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[00:00:45] We, you know, bring things to the table that really make sense for you, that help you in your life, that help you keep up on tech without being too technical in the whole bit. Welcome to the show. I'm Sam Bushman. Jay Harrison's with me. Welcome, sir. Hey, Sam. How's it going? Going fantastic, sir. There's too much on my plate. But other than that, doing wonderful, sir. Tech never stops. Yeah, and especially it doesn't stop when you realize that NPITechGuys.com is the website for the show. Video, audio, and more. We're on YouTube.
[00:01:13] YouTube, Rumble, X. We're everywhere. Spread the word. But we're also available on the NPITechGuys.com website. And then NetworkProvidersInc.com is the company that underwrites this show. We're grateful for them and their support, their sponsorship. And most importantly, if you need a partner in IT, whether it's strategic or somebody day-to-day doing the work, they are your embedded tech team. NetworkProvidersInc.com. So, Jay, Samsung is speaking out. Did you see this?
[00:01:40] I have seen a little bit of this. I mean, everybody knows about this, right? Everybody knows AI is making memory more expensive, more elusive to get a hold of. Computer prices are going up. But Samsung says they're warning that the escalating RAM shortage is going to even get worse in 2027. You know, I've been telling people recently that, you know, people, yes, some people have gotten out of chips and more people will get into it and we should actually see it level out and get better.
[00:02:08] But Samsung says, no, this is going to get worse and you need to brace for it. They announced that the current RAM shortage is going to worsen significantly. They say exacerbating supply and demand imbalances for DRAM and SSD memory. The forecast comes in light of Samsung's semiconductor profits skyrocketing. $36.5 billion in the first quarter of 2026, marking a 49-fold increase. I don't see why they wouldn't be ramping up production. Do you?
[00:02:37] I don't know, except the only thing I can guess is this. Here's kind of the question. Once the AI gets all the memory they need and once society has, you know, is it going to be a continued ramp up we need RAM forever? Or is it going to be a huge massive we need RAM all right now? But once you satisfy our big boom push, then you'll need more RAM, but not near what you needed before. So, hey, we're going to increase our output, but we're not going to increase to solve the demand quickly.
[00:03:04] It's going to be more of a, I don't know what you want to say, kind of a rollout idea rather than we're going to quadruple or 10-tuple or whatever our manufacturing only to have to bring it back to 5-tuple again and whatever. And I think it's those kind of discussions, Jay. I used to think that it was going to level out and you just had kind of a push and it was kind of a tulip thing where, you know, you have a boom and then there'll be a bust. But I don't know. I also can see a side where it just snowballs. And the more you get, the more you have.
[00:03:33] It's like saying, hey, when everybody has enough money, we'll just stop printing it. Hey, Jay, all we need is 64K, buddy. Yeah, right. I mean, doesn't that really tell the whole story? That day came and went, right? I'm going to say that tells the whole story, though. It's like, you know what? We don't know the future. What they need to do is realize that we have to take time to ramp up these online data centers. And we need to take time to work through the legal and the, you know, concerns that communities have in building them.
[00:04:00] We need to kind of get the dollars and cents together and say, hey, how do we make AI pay? You know, when does it pay for itself versus when are we just getting crazy? So we need to basically stop the bubble craze stuff. Well, the speculative stuff and get down to reality and say, hey, how do we put together a 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 year plan for AI rollout that makes sustainable sense? And I mean, environmentally, you know, with water and heat and everything else. I also mean with technology. And when you build a data center today, if you're not very careful,
[00:04:29] and in five years because of AI, we know a way to do it 10 times cheaper. Yeah. Maybe we should have been a little more patient, right? And that's stuff people need to honestly discuss, not only in the boardrooms of corporations, but I mean in the halls of Congress and government, but also on the people level. How much AI do you need in your company today, this very second, versus how much should you just kind of hold on a little bit and say, yeah, I'm going to embrace it and I'm going to play with it. And I'm going to actually, you know, when I see the needle can be moved in certain ways,
[00:04:56] I'm going to embrace that, but I'm not going to do so psychotically. I'm not going to lay off all my workforce and hope AI saves me. I'm not going to, you know, rely on memory that I can't get. I'm not going to. And how do we kind of create an intelligent, you know, usually in the world of software, we call them dev maps, right, Jay? Yeah. That's exactly right. It's like, hey, I can't take on and build you every feature and everything you want instantly. And so I'm going to put together a roadmap for, you know what, for 2026, here's what we're going to be doing in quarter one, quarter, so on. And you do kind of the same thing, in my opinion,
[00:05:24] we need a nationwide AI roadmap that, that everybody kind of gets aboard for and says, I don't care how advanced you are, Google, or, you know, whatever, anthropic or whoever you are, we need to realize that we may not be able to keep up with you. Society, laws, rules, data centers, memory. And we're going to basically kind of put together a plan that makes sense for this. Companies can ramp up and build the memory we need. But this morning is serious.
[00:05:52] And the question becomes, they might eventually have such AI centers. AI centers have all the memory and I can't. So AI is incredible, but I don't have a computer to, you know, connect to it and use it because I don't have any memory. Yeah. But is that where we're going to get to if we're not careful? Well, and why concentrate so much on AI data centers? Why not balance that with domestic chip making? I mean, why don't we roll out jobs for people and create some semiconductor plants here stateside? And I mean, if you're seeing a 49-fold increase in profits,
[00:06:20] there's got to be money there to build chip facilities, right? Or are we just so behind that we can't make it happen here? I don't know. Anyway, it's very interesting, but the warning is scary, in my opinion, a little bit. But they announced that the current RAM shortage will worsen significantly in 2027. And they say it'll just continue this forecast. Basically, it says, hey, semiconductor profits are skyrocketing. Everything's crazy. My question, too, is what if the Chinese take over Taiwan?
[00:06:50] I mean, I know that sounds insane and I don't want that kind of stuff, but I'm just saying we've seen crazier things. Well, the situation literally signals. They could put an embargo on it. A challenging landscape for all of us, right? Yeah, they could put an embargo on chips or they could raise tariffs or who knows what. Again, another reason why I think we should have more domestic U.S.-produced semiconductors. Anyway, I wanted to kind of give that warning so people understand, though, computers are going to become more expensive. Now, hopefully they can find ways to decrease costs in other areas that'll offset some of this.
[00:07:19] And hopefully they can find a way to create memory faster and cheaper and better, too. I mean, there's all that stuff on the table. And the good part about AI is hopefully it can, you know, God's been very kind to us about that. We think about food and the population. And a lot of people are like, oh, we can't have more kids because we don't have food. But every time, you know, God, you know, there's plenty of room and enough to spare in the Bible. That's what we hear. And I bring this up just because every time we think there's not going to be enough food, we have some kind of farming breakthrough or whatever you want to call it
[00:07:49] that lets us create more crops and things. And so anyway, I just hope the same thing happens in AI. The question is, we got to use AI wisely, which brings up an interesting tidbit. I did a talk or a video last night for a company or a group. And my question was, is technology good or evil? Is it righteous or is it evil, Jay? And the answer is I came back with after my monologue on this thing is it's not good or evil. It just exists. Okay.
[00:08:18] Your car, for example, it just exists. It could be used to get you places to have a great family reunion. It can also be used to mow a bunch of people down. The car's not bad or anything else. And so here's the, you know, summation of what I talked about. It was a good long 27-minute video. If people want to go hunt for it, go to look for Liberty United and you can see the video. But I bring this up because here's what my kind of summary was. Technology magnifies human intent, Jay.
[00:08:43] And in the hands of good people guided by conscience, technology is an absolute blessing. In the hands of corrupt, power greedy, tyrannical type folks, those who are for manipulation or tyranny or control, technology becomes very dangerous indeed. And then here's my summation. The future will not be decided by technology alone, but by the moral character of the people who build, control, and use it.
[00:09:13] And I think that's really important to understand. Yeah. Anyway, I don't mean to digress on that, but I do think it's important. We need to think about these things. And I'm afraid that the technology is getting way ahead of our, what word do you want to say, our understanding of it or our willingness to deal with it? I don't know if it's our, it definitely is our understanding. I mean, people look at LLMs and AI and they say, this is just a black box. We don't really 100% understand how it works. It just does.
[00:09:42] So yeah, it is getting beyond our ability to understand coding. AI is now able to code and to proof code and find exploits and stuff that we just can't hardly understand or get our arms around or see because it's too complex. So yeah. Yeah. It has the ability to really to look across massive amounts of data that the human brain just can't look at. I mean, computers are good at certain things and we should take advantage of that. Don't get me wrong.
[00:10:05] But we need to be very careful when we do that to make sure that we're doing it in a way that's, that respects dignity and most importantly does not rob us of our conscience. Remember, God created us and we created technology. The creation can never be greater than the creator. And so we got to really kind of contemplate that and understand that and say, how are we want to, how do we want to deal with that? Right. Right. Anyway, very strange topics.
[00:10:34] They're good topics, but in some ways they're scary topics for everybody, Jay. It can be. Yeah. All right. When we come back later, we got a whole lot more to talk about. Everything is AI, by the way. But I want to talk about chat, DBT and your bank accounts really quick because we mentioned it on the last episode. But man, I got to, I got to kind of dig in a little bit more. We'll do it in seconds. You're listening to, you're watching TechWatch. We keep an eye on tech so you don't have to.
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[00:12:26] Together, we can uphold our Constitution and ensure liberty and justice for all. Your community needs you now more than ever. All right, back with you live, ladies and gentlemen, Sam Bushman, Jay Harrison, talking tech. So, what do they want to, I guess AI now wants to, or chat GPT wants to control my bank account, Jay? Well, I don't think it says control it.
[00:12:56] They don't say it that way, but that's what it appears like. What you do is you link it so that it can give you insights on your bank account. I don't think it really can take any action or spend or transfer funds. Not yet. You can now connect, if you use these financial institutions, Plaid, I think it's how you say it, Plaid, Plaid? I think it's Plaid, is something that connects a lot of bank accounts.
[00:13:24] So, bunches of people, you know, Chase, First Federal, you got all these different, I'm sure Zion's in there, but there's tons of different banks. And you can connect your bank account with that, and then you can ask questions on, I don't know, spending and things like that. To me, it's kind of weird, though, because I wonder, I mean, I guess a business account probably has more transactions, but a lot of personal accounts, you don't have that kind of visibility into a bank account unless maybe your card is. It has a lot of transactions, people.
[00:13:51] Well, I actually have very few transactions in my bank account because a lot of them will be on a card, right? And then you'll just see one transaction to a card. So, I don't know how valuable that would be for the average consumer. Yeah, I don't know how valuable it will be. I do know, though, that AI is trying to make a play in every aspect of your life. And it's not really that they're, I mean, there are people who want to control you with AI. I agree. But in many cases, it isn't that. It's just like, hey, it is the buzzword today. Yeah. How do we build it into everything and see what sticks and what doesn't?
[00:14:18] A lot of things are going to, you know, grow legs, and a lot of things are not going to go anywhere. And we, the people, are going to decide a lot of that with our choices. I'm not connecting it to my bank account, for example. I'm just not doing that. No, and I think you're right. I think people are just taking AI and smearing it all over everything and seeing what sticks and what works and what's beneficial. And a lot of things aren't. I mean, you'll see it in refrigerators and toasters and stuff, and everybody will be like, okay, yeah, that was kind of dumb.
[00:14:41] But, you know, we saw that with the smart home revolution stuff, too, where everybody wanted everything to be connected to your Internet. And then they kind of, I think, I think now have realized that that may not be, have worth, you know, been worth the trouble. Right. What do we do from here, Jay? We be reasonable about it. And we, I could see use cases where you might want this. You don't panic, Jay? You don't freak? No, I don't panic. Okay. No. You just don't hook it up.
[00:15:11] That's what you need to understand, folks. Look, all this stuff's coming down the pike, but you can personally just say, I'm not going to work on that. I'm going to go back to a flip phone. Well, if you're going to, I'm not going to hook this to my bank account. Remember, these decisions are still yours at this point. Right. That's true. So just slow it down in your own world. And that's what I'm doing. I'm embracing AI 100%. But I'm also slowing down in areas that I feel like need to be mature first in areas that I think are fine or that improve my life or that makes it.
[00:15:36] So I'm selectively employing and taking advantage of all of it that I can and rejecting the parts that I'm just not ready to take on yet. And I'll see how it checks out. I can see the use case for this. If you're either an individual that uses a bank debit card and you have a lot of transactions or maybe you're a business and you write a lot of checks and you want insights or help with accounting and things like that, I could see where this would be helpful. But for a lot of people, consumers, I think that, I don't know.
[00:16:02] And plus there is also the idea of just more hooks into your life of AI that you may not want. I mean, I already think Chet GPD knows too much about me anyway. You think it knows too much about you already? Well, yeah. Just from, you know, once you start using it as a search engine, anything that is your search engine, right, is going to know too much about you. You know, it's going to know where you live. In some ways, yes, Jay. In some ways, no. Where you work. What it knows now is a lot.
[00:16:30] But what it's going to know in 10 years is a lot more. Yeah. Pretty soon it's going to know about your DNA and your biometrics and your heartbeat. And I mean, how close do we let technology get to our personal lives? Do we let it watch us on every street corner? Oh, done. Do we let it watch us at every mall and every public? Done. Done. Do we let it monitor us in the house and listen to us while we're talking? Done. Do we? And so what I'm saying is it's, I'm not disagreeing with you, but I'm saying it's a discussion that's interesting. How far will that get? And I think in many ways we've gone too far.
[00:17:01] Yeah, but we haven't seen the end of it. Not even close. I agree. And that's kind of my point with the whole thing is that it's a very serious thing to think about. And part of it's going to be decided by society and part of it's going to be decided by us. Right? Yep. By we the people. All right. Microsoft is in the news, Jay. Yeah. They want to drop SMS verification as part of their enhanced security pass keys. So they want to move to pass keys.
[00:17:30] They want to phase out SMS. That's getting a text message on your cell phone. They're steering users toward adopting pass keys as a more secure authentication method. I actually see with Microsoft them trying to, not just steer, them forcing people to use Microsoft's authenticator. So even if you use a third-party authenticator, say you use Chrome or Google's version or you use the one in Bitwarden or whatever, in some instances you can't even use that. You have to install Microsoft's authenticator app on your phone and use that one, which I think is kind of unfair.
[00:17:59] And this article in particular is saying that they're pushing people to pass keys, which are good. They're very convenient. But if you only have your pass keys, let's say you're somebody, the average kind of person who, I would say average young person, who may only use a cell phone. They don't use a laptop or desktop or anything else. Yeah, it's weird how that generational change happens, too. When you're younger, you know, you don't really use, especially desktops, for example. And I love desktops because they're powerhouses and I can put them in my office and I can rock and roll with super power.
[00:18:27] But the average guy is like, all I've got is a cell phone now. Yeah, I know. It's crazy. What are you talking about? I've got a computer at work because they need me to have one. But when I'm off work, what do I need that for? But pass keys, if you don't back them up into something like Bitwarden or Password Manager of some sort, pass keys are tied to that device. So if you lose that cell phone and all your pass keys were on it, you could be very, very poorly hosed. You know, it'd be not very good. But Microsoft aims, again, they're aiming to fortify their security.
[00:18:55] They say users are urged to transition to pass keys promptly because the timeline for the complete discontinuation of SMS remains vague. So they're not giving an exact answer. They're just saying you better do it soon. And what do you think? Do you think pass keys are a lot more secure than, you know, SMS? I think they are more secure than SMS, yes, because people can do SMS hijacking.
[00:19:20] And that's the biggest problem with SMS is if you can convince a carrier to switch your number or port your number or do whatever, even if you're a scamster, you can just rape somebody's life. I mean, digitally, you can just take over anything that is too bad. Yeah, but the same thing is true. If you put all your pass keys in a password manager and somehow they breach either one, get in some weird way. I know it's encrypted and they say you can't. But whether they get your password or they find some back door or something else, you're still just as vulnerable, right? You're right.
[00:19:47] The difference is, though, it's so much easier to convince somebody to port a number than it is to, for example, break into my last pass or whatever. Yeah, but if your number's ported, you're going to know pretty quick. If your number's ported and your phone's not ringing and you can't call anybody or text anybody, you're going to know pretty quickly. If I find a back door to your password manager and you don't know that, right? Yeah. You might not know it for six months. It's true. It could happen.
[00:20:17] And if you're stealthy about it, you would want to actually do that. You'd want to sneak around and get your hooks into everything and get everything in your mind. Yeah, I don't want to let you know that I've breached you. I want to just chill and watch and do things. That's what hackers do when they get on corporate lands. You know, they sneak around, they try to exfiltrate all the data they can before they let loose the, you know, let people know that they know about it and that they're in. All right. Give people this update on this Windows 11 thing really quick.
[00:20:42] Okay, so this is a little bit confusing, but Windows 11 has an update bug that has halted security patches. And they say that immediate action is required since February. A significant bug following the January preview update has impeded all Windows 11 updates, exposing users to severe security risk in a detailed report from PC World. This glitch affects the update mechanism, leaving systems vulnerable and potentially impacting secure boot functionality due to expiring certificates.
[00:21:09] Microsoft advises users to execute a known issue rollback in KIR to circumvent this issue temporarily and restore update capabilities. The urgent fix is crucial for maintaining system integrity and security, and especially with impeding certificate expiration. So what we may see is people's computers stop booting if they are affected by this. And I don't even know. You know, I just read the entire article. I don't even know how you know if you're affected or not, really. You don't.
[00:21:39] They don't want you to know. They just want you to take action, Jay. Yes, but there's no specific action other than rollback to something. That you roll back or you upgrade. This is a problem, though. Microsoft has done something where they've inadvertently broken the updater so they can't send out an update to fix the problem. And now they're expecting that consumers and, you know, I could see corporate IT may get this fixed, but people aren't going to be able to get this fixed. This is going to cause problems.
[00:22:08] And I don't know. We'll see. What are they going to do about it? Why don't they have more specifics like you need to use this update or you need to uninstall this update by this date before this happens? Like that's very vague, really. I know what you're saying. I kind of look at it slightly differently. And I mean, I would phrase it this way. You know what?
[00:22:33] Microsoft, you've decided that you want to be responsible for the maintaining of the security of my machine by providing updates and patches and fixes and this and that. And you really want to force them on me. Right? Yep. I don't really have a choice not to participate, in other words. I mean, I can, but I got to disconnect myself with the Internet and shut all these things down. I mean, really, you're forced in. Yeah. And if you're going to take control of that, then you need to own it honorably.
[00:22:56] And so you don't tell me, hey, man, we got this massive problem and you're in harm's way and take action and you don't tell me what the action is. No, no, no. You need to take action. You need to provide an immediate fix that can solve this or find a way to roll me back safely or something to where I don't need to really worry about it. But what you're doing is saying we want to control it when it's good, when we like to. But when there's any problems, we want to just dump it on you. Yeah, which is not fair. And that's the problem I have. It's not good and it's not fair.
[00:23:24] And if this is really as big a problem as it seems like it is, they should be spending some money on PR and they should have some kind of maybe a website like fixwindows11.com where you can easily go there, download the patch, get it done. But they've got to get some onus on fixing people's stuff before it breaks permanently. And they can't boot their computer because their secure boot certificate has expired and their computer will not boot anymore.
[00:23:53] Anyway, I don't even know how to respond to this, Jay, because it really angers me. This makes me very thankful. It's bad when you're a tech guy like me and you can actually kind of work through it and figure out something and do whatever. What about the average person or small company that says, I don't really have an IT staff on board or whatever. I don't even know what to do with this thing. And what they're doing by this pushing this to the consumer is not only are they not taking responsibility for what they kind of have forced that they should or whatever. What they broke, but also what they've promised to maintain kind of as part of the deal.
[00:24:23] And then the last point that I would say is this. And now they're not only leaving people vulnerable with not knowing what to do, but they're also leaving the world a very dangerous place. I'm happy I'm on Windows 10. Well, you can be happy on that. They'll shut you down and give you a grace period and everything else. Well, I'm on the extended service update, so we'll see. You're on the special privilege update. All right. All right. Thanks for being alongside with the ride. This is TechWatchRadio, npitechguys.com. Thanks for watching. Make it a great day.