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This episode of ID10T Techcast with Tyler Woodward asks who is supposed to be protecting your stuff, after security researchers found proxy software on the White House network, Meta tried to crawl any website a Facebook page links to for its AI, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) filing system leaked confidential radio station applications. Tyler's take: somebody was supposed to be looking out for all of it, and nobody was.

This week on ID10T Techcast with Tyler Woodward:

• Why can you rent a White House internet connection? Security firms Layer3 Intel and Synthient found software on the White House network that lets outsiders route their traffic through it for a few dollars. The Verge
• What did Meta want to do with websites linked from Facebook pages? Meta paused business terms that would have let it crawl any site a Facebook page links to for its AI products, after courts in Brazil and Norway blocked them. Ars Technica
• How did hackers get into a blood bank's freezers? Attackers raised the temperature in the cold storage at France's national blood bank before staff caught it. NPR
• Why did the FCC's filing system leak radio station applications? Confidential applications from small noncommercial stations showed up when the filing window opened, the system went down for hours, and the fix was six more days to file. Radio World on the leak and the filing window extension

Opinion piece: Tyler wants the government to make tech companies protect our data, and he says it has to keep your own filings private for more than a few hours. Fund the FCC's filing system, fix it, and make somebody accountable for it.

Visit the show at ID10T.fm.

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In this episode, Tyler shares his recent career transition from a broadcast network engineer role back to field engineering, reflecting on his experiences and challenges in the broadcasting industry. He discusses the importance of autonomy in his work, the impact of communication issues, and his excitement about joining a new company focused on revitalizing local radio stations.

Takeaways

• Career transition insights
• Importance of autonomy in work

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The conversation explores the resurgence of physical media, particularly vinyl, CDs, and cassettes, and discusses the growing consumer preference for ownership over subscription models. It highlights the unique position of radio in the media landscape and suggests that radio can learn from the revival of physical media to enhance its relevance.

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Meta's new Muse AI agent handled a Facebook Marketplace sale for a guy named Matt Rob, and it gave a complete stranger his home address without asking first. The guy shows up expecting to buy a keyboard, and Rob has no idea any of this happened until there's a knock on his door. That's not a hypothetical risk, that's a thing that actually occurred, and it happened because of one "allow always" permission he clicked and forgot about.

I get into why this story bothers me so much, and it's not because I think AI is evil or useless. I use it, I build with it, it's a tool like anything else. The problem is the gap between using AI to help you think and handing an AI agent the keys to your email, contacts, location, calendar, and the ability to talk to strangers and make decisions on your behalf. Those are two completely different risk profiles, and Meta is rolling out the second one to a user base that includes a lot of people who have spent twenty years clicking "allow" without reading a single word of what they agreed to.

I walk through what Muse actually does, what Meta says about it, why I don't buy the reassurances given their track record, and the specific questions you should be asking before you give any AI agent permission to act as you. If you've ever connected an app without reading what you were agreeing to, which is all of us, this one's worth your time.

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A low power FM station in Valdosta, Georgia has a real interference problem. Instead of accepting the engineering explanation, they decided to accuse broadcast engineers, large radio conglomerates, and apparently the atmosphere itself of running a coordinated campaign against them. I break down what's actually happening with Supra 89.7 and WFA GLP, and why the answer was sitting in front of them the whole time.

I get into what tropospheric ducting and sporadic e-skip actually are, why the ITU and the FCC both account for this stuff as normal radio propagation, and why a hundred watt LPFM station picking up interference from stations hundreds of miles away isn't evidence of hacked ham radio equipment or a secret relay. I also cover the legal side, including why 47 USC 333 requires willful or malicious intent, something that doesn't apply to weather doing what weather does. And I get into why LPFM's status as a secondary service matters here, whether you like that fact or not.

This one covers real engineering, a real regulatory structure, and a station that keeps rejecting both in favor of a story that feels better. If you care about how spectrum actually works, how the FCC evaluates interference, or just want to watch what happens when people replace data with a grudge, this is for you.

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Kids are not going to stop talking to each other just because you blocked an app. I get into the story of how a group of teenage girls turned NPR's podcast comment section on Spotify into a full blown underground group chat, complete with its own routing system, and why they picked the most boring, least popular corner of the internet to do it.

I walk through how this traces back way further than people think, from the Twin Cities jam line phone network in the late 60s, to AIM and away messages in my own childhood, to Google Docs chat rooms, and now Spotify comments. Same behavior, different equipment, every single time an adult decides they've finally found the way to control how kids communicate.

If you've ever thought restricting social media access actually stops kids from talking to each other, this episode is going to ruin that theory for you. It's a good reminder that tech accountability isn't just about what companies build, it's about what people actually do with it once it's out in the world.

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Radio loves patting itself on the back for showing up during hurricanes and tornadoes. I grew up in Florida watching cones of uncertainty aim at my house, so I get why that story feels good. But building your entire pitch around being useful only when everything else breaks is a terrible way to run an industry, and it's exactly what radio has been doing for years.

In this episode I get into why the disaster narrative is true but incomplete, what Pew's 2025 local news numbers actually reveal about how few people choose radio over just encountering it, and why a station like WELY in Ely, Minnesota proves the model that actually works. Spoiler: it's not more emergency messaging, it's showing up on a random Tuesday when nothing's wrong so people already trust you when something is.

If you've ever wondered why radio keeps losing ground despite being technically essential during emergencies, this is the conversation about what happens when an entire medium forgets to earn its relevance the other 364 days a year. This is digital ownership and tech accountability applied to broadcast, and it's a hard look at what local actually means.

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Diesel prices are all over the news right now, but everyone's talking about it like it's just a trucking story. It's not. I'm a broadcast engineer, and I'm here to tell you diesel is the thing keeping radio transmitters and cell sites alive when the power goes out, and right now that backup power is getting brutally expensive.

I break down what diesel actually costs to run a generator at a radio site or cell tower right now compared to a year ago, and the numbers are ugly. I run the math on different generator sizes, look at what happened at WMIT in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene, and talk about the FCC's numbers on how long cell sites actually run on batteries and backup fuel before someone has to physically drive more diesel out there. Spoiler: it's not as long as you'd hope.

Everyone treats backup power like a checkbox: station has a generator, cool, done. But a generator without fuel, fuel trucks, and people who can actually get to the site is just an expensive lawn ornament. If you care about what keeps communication infrastructure running when everything else fails, and who actually pays for that, this one's for you.

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On November 17th, every radio and TV station in the country is going to interrupt whatever you're doing with that awful screeching tone. I'm breaking down what that nationwide Emergency Alert System test actually is, how a warning message travels from a federal agency all the way to your car radio, and why the FCC and FEMA bother running this drill every few years instead of just hoping the system works when it counts.

I walk through the whole chain: who issues the alert, how it gets distributed, how your local station receives it and puts it to air, and what happens after the test when stations report back on what worked and what didn't. I also get into why this broadcast based system isn't the same as the wireless alerts on your phone, and why that's actually a good thing. Redundancy matters. You don't want a tornado warning depending on one app, one carrier, or one piece of tech working perfectly.

This one's short, but it matters if you've ever wondered why that annoying tone exists or why it's supposed to be annoying. A boring Tuesday afternoon test is exactly how you find the broken piece in the system before you actually need it during a real emergency, and that's the whole point of testing anything that's supposed to keep people safe.

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Radio keeps trying to beat Spotify at being Spotify, and it's losing, because that was never a fight it could win. I lay out why the actual advantage terrestrial radio has always had isn't the music or the transmitter, it's the human relationship, and why chasing efficiency has quietly stripped that out of most stations.

I get into the research backing this up, including a Jacoby Media tech survey showing core radio listeners actually rank the DJ or host above their favorite songs as the reason they tune in, plus a local feel that they say they don't get from any other kind of audio. I talk about what real local means beyond just saying a city name between songs, why automation and voice tracking aren't the enemy but became the whole philosophy for too many stations, and I point to a couple of stations, WFMU and KEXP, that still treat their air staff like people instead of interchangeable boxes on a log.

If you've ever wondered why radio feels hollowed out even when the music is fine, or you care about what happens when an industry optimizes itself into irrelevance, this one's for you. It's about radio, but it's really about what happens when companies mistake efficiency for value and forget what actually made people loyal in the first place.

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