Compute This 1-5-2025

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Shrock Innovations presents the midwest number one independent computer repair
company with service centers and Lincoln Paul Maha a billion
des moines and across the country via the Shrock desk.
This is Compute This.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Good morning, folks, welcome into Compute this happy twenty twenty five.
Welcome aboard everybody. My name is Thor Schrock. I'm the
owner of the Shrock Innovations Computer Company. Four zero two
five five eight eleven ten or eight eight eight two
five zero two zero nine to one of the numbers
to join us on the program today, quick program note,
as we get started, there is no Facebook today. There

(00:37):
is no aftershock today. We're in a technology upgrade cycle.
If you will, you notice a few new things next
week on the program. So don't panic. It's not that
you can't find it, it's that it doesn't exist, right.
You know, there's no manifestos, there's no conspiracy theories. We
picked a heck of a week to not have an aftershock.
Let me just tell you there's so much crazy stuff

(00:57):
going on. However, there is one very important thing that
we need to accomplish today, and so I don't want
to take up a whole lot of time on perfunctory stuff,
or there isn't really any advertising messages today, there's no
promotions or specials or you know, anything like that, because
today the first show of twenty twenty five is all
about the predictions of the infamous thorstra Damas. So that's right, guys, Thorstradamas.

(01:22):
If you're not familiar with this, maybe you're new to
the program. And in the last year there is a seer,
if you will, somebody who has the ability to you know,
from the ether somehow gather these these predictions every year,
and I have the opportunity wants a year to sit

(01:43):
down with thorstra Damas and ask him some questions. And
his responses are sometimes a little vague. It requires a
little probing or a little interpretation, which I guess some
of the best prophecies are a little vague, right, You know,
if you want to be right all the time, you
can't be super precise. Like you know, the first of
January at two to five in the afternoon, a former

(02:05):
military guy is going to blow up a cyber truck
that he knows isn't going to kill anybody because it's
an act of terrorism in front of a Trump Building
because because yeah, you know, you see, that would be
a very specific prediction if you made that prediction ahead
of time. Holy cow, Like the one guy that predicted
nine to eleven happening, you know on nine to eleven.

(02:27):
You know that that guy, you know that's a prediction. Right.
So Thorstra domas, I sit down and I try to
get as specific as I can, because we want to
make sure that we're delivering good content to you guys.
And then, of course, one of the things I've noticed
over the years, you know, you you read these psychic
prediction websites or whatever if you've hit the end of
the Internet, like I don't know what to read next,

(02:48):
and you're like, oh, well, what does the psychics have
to say? And you know all the all the garbage
predictions are in there, but you hear anytime there's a
correct one. Oh yeah, you hear about it. You hear
about all the correct ones, but you ever hear about
the wrong ones, the ones where this psychic predicted fourteen
things that never happened and they predicted one thing that did.
So obviously we should listen to them in their future predictions.

(03:10):
So what we do with Thorstra Damas is every year
we document four predictions that he makes, and then the
following year we come back and we look at the
four predictions that Thorstra Damas made and we see if
they came true. We hold him accountable. Now here's the thing,
this is going to blow your mind. Thorstra Damas in

(03:32):
all of the years, I don't even know when we
started doing this, I mean it was it was more
than twenty years ago. But in all of the years
that we have done this, Thoristra Damas has never been
wrong one time. Every single prediction we can document with
news stories, facts, figures, we can back it up a

(03:52):
year later that it happened, and then we go through
the second half of the show is the new four
predictions for the coming year. So we build the credibility
up in the first half of the program, and the
second half of the program we then tell you what's
coming in the next year according to Thorstra Damas. Now
really quickly, I want to remind everybody that if you

(04:14):
missed the show last week, it is available over at
Shrockannovations dot com. It's available on our YouTube channel. I
noticed I hit up Alfonso and I was like Alfonso,
our YouTube channel is like nine months out of date.
What's going on? And he says, thor, you told me
to stop uploading to YouTube. I'm like, no, I told
you to stop uploading the Aftershock to YouTube because we
were saying things that were true and so that we
were getting strikes, and I didn't want to run our

(04:35):
channel out of business, so we got to have the compute.
This shows up there, so he's catching those up there,
but they're all available on Rumble because we post everything
to Rumble because Rumble is a free speech platform and
you can say anything that's true there, or even things
that aren't true you can say there. You know, if
you want to hear it, it's on Rumble. So we
have all the shows that the shows, the Aftershocks, everything
available on YouTube now on Rumble, also Facebook dot com,

(04:58):
slash Shock Innovations. Some great pictures we posted there from
our holiday party and the awards that we gave away.
There's a great picture. There's one picture that the Lovely
Kimberly did not directly authorize, so she sent me a
whole bunch of pictures to post because you know, she
is like she's a photographer, she's really good at taking pictures.
Me not so much. The lighting is always wrong, the

(05:20):
angle is always bad. I don't know the rule of
the thirds or whatever, you know, the king and the
queen and the joker. I don't know any of it.
So I just take the picture. Yeah, I take them
picture and put up on internet. There we go, very caveman.
And so there is one picture I took because I
was getting ready. It was the Ladies of Shrock and
was when we bring all the women that work for

(05:40):
us and the wives of the guys that work for us,
and we all get a picture with them all together
at the party, and as Parker we call it, it's
the women of Shock picture. And so we put them
all up there. We're in a picture, and literally, the
lovely Kimberly is trolling me because I'm about to take
the picture. She's pointing at me and she's like, do
not let this man take a picture. The picture will
be awful. It's off every time. Do not let this

(06:01):
mant click click click click. I'm taking pictures and everyone's laughing,
like it's the most genuinely amazing picture I've ever taken
in my life. All the ladies are laughing they're smiling,
they've hand up over their mouth like I can't believe
she's roasting right in front of him. It's great. And
then except for my wife who is pointing at me
like the wicked witch of the West, this man shall

(06:23):
not be heard. I mean, it's great, and I'm sure
she's thrilled. So yeah, so she's the only one in
the picture that's not smiling, not laughing. She's very serious.
She's like, this man shall not take a picture. And
that picture did get published at facebook dot com slash
shrock Innovation, So if you want to see that one,
along with all the others, you can check it out
Facebook dot com slash shrock Innovations. Now. Last week, if

(06:44):
you missed the show, we covered a whole bunch of stuff.
We finished up the holiday special. Guys. I think we
honestly have one laptop left. I think, and I believe
there might be a desktop display model remaining. I'm not
sure about that. It might be spoken for on Monday,
so I'm not sure what's one on there. But if
it was something you wanted to do, give us a call,
and if we have one still, we'll get you hooked up.
And if we don't. Well, we don't. One of the

(07:07):
other things is I'm a complete failure, and uh yeah,
I guess I was supposed to get pricing together because
you know, everyone's computer that has Windows ten is pretty
much going to go put in October, so we're looking
at a PC upgrade supercycle this year. That's something that's
been widely known that's happening in our industry this year.
Lots of people who have Windows ten computers are I'm
getting emails about it every week, are coming to the realization.

(07:30):
They're saying, well, when Windows ten goes bad, well, sofo
still keep me safer? Well, I need to find a
different antivirus. And I'm like, I think you're missing the
big picture of ego. When Windows ten goes bye bye,
there is no anti virus anymore, there are no printers anymore,
and anyone who continues to offer those services is literally
stealing your money from you because they can't keep you safe.
So there's no new devices, no new software, no new

(07:53):
anti virus, no new security. You have no security on
Windows ten. After October, literally it's gone. You need to
upgrade to Windows eleven. I know it blows. I know
it's not cool. I know you probably have a computer
that works great right now and you don't want to
touch it. I'm sorry, and we can all lament the
fact that you know it is what it is. But

(08:15):
your computer is caput October of twenty twenty five if
you're running Windows ten. So we had this thing that
we did during the holiday special called the Core Upgrade. Well,
we replace all the guts of your computer essentially to
make it Windows eleven compatible. Then we have created to
Windows eleven, so you get to use the same computer
for a fraction of the cost of buying a new computer.
It was and it was on special for the holiday season.

(08:35):
We add it up for eight hundred and fifty bucks.
Well guess what the full retail cost of doing that
is like one thousand dollars. And I was supposed to
adjust the prices on the website at the end of
the year, and then I realized I waited til the
last minute, and I said, okay, let's go adjust the prices.
But then I realized, you know, we're going to offer
a Core upgrade throughout the year, and there's different levels.
You don't have to go all the way up to

(08:56):
the holiday special. You can get something intermediate if you want, well,
all those prices have to be entered in and there
have to be new products created, and I had to
get on Fonzo involved and get it all on the website,
and how do customers purchase it online versus how do
we invoice it in the service center. It turned out
to be a lot more logistically involved than I anticipated,
so I completely failed as a result. The Holiday special

(09:17):
priced Core Upgrade is still available on the website. You
can still purchase it over at Shockinnovations dot com click
on Shopping Specials. You can find it there. As soon
as we have the new pricing available, that price will
jump to one thousand dollars, and then there will be
other lower variants that you can purchase for lower prices,
starting at around six hundred dollars if it's something you

(09:38):
want to do. So basically what I'm telling you is
for about six hundred dollars, you can get upgraded to
an entry level computer like what we'd sell at Shock,
like a boundless they sell for seven hundred bucks. You
save like one hundred dollars over buying a new computer.
Not a bad deal, but not an amazing deal, right,
or for eight hundred and fifty dollars. You can essentially
have the flipping holiday special, which would you rather have

(10:00):
six hundred dollars for an entry level computer or eight
fifty for a holiday special. Now, once the price is changed,
it'll be six hundred for an entry level or one
thousand dollars for a holiday special level. So again it's
not a not a bad deal at all considering the
holiday specials an eighteen hundred dollars computer, But it's still
two hundred and fifty dollars cheaper right now than you'll

(10:21):
be paying for it like next week. So if it's
something that you're gonna do, you know, I don't have
to tell you. You know, I don't have to tell
you to do it now? You can please wait, please wait,
you know, sure, it's fine. But so anyway, that's pretty
much all the promotion we've got for the show today, guys,
because the rest of this stuff is Thorstra Damas content
four zero, two, five, five, eight, eleven ten. So what

(10:42):
we want to do real quick here is cover predictions
number one and number two from twenty twenty three. What
did Thorstra Namis predict in twenty twenty three that would
happen in twenty twenty four. So as a quick reminder,
these predictions were made at the conclusion of twenty twenty
three as to what would happen in two twenty twenty four.
Prediction number one, experts confounded interest rates and inflation dance

(11:07):
while the wall it burns. Now this, you know, inflation
was certainly not a new thing in twenty twenty three.
We were in the throes of the transitory inflation at
that time that was not so transitory. And what we
basically came to the explanation was the impacts of interest

(11:27):
rates are going to surprise experts in twenty twenty four.
In other words, any what the experts are saying is
going to happen isn't going to happen. So now what
we officially had the official word, is that interest rates
have come way down since twenty twenty three, that we
are now at two point something percent, maybe trending toward three,
but you know, we're definitely trending back up, but we're

(11:47):
not trending up at like an astronomical Jimmy Carter kind
of rate, not to you know, speak ill of the dead,
but you know, when we think inflation, you think nineteen seventies, right,
that was the end of the Carter administration the beginning
of the Reagan administration. And then you look at what
Reagan and his administration did to tackle inflation, and it
was incredibly painful, but it got the job done. There

(12:08):
wasn't that much pain from the Fed. They raised the
interest rates to five flipping percent, which is historically normal.
But when you're used to zero five percent is like
you don't go buy the new truck, you know, It's like,
that's five percent interest. I can't believe you're gonna pay that.
You're getting ripped off that house. What are you talking
about seven eight nine percent interests? I thought interest was
three percent on the house. You know, that kind of stuff.

(12:30):
So there's one of the things that many people don't
realize is that one of the ways the government plays
around with the inflation numbers is to change the definition
of inflation, just like with recessions. If we technically entered
a recession in twenty twenty four, but we didn't because
they just decided that recession didn't mean what recession meant anymore,
the definition changed. So we've changed the definition of inflation

(12:54):
twice in major ways. Since the Jimmy Carter inflation era.
So there is a website called Shadow Stats that measures
inflation according to so it takes the same numbers the
government gives us, but then it runs them through the
calculator as if the calculator was done in the nineteen seventies,
and then as if the calculator the nineteen eighties, the
early eighties, So late seventies, early eighties, because Reagan did

(13:17):
change the definition of inflation. This isn't a partisan thing.
Republicans have done it, Democrats have done it. Then we
also run it through the calculator in the nineteen nineties calculator,
which was when Clinton was president, which would the last
time it was majorly changed that the calculation was changed. So,
if we measure the inflation of twenty twenty four according
to then the late seventies early eighties, you're going to

(13:41):
get a real inflation rate of twelve percent. That's according
to Shadow Stats, that the real inflation rate, the real
cost of things went up twelve percent in twenty twenty four. Now,
if you report the numbers and calculate them the same
way the government would have calculated them in nineteen seventy,
nineteen eighty and use what would what would have been

(14:03):
the official government numbers at that time, because shadow stats
is like looking at the price of what actual things
went up, and so it includes all the things, all
the stuff that's not included. But if you look at
the way the government and calculated the numbers back then,
inflation was up four percent in twenty twenty four. If
you measure it the way that Clinton did when he
was president, inflation rates are closer to seven percent up

(14:27):
with official numbers again coming in at four percent. So
not dramatically different, but certainly not back to quote unquote normal,
not back to the new normal. This I remember when
I was a kid going to school. In my accounting
classes in college, they would say, and you assume for
a rate of inflation is four percent. So as a business,

(14:48):
if you want to have a profitability, your profitability needed
to exceed four percent because four percent just countered inflation.
That meant you were stagnant in real nominal dollar terms.
So if you wanted to have a a ten percent profit,
you needed a fourteen percent profit to achieve that. Well,
if the real inflation rate is closer to twelve percent

(15:08):
and you want a ten percent profit, in your business.
Now you need a twenty two percent increase. So when
you see these reports that holiday sales were up, the
holiday sale was great, Holiday sales were up five percent
over last year, Well what that means is they were
stagnant or slightly lower than last year in real dollar terms.
Because inflation. That's why the stock, that's why the S

(15:29):
and P five hundred is going up so rapidly. It's
not because the companies are incredibly more profitable. The numbers
got bigger, sure, but the numbers got bigger because of inflation,
not because the companies are producing more goods and services
and being more efficient with how they use their money.
That's not it at all. So I have to say
thorstra damis the experts were confounded because they lowered the

(15:51):
interest rates and then they raised them, or they raised
the interest rates, and then when inflation started going up again,
they lowered the interest rates. And there could be all
kinds of political reasons for that, but from an economic perspective,
it didn't make much sense unless you saw that the
labor market was cracking, and you know there's a problem
coming on the horizon, so you had to lower the
rates again. Or maybe it was just that the government

(16:11):
couldn't afford its own debts, so it had to lower
the rates. Again, we don't know why, but it definitely
seems a little conflicted. And inflation did dance on us
while the wallet burnt. Most people got a four percent
cost of living increase in their raises and it didn't
keep up with inflation. So I think throstradamis wins on
that one. Prediction number two from twenty twenty three for

(16:34):
the year twenty twenty four, Electronic brains invade daily life.
Artificial assistance impossible to avoid. Now, if you think back
to twenty twenty three, this was the start of the
AI craze in the stock market. This is where it
started to happen, where Nvidia started to take off, and
everyone was talking about AI and AI this and AI that.
But it was all very futuristically. This is the new Internet,

(16:57):
This is the new tubes and pipes of the Internet
kind of thing. You know, this isn't what's going to
make businesses money. What's going to make businesses money is
the second tier knock on effects that do all that.
You know, there wasn't anybody talking about how AI was
going to impact your daily life. So in the last year,
what has happened with AI? This is definitely happening guys.
Now you probably see this on your computers as copilot

(17:21):
or chat GPT, and maybe it's not invading your daily life,
but I can tell you that businesses and people in
businesses are using these things right now, especially on LinkedIn,
you're seeing a lot of AI generated lead gen and
things like that. Now, these are being done, as we
talked about last week, through AI agents, where they're basically
synthetic beings if you will, you know that are doing

(17:44):
automated tasks for humans, making humans more efficient, freeing them
up to do humany stuff while their repetitive tasks are
being done by bots. Let me tell you about a
repetitive task that I talked with Alfonso about this week.
Already mentioned this one. Why is our YouTube channel nine
months out of date? And so then Alfonso realized how
much time it was going to take him to catch

(18:04):
up nine months of posts on YouTube, and he said,
is there anyone else in the company that we can
have do this? Because Alfonso's time is very expensive. He's
probably the highest paid employee in my company, So making
him sit around and post YouTube videos does not seem
like a wise use of his time. In fact, the
thought occurred to me posting YouTube videos is a pretty
repetitive task. The thought occurred to me that it's an

(18:27):
extremely repetitive task that the hardest part of that task
is writing the descriptions and the titles and creating a
thumbnail if you want to create a thumbnail. Alfonso thinks
it's really funny to create thumbnails that are met in
compromising facial expressions. So if you look through the Rumble channel,
it's like a it's like a I don't know, a
bunch of thor shrock chimp faces. Uh yeah, ooh, ooh,

(18:50):
you know, don't you know it's it's literally it's almost obscene.
And so you know, we're like, so we you can
make thumbnail and you can say you can set the
video to be that thumbnail. So that's the hardest part YouTube.
We need to make a graphic, We need to make
a graphic for the thumbnail. We need to write a description,
We need to write a title. Well, the title is

(19:12):
always compute this space date, So the title is super hard.
The description, I pretty much write the description on Facebook.
You could just clip it from Facebook and use that description,
or if you want to watch the whole video and
write your own, you can. So why are we paying
a human to do this at all? We sat down
around the numbers. We spend eighteen four hundred dollars a

(19:34):
year in employee time posting social media videos that could
be completely automated by an AI agent. And that's just
little old shrock innovations. Let's take a look at somebody bigger.
How is Walmart using AI to impact your daily life?

(19:54):
Walmart created a chatbot to negotiate with their suppliers. Could
you imagine, like you're selling stuff to Walmart and all
of us like, you don't talk to the buyer anymore.
You're talking to like a chat GBD chatbot. And in
some ways it might be easier because you're like, I
just don't know how much do you ask the chatbot for.
It's not like it's a human, you know, you can
push for whatever you want. Well, what ended up happening
was the AI chatbot was able to get all the

(20:16):
stuff into Walmart at a savings of three percent that
almost offset inflation guys, according to official numbers, which of
course is the full impact of inflation. But it's three
percent better. So the AI chatbot saved Walmart three percent
on everything it bought. Do you have any idea how
much money that is? Retail businesses are using AI to

(20:36):
craft specific offers for individual customers. You're going to see
this if you have not seen it already this holiday season.
Make it makes you feel special when you get an
offer that is tailored specifically for you based on what
you've bought before. It feels and looks like somebody actually
took the time to look into what you would like
to have for an offer. If Shrock was doing this
right now, this drives down the cost of new customer acquisition. Essentially,

(20:59):
if Shock did this to acquire new customers internally, and
we save the same amount that the industry is saving,
we would save twenty five dollars and twenty cents on
every new customer acquisition. Twenty five dollars per new customer,
thousands of dollars a year. So yeah, throstra Damas for
the win, Number two is also true. We're going to

(21:21):
take a quick break here, guys for zero, two, five, five,
eight to eleven, ten predictions number three and number four from
twenty twenty three, did they come true. We'll find out
coming up next on compute this.

Speaker 3 (21:31):
There are enough unused computers in storage to give every man,
woman and child in the US and old, outdated and
useless computer system Obsolete tablets and smartphones are nearly as bad.
Most people know not to throw them into the landfill
where they leak and contaminate, but it's hard to find
a place to safely recycle electronics. That's why Shrock Innovations

(21:51):
offers free recycling for computers, laptops, phones.

Speaker 4 (21:54):
Tablets, cords, and accessories.

Speaker 3 (21:57):
In fact, only monitors and printers have a small recept
cycling fee.

Speaker 4 (22:00):
Everything else is free. More importantly, Shock.

Speaker 3 (22:03):
Will securely delete any data from your devices and hard
drives before they are sent to a certified recycling partner,
who will then repeat the wiping process just to be saved.

Speaker 4 (22:13):
When you recycle your.

Speaker 3 (22:14):
Old technology at Shrock, you know your identity and privacy
are protected and your equipment is being actually recycled by
a certified recycling partner. Shock is proud to recycle more
e wasays than we produce annually, making a positive difference
to our economy and ecology. Do your part by dropping
your old gear at any Shrock service center and be

(22:35):
part of the area's largest and most popular technology recycling
program WI Shrock Innovations.

Speaker 5 (22:42):
Drive Advisor is a free program from Shrock Innovations that
monitors your hard drives health and tells you if it's
going bad. Download it for free at driveadvisor dot com.

Speaker 3 (22:52):
You would probably rather drink the water at Camp La
June than get another call about the desperate need to
renew your cars expiring warranty.

Speaker 4 (23:00):
Who actually responds to those calls.

Speaker 3 (23:02):
Everyone wants to play the warranty game where you pay
money now just in case you need service later that
everyone hopes.

Speaker 4 (23:08):
You won't neet or use. It's such a waste. It's
no different with computers.

Speaker 3 (23:13):
Major manufacturers warranties have more subscript crosses than a Sunday
morning church service.

Speaker 4 (23:19):
Batteries are exempt.

Speaker 3 (23:20):
Hard dripes must be completely dead and forget about anything
that they can remotely claim us physical damage. That's why
Shrock warranties are different. When you purchase a modul or
PC or a solid state laptop and extend your warranty,
we offer a no risk money back guarantee. If you
need the warranty, you will be thrilled to have it
if you don't use it, and we refund your money

(23:40):
automatically every time.

Speaker 4 (23:42):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (23:43):
We are so confident in the quality of our products
that our extended warranties are refundable. Many Shock customers use
their refunds to purchase another warranty or pocket the savings.

Speaker 4 (23:53):
And move on.

Speaker 3 (23:54):
We all know you'll need it to cover that expiring
car warranty. Anyway, Shocks refundable extended warranty. He's just another
way The Shrock Innovations Computer Company makes your computer work
for you.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
All righty guys, welcome back in to compute this. My
name is Thor Schrock and the owner of the Schrock
Innovations Computer Company for service centers to help you out
when your computer's not working, when you need a new computer,
when you maybe want to upgrade your computer to make
it Windows eleven compatible. We want to find out if
your computer could be Windows eleven compatible. What do you
need to do to keep your computer safe? To make
a New Year's resolution to secure your information technology landscape.

(24:34):
I have to tell you guys, like you know, one
of the things they're talking about this Vegas bomber guy,
and one of the things they're saying is after the explosion,
his signal safety number changed. So that means one of
two things. The FBI was able to clone his phone
and get into his Signal account, which then means Signal
is nowhere near as secure as everybody says it is.

(24:55):
Or number two, he is still alive and he got
a new phone and updated his signal count. So either way,
something is really really not right with Signal. So I mean,
you need to make sure that you're using encrypted messaging,
that you are using VPNs where appropriate, that you have
secure WiFi that's up to date with a router that's
not fifteen years old, that you have sofos on your computer,

(25:17):
that you have secure update on your computer. These are
all things that you need to do to secure your
own information technology landscape. And Heaven help you if you're
a business and you're not doing these things. If you're
a business and not doing these things, you're gonna get
sued for not doing these things. At some point, something
is going to hit the fan and you're going to
be in trouble. That's what we do it, truck is

(25:38):
we make sure that you as individual consumers, we still
serve consumers. We're the only place left in town that
does this anymore. Other businesses are literally shunning consumers in
favor of businesses, and we are scooping up the masses
like the long lost children that you are. And we
fix your technology. We keep you computing, we keep you safe,
we keep your embroidery machines going, we keep your genieology

(26:00):
moving forward. You know, whatever you're doing with your technology,
we're here to support you in it. For zero two, five, five, eight,
eleven tens a number to join us. Prediction number three
from thorstra damis to slick the political operative reach too far.
An unsupported outcome divides Lincoln's house. So we looked at
this at the time and we said, essentially, the twenty

(26:21):
twenty four political season will feature tactics never before seen
in modern politics. Many will be unhappy with the outcome. Okay,
so the second part of that, many will be unhappy
with the outcome. The fifty percent of the people are
going to be unhappy with the outcome no matter who
gets elected. Right. But as far as tactics never seen before,
I mean, we saw a ton of stuff that never

(26:42):
happened before. In twenty twenty three, the Republican Party was
very much a house divide to going into twenty twenty four,
an unprecedented attempt to stop the Trump candidacy through legal maneuvering, indictments, raids,
negative news coverage, the J six Committee, massive judgments, financial
judgments against him. All of this was actually supported by

(27:05):
some Republicans in the party, like the Liz Cheney wing
of the party. They actually they actually wanted these things
to happen, while others opposed these things. There were two
warring factions within the House of Lincoln and there was
a massive inner party brawl that Donald Trump eventually won,
taking complete control of the Republican Party, winning a decisive,

(27:26):
in fact historical electoral win. And also the forces that
were arrayed against him got so insane, did so many
over the top things when they were in the throes,
things that they felt were politically justified at the time.
They did so many things that now they're worried about
facing actual legal charges over the things that they did.

(27:50):
There's actually a push out there, a legitimate push that
Liz Cheney can be prosecuted for what she did on
the J six Committee. So, yeah, we saw things and
we haven't even dove into like the way that Trump campaigned,
the way he did, you know, podcasting. He wasn't doing canvassing,
he wasn't doing door knocking, he wasn't doing printed literature,
all the things that you know, the Democrats were laughing

(28:12):
at him for not doing as they canvassed a million
houses the night before the election and everything else. And
Donald Trump went on like the Joe Rogan podcast and
the THEO Vaughn podcast, and you know, talked about all
kinds of personal things and you know, went was willing
to talk to anybody about anything, really went out there
and engaged digitally, and it was something that was a

(28:33):
way of campaigning that's never been done before on a
national level, and it was wildly successful. So no matter
how you look at this prediction, whether you look at
it from the political lawfair perspective or you look at
it from a campaign perspective, there definitely was a division
in the House of Lincoln and that division was settled
when Donald Trump won, and half the country wasn't happy

(28:53):
with it. So I gotta tell you, Throstra Damis Prediction
number three was a win there all right. Last one here,
prediction umber four. The wealthy have the opportunity to soar
while the while the commoner fails at almost every turn,
the monetary engineers successfully fail. That one's was kind of
weird when there were so many things to think about there.

(29:14):
But when we talked about it last year, we said, basically,
some markets are going to freeze while other markets are
going to soar, and twenty twenty four will be good
for those who have money and difficult for people that
don't have money, maybe a soft landing. That was what
we talked about last year at the time. So there
is no doubt, I mean no doubt whatsoever. We were
Bill and I were talking about this during the break.

(29:35):
There is no doubt that if you had money in
the market in twenty twenty four, if you had money
in precious metals in twenty twenty four, if you had
money in real estate, even in some commercial real estate
in twenty twenty four, you did very very well in
twenty twenty four. In other words, if you had money,
you left twenty twenty four with more money than you

(29:56):
came into it with most cases, almost every case. And
if you didn't have money, if you were on the
lower end of the earning schedule, you were hammered by
higher energy costs, higher food costs, higher housing costs, bigger rents,
generally higher prices for just about everything that exceeded your

(30:17):
ability to earn additional income. Well yeah, so if you're
in essence, if you were rich, you got richer, and
if you were poor, you got poorer. And that's just
how life went. In twenty twenty four, workers in the
gig economy had virtually no means of keeping up. I mean,
everyday people still ordered food, right, so people still did

(30:40):
door dash. People still you know, ordered their groceries, had
to deal with shipped and had them delivered and all
this stuff. But every day people cut back on the tips.
Because the tips are optional. You can still get the service,
you're paying for the service, but you can cut back
on the tips. So tipflation became a in twenty twenty four.

(31:01):
This is where like everyone and their dog thought they
deserved a tip. Like every square terminal was programmed to
ask you for a tip. Like you go to Stalm
Chocolates over the little chocolate tear and you're gonna buy
some chocolate. And at the end, I mean you're paying
like three dollars of chocolate for this chocolate. These are
not poor people chocolate stores. Okay, this isn't this is
Willy Wonka. I mean, this is like the big time

(31:23):
and you're going in there because my son loves these
little chocolates and so like, I get them two chocolates, right,
and the total is like six dollars for two pieces
of candy. And it asked me if I want to tip,
if I want to leave a tip, I'm like a
tip for what they put it. They put two pieces
of chocolate in a bag and charge me six dollars
and I need a tip for that? Or what about
the barista? Is it Starbucks that are unionized? I'm paying

(31:45):
eight dollars for a cup of flavored coffee at Starbucks
and they think they deserve a tip for making my coffee.
I'm sorry, but you're unionized. I mean, it's not like
you're making two dollars and fifteen cents an hour here.
You know, if you don't like working at Starbucks, go
get another job somewhere else. It's not like you're making cars,
you know. It's not like you have a skill set

(32:06):
that can't be applied anywhere else. So this is part
of the reason that the slogans during the Trump campaign
No tax on tips and no tax on overtime were
so powerful during the election. People just starting out in life,
they have a much more difficult time. We see this
all the time with the kids and the guys that
with young guys that we bring in a truck in

(32:29):
the beginning, when they're very young, high school, just out
of high school. They are struggling to goodbye. They've got
several roommates, and they make stupid, stupid decisions. I mean,
and you try. You're not their dad, your job is
to do computer work, but you try to explain to
them that it's a stupid decision to go buy a

(32:49):
new car right now. Stillant has just cut the price
of all their trucks by thirty five percent. By the way,
Ford is the only company out there that hasn't lowered
their prices yet. I don't know what the right now
Ranger costs forty thousand dollars. You can buy a Ram
fifteen hundred for thirty nine thousand dollars, So you can
buy an actual full size pickup truck for the same
price you can buy a Ford Ranger for, which is

(33:11):
like the kick around little weekend pickup truck for people
who don't really want to drive a pickup truck that
ain't an F one fifty f one fifty, I'll set
you back sixty three thousand dollars. Not a platinum, that's
just the that's the exlt. It's like not even a
nice F one fifty. So I don't know what Ford's doing.
I'm like, I have their stock. I'm really concerned about this.
But Thorstra Damas was correct. The rich got richer and

(33:33):
the poor got poor at almost every turn. So there
we have it, guys, for predictions one hundred percent success.
The prediction streak remains unbroken. So coming up next, we're
gonna take a quick break. When we come back the
twenty twenty five predictions, what does Thorst Damas say is
coming in the next year or the current year? Now,
what's gonna happen to us this year? And what can

(33:56):
you do to make sure that you are financially and
technologically ready for it? We'll tell you coming up next
on compute this.

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Speaker 2 (36:38):
All righty guys, welcome back here to compute this predictions.
Thorstra down the show, first show of the year, Happy
twenty twenty five for zero two five five, eight eleven
ten or if you're outside the metro area eight eight
eight eight eight at eight two five zero two zero
nine one. All right, so we through the four predictions

(37:01):
from last year. One hundred percent true again thorstra damas
for the wind, But what did thor Stradamas predict was
going to happen in twenty twenty five? Prediction number one,
The weapons are not always bullets and bombs. Beware the
weapons that impact through the ether in ways you do
not expect. The weapons are not always bullets and bombs.

(37:23):
Beware the weapons that impact through the ether in ways
you do not expect. Wow, Well this one. I tried
to pin him down and tried to get him to
get a little more specific on this one, because I'm like,
are you talking about cyber attacks? Are you talking about drones? Well,
the drones aren't really you know, through the ether is
something like when they talk through the ether this is

(37:44):
something from like, you know, the the turn of you know,
from I don't know, the turn of the nineteenth century,
where radio was a new thing and there was you know,
signals from the ether, you know, just you know, the
ether was through the air essentially, and so when you're
talking about something that impacts you through the ether, so
this means like something that seemingly comes out of nowhere

(38:06):
and is magically and mysteriously destroying your life. So, I mean,
we could very well be talking about cyber attacks. We
could be talking about AI involved in cyber attacks. There's
the possibility that this could involve quantum computing right now,
that's a very it's still cutting edge. I mean, we're
starting to hear more about it in the news now.

(38:26):
But these computers are incredible. It's a whole different way
of computing, incredibly powerful systems. If you pair these systems
with AI, you truly get like a Terminator Skynet kind
of vibe. It's very very out of the ether, mysterious
crazy stuff. So this one is a little bit opaque.

(38:47):
We're basically what Thorstronomis is saying is that we are
going to see attacks because you're talking about bullets and bombs.
Those aren't friendly things. Those are attacks. I think that's
stuff you attack with typically you think of like a
military attack. So I'm going to say that this is
probably a prediction about state actors using non traditional means
of attacking adversaries in twenty twenty five. Watch for that

(39:12):
prediction number two from thorstra Damas for twenty twenty five.
The power costs so much, the demand staggering. New power
is born. Necessity is the mother of invention. I'm like,
new power is born. Are we gonna finally get cold fusion?
Are we really? Are we going to finally get the
secret formula that turns oil into like coal or whatever.

(39:34):
I don't know if you remember that, like the or
no coal into oil. That's what it was. The you know,
the Nazis, they had a way to turn you know,
coal and oil. But the big oil companies discovered it
after World War Two and they suppressed the technology so
that we could never create oil. We'd always had to
pull it out of the ground because you know, nobody
will ever want a corner the market on the ability
to create oil out of thin air. It never quite

(39:57):
added up for me, But I don't think that we're
talking about cold fusion. I don't think we're talking about
hidden Nazi technology here. The power costs so much in
the demand of staggering Okay, well, there is no doubt
that the cost of power has gone up in twenty
twenty four. There's no reason to expect that wouldn't continue
into twenty twenty five unless you are you know fully
bought into drill Baby, drill that you know that basically

(40:19):
Trump has the ability to magically make more oil up
here on the market that will drive down costs. Now,
the Biden administration is currently throwing up every roadblock they can.
They there was an executive order signed just before Christmas
that no one even heard about until last week. Well,
I guess you know it was signed before Christmas, or
during Christmas or after Christmas, but we just we're just
now hearing about it. That that essentially banned all offshore

(40:42):
drilling off all the shores, so any any United States
shore it can no longer have any exploration offshore according
to an executive order. Now that seems kind of silly.
It seems like a waste of time, because you know,
Trump could just undo that with another executive order. But
It just goes to show you that when you're talking
about extracting oil and gas from the ground, even if

(41:03):
you know where the deposits are at, which we don't
always know, it takes time to go get the stuff,
To go get the oil in the gas. You can
take a decade. So if you start now a decade
from now, you might have the benefit. So that the
idea that we're going to magically pull more oil and
gas out of the ground in the next twelve months
is interesting. Now you couple that with the the sure

(41:30):
demand for more energy because of artificial intelligence and data centers.
Data centers are popping up everywhere. Guys. We have data
centers throughout the Midwest. Now, anywhere there's water for cooling
and abundant power, you know we're going to go. We
brought you a story or in twenty twenty four about
how basically a lot of small communities in Nebraska are

(41:51):
looking at the possibility of bringing on many nuclear plants,
like not like big nuclear plants like you're used to seeing,
but little tiny things that are designed to just increase
in create a good amount of baseload. You have places
like Beatrice looking into this, Places like Fremont looking into this.
Columbus is looking into this. Not Omaha, not Lincoln, not
the big cities that already have a good baseload, but

(42:12):
these smaller communities because if they can get a big
baseload of power and they have access to water, they
can attract a data center and that would transform their
small community, providing it with some really high paying jobs
at a stable tax base. So interesting stuff there. The
power costs so much, the demand is staggering. That stuff
we figure out, then new power is born. Necessity is

(42:33):
the mother of invention. So there's going to be a
need for new power, is what I'm reading here, and
that's going to mean new solutions, things that we previously
were not willing or able to do. So I'm going
to say that this prediction is that we are going
to bring on more new power online in ways that
previously would have been politically unacceptable to do in twenty

(42:55):
twenty five. So there you go. Prediction number one, not
always bullets and bombs, beware of the weapons that attack
through the ether in ways you don't expect. And prediction
number two, the power costs so much, the demands staggering,
new power is born. Necessity is the mother of invention.
So those are your first two new technology predictions for
twenty twenty five. There are two additional predictions that we're

(43:17):
going to cover for you today as well, for zero two,
five to five, eight eleven ten. We've got to take
our final break of the program here, but when we
come back, we're going to have predictions on streaming and
predictions on political promises. Oh boy, this is going to
be a fun one. Hold on to your hats, folks.

(43:37):
We'll tell you what's going on and what's coming for you.
According to Thorstra, damis next on compute.

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Speaker 2 (45:27):
Alrighty folks, thanks for joining us on the first episode
of Compute This for the New Year twenty twenty five
four zero two five five eight eleven ten. Also, if
you're outside the metro area eight eight eight two five
zero two zero nine to one, we're doing the Thorstradamus
Prediction Show today. Quick show reminder guys, if you're looking
for us at Facebook dot com slash Rock Innovations and

(45:48):
you are unable to find us, it's not Facebook doing
anything funny. It's not you. There is no Facebook broadcast today.
There is no Aftershock today either. We are going we're
doing some technology upgrades. We're adding some different backgrounds, we're
working on different different commercial spots. That a lot of
upgrades happening to the radio show into the Aftershock. All

(46:09):
those some of those will be in place next week
and then more of them will come in as we
go forward into the year. But we are not online
on the video channels today. We will be back next week.
So we're doing thorstra Damis Predictions today. As I've mentioned before,
Thorstradamas gives me these predictions every year. We hold them accountable.
We went through the first We went through the four
predictions from last year. If you miss those, we're going

(46:31):
to post those up on our Rumble and YouTube channels
later on tomorrow, so you can check it out there.
But one hundred percent correct. Again, he got them all right,
And so we've done the first two predictions for twenty
twenty five. Now we'll see what happens with those prediction
number three. So many streams, so much to see, content
moves outside the lines. Okay, I don't know about you guys,

(46:54):
but to me, so many streams, so much to see.
I don't know if you've been frustrated by this, but
if you try to keep up, especially if you want
to watch football games like now, you have to have
a subscription to Netflix and Amazon and Hulu and you know,
and Hulu. To get the ad free subscription to Hulu,
it's like one hundred and sixty dollars a month with
the sports package. It's more than Cox was charging.

Speaker 1 (47:17):
We didn't.

Speaker 2 (47:17):
We cut the cord to like get rid of the
channels we didn't want to watch anymore. And so now
if you want to subscribe to all these things. You
have Disney Plus and you have Discovery Plus, and you've
got Paramount Plus and I mean you've got all these
things you have to subscribe to. Now, if you want
to watch Downton Abbey, you're subscribing to PBS. You know PBS.
I mean this is so sponsored by Viking? Was Viking

(47:37):
cheaping out? Do the river tours get cheap this year?
I mean, what why do I have to pay to
watch Downton Abbey? You know, it doesn't make any sense.
It's b freaking bs. What don't you get tax money? Like,
isn't there anyway? So there's a lot of streaming services,
there's a lot to see, and there's a lot of
content out there that a lot of people don't see

(47:58):
because you're just not gonna pay all those subscription fees.
So I think what Thorstra Domas is predicting here is
that the streaming services are going to start swapping content. So,
in other words, you might see Disney, for example, licensing
some of its content to Netflix in exchange for payments
from Netflix. Netflix will see additional content, meaning that they're

(48:21):
subscribers who maybe wouldn't necessarily pay for a Disney Plus subscription,
but they do want to watch the Marvel movies. So
but they weren't going to pay month after month after
month for the ability to watch them on demand while
they're already paying for Netflix. So that's an example. Or
you might see, you know, the NFL decide that, you know,
segmenting all these games to different streaming services is actually

(48:43):
hurting viewership. We need to have them available across platforms.
So maybe you know, there's a lot of talk that
Netflix just is not ready for prime time, no pun
intended streaming live events, live sporting events. So but what
if Amazon handled all the streaming and licensed the content
to everybody else so you could watch it on Netflix
and Netflix paid Amazon to host the content but didn't

(49:05):
have to pay for all the expenses of actually streaming it.
Do you see how this could make sense for a business.
So I think what thorster Domas is saying is that
you're going to actually be able to watch more of
the content that's being created with fewer subscriptions in twenty
twenty five. So we'll see if that comes true. That
would be great if it did. I can tell you
I would save a bunch of money. Number four the final,

(49:26):
the final prediction of from thorstter Domas of what is
going to happen in twenty twenty five. Too many promises,
the disappointment will be real. The perfect is the enemy
of the good, and the results will not be good
enough to appease all. There's a lot to unpack in

(49:48):
this one. So let me read this one more time.
Real Slow, too many promises, the disappointment will be real.
What kind of promises are we talking about here? I
think we're talking about political promises. No tax on tips,
no tax on overtime. Drill, baby drill. The deep state
is real. Doge is gonna eliminate all the waste. Trump's

(50:10):
gonna get rid of the national debt. We're gonna have
a bitcoin reserve. I mean, there were a lot of
political promises made. We're gonna finish the wall, We're gonna
deport millions of people, We're gonna start with the criminals.
There was a lot of political promises made. And he
says here the disappointment will be real. And what that's

(50:32):
telling me is thorstra Domas is predicting that some, if
not many, of Trump's political promises will never see the
light of day. The perfect is the enemy of the good.
I think we saw an example of this just this week.
So the perfect we don't like Speaker Johnson. Speaker Johnson

(50:52):
doesn't have a backbone. Speaker Johnson didn't do any of
the things he promised last time around. We don't want
Speaker Johnson. Well, who else do you want? No one's
running against, but we don't want him. We're not going
to vote for him. Well, if you don't elect a
Speaker of the House, we can't inaugurate President Trump. So literally,
there will be no There will be no President Trump
if you do not elect Speaker Johnson. And they still

(51:13):
had holdouts because the perfect was the enemy of the good. Yes,
Speaker Johnson didn't do everything he said he was going
to do last time. And yes, he has an even
slimmer majority this time, so he's probably not going to
do all the things you wanted to do this time either.
But if you want to get anything done, you need
to elect Speaker Johnson because there is no alternative. There
is no other person running that is a viable alternative

(51:36):
to Speaker Johnson. Yet some Republicans refuse to vote for
the guy because the perfect was the enemy of what
was possible, what was good, and then the second result.
The second part of this is the results will not
be good enough to appease all. This is really really scary.

(51:58):
If the results of Republican infighting lead to political promises
made by Trump going unfulfilled, there is going to be
an internal battle again in the Republican Party, and Trump
is going to be trying to hold the MAGA movement

(52:19):
together while other people are maneuvering for their own political gain.
And it's going to be necessary for the MAGA movement
to eliminate those that are resisting and causing the problems.
But some of the people who are resisting and causing
the problems are some of your most staunch conservatives, some
of your most fiscal conservatives, some of your most vocal conservatives.

(52:44):
So is the MAGA movement a conservative movement or is
it a populist America First movement? Or is it some
kind of hybrid. This is going to probably be the
most controversial prediction next year when we come back, because
there is no doubt that there are going to be
some things that Trump said he wanted to do that
he's not going to be able to get through we
know that, we know that that's just the political reality

(53:06):
of things. But the disappointment will be real tells me
that some of the big things aren't going to get done.
Some of the immigration things aren't going to get done,
some of the tax things may not get done, and
that could be a real problem. So there you have it, guys,
for predictions, they're not always rosy, right. I didn't tell
you they were all going to be good. Hey, last

(53:27):
year the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. Okay,
I mean that's a solid prediction right there. That doesn't
happen every year. Huh noh, Surrey Bob. All right, guys,
thank you for joining us. I appreciate you being here,
and we will see you next weekend for another exciting
live Facebook Live edition of Compute This