October 22, 2014 • 42 mins
Shannon Morse is a technology journalist and hacker. She talks about her experiences in tech and how she fell in love with technology.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Get in touch with technology with tex Stuff from dot com.
Hey even everyone, and welcome to tex Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
and today I've got a very special treat. The lovely,
the talented, the intelligent, the amazing. Shannon Morse has agreed
(00:26):
to grace me with an interview. Shannon stole my heart
the first time I met her in two thousand thirteen
at c e S because we uh we met and
she immediately, instead of shaking my hand as I was
putting my hand out, gave me a big old hug.
How you doing, Shannon, I'm doing wonderful. I remember that
(00:47):
day so crystal clear. I just ran up to you
and I was like, John, hugs. It was wonderful. I mean, yo,
not that I not that I want everyone at c
e S to do that to me, but it's in
a while. It's nice, ye Shannon. For all of my
listeners who are may not be familiar with your work,
(01:08):
can you give us like a rundown of all the
amazing stuff you do? Absolutely? Um So. Of course you
can always find me on Twitter. I'm snubs on there,
but if you're really interested in checking out my podcast,
I started podcasting in two thousand eight, and I do
about uh five six shows now, well one's kind of
in the work, so I can't talk about that one
(01:29):
quite yet. But I'm also doing Hack five, which is
j K five. It's all about hacking and moning and
really interesting things that you can do with not only
software but hardware as well. We break and we reconstruct things.
It's really fun. Lately we've been hanging out with drones.
It's super, super enjoyable. And I also do a show
called tech Zilla. That one's more of a question the
(01:50):
answer show. We get a lot of viewers that email
us with tech questions, so we try to answer those,
and we also do some tech reviews as well. Lately
I've been reviewing reviewing a lot of cell phones and tablets,
Go Figure. And last, but not least, of course, is
Coding one oh one, and that is a beginner's programming show.
We're not really there to take place of college courses,
(02:11):
but we're there to kind of give you a grasp
of what programming looks like, what different languages are available
to you, and get you excited about it. So we're
hoping to get younger people really excited about programming and
hopefully increase their experience in it when they actually delve
into it in college. That's about it. That's fantastic. And
(02:31):
I mean it's great because it's coming in a time
when I'm seeing kind of a resurgence in that interest
in coding and sharing the love of coding, because you know,
in the early eighties, I'm older than Shannon. In the
early eighties, when people were getting hold of things like
Texas instruments, computers, Apple the Apple to e was my
(02:53):
my baby. Uh. You know, we started learning basic programming,
truly basic programming programming in Bay sick and uh and
and it was something that kids could get into. And
then as time progressed, we started to see these programming
languages become more and more sophisticated and complex, and therefore
(03:13):
the barrier to entrigue became higher and higher, and so
for some people they felt discouraged getting into it because
it just seemed like even the first steps were far
too advanced for them to really understand and appreciate it.
And I love seeing shows like yours, as well as
people working in the field to build hardware for folks
(03:35):
to practice coding on. Things of course, like like the
R do we know, micro controllers and the Raspberry pie um.
These are great tools that I love seeing because it
lets people get that foot in the door and then
build upon the knowledge that they they they are able
to um gain in those early days. So what got
(03:59):
you Channon interested in all of this? Oh? Man, can
I blame my dad? Well? We can. We can give
him credit. Will give him credit. Well, when I was
really little, the very first thing that was in my
nursery was a computer, and that was the eighties, so
I grew up with computers in my house. My dad
(04:21):
taught me how to build my first machine. He brought
me to this PC store in Indiana back when I
was a little kid, and I just thought it was amazing.
For me, it was like it was like Chucky Cheese
for nerds. It was so incredible with all the all
these pieces of ram just hanging out and all the
CPUs that you could choose from. It was just incredible
to me, and I got very excited to learn that, Like,
(04:43):
it's not just the monitor that beholds what you can
do with a computer, but it's also all the insides
and how you can manipulate it to do all the
different things that you wanted to do, so he got
me interested in that. My mom got me interested in
theater because she basically forced me into it, and I
ended up falling in love with it. So I took
these two loves and I kind of combined them together
(05:05):
to start doing podcasting. So now I'm entertaining, but I'm
also trying to educate the masses about building computers, programming,
and hacking. So when you got into podcasting, that was,
you know, that's not that far into when it was
really starting to take off. Uh, what was your experience
like when you first started? Um, it was kind of
(05:28):
weird because I didn't really work with a network or
anything like that. My my friends over at Hack five
were just like, Hey, you should come move in with us,
and I decided to because I was just out of
college and I didn't really have a job lying out
for me or anything. So I ended up moving out
there to Virginia, got a full time job at a
bank as a teller, which was really boring, and I
(05:51):
ended up doing this show Hack five pretty much at
like the middle of the night once a week for
us like a couple of years. When I first started
doing it, it was really weird. To me, it was
very awkward to be in front of a camera as
opposed to being in front of a theater audience because
there's a really big you know, it's a big difference.
You don't have that kind of interaction that you get
(06:12):
from theater. Yeah, there's no live feedback. You don't you
can't tell when you're doing well, and when you're not
doing well. You don't know when to amp up the
energy or maybe pull it back exactly, So you don't
you don't know if you're doing well until the shows
on YouTube and then you start seeing the comments. Well,
and you can't judge your performance by YouTube comments. It
(06:33):
took me a long time to learn that, So, um, yeah,
it was It was very interesting to me. It was
a little bit hard. Some of my first segments are
incredibly terrible, and I suggest that nobody go watch them,
and now everybody's going to. But I think that I've
learned a lot. I've been doing it since uh two
thousand and eight, and I've I've had more than ten
(06:54):
thousand hours just on podcasting alone, whether that's researching for
are you saying or actually being in front of the
camera and doing it. So I feel like I'm starting
to get it now. Yeah. They say that your first
ten thousand hours are your hardest. Oh yeah, you know.
I I think that's about three episodes of tech stuff.
I do tend to get a little long winded, but
(07:18):
on a more serious note, I am curious when you
get you know, you do these episodes about hacking and
about coding. You do all these shows, not just episodes,
but entire shows about it. What is your favorite programming
language that you've worked with so far? Oh man, I know,
it's like choosing your favorite kid. It is. Oh man,
(07:40):
that's a hard one because they all have good aspects. Well,
so far, I've done Java, c sharp, Python, and Pearl,
and um, I think c sharp is my favorite. I
really like the syntax, I like the organization, and we
just started getting into object oriented programming with c sharp,
and I found it really compelling because like I was
(08:01):
able to build applications with it. It's just so cool,
and it's it's so much easier to use than some
of the other ones because like even the gooey just
tells you whenever you make an error, and it tells
you exactly what line it does it's on, So it's
a lot more helpful to beginners. And I still consider
myself a beginner programmer, so right now, yeah, C sharp
is my favorite. Alright, So then no, no, no, no
(08:24):
one should hate you for that. I think just saying
that gives people that insight to know that, you know,
if they're interested in just getting their toes wet, which
programming language would be a fun one to start off with,
one that really appeals to them. I always tell people that,
you know, it may take some some experimentation with different
(08:46):
ones to kind of see which ones click with your
thinking style. Yes, you know, people thinking very different ways,
and the way I think it organized my thoughts, there
are certain languages that work really well, and then there
are other ones where I look get and I say,
I don't know what this this gobbledygook is supposed to do,
so I can't tell you that it doesn't. And I
(09:08):
think that's why a lot of people make their favorites
when it comes to programming, is just we we all
think very differently. So psychologically, you might look at the
data and think it's completely confusing, while I look at
it and say, oh, yeah, that completely makes sense. Well, then,
now that we've talked about the the the programming language side,
you know, like you you said, hacking is so much
(09:30):
more than writing code than writing computer programs. A lot
of us associate the word hacking with the idea of
of breaking into a system, which is obviously a very
narrow definition. In the old days, what hacking was all
about was that you wanted some technology to do something specific.
(09:51):
It was not necessarily meant to do that. So you
had to figure out how to make the stuff you
have do the stuff you wanted to do, and you
would create a hack. You would you know, elegance was
not necessary. You didn't have to worry about looking pretty.
It just needed to work. And so there's some hackers
who may take a little extra time and a little
(10:12):
extra effort and a little extra baggage to get the
thing done. But the important thing is at the end
of the day, it does what you wanted to do.
So with that in mind, with the with hacking taking
into account physical things not just code, are there any
physical hacks that you found to be particularly interesting, something
(10:33):
that really fascinated you. Yes, I've been doing some really
cool hacks lately with something called software defined radio, and
it sounds like it's just software but it's not. You
take these physical antennas and most of them have USB,
your micro USB connectors and them, so you can plug
them into your computer. And you can build different uh,
(10:55):
different length antennas to be able to pick up different
kinds of frequencies. Plug him in to these little um
R T L SDR dongles that you plug into your computer,
and then you can start picking up all sorts of
different frequencies through your computer. As opposed to the old
school Ham radio operators where they had the really really
big machines, these cost you know, a fraction of the price,
(11:19):
and you can also do it straight from your desktop
or from your laptop. So I've been lately, I've been
building a bunch of different antennas. I've learned how to
basically do the math behind antenna building, and it's really
really complicated. Yeah, it's complicated. You have to make sure
one wire is grounded and the other one is picking
up lots of frequency speeds and whatnot, and then you
(11:41):
have to make sure that you have at level and
it's perfectly straight so yet that your all your your
bandwidth is going out the correct directions. It's really weird,
but I've been having so much fun with like tracking
airplanes and ships that are coming into the bay and
being able to One thing I really want to do
is build an antenna to pick up the weather satellites. Luckily,
(12:04):
all of this stuff is legal, So this is this
is hacking in a legal aspect because that's what I
like to do. Um. But yeah, this is my new
favorite thing. Yeah, this is well, this is all about
receiving information. It's not like you're beaming out something so that.
Uh you know that weather satellite was supposed to be
over Nevada but instead it's in the Pacific Ocean. Do
(12:25):
you know anything about that? It's not like that I
can do that, but i'd have to be a ham
radio operator licensed. Well, what's what's interesting is that you know,
when you were mentioning the fact that the math behind
antenna's is so complex, I know that really. Well is
because way back in the day, when when we first
started doing the Tech Stuff podcast me and my original
(12:48):
co host Chris Pollett, one of the earliest requests we
ever got was how Cantanna's work. So we started looking
into it, and the more we looked into it, the
more desperate we begin to feel. And to this day,
that episode has never been recorded. So listeners, I'm just
(13:09):
gonna throw this out in the middle of the episode.
If you in fact want to hear how cantenna's work
and you are curious about the technology that nearly broke text,
stuff right in and let me know, and I will
once again go back to the drawing board and attempt
to explain it. Because yeah, I mean, I feel a
little more confident than I did back in those days.
(13:31):
But even so, there's a there's there's a lot of
physics involved. There's a lot of things about the wavelength
of the radio waves that you're trying to pick up
and the relationship between the length of the antenna and
the wavelength. Yeah, yeah, because you have to have you know,
that's when you see these antenna that have that are
really really tall for certain types of wavelengths of radio waves,
(13:52):
because that's the efficient means of picking up that frequency,
and it has to be a certain fraction of the
wavelength for you to be able to do that. Not
something that all of us can easily do. But that's fantastic.
I mean, I love I love this idea of of
of using modern technology to achieve something that in the
(14:15):
old days, a very small dedicated population had access to
but anyone outside of that it just remained completely foreign.
And so now you can just go out and get
the pieces. I figure, you know, when the zombie apocalypse
happens and there's a big E m F and we
have to make sure that, you know, we have a
(14:36):
Faraday cage protecting our ham radio operations. I'm just gonna
have this little intenda in a little USB cable in
my laptop. I'll stick those in a fair Day cage,
and after the E m F happens, I'll plug him
in and I'll be good to go. Yeah, it's it's
good to have someone cheerful about the zombie apocalypse. Well,
(14:56):
we have walkers here in Atlanta, so I mean, it's
just that's true. It's just a way of life here.
You know. You you know, you're on your way to
the train station, you've got to dodge an entire group
of zombies. I joke about it, but there was a
day when I could not get to my favorite diner
because there was a mob of zombies between me and
the diner. That's awesome. Yeah, that's the wonderful thing about
(15:19):
people actually shooting on location. Moving on to other tech questions,
I want to know you've you've been covering technology for
a really long time and in various ways. Are there
any particular stories in tech that you really felt were
important and either you feel they weren't given the appropriate
(15:39):
amount of attention or maybe you feel like it's faded
from memory and should be brought back. Oh, that's a
good question. Well, the first one is still kind of
in the news, and it's the whole Edward Snowden thing. Yes,
and there were there were a whole bunch of hacks
and a whole bunch of security issues. Wait before Edwards
Snowden him along, but he really brought a lot of
(16:02):
it to light for the public. And I think that
was really really important because a lot of the public
just doesn't care about their security, and now that this
is starting to become an issue, they're starting to pay
more attention to when they you know, when they connect
their phone to open wireless, or when they go to
the Starbucks and somebody and they give somebody their password
or whatever it might be. So I think that was
(16:24):
really important. And the second thing I'm really itching to
see more of in the tech Techisphere would be women
in tech news about women that are, you know, taking
over for companies like um, the woman that works at
Yeah who. That was a really really big news thing
and she got a lot of controversy when she first started,
and most of it was just because she was a woman. Um.
(16:46):
I think it's really important to get more women into
working in tech, whether that's just reporting on it or
actually doing behind the scenes stuff like hacking and programming.
It's so so important to me that I'm able to
you know, watch this and report on it as it
comes along and hopefully it's good stuff that I'm reporting on. Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
(17:07):
We've also taken a few stabs at covering those those uh,
those stories as well, including I did an episode recently
where I brought in Kristen Conger of stuff. Mom never
told her. She's been. She's phenomenal. Right, yeah, you've done
You've done some um hangouts with her, right hangouts. She's
so funny, she is, she's hilarious and she really knows
(17:30):
her stuff. And she joined me and we had a
nice frank conversation about Anita Sarkeesian and her work with
the women versus our troops versus women in video games,
and yeah it was. It's a fantastic episode. If you
guys haven't listened to it, you should definitely go and
check that out. Kristen makes some great points. Um, and
I fumbled my way through and uh, as is my want.
(17:53):
But that's why I feel the same way. I feel
very strongly about that, because I I am fortunate to
work in an office that is filled with some of
the most intelligent people I've ever had the luxury to know,
and there men and women who are constantly keeping me
on my toes and to just see that and to say,
(18:16):
why is this? This is something that's just this is
the norm. This is actually normal, and a lot of
people don't end up appreciating that. So the folks who
do report on those stories to make sure that they
do get the attention they deserve, get my respect quite
a bit. So now you've said that you have to
talk a lot about tech reviews, you know, the kind
(18:41):
of things that you have to look at. Are there
any tech products that you felt, you know, were absolutely stellar,
something that truly knocked your socks off? I mean, not
that it's an endorsement, I'm just curious. Yeah, there is,
and it's gonna sound really cheesy, but there's these things
called the neco Mimi ears. Are these the ears that
(19:04):
react to your emotional status. So it sounds really cheesy.
This this is a kitty cat ears that perk up
if you're if you get if you're like, uh, become
suddenly alert you're you're mentally Yeah, So this is um
this is not a big surprise. It shouldn't. I'm obsessed
with anime and I love cats, so if I can
(19:26):
cause play as a cat, I'm perfectly fine with this,
especially if the ears move. So a lot of people
think that these things are totally fake, but I have some,
and I've warned them a lot, and I know that
you can. You can train them. You can you can
make your brain things certain things, and you'll figure out
what things that you think about that will make them
(19:47):
twitch or make them move softly and go to sleep.
I figured out that if I do math, they twitch nice. Yeah,
it's I just think the the technology behind it is
really cool because they use the brain wave detector that
you put on your forehead as well as a little
one that you clip onto your ear, and it picks
up all sorts of different um you know, brain waves
(20:10):
that you're thinking about, so you can't really read your thoughts,
but it can read how active your brain is. And uh,
it's not only like the ears that have been created
out of this, but also I went to the yeahoo
um campus about a year ago and there was a
really really cool uh display of this out in there,
just in their backyard. Basically, somebody had built a huge
(20:33):
like PVC piped ahead of a person, a human head,
but it was like ten ft tall and it was
really big and um. They lit it up with a
bunch of l d s and if you sit down
and put on the brain wave sensors, it would start
activating different l eds depending on how active your brain was.
And it was such a huge display that you could
see it from really really far away and it would
(20:53):
just light up the entire the entire yard. It was beautiful. Really,
it's uh it reminds me actually of and I'm sure
you've you've heard of this too, people who are using
uh a similar set up, but instead of detecting brain waves,
they're trying to stimulate cognitive abilities by using light electrical current.
(21:16):
And it's the same sort of thing. You have one
one like sponge with an electrode in it that's over
essentially over uh, not quite over on your temple, but
sort of over your eyebrow, and another one that is
closer to your temple on the other side, and UH
you use that to stimulate your your brains activity, and
(21:38):
anecdotal UH responses say that helps boost things like, uh,
your your mental acuity, and um, of course this sort
of thing I should, I should add is something you
want to be careful with. And I would not recommend
any of my listeners actually rush out and try and
do this. I did. Ah. I have another show called
(21:58):
Forward Thinking where UH Joe McCormick and I talked about
it and UH and he's he's the one of the
writers for the Forward Thinking Show, and he and I
and and my former co host Lauren we all talked
about this stuff and they were shocked when I said, yeah,
I I might try this, and they all thought you
were crazy, isn't you should? So now now that we've
(22:21):
talked about some of the stuff you've done since you
do work also with UH hacking in general and things
like you mentioned, you know, the not you know, being
very careful if you're using public WiFi that kind of thing.
What sort of tips would you have to give someone
who wants to just be now generally safe with their
(22:42):
their wife. I use these are questions that come in
all the time, and I've even done episodes on it.
But it's always good to talk to someone who who
extensively covers this issue. Oh absolutely, I cover this stuff
like every darn day. This is the only thing I
talked about, so um. First off, if you do have
to go to a public WiFi place, and if you
have to use public WiFi, which I definitely recommend not
(23:05):
to uh. In fact, if you have the option just
transfer your cell phone data from your phone to your laptop,
if you have that option with your cell phone provider,
that would be a much safer way as opposed to
doing you know, open wireless wherever you go. So, if
you have to connect to open wireless, first off, make
sure you're not logging into anything like your banks or
(23:28):
your UH email accounts, or anything specifically related to your
personal identifying information. If you do your password and use
your name could be stolen. It's really really easy to
do well, not so surprisingly uh. Secondly, if you are
on open wireless, make sure that each and every single
(23:49):
password that you do use on all your different sites
is different. So if somebody did end up snooping your
usual name and password, they want to be able to
use it to get into some alternative site. So if
your Facebook password is like god sex Love, which if
you watch tackers you probably recommend nize that, then you
don't want to use God sets love over on you know,
(24:10):
Bank of America dot Com or whatever you're banking credentials
might be. So that would be helpful. Um, what else
would be good? Oh, use a password reminder. Those are
awesome tools to have, and I use one on my computer.
It's called last Pass. Last Pass is amazing. It just
basically generates all these really really random characters for each
(24:33):
and every single password that I use, So all of
my passwords are different. And uh, if I log into
anything I know that, you know, it's going to be
really easy to find that in my last past vault.
But it's going to be so hard to memorize and
so hard to basically crack that it would take somebody days,
if not you know, months, to be able to crack it.
(24:54):
So I'm not too worried about my passwords and use
two factor authentication. I loved two factor authentication. So t
f A or t F to f A is it
basically means that it's using two different versions of information
to access your accounts. So it could be something you
know and something you have, or it could be yeah
(25:18):
like that. So for me, it would be something I know,
which is my password, and then something I have, which
is a token I D on my phone. So unless
I have both of those things, I'm not able to
log onto my accounts on any kind of wireless no
matter where it is. Right, I'm really hopeful that two
factor authentication becomes the norm for most logins, at least
(25:39):
for things that you need to log into regularly. I
use it for I use it for my email, I
use it for use it for Facebook. UM, so I
use it for the things that I whenever it's possible,
And like you, I use a password reminder system, a
vault system. I use dash ling, which is similar to
(26:00):
last Pass. Yeah, it's dash len is pretty cool. It's
uh one of those that that also has the cloud
based UM system, so that if you are on someone
else's computer and you need to access something, you can
access it through the website. Uh, you know, go to
dash Len's website and access your passwords that way, and
(26:22):
that way you don't have to download anything to that
person's computer. And that's useful. So really you just the
key to those is that you usually have to have
one master password that will get you into the vault
so that the vault knows you are who you claim
to be. And uh even that dash Len and I
think has uh two factor authentication as well. I think
(26:44):
I always get a message on my phone whenever I
have to do a white on a computer on a
computer I'm rebuilding a computer or something. Uh that's I
go in and attack my password super fast to hit
and I'm ready for it to load up. Oh that's right.
Let me get my phone, gotta go type in this
text message. Yeah. So that's that's great advice. I really
(27:05):
much appreciate it. So now I want to ask you,
are there any things in tech like, are there any
areas in tech that you haven't really had a chance
to dive into yet that you would love a chance
to explore further? Maybe it's a texture, There are, yes, yes,
(27:28):
there is. I just remembered car tech. Okay, I know
almost nothing about cars. It's so sad, really, but I
know that there's all sorts of crazy cool hacks that
you can do with newer cars on the market. Like
I just saw a guy on YouTube. He has a Tesla.
I don't know how I can afford one of those things,
but he has a Tesla and he has a this
(27:51):
hack RF, which is a software defined radio that you
can plug into your computer. Basically, so he took this
radio and the sentence and he played a frequency through
the antenna. He transmitted it nearest Tesla and he was
able to open the little gas control on his on
his Tesla, and I was like, that is so crazy cool.
(28:11):
I didn't know you could do that. And apparently you
can do things with like the little key fobs that
you received with cars when you buy him new. You know,
those things are crazy expensive, but it turns out every
time you hit the unlocked button or the lock button,
they send the same frequency, but it's encoded in a
different way, so you can't copy it and you can't
create your own key fob to open and break into
(28:32):
other people's cars. It's like, so cool, that's pretty awesome.
I get really excited about stuff like that, so I
need to learn more about cars. Well, we've got a
We've got a guy here. His named Scott Benjamin. He's
one of the two hosts for Car Stuff. And before
he came to How Stuff works, he worked in the
auto industry. Uh so he has a huge background in that.
(28:53):
He sits right next to me, and he's a very
quiet guy, very very polite, and then when you, uh,
when you really start chatting with him about cars, he
just he lights up. And so we've had a couple
of discussions, and in fact, I just recorded an episode
with him where we talked about autonomous cars and all
the technology that goes into making that possible, and how
(29:15):
some of that technology is finding its way into consumer
vehicles today. They're not autonomous vehicles, but they are my
car parks itself. Yeah, it's the best thing ever. Well yeah,
especially if you live in say like the Bay Area.
Oh yeah, if you don't know how to parallel park
out here, you can't park. And I don't know how
to parallel park because I grew up in Missouri. So yeah,
(29:37):
and and also you didn't have to worry about parallel
parking on a on a hill that has like a
forty degree incline. Very true. So I just let my
car do it for me. That's a good it was
a good investment. He was talking about a system that would,
uh would even get to the point where it lets
you out at the curb of say a mall, and
then it goes and looks for a parking spot and
(30:00):
of itself, and then when you come out, you hit
your little key fob and then it comes and finds you.
Oh my gosh, it's like a puppy. Yeah. Yeah, again,
it's getting closer and closer to the truly driverless cars, um,
which I cannot wait for personally since I don't I
don't drive, so for me, that would be a wonderful thing.
So what do you find frustrating as someone who covers technology?
(30:25):
What what sort of things do you think would you
like to see change just in all the sort of
stuff you do, um, being a woman in tech. So yeah,
that would be a big one, right, Not not that
you would change being a woman, but that you would
change how everyone behaves towards you. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well,
(30:47):
I didn't really feel strong and self worthy until a
few years ago. You know, I've been doing this since
two thousand and eight, and I've dealt with all sorts
of rude things being thrown at me, people calling me
stupid or calling me a nube. And yeah, I think
I'm anub about certain things, but when they call me
a nub about what I'm researching and talking about, I'm like, no, no,
(31:08):
I'm not here. I can teach you this too. Let
me show you how this works. Yeah, no, it's it's
it's it's irritating because they act not only as if
you don't know anything, but that you could not know anything,
that you you are incapable of learning even if you
you know, I didn't know it. First of all, you
already know it. Second of all, you have the capacity
(31:30):
to learn even if it if it is something you
don't know, you can learn it. That's exactly right. I
learned something new every single day. That's one of my
goals is learning something new every day, no matter how smaller,
how big it is, and then I try to teach
other people that thing that I learned. Yeah, that's that's
kind of how how stuff works works. Just sort of
the philosophy of our company and our website. So there's
(31:52):
no one here at this company who doesn't learn something
new every day. Um, and then of course it's our
job to try and communicate that to our audience in
a way that makes sense and is accurate. You know,
those are two things that are challenging. You know. Yeah,
I've had I've had a few experiences where like I
would have email from a fan and they'd say like, oh,
(32:15):
I think this is really cool and it's so easy
even you could do it, And I'm just like, really,
how you feel? And the side part is, I don't
think that a lot of times people realize that they're
being somewhat downgrading, and it's just because they perceive women
as not supposed to be in the tech field. So
(32:36):
they just figure, oh, well, you're in you're in the field. Well,
you're just here because you're pretty. You're in the field.
You're just here to you know, hang out with the
cool guys whatever. It might be like, No, I'm not,
I'm here because I want to build a new computer. Well,
more power to you, is what I say. So who
are some of the people that you really like to
(32:57):
uh to work with or or listen to. I don't
know if you have time to actually listen to other podcasts.
It's getting harder and harder, especially if you're working on
five or six shows, you probably don't have a whole
lot of spare time. But I'm just curious, who are
the people that you you look to as your favorite
peers in the space. Um, well there's lots. Uh. There's
(33:19):
this guy Jonathan Strickland, who's great at what he does.
A bald idiot. Bald idiot. But that's very sweet. I
was not fishing for compliments. I'm just gonna blush. You
keep talking, Okay. So, um, one of my friends who
has been doing journalistic podcasting for a long time, his
name is Tom Merritt. You know, he's awesome. Uh. He
(33:42):
was one of the very very first podcasters that I
started listening to way back in college days, and I
thought that he was He was very understanding, his voice
was excellent to listen to, and he did his research.
He wasn't just you know, reading off articles. He was
actually going in depth and trying to find really interesting
information about everything that he was talking about. So I've
(34:05):
been listening to Tom merrit shows for a very long time.
He even he was my officiant for my wedding. Yeah, Tom,
Tom is uh. For those of you who do not
know Tom Merritt. Uh He He was a podcaster for
a very long time with c NET did a very
popular show called Buzz out Loud. He worked for a
while over at This Week in Tech. He was the
(34:25):
person who started tech News. Today. He now has his
own show that's supported by by listeners. Actually that he
uses Patreon to support his show, and that's the Daily
Tech News Show. And Tom Tom only is really good
at communicating uh tech news and explaining the context and
why it's important. He's also incredibly generous with his time,
(34:50):
and he loves to have other people come onto his
show and share their points of view and generally is
one of the nicest guy in podcasting that I've I've encountered.
Yeah me too. He was the first person to have
me on as a guest on another show, and that
was on buzz out Loud way back in the day.
(35:11):
Yeah yeah, Tom, good choice, good choice, We go back,
we go back in the days. I respect him very
much and I appreciate that he's let me kind of
go under his wing a little bit and ask him
questions whenever I need help. Um. One of my co workers,
Patrick Norton, He's been in the scene for a long time,
and he's he's really kind of taken me under his
(35:32):
wing as well, and he's taught me a lot about
podcasting and what he expects of me being on his show,
and I still consider it his show even though we're
both doing Taxola together. And um, last but not least,
one of my favorite women in the industry is Veronica Belmont,
another one of our good friends. Wow. Yeah, you've named
all the people that I know, because like now, working
(35:54):
in this field and working with these people, I've really
you know, learned about their personality, these and learned what
they're good at and what they still want to divulge in.
And a lot of them are you know, I feel
like they're experts in their fields. And UM, for me,
you know, Patrick and Tom are excellent people to look
up to as far as you know, what should I
(36:15):
do better from your standpoint. But Veronica for me, is
a great female perspective because she's been in it a
lot longer than I have. She went to school for um,
I believe for audio or something, UM. But she's she's
been in it long enough to you know, know, how
to cope with dealing with you know, anti female people
in the world and how to deal with industry. Yeah, exactly.
(36:40):
So I've asked her a lot of questions about like, hey,
how do I deal with this comment on YouTube and
stuff like that, and she's been really helpful in that
way as well. Yeah, I I respect the heck out
of all the people you have mentioned. I have so
many other friends that are in in the field, Like
you know, I work with Darren Kitchen and he's this
amazing hacker and he's taught me a lot as well,
(37:02):
Like anytime I have a question on hack five, I'm like, dude,
how do I do this? And he can explain it
to me in a detail that breaks it down so
so good, and I'm just like, holy crap, I'm so
happy that I work with you. Yeah, there's just there's
so many people in this field that you can learn from,
and I'm trying to use as much as that of
that to my advantage as I can it. To me,
(37:24):
what's phenomenal is that, uh, and this is peaked behind
the curtain for for our podcast listeners. A lot of
podcasters are happy to help out each other, and it's
there's no real ego there for a lot of them.
I'm sure there's some that are exceptions, but you and
I've I've felt that I've I've worked with that before.
But you know, to be honest, most of the people
(37:46):
in our field are some of the nicest people I've
ever met. So now that we've we kind of talked
all about your career and the people that you know
and the things you do. And I know you can't
talk about this new show, so I'm not going to
ask you about the news show. But if you could
do a show that you are not doing now, what
(38:07):
would the topic be? Can I give you two? Yes?
Of course you can, Okay, So the first one is
a Sailor Moon fan show. We all I talk about
is Sailor Moon every day for the entirety of like
an hour, and I would discuss the causeplay and the
mythology behind Sailor Moon, and I would talk about the
author and the manga and the anime. It's an anime
(38:30):
for anybody who's not familiar. I'm obsessed with that show,
and I have been obsessed since I was like five
years old. And I'm going to Japan next year just
to pick up a whole bunch of Sailor Moon merchandise.
That's how obsessed. I am. We gotta get you out
the Dragon Con. I'm telling you, I know, I know.
I'm planning to go next year. I have it on
my calendar when they're opening up hotels again, so I'm
hoping I'll be there next year. All right, So what's
(38:51):
number two? This one's weird and people are going to
think I'm crazy, But it's a couponning show. Yes, you
are super coupons right kind of Well, I'm I'm kind
of taking a break at the moment so I can
focus on the shows that I get paid for. But
coupon ing is when you figure out the store policies
(39:15):
for whatever store steps coupons, and you figure out how
to manipulate the coupon a store sale and a store
coupon and stack them on top of each other to
hopefully get stuff for free. And it's totally legal. You
can do it. It's completely fine, and as long as
it's under their policy, you're allowed to do whatever you
want with the coupon. So I like to go to
(39:36):
stores and try to get things for at least under
a dollar, and a lot of times for free. You
do still have to pay tax, so hopefully it's things
that you use. But I've been able to get like
a pretty good stockpile of you know, hygienic things, lots
of paper products, and I've even been able to give
a lot of stuff away to my friends and even
(39:56):
a few homeless guys in the area, and they really
appreciated it. And it makes me feel good insight to
be able to do that kind of thing. Yeah, I
tried it once. I ended up with seventeen bubbles of
shampoo and I just spent the evening crying in the showers,
you know, But I I definitely admire the ability to
do it well. Shannon, again, thank you so much for
(40:21):
being on the show. I'm going to ask you to
come back when we're covering specific topics like coding and hacking,
so that you'll be a guest host, not just an
interview subject. It would be phenomenal. You'll you'll be amazing,
and so we'll we'll we'll get some we'll talk offline
and figure out some topics and times. That's always actually
(40:42):
the biggest challenges figuring out when we can schedule these things.
But for those of my listeners who want to follow
everything you do, one more time, just to give them
the opportunity tell them where to find you. Easiest place
is Twitter. I'm at snubs, so that's at S and
U B S. I think that would be September November Umbrella, uh,
(41:05):
Bravo September. Yeah, that would be. That'd be that'd be
a good call sign right there. Another thing I'm trying
to remember. Oh yeah, my wife's very good at that.
She works in the airline industry, so she she spells
things out like that, and I'm said, my brain doesn't
work that way. You're just just use the letters. I'm
kind of a dork. I practice on the way to
(41:25):
work by looking at license plate numbers. That's fantastic. Yeah,
it's It's a great way to train yourself to learn
all the different um what are they the different Alpha,
new member whatever. I don't even remember what they're called. Charlie,
I would, I would, uh. I know that. My Floyd,
the truck driver, who's one of our super fans, I
(41:46):
know he would. He would jump right in and start
talking about this. That would be one of his dream topic.
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you
for all of my listeners out there. If you have
the Jet Sins for people you would like me to
interview for future episodes of tech Stuff, or maybe there's
just a topic that you've always wanted to learn more about.
(42:07):
Get in touch with me my email addresses, text stuff
at our stuff works dot com, or you can drop
me a line on Facebook or on Twitter or on Tumbler.
The handle it all three is tech Stuff H s
W and I'll talk to you again. Really si for
more on this and thousands of other topics because it
(42:29):
has stuff works dot com
Get in touch with technology with tex Stuff from dot com.
Hey even everyone, and welcome to tex Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
and today I've got a very special treat. The lovely,
the talented, the intelligent, the amazing. Shannon Morse has agreed
(00:26):
to grace me with an interview. Shannon stole my heart
the first time I met her in two thousand thirteen
at c e S because we uh we met and
she immediately, instead of shaking my hand as I was
putting my hand out, gave me a big old hug.
How you doing, Shannon, I'm doing wonderful. I remember that
(00:47):
day so crystal clear. I just ran up to you
and I was like, John, hugs. It was wonderful. I mean, yo,
not that I not that I want everyone at c
e S to do that to me, but it's in
a while. It's nice, ye Shannon. For all of my
listeners who are may not be familiar with your work,
(01:08):
can you give us like a rundown of all the
amazing stuff you do? Absolutely? Um So. Of course you
can always find me on Twitter. I'm snubs on there,
but if you're really interested in checking out my podcast,
I started podcasting in two thousand eight, and I do
about uh five six shows now, well one's kind of
in the work, so I can't talk about that one
(01:29):
quite yet. But I'm also doing Hack five, which is
j K five. It's all about hacking and moning and
really interesting things that you can do with not only
software but hardware as well. We break and we reconstruct things.
It's really fun. Lately we've been hanging out with drones.
It's super, super enjoyable. And I also do a show
called tech Zilla. That one's more of a question the
(01:50):
answer show. We get a lot of viewers that email
us with tech questions, so we try to answer those,
and we also do some tech reviews as well. Lately
I've been reviewing reviewing a lot of cell phones and tablets,
Go Figure. And last, but not least, of course, is
Coding one oh one, and that is a beginner's programming show.
We're not really there to take place of college courses,
(02:11):
but we're there to kind of give you a grasp
of what programming looks like, what different languages are available
to you, and get you excited about it. So we're
hoping to get younger people really excited about programming and
hopefully increase their experience in it when they actually delve
into it in college. That's about it. That's fantastic. And
(02:31):
I mean it's great because it's coming in a time
when I'm seeing kind of a resurgence in that interest
in coding and sharing the love of coding, because you know,
in the early eighties, I'm older than Shannon. In the
early eighties, when people were getting hold of things like
Texas instruments, computers, Apple the Apple to e was my
(02:53):
my baby. Uh. You know, we started learning basic programming,
truly basic programming programming in Bay sick and uh and
and it was something that kids could get into. And
then as time progressed, we started to see these programming
languages become more and more sophisticated and complex, and therefore
(03:13):
the barrier to entrigue became higher and higher, and so
for some people they felt discouraged getting into it because
it just seemed like even the first steps were far
too advanced for them to really understand and appreciate it.
And I love seeing shows like yours, as well as
people working in the field to build hardware for folks
(03:35):
to practice coding on. Things of course, like like the
R do we know, micro controllers and the Raspberry pie um.
These are great tools that I love seeing because it
lets people get that foot in the door and then
build upon the knowledge that they they they are able
to um gain in those early days. So what got
(03:59):
you Channon interested in all of this? Oh? Man, can
I blame my dad? Well? We can. We can give
him credit. Will give him credit. Well, when I was
really little, the very first thing that was in my
nursery was a computer, and that was the eighties, so
I grew up with computers in my house. My dad
(04:21):
taught me how to build my first machine. He brought
me to this PC store in Indiana back when I
was a little kid, and I just thought it was amazing.
For me, it was like it was like Chucky Cheese
for nerds. It was so incredible with all the all
these pieces of ram just hanging out and all the
CPUs that you could choose from. It was just incredible
to me, and I got very excited to learn that, Like,
(04:43):
it's not just the monitor that beholds what you can
do with a computer, but it's also all the insides
and how you can manipulate it to do all the
different things that you wanted to do, so he got
me interested in that. My mom got me interested in
theater because she basically forced me into it, and I
ended up falling in love with it. So I took
these two loves and I kind of combined them together
(05:05):
to start doing podcasting. So now I'm entertaining, but I'm
also trying to educate the masses about building computers, programming,
and hacking. So when you got into podcasting, that was,
you know, that's not that far into when it was
really starting to take off. Uh, what was your experience
like when you first started? Um, it was kind of
(05:28):
weird because I didn't really work with a network or
anything like that. My my friends over at Hack five
were just like, Hey, you should come move in with us,
and I decided to because I was just out of
college and I didn't really have a job lying out
for me or anything. So I ended up moving out
there to Virginia, got a full time job at a
bank as a teller, which was really boring, and I
(05:51):
ended up doing this show Hack five pretty much at
like the middle of the night once a week for
us like a couple of years. When I first started
doing it, it was really weird. To me, it was
very awkward to be in front of a camera as
opposed to being in front of a theater audience because
there's a really big you know, it's a big difference.
You don't have that kind of interaction that you get
(06:12):
from theater. Yeah, there's no live feedback. You don't you
can't tell when you're doing well, and when you're not
doing well. You don't know when to amp up the
energy or maybe pull it back exactly, So you don't
you don't know if you're doing well until the shows
on YouTube and then you start seeing the comments. Well,
and you can't judge your performance by YouTube comments. It
(06:33):
took me a long time to learn that, So, um, yeah,
it was It was very interesting to me. It was
a little bit hard. Some of my first segments are
incredibly terrible, and I suggest that nobody go watch them,
and now everybody's going to. But I think that I've
learned a lot. I've been doing it since uh two
thousand and eight, and I've I've had more than ten
(06:54):
thousand hours just on podcasting alone, whether that's researching for
are you saying or actually being in front of the
camera and doing it. So I feel like I'm starting
to get it now. Yeah. They say that your first
ten thousand hours are your hardest. Oh yeah, you know.
I I think that's about three episodes of tech stuff.
I do tend to get a little long winded, but
(07:18):
on a more serious note, I am curious when you
get you know, you do these episodes about hacking and
about coding. You do all these shows, not just episodes,
but entire shows about it. What is your favorite programming
language that you've worked with so far? Oh man, I know,
it's like choosing your favorite kid. It is. Oh man,
(07:40):
that's a hard one because they all have good aspects. Well,
so far, I've done Java, c sharp, Python, and Pearl,
and um, I think c sharp is my favorite. I
really like the syntax, I like the organization, and we
just started getting into object oriented programming with c sharp,
and I found it really compelling because like I was
(08:01):
able to build applications with it. It's just so cool,
and it's it's so much easier to use than some
of the other ones because like even the gooey just
tells you whenever you make an error, and it tells
you exactly what line it does it's on, So it's
a lot more helpful to beginners. And I still consider
myself a beginner programmer, so right now, yeah, C sharp
is my favorite. Alright, So then no, no, no, no
(08:24):
one should hate you for that. I think just saying
that gives people that insight to know that, you know,
if they're interested in just getting their toes wet, which
programming language would be a fun one to start off with,
one that really appeals to them. I always tell people that,
you know, it may take some some experimentation with different
(08:46):
ones to kind of see which ones click with your
thinking style. Yes, you know, people thinking very different ways,
and the way I think it organized my thoughts, there
are certain languages that work really well, and then there
are other ones where I look get and I say,
I don't know what this this gobbledygook is supposed to do,
so I can't tell you that it doesn't. And I
(09:08):
think that's why a lot of people make their favorites
when it comes to programming, is just we we all
think very differently. So psychologically, you might look at the
data and think it's completely confusing, while I look at
it and say, oh, yeah, that completely makes sense. Well, then,
now that we've talked about the the the programming language side,
you know, like you you said, hacking is so much
(09:30):
more than writing code than writing computer programs. A lot
of us associate the word hacking with the idea of
of breaking into a system, which is obviously a very
narrow definition. In the old days, what hacking was all
about was that you wanted some technology to do something specific.
(09:51):
It was not necessarily meant to do that. So you
had to figure out how to make the stuff you
have do the stuff you wanted to do, and you
would create a hack. You would you know, elegance was
not necessary. You didn't have to worry about looking pretty.
It just needed to work. And so there's some hackers
who may take a little extra time and a little
(10:12):
extra effort and a little extra baggage to get the
thing done. But the important thing is at the end
of the day, it does what you wanted to do.
So with that in mind, with the with hacking taking
into account physical things not just code, are there any
physical hacks that you found to be particularly interesting, something
(10:33):
that really fascinated you. Yes, I've been doing some really
cool hacks lately with something called software defined radio, and
it sounds like it's just software but it's not. You
take these physical antennas and most of them have USB,
your micro USB connectors and them, so you can plug
them into your computer. And you can build different uh,
(10:55):
different length antennas to be able to pick up different
kinds of frequencies. Plug him in to these little um
R T L SDR dongles that you plug into your computer,
and then you can start picking up all sorts of
different frequencies through your computer. As opposed to the old
school Ham radio operators where they had the really really
big machines, these cost you know, a fraction of the price,
(11:19):
and you can also do it straight from your desktop
or from your laptop. So I've been lately, I've been
building a bunch of different antennas. I've learned how to
basically do the math behind antenna building, and it's really
really complicated. Yeah, it's complicated. You have to make sure
one wire is grounded and the other one is picking
up lots of frequency speeds and whatnot, and then you
(11:41):
have to make sure that you have at level and
it's perfectly straight so yet that your all your your
bandwidth is going out the correct directions. It's really weird,
but I've been having so much fun with like tracking
airplanes and ships that are coming into the bay and
being able to One thing I really want to do
is build an antenna to pick up the weather satellites. Luckily,
(12:04):
all of this stuff is legal, So this is this
is hacking in a legal aspect because that's what I
like to do. Um. But yeah, this is my new
favorite thing. Yeah, this is well, this is all about
receiving information. It's not like you're beaming out something so that.
Uh you know that weather satellite was supposed to be
over Nevada but instead it's in the Pacific Ocean. Do
(12:25):
you know anything about that? It's not like that I
can do that, but i'd have to be a ham
radio operator licensed. Well, what's what's interesting is that you know,
when you were mentioning the fact that the math behind
antenna's is so complex, I know that really. Well is
because way back in the day, when when we first
started doing the Tech Stuff podcast me and my original
(12:48):
co host Chris Pollett, one of the earliest requests we
ever got was how Cantanna's work. So we started looking
into it, and the more we looked into it, the
more desperate we begin to feel. And to this day,
that episode has never been recorded. So listeners, I'm just
(13:09):
gonna throw this out in the middle of the episode.
If you in fact want to hear how cantenna's work
and you are curious about the technology that nearly broke text,
stuff right in and let me know, and I will
once again go back to the drawing board and attempt
to explain it. Because yeah, I mean, I feel a
little more confident than I did back in those days.
(13:31):
But even so, there's a there's there's a lot of
physics involved. There's a lot of things about the wavelength
of the radio waves that you're trying to pick up
and the relationship between the length of the antenna and
the wavelength. Yeah, yeah, because you have to have you know,
that's when you see these antenna that have that are
really really tall for certain types of wavelengths of radio waves,
(13:52):
because that's the efficient means of picking up that frequency,
and it has to be a certain fraction of the
wavelength for you to be able to do that. Not
something that all of us can easily do. But that's fantastic.
I mean, I love I love this idea of of
of using modern technology to achieve something that in the
(14:15):
old days, a very small dedicated population had access to
but anyone outside of that it just remained completely foreign.
And so now you can just go out and get
the pieces. I figure, you know, when the zombie apocalypse
happens and there's a big E m F and we
have to make sure that, you know, we have a
(14:36):
Faraday cage protecting our ham radio operations. I'm just gonna
have this little intenda in a little USB cable in
my laptop. I'll stick those in a fair Day cage,
and after the E m F happens, I'll plug him
in and I'll be good to go. Yeah, it's it's
good to have someone cheerful about the zombie apocalypse. Well,
(14:56):
we have walkers here in Atlanta, so I mean, it's
just that's true. It's just a way of life here.
You know. You you know, you're on your way to
the train station, you've got to dodge an entire group
of zombies. I joke about it, but there was a
day when I could not get to my favorite diner
because there was a mob of zombies between me and
the diner. That's awesome. Yeah, that's the wonderful thing about
(15:19):
people actually shooting on location. Moving on to other tech questions,
I want to know you've you've been covering technology for
a really long time and in various ways. Are there
any particular stories in tech that you really felt were
important and either you feel they weren't given the appropriate
(15:39):
amount of attention or maybe you feel like it's faded
from memory and should be brought back. Oh, that's a
good question. Well, the first one is still kind of
in the news, and it's the whole Edward Snowden thing. Yes,
and there were there were a whole bunch of hacks
and a whole bunch of security issues. Wait before Edwards
Snowden him along, but he really brought a lot of
(16:02):
it to light for the public. And I think that
was really really important because a lot of the public
just doesn't care about their security, and now that this
is starting to become an issue, they're starting to pay
more attention to when they you know, when they connect
their phone to open wireless, or when they go to
the Starbucks and somebody and they give somebody their password
or whatever it might be. So I think that was
(16:24):
really important. And the second thing I'm really itching to
see more of in the tech Techisphere would be women
in tech news about women that are, you know, taking
over for companies like um, the woman that works at
Yeah who. That was a really really big news thing
and she got a lot of controversy when she first started,
and most of it was just because she was a woman. Um.
(16:46):
I think it's really important to get more women into
working in tech, whether that's just reporting on it or
actually doing behind the scenes stuff like hacking and programming.
It's so so important to me that I'm able to
you know, watch this and report on it as it
comes along and hopefully it's good stuff that I'm reporting on. Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
(17:07):
We've also taken a few stabs at covering those those uh,
those stories as well, including I did an episode recently
where I brought in Kristen Conger of stuff. Mom never
told her. She's been. She's phenomenal. Right, yeah, you've done
You've done some um hangouts with her, right hangouts. She's
so funny, she is, she's hilarious and she really knows
(17:30):
her stuff. And she joined me and we had a
nice frank conversation about Anita Sarkeesian and her work with
the women versus our troops versus women in video games,
and yeah it was. It's a fantastic episode. If you
guys haven't listened to it, you should definitely go and
check that out. Kristen makes some great points. Um, and
I fumbled my way through and uh, as is my want.
(17:53):
But that's why I feel the same way. I feel
very strongly about that, because I I am fortunate to
work in an office that is filled with some of
the most intelligent people I've ever had the luxury to know,
and there men and women who are constantly keeping me
on my toes and to just see that and to say,
(18:16):
why is this? This is something that's just this is
the norm. This is actually normal, and a lot of
people don't end up appreciating that. So the folks who
do report on those stories to make sure that they
do get the attention they deserve, get my respect quite
a bit. So now you've said that you have to
talk a lot about tech reviews, you know, the kind
(18:41):
of things that you have to look at. Are there
any tech products that you felt, you know, were absolutely stellar,
something that truly knocked your socks off? I mean, not
that it's an endorsement, I'm just curious. Yeah, there is,
and it's gonna sound really cheesy, but there's these things
called the neco Mimi ears. Are these the ears that
(19:04):
react to your emotional status. So it sounds really cheesy.
This this is a kitty cat ears that perk up
if you're if you get if you're like, uh, become
suddenly alert you're you're mentally Yeah, So this is um
this is not a big surprise. It shouldn't. I'm obsessed
with anime and I love cats, so if I can
(19:26):
cause play as a cat, I'm perfectly fine with this,
especially if the ears move. So a lot of people
think that these things are totally fake, but I have some,
and I've warned them a lot, and I know that
you can. You can train them. You can you can
make your brain things certain things, and you'll figure out
what things that you think about that will make them
(19:47):
twitch or make them move softly and go to sleep.
I figured out that if I do math, they twitch nice. Yeah,
it's I just think the the technology behind it is
really cool because they use the brain wave detector that
you put on your forehead as well as a little
one that you clip onto your ear, and it picks
up all sorts of different um you know, brain waves
(20:10):
that you're thinking about, so you can't really read your thoughts,
but it can read how active your brain is. And uh,
it's not only like the ears that have been created
out of this, but also I went to the yeahoo
um campus about a year ago and there was a
really really cool uh display of this out in there,
just in their backyard. Basically, somebody had built a huge
(20:33):
like PVC piped ahead of a person, a human head,
but it was like ten ft tall and it was
really big and um. They lit it up with a
bunch of l d s and if you sit down
and put on the brain wave sensors, it would start
activating different l eds depending on how active your brain was.
And it was such a huge display that you could
see it from really really far away and it would
(20:53):
just light up the entire the entire yard. It was beautiful. Really,
it's uh it reminds me actually of and I'm sure
you've you've heard of this too, people who are using
uh a similar set up, but instead of detecting brain waves,
they're trying to stimulate cognitive abilities by using light electrical current.
(21:16):
And it's the same sort of thing. You have one
one like sponge with an electrode in it that's over
essentially over uh, not quite over on your temple, but
sort of over your eyebrow, and another one that is
closer to your temple on the other side, and UH
you use that to stimulate your your brains activity, and
(21:38):
anecdotal UH responses say that helps boost things like, uh,
your your mental acuity, and um, of course this sort
of thing I should, I should add is something you
want to be careful with. And I would not recommend
any of my listeners actually rush out and try and
do this. I did. Ah. I have another show called
(21:58):
Forward Thinking where UH Joe McCormick and I talked about
it and UH and he's he's the one of the
writers for the Forward Thinking Show, and he and I
and and my former co host Lauren we all talked
about this stuff and they were shocked when I said, yeah,
I I might try this, and they all thought you
were crazy, isn't you should? So now now that we've
(22:21):
talked about some of the stuff you've done since you
do work also with UH hacking in general and things
like you mentioned, you know, the not you know, being
very careful if you're using public WiFi that kind of thing.
What sort of tips would you have to give someone
who wants to just be now generally safe with their
(22:42):
their wife. I use these are questions that come in
all the time, and I've even done episodes on it.
But it's always good to talk to someone who who
extensively covers this issue. Oh absolutely, I cover this stuff
like every darn day. This is the only thing I
talked about, so um. First off, if you do have
to go to a public WiFi place, and if you
have to use public WiFi, which I definitely recommend not
(23:05):
to uh. In fact, if you have the option just
transfer your cell phone data from your phone to your laptop,
if you have that option with your cell phone provider,
that would be a much safer way as opposed to
doing you know, open wireless wherever you go. So, if
you have to connect to open wireless, first off, make
sure you're not logging into anything like your banks or
(23:28):
your UH email accounts, or anything specifically related to your
personal identifying information. If you do your password and use
your name could be stolen. It's really really easy to
do well, not so surprisingly uh. Secondly, if you are
on open wireless, make sure that each and every single
(23:49):
password that you do use on all your different sites
is different. So if somebody did end up snooping your
usual name and password, they want to be able to
use it to get into some alternative site. So if
your Facebook password is like god sex Love, which if
you watch tackers you probably recommend nize that, then you
don't want to use God sets love over on you know,
(24:10):
Bank of America dot Com or whatever you're banking credentials
might be. So that would be helpful. Um, what else
would be good? Oh, use a password reminder. Those are
awesome tools to have, and I use one on my computer.
It's called last Pass. Last Pass is amazing. It just
basically generates all these really really random characters for each
(24:33):
and every single password that I use, So all of
my passwords are different. And uh, if I log into
anything I know that, you know, it's going to be
really easy to find that in my last past vault.
But it's going to be so hard to memorize and
so hard to basically crack that it would take somebody days,
if not you know, months, to be able to crack it.
(24:54):
So I'm not too worried about my passwords and use
two factor authentication. I loved two factor authentication. So t
f A or t F to f A is it
basically means that it's using two different versions of information
to access your accounts. So it could be something you
know and something you have, or it could be yeah
(25:18):
like that. So for me, it would be something I know,
which is my password, and then something I have, which
is a token I D on my phone. So unless
I have both of those things, I'm not able to
log onto my accounts on any kind of wireless no
matter where it is. Right, I'm really hopeful that two
factor authentication becomes the norm for most logins, at least
(25:39):
for things that you need to log into regularly. I
use it for I use it for my email, I
use it for use it for Facebook. UM, so I
use it for the things that I whenever it's possible,
And like you, I use a password reminder system, a
vault system. I use dash ling, which is similar to
(26:00):
last Pass. Yeah, it's dash len is pretty cool. It's
uh one of those that that also has the cloud
based UM system, so that if you are on someone
else's computer and you need to access something, you can
access it through the website. Uh, you know, go to
dash Len's website and access your passwords that way, and
(26:22):
that way you don't have to download anything to that
person's computer. And that's useful. So really you just the
key to those is that you usually have to have
one master password that will get you into the vault
so that the vault knows you are who you claim
to be. And uh even that dash Len and I
think has uh two factor authentication as well. I think
(26:44):
I always get a message on my phone whenever I
have to do a white on a computer on a
computer I'm rebuilding a computer or something. Uh that's I
go in and attack my password super fast to hit
and I'm ready for it to load up. Oh that's right.
Let me get my phone, gotta go type in this
text message. Yeah. So that's that's great advice. I really
(27:05):
much appreciate it. So now I want to ask you,
are there any things in tech like, are there any
areas in tech that you haven't really had a chance
to dive into yet that you would love a chance
to explore further? Maybe it's a texture, There are, yes, yes,
(27:28):
there is. I just remembered car tech. Okay, I know
almost nothing about cars. It's so sad, really, but I
know that there's all sorts of crazy cool hacks that
you can do with newer cars on the market. Like
I just saw a guy on YouTube. He has a Tesla.
I don't know how I can afford one of those things,
but he has a Tesla and he has a this
(27:51):
hack RF, which is a software defined radio that you
can plug into your computer. Basically, so he took this
radio and the sentence and he played a frequency through
the antenna. He transmitted it nearest Tesla and he was
able to open the little gas control on his on
his Tesla, and I was like, that is so crazy cool.
(28:11):
I didn't know you could do that. And apparently you
can do things with like the little key fobs that
you received with cars when you buy him new. You know,
those things are crazy expensive, but it turns out every
time you hit the unlocked button or the lock button,
they send the same frequency, but it's encoded in a
different way, so you can't copy it and you can't
create your own key fob to open and break into
(28:32):
other people's cars. It's like, so cool, that's pretty awesome.
I get really excited about stuff like that, so I
need to learn more about cars. Well, we've got a
We've got a guy here. His named Scott Benjamin. He's
one of the two hosts for Car Stuff. And before
he came to How Stuff works, he worked in the
auto industry. Uh so he has a huge background in that.
(28:53):
He sits right next to me, and he's a very
quiet guy, very very polite, and then when you, uh,
when you really start chatting with him about cars, he
just he lights up. And so we've had a couple
of discussions, and in fact, I just recorded an episode
with him where we talked about autonomous cars and all
the technology that goes into making that possible, and how
(29:15):
some of that technology is finding its way into consumer
vehicles today. They're not autonomous vehicles, but they are my
car parks itself. Yeah, it's the best thing ever. Well yeah,
especially if you live in say like the Bay Area.
Oh yeah, if you don't know how to parallel park
out here, you can't park. And I don't know how
to parallel park because I grew up in Missouri. So yeah,
(29:37):
and and also you didn't have to worry about parallel
parking on a on a hill that has like a
forty degree incline. Very true. So I just let my
car do it for me. That's a good it was
a good investment. He was talking about a system that would,
uh would even get to the point where it lets
you out at the curb of say a mall, and
then it goes and looks for a parking spot and
(30:00):
of itself, and then when you come out, you hit
your little key fob and then it comes and finds you.
Oh my gosh, it's like a puppy. Yeah. Yeah, again,
it's getting closer and closer to the truly driverless cars, um,
which I cannot wait for personally since I don't I
don't drive, so for me, that would be a wonderful thing.
So what do you find frustrating as someone who covers technology?
(30:25):
What what sort of things do you think would you
like to see change just in all the sort of
stuff you do, um, being a woman in tech. So yeah,
that would be a big one, right, Not not that
you would change being a woman, but that you would
change how everyone behaves towards you. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well,
(30:47):
I didn't really feel strong and self worthy until a
few years ago. You know, I've been doing this since
two thousand and eight, and I've dealt with all sorts
of rude things being thrown at me, people calling me
stupid or calling me a nube. And yeah, I think
I'm anub about certain things, but when they call me
a nub about what I'm researching and talking about, I'm like, no, no,
(31:08):
I'm not here. I can teach you this too. Let
me show you how this works. Yeah, no, it's it's
it's it's irritating because they act not only as if
you don't know anything, but that you could not know anything,
that you you are incapable of learning even if you
you know, I didn't know it. First of all, you
already know it. Second of all, you have the capacity
(31:30):
to learn even if it if it is something you
don't know, you can learn it. That's exactly right. I
learned something new every single day. That's one of my
goals is learning something new every day, no matter how smaller,
how big it is, and then I try to teach
other people that thing that I learned. Yeah, that's that's
kind of how how stuff works works. Just sort of
the philosophy of our company and our website. So there's
(31:52):
no one here at this company who doesn't learn something
new every day. Um, and then of course it's our
job to try and communicate that to our audience in
a way that makes sense and is accurate. You know,
those are two things that are challenging. You know. Yeah,
I've had I've had a few experiences where like I
would have email from a fan and they'd say like, oh,
(32:15):
I think this is really cool and it's so easy
even you could do it, And I'm just like, really,
how you feel? And the side part is, I don't
think that a lot of times people realize that they're
being somewhat downgrading, and it's just because they perceive women
as not supposed to be in the tech field. So
(32:36):
they just figure, oh, well, you're in you're in the field. Well,
you're just here because you're pretty. You're in the field.
You're just here to you know, hang out with the
cool guys whatever. It might be like, No, I'm not,
I'm here because I want to build a new computer. Well,
more power to you, is what I say. So who
are some of the people that you really like to
(32:57):
uh to work with or or listen to. I don't
know if you have time to actually listen to other podcasts.
It's getting harder and harder, especially if you're working on
five or six shows, you probably don't have a whole
lot of spare time. But I'm just curious, who are
the people that you you look to as your favorite
peers in the space. Um, well there's lots. Uh. There's
(33:19):
this guy Jonathan Strickland, who's great at what he does.
A bald idiot. Bald idiot. But that's very sweet. I
was not fishing for compliments. I'm just gonna blush. You
keep talking, Okay. So, um, one of my friends who
has been doing journalistic podcasting for a long time, his
name is Tom Merritt. You know, he's awesome. Uh. He
(33:42):
was one of the very very first podcasters that I
started listening to way back in college days, and I
thought that he was He was very understanding, his voice
was excellent to listen to, and he did his research.
He wasn't just you know, reading off articles. He was
actually going in depth and trying to find really interesting
information about everything that he was talking about. So I've
(34:05):
been listening to Tom merrit shows for a very long time.
He even he was my officiant for my wedding. Yeah, Tom,
Tom is uh. For those of you who do not
know Tom Merritt. Uh He He was a podcaster for
a very long time with c NET did a very
popular show called Buzz out Loud. He worked for a
while over at This Week in Tech. He was the
(34:25):
person who started tech News. Today. He now has his
own show that's supported by by listeners. Actually that he
uses Patreon to support his show, and that's the Daily
Tech News Show. And Tom Tom only is really good
at communicating uh tech news and explaining the context and
why it's important. He's also incredibly generous with his time,
(34:50):
and he loves to have other people come onto his
show and share their points of view and generally is
one of the nicest guy in podcasting that I've I've encountered.
Yeah me too. He was the first person to have
me on as a guest on another show, and that
was on buzz out Loud way back in the day.
(35:11):
Yeah yeah, Tom, good choice, good choice, We go back,
we go back in the days. I respect him very
much and I appreciate that he's let me kind of
go under his wing a little bit and ask him
questions whenever I need help. Um. One of my co workers,
Patrick Norton, He's been in the scene for a long time,
and he's he's really kind of taken me under his
(35:32):
wing as well, and he's taught me a lot about
podcasting and what he expects of me being on his show,
and I still consider it his show even though we're
both doing Taxola together. And um, last but not least,
one of my favorite women in the industry is Veronica Belmont,
another one of our good friends. Wow. Yeah, you've named
all the people that I know, because like now, working
(35:54):
in this field and working with these people, I've really
you know, learned about their personality, these and learned what
they're good at and what they still want to divulge in.
And a lot of them are you know, I feel
like they're experts in their fields. And UM, for me,
you know, Patrick and Tom are excellent people to look
up to as far as you know, what should I
(36:15):
do better from your standpoint. But Veronica for me, is
a great female perspective because she's been in it a
lot longer than I have. She went to school for um,
I believe for audio or something, UM. But she's she's
been in it long enough to you know, know, how
to cope with dealing with you know, anti female people
in the world and how to deal with industry. Yeah, exactly.
(36:40):
So I've asked her a lot of questions about like, hey,
how do I deal with this comment on YouTube and
stuff like that, and she's been really helpful in that
way as well. Yeah, I I respect the heck out
of all the people you have mentioned. I have so
many other friends that are in in the field, Like
you know, I work with Darren Kitchen and he's this
amazing hacker and he's taught me a lot as well,
(37:02):
Like anytime I have a question on hack five, I'm like, dude,
how do I do this? And he can explain it
to me in a detail that breaks it down so
so good, and I'm just like, holy crap, I'm so
happy that I work with you. Yeah, there's just there's
so many people in this field that you can learn from,
and I'm trying to use as much as that of
that to my advantage as I can it. To me,
(37:24):
what's phenomenal is that, uh, and this is peaked behind
the curtain for for our podcast listeners. A lot of
podcasters are happy to help out each other, and it's
there's no real ego there for a lot of them.
I'm sure there's some that are exceptions, but you and
I've I've felt that I've I've worked with that before.
But you know, to be honest, most of the people
(37:46):
in our field are some of the nicest people I've
ever met. So now that we've we kind of talked
all about your career and the people that you know
and the things you do. And I know you can't
talk about this new show, so I'm not going to
ask you about the news show. But if you could
do a show that you are not doing now, what
(38:07):
would the topic be? Can I give you two? Yes?
Of course you can, Okay, So the first one is
a Sailor Moon fan show. We all I talk about
is Sailor Moon every day for the entirety of like
an hour, and I would discuss the causeplay and the
mythology behind Sailor Moon, and I would talk about the
author and the manga and the anime. It's an anime
(38:30):
for anybody who's not familiar. I'm obsessed with that show,
and I have been obsessed since I was like five
years old. And I'm going to Japan next year just
to pick up a whole bunch of Sailor Moon merchandise.
That's how obsessed. I am. We gotta get you out
the Dragon Con. I'm telling you, I know, I know.
I'm planning to go next year. I have it on
my calendar when they're opening up hotels again, so I'm
hoping I'll be there next year. All right, So what's
(38:51):
number two? This one's weird and people are going to
think I'm crazy, But it's a couponning show. Yes, you
are super coupons right kind of Well, I'm I'm kind
of taking a break at the moment so I can
focus on the shows that I get paid for. But
coupon ing is when you figure out the store policies
(39:15):
for whatever store steps coupons, and you figure out how
to manipulate the coupon a store sale and a store
coupon and stack them on top of each other to
hopefully get stuff for free. And it's totally legal. You
can do it. It's completely fine, and as long as
it's under their policy, you're allowed to do whatever you
want with the coupon. So I like to go to
(39:36):
stores and try to get things for at least under
a dollar, and a lot of times for free. You
do still have to pay tax, so hopefully it's things
that you use. But I've been able to get like
a pretty good stockpile of you know, hygienic things, lots
of paper products, and I've even been able to give
a lot of stuff away to my friends and even
(39:56):
a few homeless guys in the area, and they really
appreciated it. And it makes me feel good insight to
be able to do that kind of thing. Yeah, I
tried it once. I ended up with seventeen bubbles of
shampoo and I just spent the evening crying in the showers,
you know, But I I definitely admire the ability to
do it well. Shannon, again, thank you so much for
(40:21):
being on the show. I'm going to ask you to
come back when we're covering specific topics like coding and hacking,
so that you'll be a guest host, not just an
interview subject. It would be phenomenal. You'll you'll be amazing,
and so we'll we'll we'll get some we'll talk offline
and figure out some topics and times. That's always actually
(40:42):
the biggest challenges figuring out when we can schedule these things.
But for those of my listeners who want to follow
everything you do, one more time, just to give them
the opportunity tell them where to find you. Easiest place
is Twitter. I'm at snubs, so that's at S and
U B S. I think that would be September November Umbrella, uh,
(41:05):
Bravo September. Yeah, that would be. That'd be that'd be
a good call sign right there. Another thing I'm trying
to remember. Oh yeah, my wife's very good at that.
She works in the airline industry, so she she spells
things out like that, and I'm said, my brain doesn't
work that way. You're just just use the letters. I'm
kind of a dork. I practice on the way to
(41:25):
work by looking at license plate numbers. That's fantastic. Yeah,
it's It's a great way to train yourself to learn
all the different um what are they the different Alpha,
new member whatever. I don't even remember what they're called. Charlie,
I would, I would, uh. I know that. My Floyd,
the truck driver, who's one of our super fans, I
(41:46):
know he would. He would jump right in and start
talking about this. That would be one of his dream topic.
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you
for all of my listeners out there. If you have
the Jet Sins for people you would like me to
interview for future episodes of tech Stuff, or maybe there's
just a topic that you've always wanted to learn more about.
(42:07):
Get in touch with me my email addresses, text stuff
at our stuff works dot com, or you can drop
me a line on Facebook or on Twitter or on Tumbler.
The handle it all three is tech Stuff H s
W and I'll talk to you again. Really si for
more on this and thousands of other topics because it
(42:29):
has stuff works dot com
TechStuff News
Host
Jonathan Strickland
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