Federal Workers Shift to Encrypted Messaging to Hide Communications #1799

As trust in platforms like Facebook declines, federal employees are increasingly turning to encrypted apps like Signal for private communications. Concerns over surveillance by the current administration and tech companies cooperation with government data request have driven many to migrate to sensitive conversations away from mainstream services. Employees fear potential monitoring and retaliation yet avoiding and ignoring security concerns.

Again, this leads to heightened caution in work to place discussions and online interactions.

Welcome to episode 1,799 coming to this Thursday, February 13. I'm your host, Todd Cochran, ready to deliver your tech news and information fix. A quick shout out to our incredible sponsor at GoDaddy. Score exclusive deals and discounts at geeknesscentral.com/godaddy. And to all our fantastic listeners, you are the heartbeat of the show. If you wanna support the GNC mission, head to geek news central dot com forward slash insider and become a GNC insider. We are live and lit thanks to

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this independent team of creators. Share my deals with your friends and family because every time a code is used, it supports Geek News Central. Thank you. Thank you so much for keeping us online and going strong. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the show. You know, most people say, thank god it's Friday. I'm like, TGIF Thursday because I mean, TGIT. Thank God it's Thursday because TGIF is tomorrow. It's been a very long week. A lot getting done.

And, I'm just you know, I'm focused on getting through tomorrow, and then I'm probably gonna collapse. And then Saturday, I have, you know, the thing that we all hate doing. I'm going to try I'm going to try to finish the taxes on Saturday. Famous last words. Famous last words. And, of course, we have episode 1,800 on Monday. We get into the 18 hundreds. Are you excited? I am a little bit. You know, it seems like it took us a trudge to get through all of the the 17 hundreds.

So, 18 hundreds come Monday. So, we're at the top, seventeen ninety nine. That's a number, ladies and gentlemen. 1,800 on Monday, so we'll do something special. Please join me on Monday for that deal. So we're gonna get right into the stack today. I'm gonna get a little late getting the show started. Just, you know, things went late with the JOB. So when things go late with the JOB, then, you know, the show starts late. But I wanna talk about

this this top of the top of the hour article about federal workers say they increasingly distrust platforms like Facebook. They say platforms they once used to communicate with coworkers and friends increasingly feel insecure. You know, when I was a federal government employee, there was no allowance made for communications. We we weren't allowed to talk about work on any apps. It's not allowed. No. No. No. No. No. Not allowed at all. Email, in person, video conference.

I think on our computers, we may have had some messaging app, but they were that was it. You weren't allowed to talk about work texting. You know, you might say, hey. I'm a little late for meeting texting, or I'm coming, or a coordination thing, but no business. No no federal business in chat whatsoever. We didn't have Slack channels or anything like that. So it surprises me when I hear about government workers communicating with another via apps like Signal, this is very scary.

And first of all, I would have never you know, I understand that the value of Signal, don't get me wrong, for personal stuff, not for anything to do with work. If you just wanna talk to your friends about non work items, do what you will. But anything that you say that is involving work,

it should not be allowed. It should not be should not be matter of fact, in the job I had, I subject to dismissal if I was caught communicating, you know, improperly because the job was very sensitive, and the discussions were, more than likely, about nine out of 10 times, were not for public dissemination. And, in fact, when we talk to each other on the telephone, we had a secure phone that we use to talk to one another. There would be times we would call somebody,

say, hey. I need to. We'd say, hey. Because these phones weren't just readily available. My office, there was one. But people I would talk to us say, hey. If you if you got a secure phone, talk to them on open, and they would say, yeah. And I'm like, okay. I'll I'll call you back on you know, call me back in ten minutes on this number.

And then we would kick it secure and have our conversation and come off secure, but we never talked openly over the phone unless it was something that could be talked about on the phone. And we had to take a screen care and not even talking around topics. You know, they would be like, hey. You know that thing, it's such and such, you know, by the window? That's what they would be like talking around. Oh, yeah. I know the thing by the window. You you know the the things halfway down

from the window? Yeah. I know. That not allowed to be talked about. Can't say that it was never done because there was sometimes it had to be done, but it was really, really, really discouraged. So I'm hearing a buzz in my ear. You guys hearing that at all? Maybe it's just my earball. You guys like that earball? So at heart of the trust distrust is because of the administration that cozied up to Meta and Axe and so forth.

So one worker also pointed out a recent change my made my Google to its calendar of holidays. And I'm like, listen. You have a government you as a government employee are have installed on your set on your computer a set of software. Microsoft is probably there. There's no when I

was there, it was no cloud stuff. Oh, no. No cloud. Uh-uh. No cloud. Because stuff I created on my computer and, again, depending on what I was working on let's just just use the acronym g. If it was a g rating, I could use one computer. But if it was an r rating, I had to use a different computer. And then if it was an x rating,

I had to use even another computer. So there was no even even stuff that we did, there was depending on what you were doing, you worked on one machine, And if there was other stuff you had to work on, you work on another machine and then go to even the next level because there was no interchange of this data that wasn't allowed.

I had a separate email on machine b. I had a separate email on machine c. Crazy as it may sound, but as you can imagine, my dot mil address that I had for, god, thirty plus years, I had a different address on another machine for thirty plus years, and I had another email address on thirty plus years because sometimes the messaging required stuff to go one way and not another. All about the classification of the conversation.

So a general government worker that's working on an unclassified machine still has restrictions. And most, believe it or not, most government employees do not have a government phone. I never I never in my thirty years had a government phone. Never had one.

I had personal phone. And matter of fact, most of the time, when I went to my office with my personal phone, outside the office was a box, and it had a place to unlock, stick your phone in, close the door, lock it up, and I would have to go into the room and leave my phone outside. I couldn't even come in the room with the phone. And then when I went to lunch, I could get my phone and go to lunch and come back and stick it back in

there. If the phone crossed the threshold of the room that wasn't allowed to have a phone, guess what? If you were caught, the phone was confiscated and smashed. That's how serious it was. So when I hear about government employees doing the the dance on apps, well, you know, that that, to me sounds very, very dangerous. And, again, I'm sure it's a it's a subset of employees that don't have to work in

a classified system or unclassified. Believe it or not, I think probably, I would almost bet you and again, I don't know about different government agencies, but I would almost bet that every one of those agencies, there are phones that's I mean, computers that say unclassified when you log into them. At least in DOD, you knew what kind of a computer was you were on based upon the background color of the screen. If you were on a green screen,

you're you're one level. If you are on a red screen, you are on another level. If you are on a yellow screen, you're on another level. So, you know, dependent on the color of the screen. Just to remind you. So I don't like the the situation here where people are trying to hide communications. If you're just trying to talk to your friend, do as you want. But if you're talking about the JOB, there's a big, big, big, big issue there.

Alright. And a very disturbing a very disturbing story here, and this this is very disturbing. An investigation has found that Match Group failed to act on reports of sexual assault. Now the company who owns Tinder, Hinge, and OkCupid and more, apparently, and have been found. New investigation claims the parent company of TenderHinge, OkCupid, and other apps has turned a blind eye to allegedly abusive users on

its platform. The eighteen month investigation found instances in which users were repeatedly reported for drugging or assaulting their dates. On such cases, a Colorado one such case involves a Colorado Colorado based cardiologist named Stephen Matthews. Over seven years, multiple women on Match's platforms reported him for drugging or

raving them. Despite these reports, his Tinder profile was at one point given standout status reserved for popular profiles and often requiring in app currency to interact with. Matthews wasn't removed from the platform until two months after one survivor went to the police. Match Group subsequently dragged his feet when Hinge received a search warrant complying after seven month. He was sentenced to a hundred and fifty years to life in prison. How is something like this

allowed to happen? How is this even possible? Since 02/2016, Match Group had been aware of which users were reportedly assaulting, drugging, or raping their dates. In 02/2019, Match Group Central database began recording each user reported for either assault or rape on any of its apps. Company insiders reported three years later, the system registered hundreds of incidents weekly, but the system was reported ineffective and easy to gain.

Users could easily evade evade bans by excuse me, evade bans by signing up with different contact information. Internal company documents show information on IP address, photos, and birthday were not used to ban a user if they appeared in another Match dating app. A Tinder user banned for reports of rape could simply jump ship to Hinge without issue. There reportedly many tutorial online for methods to evade bans.

Wow. In 2020, Match Group stated it would release a transparency rate, disturbing harm conduct in relation to its platform. That report has never been released. So by 2022, Match Group entered a major partnership with background check company Garbo. The next year, that partnership was dissolved with Garbo writing public. It made clear that most online platforms aren't legitimately committed to trust and safety for their users. This is crazy. This is crazy that this is going on.

Ladies, ladies, ladies, late ladies and gentlemen, be very careful out there. Okay? Please. If you're gonna meet someone, meet them in a public place. You know, be very, very careful. This is, this is disturbing that this is out there, and shame on

this company for for not doing anything. There's been instances I've heard in Colombia where it's the opposite situation where men are matching with women and then women agreeing to meet men, and the women show up with two women and waiting down the hallway is assailants, And they're drugged and robbed of everything they have. So it's going both ways. So be careful. Be very, very careful out there, you know, Bad, bad, bad, bad people for sure.

Moving on. YouTube TV app could get much easier use with two new features. And, YouTube has just recently announced that, YouTube is now primarily watch on smart TVs in United States. And, so that means that the the very, very poor experience that YouTube offers on most TVs, it's time is coming to be updated. So they're going to be laying out new features, including ways to comment, which you can never do. You could only thumbs up with with videos.

So there's gonna be some key changes here to make it, more interactive, which will be great. The first new features are geared on the second screen experience allowing you to use your phone to interact with the video watching on TV. For example, to leave a comment or make a purchase or make a donation. So that I'm not surprised about. That kinda works a little bit already. So looking forward to see these, YouTube TV not YouTube TV, but YouTube updates for TV.

In a very disturbing article, this headline just really caught my attention. And when I read this to you, you're gonna be kinda weirded out too. Oracle head Larry Ellison wants to put all of America's data into one big system to study, including your DNA. Now my DNA is already on file with US government. They you know, that's part of the thing

of being a military person. If you get killed and they need to figure out, who you are later from remains, that aren't recognizable, they can, you know, run your d DNA through a database. I'm good with that. I know I I know I handed that over on purpose. And some of you have done 23 and me and genealogy.com and got your DNA tested. And, you know, so some of that data is out there in the wild on you already.

And but he said government should centralize all their data, including citizens' health data, enhance services and security. I don't trust the government with anything. He says we've already presented with countless studies touching on poor data foundations often caused by siloed data. Well, speaking of silos, I guess, you know,

it also includes caves. By making economic health care and infrastructure mission available, essentially, he envisions enhanced health care with personalized treatments, improve agriculture productivity with better land and crop analysis. But okay. So why do you need our DNA? It's been already been proven pharma and the health care system cannot protect our data. You know? So much for HIPAA. All this stuff is already finding its way onto the Internet, so there's nothing sacred anymore.

And it's no wonder people are hesitant to have stuff. You know, I just had a doctor's appointment, Tuesday for, blood sugar. And, yeah, by the way, I'm down. My blood sugar is down. I'm doing better. My doc was pleased with me. And, you know, we had a good conversation. But all the time we're talking, he's into the computer and putting in my information into a digital record. It's being held at the VA, which I'm sure has great security.

I've been open on this show. I've talked about having type two diabetes, so it's no secret. But some of you have health concerns that you don't want anyone knowing about. Your status. You know, health status. You don't want that information getting out because people can be weird, and it can be held against you and used against you. I get it. You know, someone living with a a ecumenical disease that has got stigmatism around it definitely would not want that data to be in the open. So

I I don't know. You know? It it I don't know if we're ever gonna be secure. I guess everybody's business is just gonna be out there. I definitely don't want the government holding anything. They you know, my whole life story is in the Chinese hands. You know? They got it. They've got it. My history from when I was a teenager to, you know, till I was 45 years old or older. Everything. So, you know, if you've had your data put out there for the world, you know, you you have a consideration on

this stuff. You understand the impact. And then there's another story out here that AI chatbots could outperform doctors in diagnosing patients. This is a study compared whether chatbots can diagnose patients accurately and quicker than doctors. The study suggests physicians who have access to a large language model, which underpin generative AI chatbot demonstrate improved performance on several patient care tasks compared to colleagues without access to the tech.

Now I had a situation that happened to me that I talked to my doc about that could have been one of two things, and I was worried about it being item b. And we talked extensively about the one thing that he thought it was, Where I, on the other hand, was more worried about b, and I brought b up because guess what I had done? I had done a little bit of looking around myself. Of course, doctors hate that. But, you know, he took a deeper look because I'd self educated myself on a and b.

And we had a discussion about, okay. If you see this again, b, come back to the doctor. And, a, if you think it if it happens and we're you know, he was giving me two directives on what to do. And around blood sugar. So the AI stuff, potentially and I didn't use AI to find what I was looking for. I just did a search. Of course, that's no more better than a security release. Right? And it said, oh, it could have been that. You should've went to the doctor immediately.

So the under the research undertaken by more than a dozen physicians at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center showed GenAI's promise on an open end decision making. However, this will require rigorous validation to realize LMS potential enhancing patient care. Unlike diagnostic reasoning, it tasks often with a single right answer, which LMS excel at. Management reasoning may have no right answer involves weighing trade offs.

The conclusion based on evaluations, about the decision making capabilities of 92 physicians as they work through five hypothetical patient cases. They focus on the physicians managing reasoning, which include decision on testing, treatment, patient preferences, social factors, cost, and risk. Now I asked my doc about, a certain drug that's being very popular right now. I don't wanna take it, But I

asked, does the VA offer? They said, oh, we're not supposed to talk about that because if we didn't make it available, it's gonna be a $10,000,000,000 bill for the government. I asked them about Ozempic. And, you know, I said, you know, what's this thing about people going blind and a whole bunch you know? He says, yeah. There's some stuff out there. You got a thyroid cancer and, you know, some things they have to watch for.

Because when I was, in The Philippines, you can get that particular product very, very cheap over the counter compared to here where it's, you know, with insurance, like, $1,400 or something a month. So we're having a discussion about that, and they're not supposed to talk about it, you know, because the VA doesn't wanna give this out. I rightly understand. I'm not a candidate for it anyway. I'm not that fat even though I, you know, sitting at $1.97

right now. So but, anyway, how's that all have to do with this AI chatbot stuff? Well, we may soon be talking to chatbots. Google will use AI determine if you're lying about your age. The company says it's part of an effort to provide more age appropriate experiences. The company said in a blog post, the model the model expect to launch later this year intends to provide more age appropriate experiences for young users.

So how are they gonna do this? The announcement comes as tech companies are feigning pressure from lawmakers to make platforms safer for users. Last year, made to induce a similar AI model that will help determine if a user is under the age of 18. I think all of us guys will be flagged for being under the age of 18. They won't be able to tell. Only the ladies will be able to be figured out if they're older than 18. I'm just joking, but you you all know what I'm talking about.

So, time will tell here.

Waze. I quit using Waze. Waze became so unusable to me, so I guess I have to check it out again. Waze has got the big update that makes it easier to navigate your favorite places. Waze's new button allows for faster navigation to favorite spots. Okay. The recent update allows a general update of the user interface, speed bump alerts, and lead merging notifications are also now a feature. So, you know, Google and and Apple Maps

are caught up. Well, there's been integration with Google and Waze, of course. But, you know, Waze really to me become a pretty unuseful app for a long time. What did I use it mostly for? Believe it or not, was, you know, where's Smokey? You know, where where's where's the speed trap? You know? And my, what's funny is now my in as long as I'm using my, Apple Apple CarPlay, you know, I get a pop up speed trap ahead. I don't have to be using Waze anymore.

It's usually pretty accurate too. Nvidia systems could be facing another worrying security flaw. They it has been patched. There they confirms a new bug in container toolkit toolkit and GPU operator. The bug allows malicious actors to execute code remotely, so there is a fix out there. So but there is potentially patch bypass, so be aware of that. That affects you for those of you in IT.

Prime Video just launched a new app for Apple TV devices with six major improvements. You know, give me the six major improvements. They're saying, you know, here's the thing. They they put on the the article. There are six notable improvements. Okay. Better responsiveness and accessibility. So that's one too. What else is there? And and I'm just looking through here, and it it really doesn't get into it very good. In app search, I guess, something to do with Siri.

So, anyway, are you guys using Prime Video at all? I don't think I've been on Prime Video in in months, to be frank. But come on. You're gonna say that six improvements. Give me the six improvements. Meta x. No. X. X will pay $10,000,000 to settle lawsuit over Donald Trump's Twitter suspension. Oh. Oh, so Elon and company have to pay even though they're bros, they gotta pay, The Donald the president ten million. Now Meta recently settled for 25,000,000.

So this was a lawsuit that was filed on the 2021 suspension from then previously, Twitter. The question is how much will CBS have to pay? That's gonna be the question that's out there. Hey. I do wanna thank all of you that are, insiders of the show. James Fletcher and his $2 sustaining donation, Nigel Cottrell on his $25, Lahi Chief Super Ohana donation. They they, excuse me. Dale Taylor with his $25 Super Chief Allahi Ohana donation and Andrew Palmer for his Ohana five dollar donation as well.

So thank you, gentlemen, for your donation to the show. We've had no boost that come in, but a number of you have been streaming the show. Pestmark, thank you for streaming the show at 20 sats, a minute. Thank you so much. That makes for about a thousand sats. For if you listen to the whole show, thank you so very much for that.

And, a number of you have been doing that as well. So, but, anyway, thank you, Pestmark, for your support of the podcast. And, again, this is what it kinda looks like to me. I can come in and see, how people have donated to the show, and you can see that it, it comes in at, 20 sats a minute. So thank you. Thank you. Again, you can become an insider at geekneycentral.com forward slash insider. $2.05 $10.15 20 or $25 a month donation or one time donation is available.

You can also some submit Satoshis, as well. We thank you so much, and, of course, the PayPal link is available for you to, to click and support with your with your treasure. We also accept time and talent. So if you have something you wanna contribute to the show, email it. Your time and talent is greatly appreciated, very, very much. Upcoming, a total lunar eclipse brings a blood moon to North America next month. So what? This a this is a old one. No. It's not.

I saw a date of November 2022. They didn't update. Look look at this, ladies and gentlemen. Why is something's wrong with this headline. Total lunar eclipse springs a blood and moon, and then right below it, it says, Earth will soon experience a first total lunar eclipse since February. Okay. Maybe how does one relate to the other? So the lunar eclipse will happen overnight between

March 13 and March 14. Oh, and okay. I guess so. And will be the first total lunar eclipse. I'm dumb. I didn't you know, that's what happens when I read this stuff. Don't read it good enough before I talk about it, and this is just it. So, yes, a total lunar eclipse, oh my god, will happen overnight between March 13 and March 14 and will be the first total lunar eclipse seen anywhere in the world since November 2022. So, where are we gonna be able to see it overnight? Anywhere in the world.

So where alright. Link will be in the show notes. We can check it out. Citing too much bureaucracy, Blue Origin has been a cut 10% of its work workforce. Too much bureaucracy. What does that mean? Too much bureaucracy. And you're cutting 10%? I don't get it. What what does that mean? Too much bureaucracy.

Too many pencil pushers? I guess so. So that was announced today. Of course, Elon Musk and Sam Altman are still sparring over 97,400,000,000.0 OpenAI bid in court filings. So they've been in court. But, basically, what people have said is this just is a play. Elon has made this bid, and what it's really doing is throwing a wrench and them having the ability to change the business model of OpenAI because of this evaluation that they've, placed upon. The company said, hey.

We're willing to pay 97,400,000,000.0 for it. And yet they wanna change the business model and undervalue the company. It's it there's a little bit of a play on it. I saw a YouTube video on this. And, it this all cash offer undermines

the very claim at the heart of the lawsuit that its assets can't be transferred away for private gain. So this, this lawsuit is to thwart OpenAI's plan to convert to a for profit entity. And, so, anyway, they Altman's saying it's improper bid, and, OpenAI's board is going to is prepared to, you know, preserve the charity mission, blah blah blah, and the judge is kinda skeptical. She kinda see what's going on here, but it's all fun and games. Billionaires having billionaire spats.

That's what it's really about. Amazon robots, a $10,000,000,000 cost cutter. So Amazon's under the radar robot push is widening its competitive lead in retail and could boost its profit margins. So think about this, getting rid of workers. Amazon's quite developed six significant next generation fulfillment centers that bring automation front and center. After a true one of the sites in Shreveport, Louisiana recognized the potential for more opening efficiencies in retail business.

So they're basically trying to reduce fulfillment costs. It's about that makes up about 20% of, you know, of their cost. So they could lead to $10,000,000,000 in savings through automation, getting rid of humans. Now they won't get rid of them completely, but this is the the the the future is looking towards. Now Western Digital, how many of your fans are Western Digital, hard drives? Well,

they're they're between a rock and a hard place. Western Digital has been told to pay half billion in patent damages before the business splits. So they are poised to become two publicly traded companies, but the judge says, before you restructure, you need to write a $553,000,000 check for the in patent infringement case.

So The US storage business was found by a jury in California, of course, to infringe on data encryption patents owned by Spex Technologies in October, told to pay 316,000,000, but because they haven't paid it, they got $237,000,000 in interest charges on top. Holy cow. What what rate are they charging the interest at this bad boy on? 316,000,000, and it's now to another 237,000,000? I wanna see that math. Wow. Crazy. So we'll see what they do.

The US Lawmakers are pressing the current administration opposed UK's order for Apple's iCloud backdoor. Yes. You guys in The UK, you know that they they want a backdoor to iCloud. So senator Ron Wyden and representative Andy Biggs sent a letter to the new DNI today, Tulsi govern Tulsi Tulsi Gabbard arguing that if Apple complies with the unconfirmed demand from UK home office, it would jeopardize the security of both US citizens and government data.

Apple does not make different versions of its encryption software for each market, the pair argue in the letter. If Apple is forced to build a backdoor in its products, that backdoor will end up undermining the security of Americans' data as well as countless federal, state, and local government agency and trust sensitive data to Apple products. Well, probably probably privately, the government must hate that they don't have a backdoor into iCloud. My suspicion is they do.

That's my suspicion, and they just don't talk about it. That's that's my suspicion on this,

but so we'll see what the new DNI does. Tim Cook is teasing a new Apple launch next week and it's probably the iPhone SE, so we'll keep an eye on that. How many of you use Google's Family Link? I'm not familiar with this. This is definitely for those of you that have children and devices, and Family Link is getting a design refresh. School time will come to Android phones managed with Family Link starting next week, and parent managed controls will hit Family Link devices in

the coming months. So if you're using Family Link, let me know. I heard, a good friend of mine, on his podcast talk about, how he had used, child settings in his kids' phones so that when they got phones at, like, 11 years old, they basically had them bad boys locked down. And I thought it was pretty interesting discussion, and they were using iPhones. And, we're talking about Google devices. So,

how many of you have locked your kids' phones down? I'd love to hear your feedback. [email protected]. Salt tough Salt Typhoon strikes again. More USISPs. University and telecom networks hit by Chinese hackers. So, they're at it again. The latest intrusion responded by cybersecurity researchers from Recorded Future, which said the group is targeting Internet exposed web interface of Cisco, iOS software that powers different routers and switches.

More than 12,000 Cisco devices were were found connected to wider Internet and exposed to risk. This small subset of targets include US Internet service providers and co telecommation firms, a US affiliate of a UK telecom in South Africa and Thailand, an Internet service provider in Italy. So it just wasn't The United States. It was, all over the place going after these devices.

It's being talked about over NPR, believe it or not, is the current administration, is Trump the president, will truly set a course for Mars and it goes into a whole discussion. I'm normally not a big NPR reader or watcher. But, what do you guys think?

I don't. He said it during his inauguration speech, but I'm, you know, that's that's the US government's got enough problems. We we don't have enough money to go to the moon, let alone Mars right now, so time will tell. If you're in Las Vegas, you can now eat in a Netflix themed restaurant. So seeing as it started as a service sending DVDs in the mail, Netflix has come away. Not only is it the most popular streaming service, it's now it now has its own themed restaurant, and,

you can also go in there. It's called Netflix Bites. What hotel is it in? Does it say let me let me do a little little, investigation here. It's called where's it gonna be? Does it say? It's gonna be at the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino. So if you're in the MGM, you can go eat at Netflix Bites. Alright? Google paid out $55,000 since bug bounty program for Chrome vulnerabilities. I don't have that kind of budget, but we do pay out bug bounty.

We paid out two this week to people that discovered a little small bug in our system. And, we do what we can, but we appreciate when people are white hacking and basically say, hey. You got a problem here. So we've we we do pay on bit bug bounties. IBM is under fire as a return office order suspected replacing human staff with AI, and I think this is, probably we're gonna see more of this. But IBM's finance and operations team were given an ultimatum.

Workers told they must move closer or accept a redundancy package. Woah. So, I was what I was expecting, actually to happen because they forced the government workers back, I was expecting to hear something in the news about people being fired in the government that did not come back to work. That's what I was expecting, but we've heard nothing of that so far. Hey. A NASA telescope stellar bouquet in time for Valentine's Day. Of course, if you're listening to the show, it's

probably Valentine's Day. But I'm looking at this, and to be honest with you, the first thing I saw was a middle finger and not, a bouquet. Although I could see where the bouquet could come in on the image, but it looks like this might be a troll here a little bit. So you you look at the, image and let me know. Is it look like a middle finger, or does it look like a bouquet? I guess they want us to look at the, the red inside and not the gas. Very, very I just got a pop up.

What happened? Oh, yes. Let's come back to this. For some reason, why did why did you do that, computer? Why did you take away my access to okay. It's back. I got this warning. It says, hey. Do you want NDI to to show off that that was very weird. You know, there's a setting now in, on Macs that you have to give permission every thirty days. So the permission ran out while I was showing this screen. That's why the screen went black. So

very, very odd. Okay. For those of you listening, you don't care. And a little bit of drama. Astronomers sifting through data from the Murchison Wide Field Array, a radio telescope in Western Australia, found themselves confronting an unexpected mystery. The telescope, which consists of 4,096 spider like antennas designed to detect radio signals more than 13,000,000,000 years ago, appeared to stumble upon something far more local, a television broadcast.

This was very puzzling given the telescope is located in designated radio quiet zone where the Australian government regulates signal levels from all radio communication equipment, including TV transmitters, Bluetooth devices, etcetera. But it hit it because the signal was moving. Guess what happened? The television signal bounced off an airplane. Now I've known about this phenomenon since 1984.

And if you think about it, when a radar is spinning and it it's hitting, you know, an airplane or hitting, land, you know, especially a ground radar, maybe it sees the mountains, you're getting a return from the mountains, it can see the airspace above the mountains, but you see the signal of of the terrain when you're on a ground radar. Right? And you, obviously, you're looking into

the sky to see airplanes. But if there is a mountain in line with the radar and there's an airplane behind the mountain, obviously, you can't see the airplane. Right? Well, what happens when the signal bounces off the mountain and goes somewhere else, goes doesn't come directly back to the antenna from scatter, and it hits a another object and then bounces in a way that gets back into the antenna. There's some cool things that you can do with that.

If you know the math, You can see something without seeing something. It's very, very cool. It's go very cool. It's it's it's basically why is that not there or why it is there? I'll just leave it at that. I've known all about this kind of this, multi you know, basically stuff traveling in directions it shouldn't travel for a long time. It's pretty amazing, the data you can get from the stuff that not supposed to be able to be seen.

Okay. Chances of an asteroid approaching Earth doubling in 2032. NASA's new observation of the asteroid named twenty twenty four y r four led to a 23% probability hitting Earth on this twenty two December twenty thirty two. Well, those odds went way up, so we'll see. Also, because some knucklehead wrote Tesla in a proposal, everyone's freaking out. Plans to buy armored Teslas vanish from state department procurement list.

Someone just wrote, the state department's procurement forecast removed the mention of Tesla in relation to a planned 400,000,000 armored EV purchase after reports emerged about it on Wednesday. The wording has been changed to armored EVs. Tesla's name appeared in the document near the BMW AG whose armored x five and x seven SUVs the state department is also planning to buy. The German's company name remains on the list while Tesla's has been excised,

leaving four hun leaving the 400,000,000 contracts still at the planning stage, now listed for generic designation of armored electric vehicles. You know, that's probably something that's been in the in the planning stage for a long time. Elon says, we didn't know anything about it. We don't think we're getting 400,000,000. He says, there's been no contract for this to reply on and but Tesla stock was up 2.3% on the rumors. It's interesting the transformation it's having in government.

You know, when I had a government desk, there was definitely things you could have on your desk and things you couldn't have on your desk. You could have pictures of your family, your kids, but you couldn't have anything that would cause anyone to raise an eyebrow. You couldn't have any scantily pad, place pictures. You couldn't have cartoons that had some sort of meanings. You know, there was you know, we you

know, it's a workspace. Right? You know, that that childish stuff, locker room stuff was not allowed. Not allowed at all. And if you put something on your desk like that, you probably would've got wrote up and, you know, you would've had a counseling session. Manager have been reminding employees to be mindful of what personal effects they have in the workplace, but there are no plenots or warnings about being placed on the ministry for for displaying personal items. But if you're at work,

you know what we're talking about here. Right?

It's just common sense that you would not put stuff on your desk that would make other people uncomfortable. That's just kinda like, duh. Right? You know, that's how you get fired. So interesting that they're reminding people to be sensitive what's in their workspace. Unofficial TikTok download surge in The United States. No surprise there. And finally,

I saw this made me go, a tiny antenna made on denim will put your five will put five g in your clothes. And I said, what is the use for this? Well, I you know, I as like, no one's gonna put a five g antenna in regular clothes. First of all, I'm not gonna wear it. But apparently, connected clothing is potential used by military and in space exploration, but more reverently to us is the use

in health and sports. The dual band antenna means sensor side clothing can collect and send health data without the need for smart owner's smartwatch. So, apparently, this can be watched, yet they show the antenna having an SMA connector on it. I don't think that will do very good in the laundry to be to be frank, but,

who knows? Alright, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being part of the show. Don't forget about our sponsor GoDaddy, geekin central dot com forward slash godaddy. If you have comments on the show, don't forget email address is [email protected]. And, we definitely want to remind you also of, our affiliate offer, our our product offer that's on the, the website. I didn't get around in getting something ready for the ladies. I

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So when you're not getting your GNC fixed, you can come over to GNC and get a little bit of tech news and information. And, we appreciate it, for you do and appreciate the team doing what they do. Alright. I'll be back Monday for the big one, eighteen hundred. We're hitting another

huge milestone. 1,800. It's gonna be fun. Thank you for being here. We'll see you on Monday, everyone. Take care. Bye bye.