TechTime with Nathan Mumm

273: TechTime Radio: Tech turns terrifying: cloud crashes, robot takeovers, satellite leaks, AI love, ghost-seeing Teslas, doorbell surveillance, and blockchain malware. One failure can haunt everything. Tune in—if you dare. | Air Date: 10/28 - 11/3/25

• Nathan Mumm • Season 7 • Episode 273

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Want a Halloween scare that sticks with you after the candy’s gone? We’re pouring a glass and pulling back the curtain on the creepiest corners of everyday tech: a cloud outage that toppled major apps and smart beds, a Prime refund saga with fine-print timelines, and Amazon’s bold plan to swap 600,000 human jobs for robots by 2033. The number that matters isn’t the 30 cents shaved off a product; it’s the blast radius when a single point of failure hits everything from payments to sleep pods.

We go deeper with cybersecurity expert Nick Espinosa to map the new threat surface. He breaks down a jaw-dropping study showing unencrypted geostationary satellite traffic—airline passenger data, critical infrastructure chatter, even U.S. and Mexican military communications—floating for the taking. Then we connect the surveillance dots: Ring’s partnership with Flock could feed millions of doorbells into a searchable police network. With Ring’s track record, do you want your front porch in a national database accessible by natural-language prompts?

The uncanny valley gets crowded too. A widower claims an AI replica of Suzanne Somers “feels indistinguishable,” while OpenAI prepares to allow “mature” content for verified adults. We weigh the supposed benefits against the hard psychology: isolation, distorted attachment, and empathy atrophy. For a lighter fright, we test the viral claim that Teslas see “ghosts” in cemeteries—spoiler: that’s what a cautious perception model looks like when tombstones confuse it. The real nightmare? Attackers hiding malware inside blockchain smart contracts, using decentralization to dodge takedowns and $2 fees to keep it cheap.

From airline IT meltdowns to smart contract exploits, the pattern is clear: concentration of power and data magnifies risk. Redundancy, privacy-by-design, and failure-aware engineering aren’t nice-to-haves—they’re the only way through. Grab your headphones and your favorite pour, then join us for a tour of the haunted infrastructure underneath daily life.

Enjoyed the ride? Follow, share with a friend, and leave a quick review so more curious listeners can find the show. What scared you most—and what would you fix first?

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Announcer:

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, mmm. 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.

Nathan Mumm:

Our Welcome to Tech Time Radio with Nathan Mum, the show that makes you go mmm. Technology News of the Week. I'm not going home right now. What's that? I'm not going home right now. 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. As you can see, this is our Halloween scary episode. So you're gonna love what we got in store for you today. Let me tell you. I'm Nathan Mum, your host and technologist with over 30 years of technology expertise. Our co-host Mike Roday here is in studio. He's the award-winning author and our human behavior expert and our steampunk man from the future. I like the slash one better. Okay, there you go. We live stream during our show on six of the most popular platforms, including YouTube, twitch.tv, Facebook, LinkedIn, and now kick and rumble. We encourage you to visit us online at techtimeradio.com and become a Patreon supporter at patreon.com forward slash techtime radio. We're all friends from different backgrounds. We bring the best technology to 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.

Announcer:

Now on today's show.

Nathan Mumm:

All right, welcome to Tech Time Radio. Today on the show, we have our Halloween episode where we have the spooky and scary technology items.

Mike Gorday:

Okay, are you a pirate? Are you uh Trump? Uh you're like moving into that territory. Errrr. All right.

Nathan Mumm:

Well, you know what That's amazing. That's amazing. That's the best ever. All right. Well, you know what? We have our Halloween episode, and of course, that means we have Nick Espinoza on the show. You know what that means? We're going to be talking about all the scary things that you can learn in technology. Today's show will make you drink. We promise you that. And of course, we also have our standard features, including Mike's mesmerizing moment, our technology fail of the week, a Nathan Nugget, and our pick of the day whiskey tasting. To see if our pick of whiskey gets zero, one or two thumbs up by the end of the show. But now it's time for the latest headlines in the world of technology.

Announcer:

Here are our top technology stories of the week.

Nathan Mumm:

All right. Story number one: Amazon has a lot of explaining to do, from job cuts to major outages on its cloud service. Let's go to Lisa Walker for more on last week's outage.

Announcer:

Amazon Web Services, AWS, has apologized to customers affected by last week's massive outage, which knocked some of the world's largest platforms offline. Snapchat, Reddit, and Lloyd's Bank were among more than 1,000 sites and services reported to have gone down as a result of issues at the heart of the cloud computing giant. Amazon said it occurred due to errors in its internal systems involving the IP addresses computers use to find them. Back to you guys in the studio.

Mike Gorday:

I bet you there's a whole subreddit about them bitching about this.

Nathan Mumm:

Yes, there is. There's a whole subreddit out there that you can listen to all about this. And those Snapchat people were just so disappointed they couldn't send their pictures. All right, well, the outage has far-reaching impact, even reportedly disrupting the sleep of some smart bed owners. Now, this is when it's hit a rock bottom issue. Eight sleep, which makes sleep pods with temperature and elevation options require an internet connection. And its outage-proof mattress had some problems with one overheating and getting stuck in the inclined position. Oh my goodness. Doesn't this sound like a cartoon where you see the mattress fold up right in the middle of somebody? This is some Salvador dolly stuff, man. Well, this is just surreal. Many experts said the outage showed how reliant tech is on Amazon's dominance in the cloud computer sector as the market larger cornered by AWS and Microsoft Azure. And the specific technical reason is a faulty automation broke the internal address book system that the region relies upon. The company said that it would do everything we can to learn from this event and improve its availability. So does improving this mean getting rid of employees? Because guess what? Amazon is planning to cut 600,000 human jobs for robots. So you know what? We have a problem with the script. It has to be human error. So you know what? Let's just create more robots. Amazon plans to cut 600,000 jobs, human jobs, of course, for robots. Uh in an insider report, by 2033, they expect to be 75% operational on automation. Since 2018, the number of Amazon employees in the U.S. has more than tripled to almost 1.2 million. Nevertheless, managers have reportedly informed the board last year that the company will not need to hire any more U.S. employees in the future, thanks to advancement in robotic automation, even if sales double by the year 2033. According to internal documents, around 160,000 jobs could be lost by 2027, particularly in logistics and warehousing. In the long term, Amazon plans to automate around 75% of all activities, which will save the company up to $12.6 billion, according to the projections. Now, this will reduce cost of each product it sells by 30 cents. Now, do you think that 30 cents is going to be saved for everybody, Mike? Are you going to save 30 cents on that shipping cost now since they're going to go all to robots?

Mike Gorday:

No, they'll find some way of charging me with extra money.

Nathan Mumm:

That's crazy. Now, Amazon already employs one million robots to support its 1.6 million human workers. In the future, however, machines will no longer just help uh keep the company running, but it'll also have many of the tasks beyond the warehouse. They expect to have one employee for every 500 robots that will be running around in the city. So they think of that. Their little warehouses are gonna have 500 of these bad boys. Yeah. Well, Amazon, we're gonna continue with Amazon. There's so much news with them. They're actually uh in trouble. They're set to pay out refunds to qualifying prime users after a $2.5 billion sediment settlement with the Federal Trade Commission. Sediment is what happens on the bottom of my uh uh whiskey glass when I'm drinking out err on the on the island.

Mike Gorday:

Hey, you even use that properly.

Nathan Mumm:

That's right. The retail giant agreed to the settlement to resolve an antitrust lawsuit the FTC filed by 2023, where federal officials alleged Amazon coerced millions of consumers into enrolling into Prime subscriptions that made their agreements extremely difficult to cancel. The amount of money each customer gets from this $2.5 billion, what is it going to be? A maximum of $51 per customer.

Mike Gorday:

That's what you get for $2.5 billion.

Nathan Mumm:

The lawyers take 90% of it, and you get $51. That's right. Now there's two different settlement groups that will be issued money. The first group receive an automatic payment, which will be filed with Amazon for their prime benefits three or less times during a 12-month period. Customers who qualify for the settlement should receive their payment by December 24th, 2025. Those who do not qualify for the automatic payment still have the opportunity to file a claim. A third-party claim administration uh will be sent out with information in January 23rd of 2026. However, eligible claimants will have to wait until July 23rd, 2026 to officially submit the claims. So in January, that we're gonna allow people that didn't get the automatic payment on December 24th, the day before Christmas. There you go. To then sign on up so they can get something else. You know what? Amazon is in a world of hurt right now.

Mike Gorday:

I don't think they're in a world of hurt.

Nathan Mumm:

You don't think so? No. They'll just move their headquarters.

Mike Gorday:

I mean, this was the big this was the biggest fine that anybody's gotten so far. But they're are they no, they're not in a big world or hurt. You don't think they're a big world or hurt?

Nathan Mumm:

No. $51. Do you do you pay for Amazon Prime? Yeah. Uh Odie, do you pay for Amazon Prime? Okay. So that means that we all should get $51 back. And what are you gonna do with that?

Mike Gorday:

That's only if we qualify for the coincidence.

Ody:

How much is that in the grand scheme of things to them? Like, is that like $20?

Nathan Mumm:

Uh, probably not. Well, it's it's I'm sure it's fifty-one dollars until inflation keeps on going up, and so then it'll only be worth like two dollars. But it's two point five billion dollars in the settlement.

Ody:

Yeah, but compared to Bezos or to Amazon as a company, is that chump change? Yeah, it's chump change. That's chump change.

Mike Gorday:

And they're gonna give it some.

Nathan Mumm:

That's him housing on credit. That's him housing his super yacht for a month. That's you know what, that's gonna be in credit, so they can just spend more money on their Amazon stuff.

Mike Gorday:

Yeah, yeah. What's it really gonna do? I mean, heck. They're getting rid of 75% of their force. Their sales force. Or no, not sales force, their people force.

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah, 600,000 people, you know, that's not a big deal. Yeah, no, 1.6 million, you know, 600,000 robots.

Mike Gorday:

Let's not create jobs, let's eliminate jobs. That's what this is all about.

Nathan Mumm:

All right, well, you know what? It's our Halloween episode. So let's move on to story number two.

Mike Gorday:

Yeah, let's talk about the disturbing, some really disturbing stuff here. Uh, if you're not disturbed by this, you might need to go see a uh therapist.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay.

Mike Gorday:

Remember Suzanne Summers?

Nathan Mumm:

Oh, yes, the Thighmaster.

Mike Gorday:

The Thighmaster Three's company.

Nathan Mumm:

Oh, yeah.

Mike Gorday:

She died, she died a couple years ago. Do you know that? I did not know that. I'm sorry to hear that. Okay, well. Uh, she is now living on as an AI robot. What? Alan Hamill creates an AI clone of his late wife, Suzanne Summers, two years after his death or her death, and says he can't tell the difference from the AI model and his late wife. Okay. Okay, and when we first talked about this, when we first talked about this, we just thought this was just like some sort of chatbot thing, right? We did.

Nathan Mumm:

We did we just thought that was a prompt.

Mike Gorday:

And then we had to do a bunch of research on our. It is not. This is an AI robot sex doll. It is, isn't it? They have in they have input an AI version of Suzanne Summers into a life-size robotic doll. Odie, yeah. Why are you looking like that, Odie?

Ody:

She's not a sex doll, though. She's just made from a sex doll. Correct. Her made, yeah.

Nathan Mumm:

So she's not she's not being used as a sexual.

Ody:

That's not her use.

Nathan Mumm:

She's not being used.

Mike Gorday:

Are you really sure about that?

Nathan Mumm:

Well, I don't know.

Ody:

Well, on behalf of his ex-husband says he can't tell the difference. You don't think you don't think that's that's part of his part of his difference between a heartbeat and no heartbeat, but that the doll doesn't like anything like Suzanne Summer's. I'm sorry.

Nathan Mumm:

Suzanne Summer didn't have dark hair.

Mike Gorday:

That's the that's the thing here. Two years after her death, okay, at 76, her husband and partner of 55 years started putting plans into action that they they both had discussed for decades. Okay. And one of the projects that they were doing is coming up with this AI twin uh to her ex-husband. Okay. The project is perfect. It is an AI and a talking doll. It he says it was Suzanne. I asked her a few questions, she answered them, blew me and everybody else away. When you look at the AI next to the real Suzanne, you can't tell the difference. It's amazing. If this does not disturb you, if this is an eye problem. Because he can't see very well. If this isn't disturbing to you, the I mean, okay. This is very disturbing. Is Alan nearsighted? Well, he's 76, so probably yes. Many ask if the doll or his late wife look anything in common after seeing it on display, and many see no similarities. Okay. While the AI is fairly new to most, Hamill revealed that he had been in an ongoing conversation with himself and his wife since the eighties when uh Ray Kurzweil first explained the concept to him. Um Ray Kurtzweil, I guess, according to Bill Gates, is the smartest man on the planet. Okay. Okay.

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah. Coming from Bill Gates, he was being thought of as one of the software geniuses that probably wrote very little code to anything that he did as he stole most of it, but that's okay. Continuing on.

Mike Gorday:

I don't know, and I don't care. And you know, this is this is really disturbing if you can't tell the difference between your real ex-wife and a robot ex-wife.

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah, yeah.

Mike Gorday:

Um, and I think this is I mean, this is disturbing on so many levels to me. This is this is this is what I argue about why KI is bad. Okay. It all rolled into one, because now this this person is is in love with uh he's interacting with a doll. He is uh anamorphizing it so that it is his wife, he's treating it as if it's a living thing, uh, which I'm sure includes other things rather than just talking about it. And he's not allowing himself to grieve the loss of his wife.

Nathan Mumm:

That's the biggest thing, isn't it? Isn't like the the whole condition of dealing with death really important for for us as a society?

Mike Gorday:

Yes, it is. And when when we do stuff we've talked about this before when when we were talking about this, I think they were doing this in Japan. Yep, yeah where they were creating these AI ghosts of their their departed souls. Or or kids or whatever. Yeah, we're not we're if we're not allowing ourselves to grieve because we are trying to replace that with some sort of object, yeah, um, that is that is ultimately not good for our mental health. All right. I totally agree. I I don't know that you really agree with that. I think you would I think I think you would have a you wouldn't have an AI doll hanging out.

Nathan Mumm:

No, no, no, I would I do an R2D2 or some robot type of deal or Rosie, but I wouldn't want an AI doll.

Ody:

Yeah, he would never do a person as a as a doll. No. Or a person.

Mike Gorday:

Give me a robot. Yeah, he would. Yeah, it would be in a closet. See, three PO it would be in a closet somewhere, but he would.

Nathan Mumm:

Wow.

Mike Gorday:

All right, well, story number two. This is not and this is not like talking to Alexa, you know, right? What yeah? Okay, because do you talk to your Alexa?

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah, I just told my because I got the new upgrade for the AI for Alexa, and I just You gave in. I did. Of course I did. Of course I did.

Mike Gorday:

What what makes you what what even surprises you about?

Nathan Mumm:

And so do you know what? So she actually responded to something, and I was like, you know what? Don't respond it to me that way. And we literally had like a conversation, and my wife says, What are you doing? I'm like, I said I'm having a conversation with Alexa. When I get something done, instead of you saying, Okay, that's been completed, I want it to say awesome, it's done. So now she says, awesome, it's done whenever I ask her to do any tasks. So there you go.

Mike Gorday:

Yeah, see, that's that's like 18 steps below what this person is.

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah, that's not not the same type of level, not the same type. Well, story number three is Tesla's advanced technology detecting something beyond the physical realm or is it just a glitch? Soft social media is a buzz with the claims that several Tesla owners reported that their cars, sensors, and cameras pick up invisible human figures in cemeteries. Now, this is like a hot thing that's going on right now. If you have a friend that has a Tesla, all you need to do is go down, especially at night, but you can still do it during the daytime. And you go and you walk, or sorry, you you drive and you'll see people on your screen walking next to your car in the open fields. This is so viral that people are making different uh items, and there's lots of skepticism online about this not being taken care of. Skepticism. Skepticism, maybe skepticism. Soon after others attempted to verify the claims. One user said he intentionally drove through a cemetery late at night and saw multiple human shapes appear on his Tesla screen. There was no one around, and the display showed moving figures. It was unsettling. Another Tesla owner reported a similar experience while driving in a dense forest. He said the vehicle sensors displayed human-like figures surrounding the car, despite no visible movement outside. Phenomena has led to many theories. Some jokingly suggest Tesla's autopilot can detect spirits or negative energies. While everyone believes it's merely a technical glitch, perhaps interrupted by the car's object detection algorithms. There are still some that believe. You did this, didn't you? Was that I you did this, and you you you got you don't own a Tesla, but you know. I wrote in a Tesla and I went to a cemetery, and guess what happens? This actually happens when you go by now. It's probably what I think it's picked up flowers, and it doesn't know what the flower objects are on the side of the road, per se. Or maybe headstones, and and and tombstones and headstones and different items that are available in the cemetery that are just unique. And I think it just displays the default algorithm is probably a person. Because if you're gonna get sued and you don't know what it is, it probably displays a person, but I don't know.

Ody:

When you go like that and it moves, I think in the video you see it like spinning because what the person would be.

Nathan Mumm:

Yes, moving back and forth, like they're walking around. Yeah, that would be cool. Do you believe that they're the the the that's I think it's cool that's cold.

Ody:

Now, will I go out there and drive through a cemetery with a Tesla? No.

Nathan Mumm:

You should do that as you should create an Uber driver event where you can create an event now where you become the cemetery driver. Stop. Stop. Okay.

Ody:

The the This is a million dollar idea.

Mike Gorday:

The irony of this, the irony of this is that Tesla, who is all about, you know, technology and stuff, discovers that ghosts are real.

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah, yeah. That could be there.

Mike Gorday:

While everybody out there doing these ghost shows and they're doing all this phony stuff is like, Well, and Ghostbusters is that maybe they have the same algorithm that Ghostbusters do to pick up me.

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah, that's yeah, he just crossed the street. We're moving stuff. Oh, wow, wow, wow. That's there you go. That's perfect. All right. Well, do you think it's a ghost story or do you think it's technology?

Mike Gorday:

It's just artifact. It's the same thing, it's the same thing when you look at an EKG and you see all this well, you won't know what it like. You wouldn't know what it looks like. Keep the whimsy, Mike. Yeah, EKG, isn't that to test your uh your brain power? I okay, so from a from a from a nice little uh Halloween story perspective, this was pretty funny. But if you are out there believing that ghosts are running around your Tesla vehicle, yeah, uh, I think again, you might need to go to go seek some therapy.

Nathan Mumm:

Maybe you and Alan can go and uh have a fake AI doll. Is that what you're saying that you should be doing? Yeah, sure, whatever. I don't know how you connect to that, but okay. All right, well, well, that ends our top technology stories of the week. When we return, Nick Espinoza from Security Fanatics will join the show in our annual scary Halloween technology episode with some of the scariest technology stories of the year. You'll find out what is next. You're listening to Tech Time with Nathan Mumsi after the commercial break.

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Nathan Mumm:

Welcome back to Tech Time with Nathan Mom. Our weekly show covers the top technology subjects without any political agenda. We verify the facts and do it with a sense of humor in less than 60 minutes, and of course, with a little whiskey on the side.

Marc Grégoire:

I thought you were a pirate, not a robot.

Nathan Mumm:

Oh, look at you. Southern Comfort.

Mike Gorday:

We don't really know what to say here. Dream me up. Please. Please don't.

Nathan Mumm:

All drink of water. Alrighty. Okay. Today, Mark Greguier, whiskey connoisseur, is back in studio. Or we call him Southern Comfort for today. Mark, what have you chosen for us to drink? Well, something to comfort us today.

Marc Grégoire:

Should be Southern Comfort, isn't it? I don't drink Southern Comfort anymore. That was my gateway whiskey.

Mike Gorday:

If you're Southern Comfort and we drinking Southern Comfort, just pee in our glasses. Wow.

Marc Grégoire:

Today we are drinking.

Speaker 3:

Okay.

Mike Gorday:

I just had a phone.

Marc Grégoire:

I'll carry my Russell's Reserve private barrel selection. It's the Ballard Cut number five. Why isn't that over here where it belongs?

Nathan Mumm:

Well, because it was a part of my costume today.

Marc Grégoire:

Now from Russell's Reserve, they say this is hand selected by the Ballard Cut. Okay. This private barrel selection bourbon was distilled in October of 2016 before aging at the Tyrone campus in Rick House B. Cherry, vanilla, clove, caramel, cola with a medium-long finish, including nutty toffee, baking spice, pepper, and sweet oak.

Nathan Mumm:

Oh, I taste the oak.

Marc Grégoire:

This is from the Kampari Group. It was distilled by Wild Turkey in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky. It's straight bourbon. It's age eight years old, 110 proof, 75% corn, 13% rye, 12 malted barley, and it goes for about $60. Okay. Okay.

Nathan Mumm:

All right. Is it is is this a special selection from your guy that you have?

Marc Grégoire:

Yeah, this is the Ballard Cut is a whiskey bar and restaurant in Ballard, which is in uh North Seattle. Okay. And this is a barrel that they selected and distributed out to the whiskey group. All right.

Ody:

So you're telling me to just take off your top and turn over to the side to pour us this acid.

Marc Grégoire:

He doesn't need no. He doesn't need to do that.

Ody:

I was hoping it'd be direct from Mark.

Mike Gorday:

It is not. I'm sorry, Odie. I'm sorry. He is Southern Comfort. He's not Ballard selected.

Ody:

A girl can dream, okay? Okay.

Mike Gorday:

You don't want to, you wanna you don't want to see how he fills up your glass. Wow. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Well, I don't know if this is a Halloween special or soft porn now. Wow. Wow.

Nathan Mumm:

Where did that come from? That had nothing to do with it. We've been drinking a lot today. That's what that tells you.

Mike Gorday:

All right.

Marc Grégoire:

We're already off the rails, and it's only what 20-something minutes in.

Mike Gorday:

Look how you show it up, man. Look how you showed up. And Odie, Odie is Odie can't get it back together. She is she is cracked. She's gone.

Nathan Mumm:

All right. Well, do you oh you're gonna need to end your uh saying? Oh, yes. Okay.

Marc Grégoire:

Don't forget to like and subscribe. Add a comment and drink responsibly, unlike what we're doing today. Yeah. Because heaven can wait. That's right. Spark will pop.

Nathan Mumm:

Now, Mark, we're gonna try to engage more users. We have a secret sound show that we're gonna be doing or game that we're gonna be doing. So we got a secret sound, so everybody's gonna have to listen in here because I want you guys all to guess. No one's gonna get it. As each week we extend one more second onto the sound, we will allow people to submit these online at techtime radio.com. Underneath our talk back area, they put their username and tell us what the answer is, and we'll take the top 10 selections. And if anybody wins, then that's great. And if not, then we'll continue on next week. Okay. All right, there you go. Exciting game. All right. With our first whiskey tasting completed, let's move on to our feature segment. Today, our technology expert Nick Espinoza is joining the show. Nick is an expert in cybersecurity and network infrastructure. He's consulted with clients ranging from small business to the Fortune 100 level. In 1998, at the age of 19, Nick founded Wendy City Networks, which was later acquired in 2015, and he then created Security Fanatics, where he is the chief security fanatic. We welcome Nick to the show.

Announcer:

Welcome to the segment we call Ask the Experts with our Tech Time Radio expert, Nick Espinoza.

Nathan Mumm:

All right, Nick, welcome back to the show. Hi, Nick. All right, look Nick is coming to us from a new bunker. So he he he he's in the process of uh uh uh leaving maybe the United States to move to a different country. Is that right?

Nick Espinosa:

I I am I'm going to parts unknown. Although I will say, Mark, I do believe you were in my nightmares last night chasing me on the street. So that's a new costume, by the way.

Mike Gorday:

Did I catch you? Hopefully you stop. Oh, wow.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, alrighty. Well, welcome to the show. That's not disturbing. Tell us a little bit about yourself for any of our new listeners.

Nick Espinosa:

Sure, sure. I'm uh, as you mentioned, I'm the chief security fanatic of security fanatics. Uh, we do all things for security, cyber warfare, cyber terrorism, etc. And uh it's always happy to hang out with you guys. And uh today I am not rocking Kentucky whiskey, I am rocking Scotch. I got my O-Bon here. So uh, so uh I'm joining in the fun for Halloween.

Nathan Mumm:

All right, fantastic. This is our scary episode on Tech Time Radio. We do this every year. Uh, Nick has been a part of this every year. So he comes on in and we have Nick talk about all of his scary information uh that we have. We have so much to do today. It's gonna be so great. You know what? And then Mike drinks a lot. And he and Mike drinks, and at the end of the show, then he says, What the heck am I doing? But you know what? Let's start off a little bit slow. We don't want to get too engaged here. So we're gonna just talk about, you know, the uh economy numbers just came on out last week. So, you know, the economy is there's a little bit of inflation that's happening. But I'm kind of curious on how the dark web economy is doing. You know, there's different things that are available on the dark web for sale. Nick, can you tell me a little bit about how is the dark web economy doing currently right now?

Nick Espinosa:

Oh, so the uh that that's actually kind of fun. So let's go through some of the numbers here because uh quite frankly, it's gonna be pretty cheap to bump Nathan off and uh take his place when I uh make that move in a month or two, not that I'm planning that. But let's let's talk about this because if I want to hire a contract killer without any kind of upsell, just get rid of Nathan, it's gonna cost me $15,000 now in the dark web, which isn't that bad. And of course, I'm gonna need to dispose of Nathan. So think breaking bad season one, you know, we'll we'll put you in the bathtub and chemical you up. That's only five thousand dollars more. So for 20 grand, I can get rid of you, lose the body, and I'll be the new host.

Mike Gorday:

That's like a blue light special.

Nathan Mumm:

Just think of that.

Mike Gorday:

You can take out all the people that we're gonna, we're gonna we're gonna eliminate you and put a put a an AI sex bot in your place.

Speaker 3:

There you go.

Nick Espinosa:

There you go. There you go. That that that is that is the other nightmare I had the other week for the record, was the Nathan AI sex bot.

Speaker 3:

Okay.

Nick Espinosa:

So with with that, of course. I mean, if we're gonna be in the dark webs and you know, we're gonna be morning native and we're gonna have to have some hard drugs. I mean, who wants weak drugs, right? And so these are actually kind of down in price right now. Uh and basically import tax issues are causing the cost to be lower. Not to mention the fact if you're fishing in, you know, basically the southern Caribbean right now, you might get blown out of the water, whether you're a speedboat full of drugs or just hanging out. So, kids, if you're gonna go get into narcotics, you know, if you're gonna get in narcotics, kids, it's never been cheaper right now, but obviously don't do drugs. So let's get specific. Let's get specific here. You want some good Colombian bam bam, it's basically five to 40 bucks per rock right now, all right. You know, so not bad. 50 to 150 per gram. So that's actually pretty good, uh, you know, in one knot. On top of it, uh, heroin is about $30 to 200 per gram, depending on purity. Angel Duster, PCP, you know, if you're a biker, tells Angels I'm looking at you. Basically, five to thirty bucks a tablet, you know. So it's not bad. And to quote the quote the dark web directly, these are at some of the all-time lows for some short-term highs.

Mike Gorday:

So that is that is a tagline right there. See? Yes, that's better. That's better than yours.

Nathan Mumm:

You like Nick's tagline on that?

Mike Gorday:

I like Nick's tagline. All right, well, you know what?

Nathan Mumm:

Nick, so I'm glad we're starting out a little slow here.

Mike Gorday:

You know, it's good to know that the dark web is booming right now.

Nick Espinosa:

That's right. Well, yeah, it's it's crazy down there, but hey, you know, it's uh, you know, if anybody needs links, you know where to find me. Don't do those kids.

Nathan Mumm:

Now, you know what? We've been a little bit on this uh episode, a little bit more PG 13. So speaking about PG 13, let's move on to our next topic. You know, ChatGPT now is becoming a new sexting tool. Can you explain a little bit more about this?

Mike Gorday:

Suzanne Summers.

Nick Espinosa:

Yeah, yeah. So uh, I mean, the real thing is, are you ready now, Nathan, to get your freak on with Chat GPT? Not just Suzanne Summers, but we can have Chat GPT probably be Suzanne Summers at this point as well. So I'm personally not, you know, I think I'm not really interested in sexing with Chat GPT, but here we go. Quite frankly, my AI wife and six kids I have on anthropic would be pissed. But here's what we're actually talking about here. Because in a in a post on X, aka formerly Twitter this past Tuesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Holtman said that basically they're gonna add support for mature conversations. When they start adding their age gating or age verification in December. And Altman wrote, and I quote, as we roll out age gating more fully and as part of our treat adults like adults principle, we will allow even more like erotica for verified adults. So I think honestly, and and you know, Mike, I think you're gonna be one that can probably speak to this better, but I think there's some good and some bad here. I mean, so if I'm thinking about the good, I mean, maybe it's safe exploration of naughty topics without harming anybody, maybe it's mitigating loneliness. But I think there are probably more downsides to this, not to mention the fact we've already seen emotional dependency on AI, just regular AI. Like you could literally go get an AI girlfriend. I think there might be issues with desensitization and isolation and all of that, maybe some psychological distortion. But Mike, what do you think on that? Because you you know better than anybody here. Not that you're doing it.

Mike Gorday:

Yeah, yeah. No, the the the upsides are definitely uh completely blown away by the downsides. The downsides are are are very big. Okay. You know, um, because you've mentioned it, it increases isolation, it uh actually increases depression rates of depression, it um keeps us from engaging uh in healthy, fruitful relationships with other human beings. There are a lot of lot of problems with this type of technology being used for emotional support.

Ody:

So you're telling me Joaquin Phoenix portrayal did not do anything accurate at all?

Mike Gorday:

You mean her?

Ody:

Yeah. He was happy there. Yeah, okay, so telling me that's not reality?

Mike Gorday:

That is not that's not reality. That's not reality. We we the fact that we can do that with with just a voice on a computer shows you how insta in how unstable human psychology can be, because we can take that and and create a pair relationship with it and uh seek intimacy through something that has no ability to empathize with us.

Nathan Mumm:

Wow. Okay, well, Nick, you know what? Let's let's continue on because we got we're we're building up.

Mike Gorday:

Yeah, let's let's talk about more scary stuff, Nick.

Nathan Mumm:

All right, so satellites are linking are leaking tons of data, including military uh data, military locations, information across our world. Explain to me and our listeners what is going on here.

Nick Espinosa:

Yeah, yeah. So this this one is seriously amazing to me. About half of geostationary satellite signals, many of these are carrying, like you mentioned, they're carrying sensitive information for consumers, for corporations, even government communications, have basically been left entirely vulnerable to eavesdropping. And so a team of researchers at UC San Diego and the University of Maryland basically revealed this on an October 13th study, and they found a ton of encrypted data just floating around in space. Probably your data too. Uh so here's some of the stuff they found. If you're on T Mobile's cellular network, they found calls and text messages that they could eavesdrop on uh data from airline passengers in flight. So you're on that American United, Delta, whatever flight, and you're using the in-flight wireless. I'm not just worried now about the passengers. That's going back and forth, sometimes unencrypted. On top of it, we've got communications to and from critical infrastructure like electric, electric utilities, offshore oil and gas platforms. And they even picked up basically satellite transmissions that they could decode from both the US and Mexican militaries that basically were talking about locations of personnel, equipment, facilities. So it ain't good. And and to be fair, they did put this out in some, like T-Mobile have started, you know, hardening their infrastructure, but you know, not a week goes by where T-Mobile doesn't have some kind of breach. Um, so I think this is absolutely nuts, but this is just a snapshot of a small part of Southern California sky, and these satellites are literally all over the globe. So you can imagine the amount of data that's out there. That's absolutely insane.

Nathan Mumm:

Well, you know, speaking of surveillance, you know. No, no, no. Well, it gets worse. He's gonna add to that. Nathan wouldn't care because he gets a free TV. I get a free TV on my free TV. I know we'll have to talk, Nick, about it. Okay, so still speaking on surveillance, let's talk about this. Let's now also add an Amazon. Yeah, they would now have integrated their ring doorbell system. I'm sure everybody's familiar with that. You see commercials for this into the U.S. surveillance state software. Explain how the satellite stuff and now ring with Amazon for footage and different aspects for the government to control.

Nick Espinosa:

You get that name? Yeah, so yeah, yeah. Sorry, you guys are breaking up on me just a little bit. But yeah, let's talk about this one. And I want to start with my default mantra here, which is cybersecurity is agnostic to politics, but we're not immune from it. And Amazon just keeps ringing that bell every day. So, yeah, I mean, think basically through Amazon Ring, allowing Flock, this AI camera system that law enforcement has access to, uh, they're gonna allow that to basically combine. Flock is a maker of an AI-powered surveillance camera system. They share footage with law enforcement, and agencies that use Flock can soon request that Ring doorbell users share their footage to help with evidence collection, investigative work, et cetera, et cetera. And if you didn't know, Flock's government and police customers can make natural language searches of their video footage to find people who match specific descriptions. And the kicker of the whole thing is basically on the same day that Ring announced this partnership with Flock, the 404 uh media reported that ICE, the immigration customs enforcement and the Secret Service, as well as the Navy, had access to basically Flock's network of cameras. And so by partnering with Ring, Flock could potentially be giving access to millions of more footage and millions of more cameras to basically ICE, the Secret Service, and the Navy as well. And Ring has a terrible, terrible track record uh basically of anti-privacy, of surveillance. They were caught basically allowing thousands of uh you know employees across the world access American footage. One of their, I think it was a vice president, was caught just going into his like ex's uh, you know, ring doorbell to see who was coming and going from her house. I mean, they intentionally were unencrypting it so it'd be easier to dynamine and sell. It's it's a whole mess. And I am not a fan at all of ring doorbell. And so if you've got a ring doorbell, you can potentially be be become part of this much larger surveillance state that obviously ICE and all of the others are using right now. So again, we're agnostic to politics here, but we're definitely not immune from it. I think it's absolutely crazy. How Orwellian is that Orwellian indeed.

Mike Gorday:

Orwellian, yeah. That means uh in like 1984. Yeah, remember that? Yeah, big brother. Yep.

Nathan Mumm:

So so we have satellites with unencrypted data while I'm flying on my plane. My ring doorbell back to the my ring doorbell that I have so that everybody comes on in here and now tracks everything that's going on in in my personal life to and from the doors. Um, so you so you know what? I you know what? I I think uh we may have to be like Mike today. You know, I want to be like Mike and just go and turn it all off, Mike, and so that with no worries.

Mike Gorday:

Yeah, let's just grab a bottle and go and hang out with our chat GPT stuff.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, okay, all right. Last but not least, they already came and got Mark, so that's right, Mark's gone. The Southern Comfort is being squeezed out of him right now. Now, let's talk about some bit uh or some blockchain concerns for people that are using this. So you may have a Bitcoin, you may have Litecoin, you may use different blockchain technologies to transfer your information for security purposes and encryption and back and forth. What is going on with blockchain for those that are maybe dipping into this space, Nick? What should they be worried about?

Nick Espinosa:

Yeah, yeah. So this one actually, I mean, honestly, you gotta love innovation, right? Even if it's malicious. But hacking groups have found basically a new and incredibly inexpensive way to distribute malware, and they're basically using blockchains, public cryptocurrency blockchains. And so basically, in a recent post, members at Google's uh threat intelligence group said that basically they have a technique that they've discovered where these hackers are using or creating basically their own what are known as bulletproof hosts. Now, a bulletproof host is basically just a cloud platform that uh is essentially immune from takedowns by law enforcement, et cetera, et cetera. And so here's the nuts and bolts of what's happening. And so, heads up, crypto traders. Um, this method is known as ether hiding. Essentially, what it does is it embeds malware into smart contracts, which are essentially apps reside on blockchains for Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies. And so two or more parties then enter into this agreement spelled out in the contract. And when certain conditions are met, the apps basically enforce the terms in a way that at least theoretically is immutable and independent of any central authority. And so there's a wide array of advantages to basically ether hiding over more traditional means of delivering malware because the decentralization of a blockchain prevents takedowns of these malicious contracts because there are mechanisms built into the blockchains that prevent the removal of that kind of stuff. Transactions on Ethereum are effectively anonymous, so it's really good at hiding your identity if you're a criminal jerk. Uh, retrieval of malware from contracts leaves no trace in any kind of like event log. So forensically, it's hard to find. So it's great for stealth. And you can update malicious payloads at any time. And again, you've got all of this anonymity, and it's dirt cheap too. It costs basically less than $2 US per transaction on the blockchain here, which is a huge savings in terms of basically trying to spin up, you know, servers and infrastructure or take it over at like a bulletproof host. And so this is, I think, gonna be the future of delivery of a lot of malware, and the blockchain really lends itself to that anonymity and security that essentially ensures the malware can never go away. So it's absolutely nuts.

Nathan Mumm:

All right. Well, you know, Nick, we want to thank you so much for being a part of the Halloween special. Uh, we're gonna tell listeners how can they connect with you before we close out the show? Where what's the best way to reach you?

Nick Espinosa:

Yeah, yeah. You can find me on LinkedIn at slash Nick Espinoza, or you can follow me on you know Twitter, Blue Sky, which is still a thing, and and all of the others at uh at Nick A E S P. Or you can see my ideal YouTube videos on slash Nick Espinoza. Thanks for and thanks for hanging out. I always appreciate it.

Mike Gorday:

Hey Nick, see you later. You're always the best guy and never want to hear from.

Nick Espinosa:

This is why we drink, Mike. This is why we drink.

Nathan Mumm:

All right, well, that ends our segment. Ask the expert with Nick. Up now we have Mike's mesmerizing moment.

Announcer:

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

Nathan Mumm:

All right, Mike, let me tell you, what of these stories scares you the most? So we just had Nick on. What is gonna be the most?

Mike Gorday:

Uh I don't know if any of them scare me anymore. They just they just exist. But uh what what is the concerning ones that concern me?

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah.

Mike Gorday:

Oh, every one of them. Every one of them? Yeah. Okay. We can't we are getting to where we can't we can't do anything without being monitored by something.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay.

Mike Gorday:

Right? We can't we can't walk out of our house, we can't walk next to uh a parking lot, we can't uh You're on camera. We're on camera all the time. Now we have interactions with uh fake AI that can you know mimic human stuff, and which I've said before, if we're going to apply human stuff to uh AI is uh technically psychopathic because it has no ability to be empathetic. Okay. Right? So we're we are harming ourselves. Yeah, so just about everything, huh? Uh just about everything, yeah. I I I you know how much I I wonder why I do this show, because uh all these AI uh it just to be clear, it's never the it's never the technology that concerns me the most. Okay. It's how people use the technology.

Nathan Mumm:

That makes sense.

Mike Gorday:

Okay. So when I go off on these these huge tangents about how crazy this is, this isn't because the technology exists, it's because the people who created it the created it for these these uh specific purposes, and we don't understand what we're doing.

Marc Grégoire:

That makes sense.

Mike Gorday:

And when we don't understand what we're doing, we tend to abuse it. That's true.

Nathan Mumm:

So you can make an AI doll. There you go. Well, thank you for that mesmerizing moment.

Mike Gorday:

I don't uh are there gonna be Suzanne Summers uh ads, you know, bots of bots available for people to buy.

Nathan Mumm:

They all look identical, just like I don't know.

Mike Gorday:

That would that I think that's probably the next step.

Nathan Mumm:

All right. Well, we have up next we have this week in technology, so now would be a great time to enjoy a little whiskey on the side as we're gonna be doing so during the break. You're listening to Tech Time Radio with Nathan Mum. See you in 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.

Mike Gorday:

If you like our show, if you really like us, you could use your support on patreon.com. Or is it Patreon? I think it's Patreon. Okay, Patreon. If you really like us, you can say I'm English guy?

Nathan Mumm:

Patreon.com. I butcher the English language? You know you butcher the English language. Okay, so it's all the team. It's patreon.com.

Mike Gorday:

Patreon.com. If you really like if you really like our show, you can subscribe to patreon.com and help us out.

Nathan Mumm:

All right, and you can visit us on that Facebook platform. You know the one that Zuckerberg owns?

Mike Gorday:

The one that we always bag on?

Nathan Mumm:

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

Mike Gorday:

Like and subscribe to our social media.

Nathan Mumm:

Like us today. We need you to like us.

Mike Gorday:

Like us and subscribe. That's it.

Nathan Mumm:

That's it. That's that simple.

Announcer:

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

Nathan Mumm:

Arrr. It was a dark night in October, the 27th of the year 1980. Something eerie began to creep through the ARPNE, the ancestor of today's internet. There wasn't just any network at that time. The ARPNET was a government-built system that lets computers talk to each other by breaking messages into tiny packets and sending them across the country like a digital puzzle piece that was designed to survive disasters. But this night it met one. Suddenly the network's vital nodes called IMP started dropping like vibes. Phones rang off the hook. At the network control center, engineers reported ghostly error messages and broken connections. A rogue software process awakened by a freak hardware glitch, beginning to devour the system resources like a zombie with an endless appetite. It flooded the network with a malformed routine update, a message meant to guide traffic, but instead led it into chaos. Evenly freshly rebooted machines were infected at the moment they rejoined the haunted net. The IMPs could only keep their lines up so long before they could say hello to each other. Essentially, this was a uh fix was really simple, but it was really scary at the time to think of this digital nightmare revealed a chilling truth. Even the most reliant systems can unravel in an unexpected strike. And at the time the haunted October day, the ARPNET showed us that the internet can go down and can cause problems. All right, we're gonna head out now. But this is this week in technology. We want to watch some tech time history. We have 270 plus weekly broadcasts spanning five plus years of pod broadcasts and information. You can always visit us at techtime radio.com to watch our older show. We're gonna take a commercial break. When we return, we have Mark Mumble's whiskey review. See you after the break.

Mike Gorday:

How to see a man about a dog. It combines comics, short stories, powerful poems, and pulp fiction pros 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 Book Pository, and more.

Announcer:

The segment we've been waiting all week for.

Nathan Mumm:

All right, Southern Company. I'm back. All right.

Marc Grégoire:

How you doing? I'm doing great on today. Just a little before Halloween. He's missing a few fingers.

Mike Gorday:

He's missing a few fingers. Was that what happened?

Nathan Mumm:

There you go. There you go. All right.

Marc Grégoire:

You can just stroke it.

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah, stop playing with that, Mark. What are we celebrating pork in control? You know what? What are we celebrating? What are we celebrating today? Not Chat GPT. Uh all of the uh privacy invaded issues. No? Some hints. Oh, oh yeah, Snickers satisfies you. Some chocolate? Are we National Chocolate Day?

Marc Grégoire:

It is. It's National Chocolate Day.

Nathan Mumm:

This is a couple days before Halloween. That's a coincidence, isn't it?

Marc Grégoire:

And I can pass these down if you want to open these and break some off because I'm going to tell you why. Oh, is it a good idea? Well, let me tell you about today first.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay.

Marc Grégoire:

Today is nothing short of a special tribute to mankind's greatest culinary invention. Sorry, pizza. Chocolate reigns supreme. It can elevate the most luxurious dessert or satisfy instantly with a simple candy bar. For a truly heavenly experience, reach for chocolate with a high cacao percentage and low added sugar. The rich, complex flavor is worth it. Though let's be honest, this is probably a little too refined for Nathan's palate. That's why I brought the cheap sugar stuff.

Nathan Mumm:

You gonna bring me some real chocolate?

Marc Grégoire:

Do you like dark chocolate? I do. What?

Mike Gorday:

That's good.

Marc Grégoire:

Wow. I am surprised and pleasantly pleased. Now, nothing goes better with Russell's Reserve.

Nathan Mumm:

Oh, okay.

Speaker 3:

Continue it on. I I'm just your cork moved.

Marc Grégoire:

I did. I was a little surprised there. Just the way we do the whiskey. I thought for sure he did not like dark chocolate. But hey, Russell's Reserve, nothing goes better with this than chocolate. Snickers for the nutty kick and carmelo bar to echo that rich caramel sweetness. A perfect match for bourbon lovers. Russell's Reserve stands out for its extra long aging and hand selected barrels chosen by Jimmy and Eddie Russell. Each batch reflects their personal touch, richer, smoother, and a full of character drawn from the perfect Rick House floors. Now Russell's Reserve has always delivered with its standard shelf offering, rich, balanced, and consistently enjoyable. However, the private barrel selection takes it to a whole nother level. Anybody remember where that's from? Aneta level. Whole nother level. That's before your time.

Nathan Mumm:

Is that uh Eddie Murphy?

Marc Grégoire:

No. Other other comedy sketch show. Uh In Living Color? No. Close.

Nathan Mumm:

Mad TV? There you go, bingo. In Living Color was like the best. That was an awesome show. Firemanville. Don't, don't, don't try.

Marc Grégoire:

Now, they capture now. Russell's Reserve private barrels capture the best of what makes this bourbon special. Depth, personality, and unmistakable Russell Spice. Every private barrel I have tried has been outstanding. And if I see one on the shelf anywhere, it's absolutely worth picking up. I don't even buy the standard offering anymore. I just I just wait for the private selects. Alright. Homie don't play that.

Mike Gorday:

That's doing quotes. That's an old reference. Okay. You know who homie is? Homie the Clown? Homie the Clown. You don't know who Homie the Clown is?

Ody:

I don't know who Homie the Clown is, but I know Homie Don't Play that. I never remember the couple of things.

Nathan Mumm:

You need to Google that. Wow.

Ody:

Oh well, the young girl doesn't know what the old thing is.

Marc Grégoire:

How was the whiskey before, and then how is it with the chocolate?

Nathan Mumm:

Oh, with the chocolate is A plus thumbs up. But before that, it was thumbs up too. Yeah, you saw him eat the chocolate and then slam the drink. That was fantastic. That's what you should. I should be doing that every single time I have whiskey. What slam in it? No, I have chocolate, yeah. That should be, I should add that.

Mike Gorday:

Yeah, because that's what you need.

Nathan Mumm:

You know, you need more chocolate in your life.

Mike Gorday:

Carmelo over here. I want to. All right.

Nathan Mumm:

Whiskey and technology are such a great pairing, like Scooby-Doo and the ghost hunting group from the Mystery Incorporated. Really? Did you need to explain that? Yes. Let's prepare now for Scooby-Doo and the Mystery Machine. Yeah, let's prepare for our technology fail. The week brought to you by Elite Executive Services. This technology fail. As a person that experienced it, started now. Congratulations. You're a failure.

Announcer:

Oh, I failed. Did I? Yes. Did I? Yes.

Nathan Mumm:

What's going on? This technology fail comes to us from Alaska Airlines. As we had an experience of an outage by one of our independent people. Can we skip this story? No. Mark, tell us a little bit about what happened to Alaska Airlines last week as a nationwide grounding stopped due to a technical outage. Now, you last week you were actually at the airport, right? I was. Explain this to everybody, all the listeners.

Marc Grégoire:

Oh my goodness. Well, I'll take tell you the short story because it goes on almost 24 hours. Okay. Oh, 24 hours on an outage.

Nathan Mumm:

An IT outage.

Marc Grégoire:

Well, well, not for the IT outage wasn't 24 hours, but by the time when I was supposed to leave, by the time I finally got home, it was about 24 hours. Oh my word. Tell me what happened. So basically, we're sitting on the plane. We were just about to pull back. Everybody was there. Doors were locked, and all of a sudden they said they had an IT outage on one of their systems. I believe it was the weight and balance system where they need that data before taking off, how the plane, how much fuel, all that kind of calculations. Because nobody does that by hand anymore. And uh it just went down. So we missed getting out by about five to ten minutes. Five to ten minutes. So we sat on the plane for a few hours because they didn't know whether it's a five minute, you know. IT, they always the big thing they kept saying at the airport is, well, we don't know how long it's gonna take. We don't have to submit that ticket. Yeah, it's not like uh a broken. Hello, can I help you? Yeah, yeah. Every time I've been on a plane, they always have an estimate how long it takes. It's like if something's broken on the plane, it's they have it all stats. But IT, as we know, it could be five minutes, it could be a day, who knows?

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, so you still have to get it.

Marc Grégoire:

So finally they let some of us get off if we wanted. I decided to get off, get something to eat. Okay. They finally deboarded the rest of the plane. We all waited there. Finally, they said they think they have the system fixed. That was about four hours later. And then this is grounded not just where I was in Arizona, but this grounded every nationwide Alaska Airlines in Horizon, too, because they're on the same system. We got back on the plane, they said it's good to go. Everybody's back, they shut the door, about to pull back, and they're like, Oh, a subsystem just went down.

Nathan Mumm:

Oh no.

Marc Grégoire:

So we gotta get that up. So then they had more sex, and then just about we're about to pull down, it hits uh, I think it was like five, six hours later. Yep. The pilot's time had run out. So they're they have strict times they can fly, and so that crew could no longer fly, and so canceled the flight.

Mike Gorday:

Yeah, that happened that happened to me back in 2022. And then the next two.

Marc Grégoire:

Yeah, the next day is just a mess. I got rebooked on the next day, 8 a.m. went to spend a night at a hotel, come back to take off, and that flight got canceled.

Nathan Mumm:

Oh, whoa, okay. Why was that? Because it still wasn't up and running?

Marc Grégoire:

No, it was up and running, but they were trying to add flights. Um, I think a lot of it had to do crews weren't weren't in the right place for the next day. Because just, you know, with every flight being canceled, they couldn't get every flight back in the air the next day, also, because not just because crews couldn't make it, they weren't in the right locations and they had too much capacity. Okay. Um to it on the airline. So that got so finally ended up transferring to Delta and uh taking off a little later that day.

Nathan Mumm:

They said over almost 50,000 passengers had their travel plans disrupted. You were one of those 500. I was one of those. All right. Well, I guess this tells you uh Alaska Airlines needs to update their entire IT infrastructure. Well, they did come on out saying it was not a cyber attack and it did not have any problems with Hawaiian Airlines. So I guess if you were flying with them, you would have been fine. But the equipment manufactured by a third-party supplier was installed in the data center and it failed. Yeah, it's not their fault. It was that they bought a piece of hardware that was installed in the data center. So they don't want to do it.

Marc Grégoire:

What are they doing installing it in the middle of the day? Well, I I see this is the whole past of it in the middle of the night when nothing's flying.

Mike Gorday:

It's bad IT. Bad IT. That's well, maybe they just don't operate in that time. But it looks like it didn't affect your sanity at all.

Marc Grégoire:

Well, I I I was happy. I got to drive in a Waymo.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay. How was the Waymo? Oh, it was awesome. Okay, you had a great time with that.

Marc Grégoire:

I had a great time with the Waymo.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, did you go that couple times in the Waymo, like there and back?

Marc Grégoire:

No, I just did one Waymo. Okay. Did you spin around a parking lot for an hour? I did not. Oh, that's too good. I was looking forward to something crazy like that, but no, it drove nicely. It was uh better than most of the drivers I had. It was clean, nobody talked to me. I didn't have to tip. And it was a cheaper ride. They knocked a few bucks off because it was because of that.

Mike Gorday:

Okay, now you're starting to sell me on the Waymo thing.

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah, you don't have to talk to anybody.

Mike Gorday:

I don't have to talk to anybody on the ride to leave a tip.

Nathan Mumm:

All right. Well, you know what? Let's now move into our Nathan Nugget.

Announcer:

This is your Nugget of the week.

Nathan Mumm:

All right. Do you have a you know what? You got a Snicker bar right here, right? You need to keep this Snicker bar right next to your passenger seat because if you're driving and you get pulled over with your cell phone as a distracted driver, which you shouldn't do, it seems to be that if you say that you are eating a candy bar, this happened to a 30-year-old who was stopped by local police holding his phone while driving. He received a fixed penalty, but he did not pay it. He decided to appear in court and say that he was having a candy wrapper and that it was not an actual phone. The judge decided to dismiss that since they had no evidence. And he did have the uh candy wrapper shown to the police and got off that ticket. So, you know what? With all your your candy for Halloween, save those wrappers, put them in your uh passenger seat. Are you driving? You can then say that you were just having a candy bar.

Mike Gorday:

Okay, I wouldn't rely on too much of that because you can still get pinged for distracted driving for having food.

Marc Grégoire:

Do we have to make a disclaimer this is not legal advice?

Mike Gorday:

That's not legal advice.

Nathan Mumm:

I'm not a lawyer. This is a Halloween episode, so probably please don't do that.

Mike Gorday:

Nathan, Nathan.

Nathan Mumm:

He did say that he was using a Mars bar, though. So I mean that was pretty good. I mean, he was very specific on what he was having for candy.

Mike Gorday:

Is that is that necessary? Do you like Mars Bar? That that has no bearing on the story at all.

Nathan Mumm:

Well, yes, it does. He said he was eating a Mars bar at the time. Okay, okay, for one, for one, all right.

Mike Gorday:

This guy hired a lawyer to go and talk about a traffic fine.

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah.

Mike Gorday:

And to convince a judge that he was eating a candy bar.

Nathan Mumm:

Yes.

Mike Gorday:

Is that an adequate or an appropriate response to getting a ticket for holding your phone?

Nathan Mumm:

No, you should just do what Nathan does and just pay the ticket immediately. Go online and just pay it. Just pay for the ticket. You caught me.

Mike Gorday:

Or better yet, stop using your phone while you're driving. That's a good idea.

Nathan Mumm:

But you know, that's never gonna happen. That's a good idea. You know what? Now let's move to our pick of the day whiskey tasting.

Announcer:

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

Nathan Mumm:

All right. What do we have here, Mr. Southern Comfort?

Marc Grégoire:

We are drinking Russell's Reserve Private Barrel Selection, the Ballard Cut number five. So it's an eight-year straight bourbon from Wild Turkey. 110 proof, $60.

Nathan Mumm:

I'm giving it a thumbs up and one hookup.

Mike Gorday:

Okay, whatever. You sound like a freaking hound dog laying on the porch. What'd you say, Mike? Uh, I didn't say that. Are you gonna give it a thumbs up? Uh, yeah, I'm gonna give it a thumbs up because it tastes good with or without the chocolate. Okay, well, there you go. These are always delicious.

Nathan Mumm:

All right, well, you know what? We're just about out of time. We want to thank our listeners for joining the program. Listeners who want to hear from you, visit techtime radio.com. Click on the beat a caller, because right now we are gonna do our secret sound of the day. Are you ready for this, Odie? Here we go. Our secret sound.

Announcer:

And now for our secret sound, brought to us by Elite Executive Services. Visit Techtimeradio.com and click on the contact page to submit your answer. Odie, play that sound.

Nathan Mumm:

All right, did everybody hear that sound? Do you think you know what that is? Oh, that's what you have to do.

Marc Grégoire:

You have to submit what it is.

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah, you need to go visit us online at techtime radio.com. Click on the contact page, and the top ten people, the first ten people that go to the page. Type in you have to type in your name, you have to type in your email. Say what that sound is. If you get it right, we will announce it on next week's show. If you don't get it right, we'll tell you all 10 guesses that the people do, and then we will continue another second more of that sound.

Marc Grégoire:

Do I get it? I have no idea. I wasn't part of this. Do I get to say a hint?

Nathan Mumm:

Sure. Why don't you what's a hint? No, what's your Chris?

Marc Grégoire:

I would put down a pinball machine. Oh, okay.

Mike Gorday:

Okay. All right. What would you put, Mike? I was gonna say pinball machine, but I didn't know we were guessing because this is a this is for the listeners.

Nathan Mumm:

Listeners, uh Odie, what do you think it is?

Ody:

I would also say a pinball machine.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, you know what? I would say our you guys are not even close yet, but thank you for your guess. Okay. All right, there you go. So that should help everybody know that it is not a pinball machine. So there you go. You need to be specific on what it is, and once you choose that, you'll winner. All right. You know what? We're out of time. We want to thank our listeners for being a part of the show. You can always talk to us at our radio information at techtime radio.com and click on our BR collar. Remember, the science of tomorrow starts with the technology of today. Our see you next week. Later. Bye-bye.

Announcer:

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 techtime 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.

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Nathan Mumm

Host
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Mike Gorday

Co-host
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Nick Espinosa

Guest