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Translating security and tech concepts for the everyday consumer
0 Playsin 10 hours
When did we stop asking how things work? Rich Greene joins the show to talk about his new podcast Plaintext with Rich, and we get into something that matters more than any tech: curiosity itself.
Rich spent 20 years in Special Operations before becoming a SANS instructor. Now he's taking complex tech topics and breaking them down for people who need to understand, not just use.
There's a tension building between the tech sector and society at large. AI promises to make everything easier, and maybe it does. But easier can become a trap when it stops us from asking the fundamental questions. When convenience replaces comprehension, we don't just lose technical skill, we lose the ability to think critically about the systems we're building and trusting.
The conversation pushes on a deeper problem: we're creating a generation that believes technology is magic. That you can "vibe code" production software. That prompts replace understanding. And when everything becomes a black box, we've surrendered more than we realize.
Communication and curiosity - those are the skills that matter when the tools change every six months.
Find Plaintext with Rich:
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Transcript
Introduction to Green Berets and Guest Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
A lot of people don't know that Green Berets, their number one job in life is to be teachers. A lot of people don't think that. They think of Rambo. They think of war movies. They think of of guns and jumping out of airplanes and all that great stuff.
00:00:10
Speaker
But the primary goal of a Green Beret is to teach and train and instruct small forces to do amazing things. So, it's just a skill set that is't has grown and empowered itself over time. And now I just keep going with it.
00:00:33
Speaker
Hey, hey, it's 2026 and this is Bare Knuckles and Brass Tacks, the tech podcast about humans. I'm George K. And I'm George A. And today our guest is Rich Green, host of a new podcast called Plain Text with Rich.
00:00:48
Speaker
He is an instructor at SANS, which for those of you not in the know, does a lot of cybersecurity training.
Simplifying Tech Concepts for Civilians
00:00:55
Speaker
But his whole podcast is like 10 minute chunks to translate deep technical technological concepts, both in security, IT, et cetera, to a civilian audience, as it were. So we were excited to have him on. Communication is a big thing that we've talked about on the show. And ah as a high octane, highly energetic individual, Rich does not disappoint.
00:01:18
Speaker
It was a really good episode with Rich and, um you know, i was really, really impressed to finally sit down and talk to him. His enthusiasm is just through the roof. I absolutely love ah speaking to people who actually still care, care enough to actually help people, which is really, Really got the whole point.
Avoiding Cybersecurity Buzzwords
00:01:36
Speaker
um Little challenge that George and I laid out for each other before the show ah audience. You can call us out on this if we fail. But George and I tried to go the entire episode without saying cybersecurity once. I think we pulled it off. so I think we did. i did the whole digital. I think I called it what was it? You said digital hygiene. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Clever dodge. Clever dodge.
00:01:56
Speaker
But ah enjoy the show with Rich. I think it's going to be worth the start of the year because Rich really kicks it off with enthusiasm. And check out his show.
00:02:13
Speaker
Rich Green, welcome to the show. George and George, thank you so much for having me. As a fan, it's always cool to now kind of be here on the actual podcast. Yeah, we are excited to have you. And the reason we wanted you on is because you are launching a new podcast of your own. So let's start in the obvious place. Tell us a little bit about the podcast. What's it about? And we'll take it from there.
00:02:37
Speaker
Absolutely. So first thing I was like, the name needed to have a name that kind of really triggered. And I was like, what would be a good name? And even you and I talked about it briefly. i was like, plain text. Plain text, you take something that's unreadable and makes it in a way that everybody can read it.
00:02:51
Speaker
So the podcast is titled Plain Text with Rich. And the whole goal, the whole premise behind this is for me to take semi-complex, deeply technical topics and really break them and simplify them down.
00:03:06
Speaker
my My goal to me for that is 10 minutes or less because I feel like most topics without diving deep, I can explain in about 10 minutes in in a way that's easy for people to understand. And that's, that's where, that's, that's what we're doing. My goal is an episode every single week on a topic.
Audience-Driven Podcast Topics
00:03:23
Speaker
I would prefer the topics to come from the actual listeners and the viewers because I don't want it to just be me and my echo chamber being like, yeah, you need to know this and you need to know this. um So that's really the big one for me.
00:03:34
Speaker
But yeah, at a minimum, 52 episodes a year. um i'll I'll release some special ones. Like if there's an actual big breach or like a big news headline that comes up, I'll probably pull that down and do the same thing for that one, right? Break it down to where, as you said, like breach notifications before we started recording. like Break down exactly what happened. So everybody else that was curious will now have a better explanation of it.
00:03:57
Speaker
And that that's what it is. Good old me. Master stories. Yeah, man, that's pretty fun. ah First of all, hi. i think it's the first time you and I have ever directly talked, so that's kind
Communication Skills from the Military
00:04:08
Speaker
of cool. um Like when when I was introduced to your presence and existence, you were like kind of a big superstar. I i made the joke with George. He's like, oh, yeah, we're interviewing Rich. i was like, Sans Rich? Like, Sans Star Rich? So, um no, it was really cool to meet you. And um I love the concept because You know, i was, I've been making the joke for a long time with us, um how I came up my career, like practicing my pitches and stuff, because I came from like the the second world to like cyber and like trying to explain things to business. And that's a different thing than speaking to a battle commander.
00:04:44
Speaker
I used to do my pitches on my mom who's like an off the boat immigrant with her off the boat, like grade 10 English skills. i was like, if I can explain this to her and she can understand, I can explain this to executives who are super rich and powerful and also technically stupid. So I can figure this out. um But I do appreciate, I guess, kind of like your um attempt at kind of taking this on because I think,
00:05:09
Speaker
You know, there are a few other podcasts that do a good job of this. Like Caitlin does a really good job with like her cybersecurity girl brand. um She has a little like TikTok bite sized bits there.
00:05:21
Speaker
I'm kind of wondering what's going to be the differentiation with your specific brand and your specific style of show, Because if you're doing these 10 minute bits, Right. It's really i would think there's kind of more of a prescriptive formula for how you'll kind of put together each episode.
00:05:37
Speaker
And I'm wondering without revealing the whole thing, obviously, kind of what are the salient points that you're trying to get people to take away from every single episode on this?
Podcast Format and Business Takeaways
00:05:48
Speaker
I think for me, what it was is explaining what it is up front. So taking the overall, so almost every single show starts the same way.
00:05:56
Speaker
Very headline, we have the cold open, right? We have that cold hook, which will be for every single episode, draw everybody in. And then we we discuss the actual topic. We'll talk about like deep fakes with AI. I think that's episode number three, I believe after today's episode, which is cybersecurity.
00:06:11
Speaker
I already broke it for me, George, but it is go over the actual topic, break down in plain text what that means for everybody else, go into a little bit more detail.
00:06:23
Speaker
And then i I try to have at least four takeaways from every single episode. So like, what can you do, either an individual, a small business, a medium business, because that's where I kind of focus with my um my consultation work is outside of the small medium business, because I think they struggle the most when it comes to security.
00:06:42
Speaker
Four takeaways. Try to do these things. I stress almost every single episode. This field is not about being perfect. It's about being resilient and being curious and being knowledgeable. And that's really going to be there for almost every single episode i have so far. I think we have 15 episodes already scheduled on the docket to release between now and March 9th or March 6th. And almost every single episode is going to be almost the exact same breakdown.
00:07:09
Speaker
Yeah, that's impressive. And I appreciate that in terms of its brevity and terms of a focus on takeaways, because as you know, George and I hate problem admiration. Like just let's like spin in circles and talk about the problem endlessly, which is sometimes what it feels like ah a lot of industry talk is, right? We just sort of say the same thing and we say the same thing at the different conference and we say it in a different way at another conference.
00:07:33
Speaker
um So I guess I want to also get into a little bit of your
Career Transition from Military to Cybersecurity
00:07:38
Speaker
background. so if we can get your sort of five-minute hero's journey, I have a follow-up question after that.
00:07:44
Speaker
Oh, I love it. All right. So... GK and I will be kind of similar. So i spent 20 years in United States Army, um more than half that with the special operations side with seven special forces group, where I then molded into the more human side of the fence.
00:08:00
Speaker
So little bit human, little bit of, and my cybersecurity journey wasn't defense network admins. It was close target access. It was wifi exploitation. It was Bluetooth exploitation. It was more on that side of the fence.
00:08:12
Speaker
And then I retired from the army, became the lead author instructor for a course for SOF called Brighton, which taught duo and singleton operations doing the exact same thing. And this was awesome. I got to really experience the deep technical side more from a tactical offensive side of the fence.
00:08:28
Speaker
And then of course I found myself over SANS as a sales engineer. And then I found myself at SANS as an author instructor. And that was amazing. And I absolutely loved it. And then For me, as much as I love the deep technical things, I love what those very, very advanced people are doing.
00:08:45
Speaker
I enjoy having conversations and building that rapport with humans and trying to bridge that gap. I think one of the strongest skill sets you can have in our field is the ability to communicate. Because yeah as we said, I can be the smartest person in a room, but if I can't convey the amazingness that's inside my head to the person or the room in front of me, it doesn't matter how smart I am that whatever I wanted to do is not going to be accomplished. um And that's kind of where I'm at now. Now I'm in this weird spot my life where like I don't know what I want to do with it. And I've always, I had a podcast for two and a half years and I was like, i think i want to go back into it. So I kicked that back off for 2026.
00:09:19
Speaker
And now I'm just a guy that's done a whole lot of things. in 23 years of my life. um And I just want to share with the world. Yeah. So, I mean, yes, we have said communication is like probably the most neglected skill in this field because you get a lot of ah executive leaders who came up with technical expertise and then they wonder why they can't get buy-in.
00:09:41
Speaker
And it's because no one understands what they're saying and they just sort of get relegated in the mind's eye. ah This is just the weird IT t crowd. Just let them do what they're going to do. And, you know, Which I think has affected the industry for a long time. um But t in your journey, did you discover that you had this communication talent or you were naturally drawn to storytelling some people develop that over their careers i think george and i have done that we we figured out that this was a thing and that it gave us a career differentiator if we could do it and so we applied energy and effort to it some people are like my uncle natural storytellers you can spin a yarn where did that side come from that that skill set
00:10:28
Speaker
That's a great question. um If I think back, i vividly remember when my mom and my grandmother used to always tell me, raised up in the South, they're like, you can sell ice to an Eskimo, was what something used to always tell me. Yeah.
00:10:40
Speaker
And it just kind of stuck with me. They're like, you should go be a car salesman. I was like, I don't know how I feel about that. I know how I feel about car salesmen. So I don't know if I take that as an offense or not. um I've always enjoyed just talking. Like if you put me on stage, you put me in front of a camera, you put me in front of people, I will talk. There is no fear there. I think public speaking is like the number one phobia of people in the world, but I don't really have that.
00:11:03
Speaker
And then I kind of took that skill because when we look at it, when I when i was going through the process for the interviews for SANS, And and i i never knew I never knew what a sales engineer was. I have no, but I was like, I don't know what a sales engineer is. They're like, you got to do this and this. was like, look, I've never sold an actual product.
00:11:19
Speaker
but I've talked into generals and senators and Congress people and people and not convince them, but empowered them through, through words to do things they probably never would have done before. So I can definitely talk to people and they're like, you know, what we'll take a chance with you. And and they did. and and And here I am three years later, still at SANS. So doing something right. But yeah, I think it's always just been an innate thing. I just enjoy talking and
00:11:46
Speaker
A lot of people don't know that Green Berets, their number one job in life is to be teachers. A lot of people don't think that. They think of Rambo, they think of war movies, they think of of guns and jumping out of airplanes and all that great stuff.
00:11:57
Speaker
But the primary goal of a Green Beret is to teach and train and instruct small forces to do amazing things. So it's just a skill set that isn't has grown and empowered itself over time. And now I just keep going with it.
00:12:11
Speaker
Interesting. i find so I find it tough though, man, because like, I find after leaving the uniform and doing this now for almost a decade, you know, it's, it's interesting that you have so much fulfillment out of doing this kind of thing. I find I get exhausted having to explain lot of basic fundamentals to people all the time, both at work and in my personal life for non-technical friends and family, all that stuff.
00:12:39
Speaker
um And I find, you know, as as much as we try to be effective communicators, I think i think I'm a reasonably effective communicator. What I find especially is you'll explain some concepts to people and they'll get it the first you know time or whatever. And you're like right there and you're helping them out.
00:12:54
Speaker
And then they walk away and then they go back to just fucking it up completely. Right. It's just like, i I spent time doing it And then they come back to you with the same issues. And like, I think I,
00:13:08
Speaker
don't know, is it thing that you're kind of a glutton for punishment? That you're going down the path of like trying to guide people into the light of of what's essentially basic digital hygiene, right? Like that's that's kind of what you're teaching people how to do is to wash their sex, on what kind of digital footprint they're leaving, on perhaps how to protect the privacy a little bit better, perhaps how to understand setting up your applications a little bit more, understanding that if you're downloading an application for a thing and it's not costing you any of money up front, but the big, you know, terms of conditions is a massive thing you got to scroll down. Essentially, you are the product and you're selling yourself.
00:13:43
Speaker
A lot of people don't understand that. i guess... It's tough. Like, how are you finding the morale or the excitement to get into Because I know with George, when we did the whole season four pivot, we're both just kind of like, ah security is just the same shit over and over and over again. And we're talking to different people every week, but we just found it was cycling through the same conversations. Yeah. I kind of, um I see the excitement in your face, but people can't, cant this is an audio only podcast for now, but people can't see how excited you are to talk about this.
00:14:14
Speaker
Where's that come from, man? Because I'm, I, I don't know. Maybe i parents coffee you I'm just a season for too long. A little bit might be a gluttonous punishment. No, um I will say patience of a saint, I think is like the other skill set that I think finds itself inside me. um When I was retiring from the army, teaching has always been a passion of mine.
00:14:36
Speaker
And when I was retiring from the Army, i was actually talking to a superintendent in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I was going to be a middle school history teacher. Because I just love teaching. And for me, I was like, man, Rich Green was a straight kid.
00:14:49
Speaker
a-hole in high school. I couldn't teach. There's nobody in the world that could have told me a single thing when I was in high school so i was the smartest human being on the face of the earth. So I don't want to go teach high school kids. um And I was like, I don't know if I'm going elementary school kids because I don't know. That's just that's too much. i don't know if I have that much patience. But i was like middle school, I think middle school is that last bastion where if I think you're going to have like a really truly impounding effect on a human. It's going to be right there before they kind of cross over that boundary and go into high school.
00:15:15
Speaker
um So, I think part of that, knowing I was going to be a teacher for children, you have to have patience. And I think that that was pretty paramount. And I think it's just,
Extroversion and Interaction Challenges
00:15:26
Speaker
it's just there. I just, I don't, I'm a nuclear reactor. I joked at somebody on, um I think it was on LinkedIn or something. I'm a nuclear reactor, just kind of hiding and masturbating as a human with skin.
00:15:36
Speaker
skin The energy never, it's always there. Yeah. I mean, yeah, George, uh, totally hit my question. My next question was like, where does the energy come from? A ceaseless, ceaseless enthusiasm to explain things.
00:15:54
Speaker
I'm pretty sure if you ask my wife, I'm annoyingly optimistic. And I'm pretty sure after five years, she would, she would state the exact same thing. It's just, I don't know. Um, for me, it's, They're, you know, the introvert extrovert. I think I am so far beyond an extrovert. I get so, so maxed. Like if I was character creation, I would have maxed that thing like a hundred at the very beginning of my character creation.
00:16:15
Speaker
And it's just always been there. For me, it's the opposite. My wife, she can go out and she can be social. And then that battery drains and she's like, I need to go recharge. And she goes back to the room. For me, it's if I'm around people, even another single human being, I don't know if I'm siphoning off their energy and that's why they get tired.
00:16:33
Speaker
I could just be, I'm just taking all their energy, but it just goes. Like when I go back to the room at the end of the day and I'm by myself, like my battery goes down, then it doesn't recharge.
00:16:43
Speaker
i guess the opposite I can stay nonstop as long as there's people.
00:16:50
Speaker
Hey, just a quick word to say thank you for listening and to ask a favor. If you're digging the new direction of the show, which is looking more at human flourishing and the impact of technology more broadly, share it with friends. It really helps the show.
00:17:05
Speaker
We're really trying to grow something here organically. We don't do paid We don't paid We don't do a lot of sponsorships, so we'd appreciate getting the word out and getting it to people who care about the questions that we're tackling, how to keep tech human, and how to make technology work for us instead of the other way around.
00:17:27
Speaker
And now, back to the interview.
00:17:32
Speaker
Well, that's that's that's interesting because i find sometimes, and maybe it's just because there are different roles and perspectives, like you say, you know, siphoning off energy. I don't, I see you as kind of like more Highlander where you're you're growing in that power. You can be only one. But but ah George and I talk about the concept of energy vampires, and I find our industry is full of that. It's people who just try to drain your energy and suck your soul out and demoralize you with...
00:17:57
Speaker
Usually they're either self-important or, I don't know, what's the word? my ah former My former boss calls them ask-holes. Like they ask lot you, but there's you're not getting a lot in return. And so you're putting in time and effort and energy, mentoring, whatever it is. And then what is you have nothing left at the end of the day. Yeah, you're just, you're getting used. Like how how do you...
00:18:23
Speaker
Is your shit shield up enough to detect when you're engaging with all these people, whether it's at work or whether it's now, you know, doing the advocacy, when you can tell someone's worth the time to invest in versus when they're not.
00:18:35
Speaker
And what in your spidey senses tingles about that to let you know one from the other? That's broken. I don't think I had that. i If I was to be completely honest, I don't think I had that ability. um And I've made this abundantly clear not and it's I wouldn't call it a work-life balance, but I definitely fail in that direction or where it's, if somebody reaches out to me, like,
00:18:56
Speaker
We're talking like once you initiate that conversation, regardless if it's worth my time or not, like we'll have it. um I had probably a three day conversation with a user on TikTok. I made a post about password managers on TikTok and he was, he said something about, this is great. Now tell me why my wife left me. And i was like, whoa, that took a really short turn.
00:19:18
Speaker
I was like, let's pivot back to password managers. And when was all said and done, he was like, I think you convinced me he was a password manager. And I'm like, that's good. I'm sorry about your wife, but hey, you know what? Live long and prosper, do amazing things. um Same thing with all the, like going through LinkedIn. LinkedIn, I love LinkedIn and i hate LinkedIn all at the same time.
00:19:37
Speaker
Yes. It is weird dichotomy of like, I don't know how much is actual valid and how much I am just wasting my time. But people message me link on LinkedIn all the time. We'll have a long conversation and they'll get to the point eventually where like, oh, can you please fill out this form on this random thing? And I'm like, oh, you got me.
00:19:51
Speaker
That's okay though. Whatever. I'll chalk that up in the Yelp column. So listeners note, it's easy to socially engineer Rich Green. Yeah. I know where to stop. Okay. Well, that's that's the that's the stop gap. um Rich, you had started by saying ah in your SANS courses, you're talking to a lot of small,
Cybersecurity in Small Businesses
00:20:11
Speaker
medium businesses. I want to return to that because I have a lot of friends in that space. And for sure, a lot of them are just relying on kind of the default security features in whatever software they're using, whether it is their store is on Shopify and this, that, and the other. And in my mind, i'm always like, oh my God, you're like one 15 grand ransomware email away from going under.
00:20:35
Speaker
um so Let's talk a little bit ah about what may not be in the headlines, right? I think the things that catch headlines are the change health care of the world. It's always size, right? It's like number of records exposed.
00:20:51
Speaker
um But the stuff that affects day to day are like... the attacks on county government systems. um Yes, these mom and pop small businesses, maybe they got like 50 million in revenue, but they employ only like, you know, 15, 25 people. And if they get locked out of their systems, I mean, that's that's it. Like that that business ah is probably not going to recover because they don't have these fancy backup and disaster recovery plans. They usually don't have IR plans.
00:21:20
Speaker
Let's talk a little bit about your experience translating these concepts to those people who I think are maybe the most vulnerable part of the economy. And it really is. And and I hate, I'm not as, I hate using statistics and percentages, but I think, i don't, I don't know what the actual number is, but it was like something 70% of small businesses go under if they're ever to be affected by a ah cybersecurity attack or whatever, or some kind of something along those lines. It's twice I've done it, but it's, um,
00:21:48
Speaker
I think for me, I go back to to the army. The army had the acronym KISS, which is keep it simple, stupid. And I think what happens for small businesses that I've noticed so far is they they equate to tools equals safety. They're like, oh, I'm just going more tools, um put more tools in there, just more things, more stuff in the stack and we'll be safer. um and I try to really break it down. Let's like, let's pause.
00:22:11
Speaker
Let's, let's reset a little bit and like start through like, what's most important to you as an organization? Like, what is your crown jewel? What is the thing that if it was to be compromised, like you're done, like your, your, your, your dream is shattered. It's no longer going to go forward.
00:22:24
Speaker
um And then we start there and we slowly build that out and try to tell them, Hey,
00:22:31
Speaker
when I took over SEC 301 and people, it's a foundational course of cybersecurity and I had to say it because it's part of the title, but it's the fact there is, The foundational things that we do in this field have the potential, have the highest impact on protecting ourselves. It's not the craziness. I every single i start every class with that. I tell somebody, show me the last breach that happened because of some crazy advanced exploit or AI or something like that. And it's usually not. It's because people like McDonald's use one, two, three, four, five, six as their HR admin password or the Louvre uses Louvre.
00:23:05
Speaker
as their close target camera or surveillance aspect, right? It's the foundational things, the default settings. It's it's those things. So it don't he't have to be advanced. Just bring it back down.
00:23:16
Speaker
what is it you're trying to accomplish and go from there. I was working with a business here, huge. It was like, I wasn't 50 million, but it was, it was millions revenue. It was a small little farm.
00:23:28
Speaker
They had one admin and they had access to everything. There was, there was no backup. There was no fail safe. So when they removed this individual, like they had no backup and he locked everybody out of the process. Right. So there was no redundancy there. um there's This it's,
00:23:44
Speaker
And they don't think about it because like you said, I think, I think most people think of businesses in terms of their operations, which is not like the wrong thing to do. Right. So in a farm, it's like we, we grow the stuff. I have to make sure that I have the loans in order to get the seed, to get the equipment. Right. So the operational aspect.
00:24:05
Speaker
And there's a big mental hurdle to software, right?
Cultural Attitudes Toward Technology
00:24:09
Speaker
It's like as soon as it hits the computer, it's like, es i don't know, I don't get technology. Just give it to somebody who is, right? So in this case, this sysadmin or something like that. Yeah.
00:24:19
Speaker
And the thing that I try to tell everyone, including my children, is like everything is software. Right. right like the settings in the car like why won't the directions play over spotify i just had to troubleshoot this with my parents and stuff like that i was like yes it's a car company it's also a software company and and so i think if more people thought of here is the yes or no question do you use a computer in your business operations if the answer is yes
00:24:53
Speaker
then you are fundamentally in the software business, at least protecting your end of the software stick. So I don't know. That's not really a question, but it's a reflection on what I have seen as, I guess, a cultural impediment is ah has always been, just like George, I am also i t support for all my friends, but it's because there's just this like
00:25:18
Speaker
this apprehensiveness about anything involving quote-unquote technology. first episode that that went live this morning. um That's my very first thing I talk about it. It's like, hey, this security is not IT t only. Like that is not a thing. And I and i talk about how The reason why it's important for everybody, not just security minded folks, is because in theory, almost the entire population has moved their entire being online.
00:25:47
Speaker
Photos, emails, messages, business, like go car i i don't know if there's a single function that exists in today's world That it's still old school, like a manual non-technology function. um Taxes. yeah People don't put letters. Look, i was just in I was just in Naples, Florida for Christmas. And everywhere you went, you parked through, you texted a number and it sent you a link. And you went and you said, like, i'm going to be here for this amount of time. Enter your credit card to pay. And and it gave you the option.
00:26:17
Speaker
of like save your credit card info instead of the one time transaction. Right. And my brother was like, just add it. We're going to be here for like over a week. I was like, I asked him, i was like, how robust do you think this tech software's security is? Like, I don't know what that is.
00:26:36
Speaker
I would rather the one-time transaction go through than them just like hold my credit card data. I don't know. Is it encrypted? Who knows? Like, why would I do that? And anyway, I just felt like, oh, this is like the mindset that I live in, which is very different than the convenience mindset, which most people are operating in.
00:26:54
Speaker
Yeah, but yeah I'll look at it too. Like it's it's tough because, you know, you try to explain to people like the basics of just like, here's how to keep yourself safe or even whether you're dealing with an enterprise. an Enterprise is a different thing. And I find that frustrating because it's a business and you're having to explain them like, no, you can't just vibe code your way into oblivion. It's not just going to be profitable. you can't just like build product in production. you can't do that. Like CICD exists. Literally, I've had conversations with like,
00:27:24
Speaker
ownership level executives, like, no, you you actually need to have an industry standard CI, CD pipeline to build software. You can't just like vibe code a thing. Cause fucking, you know, what is it? the Nvidia's, uh, Nvidia dude's kid built an app in like five minutes or something. Like you can't do that. You can't go to market with that. Yeah. This is the thing we're fighting with right now, man. And it's like super frustrating. Like, I'm like, how do you even,
00:28:05
Speaker
I think for me, it comes down to, I'm not going to be able to have effects on everybody. um Yes. If I can just teach one person, not storing your credit card information on this one off random parking garage thing that you're going to use. um I feel like we're we're making progress, but AI does make it in because everybody's using it now for, for absolutely everything. And I don't even think people will comprehend because I mean, you said it George right there.
00:28:33
Speaker
I'm a firm believer that 99% of people don't care about security. They care about convenience because they they want this thing to do this thing right now. And that's really kind of all they care about. And as long as they're doing that, they're they're fine and they're happy. um Which then leads us further on to all the other problems that we have.
Tech Accessibility vs. Understanding
00:28:50
Speaker
Yeah, there's this paradox here, and I'm going to attempt to articulate it on the fly. So, you know, the magic that Steve Jobs was able to achieve as a business leader was to emphasize things that made technology easy to use, right? Like, you didn't need line commands. He...
00:29:13
Speaker
basically licensed the GUI from Xerox, right? I moved this pointy thing on the screen and click was a massive unlock for most people to use computers.
00:29:23
Speaker
Same with the iPhone in 2007. Like, you had these... shitty keyboards and was like just make the keyboard like in the glass like the touch screen was like remarkable right and so that has facilitated a lot of technological adoption and uptake you know it's the reason again why my parents can use what is essentially a supercomputer in their pocket mm-hmm And then, but now we're at this wave where a lot of the AI grifters and labs will push this narrative that AI is basically magic, right? Without explaining how it works because it gets really weird and maybe they stole some data to do the training, whatever, but they're trying.
00:30:11
Speaker
And so we're kind of coming to this point where If we continue to believe that story, there is one part of the story where it makes it easy to use.
00:30:22
Speaker
But then there's another part of the story, if we take it to its logical extreme, where it just convinces everybody that they don't need to understand how things work. That, again, it's just magic that will do everything. Like it's an everything machine. What is that? Nobody knows. But I'm here to sell it to you, right? Yeah.
00:30:40
Speaker
yeah And again, that's another topic that comes up a lot. I think almost every single episode I've recorded so far, I mentioned like this isn't magic. Like there's things that go on in the background that make these things function.
00:30:53
Speaker
And we, I think not we, and not especially not you and me, I think a lot of people to stop questioning things. They're like, I do this thing. And that's that's what I want. I want people to just ask the questions like children do. Like yesterday, my daughter was like, how does...
00:31:09
Speaker
the camera know what the viewfinder is looking at? She just got this Instax, like the Polaroid camera. And I was like, I had to explain like single lens reflex. i was like, this is, and I even drew a diagram, but I was like, thank you for asking the question.
00:31:23
Speaker
Right. Because Yeah, that is, it does feel like magic. I just point the thing at the thing that I want to take the picture of. i push the button, picture comes out. But i I would, I've always said that in any sort of tech career, the number one thing you need to succeed is curiosity. Because the moment you sort of just like lie back on your laurels and be like, I got this, it is sort of like when the sand shifts beneath your feet.
00:31:48
Speaker
Yep. Nope. That's, that's the second thing. When I teach my class, number one, communication, number two, curiosity. The second you lose that curiosity and you stop asking the questions of why, go ahead and hang it up. Like, I don't think like you're you're now on that coasting. You're coasting whatever you're doing. um We need to ask those questions. I literally just had a conversation with somebody yesterday. We were talking about AI.
00:32:10
Speaker
And I was like, you do know how it functions that what we're using right now is still, even at this stage, just predictive analysis. It's not doing anything wildly crazy when you hop on there and chat GPT and you put your prompt there. It might seem like it is, but it it's really just predictive.
00:32:25
Speaker
It's just going off what it thinks is best guess. And you interpret that as... intellectual dominance. It's like, oh, it came up with this out of nowhere. It has a mind or it's yeah sentient or whatever the hell. yeah Yeah, whatever word you want to throw in there. um But no, Mike, we're not there yet.
Podcast Availability and Release Schedule
00:32:41
Speaker
It's it's it's just going to guess. Well, not guess. It's going to predict based off of, you know, math. But, and we're still having those conversations. But yeah, just be curious. Ask questions. That's what I just want people to do.
00:32:53
Speaker
Nice. Well, that is ah that's a perfect place to leave it. So before you go Rich, to tell the audience, ah when do the episodes come out? Where can they find it? And we'll leave it at that.
00:33:04
Speaker
Absolutely. So Plain Text with Rich available right now on Apple Podcast and Spotify. I don't want to throw it out the entire world. I'm going to keep it kind of small and located. Episodes every Friday at 8 a.m. Eastern Standard Time is the way it's going to go now. And I said there will be special episodes I release for headline breaking things that I'll break down.
00:33:23
Speaker
But that's where it is right now. And if you're not a big person of listening to podcasts, there is an accompanying blog available on Medium, Plain Text with Rich as well, which goes along with every single episode that drops as well. um which comes out every Friday. So yeah yeah, I mean, if you just simply type Blank Texts with Rich into Google right now, luckily I'm the only one that exists. So spot on. I did a good job there. There you go. All right. Well, thanks so much for the time, Rich. And we are looking forward to following the progress.
00:33:49
Speaker
Thank you so much, George. I appreciate it. I look forward to see what you all do.
00:33:55
Speaker
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00:34:08
Speaker
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