The lead story for Monday,
June 16.
Annie Wojcicki,
founder of twenty three and Me, has successfully
repurchased a genetic testing firm out of bankruptcy
through her nonprofit
ITAM
for $305,000,000,
surpassing a prior winning bid from Regeneron.
The deal excludes the company's liabilities,
may easy ease public concerns over genetic data,
and gives her continued leadership. The acquisition still
requires court approval while lawsuits related to a
2023
data breach remain unresolved.
The company shares a surge on recovery hopes.
I wanna welcome you to episode 1,867.
I'm your I'm your excuse me. 1,827.
Jump 40, 40 episodes.
But,
I know many, many, many folks were worried
about this very
specific acquisition.
A lot of people worried that it was
gonna get bought by
a firm that, would take all the data
and,
and have, basically, all of your DNA for
any of you that submitted to,
twenty three and Me. Now
I have never,
give my DNA to
anyone.
Ancestry,
twenty three and Me. I've had family members
do that. So, you know, it's basically just
as good
as me having done that,
because, you know, I'm just,
I guess, what is it? A not a
chromosome, but, you know, a few DNA markers,
off from other from every other family members.
It's not a it's not one of those
situations that really has me concerned that much
because
the government's had my DNA for many years
because of my my time in the navy.
So,
you know, if you're gonna be tied to
any DNA related
crimes, well, I'm definitely gonna be found. So
it's not because of
that. I just don't like the idea.
Even the government, I wasn't so happy with
having access to,
my DNA.
But, this nonprofit public benefit company
won the auction with 305,000,000.
Now if you remember,
they were prevented from bidding
before,
and there was a lawsuit that was held
that,
essentially, the the court said, hey. You don't
have the money to to pay for this.
And,
they came they basically
said later had came backing from a Fortune
500 company
with a current market cap of more than
100,000,000,000
and $17,000,000,000
in cash on hand.
So that is no small investment fund. So
she's backed by someone.
Now Regeneron had operate to see the best
and final
and make a higher bid, but it declined.
They're set to serve
set to receive a $10,000,000
termination fee according to court filings.
So
they won 10,000,000 just because
of the lawsuit.
So they, you know, they came on ahead
for really doing nothing more than having some
lawyers and some bids.
So I'm sure
that acquisition was gonna cost some money regardless.
So, anyway, 10,000,000.
So, an expert hired by the court to
review the data privacy concerns over sale of
twenty three and me had submitted a report
on Wednesday that noted
that the new founder,
of course, who had been the chief executive
when the breach occurred.
But, you know, oftentimes,
the boss isn't always in charge.
It is the
it's the company
and the IT folks and everything else. Now
we know that,
Wojcicki was and if I pronounce her last
name incorrectly, I apologize.
We know that she was, originally married to
a Google cofounder, Sergey Brin.
And, of course, twenty three and Me went
public in 2021
through a merger with a,
through a merger with a blank check vehicle
sponsored by Richard Branson. So friends and friends
and friends, rich of the rich.
So,
we will see where this goes. Now they
had bid, bid 40¢ a share to acquire
the company.
So those of you that are stockholders in
this,
there's the,
the the
the stock over the counters,
raised to $5.49.
Believe that the company has staged recovery. Now
if they if the stock stays up
over the counter above $5.49,
they have a good chance of, being
relisted
and,
to be a true, true SEC,
basic, a stock exchange company. So time will
tell where this goes.
Okay. As we're, gonna get into the rest
of the stack here in a few minutes,
of course, I wanna welcome you again to
episode 1,827,
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So, everyone, welcome to the show. Thanks for
being here, and,
I wanna I definitely wanna take a minute
and share with you guys.
Last Thursday,
I met with,
a couple of my team members, sir, Blueberry.
One of them has,
type two diabetes like I do.
And, I was you know, he's got the
patch. I'll you know, one of those patches
that,
measures the blood sugar.
And, you know, I basically said my, you
know,
my insurance won't do it. I I have
to poke,
prick blood,
you know, and and check the levels. And,
you know, that's,
in my opinion, quite the antiquated way to
go considering they've got all these monitors and
how expensive they were. And he mentioned to
me that,
you can now get,
blood sugar monitoring for about
a $100 a month if you wanna pay
for it yourself.
So I ordered
from Amazon
a Dexcom system, and those of you
that have type two diabetes may be aware
of of these devices, and, I started wearing
it today.
It came in.
And, you know, I'm always interested in the
tech of these things and this applicator.
You know? I can see
potentially why part of this cost about $50
every two weeks. But,
you know, this this applicator is very, very
simple
to to deploy the sensor.
And I'm gonna be very, very curious now
because to be honest with you, I just
got sick and tired of poke poke poke.
And, you know, those of you that have
to, check your blood sugar from time to
time know what I'm talking about.
So I think this is gonna be you
know, it's a $100 a month, but,
you know, for being able to watch things
really hour by hour, day by day,
see what I've done, what I've ate, because
I kinda have an idea all these years,
you know, all these years later. But to
have it really be able to say, hey.
Alert.
You know, your blood sugar's high or
low,
and and kinda be able to get a
better idea, I think is,
is fantastic. But if you didn't know
that these are available and this is this
is not sponsored. So just so you aware,
the company that I again, it's it's called
Dexcom,
and I think it actually goes under a
different,
name online.
You can go to Stello. Stello is the
name
of the,
of the app.
So,
that's what I found. You know, I found
the Stello piece on,
on Amazon. And,
so, anyway,
it's gonna be interesting, and I'll keep you
all advised for those of you that even
care,
and those of you maybe facing type two
and maybe those of you that have never,
never used one of these, devices before.
But,
you know, I'm taking a little more
care
to know, to understand,
And I ain't always have,
but,
it's nice to kinda have this,
you know, hour by hour,
what I've ate, did it matter.
And, you know, typically, I'm, you know, pretty
good at being able to tell where my
sugar is at just because I know my
body. And as I suspected, when I
first few readings I got today, I just
got done eating. So, of course, sugar was
up a little bit. Now the question is
how fast
does it come down?
That that is really the key. So,
just give you an update on that and
what in what I'm doing.
And,
trying trying the goal.
The goal here over the next,
six months
is try to lose, 40 pounds.
So
big challenge. I've never lost more than 20.
So,
at one time. So the goal is 40,
and and we'll see if I can,
if I can get, get skinny.
You know, I'm not really skinny, but, you
know, I'd like to get down to a
hundred and sixty pounds. That's kind of the
target,
because I'm right now, like, one ninety six,
something like that. And if I could lose
40 pounds, that would be, that would be
fantastic.
The goal really is kinda like one fifty
seven. I don't know why. It's just a
number that's stuck in my head.
So,
anyway,
enough personal
discussion. Hey. I do wanna thank the insiders.
I wanna thank, James,
for his
donation sustained donation of $2 a month. Nigel
Cottrell for his $25,
Alihi Warrior donation. Dale Teller here for his
$25
Warrior donation in,
and, it's, actually, Allahhi
Chief donation
and Andrew Palmer
for his $5 Ohana donation. Thank you so
much for that.
And some of you are still sending some
sets.
It slowed down a little bit. So, you
know, definitely check out one of those new
podcasting apps. It's,
it's well worth the time to do so
and check out all the new features even
if you're not boosting. Now I know, sir,
this is gonna thrill about 50% of you.
Please don't unsubscribe,
but, comically, the Trump mobile
has launched a $47
gold phone service. The Trump branded t one
phone will apparently be made in America.
Apparently,
that's the that's the that's the, sales pitch
we we will see, and I'm sure it's
gonna be running on Android. Maybe. I don't
know.
But, yeah.
You're gonna be able to get a gold
phone for $499.
Of course, you had $10,000,000
you can get that. Is it 10 or
5? 5 or 10,000,000, you can get that
that gold, gold card to be able to
get, a Visa here.
So something about gold. Right?
And, details on the phone are sketchy.
And,
but, you know, the image they put up
was definitely photoshopped as everyone says.
But, apparently, we have have 12 gigs of
RAM, 206 of expand on mortgage, run on
Android 15,
have a 6.7 inch display.
How who's gonna make that in
America?
They're gonna do this
through T Mobile and and as a NVNO.
Now I heard a podcast just recently
launched a NVNO
service that was tied
to to T Mobile. I thought that was
kind of smart.
You know, we could have the Geek News
Central phone network.
Is is it setting one of those up
now as just getting a branding deal?
You know? That's you know, and setting a
price and, you know,
you know, what does it take now to
to launch your own mobile phone service? You
know, it sounds like it to me. It's
just as easy as doing a branding deal.
Who knows?
The made of Oakley smart glasses are real,
and here's what to expect from a Friday
announcement. The new generation smart glasses is upon
us
with the announcement coming this Friday.
So,
you know, here's what about all these glasses
that
I love and hate. I would really love
to to try the tech.
I really I really would. I would I
would nothing more than love to order
a set of these Oakley smart glasses.
But
number two, I look like
dog doo doo in
Oakley
sunglasses. I really do. I I I'm not
I'm not 25 years old anymore.
Yeah. I'm I'm not, you know, I'm not
a sports bra bra or anything.
And,
you know, I I think it'd be cool,
but, also, at the same time, I need
a prescription pair.
I I don't need some that is
just, you know, just plain glasses.
So, apparently, those of you that are Oakley
fans,
you're gonna get to your there's a new
Instagram Oakley Maida account,
and,
the camera is centered on the nose bridge.
And I'd be worried as big as my
nose is is that the, the camera would
just see my nose.
It's gonna be interesting how these are gonna
rest,
on the nose. There's gotta be pads or
something to keep it off your nose bridge
or that's gonna be
super painful.
But,
anyway, did you know, they're they're predicting what
it's gonna look like. You know, I'm I'm
a big Oakley fan. I I believe
am I wearing Oakley's now? No. My previous
glasses,
these are not Oakley's.
But I've I've owned a lot of Oakley
eyewear
that look great, but not sunglasses. So maybe
it's coming to eyewear. I time will tell.
But, what say you? Are you gonna go
out there and get yourself a pair of,
of, Oakley meta glasses? Or is this just,
you know I have my old
Apple
camera
glasses. Those gotta be worth something at some
point. So I've got them boxed away.
Someday, sometime, maybe twenty years from now, someone
will want to to buy those for a
museum or something. But
considering the number of people that you know,
how few that were actually out in the,
ecosphere.
And just to think, I went to
I flew from Hawaii to San Francisco
to get these stupid things from Apple
back in the day.
And I paid for that airline ticket too.
There was no free ride on that.
You guys remember that when I got those?
And I probably wore those things less than
less than a hundred hours
largely because there was no prescription
on them.
And and, I just couldn't see.
Oh, I think I'm am I blurry right
now?
That camera's it looks like it's focused.
The International Space Station leak has pushed the
Axiom mission for launch
to no longer than June 19.
Concerns over a leak have been mounting for
some time, and,
we know what's getting along in the tooth.
The Russian segment is be set of small
cracks,
and,
they apparently have found
the issue
as they say that pressure was now stable
and,
or it would have been before dropping.
So they didn't wanna bring people up there.
So maybe,
we will have a launch on, the nineteenth
with this with this crew
for Crew Dragon. So time will tell. Let
me move this over
and double check
and see because just
yeah. It looks clear.
If if you're watching the show today, just
check-in and say hello.
So, anyway, this, ISS leaking, you know, they're
I I think I would be
keeping my oxygen mask
close.
They obviously know what to do in case
there's a big leak. They'd have to shut
the module off, But it seems to me
like that would be a very I I
don't think I'd keep too many personal items
over in that segment, but it is the
Russian segment. So,
you know, Russian,
Russian stuff never breaks. Right?
Never breaks at all. Hey. If you're running
Windows 11, you may have gotten a retro
Vista boot noise.
Windows insiders on the beta and dev builds
are greeted with nostalgic startup sound after the
latest update. Yep. You heard the you heard
the old Vista boot.
And, I don't even remember what that boot
noise is,
but, yeah, it's it's a bug.
But it it's kind of a funny one.
It real it really is, and, they'll they'll
get that switched around.
The next Galaxy Watch will read antioxidant levels
and give you a useful bedtime guidance and
become the running coach you always wanted.
And, so that's interesting. It's going to watch
antioxidant
levels.
Is that is is that really a thing?
Those of you that are out there that
are health nuts, please give me some feedback.
What
what is it actually
reading?
So
what does it say? It it's it's it's
doing everything it has done.
It's looking at your heartbeat, your sleeping time.
I don't sleep with my watch. That's the
only thing.
But
oxidants, I guess, is this from
from exercise?
Now what's funny
is
they don't give too much detail on this
anti oxidant
stuff.
It says it's gonna introduce anti oxidants, but
it doesn't tell you exactly what.
So the next galley Galaxy Watch will read
anti oxidant levels, give you useful bedtime guidance,
and become the running coach you always wanted.
I can't run on a surface because of
my back injury, but,
any of you got one of these Galaxy
watches?
Yeah. Here's the thing. I I waited. And
one of the reasons why I was waiting
to hopefully not have to do this this
patch thing
was I wanted the ability
to have
my watch do the blood sugar levels. And,
of course, it's never come. And, of course,
I've seen advertisements
on various social media platforms
that talk about these new sensors. You can
just stick your finger in it.
Of course, from China, that tells supposed to
tell you your blood sugar levels, but it's
fake advertising. There's no such thing.
All it does tells us oxygen level just
like anything like a regular oxygen level, your
heartbeat,
and, it doesn't really tell you anything more
than that.
So don't think you're gonna go out and
buy one of those
$20 devices.
I tried because of the, oh, well, maybe
there's something out there. And when it came,
you know, they they advertised
that it would do blood sugar levels, but
no. Total false advertising. So I've got something
now that, you know, I can check my
oxygen level with. But other than that, it's,
$20 wasted.
Google's 32,000,000,000 wiz deal draws DOJ antitrust scrutiny.
According to reports, US Department of Justice will
assess whether the deal would harm competition.
I'm not really familiar with the wiz.
So I guess Wiz is a cybersecurity
product.
So
Bloomberg noted the companies were anticipating pushback with
Google agreeing to a breakup fee of roughly
3,200,000,000.0
should the deal fall
through. The pros deal comes after a year
after Wiz walked away from a 23,000,000,000
offers expected to reorder the competitive landscape with
Microsoft and reshape our investors. Think about funding
cloud security startups.
Apparently, Google struggled for relevance in enterprise cybersecurity,
but apparently, Wiz is gonna help you with
the men and an assets the company is
chasing in a vicious strategy blah blah blah.
So, So, of course, the DOJ is going
to look at anything
Google is doing right now considering they're just
coming off this trial.
So,
so be it.
Of course, you know, we just passed Father's
Day. And for all the fathers out there,
happy Father's Day.
Four of my five kids checked in on
me, so, you know, I feel pretty good
about that.
The fifth one,
I don't know what she's doing, but, yes.
One of them forgot.
So,
I'm not alone. I was talking to some
other people today, and someone else was saying,
yeah. Two of my kids forgot to wish
me happy Father's Day. And they they remember
about Mother's Day, but they don't remember Father's
Day, do they?
So,
you know, even Shoko has said happy Father's
Day, which was which was nice. So and,
you know, other people did as well. But
one of your only children forget, you kinda
like, I wonder if I should forget their
birthday.
So Victoria's Secret says all systems are back
online as, you know, basically, what triggered that
was I was thinking it wasn't, you know,
it wasn't Father's Day. It was, you know,
it was Father's Day. It wasn't Mother's Day,
so it wasn't like
well, maybe the guys bought some
Victoria's Secret stuff for their, for their wives
for Father's Day. I don't know. But, Victoria's
Secret says all systems are back online filing
a cyberattack,
and it's investigating into the they're investigating how
the attack happened and so forth. So you
can go out there and buy some, Victoria's
Secret's,
some products here.
So it's been fifty years since Jaws. Can
you believe that? So every Jaws movie is
now coming
to,
online.
And,
so if you if you miss,
don't wanna watch the full series again,
It will be available.
And, I I don't think I wanna watch,
Jaws once again. I little past that.
I think I watched the first two, and
and that's probably all.
One thing, the and I don't think I
picked up on this beginning, but there was
some ice age puppies
and,
that were
essentially buried in frozen ice for, like, fourteen
thousand years.
Now these ice age puppies were not puppies.
They were wolf cubs.
And,
there's some remarkable
science that's been pulled out of them. They
died suddenly,
probably in a landslide or something to that
effect,
but they've been able to do all kinds
of analysis on
what they had in their stomach and a
whole bunch of stuff. It's crazy.
So, link is in the show notes on
that.
And,
you you can take a link you can
take a read through the link, but, pretty
impressive. 14,000
years ago. Just saying about the science we
have today and what we're able to extract
and and learn. Now what will they be
doing against us in twenty or thirty thousand
years? That's the next question.
Maybe watching this type of content here and
look at the you know, say, look at
those primitive people,
doing podcast when, you know, we could just
be putting the,
content out through telepathy or something.
OnePlus could be writing a tablet to take
on the mighty iPad.
Well, you know, I know a lot of
people have different devices besides the iPad as
far as tablets go. I know there's a
strong number of pea a lot of people
have either Microsoft or,
Samsung tablets, that type of thing, in Android
based tablets.
But they're saying OnePlus could be running a
tablet,
and it will be a new it'll be
a budget Android tablet.
Leaked render show familiar design with 11 inch
display and a MediaTek Helo g 100 processor,
a ninety three forty m a h battery.
The tablet is supposed expect to ship with
Android 15.
So we will see,
if this is a go and how much
it's gonna cost out of the box.
So any of you that, do not like,
iPhone products and services,
you do have a option. This headline from
CNET says you are lazy.
Your passwords are lazy, and hackers love it.
A new CNET survey finds forty nine percent
of adults have risky password habits.
Nearly one in four of us use the
same passwords for multiple counts.
So, you know, come on now. There's no
need for that at this time.
I'm a big one password,
user.
I'm also doing a lot of pass keys
these days.
So, you know, go out there and get
yourself
a password manager.
It's really, really time to do that.
The CNET CNET survey found the risky password
habits US most adults commonly turn to include
reusing passwords
and using a personal data as part of
a password.
While 24, they use the same password, different
accounts, eight percent admit to using password that
they know
what?
Eight percent admitted using a password they know
was compromised in a data breach?
What?
Eight percent admitted to using a password that
they know is compromised in a data breach.
I I guess they're just hoping that people
aren't going to log in
to
their account
or know what accounts they're using.
So in the past year, which of the
following have you incorporated when creating and updating
your passwords? Twenty five percent
were using a randomly generated password.
24%,
a password shared with another account.
15%,
a birthday anniversary.
14%,
name of a pet.
11%,
part of their own name. 11%, a family
member's name.
Again, 8% that knew that their password's been
compromised. A previous or current street address, 6
Percent. My child's name, 6%.
A common sequence, one, sequence, one, two, three,
four, five, six, 5%.
The word password, 3%. A college or professional
sports team, 3%.
None of these, 23%
and prefer not to say 17%.
Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on.
As a listener of the show, I know
you are not doing this. There's no way.
Matter of fact, I'm I'm meeting with, my
team members today, and we're talking about all
of the different services we use. And are
we using two factor authentication? Are we are
you using passkey? Or, you know, what are
we using?
And make sure that we're, you know, keeping
things locked down.
And, you know, we felt pretty good coming
out of that, but it just I'm just
always, like, nervous about it.
Your, my, and everyone else's least favorite browser
finally added a proper password manager.
Yeah. Microsoft Edge has introduced a new password
management feature. The tool is available as part
of Microsoft three Microsoft three sixty five.
So if you're an Edge user, you've got
one built in. So admins now have more
control over users' credentials.
So
credential leaking is always an issue.
So, yes,
Edge now has a a password manager. Even
Chrome has a password manager. It's not super
great, but it might be better than nothing.
Hackers claim a 64,000,000
leaked T Mobile records, but it denies it
denies the breach.
And here's what customers need to know that
they've said they've stolen a fresh batch of
T Mobile
customer data. What did they say they got?
Records includes names, email addresses, phone numbers, and
other PII.
I don't consider my name, email, or phone
number PII. But if you have my Social
Security out there, that's definitely PII.
But my Social Security has been leaked so
many other times.
You know, we really look. Right? We go
through every, like, every three months. Do we
need this data from our customers? What do
we not need? And trying to narrow and
narrow and narrow the amount of data we
hold.
I'd love to have more data, but I
don't wanna hold any more data. I really
don't.
You know
you know, it's like even having the ZIP
code, I don't like, but we have to
because of credit card charges.
So it's just some stuff out there we
have to hold it, but, you know, we
make sure that is, like,
give
given the top attention.
Those of you that have Rokus,
apparently, there's gonna be some update. If your
home screen changes, it's because you're special.
And,
the the new homepage
makes key sections faster to find,
and it's apparently a work in progress and
likely to change again, and you can opt
out if you if you're offered the update.
And, I don't get into Roku too much.
My Sony TV has interface. I use Amazon
Fire TVs a lot.
Don't use my Roku a lot anymore, but
all my TCL
TVs like the one directly in front of
me are technically Rokos in disguise, but I
just use it for
screen repeating.
Kia
has a new small affordable electric car.
Thought I pulled something.
The 2024
the 2026
e v four sedan, and it looks kinda
nice.
The sedan goes on sale in The US
towards the end of the year, again, called
the e v four.
I do about 330
miles on a charge,
but I have not yet found
the price on it. They go through and
talk a lot about it,
how it's efficient,
and they're gonna
it's
do they give a price? I just keep
going here.
And a lot of copying from Tesla and
others.
Okay. The car is gonna wow. So it's
gonna be between 37 and 39,000.
So still a lot
for a sedan.
That's the standard range.
So is it what's the standard range difference?
And so it'll probably be 45,000
for,
you know, for the extended range and whatever
that may be.
So,
Kia EV four.
Apparently, WhatsApp is gonna start showing more adverts
in the messaging app, and, I just that
there's some apps that I've had on my
phone that had become completely
useless.
Kick was an app I used for years,
piece of junk.
And there's other apps that are throwing in
advertising.
And
if it starts throwing a lot of apps,
I'm just gonna be
be pissed.
I might
you know, I use WhatsApp enough.
I might
be empowered to pay for no apps using
WhatsApp.
In Asia, that's how I talk to my
employees. I talk to it's it's how we
all communicate,
you know, and it depends on where you're
at in Asia. Some folks use line.
So, yeah, if if I start getting adverts
in WhatsApp, it's gonna it's gonna really be
negative.
And the Android 16 glitch is making some
Pixel phones a pain to navigate.
Even simple swipes and tabs are not playing
nice.
So, here's what you you really need to
know about this, and it's typically three things
or two things.
Some Pixel eight Pro owners are reporting delays
up to thirty seconds to just swipe or
go back, meanwhile Pixel nine Pro XL owners
are saying the swipe up gesture is just
not even working.
So a number of folks are seeing this.
So if you're on an older phone and
you have Android 16, be aware that these,
glitches
are are avail are happening.
NASA has teamed up with India, and I
didn't know that they this is kinda surprising
to me.
They're launching
a satellite
on an Indian rocket.
So
this is the India Satish Dowan Space Center,
was gonna launch this.
It's called the NISAR,
n I s a r satellite. What really
got me
interested in this
those of you may have heard me talk
in the past about synthetic aperture radar.
And,
I I would just say personally,
I know a hell of a lot about
synthetic aperture radar.
I've known,
I mean, like, for a very long time.
I, at one time,
me and a couple other people were the
foremost
knowledgeable
operators
of synthetic aperture radar.
And,
I have literally,
literally
saw
tens of thousands of synthetic aperture radar images.
It's a topic I
know very, very, very, very, very well.
So weighing almost three tons and boasting 12
meter radar dish, The US 1,500,000,000
NISAR satellite
will track ground under our feet and water
that flows over and through it in unprecedented
detail.
Now
there are conditions for this, of course.
And a good thing about synthetic aperture radar,
it's almost
in it's it can penetrate clouds.
It's an all weather type
of system.
And,
so this thing will work. Doesn't matter. Day
or night.
The NISAR is a collaboration between the National
Space Agencies
of the United States and India SRO,
and they've overcome these challenges by using synthetic
aperture radar to take images of the Earth.
So what is SAR?
For military use, it's been used for military.
Rather than using reflected sunlight to passively image
the Earth's surface, SAR
SAR works by actively beaming a radar signal
towards the surface and detected the reflected signal.
Think of this as using a a flash
to take a photo in a dark room.
Flash flash flash flash flash flash at the
speed of
light.
This means SAR can take images of Earth's
surface both during the day and night,
and
it gives you a very
interesting image. Now, depending on your angle of
attack
and what you can see,
and there's different types of SAR and the
way it works and how it, you know,
it's how the frequencies are.
And this image that I'm seeing here of
NISAR data,
The beauty about this
is it's very
accurate.
Very accurate. They said it's accurate to an
inch.
Now that's impressive. So let's say,
you wanna see what's happening with, erosion
or water levels,
all kinds of data like this that you
can detect
changes,
to to the surface.
Now I don't know how this satellite orbits
work,
but there are some interesting things that can
be done if you image the same location
twice from the same position,
all kinds of very cool stuff. Now it
we'll be able to provide high resolution images
of almost all land and ice surfaces around
the globe every twelve days.
Now let me tell you, that's a hell
a lot of data.
Hella
data.
The NICER satellite will use to monitor forest
biomass. Its ability to penetrate
vegetation, detect water, will also allow it to
accurately map flooded vegetation.
Satellite will be able to detect changes in
the height of Earth's surface of a few
cent what what?
The site will be able to detect change
in the height of the Earth's surface a
few centimeters or even millimeters
because change in height
creates tiny shifts in the reflected radar signal,
AKA bounce time to get back and forth
and more more tech there's a little more
tech to it than that, but,
be able to track,
dam heights and a whole bunch of other
stuff.
Now
I will say this,
depending on the type of technology they use
and the wavelength and everything else,
movement is not good.
AKA, the anything on the ground moving
as an image is being taken is not
good. It's perfectly when there's no wind,
when there's no vehicles moving,
when everything is absolutely still, that's the best
time
to get an image.
So there's filtering technology that can be done,
of course. So I'm gonna be interested to
see what this data looks like, to be
honest with you. And it get all good
depends again down to resolution. But if they're
saying they can measure changes in inches,
okay, but inches of what,
you know, what's what's a pixel on that?
If it's if it's looking at an image,
that pixel might be a 100 a 100
square feet
or larger. So whatever the pixel size is,
so, you know, the less if you're looking
at if if one image takes a 100
but 100 miles by a 100 miles,
well, I can guarantee you the pixel density,
even if it's a four k image, is
one pixel is still gonna be,
you know, a certain amount of
of land distance or some other some amount
of distance in the pixel.
So
very, very curious. It really, really is.
Yeah. I
taught a lot of people,
synthetic aperture radar.
Well, Martin's is bringing drone deliveries to, to
three more states.
So they're gonna bring,
delivery option a 100 stores in Atlanta,
Charlotte,
Houston, Orlando, Tampa within the coming year.
And,
this is gonna make five states now, Arkansas,
Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Dallas, Fort Worth
area.
The drum wrappers will have an,
six mile range from stores.
So,
again, coming to
Walmart,
not Amazon.
Walmart.
Everyone's worried about the macOS and and what's
gonna happen with the iPad, but Apple explains
it will never let its tablets become full
Macs.
So
WWC,
some of the iPadOS 26,
a bunch of Mac like features, but they
were not Macs. They have Mac like
features. And macOS Tahoe isn't designed for tablets,
but Apple is happy to borrow ideas from
each platform. So it's it's gonna look and
kinda feel the same, but not be
the same.
Google Cloud had an outage.
The outage struck last Thursday and meant that
Google Cloud customers could not access
their rented infrastructure for at least three hours.
Wow.
Among the customers impacted
by the event was CloudFlare.
So, yeah, a lot of people had outages,
and,
we did not.
We run, almost exclusive on Amazon services, and
we use
a little Cloud Fair stuff for some things
but not see a problem.
Amazon, as in Roku, set landmark pack giving
brands access to 80% of connected TV households.
I'm telling you, Roku needs money.
And,
so they're gonna do deals to to drive
revenue,
and they're gonna tie it into the Amazon
demand side
platform, DSP.
It's a term in podcasting. I know a
lot. DSPs. Oh, we're tied into 23 DSPs,
22 DSPs.
We're adding DSPs.
But any anyway, what that means is more
ads for the Roku.
So police seized a a drug marketplace. So
So law enforcement authorities from six countries took
down the arch type market,
an a darknet
drug market that's been operating since 2020.
And the market customers gave gave them access
to high values of drugs, including coke, amphetamine,
amphetamines,
heroin, cannabis,
MDMA,
and synthetic opioids like fentanyl through more than
3,200
registered vendors.
Wow.
Over its five years activity, the marketplace amassed
612,000
users.
So how how does this work?
You go on there and and you buy
your drug of choice.
Do they ship it to you?
Do you make did meat in the dark
of night? How does this all work
As part of this joint action code named
Operation Deep Sentinel led by German police and
supported by Europol,
an investigation in The Netherlands took down the
marketplace infrastructure with a 30 year old German
national inspector being the administrator,
and he, has been arrested.
In total, law enforcement sees 40 wow. 47
smartphones, 45 computers,
narcotics and assets worth €78,000,000.
Wow.
They arrested a 270
says suspects following international joint action
that was going after the vendors.
So police in Europe, South America, Asia, United
States also seized more than two tons of
drugs,
again, including amphetamines, cocaine, ketamine,
opioids, cannabis, and over a 184,000,000
or 207,000,000
US dollars in cash and cryptocurrency
and over, oh, yes, a 180 firearms.
Where there are drugs, there are firearms.
So
so another
dark net drug place
shut down,
but, it's been running for
nearly five years.
You know, anything like that is, you know,
is just it's gonna get busted at some
point for sure.
One thing that, again, I wanna talk about
here just a little bit as we getting
getting near the end of the show. AI
isn't taking your job for now,
but the big threat, I agree, is a
growing skills gap.
AI talent remains scarce,
and we've been talking about this a lot
by my team. We talked about this morning
when I had my morning meeting.
I want everyone engaged using tools, finding out
what works, what doesn't,
and putting some time
each week into testing tools, even my coders.
And, you know, like, you know, my coders
are
worried,
but I I I'm I'm not worried right
now. But what I want is
efficiency,
more efficiency.
If we can gain efficiency through AI,
it makes projects get done faster, makes the
teamwork more efficient.
We get better product, maybe.
That's really all it's all about. So if
you're not doing
any AI stuff at work,
if you're working a job that does not
require AI,
hedge your bets.
Please hedge your bets and
get a ChatGPT
free account.
Go and play with it. Ask it questions.
Help it help you in your general day
to day life. Have it tested against data
that you have.
It's really super critical. There's lots of cool
things
that it can do that I think a
lot of people don't know. I'm learning new
stuff every
day. But a survey, 40,000
employers in 42 countries found that 74%
of employees
still
struggle.
Employers
still struggle to find skilled talent
with only 16% of execs confident in their
tech teams and 60%
citing the skills gap as a key barrier
to digital strategies.
Bain and Co found that forty first percent
of corporate leaders say limited in house expertise
has slowed AI adoption.
Be that person in your company
that figures out a use case.
Pay and AI skills continue growing
growing 11% a year since 2019.
Workers with AI skills such as prompt engineering
command a 56 wage premium.
It's really important. I keep saying this,
and I hope you're listening to me. Read
this article.
Again,
if you're in a job and, you know,
here I am. Right? I'm looking ahead. When
do I wanna retire?
Am I gonna make it before I become
obsolete?
No.
Because I'm staying current. I'm engaging. I'm
I'm figuring out what works and what doesn't.
And,
it's super critical.
You gotta do it. So, again,
it's not taking your job, but the threat
is a growing skills gap. And you don't
wanna be the one with the skills gap
when it comes time for
someone to,
you know, put in,
you
know, basically new policy,
and you'd be
no longer
a valuable contributor to your company.
Alright. As always, we wanna thank you for
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Bye bye.