Techstrong Gang – August 22, 2024

Happy Thursday, everyone. You know, it's nine 30. How secure are your software supply chains?

Did the Deepfake detectives are out? Can we, is there such a thing? Will we ever get a handle on it?

And what is, what about rights to repair? We're gonna discuss all that and more on Techron Gang. Hi everyone, it's Alan Shival here for Textron Gang.

Welcome to our Thursday show. We've got an amazing show. We've got some great stuff to talk about, and we've got some great people to, to do the talking.

Let me introduce you to our gang members today. Uh, first of all, again, joining us from, uh, out in the valley where he, he sits top with his finger on the pulse of big tech, little tech, medium, medium tech, and all the text in between. It's our roving editor extraordinaire, John Swartz.

Hey, John. Welcome. Hey.

Hi, Alan. How's it? Good going.

Feel like I Be with you. Introducing you at a convention or something, you know? Oh, I know, I know.

The pulse in Silicon Valley, by the way, is faint right now. It's very early. Yes, it is.

It is A little early out there as we record this. Um, also joining us, actually, I, Chris, you're, you're, uh, are you still up in Canada? I'm still in the north, yeah.

It's still hot in Florida, so it's good to see you. And it's nice not to be there. It is hot though.

I, I was recently in Abilene, Texas to visit my younger son and came home here to Florida and felt that cool breeze of only 92 and, uh, realized it's all relative. Anyway, Chris, welcome. It's good.

I haven't been on a gang with you in weeks and it's great to see you. You too. Good stuff.

And now making her debut on Textron Gang. It's a friend of mine, uh, her name is Hope Lynch. If you've watched any of our Textron TV video series or interviews over the years, you've probably gotten a fair dose of hope.

But hope for those people who don't know you, why don't you, you know, it's your first gang, uh, episode here. Why don't you give 'em a little, little background on you? Yes.

So I have been working in technology for, for many years, and as I tell people, if there is a role in tech, uh, I have probably done it at some point. I've touched it. I've led, um, platform engineering teams, engineering teams.

I have done, uh, technology strategy, partner work, all sorts of things. But, uh, one of my passions, platform engineering for whatever reason, uh, you know, that sticks in my head and just make sense. But most recently at CloudBees, formerly, uh, Cisco, red Hat, uh, other organizations, Absolutely.

Just an all around this, this, there's a woman who knows tech and, and it's great to have you on here, hope and Thank you. I hope That, you know, this will be the first of many, uh, gang appearances here on with us. Yeah.

So that's our remote gang members today here in our Boca Ratone headquarters. We're very lucky to be joined by the lady in red looking, uh, very festive. She's our roving editor and analyst for Echo Insights Sustainable It and Green Tech Bar Schneider.

Hey Bar. Welcome. Thanks, Helen.

Thanks for being here. And then, no, Barney's left my extreme left. I don't mean anything by that, but, uh, Eileen left.

Okay. I, you know, you got this thing about big crowds, but, um, it's our chief content officer, Mike Ard. Mike, welcome.

Always Happy to be here. Alrighty. So we're gonna start off today.

Mike, you want to kick us off? Yeah, there's a lot going on in the land of, uh, software and securities. CSA has come up with a vulnerability on remote code execution involving Jenkins, which is great to have hope here to discuss.

Um, there's an extortion group that's been using some very advanced DevSecOps techniques to compromise AWS environments. And then finally, Palo Alto Networks has a report that says we are updating and adding services at a rate that is just not possible for cybersecurity teams to keep pace with. So there's just a whole lot going on here.

Hope. Alan and I have been arguing about this for a while now, and, um, I'm on the point of view that says that this is a full bone crisis and Alan is kind of invoking full tear and saying it is the best of all possible worlds and, you know, where things could be a lot worse. What's your assessment of the overall state of software supply chain security right now?

I, I, I think I'm gonna have to lean into to Alan's perspective. And the reason for that is, um, you know, like they say, never let a good crisis go to waste, right? Only when there is something that, uh, exposes the vulnerabilities, brings the disruption, uh, can you figure out how to make your systems better now?

And in, in the best of all cases, you figure that out on your own. You have someone internally that is causing that disruption. But anyone who has read, you know, what's been happening over the past few years as far as what's going on with SOM, you mentioned, uh, the, the Jenkins, uh, vulnerability, everybody remembers SolarWinds log per j um, there's the Capital One data breach.

All of these misconfigurations, uh, in, in the cloud are what is causing so many of these issues, right. And cloud providers continue to change, vulnerabilities continue to change, but overall, I think it makes it better for all of us because the, the systems just become better over time. I, I, thank you hope, Chris.

You know what? I, I know you, I I'm gonna assume you're gonna agree with hope and I, but I'll give you a chance to, to speak up, Right. You know, so Ian, in the words of the great British philosopher Douglas Adams, you know, there's always a vogue on battle fleet coming to destroy the earth.

Right? You know, so is it a crisis? Yes.

But we're security people, and that's the world we live in. And yeah, I I agree with hope, you know, this particular incident, you know, is best practices and so forth. I mean, can you define it as a supply chain problem?

Yes. But again, as we discussed here, and as you know, I spend most of my professional world these last four or five years, we're putting together the pieces to address these supply chain things, ironically, or not, you know, again, just in time about the time we need them, and not 20 years earlier. I, I think that that sums that, that's what I thought Chris would say, Mike, I'm gonna, I'm gonna disagree.

We, we live in a constant state of crisis. So if you're always in crisis, you're Never in crisis. That's, That's deep circular.

That's deep. Um, I'm gonna argue that we are maybe updating things just too fast. And I know everybody worships at the altar of DevOps, but if you do look at that Palo Alto report, they're saying the updates measure in the thousands per month.

And these are developers who are doing this, who, God bless them, they don't have a lot of cybersecurity expertise in the hub's point, most of this stuff is misconfigurations that resulted from a developer doing something with no adult supervision. I'm arguing for a more adult supervision. And I'm also arguing for, um, better understanding of what we need to patch when faster.

Because right now, half the time a developer will say, I'll give you, you know, maybe a day a month to work on patches, but then I'm only gonna wind up doing the easy stuff because nobody told me which ones were more important than the other ones. So I just want to finish this stuff and I move on. So I feel like there's a huge disconnect between, uh, the security issues and what developers are thinking about and prioritizing.

And that issue is ultimately a, an engineering problem more than it is a security problem. But hope that's where I am on this. Yeah.

And as you say that, one of the things that comes to mind for me is there are people who are inserted into these technology problems. And none of our brains can work as fast as some of the technology we are touching. And if that technology is leveraged, um, by, by bad actors, some of these groups who are actively organized to make this happen.

And now you have a team who perhaps is way oversubscribed with the amount of work they have to do. Maybe they don't have all the tools required. Um, they are making their best effort, but they, they are climbing a, a very, very steep mountain, especially if they're depending on manual processes, memory, making time.

Uh, some of the only solutions for this, you, you have to have some automation in place. You have to have something that is automatically checking, automatically reporting. And hopefully in some of the more advanced cases, you have, um, some AI tools there that are consistently looking for openings, looking for anything that might be an anomaly.

Gives you an earlier, uh, an earlier alert. I think it's just beyond people as individuals to manage and, and keep up with this. Hey, Ellen, I have a question.

I have a pop culture question to go start with. What was the name of that show that Groucho Marx was in when the duck would drop with the magic word? I can't remember.

What's your line? Bet you're life. You're life, you're lying.

Thank you, Chris. So, here's where the duck drops and AI appears, and I hate to do this. I, we always interjected almost every segment, but it's kind of from a outside perspective and even from the Silicon Valley angle, not to sound alarmist, but there seems to be this general security paranoia crisis that's greater than normal.

And here's why I say this. In the last couple of days, I've talked to several people about different crises across the security spectrum. So first I talked about somebody involving, uh, crypto being sta stolen from North Korea via North Korea.

There's a survey that came out Wednesday showing this huge disparity between AI adoption and security concerns. There's a huge disconnect, and there's some new research coming out that one third of organizations suffer a SaaS attack this year, which is up. And and then I also hear from somebody like an Alex Stamos last year in an interview.

He's a former Facebook CSOI believe. And he was talking about how things are gonna get worse because of something we talked about yesterday, deep cuts and layoffs at companies. And many of them overlap with security.

So what I'm actually kind of want to ask hope, Chris, whomever is, is are things more dangerous or treacherous now? And, and if so, why? Or is this just business as usual?

I, I think, I think it is. Um, I think it is definitely a readjustment period across technology. Not just focused on security, but across how the technology business is done, how technology business is staffed, and how people are looking at it.

Whenever you reach an inflection point, whenever you reach a period of change, cracks form and vulnerabilities show up as it is specifically for this. Yes, they're definitely, I am sure our organizations who are having, um, exposure, they probably would not have had, had. They remained fully staffed, fully loaded.

And you don't have people there who are pulling 60 and maybe 80 hour weeks and energized at capacity. They're just their limit. It is not that they want these things to happen, but again, human humans are, are, are one of the biggest vulnerabilities in, in any computer, uh, or technology system.

Yeah, I, I, I wanna combine sort of all three of those statements. 'cause Mike, you know, it'll surprise you, you know, but perhaps, but I, I agree. Everything you listed a minute ago is true, but I think it sort of speaks to hope's point and John's question, you know, never, uh, uh, waste a good crisis.

Right? We, you know, to, to the point that that started this, you know, Palo Alto is saying, there's too many updates. If we look out into the future, will there be less updates over the short, medium, long term?

And the answer is no. There's going to be many, many more. So the real lesson and the, the, the lever, uh, we should use it in, you know, this particular crisis for, is we, there's too many updates to do things the way we're doing them.

So we need to automate. And if we automate, that means it needs to be, you know, uh, reliable and, and good enough for the purpose and therefore, right. You know, so I, I was thinking of whether it's a how or therefore, but it really is therefore the, we have all these issues, therefore, three years and five years, and seven years from now, we're going to do things differently.

And we are. So our job today is to figure out which of those, those are Those. I just point out in the Palo Alto thing, the scary stat to me is that 32% of the updates being made created either a high or severe vulnerability.

That's a huge percentage of the updates are creating an issue here. Couldn't Brick it with a blue screen. What's, Hey, Mike, what's the, you said 32%.

What is it normally? Is it, well, half that one. I mean, I don't think there's a normal, it should be you, But that, that's why I mean something called QA before we would do patching here.

Here's the issue though, guys, for me, this is absolutely not a people problem. This is not a people throwing more people at this isn't the answer. Because the more people you throw at it, the faster we're going to go on the other end, putting up more updates and more patches and more Sinks we're gonna make.

Mm-Hmm. Well, no, there is an answer. It's just not throwing more people.

The answer is, is being better around our automations. The only way to fight automation is with automation. Okay?

And so we need to do automated and we look, do we need maybe better testing? And maybe AI helps with that. Maybe it doesn't.

Maybe there's something else we could use to make sure before we put out patches that they're tested a little more. But the key to speed kills, the only thing faster is more speed. You need speed.

You can't be slowing down. And I, and by that same token, I also, we can't put some damsel on the tracks of, of progress and say, slow stop the trade knock that train's left the station and it's going as fast as it can because business demands it. And that's been a problem for too long in security.

We're the people saying slow down, slow down. Yeah, maybe that's part of our role is to be those people. But business doesn't slow down.

It never will. We're only gonna accelerate and to accelerate, we need to do more automation on patching and testing. To that point, point, to that point, hope.

There is an argument that says that if you do speed up and you do smaller updates, you're less likely to have, uh, a mistake and you're a little less, and it's easier. That's Like a kind agile. But, um, it doesn't feel to me like everybody's, you know, actually absorbed that tenant.

And a lot of folks are still doing these kinda, you know, forklift upgrade, stab and then being surprised when there's an issue. Yeah. I, I think this goes back to a different, partly a, a different fundamental problem that we have in technology where there, there's tech debt, there are are bugs, there are other things.

And unless someone screams loud enough or the problem is serious enough, uh, it sits there. So if you roll out an update, it affects a small number of your customers. Maybe it's a small vulnerability, how are you gonna prioritize that?

Versus it's your largest customer, it's hit the news. You are, uh, getting exposed. You are T-Mobile, you're saying, oh my god, you know, $60 million fine.

Now you are all over it and you're prioritizing it. A lot of this is, you know, what costs, you know, where's the biggest penalty? What costs the most, what, uh, is gonna cost public reputation?

There, there is still the issue within organizations, and again, maybe more now tied to the layoffs, right? You don't have people who are given the amount of time necessary to really look at these problems and figure out the solution, whether it is automation or whatever it may be. They are just racing to try and keep up and sometimes a attack the greatest problem that's in front of them at the time.

All right? Fair enough. Hey, we, we are about outta time for this segment.

Thanks for the participation. We are gonna take a break here on Textron Gang, and we're gonna come back. Do we have a solution to find the, or identify deep fakes for everyone?

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Let's revolutionize your tech journey. Contact us today and tell your story to the world in the most powerful way with Textron Group. All right, folks, we're back and we're talking about DeepFakes.

And if you've been watching the show lately, we've been talking a lot about how to manage the providence of content and McAfee yesterday in collaboration with Lenovo, rolled out a new pc, one of these AI PCs that is making use of the NPU chip in there to run an inference engine to identify audio files initially, and then eventually video that has been, um, tampered or adjusted in some way using ai. This is a, a big ask, but, um, Chris, lemme start with you. Do you think we can reliably identify audio and video that has been tampered with by these AI modules?

I mean, not all that stuff is of course, malicious, but people should know what they're looking at, right? I think we can do a lot of good with that. I was thinking about that before this, before recording this episode, and I think, I think will surprise people like myself that that can actually be a pretty good filter.

But, you know, as you may know, I mean, my focus on this particular issue is, again, take the supply chain world. We need to know in real time as we're talking about in the last segment, so that we can automate the operation and, and management of power systems and so forth. You know, really, really critical infrastructures.

We need to know that information transmitted milliseconds ago from a vendor through a third party, through another third party to get down to us can be applied to critical situations. And to do that, we have to have a level of veracity that we don't have yet. Right.

You know, so I keep coming back, you know, from my, my main focus on these critical infrastructure, low level, you know, technical sort of things into this disinformation question. And I think the same sorts of technologies and the same sorts of structures do a lot of good in the end. Right?

And I don't mean that you can to the, to this question. I don't mean that you can tell, you know, whether this, this video is faked, but I think we'll get to the point where we can say someone, you know, owns this video or not, right? And then maybe if, if you can't tell who owns a video who created it, you know where it came from, maybe it's still real, but you know, you have a reason to question that.

Whereas if you can have a functional level of, of surety, you know, that someone has stood behind this, that this piece of content actually came from somewhere tra traceable, that makes it more actionable. Look, if these work, let's send one to Donald Trump. I was just gonna say with the political thing, seeing a lot of this stuff stuff now.

Yeah, exactly. Okay. But that being said, mm-Hmm.

I'll take the politics out if I can for a moment. A moment. Um, everybody's making videos.

They're not all fake, but No, no, it's, everybody's making videos. Not everyone is turning up conspiracy theories about AI being used to put in crowds and so forth if you hung up on crowd sizes. But anyway, the point is, what a great thing.

So Chris, yes, it'll help folks in our IT stream, maybe, you know, in security. But let's be clear, I think this is aimed at consumers. We need this in the world.

Most people are not in the working in the tech space. They work in other jobs and they are having a hard time discern. They were having a hard time before AI discerning truths from fiction online.

And now with ai it's even harder because, you know, you, you could have, you could have Camilla, miss America or Captain America, or, or Orange Jesus with ai and, and people look at it like, oh my God, look, we need, we need this technology desperately. I I, does it work? I haven't tried it yet.

Do I pray and hope it works? Absolutely. Alright, John, I do have a conspiracy theory for you.

Oh, okay. I love those. I I've read 20 books about the JFK assassination, by the way.

All right. But go, but go ahead. So doesn't it strike you as a little ironic that we have to go out and buy all new PCs to make sure that the stuff being generated online by all these people who are using AI is true or not.

And by the way, they want, uh, 30 bucks a month per user for the tool Yeah, exactly. To, uh, you know, to, to look at, to figure this stuff out. Um, you know, have we created this weird cycle where, you know, people are misusing AI to create content, so now we gotta go buy all new gear and my So are you saying Intel and Nvidia behind the deep fake, you know, I'm just saying like, You know, that there was a vacuum there and somebody must have stepped into it.

Right? Right. You know, fear sells.

So does paranoia. You know, it's funny too. So you talk about a consumer breakthrough, it's like this whole Taylor Swift pro-Trump, maga AI fake or whatever that maybe that, maybe that generates more interest because you either, there is a huge, as you said, Ella, huge disconnect between what happens and the reality.

And a lot of people don't know or care about any of this stuff. And I I'm talking about tech in general, unless they're directly affected and then they become interested until there's a solution, and then they get fold on another rabbit hole. But, um, yeah, I'm just wondering how effective this tool's gonna be because with the onset of Grok two and when we, I won't get too political, but we're gonna see an escalation of this arms race.

And I, what's, what makes me nervous is that there aren't enough publicly known solutions. Mike makes a good point too, by Silicon Valley always sees an opportunity and I'll, I'll just, I'll point the finger at ourselves to help create a problem and then offer a solution where they enrich themselves. And I'll, I'll just leave it at that.

Hey, It's, it's America. Mm-Hmm. Hey, help.

You know, one. Yeah. One, one other thing I'd like to mention really quickly in all of this, I think there's the elevated way we're talking about it, the broad social media exposure, but there are, um, more individual cases that are also tied to deep fakes.

There are scams running right now where some person will get a phone call, your grandchild is in jail, you need to provide some money, we can keep this quiet for you. And then they have a voice that sounds exactly like the relative, I've read that. Right.

They are using this, this technology is weaponized in so many different ways that perhaps, you know, in that elevated way, we can bring it down a little bit that, you know, the large corporations and organizations, but somehow over time, whether it is legislation, government, or just a tool that someone creates that is easier for, uh, you know, rank and file people to pick up and use, um, there's still gonna be a huge exposure for people who are, who are outside of that sphere. That's such a great point, especially when it comes to a voice, because I think that's where we're seeing the first part of these deep fakes. The video you can sort of tell, you know, it doesn't look right, but the audio unfortunately, so was saying is, is good enough that it can pull people nefariously, Don't kid yourself that this is a consumer only problem.

I mean, I can easily see a scenario where somebody's gonna put up a video that says, this is how you update, say your cloud based platform, and then they do that and you follow it and you leave all kinds of things over. No, No. We had a story a few months ago about the bank in Singapore where the guy got on a Zoom and he, it was the CTO of the, or the CFO of the company.

He dealt with the banker and the c CFO asked them to transfer $20 million or something. And they did. It did.

And there's always like that time sensitive threats. Like what with, uh, hope mentioned that, that example about somebody in jail, that used to be the what? The email approach.

Mm-Hmm. I know that, I know that because my, my father-in-law fell for it. Uh, she thought her grandson was in prison in Mexico, but if the, I I think she would've fallen, fallen forward if there was a voice.

Right. That sounded like, Let me ask you a question, guys. I, because I don't know this, the NPU units in these Lenovo PCs, are they intel?

Um, I think there's a mix of them out there that are ones intel. I think Qualcomm might have one too. So there's a, there's a, a mix of these.

Look, it's good to see intel in the conversation at least. There you go. So, um, at the end of the day though, you know, and I think Chris has talked about this in the past, so aren't we reaching a point where we assume everything is false till proven otherwise?

Is that a bad thing? I think, Yeah, that's not a bad way to put it, right? You know, it's the, you know, we can go all the way back to the early firewall days, you know, deny by default, right?

Unless you know where it's coming from, it should be coming through. And, you know, I hate to repeat myself, but maybe that's the kind of the point, right? And this is, you know, I think about this, you know, in the context that there, I said it here before, I think, you know, uh, Fred Cohen and I did a 25 year national infrastructure, uh, plan for a allied, uh, US allied country.

And in that, there was a seven and 15 year breakpoint. And this part of the seven year breakpoint that we're approaching right about now is this issue that you will not be able to run your power systems at some point because someone can, you know, to the topic, topic here, I pick up the phone, the voice says, Hey, you know, downtown's on fire. Turn off the power.

I go, gosh, I turn it off, right? So this is rising to the point where if we can't address it, we can't have nice things like electricity and running water, you know? And it's not 10 years away, you know, it's, it's right about now.

So if you are running any critical infrastructure, and you're not even thinking about this yet, you need to think about this yet. Yeah, No, You had to, you have to. So Someone needs to invent zero trust for deep fakes.

No trust. Yeah, no trust, You know, but Chris, you're right. It's why we can't have nice things.

It's, It's why we're all here. So I can verify that you are hope and that that's Chris and I, I'm not swearing again. Anyway, let's hope we, let's hope that this does work.

Mm-Hmm. And that, uh, this whole deep fake issue for consumers, for business, for security, for critical infrastructure, becomes kind of yesterday's news. Because we've got a technology, we've got a, we, we can, you know, at $6 million, man, we could build it better.

We can build them back better and, and fix it. Um, we're gonna take a break on deep fa on deep fix. We're gonna take a break.

Maybe I'm a deepfake. We're gonna take a break on tech strong gag, and we're gonna be back here in just a moment. Bonnie Schneider has a lot to say about the right to repair.

Welcome back to the Textron Gang. Well, you may have experienced this personally, if your phone breaks and you just wanna be able to fix it yourself, but you don't have the parts. This is part of a movement actually called the Right to repair.

Many, uh, tech manufacturers are on board with making sure consumers can repair their own devices, but others have held back and made it a little more complicated. It's gotten to be such a big deal that some states in America are actually changing laws regarding the right to repair. I take a closer look at this issue and offer some insights in this video.

Today we're talking about the right to repair, which grants consumers the right to repair their own devices. This movement is pushing for laws requiring manufacturers to provide consumers with tools and parts for repair. Why the effort?

Because a longer product lifespan means less electronic waste. Major tech giants like Microsoft, apple, Google, and Dell are responding to the right to repair in various ways. Let's take a look.

Microsoft recently agreed to expand access to its parts and tools. Plus they've partnered with I fixit on repair guides for service devices and Xbox consoles. Google is actively backing supportive legislation.

For example, Google endorsed a right to repair a bill in Oregon, plus parts for Google devices, like pixel phones are available to the public without requiring additional registration. Apple, once a staunch opponent of the right to repair has shifted its stance. The company has expanded its self-service repair program, allowing greater access to Apple parts.

Dell has long supported repairability and designs products with those features in mind. For example, Dell's concept, Luna allows a user to disassemble a laptop and replace its components without generating excess waste. Notably, the right to repair has also gained momentum in several US states.

New York, Minnesota, and California are passing laws mandating manufacturers provide repair resources. As demand grows for eco-friendly practices, tech companies should offer self repairability as part of its overall sustainability strategy. You know, recently we talked about the Mac new, the rumors of the New Mac Mini and how the right to repair might affect that.

If the parts are smaller, um, is that gonna raise an issue? So I think now with all the new devices that are coming out smaller, which is great because that makes them more energy efficient typically, but it does raise this issue of the right to repair and making sure all, uh, manufacturers are getting on board. I mentioned Apple at first was not as much on board as they are now, but it seems to be, especially with the Google and some of the things I talked about in the video, um, that Repairability is getting to be more mainstream.

But I'd love to hear with panel. Thanks. We bought, oh, sorry.

Go ahead, Alan. No, No, you go Judd. Oh, no, I was just gonna mention that this is interesting.

It's really very, very topical because in a sense, I've noticed like in the last year, even the last year or two people who were normally averse to, to fixing a, a, a computer or a smartphone, something that they, that they own, they're afraid they're gonna break it or they're gonna exacerbate the problem. They started Googling to fix things, right? It was just go on Google and figure out how to do it and do it themselves.

And I think people are open to that idea. It's interesting that you mention Apple because in a sense, apple has tried to position themselves as this very green friendly company, but they kind of find themselves compromised a little bit because of the product product itself. Um, it's, it's, it's, it's something that, that I think though we're gonna see a lot more of just in terms of doing something at home, rather than schlepping your, your computer or whatever have you.

Just some sort of store waiting to see if it's gonna work. I mean, it's, it seems like the, the right movement And no, YouTube, YouTube is our friend on those Things. YouTube's another one.

Yeah. Yep. Yeah.

But I, I'll tell you this, this particular issue hits home for me. Um, you know, as Christos, I, I have a boat down here and I, I have a bunch of handheld, what, what are the radios? UHF or V-H-F-V-H-F aren't they Chris?

That's the band. Yeah. Right.

So every, I have a bunch of handheld vfs and they're, they're keying in, registered with my Coast Guard registration number so that if I had a mayday or a man Oval board, people would know what vessel it was and, and where they could get my location. Um, so one of them is by a company called Cobra's, pretty popular, you know, electronics brand. And I've had it for, I don't know, two years maybe the battery.

So it's not a AA or AAA or even one of the lithium round ones. It, it's like a, it's the back of the radio and the battery's kind of built in and it slides out. If you've ever seen those kinds of things, the battery went bad.

It'll only work while it's plugged into its cradle. It will come out when, as soon as you take it outta the cradle, it goes dead. I went online, let me get the battery.

I mean, the radio was, I don't know, a couple hundred bucks. I said, I, you know, let me get the battery. I'll replace the battery.

Can't get the battery. Oh, I've looked, I've looked on Amazon, I did Google searches. I went to the Cobra site directly.

They don't make the battery. So I, you know, now it's, it's the, I have three of these radios. So it's, it's a spare of a spare.

So I'm not going to, you know, replace it. But they want you to go out and buy a new radio, which is probably about 299 bucks versus this battery that's probably $40. I'm gonna say if it's that much.

And it kind of really bummed me out because now it's, so, now I'm gonna throw this radio away. It's keyed in. I I put all the time into King and it was a good little radio and we're wasting it.

And it's, it, there's no need there. There shouldn't be a need. This is why we need standardization of things like batteries and, and plugin chargers and all these things.

Because the, the proprietary kind of stuff like that, and, and this right to repair it, it bite home. I mean, they, it's, it's ridiculous. That's a great point.

'cause that's the whole thing behind the movement is how to have a longer lifespan for each device Law. What laws are being changed? 'cause you know, last time I checked, there's nothing in the constitution about right to repair Gates.

Not a Constitution. We're, we're all strict, you know, we'll tell you To privacy about 20 weeks, Oregon, Minnesota, and New York are all, um, uh, putting forward leg legislation. I know Oregon had, uh, Google actually backed the bill there.

And of course, in the eu there were also, uh, recommending that too, four batteries and for different devices. So, you know, legislation and bills could be written, doesn't mean they're necessarily passing. I, I, This is that whole thing, that whole thing about planned obsolescence, right?

I mean, even, you know, I'll go bring back Apple this's, this idea that you always had to keep buying a new iPhone over and over again to, to, to, to stay ahead. That that doesn't work anymore. People hold on longer.

Um, okay. But yeah, I just wanna throw that out. But you know what, I so not to be the Apple best.

Sure. I'll give Apple a kudo credit here. It used to be when your battery went bad on the iPhone, get a new iPhone.

But now if you bring your iPhone into Apple, Mm-Hmm. Especially if you have AppleCare, I, I, they replaced the battery for repentance. Even if you don't have AppleCare, I, I wanna say it's $99 to replace the battery, which is a hell of a lot cheaper than a thousand bucks for a new iPhone.

Yeah. So I, I'll give them credit on that. But speaking about phones, there's also a, a Dutch company called Fairphone, and they are selling modularized phones.

So you can replace any part on the phone you want. They give you repair manuals, they will sell you the part directly, and they are there. Well, that's what we need.

That's great. I didn't hear about that taking Wheel, hot wheel Thumb wheels done with you. They're coming back.

If everyone's listening there, if you could design a phone with a thumb wheeling ad, we've got your best customer right here. Yeah. Shepherd directly to Mike.

But, uh, but yeah, but there are some that are making strides. But a lot of these organizations, and I'm interested here, what you all think about this, a lot of the ones who have put up the most amount of resistance, John Deere was an example a few years ago, right? Is we have IP that we want to protect, therefore we don't want consumers being able to, um, get into these devices and dig around.

But I'm gonna say anyone who wants the IP is at an organization that is sophisticated enough to break that system down. It is, it should not impact, yeah. Consumers, I, I, I'm glad you went there, right?

You know, 'cause I've spent, you know, virtually my entire career on the vendor side, you know, where I quite often have a legal responsibility to increase profits, right? You know, people invest in us in retirement funds. There.

I, I need to make that work. And it, it is been a, a, a career long battle. But I mean, I, I think I have evidence that engaging honestly with your customers is profitable.

You lower costs, right? And this, you know, hope as you said, you know, intellectual property, I keep coming at this again and again in supply chain right now, same sort of things. Oh my God, people are gonna get my IP in threat intelligence 10, 15, 20 years ago.

And you look at how people manage IP and, and you said exactly right. You know, if someone really capable of being a threat to me and my organization wants my ip, they are going to get it. We do not as, as organizations manage IP in the way that we think it should be, given how we behave about its criticality.

Um, at the same time, if you dumped all my competitors' IP on me, I probably wouldn't look at it. I have enough things to do already. It's just a waste of time.

I don't need to get in their bloody heads, right? Yeah. So I think we need to get realistic about where the value is and be really clear with our, with our customers to say, look, this is ours.

You can't see that. But it's not that much. And I'm glad you brought up John Deere because I think in their case, they can drive that down to this little bit.

And yes, you can repair the rest. I always wonder if there's just gonna be a resistance among some companies regardless, this idea that you could swap in a, a part that's, that no longer works for a fraction of a, of having to buy a whole new model. I mean, it just kind of runs counter to what a lot of these companies try to do.

They, and I, I, I won't pick on anyone in particular, but this whole idea, well, you've had it for a year or two, or a year and a half or two years, And we have a, we have a, That's a faster one, And Then it suddenly breaks Right? Time idea. Well, that, that is, that is another conspiracy theory that floats around out there, is that yeah, the vendors keep writing software to the point where it just slows down the thing you bought through crawl.

So then you're gotta buy a new one anyway, always happens. And so people complain about that, and that cycle probably happens faster than the device is gonna break. Let me give you another personal antidote.

So I, when I moved to our new house to almost three years ago now, August, actually the end of this month will be three years. I splurged and bought a big ass tv, eight K, all the bells and whistles, a Samsung model. And I, you've been at my house, it's to watch football.

It is, it's almost as good as being there, right? The upscaling to eight K is amazing. Got the whole sound system.

Two months ago, I, I'm, I, I, no, right for football season last month I put on my first preseason football game, and I've got a green line running down my Samsung's 85 inch screen. And you know, I said, I said to my wife, Bonnie, do you see that green line? She said, what green line?

I said, there's a green line. She got real close up to the tv. She said, yeah, you, you know, you're right.

It's a green line. She says, but it's nothing. I said, nothing.

I can't watch the game. This green line is right in the middle of the g*****n I, this is not good. I said, thank God we got the extended warranty.

And I look up and, you know, I did, I got the two year warranty, which is what they offered. And um, I was at two years and three months. Oh, oh.

And so I called Samsung and said, Hey, That's good engineering on there. Yeah. And I'm gonna tell you something.

I got, I finally got a live person on the phone, which is a, is a beating in of itself. And I told them, he said, well, what do you do? You know, and they, I told 'em the problem.

They, they like, were able to log in to my TV or whatever. And he said, yep, you need a new panel. I said, what do you mean?

He said, you need a new panel. This, it's not, it's not the cable, it's not this. You need a new panel.

I say, how do you know that? He said, I deal with 'em all the time. It happens all the time.

I said, so you sell a $5,000 TV and you know that it goes bad in, in two years. He says, unfortunately, a lot of 'em go, bet. How much is, how much is the panel?

He says, well, it's about 1500 for the panel plus the service charge, but it's about 2,500. Wow. And we're going to give you that 2021 panel too, not the 2024 panel.

The last time I bought a doubt, I'll never buy a Samsung TV again. I went out, I, and that TV is now in our offices here in, in, uh, in, in tech because resume the green line won't bother me for football. It bothers me.

And I, I got a Sony and you know, Samsung shame on you, Alta and Samsung. That green line is bugging the crab outta me on Christmas face there, but it's okay. No, they're not comfortable.

That's triggering me because I had a, we had a Ford escort, God that was so long ago, but they had the same issue with the timing belts. It's like this national recall. I just remember driving my car and this, that the car would just die.

And I subsequently wrote a story about it, and I think NBC ended up doing a story about it. But these things, it was almost planned beyond Yeah. The warranty, right?

It just, Eric's the heck outta you, man. And you know, meanwhile, you know, the 19 inch big box that my grandma watched on my whole entire life never had a problem. Right?

So progress. There you go. Anyway, you Donated that one to the Smithsonian, right?

Uh, I think so. Yeah. Probably.

Yeah. The Smithsonian's probably full of them because those never die. Sure.

They never die. Mm-Hmm. But, um, go ahead, hope.

One more thing that I do want to mention. Some of these companies, some of the resistance on, uh, the, the part of the manufacturers is they have, they will need to reconfigure whole product lines in order to make devices repairable. Right?

Now, are we selling proprietary parts or are these commoditized parts that we're just gonna, you know, anyone can make. So for them it takes out some of the, I'll call it lazy ways of making money that they've been able to take advantage of because they have to invest. Where are they gonna recruit those dollars from redesigning those product lines, right?

Are they gonna raise prices or They, do you hear this right here? Do you hear that? That's the smallest violin in the world paying hards and Bowies for.

Oh, I'm with you. I'm with you. But that, that is gonna be a lot of the pushback, you Know?

Absolutely. Anyway, interesting topic, Bonnie. Great.

You got us triggered there. Yeah, I triggered that. Anyway, I think, is that it?

Yeah, that's it. Heard the gang today, guys. There we, yeah.

Blew by. Hey, for any of you guys watching out, there is Hope mentioned. She was at CloudBees and Red Hat and a bunch of other places, but she's available.

If you need a really top-notch tech person, check her out on LinkedIn. Hope Lynch. Hope we hope to have you back on here soon.

Well, our scheduling, uh, uh, ais will take care of that. Well, maybe they're deep fakes. Who knows?

Uh, Chris, always a pleasure. I hope to see you in Florida soon. The weather is cooling down and we'll, we'll do some, some boat stuff.

John, as always, great job. Thank you Bonnie. Michael, thank you.

Thank you most of all for watching. We appreciate you watching and supporting Textron gang no matter what outlet you're watching it on. But until tomorrow, this is Alan Hummel.

Enjoy the rest of Textron TV today, by the way, we've got some great stuff and we'll see you tomorrow Here on Textron Ag. I'm Bonnie Schneider, sustainability contributor to the Textron Group. I'm excited to introduce you to a groundbreaking new initiative from Textron Research, the sustainability pulse meter.

The pulse meter offers valuable insights into how environmental responsibility factors into tech purchasing decisions for key players in the industry. Position your company as a leader in the industry and differentiate from your competitors with a sustainability pulse meter offered exclusively from Techstrong research.