Dean Nelson visits Texas and brings back a special gift. This week we're discussing China's Covid data creep, Amazon's plans to censor certain AWS customers, we check in on Steve Mullaney at Aviatrix, a 77-atom AI molecule, and Nasa's big UFO plans.
Dean Nelson visits Texas and brings back a special gift. This week we're discussing China's Covid data creep, Amazon's plans to censor certain AWS customers, we check in on Steve Mullaney at Aviatrix, a 77-atom AI molecule, and Nasa's big UFO plans.
It's The Next Wave Podcast, episode 47. I'm James Thomason here with co host, Dean Nelson and Brad Kirby. And this week, we're bringing you the latest and big tech with Amazon and a whole lot to talk about with apple plus China COVID. To artificial intelligence. But before we do any of that, we have to talk about Dean Nelson, who received a very special gift on his trip to Texas Dean, what did Texas give you?
Dean Nelson:I did my travel and I decided that it was important for me to get COVID Okay, no, I contracted COVID. On the trip,
James Thomason:You contracted COVID on a trip. So your were you at a convention or like with a bunch of people or you just got on the plane? Or what do you think happen?
Dean Nelson:Okay, so it's been 18 months, and I've been really good. And I went to this, I gotten the vaccination. So I'm fully vaccinated. And I went to the conference, because they wanted me to do a keynote. So this is DCAC, in Austin, and I was nervous about it. And I had gone to dinner with some folks on Monday. Then I flew out on Tuesday, and then went to dinner with folks on Tuesday night, then the conference started, had some other meetings on Wednesday, but then they had kind of the VIP meeting or event on the evening. And then they had the full conference on Thursday, and I was keynoting. So I opened that up. And boy, I'd say it felt so good. To be back with people. I bet. I can't tell you how, how much I missed being on stage. And telling a story. As simple as that I stood up, there's five or 600 people that they were attending, you know, and I knew a lot of them. It's just it's just a small community and digital infrastructure. And, and so I'm up there, I'm giving the presentation. So you know, Joe Kava and Peter gross and Bill Kleyman. And you know, all these people are together. And after my keynote that we did a panel. So and Peter and myself are on and they're talking about trends and features for data centers and infrastructure. And then Bill claim, he got up and he did another panel with the old people. Then I met with a few other executives went to dinner with another executive, then I spent Friday doing more meetings, but all out of the hotel. So I thought, Okay, I'm gonna fly back home, feeling great, worked a lot was a lot of hours. But I flew back home, got the rapid test, went into the house, went in through the garage, you know, right into the room just to do the test versus I do this every time when I'm traveling, just to be safe, did the rapid test, and it was positive, solid, positive. And really,
James Thomason:I'm like, I felt fine. You didn't have any symptoms, you felt you felt fine.
Dean Nelson:No symptoms. And so I thought, oh, okay, so maybe it's a false positive, because these tests aren't really as accurate, right? This is the Abbott Labs, remember? So the Okay, then I scheduled the PCR test for the next day went and got that thing done, right. It's it end up being the same swab that I did, they did, but they had more accurate tests, apparently, because my was done in 15 minutes. And so I had quarantine downstairs, and then I did that test. And then that evening, I started getting symptoms, and that was the fever, and then the cough and the other things. And then it knocked me down for a while, right. And I ended up sleeping for 13 hours and this kind of thing. And you know, it hits and then that was Sunday, and then Monday, I got the PCR test back positive. Right, so I've been quarantining within that and but two or three days was like a really heavy cold. And so I'm a little nervous about what that is took it easy and those things just to relax and sleep a lot. But of course, when I first found that out, then I just sent messages back to all the people that I had met with. And I really wanted to triangulate how where, but everyone? And I mean, everyone that I met with, in close proximity, all tested negative.
James Thomason:Wow. So it was probably like the plane or something you touched and you know, random error realization, there's no way you'd know where you where you
Dean Nelson:got it from. Yeah, but I can't triangulate the day. And I'm pretty sure because you know, three day gestation period kind of thing. It was somewhere on Tuesday or Wednesday. So because I went back, I'm like, well, maybe I got it California, and it came back out. But I didn't write. But this is such an interesting experience. So first off, I'm just really thankful. Number one, the vaccine worked for me, I did not have serious implications on this, right. It was like having to have a cold and you work through that.
James Thomason:You know, we know that older people are at risk. And Dean Nelson is very, very old. So
Dean Nelson:I'm like England. Yeah. Well, I am 52. So I'm in that range, right. And I do have high blood pressure and all those things. So there's underlying things and that's what I was nervous about. So I went back, sent out notes to everybody. And it's so weird to go back and say, Hey, by the way, I have the plague. I just want you to know and I was with you. I hate that was terrible, you know to have to do that, especially with, you know, a meeting with customers and like industry people like just just like crap, I don't want to be that guy. But it was really glad because everybody appreciated being notified as quickly as they could. They went back and tested right and they all validated that they were okay. And a couple of things came to mind for me. One was, I haven't I got a lot of sleep. I'm working too hard. My wife, my team, everybody tells me the same thing. I have a feeling my immune system was lower to begin with. And I did have a conversation my doctor And they said, you know, fully vaccinated, you've been vaccinated for months, you might be a breakthrough case, right? And this kind of, you're not as susceptible, when you have the vaccine to get it doesn't mean you're immune. It just simply means, yeah, you can get it. And I was proof of that. And you also can transmit it to others. But the whole point here is that you will have less impact and write less potential of dying, like
James Thomason:11, illness, hospitalization or death.
Dean Nelson:And that math for me was such an important thing. And so it was great because it really solidified that the experience for me was interesting, because California has a COVID team, right? And they basically do it by phone number. So I learned a whole bunch in this. So first off, okay, I got the vaccination. Right, I still got it. I can still pass it on to other people. Luckily, didn't hit me other people. But then, I mean, I was on the airplane. Think about that. I was highly contagious on the airplane. Right? It was Friday night. I clearly had it because I tested when I got home. But luckily, you know, I wear my mask. And I have this hand sanitizer, bring with me my bag, just because I don't want to get it. Yeah, so I put the sanitizer on then I go up to the bathroom, and I put it back. So. But I thought okay, they called up and said, So where were you? And they start doing contact tracing. And this I thought, Okay, this is interesting. And James said, Sure, we're gonna get into a debate everybody else at this point, right. But But I thought, all right, so I said, Well, I was in Texas, I was at a conference like, okay, so you don't need to tell us who you're with, etc. But just, you know, now we can start to correlate things because somebody else test positive, the actual California government knows that it's associated with a phone number that you put back in. And then they can start associating phone numbers with location and other things to say, Oh, well, that was a super spreader event, or that was right, these things. Then they also said, Well, you know, what Flight were you on? I don't even think about that. I thought about the people that I was meeting with, right, but not the people. I just happen to be around. So I share my flight number, my seat information. And I thought that's really cool. Because if I was sitting next to somebody that was positive, I would want to know, so I could go test myself. You know, I mean, wow. So that contact tracing was, again, interesting and unique.
Brad Kirby:They're doing that in Canada a year ago, for about four months. And then they stopped, because there was a bunch of outbreaks happening on flights from Toronto, to Vancouver, at our peak here. And it was six rows, I think. So if you're within six rows of somebody that had had tested positive, then they would notify people, but now they don't even notify them. Yeah, it actually stepped backwards.
James Thomason:Well, once the stress tested their surveillance infrastructure, they got what they needed. And now exactly.
Dean Nelson:I've thought about all the episodes, we talked about COVID, and the whole 18 months of lockdown all the stuff we've been doing. And all of a sudden I get this and then, man, I've been I'm in day 11 of quarantine, down here in my basement, like a leper. And so Wait,
James Thomason:did they just I mean, are you getting fed? Does your family just like show up at the door and toss food in there? Like you're a cave troll or something? I mean, what's happening?
Dean Nelson:It's like, I'm a leper. So is it my wife comes down, she puts food in front of the door knocks and runs away. Right? Like,
James Thomason:Thanks, honey, you're the family secret in the basement. Now. Yeah,
Dean Nelson:I put the mask on, I go out and pull my food in love and go back to my cave. Ate My food. But there's no Erica DC down here. I'm going to complain. There's all these things, but I haven't. I haven't spent 11 days in a room downstairs in the basement ever. But
James Thomason:time to get meditation and mindfulness. Yeah, living in the present moment.
Brad Kirby:Now that we transcribe our podcast episodes, I have a dean Nelson quote from Episode 44. I feel safer here than I do in anywhere in the United States right now. Because I know there's some gate there's something requires people to say, hey, look, I tested negative, or I've had the vaccine. So this is why this has been your Hawaii. So moral of story as you should have stayed in Hawaii. I don't know. That's,
James Thomason:that's my takeaway. Things are better. Why? And I knew that.
Dean Nelson:I'm okay. Sure. All right, except we might have a false sense of security here because there was a realization With that, Brad. So thanks for bringing that up. When I went to Hawaii, I thought, okay, great. All these people are vaccinated, they're less likely to get it that other kind of stuff, right? Cool, or they've tested. But clearly, I was asymptomatic on an airplane fully vaccinated for multiple months. Right? fully vaccinated, and I was positive, which means you can go to Hawaii have the exact same thing be on the same plane, and you're in Hawaii, and now there's less likelihood because people would have vaccines or they've been tested. So they screened out people because of the test. But it now means that vaccinated people, you know, having a vaccine passport doesn't stop it. That's a really interesting, very simple, that's
James Thomason:kind of been mine. That's been my thing. The whole time is that you know, a vaccine passport is completely meaningless because it doesn't stop the spread of the virus. And it doesn't even necessarily give you meaningful data. It's like You know, it's kind of the sex offender database, like when the sex offender database was brand new, at a point in time snapshot of sex offenders in there, like 12 of them, I guess it had some value. But over the ensuing 30 years, right, I mean, you've ever pulled that thing up. It's like everyone on your block is a sex offender of some kind. I don't, you know, like getting the database is completely useless at this point, it doesn't do anything.
Brad Kirby:Sure. So can I can I give my two cents on I agree with you to an extent in that it doesn't, it's not as effective as it should be, especially with variants coming in that that really don't have the efficacy that it did against the first strains. However, my point is that effectively by having by having a vaccine, you're less likely to contract it or contract it for a period of time or lead it or for it to be as strong for to be contagious for a longer period of time, to people that are at risk, and therefore reduces the amount of potential hospitalizations, which is really what it all comes down to. Yep, that's my I know, it's not a perfect system. But if it reduces the amount of people in the ICU if it because we're 80% vaccinated, and therefore the 20% of people that aren't vaccinated, sure, they can go and get tested if they get tested, let them into places right, but
James Thomason:you Canada completely botched this. I mean, you sent us something this week about the botched vaccine passport. They did, yeah, Quebec, right? Yeah,
Brad Kirby:Quebec, implemented it at the start of the month started September. And they have this thing called a smart health card protocol. It specifically states under the trust section that anyone can issue health cards, and every verifier can make its own decision about which issuers to trust. So effectively, that's like, think about the internet like certificate authorities. That's like saying, Jimbo signs vaccines already self signed? Ca right. It's like what, like what is going on there. So and on top of that, it's just very easy to hack the QR codes. If you get into the actual nitty gritty, there was a really good article on it. And I actually used my vaccine certificate. For the first time it was on my phone on Labor Day weekend, I went to a concert, and you had to have had to have your proof of second back in vaccination, or a 48 hour negative test within and then you went to a group of 5000 people watching multiple shows. But I know for a fact that the market for copying this is quite prevalent and cheap.
James Thomason:I mean, it's 15 bucks to get you a vaccine passport, right?
Brad Kirby:Yep, that's, that's correct. That's the going rate that I heard on on Labor Day weekend. Not that I know that I have one or partake in that. It's just that was a number that was actually working for people.
Dean Nelson:So think about this. We went from the vaccines are going to help a lot. Right to the vaccines will help. But they're not the thing that's going to stop the spread, it's going to lower the amount of potential spread, because people are vaccinated. Right. But the testing of somebody is more effective than the vaccine is at at least understanding if somebody has it. So take take what you just said 5000 people in that room? Right, let's say 80% of them have the vaccination card. But they haven't been tested in Yeah, at all. Right, right. So you could have 20% of those people that have COVID, like I did, yeah. So it doesn't it's like, and I hate to say this, James. But imagine the ideal scenario is that everybody's got the vaccination. Second is that they've got current tests. And from there you go on and say, oh, yeah, I could prove I'm good, I'm clean. That right, would do it, because it would stop other people. But if the tech is not there, yeah, and people are circumventing everything with it by having fake pass, you know, passports or fake tests or whatever, then it undermines everything we're trying to accomplish. Well,
Brad Kirby:also, towards James down because of this, right, like we said, in ideal situation, if the tech worked, that's when it could be more effective, but
James Thomason:essential for abuse, you know, if you just stretch squint just a little bit, right. And you can see that this is something that can be easily abused to create all kinds of restrictions against different classes of people in society. It's something that the sub classes of people have no control over, no way to fight against. And I really, I really, in my heart of hearts, I believe that something like a vaccine passport is the straw that will break the camel's back when it comes to implementing widespread tyranny in our free society. And I you know, I don't want to sound completely hyperbolic saying something like that. But if you're a person who has studied history, you know, at any any point in time that this kind of these kind of restrictions have been put in place. People have suffered for it and freedom has suffered for it, and society is suffer for it. And I think we just have To say, collectively, no. And I'll be the first to say, this is where I draw the line. I'm vaccinated, I wore masks, I did lockdowns did all of that in the spirit of cooperation and helping my fellow man avoid the spread of a contagious disease. But I will not live in a surveillance state. And I will not live where I have to get permission to go and do the things that I do in my daily life. Because that's something we call freedom, freedom, it's about being able to go where you want, do what you want, live the way you want, without having to ask permission of government or anyone else. And I'm not going to live that way. And I mean, when I say, and you should know this. So this is part of my fear, by the way is that so when 911 happened, of course, we're at the 911 anniversary. And the TSA was formed the department Homeland Security, and they implemented all of these controls to get on aircraft, and notably, the body scanners, right. And so for 10 years, every time I went through an airport, I refuse to go through the body scanner and did the manual TSA fill me up search. And usually, initially, there were like, hundreds of people with me, there'd be a long line of people like I'm not, you're not going to X ray me is like my body as I go through this thing. And we we had a small victory, and that they took out the millimeter wave stuff, or I'm sorry, they took out the the X ray stuff and just stuck with the millimeter wave, which is an improvement. And for people to travel like myself, that's a lot of X getting X ray, you know, to go get on a plane. But my main problem with it is that it really added nothing to security, it's just security theater. It's just a way for additional controls to be put into place that restrict people from being able to travel. And so for 10 years, and you guys know me, I flight between 150 and 500,000 miles a year, during that 10 years was a very painful thing to do. But you know, by the end of the 10 years, I was the only guy who would opt out of the body scanner and go through this thing. So there was there was literally no point that and so I have a fear of that now that if we don't stand a push back on this, this could become the norm. And once it is the norm, then it's a really insidious thing that can be abused in a myriad of ways that are even even difficult to detect partial victories like the UK, the news this week, as the UK has rolled back his vaccine password, they're not going to do it or not. I don't if you're paying attention to that. It's the rallies in France. And what's happening across Europe, in rejection of the vaccine passports. And even in Canada. There was a huge protests yesterday in BC in Vancouver. So I'm hopeful that we can collectively push back against this and avoid Yeah, totalitarian society.
Brad Kirby:So here's, here's my view, I agree with what you're saying in terms of its like the abuse of power and not being able to roll it back. Right. But in terms of if we just isolated to vaccines and like, think about when your child or even your own children, like for them to go to school, they have to be immunized, right, against multiple things, those are vaccines, then they have a car, they have to go to school. Otherwise they can go. Now that's only school. That's not to go into like every single thing that they go and see. Which is a little bit excessive.
James Thomason:A grocery store a restaurant a drug. Yeah,
Brad Kirby:exactly. And in my opinion, there could be a medium where there is a hard stop temporary measure in place that automatically gets rolled back like it has it cannot last past a certain number of and it's only when there's a spike in the numbers literally just to prevent the number of hospitalizations. And that's like that number is defined. And therefore after that it is no longer something that can legally be implemented. Because I think I think there's good intentions with what they're trying to do. But what you're saying is definitely accurate and that it will get abused and countries for sure.
James Thomason:And this leads to one of our first big stories, right, in China, which moving on to big government, we like to cover big government on this show. It's about function Korea, right. And China's COVID data and surveillance trying to initially use big data to trace and control the outbreak of COVID-19, which involved a significant amount of infrastructure and new technologies to expand. It's already huge surveillance state and infrastructure across the country. But now there's function creep, right? They're starting to use this surveillance infrastructure for for more and more, isn't that right?
Dean Nelson:Yeah, Brad, is this the one you're looking at? Yeah, they
Brad Kirby:definitely are. So effectively, I mean, this isn't a surprise at all right? Like, if you look at China, they're constantly trying to more and more, monitor and collect information like just to go back to the gaming announcements last like the facial recognition of, of minors and the impact that it had there, because they're not focusing on profit. They're focusing on digital wellbeing, trying to parent every child in their country. That is definitely always been the case in China. So it's certainly a case there. No question. Yeah, they
Dean Nelson:are the example if you think about it have kind of really taken it to that far edge. So for example, in this this example, they had every night Chinese citizens receive a QR code on their mobile phone. That's right. It's called health code. And the code requires users to upload that personal information to a special app, right to verify their identity. their national ID number in the biometric selfie. All right, along with their body temp and COVID symptoms and their recent travel history. So that's exactly what I think. James, you're saying we don't want to get too because then it's a police state of just they can, it can be abused in a huge way. I mean, the intent
James Thomason:of it is good to hell is paved with good intentions.
Dean Nelson:Exactly, exactly. But it assesses all those people. I mean, we've talked about this this tech contact tracing across this last 18 months on boy wouldn't it be great if we could do that? Remember, we had the meter that could sense cough with somebody had a certain cough that was gonna get a
Brad Kirby:hand washing tire in workplaces, and they actually didn't implement it now.
James Thomason:We've had a lot of good ideas smell you smell me? Smell? Yeah, that's still licensable intellectual property, by the way.
Brad Kirby:Incredible guests on to write with, implemented literally, potentially life saving.
Dean Nelson:Yeah, no, I forgot what that was the one that was they'd shifted to the temperature and other things. They could now do 40,000 things on the face material security. Right. Right. Right. So really cool stuff. But James, you just reminded me of the smell. You smell me? Have you seen the COVID Sniffer dogs? No. You heard of those? Yeah. So they just rolled out in Miami. So they can smell COVID. So people walk by they put their basket over and they they basically say if you have covered or not.
Brad Kirby:The dogs in Miami do have the best noses.
Dean Nelson:So think about it. Drugs bomb cadaver. And now COVID. Smell it sniffing dogs. Oh, wow. That's crazy. It's actually really cool. If you think about it. You know, I
James Thomason:remember like a long time ago, they were talking about training dogs to smell cancer and other things. Because certain medical conditions cause certain chemicals released from your breath and so forth. And like us dogs, but I had no idea. They actually had COVID trained dogs and that they could detect,
Dean Nelson:yeah, five days ago ruled out Miami can wow.
James Thomason:That's horrifying.
Dean Nelson:I guess they could but it wasn't
Brad Kirby:one. There was one dog they got one like last year, I remember. Seriously. But
Dean Nelson:going back to the China story, if you think about it, you know, this whole point of the government understanding and having control of data, all data, is remember their intentions around trying to find, you know, rapid cures for cancer and those things, took all records of all people in China, and fed those back into these massive machine learning, right, and AI engines to go back and find patterns that doctors couldn't, etc. And so lots of good came out of that. But what else came out of that, because it is all information about all people.
James Thomason:It's amazing what you can learn about a person with a very little amount of data, and how easy it is to identify someone with very little data about them. And we see this all the time. And in hacker circles and social engineering, it's just it's very easy to we're creatures of habit. And we we do things by patterns, we get into routines. And so it doesn't take very much information about us to understand who we are and what we believe. And if there's a database of people who believe certain things, that database is just waiting to be used by the wrong authoritarian for great evil. We've seen that in history. I look at what's going on in Australia. And I just, I guess it's ironic that Australia started out as a prison colony. And it's going to end up as a prison colony in modern times, with everyone checking into the state for permission to do everything at all times. And I think finally, we're starting to see some, some rallies and political activity there. People are pushing back against these restrictions and mass violations of lockdowns and so forth. Yeah, that
Dean Nelson:seems extreme. Its intent, their intent is everybody needs to comply. And so if you comply, we're going to control it. But the problem is, if you go so far, it's like Texas, I had a, I had a person tell me that lives in Texas, the harder you push, they're gonna push back on you twice as hard, doesn't matter, you're gonna push back, right. And it's interesting that you watch that it's just almost human behavior, uncertain thing. So how this is done, to bring people in and forcing it, people are going to react in a negative way. So opting in, again, if I wanted to share my information about where I'm at. Because I've been, I've contracted it, and I care about other people. And I want to share that if I happen to be around people that they would know. Right? I would want to do that. But I should be able to opt in to do that. And then if you think about it, if 70 80% of the people opt in, you're going to get a sampling of things, it's going to be really accurate, right? Of that. It's like well, I happen to be in Saratoga, California, and I look around and I see these dots. I'm gonna steer clear of that.
Brad Kirby:Flip Flop on the opting in on the data sharing since the beginning of this. Yeah, at first, I was like, No way in hell and yeah, maybe I should and then I think I've honestly changed it at least 10 times.
James Thomason:Yeah, I gotta tell you I'm becoming we're gonna talk about Apple in a minute, you know, when nothing's going on there but I'm becoming like, so tired of my, my privacy and data being violated? You know, I upgraded to the latest version of Mac iOS, and by default, it synchronizes Documents folder in iCloud now so basically Apple stole my documents. And did Gazan, God knows what with them out of my own my own PC, which is something that I didn't I never had enabled before because I don't want that. There's a bunch of examples like that they just keep stretching their, their wings further and further or to take more and more of your data. It's becoming such that there is, you know, you have to trust someone, right, you have to trust the maker of your operating system, the maker of the computer you're using, or the whole thing really comes down doesn't it's a big house of cards. Because if you can't trust those fundamental things, then you really have no data privacy and security whatsoever. And you just end up like not using a computer, not using electronic device. And that's exactly where I'm going. Because let me get into Apple a little bit here. Because there's there's a ton of Apple news, and we'll come back to Amazon in a minute. But our story in the previous episode was Apple's CCM implementation, which was designed to prevent, again, good intentions, prevent child pornography, everyone accepts child pornographers wants to prevent child pornography. And this is how this is how the slippery slope gets implemented, right? You, you take a really good intention that has broad support in society, and then do something really evil with it, like automatically scan everyone's data without their permission, looking for something and like a previous show a disgust like, Well, if there was, I don't know, a zero day security exploit on iOS, or something, anybody who was malicious could install something that was designed to trigger this algorithm and get a whole bunch of people in trouble or certain people in trouble because of their political beliefs because of their religion, or because of their race. And we simply cannot have systems like that operating algorithms operating in society that are opaque, or black boxes that are stealing and looking everyone's data. And so Apple, for the moment seems to have like, hit the pause button. I think the whole planet was pretty irritated about this.
Brad Kirby:And even the three of us agree together. Like we all had the same stance, and for the first time, and no person I've talked to that, like non tech. All agreed. So it really is the whole planet.
James Thomason:I've bought apple products my whole life, had dinner with Steve Wozniak, you know, I love Apple, I love the legacy. And I gotta tell you, if this kind of thing goes through, I will not buy an Apple thing ever again. I shattered my iPhone yesterday, and I went to the Apple Store. And I did I did buy a new iPhone because my old one was not worth repairing. But I you know, I had a moment of deep consideration there. I'm like, Am I really going to hand this company money, when they are threatening to erode the civil liberties I hold so dear, and that I think are essential to free society. And so I just decided like, well, you know, it's neither here nor there right? Now, they've decided to pause it. So I'm going to support that I support the pause. But if they change their minds, then I'll take that thing to the firing range, and YouTube or something I don't know. Now, I
Brad Kirby:know that there's gonna be a lot to talk about on this. But I actually wanted to step back and ask Dean at one question about his whole COVID experience, I guess, what was your main takeaway from, from the whole experience?
Dean Nelson:The vaccine helped me? Simple, right, right. That's the number one thing if I think if I didn't have the vaccine, I would have a lot more severe symptoms. And here's the reason why, when I got the first COVID vaccine shot, I didn't have any symptoms, it was fine sore arm, right. But I got the second one and that kind of knocked me down. And in between that I also got the shingles vaccine. Right. And because that was four other people get shingles. And I did not want to get shingles that does not look fun at all painful all the other. Like so I got that I basically got the shingles vaccine, then I got the first shot of the of the Pfizer vaccine. Right. And I was okay with both of those. Then I got the second shot of the vaccine. And I was okay for a bit and then I'm like, a little tired. And then I suddenly was knocked down for six hours, but I was okay after that. Right so but but it did hit me. And then I got the second shot of the vaccine for shingles that knocked me out for two days like I was that was I was incoherent with that. Now when I look at it going okay, here I've got all these antibodies everything else has been built up inside because of the vaccine I have I have less likelihood to get it then I get it and then I have more ability to fight it great. But I still was down I still had the fevers I see the sweats the cold the you know the coffee and and all the other things that came with it. And I Friday it did start knocking me over I mean, I slept 13 hours. I haven't done that a long time, right and then woke up for a bit and then I slept under six hours like I was sleeping a ton is my body was fighting all that so much, you know. So that happened and then like that was last weekend. Then I felt good through the week like it was it was getting better. And then I tested I got a second positive and that was demoralizing, right. It's like crap, why can I feel good and then that last weekend, I I had to hit again fatigue. So crashed again sleeping or whatever. So I kept thinking man, if I didn't have that, I just didn't have as much ammunition. Right against trying to actually do. Yeah,
Brad Kirby:I didn't realize there was some like various different new treatments that weren't available like in First 12 months either? Oh, yeah.
Dean Nelson:Have you heard of this? James? What's that? monoclonal antibodies? Oh, no treatments? Yeah, my leading,
James Thomason:there's a shortage of them, right?
Dean Nelson:I don't know. But this first time I heard about just three or four days ago. But apparently what they do is they take if you test positive or certain to show symptoms, right are both within 24 to 48 hours, if you get this shot, what they're doing is injecting antibodies that are specifically targeted battling the virus. Right. This is
James Thomason:a great case in point, actually, because this treatment has been available for some time, and was used earlier, I think in the in the outbreak to help some people. And there have been suggestions recently, that suppliers and or the government should withhold this treatment from patients if they have not been vaccinated. I disagree completely. Yeah, I mean, that so withhold your sick from someone. Exactly, exactly. And she'd get treated. And this is exactly what I'm saying is that if you open the door to treating people as different classes of people based on some biological characteristic, then the door is open to all biological characteristics by its very nature, right? If you have a legal framework that makes that possible, in this country, we fought against that, right, we've been going the other way for decades to fight against discrimination that is rooted in biology or appearance or raisings in your brain, you know, everything absolutely the way you think and feel, and the way you identify. And so the confusing thing to me is that some of the people who were who were the most, I would say, like rabid defenders of things, like certain civil liberties are also rapidly in favor of programs that would discriminate against people based on their COVID status. And that just, it goes back to like Orwell and double think like, I cannot hold those two opposing thoughts in my mind at the same time without experiencing cognitive dissonance. I don't know how people can be in favor of a program like that. And then at the same breath, say that they are against discrimination, it just, I feel like these people can't see passing into their own noses like they just they're so short, so short sighted that they can even imagine in one way that you know, such a thing might be applied to increase the various forms of discrimination we've been working so hard to eradicate in society for this whole last century, you know, basically, right, so going back to Apple, the EFF, Electronic Frontier Foundation, maybe people don't know who that is. But if you don't know who that is, you should give the Electronic Frontier Frontier Foundation money. That's what you should do. If you've never heard of the EFF, you should go Google it, and then give them money. Because what they do is defensive liberties online. They're a fantastic organization, they've been around forever. When I was a child on the internet, I used to sit around and read editions of effector, which was their electronic newsletter about individual liberties. And so they've been they've been fighting the good fight for a long time. Some people may disagree with that, I give them money. And I think everyone should give money to good people doing good things. They haven't sponsored us in any way to say that. So just say that's a completely cold endorsement out of left field. But they put a lot of pressure on him saying, you know that Apple should completely abandon this plan, because it's a bridge too far. And Apple's hit the pause button. But there's more to talk about with Apple besides the CCM stuff. So notably, is the emergency security update. That just released to close a severe spyware fall from the NSO group and Israeli spyware company. They've managed to infect Apple products without so much as a click. And this is sort of the dream vulnerability, right is like you don't need the user to do anything except come in contact with your exploit to work that's like a dream come true. There's no tricking them. It's just hey, crypto, Brad.
Brad Kirby:I know way too much about this.
James Thomason:Since out. Yeah. So you've had some personal experience with this sort of thing, right.
Brad Kirby:I had a zero click attack through Pegasus in 2019. I believe it was June 2019. That long it's been around, but actually goes it's been long before that. It goes back to I think 2016 WhatsApp sued the NSO group. And what's what's really messed up as NSO group has always said they license out the software to governments and, you know, agencies to counter terrorism and threats, which I'm sure is for the most part true. In this lawsuit, they actually own the servers that conducted these attacks. Wow. So my mind was blown because I was listening to darknet diaries podcast, that most recent episode, and it just it's titled NSO group, and about 10 minutes and I said to turn to my wife, Sybil, I said, You just wait. They're told they're talking about zero days and how they have to click links. That's a joke. Just wait, they're going to talk about zero clicks and how, how invasive this has been for so long, and people don't know.
James Thomason:There's a quote from Bill Marsac, a senior research fellow at Citizen Lab. He says this spyware can do everything an iPhone user can do on their device and more scary rad how do we make sure that we aren't compromised with this particular Xbox or anything we can do
Brad Kirby:on the iPhone Dean Dean actually just did it so he can tell you this specific process.
Dean Nelson:I saw this article and I dug into a little more and I'm like, Whoa, Pegasus. Oh crap, Brad. Like, I remember his, his his experience. And then I thought, Wait, okay, literally, they can go back and listen, they can see what's type. They can help control apps, they can like, okay, the phones open. At that point, like crap, am I am I infected, like COVID. So I went back in, there's a thing called I verify you can download that part. And it does the scan to go back and see if Pegasus is there. And they've been checking up for that for a while. Because when I saw the article, I also saw that, you know, there was going to be a push with iOS. So that okay, but can I come soon enough? Because I don't want to be in a situation where everything on my phone is open. So I went back into the Verify. That was great. gave me confidence of it. But now you've got two plus years later, iOS has been updated to deal with Pegasus. Two years? What's happened in those two years? What kind of that? Yeah, exactly.
James Thomason:And a lot of people have complained about having conversations that are about really random stuff. And then they get back on the internet. And they're getting advertisements for the really random stuff that they were just talking about, like stuff that they haven't even like, you know, typed into a browser ever so
Brad Kirby:it started that's how it started was those clicks. They were targeting politically sensitive people in their children and just to get access to their phones and but that was a reaction to click right.
Dean Nelson:Yeah, this reminds me of Cambridge Analytica. All right, and, and the whole point of what they started doing when they got data, but this is a different company. So NSL, right. What does that acronym mean?
Brad Kirby:And three, three, is really guys last names. Okay,
Dean Nelson:so everything goes back to intent. What was the intent of what they were doing? Was it nefarious? Or was it let's go put put together some software that's gonna allow us to be able to now make sure bad guys are going to be caught? Yeah, I don't know. But either way, it's how tech is being used. So is somebody using this to go back and be nefarious? Is someone using this to go back and do something for the greater good,
Brad Kirby:they claim they have the ability to shut it down at any time. And this is like state actors using it to fight like, they claim El Chapo was caught through Pegasus. So I'm not saying they say they've saved 10s of 1000s of lives, they probably have, there's probably been a decent amount of people killed as well. Innocent people. So
James Thomason:and the, the potential for abuse, right? So just to drill in, if you're the spyware on your phone, and Apple was doing it CCM auto scan, right, there's nothing to stop a hostile actor from putting things on your phone that they know is going to trigger, see Sam and get you in a lot of hot water. Because of the legal framework in this country. If you have that kind of data, if you have that kind of data. It doesn't matter how it got there. It's a strict liability, right? So you're guilty with possession. That's enough to put you in prison for quite a long time. Right in that the facts and circumstances around how you came to be in possession are irrelevant in strict liability. You know, it's it's just like environmental law. Like I think I mentioned this once in the podcast if I if I come over to Dean Nelson's house and toss off an oil barrel on the lawn, and it shatters and sends oil everywhere. Dean Nelson now has an oil spill. It doesn't matter that I did it or someone else did it in the middle of the night. It's like it's Dean Nelson's property with oil all over it. And so Deena has an oil spill and a very expensive environmental cleanup to take care of. So that's the legal framework we have right now and so that's it's just so easy, you know to target the right people and you
Brad Kirby:end to understand how powerful this exploit is they can literally replace anything on your phone was zero trace whatsoever. They can delete they can add they have full admin rights with no route. They are routed they have route but they have like route that you can't even there's no record that they can traceable. Yeah. Root Access without you doing anything with you. You know, the software works if you type in a phone number.
James Thomason:I'm not so this gets ramped back you know, we don't want back I want my Nokia stick phone from 1997. You know, I'm gonna go back to t nine t nine texting. And it had jingles on it. That was good enough people could call me they can tax me. It was good enough. You know, that's all I need. I'm ready for the tech backlash I'm ready for
Brad Kirby:is only 40 countries or have this software so nothing to worry about.
Dean Nelson:Only 40 Okay, fortnight.
James Thomason:Okay, sweet. Sweet.
Dean Nelson:This reminds me of Minority Report. Remember that movie? Of course. Yes. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. The whole point of where there's tech and the intent and they drove down crime. Right. But they had these cognitives that could see free cars but pre card the pre cogs Exactly. Those cogs would go back and now say I can predict a crime it's gonna happen. And the problem is that they were now being manipulated but also a crime that could have happened as well as she
Brad Kirby:sounds pretty idealized in this situation.
Dean Nelson:Yeah, interesting. Very interesting.
Brad Kirby:I like that.
James Thomason:James, you wonder where I get these ideas? I'm a huge fan of dystopian sci fi right? I'm an avid reader of my whole life. Okay, last one and it's relevant right is that in eight US states Apple will begin storing driver's licenses on iPhone this was announced today, I think this news just came out. So state IDs will now be part of your apple wallet. If you want to know how deeply this thing is underwritten your life just smashes on the concrete like I did yesterday, you'll become acutely aware that like you're using this thing for free if you can't do anything. Yeah. And I'm like, Well, this is wonderful. No one could call me. So I'm not being disturbed. That's really nice. But also like, I can't provide any information to anyone that's like asking for it. Ironically, you know, I went to the Apple Store, and they're like, do you know your corporate ID? I'm like, yeah, it's on my iPhone. Here you are, can you recover it for me? So yeah, everything is on there. And everything is on there. And someone could get a zero day and route it? Well, now they're you basically they can do anything that you can do with your identity with your credit cards, with your travel documents, and so forth.
Dean Nelson:We've had that vulnerability on laptops and desktops and everything else since the since everything was in our pocket turned up right now. It's just happens to be in our pockets is another device. But more and more and more stuffs getting on there. Sure. Of course, the thing that makes me nervous, James is is that if this NSO thing that zero day, like no click thing is there, that everybody's vulnerable at that point, right
Brad Kirby:and rebuild.
Dean Nelson:But if we could do better, we could do better. If the NSO thing exists today with a zero click. How many more behind it that we don't know about exist? Oh, that's the time it's gold as gold, right?
Brad Kirby:It's yeah, well known that that's part of what's known, or at least as well, but state like spy agencies and state actors will hoard them. They're, they're effectively arms, right? They're suddenly in terms of InfoSec and cyber
James Thomason:cyber. Yeah, that's a great way to look at their their weapons, basically, their
Brad Kirby:weapons there.
Dean Nelson:Here's the other thing. We haven't talked about quantum computing, right in the show very much. And this came up at the DCAC conference. And it was, I don't know, it was to cover Peter gross. But it was a really good point that they said, Okay, we've got 256 bit encryption today. And all of this stuff is safe. Quantum Computing, will be able to crack this stuff in the future, which means that anybody is broken and grab data that's encrypted, just keeps the data because eventually that data will be unlocked.
Unknown:Right? Yeah, it just
Dean Nelson:is more and more compute power, more processing things, the ability to run that many hash rates, like it's going to come that data is going to be decrypted.
James Thomason:Well, speaking of that, speaking of that, I don't know if you guys have been watching this. And of course, we covered the tragic death of John McAfee on the show a while back. Well, in John McAfee's channel on telegram he has emerged to reemerge from the dead or at least someone has control of the account and the channel. And they've been teasing that they have decrypted the alleged archives of information that John McAfee had and they've been running a countdown now for several days and releasing bits and pieces have like teaser photos that appear to be like personal photographs of certain politicians and other stuff. And this is taking place live in a telegram channel. And there's there's hundreds of 1000s of users including myself in this channel and so a lot of it is nothing of substance has come out yet. It was rumored that McAfee had a deadman switch and the stuff would get an archive of information. terabytes of it that would be D encrypted and sent to the media as well as disseminated widely on the internet. And of course he passed away tragically and nothing happens sometime later this is taking place so I have no idea if this is a hoax, it's probably a hoax or you know if there's any substance nothing substantive has come out of it so far, but it is at least very entertaining to view in the short term and there's all kinds of like weird messages and stuff and so this just you know, tickles the conspiracy theories and me to nearly to death. So I think the countdown is running for a couple more days and so I'm curious to see if it's if it's going to be like a big haha fooled you. There's nothing tricked you all or if something substance have emerged because that would, for whatever reason, I just really want it to be the latter. I think that would be the best middle finger from McAfee, if something like that did did take place. And he did have something substantive. And he did have a deadman switch and it did get released. I just think that would be great. I want to I want that to happen. Yeah,
Brad Kirby:that would be great. I typed in McAfee telegram to Google and it came up with toxic I rat on mcafee.com Toxic eye rat uses Telegram for command and control over is that what it's called?
James Thomason:I don't think that's the same thing. I think this is the original telegram channel that he had pre arranged and all that. There's several 100,000 people in it, and a lot of posts and I think this is a piece of the media they're picking this up. No one's really saying much about it was kind of generating some social buzz a few days ago. Oh, there's
Brad Kirby:q&a associated with this too. Who knows?
James Thomason:Yeah, I'm sure you know, every everybody's gonna latch on in fights thing in memory of John, you know, I hope. Oh, something like that does happen. I think that would be really great.
Brad Kirby:There's a there's a movie called deadman switch that's about the CEO of quadriga, which was the Canadian crypto exchange, he was found dead with $300 million of private keys in India, although there's no real death certificate. I know. It's I know, it's just a term that just a fun fact that just came out a month or two ago. I haven't seen it yet.
James Thomason:Interesting. I don't have it on my list. Getting back to what you're saying, Dean before I so rudely took us down to McAfee red hole. So one thing that's encrypted and could be disrupted by quantum is everything on blockchain, right? So Oh, yeah, yep. Lots of money at this point, could be disrupted by something like that. That's well
Brad Kirby:known in the blockchain community, though, like I remember, I remember five years ago, people were talking about quantum proofing. It's not
James Thomason:they're talking about it.
Brad Kirby:They talk about it.
Dean Nelson:Let me just make sure for our audience that people understand that, you know, quantum computing is a big deal. But when and how big, like quantum computers are really good at one thing, so they want to go back and decrypt something that's going to be tackled, but it has to be down to below. sub zero temperatures, like I forgot what Kelvin, it's got to be so cold, right for the thing to operate.
James Thomason:And if you if you haven't seen a picture of either IBM or Google's quantum computers, yeah, these are some of the most beautiful and intricate machines ever made by man there. And I look like aliens. Yeah, I would encourage everyone to just if you haven't seen one to just go look at it, it look, it looks like it's straight out of a sci fi movie. Like if you were to watch a movie on the future of computing, there would be a big brain there. That I mean, this is what this thing is it looks like or it could be like a piece of Clockwork from the last century, like a crazy clockwork machine is what it looks like. There's there's all sorts of tubes and vesicles. And wires in this thing is like they tend to be upside down, you know, because to the point they have to be kept very, very cold to work. So they're hanging gently hanging from the ceiling. And the the quantum processors at the very bottom. And it's hooked up to all this other stuff just yet. If you haven't seen one of these really beautiful machines, you have to look at it.
Brad Kirby:also highly recommend the show devs D vs on Hulu. It's actually pretty decent. One on one. Her call it one Oh, because quantum computing is you don't want to go down that rabbit hole too quickly. Because you're you'll lose your brain pro real quick. We should get someone on that. That is an expert
Dean Nelson:on it. Yeah. And look, I know a number of people that are actually doing pretty heavy investment and research and all this right? You think all the big all the big tech players, they've got something quantum going on for sure. The
Brad Kirby:former founder, Blackberry is 100% Quantum since 2002. Like Lazarus.
Dean Nelson:Got it. And I guess the point is that how close are we towards like true
Brad Kirby:Blackberry? Research in Motion? Sorry.
Dean Nelson:Oh, different. One
Brad Kirby:different Blackberry? No. Same Blackberry.
James Thomason:Yeah. The company rim? Yeah. I see. Would that be something if REM came back from the dead? It is back from the dead.
Brad Kirby:John Chen Britt brought it back. Oh, no. It's all there. All InfoSec now and they're all software, specifically in vehicles. There's the publicly traded on their Blackberry.
James Thomason:So they're going to reinvent the BlackBerry with this. It'll be a quantum computer, where they'll put it back in your pocket.
Brad Kirby:There's no full circle. I had the very last one. They divested their hardware like three or four years ago. Yeah,
James Thomason:absolutely. Where you will not to have a Blackberry because I did I had
Dean Nelson:one. Okay. I worked at Sun I never got
James Thomason:wow, I had a competitor. Good good networks. Remember, then I had their competitor do good devices?
Brad Kirby:Yeah. Because they were found for you are to Lou, which is about 45 minutes from where I grew up. So it was a nice Canadian company, these the other co founders like a CA, like I am, I don't know how we got into, you know, research emotion. But Jim balsall is the engineer and he's still at Waterloo, and he founded the Quantum Computing Institute, University of Waterloo in 2002, and has some of the brightest minds and in quantum in North America, at least definitely. In Canada,
Dean Nelson:the big question still comes down to is when is quantum going to be available? Right in a general purpose type thing? And how big will it be? It's so specialized, right, that I can see it's going to take this is five to 10 years before something's going to be there. And if it is, how much will be done? And then because it's so specialized, specific, I don't know. So yes, it's a threat. How close is it?
Brad Kirby:The problem is it's probabilistic, right? So it's hard to get the accuracy down to that point where it could actually be effective in cracking and cracking that type of RSA encryption. I'm sure it's not far off. And there's but there's ways to counter it. But it is certainly a threat, especially if someone's ahead in the quantum supremacy race that they call the quantum supremacy. And everybody.
Dean Nelson:Yeah, I don't, it'll be interesting to watch to see what happens. But yep, state secrets and data and decryption of all this stuff is going to be how many
Brad Kirby:qubits Do you have?
Dean Nelson:I've got to the cost me $38 million.
Brad Kirby:I wonder who the leader is right now? I think they're close to 100. Now, right, IBM, Google, IBM, Google. Yeah. Yep. Do you weigh about out in Vancouver claims to be the highest, but they just have chips. So it's a little bit of a, that's not true?
James Thomason:Well, a lot of people think that quantum is going to unlock the event horizon when it comes to generally intelligent AI, you know, which we talked about previously, previously on the show. But other researchers are pursuing a different path, where they are trying to build potentially computers that more closely mimic the human brain, or brain structures that we see in nature. These are to some extent, quite Divergent Paths of research, right? Quantum Computing being one entire field. And these other kinds of architectures being another emerging field, the latter being very, very, very new, just so nascent that it's not even really got a complete name. I don't think there's a new story this week about a team of scientists at the University of Limerick in Ireland, and they have discovered a new molecule which could boost decision making times in computers. And what these it's a 77, made of 77 atoms only these atoms are configured somewhat like the circuitry of the brain. And the idea is that they could overcome the Von Neumann bottleneck, von Neumann, if you don't know von Neumann was was a pretty important guy in, in computing. And all basically all modern processor architectures are von Neumann designs, von Neumann architectures, and so that basically, what we're all familiar with the idea that the program and its data and everything is in memory and processor is connected. And you know, we try to overcome the bottleneck through caching and all these different techniques. That bottleneck has been around since the beginning of computing and author in modern times, it'd be great if we got a someone who's a super expert on this particular area of computing as well. And maybe, maybe it's the same person, even with if we get a quantum expert on who can talk about this in detail. But you never know if something's going to come of these really early stage research projects like this, but I get really excited when I see them. Yeah, and this idea, yeah, this idea that we could have processors that are more or less physical representations of the same kind of circuitry we see in nature and the human brain, and what that could do in terms of offering different types of software in the future, no software that learns software that thinks I'm stunned by it. So I, I wasn't able to find any practical demonstration of this technology yet. There was just a publication at the university. I think the media picked it up. But super interesting stuff. Definitely. And last, but not least, we talk a fair amount about UFOs in the show. But there's an interesting piece that came out this week, that had to do with NASA, it basically an interview on PBS as firing line with former senator Astro Bill Nelson. And he basically openly admitted that like NASA has absolutely no contingency or plan to deal with an actual UFO say from another planet, or an alien civilization or something like there's no plan whatsoever to deal with an eventuality like that. And I guess that shows you how improbable they think it actually is. Right? That there's no that we know of at least below top secret. There's no plan to deal with such a contingency or into eventuality in NASA. Probably it has to do with the seriousness of that like you know, allocating government dollars for things that are very, very unlikely to ever happen. Like pandemics, like pandemics or contact with aliens or you know,
Brad Kirby:the technology to get here and survive. We're probably all dead anyways, right?
Dean Nelson:So zero day bugs are already inside.
James Thomason:There's a fascinating movie, a short documentary on Netflix, about a gentleman who's been trying to contact aliens since he was a kid. He built all of his like his like in the 60s and he built all of his own radios and deep space transmitters and stuff. And it started in kind of like a bedroom at his at his mom's house and then it gradually started to take over the living room and like the rest of the house and he you should check that documentary out. It's I think it's literally called the man who tried to contact aliens are mandatory to talk to you if those or something. It's a short it's less than an hour, I think and it's just a fascinating look at this stuff about one man's innovation in a completely non productive, I guess you would say, Endeavor so far right? He has a music broadcasts and he broadcasts so he believed that the best way to reach aliens would be to play music at them. I gotta tell you, I love his playlists. He plays all this really ethereal, futuristic sounding like Modern experimental music and he blasts it out into deep space. So check that out. It's super interesting. Okay,
Dean Nelson:you know, the thing that's funny in this story is that they have a new branch of government called Space Force.
James Thomason:Yes. I really want to be in Space Force just so I can make that claim. That sounds like
Dean Nelson:a nerdy I don't know. Have you seen that? The Netflix?
James Thomason:Yes. It's amazing. Yes. Yeah. Well, Steve corral. Seadrill. Funny,
Brad Kirby:that's brilliant Tina yet. Yeah. But
Dean Nelson:if you look at it, you look up SpaceForce. It's a it's a real group. I don't know what it was formed. But oh, it's established December 25 2019. Yeah. Okay. But
James Thomason:I consider the listing. There's no way to enlist, though. At that time.
Brad Kirby:I think you're the one who actually made all these things in the 60s. And
Dean Nelson:is it okay, all right.
Brad Kirby:James, it's on YouTube.
Dean Nelson:I highly recommend people I will always have an evening, go watch SpaceForce because it's really funny. I'm just the link after James. So it's very funny. Yeah, it goes into every one of those. All the things that you would think would go wrong in a government organization and the intent, right. It's just, it's, it's hilarious, absolutely hilarious. John Malkovich, isn't it. So okay,
James Thomason:so the title of the documentary I mentioned is John was trying to contact aliens. That's the title John was trying to contact aliens is on Netflix. It's short. It's really pretty and like a pretty cool, sort of like touching story. I'm going to flash the my co hosts your picture so they can see the kind of stuff you're building in his living room? Like these giant high voltage, Deep Space transmitters? And like these antenna arrays, he built a tower outside of his poor mom's house a wow, at Deep Space. Yeah, there you can see the equipment encroaching and living space was my mind. You know, like reading the news is and our son is like, over in the corner with all this machinery trying to reach deep space and contact aliens. You have to watch this little that
Dean Nelson:is very interesting. I was wondering,
Brad Kirby:for people that thought their ears were burning from 5g towers, it's actually this guy shooting it into their head. Yeah.
James Thomason:Yeah, I did see. I'm very much about people controlling their own bodies and not being mandated to do things with their bodies that they don't want to do. But for some reason, those people often get clustered with the absolute crazies who are like, there was a clip of a guy who actually said, The vaccine is like software that connects you to the 5g. And that's how they're gonna mind control you. And I'm like, Well, you don't have to do that. Because you already carry a phone around. And they're already mind controlling you with that. So don't worry, buddy. It's not the vaccine. You already. You've already got the mind control device. You're using it right now.
Dean Nelson:It's making you dumber every day.
Brad Kirby:Yeah. Last time. Yeah.
Dean Nelson:electrolytes. Let's go.
James Thomason:Okay, well, last but not least, there's a there's an ima something happening. Dean. Right. Yeah, Mr. Summit. Yeah, I'm
Dean Nelson:excited about this really. We do an end user forum every year, what we do is bring together companies, basically professionals from all these different companies across four different disciplines. And so that's data center, hardware, network and infrastructure management. And we bring them together, and they share their experiences. So it's just, it's just gold. So we got people from Amazon, Apple, Bank of America, Bloomberg, eBay, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, and Microsoft, Nike, and Vidya and Nutanix, SAP, Uber, like, just think of all those companies. And they come together. And they really, I think this is probably one of our best events, its end users actually getting together to collaborate. And then we have our partners that are helping making this possible, right. So we got pure data centers, that's actually, you know, driving the entire event. And what's neat is the money they put in, the majority of it goes to our scholarship program. So just by showing up, people are donating to the scholarship program. And then we've got yonder this drive in the datacenter track, and then we've got it renew, as soon as driving the hardware track, right? It's gonna be fun. So anybody who's an end user in our space and digital infrastructure, go to Mason's that org, you can find the event and just sign up, we have to validate that you're an end user, because it literally has to be that good group of people. We've had really good attendance and amazing content comes out of that. We capture all the content, it's Chatham House rules, right names and companies are stripped away. And we gather themes and content in that we've got a year's worth of content that comes out of that single event.
James Thomason:This is gonna be a virtual conference or an in person conference.
Dean Nelson:We are doing this virtual, we made a choice just just to be safe is that many senior people together, I'm just not as competent. You know. So we made that choice. Yeah.
James Thomason:Especially the recent COVID experiences to certain co hosts. Yeah, I
Dean Nelson:don't know to talk about the needed thing as well as its global then we also have everybody there's no travel that has to be done. So, you know, we did this last year right during the middle of pandemic and it was everybody Really appreciate it and enjoyed it because it's just, it's like our podcast, we get together and chat about stuff. And we have all these different video sessions, and then we roll those content back out to folks. So, so yeah, we're 14th. Right? Yep. October 14 Is the summit and we've got all the sessions that happen before that. And then we we read this out of their global member summit content wise of kind of the key learnings across all of it, but it's just all
James Thomason:right. Hmm. I might be
Brad Kirby:right, maybe two. Maybe I look,
James Thomason:I look forward to it. I think we can make time to attend and look forward to that. Same just me since Edward Dean. Is that it? Yep.
Dean Nelson:I misses that org and look under Events and you'll find the end user forum.
James Thomason:Excellent. Well, folks, if you enjoy shows such as this one where we bring you the very latest in tech, big tech, big government, big everything. We try to keep you up to date trying to stay on top of it. Not to mention that weird news if you oppose please do give us a like, it helps us grow our audience. This show is sponsored by alien civilizations, Apple, big government. Just kidding. The show is sponsored by infrastructure masons, you don't need builders of the digital age, learn how you can participate and attend this in user Summit. If you have time. It's going to be great. It's full of interesting people smart people who are doing cool stuff, basically all the Nelsons Padre which are like all the smartest people on Earth. Join us advance go to imasons.ORG. And of course we're sponsored by EDJX building a new platform for all the things to help developers make applications that are truly planet scale. Visit us on the web at EDJX.io. That's EDJX.io.