Techstrong Gang – February 7, 2025

Hey, everyone. Happy Friday. It's Super Bowl Sunday this weekend.

We're gonna kick our Super Bowl ads off right now. Buy Shimmy Coin, the newest crypto you're watching. Textron Gang.

Hey everyone. Alan Schmo here for Textron Gang. It's a great Friday.

It's Super Bowl weekend. You hear the sound of those cash registers, Jing, that's people paying $8 million for a 32nd commercial. We're gonna talk about that.

We're gonna talk about the US going in off the gold standard to Bitcoin and blockchain and who knows what else. Um, and another crypto story too, outta Security Boulevard, all that and more. But let me first introduce you to our gang lineup for today.

We've got some great people to talk about it. Let's start off out west in Silicon Valley where we have our, well, she's a radio host, a TV host, a marketing guru, everything else. Our Lisa Martin.

Hey Lisa. Welcome. Hey, shimmy.

Great to see you. I want some shimmy coin. Some shimmy coin.

Well, look, there's something, there's gold in them there hills. Um, but Lisa, it's great to have you. As I think I wrote on one of the LinkedIn posts you put up, whoever thought you would be happy being a gang member.

I, I I lead Textron gang colors. I knew. Well, I do.

Well, I get you. I get it. Um, but if we're, if we're out West Oak, the, the head gang dude out there, the gang chief in for Silicon Valley is our own editor, John Schwartz.

John, welcome. How are you doing today? I'm good.

Hey, I just wanted to mention something. We have breaking news that there's a, uh, the federal lawmakers just introduced a bill that would ban the use of deeps seek from all US government devices. So I wanna get that out there because What, what kind of federal lawmaker, Uh, two representatives from Congress.

Oh, they don't count. If it's not an executive order, it doesn't mean anything. I know.

Oh, we're gonna go down that path. Okay. But, um, yeah, sure.

Uh, yeah. He'll, he'll, he'll decide what he wants to do. But, um, uh, it's, it's really interesting.

This is a, a band that's has started, the band was in Italy, uh, Ireland, Australia, US Navy. Well, We could talk about it Government You want, but I think in those countries, the ban is against government agencies and, and employees using deep seek. I don't think it bans it from private use.

And I Oh yeah. No. Here, here's, it's gonna be all Government.

Oh. It's also only government. Government.

Well, I'm glad to see they're not sto on the right to the Yes. It's within the government. Not, it doesn't apply to the rest of us For now, but It's very significant.

Yes. For now. Yeah.

It's, it's just government owned devices. That's it. Right.

For now. Right. Alright.

For now, we'll see. Alright. But thanks for the breaking news, John.

Sure. Maybe we'll cover that by Monday. Maybe it'll percolate up to something.

Let's move now though, over to Colorado. He's home from his Vegas Sojourn back in his guitar room. Uh, Futurum VP DevOps, Mitch Ashley.

Hey, Mitch. How are you? I remember getting off the plane at, uh, at, uh, Harry Reid International Airport.

I don't remember anything. I just woke up this morning back in Colorado, so I guess it was a good trip. Enjoyed it.

Sounds like it, It Tiger in the bathroom show. Yeah, I did, did, I did get the blockchain set up for Shimmy coin, but I have bad news. com so you gotta go with something else, Alan.

Sorry. Oh, I'll sue em. I'll sue 'em.

There you go. It'll be huge. All right.

Um, That'd be great. Moving on from Mitch, she's our editor for, uh, tech Strong ai as well as Gestalt our it, which we are working with our friends at Tech Field Day. And it's gonna be, or it is, it's not going to be.

It is our infrastructure site. We'll be talking about that more in the days and weeks to come. S Sona Soha.

Saha. Excuse me. Sona, how are you today?

I'm good, thanks Alan. Great to Have you. It's good to be here.

Alrighty. So guys, let's jump right into it. As I mentioned, it's Super Bowl weekend, you know, and for many of us, me included, and I'm a crazy football fan, but for many of us, the commercials are the highlights of the game, right?

There's always, I mean, you know, you get the Budweiser tear Jerker commercial's, usually a good Chevy one. Maybe it looks like we might have ai Super Bowl ads. Uh, this, this, um, year.

Lisa, do you wanna kick it off for us? Sure. Well, I think we all definitely expect fast food.

The cars, you mentioned, beer and insurance, those are like kind of staples. But AI is expected to have a really strong presence this year. And of course, I think that really underscores the, just what we expect to see globally in the years to come.

Um, but the campaigns aren't just about buying airtime. I've seen a few, 'cause they always leak the commercials ahead of time, which I never understand. There's a really funny one that Mountain Dew has that's a very clearly AI with seal, the Singer, pop, singer Seal.

Um, but what we're gonna see from Google, for example, and meta or opportunities for, for these companies to really kinda shape perception around ai. It's been challenging. We talk about that all the time.

There's a lot of negativity out there. But Google is doing something really cool. They're unveiling 50 different commercials in 50 different states, and they're profiling small businesses that are using AI to get more done.

For example, they're gonna be highlighting tasks that Google's Gemini AI can help with, like scheduling and email communications and things like that. Met is coming back to the Super Bowl for the first time since 2022. They have a couple of a-listers.

They have a couple of the Chrises. They've got, um, let's see, uh, I think Hemsworth and Correct heworth and pr. That's right.

They're gonna be promoting their RayBan sunglasses, their AI powered smart glasses that you can do a whole bunch of things with. I gotta get, I gotta order up here because I'm so curious to see it. But I, I like the idea of these companies coming in and sharing what AI can do for you, what's already doing for us to help shape that perception in a more positive light.

So that's what I'm looking forward to seeing, um, commercial wise AI related this year. Hey, you, I'm gonna be seriously disappointed if there isn't a Matthew McConaughey, you know, rolling whatever. He was rolling in his Lincoln.

He's Supposed to Have an Uber Eat voice, you know, chat. GPT. We gotta have us one of them.

All right. All right. He's, he's An Asph righty with Salesforce.

Yeah. I mean, he, he should do something with Salesforce, right? He's doing something with Uber Eats.

I know that course He is about the NFL and food. What are you eating, Jerry Rice. Exactly.

Rice, You know what? I wonder if there's gonna be, like, we would talk about this as the AI Super Bowl in terms of ads, if there's gonna be an aha moment or if it's a breakthrough for the mainstream audience, because so many people hear things about ai, they have mixed feelings about it. Then you know, the, you know what, what's really weird?

40 years ago, I can't think, perhaps the most iconic Super Bowl ad Rand that was Ridley Scott's Apple, 1984 ad for Macintosh. Oh my gosh. How Was that ad?

I remember watching That Ad. I, 1984. One, like 1984 Bought one right then.

Mm-hmm. Right. That was, uh, yeah, it ran technically in 85, I think it was the Super Bowl between the Niners and the Dolphins out in Palo Alto, the Silicon Valley Super Bowl.

Oh my gosh. Yes. You remember that.

Um, but, um, it wa it, I, I actually wonder though, if there's like a breakthrough moment. I mean, we have deeps seek, in a weird way, deeps seek is actually bringing attention, whether it's good or bad to the field, you know, it's getting people interested into, in the market. So I wonder if these ads in a sense kind of build on that, or if it, if it's just another, you know, layer of hype that pushes us for another six months.

You know, last Thursday on my Shimmy says on YouTube blog on, uh, not YouTube Live, excuse me, LinkedIn Live. It's gonna be on, you could watch it on YouTube shorts, though. I, this is what I discussed.

Is AI living up to the hype? Where is it really delivering? What can we expect to see?

And, you know, certainly proof's in the pudding here with these Super Bowl commercials. But John, I'm reminded of another era, not the Apple commercial that kicked off the Mac, right? That was amazing.

com baby, right? I sold my, I built my first company on the internet, sold it in 97, the end of 97, and, um, 98, 99, 99. com fever at a peak, right?

And every so many friends of mine who were founders of companies were showing out back then, they were showing out, I think it was 7 million for a 62nd commercial. Now it's 8 million for a 32nd commercial. But it was the same thing.

com commercials of 99 and 2000, and how many of those companies spent literally 20 million bucks on Super Bowl ads and got not, you know, it was a joke. It was a joke. Are we gonna look?

Yeah, They had a lot of money to burn. They had had tons of money to burn. There were so many artists too that's throwing that well's part, the, the capitalism at Work, right?

If you've got money, there's a place that'll soak it up. And the Super Bowl's a great sponge. Are we gonna look back 20 years from now and laugh at, you know, some of these AI companies that tried so hard here to influence us for 30 seconds, where we can't wait to go back and see the cheerleaders or what they took off the end zone, what they're wearing on the back of their helmets, who's singing what Anthem and, and everything else, right?

Are we gonna try to make this Super Bowl, the AI Super Bowl? And that's, that's a good question. I, you know, we'll, we'll see how it plays out.

You know, at least to me, it's about crossing the chasm. Are we still in the early adopter stage, which I, I think we are. Or I think so too.

Is this the, the, the Rams horn blowing signaling, the onslaught, you know, across the river to the main street? Or at least the early mainstream? I think we are, oh, go ahead.

So s sorry, I feel like this is a really good moment to, um, amplify the chat, GPT effect. Um, so Super Bowl I zoo, you know, great place to, you know, break the kind ad and make something mainstream. So yes, I know, uh, $8 million for a 32nd spot is, sounds like exorbitant, but I feel like, uh, here's a, a good opening for, to push AI into mainstream in the public eye.

Uh, even if it, the effect is brief or wherever, I feel like, uh, this is a good opportunity and companies are sort of, uh, grasping at that. So you'll know. Massive audience hit mainstream.

I'm sorry, go ahead, Lisa. Oh, sorry Mitch. I say, I think I saw last year that the audience was like 200 million.

So, yeah, so you've got this captive audience. People have known for decades about the commercials. And if you don't care about the teams, um, go Eagles.

Um, you, you know, the commercials are gonna be funny. There's gonna be something. And a lot of people watch it for that.

So they have this captive audience. I wonder, Solan, to your point, are we gonna see some of the other ones? I mentioned Meta and Google, but are we gonna see like the open ais for example, or perplexity or Anthropic?

Are they going to be doing ads and trying to get their names out there more? Everyone chat. GPT is almost a household word.

If it isn't by now, it is, of course it's here in Silicon Valley. But I'm curious to see, 'cause they, they've got the money and we know how much it costs to first 30 seconds, but are they going to have the opportunity to influence this capital audience? You're right.

I was thinking the same thing, Lisa. If open AI or and philanthropic one of the companies that are that, that are backed by Microsoft and Amazon, if we see something from them, which kind of sparks more of an interest, I think that's significant for now. It's what's Google Meta.

And I think even GoDaddy's doing a spot, um, they're, I mean, they're known for other things. And I, we, if we have a fresh voice or something new or invigorating, then you, then you kind of break through with more people. Well, you have kind of an another reaction if there's so much AI in all the commercials, how do you break through with the AI in all the commercials, right?

So there's that effect. And it seems like there are iconic moments of, did you see that commercial where the young boy is doing that thing in front of the cars, Darth Bader, and like, yeah, what, what product was it? I don't remember what it was, but it was Sure, good.

Or you remember the Budweiser or whatever, you know, whatever thing, the phrase that sticks out, right? So I, I'm, I'm wondering if we're gonna enter it, I don't know if it'd be this year, but I almost expect QR codes, like, here, here, download the phrase, download the prompt, and, uh, it'll load right into, you know, Gemini for you and tell you all about, about whatever kind of thing, and get you engaged using Ai. So, Mitchell, that's, if I were Google or ai, what I would've gone is gone to the traditional advertisers and say, let's make your commercial with AI embedded, or have AI do it.

And then as the commercial run, have this commercial was created, produced by ai and then with the QR codes, that takes you to how, how they did it, you know, what was the prompt and, and all of that. And to show people, Hey, you think AI's not useful? Look what we did here.

That would be really cool. And you could probably pay less than the 8 million. Well, Maybe I'm living in the past, but, um, you wonder if maybe the big breakthrough moment isn't this year, but maybe it's when Apple does its big push with Apple intelligence or some sort of something involving ai where Apple kind of, they are so effective at advertising regardless of what they do.

I always wonder if they're the ones who really push it to the mainstream in a, in a future Super Bowl Jobs, apple, John, Steve Jobs, apple. I know, I don't know. You're right.

If today's Apple is the king of innovation, even in advertising, let alone product, I think the ads are better than their products, to be honest with you. I mean, the last few years, that's the highlight with Cook. He's just a, he's a caretaker, but that's another topic.

Yeah. Yeah. I, I don't think we'll see any Deep Sea commercials.

I don't think so. I I think you're right with that. Yeah.

And it's not because of an executive void are either, um, but yeah, they're not going to, but they're The new TikTok. Yeah. To me, I think when they take over our screens, you know, just deep careful, careful.

Um, but this is, you know, to me, this is the be interesting to see if this is the crossing the chasm moment, right? Because like, you know, Lisa and John, you guys are out in Silicon Valley, soda. Mitch and I, we live in a bubble.

We're in the hinter land out here. We don't get all I told, I was telling Mike Ard the other day, no, come on. We talk about AI every day on here.

Go talk to people watching the Super Bowl in Kansas. Well, everyone in Kansas City's gonna watch Super Bowl, Wyoming. You're, because they sent their money into the referees.

But, but, you know, that Was yesterday's episode. Yeah, Right. Go to go to Iowa, go to Ohio, go to Kentucky, and you know, and I'm not saying they're backwards.

Oh, yeah. I mean, No, we, we live in a bubble out here, I think. But Lisa and I would agree with this.

I mean, I mean, we're, we're surrounded by, everywhere I turn, I see a Tesla everywhere on the, on the roads. I see Lemos everywhere, driverless cars driving around. Um, I hear people overhear people at coffee shops talking about AI or their investments.

But I think that's an anomaly. I mean, we're, we're just, we're just like kind of caught up at who we are or what this is, or we, we, We have a lot monetization. Lot of Tesla here too, though.

That's not the electric car of choice here. I I think the Beamers have, well, there's probably more Tesla lose electric than Beamers Electric here. But, um, Well, just like the billboards on the, on the freeway, it's, you can't avoid 'em.

It's inescapable. You're driving, You see these, I don't a Reminder Everywhere you go, don't, maybe Nashville area, but I don't, you know, that that's gonna be, to me, the interesting thing. Are there gonna be a lot of people, you know, Mr.

And Mrs. A mom, PA America, who see these commercials and saying, dang, what is this stuff? Right?

I've never heard of this Anthropic. Who's that Claude fella, You know, also put, uh, uh, Mitch sent me some really interesting thoughts yesterday. We were looking at Gemini two out, and there's just so many options that they're just coming out willy-nilly, one after another after another, which kind of builds into the confusion.

And I think folks out there, they, they have no idea what what's happening. And, and these ads, they just need a foundational, uh, knowledge just to begin with about what the hell this means. You know, I, I mentioned the Shimmy says I did last Thursday.

One of the things I, I said on there is, is AI still in search of its killer app, right? Is there we have, we, 'cause I don't know if we've seen the killer app for AI yet. You know, mark Cuban said something, I I said it last Thursday.

He said, the first trillionaire, the first trillionaire probably won't come from like one of the richest people in the world. It's not gonna be Elon or Bezos or Zuckerberg. It's gonna be the person who harnesses AI in a way we haven't thought of before.

And it explodes. And that will make the world's first trillionaire. And I, that's, that, that's that new applications of AI we haven't thought of yet.

Yeah. Someone's gonna do that. AI better what we already do.

And, and, and Mitchell to a point you were talking about yesterday about evolutionary versus revolutionary. It may not be necessarily revolutionary. It may be evolutionary, but it's gonna open the gates and, and that'll make your first trillionaire.

And I'm wondering if, if not that I have a desire to be right. I do. But I wonder if the super Boaz will confirm what I've said about these are experience with ai.

Generative AI is broken. The idea of everybody in the world is gonna be an expert of what have to become an expert at what LLM should I use when, what oh three versus oh one. Is that better for this task?

Or that, you know, mom, pa and whoever else are not gonna be interested in that. Matter of fact, I don't, I don't wanna worry about that. If I'm writing code, I want it to know what, what l But you shouldn't have to pick what model it it, yeah.

But, but this, we shouldn't be in Prompt M. Remember Mitchell, they used to run out, like when Web two oh was the hot thing, they were constantly updating, you know, how many RSS formulas and standards and all of that stuff. Um, it's going to be interesting, but it, it, you know, it'll make for a good Super Bowl, uh, or, or a good ad watching for the Super Bowl.

I don't know how it'll affect the game, uh, you know, but someone might have a share an account with a friend who's a known gambler, as we were talking about, uh, last, last, uh, Thursday on this. So just have your robots ready to bring you more beer, pizza and chips, so you don't have to. That'll work.

Track yourself from the commercials. That'll work. Alrighty, let's take a break here on Textron Gang.

We're gonna come back and we're gonna talk about, you know, this is like a William Jennings Bryant question. Should we move off the gold standard and, uh, moving over to a Bitcoin reserve? I don't know.

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We're back here on Text and Gang. You know, as I alluded to before the break, uh, seemed to, or there's a move afoot anyway, maybe the move, I don't think we were actually on the gold standard against since William Jennings Bryant in the election of 1896 or something like that. Um, but we are potentially moving to a Bitcoin reserve on the federal end of things.

And oh, what could go wrong? Uh, it seems, uh, the cryptos are who's also the cybersecurity czar, and that's an interesting combination. Anyway, uh, Sachs is, wants to have a potential Bitcoin reserve so that we have, uh, you know, we have reserves in case there's an all our crypto war.

I have another theory, and there's other stuff that Congress is moving on this. There's been, you know, this has created a whole tornado of excitement and buzz in the crypto world. Mitch, let's go to you on this.

To start, what do you think? Well, um, David s who is a PayPal fame, right? He was one of the folks that, that, uh, PayPal Mafia.

PayPal Mafia, yep. Uh, he, he's actually AI czar, I think, in addition to Crypto Czar. Ah, so yeah, he's kind of czar of everything, I guess in technology wise, let's face it.

He's Elon's friend. He's El Elon's part of the mafia, part of, part of the group for sure. It's, it's, what's interesting is, you know, just not to get too political here, but Trump has gone from crypto is dangerous.

I'm not sure about it. We should stay away from it to, you know, doing his own crypto coins and kind of, uh, pulling wealth out of a lot of his followers that as his crypto, uh, coin dropped after the election. But there's a lot of discussion.

A, creating wealth funds for the United States Sovereign funds, possibly creating more crypto, possibly, uh, creating something that I don't know about the dollar being based on it. You know, for folks that don't, don't, don't know what that's all about. Long time ago, our dollar was backed by gold as backed by the gold in Fort Knox.

And, uh, you know, so you knew that the full faith, not of the government, but of our gold reserves were backing up the value of the dollar. Now it's not, it's full faith in, uh, in word of the government. So I, I think that's just, I don't, I can't imagine the markets are gonna be really all excited about, uh, moving onto a, a crypto, you know, standard for backing the dollar people in crypto.

Sure, I'm, I'm sure they would love it, but, um, I think it's just more of crypto entering its next phase of Being sort of this tangential thing that other people are doing. And maybe people are getting rich on it. And I see people, my friends on Facebook selling stuff that help you, you know, get rich quick to maybe becoming more of a mainstream, uh, type of currency.

Uh, but we'll see. I, I can't imagine our government's gonna be building itself around crypto. But then again, you know, I couldn't imagine Musk going in and see all, all the bills we pay either.

So who knows? Yeah. Yeah.

That's interesting. Yeah. So, so Trump, I guess when he was campaigning, pledged to be the crypto president and promote adoption of digital assets, which is quite a difference from the previous administration, I think, um, under Biden, the regulators were looking at crypto is, is a source of fraud and money laundering.

And were trying To frack down on Well, didn't find in, did they? Uh, they, no, they, well, they sued, uh, Coinbase, Other, there are people sitting in jail. Yeah, They did.

Yeah. And so they, they, they actively looked into it. So of course, we're gonna expect the opposite again, without being too political about it.

And I think now it's just, it's open game. So in a sense, it starts at the top. And, um, it's it, but the fact that Sachs is as, as Mitch pointed out, the czar, not just crypto, but AI is very significant.

And plus, with the work, with the work of Musk and their interest in this topic, I think they're just gonna plow this through and just push this as hard as possible and see how far they can take. Maybe that's how we'll fund fund, uh, rebuilding Gaza. No, I, I heard Steve's, that's actually not, that's not an impossible, uh, of concept.

That's, I I I'm actually thinking they're, they, if they get it, if anybody from the White House watches this, it'll be an action item. Yeah. It'll be announced this afternoon.

So let me Exactly. Don't even go there. Let me, let me play a new game here on text and gang.

I'm going to give you Shimmy's top three outcomes or, or, you know, potential things as a result of this. And you could tell me how likely you think they are. One potential story.

Crypto Zr Sachs says, we should put a portion of our Bitcoin reserves into Trump coin, thereby enriching our sitting president by buying his crypto coin. We don't care about conflicts here anymore. How, how likely do you think that is Now, if you're not conflicted, you're not interested.

Why, why should we start now? Number two, between the tariffs and everything else that we do, the rest of the world gets so pod at us that we go, the world goes off the dollar as the world currency of the, you know, the, the, the standard. And as a result, we damn well better have some Bitcoin in reserve.

'cause that might be the only thing saving us number three. Number three, I mean, you know, likely outcomes. What could go wrong here?

Um, we put a ton of money into our Bitcoin reserves, and the, something happens in the Bitcoin market washes out and we double our $37 trillion debt because all of that money is now worthless. And old man Potter is here, right? To, to move us all into Potterville.

That's a very, that's very possible. Very possible. I I have a fourth one for you.

Go Ahead. Bitcoin moving to the Bitcoin standard or crypto standard back the dollar is highly successful. And then someone in the Trump administration loses the private key to the Bitcoin, the, oh geez.

Oh my God. It's all possible. But, But it was just members, I didn't know what it was.

Yeah. But let me, you know, all of this crypto craziness is leaving, like it always does, right? Mitch, you said there are people selling get rich quick schemes, you know, some poor schnuck in Canada stole $65 million in crypto in some platform hacks.

So on that Security Boulevard, if you're interested in that story, that's a lot. Bitcoin, that's a lot of money even in today's prices. That's a lot of Bitcoin.

So are we, you know, we've all, I think those of us in the tech world have kind of taken for granted that blockchain, which, you know, underlines all of Bitcoin's foundational stability and security that blockchain is what blockchain is. And of course, with Quantum and everything else, we don't know what it's gonna be with that. But, you know, all of this crypto craziness, we're gonna have plenty of people, you know, trying to, trying to make out some money here, you know, be old fashioned, we're stealing it.

I don't think you could have a lot of people withdrawing money outta the bank and putting it in their mattress who don't understand crypto and like, what is going on? You know what, there's an argument to be made for those people. Mm-hmm.

Right? The same way in the Depression, people didn't trust banks. Mm-hmm.

And that's why they kept it in their mattress, Invested in diamonds and gold and Sure. Physical things. Sure.

So, I mean, you know, it'll be re it remains to be seen if you couldn't tell, I'm, it's Funny when Ellen, it is funny, it was, when you mentioned William Jennings, Bryan, I think of like 1900 era and this almost weird fascination that Trump has with, with that era, whether it's McKinley or, or this, like, just kind of going back with tariffs and crypto, it all seems like part of, like this, this theme of of, of a different type of America and a different type of enrichments. Uh, I just, no, But you know, John, it's just something that I keep talking something there because it's a vision of an Imperial America, right? This is when America was America grabbing up the Philippines and Puerto Rico, and, you know, the Mexican American, uh, not Mexican.

The, uh, Spanish American war with all of that American war. Yeah. And, you know, it was an imperial era of, of the robber barons in Imperial.

What's different today? We want Greenland, we want Canada, I want the Panama Canal back. I wanna make Gaza, Las Vegas or the Riviera, whatever, Or, or Havana back in, uh, Cuba.

Yeah. Right? It's, it's a vision that is the mag.

And I'm not, I don't wanna make this political, but part of the magazine is a return to an Imperial America, right? Where we don't care about minorities, and there's no such thing as climate change. I, I sort of think Marco Rubio pulled outta the G 20 meeting because those crazy people in South Africa, they just want to talk about DEI and climate change.

And we don't talk about that. But Yeah. And the difference now is that the, the, the application of, of technology in a weird way through the, the new oligarchs, who are the people who are from Silicon Valley, the billionaires from trillionaire companies, they're, they are now having that impact, like previously, other, other industries that dominated the world economy.

So in a weird technology Is the trains and chipping and coal. Oh, this, no, these may be the new Rockefellers. Vanderbilts, and yes, JB Morgan's, who knows.

Anyway, let's take a break here on, on, uh, text Gang, while we're spreading all this good Cheer around, come back and talk about something else you're watching. com is the leading resource for news analysis and education on challenges facing the cybersecurity industry. com covers all aspects of cybersecurity, including data security, DevSecOps, cloud security, application security, network security, security threats, and more.

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Home of Security Bloggers Network. Welcome back to Textron Gang. Hey, there's a very interesting lawsuit that was filed in San Francisco Federal Court, uh, by an individual who claims that Amazon has been tracking and selling California resident sensitive movements and location versus, uh, via pri precise time stamped latitude and longitude, geolocations sounds like Big Brother to me in even 1984 that we talked about earlier.

This, this lawsuit, um, further states that people in general have not agreed to allow Amazon to collect or sell their sensitive data. And there is no mechanism to opt out of Amazon's data collection practices. So this is kind of playing into this idea that we, the citizens are the product and are fueling these data machines.

And the, the more that we do this, the more that we are being monitored or being surveilled by them, especially companies with vast amounts of data like Google Meta and Amazon. And Lisa, I'm wondering what you think this lawsuit tells us or where you think it might lead to. This is the exact reason why I don't have any of those devices.

I just feel like I don't need anything else listening. But it never occurred to me that they would be, um, giving data away, like name, address, phone numbers, payment information, age IP address, but also, um, they may collect personal information relating to other people presenting at their residence. That scares me.

And that's a concern, especially because of CPRA in California. What's going on there? It's definitely a message that, um, Amazon should, should combat.

But what they were apparently doing was, um, uh, Amazon ads, SDK have been, uh, developers putting them into their mobile apps, getting all this information to advertisers that the user isn't aware of. If somebody's simply in their kitchen wanting to ask the little Pocky P thing, how many, you know, courts in a gallon, uh, they're now thinking about that. And it's actually scary that it's giving away so much information, not just listening to what you're saying, but it's really digging in according to the lawsuit, really personal information that it's sharing with all these advertisers to make your, I guess they would say, make your experience more hyper professionalized and relevant, which is what we want as consumers, but to what, at what price?

Well, it's also invading into our phones too, because apps, well, I think in this particular article, they talked about speed test. You, you enable location services so it knows what, where you are and what provider to best test, you know, the speed test with. But that also gives ads, Google ad, sorry, Amazon ads that are probably Google too, that are, that are running as part of that application.

You know, the ads in the app, uh, then have look access to location information. And that's part of what they're collecting. And that's, there's also just even on the iPhone, I don't know about Android, there is a frequently visited location setting in your settings, um, that will, it keeps track of, you know, you have a habit of going to this Starbucks and this, you know, this, uh, gro grocery store and you know, your home or whatever it is.

And so in those locations that you frequent and then can also personalize based on that as well. So it, there's a lot of data that is being collected about us that we give away. We say we're okay with 'cause it's, but it isn't specific broad, generalized collecting information about us.

Right. There's never been a better tracking Oh, sorry. So go ahead.

No, go ahead. Go ahead, Go ahead. I was just gonna say, there's never been a better tracking device for a human being than a smartphone because it's a fixed to us, and we're constantly honest.

So if anyone has any interest in what we are, who we're, what we're doing, just, just, just follow this, the data on the smartphone. Oh, it seems to be following us everywhere. I don't know why it happens, but Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's inescapable nowadays. Uh, this reminds me of when you go to search something on Google and then it asks you your device location, so you would have to put it in, in order to filter your search.

So it's like, it's like a double-edged sword. Like, Mitch, you said that, you know, it's required to personalize the, uh, results for the customers, which is what we want. Uh, but at the same time, it's also like, I feel like if companies could, uh, find a way to really handle the data well and not really give away without the consent of the customers, that would be nice to begin with.

Uh, so yeah. Um, this is quite scary for me as well, if it is, uh, what the say is. I mean, I know when I get in my car in the morning, it, my Apple maps pops up and says, you know, go into the office with the address, and when I get in my car in the afternoon, it wants to take me home.

So obviously it's tracking where I go at what time, but, but here's my point. Look, more power to this guy who filed the lawsuit. I assume it's gonna be a class action at some point, not just a person.

I believe so, but, but here's the key. I, and I wish I had polling for people watching this, but guys, didn't, we already think this is happening. This is not new.

It's not new. Right? Right.

You know, my wife and I earlier this week, we're going to New York later in February, and my wife said, you know, I looked at the weather, it's gonna be freezing up there. It might snow. We don't really have any boots.

And both of our phones immediately started showing boot, boot ads on the webs, on Amazon, on, on the web, on Google search, everything. So it's happening, and it's a fact of digital life that this is what, what's going on. The question is, do we consent?

Is it being done without our, our consent? Consent so that the next time some Chinese company wakes up with a new ai, we say, oh, they took our information without our consent. No, everyone's been taking our information without our consent, and we don't seem to give a damn.

That's the irony of this, is that on one hand we are, we're, we're up in arms about what deep seek and what it's doing with data. I mean, understandably, is it good if it's being fair being, being relayed to China, but yet this is going on in our country all the time At a great moment. And, and here's another thing all the time, there's a generational element to this.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I read an article in the Atlantic the other day about like, where did things go off the tracks in America between, you know, it was about the falling of the Tower of Babel and maybe building Babel back, ba whatever.

And, um, you know, and it's about social media. They, they, the, the author blamed social media because it, at some point around 2011, it crossed from like pure innocent, uh, Facebook. What was the predic test of Facebook?

The other one we used to use MySpace. Oh, um, MySpace. MySpace.

It was a great way to catch up with old friends. But now social media becomes your, your digital gang, your digital tribe, right? Mm-hmm.

You hang out with your tribe and you, you do digital warfare against the other tribes. And, you know, and it just breeds distrust in anyone who's not in your tribe. But, but, but the key, the key thing about it is it's so generational where I'm not saying you're old Mitchell or me, but we, we, we, you know, the idea of them collecting or invading our privacy, like without my permission, kind of p****s me off.

Mm-hmm. Well, it's, it's, it's the tendency of, uh, filling, filling the vacuum as far as you can fill it with what you're, you think you might be able to do versus what you're explicitly Allowed to do. Yeah.

But younger people don't, are they assume, they assume that there's no right to pri Well, the Supreme Court said there was no right to privacy, right? In, uh, in the, well, let's not go there. But the right to privacy in younger people is, is almost non-existent or much, much lower than maybe Mitch or I or John, right?

Yeah, yeah. Willing This to give it up. I, I think they've, I think they've entered into like this tacit agreement that there is a trade off, right?

For the convenience Yes. Sake of, so it's about convenience, right? Yes.

So one hand your life is easier, but you make compromises until you are affected in some way, maybe Id theft or whatever. And then you become interested to the other extreme, then you become alarmed. And I think this is just a pattern that's been going on for decades, actually.

But, but no, but back to this article, and I'll try to find the article, but it's probably behind a paywall on the Atlantic. But the, the point he was making was in Facebook when it switched, when this whole thing switched on us and made us the monsters we are today is all of a sudden, for some reason, we became comfortable sharing intimate details of our life with strangers. It used to be, you know, if you were at the bar with your friends, your buddies, you could talk to your buddies.

It was a small group. I saw them. Um, the women were out doing whatever you, you're doing.

So at a bar or at a dinner, you could talk to your girlfriends, right? Sag Lisa, you had your, your girlfriends that you did intimate secrets with. Well, but at some point it, we crossed a chasm of sharing our intimate sec secrets with all of our online touchpoints, which may, may be in the thousands.

And some of us just put it on public anyway, not even caring who sees it, or friends of friends of friends of friends see it. And once you cross that chasm where you are just putting it out there, of course, what do you expect? No one's going to use it.

No one's gonna see it. No one's gonna do anything. So that, that was the switch that went off around 2011, according to this article that, you know, just really hyper accelerated the tribalism and the, the craziness, right?

And, and, and along with that is a lack of trust of what used to be trusted sources, such as the mainstream media, right? Because everyone in your tribe says, don't trust that. And let me show you some examples.

And they may have real examples or not, but who knows? And who cares, right? And it, it, it's a fascinating article and, and it, by the way, it's not a right or a left article.

It another Yeah, no, it's, it, it can, because It's interesting. You look at the, at the very far right and the very far left, you know what, the demographics are the same. They're white people who make a lot of money, and they're the loudest.

8% is far left, 6% is far right. They're the loudest people online. That whole middle Facebook used to do.

Yeah. Facebook used to do this. Like Cheryl Sandberg, I mean, we used to interview her a lot, and she would always talk about, if you really wanna be engaged with your audience and you really wanna build on that audience, you have to share more.

The more you talk about yourself, the more you share in general, the better the product is that your, your benefit, you benefit from all the likes, you know, like this addictive Behavior. Well, we could fine tune our algorithms, right? To give you what you want, right?

Yes. Well, this is to personalize it. This is the result.

It, it's gonna be interesting. As I said, the courts, the courts have been whittling away a right to privacy for some time, right? Including Roe, overturning Roe.

And so it's gonna be in, well, San Francisco federal court's probably a little more liberal than most, but it's gonna be interesting to see, do we in fact have a right to privacy to our digital footprint? And that has all kinds of implications. That's the, uh, GDPR to bring up regulation.

It doesn't even necessarily protect us with this or provide productions with this, because it does mention location information, but only as far as a gateway to figuring out other things about you. I don't think you can say this is P ii. No.

Well, I, I, I think you could. The, the fact that I go to a certain store every Monday and Tuesday, I think that's personal information. Well, yeah, there's Things that can lead to data that can lead to identifying who you are individually is PII, so it's not classified as PII that's protected.

It's classified as data that could lead to data that can determine who you are. So it's kinda secondary right now. Maybe that'll change, I don't Know.

Interesting, interesting. Guys, what a great text on gang on this Fine Friday. We, we need to end it.

I've gotta get over to New Orleans and, uh, you know, I got a couple of referees to talk to. So, um, Start Bitcoin some Coin in New, I'll put some coin on on this slide. Yeah.

Uh, Lisa, John Sona, Mitch, thanks for joining in. Thank you for watching. As usual, we have tech drunk TV all, well, not all day, but for the next couple hours after our gang show today, stay tuned for that.

Um, we'll be back Monday maybe talking about the Super Bowl or what our favorite ads were. Uh, will they be the AI ones? I don't know.

I always liked the Budweiser Clydesdale commercials. They, they do a good job with them. But for now, that's it for this.

Have a great weekend. Enjoy the Super Bowl, everyone. This is Alan Shimmel for Techstrong.

We're outta here.