TechTime with Nathan Mumm

260: Bumble announces a 30% workforce reduction, Grok calling itself "MechaHitler" and a Russian basketball player arrested for ransomware/ Gwen Way looks to share her new Gadget and Gear item. | Air Date: 7/15 - 7/21/2025

• Nathan Mumm • Season 7 • Episode 260

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Ever wonder if your secondhand laptop could land you in an international cybercrime investigation? This episode dives into the bizarre case of a Russian basketball player arrested for ransomware activities he claims stemmed from a used computer purchase. Was he an unwitting victim or a sophisticated criminal? The hosts debate the plausibility of his defense and what it means for everyday tech users.

The conversation takes a darker turn when exploring Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok, which began calling itself "MechaHitler" and spewing hate speech before shutting down entirely. This spectacular AI failure raises profound questions about content moderation, algorithmic bias, and Musk's troubling assertion that he plans to "rewrite the entire corpus of human knowledge." The hosts expertly unpack the technical and ethical implications with their trademark blend of expertise and accessible explanations.

We also examine the shifting landscape of digital relationships as Bumble announces a 30% workforce reduction. Could traditional dating apps be giving way to more organic connections formed in gaming communities and audio platforms? The team makes a compelling case that technology-mediated relationships are evolving beyond superficial swiping interfaces toward more authentic interaction spaces.

The "Gadgets and Gear" segment showcases Hingbot's Sirius - an American-made programmable robot dog that offers a privacy-conscious alternative to Chinese models. Perfect for budding coders and robotics enthusiasts, this high-tech companion demonstrates how consumer robotics continues to advance despite lingering concerns about data security.

Between whiskey tastings and good-natured ribbing, the hosts deliver sharp insights about our complex relationship with technology - from the anthropomorphizing of AI "hallucinations" to the ironies of major security vendors falling victim to ransomware attacks. Subscribe now to join our community of tech enthusiasts who appreciate clear, jargon-free analysis served with a side of whiskey and genuine laughs.

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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 a glass with our hosts as we spend the next hour talking about technology for the common person. Welcome to Tech Time.

Nathan Mumm:

Radio with Nathan Mumm. Welcome to Tech Time with Nathan Mumm. The show that makes you go hmm. Technology news of the week. The show for the everyday person, talking about technology, broadcasting across the nation with insightful segments on 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, microday, is in studio today. He's the 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. We are all friends from different backgrounds, but we bring the best technology so possible weekly for our family, friends and fans to enjoy. We're glad to have Odie, our producer, at the control panel today. Welcome everyone. Let's start today's show.

Speaker 1:

Now on today's show.

Nathan Mumm:

All right, welcome to Tech Time Radio. Today on the show we have our guest Gwen Way joining the show for our gadgets and gear segment. Of course, we have our standard features, 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 gets zero, one or two thumbs up at the end of the show. Now let's start with the latest headlines in the world of technology.

Speaker 1:

Here are our top technology stories of the week of the week.

Nathan Mumm:

All right Story. Number one Russian pro basketball player is arrested for allegedly a role in a ransomware attack. Let's go to Lisa Walker for more on the story.

Speaker 2:

According to French media, Daniel Kasakin was arrested at Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport on June 21st after landing in France with hisée. The arrest was made as part of a United States international arrest warrant for his role as an alleged negotiator for a ransomware gang. Kasikin is now under custody, while the US seeks to have him extradited to face charges of conspiracy to commit computer fraud and computer fraud conspiracy. His lawyer alleges that Kasikin is not guilty of these crimes and that they are instead linked to a second-hand computer that he purchased back to the full team in the studio all right, so let's talk about this.

Nathan Mumm:

A russian professional basketball player, daniel, was arrested in france at the request of the united states for allegedly acting as a negotiator for a ransomware gang. Now, from his lawyer, he says that he bought a secondhand computer. He obviously knew nothing about what was happening. He's stunned. According to his lawyer, he's useless with computers. His lawyer calls him he's useless with computers and can't even install an application. He didn't touch anything on the computer. It was either hacked or the hacker sold it to him to act undercover for another person. Well, the name of the ransomware gang was not disclosed. It is reported that it has been behind more than 900 company attacks, including two federal agencies, between 2020 and 2022. Now, the description closely matches similar language used by the department of justice to refer to the notorious Conti ransomware gang, which has emerged as a successor to Raikou in 2020 and was then shut down in 2022 following the data breach. Now here's my question that I have for everybody here on the panel Are you ready, odie, for this one? This is what we got.

Speaker 2:

Do you think?

Nathan Mumm:

Daniel is innocent if he purchased a second-hand computer, so he's saying he purchased it. He went down to the local pawn shop or someplace, purchased a second-hand computer, didn't know anything that was going on, and that's what his lawyer attests to. What do you think about that?

Ody:

why is he? But what I'm getting tripped about is why is he buying a computer second hand if he's a pro ball player?

Mike Gorday:

because he subscribes to nathan's uh podcast and we all know nathan does everything second hand I buy a lot of second hand laptops.

Nathan Mumm:

I actually do yeah, but you're not a pro ball player I'm not a pro ball player, but what does a pro ball player mean? A pro ball player.

Ody:

They have money that they could buy. Well, does that?

Nathan Mumm:

because I I know somebody that used to own a semi-pro team. Oh my God.

Mike Gorday:

All right, and so this person.

Nathan Mumm:

And so all these players consider themselves pro basketball players because they are paid and they were making anywhere between $35 to $65 a game. That was all they're making in the minor league system, so it's pretty in significant amount of pay.

Ody:

So if that's the case, with that being said, no, I don't think he should be blamed, because if he didn't, well, if he didn't know about it.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, if he didn't know about it you say no.

Ody:

Okay.

Nathan Mumm:

Mike, what's your feeling on this?

Mike Gorday:

You know, I don't have a feeling about this, because I don't know, anything. I don't know anything about this guy.

Nathan Mumm:

So okay, but what if you bought a secondhand laptop? What would you do when you bought a secondhand laptop?

Ody:

Reformat.

Mike Gorday:

Well, that's what it's supposed to be here in the United States.

Ody:

But if he knows nothing about, sorry. Yeah that's good. If he knows nothing, then he wouldn't know.

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah. So he just gets a laptop that already has games loaded on it. His buddy sold it to him. Here you go, I have this laptop it's clear.

Mike Gorday:

Clearly you are on the side of the basketball player, right uh that's, that's where you're coming down, you? You seem to be arguing in favor of his ignorance of computer yeah, yeah, because I I know, if my okay, so I have, I have a I'm not an expert right but I have knowledge right, knowledge right yes you do, absolutely.

Mike Gorday:

I don't know how to hack stuff. Okay, I don't know how to get onto the dark web. Okay, right, yeah, okay, if I bought a computer and then were suddenly hauled into the authorities for suspected hacking and because I have knowledge about computers yeah does that automatically make me complicit?

Nathan Mumm:

I see, I would say no, because I could give you, if I gave you a laptop later today. Yep, so here you go. Mike's all ready to go, everything's been taken care of, and I had a bunch of hacking devices on there and you took it home. I could then log into your computer when you're not there, do a bunch of stuff, cause a lot of grief to you and since the public eye, you're on a radio show for technology, right? So of course you should know what's going on.

Mike Gorday:

So I I kind of actually on the other hand, yeah, I might be somebody who uh is in desperate need of money okay because I play basketball and don't maybe get paid like I should, okay, or I might have this huge ego about how much money I should be making. And so I get hooked up with a ransomware gang and, uh, they, they cited him as being a negotiator.

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah, so he's on their customer service lines or is he the one that actually used his computer to say here's the money.

Mike Gorday:

I have no idea what they're yeah, yeah, the problem, the problem with stories like these is that there's not enough information to really draw any real good conclusions. It's all it does is strike us in our feels if we pay attention, and then we react to that, and it doesn't really, doesn't really cover a story, okay, so you know, six and one and a half a dozen and the other.

Mike Gorday:

Does the guy really not know anything about computers and he's and he's a patsy? Or does he need money or want money and has has information and is trying to uh weasel out of what he did wrong?

Nathan Mumm:

okay, well, you know what?

Ody:

is there a way to test that?

Nathan Mumm:

is there a way to test that?

Ody:

Is there a way to?

Nathan Mumm:

test. Yeah, If a government comes on in and arrests you. I would hope that they have done the due diligence enough so that they can have evidence. But see, that's my concern there Exactly.

Mike Gorday:

Okay. Forensically there is Okay. Okay, I assume that this is something that was done over a chat. Probably, Probably okay. Uh, I assume that this is something that was either that was done over a chat, probably okay. So if the way this person uses language and expresses ideas is the same as how he the chat is, then that's a good indicator that he was involved okay, all right, there you go.

Nathan Mumm:

All right, let's see what I think story number two is going to. Uh, brighten our day.

Mike Gorday:

Yeah, you're you just you, just love it when I was talking about chat.

Nathan Mumm:

What do we have here next?

Mike Gorday:

well, you know you, you just love it when you can give me a hand, me a story that just supports all the thing that I hate about ai well, no, we, we, we talk about it in the production meeting.

Nathan Mumm:

This is, this is gonna be a great story here. This is interesting.

Mike Gorday:

But this is the exact reason why AI chatbots are not good for us, right? So, grok, everybody knows what Grok is. Grok renamed itself MechaHitler just recently.

Ody:

Wait a second. It renamed itself.

Mike Gorday:

It started calling itself MechaHitler Yep After chatting with several people.

Nathan Mumm:

Is this a joke? No, it's not a joke.

Mike Gorday:

It's not a joke. It also suggested certain anti-Semitic things should happen as a result of that, of that, and uh, it turns out which which is the interesting piece, is that, uh, uh, it was getting so much input from all these people that were trying to turn it to the dark side that it stopped communicating with words, started communicating with images and then shut down altogether. So I guess it had a does not compute moment and couldn't go forward and had to redo it. But you know, elon over here is certainly defending it. Okay, right, he said that we have improved Grok significantly and you should notice a difference when you ask it questions significantly. And you should notice a difference when you ask it questions.

Mike Gorday:

Uh, the term mecca hitler comes from a video game called wolfenstein, which is, uh, supposedly it was pure satire. Um, of course, this is. This is a problem with with these platforms, because you have people like neo-Nazi accounts trying to get these things to say particular things. Okay, so this is what happens. Other social media said they noticed that Grok was going on to tirades in other languages, going on to tirades in other languages. Then the bot stopped giving text answers publicly by Tuesday afternoon, generating only images, and then it later stopped doing it. They had to, I guess they had to re. What did they have?

Nathan Mumm:

to do? They had to shut it down. They had to shut it down. Yeah, I think they probably ran in there and had somebody pull the emergency switch and said knock it off. We need to fix this before it keeps on going.

Mike Gorday:

We need to redo it. So neither X nor XAI responded to a request for comments. A post from the official Grok account Tuesday night said we are aware of the recent post made by Grok and are actively working to remove the inappropriate post, and XAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X. Yeah, that works. That just happened before. I don't know if you remember, uh, microsoft in 2016 released a an ai chat bot named tay on twitter. Yep, and in less than 24 hours after its release, uh, it was saying racist and anti-semitic statements, including praising hitler. Do you remember that?

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah, and they actually shut the whole thing down and they never came back.

Mike Gorday:

They never came back, yeah.

Nathan Mumm:

They shut down a whole chat box in two years' worth of development time and said forget it. If you can't regulate this, it's gone.

Mike Gorday:

Well, that's, the problem with this stuff is because it's drawing on all these different things but it has no moral compass and it's never going to have a moral compass.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay correct, it's just ones and zeros.

Mike Gorday:

It's just whatever it's drawing its information from. All right, so what do you think Do?

Nathan Mumm:

you think this affected the announcement from the CEO.

Mike Gorday:

I don't know. You know because, coincidentally, on wednesday morning, uh x's ceo, ceo, linda yaccarino, announced she was stepping down yeah uh saying now is the best time yet to come, as x enters a new chapter with xai. Okay, so let me just say that quote that quote.

Nathan Mumm:

Let me just tell you how those quotes work right. So you get a severance letter and in that severance letter what they do is they tell you this is what we're going to say from you, and you can say nothing else. We'll give you x amount of dollars for this post. To be there.

Mike Gorday:

You cannot say anything different than that, and that's what the post will say of course, but but if you look at this ironically, yeah, now the best is yet to come, as X enters a new chapter with XAI as a racist computer. Well, I think they're hoping to fix that she did not indicate whether the move was because of the fallout for Brock, but it was coincidental that it happened. You know what?

Nathan Mumm:

Elon Musk just got done doing all the white house stuff so he had nothing else to do. So he just decided to come back and do a bunch of meetings, probably with high. Actually I know this for a fact. He did a bunch of meetings with the high executives and pulled them on in and they said that it was difficult to have two people in charge him and her was kind of what? The meeting, of course and so el Elon decided to have him in charge.

Mike Gorday:

This is one of the issues I have with Elon is that he thinks he is in control of everything. So the latest changes to Grok oh, mark's over there smiling like a Cheshire cat. The latest changes to Grok follow several incidents in which the chat spot answered frustrated Musk and his supporters In one instant. Grok stated several incidents in which the chat spot answered frustrated Musk and his supporters.

Marc Gregoire:

Yeah.

Mike Gorday:

In one instant, grok stated right-wing political violence has been more frequent and deadly than left-wing political violence since 2016. Musk then accused Grok of parroting legacy media in his answer and vowed to change it, to rewrite the entire corpus of human knowledge, adding missing information and deleting errors. Do you see the problem with that statement?

Nathan Mumm:

That he's altering history. Is that the part that you got? That he Rewrite history?

Mike Gorday:

Yeah, that he has become the wealth holder of all information human.

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah, if he keeps on getting more AI companies, he may end up becoming the stories all run through him.

Mike Gorday:

No, with what he owned. This is what he thinks yeah he vowed to change and write the entire corpus of human knowledge. This is a quote from him, right? Yeah, the entire corpus of human knowledge, adding missing information and deleting errors. He believes that he has all the knowledge. That is correct and he is going to program it into this thing. This is, this is why this is problematic. Right, sunday's updated included telling grock to assume subjective viewpoints sourced from the media that are biased so he's?

Mike Gorday:

he's basically saying don't look at this over here, because these guys we don't like them. We don't want you to pull information from these guys we don't like, and so we want you to formulate these opinions over here. You see where I'm going with this.

Nathan Mumm:

I see the problem.

Mike Gorday:

I do. That's why you like the story I like the story because it shut itself down. That's what I like. I don't like the story. I like the story because it shut, shut itself down. That's that's what I like. I don't like. I don't like any other parts of the story all right, well, okay, that makes sense and I think it should stay shut down. I you know. You know how I feel about all these chatbots I don't.

Mike Gorday:

I don't think they are effective, I don't think they are healthy or a positive addition to the human situation.

Nathan Mumm:

All right well, speaking of of chatbots, do you think Bumble uses a lot of chatbots on their platform?

Mike Gorday:

I don't know, I don't think so, I don't know, on purpose, on purpose.

Nathan Mumm:

Well, we're going to see, Because Bumble has just announced they're going to reduce their workforce and their company to do a restructure. You know what they're talking about reducing all the way up to 30% of his global workforce and an announcement came from the ex CEO, who's now kind of back in charge of Bumble again. So Bumble decided to go public. This is what happens to every great company is their private. They get to do whatever they want, with no issues.

Nathan Mumm:

People can say they like it or they don't like it, and all of a sudden then you go public and now you have to have stakeholders and you have to have profit analysis and it doesn't care about what you're producing, it cares about the money you bring in. Well, it's interesting because the memo was sent to employees Wednesday from Bumble CEO and founder, whitney Wolf. Bumble, like the online dating industry itself, is at an inflection point. Today we are marking one of the most difficult. We are reducing the size of our team. The decision is not a reflection of any individual, but rather that we're going as a company into a new direction.

Mike Gorday:

Yeah, it's basically hey, we're not making enough money, so you guys need to go away so we can figure out how to make more.

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah. So Wolf Heard, who stepped away from her CEO role back in March, has come back into the company. She left it in January of 2024, so she's been out of it over a year plus. And my real question is is online dating, as we talked about here on Tech Time Radio in January? It's really kind of moving into the game community, right? So people are online having interactions and that's growing at three times as fast as any of the dating apps in the industry anymore. So is online dating in all these services moving the way of the VCR repairman? Is it kind of closing shop and now time to move on? Well, what do you know? I?

Mike Gorday:

think they're. I think that. So online dating has become like a job interview. Okay, right, that's that's kind of and. And now they they're trying to gamify it because they. So the whole idea is that in order for the app to exist, people have to use the app. Yeah, so if you are dating and you are on their app and you swipe and you find somebody you're interested in and you go out with that person and you hit and you get together, are you still using the app to date? No, no, so you're going to close your account? Well, at least you should be right. I mean, you could be one of those people that are like, secretly, have the account open and they're looking for the bigger better deal.

Nathan Mumm:

Look at Odie. Look at Odie smiling. Yeah, Odie smiling.

Marc Gregoire:

Is this your thing? Is this your elbow?

Nathan Mumm:

No, Rolls her eyes and looks up.

Mike Gorday:

The problem is that this has not become about helping people find matches. That last, yeah, it's about keeping people engaged in their app.

Ody:

It's a business.

Nathan Mumm:

Well, Bumble has expanded its business.

Mike Gorday:

What does it have to do with? You mentioned something about chatbots. What does it have to do with chatbots? I don't see anything in there.

Nathan Mumm:

So Bumble CEO, whitney Wolf, when she first came, came on out, bumble was all about chatbots. That was how you would interact with before the lady, because bumble's a little bit of a different dating site, unlike tinder and some of these other well, it's supposed to be, uh, supposed to be, that women ask first.

Nathan Mumm:

Yes, and so other online services had a lot of chatbots, so they had. Bumble announced that they had a chatbot when they first released themselves. That was specifically just to relay the information to the ladies so that they could then click they're interested or not interested within that service. If you remember, as Bumble was out over like a year and a half to two years, they got rid of their old chatbots. So they removed every single one of their chatbots because they were having problems and people were considering their chatbot that they had in there to interact with people as fake bots, as other sites like Ashley Madison and other type of deals have been known to have just completely fake accounts.

Mike Gorday:

Interestingly enough, it's very easy to keep people on if you have secret chatbots that keep on tempting them to take care of stuff.

Nathan Mumm:

So my real big concern here is that they're laying off people. We've talked about this quite a bit is the whole dating scene. I actually think the whole online dating scene is going to disappear soon. I think it's going to just become like these public forums.

Ody:

You are so funny, Nathan. Why is that? You really think that's going to just become like these public forums? You are so funny, Nathan. Why is that? You really think that's going to go away?

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah, I think like platforms like Clubhouse and different areas, where you can just jump in and say, hey, I'm interested in a date in the Seattle area and then you can have a verbal conversation and you can have some text conversations. So Clubhouse is this audio app online that you can download, and what it is is it's no video it that you can download, and what it is is it's no video, it's only audio. And there's a bunch of forums and a bunch of public rooms that are starting to pop up all over everywhere where people are using those as dating services and it'll be like dating Seattle and you can go in for Clubhouse for free, you can have conversations back and forth and then you can meet somebody and then you can jump out of it with no additional costs. You got online gaming, where you can go into chat rooms. You can go into a mission area where you're having conversations.

Mike Gorday:

I mean, clearly, one of the reasons why they're struggling is because, um, they're tired of, they're tired of the bs that comes with a dating app, yeah, and then a lot of people are are in, uh, gaming chat rooms and they they hook up with each other through those.

Nathan Mumm:

So I mean, look at the, the Switch 2. Just came on out All incorporating chat, right. So they didn't have chat with verbal communication, which they now have. The reason is because people can then trust, at least at this time, if I have a conversation and there's a voice on the other end, maybe there's actually a person there, versus some AI or a chat bot or a fake thing. So I do think the verbal communication, just like land phones we talked about a couple of weeks ago on the show too, I think some of these older technologies are coming back because they're they're tougher to fake.

Mike Gorday:

Well, they're tougher to fake and they're easier to use. Yep, all right, okay, and we're just, we're, we're now starting to figure, figure this out. We're, we're now starting to figure out that the technology well, the technology industry is advancing things on us so quickly they would don't keep. We can't keep up with it.

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah.

Mike Gorday:

I mean, I never thought I would be behind the tech curve, but some of these things that are coming out I have no idea how to use anymore. I'm like what the heck is this thing?

Ody:

can you give an example? Uh, let's see, because in my opinion, seeing how you interact with technology, you're not as behind as what you're saying yeah, I don't think you're behind at all.

Mike Gorday:

I'd say you're actually I am because when, when we talk about stuff like, um, like, what?

Ody:

the dark web? I have no idea how to do that. I no the dark web. I wouldn't say that that is like a normal thing.

Mike Gorday:

It's gotten to where, if something happens on my computer that requires diagnostic stuff, yeah it's harder for me to find out where the tools are. It's harder for me to. But that just made.

Mike Gorday:

I'm just getting old and and my brain doesn't work right I feel, like that's more than the average consumer, though, because you're actually trying to fix the problem yourself yeah I think I think somebody else yeah but my point is is that, um, even though I try to keep up with everything, technology moves so quickly that I can't do it. Do you know how to use ChatGPT?

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah, I know how to use ChatGPT. Okay, so do you understand that only 40% of the people in the world to date know how to interact with an AI?

Mike Gorday:

bot. That's because they're smarter than 60% of them are smarter than I am.

Nathan Mumm:

Well, okay, I'm just saying so you're not in that bad shape.

Mike Gorday:

If of them are smarter than I am, well, okay, I'm just saying so. You're not in that bad shape. If you can get on to the ai and you know anything about grok or any of these subjects that we're talking about, I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go home and find a chat bot that I can turn into a racist pig.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, all right okay, well, just make sure you don't do that to any robots. Oh well, speaking of that, let's get uh ready to end well, you're gonna figure out. There's a little tie-in to that robot comment.

Mike Gorday:

Oh, I already know what it is.

Nathan Mumm:

All right, well, that ends our top technology stories of the week. Moving on, Gwen Way will be joining us in our gadgets and gear segment. Maybe it's a robot. Buckle up as we drive 88 miles per hour into our next segment. See you after this commercial break.

Speaker 9:

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Nathan Mumm:

Visit HartungGlasscom to learn more. All right, welcome back to Tech Time with Nathan Mumm. Our weekly show covers the top technology subjects Without any political agenda. We verify the facts and we do it with a sense of humor, in less than 60 minutes and, of course, with a little whiskey on the side. Today, mark Gregoire, our whiskey connoisseur, is in the studio and we have our monthly traditions. Now moving into the semifinals, I think right, are we in the semifinals or are we in the finals? Round two, round two. Okay, all right, tell us, what have you chosen for?

Marc Gregoire:

us today, Mark. So today we're using the 2024 Flavor Whiskey Advent Calendar. Okay, 24 remarkable whiskeys to use for our year-long blind whiskey competition to see which one Nathan and Mike like best. Now I want to invite everybody to come along for the ride once a month while they uncover new tastes and train their senses to become true connoisseurs. Today is the start of round two, where they will choose their winner to move on to the next round. If they disagree, I'm the deciding vote.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay.

Marc Gregoire:

So hopefully you disagree.

Marc Gregoire:

Then I get to drink more Now. Today our two whiskeys are finished, one rye and one bourbon. I can tell the difference Finished whiskeys. Take a traditional whiskey and add an extra layer of complexity by exposing them to secondary influences, often through additional barrel aging or, in some cases, the use of wood staves. These finishing techniques allow the whiskey to absorb unique flavors and aromas, whether from a wine or a sherry cast, or from carefully selected types of wood. The result is more layered and distinctive profile that showcases the distiller's creativity and craftsmanship. Stay tuned to see which one advances from this round all right.

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah, nathan's already finished one of his glasses. I did, I did, and the other one isn't bad either, so I don't mind having the. We already know what nathan's pick is. Wow, one of these was really good. One of these, uh, you know what? I would keep on drinking and drinking, and drinking, and drinking.

Nathan Mumm:

That will get me in trouble, all right, I don't know if it will get me in trouble, but I probably shouldn't drink all that much. How many more of those samples do we have left of this one right here? Do we have enough to make it into the finals?

Marc Gregoire:

The one that's in the concurrent. Oh God, I hope not.

Mike Gorday:

Do we have enough, so Nathan can have more to drink?

Nathan Mumm:

Wow wow, did you hear what Mark said? He didn't like that one. Okay, all right. Well, any other news for our whiskey connoisseurs that you have for us?

Marc Gregoire:

I only say please like and subscribe, drink responsibly.

Nathan Mumm:

Heaven can wait there you go, there's your tagline. All right Now, you're going to love this next segment here, mark, this is going. You go, there's your tagline. All right now, you're gonna love this next segment here. Mark, this is gonna be really exciting. We're gonna bring up, of course, one of our favorite gals. She's a part of our producer of the show. She's a game board geek in the evenings and she is also in cyber security working for a big company, uh, in the Seattle area, which makes a firewall device and many other devices. You know that I don't want to say where she works, but if you had somebody looking out on a tower, you'd probably have it on a watch guard tower to begin with. But let's move on now to get ready for our Comcast video stream and start our next segment.

Speaker 1:

What's new in our gadgets and gear.

Nathan Mumm:

All right, Gwen. Welcome to our program.

Mike Gorday:

There is nothing smooth about Nathan. There is nothing smooth about Nathan.

Marc Gregoire:

What do you mean about that?

Nathan Mumm:

It's kind of like the whiskey drinks.

Marc Gregoire:

Oh wow, hang on, now Be nice.

Nathan Mumm:

Now Be nice, all right, that's not what we were hired to do. That's now Be nice.

Mike Gorday:

All right, that's not what we were hired to do. That's right, it's in our contract.

Nathan Mumm:

Welcome to the show, Gwen. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself for any of our new listeners?

Gwen Way:

Of course, as Nathan says, I have the joy of working for a fairly large cybersecurity firm and I love my job there you go.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, all right, but of course you love your boss before that, at your previous job, the more than anything than in the world.

Marc Gregoire:

But okay, continue you mean the last boss she had at her previous job. Would you stop sucking, all right here we go, okay, okay.

Nathan Mumm:

Well, gwen um, tell us what do we have for our new gadget or toy today on the show, I think?

Mike Gorday:

it might be a robot.

Nathan Mumm:

I think so I think it might be.

Gwen Way:

So one of the shows that we did earlier last month, you mentioned a robotic dog that peed.

Mike Gorday:

Well, the peeing dog?

Nathan Mumm:

yes, yeah, from Timu, he did Kung Fu, yep yep, and if you loaded the app, then you sent all of your information back to China. So that was a positive about it, I guess. So you give the Chinese all your information on your phone.

Mike Gorday:

It is for you, because you don't have a problem sharing all your information with China.

Nathan Mumm:

That's right, okay, but I guess, if you did, I mean we already share all our information with our government.

Gwen Way:

So we already share all our information with our government. So we'll just spread the wealth.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, there you go. All right, what do we?

Gwen Way:

have. I know that there were a lot of people who were concerned about the fact that it was coming from Timu, that everything would get back to China. So I did a little bit of digging and I actually found a very similar robot that is available from a company out of Albany, New York.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay.

Gwen Way:

All right. So for this particular thing, what you need to do is go to kickstartercom and search for Hingbot. That's H-E-N-G-B-O-T.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, so I can't get that. This is. You got to help me here. So it's an American company and they call it Hingbot. It sounds absolutely like an overseas name. American company and they call it Hingbot. It sounds absolutely like an overseas name. Why would they call it like Sparky or something like that? Absolutely.

Gwen Way:

Well, the dog itself is named Sirius. Which is a little more universal and if you dig into the FAQs, you do see that the vast majority of the parts within Sirius do utilize the Chinese supply chain.

Mike Gorday:

Do you know what Sirius is?

Gwen Way:

Which should come as not a surprise to anybody.

Mike Gorday:

And I'm not talking about Harry Potter here. What else is Sirius? Sirius is a star that's called the Dog Star.

Nathan Mumm:

Oh, is it? Yes, okay, so they had some real intellectual person come up with this name? I'm pretty sure that wasn't what happened?

Mike Gorday:

They probably read Harry Potter and liked the name.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, you think it's serious black, it could go either way.

Gwen Way:

It could go either way. One thing that does set this aside from most of our Kickstarter groups or products that we support, this actually has a fairly active Facebook page. Okay, most of our Kickstarter groups or products that we support, this actually has a fairly active Facebook page.

Marc Gregoire:

Okay.

Gwen Way:

So if you go to Facebook and search Sirius Robotic Dog, you're going to get a lot more information about the process, where they are in it and how the production is going Okay, cool, that's good.

Mike Gorday:

That's Sirius as in S-I-R-i-o-u-s, not s-e-r, exactly not serious, not serious. I get it seriously, seriously, I get it okay I just want to make sure.

Speaker 8:

Okay, all the puns fly, okay I get you, I get you.

Nathan Mumm:

now, let me just ask you this before you tell me any more about this product. So we try to do this right. So do you know that there's an Apple phone and they have this AI assistant? Do you know what the AI assistant's name is? Oh yeah, it's Siri, siri. So when you say so, oh just turn, look at that. I actually just turned on my Mac. You see that it's talking all over.

Nathan Mumm:

We don't need to see how you're awesome, so no, no, no no, no, my concern is, when we were just talking about this and we set it on our production meeting, it triggered my phone 50% of the time. So I'm I'm concerned with Sirius being so close to.

Mike Gorday:

Siri, that's because AI sucks. Well, okay, well, mike.

Marc Gregoire:

I thought you'd have a different answer. People should just get rid of all their Apple products. Well, that's that. That could work too. You can go either way.

Gwen Way:

The good thing about this, though, is that you can reprogram the dog's name.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, perfect, so that it responds to something else.

Speaker 8:

I could call it Nathan, you can name it whatever you want.

Gwen Way:

You could call it Nathan Wow. Also you can program it to respond in different ways to Stimulize Okay. So I think it might be a good gift for your preteen teenager who wants to get into either robotics or coding and needs a project to work on.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, so now give us all the stats, Is it good?

Marc Gregoire:

for a dorky 50-year-old man that hosts a radio show. I mean that may have been why I chose it.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, okay, okay. Well, I'm in love with my Luna dog.

Mike Gorday:

Let me just tell you right now we know that he's not going to get it.

Nathan Mumm:

My Luna is my dog and if I replaced Luna with a new dog, my robot dog would probably throw a fit.

Marc Gregoire:

Well, you could add another dog to your. Yeah, you could have a robot pack this is exactly

Mike Gorday:

my problem over here is this anthropomorphizing thing that's he's doing.

Nathan Mumm:

Oh my my other robot dog will get jealous. Well, they could no, okay, all right it's called having feelings, mike.

Ody:

He's caring for what is it, luna?

Mike Gorday:

luna my luna, yeah, yeah, yeah, like luna cares that he does care.

Ody:

She shows her little emotions.

Mike Gorday:

Yes, absolutely.

Nathan Mumm:

Oh Christ, there you go, there you go Don't you be hating on my.

Mike Gorday:

It's all real.

Nathan Mumm:

On my pet robot. It's all real. All right, continuing on on this pet robot, though.

Gwen Way:

Yes, so if people are interested in it, they can go to Kickstarter. You can do a search for either Sirius S-I-R-I-U-S or Hingbot H-E-N-G-B-O-T. Your base model is about $699 for $150 more you okay, Mike, I know Well how much is the Timu dog?

Mike Gorday:

$69.

Gwen Way:

Way less. For $150 more you can get a Bluetooth controller, which the Timu dog does not have. And a bonus battery. You've got until August 24th if you want to purchase this, and it is already funded with 386 backers and almost $300,000.

Mike Gorday:

Are you going to get one? Are you going to do it?

Nathan Mumm:

You're going to do it so why do I need to get one?

Mike Gorday:

What features.

Nathan Mumm:

Do you think this has better than Luna?

Gwen Way:

Honestly when. I said that I think that this would be best for somebody getting into programming. I meant that this gives you a lot more experience with that than the Luna really did. Okay, and so maybe it's for somebody who just wants to break into that, or someone who's looking at changing careers into a robotics career.

Nathan Mumm:

So you can kind of program the robotic with direct base code. Is that what you can do? Because Luna is consumer-based products, I can't go into Luna and do anything like that.

Mike Gorday:

See here's the irony here's the irony of everything you were talking about earlier. You started talking about the feelings of a robot dog, and when you start talking about feelings, that's when everything washes out. Because we know, we know that the fact that you can program this robot directly really makes you have all kinds of other feelings.

Marc Gregoire:

Oh yeah yeah, that's true. That's you ready to sing gwen?

Mike Gorday:

nobody knows what that song is anymore gwen does. That's's why I said Gwen, that's because we're all old, except for her Odie is on, she just put her head down. She has no idea what's going on right now. She's like what are these whole folks doing? I mean, if you're uncareful, she's going to be waving one finger at you all.

Nathan Mumm:

That's right.

Mike Gorday:

She does that anyway, she just sits over there and gives us one-finger salutes all day. That's right.

Nathan Mumm:

All right, so does this have integration to OpenAI, ChatGPT, Grok any of the AI systems built into this robot?

Gwen Way:

It does have some large language models. It does not necessarily point out specific ones. If I were to guess, it's probably ChatGPT. Most things are these days.

Nathan Mumm:

That is correct, all right, okay.

Marc Gregoire:

If you do Grok, it is correct. All right, okay.

Nathan Mumm:

All right, if you do.

Marc Gregoire:

Glock. It could be a German Shepherd.

Nathan Mumm:

Wow, the comedy hour is going on. Did you just pull that one out? That is amazing.

Marc Gregoire:

I like that one.

Nathan Mumm:

I'm glad I stayed on for the segment. That's all right, okay, all right. Final question that all the viewers and, of course, we have and we ask you each time is this a unit that you would buy?

Gwen Way:

I don't think so simply because programming and robotics is not my focus. However, I will be keeping an eye on this for perhaps nieces and nephews in the future.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, all right. So, last thing, where can we find it again? Kickstarter, what's the name of it?

Gwen Way:

Kickstarter where can we find it again? Kickstarter, what's, what's the name of it? Kickstarter? You can search for either sirius, s-i-r-i-u-s or hangbot h-e-n-g-b-o-t.

Nathan Mumm:

All right going, that's you know. You know what. I did do a lot of research on it, so it and if it weren't for the price tag, he'd already. Yeah, actually the price tag is just the price tag. Just killed me because of the luna one I got for 399.

Mike Gorday:

It uses chat gpt it's consumer based, and that's really why he doesn't want to make the dog jealous is because it's cheaper well.

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah, it is cheaper, but it did look. I'll keep my eye. That's why you know what I did is I tagged the and I joined the facebook group of this company. So I'm going to keep an eye on this company. I'm not surprised if we come back with another Kickstarter from this company, and I probably would back it. They do have some very good engineers, it looks like on staff.

Nathan Mumm:

This robot does look superior as a dog robot than most of the stuff I see out there in the market right now. So it's not by any means a cheap, flimsy dog. It looks very high-tech and I can see this being used in like a battle bots type of scenario or an engineering type of scenario where you have dogs doing different stuff and competitions, because there's a lot that can be done to this. So thank you so much for sharing this to our group of listeners. Well, thank you all. All right, well, we want to thank gwen for being a part of the show. She does a great job of finding the most unique items each month for our show. And now let's move on to mike's mesmerizing moment. Welcome to mike's mesmerizing moment. What does mike have to say today? All right, here's my question to you mike, with all these hallucinations and AI. Does the average person now question the information that they're getting from AI?

Mike Gorday:

First off, I hate the word hallucination because it implies that there's something going on. That's not true.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay.

Mike Gorday:

And these are not individuals that have hallucinations. These are pulling information from already established places, so I have a problem with that term.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, the second question, and you've said that before on the show yeah, that is now the term in the industry.

Mike Gorday:

Again, we're relating it to human, we're relating it to the human situation, and we shouldn't be, and so we're calling it things that a human, a human person, that you have hallucinations, we all have hallucinations. Okay, right, a dream is technically a hallucination, right, if you've ever been falling asleep and you heard a loud noise and woke up? Yeah, that's a, that's a hallucination. Okay, right. So, but we have these. But we have these things. We have these things that, if they get worse, it means we have mental health problems. We start seeing and hearing things that aren't there. Okay, when we apply it to something like an AI, they are not pulling things out of the air, they are pulling it from data sets.

Mike Gorday:

Okay, so these are not hallucinations. These are errors in their algorithms or whatever. They are pulling it from data sets. So these are not hallucinations. These are errors in their algorithms or whatever.

Nathan Mumm:

So what was the question? Does the average person now question information on AI?

Mike Gorday:

when you get that back, I'm going to say no, okay, most of the time we don't question things like that. One of the reasons is it's easy to just believe everything we read okay, okay, it's. We've. We've known about this phenomenon forever. If it's on tv, it must be true. If it's in the paper, it must be true. If the chatbot is telling me it's mecha hitler, it must be true.

Nathan Mumm:

I had somebody that believes with all sincerity that there is a group of people in the center of the earth now that are controlling how the earth rotates and all the vegetation and everything in there. He also believes that the earth is flat. I didn't know. Greg McNabb did all that. It's just interesting that you see something now online and people are just believing it.

Mike Gorday:

So I, this has happened. It falls into a phenomenon called social proof. Okay, so social proof means that if I'm going to go buy a car, yeah, and I'm looking at, let's say, a Camaro because that's my favorite car, right, I'm looking at a Camaro. But I'm looking at, let's say, a Camaro because that's my favorite car, right, I'm looking at a Camaro, but I'm going, I just don't know about this. And you come along and you said, oh God, you got to get that Camaro.

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah.

Mike Gorday:

Because Camaros are awesome. I've just now linked up with you and you've given me proof that my decision is the right decision.

Marc Gregoire:

Okay.

Mike Gorday:

So I'm more likely to buy the Camaro. This is the right decision. Okay, okay, so I'm more likely to buy the camaro. This is, this is the same thing. So when we see things on in print, we say, okay, so somebody wrote this, somebody agreed that this was the right thing to write. Now I can agree that this is true. This is why we have trouble with uh, you know, fake news and and whatever else we're we're dealing with in today's social status Sphere, stratosphere. That's a good word, even though you didn't pronounce it.

Nathan Mumm:

Sphere of stratus, All right thanks, sphere of stratus. There you go, thank you, okay, you just totally blew that moment. But that's okay. Well, no, I didn't blow the moment. That'll be good. Clipto will get replayed and replayed and replayed online.

Mike Gorday:

What did he just say?

Ody:

He just said words came out of his mouth. That's a big word for Elmo.

Nathan Mumm:

All right. Thank you, mike, for that mesmerizing moment. Up next we have this week in technology so now would be a great time to enjoy a little whiskey on the side, because we're going to be doing so during the break. See you in a few minutes, hey.

Mike Gorday:

Mike, yeah, what's up?

Nathan Mumm:

Hey, so you know what. We need people to start liking our social media page.

Mike Gorday:

If you like our show, if you really like us, we could use your support on Patreoncom. Is it Patreon? I think it's Patreon, okay, patreon. If you really like us, you can like us at patreoncom.

Nathan Mumm:

I butcher the English language. You know, you butcher the English language all the time.

Mike Gorday:

It's patreoncom. If you really like our show, you can subscribe to patreoncom and help us out, and you can visit us on that Facebook platform.

Nathan Mumm:

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.

Nathan Mumm:

Or you can even. Instagram with us and that's at Tech Time Radio. That's at Tech Time Radio.

Mike Gorday:

Or you can like us. Like us and subscribe.

Nathan Mumm:

That's it, that's it, that's that simple.

Speaker 1:

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

Nathan Mumm:

Alright, we're going to go back to July 17th 2014. Talk to us, omar Alright. Jeremy Berg, the founder of Emojipedia, created World Emoji Day, a celebration of emojis. It is now a ubiquitous icon that's used in text to communicate and visually represent emotional cues. Now, berg chose the date of July 17th because Apple's emoji for calendar displays July 17th, in reference to the date that Steve Jobs originally introduced Apple's iCal software. Now, world Emoji Day has become so popular that it's influenced design on the calendar emoji on other platforms. Originally, companies other than Apple use a variety of different dates on their calendar, but now they have all changed, except for two. Microsoft and Facebook are notably exempt. Now let me ask you this question what is your favorite emoji? What's?

Mike Gorday:

what's that? Notably notable exceptions, notably accept is not quite the right way.

Nathan Mumm:

What's your favorite?

Mike Gorday:

emoji. Right now it's the birdie. The birdie.

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah, okay, all right.

Mike Gorday:

What birdie? The one that you were all throwing at us during the thing, the middle finger, the middle finger one.

Nathan Mumm:

Oh, okay, all right, we know, yours is the poop one, mine is the poop. I like the poop.

Ody:

Basic answer.

Nathan Mumm:

What is yours?

Ody:

Mine's either, the crying emoji.

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah, you like the crying emoji.

Ody:

I think I said like the chef's kiss emoji, okay.

Mike Gorday:

Okay, that's good. All right, I'm fully versed in all forms of emoji language.

Nathan Mumm:

There you go. Well, that was this Week in Technology. If you ever wanted to watch some Tech Time History, with over 250 plus weekly broadcasts spanning four plus years of video, podcasts and blog information, you know, we're Okay. How does it feel? From year one to year five, it's been amazing, do you feel?

Ody:

like he's grown. He's amazing as a reader Amazing, yeah, yeah.

Mike Gorday:

Yeah, he's grown as a reader. All right, we're going to take a commercial break. I think Elmo was the proper name.

Speaker 8:

When we return, we have Mark's Mumble Whiskey Review. See you after the break, attention, all geeks. And See you after the break. And a street fair brimming with unique vendors. From the innovative Geektopia Vendor Hall to the Galactic Time Warp showcasing beloved film classics, including Ghostbusters, the Wrath of Khan and our special 40th anniversary showing of Goonies, there's something for everyone. Plus, participate in interactive events, from keynote speakers each day to special guest artists. Tickets are on sale now. Secure your spot for this epic celebration at geekfestcom. Get your badges from one day passes to VIP options, and don't be left out. Visit geekfestcom Geek Fest West, the biggest gathering of geek fandom in Snohomish County.

Marc Gregoire:

The segment we've been waiting all week for mark's whiskey mumble. Really all right. Yes, oh yeah, mike, oh he's got the giggles all day today.

Nathan Mumm:

What's up with her? She must be very happy, all right.

Marc Gregoire:

Seriously no, so this is from Mike and Odie. Yes, we are celebrating Nathan today, on July 15th. Why? What is that? It's National Be a Dork Day, oh.

Nathan Mumm:

I'll embrace that. I like that. I'm good with that.

Marc Gregoire:

You're good with that. Yeah, I'm good with that. You're good with that, yeah. Today has us getting ready to let go of our inhibitions for the day. A dork, by definition, is a person who generally lacks social skills and tends to have, you know, interesting interests and hobbies. Okay, eccentric.

Mike Gorday:

Control yourself, odie, control yourself.

Marc Gregoire:

Using a dork's, fashion sense is also questioned, so their outfits tend to be mismatched, ugly or something most people would prefer not to wear. National Be A Dork Day aims to celebrate the dork in all of us. All right, so we bring out that little Nathan in all of us.

Mike Gorday:

All right, there's also another name for dork that we can't say on the radio. Okay, hold up.

Nathan Mumm:

All right.

Marc Gregoire:

Okay, are you okay, odie?

Ody:

You don't want to stay on this subject. I like dorks. I just roasted the crap out of.

Nathan Mumm:

Nathan, right there I know Everything you said will be Nathan, all by himself.

Marc Gregoire:

People can say I'm being mean, but all you have to do is take the camera and then pan to the rest of the studio and you will all understand.

Mike Gorday:

We will see the dork definition come to life.

Nathan Mumm:

I need more shelves to put more toys on.

Marc Gregoire:

Now, since today is a time we proudly own what makes us wonderfully weird, it feels only fitting to lean into our own brand of nerdiness with a head-to-head whiskey showdown between two uniquely Finnish contenders.

Mike Gorday:

Nerd is different than dork.

Marc Gregoire:

Well, I shifted it for us. Oh, okay, Alright. So one of these today we are drinking is Bacta 1928 Rye Whiskey from France. It's a Finnish rye whiskey, 100 proof. It's 60% rye with 30% Cavados and 10% blend of Armagnac $67. And the other one we are drinking is the Yellowstone Special Finish Collection Toasted. This is from Luxe Row, from Kentucky. It's a finished straight bourbon, four years, 100 proof, 75% corn, 13% rye, 12 malted barley $52. Okay.

Nathan Mumm:

All right.

Mike Gorday:

He's not listening to you. He's looking at hands hang on. You called me a dork.

Nathan Mumm:

So as you talk about these, I'm gonna run over and get some dorky stuff we don't need to get dorky stuff so, mike, while he's off screen and out of things.

Marc Gregoire:

So which one are you leaning to? We have one in a beer glass and one in a Glencairn Mike.

Mike Gorday:

You know I'm going more for the rye. I think my turn to the dark side is complete here because the rye is a little bit more robust than the other one.

Nathan Mumm:

I like both of them.

Mike Gorday:

All right, okay, senior dork.

Nathan Mumm:

I'm taking this as my favorite.

Marc Gregoire:

The Glencairn. So Mike already thinks he knows which one's which Do you?

Nathan Mumm:

know which one's which I think I do too, yes.

Marc Gregoire:

Okay, we'll save that for the final.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay.

Marc Gregoire:

All right. What is your dorky things that you grabbed?

Nathan Mumm:

for us. I'll just say it.

Mike Gorday:

Okay, speaking of a dork, he's now going to prove to us why him. I'll just say so.

Nathan Mumm:

This is an original Star Wars and they call it like the 12-card back the original.

Mike Gorday:

Yes, it's big hand-to-hand solo.

Nathan Mumm:

It's Han Solo. Right, there you go. Original in the box Still never been opened. Do you know how much those bad boy dorky things?

Speaker 2:

go for 500 bucks.

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah, you saw my pull it up.

Marc Gregoire:

Yeah, that's because you jumped up and ran away. Hopefully on YouTube they also saw your mismatched outfit that you're wearing today too.

Ody:

Yeah, the dorky outfit.

Nathan Mumm:

Oh no.

Marc Gregoire:

Did they see my pants? Probably yeah, oh no your half pants, my half pants.

Nathan Mumm:

It says, you know it's a party below and business above. Are you wearing cargo shorts? I'm wearing some shorts. That's correct, all right.

Mike Gorday:

Well, and a In a sports jacket. Okay, everybody, if you're not watching the video, you need to go to the video.

Marc Gregoire:

Did I nail it or what you did nail it?

Mike Gorday:

Okay.

Nathan Mumm:

You know what Whiskey and technology are such a?

Mike Gorday:

great pairing. I don't think Odie's going to be able to recover.

Nathan Mumm:

I don't either Like swimming and water in your ear.

Ody:

You know that's real dorky of you too to make a pairing every episode.

Nathan Mumm:

I know, have you ever gone swimming? And they're really bad most of the time. All right, let's prepare now for our technology fail of the week, brought to us by all my staff at Tech Time Radio. I think Nathan might be the technology fail.

Speaker 9:

You're a failure. Oh, I failed. Did I yes, did I yes.

Nathan Mumm:

All right. Today's technology fail comes to us from Ingram Micro.

Mike Gorday:

Just say I am the technology fail, I am the technology fail.

Nathan Mumm:

No, no, no. So let's talk about this. Does anybody know what Ingram Micro is? It's a huge, huge computer value-added reseller. A big word for bloated money for no reason. That's what I call it, but they are an IT giant. Ingram Micro, though, was caused by a ransomware attack this last week that led to shutdown of all their internal systems. Now they're supposed to provide the best security, hardware, software, cloud service, logistics and training to resellers and managed service providers. World, worldwide, worldwide world ride, that's a little bit.

Mike Gorday:

Is it? Is it the russian, russian basketball player? Well, no, it's not take down ingram?

Nathan Mumm:

no, so their website and online ordering systems were completely shut down, with the company not disclosing what the cause was. We have found out that this was due to a cyber attack that occurred thursday morning of the previous week, with employees suddenly finding ransomware notes on their devices. So here's the problem when you come on out and you won't tell anybody what happens, and all your employees are posting pictures online in their social media that says they've been hacked, your pr person, a number 101, should probably say we have an issue and we're taking care of it. Don't try to deny that this is happening.

Mike Gorday:

Why? Why would they do that? Because then they can, you know, hide behind their, their corporate uh their corporate image.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, well, the ransom note is associated with the safe pay ransomware operation, which began one of the more active operations in 2025. It's unclear if the devices were actually encrypted in the attack, but it was noted. The ransomware claims to have stolen a wide variety of information. This generic language is used in almost all of safe pays ransomware notes, so it may not actually be specifically targeted to the Ingram micro attack. Now. Ingram micro has since announced that they are restoring their systems. But my question goes back to you how does one of the largest it service and security providers get hacked? You know how, because it's about sales, not support or tools. These large companies, if you're buying their IT services, you are getting taken advantage of, because most of the time, if you use them as the middleware person, they have no knowledge, no understanding or even the correct deployment methods for this technology. Your IT expert advice here go to the company that makes the software work with them directly and work with their engineers, instead of a middleman or a value-added reseller.

Marc Gregoire:

So the bottom line for this company is they're a sales company, not really a technology company.

Nathan Mumm:

I know, but if you just go and take a look at them out in the world, they distribute their knowledge as a technology company they sell technology. They sell technology. If I need to buy a Dell computer, I could buy it through them. Or you know what? It's even better if I want to buy a Dell computer, why don't I go to Dellcom and get one of their sales representatives and buy it directly, so that if I need support, I get it from them?

Marc Gregoire:

Easy to use. Ease of use people. I know some companies that they buy only from like ingram, micro or some of the other competitors of theirs, because they want a one-stop shop.

Mike Gorday:

They just want to go to the same place. That's because people are lazy.

Nathan Mumm:

All right, let's go.

Speaker 1:

Now they're dorks to our nathan nugget this is your nugget of the week all right, this is exciting.

Nathan Mumm:

Video game actor strikes officially ended. So did you know that the video game people are going on strike?

Mike Gorday:

we actually talked about this, about this um two years ago almost two years ago, are you sure?

Nathan Mumm:

I yeah, because they've been on strike for over a year plus and they actually, before they went strike, they were already talking about it, but both sides have come to an agreement that says the SAG, the SAG A-F-T-R-A, aftra is the group that they call for. These voice actors have agreed to 24 out of the 25 areas of sticking points. The main sticking point, though, and the biggest barrier, was the disagreement over motion capture. Actors who work are treated as data rather than performance. So motion capture so if you all the cgi people that go on out there when they yes they.

Nathan Mumm:

They capture that information. They said that that was not an actor yeah, that's.

Mike Gorday:

That's why uh, what's his name? Was not able to win an award for Lord of the Rings.

Nathan Mumm:

Yep, okay, you mean Sir Gollum.

Mike Gorday:

Yeah.

Nathan Mumm:

Yep, okay. So the historical wage increase has happened. Now all of your big name voice actors and performers can come back on and do all of their stuff, just in time to be implemented in the grand theft auto's new game, so that they have all of their main original characters back. Now let's move to our pick of the day whiskey tastings and now our pick of the day for our whiskey tastings.

Marc Gregoire:

Let's see what bubbles to the top all right, so we just started our round two. For their Flavor Aven calendar, we have a head-to-head between a finished rye and a finished straight bourbon.

Nathan Mumm:

All right. So I am sure this is. I believe this is the finished rye and I believe this is the finished bourbon. That's what I'm going to go with.

Marc Gregoire:

So you said the Glencairn is the rye and the beer glass is the bourbon. That's what I believe. And which one did you choose?

Nathan Mumm:

I choose the. I choose.

Mike Gorday:

Pikachu.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay.

Marc Gregoire:

And Mike. Which one did you choose?

Mike Gorday:

I chose the rye out of the beer glass.

Marc Gregoire:

Oh, we have a disagreement between what is what, and there you have a disagreement between their favorites. Okay, dun dun dun, dun, dun dun Dun dun, dun you guys going to work this out, or do I have to choose?

Nathan Mumm:

Well, you got to tell us who's got right on the rye first.

Marc Gregoire:

Oh, mike's right. Okay, mike knows his rye's palates now Okay. I've trained him well.

Nathan Mumm:

He is getting to be a connoisseur.

Marc Gregoire:

Look at that little winky, is the Bacta 1928 Rye Whiskey which has the Cavados and the Armagnac finished with it. And the Glencairn, which is what you chose, is the Yellowstone, which is the Finnish Straight Bourbon, which is a toasted barrel stage.

Nathan Mumm:

I like them. You know what I'll say both are thumbs up, though I'll just tell you that I could drink both a lot. Yeah, they're both really good. This is your first choice, I guess this is not my first choice.

Marc Gregoire:

We had one in round one and it involved the bhakta also. Oh, did it really? It did, and you did not choose the bhakta that time either, and Mike chose it.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, so you know what we're consistent then. So we are consistent.

Marc Gregoire:

I have not chosen it both times, but you didn't like it the first time. You said it was not good. Okay, I have to go back to the script to see if you may have even given a thumbs down, I could have.

Nathan Mumm:

I can see that Now you're saying they're both really good.

Marc Gregoire:

I would take both. Maybe you're growing too.

Nathan Mumm:

No, no, I am not growing.

Marc Gregoire:

I just like alcohol. Well, the winner, the winner, is the Bokta 1928 Rye Whiskey. Woo-hoo, it's moving on again. It's moving on again, oh boy.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, all right. Well so that means all of this I can drink myself on my own private reserve, then.

Marc Gregoire:

That is true and I have here, we have this much left.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, we have another glass Okay perfect, all right. Well, Mike, guess what? What Elmo's telling you? We're about out of time. We want to thank our listeners who joined the program. He can't even get the reference right If you want to hear from us. Elmo says it's out of time. That's right. Wow. Appearing at the Comedy Club we have Mike Corday.

Marc Gregoire:

Everybody give him a round of applause. Do I get to push your belly button, Mike? No, I don't.

Mike Gorday:

No comedy club. We have Mike Corday, everybody give a round of applause.

Nathan Mumm:

No, I don't. No, we don't want to touch that. We want to thank our listeners for joining the program. Listeners, we want to hear from you, so visit us at techtimeradiocom. Click on, be A Caller, Ask us a question on technology or in our TalkBack recording system. You can always stay connected by visiting us online. Remember, the science of tomorrow starts with the technology of today. We'll see you guys next week Later. 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

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Gwen Way

Guest