[00:00:18] This is indeed another incredible edition of NPI TechGuys. We keep an eye on tech so you don't have to. Thanks for being alongside for the ride. This broadcast is brought to you by NetworkProvidersInc.com. You've got a partner when it comes to IT, from IT strategy to security to a help desk, all the way through anything you need for IT, think NetworkProvidersInc.com. The show is available at NPITechGuys.com. I'm Sam and Jay Hill's with me. Welcome to the Broadcast Network.
[00:00:46] Welcome to the Broadcast, sir. Thank you, Sam. How's it going? Oh, man, it's going crazy fantastic, and I'm just grateful we're getting through the hurricane season without too many hurricanes. Shh, don't say that. Just keep it on the down low, Sam. The El Nino's out there, you know, keeping everything away. There's a couple of systems developing out there, but we'll see. You know, it's only like 50% chance anything will come this way, so we're liking it. It's a hot summer, though. I mean, the whole country, right? Whoa, boy, is it. And I don't know how you cool it down.
[00:01:16] Except for AC, but man, if AC were ever to go out, I just, I fear for the nation. It's so hot. I'll tell you what, though. I mean, here locally in Florida, our power has doubled in the last year. We went from, almost doubled. In terms of cost, you mean? Yeah, about 10 cents a kilowatt to now 17 cents a kilowatt. Woo! Yeah, so that may... What are you going to do? I don't know. I mean, my average power bills are running, you know, like $400, $600.
[00:01:42] Wow. Well, all I can tell you is you guys are going to have to just slow down. Maybe you have to just dig a hole and just lay in the ground like one of the lizards and stuff. I don't know, but I will tell you this. Utah, your home state, right? Oh, it's harder than I'll get out. Well, no, they passed this new solar system. They call it balcony solar, where you can set up these solar systems. They plug right into your wall outlet. We talked about this a little bit. Yeah.
[00:02:07] And then they feed into... They make sure that the power's on, so they shut off instantly if the main lines go down. But they feed power in, and it lets you use just a little bit of solar. You can put up 400 watts, or I think you can go all the way up to like 1,200, 1,500 watts. I think in Utah, they approved it to 1,200 watts, so you can do these balcony solos. I think this is a great idea. It's a great way for people to dabble in solar that just want to play with it. And it really goes right into your appliances. Like, it doesn't backfeed the grid or any of that kind of stuff. You just use it locally.
[00:02:35] And it's great because you can then kind of start to learn, and this is one of the things that I believe is so valuable about this. Not only is it easy to use and not dangerous, which is really important. Right. But secondarily, it lets people kind of understand that, you know what, when I play a radio, no big deal. When I turn on a light, not really a big deal. When I start turning on AC or running refrigerators or running dryers or hair dryers or heaters or... I mean, I can just keep going, right? But people start to go, whoa, wait a minute. It's enormous.
[00:03:05] And people kind of start to understand a lot more. And I think people will be willing to put, say, their Levi's or their pants out on a line instead. Or they'll say, hey, I can run a fan instead of AC. Or I can start to... Anyway, I think people will be a little bit more conscious about what's happening. Because I think all it takes is really kind of some understanding, right? Yeah. And it gives you some real world experience. And you know what it takes. I like these things. You see these in museums sometimes where there's like a hand crank or pedals or whatever. And they get kids up there.
[00:03:35] And they light up an incandescent bulb. And they let them see how hard it is to just light like a 60-watt light bulb. And they're like, oh, my gosh, man. Imagine doing that all the time. Yeah. And it reminds me of Joe Arpaio, the old sheriff of Arizona. He was well-known. He'd have these prisoners. And they could watch TV all they wanted. Yeah. The only problem is they had to pedal for the TV to stay on. So they would sit there on these exercise bikes. And if they wanted to watch TV, they'd just have to pedal. Wow. And they could watch it. He said you can watch 24-7.
[00:04:06] As long as you pedal. You guys are free to watch it as long as you pedal. I like this play. Speaking of throwbacks to earlier times, Jay, this is kind of an interesting twist on security. Yeah. So a top security expert who has ran obsolete email software for years because hackers have stopped bothering with it, he says. The new strategy, I guess it's a new strategy. They're calling it, we've heard of security by obscurity, right? This is security by antiquity. And militaries are swearing by it too. So they're just using really old software.
[00:04:36] And I guess it's gotten so old now that people, it's not even a low-hanging fruit or a ripe target. They're just ignoring it because it's so old. Like if you're running your Fortran database or something, nobody's going to mess with it. And believe it or not, sometimes people don't even have the old enough tools to deal with it. I know that sounds weird, but a lot of times the tools are ahead of it too. Yeah. If your network's running on like a net buoy or something, and it's not even TCP IP, you're probably pretty safe, I guess, nowadays. Anyway, very, very strange.
[00:05:06] Security by obscurity is what we do. So obscurity just means, hey, it's not really 100% secure. It's just hard to find. We've changed it to a different port or a different IP address or something simple, but yet it's harder to find as the obscurity idea, right? In IT, we do that as a defense-layered, in-depth kind of thing. So you might do a little bit of security through obscurity. You change, for example, everybody does this with a remote desktop. You always change the port. You don't want it to be 3389. Everybody knows that. It's the first thing they scan. So you set it to something random.
[00:05:35] That's why I put mine on 3389, you know? Yeah, because you're thinking outside the box. Well, I just want to be a hidden in plain sight kind of guy. Well, I mean, even if you're running... It's a joke, people. Don't think I'm serious. Yeah, but even if you're running that, like nowadays, you don't even expose a remote desktop to the outside LAN. It's only on your local LAN. But even when you're doing that, you still change the port just for that little bit of obscurity as a defense-and-depth strategy. There's no harm in it, and there's only value. Right. Is the idea.
[00:06:04] So anyway, this is security by... Antiquity. Antiquity, which means it's just like old school. See, if I just boot up my DOS computer, I'll have that too. That's right. And you'll be fine. You don't connect it to the internet, and you're going to be all right, Sam. Even DOS, though, on the internet, though, I don't know how many people would even be dealing with some of that kind of stuff. I used to write utilities in the DOS world. We called our program back in the day the early, early, early 90s when most people didn't even have an email address at the time.
[00:06:29] And we created this program called The Net because we didn't know what else to call it. I thought you were going to say TN. Well, yeah. We called it TN. That's right. TN. Oh, that's what TN stood for, The Net. Yeah, The Net. I thought it was tiny something. Well, and then we called it The Net, and then we called it Tiny Net for a while. And it was just this application that you could just simply... I remember this. It was a little bit like a terminal, and you could literally just type in whatever port and whatever protocol and whatever you wanted, and you could just specify all these things
[00:06:58] and then just type back and forth the servers. And I learned the email protocols by typing it by hand. You'd type in R-E-T-R space 5, and you'd retrieve your message 5 and stuff like this. And so it just goes to show that there is something to what he's talking about. And speaking of that, there's more people that are kind of going old school in Gen Z and everywhere else. You see these old school different things people are putting together. Your example was one of them, the security thing.
[00:07:28] There's a new term called digital delays, Jay. Okay. There's a rising popularity of what they're called slow messaging apps. And you get messages really slow. So they call it, in the digital age, obsessed with speed. New apps like Carrier Pidge. And what's this other one called? Roost. Roost. I guess it's for chickens. And roost.
[00:07:55] And they're basically designed to slow things down, reintroducing the charm, they say, of old-fashioned delayed messaging. Why don't they just get on IRC? So these apps allow users to send text messages mimicking the pace of carrier pigeons, snails, and other animals. And some messages are delayed significantly and or lost.
[00:08:22] This novel approach to communications has resonated with many different people, they say, Jay. Gen Zers, et cetera. And the apps offer a mix of nostalgia and novelty, provoking users to kind of have more thought about, anticipation, reminiscent of a time when every single word mattered.
[00:08:45] And so there's one lady who's like, you know, we send love letters back and forth on purpose because it's kind of fun to see what they're going to say next. And you've got to wait. You've got to learn kind of patience and anticipate. Oh, my goodness. And so there's apps that are really doing this now. Just use paper, guys. And a postage stamp. Just mail. Here we're going to go old school. Maybe get those wax seals, too. You know, just make all the charm right there. Well, and you could do a pen with an ink well and stuff. Yeah. Right? No, these guys are just saying it's kind of a cool, fun throwback.
[00:09:14] And once in a while, a message is lost. And you can preserve it on your own end. And so if it gets lost and doesn't make it, you can resend it and stuff. Nice. If you send it by snail, that's what it takes. That's correct, yeah. Yeah. Or if you're a pigeon. Telegram. You know I'm a fan of Telegram. Telegram in group messages has this thing where you can slow down messages. Like you can throttle people to say they can only send one message every 10 seconds or only one every 60 seconds or whatever. And it keeps those people that are just spamming stuff out.
[00:09:44] You can slow them down. It kind of reminds me of that. It's very strange. But I think it's kind of cool. And there is a whole movement called the slowdown movement where people want to drive their cars slower. And I've been kind of a fan of this. I know it seems crazy. That's just because you're getting old, Sam. People should only go 35 miles per hour top speed. Right. And stay off your lawn while they're at it. Dang it. Yeah. Anyway, the slower speeds, though, have to do a lot with, you know, there's a lot of people that die in vehicle accidents.
[00:10:12] And I'm not saying nobody would die if they only went 35, but it would decrease the death rates by a significant margin. Yeah. And you can have a lot less car, right? You wouldn't have to be driving around something that's two and a half tons. You could be like golf carts and things like that. There's a lot of metros here in Florida, the villages and stuff like that where it's all golf carts like all the time. You can't even drive cars in some of those places. But I think if you did that, you wouldn't have near, you wouldn't need near the airbags. You wouldn't need, I mean, cars could become affordable again.
[00:10:38] And I know it sounds crazy, but there's a lot of benefits to that kind of stuff. But everybody wants the best of both worlds, so they want to have slow and fast and they want to be fit, but they want to eat what they want. And well, let's talk about beyond fitness. We'll do it in seconds. This is Tech Watch. We keep an eye on tech because we love it. How's that? More in seconds, Tech Watch, radio and the best part, TV. We're getting Jay on camera pretty soon, folks.
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[00:12:44] So we've been talking in the last segment about old school stuff, and Jay doesn't want to do the carrier pigeon slow messaging. He likes Instagram. I mean Telegram that's Instagram. That's exactly right. At the same time. But Jay is old school, though. He won't get on camera, ladies and gentlemen. Maybe we need to have a fan club. Maybe we need to have a fan club get Jay on camera. Yeah. We'll see how that works out. He's like the on-camera chant for Jay. All right. Beyond Fitness, Jay. This one's interesting.
[00:13:12] The fierce race toward healthcare integration is in the wearable tech arena. Do you wear any wearables, Sam? Do you have an Apple Watch or anything like that or no? I don't wear any wearables like that, but I do have a diabetes monitor thing. Oh, yeah. A GCM. It's a glucose monitor. Yeah. But what's it called? Libre or something, I think is one. Libre Plus or whatever. I do wear one of those. Yeah. So I guess I kind of do, and I have it connected to my phone, and then I can keep track of my blood sugar levels. That's a wearable, for sure. Yeah.
[00:13:39] So I would say that's a wearable, but it's not like most people are thinking of, right? Well, they say it's booming. It's a $44 billion industry now. Yeah, it's expensive. Google, Samsung, alongside rising stars such as Aura and Whoop are vying for dominance, not just in fitness tracking, but in comprehensive healthcare integration. Because wearable technologies evolve from fitness aids to crucial health monitoring systems, these companies are entwining cutting-edge AI into everyday health management,
[00:14:06] sparking a revolution poised to transform healthcare and personalized medical care. So the big deal here is, I think, not just with that, but also with they're getting into legal battles over patients and private sector, who gets access to this data. You know, people are selling it. There's lucrative returns for it. And it's indicating a future where wearables might be as commonly prescribed medication in our medical toolkit.
[00:14:34] So you might get prescribed one that says, hey, you need to do this, you know, for your doctor. Yeah, and that's kind of how I have my Libre. Okay. I wouldn't really say it was prescribed, but it was more the kind of thing where it's like, do you want to prick your finger all the time, Sam? Or do you want to wear this other thing? And I'm just like, hey, I'm not going to my finger if I don't have to, right? Yeah, but I think this has been being done for a long time. I mean, I know with sleep studies and stuff, you'd get prescribed a monitor to go along with, let's say, CPAP or whatever.
[00:15:02] I did a monitor and I had to sleep with it around my waist or my kind of chest for three days and then turn in the results and then da-da-da-da-da. So yeah, I mean, I have all kinds of stuff like that. And I think it's interesting. What are those rings called that people have? I don't know. There's a lot of different names. A lot of them are, some of them are kind of on the cheaper end. Aura. Yeah. Thanks for the producer. Aura. Some of my family members wear Aura rings and they're actually incredible. They track your sleep and they track your steps and they track a lot of kind of cool
[00:15:32] data. And some people say it's not 100% accurate, but others say it doesn't matter if it's 100% accurate or not. It's close enough to kind of give me an idea. Yeah. It's giving you a way better idea than just guessing, right? Yeah. If it's off by 200 steps on a, I walked 14,000 steps today and it's off by 250, who cares? I mean, that's not the point. The point is I got my steps in, right? But not only that, if it's off, let's say it's off by 250 steps when you do 14,000. Um, it's going to be consistently off in general and you'll know, Hey, I did 50% more steps
[00:16:01] today than I did yesterday. That's going to be pretty accurate. Yeah. And when it comes to sleep, it may not track sleep perfectly, but I do know, and I've talked to people about this specifically where they're like, Hey, when it says I have a great sleep, I do feel great. When it says I don't have a good sleep, I don't feel well. So yeah, you can say that it's not as accurate as it may be factually needs to be fine. That'll improve over time probably. But the fact is I get a great gauge of, Hey, I didn't get enough sleep last night. And this app shows and proves that I'm not just thinking that it's true or, you know, the other way around.
[00:16:31] And so they even have sleep deficits, uh, that it shows. And so, Hey, I I'm a deficit of two hours of sleep. I need to get caught up. And so I'm going to sleep a little longer tomorrow. And when that number starts to feel better or go to bed earlier. Yeah. And people start to feel better, Jay. So this isn't just poppycock. This is real stuff. Yeah. I know. I myself, I wear an Apple watch and for the longest time I would charge it while I was sleeping, but I kind of wanted to get a little bit better sleep data because it does track. And so I've switched to charging it during the day, usually like around three to five in the
[00:17:00] afternoon, because I want to keep it on while I'm sleeping. Cause it actually does a pretty good job at telling you. And in my own personal experience, it lines up with it when it says it gives you a sleep score, like a zero to 100. And you know, it averages about maybe 70 or so, but you know, if I get a 50 score, you feel it. You're like, yeah, I know. And when you get like, I think the most recent one I've got the highest one I've gotten is maybe like a 91 and yeah, man, that was a great sleep. And does it ever denote when you toss and turn and stuff like that? Yeah. Oh yeah. You can break it down.
[00:17:30] It shows like when you're in REM sleep and when you're, you know, these different stages when you were awake and, uh, and it really has, I don't even, I don't really go into it that much. I mostly just look at kind of the overall score, which is broken into three categories, like, um, how much you were sleeping when you got to bed by, like according to your target goal. Yeah. How restful the sleep was or whatever. But it's a good number. I think these tools are very good. I think we can overuse them too.
[00:17:56] If we're not careful though, you know, you don't want to live your life by statistics all day long. A lot of it has to do with how you feel inside and stuff too. So I think there's some, uh, a balance here, but I do think that these tools have real value and I think what you're going to see over time, I know COVID kind of took a hit to this, uh, and some things like that. But I, I know that, you know, people are living longer and they're living better lives and more healthy lives. And so I think it's a good trend we're on. I think we need to keep it up.
[00:18:23] I think some people want shortcuts, but I think these are reality ways not to take shortcuts, but to have real information. And I think if you make data driven decisions along with how you feel, you get this blend to where I think people will do really well going forward in the future if they balance it right. Jay, I agree a hundred percent. And it's just a tool that adds to your toolbox and allows you to get a better handle on things. And, you know, can that stuff be abused? People selling data and doing stuff maybe that you don't want them to, uh, you got to be careful about that, but sometimes there's not much you can do about that too.
[00:18:53] So sure. Do what you can. And that's where you take it with a grain of salt and you, you keep the information and you do the best you can with what you have. Right. Uh, for example, I could eat perfect and I wouldn't have any diabetes problems. That'd be just perfect. Right. Wouldn't we all? Problem is, it's not real and I don't make the best choices sometimes. And sometimes I'm in situations where I can't eat is exactly what I would want to eat or should eat. And so you just do the best you can, but at least I have a gauge. That's the American mind me, Sam, you, Sam, you've got to start being a lot more careful.
[00:19:22] You've got to be careful what you eat. Uh, and without that gauge, I, I just have no kind of consistent, solid facts based reminders. Right. That's right. And that's, I think what a lot of it's about. I don't remember whether it was Charles Schwab or, or Henry Ford. Somebody said, um, you know, nothing can be managed that isn't monitored. And so you're measured. Yes. You're exactly right. You're familiar with the quote. Um, so this just measuring it, just seeing how, when you eat something, a donut or something
[00:19:49] that you shouldn't have when it goes way up and then you're like, Hey, you, not only you see how, how that impacts things in your health, but also how long it impacts it and things like that. Just getting that real world data is always helpful. It helps you manage it. All right. You have to measure it. Google is expanding what AI features to all ages, all ages in the classroom app. Whoa, this is kind of scary. Jay, I don't like this. I know. Sparking debate in educational technology use.
[00:20:16] Google has expanded the availability of its Gemini AI feature into the classroom app to include students of all ages. Previously, this was restricted to those 18 and older. This change is part of Google's strategic effort to integrate AI learning tools in educational settings, competing with other tech giants like Apple, Microsoft, and amidst rising concerns over AI's impact on student safety, privacy, and learning development. This expansion allows younger students to access AI assisted study aids, such as quizzes, flashcards
[00:20:44] directly through the new Gemini tab in their classroom app. However, the move has sparked discussion among school administrators and parents groups about the appropriate use of AI in schools, emphasizing the need for schools to have greater control over the new technology and its implementations. One of the things I will say is that I like AI and I like technology, but when they push technology on me, when I stumble across, you know, Copilot or whatever you want to say, or I stumble
[00:21:12] across Gemini, everything I do, they're trying to push Gemini on me or whatever. It starts to wear thin on me after a while. I'm just like, stop. Right. Okay. I don't like it when it's, when it's shoved down my throat or everywhere kind of in my way all the time. And I'm just telling you right now that if these companies don't kind of back off a little bit and let us take on AI as we are comfortable and as we learn, and as we find places for it in our lives, if they push too hard, it's going to backfire. People are going to go back and say, Hey man, I just want that slow app.
[00:21:40] That's like a pigeon thing that delivers my mail or my message is real slow, you know, stop. Um, because people get sick of it. It can be overused and, and when it's not reliable or when it makes stuff up or when it hallucinates or when it gives me bad answers or goes down a wrong road, it's worse than the first time. Yeah. It's worse than wrong. At first, I think it's great because the first 25 minutes I get something done. And then all of a sudden it's like, it sent me down the wrong road. And now I'm spending the next hour trying to get it back. And I'm like, man, I should have just wrote this thing myself or whatever. You know, they need to be careful about some of this, Jay.
[00:22:10] And I think that in the classrooms, I think this is really going to hit home where teachers are going, wait a minute, we're just off the, off the rails. Hold on. These kids are coming up with stuff that I'm not even ready to cover and I'm not trying to work on it. They need to learn to walk before they run. And I mean, it's going to be like that, right? Well, I think they ought to be staging this in a little bit. I mean, if you, it's one thing to say, well, we're not going to do it with anybody under 18. Why not just open it maybe to high school or something? I think little kids having access to AI is probably not the best thing. I don't think it needs to be an all or nothing.
[00:22:39] You don't think your kid that's fit five that needs an AI collegiate paper on? Not without supervision. Like, I just think if I were them, I would take a little bit more cautious approach. Now, I will say this for Gemini and Google, a little bit of kudos. When they first started adding Gemini into Google and into Gmail, it was very in the way kind of. It was like, look at me. I'm here. And they were kind of, and you got that sense of just pushing a pro version or buy this. And there's still a little bit of that, to be fair.
[00:23:07] But also, they've gone, they now have added an AI inbox, which kind of summarizes your inbox and gives you like the top four things you need to deal with and things you need to follow up. This is regular Gmail interface for personal use, which is pretty cool. Another thing that they've done is you can use Gemini to search your mailbox. So before, you just had to search terms. And you need to know what those terms are. And if you're a Gmail guru, you could add things like certain time frames, if you knew all the switches and the stuff for terms.
[00:23:34] But now you can ask questions of your inbox. Yeah, you don't have to know anything. You can just ask questions. And it can intelligently go through. And that's why they call it basically the reasoning layer, because it can kind of reason through what you're really trying to ask and then find data that relates to the reason that you asked in the first place. It becomes intelligent, if you will. And I've used this actually a couple of times recently where I really obscure things. But I knew somewhere years ago in my email that answer was it. But I didn't even know how to ask the question.
[00:24:04] Like, I didn't even know the exact terms to look for. Or, I mean, it just found it instantly while I was on a phone call. It's kind of like how everything works when it comes to finding files on your computer a little bit. It's just fine stuff. Sam's talking about the app called Everything. It adds the Mac-like spotlight to your computer. It's amazing once it indexes. It is incredible. There's no doubt about it. And so it's like that. And I think AI is wonderful. Don't get me wrong. I'm not an AI naysayer by any means.
[00:24:33] I'm just telling you that we've got to use it responsibly and wisely and let it find out how to serve us, not own us. I'm Sam Bushman. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. We keep an eye on tech so you don't have to.