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! Get started using Salt Project in just a few minutes! Take a look at Idem Project!

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! Get started using Salt in minutes! Simplify your cloud with Idem Project.

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.  Get started using Salt in just a few minutes! Simplify your cloud with Idem Project!  

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! Get started using Salt in just a few minutes! Simplify your cloud with Idem Project!

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! Get started using Salt in just a few minutes! Simplify your cloud with Idem Project

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!   Get started using Salt in just a few minutes! Simplify your cloud infrastructure with Idem Project!

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!!   Get started using Salt in just a few minutes! Simplify your cloud infrastructure with Idem Project  

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! Get started with Salt in just a few minutes! Simplify and stabilize your could with Idem Project!

Open Source madness continues! With all of the changes taking place within a few of the worlds largest open source offerings, many are starting to ask lots of questions.  A bunch of those questions are about long term maintainership and how their own infrastructure will be affected. On the heels of two huge announcements from Red Hat and HashiCorp, there are now two large, promised communities that are asking "what are we going to do"?  Tom says these questions have already led to discussions about "consortium forking". Back in the day, forking open source software was often times viewed as a threat, leveraged by community members to get what they want from an open source software provider. According to Tom, forking open source software can be a good thing--sometimes.  This primarily if you're forking the software to accomplish specific internal needs of your infrastructure. However, when a decision is made to fork a large, consortium based, open source entity, things get much more difficult--thanks to long term maintainership--and ultimately ends with the wholesale splintering of a community. Why is it assumed that this will happen, and is there a way to prevent it?  Listen to this episode to find out! Get started using Salt! Simplify your cloud infrastructure with Idem Project!  

There's been a ton of craziness in the open source space lately. In the last episode of The Hacks, Tom and Chunga were talking about the fallout from Red Hat and HashiCorp making changes to their source code access, and licensing. During that episode, Chunga asked the question, "How did we get into this mess in the first place?!" Well, in this episode of The Hacks, Tom has the answer in the form an open source history lesson! Back in 2008, something insane happened that kicked off a fundamental shift in the way open source software was funded, viewed and ultimately developed. What is it?  What happened? Here's a hint--It was the first time an open source company was acquired for a ridiculously large amount of money.  This acquisition changed the very fabric of open source!  Listen NOW to learn how!    Get started with Salt in just a few minutes! Simplify your cloud with Idem Project!