What happens if you don't accept those cookies? So where we kick off tech talk?
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Mark Saltzman joins us in talk tech. It's been a couple of days.
How you've been, Mark, Yeah, I don't think we've ever gone two weeks or three weeks without doing this segment. But well, yeah, a little you know, traveling a lot. So well we'll get into your travel here in just a minute.
We have a little blow up Mark Saltzman doll that we have when you're gone for longer than a week that we rely on. We put them up right here in the studio. So yeah, so I often wonder this Mark, do I really have to accept those cookies? And what does it all mean? Does it just mean do I accept that they're taking more information from me?
And don't they already have it already?
Yeah? Essentially there's two kinds of cookies, and yeah, both of them are not the tasty kind. But yeah, no doubt your listeners when they're on their phone or on a laptop or tablet, they've seen when you land on a website, do you accept or reject cookies.
So what are they?
They're just little bits of information that the website owners are getting based on your clicking or you're tapping. So there's first party and third party cookies. You do not need to accept the third party ones. The good ones are where you land on a website, your bank remembers your logging infos, so you just have to type in your password. You don't have to type in your debit card every time, or that when you type in whether it knows that you're in La, it's not going to
give you whether in I don't know Boston. There's advantages to first party cookies because it gets to know you and where you are geographically. Third party cookies, as my friends at McAfee told me in this Reader's Digest article
that I wrote, are tracking cookies. So these are companies, usually advertisers that want to know where you're going on the website, where do you click first, and then where do you go after that website or where did you come from before you landed there that website or app that is, and so you may get a prompt saying do.
You want to accept these? And that's also.
Called non essential cookies. So the short answer, Shannon and Gary is that you will have to accept some or you may not be able to use the website at all. But you can click to only accept the first party ones or essential cookies, and then you can disregard or click deny or reject the third party ones where you
know they want to know more about you. You're still going to see ads, mind you, but they won't be related to you, So you're going to see ads perhaps for diapers when you don't have kids, so it's not necessarily evil, but it is tracking your whereabouts and your interests.
And then obviously they allow you.
Most of these browsers will allow you to go back and clear your cookies.
Do you do that on a regular basis?
Yeah, I don't do it myself, but yeah, it's in the article as well if you want to know why and how to clear your cookies again. When I've done that in the past, then I have to type in my information all over again that I don't want to
type in, like when I log into my mail. I don't want my password automatically there, but I want to know I want to have my login info all queued up right or or again going to your your your go to Amazon and if it doesn't remember your credit card and then you're going to type it all in all over again. It's not convenience. So you've got to straddle the line between convenience and peace of mind and see what fits within your comfort level.
Would would you say you had peace of mind when you drove up?
I was going to say, what's going on to the important stuff on an F one track?
No less?
So yeah, So I went to Italy with AWS, which is part of the Amazon family, and then I went to Taiwan from Italy to a convention called Computechs. It's basically computers as the name suggests. But yeah, Italy was fun because AWS has partnered with Formula one, the organization to help the teams analyze their racing data, like the
tele tree of the vehicles. So there's three hundred sensors on average on at any given F one car that gives data back to the teams on how to shave, you know, little milliseconds here and there which can all add up. So they brought twenty journalists from around the world to kick the tires on this new tech. And yeah, and I got a chance to drive a Ferrari on an F one track, which was pretty fun. I was a little afraid to, you know, because I haven't driven
like gearshift in I don't know how many decades. But it turned out to be like paddles behind the steering wheel. So and then one time I took the track was just automatic as well. But that, yeah, it was fine. I didn't, you know, I was afraid.
To really push it.
I got up to I don't know, one hundred and fifty miles an hour. That was about it on a straight away. I was too afraid to go any more than that. Maybe one forty but yeah, and some hairpin turns, but it was fine. And then again they then they we analyzed our performance. We popped the SD card out of the car, popped it into a computer, and then an engineer walked us through our data and we got
to watch a race and visit the Ferrari factory. We had given our phones, so we couldn't take pictures or anything. So yeah, it was it was a really cool trip. I'm not a huge F one fan, but my friends are, and so they were pretty jelly.
It was a great trip. Yeah, Okay, let's be honest.
Was it one hundred and fifty miles an hour one hundred and fifty kilometers now.
Because it was I think one fifty max miles, So I don't know, I don't know what is it one ninety two hundred kilometers. I don't even know that the one point six I'm trying to think of.
The two forty one forty aliometer on that. Then I was not going that fast.
I was over two hundred kilometers and that's what the stage was in. But was so I'm wrong. It wasn't that fast as one hundred and fifty. But honestly, I was afraid it was like six hundred thousand euro vehicle.
Right, I mean, I did the driving simulation at the NASCAR Museum in Charlotte, and I know I was terrified, and I knew it was a simulator.
Well, there was one part where we got to practice drifting. They spray part of the track with water and then you do basically donuts and you have to you know, so you slam on the gas and then you have to spin the steering wheel the other way. And I thought, I'm from Canada, I know how to drive in the snow. This is easy. I'm going to ace this part, but it was just it was tough because of so much power,
you know, under the hood of these vehicles. But it was It was a cool trip, and so I wrote a piece about if anybody's interested, they can google my name, Mark Saltzman, Mark with the Sea and then Formula one and you'll see the tie in between tech and sports and in this case racing sports motorsports.
Really it was a fun.
Trip, very cool and if one is one of those sports, I think, at least in the United States, it has room to grow. It's gaining popularity and has a lot of room to grow.
I think, aside from soccer, it's the biggest sport in the world, but yeah, in the US it still has a room to grow. Yeah, I've been to NASCAR events as well, including Daytona five hundred. It's obviously a whole different animal all together. But yeah, it was a pretty exciting being there.
Very cool. Well lucky you, Mark, Thank you appreciate it.
And I got some nice messages from KFI listeners going hey where are you for tech talk Thursday on X which was nice.
So I'm bad good to see you again.
You likewise, Mark Saltsman, then make sure you follow mark on X by the way, m A. R. C. Underscore Saltsman for all of his great posts and information and articles, and the podcast that tech it Out podcast Everything