[00:00:19] AI moves from experiment to infrastructure. I teased that last episode, but we're going to get to it this time. Telegram is in the news and Amazon is in the news. Amazon, I guess, put together... What do they call this thing now, Jay? What is it now? So, Amazon... What do they call it though? Oh, their Prime Day you're talking about, right? Yeah, but Prime Day? Well, it used to be Prime Day. Yeah.
[00:00:49] It's not anymore. Amazon's annual Prime Day, we put that in quotation marks, is now going to be June 23rd through the 26th. It's going to be 23, 24, 25, 36. It's going to be four days long. So Prime Days. Yeah, Prime Days. That's right. Yeah. And then usually, when you have those Prime Days, then you have something like Small Business Saturday, and you have Black Friday, and you have this, and they have that. Pretty soon it's going to be Prime Week or whatever. Well, it's not far from it. It rounds up to a week, four days does, right?
[00:01:19] Yeah. So that's what I mean is this is the society of things is that everything is more, more, more, more, more. Anyway, we wanted to tell you about it to make sure you know if you want to get in on Prime Week, there's incredible deals. There's all kinds of groups that watch for those deals and make them available for you. And it is a great time to buy some things if you really need something. What I really think people need to think about is don't just say, oh, the Prime Days are here. I'm going to buy. That's what they want you to do. What you really need to do is step back and say, look, if I really need something, it's a great time to get it. But I'm not just going to buy things just to buy things, Jay.
[00:01:49] Yeah. And one of the things that Prime, it always moves around, which I don't know why they don't pick a day and actually have it annually. No, because you've got to do it like it's random. Like, dude, this is it's part of that psyche, Jay. If I have it consistently, you're like, oh, it's that way every year. Who cares? You don't have the excitement. If I randomly bring it up to you, then it's like, dude, this is a once in a lifetime. Jay, come on now. So they moved it out of July. The deals have never been better, Jay, this July. And you've got to see what I mean. Yeah.
[00:02:16] They moved it into June, they say, because they wanted to have it before the America 250. So I guess people can gear up and buy all their barbecue stuff or whatever. But so is the first time that they've had it like that where it's been in June and been this long. And they say that traditionally it's in July. But this time it's going to be in late June. It's going to be actually not far away. It's right around the corner now. I got to say, spend yourself into oblivion month. Christmas in July, baby. Yeah. Load up those cards.
[00:02:44] Don't wait till December to load up those credit cards, Sam. Yeah. You can load them up twice a year, not just once a year now. So anyway, I don't mean to mock it. I'm just saying, you know, what does this stuff turn into when we get this? Now we have Black Friday and we have Cyber Monday and we have, you know, small business Saturday and we have prime days. And we have, I mean, it's just pretty soon every day is going to be this incredible shopping day kind of a thing. And it's just, I don't know. I think we've kind of worn that out. It's kind of like the last episode when I said everybody's getting burned out on subscriptions for everything.
[00:03:14] It's just too much, folks. And I get that we want to, you know, do good with the economy and everything else. But, you know, there you go. Right. Telegram is a well-known communication service. Basically, the private sector and individuals love Telegram. The corporate world loves Slack. They serve different purposes. But Telegram, there's two stories about this that are kind of interesting, Jay. That's right. So the one that I have here is a Telegram message from Pavel Durov.
[00:03:41] This is the guy that wrote Telegram and still is actively developing it and in charge of it. He said the U.K. government wants to ban social media for children under 16. But banning social media for kids only puts them in greater danger. He says this will be pushed to use VPNs and unlock even worse illegal content. We've seen this before. When Russia government banned Telegram, 95% of Russian teenagers kept using it. They just moved to VPNs. Same in Iran. And now they're tapped into the underground world of the, what do they call that internet?
[00:04:11] The underground internet? The dark web, Sam. The dark web, Jay. That's right. So it really just drives over to the dark web, right? Yeah. Parents have already have the tools to restrict their kids' digital habits. They have parental controls. They have screen times or no smartphone at all. By gosh, what a concept. He said instead many parents give toddlers iPads just to keep them quiet. And no amount of government regulation is going to fix that. But under the new law, all social media users in the UK- You can just outlaw iPads. Yeah. Well, you could, I guess. But under the new law-
[00:04:41] I'm demonstrating the absurd by being absurd, people, intentionally. This is crazy. Or just do some parenting. Although- Whoa, Jay. I know. You mean what you ought to do is let kids have access to things, but let parents kind of monitor control and deliver it appropriately? Yeah. Side note on this. Apple in their latest WWDC just released some new parenting controls. We'll talk about that in a future episode, though. But he says thousands of in the UK are already arrested for political posts every year.
[00:05:08] He says, and this is kind of the key thing, and the question is, is this really about protecting children or is it about identifying more people to arrest? Because- No and yes. They want everybody to register on- Yeah. No, it's not about the children. Yes, it is about everybody registering. Yeah. Absolutely. I think he's spot on on his point. And he's been kind of known the leader of Instagram and some of these people. They've kind of been freedom fighters for quite some time, Jay. Yeah. He's done a good job. This is Pavel Durov, a leader of Telegram that we're talking about. Yeah.
[00:05:38] So anyway, good job by him. And he's bringing up, in my opinion, some fundamental truths. So that's one story about Telegram. The other Telegram story I have is Telegram loses court fight in India, of all places. Now, I don't know if you know population of India, but India is what, the most populated country on the planet? Yes. They're also leading births in the world. Okay. So not only are they the greatest population, but it's- Like they beat China long ago. Yeah. Anyway, they're the largest population country.
[00:06:07] And so there's this big lawsuit. And an Indian court, they say, upheld the government's, quote, temporary ban on Telegram tied to security concerns. They say it's a national security concern. It's a digital freedom concern. So here's what happened with this. Anyway, it's weird, right? Yeah. I'm actually familiar with the story. So there was an exam.
[00:06:32] I don't know whether it was like a high school exam or some civic exam or something, but- Yeah. It's an exam. Yep. The answers got out on Telegram. People were using Telegram to share- Yeah. To cheat. And so the government of India shut down Telegram users are using it- That's what you do. For one week. They just said, no more Telegram for one week. So if you use Telegram to talk to your family or do whatever- No, you're done, buddy. You're just- They put you in the corner for a week. See, I have a problem.
[00:07:02] I have a problem. Is this Telegram's fault? No. Why punish Telegram? Telegram has nothing to do with it. It's just a vehicle, right? It's like if somebody put porn on Telegram or if somebody put porn on YouTube or whatever else. Right. Why would you shut down all YouTube access for a week? That's the point. It's insanity what's going on here. But again, the largest populated country in the world just did this, Jay. You know, there's another- And then, hold on. And then it got, you know, kind of contested and got affirmed, right? So it's even worse. Yeah.
[00:07:31] They're just not gonna, as far as I know, they're not gonna do anything about it. You just have to wait a week. You're just in timeout. If you're a Telegram user. Well, the question is, when is timeout gonna be a month? When it's like shutting down the Straits of Hormos? When does it end? Yeah. Exactly. One other thing I want to touch back on. The digital Straits of Hormuz. Telegram just got shut down. I mean, I don't know what to think about it, but wow. I've heard about this on the social media ban for kids, okay? And not to make this too political, but you may know more about this, Sam.
[00:07:58] And as I understand it, it includes, you know, things like Telegram, Instagram, Facebook, of course, you know, all these, Twitter, everything. But there's one exception, notable exception to that, doesn't include Blue Sky. Blue Sky is a more liberal, progressive, whatever you want to say. Of course, it's protected, Jay. Yeah, but it is not included. It's specifically excluded from the ban for children on social media in the UK. You know, we can't. No, TikTok's included in the ban.
[00:08:28] Oh, they got to stop that. Donald needs to come to the register. Come on. Yeah. It's just interesting to me. How do you get, how does the people of Blue Sky get this special exemption? You want me to tell you? Yeah. I mean, if you know. It's who you know, Jay. Well, of course. Yeah. That's how it is. Anyway, very interesting stuff. And the sad part is Telegram, in my opinion, taking the beating for this. And the real important point that I want to make about this, forget the political side of the whole discussion.
[00:08:55] A lot of people use Telegram and some of these phone-based digital communication services. In America, we don't do this as much. But in other countries, they use these core communication tools as their home phone. That's right. As their business phone. As their banking phone. As their, you know, what I mean is it's tied into everything. And this is a massive communications shutdown. It's not just like, oh, we shut down your fun. No, no, no.
[00:09:22] We're shutting down core tools people need and use on a daily basis. We didn't shut down Roblox or something. We shut down a communication app. I'll give you an example. Even in my house. You know, I've got a metal roof on my house. And so it attenuates cell phone signals quite a bit. We do have wireless. You're supposed to be able to do cell phone over Wi-Fi. But that doesn't always work well. And so sometimes if I need to call somebody, I will use Telegram or FaceTime or something, a data version of a call that I know is going to be just carried over data to get through.
[00:09:51] And if you just shut down Telegram, I mean, what do you do? If that's a core communication system that you're using with your people, your family, your business, whatever, what do you do, Sam? Anyway, in my mind, that's the real concern. And what countries need to learn, and again, this isn't political. This is technical in my point. What they need to learn is this. Shutting down people is not the answer. Okay, finding ways to stop the criminals and let the rest of us do our business is good. So if you want to stop people from cheating, work on that.
[00:10:21] Don't attack Telegram where most of us are doing great things on Telegram. I mean, Jay uses Telegram with a lot of people for a lot of reasons. And none of it's sinister. None of it's cheating. None of it's any of that. And many people around the world, millions, are using it for legitimate, legitimate, needful purposes, as you've articulated, Jay. And we've got to find a way. We've got to somehow back into this idea that we're not going to penalize the rest on the few abuses or wrongful use or whatever you want to say. We're going to find out how to, you know, filter down and stop the bad guys,
[00:10:49] but let the good guys continue. I mean, that's the real quest here, right? Absolutely. All right. Well, AI should be able to help us with that real quest. AI helps us with everything, Jay. And now AI moves from experiment to infrastructure. This is interesting. The biggest story in tech right now is not a gadget, a device. AI is becoming embedded into everything we're doing, Jay.
[00:11:16] It's becoming embedded into business, operations, budgets, governance, forecasting, not to mention daily work. It's huge, Jay. And I don't think people really realize that's the big story in tech right now. It's that it's coming instead of being, we're going to play with it. Should we play with it? Should we, you know, dabble in it? Should we try to use it? Those questions are gone, right? Yeah. It's not a toy anymore.
[00:11:44] Companies are now shifting and they're saying, hey, how should we use AI? Now they're saying, how do we manage it responsibly? How do we afford it? How do we, it's those questions, right? And so believe it or not, OpenAI now is adding enterprise analytics and spending controls to their system. Because chat GPT enterprise customers basically are saying, hey, we got to have this. We can't just spend ourselves into oblivion. Got to have spending limits.
[00:12:13] Got to governance this thing. So AI is strengthening its executive bench ahead of their, quote, public offering. And they're highlighting how rapidly AI is moving into the business world. But they're doing this all on, we're going to go public. We're going to be huge. And we've got to have this governance, these things in place that executives need to set aside all their concerns and roll with AI. Jay? That's exactly right. AI is not a toy anymore. It's definitely utility.
[00:12:42] And now they're managing it. They're incorporating it. And it's not a question of if we're going to use AI or what we're going to do with it or how can we make this work. We already have seen enough ways that it can work. It's just making it happen and managing it and budgeting it. Yeah. Did we have a break or something, I think? All right. Love it. Man, bright minds think alike. How's that? When we come back, I want to talk about President Trump and Apple. I want to talk about Brazil and Apple.
[00:13:10] I want to talk about Apple raising prices. And then I want to talk about Waymo because I took one of those several months ago. And I wonder if they're taking the one I took out of production. We'll talk about it. Sam and Jay, TechWatch. Introducing managed IT services from NPI. We offer top-notch data backup and recovery, email spam protection, and network security tailored to your needs and budget.
[00:13:38] With 20-plus years of experience in the medical field, our HIPAA-certified consultants know what it takes to protect sensitive information. Don't settle for less. Give us a call at 801-706-6980 and experience the difference with managed IT services. Remember, your IT support should be fast, efficient, and reliable. Cybercrime is exploding. Take Sarah from Sweet Delights, whose world crumbled after having to close with not being able to bounce back.
[00:14:05] Small businesses are prime targets, but the right strategies can keep yours safe. Jay Hill, CEO of Network Providers, has co-authored The Cyber Playbook Simplifies Cybersecurity for Business Owners with Strategies to Avoid Costly Breaches and Fines. Build a strong cyber attack response. Secure your business with key protections. Cyber threats aren't slowing down, but you can stay ahead. Protect your business.
[00:14:34] Ensure its security for tomorrow. Get the Cyber Playbook today at networkprovidersinc.com slash cyber dash playbook or call 385-446-5500 now.
[00:15:06] Beyond experimentation, now it's becoming a utility. We're talking about AI, so there's governance on budgets and pricing and rollout usage and not a how or, you know, all that. But let's implement it. What do we need? Safeguards in place. AI working on that as they work their public offering into place. That's coming up. We'll keep an eye on that, Paul. But we also talk about these data centers across the country, and people are getting angry because there's going to be a big data center in their area, and they're concerned about it. Well, these folks ought to be super concerned, Jay.
[00:15:35] That's right. Apparently, in Georgia, they're having a little kerfuffle about this. Georgia Power is seizing homes for AI. They're using eminent domain to seize hundreds of properties for a 35-mile transmission line, feeding AI data centers with up to 30 homes facing demolition. Coweta County homeowner Angela Hall, who escaped public housing to buy her property in 2003, has until August 1st to leave her home that she's hoped that she would pass to her granddaughter.
[00:16:04] Her daughter, Ansley Brown's TikTok went viral, pushing Georgia Power to raise its initial lowball offer to 125% of fair market value. The family is fighting the offer. The corridor is part of a $16 billion grid expansion, adding 10 gigawatts of capacity, with 80% going to new data centers. All I can tell you is this, folks. Just compensation needs to be offered, and we need to be very careful how often we use this eminent domain and everything else.
[00:16:30] You know, property rights are critical in America, and if we don't focus on that, I mean, at some point you'll just start to say for any reason, hey, because prime day is becoming prime days, prime weeks, prime months, prime years. We got to just take over your house because we need more warehouse space. Where does that end is the point. I know I demonstrated the extreme a little bit, but I mean, that's kind of what we're talking about a little bit, right? If you're going to eminent domain somebody, you should never be giving them a lowball offer. You should be giving them a make-me-move offer where they're just like, I'd be stupid not to sell for this.
[00:17:00] Well, and an offer that says, hey, it's a win-win-win. It's a win for the public because we get what we need. It's a win for the company trying to make it happen, and it's a win for those people who are on the losing end of this if we're not honorable. That's right, and I know you're going to have some stubborn holdouts, too. I understand both sides of that coin, but you can't be. But if you're a stubborn holdout, let's make sure you don't have a lot of leg to stand on. Yeah, but I've seen where they'll make a fair offer, and they're just like, no, I'm fine where I'm at. I actually like this house where there are.
[00:17:28] And then they'll do eminent domain, and somebody will get 75% of what it's worth or 25% of what it's worth. And it's just those are real slimy and not good. I agree, but on the other side of the coin, if somebody just will not move and it's in the public's best interest and we're making a sweet offer, and you're still turning it down just to be obstinate when you could probably start somewhere else and actually do better, it's really a win-win-win, an honest, fair win-win-win. Somebody just won't play ball. I mean, there's something to that side of the discussion, too.
[00:17:56] I agree, but you still need to give them a more than fair market value when you kick them out. If you're going to pull the eminent domain trigger. That's the sweet offer I'm talking about, right? I know, but if they don't accept it and you're going to force them out, you still need to give them the sweet offer, not just be like, well, here's your pennies, and we're forcing them anyway. That's what I mean is that, hey, when you're gone, you can complain all day, but we've done you right. Yeah, exactly. You want to have a good conscience there on all ends, like you're saying. Amen. All right. Anyway, interesting stuff, to say the least.
[00:18:23] Well, President Trump now announced that Apple will work with Intel on chip design and manufacturing in the United States, Jay, potentially reshaping America's semiconductor industry. I don't know about this. You know, Trump seems like he's got every. From Intel Silicon, like they're making their own chips now. The last, you know, five years they've been. No, no, no. That was before Donald decided to solve it, Jay. Oh, Donald got in the mix and made it all better. Yes. That's correct.
[00:18:53] Like he did with Iran, right? Yeah. It's all good now. I don't know what you're talking about. Well, I'll tell you this. I like the idea that they're doing it domestically. That's kind of cool. We'll see what happens with that. I guess unless it's the eminent domain and you have to take over my house so that you can go ahead and put your new chip center up. That'll be all right. Sam will volunteer his house for that project. Yes, I will. Sure. Absolutely. Just, hey, man, lay me down on the altar there, ladies and gentlemen. That's right.
[00:19:16] Now, Brazil forces, this is interesting, forces Apple to open their iOS. Apple agreed to a, what do they call this thing? A alternative. So they got, you know, app stores, payment systems in Brazil following regulatory pressure. Further weakening the app store's traditional control. So we're starting to see them starting to say, look, you just cannot charge everybody so much.
[00:19:45] You can't control your store so hard. You know, I've got a problem with this, Jay, because I don't see where governments get off saying you can or cannot do it. If American people don't like it, pick a different service. Yeah. I also don't get off where foreign governments are telling an American or even vice versa, an American company, how they have to do this or what charger they have to have for their cell phone products. I could see a foreign government saying, hey, you know, we don't like your stuff. We don't think you're playing fair, so we're not going to allow it in our country. They can do that if they want.
[00:20:13] But if you have a, let's say you have a website, you're running it in America and you're selling sporting goods or whatever. You can't have a company like Brazil saying, well, you got to do this and you got to do that. No, it's just all available on the web. Your customers don't have to shop here. Your people, if you don't like it, ban it in your country. Well, and that's another question. Should they be banning it? Should they be controlling it? The problem is we've just got, you know, the creation greater than the creator many times and it's just become a disaster. Anyway, I thought that was interesting.
[00:20:40] Well, now Apple is saying they got to raise their product prices because of the memory price surge. Tim Cook announces this before he steps down, by the way. And they say the rising prices are driven by a shortage of RAM exacerbated by AI data centers consuming massive amounts of memory chips. So now you and I are going to be paying for these data centers in a backhanded way, whether we like it or not, Jay.
[00:21:08] Well, that's just a way to blame price rising, which is also true. I'm not saying that it's not true, but Apple did make some smart moves where they somehow they got ahead of this and they knew this was coming, maybe just with AI or whatever. But they bought a ton of memory from Samsung before all this kind of hit the mainstream that there was going to be this Apple shortage. So they they've been able to. Yeah, but not enough because they're raising prices now. Either they're taking advantage of it or they. I think it's a little bit of both, in my opinion. All right.
[00:21:37] Well, there you go. Anyway, that's kind of the latest twist on that, which means memory cost is going up for everybody. Jay just told me he'd give me a $10,000 computer to cost me 10 grand. It'd be about a $2,000 worth of hardware. That's right. That's a true story. I'm kind of looking forward to that. So am I, because I'm going to profit quite a bit on it. Anyway, the final story before the end of the hour. Waymo recalls nearly 4,000 robo taxis, Jay.
[00:22:03] Waymo's updating its quote autonomous fleet, they call it, after they've had problems navigating highway construction projects. They say autonomous driving continues to improve but remains imperfect, Jay. Yeah, I saw a video of this. I took a Waymo. I wonder if the Waymo I was on is now recalled or what. But it's very interesting. It might be. I don't know why they can't handle construction. And I don't know why they can't just deploy them where there's not construction. I'll tell you an example.
[00:22:32] I saw a video of this at a construction site. So you had traffic lights that were working, but you had an officer in an intersection overriding that, as they do if they're there. You obey the officer instead. And this Waymo had a green arrow, and it's trying to drive out into oncoming traffic. Because the traffic, the officer is telling the opposing traffic in the parallel lane, or not parallel, the perpendicular lane to move. And this Waymo has a green arrow from the traffic light.
[00:23:00] It's just trying to drive right out into this moving traffic. And you can see the officer like cussing at it. The bottom line is it's not Waymo's fault. It's the conflicting instructions fault, right? Well, a little bit. But I mean, Waymo should have the logic in there that if there's a person directing traffic, you know, that overrides. Yeah, whatever your traffic lights up. Yeah, but that puts humans in charge, and AI won't do that, Jay. It's supposed to. It's got to have guardrails, Sam. Guardrails. No, AI is in charge, my friend. Don't you just sit down and shut up. No. Okay. Knowing about it all wrong.
[00:23:30] The battle's on, ladies and gentlemen. That is a battle. But I'm telling you, what the interesting thing about this is, is why don't they stop the traffic lights, though? Why don't they give the officer a button, and you press the button, and then the controls match the officer? I mean, if we really want tech to be applied, apply it right, and then you don't have a conflict. That would be cool, but it would be hackable, right? Which people can do already. But all of that's controlled by DOT. It's like a whole different department. Doesn't matter. Get it done. I have seen. But you can fire everybody and get this done, okay?
[00:23:57] I have seen where officers have actually gone up to the box that's on the intersection and control traffic that way instead of standing out in the intersection, which is probably safer for them, too. But I agree. I don't think everybody either, A, has the capability or B, the knowledge. That's what we need to work on, though. And so it's interesting. I mean, I realize Waymo should be more intelligent, and they've got to go back and engineer their AI and their systems. I get it. But I think it's a two-way street, pardon the pun, and I think we've got to have people realize you can't have conflicting instructions. That might confuse young drivers, too, for that matter.
[00:24:28] Certainly. Anyway, Amazon is expanding its AI push, too. Amazon unveiled new AI agents, and they want to balance autonomy with human oversight, and they want to join the race to make AI assistants, not just give you information, but actually do things. So there you have that. I'm Sam. He's Jay. Network providers, Inc. for a partner in IT, NPI, TNP, and TNP.