lot of other people who experience motion sickness where this type of gadget might be key. So I really just thought that this was awesome. And yeah, they come in some different styles and some different contours. That looks like one of the higher-end ones. Jim Collison. Yeah, that was 279. I mean, the highest price on these things is less than 300. I mean, I pay more for an Apple Watch than these, right? This is the sport version of it we're showing on screen for, for $250. I mean, in your experience, here's the Flex for $179. And then they've got the, the Classic, what they call the Classic, that's, I think, for $150.
Telecom Reseller
"mgm f" Discussed on Telecom Reseller
"Right. It's the people. It's always the people. Chuck, I think that's actually a very good point. And you've made that point before on this podcast series that and maybe it's some cold comfort that I shouldn't be so surprised because up until now, a lot of this has happened, but it was never reported. Folks just moved on. They didn't want to disclose it for many reasons. I think that's I think that's right. I mean, no organization wants to lay out the path that some if they could find it. Right. Because they have to reverse engineer it. It's embarrassing. It's a damage to your brand. You know, Chuck, it also reminds me of what they say about fraud on the personal level. In other words, there's the fraud we know about senior fraud, regular fraud. People are defrauded and so on. But so many people, you know, they go, hey, this isn't me. I'm not the type of person that can be fraud. I can't believe this happened to me. I'm not reporting. It's not worth it to me. Right. Even though I lost some money, I'm just not going to do anything. It's embarrassing, right? It's absolutely embarrassing. And nobody wants to be embarrassed. And it's not for the fact that that there are now there's these new requirements. But if if an organization did lose information related to you, I mean, you might find out about it at some point in the future where you're offered credit protection. Like that's oftentimes and oftentimes as well. There's a there's a there's some sort of huge class action suit associated with that organization for losing data. So it's it's a very expensive proposition. But even then, they never tell you why. They never tell you what you get. And if you I'm sure you've seen these, we've already seen these now over the course of our careers. You know, your your data was subject this it might have been missing and so forth. Here's your credit monitoring service for one year. Well, how did you lose it? Never, never disclosed. So, Chuck, you know, I'm almost going to pretend I'm in Fort Lauderdale doing those panels at the MSP Expo where we always close out with what are five things I can do now to protect myself. And let me ask it this way. You know, we have enterprise readers watching on behalf of their own organization and our guys actually are in charge of voice. Usually that's usually our readership. That's part of the responsibility. We have our channel partner and MSP readers and watcher watchers who are looking over that or for that for their customers. And of course, we actually have carriers, including rural carriers. So for the whole community, what are five or six things folks can do right now? Well, you can obviously you can come go to our website. There's a plethora of information to learn more about the problem of unwanted calls, whether that be a nuisance call and nefarious call. You'll see that there. And it's by vertical by organization. I mean, there's there's there's just lots of good data there. You can also learn more about about our solution in our solution is enterprise grade. It's carrier as well. So we can we can we have actually we're working towards a model that that a carrier would be able to offer to their customers. And our our solution is so easy to use. If an MSP wanted to to offer that to their customers. There's a there's a beautiful back end and administrative, very easy for them to help create the rules necessary so that an organization can filter their traffic based on their specific needs. But but, you know, to get get really down to the ground level on this. And I'll speak to the enterprise for a moment. If you have the ability to to to to submit call detail records to Mutari, we have a free process. It's it's very simple. You send us CDR records. We actually run it through our system. We have five layers of protection. We'll run it through one layer, which is the known bad numbers, the reputation database. We'll run it through there and we'll come back and actually report to you historically exactly how much bad traffic you had. And we don't charge for that. We absolutely don't charge for that. That's. And so for the first time, you're going to see quantified the amount of bad track you have coming into your voice network. Also offer offer up one more thing. If you're if you have a UCAS or a CCAS platform, we actually have an API driven version of our model and in an hour. This is very different than a couple of years ago where you'd have six months implementation times and product matters in an hour. We can and we can install our voice traffic filter and let you try it for 30 days. So there's lots of ways for an organization to get a sense of what's actually happening in their own environment is right now. And that's unfortunate. People just don't know. You know, check that that that free service where you can just find out what the heck's happening. Is that something you can do almost as a first step? Can you just go in there, set that up and see what's going on? It's available right on the site. I wish I could. You know, if you want to, I can send you a link to it, but it's available. But you can. Yeah, the voice traffic assessment is what we call it. So we'll we'll take it. We'll run it through and we'll write it up in terms of, you know, what it means, what the cost is and so forth. And we'll look at it in multiple dimensions. Well, Chuck, I am looking forward, obviously, to our next call on this. We're not through on this topic that by any means. So where can we learn more? www.mutari.com. That's our that's our URL. And and of course, feel free to reach out and reach out to me directly. Well, I'm looking forward to the next podcast, but thank you very much. We always learn a lot from you, Chuck. A pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.
Telecom Reseller
"mgm f" Discussed on Telecom Reseller
"So, here we are, and basically what you and so many other people have been talking about for a long time has happened in it and not and I don't want to, you know, make small other incidents at other organizations. But here we have a wealthy organization, a big world class company experience. And the thing that I can't get out of my mind is here's an organization that 24 hours a day is looking for people that might rip them off. That's what a casino does, right? They're constantly in defensive mode, unlike unlike, let's say, a hospital or university or a city government and so on. So where's the hope for the rest of us? In other words, if it could happen in Vegas on the strip, you know, what can we do? And so so what you described, though, and I want to I want to I want to address the point you just made here is that the entire security industry has a bias that the voice traffic coming in poses less risk to a business. Right. Then then the data side. Right. And in reality, it's flipped around. It's it's always the humans. It's always it's it's why we have some these systems in place. That guy, if you were in a large organization, you would probably get training. You would have your security team sending you emails and oftentimes to try to control you into clicking a link. Right. They would be doing that on purpose to training. Right. To click a link. Now, there was there would be there would be a a a software solution in place to help prevent that link from doing something bad to the system. But here we are. Here we are with voice traffic where there is no filter for most organizations. Right. There's probably no training because people don't get trained on voice the same way. And there is no technical control back there to prevent the bad action from happening. So is a human and be social, be socially engineered, you know, professional social engineering professionals. They're so good. They are so good. They know how to research. They know how to create a sense of urgency around things. And and they they they are very and there's nothing to prevent them from coming in and getting to an employee, which means they're getting into your your your customers data. They're getting into your gear. They're impacting your enterprise, you know, value. You're all bad things happen. So what can you do? Well, you would take like you would and this is what I would recommend. You would take a layered approach to security. Right. Just like like a normal organization does around data. Right. You would have a layered approach to security. And so in in the world that we're in. Right. We would recommend at a minimum, you have a voice traffic firewall or a filter to look at the type of calls that are coming in and determine whether or not. Do I want that call to be connected? Do I want to challenge that color? Do I want to push information maybe to security teams? Right. Because if it's a suspect call, do I want to send it to voicemail? I want to send it to a group of people that maybe are trained specifically to take suspect callers at a minimum. You want to do that as another layer potentially. And this is a lot of context. You obviously have caller authentication. Right. We're using knowledge based approach or you're using voice analysis or you're using some other means to authenticate that someone is who they say that they are. And lastly, there's a whole suite of solutions to prevent fraud. Right. That's the last line of defense fraud where I mean, they're there. This is DARPA stuff at this point where they're looking at the latency in the line. You're purporting, you're from here, but you couldn't possibly be from there. They're looking at the device settings and so forth. So you really need a layered approach, but at a minimum, at a minimum, help the humans out. And at least at the first layer, make it create some resistance for your organization. So that would be our recommendation, which obviously is something that we're involved with. So this so, you know, you've made a good point that that's interesting, right? That just, I guess, like in any other situation in history, people look for the weakest part of the down. Right. They're probing and they notice, well, no one's guarding the voice conversations. No one's the elaborate procedures on texting and emails and so on. Maybe not as much in voice. And a frustration comes through, Doug, for many years working at this. But I have to tell you, the analyst community have not been putting enough of a spotlight on this, even though they know it's true. The consultants community are the resellers that are supposed to be advising, particularly resellers today, that have to reinvent themselves. Right. The carriers aren't stopping these calls. I mean, nor would you want them to. They can't. They want to stay in the safe harbor. But this is this is one of those moments which I have to tell you, it's terrible and I feel bad for MGM. But there's hope for the rest of us because most people never know. And part of this is the SEC has some new rules about disclosure. It's, you know, to protect shareholders. It's a requirement now. But you have to start telling not only your cybersecurity posture and your tools and so forth, but also if you have an event that you have to be material. So who knows what that means? It's open for, you know, open for debate. But we're now starting to see the impact. And what do what do smart people do? Right. You know, particularly if you're a bad actor, you're going to find the point of least resistance to get into these organizations. Right. And if it's unprotected, I'm going to spend more time there versus work because we're getting pretty darn good at protecting the data set.
Telecom Reseller
"mgm f" Discussed on Telecom Reseller
"This is Doug Greenan, I'm the publisher of Telecom Resiller, and I'm very pleased to have with us once again Chuck French of Mutari. Chuck, thank you for joining me today. Doug, a pleasure. Thank you. Well, we're, you know, we have talked in the past about cyber security, and of course on this podcast series, we've been doing a lot of work on that all year long, but this time I think it's a little bit less abstract. We're doing this literally while, even as we're recording this, MGM hospitality company is being basically hacked. You can't make a reservation on their line. There's still many operational problems that they're having. So we have the spectacle of one of the world's richest and most well-prepared companies, you know, having basically an episode about which we've talked about many times in this program. So Chuck, we're going to be sort of diving into that to find out, you know, what that's all about. And if anything can be done by, you know, the rest of us who are maybe in companies that have fewer resources, less visibility and so on. But what is Mutari? Well, Mutari is a 30-year-old, not just more than 30 years old, but we're an independent software vendor, been focused in business communication software for all those years. We're based in Chicago, 400 enterprise customers. We enjoy a pretty good reputation for building great software and supporting it in the way that our customers enjoy, very little turnover of our employees, our customers, our partners. And as an organization, we're buying the company right now through an employee stock ownership. And I tell people this every time I meet them, because I think it's important. We're aligned and we're the most aligned company you've ever spoken to, Doug. And we're aligned around buying the company, but with a specific purpose. We need to do it around solving a problem. And then for the last couple of years, we are focused on being the leader in voice threat defense, which is why this conversation is so timely. You know, before we get off the topic of your company's core identity, I understand Mutari is actually a Latin word. Yes, it means to change in Latin. So think mutant, mutate. I always have to remind myself of that to make sure I'm saying Mutari. Pretend you're an Italian person saying Mutari, right? It's Latin for to change. And at first, I didn't know what to make of the name because everybody has a hard time with it. But I really do think it's more apt today than ever because this world, by the day, changes faster and faster and faster. And we know how to respond to that. We're a agile company that still acts like a perpetual startup. Well, let's talk about today because as we were just discussing before we started our podcast, and I'm sure a lot of our watchers, listeners are paying close attention to this. I am really just dazzled as much as we've talked and talked with you and many other people about the cybersecurity threat. I think very few of us imagined that what you guys have been telling us in terms of, gee, guys, you know, this could be really bigger than anyone could imagine. Well, here we are. It's seven days. It's still unfolding. I welcome anybody to go to our website and look in the resources column for all the content we put out there around this specific topic. Long-form articles about all of this, statistics, everything you'll ever want to know about the voice. And I'll bring it back to voice, Doug, because you didn't mention it yet. But, you know, the MGM ransomware attack, the cybersecurity attack that's happened has really brought MGM to its knees. You mentioned people can't make reservations. People can't get into the rooms right now, right? You can't, machines are not working. You know, from some estimates, MGM right now, because their systems are all offline, is losing somewhere between $3 million and $7 million a day and $1 million in pure cash. So those would be revenue and a million in cash every day because of this. And why this is so interesting to our firm is because the catalyst for all of this was a voice call. It was a telephone call from someone into the IT area, the customer service area of the IT department at MGM that allowed the bad actors to get the credentials necessary to put their software in, to allow them to take control of all of MGM, a voice call. So how about that? Well, you know what, it's very interesting because for those of you who are movie fans and like the Ocean's Eleven series, not the original with Frank Sinatra, but the more recent one from 20 years ago, there was, for those of you who are telecom fans, there was a PBX hack in that. That was part of what they did. And that was still in the era when the PBX was mostly a non-integrated system, a separate system running alongside the rest of IT. And of course, in the last 20 years, that's been departed. And now, you know, that call presumably occurred on the same set of servers, I think, that a lot of this is happening. Yeah. So, you know, so let's dive into this. So this is exactly what happened. This apparently started with a phone call. And then you were telling me that once they got in, they were able to do sort of some sort of horizontal thing. Tell me more about that, what that means. Yeah. And so I'll provide a little context around that. These are not people who, you know, stumbled upon this and, oh, I was able to get the credentials and so forth. These are large, large, sophisticated organizations, virtual organizations that are all over the world. And when I say sophisticated, and I know I've mentioned this in the past, these are, they have HR departments. They have areas where they can adjudicate conflicts. They have health plans in these organizations and they have specialization. So oftentimes what happens, and if you were to go on the dark web, you know, you can actually purchase some of these things. You can purchase the software to be able to enact these things. But there's just like in a hospital, right? You might have people whose job is the anesthesiologist, then you have the physicians and you have the nurse. They have that regarding ransomware attacks. So there are things called initial access brokers, people whose sole job is to be able to get access to a system. And that might be where their job ends. They sell that, they sell that and they put that in the marketplace. Another group picks it up, say, we're going to be the group now harvests us. That means they take the credentials and they go laterally and they infiltrate systems throughout an organization. They don't do anything. They lay late for a little while. I want to make sure that if you're backing up the copies, they're in the backups, all of their software is there. They lay in there. And then ultimately there comes a day when they say we're going to attack. And that's when someone, and I'm sure you've seen these before the screen pops up, you know, someone, some administrator that, you know, we have your data. You know, here's the information. Send some, you know, so much Bitcoin to so and so. Well, the encrypt your files and destroy them and still proof of life, if you will, to that end, and then you can continue on your way. So, yes, to answer your question, they received through three socially and through social engineering, a customer service person. It's this organization and they this group they call swirly spiders. I forget. I forget the name of these. Yeah. Yeah. They they. Yeah, that's right. That's right. They went ahead and then got access and told MGM that they had their systems in and ultimately MGM ignored them. And guess what happened to MGM when they didn't take this group seriously, everything that we're talking about today.
Telecom Reseller
A highlight from Cybersecurity attack on MGM may have begun with a ten-minute phone call: How it happened, Special Mutare Podcast
"This is Doug Greenan, I'm the publisher of Telecom Resiller, and I'm very pleased to have with us once again Chuck French of Mutari. Chuck, thank you for joining me today. Doug, a pleasure. Thank you. Well, we're, you know, we have talked in the past about cyber security, and of course on this podcast series, we've been doing a lot of work on that all year long, but this time I think it's a little bit less abstract. We're doing this literally while, even as we're recording this, MGM hospitality company is being basically hacked. You can't make a reservation on their line. There's still many operational problems that they're having. So we have the spectacle of one of the world's richest and most well -prepared companies, you know, having basically an episode about which we've talked about many times in this program. So Chuck, we're going to be sort of diving into that to find out, you know, what that's all about. And if anything can be done by, you know, the rest of us who are maybe in companies that have fewer resources, less visibility and so on. But what is Mutari? Well, Mutari is a 30 -year -old, not just more than 30 years old, but we're an independent software vendor, been focused in business communication software for all those years. We're based in Chicago, 400 enterprise customers. We enjoy a pretty good reputation for building great software and supporting it in the way that our customers enjoy, very little turnover of our employees, our customers, our partners. And as an organization, we're buying the company right now through an employee stock ownership. And I tell people this every time I meet them, because I think it's important. We're aligned and we're the most aligned company you've ever spoken to, Doug. And we're aligned around buying the company, but with a specific purpose. We need to do it around solving a problem. And then for the last couple of years, we are focused on being the leader in voice threat defense, which is why this conversation is so timely. You know, before we get off the topic of your company's core identity, I understand Mutari is actually a Latin word. Yes, it means to change in Latin. So think mutant, mutate. I always have to remind myself of that to make sure I'm saying Mutari. Pretend you're an Italian person saying Mutari, right? It's Latin for to change. And at first, I didn't know what to make of the name because everybody has a hard time with it. But I really do think it's more apt today than ever because this world, by the day, changes faster and faster and faster. And we know how to respond to that. We're agile a company that still acts like a perpetual startup. Well, let's talk about today because as we were just discussing before we started our podcast, and I'm sure a lot of our watchers, listeners are paying close attention to this. I am really just dazzled as much as we've talked and talked with you and many other people about the cybersecurity threat. I think very few of us imagined that what you guys have been telling us in terms of, gee, guys, you know, this could be really bigger than anyone could imagine. Well, here we are. It's seven days. It's still unfolding. I welcome anybody to go to our website and look in the resources column for all the content we put out there around this specific topic. Long -form articles about all of this, statistics, everything you'll ever want to know about the voice. And I'll bring it back to voice, Doug, because you didn't mention it yet. But, you know, the MGM ransomware attack, the cybersecurity attack that's happened has really brought MGM to its knees. You mentioned people can't make reservations. People can't get into the rooms right now, right? You can't, machines are not working. You know, from some estimates, MGM right now, because their systems are all offline, is losing somewhere between $3 million and $7 million a day and $1 million in pure cash. So those would be revenue and a million in cash every day because of this. And why this is so interesting to our firm is because the catalyst for all of this was a voice call. It was a telephone call from someone into the IT area, the customer service area of the IT department at MGM that allowed the bad actors to get the credentials necessary to put their software in, to allow them to take control of all of MGM, a voice call. So how about that? Well, you know what, it's very interesting because for those of you who are movie fans and like the Ocean's Eleven series, not the original with Frank Sinatra, but the more recent one from 20 years ago, there was, for those of you who are telecom fans, there was a PBX hack in that. That was part of what they did. And that was still in the era when the PBX was mostly a non -integrated system, a separate system running alongside the rest of IT. And of course, in the last 20 years, that's been departed. And now, you know, that call presumably occurred on the same set of servers, I think, that a lot of this is happening. Yeah. So, you know, so let's dive into this. So this is exactly what happened. This apparently started with a phone call. And then you were telling me that once they got in, they were able to do sort of some sort of horizontal thing. Tell me more about that, what that means. Yeah. And so I'll provide a little context around that. These are not people who, you know, stumbled upon this and, oh, I was able to get the credentials and so forth. These are large, large, sophisticated organizations, virtual organizations that are all over the world. And when I say sophisticated, and I know I've mentioned this in the past, these are, they have HR departments. They have areas where they can adjudicate conflicts. They have health plans in these organizations and they have specialization. So oftentimes what happens, and if you were to go on the dark web, you know, you can actually purchase some of these things. You can purchase the software to be able to enact these things. But there's just like in a hospital, right? You might have people whose job is the anesthesiologist, then you have the physicians and you have the nurse. They have that regarding ransomware attacks. So are there things called initial access brokers, people whose sole job is to be able to get access to a system. And that might be where their job ends. They sell that, they sell that and they put that in the marketplace. Another group picks it up, say, we're going to be the group now harvests us. That means they take the credentials and they go laterally and they infiltrate systems throughout an organization. They don't do anything. They lay late for a little while. I want to make sure that if you're backing up the copies, they're in the backups, all of their software is there. They lay in there. And then ultimately there comes a day when they say we're going to attack. And that's when someone, and I'm sure you've seen these before the screen pops up, you know, someone, some administrator that, you know, we have your data. You know, here's the information. Send some, you know, so much Bitcoin to so and so. Well, the encrypt your files and destroy them and still proof of life, if you will, to that end, and then you can continue on your way. So, yes, to answer your question, they received through three socially and through social engineering, a customer service person. It's this organization and they this group they call swirly spiders. I forget. I forget the name of these. Yeah. Yeah. They they. Yeah, that's right. That's right. They went ahead and then got access and told MGM that they had their systems in and ultimately MGM ignored them. And guess what happened to MGM when they didn't take this group seriously, everything that we're talking about today.
WTOP
"mgm f" Discussed on WTOP
"Emergency for Maine. MGM resorts, hotels and casinos have been dealing with crippled computers for days, apparently because of a cyber attack now under FBI investigation from Las Angeles. Preston MGM Resorts is not only one of the biggest players on the Las Vegas Strip, it's Nevada's largest employer, and it's paralyzed casinos filled with non working slot machines. Computers and phone lines are down and frustration is growing. I don't even want with to pay my card right now. I'm scared that they're gonna hack all of our information. On the medical watch, something really extraordinary to report now a pig kidney working for two months in a brain dead man raising hopes for a big jump, says one of the lead transplant surgeons at NYU Langone. Given the results that we had, If the FDA felt that it was safe enough to proceed, I think that we could do this in the next few months in in a living person that was in need of a transplant and didn't have any other access to transplantation. Ukrainian President the next also expected to come here to Washington as Congress debates additional US military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine as it battles the year -and -a -half old Russian invasion. This news you need to hire fast and hire right you need indeed their all one -in hiring platform helps you attract interview and hire candidates efficiently visit indeed .com slash credit. My brother -in -law died suddenly and now my sister and her kids have to sell their home that's why I my told husband we could not put off getting life insurance any longer. Are you the parent of an outstanding student -athlete? Nominate your favorite high school athlete for their chance to be WTOP's next player of the week. Each week from now through November 30th WTOP will choose one local athlete in the DMV to be featured on air and online for their contributions to their community and to their team. Visit WTOP WTOP .com search player to nominate today. WTOP's player of the week program is sponsored by Main Street
Dennis Prager Podcasts
A highlight from Over the Rainbow
"United States Border Patrol has exciting and rewarding career opportunities with the nation's largest law enforcement organization. Earn great pay, outstanding federal benefits, and up to $20 ,000 in recruitment incentives. Learn more online at CBP .gov slash career slash USBP. Dennis Prager here. Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast. To hear the entire three hours of my radio show commercial free every single day, become a member of Pragertopia. You'll also get access to 15 years worth of archives as well as the daily show prep. Subscribe at Pragertopia .com Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I know what you're thinking. This sounds nothing like Dennis. Has he transitioned? Is he now a woman? No, it is 23 year old Amala Epenobi from PragerU who is subbing for Dennis today. I'll be your guest host and I hope so far your day has been well. Mine's been great. Woke up happy and healthy. If you're a regular of this show, you've probably heard my voice before and you probably know who I am, but just in case you're not a regular, again, my name is Amala Epenobi. I'm 23 years old. I'm currently working at PragerU, hosting a show called Unapologetic Live where on the daily we talk about trending stories, pop culture, news topics from a Gen Z perspective as I was born in 2000 and am a generation. And yeah, that has been my life. That's what I do now. And every now and then I get the pleasure of guest hosting Dennis' show here on the Salem News Channel. So good morning to you all. I woke up happy and healthy today. So it's a good day. We're not going to skip a beat. We're going to get right into stories today. I often wake up and by virtue of what I do, have to go and check out what's trending online and what people are talking about, what's getting buzz. And often the topic of cancellation or cancel culture comes up. And I'm always interested to see who is the next person who's going to get canceled on the internet. Now, much to my dismay, I woke up one morning and hopped on Twitter and saw Judy Garland's face. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Judy Garland, she was the star of The Wizard of Oz, a star is born, just an icon within the space of Hollywood. And I saw a viral tweet go out that said, quote, two movies a year apart, the same B word, shout out to Gen Z for teaching me this. And underneath those words were two pictures of Judy Garland, one of her playing her famous character, Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, and a second of Judy Garland in blackface. For those of you who don't know what blackface is, it's when a white person puts on black makeup, maybe does their hair in a way that is intended to make them look like a black person and is often used to portray a caricature of what it means to be black. Now, this old picture of Judy Garland was in her teenage years. I believe she was about 16 or 17 when she starred in a movie called Everybody Sing. It was in 1938, and it depicts a teenage Judy Garland painted with dark skin, large white lips, and dreadlocks. She played a character known as Judy Belair in the musical comedy who joins a music show as a blackface singer to escape her dysfunctional family. Now, of course, this tweet goes crazy. So many people have something to say. They're the cancellation, which is strange because it would be the cancellation of a woman who was long since passed. Judy Garland passed away over 50 years ago now in a very tragic way due to drug addiction. But amongst those calls for cancellation was an overwhelming force to defend Judy Garland, and this made my heart sing. It was wonderful to see people come to her defense, and the main defense being that, one, if you know the story of Judy Garland, you know that she had a very abusive history within Hollywood. That, especially in her teenage years and young years, she was forced to do a lot of the work that she was doing. She was constantly given drugs. She was on extreme diets to keep her shape for these films. She had a particularly abusive relationship with her mother and abusive relationships with the studio heads at MGM Studio, where she was signed from a really early age. And so often when you hear these stories of cancellation, where people come after these celebrities, the one very important thing that is missing and that we should all be looking for is context. For some reason, we always forget the context of the situation. And if people had just taken two seconds to get a quick Google search about Judy Garland, her past, what she was going through at a time where she might have been depicted in blackface, like 1938, you would have found that she is really not the one to blame here. Not only because of the abusive environment that she lay in, but also because blackface and minstrel shows were something that were not necessarily looked down upon at the time. Remember, a studio was producing this film and putting it out to the general public. This was seen as largely a very normal thing for a white actress to do. So to come after a woman who, for one, is not here to defend themselves, but also has a circumstance that would have led to this sort of behavior makes absolutely no sense. But of course, we're in 2023, right? Sense is not a top priority for us. Context is not a top priority for us. Nuance is not a top priority for us. And I must put out the reminder that Judy Garland, even for her time, was a massive supporter of the civil rights movement, the LGBTQ movement, and was a force for good in those directions, if the left wants to look at Judy Garland as an icon in that sense. So to come after her for something she did as a minor with very little agency over her own actions just really astounds me. But that's exactly what cancel culture is, right? There is no room for redemption. And even an action that you committed as a minor, you know, decades and decades ago, you cannot come back from. Which is really interesting when we get into the main players behind something like cancel culture. Because I imagine that if you spoke to them and asked them what their goal was in canceling individuals, deplatforming them, stripping them of their livelihoods, they would say that they view cancel culture as a force of progress and accountability, and that they want to have people take responsibility for things. But I can understand accountability in a sense. That maybe you recognize, hey, this is something that was of the time, certainly not something that I would do in today's world, and I recognize that I did that, but I've moved forward.
The Hugh Hewitt Show: Highly Concentrated
Sonny Bunch Discusses Guy Ritchie's "Operation Fortune"
"You got to go to the movies. And the good news is John Wick is back. The bad news is operation fortune has not been much noticed by anyone. Sonny munch is here, the official movie critic of the Hugh Hewitt show. Airline miles rolling downhill towards him faster than boulders in an avalanche. Sunny, I want to talk to you about operation fortune and Guy Ritchie before we go to John Wick. Why didn't no one know that movie was out? It was very entertaining. Well, you know, that movie has had an interesting and kind of cursed release. It was supposed to come out, it was supposed to come out last year. It was supposed to come out more than more than 12 months ago. And it ended up getting kind of caught in the Russia Ukraine news cycle because originally the villain in that movie was a series of Ukrainian gangsters. Oh my gosh. No kidding. Yeah, so it got kind of caught up in that news cycle. The final version, they edited out the Ukrainian gangsters. They changed the villains around a little bit, I think. I don't know if they reshot any of the scenes or if it was just a little bit of sniffing here and there. I mean, I for one really enjoyed operation fortune. Even the fetching misses Hewitt, who generally doesn't, she won't go see John Wick, but because Hugh Grant was it using the Michael Caine access. She wanted to go see it. Yeah, so this is the second movie, I think. That Hugh Grant has done with Guy Ritchie, the first was the gentleman, which came out. A couple of years back. And I feel like Guy Ritchie is kind of unlocked something a little bit different within him. He's not. He's funny and bad. Yeah, no, it's interesting what he's doing. Anyway, I like to operation fortune a lot, but because it got kind of, again, it got wrapped up in all this. And there was also stuff with the distributors so that this movie was financed by a company called STX, which has kind of gone out of business that sold off their interests. So this got bought up by I can't even remember who MGM or somebody.
Asia Crypto Today
What is Kingdomverse Mobile Metaverse KMM
"2 a.m. Thursday, February 9th, 2023. What is kingdom versus mobile metaverse kmm? Kingdom verse is a new and innovative gaming platform, offering players a unique and immersive gaming experience. This mobile gaming metaverse MGM is the first of its kind, comprising multiple mobile games all connected by a dynamic and open world social hub. Here, players can interact, game, trade with one another, form guilds, battle, conquer resources, and the post what is kingdom versus mobile metaverse appeared first on Asia crypto today.
The Drill Down
"mgm f" Discussed on The Drill Down
"Welcome to the drill down. We've got business stories behind stocks on the mood. I'm cory johnson today october. Twelve gives us episode number one hundred fifteen. We'll just ahead shortsellers go after max linear. So how does the company explain. It's controversial acquisition strategy and mgm sees. The nfl is driving online sports betting more than they even imagined and how buying a bank his transforming a company called new tech business services. We're gonna get into that with new tech ceo berry sloan from the l. d. micro conference in los angeles but first it's sponsor time. The drill down is brought to you by era. Never miss another critical event or insight. Ever with era customize. Your company watch watchlist track key events mentioned filings and more all with an easy to use customizable interface. That's era a. R. a. dot com. And you can listen to drill podcast everyday on your smart speaker just asset smart speaker to play the drill down podcast and.
KOA 850 AM
"mgm f" Discussed on KOA 850 AM
"My Rockies baseball Rockies on Deck. No, Here's Jack Corrigan and Mike Race. Welcome to Colorado Rockies Baseball Tonight, The Rockies begin their final trip East as they open up a four game set in Philadelphia against the Phillies. Hi, everybody. Jack Corrigan, Along with Mike Rice and our executive producer Jesse Thomas. We've got Dragon red bearded Master control. Doug Niemeier will be joining us shortly. The Rockies once again tonight are going to face a picture They haven't really seen before. And a guy who is red Hot. He sure is. Ranger Suarez. The left hander has been so good Jack in his last three outings in particular after Transitioning back from being the closer there for a while, but last three outings he has given up two earned runs in 17 innings. He's been very, very good was the starter through the minor leagues, so this is an unfamiliar territory for him, But it is for the Rockies against him tonight. And for the Rockies. It'll be Antonio sends it tell us since has been very good himself over his last half dozen starts. Here's our pregame line report brought to us by bed, MGM The king of Sports books. Download the bed, MGM F turned Game days into paydays, please bet responsibly. Rockies..
The Deep Dive Podcast
"mgm f" Discussed on The Deep Dive Podcast
"While the film was initially successful when it was released it was so expensive to produce. It actually lost money. It wasn't until a decade later when the wizard of oz was re released into theaters that it managed to turn a profit. The movie's popularity only grew after it began airing annually on television beginning in nineteen fifty-six well. Mgm remained profitable over the following decades. They began relying on. Big budget. blockbusters like their remake of ben hur to carry the studio through less profitable smaller pictures but that strategy is failing in the late. One thousand nine hundred sixty s it looked like mgm was making a comeback releases like doctor zhivago the dirty dozen and two thousand one a space odyssey were signs that the studio was back to making hits again that didn't last in nineteen sixty-nine controlling shares of stock in mgm were purchased by businessman. Kirk kerkorian. Now by all accounts kerkorian had little interest in the motion picture business. He was interested in the branding itself. In fact he put the mgm name on his las vegas casino hotel the mgm grand kerkorian began selling off mgm's assets including real estate music publishing and even dorothy ruby slippers in the nineteen eighties. Mgm purchased another movie studio united artists which included the popular and lucrative james bond franchise since then ownership of mgm has been shuffled around more than a deck of cards at the mgm. Grand itself the company filed for chapter eleven bankruptcy in twenty ten but it emerged as a veritable remake machine with new versions of classic. Mgm properties like robocop. Red dawn and poltergeist while by no means has the lion's share of the motion picture business after nearly one hundred years. Mgm is still alive and still making speaking of lions there have been eight lions that have lended their regal presence to the opening of mgm films. Leo was the last and has been seen and heard in mgm movies since nineteen fifty seven. There are still questions about this megamerger though what movies will make it to amazon prime video streaming service. We already know that classics. Like the wizard of oz. Singing in the rain and on with the wind won't be there because all mgm titles released before nineteen eighty-six belong to warner brothers. Now what about. The james bond franchise will your amazon delivery person. Show up at your door wearing a tuxedo and carrying a vodka. Martini shaken not stirred. Well if nothing else this deal. Almost instantly makes amazon a major player in the motion.