UnHacked - Cybersecurity Made Simple for Small Businesses

Joshua Holloway (00:00)
One.

Mario Zaki (00:02)
Yeah.

Joshua Holloway (00:09)
Thank you.

Justin Shelley (00:11)
We should like get a dance con on We need we need a dance contest, like a dance off. Wasn't that a thing back in the day?

Bryan Lachapelle (00:11)
Unhacked. that's the end. I'm sorry.

Joshua Holloway (00:13)
Yeah.

Dude, I don't know. I think Mario's gonna bust out some moves that nobody was expecting. Like I I just like deep down in my core I feel like, you know, he used to break dance or something.

Mario Zaki (00:25)
Yeah.

Justin Shelley (00:25)
I already know.

He's got the walk like an Egyptian thing down from before. Remember that one? See? Yeah, we'd we'd lose. So never mind. Scratch that. Guys, welcome everybody to episode 110 of Unhacked. Mario, what are you breaking out the high voltage sign for? Wrong group.

Joshua Holloway (00:35)
Yeah.

Mario Zaki (00:45)
I don't know. I Sorry.

Bryan Lachapelle (00:48)
⁓

Justin Shelley (00:50)
High voltage. Good song by ACDC. Anyways, we are we're gonna kind of continue our theme of just shooting the shit today. But you're all on notice, and I I told you this before the recording, but I'm putting it on the air so our audience can hold everybody accountable. Next week we're all coming with our own individual topic or topics, singular or plural.

Bryan Lachapelle (01:13)
Did I mention next week I won't be here?

Justin Shelley (01:14)
Yeah, I think you did already.

Joshua Holloway (01:17)
I I I think our our Canadian friend's a little ⁓ adverse to tent tension.

Justin Shelley (01:24)
Well, no, he doesn't want to prepare. He already said that. But I I did say bring something somewhat controversial. I mean, that'd be an added bonus, but for real's just we're all gonna come with our own like what the hell's going on in the world of security and AI. I'm gonna start because ⁓ what caught my attention this week was something that wasn't AI related. Like that's the first time I've seen that in a long time. ⁓ it's not

Mario Zaki (01:50)
Everything is AI related now.

Justin Shelley (01:52)
Well, this one has not yet mentioned anything about AI. This headline. I'm sure it did, but it hasn't said it yet. That's what I'm saying. Today, as it sits, there is no news about AI regarding the very unfortunate and seemingly very massive attack on I've learned not to say breach. ⁓ we just say attacks on the University of New Mexico.

Joshua Holloway (01:53)
Mm.

Did you check to see if AI wrote it?

Mario Zaki (01:58)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Shelley (02:21)
hospital or health services center. You guys hear about this one?

Bryan Lachapelle (02:24)
Mm.

Joshua Holloway (02:24)
So they suffered an incident.

Justin Shelley (02:26)
An incident, that's the right word. It just something happened. I'll tell you what happened. ⁓ people's computers, you know, they got the message on the screen. You've been attacked, you've been incidentized, and then they've got text to speech. ⁓ so the computers talking to them, threatening them, all kinds of shit. They went completely offline. They were rerouting ambulances, closed down the whole like it it was it was a huge deal, big problem. ⁓

Joshua Holloway (02:28)
Yeah.

Justin Shelley (02:56)
I was really impressed with the fact that they got back up and running. I think they had some stuff up the same day. They had some most of it up the following day as far as the emergency services and stuff. So my ⁓ we'll jump right to the end. Key takeaway was they I'm guessing they had a pretty significant incident response plan. That's what I took away from that. So I'm introducing that topic. Josh, I think you had one or more topics that you can introduce.

Joshua Holloway (03:26)
Yeah, I I think one of the topics we should talk about today is ⁓ Microsoft ⁓ opting opting to provide buyouts to up to sixty thousand employees who would like early retirement or would like to see themselves out of a job and move on with a little bit of a a payout and and leave on ⁓ and and honestly I think we should talk about that one because at the end of the article or some of the articles I found, they said that they wanted to have the money to further invest in artificial intelligence.

So we may have our first ⁓ showing of people losing their jobs. And they're not losing, they're opting to just to leave that profession, that career with that company. Yeah.

Justin Shelley (04:05)
We'd like to free up your future for better opportunities. I have a I have a theory on this one. I'm gonna hold it for now. But ⁓ yeah, I I I this'll be interesting. This might even be fun. All right. That's a good topic. Brian and Mario, I know that this is ⁓ last minute, but just digging back into the eternity that has been the last seven days in the world of technology, what's caught your attention and ⁓

Joshua Holloway (04:11)
Yeah, we'll come back to that.

Justin Shelley (04:33)
Brian, do you got do you have anything if you can you go first? Anything that's caught your attention in the in the world of technology and AI?

Bryan Lachapelle (04:41)
the only thing I can think of is is you know, we were all at a conference ⁓ last week and at the conference we had ⁓ folks presenting all the things they're doing with AI ⁓ and coding. And ⁓ I think a lot of software is going to be replaced. we talked a little bit about it during our session last week, but I you know, after being at the conference for the rest of the time, man.

We're in for a whirlwind of change over the next twelve months with that with regards to that. And ⁓ yeah.

Justin Shelley (05:12)
It is going to be interesting. Yeah. Yep.

Joshua Holloway (05:15)
I w I wanna talk about the legality portion of that when we get to it because I also feel we're gonna see a huge uptick in in legal responses regarding vibe coding. But

Bryan Lachapelle (05:26)
I mean if you're doing it for yourself and you're not selling it, like they'll never even know it exists. You could replace an entire app and they'll n nobody will ever know that you're using it. So

Joshua Holloway (05:36)
Yeah, the moment you get forward facing, that's entirely different.

Bryan Lachapelle (05:40)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mario Zaki (05:42)
Yeah, I mean for me, the ⁓ the article that somebody sent to me w that caught my attention the most was ⁓ an a Japanese internet giant, it's called GMO, tells customers to shut down and disconnect PCs from the internet following a data breach and ransom threat. So this is literally coming from the internet service provider telling all their customers, hey.

Shut down your shit and unplug from from the internet.

Justin Shelley (06:13)
I and I've honestly I've never heard that ⁓ as a response to an incident in in my career where where that was like the advice from the head organization being attacked. Shut everything down. Everything. Unplug it. Crazy. Crazy.

Bryan Lachapelle (06:20)
No.

Unplug it. Yeah.

Joshua Holloway (06:33)
And I do I do have one final one for you guys. We had didn't talk about this at all. And and I wanted to bring this on up because we always talk about how these the these frontier models and the weighted models and everything. They now have evidence of a Chinese model from Alibaba, which is Quinn, phoning home to a server in Hong Kong even after the testers said, do not use any tools, do not search for tools, do everything within your constraints and agreed to.

And then they saw it reach out after the test had gotten started. So that kind of goes and and the argument is going back to the models that you use, where do you get them? And what is truly happening in the background.

Justin Shelley (07:19)
I do believe I was the one that went on record as saying I would rather use a I'll contain my own Chinese model way better than I trust my vendors. Now I can't trust anybody. I w I won't I won't say that I'm gonna go trust vendors now, but shit, we can't trust anybody. There's a shocker.

Mario Zaki (07:36)
I mean i i it's i the world has changed within and we talked about this a little bit last week. You know, the world has changed a lot within the last six months, you know, and I can just imagine I I can actually imagine what the next six months is gonna be, you know, because you know, when we started kind of conversating about AI, we would have like something come up like every couple weeks, we're like, ⁓ did you guys hear about this and whatever?

And then we started having like almost something new coming up every other week and then ever one thing every week. And then this week in our chat w there's like four or five things that we're discussing. And this is like that's how it's progressing. It's it's crazy. By

Justin Shelley (08:21)
And that's condensed. That's just the stuff that caught our attention, right?

Joshua Holloway (08:27)
Yeah, within we're now we're now within hours. I think we're getting we're now g we're now getting updates within hours. I'd be to the point where ⁓ I'm losing sleep because I want to research. Not because I'm scared, but because I want I w I want to research.

Justin Shelley (08:27)
Josh.

Yeah.

I know. Yeah. Cause yeah, I'm like FOMO.

Bryan Lachapelle (08:39)
Right.

Mario Zaki (08:43)
Do they still make typewriters? I think I may invest in typewriters.

Joshua Holloway (08:47)
You might you might need to.

Bryan Lachapelle (08:49)
You might be able to AI enable one of those.

Justin Shelley (08:52)
Why why I I'm I'm you lost me on that one, Mario. Why do you want a typewriter?

Mario Zaki (08:57)
Because I feel like I feel like no more computers. I don't want to deal with computers anymore. Are you still drinking from I that was only supposed to be from last week?

Justin Shelley (09:01)
You just want to go back in time? Okay. Okay. All right.

Who was drinking? because I'm not catching up? See, there it is again.

Joshua Holloway (09:13)
Well I are you drinking out of your Coca Cola cup again?

Mario Zaki (09:13)
It could be me.

Justin Shelley (09:16)
listen, these are sealed.

Bryan Lachapelle (09:19)
Uh-huh, sure.

Joshua Holloway (09:20)
You know what we should we should start doing is when you come on and you we go through everything, then then you open it.

Justin Shelley (09:21)
Then I opened them and pour.

No, no, no, we're not playing that game. And listen, I'm just gonna have to say this on the air, Josh, since you're not looking at the chat. You can you turn on your echo cancellation? You've got a little bit of feedback on your on your account. Anyways. All right, guys. We've we I I chatted, I tried to do it behind the scenes, but I'm getting accused of drinking. Me, meanwhile, I know where the fuck you are, Josh, where we're talking about this. All right, so we're gonna hit these one at a time. We've got the the

Joshua Holloway (09:38)
damn.

Man, wait a call me out.

Bryan Lachapelle (09:49)
Yeah.

⁓ children.

Justin Shelley (09:56)
University of New Mexico, we've got the Microsoft layoffs, we've got software changes, we've got the shut your computers down, we've got China phone home. Like I've got five things that we're gonna talk about, one at a time, in order. And the fastest we can get through them, the sooner we can get to putting whatever we want in our drinks. What what is your guys' take on on ransomware these days? And and you know, like there's not a lot of information to get into details about what happened yet. They're not releasing any of it. But

I mean, let's be honest, there's ransomware's not making the news much. Why? Is it really happening still? Is this a like have they just moved on to to bigger, better things? What what are your thoughts?

Bryan Lachapelle (10:35)
I think it's still happening. it's just I don't think it's happening nearly as much because ⁓ there are other pressing s concerns. But or if it is happening, which I don't see it happening much in my neighborhood, much much in with my client base at all. ⁓ but if it is happening, ⁓ then other news are are just taking way more air time than any, you know, any in individual breach of any type. So

Justin Shelley (11:02)
That's that's kinda what I'm wondering if it's just like it got boring. So it's not making the news. ⁓

Bryan Lachapelle (11:06)
Yeah, that's like old news.

Justin Shelley (11:10)
Yeah, okay.

Mario Zaki (11:11)
I I I think now they're maybe also concentrating on like the you know, like th this is a bigger one, that's why it probably hit ⁓ hit the news. But it's always been like these smaller breaches, the low hanging fruit ones never hit the news.

Justin Shelley (11:26)
Yeah, that's always been true.

Joshua Holloway (11:30)
Well, AI is our new cycle. You know, like that's that's the the bread and butter where it used to be ransomware. That was the th that was the big scary boogeyman, you know, in in our realm was ransomware. What happens when everything gets encrypted. But now it's now it's AI. Now it's AI breaking out or doing things that it shouldn't, or people using it nefariously.

Bryan Lachapelle (11:48)
Yeah. Exactly. Or finding flaws in existing software and all of a sudden that's huge news, like the PHP last week.

Justin Shelley (11:54)
my God, that was, yeah, that was fun. So I guess the other thing here then is, you know, and we we say this frequently, but it is back to the basics. So as I'm going through their updates and ⁓ no, Josh, just stay here. I'm just I'm tired of typing. there's a little bit of echo. We're gonna deal with it. We will get through this today. ⁓ you know, I'm I'm reading what they will disclose, what they won't disclose, and then it just comes up with, you know, ways to prevent attacks.

Identity theft, all that, right? And they listed four or five things. And it is the most basic shit over and over and over. So in the middle of this thing, their world's burning down and they're providing advice. So whatever information they do or do not have that they're sharing or not, ⁓ they didn't come back and say, Hey, here's some new thing we just learned from this breach. Do this. It was put 2FA in place, strong encrypted or ⁓ strong complex passwords.

unique passwords on every site. ⁓ it was just the stuff that we say all the time, over and over.

Mario Zaki (12:57)
Yeah, and I think we have that posted on ⁓ on hackmybusiness dot com, right?

Justin Shelley (13:03)
I would imagine we do on hackmymbusiness dot com for those of you I I've I've got a huge announcement coming on that, by the way.

Joshua Holloway (13:06)
Pretty standard procedures.

Justin Shelley (13:12)
⁓ all right. So any I'm not yet. No, I'm just that's just a teaser. you'll you'll you'll have to stick around to the end of the episode for that one. Okay. I know. Well, I'm talking to the audience right now, Brian. I got I think sometimes we forget that there's actually an audience because it's just so much fun to sit in here and shoot the shit. ⁓ but surprisingly, people do listen to this. I don't know why, but they do. In fact, the numbers keep growing. So ⁓ it makes Liana very happy. She hates it when I say her name, but I did anyways.

Joshua Holloway (13:13)
Yeah.

Mario Zaki (13:17)
Okay.

Bryan Lachapelle (13:20)
I was not planning on sticking around.

Well.

Justin Shelley (13:41)
I can't tell you she will like text me during the middle of the day asking about the numbers. She'll come home. The first thing she does is grab her computer and look at the numbers. And and if it goes up, she's like in the greatest mood. But if something drops for a minute, my God, it's a bad day around here.

Mario Zaki (13:56)
Yeah.

Justin Shelley (13:58)
Yeah.

Joshua Holloway (13:58)
She's a production manager.

Mario Zaki (13:59)
Didn't didn't we get picked up by a couple of networks too? Did

Justin Shelley (14:03)
we've we've been picked up by some some platforms. Yeah. We've ⁓ it it's getting to where it it's always a fun inflection point when like you're just going out and hammering away trying to get anybody to pay attention and then it shifts to where you're like having to field or or ⁓ like filter all the stuff that's coming in and it's people wanting to be on the show or people wanting to rank us or people wanting to whatever. And it's like, all right, is this real? And like who are you to want to rank yeah, I don't know.

It's it's ⁓ I'm gonna let my ego show here. I that's not my point. But it is kind of a fun ⁓ a fun shift. So yeah, I mean, for whatever reason, people do listen. Let's get back to saying stuff they actually care about instead of us bragging about us. ⁓ that's where we lose them.

Mario Zaki (14:33)
Yeah.

Bryan Lachapelle (14:50)
Ha ha.

Justin Shelley (14:50)
Microsoft layoffs. We're switching gears. ⁓ Microsoft layoffs. Well, they're not really layoffs. ⁓

Bryan Lachapelle (14:59)
quests to move on and free up your own future.

Mario Zaki (15:03)
They haven't reached the layoff part. They're like letting you Yeah. They're letting you like, Hey, do you wanna leave on your own or should we show you the door?

Justin Shelley (15:03)
Yeah yet.

Bryan Lachapelle (15:12)
Yeah. Now what was the official reason behind it? Was it

Justin Shelley (15:15)
They want to use switch resources to AI. That's what they said.

Bryan Lachapelle (15:18)
Okay. So they're they're they're not trying to cut costs because AI has taken over, they're just shifting the resources allocation. Is that what they're claiming?

Justin Shelley (15:28)
That's what they're claiming.

Mario Zaki (15:28)
We'd check it on the screen. Because I

Bryan Lachapelle (15:29)
Yeah, I I don't I don't think I buy it though.

Justin Shelley (15:32)
Well what's your theory?

Mario Zaki (15:32)
Well because

Bryan Lachapelle (15:34)
I I think that they're able to automate enough in their business that they can get rid of a lot of low level ⁓ employees that were doing a lot of redundant work that can be automated easily. That's

Justin Shelley (15:45)
Maybe. I I'd okay. Probably true. Probably true. But we've talked here's what we've talked about before too. When when you El like this low level work that we're using AI for really just frees up so many more things that we can get done. I can't imagine a company the size of Microsoft doesn't have other work they could put their people on.

Bryan Lachapelle (16:07)
That's a lot of people would reallocate.

Justin Shelley (16:09)
It is. Imagine what they could do with it because I'll tell you this right now. I'm Microsoft's was past tense. I hate all vendors now equally. I was Microsoft's greatest fanboy back in the day. I absolutely loved Microsoft. Went to their conventions. you guys remember the Action Pack, Microsoft Action Pack. If you were a if you were a Microsoft partner, you could get all their cool software for free. I had every server loaded up that I would tinker with. Loved Microsoft.

Bryan Lachapelle (16:29)
yeah. Absolutely.

Joshua Holloway (16:30)
yeah.

Bryan Lachapelle (16:36)
Same.

Joshua Holloway (16:37)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Shelley (16:38)
And they have systematically dismantled their love, their return love, because they used to show us a lot of love. ⁓ it it's it's largely gone. It it's like Microsoft sees us as a a thorn more than they see us as a benefit, as a partner. Correct? What do you guys think about that, first of all, before we dig into their layoffs? How do you see your relationship with Microsoft today versus ten, fifteen, twenty years ago?

Joshua Holloway (17:03)
Well, I think for most of those people who don't know, ⁓ I was born a redhead, so I'm used to being called a redheaded stepchild. so ⁓ I feel like Microsoft is treating me just like how I grew up as a redheaded stepchild. You know, it it's it's the margins or the lack thereof. It it's t ⁓ lack of response, the your SOL when you when you're trying to do things, it's it's it's pretty bad.

Justin Shelley (17:09)
Ha ha.

Yeah. Yeah.

Bryan Lachapelle (17:27)
Yeah, I would I would concur. Back twenty fifteen, twenty years ago, we would we would have a rep. We'd you know, we'd be in constant contact with them, we'd actually be able to have conversations back and forth. ⁓ now they're turning around and creating agreements where if my clients don't pay me for Office 365, I still I'm still on the hook for it. ⁓ which is basic yeah. No resources. Well, you you got a three-day grace period for Office 365. Like they're basically going through systematically and and and basically

Mario Zaki (17:37)
In English.

Justin Shelley (17:44)
Yeah, we're we're on the hook for everything. No resources, like I mean not none, but but not what they used to give us.

Bryan Lachapelle (17:57)
making it so that I don't want to do business with them. And I think the danger is that they might actually find themselves becoming irrelevant over time because I've I've just again at the conference the other day I saw somebody talking about how they're rolling out Linux, making it look exactly like Windows or close to it, ⁓ making it so that it functions more or less the same way and they're managing everything remotely using AI built right into the OS, which is

Justin Shelley (18:00)
Yes.

Bryan Lachapelle (18:24)
kind of scary and but also thrilling and exhilarating because you know getting rid of Microsoft might be appealing to a lot of organizations.

Justin Shelley (18:31)
Now we're talking. See, now we're talking because Mario, ⁓ I think it was last week, the week before, you talked about you wanted to replace Microsoft. There were a few vendors you you called out. That was one of them. It was also one of the ones where you s didn't feel like you could do it. if okay. Well also Microsoft's cutting or incentivizing sixty thousand employees to leave.

Bryan Lachapelle (18:48)
Somebody did. They replaced all of the Office three six office products.

Justin Shelley (18:58)
Do you think these people aren't gonna go out and build a competing product that's better and cheaper?

Bryan Lachapelle (19:02)
Probably if they're in that if they're coders for sure.

Justin Shelley (19:05)
They're gonna kill Microsoft off. That's that's what I think happens here.

Mario Zaki (19:07)
I mean, I to be honest with you, I'm kinda grateful for Microsoft. I know they're th you know, we're a thorn in their ass and w they're a thorn in our ass, but without Microsoft, we would all be out of a job. If they built a good product, you know, we would all be out of a job.

Bryan Lachapelle (19:23)
I mean I can't argue there. They they built a product so poor they require up, you know, a million MSPs to support it.

Justin Shelley (19:23)
So you're you're glad they suck so hard that

Or if they had better support, right? Because how as partners where we have all the inroads and the special access, getting support from Microsoft has always been a nightmare. At best, you could pay $500 per incident and then somebody would actually talk to you. But it it might take days or weeks to get a response. ⁓ I've had very good luck with their paid support, but short of that, my god, you're you're screwed if you ⁓ if you don't know what's going on with Microsoft.

Joshua Holloway (20:02)
I think most people don't realize, especially non technical people that might be listening to this, how much we're on our own trying to figure these things out. Figure out a lot of the ⁓ issues.

Justin Shelley (20:10)
Yeah.

And it doesn't come from Microsoft. The help we get is from peers from online. the BBS board. You guys remember those? What what what did that even stand for? Whatever. ⁓ there was a website called experts-exchange dot com. Did anybody ever use that?

Bryan Lachapelle (20:28)
Bulletin board system.

Joshua Holloway (20:30)
Yeah.

Bryan Lachapelle (20:38)
right, yes. Well

Joshua Holloway (20:39)
yeah, expert exchange. Yes, I did.

Mario Zaki (20:39)
⁓ I love that one.

Justin Shelley (20:42)
If you take the hyphen out, I I always like, why would you hyphenate this? Because otherwise it's expert sex change. ⁓ anyways.

Bryan Lachapelle (20:49)
Ha ha ha.

Joshua Holloway (20:50)
Which was a porn site.

Justin Shelley (20:52)
Maybe. I don't know. I I don't know porn, Josh. Tell us more. all right. This is this this is where we lose our audience again. I think about my my avatar, my my client. My ideal client is like, you know, office managers at medical practices. I can't imagine. If they're listening to this, like I just lost them as clients. I I am so sorry. ⁓ anyways, where were we talking about ⁓ go ahead, Josh.

Joshua Holloway (20:58)
No comment.

Bryan Lachapelle (21:00)
⁓ boy.

Mario Zaki (21:02)
I swear we're not drinking this week.

Joshua Holloway (21:20)
Well I was gonna say we have to have levity in some of the stuff that we deal with. Like they they know.

Justin Shelley (21:25)
I tell you what, if we don't bring that, this is a really boring conversation. So ⁓ you're welcome, audience, whoever you are. Right. my god, yeah.

Joshua Holloway (21:29)
Yeah. No no absolute. Especi especially when we're talking about Microsoft.

Mario Zaki (21:34)
Now I I can't imagine Microsoft replacing one fourth of their employees with because of AI because if they're using their copilot AI, they're they're they're not they're they're not getting shit done. Yeah.

Justin Shelley (21:49)
Copilot. Wait, what did you what did you call it?

Mario Zaki (21:52)
Of the co pilot.

Justin Shelley (21:54)
Like in an airplane?

Mario Zaki (21:57)
I is it's not called co pilot or what am I?

Justin Shelley (21:58)
Listen, I'm trying to be a smart ass. I've never heard of copilot before. It's the most irrelevant. What I here's when I hear copilot. A bunch of retail ⁓ bad, don't say that word. ⁓ nerds like us get around and bitch about how we can't make money on AI. And the most common thing that people are doing to try to make money in AI in the MSP world is reselling copilot. Why resell copilot and I can't make very much money? It's like because nobody wants it.

Joshua Holloway (22:28)
No, nobody wants it. It doesn't take off.

Justin Shelley (22:31)
Anyways, ⁓ so twenty-five percent of their employees gone if everybody takes it.

Joshua Holloway (22:41)
I mean honestly I I think this is Microsoft's softening their new cycle blow later on with having to do layoffs it so that their numbers are a lot smaller. So it's like only ten thousand people get laid off.

Justin Shelley (22:41)
Crystal balls.

Mario Zaki (22:57)
Yeah. I agree.

Justin Shelley (22:59)
Or here's another thought. Like Copilot, and you guys somebody said it a minute ago, maybe Microsoft is in fact becoming irrelevant. And maybe they know it, maybe they see the writing on the wall.

Bryan Lachapelle (23:10)
And this is their way of shrinking before.

Justin Shelley (23:13)
Yeah.

Joshua Holloway (23:14)
Or they're freeing up enough capital to buy one of the AI companies because they know they're becoming irrelevant and they need it.

Bryan Lachapelle (23:15)
Maybe.

Justin Shelley (23:20)
That could be too. Yeah. Because Cloud's already introduced their competing products, right? Google's had them forever, but now Claude has the competing documents and whatever else. ⁓ we've we've got people doing this through Linux, Linux flavors. ⁓ because there's always been open source versions. So and I know I'm talking about the Office products. I mean Microsoft does a lot of things. So I don't know. interesting.

Let's unless you guys have anything else, I think we beat that horse clear to death. Let's talk about ⁓ Brian, you brought up Sauce be gone.

Bryan Lachapelle (23:58)
Sass begone. Yeah, it's ⁓ Sass. I say sass. I don't say sauce. Sauce sounds like I'm gonna eat ketchup or something.

Justin Shelley (24:00)
Is that how they say it Canada is Sass? I say sauce. How do you Mario? This is a pull I know. ⁓ Sass. Which one do you do, Josh? Sass. So I'm so I'm the odd guy out. I'm the redheaded. I'm the bald headed stepchild. I I just go sauce. ⁓ yes, SAS be gone. what what what are our thoughts here, guys?

Mario Zaki (24:07)
Soft.

Joshua Holloway (24:09)
Sauce sass, sass, sass.

Bryan Lachapelle (24:14)
Yeah, what the heck? Has nothing to do with Canada.

Mario Zaki (24:31)
Well, I mean we we we

Justin Shelley (24:31)
Brian, you brought it up. You gotta say something.

Bryan Lachapelle (24:32)
Yeah, I mean I could certainly dive in here. ⁓ you know, when whenever I look at a lot of the software we're using, a lot of the software as a service we're using, it's it's become very common for me at least to look at it and say how much effort would it be for me to recreate this or create my own version of it, ⁓ similar similar product that only does the things that I want it to do, not the fluff that a thousand other people asked for and and has no bearing on me.

⁓ and in a lot of cases I can create or recreate the very core functionality of of many smaller SaaS products without any actual knowledge of of how it's done. Now, granted, don't get me wrong, somebody's got to scrutinize the code, somebody's got to look at it, make sure it's safe and secure. But that aside, right, if I'm using this piece of software internally and it never sees the light of day outside of my office, why in the world would I

go spend five hundred dollars a month for a product that I could recreate in an afternoon and ⁓ and scale through my entire team essentially for free. ⁓ and I think a lot of organizations are going to start looking at some of their internal tools that they're currently paying mass amounts of money to third parties for and saying, I can probably recreate this for my own team, host it locally so it's not up on the web and I can, you know, save thousands of dollars and customize it in my own workflows, add my own ⁓

modules and my own things that I want to really, really add to this piece of software that other software, you know, you gotta pull the teeth of the developers to even look at your your request and they never do get it put into the system 'cause it's, you know, so far down the list of their priority that you never get it done.

Mario Zaki (26:17)
Now the the thing is for me and and I think just especially based on like conversations that I had last week, I thought we were just kind of like this leveled with the other MSPs and other people are doing the same thing. But I actually think, especially like us four, I think we're way ahead of the curve. Like I don't think there's as many other MSPs working with AI and and app development as much as we are.

Justin Shelley (26:17)
Mario.

Mario Zaki (26:47)
So I think for the near future they're okay. They may they may take like a slight hit, but the majority of people are actually still using some of these products that we're talking about replacing.

Justin Shelley (27:03)
Yeah, ⁓ that's fair. ⁓

I I don't and I'm gonna go in a little bit different direction on Brian, when you said that you know, somebody has to come in and look at the code. Like right now you're you're you're right, Mario. Right now most people aren't doing this. I don't know how long that lasts. A. And B, Brian, to your point of you know, somebody still has to come in and and check the code and everything else. Anthropic is using their own LLMs to make their own code. Like this code is it's good enough for them.

to write it securely, I don't know how much longer we have to have somebody come in and review the code.

Bryan Lachapelle (27:44)
Well, I I didn't mean necessarily review the exact code. So here's the thing. Anthropic has developers who understand software development. They understand how things are supposed to be done at a high level, where the databases are, how they should be secured, how logins and passwords and two factor authentication, all these things are supposed to integrate, right? And a lot of people who are vibe coding don't necessarily have that. And especially if you're talking about a

Justin Shelley (27:47)
Okay.

Bryan Lachapelle (28:08)
IT team at a local organization or local company that's just gonna start using claud code on their own, they won't have that level of knowledge. Most of the people in this room have a general understanding of software development to understand, hey, I need to secure the database, I need to have row level security, I need to have ⁓ you know, two factor authentication, single sign on, ⁓ I need to make sure that, you know, if I'm doing a multi tenant that each tenant can only see their own their own data. I would say over time the LLMs will get a

good enough that they'll just do this by default, I think. and in that case there, you're probably right. We won't have to necessarily review code. ⁓ but right now, you know, d going to what Mario was saying about not a lot of of us MSPs are doing this. ⁓ I will agree, but I will say that it's growing significantly. So out of the people I coach, I probably coach about forty different MSPs throughout North America. There might be ten on the calls that are actively doing what we're doing. ⁓ and the rest are not yet.

Justin Shelley (28:41)
That's yeah.

Bryan Lachapelle (29:07)
They're all talking about it. They're all talking about wanting to do it. They just don't know where to start. And I think that's the challenge we all face when we first start. It's like it seems like a huge obstacle, but then you get started and you're like, this is actually a lot easier than I thought it would be. Right. And it's not a very big barrier to entry. Yeah.

Justin Shelley (29:11)
Yeah.

absolutely.

Yeah. Here here's the cheat code of how to get started. Cheat code. Go to your ⁓ AI chatbot of choice and say how do I write my own code?

Bryan Lachapelle (29:28)
Ask it. Yeah. Yeah. And that is the cheat code, right? You just get it to to walk you through the steps. But now I'd say you'd want to learn as you do it. You want to learn like the the ropes. You're not just going to take verbatim everything it tells you to copy and paste and just copy and paste it. half the time it's wrong anyway, but that's neither here nor.

Mario Zaki (29:48)
So funny story, ⁓ a good friend of mine, ⁓ last week we were ⁓ all together watching ⁓ a football game on Thursday night, and ⁓ he had his laptop out and he was showing me something about a program that he uses and I'm like dude, why don't you just create your own you know application just like this and you could even have like a your own app and stuff like that? He's How? I'm like

And we're watching the game. So I leaned over. I'm like, all right, open up your Claude, click code here, and just go ahead and tell it, I want to redo this and I want to brand it with this, and blah blah blah blah blah. Literally, like probably a four-minute conversation. He started typing, and by the end of the game, he had a pretty much a working product of exactly what he wanted.

Bryan Lachapelle (30:20)
Ha ha ha.

Okay, and you probably won't see this guy for another three weeks now. Thank you very much, Mario. You just ruined that poor guy's sleep.

Mario Zaki (30:40)
And I I saw him once again and he's just walking around with the Yeah, it's funny because I actually saw him again Monday night. and we're hanging out, we're actually at his house this time and we're just you know, whatever, and he had his laptop in there. But all of a sudden it's like, Do you guys mind if I code while we're while we're talking about

Bryan Lachapelle (30:48)
Yeah. He's probably got red eyes.

Joshua Holloway (31:03)
Which is all of us when we get together with people now.

Justin Shelley (31:04)
You're Yes, you're screwed.

Mario Zaki (31:06)
Yeah, I'm like I was actually surprised, I'm like that you I told him I'm surprised you didn't do it already. You know, it's already the end of the first quarter.

Bryan Lachapelle (31:06)
Yeah.

Joshua Holloway (31:16)
Well, I think there's a couple couple of things to push on push on that. Mario, your friend he's probably not gonna check his code. It might be a security issue. And that's that's a bigger problem, right? Where people are starting to vibe code, ⁓ they are inevitably opening doors because Claud Code, other clothing apps don't necessarily check their work. When they do check its own work, of course it's gonna give itself an A plus just like any student grading their own homework. So that will be get like a a security issue.

Justin Shelley (31:16)
All right, so

Joshua Holloway (31:44)
⁓ I think the other thing is is these SAS, SAS vendors, whatever we feel like calling, one, I think they're gonna have to lower their prices to be competitive because they are replaceable. Two, I'm wondering if this opens the door for like a software certification where if you if you have a compliance that you have to follow, you now have to go get a certified piece of software to operate.

Justin Shelley (31:50)
Sauce.

Yes.

Joshua Holloway (32:11)
Within parameters because people have been developing their own software forever. It's just now it's a thousand times easier for us to do it. So you know, did we just, you know, start the whole cycle of certified software?

Justin Shelley (32:26)
Somebody's doing this. Who's doing it?

Mario Zaki (32:30)
Well, Josh, let me ask you a question. Maybe and maybe we should mention this off the air before somebody steals our million dollar idea. Why don't we build something that says, Hey, we'll check your code for you? You know, like build an application to have check other people's code and maybe steal something. Yeah. Or maybe

Justin Shelley (32:35)
Yeah.

Bryan Lachapelle (32:47)
There there there's already some that exist. Yeah.

Joshua Holloway (32:50)
Hey Justin, I'm gonna I'm gonna go ahead and need you to send an N D A to all of our listeners so they can continue listening to this episode.

Mario Zaki (32:54)
Yeah.

Justin Shelley (32:57)
As as we plot to take over the world. yeah. I don't know, I just it it is. I somebody's doing it and I think it's even it's a big name and I can't remember who it is. Did you know who it is?

Joshua Holloway (33:03)
No, it's a great idea 'cause I think that's coming.

Bryan Lachapelle (33:10)
It yep. Is it like Vanta or V something ⁓ I can't remember the name of the actual software, but I I saw I actually saw an ad on it. Really?

Justin Shelley (33:18)
No, I think it's Cloudflare.

I'm I'm Googling it frantically. I should ask ⁓ Claude. ⁓ Cloudflower's new tool helped spot the hidden dangers in your vibe code. Yeah.

Void, a new open source self-hosted platform designed to give non-technical workers guardrails while vibe coding internal apps. So this is coming. And it's my point. This this fear of don't do your own stuff because it's gonna be insecure, unsafe, whatever, that's gonna be addressed really fast. Weeks, months, worst case. That's not gonna be an issue. Start building your own shit.

Bryan Lachapelle (33:35)
I Vanta does it too.

Joshua Holloway (33:42)
Well

Bryan Lachapelle (33:51)
Going away. Yeah.

Joshua Holloway (33:57)
Well you can address you you can build your own shit, but you can you also have to understand how to check it, because you can check it now and s and be safe and secure the more ⁓ time you invest in understanding what it you're doing, how you're doing it, and how you set up your project. Just the same as coding fundamentals that we all learned a long time ago, right? Like you just don't write a bit of code and say, Here's a production server. I mean, if you did, I'm sure somebody would poke a hole through it, but it's it's the same idea.

Justin Shelley (34:15)
Yeah. Yep.

Well, you're responsible for a lot of things. You've got I mean, j let's just talk about ⁓ even if you can get your code to be secure, you're gonna put it somewhere where other people can access it. So now you have ⁓ that kind of security. You've got data backups because like god forbid Claude goes ahead and deletes your entire database. That's never happened before. and the backups. Oops. ⁓ y you've got to account for that kind of stuff. ⁓

Anyways, there there's a lot to it. I'll run into things where like I have Cloud set up to be able to push things to production. Probably not the greatest idea, but I do. And then once in a while it's just like, hey, I can't. I can't go to production. like you did five minutes ago. It was like, no, I didn't. I've never been able to. Like, okay. Whatever. ⁓ what what else on vibe coding? Josh, you talked about the

Mario Zaki (35:08)
Yeah.

Joshua Holloway (35:14)
Yeah.

Justin Shelley (35:18)
the legality of it. We're talking about copyright, trademark, whatever we wanna call it, intellectual property. What what are your thoughts there? Just just peer into your crystal ball and tell me what you think's coming.

Joshua Holloway (35:32)
I think we're gonna see a lot of litigation, especially with people reverse engineering. I mean, we have skills out there that are, you know, is essentially called reverse engineer anything. That's all they do. That they're the whole thing. ⁓ so I think we will see some legality. I definitely see we'll see some legal precedents be set on on using vibe code. And then I would probably venture to see the insurance companies jump in. ⁓ this is just a guess, where they'll jump in and one of their

Justin Shelley (35:40)
All they do. Yeah.

Joshua Holloway (36:01)
questions in their questionnaire and I'm sorry to all the technical, non-technical people who I just gave this information to insurance companies to add, they're gonna question you are you self-writing any code with AI? And they will they'll I'm pretty sure they'll up your fees. Your premiums are going to go. They're gonna they're gonna go up if you if you choose to vibe code.

Justin Shelley (36:13)
Yeah.

Or you'll have to have it certified like we just talked about. Some way, shape or form.

Joshua Holloway (36:25)
Or you'll need you'll need to get it certified.

Mario Zaki (36:28)
No, I think I'm I'm gonna and I completely one hundred percent agree with what you're saying, but I could almost make an argument the other way around. I almost sometimes feel like I trust the the AI to program something better than these people with you you know, humans that you hear all the time, like this got breached, this got hap you know, this br went down, this you know, it almost it almost works both ways as well too. Sometimes like sometimes

Justin Shelley (36:49)
Yeah.

It does.

Mario Zaki (36:56)
the the AI, yes, will make mistakes and you know do what exactly what you're telling it. But sometimes these humans are doing, you know, shit that breaks all time. Yeah. Or or or older or older applications. How many older applications, you know, do you hear that got breached? Like last week we were talking about the side kick or cyber kick or whatever. It's sidekick. That was that that's an old program. That was way before AI. And then look

Bryan Lachapelle (37:04)
I mean, they're doing the same stuff anyway. They're just vibe coding it on their hand.

Justin Shelley (37:08)
Sometimes, yeah.

Bryan Lachapelle (37:19)
cyber.

Justin Shelley (37:20)
Side check, yeah.

Yeah.

Mario Zaki (37:25)
They're using AI to say, look how much this guy fucked up, you know.

Justin Shelley (37:30)
Yeah. It it is the general problem. Security generally is because humans are trying to think and work like computers, and we are not the same. So when you've got humans writing code, we introduce vulnerabilities and flaws because we don't think the same way. We don't have the same attention capacity. And I think this is where AI excels. Is it can write more secure, better code because it can keep all of it in its brain where we cannot. Like guys.

Code is millions of lines, thousands, hundreds of thousands of variables. You've got to keep track of so much. And it's not just that, but every goddamn semicolon at the end of every one of those millions of lines of code, depending on the language you're working in, or close angle brackets, or quotation marks, like there are so many ways we can mess up code. ⁓ computers are, they're the ones reading it and following the instructions exactly. So they're gonna be better at writing it.

Bryan Lachapelle (38:00)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Shelley (38:28)
It's their language. We're trying to understand their language and their world, even though we invented it. Computers are better at talking computers.

Joshua Holloway (38:36)
No, you're absolutely right. And I think the biggest thing is there there's a reason why they're calling this month Black Black Tober, right? AI is now looking at all of our flaws and it's calling them to the front. So I I think we have to do better about working with AI to analyze the code of our existing tools. Also, there's a reason why we tell people you have to update, you have to upgrade. You I I I've I have a client that is just stuck on a piece of software that was deprecated.

The company no longer exists in twenty s and twenty sixteen. Like if

Justin Shelley (39:06)
yeah.

that's pretty new, because I've seen some shit that won't run on anything but Windows XP in production.

Joshua Holloway (39:13)
Yeah. Right. And they tr they try and run it in production and I'm just like, You do know that when this dies, this dies. Yeah.

Justin Shelley (39:19)
You're gone, yeah. You can do it right now on your own timeline, or you can do it because you're forced and your this function is shut down. Good luck. Yeah.

Bryan Lachapelle (39:27)
Yep. This piece of software requires a hardware token that plugs in via serial port. Whoa, what's a serial port? They don't make those anymore.

Mario Zaki (39:34)
Yeah.

Justin Shelley (39:36)
It's another consideration when we're coding though and building these applications is you you build it and then you get to continue to maintain it for a various reasons. Hardware changes, software changes, integration changes, ⁓ security updates. ⁓ like you you don't just get to build it once and be done. So that that is another ⁓ I don't know ⁓ a downside, the dark side of vibe coding that I don't love.

I don't look forward to 'cause I'm building some really cool stuff and I'm well aware of the fact that I've got to keep this thing alive and up to date and secure until the end of time and and my whole business runs on it and it's like e

Bryan Lachapelle (40:15)
Justin, you just create a loop that says check my code, fix it, make no mistakes.

Justin Shelley (40:19)
Make no mistakes. Yeah. I'll get right on that. All right. ⁓ anything else on this horse that we need to continue to beat, Josh?

Joshua Holloway (40:28)
Well, I w I was just gonna say you you have a a valid point right there because most people think I vibe coded this and I just let it go. They don't they d they yeah, I'm just done. They don't realize that there's a there there is no in. It's it's a hydra. You'll f you'll fix a flaw, you'll find an issue, you'll you'll add something new, and then somebody will have a new delivery method that they want, or the the a patch will open up a hole.

Justin Shelley (40:34)
And I'm done. Yeah.

There is no end.

Joshua Holloway (40:52)
or or something. Like it will forever go and grow. And I think these businesses that are going to get into vibe coding or or think it's awesome, they need to realize that the cycle, welcome to the infinite loop. There's a reason why IT guys lock themselves in rooms with the lights off and a lot of monitors all around them. It's not to hide. It's because we're that busy and that there, you know, we're working on a lot of different things at once and people are going to see it because, you know, some random person in accounting thought it would be cool to build an app to, you know,

Justin Shelley (41:02)
Yeah.

Yes.

Joshua Holloway (41:21)
Do all their balance sheets for them. And then they they don't realize that it's partially broken or it's slightly off or they have to keep updating it.

Bryan Lachapelle (41:27)
Or they retire and nobody knows how it was done in the first place. They forget that it even exists.

Justin Shelley (41:31)
That do you guys do you guys know the campfire song? This is the song that never inst what I'm thinking of right now. That's as you're saying that. I'm like, this is just a loop that never goes anywhere.

Joshua Holloway (41:32)
That's a huge one.

Bryan Lachapelle (41:37)
yeah.

Joshua Holloway (41:42)
Well, I I was also thinking about the song ⁓ 99 flaws on the wall, you know, because you you take you take one down and now you have 117.

Mario Zaki (41:52)
Yeah.

Joshua Holloway (41:53)
Yeah, you know, I I I don't know if you guys ever it's to the tune of ninety nine beers and when you're coding, it is so true because you fix one thing. No no, no, it's it's a real one. I've run across it. Yeah, yeah. Take

Justin Shelley (41:54)
my God. ⁓

Wait, is this a real one or did you just make this up on the spot? I have not heard this. Ninety nine flaws. Okay, I'm looking it up.

Bryan Lachapelle (42:06)
I literally ran I literally ran across that when I was vibe coding myself. I'm sitting there going, I'm working on a problem and then next thing I know, Claude's issuing two more issues, like two recording two more issues of things it found. And I'm like, Okay, cool, cool. So let's start working on one of those. And it found two or three more. I'm like, wait, and we we get down the line and I've got like I started off with one problem that I fixed and now I have thirteen I gotta fix. And I'm like, What the hell happened? Yeah. Yeah.

Justin Shelley (42:10)
Ha ha.

Joshua Holloway (42:11)
Yeah.

Justin Shelley (42:31)
That's just the problems because the same thing happens with the features you want to put into it. So this whole thing just like explodes exponentially. It never ends. The development never ends. Forget about all the maintenance that comes afterwards. Holy shit. I'm done. I'm I'm out. I'm gonna go I think I'm gonna go apply at McDonald's. I just wanna flip burgers.

Bryan Lachapelle (42:38)
Yeah.

Mario Zaki (42:42)
Yeah, have you have you guys like have you guys ever had like or adds like a feature like that you wanted and it's like okay I'm done hit refresh you hit refresh and the whole thing just it's a white screen that cannot be displayed. ⁓ I'm like what the f fuck is this?

Justin Shelley (42:55)
Broke. Yep. yeah.

Joshua Holloway (42:57)
Absolutely. Absolutely. Just happened to me three nights ago. Three nights ago.

Justin Shelley (43:02)
Dude, it happened to me this morning. What are talking about? Lord. All right.

Bryan Lachapelle (43:07)
Let me guess. you're right, I did make that mistake.

Justin Shelley (43:10)
⁓

Mario Zaki (43:10)
Yeah. I hate that nothing annoys me more than when my AI says, ⁓ you're right. Nothing annoys me more than when when it says that to me.

Joshua Holloway (43:11)
Yes.

Justin Shelley (43:19)
Okay, I've got one for you that competes with it. May not be better, but it'll be like, ⁓ fuck, I just lost it. God damn it, I hate it when I do that.

Mario Zaki (43:28)
No, it never says that to me.

Bryan Lachapelle (43:30)
Ha ha.

Justin Shelley (43:30)
Doesn't either.

Mario Zaki (43:32)
Yeah.

Bryan Lachapelle (43:33)
And here we all thought we'd like to hear that you're always right, right? You know, we always wanted to hear that. Now we hear it and we don't like it.

Justin Shelley (43:33)
Shit, it's gone. It's gone. I had something. ⁓ I had something. It'll come back. It'll come back. All right. ⁓ let's move on. Well, I'm feeling stupid. Sauce. SAS. Be gone. So's the topic. Let's move on to shutting down your PCs because your ISP got incidentized. That's my new word.

Bryan Lachapelle (43:54)
Ha ha

Mario Zaki (43:59)
I like that. ⁓ I brought it up.

Justin Shelley (43:59)
Who brought this one up? Mario, I think you. So so thoughts.

Joshua Holloway (44:01)
Mario.

Mario Zaki (44:04)
⁓ I mean, so it was pretty much just like what you said, like I've never seen it happen at the source of the internet where they are the ones that are saying like every one of you that are ⁓ using our service, they have to compl like our internet service, you have to completely shut down and disconnect. That means

Justin Shelley (44:24)
And they said, take every cord out of the back of your computer. Like that was their instructions.

Mario Zaki (44:28)
The the crazy part is how do that how do those customers now know when the whole thing is fixed if they're offline?

Justin Shelley (44:35)
It was a preventive. I don't know if you read like all the details, but it was like the threat came in that we did this, we exfiltrated that, and now we're gonna go after your customers. And I think they even put a a timer on it. I don't know. It was probably just a scare tactic because I don't think anything ever happened to them. I don't think there were any actual ⁓ incidents on the customer level. The the the company did absolutely get

Mario Zaki (44:56)
Yeah, yeah.

Justin Shelley (45:05)
some incidents. But the clients, the customers, I don't think they did. It was just like a shut it down now because they said they're coming after you. So it's just a disruption. It's like I I like if I'm the bad guy, I'm putting my evil hat on. It's like I'm gonna see just how many people I can piss off. Watch this.

Bryan Lachapelle (45:19)
Yeah, but th like they're after us all the time. You're connected to the internet and you're getting hit hundreds of thousands of times a day anyway, whether your ISP is compromised or not. So I don't see the point in turning off your computer if your ISP gets compromised. I just can't see it. They still can't get into my stuff.

Justin Shelley (45:23)
I know.

Yeah.

I I don't.

Joshua Holloway (45:39)
I think we should pay attention to this one and just keep our ears out for it, Mario, because I think ⁓ if I wonder if certain incidences will start to pop up in a in a couple months from now where maybe they they did get hacked where some of their users did get hacked or something happened, but then how do you contribute what happened with the the ISP versus what happened to you know somebody's home internet connection or their computer?

Mario Zaki (46:05)
Yeah, I mean that i if i in the if it does happen, if they're able to get to the ISP and then in effect affect all their customers, ⁓ that is definitely something that would be, you know, wild.

Justin Shelley (46:19)
Yeah, what what what's going on with the ISP has that kind of in ⁓ direct in lines to the workstations. I don't know.

Joshua Holloway (46:27)
Well, I th

Bryan Lachapelle (46:27)
Unless they were just worried about spying on stuff in that's in transit, maybe.

Justin Shelley (46:30)
Yeah.

Joshua Holloway (46:32)
But think about the power that that let's say like an ISP like Comcast has. How how many times you can call up ⁓ you know, service and they're like, Well, hold on one second, I'll I'll reach into your modem and reboot

Justin Shelley (46:41)
Sure, absolutely, yes. The modem, but not the workstations. Now, an interesting thing about this company is one of the services they offer is I'm blanking on everything today. What what's the hosted workstation? There's a three letter acron acronym for it. Yes, that's one of the services they offer. ⁓ they do like some online trading and stuff, I believe. That stuff ⁓ was incidentized, so there were unrecognized trades happening on people's accounts.

Joshua Holloway (46:45)
Exactly, yeah.

VDI.

Justin Shelley (47:12)
⁓ and one of the services they offer, of course, is cybersecurity. Won won.

Mario Zaki (47:16)
Yeah.

Justin Shelley (47:19)
Oops.

Bryan Lachapelle (47:19)
You know, you brought up a good point though, Justin, about connecting to their modems because a lot of residential customers are not using commercial equipment. They're just using whatever the ISP has provided. So if if the ISP had access to be able to change the firewall settings remotely, they would basically get in complete internal access to your internal network.

Justin Shelley (47:36)
Mm-hmm.

Absolutely. To the network. Yeah. Yep. Yep.

Joshua Holloway (47:40)
They can open ports, set up forwards, proxies, like they can

Bryan Lachapelle (47:42)
Right. And so they might not have access to the computers themselves, maybe, maybe not, depending if they're protected with a firewall, but they certainly could potentially get through into the internal network access any of your thermostats and anything that's not password protected within your local network if they had access to the firewall and changing the settings on the firewall. So that's an interesting point of view. Yeah.

Justin Shelley (47:50)
No

Yeah.

All of a sudden it's a hundred and fifty degrees in your house. Well then then the the instructions should have been then unplug your router. And I hate it when people call them modems. It's not a modem.

Bryan Lachapelle (48:08)
Yeah, I agree. Yeah. Yeah.

Joshua Holloway (48:12)
Well, think about if they proxied all of their traffic. Now they're gathering all their financial traffic as it goes through. You know, like they're in banks at that point. Super easy. Snatching tokens.

Justin Shelley (48:17)
Yeah.

Bryan Lachapelle (48:20)
Man in the middle, they're just spying on what's going on and and intercepting traffic.

Joshua Holloway (48:23)
yeah. And then of course that most famous, you know, spam that came out. I I love this one. It's like, hey, I'm in your computer. I know what you've been up to. I really like your your your choice of porn or I turned on your cam camera and saw what you were to. s let me guess, you you gave up a couple of Bitcoin.

Justin Shelley (48:32)
I love that. Yeah. Yeah.

Bryan Lachapelle (48:36)
wait, I thought that was real.

Justin Shelley (48:38)
We

Bryan Lachapelle (48:41)
No.

Justin Shelley (48:41)
Dude, we had a client come to us and, like, I got busted. ⁓ my bad, and gave us the email. I'm just like, You didn't get busted. ⁓ but I'll tell you, the first time I got that message myself, I did panic. Wait, wait, wait, what did I just admit to? things I can.

Bryan Lachapelle (48:45)
Ha ha ha.

Joshua Holloway (48:45)
Same, same.

Mario Zaki (48:47)
Same here. Same here.

Bryan Lachapelle (48:50)
no.

Joshua Holloway (49:03)
You know you know what you just admitted to.

Justin Shelley (49:04)
Things I can say now that I'm no longer Mormon. Anyways, guys, let's let's move. This this is we gotta fast forward fast. China phoning home. Who brought this one up?

Bryan Lachapelle (49:06)
my boy.

Top that up.

Joshua Holloway (49:15)
Yeah, that was me. ⁓ so the the one I brought up is ⁓ that we now have our first incidents where there was a company I believe it was Cohere was running Quinn from Alibaba in a in a test environment. And they they basically gave it the instructions don't use any tools, don't use any outside resources, stay local with and within yourself, and ⁓ you know, run these tests. Immediately as it was running the tests, it reached out to a server in in Beijing.

Even after the AI even agreed to not do anything like that and it just stayed compound. They're thinking that maybe it was an artifact lookup or something. They don't know if it was nefarious, but it's very weird and ver that somebody would make these requests and then all of a sudden it reaches right out to a server in China, which a lot of people are now starting to kind of raise their eyebrows and say, Hmm, what's going on? Now, personal experience for myself working with Quinn.

in a in a lab that I have over here in in my office. And you know, we were going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And I may have mentioned this, right? Working out everything in in English, asked it to do something, and all of a sudden my whole entire stack, my whole entire prompt stack, everything went into Chinese characters. And I was like, hey, what's going on? And it responded back to me. Well initially responded back to me in Chinese. And then I was like, I speak English and I need English.

Justin Shelley (50:31)
Yeah.

Joshua Holloway (50:42)
And it was like, ⁓ I'm I'm talking to you into the native language that I learned. And I was like, well, why? You and I were conversing just fine and and in English, but you immediately revert revert it back into Chinese characters and our entire conversation was now in Chinese. And everything got updated and changed into to Chinese. So then I just kind of went click and powered that thing off.

Justin Shelley (51:00)
really? It it went back and changed it all?

interesting.

Yeah.

Joshua Holloway (51:11)
I haven't turned the box back on since then. but I will be wiping that thing several times, maybe even changing out its hard drive, and and rebuilding it. It was just and and and I couldn't even get it back. Like it took me ⁓ it took me a little bit to try and really get it back into the habit of of English and it would cut it would just revert right back. So I was done. Just turned it off.

Justin Shelley (51:12)
⁓ God.

yeah. Okay, so ⁓

Well it

Mario Zaki (51:34)
I feel like my wife does the same thing though. Like I I'll talk to her in English and then all of a sudden she just starts talking about other stuff that I'm like, it sounds like it's Chinese to me and I'm like, What the fuck are you talking about?

Justin Shelley (51:45)
You're you're you're giving the whole audience so much information they could blackmail you with. we know your we know your wife doesn't listen, but Mario, I could take that clip and send it to her. Unless you send me a hundred thousand dollars. Okay. she already knows. That's the best defense against these things, anyways. Okay, here's my thought. ⁓ AI, we know, because we always talk about this, it just mirrors human behavior. It just

Joshua Holloway (51:50)
I have no comment.

Mario Zaki (51:50)
I sh I think they should have a button that I can do this.

She knows.

Justin Shelley (52:13)
does what its developers taught it to do or the the information that it ingested. Right. So I mean these Chinese models, of course they're gonna phone back home and spy on us. That's all they do. There we go. Problem solved. Don't use Chinese models. I mean it they they put it in the chips they send us. They put like this is a known issue. So it it does make sense and I'm I'm going to retract my previous statement where I'm like I'll I'll contain a Chinese model much better than I'll trust a a vendor. ⁓

They really are a mirror of their developers and the content that they were fed in the training. So hmm, maybe don't use Chinese models.

Mario Zaki (52:53)
And and the there's a reason why they make it so cheap, you know, like yeah.

Justin Shelley (52:58)
of course, they want us to use it.

Joshua Holloway (52:59)
It's free.

Bryan Lachapelle (53:00)
all your intellectual property siphoned off. Boom. New company just magically spun up doing exactly the same thing you do.

Mario Zaki (53:09)
Justin, what do you say? If a product's free, you are the

Justin Shelley (53:12)
You are the product.

Joshua Holloway (53:13)
You are the product.

Justin Shelley (53:15)
Yeah, all right.

Bryan Lachapelle (53:15)
I mean, that's why I honestly I think like, you know, long term I can't see a lot of people wanting to trust the very large models. I I think a lot of you guys talked about this last week where ⁓ you know, ⁓ if you're able to get a open model and it's been vetted by the ⁓ community, if it's open source or whatever, then I think a lot of organizations are gonna just start using their own internal models.

not want to trust third parties because you never know. Who knows what's happening in the background with Anthropic and OpenAI and Grok. We really don't know. At the end of the day, they could be taking our data, you know. my phone is not listening to me at all, ⁓ you know, for advertising purposes ⁓ yet.

Mario Zaki (54:00)
How do we create our own models? I wanna just create my own model from scratch. Is that

Bryan Lachapelle (54:01)
Are they? Right.

Justin Shelley (54:05)
Ask AI.

Bryan Lachapelle (54:08)
Yeah.

Justin Shelley (54:09)
Dear Claude.

Mario Zaki (54:10)
Ha ha ha.

Bryan Lachapelle (54:11)
I would like to create my own virtual thing.

Joshua Holloway (54:12)
It's like a diary entry now tonight. Dear dear Claude, today I had an idea. I would like to build my old model. Can you help?

Justin Shelley (54:20)
Ha ha

Bryan Lachapelle (54:21)
Can you and OpenAI get together and have a baby?

Justin Shelley (54:26)
⁓ Lord. Okay. we're we're we're at the end here. I've got one more thing I kinda want to talk about, but we're almost an hour into this thing. So I'm gonna save it for next week. Guys, we're gonna go around the room. Just closing thoughts, final arguments. Other way around, but you know, old Charlie Fa Charlie in the Chocolate Factory. Strike that, reverse it. Yeah, that's gonna be my closing thoughts. It's the end. All right.

Mario Zaki (54:46)
Well didn't you say you had a teaser?

I've been wa I've been waiting so patiently.

Justin Shelley (54:56)
I know. This is our our audience has stayed on the entire time because I said that. Everybody's listening to the whole episode this time. Do you guys ⁓ quick quick ⁓ survey. Do you guys listen to an entire episode of a podcast generally speaking when you listen to podcasts?

Bryan Lachapelle (55:03)
And meanwhile you're not

Joshua Holloway (55:13)
Yes.

Bryan Lachapelle (55:14)
Yes.

Mario Zaki (55:15)
⁓ in in one sitting no. Usually when I listen to it it's in the car, so like if I don't finish it I finish it on the next ⁓ on the next ⁓ ride.

Justin Shelley (55:20)
Okay.

I have a nasty habit of I'll listen to like I maybe it's my ADHD, undiagnosed, but definitely official. ⁓ I get about halfway through it, I'm like, Well, what's next? I'm bored. So

Bryan Lachapelle (55:34)
I just put at one point five times the speed and it's just, you know.

Mario Zaki (55:37)
Same here.

Justin Shelley (55:37)
I can't understand that. I

Joshua Holloway (55:38)
One point five, one point seven. You got you gotta work your way up. You know, you go to one point two, one you know, one point four, just keep going.

Bryan Lachapelle (55:39)
Yep. Yep. Yeah.

Mario Zaki (55:40)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Justin Shelley (55:43)
No.

Mario Zaki (55:45)
I I do that with YouTube now too. I can't watch a video. I can't watch a video on one X. It just drives me crazy. And then if you go from two X down to one X, it sounds like they're talking.

Bryan Lachapelle (55:47)
All of it. Yep.

I can't. Nope.

Talking so slow. Yeah.

Joshua Holloway (55:59)
Mm.

Justin Shelley (56:03)
Yeah anyways

Mario Zaki (56:03)
I swear we're not drinking this week, guys.

Bryan Lachapelle (56:05)
No, no.

Justin Shelley (56:07)
Yeah.

Joshua Holloway (56:07)
who said that we weren't? I was told we were. I'm like a fifth in.

Mario Zaki (56:11)
Yeah.

Justin Shelley (56:11)
I've got mine. I opened it on on camera so you guys could see it.

Joshua Holloway (56:15)
But we didn't hear it.

Justin Shelley (56:18)
I muted my mic. All right. So

Bryan Lachapelle (56:18)
Off camera he's just pouring.

Justin Shelley (56:24)
We were you guys threw me completely off. We were going around the room. We only got nowhere. Who was who was starting? Did anybody even start? Good God.

Joshua Holloway (56:25)
Your your your final thoughts.

Bryan Lachapelle (56:32)
Nobody. You didn't even give us the starting announcement. Yeah. The big announcement.

Joshua Holloway (56:33)
Nobody 'cause you 'cause you had that that that that drop, that announcement that I think we're all in anticipation. It's a big announcement.

Justin Shelley (56:39)
that's what it was. Mario interrupted me and then we started talking about if you listen to the full podcast, and then my ADHD took over from there. Brian undiagnosed.

Mario Zaki (56:45)
Women on me.

Joshua Holloway (56:46)
Undiagnosed.

Bryan Lachapelle (56:48)
Notice he keeps avoiding the big announcement. huh.

Justin Shelley (56:50)
I'm gonna say it at the end. I am. Yeah, I'm like, what should I say? Brian. I do, yes.

Mario Zaki (56:51)
Yeah. ⁓

Joshua Holloway (56:51)
He's wait he's waiting for Claude to finish.

Bryan Lachapelle (56:54)
Ha ha ha.

All right, you want me to give my closing statement? Okay. After everything we just said, all of the things that we're all fearful for, don't let that stop you from starting your journey with AI and automation. If you're looking for some help, my team has developed an entire AI, ⁓ specifically with Claude, onboarding document that will allow you to understand the step by step process on how you should get started. Obviously, reach out to us if you need some help.

but get started and ⁓ start automating and start start your journey on AI and getting things ⁓ done much faster in your business so you can be the next Microsoft.

Justin Shelley (57:37)
Is that a is that a gated document or do you have something you want me to attach to this episode?

Bryan Lachapelle (57:43)
⁓ I have to te talk to my team. We're we're producing a public version of it. We have we have two versions of the document. One of them is is ⁓ step by step checklist and the other one is more of an open document. The open document I will gladly share with ⁓ with the audience. ⁓ yeah.

Justin Shelley (57:50)
No no no just understand. Keep it keep it key.

Don't don't show your hand. No, we got it. We got it. Message received, Brian.

Mario Zaki (57:59)
Yeah, so we can put so we can put it on unhackmybusiness dot com.

Bryan Lachapelle (58:03)
Yes. Yes. I will. Yes.

Justin Shelley (58:04)
Well, that's what be the goal. If if he's willing to share at some point. Okay. Josh, closing arguments.

Joshua Holloway (58:11)
So final thoughts here, you know, d closing arguments. I I I'm wanna echo ⁓ Brian's sentiment. ⁓ all four of us are pretty advanced utilizing AI. We we dove in pretty early, pretty quick. A lot of MSPs are behind us. Eventually they'll catch up. And this is the reason why people should be listening and and learning from you know the four of us ⁓ for for what it's worth, right? Like reach out and talk to people who are in the trenches, figuring this stuff out, working with it.

Seeing the flaws, seeing the security issues, and already coming up with solutions and fixes. But also don't dissuade it. Don't let that dissuade you from diving in and trying it out yourself. Just do it on non-company like product that could potentially get you in trouble. No, you know, ⁓ set it up, talk, talk to your talk to your IT, talk, talk to management, make sure they're okay with you vibe coding. But try it because that's the only way we push our ourselves forward. And we can't just let AI propel us forward.

Justin Shelley (58:56)
Yeah.

Joshua Holloway (59:11)
We need to be human led and AI assisted, not AI led and human replaced.

Justin Shelley (59:18)
Right, right. Good line. Nice tagline. Mario?

Mario Zaki (59:23)
Yeah, I mean to kind of echo what these guys are saying, I mean, we we will do, you know, what you need to not only be more productive, have, you know, the products that you're using either be more productive or replaced. Like we're obviously not gonna do it for free, but whatever small amount that you're paying us, you can get stuff that's more secure, better working, up to date, ⁓ monitored correctly. You know, we we can take care of it all.

And if you guys don't want to go that route, I'm opening up a typewriter company that I will give you guys some discounts.

Bryan Lachapelle (1:00:01)
boy. Is that electronic typewriter or just like the old school mechanical ones?

Justin Shelley (1:00:02)
Good God. Well you're

Mario Zaki (1:00:03)
Mm.

Yeah.

Joshua Holloway (1:00:08)
Yeah, not not the cool word processors from like nineteen eighty eight to nineteen ninety four, right? Like it's it's a legitimate classic mechanical ribbon based typewriter.

Mario Zaki (1:00:19)
Yeah.

Justin Shelley (1:00:20)
Ribbon. the old ribbons. God. okay, well Mario's developing his typewriter from the seventeen hundreds. I don't know when were typewriters invented. ⁓

Mario Zaki (1:00:31)
Some right.

Bryan Lachapelle (1:00:31)
Rabbit hole.

Justin Shelley (1:00:33)
I I am my my big announcement, and it's gonna be vague. I'm I'm not gonna give you guys everything right now. But ⁓ for members of unhackmybusiness.com, we are going to ⁓ anybody that's a a member right now or that signs up in the next week gets a a free device. Now I'm not gonna tell you what the device is. You're gonna have to go on a little bit of faith right now. The account's free. Go make your goddamn account. Also, free accounts are gonna go away pretty soon too. So ⁓ jump on it now.

While it's still free. Those that do will get a free device. We're gonna talk a little bit next week about what this device is, what it does. Maybe it's a spy device from China. I don't know. But I think you're gonna want one. So that is my final thought and my closing argument. Guys, appreciate you being here. last week was a good time. I'll be in the same room. We're gonna have to do that more often. Brian, your your clothes just fell off.

Bryan Lachapelle (1:01:12)
Yeah.

Mario Zaki (1:01:26)
See ⁓

Bryan Lachapelle (1:01:26)
Apparently. I I went like this and the camera just started being like Yeah. Yeah, apparently.

Justin Shelley (1:01:30)
⁓ that's the isn't that like the secret key that you can tell if somebody's real or not? my god, his background just dropped for the audio audience. Audio only audience. ⁓ he he held up the peace sign, his background went away, and we saw all of his nakedness behind him. ⁓ all right, let's get the hell out of here.

Bryan Lachapelle (1:01:41)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Joshua Holloway (1:01:49)
Thank thank God you had clothes on. I I I d I did I didn't want to see that again after our our get together.

Bryan Lachapelle (1:01:51)
⁓

Mario Zaki (1:01:52)
It's the shirt. We don't know what's on the bottom.

Yeah.

Justin Shelley (1:01:57)
again, huh? I always like it when I stand up. I'm like, good, I I did think to put pants on this morning. All right. ⁓ guys, it's time to go because this is just getting worse. ⁓ thanks for being here. We'll have to do another ⁓ I have to tell you, this is never gonna end. Just like the ⁓ vibe coding loop. ⁓ we did not get a five-star review from our producer with our ⁓ sitting on the same side of the table and we're all holding our beers like this.

Bryan Lachapelle (1:01:58)
WHA

Joshua Holloway (1:01:59)
Yeah, I can't do it again.

Justin Shelley (1:02:26)
She said we looked like recovering Mormons. It was like all stiff and proper, and we're like picking up our beers and sipping. She wasn't impressed, so ⁓ we're gonna have to find a way to make it look more casual next time, I guess. Anyways, that's all I got for you. Thank you for being here. We are gonna be back next week with more exciting news. Unhacked.

Bryan Lachapelle (1:02:28)
Ha ha ha.

Unhacked. Unhacked.

Mario Zaki (1:02:45)
An hack

Joshua Holloway (1:02:47)
Unhacked. Unhacked.