What Is a Botnet?

Tom and Chunga are tired, TIRED of talking about AI!  They need a dang break from talking about AI!!  Are they going to get a break in this episode of The Hacks?  Nope... Well, ok, kind of. At the start of the year, Tom predicted one of the biggest stories of 2024 will be the failure and ultimate collapse of a whole bunch of AI focused companies and products. The most recent organization to proove Tom right, is Stability AI.  What did they do wrong?  How could they botch things so badly? Will other companies make the bad mistakes?  Tom says "Oh! Most definitely!" Listen now, to learn what those mistakes are and who may be making them next! Get started with Salt in just a few minutes!

Do you remember a few episodes ago, when Chunga said "The tech industry is terrible at this! We're the worst I've ever seen, in any industry, when it comes to taking 20-steps to do something, when it can be done in two!" This episode of The Hacks, is a perfect case study of what Chunga's talking about. Recently, Terraform changed it's license. Shortly after, a group of open source community members forked Terraform and renamed it "Open Tofu".  Last week, it looks like someone within the Open Tofu eco-system has caused an awful lot of trouble. Why? Well, there is a solid accusation that Open Tofu has stolen some new features of a recent release of Terraform. To make things even more contentious and embarassing, they didn't just steal the complete feature set, they also stole the line by line code of the Terraform copywrite itself.  Tom is shocked, asking the question "How could someone be this freakin stupid?!?"  How does something like this happen? More importantly, whats going to happen next? Tom knows exactly why this kind of thing happens, and he has several different examples of what's going to happen next! Listen NOW Join the Salt Project Community Discord Server! Get started using Salt in just a few minutes.

Tom and Chunga have a good one for you today!  Late last week, news broke that an extremely dangerous backdoor CVE, built within the XZ compression library had compromised Linux Debian Unstable and Fedora 40-41.  Fortunately, was discovered before it could hit an enterprise platform! Tom says this particular CVE was especially dangerous and hard to detect because it was built deep into the XZ compression library. As dangerous as it was, it was also brilliant backdoor hack because nobody ever pays any attention to the compression library! Plus, the hacker took an extremely long time to execute his or her plan. It was so smart in fact, that Tom says we're all very lucky it was ever discovered.  Chunga has a theory that this is only the beginning when it comes to what this individual is actually planning. He's of the opinion that this person has several of these CVE's built into multiple open source software platforms.  Does Tom agree with this theory?  Listen NOW to find out! Get started using Salt in just a few minutes!

Tom tells people a lot... a lot. When you choose to pick up or "adopt" open source software, you take on a certain level of liability. If you choose to deploy open source software into your infrastructure you run the risk of that software going away! We've seen this happen several times within the past year. Now things are changing at Redis. Last week, Redis announced it's changing to a dual source license. What does this mean? Well... it basically means it's no longer free for most users. In this episode of The Hacks, explain why they think Redis chose to make this decision, and why Tom says we're going to see more and more of this type of thing within the world of open source. Listen NOW! Get started using Salt in just a few minutes!

Chunga noticed somehting recently, and he's wondering if it's symptomatic of a larger problem. A few weeks ago, a video game emulator company called "Yuzu" was sued by Nintendo. Yuzu folded and disappeared almost immediately. Since then, several other emulator makers have done the same thing.  Many of them have scattered to the four winds! Unfortunately, Chunga is seeing more and more of this type of thing when it applys to other open source companies as well. Tom says Chunga's observation is spot on, and it's a huge problem, a scary problem that will have far reaching impact in the world of open source. In fact, Tom is particularly worried about same thing, but from an infrastructure perspective. Infrastructure? Why? It seems to Chunga that infrastructure is on the rebound with more and more companies choosing to move away from the cloud.  Tom is deeply interested in something called DBOS, or Data Base Operating System. He says its brand new, and REALLY weird. It doesn't use the Linux kernel, and... it's in the cloud. Is this a revolutionary game changer? Tom doesn't know for sure, but he thinks it has the potential due to the fact that open source has always struggled to solve the "Last Mile" problem. Also, smaller open source operations are disappearing at a record rate, while the larger open source organizations are choosing to go "Proprietary".   Then... Tom drops a bombshell on Chunga with a huge rumor thats looking more and more real by the day!  What is it?  Listen NOW to find out!! Get started using Salt in just a few minutes!

Score another one for Tom Hatch!  He and Chunga have been trying to get to this episode for weeks!   As all of you know, Nvidia is king.  At the first of the year, Tom said that if AMD and Intel wanted to have any hope being competetive and gaining ground against Nvidia's AI strangle hold, they'd have to do something "Unthinkable", and team up.  Good call Tom! One of the main reasons Nvidia has been so dominant isn't because their chips are so fast (which they are), it's because the majority of their open source framework is built on top of CUDA. AMD and Intel have invested heavily in trying to come up with an answer to CUDA because their own open source offerings, HIP and ROCm, don't have an open source CUDA compatibility layer. They've both tried for years on their own, to develop one, with each company investing milliions and millions of dollars, only to come up short, and give up. Well, it sounds like both AMD and Intel have been listening to Tom, and their problems may be solved. Listen now to see what they've done!  Get started using Salt in just a few minutes!

Tom is THRILLED!!! KDE 6 is out! (crickets). Sorry Tom, nobody cares.  Is that what Tom and Chunga are talking about today?  KDE 6? Uh... No.  Chunga doesn't really care either. Instead, they're talking about something everyone loves, video games! More specifically, video game emulators. Tom & Chunga are both big fans of emulators & have owned them for years. However, they both have a rule, they don't have a video game on an emulator unless they've already purchased it at some point.  Historically, game emulators have somehow managed to recieve a substantial amount of legal protection, but a new lawsuit may change all of that. Nintendo has just filed suit against a popular video game emulator called Yuzu.  Do you own one? According to Chunga, unlike other emulator companies, Yuzu is in serious trouble. Tom doesn't disagree. Why?  How is it that Yuzu can be in serious legal trouble, while others have been able to not only survive law suits, but set legal precedence as well?   Listen NOW to find out! Get started using Salt in just a few minutes!

Nividia is big. It's been really big for a long time. Last week it got even bigger!   Nividia had their earnings call late last week and caused quite a stir, in a good way, on Wall Street and it made their stock rise 16% in one day. While Nividia is the big dog, they're definitely not alone. There are more than just a handful of big tech companies that are no longer "big", they're gigantic! There are some in the media and tech experts are saying that these companies like Nividia, Broadcom, and AMD have become too big. So big that their stocks could cause problems with an individuals investment portfolio or greatly affect the overall economy.  Some are even using a phrase that we all heard repeatedly during the housing crisis of 2008, "Too big to fail". Do you agree with that statement? Tom has some very strong opinions about some of the things being said about these big tech companies.  Does he think their stock prices are too inflated? Does he think they're too big to fail, or are things only going to get bigger and better?  Listen now to find out! Get started using Salt in just a few minutes! Learn more. 

Its embarassing.  Did you see the recent story about how hackers turned 3 million toothbrushes into a botnet in order to steal a bunch of money from people in Europe? Lots and lots of people including Tom and Chunga saw this story and thought it was amazing! Unfortunately, there was a problem... It wasn't real.  The story was completely fake. As an industry, smart, learned people, we all bought it. Why? How does something like this happen? This isn't the first time either. Tom says its completely understandable. Ferris Bueller said it the best, "This world moves pretty fast."  The pressure to produce and get product and information into the marketplace is incredible. We have an unquenchable thrist to be new, shiny and above all things--first.  Chunga says this type of environment has caused a dangerous lack of critical thinking. Not only by innovators and content creators but by customers and consumers as well. Whats more, this is a problem that goes way beyond the tech space. In this episode of The Hacks, Tom & Chunga have some opinions that may be considered by some to be controversial. Regardless, Tom says it's long past time for each of us to start thinking as individuals, and stop buying into group ideologies because their popular or simply created by a like minded group of "experts".  Do they think we as both an industry and society  ever start pushing back and questioning "the best way"?  Listen NOW to find out! Learn more about Salt Project and get started in just a few minutes!

Recently, Chunga was talking with a guy in his teens who was really struggling, and having a hard time with some life and career choices. To many, it appeared that he had simply given up on his interests and goals. During his discussion, Chunga learned that this young man had a strong interest in cybersecurity and "counter-hacking".  Sadly, he was of the opinion that it wasn't possible to make his interests a legitimate career choice without first going underground and becoming one of the bad guys, first. This was obvoiusly causing some problems for both him and his parents! Tom has heard this perception and logic many times before.  It was then, and is now, very concerning to him. He says the world is desperate for talented people like this kid, and we, as an industry aren't doing enough to show interested individuals that there are lots of ways to become an expert in cybersecurity, without getting anywhere the "darkside".   In this episode of The Hacks, Tom and Chunga talk about how to start from ground zero. They discuss the various ways that interested people of all ages can get the right education and certifications. They also chat about why the tech industry, including Government and corporate spaces are desperate to find qualified counter-hackers and cybersecurity experts! You want to make a ton of money, in an exciting field, with incredible job security? The Hacks are going to tell you how to get started!  Listen NOW Get started using Salt in just a few, short minutes!