TechNews Unleashed: July Tech News Roundup

In this episode, Alex and Pat discuss Twitter's rebrand to X, Meta's Threads as competition to X, Google Cloud Platform turning a profit for the first time, Pat's time at Networking Field Day, and Cisco U features and capabilities!  If you're interested in Cisco's Rev Up to Recert initiative they have going on right now, check out this link

Transcript

Pat Allen: 0:31

Hey everybody. Welcome back to this week's edition of Breaking Down the Bites. As usual, I'm your host, pat. You can find me on Twitter at layer eight packet. That's the number eight. You can find Kyle on Twitter as well. Dan. It's 2 56. You can find the show on Twitter at breaking bytes. Pods. We're pretty active on Twitter, so come say hello. You like the show. Don't forget to subscribe on your streaming platform of choice. We're out there everywhere iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcast, pretty much anywhere you can get a podcast, we are there. So come and say hello. Don't forget to subscribe and that makes our numbers look good and keeps us doing this kind of thing. So, Kyle is not here this week. He's got some after hours maintenance, so I hope that's going well and he's not completely blowing up his world, which it can be scary. We've all. Been there so it's just Alex 90 and ninth Duo, we haven't done one of these in a while, Alex, a little tech news action. So it's been a couple of weeks. We've the Cisco Live one was was in there, the recap and the whole deal. So it's been a couple weeks since we have our monthly ish. Tech news that we've been trying to do. So figured we would stick one in here. It seems like it's a good time. There's a lot of there's a lot of decent news going on out there from the tech world, so we figured it would be good to stick our noses in here and give an opinion or two on what is going on. So I guess the first thing, I can't really, I have to change, I have to change the intro. I can't say Twitter anymore. I have to say X. Oh my God. I, I'm like an old dog. I can't learn these new tricks. This is outrageous. I gotta have somebody pre-record this for me. This is insanity, my man, Mike Cunningham, that does our intro. Where are you at, buddy? We're gonna have you do this intro too.'cause I, I can't, oh man. That's gonna throw me all off. I'm a creature of habit. It's what I do. Here's how.

Alex: 2:15

Oh, well, that, how do I follow up with that? But yeah. I'm doing fine. I know I'm not a, a social media guy but I am really interested to hear your take on x slash Twitter. I think it's. Everyone's gonna call Twitter for at least another couple months, I would

Pat Allen: 2:34

long time long time.

Alex: 2:36

you. So you get

Pat Allen: 2:37

good Lord.

Alex: 2:39

Yeah, that's all I got. I mean, Kyle's not here, so I won't bother talking about the weather. I'm ready to just get right into it.

Pat Allen: 2:46

Let's do it. So speaking of that, let's talk about that Twitter rebrand to X. Our favorite billionaire, Mr. Elon Musk. He all, he seems to be in everyone's feeds these days and, and thoughts and mouths of the better or worse, right? We've all been there. We've seen both sides of the aisle, which totally understandable. I found it interesting. I, it, it makes sense in some aspects. I think, I think he's got a little bit of a. Sort of like fly by the seat of his pants sort of attitude. But again, that's why he is who he is and one of the smartest people on the planet. And I'm not questioning, anything'cause look as he's done. And here we are talking on a podcast. So like, that's my claim to fame is this podcast. So, we can't compare apples and apples. But but no, I, it makes sense in some aspects. To me, I think it he. I mean, obviously, right. The Twitter as a, as a brand was it's almost iconic in, in some aspects, right? It's, it was literally one of the very first to the game of its kind. And, people knew it. The Twitter bird and the, tweets and, all that kind of stuff. They really carved a name out for themselves over the last, whatever, how many years they've been around. It's, it's been around a long time. And then, he comes and. Takes it over I don't know, I won't wanna say somewhat hostile way he did it, depends on who you talk to. It depends on That kind of thing. But and then he's, okay, I'm gonna change the name. And people went and like all the Twitter purists went, oh my God, you're gonna do what? You know, Like, mine's exploded. And you could see the smoke from a thousand miles away. So, some of it makes sense. Some of it still is a little murky to me, but I'm interested to see where he goes.'cause I think he's trying to rebrand it from a, you can kind of do everything on this platform, not just A hundred or 200 and whatever the character limit is up to now. So I think there's bigger plans there, and he's just kind of, this is the first bandaid that he's ripped off. So I'll, I'll stop there and get your thoughts.

Alex: 4:45

Yeah, the biggest fear, at least from a marketing standpoint, which is probably some people on his team that are probably concerned about it too, is Twitter is pretty iconic. I mean the logo, even calling it a tweet and when you rebrand it do you lose marketing share just because you're not using what everyone's accustomed to. I guess that's the big concern. The other thing is just kind of like meta slash Facebook did, it didn't work out well in their case, but they rebar themselves meta because they wanted to kinda think distance themselves from the original idea of just Facebook and try to introduce everything else that this company does. And just like you said, they, he wants X or Twitter to be more than just a means of sending a couple hundred characters at a time. I mean, he is already, and maybe they already did this before he started on, but I mean, now you can have pretty long videos on Twitter. And I don't know what else outside of that, that's like the first thing that comes to mind. It's just like you hear nowadays, people watching entire videos on Twitter. He even mentioned, I didn't look into this, I don't know if you did too, but he, he was talking about even using X to be some type of financial app. And this is where I need to look into it a little bit more. I don't, I don't really see how that has, well, again, it goes back to maybe why he rebranded it, but I, I, I'm interested to see how the platform can change so much and. Why not just create another app, I guess is what I was thinking. But yeah, I'm interested to see where it goes. People, he's a polarizing figure, to say the least, and some people have his opinions, but at this point I, I'd be hard not to believe that he's gonna make something a success. I think that's kind of how I feel right now. I mean, between PayPal and SpaceX and Neural Lynx and Tesla. Yeah, I just, it's hard to bet against them and, and like I said, I, I'm not a social media guy, so I'm, I could see myself using X

Pat Allen: 6:57

There you go. The door is opened. The door is opened. Yes.

Alex: 7:01

associated as just a social media app, even if I, do it a little bit

Pat Allen: 7:07

That's right. No, I think you're right. I think it's the idea. And and it's hard to, it's hard to Kind of go against his track record, right? I mean, SpaceX and PayPal was, PayPal was certainly one of, its first of its kind, in the digital space, right? And LYX and, and obviously Tesla, right? I mean, Everybody. I, I know a bunch of people that have like, Teslas, like they can't, I, I think people can't wait to get their hands on Tesla stuff. And it's just like, shout out to my old boss, Dave Chrisman, who like, loves his Tesla. He can't get enough of it. I've ridden in that, in that thing a few times and it's awesome. Lemme tell you, it's great. It's, so, it's hard to go against his track record Again. He's a polarizing figure. His personal opinions aside, like, it just, he does things that make. To me, make the world go forward. And that's not me, apologizing for him or whatever, he's certainly done in the past, whatever. But like if, again, you gotta sort of take the feeling out of it. But if you just look at what he's done, it's just, it's hard to bet against him to, to see, okay, look, yeah, he's gonna let you know, well x, he's gonna let X go, down the toilet. I just don't, I don't see it. And it's, it's hard to kinda. I sort of, kind of see where he's coming from as far as like the old Twitter brand that made sense, like the 140 characters right. Messages going back and forth and birds, birds tweeting, yada yada, that kind of thing. But now as he wants to evolve this thing and go, again, the financial app and, and all the things he wants to do with it, the, the old Twitter brand just didn't make sense anymore'cause it's a lot more robust than what it was originally, kind of used for.

Alex: 8:41

Right. Yeah. So you get the good and the bad with marketing? Yeah. I mean, Twitter is iconic. Everyone understands what it is, but therein lies the issue. If you're gonna try to make it so much more than what people are accustomed to when they think of Twitter, maybe it makes sense to rebrand.

Pat Allen: 9:00

Right. Yeah, that was interesting as well. And I don't know, you have the final thought there, or.

Alex: 9:06

I, I don't think there's anything more to say with X other than I'm one of those people that think it's gonna be successful. But I did wanna mention that he does seem to have a liking for X.'cause the other big news in July was he announced X ai. So I don't know if you've been Reading at all about that. But for those of you that don't know, and maybe it's not obvious'cause we talk about his track record. He is one of the co-founders of OpenAI, which made chat, G P T, which was, has been our tech news for everything. He, I think he left the company or left any affiliation with it in 2018. So, I mean, not to say that he had the reason for its success. But just the idea that he was part of it. So now he's starting his own company X ai, so that's interesting. Don't know what he'll end up doing with that, but has me interested for sure. I know his biggest concern with OpenAI and the reason that he claimed to have left was, he's a. At least he claims to be a freedom of speech, like, freedom Fighter kind of thing, where he, he fights for freedom of speech and I guess he thought that open AI and chat G P t, the danger with them is, is that they moderated too much. And this is such a gray area. I mean, what, what do you moderate? mean, but if you get to the point where something can I mean we talked so much about what Chap, G P T and this just AI revolution, what it can do if it was biased in any way, how simple it could be to kind of just influence just about anything. And I know that was Elon's concern, is this, if you censored too much. You're gonna get to the point where biases come into play. And so I know that's one of his goals with whatever AI platforms he starts right now is really limit censorship, which is gonna come up to some interesting stuff.'cause I think it's gonna get bashed pretty hard.

Pat Allen: 11:14

Sure.

Alex: 11:14

I think there's gonna be people that say like, Hey I can find a lot of hate speech pretty easily here. I can Write new manifest manifestos or K, K, K, I can build a bomb. So anyway, I'm interested to see where that goes. So,

Pat Allen: 11:30

So I could smell the hate

Alex: 11:32

more it.

Pat Allen: 11:33

smell it. It's coming that, that train's never late. Anyway I find that interest. That was the first time I heard that. I did not know. X I was a thing. So I'm, I'm interested now that you kind of put that on the table. I'm interested to see how that goes as well, because, we all kind of talk in this censorship game. That seems to be, in today's major news outlets and various social media platforms. But it, it's very interesting to see how that's gonna, play out. Yeah. There again, you start censoring things. Then it's like, all right, well, who's censoring it and what ideology do they have? Does the bias come into play? And things of that nature. And then, all of a sudden the, the pendulum swings the other way. And then you have the other side censoring. And then people go, oh, why are we get censored? Well, it's like, you open the door to this when you people were doing the sensory, that that just, how about Anyway. So yeah, I, I find that interesting to see how that's gonna go. And I, I, I feel like and I guess this is my, my final thing on the X rebrand, but it's originally when Elon took over, it was very, there was like a shaky time there because he was not sure, well, I should say he, he, he was very sure but the like advertisers were sort of backing out. That kind of thing. Again, personal bias comes into play. You don't like Elon and you're gonna, take your ball and go home, which is fine. That's your right to do. So, but now he's hired Linda, is it Y Carino? I think that's how, I think that's how you pronounce her last name.

Alex: 13:00

was it the N B C

Pat Allen: 13:01

She was at N B C exec. Yeah. Now she's the c e o of of Twitter, which I guess is sort of calm some of the advertising fears. So I'm, I'm guessing some of the advertising is back in the game, I'll be interested to see how that sort of plays out and how she fits into all this. And but yeah, it's supposed to be this whole audio, video messaging, payments, banking, global marketplace, kind of, thing that he's got, that his vision has got. So I think he's got the vision. I just think that he hasn't sold the vision yet. For better or for worse, he just hasn't sold it or people aren't quite buying it. But I don't know if that's, if they will eventually and get over that. I hate Elon all the time. Nonsense, or if they're just going to use something else.'cause to me, like all these social medias are just getting outta hand. Like I can't do another social media. It just drives me crazy that I have to spin up another one because everyone flocks to these new places. I'm like, I don't have time for this. This is insane.

Alex: 14:00

Yeah. And maybe that's what he is trying to do. He is just like, you have one app that does everything. Because I mean, even, you can even make the argument that Facebook did the same thing. I mean, they, they, they own Instagram and so rather than kind of blending them both together and having'em do both, there's two separate apps now. They have threads. Again, I'm not a social media guy, but that's another thing that came out big in July.'cause it was like the, the Twitter killer. So I guess shifting over that

Pat Allen: 14:24

Yeah. Yeah.

Alex: 14:25

talk about

Pat Allen: 14:26

Good segue.

Alex: 14:27

Any chance you downloaded it, tried it your thoughts on it? Is it just yet another thing to do?

Pat Allen: 14:35

I think it is. I really do. I downloaded it the first day that it was able to come out, and I looked at it maybe twice since then, and I downloaded it like two weeks ago. Which I think is most people, I think what they, I think what most, again, society's like a shiny object, right? Like, oh yeah, there's a new toy to play with. Go. And then they, they all did it. So they had this massive rush of like all these downloads in the first like 48 hours or whatever it was, and then people didn't touch it again. Like they had a massive drop off. So, it, it looks very similar to TWI to X. I'm gonna call it Twitter. I swear I, I'll, I'll, I'll fix that. It looks very similar to, to X. It just, it's very, it's very odd to me that they started to play in that space. It just, it seemed like X was the winner in that particular form of social media. I don't know what they were trying to kind of get at or whatnot, but it just seemed to, it, it, it was hot for. A couple of days. And like I said, I haven't looked at it since, and it just, it, it seems to be, I am most folks where they basically like I said, they signed up and then they lost like over 50% of its users, that kind of thing. So it's, it's taken a dive. So I don't know if they have plans to sort of temper that, bring it back, something of that nature. We'll see.

Alex: 15:58

Well, again, as someone who's not a social media guy, what exactly is it?

Pat Allen: 16:03

Yeah.

Alex: 16:03

people. I know you said it's like a, a Twitter or X replacement. Is that really, it just kinda like it's a short snippets and that's it. So as opposed to people posting 20 images and five paragraphs, it's like you get X amount of characters

Pat Allen: 16:21

Yeah. It's basically, it was basically deemed to be a Twitter Killer. But it's I, two days ago was the Zuck, as I like to call him, He came out and said that the, that it's lost more than half its users. So, it was like a hundred million users in the first, like five or whatever day, five days or a week, whatever it was And then all the, now they're like, they're, they're down to 50 million I guess. What this says is true. It's lost more than half. So, it's interesting. But yeah, it's basically that it literally looks almost identical to Twitter. At least the last time I logged in. It's very Twitter esque and it's it just feels very, even the logo is kind of weird. It's like a weird, like at symbol kind of thing. So I, I mean, I guess it makes sense, but It is very Twitter esque. I'm, I'm looking at it right now, live. So it's very, yeah, it's, there's not a whole lot to it. It's very, Twitter esque and I don't know the character limits or if there is one. But anybody, if anybody knows that, let us, let us know. Hit me up. But it, it looks exactly like Twitter and some people do it. And as I get notifications'cause as people join, Threads. I get notifications like, Hey, you file this person on Facebook, and they're now on threads. And I'm like, great. You know, That kind of, I just swipe and get rid of the notification. But but yeah, it, it's very Twitter esque. And I just thought maybe, I guess did you think Zuckerberg was just kind of like, Hey, let's spin this up and have those people that we've, that have, have been scorned by Eli's takeover of Twitter will come to us? it work. I, I don't know what his thought was. That'd be interesting to see what kind of changes they make to kind of bait some of those folks back into the pool.

Alex: 18:05

Well, for me, and maybe this isn't the case for everyone, I could, I had no idea this was even coming. So, I mean, this isn't something you just develop in a, a week. So, when I first heard it I didn't realize that it was gonna be such a big thing, and I also thought it was half a joke because the thing I had been hearing about Musk and Zuck is is the. The potential U F C

Pat Allen: 18:33

Oh, they're gonna cage fight. That's right. I forgot all about that. Why didn't I lead with that? Dammit,

Alex: 18:39

so there's a part of me that thought this was just a practical joke, like he is just like, ah, I'm just coming out my own version of Twitter. And then I was like, oh, it's a real thing.

Pat Allen: 18:46

That's funny. Yeah, that's right. They were gonna cage fight and I guess like Zuckerberg's like training with like Brazilian Juujitsu guys and like, oh, it's wild.

Alex: 18:55

he, is big in it.

Pat Allen: 18:56

all about that.

Alex: 18:57

I mean, that's a bores line on whether it's tech news or not. But yeah, his journey to becoming an, like a pretty respectable fighter and getting in shape is getting pretty well documented at this point. Like, he's in really good shape now, and yeah, there's quite a bit of footage with him and seems like he is taking his. This is a lot more serious where Musk is just, I think he went on record too, saying if this happens, which he seems to be okay with the idea, he's not losing any weight for it.

Pat Allen: 19:27

Yeah. That's funny.

Alex: 19:29

he's actually a Elon's a, he's not a small dude. He's like, he's 6, 2, 3. He's, he is not a small guy and Zuckerberg is so normally U s c fights. There's

Pat Allen: 19:39

They're pretty jacked. Yeah.

Alex: 19:43

I think Musk is like 70, 75 pounds heavier. So that's why he said, I'm not losing any weight for this. Like you guys are gonna have to accept that I'm 70 pounds heavier than

Pat Allen: 19:52

yeah..Yeah. It is what it is. Yeah, that's, I wanna know where Elon gets his time from to, to actually, like, if he's gonna do it, like where, how's he gonna train? That guy doesn't sleep as it is. Like I don't understand what.

Alex: 20:04

I, I don't think he will. I think he'll just, he'll just show up and it, it'll probably be the most entertaining thing we've ever seen.

Pat Allen: 20:14

He'll probably like drive, he'll drive the new Tesla that nobody's ever seen before to the octagon. He'll drive right down, right down into the arena to it like,

Alex: 20:23

the shorts and gloves got the X brand on it.

Pat Allen: 20:26

Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, I, i, I'd see that, I'd take a look

Alex: 20:31

I would, I know it's, see, it's so ridiculous. I'm part of the problem by saying this. I, I'd, I'd pay to see it. And I think most people would just outta just raw curiosity. I, I want see this

Pat Allen: 20:42

it. It's like a train wreck. You don't wanna look, but you can't look away. It's

Alex: 20:45

Yeah. It's exactly what it is. It's so ridiculous that two of the most powerful men in the world are gonna go fight

Pat Allen: 20:53

Toe to toe, baby That'd be interesting. Like the winner takes all like,like the winner takes the other person's company and be like, it's mine bitch. Get outta here,

Alex: 21:03

yeah. You should put majority stake of your companies up.

Pat Allen: 21:07

Boy, that one, whew. Boy, let me tell you.

Alex: 21:09

And yeah, I really hope it happens. I really do. And Dana White, the, like the, the president of the U F C, he says he convinced that if this actually happens, it will be the biggest single event. Like the number of people that watch this, like more than a U S C fight more than any Super Bowl. More people will watch

Pat Allen: 21:30

I'd pay for it. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. I'm, I'm, yeah, I, I fell outta the U F C a couple years ago. Now it's, like, it's crazy now, but like, man, I would definitely put up the button, the money for that for that pay-per-view for sure.

Alex: 21:46

Yeah. The interesting thing is, is that when you do hear about these big fights and like the, the fighters taking home, like these life changing amount of money is like 50 million, a hundred million, and like Floyd Miller or$200 million, like for these guys,$200 million is like a rounding error.

Pat Allen: 22:02

Yeah. They're like, ah,

Alex: 22:03

don't even like, what's this

Pat Allen: 22:05

they're gonna, they're gonna walk outta the octagon in Vegas and go put all that on, like black and and just be like, let it ride baby. Let's go.

Alex: 22:13

Yeah, there'll be some check there for'em and they'll forget it. Like, oh, oh, I forgot to check. Keep it

Pat Allen: 22:19

Jesus. Oh yeah. This thing.

Alex: 22:21

They should put like a, like a$10 billion of their own money.

Pat Allen: 22:24

There you go. There you go. Now we're talking.

Alex: 22:27

$10 billion of stock

Pat Allen: 22:29

Yeah. there you go. So anyway, that kinda got off on a tangent, but that was a good one. I like that. The tangent was good. So yeah, so I'm interested to see what happens, but both. The X thing as it starts to grow and kind of get more to El and Elon's vision, if you will. And then the threads thing, the c because I guess it was sort of criticized as it came out when it launched that it wasn't as feature packed. As X was or is. But they slowly started to add things to it. Now that it's, a month or so old it's starting to come out with some things. So I'm interested to see where that kind of lands and if he can, if the Zuck can get back the people that have been scorn by, by Eli's hate, Elon's hate, so it'll be interesting.

Alex: 23:13

Yeah, Facebook's on a, at least just for company performance, it's really, oh man, it's been impressive the last four or five months.

Pat Allen: 23:21

Yeah.

Alex: 23:22

I think he needs a win'cause meta. That's gotta be like one of the most expensive mistakes in like, recent, recent history. I mean, re you rebrand your company.

Pat Allen: 23:30

Yeah.

Alex: 23:31

I don't know how many billions of dollars you pour into this. And it's pretty much dead. I mean, even people within Facebook, like high end, I think there was a VP that recently said it that all meta initiatives are essentially done.

Pat Allen: 23:43

Wow.

Alex: 23:43

So,

Pat Allen: 23:44

Yeah, he needs to win, that's for sure. Yeah. He needs to win. Absolutely. A hundred percent. Kind of switching gears here, the other thing that kind of caught my eye, and this was more on your side of things Alex, was that one of our, one of our cloud things, the public cloud, G C P, that turned a profit this quarter for the first time ever.

Alex: 24:05

Right. And I guess to be clear, it, it did actually turn a profit last quarter earnings barely. But yeah, we always talk about. A w s and Azure, and sometimes we stop there and probably most of the time we do

Pat Allen: 24:20

Yeah, we do

Alex: 24:21

Sometimes we throw Google a bone and say, oh, and G

Pat Allen: 24:24

G C P. That's right.

Alex: 24:26

But yeah, it gets just bring it up just because it's not going anywhere. I mean, at this point it's not an experiment. They're, it's making money, albeit not as much as these competitors, but still, even for being third place, the revenue had brought in, again, this isn't profit, but the revenue. I had it up early. I think it was like$7

Pat Allen: 24:45

$7 billion Yep.

Alex: 24:47

It's ridiculous.

Pat Allen: 24:48

Yep. Seven and a half billion in quarter one of this year. Seven and a half billion.

Alex: 24:53

that's like, just think about the companies that would love just their entire net worth to be$7 billion. This is. One product

Pat Allen: 25:04

of, of Google.

Alex: 25:05

a co of Google, which some people probably don't even realize they have

Pat Allen: 25:10

crazy. It's crazy.

Alex: 25:13

and yeah, that it's, it's turning in the right direction. So maybe we'll see it, now that, I mean it, it started in 2008, which is another thing. Just think about how much in was

Pat Allen: 25:24

How long that's been. Yeah.

Alex: 25:26

15 years

Pat Allen: 25:27

Oh geez.

Alex: 25:29

Billion dollar losses every year. I mean, there's a lot of money in this now, and I think this last quarter was almost$400 million in profit. The previous quarter it was under 200. So, I mean, not that it's gonna double each year, but the path it's going to, it's gonna end up being yet another product that makes billions of dollars in profit every quarter.

Pat Allen: 25:50

You Sure?

Alex: 25:51

I think With Google in general. I mean, Google has been pretty another solid company the last year, just stock performance and I think they, they got hit a little hard with Bard and I'm still trying to see if they can come out like looking okay with that

Pat Allen: 26:06

Yeah.

Alex: 26:07

if they, if they can compete with Microsoft and chat G P T. I think that's just gonna do wonders for everything, including G C P. I think G C P will end up just increasing because of it, I think. Nowadays, any company just throws out keywords, AI,

Pat Allen: 26:25

Yeah.

Alex: 26:26

that's a way to increase the buzz around them. But they claim that the, the feature of G C P that is giving them the most money is like their generative generative AI functionality. And we probably have a whole show. Maybe we'll go into AI a little bit more.'cause then we kind of focus on things like chat, G P G and language models'cause they're so popular. But there's, it really comes back to just looking at patterns and being able to do something automatically. And there's some really interesting things that a lot of big companies are using G C P for, and at least that's what Google is claiming is really driving home this increase in usage and finally getting to profitability margins. So yeah, more power too. I think that's only a good thing. If you got two companies that are kinda, just walking away with the win, which Microsoft and a w s were I like a third option. It's just more fuel to keep innovating. So I don't think it's a bad thing. So not too much more to say than that. I don't know if you have any comments on it.

Pat Allen: 27:32

The more competition, the better it is for all of us. That's what I say, that's how we roll So yeah, I find that interesting. Like I said, just some round numbers. We've mentioned seven, seven and a half billion in revenue in this quarter which is up from 5.8 billion a year ago this time. So that's like 27 ish percent growth, which is pretty, pretty crazy. So,

Alex: 27:57

Yeah, when you're talking about already that much income, that's a, that's a big increase. So yeah.

Pat Allen: 28:02

sure. And they, they, they lost 706 million a year ago, and then now they have a hundred and one ninety, a hundred ninety 1 million gain this year. So that flip is just crazy so I, I find that very interesting as far as the numbers, go and, yeah, they always, we talk about it all the time, big tech and, and the, usually when there's layoffs, you hear about them first and they get the bad name of, and again, they, they laid off, 12,000 people back in January and all this stuff, and this happened. It does seem to be that they're trending in the right direction and it's, I guess it's worth noting that, the Google Cloud as a whole, Includes infrastructure and platform as a service pieces, right? Which, that directly competes with a w, SS and Azure, right? And then along with google Workspace, which is their competition to, Microsoft, the Microsoft Office suites, right? So it's got the Gmail and the docs and the calendar and all that kind of, stuff in there. So, but yeah, I think it's a good piece or a good trend in the right direction, and curious to see if they can close that baby brother gap that they have between, a w s and Azure seem to be the big brother there. Yeah. So I'm curious to see if they close that gap and you'll see what happens.

Alex: 29:17

Yep. Until Elon starts on,

Pat Allen: 29:19

That's right. Elon's gonna start his own cloud called X Cloud,

Alex: 29:22

X, X cloud, no doubt.

Pat Allen: 29:25

X Cloud. Just do whatever you want free on X Cloud. Yeah, that's interesting there as well. So, yeah, I just thought we'd touch on the the, the cloud stuff that's obviously hot in our space and try to keep up with what we have here and, and See what what else is going on out there. But the other thing too that I kind of caught my waiver wire was the Well, first of all, I kind of wanna give a shout out to something I was a part of this week. So I was part of networking Field day number 32. So, they've had 32 of these meetings or, or presentation style days or whatnot. And it was Wednesday and Thursday last week I think it was. But anyway I, I had a great time. There was some real good presentations there for folks at from various networking companies and came and gave their spiel and we kind of got to grill them as far as, questions and learn about their product and, that sort of thing. And, we as quote unquote delegates as they like to call us, we're the, the voice of the audience or people that are tuning in. So basically what networking field day is, it's part, it's a, it's a part of Tech Field Day. So Tech field day they have uh, various veins of field days, right? So networking, security, storage Cloud, there's a bunch of'em that are out there, and they're, they're at various times throughout the year. And then basically he Tom Hollingsworth is the guy he's at@networkingnerd on Twitter or on x I guess I call, I'm gonna do this. Bear with me. So go, go follow him. He is a real good dude. Met him at Cisco Live this year. Did my first networking field day at Cisco Live. And then The networking field. Day 32 was in San Francisco, so you, yeah, they, they fly you out and they, they win and d you, they fly you out, you stay a couple days you sit through the presentations and then basically you, he let you go, blog about it, tweet about it podcast of anything and rev up the the buzz about, so. I did mine again Wednesday and Thursday. So we had, we had a light one this time because I think there was a major conference going on. A lot of the network companies were at this big conference that was going on. I forget, was, was it Is it Defcon this week or something in the security space was going on this week, and it was a, it was a big one. So a lot of, a lot of folks were, a lot of networking companies were represented out there and didn't have people to, to come to, to this one. But we got presentations from Nile and then Anuta Networks as well, and Broadcom. So those were the three. But it's, it's usually a three day thing, Wednesday through Friday. But because of the short networking companies that were available that you could grab. It was, it was a two day thing, so they were great. They really have some, some decent stuff, some interesting stuff in that space. Especially from Nile. And they're kind of big claim to fame is like network as a service. So basically I don't wanna say putting guys like you and I outta business, but they're very heavy into the automation space and not touching, the network. It's all done based off of, AI and, things of that nature. And it's very they're, they shtick is to, unclutter or, less complexity in the network space and just let them Kind of do network as a service, that kind of thing. So I found it interesting to me. I, I felt like it was a little young yet.'cause they only really dealt with the axis layer. Like they don't really do well. They deal with the axis layer they deal with like, almost like a collapsed core kind of design, but they don't do anything on the edge. Nothing in the like wan space, anything like that. So I'm like, well, It's truly not network as a service at that point. It's more of like, Hey, here's your ex slayer. You don't have to put VLANs on ports, shit like that. I'm like, eh, for me to kind of dive in, I, I need a little more. But, not to say that they're not, developing that or that's not coming. I, I think, I think some things are coming from them. They just hadn't they weren't allowed to tell us yet. But stay tuned for the. For those announcements from Nile, they, they seem to be doing some cool things in that space. So as it kind of grows and, who knows, we'll see what happens. And, it kinda, network as a service kind of takes off'cause we have everything else now as, as a service. So why not think about the network? So I think they're trying to drive in that in that direction. So that was cool to, cool to hear from them. Now we had Anuta- networks, which was again, very heavy in the automation space. Anuta ATOM is their big claim to fame, which is basically a networking platform that, drives that automation, click blah, blah, blah that sort of thing. So Anu to was really cool. And then we had Broadcom, which was, Broadcom was really into the weeds as far as some of that. It was like all the the, Broadcom being the big chip. Set maker that they are, they were, they were really into those weeds and driving just insane numbers as far as what they're pushing for their, for their chip sets and whatnot and that kind of thing. So, so I found myself kind of swimming and, kind of spacing out a little bit'cause it was so deep in the technical weeds. But obviously Broadcom being a huge player in that, in that space. They're, they're doing some crazy things with their ai platform as well. And just Broad numbers and throughput that they're pushing through their chips is just insanity. So some cool things there. But overall, I thought it was great. Networking Field day was really fun. You wanna check that out, become a delegate, whatever techfieldday.com. Go, go check that out. There's a list of all the delegates there and all of the events that they've done over the past it's all there. Go, go check'em out there. It's a wealth of knowledge out there for various vendors that you're interested in and kind of, go from there and, and it's, it's a really cool idea. So I, I thank Tom and those guys over at Tech Field Day for having me, and I'm hoping to hope to be back for some of the other security field days or cloud or Edge or just anything I can sit in on would be, is awesome.

Alex: 34:42

Yeah, you're turning into quite the, the celebrity. I'm seeing you on a lot of things,

Pat Allen: 34:47

well, I guess. Yeah we did a podcast on networking as a service for Tech Field Day, right before Tech Field Day last week, so I think it was released last Tuesday. So check that out. From tech Field Day, they do a, they do various podcasts to kind of drum up some talks for their, for their stuff that's coming up. So, go check that out. And it was me with drew from packet Pushers, which we had Ethan on the show last year from packet pushers.net. Ethan Banks, great guy. Actually, I gotta call him. We gotta get him back on here. He's a heck of a talk. I, I love talking to that guy. So Drew over there and a couple other folks from various places. Some there was a gentleman on there Ali from Avar. He, he works at Avar, so he's in the wireless space. It's just cool meeting people and wherever I can Can jump in and talk and, and not make an idiot outta myself. I'm, I'm all for it. So So yeah, I want to throw that out there. Anything you want to add on your radar?

Alex: 35:42

Well, we talked about it a little bit and as is often the case, it surprised me how long we were chatting when I don't think these topics are gonna take this long. But we talked about Cisco U and I think it goes a little bit hand in hand with tech news the last. Day to buy the old Cisco Digital Learning Library, I think was the end of May, so probably would've made more sense to do this as June Tech News. But like you said, we had a lot of other things going on and it really drives home for me because my subscription to the learning library ended two weeks ago. So I'm certainly interested in it.

Pat Allen: 36:21

Yeah.

Alex: 36:23

I guess let's chat about Cisco U a little bit.'cause there's so many different learning platforms right now, even within just Cisco. It's sometimes it's difficult to understand what they all are and what's different. So I guess I'll start with the learning library versus Cisco U. Did you use the learning library? Have you used Cisco U yet? You familiar with anything that stands out as being radically different?

Pat Allen: 36:52

Yeah.

Alex: 36:52

is it a rebranding?

Pat Allen: 36:54

No I think it's more than a rebrand. I think it's good first of all currently where I'm at, they give us a subscription to Udemy. So I pick and choose what I Wanna learn from, from Udemy, again, it's, for you spoke, you speak to some people, it's not necessarily an apples to apples comparison, right? I, that's not lost on me. Udemy is fine for various things. I personally have a subscription that I pay for to Pluralsight every month. And I've used Pluralsight, I've used C B T Nuggets. I've used I n E I've paid for all of them. It's just, I'm just I happen to be with parole site at the moment, but I, I think either one of those companies that I mentioned are fantastic options that really shine in, in all areas. So, Cisco U, obviously you have the free one, right? Just getting an account, you get a free, the free the tier with it. I'm just looking at sort of, what, what's here. Now. I, I logged in right before we started the show, but it wouldn't be bad if I, took a flyer on the the essentials plan, I guess you wanna call it. It's, I think it's like 1800 a year for the year, or sys 18 Cisco Learning Credits. So if you're with a company that has extra credits to land around, you can apply that. There as well. all mine are gone.'cause I went to Cisco live this year, so that's not a, it's not a thing for me. But the thing I just noticed here, just kind of comparing plans and whatnot it actually, the, the essentials one only gives you associate level, like certification, learning paths. The professional one, you have to go to the all access, which is six grand a year, which is For me, for me to personally pay that out pocket is steep. So, it's probably not something I'm looking at at the moment, especially since I'm, with Ural site at the moment. But again, I'm not, not married to them. It's just where I'm, it's just where I landed for the year. So it's working, I'm working my way through a bunch of courses, both Cisco and non Cisco. It just works for me at the moment, so, I, I see I see it being a good thing. And it's more of, trying to get you to, hey, what are you interested in, networking or collab or data center or, cloud and all this stuff. So it kind of tailors your, your interest to, I should say it tailors the, the, the offerings to what you're interested on, that kind of thing. But it. It depends. I guess I, I'm gonna keep my account, I'm gonna use it for what the free is, but, and with anything Cisco, to get anything decent out of it, you're gonna have to put in some, some good old cabbage. So I just, that's just not where I'm at at the moment. So that's kind of where, where I'm at. As far as the whole, I, I think it's a great idea. I just, for me at the moment, I'm just kind of, it's on the back burner, so I'll get your thoughts.

Alex: 39:33

Yeah, yeah. With a lot of these training Things that these companies do, especially with Cisco. It seems like it's more tailored to big companies that are gonna have learning credits anyway. So if you work for a larger company, I. I think you're just gonna be more likely to have learning credits laying around, so you, it's probably worth just pinging them like your, powers would be, and seeing if they got some laying around and getting it. As someone who used the digital learning library and just, I haven't logged into Cisco U yet. But reading about it what I thought of the digital learning library was a lot. I'm accustomed to it had a lot of stuff on it, but it was pretty much you log into it and you search for whatever you're interested in learning and you had some type of formal learning plan, which seems pretty straightforward and works fine. I. Sure. What Cisco used trying to do a little bit differently is now it's trying to understand your skillsets a little bit more, and AI's a buzzword. They use this buzzword too, but it's not that complicated. Now they're, they're trying to be a bit proactive with developing learning lessons for you. I actually think now with Cisco U, one of the first things they do is have you Some type of questionnaire. It might even be like an intro test to kind of get your level on different technologies. It really wants to know what things you're interested in, and then it'll start tailoring a program for you. The other thing that they're doing again, with the learning library, it was a, some type of Cisco written course, and that's what you did. Now they're with Cisco U. They're bringing in lots of different forms of learning, so it's not like I say I'm interested in network automation, and I make that really clear, it's not just, here's a network automation course, it takes 40 hours, do it and you're done. Now it'll do things as simple as, Hey, I just noticed that there's a network automation podcast that's 45 minutes that covers Cisco callus switches. I know you have that in your network. You wanna try using, you interested in this. And It might suggest like, a new Cisco press book just came out that covers that you mentioned that you're interested in. So it's trying to, and even like pull snippets out of text that are relevant to the things that you are interested in. So rather than, so if you're interested in Kubernetes and that's covered in a. Some large network automation, Cisco press book, it might just pull out that chapter and say, this chapter might be relevant for you. And I think that'll be pretty interesting. So seeing some of that stuff actually made me a bit more interested in it. I like that the idea that they know I'm into chat, G P t now, it's not like they're gonna have a chat G p T course, but hey, someone might throw out a A podcast that I might be interested in. And it also makes it a lot more likely that you're gonna get newer content.'cause it, I mean, to have a 40 hour course you geter at the end or a some type of badge is a little more difficult than pulling from a pretty robust community and just say, Hey, this stuff is relevant to you. Go ahead and use it.

Pat Allen: 42:47

Yeah, it's interesting that they're starting to, kind get a little more outside of their, Hey, this is just videos and, stuff that, that we're gonna, stuff down your throat kind of thing.

Alex: 42:59

Yeah, they did this with the learning library too, to a degree, but there's an also a much more, a much bigger focus now on hands-on learning. So I, I ha I did some labs on the, the learning library, but Now with Cisco U there's definitely gonna be a lot more, like if you're, whatever technology, whatever discipline, you're actually gonna be on a device doing the actual commands. And probably the final thing I'll mention that's a little bit different with Cisco U, which will make it much more Real world is they're actually partnering with I wouldn't call their rivals but they're partnering with other big tech companies to give you like the end-to-end solution for something. So the, the most common, or the, the best example I can give is that you might use Cisco's, What's a good word to put it? Digital router. the one that you can deploy within a W Ss. So they have a course on that, but that they also have a, a same course of like implementing Cisco devices in a w s and then that'll actually give you the a w SS related training that gets you up to speed on this stuff up. In like Terraform, they have an entire crash course on Terraform, which really has nothing to do with Cisco.

Pat Allen: 44:19

Hmm.

Alex: 44:19

So they're bringing that in and I think there's a couple others. Just AWS is such a big one. But that's interesting to know that the Cisco U is gonna turn into like a Technology university, not just Cisco branded university.'cause I think that was one of the things that Cisco got some props for, and maybe it was lost a little bit recently, but I always thought the CCNA is such a good exam because yes, there's Cisco focused stuff, but there's so much stuff that is just not Cisco propriety. It makes it a better exam. I think Cisco U is kind of going back towards that and offering you more real world stuff that isn't just. Cisco focus, which is I think is a good thing.

Pat Allen: 45:03

Yeah. I find that interesting as well. Like I said, I, I like the idea. I probably will stick around to just kind of poke, poke around and see what I can just kind of pick up here and there, tidbits. But the one thing I did wanna mention which is really cool, probably a little late to the game just'cause in this podcast, but a couple weeks ago they mentioned that they have their rev up and race to Recertification. So basically they're giving you 56 free. Continuing education credits towards your existing, which is a decent chunk, right? So

Alex: 45:36

I mean, 40 Rees an associate level, so yeah, I mean it

Pat Allen: 45:40

sure. It's a decent chunk. And I'm.

Alex: 45:42

CCNA out there,

Pat Allen: 45:43

exactly. And I'm looking at it now and I'll put this, it, it's basically a blog that breaks it all down. I'll put this in the in the show notes if you want to take a peek at it. Like I said, it's kind of, it's kind of late'cause it was released two weeks ago that they've had this. We're just mentioning it now, but There's three courses on there, implementing and troubleshooting networks using Cisco Thousand Eyes, which is 24 credits. Secure Cloud and Network Analytics, which is 16 credits. And then understanding Cisco Network Automation Essentials at 16 credits as well. The first two that I mentioned, the Thousand Eyes and the Secure Cloud that you must complete that learning path by August 17th. So that's just about 17 or 18 days. And then basically the, the, the network automation one does not expire, and you have 365 days to just claim your credit when you get done with that particular That, that particular path. But if you add those up 24, 16 and 16, that is 56 big credits to research or to renew whatever your heart desires. So I've, I'm interested to see that. I'm actually probably gonna start on that for, just to keep'em in my back pocket, which would be great. Like I said, I just, I just passed d n a at Cisco live this year, so I'm, I'm set for three years. But it, If you can stockpile'em and, and whatever that's that's all, more power to anybody getting it done out there. So, wanted to mention that they got the 56 credits that are just hanging out there in the wind and rock and rolling. So if you're looking for that, if you have a cert coming up, That is ready to re be redone, this is a, this is a decent path, so,

Alex: 47:14

Yeah. Yeah, you mentioned it. I mean, those, the certs, they, they give you, they start the three year clock, but you, you have three years now to kind of accumulate these points. So someone who has an expert level certification and they need 80, 80 credits, you keep doing these freebies, the 16 credits here a couple times a year, and hey, you re-certified

Pat Allen: 47:35

to go. You are good to go. So,

Alex: 47:40

So I'll, I'll pay attention to that.

Pat Allen: 47:41

For sure. So, like I said, anybody's sharing that. I'll put that in in the show notes. I'll put the link to their, their blog in the show notes. But yeah, I'll probably, I'll probably start cracking on that this week just to get my feet wet with that. And that was kind of it. That was that was the big one. We're, we're right around the hour, so I'm, I'm, this is crazy. We talk about this stuff for so long, so

Alex: 48:00

I know we always think that we're gonna have a 15 minute podcast. What are we gonna talk about? And then we're like, oh wow. We just, in this case, 54 minutes. In the last one, I think it was like an hour and 40 minutes.

Pat Allen: 48:12

It's crazy. It's crazy.

Alex: 48:15

yeah, I don't think we need to touch on another subject. I think it was a good time to close up.

Pat Allen: 48:20

For sure. I just wanna mention that we have a couple of guests coming up. We have solid dates on a couple of guests. One of them being a good friend of mine. I met him out at Cisco Live for the first time. Mr. Tim Bertino from the Art of Network Engineering podcast. He's coming on to hang. So, he'll be, he'll be here in a few weeks. Just getting the, the last minute dates solidified. And there's some There's some invites to some other big fish out there. So we're just waiting for people to get back to us and, and solidify some schedules. So you wanna hang around and keep listening, tell your friends and we'll be, we'll be back. And we try to, try to keep it light, keep it fresh, keep it new, and just keep it going. That's that's what we're all about here, so it's all good. So, that's it, my man. We're gonna wrap up on this one. We're gonna put a bow on this one. I'm gonna send it right to Elon. I'm gonna send it, be like, yo, listen to this and share it with all your peeps, bro.

Alex: 49:10

that's right. I was gonna give you another heads up. We're gonna do the outro. Don't forget it's

Pat Allen: 49:15

That's right. It is X, Thank you. I appreciate that. Yes. This old man, mine of, of mine is, is, doesn't work like it used to. So It's too much up here now. So. All right everybody. Thanks for joining this week on the new episode here. I'm breaking down a bites. Make sure you visit our website. Breaking Bytes, pod.io. You can subscribe to the show on your platform of choice. Again, we are everywhere. Apple Podcasts Spotify, Google Podcast or just if you need an R S Ss feed we have one there as well. All the shows are there as well in the episodes. You can listen to the episodes right? From our website too. So either way, however you choose to consume it, have at it. We are everywhere. Everywhere you can think of. And then some. So there was a rating on the Apple podcast that would be great if you simply tell a friend, that would be great as well. The more ratings, the more reviews and that kind of stuff. It really helps with the apple Podcast stuff and the algorithms and I'm sure the AI that they're using as well, So, that would be great. Yeah, exactly. That every little bit helps. So tell your friends we don't bite. Come hang out. Follow us on all of our socials, LinkedIn. We're actually one follower short. We're almost at two. Followers on LinkedIn. So that that's a nice round number I figured I'd throw out there. So, LinkedIn, we have some good stuff going on there x as well. Instagram, Facebook discord server. The invites in the show notes. If you wanna join us on there, come hang survey is out there. Again, if you like the show, if you hate the show, just let us know. We're just looking for feedback. We don't know who you are. It's anonymous. It just aggregates numbers for us so we can basically just tailor the show to what people are liking. So if you have any suggestions, there's a freeform box up there on the survey to throw us a topic idea or whatever. So we're, we're all for it. And we'll we'll give you as much as you can and go from there. So, always good talking to you, my man. We'll we'll see everybody next week and we'll be back and I don't know, we'll see what we talk about next week, but it, it'll be a goodie. I'm, I'm almost positive. So buddy, we'll see you next week.