QuickBooks Live Could be a Top 100 Firm by 2020, Fake Bots from Google, Roger Raises $7.35M to Automate Accounting with AI, and Why the NSA Might be to Blame for the CCH Malware Attack

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Show Notes

• 02:34 -- Blake crunches the numbers and figures that if Intuit meets its publicly stated goals, QuickBooks Live will likely be a $60 million per year accounting firm by 2020, putting it at 73 on Accounting Today’s Top 100 Accounting Firms list. 
• 06:56 -- Sholto Macpherson asks, is QuickBooks Live a "Watershed moment or BAU?" — Twitter
• 10:02 -- Google’s Duplex Uses A.I. to Mimic Humans (Sometimes) — The New York Times — Google admitted that it’s AI still needs human help, but you’ve got to listen to a recording of a call from Google Duplex (a bot) to a restaurant to book a dinner reservation.
• 17:13 -- Roger, the accounting automation tool, raises $7.35M Series A — TechCrunch (Guess who is one of the investors? Dan Wernikoff, the former GM of QuickBooks and TurboTax.)
• 20:02 -- Firms lose cloud access after Cetrom systems breach — Journal of Accountancy — Centrom, a provider of cloud hosting to CPA firms, fell victim to an attack using similar malware to the one that caused the CCH outage.
• 21:23 -- In Baltimore and Beyond, a Stolen N.S.A. Tool Wreaks Havoc — The New York Times — The New York Times details how a leaked N.S.A. hacking tool might be responsible for the recent malware attacks on CCH, Centrom (a provider of cloud hosting to CPA firms) and the City of Baltimore.
• 25:53 -- Social engineering: Password in exchange for chocolate — ScienceDaily — A disturbing percentage of people will give out their password to strangers in exchange for little value.
• 29:38 -- Hands On: The Twin-Screen Asus ZenBook Pro Duo Is a Laptop From the 2020s — PC Magazine — With two built-in screens, David predicts this laptop could be the ideal computer for accountants and bookkeepers on the go.
• 32:04 -- When You Raise Prices More Than a Smidge ... They At Least Look At Another Vendor — SaaStr — The author cautions software companies that rase prices to dramatically. Meanwhile, David was hit by a 100%+ price increase on his QuickBooks subscription!

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