Waves with Wireless Nerd
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Waves with Wireless Nerd
Conversations with the Wireless Nerd: From CB Radios to Wireless Smart Glasses
The digital world demands our attention as both wireless professionals and responsible individuals navigating increasingly complex technology landscapes. Drew Lentz dives into this fascinating territory, balancing nostalgic wireless technologies with cutting-edge innovations that challenge how we think about connectivity.
The episode kicks off with exciting news about upcoming giveaways, including a professional-grade NetAlly AirCheck G3. Drew shares a powerful personal moment about digital parenting after watching Netflix's "Adolescence" series, which prompted him to strengthen digital safeguards for his children using monitoring services like Bark. His candid discussion about parental vigilance in the age of online predators serves as a sobering reminder that even tech experts must remain alert to digital dangers.
Nostalgia takes center stage as Drew showcases his classic Cobra 29 CB radio, explaining how films like "Smokey and the Bandit" and "Pump Up the Volume" sparked his lifelong passion for wireless communications. This leads to a compelling argument for wireless professionals to obtain amateur radio licenses, which teach fundamental RF principles that enhance Wi-Fi expertise.
The conversation shifts to viral phenomena and emerging technologies, including the aluminum foil Wi-Fi hack that's gained over 33 million views online. Drew critically examines this simplistic approach while acknowledging the basic science behind it. He also explores fascinating developments like Carnegie Mellon's Wi-Fi imaging technology and Clueley's controversial smart glasses that provide real-time information during conversations – raising important questions about privacy, ethics, and practical applications beyond their marketed use.
Before wrapping up with information about industry events like the Wi-Fi Now Global Congress and WICO gatherings, Drew emphasizes the importance of community engagement. He encourages listeners to share their wireless expertise locally, particularly regarding security concerns that often go overlooked.
Subscribe to our channel and join us live next week for a chance to win that NetAlly AirCheck G3! The Wireless Nerd community continues to grow, and we'd love to see you become part of our ongoing conversation about the technology that connects our world.
What's up everybody? It's Drew Lentz, the Wireless Nerd, coming in with a cold cut, starting the podcast today for April 22nd. We just had a really fun time testing out a new mechanism on our YouTube page. Thank you to everyone. Bradley, thank you for winning the non-raffle. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1:What we're going to start doing is giving stuff away, because I have a lot of stuff and I want to give it away and because some of my fine sponsors that are out there and some of the people that have supported the show for a real long time are totally down to give stuff away, and so that's what we're going to do. Man, maybe we'll do it today, at the end of the show, maybe we'll wait till the next one, but we've got some really cool stuff that we want to be able to start giving away, and the first thing that we're going to give away is a NetAlly AirCheck G3, courtesy of the fine folks over at NetAlly, mr Julio and Mr Dan. If you guys happen to be at the Wi-Fi Now Global Congress, stop by and say hi to them. If you're at RSAC, stop by and say hi to them as well. Netally always coming through clutch, making incredible tools, and this time they're going to start letting me hand some of the stuff out. So very cool to have that partnership with them and be able to support them, getting some new tools in your hands. They also make a whole lot of really cool other stuff and you never know what's going to show up. So get familiar with their product line, get familiar with their features and what they do, and we'll be giving out a NetAlly AirCheck G3 probably next week Unless out a NetAlly AirCheck G3 probably next week Unless. Like if I get like 80 viewers right now, maybe we'll give it out. But I mean you guys, unfortunately you guys are the guinea pigs. So if you're listening anywhere else, make sure you watch the Waves podcast at youtubecom, slash at wireless nerd or go to the wireless podcastcom. There's a link in there. But the only way that you can be participatory in this is by joining the live chat in our YouTube channel so that I can say things like what's up chat, it's Drew the wireless nerd and I can sound like all the people that my kids listen to.
Speaker 1:Hey, man, speaking of not wireless related, but total parenting moment man we had, you know, I don't know if you've watched that Netflix special or the Netflix show that's out right now about the little kids and the effects of what's going on, you know, with social media and everything and how it's affecting teenagers. But there's a good show. Can't remember the name of it right off the top of my head, you know, obviously, because now that I am older, things like that happen. Someone's going to mention it here in the chat in just a second, but it's a Netflix special. It's about a child in the UK and they get in trouble. It's called Adolescence is the name of it, and it's a four-part series and it was really cool and really eye opening just then. Terrifying, as a parent, you know.
Speaker 1:And then we had this moment with our kids where we had to lock everything down. So you know, we've had it locked down in the past. Then we got a little lax. I mean, dude, we're just, we're just human right. And then we had to turn around. We're like, no, we got to start locking everything back down on the kiddos and so they're not a sponsor. And you know, I don't. I think I made a referral for you one time, but I can't recommend Bark enough man for what they do and it's just.
Speaker 1:It's it's peace of mind more than anything for a parent, but, having watched that movie and seeing what's going on with social media, definitely wanted to do that. Because, dude, the stuff that my kid listens to on YouTube, you know, it's like one day everything's fine, it's funny, and we're watching, you know, videos of dogs and cats, and then the next minute it's like like terrifying. So, as much as we are, all you know, anyone listening to this probably is involved in technology. You know, don't forget, dude, don't forget to turn around, because as much as we're comfortable with it, maybe kids aren't that comfortable with it and there's a lot of stuff that goes on. You know, there was just a deal happened with someone who met on Roblox and got abducted, and so I mean, you can never be too vigilant, I guess, is my point. So make sure you take a look at that Bark, very, very cool product for parents.
Speaker 1:So what's going on, man? Well, you know, we just we pushed one of these out last week. We had some really cool announcements. I have some sick sponsors now so excited, not just in the ability to give stuff away like we just kind of did we didn't really give anything away, but I mean we tested out the functionality and the mechanism to give stuff away. So pretty soon we'll start really giving some stuff away, starting with the next show, for sure. Pretty soon we'll start really giving some stuff away, starting with the next show, for sure, we're going to start giving out some freebies to people that listen. So I would encourage you to jump online, drop me a message or a comment, tell me about the stuff that you want. I'll look through my office if I have something that you like that I can give away. Then, man, by all means, I think one of the things I am going to give away because I have a set of them here, check it out. This one's not even open yet, but this is a halo link from morse micro. So this is a wi-fi halo, still new, uh, unopened. That's something we can definitely put in the pool. Um, you know, what I'm not going to give away is is some of my radios, like my radio radios. Check this out.
Speaker 1:Had a moment with the kid the other night. They didn't have school on Monday, so Sunday night we decided to watch a movie and I, you know, judge my parenting later, but I put on one of my favorite movies that got me interested in wireless communications in the first place, and then I had to bust out all my gear the first place and then I had to bust out on my gear. There she goes, you guys ready for this? Look, look at this man, the cobra 29 classic. Oh yes, we watched smoky and the bandit the other night and we got to learn all about CB lingo. Hey, snowman, you got your ears on this bandit? Come back, it's good stuff. So we had a whole conversation about CB radios and I had to go find mine.
Speaker 1:Man, and I remember the first time that I messed with CB I was in Simi Valley, california, riding around in a truck with a bunch of us, this guy named Tony, who had this cool little Toyota I guess it was a Tacoma. It was that little truck like the one in Back to the Future, and he had a big old whip antenna on it and I thought it was so cool because he could talk to people from all over Simi Valley on his little CB radio and they had all these weird things that they'd say to each other and they'd have these little music notes that they would play in the background and it was pretty awesome. So thinking about that man got me busting out the cb radio, and so I'm driving a ford f-150 lightning right now and unfortunately there's nowhere to put the cb radio yet. But I'm pretty sure I'm gonna find a place to stick this bad boy and plug it in and turn it on. Man, I got this at a pawn shop for 36 bucks that crazy. Anyway, I'll stick one the wife's car just for good measure. Anyway, are you a cb here? If you, if cb is in your blood, man, let me know. Mark I I I have a feeling I know the answer to this with mark bender sounds like a cb radio enthusiast also. So if you do, uh, if you've ever done cb man, drop me a note. It's pretty crazy, I think it's.
Speaker 1:I think it's neat, fun way to start with with wireless from back in the Anyway. So we're watching smoking the bandit. Talking about that, you know there were a couple of movies that stood out in my childhood that made me really like want to get involved in wireless communications. Uh, you know, smoking the bandit convoy. Uh, you know, cannonball run. These are some good ones, uh, but pump up up the volume. That's a movie that really got me interested in radio. It got me interested in djing, got me interested in talking on the mic. It got me interested in how to use signals to you know, to break into stuff or throw people off your track. So pump up the volume was a pretty good one that I liked also anyway. So I had some cool moments there with a little, with the little kiddos showing, showing them. You know some movies that I really enjoyed.
Speaker 1:Mark says you need to take the test Starting to get your ham. Yeah, man, I mean it's. It's my books are outdated here, but but definitely go check out the ARRL and and get their latest manuals. It's not that difficult to take the test for ham operators. You can get your basic, you can get your technician license, no problem. It's a lot of math. But for people like us who are in the wireless industry, first of all I would say you totally should have it.
Speaker 1:If you're doing anything with wireless and you're seriously doing it, you should absolutely have an operator's license because there's things that it teaches you and things that you can understand from doing it that you might not even think about on a day-to-day basis. You know it's a lot of math, it's a lot of science, it's Ohm's law Like you got no Ohm's law inside and out, I just remember that. But learning how to build an antenna and learning what visor is and learning all these things that make a difference. Even if people don't think wifi is as RF technical you know technical as it is. It's great to have a ham operators license and I tell you I put it, I haven't had a business card in a minute, but I put it on all my business cards and when you hand that to someone or you've got your call sign or it's on your license plate on your truck, whatever it is, it's like instant aha, you know, instant recognition. So I would definitely encourage you to visit ARRLorg, learn about becoming a ham operator, take the test.
Speaker 1:I mean we really need to do one of the things we need to do at WLPC is we need to have a ham meetup. Man, we need to have like a swap meet and a meetup there for hams. I don't know why we haven't done that yet Like a little mini field day. That would be really fun. There's a lot of stuff I've always wanted to do at WLPC. Like it's a perfect grounds for doing just nerd stuff like this. So maybe this year, if enough of us hams get together, we can. We can have some fun and maybe we can do a study, a study class or study group. Maybe we need to crank something up on the on the wireless land pros chat and see if we can do that. But if you're not an amateur radio operator, uh, definitely encourage you to become one. And I definitely encourage you to take part in Aegis and take part in disaster recovery and the things that amateur radios do with that. It's special to me because I live down here on the Gulf Coast. Shout out to the RGV Amateur Radio Club. Our amateur radio club mobilizes whenever something happens.
Speaker 1:I've got a Kenwood TS2000 that I bought on eBay a while back and a great little Astron power supply for it and the radio stays off a lot. But the second that there's any storm or the second that there's weather, or maybe on a Tuesday night at 7pm for a rag chew, the radio comes on and the kids get such a kick out of it because the second weather hits, radio flips on and throughout the whole house all you hear is all the chatter going back and forth from all the hams, given, you know, status updates and situation updates and things like that. So it's super fun to nerd out. If you're into wireless, listen. This is the Waves podcast. I am a wireless nerd so I don't know what you're expecting to hear. But if you're going like, oh my God, this guy's getting kind of knee deep in it, this is exactly the kind of stuff and the reason that I do what I do. So plug it in, turn it on, have a good time, learn how to be a ham man Really really cool stuff.
Speaker 1:Now let's talk about things that are going on in the industry, because there's a couple deals. There's a couple, a couple deals. The first thing that I want to reference here. I've seen this a couple of times and you know it. If I had a minute today, what I was going to do is set something up on my kitchen table and see say honestly, see if it worked. I mean theoretically, in science there's, there's things about it that should work but doesn doesn't make it better. Of course, I'm talking about the aluminum foil Wi-Fi hack that's blowing people's mind. Let me see if I can share my screen out here. Y'all ready for this? Here it is this viral aluminum foil Wi-Fi hack is blowing people's mind, but does it actually work? So this article has been published in a couple of different places and this person has a little NiteGear Nighthawk inside. It looks like in a couple of different places, and this person has a little Netgear Nighthawk inside. Looks like half of a box covered in aluminum foil.
Speaker 1:I don't doubt that there's going to be an increase in signal. I reached out to Firas If you guys know Firas I was like bro, you need to totally do this because he has all the crazy equipment. But then I turned around and looked. I'm like dude, I've stuff that can measure these signals. Why not try it? So I didn't have a chance to do it today, but I'm definitely looking forward to someone who's a little bit more excited about these things to try this out.
Speaker 1:I really want to see if this works and to what extent, because, as you know, the second something like this gets out on the internet. People all over the world start to consume it, and by that, if you look at this, a tweet from this person showing Wi-Fi routers surrounded by aluminum foils racked up over 33 million views. That's 33 million people that we're gonna have to troubleshoot. Y'all know that right. So people swearing, their signal strength improved instantly. And there it is Put an aluminum foil behind your Wi-Fi router. Thank me later. Oh, oh man, this is going to be uh, this is going to be some fun tech support, but the science behind it talks about signal reflector being better from walls. So what I am curious about is the effects of mimo in this with multipath. But let's just see. Um, anyway, if anyone has done this, let me know. Man, post your results online. Let's find out what's uh, what's happening with it, because this is hilarious and fun both at the same time. Let's see what else we got going on. So I'm going to close that window on to the next one and the famous words of jay-z.
Speaker 1:This popped up, which is something that that came out before, and I've seen this article. You know this was published, I think, like 10 years ago, maybe O23 Ecotech, and this was a deal that they were talking about at Carnegie Mellon University. Oh, it was two years ago, three years ago, and we talked about this actually on the show, and what they did is they took a camera on one side and a Wi-Fi. You know, according to them, I think it was an off-the-shelf Wi-Fi router on the other side and they had it match up so when someone would walk in the room, the camera would focus on the person and show the person and that would teach the Wi-Fi router to you know reflective signals, understand what it saw basically using Wi-Fi like LiDAR, and it worked pretty well. On the left-hand side is what you see as a combination of the two images. On the right-hand side is what you see just from the RF signature of it, and they did a live demo of it and if you scroll through on Instagram you can see what the live demo is here. Yeah, so this guy's explaining exactly what I just said. I can't fast-forward that, but you get the idea.
Speaker 1:But this came back up and I just wanted to bring it up because, if you hadn't seen this already, there's lots of talk about Wi-Fi imaging and about Wi-Fi sensing. That came up last year at Wi-Fi Now, at the Wi-Fi Now Global Congress, and that's coming back up again next week, and so I don't know if anybody's going to be there talking about Wi-Fi sensing again, but if they are, I thought I'd bring it up just in case anyone knows if there's any. Has there been any new movement on it? I haven't seen any product releases or anything that's coming out, but it's definitely an interesting use of the technology to me, using Wi-Fi to understand who's where and what they're doing, but it did surface itself again, and this time on digital camera world. So you know, you never know, but this is what people are gonna be talking about.
Speaker 1:Let's see On to the next one. What's the next article? We got Columbia students suspended over interview cheating tool. Okay, so, man, this is nuts. Clueley was announced and this 21-year-old dude over here, roy Lee, announced he's raised $5.3 million in seed funding. Oops, there we go. Let me show my screen $5.3 million in seed funding from Abstract Ventures and Sousa Ventures for a startup called Clueley. I would encourage you to look at their social media and look at the commercial that they made and what they're what they're doing with it, because it's a pretty cool commercial. So I'm underscore Roy, underscore.
Speaker 1:Lee has the, the video on there and he's he's gotten just a ton, a ton of traffic. I think if we click through on his name, you can see some of the stuff that's on here. He mentioned that that it's had just an insane amount of views. Clueless, I'm cheating on everything. There we go 10 million views in two days, 80,000 on X in three months.
Speaker 1:This is a pretty wild thing to think about. So what he did is he wrote a program that allows him to use smart glasses to have interview questions. Someone would ask an interview question and the glasses would listen and it would display whatever the results are. Now he did this on his browser. Right, he did this on a web browser and he goes on to show, if you dig through his social media, how you can't stop this from happening on a browser. There's no way to detect it or whatever else. But his idea was to cheat through job interviews and he ended up getting something like four or five job offers total worth $600,000, I think is what he said and it gives him the ability to interpret what's going on.
Speaker 1:So this takes it a step further. Right In this you've got smart glasses with active listening and they're displaying real-time data on his glasses. And here he's trying to win over the heart of a young lady at a dinner date. In the video you can see right here on your screen that's what he's doing and she actually busts him. But the idea isn't just that. Right, it's a funny take on it, but if you stop and you think about the real-world implications of what's going on here and what Clulee can bring, it's something that I find actually exciting.
Speaker 1:Now, again, this is like take all the privacy stuff and don't focus on that. Think about what the usability of this is in an environment where data is secure and private. And I was talking to my wife about it, because my wife does insurance right and insurance. You have contract after contract. You have all this data. You have all the information about the businesses and what they do and what their annual earnings are, and their quarterly reports and everything else. Imagine if you're sitting in a meeting with someone like your insurance agent and they have these glasses on and, as you're talking to them, you can ask them any single question about anything that they're doing and I don't mean like the normal stuff that they should know, I mean like crazy obscure things and having that information at their fingertips where they don't have to fumble through papers and look anything up. Now apply that further on, and what I've always wanted to see and again, this is the total opt-in thing what I've always wanted to see is the smart glasses that I can put on in a conference and when I walk up and shake your hand, it scans your face If you've opted in for it. It shows me your LinkedIn profile and where you've been and who you are, and it shows me where you've worked and it shows your social media or anything else that you've opted into, so that I can so I can understand who it is I'm talking to.
Speaker 1:Granted lots of privacy and security implications there. Totally understand that, but from an opt-in perspective, man, I think that that would be pretty insane. It would be crazy to see that as a lawyer. For example. Imagine a lawyer wearing something like this in court and having instant access on their glasses to every single court case while they're sitting there trying to argue for something. That would be pretty involved. There's lots of uses for this, and so what he's teasing out is the ability to quote unquote cheat on anything, and I find that to be absolutely fascinating because it's not about faking a job interview. It's about leveraging data and the massive amounts of data that we have and presenting it in a way that it hasn't been presented before. So I'm keen to see what happens with that. Again, privacy huge thing going on there, but at the same time, if you can do that in a way that protects that privacy, then that could be pretty awesome. Now, as long as we're going down that path and you can see that B&H puts up advertisements all over everything for me, so nice.
Speaker 1:Jj just posted something. Jj Manella, I'm hoping you know JJ if you're listening to this podcast. Jj is a big rock star in the Wi-Fi industry with. She posted something that was funny on LinkedIn and I commented back. I know that you've seen this right, jj, because Sam Altman is saying that people saying please and thank you to ChatGPT is wasting millions of dollars in compute power. It's the computer. You don't really have to be quite nice to it, you know, and I don't think you're going to earn brownie points for being nice to it and it's not going to change the function if you're nice or if you're mean to it. I'm not saying be mean to the computer, but your robot overlords don't seem to have any feelings and that's not necessarily a bad thing. So using polite language sets a tone for the response. However, it'll be polite back. But generative AI also mirrors a level of professionalism, clarity and detail that you provide, but it's not necessarily going to change what the output is. So that was pretty interesting to see.
Speaker 1:Another story coming up with ChatGPT and this is kind of creepy. This hasn't happened to me yet is that ChatGPT is referring to users by their names unprompted. You know that's kind of weird. It hasn't done that to me yet and I'm a pro user on it. So maybe, maybe I'm just not asking it the right questions. I'm asking it to like make me look like an action figure or create a create an image for a podcast. So it's not, maybe it's maybe I'm not the right demographic, uh, but you know, we can try it out and see what happens.
Speaker 1:What else do we have going on here? This, okay, out of curiosity, I saw. What else do we have going on here? This, okay, out of curiosity, I saw. I worked with someone who used this tool and I wanted to ask anyone if they had seen this, this actual tool, so what it has right here. If you look at it, it's a Keystone Terminator by True Cable and I saw it and it worked really, really well and that's it. That's like that's all I got.
Speaker 1:It doesn't really have anything to do with wireless, unless you're plugging wireless stuff in. However, uh, does anybody have any experience with this? Because if you do, let me know. I I used it once. I was like man, is this something I should buy? So I thought I would bring that up. What else we got?
Speaker 1:Scientists have hijacked the human eye to get to see a brand new color. It's called olo I'm. I would love to see what a new color looks like, but apparently the only way to see it let's see if it's in here is you have to shoot a laser beam directly into your eye. So maybe I don't want to see the color that bad. Um, blue green, blue green of unprecedented saturation isn't that crazy? So apparently, in order to see it though you've got to you've got to shoot a laser beam right into your eye. Again, nothing to do with wireless. Definitely found that fascinating. Now this has a lot to do with wireless and I also found this fascinating.
Speaker 1:I don't know if I'm sure you all have met Anil. If you've listened to the podcast, you've seen that we interviewed on him. Anil is one of the co-founders and CEO of Meter. If you've listened to the podcast, you've seen that we interviewed on him. Anil is one of the co-founders and CEO of Meter, who's one of the fine, fine sponsors here at the Waves podcast, and this is not me going out. I would have posted this, no matter if they're a sponsor or not. Check this out If you guys know anyone who's into machine learning. Anil posted this on Twitter yesterday. I believe he said Meter's building one of the most ambitious projects an AI, fully autonomous network and they're growing their team. If you know anyone and they hire them, he'll give you 20 grand Anil. What do I get for referring people to refer to you? I'm just saying I mean, let's go ahead and put that out there, but I thought that that was pretty neat. So if you all know anyone that's interested, look up Anil. His X handle is at ACV, or find the folks at Meter or reach out to me. If you know anyone who's interested, he's got a finder's fee in there for you, which is pretty cool, so I figured I would pass that on. This might be a little bit broader of an audience than someone who just reads a tweet every once in a while. So if you know anyone who's interested, visit meterai, look up Anil at ACV, send me a message, whatever it is. Let's get you in touch with the right people If you know someone who's interested in building that, because that would be a really cool. Plus 20 grand. So you got that going for you.
Speaker 1:Kuiper one ULA is a set to launch the first operational satellites for project Kuiper. Very cool, I'm interested in this for a whole bunch of reasons, I'm sure, as you know. You know, just, uh, you, if you don know, what I do during my day job is I work for a company called Eero. This is an Amazon company, so I'm keenly interested in how the whole atmosphere of everything that's going on at Amazon is doing. And this is really neat, not to say that any comments or things that I say are mine and mine only. They don't represent anything of the people that I work for, so let's go ahead and make that clear. But this is really neat either way, because this is a new LEO project that's going up.
Speaker 1:Kuiper 1 is going from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral. Wednesday April 9th is when it launched and everything's up there. Man, pretty awesome. March 31st kuiper one satellite processing. So keep your eye on what's going on there. And uh, and this is pretty neat, man, this is really cool to see. So more low earth orbiting satellites, more stuff happening in the atmosphere.
Speaker 1:Let's see, all right on to events, what kind of events we got going on right now. Look at this. This is pretty cool. So shout out to the, to the posse over at waiko um, waiko, toronto is sold out. That's awesome, uh, congratulations getting the sellout audience there.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of other waiko events coming up the wireless community, this fancy elephant, uh, that mr peter mckinsey probably drew on a napkin and then, you know, turned into a logo, maybe not, I don't know how they came up with it, but waiko and peter and all these events are going on. This is so neat, man. It's so neat to see right here, um, that norway, tullinore, north carolina, at the botanical gardens, philly is coming up on the 15th of may, nashville on may 29th, bordeaux, france, on july 3rd, um, the bay area, nc experts doing one in the bay area on the 7th of july, and then the waiku conference in london. This is going to be the big one. This one's going to be really, really cool. So this, if you got any, if you're going to be out there in september, this is the one that you want to go to, uh, to really bring everything together. And then the 2nd of October in Montreal and the 20th of November in the Netherlands. So WICO is all over the place and what we need to do is we need to bring some of the team on from WICO so that they can talk about this.
Speaker 1:Wico is a lot of sessions specifically around what we're using as a community, whether it's tools, whether it's tricks, whether it's knowledge. Wico is like a small, localized version of WLPC, hitting every single one of these areas. So the big events, like the WICO conference in the UK, the WLPC in Phoenix, the WLPC in Prague, those are the big events, right, those are the big daddy events where everything happens, but WICO breaks it out into these sessions that bring it to your door, that bring it closer to you. So if you're not, if you haven't gone to a WICO event and one is coming relatively close to you, I would make every effort that you can to attend. You get to see some incredible speakers. It's a lot of people that you know from the industry, a lot of people that you've seen and heard. Maybe you don't know them personally, but here you might get a chance to do that.
Speaker 1:Speaking of other events, as I mentioned, the Wi-Fi Now World Congress is coming up next week, april 28th through 30th. This is going to be in Mountain View, california, co-located with the Wi-Fi Halo Global Summit and the Open Wi-Fi Global Summit. Klaus again puts together just the slate. I mean, these are the people that you want to hear from about what's happening in the industry and what's going on, and they're all going to be there. Look through it. You know they're all going to be there and it's a very cool conference where you get to get face-to-face and you get to shake hands with a lot of these people. You get to get to know them personally and you get to hear what they're doing and what's happening in their organizations. Very cool group of people that's going to be there. So I would encourage you, please tune in, or tune in, please show up and take a look at what's happening. I think there's still ways that you can buy tickets to register for it. So visit wifi now, globalcom. You can learn more about what's going on there.
Speaker 1:Also coming up very soon on the heels of that, may 19th and 22nd, is the wgc americas with wireless, the wireless global congress. I will be out speaking at this one talking about smart communities. So if you're close to Dallas, may 19th through May 22nd, this is a really fun one. Now there is some carryover from content between the two conferences. You'll hear it first at Wi-Fi Now and then WBA will have some of the same speakers talking about some of the same things.
Speaker 1:But the way to think about. It is Wi-Fi Now, in my opinion, right, this isn't the official opinion of either one of these, but in my opinion, basically Wi-Fi Now is where you get all the leaders together to talk about what's happening in the industry. It's more of a corporate feel, more of a you know from the captain's observatory point where the ship is going. Wba does a really good job of identifying what people are doing with Wi-Fi, how they're using Wi-Fi Now, wi-fi, the Wi-Fi Alliance, kevin and the team Consuelo and the team at the Wi-Fi Alliance. What they do is they make sure that the standards are being met, the Wi-Fi gear is being produced. They help support the industry and make the industry move forward. But WBA is like how do we do things using Wi-Fi, in my opinion? And then Wi-Fi now is these are the people that are doing things with Wi-Fi and how you should listen to them. So there's this really cool carryover between the three. I expect to hear a lot about open roaming and what's been going on with open roaming, what's been happening with American bandwidth and the teams are using Passpoint now and doing offload with Wi-Fi. So there's some really neat things that are happening. Definitely would encourage you to go check out the Wireless Global Congress. Then, right after that, registrations open 46 days until Cisco Live.
Speaker 1:Coming back to San Diego, california, it's just, it's Cisco Live. You know, it's everything, it's everything and everyone in the industry doing their things. You know, I remember there used to be incredible shows. You know, you had Comdex and the Network Interop and NetWorld Interop and you had Supercom and you had all these shows where everyone was talking about the industry and then that just kind of collapsed. It seemed like back into vendor conferences. And so the Cisco Live vendor conference is good at putting together an event where they have the world of solutions, where you can see a lot of what people are doing. And I don't want to say that it's just Cisco, but the trade show there is one of the. There's a lot of people that go to that trade show and there's a lot of people that go to Cisco Live, maybe not even interested in Ciscoisco, but interested in what's happening overall.
Speaker 1:So I will be there, um, hanging out. I uh, the cisco champions will be there, cisco champions will be in the house and it's a great time to go out to san diego and they know how to put on a hell of a party. So they're turning, I think, the whole downtown area into a big party. So that's gonna be pretty nuts. Anyway, that's what we got going on. I appreciate, yeah, the killers man, I the killer. If you haven't seen the killers in concert? I've seen them a couple times, so I'm not like, yay, killers, you know, uh, but if you haven't seen them, they put on a hell of a show. A hell of a show.
Speaker 1:We do need a wi-fi conference in south texas. Mario, maybe it's just going to be you and I that do our own south texas conference. You know, the closest thing that we have is we have B-Sides. So if you're listening from the Rio Grande Valley, b-sides RGV is coming up. It's a spectacular time. I've gotten to present there a number of times. You know I had a really good time and I would encourage you all to do the same thing.
Speaker 1:If there's a conference like B-Sides or Security Conference or a nerd conference that's happening in your local community, all you got to do is grab a pineapple and grab a flipper and a laptop and a tablet and you can go out there and you can put together a session showing people what the most basic, fundamental attack looks like using wireless and how to protect themselves or how to protect their companies from it. And I would encourage you to do that, because a lot of times what we're dealing with is people who don't really understand what is capable with wireless. A lot of people don't give it the first thought. When they think about network security, they're not thinking about protecting their networks from a Wi-Fi side, and we've had it happen down here. We just had a whole lot of hacks and a whole lot of outages down here in South Texas. I mean, it took out a school district, it took out a city, another one took out a hospital. There's some nasty stuff going on.
Speaker 1:So I would encourage you, if you're in your local community, share your knowledge about what you know in the wireless industry. Get out there, talk to people about it. If you need ideas for presentations, it's great to go to shows like Wireless Global Congress or the Wi-Fi Now events or WLPC. You know, one time Lee Badman, my favorite person in the Wi-Fi industry Mr Lee Badman, mr Porkchop Sandwiches, mr Beef Wellington himself did an incredible session on the Wi-Fi pineapple at WLPC and I turned around and I said, lee, this is great, I'm going to take this curriculum, I'm going to hack it apart. I'm going to do a local version of it and Lee's like dude, go ahead, man, that's awesome. That's what we do it for is for people to share the education.
Speaker 1:So I would encourage you, if you're looking for something to do, reach out. You know, if you need, if you need pointers, but definitely let people know that you're the wireless nerd in your community. Go out there. And, mark, I know that's going to be hard because you live in a community where there's some where there's some stiff competition for wireless nerds and you don't have a man cave, so that's okay. Anyway, go be the wireless nerd that you were meant to be.
Speaker 1:That is a wrap for Waves this week. I'm not going to do that giveaway today, I'm just going to tease it out. But y'all, next week we're going to give away an AirTrek G3. It's going to happen. I'm going to find out all the specs on it and we are going to get people on and I would ask you to share it so that more people can join, but I know you probably won't, because the less people, the better your chances I get it. However, I would appreciate it if you would share the link. Let's build up some excitement, let's have some fun, and I hope you all like.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to drop the sponsor messages in like pre-roll, mid-roll and at the end. So give me some tips and pointers on there. I'm trying not to be obnoxious with the sponsors. I'm trying to make sure that they convey a good message and something that's of absolute interest to you. That's the whole idea, right is that we all learn from this, anyway. So that's it, y'all. There's only one wireless nerd in the valley Aw, thanks, mario. Anyway, he says he's getting marks coming to South Texas. I love it. All right, y'all. Well, that being said, that's about the 40-minute mark here on Waves. So I'm going to wrap this up and I hope you all have a great week, enjoy your week, and next week I'm going to be traveling, but I'm going to stop for a minute and produce the podcast and give some stuff away. It's going to be phenomenal and I'll be out in Mountain View, so I'll be doing the podcast out there. So, if we happen to see,
