TechTime with Nathan Mumm

257: Meta using tactics similar to those of digital criminals, AI models being developed for US national security, and Spaceballs 2 announced for 2027. with Guests James Riddle, and Nick Espinosa | Air Date: 6/17 - 6/23/2025

• Nathan Mumm • Season 7 • Episode 257

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Privacy invasions, robot surveillance, and the surprising return of beloved cult classics dominate this week's tech landscape. Meta has been caught red-handed using tactics similar to digital criminals to secretly harvest web browsing data from Android devices through a backdoor approach that even Google wasn't aware of. The technique mirrors malicious software, planting itself on phones and bypassing security settings by default—a disturbing revelation that should prompt users to reconsider their browser choices.

Meanwhile, autonomous vehicles like Waymo have become rolling surveillance systems, their 360-degree cameras constantly recording everything and everyone they pass. Police departments in San Francisco and Phoenix are already issuing warrants for this footage, raising profound questions about our surveillance-saturated future. When you step into a robo-taxi, you're essentially signing away your privacy rights—just one more way we're trading convenience for constant monitoring.

On a lighter note, the 1987 cult classic Spaceballs is finally getting a sequel in 2027. Could it be called "The Schwartz Awakens"? It will reunite original cast members including Mel Brooks as Yogurt, Rick Moranis as Dark Helmet, and Bill Pullman as Lone Star, while introducing new characters including Bill Pullman's real-life son Lewis as "Starburst." 

In other fascinating developments, Chinese researchers have achieved remarkable accuracy in reconstructing human faces from DNA alone, scientists have genetically engineered spiders to produce glowing red silk, and space station microbes are evolving new protective features against radiation. The technological landscape continues to advance at breathtaking speed—for better and sometimes worse.

Join us each week as we navigate these technological developments with expert analysis and our signature touch of whiskey appreciation. Whether you're concerned about privacy, excited about entertainment, or fascinated by scientific breakthroughs, Tech Time Radio brings you the insights that matter most, without the technical jargon.

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Speaker 1:

Broadcasting across the nation, from the East Coast to the West, keeping you up to date on technology while enjoying a little whiskey on the side, with leading-edge topics, along with special guests to navigate technology in a segmented, stylized radio program. The information that will make you go, mmmmm. Pull up a seat, raise a glass with our hosts as we spend the next hour talking about technology for the common person. Welcome to Tech Time Radio with Nathan Mumm.

Nathan Mumm:

Welcome to Tech Time with Nathan Mumm, the show that makes you go, mmm, mmm, mmm. Technology news of the week the show for the everyday person, talking about technology, broadcasting across the nation with insightful segments on subjects weeks ahead of the mainstream media. We welcome our radio audience of 35 million listeners to an hour of insightful technology news. I'm Nathan Mumm, your host and technologist, with over 30 years of technology expertise. Our co-host, mike Roday, is in studio today. Mike's an award-winning author and a human behavior expert. Now we're live streaming during our show on four of the most popular platforms, including YouTube, twitchtv, Facebook and LinkedIn. We encourage you to visit us online at techtimeradiocom and become a Patreon supporter at patreoncom. Forward slash techtimeradio. Now. We are friends from different backgrounds, but we bring the best technology show possible weekly for our family, friends and fans to enjoy. We're glad to have ODR producer at the control panel today.

Speaker 1:

Welcome everyone, let's start today's show.

Nathan Mumm:

Now on today's show. All right On the show today we have James Riddle talking about technology and the medical field, along with Nick Espinosa talking about all things security. In addition, of course, we have our featured segments, including Mike's mesmerizing moment, our technology fail of the week and a possible Nathan Nugget and, of course, our pick of the day whiskey taste and to see if our selected whiskey pick is zero, one or two thumbs up by the end of the show. But now it's time for the latest headlines in the world of technology.

Speaker 1:

Here are our top technology stories of the week.

Nathan Mumm:

All right Story number one Meta found a new way to violate your privacy. Let's go to Lisa Walker for more on the story.

Speaker 3:

It's not novel that Meta is undermining your privacy. Researchers have recently discovered that Meta is using tactics similar to those employed by digital crooks to secretly compile logs of people's web browsing on Android devices. After researchers publicized their findings, meta said it stopped. No one, including Android owner Google, knew that Meta's Facebook and Instagram apps were siphoning people's data through a digital backdoor for months. Meta is undermining your privacy, and it has been doing so for many years. Now back to the studio.

Nathan Mumm:

All right, so we're going to be talking about this. It just is like repeat rents, repeat rents. You know what I'm talking about. It's just unbelievable. So now are they going to do anything about it? Well, I don't know. I just finally got my $22 settlement from the Equifax settlement. Did you get that in your mail? $22.66.

Mike Gorday:

What Equifax the.

Nathan Mumm:

Equifax security breach where everybody was breached no. I didn't get any of that. There was a class action you could sign up for. Did I have to sign up for it?

Mike Gorday:

You did have to sign up for it. Okay then, I didn't get it.

Nathan Mumm:

They promised you hundreds of thousands of dollars that would be paid out to the, and I got 22 bucks.

Mike Gorday:

Well, yeah, that's what a class action lawsuit is it's $100,000. I already spent it on Amazon. And they break it down for everybody in the class action lawsuit and then the lawyers take about 90%. Yeah, that's crazy.

Nathan Mumm:

All right. Well, let's talk about and unravel this mystery regarding Meta. Now, millions of websites contain a string of computer code from Meta that compiles with web activity. It might capture income, your report to the government, your application for a student loan or even your online shopping. Now Meta uses logs, and they call this the Metapixel software to build a profile of you for advertising and people to purchase. Now, typically, information from this Meta software flows one way it connects once your computer sends information to Data's cloud. But we have found out that Meta has been prying the back end of Android phones. Now you have an Android phone, right, mike?

Mike Gorday:

Yep, are you going to tap dance on my Android right now?

Nathan Mumm:

Well, I'm not going to tap dance on it. I'm going to tell you that you know we've been talking about where you say something and all of a sudden that becomes available for purchase in the stores that you're looking at.

Mike Gorday:

That's because that never happens to me.

Nathan Mumm:

That never happens to you, no, I don't.

Mike Gorday:

But then again, I don't talk to my phone. You don't talk, or on your phone. I know I don't talk on your phone either okay.

Nathan Mumm:

Well, if you actually use your phone to talk or to browse, apps, especially those like chrome, meta and yandex, have found workarounds that actually gets your data. The techniques essentially are that like malware or malicious software that goes in and is planted on your phone and bypasses all the security settings by default on your phone itself.

Nathan Mumm:

You're not going to try and say that word all right as meta representatives said, the company is talking to google to address potential miscommunications regarding the applications of their policies. Meta said that it paused what it was doing. Yandex, another collection company, said that it also stops its information of collecting sensitive information until they can identify and understand best practices. Best practices Now, if you're wondering about iPhones, the research team that did this study found no evidence that Meta and Yannix were able to do the same backdoor data harvesting on Apple devices. So no privacy settings could be hacked or altered by both Meta and Yannix, even though it does look like there's logs that they attempted to do so. Go figure.

Nathan Mumm:

Now they circumvented privacy and security protections Google set up on the Android devices, and this is how they did it.

Nathan Mumm:

They did it by loading third-party software that then would mimic and would have a buffer within the operating system itself that would use that over the standard Google operating system. So this is the same way that you would have somebody hijack or load a virus onto your Android phone to get information. So if is the same way that you would have somebody hijack or load a virus onto your Android phone to get information. So if your phone started acting a little slower after they were doing that, that was because they were harvesting the data both in and out back to their areas. Now let's tell everybody what they need to stop doing right now. First of all, you should stop using the Chrome browser, because if you're using the Chrome browser, there are so many extensions and so many hackable systems that are in there right now that everybody is creating backdoors into the system and, without the government having people regulating and looking into this stuff, it's making it easier and easier and easier, and Google Chrome is considered the number one browser, so it'll be the number one that gets hacked.

Mike Gorday:

So that's why Android devices right.

Nathan Mumm:

This isn't on your pc, no, it's not across the platform pc, android devices, uh, ios devices. Now is the time to use the brave browser or mozilla's firefox, both very good alternatives. They are not number one, so they don't get all these hacked backdoor applications that are adding to it. So now, if you really want to get crazy, you can even do Microsoft Edge, but that's really, I know, going a little bit to one extreme, so I don't know if you want to do that.

Mike Gorday:

But there are a couple alternatives. Are you bagging on Edge?

Nathan Mumm:

Well, yeah, I'm just saying that there are other browsers out there. Please be careful. Chrome is the most popular web browser and has the most vulnerabilities of all that are out there. All right, awesome, there you go. You know what I think we need to new. Now move to story number two. What do you have for us, mike?

Mike Gorday:

I'm so excited, you're so excited about this, so let me, let me ask you a question, but it's been, it's almost 40 years old now, it, it's almost 40 years old now.

Nathan Mumm:

It's a movie, it's one of your favorites.

Mike Gorday:

What is it?

Nathan Mumm:

Well, it would be the Three Amigos, although I do have a Three Amigos right behind the studio thing. I would say Spaceballs, spaceballs. That is correct. Do you like Spaceballs? I do like Spaceballs.

Mike Gorday:

Okay, well, nothing's better than when the big vacuum comes on. Guess what's going to happen in 2027? What 2027. What's that? It's Baseball 2. Oh boy, and it's not going to be the Search for more money.

Nathan Mumm:

It's not going to be the Search. It's too bad Because that was in the original movie. Well, I don't know if they've come out with the official title. I think they're just saying that they have like a working title right now. They have a working title and it's called the Schwartz Awakens. Okay.

Mike Gorday:

Which is the, the mostly beloved star wars. The force awakens. Seventh film.

Nathan Mumm:

The force awakens, okay, all right. Well, what do we have? What good news do we have about space balls too?

Mike Gorday:

okay. Well, amazon is calling this film a non-prequel, non-reboot sequel part two, but with reboot elements franchise. Okay, it is, look at that, it is.

Marc Gregoire:

Yep.

Mike Gorday:

Well, tell us who's it in Bill Pullman.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, so he was in the original.

Mike Gorday:

He was in the original, he was Lone Star Yep, and Mel Brooks is going to come back as Yogurt.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay.

Mike Gorday:

Rick Moranis is going to be back as well His dark helmet. His dark helmet.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, that's a pretty big deal. Rick Moranis hasn't done anything for a long time.

Mike Gorday:

No, a lot of them haven't done anything. Bill Pullman's son, lewis, is going to be the central guy.

Nathan Mumm:

He's hot right now Is he Are you sure he's hot. Yeah, he was just out in the uh marvel uh the new adventures on that new thunderbolts or thunderbolts, whichever one you want to get his new adventures. I haven't watched, you haven't watched it.

Mike Gorday:

He's really good in that. Actually, I'm so tired of uh marvel films right now I haven't anyway.

Mike Gorday:

It's been about 40 years since Spaceball came out and here we go. The best news of all. Plot details have been revealed, along with a key piece of casting. The Hollywood Reporter broke the news of the casting as well as some of the plot details. According to the trade, Lewis Pullman is playing Starburst, the son of Lone Star. Pullman is playing Starburst, the son of Lone Star, Okay, and Queen Vespa, who is Daphne Zuniga, is set to also return.

Nathan Mumm:

So that was Princess Leia, knockoff right, yep, yep.

Mike Gorday:

Starburst is one of the film's three main characters, along with Destiny, played by Keke Palmer, and a character played by Josh Gad, who has yet to be named but is suspected to be a Barf descendant.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay.

Mike Gorday:

The younger Pullman has had an incredible few years. First really breaking out is the lovable naval operator Bob in Top Gun Maverick, followed by playing Bob aka Sentry in the Thunderbolts. The Swartz Awakens is, of course, the play on the title name, the star wars name. Star wars awakens the everybody's favorite star wars film okay uh, it's going to be coming to theaters in 2027.

Nathan Mumm:

Didn't have a an official title yet I said it better be space balls to the search for money.

Mike Gorday:

If they do not do that, it would be nice if they did that, since it was referenced in the film that would be perfect yeah, that's. That's all I got all right.

Nathan Mumm:

Well, I hope, hope this is not one of these bad remakes. I hope this is actually a remake that will be done. Well, they have so much to make fun of.

Mike Gorday:

They can do all the MCU stuff. It's been 40 years.

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah, you got some MCU.

Mike Gorday:

But then again, this is one of the things that have been happening all over the place.

Speaker 5:

You know like Beet all over the place. You know like beetlejuice as a new film. Yep, you know I'm excited about it?

Nathan Mumm:

they're not remakes, they're sequels they're sequels. Yeah, so it's not a prequel, but it's a sequel to no, it's a non-prequel, non-reboot sequel, part two, but with reboot elements franchise expansions yeah, okay, so they'll have like characters in there, but it'll be a whole new storyline.

Speaker 5:

Yeah, they're saying they're not remake. I feel like if they were trying to remake it, there'd be an uproar on the internet.

Mike Gorday:

Well we got two years to figure this out.

Speaker 5:

Yeah, we got.

Mike Gorday:

I'm sure people are going to be freaking out about this later on Alright, and then they'll have all the people.

Nathan Mumm:

Well, there they go.

Mike Gorday:

Alright, we'll see what happens when the teaser trailer comes out.

Nathan Mumm:

They do have the scroll right now. That's on. Have you seen the scroll? No, you got to watch the scroll. It makes fun of all the Marvel stuff, so it's pretty good. Okay, all right. Well, that ends our top technology stories of the week. We're going to return with Nick Espinoza from Security Fanatics. He's joining the show talking about cybercrime. What do we need to next month?

Speaker 3:

All right.

Nathan Mumm:

Find out more. You're listening to Tech Time with Nathan Mumm. We'll see you after the commercial break.

Speaker 8:

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Nathan Mumm:

Welcome back to Tech Time with Nathan Mumm. Our weekly show covers the top technology subjects without a political agenda. We verify the facts and we do it with a sense of humor, in less than 60 minutes and, of course, a little whiskey on the side. All right, mr Gregoire, our whiskey connoisseur, you're in studio today.

Speaker 3:

I am.

Nathan Mumm:

Glad you're here. Tell us, what are we sipping today. Today is.

Marc Gregoire:

Sazerac Rye Whiskey. It's also known as Baby Saz, baby Saz, baby Saz. Now from Buffalo Trace's website. Aromas of clove, vanilla anise and pepper, subtle notes of candied spices and citrus. The big finish is smooth, with hints of licorice. Now, this is from the Sazerac Company. Okay, buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort, kentucky. It is a straight rye. It's non-age stated, but we know, since it's straight rye it has to be at least four years old. 90 proof mash bill is undisclosed, but we know it's buffalo trace's low rye rye mash bill.

Mike Gorday:

Okay, and the price? Is 30 well, mark I, I think I think we can say you did it. What's that? I have converted to liking rye.

Marc Gregoire:

Every time he brings a rye on, I like it wow, and you know what, mike, this is a very inexpensive rye look at this bottle and it's got a cork top.

Mike Gorday:

It's got all all that's got all the nath. It's got all the nathan perks and it's under 50 bucks.

Marc Gregoire:

I know that's like number one, and during the mumbles it has a fun story. Oh, does it all, right I?

Nathan Mumm:

have to wait for that, all right. Well, with our first whiskey tasting completed, let's move on to our feature segment. It's a fun story, oh, does it? All right, we'll have to wait for that, all right. Well, with our first whiskey tasting completed, let's move on to our feature segment. Today, our technology expert, nick Espinosa, is joining the show. Nick is an expert in cybersecurity and network infrastructure. He's consulted with clients ranging from small business to the Fortune 100 level. In 1998, at the age of 19, nick founded Windy City Networks, which was later acquired in 2015. You know what we need to ask how much he sold it for in 2015.

Mike Gorday:

Well, no, we don't, no we don't need to ask that question.

Speaker 3:

He then created.

Nathan Mumm:

Security Fanatics, where he's the chief security fanatic. We would now want to welcome Nick to the show.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the segment we call Ask the Experts With our tech time radio expert, Nick Espinoza. Hi, Nick.

Nathan Mumm:

All right, here I go. Nick Question number one off the charts how much?

Speaker 5:

did you make when you sold? Why do you want to be asking people?

Nathan Mumm:

That's rude, did you make a good amount of money. Let me just ask you that.

Marc Gregoire:

He's on Tech Time. That answers your question.

Nick Espinosa:

All right, right, well, hang on. Let me just say this first, okay is that the same?

Speaker 5:

bottle what the heck.

Nathan Mumm:

Look at that right, baby. That's right.

Nick Espinosa:

Look at that way to go yeah, yeah, I opened it about an hour ago and, uh, it's halfway gone.

Mike Gorday:

Yeah, that's the way I feel, nick.

Nick Espinosa:

Wow, look at that figured you guys would get a kick out of that that is perfect, yeah yeah, I had no idea that was not planned. Audience, that was not planned, so let's dive in all right, well, hang on.

Nathan Mumm:

Let me ask thumbs up or thumbs down, nick?

Nick Espinosa:

oh, oh, I like it.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, I like it, it's good, all right, all right, okay. Well, tell everybody a little bit about yourself for the listener audience sure, sure, I'm, uh, nick Espinosa, chief security fanatic of Security Fanatics.

Nick Espinosa:

We do all things cybersecurity, cyber warfare, cyber terrorism, all that fun stuff. And, as always, I'm happy to be here.

Nathan Mumm:

We're happy to have you on the show. All right, so we're going to start out with our first subject, which is Mike Gorday's favorite. It's all about AI.

Speaker 5:

AI All right about ai.

Nathan Mumm:

All right, so ai, let's talk about robo taxis. Now they're becoming a surveillance nightmare, uh, which is why? Uh, you know what? No, let that second story. Let's go back to the first story. Ai see, we got. We got two ai, so let's talk about the ai that is now being used by our national security. What is going on with this? I'm seeing a bunch of articles pop up all over everywhere. What ai are they using? What's going on? Why this? I'm seeing a bunch of articles pop up all over everywhere. What AI are they using? What's going on? Why is our national security using AI?

Nick Espinosa:

Yeah, yeah. So we all knew this was coming right, and I think there's a lot of implications in this. So the AI maker that we're talking about today is Anthropic. They're one of the major players, competitor to OpenAI, microsoft, google, et cetera, et cetera, and so they have just released a new set of AI models specifically for US national security customers. Now, these are basically based off of their CLOD, that's what Anthropic calls their artificial intelligence, but these are Gov models and they're designed essentially to be applied to government operations like strategic planning, operational support and, I think this one's concerning intelligence analysis.

Nick Espinosa:

Now, anthropic is saying that these new custom models handle classified material better, and then they also refuse less when engaging with classified information. So I guess the initial models just couldn't ingest everything and look at all points from all sides, and now it's gotten better, as AI tends to get better, and so, by virtue of that, it now has a greater understanding of the documents within intelligence and defense contexts. So these models have enhanced proficiency in languages, dialects and whatnot that are critical to national security operations, and Anthropix says that also has improved understanding and interpretation of complex cybersecurity data for intelligence analysis. Now, obviously, a whole bunch of AI makers are trying to get into this space, because what's good enough for the government usually means really expensive contracts. So OpenAI, meta our good friends that are data mining the bejesus out of us Google, cohere and others are working on this as well. My fear here is that this is going to look at basically intelligence from all sides. It's going to make some kind of decision and then get people killed Skynet.

Nathan Mumm:

What I said Skynet. I said Skynet.

Nick Espinosa:

I'm not saying they're hooking it up to the missiles, right, but imagine ingesting a whole bunch of intelligence, like where Osama bin Laden is in Abbottabad, and the AI makes an incorrect assessment, incorrect statement, statement, something along those lines that's wildly off, and we get a whole bunch of seal team members killed or something along those lines, or we bomb the wrong target, you know, and and bombings are a thing lately. So so I mean, I think this has a lot to be desired and I think it's something that we really need to watch yeah, you know yeah, I I do have concerns about this right, so now I mean what, uh?

Nathan Mumm:

yeah, all right, I like the ai I love ai for aspects of of ai, but I don't know if I want I mean, I don't mind going through a bunch of sharepoint documents and and summarizing different stuff, but when it starts going on out and making its own ideas and its own uh intelligence which is not, it's just a bunch of ones and zeros that it's deciding, yes, or no then now, all of a sudden, I I think we have some issues to be already know that it lies and and it hallucinates.

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah, we already know that it tried a couple weeks ago or last week I think it was on the show where we talked about the bribery where it tried bribing somebody. So I mean it's at the infancy stages and I'm not sure that anthropic on the back end. I I am not too hip on that company in their processes that they have. I'm a big sam altman open ai type of guy. I just like that. They have a lot of guardrails in place. In my opinion they are doing a lot of stuff, but that, I think, is what I would want to be done. So I just Right.

Marc Gregoire:

Okay.

Nick Espinosa:

Right Well, and Anthropic is a major player. I mean, if you've used their cloud model, it's pretty solid and it's accurate, or tends to be. But to Mike's point, we see hallucinations all the time. These things go off. I've literally written articles on it where I've gotten it to lie to me and it really wasn't hard to get it to do that, you know, not to mention the fact that the more information you're ingesting, the more probability there could potentially be for misanalysis as well, you know, and obviously the intelligence agencies want to dump as much data into this thing, have it sift through and come up with solutions. I think that could be very promising, but also very, very detrimental. You know, to this as well, and we've just seen some terrible misfires over the year with this. So putting this in the hands of national security, I think, is a little concerning, not to mention the fact Palantir seems to be building and compiling a national database, right, and so how's the AI going to look at that, as it's looking at our data, for example? That's the whole thing from Goj.

Mike Gorday:

Now, suddenly, you're going to start having personal profiles and the government will be like these are high-risk Well they do, but now it's going to be even easier to dynamically pull that all the government is going to do is buy Meta and then they'll know everything about it.

Nathan Mumm:

That's about right, all right, staying on the topic of AI I almost skipped over this becoming the surveillance nightmare. Not only are they a road nightmare, not only do they stop in the middle of the road when software updates need to be happening and they don't know what's going on. So you got all those nightmares. Now we have LA protesters that have been in the news. They set some on fire. What is going on? Waymo and these robo taxis in the AI are a concern. What information do you have that we need to have out in the public now?

Nick Espinosa:

Well, think, okay. So think about it this way what is a robo taxi? If you see one of these things, it sees you, right? And so, by virtue of that, police departments in cities where these things operate I was just recently in San Francisco for the RSA conference these things are flipping everywhere, right? And so the cops, basically, are getting all of the footage from these to help them in investigations. And so Bloomberg did some reporting on this and they noted that San Francisco, maricopa County, arizona, which is Phoenix, and some others are issuing legal requests like warrants and subpoenas and all of that to essentially obtain videos from like these Waymo vehicles and obviously other ones.

Nick Espinosa:

But like, waymo is the big one, right, and they've been doing. San Francisco and Phoenix have been doing that since 2023. But this goes all the way back with Waymo to 2016, when they first started launching in other areas around the Phoenix area, like Chandler and all of that. So autonomous vehicles are obviously equipped with 360-degree cameras. They're constantly, constantly recording.

Nick Espinosa:

In other words, if I'm walking down the street in San Francisco or Phoenix or whatever, and one of these Waymos goes by, it sees me. It has to see me because I could be a potential threat if I jump in front of the car right, so these essentially are surveillance cameras on wheels right, and so it's obviously raising the question about oversight, data collection, all these kinds of things. And, if you think about it, we are turning ourselves into, for the sake of convenience, a massive surveillance state Ring doorbell, for example, license plate readers, all this kind of stuff. And so by virtue of that, we've seen companies without warrants for the record in the past, like Amazon and Ring, give footage to the police upon request, and so we'll see where this goes. But essentially these are massive surveillance, which is why a whole bunch of protesters in LA, like a few days back, a week back, whatever it was started ordering Waymos to show up and then they started torching them because again could be used footage used by the police.

Mike Gorday:

All right so again we don't, we don't we don't want anybody to be torching any cars. You know they talked about this in the Dark Knight.

Nathan Mumm:

Do they? Yeah, the movie, never mind, ok, ok, all right. So. So think about this. You have Waymo now collecting all this data about yourself. This is kind of like the Britain juice of CCTVs all over the place, where they can hack into it anytime to find out what's going on, as you can see in any of the movies I don't know anymore, though.

Nick Espinosa:

What's that? It's not just London anymore. I mean, this is now hitting America. I mean how many cameras are in New York, Chicago, LA, that we see stoplight cameras everywhere?

Nathan Mumm:

everybody's, everybody's wire room but room, but cameras now being used in court cases. Or somebody sees something.

Mike Gorday:

Maybe that's why my room but was spinning around on my carpet this morning was it was it telling you? It was. It was somebody protesting, it was protesting.

Nathan Mumm:

Uh, I mean this, this is a concern. Uh, we, we got I mean I get.

Mike Gorday:

I love technology okay, but these roles? I need to drink whiskey right now but, uh, what are we going to do about it? What?

Nathan Mumm:

oh nothing, because everybody's going to continue to use. Robo. Taxis are going to become more and more popular. Waymo has got huge market share when you get into their vehicle.

Nathan Mumm:

Now you, you sign away all your privacy in that video. Now, if you video record something negative about Waymo and you post it, you now get a cease and assist letter from them immediately, because when you go into that taxi, you have given your rights away to do any recording or anything of that extent. They now own, while you're in that vehicle, all recording devices and it's actually in their user's agreement that you cannot record.

Mike Gorday:

So they can record you.

Nathan Mumm:

They can use that information, but you as a user can't record what's going on in that vehicle and then post it to social media.

Nick Espinosa:

You know, that brings up a really good point, because I bet you there is an OnlyFans account out there of nothing but Waymo videos of people in Waymos. That would be fun.

Nathan Mumm:

I'd put money on it. I of nothing but Waymo videos of people in Waymo. That would be fun. I'd put money on it. I may actually spend money to go watch that, If you can think about it it's on the internet somewhere, all right.

Nick Espinosa:

There you go, okay.

Nathan Mumm:

Last story that we'll talk about Now. This is really cool because I actually watched a bunch of the videos that were hosted.

Nick Espinosa:

Oh, they're crazy.

Nathan Mumm:

So China hosted an all-robot MMA tournament. Now it was kind of like a BattleBots tournament, but if you've ever watched the BattleBots and the Battlezone, there's these robots that go and they fight to death. Pretty well engineered, these machines destroy other robots. Now the fight footage shows some robots could punch and kick smoothly. Other attacks were soft and more like pushes and strikes. Now the owners were controlling them with remotes. Other attacks were soft and more like pushes and strikes. Now the owners were controlling them with remotes. So it wasn't necessarily an all AI-driven type of deal. But tell us a little bit about this robot MMA tournament, nick.

Nick Espinosa:

Yeah, yeah, and to Nathan's point, go watch the footage of this thing. It's called the China Media Group World Robot Competition Mecha Fighting Series and I'm telling you you will be laughing and a little terrified, just a little.

Speaker 5:

Yeah, a little bit, a little bit.

Nick Espinosa:

Just a little. So anyway, this tournament, basically every entry in the tournament, any team was using the Unitree Robotics G1 robot. They're about 77 pounds or so. They're about four and a half feet tall, so it's like a 12-year-old basically in size. And the G1, you can go buy your own Terminator right now. It's a relentless killing machine for 16,000 US, and so essentially what they did was they basically made it a standard fight Three rounds, two minutes each. If you landed a punch, it was a point. You got a kick. It was a point, you got a kick. It was three points. Five points were deducted, though, for falling over, and 10 points were deducted if the robot failed to stand up within eight seconds. In other words, it was right itself.

Mike Gorday:

Tim count TKO.

Nick Espinosa:

And, for the record, as we're talking about this, it does kind of sound like the robot zombie apocalypse here, but it's honestly not. Just go watch those YouTube videos. They are beyond amusing and some of it was impressive because, to Nathan's point, this was a hybrid of programmatically creating these robots, teaching them Kung Fu or mixed martial arts or whatever, and so you can see some pretty impressive kicks in all of that. But there's a whole bunch of videos of them just flailing around, punching into nothingness, tripping over themselves and all of that. So it's more comedy than nightmare at this time. And I think that's the key phrase right At this time, because robotics is developing crazy fast, right, we've seen you can go watch the video of the evolution of Boston Robotics and, just in the last 20 years, how far they've come in robotics. So the Chinese have robots, they're teaching them Kung Fu and honestly this might be the prelude to what future wars look like, right, drones and robots. So we'll see what happens, but best of luck to us all on that one.

Nathan Mumm:

What's that movie? My son loves that movie with the robot.

Speaker 5:

Big Hero 6.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay.

Speaker 5:

That's exactly what I'm thinking of this whole time Big Hero 6. That's exactly what I'm thinking of this whole time Big Hero 6. Baymax just fighting it out with another robot.

Nathan Mumm:

What's the big robots that?

Speaker 5:

fight Back Warrior Pacific.

Nathan Mumm:

Rim, pacific Rim that's what I was thinking of. Pacific.

Nick Espinosa:

Rim From the 80s that works too.

Nathan Mumm:

You should go watch it, because right now, if you're worried about robots taking over, that was pretty funny. I don't think you have to worry about these. Robots Couldn't stand up, they would do a sidekick.

Mike Gorday:

For now, for now. But, again later on. We're going to have like robot wars and people are going to have come out and have picnics to watch them, just like they did at the start of the Civil War.

Nathan Mumm:

The Civil War, or you could just then put them in like real steel, or that you can put them in a fighting area and then you bet on them.

Mike Gorday:

But yeah, I'm pretty sure that's already happening.

Nick Espinosa:

Right, oh yeah, they're on FanDuel for sure.

Nathan Mumm:

FanDuel. Fanduel wages for Robot A62. Will he make it more than three minutes, will he do the first punch and will he also then score the first touchdown? All right, well, nick, thanks First touchdown.

Nick Espinosa:

All right, well, nick, thanks. If I could watch two guys from Belgium slap each other with fish for money, uh-huh, I'll tell you what. I'll tell you what I watched the video of the MMA stuff.

Nathan Mumm:

All I could think of is the other videos that I watched. What are the slapping competitions? I don't know if you ever see those on, like ESPN, oh yeah, and stuff like that. I'm just like scissor paper slapping somebody in the face.

Mike Gorday:

I mean they're, they're, there's a, there's a professional rock scissor paper I I know anything and everything that's what we're on hacking competitions as well that's right you know, that'll be a time.

Nathan Mumm:

That'll be time.

Mike Gorday:

Then you just put I'm sure there's competitions on how fast you can dress your dog. You think so?

Nathan Mumm:

yeah, I'm pretty sure, have you ever seen the people that have the fake uh pony horses that they don't really ride on?

Speaker 5:

but it's like a stick up. We are way off topic, buddy.

Mike Gorday:

We don't need to go into that.

Nathan Mumm:

Thank you for coming on the show today. It's always a pleasure to talk with you. Please tell our listeners how can they connect with you outside of the show.

Nick Espinosa:

Please like, share, follow me Facebook, x, twitter, blue Sky, all that kind of stuff. At Nick a ESP or Nick Espinosa, come say hi, I love hanging out.

Mike Gorday:

All right, Nate. Thank you so much.

Nathan Mumm:

Yes, enjoy, enjoy your whiskey Sounds great From all of us here at tech time radio. We want to thank Nick from security fanatics for joining the show Now. That ends our segment. Ask Mike's mesmerizing moment. Welcome to Mike's mesmerizing moment. What does Mike have to say today? Why are B-rated movies a part of our culture? We were just talking about some of them, as we did that last segment too. Why?

Mike Gorday:

Why? Why are B-rated movies part of our culture? Nostalgia Camp.

Speaker 5:

What is camp?

Mike Gorday:

There's campiness to them.

Speaker 3:

I'd love to hear your description of camp right now.

Mike Gorday:

It's so bad, it's good. I think that's probably a good reason, do you?

Nathan Mumm:

know Blade Runner was a B-rated movie. No, when it first came out, kind of like a blockbuster I don't bomb and then all of a sudden caught on later.

Mike Gorday:

Yeah, well, see, that's that's. That's where we get this discussion right, because when, when a company makes a movie, they are looking for a specific return on that movie, right? So if it, doesn't hit that, if it doesn't hit that in the box office, then it becomes a a b-rated movie A bomb. But a true B-rated movie is those movies that are quickly done. It's under budget, it's a proving ground for actors and actresses and filmmakers and all this other stuff. So I don't think you're quite putting Blade Runner in the correct category.

Speaker 5:

I don't think.

Mike Gorday:

Blade Runner was created as a B movie and it just didn't do well in the box office. And then what happens is, if it doesn't hold up to the hype when it releases, you get what's an underground fandom that comes along and they recruit more and more people and then it becomes a very popular movie later on down the line and that that feeds into, uh, a lot of different psychology you know it feeds into um the same, the same the same, yes, a community thing, and also it's all they call it a cult following, because there's some cult aspects to it.

Mike Gorday:

So, yeah, okay, that's why.

Nathan Mumm:

Now, the B movie originally was created for a bomb. That's what they call this. It was a bomb at the box office, but now it has its own sub-genre category of what a B movie is A B movie is just one of those.

Mike Gorday:

There's a lot more freedom in how it's filmed and how it's done and you know, there's a lot of different reasons why b movies exist. Okay, whether it becomes a cult classic or a a favorite. I mean there's tons and tons of movies out there that nobody knows about, nobody cares about howard the duck, howard the duck yeah, there's, there's a cult following of howard the you think so? Pretty sure. Okay, it pops up on streaming services every once in a while.

Marc Gregoire:

All right, okay.

Nathan Mumm:

Well, thank you, Mike, for that mesmerizing moment.

Mike Gorday:

Yeah, I'm sure that was really mesmerizing.

Nathan Mumm:

That was mesmerizing for me.

Mike Gorday:

I'm going to go home and watch baseballs Are you.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, all right Up. Next we have this Week in Technology, so now would be a great time to enjoy a little whiskey on the side, as we're going to be doing so during the break. You're listening to Tech Time Radio with Nathan Mumm. See you in a few minutes. Hey, mike, yeah, what's?

Speaker 5:

up. Hey, so you know what. We need people to start liking our social media page If you like our show, if you really like us. We could use your support on Patreoncom. Or is it Patreon? I think it's Patreon. Okay, Patreon. If you really like us, you can like us in. Patreoncom. I butcher the English language. You know, you butcher the English language all the time it's Patreoncom, patreoncom.

Speaker 5:

If you really like our show, you can subscribe to Patreoncom and help us out, and you can visit us on that Facebook platform. You know, the one that Zuckerberg owns, the one that we always bag on. Yeah, we're on Facebook too. Yeah, like us on Facebook. Do you know what our Facebook page is? Tech Time Radio. At Tech Time Radio, you know what? There's a trend here.

Mike Gorday:

It seems to be that there's a trend and that's Tech Time Radio.

Speaker 5:

Or you can even Instagram with us, and that's at TechTimeRadio. That's at TechTimeRadio. Or you can find us on TikTok, and it's TechTimeRadio. It's at TechTimeRadio. Like and subscribe to our social media Like us today, we need you to like us. Like us and subscribe. That's it. That's it. It's that simple.

Speaker 1:

And now let's look back at this week in technology.

Nathan Mumm:

Alright, going back to our way back machine, we're going to June 17th 1980. The first two video games were copyrighted. Now, atari's Asteroids and Lunar Lander two of some of my favorite first video games became the first two video games to get registered by the US Copyright Office. This was a crucial step in the development of intellectual property rights for the emerging video game industry. Now, with over 400,000 active copyrighted games in the United States, it's key that the underlying source code and the game's artistic elements, including art, music and dialogue, can be protected by copyright law. However, gameplay elements of a video game are generally ineligible for any copyrights. Did you know that?

Nathan Mumm:

No, so, that makes sense, why there's so many knockoffs of Grand Theft Auto, right? I mean, you got Mafia, which is a knockoff of that. You got tons of other video games that take the same type of experience and then create their own worlds or their own versions of those worlds. So it just tells you that you can copyright the people, the artists and the music and art.

Speaker 3:

Okay, nobody cares.

Nathan Mumm:

All right, well, that was this Week in Technology. If you ever wanted to watch some Tech Time History, with over 250-plus weekly broadcasts spanning on our four-plus years, All right Well, that was this week in technology. If you ever wanted to watch some Tech Time history, with over 250 plus weekly broadcasts spanning on our four plus years, going on five of video, podcast and blog information, visit us at techtimeradiocom to watch our older shows. All right. Now we're going to move on to our special guest segment. Today we have James Riddle. James has been a longtime contributor to the program. James, our special guest, is here to talk about what's going on in the medical research and innovation. James has spent the last 25 years working in the clinical research fields and lends his expertise to our audience to help break down what's going on in the world of research. You can also follow him on LinkedIn. Let's start our next segment.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the segment we call Ask the Experts With our Tech Time Radio expert James Riddle.

Nathan Mumm:

Hi James, great to have you back on the show. Hi James, all right, so please tell the listeners a little bit about yourself.

James Riddle:

All right. So I've been around doing clinical research, oversight, medical ethics and items related to interesting research and innovation For goodness since the latter part of the 20th century, so I appreciate being on the show. It's always a good time. I am going to rethink how I interact with the Waymos here in the Phoenix Valley. Sure, that last segment. I have to say I never really thought of them as mobile surveillance vehicles, but I can't unsee that now, don't firebomb them.

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah, and also be very careful. Anything that you say in there is recorded and they do go back and transcribe it. So if you have a conversation on your phone with a loved one or something like that, they got all that information on your profile.

Mike Gorday:

You don't use them, do you?

James Riddle:

No, I have not partaken in one of the Waymos. I do see them driving around town. There are a lot of them, I mean they seem to be just about everywhere. I have not had the opportunity or the desire to want to get into one of them yet. However, I would have to assume that possibly Uber and Lyft have the same type of clauses in their contract when you get into one of their vehicles.

Nathan Mumm:

So probably I think all of the autonomous driving vehicles will probably have the same exact terminology that they can record you and you can't be recording them in the future. And if they don't have that written now, I'm sure they're adding that to that. So you know what? Just go and hop in an Uber with a real person and then you can talk with them.

Mike Gorday:

That's what you just said. They probably have the same. They probably have the same stuff going on.

Nathan Mumm:

I don't know if you. I don't know if you could do that because as a driver in there, then you would also have to be all recorded and all your stuff would go to uber and I think there could. I don't know. You know what. I have not done the research into that. I did do the research into seeing what was going on in the recording stuff with Nick.

James Riddle:

I think you basically just have to assume that everybody is watching you all of the time for everything that you do, yep, and you just have to kind of be okay with that.

Mike Gorday:

See, you know, I got crazy neighbors that always come and knock on my door and ask me while I'm cussing at them. Oh, really yeah.

Nathan Mumm:

Isn't that you're just cussing at your?

Mike Gorday:

That's just me yelling at the TV.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, or my Roomba, all right.

Mike Gorday:

That's spinning on the carpet In circles In circles, all right.

Nathan Mumm:

So we love AI topics here, james, and you know what, mike, that's his favorite subject. If he could talk about AI face, you know everybody's got a unique face, but what if you could actually get a facelift and actually change your face? Is there stuff that is being worked on right now regarding our DNA that would actually move into the real world with this type of prospect?

James Riddle:

The short answer to that is yes, and I think that maybe a couple of years back we were having a segment about how close technologists were to being able to reproduce a reasonable facsimile of what you might look like just by looking at your DNA.

James Riddle:

A couple of years back it was still in its infancy now easily obtainable. There's a recent article came out in BGR that there was a research group over in China of course, because they can do stuff like this that maybe we can't they got together 10,000 volunteers, took high resolution pictures of their face, took their DNA, ran them through high poweredpowered AI-enabled technology and they were able to get just with DNA. So nothing else like you, just you got a fingernail, you got a hair clipping, some kind of skin cell left behind. They were able to get a reasonable representation of someone's face down to three millimeters, which is not quite enough for facial recognition. Yet, but that was with a sample of just 10,000 people, and so what they did is they took the picture, then they took the DNA from the 10,000 people, they loaded it into the AI unit and then they took DNA from somebody who wasn't in the sample set and they were able to have been trained. They trained the AI to be able to reproduce the face. But here's the cool part.

Nathan Mumm:

Yep.

James Riddle:

When they added in age, sex and body mass index. So think about, like, what the police officers might ask a witness. Yeah. Like what did the person look like? Well, they were, you know, five, six male, 200 pounds. When they loaded those three parameters in, nothing else. Okay, it got down to three micrometers, which is facial recognition territory. So skin cells, age, sex, body mass index and all of a sudden you've got facial recognition tagging you on the system.

Mike Gorday:

And that's what we can do on the system. That's why china wants to steal all our deal here not too long from now yeah, so?

Nathan Mumm:

so let me just say that. So all of our data from our medical providers at least my medical providers these large companies have been breached. So they would have my body mass index, they would have my height, they would have my weight, they would have, uh, lots of information in there. So you're saying that they could recreate a beautiful picture of this Nathan Mum face all the way, accurate enough that it could actually be used in surveillance items?

James Riddle:

Yeah, so not saying that the law enforcement and the like are doing that now, but the research group over in China proved that it could be done pretty easily.

Nathan Mumm:

Hmm, well, I'll tell you what the police do do now.

Mike Gorday:

Well, that's why China wants all our DNA from like uh 23 and me yeah, 23 and me, yeah, yeah, now watch it.

James Riddle:

If and even if you get a facelift and the like, it still doesn't change the underlying bone structure of your face and so facial recognition. I mean you have to get some fairly significant cosmetic surgery to fake the facial recognition.

Mike Gorday:

Yeah, that's great, especially with the technology that does the DNA sniffing that we talked about in crime scenes. Yeah, so okay Well that's how we start out. I'm not going out of my house anymore, I'm just going to stay in my house.

Nathan Mumm:

Well, next how we start out. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not going out of my house anymore, I'm just gonna stay in my house. Well, next story story. So we just talked about dna for facelift, so that means it's 100 accurate with the right information, so great. We'll be seeing lots of clones of mike and nathan around the streets. Uh, coming up here in the pacific northwest. Now let's go to the next story. Now this is a marvel of a story, all right. Or should we say a spider-man marvel of a story, all right. Or should we say a Spider-Man Marvel of a story let's talk about? What do you have going on with spiders? Explain this. What do we got going on here, james?

James Riddle:

Yeah, so there was a very interesting article in a journal called Interesting Engineering no pun intended where I think we've talked about CRISPR-Cas9 on the show before. The ability to take DNA and make very specific changes to the DNA, insert it back into the organism and then the organism will adopt the traits of the updated genetic code, Useful for all kinds of things, from curing blindness to other traits that you might want to insert into crops or things of that nature.

Mike Gorday:

Making T-Rex purses.

James Riddle:

Yeah, exactly, this is the first time that they've done it in spiders. Okay, they took a relatively common house spider the researchers in this particular article and they genetically engineered the spider so that it produced red fluorescent spider silk. Okay, the spider so that it produced red fluorescent spider silk. So spider silk is an amazing biologic phenomenon. We have not been able, as humans, to reproduce the characteristics of spider silk, but we've finally been able to take a little bit of time to genetically engineer the spider to make it glow red, which was kind of interesting. So you can picture all kinds of commercial applications for this, from genetically engineered silkworms that are going to produce glowing flower shirts like the one I've got on today.

Nathan Mumm:

Wow Okay.

Speaker 5:

That just wasn't that interesting. If you're into.

Nathan Mumm:

Spider-Man, though Well speaking of.

James Riddle:

Spider-Man. Like speaking of of spider-man. If you can genetically engineer the spider to put out glowing fluorescent spider silk, like you could genetically engineer the spider to do like all kinds of cool stuff yeah, you could, yeah, wow.

Mike Gorday:

Well, sir, it'll certainly make haunted houses more awesome, you get shot with stuff, all right it's like yeah, it's gonna be a combination of haunted houses and raves all right.

Nathan Mumm:

Now spider-man has an enemy. One of his enemies is known as venom right, and this is a bacteria-like creature from another planet, right man is that? Is that correct mike? This is how we lead into the next story. Yeah, nathan, nathan has to combine everything with sci-fi, that's right now, do we have something that is growing from out of this world on one of our space stations?

James Riddle:

oh yeah, this. This is a good segue from the, from the glowing spider silk and the ability to recreate people's faces. Uh, so the space station, the space station it's not unique to them. Nasa had this about a year ago.

James Riddle:

Okay, microbes up on the space station are transforming themselves to exist in space, things like so they found recently it was in an article called Science Alert they found some microbes up on the Chinese space station that don't exist on Earth.

James Riddle:

They had hitched a ride with something that went up you know supplies or whatever and they had the microbes that they found on the space station had modified themselves to have protection against radiation as well as some other unique characteristics that don't exist on the similar microbe down here on Earth. So new adaptation from the microbes up in space just brings back all kinds of wonderful sci-fi movies of space, and it didn't necessarily seem to pose any immediate threat to the astronauts who were on the space station. Nasa came to the same conclusion last year, but it was interesting that after a certain amount of time up in space the microbes started to adapt to the environment pretty quickly. It makes you wonder what would happen when humans make it to Mars and are out there for years and years when humans make it to Mars and are out there for years and years, it has all kinds of scientific implications and interesting things you can learn from how microbes and the like adapt out in space.

Mike Gorday:

So are these microbes? Are they transferred from internal to internal? Are they from an external to the ex meaning? Are they outside the space station?

James Riddle:

No, my understanding from the article is it was stuff that was inside the space station. So it's inside the microenvironment of the space station, with the air and everything else that's going on with the humans. Not surprising that we would take viruses and all kinds of crazy junk up there with us. Anything that's in the air of the space capsule gets released into the space station. Somehow these microbes got in. Not surprising that they were there. What was surprising was the mutations and adaptations that they were adopting because of their life in space.

James Riddle:

Okay, well, there's Darwin, yeah so it wasn't like something was outside the space station digging its way in.

Mike Gorday:

I think that's what Nathan thought was that it was outside the space Like that movie. Life where they get something and then it goes out Kills everybody.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, james, thank you so much for being a part of our show. We're out of time. How can people get in touch with you offline so they can have more great conversations about all this great stuff that you have information regarding?

James Riddle:

thanks. Yeah, the best way to get in touch with me is to just look me up on linkedin. Uh, send out a send out a linkedin request, and that's the best way to get ahold of me perfect, all right, james, thanks all right, take care guys the segment we've been waiting all week for Mark's Whiskey Mumble.

Marc Gregoire:

Today, today. I wish today was Saturday. Why is that? This past Saturday was National Bourbon Day.

Nathan Mumm:

Oh, I hope you guys enjoyed it, did you?

Marc Gregoire:

celebrate? Oh, of course. Okay what's today? That's the more important question.

Nathan Mumm:

What is today? A national B-rated movie day? No, I don't think so.

Marc Gregoire:

Today, is National Mascot Day. Oh, okay, national Mascot yeah, we celebrate and appreciate the spirit of fun mascots bringing to every event National mascot yeah, we celebrate and appreciate the spirit of fun mascots bringing to every event People of all ages, children and adults alike, except maybe Mike Enjoy, and they help build memories of their favorite team. Now, the word mascot originates from the French word mascotte, used to describe things that bring good luck.

Mike Gorday:

Wow, good luck to both of you, alright.

Marc Gregoire:

Now mascots are not just foam suits and sidelines. Some show up in more subtle, spirited ways. Enter sazerach rye, nice. Thank you, mike. It may not have a furry costume, but this rye whiskey carries history and swagger that rivals any sports mascot. Originating from new orleans, and tied to the country's first branded cocktail, it stands as a bold, unmistakable symbol of American rye. Sazerac rye is named after the Sazerac Coffee House in New Orleans, where many consider it to be America's first cocktail. The Sazerac was born in the mid-1800s Now. Originally, it was made with cognac. The Sazerac was born in the mid-1800s Now. Originally, it was made with cognac. The Sazerac, the recipe evolved into a rye whiskey-based cocktail when insects devastated French vineyards. Oh and cognac became scarce. Even more fascinating, the Sazerac company, which owns the brand, literally trademarked the official cocktail of New Orleans, making it the only city in the US to have an official cocktail, thanks in part, to this bottle of rye. Wow, okay, now this whiskey is a staple on my cocktail shelf. What was funny about?

Mike Gorday:

that I don't know.

Nathan Mumm:

You're just like yeah, okay, is this glass empty over there.

Mike Gorday:

He's so interested in that.

Marc Gregoire:

No, I am.

Mike Gorday:

No, keep on going.

Marc Gregoire:

I'm already done with mine. I was going to say. This cocktail is on my shelf and rarely lasts long, especially during the colder months when I find myself reaching for it time and again to craft a classic rye based cocktail. It's bold and spicy profile makes it ideal for Manhattans, old fashions and Sazeracs, adding warmth and complexity that perfectly complement winter flavors. It's one of these bottles I keep in stock because it's reliability, versatility and it's a crowd-pleasing character.

Nathan Mumm:

All right Now, since it's mascot day. What is the world's most recognizable mascot?

Marc Gregoire:

Cody quick, you guys give me a guess it's the Santa Cruz slug. Nope, Incorrect.

Nathan Mumm:

Number one mascot Mike, I don't care.

Speaker 5:

All right, is it the Chicago Bulls one?

Nathan Mumm:

No, it's not, that would have been the fun one.

Mike Gorday:

It's not the San Diego Chicken either. What?

Nathan Mumm:

It's not Mickey Mouse.

Marc Gregoire:

This is what Nathan was doing when I was talking about the whiskey.

Mike Gorday:

That's why he sounded so excited. He was so busy trying to All right, okay, well, you know what Thanks to make you go.

Nathan Mumm:

What a great pairing, just like Spaceballs and Blazing Saddles, two movie classics. Yeah, you bombed that one. That's all right. All right. Now let's prepare for our technology fail of the week. Congratulations, you're a failure.

Speaker 8:

Oh, I failed. Did I yes, did I yes.

Nathan Mumm:

All right, this technology fail will probably fade us out into the end of the show. All right, AI startup builderai. Guess what? It lost $85 million in a meltdown because it was found out that it was a pretender and not a contender. Because it was found out that it was a pretender and not a contender, this Builder AI app was essentially 700 coders in disguise in India that were all pretending to be the AI company in itself. Well, guess what? This is not the only company that has failed on AI Amazon, remember.

Mike Gorday:

Amazon If I want. So what this is is like a bunch of people doing customer service and pretending it's not custom, pretending it's ai right, yes, and you're. You're chatting with a live human being and it's pretending that it's ai yes, that is correct I don't well, I'm okay, I want. I want to engage with real people when I call or I chat.

Marc Gregoire:

Well, it's a little bit more than chat on this one.

Nathan Mumm:

It was AI developer code.

Marc Gregoire:

It was code too, it was an AI to write software code for you.

Nathan Mumm:

Now, do you remember those Amazon stores where you could go on in and you could grab a?

Mike Gorday:

deal.

Nathan Mumm:

Amazon Go. Remember that stores they don't exist anymore. You know what that was. That wasn't AI detecting you walking out. That was somebody in India watching a camera of you in the store, and then they would have to go back and put all the items that you put in there to send you the bill afterwards. So a lot of AI fakers.

Marc Gregoire:

All right With that, let's move on, never mind what was that.

Mike Gorday:

I'll have to think about why these exist, because that's kind of dumb.

Nathan Mumm:

Because you can get $85 million invested into your AI company when you have 700 engineers in.

Mike Gorday:

India doing it. I suppose they probably made out pretty well.

Nathan Mumm:

Huh, yes, they do now behind bars. All right, let's move to our pick of the day whiskey tasting.

Speaker 1:

And now our pick of the day for our whiskey tastings.

Marc Gregoire:

Let's see what bubbles to the top well, except for nathan sazerach rye whiskey needs no introduction for most people. Oh wow, buffalo trace distillery 90 proof, five years.

Nathan Mumm:

Of course I know what that I don't know get on your ai chatbot and figure it out $30. $30. Absolutely Thumbs up. Thumbs up for Nathan. Mr Gorday, what are you going to give it?

Mike Gorday:

Oh, I already gave it a thumbs up. Thumbs up, all right, and Mike gives it a thumbs up and Mark gives it a thumbs up.

Marc Gregoire:

Odie gives it a. I use this as a sipper. This is not on my sipping shelf. Okay, this is your mixer. This is a great mixer. It makes great cocktails and it's a good price.

Nathan Mumm:

All right, there you go it is.

Marc Gregoire:

All right, michael, it's very tasty you like it.

Mike Gorday:

I think dude over here has set out to convert me to a rye drinker.

Marc Gregoire:

I think so, and what we got to get on the show is the big brother, because this is baby saz the big brother. There's two big brothers to this one. One is thomas h, handy, okay, which is the same mash bill, but it's at um barrel strength, okay, delicious, but it's a b-tac, okay. And the other b-tac is sazrac 18. It's this mash bill, this proof point, but it's age 18 years, 18 years, but those those aren't $35 bottles.

Marc Gregoire:

No, no, On the secondary market the Handy is around $400 or $500, and the Sazerac 18 is in the thousands. Thousands, sorry, Okay, well everybody.

Nathan Mumm:

We're just about out of time. We want to thank our listeners for joining the program. Listeners, we want to hear from you. Visit techtimeradiocom, click on our via caller and ask a question on technology in our TalkBack recording system. You can always stay connected by signing up for information on our website From all of us at Tech Time Radio. Remember the science of tomorrow starts with the technology of today, see you next week. Bye-bye.

Speaker 1:

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People on this episode

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Nathan Mumm

Host
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Mike Gorday

Co-host
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James Riddle

Guest
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Nick Espinosa

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