Open Source Adoption, Digital Strategy & Amazon’s AI Bracelet Privacy Risks | TSG Ep. 889

Hey, everyone. We're riding the cloud Native wave. Stay tuned.

You're watching Textron Gang. Hey, everyone, happy Monday. Welcome back after I would, I hope is a great summer weekend for you.

It's time to shake out those Saturdays and Sundays, though, 'cause it's Monday, it's Monday morning, and we've got our Monday gang crew here to go over stuff with you. Let me introduce you to them quickly, the people of all regular gang members here. So we've got our Tracy Reagan, Jack Poer, Dr.

Stacy Thayer, Mitch Ashley, and of course the dean, Mike Ard. Mike, hope you had a good weekend. I did.

These Yankees are Heartbreakers. All right. I'm, I'm, I'm making a little tour of New York State starting tomorrow, so, oh, good For you.

Enjoy it. Enjoy it. All righty.

Hey, uh, gang, you know, we're gonna start off with a look at, uh, a midyear look, let's call it at the, uh, CNCF Open Source, 200 some odd products in there. Uh, projects, not products, excuse me. They're projects, they're open source, but there's 200 of them.

They highlighted some of the movers and shakers. Mike, what do we got? Yeah, if you look at the report that they published, it wouldn't come as much as a surprise that there's a lot of usage and adoption of Kubernetes.

It's kind of always been the, the, the lead poster child, but there's also a lot of uptake on open telemetry, which, uh, in my mind is bigger than Cloud native itself. It goes well beyond that. And then there's all these other projects, some of which are now starting to maybe get enough traction on their own.

Things like Argo are starting to, uh, see a lot more usage and adoption. But Tracy, you live in this space. Is there anything in this report that kinda leapt out at you?

Well, first of all, um, it's near and dear to my heart. The CNCF has been an amazing open source foundation. It really has the growth that it's experienced over the last, I don't know, five years is incredible.

Um, you know, I think backstage kind of leaped out at me, uh, and backstage probably as a reflection of platform engineering. Um, but, you know, when you look at what Backstage is, it's another kind of tool that we, you're doing plugins around. And I believe that that will get disrupted with new ways of doing things, and maybe backstage will be the ones to disrupt it.

But when I look at a report like this, uh, if you, and Backstage is unique because it's, I think the company, it started, it was roadie, and they're kind of like us. They're small, they've pushed it, and they've done an amazing job of building a, a, a platform for platform engineers. But what it makes me think about truly is when you, when you look at those numbers, you have to really see what's inside those numbers in terms of contributors, particularly like Kubernetes, because it's the giants that are contributing.

We don't see, you know, when you look at that, you go, there's thousands of, you know, hardworking volunteering contributors, but many of those are contributors are paid by Microsoft, by Apple to do those open source projects. And that's really what's driving some of these projects. Now, if you look at the broad scope, you know, even Argo and some of the smaller projects that we're seeing in those 200, if you ever take a look at the, the CNCF landscape, it'll make you dizzy.

But the smaller projects are truly being driven by small companies who are trying to leverage and make a business out of the CNCF. But in reality, the contributors are coming from the big companies. So Kubernetes is an important, very important project for every single company that is trying to do digital transformation.

And it doesn't surprise me that it's on the top of the list. So I think that it, we have to look at and, and be realistic about who those contributors are, and, you know, give every contributor a pat on the back who's in one of those smaller projects that are not getting noticed who are doing this because they love open source and they wanna provide tooling that, uh, their, you know, that their community can benefit from. But we're gonna see a lot more.

And there is a, there is a danger to what's happening at the CNCF. It's, it can, I can see it being too big. Uh, the weight of itself is too much to, to carry.

And the problem has become is that everybody wants to, every project wants to be part of the CNCF. The CDF even is losing projects to the CNCF, because that's where all the, that's where Kubernetes is. That's where the money is.

That's where the, the attention is. And so I, it, it gets diluted, right? It gets a little bit diluted.

Those 200 projects, I don't believe all of them should be there. In fact, I would argue that Argo should be in the CD foundation, and there are security tools that should be in the open SSF. So it's a little bit of, I would call it a bloated look at the projects.

And if you really look, look at the contributors they are. There's a lot of big companies who pay contributors to do the work. Yeah.

So couple of things. First of all, for anyone who looks at the article, there's this bubble chart of all the different projects I should mention, that's not just CNCF projects, that's actually all the Linux Foundation projects. And the, and the list of the, the movers and shakers is not just CNCF as well, there are also Linux ones on there.

But that being said, when we look at just the CNC Chasey, I agree with you two, 200 plus and growing projects is, is a lot. I've spoken to the CNCF people about this. And, you know, they feel they'll just keep taking projects as long as, you know, because that's their charter.

And it's, it's sort of becomes the, the child who eats the parent almost, right? Or it's that one big bird in the nest that's taken all the food and all the other little baby birds aren't as big, and they're not as healthy, and that's not healthy for the whole ecosystem at some level. And I, I do don't disagree there.

The other thing I would mention though, is this is momentum, not just who has the most developers, but who's adding the most developers, who's adding the most are the key metrics. And when you look under the covers a little bit, yes, Kubernetes still rules the roofs, but Open Telemetry may have in fact, more velocity than op, which is, they Probably have, I would guess they have more end users. It definitely is, you know, the end users who are usually actually implementing.

Yes. The velocity is there. I too was happy to see Backstage on there.

com site about, I wrote about Backstage specifically, you know, it just, so Backstage was Spotify, if I'm not mistaken, right? Right. Backstage is Spotify file.

And then they, they contributed, they gave it to the CNCF in 2022. So in just three years, it's shot up into the top 30 there. And it, and it's rising with a bullet.

But at the same time, as, as I think you'll see in the, or my article on Platform engineering, you know, Spotify's now come out with a hosted version of Backstage, uh, SaaS version that they charge for. And there are some other, uh, you know, internal developer platform, uh, competitors out there because, you know, the, the story with Backstage is the same thing that plagues, not plagues, but it's the same story we hear with a lot of open source stuff. It's hard to use it's command line.

It's, you know, it's not as polished. It's not that commercial version. And, and if, if that's the kind of person go, go use the SAS version.

But anyway, um, Argo and Flux, the two GI ops players absolutely are, are, uh, you know, hitting, hitting strides. Look, overall, it's a very healthy market at the top, but I'd like to see the bottom 50 of the 200 and see what kind of numbers they have, because those people may in fact be better served, finding someone who can show 'em a little more love, a little more Time. Yeah.

It's hard as an open source, as an open source, you know, running an open source project within the Linux Foundation, when you're one of those small ones, it's hard to find the love. You really have to make a big, you have to, you have to make a lot of noise. Mitch, I have a conspiracy theory.

My conspiracy theory, A Monday morning conspiracy theory. All right? It was Epstein.

It was Epstein, wasn't it? Right. The project teams, because they're funded by vendors, are not exactly all that interested in making everything easier because their vendors are creating the commercial version to make things easy.

And there's not enough time and effort in being put into making things easy, because it's just not in anybody's economic interest. Hold it, hold it. You mean there's gambling going on here?

There's financial interest happening. Oh my gosh, my heart's broken for open source. You know, I mean, it's, it, it's, it's real.

I mean, companies are contributing because that's in their financial interest. It isn't pure altruism. Maybe it's not even altruism at all.

Right? I mean, I'd actually be major open source advocates as much as it's important to their business. And if it wasn't for that, maybe they wouldn't be.

I'm not, I'm not pointing any fingers at anybody, but it, it, it's, you have to also look at the other side of it. It's, that also drives a lot of the innovation and moving projects forward. Whether they're new ones that are contributed, like we talked about backstage, where it's accelerated two and three years, or, you know, Kubernetes and KU Flow and, and Open Telemetry, I think is the kind of poster child for involving a lot of people, uh, a lot of vendors out of an ecosystem, uh, to work together.

So much so that both Kubernetes and I think Open Telemetry too, has kind of passed the cloud native moniker, at least in terms of their use. Alan, you and I were talking about this the other day, is, is, uh, is Kubernetes really a cloud native thing anymore? It's really a workflow engine workflow system that works on anything AI applications or what, it doesn't matter what it is, anything that's containerized, and it could be a cloud native app, quote unquote.

So it, you know, on, on the, think on the plus side, I'm, I'm super happy that we've got a great ecosystem of open source and with what the CNCF is doing. I don't have an appreciation like you do Tracy, of what it is to be one of the small teams and projects. And I'm sure that's a struggle.

Maybe that's something the CNCF could take on. It's how do we identify projects that have a lot of promise, but need a little bit of help, need that sort of, that startup nudge, you know, get 'em to the next tier to help 'em accomplish that and maybe find a sponsor or two. And there may be projects, big open telemetry that are bigger than cloud native, and maybe it's time for them to move on and become their own little foundation.

I don't know. I'm just putting it up. I kind of think So very Possible.

The project I thought we would see in that list was open tofu. Mm. Mm-hmm.

So, I, I don't think it's had enough runway mm-hmm. To really, 'cause that's a hard list to crack, right? Oh, yeah.

You gotta, yes. And so I, I'd say if it's not on by next year, it'll, or maybe by the end of this year, 'cause this was just a mid-year l look, let's see, end of year look, then I'd say, okay, maybe it's, maybe there was a lot of smoke and not as much fire there. That's a good one, Tracy.

I agree with you. You know, they, they're not abandoning the, uh, Hashi stuff. Um, anyway, though, it is a, it, it's a, it's a colossus, right?

This CNCF and the whole open source world around it. io and they're doing ag agentic, uh, remediation on the fly of a lot of these open source tools and components that we're seeing in there. Even the oss and, uh, we're, they donated a project to the CNCF two, uh, slim or something.

How about we see an AI agent for all these projects, and that'll make it easier because that one AI agent can figure out how to learn all these things, right? Or do I need a hundred AI agents because there's a hundred projects? I don't Know.

Maybe they could be the maintain, maybe subagent. I wanna be your secret agent, man, right? Let's, let's get that song going.

I always knew it's gonna be like Downton Abbey, there's gonna be a head Butler agent, and then there's gonna be all these other agents working downstairs, taking care of stuff, You know? But I think about that. Are they other agents or are they just alter egos, you know, sub-agents, if you will, of that master agent?

Well, you know, it's funny you say that, Mike, because, uh, Walmart just announced they're actually doing exactly that. They discovered they had way too many agents. And so they're now consolidating and having one agent, one master agent for consumers, another master agent for their vendor suppliers, another master agent for the developers, which will then form out work to all of the subagents that you were talking about, right?

Yeah. To having lay out of agents. Wow.

That's, that's a first. And this goes to that. There's that amazing discussion that we should still be having around how to lay these agents out.

And a domain structure will be so critical. And it's not always about LLMs, right? It's gotta, mm-hmm.

We have to start ma making a more container, or I shouldn't say use the word container, but more specialized and more domain specific. I'm with you. And We should, we should have that conversation on one of these calls.

We Should somebody. We'll, I, I know someone I, I can make that happen. We'll put it out there.

I'll, I I will, I will. I will pencil that in for a, a week from today. Alrighty.

All right guys. Hey, um, we're gonna take a break here on Text Strung Bang Gang, let's come back and talk a little digital transformation modernization. I don't know what you call it.

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Contact us today and tell your story to the world in the most powerful way with Textron Group. Hey, folks, we're back and we're talking about digital transformation. And a funny thing happened on the way too.

Innovation. I think we discovered that there was just a lot of stuff that we were working with that was suboptimal and just wasn't working the way it was supposed to in the first place. And a lot of these digital transformation initiatives shifted from being about some great new innovation thing to simple, good old fashioned modernization.

Alan, you wrote two stories related to this topic on digital CXO invite you, I'll check those things out, but what's your take on what's happening here? You know, I've always felt that digital transformation was a loaded word, right? It meant something different to different people.

To some people, digital transformation meant transforming from an analog world to a digital world, right? They went from a brick and mortar store, maybe to actually being able to sell stuff electronically online. COVID was a huge, uh, catalyst for that, right?

You, you, you people didn't come to your store shopping. You had to get it. You had to get your goods to them and be able to sell it to them online.

Then for others, digital transformation became code word for moving to the cloud, which to me was really a modernization play. But for o, for many people, digital transformation was, I am going to take advantage of the latest digital, I'm already digital to a certain degree, but I'm gonna take advantage of the latest digital platforms. For others.

It's a much broader term, emphasis on transformation, not on digital. And that's the second article I wrote, the Rise of the ct, little RO, the chief Transformation Officer. Their charter is to transform the company or their organization into a modern organization.

And it's not maybe just, it, even, frankly, it's the people process technologies. It's, it's a modern transforming to take advantage of modern, uh, formulas and, and and so forth. So, while we all are, you know, know, and they're, I cited in the first article, there's companies that put out, here's the stats on digital transformation.

It's a gazillion trillion dollar industry. And there's all of this and all of that, and all, all these big numbers, highfaluting numbers that make you say, oh my god, digital transformation is rocking and rolling. It's, it's the major force in the industry.

But when you peel back those numbers, what you really see is a lot of the money is being spent. Mike, as you said, on good old fashioned modernization. We're modernizing.

We're modernizing from waterfall to microservices. Cloud native cloud and cloud native from data center, right? Containerization, we're using AI and machine learning and other, we're mo we're moving from a PM to observability, right?

All of these lit, not little, but all these disparate things that we do that make for the modern enterprise, that make for the modern IT stack. And we could still call that digital transformation. I do believe that still is digital transformation, but I think we've gotta be smarter about what we think of when we talk digital transformation.

You know, Al, if I had to play historian for a moment, I remember the first time I really kind of heard about it. I don't know if it's the OG of Digital transformation, but if you remember Tom Siebel, Siebel Systems, CR, the early CRM player, he wrote a book on it and he described there were four things. Um, it was moving to the, this is, this is how he defined his book.

This is pre COVID. So it was, uh, moving to the cloud, it was automation, it was data, and it was ai. And so that was kind of my OG definition of what digital transformation is.

And I think as COVID hit and we needed everything to go digital, then the digital become what the trans trans, uh, transformation was about, is to getting things into a digital format. 'cause we can't do manual processes with everybody working from home. And then that started to expand, as you mentioned.

We saw a lot more going to the cloud. One of the characteristics of my, my time of working into in large enterprises is what happens is as soon as projects start getting of a certain type, start getting funded, suddenly your project is now one of those kinds of projects. 'cause that's how you get funding for it.

So our, whatever it was Mitch's, you know, Mitch's favorite project is now a digital transformation project. Let's go get those funds. So it just o broadens the definition.

And that's kind of where we are. It's a little bit of everything. It's a, you know, it's a rainbow of different kinds of projects and it really is some modernization, some going digital, some going ai.

I think it's a move forward taking your, your technology and moving it forward in some way. Mitch, to some extent, yes. And to some extent, no, that's Not a new concept going way before siebel's book was, uh, back in the mid nineties was a book called Re-Engineering the Corporation, which was all about how do we transform corporation, if you remember that, right?

I remember re-engineering projects. Yes, I did. Right.

Re-engineering projects. And it was really about, um, uh, arguing against incremental improvements and going for quantum leap type improvements. And in one sense, a digital transformation, digitizing your analog processes really is that quantum leap forward or quantum leap different.

And they argued for which I think now 30 years later, we're seeing the formalization of a leader, in this case, the Chief Transformation officer at CTRO, because you need somebody senior enough or under the organization who has the authority and the sway to actually evoke change. That these are not things in a large corporation that can be done from the bottom or from the middle. They have to have a mandate from the top.

Now, once you have that mandate and you start doing those projects, yes, everybody wants to glo on because that's where the money is. But I do think that there's a very valid purpose in having a chief transformation officer who has the mandate to change the organization, how it does business, which really means changing the culture of the business as well. It's, to me, it's much more than just the digital workflow.

The, the mandate though, is complicated because it kind of goes like this digital transformation officer launches new project, builds new app, and then needs data to actually feed this thing. And then they gotta call up the CIO and they call up the CIO and they go, I need access to this data and I need these legacy systems of yours, need to have APIs, which is usually followed by a comment from the CIO that's roughly equivalent to what you're talking about, Willis. And then it just sits.

And that has gone on for how many years, right? Since the beginning of time it Was a digital transformation where we went from a, a green screen to a screen scraper. Remember that phase?

Mm-hmm. We've gone through, we've gone through, we, we are never, still, we do not float in still water. Yeah.

This industry mm-hmm. Is in a, it is, you know, on a kayak in a, in at the Colorado River at its most, you know, highest point, we are constantly, uh, changing. There is never a point in time that we're not transforming.

And how long will it be before AI is not the shiny new tool. That's all quantum. I'm already getting there.

And most every, every new term that comes out, I feel like it's just a way to market to investors, right? It's all about getting funding and these small companies coming up. And now if you don't have AI in your, in your portfolio, then you're not being looked at.

How long will it be before it says you've gotta have Quantum. This is just who we are as a community. We always have been in a constant flux of change.

And, you know, I don't know why we now have a digital transformation officer. I think it's kind of a cool term. I wanna be one, it looks like a really fun job.

But you know, they're gonna, what are they gonna transform? Are they gonna ever stop? So I think we just have to see it in for what it is that we, we're an industry that can't stop.

We can't, we have to constantly evolve. There is no other, for us, you We're like, sharks. We're like sharks.

If you're not swimming forward, they drown. Yeah. If you're not swimming, I think drown.

Yeah. I think Evolve is really the word that kept coming to my mind was that we have to evolve. It's almost Darwinian, right?

If you don't keep evolving, if you don't keep moving into technologies, some companies, people become extinct in their careers or in their trajectory. So that, that's what came think transformation. But Chief, chief Evolution officer, well, you know, we'll see if that comes up.

But at least it's, well It's, there are people who don't believe in evolution, still don't figure out. Well I know that's, I'm touching that one the US Anyway. Um, but one more thing, the more things change, the more things stay the same.

Yeah. We still have programmers. We still have to sort scan code.

We still have to run and build. We still have to figure out how to deploy things. We still figure have to figure out the dependencies across all of these components.

They're just parts, parts or parts. And, and in that aspect, we haven't changed any. But given the, the role of the transformation officer is to eat the sacred cows, basically, right?

They make the Tastiest hamburgers to borrow another book's title. Right? And the problem, the problem in many organizations as people are resistant to change, because we've always done it this way.

It works and yes, it works, but can it be better? And can we do more, quicker, better, faster, more if we change? And the in organizations, you know, there, there are two opposing forces and if you don't have something opposing the force that wants to stay static, you will stay static.

You know, that, that kind of reminds me of the goal and Phoenix Project and all that stuff, right? Mm-hmm. Absolutely Change.

And, But I, I wish we were a little more deliberate about it. 'cause when you go visit a lot of these enterprises, you discover that there's just stacks and stacks of crap and projects that people built and they're all kinda isolated and nobody actually, you know, integrated much of this with any kinda real plan. And it's different business leaders funded and all this other stuff.

And it's just kind of a mess. It's interesting how it evolves because some things do fall by the wayside. Like you were talking about.

AI might not be the shiny object anymore. I'm having a little bit of PTSD from the re-engineering era of the nineties. Jack, thank you very much.

Um, for me, that was all about moving to clients, client server using X Works stations instead of terminals, you know, on on, on uh, service reps, desks and things like that. Which is about bringing graphical user interface, putting Unix boxes on people's desks. Well, that kind of would, by the wayside is we replace that with computers and, you know, windows devices.

But it was part of the evolution. It was part of the way there. Yes.

The client server stuff stayed and then we evolved that to where we are today. But it, it's, it's part, I I like your river analogy, Tracy. 'cause it's a constant motion thing and you, you trying to paddle against the tide or against the, the, the river.

Good luck. Right. Especially if you're at the peak of it.

Um, so sometimes it carries you if you're not, uh, be careful. Yeah, for sure. Alright, let's take a break here on Textron Gang.

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com. Home of security bloggers network. Hey folks, we're back in Amazon acquiring in a little startup called BI, they make this kind of bracelet thing that auto transcribes conversations and summaries and, uh, might even occasionally raise the privacy alarm.

We'll see about who's listening in on this stuff. But, um, Stacy, I would love to get your impression on this because in my mind, the minute I read this, I was like, so let me get this straight. Every, I gotta check to see everybody's wearing a bracelet before I open my mouth to see what the heck I might say or not, notset.

Mm-hmm. Well, this new wave of wearables, I mean everything from the, the Veta glasses recording things to, you know, if there's something on your wrist, what are people wearing and what are the privacy implications of that? Are people sharing if they're wearing something that can be recording for you?

You know, is it one of those, like when you go to an event, is it recording is in process where people have to, you know, make, make it known? What will, what will happen with this as we, you know, and, and then the question comes, why are they wearing it? What's the purpose for it?

Yeah. I don't, I mean, my memory is bad. Don't get me wrong.

Know, I don't know if I wanna report. We called your speech, So I I had the same thoughts, Stacy. Um, so first of all, look, we all think Amazon's listening in on us through Alexa anyway, right?

I, you know, and so what's different about this? But there's two things here, and they're on both sides. You know, one's on one side, one's on the other side of this.

The first thing is, there are definitely laws, whether it's on a phone conversation or meeting, right? I mean, we're not talking about policemen or law enforcement. Two Party or one party is what they Usually call, right?

That you've gotta be notified that what you're saying is being recorded. Right? And I don't know mm-hmm how that applies in this situation and if it would ever be admissible or usable or, or whatever.

But I will tell you, you know, God, my brother-in-law's much older than my wife and I, God bless him, he's 81 years old and he's walked around as long as I know him, which is a long time, uh, with like one of those little recorders. And you'll, he'll, you'll say something to him, he'll say, wait a second, say it again. And then he'll make a mental note on his recorder with it.

My brother-in-law, Phil Mitchell, you've met him, I believe. Mm-hmm. Mike, you probably have too.

I've met him. He always makes his little notes. 'cause then he goes home and he actually takes notes off of what his recorder says, and he has recordings going back years.

So it's, I I think in that regard for seniors, for people with memory or, or just people who like to take notes, what, it's a great thing. It's a great thing. And if you don't, if you don't mind the privacy, it is a great thing.

But will everyone else think it's such a great thing? And that's really the Idea. Well, there's also the unintended consequences of it, right?

Like, like, do all of us want cameras in our car to record everything we're doing and how fast we're driving? And so the insurance company I know, so the insurance company can up our rates. Um, do we want to be wearing body cam someday?

Everybody's wearing a body cam and it's it's in their glasses, or it's in their jewelry or whatever. I mean, that's where we're headed. And that there are the benefits side of it, but there's also the consequences, which is okay, that can be used in a court of law when something happens.

You remember it this way, but you're, your, your body camera remembers it differently. Um, so, so the putting it in digital form can be a, a blessing and a curse at the same time. Well, that, yeah, that's, I think what I was trying to say.

There's two sides to this. So There's, I think there's two things that I wanna talk about. First, I wanna make a disclaimer that I actually use the Applaud Pen, right?

Oh, you've Been recording us all this time, Jack. Well, I'm, I'm hurt. So it just clips on here, right?

The difference is, this is not an always on device. You have to turn it on when you wanna court. Now, I find it very useful for in meetings, or particularly in when I do briefings at a conference, it's very useful because then I can be in the moment and have a discussion knowing that it's take, it's, it's recording it.

So I have notes afterwards, rather than sitting there having to write stuff down. That's so, so that's, but it's not an always on device, so it's not recording everything all the time. I think more importantly for this is Amazon's acquisition and what that means.

'cause Amazon has a very mixed record with privacy, right? So you have the Alexa device. Hold on, Jack, let, let's not mince words.

It's not a mixed record, it's a very tarnished record. I'm trying to walk a fine line. My dad, you know, I Gotcha.

Um, Amazon bought Ring, which is effectively and always on camera for your home. And, uh, once they bought it, there wa uh, people discovered a lot of privacy implications, uh, including that Amazon basically gave access to your local police department to your cameras so that they could use it. Now, people were less upset about the cameras they had pointing outwards than they had of the cameras pointing into their homes.

And why would police want to get access to any of that? So there's, there's a lot of privacy implications just with Amazon acquiring the technology outside of the technology itself because of Amazon's very mixed reputation. Yeah, no, I, I do think that because it's Amazon, people are gonna look a little bit more closely at it be just because what, what's Bezos gonna do with that information already?

What do, what do we think he does now? Um, the other thing though, I'll mention, there's a difference between video and, and Jack voice recorder, which is in essence what this is though. This is a voice recorder, the transcription service.

Is the transcription service really good, right? 90% means one out of every 10 words is still wrong. Uh, I can't speak to BI can speak to Claude to say, and to, uh, say Zoom, which does, can, will record your Zoom calls, right?

They're actually very good, um, with most modern English. Now, I can't speak to any other language. They often get names wrong because names are, can be very difficult.

But for my purposes, the recording, the transcription, the AI analysis has been very helpful. I am concerned from a privacy, both from an enterprise data privacy, data security point of view, and from just a personal, uh, privacy, security perspective of who has access to the data and what do they do with it. Now, b claims that they re they instantly transcribe.

So they don't actually record the audio. They listen and transcribe. They don't save the audio itself.

They save the transcription and their analysis of it, and they move that to the cloud. Uh, applaud actually records the audio, send the audio to the cloud or to your a on app on your phone and does the transcription afterwards. So again, it's who has access to it and what are they gonna do with that data?

And then from an always on nature, if I'm at a place where it's not expected that you're being recorded, like at a conference, everybody knows everything's being recorded. So I don't worry about it, but if I'm having a conversation one-on-one with somebody, I ask them, can I record this? I, I, I think that's the decent thing to do, Right?

I just take it, it's even, It's Just weird to me. It's just weird. I don't know why I would wanna record every conversation I had.

I can see wanting to record some conversations. Like, you know, if I'm doing research and I wanna, I interview somebody and I usually try to do Zoom so I can get the transcription, but just to have it on all the time is odd. That to me, I don't understand the use case at all.

It just Reality TV Stars. Well, do you remember the episode of Black Mirror where they can see everything? Yeah.

Then rewind it. It was like in the, and I think that was around the time I stopped watching because the idea of that was just like, oh God, the trouble that, like, you know, the, what is the reality on the tooth? And it's, and when I look at this and I think, okay, so like when I give toxic conferences, they're very human centric.

And so burnout things, whatnot, we wouldn't, uh, uh, sometimes allow recordings in there because it's of human nature. I, and so the idea that anybody could be recording you at any time conversations like, does it, what's the noise? You know, how, how much sound does it pick up around you?

What's the ambient noise factor? I have a lot of questions. Can you go to Europe with this, for example?

You know, I mean it's just, to me it seems like such a rabbit hole of what can you do with this? Let Me, let me, let me propose something to y'all here. Howdy, boomer or Xer, is this a generational thing?

Will, will my children really give a hoot if everything's recorded? The 20 some, the Gen, I guess Gen Zs and whatever comes after Gen Zs, right? I hope so.

I hope so. Are you asking 'em to clean their rooms? Because then No, no.

I mean, spoken Like a mom, but yeah, I get it. I, I think this was, I think if they record everything that happens after they, they leave a bar at 2:00 AM then I think they'll care. Yeah, exactly.

But it kind of, it's kind of authoritarian actually. I mean, if you look at China, yeah, China reports Everything Everywhere it looks. It's very authoritarian.

Well, London, there's a lot, lot of video in London too, though. You're London has More cameras than any other city in the West by far. They, it's everything is surveilled in London.

Yep. So, so I'm Gonna, I'm gonna join The Masons gonna have secret hands, please. The secret handshakes the whole thing, right?

You wanna know what we're talking about? Alright. Anyway, hey, this has been recorded, so it's all good.

Let gang, thanks so much for joining us in the great discussion today. I hope we got your week off to a good start. A little hopefully light, not too heavy, but there's good stuff there.

As usual, we have a lot of tech junk TV following the gang today, so stay tuned for that. Do check us out on our OTT channel, whether you're on Amazon or Roku or uh, apple TV or iOS, if you're running the new OS 26 or Android as well, or text drunk tv, text drunk TV on YouTube, wherever you watch us, we hope you enjoy it. Until tomorrow, this is Alan Shimmel.

We're out.