The Host Unknown Podcast - HU Podcast Number 5, Really

Episode Date: May 8, 2020

This time we get really professional, although no planning was actually carried out. Starring Rik Ferguson, Dame Dido Harding, an Ambulance Crew, and none of Thom's clients. Come on! Like and bloody well subscribe!

So, you know, should we try and make this one a professional, a bit more professional on the podcast? Well, again, it's not like anybody's paying for this, is it? Exactly. You know, we just make this crap up as we go along. Fair enough. You're listening to the Host Unknown Podcast. Hello, folks, and welcome back to the Host Unknown podcast. We think we're on episode 7, 8, 9, something like that now.

Episode 12. We lose track. 12, yeah, because we're very prolific like that. And talking of prolific, hello Andy. Hello Mr Langford, how are you sir? I'm very good, thank you sir. I'm very well. And what about you Mr Malik, how are you, sir? I'm very good, thank you, sir. I'm very well. And what about you, Mr Malik? How are you? Tired and miserable. Nothing new there.

Well, freshly rolled out of bed, I believe. Yeah. Whoever's idea it was to do it so early on a bank holiday Friday. At 1pm in the afternoon. Yeah, yeah. Very early. Anyway, it's not a bank holiday, it's a public holiday. Subtle difference. What's the difference between a bank holiday it's a public holiday subtle difference what's the difference between a bank holiday and a public holiday sir uh banks are normally closed on a bank holiday hence the name and on a public holiday uh like mayday which is what this one originally was the banks would have remained open. Really?

Why would they? I believe so. So we didn't actually switch the May Day to here. We switched the May Day bank holiday to Friday. Ah, so maybe it is a bank holiday. Because May Day was a Friday. Yeah, May Day isn't a bank holiday. That's a public holiday. Who knows?

Certainly none of us. Maybe we should start giving out fake news. Exactly. On this consumer-focused information security podcast. Absolutely. All I know is my American colleagues are just like, you guys are always having days off. And yet, actually, when you count them up, they have more.

Yeah, I was going to say, I've been down this route before with American colleagues, where you list out all the public holidays in a year, and the US do slightly come out ahead of us. Where you want to work is India, because they have something like, is it 17 or 18 a year? Nice. So Malaysia's not too far behind but uh the good thing about malaysia is you don't actually know when it's going to be a public holiday the king just declares it

and uh on the morning of uh sometimes they get you know a day or two's notice um and there's like again this could be fake news but as I understand it when I query why they have so many holidays, there's like four kings or something, so they all decide to have their own public holidays. Is that a bit like the two Ronnies, four candles? Yes, something like that for the older viewers. I have no idea what that is, but tell you. Oh, please, come on.

Absolute classic. Oh, dear dear so either of you come down with the rona yet uh again still not calling it that but um i did have uh some slightly positive news with um you know with this whole ongoing situation um an email which arrived in my inbox obviously scared the hell out of me first of all because in the preview it came up uh you know dear mr agnes you may be aware that hm revenue and customs you know brackets hmrc and anytime i see those initials it's rarely positive so um i saw that in the preview i was like oh and it says uh it continues uh HMRC recently amended the categorization of personal protective equipment to classify it as zero rated for VAT purposes.

Prior to today, we kept the items in our system as standard rated 20%, while we obtained formal advice from HMRC. Long and short of it is they're going to give me a refund because I've been purchasing some ppe and uh they charge fat for it so um you know within the next sort of 14 days the money will reappear on my credit card is that ppe you ordered from turkey uh no this is a uk-based stock which they ordered from turkey so you know i know, I'm okay with it. So just as ineffective, but at least you got a refund on it.

Exactly. So I'm intrigued as to how much and how full your garage actually is. So I am well stocked. I was well stocked prior to the pandemic sort of really taking hold. But I had recently made deliveries to a family who were not as prepared as I was. So I had to share a lot of my equipment. And as you well know, it's very difficult to get hold of 3M,

you know, the nice branded FFP2 or better face mask at the moment. And again, that was some of the stock that I had delivered FFP2 or better face masks at the moment. And again, that was some of the stock that I had delivered to family members who were unprepared. So now I'm just replenishing my stock and obviously not competing with UK health services who have their own suppliers. As a private citizen, I am paying for my own. I'm guessing this is not available on Amazon. No, it's not the Amazon stuff.

No, I've kind of been all over to get it. But, you know, alternative industries. If you hit the whole Heron... Ray Market? No, Heron Beauty Industries. I've been a long-time commercial client of. I can tell from your profile pictures. Exactly, yeah. Obviously obviously i take care of

myself there um but no they are an industry which is uh rife with alcohol-based sanitizer and um personal equipment i'm glad you finished that sentence yes uh rife with uh alcoholics uh as well yeah oh dear well i i guess we should get on with the show and actually talk about some infosec stuff no this is no i guess this is actually interesting this is actually really interesting this is like you know safety is very important so so just you actually sound like one of those american preppers just minus the gun so do you actually have a bunker somewhere in your garden i don't you know what and it's hard to find the balance as you you may well know a very good friend of mine um

i won't say his name because he's very private he goes by mr kipling on twitter um and i would classify him as a prepper uh so you know he's kind of been on at me since since early january to be to prepare and stock up and uh you know he doesn't let up he bought a couple of extra freezers to store uh meat from the butchers and stuff like that and uh it's about finding the balance you know so whatever he says if you tone it back a couple of notches uh you know you should be okay that's about right but uh yeah i mean he's uh you know, you should be okay. That's about right.

But, yeah, I mean, he's obviously, I would say, a conspiracy theorist as well. But he has been right on a lot of recent occasions. The whole Brexit thing he bet on big. He bet on very big and made a lot of money. And Trump becoming president as well was also a big windfall for him. But the thing is about these preppers that gets me and you see this in America

obviously because it's almost I think where the prepper movement originated from but with all this lockdown you'd think that these preppers the guys who walk around in tactical kit and carry guns and normally have beards and you know baseball caps all that sort of stuff and

turn up at these marches but you know this is exactly what they're preparing for a lockdown batting the hatches all that sort of thing and yet they're the ones out there complaining that they can't get a haircut yeah they're just not as prepared or they want to get their nails done or something you know it's just because there aren't zombies doesn't mean that it's it's not time to you know lock the doors on your subterranean shelter and uh hopefully lose the key yeah bizarre utterly bizarre Speaking of bizarre people, has there been any movement on the auditor you mentioned last week,

Andy? There hasn't. Yes. Other than he has not only doubled down, he has quadrupled down on his insistence that people having access to the system32 folder

in a corporate environment is a serious finding and not in line with the principle of least privilege. Wow. There's almost nothing else you can say about this because it is so insane. You know, there's a gif where the guy so he's about to say something and he sort of you know just puts his hands through his mouth and stops before he actually said yeah that's that's me every time uh i reckon he actually

knows he's wrong but he can but he can't back down now. This sometimes happens with auditors, and generally what we have to do is just replace the people. We will introduce new people on our side and say things in a different way, and it gives everyone a chance to walk away and save face. But unfortunately, no, this guy guy he's already had additional people um you know player three's already entered the game and uh he's doubled down and player

microsoft as well player microsoft and uh no this uh this auditor knows better than microsoft how Microsoft, how Windows works. And he's still not able to offer a solution either. Any good auditor would say, this is wrong, this is the risk, this is what you can do about it. Yeah, and so I guess his approach is that we should catalogue all the, I guess you refer to them as powerful directories of a Windows operating system. Powerful directories? I mean, that technology alone is wrong.

Obviously, by default, we should block them and then grant access on an as-needed privilege. So if you need access to cmd.exe um you know it's presumably you've got other mitigating controls in place that mean that certain people can't fire up the command prompt these desktops are locked they're harder they're more locked down than most people would uh would experience uh in their um normal daily working life. Yeah. And, you know, to the point where, you know, you can't even,

it's not like, you know, you have a machine and all the controls are solid when you're on the network or when you're connected to the corporate VPN. No, we have roaming proxies. You know, all of our controls are offline controls as well. It's not a case of you disconnect from the network, we can't see you. Yeah. You know, the controls are offline controls as well it's not a case if you disconnect from the network we can't see you um yeah you know the controls are persistent um which uh yeah i mean where can i go from this you know it's uh you know i've been trying to get someone else on their side uh you know escalate and escalate and um you know unfortunately his uh immediate superior his boss uh head of department appears to be supporting him in his assessment.

So, you know, we're currently at an impasse. I wonder if there's anybody in the industry you know who works there who could give some kind of, you know, guide. Do you know what I mean? Like a How Windows Works book. If you're going to assess something at least understand how it works right yeah exactly or at least tell you if this guy actually knows what he's talking about or something or or no that's not how we do it in this company

he's talking out of his backside or something you know yeah but But obviously it's one of those, you know, one of those situations where, you know, you just scratch your head and figure. And, you know, like I say, I think I mentioned last week, these are the struggles with InfoSec. It's not all pen testing and, you know, the fun stuff, popping shells. We had an auditor once who refused to hand over her driving license at the data center uh because they couldn't you know she didn't didn't sort of trust or or didn't want to lose control of a driving license and she had to do a you know

in-person assessment of the data center. She refused to hand over a driving license. They wouldn't let her in. We failed on the sections to do with the data center because she was unable to in-person confirm. Excellent. So in that case, we escalated and went around her. Yeah. But, yeah, ridiculous, utterly ridiculous. The controls that she was trying to test worked, do you know what I mean?

Yeah. Physical security. So it's also just one of these things, Kit, and we have said money and time, certifications do not an infosec professional make no and just because you're a senior auditor doesn't mean you're any good either yes you're only as good as your last job so actually there's a just on a completely unrelated thing i just found this this news article i'll send it to you guys on the on our chat thingy it says uh the listeners won't be able to get no the killing of auditor guayrala akhmad out of the commissioner commission of audit the coa the other day could be work related no comment i have an alibi

yeah just just something that caught my eye so just just, Tom, when you were asking how I progressed this one, problem solved. Yeah. Allegedly. Allegedly. Allegedly. Shall we get on with it then? Yeah, well, I'm still coughing, which is why I just paused so I can.

Is that the? That's the rona. Rona. Rona. Yeah, so let's move on so I think we have

oh yes here we go this is what we're going to do next Billy Big Balls of the Week oh this sounds like

one for me. Yeah. So, Billy Big Balls of the Week. For me, this week comes from the Northwest Ambulance Service, who they posted on one of their social media accounts that they were aware of a TikTok video circulating on social media, which was posted by a small group of their staff and it apparently showed them acting in an unprofessional manner now the the thing to

realize you know these guys were not youngsters you know they're not gen z um you know they acknowledged they were not meant to cause offense but you know also acknowledge it was highly inappropriate um and for me it's something I can relate to. When you're in a situation where you know you're probably going to get in trouble because it's not appropriate, but you follow through anyway, just for the giggles. And it's something I can wholly relate to. So what these guys did, you may be aware of the meme

of the African funeral dancers. Oh, yes. Yes. They did the intro. There's a guy who got into the back of their ambulance. They said, just wait over there. We'll come and see you. And then he coughed.

And then, you know, the build-up to the music as it comes in and then uh they sort of completed the whole thing and they uh they dance with the dummy um you know on their shoulder acting like the pool bearers but it was no way to talk about the um the patient well no i mean it was inappropriate yes a humorous yes um and i think certainly uh you know during these times don't mistake my humor uh you know about the virus as a lack of seriousness or concern um it's just that laughing through hard times is uh yeah it happens to be how I got through my whole life. So it was, for me, an old move.

I think as they were making it, they knew that they probably shouldn't. But it took some brass balls to pull that one off and just follow through. Do you think the ambulance service has suffered a little bit from the Streisand effect? Potentially. think the ambulance service has suffered a little bit from the streisand effect uh potentially i mean i hadn't heard of it until uh you know i saw the headline and when i read that headline i was desperate to see the video well there you go there you go exactly that is just incredible you know just funny like i remember like oh what is it five seven years ago when planking was the worst thing someone could do? Yeah. I remember.

We opened the door one night. We had some commotion outside the front door. We opened the door, front door. It was about 8 o'clock at night. Looked down and there was a kid just planked in the front door. I don't think they expected us to open the door because obviously they hadn't rung the bell or anything his mates just ran off laughing it's hilarious oh man so for me that was uh my billy big balls of the week uh sorry there we go billy big balls of the week so we're trying a brand new um podcast solution and uh trying to get all of our all our jingles

incorrectly so a little bit little bit uh a few timing issues here and there but i think it's still working a lot better than tom's home homegrown solution hey this is still my homegrown solution this is us moving to the cloud instead of you buying like 20 different bits of kit and trying to connect them all together well he's got a welder he's going to it's going to do something i'm just waiting to use this one there's no humour in this. No worthy humour. Do you know what? Something actually just hearing that music,

I don't know why it triggered me. I had a call from North Korea the other day. Oh, really? Yeah. Just completely out of the blue. I had a missed call. well i didn't i heard the phone ring but by the time i got to it it's obviously a missed call uh it's a plus 850 number uh which i've never you know i didn't recognize it wasn't any uh colleagues in the us or uh you

know anyone else that would typically call me late at night and And, yeah, upon looking it up, plus 850 allows you to call North Korea. Perhaps you'd won the North Korean lottery. Potentially. I'll let you know. So, well, you know what? So, obviously, I kind of, you know, text a group of friends. I was like, holy crap, like, you know. Because North Korea is not a car you know a

country i want associated on my phone records was it the hmrc of north korea well it's always that uh potential which uh you know i'm not a fan of but uh i will say a friend of mine very quickly replied um kim's popped it after all and they reckon that with your height whipped and hamster cheeks you could make a decent standing what's that uh uh yeah okay yeah very good uh but no never called back don't uh i want to be able to prove next time i try and get into the U.S. that I did not contact North America and North Korea. So, Kim, if you're listening, Andy is available. Short rates. Short rates.

No, that's you generally. Low rates. And, yeah, available for your weddings and bar mitzvahs and things like that as a standing. Great leader. Great leader. Great leader. available for your weddings and bar mitzvahs and things like that as a standing great leader great leader great leader just just to let you know that tom and i we we've we've been friends for many years we don't actually know andy he's just an invited guest onto this podcast we don't associate with him it's a bit like how everyone gets uh taken for secondary screaming since they walk through the airport with you, Jeff.

And if, and if Andy needs an alibi for something that may or may not have happened to an auditor in the future, we have no idea. We never met him. I'm sure he's a very fine person, but outstanding member of this community. Right. I think we should,

uh, uh, legal advice. Should we do some industry news? Move on. Yes. Yeah. Industry news. on legal advice. Shall we do some industry news? We should move on, yes. Industry news.

Brexit-related firm wins government contracts based... Sorry, let me try that again. Brexit-related firms wins government contracts related to AI and data mining. Industry News. Completely screwed that one up. Blockchain startups move from coin offerings to investment for funding. Industry News.

GCHQ granted access to NHS data as privacy concerns increase. Deja vu. Again. Yes. Industry news. I think the writer behind these articles needs to pull his or her finger out. Yeah, need to up the game.

Because I'm sure one of those we did last week. Yes. And a week is a long time in InfoSec. Yeah. week yes and it's a week is a long time in infosec yeah here we are trying to earn an honest living holding a mirror up to the industry and yet there's this dearth of um of quality uh articles that we can talk about so come on journalists pull your finger out so we can do some more of the give us some interesting headlines industry news yeah that was industry news but you know that that last story actually um was it was an interesting one

the one about um gthq being granted access to nhs data um sort of like teased me up quite unexpectedly, guys. Oh, you mean for your... Tweet of the Week. God, that's such a professional job, this. I know, I know. Yes, so the Tweet of the Week was actually related to it, and it's a good Tweet of the Week from a good old friend of ours. Friend of the show, folks older friends of the show folks, friend of the show.

That's what I meant. It's by Rick Ferguson, who many of you know, all of us are jealous of his long flowing locks. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. But I can put my hair like that if I wanted to just let you guys know.

Yeah. I could also on your chest. Maybe when they make me supreme leader of North Korea, you guys know yeah i could also on your chest maybe when they make me supreme leader of north korea you guys will regret this when you come around to our house with an anti-tank gun i'll nuke this country when i'm there Kirsten Sloan does not condone such activities. Anyway, go on. See, that's white privilege in action, folks.

Andy can get away with saying something like that. Yeah. I'm going to play my African nationality card here. What, like this? Exactly that. Come on, Jav. Okay, so Rick Ferguson said, Health Secretary Matt Hancock has announced that Baroness Dido Harding will head up the wider test, track and trace programme.

Ahem. And then he's linked to an article he wrote in 2015. Now, if you think that the name Baroness Dido Harding sounds familiar... She did a duet with Eminem, didn't she? A friend of mine went to school with her. Which? Dido Harding or the Dido? No, Dido. Dido, Dido.

That's your claim to fame, Tom. Well done. No, my claim to fame is I've been in Kate Bush's bedroom. Whose bedroom? What? Whose bedroom, Bush? What? Kate Bush.

I mean, that can go in many directions. You know, one, did she know? Yeah, she took me there. You know the kite from the album, The Kick Inside? There's a big kite on it. That was on the ceiling above her bed, and she took me in to show me. I was five, by the way. Right, do we have...

Oh, okay, right, that would be inappropriate then. I was about to say, do we have any Pornhub music queued up that you can... You have okay right that would be inappropriate then i was about to say do we have any porn hub music queued up that you can you're right that would be inappropriate yeah so i used to go you added the five afterwards like you know you're making this sound worse than it is yes yeah it's right um i used to go to like nursery school with her nephew and used to go around to his his house for um you know play dates and stuff and then and you know she was always hanging around first first concert i ever saw in 1977 i think it was i didn't realize she was so much older than you literally before i was born as well Anyway, do go on, Jab. So it's not that Baroness Dido Harding that has got any relation to music, but she was the CEO of TalkTalk when they suffered a massive almighty breach.

So Rick's tweet links to an article he wrote on october 26 2015 wow that we really keep up with the times here um but it just sort of like tears apart a lot of her strategy and what she did and and uh how she communicated but this is a problem we see a lot of the times it's people who've got a track record of failure continually hashtag i'm not talking about you alex stay most don't at me but you know these people that have got no please come on the show alex yeah they've got nothing to do with security and they just keep on getting put into these positions where they're in charge of so much information. There's sensitive information there, or they're responsible for incident response.

Actually, there was a university, it just came to mind last week, Warwick University, I think, a couple of weeks ago. They suffered a breach, and they didn't even bother reporting it because the person that was the registrar was also a head of data protection services and she had no experience at all in that field and didn't think it was important to report it or investigate it and actually the the auditors actually made a direct recommendation that they should put someone who actually knows what they're doing into that role. So this sort of incompetence is everywhere. And then you have people like Andy's Auditor going around trying to say

that you need to raise a ticket every morning just to get temporary access to System32 folder in order to log into your machine. So it's just annoying. It's something that is uh it's rife in the industry i'm trying to like temper it i want it to maintain a a ranty vibe as opposed to like going full-on nuclear no pun intended andy on on this whole topic. But, you know, this is an industry full of mediocrity, and then on top of it, we promote absolute incompetence.

And to have people like, well, you know, Dido Harding in charge of something so sensitive was just as bad as having Matt Hancock as health secretary i suppose so is this um is this uh an issue with the infosec industry hiring mediocrity or is it um people who are good at self-promotion getting the better jobs well this this tweet isn't about the infosec security per se i mean dido harding's not an infosec person right she's a singer yeah well she keynoted that infosec a year or two ago yeah yeah but you know the keynotes that they bring in aren't always infosec people no that's right have you ever you know i completely agree with you i think we do promote mediocrity you

know the peter principle of being promoted to the level of incompetence and all that sort of thing Have you ever keynoted? So to a certain extent, she was the public scapegoat rather than the people who were advising her badly. They were the ones that probably should have been more vilified. So is it now you think she's got the experience, she knows what bad looks like, and she knows how to avoid that, so that's why she's an ideal candidate? I think that's such a bad misconception as well. It's like me going into the ring and getting knocked out by Mike Tyson in his prime.

Well, he's clearly a good boxer now because he knows how to get knocked out. Yeah, that very binary example maps so clearly onto such a complex environment. It does, absolutely. See, we have to dumb it down for our three audience members, otherwise we're going to risk losing them too, okay? What? That's you, me. No, it's an interesting one because, you know,

Rick is someone whose opinion I respect greatly. I also, but I also, my opinion of Dido harding changed as a result of last year's keynote that's not to say i think she's you know the best thing since sliced bread but i don't think she's as necessarily as ill equipped to deal with this as perhaps you might think man this is just like this is the problem you see it's, you're so willing to give white privilege and other chance. I was going to say, there's going to be white privilege and old man in here somewhere.

And, you know, this is how capitalism has worked for a long time and in its corrupt and current form that it is here. You know, you go on twitter yeah and um kevin mitnick my my my work colleague yeah anytime he tweets something there's a whole barrage of like hate against him and it's completely unwarranted it's just like you know you're a criminal you're this you're that and what have you and there's a complete hate group and what have you. And the dude actually did time, yeah, and most of that he spent in solitary confinement, yeah.

That's called paying your dues, yeah. And, you know, you can then expect someone to have a chance to say, okay, you've made a mistake, you've done your time, now let's give you a chance to, you know, come back into society and be an honest person again. you know, come back into society and be an honest person again. This is like someone makes a colossal F up and... But doesn't intentionally screw up. Just, you know, is in a situation where the screw up happens to them.

They're incompetent. They completely screw up. They've not done an illegal act. They've not done anything knowingly illegal. And then the bar of forgiveness here is well she gave she said some nice words at infosec when i saw at the keynote so i now believe her you know and those words came clearly from my heart they weren't you know massaged to in an inch of their life by pr wonks i'll be honest i didn't actually see the keynote, but I just know that you watched it.

Just a point of fact, Kevin Mitnick is actually a criminal. He may have served his time, but that doesn't escape the fact he has a criminal record, just to point that out. As far as I'm aware, Dido Harding hasn't held up a corner shop or anything at gun point well you know that that's and i think that's where i i would say ceos um and you know heads of security and everything maybe they should be held to the same account when they issue through their sheer incompetence they gather millions and millions of records relating to individuals, and then they're careless enough to let it slip through the fingers. And then they're incompetent to the degree where they don't even do a good incident response sort of process to it.

Then I think they should be held to a similar account as someone who's malicious in nature. So I agree that incompetence is no defence in law, but was a law actually broken, a criminal law? Oh my God, it's like speaking to people from Eton right now, isn't it? People who have a fundamental understanding of the laws of England and Wales. No, no, the sort of like rich elitists who make all the laws, who place all the loopholes in it. If every person was trialled by the court of social media,

there would be a lot more deaths than there are now. Yeah. They would be under jab, definitely. And you say that like that's a bad thing. You know just ordinarily i'd say go and have a snickers or something jab but obviously right at this period of time that's that's not that's quite insensitive of me not illegal of me quite an incompetent thing of me to

for me to say but not illegal andy you're going to uh north kore I heard Libya's got an opening. How about we form an alliance right now? We need to get off and move on from this topic quickly. Yeah, indeed. Hang on. Tweet of the week. There we go. Thanks for that, Geoff. Whoa. Dear me. And by the way, if there's any sponsors out there

that might be interested in joining into our socio-political and economic discussions on this um consumer focused information security podcast yes this could be you host unknown sponsored by insert name here beautiful i mean who wouldn't wouldn't want to be associated with you know in-depth conversation Insert name here Beautiful I mean who wouldn't want to be associated with In depth conversation And current affairs analysis

Like that Everyone Please folks Please I really need to replace The co-presenters because they Just have no idea what they're talking about Well one especially the other one i'm working on oh dear that got very serious i like that you know it was almost a replacement for the rant of the week it was it was it was gonna make my job a little bit

more difficult later on let's see if you can uh if you can make a rant more rant worthy than that all right should we should we move on to that then? Yeah, let's give it a go. Hold on a second. Let's give people a break. Run the commercial ad thing one more time just to let people's brains reset before we head into something far more intense. The commercial ad.

Okay, hang on. The Yorda. No, Yorda ain't here. Talking about careers oh 30 seconds of it you know we want to alright it's done so yeah folks if you would like to have the African funeral music played

next to your uh company name then you know it's cool sponsored by insert name here do you think that's enough of a break? Let's go. Okay. I tell you what, we practice so much before we do these things. Rant of the week. So hang on, I'm just going to go on mute because I'm just about to have a coughing fit. Excuse me. And while Tom is on his... What is it? In the throes of death

yeah yeah this Rona's getting right to me so we are looking for a replacement once Tom dies which

shouldn't be too long so we want someone young and energetic and someone that can carry the show with us for a long time to come. So Jack Daniel, if you're listening and you're free.

Yeah, that's good to say. Brian Hohner, no need to apply. Rant of the week. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is what I'm calling the Hignifi effect. The what? Which is my very, the Hignifi effect. It stands for have I got news for you?

And I blogged about this quite recently now you may recall uh a popular tv show called have i got news for you on the bbc done on friday nights it's very topical it's recorded something like less than 24 hours before it goes live so it always picks up on current affairs and the you know the very latest things of the week panel show um paul merton and uh i can't remember the other folks now and um basically five people on the panel show live talking lots of banter kicking off each other etc now when the uh when the rona hit and we all had to go into lockdown uh it was a bit of a problem because they couldn't get everybody in the studio so what they did for the first episode of the new series that was scheduled rather than cancel it

postpone it or whatever they uh sent iphones and to the guests, iPhones, some lighting, microphones, etc., and basically set up the virtual environment. So the show was actually carried out whilst they were in their kitchens, living rooms, offices, etc. And it was broadcast as normal. Now, it didn't quite work the first time around. It was a little bit stilted. The jokes were still funny.

The timing was a little bit off, not unlike this podcast, really. But it worked. And each week it gets better and better, the qualities of, you know, the technical quality is better, the lighting is better. Much like this podcast. Much like this podcast, yeah. The timing is better. Exactly. And it the lighting's better. Much like this podcast. Much like this podcast, yeah. The timing's better, exactly. And it got better and better.

And actually the show, although it has a very different feel to it, is actually the same show and they're making it happen. Now, if you compare that to what I've seen in this industry, and certainly as a small company working with many, many different clients, what I've seen is that so many companies have literally just stopped everything. They're no longer going, you know, obviously they're not going to in-person events and conferences and forums and all that sort of thing,

but they're not doing anything else either. And it's like they've just gone into their shells and just waiting for this to go over to, to, to blow over. Whereas other companies are actually embracing it. So, um, you know, uh, a company I used to work for, they've jumped onto the LinkedIn, um, broadcasting that LinkedIn do, and they're doing weekly, uh, panels for about an hour, gathering lots of feedback and getting questions from people online, et cetera. And it works well. I'm seeing people I used to work with sat in their living rooms doing a panel. Other organizations running big Zoom town halls or anything like this. You're seeing a lot of other companies who are actually embracing it. It feels a bit crap at first.

You know, we're not used to it. We're not used to this kind of environment. And certainly in this country where webinars are not as popular as perhaps they are in the US, for instance. But actually, this is just us getting used to a new normal. And I think the difference here is companies that are embracing the change and actually leveraging this technology to make things work for them, even though it's a bit clunky at first, it's difficult, it's a little bit awkward, but eventually they're getting much better and better at it versus the companies that are just holding back and just waiting for it to blow over. And it seems to me any company, certainly in this industry, that can't deal with disruption whilst trying to serve an industry that deals with disruption is not one that we should

be looking to partner with or work with. And so my rant is effectively against the number of companies out there that are just literally doing nothing and waiting for this all to finish and things to go back to normal, even though normal is never going to come back. There's going to be a new normal. So yeah, that's my rant of the week you know folks um have you seen any of this there are two things to this that i i've got to say first off stop using the word new normal i just absolutely hate that phrase that's what you took from this yeah yeah yeah secondly what i took from this really is that this isn't a rant

about the industry this is a rant about an independent contractor or independent consultant he's been told by his clients that you know we're putting his projects on hold and he's like taken that to encompass the whole industry is on hold because i'm in damn it you've seen seen through me did you notice how the fanboy still got in that it was iphones that were sent out to click on tom's affiliate link to apple in the in the description below well why would you send Android to him? Ridiculous.

To be fair, do you remember, as we know, the King of Tigers, Carol Baskin and all those guys. The Tiger King. Do you remember the finale or, as I say, that follow-up show

that they shot when the curtain closed? Again, that was a situation where it was all filmed on iPhones, wasn't it? Yeah, they sent out the iPhones to everyone to make it happen. Yeah, that's right. So what we're saying is iPhones are pretty good out of the box, right? And I think, you know, yeah, they are. They just work.

But also, you know, if the BBC and if other organizations can cope with this, then so can everyone else. So to be honest, I agree with your points that we should be adaptable. In my company and in companies I deal with, I've not really seen that. I've seen everyone adapt to it quite quickly. deal with i've not really seen that i've seen everyone adapt to it quite quickly having said that i will do work for a us-based company so maybe it's a more of a uk thing but i don't know andy seems to be busier than ever but i work for a uk-based company and uh yeah we're very familiar with um you know working remotely different locations uh global company as well so quite used to um you know adapting um and but you But it wasn't without challenges. I think there was certainly unprecedented levels of traffic connecting at times, which would normally not have peaks.

But, yeah, I mean, we got through it pretty quickly. I mean, get over it in two hours or else you get fired. That's how we work. It's this major incentive nice nice people you want to work for yeah having said that i do think that there is something to be said for like um independent like or external contract because a lot of companies are going through like a lot of cost cutting measures and what they're trying to do cash flow retention and what they're trying to do is preserve their their full-time employees before um anything else

so that's why like if you're an external consultant or advisor you know you're going to get hit the hardest um and then all non-essential projects are going to get canned and then maybe like some employees will be offered like you know can you work four days a week and we'll give you 80 of your salary kind of thing just to help try and meet those budgets so i think it's it's it's i i'd say it's it's less of a let's adapt to technology and more of a business cash flow issue for a lot of organizations out there oh i i totally get that but i think it's so it's it's the ones that i've seen that just do nothing literally just you know they they were going to be government

yeah that's right they were going to be going to so many different shows going to be doing this that and the other and now then they're not doing anything to to engage with their market at all you know and that's that's not necessarily my clients or anything. I think it's you're seeing which companies are out there actually embracing a new style of working versus or new style of marketing versus those that are just waiting. Can you give any examples? Can you name any names?

No, I won't name any names? No, I won't name any names because they may be clients in the future. God, I'm not stupid. So companies, if you're thinking of engaging Tom Langford, just be wary that if you don't give him the deal he wants, he might start throwing shade at you.

But to be fair, he didn't actually name them so you know yeah no he'll imply he'll imply yes but don't worry tom uh when i go to korea i'll have a job for you oh marvelous marvelous chief of i don't know lounging hiding the body chief of body hiding yeah yeah you can ask siri to do that again with the fanboy shit apple perhaps you'd like to be a sponsor this could be you you know having said that um so I used to have an iPhone and then I switched to Android a few years ago.

So on the desktop and computer, I just really like Apple. I've always used it, mainly because I think Final Cut Pro is there and it's just the best, like, for me, video editing. But I had this old iPad 2 um I actually know before the iPad 2 I mean that's just sitting there it can't be updated or anything but um I was looking for a new like a reader because my my Kindle's not very good for reading PDF documents and I was like oh what's a good reader and I was looking at the remarkable and this that the other and everything and Tom suggested hey you know you can put them into iBooks on your

on your old iPad and to Tom's credit I've got to say it just works brilliantly it is the best um sort of like pdf reader I have so I might be coming back into the fold so so, you deserve your commission on that. And, Tom, you're also spending time fixing old iPods at the moment, aren't you? I am. I am. iPod 3G, third generation. Fitting them up with replacement batteries and SD card storage. Is this to relive the Walkman days where you're carrying around something really bulky

in your pocket? I often walk around with something bulky. Your testicles that your ex-wife gave you. No, I'm talking about my iPhone XS Max. Oh, okay. I thought you were talking about your hemorrhoids. Oh, okay. I thought you were talking about your hemorrhoids. Oh, dear. On that lovely note, I believe we're going to have to end

because I think we've probably even gone over our longest podcast. And every week we say we've got to do it shorter. So, folks, thank you very much for listening. Jav, thank you very much for listening uh jav thank you sir thank you for waking up rolling over in bed and switching your your i was gonna say iphone your android on to to join us you're welcome jolly good and andy thank you very much and uh long may the supreme leader live absolutely and i look forward uh tom to uh hearing about uh what ve day was like um your first-hand experience of being there um so look forward to uh chatting through that later on thanks mate host unknown the podcast was written performed and produced by andrew agnes javad malik and tom langford copyright 2015 or something like that insert legal agreements here

as applicable and binding in your country of residence. We thank you. That was you trying to be nice to me. Well, I said that you recommended the iPad and it really works. Yeah, thanks, mate. Much obliged.