Waves with Wireless Nerd
Join me for a weekly look into what's making waves in tech and the wireless industry! What's new? What's now? What's next?
Waves with Wireless Nerd
AI's Impact on Tech, Jobs and Business: Exploring AI-Powered Retail Innovations, Global Space Race, HTTP3, DEF CON Discoveries, and More!
Can AI really shape the future of technology and business? Join me, Drew Lentz, the Wireless Nerd, as we tackle this monumental question in our latest episode of Waves. We start by unpacking the whirlwind that was my week, including some exciting developments with Google AdWords and the ongoing Wi-FiStand and SignalRoam initiatives. You'll get the scoop on the viral sensation DeepLiveCam, a groundbreaking software that creates digital doppelgängers, and my take on the pivotal role of AI in the tech landscape. Plus, hear about Cisco’s AI-driven layoffs and the unfortunate reality of Humane's highly anticipated AI Pin wearable.
Next, we shift our focus to significant global tech industry trends. Discover the European Commission's latest decision on the HPE / Juniper merger and its implications for market competition. We'll delve into China's ambitious Starlink rival and Amazon’s Project Kuiper entering the space race. We also discuss the evolution of internet protocols with the transition from HTTP to HTTP3 and the benefits of the QUIC protocol, emphasizing its impact on network performance and wireless connectivity. These advancements promise to revolutionize how we experience the web.
To wrap up, we explore how cutting-edge technology is transforming retail pricing strategies. Learn about Kroger’s use of AI and dynamic pricing models, incorporating electronic shelf labels and facial recognition to tailor customer experiences. We weigh the innovation against the privacy concerns it raises. Finally, we examine recent 5G baseband vulnerabilities and the intriguing discoveries at DEF CON, including hardware exploits and my own AI project involving Raspberry Pis. We don't shy away from controversies either, highlighting the troubling incidents at DEF CON and the "shade" for Palo Alto Networks. Don't miss this episode packed with insights, revelations, and a candid look at the future of tech!
Good afternoon everybody. How's it going? It's me, drew Lentz, the Wireless Nerd, and this is your episode of Waves for August 13th. Today is Tuesday. It's 5.30 in the afternoon. Just having a heck of a week. So much stuff going on. Yeah, just what a busy day.
Speaker 1:You know I've been wrestling with AdWords all day. It's been a while since I got into Google AdWords. I've been in there tweaking, uh, some settings for some of the advertisements for one of the products that we've got going on and fixing up the wi-fi stand stuff. So let me know if you see a wi-fi stand ad up on a, on a search, excuse me, or on social media or something, give me a holler, let me know. I want to make sure it's working anyway. So, good afternoon everybody. Hi, everybody out there in x land. Hopefully we don't break x, you know, like they did last night. Uh, somehow I'm not worried about it, excuse me.
Speaker 1:I don't know if there's gonna be a million people tuned into this, but this is me. This is not a likeness of me, although I was just flipping through an article that doesn't have any, doesn't have anything to do with wireless, but, but the DeepLiveCam is going viral, allowing anyone to become a digital doppelganger. So, ars Technica, one of my favorite sources under the headline Deep Deception with Binge Edwards. Over the past few days, a software package called DeepLiveCam has been going viral on social media because it can take the face of a person extracted from a single photo and apply it to a live webcam video source, while following pose, lighting and expressions performed by the person on the webcam. While the results aren't perfect, it shows just how quickly the tech is developing. It's the number one trending repo on github right now. Um, pretty crazy, went from four to one pretty quickly. It's available for free, so get it while you can. Interesting deep live cam. I'm gonna have to download that and see if we can have some fun with it. But this is yours truly. Um, you know, not that it matters. I guess a lot of people you know.
Speaker 1:Compared to the people that listen to the podcast versus watch the video, I mean we get a decent amount of plays. I could use more. I could use about 300 400 more subs on youtube for me to get to Mexico with my wife. Well, actually we're about to hit 700 on there, which is kind of cool. So I appreciate. If I had a little applause button, I'd hit that, but I appreciate everyone who subscribes to the channel. If you haven't subscribed to the channel, do me a favor Run over to YouTubecom, slash at Wireless Nerd and subscribe to it, because I would love to do this broadcast from Mexico. It's still out there. My wife says that she'll be happy to take me to Mexico San Miguel de Allende and you are welcome to join us if you'd like to come to San Miguel. If you've never been, it's a great place. So make sure to tell your friends, tell your family, have a good time.
Speaker 1:I don't use the funny YouTuber voice. Maybe I should Do. You think I'll get more views. I did change my thumbnails, though I took a a minute to look at my thumbnails and have some fun with those. So that's been. That's been pretty cool.
Speaker 1:I'm using ai for everything, which is kind of neat. I'm a big, big believer in ai bitches, as lee badman would say. Speaking of ai bitches, a couple, a couple things on that note that have made the news in the last week. First and foremost, my thoughts go out to anyone who is going to be affected tomorrow after the earnings call. I think is when it's scheduled to hit, but Cisco has made the announcement that they're laying off another 4,000 people. It's the second set of layoffs this year. People, it's a second set of layoffs this year. As you know, or maybe you don't know, I got hit in the first one and I have nothing negative to say about Sys2Go, not because I can or because I can't, but because they actually really did a good job taking care of us. It's pretty neat. You know, I feel like my time there was cut a little bit short, but you know, I did get to do all the amazing things that I wanted to do and I'm sure that there's going to be a lot of those feelings coming up pretty soon. Number of people affected could be similar to, or slightly higher than, the 4,000 employees Cisco laid off in February.
Speaker 1:According to Reuters, it'll likely be announced as early as Wednesday with the company's fourth quarter results, said the sources. Is Wednesday with the company's fourth quarter results, said the sources. But the thing that they get, or the thing that gets me is, you know, it's like Cisco didn't reply for comment. Reuters reported the job cut blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then it takes its turn and it says the company has been trying to incorporate AI products into its offering and it may reiterate its target of $1 billion worth of AI product doors in 2025. And so now it's the whole. The layoffs are the latest in the tech industry, which has been cutting costs this year to offsets and investments in ai. So, to quote lee batman, ai bitches speaking of another.
Speaker 1:Another interesting article on the ai front which is kind of a bummer because I was looking forward to seeing that thing get pretty crazy was humane. The ai pin, the one that the guy talked about at ted talks. It's you know, it looked like it was Humane. The AI pin, the one that the guy talked about at TED Talks. It looked like it was going to be a really neat step in the direction of having a wearable that could understand contextually where you are and what you were doing and how you were doing it, and they would be able to use that to present information. When you said all you have to do is tap and say what's the weather outside, or you know what's on my calendar today, or you know where's a nice place to go to lunch, it could understand all of where you are and what you're doing. However, it doesn't seem like it landed very well. People are returning Humane AI pins faster than Humane can sell them, which is kind of a bummer for a segment in that industry.
Speaker 1:The AI pin is a lapel pin that markets numerous features voice assistant, camera, laser projector the creators claim will replace smartphones as a go-to gadget costs 700 bucks. It requires a 24 a month subscription, not including taxes and fees, so it is a bummer that that it isn't taking as well as people thought it would. It viewed. Internal diverge said it viewed internal sales data showing returns outpacing device accessory sales within about nine million dollars. Internal data also reported revealed that 1,000 AI pin orders were canceled before they even shipped. So rocky start to that. But that doesn't mean the end of it and the people, the team that are behind that. I hope they bounce back from that pretty quickly.
Speaker 1:So no AI for you. I guess is that one that's the opposite. Too much AI and too little AI. You know where's the happy medium there. You know. Know where does it, where does it, where does it make make its way into it? Anyway, what else we got going?
Speaker 1:Speaking of ai, earlier this month the european commission approved unconditionally the proposed acquisition of juniper by hpe. Yay, breath of fresh air seeing that coming from the eu saying look it's cool, we're not worried about, but also kind of some shade in there. As you know, hpe supplies IT infrastructure related software and cloud solutions. Juniper supplies networking infrastructure and security solutions. The concern was about the overlap. Is there going to be overlap between switching and wireless? Is there going to be overlap between HPE and Juniper? And the EU is like, nah, they don't really compete. Wow, okay, I mean thanks, but thanks for the slap in the face. Hpe and Juniper are not considered the closest competitors in the EEA market.
Speaker 1:The body concluded Yowza, so okay. And they said you know, to add a little bit of salt to that wound, the European Commission found that in the EA, the merged entity's market position would remain moderate and it would continue to face competition from a wide range of competitors, including those strongly established players on the market. Wow, so they got some cojones there. The European Commission was like we don't really see that as a threat to anyone else. But I you know what I mean like I'm glad that they, that they said it's cool that that they don't have an issue with it merging, but I, I am interested to see what becomes of this.
Speaker 1:Uh, because after the merger, I mean, I, I do think it will pose competition. I mean, I'm just gonna say it, those two come together, I mean it's gonna be, it's gonna be pretty crazy it. I think it will create some competition in the space. You know, especially again, look, I mean, this was we talked about this before it's when there's turmoil in the marketplace, where you've got, you know, big, solid, number one now laying off another 4 000 people, and now you know saying ai, ai, ai, you know, and then it's not. It doesn't seem like the guards are at the gate. Man, I don't know how else to say it. It's, I'm just looking at this, I'm going golly, this is a big, open opportunity for people to creep in. And you know, with juniper and and hp coming together, I they may not be big now separate. We'll see, we will see. Ah, what else we got going on?
Speaker 1:Um, the china's launching a mega constellation sounds a lot like starlink. You know, when I started to read more about starshield and what starlink's doing with starshield and the government and and how they are, what it could possibly be used for, it was only a matter of time before China started launching stuff into space. The first batch of 18 satellites for one of those Chinese networks are going to be launched into low Earth orbit on Tuesday so I guess that was today, I don't know. This was a week ago, so maybe it was last Tuesday A Long March 6A rocket delivered 18 spacecraft into polar orbit. Yeah, so they've got a constellation satellites that are going up there. Chinese officials have long signaled their interest in deploying a satellite network, or maybe several, to be broadband air net, across china and other nations in its sphere of influence. There's a lot going on in the world right now, um, so china's jumping into that game. But you know, what I'm really interested to see is Project Kuiper and what's going on with Amazon. They had that win in. I think it was South Africa where they won the opportunity to do business there, and I'm waiting for them to get going. It's going to be cool to see them enter the market and play alongside with Starlink, so it'll be pretty interesting Along those notes, something that affects all of us every day.
Speaker 1:Not a lot of this has to do with what I guess. Satellites are wireless, but this doesn't have much to do with wireless, but it does at the same time because, as you know, when you jump online and you click, or you click on a link and you want to look at a web page, whether it's on your mobile browser, whether it's on a laptop or a tablet, um, use http, right, hypertext transfer protocol goes back and forth and, and you know you, um hold on. Did I get that right? Is it hypertext transfer protocol, meaning he's gotta look it up? Yes, I did get it right. Golly, I don't even know why I'm doubting myself on that one. That's like old school internet. Anyway. Um, use http to go back and forth and it's always gone across tcp. And now is, you know, as things started to progress with google chrome, quick started to make its way into into the world and now http3 is uh, is quick right?
Speaker 1:This post is all about http3 and quick. If you don't know what it is, there are many, many, many many good resources. There is an article posted about this at kmcddev. It's called Y'all Are Sleeping on HTTP3. And it talks about why QUIC is so awesome and why it feels important.
Speaker 1:Http3 abandons TCP in favor of a channel-aware, udp-based protocol called QUIC. And all I can think of y'all is the joke that I would tell you a UDP joke, but I don't care if you get it. Or I could tell you a TCP joke and you don't acknowledge it, and it doesn't matter if you get it or not and all those other funny t-shirts that are made out of it. But this is interesting to see to me because there's some. There's some true benefits here and I think when you talk about network optimization and what you're doing over wireless wireless for a long time was the it wasn't the fastest part of the connection some could say. But all of these modifications and things that are being made not just a product at the protocol level, at the web level and everything else are definitely going to help. So it doesn't. You know, even though the connections are getting stronger and more resilient and better and faster and and everything else are definitely going to help. So it does, you know, even though the connections are getting stronger and more resilient and better and faster and more throughput, things like this are going to help. Incredibly, um 30 of web traffic is served with http3 right now.
Speaker 1:And what's wrong with tcp? Some of the highlights that they put on here are multiple streams. It's only one connection with tcp. It is a good and dynamic network environment. Why can't I use wi-fi and mobile at the same time? Kind of important. This is actually possible with tcp using a feature called multi-path tcp, but the role has been slow and difficult. Quick's built-in support for connection migration and uh, zero rtt.
Speaker 1:Resumption offers a smoother and more efficient solution, potentially enabling true multipath connectivity in the future. Yay, now, when you cut this is. This is part of what makes this fascinating to me is that when you build that in and then you look at where we are with a multi-link optimization with mLO, and then now you look at what's coming down the pipe with Wi-Fi 8, with not just link aggregation but multiple AP aggregation, now you need something that supports multipath in your ability to not just send but also to receive packets on your web browser. So what you're looking at needs to be able to handle that. So it doesn't mention it in here, but I'm looking at that going okay well, does that mean that it's going to work better there? So QUIC and HTTP3, faster connections, fewer round trips instead of three needed for TLS plus HTTP.
Speaker 1:Quic has just one zero round trip time, resumption, multiplexing, improved congestion control lots of really cool, cool stuff. So it's neat to see that hdp3 is jumping is jumping on that and there's there's a statistic here most major cloud providers support it, most major load balancers support it, all major browsers now support it. It's a you know 30 web traffic. So the downside is is, if you look at, if you're doing protocol analysis and you're looking at web traffic and you're looking at, you know you're trying to pull that traffic apart you can see tcp traffic, you can see where it's going, coming to. But because of the multiplexing, I believe, and because of the the nature of quick, sometimes you just see it listed as quick traffic. So I haven't, I haven't looked at those packets a long time, but does this mean that we lose the ability to go and look at host um? You know a source and destination and things like that. So I'm curious because I know with Quick, once you saw Quick it was like, oh, can't say anything, it's in Quick. So I wonder if that's going to be effective. It could sound really dumb, but I think that that's right. So I'll take a look at it. If you have any insight into that, let me know or post online. Anyway, what else we got going on? So HTTP3 and QUIC very, very cool, affecting every little thing that we do. What else is being affected Earlier this month? Other things that are going on. Oh, this was fascinating.
Speaker 1:Kroger's new dynamic AI pricing scheme is quote, corporate greed out of control, say the critics, and this is a story that ran online and I don't even know if this is a legit website. It's called raw story um julia conley from common dreams. I don't even know if that's a real person in a real place, but I posted this article and it's talking about, uh, expressing doubt. The new artificial intelligence part dynamic pricing model used by kroger is truly meant to better the customer experience center, elizabeth war Warren said on Friday. The practice shows how corporate greed is out of control. Here's the thing, man, I don't. Oh, this is a tough one.
Speaker 1:So it goes on to talk about what Kroger, how they started using information, electronic shelf labels and and shelf information and and what they're doing with that data. Nearly you know. Let's see. It says it first introduced in 2018. Expanded 500 of 3 000 stores. Last year, the company's partner with microsoft to develop electronic shelf labels, known as enhanced display for grocery environments or edge, using a digital tag to display prices in stores so employees can change the prices throughout the day with the click of a button. Now inter cameras and inter-intelligence right Inter-artificial intelligence Through its work with intelligence known to Microsoft, kroger has gone beyond just changing prices based on the time of day or other environmental factors and is seeking to tailor the cost of the good to individual shoppers.
Speaker 1:Now, this is fascinating to me, and you know, you think about pricing with, with what's happening with with vehicles, whenever you do like an uber or whatever, but when you look at, when you look at what can happen in a grocery store, um, it's interesting and so. So one of the things that the senator just mentioned, I'm gonna, I'm gonna read this real quick. It says the edge shelf helps kroger gather and exploit sensitive customer data okay, I disagree with the term exploit and also sensitive. Through a partnership with Microsoft, kroger plans to place cameras at digital displays which will use facial recognition tools to determine the gender and age of a customer captured on camera and present them with personalized offers and advertisements on the Edge shelf. All right, let's break that down real quick. It's using a camera to do facial recognition, okay, but it's using the data from that facial recognition to say all right, well, you know what Drew is? Middle-aged, white guy. We're going to make the price of spam go up or we're going to make it go down, or we think he's more likely to buy this or less likely to buy this, or maybe I'm more likely to pay more for you know craft beer than I am for something else. So as I walked down the aisle it's going to change the pricing based on me.
Speaker 1:First of all, very cool use of technology. I got to say that's kind of awesome if it's a benefit. But I understand there could be some concern Also. I mean there's a benefit here, right, if there's nobody in the store and nobody's shopping and they know that they've got to dump the fruit or there's only two days left before expiration of certain dairy products or whatever it is, and it knows that you know what. Drew's the only person we've seen for the last three hours. Let's tank the price of milk so we can get rid of it and he can get what he needs and everybody wins. That's kind of awesome.
Speaker 1:I've seen this technology in action, for the most part not tied together like this, but at the retail show, the NFR show National Federation of Retailers in New York this past year. It was so cool to see this. I mean it's interesting. They set up cameras on one side of the aisle to look at the other side of the aisle and vice versa, and it does everything from make sure that there's inventory to look at the labels, make sure it's facing right and see what people pick up and see where people go and do they reach for a top shelf or go to the bottom shelf so I can understand where it's coming from.
Speaker 1:I don't know that it would be used for price gouging, but then again, I live in a world where I don't think people take advantage of each other, so that's one of those things where it's like I guess if you look at it in a negative way, it could be seen that way. But I mean, how are you, how do you? How do you present? How do you present that in a way? Or how do you, how do you ask a company to to use the data to not do something there? I mean what's negative, right? Anyway, the same thing that's going on. I mean this is happening in in the hotel industry and in the Airbnb industry right now, where they're saying are they using data to, you know, run through, basically surge pricing on properties, on houses, on rentals, on, you know, like I said, airbnbs or hotel rooms or whatever.
Speaker 1:It is so interesting concept, definitely. You know. What's great about this is you think about ESL and electronic shelf labels, that's all I mean. These things are all connected via wireless. So this is how it falls in my realm, or at least I justify, justify that I'm going to talk about it. But you know it's. Aruba has a killer ESL product. You missed, you missed has a killer ESL. Francisco has an incredible ESL product.
Speaker 1:You know SES imagine imago tag, and I forgot what they're called. Now they did change their name, but those are the guys that I saw at. What are they called? Now I remember what they're called. Anyway, they were the ones that had the booth up at Vusion V-U-S-I-O-N, so Vusion Technology for Positive Commerce. I mean, if you want to take a look at it, go to Vusioncom, v-u-s-i-o-ncom and you can see some of the ways that they're doing this. And it's not just about changing pricing and how that relates down to the label, but it's about the entire ecosystem that runs around this. So if you've never looked into this and you want to see something really cool, definitely go check it out.
Speaker 1:And vision is supported. You know the magic type of stuff is supported by a number of wireless manufacturers. So if this is something that if you're in the space of retail or if you're in the space that someplace that needs electronic shelf labels, there is some really, really, really cool technology out there. Uh, that's being enabled. So take a look at that. I'm gonna leave that one for last. Let's see. What else do we got, uh, china, we've got quick. We've got humane. We've got cisco. We've got the european commission. We've got kroger veto for the olympics man. You know, at ces, every year they have this, they, they talk about what's going to happen when people can start launching.
Speaker 1:You know vehicles and during vertical takeoff and landing and it says, uh, you know, vtol is supposed to be setting up for LA 2028, archer to set up. Archer is an email company. It's setting up air taxi network in LA 2026, ahead of the world cup. So that will be crazy to see. They're basically big drone, vertical takeoff and landing drones and they've got a map that's published online. You can take a look at it. Look at the Archer LA network map and you can see where it's flying to and from. And Archer's partnered recently with Southwest Airlines. It gives Archer access to airline customer data to identify locations for vertiports Vertiport, vertiport.
Speaker 1:I've never been to a vertiport before. I wanted to fly blade. One time, when I was in new york city, they had this really cool deal you pay, you know, a couple hundred bucks, you can get on a helicopter and instead of waiting two and a half hours to fly out east, you could just jump on a blade and do it in 20 minutes. And I wanted to feel special, but I didn't do it. It Because, dude, that's like five or 600 bucks Out of my realm. That's above the threshold for me feeling special. I'll feel special for like 200 bucks maybe, but definitely not 500 bucks. That's a lot to spend. Doesn't fly underneath the wife radar, anyway. And also, how do I explain getting there four hours earlier, three hours early, by taking oh, I took a helicopter over here, babe. It's cool Anyway, uh, but my dreams may soon come to fruition in 2028, um, by using VTOL at the Olympics. That'd be kind of cool.
Speaker 1:What else is going on? News for people that operate wireless networks Um, instagram is embracing photo dumping 20 photos compared to 35 of Tik TOK. I didn't know you could put 35 photos on TikTok at once. You can do that on TikTok, and now Instagram is jumping up to 20. So you can upload 20 photos on each of your posts now, instead of the old school 10.
Speaker 1:So, man, you know it's like I have photos everywhere. I've got photos on my hard drive. I've got photos on multiple drives. I've got photos on Flickr. I'm like a Flickr lifetime member. I've got photos on Google Cloud. I miss Picasa. Does anybody miss Picasa? I miss ACDC, the old Windows software. Anyway, there's all these places that photos are.
Speaker 1:When's someone just going to develop a way to have all of your photos in one place and not have to worry about? You know, I feel like George Costanza, like the wallet that he carries. But with my photographs, I have photographs of every event and like, what do I ever do with them? Nothing. I go back every once in a while when I have to remember something. But that's what ai is for. I can't, that's what I can't wait for. I can't wait to be able to load all of my photographs into ai so that I can just ask myself questions. That's really that's going to be awesome, maybe, you know, I don't know how close gemini is to work on that with google and I don't know how close Gemini is to working on that with Google and I don't know how, I mean, maybe Meta is doing. I mean huge announcements from Meta on the AI front. I know you're not covered on this show, but, dude, what they're doing with Lama is incredible and it's built into everything. It's all over my Instagram, it's all over WhatsApp, it's all over Facebook. It's everywhere, man. So hopefully soon they'll integrate that with photos, being able to say you know what was the name of the restaurant that I ate at with my wife in 2022 in san jose, and we had lobster. You know, look at the photos and find out. Maybe it's already there, hell I don't know. If only I knew someone over at meta ai. Just kidding, hi guys, good to see you. Anyway, what else we got going on?
Speaker 1:Um hackers could spy on cell phone users by abusing the 5g baseband flaws. Researchers say this was pretty cool. Using a custom-made analysis tool they called 5g base checker, the researchers uncovered baseband vulnerabilities made by samsung, mediatek and qualcomm, which are used in phones made by, you know, google, oppo, oneplus, motorola, samsung, nobody big. Uh hussein is an assistant professor at pin state told tech crunch that he and his students were able to trick phones with these vulnerabilities uh in their 5g base bands into connecting to fake base stations essentially a fake cell phone tower and then launch their attacks from there, because once they're on your network, you can do whatever you want to do with them. This was covered in uh tech crunch is where I read it. Lorenzo franceschi bicharia I've bicharia, your name. Sorry about that, uh, but you know, I at least like to give credit to the people that wrote the article. I didn't write this article, but it's pretty cool. Hackers could spy on cell phone. This is on tech crunch.
Speaker 1:A group of researchers say they've uncovered a series of security flaws in different 5g basebands and they present their findings at black hat on las vegas last wednesday, as well as an academic paper and the. They've said that. You know the different groups have said that they are fixing this or that they have fixed it. At the time of writing, the research is identified and got patched 12 vulnerabilities in different 5g base bands. But it's just showing that there's a different way to attack the network now and as we move towards towards more complicated or more complex networks, away from a simple AP into multiple frequencies, multiple APs, multiple connections Now there's just multiple vulnerabilities. It seems like there's more places that people can take advantage of data or take advantage of those connections. So I'm curious how something like this is going to have these long-term effects. This is just the beginning of someone doing something with 5G Baseband.
Speaker 1:Where does it go from here? I, for one, welcome our AI overlords. Yes, we got a comment from YouTube, luis. Fantastic. I love our AI overlords. There's a lot of fun stuff. If you know, I really enjoy using AI tool sets and having a good time with them. I wrote an entire application stack using AI, so I guess I can't say that I wrote it, but I told ChatGPT to write it and it did just a bang up job. I'm not going to lie. I had a really good time doing a no code project and I posted about it on LinkedIn.
Speaker 1:It's where I took two raspberry pies and I plugged a microphone into one and I set it up outside. And I took another one and I hooked it up. I've got speakers in a bunch of the rooms in my house and I plugged it into my whole home audio system and I made it so that I could tune to that, you know, to that channel or to that port on my audio system and it would play back whatever it was hearing outside. I put the microphone outside my, you know, outside the door over here and I could hear the birds, I could hear the chirping, I could hear the crickets, I could hear everything that was out there and it was a neat way. I don't I didn't want to open the windows and the doors in 108 degree heat, but I still wanted to feel like I was outside, so I got to have the outside inside. It was a pretty cool project and so I had a real good time doing that, but I did the entire. I had chat, gpt, write every single piece of code on there, which was the one of the main reasons I did it. I wanted to see if I could write a program without actually writing a program and I did it.
Speaker 1:So the AI overlords, man, love them or hate them. Ai bitches, leave badman, eat your heart out. Can't wait to see you, man. Hope we get to see you pretty soon anyway. What else we got? Now, speaking of hackers, before I get into that, doom and Doom 2 get a definitive release that's packed with upgrades. The classic games are now available in a combined package with cross-platform online multiplayer in an in-game mod browser, a new single-player episode and more.
Speaker 1:Bethesda Surprise dropped on Thursday Doom and Doom 2. Go check it out. I don't even know where it's at the slayersclubbethesdanet or if you go to Bethesdanet for Bethesda software, doom and Doom 2. Man, I'm going to go download and play it this afternoon and have some fun with that. So that goes. You know, first WordStar and now Doom. I love it. What else is going to come out? You know if there's a Crystal Caverns or if there's an old school Duke Nukem that pops up? You know, color me happy. That would be awesome.
Speaker 1:Okay, so the other thing that happened last week you know that I thought was pretty interesting and some stuff came out of good stuff and bad stuff was DEF CON. Def CON was last week. You know it started with Black Hat, then led into DEF CON, madness at DEF CON, all kinds of things that were happening out there. I was not there. That's a show I've never been to, always wanted to go and I've just never. I don't even know when it is. It's not on my regular calendar so I never go. But maybe next year I'll really try and go. I would have so much fun, I think, just being a fly on the wall.
Speaker 1:Uh, so the madness at defcon, from this, from this chair's perspective, the things that I saw that that I paid attention to. Uh, first and foremost the the mess with the hardware and the firmware that was going on out there. Apparently and and you know, don't get me wrong if if I mess this up it's not my, you know, this isn't really my, my space, but the defcon paid a group to build the badges for them and they went back and forth, back and forth with the people that were making the badges and there were overruns on timelines and budget and everything else, and so they canceled their contract with the people that were making the badge and they moved it to someone else to make the badge, but the guy who wrote the firmware for the original badge the firmware was, I guess, was already written or maybe continued to write it, and so then there were some issues that they were having at at the show. And then there's like all this drama where people are saying, well, defcon didn't pay their bill and then the guy who wrote the firmware didn't get credit and the other guys didn't get credit, so he put an easter egg in and they got dragged off the stage, where he really didn't get dragged off the stage. It was kind of like a tongue-in-cheek type of thing and there were all these things that happened and then everything got posted online.
Speaker 1:But it was crazy to see like there was this whole upheaval and it just made me think, you know, and then all these memes started coming out about Dark Tangent, the guy who's the organizer for DEF CON, and it was like man, how long before the conference turns on the conference? Because it almost felt like that was about to happen, almost felt like that was about to happen. There's a lot of crazy stuff happening with those badges out there. Um, you know, but I it resonates with me, right, I've had projects go over in time and in money and I know what it's like to work with some, with with either a team or a manufacturer group, that that runs you through budget and you've at some point you've just got to cut the line and move over to someone else to get the project done. So I get it it, um, I'd hope they didn't stiff them though, because that's kind of I don't know again, not not my, not my circus, not my monkeys over there, but it was crazy to read because that like blew up everywhere and then there was the inspection of rooms that was happening. You know like seriously, I've stayed at resorts world.
Speaker 1:What's up with that man? I mean, if you're gonna host the conference, they go all in. But no, they sent out letters to people saying that there were going to be security checks and that they were going to go into people's rooms. And so there was a you know, five days ago, imga's 4063 post on reddit that that you know people are saying that they're going to do a security check in his room and you know, to prove that they weren't a threat or have devices that could compromise the network security in an aggressive way, they demanded to have their rooms open up and go through the stuff. And things escalated and armed security guards came in with the intention of breaking the door down to get us out. They wouldn't reason. I opened the door. They aggressively asked for IDs, started reading some of the policy out loud, escorted people out of the property Without a care in the world, it says. On our way down the hall there are many more security personnel knocking on doors and getting people out, just like a drug raid. Um, crazy man.
Speaker 1:Cyber, cyber security professionals must stick together to make things right for the good of everyone. Discrimination cannot be tolerated. If you know how to help in any way legally, awareness etc. Please do. That is on the r slash, defcon uh, reddit subreddit for defcon. There's just a lot of stuff that was happening out there. I get it. I mean they want to look out for the security of their, of their hotel, so that's why you host a hackers conference. Come on, man like that. Just that just doesn't seem right. What's going on there? The other thing that didn't seem right that palo alto man, palo alto networks for shame.
Speaker 1:Uh, I saw this posted online by someone who's a connection of a connection olivia rose, veteran global cso executive advisor. Security maturity. I miss olivia rose. I don't know you and I don't know what you do. I don't even know who you work for. Let me scroll down cso. Founder of the rose cso group. Board of directors for cyversity faculty. Member of IONS, ciso, vp of Amplitude, ciso for MailChimp in her past Lots of good stuff there.
Speaker 1:She posted a picture online of Palo Alto Networks and Cyber Risk Collaborative Happy Hour with women wearing lampshades over their heads, completely covering their faces, and the comment was so women are nothing more than props to you. We're only a black hat to be lampshade holders. Damn, I mean palo alto. Come on, dude, poor, poor taste. Whoever executed that one, that's. That's tough man, uh. But the, the cmo of palo alto, responded. Here it is, it says last week, a black hat.
Speaker 1:An unfortunate decision was made at palo alto network's event to have hostesses wear branded lampshades on their heads. It was tone deaf and poor taste and not aligned with our company values or brand. I take full responsibility for the misjudgment. I've addressed it with my team and I'm taking further steps to prevent such misguided actions in the future. Please accept my heartfelt apologies for this regrettable incident. Also, I should note I should add this note that in the event they read the comments here, apollo Alto shall also be made aware that I've personally received multiple messages from women about the company who are too scared to speak up about this decision. Quite a bro culture going on there. Sounds like dang man. So I'm glad they addressed it.
Speaker 1:But that was like terrible optics. I mean you would, I don't know, I'm nothing to say other than that was, that was rough man, don't do that, don't do that. That's not cool Anyway. So I mean, def CON was making the headlines for all these weird things. That's what I'm saying, not weird, just like things that aren't related to what it's supposed to be about.
Speaker 1:And then, when it came for actual content, I didn't read much. I didn't read much about the presentations. I didn't read much about the presentations. I didn't read much about anything groundbreaking that was going on there, because there was so much buzz I don't want to say static, it's not the right word there's so much other stuff being talked about. It's important stuff. I mean the badge hardware issues, stiffing the badge company, the inspection of the rooms, the way that they mistreated females. I mean this is like dude, that's not what you want your conference to be known about. So that's kind of rough.
Speaker 1:But then the things that the thing that did pop out was the HID keys, the. However, they were showing how there were researchers on the DEF CON stage that showed how they were able to compromise the HID keys, not by you know the the hotel room keys, right, the HID keys, not by you know the hotel room keys right, the HID is the name of the company but how they were able to compromise it, not just from the key perspective, but they were HID more customers about this existence. The method the researchers plan to show off allows the secret keys to be pulled out of the encoder. So at the hotel desk where they put the little key down and they encode your key somehow, getting access to that using one of their programming keys, getting access to the data that's on there and then posting that to dark web and sharing it. So like if you, if I, go to the Hilton down the street and I grab that data and then share it with the dark web. Now all of a sudden I've got you know, everyone has access to the Hilton that's down the street from me. That's tough man. That's a tough one to swallow.
Speaker 1:So that was the only big thing that I read about. I didn't see anything crazy about Wi-Fi. I didn't see anything crazy about IoT. I'm sure it was talked about, but all of the lights in the press were tuned and focused on what was going on with the other stuff. So if you know of anything that happened at DEF CON, please let me know. No, the HID thing was pretty nuts. The HID did warn the customers about the existence's vulnerability and said hackers would be able to clone it. This was back in January. It has recommendations on how customers can protect themselves, but it offered no software update at the time. So I don't know if they ended up doing that or not, but you know that was the last thing that I heard about there. Anyway, that's what's going on. That's what I got this week Fun week, man.
Speaker 1:Lots of fun stuff. Getting ready for the picture that I post. I've got all the equipment sitting back there on the shelf right over there Going to do some fun test runs with that. What else I spent this week? We got Signal Roam running on open Wi-Fi, which is pretty neat. I love the open Wi-Fi stuff and running Signal Roam across it's very cool. Also, I've got my handy prism right beside me, so I've got some testing to do with that.
Speaker 1:Shout out to IB Wave again. And I just found out I don't even know if I can talk about it. Let me open my email and see if this is talkaboutable. Yay on the event. We'll share more details with you soon. There's an event coming up. There's a launch august 21st um, august 21st that's in nine or eight days there's a new launch coming out. I'm not going to say who or when, but what I will say is look at, pay attention to what's happening. Uh, in eight days there's going to be a really cool announcement about something that I got to see a while back and I'm excited and hopefully I'll be able to do a quick recording and we'll show it off here on the podcast so anyone who pays attention to Waves can read it or watch it. Anyway, have a wonderful week. Thank you for listening as usual. Tell all your friends and your family about it, make sure you like and subscribe All right chat, appreciate it. Have a great week. I will talk to you all next.
