The Hacks

A few months ago, Red Hat made the decision to restrict it's source code. As much as it pains Tom to say, he thinks Red Hat was smart to do it, even though its a move thats been fairly unpopular with its own community and users. It proves that Red Hat understands something Tom calls the "Trinity of Open Source".

Chunga is curious about the impact these decisions will have over other open source projects and companies. Additionally, he wonders how much influence Red Hat actually has in the open source space in todays world. Tom has many opinions and thoughts to answer Chunga's curiosity about this area.

For years, Red Hat has been the example and model of how open source companies choose to operate. However, as companies have evolved over the years, that may no longer be the case according to Tom.  Why?  Listen now to find out! 

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Tom and Chunga are both gearheads. They both love getting into the weeds, and learning everything they can about pretty much anything, not just computers! No matter what it is, they love to do their research. 

When it comes to research, data, and benchmarks, unfortunately there's a problem. Depending on where you look and how look, research can give us a mountain of conflicting information. This data can oftentimes be greatly skewed to favor a desired outcome, and it can be done without being deceptive, even though its inaccurate!

In this episode of The Hacks, Tom and Chunga talk about the importance of conducting proper research and how to look at benchmarks and data in order to accurately formulate an opinion or result.  Listen NOW!

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A.I., Artificial Intelligence. When you look back on 2023, A.I. will definetely be remembered as the biggest industry term of the year--but, can companies actually make money with it?

From a business perspective,A.I. is fairly counter intuitive according to Tom Hatch. Companies are dumping massive amounts of money into video cards and assorted hardware, and they're not making money with any of it! Why?

Simply put, A.I. has yet to deliver a substantive, targeted, solution. Chunga says while A.I. is cool, and very exciting, it's still a mess. Its potential is a long way from being truly understood. Does Tom have an opinion on how the industry can make that happen?  He sure does, listen now to find out what he says!

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Nvidia is a beast. It has become an absolute monster. Chunga isn't surprised at all, he's been an Nvidia fan boy for decades!  The industry on the other hand, seems to be very surprised at how quickly Nividia has been able to become the top dog, in the chip space.  This rise has some industry experts asking if it's even possible for competitors like AMD and Intel to compete.

Tom says it's very possible and he has the answer on how AMD and Intel can catch Nvidia very quickly. Not only that, he says that he has a way AMD can double their stock price in just 18-short months and it's easier and cheaper than they may think it is.  Here's a hint, Tom says the key to winning is Open Source.  How?  Listen NOW to find out!

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Tom and Chunga are kind of stuck.  Over the weekend, the whole world changed its focus. In light of everything that is currently happening in Israel, they're having a hard time trying to talk about anything unrelated without sounding incredibly tone-deaf.

Because of this, Tom & Chunga--while being ultra cautious and respectful to those that are suffering--have chosen to talk about something that's safer. It's something that Chunga is seeing, and says the media is getting completely wrong. Throughout this tragedy, there have been tons of reports about how this war was started in part due to an "intelligence failure". Chunga disagrees with this. He says this narrative is highly inaccurate, if not completely wrong altogether.  

Tom, who has a long history as a member of the U.S. intelligence community says Chunga is 100% correct. He believes the media should work harder to understand the complexities of how Governments gather intelligence, in order to better inform the public about how horrors, like the ones we're all currently seeing can happen; despite the best efforts of extremely smart, hard working, dedicated professionals. In Toms opinion, the attacks that were started in Israel over the weekend were not the result of an intelligence failure, becuase sometimes is not possible to get intelligence to begin with. 

In this episode of The Hacks, Tom talks with Chunga about the differend types and methods governments use to gather intelligence about an enemy, and explains how that information can often times sketchy, incomplete and or completely non-exsistant. 

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Somehow, while watching Tom eat a sandwich, Chunga managed to equate Toms lunch to Kubernetes and containerization. Once again proving--Chunga is a genius.

Tom says Kubernetes has its place and purpose, but it has fallen far short of the intense hype that surrounded it when it first came on to the scene. He remembers a time, back in 2015, when people boldy declared that "all infrastructure will be Kubernetes!" This is something that Tom has never believed. Furthermore, he says universal distributed computing is still a long way from being realized.  Why is that?

After all this time and evolution, one would think that distributed computing, and data centers would be simple and common place in todays world. Tom has a singular reason why this is not the case. He also says that distrubuted computing is a unicorn, and going to remain so until this one, single, reason is standarized. What is it?  Listen NOW to find out!

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Have you been following this story in the news? A few days ago, MGM Resorts and Ceasars Palace suffered massive cyber-attacks, just days apart! Although they were close in timing and proximity, each company handled their respective attack differently. Both intrusions were ransomware attacks, executed by using social engineering. Ceasars Palace chose to pay millions in ransomware, while MGM refused. 

In this episode of The Hacks, Tom and Chunga discuss who made the right decision. Was it MGM or was it Ceasars Palace? The also talk about social engineering and why Tom says it's the least understoon, most mysterious, and often times most effective method of cyber-attack. How did these attacks happen? Which company was ultimately better off, based on their strategies and decisions? Listen NOW to find out!

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Last week, Tom lost someone who was central figure in his life. Dr. Micheal Grady was a professor of at Southern Utah University and was a personal mentor of Tom's. In truth, he wasn't just a mentor. Dr. Grady was the first person to recognize Toms early potential to become an innovator in tech.

When Dr. Grady passed away, his wife called Tom and asked him to come to their current home in New Mexico to help her go through his personal office in order to catalogue and organize his personel effects. While going through his mentors notes and writings, Tom was amazed to see the empasis he had placed on having longevity as an innovator, right up to his death. It's something that has really stuck with Tom since he's been back home.

In this episode of The Hacks, Tom pays tribute to his mentor, Dr. Grady and talks with Chunga about the importance of pushing yourself forward, every day, regardless of success and/or level of experience. Spoiler: Tom uses Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones as an example!  Listen NOW!

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WOW!  The Hacks has been extra technical lately!  With all the drama surrounding changes to open source licensing at HashiCorp, and source code restricitions at Red Hat, recent Hacks episodes have been...well, complex and heavy.  Tom and Chunga would like to lighten things up a bit.  Maybe have an episode thats more light hearted and fun!  Tom has the perfect topic to talk about, Quantum Resistant Cryptography and Quantum Computing! (Chunga starts to "ugly cry").

Tom loves quantum computing and is surprised how little its understood by professionals within the tech space.  In this episode of The Hacks, he's going to show everyone (including Chunga) how easy quantum computing actually is!  Tom says it represents a wholesale shift in modern day computing. Not only that, he's saying it will be much sooner than people think!  

How soon?  How big?  Listen to this episode to find out!!

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As you all know, the U.S. Government has announced a crackdown on Chinese computer chip manufacturers. There is currently an effort underway to restrict and in some cases completely eliminate the sale of Chinese made computer chips to U.S. owned companies. Some experts claim that this quasi-embargo is going to cripple American commerce! 

Tom is predicting a different potential outcome. He says these restrictions are going to be devastating to the Chinese government interests and businesses. So much so, that it could potentially be a precursor to conflict. History has proven that all nation state conflict is ultimately based on economics! When the economic balance of rival nations shifts too far to one side or the other, conflict becomes a viable equalizer. Listen to this episode to learn more!

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