The Killing IT Podcast

Welcome to Episode 212

At 212 degrees fahrenheit, water becomes steam. At 211 it’s hot. At 212 you can move a locomotive or make electricity. We are happy to bring you episode 212 of the Killing IT Podcast!

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Topic 1: CISA Under the Microscope

CISA was called out in the Project 2025 document as a left-wing organization inside the government due to their warning about election interference. It is now subject to cuts and scrutiny. In the mass firings at DHS on February 14th, 130 employees at CISA were fired as they were “probationary” employees.

Many MSPs and MSSPs subscribe to CISA.gov alerts. It is unclear how this will be affected. Whe...

The Q4 2024 Killing IT Podcast features what may be our last discussion of robots for a long time!

Topic One - Where Are My Robots???

We’ve been talking about this for five years - So where are the robots? We have a massive personnel shortage on many fronts. AI is creating jobs faster and faster. So why haven’t robots evolved to serve us? We’re on the verge. What’s the holdup?

If nothing else, we're tired of talking about it.  

Top...

We're back for Q3 2024. Quick question of the day ... then onto the topics of the day.

Topic 1: MIT Releases the AI Risk Repository

Thanks to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a major resource. It's definitely more for you than your clients. But we see great opportunity here. 

The public database contains 700+ risks as documented by published papers. It includes many categories, based on severity and other variables. 

C...

Topic 1: Massive Botnet Network Taken Down

Police coordinated by the European Union's justice and police agencies have taken down computer networks responsible for spreading ransomware via infected emails, in what they called the biggest-ever international operation against the lucrative form of cybercrime.

The European Union's judicial cooperation agency, Eurojust, said that police arrested four “high value” suspects, took down mo...

Check out the bonus Killing IT content on MSP Radio's Business of Tech podcast! Today's a great day to subscribe to that: https://www.businessof.tech/subscribe/

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Topic 1: The Current State of Mergers, Acquisition, and MSP Consolidation

Mergers and Acquisitions are alive and well in the MSP channel. Jay McBain from Canalys predicts a growth of M&A of 50% in 2024. In addition to MSPs themselves, he says that we’ll see some m...

Topic 1: Chat GPT 1 year later.

AI Article Summary: Elon Musk creates his own AI company called X.AI, while Satya Nadella of Microsoft invests in OpenAI and accelerates plans to incorporate AI into Microsoft's products. OpenAI releases ChatGPT as a "low key research preview," which becomes a hit. Meta, led by Mark Zuckerberg, faces challenges with its own chatbot and struggles with the decision to go open-source. Microsoft introduc...

We're Baaaaaack!

The Killing IT team returns . . . with a fun and educational Q4 show. 

Topic 1: Overworking 

Have you heard the term Over Employment or Overworking? These are folks who manage to hold down two or three full time jobs using apps and BS. Are these just eager, hardworking "gig" folks, or are they thieves who are simply more interested in making money than earning an honest living?

A few links: https://www.vice.com/en...

Topic 1: How much will AI change our business in the next twelve months?

ChatGPT now has over 100 million users. Government wants to regulate it. We’re past the hockey stick moment.

 https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/14/u-s-tech-policy-must-keep-pace-with-ai-innovation/ 

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Topic 2: Oh Dear God - Minority Report crack for Ryan:

Movie clip reconstructed by an AI reading mice's brains as they watch

Researchers have put together a 30-se...

Topic 1: The Arms Race is Here...AI is Definitely Moving Fast, but Will It Break Things?

ChatGPT is now integrated in Bing as “Prometheus.” That sounds ominous. But Bard is also coming. And now Ernie. And Claude. Soon there will be AI bots generating “conversations” and disrupting the search industry on all sides of the globe. Is that a good thing?

https://www.reuters.com/technology/chinas-baidu-finish-testing-chatgpt-style-projec...

Topic 1: Score 1 for the Good Guys in the Cyber Wars

https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-login-0f2b3e6a-1272-4510-8fd2-c1aa9128b8db.html

In a significant development in the fight against ransomware, the FBI announces that they have shut down a notorious cyber gang after infiltrating their system months ago and secretly giving decryption keys to ransomware victims.

Topic 2: Ummmm … This is Some Seriously Scary Big Brother Stuf...

Topic 1: Sorry: Let’s talk jobs.

December: Total new jobs UP 235,000. That is despite the fact the enterprise companies (500 employees+) reduced jobs by 151,000

https://adpemploymentreport.com/ ← Great summary stats

Spotify  600 (6% of workforce) Twitter  3,700 (50% of those who lasted this long) Salesforce 7,000 (10% of workforce) Microsoft 10,000 (5% of workforce) Tesla  10,000 (10% of workforce) Google  12,000 (6% of workforce) ...

Topic 1: Small companies are “labor hoarding” while large companies are laying off.

https://www.utahbusiness.com/labor-hoarding-tech/ 

https://www.teambonding.com/labor-hoarding/ 

Keeping employees at any cost!

Topic 2: Understanding the Dynamics of the Tech Workforce in 2023

Data Point 1: Tech Layoffs are Happening … But Not Because Tech is Suddenly Less Valuable

https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-login-e28dd906-601f-480d-8...

Topic 1: Algorithms Need Management Training, Too!

From Wired Magazine.

Human beings excel at avoiding responsibility for difficult decisions. Management and personnel decisions are often difficult. Therefore, they are great candidates for turning decision-making over to the bots.

What could possibly go wrong?

https://www.wired.com/story/platform-work-labor-economy-ai/ 

Topic 2: Microsoft drops $1 Billion on ChatGPT

I should have ...

Topic 1: Generative AI is Fun … Until the “Other” Guys Start Doing It Too

https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/31/how-china-is-building-a-parallel-generative-ai-universe/

China is aggressively building their own versions of generative AI platforms (with some obvious / inevitable filters) that do essentially the same thing as ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion. The question is whether they will be able to out-race us to the auto-content future...

Topic 1: For Sale on eBay: A Military Database of Fingerprints and Iris Scans

Great topic for ITSPs - especially as clients get rid of equipment at the end of year. Old machines of all kinds might have sensitive data. Not this juicy, perhaps, but stories like this are great for you client-facing newsletters.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/27/technology/for-sale-on-ebay-a-military-database-of-fingerprints-and-iris-scans.html

Topi...

Topic 1: Meta scamming: Scammers Are Scamming Other Scammers Out of Millions of Dollars

https://www.wired.com/story/cybercrime-hackers-scams-forums/ 

On cybercrime forums, user complaints about being duped may accidentally expose their real identities.

Topic 2: Teens are Self-Liberating from Social Media

‘Luddite’ Teens Don’t Want Your Likes

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/style/teens-social-media.html 

Topic 3: The Drones Are...

Topic 1: The Bots are Coming for LinkedIn, Adding New Layers of Risk for Professionals and for Companies … but Especially for Recruiters

https://thehustle.co/12122023-LinkedIn-bots/

Bots are everywhere on social media, and some platforms are doing more to combat them than others. Now that the bots are proliferating on LinkedIn, it’s vital for everyone to think about the layers of threat and the corresponding hygiene on the career-c...

Topic 1: Should the Police have killer robots?

San Francisco approves the use of robots capable of lethal force.

Is this move inevitable, or are the arguments in favor of this just rare exceptions to the rule?

https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/sf-police-killer-robots-would-have-explosives-not-guns-sfpd/ 

Topic 2: Data Volumes are Increasing at Such a Fast Pace, We Need New Words to Describe Just How Much There Is

https://engli...