Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tex Stuff from dot com.
Speaker 1: Hey even everyone, and welcome to tex Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: and today I've got a very special treat. The lovely,
Speaker 1: the talented, the intelligent, the amazing. Shannon Morse has agreed
Speaker 1: to grace me with an interview. Shannon stole my heart
Speaker 1: the first time I met her in two thousand thirteen
Speaker 1: at c e S because we uh we met and
Speaker 1: she immediately, instead of shaking my hand as I was
Speaker 1: putting my hand out, gave me a big old hug.
Speaker 1: How you doing, Shannon, I'm doing wonderful. I remember that
Speaker 1: day so crystal clear. I just ran up to you
Speaker 1: and I was like, John, hugs. It was wonderful. I mean, yo,
Speaker 1: not that I not that I want everyone at c
Speaker 1: e S to do that to me, but it's in
Speaker 1: a while. It's nice, ye Shannon. For all of my
Speaker 1: listeners who are may not be familiar with your work,
Speaker 1: can you give us like a rundown of all the
Speaker 1: amazing stuff you do? Absolutely? Um So. Of course you
Speaker 1: can always find me on Twitter. I'm snubs on there,
Speaker 1: but if you're really interested in checking out my podcast,
Speaker 1: I started podcasting in two thousand eight, and I do
Speaker 1: about uh five six shows now, well one's kind of
Speaker 1: in the work, so I can't talk about that one
Speaker 1: quite yet. But I'm also doing Hack five, which is
Speaker 1: j K five. It's all about hacking and moning and
Speaker 1: really interesting things that you can do with not only
Speaker 1: software but hardware as well. We break and we reconstruct things.
Speaker 1: It's really fun. Lately we've been hanging out with drones.
Speaker 1: It's super, super enjoyable. And I also do a show
Speaker 1: called tech Zilla. That one's more of a question the
Speaker 1: answer show. We get a lot of viewers that email
Speaker 1: us with tech questions, so we try to answer those,
Speaker 1: and we also do some tech reviews as well. Lately
Speaker 1: I've been reviewing reviewing a lot of cell phones and tablets,
Speaker 1: Go Figure. And last, but not least, of course, is
Speaker 1: Coding one oh one, and that is a beginner's programming show.
Speaker 1: We're not really there to take place of college courses,
Speaker 1: but we're there to kind of give you a grasp
Speaker 1: of what programming looks like, what different languages are available
Speaker 1: to you, and get you excited about it. So we're
Speaker 1: hoping to get younger people really excited about programming and
Speaker 1: hopefully increase their experience in it when they actually delve
Speaker 1: into it in college. That's about it. That's fantastic. And
Speaker 1: I mean it's great because it's coming in a time
Speaker 1: when I'm seeing kind of a resurgence in that interest
Speaker 1: in coding and sharing the love of coding, because you know,
Speaker 1: in the early eighties, I'm older than Shannon. In the
Speaker 1: early eighties, when people were getting hold of things like
Speaker 1: Texas instruments, computers, Apple the Apple to e was my
Speaker 1: my baby. Uh. You know, we started learning basic programming,
Speaker 1: truly basic programming programming in Bay sick and uh and
Speaker 1: and it was something that kids could get into. And
Speaker 1: then as time progressed, we started to see these programming
Speaker 1: languages become more and more sophisticated and complex, and therefore
Speaker 1: the barrier to entrigue became higher and higher, and so
Speaker 1: for some people they felt discouraged getting into it because
Speaker 1: it just seemed like even the first steps were far
Speaker 1: too advanced for them to really understand and appreciate it.
Speaker 1: And I love seeing shows like yours, as well as
Speaker 1: people working in the field to build hardware for folks
Speaker 1: to practice coding on. Things of course, like like the
Speaker 1: R do we know, micro controllers and the Raspberry pie um.
Speaker 1: These are great tools that I love seeing because it
Speaker 1: lets people get that foot in the door and then
Speaker 1: build upon the knowledge that they they they are able
Speaker 1: to um gain in those early days. So what got
Speaker 1: you Channon interested in all of this? Oh? Man, can
Speaker 1: I blame my dad? Well? We can. We can give
Speaker 1: him credit. Will give him credit. Well, when I was
Speaker 1: really little, the very first thing that was in my
Speaker 1: nursery was a computer, and that was the eighties, so
Speaker 1: I grew up with computers in my house. My dad
Speaker 1: taught me how to build my first machine. He brought
Speaker 1: me to this PC store in Indiana back when I
Speaker 1: was a little kid, and I just thought it was amazing.
Speaker 1: For me, it was like it was like Chucky Cheese
Speaker 1: for nerds. It was so incredible with all the all
Speaker 1: these pieces of ram just hanging out and all the
Speaker 1: CPUs that you could choose from. It was just incredible
Speaker 1: to me, and I got very excited to learn that, Like,
Speaker 1: it's not just the monitor that beholds what you can
Speaker 1: do with a computer, but it's also all the insides
Speaker 1: and how you can manipulate it to do all the
Speaker 1: different things that you wanted to do, so he got
Speaker 1: me interested in that. My mom got me interested in
Speaker 1: theater because she basically forced me into it, and I
Speaker 1: ended up falling in love with it. So I took
Speaker 1: these two loves and I kind of combined them together
Speaker 1: to start doing podcasting. So now I'm entertaining, but I'm
Speaker 1: also trying to educate the masses about building computers, programming,
Speaker 1: and hacking. So when you got into podcasting, that was,
Speaker 1: you know, that's not that far into when it was
Speaker 1: really starting to take off. Uh, what was your experience
Speaker 1: like when you first started? Um, it was kind of
Speaker 1: weird because I didn't really work with a network or
Speaker 1: anything like that. My my friends over at Hack five
Speaker 1: were just like, Hey, you should come move in with us,
Speaker 1: and I decided to because I was just out of
Speaker 1: college and I didn't really have a job lying out
Speaker 1: for me or anything. So I ended up moving out
Speaker 1: there to Virginia, got a full time job at a
Speaker 1: bank as a teller, which was really boring, and I
Speaker 1: ended up doing this show Hack five pretty much at
Speaker 1: like the middle of the night once a week for
Speaker 1: us like a couple of years. When I first started
Speaker 1: doing it, it was really weird. To me, it was
Speaker 1: very awkward to be in front of a camera as
Speaker 1: opposed to being in front of a theater audience because
Speaker 1: there's a really big you know, it's a big difference.
Speaker 1: You don't have that kind of interaction that you get
Speaker 1: from theater. Yeah, there's no live feedback. You don't you
Speaker 1: can't tell when you're doing well, and when you're not
Speaker 1: doing well. You don't know when to amp up the
Speaker 1: energy or maybe pull it back exactly, So you don't
Speaker 1: you don't know if you're doing well until the shows
Speaker 1: on YouTube and then you start seeing the comments. Well,
Speaker 1: and you can't judge your performance by YouTube comments. It
Speaker 1: took me a long time to learn that, So, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was It was very interesting to me. It was
Speaker 1: a little bit hard. Some of my first segments are
Speaker 1: incredibly terrible, and I suggest that nobody go watch them,
Speaker 1: and now everybody's going to. But I think that I've
Speaker 1: learned a lot. I've been doing it since uh two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, and I've I've had more than ten
Speaker 1: thousand hours just on podcasting alone, whether that's researching for
Speaker 1: are you saying or actually being in front of the
Speaker 1: camera and doing it. So I feel like I'm starting
Speaker 1: to get it now. Yeah. They say that your first
Speaker 1: ten thousand hours are your hardest. Oh yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: I I think that's about three episodes of tech stuff.
Speaker 1: I do tend to get a little long winded, but
Speaker 1: on a more serious note, I am curious when you
Speaker 1: get you know, you do these episodes about hacking and
Speaker 1: about coding. You do all these shows, not just episodes,
Speaker 1: but entire shows about it. What is your favorite programming
Speaker 1: language that you've worked with so far? Oh man, I know,
Speaker 1: it's like choosing your favorite kid. It is. Oh man,
Speaker 1: that's a hard one because they all have good aspects. Well,
Speaker 1: so far, I've done Java, c sharp, Python, and Pearl,
Speaker 1: and um, I think c sharp is my favorite. I
Speaker 1: really like the syntax, I like the organization, and we
Speaker 1: just started getting into object oriented programming with c sharp,
Speaker 1: and I found it really compelling because like I was
Speaker 1: able to build applications with it. It's just so cool,
Speaker 1: and it's it's so much easier to use than some
Speaker 1: of the other ones because like even the gooey just
Speaker 1: tells you whenever you make an error, and it tells
Speaker 1: you exactly what line it does it's on, So it's
Speaker 1: a lot more helpful to beginners. And I still consider
Speaker 1: myself a beginner programmer, so right now, yeah, C sharp
Speaker 1: is my favorite. Alright, So then no, no, no, no
Speaker 1: one should hate you for that. I think just saying
Speaker 1: that gives people that insight to know that, you know,
Speaker 1: if they're interested in just getting their toes wet, which
Speaker 1: programming language would be a fun one to start off with,
Speaker 1: one that really appeals to them. I always tell people that,
Speaker 1: you know, it may take some some experimentation with different
Speaker 1: ones to kind of see which ones click with your
Speaker 1: thinking style. Yes, you know, people thinking very different ways,
Speaker 1: and the way I think it organized my thoughts, there
Speaker 1: are certain languages that work really well, and then there
Speaker 1: are other ones where I look get and I say,
Speaker 1: I don't know what this this gobbledygook is supposed to do,
Speaker 1: so I can't tell you that it doesn't. And I
Speaker 1: think that's why a lot of people make their favorites
Speaker 1: when it comes to programming, is just we we all
Speaker 1: think very differently. So psychologically, you might look at the
Speaker 1: data and think it's completely confusing, while I look at
Speaker 1: it and say, oh, yeah, that completely makes sense. Well, then,
Speaker 1: now that we've talked about the the the programming language side,
Speaker 1: you know, like you you said, hacking is so much
Speaker 1: more than writing code than writing computer programs. A lot
Speaker 1: of us associate the word hacking with the idea of
Speaker 1: of breaking into a system, which is obviously a very
Speaker 1: narrow definition. In the old days, what hacking was all
Speaker 1: about was that you wanted some technology to do something specific.
Speaker 1: It was not necessarily meant to do that. So you
Speaker 1: had to figure out how to make the stuff you
Speaker 1: have do the stuff you wanted to do, and you
Speaker 1: would create a hack. You would you know, elegance was
Speaker 1: not necessary. You didn't have to worry about looking pretty.
Speaker 1: It just needed to work. And so there's some hackers
Speaker 1: who may take a little extra time and a little
Speaker 1: extra effort and a little extra baggage to get the
Speaker 1: thing done. But the important thing is at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, it does what you wanted to do.
Speaker 1: So with that in mind, with the with hacking taking
Speaker 1: into account physical things not just code, are there any
Speaker 1: physical hacks that you found to be particularly interesting, something
Speaker 1: that really fascinated you. Yes, I've been doing some really
Speaker 1: cool hacks lately with something called software defined radio, and
Speaker 1: it sounds like it's just software but it's not. You
Speaker 1: take these physical antennas and most of them have USB,
Speaker 1: your micro USB connectors and them, so you can plug
Speaker 1: them into your computer. And you can build different uh,
Speaker 1: different length antennas to be able to pick up different
Speaker 1: kinds of frequencies. Plug him in to these little um
Speaker 1: R T L SDR dongles that you plug into your computer,
Speaker 1: and then you can start picking up all sorts of
Speaker 1: different frequencies through your computer. As opposed to the old
Speaker 1: school Ham radio operators where they had the really really
Speaker 1: big machines, these cost you know, a fraction of the price,
Speaker 1: and you can also do it straight from your desktop
Speaker 1: or from your laptop. So I've been lately, I've been
Speaker 1: building a bunch of different antennas. I've learned how to
Speaker 1: basically do the math behind antenna building, and it's really
Speaker 1: really complicated. Yeah, it's complicated. You have to make sure
Speaker 1: one wire is grounded and the other one is picking
Speaker 1: up lots of frequency speeds and whatnot, and then you
Speaker 1: have to make sure that you have at level and
Speaker 1: it's perfectly straight so yet that your all your your
Speaker 1: bandwidth is going out the correct directions. It's really weird,
Speaker 1: but I've been having so much fun with like tracking
Speaker 1: airplanes and ships that are coming into the bay and
Speaker 1: being able to One thing I really want to do
Speaker 1: is build an antenna to pick up the weather satellites. Luckily,
Speaker 1: all of this stuff is legal, So this is this
Speaker 1: is hacking in a legal aspect because that's what I
Speaker 1: like to do. Um. But yeah, this is my new
Speaker 1: favorite thing. Yeah, this is well, this is all about
Speaker 1: receiving information. It's not like you're beaming out something so that.
Speaker 1: Uh you know that weather satellite was supposed to be
Speaker 1: over Nevada but instead it's in the Pacific Ocean. Do
Speaker 1: you know anything about that? It's not like that I
Speaker 1: can do that, but i'd have to be a ham
Speaker 1: radio operator licensed. Well, what's what's interesting is that you know,
Speaker 1: when you were mentioning the fact that the math behind
Speaker 1: antenna's is so complex, I know that really. Well is
Speaker 1: because way back in the day, when when we first
Speaker 1: started doing the Tech Stuff podcast me and my original
Speaker 1: co host Chris Pollett, one of the earliest requests we
Speaker 1: ever got was how Cantanna's work. So we started looking
Speaker 1: into it, and the more we looked into it, the
Speaker 1: more desperate we begin to feel. And to this day,
Speaker 1: that episode has never been recorded. So listeners, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna throw this out in the middle of the episode.
Speaker 1: If you in fact want to hear how cantenna's work
Speaker 1: and you are curious about the technology that nearly broke text,
Speaker 1: stuff right in and let me know, and I will
Speaker 1: once again go back to the drawing board and attempt
Speaker 1: to explain it. Because yeah, I mean, I feel a
Speaker 1: little more confident than I did back in those days.
Speaker 1: But even so, there's a there's there's a lot of
Speaker 1: physics involved. There's a lot of things about the wavelength
Speaker 1: of the radio waves that you're trying to pick up
Speaker 1: and the relationship between the length of the antenna and
Speaker 1: the wavelength. Yeah, yeah, because you have to have you know,
Speaker 1: that's when you see these antenna that have that are
Speaker 1: really really tall for certain types of wavelengths of radio waves,
Speaker 1: because that's the efficient means of picking up that frequency,
Speaker 1: and it has to be a certain fraction of the
Speaker 1: wavelength for you to be able to do that. Not
Speaker 1: something that all of us can easily do. But that's fantastic.
Speaker 1: I mean, I love I love this idea of of
Speaker 1: of using modern technology to achieve something that in the
Speaker 1: old days, a very small dedicated population had access to
Speaker 1: but anyone outside of that it just remained completely foreign.
Speaker 1: And so now you can just go out and get
Speaker 1: the pieces. I figure, you know, when the zombie apocalypse
Speaker 1: happens and there's a big E m F and we
Speaker 1: have to make sure that, you know, we have a
Speaker 1: Faraday cage protecting our ham radio operations. I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: have this little intenda in a little USB cable in
Speaker 1: my laptop. I'll stick those in a fair Day cage,
Speaker 1: and after the E m F happens, I'll plug him
Speaker 1: in and I'll be good to go. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: good to have someone cheerful about the zombie apocalypse. Well,
Speaker 1: we have walkers here in Atlanta, so I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just that's true. It's just a way of life here.
Speaker 1: You know. You you know, you're on your way to
Speaker 1: the train station, you've got to dodge an entire group
Speaker 1: of zombies. I joke about it, but there was a
Speaker 1: day when I could not get to my favorite diner
Speaker 1: because there was a mob of zombies between me and
Speaker 1: the diner. That's awesome. Yeah, that's the wonderful thing about
Speaker 1: people actually shooting on location. Moving on to other tech questions,
Speaker 1: I want to know you've you've been covering technology for
Speaker 1: a really long time and in various ways. Are there
Speaker 1: any particular stories in tech that you really felt were
Speaker 1: important and either you feel they weren't given the appropriate
Speaker 1: amount of attention or maybe you feel like it's faded
Speaker 1: from memory and should be brought back. Oh, that's a
Speaker 1: good question. Well, the first one is still kind of
Speaker 1: in the news, and it's the whole Edward Snowden thing. Yes,
Speaker 1: and there were there were a whole bunch of hacks
Speaker 1: and a whole bunch of security issues. Wait before Edwards
Speaker 1: Snowden him along, but he really brought a lot of
Speaker 1: it to light for the public. And I think that
Speaker 1: was really really important because a lot of the public
Speaker 1: just doesn't care about their security, and now that this
Speaker 1: is starting to become an issue, they're starting to pay
Speaker 1: more attention to when they you know, when they connect
Speaker 1: their phone to open wireless, or when they go to
Speaker 1: the Starbucks and somebody and they give somebody their password
Speaker 1: or whatever it might be. So I think that was
Speaker 1: really important. And the second thing I'm really itching to
Speaker 1: see more of in the tech Techisphere would be women
Speaker 1: in tech news about women that are, you know, taking
Speaker 1: over for companies like um, the woman that works at
Speaker 1: Yeah who. That was a really really big news thing
Speaker 1: and she got a lot of controversy when she first started,
Speaker 1: and most of it was just because she was a woman. Um.
Speaker 1: I think it's really important to get more women into
Speaker 1: working in tech, whether that's just reporting on it or
Speaker 1: actually doing behind the scenes stuff like hacking and programming.
Speaker 1: It's so so important to me that I'm able to
Speaker 1: you know, watch this and report on it as it
Speaker 1: comes along and hopefully it's good stuff that I'm reporting on. Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 1: We've also taken a few stabs at covering those those uh,
Speaker 1: those stories as well, including I did an episode recently
Speaker 1: where I brought in Kristen Conger of stuff. Mom never
Speaker 1: told her. She's been. She's phenomenal. Right, yeah, you've done
Speaker 1: You've done some um hangouts with her, right hangouts. She's
Speaker 1: so funny, she is, she's hilarious and she really knows
Speaker 1: her stuff. And she joined me and we had a
Speaker 1: nice frank conversation about Anita Sarkeesian and her work with
Speaker 1: the women versus our troops versus women in video games,
Speaker 1: and yeah it was. It's a fantastic episode. If you
Speaker 1: guys haven't listened to it, you should definitely go and
Speaker 1: check that out. Kristen makes some great points. Um, and
Speaker 1: I fumbled my way through and uh, as is my want.
Speaker 1: But that's why I feel the same way. I feel
Speaker 1: very strongly about that, because I I am fortunate to
Speaker 1: work in an office that is filled with some of
Speaker 1: the most intelligent people I've ever had the luxury to know,
Speaker 1: and there men and women who are constantly keeping me
Speaker 1: on my toes and to just see that and to say,
Speaker 1: why is this? This is something that's just this is
Speaker 1: the norm. This is actually normal, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people don't end up appreciating that. So the folks who
Speaker 1: do report on those stories to make sure that they
Speaker 1: do get the attention they deserve, get my respect quite
Speaker 1: a bit. So now you've said that you have to
Speaker 1: talk a lot about tech reviews, you know, the kind
Speaker 1: of things that you have to look at. Are there
Speaker 1: any tech products that you felt, you know, were absolutely stellar,
Speaker 1: something that truly knocked your socks off? I mean, not
Speaker 1: that it's an endorsement, I'm just curious. Yeah, there is,
Speaker 1: and it's gonna sound really cheesy, but there's these things
Speaker 1: called the neco Mimi ears. Are these the ears that
Speaker 1: react to your emotional status. So it sounds really cheesy.
Speaker 1: This this is a kitty cat ears that perk up
Speaker 1: if you're if you get if you're like, uh, become
Speaker 1: suddenly alert you're you're mentally Yeah, So this is um
Speaker 1: this is not a big surprise. It shouldn't. I'm obsessed
Speaker 1: with anime and I love cats, so if I can
Speaker 1: cause play as a cat, I'm perfectly fine with this,
Speaker 1: especially if the ears move. So a lot of people
Speaker 1: think that these things are totally fake, but I have some,
Speaker 1: and I've warned them a lot, and I know that
Speaker 1: you can. You can train them. You can you can
Speaker 1: make your brain things certain things, and you'll figure out
Speaker 1: what things that you think about that will make them
Speaker 1: twitch or make them move softly and go to sleep.
Speaker 1: I figured out that if I do math, they twitch nice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I just think the the technology behind it is
Speaker 1: really cool because they use the brain wave detector that
Speaker 1: you put on your forehead as well as a little
Speaker 1: one that you clip onto your ear, and it picks
Speaker 1: up all sorts of different um you know, brain waves
Speaker 1: that you're thinking about, so you can't really read your thoughts,
Speaker 1: but it can read how active your brain is. And uh,
Speaker 1: it's not only like the ears that have been created
Speaker 1: out of this, but also I went to the yeahoo
Speaker 1: um campus about a year ago and there was a
Speaker 1: really really cool uh display of this out in there,
Speaker 1: just in their backyard. Basically, somebody had built a huge
Speaker 1: like PVC piped ahead of a person, a human head,
Speaker 1: but it was like ten ft tall and it was
Speaker 1: really big and um. They lit it up with a
Speaker 1: bunch of l d s and if you sit down
Speaker 1: and put on the brain wave sensors, it would start
Speaker 1: activating different l eds depending on how active your brain was.
Speaker 1: And it was such a huge display that you could
Speaker 1: see it from really really far away and it would
Speaker 1: just light up the entire the entire yard. It was beautiful. Really,
Speaker 1: it's uh it reminds me actually of and I'm sure
Speaker 1: you've you've heard of this too, people who are using
Speaker 1: uh a similar set up, but instead of detecting brain waves,
Speaker 1: they're trying to stimulate cognitive abilities by using light electrical current.
Speaker 1: And it's the same sort of thing. You have one
Speaker 1: one like sponge with an electrode in it that's over
Speaker 1: essentially over uh, not quite over on your temple, but
Speaker 1: sort of over your eyebrow, and another one that is
Speaker 1: closer to your temple on the other side, and UH
Speaker 1: you use that to stimulate your your brains activity, and
Speaker 1: anecdotal UH responses say that helps boost things like, uh,
Speaker 1: your your mental acuity, and um, of course this sort
Speaker 1: of thing I should, I should add is something you
Speaker 1: want to be careful with. And I would not recommend
Speaker 1: any of my listeners actually rush out and try and
Speaker 1: do this. I did. Ah. I have another show called
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking where UH Joe McCormick and I talked about
Speaker 1: it and UH and he's he's the one of the
Speaker 1: writers for the Forward Thinking Show, and he and I
Speaker 1: and and my former co host Lauren we all talked
Speaker 1: about this stuff and they were shocked when I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I I might try this, and they all thought you
Speaker 1: were crazy, isn't you should? So now now that we've
Speaker 1: talked about some of the stuff you've done since you
Speaker 1: do work also with UH hacking in general and things
Speaker 1: like you mentioned, you know, the not you know, being
Speaker 1: very careful if you're using public WiFi that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: What sort of tips would you have to give someone
Speaker 1: who wants to just be now generally safe with their
Speaker 1: their wife. I use these are questions that come in
Speaker 1: all the time, and I've even done episodes on it.
Speaker 1: But it's always good to talk to someone who who
Speaker 1: extensively covers this issue. Oh absolutely, I cover this stuff
Speaker 1: like every darn day. This is the only thing I
Speaker 1: talked about, so um. First off, if you do have
Speaker 1: to go to a public WiFi place, and if you
Speaker 1: have to use public WiFi, which I definitely recommend not
Speaker 1: to uh. In fact, if you have the option just
Speaker 1: transfer your cell phone data from your phone to your laptop,
Speaker 1: if you have that option with your cell phone provider,
Speaker 1: that would be a much safer way as opposed to
Speaker 1: doing you know, open wireless wherever you go. So, if
Speaker 1: you have to connect to open wireless, first off, make
Speaker 1: sure you're not logging into anything like your banks or
Speaker 1: your UH email accounts, or anything specifically related to your
Speaker 1: personal identifying information. If you do your password and use
Speaker 1: your name could be stolen. It's really really easy to
Speaker 1: do well, not so surprisingly uh. Secondly, if you are
Speaker 1: on open wireless, make sure that each and every single
Speaker 1: password that you do use on all your different sites
Speaker 1: is different. So if somebody did end up snooping your
Speaker 1: usual name and password, they want to be able to
Speaker 1: use it to get into some alternative site. So if
Speaker 1: your Facebook password is like god sex Love, which if
Speaker 1: you watch tackers you probably recommend nize that, then you
Speaker 1: don't want to use God sets love over on you know,
Speaker 1: Bank of America dot Com or whatever you're banking credentials
Speaker 1: might be. So that would be helpful. Um, what else
Speaker 1: would be good? Oh, use a password reminder. Those are
Speaker 1: awesome tools to have, and I use one on my computer.
Speaker 1: It's called last Pass. Last Pass is amazing. It just
Speaker 1: basically generates all these really really random characters for each
Speaker 1: and every single password that I use, So all of
Speaker 1: my passwords are different. And uh, if I log into
Speaker 1: anything I know that, you know, it's going to be
Speaker 1: really easy to find that in my last past vault.
Speaker 1: But it's going to be so hard to memorize and
Speaker 1: so hard to basically crack that it would take somebody days,
Speaker 1: if not you know, months, to be able to crack it.
Speaker 1: So I'm not too worried about my passwords and use
Speaker 1: two factor authentication. I loved two factor authentication. So t
Speaker 1: f A or t F to f A is it
Speaker 1: basically means that it's using two different versions of information
Speaker 1: to access your accounts. So it could be something you
Speaker 1: know and something you have, or it could be yeah
Speaker 1: like that. So for me, it would be something I know,
Speaker 1: which is my password, and then something I have, which
Speaker 1: is a token I D on my phone. So unless
Speaker 1: I have both of those things, I'm not able to
Speaker 1: log onto my accounts on any kind of wireless no
Speaker 1: matter where it is. Right, I'm really hopeful that two
Speaker 1: factor authentication becomes the norm for most logins, at least
Speaker 1: for things that you need to log into regularly. I
Speaker 1: use it for I use it for my email, I
Speaker 1: use it for use it for Facebook. UM, so I
Speaker 1: use it for the things that I whenever it's possible,
Speaker 1: And like you, I use a password reminder system, a
Speaker 1: vault system. I use dash ling, which is similar to
Speaker 1: last Pass. Yeah, it's dash len is pretty cool. It's
Speaker 1: uh one of those that that also has the cloud
Speaker 1: based UM system, so that if you are on someone
Speaker 1: else's computer and you need to access something, you can
Speaker 1: access it through the website. Uh, you know, go to
Speaker 1: dash Len's website and access your passwords that way, and
Speaker 1: that way you don't have to download anything to that
Speaker 1: person's computer. And that's useful. So really you just the
Speaker 1: key to those is that you usually have to have
Speaker 1: one master password that will get you into the vault
Speaker 1: so that the vault knows you are who you claim
Speaker 1: to be. And uh even that dash Len and I
Speaker 1: think has uh two factor authentication as well. I think
Speaker 1: I always get a message on my phone whenever I
Speaker 1: have to do a white on a computer on a
Speaker 1: computer I'm rebuilding a computer or something. Uh that's I
Speaker 1: go in and attack my password super fast to hit
Speaker 1: and I'm ready for it to load up. Oh that's right.
Speaker 1: Let me get my phone, gotta go type in this
Speaker 1: text message. Yeah. So that's that's great advice. I really
Speaker 1: much appreciate it. So now I want to ask you,
Speaker 1: are there any things in tech like, are there any
Speaker 1: areas in tech that you haven't really had a chance
Speaker 1: to dive into yet that you would love a chance
Speaker 1: to explore further? Maybe it's a texture, There are, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: there is. I just remembered car tech. Okay, I know
Speaker 1: almost nothing about cars. It's so sad, really, but I
Speaker 1: know that there's all sorts of crazy cool hacks that
Speaker 1: you can do with newer cars on the market. Like
Speaker 1: I just saw a guy on YouTube. He has a Tesla.
Speaker 1: I don't know how I can afford one of those things,
Speaker 1: but he has a Tesla and he has a this
Speaker 1: hack RF, which is a software defined radio that you
Speaker 1: can plug into your computer. Basically, so he took this
Speaker 1: radio and the sentence and he played a frequency through
Speaker 1: the antenna. He transmitted it nearest Tesla and he was
Speaker 1: able to open the little gas control on his on
Speaker 1: his Tesla, and I was like, that is so crazy cool.
Speaker 1: I didn't know you could do that. And apparently you
Speaker 1: can do things with like the little key fobs that
Speaker 1: you received with cars when you buy him new. You know,
Speaker 1: those things are crazy expensive, but it turns out every
Speaker 1: time you hit the unlocked button or the lock button,
Speaker 1: they send the same frequency, but it's encoded in a
Speaker 1: different way, so you can't copy it and you can't
Speaker 1: create your own key fob to open and break into
Speaker 1: other people's cars. It's like, so cool, that's pretty awesome.
Speaker 1: I get really excited about stuff like that, so I
Speaker 1: need to learn more about cars. Well, we've got a
Speaker 1: We've got a guy here. His named Scott Benjamin. He's
Speaker 1: one of the two hosts for Car Stuff. And before
Speaker 1: he came to How Stuff works, he worked in the
Speaker 1: auto industry. Uh so he has a huge background in that.
Speaker 1: He sits right next to me, and he's a very
Speaker 1: quiet guy, very very polite, and then when you, uh,
Speaker 1: when you really start chatting with him about cars, he
Speaker 1: just he lights up. And so we've had a couple
Speaker 1: of discussions, and in fact, I just recorded an episode
Speaker 1: with him where we talked about autonomous cars and all
Speaker 1: the technology that goes into making that possible, and how
Speaker 1: some of that technology is finding its way into consumer
Speaker 1: vehicles today. They're not autonomous vehicles, but they are my
Speaker 1: car parks itself. Yeah, it's the best thing ever. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: especially if you live in say like the Bay Area.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, if you don't know how to parallel park
Speaker 1: out here, you can't park. And I don't know how
Speaker 1: to parallel park because I grew up in Missouri. So yeah,
Speaker 1: and and also you didn't have to worry about parallel
Speaker 1: parking on a on a hill that has like a
Speaker 1: forty degree incline. Very true. So I just let my
Speaker 1: car do it for me. That's a good it was
Speaker 1: a good investment. He was talking about a system that would,
Speaker 1: uh would even get to the point where it lets
Speaker 1: you out at the curb of say a mall, and
Speaker 1: then it goes and looks for a parking spot and
Speaker 1: of itself, and then when you come out, you hit
Speaker 1: your little key fob and then it comes and finds you.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, it's like a puppy. Yeah. Yeah, again,
Speaker 1: it's getting closer and closer to the truly driverless cars, um,
Speaker 1: which I cannot wait for personally since I don't I
Speaker 1: don't drive, so for me, that would be a wonderful thing.
Speaker 1: So what do you find frustrating as someone who covers technology?
Speaker 1: What what sort of things do you think would you
Speaker 1: like to see change just in all the sort of
Speaker 1: stuff you do, um, being a woman in tech. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be a big one, right, Not not that
Speaker 1: you would change being a woman, but that you would
Speaker 1: change how everyone behaves towards you. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I didn't really feel strong and self worthy until a
Speaker 1: few years ago. You know, I've been doing this since
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, and I've dealt with all sorts
Speaker 1: of rude things being thrown at me, people calling me
Speaker 1: stupid or calling me a nube. And yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I'm anub about certain things, but when they call me
Speaker 1: a nub about what I'm researching and talking about, I'm like, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not here. I can teach you this too. Let
Speaker 1: me show you how this works. Yeah, no, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's irritating because they act not only as if
Speaker 1: you don't know anything, but that you could not know anything,
Speaker 1: that you you are incapable of learning even if you
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't know it. First of all, you
Speaker 1: already know it. Second of all, you have the capacity
Speaker 1: to learn even if it if it is something you
Speaker 1: don't know, you can learn it. That's exactly right. I
Speaker 1: learned something new every single day. That's one of my
Speaker 1: goals is learning something new every day, no matter how smaller,
Speaker 1: how big it is, and then I try to teach
Speaker 1: other people that thing that I learned. Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: kind of how how stuff works works. Just sort of
Speaker 1: the philosophy of our company and our website. So there's
Speaker 1: no one here at this company who doesn't learn something
Speaker 1: new every day. Um, and then of course it's our
Speaker 1: job to try and communicate that to our audience in
Speaker 1: a way that makes sense and is accurate. You know,
Speaker 1: those are two things that are challenging. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've had I've had a few experiences where like I
Speaker 1: would have email from a fan and they'd say like, oh,
Speaker 1: I think this is really cool and it's so easy
Speaker 1: even you could do it, And I'm just like, really,
Speaker 1: how you feel? And the side part is, I don't
Speaker 1: think that a lot of times people realize that they're
Speaker 1: being somewhat downgrading, and it's just because they perceive women
Speaker 1: as not supposed to be in the tech field. So
Speaker 1: they just figure, oh, well, you're in you're in the field. Well,
Speaker 1: you're just here because you're pretty. You're in the field.
Speaker 1: You're just here to you know, hang out with the
Speaker 1: cool guys whatever. It might be like, No, I'm not,
Speaker 1: I'm here because I want to build a new computer. Well,
Speaker 1: more power to you, is what I say. So who
Speaker 1: are some of the people that you really like to
Speaker 1: uh to work with or or listen to. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you have time to actually listen to other podcasts.
Speaker 1: It's getting harder and harder, especially if you're working on
Speaker 1: five or six shows, you probably don't have a whole
Speaker 1: lot of spare time. But I'm just curious, who are
Speaker 1: the people that you you look to as your favorite
Speaker 1: peers in the space. Um, well there's lots. Uh. There's
Speaker 1: this guy Jonathan Strickland, who's great at what he does.
Speaker 1: A bald idiot. Bald idiot. But that's very sweet. I
Speaker 1: was not fishing for compliments. I'm just gonna blush. You
Speaker 1: keep talking, Okay. So, um, one of my friends who
Speaker 1: has been doing journalistic podcasting for a long time, his
Speaker 1: name is Tom Merritt. You know, he's awesome. Uh. He
Speaker 1: was one of the very very first podcasters that I
Speaker 1: started listening to way back in college days, and I
Speaker 1: thought that he was He was very understanding, his voice
Speaker 1: was excellent to listen to, and he did his research.
Speaker 1: He wasn't just you know, reading off articles. He was
Speaker 1: actually going in depth and trying to find really interesting
Speaker 1: information about everything that he was talking about. So I've
Speaker 1: been listening to Tom merrit shows for a very long time.
Speaker 1: He even he was my officiant for my wedding. Yeah, Tom,
Speaker 1: Tom is uh. For those of you who do not
Speaker 1: know Tom Merritt. Uh He He was a podcaster for
Speaker 1: a very long time with c NET did a very
Speaker 1: popular show called Buzz out Loud. He worked for a
Speaker 1: while over at This Week in Tech. He was the
Speaker 1: person who started tech News. Today. He now has his
Speaker 1: own show that's supported by by listeners. Actually that he
Speaker 1: uses Patreon to support his show, and that's the Daily
Speaker 1: Tech News Show. And Tom Tom only is really good
Speaker 1: at communicating uh tech news and explaining the context and
Speaker 1: why it's important. He's also incredibly generous with his time,
Speaker 1: and he loves to have other people come onto his
Speaker 1: show and share their points of view and generally is
Speaker 1: one of the nicest guy in podcasting that I've I've encountered.
Speaker 1: Yeah me too. He was the first person to have
Speaker 1: me on as a guest on another show, and that
Speaker 1: was on buzz out Loud way back in the day.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, Tom, good choice, good choice, We go back,
Speaker 1: we go back in the days. I respect him very
Speaker 1: much and I appreciate that he's let me kind of
Speaker 1: go under his wing a little bit and ask him
Speaker 1: questions whenever I need help. Um. One of my co workers,
Speaker 1: Patrick Norton, He's been in the scene for a long time,
Speaker 1: and he's he's really kind of taken me under his
Speaker 1: wing as well, and he's taught me a lot about
Speaker 1: podcasting and what he expects of me being on his show,
Speaker 1: and I still consider it his show even though we're
Speaker 1: both doing Taxola together. And um, last but not least,
Speaker 1: one of my favorite women in the industry is Veronica Belmont,
Speaker 1: another one of our good friends. Wow. Yeah, you've named
Speaker 1: all the people that I know, because like now, working
Speaker 1: in this field and working with these people, I've really
Speaker 1: you know, learned about their personality, these and learned what
Speaker 1: they're good at and what they still want to divulge in.
Speaker 1: And a lot of them are you know, I feel
Speaker 1: like they're experts in their fields. And UM, for me,
Speaker 1: you know, Patrick and Tom are excellent people to look
Speaker 1: up to as far as you know, what should I
Speaker 1: do better from your standpoint. But Veronica for me, is
Speaker 1: a great female perspective because she's been in it a
Speaker 1: lot longer than I have. She went to school for um,
Speaker 1: I believe for audio or something, UM. But she's she's
Speaker 1: been in it long enough to you know, know, how
Speaker 1: to cope with dealing with you know, anti female people
Speaker 1: in the world and how to deal with industry. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So I've asked her a lot of questions about like, hey,
Speaker 1: how do I deal with this comment on YouTube and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, and she's been really helpful in that
Speaker 1: way as well. Yeah, I I respect the heck out
Speaker 1: of all the people you have mentioned. I have so
Speaker 1: many other friends that are in in the field, Like
Speaker 1: you know, I work with Darren Kitchen and he's this
Speaker 1: amazing hacker and he's taught me a lot as well,
Speaker 1: Like anytime I have a question on hack five, I'm like, dude,
Speaker 1: how do I do this? And he can explain it
Speaker 1: to me in a detail that breaks it down so
Speaker 1: so good, and I'm just like, holy crap, I'm so
Speaker 1: happy that I work with you. Yeah, there's just there's
Speaker 1: so many people in this field that you can learn from,
Speaker 1: and I'm trying to use as much as that of
Speaker 1: that to my advantage as I can it. To me,
Speaker 1: what's phenomenal is that, uh, and this is peaked behind
Speaker 1: the curtain for for our podcast listeners. A lot of
Speaker 1: podcasters are happy to help out each other, and it's
Speaker 1: there's no real ego there for a lot of them.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's some that are exceptions, but you and
Speaker 1: I've I've felt that I've I've worked with that before.
Speaker 1: But you know, to be honest, most of the people
Speaker 1: in our field are some of the nicest people I've
Speaker 1: ever met. So now that we've we kind of talked
Speaker 1: all about your career and the people that you know
Speaker 1: and the things you do. And I know you can't
Speaker 1: talk about this new show, so I'm not going to
Speaker 1: ask you about the news show. But if you could
Speaker 1: do a show that you are not doing now, what
Speaker 1: would the topic be? Can I give you two? Yes?
Speaker 1: Of course you can, Okay, So the first one is
Speaker 1: a Sailor Moon fan show. We all I talk about
Speaker 1: is Sailor Moon every day for the entirety of like
Speaker 1: an hour, and I would discuss the causeplay and the
Speaker 1: mythology behind Sailor Moon, and I would talk about the
Speaker 1: author and the manga and the anime. It's an anime
Speaker 1: for anybody who's not familiar. I'm obsessed with that show,
Speaker 1: and I have been obsessed since I was like five
Speaker 1: years old. And I'm going to Japan next year just
Speaker 1: to pick up a whole bunch of Sailor Moon merchandise.
Speaker 1: That's how obsessed. I am. We gotta get you out
Speaker 1: the Dragon Con. I'm telling you, I know, I know.
Speaker 1: I'm planning to go next year. I have it on
Speaker 1: my calendar when they're opening up hotels again, so I'm
Speaker 1: hoping I'll be there next year. All right, So what's
Speaker 1: number two? This one's weird and people are going to
Speaker 1: think I'm crazy, But it's a couponning show. Yes, you
Speaker 1: are super coupons right kind of Well, I'm I'm kind
Speaker 1: of taking a break at the moment so I can
Speaker 1: focus on the shows that I get paid for. But
Speaker 1: coupon ing is when you figure out the store policies
Speaker 1: for whatever store steps coupons, and you figure out how
Speaker 1: to manipulate the coupon a store sale and a store
Speaker 1: coupon and stack them on top of each other to
Speaker 1: hopefully get stuff for free. And it's totally legal. You
Speaker 1: can do it. It's completely fine, and as long as
Speaker 1: it's under their policy, you're allowed to do whatever you
Speaker 1: want with the coupon. So I like to go to
Speaker 1: stores and try to get things for at least under
Speaker 1: a dollar, and a lot of times for free. You
Speaker 1: do still have to pay tax, so hopefully it's things
Speaker 1: that you use. But I've been able to get like
Speaker 1: a pretty good stockpile of you know, hygienic things, lots
Speaker 1: of paper products, and I've even been able to give
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff away to my friends and even
Speaker 1: a few homeless guys in the area, and they really
Speaker 1: appreciated it. And it makes me feel good insight to
Speaker 1: be able to do that kind of thing. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: tried it once. I ended up with seventeen bubbles of
Speaker 1: shampoo and I just spent the evening crying in the showers,
Speaker 1: you know, But I I definitely admire the ability to
Speaker 1: do it well. Shannon, again, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: being on the show. I'm going to ask you to
Speaker 1: come back when we're covering specific topics like coding and hacking,
Speaker 1: so that you'll be a guest host, not just an
Speaker 1: interview subject. It would be phenomenal. You'll you'll be amazing,
Speaker 1: and so we'll we'll we'll get some we'll talk offline
Speaker 1: and figure out some topics and times. That's always actually
Speaker 1: the biggest challenges figuring out when we can schedule these things.
Speaker 1: But for those of my listeners who want to follow
Speaker 1: everything you do, one more time, just to give them
Speaker 1: the opportunity tell them where to find you. Easiest place
Speaker 1: is Twitter. I'm at snubs, so that's at S and
Speaker 1: U B S. I think that would be September November Umbrella, uh,
Speaker 1: Bravo September. Yeah, that would be. That'd be that'd be
Speaker 1: a good call sign right there. Another thing I'm trying
Speaker 1: to remember. Oh yeah, my wife's very good at that.
Speaker 1: She works in the airline industry, so she she spells
Speaker 1: things out like that, and I'm said, my brain doesn't
Speaker 1: work that way. You're just just use the letters. I'm
Speaker 1: kind of a dork. I practice on the way to
Speaker 1: work by looking at license plate numbers. That's fantastic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's It's a great way to train yourself to learn
Speaker 1: all the different um what are they the different Alpha,
Speaker 1: new member whatever. I don't even remember what they're called. Charlie,
Speaker 1: I would, I would, uh. I know that. My Floyd,
Speaker 1: the truck driver, who's one of our super fans, I
Speaker 1: know he would. He would jump right in and start
Speaker 1: talking about this. That would be one of his dream topic.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you
Speaker 1: for all of my listeners out there. If you have
Speaker 1: the Jet Sins for people you would like me to
Speaker 1: interview for future episodes of tech Stuff, or maybe there's
Speaker 1: just a topic that you've always wanted to learn more about.
Speaker 1: Get in touch with me my email addresses, text stuff
Speaker 1: at our stuff works dot com, or you can drop
Speaker 1: me a line on Facebook or on Twitter or on Tumbler.
Speaker 1: The handle it all three is tech Stuff H s
Speaker 1: W and I'll talk to you again. Really si for
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics because it
Speaker 1: has stuff works dot com