00:00:02Tech Talk Podcast With Special Guest
00:13:46Caution and Research in Finance
00:16:14Revolutionizing Weather Forecasting With AI
00:23:21Data Disaster and Recovery Solutions
درباره این اپیزود
Ever wondered how collecting matchboxes can become a delightful hobby? Join us this week on Zero Gravity Live as Kasey King fills in for Sterling and shares her charming tradition of gathering matchboxes from beloved restaurants across various cities. Broadcasting from his parents' home in Dothan, Alabama, Matt gives us a nostalgic glimpse into his late father’s history-laden office, captivating us with the mysterious tale of a World War II-era flag. We also draw intriguing parallels between lifeguard training and being prepared for ransomware attacks—an unexpected yet enlightening discussion you won't want to miss.
When it comes to managing finances, we tackle the pressing question: is it wise to use credit cards for paying rent? Drawing on a New York Times review of Wells Fargo's renter-friendly card, we dive deep into best practices for ensuring timely payments and avoiding the debt pitfalls that many fall into. With shoutouts to our global listeners from the Netherlands, Philadelphia, Chile, Spain, and Italy, we celebrate community engagement and congratulate Five Foot Fisher for acing our trivia contest.
Lastly, get ready to be astounded by the revolutionary advancements in AI technology for weather forecasting. We spotlight Google's DeepMind initiative, which promises near-perfect accuracy in predicting weather patterns and potentially saving lives. The conversation then shifts to the chaos of tech failures during busy travel days, emphasizing the critical need for robust backup and recovery plans. From personal anecdotes to practical solutions like Veeam and Object First, we stress the importance of being prepared in our tech-centric world. Tune in for a blend of nostalgia, practical advice, and cutting-edge tech insights!
Watch us live every Tuesday at 11 am EST
Need the best storage for Veeam? Check out Ootbi by Object First
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Speaker 1:
0:02
Welcome back to Zero Gravity Live, the weightless weekly tech talk podcast, bringing all the latest news and discussions right to you. It's been a absolute wild week since our last show. We'll get all into that soon. But more importantly than that, we've got a special guest on the show. Sterling's out on vacation this week joining us. Casey King. Thank you for joining us today.
Speaker 2:
0:23
Thanks for having me, guys. I'm so honored to get to jump in today, especially with such an exciting week we've had.
Speaker 1:
0:30
We're honored to have you. You know it's always under interesting circumstances that we have guests on, and the big news of the last week is no exception, so we will get into that. Before we do got to find out, casey, what's going on in your office.
Speaker 2:
0:46
Okay. So I woke up this morning and I felt like it was like show and tell. I was like running around like what is actually going to be cool, so excited, okay. So I decided on this. I don't know if you guys do this, but I collect matchboxes from my favorite restaurants and I keep them in this little dish and then whenever I light a candle, I use one of my fun match boxes. So have them from all over Atlanta, charleston, new York, austin, all the different cities I've been to. Just fun little decor and collection. I got going, so that's mine.
Speaker 1:
1:19
That is a super cool collection. Now, now you mentioned Atlanta, you are from Atlanta, right?
Speaker 2:
1:25
I'm from just south of Atlanta.
Speaker 1:
1:27
yes, I wanna know where our audience is from. So please let us know in the chat where y'all are watching from. But where are you from originally? That's a different question for this week. See if we can get a little more information about our viewers Now. Matt, as another Georgia resident, you are in a different location than we're used to seeing you in. So what's going on in your office this week?
Speaker 3:
1:50
Yeah, so this is not a virtual background. This is actually another physical location. So, yeah, I'm based out of Kennesaw, georgia, normally, so not too far from Casey, but this week I'm working remote down in Dothan, alabama, which is where my parents' house is. We wanted to give the kids one full week of grandma time before school starts back, so I'm here in a makeshift setup studio. I wish I could show you guys behind the scenes, but basically I have my gear on a ladder, so we're making it work right.
Speaker 3:
2:20
So one of the cool things that I wanted to share, anthony, so behind me is a room, so basically the wall is like right here I'm at the threshold and this was my dad's old office. So my late father passed away February this year, so this is all his old memorabilia. We haven't touched anything. And one of the things I kind of wanted to throw out and pull, let me go this way, pull to the audience here and pull me go this way, pull to the audience here.
Speaker 3:
2:42
If anybody knows anything unusual or notices anything unusual about this flag, let me know in the comments, because this is something that I thought was really really unique and I felt like you know, this will be the topic of conversation for what's in my cool office this week. And I'll give you a hint there's something about the star. So for those of you who can count really quick, so yeah, so really cool flag. It was World War II era, so I just think you know a lot of the swag, knife collection, all kinds of cool stuff in the background. So, anthony, if this was my regular venue, we'd have a lot more cool stuff to show and tell, but just for today's episode. The flag is really cool and I'll keep monitoring the comments. If nobody drops it in there, I'll let you guys know at the end of the show.
Speaker 1:
3:24
Excellent. I'm very curious if someone can figure it out. Also, just love the fact, matt, you know the different location, but the history in there, it's palpable, it's super cool, yeah, awesome. Well, casey, thank you for sharing your Matchbox collection and Matt, giving us a tour of your different surroundings, let's get into it. So you know, like I said before, a lot has happened and we will talk about that shortly, but before we do, casey, when we first talked about having you on, since Sterling's out this week on a much needed vacation, we said what does Casey bring to the show? And then we found out you were a lifeguard once upon a time and I thought that's perfect, like I had no idea that that you were and that you know. You were out there saving lives. And then you said you didn't save any lives at all in your entire time but also, no one lost a life.
Speaker 2:
4:22
that's an important stat to go with the first one, did you blow a whistle?
Speaker 1:
4:35
Probably, but like for something, like please walk, you know, not for anything cool or life-sharing?
Speaker 2:
4:37
No running, got it? No running yeah.
Speaker 1:
4:38
So you're a lifeguard and you actually gave us this really cool analogy about you know the dangers of ransomware and lifeguarding. I thought, well, that'd be a perfect way to start a show and you know it's perfectly akin to what we do. So why don't you walk us through a little bit about, like where your mind was when you were thinking of that?
Speaker 2:
4:58
Well, yeah, so we were talking about you know the show last night. We talked about the shark attacks, and then we were talking about me being a lifeguard, and no, I never saved the life. I will say I was CPR trained three times. I knew what to do if something did happen, and you know what I think. When it comes to things like kids in a pool, we make sure we know what to do if something happens, but when it comes to ransomware, which we're using technology every single day, we don't know what to do when something happens, and so it's one of those things where you never think it's going to happen to you until it does, and then you have no protocol. So that was my analogy. I love taking anything and tying it back to ransomware because it is such a big part of our lives, so it really does tie into anything and, just like anything else, that is a great thing can also be a dangerous thing with technology right. So got to make sure we have the practice in place to handle the situation when it comes up.
Speaker 1:
5:57
Yeah, go ahead, matt.
Speaker 3:
5:59
I was just going to say I couldn't agree more. And you know, with CPR training. Frankly, as a quick aside, I feel like everybody should have that, because you just never know when you might be in a situation where somebody around you is not trained and you know somebody needs that life-saving treatment. So kudos for you for getting that. I think we should all take a lesson and get that. But you're right.
Speaker 3:
6:19
So when an event happens, we always talk about right it's when, not if, you've got to have a plan. And what is it? The old saying goes failing to have a plan is planning to fail. That's essentially. It could never be more true, right? Because if you don't have a plan, you don't have a runbook, you're not ready. When that event happens to your business, you're going to be out and you're going to have reputation, impacts, possibly financial impacts. And you know, anthony, you mentioned, you know, the events of last week. We're still dealing with that in Atlanta at the airport. I mean, hartsfield Jackson is an absolute train wreck right now because nobody had a plan on how to recover quickly from that event. And all it takes is, especially in an airport, of all things all it takes is a small little ripple and the chain reaction is just like dominoes falling. So definitely want to make sure you have a plan in place for for anything in life really.
Speaker 1:
7:13
Yeah, completely agree.
Speaker 1:
7:15
And the other thing I love about that analogy too is, like we we we put a lot of value on life, you know, as human beings, as we should.
Speaker 1:
7:24
It's pretty, pretty valuable to us as a species, but like we don't think about the life disruption that comes with ransomware or update failures that occur. Like this is a disruption to to lives and I think it's hard for us to conceptualize that, because when healthcare gets impacted, when airlines get impacted, when airlines get impacted, when service industry is disrupted, there are potential lives on the line by these things. So we have lifeguards, we have firefighters and policemen and all kinds of different service industries out there to ensure that we stay safe, but I think we often forget the kind of impact technology has on our well-being and our lives. So I love that analogy, because having a lifeguard for your data or for your business, your infrastructure, whatever it is, we don't really think about that. That's your security team and you just kind of hope they're doing it. They're not out there blowing a whistle saying no, running, it's them that phishing email test and you click the link. That's the most whistle blowing you get.
Speaker 1:
8:28
So true, so true Now before we get into the news of the week, I do want to hit one more thing. You brought up Casey, that that was pretty cool Before we get into some serious security discussion. You actually shared this with me and I had no idea this is a thing. So can you walk us through what I'm looking at here? This came from you the built master card. Is it worth it? We've never talked finance on this show before, but when you explained this to me I was like I feel like we need to. So what is this?
Speaker 2:
8:57
Okay, yeah. So anyone who knows me in my personal life is so tired of hearing me talk about this, especially my sister. I've asked him like 10 times if this thing is real. But basically it's a credit card that was built for renters. So, with us using technology and everything being so at our fingertips, I've found myself really learning a lot about finance.
Speaker 2:
9:21
And this credit card came up and I was like, oh my gosh, how do more young people not know about it? Basically, what the built credit card came up and I was like, oh my gosh, how do more young people not know about it? Basically, what the built credit card is is a credit card where you can pay for your rent without any kind of fee associated. So even if your landlord won't accept the built credit card as a built partner, you actually get set up with your own account number and routing numbers. So it kind of acts like a bank and then bill just bills you via the credit card for the difference, and if that doesn't work too, they'll also send a check to your landlord. So basically, you're earning points on your biggest expense of the month.
Speaker 2:
9:59
Who wouldn't want to do that? And I'm just so confused by more people aren't talking about it, but there's a lot of controversy around it too, right, because it's like what economics are behind this? I don't really understand. So there's a couple different things that we can talk about, but first I just wanted to get into y'all's thoughts about this. Is it too good to be true?
Speaker 3:
10:16
I mean, does it work for mortgages?
Speaker 1:
10:18
That's my first question.
Speaker 2:
10:23
Yeah, they're actually talking about it. I think that's one of their business growth plans is to move into mortgages.
Speaker 1:
10:29
I just don't, like I read the article after you sent it to me and like I read this section that we've highlighted here. You know, is it too good to be true? And they say presumably built loses money when giving out rewards and then mailing a check to a landlord it has no relationship with, but it's a bigger, it's part of a bigger play. Like I get that that's. You know, that is business 101.
Speaker 1:
10:48
It's kind of the same way that, um, why is my mind blanking on all of them uber eats, uh, the all of the food delivery grub hubs and the like they lose a little bit of money on the transaction on the food. They're hoping that you know they're able to build up a big enough network long-term that they can then crank up the rates and you depend on them and you know competition drives the value there. So, like I get it, sometimes the consumer does get a really good deal and the producer takes the hit. But, like with finance, it's so curious because, like finance is all about making money always all the time, and it does seem too good to be true. So have you run into any catches yourself?
Speaker 2:
11:31
No, so I don't have the card. Let me give that disclaimer, because I'm still skeptical, we're working on it.
Speaker 2:
11:36
We're working on it, I'm doing my research, that's for sure. But what some things that are interesting about it. So you do have to have five charges a month in order to get the points, so you can't just use it for your rent. So I think they're hoping that some people will kind of start using it more and more and they'll see more of that overspend and people not paying it off. But so far they haven't seen it. Another thing is there's no annual fee, but there's also no sign on bonus, so you don't really get to the point where you're earning a max amount of points for paying your rent for three months. So there's that too. So they definitely have some things built in that make it make a little bit more sense. But overall, I think Wells Fargo is the one that's losing on this one, from what I've heard in my research. And for consumers it's just kind of a thing right now where it's like, hey, use it till it's gone, because come 2029, it might not exist anymore.
Speaker 1:
12:29
So, movie pass 2.0.
Speaker 3:
12:32
Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head, though In your description you said something that like stuck to me. I wanted to earmark that if you pay it off each month and sadly I feel like that's what's going to happen and that's what they're banking on, especially sadly with younger folks is oh, you mean, I don't have to pay my entire rent this month, I can pay a half of it, sure. And then you start getting into the whole cycle of interest and credit, the typical credit card, right. So I think, if you're a course this is the first I've heard of it, I haven't done due diligence either, but let's say, all things considered equal and it's legit, I think, as long as you're disciplined and you can say well, my rent is X, I'm going to pay X, there's never, ever going to be any carryover, but I get to earn points. Sounds great.
Speaker 3:
13:20
But I think that's where you run the risk of people not being disciplined enough and carrying balances and it slowly starts to build up and I think that is probably what these big banks are banking on. Is people doing that? And that's when they start earning money. They build up a big network. You get I don't know a percentage of them not paying it off each month, interest starts rolling up and that's where they get paid back, I bet. Interest starts rolling up, you know, and that's where they get paid back, I bet.
Speaker 2:
13:44
Exactly so. That's exactly right. When I did listen to a podcast on it from it's from the New York times, their journal, their podcast they did a whole unbiased review on it and they said exactly that Wells Fargo is praying that renters don't pay. Yeah, and it makes sense but for Wells Fargo.
Speaker 2:
14:03
usually people who have signed up for this card are very responsible. So shout out to the generation of renters out there who are paying off their rent and using this card. Good for you, guys, but yes, like anything, there's best practices. If you're not sure you're going to be able to pay that off, I don't recommend the card. So anyways, interesting topic.
Speaker 1:
14:22
I like it. This whole episode's got a theme of, like caution, research, intrepidation and execution of a plan. This is good. This is good. I like where this theme is going. Before we get into, I want to hear your topic next, matt. Before we do that, a couple of shout outs. So we got a whole bunch of people coming from a lot of different locations in the chat. I just want to make sure we hit all these. We got Netherlands, philadelphia. I just want to make sure we hit all these. We've got Netherlands, philadelphia. Luis mentions he was born in Santiago de Chile but is based in Pamplona, navarra, spain. I'm hoping I'm not butchering those names. We've got cheers from south of Italy in the Chilinto area. Welcome all of you. And Matt, I will let you reveal our trivia. Winner of the day.
Speaker 3:
15:03
Yeah, Five Foot Fisher got it nail on the head. It was a 48-star flag from pre-1959, when Alaska and Hawaii joined the United States. So I just thought that was really cool. So yeah, to your point. Lots of great places watching, lots of people tuning in. Really appreciate y'all's time for sure.
Speaker 1:
15:23
Yeah, thanks all for tuning in today and checking us out, and congratulations on getting that trivia. Five foot Fisher, we have nothing to give you, but you have the pride of knowing that you won this round. So that's enough for most folks. Now, matt, what do we, what are you going to take us down the path of today?
Speaker 3:
15:40
Yeah, let me reshare it. I think when you shared the first time, it canceled my share, so let me kick this guy off and hang tight. Is that the wrong screen? I think.
Speaker 1:
15:52
I see a graph cast.
Speaker 3:
15:55
Yeah, that's what it's supposed to be, so let's do this again.
Speaker 1:
15:58
Here we go. Shout out to Matt.
Speaker 3:
16:02
He's literally working on a ladder baby, all right, so yeah, so Sterling's not here, so I feel like I got free liberty to say AI 20 more times.
Speaker 3:
16:12
just as a joke that we all have. But you know, one of the things that we've talked about plenty of times on this show is technology working for us, and not just being tech and being smart just for the fact of being smart Hashtag, wi-fi, toothbrushes, right, I mean, there's reasons why you put smarts into things and there's reasons for AI really helping. Okay, if anybody were to name the number one profession where people can just wake up one day and have a 50-50 shot of being right, and every time they're wrong, they just carry on the next day like nothing happened, meteorologists, I'm sure would be at the top of everyone's list. Right, they just go out, yep, it's going to rain, and then, when they're wrong, nothing ever happens, right? So one of the things that I came across that I thought was super cool and, frankly, I clicked on it just because of the URL and you might not be able to see it up there, but it's deepmindgooglecom and I'm like, ooh, this sounds intriguing. So I click on this and this is basically what Google is using to improve AI weather forecasting, and there's a lot of stuff in here that you know. That's you've got to read to kind of understand it.
Speaker 3:
17:26
But one of the things I wanted to point out is let me get down to the actual stat that I saw Bear with me here. Let me find it. Yeah, so here it is. So what I thought was so impressive is, if you highlight this section right here and again let me try to zoom in there we go All right. So, basically, what this is saying is this new model is able to forecast in like what was it? A minute, whereas previously, using the same stuff, prior to this, ai was using much higher computational power, so essentially supercomputers, and it was taken. You know sometimes what is this? 10 days, um, uh, where's the? Where's the stats? Uh, so you got accuracy. I don't know why I'm not finding the actual time in here, but basically when I was reading through this earlier, yeah, less than a minute on a single Google TPU V4 machine and in comparison, the same forecast could take hours in a supercomputer with hundreds of machines. So, right away, that's one earmark to note time. Okay, but if it was all the same accuracy, that's great. But then you go on to read and look at the improvement of accuracy down here, 99.7% is the accuracy that these new model would have when you were measuring what's called the troposphere, which is basically, you know, a huge section of the atmosphere. I think it was what six to 20 kilometers or something like that high. And I'm like, okay, so you're telling me that we go from hours to minutes and we go from you know whatever the accuracy was before, and I kind of use the joke we all know what it was before.
Speaker 3:
19:23
Nobody knows how to predict weather. Like they kind of give it their best guess and I guess with hurricanes you've got a little bit more. You know guidance where you can follow the track, but you're increasing this to almost a hundred percent accuracy. Like that's crazy. Like I mean, to me this is a great example of we need this because we've all been a part of something as simple as it's not going to rain today. Boom, you have like massive. You know washouts all the way up to. You know the whole idea of today's show is you know life saving things. You're drowning. Protect your data from drowning and, just generally speaking, you know protecting yourself from all different things Hurricanes, tornadoes, you know these types of events that weather forecasting can help save lives. This is awesome and I feel like this is tech used where it's needed, you know, whereas right now we're just taking shots in the dark in some cases, and this was like really eyeopening to see that 99.7% accuracy in minutes. What do you guys think?
Speaker 2:
20:26
Yeah, well, the first thought that comes to my mind, matt, is snowpops and the horrible events that could have been saved with this technology. I mean, even let's think back to that Like I remember being stuck on a bus for two hours waiting for my dad to come get me because of that and because no one knew the weather and no one knew what to do in Georgia, we we have no idea, and people watching not from georgia are probably judging, and rightfully so, right, so helpful back then. And I think you know we can't be scared of technology, right, we have to know where it's good and where it's useful and use it for those things. And, um, I think this is a great example of that, so I love it listen, I live in hurricane state right.
Speaker 1:
21:12
I live in. I'm from Florida, born here, raised here, lived through many hurricanes here. But more importantly than that, I saw Twisters this weekend and let me tell you, if Twisters had this technology, that movie wouldn't have happened.
Speaker 3:
21:26
Right, because hours they've already set through the movie minutes they could walk out in the trailer right correct, right, like I mean, that was the whole thing.
Speaker 1:
21:35
It's like, oh no, these, these rogue twisters are coming out of nowhere. We couldn't predict them, but it's like with 99.8 accuracy that changes the game. And I'm very skeptical as, as our viewers who recurring watching the show know, I don't. I don't find AI to be that compelling a technology, but this is actually significant, like the amount of accuracy, if they're actually able to predict this, and I'm guessing they're using both a combination of typical meteorology as well, as you know what is it? Aggregational, like data learning and the maturity models in there, like that. Like that's pretty compelling and it can definitely save lives. To the earlier conversation like this is how you save lives from freak weathers when you're able to see, like well, what made this tornado or this hurricane become so deadly, so quickly and how do we get people out sooner. Like this is awesome, yep.
Speaker 2:
22:27
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
22:28
Yep.
Speaker 3:
22:29
I thought it was super cool because there's so many use cases of AI that are just like really, do you really need it there? And this is one that, yeah, you actually do. You know, really really help accuracy and give people much better heads up. So that was my topic for the day. I know there's the elephant in the room with the CrowdStrike thing. Maybe we can chat about that a bit, but, like I thought this was really really cool from a new emerging tech perspective, it is. You know, what are your thoughts on the whole CrowdStrike thing, anthony?
Speaker 1:
23:00
Well, you know, firstly, matt, thanks for bringing the good news. I'm always, I'm always down for some good news on this show. You know, I feel like you and Casey did a good job with that today. So last week there was a. Actually there was two distinct instances that happened. There was the crowd strike thing and there was the microsoft azure outage. Uh, both happened like on the same day, around the same time frame. Like super freaky that just everything fails on a friday, especially like a big travel friday, because you have your, your summer travelers on vacation. You know you just mentioned, you know you're, you're here with your kids getting ready to go back to school. Everyone's trying to get that last minute traveling before the summer ends, get kids getting ready to go back to college and business travel, and I think that's the perfect storm for everything to go down and wrong. And we're still not back up to 100% functionality. The airports are not back in place, except for Southwest Airlines, because they're running freaking Windows.
Speaker 3:
23:57
I saw that. I saw that Somehow they dodged it because of being so outdated.
Speaker 1:
24:02
I've always liked Southwest Airlines. Now I'd say to say I love Southwest Airlines, I love Southwest Airlines. I just like and you know like we jest. But this is the thing right With technology, especially with software as a service technology when you're developing product and you're on a SaaS platform and you push out an update, everyone gets that update, regardless of whether or not they want it. You know this is very counterintuitive to the old model where we're going to test this thing in a red blue environment for 30 days and make sure that nothing goes wrong. Then we're going to flip it live in our channel and we'll get that update. But ransomware has made it, so people need to update their services right away, otherwise you might have a day zero security threat and two because it's SaaS, because we're all paying a subscription for everything in our lives. Now you just get the update, whether you want it or not. It's part of what you're paying for. And that led to the cataclysm of the weekend, which everything became inoperable, every service industry. Did it impact y'all at all?
Speaker 3:
25:05
Personally, I didn't notice any direct impacts. It's ironic. Down here in Dothan we went to get takeout last night from Buffalo Wild Wings of all places and I looked behind the bar. Sure enough, I took a picture of it. There's a blue screen of death sitting right there on their point of service system. I'm like, wow, here we are, it's Sunday evening and we're still having these issues. Or Monday evening still got the problems. It's Sunday evening and we're still having these issues. Or Monday evening still got the problem.
Speaker 3:
25:33
So you know, I think the widespread issues that this caused were just, I mean, devastating all over the globe. And it's funny because they came out with a fix pretty quick. But the problem is it's a manual fix. It takes somebody either doing restores, fingers on keyboards, going into safe mode, deleting the file, restarting it's not super involved to fix it on a single machine. But if you have to fix this across, you know a company, it's a major problem.
Speaker 3:
26:02
And you know to your point, anthony, we're in today's world. We're almost stuck between a rock and a hard place Because, like you said, zero day exploits. You got to stay updated, you got to stay patched, you got to stay on the latest code or else you run the risk of you know the newest ransomware, the newest phishing or the newest virus, but then, on the flip side to your point, if somebody doesn't send their patches through quality control, you know you're going to be stuck there when something goes sideways, and that's why backups and recoveries are so critical. Right, I mean, that's why we do what we do in this business. You know, veeam plus Object First is literally that perfect pairing about being able to recover quickly.
Speaker 3:
26:41
And I'll give you an example. I actually saw a post from a former colleague, brad, on LinkedIn the other day. Veeam even has a capability called a quick rollback. So rather than restoring, let's say, your whole business, you could literally do a quick rollback to the day before the patch, and what Veeam will do is only restore the blocks that were changed overnight. So what might may have taken potentially hours or days, depending on the cumulative size of the server. You could have done exponentially faster if you had the plan and you knew what to do when something went sideways. So always have a plan.
Speaker 1:
27:15
Yes, I love that. And if you don't have a plan, have something in place or a team or someone who does have a plan, because that's the only way you get through this. Now I do have two things to share, because I guess, first Casey, did it impact you at all, just curious.
Speaker 2:
27:33
It didn't. It didn't impact me, I was lucky. But I did want to say I just think it's so crazy how much we rely on data and technology and how unprepared we are for when it doesn't work. I mean we use it all day, every day, and if it goes blank we go blank, Like it's crazy, and so and you know the knowledge, it's not talked about enough. Before I worked at Object First, I didn't understand either, and so I'm proud to work for Object First and for something that's taking care of this huge problem, because I mean, we're seeing it every day.
Speaker 3:
28:05
So I mean to take a-.
Speaker 1:
28:07
We go blank. I love that Hashtag yeah.
Speaker 3:
28:10
I'm stealing that, you know. I was about to say, like you know, from taking a hat out of your cap, anthony about Johnny Raincloud. It's flat out scary, is what it is. Because if something so insignificant as a rogue patch can basically ground all flight travel and you know all airlines other than Southwest, I mean that's crazy scary. If that's all it takes. And this wasn't even malicious, right, this was a genuine human error. It just didn't go through quality control and here's the outcome. Imagine if it was a malicious attack that got pushed out. I mean, yeah, it's scary to think about.
Speaker 1:
28:46
We got a good comment from a good friend of mine, Cliff Barcliffe. He said thoughts on CrowdStrike. Did customers know that updates can be pushed out their internal controls If not, why not? And he mentioned he was a production ops manager in a previous lifetime would never allow updates without testing in their own test dev environment, and it's amazing that airlines and some financials were impacted Like couldn't agree more. These are the questions we need to be asking. Yeah, um, on a bit of a light note in regards to this conversation.
Speaker 1:
29:15
I do want to share. This was not true. I don't know if you saw this image over the weekend but I did and I loved it.
Speaker 1:
29:22
This is this is fake. This is not real, as much as we would love it to be. There was no blue screen on the Las Vegas here, so I'm sorry to report that has been debunked Now, unfortunately. The thing I am not as excited to share about is the aftermath. So now this comes from Bleeping Computer, one of my favorite cybersecurity journals. Fake CrowdStrike fixes target companies with malware and data wipers, so it just continues, right.
Speaker 1:
29:55
So what this means is now the damage has been done We've mentioned people are still stuck trying to deal with all the problems that they have, and there are fixes on the internet that are posing as real fixes to the CrowdStrike problem. People are downloading them and they are being hit with malicious software. You know it's come in the form of an email. Look at this like dear value customer, which right away should be a trigger for most, but we know that doesn't always work right. Look for your name. Look for the simple things that make sure that it ensures that it's coming from a valid source. You know they've got their image in there. They've got attachments. Don't just open attachments. But it's bad y'all. So there's the aftermath and there's the ambulance chasing. There's always going to be those that look to take advantage of this bad situation and it's happening out there. So if you are impacted, please do your due diligence and ensuring that, as you get back to business as usual, that you're not pulling something that's only going to make things worse for you. Go ahead, matt.
Speaker 3:
31:02
I was going to say I think there's never been. Well, certainly there's been some strong cases, but in recent months this is certainly the strongest case I've seen to have a backup and recovery plan. So the patch, the fix, is one thing, but you're down, you were down or you could have been down until it was realized what happened, until the patch got pushed out to you, implemented it Again. If you had a recovery plan, you could be back up in minutes, you know, and just restore, restore from you know, prior to this issue, you may have a little data loss, but your company's afloat and I saw you know. Speaking of financial hashtag, this show is not about financial advice. Don't do. Don't do what we say, but I I did notice this morning that they were down 13 percent.
Speaker 3:
31:46
Like you know, crowd strike definitely took a hit because of this and I also found it interesting that I guess the president, ceo, the main guy, is a former FBI guy, you know, was there like his whole career. So his whole life has been security, doing things right, protecting people from bad things. I think was his direct quote and it's, you know, sometimes it's human error, sometimes people just screw up and you know that's the reality. It's not always, you know, ransomware it's not always malicious bad actors, sometimes it's the human element. And, anthony, I mean, you know as well as I, we talk about that so much on the show.
Speaker 3:
32:21
It's like we can't get so hyper-focused on ransomware that we forget everything else that can go sideways in the tech world. I mean all it takes is one person not checking code and thinking the patch is good and boom, here you go and, like to Clifford's point, like I don't want them pushing updates unless I authorize it, you know, because I want to make sure it's going to work. Maybe I check it on one server first, before the entire company. So there's a lot of things that went wrong here that hopefully we learn from and make better going forward yeah, completely agree.
Speaker 1:
32:53
I think you know my. It's funny. When it happened, my, my parents texted me like, have you heard of this company called the Crowdstrike? I'm like, yeah, I love that strike, they're awesome. Yeah, I mean like, and that's, it's still true, right, like I don't. Yes, they're responsible for this thing happening, but it literally could have been any company that offers software as a service solution, that provides business critical infrastructure for you know, service industry. Like it literally could be any company that this happened to and it just knocks out the entire, you know, airline industry, healthcare industry, everything.
Speaker 1:
33:28
The thing to take away is exactly the points that you and Casey have made. It's not, you know, oh, crowdstrike, bad company stock go down, boo. Like that's not the way we should feel about this. It's what can we do as businesses to ensure redundancy, resiliency, the ability to recover all of those things on ourselves and then hold other businesses accountable as a? You know, is your quality assurance up to snuff? Are you testing this in your internal environment before you're pushing it out to everyone else? And, and more importantly, like, how do we get to a point where sas is not a one-size-fits-all solution? Like I, I do truly believe that we need to get to hey, we're not going to take your SAS update. It requires 30 days of testing on our end. Like it's a good thing this happened the way that it did, because now we can prevent a real bad one from happening in the future.
Speaker 1:
34:21
Like I am a little grateful that everything played out the way it did, because it could be so much worse, and this is a great learning opportunity for the entire industry.
Speaker 3:
34:28
I totally agree. I feel like we almost need to rename the show. You need a recovery plan because insert reason, because every week it's. These are the reasons why you need to have a plan in place for when things go sideways.
Speaker 1:
34:42
Yep.
Speaker 2:
34:43
Yep, exactly. I mean, we talk about ransomware all the time. It happens every 11 seconds. But other things are happening too, and and you know not to beat a dead horse, but the best way to prepare for this is to plan on it happening, because it and it might. And when it does, what are you going to do?
Speaker 1:
35:00
so I think it's very interesting topic and definitely aligns with what we're trying to do here yep, I've told the story before first day on the job, my internship at a previous company, a fellow intern deleted an entire customer database because he was told to and it just happens. So I think awareness is everything and preparation is key and, just like you were a lifeguard, casey, I think we need those protectors out there that are blowing the whistle. Stop running. Stop just updating things. Yes, walt, don't run. Yeah, don't run the pool. Don't download those CrowdStrike fixes unless you verify them first Exactly.
Speaker 1:
35:43
Well, thanks so much for joining us this week, casey. It was great to have you on the show 're a phenomenal guest. We we appreciate the financial insight, as well as the uh lifeguard stories. And matt, as always, thank you for being here with us and making sure the the wheels don't fall off the planes we're flying it. Thanks to our audience for joining in making sure that we stayed on topic. Some really great conversation in there today. We always appreciate your insight. Next week I I teased this last week, but I don't know what time it is Next week we're going to be talking about the Olympics and what is going on there. I got some crazy stats and facts about ransomware in the Olympics that will blow your mind. So make sure you tune into that Show is sponsored by Object. First we create OOPI. It stands for Out of the Box Mutability. It's the best storage for Veeam. Appreciate having all you here and, as always, stay weightless, stay frictionless, stay zero gravity. We'll see you next week.
Speaker 2:
36:35
Thanks guys, bye, thank you.
0:02
Welcome back to Zero Gravity Live, the weightless weekly tech talk podcast, bringing all the latest news and discussions right to you. It's been a absolute wild week since our last show. We'll get all into that soon. But more importantly than that, we've got a special guest on the show. Sterling's out on vacation this week joining us. Casey King. Thank you for joining us today.
Speaker 2:
0:23
Thanks for having me, guys. I'm so honored to get to jump in today, especially with such an exciting week we've had.
Speaker 1:
0:30
We're honored to have you. You know it's always under interesting circumstances that we have guests on, and the big news of the last week is no exception, so we will get into that. Before we do got to find out, casey, what's going on in your office.
Speaker 2:
0:46
Okay. So I woke up this morning and I felt like it was like show and tell. I was like running around like what is actually going to be cool, so excited, okay. So I decided on this. I don't know if you guys do this, but I collect matchboxes from my favorite restaurants and I keep them in this little dish and then whenever I light a candle, I use one of my fun match boxes. So have them from all over Atlanta, charleston, new York, austin, all the different cities I've been to. Just fun little decor and collection. I got going, so that's mine.
Speaker 1:
1:19
That is a super cool collection. Now, now you mentioned Atlanta, you are from Atlanta, right?
Speaker 2:
1:25
I'm from just south of Atlanta.
Speaker 1:
1:27
yes, I wanna know where our audience is from. So please let us know in the chat where y'all are watching from. But where are you from originally? That's a different question for this week. See if we can get a little more information about our viewers Now. Matt, as another Georgia resident, you are in a different location than we're used to seeing you in. So what's going on in your office this week?
Speaker 3:
1:50
Yeah, so this is not a virtual background. This is actually another physical location. So, yeah, I'm based out of Kennesaw, georgia, normally, so not too far from Casey, but this week I'm working remote down in Dothan, alabama, which is where my parents' house is. We wanted to give the kids one full week of grandma time before school starts back, so I'm here in a makeshift setup studio. I wish I could show you guys behind the scenes, but basically I have my gear on a ladder, so we're making it work right.
Speaker 3:
2:20
So one of the cool things that I wanted to share, anthony, so behind me is a room, so basically the wall is like right here I'm at the threshold and this was my dad's old office. So my late father passed away February this year, so this is all his old memorabilia. We haven't touched anything. And one of the things I kind of wanted to throw out and pull, let me go this way, pull to the audience here and pull me go this way, pull to the audience here.
Speaker 3:
2:42
If anybody knows anything unusual or notices anything unusual about this flag, let me know in the comments, because this is something that I thought was really really unique and I felt like you know, this will be the topic of conversation for what's in my cool office this week. And I'll give you a hint there's something about the star. So for those of you who can count really quick, so yeah, so really cool flag. It was World War II era, so I just think you know a lot of the swag, knife collection, all kinds of cool stuff in the background. So, anthony, if this was my regular venue, we'd have a lot more cool stuff to show and tell, but just for today's episode. The flag is really cool and I'll keep monitoring the comments. If nobody drops it in there, I'll let you guys know at the end of the show.
Speaker 1:
3:24
Excellent. I'm very curious if someone can figure it out. Also, just love the fact, matt, you know the different location, but the history in there, it's palpable, it's super cool, yeah, awesome. Well, casey, thank you for sharing your Matchbox collection and Matt, giving us a tour of your different surroundings, let's get into it. So you know, like I said before, a lot has happened and we will talk about that shortly, but before we do, casey, when we first talked about having you on, since Sterling's out this week on a much needed vacation, we said what does Casey bring to the show? And then we found out you were a lifeguard once upon a time and I thought that's perfect, like I had no idea that that you were and that you know. You were out there saving lives. And then you said you didn't save any lives at all in your entire time but also, no one lost a life.
Speaker 2:
4:22
that's an important stat to go with the first one, did you blow a whistle?
Speaker 1:
4:35
Probably, but like for something, like please walk, you know, not for anything cool or life-sharing?
Speaker 2:
4:37
No running, got it? No running yeah.
Speaker 1:
4:38
So you're a lifeguard and you actually gave us this really cool analogy about you know the dangers of ransomware and lifeguarding. I thought, well, that'd be a perfect way to start a show and you know it's perfectly akin to what we do. So why don't you walk us through a little bit about, like where your mind was when you were thinking of that?
Speaker 2:
4:58
Well, yeah, so we were talking about you know the show last night. We talked about the shark attacks, and then we were talking about me being a lifeguard, and no, I never saved the life. I will say I was CPR trained three times. I knew what to do if something did happen, and you know what I think. When it comes to things like kids in a pool, we make sure we know what to do if something happens, but when it comes to ransomware, which we're using technology every single day, we don't know what to do when something happens, and so it's one of those things where you never think it's going to happen to you until it does, and then you have no protocol. So that was my analogy. I love taking anything and tying it back to ransomware because it is such a big part of our lives, so it really does tie into anything and, just like anything else, that is a great thing can also be a dangerous thing with technology right. So got to make sure we have the practice in place to handle the situation when it comes up.
Speaker 1:
5:57
Yeah, go ahead, matt.
Speaker 3:
5:59
I was just going to say I couldn't agree more. And you know, with CPR training. Frankly, as a quick aside, I feel like everybody should have that, because you just never know when you might be in a situation where somebody around you is not trained and you know somebody needs that life-saving treatment. So kudos for you for getting that. I think we should all take a lesson and get that. But you're right.
Speaker 3:
6:19
So when an event happens, we always talk about right it's when, not if, you've got to have a plan. And what is it? The old saying goes failing to have a plan is planning to fail. That's essentially. It could never be more true, right? Because if you don't have a plan, you don't have a runbook, you're not ready. When that event happens to your business, you're going to be out and you're going to have reputation, impacts, possibly financial impacts. And you know, anthony, you mentioned, you know, the events of last week. We're still dealing with that in Atlanta at the airport. I mean, hartsfield Jackson is an absolute train wreck right now because nobody had a plan on how to recover quickly from that event. And all it takes is, especially in an airport, of all things all it takes is a small little ripple and the chain reaction is just like dominoes falling. So definitely want to make sure you have a plan in place for for anything in life really.
Speaker 1:
7:13
Yeah, completely agree.
Speaker 1:
7:15
And the other thing I love about that analogy too is, like we we we put a lot of value on life, you know, as human beings, as we should.
Speaker 1:
7:24
It's pretty, pretty valuable to us as a species, but like we don't think about the life disruption that comes with ransomware or update failures that occur. Like this is a disruption to to lives and I think it's hard for us to conceptualize that, because when healthcare gets impacted, when airlines get impacted, when airlines get impacted, when service industry is disrupted, there are potential lives on the line by these things. So we have lifeguards, we have firefighters and policemen and all kinds of different service industries out there to ensure that we stay safe, but I think we often forget the kind of impact technology has on our well-being and our lives. So I love that analogy, because having a lifeguard for your data or for your business, your infrastructure, whatever it is, we don't really think about that. That's your security team and you just kind of hope they're doing it. They're not out there blowing a whistle saying no, running, it's them that phishing email test and you click the link. That's the most whistle blowing you get.
Speaker 1:
8:28
So true, so true Now before we get into the news of the week, I do want to hit one more thing. You brought up Casey, that that was pretty cool Before we get into some serious security discussion. You actually shared this with me and I had no idea this is a thing. So can you walk us through what I'm looking at here? This came from you the built master card. Is it worth it? We've never talked finance on this show before, but when you explained this to me I was like I feel like we need to. So what is this?
Speaker 2:
8:57
Okay, yeah. So anyone who knows me in my personal life is so tired of hearing me talk about this, especially my sister. I've asked him like 10 times if this thing is real. But basically it's a credit card that was built for renters. So, with us using technology and everything being so at our fingertips, I've found myself really learning a lot about finance.
Speaker 2:
9:21
And this credit card came up and I was like, oh my gosh, how do more young people not know about it? Basically, what the built credit card came up and I was like, oh my gosh, how do more young people not know about it? Basically, what the built credit card is is a credit card where you can pay for your rent without any kind of fee associated. So even if your landlord won't accept the built credit card as a built partner, you actually get set up with your own account number and routing numbers. So it kind of acts like a bank and then bill just bills you via the credit card for the difference, and if that doesn't work too, they'll also send a check to your landlord. So basically, you're earning points on your biggest expense of the month.
Speaker 2:
9:59
Who wouldn't want to do that? And I'm just so confused by more people aren't talking about it, but there's a lot of controversy around it too, right, because it's like what economics are behind this? I don't really understand. So there's a couple different things that we can talk about, but first I just wanted to get into y'all's thoughts about this. Is it too good to be true?
Speaker 3:
10:16
I mean, does it work for mortgages?
Speaker 1:
10:18
That's my first question.
Speaker 2:
10:23
Yeah, they're actually talking about it. I think that's one of their business growth plans is to move into mortgages.
Speaker 1:
10:29
I just don't, like I read the article after you sent it to me and like I read this section that we've highlighted here. You know, is it too good to be true? And they say presumably built loses money when giving out rewards and then mailing a check to a landlord it has no relationship with, but it's a bigger, it's part of a bigger play. Like I get that that's. You know, that is business 101.
Speaker 1:
10:48
It's kind of the same way that, um, why is my mind blanking on all of them uber eats, uh, the all of the food delivery grub hubs and the like they lose a little bit of money on the transaction on the food. They're hoping that you know they're able to build up a big enough network long-term that they can then crank up the rates and you depend on them and you know competition drives the value there. So, like I get it, sometimes the consumer does get a really good deal and the producer takes the hit. But, like with finance, it's so curious because, like finance is all about making money always all the time, and it does seem too good to be true. So have you run into any catches yourself?
Speaker 2:
11:31
No, so I don't have the card. Let me give that disclaimer, because I'm still skeptical, we're working on it.
Speaker 2:
11:36
We're working on it, I'm doing my research, that's for sure. But what some things that are interesting about it. So you do have to have five charges a month in order to get the points, so you can't just use it for your rent. So I think they're hoping that some people will kind of start using it more and more and they'll see more of that overspend and people not paying it off. But so far they haven't seen it. Another thing is there's no annual fee, but there's also no sign on bonus, so you don't really get to the point where you're earning a max amount of points for paying your rent for three months. So there's that too. So they definitely have some things built in that make it make a little bit more sense. But overall, I think Wells Fargo is the one that's losing on this one, from what I've heard in my research. And for consumers it's just kind of a thing right now where it's like, hey, use it till it's gone, because come 2029, it might not exist anymore.
Speaker 1:
12:29
So, movie pass 2.0.
Speaker 3:
12:32
Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head, though In your description you said something that like stuck to me. I wanted to earmark that if you pay it off each month and sadly I feel like that's what's going to happen and that's what they're banking on, especially sadly with younger folks is oh, you mean, I don't have to pay my entire rent this month, I can pay a half of it, sure. And then you start getting into the whole cycle of interest and credit, the typical credit card, right. So I think, if you're a course this is the first I've heard of it, I haven't done due diligence either, but let's say, all things considered equal and it's legit, I think, as long as you're disciplined and you can say well, my rent is X, I'm going to pay X, there's never, ever going to be any carryover, but I get to earn points. Sounds great.
Speaker 3:
13:20
But I think that's where you run the risk of people not being disciplined enough and carrying balances and it slowly starts to build up and I think that is probably what these big banks are banking on. Is people doing that? And that's when they start earning money. They build up a big network. You get I don't know a percentage of them not paying it off each month, interest starts rolling up and that's where they get paid back, I bet. Interest starts rolling up, you know, and that's where they get paid back, I bet.
Speaker 2:
13:44
Exactly so. That's exactly right. When I did listen to a podcast on it from it's from the New York times, their journal, their podcast they did a whole unbiased review on it and they said exactly that Wells Fargo is praying that renters don't pay. Yeah, and it makes sense but for Wells Fargo.
Speaker 2:
14:03
usually people who have signed up for this card are very responsible. So shout out to the generation of renters out there who are paying off their rent and using this card. Good for you, guys, but yes, like anything, there's best practices. If you're not sure you're going to be able to pay that off, I don't recommend the card. So anyways, interesting topic.
Speaker 1:
14:22
I like it. This whole episode's got a theme of, like caution, research, intrepidation and execution of a plan. This is good. This is good. I like where this theme is going. Before we get into, I want to hear your topic next, matt. Before we do that, a couple of shout outs. So we got a whole bunch of people coming from a lot of different locations in the chat. I just want to make sure we hit all these. We got Netherlands, philadelphia. I just want to make sure we hit all these. We've got Netherlands, philadelphia. Luis mentions he was born in Santiago de Chile but is based in Pamplona, navarra, spain. I'm hoping I'm not butchering those names. We've got cheers from south of Italy in the Chilinto area. Welcome all of you. And Matt, I will let you reveal our trivia. Winner of the day.
Speaker 3:
15:03
Yeah, Five Foot Fisher got it nail on the head. It was a 48-star flag from pre-1959, when Alaska and Hawaii joined the United States. So I just thought that was really cool. So yeah, to your point. Lots of great places watching, lots of people tuning in. Really appreciate y'all's time for sure.
Speaker 1:
15:23
Yeah, thanks all for tuning in today and checking us out, and congratulations on getting that trivia. Five foot Fisher, we have nothing to give you, but you have the pride of knowing that you won this round. So that's enough for most folks. Now, matt, what do we, what are you going to take us down the path of today?
Speaker 3:
15:40
Yeah, let me reshare it. I think when you shared the first time, it canceled my share, so let me kick this guy off and hang tight. Is that the wrong screen? I think.
Speaker 1:
15:52
I see a graph cast.
Speaker 3:
15:55
Yeah, that's what it's supposed to be, so let's do this again.
Speaker 1:
15:58
Here we go. Shout out to Matt.
Speaker 3:
16:02
He's literally working on a ladder baby, all right, so yeah, so Sterling's not here, so I feel like I got free liberty to say AI 20 more times.
Speaker 3:
16:12
just as a joke that we all have. But you know, one of the things that we've talked about plenty of times on this show is technology working for us, and not just being tech and being smart just for the fact of being smart Hashtag, wi-fi, toothbrushes, right, I mean, there's reasons why you put smarts into things and there's reasons for AI really helping. Okay, if anybody were to name the number one profession where people can just wake up one day and have a 50-50 shot of being right, and every time they're wrong, they just carry on the next day like nothing happened, meteorologists, I'm sure would be at the top of everyone's list. Right, they just go out, yep, it's going to rain, and then, when they're wrong, nothing ever happens, right? So one of the things that I came across that I thought was super cool and, frankly, I clicked on it just because of the URL and you might not be able to see it up there, but it's deepmindgooglecom and I'm like, ooh, this sounds intriguing. So I click on this and this is basically what Google is using to improve AI weather forecasting, and there's a lot of stuff in here that you know. That's you've got to read to kind of understand it.
Speaker 3:
17:26
But one of the things I wanted to point out is let me get down to the actual stat that I saw Bear with me here. Let me find it. Yeah, so here it is. So what I thought was so impressive is, if you highlight this section right here and again let me try to zoom in there we go All right. So, basically, what this is saying is this new model is able to forecast in like what was it? A minute, whereas previously, using the same stuff, prior to this, ai was using much higher computational power, so essentially supercomputers, and it was taken. You know sometimes what is this? 10 days, um, uh, where's the? Where's the stats? Uh, so you got accuracy. I don't know why I'm not finding the actual time in here, but basically when I was reading through this earlier, yeah, less than a minute on a single Google TPU V4 machine and in comparison, the same forecast could take hours in a supercomputer with hundreds of machines. So, right away, that's one earmark to note time. Okay, but if it was all the same accuracy, that's great. But then you go on to read and look at the improvement of accuracy down here, 99.7% is the accuracy that these new model would have when you were measuring what's called the troposphere, which is basically, you know, a huge section of the atmosphere. I think it was what six to 20 kilometers or something like that high. And I'm like, okay, so you're telling me that we go from hours to minutes and we go from you know whatever the accuracy was before, and I kind of use the joke we all know what it was before.
Speaker 3:
19:23
Nobody knows how to predict weather. Like they kind of give it their best guess and I guess with hurricanes you've got a little bit more. You know guidance where you can follow the track, but you're increasing this to almost a hundred percent accuracy. Like that's crazy. Like I mean, to me this is a great example of we need this because we've all been a part of something as simple as it's not going to rain today. Boom, you have like massive. You know washouts all the way up to. You know the whole idea of today's show is you know life saving things. You're drowning. Protect your data from drowning and, just generally speaking, you know protecting yourself from all different things Hurricanes, tornadoes, you know these types of events that weather forecasting can help save lives. This is awesome and I feel like this is tech used where it's needed, you know, whereas right now we're just taking shots in the dark in some cases, and this was like really eyeopening to see that 99.7% accuracy in minutes. What do you guys think?
Speaker 2:
20:26
Yeah, well, the first thought that comes to my mind, matt, is snowpops and the horrible events that could have been saved with this technology. I mean, even let's think back to that Like I remember being stuck on a bus for two hours waiting for my dad to come get me because of that and because no one knew the weather and no one knew what to do in Georgia, we we have no idea, and people watching not from georgia are probably judging, and rightfully so, right, so helpful back then. And I think you know we can't be scared of technology, right, we have to know where it's good and where it's useful and use it for those things. And, um, I think this is a great example of that, so I love it listen, I live in hurricane state right.
Speaker 1:
21:12
I live in. I'm from Florida, born here, raised here, lived through many hurricanes here. But more importantly than that, I saw Twisters this weekend and let me tell you, if Twisters had this technology, that movie wouldn't have happened.
Speaker 3:
21:26
Right, because hours they've already set through the movie minutes they could walk out in the trailer right correct, right, like I mean, that was the whole thing.
Speaker 1:
21:35
It's like, oh no, these, these rogue twisters are coming out of nowhere. We couldn't predict them, but it's like with 99.8 accuracy that changes the game. And I'm very skeptical as, as our viewers who recurring watching the show know, I don't. I don't find AI to be that compelling a technology, but this is actually significant, like the amount of accuracy, if they're actually able to predict this, and I'm guessing they're using both a combination of typical meteorology as well, as you know what is it? Aggregational, like data learning and the maturity models in there, like that. Like that's pretty compelling and it can definitely save lives. To the earlier conversation like this is how you save lives from freak weathers when you're able to see, like well, what made this tornado or this hurricane become so deadly, so quickly and how do we get people out sooner. Like this is awesome, yep.
Speaker 2:
22:27
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
22:28
Yep.
Speaker 3:
22:29
I thought it was super cool because there's so many use cases of AI that are just like really, do you really need it there? And this is one that, yeah, you actually do. You know, really really help accuracy and give people much better heads up. So that was my topic for the day. I know there's the elephant in the room with the CrowdStrike thing. Maybe we can chat about that a bit, but, like I thought this was really really cool from a new emerging tech perspective, it is. You know, what are your thoughts on the whole CrowdStrike thing, anthony?
Speaker 1:
23:00
Well, you know, firstly, matt, thanks for bringing the good news. I'm always, I'm always down for some good news on this show. You know, I feel like you and Casey did a good job with that today. So last week there was a. Actually there was two distinct instances that happened. There was the crowd strike thing and there was the microsoft azure outage. Uh, both happened like on the same day, around the same time frame. Like super freaky that just everything fails on a friday, especially like a big travel friday, because you have your, your summer travelers on vacation. You know you just mentioned, you know you're, you're here with your kids getting ready to go back to school. Everyone's trying to get that last minute traveling before the summer ends, get kids getting ready to go back to college and business travel, and I think that's the perfect storm for everything to go down and wrong. And we're still not back up to 100% functionality. The airports are not back in place, except for Southwest Airlines, because they're running freaking Windows.
Speaker 3:
23:57
I saw that. I saw that Somehow they dodged it because of being so outdated.
Speaker 1:
24:02
I've always liked Southwest Airlines. Now I'd say to say I love Southwest Airlines, I love Southwest Airlines. I just like and you know like we jest. But this is the thing right With technology, especially with software as a service technology when you're developing product and you're on a SaaS platform and you push out an update, everyone gets that update, regardless of whether or not they want it. You know this is very counterintuitive to the old model where we're going to test this thing in a red blue environment for 30 days and make sure that nothing goes wrong. Then we're going to flip it live in our channel and we'll get that update. But ransomware has made it, so people need to update their services right away, otherwise you might have a day zero security threat and two because it's SaaS, because we're all paying a subscription for everything in our lives. Now you just get the update, whether you want it or not. It's part of what you're paying for. And that led to the cataclysm of the weekend, which everything became inoperable, every service industry. Did it impact y'all at all?
Speaker 3:
25:05
Personally, I didn't notice any direct impacts. It's ironic. Down here in Dothan we went to get takeout last night from Buffalo Wild Wings of all places and I looked behind the bar. Sure enough, I took a picture of it. There's a blue screen of death sitting right there on their point of service system. I'm like, wow, here we are, it's Sunday evening and we're still having these issues. Or Monday evening still got the problems. It's Sunday evening and we're still having these issues. Or Monday evening still got the problem.
Speaker 3:
25:33
So you know, I think the widespread issues that this caused were just, I mean, devastating all over the globe. And it's funny because they came out with a fix pretty quick. But the problem is it's a manual fix. It takes somebody either doing restores, fingers on keyboards, going into safe mode, deleting the file, restarting it's not super involved to fix it on a single machine. But if you have to fix this across, you know a company, it's a major problem.
Speaker 3:
26:02
And you know to your point, anthony, we're in today's world. We're almost stuck between a rock and a hard place Because, like you said, zero day exploits. You got to stay updated, you got to stay patched, you got to stay on the latest code or else you run the risk of you know the newest ransomware, the newest phishing or the newest virus, but then, on the flip side to your point, if somebody doesn't send their patches through quality control, you know you're going to be stuck there when something goes sideways, and that's why backups and recoveries are so critical. Right, I mean, that's why we do what we do in this business. You know, veeam plus Object First is literally that perfect pairing about being able to recover quickly.
Speaker 3:
26:41
And I'll give you an example. I actually saw a post from a former colleague, brad, on LinkedIn the other day. Veeam even has a capability called a quick rollback. So rather than restoring, let's say, your whole business, you could literally do a quick rollback to the day before the patch, and what Veeam will do is only restore the blocks that were changed overnight. So what might may have taken potentially hours or days, depending on the cumulative size of the server. You could have done exponentially faster if you had the plan and you knew what to do when something went sideways. So always have a plan.
Speaker 1:
27:15
Yes, I love that. And if you don't have a plan, have something in place or a team or someone who does have a plan, because that's the only way you get through this. Now I do have two things to share, because I guess, first Casey, did it impact you at all, just curious.
Speaker 2:
27:33
It didn't. It didn't impact me, I was lucky. But I did want to say I just think it's so crazy how much we rely on data and technology and how unprepared we are for when it doesn't work. I mean we use it all day, every day, and if it goes blank we go blank, Like it's crazy, and so and you know the knowledge, it's not talked about enough. Before I worked at Object First, I didn't understand either, and so I'm proud to work for Object First and for something that's taking care of this huge problem, because I mean, we're seeing it every day.
Speaker 3:
28:05
So I mean to take a-.
Speaker 1:
28:07
We go blank. I love that Hashtag yeah.
Speaker 3:
28:10
I'm stealing that, you know. I was about to say, like you know, from taking a hat out of your cap, anthony about Johnny Raincloud. It's flat out scary, is what it is. Because if something so insignificant as a rogue patch can basically ground all flight travel and you know all airlines other than Southwest, I mean that's crazy scary. If that's all it takes. And this wasn't even malicious, right, this was a genuine human error. It just didn't go through quality control and here's the outcome. Imagine if it was a malicious attack that got pushed out. I mean, yeah, it's scary to think about.
Speaker 1:
28:46
We got a good comment from a good friend of mine, Cliff Barcliffe. He said thoughts on CrowdStrike. Did customers know that updates can be pushed out their internal controls If not, why not? And he mentioned he was a production ops manager in a previous lifetime would never allow updates without testing in their own test dev environment, and it's amazing that airlines and some financials were impacted Like couldn't agree more. These are the questions we need to be asking. Yeah, um, on a bit of a light note in regards to this conversation.
Speaker 1:
29:15
I do want to share. This was not true. I don't know if you saw this image over the weekend but I did and I loved it.
Speaker 1:
29:22
This is this is fake. This is not real, as much as we would love it to be. There was no blue screen on the Las Vegas here, so I'm sorry to report that has been debunked Now, unfortunately. The thing I am not as excited to share about is the aftermath. So now this comes from Bleeping Computer, one of my favorite cybersecurity journals. Fake CrowdStrike fixes target companies with malware and data wipers, so it just continues, right.
Speaker 1:
29:55
So what this means is now the damage has been done We've mentioned people are still stuck trying to deal with all the problems that they have, and there are fixes on the internet that are posing as real fixes to the CrowdStrike problem. People are downloading them and they are being hit with malicious software. You know it's come in the form of an email. Look at this like dear value customer, which right away should be a trigger for most, but we know that doesn't always work right. Look for your name. Look for the simple things that make sure that it ensures that it's coming from a valid source. You know they've got their image in there. They've got attachments. Don't just open attachments. But it's bad y'all. So there's the aftermath and there's the ambulance chasing. There's always going to be those that look to take advantage of this bad situation and it's happening out there. So if you are impacted, please do your due diligence and ensuring that, as you get back to business as usual, that you're not pulling something that's only going to make things worse for you. Go ahead, matt.
Speaker 3:
31:02
I was going to say I think there's never been. Well, certainly there's been some strong cases, but in recent months this is certainly the strongest case I've seen to have a backup and recovery plan. So the patch, the fix, is one thing, but you're down, you were down or you could have been down until it was realized what happened, until the patch got pushed out to you, implemented it Again. If you had a recovery plan, you could be back up in minutes, you know, and just restore, restore from you know, prior to this issue, you may have a little data loss, but your company's afloat and I saw you know. Speaking of financial hashtag, this show is not about financial advice. Don't do. Don't do what we say, but I I did notice this morning that they were down 13 percent.
Speaker 3:
31:46
Like you know, crowd strike definitely took a hit because of this and I also found it interesting that I guess the president, ceo, the main guy, is a former FBI guy, you know, was there like his whole career. So his whole life has been security, doing things right, protecting people from bad things. I think was his direct quote and it's, you know, sometimes it's human error, sometimes people just screw up and you know that's the reality. It's not always, you know, ransomware it's not always malicious bad actors, sometimes it's the human element. And, anthony, I mean, you know as well as I, we talk about that so much on the show.
Speaker 3:
32:21
It's like we can't get so hyper-focused on ransomware that we forget everything else that can go sideways in the tech world. I mean all it takes is one person not checking code and thinking the patch is good and boom, here you go and, like to Clifford's point, like I don't want them pushing updates unless I authorize it, you know, because I want to make sure it's going to work. Maybe I check it on one server first, before the entire company. So there's a lot of things that went wrong here that hopefully we learn from and make better going forward yeah, completely agree.
Speaker 1:
32:53
I think you know my. It's funny. When it happened, my, my parents texted me like, have you heard of this company called the Crowdstrike? I'm like, yeah, I love that strike, they're awesome. Yeah, I mean like, and that's, it's still true, right, like I don't. Yes, they're responsible for this thing happening, but it literally could have been any company that offers software as a service solution, that provides business critical infrastructure for you know, service industry. Like it literally could be any company that this happened to and it just knocks out the entire, you know, airline industry, healthcare industry, everything.
Speaker 1:
33:28
The thing to take away is exactly the points that you and Casey have made. It's not, you know, oh, crowdstrike, bad company stock go down, boo. Like that's not the way we should feel about this. It's what can we do as businesses to ensure redundancy, resiliency, the ability to recover all of those things on ourselves and then hold other businesses accountable as a? You know, is your quality assurance up to snuff? Are you testing this in your internal environment before you're pushing it out to everyone else? And, and more importantly, like, how do we get to a point where sas is not a one-size-fits-all solution? Like I, I do truly believe that we need to get to hey, we're not going to take your SAS update. It requires 30 days of testing on our end. Like it's a good thing this happened the way that it did, because now we can prevent a real bad one from happening in the future.
Speaker 1:
34:21
Like I am a little grateful that everything played out the way it did, because it could be so much worse, and this is a great learning opportunity for the entire industry.
Speaker 3:
34:28
I totally agree. I feel like we almost need to rename the show. You need a recovery plan because insert reason, because every week it's. These are the reasons why you need to have a plan in place for when things go sideways.
Speaker 1:
34:42
Yep.
Speaker 2:
34:43
Yep, exactly. I mean, we talk about ransomware all the time. It happens every 11 seconds. But other things are happening too, and and you know not to beat a dead horse, but the best way to prepare for this is to plan on it happening, because it and it might. And when it does, what are you going to do?
Speaker 1:
35:00
so I think it's very interesting topic and definitely aligns with what we're trying to do here yep, I've told the story before first day on the job, my internship at a previous company, a fellow intern deleted an entire customer database because he was told to and it just happens. So I think awareness is everything and preparation is key and, just like you were a lifeguard, casey, I think we need those protectors out there that are blowing the whistle. Stop running. Stop just updating things. Yes, walt, don't run. Yeah, don't run the pool. Don't download those CrowdStrike fixes unless you verify them first Exactly.
Speaker 1:
35:43
Well, thanks so much for joining us this week, casey. It was great to have you on the show 're a phenomenal guest. We we appreciate the financial insight, as well as the uh lifeguard stories. And matt, as always, thank you for being here with us and making sure the the wheels don't fall off the planes we're flying it. Thanks to our audience for joining in making sure that we stayed on topic. Some really great conversation in there today. We always appreciate your insight. Next week I I teased this last week, but I don't know what time it is Next week we're going to be talking about the Olympics and what is going on there. I got some crazy stats and facts about ransomware in the Olympics that will blow your mind. So make sure you tune into that Show is sponsored by Object. First we create OOPI. It stands for Out of the Box Mutability. It's the best storage for Veeam. Appreciate having all you here and, as always, stay weightless, stay frictionless, stay zero gravity. We'll see you next week.
Speaker 2:
36:35
Thanks guys, bye, thank you.
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