TechTime with Nathan Mumm

269: TechTime Radio: Apple’s iOS 26 Blocks Spam Calls with Smart Screening Upgrade, Instagram’s Teen Safety Tools Fail Majority of Tests, Raspberry Pi 500 Plus Delivers Power at $200, ROG Xbox Ally Hits $999 | Air Date: 9/30 - 10/6/25

• Nathan Mumm • Season 7 • Episode 269

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Call screening technology is finally getting the upgrade we've all been desperately waiting for. Apple's iOS 26 introduces a revolutionary feature that puts unknown callers into a holding pattern, requiring them to state their business before you decide whether to answer. For those of us bombarded with daily spam calls, this could be the most practical smartphone innovation in years.

Meanwhile, the digital safety nets meant to protect our children continue to show alarming gaps. A troubling study reveals that Instagram's teen safety tools are largely failing, with researchers finding that 30 out of 47 protective measures are either substantially ineffective or completely nonexistent. Despite Meta's reassurances about "industry-leading" protections, their platform continues exposing young users to harmful content while seemingly encouraging risky behaviors that attract inappropriate adult attention. This ongoing failure raises serious questions about whether social media companies can ever truly prioritize safety over engagement metrics.

On a more positive note, the tech world offers exciting new options for both computing and gaming enthusiasts. The Raspberry Pi 500 Plus delivers impressive computing power with 16GB RAM and dual 4K display outputs for just $200, while the new ROG Xbox Ally handheld aims to bring premium gaming on-the-go—though at the eyebrow-raising price of $999. As we review both options alongside our whiskey tasting of Mickter's exceptional Barrel Strength Rye, we explore the value proposition each offers and whether they're worth your hard-earned money.

From practical advice on avoiding increasingly sophisticated scams to insights about malware that's been silently stealing data from U.S. organizations, we're covering the technology developments that directly impact your digital safety. Join us each week as we decode the tech world with straightforward explanations, honest reviews, and perhaps a little whiskey on the side. Subscribe to our podcast on your favorite platform and visit techtimeradio.com to catch up on previous episodes!

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SPEAKER_04:

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, hmm. 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 Mum.

SPEAKER_07:

Oh, welcome to Tech Time with Nathan Mum, 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 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 Mum, your host and technologist with over 30 years of technology expertise. Our co-host Mike Roday is in studio today. He's the award-winning author and our human behavior expert. Now we're live streaming during our show on five of the most popular platforms, including YouTube, Twitch.tv, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Kik. We encourage you to visit us online at techtimeradio.com and become a Patreon supporter at patreon.com forward slash techtime radio. Now we're friends with different backgrounds, but we bring the best technology show possible weekly for our family, friends, and fans to enjoy. We're glad to have Odiour producer at the control panel today, so Nathan can be back in the main seat. Whew, that sucked last week. Uh welcome everyone. Let's start today's show.

SPEAKER_04:

Now on today's show.

SPEAKER_07:

All right, today on the show we have our letter segment, this funny yet informative reading of emails, scams, and other fraudulent information that I received during the week. This includes, of course, emails, texting scams, all out missed truths, and we have a hand-delivered postcard that was sent to us that we'll be talking about today, also. And in addition to that, we have our standard features, including Mike's mesmerizing moment, our technology fail of the week, and a possible Nathan Nugget, which we got to get to. And of course, our pick of the day, whiskey tasting. To see if our selected whiskey pick at zero, one or two thumbs up by the end of the show. But now, Odie, thank you so much for being back in studio. We always miss you when you're gone.

SPEAKER_05:

I'm glad to be back.

SPEAKER_07:

All right. Now we we did hear that there was a little car accident. So hopefully, are you doing okay from that?

SPEAKER_05:

Anyway.

SPEAKER_07:

Okay, all right. Well, hopefully you you can uh heal up. All right. Now are you ready? You see that finger right there? Uh yeah. You know what that means? He says, Don't tell them all about my personal life. You can find out more about Odie at but no, okay. All right, now it's time for the latest headlines in the world of technology.

SPEAKER_04:

Here are our top technology stories of the week.

SPEAKER_07:

All right, we're talking about the iOS 26. Now, this uh only Apple jumps from an uh OS five or six different digits. You know, you go from like an 18 to a 26, but uh, I get it, I get it. Now though, they have probably the best feature I have ever seen on a phone, and it is called the phone screening option that allows you to put all of your spam phone calls into a holding pattern. Have you heard about this yet, Mike? No. All right, this is this is the best. Let's go first off to Lisa Walker for more on this.

SPEAKER_01:

Spam calls can be a huge problem for a lot of us, and I get my fair share of random calls from marketers and scammers during the day. Not ideal when you're trying to be productive. With call screening in iOS 26, though, I think Apple has found the fix. As you might guess from the name, call screening puts an automated voice between you and unknown callers. The person, or robot, at the other end of the line asks them to state their business, and their response is then presented as a text transcription for you. You can then decide whether or not to take the call. It won't kick into action for known contacts, and you can enable or disable the feature whenever you like. But for me, this is a new game changer, and all the time, even for calls from Nathan. Now, back to you guys in the studio.

SPEAKER_07:

Wow. Does that mean Lisa Lisa has me as a spam caller? Are you a spam call? Okay, well, guess what? So that's gonna stop blowing up my phone. Okay, I I do. All right, the iS or iOS 26 supports call screening. So you don't have to have Apple intelligence. This is actually built into the system itself. If you have an iPhone 11, 11 Pro, iPhone 11 Pro Max, or anything newer than that, you are able to get to the iOS 26. So you are able to have this feature. Now, after installing this, you may see a prompt to enable call screening when the first unknown caller, or as ours, ours always come as uh spam caller or what's the uh unknown caller also robocallers. What happens is the first time you get a call, uh you get a feature that will ask you if you want to enable this and your iOS settings by tapping apps and phone. Under the screen unknown callers heading, you get three options. Never call from unknown numbers is treated as normal, a reason for calling, which is the call screening, and the option for silence, which essentially sends all the unknown numbers into a silent voicemail and they can't ask for any information. I have used the ask reason for setting up this process. Now, with the call screening enable, you get a silent alert when the call is being handled, then a ping if they leave a message. So it's gonna prompt them and say, please put in your name and why you're calling. So if they don't fill that out and then nothing happens, it automatically goes to voicemail. But if they do put in their name and why they're calling, it will give me a few seconds to either accept or reject that call based on the text transcript I receive on my phone or on my Apple Watch, also. So personally, this is probably the best thing to have on any cell phone. I think Android's gonna need to adopt something like this very soon. Uh, it allows me to keep the conversations that are important top of mind. And for those that I don't know about that I may be interested with, if they leave me a long enough message with information, I can call and talk with them.

SPEAKER_08:

Okay. So what's the difference between that and the old guy strategy of just not answering phones from numbers you don't recognize?

SPEAKER_07:

Well, sometimes I actually get some uh so I'm interested in some sales, sometimes technology sale items that come across the desk. I like to learn about new stuff that happens. So if I actually have it call and the person is not in my contact list, if they're in my contact list, it automatically goes through like a normal phone. But if they're not in my contact list, they'll have to leave a brief message. If it's a uh robo call in an automated cheap AI system, they're not gonna actually gonna say, Hey, my name is David, and I'm looking to talk to you about X, Y, and Z. It's gonna just say nothing and then it will automatically be sent to voicemail.

SPEAKER_08:

Okay, so last week I got approximately 20 phone calls. Okay. Out of those 20 phone calls, only two were calls that I knew and recognized and took.

SPEAKER_07:

Okay, and you answered them, probably, right?

SPEAKER_08:

And I answered them. But what happens if if I answer a spam call, yeah, I suddenly start getting more spam calls. You do. Yeah. So if I answer a robocall, suddenly I'm getting robocalls on the code.

SPEAKER_07:

They got whatever robocall tree is, they're trying to sell you a vacuum. Now they're putting you on the vacuum that's easy. Freaking email. Yeah, it's kind of like when you click on an email and you respond to a hacker or somebody that's trying to solicit information.

SPEAKER_08:

It's a real pain in the neck.

SPEAKER_07:

Okay. Well, so you know what?

SPEAKER_08:

I I I I I I value that that technology that you're talking about. Yeah. I just have an old guy strategy that takes Okay, but you don't you don't you don't have do you have an Apple device? Uh my work does. Okay. But I hate it. I hate Apple.

SPEAKER_07:

Well, okay. Well Odie, do you have this on your device set up? Because you I know you have an Apple phone.

SPEAKER_05:

I don't think I do. Not yet, anyway.

SPEAKER_07:

All right. So before the end of the show, I gotta show you how to set that up.

SPEAKER_05:

Okay.

SPEAKER_07:

It's pretty cool. All right. Mike? Story number two.

SPEAKER_08:

Okay, well you know, and we talk about things like uh Instagram, uh what do they call child protection security blah blah blah. Yeah. Yeah. What do I usually say about those? All of them are a hustle. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07:

Or or you don't like any of them.

SPEAKER_08:

Uh yeah, they because they don't do anything. Okay. Right?

SPEAKER_07:

Well, Instagram has a great thing set up, right?

SPEAKER_08:

Okay, well, Instagram's tools that are designed to protect teenagers from harmful content are failing to stop them from seeing suicide and self-harm posts. Oh no. A study has claimed. Researchers also said the social media platform owned by our buddy Meta encourages children to post contents that receive highly sexualized comments from adults. Oh, okay. The testing by child safety groups and cyber researchers found 30 out of 47 safety tools for teens on Instagram were substantially ineffective or no longer exist. Meta, of course, has disputed the research and if and its findings saying its protections have led to teens seeing less harmful content on Instagram. And I guess they figure if less content means one or two videos that weren't supposed to be shown to them that that works. Okay. Uh the report repeatedly this is meta stance. The report r repeatedly misrepresents the efforts to empower parents to and protect teens, misstating how our safety tools work and how millions of parents and teens are using them today. Teen accounts lead the industry. There's a key point. Teen accounts lead the industry because they provide automatic safety protections and straightforward parental controls. Not sure how that works.

SPEAKER_07:

So they say they're specif well, so what they just told you in that uh comment that they said is that they're specifically targeting teens because that's their market.

SPEAKER_08:

Because that's their market. The company introduced teen accounts on Instagram in 2024, saying it would add better protections for young people and allow more parental oversight. It was then expanded to Facebook and Messenger in 2025. Under the Online Safety Act, platforms are now legally required to protect young people from damaging content, including material promoting health, self-harm, or suicide. The study into the effectiveness of his teen safety measures, however, was carried out by the U.S. Research Center Cybersecurity for Democracy on behalf of child safety groups, including the Molly Rose Foundation.

SPEAKER_07:

I'm familiar with that. It's pretty good organiz this is a pretty good organization. I don't think that they're um um uh specifically targeting in individuals. They spend a lot of time going to actually do tests and um set up how a user would actually interact with the application. So uh it's a pretty good protection service that's out there.

SPEAKER_08:

Okay. Well, the researcher said that after setting up fake teen accounts, they found significant issues with the tools. In addition to finding 30 of the tools that were ineffective or simply did not exist anymore, they said nine tools reduced harm but came with limitations. The researcher said only eight of the forty-seven tools they analyzed were working effectively, meaning teens were being shown content which broke Instagram's own rules about what should be shown to young people. This included posts describing demeaning sexual acts as well as auto-completing suggestions for search terms, promoting suicide, self-harm, or eating disorders. The researchers shared screen recordings of the findings, some of these, including young children who had appeared to be under the age of thirteen, posting videos of themselves of themselves. In one you in one video, a young girl asked her users to rate her attractiveness. The researchers then claimed the study's into Instagram's algorithm incentivizes children under thirteen to perform risky sexualized behaviors for likes and views, which that kind of jives with why they agree with all this stuff. They said it encourages in the post content they received a lot of comments from adults. It also found that teen account users could send offensive and misogynistic messages to one another, and were suggested adult count accounts to follow.

SPEAKER_07:

Okay, so that's kind of a big deal there, right? So if you're in a teen account, you should only be recommending to connect with other teen accounts, would be the thinking, right?

SPEAKER_08:

No, this is just the ongoing problem with social media and how it markets to to younger persons. This is this is kind of like how uh tobacco companies used to market to directly to younger people. Okay. And they did that for what reason? Because that was their market. Yeah, that was their cool market. That's where they got their money from. And so meta is going to do everything they can to skirt everything that they can in order to get the best out of what they can get from all the laws that are being enacted against them doing these things. But you know this is just one more reason why social media is just a bunch of sewer uh trash.

SPEAKER_07:

Is that what you think?

SPEAKER_08:

It's it's sewage. Okay. Okay. It encourages it encourages the worst behavior of of human beings. Interactions. Yeah, that and places like Reddit and and uh although I do like Reddit, I'll say Reddit has become my go-to location lately. You know, that doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_07:

Well, hang on. Uh I I just buy I like that they store their information. And it's the old bulletin board service slash communication service. So I I kind of like that.

SPEAKER_08:

Yeah, yeah, and then Chat GPT comes along and scrapes information from Reddit. And then it chooses it to be fact, and then chooses it to be fact and gives it back to people when they're trying to date their computer.

SPEAKER_07:

And and then those create hallucinations, which you love that word.

SPEAKER_08:

I hate that word.

SPEAKER_09:

Hallucinations.

SPEAKER_08:

A computer cannot hallucinate, and we shouldn't be applying human terms to to errors in programming. Okay.

SPEAKER_07:

All right, well, guess what?

SPEAKER_08:

Just in time for Thanksgiving, oh yay, we have some Pi.

SPEAKER_07:

Oh, I know. You're gonna have to talk about the Raspberries. Yeah, the Raspberry Pi 400 was the first Pi computer with an integrated keyboard, and now that's been upgraded models that make people excited with the new Pi 500 Plus, which has just arrived. Is that a subscription service? No, there's no subscription service. This is open source. They shouldn't use plus then. Uh okay, they shouldn't use plus. Well, okay. Well, there's already a Raspberry Pi 500. So this is the 500 Plus, has arrived with a high quality mechanical keyboard, better internal hardware, and all-important RGB lights. So you can have colors on your little mini computer. The once value processor that you could get for 30 bucks is now a full-fledged computer at the price a tag of$200. Does it make it worth it? Well, the first Raspberry Pi 500 was a simple pi board built into a keyboard, more like the design of an old Commodore 64 or BBC Micro. They still had to connect to separate display, mouse, and power supply, but the computer itself, a Raspberry Pi 5 and keyboard, were integrated into one sleek package. Now the$200 Raspberry Pi Plus. It's based on the Raspberry Pi 5 with a 2.4 GHz quad core ARM Cortex A76 CPU, 16GB of RAM, dual 4K display outputs, not one but two 4K display outputs with micro HDMI ports, Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5, and gigabit Ethernet connected. These are also come with three ports. Two of them are USB 3 and one is USB 2. The computer has a 256 gigabyte SSD inside the M2 NVM slot with this Raspberry Pi OS pre-installed. You can also use the micro SD card and slot to boot up to other drives and other OSs. So you could do your uh uh video game ROM simulations with your Pi Arcade and other devices. But the question is$200, 256 gigabyte internal drive.

SPEAKER_08:

So for all the all the non-tech people out there that listen to us, is that good?

SPEAKER_07:

Uh yes, so$200. So you can get now a computer, not just a uh a device board, which you used to get previously, and you kind of had to get a 3D printed uh shell to put on this computer. Now you get a full computer with, of course, nice display lights. Um, but it's a 256 gig SSD drive. It has 4K two outputs. This can be for 200 bucks. You can load this bad boy up with an SSD drive, load Windows 11 on this, load Windows 10 on this, an operating system, or don't load Windows 10. Uh or okay, or or any or any type of other third-party freeware-based uh does it come with parental controls? No, it does not come with parental controls, but a computer for 200 bucks. This is gonna make what I talk about a little bit later or regarding the new Xbox device. You're gonna and look at the specs of this, you're gonna be like, why is one one price and one once the other? Greed. All right. Well, that enhanced that's there. You go. Well, that is our top technology stories of the week. Next we dive into our letter segment featuring scams submitted by listeners, some studio selected emails, and a new one on the show. We have a postcard sent to us directly. Be sure to listen and share the segment with a friend to help them save from clicking on stuff. But now we're gonna take a commercial break and we'll see you after this.

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SPEAKER_07:

All right, welcome back to Tech Time with Nathan Mum. Our weekly show covers the top technology subjects without any political agenda. We verify the facts, 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 Gregois is back in the studio. Mark, what have you chosen for us today?

SPEAKER_10:

Today you are drinking Mickter's single barrel barrel strength rye, the 2025 edition. Okay. While you guys moan and groan over there, let me tell you from Mikter's website what they say. Okay. Since the 1990s, the Mikter's team has been doing pioneering work to re-establish the high-quality American rye whiskey category. As a single barrel product, each barrel is bottled at a particular alcohol level at the time of bottling. The bottle strength of this 2025 release ranges from 107.4 proof to 115.2 proof. Tasty notes of butterscotch and cinnamon with hints of cherry on the nose. Warming, rich, toasty vanilla and caramel up front with a dry oaky spice on the finish.

SPEAKER_08:

Yep. I'm gonna have to I'm gonna have to say, Mark, that uh I am a I am a rye convert. Oh. Are you saying are you saying you're liking this? Oh yeah, this is good stuff. This is good stuff, this is.

SPEAKER_07:

But I think I I'm pretty sure I I don't remember all the stuff that I have, but I'm sure I I I I believe I have a Mitcher's bottle up there or if I on my own whiskey shelf behind. And if I haven't uh have it up there now, I had it at one time because this is a drink that I do like.

SPEAKER_10:

Yeah, you had the standard dry there. We have reviewed, I think, the uh the 2023 barrel strength one. Okay.

SPEAKER_07:

I I I I bet you I did not put any thumbs down. This is a thumbs up, Nathan type. This is this is a Nathan type of whiskey. It is, it is.

SPEAKER_10:

So let me tell you a little bit about the stats. So it's from Micter's Distillery. Uh it's an undisclosed distillery in Kentucky where it's from. It's a straight rye. It's non-H-stated, but we know it's at least four years old. It's probably much it's probably more around seven, eight, I would say, but we don't know for sure. This particular bottle is 112.6 proof. The mash bill is undisclosed, but it's rumored to be a low rye rye. That's probably why you like it a bit, Nathan. Okay. And the price is MSRP 120. 120 bucks. All right.

SPEAKER_08:

Did you a little bit out of your Nathan range?

SPEAKER_07:

That is well, I had that's the standard bottle that I got. I think that was probably like around 60 or 70 bucks. It's probably the standard is probably a little bit less. A little less than that. So yeah, so that's a while. I have to buy the cheap version of this mic, but I uh okay. This is really good though. Did you do did you just get this in?

SPEAKER_10:

Uh no. This is this is my backup bottle here. It's not opened as you can see. Yeah. The bottle that we're drinking from is uh in back of Odie. Okay. Finishing it off. Okay. Odie's back there. You know what?

SPEAKER_07:

Odie, let me just tell you, Odie has already finished her glass. She's gonna be trying probably during the next commercial break another shot. You want another shot of this, Odie? Yeah, she's already finished the bottle.

SPEAKER_10:

Yeah, it's pretty good. Everybody out there, don't forget to like, subscribe, and Odie, drink responsibly. Heaven can wait. There you go. All right. She's about to dance on the table.

SPEAKER_07:

There you go. With our whiskey tasting completed, let's move on to our feature segment. Today we bring back the funny yet informative reading of emails that I received during the weeks. This includes scam, fishing emails, text scams, all out missed truths, disguised as legitimate emails, and mail in a segment we call letters. Odie, what do we got over here?

SPEAKER_05:

Well, you told me that this is connected.

SPEAKER_07:

Maybe there weren't. It looks like maybe are they connected or are they not connected?

SPEAKER_05:

I can't tell.

SPEAKER_07:

It sounds like there's more drinking going on than ever from the Oh, wait, okay, they are.

SPEAKER_05:

Okay. Okay, good.

SPEAKER_07:

That's what I thought.

SPEAKER_05:

Okay, it says it's from Sativa Partner.

SPEAKER_07:

Okay.

SPEAKER_05:

Uh install at mail.instyle.com on behalf of Sativa.

SPEAKER_07:

Okay.

SPEAKER_05:

And it's just a are you in the market for a new mattress?

SPEAKER_07:

Uh well, hold on. Yeah. Sure. Read the email. What does it say first off?

SPEAKER_05:

It says Sativa Partner. Dreamy deals away open for exclusive sattva classic offers.

SPEAKER_07:

Okay.

SPEAKER_05:

With an attachment.

SPEAKER_07:

Okay.

SPEAKER_05:

And then a fall sale of getting$250 off.

SPEAKER_07:

Okay. So that's the attachment that comes with you. That's the attachment, yeah. Yep.

SPEAKER_05:

It has a bunch of weird codes at the bottom.

SPEAKER_07:

Better sleep or your money back.

SPEAKER_10:

Hopefully it's a helix. Everybody on YouTube does Helix commercials. I don't know.

SPEAKER_08:

You know, you just have to drive around your neighborhood and you can find people getting rid of their mattresses outside. Is that for free? For free. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05:

That's a bargain.

SPEAKER_10:

I saw a couple yesterday while I was riding around. So what do we get to click on on this one?

SPEAKER_07:

All right. So we clicked on an attachment. All right. So now look on there. Let's see if there's any place in there that you think allows you to actually buy the mattress.

SPEAKER_05:

On the website itself, or on the attachment. It says shop now with the little arrow.

SPEAKER_07:

Okay, so what it guess what happens when you click on that?

SPEAKER_05:

What?

SPEAKER_07:

Nothing happened.

SPEAKER_05:

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_07:

Okay, so do you think there's any place else to do this mattress? So I was very interested. I wanted to get this additional$250 off the savings.

SPEAKER_05:

And there's no link either.

SPEAKER_07:

There's no link to sell. So this is the worst type of spam to get.

SPEAKER_09:

Or either. Is it the worst type of spam because you wanted to do it? You wanted it to be real.

SPEAKER_07:

If you're gonna send something that you're trying to get people to click on, you need to actually include a link for people to click on. So now I decided to respond to them in email. So I sent them an email. I said, I'm struggling to find the link to get this taken care of. Guess what I received back? An NDR. So there is so I send it to them and it's a non-disclosure? No, an NDR, which is a non-deliverable receipt, which says that that email address is no longer available. So they send me this thing, tempt me into saving$250, didn't have a link for me to click on to put any of these codes in, and then when I respond to them, it's not legit.

SPEAKER_05:

But Nathan, you're forgetting a key factor.

SPEAKER_07:

What's that?

SPEAKER_05:

You're not supposed to click on stuff.

SPEAKER_07:

You're not supposed to click on stuff. So I guess the hat. So I know, don't click on stuff, right? There you go. So let me but if you're gonna try to spam me with a great mattress offer, shouldn't you at least give me a link to click on? Was that$250? What$250 off?

SPEAKER_05:

That's how much I spend on a mattress.

SPEAKER_07:

Okay. You don't go around and look around your neighborhood for the ones that are for free.

SPEAKER_05:

That's like an older person thing to go shopping at like a mattress and more or whatever.

SPEAKER_07:

Yeah, you don't do that. Did you just buy a mattress on Amazon and have it delivered? Yeah. Did you get the purple mattress? No. No.

SPEAKER_05:

That's like$500. I just said$250.$250 is your max.

SPEAKER_07:

What did you find for$250 on Amazon?

SPEAKER_05:

Something that's like six or seven inches. Okay.

SPEAKER_07:

Okay.

SPEAKER_08:

All right. Okay. I'm really uncomfortable. Let's stop talking about mattresses.

SPEAKER_07:

Okay. All right. Well, you know what? We're going to move next on to Mr. Grewell. Gregoil, what do you have there?

SPEAKER_10:

I have something that somebody is targeting Mike for. Oh, what okay.

SPEAKER_07:

Explain, explain that. Explain that.

SPEAKER_10:

Because it's not an email, because they know he doesn't click on anything in his email. It's actually a piece of paper that was mailed. It was mailed to the mail.

SPEAKER_07:

And this came in the mailbox.

SPEAKER_10:

Does it have a link on there?

SPEAKER_09:

Oh, it does.

SPEAKER_10:

It has a QR code. Is that what it is? And it looks official. It says it's from Amazon and claim your$25 Amazon gift card. And it does look valid because a lot of products do this where they say, hey, look, if you review us and give us five stars, we will give you a gift card. So it looks very valid. And they say just go on there, follow this QR code, and do it for what you purchased from us. But I don't know what you purchased from this because they don't say who they are. What is the QR code, buddy?

SPEAKER_07:

I did not click on that. You did not click on a QR. You gotta be very careful to click on QR codes nowadays, right? Because QR codes are becoming the new simple way you'll see something on a TV ad and you just scan it.

SPEAKER_08:

Let's just go back to you know campfires and uh tents.

SPEAKER_07:

All right, tents. So if you actually click on that QR code, you'll you will be safe. This is actually a legitimate. You wouldn't click, I mean you scan it with your phone. Or scan it with your phone, yeah. So you scan it with your phone and it opens up in your browser and you go to click on it. Stop poking it with your finger, it's not gonna work. Okay. So what happens is it goes to a site of a purchased item that I've never purchased. It's a three-in-one HDMI splitter. Which, you know, what it sounds like something you would buy. That sounds like a Nathan. Yeah, so absolutely, I could use that for like one TV screen and you see another TV screen.

SPEAKER_10:

You are getting old. You sure you haven't bought it?

SPEAKER_07:

Well, I actually did look in my history over the last couple of years. I have not bought a splitter. Okay. But what it does is it will it wants you to buy the splitter for$11. Then it wants you to give it a five-star review. Once you give it a five-star review, what they'll do is they will give you a refund for the three in one splitter that you ordered. And then on top of that, they will give you a$25 Amazon gift card. Now, I do review a bunch of stuff on Amazon, so I probably have a decent rating. I I don't know if they knew to send it to look at look at the person's address right there. Does it say my name on the front, or does it say Nathan Mum personal?

SPEAKER_10:

Personal.

SPEAKER_07:

So that that is my actual login to Amazon. So they probably saw that review of something else that I've done. And then they've got my address, which there's a gazillion and a half compromised sites that you can just put in my name and find at my address of where I'm at. And they're all over the dark web anymore for this bad boy. Um, and so they wanted me to review the product. I didn't review the product. Well, you have to buy it first, don't you? You have to buy it first. So there's and then so you buy it first, then you have to review it, then you have to send them the review. It really came down to 25 bucks was not worth the time and effort to do.

SPEAKER_10:

Yeah, I've been asked to do a few of these on ones I've actually purchased, and I've ended up not doing it. Just wasn't worth the time and effort. Yeah, and there's a little hokiness about it.

SPEAKER_07:

It is because now when I go to look at other reviews, do I know if that person got paid for that review? Or they actually really have to be.

SPEAKER_10:

You have to give them five stars. So I'm like, that's not really an honest review.

SPEAKER_07:

It's all crap. Yeah, I I've given a couple products four star reviews, and let me just tell you, I guess that's like a kiss of death. I get people calling me up and I get people emailing me, how dare you rate my product with a four? Now, if you do a scale of one to five, isn't four still good? It is.

SPEAKER_05:

In order to be like highly recommended, it's five or nothing.

SPEAKER_07:

So it's either five or one.

SPEAKER_08:

Where are you getting feedback from people who you're rating?

SPEAKER_05:

The sellers?

SPEAKER_08:

Yeah, the sellers for real. On eBay? On Amazon. On Amazon, I put a four star. I never get anything. I I rate stuff on Amazon. I never get people calling me and yelling at me. Do you do a five star or a one? I do the full range. If if I never do fives. Okay.

SPEAKER_05:

You never do fives. Okay.

SPEAKER_08:

I think that's an older person thing. That's an old that's an old guy thing.

SPEAKER_10:

We just give it a range. Uh but I do know the my daughters, which are more around Odie's age, it it's five or one for everything.

SPEAKER_07:

Yeah. Usually it's either you're happy or not. So if you're happy, it's a five.

SPEAKER_05:

Well, on that note, I only rate something if I'm like super ecstatic about it and it's a five.

SPEAKER_07:

Or super pissed.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah.

unknown:

Okay.

SPEAKER_05:

Otherwise, if it's like a four and mediocre, I'm not gonna. To leave a review, I'm not gonna say I do some threes, I do some fours.

SPEAKER_10:

I don't mind that as much, but uh you go through a lot of these and you're trying to figure to buy something, so I actually read the reviews. And there's a lot of five stars that when you read the actual review, it's not a five star they're talking about. No, but they give it a five star because that's I had some problems with that. I love this.

SPEAKER_07:

I had to update this, I had to update that.

SPEAKER_08:

I love the ones that start. I I would give if I I had to give it a one star because I had to. If I if I didn't, I would be a zero star. So yeah, I love those. Those are nice.

SPEAKER_07:

Uh all right, okay. Well, so there you go. So an actual postcard. You can take that home, Mike, if you want to buy the product. No, that's okay. It doesn't work. I keep trying to click on the one here. All right. Uh what do you have next, Mike?

SPEAKER_08:

Well, it looks like I have something sent from you to you, but that was actually a reply to an email from something called CSID S or C S I D. Correct. No reply at alerts-mail dot Csid.com. What is Csid.com?

SPEAKER_07:

I have no idea, but boy, it sounds secure. It sounds like a security site.

SPEAKER_08:

Subject is your email address was found on the dark web, and then it has a graphic. Oh no. Nathan, view your email address alert. C Sid detected a match to your email address. Found email address. Email I don't know at hotmail.com. Yeah, so star star star.star star star at hotmail.com. Potentially breached site, not available. Click here to see what you can do to protect yourself.

SPEAKER_07:

Also, visit our FAQs to learn more. All right.

SPEAKER_08:

So they did you log in?

SPEAKER_07:

So there's no FAQs on the on the page. So I don't know how I can click on FAQs if you don't provide a link in the case. But you sent them if you're sent them a thank you note.

SPEAKER_09:

Uh you're like, hey, thanks. Make them up.

SPEAKER_07:

So if you're gonna start, so you know what? With AI out there, you can now have grammar take care of almost anything you're scamming. So you need to at least provide the links if you're gonna be doing this. Now, this did have a link, and it said to scan now or log in now. Log in now. So I clicked on the link, log in now. And and what it did is it says you could be a part of a potential breach. We want to stop it immediately. Now, this is not a real site, this is not a real security site. I do not pay for CSID. I did not sign up for an alerts.mail at csid.com. This is a scam site that is imposing itself as trying to protect us. That's what they do when they call up on the phones and say they're from Microsoft and they're here to fix your computer. Yep. All of it starts with that we're here to help you. They have an um an address here, a physical address. Did you in Texas? I did. I did. And you know what it goes to a coffee shop. Oh. So the coffee shop is probably not going to be able to, and it's not as Starbucks is closing down or any uh one of those. It's actually a uh uh like personal coffee shop. So maybe the C S ID security uh group is uh, you know, maybe they're doing coffee in the morning. That is the best job ever.

SPEAKER_08:

My office would be a coffee shop if I were running a cybersecurity ID. Oh, there it is, C Sid. Oh, there you go.

SPEAKER_10:

I I disagree with you, Mike.

SPEAKER_08:

What would yours be?

SPEAKER_10:

No, no, I think I don't think Mike's would be a coffee shop if he did cybersecurity. I'm sure it would be a liquor store. Liquor store? Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_07:

I don't think I can go to every time you talk about tobacco streets heavy. A tobacco cigarette.

SPEAKER_08:

That's true. That's true. It would be uh okay, so it would be a bar. That'd be a bar.

SPEAKER_07:

If you're gonna do a security system out of there, yeah.

SPEAKER_08:

And you know, I'd be picking up on chicks over there and be like, uh yeah. Can I need to smoke a cigar? Okay. Wow, that attitude. I think you'd be picking up my. All right, so when you log in, hanging out in bars and doing cybersecurity.

SPEAKER_10:

That's how Mike Gordon all the way.

SPEAKER_08:

Sounds like me all the way.

SPEAKER_07:

And be like, get out of here. Don't click on stuff.

SPEAKER_10:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07:

All right. So when you clicked on this link, it asked you to put in your email. It asked you to put in your password. It pass asked you to do a bunch of stuff. I kept on putting in fake stuff. It just kept on looping and looping and looping. Never gave me an opportunity to log in. It just kept on collecting my email addresses I sent it with all my passwords. So they got a lot of fake email accounts. Poor Travis at yahoo.com. That poor guy. I don't know who Travis at yahoo.com is, but he is my default uh email address that I see.

SPEAKER_08:

Yeah, one day somebody's gonna show up on your lawn and be like, hey, I'm Travis from Yahoo.com.

SPEAKER_07:

This guy keeps on signing me up for everything. I think it's a good thing. You can have a bazooka.

SPEAKER_10:

All right. The theme of the show so far or this segment seems to be there's a lot more spam phishing emails going out, but they seem to be a lot, a lot of broken links, a lot of things that don't work. You know, the other ones you could kind of figure out because they had bad English or this, but at least they had links at work so people could click. I know. So what are they?

SPEAKER_07:

It's a real it's a real letdown. So what are they trying to get better for? This is just this is just uh uh an email farm. Credentials are trying to get your login credentials for sites.

SPEAKER_10:

Now, do you think the links don't work because something actually got taken down or they got caught or they got you know well this one was collecting your stuff, so this one kept on collecting and collecting and collecting.

SPEAKER_07:

So this one was working. So this one was working. Okay, but uh Odie's one was working. It could have been that they actually they got the poor factress company and somebody tried ordering a fat uh uh a nice mattress and when they contacted the factory they were no longer there, so they shut down. All right. My last one is very simple. Yeah, it looks like it. Uh I got this from CWC online certification, but look at what it goes to. It actually goes to a Tyler dot uh Nigin at 1956 at valuecustomerscase.info. That's spelled, that's pronounced in when Tyler Wynn 1956. So, you know what? Really, it says in 30 minutes, you could have a concealed carry qualified uh instant certificate. Extend your second amendment rights, just got easier with countrywide concealed. You can complete your certification in minutes, watch a training video, pass a 10 question test, download your certificate instantly. Now, this is What does that mean? I can carry an office.

SPEAKER_09:

No, that is not, no, that is not. That is you cannot do that. You have to access your real test.

SPEAKER_07:

No way to carry. If you want to, if you want to have a concealed weapons permit, oh is that what a concealed weapons permit?

SPEAKER_10:

I was hoping it's a concealed flask or something.

SPEAKER_07:

No, that's a concealed well it it's about things. There you go. Get certified to carry. Now look at that now and then look at that link. If you're gonna send out a link and it goes, there's a lot of words on the you should just have it go and and be a uh a bit.ly URL or something. You should show it to the screen. Show it to the screen. Uh so the whole email.

SPEAKER_08:

They can see that.

SPEAKER_07:

The whole email is those are links, those are actual three links in the Did you click on it? I did click on it. I know you want to be a concealed carry guy. Uh so I clicked on it. And you know what? For only$49. Okay.$49. I could watch this little video of a guy on YouTube that was a free video. So I don't know. Did you watch him? I I you could watch this video. Did he tell you how to conceal your firearm? Uh he talked about gun safety and how to lock up everything. And then at the end of this, then all of a sudden you get a certificate that you could print and you could download. So you could have it very simply taken care of. And now I'm eligible to carry in 84% of the United States.

SPEAKER_08:

84% of the of the US.

SPEAKER_07:

That's the continental United States. And then when I actually clicked on each of these states, it says, but there may be additional licenses available, so please contact your local state. So it was a waste of$49. Yeah. Did you actually pay$49? Yeah, you know. I did. But then I actually went back to my credit card and said it was a fraud. So I so I got the money back from the credit card as a scam. Okay.

SPEAKER_08:

Now they have your credit card information.

SPEAKER_07:

You know, Washington State is an open carry state. Is it?

SPEAKER_08:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07:

You know what? I actually have I actually went through the real testing, and it was much more vigorous than this to actually get the real permit.

SPEAKER_08:

Well, we live in we live in the we live in the society of I want it now. So in 30 minutes I can get a skilled weapons permit. Uh yeah, I think that's I think that's the way to go. Well.

SPEAKER_07:

All right, you know what? That ends our Odie's giving us the slide. Yes, that's right. So now it's time for us to end our letter segment and move on to Mike's mesmerizing moment.

SPEAKER_06:

Welcome to Mike's mesmerizing moment. What does Mike have to say today?

SPEAKER_07:

Alright, Mike, would you fill out a survey and give a positive review if you're paid to do so? No.

SPEAKER_05:

Wait, even if you were paid?

SPEAKER_08:

If you're paying me to give you a good review, what is that? Um that's functionally so I don't know how to I don't even know how to answer this for you people. Okay. I don't know why you're even asking me that question. Well I guess. Okay, so this is a this is a this is right, it's an integrity issue and it's a deceptive marketing practice. If somebody's gonna pay me to write them a good review Did you say good review or just review? Uh just positive positive review. Positive review.

SPEAKER_10:

It has to be five star for most of these for them to pay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08:

Yeah, yeah. So I've I've run into this quite a bit over the last several years where people have offered to give me money to give them a really good review on a product. Okay. And you know, that's that's kind of like uh Forrest Gump, you know, where he's on talking about his paddle. It's like it's a little white lie, but Mama says that's okay. Uh I not I can't do that. Okay. So you would not give a No. It's a yeah. Okay. If I get a product and it doesn't work and then I tell everybody else it's the greatest product in the world, what does that make me look like?

SPEAKER_10:

Uh makes you look like you're an advertiser. Now, on the flip side, if Mike wrote a maybe Mike, if you wrote a positive five-star review and then the they reached out to say, Thank you so much, here's$25, you would definitely accept it after the fact.

SPEAKER_08:

Yeah, I might I might do that because it's about the product and it's an integrity of the product. It's not but they you know they do this all the time. And Amazon is even cracked down on people for doing this. They did it in on their uh a couple a few years back. They did a crackdown on yeah, I don't think they do that anymore, though. They probably don't.

SPEAKER_07:

Because I I look at these five-star reviews now.

SPEAKER_05:

No, that's literally everybody. I mean, that's all of TikTok shop.

SPEAKER_07:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07:

Yeah. So look at the brand new egg scrambler.

SPEAKER_05:

I never buy anything, but I'm like, man, one day.

SPEAKER_08:

Wow. What's the problem with this? It it creates a it creates a system that you can't trust, right?

SPEAKER_05:

Right. But you know, that's just on me to do better.

SPEAKER_08:

It's kind of it's kind of like I said, I'm not buying the exit. It's kind of like positive reviews being done by employees of the restaurant or the organization or something. Oh, I love this place. This place Michaela was the best server ever put in the city.

SPEAKER_07:

But you know this has been going on for 67 years. Right? I mean, I mean, this is this is infomercial.

SPEAKER_08:

The infomercial is the first version. Yeah, this is as old as the other profession, that's the oldest profession. Okay, there you go. What's what's that one?

SPEAKER_07:

Uh, we don't need to talk about that right now. All right, thank you, Mike, for their mesmerizing moment. Up next, we have this week in technology. So now be a great time to enjoy a little whiskey on the side as we're gonna be doing so during the break. You're listening to Tech Time Radio with Nate the Mum. See you after a few minutes. Hey Mike. Yeah, what's up? Hey, so you know what? We need people to start liking our uh social media pages.

SPEAKER_08:

If you like our show, if you really like us, we should use your support on patreon.com. Or is it Patreon? I think it's Patreon. Okay, Patreon.

SPEAKER_09:

If you really like us, you can say I'm the English guy? Patreon.com. I I butcher the English language? You know you butcher the English language. So it's all the time. It's patreon.

SPEAKER_08:

Patreon.com. If you really like if you really like our show, you can subscribe to patreon.com and help us out. Oh, and you can visit us on that Facebook platform.

SPEAKER_07:

You know the one that Zuckerberg owns?

SPEAKER_08:

The one that we always bag on?

SPEAKER_07:

Yeah, you can 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.

SPEAKER_09:

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

SPEAKER_07:

Or you can even Instagram with us. And that's at Tech Time Radio. That's at Tech Time Radio. Or you can find us on TikTok. And it's Tech Time Radio. It's at Tech Time Radio.

SPEAKER_08:

Like and subscribe to our social media.

SPEAKER_07:

Like us today. We need you to like us.

SPEAKER_08:

Like us and subscribe.

SPEAKER_07:

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

SPEAKER_03:

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

SPEAKER_07:

Alright, we go back to October 5th, 2011. Steve Jobs passed away. After a long battle with pancreatic cancer, technology visionaire and founder of Apple Computer, Steve Jobs, passed away. Jobs contributed to the technology industry, was undeniable. Together with Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs started the personal computer revolution with their Apple II computer. After being forced out of Apple, Jobs went on to found Next Inc. And then purchased Pixar, a company that redefined the animated motion pitcher industry until it was purchased by Disney and then it went down the other hill. Oh, sorry. Okay, continue on. In 1997, the Apple purchased Next, which bought uh Steve Jobs back into Apple, and the technology developed at Next was used to found the Apple's future operating system, the Max OS X and iOS, by introducing the iPhone and iPad. Steve Jobs ended the PC era and he created the new kickstart to the world of technology and led Apple from the brink of collapse to the most valuable company in the world today. Okay, I have to ask a question.

SPEAKER_09:

What's that? Why, Odie, do you find that so funny? Well our poor man died.

SPEAKER_05:

I don't remember this. We us talking about this in the meeting. So I was expecting some random piece of technology.

SPEAKER_07:

What? We talked about this.

SPEAKER_05:

I don't remember this at all.

SPEAKER_07:

Okay, all right.

SPEAKER_05:

I remember the Apollo 13.

SPEAKER_07:

I remember such a Yeah, that we had already done that one, so we decided to do this one.

SPEAKER_05:

I don't know.

SPEAKER_07:

Just your cohort Gwen suggested we do this one. It was a good show. Okay, all right. Okay. I'm glad to know that Odie's paying attention on our production meetings there, Mike. What does that tell you? There's this.

SPEAKER_09:

I did pay attention because I I don't pay attention in the production meeting.

SPEAKER_07:

What are you talking about? Okay.

SPEAKER_09:

That was this week in technique.

SPEAKER_07:

I just think it's funny that she's laughing when you said that. All right. That was this week in technology. Have you ever wanted to watch some Tech Time history with over 260 plus weekly broadcasts spanning our five plus years of video, podcasts, and blog information, you can visit us at techtime radio.com to watch our older shows. We're going to take a commercial break. When we return, we have Mark Mumble's whiskey review. See you after this.

SPEAKER_08:

How to see a man about a dog. It combines darkly comic short stories, powerful poems, and pulp fiction prose to create a heartbreaking and hilarious journey. Readers will not soon forget. Read How to See a Man About a Dog, collected writings for free with Kindle Unlimited. Ebook available on Kindle, print copies available on Amazon The Repository and more.

SPEAKER_03:

The segment we've been waiting all week for.

SPEAKER_10:

You know, Nathan, this has been a very informative show. I learned two things about Odie today. What'd you learn? I learned that she doesn't pay attention in production meetings. That's not true. And I learned that she's broke.

SPEAKER_09:

She's broke.

SPEAKER_07:

That take you today to learn that? Okay, all right.

SPEAKER_09:

I paid attention today. Okay, all right.

SPEAKER_08:

For some people, it takes a while. All right, okay, that's all right.

SPEAKER_10:

So today's September 30th. What are we celebrating today? We are all celebrating today. All four of us are celebrating today. Cheap mattress day. Odie's in the background. He's laughing at it.

SPEAKER_07:

He's already drinking with Drink with Friends Day. Well, that's a good one, but no.

SPEAKER_05:

That's actually a smart one coming from you.

SPEAKER_09:

Sounds really good. Wow, thank you. It's National Tuesday Day. Oh, National Tuesday.

SPEAKER_05:

Imagine.

SPEAKER_09:

Imagine that. It is. It's a TTT. Drum roll here. International Podcast Day. Oh, okay. All those podcasters.

SPEAKER_07:

Don't get me started on podcasters. You are one. I know, I get it. I get it. But everybody I meet, when I say that we do a radio show and a podcast, they all tell me, Oh, yeah, I've done one too. And then I the first question I'll ask is how many episodes did you do? If you did more than five, then that's amazing. I've done one or two. So no, you did not. So you're not a podcaster. A guest speaker, then you're just a guest speaker. You're not doing a podcast. You're doing a guest speaker. But if you've only done one or two podcasts, that does not make you a podcast.

SPEAKER_08:

Yeah, you you got them wound up on that one.

SPEAKER_10:

So radio may have dominated the 20th century, but the 21st belongs to podcasts. The word podcast comes from a mashup of iPod and broadcasting.

SPEAKER_07:

It did.

SPEAKER_10:

The iPod itself is long gone, but its name namesake Media lives on stronger than ever as we celebrate modern storytelling storytelling of a podcast. Now, on International Podcast Day, it's only fitting that Mickter's story has its own spotlight. Micter's Distillery Story, episode 178 of TC After Dark Podcast. Okay. The episode highlights Andrea Wilson in her dual role as master of maturation and COO, giving listeners direct insight onto how Micter's manages both the art and operation of aging whiskey.

SPEAKER_07:

Okay, so explain to me the TC podcast.

SPEAKER_10:

It's a podcast of uh woman who does a podcast on all different subjects, and one of them she did the Mickters story and talked about their whole distilling. All right, perfect. Now I thought you were gonna production. I thought you were gonna ask what is a master of maturation.

SPEAKER_07:

Oh, what's a master of You wouldn't know what maturity means. Maturation.

SPEAKER_10:

Thank you. This is a person responsible for overseeing how whiskey ages over time in the barrel. It is specialized roll that sits alongside the master distiller, but focuses on the after distillation stage. Okay. All right, that makes sense. Okay. Now, Minter's Barrel Strength Rye 2025, which we are drinking today, is bold at barrel-proof, yet impressively balanced. Caramel and oak open the palate for me, followed by black cherry and rice spice with a warm, lingering finish that really shows depth. That was my sexy voice. Okay. I'm gonna screw it away from you right now. It's a kind of pour that reminds you, patience pays. And second pours come faster. Oh, okay. There you go. All right.

SPEAKER_07:

Oh, he's still waiting for a second.

SPEAKER_10:

Everybody's glass is empty right now. I think that says a lot.

SPEAKER_07:

It does, yeah.

SPEAKER_10:

Everybody's sitting here going, where's the second pour? Where's the second glass?

SPEAKER_07:

We should be doing that during the next commercial break. All right. You know what, Mark?

SPEAKER_10:

Thanks for that mumble.

SPEAKER_07:

You're welcome, Nathan. All right, you know what? Whiskey and technology. Such a great pairing. Just like pumpkin pie and whipped cream. You like pumpkin pie?

SPEAKER_05:

You're a month too early, man.

SPEAKER_08:

This is a name, this is a Nathan pairing. No, let me just tell you.

SPEAKER_09:

He either goes really weirdly obscure and or he he likes Okay, cut and face guys. Well, I'll take that back, so it depends.

SPEAKER_10:

So most pumpkin pies I will not eat, except it's my wife's, because she uses real pumpkin for the mash. Most people use the you don't use Miss Costco. You don't like Miss Costco? No. Five dollars.

SPEAKER_09:

Five dollar pumpkin pie. Yes. Oh, it's so good.

SPEAKER_07:

You go in. Because it's five dollars or five. Because it's five dollars. It's just it's just like as a mattress. And what you do is you put it in the freezer a little bit so that it can be really extra chilled. You just put it in there, not enough to freeze it. You don't want to freeze it, but just to get it extra chilled and much better than the refrigerator.

SPEAKER_10:

No. That'd make a good little short for you there.

SPEAKER_07:

That sounds like a fail there. But you know what? Speaking of fails, let's move on to our technology fail of the week. Congratulations.

SPEAKER_06:

You're a failure. Oh, I failed. Did I? Yes. Did I? Yes.

SPEAKER_07:

All right. Our technology failed comes to us from a bit large company called Google. Have you ever heard of that company? No. All right. Well, Brickstone Mauer has been used to steal U.S. org's data for over a year as a suspected Chinese hackers have used the malware in a long-term persistent espionage operation against U.S. governments, organizations, small business, and large businesses in the technology and legal sectors. Brickstorm, a geo-based backdoor documented by Google in April of 2024, following China-related intrusions that spawned from various edge devices and remain undetected in the victim's environment for more than a year on an average. The malware served as a web server, file manipulation tool, a dropper, SOX Relay, a shell command execution tool. And according to Google Threat Intelligence Group, GTIG, the attackers used Brickstorm to silently siphon data from their victims' networks for an average time of 393 days before being detected. The researchers confirmed the compromised organizations in the legal and technology sector, software as a service providers, and also business process outsourcers. Time will tell, but this malware is expected to have affected thousands to hundreds of thousands of mid to large size businesses.

SPEAKER_08:

There you go. Well, that's why you're getting emails about your email being on the dark web.

SPEAKER_09:

No, no, no.

SPEAKER_08:

When you ask that question, it's it's excellent.

SPEAKER_09:

Are we out of time?

SPEAKER_07:

Yeah, you know what? We're almost out of time. That doesn't make us feel very good there, does it? Now, you know what though? Let's move on to the Nathan Nugget.

SPEAKER_04:

This is your Nugget of the Week.

SPEAKER_07:

All right, we talked about our first devices, the Raspberry Pi computer for 200 bucks. Now we're gonna talk about the long-awaited Asus-produced ROG Xbox Ally console. There's two of them and they're launching on October 16th. Presales have already started. And guess what? Presales are still available, they have not sold out. I was gonna say, I didn't think Xbox was hot. That's just like an old man's thing.

SPEAKER_09:

Well, just watch the commercial.

SPEAKER_07:

If you watch the commercials for the new Xbox, this is the portable Xbox, like the Switch, you can take with you. Watch all their promo videos. Yeah, it's uh or it's a souped-up version of the Steam Deck, but actually I have a Steam Deck and I like it much better than I do this device. Um, when you see all the commercials, very interesting target demographic that they're hitting. Every single one of them are people over the age of 40. You got gray-haired people saying, Wow, this is cool. So clearly they're not targeting the younger demographic. I guess they're trying to target me, but they are not going to target me with this price point. Now, the new ROG is it's X Asus, which is known as the official Xbox handheld for the Raisin AI Z2 Extreme processor, 24 gigs and a one terabyte SSD AMD processor$999.$999. Now the Switch costs$499, right? So I mean so this is double the price of your Switch device. Now this is the closest thing to a portable Xbox. Unlike the Nintendo Switch or Steam Deck, this device actually runs Windows 11, which means you can play PC games and tap directly into the Xbox Game Pass, giving players access to hundreds of Xbox titles on the go. Odie just needs to play you out. It's powered by AMDs. Hang on, I don't know. Hang on, it's powered by AMDs. Let him speak. The Raisin's Extreme Processor, 24 gigabytes. This is a seven-inch full HD display running at 120 Hertz, so games look smooth and responsive. One of the biggest challenges is Microsoft's new handheld gaming mode, the full screen Xbox style interface that hides the usual Windows clutter. When you boot it up, you're greeted with a console-like menu ready to launch your game straight away. And now you don't have to worry about dropping into the Windows desktop um UI, and you can immediately get it going. Now the Ally doesn't support external GPUs like the first ROG Ally, but it makes up for it with better battery life, really. Streamlined controls. Okay, you have a controller built on the screen. And full access to the Xbox ecosystem. In short, it's the portable Xbox and a PC all in one, perfect for gamers who want AAA titles in their backpack.

SPEAKER_10:

He's trying to sell crap.

SPEAKER_09:

I don't know. There you go. So the Xbox.

SPEAKER_10:

Now, does this hurt you down in your soul? Because you worked on the original Xbox.

SPEAKER_07:

This actually has to hurt. This absolutely hurts. The whole idea of the Xbox original, you know, was that it was like a PC component. You can modify, you could do a bunch of stuff. You could crack the old original Xboxes. I have cracked Xboxes myself with all the game libraries loaded. I mean, it it's a great system. You know, I had works. Yeah, and you and you like your Xbox, don't you, Mike?

SPEAKER_08:

Uh I do, but you know, it's hooked up to a 64-inch TV. Okay. You know how often I play it? How often? Very not often.

SPEAKER_07:

Very not often.

SPEAKER_08:

No, I usually use my PC.

SPEAKER_07:

Do you project your PC to your TV?

SPEAKER_08:

Uh no, because there's a lag. Okay.

SPEAKER_07:

Okay. All right. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_08:

So I I just look at my screen.

SPEAKER_07:

Now they also have a smaller version of this Xbox that's the white version. So the black version is the$999 souped-up version. They have a cheaper version that is the white version that you can get for almost half the price. But I I still wouldn't pay it.

SPEAKER_05:

Of a mobile one?

SPEAKER_07:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05:

So it's inferior. It's$59 or$4.99.

SPEAKER_09:

It's$599. It's$599.

SPEAKER_05:

So that's not even half. Well, that's$600.

SPEAKER_07:

What that is. What's the difference?

SPEAKER_05:

Versus a thousand.

SPEAKER_07:

Yes. Well, no, the$999. They try to get you under the thousand by the time you pay taxes.

SPEAKER_08:

They've been talking to Zuckerberg, huh? What's that? You know, like with the.

SPEAKER_07:

No, Zuckerberg, I can get a whole virtual reality system.

SPEAKER_08:

Isn't this VR system? Didn't it come out as as like$400 I can have a whole VR system? Wait, what was the one that's like$3,000? Apple is the same. That was Apple. Okay. That was Apple. Okay, they've been talking to Apple. All right.

SPEAKER_05:

I just looked it up. In 2004, when the original DS came out, it was$150.

SPEAKER_07:

Yep.

SPEAKER_05:

Which in today's money would be$258.

SPEAKER_07:

Okay.

SPEAKER_05:

And I feel like I would still pay close to$300 for a DS console.

SPEAKER_08:

At some point, this just gets to be ridiculous.

SPEAKER_05:

What,$800 for the full bundle? Yeah. I don't think that's worth it, in my opinion. Especially with the fact that you can't own any games. You can't, you know, you have to play that a whole heck. You have to have a pass for like the whole family to be playing with other people online. Yeah. Like it's ridiculous. To use that whole chat feature. Like, why?

SPEAKER_10:

It's tariff.

SPEAKER_05:

Right.

SPEAKER_07:

No, okay. No. So what happens is if the consumer buys these devices. Now it's gonna be very interesting. Nobody's buying this device. I mean, it is still available for pre-sale on. You can go to Amazon and get it, you can go to Best Buy and get it.

SPEAKER_05:

This device will not be a shame because Xbox does a decent job with their products, but this is just an insane price hike that is ridiculous.

SPEAKER_08:

This is just this is just another factor of corporate greed trying to get stuff out of your pocket.

SPEAKER_05:

Now, thinking about it, it would be nice in the sense if I can like cast it onto my TV, and that way I have an Xbox without that big hunk of junk standing behind it.

SPEAKER_07:

That's the only like I think it's a hunk of junk.

SPEAKER_05:

You just look at it. You don't even play it.

SPEAKER_07:

So you'd have to get another third-party docking station. And they haven't actually released the docking station as officially. How long is the battery life? Uh four to six hours.

unknown:

What?

SPEAKER_08:

That's not even that's not even the average gaming day.

SPEAKER_07:

So you're you're in the middle of your Call of Duty and all of a sudden you shoot and boom, and then all of a sudden your screen goes dark.

SPEAKER_05:

For a thousand dollars. Yeah, no.

SPEAKER_07:

But you're gonna be probably playing with it plugged in.

SPEAKER_05:

And then especially with what, Nintendo games are now eighty dollars? Imagine how and it how much are Xbox games?

SPEAKER_07:

Uh Xbox games, I just well, I don't know. No, because I just got the new Madden 26 for 35 bucks. So I got the new Madden 26 on sale.

SPEAKER_08:

Did you get the percent on but you got that on your on your regular Xbox? Did you buy it from the regular uh marketplace or did you buy it from your your your former no not my not that not the company employee deal?

SPEAKER_07:

Okay, no, it was it was because it's not a Microsoft.

SPEAKER_05:

Is that the full the is that the full price though?

SPEAKER_07:

Uh the full price was 60 bucks. So they had on sale 50% off.

SPEAKER_05:

$60.

SPEAKER_07:

Yeah, yeah. But if you wait that's normal. You just need to wait three weeks after a game comes on out because then all of a sudden it goes down 20%. That's that's the new Nathan. Or you can do it on Steam where they that's a good Nathan nutty. All right, let's talk whiskey. You know what now? Let's move to our pick of the day, whiskey tasting.

SPEAKER_04:

And now our pick of the day for our whiskey tastings. Let's see what bubbles to the top.

SPEAKER_10:

Usually I say we are drinking, but I should say we have drank Mick Durle Barrel Barrel Strength Rye 2025. It's a straight rye. It is this bottle is 112.6 proof, and MSRP is 120. Now I will say when we I look back at our last one review, which was two years ago, um, that price was 110. So it's gone up ten dollars, but the the market, the black market of it was at$350. Okay. And now they're they're not that much higher than the ones they're maybe one hundred fifty, one seventy. Okay. So secondary market has tipped a little bit on this? Tipped on whiskey. So This is a good time to go out and start getting those higher end ones if you can afford it.

SPEAKER_08:

All right. Mike was thumbs up after buying your Xbox handheld. Uh, you can't afford anything.

SPEAKER_07:

You gotta drink Canadian mist then. Oh no. Hell no. That's the no, you did not. Nobody deserves to have Canadian mist. That's the that's the worst that that that's out there.

SPEAKER_08:

Uh thumbs up for me.

SPEAKER_07:

Thumbs up, Mike. It's really good tasting. Thumbs up. Thumbs up. Odie puts a thumbs up.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah, I liked it.

SPEAKER_07:

Is this on your shelf at home?

SPEAKER_10:

Mark? Um, it was until after this show because we just killed my butt my bottle. Okay. I got I got my backup bottle, but this is going back into the Odie can't get out every time. All right, okay. Well, Mike, Mark, no.

SPEAKER_07:

We're all about out of time. We want to thank our listeners for joining the program. Listeners, we want you to hear from you. Visit us at techtime radio.com, click on be a caller, ask us a technology question, or when you're in the live stream, just let us know you're there. Just say hi. You know what? Just say hi. We have we see a thousand some odd people in there, and nobody talks to us. That makes me feel very sad. So please say hi to us. Give us a like. And it was an honor to be the host of today's show. Oh, we need tips too. And we need tips. We are here to decode the technology that shapes your world. One breach, breakthrough, and bourbon at a time. See you next week. Later. Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_04:

Thanks for joining us on Tech Time Radio. We hope that you had a chance to have that hmm moment today in technology. The fun doesn't stop there. We recommend that you go to techtime radio.com and join our fan list for the most important aspect of staying connected and winning some really great monthly prizes. We also have a few other ways to stay connected, including subscribing to our podcast on any podcast service, from Apple to Google and everything in between. We're also on YouTube. So check us out on YouTube.comslash Tech Time Radio. All one word. We hope you enjoyed the show as much as we did making it for you. From all of us at Tech Time Radio, remember, Mum's the Word. Have a safe and fantastic week.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Nathan Mumm

Host
Head Shot

Mike Gorday

Co-host