October is cybersecurity awareness month, which I’m sure you’ve been excited about ever since Nov. 1, 2024. Make sure to follow all of Ashton’s socials (links at the bottom of this email) to keep up with security tips all month long. For starters, CISA has put together a good list of essentials for you, including phish training, strong passwords, multi-factor authentication, and regular patching. If you need to up your security game or confirm that your existing resources are doing all that they can and should be (we do a lot of security audits), you know where to find me. In the meantime, there’s a lot of food in this week’s edition, some bad AI, personal finance, and more. Enjoy.
Something about ...
Sonicwall Hackers
If you’re using Sonicwall for firewall and/or VPN, you should probably read up on the most recent threat against the brand. Another good reminder that you or your IT partner should confirm that all security solutions are always up to date. We used to sell nothing but Sonicwall firewalls when I first started here 11 years ago, but the company has been bought and sold numerous times since then, and they’ve never really bothered to stay on top of things from a security perspective. That’s why we switched to Sophos 10 years back and have never considered anything else.
Birthdays
Ever wanted to know what was happening on the day you were born? Here’s a website to give you the details. I checked my birthday, and one of the highlighted items was the birth of a famous cricket player. Odd. So I checked my date one year later, knowing that it’s the birthday of Jim Thome. Sure enough, he was listed. But so was another cricket player. Leads me to believe that a Brit put this site together…
Windowless Planes
I had two articles this week about this new windowless plane. I didn’t bother with the first one, but when I saw a second, I figured I should read. It’s actually sort of cool. There lack of windows leads to less fuel consumption, meaning a smaller plane due to less required fuel storage. And instead of looking out your window, you see big digital screens lining the cabins and showing you what’s outside. Interesting…
AI Concerns
Meta calls it “improving your experience” through use of more personalized content. In reality, it’s just them looking to sell more data to advertisers. Starting next week, if you’re using Meta’s AI tool (does everybody have their own IA tool now?), your social media feeds will be even more tailored based on whatever you’re asking/telling your AI.
And speaking of concerns with AI, Google’s Gemini product now has three separate, active threats being used against it. This is one is a good reminder to businesses; your employees need to be reminded that when they’re uploading data to an open AI solution, they’re putting your corporate data on the open market. Might want to consider how you’re interacting with your AI.
Friends
The characters on Friends would now all be in their 50s and working towards retirement. And somebody has taken the time to determine what each character may have saved up by now, based on their jobs and habits. Lots of personal finance ads interspersed throughout this piece, but if you were a Friends fan, you’ll enjoy.
Food
Lots of food news in my inbox this week. I’m a big fan of barbecue, and unfortunately, the bar here in Cleveland has been set pretty low for that. When Millican and I were in Dallas for an M&A event two summers ago, we hit Terry Black’s for dinner one night. And even though it was well over 100 degrees, we decided to walk the mile+ back to our hotel (through a questionable neighborhood) in hopes we could sweat off some of the amazing food we’d just had. So, this article about Terry Black’s BBQ jumped out at me earlier this week.
If you’re not a fan of BBQ, there are always vintage MREs (Meals Ready to Eat). Don’t think this one will go over well in our house as Nancy usually contends that I’m trying to poison her if the sour cream is one day past the ‘best by’ date. I can’t imagine she’d join me in sampling Vietnam era MREs, much less those from the Civil War! Reminds me of Elaine eating the 60 year old cake purchased by Peterman…
And finally, who knew that there were both bread and cheese Olympics? A Cleveland baker is representing the USA as they compete in the international bread Olympics for the first time since 2017, and an American duo (Philly and Seattle) just won the cheese Olympics.
I’ll leave you with some nature this week… Polar bears have always been one of my favorite exhibits at the zoo, so this one about the big animals inhabiting a Russian ghost town was kind of cool. They sure look friendly when viewed from a drone!
The Indians season came to a sad end yesterday, but it sure was a fun run down the stretch. I guess that means it’s football season now. Buckeyes had a nice road win last week and the Browns are starting another new QB in London on Sunday. Anybody out there think the outcome will be any different?
Abbey