Latest / Brian Thomas / Tech Friday w/ Dave Hatter - Sponsored by Intrust IT - 2/27/2026

Transcript

Tech Friday w/ Dave Hatter - Sponsored by Intrust IT - 2/27/2026 · Brian Thomas

0:00
Speaker 1: Chuck Ingram fifty five KRC the talk station six thirty
0:07
Speaker 1: on a Friday. It's that time of the week I
0:09
Speaker 1: always look forward to. I always call it appointment listening,
0:11
Speaker 1: and I beg my listeners, please, dear God, listen to
0:13
Speaker 1: what Dave had it from Interest. I has to say.
0:16
Speaker 1: Interest it dot coms where you find Dave and the
0:18
Speaker 1: crew for your business computer needs, and he's on the
0:22
Speaker 1: program every Friday to try to keep us out of trouble.
0:24
Speaker 1: I'm so happy, Dave, welcome back to the Morning Show,
0:26
Speaker 1: Happy Friday, that you have the seven thousand robot vacuum article.
0:30
Speaker 1: I brought this up early in the week and I
0:32
Speaker 1: mentioned you right out of the gate. I said, see
0:34
Speaker 1: Dave Hatter's right, listen to him. Don't go Internet of
0:37
Speaker 1: things stuff because they suck. Here's a terrible illustration of
0:40
Speaker 1: exactly what you're talking about. Fortunately, at least this guy
0:43
Speaker 1: was honest about it and didn't use it for nefarious purposes.
0:45
Speaker 1: Let my listeners know, Dave, welcome back.
0:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, Brian, great, great intro, as always, thanks for having me,
0:52
Speaker 2: and yeah, I've been on this particular story now for
0:55
Speaker 2: several days, posted it all over my social media and
0:59
Speaker 2: you know, I will frequently try to share these stories
1:02
Speaker 2: and use them to show people why the Internet of
1:05
Speaker 2: things aka so so called smart devices, which are actually
1:10
Speaker 2: rather dumb, as evidenced yet again by this story, to
1:13
Speaker 2: just point out why you don't want this stuff. So
1:16
Speaker 2: before I get into the details, let me just simplify
1:18
Speaker 2: this for everyone. Almost all of these so called smart
1:22
Speaker 2: devices come from China. They're full of software that no
1:25
Speaker 2: one has vetted. They could have back doors and if
1:27
Speaker 2: nothing else, all kinds of security vulnerabilities. They typically will
1:33
Speaker 2: not be managed or maintained the software anyway for more
1:36
Speaker 2: than a couple of years as they move on to
1:38
Speaker 2: a new product. So you know, we've been doing this
1:40
Speaker 2: show for over ten years, Brian.
1:42
Speaker 3: It's not just me.
1:43
Speaker 2: Look at the DHS, FBI, Microsoft, Google, Apple, anyone will
1:47
Speaker 2: tell you.
1:48
Speaker 3: You know, software vulnerabilities are.
1:49
Speaker 2: One of the ways bad guys get any You have
1:51
Speaker 2: to patch your software well when they stop making updates
1:53
Speaker 2: for it. How do you patch it right right now?
1:55
Speaker 2: You're in the legacy bucket. People don't understand this. They
1:58
Speaker 2: don't know how to configure these things correctly. But the
2:00
Speaker 2: big problem, besides the fact that almost all of this
2:02
Speaker 2: is coming from China is that it's not designed with
2:06
Speaker 2: your privacy and security in mind, and in fact, in
2:08
Speaker 2: many cases it's the opposite. It's designed with speed to market,
2:13
Speaker 2: market share, easy abuse in data collection in mind. So
2:16
Speaker 2: this this particular guy again Popular Science magazine. This isn't
2:19
Speaker 2: like ten foil hat magazine.
2:21
Speaker 3: Or something like that.
2:22
Speaker 1: Listen, I didn't somebody sent me a meme about this.
2:24
Speaker 1: I didn't believe it at first, because I don't believe
2:26
Speaker 1: anything anymore. So I immediately started searching in a found Yes,
2:29
Speaker 1: this is actually a genuine thing. And one of the
2:31
Speaker 1: reasons I gave Popular Science at least credit for some
2:34
Speaker 1: measure of credibility. They were the ones reporting on it. Anyway,
2:36
Speaker 1: go ahead, Dave.
2:37
Speaker 2: So this particular guy is a software engineer, so he's
2:41
Speaker 2: got some technical skill, right. He bought a now, wait
2:43
Speaker 2: for two thousand dollars robot vacuum. I can't imagine why
2:46
Speaker 2: you'd pay two thousand dollars for one of these things.
2:49
Speaker 1: People who want a six thousand dollars toilet.
2:50
Speaker 3: Dave.
2:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, Brian, I wouldn't pay two dollars for
2:54
Speaker 2: one of these. But nevertheless, he buys one of these
2:57
Speaker 2: and he decides that it would be fun as a
3:00
Speaker 2: little side project for himself to try to steer the
3:03
Speaker 2: thing around using a video game controller. Right, right, So
3:07
Speaker 2: he's going to reverse engineer it. And as he gets
3:10
Speaker 2: into it and starts to fool with it, he realizes
3:13
Speaker 2: that the robot is talking to the company that makes it.
3:16
Speaker 2: Dji've never heard of them, talks to their cloud servers, right,
3:20
Speaker 2: So it's connected to the internet through his Wi Fi. Obviously,
3:24
Speaker 2: the thing moves around, it doesn't have a cord necessarily,
3:27
Speaker 2: and it's it's communicating back to their servers. Now, one
3:30
Speaker 2: could ask why does the robot vacuum which is just
3:33
Speaker 2: sweeping need to communicate with their servers? Well, you know
3:36
Speaker 2: one answer, one legitimateswer, Well, you want to want it
3:39
Speaker 2: to get software updates, but you know it might be
3:42
Speaker 2: mapping your house. Who knows what it's doing? Does it
3:44
Speaker 2: have a camera and a microphone? Is it listening to you?
3:46
Speaker 2: Who knows?
3:47
Speaker 3: Right?
3:48
Speaker 2: So he gets into it and he discovers that now
3:52
Speaker 2: I'm reading directly from the article. While building his own
3:54
Speaker 2: remote control app. This guy reportedly used an AI coding
3:58
Speaker 2: assistant to help reverse ineer how the robot communicated with
4:01
Speaker 2: their cloud servers. He soon discovered that the same credentials
4:05
Speaker 2: us your name and password. This is a common problem
4:07
Speaker 2: embedded in the business. We call it secrets use your
4:10
Speaker 2: name and password in the code so that they can
4:13
Speaker 2: talk to their servers. He discovers the same credentials that
4:16
Speaker 2: allow him to see and control his own device also
4:19
Speaker 2: provided access to live camera feeds, microphone audio maps, and
4:23
Speaker 2: status data from nearly seven thousand other vacuums across twenty
4:28
Speaker 2: four countries. Now this guy, yeah reports it. Imagine if
4:33
Speaker 2: this were and a hacker who wanted to steal your
4:37
Speaker 2: information or wanted to use their access to this device
4:41
Speaker 2: to get to your other devices or possibly eventually to
4:44
Speaker 2: your bank or to your work.
4:45
Speaker 1: Well, you can mention all that, but they have access
4:47
Speaker 1: to the cameras on the things they could spy on you.
4:50
Speaker 1: Maybe some creepy pedophile wants to look at your twelve
4:53
Speaker 1: year old daughter or something.
4:55
Speaker 2: Yes, or again, imagine if this weren't just a robe vacuum.
5:01
Speaker 2: Imagine if it were, for example, a car that adversarial
5:05
Speaker 2: hackers a nation state actor like China could take over,
5:09
Speaker 2: and the day that they decide to launch an attack
5:11
Speaker 2: on Taiwan. They make every one of those cars missiles.
5:15
Speaker 1: They could guess drive them into power stations, right anything.
5:20
Speaker 2: This article, And this is not the first time something
5:24
Speaker 2: like this has come up, This is just the most
5:26
Speaker 2: recent time. When I shared these things, I'll usually come
5:29
Speaker 2: up with some sort of snarky comment like reason number
5:32
Speaker 2: one million and seven, why you don't want this garbage? Okay, So,
5:37
Speaker 2: yet again, yet again, we have an example of these
5:41
Speaker 2: things being built in a way that they are inherently insecure.
5:47
Speaker 2: I mean, even the most basic person, even most basic
5:50
Speaker 2: cybersecurity person, knows you should not store credentials, use your names, passwords, tokens,
5:56
Speaker 2: anything that would give you access like that in the code.
6:00
Speaker 2: This is like one oh one type stuff, right, But
6:02
Speaker 2: it comes up over and over again. Now, I'm not
6:06
Speaker 2: suggesting in this case this was done in a nefarious way.
6:09
Speaker 2: The problem is many software engineers are not trained on
6:13
Speaker 2: security at all. They don't care about security. They care
6:16
Speaker 2: about against Did I get it done on budget? Did
6:19
Speaker 2: I get it done on time? These companies do not
6:22
Speaker 2: care about your privacy or security. They care about selling
6:25
Speaker 2: you their cheap, garbage spyware. And yet here is another
6:29
Speaker 2: example of it. Well, documented you your own para.
6:33
Speaker 1: Gotta take a break. We're way over time and Joe
6:35
Speaker 1: Strecker is yelling in my headset. We'll continue with Dave Hatter,
6:38
Speaker 1: Talk Interest, I dot Com, Jimmy Care fireplaces, though I
6:41
Speaker 1: always say they do literally everything related to chimneys and
6:43
Speaker 1: fireplaces to you know, a lot of the second.
6:44
Speaker 3: Do they talk station?
6:48
Speaker 1: If you about kr CD talk station, we call it
6:51
Speaker 1: tech Friday with Dave Hatter. Listen to what Dave has
6:53
Speaker 1: to say, including when he says no, I'm a no.
6:57
Speaker 1: There's a quote. I saw this article about the mayor
7:00
Speaker 1: of Fort Wright and they were discussing the contract with
7:03
Speaker 1: Flock Safety, which aggregates your personal ring camera, doorbells and
7:07
Speaker 1: consolidates and for the purposes of safety, and the mayor
7:10
Speaker 1: over there some guy named Dave Hatter said, I'm gonna
7:13
Speaker 1: know nothing you say will convince me. Unless you all
7:15
Speaker 1: have a super majority, this is dead. I will veto this.
7:19
Speaker 1: I think we're talking about the same kind of concept here,
7:21
Speaker 1: aren't we, Dave Hatter, mayor.
7:23
Speaker 2: Oh Brian, We are talking about the same kind of concept,
7:26
Speaker 2: which is my issue with this. So you know, flock
7:29
Speaker 2: cameras have popped up all around the country. They've come
7:32
Speaker 2: under a lot of fire. In fact, you may recall
7:35
Speaker 2: after the Super Bowl a flock and Ring had some
7:38
Speaker 2: kind of partnership to you, and then the Ring ad
7:40
Speaker 2: that freaked everyone out with the lost dog finding capability
7:44
Speaker 2: has thrown cold water on that. And you know, I've
7:47
Speaker 2: done a lot of research on this over time, but
7:51
Speaker 2: I have fundamental issues with the concept of this and
7:54
Speaker 2: the idea of this Orwellian digital surveillance state we're building
7:58
Speaker 2: all under the guise of convenience and safety.
8:01
Speaker 3: I know we'll run out of time because.
8:02
Speaker 2: I can get ranting on this, just like I did
8:05
Speaker 2: the last segment, and a great segue from the last
8:07
Speaker 2: segment about the Internet of things. I mean, these are
8:09
Speaker 2: Internet of Things devices, and in general, folks, anything that
8:13
Speaker 2: is smart, anything that is connected to the Internet, is
8:15
Speaker 2: an Internet of Things device in the most general sense. Right,
8:20
Speaker 2: There's a guy that I think it was in Wired magazine.
8:24
Speaker 2: I don't have it in front of me, went out
8:26
Speaker 2: and was able to hack one of these things and
8:28
Speaker 2: actually see himself standing in.
8:30
Speaker 3: Front of the camera.
8:32
Speaker 2: It's in and I've been I'm pretty sure it's in
8:33
Speaker 2: Wired magazine. I'll post it in my notes today. But
8:38
Speaker 2: the way these things work and all the back end
8:40
Speaker 2: surveillance and so forth, I totally understand the argument of
8:44
Speaker 2: why people think these are good.
8:46
Speaker 3: Right.
8:47
Speaker 2: Hey, it might help us find a lost person, it
8:50
Speaker 2: may help us capture a criminal.
8:52
Speaker 3: I get all of that. Okay.
8:54
Speaker 2: However, I'm going to go back to our boy Benjamin Franklin,
8:58
Speaker 2: who said, you know, he who gives up say for
9:00
Speaker 2: liberty liberty for safety, deserves neither. I'm paraphrasing.
9:03
Speaker 3: I mean we are.
9:04
Speaker 2: We are building a digital surveillance state, and people like
9:07
Speaker 2: the ACLU, the eff most people who have spent any
9:11
Speaker 2: time really studying these things are not fans. Right now, Again, again,
9:18
Speaker 2: I get a lot of your listeners like the ACLU.
9:20
Speaker 2: I don't agree with them on versus anything. Well, just
9:22
Speaker 2: go read what they tell you about this, okay, Again,
9:25
Speaker 2: take any of the politics out of it for a second,
9:27
Speaker 2: Electronic Frontier Foundation, just read what they have to say
9:30
Speaker 2: about these things. So this came up, you know, typically,
9:35
Speaker 2: I am very fortunate that on our city council we
9:37
Speaker 2: have six members and we all generally see things the
9:41
Speaker 2: same way. We have a simple objective here and for
9:43
Speaker 2: it right, for the most part, we want to leave
9:45
Speaker 2: you alone and let's keep your own money. That's what
9:46
Speaker 2: we're trying to do here. That's what we've been doing
9:48
Speaker 2: for a long time for anyone. That's for anyone that's
9:51
Speaker 2: looking to live in a place where you'll be left
9:53
Speaker 2: alone and get to keep most of your own money.
9:56
Speaker 2: Right is your place. Our tax rate is the lowest
9:58
Speaker 2: it's been since two thousand and eight.
9:59
Speaker 1: Bryan, and I'll mobitarian dream right there. We trusted with Zippra,
10:03
Speaker 1: We're trusted with your money, will leave you alone. Welcome
10:06
Speaker 1: to Fort Wright.
10:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So this came up again. I understand why
10:11
Speaker 2: some people were interested. So you know, I did a
10:13
Speaker 2: lot of research. I sent out a lot of information.
10:16
Speaker 2: One of the things and I think you and I
10:17
Speaker 2: have talked about this over the years, and again I'll
10:19
Speaker 2: put all this in my show notes. Frank Church, the
10:23
Speaker 2: Church Committee back in the seventies, Okay, he was a
10:27
Speaker 2: US senator. There was some potential abuses of the surveillance
10:30
Speaker 2: state at that time, and there was this big committee.
10:34
Speaker 2: Now there's a video from the seventies of him talking
10:37
Speaker 2: about this, and this is it's all well document. If
10:39
Speaker 2: you know where to look. Most people don't know about this.
10:42
Speaker 2: There's a video, and there's the subject of the video.
10:45
Speaker 2: Senator Frank Church quote, there is nowhere to hide from
10:48
Speaker 2: government surveillance, from the government's surveillance state unquote. That was
10:52
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy five long befoording of this stuff. Now, think
10:56
Speaker 2: about the capabilities today, Think about what was exposed by
10:58
Speaker 2: Edward Snowden, And before we run out of time, there's
11:01
Speaker 2: a great quote from Snowden. I use it all the time.
11:04
Speaker 2: Arguing that you don't care about privacy because you have
11:07
Speaker 2: nothing to hide. Is no difference in saying you don't
11:09
Speaker 2: care about free speech because you have nothing to say.
11:12
Speaker 2: Edward Snowden, I am just fundamentally against this stuff. Again,
11:17
Speaker 2: all the arguments for it, I understand, But when I
11:21
Speaker 2: weigh it down in my mind and I see where
11:23
Speaker 2: we're going, and then we see yet another example of
11:25
Speaker 2: Internet of Things devices being used in ways you didn't anticipate,
11:29
Speaker 2: being hacked, being controlled by foreign nation state actors. Imagine
11:34
Speaker 2: if again, the day China decides to take to attack Taiwan,
11:39
Speaker 2: in addition to all kinds of other attacks on the grid,
11:42
Speaker 2: attacks on the IoT, they were able to use these
11:45
Speaker 2: cameras for surveillance purposes, to launch other types of attacks
11:48
Speaker 2: of some sort.
11:49
Speaker 1: Certainly, I mean we envisioned that easily.
11:52
Speaker 2: We're throwing so much of this stuff into our environment
11:54
Speaker 2: with a little thought to privacy or security. Much of
11:57
Speaker 2: it is garbage, and for all of those reasons, I'm like,
12:00
Speaker 2: you know, sorry, guys, there's no convincing I'm against this.
12:05
Speaker 2: We're not doing it as long as I have a say.
12:07
Speaker 3: Well, it's end of story.
12:08
Speaker 1: In the name of security, we're giving up security. There's
12:11
Speaker 1: an interesting test on this. Let's continue with Dave Hatter
12:13
Speaker 1: and find out if you see the talk station six
12:17
Speaker 1: if you want to, if if you have CARCD talk station.
12:19
Speaker 1: Happy Friday. One more segment with Dave Hatter Intrust dot
12:23
Speaker 1: Com Get Dave and the crew on the job your
12:25
Speaker 1: business Computer Needs. Business Career says they are the best
12:27
Speaker 1: in the business. Dave Hatter, We've got one more thing
12:29
Speaker 1: to talk about, and that is artificial intelligence making work
12:32
Speaker 1: more efficient.
12:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, so real quick, Brian, I just want to say,
12:38
Speaker 2: when you understand how to use these AI tools that
12:41
Speaker 2: are out there, and you understand what they can and
12:43
Speaker 2: can't do, right, the hallucinations and all that sort of
12:46
Speaker 2: thing that you can fastly improve your productivity individually. As
12:52
Speaker 2: an organization, you know, we use these things internally at
12:56
Speaker 2: interust in carefully designed way. You know, we're not just
13:02
Speaker 2: throwing everything at it and hoping that it produces correct
13:05
Speaker 2: results in that sort of thing. Again, you've got hallucinations,
13:07
Speaker 2: you have privacy issues with the data you're putting in
13:09
Speaker 2: these things. These things, to some extent can be solved.
13:13
Speaker 2: And again I just want to be clear. When you
13:16
Speaker 2: understand how to use these tools, which by the way,
13:18
Speaker 2: is something we can help you with, it can be
13:21
Speaker 2: a huge productivity booster. But there's so much hype and
13:25
Speaker 2: hyperbolea around all of this and has been now for
13:27
Speaker 2: a couple of years. It's hard to know who to
13:29
Speaker 2: believe what to think about any of this stuff. And
13:32
Speaker 2: then you know, recently some of the bloom has come
13:35
Speaker 2: off the rows on some of these things. For example,
13:38
Speaker 2: here was an article from inc magazine. It turns out
13:40
Speaker 2: AI agents can't replace experienced humans. That's just one of
13:44
Speaker 2: many articles. IBM recently announced they're going to triple their
13:49
Speaker 2: entry level hiring with the idea that because one of
13:52
Speaker 2: the arguments has been okay, entry level jobs are going
13:54
Speaker 2: away because of this stuff. IBM's theory is we're going
13:57
Speaker 2: to triple this and we're going to augment these people
14:00
Speaker 2: with AI tools in ways that makes sense and work.
14:05
Speaker 2: So again, there's so much hype around this. Here's another
14:09
Speaker 2: article from Ink magazine. A new report says AI layoffs
14:12
Speaker 2: are backfiring and half of companies will start rehiring. The
14:16
Speaker 2: article I think Joe found or maybe I sent him.
14:18
Speaker 2: I don't rember which the Wall Street Journals CEOs say
14:21
Speaker 2: AI is making work more efficient. Employees tell a different story,
14:24
Speaker 2: and then you know, they've got some results in here
14:26
Speaker 2: from a study that was done, so you know. I
14:31
Speaker 2: think the bottom line is if you understand or your
14:35
Speaker 2: organization understands how to use these tools, which ones are
14:39
Speaker 2: good at, which things put some guardrails around them. Again,
14:42
Speaker 2: think about things like privacy and security. Are employees putting
14:46
Speaker 2: sensitive data, whether it's trade secrets or compliant information that
14:51
Speaker 2: would be covered under some sort of compliance or contractual
14:56
Speaker 2: arrangements with a customer or partner or whatever. If you're
14:59
Speaker 2: just dumping these into the the free online tools, you
15:01
Speaker 2: got a real problem. But there are ways to use
15:04
Speaker 2: private versions of these things, offline versions of these things.
15:08
Speaker 2: You know, there's this whole agentic AI where they can
15:11
Speaker 2: take some action on their own. That's caused a bunch
15:14
Speaker 2: of controversy and a bunch of concerns too.
15:17
Speaker 3: These tools can be used in a way.
15:19
Speaker 2: Where you can get significant productivity boosts in some ways
15:23
Speaker 2: in certain cases. So again, it's hard to know what
15:27
Speaker 2: to think about this stuff at this point because you
15:29
Speaker 2: have all these divergent viewpoints as well of people who
15:33
Speaker 2: know way more about this than me, people who've worked
15:35
Speaker 2: in the field building this stuff for years. You know,
15:38
Speaker 2: some are saying the large language model based AI tools
15:41
Speaker 2: we see now, the chat GPT's the world and so forth,
15:45
Speaker 2: or are more or less peaked. They can't get better
15:48
Speaker 2: really because of the way they work. They'll never get
15:50
Speaker 2: to senient artificial AI. And there are others that say,
15:54
Speaker 2: you know, that's going to happen tomorrow. So it's really
15:58
Speaker 2: hard to know what to think, Brian. All I know
16:00
Speaker 2: is when you see, you know, many of the studies
16:02
Speaker 2: that have come out and you see these stories where
16:04
Speaker 2: now companies are starting to rethink, hey, we've gotten rid
16:07
Speaker 2: of a bunch of people because we're going to use
16:09
Speaker 2: these tools.
16:11
Speaker 3: And then perhaps they don't work the way we thought
16:13
Speaker 3: they would.
16:15
Speaker 2: You know, I think the bottom line in my opinion,
16:17
Speaker 2: based on what I what I see out there with
16:19
Speaker 2: our customers and what people are doing. Again, as an organization,
16:25
Speaker 2: if you work with people that actually know how to
16:28
Speaker 2: use these things in a secure, responsible, productive way, you
16:32
Speaker 2: can when you arm your people with these tools, get
16:36
Speaker 2: some significant productivity increases. But if you just say, oh,
16:41
Speaker 2: here's an account, go use this, you not only are
16:45
Speaker 2: potentially not going to get a lot of value out
16:48
Speaker 2: of it for these studies, but you also are setting
16:50
Speaker 2: yourself up again for privacy and compliance issues if people
16:54
Speaker 2: don't understand how these things work, where their data might be,
16:59
Speaker 2: where the data they end put might be going, and
17:01
Speaker 2: ultimately what the consequences might be from again a legal,
17:04
Speaker 2: ir regulatory perspective. So it's it's really interesting to see
17:08
Speaker 2: all the hype around this, but there are ways to
17:11
Speaker 2: use this stuff that will make you more efficient and
17:14
Speaker 2: more productive.
17:15
Speaker 1: Well possibility anyway, You just got to know what you're doing,
17:18
Speaker 1: and there in lies the challenge finding people who know
17:20
Speaker 1: what they're doing and the limitations.
17:21
Speaker 3: AI that's what we.
17:22
Speaker 1: Have you for. Intrust it dot COM's where you find
17:25
Speaker 1: Dave and the crew for your computer needs and business needs.
17:27
Speaker 1: They can teach your business how to use AI. Apparently
17:29
Speaker 1: that's what he just said. And find him online for
17:32
Speaker 1: all the resource material he use for this segment every week.
17:34
Speaker 1: It's LinkedIn dot com search Dave Hatter and you will
17:37
Speaker 1: find him, or just look for the mayor for it,
17:39
Speaker 1: right Dave, thank you so much for coming on the
17:41
Speaker 1: program every day. In sponsor