TechTime with Nathan Mumm

280: TechTime Radio: Special Year-End Episode: Eight Tech Stories That Shaped 2025 - We Review 2025’s Biggest Tech Shifts And Ask What Should Change Or Stay The Same For 2026 | Air Date: 12/23 - 12/29/25

• Nathan Mumm • Season 7 • Episode 280

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What happens when convenience becomes the cost? We close the year by unpacking the eight tech stories that reshaped daily life, wallets, and trust. From streaming’s pivot back to bundles that feel like cable, to smart speakers and connected appliances that quietly ship household data to the cloud, we trace how “modern” increasingly means managed—and often monitored.

We dig into the robotics hype cycle and ask why humanoids still struggle with balance and dexterity while specialized bots make real progress. We revisit the year’s biggest cloud outages and map the true downstream impact on classrooms, small businesses, and critical services. Then we turn to the road: cars and EVs are now rolling data platforms, collecting location histories, driving behaviors, and infotainment usage that can flow to insurers and third parties. The question isn’t whether your vehicle knows you—it’s who else does, and for how long.

Surveillance didn’t expand with sirens; it seeped in through doorbells, license plate readers, and citywide cameras, often in partnership with law enforcement. We challenge the idea that this is inevitable and debate where safety ends and overreach begins. Finally, we tackle AI’s identity crisis: voice cloning, realistic generation, fragile safeguards, and the policy vacuum that leaves creators, consumers, and companies guessing. Can we set guardrails without strangling innovation? We argue for practical steps—licensing high-risk systems, watermarking synthetic media, meaningful transparency, and liability when promised safety fails—while keeping room for creativity and progress.

Along the way, we keep it human: tradeoffs you can control now, policies worth pushing for, and a rye whiskey tasting to toast lessons learned. If you care about privacy, reliability, AI ethics, or just want streaming to stop nickel-and-diming you, this conversation brings clarity without the jargon. If it resonates, follow the show, share this episode with a friend, and drop your take: what tech boundary should we draw first? Subscribe and leave a review to help more curious listeners find us.

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Introduction:

Broadcasting across the nation from the East Coast to the West, keeping you up to date on technology while enjoying a little whiskey on the side with leading edge topics, along with special guests, to navigate technology in a segmented, stylized radio program. The information that will make you go, hmmm. Pull up a seat, raise a glass with our hosts as we spend the next hour talking about technology for the common person. Welcome to Tech Time Radio with Nathan Mum.

Nathan Mumm:

Well, welcome to Tech Time Radio with Nathan Mum, the show that makes you go, hmm, Technology News of the Week, the show for the everyday person talking about technology broadcasting across the nation with insightful segments on subjects weeks ahead of the mainstream media. We welcome our radio audience of 35 million listeners to an hour of insightful technology news. I'm Nathan Mum, host and technologist with over 30 years of technology expertise. Our co-host Mike Raday is in studio, of course, today, and he's the award-winning author and our human behavior expert. We're friends from different backgrounds, but we bring the best technology show possible weekly for our family, friends, and fans to enjoy. We're glad to have Odie, our producer at the control panel today. Welcome everyone. Let's start today's show.

Introduction:

Now on today's show.

Nathan Mumm:

No, no, no. Uh oh. No, no. What's up?

Mike Gorday:

Do it like this. Okay. Welcome to our special end of the year extravaganza, where we go over some of the stories that we we talked about during this year and talk about where it's gone, where it's going, and and what we're going to be thinking about it. How about how about that? Well, you guys, you guys have changed roles. Wow, I like that. Alex is the hype man.

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah, I was gonna say, I was gonna say, well, this is not an standard show, but okay, I like that, Mike.

Mike Gorday:

That's because of the drinking I've been doing.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay.

Mike Gorday:

Before we started.

Nathan Mumm:

So here we go. We're actually gonna go through the top eight stories, and Mike and I will read them out. We got Mark and Odie here to give us some debate and questions and feedback. I will tell you what episode it's from, so you can go back and watch it in your entirety if you just want to hear what we're talking about even more. So let's start out with story number eight streaming industry consolidation. We talked about this on episode 278 with December 9th through the 15th of 2025. So kind of in a recent one. By the end of 2025, streaming feels less like the future and more like cable with apps. We covered rumors and confirmation of mergers, bundled services, rising subscription fatigue. Consumers are paying more, juggling platforms, and questioning whether the choice is actually improved for their media consumption. Here's our question for the round table. Are we slowly rebuilding what was just cable TV? Kind of, yeah.

Ody:

Yeah, but it's so much worse.

Nathan Mumm:

It's okay. Why is it worse, Odie?

Ody:

I thought about this. I don't even like football. Okay, but to watch every single game of the season, it's such a hassle. You have to have multiple subscriptions. You do. You can't just have cable. I don't even want to think about watching the major league baseball either. Because it's such a pain.

Nathan Mumm:

It is, and you have local TV. So I mean, so here's in the NFL, since I'm a big NFL guy, you can get the red zone, which gets you about 80% of the games. Uh that's a you were already upset about that. Okay, well, I am because there's got commercials on there now. I pay for a commercial. You have to have Amazon Prime so you can get the Thursday night games. You have to have a subscription to ESPN for Monday night's game because that's not a regular broadcast. And then Sunday night football at five o'clock is your NBC affiliate.

Mike Gorday:

So this was this was I think we talked about this on our on our um future prediction show last year, didn't we? We did. And yeah, we talk about and we talk about this all the time because it's like, hey, did you see such and such show? On and I'm like, no, because I don't have that service. And you go, Well, you have to get that service. I'm like, I'm not shelling out any more freaking money for that service.

Ody:

And I agree with that.

Mike Gorday:

Yeah, it's expensive too.

Ody:

Was it has it how long has it been like that? Has it always been like that? Where you have to maybe not different streaming services, but you have to have different things. Let me get on.

Mike Gorday:

Let me get out of my rocking chair here for a second and tell you how it used to be. In the 80s and 90s, cable. In the long time ago, one channel you would.

Speaker 5:

Hang on, hang on.

Mike Gorday:

Wait a minute. In the long, long time ago, television was absolutely free. What? Yeah.

Speaker 9:

Okay, we're not gonna be there.

Mike Gorday:

There were there were there were four channels, and then they moved to 13 channels or 12 channels or some crap like that.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Mike Gorday:

Uh, and all we had to do is sit through commercials. Okay. Right? So that was where that was where they paid for their bills. So we all got VHSs. Yeah, and then cable.

Nathan Mumm:

And then you had a direct TV or you got a sling box or one of these that you could then record it and fast forward to it.

Mike Gorday:

Yeah, and then some smart ass came along and said, Hey, we can get people to pay for this if we offer premium channels, and then cable was born. Okay, and we paid for cable.

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah, and those and I had my grandfather had like every channel on cable, and he paid a bill back in the 90s of 250 bucks a month to watch TV.

Marc Grégoire:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how that's why we ended up cutting our cable many years ago, is for price. Yes, thank you, guys. And we added the subscription services, which was a lot, lot less expensive, and we got more. Okay. And my wife came to me recently and said, let's re-evaluate this. We're paying more now with all those subscription services and watching less than what cable used to be.

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah, it's really funny because I've kind of done the same thing too. I have direct TV as my main thing. I don't have cable, but direct TV, and I am now looking. Do I add other direct TV stations back to my deal? But they, you know what they don't have? They don't have Netflix, they don't have Paramount Plus, they don't have any of these that the new content that I enjoy that watching.

Mike Gorday:

So yeah. Well that yeah, and then you know, the internet came along and suddenly everything was free. Yep. Then it was free. And then and then these guys got together and said, hey, we can jump into this this whole streaming service. I think Netflix was probably the first one because Netflix, Netflix was around before the interview in the internet.

Nathan Mumm:

Yes, correct.

Mike Gorday:

It was the equivalent to compete against uh Blockbuster. Yeah, so Netflix came along to compete against Blockbuster, and they they saw the they saw the train coming down the track and said, Okay, let's jump on this. And now now we got to this place where there's 50 bajillion of these stupid things. They all want a subscription service.

Nathan Mumm:

We talked about howdy company. I was just looking at some new ones, like just howdy with $299.

Marc Grégoire:

Yeah, and this has been the year of them raising rates multiple times in the year. Yeah huge jumps in each all the subscription services. Are consumers gonna tolerate these endless subscriptions? That's my next question.

Mike Gorday:

No, at some point, at some point we will get tired of it and we will do what Mark is talking about, and we will start backtracking on the ones where we use the less of, and they're and they're gonna be like, oh crap, what are we gonna do?

Ody:

It's already happening. I mean, Hulu and Disney are becoming a thing, and people have been boycotting the Disney products since the whole Jimmy Kimmel.

Nathan Mumm:

Or Jimmy Kimmel, yes, Jimmy Kimmel thing.

Ody:

And then a lot of people are like, I don't even watch half the streaming services that I use. There's too many, right? There's too many of them.

Nathan Mumm:

I know people to put these on their credit cards, so they're paying interest to watch these streaming services. Yes. That's a bad idea. So now all of a sudden you're not even paying the $19 a month, you're paying $26 a month. Well, I I will take a little caveat here.

Marc Grégoire:

All mine go to my credit card. But you pay your credit. I pay them off. I pay everything 100%.

Mike Gorday:

But yeah, you're you're one of the smart, responsible guys that pay off your balance every month. And then I get some money back. Points. You get points back. Yeah.

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah, that's the proper way. And then your credit score goes up. That's the proper way to use credit cards. Less than 1% of people do that. Story number seven, Mike. Are you ready for this? Almost. Okay. What do we what do we have here?

Mike Gorday:

Smart devices and home privacy. Okay. One of our favorite things. Episode 237, which aired on January 21st and 27th in 2025. The recap was smart homes promised convenience, but 2025 highlighted the privacy cost. Always listening speakers, connected appliances, and cloud-dependent devices quietly collecting massive amounts of data. Many users didn't realize how much information left their homes and where it went. So the question is, are smart homes worth the privacy trade-off? We can probably, you know, answer that for Nathan.

Nathan Mumm:

I'd say yes. Because I have I have Alexa devices all over my house and it turns on my television, it turns off my television. I I you can't push a button on a remote. Well, so I also use it- You know what, you know what I do? I just push pause and just leave it on. But I also use it for my home audio system because all the speakers are connected. So when if you're playing like Christmas music right now throughout the whole house audio, I used to have a Sono system. I replaced that with all these Alexa devices because it's free and it's about the same quality and it all syncs up for whole house audio.

Mike Gorday:

Okay. Besides all that, Nathan Nathan has multiple times come across the airways and said he doesn't care if his personal information is taken. Correct. All right. So that's believing.

Ody:

Hell yeah, so would I. Yeah, for free.

Nathan Mumm:

Well, yeah, we already know that. All right. So Odie.

Ody:

You should.

Nathan Mumm:

So all right. So the question to you, do you like is it worth the trade-off?

Ody:

Oh, hell yeah.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, so why is it worth the trade-off for you?

Ody:

Because I've become accustomed to it. I am with the belief there is no such thing as privacy anymore.

Mike Gorday:

Good.

Ody:

No matter as I no matter as hard as I try, unless I want to be a hermit, there's no such thing as a privacy anymore.

Mike Gorday:

There is a lot, there's a lot of good things to being a hermit. I'll I'll let you know.

Ody:

Yeah, like being boring. So there's a wow.

Nathan Mumm:

Well, okay. So, Mark, how about you? I'm kind of curious. Uh at the at your household, is it worth the trade-off?

Marc Grégoire:

Oh, I don't know how to answer that one. Oh. I'm kind of in the middle. We don't have smart appliances. Yeah. Those have a lot of security issues with them. I do have one little uh Google nest uh to control some lights and and ask quick questions to.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, looks like he's gonna start converting.

Mike Gorday:

And Mr. Gordet. I'm the least, I think the least one here. I don't know. I I have technology in my home. I have a Alexa device, I have a Roomba, but I don't have any smart things where I'm turning off and turning stuff on. Well, you still have an Alexa. Well, I have an Alexa, but she doesn't she can't do anything. She can't she can access my Roomba and tell me my Roomba is is you know ready, is ready to clean. I confuse her all the time. I asked her, I asked her the other day and said, Hey, can you turn off my lights for me? And that really confused her. I'm not connecting anything. If you want connections, blah blah blah. Went into a sales pitch.

Nathan Mumm:

She franchised selling you something.

Mike Gorday:

Yeah, so for me, for me, it it's not a thing to really put my teeth into. I'm I I think I've just grown past that age where I want everything done for me. Okay. So, but you know, the follow-up question here is do consumers truly understand what they're agreeing to? And you know what my opinion about that is. No. Nobody nobody knows what it is. Nobody knows what they're agreeing to. They just hit okay.

Nathan Mumm:

When there's a terms of service on on a screen, people don't read it anymore. They just hit okay and they just move on.

Mike Gorday:

We have to agree to some legal mumbo jumbo that that says we have no privacy.

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah.

Mike Gorday:

So, you know. And secondarily, uh, and we've talked about this before, is that uh uh there's so much information out there that somebody interested in my information probably not gonna find it unless they're really looking for it. But if I say that to somebody who's had their identity stolen because of this crap, uh that's a completely different perspective. So, you know, should should we? Yeah, I don't I don't know if giving away all of our privacy information is a good thing.

Nathan Mumm:

I've just kind of given up I just give it away now because I just I put so much out there that if you want to know about me, go for it.

Mike Gorday:

Well the the again, you know, we have all these other systems that are supposed to be secure that are getting hacked like left and right anyway. So that my medical information is out there because you know, my medical institution. My charge got hacked. Yeah. Uh you know, my what what other cable companies have been hacked? You know, phone companies have been hacked.

Nathan Mumm:

T-Mobile gets hacked like every three months.

Mike Gorday:

Well, it is a losing battle. And the older I get, the the more hermit hermit-like I want to be.

Speaker 4:

Okay.

Mike Gorday:

But then again, I, you know, I still have my I still have my internet and I still want my video games, video games and my shows. So wait till your video games start tracking you.

Nathan Mumm:

They're already tracking me. Story number six Humanoid robots. Hype or reality? This comes from episode 274, November 4th through the 10th, 2025. Humanoid robots dominated the headlines this year, but reality lagged behind demos. We saw robots struggling with balance, dexterity, and basic task issues. Well, marketing painting a future of robot assistance, the gap between hype and practically having it work is impossible to ignore. All right, here's my question. Are humanoid robots a design mistake? Mark, what do you think about that? Are humanoid robots a design mistake or are you excited about humanoid robots? Wow, question. Okay. Odig, we'll go to you.

Ody:

There is so much work to be done. I don't think we're gonna be able to have like a functioning, helpful, made service robot for another like five, ten years.

Nathan Mumm:

Like Rosie on the Jets. Yeah, we're nowhere near that. You know, I actually think we're like 40 or 50 years away.

Ody:

I I would argue the same thing. I mean, look at Amazon Go. They can't even the whole like camera thing is a facade. There's people somewhere else that are watching you in the world.

Mike Gorday:

Well, yeah, and there's there was that what was that one we did where the emotional robot? No, not that was your favorite. I think the therapist. How about the roller bed in Russia? The one the one that they had that you had to buy a subscription service to have somebody run it for you. Yeah, $20,000. Yeah, $20, yeah, $20,000.

Marc Grégoire:

I thought you were thinking of the Suzanne Summers.

Mike Gorday:

That that one too. Okay, so the the nerdy kid in me loves this stuff, right? Right. The nerdy kid in me is like, yeah, I totally want a C3PO or a uh R2D2 type thing running around my house doing stuff and telling me stuff. But the educated guy in me is like, this is these are bad ideas. We're talking about a system of slavery because we are Wow, that's what robot means. Didn't you know we've had this conversation? Yeah, robot means slave. Okay. So we're talking about a system of of creating something that does our work for us, personal servants, and it's taking away our ability to do things on our own. Not to mention the AI thing, it's so easy for us to psychologically be connected to these things in ways which are not healthy, like the Suzanne Summers thing. I think that's very unhealthy.

Marc Grégoire:

Yeah. So a lot of conflicted emotions. I'd love it for to do the menial tasks, like go to the store and do my shopping, or stay online and argue with medical people about bills and that kind of stuff. However, people start abusing them and they become like what Mike said, emotional support and having us not it's gonna go out and take our morning walks for us. It's not healthy.

Mike Gorday:

Yeah, that's why you know I'm quoted on this little thing about the whole uh Wally thing. Wally is one of my favorite movies because it it gives us a really good self-report on how human nature is, right? That makes sense, yeah. So we have we have this big store mentality where everything is just given to us and you know, everybody's floating around in chairs, they don't exercise, they don't do anything. I'm not here to solve the problem, but I'm here to complain about it.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, all right. Go to yeah, I think you got the next story. What do you have here on the fifth most uh talked about?

Mike Gorday:

Uh we're gonna talk about the next next cool thing in in technology where we're talking about cloning your pets. Okay. And bioethics. Okay. That was from episode 276, which was November 18, 24th of this year. So the story was that pet cloning has moved from science fiction into consumer reality. Companies are offering grieving owners genetic copies of beloved pets, uh, raising ethical, emotional, scientific questions about grief, identity, and expectations. And Tom Brady did this with his Tom Brady did this, yes. And the one piece that I still don't understand is how he's consulting. You're still hung up on how to hung up on how he's consulting. For that company? Is he is yeah, is he like saying, No, I want the dog's tail to be more curled?

Nathan Mumm:

Well, you know, he's struggling just with broadcasting, so I I guess he needs to have some backups.

Mike Gorday:

Uh what's he doing? I want to know what they're paying him to do. They did he come in and talk about his his football years? Well, maybe. I don't know. Okay, so here's the question Does a clone replace emotional loss or deepen it? And should cloning be regulated? I just uh I think it should be regulated.

Nathan Mumm:

I think it should be regulated.

Mike Gorday:

Oh, definitely, but I just I it is regulated. We we do have regulations and laws around cloning, but I did see an article, I didn't read it, but uh saw an article about the first human child who has been genetically altered. Okay.

Nathan Mumm:

We had James Riddle talk about that. Yeah. All right, so what do you think, Odis? Should cloning be regulated?

Ody:

Oh yeah. It should it's that kind of thing where but nobody has any like rules or laws about it yet. And what is that like? Like social media or the internet where it's down or the Waymo, where it's always down the line when something goes wrong, that then people start putting like regulations and loop rules and this is the story of of human human existence, right?

Mike Gorday:

100%. When we find areas that are don't have regulation, we abuse the crap out of it and force everybody to start making regulations. I mean, that's what we do. Why human nature? Yeah, it's human nature. I hate we we are so dumb.

TechTime Radio 12 Days of Christmas:

Well, wow, wow, wow, wow. Mark, what do you think?

Marc Grégoire:

Should cloning be regulated? We just need to move the next story. This is like a quick answer. Yes, it should be regulated. Cloning should only be used for certain scientific purposes. Nobody should clone a dog because they love their old dog. I agree. If you guys feel differently, put it in the comments. I don't I don't get this.

Mike Gorday:

Uh from a psychological perspective, I don't think it's a good idea. That makes sense because you're not you're not you're not grieving the loss. You're not grieving the loss and moving moving on. You're you're basically and it's got the same genetics, but it's not the same animal anyway.

Ody:

So you'll never know what the personality is gonna be like or anything.

Mike Gorday:

Yeah, you don't, and you're gonna train it differently now than when you did when you first got it.

Marc Grégoire:

So it's scary story scares me so much. I I have to move on. Okay. Story number four.

Mike Gorday:

And then after this, there's a Mark clone at home.

Nathan Mumm:

After story number four, get ready, everybody. We have the 12 days of Christmas to take you out in the break. So here's our story number four. As we get to three, two, and one, they get a little longer with a little bit more talking. Cloud infrastructure failures. So we talked about this on episode 273, October 28th through November 3rd. Major cloud outages in 2025 showed how fragile the digital world really is. When a single provider went down, entire businesses, regions, and the internet fell and stopped. Many companies learned that they weren't as reliant as they believe they were. Now let's talk about this. AWS, Amazon Cloud Services, was the largest outage of the year. 15 plus hours of downtime that happened on October 20th. Then we had Cloudflare, which is essentially a service that protects your online website from being attacked in having services. They had two global outages on November 18th and December 5th. Microsoft Azure, multiple major Failures. I tell you, Gwen every single week was submitting a Microsoft Azure failure for our pitch meeting for our pre-show, and it was just tough to cover every single outage. And then we had Google Cloud that on June 12th that went out too. We had every major cloud services go out. And then these are all small companies that get hit because these large services go out. Should cloud providers face penalties for downtime? So they're providing a service. If they take my small business down on their platform, should there be any regulations or anything in place so that I, as a small business, can be um credited or be held liable for a mistakes? A lot of them say they're mistakes, and some of them probably weren't. Some of them are hacks, but should cloud services face penalties for downtime?

Mike Gorday:

No.

Nathan Mumm:

No, I love that.

Marc Grégoire:

Why would Mike say? I love this idea. Okay. So in in business, in the technology business, whenever I make a contract with most technology partners, we have this in our contract where they're guaranteed 99.9 or 99.99 or 0.9999, depending on what we're paying for. And then if they don't deliver that service, there is repercussions of that. Okay.

Nathan Mumm:

And you know what? It's interesting because I do contracts too, and we ask for the same thing from a provider, and then all of a sudden they say, Well, there's it's out of our control. And I'll come back to them. I said, Well, you know what? You should have had multiple cloud services available then, because if one went down, you shouldn't be relying upon that. And then most of the time they don't want to redo our business the following year. So I I do it with a different business, but there is no penalty for the large businesses to these other business providers. Odie?

Ody:

Was Salesforce or they got hacked.

Nathan Mumm:

They got hacked.

Ody:

Okay, what about AWS?

Nathan Mumm:

AWS was down.

Ody:

Yeah.

Nathan Mumm:

So they were the 15 hours plus that was down.

Ody:

Yeah. I mean, I don't know about I can't remember what else they did, but I know for sure that they had Canvas down, which is how students do their schoolwork and blah blah blah blah blah. They have deadlines to be done that it disrupts the whole school day. Everything now is technology. There's no such thing as turning in your paper or turning in a little bit.

Mike Gorday:

But that that's a bigger problem. Right? That's a bigger problem. Right.

Ody:

There should be some form of penalty that happens, like, okay I think so too. Imagine paying for tuition, and then you can't even get your school.

Mike Gorday:

So we've been we've been having a lot of weather problems around here lately. We've been having flooding, and my electricity went off the other day. It was out for eight hours. Mine was six. So yours was six. Why isn't why aren't we getting credits from the electric company?

Nathan Mumm:

I actually I called them up and asked them. Yeah, you can do and they said they'd give it to us. Yeah, absolutely. Really? Yeah.

Mike Gorday:

Yeah. Only if you complain about it. Mr. Hermit, come on. QG Sound Energy.

Ody:

But then it's a loss of QG Sound Energy. What do you call that?

Marc Grégoire:

I guess the Seattle lighting technology and Mike doesn't use technology. Yeah, I contacted the. No, I you know, I I don't know.

Mike Gorday:

I just have an old I just have an old guy thing where I was like crap and I went to bed.

unknown:

Okay, well.

Nathan Mumm:

There you go. So they there are penalties for the see that and this is where I think because the electric companies and the phone companies that provided landline phones used to have these penalties that were regulated by the FTC. No, I think the same thing should happen for cloud services.

Mike Gorday:

Way long time ago, I worked at a pager store. I don't know if anybody I know um do you do you know what a pager is?

Ody:

I know what a pager is.

Mike Gorday:

Before after the car sells. This was before. This is this was way before. So paging paging had just come onto the market in a big way. You know, we all know that when we were younger, well, some of us knew when we were younger, there was always that guy that had a pager and you knew what he did for a living. Uh but you know, paging paging.

Speaker 5:

Is that what you're trying to say? A doctor?

Mike Gorday:

I didn't say anything. I had one too that I was at Microsoft, but okay. I didn't say anything. But um we ran a pager store and when we lost service, we would be kind and credit our customer stuff. We did automatically? Yeah, we weren't we weren't being forced to penalize you know ourselves, but we would we would credit people for the the loss of service. Did your did your company go bankrupt? It did go out of business. It did go out of business, but it wasn't because it wasn't because we were crediting people for missing, it was it was design flaws in the in the ownerslash tech wizard owner of the business who never backed up his systems.

Marc Grégoire:

That was good, Mike. But I am looking forward to our commercial break where we can drink some whiskey and listen to your so we are gonna take a commercial break here.

Nathan Mumm:

When we come on back, you guys are gonna now listen to 2000's twenty five 12 days of Christmas. And when we come back, we have our Mark is gonna talk about what whiskey we're tasting.

Speaker 14:

Come to Tech Time Radio, 12 days of Christmas, 2025.

TechTime Radio 12 Days of Christmas:

On the first day of Christmas, Tech Time Radio came to me. On the second day of Christmas, technology on the first day of third, and we're gonna be able to do that.

Speaker 5:

Alright, welcome back. Hello. But that's right with Nathan Mummer. Wow. It show covers top technology submissions without a big thing.

Mike Gorday:

I just want to clarify something.

Speaker 5:

What was that? I paid for a pretty big orchestra.

Mike Gorday:

Debated. Debating. Debating. Debating. Okay.

Marc Grégoire:

I love them each year. This may be the best. That was pretty good. It's most catchy. It's very catchy.

Mike Gorday:

I enjoyed the tune.

Nathan Mumm:

Alright, well, you guess what? We have a special song that would be coming on up. Don't click on things. And we have our song to carry out. So we have two. We've paid for orchestra. We have the best in place. Now, Mark, what are we tasting?

Marc Grégoire:

For a Christmas episode. Or well, it's just our end of the end of the year, but it's special. It's just before Christmas. Two days away from this.

Mike Gorday:

End of the year, holiday extravaganza.

Marc Grégoire:

There you go. I brought something in that is holiday flavors. This is different tasting. Stellum black rye whiskey. So from Selem's website, Stellum Black Rye is an evolution of the Stellum Rye flavor profile. Think of it as stellum rye in high def. They use the meticulous blending approach to layer older reserve barrels into the original Stellum Rye blend. The result is surprisingly mellow cast strength, rye whiskey combining iconic rye spice with a deep complexity that reveals new facets with every sip. Buttery and rich on the palate with flavors of chocolate mint, star anise, and sesame that leaves a finish of fresh still and cracked black peppercorns that are slow in warming. Such a holiday drink. Mark, is this a relatively young blend?

Nathan Mumm:

Is it under is it under five years?

Marc Grégoire:

Well, let me tell you, it's Stellem Spirits, which is owned by Barrel Craft Spirits. It's undisclosed Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee distilleries that is blended of straight rise. It is non-age stated. Okay. My guess is it's probably four to five-year-old rise. Okay. Purely my guess. It is 114.26 proof. The mash pill is undisclosed. $95.

Mike Gorday:

See, I asked that. I'm wondering if my palate is changing because I like this, but I can still taste the alcohol. Yeah. And it's how much? $95. $95. Oh wow. So is that is that my palate working?

Nathan Mumm:

Is that your palate working good? I I I'm kind of struggling with this. We know Nathan. Nathan's palette. And I normally give thumbs up to everything, right? It does it Nathan's palette. I see Mark glaring at me. He's like, probably this is like the best stuff in the world.

Marc Grégoire:

It is a little youthy. I would love to have I would love to have a little bit more age on it, but even for that, um, and with what what rise are going for, I'll talk a little bit in the mumbles quickly. There's there's more background here that's gonna be very interesting in the mumbles.

Speaker 4:

Okay, okay. That makes sense. All right, okay.

Marc Grégoire:

My palette is is definitely getting. So far, Mike, you kind of like it. Thumbs up ish. Yeah, thumbs up-ish. Nathan is kind of on the thumbs down leaning right now. Have a little bit more. Let it develop on you. The wrong glass for Nathan. But you didn't choke on it. I didn't choke on it.

Nathan Mumm:

No, he didn't do it, he didn't do his cool face. I am so looking forward to the moment.

Ody:

What a standard to have.

Nathan Mumm:

All right. Well, with our whiskey tasting completed, let's continue with our top three stories of the year. So we're gonna go story three and two, and then we're gonna take a commercial break, and then we're gonna come back with story number one. So I got story number three here. We have episode two seventy-three that we talked about surveillance tech normalization. We're gonna talk about ring, flock, and city cameras. So this is episode two seventy-three, October 28th through November 3rd of 2025. Surveillance didn't expand with dramatic announcements in 2025. It expanded quietly. Nick talked about this on our show also regarding what's going on. Doorbell cameras, license plate readers, and citywide sensor systems become the norm now through partnerships with law enforcement. Ring camera specifically is able to use video footage for law enforcements under the terms of service that it was upgraded and forced every user to approve of. That means anytime law enforcement wants to get into your ring camera, they have back-end access to do that now. Well, solid as safety tools, these systems now are blurring the lines between public security and constant monitoring are often without public debate. The question I have here is mass surveillance now inevitable.

Marc Grégoire:

Yes, move on to the next one.

Nathan Mumm:

Yes, next question. Yeah, Mark. Okay. Should citizens be able to opt out? Yes. Yes, absolutely.

Mike Gorday:

Yes, Mike, yes. I don't think it should I don't think you should be allowed. I don't think you should have something forced on you via your terms of service in order to have these things.

Marc Grégoire:

This is what's missing in all our technology in the US. Europe has been really addressing it very well in some other countries. But we as citizens don't have a lot of rights when it comes to technology, and I think that's an issue.

Mike Gorday:

And I think that's because we don't pay attention.

Marc Grégoire:

We just want what we want, and we get it, and we suffer the consequences, like the way we talked about earlier, with with all the uh hacking and breaches and uh and our government's not helping a lot because the big tech companies are usually in the US, and there's a lot of money being funneled to individual representatives to keep this out.

Nathan Mumm:

Hey Odie, are you are you are you scared about citizens being it being watched all the time? Because you're you're a little younger of a demographic.

Ody:

No, I I have no choice. Truly. This is all I've known. This is all I'm ever gonna know. There's gonna have to be some radical. What else can I do? I mean, there'd have to be a huge uprising of a bunch of people.

Marc Grégoire:

Isn't it about time your generation uprises against this?

Mike Gorday:

They're so used to it, they would have to give up their avocado toast.

Nathan Mumm:

All right, where's the line between safety even overreach? Where do you think here?

Marc Grégoire:

That's the big question. That's the big question. That's the biggest question. That's what I've been trying to get to of these questions. Okay. I don't have a good answer. I I love what this technology is, what it can provide, but the abuse that can happen is tremendous. It happened back during World War II with the Japanese internment. It's happening now with all current government and just going into systems that have data and pulling it for other uses. Okay. It is I'm sound like Mike. It is scary as hell.

Mike Gorday:

Yeah. Yeah. See, okay, so from forensic point of view, all right. So I read a story where somebody committed a crime and fled across the state, and they were able to track that person through various methods of traffic cameras and ring cameras and stuff. They tracked them all across the state. So there's this yay moment. Like, okay, that's great, because they they were able to track this criminal who committed this crime. Then there's the holy crap. Because if they can track him, they can track anybody. That's right. And it and it then it again comes down to who's morally who's morally able to determine what this is used for and who's going to abuse it to do this. Because if I hack into that system, if I can, I don't know if I can, but we've shown that that happens to be a good thing.

Nathan Mumm:

You can I'm sure that they're pretty easy to get into. Can I track people? Yeah, and then you have third-party people watching this. And I mean, Chris Pratt's coming out with a new movie called Mercy, where essentially he's on trial and they're going through video footage and he has to like previously for that.

Mike Gorday:

I mean, that is exactly where we're getting to you know, the problem that we have in our in our social structure here is that we we have these cool movies that come out, but we label them as science fiction or fantasy, and so we have this entertainment value attached to them, but we don't really think about the the actual ramifications of why that film exists. You know, all these movies that we talk about all the time, they're reflections of human behavior. And they often carry warnings, right? 1984, written written before the technology revolution hit us, yeah, talked about a lot of the stuff that we're going through right now, is where people are watching us, can watch us all the time, they track our information. There's things that we know about we can figure out about people just by getting on the dark web. There's all the stuff going on, and we aren't paying attention.

Marc Grégoire:

That's right. I'm gonna say a word that was very common back in our youth. Yeah. I had I don't hear that much anymore. What's that? Checks and balances. Checks and balances, and that is missing in our current society across the board.

Nathan Mumm:

There you go. Story number two, Mike. You ready for that one? Yeah, are we done with this one? We got story number one that we got to get to, and that's gonna be, I'm sure, like we we could probably do two episodes just on our story number one.

Mike Gorday:

All right. Well, the next one is uh massive EV owner data exposure. All uh auto manufacturers track data and sell it. Should you buy a vehicle that comes with a user agreement? Is this fair? One of the earliest warnings in 2025 came from massive data exposure involving hundreds of thousands of electric vehicle owners. Driving habits, location, and personal data were exposed, not through a dramatic hack, but through poor data governance, made clear that modern cars are no longer just vehicles, they're rolling data platforms. And we, you know, we also talked about how it's affecting insurance premiums. So, should vehicle data be protected like medical records? Yes. Next question.

Nathan Mumm:

It should. So I guess they're gonna get hash tests.

Marc Grégoire:

Mark just doesn't want to talk about it. He's just like, this is so cut and dry on this. So I'm not gonna get into our life changes that my wife and I are going through. Very positive things. Okay. And so she's like, hey, should we get rid of our car? And when we're done, we'll get another car. And I'm like, no.

Nathan Mumm:

Because now you have to sign a user agreement.

Marc Grégoire:

She goes, but you love all the the new stuff and the new cars. I go, I do, but you know, we've been talking on TikTok what's going on, and her car is it's a beautiful little car, but it has no electronics in it.

Nathan Mumm:

So that's nice. So they're not they're not hearing what you do, they're not hearing your conversations. That's why I like my motorcycle.

Marc Grégoire:

It has all kinds of issues, check engine light, but I'm not getting rid of that thing yet until this gets taken care of. Okay.

Mike Gorday:

Next car I buy is gonna be a 1969 Camaro SS.

Nathan Mumm:

Actually, you want to buy a 2000 20 and before. Because 2021 was when they came out with all the user agreements for every vehicle that you buy that they can listen in and sell your stuff.

Marc Grégoire:

Yeah.

Mike Gorday:

So yeah, see I don't think I don't think the information should be protected. I think they shouldn't be collecting it in the first place. Okay. So do automakers collect too much data by default? Yes, they do.

Marc Grégoire:

I'm with Mike. Yes, move on to the next question.

Mike Gorday:

Would privacy transparency change buying decisions?

Nathan Mumm:

Nobody knows. Nobody knows that they're buying. I I just had somebody at uh work buy a brand new vehicle. And I'm like, okay, so you signed the user agreement, you're okay with them recording everything that you do and everything like that. He said, What do you mean? I said, Well, when you went and bought your vehicle, didn't you have a user agreement? Oh, yeah. I said, Did you read it and look at what they did? No, I just he said I couldn't buy it unless I Said yes on the user agreement. But that's see, that's the So they they hooked him and he said I'd pour more whiskey.

Mike Gorday:

You know, and it it we've gotten, we're already said earlier, we've gotten to this point in in our progress, our technology progress, where we have to have this stuff. And when we have to have this stuff, then we get this oppressive situation where they're saying, Well, if you have this stuff, then we get this.

Ody:

My sister recently bought a car, and the first thing that I said after like all the excitement and whatnot as we were cruising, I was like, you know, they're tracking you, right? And she immediately goes, What are you talking about? What what is this? And I'm like, Well, cars after a certain point, they're all tracking you, they're all keeping it in their little database and blah blah blah blah blah, and they could be used at any moment. And you'll never know. And that's what that's what's so Nobody knows.

Speaker 5:

And she was like, She was like, Shut up, buddy.

Ody:

She was like, What are they gonna know? I'm like, they're gonna know where you live, they're gonna know how long it takes you to get to work.

Nathan Mumm:

Uh you know what? Maybe that's my goal for 2026 to really bring this to light.

Ody:

It's not a good thing.

Nathan Mumm:

We should we we shouldn't have to do a revolt of having a lot of people.

Mike Gorday:

But every er but you know, this is what I was talking about. Because every time we have these situations where technology gives us something, there's always something that can be abused, and people will take advantage of it for whatever reason they want to until and even after a law is made to do it. We all talk about this quite a bit about how the legal system is so far behind the technology age that we can't keep up.

Ody:

Right.

Mike Gorday:

And these questions keep coming up even into the Senate where they can't even ask an intelligent question about the technology. You should collect zero or pay me for it.

Nathan Mumm:

All right. We're gonna take a commercial break. When we return, we have the Mark Mumble whiskey review and our top story discussion for 2025. See you after this.

Speaker 2:

Inbox lights of warnings blank. Too much rush, too good to think.

Segment:

The segment we've been waiting all week for.

Nathan Mumm:

All right, Mark, what do we have?

Marc Grégoire:

Today, December 23rd. I know you gentlemen know what today is. You have been celebrating this for years.

Nathan Mumm:

Uh, it must be dress dress professional, put on an ugly sweater day.

Marc Grégoire:

Oh. I thought Mike was gonna come right out with that. I I probably not.

Nathan Mumm:

Uh became famous in 1997. 1997.

Marc Grégoire:

The world was made aware of this in an episode of Seinfeld.

Nathan Mumm:

Oh, is it Festus? It's Festive! It's Festus Day. Okay. Festus for the rest of us.

Marc Grégoire:

That's right. It was from an episode titled The Strike. George Costanza is the one who celebrates Festivus with his catchphrase. As Nathan mentioned, a festivist for the rest of us. The holiday was created by his father Frank, and they celebrated it throughout George's childhood. Instead of a tree or menorah, what did they have? You know, I don't remember. An aluminum pole. That's right.

Nathan Mumm:

That's right, that's right.

Marc Grégoire:

They'd have a dinner of meatloaf as the main course, and afterwards, they'd have feats of strength and airing of grievances traditions. And the latter people could bring up what disappointed them about the previous year's gifts. Yeah, it sounds like Thanksgiving.

Ody:

Yeah, is this a is this an end-of-year holiday kind of thing?

Marc Grégoire:

Yeah, Testis, yeah. December 23rd, that's way before. Oh, Odie has no idea who took it. No, anybody watching.

Ody:

Whoa! Whoa.

Mike Gorday:

See, I vaguely remember this from watching Seinfeld, but you it took it took Mark to bring it up and dig it out of the He's got these he has all these special things.

Nathan Mumm:

All right.

Marc Grégoire:

Tell us a little bit about Stella Black Rye whiskey. Stella means Star in Latin, manages to do what a whole lineup of other rye have never quite pulled off for me. It earns a spot well above the $55 introduction bottle it's built from, earns every single pour. This is a bottle I think about when I open my whiskey closet and ask what actually sounds good tonight. Now I have a shout out to Tony, the late owner of North by North East Liquor on Williams Avenue in Oregon, who first put this bottle in my hands. I'm confident he is sipping something exceptional in heaven. And now, since we're celebrating festivist, here is my grievance.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, what is your grievance?

Marc Grégoire:

Tech Time Radio, episode 133. Oh, okay. Almost three years to the day on December 27th, 2022. Yeah. We had this whiskey on. Oh, did we? These two jokers gave this whiskey a solid two thumbs down. I was gonna give it solid thumbs up. All Nathan did the whole episode was every time he took a sip, went. And Mike kept saying, I don't like rise. I don't like rise. I don't like rise. Now, some palettes evolve, some apparently stay lost. Let's see how Nathan and Mike have actually evolved. Any guesses, Odie?

Ody:

They have not. What do you mean? No, no, Mike definitely.

Marc Grégoire:

Mine evolved.

Ody:

Wait, for this whiskey specifically or evolved in general?

Mike Gorday:

Mine is evolving in general.

Ody:

Yeah, you have evolved, yes. Nathan, not so much. Look at our look at our stream. We're all festive now.

Marc Grégoire:

But at least Nathan didn't moan and groan so he's almost he started off so so on it, and he's almost a thumbs up. Okay.

Mike Gorday:

Well, maybe it is evolving or he's already drunk. All right. Thanks, Mark. You're welcome.

Marc Grégoire:

That's our throwback.

Nathan Mumm:

We're throwing back everything. Here we go. Let's go to our top story of the year. Story number one AI regulation and innovation. Episode 239, February 11th through the 17th. Episode 279, our December finale. We have talked about this and talked about that. These are the two episodes I pulled. I probably have an episode every month where we talked about AI innovation or AI regulation. Throughout 2025, governments have scrambled to regulate AI that have gone mainstream. Global summits, draft frameworks, public promises, clash with fears of stifling innovation. The year end with more talk than rules and growing concerns that self-regulation isn't enough. The defining story of 2025 will be the collapse of identity trust, AI voice cloning becoming good enough to impersonate executive co-workers and loved ones. Now, my question for everybody can I AI be regulated without crushing innovation?

Mike Gorday:

Well, you have to define innovation. Well I mean, as far as what the boundaries are for that, because some of this stuff really isn't innovation, it's just abuse. Okay, all right.

Nathan Mumm:

Uh Odie, what do you think about that? Can AI be regulated without crushing innovation?

Ody:

Not really, no. I mean, I don't even know how to explain what I'm trying to think.

Marc Grégoire:

Yeah, I don't because I disagree with you, so I'm listening, I'm curious on your explanation.

Ody:

I don't really have an explanation, truly.

Nathan Mumm:

So I I I I think AI, I know I kind of I kind of Odie, I'm kind of on your side. So I I kind of if you're gonna have AI be regulated, are you gonna have a government entity now deciding that is normally years and years behind technology innovators what goes on and what doesn't go on?

Ody:

I'm thinking about it in the sense of like, I think it was Grok that let you do AI images of anything. Did you think they had like Mickey Mouse with like three different arms, right? He was doing all kinds of different crap.

Nathan Mumm:

Driving a jet into the World Trade Center.

Ody:

Yeah. So how are we gonna regulate?

Mike Gorday:

Okay, all right. So is it gonna crush innovation? No, innovation is going to happen anyway because we push through all kinds of things. We are we are constantly trying to find our way around the rules. And because of where it is now, it's the wild west again. Okay, everybody's out there doing whatever they want. Yeah. The only way that innovation can be crushed through regulation is if we completely get rid of it altogether.

Marc Grégoire:

If you overregulate, of course, anything can crush innovation. I'm just looking for safeguards. That's that's what my problem is.

Ody:

Right.

Marc Grégoire:

So that's why I agree. Regulations need to be put in to put in safeguards, but that should not stop innovation.

Nathan Mumm:

Should AI companies be licensed like utility companies? Yes.

Marc Grégoire:

Yes.

Mike Gorday:

You need you need to you need you sh you need to have regulations that say you have to meet certain standards before we allow you to do this. I kind of say no. Oh, well, you would, but we're talking we're talking about, you know, things like when I think of this stuff, you know how much I love AI. Okay. And and you know, when we talk about the case, what'd you think of our 12 days of Christmas?

Nathan Mumm:

That was all AI generated.

Mike Gorday:

Yeah, and that was that's a that's a cool way of using it. Okay. But when you start using it for therapy or or you know, for companionship, that's where you're getting into really solid problem areas where it should be regulated. What do you think, Mark? That's it.

Marc Grégoire:

This is probably your deepest question. I don't have an actual answer for this. Do I want to be regulated like utilities? Probably yes. However, this is a worldwide phenomenon, and so it needs a larger response.

Nathan Mumm:

So let me last question.

Mike Gorday:

I feel like the Ian Malcolm of of AI, you know. I'm always talking about talking about how bad this is. That is last question. Who is liable when AI advice causes harm? The company that developed it should be. Really? But they they've been let off the hook, but legally. Yeah, that's that's the problem. You know, we talk about it with the Waymo cars. We we we did how many stories were we did where uh uh the AI was saying put gravel on your pizza or whatever. Yeah, yeah, you know, put it in. Yeah, here's the here's the pro here's the problem. Okay, if if I go and I use Chat GPT to say what's a good recipe for pizza, yeah, and it tells me to put gravel on pizza and then I do, and then I break my teeth on it, that's that's a thing where I should take personal responsibility. I'm not I shouldn't go and you know, sue the AI company for that, because that's just stupid.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, so there's gotta you're gonna have a stupid meter that's gonna be here by a regulator.

Mike Gorday:

Uh there should be a stupid meter.

Marc Grégoire:

Well, it's like pornography in our law. You know it when you see it. You know it when you see it.

Mike Gorday:

But you know, if I step into a Waymo and I have been given all these all these um directives that that this is a safe way to travel and all this other stuff, and the Waymo just yanks me out into traffic and and I get into a car wreck because nobody was expecting it to do that, then I should be able to sue Waymo for that because they they gave me a promise that they couldn't deliver on it.

Speaker 4:

Okay. You see what I mean? Okay.

Mike Gorday:

Why why are you why are you like it all comes out of that regulation stuff, right?

Nathan Mumm:

Alright, well, you know what? We need to end our day with our pick of the day whiskey tasting. So let's move on to this and see how our whiskey does.

Introduction:

And now our pick of the day for our whiskey tastings. Let's see what bubbles to the top.

Marc Grégoire:

All right, what do we have, Selem Spirits from Barrel Craft? It's a blend of straight ries, non-each stated, 114.26 proof, $95. Mike, what do you think?

Mike Gorday:

Well, I think, Mark, you have, you know, completed your journey of corrupting my rye taste uh because I like this. I love I I have to say that rye is on my on my list of things to drink.

Marc Grégoire:

I give this a thumbs up. Odie, take us out.

Nathan Mumm:

Wow, he doesn't want my review. Odie, we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna still be like maybe I need another your palette. I'm still gonna give this a thumbs up. No, you guys, it's an it's an okay. It's it's in the wrong type of glass. He needs it to be in a beer glass. Okay. I'll I'll give it a thumbs up. Very begrudgingly.

Marc Grégoire:

I'll give it a thumbs up. I love you, Nathan. All right. You know, Nathan had his birthday recently, and so I think you're maturing. Oh, well, thank you. No, I don't think so. Just like a whiskey. Getting older does not mean maturing. All right. That's true, Mike. That is a hundred percent true.

Nathan Mumm:

Well, we're about out of time. We want to thank our listeners for joining the program. This was not our normal program, but if you like it, give us some comments. So we know there's a different type of atmosphere. This is our end-of-the-year extravaganza. That's right, my thumbs up. Remember, the science of tomorrow starts with the technology of today, and we wish you guys a very merry holiday. Later. Bye-bye.

Introduction:

Thanks for joining us on Tech Time Radio. We hope that you had a chance to have that hmm moment today in technology. The fun doesn't stop there. We recommend that you go to techtime radio.com and join our fan list for the most important aspect of staying connected and winning some really great monthly prizes. We also have a few other ways to stay connected, including subscribing to our podcast on any podcast service, from Apple to Google and everything in between. We're also on YouTube. So check us out on YouTube.comslash techtime radio, all one word. We hope you enjoyed the show as much as we did making it for you. From all of us at Tech Time Radio, remember Mum's the Word. Have a safe and fantastic week.

Head Shot

Nathan Mumm

Host
Head Shot

Mike Gorday

Co-host