This week, we cover the news, chat about technology and pop culture, and then focus on data centers and what they are.

Hosts: William Sikkens, Bill Snodgrass, and Gretchen Winkler

Welcome to User Friendly 2.0

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with host Bill

Sikkens, Technology architect.

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And this is User Friendly 2.0.

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I am your host Bill Sikkens. Welcome.

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Welcome to this week's show.

We're glad to have you here.

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Bill. Gretchen. Welcome.

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Hello there.

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So we're already on our way

to the end of June.

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We've got some comic cons coming up.

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Rose city is.

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And Bradley Weston,

who handles a lot of our East Coast

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things, is traveling right now

and picking up the world's

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largest toy museum,

I believe, and Comic-Con on his end.

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And we'll be covering that

in future weeks too.

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So that will be coming up as we move

ahead.

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So how are things with you guys

getting ready for the July 4th? Yep.

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Gretchen, do you have your private fire

department in order, I wish.

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So Gretchen lives in a place

where they do not have sound ordinances

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and or any restrictions on fireworks,

it seems.

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Yeah, every year

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it's like being in the middle of a,

you know, a war battle battle.

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Yeah, yeah.

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So last year, they managed

to catch the power box on fire

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and when it was burning, apparently had 15

people who were intoxicated calling 911.

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Every five was

it was three, three drunk people

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calling 911 like 30 times.

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Oh, that's funny

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because according to the blotter report

that they posted, it said 15.

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Oh, I got that number.

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So anyway,

what do we have in the news this week?

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Well, most pros have seen AI

hallucinations in IT operations.

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So, you know, every time

I think that we've talked about AI

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and hallucinations

and we're kind of done with that topic,

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it seems to come up again.

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And before I dive into this story,

I'm just going to make this one comment.

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There is nothing else

that I am aware of that in business,

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people would just blindly trust

to do something that that could be

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any kind of a machine or computer

or even another employee.

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You always check it.

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But for some reason with AI,

it seems like in a lot of

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these scenarios, people

are just accepting it at face value.

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AI is an amazing tool.

It can do a lot of stuff,

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but like anything else,

it isn't correct all the time.

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And this is one of those stories

that goes along with this

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that could become a little bit scary

if it's not handled right.

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So what's happening is, is AI

is being used more and more in IT

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operations, as the headline says.

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So basically what this comes down to

and I'll just talk about, you know,

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this is old man

shouting at the cloud stuff here.

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I know I'm that age, so I accept that.

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But when I started out, you know, back

in the days of vacuum tube servers, okay,

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it wasn't quite that bad,

but you weren't in the punch card era.

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No, no,

but I was transferring people out of it.

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First bank I worked for,

that was part of what we did.

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So that dates me a little bit.

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But in any event,

what happens is, is you have an AI team

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usually that handles back end operations.

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And these are people that take care

of maintaining servers, infrastructure,

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that kind of thing, fixing stuff

when it breaks all of that.

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And part of doing that,

we've had tools for a long time

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that will monitor the network

and tell us if something is not working.

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So, you know, you've lost.

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I work for a bank, so you've lost branch

shown, so they've dropped off the network.

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The idea being that

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if you can see these things sooner, then

having somebody call in and telling you.

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Hey, we've stopped working.

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It becomes a situation where you can get

all these things faster and time is money.

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Well, what they're doing

now is taking this to the next level,

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where it is

not only monitoring these things, but

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also making adjustments

based on what it's monitoring.

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So if it sees that the branches gone down

before contacting a human, it might go in

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and try to reestablish it

and all that kind of thing.

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Now again, this can save time.

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But at the end of the day,

if the AI is hallucinating and finds

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something that isn't actually wrong,

it could also bring in other problems.

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And this is something that we're

just going to need to watch out for

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and make absolutely sure

that doesn't happen

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and not turn too much control over this

Hilo Apple computer.

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You know, when it comes down

to these things, you know, I think

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I was reading somewhere that it was about

9% hallucinations and errors.

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Yeah. AI right now.

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And that sounds about right.

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You know,

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it just it's a situation

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where you've got to watch

what you're doing and go from there.

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And this comes from Alec called Help

Security.

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And I don't think we've ever covered

anything from them before, but

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article does go into a lot of good detail

on this.

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And it's just, again, a situation.

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It's not saying you can't use AI,

but it's saying don't blindly

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turn your life over to it.

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You know, I can see doing that

with a board collective

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or something like that, that's actually,

you know, independently intelligent.

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But don't turn it over to AI. Not yet.

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Although Alto warns Global Protect

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VPN floor is being actively exploited.

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All right,

so that's a mouthful of a headline.

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And when you dive into what

we're talking about first here

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for anybody that doesn't know,

a VPN stands for virtual private network.

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And these are used

for a lot of different things.

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One of them is encrypting data between

a source that's private and your computer.

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So in other words,

let's say you're on your laptop.

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You go to a coffee place

that has an open network,

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and you want to work on your stuff

from your office.

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You would use a VPN in this situation

to encrypt that data.

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So even though you're on a public network

and going over the internet,

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the data is still being protected.

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So what's happening here

is that like anything

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else, the VPN software can have problems.

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And they're having an issue here

where the cookies

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that are created by your browser

or by the website you're going to

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are being able to be basically intercepted

and changed on the point of the VPN.

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So to explain what I'm talking about with

that is I'm not talking about

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chocolate chip cookies from the grocery

store be a lot easier if I was.

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But what this is, is

when you go to a website

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and authenticator, do other things,

but in this case authenticate.

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The website keeps a small piece of data

on your computer

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with one method of authentication

using what are called cookies.

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And this information stays behind.

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So the next time you go to your work site

or whatever website,

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that's how it knows that we don't need

to go through third party authentication

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or, you know, another

method of multi-factor authentication.

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But when you go to another machine,

you do okay.

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So that's just a convenience things.

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It does a lot more than this.

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And I know in some of the comments

we're going to be talking about this,

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but I'm not trying to dive that deep.

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Just more of an explanation

of what's going on here.

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So what they're able to do is the bad

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guys can get in and modify

these cookies in the VPN.

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So in other words, the server you're going

putting walnuts in the cookies.

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They're putting walnuts in the cookies.

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Yeah.

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And everybody

that likes walnuts don't write in.

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But what's happening with that is

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the server is getting the idea

that it's already authenticated

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and that your machine doesn't

need to read.

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And then it can do things

on a basic level, like get in there

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and be able to access the system

that you've already authenticated to,

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to much worse things, doing things

like a man in the middle attack where it's

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actually diverting information, changing

what's going to you,

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changing what's going to the server,

and a lot more.

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So this is something to be aware of.

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It is something that is being worked

on being fixed.

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There's a lot of different providers

that provide VPN services out there too,

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so different ones will be different.

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And what I would suggest is

if you're using this on a private network,

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like from your office, talk

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to your IT department

and tell them there's a concern of this.

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Is there anything you should do

if you're using a public VPN,

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like many of the ones that are out there,

check with them on their support

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and see if there's anything you should do

there.

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There's not one solution to this

that I can cover here.

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The best thing is to check

with your provider until this is fixed.

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All right.

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Struggling Pizza Hut restaurant

chain will be sold

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for $2.7 billion.

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Yeah. You know, from a nostalgia thing.

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I still remember Pizza

Hut walking in there.

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It was like this dark environment

that was, you know, done up

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and you had your pizza

and you had that weird game

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where you shot

a skeet shooting or something and,

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you know, and you usually had Pac-Man

at the, at the table.

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Okay, I'm dating myself,

but that's what I remember.

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Pizza hut restaurants like this being

and with delivery culture,

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they haven't kept up,

which is kind of an odd thing

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considering the pizza

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was one of the first kinds of food

you could get delivered, really.

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But I didn't know.

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You know, their restaurants

are becoming more and more outdated.

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They're not keeping up.

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And the thing of it is,

even though they do delivery,

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a lot of their business does

rely on people coming into the restaurant

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and doing what you would expect them

to do order a pizza,

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you know, by beverages and upsell

and all that kind of stuff. So

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the company is

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being acquired by a Chinese company

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called Yum Chinese Holding Incorporated,

and this is part of yum!

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Brands, which also owns Kentucky

Fried Chicken, Taco Bell and some others.

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And they're going to go through,

I guess, and try to revamp this.

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You never know what happens

with these mergers.

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They could do anything from trying

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to bring the stores into the future

to completely shutting down the brand

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or something in between.

So we'll have to see what happens.

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I would think pain in the billions for it.

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They're probably going to do something

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more with it

than just shut it down, hopefully.

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So we're going to see a KFC, Taco

Bell, Pizza Hut.

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That is very much

an option, very much an option.

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Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut isn't a

what's the one?

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The root beer one,

I think that's in there too w w yeah,

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because I've seen and w KFC's

I've seen KFC, Taco Bell's.

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Yeah.

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All right.

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Well, your one stop fast food shop

that we really need that.

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So those are usually at truck stop.

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Have you noticed that? Yeah. Yeah yeah.

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PGE is

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upgrading

its lines using special technology.

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So one note on this we're talking PGE

not PG

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and E not like that's confusing

or anything.

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Is Portland General Electric

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PPG and a specific graft

and I mean a specific.

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What is that.

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Extortion. Grafting. Extortion. Yeah.

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No I mean something else.

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I believe it's Pacific glass and glass.

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Gas and electric. I can talk today.

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Anyway, they are two completely

different companies.

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And when I first moved back to Portland,

I didn't know that and was trying

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to set up an account through Penny

and having problems

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because my address in Oregon

was not coming up on their system.

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So we're talking the one in Oregon here.

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And Gretchen, this is a story

you found, which is kind of cool.

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And tell us a little bit

about what's going on.

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Okay.

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Well, first of all,

this company seems to like to send

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informative emails to their customers,

which has actually been kind of fun.

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And what they're doing is

they're trying to upgrade the lines that

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where the electricity travels

and they're putting like this weird

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coating on the outside of the

of the electrical lines,

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and it's supposed

to make it more effective, you know,

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hopefully, maybe we can get one of them

to talk to us about this.

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It's not a bad idea.

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I'll send out the invitation

because this is a cool technology.

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And it's also something

that, from what I've been reading about,

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it is a retrofit,

which helps in a lot of ways.

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You're not having to replace

the infrastructure, you're upgrading it

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so you don't have the waste time

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and purchasing new materials

that would be involved in that.

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And something like

this could really have a lot of benefit.

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So I think that I like seeing that

they're looking at technologies like this.

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And like you said,

I think we need to have someone

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come on and talk a little bit more detail

about this to be able to describe

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exactly how they're doing,

what they're doing.

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But it is something that's nice

that's out there.

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So yeah, I'll look into getting

someone on the show for that.

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Oh geez.

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A mysterious cold blob in the ocean

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has puzzled scientists.

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Well, you know, mysterious cold blobs

could puzzle a scientist

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or, a little more important,

anybody that hasn't seen the movie

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Day After Tomorrow, it's a disaster film

that came out, oh, 15 years ago

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or something.

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Now I'm probably more

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it kind of goes into what would happen

if this really went the wrong way.

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And what this is referring to

is there's an area in the ocean

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that's cooled by about one degrees

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Okay, that might not sound like a lot,

but what it's relating to and what science

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is are considering

this to be a warning sign

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of, is the fact

that there is a system of ocean currents.

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The basically brings

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heat from the equator in the ocean

back up to the areas of the North Pole.

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That's what keeps Europe as a temperate

climate, as well as the climate

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on the East Coast, North America

and stuff like that.

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And if this was to shut down,

he wouldn't be coming north.

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And, you know,

we could go into a bit of an ice age.

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And with climate change,

which is changing

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the temperature of the water in the ocean,

in some places,

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the idea day

after tomorrow was exploring was,

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what if these systems of currents

completely shut down?

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Well, bad things would happen, you know?

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And while it doesn't seem like it's going

to be going quite to that extreme with

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something like this, it is a situation

where we're seeing documental evidence

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that there is a sign

that something could go very wrong here.

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Yeah, well,

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I mean, think about all the weird stuff

that's floating around in the ocean.

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Those those, like islands of garbage.

Yeah.

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That's got to affect

how the water cools or heat, you know?

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So it's

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it's kind of like

putting maybe like asphalt on the ground.

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If you put asphalt on the ground, it

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kind of like, collects

the heat and heats everything up.

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Heat islands. That's probably the garlic.

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Why wouldn't the garbage

do the same thing to the ocean?

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Yeah. Why do you are probably is.

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And you know

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and I don't I don't know

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if that's affecting this directly,

but it's another big problem

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when you think about the garbage islands

like larger than the state of Texas.

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I heard somewhere I'd have to double

check that, but it's huge.

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You're kidding.

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The amount that they said was in there.

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I'll find out the exact comparison

and talk about it a little bit later.

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Oh, wow.

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I didn't know that.

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The amount of garbage, let's just say.

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And it's all in one place,

it's it's gathering.

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Yeah.

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It's almost like I don't know, the

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there's links of it, but it's almost like

it's attracted to itself or something.

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So so do the ships.

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Oh wow.

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This is a whole big story

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because I would think the ships

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would try to avoid that,

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because I would think that would clog up

the propellers and everything.

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Well, of course it would. Yeah. Wow.

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You have to navigate around it.

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And again, I'm not an expert on that,

but I do know that

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having a garbage island that's very large

is just going to be a bad thing anyway.

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So anyway, yeah, on the story

with the cold spot, CNN was reporting

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that and is definitely something

that if there was to be a complete

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shutdown of these currents,

it would a lot of bad things would happen.

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And you

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unless you wanted to, you know, to live in

a very cold climate would move south.

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But you can only imagine what would happen

if something like that went down

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anyway.

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Listener question that's come in, and one

that I have to make a correction on,

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something that I talked about previously

is something to do with Nintendo. And

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we've talked about in the past

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the idea of physical versus digital media.

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And one of the things

that I had talked about was that

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I really wasn't too excited about a switch

to because it was digital only.

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And where I'd gotten that was from

some of the initial demonstration units,

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as well as the press that came out

when this was

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something that was first being discussed.

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Well, I decided that I wanted to maybe

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break down because the Zelda franchise

is something I really like,

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and I need to get a switch to

to run the newest version and emailed.

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I think it was Best Buy or somebody

in their business sales department asking,

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you know, what can I do?

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And how do we play old games

and all this kind of stuff?

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And got a very perplexed email going,

well, there is a physical cartridge

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slot in the switch

to it's in the upper right of it. So.

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Reggie,

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but this is a good

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thing, you know, and to me and actually,

I have to say thinking about this

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a little bit Nintendo good, bad

or otherwise, whatever you think of

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Mario and company has always been

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maybe a proponent would be the right word

of physical media, and it seemed strange

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that they were going away

from that in the switch to.

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Although that does seem to be the

direction of some of the others are going.

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That absolutely is not the case here.

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You can do

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digital downloads and that's fine,

but you can buy a game and have

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all the stuff that goes along with it.

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You own it, you can lend it to a friend,

you can sell it,

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you can put it on the shelf.

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You can hang it from your rearview mirror

if you want, but it's yours.

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It's a physical object that is something

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that you have,

that you know has a value to it.

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And one of the issues

I've had here is we do review games.

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Bill, I know you do

that. And James does on the vault as well.

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And one of the things is,

is you buy a game digital

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and a downloads and that's it.

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So do you really own that?

You can't sell it?

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I mean, there's no way to write.

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You can't return it, obviously,

but you can't do that anyway.

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But you can't sell it.

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You can't play it on someone else's system

unless it allows for that specifically.

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And a lot of gamers are moving

in a direction where they prefer

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physical media.

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In fact,

this is becoming kind of a movement.

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And so in checking on this,

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the answer I got back from Nintendo

is that they want to remain

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one of the strongest supporters

of physical game releases,

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which is one reason many collectors

appreciate the company.

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Yes, that is a quote.

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So so that's really good news.

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And actually I've made an observation

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while looking at stuff on Amazon Prime.

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Okay.

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So you all know

that I'm like into Star Wars really?

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Yeah.

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And the century aggressions

in the Star Wars.

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You heard it here first.

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And and one of the few things

that I'm allowing myself

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still to collect are the six inch

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Black Series action figures.

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And it seemed like the last

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five years or so, the whole

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toy stuff kind of died,

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and all of a sudden

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there's an explosion

of all kinds of cool figures.

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It just went boom, all,

all kinds of fun stuff.

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And it's like there's this feeling like,

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oh, hey, maybe Star Wars is coming back,

you know?

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And so I just thought I would share

something happy that's going on.

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You know, maybe it's because

The Mandalorian and Grogu are doing well.

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Maybe it's because Dave Felony

and Company are, you know,

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forging ahead with a positive attitude,

so who knows?

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I think it's a very important point

you put out there and a 10,000ft view,

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these type of things is as much part

of our cultural history as anything else.

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And when you look at purely digital stuff

and action

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figures, by the nature of what they are,

has to be a physical object.

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Unless you're doing like an NFT of one

or something, which was tried and didn't

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work out too well for obvious reasons,

but it is something that you can use.

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Put on the shelf, play with whatever

you would want to do with it.

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But one thing that you don't think

about where this plays into

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it is the idea of being able

to preserve cultural history.

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So I have my, you know, with a new He-Man

movie out here.

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I was really in He-Man

when I was a little kid, and

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I still have some of my original figures

and stuff that go back to that era.

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We're going to go see the new movie.

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We'll talk about it probably next week.

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But the point of that being

is that's one example.

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Books or comic books that came with this,

regular books, all that kind of stuff,

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movies, music,

these are all things that can be preserved

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unless they're digital only

and you have some problems

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that are coming out of this

because one of them is the fact that

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you have a game you really like.

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If I have a game for my Atari 130 X,

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which I now got up and running again,

I can go play it.

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I have the cartridge or the disc.

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You know, I'm not a big fan of discs,

but it was a way to archive it.

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And you go, you can move that file over

to SD and use it on a modern,

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you know, cartridge

that will accept those such things.

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But the point of it is it's out there,

it's still there, you can get to it.

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And we're seeing some stuff now.

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We're entire franchises are disappearing.

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One I would bring up from this

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because it's still commented about it,

is tapped out from The Simpsons.

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There's no way you can play that game.

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It's gone.

Yeah. It's gone. It's not archived.

416

It is completely gone.

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And anything with servers

which are most, you know, tablet games

418

and that kind of a thing,

have that potential problem.

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At some point it's going to go away.

420

And unless there's a private single player

mode or something of that nature,

421

you're

not going to be able to get into it.

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But it goes a step further too,

because even with some physical media,

423

Electronic Arts bought the SimCity

franchise and in my opinion,

424

completely destroyed it

when they released a new game.

425

This was back in like 2013,

I think released a new game

426

that, in my opinion,

wasn't as good as the Maxis one before it.

427

But that wasn't the big issue.

428

The big issue was in order to play it

even installed on your local computer,

429

it had to authenticate with a server

for copy protection.

430

When that server goes away,

you can no longer start

431

the game that you have the disk for,

you know, because of the digital stuff.

432

Now,

Electronic Arts did change that later

433

because of the backlash on it,

but the point being

434

that it is a situation

435

where we're going to see some stuff

just completely disappear

436

because of this kind of stuff, you know,

and I was one that for a long time

437

I liked the digital versions of things,

and I still do do the convenience.

438

One example that I brought up is the idea

that I like being able to watch movies

439

on any television or device in my house,

so if you have a Blu ray disc,

440

you can't really do that because you would

have to have a player in each room.

441

You're not going to have a Blu ray player

on your tablet.

442

Probably.

443

The point being is that if you have a

is a digital copy, you can pause it

444

and resume it on another device.

445

So I've kind of gone to a hybrid of this

where I buy a legal copy of everything

446

on physical media now

and then put it on my, in my case,

447

Plex server, which is what I use for that,

so I can do both things with it.

448

But I still have that physical copy.

449

So if someday later that goes away,

I still have access to it

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in some type of an example.

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All right.

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Well we're going to go ahead

453

and take our break and our next segment

we are going to be talking about

454

data centers.

455

This is user friendly 2.0.

We'll be back after the break.

456

He's from the future.

457

He's got a really big computer

458

and he uses it uses it every day.

459

And he uses it uses it in every way.

460

What you use it for, you know, I'm

not that sure because he uses his

461

welcome back. This is user friendly 2.0.

462

Send us your questions.

Send us your comments.

463

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464

User Friendly Show is the website to go to

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465

Check out our back

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466

And that's user friendly show.

467

And you can go to

468

show or the Flash Briefing.

469

So we've did a piece a while

back on data centers.

470

This would have been kind of mid

last year,

471

I think, and we've had a lot of questions

coming in on this.

472

And it is a topic

that seems to be evolving quite a bit.

473

A lot of that AI.

474

Yeah.

475

And for anybody that doesn't know,

you know,

476

or has really never thought about

this is data center is a place

477

where for a lot of computers basically

that serve up various different things.

478

Right.

479

And you're

I can assure you, anybody that's

480

listening has used a data center

because you're using one right now.

481

Listen to the show.

482

Pretty much anything

that streams or anything like that

483

has a data center at some point in it,

as well as a lot of other things.

484

So back in the day,

when I started working on this stuff

485

for the bank that I worked for

and then our own company afterwards,

486

a data center would be a place

where we'd have a server,

487

which is a computer that handles,

you know, various different things,

488

and that would be placed into a building

with other servers that we rented space in

489

that had a

490

lot of different companies in there,

and they would handle the power cooling,

491

all of that kind of stuff

so that we didn't have to.

492

And then the other nice thing about

that is if we had a problem with a site

493

or if we did like we with a consulting

company were handling stuff

494

for various different businesses,

you could use our hardware,

495

but it was centralized,

it was maintained properly, and

496

that was something that a lot of different

people used to.

497

Gretchen,

you worked for that insurance company.

498

I remember too,

and they had the server closet.

499

Oh, yeah, literally the server closet.

500

You know, a lot of things started out

when they needed servers.

501

They were putting them in these back rooms

and stuff.

502

They weren't cooled properly

and that kind of a thing.

503

And that causes a problem

if you go into one of the

504

I remember those old server farms,

you walk in there

505

and there's this enormous hum

from all of the fans

506

blowing, trying to keep the area

where all the servers were running cool.

507

Oh yeah. And you had that.

508

And then about 2015,

the cloud came into being a thing.

509

And this makes me think of those t shirts.

510

You know, there's no cloud, it's

just somebody else's computer,

511

which in a lot of cases is pretty accurate

even today.

512

Although what you can do with cloud

based systems is a lot more than what

513

you could do without them in the past,

because things are tied

514

together, which has good things

and bad things that that creates.

515

So that's basically

what we're at right now.

516

And data centers are evolving

and have been for a bit into

517

AI supercomputing campuses.

518

Now, the reason for this

is because when you use AI,

519

generally speaking, it's not running

on your desktop, phone, tablet, whatever.

520

So when you go to your smart assistant

on your phone and ask a question,

521

what it does

is it takes a recording of what you asked,

522

sends it to a data center somewhere,

and that's where it is interpreted.

523

And the AI that's powering

that can send back and answer,

524

and that's sent back to your phone

in this case.

525

And that's done so quickly that you don't

know that that's what's going on.

526

But that's what it is.

527

And if you ever want to check that out,

disconnect your smart speaker

528

from the internet.

529

So take it off your Wi-Fi

or take your phone off

530

mobile data and Wi-Fi

and that kind of a thing.

531

And you'll find out that while it's

still there, it's very limited.

532

Well, often a certain

533

AI will go, I'm sorry,

I can't do that right now.

534

Know? Yeah.

535

And that's because that's that's

what's happening, you know.

536

Yeah.

537

So anyway, cloud stuff does have

538

a little bit of a difference and literally

it's just someone else's computer.

539

So as a for example,

a lot of my clients I run their

540

workloads,

I guess you would call it on AWS,

541

which is Amazon Web Services,

which is, if not the largest,

542

one of the largest web services

that there are in the world.

543

Right.

544

And that handles

a lot of different things.

545

But what happens is,

is there's one company I have as a client

546

that they want to be able

to upload video files

547

and have it automatically convert it

to a common format.

548

So whatever it is,

I believe it goes to an MP for.

549

And if you try to do that

with just one server,

550

it wouldn't work

because you wouldn't have the resources.

551

So what happens is, is there's

an application that's part of Amazon

552

Web Services

where you can have it, do it where it has

553

the appropriate amount of computing power

that's required for it.

554

But you don't have to buy it

and maintain it.

555

You do pay for the time that's used.

556

So that's something

that cloud services can do.

557

And that's just one example.

558

Things like email and all of that

are also obviously cloud services.

559

The web is in that type of a thing.

560

And when you think about it,

there was a time where you could

561

and you conceivably still could host

your website in your office,

562

at your company,

and it would just run on a program there.

563

But if you ever lost your internet

connection or something ever happened,

564

you would be off the web.

565

So data centers, because they're a set up

where they have redundancy and backup.

566

And that type of a thing, generally

speaking, eliminates that problem.

567

Although we have seen from time to time

where there can be problems

568

that will still take things down,

but it's a lot less likely to happen.

569

And as a person

570

that does support of these things,

it also is nice because I don't have to

571

go at 2:00 in the morning somewhere to try

to figure out why the server went down,

572

you know? Yeah.

573

And the reason why that's important

is because, you know, some businesses

574

completely rely on that

constant communication.

575

It's mission critical, you know.

576

Yeah, I have a client

that if they software stopped working,

577

they would be shut down.

578

And that's not uncommon, you know, so

579

some of the things that you probably are

a little more familiar with that

580

use data centers are things like Netflix,

Disney+, YouTube.

581

All of these different type of things

run off of cloud resources

582

at a data center or collective

set of data centers somewhere.

583

And companies

like Netflix actually will have software

584

that will intentionally create

network problems to test the redundancy.

585

Does it feel over?

586

Does it do what it's supposed to do

and that type of a thing?

587

And I don't know that it would be possible

to run

588

a model like Netflix

from your server room in your office.

589

In fact, I'm quite sure it wouldn't.

590

You would end up building your own data

center if you tried to do it that way.

591

And a lot of companies

do have their own data centers.

592

So yeah,

the would be too heavy, wouldn't it?

593

Well, yeah, too heavy of a workload.

594

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

595

Just think about what it really takes.

The stream of video.

596

We used to work on that in the early 2000.

597

Yeah. People.

598

And you needed a lot of resources

to be able to do it properly.

599

And the thing of it is, is a lot of

that comes down to money, too.

600

Could you do it?

601

Yeah. Is it financially viable to it.

602

Do it that way.

603

No, of course not.

604

There would be no reason to, you know.

605

So applications, office 365, Salesforce,

zoom or some of the examples they give.

606

All of these things

run out of data centers as well.

607

So when you do your zoom call

that uses a data center.

608

Now what's driving

growth and really has been pushing

609

this along is the onset of AI, generative

AI and what you would call mechanical AI.

610

All of these things

run out of data centers,

611

and I can build my own

AI model here at my house.

612

But to actually have it work,

613

I need those resources

to be able to do the processing

614

and have the back end power

that are needed for that.

615

So when you look at it, one of the big

things that comes out of this is search.

616

And this is a good topic

617

because this is something that

demonstrates the evolution of this stuff.

618

Google, when it started, before

619

that, things like AltaVista and Yahoo

and some of the other resources

620

that were used for this,

it was a much smaller web in those days.

621

And now if you do a search,

622

you're searching

through billions of pages.

623

Your search engine automatically ranks

the results, filters out

624

spam, and now uses AI summaries for that.

625

So if you go to Google and run a search

today,

626

you'll get the sponsored stuff at the top.

627

You'll get an AI summary,

usually from Gemini in their case,

628

and then you'll get the list like

you would have had before of the websites.

629

But even the list of the sites include sub

sites and different things like that.

630

And you know, so there's a lot

more going on here than there used to be.

631

And that's where AI has come in

and really changed things, you know?

632

So what do you get out of that.

The search is faster.

633

You get things like maps, recommendations

and all of that kind of a thing.

634

Real time language translation

635

is another one that relies on data centers

to be able to work properly.

636

And these things are kind of cool.

637

I have a HUD right now where

638

I can look at a signing in any language,

and I'll see it in mine,

639

but if I went offline with that hut,

I can assure you it wouldn't work.

640

So where do you use data centers, Bill?

641

Gretchen? I mean, you know,

642

obviously the basic stuff like right now

is recording the show.

643

We do,

644

but there's a lot of locations where you

wouldn't have thought of it in the past.

645

I'll give you one more in your book.

646

Yeah.

647

Publishing the book and watching TV.

648

Yeah, yeah.

649

Those are two things that we didn't used

650

to use for with need databases.

651

Yeah. And in line.

652

The thing of it is, is even today,

653

if you watch over the air broadcast

television, which is still a thing

654

there, you're still using a data center

655

because they're sourcing their material

from some digital source.

656

There's nobody with a film camera,

you know, going to satellite

657

and having an analog signal

come back anymore.

658

But now you can also get books,

you know, downloaded to your tablet.

659

Yeah, yeah.

660

Data center, you know, that

kind of a thing or runs through that.

661

So there are a lot of advantages to this.

662

And it kind of powers

the world as we live in today.

663

But like anything else,

there are some problems that this creates.

664

And the biggest one is power and water.

665

So it's been in the news lately

where company X wants to build a big data

666

center somewhere, and the local people

start reacting to that negatively.

667

And there have been some problems where

668

you look out there

and people's power grids doesn't work

669

quite right because of the amount of power

these data centers are using,

670

and they use a tremendous amount water

for cooling.

671

Well, we're living in a time right now

where it's hotter.

672

So just things like the number of people

running, air conditioning is pushing

673

the power grid, electric cars, charging

at your house or pushing the power grid.

674

Things are being upgraded,

but there is a limit

675

to what this kind of stuff can provide.

676

Now you put something on there

that in some cities uses as much power

677

as the entire city

does to give a comparison.

678

And unless you double the capacity

of the generators,

679

the power grid itself and everything else,

you're going to start to have problems.

680

So is this the reason why

681

they're having concerns

in the town of Hillsboro?

682

Yeah.

683

Hillsboro, Oregon.

684

And that's an example of one place.

685

And you see this

also in Tahoe, Lake Tahoe,

686

they're having problems with it

because the power consumption,

687

they're telling them now

688

that they're going to have to completely

find a different supplier.

689

That's good. Yeah.

690

That makes life easy,

691

you know.

692

And so what's happening with this?

693

Well, first of all,

where do you get the power.

694

And Bill.

695

Like you just kind of hit spot on there.

696

That's something that has to be considered

nuclear as an option, to the point

697

that Microsoft bought their own nuclear

power plant to run their data centers.

698

Now, that wouldn't have been something

you would have thought

699

about a private company.

700

I mean, the power companies,

701

of course, are private companies

in some cases, and them.

702

But what I mean is just ABC Corporation.

703

Yeah.

704

And part of our assets

is we own our own nuclear reactor.

705

Yeah. Could possibly go wrong with that,

706

Now, other

707

companies have bought their own power

plants, like in Las Vegas.

708

Didn't they own some of the casinos,

own their own power plants?

709

I know you're in Nevada.

710

I mean, was it

they own their own power plants?

711

Or was it that they were sourcing

from specific places?

712

Do you remember how that worked?

713

I don't that that was a

714

probably a while ago when that came up.

715

So I don't remember completely

what Gretchen's talking about is

716

there was a thing

and I do remember this, where big casinos,

717

especially down in Vegas,

like MGM resorts,

718

didn't want to buy from Nevada Energy,

which is a provider in Nevada

719

and would actually come up

with a situation

720

where they could buy

from another provider.

721

Now, whether or not

they own the power plant, I don't know.

722

And that's a good question.

723

I know, I know, we can I

think there's a way that you can pick

724

who use power supplied from

if you're a company or.

725

Yeah, yeah.

726

And I remember

727

they wanted to do exit fees and stuff

because the power is

728

you're not running your own power

lines to the source.

729

You're still having to use

common infrastructure for stuff like that.

730

So, you know, there's a lot

that would go along with that.

731

But it is an issue

and power in general is an issue.

732

But at the end of the day, if you don't

have power, you don't run these things.

733

And if you are doing something

that has such a big use of electricity

734

that it supersedes the need of the people

that are normally using that power

735

grid, I can see where people would have a

negative reaction to something like that,

736

you know? Yeah,

737

it just says since

738

many experts call AI the largest growth

in electricity demand in decades,

739

and it is we've seen this a little bit

over the past few years.

740

Electric cars are one of them.

741

Crypto mining is another big one

that uses a lot, but that's a data center.

742

You know what you think about it really.

743

So it is definitely a situation

where you've got the power.

744

Then the other part is water.

745

You've got to keep all these computers

cool.

746

And even in the days of the smaller ones

screeching, like you and I used to work

747

with, like the one in Oregon here

that we would go to.

748

Yeah, you had to have massive

cooling systems to be able to keep all

749

of this stuff that produces a lot of heat

and still does even in the modern age.

750

Cool.

751

Because if it overheats, it stops working

and it can cause damage to things.

752

You know,

even though you have a gaming machine

753

you built and you have liquid cooling,

I believe on that.

754

Yes. Now, does that use water

or is it a chemical?

755

I believe it's a it's a mixture of water

and a chemical

756

to make it non-electric or whatever.

757

The term is. Non-conductive.

758

Non-conductive? Yeah.

759

And so you're looking at a system there.

760

That one

machine has a requirement for water.

761

Now you times that times

762

the infrastructure required

to do all of these different things.

763

And you're starting to see a lot of demand

for water use.

764

And again you have some data centers

that use more water

765

than the entire municipality

that they're in.

766

And all of a sudden

you start having water shortages.

767

It's almost too bad that they couldn't

use the heat generated by all

768

these computers to run something else

that would generate electricity.

769

There are experiments being done in that.

770

Oh, cool.

771

Yeah, that is actually something

that's being researched in some places.

772

There are some proof of concepts out

there.

773

I'm not sure

if there's anything beyond that,

774

but if anybody is familiar

with alternative uses of heat

775

from data centers

or anything like this, right.

776

And I'd love to learn

more about that and cover it, because

777

I know a couple of them are using that.

778

It's where the heat is conducted

through an element

779

that allows it to change it

into electricity directly.

780

Right, right.

781

I can't remember the actual name for that.

782

My brain is died today, conducted

783

at the very new technology, by the way,

that does that.

784

Yeah, but I know it's it's

only a percentage of it

785

return because, you know,

laws of conservation and stuff like that.

786

Yeah. Well,

you're not going to have perpetual energy.

787

If we had that,

this all wouldn't become a non-issue.

788

We're not quite there yet.

789

You know,

hopefully we will be at some point.

790

But right now we're having to deal

with what we have to deal with

791

and also with new technologies like that.

792

You're also looking

at an existing data center.

793

Do they want to pay to retrofit?

794

You know, because that's another issue

really wants being built.

795

Is it a proven technology

that we know we can rely on?

796

Again,

you know, questions that have to be there.

797

And the other thing is

798

that I don't understand is why

they're building data centers in places

799

like Arizona and Southern Nevada

and the Mojave Desert, to name a few.

800

I'm assuming it's because there's large

tracts of land that are open.

801

There's a reason why there's large

tracts of land that are open.

802

There's no water.

803

Yeah.

804

Now, the thing the next question would be,

are they using solar panels

805

to help develop a, develop a or not?

806

You know, some of the data centers,

those locally here

807

have their own solar farms

or they're using other methods.

808

I know of.

809

One close here

810

to Reno uses a solar farm, and it's also

pulling off of a geothermal plant.

811

Yeah. Oh, cool.

812

So see, and some of those things,

unfortunately that's the exception,

813

not the norm at this point.

814

But it's good to hear because

using alternative energy, it makes sense.

815

Now, if you're in the middle of

816

the Mojave Desert and put up a solar farm

and have all these tracks of land

817

that are available

818

because nobody wants to live there,

that actually totally makes sense.

819

Still have to figure out

a way to get water if you need it.

820

But conceivably,

if you could generate enough solar power,

821

you would be able to use other

cooling solutions to than just water.

822

So, you know,

some of that kind of makes sense.

823

Unfortunately, that's not

what I've heard of them doing that

824

you use solar power,

but not quite to that extent.

825

And you know, so again.

826

Good question.

827

To have out there is

is there an advantage to doing this.

828

Obviously the land's cheap.

You would have that right.

829

And so I can see it from that standpoint

outside

830

of the monetary perspective,

I could see there being other problems.

831

And then the other thing of it

is that happens with these things is

832

what happens

if something happens to the data center.

833

So in the Iran war,

the Amazon Web Services

834

facilities in the UAE was bombed.

835

So and something

like that being a war time target,

836

being a centralized area of information

exchange, I can understand where

837

that would be something

you'd need to be concerned about.

838

And it did happen, you know,

now Amazon Web Services is distributed.

839

So if things are configured properly,

which is a big if in certain situations

840

it should back up to another data center

that's still operating

841

that we saw earlier in the year

when the Amazon Web Services

842

on the East Coast of the United States

had some downtime.

843

It what caused a situation where a lot of

things backed up to other data centers?

844

But the programmers had set it up

so that the only place

845

that you could do things like authenticate

your log on was US East.

846

So if that data centers down,

it can be backed up wherever you want.

847

But if you don't have that log on system

replicated as well, you can't get to it.

848

So who cares. You know. Yeah. Wow.

849

But you know,

and bombing the data center is one thing.

850

Hackers, malware, cyber attacks,

physical attacks, all these different

851

things become very much an issue.

852

You do not want some choke point.

853

And you know, we saw this too.

854

This goes beyond this.

855

Just a little bit of an aside,

but it's the same kind of thought process

856

is when the sabotage happened

at the power substation for London

857

Heathrow Airport last year

and took the entire airport out,

858

and they were supposed to have a backup,

but it didn't work.

859

You know, a lot of people got in trouble

860

for that one to imagine, you know.

861

Now, on the other side of the coin,

862

these are some of the negative things

that we have to deal with.

863

But on the other side of the coin,

you're also looking at a situation

864

where more computers network

together, are more powerful.

865

And this is the case

in any kind of a situation

866

where you have collective

computing capabilities like this.

867

So the ability to do things

like actual generative AI,

868

the examples given are medical research,

drug development, medical imaging,

869

online learning,

you know, the list goes on, are all things

870

that wouldn't be able to be done

with this kind of a situation.

871

The other big one that I know

I use them for is backups.

872

So in the day of hackers

and everything else,

873

you have a situation where something like

malware gets into your system.

874

Well,

the hackers know that you have backups.

875

I mean, they're smart

enough to do the malware.

876

They're not going to be stupid enough

to think that there's

877

none of that stuff on the system.

878

So if your backups are online,

they can get to that too.

879

So using a data

center is a place to be able to back up

880

these things too, and then disconnect

from the physical network

881

until you need

it is a way to be able to strengthen that.

882

And again,

that's requiring an off site situation.

883

Plus,

if all of your backups are only on site,

884

and even if you switch off the backup

after it's done.

885

Let's say you have a disaster at

your office in the building like a fire.

886

Yeah, exactly.

887

Yeah.

888

So you kind of really need both solutions

to really

889

have that being done properly, you know?

890

So that being said,

what is the future look like for this?

891

Well, one of the things we talked about

was nuclear energy

892

and being able to come up with carbon

free power.

893

Gretchen,

you brought this up with solar panels.

894

These kind of directions are going to help

with this advanced cooling

895

using new approaches

and that type of a thing

896

that are out there

that are being developed

897

that we can deep dive into,

898

that I don't know enough

about the different kinds

899

of new cooling systems to really be able

to, nor do we have the time of day,

900

but there are things being developed.

901

The other thing of it

is, is instead of the giant centralized

902

locations, decentralized,

and so you have more regional centers

903

that can break up the power demand

and also not have a physical location.

904

That is one spot

that if you happen to end up in a war

905

area, is going to, you know, get bombed

or have something like that happen.

906

The other thing of it,

907

too, and this is one of the

908

things that I like about it,

is something called edge computing.

909

And what this ends up doing.

910

And Amazon Web Services, again,

I use it as an example,

911

just because they're the service

I use for a lot of things

912

is I have a server location

where, let's say I have a website,

913

but it needs to be accessed

from all over the world.

914

So I update the one website

wherever it stored, and then their system

915

automatically replicates that to locations

that are closer to the users.

916

So in other words, let's say that you're

listening to our show in the UK

917

and somebody else is in Canada

and somebody else is wherever.

918

When you listen to the file,

it might actually be being sent to you

919

from somewhere close,

like your data center in the UK,

920

even though it was uploaded

to the one in Canada,

921

and it will automatically be able to do

that.

922

So, you know,

923

that's a question that definitely is

something that should be answered,

924

but it's a direction

they're going in and something that

925

we are seeing as a

926

definite direction.

927

So like anything else with technology,

the technology itself is very benign,

928

but it's what you do with it

and it's how you implement it.

929

And I think part of what's happened

is this initial data centers

930

just kind of built up

931

where they were and got bigger and bigger,

932

which is why we have a lot

of the centralized facilities.

933

And going forward,

we're seeing a lot of the decentralization

934

that takes the load off the power grid

from all one spot, that kind of thing,

935

you know, and be able to develop this

in a way that it will work better.

936

And maybe new thinking is required

for when they build these facilities.

937

Yeah.

938

Yeah, I, I think that going forward,

definitely

939

the engineering and all that kind of stuff

is going to be important.

940

And, you know,

941

one thing you could do for

AI and it's just a thought is

942

instead of having it all in one spot,

you have each node that uses the

943

AI have a little bit of the computing

capability on a distributed system.

944

And what would happen

is as your nodes grew, you would

945

automatically be increasing the amount of

946

computer capability for the AI to run on.

947

And the

AI might become self-aware and sentient.

948

But that's just

one of the things that could happen.

949

You know, with generative

AI any day of the week.

950

Making a face.

951

Anyway,

952

since your questions and your comments,

we love to hear from you.

953

And if there's anything on this topic

or the Nintendo topic or anything else

954

you'd like us to deep dive into,

we can do that too.

955

We love to do our programing

based on what you want to hear,

956

and we love the feedback. Until next week.

957

This is User friendly 2.0 keeping

you safe on the cutting edge.

958

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959

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960

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961

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962

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963

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964

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965

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966

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