Welcome to User Friendly 2.0
with host Bill Sikkens technology architect.
Hello, hello, this is User Friendly 2.0.
As always, I am your host Bill Sikkens.
Joining me Gretchen. Bill, welcome to this week's show.
Hello there blue.
So what's new and exciting in your world?
Anything?
Oh, no.
Yeah, it's about the same week I've had I.
The only thing that I really have that would be relevant is
I got into a bit of a controversy with vendor that I use over ACH.
So we're going to be talking about that a little later in the episode.
And then the second segment, we are going to be going over
elastic pricing and Wi-Fi safety in 2026.
So we'll explain all of that when we get to that point.
All right. What do we have in the news this week.
All right.
Commodore fans split over C64 ultimate FPGA
firmware lockdown.
So what does that mean?
Well that's a lot of letters.
So. Well okay, what we're talking about here,
and we've had a lot of questions coming in about this
and had to look it up to figure out what this even was going on
is like Atari, Commodore is back in a new form.
So anybody that of our listeners that was around during that era,
which would have been early to mid 80s, may know what this kind
of equipment is, very first generation home microcomputers.
And for weird people like me, I love working with them in the retro stuff.
I love modern technology, but I like working with the old stuff too.
In line with that,
it seems like I'm not alone in that, and it's enough that they are reissuing
a lot of this equipment that was done before.
So the Commodore 64 FPGA
ultimate is a new system that looks just like the original,
what they called breadboard Commodore 64 is now they do have three versions.
One is the beige like that.
And then they have another one called a Founders Edition that's
gold, and a third one that lights up and is kind of really cool.
So, you know, it's whatever the preference is.
But being FPGA, it is an emulator,
but it's a hardware emulator, so it works very well.
And you can run your cartridges, you can run your floppy disk drives
and all of the other peripherals and that type of a thing on the system.
In fact, the only thing that I've noticed on them
is it doesn't have the user port, which is like an expansion port.
However, I found out you can get one that's on USB.
So one of the first things you have to talk about is early
80s computers did not have USB or I.
This one does.
But the one advantage to that is, is
you can plug it into a modern monitor television.
So that does make it a little bit easier from that standpoint.
Well, what's been happening is there came out with this
and have started shipping them, and there are people out there
that are trying to make firmware for this.
That is not the firmware that comes on the system.
So either hack stuff or customized stuff or whatever the case may be.
And being that it is FPGAs,
it does use firmware like a modern computer would,
so you update it and all that kind of stuff.
And I don't think that would be such a big deal,
except that users that are screwing up their computers by doing this
in some cases, are expecting Commodore to honor the warranty,
even though they're using third party software.
And that's a problem.
They don't have the infrastructure to do that, right?
Yeah, right.
So what they're wanting to do is on the next update,
which I think is 1.1 or 1.2 is locked down a portion of the firmware.
And the idea here is not to keep users from being able to do what they want
with their computer, but is to keep it from getting screwed up.
So of course, there's some controversy about that because there's people
saying, well, we want, you know, complete access and other saying, well,
it would be nice to know that this isn't going to be a problem.
And the other thing
that I look at it from a standpoint, because this didn't exist in the days
that these originally were made, but this computer is also online.
It has Wi-Fi, which means conceivably somebody could try
to hack the firmware or have a virus or something like that to, you know.
Yeah, I didn't have to worry about that on my Atari 136,
but I guess today you should.
So well, isn't wouldn't the simple evil thing to do
would be to get on their computer and say C colon format or something like that?
Well, that works on a DOS machine, but Commodore okay.
Like it's see, if I can remember this, you would load something
universally was load quote star quote comma eight.
That's right.
Because for some reason the floppy drive is the eighth device on the computer.
I don't I can't explain that.
But it was okay.
Now. But it is.
It is kind of cool.
Now I am a bit of a purist and I'm split on even having stuff like this,
but there is something nice about being able to get a machine
that does what it originally would have done, but is reliable,
and that's one of the big problems that's being run into running 4050 year
old equipment sometimes is it's just aging out.
And we've talked about that in the past, but it is definitely a thing.
And I think it's a kind of cool to see that we are getting this.
And then you have a choice of both.
You can try to buy one at a garage sale or on eBay, or get one of the new ones.
And the funny thing about it is, is the price that a working machine
on eBay originally is going for is about the same price as the new system.
So you know, who knows?
Well, would you like $100?
Sure. Yeah, sure.
Here's my checking account and credit card number so you can send it.
Okay.
Just kidding on that. But.
So what this is, is a settlement.
If you are one of the few handful of people that have used
an Android device since 2017, you would qualify for this.
So there's just a couple of us out there, I guess.
Oh yeah.
What's that?
So this is a class action settlement.
The maximum amount you can get from it is $100.
And it is basically anybody that has used an Android phone
that's been online through a cellular network.
So if you had an Android tablet that's only been on Wi-Fi,
I guess that might not qualify.
But check out the settlement website for the details.
And you have to be alive for some reason that actually is in the list.
Oh, okay. So Jeremy can't complain.
Yeah, maybe that's what maybe that's why they're doing it.
So you can't like back claim?
I don't know, but it does actually say you have to be alive.
And one of the other things is, is you have to be in the United States.
And this particular settlement, the only state from my understanding,
that is not covered by it, is California,
because they have their own separate case that you would register for there.
So basically anybody that has had an Android phone
and has been online and used it, which is most of the world
can claim this settlement, but you do have to go on and register
with the settlement administrator and give them a payment thing
like a PayPal or, you know, sending you a Zelle payment or something like that.
So now the one thing that I will
just give us a little footnote on this is we all know
that class action suits, or most of us do a lot of times
don't get quite what they tell you, and you end up getting,
you know, a coupon for $0.50 off at McDonald's instead or something.
And the payout of this is not guaranteed to be $100,
and it's based on the number of people that claim and all that kind of stuff.
So, you know, it can be a little bit less.
But even if it is, it's still worth doing.
Is it legitimate?
It's not like a marketing ploy to collect data from us.
No, this is legitimate, as far as I can tell.
And if you want an attorneys
thing on
this, which I am not on YouTube, and check out the attorney,
Steve Lehto, he did a whole talk on this where it goes into all of those details.
But yes, it is a legitimate settlement.
All right.
SpaceX has deal for
the right or a right to acquire cursor
for $60 billion.
So what is this cursor?
I think number one is because my understanding this is the only.
Right okay. It's not a right. It's the only right.
So that's just context. Right.
But basically what's going on here.
Well let me actually start by explaining what cursor is.
And no, they're not referring to the thing that flashes on your screen
when you're typing in word or some person saying foul language.
Yeah, that would be that would be another definition of it.
Although I'm sure some are considering this story.
But there is a company that develops AI for programmers, and I do know about them
because I work within that thing and Musk would like to control this assistance.
So basically what's going on here is a stand the swearing part of it.
Yeah.
Basically what it is, is controlling the tools to create programing.
So that's why this is going on here.
This is a rumor.
It's been reported in some outlets that this is going to happen.
It has not been something I've been able to confirm,
but it is out there wide enough that it's something to be concerned about.
And obviously
if we find out it's not real or get more news, we'll be covering that in the
coming weeks.
But one of the things on this, and I think that this is the best way to
sum it up, is developers are moving from writing code to directing AI.
And in many ways that is true.
And in fact, before we started recording today, we were looking at some stuff
from our own dashboard that we use for producing the show.
And as a programmer, I put the software together,
but I am working with AI to do the layout and design.
I'm not good at that and it did a really nice job
in my opinion, so I can see where this is going.
The problem is, is that current developers,
you at least know what you're getting back.
And I have a funny feeling that developers in the future
are not going to know what the code is.
I'll just paste it in and that in of itself can cause problems.
That's not a good thing, just in my opinion.
I see Bill, you're agreeing with me on that.
Yeah.
But anyway, so yes, that's what it is.
And we'll see if SpaceX has this happen.
There's a lot of things that can happen between now.
And even if this is a real thing that they're going to do,
we'll see if it actually comes together.
Disneyland announces
immediate closure of Star Wars Galaxy's Edge area.
Yes, and this has been generating a lot
of questions, because if you look at this headline,
you would think what the Disney's closing Galaxy's Edge, right?
Yeah, that's what it sounds like.
It kind of makes sense.
And it's like one of the most popular places to get a photo.
Yeah. It is. Well, people like it.
It's the Star Wars section of Disneyland, you know? So yeah.
Why would they close it? Well, what happened is, is on April 20th.
So this last Monday,
Disneyland abruptly blocked off the Millennium Falcon building in Galaxy's
Edge, and the cast members blocked access to people getting in there,
you know, that were guests of the park and that type of a thing.
But what it looks like is happening here is they're not closing it forever,
but they're updating it and the ride in there is still running.
Smugglers run, I think, is what that's called.
But the other part of it is being updated
to revert it back to the original first three movies.
Oh, cool.
That's what they're doing
afterwards to see Darth Vader and, you know, and a real CIF like Palpatine.
But they'll have the characters from that era in there.
So that's what's actually going on here.
But the one thing to be aware of is that part of the park
will not be available if you go visit Disneyland right now.
And this is an area that a lot of people want to see.
So check Disneyland's website to see what's going on.
And I do not believe this is affected
in any other park, and I don't even know for sure.
Does Disney World have a Star Wars?
I don't know, yeah, I don't know what I think we should take it.
Expense paid trip to floral research for the show.
Right? There you are.
You know, I've been in there there in the past, many, many years ago.
But that was before Disney had its claws into Star Wars,
so I wouldn't be surprised.
It's an accurate way to put it, although fortunately
it looks like the direction they're going from that standpoint.
A lot of fans, including me, are liking what we're seeing.
So yes, the whole thing has been great.
Yeah, all things are great.
And The Mandalorian and Grogu movie looks like it's going to be really cool.
So, you know, we'll see what happens. Yeah.
All right.
New technology is changing the way Tualatin gets its power.
Wallet in, by the way, is a city in Oregon. Yeah.
I was going to say to Walton, Oregon.
So this is really kind of cool.
There's a lot of potential energy,
and sometimes you have to be creative to get it.
Now we see renewable energies with things like solar and wind
and all that kind of stuff, which can augment the power grid.
But in a lot of cases it's not reliable.
You know, if there's no wind, you don't get wind energy.
If you don't have sun, the solar energy can be affected by that.
Although I am led to understand there are some solar panels
now that can pick up power at night, just not as much.
But this is an interesting thing.
And what they're doing is
they're installing turbines, power turbines into the water mains.
So the pressurized water mains
as it pushes through the pipe, which it does already turns the turbines.
And now that creates power.
And it's not taking more power to push the water through the pipes to do this.
That's noticeable.
So I'm going to really love to see where
this ends up going, but it is kind of cool.
This is, I think, a take on something like wave energy, but every city
that has a water service, which is most everybody.
Yeah, do something like this.
And you would have the investment and the equipment initially to be able
to retrofit your system, but once you've done it,
it is renewable energy that's coming from a source that you're already
expending the energy to put the water through the pipes in the first place.
So I think it's really kind of cool whoever came up with this,
I've got to give kudos to because it's a neat idea.
It's a terrific idea.
Why don't space photos ever show stars?
NASA's explanation is simpler than you'd think.
Well, it's because we've never been off the planet.
You know, the moon landing was fake. I've lied to understand that.
You don't tell who is Armstrong. That because you might get punched.
Or was it.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's.
I think that's it.
In any event, you know this.
We actually get questions on this all the time in this particular topic.
All the conspiracy theorists are out there.
There's no stars.
Well, there's actually a very good reason for it.
And if you've ever taken a picture, you've probably dealt with this.
And it has to do with light if you're photographing
the moon or the Earth, which is bright
and the stars are much dimmer in the background,
they're not going to show up
because you're going to be focused in on the object and the primary area.
You could try to do both, but it makes it blurry.
And on that, from the Artemis mission that just happened,
there are pictures of the stars in the background,
which are photographed when the foreground object is not bright.
So they are really out there, you know,
now, the moon landing again, I do have to say was completely faked.
But the one thing is, is the reality.
They wanted to film it on location.
So, you know, I keep thinking about the Star Trek
episode where they are on you to, you know,
I'm trying to remember the correct title of the episode.
It's something about something about climbing
to the top of the mountain, and I can touch the sky.
I remember that Star Trek. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And now that would be the case if you traveled out to the Dyson Sphere
or Planet Nine.
But we'll talk about that later. Yeah.
Okay.
NASA shuts off instrument on Voyager
one to keep spacecraft operating.
Yeah.
So it's a what, was Star Trek a five year mission initially,
I think I think so, yeah.
Well, I believe that Voyager one and two were a three year mission
when they started. It was somewhere in that range.
And we are well beyond that threshold now.
But they are powered by a reactor.
And as time goes by, the reactor
generates less power just because it's running out of fuel.
Essentially, there's a much better explanation for that, I know, but that's
that's essentially a 10,000ft view.
So as time has been going on and the fact that the Voyager spacecraft
has been continuing to operate
and are still in communication with Earth and are now the only man
made objects that are actually outside of our solar system in interstellar space.
Keeping them going, at least to some extent, is a big deal.
So short of being able to run a service call or asking the Roswell
Grays to do it for us or something, shutting off equipment,
we'll prolong the life a little bit longer.
So they've been shutting off instruments.
There was a plan to do this that was put together.
Well, what happened on Voyager one is they were doing some routine
work on it and it went almost went into low power shutdown.
Something happened.
So it was decided to speak up, turning off this last instrument
that they were going to do, which is the CP.
And what that instrument is for is
detecting low energy charged particles or less.
See the acronym makes sense.
Gretchen I'll do.
And this is actually been something that's been pretty much running straight
for 49 years, which is time since one launch.
So they're keeping one other instrument going.
And the other thing they have to do is keep the spacecraft heated enough
so it doesn't freeze, because I'm led to understand
it is very cold and interstellar space.
So I haven't checked it out for myself.
I don't know, but that's what I've been told. So.
Oh my.
Okay.
Well all right, well, let's go back to Earth here and talk ACH for
a little while.
And where this came up is we have a storage unit.
And the storage unit decided that they're going to charge 1.5%.
If you want to continue paying with a credit card
to try to get people to use ACH.
And I believe that stands for Automated Clearing House.
Oh, I don't like the sound of that.
What ACH is, is basically an electronic version of a check.
Now, anybody that's been a long time listener knows how I feel about checks.
I'm a little shocked that we still have them,
you know,
so the rest of the world has gotten rid of them
because you give somebody a check, your handing them your account
number, tracking or routing number, signature address.
Yes. Yeah.
All that stuff. Yeah.
And that is a bit insecure.
Plus you can just print checks on your laser printer and everybody knows that.
So making these things up isn't that terribly difficult to do.
So ACH is an electronic version of it.
Now I will give it that.
It is safer than sending a check through the mail.
However, in order to sign up for ACH,
you have to provide the company that you're going to pay.
With ACH, you're checking account number, address, routing number, etc., etc.
right? And
well, there's not a check in the mail that's going to get stolen.
The concern
I have about these things is what happens when that payment processor gets hacked.
Because keep in mind, most businesses do not actually run their own credit
card transactions. I would say 99% don't.
They contract out with a third party bank to do that before them.
And these places are very much targets because they have financial access to
our credit cards and everything else.
But here's the big deal on that.
If someone steals your credit card number and runs the card up, it's not real
money in the sense that it's not actually taking money out of your bank account.
That's your paycheck that you use to pay the power.
And the credit card people are kind of like keeping an eye
on these things actively, because this is what happens.
So they're watching it.
And and when you deal with your checking account,
while there are ways to get money recovered, it's a hassle.
You are not going to have access to your money for at least a little while,
which means your other checks for months.
Yeah, exactly.
And a lot of online bill pay also uses a check,
but it's a different kind lot to do electronic two.
But the checking version of that,
since kind of a generic check that's drawn on an account from the bank.
So that does not actually send out your personal checking account number.
However, it is funded by your account.
So if you send one of those out or have automatic payments or whatever,
and all of a sudden your account has no money in it, you're going to start
having bounce fees and overdraft and all of that kind of thing.
And banks generally have a lot
less time that you have to make the claim under your account.
So if you don't keep an eye on it, which everybody should, it's your money.
You should check on it. I do mine at least once a week.
I'll be sitting on hold or something.
Just check in to make sure that you know everything looks pretty normal.
And to that end, I strongly advise doing that because a lot can happen.
But anytime you're giving information for direct access to your real money,
I personally would recommend against that because I do not consider it safe now.
Yeah, they could just pull it out.
Exactly.
All of it, and eventually they'll get hacked.
I mean, the thing of it is that's not an if it's a win really.
So at the end of the day, that is why I have concerns
about dealing with stuff in this way.
Looking to have another point.
What if what if it's not the hackers that's the problem?
What if it's the company that you're working with?
Years ago, I had a dial up account
where they would not accept my.
I didn't want
to have their services anymore, but they kept charging my credit card.
So what the bank did was get rid of the credit card.
They killed the card to stop this, this so-called provider.
And what happens if they just keep stealing money out of your own?
It's not like you can just, you know.
And even if you could get it back, you're still looking at months
and you're still looking at having to close the account to set it over,
you know?
Yeah. Which can be a lot of hassles and of itself.
And let me tell you a little story on that,
because these type of things do happen.
This is a story from a cruise line out of Florida.
I'm not going to mention the names
because it's not relevant, but there was a couple on the cruise
that had bought the prepaid meal plan and were having dinner,
and they had an American Express card connected for other charges on the boat.
Right.
So they go and they placed a tip and the my understanding,
the person that ran it, instead of putting in the tip amount
and they were going to leave a big tip because the service was great,
but instead of putting it in the tip amount,
they accidentally entered the ID number of the couple on the boat
as the amount that was going to be paid, which got like $90,000 or something.
So here this goes through and authorizes this amount on their American Express
card. Eyes up the card. They can't use it anymore.
But it had that been like a debit card or ACH, it would have withdrawn
that money from their account or at least locked it up, you know. So.
Yeah, I don't know.
You got to be careful. You got to keep your eye on things.
You got to be vigilant, especially in this day and age.
But anytime I can avoid giving a third party
my financial information like that, I'm going to do it.
And in a few seconds here, you might ask, why are they doing that?
Well, ACH
does not have the fees like credit cards due to the business to be able to accept
the payment. So that's why we're seeing it pushed for a lot.
But again, think about it before you do it.
This is user friendly 2.0.
We'll be back after the break.
He's from the future.
He's got a really big computer
and he uses it uses it every day
and uses it uses it in every way.
What you use it for, you know, I'm not that sure because he is here.
Welcome back.
This is user friendly 2.0.
Check out our website at User Friendly Show.
It is your one stop for everything user friendly.
And now through the end of May we're running a special little promotion.
Go to our site by the Cyber Hawk book or by Nights Journal
by Gretchen here and use the word cyber Hawk
and Amazon will give you $5 off, so it's definitely worth
checking out and say, you know,
you know, I was really shocked.
The books are expensive.
Well, the books are also quite thick.
And that's true. Yeah.
You're not you're not getting some tiny little flimsy thing.
Yeah.
And if you like the eReader, like Kindle, they're available on that for
I think ten bucks. So it's you know, you can get it that way too.
But it's definitely worth checking out.
And again, right through the website and you'll save yourself some money.
I highly recommend it.
It's completely my unbiased opinion.
All right, on the note,
I'm completely biased.
Like, you know, sarcasm sign, right?
Yeah, sorry.
Generally speaking,
it is the rest of the world that seems to be appreciating this too.
I know you've gotten some feedback from people that are,
you know, somewhat negative about it,
but the majority of your feedback apparently is very positive.
So that's a cool thing, and it actually is worth the read.
The people I know that have read it have enjoyed it and Night School Journal
and then The Cyber Hawk Rise of Heroes are two very different stories,
both set in the same universe, but they're fun ones.
A coming of age novel and the other ones sci fi, where you get to play
with all this high tech and be a cyborg and thing.
So topic I kind of like.
So yeah, there you are.
All right, on to what we are going to talk about today.
We've got listener questions that have come in on both of these topics.
So again like I say user friendly dot show.
Let us know what you want to hear. Because that's where we get this stuff.
And the first one is something called elastic pricing.
All right I don't like the sound of that.
That sounds bad.
What would you think something like that is just just that plastic pricing
that they'll just make it more expensive on their whim.
Just I don't know, I've you crazy I don't know, I'm not mistaken.
It's where they're pricing things based on location or personal information.
Yeah.
And time of day even.
So, what's going on here is basically what Bill just said is they have these
electronic price tags on the shelves now, and you'll see a lot of them.
I know up here
the Kroger store has it read Myer, Home Depot has them and a lot of others.
Now part of why they would do that is it saves staff
time to be able to change prices when they need to.
So I understand that, but they can also be changed on the fly.
So some of the things that are going on, or at least some of the concerns are,
is that one of the rumors
that's out there is their pricing based on some kind of facial recognition thing.
If you walk up to the display, it raises the price.
If they think you can spend more. Now that is a rumor.
They're not doing that, at least not yet.
But they are doing things like surge pricing.
So you go into the store one time a day, and the prices will be different
than if you win in another time of day, stuff like that,
you know?
So I have to dress like a hobo in order to go shopping.
No, no.
Okay, again, it's not anything like that, but it is the time of day.
It is what's happening.
If their inventory levels go low, it can automatically raise the price.
You know, stuff like that.
Expiration dates.
This is one.
If it gets closer, it can lower the price, which is not a term you use associated
with. It's always about raising the price, you know.
But that is one thing.
So if they wanted to
sell something quickly and then demand if something gets real busy,
like they're selling a lot of this one item, like, say,
air conditioners here in the Pacific Northwest in the beginning of the year.
Well, as the demand goes up, it can automatically raise the prices for those.
And since it's an automated system, it will know at the checkout
what the price is on the shelf. So
it literally could change from where you picked it up.
Yeah it could, it could.
Yeah okay.
That's very deceptive.
And yeah, I could see that,
you know, having bad results.
It is.
And it's, you know, one of those types of situations.
So basically again, what you're dealing with here is that
the prices are not changing based on who is standing in front of the shelf.
I could see them trying that, but that's not the case right now.
Camera sees you, prices go up so you don't have to dress like a hobo.
As you say, you will be able to get lower prices.
At least they deny that they're doing this.
And regulators,
I think, would step in on that one because that would be a little bit
not so nice.
But there's probably rules against that too.
However, where this is going
and what we're seeing as retailers are investing heavily in AI pricing
systems, loyalty apps are getting more personalized.
Digital things remove the friction of changing prices.
Now that last one, I can kind of understand
going through a store and changing all the price tags.
That would take a lot of human time, so you can avoid that.
That makes a lot of sense.
It also see things like targeted discounts of one store targets a specific item
for a discount just in that store or during a certain time period,
these kind of things.
And then app based pricing that differs from in-store tags.
That's another one too.
And we're already seeing that.
I mean, if you go online and order something, we do the click pick thing
where you put your grocery order in online and then you go pick it up
and they blow it into your trunk.
And I have noticed that the prices are different there than other things.
Now, one of the other questions that's coming into this is loyalty programs.
And this isn't directly related to this topic, because
this is something that's always been out there.
When you run your loyalty card, they know what you bought.
In fact, a lot of places put that online now and you can see
I can see what I bought for groceries five years ago at Smith's and Merino.
Right.
So not that I would need that, but it's out there
and they use this type of information to target the specials they send you in.
That kind of a thing.
Now, I haven't had an objection to that because it's the products
I buy and I get coupons or whatever the case may
be to be able to use for that, but it makes sense.
You know, what I don't like
is when they sell that data and believe me, they do to third parties.
So, you know, it's an interesting thing.
In fact, there was a law and order done about this type of a topic
a number of years ago, and it was based on a true story in that
there was a stalker stalking this woman, and they knew, you know,
what kind of toothpaste she bought, what kind of,
you know, all these different things.
And it came out well, how would they know that even if they were watching her?
You can see some stuff.
Well, the hackers had gotten into the computer
that had her loyalty card so they could see exactly what she bought
when she bought it, when she was shopping, you know, all that kind of stuff.
So again, the story that is they did it is fiction, but it was based on
something that actually did happen.
And, you know, like we said in the first half, it's not about
if they're going to get hacked, it's about when is it will happen.
So these type of things, but it isn't even so much that last week
we talked about the DMV selling your personal data.
Same thing with loyalty programs.
And you know, if you lose your login or something, a lot of times it's okay.
What's your name? What's your date of birth?
Maybe some other bit of information.
What's your address?
Well, if someone has that information from the loyalty card
or your driver's license or wherever they got it, they're going to have that.
And with the credit bureaus
being hacked, most of that information is already on the dark web, which
and sometimes has better customer service than the websites on the regular web.
So I've been told by a friend. Right. But
but in all
seriousness, it is a huge problem.
And I think the worry that creates these type of things is, is
stuff keeps going more and more digital is could they eventually do this?
We were talking about the idea
that airlines were changing ticket pricing based on the device you are using.
And while they steadfastly deny this, and I wasn't able to find any evidence
that that was the case,
I could find that where you were buying the tickets, like physically,
your geolocation would change the price and other things like that.
But I do know as a programmer
you can tell what your user is using the browser website.
That's a function that's been there for a very long time.
And what it's supposed to be used for is formatting the page
so it fits the screen size, stuff like that.
Exactly.
But, you know, it's certainly not something that any bad guy
would look at and go, hey, I can use this for nefarious reasons.
So the idea that there would be a concern of these things
to do that, actually do that and deploy that in a store would take more,
because you would have to have facial recognition
and you have to have it tied to some system
where they could look up who you were and these type of things.
But, you know, it wouldn't be impossible to do that.
It really wouldn't.
And I don't know, you know, I love
technology, I love I love the new stuff, like I say,
but there are some things here where you do get
a situation that's going to be kind of scary.
So what happens now? Dynamic pricing.
So if you shop between 3 and 5, just making this up at three and 5 p.m.
somewhere, the prices are going to be higher because they're busier.
And then after prime time it goes lower to do that.
You know, and I know the pushback on these things has been pretty negative.
Uber surge pricing is one of those things that causes problems,
especially when there's an emergency and everybody needs to get out of someplace.
And now they start charging you more because more people are using the service.
Right.
So pushback will be the best way
to keep places from doing this kind of stuff.
And it has worked in some cases.
As far as I know, we don't have to pay to use the heated seats in a BMW
or the key fob on a Toyota's remote start, that kind of a thing.
But these are all things
that these companies had wanted to charge a subscription for, or additional money,
or that kind of a thing that people making enough of a fuss push back on.
So, you know, it's just interesting to see where this goes.
What do you guys think of that?
Are you ready to have facial recognition at a store and how the prices change?
I think I'm going to wear my mission anywhere.
I think I'm going to wear my Mandalorian helmet.
I think we should all go in Mandalorian helmets
that would go into a bank or a casino like that.
You probably bad things might happen.
So yeah, you know, now, one thing I will tell you that's
a little bit scary on this too, is we covered this last year,
but at one point Home Depot was having videos taken of people
using the automated checkouts and was using facial recognition.
So if you log in like I have my extra military thing,
it would actually have been able to put my picture with my account.
Oh, now if I go online it knows more information.
Now, I haven't seen them doing anything
nefarious with it, but I don't like them having that at all.
You know? Yeah, it's kind of creepy.
In a few weeks, we're going to be doing an episode
on all the places where there's cameras and what they do.
This will be in there again.
But some of the other stuff we've talked about,
like lock cameras and stuff, it's getting downright weird.
And we're going to happen.
Is it just here in the United States or is it in other countries as well?
Oh no. Oh no.
Surveillance states are all over the world, I think the UK.
Yeah, I don't know if we still have, but they had a record of having
the most cameras per person or something like that in London.
Yeah, I had a friend complaining about that.
We're feeling concerned. Yes.
It's a valid concern if everything you do from when you leave your house to
when you get back is videoed and recorded somewhere,
that really is not a good thing.
I don't think I'd make a very exciting what is it?
Was the character's name Truman in that movie Truman Show, the Truman show?
I'm sorry, I'm not really that interesting.
Don't watch me no fall asleep.
Let's say, as a for example, you drive to work,
you go to a store, you know, a couple times a week, drive home.
Now all of a sudden, the ads on your phone or for that store
and normally go there and with some of the stuff Ford's
patented, it's a forced commercial
on your car infotainment system when you drive by the place.
Wouldn't you like to come in today for this deal?
Not doing it right now, but is it possible they filed the patent for it?
So yeah, it's possible.
It's possible.
So next listener question that came in that is something
important is securing Wi-Fi.
Now this is not anything new.
Wi-Fi has been out for a year or two.
I'm led to understand and maybe a little longer than that.
And public Wi-Fi as a result has been out there.
You go to Starbucks or the airport or, you know, nice hotel or something.
It's all
offer a Wi-Fi network, you know?
And the problem is, is these open
networks have a situation where
when you're on them, so are the bad guys, and it's an open network.
So your security, if you don't have things set up properly
on a shared untrusted network, is a thing.
So the common risks you have on
that is something called a man in the middle attack,
which means you going to a website and it's working just fine.
But someone's injected themselves into that data stream,
so they're seeing what you're doing,
getting your credit card number, all that kind of stuff.
Fake Wi-Fi hotspots.
This is a big deal.
And with Wi-Fi seven out now, it's an even bigger deal.
So what will happen is you'll go to the airport
and you'll have a Wi-Fi network.
They're called the airport, you know, whatever.
And somebody has a router running on Wi-Fi seven or even six.
It's probably more powerful than what they have there.
They plug it in somewhere, sitting there with the same name.
Now you're connecting to their network.
You have the routing setup, right?
It'll still go out to the internet
and that type of a thing, but they can see everything that you're doing
and that can lead to malware injection, other things like that.
So how do you
how do you
check your phone to see if it's got malware on it?
How do you work to protect your device?
Now one option is prey,
but something a little more that you can figure out right now,
and that doesn't require divine intervention.
There are some things you can do in answer to your question to figure out
if there's malware on the phone or the tablet or your laptop.
Some of the things you look for are the device suddenly slows down,
or you have performance issues that kind of a thing, or you open your web
browser and it's always forced to some specific third party website.
Those are some signs of that type of thing.
But it gets kind of scary because if you have good programmers,
they can do keyboard tracking.
That kind of a thing.
I know on a phone it's a touch screen, but it's the same idea
where everything you key in
there is sent to a third party site, and if the software is written
correctly, it's not going to necessarily slow down your phone.
But if weird things start happening,
that's one thing that you would want to look at.
And if you start thinking there's a problem with it, check with your
cell phone provider like your Verizon or whatever is one place to start.
And then when they don't know
what you're talking about, there are programs like malware bites
and some other things that are available on mobile platforms as well as desktops.
Now, anti-virus software, all that kind of stuff.
Now, my thing with all of that is I used to be very, very specific
on running, you know, like Norton Antivirus or one of these systems.
I have found that on the new versions of windows, Windows Defender
does a pretty nice job, and it's as good as the third party one,
and it doesn't have the footprint that slows down.
Your computer on your phone is a little bit different now.
The operating systems,
whether it's Android or iPhone, do have this technology built in.
We've seen even recently where there's a zero day update
because they've found a problem in our exploiting it,
and they push the update out.
And one of the bigger problems
with mobile devices, especially on the Android side, is your updates
might come out from Google, but might not be approved by the cell phone
provider or the company that makes the phone for a few weeks.
So you get a delay on getting these things in.
So your Google Pixel, which is a Google phone, will get updated before
your Samsung Galaxy or whatever, you know, and that can be a problem.
So some of the other things you can do to try to avoid getting malware
in the first place is don't install creepy apps.
And I will say
Apple's a little bit more secure on their distribution than Android is.
But malware apps are out there on both systems, and if you go out there
and get an app that you know, we're going to pay you money
for every website you visit or every game you play or something like that,
probably something to be suspicious of.
And while there are legitimate things for this type of thing,
don't just install it.
Take the time, read the reviews, make sure there are reviews.
And it wasn't just
launched a week ago or something, because that's another thing to look at.
All of that kind of stuff.
And the other thing of it is, is the basic stuff that we use now
still works with this. When you go to a website,
make sure the padlock is on the browser and it's Https
from times.
The browsers don't always show that anymore, but the padlock will be there.
Insecure sites are a bad thing and most major sites enforce it.
A lot of browsers will give you all kinds of warnings
if it's not secure, but they all don't do that.
And sometimes there's ways to get around that.
Do you want to do that?
If you happen to be using a site that doesn't use HTTP
or shows the s, I can say that really
or doesn't show the padlock, don't enter passwords,
certainly don't enter credit card numbers, and probably just don't use the site.
And if it's a real vendor and it's 2026 and they still have something like that,
I would call and complain
because that would be really something where they're not keeping up with it.
Now, one of the better things that you can do is using a VPN,
and this will solve a lot of problems because the data is encrypted
over the VPN, as long as it's a legitimate VPN.
ExpressVPN, NordVPN, proton.
There's a lot of different companies like that that will put that out there.
Even Eero the manufacturers, the Wi-Fi
seven devices by Amazon has a VPN available on their plus service.
You do pay for it, but I know Nord for me is like not a lot of money
for three years. I want to say like 40 bucks or something.
It wasn't expensive.
And when I travel internationally, I like to have it too,
because I can get to things that would be locked out.
You know, from that standpoint, if the VPN is free, you know, free is nice.
It's not really free.
You're the product.
And I would stay away from anything like that, you know.
So the other thing that is something that I really didn't think about.
And so I started researching this is turn off the auto reconnect
or the auto join function on your phone or public network.
So your home network, you can have that on or a secured network at work.
That's fine.
But if you're at Starbucks, don't have that turned on
because it will auto reconnect
and you might not know what's doing it, you might park in the parking lot
and it picks up the signal, something like that.
So we're just wanted to look for this particular feature, okay.
The way to get to it is different on the different phones
iPhone versus Android and some androids are different.
But what you're looking for is your Wi-Fi settings, oh, Wi-Fi settings.
Can you get into that?
And it'll give you a list of the remembered networks,
and you can look through it, and you might be kind of surprised
at how many are actually in there, especially now when you get new devices
and they import the data from the old ones. So it's not even reset.
Really keeps that information and delete anything out of there that you don't need.
Now, one of the other things to do is also try to avoid the fake networks.
We talked about that a little bit earlier,
but ask a staff member for the actual name of their Wi-Fi.
And I actually had this happen once.
I was at a Starbucks and the network was Starbucks, so was spelled wrong.
The actual network was Starbucks and somebody was actively doing it.
This was a couple of years ago and I did turn it in, but that type of thing
is very easy to do, especially if you get busy, you know?
And if you're on a iPhone, turn off AirDrop
and on both types of phones, turn off file sharing and network discovery.
These options will also be something that people can get in on.
One other thing to think about
when you're on a public Wi-Fi network is do not use the network.
If you're
going to put in financial information, like logging into your bank account
or using credit cards, turn the network off for that point.
Use the cellular connection, which will be more secure
because it's not a thing, and then you can turn it back on afterwards.
And finally, like we were alluding to earlier, keep your phone updated.
Both operating systems benefit from that sometimes.
You can't always get them updates right away, but you do want to do it.
And when an update comes in, don't pause it for two weeks.
I've been guilty of that myself because it's like it's not good right now.
I'll do it later and then it gets the late.
Eventually it will force it, but at the end of the day,
you do want to get those in there as quickly as you can.
And finally, this isn't just open Wi-Fi networks,
but it's good advice is set up.
Multi-factor authentication.
Boy, this saved us on Facebook about a year ago.
I know I've talked about that in the past, but one of the people that works with us
got this message from Facebook that your account is performed
a crime or something that violated their policy or whatever it is,
and you need to go here and appeal it, or it's going to be deleted at some point.
So our staff member did, and the bad guys had set up a very,
very authentic looking site, and it caused us to rethink
our training a little bit more, because when it got to
asking for the password, that should have been a clue.
It is now.
But you know, we all learn even the best people can can get hacked.
And I started getting all of these texts that your MFA code is this your MFA code?
Is this for Facebook?
And they were trying to go in and get in and change the password
and hijack the account, which is a very common thing to do.
So, you know, at the end of the day, two
for even though sometimes it's a little bit of a pain,
you can do that.
And one of the other things is if you travel a lot, get a personal hotspot.
Now, I hadn't worked with these before,
but when we did the robots at the Stem presentation,
I needed a network that when I had the robots
not on my network at the lab, they would still work
and I didn't want to have to reconfigure them at the school.
That would have taken too long.
So I bought this little mini router.
It was about 40 bucks and it creates its own network.
And with that, you can connect it to the hotspot on your phone for internet access.
You can connect it to
a network that you would have that's Wi-Fi that you know is secure.
Or you if you don't need the internet like we did with the robots,
you can just run it for that.
But what ends up happening is all of your devices that are connected to your
private hotspot or your personal network
stay connected, and the only place that you have to make a change
is on the one unit to go in and tell it's okay to connect
to this network or that type of thing, or just uplink through your phone.
Most cell phone providers now, if you're traveling, especially,
offer unlimited or very inexpensive data for doing that type of a thing.
And whatever the cost is, it's well worth having the extra security. So.
All right. Have I scared you guys at all?
Not really.
I'm concerned, but, you know, that's good.
Yeah, it's it's stuff to think about.
And it's unfortunate because a lot of this attacks
the features that are in these devices
that are supposed to make them easier to use, things like the auto reconnect,
you know, it's a nice thing to be able to do.
And again, if you're on a secure network, it's fine to use that.
But a public network, be careful.
I know Gretchen going to the hospital was another place
that you were mentioning before we started recording,
where it's an auto reconnect thing.
And is the hospital network going to be secure when when you get on it?
At least when I've seen that you have to accept the terms.
Yeah. And it's something.
But that's not secure in the network.
That's just securing the terms.
It's still an open network. Exactly.
And conditions or not.
And the other thing of it is, is
even if it asks for a password through a browser, when you connect,
not connecting to the Wi-Fi and putting in a Wi-Fi
password, but a password to like, log in, I've seen that.
And even those type of things are still an open network.
It's just they're securing so that you can't get free
access, usually have to pay them, or to be a member of a program or whatever
the case may be, where you can get the password for it.
So unfortunately, it is definitely something to where
maybe it's not as convenient, but it would be less
convenient to have to figure out getting your money back
and your banking account and that type of thing. Until next week.
This is user friendly 2.0 keeping you safe on the cutting edge.
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