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 Appointments
Hey, you know, it is probably time to do an upgrade on that computer of yours to Windows 11. Or maybe you’re going to move over to the Linux world. That’s what I did with my older computer. It’s running Linux now. Much faster, but there’s more to it than that.
[Automated transcript follows]
I send out my newsletter, my insider show notes every Monday morning.
[00:00:22] Usually sometimes it’s Tuesday, sometimes it’s Wednesday depends on the week. This week I was at a client site over the weekend, actually, and Monday and Tuesday. Down in Atlanta. So I, I was busy down there. This is a DOD subcontractor. They just ship parts, but they are required by CMMC these new regulations I’ve actually been around for a while now to really.
[00:00:49] Keep an eye on their cybersecurity. And so of course they bring me in and my team cuz you know, that’s what we do. But I told you that because of my newsletter this week, I got some comments from a few people that the cybersecurity section in my newsletter was two articles from 2015. And , they both pointed it out.
[00:01:13] I think it’s great that everybody’s paying that much attention. I actually, there’s a few people that notice that, and it 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 to go to the client site and do. Dates fix a couple of things, check the seals on computers and you know, all of those sorts of maintenance 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 that has these big air filters on them and stuff. Anyhow, the two articles this week on cybersecurity in my newsletter. Well, this is even in the free newsletter. Talked about two different things.
[00:01:57] Lenovo was installing software and laptops and they apparently have still kind of done that. This was some years ago, like how seven years ago now, I guess. And they were putting it on there 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 did for years in modifying the firmware on the hard disk drives of a number of computers, many computers out there.
[00:02:32] And in both cases, Lenovo and the NSA, the national security agency put software on the computers so that even if you erased your computers, you would still. Have their software on it, they would reinstall itself and Lenovo has been caught again, doing that. Okay. So there there’s articles out there talking about just all of the stuff they’ve been doing.
[00:03:00] So here’s what I want to propose to you guys. And I did not make. This clear in the newsletter. And for that, I apologize, I was in a hurry and that was my intention and it just had 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 did on the radio a little bit this week as well.
[00:03:22] And I’m doing it right now. My intention is to let you know that for decades now, bad guys have been able to embed malware into parts of your computer. So instead of just the operating system where they might have a. Replaced some sort of a library file. And now when your machine boots up, it’s going to pull 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 your computer. And as we just mentioned here, they will put things in the hard drive itself, not on the blocks of the hard drive, but in the control. Of the hard drive right there on the hard drive’s board motherboard, if you will, for the hard drive and they can make 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 really lock things down on your apple. And that’s always a good thing, right? And the apple TTU chip keeps track of passwords and makes things bootable and everything else. And apple has also really kind of spun things out a little bit here with their TTU chip.
[00:04:51] They had some security problems. Uh they’re in all of the newer apple computers. In fact, the one I use a lot is an older computer that doesn’t. That T2 chip in it, but what Microsoft has done now, and this isn’t really Microsoft, it’s really the hardware vendors. They have something called a TP. And this TPM is there for security.
[00:05:16] It’s the trusted platform module. You want the version two or better, uh, as they come out, right. Kind of keep it up to date. But the T2, this trusted platform module is kind of like the apple T2 chip. It is nowhere near as. Complete, if you will, as the apple T two chip is, and it’s designed primarily for booting your computer, which is really kind of cool.
[00:05:47] There’s a cute article over a medium. And it’s saying that the authors of professor bill Buchanan, the author of this article says, uh, the TPM chip in your computer is perhaps a forgotten device. It often sits there not doing much and never quite achieving its full potential. You bought the laptop because it had one, but you just can’t find a use for it.
[00:06:09] The chip itself is rather jealous of the applet two chip and which does so much more and where people actually buy the computer for the things it bring. Few people actually buy a computer, cuz it has a TPM, but lots of people buy a MacBook and an iPhone because it is trusted to look after your sensitive data.
[00:06:29] And he’s absolutely right about that stuff. Now I’ve got clients who have been buying servers and other computers and the T2 chip has been. Option for them. I think that’s probably almost gone nowadays. It is probably added in by default. These things are pretty cheap, cuz again, they don’t really do much, but they 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 to have one of. T2 chip or TPM chips, I should say the TPM 2.0 cuz you know, it’s gotta be as good as apples T2 the TPM 2.0, which is a crypto processor so that you can run windows 11. Now, I don’t want you to think that having this TPM chip in your computer, all of a sudden 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, which is super important when we’re talking about encrypt. And that random number generator is used to generate keys that are used for your disc encryption and potentially other things. So if you are encrypting the disc on your windows machine, you are really moving ahead in a very big way, because now if your computer is stolen and it boots up, they won’t be able.
[00:07:57] At any of that data, it’ll all look like random trash. If it’s done its job. Right. And it can also of course store the user’s password in the chip. It has some what’s called persistent memory. I told you all of the stuff because of what I want to tell you next. All of this stuff from Lenovo, from the NSA over 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 may well have had access to your computer in the past, if you have an older computer. And because some of this software, some of this malware is persistent.
[00:08:44] And because windows now is, as I said, pretty much requiring one of these TPM chips, the TPM 2.0 were better is what you want. I think that it’s time to seriously consider buying a new windows computer. Now we’re working with a client right now that has an engineer who has been continually upgrading his windows computer since I don’t know, windows XP days, I think.
[00:09:13] And every time he gets a new computer, he just goes ahead and migrates everything over. Doesn’t upgrade. Doesn’t update to 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 his computer.
[00:09:37] The registry is going to be scattered with these things. Some of them probably installed by some form of malware over the years, his disc is gonna be cluttered, everything. So I’m saying right now, Get a new computer and go ahead and make sure you reinstall windows. That’s the first thing we do. In fact, what we do for our clients.
[00:10:01] We have a version of windows that we have updated stream updated, and we don’t have any of that bloatware on it. That the manufacturers get their 10 bucks from the various offenders, you know, to put the Norton antivirus and all this other useless stuff on your computer. So by reinstalling, just the windows.
[00:10:23] And of course, since it’s windows, you gotta install all of the drivers for your computer, too. But by doing that, you’re getting rid of all of the bloatware. And then what you wanna do is either copy or restore your files onto the new computer. And then when you’re done with that install, Your applications, the newest versions of your applications.
[00:10:48] And I can hear people right now complaining, cuz I hear this all of the time. My gosh, I’ve had that application for 10 years and you can’t even get it anymore. Blah blah. You know what? You should not be using that application. You need to get the newest version, or if that vendor’s out of business, you need to make sure that you go one more step, find a compatible vendor or whatever.
[00:11:12] We have to stop using old computers and old software. Uh, there’s options here, but seriously, consider this because of what’s been happening to us for years. Hey, visit me online. Sign up for my newsletter, Craig Peter son.com.
[00:11:31] Well, autonomous cars are on the road and there was an accident in Germany. We don’t have all of the details yet, but it’s really concerning. And it’s about the anonymous cars. Yeah. Autonomous cars. And, uh, we gotta study out. I want to talk about as well.
[00:11:48] There are various levels of autonomy, I guess. Yeah.
[00:11:53] That’s the right word in these autonomous vehicles that we have and that we’re looking forward to level one is kind of the gold standard, right? That’s where we want to get. That’s where the cars don’t even need a churn pedals, your tension, nothing. They just drive themselves. We’re not there. And you probably guess that.
[00:12:15] And then there’s level two where you, the driver’s supposed to pay attention, but the car’s pretty much going to drive itself. Well, there is an article here from the associated press talking about what happened in Germany. And, uh, this is a few weeks back and this is the first time I’ve seen this article, but they’re saying.
[00:12:41] Test car with autonomous steering capability, veered into oncoming traffic in Germany, killing one person and seriously injuring nine others. A spokesman for police in the Southwestern town of Roy. Again said the electric BMW. Nine with five people on board, including a young child swerved out of its lane at abandoned the road, triggering a series of collisions involving four vehicles after brushing an oncoming search, the BMW hit a Mercedes Benz’s van head on resulting in the death of a 33 year old passenger in that.
[00:13:27] The 70 year old driver, the Cien lost control of her car 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 helicopters and dozens of firefighters. Responded to the incident and the injured were taken to several hospitals in the region.
[00:13:55] They included the 43 year old driver of the BMW three adults aged 31 42 and 47 and an 18 month old child who were all in the test vehicle. The article goes on, uh, is the police said in a statement, the crash vehicle was an autonomous electric test car, whether it was being steered by the 43, 3 year old driver or not is a subject of investigation.
[00:14:24] So this is called a level two driving assistance system. It’s already incorporated in production vehicles today. They can support the driver on when the driver turns them on according to BMW with the level two vehicles, the driver. Always retains responsibility. In other words, if that car gets into an accident 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 covers what doesn’t it? Yeah, it, it does it. Pretty well, because it’s your fault is kind of the bottom line. So we are in the process of investigating the exact circumstances of the crash. BMW said, of course we are in close contact with the authorities. It’s it’s concerning very concerning and I am not ready yet.
[00:15:23] Autonomous vehicles. Now we’ve seen, and we’ve talked about on the show before a number of problems with some of these different vehicles from Tesla and others, and they are on the roads in many states right now, even in the Northeast, not just the Teslas, but these fully autonomous test vehicles. And.
[00:15:43] There are a number of things to be concerned about here. For instance, how can an autonomous vehicle determine what to do when there’s a police officer in the middle of the road or a flagman? Or obviously it really can’t determine it because it can’t make out. What’s what, in fact we might remember, and I’m sure they’ve made some adjustments here over at Tesla, but a Tesla car went ahead and, uh, struck and I think killed a lady who was crossing 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 car that’s wrapped and has someone’s face on it, maybe a politician full body on the back of a box truck as an advertisement. How can it tell the difference between that and a person that might be standing there?
[00:16:44] It, it gets to be a real problem. We’re already seeing that some of these autonomous vehicles go directly rear end fire trucks stopped at the side of the road with their lights on police cars stopped at the side of the road with the lights on just completely rear end them. We’re seeing that. So how about when it gets a little more difficult than a fire truck parked on the side of the road?
[00:17:10] Now these cars, apparently autonomous steering and, uh, lane detection and correction, all that sort of stuff. These vehicles are looking at things and trying to determine, well, what should I do here? And oftentimes what they determine is, oh, well, okay. That’s just something that’s fixed at the side of the road.
[00:17:30] Like, like a sign post, like a speed sign. When in fact it’s not. So we’ve gotta solve that problem. It, it still isn’t solved yet. What caused this car to steer directly into oncoming traffic and, and head first into a Mercedes van? I, I don’t know. They don’t know yet. Anyways. I’m sure they’ll find out soon enough.
[00:17:57] There are real questions here. And then I wanna take it to the next levels. If the car is in, let’s say level one where it’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 either going to hit a pedestrian or go over a cliff or into a brick wall?
[00:18:23] That’s even better. Cuz the car might not know the cliff is there. What decision should the car make? What kind of ethics should it be? You know, executing here. Can it even make an ethical decision? And this is the trolley testing in case you’re not familiar with the whole trolley test thing. It’s, let’s say you are.
[00:18:47] A trolley operator, you’re going down a hill and there is a fork in the tracks. And all you can do is select track set a or track set B you can’t stop the trolley. You can’t slow the trolley down in track. Set a there’s a group of seniors walking across the tracks that you will hit. If you go down tracks at a tracks at B there’s, some young kids playing on the.
[00:19:16] And if you choose B, you’re gonna kill the kids. So ethical dilemma here, who do you kill? Cuz that’s what the whole trolley test is about. Look it up online. There’s a lot of different variations of this, but what about the car? What decision should the car make? Should the car make the decision to protect you the driver, or should the car be making the decision to protect the pedestrian?
[00:19:43] If it’s going to protect the pedestrian by plowing into that brick wall and potentially killing the occupants of the car. How about when there is the decision of the old people or the young. 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 something you 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 find these articles in my newsletter this week at, uh, Craig peterson.com.
[00:20:32] If you’re not on the newsletter list, you can sign up. It’s absolutely free. This is the free newsletter and you can see all my insiders show notes every week. But it’s an issue, isn’t it? The car veering into traffic hitting another one head first. How about later on when it’s completely autonomous, what should it do?
[00:20:58] By now you’ve seen one of these new cars with that big screen right there in the center of the console. I’ve got a few problems 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 that display in the center of the car console.
[00:21:21] One of the major reasons that the automotive manufacturers are putting that console right there in the center is because we are demanding, uh, the apple car play the Android car functions in order to have some really cool stuff, right. Where we can just run our. And have all of this, uh, wonderful information.
[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 use the navigation system that you prefer, that you like, that you want that’s in your. I have switched over to apple maps. Now I used to use ways. And before that I would use Google maps and way before that map quest and, and others, my wife could tell you some stories of 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 least three satellites. And, and, uh, if you went off course at all, went the wrong way, took the wrong. It would just insist on bringing you back to where you were when you went off course, as opposed to taking you from where you are, to where you want to go, which they do nowadays.
[00:22:47] But I like that. Right. And, and I like the new features that are always coming out in these apps that we run on our smartphone. I do not like the fact that the cars have navigation 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 the music or the radio, whatever is playing on the driver’s side speaker there in the front of the car.
[00:23:17] And then it gives the driver the direction. So everyone else can just keep listening to whatever they were listening to before on the radio, et. You I’ll need features like that. But what I don’t like is they wanna get six or 800 bucks out of us in order to get new maps in order to get new software for the mapping 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 does right Android. Uh, very, very nice. I, I really like them. And the apple maps now is really good. I don’t know if you remember how bad it was when it first came out, but Steve jobs brought all of the mapping, senior management into a room and asked them what happened.
[00:24:05] Why is it so bad? You might remember that it took some people in Australia. Way off the beaten track out in the middle of nowhere with no water, with no fuel and they could have died out there, you know, Australia, everything’s out to kill you and they might well have died and they didn’t, which is good news.
[00:24:27] But even in the us, it was just messing up. It wasn’t very good. Wasn’t taking you always to the right place and certainly not the best route. Now it’s just gotten amazingly good. Very, very good. So I can choose, right. If I still want to use ways I can use it. If I wanna use apple, I can use it. Google maps.
[00:24:45] I can use it some third party. I can use it, but if I’ve got the stuff that’s built into the car, I’m stuck with the stuff 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 G data network went. And that means now that your remote control for your card doesn’t work anymore, you might have found your navigation doesn’t work anymore.
[00:25:13] I remember I had a garment that got live traffic updates, but it was using FM carriers on FM radio stations. And many of them dumped that. guess what your garment’s no good anymore. At least that part of it isn’t any good and garment charging 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. So that’s part of the problem. In fact, that’s indicative of what I see to be the very big problem with these new in car systems, because that display in the computer behind it. Isn’t just handling your navigation. It’s controlling your seat, heaters, the radio, the music you’re listening to the lights, the dimming, the headlights, almost everything in the car goes through.
[00:26:08] Infotainment system, right? Yeah. Figured out where I’m going next. Cuz that infotainment system just like the maps on my car right now is going to become out outdated. And then what are you 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 new maps.
[00:26:34] Yeah. But what happens when it breaks? This leads us to a study that happened here. A Swedish publication had performed a test. They took 11 new cars alongside an older car, a Volvo C 70 from 2005. Now that Volvo had buttons and knobs, buttons and knobs, I’ve always liked that. And those 11 new cars all had these wonderful infotainment systems, all in one touch screens in the center of the console.
[00:27:11] They tested this whole thing and they timed how long it took people to perform a li list of tasks in each car. So they included things like turning on that seat. Heater, turning up the temperature inside the car, the frost, adjust the radio, reset the trip. 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 were handled within 10 seconds, flat using buttons and knobs in the Volvo. So in the amount of time it took them to do all of the tasks, the four tasks that they were given out of that selection here, I just read the car, drove a thousand.
[00:28:06] At 68 miles per hour. Now most of these other cars with that wonderful infotainment system required twice as long, or even more to complete those same four tasks. So some 30 seconds. So you’re talking about traveling two or 3000 feet while you’re messing around with that display in the central console.
[00:28:34] Looks cool. Isn’t this the neatest thing ever, but the 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. They let all of the participants play with the cars systems before they started the tests.
[00:28:57] In other words, they knew the menus, they knew where things were and it still took that time. See, what we’re really talking about here is muscle memory, the ability for your car or for you to know your. so you can reach out and you can turn that volume knob. You might have to glance real quick to make sure you got the volume knob, but you don’t have to hunt and Peck through menus.
[00:29:26] I like that. So as you can tell, I am not all that hot on these new, all touch interfaces. BMW has an interesting solution to this and that is that I drive system that little knob people 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 a knob up, up right down.
[00:29:52] And then TA your seat heater and you get to adjust it right there. That is muscle memory as well. So we’ve got some work to do here. Uh, there are some decent systems out there in Acura, MDX Mazda, CX 50, neither one of them uses a touchscreen infiltration inform attainment system. So that’s good. We’ll see how it all goes.
[00:30:18] Make sure you’re on my newsletter. So you can read this article and more. Craig peterson.com.
[00:30:26] We’ve had a chip shortage. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. And it’s been a real problem for everybody from car manufacturers through PC makers. Well, now we’re seeing a sudden downturn what’s happening now. The Congress has funded it.
[00:30:43] Hey, surprisingly enough. Congress comes along to fix the chip problem with the chip bill, billions of dollars, tens of billions actually being spent on our chip plants here to help the chip 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’t anymore. And they’re talking about how we went from a boom economy when it came to chips, these microchips, everything from, uh, Intel corporation out through the manufacturers of some of these much more common chip styles nowadays, the arm chips and how this new.
[00:31:38] That’s supposed to, uh, boost production is coming at a point where, okay, first of all, these manufacturers put billions of dollars into building new plants here in the us of a. So that’s a good thing. And then Congress comes along sometime after the fact and gives him tens of billions more. And by the way, managed, and this apparently was Senator Chuck, Schumer’s doing managed to remove a provision in the bill that said that none of that money for chip.
[00:32:13] Plants could be spent in China. So yeah, there you go. China, you get billions more from us, potentially here as we build chip plants over there. But now what do we find out? Well, a bit of a turn here, because there is now excess inventory. Dan Hutchinson, who is the chief executive V L S I research. Who’s been really watching the whole chip cycle since 1980s came out and said, quote, I have never seen a time when we had excess inventory and.
[00:32:46] We had shortages. Okay. So the immediate cause of this is a rapid buildup and inventory in the chip supply chain since early the year 2022 here. So compared to February, there are enough chips on hand to support about a month and a half of production. Global inventory levels jumped up even higher and then even higher in July to almost two months.
[00:33:13] So that’s been an issue. And then on top of it, PC sales have been tumbling. Smartphone demand has dropped, and those have been the main causes as consumers are slowing their spending. Why are they slowing spending? Because they don’t have the money they 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 things happening and to top it all off, as I said, they’re taking tens of billions of dollars of our tax money and, uh, going to be spending it on all of this. It’s just absolutely amazing. But the suddenness of this turn, again, according to financial times has, was when Intel stunned wall street with news that its revenue in the last quarter had fallen 2.6 billion.
[00:34:02] 15%, which of course was short of what they were expecting on wall street. There. This is really quite amazing. They took an inventory adjustment that only hits like once a decade and Vidia man. They are about to, uh, to really get hit too. I don’t, I don’t think I talked about this, but. They’re the largest maker of these GPUs, these graphics, processing boards, and supplemental chips 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 and they have seen it fall dramatically 44% fall in these GPUs that have been used for gaming. Bitcoin and, and mining and, and other of these cryptocurrencies and micron, one of the largest makers of memory chip said it’s free cash flow was likely to turn negative in the next three months after averaging $1 billion in recent quarters.
[00:35:11] Isn’t that amazing? So all of these problems have been. Also throughout Asia last, uh, month here over the last month, the chief executive of Chinese ship maker, semiconductor manufacturing, international corporation, S I C said that demand had slowed from smartphone and other consumer electronics makers.
[00:35:32] And some of these manufacturers, electronics makers have stopped orders all together. So guess what happens when you do that? Think about what happened with. Down right. That really spurred this whole thing on a month before Taiwan, semiconductor manufacturing company, TSMC, which is like the biggest guy out there for making many of the chips we depend upon said it was expecting an inventory correction that would last until late next year.
[00:36:05] So this has been a very abrupt slide. Chip makers in the us are trying to manage this decline at the very moment. They’re laying the ground for huge increase in production because of the tens of billions they have spent. Plus the $52 billion bill that was signed into law here. What a month or two ago?
[00:36:30] Uh, government support provided by the chips act. So on the same day that Congress passed the law, Intel expected to be the biggest beneficiary of all of these government grants of our tax dollars, sliced 4 billion summits, capital spending plans for the rest of the year. Now isn’t that? What happens every.
[00:36:52] Really isn’t it. What happens every time? For instance, the, uh, build back better plan renamed the inflation causation actor, I think is what they might have called it. Um, that particular bill. Put money in for you to buy an electrical car electric car, like four grand, eight grand kind of depends, uh, across the board.
[00:37:14] So what electronic electric car makers do they increase their prices? Yes, indeed. Buy, you know, Six or eight grand as much as 12 grand. Right? Because now we got government money. We don’t have to have you pay for it. So we’re gonna take a bigger profit and that profit’s gonna come from the tax dollars that were taken from you and from me and from the widow down the street, right.
[00:37:40] Yeah. That’s what happens every time? Why do we have this whole thing about the loans for people who went to college? Well, why is college so expensive? Well, it, it continued to go up as government started providing grants and started backing loans. Right? All of the stuff the government was doing was ultimately driving up the cost of your schooling.
[00:38:05] Now they’ve driven up the. Of electric cars because of the money they put in. And because of the money that they’ve put in for the chips act the 52 billion to make chips that, Hey, we got a glut right now. Yeah. Um, guess what. The manufacturers of chips, the companies that were spending the money in order to create plants, more plants, more chip factories, fabrication plants have decided they’re gonna cut their spending.
[00:38:38] Why not? Because they’re gonna get money from you at the point of a gun, right? That’s exactly what’s happening. Oh man. So for now, again, according to the financial times, most chip supply chain experts predict a relatively shallow downturn provided that the global economy is headed first off landing something that’s obviously not guaranteed, but it has really left them scrambling, trying to figure out what happened here, because it just fell apart so quickly.
[00:39:13] Gartner group, you might know them. They put together a lot of studies on a lot of different industries had been expecting the growth in chip sales this year to have from 2020 ones, 26%. So it took its forecast down further to 7% and is now predicting 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 us companies involved in, in chip design manufacturer and sale fell back almost 40% as a stock market corrected this year.
[00:39:57] After rising threefold after the early lockdown stock market slump, because people were working from home, they couldn’t go in to work. Peop the kids were home, people were buying computers so they could play games or get on a video conference with the office, et cetera. It has really, really changed. Oh, and I mentioned Nvidia and how Invidia’s been.
[00:40:23] Pretty badly. And you’ll find this article by the way, in my newsletter that went out on, um, Monday. And if you don’t get my free newsletter, definitely get it to just app to date. Craig, Peter son.com/subscribe. It’s it’s all worth doing, but within video here’s what’s happening. One of the biggest cryptocurrencies out there has decided that they don’t want to be part of this.
[00:40:52] Energy problem that we have, you know, some of these minors for various types of cryptocurrencies have actually bought power plants, old coal PLA powered power plants that the states don’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 special purpose made mining equipment into the power plant, we can save a lot of money.
[00:41:27] That’s how much power they need every. A whole power plant to run some of these mining operations. And remember the way you mine, the cryptocurrencies. In most cases, you have to solve very complex mathematical problems to prove that you did the work. That was needed in order to then, um, be awarded that Bitcoin or whatever it was that you were mining.
[00:41:54] So pretty much all of the major cryptocurrencies are looking at how can we move away from this model? Because in, in some cases, you know, we’re talking about electrical consumption, just for mining cryptocurrencies that serve passes, some countries entire need for electricity. That’s how bad it is. And supposedly here, we’ve got one of the major cryptocurrencies that is changing.
[00:42:24] The entire way you do mining, if you will. Very, very big changes. So expect GPUs and companies like Nvidia that make them to go way down in value here over the coming months. Hey, visit me online. Craig peterson.com. Subscribe to my podcast and find me at YouTube. Take care.
[00:42:50] If Facebook, isn’t the only company doing this, but there’s an article from the markup. They did a study and caught Facebook. This is absolutely crazy receiving sensitive medical information. 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 over a 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 ads based on your interest. And frankly, as a consumer, if I’m looking for a new F one. I wouldn’t mind seeing ads from competing car dealers or, you know, used car places, et cetera, to try and sell me that Ford truck.
[00:43:43] It makes sense, right? If I’m looking for shoes, why not show me ads for shoes, but what happens when we start talking about the medical business about the legal business things get murky and people get very upset. You see the way these pixels work is 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 pixel on there from Facebook. And what it allows me to do now is retarget Facebook user. So you go to my site to go to a page on my site, and this is true for, uh, pretty much every website out there. And. I know that you went and you were looking for this, so I can retarget you in an ads.
[00:44:28] I’ll show you an ad. In other words, on Facebook now I’ve never actually done that ever. Uh, I I’m like the world’s worst marketer, frankly. Uh, and, uh, but I do have that on there because it gives me some other numbers, statistics, and, and really helps you to understand how the website’s being used, which I think makes a whole lot of sense.
[00:44:49] So there are marketers that are using this for obvious reasons. Now, I think you understand what the pixel is. It is literally a little picture that is one pixel by one pixel, and it tends to blend in, I think even in most cases, now these pixels from different. Places like Facebook are actually transparent.
[00:45:09] So you, you don’t even see it on the page, but the idea is now they have a foothold on a website that doesn’t belong to them. In this case, Facebook now has access to information about a website that you visited that has nothing to do with Facebook. okay. So that’s the basics of how these pixels work and they’re almost impossible to get rid of because in reality, many websites, mine included will even grab graphics from other websites just because you know, it it’s, I’m quoting another article I pull in their graphic.
[00:45:50] Of course. I’m gonna point to that other site. Why would I take that picture? Put it on my side. I don’t own the rights to it. But if he’ll let me that other website will, let me go ahead and show that graphic on my website, cuz there’s ways to restrict it. If they don’t want me doing that, they could stop me from doing it.
[00:46:09] Then I I’m going to just go to the original website so they can get the credit for it’s their property still. I’m not violating any copyright laws, et cetera. Does that make sense to. So what’s the difference between the Facebook pixel and a picture I’m pulling from another random website? Well, the obvious thing is it’s coming from a Facebook domain of some sort.
[00:46:31] So, so there are ways to stop it, but there’s just as many ways to get around stopping it, frankly. Well, Let’s move on to something a little more sensitive. We have had problems that I reported on years ago of people going to an emergency room in a hospital. Now, when you’re in that emergency room, your phone has GPS capabilities still.
[00:46:57] It knows you went in the emergency entrance to the hospital and you are. Opening it up. Maybe you’re looking around, maybe you’re reading articles, maybe you’re plotting your trip home using Google maps. You are being tracked depending on what apps you have on your phone. If you have an Android versus an iPhone, what you’ve enabled, what you haven’t enabled.
[00:47:20] Right? All of that sort of stuff. well, this now has become a problem because as I reported there have been people who went to the hospital, went to the emergency room and started seeing ads from what you might call ambulance, chasing lawyers. Have you been 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 up on your phone, would you get a little upset, a little nervous saying, what are they doing, trying to cash in on, on my pain, maybe literal pain. And it’s not as though those ads are just showing up while you are in the emergency room, because now they’ve tagged you.
[00:48:06] They know that you are in that emergency room. So off they’ll. They will go ahead and track you and send you ads even after 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, my insider show notes. It has become very popular. Thousands of people get that every week.
[00:48:32] Go right now to Craig peterson.com. I’ll also send out a little bit of training. I do that. I have special reports. I send out. I’ve got more stuff I’m doing, but you gotta be on the email list. Craig peterson.com to get on my free email list now. What’s happened here now is markup went ahead and looked at Newsweek’s top 100 hospitals in America.
[00:48:56] They went to their websites and they found about a third of the hospitals using what’s called the Meel. That is the Facebook pixels referring to earlier. So it sends a little bit of data. Whenever someone clicks a button to let’s say, schedule a doctor’s appoint. Why does it do that? Well, because the Facebook pixel is on the scheduling page.
[00:49:24] Let’s say there’s scheduling page for oncology on the website. I guess who knows that you are going to see an oncologist? Facebook? Why? Well, because the hospital has put a Facebook tracking pixel on that page. So Facebook knows, Hey, he was on the oncologist page. Maybe he has cancer. I should start showing him ads from other hospitals and from cancer medications, et cetera.
[00:49:51] Cetera, that is happen. Right now, 33 of these top 100 hospitals in America. Th these are the top 100, according to Newsweek’s list. Have that information. Now that data is connected to your internet. Address. So it’s kinda like your computer’s mailing address and they can link that back to usually to a specific individual or to a household.
[00:50:20] So now they have a receipt of the appointment request. that’s gone to Facebook now. They don’t have everything you filled out on the page or anything, you know, you added in your social security number, maybe other medical information. Facebook didn’t get all of that, but they do know that you visited the hospital’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 a Facebook pixel tracking on the appointment, scheduling page. They informed John’s Hopkins of how that is a leak of personal information. And after being contacted by the markup, they did not remove the track.
[00:51:18] also, by the way, when the markup reached out to them, the hospital did not respond UCLA Reagan medical center. They had of course a pixel and they did remove it from the scheduling page. Although they declined to comment, New York Presbyterian hospital, all these hospitals have that pixel and they did not remove it.
[00:51:40] Northwestern Memorial hospital. Again, they got the tracking pixel did not remove it after they were informed about the security problems, duke university hospital, same thing. Most of these, by the way, did not respond to them. University of Pennsylvania, Houston Methodist hospital, the university of Chicago medical 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 many Brigham and women’s Faulkner hospital. They were informed that they had the tracking picture pixel on the, on the, uh, scheduling page. They did not remove it, but you know, the time of this article, a Tufts medical center, same thing did not remove it, uh, out in Sanford 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 that goes on and on sharp Memorial hospital, Henry Ford hospital. Uh, let’s see some more, I’m trying to, oh, Massachusetts general hospital.
[00:52:51] They did not have the tracking pixel Brigham in women’s hospital, no tracking pixel on the scheduling page. So some of these hospitals were already doing it right. They re they recognized that putting this face. Pixel on may help them with some of 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’s advertisers.
[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 very good news there in general. Again, don’t be worried about a pixel on just a random website because it probably is being used to help with stats to know what’s being used on the website.
[00:53:49] And maybe, maybe just maybe using it to send a little ad to you on Facebook later. Of course, you’re listening to Craig Peter son. You can get my insider show notes for absolutely free. And my little mini trainings. Oh three to five minutes every week@craigpeterson.com. Just sign up on the homepage.
[00:54:14] You know, I’ve got it on my homeowner’s policy. I have a special business policy for it. And it’s something that you should seriously consider, but you need to understand first. So we’re gonna talk about it. What is cyber insurance? Uh, that’s what’s up now?
[00:54:31] Cyber insurance is something that many businesses have looked at, not all businesses have, which is kind of crazy. If you ask me according to the industry statistics right now, less than 1% market penetration for cyber insurance and is expected to.
[00:54:52] Into a $20 billion industry by 2025. That is some serious money. So what is this cyber insurance? For instance, there’s a rider on my home insurance for, for cyber insurance and I have special cyber insurance from a big company underwritten, but it is for anything that happens. In my business, that’s related to cyber security and it also covers my clients because that’s what we do for living is cyber security.
[00:55:28] If they are following our guidelines. So it’s pretty darn cool when you get right down to it, because these risks that we have in the digital world are really every. So if you’re a large organization, if you’re a small little enterprise, are you going to get hacked? You know, bottom line, anybody could potentially get hacked because the bad guys have gotten pretty good.
[00:55:56] And most of us in business have gotten pretty lackadaisical because of all of this, but not everybody understands when we’re talking about cyber insurance. What does cyber mean? Well, the idea is that cyber insurance is created to protect organizations and individuals against digital risks. So we’re talking about things like ransonware malware fishing campaigns.
[00:56:24] So for instance, I got a call just this week from a listener who again, had their operating account, emptied out, hate it. When that happens. And so they lost everything. They lost all of the money in the account and they’re trying to get it back. I got an email this week and, uh, from a lady that I, there’s not much 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 completely emptied, completely stolen. Can you believe this sort of stuff, right? It’s happening every day. You might have insurance that covers that, but you might not. Traditional insurance policies are only looking at physical risks, so they will take the physical risk things like damage to equipment, or maybe you have livestock or you have stock and inventory, a building different locations.
[00:57:29] That’s your standard stuff. But cyber insurance is to allow businesses to transfer the costs associated with recovery from the losses incurred when there’s some form of cybersecurity breach. Now that’s a pretty big deal. because the losses can be huge. It isn’t just ransomware where maybe it, it costs you a million dollars in ransom payments.
[00:57:58] Or if you’re an individual, a retiree, maybe it only costs you 25,000 in ransom payments. And I know that’s a lot, especially for retiree. But there is loss of reputation. There’s loss of business, cuz you couldn’t conduct business cuz you couldn’t use your computers. Right? All of that sort of stuff. You got people that you have to bring in, you have to bring in a special 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 of people kind of mistake it for policy that pays off. Attackers to retrieve or unlock data. That’s not what it’s really for cyber insurance is something that allows you to, I guess the term in, in the industry is transfer risk when your online security controls fail 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 a security operation center, but at the same time, you also have more employees that are causing more problems. So look at it entirely business interruption, payments to experts to recover the data.
[00:59:14] Compensation for bodily injuries, uh, depending obviously on the resulting damage and the particular policy and the rates 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, the cyber security maturity CMMC and what that helps ’em to determine is.
[00:59:39] What are your rates gonna be? So if you went out and you’re just using the cable modem that they, that the, uh, company, your cable company provided for you, or you go to a big box retailer, and that’s where you bought your firewall and switches, and you’ve got your wonderful little Lenovo PCs or Dows or whatever, and you’re running, uh, Norton antivirus.
[01:00:04] You are not well covered. You are not very mature from a cybersecurity standpoint. The other thing you need to be able to do is make sure you’ve got your asset management all in line, that you have policies and procedures in place for when things happen. You gotta have it all put together, but the average cyber insurance policy for a small to mid-size company in 2021 was about $1,600.
[01:00:31] For $1 million in cyber liability coverage. Now that’s not really bad at all. Now there are limits to what the provider will pay. They will often, if you do get nailed, They’ll come in and double check that, everything that you said, all of those boxes that you checked when you were applying for your cyber security insurance, make sure you actually did all of them.
[01:00:59] Okay. Yeah. Kind of a big deal. And you not only will they not pay out, if you didn’t do everything that you said you were going to be. but the other problem is you might end up getting sued by. Okay. So expect a counter suit if you decide to soothe them. So don’t lie on those fors people. Okay. All right. Um, cyber claims, unlike non-technical events, like again, a fire flood storm damage, the cyber insurance claim might be determined by means of attack and your ability or your effort to prevent it.
[01:01:40] As I was saying, make sure you’ve got the checklist and this is something I think I, I should probably put a course together on to help you guys with, or maybe even a little bit of consulting for people. Let me know, just send an email to me, me@craigpeterson.com. And uh, if you’re interested in more info about cyber insurance, you can either look at this week’s newsletter that you can.
[01:02:04] By again, going to Craig peterson.com and a link to this 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 business qualify for cyber insurance? Well, some do some don’t, uh, you might not see yourself as a target.
[01:02:27] For the bad guys, but I’ll tell you, my 85 year old father was conned by some of these cyber attack guys. Okay. And he doesn’t have much money. He, he’s not the bank of, uh, England bank of America. None of these big banks or anything. Oh. Is a retiree living at home trying to make ends meet. So the same, thing’s true for you as a business, you as an individual.
[01:02:57] You are vulnerable most likely to a cyber attack, but you’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 help you do. But you can find information about this again, you can just email me, me, Craig peterson.com and ask for the info on cyber insurance, or if you’re already a subscriber to my newsletter.
[01:03:23] That went out Tuesday morning. So just check your mail. Maybe it’s in the spam box from Tuesday morning and you’ll find a lot more information linked right from there. Craig peterson.com stick around. We’ll be right back.
[01:03:41] There are a lot of complaints about how some of these cryptocurrencies are very non green using tons of energy. And now the prices are going down. We’re seeing a number of really weird things happening.
[01:03:57] Cryptocurrency, as you probably have heard, has taken a tumble. Now, some of the cryptocurrencies, particularly of course, someone you might know most is Bitcoin use a lot of computing power.
[01:04:11] You see, what they’re trying to do is basically solve a very complex mathematical problem. And in order to do that, they need a lot of computing. Now you can certainly run it on your little desktop computer, that program to compute those things. It’s called mining. So you’re mining for Bitcoin. You’re, you’re trying to solve these mathematical problems and there’s a theoretical limit to how many Bitcoins could actually potentially be mind looking right now.
[01:04:45] They’re saying that circulating Bitcoin right now. Is about 19 million Bitcoin that are out there. And Bitcoin is worth about $20,000 right now, down from its huge, huge, huge high. That was, 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 run the software, it’s gonna do some mining and it is probably going to cost you more in electricity nowadays to mine.
[01:05:21] One Bitcoin than that Bitcoin is worth. In fact, it certainly will cost you more. Now. That’s why the people that are professional Bitcoin minors have taken a different tact and what they’ve done. Is they found places where they can get cheap electricity. For instance, Finland, where they’re using geothermal produced electricity.
[01:05:46] They’re also using the cold air outside in order to cool down. The computers themselves as they’re trying to compute this, but there’s another thing that they’ve been doing. And that is well, how about we buy a coal plant? That’s been shut down and that’s happened. So they take that coal plant. They bring it back online.
[01:06:08] They burn the coal, they produce electricity at a cheaper rate than they could buy it. but behind all of this is the computing power. And what miners found a long time ago is it’s better to have thousands of compute units working on solving these problems than it is just having. I don’t know how many CPUs are in your computer.
[01:06:32] Four. Com, um, CPUs. How many? Well, I, how far can you get with those? Yeah, they’re fast, but we need thousands of computers. So what they found is that GPU’s graphical processing units. Kind of met their goals. You see a GPU is actually composed of thousands of computers, little compute units. Now they can’t do real fancy math.
[01:07:01] They can’t do anything particularly fancy. They’re really designed to move. Pixels around on a screen. In other words, they’re designed to help gamers have a nice smooth game while they’re playing. They can be used. In fact, they’re used all of the time in desktop computers, just for regular display of a webpage, for instance, or if you’re watching a video, all of that is part of what they’re doing.
[01:07:30] With graphic processing units. And if you’ve been paying attention, you probably have noticed if you particularly, if you’re a gamer that the price for GPUs has gone way up, not only has it gone way up and it isn’t just due to the lockdown and the supply chain problems. but they’re very, very, very hard to get now.
[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 the numbers I’ve seen, have actually been bought by these professional mining companies. In fact, many of them have gone the next step and they have what called custom silicone. These are completely customized process.
[01:08:19] sometimes they’re using Asics. Sometimes they’re using other things, but these custom processors that are really good at solving that problem that they have to solve in order to mine, a bit Bitcoin or one of these other currencies. So you, you see how that all works. There’s a number of GPU manufacturers and something else interesting has happened because of the drop in value of pretty much all of the cryptocurrencies.
[01:08:51] And that is these GPS are going byebye. Right. Do does a company that is now no longer trading. That’s no longer operating. Uh, we’ve seen at least two of these crypto mining companies just completely disappear. So now all of their hardware is going up for sale. You’ll find it on EBA. So I, I wanna warn you, 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 because you’re not just buying a GPU. A graphics processing card, uh, that has been lightly used. It was sitting in a terminal. Maybe it’s a GPU. Like I use them where, when I’m doing video editing, it does use 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 use right now on this computer. So. What the problem is is that these minors who are selling their old GPUs have been running them full Bo 24, 7. That’s hard on anything. Isn’t it. So what, uh, what’s happening here is that you are seeing a market getting flooded with GPUs.
[01:10:25] You really don’t wanna. All right. Does that make sense? Uh, you know, there we’ve lost more than 50% this year already in some of these, uh, cryptocurrencies that are out there coin base has had an interesting year Celsius, a major cryptocurrency bank, suspended withdrawals, uh, just here in the last few.
[01:10:52] Coin based crypto exchange announced a round of layoffs. Also here, they paused their hiring a month or two ago. It it’s not going very well and prices for new and used graphic cards are continuing to fall. The peak price was late in 2021, a little bit early in 2022, but now you can go to Amazon new egg, best buy and buy current generation GPUs for prices that really would seem like 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 everybody about. You need to proceed. With caution. So there’s a lot of scams, a lot of bait and switches. You know, that’s been kind of normal for some things over the years on eBay. I’m afraid, but I’ve had pretty good luck with eBay, but any high value eBay purchase CPUs have been mining cryptocurrencies at full tilt for months or years have problems in new GPU.
[01:12:02] Would not have had, you know, this heat that they generate, the dust that gets into them, that the heat is messing with can really degrade the performance and degrade the usage of that GPU here over time. Dust can also, uh, cause problems with the thermal paste that’s in them could be dried out thermal paste because of the heat and that causes them to crack and causes other problems.
[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, fresh thermal paste. Could potentially restore loss performance, and maybe you can even get that new Sony PlayStation because GPS are becoming available. Again. Visit me online Craig peterson.com and get 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 a full 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, the stuff he’s doing, but his companies have really made some amazing progress. Now, one of the things that Elon did pretty well pretty early on was he decided he was going to start selling. A self-driving feature for his cars. And back in the day, you could buy it.
[01:13:49] This was before it was ready at all for, I think it was 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 and now it’s you pay him monthly, but in reality, There are no fully self-driving qualified Teslas on the road today. It will be a little while before that happens.
[01:14:19] So this ex Tesla employee by the name of John Burnell is quoted in ours Technica saying that he was fired for posting YouTube videos about Tesla’s full self-driving beta. Now this is called F S D. And if you know, Computers, you know what beta is? Beta means, Hey, you know, should work, could work, probably has some problems.
[01:14:44] And that’s exactly what it is. Now. Tesla told California regulators that the full self-driving beta lacks true autonomous features. And that’s probably how they got by getting with putting this car on the road, these cars on the road. So this ex employee. Says that Tesla also cut off access to the full self driving beta in the 2021 Tesla model three that he owns.
[01:15:17] Now. He said that he paid for it. He had it legitimately, and yet Tesla cut him off from, and I guess. Anybody can try and sign up for it. I don’t know all of the details behind getting that beta code. If you wanted to, you probably could investigate a little bit further, but the video that he posted on February 7th provided a frame by frame analysis of a collision of his Tesla with a Ballard, a a Ballard.
[01:15:48] Those are those stanchions, those, uh, cement pillars. They usually have. Plastic on the outside that you’ll see, you know, protecting sidewalks or in this case it was protecting a bike lane in San Jose. So he said, no matter how minor this accident was, it was the first full self-driving beta collision caught on camera.
[01:16:13] That is irrefutable. And he says I was fired from Tesla 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 if it hasn’t been taken down yet.
[01:16:38] Right. Uh, he said that he got a notice that his full self-driving beta was disabled be based on his recent driving data, but that didn’t seem to fit because the morning I got fired, he says I had zero proper use strikes. On my vehicle. So yeah, I, I can’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 video to 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 is steering. Itself down the roadway and there’s no other traffic really on the road. I don’t know when this was like a, a Sunday or something, but you can see on the screen, it is detecting things like the, the little, uh, construction pillars that are on the side of the road.
[01:17:36] And he’s in a left. Turn only lane and his Tesla turns, left the steering. Wheel’s kind of going a little back and forth, right? As it tries to make up his mind what it’s going to do and he’s driving down, he just passed a ups truck. Although I would not have passed personally, the way he passed, which is the.
[01:17:56] The car decided it was going to, um, get closer to that ups truck. I, I would’ve purposely gone further away. And then what happens is he goes around another corner where there’s some Ballards. That are in the roadway. And of course the idea behind them is so the cars don’t go in and accidentally strike a cyclist.
[01:18:20] But around that corner where there is a crosswalk crossing the street, there’s no Ballard. So people don’t have to kind of get around them. And then the Ballards start off again. So the Tesla got kind of confused by this and looking at the screen, it doesn’t show the, these Ballards. Being recognized. So the driver of the car grabs the stern wheel takes over at the very last second, but did actually hit the Ballard.
[01:18:52] Uh, no two ways about it here. He hit it and the car is 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 it performed quite admirably. And the fact that this apparently is the. Uh, the only time it was actually caught on video.
[01:19:16] That’s interesting too, but the cars of course have cameras on them too. So I’m sure. In other cases it did record a video of it. So CNBC said it obtained a copy of Tesla’s internal social media policy, and it says it makes no direct reference. To criticizing the company’s product in public. So we’ll see what happens.
[01:19:38] Uh, apparently too, they are saying that this is the first accident in a year of testing this full self-driving. So that is darn good, frankly. And, uh, he’s saying, you know, some people are saying I should have reacted sooner, which I should have. But in my year of testing, the full stop driving is usually really good at detecting objects last minute and slowing to avoid.
[01:20:01] So I don’t know. We’ll see what happens here. Tesla’s doing a very good job. Hey, and I got another car story for you. This one, I. Think is totally, totally cool. You might remember Congress passed a law back in the seventies saying that we had to have what these cafe standards for vehicles efficiencies. In other words, you had to have certain fuel efficiency across all of the cars 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’t able to hit it until they came up with a whole new ignition technology for the cars. And that of course is fuel injection. You might remember we had car braiders and all of the cars, not very efficient.
[01:20:51] The engines themselves aren’t very efficient, but we came up with fuel injection. And that helped the car manufacturers to meet these new cafe standards. Now, unfortunately, car manufacturers have removed weight from the cars in order to gain fuel efficiency in order to meet these federal requirements.
[01:21:13] So they’ve done things like taking out the full size spare tire, right? You, you had that before and that full size spare tire is now replaced. So. Stupid a little tire, right? That, you know, you can limp down the road a little ways, but not very far, but they’ve also removed steel and various metals from other parts of the car.
[01:21:32] And many people have said it’s made the cars less safe. The same time they’ve added more safety features like the side impact airbags and, and other things and, and airbags that will Mame. But, but that’s a different story entirely. Uh, but this is very, very cool because there’s a company called transient plasma systems TPS, and they came up with this new advanced ignition system that uses plasma.
[01:22:02] They’ve designed it in such a way that it replaces your spark plugs in your. And now they put the ignition module in that uses nanosecond duration, pulses of plasma to ignite that air fuel mixture that’s inside the cylinder. So you’re still doing the fuel injection, but you’re igniting it with a nanosecond worth of.
[01:22:28] Plasma. Isn’t that just amazing. So they’ve tested that technology 2019 is when they came out with it and they did some bench testing, but now it’s almost ready for production. So they’re doing now with vehicle manufacturers, validation testing. It is frankly very cool. And they don’t have to do it on brand new engines either.
[01:22:53] They will come up with retro Kitt fixed fixes. Now, imagine this getting 20% better mileage by basically replacing your spark plugs and a little more firmware changes in your engine controller. No question about that one, right. But this is frankly. Absolutely amazing. Now it’s going to take a lot of years before we move to electric vehicles.
[01:23:19] For a lot of reasons. We’re not ready. The country isn’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 the batteries. People complain about nuclear waste while there are now huge fields full of these batteries while they’re trying to figure out what do we do with the used batteries from these electric or hybrid cars, because man, they it’s a huge problem.
[01:23:44] All kinds of toxic stuff in them. And they haven’t been good at being able to recycle ’em it’s not like the old lead acid batteries. That are very easy to recycle. So it’s going to be years before they really stop selling any of these internal combustion engines and even longer before they ban internal combustion engines.
[01:24:06] From the roadways. So this plasma ignition system is going to really, really help 20%. That is darn good. And I am looking at the article right now. They used this Toyota engine. This is a 2.5 liter Toyota Camry cycle, thermal efficiency around 40%, which is absolutely amazing. Good job Toyota. And. Replaced the spark plug with this.
[01:24:38] Ignition system, this new ignition system using of course plasma and they found some amazing, amazing, uh, statistics here improvements. So in some cases they’re seeing. The spark plugs and the plasmas getting 6% increase in fuel economy and others are seeing 20% increases. Of course, they’ve got to do more testing, extreme heat, extreme, cold, wet, dry, but that’s gonna be happening.
[01:25:09] And we might see this in our cars in the next couple of years. Make sure you sign up right now. For my newsletter, get my insider show notes for free Craig peterson.com.
