Craig Peterson - Secure Your Business, Your Privacy, and Save Your Sanity: It's Trash Time For Your Computer - Autonomous Car Crash Kills - Which is better for your car? Buttons or a Screen? - Now we have a Chip Backlog! - Facebook tracking Your Hospital (2024)

Aug 27, 2022

It's Trash Time For YourComputer - Autonomous Car Crash Kills - Which is better for yourcar? Buttons or a Screen? - Now we have a Chip Backlog! - Facebooktracking Your Hospital Appointments

Hey, you know, it is probably time to do an upgrade on thatcomputer of yours to Windows 11. Or maybe you're going to move overto the Linux world. That's what I did with my older computer. It'srunning Linux now. Much faster, but there's more to it thanthat.

[Automated transcript follows]

I send out my newsletter, my insider show notes every Mondaymorning.

[00:00:22] Usually sometimes it's Tuesday, sometimes it'sWednesday depends on the week. This week I was at a client siteover the weekend, actually, and Monday and Tuesday. Down inAtlanta. So I, I was busy down there. This is a DOD subcontractor.They just ship parts, but they are required by CMMC these newregulations I've actually been around for a while now toreally.

[00:00:49] Keep an eye on their cybersecurity. And so of coursethey bring me in and my team cuz you know, that's what we do. But Itold you that because of my newsletter this week, I got somecomments from a few people that the cybersecurity section in mynewsletter was two articles from 2015. And , they both pointed itout.

[00:01:13] I think it's great that everybody's paying that muchattention. I actually, there's a few people that notice that, andit was my fault for not explaining what I was trying to do. And,and that's because I was in a hotel room and I was getting ready togo to the client site and do. Dates fix a couple of things, checkthe seals on computers and you know, all of those sorts ofmaintenance things you have to do clean them out.

[00:01:38] I brought down a, a little blower and stuff. They,they were amazingly clean cuz we put them in a special cabinet thathas these big air filters on them and stuff. Anyhow, the twoarticles this week on cybersecurity in my newsletter. Well, this iseven in the free newsletter. Talked about two different things.

[00:01:57] Lenovo was installing software and laptops and theyapparently have still kind of done that. This was some years ago,like how seven years ago now, I guess. And they were putting it onthere and you had no control over it. Okay. It was a real problem.And then the other one was. About your hard drives and what NSA didfor years in modifying the firmware on the hard disk drives of anumber of computers, many computers out there.

[00:02:32] And in both cases, Lenovo and the NSA, the nationalsecurity agency put software on the computers so that even if youerased your computers, you would still. Have their software on it,they would reinstall itself and Lenovo has been caught again, doingthat. Okay. So there there's articles out there talking about justall of the stuff they've been doing.

[00:03:00] So here's what I want to propose to you guys. And Idid not make. This clear in the newsletter. And for that, Iapologize, I was in a hurry and that was my intention and it justhad never happened. Not, but not being in a hurry was my intention.But I, I, I intended to explain this a little bit better and I didon the radio a little bit this week as well.

[00:03:22] And I'm doing it right now. My intention is to letyou know that for decades now, bad guys have been able to embedmalware into parts of your computer. So instead of just theoperating system where they might have a. Replaced some sort of alibrary file. And now when your machine boots up, it's going topull it in from that library file or one of the many other ways,uh, they, they will go beneath your operating system.

[00:03:57] So they'll put things in the boot blocks of yourcomputer. And as we just mentioned here, they will put things inthe hard drive itself, not on the blocks of the hard drive, but inthe control. Of the hard drive right there on the hard drive'sboard motherboard, if you will, for the hard drive and they canmake it persistent.

[00:04:21] Now we've tried to get around some of these problems.Apple came up with the T2 chip and what the T2 chip does is reallylock things down on your apple. And that's always a good thing,right? And the apple TTU chip keeps track of passwords and makesthings bootable and everything else. And apple has also really kindof spun things out a little bit here with their TTU chip.

[00:04:51] They had some security problems. Uh they're in all ofthe newer apple computers. In fact, the one I use a lot is an oldercomputer that doesn't. That T2 chip in it, but what Microsoft hasdone now, and this isn't really Microsoft, it's really the hardwarevendors. They have something called a TP. And this TPM is there forsecurity.

[00:05:16] It's the trusted platform module. You want theversion two or better, uh, as they come out, right. Kind of keep itup to date. But the T2, this trusted platform module is kind oflike the apple T2 chip. It is nowhere near as. Complete, if youwill, as the apple T two chip is, and it's designed primarily forbooting your computer, which is really kind of cool.

[00:05:47] There's a cute article over a medium. And it's sayingthat the authors of professor bill Buchanan, the author of thisarticle says, uh, the TPM chip in your computer is perhaps aforgotten device. It often sits there not doing much and neverquite achieving its full potential. You bought the laptop becauseit had one, but you just can't find a use for it.

[00:06:09] The chip itself is rather jealous of the applet twochip and which does so much more and where people actually buy thecomputer for the things it bring. Few people actually buy acomputer, cuz it has a TPM, but lots of people buy a MacBook and aniPhone because it is trusted to look after your sensitive data.

[00:06:29] And he's absolutely right about that stuff. Now I'vegot clients who have been buying servers and other computers andthe T2 chip has been. Option for them. I think that's probablyalmost gone nowadays. It is probably added in by default. Thesethings are pretty cheap, cuz again, they don't really do much, butthey are now a part of it because of what Microsoft has done.

[00:06:58] Microsoft has made it so that you pretty much have tohave one of. T2 chip or TPM chips, I should say the TPM 2.0 cuz youknow, it's gotta be as good as apples T2 the TPM 2.0, which is acrypto processor so that you can run windows 11. Now, I don't wantyou to think that having this TPM chip in your computer, all of asudden makes it safe, but it does do a few things that are very,very.

[00:07:28] First of all, it has a random number generator, whichis super important when we're talking about encrypt. And thatrandom number generator is used to generate keys that are used foryour disc encryption and potentially other things. So if you areencrypting the disc on your windows machine, you are really movingahead in a very big way, because now if your computer is stolen andit boots up, they won't be able.

[00:07:57] At any of that data, it'll all look like randomtrash. If it's done its job. Right. And it can also of course storethe user's password in the chip. It has some what's calledpersistent memory. I told you all of the stuff because of what Iwant to tell you next. All of this stuff from Lenovo, from the NSAover the years.

[00:08:20] And, and of course the bad guys, whether it's Russia,China, it can be really anywhere. North. Korea's been big on this.Iran's been doing this sort of thing. Uh, All of those guys maywell have had access to your computer in the past, if you have anolder computer. And because some of this software, some of thismalware is persistent.

[00:08:44] And because windows now is, as I said, pretty muchrequiring one of these TPM chips, the TPM 2.0 were better is whatyou want. I think that it's time to seriously consider buying a newwindows computer. Now we're working with a client right now thathas an engineer who has been continually upgrading his windowscomputer since I don't know, windows XP days, I think.

[00:09:13] And every time he gets a new computer, he just goesahead and migrates everything over. Doesn't upgrade. Doesn't updateto the newest operating system. And for him, anyways, life is good.Well, it ain't so good folks because he has all kinds of nastiness,little turds. If you will, that are hiding all around hiscomputer.

[00:09:37] The registry is going to be scattered with thesethings. Some of them probably installed by some form of malwareover the years, his disc is gonna be cluttered, everything. So I'msaying right now, Get a new computer and go ahead and make sure youreinstall windows. That's the first thing we do. In fact, what wedo for our clients.

[00:10:01] We have a version of windows that we have updatedstream updated, and we don't have any of that bloatware on it. Thatthe manufacturers get their 10 bucks from the various offenders,you know, to put the Norton antivirus and all this other uselessstuff on your computer. So by reinstalling, just the windows.

[00:10:23] And of course, since it's windows, you gotta installall of the drivers for your computer, too. But by doing that,you're getting rid of all of the bloatware. And then what you wannado is either copy or restore your files onto the new computer. Andthen when you're done with that install, Your applications, thenewest versions of your applications.

[00:10:48] And I can hear people right now complaining, cuz Ihear this all of the time. My gosh, I've had that application for10 years and you can't even get it anymore. Blah blah. You knowwhat? You should not be using that application. You need to get thenewest version, or if that vendor's out of business, you need tomake sure that you go one more step, find a compatible vendor orwhatever.

[00:11:12] We have to stop using old computers and old software.Uh, there's options here, but seriously, consider this because ofwhat's been happening to us for years. Hey, visit me online. Signup for my newsletter, Craig Peter son.com.

[00:11:31] Well, autonomous cars are on the road and there wasan accident in Germany. We don't have all of the details yet, butit's really concerning. And it's about the anonymous cars. Yeah.Autonomous cars. And, uh, we gotta study out. I want to talk aboutas well.

[00:11:48] There are various levels of autonomy, I guess.Yeah.

[00:11:53] That's the right word in these autonomous vehiclesthat we have and that we're looking forward to level one is kind ofthe gold standard, right? That's where we want to get. That's wherethe cars don't even need a churn pedals, your tension, nothing.They just drive themselves. We're not there. And you probably guessthat.

[00:12:15] And then there's level two where you, the driver'ssupposed to pay attention, but the car's pretty much going to driveitself. Well, there is an article here from the associated presstalking about what happened in Germany. And, uh, this is a fewweeks back and this is the first time I've seen this article, butthey're saying.

[00:12:41] Test car with autonomous steering capability, veeredinto oncoming traffic in Germany, killing one person and seriouslyinjuring nine others. A spokesman for police in the Southwesterntown of Roy. Again said the electric BMW. Nine with five people onboard, including a young child swerved out of its lane at abandonedthe road, triggering a series of collisions involving four vehiclesafter brushing an oncoming search, the BMW hit a Mercedes Benz'svan head on resulting in the death of a 33 year old passenger inthat.

[00:13:27] The 70 year old driver, the Cien lost control of hercar and crashed into another vehicle with two people on board,pushing it off the road and causing it to burst into flame Ruly.Again, police spokesman, Michael Shaw said four rescue helicoptersand dozens of firefighters. Responded to the incident and theinjured were taken to several hospitals in the region.

[00:13:55] They included the 43 year old driver of the BMW threeadults aged 31 42 and 47 and an 18 month old child who were all inthe test vehicle. The article goes on, uh, is the police said in astatement, the crash vehicle was an autonomous electric test car,whether it was being steered by the 43, 3 year old driver or not isa subject of investigation.

[00:14:24] So this is called a level two driving assistancesystem. It's already incorporated in production vehicles today.They can support the driver on when the driver turns them onaccording to BMW with the level two vehicles, the driver. Alwaysretains responsibility. In other words, if that car gets into anaccident while you are behind the wheel and responsible for it,it's your fault.

[00:14:54] So that solves the problem of whose insurance coverswhat doesn't it? Yeah, it, it does it. Pretty well, because it'syour fault is kind of the bottom line. So we are in the process ofinvestigating the exact circumstances of the crash. BMW said, ofcourse we are in close contact with the authorities. It's it'sconcerning very concerning and I am not ready yet.

[00:15:23] Autonomous vehicles. Now we've seen, and we've talkedabout on the show before a number of problems with some of thesedifferent vehicles from Tesla and others, and they are on the roadsin many states right now, even in the Northeast, not just theTeslas, but these fully autonomous test vehicles. And.

[00:15:43] There are a number of things to be concerned abouthere. For instance, how can an autonomous vehicle determine what todo when there's a police officer in the middle of the road or aflagman? Or obviously it really can't determine it because it can'tmake out. What's what, in fact we might remember, and I'm surethey've made some adjustments here over at Tesla, but a Tesla carwent ahead and, uh, struck and I think killed a lady who wascrossing the road with her bicycle.

[00:16:20] I think she was walking it across when she was hit.So how can they. How can they tell the difference between a carthat's wrapped and has someone's face on it, maybe a politicianfull body on the back of a box truck as an advertisement. How canit tell the difference between that and a person that might bestanding there?

[00:16:44] It, it gets to be a real problem. We're alreadyseeing that some of these autonomous vehicles go directly rear endfire trucks stopped at the side of the road with their lights onpolice cars stopped at the side of the road with the lights on justcompletely rear end them. We're seeing that. So how about when itgets a little more difficult than a fire truck parked on the sideof the road?

[00:17:10] Now these cars, apparently autonomous steering and,uh, lane detection and correction, all that sort of stuff. Thesevehicles are looking at things and trying to determine, well, whatshould I do here? And oftentimes what they determine is, oh, well,okay. That's just something that's fixed at the side of theroad.

[00:17:30] Like, like a sign post, like a speed sign. When infact it's not. So we've gotta solve that problem. It, it stillisn't solved yet. What caused this car to steer directly intooncoming traffic and, and head first into a Mercedes van? I, Idon't know. They don't know yet. Anyways. I'm sure they'll find outsoon enough.

[00:17:57] There are real questions here. And then I wanna takeit to the next levels. If the car is in, let's say level one whereit's full autonomous, even if it's not, even if it's a level two,like this car was, or is, uh, what happens when the car is eithergoing to hit a pedestrian or go over a cliff or into a brickwall?

[00:18:23] That's even better. Cuz the car might not know thecliff is there. What decision should the car make? What kind ofethics should it be? You know, executing here. Can it even make anethical decision? And this is the trolley testing in case you'renot familiar with the whole trolley test thing. It's, let's say youare.

[00:18:47] A trolley operator, you're going down a hill andthere is a fork in the tracks. And all you can do is select trackset a or track set B you can't stop the trolley. You can't slow thetrolley down in track. Set a there's a group of seniors walkingacross the tracks that you will hit. If you go down tracks at atracks at B there's, some young kids playing on the.

[00:19:16] And if you choose B, you're gonna kill the kids. Soethical dilemma here, who do you kill? Cuz that's what the wholetrolley test is about. Look it up online. There's a lot ofdifferent variations of this, but what about the car? What decisionshould the car make? Should the car make the decision to protectyou the driver, or should the car be making the decision to protectthe pedestrian?

[00:19:43] If it's going to protect the pedestrian by plowinginto that brick wall and potentially killing the occupants of thecar. How about when there is the decision of the old people or theyoung. There is a lot to solve here. And some of these companies,including Mercedes have come out already with their decisions,Mercedes said they will protect the occupants of the vehicle.

[00:20:11] now when you're driving the car yourself, of course,you're making that decision in a, a split second, maybe somethingyou thought about, maybe not, you might make a rational decision.You might not. It's, you know, it's hard to say. And you'll findthese articles in my newsletter this week at, uh, Craigpeterson.com.

[00:20:32] If you're not on the newsletter list, you can signup. It's absolutely free. This is the free newsletter and you cansee all my insiders show notes every week. But it's an issue, isn'tit? The car veering into traffic hitting another one head first.How about later on when it's completely autonomous, what should itdo?

[00:20:58] By now you've seen one of these new cars with thatbig screen right there in the center of the console. I've got a fewproblems with this, more than a few problems with you people,right. To quote Seinfeld. Yeah. Let's talk about it.

[00:21:15] Right here, you know, it, it's very cool to have thatdisplay in the center of the car console.

[00:21:21] One of the major reasons that the automotivemanufacturers are putting that console right there in the center isbecause we are demanding, uh, the apple car play the Android carfunctions in order to have some really cool stuff, right. Where wecan just run our. And have all of this, uh, wonderfulinformation.

[00:21:47] What I really like about it and Android auto and, uh,the apple car both provide this. What I really like is you can usethe navigation system that you prefer, that you like, that you wantthat's in your. I have switched over to apple maps. Now I used touse ways. And before that I would use Google maps and way beforethat map quest and, and others, my wife could tell you some storiesof us trying to use some of the very first generation GPS stuff,having a, a laptop in the car and then having.

[00:22:25] Keep pup on the dashboard to try and pick up at leastthree satellites. And, and, uh, if you went off course at all, wentthe wrong way, took the wrong. It would just insist on bringing youback to where you were when you went off course, as opposed totaking you from where you are, to where you want to go, which theydo nowadays.

[00:22:47] But I like that. Right. And, and I like the newfeatures that are always coming out in these apps that we run onour smartphone. I do not like the fact that the cars havenavigation in them. Eh, some of them are pretty cool. They're nice.Like in our car, if you use the in-car navigation, it mutes themusic or the radio, whatever is playing on the driver's sidespeaker there in the front of the car.

[00:23:17] And then it gives the driver the direction. Soeveryone else can just keep listening to whatever they werelistening to before on the radio, et. You I'll need features likethat. But what I don't like is they wanna get six or 800 bucks outof us in order to get new maps in order to get new software for themapping system.

[00:23:38] When we can get things like apple maps for free.Where they're not even using our data against us, like Google doesright Android. Uh, very, very nice. I, I really like them. And theapple maps now is really good. I don't know if you remember how badit was when it first came out, but Steve jobs brought all of themapping, senior management into a room and asked them whathappened.

[00:24:05] Why is it so bad? You might remember that it tooksome people in Australia. Way off the beaten track out in themiddle of nowhere with no water, with no fuel and they could havedied out there, you know, Australia, everything's out to kill youand they might well have died and they didn't, which is goodnews.

[00:24:27] But even in the us, it was just messing up. It wasn'tvery good. Wasn't taking you always to the right place andcertainly not the best route. Now it's just gotten amazingly good.Very, very good. So I can choose, right. If I still want to useways I can use it. If I wanna use apple, I can use it. Googlemaps.

[00:24:45] I can use it some third party. I can use it, but ifI've got the stuff that's built into the car, I'm stuck with thestuff that's built into the car, and maybe I can pay to upgrade it.A lot of people have found recently, Hey, guess what? That two Gdata network went. And that means now that your remote control foryour card doesn't work anymore, you might have found yournavigation doesn't work anymore.

[00:25:13] I remember I had a garment that got live trafficupdates, but it was using FM carriers on FM radio stations. Andmany of them dumped that. guess what your garment's no goodanymore. At least that part of it isn't any good and garmentcharging for map updates. And I don't blame 'em for this stuff.Right.

[00:25:33] But I would prefer to have my own device to use. Sothat's part of the problem. In fact, that's indicative of what Isee to be the very big problem with these new in car systems,because that display in the computer behind it. Isn't just handlingyour navigation. It's controlling your seat, heaters, the radio,the music you're listening to the lights, the dimming, theheadlights, almost everything in the car goes through.

[00:26:08] Infotainment system, right? Yeah. Figured out whereI'm going next. Cuz that infotainment system just like the maps onmy car right now is going to become out outdated. And then what areyou gonna do? And when I say out outdated, I don't just mean, oh,well I want the new features. It might be that you want the newmaps.

[00:26:34] Yeah. But what happens when it breaks? This leads usto a study that happened here. A Swedish publication had performeda test. They took 11 new cars alongside an older car, a Volvo C 70from 2005. Now that Volvo had buttons and knobs, buttons and knobs,I've always liked that. And those 11 new cars all had thesewonderful infotainment systems, all in one touch screens in thecenter of the console.

[00:27:11] They tested this whole thing and they timed how longit took people to perform a li list of tasks in each car. So theyincluded things like turning on that seat. Heater, turning up thetemperature inside the car, the frost, adjust the radio, reset thetrip. Computer, turn off the screen. Dim the instruments.

[00:27:35] The old Volvo was the clear winner. . Yeah, indeed.So according to this article in ours, Technica, the four tasks werehandled within 10 seconds, flat using buttons and knobs in theVolvo. So in the amount of time it took them to do all of thetasks, the four tasks that they were given out of that selectionhere, I just read the car, drove a thousand.

[00:28:06] At 68 miles per hour. Now most of these other carswith that wonderful infotainment system required twice as long, oreven more to complete those same four tasks. So some 30 seconds. Soyou're talking about traveling two or 3000 feet while you'remessing around with that display in the central console.

[00:28:34] Looks cool. Isn't this the neatest thing ever, butthe problem is you have to hunt and now before you say, oh, well,Craig, these people weren't familiar with that console. Well, yeah.Okay. I'll give you that. But what they did with this test is. Theylet all of the participants play with the cars systems before theystarted the tests.

[00:28:57] In other words, they knew the menus, they knew wherethings were and it still took that time. See, what we're reallytalking about here is muscle memory, the ability for your car orfor you to know your. so you can reach out and you can turn thatvolume knob. You might have to glance real quick to make sure yougot the volume knob, but you don't have to hunt and Peck throughmenus.

[00:29:26] I like that. So as you can tell, I am not all thathot on these new, all touch interfaces. BMW has an interestingsolution to this and that is that I drive system that little knobpeople didn't like it at first, but you get used to it, right? So,you know, if you need to turn on the seat heater, you just press aknob up, up right down.

[00:29:52] And then TA your seat heater and you get to adjust itright there. That is muscle memory as well. So we've got some workto do here. Uh, there are some decent systems out there in Acura,MDX Mazda, CX 50, neither one of them uses a touchscreeninfiltration inform attainment system. So that's good. We'll seehow it all goes.

[00:30:18] Make sure you're on my newsletter. So you can readthis article and more. Craig peterson.com.

[00:30:26] We've had a chip shortage. I'm sure you've heard ofit. And it's been a real problem for everybody from carmanufacturers through PC makers. Well, now we're seeing a suddendownturn what's happening now. The Congress has funded it.

[00:30:43] Hey, surprisingly enough. Congress comes along to fixthe chip problem with the chip bill, billions of dollars, tens ofbillions actually being spent on our chip plants here to help thechip industry make more chips, cuz we need chips, chips, chips,right?

[00:31:03] Well, ours Technica has a great little article.They're actually taking it from the financial time searched waters.Uh, I subscribe the France for times for quite a while, but I don'tanymore. And they're talking about how we went from a boom economywhen it came to chips, these microchips, everything from, uh, Intelcorporation out through the manufacturers of some of these muchmore common chip styles nowadays, the arm chips and how thisnew.

[00:31:38] That's supposed to, uh, boost production is coming ata point where, okay, first of all, these manufacturers put billionsof dollars into building new plants here in the us of a. So that'sa good thing. And then Congress comes along sometime after the factand gives him tens of billions more. And by the way, managed, andthis apparently was Senator Chuck, Schumer's doing managed toremove a provision in the bill that said that none of that moneyfor chip.

[00:32:13] Plants could be spent in China. So yeah, there yougo. China, you get billions more from us, potentially here as webuild chip plants over there. But now what do we find out? Well, abit of a turn here, because there is now excess inventory. DanHutchinson, who is the chief executive V L S I research. Who's beenreally watching the whole chip cycle since 1980s came out and said,quote, I have never seen a time when we had excess inventoryand.

[00:32:46] We had shortages. Okay. So the immediate cause ofthis is a rapid buildup and inventory in the chip supply chainsince early the year 2022 here. So compared to February, there areenough chips on hand to support about a month and a half ofproduction. Global inventory levels jumped up even higher and theneven higher in July to almost two months.

[00:33:13] So that's been an issue. And then on top of it, PCsales have been tumbling. Smartphone demand has dropped, and thosehave been the main causes as consumers are slowing their spending.Why are they slowing spending? Because they don't have the moneythey used to have because of the non inflation that's have.

[00:33:33] Right now. So we've kind of got all of these thingshappening and to top it all off, as I said, they're taking tens ofbillions of dollars of our tax money and, uh, going to be spendingit on all of this. It's just absolutely amazing. But the suddennessof this turn, again, according to financial times has, was whenIntel stunned wall street with news that its revenue in the lastquarter had fallen 2.6 billion.

[00:34:02] 15%, which of course was short of what they wereexpecting on wall street. There. This is really quite amazing. Theytook an inventory adjustment that only hits like once a decade andVidia man. They are about to, uh, to really get hit too. I don't, Idon't think I talked about this, but. They're the largest maker ofthese GPUs, these graphics, processing boards, and supplementalchips that are on motherboards.

[00:34:32] And a lot of computers used a lot in video graphics,machine learning, and of course, mining of cryptocurrencies andthey have seen it fall dramatically 44% fall in these GPUs thathave been used for gaming. Bitcoin and, and mining and, and otherof these cryptocurrencies and micron, one of the largest makers ofmemory chip said it's free cash flow was likely to turn negative inthe next three months after averaging $1 billion in recentquarters.

[00:35:11] Isn't that amazing? So all of these problems havebeen. Also throughout Asia last, uh, month here over the lastmonth, the chief executive of Chinese ship maker, semiconductormanufacturing, international corporation, S I C said that demandhad slowed from smartphone and other consumer electronicsmakers.

[00:35:32] And some of these manufacturers, electronics makershave stopped orders all together. So guess what happens when you dothat? Think about what happened with. Down right. That reallyspurred this whole thing on a month before Taiwan, semiconductormanufacturing company, TSMC, which is like the biggest guy outthere for making many of the chips we depend upon said it wasexpecting an inventory correction that would last until late nextyear.

[00:36:05] So this has been a very abrupt slide. Chip makers inthe us are trying to manage this decline at the very moment.They're laying the ground for huge increase in production becauseof the tens of billions they have spent. Plus the $52 billion billthat was signed into law here. What a month or two ago?

[00:36:30] Uh, government support provided by the chips act. Soon the same day that Congress passed the law, Intel expected to bethe biggest beneficiary of all of these government grants of ourtax dollars, sliced 4 billion summits, capital spending plans forthe rest of the year. Now isn't that? What happens every.

[00:36:52] Really isn't it. What happens every time? Forinstance, the, uh, build back better plan renamed the inflationcausation actor, I think is what they might have called it. Um,that particular bill. Put money in for you to buy an electrical carelectric car, like four grand, eight grand kind of depends, uh,across the board.

[00:37:14] So what electronic electric car makers do theyincrease their prices? Yes, indeed. Buy, you know, Six or eightgrand as much as 12 grand. Right? Because now we got governmentmoney. We don't have to have you pay for it. So we're gonna take abigger profit and that profit's gonna come from the tax dollarsthat were taken from you and from me and from the widow down thestreet, right.

[00:37:40] Yeah. That's what happens every time? Why do we havethis whole thing about the loans for people who went to college?Well, why is college so expensive? Well, it, it continued to go upas government started providing grants and started backing loans.Right? All of the stuff the government was doing was ultimatelydriving up the cost of your schooling.

[00:38:05] Now they've driven up the. Of electric cars becauseof the money they put in. And because of the money that they've putin for the chips act the 52 billion to make chips that, Hey, we gota glut right now. Yeah. Um, guess what. The manufacturers of chips,the companies that were spending the money in order to createplants, more plants, more chip factories, fabrication plants havedecided they're gonna cut their spending.

[00:38:38] Why not? Because they're gonna get money from you atthe point of a gun, right? That's exactly what's happening. Oh man.So for now, again, according to the financial times, most chipsupply chain experts predict a relatively shallow downturn providedthat the global economy is headed first off landing somethingthat's obviously not guaranteed, but it has really left themscrambling, trying to figure out what happened here, because itjust fell apart so quickly.

[00:39:13] Gartner group, you might know them. They put togethera lot of studies on a lot of different industries had beenexpecting the growth in chip sales this year to have from 2020ones, 26%. So it took its forecast down further to 7% and is nowpredicting a 2.5% contraction in 2023. Isn't that something, um,the, the Philadelphia semiconductor index, if you are an investor,you've heard of that before, and that comprises the 30 largest uscompanies involved in, in chip design manufacturer and sale fellback almost 40% as a stock market corrected this year.

[00:39:57] After rising threefold after the early lockdown stockmarket slump, because people were working from home, they couldn'tgo in to work. Peop the kids were home, people were buyingcomputers so they could play games or get on a video conferencewith the office, et cetera. It has really, really changed. Oh, andI mentioned Nvidia and how Invidia's been.

[00:40:23] Pretty badly. And you'll find this article by theway, in my newsletter that went out on, um, Monday. And if youdon't get my free newsletter, definitely get it to just app todate. Craig, Peter son.com/subscribe. It's it's all worth doing,but within video here's what's happening. One of the biggestcryptocurrencies out there has decided that they don't want to bepart of this.

[00:40:52] Energy problem that we have, you know, some of theseminors for various types of cryptocurrencies have actually boughtpower plants, old coal PLA powered power plants that the statesdon't wanna buy power from anymore because it's, it's coal. Right.Kohl's evil. But the private sector came in and said, okay, well,if we run our own power company and we put these GPU's and specialpurpose made mining equipment into the power plant, we can save alot of money.

[00:41:27] That's how much power they need every. A whole powerplant to run some of these mining operations. And remember the wayyou mine, the cryptocurrencies. In most cases, you have to solvevery complex mathematical problems to prove that you did the work.That was needed in order to then, um, be awarded that Bitcoin orwhatever it was that you were mining.

[00:41:54] So pretty much all of the major cryptocurrencies arelooking at how can we move away from this model? Because in, insome cases, you know, we're talking about electrical consumption,just for mining cryptocurrencies that serve passes, some countriesentire need for electricity. That's how bad it is. And supposedlyhere, we've got one of the major cryptocurrencies that ischanging.

[00:42:24] The entire way you do mining, if you will. Very, verybig changes. So expect GPUs and companies like Nvidia that makethem to go way down in value here over the coming months. Hey,visit me online. Craig peterson.com. Subscribe to my podcast andfind me at YouTube. Take care.

[00:42:50] If Facebook, isn't the only company doing this, butthere's an article from the markup. They did a study and caughtFacebook. This is absolutely crazy receiving sensitive medicalinformation. We're gonna talk about that right now.

[00:43:06] This is really concerning for a lot of people. And,and for good reason, frankly, I've been talking about this.

[00:43:13] I, I think the first time I talked about it was overa decade ago and it has to do with what are called pixels. Now,marketers obviously want to show you ads and they want show you adsbased on your interest. And frankly, as a consumer, if I'm lookingfor a new F one. I wouldn't mind seeing ads from competing cardealers or, you know, used car places, et cetera, to try and sellme that Ford truck.

[00:43:43] It makes sense, right? If I'm looking for shoes, whynot show me ads for shoes, but what happens when we start talkingabout the medical business about the legal business things getmurky and people get very upset. You see the way these pixels workis you'll put a pixel, like for instance, a Facebook pixel.

[00:44:06] If you go to Craig peterson.com, I've got this pixelon there from Facebook. And what it allows me to do now is retargetFacebook user. So you go to my site to go to a page on my site, andthis is true for, uh, pretty much every website out there. And. Iknow that you went and you were looking for this, so I can retargetyou in an ads.

[00:44:28] I'll show you an ad. In other words, on Facebook nowI've never actually done that ever. Uh, I I'm like the world'sworst marketer, frankly. Uh, and, uh, but I do have that on therebecause it gives me some other numbers, statistics, and, and reallyhelps you to understand how the website's being used, which I thinkmakes a whole lot of sense.

[00:44:49] So there are marketers that are using this forobvious reasons. Now, I think you understand what the pixel is. Itis literally a little picture that is one pixel by one pixel, andit tends to blend in, I think even in most cases, now these pixelsfrom different. Places like Facebook are actually transparent.

[00:45:09] So you, you don't even see it on the page, but theidea is now they have a foothold on a website that doesn't belongto them. In this case, Facebook now has access to information abouta website that you visited that has nothing to do with Facebook.okay. So that's the basics of how these pixels work and they'realmost impossible to get rid of because in reality, many websites,mine included will even grab graphics from other websites justbecause you know, it it's, I'm quoting another article I pull intheir graphic.

[00:45:50] Of course. I'm gonna point to that other site. Whywould I take that picture? Put it on my side. I don't own therights to it. But if he'll let me that other website will, let mego ahead and show that graphic on my website, cuz there's ways torestrict it. If they don't want me doing that, they could stop mefrom doing it.

[00:46:09] Then I I'm going to just go to the original websiteso they can get the credit for it's their property still. I'm notviolating any copyright laws, et cetera. Does that make sense to.So what's the difference between the Facebook pixel and a pictureI'm pulling from another random website? Well, the obvious thing isit's coming from a Facebook domain of some sort.

[00:46:31] So, so there are ways to stop it, but there's just asmany ways to get around stopping it, frankly. Well, Let's move onto something a little more sensitive. We have had problems that Ireported on years ago of people going to an emergency room in ahospital. Now, when you're in that emergency room, your phone hasGPS capabilities still.

[00:46:57] It knows you went in the emergency entrance to thehospital and you are. Opening it up. Maybe you're looking around,maybe you're reading articles, maybe you're plotting your trip homeusing Google maps. You are being tracked depending on what apps youhave on your phone. If you have an Android versus an iPhone, whatyou've enabled, what you haven't enabled.

[00:47:20] Right? All of that sort of stuff. well, this now hasbecome a problem because as I reported there have been people whowent to the hospital, went to the emergency room and started seeingads from what you might call ambulance, chasing lawyers. Have youbeen injured? Is it someone else's fault? Call me right now.

[00:47:45] Do he cheat him in. if that sort of thing showed upon your phone, would you get a little upset, a little nervoussaying, what are they doing, trying to cash in on, on my pain,maybe literal pain. And it's not as though those ads are justshowing up while you are in the emergency room, because now they'vetagged you.

[00:48:06] They know that you are in that emergency room. So offthey'll. They will go ahead and track you and send you ads evenafter you leave. Hey, I wanna remind you if you want to get this,uh, this week's list of articles. I, I put out every week, myinsider show notes. It has become very popular. Thousands of peopleget that every week.

[00:48:32] Go right now to Craig peterson.com. I'll also sendout a little bit of training. I do that. I have special reports. Isend out. I've got more stuff I'm doing, but you gotta be on theemail list. Craig peterson.com to get on my free email list now.What's happened here now is markup went ahead and looked atNewsweek's top 100 hospitals in America.

[00:48:56] They went to their websites and they found about athird of the hospitals using what's called the Meel. That is theFacebook pixels referring to earlier. So it sends a little bit ofdata. Whenever someone clicks a button to let's say, schedule adoctor's appoint. Why does it do that? Well, because the Facebookpixel is on the scheduling page.

[00:49:24] Let's say there's scheduling page for oncology on thewebsite. I guess who knows that you are going to see an oncologist?Facebook? Why? Well, because the hospital has put a Facebooktracking pixel on that page. So Facebook knows, Hey, he was on theoncologist page. Maybe he has cancer. I should start showing himads from other hospitals and from cancer medications, etcetera.

[00:49:51] Cetera, that is happen. Right now, 33 of these top100 hospitals in America. Th these are the top 100, according toNewsweek's list. Have that information. Now that data is connectedto your internet. Address. So it's kinda like your computer'smailing address and they can link that back to usually to aspecific individual or to a household.

[00:50:20] So now they have a receipt of the appointmentrequest. that's gone to Facebook now. They don't have everythingyou filled out on the page or anything, you know, you added in yoursocial security number, maybe other medical information. Facebookdidn't get all of that, but they do know that you visited thehospital's website and which pages you visited on that website.

[00:50:47] So markup went ahead and contacted these hospital.So, for example, John John's Hopkins hospital, they did find aFacebook pixel tracking on the appointment, scheduling page. Theyinformed John's Hopkins of how that is a leak of personalinformation. And after being contacted by the markup, they did notremove the track.

[00:51:18] also, by the way, when the markup reached out tothem, the hospital did not respond UCLA Reagan medical center. Theyhad of course a pixel and they did remove it from the schedulingpage. Although they declined to comment, New York Presbyterianhospital, all these hospitals have that pixel and they did notremove it.

[00:51:40] Northwestern Memorial hospital. Again, they got thetracking pixel did not remove it after they were informed about thesecurity problems, duke university hospital, same thing. Most ofthese, by the way, did not respond to them. University ofPennsylvania, Houston Methodist hospital, the university of Chicagomedical center.

[00:52:02] Uh, the last two of those did remove the pixel. Uh,Scripps Memorial hospital out in LA JOA, California. There are manyBrigham and women's Faulkner hospital. They were informed that theyhad the tracking picture pixel on the, on the, uh, scheduling page.They did not remove it, but you know, the time of this article, aTufts medical center, same thing did not remove it, uh, out inSanford in San Diego.

[00:52:29] Same problem. John's Hopkins Bayview medical center,John Jefferson health, Thomas Jefferson university, hospitals,Loyola. These are big name hospitals. I'm looking at these thatgoes on and on sharp Memorial hospital, Henry Ford hospital. Uh,let's see some more, I'm trying to, oh, Massachusetts generalhospital.

[00:52:51] They did not have the tracking pixel Brigham inwomen's hospital, no tracking pixel on the scheduling page. So someof these hospitals were already doing it right. They re theyrecognized that putting this face. Pixel on may help them with someof the marketing and understanding the market a little better,which is what I do, but it's also giving personal information,personal health information to Facebook and Facebook'sadvertisers.

[00:53:23] So they didn't put it on so good for them. Again,mass general Brigham and women's, uh, Sanford Mount Sinai,university of Michigan hospital and, and others, of course. So verygood news there in general. Again, don't be worried about a pixelon just a random website because it probably is being used to helpwith stats to know what's being used on the website.

[00:53:49] And maybe, maybe just maybe using it to send a littlead to you on Facebook later. Of course, you're listening to CraigPeter son. You can get my insider show notes for absolutely free.And my little mini trainings. Oh three to five minutes everyweek@craigpeterson.com. Just sign up on the homepage.

[00:54:14] You know, I've got it on my homeowner's policy. Ihave a special business policy for it. And it's something that youshould seriously consider, but you need to understand first. Sowe're gonna talk about it. What is cyber insurance? Uh, that'swhat's up now?

[00:54:31] Cyber insurance is something that many businesseshave looked at, not all businesses have, which is kind of crazy. Ifyou ask me according to the industry statistics right now, lessthan 1% market penetration for cyber insurance and is expectedto.

[00:54:52] Into a $20 billion industry by 2025. That is someserious money. So what is this cyber insurance? For instance,there's a rider on my home insurance for, for cyber insurance and Ihave special cyber insurance from a big company underwritten, butit is for anything that happens. In my business, that's related tocyber security and it also covers my clients because that's what wedo for living is cyber security.

[00:55:28] If they are following our guidelines. So it's prettydarn cool when you get right down to it, because these risks thatwe have in the digital world are really every. So if you're a largeorganization, if you're a small little enterprise, are you going toget hacked? You know, bottom line, anybody could potentially gethacked because the bad guys have gotten pretty good.

[00:55:56] And most of us in business have gotten prettylackadaisical because of all of this, but not everybody understandswhen we're talking about cyber insurance. What does cyber mean?Well, the idea is that cyber insurance is created to protectorganizations and individuals against digital risks. So we'retalking about things like ransonware malware fishing campaigns.

[00:56:24] So for instance, I got a call just this week from alistener who again, had their operating account, emptied out, hateit. When that happens. And so they lost everything. They lost allof the money in the account and they're trying to get it back. Igot an email this week and, uh, from a lady that I, there's notmuch I can do for her.

[00:56:46] I pointed her in the right direction, but her father,I think it was, had his digital wallet of cryptocurrency completelyemptied, completely stolen. Can you believe this sort of stuff,right? It's happening every day. You might have insurance thatcovers that, but you might not. Traditional insurance policies areonly looking at physical risks, so they will take the physical riskthings like damage to equipment, or maybe you have livestock or youhave stock and inventory, a building different locations.

[00:57:29] That's your standard stuff. But cyber insurance is toallow businesses to transfer the costs associated with recoveryfrom the losses incurred when there's some form of cybersecuritybreach. Now that's a pretty big deal. because the losses can behuge. It isn't just ransomware where maybe it, it costs you amillion dollars in ransom payments.

[00:57:58] Or if you're an individual, a retiree, maybe it onlycosts you 25,000 in ransom payments. And I know that's a lot,especially for retiree. But there is loss of reputation. There'sloss of business, cuz you couldn't conduct business cuz youcouldn't use your computers. Right? All of that sort of stuff. Yougot people that you have to bring in, you have to bring in aspecial team to try and recover your data.

[00:58:23] Maybe try and figure out what had happened. Right.All of that sort of stuff. So be careful cyber insurance, a lot ofpeople kind of mistake it for policy that pays off. Attackers toretrieve or unlock data. That's not what it's really for cyberinsurance is something that allows you to, I guess the term in, inthe industry is transfer risk when your online security controlsfail and.

[00:58:52] Basically all of them could fail. It, it, it depends,right? If you're a huge company, you can hire a bigger team for asecurity operation center, but at the same time, you also have moreemployees that are causing more problems. So look at it entirelybusiness interruption, payments to experts to recover the data.

[00:59:14] Compensation for bodily injuries, uh, dependingobviously on the resulting damage and the particular policy and therates are gonna vary based on the maturity of your cyber defenses.So this is something that I've been big on for a long time, thecyber security maturity CMMC and what that helps 'em to determineis.

[00:59:39] What are your rates gonna be? So if you went out andyou're just using the cable modem that they, that the, uh, company,your cable company provided for you, or you go to a big boxretailer, and that's where you bought your firewall and switches,and you've got your wonderful little Lenovo PCs or Dows orwhatever, and you're running, uh, Norton antivirus.

[01:00:04] You are not well covered. You are not very maturefrom a cybersecurity standpoint. The other thing you need to beable to do is make sure you've got your asset management all inline, that you have policies and procedures in place for whenthings happen. You gotta have it all put together, but the averagecyber insurance policy for a small to mid-size company in 2021 wasabout $1,600.

[01:00:31] For $1 million in cyber liability coverage. Nowthat's not really bad at all. Now there are limits to what theprovider will pay. They will often, if you do get nailed, They'llcome in and double check that, everything that you said, all ofthose boxes that you checked when you were applying for your cybersecurity insurance, make sure you actually did all of them.

[01:00:59] Okay. Yeah. Kind of a big deal. And you not only willthey not pay out, if you didn't do everything that you said youwere going to be. but the other problem is you might end up gettingsued by. Okay. So expect a counter suit if you decide to soothethem. So don't lie on those fors people. Okay. All right. Um, cyberclaims, unlike non-technical events, like again, a fire flood stormdamage, the cyber insurance claim might be determined by means ofattack and your ability or your effort to prevent it.

[01:01:40] As I was saying, make sure you've got the checklistand this is something I think I, I should probably put a coursetogether on to help you guys with, or maybe even a little bit ofconsulting for people. Let me know, just send an email to me,me@craigpeterson.com. And uh, if you're interested in more infoabout cyber insurance, you can either look at this week'snewsletter that you can.

[01:02:04] By again, going to Craig peterson.com and a link tothis particular article I'm looking at, or you can tell me, Hey,listen, I'd love a little course or little support, a little help.Okay. I think it makes a lot of sense. So does your businessqualify for cyber insurance? Well, some do some don't, uh, youmight not see yourself as a target.

[01:02:27] For the bad guys, but I'll tell you, my 85 year oldfather was conned by some of these cyber attack guys. Okay. And hedoesn't have much money. He, he's not the bank of, uh, England bankof America. None of these big banks or anything. Oh. Is a retireeliving at home trying to make ends meet. So the same, thing's truefor you as a business, you as an individual.

[01:02:57] You are vulnerable most likely to a cyber attack, butyou've got to really manage your risk posture. You gotta do things,right. So that's the bottom line there. That's what we try and helpyou do. But you can find information about this again, you can justemail me, me, Craig peterson.com and ask for the info on cyberinsurance, or if you're already a subscriber to my newsletter.

[01:03:23] That went out Tuesday morning. So just check yourmail. Maybe it's in the spam box from Tuesday morning and you'llfind a lot more information linked right from there. Craigpeterson.com stick around. We'll be right back.

[01:03:41] There are a lot of complaints about how some of thesecryptocurrencies are very non green using tons of energy. And nowthe prices are going down. We're seeing a number of really weirdthings happening.

[01:03:57] Cryptocurrency, as you probably have heard, has takena tumble. Now, some of the cryptocurrencies, particularly ofcourse, someone you might know most is Bitcoin use a lot ofcomputing power.

[01:04:11] You see, what they're trying to do is basically solvea very complex mathematical problem. And in order to do that, theyneed a lot of computing. Now you can certainly run it on yourlittle desktop computer, that program to compute those things. It'scalled mining. So you're mining for Bitcoin. You're, you're tryingto solve these mathematical problems and there's a theoreticallimit to how many Bitcoins could actually potentially be mindlooking right now.

[01:04:45] They're saying that circulating Bitcoin right now. Isabout 19 million Bitcoin that are out there. And Bitcoin is worthabout $20,000 right now, down from its huge, huge, huge high. Thatwas, uh, more than two and a half times. What it's worth right now.So, how do you mind? Well, if you take that computer and you runthe software, it's gonna do some mining and it is probably going tocost you more in electricity nowadays to mine.

[01:05:21] One Bitcoin than that Bitcoin is worth. In fact, itcertainly will cost you more. Now. That's why the people that areprofessional Bitcoin minors have taken a different tact and whatthey've done. Is they found places where they can get cheapelectricity. For instance, Finland, where they're using geothermalproduced electricity.

[01:05:46] They're also using the cold air outside in order tocool down. The computers themselves as they're trying to computethis, but there's another thing that they've been doing. And thatis well, how about we buy a coal plant? That's been shut down andthat's happened. So they take that coal plant. They bring it backonline.

[01:06:08] They burn the coal, they produce electricity at acheaper rate than they could buy it. but behind all of this is thecomputing power. And what miners found a long time ago is it'sbetter to have thousands of compute units working on solving theseproblems than it is just having. I don't know how many CPUs are inyour computer.

[01:06:32] Four. Com, um, CPUs. How many? Well, I, how far canyou get with those? Yeah, they're fast, but we need thousands ofcomputers. So what they found is that GPU's graphical processingunits. Kind of met their goals. You see a GPU is actually composedof thousands of computers, little compute units. Now they can't doreal fancy math.

[01:07:01] They can't do anything particularly fancy. They'rereally designed to move. Pixels around on a screen. In other words,they're designed to help gamers have a nice smooth game whilethey're playing. They can be used. In fact, they're used all of thetime in desktop computers, just for regular display of a webpage,for instance, or if you're watching a video, all of that is part ofwhat they're doing.

[01:07:30] With graphic processing units. And if you've beenpaying attention, you probably have noticed if you particularly, ifyou're a gamer that the price for GPUs has gone way up, not onlyhas it gone way up and it isn't just due to the lockdown and thesupply chain problems. but they're very, very, very hard to getnow.

[01:07:53] Yeah. Some of that is due to supply chain problems.No doubt about it. But most of these GPUs, according to some of thenumbers I've seen, have actually been bought by these professionalmining companies. In fact, many of them have gone the next step andthey have what called custom silicone. These are completelycustomized process.

[01:08:19] sometimes they're using Asics. Sometimes they'reusing other things, but these custom processors that are reallygood at solving that problem that they have to solve in order tomine, a bit Bitcoin or one of these other currencies. So you, yousee how that all works. There's a number of GPU manufacturers andsomething else interesting has happened because of the drop invalue of pretty much all of the cryptocurrencies.

[01:08:51] And that is these GPS are going byebye. Right. Dodoes a company that is now no longer trading. That's no longeroperating. Uh, we've seen at least two of these crypto miningcompanies just completely disappear. So now all of their hardwareis going up for sale. You'll find it on EBA. So I, I wanna warnyou, if you are looking for a GPU of some sort for your computer,maybe if you're a gamer, be very, very careful.

[01:09:28] We've got a buyer beware situation here becauseyou're not just buying a GPU. A graphics processing card, uh, thathas been lightly used. It was sitting in a terminal. Maybe it's aGPU. Like I use them where, when I'm doing video editing, it doesuse the GPU, even some of the audio editing. It uses the GPU.

[01:09:50] I'm looking at it right now and I've got some, uh,GPU utilization going on. I've got about, uh, 6% of my GPU in useright now on this computer. So. What the problem is is that theseminors who are selling their old GPUs have been running them fullBo 24, 7. That's hard on anything. Isn't it. So what, uh, what'shappening here is that you are seeing a market getting flooded withGPUs.

[01:10:25] You really don't wanna. All right. Does that makesense? Uh, you know, there we've lost more than 50% this yearalready in some of these, uh, cryptocurrencies that are out therecoin base has had an interesting year Celsius, a majorcryptocurrency bank, suspended withdrawals, uh, just here in thelast few.

[01:10:52] Coin based crypto exchange announced a round oflayoffs. Also here, they paused their hiring a month or two ago. Itit's not going very well and prices for new and used graphic cardsare continuing to fall. The peak price was late in 2021, a littlebit early in 2022, but now you can go to Amazon new egg, best buyand buy current generation GPUs for prices that really would seemlike bargain six months ago.

[01:11:26] And pricing for used GPUs has fallen even further,which is the caveat Amour URA thing here that I'm warning everybodyabout. You need to proceed. With caution. So there's a lot ofscams, a lot of bait and switches. You know, that's been kind ofnormal for some things over the years on eBay. I'm afraid, but I'vehad pretty good luck with eBay, but any high value eBay purchaseCPUs have been mining cryptocurrencies at full tilt for months oryears have problems in new GPU.

[01:12:02] Would not have had, you know, this heat that theygenerate, the dust that gets into them, that the heat is messingwith can really degrade the performance and degrade the usage ofthat GPU here over time. Dust can also, uh, cause problems with thethermal paste that's in them could be dried out thermal pastebecause of the heat and that causes them to crack and causes otherproblems.

[01:12:30] So if you buy a used GP that looks dirty or runs hot,removing and cleaning the fan and heat sink, reapplying, freshthermal paste. Could potentially restore loss performance, andmaybe you can even get that new Sony PlayStation because GPS arebecoming available. Again. Visit me online Craig peterson.com andget my weekly insider show notes right there.

[01:12:59] Self-driving is relatively new technology. And, uh,our friends at Tesla just fired an employee who posted videos of afull self-driving accident. Uh, he's done it before.

[01:13:15] Tesla has a very interesting background. In fact,Elon Musk has gotten more interesting over time.

[01:13:23] And particularly lately the stuff he's saying, thestuff he's doing, but his companies have really made some amazingprogress. Now, one of the things that Elon did pretty well prettyearly on was he decided he was going to start selling. Aself-driving feature for his cars. And back in the day, you couldbuy it.

[01:13:49] This was before it was ready at all for, I think itwas 5,000 and, uh, it was good for whenever they came out with it.And then it went up to 7,000 and then I think it went to 12,000 andnow it's you pay him monthly, but in reality, There are no fullyself-driving qualified Teslas on the road today. It will be alittle while before that happens.

[01:14:19] So this ex Tesla employee by the name of John Burnellis quoted in ours Technica saying that he was fired for postingYouTube videos about Tesla's full self-driving beta. Now this iscalled F S D. And if you know, Computers, you know what beta is?Beta means, Hey, you know, should work, could work, probably hassome problems.

[01:14:44] And that's exactly what it is. Now. Tesla toldCalifornia regulators that the full self-driving beta lacks trueautonomous features. And that's probably how they got by gettingwith putting this car on the road, these cars on the road. So thisex employee. Says that Tesla also cut off access to the full selfdriving beta in the 2021 Tesla model three that he owns.

[01:15:17] Now. He said that he paid for it. He had itlegitimately, and yet Tesla cut him off from, and I guess. Anybodycan try and sign up for it. I don't know all of the details behindgetting that beta code. If you wanted to, you probably couldinvestigate a little bit further, but the video that he posted onFebruary 7th provided a frame by frame analysis of a collision ofhis Tesla with a Ballard, a a Ballard.

[01:15:48] Those are those stanchions, those, uh, cementpillars. They usually have. Plastic on the outside that you'll see,you know, protecting sidewalks or in this case it was protecting abike lane in San Jose. So he said, no matter how minor thisaccident was, it was the first full self-driving beta collisioncaught on camera.

[01:16:13] That is irrefutable. And he says I was fired fromTesla in February with my U YouTube being cited as the reason why,even though my uploads are for my personal vehicle off company,time or property with software, I paid for. And he has a, um,channel called AI addict that you can find over there on YouTube ifit hasn't been taken down yet.

[01:16:38] Right. Uh, he said that he got a notice that his fullself-driving beta was disabled be based on his recent driving data,but that didn't seem to fit because the morning I got fired, hesays I had zero proper use strikes. On my vehicle. So yeah, I, Ican't say as I really would blame him, uh, him being in this case,Elon Musk for firing this guy, but it's an interesting little videoto watch.

[01:17:08] It's like two and a half minutes. You'll see. And it,the guy has his hand on the steering. Well, and the car issteering. Itself down the roadway and there's no other trafficreally on the road. I don't know when this was like a, a Sunday orsomething, but you can see on the screen, it is detecting thingslike the, the little, uh, construction pillars that are on the sideof the road.

[01:17:36] And he's in a left. Turn only lane and his Teslaturns, left the steering. Wheel's kind of going a little back andforth, right? As it tries to make up his mind what it's going to doand he's driving down, he just passed a ups truck. Although I wouldnot have passed personally, the way he passed, which is the.

[01:17:56] The car decided it was going to, um, get closer tothat ups truck. I, I would've purposely gone further away. And thenwhat happens is he goes around another corner where there's someBallards. That are in the roadway. And of course the idea behindthem is so the cars don't go in and accidentally strike acyclist.

[01:18:20] But around that corner where there is a crosswalkcrossing the street, there's no Ballard. So people don't have tokind of get around them. And then the Ballards start off again. Sothe Tesla got kind of confused by this and looking at the screen,it doesn't show the, these Ballards. Being recognized. So thedriver of the car grabs the stern wheel takes over at the very lastsecond, but did actually hit the Ballard.

[01:18:52] Uh, no two ways about it here. He hit it and the caris stopped and it's just a minor scratch. He's showing it on his,uh, on his screen here. But I gotta say overall, it looks like itperformed quite admirably. And the fact that this apparently isthe. Uh, the only time it was actually caught on video.

[01:19:16] That's interesting too, but the cars of course havecameras on them too. So I'm sure. In other cases it did record avideo of it. So CNBC said it obtained a copy of Tesla's internalsocial media policy, and it says it makes no direct reference. Tocriticizing the company's product in public. So we'll see whathappens.

[01:19:38] Uh, apparently too, they are saying that this is thefirst accident in a year of testing this full self-driving. So thatis darn good, frankly. And, uh, he's saying, you know, some peopleare saying I should have reacted sooner, which I should have. Butin my year of testing, the full stop driving is usually really goodat detecting objects last minute and slowing to avoid.

[01:20:01] So I don't know. We'll see what happens here. Tesla'sdoing a very good job. Hey, and I got another car story for you.This one, I. Think is totally, totally cool. You might rememberCongress passed a law back in the seventies saying that we had tohave what these cafe standards for vehicles efficiencies. In otherwords, you had to have certain fuel efficiency across all of thecars that you manufactured you.

[01:20:29] Okay. It is good enough, whatever. And, uh, they,they weren't able to make. uh, the car manufacturers, they weren'table to hit it until they came up with a whole new ignitiontechnology for the cars. And that of course is fuel injection. Youmight remember we had car braiders and all of the cars, not veryefficient.

[01:20:51] The engines themselves aren't very efficient, but wecame up with fuel injection. And that helped the car manufacturersto meet these new cafe standards. Now, unfortunately, carmanufacturers have removed weight from the cars in order to gainfuel efficiency in order to meet these federal requirements.

[01:21:13] So they've done things like taking out the full sizespare tire, right? You, you had that before and that full sizespare tire is now replaced. So. Stupid a little tire, right? That,you know, you can limp down the road a little ways, but not veryfar, but they've also removed steel and various metals from otherparts of the car.

[01:21:32] And many people have said it's made the cars lesssafe. The same time they've added more safety features like theside impact airbags and, and other things and, and airbags thatwill Mame. But, but that's a different story entirely. Uh, but thisis very, very cool because there's a company called transientplasma systems TPS, and they came up with this new advancedignition system that uses plasma.

[01:22:02] They've designed it in such a way that it replacesyour spark plugs in your. And now they put the ignition module inthat uses nanosecond duration, pulses of plasma to ignite that airfuel mixture that's inside the cylinder. So you're still doing thefuel injection, but you're igniting it with a nanosecond worthof.

[01:22:28] Plasma. Isn't that just amazing. So they've testedthat technology 2019 is when they came out with it and they didsome bench testing, but now it's almost ready for production. Sothey're doing now with vehicle manufacturers, validation testing.It is frankly very cool. And they don't have to do it on brand newengines either.

[01:22:53] They will come up with retro Kitt fixed fixes. Now,imagine this getting 20% better mileage by basically replacing yourspark plugs and a little more firmware changes in your enginecontroller. No question about that one, right. But this is frankly.Absolutely amazing. Now it's going to take a lot of years before wemove to electric vehicles.

[01:23:19] For a lot of reasons. We're not ready. The countryisn't ready. The infrastructure isn't ready. People aren't ready.The cars aren't ready. We don't even know what. To do with thebatteries. People complain about nuclear waste while there are nowhuge fields full of these batteries while they're trying to figureout what do we do with the used batteries from these electric orhybrid cars, because man, they it's a huge problem.

[01:23:44] All kinds of toxic stuff in them. And they haven'tbeen good at being able to recycle 'em it's not like the old leadacid batteries. That are very easy to recycle. So it's going to beyears before they really stop selling any of these internalcombustion engines and even longer before they ban internalcombustion engines.

[01:24:06] From the roadways. So this plasma ignition system isgoing to really, really help 20%. That is darn good. And I amlooking at the article right now. They used this Toyota engine.This is a 2.5 liter Toyota Camry cycle, thermal efficiency around40%, which is absolutely amazing. Good job Toyota. And. Replacedthe spark plug with this.

[01:24:38] Ignition system, this new ignition system using ofcourse plasma and they found some amazing, amazing, uh, statisticshere improvements. So in some cases they're seeing. The spark plugsand the plasmas getting 6% increase in fuel economy and others areseeing 20% increases. Of course, they've got to do more testing,extreme heat, extreme, cold, wet, dry, but that's gonna behappening.

[01:25:09] And we might see this in our cars in the next coupleof years. Make sure you sign up right now. For my newsletter, getmy insider show notes for free Craig peterson.com.

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