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Jun 30, 2018

 

Are Internet Passwords going away?  Listen is as I explain about a plan to kill Internet passwords.

Is Facebook still tracking you? Today, I will share with you 18 things, you may not know that Facebook is tracking.

Is Minority Report coming to your local Police force? I will explain about this new, creepy, artificial intelligence out there. This may be the future, and it is, unfortunately anticipatory.

How do you feel about Automated Grocery Stores?  What do you think is going to happen when you walk into a store and you never interact with anyone? I will explain what I think about this and some of the drawbacks of this technology.

Remember the extortion case involving bitcoin and Mitt Romney's tax returns?  I will discuss what happened this week to the criminal involved.

 

Craig is putting up a new membership site (Yes, it is free, but you have to sign up)  On it will have all his special reports that he puts out and you will be the first to get them.

These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com

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Transcript:

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.

Airing date: 06/30/2018

Microsoft Passwords - Facebook and Microsoft challenging Amazon Go - Killing Passwords - AI predicting the Future - 18 Surprising things Facebook is tracking about you

Craig Peterson: [00:00:03] Hi everybody, Happy Saturday. Well, this is when the show, of course, airs every Saturday on Clear Channel and I Heart Radio. And, I hope you enjoy it if you are watching this online. Of course, many of you might be watching at any time of day anywhere in the world, it's kind of cool. And, then also it's available via podcast so, hopefully, you've been paying attention to my podcasts and watching those as well. Today, we're going to cover a few different topics, so, I want you to kind of stick around. They're all important. We're going to talk about what you need to know, about the plan to kill Internet passwords, we mentioned this on the show before. I've got some more details. List of 18 things, you may not know that Facebook is tracking, about you. We've got a pretty new, creepy, artificial intelligence out there. This may be the future, and it, unfortunately, is anticipatory. So, we'll talk about what it's doing. We've talked before about checkout-less stores. Do you think they're going to affect you? What do you think is going to happen when you walk into a store and you never interact with anyone? Is that something that could change your life for the better or the worse? We're going to talk about that, and a story that is changing the world and it's just not been reported. I reported on it, because I got this information directly from the Secret Service some months ago, while the guy involved has gone to jail. But you know if one of your family members is kidnapped you would want to know these things. First of all, you've got to solve it quickly before that family member gets hurt or killed. You also know that the odds of getting your family member back aren't that great. Depends on where this is all happening, right. 

[00:01:50] So, kidnapping is really a bad thing. Well, what do you do when there's a kidnapping? We're going to talk about that, and we're going to talk about the new high tech kidnappings that are going on. And, this is not good not good at all. And particularly we're going to talk about a kidnapping involving U.S. presidential Republican candidate Mitt Romney. I mean, this is this is just absolutely phenomenal you probably haven't heard about it unless you heard it from me so, welcome. We're getting into the show right now. 

[00:02:26] So, first of all, let's talk about this. Check out this store, OK. This is really huge because think about if you go into the store. Think about you interacting with the cash register people, right. You put all your stuff out of your grocery cart you put it on the conveyor belt. They ring it up right. They scan it, back in the old days. They knew all the prices of everything, just because they type them, right there, Right. Nowadays, they try and scan it, if it is not can they just don't know what to do, Right. Call a manager while they're trying to change all of us because of course those employees can get kind of expensive and there's not a huge margin in the grocery market. You know, I have mixed feelings about this one. I have mixed feelings, in fact about a lot of automation projects that are going on. And the reason, I have mixed feelings about this one, is frankly, the checkout and the bagging. That's the first job, for many people, Right. That's where many of us got our start and an understanding of business. In fact, to look at the problems we have in the world today, with the younger generations, and not understanding the work ethic, and you know the real entrepreneurial drives education when you're young out there selling lemonade. I delivered newspapers, right. I have had jobs, forever. I worked for some pretty big corporations when I was young, and then went on for the rest of my life to be entrepreneurial.

[00:03:59] I haven't worked for someone else since I was 18. That is a big deal, Right. So, very entrepreneurial. And, you have these opportunities to have a starter job where you learn not to mouth off to the boss. You learn that you're not the smartest person in the room, even though you are 18, and you do everything right. All of these things, think back to when you were younger. Think back to the things you learned, so now apply that to your kids or your grandkids or even to yourself. And, then let's move on to this. Check out this war that started, Amazon's been busy at it. And, we know that already. It's called Amazon Go when they have, I think that's it. I know they have at least one test store and they may have more than that right now. And, the idea is you walk in the store when you walk in you take your smartphone, and you put it on the sensor and it knows who you are. And, you have an account and your credit cards linked into the account. And, now you go around the store and there are sensors and cameras that watch you take things off the shelf, and put them in your cart. Now, there is a grocery store in the Northeast that is now basically out of business. But it is one of the last things they had tried, in order to get their business up. 

[00:05:15] I think it was Stop and Shop, they had something very similar but you would take your smartphone to scan each item, you'd put it there in your cart and then at the very end you'd get the checkout button and you'd check out and you were all done that simple. Isn't that kind of cool. Well, they went, out of business. We used it a few times I just liked the convenience and not having to stand in lines waiting for the checkout. Not having to deal with them not being able to scan it, or whatever right. I absolutely loved it. But I'm not normal. I think we've established this. So, now think about going into the store never having to wait in line never having to do anything. Do you think that there will be more theft from the store? What do you think the downside of this is? No, I'd really like to know because I think there are some very real downsides to these problems. They've got this cashier free, automated grocery store that opened in early 2018. And, they have got more planned for Chicago and San Francisco. But Amazon is not the only one out there. Turns out that Microsoft has been busy trying to do much the same thing. They have a team now, it's only what 10 to 15 people, apparently according to this report. And, I've got it up on my Web site. This is from Fortune magazine. These 10 or 15 people are working on automated systems that will allow a store to just have you check out. One of the contracts I had years ago, was with NCR ,and I developed a system that allowed them to do way more than they'd be able to do before, when it came to checkouts. 

[00:06:59] And you know front office, back office, all sorts of things that you have to consider. But, one of these people is a computer vision expert, who used to work for Amazon Go, according to Reuters. So, that means you can expect Microsoft to get into this game. Cashier-less is coming. So, if you are working in checkout and I know my local store, my favorite store for groceries, frankly is Market Basket there are people who've been working there for 30 years, or even more. And you know good for them. But hey, if that's your only job, and automation is definitely coming to you, in coming your way, I I want to give you a little bit of warning, OK. So, keep an eye out. Very cool. How's that going to change your life? I know it will make mine a little quicker, a little easier, as I go forward, and I'm not going to be buying as much candy from that little, the little stand, they have right there at the edge, right to buy stuff, at the last minute or seconds. You know, it's probably going to hurt those supermarket tabloid magazines as well.

[00:08:10] All right, let's talk about this creepy, AI machine. This is a very cool article from The Daily Mail and it's talking about a machine that is going to work to help us, Right. Isn't that how all the science fiction shows start out. We're here to help, the right serving, human. I think that over the years so artificial intelligence is going to be helping us. And, if you are using Google's assistant, you already know they're using some machine learning to try and help you. All right, Now, the machine learning is all well and good, but in this case what's happening is right now today with assistant is looking at your calendar and send your reminder, hey listen you got that meeting coming up with your chiropractor, you need to get over there, and need to leave now or in five minutes it can remind you of things and even make suggestions your wife's birthday is coming up in two weeks. You might want to add something for her. 

 

[00:10:51] So, it is now accurately able to per detect what people are going to do next. So, it was built by a team of people over the University of Bonn in Germany. And what it did is it watched cooking videos. So, you know don't worry it's not Skynet yet, some pretty cool pictures I printed them up in black and white here, but you'll find them on my Web site. Craig Peterson dot com. This whole thing he believes, Dr. Gall that the intelligent software will eventually be able to prophesy your actions hours before they happen. So, if this team manages to fine tune this algorithm this program to be able to anticipate your actions that far in advance you can think of a lot of cool things from home gadget automation to kind of big brother's stuff. Now, do you have an Amazon Echo at home from Amazon? You just wake it up and look in a way. Now for all of you people who do have that Amazon device but think about the interfaces now, you can install different software modules onto your echo and have those software modules now control different things in your homes. So, think about controlling, for instance, the television it warms it up. Now, you need to warm up TVs anymore remember you had to turn them on wait for a few minutes for the tubes to warm up. 

[00:12:23] But you know it schedules your recordings on your DVR it is automatically going to get that cup of coffee ready for you in the morning because you're going to have a unit that has the grinder built right into it and so you just fill let up with your coffee beans and it's going to auto eject all of that coffee beans or maybe the pods into a trash can for you. And it's also going to remind you when you're shopping and you’re in the coffee aisle and are in front of the pods, Hey you need to pick up more pods because we're going to run out next Tuesday afternoon. It's going to be very, very, specific. 

[00:13:06] So, all the AI right now is really it was just watching you cooking these sorts of things are going to be used to help us understand you more. Now they used 40 different videos to teach this artificial intelligence. The recordings are about six minutes long and it was able to predict how people cook. So, they looked to recognize it. Now, remember they're not programming it to recognize something they are programming that to learn and to and to observe patterns. So, it isn't really understanding that they're cooking but it understated stood there's a second sequence of events that we needed to prepare the dish and a very far from trivial by the way and then tested how successful the learning process was. So they confronted the AI with videos and had never seen before and they were told the eye was given 20 30 percent of the clip and the AI had to kind of fill in the rest. And it did okay its accuracy right now is over 40 percent for short forecast periods and then dropped further, of course, the further it had to look into the future. It's not that smart yet, but this is coming. This is going to change our lives. And, I want to see if you have any of these concerns yourself right. 

[00:14:30] Why are people so worried about AI. Again, this is from the Daily Mail they came up with the list. I love this list so it's an issue troubling some of the greatest minds in the world. We know that we've talked about that before. Bill Gates, Elon Musk, we have many other top scientists who are worried about this and they're concerned that the AI may take over that part of the reason why Elon Musk wants to develop a colony on Mars. Elon Musk described AI as our biggest existential threat and like it's likened its development to summoning the demon. He believes super-intelligent machines could use humans as pets. Stephen Hawking said it's nearly certain that our major technological disasters will threaten humanity in the next 1000 to 10000 years. Well yeah, I think so too. Obviously, they're going to be taking jobs more than 60 percent of the people fear robots will lead to there being fewer jobs in the next 10 years. Do you think that's true? You know I do. There's a lot more. You'll see those again up on my Web site over at Craig Peterson dot com. So, make sure you check it out and get up to date on all the latest. So, Facebook, we know Facebook has been tracking us. Facebook has been promising Congress that they're really not tracking us a whole lot. 

[00:15:56] So, you know don't worry about it. Right. Not a big deal nothing to see here, but they are tracking us, and there is a list that you'll find out on Buzzfeed and up on my Web site as well, of 18 things you might not have realized that Facebook is tracking about you. Now a couple of these we talked about before, but I'm going to repeat them for those that maybe didn't catch it on a podcast, or one of my videos. So, this is in the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica scandal which is going to have his team do some follow up. You remember he did send a follow-up report to Congress. It really didn't get a lot of press because he didn't say anything, right. So, anyhow it was a massive document and it had the written answer. So, here you go. Here's some of the information that was in their Facebook collects information from computers, phones, connected TVs, those smart TVs we've been warning about, and other web-connected devices as well as your Internet service provider or mobile operator because remember they all have access to which sites are you going to. What are you doing when you're there. It tracks the mouse movements on your computer the app and file names and file types that are on your devices. 

[00:17:18] And think about that one, right. Do you have any files on your computer you might not want Facebook to see? And maybe you don't want other sites to see because remember it's not just Facebook that can potentially see this stuff. It's other sites as well. OK. Whether the browser window with Facebook is in the foreground or background the time-frequency and duration of activities. So, they are watching you watching Facebook information about nearby what nearby Wi-Fi access points Beacon's cell towers signal strength and they use all of that to triangulate your location. OK so they also have connection formation like your IP address your Wi-Fi connection a specific location information like the GPS on your device it goes on and on here other devices nearby or on the network your available storage space the installed plugins on your browser. Whether that's your computer or your smart device to ensure using the purchases that you've made on off a Facebook website, so you don't even have to buy something on Facebook to have that happen. Your call information and a whole lot of other stuff. So, Facebook is sucking up a ton of your personal information you might not have been aware of it. 

[00:18:42] There is a lot more here in this list of 18 but it's scary. I want to also remind you about the recap chaabi noticed those and sometimes they change. These are the little boxes that show up to prove that you're not a robot. The story behind those is absolutely fascinating. So, it is tracking when you're in those boxes where your mouse is moving, and you do expect that because that's how it figures out if your robot or not because humans just don't move the mouse the same way a robot does. So, it's more than that. It is really tracking a lot of things. I've got to talk about this. This is extortion. We're going to talk more right now. And man, it's a really big deal and it's changing extortion in the Internet era is not what it used to be. 

[00:19:37] It used to be you would have something that people wanted you to give to them. Or maybe it was something that they didn't want you to disclose at all. And extortion has been around basically forever. Right. It's a very long-running crime very long running problem but it has changed in this Internet era. Now that this guy's been sentenced I can tell you a little bit about what the Secret Service had told me. You know I'd do the InfraGard webinars for the FBI. Very interesting. I get a lot of inside baseball information because of this and my membership in InfraGard, but I want to point out something here and that is that there is information I can share, and I can share it and when it's relevant to everybody I do share. So, we're going to share this one right now because it appeared in a trip wire as well as other places online. There was a guy who wanted to make some money and decided to do it illegally. So, what does he do? Well, he knows Bitcoin is a great way to never be tracked. Now for those who are listening and not watching I'm using air quotes right. So, he thought he could never be tracked. And of course, that's wrong. You can always be tracked and that can be a really big deal when you're tracking. 

[00:21:07] And with bitcoin there's certainly a degree of anonymity but based on how you use it you know and other factors you can be tracked because remember it's a general ledger system. Everyone has a ledger. They all know where the transactions are. So, in this case, he didn't know what his limits are how many times have we done that. Right. Would you have started a business if you knew how hard it would be if you knew all of the regulations and then on top of that you've got to do the marketing and the cash management you got to right take care of everything? Most of us if we knew in advance he wouldn't do it but many of us know enough not to try something we just can't do. When you're 60 years old, you don't want to learn how to skateboard right. I saw a great mean I should try and put this up on my Web site. My daughter sent it today. You know when you're a kid your injuries are, I fell off my bike, I fell out of a tree, right. When you're an adult, your injuries are more serious, I said, it's a very funny mean there's more than that to it. But, we're talking about this, he didn't know his limits. So, he decided he would try and extort money from Mitt Romney. 

[00:22:26] Well, in fact, it was more extort money from the Democrat and the Republican Party. He claimed to have access to Mitt Romney's tax returns. And, you remember the tax returns were kind of a big deal back then and during that election and of course these were a big deal in Trump's election because tax returns tend to be private. And, there are a million ways to interpret these, that are very difficult when you're talking about the complex returns. Even my return, half the time you know you look at it and you say OK, well I got to talk to the accountants about this and that and trying to understand what's going on. So, he claimed to have presidential candidate Mitt Romney's tax returns that he had stolen from the offices of Price Waterhouse Coopers. Now Price Waterhouse Coopers said no, no, no. They released a statement that it didn't happen but, this guy apparently in Nashville, Michael Mann, 37 years old of Franklin Tennessee, He said I got them. I stole them and I'm going to release them. And, then he set up two Bitcoin wallets, and the bottom line on all of this is, he's said whichever wallet reaches a million dollars first, is going to determine what I do.

[00:23:50] So, if you put money into this Republican wallet when it hits a million dollars, I will destroy my copy of Mitt Romney's tax returns. You know it was so mean, the Republicans didn't want that information disclosed. And for the Democrats, he said the opposite. Hey, if you get it up to a million dollars before the Republicans, I am going to guess what disclose the tax returns. We don't have time to finish this on the radio. If you're watching us on video, we're going to continue this. But for a while, this was a very big deal. Have a great week. Enjoy yourself. Visit me online Craig Peterson dot com. And we'll be back next week as well and make sure you subscribe to my podcasts. Craig Peterson dot com slash iTunes, subscribe right there, and I've been doing a short podcast almost every day. I release new information about what's going on. I appreciate everybody who has taken the time to subscribe. So, if you're watching on video stick around, everybody else look, for the video. You go have a great week. Bye-Bye. 

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Related articles:

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The Checkout-Less Store War Is On: Microsoft Is Reportedly Working on an Amazon Go Rival


Everything You Need to Know About the Plan to Kill Internet Passwords


The creepy AI that can predict the future: Machine that anticipates your movements several minutes in advance could pave the way for next-level Big Brother surveillance


Here Are 18 Things You Might Not Have Realized Facebook Tracks About You


Extortionist Faces 25 Years in Prison for Tax Fraud Scheme Involving Mitt Romney

 

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