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[00:00:49] NPITechGuys.com is where you go. That's NPITechGuys.com for the audio version and the video version of the show. If you're going to watch it on your TV, then we're going to have to get Jay on camera. We're working on that. It's worse than going to the dentist and pulling teeth, ladies and gentlemen. It is brutal. But nevertheless, you guys are, pardon the pun, under the weather, Jay. Yeah. Well, we did have some weather last night. It was a pretty crazy night. We had weather outages, down power lines, internet out.
[00:01:18] I mean, everything went out. Even Starlink was out for the majority of the time. We had a fire. It was crazy. It was a crazy night. But we will survive. When you say you had a fire, though, I want to be clear. Nobody hurt and no damage. You're not like gone from your house or anything crazy. No, no. We had a generator that had a cracked fuel tank because it's kind of old. And so the fuel was coming out and it caught fire. And it's right next to a house. It's actually my son's house who's a little ways down from me.
[00:01:48] And it was a pretty panic. But we got through it. And thankfully... But tell people how you got through it because I think this is kind of a reminder and a warning for everybody, Jay. It is a warning. Okay. And you know, you always hear everybody's like, hey, don't put generators too close to your house. Make sure they're way... And all that kind of stuff. Have fire extinguishers handy. And, you know, all those things. And we're like, yeah, yeah, we got all that. We know. But, you know, you do. And then... So, for example, my son, he went and grabbed his fire extinguisher out of his kitchen. And it was zero. He hadn't checked it in a while. And it was...
[00:02:18] Like, it lost charge over time. It just, you know, kaput. And so we had some others. Me and a couple other... My boys that live at home. And we ran over there. And thankfully, one fire extinguisher, one good fire extinguisher, put out this gasoline fire, right? That was being fed by gas. So I was impressed. I was really impressed. I thought it was going to take more than that. His house was very much in danger at the time. But we put it out. Just a little bit of charring. And it ruined some flooring and stuff like that. That was on a porch. Like a covered porch.
[00:02:47] But, you know, it was an open-air porch. So it's like you're thinking, hey, you know, it'd be fine to test it here and start it up and whatever. But nope. You got to be super careful with those things. And so everybody's fine. No loss of anything. But we're... But the fix, ladies and gentlemen, is charge those fire extinguishers. Yes. Just because you got one. Don't think we're all good. You got to check them and you got to make sure it's all happening. Because if you don't... So he grabbed one and his wasn't ready. And you guys had a backup one, right? Yeah. We had some there and we ran over. But one is none.
[00:03:17] And that's the other big takeaway, I think, is make sure you have more than one fire extinguisher. Just don't... You know, I've never really been impressed with the chemical ones because I always thought the CO2 ones were better. But I was really impressed. One fire extinguisher put this thing out. And it was a blaze. It was the size of several people put together, you know, and licking the ceiling. And it was like crazy. It was... All right. All right. Well, Jay doesn't have a camera, so you can't watch it real-time reality TV.
[00:03:46] That's not possible. It wasn't filmed, so... But if you're going to buy a TV, you have other concerns. You got it on film? No, no, no. I said it was not filmed, so... All right. I was going to say somebody needs to grab the camera. Somebody needs to grab the fire extinguisher. That's right. Because if you could document it for insurance, that would be good, too, you know? Yeah, that's true. That's true. But, you know... Plus, you can get some views on TikTok or something, right? Yes. Now you're talking. Everybody's got to grab their camera. You got to have one... That should be like your third fire extinguisher, somebody with a camera filming that. Yeah, because you can watch anything on this new TV, Jay. Anything you want, buddy. That's right.
[00:04:16] Well, you know, the word is out is before you buy a streaming stick or a TV, experts are warning and sounding the alarm that for years, the risk of using these generic boxes, you know, you can buy... Sometimes you can find these less than reputable sellers that are selling streaming sticks. Usually they're Amazon fire sticks that have been jailbroken. And they're like, hey, you can get every channel on here. You can get all, you know, ESPN. You can get everything on here. There's a bunch of movies unlocked. Well... Yeah, it's like slicing into your neighbor's cable TV, you know, or something.
[00:04:46] Or satellite TV back in the day. It's the equivalent, right? Exactly. Yeah, it's exactly like that. Well, they're warning that they rent the user's internet connection out to strangers. So the groundbreaking new analysis finds that these devices also routinely spoof themselves as mobile phones, clicking on ads with AI-generated websites and using all kinds of... So not only do you have what we covered in a previous show, people using your internet connection, TVs using your internet connection, but now even these streaming sticks are both
[00:05:13] doing that, but also emulating a mobile phone and, you know, spoofing these sites for traffic and where you can buy, hey, if I have a YouTube video and I want, you know, to get a bunch of clicks and a bunch of likes or whatever, I can just go buy a big mobile cell phone farm to do this. And that's what they're doing on this stuff. So as if you needed one more reason not to buy these things, that's it. Folks, buy Fire TV from the original source. Buy Roku from the original source for a legitimate seller.
[00:05:41] Buy Apple, same scenario. And frankly, I don't know of a lot of other players that are even worth talking about, Jay, right now. I really don't. Well, Google has one, too, that's pretty legit. But I will also tell you this. I have a friend who bought one of these, whatever, black market fire sticks. And within a month or less. There's a different kind of fire, people, just so you know. Yeah. One fire to another. So within a month or less, they got a notification from their ISP that was saying, hey, you've
[00:06:11] got malware on your system. There's stuff going on. You need to get rid of this. Like, it's up to you to find it, but we're going to cut you off. Like, it was like the first strike kind of warning. And it was apparently his fire stick because he's like, nothing else changed. And I said, get rid of that crap right now. Get rid of it. And he did. And then everything's been fine. So we pretty conclusively blamed it on that black market stick or whatever. But not worth it. I don't know. I think he paid 60 bucks or something or 100 bucks for it. But that's a waste of money. I don't know if you know where this comes from.
[00:06:40] But be very, very careful. Yeah. That's Elmer Fudd, Sam. You think I'm not old enough. Yeah. Let's go. All right. There you have it. I'm just saying be very, very careful, everybody. Now, this is invisible. We're not talking about the phone carrier. We're talking about invisible surveillance, Jay. How they track your every move through everyday tech. This is a big concern story, Jay. They say amid soaring technical or technological advancements,
[00:07:10] your personal devices from smartphones, fitness trackers, tracking tools. They're being tracked by private companies and law enforcement without any warrants. Yes, they are. Enabled by Bluetooth and Wi-Fi signals. The technology signal trace service can pinpoint your location with alarming precision. Yeah. There's no legal frameworks around this stuff right now.
[00:07:40] That's where I always talk about we can't let that tech get ahead of the reality. This capability not only powers advertising campaigns, but also allows for the potential collection and misuse of personal movement data, where you are, what you're doing, what you visited. And they say despite not decrypting data, it raises significant privacy concerns. And so people need to be aware.
[00:08:09] People need to take protective measures. But I don't see really how you do that, Jay. It's very hard because you turn something off on your phone and think it's off, and then you upgrade your phone, and they just turn it back on. Yeah, and it's not really on. So it's really difficult to keep an eye on this all the time, Jay. There's even been where phones are off, and they're off state, and they're still communicating and still pinging different wireless access points and Bluetooth and stuff like that, even when they're supposed to be completely off. It's just a different definition of off, my friend. Yeah, that's right. What is off? But, you know, we haven't talked much about this,
[00:08:37] but it's actually getting a lot of traction, I think, in the mainstream, just general populace of, like, this kind of stuff and flock cameras, and people are concerned about this. In fact, this might make this a little bit political, and I don't mean to, but we have an event coming up on the 11th of September. It's going to be an event in Utah at a place in Lehigh or whatever, and we're going to have a bunch of people go, and we're going to have a mock trial on surveillance, talking about this very topic in terms of from a personal point of view. And we're not really interested in the political side of it so much,
[00:09:07] but more about your rights and, you know, what you can do about it. And anyway, it's a pretty interesting event we're having about this. Is it more of a political or more of a tech kind of an event? It's more of a political event. I got you. Well, still, I'm sure that tech's going to be covered. I'm sure they're going to be talking about, for example, flock cameras. Yeah? Yeah, absolutely. They're going to talk about flock cameras. They're going to talk about all kinds of things because a lot of these companies now, I don't know if you know, but even LA got rid of the flock cameras. Yeah, I know.
[00:09:34] A lot of big companies or municipalities are doing that. Yep. But what people need to understand is they're not getting rid of cameras or license plate readers. All they're doing is switching to different companies saying, we believe this company will protect your privacy better than this other company. And so it's a little bit of a shell game. Wait a minute. Why am I not surprised? Why am I not surprised? Yeah, amen. And I'm just saying this. I'm not debating the politics of it or any party or anything like that. I'm just saying, look, folks, everyone has a right to privacy. This is a fundamental American reality.
[00:10:04] This isn't left, right. This isn't Republican, Democrat. None of that. This is, look, we cannot let the laws get stripped by tech being so far ahead the laws don't cover the details so they can do whatever they want. This is about saying we need to put, you know, blockades around this kind of technology. Can they do this? When can they do this? Why can they do this? Because they're not just scanning your license plate. They're scanning the kind of car you have. They're literally scanning how many dents are in your vehicle or this or that. They're scanning what stickers are on your car, Jay,
[00:10:33] to see how you're politically affiliated. They're backing into all kinds of data with this. And it's people, too. The idea that this is being sold as a license plate reader is very disingenuous because there are flock cameras in parks and on trails in places where nobody's driving at all. So it's more about monitoring people. Now, on the flip side, people are making the argument, well, Sam, Jay, you're carrying around this device that's tracking everything. It's reporting to Google. It's reporting to Apple.
[00:11:01] Everything you do say and whatever, or maybe not say, but everything you do everywhere you go is being... I can't help it. I know what they're going to say about flock cameras then to you. You can't help it either. Society requires it, Sam. Yeah. So my response is fine. That's great. I don't have a problem with that. Let's limit what you can gather and then what you can use it for. Let's make the laws catch up with this stuff and make sure that it's on the up and up. If there's a need for this and if it tracks crime, fine.
[00:11:29] How do we find a way to make it constitutional? Or how do we find a way to protect our rights? And how do we have our cake in to eat it, too? And it's going to take everybody coming to the table and a lot of hard work. I'm Sam Bushman. He's Jay Hill. We keep an eye on tech so you don't have to. Hey, man. Driverless cars coming up. Cybercrime is exploding. Take Sarah from Sweet Delights, whose world crumbled after having to close with not being able to bounce back.
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[00:13:25] All right, Jay, what do you want to... There's so many stories in the news, I don't even know where to start. There's just... I mean, it's a rich tech environment, my friend. It never ceases, right? Never a slow news day in tech. Yeah, I guess there's a, what, challenge for driverless vehicles and stuff? What's going on? Well, you know, you got Waymo. You got the robo-taxis that Tesla's wanting to do. Cyber taxis or cyber... Whatever they're called, yeah. Something, yeah. It's like a play on there.
[00:13:54] But Waymo says that they're facing growing competition. Robo-taxis are heating up. Autonomous driver competition is intensifying. So you got Uber, Waymo, and other companies trying to get into the robo-taxi service. You're even getting certain municipalities here in Florida have passed, in conjunction with the FAA, where you can have these almost like giant drones that you get into. So robo-taxis that are air taxis.
[00:14:23] So I don't know that any are operating yet. Do you trust one of them? I would say it's about the same as aviation. I don't know. There's not enough history to say that. In one hand, it's pretty good. I'm just asking if you're going to get in one. I'm not going to have the opportunity anytime soon, I don't think. All right. Well, I might create it just to see if you'll do it or not. But anyway, I'm just saying. Anyway, it's kind of weird, though. I probably would. I probably would. You got these new cars. I can't remember what they're called right now.
[00:14:53] But they are supposed to be different. Instead of like the Waymos are traditional vehicles. Like you see them and they've got a steering wheel. There's just nobody at the wheel, right? Which is disconcerting in and of itself, in my opinion. But that's just me. But these new cars, they're boxes and they're Jeff Bezos vehicles. I can't remember what they're called. Yeah. I know what you're talking about. They don't even have steering wheels or anything else. They're just like a box car. Yeah. And not only that, but the passengers face each other. So on one side of the car, you're facing toward the rear. And the other side of the car, you're facing toward the front.
[00:15:23] And it's just like a little shuttle bus with no driver. I think they ought to make them side by side instead of rear and front facing. Yeah. It's probably easier to pack people in that way. I see. All right. Well, anyway. So they got these new vehicles and they've been given the ability to try up to, I think, 5,000 cars now or something like that. And so they're coming on. And there's also international, or I should say national, efforts to standardize what these autonomous vehicles have to know and do to be certified to be on the roads.
[00:15:52] And this stuff is coming faster than we expected, Jay, in many ways. Yeah. I think what they ought to work on more than anything is some sort of open source communication, intercar communication that almost like a wireless network where cars can announce where they're going, how fast they're traveling, that kind of thing, and communicate with the other cars on the road. Open source, Jay? Open source, yeah. So nobody's owning it and licensing it and making a bunch of bucks off of it. That can't happen. But also so any other car company can use it.
[00:16:17] But if you had enough adoption of this, you could even do away with traffic lights, for example, because cars could just be cruising along and adjusting speed and interleaving as they go through an intersection. There you go. I think it's a good idea, but I don't think that they're going to do an open source plan anytime soon. They'll have Apple create a cord, and then you'll have the Android people create a cord, and then everybody will buy cords, and then they'll battle over cords, and then some later down the road, who knows when the laws will catch up. This is what I'm talking about.
[00:16:47] The laws need to keep up with tech. But anyway, the laws will catch up really later and then force a cord, and then Sam Bushman has to buy a new phone, new cord, throw away all of his old cords, because that's how it goes, right? That's right. But you might have something like Elon Musk, for example. He'd come out with a superior charging standard and then just release the whole thing so that anybody can use it. Here's the spec. And that's what he's done, right? Yeah, that's what he's done with the Tesla charger, and a lot of people are moving to it. And they should. In my opinion, if it's the best spec out there that we have and everything else, and it's
[00:17:17] open where everybody can embrace it, I think it's a great idea. And I think Apple should have done that in the beginning. Anyway, I think it's a good idea, Jay. I just don't know if these companies will cooperate. They seem to believe that their competitive edge is their secrecy. Yeah. Just ask Coke. The Sony standard, right? And then it'll be better, but then it'll be closed source. Yeah. It's kind of like, I don't know if you know, and I knew this about the Coke recipe, Jay, for a long time, that it's a secret recipe, right? Yeah. Did you know the Dr. Pepper was a secret recipe, too? No.
[00:17:46] Yeah, Dr. Pepper, man. 23 ingredients. Nobody can match it. Nobody can tell exactly what's in it. Are you a Coke or a Dr. Pepper guy, Sam? Probably neither, but I like them both. I like them both. I used to like Mountain Dew a lot, and then I had to quit drinking soda pop, and now I drink, really, for the most part, I don't drink a ton of pop. I drink, what are they called? Zevias? I don't know. Roy's or something? I drink, it's a, I drink Monsters on occasion. You know, Zach wants to make sure you know I drink energy drinks sometimes.
[00:18:16] He's just got to put that on there for sure. No, I drink Zevia a lot. I drink Coke, or I'm sorry, Pepsi Zero sometimes. I drink Dr. Pepper Zero sometimes. Yeah. I like Pepsi Zero better than Coke Zero. Really? Anyway, we're digressing, except the reason I'm bringing it up, though, is that, you know, sometimes you've got these hidden recipes, and these companies believe that's their leverage, and it might be, but at the end of the day, I think there's more to gain from a broader open source spec.
[00:18:43] There's certain things that you can make unique to your company, then there's certain things that ought not be. Okay? And this is what I mean, like a cable. Hey, your phone's your unique thing. It's the big device. The cable's just a, come on now, the cable isn't your gig. It's just a way to rip us all off. You really want the most adoption of that anyway, because you want when somebody's going to move to your platform or your phone, they're like, hey, I've already got everything. This works with my computer.
[00:19:06] This works with my, you know, whatever, and it's already connected, and I don't have to buy a bunch of new stuff like you do sometimes when you move into, like, the Apple ecosystem or whatever. Yeah, and now I even have apples that are not even compatible with their own apples. And so, if me and Zach travel together, see, we have to have different cords now. I found an iPad, an original iPad that my son has, and it uses the 30-pin connector, and I'm like, I don't even have one of these to charge. It doesn't use the magnetic connector, Jay? Come on. No, no, no.
[00:19:34] This is an old, the original iPad 1 used the 30-pin, like, iPod connector. It's like a SCSI. Yeah, exactly. Probably is, actually. All right, very interesting indeed, ladies and gentlemen. We just thought that was kind of a fun side trip. Sorry about that. But I guess now we've got people doing drones. I thought that Jeff Bezos was going to have Amazon be the drone delivery people, and he talked about it years ago and had a few misfires and kind of been on hold. But now somebody else might be beating him to the punch, Jay.
[00:20:02] Well, speaking of drones and the FAA-approving, greenlighting, revolutionary designs in drones in taxis, but DoorDash is getting granted FAA certification to operate its own drone delivery service. This is going to make it a significant advancement from traditional road-based delivery methods. The new network, which employs drones built in the U.S., predominantly with American components, aims to enhance delivery speed and efficiency by bypassing road traffic.
[00:20:31] Although initially limited by regulatory and community concerns, DoorDash plans to roll this out in successful pilot programs, and it's a strategic shift. Not only revolutionizes how their goods are delivered, but also underlines DoorDash's commitment to innovative consumer-centric solutions. So you'll be able to order a cheeseburger, Sam, and have it dropped in your backyard. Yeah. Do you think that these guys are going to get it done where Jeff wasn't able to? I'm sorry, where? Jeff talked about it. Everybody's talking about it. Walmart's trying that. Yeah.
[00:21:01] Lots of people are doing it. Do you think these guys are going to beat everybody to it? Because I'm not against DoorDash. I'm just saying, to me, DoorDash seems like a niche business compared to, say, Walmart or Amazon or some of these other players, right? I'll tell you where I think DoorDash has a disadvantage compared to these other people. You have Amazon. You've got a big warehouse somewhere. You can send out your drones. You've got Walmart. Same thing. You can have a warehouse. You can even have it at your local place. You can send out your drones.
[00:21:25] DoorDash, you've got to go pick up from any number of restaurants or wherever and then deliver that somewhere else. That's going to be kind of tough. Yeah, so it's not just from warehouse, consistent spot A to wherever. Yeah. It's inconsistent spots on both ends. I think that doubles the logistics issues, trying to pick it up from random places and deliver it. It does, but if they're smaller and more nimble and hungry compared to these other big behemoths, they're like, I'm waiting for somebody to develop this so I can buy them out and have the tech.
[00:21:55] I also – I see a lot of restaurants that they don't have the most positive impression of DoorDash and Grubhub and all these places. They put up with it because they're like, hey, we're losing sales if we don't do it, but they don't like it. Like, people come in – Yeah, because it just makes things as expensive as all get out. If I buy something from DoorDash, I'm like, whoa, that was an expensive, crazy thing. Yeah, but they're always getting scammed.
[00:22:19] Like, people are getting their food and it's cold and they're giving negative reviews or the DoorDasher takes the food and doesn't actually deliver it or whatever. And they have to remake it. You're not a fan of the Dash, huh, Jay? Well, I'm not a fan of it. I think it's a great idea. I use it when I'm in metros and stuff sometimes, but I never use it, like, locally when I'm at home. I don't use it ever. Hate it. Don't want it. Don't use it. I don't want some middleman that can potentially touch my food. I'm off. I'm out. You have – No. No. No. You have Kid Dash, though, Sam. You could just send out one of your kids and just go grab food. I do have Kid Dash. That's true.
[00:22:48] Adult Kid Dash because, see, in a couple of weeks, I won't even have a single kid that's a minor anymore, Jay. Eight of them, they're all going to be adults. Wow. That's a big milestone. So it's kind of crazy. All right, what do we got next? Well, next up, we've got data centers in space are colliding with the unforgiving laws of physics. We talked about this a little bit one time. Yeah. The problem is heat. Heat has nowhere to go. Technology – and you think that, well, space is cold. It should be easy. But space is also a vacuum. It's one of the best insulators out there.
[00:23:17] In other words, nothing transfers, right? Yeah. So you've got three ways to transfer heat, really, is convection, conduction, and radiation. And convection, which is air moving across something, picking up the heat, can't do that in space. Conduction, which is touching, something touching it and transferring the heat into that other item, can't do that either because there's nothing out there. All you have is radiation. So all you can do with all your excess heat is literally put it into these panels and with infrared try to glow it out into the vacuum of space.
[00:23:44] And that's very tough to do. It's inefficient. And these guys are running into the problems of they're going to require giant radiators. These are the big white panels. You'd have to build a serious ecosystem that'd have to have a never-ending supply of those, right? Yeah. If you look at the ISS, the International Space Station, and you see these giant solar arrays, but then you see these giant white panels. They look like solar cells, but they're just these giant arrays of white panels. Those are where they're trying to get rid of heat.
[00:24:15] They're basically floodlights. If you look at them in the infrared spectrum, they're trying to glow away that heat. And so these ideas of data centers in space are running into this problem. We're out of time this episode, Jerry. Are you kidding me? No, sir. But we'll be back for another one. Time flies when you're having fun, everybody. Thanks for being alongside for the ride. Network providers, Inc.com when you want an IT partner. NPITechguys.com for the show. Thanks so much. And make it a great tech day, will you?
[00:24:44] We'll see you next time.