Are You Ready For Your Car to Spy On You? It's Already the Law

Jan 14, 2022

Are You Ready For Your Car to Spy On You? It's Already the Law

They pass the infrastructure bill, which means now it's time to figure out what is in the infrastructure bill. And we're going to talk about the technology that they decided to fund the technology that will win the game because it has billions of dollars of federal money behind it.

[Following is an automated transcript]

[00:00:16] This is disappointing, but it's normal, right?
[00:00:20] It's absolutely normal because the federal government has always been one that picks winners and losers. If you're old enough, you remember, of course, VHS. Tapes right too. Do you remember beta tapes? Beta max tapes. Beta max was quite the standard for professional production for the longest time, a better technology, frankly, a lot better than VHS.
[00:00:46] Same. The thing's true with beta, but beta lost. And, of course, we ended up with VHS tapes. That's an example of technologies that were backed by investors. And we've seen a lot of that. Look at what's happened with the Serono trial, again, technology backed by investors. And it turned out to not work and in quite a dramatic way, frankly.
[00:01:13] We've seen that repeatedly and keep hitting my mic here, and the problem that we really have, isn't so much that investors get things wrong because they. I was talking with a friend of mine. Who's has been an angel investor and part of VC partnerships for a long time. And he was saying, we're lucky if we get maybe one out of 20 times, we get.
[00:01:37] Now, these are professionals, and my friend, he's a technology guy. He and I contracted together at the same time over a digital equipment corporation. And he came to me for a lot of advice about business. Now, I look back and think, my gosh, the way he did it. You can have all kinds of decisions in life.
[00:01:58] Some are going to bring you closer to family. Some are going to bring you more peace and joy and happiness, and some are going to give you very gray hair that you're going to lose very quickly. And he chose the kind of gray hair. But he was really clear about that. Cause I had said to him, what is a one-time out of 10 VCs make money?
[00:02:19] And that's when he corrected me. He said, no, it's really one out of 20 if they're lucky because that doesn't even happen all of the time. Now think about him. He was working on the scuzzy subsystem, which is. It's a complicated topic, but basically, a computer can talk to its hard disks.
[00:02:38] Okay. Let's just keep it simple. And I was working in the kernel, which is the core of the operating system, and was rewriting kernel modules and routines. To work with a few different types of features and functions. I was very deep, very complicated. He was rather deep, rather complicated.
[00:02:59] There's always a battle, by the way, between compiler people and kernel people as to who has the more complicated job, but he wasn't either. So he's just a kernel guy, I guess. So he went on. He started a company, he got VC angel funding and VC funding. He made a card for your computer that you could plug in that would provide not just scuzzy support, but he moved the file system out of the operating system or onto the card.
[00:03:30] that's something I had actually done a decade earlier with the network moving it out. But anyway, that's a different story entirely. So many things I've done all my life that I wish I'd been able to monetize. But anyways, w he doesn't, he's not a slacker. Let me put it that way. When it comes to technology, neither are his partners, and yet one time out of 20 and along comes the infrastructure.
[00:03:55] They call it the infrastructure bill. It really bothers me to call bills that are not the infrastructure bill that had. What was it? About five, 6% are actually going to infrastructure. So it's like the Democrats under the president, the last president Obama they, he had this shovel-ready jobs, which of course wasn't true.
[00:04:15] And most of the money didn't go to building infrastructure. It just got worse. It's just crazy, and we're not paying attention. So I'm going to help you right now. Enough ranting and raving. The infrastructure bill contains money for some things. We'll talk about a few of them here in a minute and have new regulations.
[00:04:37] And one of those regulations that I've been talking about on the radio this week is this requirement to put kill switches in all new cars. That is really a big deal. Now a kill switch, of course, is something that will stop the engine, and it'll stop the car. That's the whole idea. And various types have been bantered bandied about, including pulling the car over to the side of the road.
[00:05:06] If the driver stops responding as a driver might have a heart attack or fell asleep, perhaps something happened in that car should probably pull over and get out of traffic, turn on the flashers which then makes it a target. Apparently, for some of these Teslas, we've seen articles about that in the news.
[00:05:24] Yeah, don't park on the side of the road. I was in emergency medicine for a long time. And one of the things I can pass along that may save your life is if you have to pull over, do not stay in the car, do not stand in front of the. And particularly in the evening or at night because the flashing lights and the vehicle at the side of the road is a beacon for drunk drivers to come and hit you as well as some of these autonomous vehicles, apparently just get out of the car.
[00:05:56] Behind the car off the road. Okay. Go off the road behind the vehicle, not next to the car off the road, not in front of the car, off the road, behind the car. So if it does get hit, you are less likely to suffer severe damage yourself, but this kills switch. That's part of this bill that was passed in sign. Of course, a remote feature requires all manufacturers to include the ability.
[00:06:24] For police departments and potentially others. And this is where some of the problems come in to be able to stop them. Now you might remember back in 98, there's a Saifai series called the X-Files. It was a very cool series. And there's an episode called kill switch about the artificial intelligence gone wild.
[00:06:47] And that, that is, of course, a while ago back when most people were still using a dial-up modem. But this was a tale of technology, run amuck, and it was warning about handing too much of your life over to technology. Oh, that's one thing. But in this case, isn't it safer, right? Because somebody is whipping through neighborhoods at 80 miles an hour in their car, trying to avoid police.
[00:07:16] Shouldn't have, please be able to stop that car and pull it. So the problem is multifold, frankly, and having this kill switch one constitutes law-abiding. There's a great article on motorists.com, and it shows a picture of this down in New Zealand. Our car was pulled over. And the police found the trunk was full of contraband.
[00:07:42] Now we've seen this before, right? And movies, Miami Vice, and others, where they pull over the car. It's got all this contraband in the trunk. It's cocaine and various other things. No. This isn't Auckland, New Zealand and the trunk was full of Kentucky fried chicken meat. They were running Kentucky fried chicken, just like the Kennedys, running illegal booze back in the day. Yeah. That's how they made their millions. They were running Kentucky fried chicken. Now this bill signed into law by president Biden states that this kills switch, which uses referred to as a safety device, must passively monitor the performance of a motor vehicle driver to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired.
[00:08:34] In other words, big brother will constantly be monitoring how you drive. So if you do something that the system has been programmed to recognize as driver impairment or unsafe driving, your car could just shut off, which could be incredibly dangerous. I want to point out this week too. Another article I read about Teslas and how Tesla had introduced it last fall, a feature.
[00:09:02] So you could set how the car was going to drive. Do you want to move? Real cool, laid-back fashion. Do you want the car to drive an average way, or do you want it to be aggressive? Just weave in and out of traffic a bit and tailgate and do all of those sorts of things, and you could set it, and there is a public backlash, and Tesla got rid of it.
[00:09:22] It is back now. How do you tell if a driver's being unsafe? When will a car in its autonomous mode do the same things human drivers shouldn't be doing? Or what if you're hauling contraband, Kentucky fried chicken? How is the driving going to be measured as impaired? Now I know in many states you have these breathalyzers that are court-ordered, installed in cars.
[00:09:52] Okay, so that makes sense. Somebody has been drunk driving many times. You don't want them drunk driving ever again, please. And thank you. But how about having that system in every car? Because it fails. It doesn't work sometimes. And how about the back door? Because that's essentially what we're talking about.
[00:10:14] These cars will have a back door that allows someone named government authorities to access them whenever they want. Would they need a warrant to do it? Probably not. Even as hackers could access the back door and shut down your vehicle, think about lad having a kill switch that would kill all cars and trucks in the United States.
[00:10:41] Right? There are so many potential problems here and they haven't been thought about. Oh, obviously, it's government, but we're going to talk, or we'd get back about the investment that is part of this multi-trillion dollar bill that you and your kids and grandkids are paying for.
[00:11:02] We know they snuck a backdoor kill, switch into all cars manufactured after 2026 into this infrastructure belt. What else is in there? That's going to affect technology. That's what we're going to talk about right now.
[00:11:17] We know about this now. After it passed, finally, people had a chance to read it because this provision on the kill switch was not debated in the house.
[00:11:29] It was not debated in this. Just like they've been doing was so many other things for so long now, they just bundle them all together in a bill. They gave it a cute little cuddly title, and then they go ahead and put whatever it is they want into it. These are these omnibus bills that they should have gotten rid of decades ago.
[00:11:54] It is absolutely crazy to me. I just. Get it. Why are we putting up with this? So now the next step here is the investments that are being made. Now I'm going to type in right now, how successful are angel investments? Okay. So here we go. Bunch of ads for angel investing says you can have an average return of 1.1 X cap.
[00:12:27] All right. And it goes on and on. This is a company called core associates. The success rate of angel investors. This is from Investopedia, the effective internal rate out return for a successful portfolio for angel investors is approximately 22%. Now, remember that over. So that's pretty amazing. Those numbers are much higher than what my friends said that they can expect absolutely much, much.
[00:12:58] But I can tell you one thing for sure. Government quote, investments, end quote, rarely ever actually payout because you've got political motivations in there. It's one thing to be a smart technology guy investing in technology. But how about those people in Congress? That aren't smart technology guys.
[00:13:22] How about the doctors in Congress? Look at what Senator Paul ran. Paul has been saying he is a doctor and what he's been saying about the whole COVID thing and the way the government has handled it. We are really going down the wrong road to here because government. Taking the money from us at the point of a gun.
[00:13:44] Try not paying your taxes and see what happens rarely ends up. Okay. So the us Congress passed November six. Biden's trillion. Plus infrastructure bill that includes 65 billion of investments in the power grid to accommodate rising, renewable energy capacity and demonstration clean tech project. So what's that one about?
[00:14:10] That particular one is because our grid cannot handle solar and also the windmill power. The rates, we would need to have it, our grid set up so that you have a few centralized power stations, and then that power is distributed to the area. It's not set up for having tens of thousands of power stations.
[00:14:35] So there you go, president Biden, put money in to try and figure out well, Hey, how do we accomplish? How do we accommodate them? Noma, Germany has done. Is they've gone ahead and they're using a massive lake as a heat sink to get rid of the extra electricity that's being generated. When it comes to a regular power plant, you can turn it up.
[00:14:59] You can turn it down the same. Thing's true for every type of power plant, whether it's powered by water or nuclear or coal, you can turn it up. But when it comes to wind and solar, you can't turn it down. If it's a nice sunny day, you're not going to be able to turn that power down. It's still coming out.
[00:15:18] You got to do something with it. You can cut it. Open the circuit. But the power companies that run the grid don't have that kind of fine-grain control over the electricity that you're generating in your house or in your business. There's so many problems that start to open up here. So they're spending $65 billion.
[00:15:40] That is a lot of money to figure this out. Okay. Personally, I'd rather see the private sector do it because they're going to have a better chance of coming up with something that's really going to work next part here. Okay. And by the way, Colin it or trillion-dollar-plus is being favorable because they played all kinds of gimmicks with this money.
[00:16:03] Just, I just found out. In fact, I think it was a couple of weeks ago, June. Do you remember. President Biden moved all of the college loans from private sources into the white house. Do you remember that? So the white house is controlling all college loans at the time I thought, okay, it's just them paying back the unions, the teacher's unions, right?
[00:16:27] Because it also included provisions that you cannot have be bankrupt and get rid of your college. Th that's just mind boggling to me, but as it turns out what he was doing. Okay. All of that's true. But what he was actually doing is saying, oh, there's over a trillion dollars in college loans. So we're going to move them into the white house and call those assets to offset all of the money we're spending.
[00:16:58] You see what we're talking about here? It's just not. Electric vehicles, clean energy, public transit are all part of this trillion-dollar-plus legislation. It's got $550 billion, a half, a trillion dollars to fund advancements in public transit, clean energy electric vehicles, roads, and bridges. Okay. It's always electric.
[00:17:26] Really? The right winner here is electric. The beta max that should have won out over VHS. How about hydrogen? How about some other way? How about natural gas or LP gas? What we'll never know because some of that is not going to get funding. However, there is going to be some funding. For nuclear development?
[00:17:50] No, I've talked a lot about this on the radio before, but the bottom line is as nuclear is the only green energy that we can really get. Now you can hear some people saying, oh, okay. You're not sure not to know. Look at the current generations of nuclear power. Now, unfortunately, the regulations around nuclear power were written what, 70, 60 years ago, right?
[00:18:17] When nuclear power was nasty stuff, it came out of the projects that we had in world war II to build nuclear bomb. Now these six generation nuclear power plants are as clean as can be. They only need to be refueled every 10 to 20 years, and they're small enough to fit into a small building smaller than your average home.
[00:18:40] And you can put one of these in the neighborhood in a small town, and that will power the. Thing. Okay. So we're already getting 27%, according to president Biden of our power from these decades, old nuclear and hydropower facilities, they've got 21 and a half-billion dollars in this for clean energy demonstrations and research hubs focused on next-generation technologies, helping to get us to that net-zero by 2050 that they're looking at.
[00:19:13] To get to, so this will be interesting because there they've got 8 billion earmarked for hydrogen and carbon capture. Guess what's going to get more, yeah. Carbon capture, direct air capture, and we don't know what's going to happen with this. We're turning cow, carbon into stone, basically with some of these plans and experiments are underway.
[00:19:34] So what happened. When we need that carbon again. But 8 billion is earmarked for hydrogen and carbon capture direct capture, 10 billion, two and a half billion earmarked for advanced nuclear. So I'm happy with that. Not that they're spending the money, not at all, but that they're actually putting it into something that might make a difference.
[00:20:00] And hydrogen funding in this, by the way, it looks like it's a big win for oil and the whole oil industry stick around.
[00:20:09] This year, we have a live show at the consumer electronic show. That's a cool thing. I was not able to go this year, but we're going to talk right now about some new technologies that were unveiled just this year. From some of the major manufacturers.
[00:20:27] Samsung had some really cool announcements out at the consumer electronic show.
[00:20:34] There were a lot when you consider how many people attend that show every year, it was way down this year, by the way, usually there's like 120,000. The people who attend, give or take this year, it was like a fifth of that number, hardly anybody, but there were still thousands of businesses that were there, exhibiting products and software and things.
[00:20:58] Hopefully next year I'll be able to head back out there again. I just don't like all this lockdown craziness that they have, and man, they had quite a bit of it out there. This year, just a large part of the reason. I didn't know. But Samsung had some cool stuff. We'll talk about that right now.
[00:21:16] You might've seen the galaxy fold, you know what that's about where you have a phone. That folds in half and it has a couple of displays on it. There's one display that might all always be visible. There have been some cool phones in the past that had LCD, just regular, old, black and white displays on the outside.
[00:21:38] And you open it up inside and there's color. Now galaxy has come out with the tri-fold flex and flex. Concepts, you can't buy these right now, but they're really quite cool because this tri-fold is something that looks like a little big bit of a big iPhone. So you, if you're familiar with iPhone, It's probably about 25, 30% bigger than your iPhone when it's all folded up.
[00:22:09] But I'm just talking about the face. It's obviously a lot thicker than your iPhone, and then you can fold it out and you have, what is. Tablet. Now, this is quite cool. This tablet look, and I'm looking at it right now. And it is neat. If you need to carry something around, of course, courses, Android.
[00:22:30] And I always advise you guys against not getting Android because of the inevitable security problems that they have. But it is quite cool. What they've done a whole way, which of course, another company you definitely should not buy from. If you're stuck on Android, then go ahead and buy the latest Samsung do not buy Walkway LTE or.
[00:22:55] Algae, any of these other guys that are out there. Okay. No safe place to, to put it on the table. At least with the tri-fold at the bottom is going to be good, but we'll see, they had another one that is a scaled up galaxy Z fold. And what you do with this thing is you pull the screen. Out now, this is something that we looked at years ago, where we had these foldable screens that would actually roll right up into the device and you could pull it out as well.
[00:23:29] We haven't really seen that go anywhere. You might remember back to the future where they had displays that were so cheap on the cereal boxes that they were disposed of. And it would play a little video, cute little video that went along with this cereal that you are buying, but we'll see what happens there.
[00:23:47] This version of the flex ass has been another trade shows. It's got this tri-fold design. There have not been a whole lot of real successes with the galaxy folds in the past. I don't know if you'll be able to see it. They've also got the flex G and this is what they call a multifold product that folds inwards twice in kind of a G shape.
[00:24:13] I'm looking at it right now. So it just folds up entirely. You can't see any display when it's all folded up, but it gives you a bigger display ultimately, and that's a thing. They also came up with the flex note and this is a laptop that has no keyboard on it. So it expands to. And then you would have it folded a little bit so that you could use the bottom half of the display as a touch key pad, which is cool.
[00:24:45] We'll see what happens with that. But there were a few things like that Samsung had out there. I like, frankly, the ability to have a device with me that can double as a laptop, and there have been some attempts at it in the past, including one, the projects are keyboard. On to any surface and then measures where your fingers are and hears and feels the taps of your finger on the surface to figure out what it is, you're typing and things but they've all been gimmicky.
[00:25:17] Now I want to talk about something that just came out that I guess you could say it's a little bit gimmicky, but it's real world stuff. And that is GM has something they're calling their ultra cruise driver's assistance. And this is going to come out in 2023, they think, and they're using a Snapdragon platform using Cellcom.
[00:25:42] Five nanometer chipsets. Now that's pretty cool because the five nanometers stuff is something you don't see very much apple is using it. Now some of these others are other manufacturers are too, but what's going to happen is this new ultra cruise is really it's out there right now, which is really quite good, but they are.
[00:26:08] Coleen and ultra crews, because it's better than the supercruise that you're seeing on the road. So alter cruise, you can't buy it yet again, that's for next year, but supercruise is limited to restricted access divided. Lane highways alter crude is gotten to operate on more than 2 million miles of roads in the US and K.
[00:26:33] So in Alterra crews, equipped car from GM is going to sense its environment. It's got a bunch of different sensors, including LIDAR, which is a laser radar thing, optical cameras, as well as regular rates. And it's going to have the sensor fuse 360 degree view of the world around it. It's going to recognize and react to permanent traffic control devices like stop signs, traffic lights, even handle left turns.
[00:27:00] Although apparently it's going to need a little bit of driver input and like super cruises, altar cruises, a driver assistance system. So it's under a level two, which is. Pretty advanced frankly, and the human driver is still responsible for the situational awareness. In other words, stay awake. This has a driver monitoring system, making sure you are awake and you're going to have to supervise it.
[00:27:27] So that's the problem I have with it. I would rather have a system that monitors. As I'm driving, they have a system that's supposed to be running on its own. And I have to monitor again. I think that's a huge mistake, the same mistake that has been made many times in the past, but it's. People are not good at monitoring computers.
[00:27:51] Computers are good at monitoring people. So I, my ideal is to have a system or I'm driving. I'm holding onto the steering wheel. I got maybe my foot on the gas. Maybe not, maybe it's on cruise control, but if I decide to do something that the onboard computer thinks is wrong. So I'm varying into another lane and there's a car there.
[00:28:13] I just assumed to have the car kind of jerk the steering wheel a little bit, and I have a little alarm go off. Hey, there's a car next to you. Comma you idiot. And I'm back in the. I think that makes the most sense, but if I am fighting against it, so if I pull really hard, I turn even harder to the right.
[00:28:35] The system says, okay, you must know what you're doing. I'm going to let you go. And it now lets you drive into that other lane. And there may be a lot of reasons for that. I'd rather have hit a car on the side then rearrange. Julian do a dump truck that stopping on the road in front of me. So there's those types of human evaluations that you're going to make, that the computers really cannot make.
[00:28:59] That's the way I wish it would go. In other words, I'd rather be driving something made by our friends at Boeing than drive something that is. Maybe a little bit of a problem from Airbus. And if you are already a Volvo owner, I want to point out that you are already in the car. That's what I just described.
[00:29:22] And that's part of the reason I haven't driven Volvo. I haven't been buying them and that is involved. The computer can override what you want to do. Your steering wheel is not hooked up directly to the wheels, your brake pedal, your gas pedal. None of them are hooked up like they used to be. I've got a 1980 Mercedes. And there's direct linkage to all of those things. So if I'm turning my steering wheel, it is in fact directly hooked up to that front end of the car. And I am really turning the wheels. Push down on the accelerator. There's a mechanical linkage that goes right to that engine and moves a controller on the fuel injection system.
[00:30:08] Same thing with the brakes. However, in ma many modern cars, not all of those things are direct linkages for many vehicles. In fact, your gas pedal does not really. Directly to the car. All it does is provide a potential geometer, one of those little volume dial type things that is sending a signal to the computer, and then the computer's actually controlling it all.
[00:30:36] So a Volvo is designed to not let you pull more than one G laterally. In other words, it only lets you turn the. So hard so far, and the idea there is just stop you from rolling over. But I, again, I can see situations where you might not want that computer to override you. And certainly not in the fashion that Volvo does it.
[00:31:00] So that's why I'm not a Volvo fan, right? Although they consider themselves safety experts. I guess they are in some ways, but now they're a Chinese company. So I don't know. I'm getting even more confused. He visited me online. Craig, peter.com. This week. If you subscribe, you'll get my password special.
[00:31:20] We've got some news on the 5g front with Verizon deciding to change its pricing strategy. So we're going to talk about that. And we're also going to talk about the promise of 5g. We keep hearing about it. What is it and what does it mean for us?
[00:31:37] Verizon's making a major change here in its five G upgrade. I'll tell you about that in just a few minutes.
[00:31:44] First of all, let's talk about 5g and what the promise of 5g is, frankly, 5g. Absolutely a huge change. It really is a complete transformation of so many industries. Our society is going to change because of 5g. Now, initially there's going to be some bumps in the road. Like we'll talk about here with Verizon, but 5g is the data plan that is being rolled out or the data technology that is being rolled out.
[00:32:19] All major salaried or phone companies, and it's going to allow them to compete against cable companies. These satellite services that are by the way, in such trouble right now, they're looking to combine themselves together. The whole dish networks thing it's really that world is going to change and 5g is going to make it even harder for them because 5g is 10 times faster.
[00:32:48] Than 4g LTE. Remember how fast 4g was now? That doesn't mean that 5g is guaranteed to be 10 times faster than 4g. LTE is right now at your home or office or commute. But what it does mean is that it has that potential. Now it's going to matter. Who your carrier is going to matter who you are, how far you are from those cell towers, because 5g requires far more cell towers than 4g ever did or anything prior to it because of the frequencies and the bandwidth that, yeah, that 10 times faster comes with a price, but 5g also supports 10,000 times more network.
[00:33:33] Then 4g does and can handle a hundred times more devices than 4g networks. And it is also one 50th, the latency of Phi or for. One 50th, which means the latency, the amount of time that it takes for the packet to get to the other side and potentially back is one 50th of what it was in 4g. So what that means is 5g is going to make your video calls seem like they're local.
[00:34:06] There's so much bandwidth that they can send high resolution. Text or data. So video, for instance, now let's talk about one of the really, I think big applications it's already been tried a little bit here, but it has to do with telemedicine. All of us probably have had some sort of a run in with telemedicine because of the.
[00:34:29] Down the doctor doesn't want to see you now, but he will see you potentially over a video call. Now that's a big deal. How about the next step up and the next let's get to surgery. What happens if you are living in a town that doesn't have a surgeon that specializes in this one particular bone inside your middle of.
[00:34:53] How many places have that right. In the Boston area. Of course, we are lucky to have some of the best hospitals and doctors in the world without a doubt. But how much detail do you want? You don't want a doctor. Who's never performed that surgery before you want a doctor. This performed at a thousand times.
[00:35:12] So when we're talking about 5g, what that means is that doctor could be at a remote hospital, could be using one of these control surfaces that allows them to hold on to tools that are hooked up to computers that are almost like the scalpel or the other tools they might be using to perform their surgery.
[00:35:34] Yeah. In maybe even a doctor's office for outpatient thing or you're in a hospital and a surgical center. There's of course a surgical staff right there. And there is a computer system set up with all of these remote controls and those remote controls are controlling, specific tools that the doctor wants.
[00:35:56] And. So the local people are there. Doesn't keep an eye on your breathing and make sure you're properly medicated and put under and that your blood pressure's correct, et cetera. And now that surgeon that works on that one bone in the middle ear can remotely control all of the surgical. Almost like they're local and that's possible because of 5g.
[00:36:21] Now I know many places have fiber. I have fiber at my office. We have three gigabits of a high speed fiber coming in as three gig up and three gig down. And that's just great. And it's wonderful, but not every place has that kind of bandwidth available where we go. To the internet backbone from the office, we have an, our own ASN and stuff they'll get into too much detail, but basically we're part of the internet backbone.
[00:36:49] So I think that's a really an interesting thing when you get right down to it, because now that doctor could be in a rural area, that doctor could be in New York City and you are out in middle of nowhere, Lancaster, New Hampshire, for instance. You're in that little hospital there, or that outpatient clinic in, in Lancaster or wherever it is you are, and that doctor can now control all of that surgical equipment.
[00:37:19] So it's going to change a lot of things. Having that kind of latency allows that doctor to have incredible control over those regions. Scalpels and other surgical tools. And it also lets that doctor see everything that's going on in super high definition video. Assuming, of course, you've got the cameras and you've got the right displays, et cetera.
[00:37:41] Now, this is going to change, not just the medical industry, but it's going to change many industries. As I mentioned earlier, think about things like your clothing, your cars, almost anything nowadays can be embedded with some sort of a computer apple has been working on kind of the apple glasses thing.
[00:38:02] Remember what Google came up with Google glass and it's going to be built right. To your glasses. You're going to be able to ask questions of Siri and it'll be able to answer them, show you things, put overlays on your glasses. So you're trying to get to a place you've never been to before your glasses are going to show you where you're going.
[00:38:23] Same thing inside your car. It's going to be projecting upon these windscreen in front of. So you're going to be able to see all of the directions and things right there. It's going to be telling you your speed or other things that you care about right then and there. And it's all going to be doing it over this amazing 5g network.
[00:38:43] Now it's going to take a while for it all to roll out. We're seeing the starts of it, in reality, we're probably talking about a decade to completely roll out 5g networks and to start really seeing its value, and much of the value comes from something I complain about all the time. The. Of things.
[00:39:03] Now, the internet of things, of course, is all of these devices we were just talking about. But instead of hooking your jacket up to the wifi, where at home and you, of course, you're gonna wear the jacket out and get a cup of coffee, and then you're going to go do some shopping and visit some friends that jacket's going to be able to keep you up to date and provide feedback wherever you are because of.
[00:39:30] Hi, high bandwidth available to it. Remember it can handle a hundred times more devices on 5g than it can on 4g. And that's what they're looking for. The automated driving, where the cars can all talk to each other. But instead of that mesh network that we were trying to build previously where the cars talk to each other, and that means everybody's got to be on the right frequencies and talking the right way.
[00:39:55] Just do the 5g. And let them all just talk over the internet with. There's so much stuff that's going to be able to happen here. Artificial intelligence tied into the glasses. Like we mentioned augmented reality again, so much. So they're thinking that by 2025, we may see 1.8 billion 5g connections deployed worldwide.
[00:40:21] Now that seems like a very big number until you get into how many people. On the earth. And you can see that it's not even going to be one device for every person, but it is going to be a huge thing in the developed world. And the bandwidth and latency are important and 5g solves most of that problem for most applications.
[00:40:44] But right now we are. I see the roll-outs and right now T-Mobile has the best 5g network nationwide. And it has very high data rates, but not as high as Verizon's are because Verizon's using different frequencies and it can get more bandwidth out of those frequencies than T-Mobile can, but T-Mobile has better coverage.
[00:41:08] So this is a trade off, right? If you're already with the company. And you're happy enough with them. There really isn't much reason to move to a T-Mobile or whatever it might be, because they're all going to have pretty good performance. And as I said, it's going to be about a decade before we're really realizing what's going on.
[00:41:27] But Verizon on January 19, launched its 5g on the C band spectrum. And there's been a lot of stuff back and forth about that. And some of it comes from the airline industry because it's using some of the frequencies that are close by and they're afraid it's going to. Problems with the airplane navigation systems and data feedback systems, but this is going to provide even faster 5g speeds for Verizon customers.
[00:41:57] So even though right now T-Mobile has a leg up. That doesn't mean that they're going to have a leg up forever. That's true. But. You're beyond unlimited Verizon smart phone plans and the other plans that include data. They're all changing right now. So check with Verizon, if you have Verizon as your character, because here's what our carrier I should say, because things are changing.
[00:42:23] Hey, visit me online. Craig peterson.com.
[00:42:29] Patents were intended to help innovation, not just stifle it. And you look at people like Edison. He had more patents than anyone else in his age, but now we've got a different world with Google and Apple and Samsung.
[00:42:44] This week, we have an article about Google losing the Sonos patent.
[00:42:51] Now, this is fascinating to me because one has happened here is we have two companies. We have Sonos who I've had on my radio show before, who has these great speakers that you can put in your home? And the idea is they all connect to your wifi and the speakers can talk to each other or talk to the internet.
[00:43:12] You can play the music you want. You can extend your television speakers, et cetera, and you can control them all. And play them all with the same songs, this up the volume down the volume, all kinds of cool stuff. Google came out with their own speakers and there was a problem with that because Sono says that it pitched Google.
[00:43:38] For support of Google play music to go to these Sono speakers. Now I've got to tell you full disclosure here. I was in a similar position here to Sonos many years ago, and I had developed software that allowed a computer system to run old code, basically. So what this was is it was for COBOL and I could emulate.
[00:44:07] The code that went into this old Sperry Cade computer assisted data entry system, which was really quite a little accomplishment. And I sold it to RCA Astro space who used it to make the space shuttles, the space shuttle program, Telstra how long ago that was right. And it was pretty cool. It was a great accomplishment.
[00:44:28] But I had gone to Sperry and I paid my own way down to their headquarters in Pennsylvania. And I did a presentation for them, showed them, okay, this is what I'm doing. You guys I'd love it. You're talking about selling it. You've already sold it to a couple of different companies and I would love for you guys to sell it some more.
[00:44:50] And Sperry went behind my back and. I had a project going to replace their Cade system. Now I was using Sperry branded anyways, Unix systems in order to do this. So they would still be able to sell hardware. The fee for this new hardware, as well as my software, that monthly fee was lower than just the maintenance fee on this old K data entry system.
[00:45:22] Now that's a huge deal. And I think what happened to Sperry said we gotta be able to sell them more stuff has got to be more expensive. They never talked to me about it again. And then about two years ago or two years after that, then. I had a trade show, announced they're brand new system for data entry and they wasn't the best.
[00:45:46] And they had taken some of my ideas and tried to implement them. Now they did a terrible job implementing them, but they stole my idea. And it's very difficult to Sue another company much to my chagrin because I've been cheated, ripped off. I don't know what, how you want to call it, but many times for stuff like this.
[00:46:09] And so it just has really beaten me down over the years. So what's happening here is Sono is this company that makes these great speakers and sound systems went to Google and said, Hey. I would love for your streaming music system to tie directly into Sonos. And that was the Google play music is what it was called.
[00:46:33] So there they go. And Google gets okay, great meeting. Let's go have 'em now. I kept this and Google gotta be hide. The scenes. Look at Sono, says operations back in 2013, and I'm sure their founders were thinking what I was, oh, this is great. They're either going to license it or they're going to buy us.
[00:46:52] And this is going to be fantastic for us. Sono says Google use that access to quote, blatantly and knowingly. Copies synopsis features for the Google Home speaker, which launched in 2016. And then, so nos sued Google in early 20, 20 Eddie Lazarus, and this an article in ARS Technica that chief article had Sonos told the New York Times.
[00:47:18] We appreciate that the ITC has definitely validated the five Sonos patents at issue in this case and ruled any equivocable. Yeah. And equivocally and does not be in there. The Google infringes, all five patents that isn't across the board, when that is surpassingly rare in patent cases, I have to agree. I think that sort of thing is just terrible.
[00:47:44] Just terrible. So what does Google. We're going to talk about a Samsung apple case as well. And they did a much different thing, but what does Google do here? Google has decided that due to a recent legal run, this is a quote from Google due to a recent legal ruling. We're making some changes to how to set up your devices and how the speaker group functionality will work moving forward.
[00:48:11] By the way, I corrected the grammar as. Terrible grammar. If you're using the speaker group feature to control the volume in the Google Home app, by voice with the Google assistant or directly on your nest hub display, you'll notice a few changes. So basically what Google did is they removed functionality from their speakers, and then they push that out to everybody out there.
[00:48:37] Now Sonos has been criticized for pushing updates. Devices, it's owner says we're not going to support this anymore. So they send out an update that makes the speaker completely useless, which is just crazy. But this volume changes the biggest annoyance on the list of features that Google has dropped.
[00:48:57] So rather than saying, oh, okay, you know what I'm really? Yeah. We messed up because we did get all of this inside information and then we use some of your technology without licensing. It let's reach a mutual agreement here and we'll pay you whatever, some sort of royalties for the past and in the future.
[00:49:19] No. They decide to keep fighting. Isn't that just incredible. And Google's says, yeah, we're not paying anything. We're just going to remove it from all of our speakers. So we don't have to pay you any royalties going forward. And there's a great customer reaction that was on a subreddit. Actually, there's a whole bunch of them, angry customers, demanding refunds, threatening lawsuits, and one who said you got sued by Sonos and we pay the price either, get some better lawyers and win the suit or pay Sonus or royalty or start issuing refunds to the customers. Fascinating. Despite Sarno's having one Sarno still says it. Hasn't got the outcome at once. Sonos wants Google to pay royalties for its patent, not pull the rug out from under the customers by stripping features from already purchased products.
[00:50:11] So a Google is going to keep getting pressure from Sonos as we go forward here, hopefully they'll pay pat patent licenses for stuff in the past. Now patents are something that are a double-edged sword. And I want to talk when we get back about the whole pattern thing between Apple and Samsung, we're not going to talk about every one of the patent issues, but we're going to focus in on why.
[00:50:39] Oh on one patent. And I also want to talk about what I see to be the problems with the patent system. There were major changes made during the Obama administration, and they made some things much, much worse, and a couple of things, a little bit better. Okay. Isn't that always the case when government gets involved, right?
[00:51:00] Yeah. At least you hope sometimes some things get a little bit better. So we'll talk about that. If you've ever thought about taking something and patenting it, you're going to want to listen. Or if you have friends or family that are great little inventors, because there's a lot of things here that most people just aren't aware.
[00:51:19] Hey, take a couple of minutes. If you would go online to Craig Peters, son.com, I've got all kinds of great information there. And if you sign up for my email list this week, you'll get my special report on passwords, which password manager to use and what to do. Craig peterson.com.
[00:51:40] So what is so wrong with the patent system? It has been such a huge problem for small companies against big companies, but what's the underlying problem.
[00:51:52] We were just talking about Google and Sonos and how Google lost this case in this international. Court and has not lost a case here in the us yet where it needs to pay royalties. So what happens in this case with the ITC is if Google removes certain functionality from the devices, in this case, the smart speakers, they can import them to the United States.
[00:52:22] I suspect Sonos is going after Google for patent infringement and royalties. But Google is just being a, I don't know what you wanna call it, but they're, they got their head somewhere and I, it just isn't. I explained how I went through something like this more than once in fact. And it wasn't just Sperry.
[00:52:45] Microsoft has been doing this sort of thing for a long time. I'm sure Apple has basically been doing that as well. In fact, Apple sued Samsung using a patent. The claim that that slide to unlock feature that Apple has been using on I-phones is Apple's invention. If you can believe that. Tells you about part of this problem, that slide to unlock really?
[00:53:13] That is an obvious next step. And that's what we had with patents in the past. If something was an obvious next step in technology, you could not patent it. You asked me that makes a whole lot of sense, because if it's an obvious next step, how is patenting it and getting the exclusive right to use and sell that technology, how is that going to help the advancement of technology and.
[00:53:46] Because that is what patents are there for. That's why they were included in the constitution. And the idea was you work hard and long for years and you come up with a cotton gin, for instance, there's going to save incredible amounts of labor and you patent it and you're rewarded for that. So you can now exclusively sell it and licensed.
[00:54:10] And you are also, of course, required to put all of the information about how to make your patent into the public domain via the patent office. So it's a cool thing. It makes a lot of sense, and I'm glad to see that it same place, but we've had a lot of problems lately. I'd looked at some numbers here before we started talking today.
[00:54:37] There's been over 350,000 US patents that were granted in 2019. 350,000 granted new member, not every patent application is granted. And that number 350,000 patents in 2019 is four times higher than the per capita rate in 19. That is huge. And the reason for this is research managers at these larger companies like Microsoft, look at a patent as being cheap and easy to get.
[00:55:13] And so why not file for them? So in the early 2000 bill gates decided that Microsoft needed more patents so that it could wield them against competitors. And within a few years, Microsoft increased their annual patent application rate by 50%. Now patents are easy to get because the standards now that are in place, thank you, President Obama and the Congress are lower than they have ever been.
[00:55:43] And also because the burden is now on the US patent and trademark office to prove that an invention is. Patentable. So you're relying on bureaucrats, many of whom sit on their butts all day long, right? And their number one job is not to get fired. No, I'm making incredible broad generalizations here, but that's really true.
[00:56:09] Everybody wants to be Fowchee getting paid a half a million dollars almost per year to sit around and make bad decisions. Why not? So patent examination is slow because of this. It takes three years or more after you file a patent application in order to get your patent approved. Now think about that in the technology world, taking three years from the time you come up with an idea to the time you finally get a patent.
[00:56:46] So they've increased staffing at the US patent and trademark office, but the patent backload. It is continuing to grow, and the examiners are spending, on average, only 20 hours reviewing each application. But think about that for a minute, 350,000 patents granted in 20 19, 20 hours reviewing each application.
[00:57:11] Now I said only 20 hours spent because in reality, It should be more, the patent examiners are supposed to be reading and understanding the invention. This described in the patent application, they're supposed to determine whether that invention meets the claim of the application. And then they're supposed to search existing technology to see if the invention already exists and then write a response to the applicant.
[00:57:42] time was again, a next step, an obvious next step wasn't patentable, but now you gotta just fight over this stuff and it's first to file. So if you come up with a really great idea that you want to patent and you play with it a little bit and you refine it, and then you file it only to find out that someone else already has a patent on your technology.
[00:58:08] 'cause they got there first and there have been cases where someone has developed something and they intend on patenting it, the word gets out about what they're doing. And then the third party files a patent on it before the actual person who invented it. This is just crazy. This type of examination is just bound to cause problems cause errors, many patents are just too broad or they cover obvious inventions.
[00:58:40] Like what? I just mentioned the slide to unlock thing on the Apple home screen. Lock screen being. It's something that Apple wasn't forcing against Samsung, Samsung just gave up after years of fighting it. So what are you supposed to do? If you're a little guy, right? You don't have the money that Samsung has or that apple has.
[00:59:05] One of the things that mark Cuban has done that I like. And he and I disagree on. Oh, a lot of things. But mark human endowed, a chair at the electronic frontier foundation, which is an organization I also support dedicated to the elimination of stupid. Patents and quote-unquote. So the idea is let's get rid of some of these stupid patents.
[00:59:28] Let's maybe update our patent system. And frankly, I think the patent system should be gone. Now that's a pretty bold statement, right? That's my opinion, obviously, but for technologies, like what you might put into a smartphone for technologies, am I going to software, et cetera? The life of that product is only going to be maybe a year or two or three years before the competition takes over.
[00:59:57] And now you are moving on to something else, and you've gone through what a three year difficult, expensive, very costly, sometimes impossible process of trying to get a patent on. So let's look at a smartphone technology. Let's say you want to start a new smartphone company, a patent attorneys going to have to review hundreds of patents, including many patents that were not even granted until long after the product could be launched.
[01:00:29] Does that make sense, too? It's going to take years to go through this patent process. And the failure to license. All of these different relevant patents creates a risk of litigation. So you'd be crazy to try and come up with something. Look at Motorola, Motorola exists basically as a patent portfolio, Microsoft has their patent portfolio.
[01:00:57] Apple has a Google, has it. Some of these companies have cross-licensed their patents because there's so many, and they have no idea how they're going to affect each other. So they just give blanket. So they say, okay here's what we'll do. We'll trade our portfolio with your portfolio. So you can use any of our patents and we can use any of your.
[01:01:18] The real problem, isn't it. And smartphone litigation, because of all of these complexities is just way too common. Apple who is truly a pioneer in smartphones. I don't think anybody would argue that. Although obviously they weren't the first, but there are definite pioneer they've been involved in. Dozens and dozens hundreds, probably of lawsuits around the globe as both a defendant and a plaintiff.
[01:01:46] And as a plaintiff, apple sometimes has been using its patents to beat other competitors over the head to stop them from coming up with new, innovative. This is a huge deal here. Frankly, Apple was able to convince the court that their version of the slide to unlock feature was patentable. And after seven years, as I mentioned here, Samsung agreed to pay license fees, to apple, to just settle the case, get it over with and economic research that is being done.
[01:02:21] And I'm looking at right now. What site is this? This is direct costs from some of these yeah. Boston University, school of law law and economics research paper, number 12 dash 34. And it's talking about these non-practicing entities known as patent trolls, that these litigation costs and license fees are stifling innovation in a very big way.
[01:02:48] Frankly, I think the, we got to get rid of the patent system entirely. It's gone. When an investor gets a patent, they're supposed to reveal the secret sauce behind the invention in the patent, in this public document that I mentioned so that other people can learn about the invention and use it to improve technology.
[01:03:08] That's the theory, but the practice has been something out it's been. To beat competitors over the head and shoulders to stop them from being able to compete is a very bad thing. So there you go. My opinion. Hey, if you want to get this week special report on passwords and password managers, sign up right now.
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