TechFirst with John Koetsier

Did you know your computer transmits a log of every single app you open? Apple has made privacy a core part of the brand -- including entire TV commercials dedicated to it -- but as a self-described hacker and security researcher recently found, every Mac sends a stream of data about every app you open (and more) to Apple. And ... sends it unencrypted. And … bypasses any local VPN software you’ve installed. In this edition of TechFirst with John Koetsier we're chatting with Jeffrey Paul, the hacker who found and wrote about the problem. We chat with him about why Apple did this, who else could see the data, what Apple's changing, and what this means for the future of computers. (Hint: it's not great.)

Former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold spent 18 months building a custom 100MP camera to take pictures of snowflakes. We chat with him about why :-) and how, which includes equipment from Japan and Canada and trips to Alaska and Yellowknife and Timmons, Ontario. Myhrvold also chats about what drives him to continue inventing and learning. He's a polymath, and while best known for being the CTO of Microsoft, he's the founder of Intellectual Ventures, has more than 850 patents to his name, and has written 1000s of pages of recipes for his cookbook series … published peer-reviewed research on planetary science plus written about paleontology … climate science … and worked with Stephen Hawking on quantum theories of gravitation. We also learn about Nathan Myrvold's latest project: a massive high-resolution picture of the Milky Way galaxy.

In the future, most work might be done by robots, but right now, most is done by humans. How do we manage the transition? And, what does a humans + robots economy look like? In this episode of TechFirst I chat with Lior Elazary, CEO of inVia Robotics.  Questions we discuss: - What is robotics as a service (RaaS)? - How can you ultimately get the best contributions out of what humans can do and what robots can provide? - What kinds of productivity gains are you seeing from robots? - What size of warehouse works best? - Does this change how big warehouses need to be? - What are we learning now about the future of automation? - How do you see the world of work in 10-20 years?

Is AI, robotics, and … verticality … about to change farming as we know it? In this episode of TechFirst we chat with Nate Storey, the cofounder and chief science officer of Plenty. Plenty grows food vertically, indoors, anywhere on the planet. A 2-acre Plenty farm produces as much food as a 750-acre traditional "flat farm." We chat about how Plenty uses AI and robotics to increase yield, what crops Plenty offers and will offer, and the company's plans for expansion.

In an era of massive budgets, invasive ads, buy now subscription models, and incessant noise, can the good guys still win? In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we chat about Insight Timer. You’ve never heard of Insight Timer, but it’s ranked higher than TikTok, Facebook, Netflix, and Twitter for session durations, it has 5X the retention of better-known competitors like Calm, and it has 17M users. All of which it achieve while spending $0 on marketing. And abiding by a "no selling" policy. To learn how Insight Timer is changing the world one stressed person at a time, we’re chatting with CEO and cofounder Christopher Plowman.

An alleged YouTube bug has retroactively taken thousands of dollars in revenue away from YouTube creators. YouTube, however, has neither acknowledged the problem nor provide details to YouTubers who rely on the platform for income. “There are people who can’t feed their families and pay their bills ... one girl I have been talking to ... had a breakdown,” Randy Lynch, who runs the Mid-South Slots YouTube channel, told me via Messenger. “[YouTube] admitted it was a bug, then backtracked, blamed us, and shut down all communication with us eight days ago.”

The 2020 US presidential election is insane and, frankly, proves that current election “tech” is trash. Days later we still don’t know who won for sure, and there’s plenty of allegations of fraud or miscounts, plus plenty of legal challenges already. Can digital voting fix that? Can blockchain help? To dig in we’re chatting with Tim Goggin, CEO of Horizon State. Horizon says they offer “fair, transparently verifiable, and ultra-secure voting” via blockchain technologies.

Is space the future of IoT? Australia-based Myriota has the world’s first low power, ultra-low cost global internet of things solution from space.  In this episode of TechFirst, we're chatting with VP of Engineering Steve Winnall about the company's 20-pound suitcase-sized satellites and its ground-based IoT modules, which cost on the order of hundreds of dollars. The company's modules are used for wind farms, good-old-fashioned food farms, ships in the ocean ... and even rhinos in Africa.

A ad fraud scheme dubbed Matryoshka is preferentially targeting U.S. swing states in a reportedly Russian-owned mobile app that has historically been linked with white supremacism content, according to an ad fraud vendor. Matryoshka, of course, are nesting Russian dolls. The theft is of both advertisers’ dollars and users’ private data, mostly in the United States. Data that the Matryoshka fraud scheme targets is location data including longitude and latitude, device identifier data, and IP address, which can connect you to a specific neighborhood or even exact location. And while key U.S. swing states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin account for less than 10% of the activity in the affected app, they make up 35% of the attacks.

Could rural Montana be the next Silicon Valley? Check internet speed off your list of reasons why not. Even though Elon Musk’s SpaceX says its expanded “Better Than Nothing” test is still a beta version of Starlink’s eventual capabilities, at least one early Starlink internet service customer says he is getting better than expected speed. Starlink says it should give you between “50 and 150 MB/s with 20-40 milliseconds of latency.” Starlink customer “FourthEchelon19” is getting 161 megabits/second download and 23 megabits/second upload speed. In rural Montana.