Have you ever seen our “green monster” Ashton van rolling around the streets of Cleveland (or elsewhere)? I had a call from a woman in Rapid City, SD on Wednesday, who swore she’d seen our vehicle in her town. Twelve to 18 months ago. And she was just now getting around to calling to ask what we do. She did a pretty good job describing the logo, colors, messaging, and phone number… aside from telling me it was a Dodge Magnum (that far back, it was a Honday Odyssey, and those two can’t possibly be confused). She even told me she woke up in the middle of the night and recited the last four digits of our phone number. We had a nice conversation and I offered to send her some Ashton swag for her trouble, even though I had absolutely no clue what she was talking about!
With that call on Wednesday, I don’t know how Thursday could’ve been any better. But it was. We spent the day shooting (not necessarily hitting) sporting clays to benefit the Boy Scouts at Hill ‘n Dale in Medina. And we’ll be back there next weekend for another benefit for Ronald McDonald House of Northeast Ohio.
And now I’m back in time to put together this week’s thoughts, even though there wasn’t much exciting. Scroll down to learn about how LinkedIn is using your data, politicians who think they understand technology, and how to make a good cocktail to enjoy with this newsletter.
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Kernel Visibility
Crowdstrike’s senior VP testified before the House committee on homeland security this week, regarding the little episode they had earlier this summer. The media continues to remind us all that this was 8.5 million devices, worldwide!!! (emphasis mine). If anybody would do the math, they’d realize that’s about one half of one percent of all Windows devices in the world… Is it necessary to convene another meeting of politicians who probably have no clue what any of the testimony even means?
Do you really think that any of those elected officials understood “I would suggest that while things can be conducted in user mode, from a security perspective, kernel visibility is certainly critical”, when the Crowdstrike SVP stated that? Seems like politicians trying to prove their worth and wasting other peoples’ (ours) time and money in the process.
LinkedIn Data
If you’re a LinkedIn user and don’t want them using your data to train their AI, you might want to update your settings. Go to LinkedIn, click on your photo (“me”) in the top right corner, and then on the drop down menu, click “settings and privacy”. On the next page, chose “Data Privacy” in the lefthand column, and then under “How LinkedIn Uses Your Data”, choose the last option “Data for Generative AI Imrpovement” and toggle that to “off”.
It seems that LinkedIn has been collecting all of our data for this purpose and didn’t bother to update their privacy policy until just recently.
Election Interference
Does anybody really believe that our elections are safe from outside (China, Iran, Russia) interference? Shockingly, various nation states are trying to effect this fall’s elections through a variety of “influence campaigns”. This article states that our government has been preparing for this for years… but have they done anything to prevent it? Doubtful.
Weekend Plans
If you need a cocktail this weekend, this article claims to share the best recipes for every classic cocktail.
Commoditization
I’m not a coffee drinker, but this piece about how Starbucks has commoditized (why does the spellchecker tell me that word doesn’t exist?) itself is pretty interesting. They’ve gotten rid of comfortable chairs, no longer write names on cups, and don’t show much interest in customer service. By doing all this, they’re really not much different than any other coffee place. We see the same in our vertical (managed IT services)- anybody that can check all the boxes (security, 24/7 monitoring, help desk, backups) in terms of what they offer thinks they can keep charging less and less and still attract new clients. It’s a commodity, rather than a service (and it’s definitely not a partnership or something you look forward to).
Every time I listen to Tom Hamilton calling a Tribe game, I say to Nancy “doesn’t it make you want to go to a game?!?!”. And the answer is always no. I actually kinda get that, because when you’re at the game (as I was on Wednesday night, when Josey hit this bomb), you miss Hammy’s calls. This was a good one! I hope we have another three or four weeks of him this year.
Have a great weekend, and Go Bucks!
Abbey