There is important stuff in tech, and then there is stupid stuff. And lately the stupid stuff has been a bit more interesting. We take a look at four or the more interesting stupid stories.

For about 10 years the conventional wisdom about #ransomware was to just pay it and start improving your security. According to John Flory III, CISO for Harbor Networks, that just doesn’t work anymore. In our interview with Flory he explains why it is absolutely necessary to go on offense now and hunt the hackers down. He gives us a preview of a case he worked on with international law enforcement that resulted in the arrest, extradition and prosecution of a ransomware ring. We will hear more from Flory in the coming weeks but his recommendations can bear fruit as hackers become more brazen.

As soon as the SolarWinds breach hit the news, press releases started pouring out of the cyber security industry with claims that their products or services would have prevented the breach, but talking to people in the trenches, that is a dangerous claim to believe. The truth is, human error and intention can defeat any security protocol or technology. We talked to Matthew Rosenquist and Steve Hanna about the only way to deal with security: vigilance.

We were going to do this after the first, but the queue is getting long with 2021  interviews and articles for Cybersecurity-Magazine.com so here's our Christmas gift to you.

Thanks for the support this year. We've grown 400 percent in listenership a engagement. Looking for great things in the coming year.

Before we get into be thankful of stuff on Thursday we need to get one thing off of our chest, namely the wasteful use of time and money spent on corporate awards programs that are nothing more than a naked attempt to build valuable mailing lists and take money from startups that they can't afford or leave them  vulnerable to a corporate raider. And there are no more blatant efforts than the Red Herring 100.

President-elect Joe Biden has been catching flack for stating that we will transition out of fossil fuel in favor of green energy, but that has less to do with government regulation and more to do with market forces. And in the case of hydrogen, we cannot decouple that clean energy from fossil fuel extraction. We look at this in a short podcast because it is that simple.

In part three of this series, we take a look at the debate over Section 230 in Title II of the Federal Communications Act that is targeting social media political bias and discuss why it is a misdirected controversy, and how it might restore the fortunes of and trust in #MSM. We will conclude the series with a couple of tools to help you create your own mental filter on what you see online.

In part two of our miniseries on journalism in a digital world, we take a look at the causes of bias in the press. Some of that is legitimate, but a lot of it is just personal perception and crowd think. The bias most of us see is actually a mirror image of our own. We talk about some of the ways you can combat bias but we admit it may be beyond one's desire to seek balanced news. THERE WILL BE A PART THREE! In the meantime, consider  becoming a sponsor so I can get rid of the ads

It is popular to say you don't trust the news media. Some of that distrust is valid, but few people can actually identify why. Joe Basques and I decided to do a deep dive into the subject in this episode... that went so long we had to make it a multiparter. There may even be a part 3. In this day and time we need all the help we can get to find the truth and randomly cutting off reliable sources of information is self-defeating.

Next week, on Crucial Tech, more about journalism and digital content than you've ever known.