NC_2024_10_13
This episode features Chris Cook discussing accessibility tech for the visually impaired, focusing on Aira and Be My Eyes with Meta's Ray-Ban glasses, AI assistance, and the balance of user-friendly design with privacy and security.
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Long Summary
In this episode, we explore the nuances of accessibility technology, focusing on the evolving landscape of services available for the visually impaired. We begin with a reflection on past experiences using AI voice technology during moments of voice loss, highlighting how these advancements can maintain listener engagement even in challenging circumstances.
We dive into a detailed discussion with Chris Cook, a rehabilitation instructor for visually impaired adults, who returns to discuss the integration of services like Aira and Be My Eyes with innovative technologies such as Meta's Ray-Ban glasses. Chris explains how Aira, a visual interpreting service, enhances her independence, allowing her to navigate situations like traveling alone by providing real-time guidance through video calls with trained professionals. The significance of accurate, actionable information—where understanding the environment supersedes superficial details—is emphasized through her experiences.
As we pivot to a newly announced integration of Be My Eyes with Meta's Ray-Ban glasses, Chris shares her excitement about the potential of hands-free assistance through augmented reality. We compare the functionalities of Be My Eyes' AI features, which provide descriptive assistance through images, against the capabilities offered by the Meta glasses. Chris elaborates on her experience testing both platforms, noting the advantages and limitations of each when it comes to accessing information in real-world scenarios.
The conversation continues as we discuss the implications of such advancements in accessibility technology. Chris highlights the rarity of such solutions within mainstream products, underscoring the value of creating accessible devices that resonate with the visually impaired community. We touch upon issues related to privacy and security within these services, especially concerning data sharing and protection in the age of AI.
Moving beyond personal anecdotes, Chris and I delve into the potential future of these technologies, speculating on how they can further improve the lives of visually impaired individuals. We also discuss the importance of continually advocating for user-friendly and affordable solutions to ensure broad adoption and ease of use.
The episode wraps up with a brief segment on the latest updates from the security landscape, with insights from Bart Bouchotts on Patch Tuesday releases, highlighting the importance of regular updates in maintaining security across devices. We remind listeners of the ongoing need to protect their digital environments while embracing the advancements that empower individuals, particularly within the realm of accessibility.
Ultimately, this episode serves as a reminder of the strides being made in technology to support the visually impaired, as well as the critical discussions surrounding privacy, independence, and the human element in the age of AI.
We dive into a detailed discussion with Chris Cook, a rehabilitation instructor for visually impaired adults, who returns to discuss the integration of services like Aira and Be My Eyes with innovative technologies such as Meta's Ray-Ban glasses. Chris explains how Aira, a visual interpreting service, enhances her independence, allowing her to navigate situations like traveling alone by providing real-time guidance through video calls with trained professionals. The significance of accurate, actionable information—where understanding the environment supersedes superficial details—is emphasized through her experiences.
As we pivot to a newly announced integration of Be My Eyes with Meta's Ray-Ban glasses, Chris shares her excitement about the potential of hands-free assistance through augmented reality. We compare the functionalities of Be My Eyes' AI features, which provide descriptive assistance through images, against the capabilities offered by the Meta glasses. Chris elaborates on her experience testing both platforms, noting the advantages and limitations of each when it comes to accessing information in real-world scenarios.
The conversation continues as we discuss the implications of such advancements in accessibility technology. Chris highlights the rarity of such solutions within mainstream products, underscoring the value of creating accessible devices that resonate with the visually impaired community. We touch upon issues related to privacy and security within these services, especially concerning data sharing and protection in the age of AI.
Moving beyond personal anecdotes, Chris and I delve into the potential future of these technologies, speculating on how they can further improve the lives of visually impaired individuals. We also discuss the importance of continually advocating for user-friendly and affordable solutions to ensure broad adoption and ease of use.
The episode wraps up with a brief segment on the latest updates from the security landscape, with insights from Bart Bouchotts on Patch Tuesday releases, highlighting the importance of regular updates in maintaining security across devices. We remind listeners of the ongoing need to protect their digital environments while embracing the advancements that empower individuals, particularly within the realm of accessibility.
Ultimately, this episode serves as a reminder of the strides being made in technology to support the visually impaired, as well as the critical discussions surrounding privacy, independence, and the human element in the age of AI.
Brief Summary
In this episode, we delve into accessibility technology for the visually impaired with Chris Cook, a rehabilitation instructor. We discuss the integration of services like Aira and Be My Eyes with Meta's Ray-Ban glasses, highlighting how these tools enhance independence and navigation through real-time guidance. Chris shares her experiences with AI features that provide assistance and the implications of these advancements, including privacy concerns. We also touch on the importance of user-friendly devices and the latest security updates, emphasizing the need for technology that empowers the visually impaired while ensuring safety and privacy.
Tags
accessibility technology
visually impaired
Chris Cook
Aira
Be My Eyes
Meta
Ray-Ban glasses
independence
real-time guidance
privacy concerns
user-friendly devices
security updates
Transcript
[0:00]
NC_2024_10_13
[0:00]Music.
[0:08]Apple Bias. Today is Sunday, October 13th, 2024, and this is show number 1014.
[0:15]Well, it's that time of the year again, my seemingly annual voice loss. The good news is that I recorded one of the articles a week ago, so I sound normal in that article. The other good news is that with security bits, I just stayed quieter than usual and interrupted Bart less than normal. But there is one article I really wanted to read you this week. When this happened back in March of 2023, my solution was to have an AI-generated version of my voice read the podcast to you. I used something called 11labs.io to do the voice generation. While it wasn't perfect for its time, it was pretty darn good. Let's have a quick listen to how 11labs sounded back then. Hi, this is Allison's assistant, 11labs.io. As you can tell, Allison's voice took yet another turn for the worse. She asked me to tell you that we got some great listener content submitted this week, so she's going to hopefully move the content she had planned to next week so you don't have to listen to the gravel machine any more than necessary. We've got a segment of Security Bits too, so it's going to be a great show. We'll get to that content soon, but let's hear what she's been up to this week.
[1:19]Well, that wasn't bad, right? But I think today's technology is a lot better. This year, I chose a service called Play.ht. It's still not perfect, but it's come a long way. You'll hear it for the Programming by Stealth Plug and one other article. When I get my voice back, I'll tell you all about what it took to create this voice. Let's let Play.ht take over from here.
[1:47]
PBS Tidbit 9: Using Git on iOS (Git)
[1:47]In the olden days, iOS kept everything sandboxed in a way that apps weren't allowed to reach outside of their own data to open individual files. But with the aptly named Files app and an API to allow a human to do the picking, apps can now open files directly on iOS. So this innovation allows us to have a Git client on iOS and have it use a linked repo that's stored in the Files app. This means we can use any text editor. We like to open the repo's files for editing. In this tidbit episode of Programming by Stealth, Bart walks us through how to configure the iOS Git client working copy to clone a repo from GitHub and then open the files in his favorite text editor on iOS Textastic. Hats off to Jill of Kent, who explained to Bart and me more than a year ago that this was possible, but a fist shake to Bart for not telling me how to do it till now.
[2:37]
iPad, Pencil, White Balance Photography and Notability – All for Cross Stitching
[2:36]So you may have caught on that I'm a bit of a tech nerd, but I also like to do some craft type stuff. But who can forget one of my favorite articles entitled Knit Like a Programmer? Today, I'd like to tell a story of combining nerdery tech gadgets, crafts, and even photography. You may learn something that will help you one day, or you may end up shaking your head thinking I make things too complicated. This story is about a different craft, cross-stitching. Before we dig in, I'm going to assume that while most of you may have heard of cross-stitching. At least 82.7% of you have no idea what it is or how it works. The best way for me to describe cross-stitching to nerds is that it's like 8-bit graphics. You create a picture using different colored threads where each cross-stitch is a little block and making a diagonal line of these little blocks would be a jagged line just like an 8-bit graphics.
[3:26]It's also like a paint by number kit because you stitch the color in each little box by following a key that has numbers associated with the colors. On a pre-made kit, one might be white, two red, and three green. If you're fancy and buy your own thread, the numbers are predefined. For example, the official number for blue-violet is 341, while teal-green is 3847. The numbers don't matter to this story, but it matters that there are numbers for each color in a pattern. The last thing you need to know about cross-stitching before I launch into the nerdy solution is that each of these eight bit blocks I've described is created by a cross stitch. In other words, one stitch from bottom left to upper right of a square, and then a second stitch from top left to bottom right of the square, hence the name cross stitch.
[4:10]Back in 2020, I told you about one nerdy solution for cross-stitching. In addition to these little squares, sometimes you use stitching in a line, not a cross, to create lettering on a project. Think of it as being like drawing lines from corner to corner of different boxes in a spreadsheet. My article in 2020 was about how I used the app Notability to create lettering diagrams for cross-stitch projects. The example I used in the article was a pillow honoring the birth of my granddaughter, Sienna Mae, with her birth date and name. I also like to put my initials in the year I created a project in a small area down in the corner. Just in case these become precious heirlooms for my family, it seems fun for them to know when I put the love into them. In my article, I showed how the grid patterns and notability, especially for iPad with pencil, is helpful for designing the lettering that you might create for a pattern like Sienna's pillow. I could create this lettering using graph paper and a pencil, and that's how I did it for literally decades, but Notability makes it easier and faster, and I can keep these little patterns for reuse all on my iPad, iPhone, and Mac. This year, I figured out an even cooler thing I could do with Notability to help me cross-stitch, and that's where my photography skills come into play.
[5:25]At the most basic level, a cross-stitch pattern's job is to provide a grid that shows you which little boxes should be what color. Cross-stitch patterns can be good, great, or bad, and I'll explain what differentiates one from great to bad. When you first start on a project, the pattern will be printed very neatly on crisp, clean white paper. That's great until you start folding and unfolding it over months while you work on the project. The design on those folds simply disappears, and you have to guess what is behind the folds. It can also get raggedy edges as you repeatedly drag it in and out of your carrier for the project. My first advice is that as soon as you start a new project, make a photocopy of the pattern, just in case it gets worn to the point you can't read it anymore. You'll also have the challenge of how to keep track of where you've completed the pattern so you don't lose your place. My daughter, Lindsay, and I have always used highlighters to mark off what we've completed. This works okay, but if you make a mistake, there's no way to erase your marking. Lindsay gets fancy and uses several different highlighter colors, but it does mean carrying around a lot more stuff. In that context, let's talk about good, great, and bad patterns.
[6:24]A good pattern is in black and white and uses symbols for each color, and then assigns a number to each color symbol. The numbers will go on little Ziploc baggies with the colors on them, or on little cards on which you win the threads. Maybe a cross means light blue 3, a dot means dark red 7, and a circle means medium green 12. So these patterns are relatively easy to follow because you can see the distinct difference between the colors and the key because of the symbols. You can imagine, though, that if there are a lot of colors in a pattern, the symbols might start to get hard to tell apart. You might have a tiny star, a tiny triangle, and a tiny cross, which could be hard to easily tell apart. A great pattern uses all of the symbols for the colors, like the good patterns, but it is also printed in color to simulate the finished product. If you see a red square with a dot in it, you can quickly scan the reds in the key to find out which red they mean. With black and white patterns, you have to scan the entire key looking for that dot because you don't yet know it will be red. While I like the color symbol patterns the best, they do make it harder to use a highlighter to mark off where you've been.
[7:25]Finally, there are bad patterns. I'm working on a bad pattern that was the reason I needed to bring tech in to save the day. A year ago, I started a project kit from a company called Hirschner's that creates four adorable holiday gnome pillows. There's one for each season, and they're so cute you can't stand it. The problem is the pattern. While this gnome's seasonal pattern does use colors for the little squares, only a very few of the colors have a symbol on them. And there are three different browns on one of the Christmas reindeer that are very close together, and the colors in the pattern don't even come close to giving you a clue as to which one is which. Without symbols, you don't have a chance. It took me hours to sort the colors into the little baggies with the numbers on them and only succeeded with Steve's help. We sat there judging the colors under a very bright light until we were pretty sure we got them correctly sorted. Woody's had to help me with all four of the patterns for the pillows because of this problem. Another problem you may encounter is that sometimes the magic decoder ring key itself is often inconveniently located. Listener and friend Lynn was just complaining that the key for a pattern she's working on is on the back of the pattern itself. How mean is that? Patterns are also often printed wee tiny, which can be a tough problem for those with eyes that aren't perfect. Lots of people have to use a magnifier to see what they're doing on the fabric, but having to swap the fabric back back and forth with the pattern to the magnifier makes it even harder. In order to deal with all of these problems, I came up with an entirely new solution to working with cross-stitch patterns. The first thing I did was take photos of the pattern with my iPhone.
[8:50]I was as perpendicular to it as possible. If you're not careful, it's easy to get keystoning, so the pattern is more of a tripezoid. I also took close-up photos of different sections of the pattern. My goal was to be able to have these sections as big as possible. I then cropped each photo to be just the pattern with nothing else around it. I also cropped one photo to be just the key. And then I pasted each of these photos into a new notability document. Since key is a separate photo, I can drag it around to each of the pattern photos as a separate layer. This means I always have it right near where I'm stitching. No scrolling up and down in the document trying to find it. This also solves Lynn's problem where the key was infuriatingly on the back of the pattern. I thought my solution was really slick until I started working on the project. I still couldn't tell the darn colors apart. I was at Lindsay's house and made that complaint to her, and she made a very intelligent observation. She pointed out that the color cast of the photo was much different than the original pattern. I hadn't done anything to get the white balance correct, so I was doomed if I stuck with these images. Now it's time to use something I'd heard about before, but only really grucked after Bart explained it in his wonderful Let's Talk Photography podcast. What we need to get a color-accurate photo is called a gray card.
[9:58]A gray card is a piece of plastic that is exactly 18% gray. You can buy these from photography shops or for a pittance on sites like Amazon, like $6. The purpose of a gray card is to help you teach your photo software what gray is supposed to look like in a photo you've taken. Rather than stay theoretical, let me describe exactly how it works with the example at hand. I took the original set of photos on the floor in a bedroom with very golden lighting. I took the same photos again with the same golden lighting, But in each photo, I included my gray card next to or on top of the pattern. This will give me a good reference to fix the white balance. You can adjust white balance in most image editing applications. I use Apple Photos for the task. On the Mac, frustratingly not available on iOS, if you go into edit mode, you'll see the image adjustment options in the right sidebar. Some of them may be folded up with a little disclosure triangle. The one you're looking for is called white balance. When you flip it open, you'll see a slider that says warmth under it. Above that is a drop-down menu that you want to set to neutral gray. To the left of that is an eyedropper. Select the eyedropper and then simply tap it somewhere on the gray card and you'll see the color shift in the image. This process isn't flawless. Even with a gray card, if the lighting is poor, the image might shift into more of a green, red, or blue tinge. I simply undo and keep clicking with the eyedropper until the colors look right. I should mention that if you don't have a gray card, you can often fix the white balance using something that should be gray or white in an image.
[11:24]Now that I have relatively color-accurate photos of the various parts of my pattern, I can finally start cross-stitching with Notability. It is quite joyful to be able to pinch to zoom way in on an image in Notability and see exactly what the pattern wants you to do, even glancing from a distance. This also solves the problem of a creased pattern. Over time, it will always look as good as the day you brought it into Notability. The best part is how it lets me keep track of where I am in the pattern. Notability has a palette of colors to choose from to draw with pencil and you can change the thickness of the line as well.
[11:56]Armed with this palette, I can make little dots on the squares of the pattern when I've finished an area. I can make them different colors so I can tell the various areas apart. It's kind of like the highlighter method that Lindsay and I used, but I can switch colors quickly and easily. And if I make a mistake and back up in the pattern, notability also lets me erase the dots so I can start again. Not that I would ever make a mistake. I explained in detail how cross-stitch is these little X's to form boxes of color. When you're done filling in all the little boxes, you next do the outlining. This is where with a single thread, you stitch around the pattern to show the detail in the subject. I like patterns with primary colors, which makes outlining relatively easy, but there are often areas where it can still get tricky to keep track of what outlining has been completed. Lindsay favors complex patterns with intricate shading, which makes the outlining very tough to follow. With Notability, Lindsay and I can choose, say, a thin yellow in Notability and draw on the pattern over the outlining we've already done. On the spring gnome pillow, for example, the gnomes have long golden braids of nearly indistinguishable color changes, and the outlining was giving me fits till I used Notability to keep track of it. Now it's super easy and actually fun.
[13:01]My general method of cross-stitching is sitting in my recliner chair with my iPad Pro in the Magic Keyboard, so it's floating right in front of me. Then I have my cross-stitch in my hands with a standing magnifier light handy to pull over the fabric when I need it. The one problem this doesn't solve is that our cat Ada Lovelace seems to love lying on my chest while I'm trying to cross stitch. But that's a whole nother problem.
[13:24]The last advantage of this technical solution is that since the pattern is in notability, I can access it even from my iPhone if my iPad isn't nearby. I've worked this way while cross-stitching as a passenger in the car where it's a little harder to hold the iPad. And it's not ideal since I don't have a pencil to make precise dots on the pattern. Instead, I use my big fat finger to try to find the center of the squares. I get close enough probably 60% of the time and have to hit the undo, button the other 40% of the time and try again. It's not great, but I still like it way better than using the paper method. The bottom line is that by combining the technology of a good camera in the iPhone, image editing for white balance or propping with Apple Photos, and an iPad with Apple Pencil, I can now relax and cross-stitch, even with a bad pattern. Well, I'm sure glad you didn't have to listen to this voice doing that particular article, but we are now going to go to some pre-recorded content, and this is actually me.
[14:22]
Chris Cooke on Be My Eyes Coming to Meta Ray-Bans for the Blind (no blog post)
[14:22]Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of having Chris Cook on the show to talk about a few things for the visually impaired. Chris is back today, and you may remember her as a tech enthusiast, a podcaster, and a rehabilitation instructor for the blind and visually impaired adult learners. Welcome back to the show, Chris. Thanks so much, Allison. Glad to be back. Yeah. Well, so last time you were on, we were focusing on a service for the visually impaired called Aira. And can you give people a brief idea what that is because then it'll help us fold into the new subject of today.
[14:58]Sure. So I love the iris service. I have had the service for the last six years. And it would be best described as visual interpreting service. So there are actual live human beings on the other end of your video call. And you can get descriptions of your environment, you're talking to a real person, you can get tasks done. They can guide you along a route. They can even remote into your computer. and they also have some other features that they've rolled out. They have their own AI feature where you can take a picture of something and then you can text them and ask them questions about it. And it's a free service. It doesn't count against your minutes or anything, but it will allow you to get then answers to your questions. And then if you do have questions that can't be answered via the text message, then you can go ahead and call them And it's, you know, it's a paid service, but to me, it's worth every penny because I just love the independence that it gives me. So it's visual interpretation on demand. Now, I think the most vivid way you explained that last time was that you said you were able to take a trip by yourself, check into a hotel, be on vacation, just completely independently, which is something kind of miraculous, right?
[16:22]It was amazing. I, it was the highlight of my life right on up there with my advanced, uh, doctoral degree. I mean, I just walking on the beach by myself was just with my guide dog and Ira, it was just absolutely fantastic and amazing. And the whole adventure will just, it's tops. It was just great. Okay, so you're definitely sold on this. Now this is a, like you said, it's a paid for service, because these are professionals at doing this. And I remember you talked about how, like, you're walking through an airport, they're not going to tell you the tiles are green they're going to tell you there's a bathroom or gate number seven or look out for this big giant uh i don't know display in front of you they give you actionable information just enough for what you need right they can yeah and they can read maps and they know they're right from their left and we really appreciate that no no stage left yeah oh yeah Yeah, that's different.
[17:24]So yeah, it's great. I mean, they're very well trained and the variety of things that I can do with them is truly amazing. But yeah, it's just one of the many options that we have out there now. Yeah, so the reason I asked Chris to come back on the show, other than she's just fun and I love to talk to her about things, is that there was an announcement this last week at the Meta event that the Meta Ray-Ban glasses are going to have integration with a service called Be My Eyes. Now, I've talked to the audience a bunch about Be My Eyes, and my understanding of what it has been able to do is through an app on your phone, you can ask for a volunteer to help answer questions about, you know, can you find my cufflinks in this room is the example I first heard about. But this would integrate Be My Eyes actually into the Meta Ray-Ban glasses. So I thought you might be the right person to ask about what does this mean? What are the pros and cons? Would this possibly compare to Aira? And any opinions you have on this, you can start anywhere you want in the middle of that story.
[18:30]Oh, great. Well, thank you. I'm excited to talk about possibilities because if you're going to be blind, this is an exciting time to have options and things that are up and coming and emerging and developing and AI is kind of all the rage too. So the whole thing is all kind of wound up together in just really wonderful possibilities. So I've used the first of all to start I've used the be my eyes um service on my phone um not as much to call a volunteer because I do have ira but to use the ai feature and so I want to talk about that a little bit yeah yeah so I love the ai feature because it's taking a picture and I've even programmed the side button on my phone, the action button, I guess we call it.
[19:18]On my phone to open the camera on the Be My Eyes app. So, I get it right away. So, I take a picture and I mostly want to make sure that my outfit is matching or I want to know about a photograph or I want to know about some other things but mostly it's it's uh my outfits lately today and so so i i take a picture and it describes and it it describes you know the pants i'm wearing the top i'm wearing and things and it generally gets the information that i want um and i can query it with more questions and so i've mostly used that feature over the volunteers because as i say i do have Ira. Can I interrupt you and talk to you about this? Because I have a lot of blind friends, so I can't remember who taught me first about how you can use Be My Eyes to the Be My AI inside the Be My Eyes app to add captions to your photos for posting on social media. So after I learned how to do it, I did a blog post about it and taught people how to do it. And then I did a screencast online tutorial on how to add captions to images and on all different social media. And one of the things I did in that video was to teach how to use Be My AI to do it. And it was so such an important piece of work that the guy that owns it, Lee Garrett, decided to make that one free.
[20:44]And screencast online videos cost money. It's a subscription service. And he said, no, this one is important enough. We should make this one free. So it's out there. And I've been trying to plug it as much as I can. But I want to know how to do that.
[20:58]When Chris talks about how good the these descriptions are, I want to read you one that I actually sent it to my good friend of the show, Tom Maddock, because he loves for some reason, he loves putting photos that other people have posted onto his Apple TV as a screensaver. And so he often takes my photos and he likes that I have good captions. I took a photo and I'm going to read the description to you because this blew me away how well this Be My AI captured not just what it saw, but what it felt like. So, This is the caption it said, the image shows a close-up of vibrant pink flowers with delicate petals and red centers. The flower's in focus and appear to be part of a cluster. In the background, there's a blurred view of a car wheel, which provides a contrasting backdrop to the bright colors of the flowers. The wheel has a metallic and black design with visible bolts and a textured surface. The overall composition highlights the natural beauty of the flowers against the industrial background of the car wheel.
[21:58]Wow. That is precisely what I was trying to do. Other people have these beautiful photos of gorgeous fields and mountains. Well, I live in an urban area. I don't have anything pretty. So I post pictures that I call urban beauty. And I purposely contrast something really beautiful with something ugly in the background, like a rat's nest of overhead cables, but with a beautiful bird of paradise in front of it. And this is this gorgeous picture. And this could not have better nailed what I was trying to say with the picture. Be My AI is astonishing, and I think it's even getting better.
[22:35]That's awesome. I love that. That is just great. Yeah, I love reading your descriptions. That's amazing. I'm not writing most of it myself. I got news for you. I've got it as a little, it takes me five seconds to add a fabulous caption with it. So that's what you're using Be My AI for, is you're taking pictures and saying, does my outfit match or whatever you need? Now, let's talk about Meta Ray-Ban. You've worn the Ray-Ban glasses before? Yeah, yeah. I own a pair, and I've taken some videos, and I liked the fact that somebody said they looked great, even though I didn't have to do anything to get there to work at it. And then I've taken a few pictures, but today I was playing with it in taking a picture of a photograph on the wall and having it describe the photograph. Um wait so does it do you have you have you have the meta ray band glasses with be my ai on them already no no um it has its own um you can say um um hey meta look and describe and it will describe what it sees now the they are not as elaborate let me tell you as the wonderful uh description that you just read um but they do give some information that um.
[23:58]I test, I put the meta glasses head to head with the Be My Eyes app, the Be My AI. And I found that when I took a picture of a photo on the wall, if I didn't have the phone high enough to match where my head was, you know, facing that level of where the glasses camera was, the phone didn't capture what the meta glasses did. And so I got more information actually from the metaglasses and I was really surprised about that. Yeah, that's interesting because you're focused, your face is going to look towards it more easily than you can with a camera. Yeah. That's really interesting. It'll be more native and natural, I think. And then I went to a food cart today and one of my students came along with a couple of us and he was using his phone with the Be My Eyes app and he was taking a picture of the menu and it read it pretty flawlessly for him, but he wished that he could have done it hands-free.
[25:03]I was reading the menu, just taking a picture and saying, hey, Meadow, what do you look and describe? And it would talk about the menu. So, I'd say, and it would mention, oh, okay, there's some chicken options and pork and things. And I would, then it would chime and then I would say, tell me more about the chicken options. And so, then it would tell me all the chicken options. So, I could query it without really saying, hey, Meadow, thing again, you know. So, it was a little conversation that I had with it.
[25:32]That's really important. I've always wondered about blind people having to read like an entire web page to find out that what they wanted was the next button. You know, he's like, oh, come on. Where's a sighted person? Okay, where's the blue button that says next? I can click that. So, yeah. So, I think, is it called Lama? Is that the AI that's on Meta? I think they're using that, but I couldn't be sure. I think so. It's hard to keep up with all who's using what. It's a great name though, right? LLM? Llama? I love it. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, it's great. Yep. And so we found to that because I was with a sighted person who was having loads of fun watching me do this. And I was relaying to her the descriptions because of course, I'm hearing it in my ears, you know, and she's not able to hear what it's saying. So i'm describing what i'm the information i'm getting we found that sometimes contrast is really important with the glasses today like it liked a darker background with white lettering rather than the other way around which we thought was curious and also the sun glare and then of course as a blind person you have to know that this menu actually exists you know on the food truck for instance you know and so yeah there there might be a little issue there is like how do i I know I'm looking for a menu or how do I know the menu is right there?
[26:51]But, um, I was, um, I was impressed by what it does so far. Um, the be my eyes app on the phone though, is probably going to give you more detail, more, uh, information in one fell swoop that you might get. Um, and you would have to then swipe over to the, um, question box again and ask it another question. So there's a bit more, you get a more information but there's a bit more fiddling around to ask the next question whereas with the glasses i can just carry on this conversation and even though i wasn't getting more information i was able to have a hands-free simple experience and so this is why i'm really really excited about the be my eyes coming to the meta glasses is because um first of all the metaglasses are a mainstream product, obviously. And so they're not made with us in mind, but they're super neat and they're lightweight. They're comfortable to wear. Yeah. The battery life could be longer, but they're mainstream. They're affordable for a lot of folks. They're good looking. But there need to be these blindness. Oh, yeah, I've got some really cool ones. The Wayfair style are really great.
[28:09]But when these blindness related apps come to the glasses and the expectations are oriented in the proper direction, it didn't used to be that you could get this much menu. Information from a menu, I don't think.
[28:26]But given that Be My Eyes is coming to glasses, you'll be able to call a volunteer, which is of course what Be My Eyes is revolving around. And then they do plan, I understand, to bring the AI part to the glasses so that you'll be able to ask the AI questions like I do the phone and I'll be able to be hands-free. And so, I think the hands-free along with the blindness-specific specialized app is really where this is going to shine when it all comes together with these kinds of services like Be My Eyes and the others that, you know, that I enjoy too, like Iris. So back on the glasses themselves, I got to borrow Pat Dengler's, a good friend of mine's pair, and she uses hers all the time. And it's exactly what you were talking about, about how the right thing is in the line of vision, where your head is pointed is a very obvious way to point whether you can see or not, I think. And so she does a lot of first person video stuff with it. Like she wanted to show me something she had built with her 3D printer, and she held it in her hands and just looked at it, you know, just tilted her head down and she was able to show me what it looked like. So I do understand what you're saying about having it be easier to point at something than pointing with a phone. The other thing I don't know that everybody knows is when you said you were hearing it, the Ray-Bans have their headphones too, their Bluetooth headphones.
[29:53]Right?
[29:57]Oh, okay. Sorry, I thought I lost you there for a second. I'm sorry. I lost your audio for a minute. Okay. Yeah, so I was saying that the MetaRay bands actually have, they are headphones. They're Bluetooth headphones, right? Oh, yes. They're fantastic. The sound from them is amazing, as well as what I think of as spatial audio, where you can get the directionality of the sound if it's coming to your right, moving to your left, coming from behind or above. And it's really, really astounding, the sound that they produce as headphones. So you're hearing these descriptions from the LLM, and I did check it is Llama from Meta. The Llama LLM, or large language model AI, is describing things to you, and you're hearing it through the headphones. So that's not a disturbing thing for other people. Are they actually like in-ear headphones?
[31:01]No, the sound is coming from like the arms of the glasses. So, is it bone conduction or no? It's along that idea, but you're wearing them as glasses, but you're hearing the sound from the arm, the piece, the sides of the arms of the glasses. Okay. And just for information, Pat calls me on her Ray-Bans for the microphone too, and I can't tell. It sounds really good. So that's great. Yeah. So now looking at what Aira can do for you and what possibly you'll be able to do with the meta Ray-Bans with Be My AI, I'm thinking that at least at the beginning, the big advantage of Ray-Bans with Be My AI is they're not going to cost you a fortune, right?
[31:59]Right. that so yeah so i think um that glasses are are are pretty affordable for folks and if they also want uh a good set of headphones and if they want to use some mobility related apps like um i don't know if voice vista works with them or you know some of these mobility travel apps um they would be great with that too um you know and and when services come to the glasses you know like like ira or be my eyes and whatever they're on they're on different you know glasses platforms so this would be a really great entry point for someone to to use these type of glasses yeah yeah um ira's not free as you said that's a paid service but be my be my eyes and be my ai that's inside of it That is a free service, right?
[32:52]Yes, absolutely. Yeah. So it might also work with the, I was assuming it was going to work with the volunteers as well, not just the AI part of it. That's where they're starting. They're actually starting with the volunteers. So you'll be able to call a volunteer on the glasses. And then after that, it's my understanding that they're going to be rolling out the AI portion of their app, of their service. Like you say, this is really an exciting time, and I love seeing the advantage of AI and other services like what you're talking about coming to the accessibility community. I know that the Be My AI guys, I get tangled on what to call them, the Be My Eyes people, were the ones to pursue meta, and they just went after them and went after them and went after them and convinced them to do it. So it's a free service. I'm not quite sure how it's funded. Do you know? I think they probably get some good funding from corporate sponsors.
[34:03]Especially maybe some funding from the sponsors that, service directory. I'm unsure of this, but for instance, I know when I called the Microsoft Disability Answer Desk the other day when I had an issue with Windows, I'm assuming that they get corporate funding from companies, from big corporate companies. And so that's, I think, how they're doing this. Well, if the audience wants to know more about what the Be My Eyes folks did in order to make this happen. Sean Preece on the Double Tap podcast did an interview with them. And it's really, really good. I'll put a link in the show notes to that. But the one question he didn't ask, and I wish he'd kind of asked is, so what kind of agreement was made about privacy and security with a company like Meta? So like, you know, Chris is putting on her glasses showing in the mirror what outfit she has on. Is she going to start getting ads in Facebook for, boy, that blouse was ugly. Here's a better one for you. I would like to know whether there's any mixing of those things together.
[35:14]Right. Well, it might help that I don't have a Facebook account, so that would help me out a lot. Oh, but if you wear meta glasses, you sure do. You end up with some connection to it, right? Well, I have the Meta app, but I don't know that I'm out there on Facebook, so I had to download the MetaView app. Yeah, your Meta knows who you are. I know. Everybody knows everything. It's inescapable. Yeah, definitely. Well, Chris, I'm really excited where this is going to go. And yeah, that was an awesome interview on Double Tap, so I encourage everybody to listen to it. Yeah, I'll definitely put a link in the show notes to that. And speaking of which, if people want to hear your dulcet tones more, I believe you're on Unmute Presents. Is that correct?
[36:04]I am. I do have some shows on Unmute Presents, if you don't mind me just saying. Plug it. Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate it. So I love working with Unmute folks. So I do a podcast once a week with Michael Babcock and Marty Sobo, and we do a show together where we, it's called Digital Bytes, B-Y-T-E-S. And it's just a little bit of this and a little bit of that. We usually have like get a little tech review, some kind of new accessory or an app or a demo or a tip. And so we love doing that every week. And then I also am starting a new show with Marty called Mac chat. It's all one word. And so once a month, we're going to be talking all things Mac. And then I also once a month have a show called at your fingertips braille then and now.
[36:55]And so that's a lot of fun to talk about some braille history and such and then things that are really up and coming in the braille sphere if I could make up a word for the community that was on the on the spot there and really really love braille I'm very passionate about it and so those are the shows that I'm involved with with the unmute folks fantastic fantastic well thanks for again for coming on the show, and maybe we can check in again when Be My Eyes is actually on Meta Ray Band, and we can get a firsthand report of how well it's working. Sounds great. Thanks, Allison.
[37:35]
Support the Show
[37:36]Well, if you appreciated not having to listen to this voice and listening to an AI voice, I hope you'll consider supporting the show financially, because it costs $39 to make that voice for just this today's episode. Anyway, you can do that by going to potview.com slash Patreon.
[37:53]
Security Bits — 13 October 2024
[37:54]Music.
[38:02]It's that time of the week again. It's time for Security Bits with Bart Bouchotts. And I'm now pretending to be Alison because poor Alison is not doing so good in the voice department. So hi, Bart. Welcome to the show. And hi, Alison, I guess.
[38:17]Hi, Bart. How are you doing? I'm here because I want to be here. I want to listen. I want to participate. I'm going to speak as little as necessary to keep the show in the form that we're used to, where I'm going to jump in if I think something's wrong and if something needs to be explained a little more, I might jump in, but less than usual. Okay, well, thank you for trooping on and doing your very valuable piece here by stopping me when I need to be stopped. So I appreciate it. Let us jump into some feedback, or some follow-ups even, dealer F. Last time we had some good news about consequences for people who lose data. And it would appear that there is a lot of work going on in the federal government of the United States because there are two more consequences of note. T-Mobile are paying 31.5 million US dollars to settle for data breaches with the Federal Communications Commission because they're a telco. And Marriott, the giant big hotel chain, are settling with the Federal Trade Commission because they sell things for 52 million over just one data breach so it costs money to lose people's data so maybe now the budget for it will increase.
[39:36]Yes. We also talked in detail about the CUPS vulnerability affecting Linux due to the Browse D part of CUPS, which isn't in the Mac. Two developments in that story. None of them are catastrophic. No need to set anyone's hair on fire, but worthy of note. The first is that the good people at Akamai, who we generally think of as a big CDN company, but they have a lot of staff, including a security team who are very good. And at Akamai, they did some poking and prodding at this vulnerability, and they found a second way to use it. So we knew you could use it for arbitrary code execution. So you could use it to take over a vulnerable server. But what Akamai found was that you can also recruit a vulnerable server as part of a distributed denial of service. Because this is over UDP, which means you can fake the from IP address. So you can send one UDP packet with a faked from address and the server will not respond with one UDP packet. It will respond with megabytes and megabytes of UDP packets. So the amplification factor is hundreds or thousands. So it's basically all of these servers are now a menace to digital society. So patchy, patchy, patch, patch. Not only for yourself, but to be a good netizen.
[41:00]And it has become a little bit easier to be a good netizen because Marcus Hitchens, who I call him a storied security researcher, he was a hacker hacker as a teenager, turned over a new leaf. And then unfortunately, after having turned over a new leaf, visited the United States to attend Black Hat and was arrested and then spent some time getting that sorted out, was eventually released. And all's well that ends well, but it was a little bit stressful for poor Marcus. Anyway, he is continuing to be a good guy.
[41:31]And he has released an open source tester script to scan your IP range for this vulnerability. So if you're responsible for one or more IP addresses, you can check to see if you are one of the people who need to patchy patchy patch patch. And I have tried this script with my other hat on. It works perfectly and it works. I won't say any more, but I promise you it finds vulnerable devices. And for the audience, Alison's chuckling away silently.
[42:07]Now, that is our follow ups. Action alerts. It has been Patch Tuesday. Patchy, patchy, patch, patch. Five zero days, which is back up to our new average. Last month was only two, I think. We're back up to five zero days. Really, it doesn't matter what they are. For whom? Microsoft. So Microsoft land. So all of your Microsofty products, patchy, patchy, patch, patch. It's not worth going into the detail. There's always zero days on Patch Tuesday. You always have to patch. Don't think about it. Patch.
[42:44]If you're a Firefox user, they released an emergency update to fix an actively exploited zero day attack. So if you're a Firefox user, it will auto update itself. but just remember to restart Firefox so that you actually pick up the automatic update. So all Firefox users restart and you're good to go. You skipped over Apple. Oh, I did. I am so sorry. And I also managed to bifurcate Apple with the Mozilla story between the two Apple stories. Isn't that clever of me? So Apple released the .01 versions of all of their new operating systems. For a large part, they are bug fixes, like not bricking iPads with M4 chips in it, for example, which is a substantial fix. But they do also contain security fixes as well as not bricking iPad fixes. So patchy, patchy, patch, patch. and it broke the day after our last recording but iTunes for Windows got a security update from Apple so on Windows they still have iTunes those of us in Mac and iOS land or use of the music app but Windowsy people still have iTunes so patchy patchy patch patch.
[43:55]Next up another router now thankfully this is one that is under active support and therefore you can patchy patchy patch patch but draytech are pretty popular because they are a way of getting really high end routers without paying really high end prices so if you're running like a home office or a small business and you kind of need enterprisey features but the build from cisco would make your eyes water draytech is your friend and a lot a lot a lot of people go that route because of the very reasonable pricing nasty bug patched so patchy patchy patch patch according to various scanners there are 700 000 draytech routers on the public internet that need this patch so hopefully any of you who own one are doing exactly that i've never heard of them i guess i don't run a home about a large home office, me and Steve.
[44:58]Yeah, they're like just a little level above the shiny routers that we would run, like the nice mesh routers that you or I would need. They're just one step above that, just one more step higher. So, but maybe below ubiquity, or that's what other people are doing that are doing more fancy stuff at home? No, put them in the same category. That's sort of just needing a little bit more than the typical user, and that sort of price range ballpark. That's sort of an area. And then finally, the story I hate doing, because I hear Alison in my head before I write the show notes. Before I type the keyboard, I already hear Alison's voice say, but what can we do? And I can't give you good advice on this one, because unfortunately, Android is messed up. So Qualcomm make chips that power many Android phones. Not all Android phones, but many Android phones. And Qualcomm released firmware to make their chips go. And that firmware doesn't go to Google. And that firmware doesn't go to you, the end user. That firmware goes to whatever company made the phone that is running Android. And so the only way you can patchy patchy patch patch is if your phone maker was kind enough to take the Qualcomm patch, translate it to their specific device and then send you that update.
[46:15]So if your Android phone is out of security support from your vendor, you have a big problem because these are very nasty bugs and they're not the only nasty bugs. So if your phone is in support, keep an eye for an update. If you see an update from your Android vendor, grab it. And that is the best advice I can give.
[46:36]So is there any way to know whether you have the bug and your vendor didn't send the firmware update? I don't know how easy it is to go into a generic Android phone and figure out what chips are inside it. It's so difficult. It's such a train wreck.
[46:56]In terms of worthy warnings, and we've stopped telling you about every single data leak because there's the odd one or two every week, you know, a few billion here, a few billion there. But I figured we have one here worthy of a mention for a couple of reasons. So the first reason is that I know a lot of people who do podcasts and stuff, at least in the past, would proactively upload their own media to the Internet Archive as a way of keeping it safe. I know, in fact, some podcasters decided not to get any hosting bills by directly hosting their MP3s straight into the Internet Archive. So that means that a lot of people have Internet Archive accounts for adding their own stuff. And that account that user database has leaked or has been hacked or compromised the attackers have it that's 30 million usernames and passwords they have been loaded into have i been pwned and again i won't give you very many details but i will tell you that when i ran some domains i need to worry about through that checker i got a lot of hits a lot a lot of you missed one adjective encrypted passwords or be crypted not plain text passwords, True. So that, yes, thank you. That is, you have earned your keep today. Thank you.
[48:22]Yes, so they are difficult to reverse, but if your password wasn't strong, they're not impossible to reverse. And once they're reversed, if you reuse that password anywhere else, it will be tried. It will be tried.
[48:37]All right notable news um this is one of those stories that i'm putting a pin in because i'm going to cite this every time some politician or law enforcement person says what we need is a backdoor for the good guys and only the good guys because that's the answer to our problems well the wall street journal have some reporting about exactly what happens when you try to make a backdoor for just the good guys. Now, in this case, it's not a backdoor into encryption, which is what is currently everyone's trying to say. We need to stop end-to-end encryption unless there's a backdoor. That's not what this is about. This is a backdoor into the cell phone carriers in America to do effectively call tracing, to do wiretapping stuff, which is different. But anyway, the backdoor is there for legal law enforcement use and the Chinese hacked into it. So they were then able to do their own wiretaps without any sort of legal authorization. That is an example of how backdoors are snuck into by people who shouldn't and why we need to be careful about constructing any more backdoors.
[49:45]So I'm going to ask Steve right now the name of the podcast we were listening to, but one of the political shows we listened to explained exactly how this happened, like how all the inner working pieces, connect together and why the information was there and how they were able to get into it, was pretty interesting but it'll be a minute before I can give you the answer so I'm going to blurt out the name of a podcast at some point and we will stick it in the show notes so that Bart can listen to it later too I'm very interested in this, our meanwhile our friends in Meta had a very bad day in Europe.
[50:21]There is an article in the GDPR, Article 5.1c, if you must know, which says that data used to target ads can only be retained for a finite amount of time. And Meta had rather hoped that everyone had forgotten this provision existed in the law, and that once they had legal right to collect data, they could use it forever. And the Noib people sued, saying, actually, you can't use it forever. It literally says in the law that you can't, how are you expiring data? And Facebook were like, erm, we're not. And the court went, I think you will now. This affects everyone, but Facebook, or sorry, Meta slash Facebook are the ones who got hauled in front of the judge to be told this. So they will have to start cleaning their data, which seems fair to me.
[51:15]California then made some news, and there's a little bit of nuance to this story. So there has been a big push in California to regulate AI because a lot of the tech companies are in California, in Silicon Valley. And because as the CCPA proved, California is a place where state level laws can be used with very great effect where effectively they become the law of the land because they're so important. And a lot of stuff gets trialed in California before it makes its way into national law, be it emission standards to stop smog to the consumer. No, CCPA, I looked this up, California Consumer Protection No, Privacy Act California Consumer Privacy Act, Oh, you've muted yourself, Alison. Call it GDPR light from California. I think another reason these kind of things propagate and start in California is because we have Silicon Valley. And the kind of stuff you and I talk about starts in Silicon Valley here. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So there was a big push for this AI law and it passed. And last time we recorded, I intentionally skipped the story because the law was in limbo. It had passed both houses, but was waiting on a signature by the governor. And I was deeply suspicious because if he was going to sign it, he would have signed it. But he sat on it for weeks.
[52:43]Well, he sat on it for weeks because he was writing his answer, which was, no, I am going to veto this bill. And he did veto the bill, but he vetoed it with a detailed letter critiquing the bill and basically saying, you are right that there is a problem to be solved. I am in favor of solving the problem. your solution is wrong. And so I had a read of his critique and his biggest critique or at least a part of his critique that resonated with me was that they defined which AI models would be regulated not based on how dangerous they were to people, whether they were doing a dangerous thing that could result in harm or not, they regulated it purely based on the size of the model and the amount of money the company makes. And that's not an appropriate way to manage risk. Because risk isn't related to size, and it isn't related to revenue. Risk is related to what it is you're doing. And so he would like a law that's related to what it is you're doing. And then the more risky the thing is, the more safeguards you have to put in place.
[53:45]And I kind of agree. That's really interesting. I'm not normally a very informed voter, but it's becoming more obvious than I need to be. So I spent two hours and 47 minutes reading all of the different ballot measures. And this has nothing to do with AI and security, but it has to do with targeting based on like money or something like that. There's a thing about some medical insurance thing that has to do with pharmaceutical discounts. And basically the counter to this law, the people saying don't vote for this measure, was it turns out it is very nearly tailored. It's going after one guy now the guy appears to be a bad guy like he's taking all these profits from these discounts and he's buying a property so he's big heavy into into property management and so he's having influence on all this other stuff but they have literally written a measure that goes no no it's bigger than this amount of money less amount of that money it has to be this many people more than these many oh and if you go inside the box there's only him like his oh wow, And so it's kind of like what you're saying there is they're just, it's written to cause one thing, but not the general thing that it looks like. I'm sure Newsom will get a bunch of garbage for the fact that he vetoed an AI bill, right? Probably, but I have to say, at least he put the work into writing a good veto statement. So at least his eyes are dotted and his T's are crossed.
[55:09]More on the good news category, Google have joined forces with two organizations. Their actual names isn't all that important. They're G-A-S-A and D-N-S-R-F. Basically, what they have done is these are people who try to figure out which domain names are being abused by spammers. And what they've done is made a data exchange. So all of these people trying to tackle spam can share information secretly with each other so that they can all block list this stuff without telling the world so that the baddies don't get a head start.
[55:41]It's kind of like VirusTotal for domain names. So it's a way for the relevant companies to securely share their intelligence. And hopefully we will all get a little bit less scams in our email. You know, a little bit less will probably still leave plenty. But hey, this is a good step for the goodies to make a little bit more progress. So I always think it's good to see these things. And because we like to end on happy stories, it just sort of occurred to me that there were three little stories I probably would have skipped over individually. Because none of them are earth-shattering, but together they actually make an interesting pseudo-story, which is that as well as releasing Patch Tuesday fixes, that's also the time Microsoft release other stuff.
[56:27]Including various deprecations and little new features and stuff. And so three of them caught my eye as just nice little improvements. They're not spectacular, but they're just nice little improvements. So it is becoming more difficult to hijack a legitimate edge browser extension because Microsoft are making the developers prove their identity through multi-factor authentication and stuff before they can publish updates. So a way to attack browser plugins is to find a legitimate plugin used by people for legitimate reasons and then effectively hack the developer and stick your malware in that way. That's now become way harder and that is for everyone's benefit. If you are a subscriber to either Office 365 for families or the personal product, you get Defender and you kind of get like a shiny version of Defender, not just the one you get for free built into Windows. Because they name everything the same thing, by the way. Microsoft love to do this. They just call everything by one name so you never know what you're buying. So two of the flavors of Defender have gotten a new feature where they will proactively warn you that you're on insecure Wi-Fi. which is very useful to be told that.
[57:39]So, you know, nice little update. And finally, Microsoft are continuing to kill old technology. This has been a trend the last couple of months where they've released deprecation notices about technologies that have been making security researchers cranky for decades. Well, two more of them are being killed and this one made me chuckle because it's one of my favourite ones to hate. So there are two terribly bad protocols for doing insecure VPNs. PPTP and L2TP, the Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol and the Layer-to-Tunneling Protocol, and they have been replaced years ago by the proper VPNs we like, like the SSL-based ones, or nowadays WireGuard. Microsoft are finally killing these two, and the reason I chuckle is because a security podcast that is so old is now podfaded, always referred to PPTP as Point-to-Point Toilet Paper. Just to underline that no one should ever configure their network with PPTP because it is absolute garbage. So every time I hear PPTP, I chuckle.
[58:41]Right. I have one excellent explainer I want to link to. Apple Insider have done a fantastically detailed post about all the different security tools in the modern version of macOS. And they explain what they are and what they do. And so I've bookmarked this one for my own future reference for a start because what does security D do versus launch D versus yada, yada, yada? It just breaks it all down and tells you what problem they solve. And they all have a job, and it's all very sensible jobs. And so now you can just look and read what the moving parts are and what it is they do. So, you know, as I say, a good one to bookmark and a good one to read. Maybe with a big cup of coffee. It's not short, but it is good.
[59:25]I stuck this last story in just because it's cool. I don't know, I don't really know where else to hang it. But basically, one of the things that has me a little bit exercised is quite how much of a scam cryptocurrency is. And there are many, many ways in which it is used to defraud people from their money. But one of the ways is to make a cryptocurrency look like it's actually being used when it really isn't. And it's called crypto washing. Because what you do is you make thousands of fake transactions. And then it looks like, oh my God, this new cryptocurrency has really taken off. I should invest here because this isn't one of those fake ones. This is a real one. Look at all those people doing all of that commerce on it. And it's all fake. So the FBI wanted to prove this. So they made a malicious, they basically made a fake cryptocurrency to expose all of the people doing pump and dumps and so forth on cryptocurrency. And then they arrested the ball. I thought, well done. Well done. Thank you. That's great. That's great. So I don't know if this would be the right place for it when I put the link in, but it's a podcast called Clean Up on Aisle 45. And I want to put a big disclaimer about it. we don't talk about politics here we don't talk about our political opinions this is a very opinionated podcast if you can catch by the title what side of the aisle these people are on.
[1:00:47]You'll guess and uh the the guy it's uh allison gill normally and she's not on this episode it's a solo episode by peter strock who uh was oh i'm trying to remember was he in the fbi who he's with but he got fired he got in a lawsuit blah blah blah i recognize the name instantly allison and i don't know where he was the guy that was texting with his girlfriend and it was not in favor of the then current president uh so he got fired but he won his lawsuit anyway in that he describes how the chinese government penetrated the networks and so i will find uh i've got the episode i'll try to find the time stamp where that starts it's a podcast i enjoy a lot but not everybody might enjoy it so i just want to put big old disclaimers around it sorry the dome european has has taken until now to grok what the title means. I had to go look at the list of presidents to see the numbers and now I get it. Now I get it. That's very clever. Okay. Okay. It was a quote from Rachel Maddow, by the way. Ah, oh, someone who I have quite a bit of admiration for, I'll be honest. I have a palate cleanser and Alison, I have bad news for you. You need an extra litter tray. You need another cat.
[1:01:56]So for the listeners, I'll save Alison's voice and say, remind the listeners that Alison names her cats after female computer scientists, I believe, or is it just scientists? No, computer scientists. I'm getting a nod. Computer scientists. So we have Grace for Grace Hopper, who rocks and is amazing. But I didn't even know this and I'm a huge fan of Bletchley Park because it is where the British did some amazing code breaking during World War II and invented half of computer science and then like Alan Turing worked there for a start and he's one of my heroes. I didn't realize that Alan Turing had someone else working very nearby him called Emily Anderson who is an, or was, an Irish lower-level aristocrat, polymath, musician, codebreaker, British Secret Service agent. She ended up secretly going to Vienna even after having spied on the Nazis. And she broke German codes. And the whole story just made my head explode in the best possible ways. And it was all news to me. So it is actually from the Irish History Podcast. so it is over link in the show notes Emily Anderson the Forgotten Irish Bletchley Park Coldbreaker, Okay so I'll have Ada, Grace and Emily I think they're nice names that sounds good Right, right.
[1:03:17]That's all you got huh Bart? That is all I got Yeah it seems to have been a quiet two weeks and I guess for your poor voice that's probably not the worst thing in the world You can nod at me if you're happy for me to close out the show at this stage. Okay. Oh, a nod and a thumbs up. That's definitely okay then. Right, folks. You all know what to do. Until next time, stay patched so you stay secure. Well, thank goodness this is going to wind us up for this week. Did you know you can email me at alison at podfee.com anytime you like? If you have a question or a suggestion, just send it on over. Remember, everything good starts with podfee.com. You can follow me on Mastodon at podfee.com slash Mastodon. If you want to listen to the podcast on YouTube, you can go to podfee.com slash YouTube. If you want to join in the conversation, you can join our Slack community at podfee.com slash Slack, where you can talk to me and all of the other lovely Nozilla castaways. Not in voice, luckily, just typing. Anyway, you can support the show at podfee.com slash Patreon or send that $39 one-time donation to podfee.com slash PayPal. If you want to join in the fun of the live show, where hopefully I will have a voice next week, head on over to podfee.com slash live on Sunday nights at 5 p.m. Pacific time.
[1:04:26]Music.