Summary:

During this episode, hosts Marlo Anderson and Steve Baker covered a range of topics, starting with a weather update about a winter storm warning in Bismarck and the use of heads-up displays to enhance driving during storms. They then discussed the potential control the Chinese government may have over the social media platform TikTok, as well as the dangers of deep fakes and cybersecurity breaches. The hosts also talked about The Boring Company’s tunneling technology, specifically its potential to alleviate traffic congestion using electric and potentially autonomous vehicles. The conversation also touched on advancements in prosthetics, including artificial limbs that can provide sensation and the possibility of grafting skin over them in the future.

Transcript:

Other breaking news, the actual one, of course, blizzard warning, starting at 11 o’clock this morning. As of right now, it’s scheduled, that system that was supposed to stay south along the north and South Dakota border is kind of slid to the north.

And now Bismarck is right on the edge of the six to 10 inches possible of snowfall and Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah. Yeah. It was just a winter weather advisory. The last I heard. Then I noticed the winter storm warning. Now we’re at a blizzard warning. It’s supposed to kick in at 11 o’clock this morning.

We’ll talk to the National Weather Service later in the program. Find out. But you don’t even seriously snowblower. It’s a blizzard warning. Now, we’re now making this up. No. Oh, cuz we make up a lot of stuff on this show. We, we do, but no, this is an accident. For real. For real. Yeah. Okay. I was shit about that.

I just find it amazing that in today’s world that we can be surprised by weather sometimes, especially they missed with this one. Blizzards. Yeah. This one was kind of a big miss. I can understand like the occasional thunderstorm that pops up and surprises people or tornado or whatever. But it seems with surprise tornado.

Yeah, but surprise blizzard. What? And the worst part is you don’t even have your snowblower. No, I don’t have a snowblower. So you lent it to somebody. Yeah. You know, so my question is, contractually, if you lend a piece of equipment like that to somebody, isn’t it an incumbent upon them to, when they return it to snowblower your driveway?

I actually think I should have first dibs on it. So before they even do their own, they should bring it to my house and do mine so that when I leave tomorrow morning that my lawn or my, driveway will be sparkling clean of no snow. You know What else to get your driveway sparkling clean of no snow.

What’s that? He had a yabo. That’s true. There’s yabo again. Plug for an endorsement there. We need to get ahold of those people. Yeah. It, you know, I, it’s just a cool machine. It is. I do have, the, oh my goodness. The badger, they sent me a lawnmower, you know? Right. Yes. So we have to install that one of these days.

I actually think that, okay. You get the badge, get the arvo. I’m putting, I’m putting Jim with the city on, on the spot here, but I think he told me the other day that I could have part of Dykes Sean Park Really? And put the, to put the badger in. I’m just saying. That’d be, it’d be fun. It’d be a fun place to experiment with it.

Right. Say Mandan Parks and Rec a little money, or, I think so, yeah. At least around the bandshell area there. Right? Well, it would always be nice and groomed and yeah. Do you think somebody would steal it though? Mm I think there, I think there would be cats that ride around on it? Well, they didn’t close the silver dollar in Mandan for a while, but I don’t know.

But anyway, can it go to its docking station in a secure location at like about 1230? That’s funny. That might be a good idea. Yes. Yeah, it’s not that idea. Yeah, somebody, you get the badge going around on it. I get the arvo. Fair enough. The ABOs cool. Yeah. You know. Did you see that it has an attachment now to take your garbage out to the court?

What? Yes. So it’ll attach to your garbage can, like what we have around here in Bismarck? Yeah. The wheel, the big wheeled garbage can, it’ll actually has an attachment so that. You don’t have to remember to take your garbage out. Now it knows where you have your garbage can and go pick it up and take it out to the street.

Oh, I know. Molds your yard moves. Snow kills weeds. Takes out the garbage. Takes out the garbage. And there’s, oh, it’s a dog poop. It’s a ba. It doesn’t have that yet, but I think it’s going to. And then, it also has a battery pack on it so that you can plug your, you can charge your cell phone and all this other stuff on it too.

So, kind of amazing. I like it. Yeah. It is pretty cool. We need that. Yep. We’ll work on it. Yabo work on it one of the things I wanted to talk about today, from a tech perspective, cybersecurity, and it starts with TikTok also, big news in the story, the data breach with the US Marshall Service.

Yeah. We’ll talk about that coming up in a little bit here. But, if you’re talking cybersecurity, and there’s been a lot to be said about TikTok because it’s a Chinese company, right? Accessed by the Chinese government. Okay. There’s a lot of talk in Congress sooner than later about getting rid of TikTok, it just making it a prohibition on TikTok that I don’t recall, a government prohibition since alcohol.

So what’s interesting to me about this is, well, there’s two things that are very, very interesting to me. So TikTok is, is certainly eroding people watching things on YouTube, certainly eroding people using Facebook and Google. And I mean, you only have so much time in the day, and if you’re consuming a lot on TikTok, then these other entities don’t have as much time with you.

Right. well, and TikTok is really the format for, if you consider it a job, Quote unquote influencer. So Instagram and TikTok would be the two places where influencers thrive. Yes. Yeah. And, and I was watching an interview on the news and there was a young man that was like, they can’t outlaw TikTok. The government can’t do that.

I’m not built for a real job. , wait a minute, that’s where we’ve gone to. Oh, okay. Yeah. Well, I just, I just wanna throw this out there because I find it interesting that, you know, and I’m not a big conspiracy theorist person, at least when I was younger. Now, as I get older, I, I tend to think through these things a little bit more.

But if you’re these entities and you can talk the US government into banning your competition, wouldn’t you do that? Well, yeah, absolutely. Okay. So I just wanna throw that out there. And if I was really concerned about security, really, really concerned about it, why are they not outlying d d i drones?

because that, that to me there’s 2 million of them in the United States. You know, I have a couple myself and the only way you really file these is with their app, with the people Marlo’s watching. And where do you think all of that footage is stored? Somewhere in a cloud. In China. In China. China. Well, China owns the company or they, they are part of that company and all the servers are in China.

And Well, when you start talking the security side, cuz. Part of it’s about where we’re going in a society from a tech perspective. Right.

 , of course, Bismarck, Mandan area. We are in a winter storm warning. Expect that to be updated to a blizzard warning. I’ve been here at 11 o’clock, so we’ll keep you up the day With that, we’ll check in with the National Weather Service coming up in just a little bit next hour, little over an hour from now.

So this is a prediction year, is that we’re going to be moved up to a blizzard war. That’s what they’ve been saying. I see. Because of the wind that’s coming along with us. Yeah. Well the good news is March is coming in like a lion. It is. There’s no doubt about it. Now we’ve got some hope towards the end of the month.

That’s interesting. Yes. Yeah. We’ll see if that prediction holds true. Yeah. Yeah. In like a lion out, like a lion, like out like a lamb. Yeah. Perfect. That’d be great actually. I love that. Thank you do too. The weather system. Yeah. . So you, you’ve got a little weather. I do. You know, to fill us in on here, I think a lot of people don’t know that you can do this.

Are you familiar with call, what’s called a heads up display? Yeah. So that projection that goes into your windshield? Yeah. Okay. Jet fighters have been using it for a long time. Yeah. Big, big in it. It started in aviation. Yep. And then grew into some high-end automobile. Now a lot of electric vehicles have heads up display.

Yes. Did you know you can do that with your cell phone? What? Yeah. So what you do? I’m just, I’m showing Steve how to do this right now. You put your phone. on your dashboard.  , so, and then it will reflect into your windshield. And then, and there are actual apps that do this. So you can get an H U d a heads up display app, and then you can have like your, like your speedometer will show up in there and all this other stuff, you know?

 , but what’s interesting and why I’m bringing this up now is because of the incoming weather. , I’m sure you’ve been caught in, you know, like this, this storm that’s coming in. There’s a lot of people don’t even realize that it’s coming in yet, because this is something that we’re all being surprised with today, right?

Now’s supposed to stay south, right? So all of a sudden you’re caught out somewhere and you’re in whiteout conditions and you don’t even know where the road’s at in front of you. Right? You can take your phone, put on Google Maps, put it in, heads up display mode, put it in your windshield so you can see, so the technology can help you stay on the road.

Or if you’re coming up to the turnoff that you need or whatever. And I’ve done this before and I’ve been in those situations, like you can’t even tell if you’re supposed to be turning off here or not. Well, the heads up display will help you do that if you have, you know, if you don’t have a later model car, a lot of cars like, you know, like, like my car has all this stuff built into it.

It’s coating in the windshield. Right? What is the reflective for this? Yeah. But it, it works really well and. You, you know, if you want that weather map or whatever it is that you want for a heads up display, because it’s much safer than when you’re white knuckling with your eyes glued to the windshield, trying to see some semblance of a road or any flashers from a vehicle that may be in front of you.

Right. You know, even that two seconds, you look at the Google map Yes. On your display, on your vehicle. Yes. The heads up display, really heads comes in handy right here because you can concentrate on what you’re doing and not take your eyes Okay. While to get used to that, because you look through it right when you’re driving.

Right. And then, oh, you just readjust your eyes a little bit to catch it, but, but if you, you don’t lose focus. And what I do with it is I actually put it in the middle so that it’s just off to, so it’s not in my view, shed looking straightforward. I can just kind of glance over and see.  , but it works really well.

And, and  , so if you get caught out there, just know that like Google Maps and I think Apple has this setting as well. Maybe before you head out on the roads today or something just, just look to see how you play with a little bit. Set your heads up. Display is what it’s called, h u d. And basically it’s just showing the image in reverse off of your phone so that when it reflects it’s showing it properly.

That’s all it’s doing. Right. So, yeah. But it does, it works really well. So it’s a cool app. And then what it does is it blacks out all the other stuff, you know, so that that part doesn’t show. So if you wanted to have like, your speed going, your, your entire screen becomes black except for the numbers to show.

And that’s what shows up in your screen then or on your windshield. So Heads Up Display. Heads up Display, yeah. App. And there’s, there’s quite a few different ones out there, but, but but most phones have this capability right now. I mean, you don’t have to have an app. but if you, if you install an app, it’ll probably make it a little easier, so, h .

Yeah. Good to know. Yeah, because you’re white knuckling at home later tonight, and there’s been times, well, you know, it’s funny, like last Tuesday, right when, when I leave, when I left here, we were in the middle of those storms, right? Right. And come out and well, and, and it had snowed. It had snowed quite a bit while winter and go out.

Oh my gosh. It was just stunning. Right. And I noticed snow globe snow. I was, I noticed as I was leaving that somebody had missed the turnoff to come into this studio, that might’ve been me. And, and so it was like 15 feet off. But you, you know, the reason you couldn’t tell is because everything was white.

You just couldn’t tell where the road was. And somebody just took a educated guess and drove into the. Now this happens a lot in the country. Of course. See now if I’m driving my hunting truck, I, I kind of do that on purpose. Sometimes I don’t care. Yep. But we’ve all, we’ve all done that when you’re driving down like a country road that hasn’t been traveled a whole lot and all of a sudden the road just turns or ends or whatever, something like what I’m talking about here would probably keep you from driving into the ditch.

Now this had nothing to do with bad weather cuz it was nice yesterday, but there was a Harlow’s bus across the street at the Cenex that was hung up. Really? Yeah. There’s a hole over there. And if you don’t hit the Proach Right, it’s a little separate interest with the snow. Yeah. It was kind of, wow, that’s a fire dollars tow truck.

All these challenges that are going on. Yeah. Yeah. There’s an app for that too. We’re talking a little cybersecurity and we were, yeah. You know, TikTok is, is kind of where the conversation starts when you’re talking cybersecurity. Congress looking at possibly getting rid of it.  , I, I think so. It’s not, I don’t think they’re really looking to get in for everybody.

They’re just, they’re, they, they, well, they’ve already taken off, banned. They’ve banned off a devices, but it’s, it’s back in the news again. So I think it’s being challenged. Well, Congress is looking at just outlawing it. Yeah. You know, like a prohibition of TikTok in this country. And part of me thinks about, okay, where are we going?

So if you have an app that has permissions and now say the Chinese government is, is utilizing this app. They have your face recognition, they have your voice, they, with AI coming that. . Okay. That does get a little scary. Well, with the, with the deep fake type of scenario they could make you Oh, they can make anybody.

And the thing with deep fakes right now, and this is an interesting point that you’re getting to here with, with the security part of it is that and I’ve played with this stuff already. We actually use some of the AI in our office. So, but so biometric scanners. Yeah. So if you’re looking at, you know, face recognition on your computer, your phone, your device.

Yeah. you know, anybody who watches a sci-fi movie or you know, government, intel mo, you know, what do they do? They scan your eye. Right. And I can recreate. . Well, that might be interesting. I guess I haven’t really thought about that so much from a security perspective. I mean, I suppose there will be a way sometime in the future, you always see them slip the contact lens in Oh yeah.

And they scan it and then it’s good, you know, or they just also cut the guys down. Yeah, yeah. There’s always that too. Yeah. If it’s kind of a gory Yeah. Yeah. But , but we’re probably, we’re probably moving more and more towards that. I mean, there’s, there’s a lot of talk about, you know, getting rid of passwords.

Totally. And just going to this because passwords are so easily compromised nowadays. But, wow. This is like two guys with ADHD again. Where, where? Where’d we start again? Cybersecurity. Oh, that’s right. That’s great. So here’s the other part, cuz you brought up the point. If, you know, if you’re a Google or one of these other.

Tech companies, why wouldn’t you want the government to get rid of your competition? Yeah. To be in your competition. I, I, I think, I think it’s kind of a twofold approach here that’s going on. I mean, I, I’m guessing, and, and again, this is just conspiracy in me, somebody from one of these organizations like Facebook or Google or whatever, whispered into one of our congressional, delegate’s ear that, Hey, we, there’s a security thing with TikTok that we need to discuss, and then all of a sudden it just becomes a thing, you know?

I really, quite frankly am way more concerned about the drone situation. I mean, I have been for years because, I mean, it, it’s kind of a combination of both. I mean, they get all these videos, and then when I think about a drone, right? You’re out camping south of Garrison Dam in the, what’s the campground down there?

Oh, the downriver Or what’s the That one? Oh my goodness. What is that name of that thing called? It’s by the, I’m drawing a blank right now. Yeah, me too. But I, there’s a campground there. Yes, there is. And, and and it’s a nice campground, beautiful area down there. Right?  , but anyway, just south of Garrison Dam or Lakes, aia.

And. You put a drone up because you’re just gonna have some fun with the family and take some, take some video of the river and whatever, and here’s Garrison Dam in the background. I’m just using this as one example, right? You, you’re not purpose purposefully filming the dam, but you’re gathering intel for the, for our enemies.

So if somebody wanted to do an attack or a cyber attack, or they’re, they already have, they already have all the data that they need on it. They don’t need to deploy somebody there to scope it out because there’s already all these videos that they’ve patched together and we have, I’ll betcha. I know pretty much all of our secured space across the country has been filmed some way or another with the drone, with the area exception of maybe area 51.

I, I, I, I did wanna finish up the, the, the other side of this too, cuz we talk about the cybersecurity and the TikTok and, okay. So where I have a bigger issue with TikTok is about what the app is cuz we’ve got the Chinese government that is pointing fingers at the US government saying you can’t ban TikTok because, you know, the United States should be free market and should be fair trade and, and all this, and, and we’ll find out a way to secure things.

I, I’m, I’m not concerned about that. . Where I have an issue with TikTok and TikTok specifically, is you take a look at TikTok, everywhere else in the world, and what we see TikTok as in the United States, and then what TikTok is in China is entirely different. It is. It’s apple to oranges. Yeah. It’s a, it’s educational, it’s patriotic.

It, it’s not what we, it’s not the crap about a dancing monkey and whatever. It’s because the chin Yeah. Chinese government is controlling the messaging that goes away from there. Right. So my point is, when you’ve got a TikTok as a company say, oh, no, no, no, we’re, we’re all secure. But in that space, the Chinese government is controlling that company.

Well, it’s a pretty easy step to go. Well, they’re controlling that company as far as content everywhere else as well. Yeah. Yeah. So, And I said, I was not gonna mention the movie, but you talk about dumbing down a society. Yep. TikTok. Yeah. The young man that I watched on the news that said, I’m not built for a real job.

Well, and if, and when you roll in, because you sit on video all day long, no kidding. You’re not built for a real job. Well, and you, you throw in the deep fake scenario. And for those of you who don’t know what a deep fake is, it’s the ability to, for example what I’m saying right now, I could be sa saying as Steve Bachan, right, right.

I mean, what AI can make. Right. Whatever. And there was a time, just real short time ago, like in the last election cycle you know, the prices had started to come down with this stuff, but it was still relatively expensive to get the software and the equipment that you needed. You know, the, the computers that you needed to do this, cuz this was all very, very expensive.

So Hollywood, that type of thing was able to do this stuff. And other, people who had the means, but now you and I can do this, we can get the software relatively inexpensively. I mean, I mean, my goodness, there are filters coming out even on TikTok that make you look like a teenager again and all this other stuff.

Right? Well, it’s not gonna be that much. I’ve never downloaded down TikTok, but now I’m thinking about it. It’s not gonna be that much further down when they’re gonna say, Hey, do you want, do you want do you wanna look like Joe Biden or, or Donald Trump, or whatever, right? And then you could say, I’m just, you know, this, this is, this is the challenge you have.

There is a window, it’s just like viruses. There’s a window, whether it’s 15 minutes or five hours or whatever before somebody debunks. What’s going on. So you can pop on and pretend you’re the president, say something, and by the time it’s corrected, the stock market has crashed. Just using that as an example, right?

Right. I mean, you could say something or start World War III or whatever it is, right? I mean, you could do things and if people think that it truly is the president and somebody and it gets, it gets viral somehow or another, that’s what, that’s, that’s the possibility here of impact. Now the impact in on the political spectrum is significant as well, because it’s always you know, this person said this or the person said that after a while, you don’t, you don’t even know who’s saying what anymore.

 , You get confused and then all of a sudden you see something else and, and the algorithm knows that you lean one way or the other. Already already knows this.

 , we didn’t talk about, we were gonna talk about this but, US Marshall Service, a big data breach

 , they’re also in charge of a lot of protective services. So they protect judges in this country. they’ve got a lot of different roles, very secure and, and, sensitive roles. they had a huge data breach, massive data breach. so a lot of information was dumped. a lot of information was, was compromised.

And then on top of everything else, extortion wear, if you want your files back. Well, so when you start looking at the vulnerability of businesses, individuals, banks, you know, the, the pipeline company that was ex now the government, it it, okay, from a security perspective, that’s a little frightening to me.

So this happens a lot more than you realize, right? And, and it, to me, it’s telling me that it’s like anybody’s vulnerable. they are. And I think it’s important for these institutions to make sure that they put some type of firewalls in place. have a plan. And it’s no different than you lock in your doors, right?

I mean, do you, do you leave your house anymore without locking your door? Do you sleep? Absolutely not. Do you sleep at night without locking your doors? No. All right. Absolutely not. So I, it’s not like when I was a kid. No. And, and I think a lot of people, I think that, oh, I’m just a, I’m just a small bank in Bismarck, North Dakota, or I am a, a clinic in flasher, North Dakota or whatever.

It’s gonna bother who’s gonna bother me. Right, right. Well, that’s the first places that they’re gonna go after because they know that there’s less obstacles for them to get through because you’re thinking that nobody’s ever gonna come after you. Well, and a lot of the, the, the phishing scams and the, the data breaches and the information that people are going after the nefarious people that are going after this information, it, it’s kinda like the phishing scams.

It is. It, it’s, it’s, yeah. If we, and my, if we get $20 from you and $20 from that person, and we don’t need a lot of people to fall for it, we just need a couple. Yeah. And we’re not taking a ton of money. We’re just taking little, but that adds up. That’s a, it’s a, that’s a little bit of a different scam scenario.

that would be more, and, and there’s a lot of those going around too. And, and the thing is, is when you look at your bill and it’s $3 and 42 cents, you’re thinking, oh, what did I buy? Oh, I, I don’t know the name of the company, but it’s $3 and 42 cents, so I’m not even gonna take my time to check into this.

The people on the other side of that. There’s an app for that though, right? There’s an app for that you can go through over there actually is. There is, yeah. I actually put that on my phone here the other day just to play with it a little bit.  , but they, but that’s what they’re after, is that you don’t realize, or you just don’t think anything about 3040 2 cents.

But when they have a million people a month that are doing this, the people on the other side who wrote that, that little ransom or that little.  , virus are loving this every minute, you know the, the ransomware scenario though, and, and my guess with the, there’s two, two ways they got into to the, marshals, and one would be what you’re talking about, some type of phishing scam.

So there’s something that came across and hey, you owe Amazon, or I, you know, you have this order coming in from Amazon for $1,842. If you want to cancel, click here. And of course, you know, people are like, I didn’t order something for $1,842. So then they’ll click on that. Well, what you did is you gave the virus permission to come into your computer.

Right. So I’m just using that as one way. Well, in this case, what football, what I heard was there was a program that got compromised and then they cut that program off. So, but how much information Right. We don’t know yet. Right, right. You know, how much did that program that they were using compromised the rest of the system?

Right. Because it was all integrated until. Oh, we’ve got a problem. Yes. Let’s cut this, shut this off. Firewall that off, block it off, disconnect it. but what else got inside? Right? You don’t know. That’s what takes the time. And that’s where the the extortion wear comes from. Yep. So it’s, it’s called ransomware and so yeah, I’m just reading through it right now.

The cyber attack took place on 17th of February and discovered a ransomware and, and they had a exfiltration event affecting a standalone system after which the system was disconnected from the network. But you never know, I mean, those things move fast. Mm-hmm. I remember one time when I had, kind of a ransom war scenario going on where, you know, they encrypt your, your information and I realized it and I unplug.

The computer. That’s the, probably the best thing you can do is if you know something weird going on, just unplug it as fast as you can, you know, or turn it off somehow or another. But, you know, in a laptop, I guess unplugging, unplugging it doesn’t help a whole lot. But on a desktop you can take the power away.

 , but by the time I got down there and unplugged it, it had encrypted everything. I mean, took, it, took out my externals that I had on that computer. It took out the backup on our network. It encrypted it all. I mean, it was crazy. And then of course, they, they want, you know, $8,000 or whatever to get your stuff back and they’ll usually, so, and this happens a lot.

I mean, I’m telling you like banks that you probably know have had this happen to them, but they, they just pay it. That’s the thing. That’s the dirty little secret here, is that hospitals and whatever, if they fight. They can be down for days or weeks or months. So a lot of times they’ll just pay it and the scammers know that they’re better off to actually give them the key to get their information back.

Because if, if it gets out that a bank is fighting this, for example, then the rest of the banks will, if, if they know that the bank can just pay the 20,000 or a hundred thousand dollars and get their stuff back, most banks will just take that and pay it off and take the loss on the, on the, well, that’s the other key too.

That’s where I was going with it, kind of comparing it a little bit to the fishing stuff too. They don’t ask for a lot of money because a lot of times in these though, I mean, they’re not gonna ask for, we don’t, we don’t want a billion dollars because we want you to actually pay it. We actually want you to pay it, but it’s usually like if it’s a bank or a hospital or something, it’s more than 10 bucks.

It’s not $3 and 42 cents. They’re gonna ask for something that’s gonna hurt a little bit. But a hospital’s different too, because depending on the systems you get into, People’s lives are at stake. That’s the issue. And they know this. So a lot of hospitals will just pay it as quickly as they can because they can’t even operate no pun intended there, I guess.

Right? But that is the truth of the matter, is that if you shut down a hospital, I mean, there are, there are lives at stake, you know, it’s not just financial records and things. I mean, so, so a lot of hospitals will just pay it and get back to business and then try to harden their systems after the fact, you know, the, the truth.

I mean, what you really should be doing is always being diligent and, and continue to harden your systems and make sure that they’re, they’re secure. So, yeah. Pound of prevention. Right. And you know, I know we all get frustrated with the password thing. It drives me crazy. It literally drives me crazy. And I know yesterday, I’m, I’m trying to get into one of my airline scenarios or one of my airlines that have, I don’t remember a million.

All my passwords. I don’t either. And I have ’em stored and I have ’em written down. I mean, I, I, I have all this stuff going on and I still have problems trying to get to these passwords cuz everybody is different. One of ’em needs  a special character, a capitalized letter. That’s one that screws me up is I’m good with all the, it’s the special character because you changed the special character.

I’m like, which special character do I use? Well, and I get a lot to choose from here and a lot of, so some of ’em you can use any special character. And then the one yesterday, I’m looking at this and I’m like, I’m putting my, what I normally would use as my password, my recent password in there. And I’m like, why is this not working?

And then I realized that the special pa or the special characters, they only allow five of them. And my one I use is not part of the five. And I’m like you gotta be kidding me. But that, that’s, that’s why it’s frustrating for a lot of people and that’s why there’s gaps in security. It’s like our corporate  email, which the.

I kind of use this to my advantage because they’ll send out things just, just as tests and then you gotta go take classes. Yeah. And it’s like I just delete everything from corporate and go, yep. Well I thought it was a phish scam. So, and what, what I love is being, what do you mean you couldn’t get a hold, pick up the phone and call me for having sakes when you go into an office, like when I, when I was doing more computer work, went into this one office one time and they had their password  with a little sticky note on their computer Right.

Or on their screen. So I, I, I walked in, I seen that, I said hi, and I actually left. I went out in the parking lot, got on their wifi, started printing stuff, and I came back in and they’re like, They’re, they’re going crazy. They’re like, my, our, our, our printer just went crazy here. And I’m like, well, that’s me.

I just wanted to show you how insecure you are. I sat out in your parking lot and did this. Oh. And people just don’t think about this.

By the way, the boring company

Don’t companies usually come up with creative names?

Yeah.

it actually tunnels and Really? Yeah. Yeah. You’re not familiar with this at all? No, I’m not. Seriously, I am not film in, so it’s, it’s like a, can we make the tunnel with it? Channel two? Yes. Yeah, you can. So it’s a big boring couple. Oh yeah. Yeah. So what happens is this unit goes underground and it bores and as it’s as it’s going through,

you very, very rarely see a company that’s literal. Yeah, . I, I just think it’s, I I really do believe it’s fantastic, it should have been called the Badger. It’s like  when I visited with Dr. Leroy Chow  he’s so, so, versed in so many different things and he hands me a business card and it says Doc All, all there is on his business card is Dr.

Leroy Chow astronaut. That’s it. It’s like, it doesn’t matter what else I’ve done in life. I’m an astronaut. That’s cool. It’s just so cool. And I have, I have this card on my desk at work because I th I look at that as, it’s kind of inspirational to me just to see this plain white card with his name and astronaut underneath because it’s attention getter at parties.

It’s kind of kind of fun. But anyway. Well, you know, but if you think about it though, what’s the pinnacle? That is the pinnacle. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for at least in his life. Right? Well, but for most people, what, what’s your pinnacle? For most people, it’s like, once you’ve accomplished that, you’re like, yeah, I, nothing else even matters.

Everything else I did. Yeah. Who cares? Yeah. I did that. Yeah. It’s like, I’m an astronaut. Yeah. I did that. Yeah. It’s like, that’s cool. Yeah. It doesn’t matter that I, well, I suppose if he actually cured cancer, I guess you could put I cured the common cold, but I’m an, I’m an astronaut . Yeah. Cuz there’s only, you know, 580 of them, so That’s right.

  it actually tunnels and then as it tunnels, it actually puts these kind of triangular. Cement pieces behind it and, and continues to make this tunnel as it goes through. And then  and then like an earth worm and then it’s night crawling. Yeah. And then it, because they secrete thing that holds little tube that they’re creating.

It’s, it’s interesting to that you say that cuz I wonder if that’s the inspiration behind it. I’ll have to dig into that sometime. Nobody intended. Yeah. Yeah.  , but it’s not just worm poop folks. Yeah. But yeah. And so if you go to Vegas, for example, at the, at the convention center  he actually has, so you can, so they run Teslas through, through the tunnels and, and if you go to the tech ranch.com, you can actually see my ride.

 , going through the tunnel with the Tesla and, and  it’s, it’s pretty cool. And now they’re gonna tunnel out to the airport and then to other casinos, other properties along the strip as well. And you can just run underground on these. Tesla. So we talked about traffic and, and it’s expensive to, to build tunnels.

Yes, we’ve talked about, oh, well traffic won’t be that bad in the future because there’ll be flying cars. Right. There’ll be, but that’s the other side of it. So you can go below the car too, which we, you see in public transit quite often all the time. Yep. This is just another way to, and, and, and, you know, to make that happen.

And it makes sense that, you know, with electric cars, cuz if you were using combustion engines, it, you know, in a tunnel that’s busy. That could cause a lot of, you know, air quality issues and that type of thing. But, but  it’s interesting and fun and, you know, they’re starting to get a lot of  gigs now with, with  with boring, I guess well think of it from a simplification perspective.

It’s a, so you got all these air exchangers and, you know, if, if, think of a regular, traditional tunnel through a, a mountain. Yep.  , you’ve got, if it’s a long tunnel, you’ve got air quality issues, you’ve gotta vent the exhaust and bring fresh air in. And you don’t have to do that with electric vehicles.

Well, and you think about like here, I mean, in the wintertime, for example, I mean, wouldn’t it be cool to, to go underground and drive between Bismarck and Mandan on your daily commute or whatever and not have to worry about wind or snow or pedestrians or any of this stuff, because these things are dedicated to one way traffic.

They’re barely big enough to get the car in there. And these cars, of course, I mean, the goal here is that these will be autonomous vehicles that are zipping through these. Well, I think about it as well going to u n d, it didn’t take me long in the winter to figure out the tunnel system at U N D, so Oh, what’s connected to what, oh, I don’t have to go outside.

Right. When it’s 40 below crossing campus. Yep. Oh, great. Let, let’s, let’s do that. Yep. You know, schools like  university of Minnesota, Duluth, you never have to go outside, right? It’s like you roll outta bed, you go from your dorm right, to your class and, and you never go outside. Well, and I even think like you know, like, like the hospitals here in Bismarck, right?

They’re in the middle of town. So an ambulance, you know, in an emergency situation trying to, you know, come in from out of town, there’s a car accident 10 miles to the north and they’re coming back and they gotta deal with traffic and everything else. Imagine that there was a tunnel that they could get in that would come out right at the hospital and wouldn’t have to deal with all of that.

Well, think about traffic and just from a  public safety perspective, going from North Bismarck to, to the hospitals. Downtown Bismarck. Right. And that could be 20 minutes with traffic. Yeah, exactly. If you’re pulled up at, at traffic time. Exactly. And special tunnel just for ambulance. Yeah. Yeah. I, I think that there’s some or PD or practical type of, yeah.

I mean for fir, you know, our first responder type of scenario, they can just hit the tunnel and get the north side. How deep did these have to be though? Because you’re dealing with all kinds of infrastructure. Yeah, I mean, it just, it depends on the infrastructure, but they, but they, as they go, they shore it up, these, these, these, this cement cavern that, that it creates as it goes through.

Right. But you’ve got water lines and power lines. Yes, and, and phone and cable and all this infrastructure. This one, I would stay under the feet, under the, under the convention center. And I’m sure that the convention center, they had to map all this stuff out. Of course, I’m sure. I would say probably 75 to a hundred feet is where was was at.

Oh wow. So, yeah, quite deep. Yeah. And they could go deeper if they needed to, but that’s, that’s cuz they have an escalator that goes underground to get you to the loading platform. And that’s where you take the, you know, and, and this would be, you know, if you were to walk this from, because it goes from like the west side of the convention center, the brand new one to the east side.

I mean, that would be easily a 25 to 40 minute walk, I suppose, if you walk this thing. I mean, that’s how big the convention center is there. I mean, and this, they travel it in three minutes. So it’s just an incredible time saver and moves people around and I could, you know, I just see. You know, I, I know we’re talking about Bismarck, but I mean, just think of the LA situation or New York, especially with first responders.

Again, I mean, these tunnels, they, they should almost make these tunnels to get first responders out to these, these heavily trafficked areas or whatever, to, well, you would have to transverse what a highly trafficked or a impact traffic area is then. Yeah, I see. Where there’s an application for that. It makes sense.

Yeah. And I just, I mean, look, I was even watching just a scenario the other day, and I don’t know what was going on, but somebody actually, here’s a, here’s a policeman coming through an intersection, a four-way stop, and everybody else was pulled over, but somebody didn’t see the light and actually makes a left turn in front of this  You know, car and his cop car.

And I’m just like, how do you not see and hear this thing coming down the road? Literally turned right in front of him. So they deal with this stuff all the time, right? I mean, just all the time because people aren’t paying attention. They got the music up too loud. I’d be guilty of that myself, I guess.

Peter fan, or who knows? Fishing fan, whatever. Windows are rolled up. Yep. And And the radio up and busy talking to the person next to you. I mean, who knows? Windows are frosted, right? Yeah, right. So anyway, you know what else would be really cool? What’s that? Work similarly the same way kind of sorta, but just for people, not vehicles.

How close are we to getting a Wonka Vader, ? I’m just asking for a friend. . So you want a space elevator that goes Yeah, that’s been talked about for a long time. Time actually.

H u d, if you’re just catching us right now,

Actually, it is a good idea and I, I highly recommend people to do that

Yeah, and that’s Have to use it. Good idea. .

heads up display. You can actually put your smartphone into your win or underneath, you know, under your dashboard, and then it reflects into the windshield so that you can see the telemetry of how fast you’re going.

Or like I said, with Google Maps or whatever, you can see if you’re still on the road or not, or you can. So this is smart technology, right? Yeah. So would it tell me if there’s a cop hiding up  the road on, I suppose if you’re using Waze? It would probably do that, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Which is another app of course.

Really? I, yeah. That one I gotta get from you , you don’t have Waze on your computer? No. Aren’t on your phone. Wow. No. Yeah, it actually, so ways will actually, somebody reports that there’s a speed trap coming up, it’ll actually warn you like a, a mile or two out, that there’s a speed trap really, you know, coming up and things like that.

Yeah. Not that the, you know, the police force wants me to be talking about that, but, but you know, if nothing else, I mean, a lot of times those type of things are about prevention, right? Right. I mean, you know, there’s a reason that, that’s why I have a radar detector, which actually tells me if there’s road construction or an accident on the head.

Sure, sure. That’s what I use it for a hundred percent. If you, if you, all the time, if you. If you solely, if you, you know, if you talk to any officer, they’ll always talk. I mean, a lot of, a lot of the stuff is just by seeing an officer on the road. I mean, you Right. The first thing you do is look at your speedometer.

Yeah. Make sure you’re, you know, law abiding there. I guess I’m, well that’s, that’s usually the second thing I do after I tap brakes. Okay. Yeah. , because you already know you’re there, h ? Might have a little bit of a lead foot. Yeah.  , you know, we were gonna talk about  another company too, because you  have an opportunity to visit with a lot of these different companies at ces, and, and Sy was one that, that.

Oh my gosh. You, you talk about the $6 million Man. Yeah, because again, everything for me comes back to a television show or a movie for some strange reason. So they actually, they not 6 million, actually, I, I’ve seen a lot of stuff this year. Of course  AI was probably one of the big things, of course, but SCI is about, prosthetics and a, as you just watched right here, this, this gentleman actually, so he, he has an artificial arm.

He lost  his arm just below his elbow a couple of years ago, and now he’s wearing this, limb built by  sci. And his first thing, it’s pretty emotional, by the way, when you talk to him, but you. He, it took, he said it took about a month to train with it, and they’re working on making that shorter because this is a new company and you know, Dan is his name and it’s his first, you know, this is one of their first people using this, but he talks about how he can feel his daughter hold his hand.

That’s crazy. And it’s artificial. Yeah. How is that possib? I mean, you think about that. So he, he uses his mind, but if you think about sensors or nerves, it’s just making the connections. Right. I know, I know, right.  , but he uses his mind just like you and I would move, move our hand, just like I’m moving my hand right now.

He uses his mind to move his hand. I mean, the interview that I’m doing with him here, and, and again, it’s not on the tech wrench yet, but it will be shortly, you’ll see him holding a microphone as I’m talking to him, and he can feel the microphone. I mean, you can see that he actually is engaging with it.

It’s not like it’s  I mean, it’s a little different because he has a prosthetic as opposed to an artificial limb as opposed to a hand. But, so he holds it a little differently than maybe you and I would.  , but the most amazing thing, of course, and you just watched this, I’m holding this piece of wood, and this is why you’re saying this $6 million man, right?

Yeah. Yeah. And he, he literally punched us through this way. Steve Majors All right, right through that wood. It’s amazing. Yeah. You know, I, I’m thinking when I, he was holding the microphone, I’m like, wow. . Luke Skywalker. Yeah. His lightsaber like that with his artificial hand. It’s, it’s in, but there, you know, and you make an interesting point.

I mean, once they get past this, are they gonna start graphing skin over the top of these things or whatever it could and then, yeah. I mean it’s, it’s really no different than having an artificial knee or anything like that now. Right, I, I, it’s just, to me, it’s incredible and I had another conversation.

And, and this is because that, that would be the next evolutionary process is grafting the skin over it. So now it’s something you don’t remove. Yes. Because right now prosthetics, there’s something that you take off and, and clean and Okay, so at what point are you not removing that? Right. It’s something that it, it’s almost like an implant.

Right? Right. Rather, this kind of is right now, because it does connect to your nerves and everything every day. I don’t think he really takes this thing off. So I’m sure there’s a cleaning process. They can, well, I’m, I’m assuming there’s probably a boot that goes on and then the attach probably gets attached to attaches to that boot which connects Yes.

Because you have to have some way to remove it. Yeah. Yeah. Fascinating. Yeah, absolutely. Amazing. So the, the gentleman who devised this, you know, we’re, we’re talking about the future, you know, and of course he’s, he’s doing stuff with legs and things right now too. But the most fascinating conversation to me was that he feels that.

Paralysis will be a thing of the past in five to 10 years. Really. So they have, especially if they’re injury related. So if you’re born with this, that’s a whole different scenario. But if it’s injury related, if you had a car accident and you’re paralyzed from this, they’re, he’s creating a device that will, let’s say it’s  you know, I don’t know enough about the spine, but there’s, you know, the, the different node in there.

Right, right. And usually it’s a, a break between them in the spine that causes this. Right. So what they do is they, it’s like Bluetooth, like Bluetooth from your phone to your headset. So they’ll just fill the gap, the break in the spinal cord with the spinal cord injury, with this communication piece. And when that thing is installed, it actually transmit wirelessly from where the break is to the next point.

And then you’re able to walk. It’s incredible. It’s incredible. So these are the advances in, in medicine that are going on right now because of technology. So it’s, it really is Bluetooth. I, I would’ve thought the next iteration of something along those lines. Maybe a fiber optic Sure, sure. That, that’s where my brain goes to this.

But we’re already past that. So if, if this company’s looking at that with Bluetooth, we’re past it. Yeah, we’re past it already. They’re doing things wirelessly and, and, and potentially who will make me run faster. Wow. They have that already too. Have you seen these boots? Oh my goodness. So there are these boots that, that you put on, and there’s kind of a spring.

It’s, it’s a rounded spring on the bottom. I’m trying to give you an idea of, I’ve seen these before, but it’s not a spring, like a coil. It’s a spring. That’s that. A rounded piece of metal, right? Yeah. Like a leaf spring in a vehicle. Yes. That’s exactly what I’m thinking of. And  it attaches to this, this boot, and if you’re, if you would normally run eight miles an hour, you can run 20 miles an hour.

Really? Yes. Yeah. That’d still be really tired afterwards. Well, right, but walking, instead of walking three miles an hour, maybe you walk eight miles an hour or 10 miles an hour, then yeah. Boy, that opens up an entirely different world for taking the dogs for a walk. . I’ll see if I can get a pair of the, I could actually keep up with my wife that way.

You could. Yes. Yes. But she’s like, I, no, we’re not walking the dogs together cuz she’s way up there and I’m like, no, I got my pace. I’m good. You can keep, you can keep your up. I, I could keep up with, with these boots. And she wouldn’t even know. All she would say is that, Steve, you’re a little taller today.

Well, yes I am. Well, if you think about a, if, think of a walking boot, if somebody has a fractured ankle or a surgery or you know, high ankle sprain or things like that, walking boots, they’re built a little like that minus the spring side of it. But they, they’ve got a little, because they’re compensating for what your gait is.

Yep. Because the other thing with a lot of, you know, and in that case a walking boot would be considered a prosthetic temporary one. Yep. But, what they found medically is there’s an opportunity to screw something else up. So if you’re not walking correctly, you could injure a knee or throw your hip out or look back.

So a boot that was made for running is gonna have a different ergonomic than what is attached to your foot. So, miss, miss Metaverse, have you, have you ever met Katie? No. She’s been to town a couple times over the last few years. I’ve invited her in for a few things. Yeah. But Jocelyn, I’ve met Katie Aquino?

Yeah. Okay. miss, miss Metaverse, she’s been on the, she used to be a frequent guest on the show when I had the tech ranch, and, she’s been very involved in the development of these boots, so, we’ll have to get her on the show sometime. You realize the song I’ve got stuck in my head right now. I have no idea.

Nancy Sinatra. Oh, these boots are made for walking. Yeah. I, I really have that there all day long now. It’s a great song though, so it’s okay to have that song stuck in your head. , just telling you that is one of my favorite songs actually. Is it really? Yeah. In fact that I came up with it. Of course it is.

Well, yeah. Yeah. So there you’re all right. I guess it’s time for the weather service.  , yeah, because we got this blizzardy thing, something coming in’s on our way. Yeah. I’m not really a  yeah, roads are good right now though, but in the meantime, Hmm. Not looking forward to what’s coming ahead. Okay. But now you’re, now you’re gone next week, right?

Well, yes. Okay. So we’re, we’re, we’re gonna. Visit a little bit about Yes. Putting next week together. Yes. Well, we’ll do that. Okay. So, so we’ll figure it out. Yeah. We’ll figure it out. So we’ll be here next week.

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