1 00:00:09,876 --> 00:00:12,178 Welcome to User Friendly 2.0 2 00:00:12,178 --> 00:00:15,949 with host Bill Sikkens, Technology architect. 3 00:00:22,022 --> 00:00:24,257 And this is User Friendly 2.0. 4 00:00:24,257 --> 00:00:26,259 I am your host Bill Sikkens. Welcome. 5 00:00:26,259 --> 00:00:28,895 Welcome to this week's show. We're glad to have you here. 6 00:00:28,895 --> 00:00:31,097 Bill. Gretchen. Welcome. 7 00:00:31,097 --> 00:00:31,664 Hello there. 8 00:00:31,664 --> 00:00:35,402 So we're already on our way to the end of June. 9 00:00:35,402 --> 00:00:37,370 We've got some comic cons coming up. 10 00:00:37,370 --> 00:00:38,705 Rose city is. 11 00:00:38,705 --> 00:00:42,175 And Bradley Weston, who handles a lot of our East Coast 12 00:00:42,242 --> 00:00:45,578 things, is traveling right now and picking up the world's 13 00:00:45,578 --> 00:00:48,815 largest toy museum, I believe, and Comic-Con on his end. 14 00:00:48,815 --> 00:00:50,717 And we'll be covering that in future weeks too. 15 00:00:50,717 --> 00:00:54,587 So that will be coming up as we move ahead. 16 00:00:54,621 --> 00:00:59,426 So how are things with you guys getting ready for the July 4th? Yep. 17 00:01:00,427 --> 00:01:05,031 Gretchen, do you have your private fire department in order, I wish. 18 00:01:07,233 --> 00:01:11,304 So Gretchen lives in a place where they do not have sound ordinances 19 00:01:11,304 --> 00:01:14,340 and or any restrictions on fireworks, it seems. 20 00:01:14,441 --> 00:01:15,375 Yeah, every year 21 00:01:15,375 --> 00:01:19,212 it's like being in the middle of a, you know, a war battle battle. 22 00:01:19,212 --> 00:01:20,080 Yeah, yeah. 23 00:01:20,080 --> 00:01:24,417 So last year, they managed to catch the power box on fire 24 00:01:24,417 --> 00:01:29,722 and when it was burning, apparently had 15 people who were intoxicated calling 911. 25 00:01:29,756 --> 00:01:32,992 Every five was it was three, three drunk people 26 00:01:33,259 --> 00:01:36,796 calling 911 like 30 times. 27 00:01:36,830 --> 00:01:37,330 Oh, that's funny 28 00:01:37,330 --> 00:01:40,900 because according to the blotter report that they posted, it said 15. 29 00:01:41,468 --> 00:01:44,471 Oh, I got that number. 30 00:01:46,906 --> 00:01:50,510 So anyway, what do we have in the news this week? 31 00:01:51,144 --> 00:01:58,618 Well, most pros have seen AI hallucinations in IT operations. 32 00:01:58,818 --> 00:02:02,755 So, you know, every time I think that we've talked about AI 33 00:02:02,755 --> 00:02:05,959 and hallucinations and we're kind of done with that topic, 34 00:02:05,959 --> 00:02:07,026 it seems to come up again. 35 00:02:07,026 --> 00:02:11,431 And before I dive into this story, I'm just going to make this one comment. 36 00:02:11,464 --> 00:02:15,335 There is nothing else that I am aware of that in business, 37 00:02:15,335 --> 00:02:19,038 people would just blindly trust to do something that that could be 38 00:02:19,038 --> 00:02:22,575 any kind of a machine or computer or even another employee. 39 00:02:22,642 --> 00:02:23,710 You always check it. 40 00:02:23,710 --> 00:02:26,913 But for some reason with AI, it seems like in a lot of 41 00:02:26,913 --> 00:02:30,350 these scenarios, people are just accepting it at face value. 42 00:02:30,383 --> 00:02:33,019 AI is an amazing tool. It can do a lot of stuff, 43 00:02:33,019 --> 00:02:35,755 but like anything else, it isn't correct all the time. 44 00:02:35,755 --> 00:02:38,691 And this is one of those stories that goes along with this 45 00:02:38,691 --> 00:02:42,362 that could become a little bit scary if it's not handled right. 46 00:02:42,362 --> 00:02:46,666 So what's happening is, is AI is being used more and more in IT 47 00:02:46,699 --> 00:02:48,401 operations, as the headline says. 48 00:02:48,401 --> 00:02:51,671 So basically what this comes down to and I'll just talk about, you know, 49 00:02:51,704 --> 00:02:53,773 this is old man shouting at the cloud stuff here. 50 00:02:53,773 --> 00:02:56,142 I know I'm that age, so I accept that. 51 00:02:56,142 --> 00:02:59,712 But when I started out, you know, back in the days of vacuum tube servers, okay, 52 00:02:59,712 --> 00:03:04,184 it wasn't quite that bad, but you weren't in the punch card era. 53 00:03:04,217 --> 00:03:06,753 No, no, but I was transferring people out of it. 54 00:03:06,753 --> 00:03:09,489 First bank I worked for, that was part of what we did. 55 00:03:09,489 --> 00:03:10,957 So that dates me a little bit. 56 00:03:10,957 --> 00:03:14,661 But in any event, what happens is, is you have an AI team 57 00:03:14,661 --> 00:03:17,830 usually that handles back end operations. 58 00:03:17,897 --> 00:03:22,135 And these are people that take care of maintaining servers, infrastructure, 59 00:03:22,135 --> 00:03:25,772 that kind of thing, fixing stuff when it breaks all of that. 60 00:03:25,772 --> 00:03:29,242 And part of doing that, we've had tools for a long time 61 00:03:29,275 --> 00:03:33,079 that will monitor the network and tell us if something is not working. 62 00:03:33,079 --> 00:03:34,380 So, you know, you've lost. 63 00:03:34,380 --> 00:03:38,585 I work for a bank, so you've lost branch shown, so they've dropped off the network. 64 00:03:38,618 --> 00:03:39,752 The idea being that 65 00:03:39,752 --> 00:03:43,957 if you can see these things sooner, then having somebody call in and telling you. 66 00:03:43,990 --> 00:03:45,091 Hey, we've stopped working. 67 00:03:45,091 --> 00:03:49,996 It becomes a situation where you can get all these things faster and time is money. 68 00:03:50,263 --> 00:03:54,434 Well, what they're doing now is taking this to the next level, 69 00:03:54,434 --> 00:03:57,470 where it is not only monitoring these things, but 70 00:03:57,470 --> 00:04:00,740 also making adjustments based on what it's monitoring. 71 00:04:00,773 --> 00:04:04,944 So if it sees that the branches gone down before contacting a human, it might go in 72 00:04:04,944 --> 00:04:07,146 and try to reestablish it and all that kind of thing. 73 00:04:07,146 --> 00:04:09,582 Now again, this can save time. 74 00:04:09,582 --> 00:04:13,019 But at the end of the day, if the AI is hallucinating and finds 75 00:04:13,019 --> 00:04:17,557 something that isn't actually wrong, it could also bring in other problems. 76 00:04:17,557 --> 00:04:20,994 And this is something that we're just going to need to watch out for 77 00:04:20,994 --> 00:04:24,063 and make absolutely sure that doesn't happen 78 00:04:24,063 --> 00:04:28,268 and not turn too much control over this Hilo Apple computer. 79 00:04:28,301 --> 00:04:31,938 You know, when it comes down to these things, you know, I think 80 00:04:32,138 --> 00:04:37,977 I was reading somewhere that it was about 9% hallucinations and errors. 81 00:04:38,278 --> 00:04:39,779 Yeah. AI right now. 82 00:04:39,779 --> 00:04:42,315 And that sounds about right. 83 00:04:42,315 --> 00:04:42,615 You know, 84 00:04:42,615 --> 00:04:43,916 it just it's a situation 85 00:04:43,916 --> 00:04:47,020 where you've got to watch what you're doing and go from there. 86 00:04:47,020 --> 00:04:50,023 And this comes from Alec called Help Security. 87 00:04:50,156 --> 00:04:53,159 And I don't think we've ever covered anything from them before, but 88 00:04:53,593 --> 00:04:55,662 article does go into a lot of good detail on this. 89 00:04:55,662 --> 00:04:57,230 And it's just, again, a situation. 90 00:04:57,230 --> 00:05:01,134 It's not saying you can't use AI, but it's saying don't blindly 91 00:05:01,134 --> 00:05:02,502 turn your life over to it. 92 00:05:02,502 --> 00:05:06,339 You know, I can see doing that with a board collective 93 00:05:06,339 --> 00:05:09,442 or something like that, that's actually, you know, independently intelligent. 94 00:05:09,442 --> 00:05:12,278 But don't turn it over to AI. Not yet. 95 00:05:15,748 --> 00:05:18,451 Although Alto warns Global Protect 96 00:05:18,451 --> 00:05:21,654 VPN floor is being actively exploited. 97 00:05:22,355 --> 00:05:24,257 All right, so that's a mouthful of a headline. 98 00:05:24,257 --> 00:05:27,026 And when you dive into what we're talking about first here 99 00:05:27,026 --> 00:05:30,229 for anybody that doesn't know, a VPN stands for virtual private network. 100 00:05:30,229 --> 00:05:32,465 And these are used for a lot of different things. 101 00:05:32,465 --> 00:05:38,304 One of them is encrypting data between a source that's private and your computer. 102 00:05:38,304 --> 00:05:40,773 So in other words, let's say you're on your laptop. 103 00:05:40,773 --> 00:05:43,509 You go to a coffee place that has an open network, 104 00:05:43,509 --> 00:05:46,713 and you want to work on your stuff from your office. 105 00:05:47,113 --> 00:05:49,816 You would use a VPN in this situation to encrypt that data. 106 00:05:49,816 --> 00:05:53,419 So even though you're on a public network and going over the internet, 107 00:05:53,453 --> 00:05:56,989 the data is still being protected. 108 00:05:56,989 --> 00:06:00,360 So what's happening here is that like anything 109 00:06:00,360 --> 00:06:03,563 else, the VPN software can have problems. 110 00:06:03,563 --> 00:06:07,133 And they're having an issue here where the cookies 111 00:06:07,133 --> 00:06:10,436 that are created by your browser or by the website you're going to 112 00:06:10,470 --> 00:06:16,376 are being able to be basically intercepted and changed on the point of the VPN. 113 00:06:16,509 --> 00:06:19,746 So to explain what I'm talking about with that is I'm not talking about 114 00:06:19,779 --> 00:06:23,082 chocolate chip cookies from the grocery store be a lot easier if I was. 115 00:06:23,216 --> 00:06:26,052 But what this is, is when you go to a website 116 00:06:26,052 --> 00:06:29,355 and authenticator, do other things, but in this case authenticate. 117 00:06:29,555 --> 00:06:32,625 The website keeps a small piece of data on your computer 118 00:06:32,625 --> 00:06:35,762 with one method of authentication using what are called cookies. 119 00:06:35,895 --> 00:06:38,231 And this information stays behind. 120 00:06:38,231 --> 00:06:42,535 So the next time you go to your work site or whatever website, 121 00:06:42,535 --> 00:06:46,072 that's how it knows that we don't need to go through third party authentication 122 00:06:46,072 --> 00:06:49,776 or, you know, another method of multi-factor authentication. 123 00:06:49,776 --> 00:06:52,478 But when you go to another machine, you do okay. 124 00:06:52,478 --> 00:06:54,480 So that's just a convenience things. 125 00:06:54,480 --> 00:06:55,481 It does a lot more than this. 126 00:06:55,481 --> 00:06:57,650 And I know in some of the comments we're going to be talking about this, 127 00:06:57,650 --> 00:06:58,985 but I'm not trying to dive that deep. 128 00:06:58,985 --> 00:07:01,521 Just more of an explanation of what's going on here. 129 00:07:01,521 --> 00:07:03,523 So what they're able to do is the bad 130 00:07:03,523 --> 00:07:06,692 guys can get in and modify these cookies in the VPN. 131 00:07:06,692 --> 00:07:09,862 So in other words, the server you're going putting walnuts in the cookies. 132 00:07:09,896 --> 00:07:11,297 They're putting walnuts in the cookies. 133 00:07:11,297 --> 00:07:11,898 Yeah. 134 00:07:11,898 --> 00:07:14,400 And everybody that likes walnuts don't write in. 135 00:07:16,502 --> 00:07:19,639 But what's happening with that is 136 00:07:19,672 --> 00:07:23,176 the server is getting the idea that it's already authenticated 137 00:07:23,443 --> 00:07:25,912 and that your machine doesn't need to read. 138 00:07:25,912 --> 00:07:29,415 And then it can do things on a basic level, like get in there 139 00:07:29,415 --> 00:07:33,186 and be able to access the system that you've already authenticated to, 140 00:07:33,219 --> 00:07:36,222 to much worse things, doing things like a man in the middle attack where it's 141 00:07:36,255 --> 00:07:38,558 actually diverting information, changing what's going to you, 142 00:07:38,558 --> 00:07:40,960 changing what's going to the server, and a lot more. 143 00:07:40,960 --> 00:07:43,963 So this is something to be aware of. 144 00:07:43,963 --> 00:07:46,866 It is something that is being worked on being fixed. 145 00:07:46,866 --> 00:07:51,437 There's a lot of different providers that provide VPN services out there too, 146 00:07:51,471 --> 00:07:53,339 so different ones will be different. 147 00:07:53,339 --> 00:07:56,642 And what I would suggest is if you're using this on a private network, 148 00:07:56,642 --> 00:07:57,610 like from your office, talk 149 00:07:57,610 --> 00:08:00,980 to your IT department and tell them there's a concern of this. 150 00:08:00,980 --> 00:08:04,917 Is there anything you should do if you're using a public VPN, 151 00:08:05,218 --> 00:08:09,555 like many of the ones that are out there, check with them on their support 152 00:08:09,555 --> 00:08:10,957 and see if there's anything you should do there. 153 00:08:10,957 --> 00:08:13,960 There's not one solution to this that I can cover here. 154 00:08:14,060 --> 00:08:17,430 The best thing is to check with your provider until this is fixed. 155 00:08:17,997 --> 00:08:18,798 All right. 156 00:08:18,798 --> 00:08:22,735 Struggling Pizza Hut restaurant chain will be sold 157 00:08:22,802 --> 00:08:25,771 for $2.7 billion. 158 00:08:25,872 --> 00:08:27,740 Yeah. You know, from a nostalgia thing. 159 00:08:27,740 --> 00:08:29,842 I still remember Pizza Hut walking in there. 160 00:08:29,842 --> 00:08:33,145 It was like this dark environment that was, you know, done up 161 00:08:33,145 --> 00:08:35,114 and you had your pizza and you had that weird game 162 00:08:35,114 --> 00:08:38,918 where you shot a skeet shooting or something and, 163 00:08:39,552 --> 00:08:43,122 you know, and you usually had Pac-Man at the, at the table. 164 00:08:43,155 --> 00:08:46,158 Okay, I'm dating myself, but that's what I remember. 165 00:08:46,659 --> 00:08:51,197 Pizza hut restaurants like this being and with delivery culture, 166 00:08:51,430 --> 00:08:53,432 they haven't kept up, which is kind of an odd thing 167 00:08:53,432 --> 00:08:54,300 considering the pizza 168 00:08:54,300 --> 00:08:57,303 was one of the first kinds of food you could get delivered, really. 169 00:08:57,470 --> 00:08:59,639 But I didn't know. 170 00:08:59,639 --> 00:09:02,642 You know, their restaurants are becoming more and more outdated. 171 00:09:02,742 --> 00:09:04,110 They're not keeping up. 172 00:09:04,110 --> 00:09:06,078 And the thing of it is, even though they do delivery, 173 00:09:06,078 --> 00:09:09,148 a lot of their business does rely on people coming into the restaurant 174 00:09:09,148 --> 00:09:13,553 and doing what you would expect them to do order a pizza, 175 00:09:14,053 --> 00:09:18,791 you know, by beverages and upsell and all that kind of stuff. So 176 00:09:19,892 --> 00:09:20,860 the company is 177 00:09:20,860 --> 00:09:23,863 being acquired by a Chinese company 178 00:09:23,863 --> 00:09:28,601 called Yum Chinese Holding Incorporated, and this is part of yum! 179 00:09:28,601 --> 00:09:32,471 Brands, which also owns Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell and some others. 180 00:09:32,939 --> 00:09:36,776 And they're going to go through, I guess, and try to revamp this. 181 00:09:36,876 --> 00:09:38,377 You never know what happens with these mergers. 182 00:09:38,377 --> 00:09:40,146 They could do anything from trying 183 00:09:40,146 --> 00:09:43,382 to bring the stores into the future to completely shutting down the brand 184 00:09:43,416 --> 00:09:46,352 or something in between. So we'll have to see what happens. 185 00:09:46,352 --> 00:09:48,387 I would think pain in the billions for it. 186 00:09:48,387 --> 00:09:49,589 They're probably going to do something 187 00:09:49,589 --> 00:09:53,759 more with it than just shut it down, hopefully. 188 00:09:53,893 --> 00:09:57,096 So we're going to see a KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut. 189 00:09:57,830 --> 00:10:00,800 That is very much an option, very much an option. 190 00:10:00,800 --> 00:10:03,836 Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut isn't a what's the one? 191 00:10:03,836 --> 00:10:07,540 The root beer one, I think that's in there too w w yeah, 192 00:10:07,773 --> 00:10:13,012 because I've seen and w KFC's I've seen KFC, Taco Bell's. 193 00:10:13,079 --> 00:10:14,013 Yeah. 194 00:10:14,013 --> 00:10:14,280 All right. 195 00:10:14,280 --> 00:10:17,850 Well, your one stop fast food shop that we really need that. 196 00:10:17,850 --> 00:10:20,453 So those are usually at truck stop. 197 00:10:20,453 --> 00:10:23,356 Have you noticed that? Yeah. Yeah yeah. 198 00:10:26,025 --> 00:10:27,393 PGE is 199 00:10:27,393 --> 00:10:30,396 upgrading its lines using special technology. 200 00:10:30,596 --> 00:10:34,467 So one note on this we're talking PGE not PG 201 00:10:34,600 --> 00:10:37,570 and E not like that's confusing or anything. 202 00:10:37,903 --> 00:10:40,373 Is Portland General Electric 203 00:10:40,373 --> 00:10:43,542 PPG and a specific graft and I mean a specific. 204 00:10:43,576 --> 00:10:44,777 What is that. 205 00:10:44,777 --> 00:10:47,079 Extortion. Grafting. Extortion. Yeah. 206 00:10:47,079 --> 00:10:49,215 No I mean something else. 207 00:10:49,215 --> 00:10:51,784 I believe it's Pacific glass and glass. 208 00:10:51,784 --> 00:10:54,120 Gas and electric. I can talk today. 209 00:10:54,120 --> 00:10:56,188 Anyway, they are two completely different companies. 210 00:10:56,188 --> 00:11:00,192 And when I first moved back to Portland, I didn't know that and was trying 211 00:11:00,192 --> 00:11:02,828 to set up an account through Penny and having problems 212 00:11:02,828 --> 00:11:05,865 because my address in Oregon was not coming up on their system. 213 00:11:05,865 --> 00:11:08,901 So we're talking the one in Oregon here. 214 00:11:10,503 --> 00:11:14,440 And Gretchen, this is a story you found, which is kind of cool. 215 00:11:14,473 --> 00:11:16,876 And tell us a little bit about what's going on. 216 00:11:16,876 --> 00:11:17,176 Okay. 217 00:11:17,176 --> 00:11:21,113 Well, first of all, this company seems to like to send 218 00:11:21,313 --> 00:11:26,352 informative emails to their customers, which has actually been kind of fun. 219 00:11:26,352 --> 00:11:33,225 And what they're doing is they're trying to upgrade the lines that 220 00:11:33,225 --> 00:11:37,096 where the electricity travels and they're putting like this weird 221 00:11:37,096 --> 00:11:41,233 coating on the outside of the of the electrical lines, 222 00:11:41,233 --> 00:11:45,638 and it's supposed to make it more effective, you know, 223 00:11:45,671 --> 00:11:49,742 hopefully, maybe we can get one of them to talk to us about this. 224 00:11:49,775 --> 00:11:50,509 It's not a bad idea. 225 00:11:50,509 --> 00:11:53,879 I'll send out the invitation because this is a cool technology. 226 00:11:53,879 --> 00:11:56,882 And it's also something that, from what I've been reading about, 227 00:11:56,882 --> 00:12:01,187 it is a retrofit, which helps in a lot of ways. 228 00:12:01,187 --> 00:12:03,789 You're not having to replace the infrastructure, you're upgrading it 229 00:12:03,789 --> 00:12:05,224 so you don't have the waste time 230 00:12:05,224 --> 00:12:08,094 and purchasing new materials that would be involved in that. 231 00:12:08,094 --> 00:12:12,298 And something like this could really have a lot of benefit. 232 00:12:12,598 --> 00:12:17,670 So I think that I like seeing that they're looking at technologies like this. 233 00:12:17,670 --> 00:12:19,839 And like you said, I think we need to have someone 234 00:12:19,839 --> 00:12:23,042 come on and talk a little bit more detail about this to be able to describe 235 00:12:23,042 --> 00:12:25,010 exactly how they're doing, what they're doing. 236 00:12:25,010 --> 00:12:27,079 But it is something that's nice that's out there. 237 00:12:27,079 --> 00:12:29,548 So yeah, I'll look into getting someone on the show for that. 238 00:12:31,517 --> 00:12:32,251 Oh geez. 239 00:12:32,251 --> 00:12:35,387 A mysterious cold blob in the ocean 240 00:12:35,387 --> 00:12:38,390 has puzzled scientists. 241 00:12:38,657 --> 00:12:42,194 Well, you know, mysterious cold blobs could puzzle a scientist 242 00:12:42,828 --> 00:12:45,898 or, a little more important, anybody that hasn't seen the movie 243 00:12:45,931 --> 00:12:50,102 Day After Tomorrow, it's a disaster film that came out, oh, 15 years ago 244 00:12:50,102 --> 00:12:50,469 or something. 245 00:12:50,469 --> 00:12:51,771 Now I'm probably more 246 00:12:51,771 --> 00:12:55,708 it kind of goes into what would happen if this really went the wrong way. 247 00:12:55,708 --> 00:12:59,578 And what this is referring to is there's an area in the ocean 248 00:12:59,578 --> 00:13:04,283 that's cooled by about one degrees Celsius since 1900. 249 00:13:04,316 --> 00:13:08,621 Okay, that might not sound like a lot, but what it's relating to and what science 250 00:13:08,721 --> 00:13:11,190 is are considering this to be a warning sign 251 00:13:11,190 --> 00:13:15,661 of, is the fact that there is a system of ocean currents. 252 00:13:15,661 --> 00:13:16,662 The basically brings 253 00:13:16,662 --> 00:13:20,599 heat from the equator in the ocean back up to the areas of the North Pole. 254 00:13:20,699 --> 00:13:24,436 That's what keeps Europe as a temperate climate, as well as the climate 255 00:13:24,470 --> 00:13:27,740 on the East Coast, North America and stuff like that. 256 00:13:27,873 --> 00:13:30,676 And if this was to shut down, he wouldn't be coming north. 257 00:13:30,676 --> 00:13:33,679 And, you know, we could go into a bit of an ice age. 258 00:13:33,679 --> 00:13:36,582 And with climate change, which is changing 259 00:13:36,582 --> 00:13:39,585 the temperature of the water in the ocean, in some places, 260 00:13:39,752 --> 00:13:42,588 the idea day after tomorrow was exploring was, 261 00:13:42,588 --> 00:13:45,558 what if these systems of currents completely shut down? 262 00:13:45,558 --> 00:13:49,228 Well, bad things would happen, you know? 263 00:13:49,261 --> 00:13:53,465 And while it doesn't seem like it's going to be going quite to that extreme with 264 00:13:53,465 --> 00:13:57,937 something like this, it is a situation where we're seeing documental evidence 265 00:13:58,137 --> 00:14:02,775 that there is a sign that something could go very wrong here. 266 00:14:03,075 --> 00:14:03,876 Yeah, well, 267 00:14:03,876 --> 00:14:08,347 I mean, think about all the weird stuff that's floating around in the ocean. 268 00:14:08,380 --> 00:14:11,617 Those those, like islands of garbage. Yeah. 269 00:14:11,650 --> 00:14:17,122 That's got to affect how the water cools or heat, you know? 270 00:14:17,122 --> 00:14:20,092 So it's 271 00:14:20,159 --> 00:14:23,362 it's kind of like putting maybe like asphalt on the ground. 272 00:14:23,362 --> 00:14:26,332 If you put asphalt on the ground, it 273 00:14:26,332 --> 00:14:29,668 kind of like, collects the heat and heats everything up. 274 00:14:29,702 --> 00:14:31,670 Heat islands. That's probably the garlic. 275 00:14:31,670 --> 00:14:34,874 Why wouldn't the garbage do the same thing to the ocean? 276 00:14:34,907 --> 00:14:36,842 Yeah. Why do you are probably is. 277 00:14:36,842 --> 00:14:37,543 And you know 278 00:14:37,543 --> 00:14:38,344 and I don't I don't know 279 00:14:38,344 --> 00:14:41,347 if that's affecting this directly, but it's another big problem 280 00:14:41,347 --> 00:14:44,583 when you think about the garbage islands like larger than the state of Texas. 281 00:14:44,583 --> 00:14:47,319 I heard somewhere I'd have to double check that, but it's huge. 282 00:14:47,319 --> 00:14:48,254 You're kidding. 283 00:14:48,254 --> 00:14:49,955 The amount that they said was in there. 284 00:14:49,955 --> 00:14:54,293 I'll find out the exact comparison and talk about it a little bit later. 285 00:14:54,293 --> 00:14:54,860 Oh, wow. 286 00:14:54,860 --> 00:14:56,028 I didn't know that. 287 00:14:56,028 --> 00:14:58,197 The amount of garbage, let's just say. 288 00:14:58,197 --> 00:15:01,800 And it's all in one place, it's it's gathering. 289 00:15:01,800 --> 00:15:01,934 Yeah. 290 00:15:01,934 --> 00:15:03,469 It's almost like I don't know, the 291 00:15:03,469 --> 00:15:07,439 there's links of it, but it's almost like it's attracted to itself or something. 292 00:15:07,473 --> 00:15:09,875 So so do the ships. 293 00:15:09,875 --> 00:15:10,342 Oh wow. 294 00:15:10,342 --> 00:15:11,510 This is a whole big story 295 00:15:11,510 --> 00:15:12,745 because I would think the ships 296 00:15:12,745 --> 00:15:14,079 would try to avoid that, 297 00:15:14,079 --> 00:15:17,549 because I would think that would clog up the propellers and everything. 298 00:15:17,716 --> 00:15:20,019 Well, of course it would. Yeah. Wow. 299 00:15:20,019 --> 00:15:21,253 You have to navigate around it. 300 00:15:21,253 --> 00:15:25,057 And again, I'm not an expert on that, but I do know that 301 00:15:25,090 --> 00:15:28,627 having a garbage island that's very large is just going to be a bad thing anyway. 302 00:15:28,661 --> 00:15:33,265 So anyway, yeah, on the story with the cold spot, CNN was reporting 303 00:15:33,265 --> 00:15:37,469 that and is definitely something that if there was to be a complete 304 00:15:37,469 --> 00:15:41,540 shutdown of these currents, it would a lot of bad things would happen. 305 00:15:41,540 --> 00:15:41,974 And you 306 00:15:41,974 --> 00:15:45,878 unless you wanted to, you know, to live in a very cold climate would move south. 307 00:15:45,878 --> 00:15:50,316 But you can only imagine what would happen if something like that went down 308 00:15:50,582 --> 00:15:52,351 anyway. 309 00:15:52,351 --> 00:15:56,221 Listener question that's come in, and one that I have to make a correction on, 310 00:15:56,221 --> 00:16:02,561 something that I talked about previously is something to do with Nintendo. And 311 00:16:03,495 --> 00:16:05,197 we've talked about in the past 312 00:16:05,197 --> 00:16:08,734 the idea of physical versus digital media. 313 00:16:09,101 --> 00:16:12,071 And one of the things that I had talked about was that 314 00:16:12,071 --> 00:16:16,875 I really wasn't too excited about a switch to because it was digital only. 315 00:16:16,875 --> 00:16:20,312 And where I'd gotten that was from some of the initial demonstration units, 316 00:16:20,312 --> 00:16:23,315 as well as the press that came out when this was 317 00:16:23,615 --> 00:16:26,251 something that was first being discussed. 318 00:16:26,251 --> 00:16:29,388 Well, I decided that I wanted to maybe 319 00:16:29,388 --> 00:16:32,624 break down because the Zelda franchise is something I really like, 320 00:16:32,658 --> 00:16:37,429 and I need to get a switch to to run the newest version and emailed. 321 00:16:37,863 --> 00:16:42,234 I think it was Best Buy or somebody in their business sales department asking, 322 00:16:42,267 --> 00:16:43,469 you know, what can I do? 323 00:16:43,469 --> 00:16:45,504 And how do we play old games and all this kind of stuff? 324 00:16:45,504 --> 00:16:49,942 And got a very perplexed email going, well, there is a physical cartridge 325 00:16:49,942 --> 00:16:52,911 slot in the switch to it's in the upper right of it. So. 326 00:16:55,381 --> 00:16:57,683 Reggie, 327 00:16:57,683 --> 00:16:59,151 but this is a good 328 00:16:59,151 --> 00:17:04,556 thing, you know, and to me and actually, I have to say thinking about this 329 00:17:04,556 --> 00:17:08,627 a little bit Nintendo good, bad or otherwise, whatever you think of 330 00:17:08,627 --> 00:17:11,630 Mario and company has always been 331 00:17:12,431 --> 00:17:16,535 maybe a proponent would be the right word of physical media, and it seemed strange 332 00:17:16,535 --> 00:17:19,705 that they were going away from that in the switch to. 333 00:17:19,738 --> 00:17:22,641 Although that does seem to be the direction of some of the others are going. 334 00:17:22,641 --> 00:17:24,476 That absolutely is not the case here. 335 00:17:24,476 --> 00:17:24,910 You can do 336 00:17:24,910 --> 00:17:29,114 digital downloads and that's fine, but you can buy a game and have 337 00:17:29,114 --> 00:17:30,416 all the stuff that goes along with it. 338 00:17:30,416 --> 00:17:33,252 You own it, you can lend it to a friend, you can sell it, 339 00:17:33,252 --> 00:17:34,386 you can put it on the shelf. 340 00:17:34,386 --> 00:17:36,755 You can hang it from your rearview mirror if you want, but it's yours. 341 00:17:36,755 --> 00:17:40,592 It's a physical object that is something 342 00:17:40,626 --> 00:17:44,863 that you have, that you know has a value to it. 343 00:17:44,930 --> 00:17:48,867 And one of the issues I've had here is we do review games. 344 00:17:48,867 --> 00:17:51,737 Bill, I know you do that. And James does on the vault as well. 345 00:17:51,737 --> 00:17:54,840 And one of the things is, is you buy a game digital 346 00:17:54,840 --> 00:17:57,042 and a downloads and that's it. 347 00:17:57,042 --> 00:17:59,878 So do you really own that? You can't sell it? 348 00:17:59,878 --> 00:18:01,814 I mean, there's no way to write. 349 00:18:01,814 --> 00:18:04,016 You can't return it, obviously, but you can't do that anyway. 350 00:18:04,016 --> 00:18:05,551 But you can't sell it. 351 00:18:05,551 --> 00:18:09,822 You can't play it on someone else's system unless it allows for that specifically. 352 00:18:09,822 --> 00:18:13,859 And a lot of gamers are moving in a direction where they prefer 353 00:18:13,892 --> 00:18:14,626 physical media. 354 00:18:14,626 --> 00:18:17,629 In fact, this is becoming kind of a movement. 355 00:18:17,830 --> 00:18:21,066 And so in checking on this, 356 00:18:21,133 --> 00:18:24,536 the answer I got back from Nintendo is that they want to remain 357 00:18:24,536 --> 00:18:27,439 one of the strongest supporters of physical game releases, 358 00:18:27,439 --> 00:18:30,042 which is one reason many collectors appreciate the company. 359 00:18:30,042 --> 00:18:31,176 Yes, that is a quote. 360 00:18:31,176 --> 00:18:33,412 So so that's really good news. 361 00:18:33,412 --> 00:18:36,682 And actually I've made an observation 362 00:18:36,682 --> 00:18:41,787 while looking at stuff on Amazon Prime. 363 00:18:41,820 --> 00:18:42,187 Okay. 364 00:18:42,187 --> 00:18:46,992 So you all know that I'm like into Star Wars really? 365 00:18:47,259 --> 00:18:47,893 Yeah. 366 00:18:47,893 --> 00:18:50,362 And the century aggressions in the Star Wars. 367 00:18:50,362 --> 00:18:52,231 You heard it here first. 368 00:18:52,231 --> 00:18:57,736 And and one of the few things that I'm allowing myself 369 00:18:57,803 --> 00:19:01,507 still to collect are the six inch 370 00:19:01,740 --> 00:19:04,743 Black Series action figures. 371 00:19:04,776 --> 00:19:07,746 And it seemed like the last 372 00:19:07,746 --> 00:19:10,749 five years or so, the whole 373 00:19:11,383 --> 00:19:14,386 toy stuff kind of died, 374 00:19:14,920 --> 00:19:17,222 and all of a sudden 375 00:19:17,222 --> 00:19:21,760 there's an explosion of all kinds of cool figures. 376 00:19:22,027 --> 00:19:26,431 It just went boom, all, all kinds of fun stuff. 377 00:19:26,431 --> 00:19:29,468 And it's like there's this feeling like, 378 00:19:29,535 --> 00:19:33,105 oh, hey, maybe Star Wars is coming back, you know? 379 00:19:33,105 --> 00:19:37,843 And so I just thought I would share something happy that's going on. 380 00:19:37,876 --> 00:19:42,214 You know, maybe it's because The Mandalorian and Grogu are doing well. 381 00:19:42,781 --> 00:19:47,352 Maybe it's because Dave Felony and Company are, you know, 382 00:19:47,386 --> 00:19:51,590 forging ahead with a positive attitude, so who knows? 383 00:19:52,224 --> 00:19:57,963 I think it's a very important point you put out there and a 10,000ft view, 384 00:19:58,397 --> 00:20:02,334 these type of things is as much part of our cultural history as anything else. 385 00:20:02,668 --> 00:20:07,172 And when you look at purely digital stuff and action 386 00:20:07,172 --> 00:20:11,043 figures, by the nature of what they are, has to be a physical object. 387 00:20:11,043 --> 00:20:14,613 Unless you're doing like an NFT of one or something, which was tried and didn't 388 00:20:14,613 --> 00:20:20,185 work out too well for obvious reasons, but it is something that you can use. 389 00:20:20,185 --> 00:20:22,955 Put on the shelf, play with whatever you would want to do with it. 390 00:20:22,955 --> 00:20:27,159 But one thing that you don't think about where this plays into 391 00:20:27,159 --> 00:20:31,163 it is the idea of being able to preserve cultural history. 392 00:20:31,496 --> 00:20:35,400 So I have my, you know, with a new He-Man movie out here. 393 00:20:35,400 --> 00:20:37,669 I was really in He-Man when I was a little kid, and 394 00:20:37,669 --> 00:20:40,839 I still have some of my original figures and stuff that go back to that era. 395 00:20:41,473 --> 00:20:42,874 We're going to go see the new movie. 396 00:20:42,874 --> 00:20:44,376 We'll talk about it probably next week. 397 00:20:44,376 --> 00:20:47,212 But the point of that being is that's one example. 398 00:20:47,212 --> 00:20:51,183 Books or comic books that came with this, regular books, all that kind of stuff, 399 00:20:51,216 --> 00:20:55,821 movies, music, these are all things that can be preserved 400 00:20:55,854 --> 00:21:00,459 unless they're digital only and you have some problems 401 00:21:00,459 --> 00:21:04,296 that are coming out of this because one of them is the fact that 402 00:21:04,463 --> 00:21:06,098 you have a game you really like. 403 00:21:06,098 --> 00:21:09,434 If I have a game for my Atari 130 X, 404 00:21:10,202 --> 00:21:12,271 which I now got up and running again, I can go play it. 405 00:21:12,271 --> 00:21:14,273 I have the cartridge or the disc. 406 00:21:14,273 --> 00:21:18,810 You know, I'm not a big fan of discs, but it was a way to archive it. 407 00:21:18,810 --> 00:21:22,147 And you go, you can move that file over to SD and use it on a modern, 408 00:21:22,180 --> 00:21:24,349 you know, cartridge that will accept those such things. 409 00:21:24,349 --> 00:21:27,352 But the point of it is it's out there, it's still there, you can get to it. 410 00:21:27,519 --> 00:21:29,855 And we're seeing some stuff now. 411 00:21:29,855 --> 00:21:31,990 We're entire franchises are disappearing. 412 00:21:31,990 --> 00:21:33,091 One I would bring up from this 413 00:21:33,091 --> 00:21:36,461 because it's still commented about it, is tapped out from The Simpsons. 414 00:21:37,262 --> 00:21:38,697 There's no way you can play that game. 415 00:21:38,697 --> 00:21:41,300 It's gone. Yeah. It's gone. It's not archived. 416 00:21:41,300 --> 00:21:42,334 It is completely gone. 417 00:21:42,334 --> 00:21:47,773 And anything with servers which are most, you know, tablet games 418 00:21:47,773 --> 00:21:51,677 and that kind of a thing, have that potential problem. 419 00:21:51,677 --> 00:21:54,279 At some point it's going to go away. 420 00:21:54,279 --> 00:21:58,450 And unless there's a private single player mode or something of that nature, 421 00:21:58,617 --> 00:22:00,052 you're not going to be able to get into it. 422 00:22:00,052 --> 00:22:03,722 But it goes a step further too, because even with some physical media, 423 00:22:03,822 --> 00:22:07,092 Electronic Arts bought the SimCity franchise and in my opinion, 424 00:22:07,092 --> 00:22:10,696 completely destroyed it when they released a new game. 425 00:22:11,029 --> 00:22:14,299 This was back in like 2013, I think released a new game 426 00:22:14,299 --> 00:22:17,402 that, in my opinion, wasn't as good as the Maxis one before it. 427 00:22:17,402 --> 00:22:18,470 But that wasn't the big issue. 428 00:22:18,470 --> 00:22:21,907 The big issue was in order to play it even installed on your local computer, 429 00:22:21,907 --> 00:22:25,077 it had to authenticate with a server for copy protection. 430 00:22:25,077 --> 00:22:27,179 When that server goes away, you can no longer start 431 00:22:27,179 --> 00:22:31,283 the game that you have the disk for, you know, because of the digital stuff. 432 00:22:31,283 --> 00:22:34,319 Now, Electronic Arts did change that later 433 00:22:34,319 --> 00:22:37,656 because of the backlash on it, but the point being 434 00:22:37,823 --> 00:22:40,826 that it is a situation 435 00:22:40,826 --> 00:22:44,396 where we're going to see some stuff just completely disappear 436 00:22:45,263 --> 00:22:50,235 because of this kind of stuff, you know, and I was one that for a long time 437 00:22:50,235 --> 00:22:54,506 I liked the digital versions of things, and I still do do the convenience. 438 00:22:54,706 --> 00:22:58,877 One example that I brought up is the idea that I like being able to watch movies 439 00:22:58,877 --> 00:23:04,816 on any television or device in my house, so if you have a Blu ray disc, 440 00:23:05,217 --> 00:23:08,920 you can't really do that because you would have to have a player in each room. 441 00:23:08,920 --> 00:23:11,156 You're not going to have a Blu ray player on your tablet. 442 00:23:11,156 --> 00:23:12,190 Probably. 443 00:23:12,190 --> 00:23:16,027 The point being is that if you have a is a digital copy, you can pause it 444 00:23:16,027 --> 00:23:17,496 and resume it on another device. 445 00:23:17,496 --> 00:23:21,700 So I've kind of gone to a hybrid of this where I buy a legal copy of everything 446 00:23:21,733 --> 00:23:25,137 on physical media now and then put it on my, in my case, 447 00:23:25,137 --> 00:23:28,473 Plex server, which is what I use for that, so I can do both things with it. 448 00:23:28,473 --> 00:23:30,075 But I still have that physical copy. 449 00:23:30,075 --> 00:23:34,546 So if someday later that goes away, I still have access to it 450 00:23:34,579 --> 00:23:37,582 in some type of an example. 451 00:23:37,983 --> 00:23:38,417 All right. 452 00:23:38,417 --> 00:23:39,618 Well we're going to go ahead 453 00:23:39,618 --> 00:23:42,754 and take our break and our next segment we are going to be talking about 454 00:23:42,754 --> 00:23:43,355 data centers. 455 00:23:43,355 --> 00:23:45,991 This is user friendly 2.0. We'll be back after the break. 456 00:23:47,092 --> 00:23:49,060 He's from the future. 457 00:23:49,060 --> 00:23:52,397 He's got a really big computer 458 00:23:52,697 --> 00:23:55,901 and he uses it uses it every day. 459 00:23:56,268 --> 00:23:59,371 And he uses it uses it in every way. 460 00:23:59,671 --> 00:24:05,110 What you use it for, you know, I'm not that sure because he uses his 461 00:24:05,911 --> 00:24:08,313 welcome back. This is user friendly 2.0. 462 00:24:08,313 --> 00:24:10,315 Send us your questions. Send us your comments. 463 00:24:10,315 --> 00:24:11,483 We love to hear from you. 464 00:24:11,483 --> 00:24:16,788 User Friendly Show is the website to go to and click the Ask a Question button. 465 00:24:16,922 --> 00:24:19,891 Check out our back episodes and a whole bunch of other stuff. 466 00:24:19,891 --> 00:24:21,460 And that's user friendly show. 467 00:24:21,460 --> 00:24:23,562 And you can go to 468 00:24:23,562 --> 00:24:26,531 show or the Flash Briefing. 469 00:24:26,832 --> 00:24:31,837 So we've did a piece a while back on data centers. 470 00:24:32,070 --> 00:24:33,872 This would have been kind of mid last year, 471 00:24:33,872 --> 00:24:37,075 I think, and we've had a lot of questions coming in on this. 472 00:24:37,075 --> 00:24:42,280 And it is a topic that seems to be evolving quite a bit. 473 00:24:42,314 --> 00:24:44,483 A lot of that AI. 474 00:24:44,483 --> 00:24:44,883 Yeah. 475 00:24:44,883 --> 00:24:48,019 And for anybody that doesn't know, you know, 476 00:24:48,053 --> 00:24:51,523 or has really never thought about this is data center is a place 477 00:24:51,523 --> 00:24:54,860 where for a lot of computers basically that serve up various different things. 478 00:24:54,893 --> 00:24:55,594 Right. 479 00:24:55,594 --> 00:25:00,098 And you're I can assure you, anybody that's 480 00:25:00,098 --> 00:25:02,834 listening has used a data center because you're using one right now. 481 00:25:02,834 --> 00:25:04,102 Listen to the show. 482 00:25:04,102 --> 00:25:07,172 Pretty much anything that streams or anything like that 483 00:25:07,372 --> 00:25:11,910 has a data center at some point in it, as well as a lot of other things. 484 00:25:11,910 --> 00:25:16,314 So back in the day, when I started working on this stuff 485 00:25:16,581 --> 00:25:19,951 for the bank that I worked for and then our own company afterwards, 486 00:25:20,185 --> 00:25:22,754 a data center would be a place where we'd have a server, 487 00:25:22,754 --> 00:25:26,157 which is a computer that handles, you know, various different things, 488 00:25:26,157 --> 00:25:31,696 and that would be placed into a building with other servers that we rented space in 489 00:25:31,763 --> 00:25:32,297 that had a 490 00:25:32,297 --> 00:25:37,035 lot of different companies in there, and they would handle the power cooling, 491 00:25:37,469 --> 00:25:40,138 all of that kind of stuff so that we didn't have to. 492 00:25:40,138 --> 00:25:44,109 And then the other nice thing about that is if we had a problem with a site 493 00:25:44,109 --> 00:25:47,345 or if we did like we with a consulting company were handling stuff 494 00:25:47,345 --> 00:25:50,348 for various different businesses, you could use our hardware, 495 00:25:50,348 --> 00:25:54,252 but it was centralized, it was maintained properly, and 496 00:25:54,986 --> 00:25:58,590 that was something that a lot of different people used to. 497 00:25:58,990 --> 00:26:00,792 Gretchen, you worked for that insurance company. 498 00:26:00,792 --> 00:26:03,795 I remember too, and they had the server closet. 499 00:26:04,095 --> 00:26:06,731 Oh, yeah, literally the server closet. 500 00:26:06,731 --> 00:26:09,301 You know, a lot of things started out when they needed servers. 501 00:26:09,301 --> 00:26:11,202 They were putting them in these back rooms and stuff. 502 00:26:11,202 --> 00:26:13,471 They weren't cooled properly and that kind of a thing. 503 00:26:13,471 --> 00:26:16,074 And that causes a problem if you go into one of the 504 00:26:16,074 --> 00:26:19,411 I remember those old server farms, you walk in there 505 00:26:19,411 --> 00:26:23,415 and there's this enormous hum from all of the fans 506 00:26:23,415 --> 00:26:28,853 blowing, trying to keep the area where all the servers were running cool. 507 00:26:29,621 --> 00:26:31,756 Oh yeah. And you had that. 508 00:26:31,756 --> 00:26:35,393 And then about 2015, the cloud came into being a thing. 509 00:26:35,393 --> 00:26:38,263 And this makes me think of those t shirts. 510 00:26:38,263 --> 00:26:40,699 You know, there's no cloud, it's just somebody else's computer, 511 00:26:40,699 --> 00:26:43,435 which in a lot of cases is pretty accurate even today. 512 00:26:43,435 --> 00:26:47,305 Although what you can do with cloud based systems is a lot more than what 513 00:26:47,305 --> 00:26:51,109 you could do without them in the past, because things are tied 514 00:26:51,142 --> 00:26:54,145 together, which has good things and bad things that that creates. 515 00:26:54,279 --> 00:26:56,348 So that's basically what we're at right now. 516 00:26:56,348 --> 00:27:01,586 And data centers are evolving and have been for a bit into 517 00:27:01,620 --> 00:27:03,254 AI supercomputing campuses. 518 00:27:03,254 --> 00:27:07,759 Now, the reason for this is because when you use AI, 519 00:27:07,892 --> 00:27:13,298 generally speaking, it's not running on your desktop, phone, tablet, whatever. 520 00:27:13,365 --> 00:27:17,402 So when you go to your smart assistant on your phone and ask a question, 521 00:27:17,402 --> 00:27:20,071 what it does is it takes a recording of what you asked, 522 00:27:20,071 --> 00:27:23,341 sends it to a data center somewhere, and that's where it is interpreted. 523 00:27:23,341 --> 00:27:26,411 And the AI that's powering that can send back and answer, 524 00:27:26,411 --> 00:27:28,513 and that's sent back to your phone in this case. 525 00:27:28,513 --> 00:27:32,217 And that's done so quickly that you don't know that that's what's going on. 526 00:27:32,217 --> 00:27:33,251 But that's what it is. 527 00:27:33,251 --> 00:27:37,322 And if you ever want to check that out, disconnect your smart speaker 528 00:27:37,322 --> 00:27:38,356 from the internet. 529 00:27:38,356 --> 00:27:41,760 So take it off your Wi-Fi or take your phone off 530 00:27:42,227 --> 00:27:44,162 mobile data and Wi-Fi and that kind of a thing. 531 00:27:44,162 --> 00:27:47,132 And you'll find out that while it's still there, it's very limited. 532 00:27:47,532 --> 00:27:50,602 Well, often a certain 533 00:27:50,669 --> 00:27:53,905 AI will go, I'm sorry, I can't do that right now. 534 00:27:54,472 --> 00:27:55,840 Know? Yeah. 535 00:27:55,840 --> 00:27:58,443 And that's because that's that's what's happening, you know. 536 00:27:58,443 --> 00:27:58,777 Yeah. 537 00:27:58,777 --> 00:28:02,147 So anyway, cloud stuff does have 538 00:28:02,147 --> 00:28:05,917 a little bit of a difference and literally it's just someone else's computer. 539 00:28:05,917 --> 00:28:09,921 So as a for example, a lot of my clients I run their 540 00:28:11,656 --> 00:28:14,025 workloads, I guess you would call it on AWS, 541 00:28:14,025 --> 00:28:17,028 which is Amazon Web Services, which is, if not the largest, 542 00:28:17,028 --> 00:28:19,998 one of the largest web services that there are in the world. 543 00:28:19,998 --> 00:28:20,598 Right. 544 00:28:20,598 --> 00:28:24,302 And that handles a lot of different things. 545 00:28:24,302 --> 00:28:28,139 But what happens is, is there's one company I have as a client 546 00:28:28,239 --> 00:28:30,175 that they want to be able to upload video files 547 00:28:30,175 --> 00:28:32,744 and have it automatically convert it to a common format. 548 00:28:32,744 --> 00:28:35,413 So whatever it is, I believe it goes to an MP for. 549 00:28:35,413 --> 00:28:38,416 And if you try to do that with just one server, 550 00:28:38,483 --> 00:28:41,019 it wouldn't work because you wouldn't have the resources. 551 00:28:41,019 --> 00:28:44,222 So what happens is, is there's an application that's part of Amazon 552 00:28:44,222 --> 00:28:47,358 Web Services where you can have it, do it where it has 553 00:28:47,358 --> 00:28:51,062 the appropriate amount of computing power that's required for it. 554 00:28:51,062 --> 00:28:52,697 But you don't have to buy it and maintain it. 555 00:28:52,697 --> 00:28:54,666 You do pay for the time that's used. 556 00:28:54,666 --> 00:28:56,801 So that's something that cloud services can do. 557 00:28:56,801 --> 00:28:57,936 And that's just one example. 558 00:28:57,936 --> 00:29:01,172 Things like email and all of that are also obviously cloud services. 559 00:29:01,172 --> 00:29:04,342 The web is in that type of a thing. 560 00:29:04,342 --> 00:29:08,780 And when you think about it, there was a time where you could 561 00:29:09,214 --> 00:29:12,217 and you conceivably still could host your website in your office, 562 00:29:12,250 --> 00:29:16,855 at your company, and it would just run on a program there. 563 00:29:17,155 --> 00:29:21,292 But if you ever lost your internet connection or something ever happened, 564 00:29:21,426 --> 00:29:22,627 you would be off the web. 565 00:29:22,627 --> 00:29:26,431 So data centers, because they're a set up where they have redundancy and backup. 566 00:29:26,431 --> 00:29:30,401 And that type of a thing, generally speaking, eliminates that problem. 567 00:29:30,401 --> 00:29:34,105 Although we have seen from time to time where there can be problems 568 00:29:34,105 --> 00:29:37,275 that will still take things down, but it's a lot less likely to happen. 569 00:29:37,275 --> 00:29:38,476 And as a person 570 00:29:38,476 --> 00:29:41,613 that does support of these things, it also is nice because I don't have to 571 00:29:41,679 --> 00:29:45,350 go at 2:00 in the morning somewhere to try to figure out why the server went down, 572 00:29:45,383 --> 00:29:46,417 you know? Yeah. 573 00:29:46,417 --> 00:29:50,421 And the reason why that's important is because, you know, some businesses 574 00:29:50,555 --> 00:29:54,492 completely rely on that constant communication. 575 00:29:54,926 --> 00:29:57,962 It's mission critical, you know. 576 00:29:57,996 --> 00:30:01,933 Yeah, I have a client that if they software stopped working, 577 00:30:02,033 --> 00:30:03,067 they would be shut down. 578 00:30:03,067 --> 00:30:06,271 And that's not uncommon, you know, so 579 00:30:07,138 --> 00:30:09,574 some of the things that you probably are a little more familiar with that 580 00:30:09,574 --> 00:30:12,944 use data centers are things like Netflix, Disney+, YouTube. 581 00:30:13,711 --> 00:30:16,981 All of these different type of things run off of cloud resources 582 00:30:16,981 --> 00:30:20,752 at a data center or collective set of data centers somewhere. 583 00:30:20,785 --> 00:30:24,055 And companies like Netflix actually will have software 584 00:30:24,055 --> 00:30:28,293 that will intentionally create network problems to test the redundancy. 585 00:30:28,660 --> 00:30:29,561 Does it feel over? 586 00:30:29,561 --> 00:30:32,063 Does it do what it's supposed to do and that type of a thing? 587 00:30:32,063 --> 00:30:35,300 And I don't know that it would be possible to run 588 00:30:35,366 --> 00:30:39,337 a model like Netflix from your server room in your office. 589 00:30:39,337 --> 00:30:41,272 In fact, I'm quite sure it wouldn't. 590 00:30:41,272 --> 00:30:44,509 You would end up building your own data center if you tried to do it that way. 591 00:30:44,509 --> 00:30:47,545 And a lot of companies do have their own data centers. 592 00:30:47,545 --> 00:30:50,915 So yeah, the would be too heavy, wouldn't it? 593 00:30:51,916 --> 00:30:53,418 Well, yeah, too heavy of a workload. 594 00:30:53,418 --> 00:30:55,053 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 595 00:30:55,053 --> 00:30:57,155 Just think about what it really takes. The stream of video. 596 00:30:57,155 --> 00:31:00,158 We used to work on that in the early 2000. 597 00:31:00,258 --> 00:31:01,359 Yeah. People. 598 00:31:01,359 --> 00:31:05,263 And you needed a lot of resources to be able to do it properly. 599 00:31:05,263 --> 00:31:08,833 And the thing of it is, is a lot of that comes down to money, too. 600 00:31:08,867 --> 00:31:09,467 Could you do it? 601 00:31:09,467 --> 00:31:11,703 Yeah. Is it financially viable to it. 602 00:31:11,703 --> 00:31:12,270 Do it that way. 603 00:31:12,270 --> 00:31:13,471 No, of course not. 604 00:31:13,471 --> 00:31:15,673 There would be no reason to, you know. 605 00:31:15,673 --> 00:31:21,980 So applications, office 365, Salesforce, zoom or some of the examples they give. 606 00:31:22,213 --> 00:31:24,482 All of these things run out of data centers as well. 607 00:31:24,482 --> 00:31:27,452 So when you do your zoom call that uses a data center. 608 00:31:27,518 --> 00:31:32,757 Now what's driving growth and really has been pushing 609 00:31:32,757 --> 00:31:38,096 this along is the onset of AI, generative AI and what you would call mechanical AI. 610 00:31:38,162 --> 00:31:40,131 All of these things run out of data centers, 611 00:31:40,131 --> 00:31:42,901 and I can build my own AI model here at my house. 612 00:31:42,901 --> 00:31:43,935 But to actually have it work, 613 00:31:43,935 --> 00:31:47,338 I need those resources to be able to do the processing 614 00:31:47,338 --> 00:31:51,309 and have the back end power that are needed for that. 615 00:31:51,309 --> 00:31:55,079 So when you look at it, one of the big things that comes out of this is search. 616 00:31:55,079 --> 00:31:56,714 And this is a good topic 617 00:31:56,714 --> 00:32:00,718 because this is something that demonstrates the evolution of this stuff. 618 00:32:00,718 --> 00:32:02,921 Google, when it started, before 619 00:32:02,921 --> 00:32:06,691 that, things like AltaVista and Yahoo and some of the other resources 620 00:32:06,691 --> 00:32:11,029 that were used for this, it was a much smaller web in those days. 621 00:32:11,462 --> 00:32:14,465 And now if you do a search, 622 00:32:15,066 --> 00:32:17,535 you're searching through billions of pages. 623 00:32:17,535 --> 00:32:21,172 Your search engine automatically ranks the results, filters out 624 00:32:21,172 --> 00:32:24,475 spam, and now uses AI summaries for that. 625 00:32:24,475 --> 00:32:26,544 So if you go to Google and run a search today, 626 00:32:26,544 --> 00:32:28,880 you'll get the sponsored stuff at the top. 627 00:32:28,880 --> 00:32:32,250 You'll get an AI summary, usually from Gemini in their case, 628 00:32:32,250 --> 00:32:35,720 and then you'll get the list like you would have had before of the websites. 629 00:32:35,720 --> 00:32:40,458 But even the list of the sites include sub sites and different things like that. 630 00:32:40,458 --> 00:32:44,062 And you know, so there's a lot more going on here than there used to be. 631 00:32:44,062 --> 00:32:48,399 And that's where AI has come in and really changed things, you know? 632 00:32:48,433 --> 00:32:51,302 So what do you get out of that. The search is faster. 633 00:32:51,302 --> 00:32:55,540 You get things like maps, recommendations and all of that kind of a thing. 634 00:32:55,573 --> 00:32:57,241 Real time language translation 635 00:32:57,241 --> 00:33:00,745 is another one that relies on data centers to be able to work properly. 636 00:33:01,479 --> 00:33:03,281 And these things are kind of cool. 637 00:33:03,281 --> 00:33:04,215 I have a HUD right now where 638 00:33:04,215 --> 00:33:07,218 I can look at a signing in any language, and I'll see it in mine, 639 00:33:07,418 --> 00:33:11,189 but if I went offline with that hut, I can assure you it wouldn't work. 640 00:33:14,225 --> 00:33:17,395 So where do you use data centers, Bill? 641 00:33:17,428 --> 00:33:18,196 Gretchen? I mean, you know, 642 00:33:18,196 --> 00:33:21,399 obviously the basic stuff like right now is recording the show. 643 00:33:21,432 --> 00:33:22,467 We do, 644 00:33:22,467 --> 00:33:25,937 but there's a lot of locations where you wouldn't have thought of it in the past. 645 00:33:27,338 --> 00:33:30,074 I'll give you one more in your book. 646 00:33:30,074 --> 00:33:31,242 Yeah. 647 00:33:31,242 --> 00:33:33,378 Publishing the book and watching TV. 648 00:33:33,378 --> 00:33:35,213 Yeah, yeah. 649 00:33:35,213 --> 00:33:38,549 Those are two things that we didn't used 650 00:33:38,549 --> 00:33:42,520 to use for with need databases. 651 00:33:42,787 --> 00:33:45,189 Yeah. And in line. 652 00:33:45,189 --> 00:33:46,591 The thing of it is, is even today, 653 00:33:46,591 --> 00:33:50,061 if you watch over the air broadcast television, which is still a thing 654 00:33:50,561 --> 00:33:51,829 there, you're still using a data center 655 00:33:51,829 --> 00:33:55,199 because they're sourcing their material from some digital source. 656 00:33:55,299 --> 00:33:58,202 There's nobody with a film camera, you know, going to satellite 657 00:33:58,202 --> 00:34:00,671 and having an analog signal come back anymore. 658 00:34:00,671 --> 00:34:05,710 But now you can also get books, you know, downloaded to your tablet. 659 00:34:05,743 --> 00:34:06,711 Yeah, yeah. 660 00:34:06,711 --> 00:34:09,881 Data center, you know, that kind of a thing or runs through that. 661 00:34:09,881 --> 00:34:12,817 So there are a lot of advantages to this. 662 00:34:12,817 --> 00:34:16,788 And it kind of powers the world as we live in today. 663 00:34:16,954 --> 00:34:20,291 But like anything else, there are some problems that this creates. 664 00:34:20,291 --> 00:34:23,027 And the biggest one is power and water. 665 00:34:23,027 --> 00:34:28,232 So it's been in the news lately where company X wants to build a big data 666 00:34:28,266 --> 00:34:33,037 center somewhere, and the local people start reacting to that negatively. 667 00:34:33,638 --> 00:34:37,108 And there have been some problems where 668 00:34:37,942 --> 00:34:41,512 you look out there and people's power grids doesn't work 669 00:34:41,512 --> 00:34:43,948 quite right because of the amount of power these data centers are using, 670 00:34:43,948 --> 00:34:47,652 and they use a tremendous amount water for cooling. 671 00:34:48,152 --> 00:34:52,156 Well, we're living in a time right now where it's hotter. 672 00:34:52,156 --> 00:34:55,793 So just things like the number of people running, air conditioning is pushing 673 00:34:55,793 --> 00:34:59,397 the power grid, electric cars, charging at your house or pushing the power grid. 674 00:34:59,497 --> 00:35:02,033 Things are being upgraded, but there is a limit 675 00:35:02,033 --> 00:35:03,534 to what this kind of stuff can provide. 676 00:35:03,534 --> 00:35:07,572 Now you put something on there that in some cities uses as much power 677 00:35:07,572 --> 00:35:11,709 as the entire city does to give a comparison. 678 00:35:11,909 --> 00:35:14,812 And unless you double the capacity of the generators, 679 00:35:14,812 --> 00:35:18,783 the power grid itself and everything else, you're going to start to have problems. 680 00:35:20,118 --> 00:35:21,786 So is this the reason why 681 00:35:21,786 --> 00:35:25,590 they're having concerns in the town of Hillsboro? 682 00:35:25,857 --> 00:35:26,824 Yeah. 683 00:35:26,824 --> 00:35:27,592 Hillsboro, Oregon. 684 00:35:27,592 --> 00:35:29,760 And that's an example of one place. 685 00:35:29,760 --> 00:35:33,798 And you see this also in Tahoe, Lake Tahoe, 686 00:35:33,831 --> 00:35:36,901 they're having problems with it because the power consumption, 687 00:35:37,001 --> 00:35:37,735 they're telling them now 688 00:35:37,735 --> 00:35:41,172 that they're going to have to completely find a different supplier. 689 00:35:41,739 --> 00:35:42,640 That's good. Yeah. 690 00:35:42,640 --> 00:35:45,643 That makes life easy, 691 00:35:45,877 --> 00:35:46,344 you know. 692 00:35:46,344 --> 00:35:48,312 And so what's happening with this? 693 00:35:48,312 --> 00:35:50,181 Well, first of all, where do you get the power. 694 00:35:50,181 --> 00:35:51,082 And Bill. 695 00:35:51,082 --> 00:35:53,818 Like you just kind of hit spot on there. 696 00:35:53,818 --> 00:35:57,755 That's something that has to be considered nuclear as an option, to the point 697 00:35:57,755 --> 00:36:01,259 that Microsoft bought their own nuclear power plant to run their data centers. 698 00:36:01,893 --> 00:36:04,295 Now, that wouldn't have been something you would have thought 699 00:36:04,295 --> 00:36:05,296 about a private company. 700 00:36:05,296 --> 00:36:06,731 I mean, the power companies, 701 00:36:06,731 --> 00:36:08,866 of course, are private companies in some cases, and them. 702 00:36:08,866 --> 00:36:11,335 But what I mean is just ABC Corporation. 703 00:36:11,335 --> 00:36:11,602 Yeah. 704 00:36:11,602 --> 00:36:14,572 And part of our assets is we own our own nuclear reactor. 705 00:36:15,106 --> 00:36:17,441 Yeah. Could possibly go wrong with that, 706 00:36:20,278 --> 00:36:21,078 Now, other 707 00:36:21,078 --> 00:36:25,082 companies have bought their own power plants, like in Las Vegas. 708 00:36:25,082 --> 00:36:29,787 Didn't they own some of the casinos, own their own power plants? 709 00:36:30,588 --> 00:36:32,223 I know you're in Nevada. 710 00:36:32,223 --> 00:36:34,425 I mean, was it they own their own power plants? 711 00:36:34,425 --> 00:36:37,428 Or was it that they were sourcing from specific places? 712 00:36:37,495 --> 00:36:39,096 Do you remember how that worked? 713 00:36:39,096 --> 00:36:42,099 I don't that that was a 714 00:36:42,934 --> 00:36:44,669 probably a while ago when that came up. 715 00:36:44,669 --> 00:36:48,472 So I don't remember completely what Gretchen's talking about is 716 00:36:48,506 --> 00:36:52,777 there was a thing and I do remember this, where big casinos, 717 00:36:52,777 --> 00:36:55,780 especially down in Vegas, like MGM resorts, 718 00:36:55,813 --> 00:36:58,816 didn't want to buy from Nevada Energy, which is a provider in Nevada 719 00:36:58,816 --> 00:37:01,586 and would actually come up with a situation 720 00:37:01,586 --> 00:37:02,987 where they could buy from another provider. 721 00:37:02,987 --> 00:37:04,989 Now, whether or not they own the power plant, I don't know. 722 00:37:04,989 --> 00:37:06,257 And that's a good question. 723 00:37:06,257 --> 00:37:11,796 I know, I know, we can I think there's a way that you can pick 724 00:37:11,796 --> 00:37:15,099 who use power supplied from if you're a company or. 725 00:37:15,132 --> 00:37:16,100 Yeah, yeah. 726 00:37:16,100 --> 00:37:17,034 And I remember 727 00:37:17,034 --> 00:37:19,637 they wanted to do exit fees and stuff because the power is 728 00:37:19,637 --> 00:37:22,240 you're not running your own power lines to the source. 729 00:37:22,240 --> 00:37:25,376 You're still having to use common infrastructure for stuff like that. 730 00:37:25,643 --> 00:37:28,613 So, you know, there's a lot that would go along with that. 731 00:37:28,613 --> 00:37:31,616 But it is an issue and power in general is an issue. 732 00:37:31,716 --> 00:37:36,120 But at the end of the day, if you don't have power, you don't run these things. 733 00:37:36,120 --> 00:37:40,958 And if you are doing something that has such a big use of electricity 734 00:37:41,058 --> 00:37:44,695 that it supersedes the need of the people that are normally using that power 735 00:37:44,762 --> 00:37:48,532 grid, I can see where people would have a negative reaction to something like that, 736 00:37:48,599 --> 00:37:49,934 you know? Yeah, 737 00:37:50,935 --> 00:37:52,403 it just says since 738 00:37:52,403 --> 00:37:57,041 many experts call AI the largest growth in electricity demand in decades, 739 00:37:57,041 --> 00:38:00,778 and it is we've seen this a little bit over the past few years. 740 00:38:00,811 --> 00:38:01,979 Electric cars are one of them. 741 00:38:01,979 --> 00:38:05,316 Crypto mining is another big one that uses a lot, but that's a data center. 742 00:38:05,750 --> 00:38:07,518 You know what you think about it really. 743 00:38:07,518 --> 00:38:11,656 So it is definitely a situation where you've got the power. 744 00:38:11,656 --> 00:38:13,190 Then the other part is water. 745 00:38:13,190 --> 00:38:14,859 You've got to keep all these computers cool. 746 00:38:14,859 --> 00:38:18,095 And even in the days of the smaller ones screeching, like you and I used to work 747 00:38:18,095 --> 00:38:21,632 with, like the one in Oregon here that we would go to. 748 00:38:21,866 --> 00:38:27,271 Yeah, you had to have massive cooling systems to be able to keep all 749 00:38:27,271 --> 00:38:31,275 of this stuff that produces a lot of heat and still does even in the modern age. 750 00:38:31,375 --> 00:38:32,176 Cool. 751 00:38:32,176 --> 00:38:35,880 Because if it overheats, it stops working and it can cause damage to things. 752 00:38:35,913 --> 00:38:38,516 You know, even though you have a gaming machine 753 00:38:38,516 --> 00:38:41,118 you built and you have liquid cooling, I believe on that. 754 00:38:41,118 --> 00:38:44,121 Yes. Now, does that use water or is it a chemical? 755 00:38:44,588 --> 00:38:48,859 I believe it's a it's a mixture of water and a chemical 756 00:38:48,893 --> 00:38:53,230 to make it non-electric or whatever. 757 00:38:53,230 --> 00:38:55,132 The term is. Non-conductive. 758 00:38:55,132 --> 00:38:57,001 Non-conductive? Yeah. 759 00:38:57,001 --> 00:38:58,836 And so you're looking at a system there. 760 00:38:58,836 --> 00:39:01,105 That one machine has a requirement for water. 761 00:39:01,105 --> 00:39:02,740 Now you times that times 762 00:39:02,740 --> 00:39:05,376 the infrastructure required to do all of these different things. 763 00:39:05,376 --> 00:39:08,813 And you're starting to see a lot of demand for water use. 764 00:39:09,146 --> 00:39:12,583 And again you have some data centers that use more water 765 00:39:12,583 --> 00:39:15,386 than the entire municipality that they're in. 766 00:39:15,386 --> 00:39:18,022 And all of a sudden you start having water shortages. 767 00:39:18,022 --> 00:39:22,793 It's almost too bad that they couldn't use the heat generated by all 768 00:39:22,793 --> 00:39:28,799 these computers to run something else that would generate electricity. 769 00:39:29,033 --> 00:39:31,602 There are experiments being done in that. 770 00:39:31,602 --> 00:39:32,303 Oh, cool. 771 00:39:32,303 --> 00:39:36,974 Yeah, that is actually something that's being researched in some places. 772 00:39:36,974 --> 00:39:39,076 There are some proof of concepts out there. 773 00:39:39,076 --> 00:39:40,678 I'm not sure if there's anything beyond that, 774 00:39:40,678 --> 00:39:44,315 but if anybody is familiar with alternative uses of heat 775 00:39:44,315 --> 00:39:45,950 from data centers or anything like this, right. 776 00:39:45,950 --> 00:39:50,421 And I'd love to learn more about that and cover it, because 777 00:39:51,589 --> 00:39:54,225 I know a couple of them are using that. 778 00:39:54,225 --> 00:39:57,294 It's where the heat is conducted through an element 779 00:39:57,294 --> 00:40:01,031 that allows it to change it into electricity directly. 780 00:40:01,065 --> 00:40:02,299 Right, right. 781 00:40:02,299 --> 00:40:04,301 I can't remember the actual name for that. 782 00:40:04,301 --> 00:40:06,937 My brain is died today, conducted 783 00:40:06,937 --> 00:40:09,673 at the very new technology, by the way, that does that. 784 00:40:09,673 --> 00:40:13,377 Yeah, but I know it's it's only a percentage of it 785 00:40:13,377 --> 00:40:17,148 return because, you know, laws of conservation and stuff like that. 786 00:40:17,181 --> 00:40:19,283 Yeah. Well, you're not going to have perpetual energy. 787 00:40:19,283 --> 00:40:22,153 If we had that, this all wouldn't become a non-issue. 788 00:40:22,153 --> 00:40:23,587 We're not quite there yet. 789 00:40:23,587 --> 00:40:26,290 You know, hopefully we will be at some point. 790 00:40:26,290 --> 00:40:29,226 But right now we're having to deal with what we have to deal with 791 00:40:29,226 --> 00:40:31,228 and also with new technologies like that. 792 00:40:31,228 --> 00:40:33,097 You're also looking at an existing data center. 793 00:40:33,097 --> 00:40:34,498 Do they want to pay to retrofit? 794 00:40:34,498 --> 00:40:37,701 You know, because that's another issue really wants being built. 795 00:40:37,701 --> 00:40:40,704 Is it a proven technology that we know we can rely on? 796 00:40:41,272 --> 00:40:43,340 Again, you know, questions that have to be there. 797 00:40:43,340 --> 00:40:44,375 And the other thing is 798 00:40:44,375 --> 00:40:48,512 that I don't understand is why they're building data centers in places 799 00:40:48,512 --> 00:40:54,418 like Arizona and Southern Nevada and the Mojave Desert, to name a few. 800 00:40:54,452 --> 00:40:59,790 I'm assuming it's because there's large tracts of land that are open. 801 00:41:00,191 --> 00:41:02,760 There's a reason why there's large tracts of land that are open. 802 00:41:02,760 --> 00:41:04,028 There's no water. 803 00:41:04,028 --> 00:41:04,462 Yeah. 804 00:41:04,462 --> 00:41:09,099 Now, the thing the next question would be, are they using solar panels 805 00:41:09,099 --> 00:41:13,771 to help develop a, develop a or not? 806 00:41:13,971 --> 00:41:17,775 You know, some of the data centers, those locally here 807 00:41:17,842 --> 00:41:22,713 have their own solar farms or they're using other methods. 808 00:41:22,713 --> 00:41:24,048 I know of. 809 00:41:25,149 --> 00:41:26,517 One close here 810 00:41:26,517 --> 00:41:32,156 to Reno uses a solar farm, and it's also pulling off of a geothermal plant. 811 00:41:32,256 --> 00:41:33,691 Yeah. Oh, cool. 812 00:41:33,691 --> 00:41:36,594 So see, and some of those things, unfortunately that's the exception, 813 00:41:36,594 --> 00:41:37,695 not the norm at this point. 814 00:41:37,695 --> 00:41:40,931 But it's good to hear because using alternative energy, it makes sense. 815 00:41:40,931 --> 00:41:41,899 Now, if you're in the middle of 816 00:41:41,899 --> 00:41:45,703 the Mojave Desert and put up a solar farm and have all these tracks of land 817 00:41:45,703 --> 00:41:46,303 that are available 818 00:41:46,303 --> 00:41:49,306 because nobody wants to live there, that actually totally makes sense. 819 00:41:49,573 --> 00:41:51,542 Still have to figure out a way to get water if you need it. 820 00:41:51,542 --> 00:41:55,980 But conceivably, if you could generate enough solar power, 821 00:41:56,013 --> 00:41:59,383 you would be able to use other cooling solutions to than just water. 822 00:41:59,650 --> 00:42:02,386 So, you know, some of that kind of makes sense. 823 00:42:02,386 --> 00:42:04,388 Unfortunately, that's not what I've heard of them doing that 824 00:42:04,388 --> 00:42:06,957 you use solar power, but not quite to that extent. 825 00:42:06,957 --> 00:42:10,094 And you know, so again. 826 00:42:10,361 --> 00:42:10,895 Good question. 827 00:42:10,895 --> 00:42:14,331 To have out there is is there an advantage to doing this. 828 00:42:14,398 --> 00:42:17,134 Obviously the land's cheap. You would have that right. 829 00:42:17,134 --> 00:42:20,137 And so I can see it from that standpoint outside 830 00:42:20,137 --> 00:42:23,440 of the monetary perspective, I could see there being other problems. 831 00:42:23,541 --> 00:42:27,011 And then the other thing of it is that happens with these things is 832 00:42:27,344 --> 00:42:29,313 what happens if something happens to the data center. 833 00:42:29,313 --> 00:42:32,917 So in the Iran war, the Amazon Web Services 834 00:42:32,917 --> 00:42:36,053 facilities in the UAE was bombed. 835 00:42:37,254 --> 00:42:41,759 So and something like that being a war time target, 836 00:42:41,859 --> 00:42:45,496 being a centralized area of information exchange, I can understand where 837 00:42:45,496 --> 00:42:47,698 that would be something you'd need to be concerned about. 838 00:42:47,698 --> 00:42:52,636 And it did happen, you know, now Amazon Web Services is distributed. 839 00:42:52,636 --> 00:42:57,474 So if things are configured properly, which is a big if in certain situations 840 00:42:57,474 --> 00:43:00,945 it should back up to another data center that's still operating 841 00:43:00,978 --> 00:43:04,949 that we saw earlier in the year when the Amazon Web Services 842 00:43:04,949 --> 00:43:08,218 on the East Coast of the United States had some downtime. 843 00:43:08,419 --> 00:43:12,957 It what caused a situation where a lot of things backed up to other data centers? 844 00:43:12,957 --> 00:43:16,026 But the programmers had set it up so that the only place 845 00:43:16,026 --> 00:43:19,797 that you could do things like authenticate your log on was US East. 846 00:43:19,997 --> 00:43:22,600 So if that data centers down, it can be backed up wherever you want. 847 00:43:22,600 --> 00:43:26,737 But if you don't have that log on system replicated as well, you can't get to it. 848 00:43:26,737 --> 00:43:29,673 So who cares. You know. Yeah. Wow. 849 00:43:31,108 --> 00:43:34,912 But you know, and bombing the data center is one thing. 850 00:43:34,912 --> 00:43:38,148 Hackers, malware, cyber attacks, physical attacks, all these different 851 00:43:38,148 --> 00:43:42,453 things become very much an issue. 852 00:43:42,987 --> 00:43:45,823 You do not want some choke point. 853 00:43:45,823 --> 00:43:48,826 And you know, we saw this too. 854 00:43:48,892 --> 00:43:50,194 This goes beyond this. 855 00:43:50,194 --> 00:43:53,631 Just a little bit of an aside, but it's the same kind of thought process 856 00:43:53,897 --> 00:43:57,868 is when the sabotage happened at the power substation for London 857 00:43:57,868 --> 00:44:01,305 Heathrow Airport last year and took the entire airport out, 858 00:44:01,305 --> 00:44:04,308 and they were supposed to have a backup, but it didn't work. 859 00:44:04,942 --> 00:44:07,077 You know, a lot of people got in trouble 860 00:44:07,077 --> 00:44:10,180 for that one to imagine, you know. 861 00:44:10,481 --> 00:44:13,984 Now, on the other side of the coin, 862 00:44:13,984 --> 00:44:16,787 these are some of the negative things that we have to deal with. 863 00:44:16,787 --> 00:44:21,158 But on the other side of the coin, you're also looking at a situation 864 00:44:21,158 --> 00:44:25,462 where more computers network together, are more powerful. 865 00:44:25,462 --> 00:44:28,532 And this is the case in any kind of a situation 866 00:44:28,532 --> 00:44:31,869 where you have collective computing capabilities like this. 867 00:44:32,002 --> 00:44:35,472 So the ability to do things like actual generative AI, 868 00:44:36,306 --> 00:44:40,077 the examples given are medical research, drug development, medical imaging, 869 00:44:40,110 --> 00:44:44,114 online learning, you know, the list goes on, are all things 870 00:44:44,114 --> 00:44:47,951 that wouldn't be able to be done with this kind of a situation. 871 00:44:47,985 --> 00:44:51,722 The other big one that I know I use them for is backups. 872 00:44:51,722 --> 00:44:55,225 So in the day of hackers and everything else, 873 00:44:55,459 --> 00:44:59,263 you have a situation where something like malware gets into your system. 874 00:44:59,463 --> 00:45:01,398 Well, the hackers know that you have backups. 875 00:45:01,398 --> 00:45:03,467 I mean, they're smart enough to do the malware. 876 00:45:03,467 --> 00:45:05,102 They're not going to be stupid enough to think that there's 877 00:45:05,102 --> 00:45:06,737 none of that stuff on the system. 878 00:45:06,737 --> 00:45:09,740 So if your backups are online, they can get to that too. 879 00:45:10,474 --> 00:45:14,578 So using a data center is a place to be able to back up 880 00:45:14,578 --> 00:45:17,748 these things too, and then disconnect from the physical network 881 00:45:17,748 --> 00:45:22,152 until you need it is a way to be able to strengthen that. 882 00:45:22,152 --> 00:45:24,788 And again, that's requiring an off site situation. 883 00:45:24,788 --> 00:45:26,990 Plus, if all of your backups are only on site, 884 00:45:26,990 --> 00:45:29,760 and even if you switch off the backup after it's done. 885 00:45:29,760 --> 00:45:33,030 Let's say you have a disaster at your office in the building like a fire. 886 00:45:33,063 --> 00:45:34,064 Yeah, exactly. 887 00:45:34,064 --> 00:45:34,598 Yeah. 888 00:45:34,598 --> 00:45:37,634 So you kind of really need both solutions to really 889 00:45:37,634 --> 00:45:40,671 have that being done properly, you know? 890 00:45:41,572 --> 00:45:46,844 So that being said, what is the future look like for this? 891 00:45:46,877 --> 00:45:49,880 Well, one of the things we talked about was nuclear energy 892 00:45:50,080 --> 00:45:53,050 and being able to come up with carbon free power. 893 00:45:53,317 --> 00:45:56,253 Gretchen, you brought this up with solar panels. 894 00:45:56,253 --> 00:45:59,590 These kind of directions are going to help with this advanced cooling 895 00:45:59,857 --> 00:46:02,292 using new approaches and that type of a thing 896 00:46:02,292 --> 00:46:05,696 that are out there that are being developed 897 00:46:05,763 --> 00:46:07,197 that we can deep dive into, 898 00:46:07,197 --> 00:46:08,899 that I don't know enough about the different kinds 899 00:46:08,899 --> 00:46:12,870 of new cooling systems to really be able to, nor do we have the time of day, 900 00:46:12,870 --> 00:46:15,873 but there are things being developed. 901 00:46:15,906 --> 00:46:19,243 The other thing of it is, is instead of the giant centralized 902 00:46:19,243 --> 00:46:21,945 locations, decentralized, and so you have more regional centers 903 00:46:21,945 --> 00:46:26,583 that can break up the power demand and also not have a physical location. 904 00:46:26,583 --> 00:46:29,586 That is one spot that if you happen to end up in a war 905 00:46:29,586 --> 00:46:33,023 area, is going to, you know, get bombed or have something like that happen. 906 00:46:34,024 --> 00:46:34,958 The other thing of it, 907 00:46:34,958 --> 00:46:35,959 too, and this is one of the 908 00:46:35,959 --> 00:46:38,962 things that I like about it, is something called edge computing. 909 00:46:38,996 --> 00:46:40,831 And what this ends up doing. 910 00:46:40,831 --> 00:46:43,801 And Amazon Web Services, again, I use it as an example, 911 00:46:43,801 --> 00:46:46,036 just because they're the service I use for a lot of things 912 00:46:46,036 --> 00:46:49,373 is I have a server location where, let's say I have a website, 913 00:46:49,373 --> 00:46:51,675 but it needs to be accessed from all over the world. 914 00:46:51,675 --> 00:46:55,312 So I update the one website wherever it stored, and then their system 915 00:46:55,312 --> 00:46:59,950 automatically replicates that to locations that are closer to the users. 916 00:46:59,983 --> 00:47:03,320 So in other words, let's say that you're listening to our show in the UK 917 00:47:03,320 --> 00:47:06,323 and somebody else is in Canada and somebody else is wherever. 918 00:47:06,323 --> 00:47:09,827 When you listen to the file, it might actually be being sent to you 919 00:47:09,827 --> 00:47:13,997 from somewhere close, like your data center in the UK, 920 00:47:14,031 --> 00:47:17,034 even though it was uploaded to the one in Canada, 921 00:47:17,201 --> 00:47:19,203 and it will automatically be able to do that. 922 00:47:19,203 --> 00:47:20,070 So, you know, 923 00:47:20,070 --> 00:47:23,273 that's a question that definitely is something that should be answered, 924 00:47:23,273 --> 00:47:26,310 but it's a direction they're going in and something that 925 00:47:26,310 --> 00:47:29,313 we are seeing as a 926 00:47:30,480 --> 00:47:32,416 definite direction. 927 00:47:32,416 --> 00:47:36,186 So like anything else with technology, the technology itself is very benign, 928 00:47:36,186 --> 00:47:39,122 but it's what you do with it and it's how you implement it. 929 00:47:39,122 --> 00:47:42,359 And I think part of what's happened is this initial data centers 930 00:47:42,359 --> 00:47:43,760 just kind of built up 931 00:47:43,760 --> 00:47:45,162 where they were and got bigger and bigger, 932 00:47:45,162 --> 00:47:47,631 which is why we have a lot of the centralized facilities. 933 00:47:47,631 --> 00:47:50,500 And going forward, we're seeing a lot of the decentralization 934 00:47:50,500 --> 00:47:54,504 that takes the load off the power grid from all one spot, that kind of thing, 935 00:47:54,538 --> 00:47:58,775 you know, and be able to develop this in a way that it will work better. 936 00:47:58,842 --> 00:48:03,714 And maybe new thinking is required for when they build these facilities. 937 00:48:03,947 --> 00:48:04,381 Yeah. 938 00:48:04,381 --> 00:48:08,418 Yeah, I, I think that going forward, definitely 939 00:48:08,418 --> 00:48:11,655 the engineering and all that kind of stuff is going to be important. 940 00:48:11,655 --> 00:48:12,055 And, you know, 941 00:48:12,055 --> 00:48:15,158 one thing you could do for AI and it's just a thought is 942 00:48:15,192 --> 00:48:18,629 instead of having it all in one spot, you have each node that uses the 943 00:48:18,629 --> 00:48:21,999 AI have a little bit of the computing capability on a distributed system. 944 00:48:21,999 --> 00:48:26,003 And what would happen is as your nodes grew, you would 945 00:48:26,003 --> 00:48:28,972 automatically be increasing the amount of 946 00:48:29,072 --> 00:48:32,175 computer capability for the AI to run on. 947 00:48:32,175 --> 00:48:34,878 And the AI might become self-aware and sentient. 948 00:48:34,878 --> 00:48:36,747 But that's just one of the things that could happen. 949 00:48:36,747 --> 00:48:40,017 You know, with generative AI any day of the week. 950 00:48:41,218 --> 00:48:44,221 Making a face. 951 00:48:45,222 --> 00:48:45,722 Anyway, 952 00:48:45,722 --> 00:48:48,659 since your questions and your comments, we love to hear from you. 953 00:48:48,659 --> 00:48:51,895 And if there's anything on this topic or the Nintendo topic or anything else 954 00:48:51,895 --> 00:48:55,732 you'd like us to deep dive into, we can do that too. 955 00:48:56,133 --> 00:48:58,802 We love to do our programing based on what you want to hear, 956 00:48:58,802 --> 00:49:01,271 and we love the feedback. Until next week. 957 00:49:01,271 --> 00:49:04,474 This is User friendly 2.0 keeping you safe on the cutting edge. 958 00:49:05,442 --> 00:49:07,678 User Friendly 2.0 Copyright 959 00:49:07,678 --> 00:49:10,814 2013 to 2026 by User 960 00:49:10,814 --> 00:49:13,817 Friendly Media Group incorporated. 961 00:49:13,850 --> 00:49:15,585 All rights reserved. 962 00:49:15,585 --> 00:49:19,756 The content is the opinion of the show's participants and does 963 00:49:19,756 --> 00:49:23,560 not necessarily reflect this station or platform. 964 00:49:23,894 --> 00:49:27,731 Requests for material use, interviews, disclosures, 965 00:49:27,731 --> 00:49:30,734 and other correspondence may be viewed 966 00:49:30,734 --> 00:49:34,271 and submitted at UserFriendly.Show