00:00.79
Andy Young
Welcome to the 825 Technologies Podcast. It’s your go-to source for practical IT insights. And I’m Andy.
00:09.14
Tim
And I’m Tim. ah Today we have some fantastic tech headlines to break down from quantum computing to potential tax rebates that could affect your idea budget.
00:21.82
Andy Young
but You got to like the IT budget rebates. But before we get too far into that, Microsoft announced that they’ve got this new ah processing chip.
00:34.81
Andy Young
And it is a quantum chip, which is kind of fascinating because, ah you know, Google’s had a quantum computer. It’s been pretty good. And now you’ve got the Majorana?
00:48.50
Tim
I think that’s what say.
00:48.55
Andy Young
Majorana?
00:49.53
Tim
And Majorana.
00:49.47
Andy Young
We don’t know.
00:50.91
Tim
Yep.
00:51.10
Andy Young
ma Major Anna? Who knows?
00:52.65
Tim
All right.
00:54.00
Andy Young
But it’s number one. Major Anna one. Yeah.
00:57.84
Tim
Yeah, this is pretty big, Andy. I mean, especially with this quantum chip. It’s going to revolution everything from so cyber threats to ah scientific the break breakthroughs to there’s a lot of cool things out there.
01:12.87
Andy Young
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just the idea how fast it can process now is through the roof. And it’s using this new thing called a topo conductor. I guess it’s not too new, but but it is new. And the idea of quantum computing is new. And it’s it’s a new state of matter.
01:30.56
Andy Young
And what it can do is allow… um allow for these, know, cause quantum computing works on the idea that electron can exist almost in two places at once.
01:40.62
Andy Young
Does it, does it not?
01:41.25
Tim
Thank you.
01:41.74
Andy Young
Who knows? Um, But this material allows it to happen and it can happen in a more ah ready environment before you’ve had to create these extreme situations of extreme cold or, um you know, vacuums or or really huge rooms that allow for a lot of margin of error.
02:01.49
Andy Young
ah But now it’s it’s something that can actually fit kind of in a maybe a chipset from a while ago, but still in a reasonably sized chipset. So that’s kind of cool.
02:12.25
Tim
very For all the small business listeners, while this won’t be immediately available, Microsoft plans to make it accessible through Azure Cloud Services for 2030. We got a little bit of time.
02:25.14
Andy Young
Yeah, yeah.
02:26.30
Tim
yeah Just a little bit.
02:27.88
Andy Young
Yeah, half a decade and a consumer can use quantum computing.
02:32.60
Tim
That’s crazy. Wow.
02:34.39
Andy Young
Yeah, which, yeah.
02:35.86
Tim
AI and all that.
02:38.76
Andy Young
You know, I don’t i didn’t ever, don’t know if five years ago, if you told me in a decade, we’d be at this point with AI and quantum computing if I would have believed anyone.
02:50.94
Tim
All right. It surprised all of us how fast it came out.
02:56.11
Andy Young
Yeah. So then i now wonder, could it happen before 2030 even that we have quantum computers that you could get on Amazon Web, Azure Cloud, Google Cloud?
03:09.26
Tim
That’s wow.
03:10.36
Andy Young
Yeah.
03:11.38
Tim
I think it’s cool.
03:12.56
Andy Young
Yeah. It’s pretty amazing. Pretty amazing. So we’ll see what happens.
03:17.29
Tim
That’s right.
03:18.07
Andy Young
Yeah. What else going on?
03:20.98
Tim
Oh, it looks like I’ve got some news coming in. Acer is raising prices. ah Acer aer star has stated they’re to be increasing their prices by 10%. Oh,
03:33.02
Andy Young
Ooh, possibly a little tariffs there going on. You think that we’re going to see other companies jump in and say, hey, let’s crank these prices up.
03:44.09
Tim
but yeah, absolutely. if Someone starts, someone’s going to follow along.
03:48.00
Andy Young
Yeah. Yeah. and It’s a wild world as far as you’ve got tariffs, obviously these tariff wars are, I think it’s, you’re right. It’s going to drive up prices, but then, uh, you know, where do we get these rare earth minerals from? Oh, conflict zones, um, or the Congo or, you know, so we’ve got that whole side of the coin too.
04:12.33
Andy Young
and we just seem to be throwing more and more stuff away.
04:15.36
Tim
Yeah, right.
04:15.38
Andy Young
That’s electronic. Yeah. And so,
04:18.34
Tim
to Come out with better recycling programs for all this stuff.
04:22.89
Andy Young
Yeah. There was a while back, maybe a month back, where they were saying that you could use a form of whey protein to help get gold out of processors.
04:38.19
Tim
hey It works.
04:38.37
Andy Young
Right.
04:39.07
Tim
It works.
04:40.70
Andy Young
Yeah. It’s an interesting way that they’re finding to extract some of these minerals in a cheaper way from some of our recycled materials. So…
04:52.06
Andy Young
um I don’t know. If you were getting ready to buy a lot of computers, Tim. All
04:56.97
Tim
I would do it now. yeah
04:59.16
Andy Young
right. yeah
05:00.06
Tim
Absolutely.
05:01.70
Andy Young
Yeah. Makes you wonder if we shouldn’t just buy something, you know, like scalpers with the NVIDIA cards. Oh, you need cheap laptop. We’ve got cheap laptop. Come on up.
05:10.27
Tim
che Open my jacket up here.
05:11.83
Andy Young
yeah
05:13.56
Tim
Pick one out.
05:15.07
Andy Young
Anyone you want, just pick one. but That’s all you get is just one. no I’m with you. I think this would be a good time to be like, yeah, let’s get them now before the prices go up.
05:26.14
Tim
Right.
05:26.06
Andy Young
I think it’ll go up on um network switches, firewalls, servers.
05:32.35
Tim
Yeah, I think so.
05:33.38
Andy Young
Yeah.
05:33.76
Tim
and Anything electronics is going to up, unfortunately. But
05:38.15
Andy Young
Yeah. Think of what it’s going to do to car prices.
05:41.69
Tim
yeah, especially for like how much more and more every day electronics are getting put inside cars.
05:48.29
Andy Young
Yes.
05:48.94
Tim
Safety features and all that. yeah it’s getting pretty crazy out there. Yeah.
05:53.02
Andy Young
Yeah, no, no, it’s, it’s, and, uh, it’s, it false reports sometimes on cars too. I had to take my car in recently because it was flashing the transmission light and like the safety eyesight feature light of like, you know, front end collision stuff.
06:08.90
Andy Young
was like, that’s weird. So I take it in and it was actually two blown fuses. Two of the fuses were blown. And they’re like, did you plug something in that draws a lot of power? was like, you know, not over the last week, it’s just been my phone.
06:23.35
Tim
1.21 gigawatts. Probably. Ugh.
06:24.68
Andy Young
yeah Exactly. i’m not time traveling over here.
06:26.09
Tim
the ah
06:29.12
Andy Young
Yeah. Best I can figure is like, you know, snow got kicked up in there or something and, you know, blew a fuse, yeah, it freaked my car out.
06:33.10
Tim
probably
06:37.37
Andy Young
It was, it was upset, man. It’s upset, but you know, speaking of tariffs, And technology and businesses. So if you have, you know, stepped out from under a rock in the last two weeks, you know that DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, has been taking a chainsaw to whatever it can find, which good, bad or indifferent, it’s a reality.
07:00.31
Tim
chainsaw
07:04.57
Andy Young
And one of the interesting developments is there’s talk. And right now it’s only talk. that there could be some interesting business budget increase coming down the line.
07:19.29
Tim
that’s right ellen musk is considering a five thousand dollar refund check program for tax paying households wow
07:26.00
Andy Young
Yes. So they, what? What? 400 billion or so projected savings thus far by cuts. um And they’re saying, you know, roughly 75, 79 million households.
07:40.33
Andy Young
um They’d be able to get back 5,000 or so. I’m not sure if that totally maths out when you really look at it all, but also, you know, this is a technology podcast.
07:53.82
Andy Young
So we’ll, we’ll stay out of the deep weeds on this.
07:54.98
Tim
but Right.
07:58.36
Andy Young
But I do think it’s, One that, if it does happen, could be helpful, could offset some tariff pains or things of that nature. But I also think that maybe they need to just throw that back into the deficit if that’s what they’re making the cuts for.
08:14.17
Tim
Right. We do have to pay the money back.
08:17.48
Andy Young
Yeah. Yeah, that’s that’s kind of my take on it. If you’ve saved the money, let’s put it towards the trillion dollar credit card debt that we’ve run up. Let’s get that taken care of.
08:28.32
Andy Young
So, yeah.
08:29.41
Tim
um Right now, it’s worth not noting that it’s still in proposal stage, so wouldn’t take effect until July 2026.
08:36.98
Andy Young
Yeah, which a lot happens in a year, doesn’t it?
08:39.87
Tim
That’s can be pretty quick. Right around the corner.
08:43.23
Andy Young
Yeah. I don’t think… I mean, you know, like I said, don’t want to get too political. But and I’d be upset if we got a $5,000 check based on that.
08:58.27
Andy Young
Especially knowing the number of people that have lost their jobs.
09:01.08
Tim
Yeah, especially. Yeah.
09:04.20
Andy Young
Yeah.
09:05.06
Tim
What did you do last week? That’s pretty much what’s going on.
09:08.80
Andy Young
Right. that You know, that email. Yeah. Five things that you did last week. Well, yeah, yeah I read a projection that answering that email could cost upwards of $170 million dollars just to not only read it, but then to process the answers, you know, like in time of people’s wages, it would be $170 million, dollars which then when you get into something that big,
09:24.37
Tim
Jeez.
09:35.12
Andy Young
to be really mindful communication, I guess, because each email could really be expensive.
09:39.66
Tim
There’s a very expensive email.
09:41.13
Andy Young
Yeah.
09:43.19
Tim
Jeez.
09:44.08
Andy Young
Yeah. Well, and the other side of that too is the processing of the answers was supposed to be done with ai
09:53.19
Andy Young
So then they’d they’d be able to see if somebody was doing something useful based on AI. But also you have to look at, well, what was their objective? Right? Because if their objective was to, I don’t know,
10:06.11
Andy Young
take out sea lampreys in the Great Lakes. um It might seem superfluous in AI’s ah eyes.
10:13.84
Tim
Right.
10:15.06
Andy Young
AI’s eyes. But yeah.
10:16.88
Tim
I didn’t say that really quick.
10:18.70
Andy Young
Yeah. But, you know, it could be very important. Yeah. Sea lampreys, man, they’re still a problem.
10:27.10
Andy Young
Yeah. You know, I just recently learned they wiped out the whole fish population in the Great Lakes in like the something. nineteen forty s or so
10:35.26
Tim
I did not know that.
10:36.54
Andy Young
Yeah, it basically sunk the whole fishing industry up in the Great Lakes because these sea lampreys, they latch on to fish and suck the blood out of these fish.
10:37.54
Tim
Wow.
10:47.70
Andy Young
And it was just, yeah, where people would go out and catch um like one, one and a half tons of fish a day, ah day, they’d go out like a boat, and we’ grab that many fish, tons of them.
10:57.87
Tim
want fish. Yeah.
11:00.44
Andy Young
And they’d they’d been doing that for years and years and years. ah The next year, they went out and they they got like 20 pounds a day if they were lucky. know
11:10.36
Andy Young
Yeah. So kind of crazy, kind of crazy. Well, I think it’s time since we’re talking about Musk, he’s famous for, you know, SpaceX.
11:20.68
Tim
yeah
11:23.08
Andy Young
He’s famous for launching a Tesla Roadster into space. So, you know, let’s jump up into space here, a little otherworldly. There is rumors that Nokia, in conjunction with DARPA, is building a cell network on the moon.
11:41.39
Tim
yes that’s that’s awesome um yeah it looks like Nokia is building out a 4G network integrating the spacesuits
11:45.17
Andy Young
this yeah
11:54.29
Andy Young
mean, I guess you kind of…
11:57.29
Tim
maybe can collect coal one second beep beep beep yeah
12:02.26
Andy Young
mean, where else are you going to put it, I guess, right? Like why build it into a handset? You need a space suit up there. So.
12:06.85
Tim
and the bear just put a phone, this phone, pull things up and just leave there
12:12.44
Andy Young
Yeah. Yeah. And so it seems like this is a joint venture with DARPA. It’s supposed to support data capacity mainly. So like something for the equivalent of home television streaming or film streaming so that.
12:27.51
Andy Young
They can do video conferencing and communicate while they’re up there on space. You know, hey, here’s a video of how to replace that oxygen oxygen regenerator.
12:37.83
Andy Young
It’s kind of important. You’ve only got 30 seconds before you run out oxygen.
12:42.65
Tim
You better get going.
12:42.79
Andy Young
Good luck.
12:45.65
Andy Young
Yeah. ah So they think that by 2028, it will up and running. it will be up and running
12:55.09
Tim
i think that’s pretty quick. yeah
12:57.38
Andy Young
Yeah. Yeah.
12:58.54
Tim
That’s really quick.
12:59.99
Andy Young
So do you think people will be living up there?
13:05.16
Tim
Maybe, don’t know, maybe the next 10, 20 years I can see it.
13:08.18
Andy Young
Yeah.
13:09.40
Tim
How fast we’re going with technology and stuff, I think we’ll be there.
13:13.57
Andy Young
Yeah. And then the question is like, why the moon rather than the ocean?
13:18.82
Tim
ah Right.
13:20.02
Andy Young
Yeah, why not create a barge that you could, I guess because tsunamis, big waves, rogue waves. That’s probably a hard one to budget for.
13:27.86
Tim
Right.
13:28.69
Andy Young
Yeah. But it’s kind of, it’s funny, you know, when you and I were coming up, cell phones were emerging. And I don’t know if you did. I think it was like a 4760 or something, the Nokia.
13:41.69
Andy Young
It was like a candy bar phone. Do you remember those?
13:44.79
Tim
Yeah, I do remember those.
13:46.07
Andy Young
Those things you could beat with a baseball bat.
13:48.74
Tim
Def. He rode over the car a couple of times. I’ll still be fine.
13:52.66
Andy Young
Yes. I cannot tell you the number of times I left it on the top of my car and drove off and came back. at you know, luckily it was still there, but like, totally fine. Totally fine.
14:02.62
Tim
made steel.
14:04.75
Andy Young
They were. Yeah, they they were bulletproof. And so I kind of wonder if that was part of the reasoning behind, let’s go to Nokia. We’re building on the moon. We need something tough.
14:16.87
Andy Young
We’re going to Nokia. Yeah.
14:18.23
Tim
You’re going to Nokia.
14:20.02
Andy Young
They are having a resurgence, actually. They’ve got new phones out.
14:24.87
Tim
i haven’t really kept up with Nokia.
14:24.85
Andy Young
Nokia does. Yeah, they’re kind of retro. They go back to that feel. And they also have like, um instead of a keypad, it’s like a dial. So you you roll the dial.
14:35.87
Andy Young
And like, it’s kind of cool.
14:38.92
Tim
I was they were going to put a big old rotary on it or something.
14:38.92
Andy Young
Yeah, don’t know.
14:42.36
Andy Young
Yeah.
14:43.07
Tim
Yeah.
14:43.02
Andy Young
Yeah, that’s it. di tict ti dig dic tic Yeah, those would be cool. Yeah, and they’re building on that whole dumb phone ah movement where people are tired of their smartphones and, you know, the addiction to social media and all those other troubles. And they just want a phone that can make phone calls and they can listen to Spotify on.
15:05.29
Andy Young
And so that’s what Nokia is filling in right now.
15:08.27
Tim
thanks
15:09.31
Andy Young
It is kind of nice. it It gives you a good option for your kids.
15:12.90
Tim
That’s true.
15:13.31
Andy Young
You know, like that’s a… Yeah, that’s a really good one. Yeah, the… the ah The cell phone with kids problem is a real problem. And it’s good to know that even if you move your family to the moon, you can’t escape it.
15:27.84
Andy Young
It’s going to be there. yeah
15:30.76
Tim
We’re going to the moon.
15:32.39
Andy Young
That’s it. I’m tired of these phones. We’re going to the moon.
15:35.60
Tim
That’s right.
15:35.53
Andy Young
Won’t work. Won’t work. Yeah. Man, that that’s a, that’s a tough one. Would you, if you had a, let’s say the government comes to you. And they’re like, we need families to move to the moon.
15:48.86
Andy Young
um your Your face already. You’re like, ah. And they’re like, we’re going to pay you. We’ll pay you $250,000 a year.
16:00.16
Andy Young
um But we’ll cover all expenses. Food, room, board, medical. um And the $250,000 can just go into an account. Use it for whatever. And we’ll pay each of your dependents $50,000 on top of it.
16:16.49
Andy Young
Would you do it?
16:17.43
Tim
Oh, probably.
16:18.71
Andy Young
you You would.
16:19.80
Tim
Just for a couple years. Just a couple years.
16:21.44
Andy Young
Just two years.
16:23.08
Tim
Yeah.
16:23.70
Andy Young
Yeah. All right. Yeah, I mean, if you got your kids 50 grand a year for a couple years and just throw it in an account, let it earn some interest.
16:34.31
Tim
I know, you’re good. Bam. Help school and all that.
16:38.01
Andy Young
Yeah. Yeah, it takes a little pressure off of them. Helps with the tariffs just a little bit.
16:44.15
Tim
Just a little bit…
16:44.70
Andy Young
Just
16:46.83
Andy Young
but would If you bought stuff on the moon, would you have tariffs?
16:53.65
Tim
Which country?
16:56.55
Andy Young
Yeah, where are you buying it from? Does Amazon deliver to the moon? That’s a question I’d have.
16:59.66
Tim
that’ would be awesome. It’s a 10-week wait.
17:01.36
Andy Young
Yeah, they they have their own outpost.
17:02.78
Tim
It’s pretty fast.
17:08.00
Andy Young
Lunar Prime. Get it in 10 weeks. Wow, that’s really fast. Perfect.
17:12.03
Tim
just bring that
17:13.47
Andy Young
All right. Yeah. Who knows? That might be the reason that Blue Origin launched. Jeff Bezos was like, we’re going to the moon. I need to make sure we’ve got a space rocket that can take our deliveries up there.
17:26.88
Tim
That’s right. That’s awesome.
17:28.93
Andy Young
Yeah. My question is this though. They’re going to have this live in 2028.
17:35.20
Andy Young
I know that government bureaucracy moves slow, especially if there’s not an urgency on it. I mean, you think how long the astronauts were stuck, stuck up in the ah you know international space station.
17:45.57
Tim
Yeah,
17:45.77
Andy Young
So how long have they been planning this?
17:49.68
Tim
yeah that’s true. yeah especially when they got stuck in their beat. What this year they were supposed to get come back, weren’t they?
17:56.13
Andy Young
Have they come back yet?
17:57.33
Tim
I don’t know. i’ mean and haven’t read anything about it, but and
17:59.33
Andy Young
Man, they say they’re fine. So that’s half the battle.
18:04.04
Tim
they said like six months or something.
18:07.12
Andy Young
Yeah.
18:08.41
Tim
We’ll get you one day.
18:10.86
Andy Young
We might get 4G up on the moon first, but we’ll get you. We’ll get you.
18:15.02
Tim
true.
18:17.03
Andy Young
Yeah, I mean, they they had to start thinking about this 10 years ago of getting cellular networks on the moon. Yeah. Who knows? It’s kind of crazy.
18:27.12
Tim
That is crazy.
18:27.37
Andy Young
Kind of crazy. yeah
18:31.45
Andy Young
Who knows? Well, anything as we wrap up…
18:35.93
Tim
Before wrap up, the the key takeaways for our small business listeners…
18:41.05
Andy Young
That’s a good point. Well, I’d say quantum computing. That’s going to be interesting. I mean, we already have AI. We’ve covered it a few other podcasts, but I think you get quantum computing involved in the AI and the artificial generic or general intelligence.
18:57.43
Andy Young
um Like that’s going to be wild. Once you get, that’s going to explode.
19:01.22
Tim
Yeah, it is.
19:04.50
Andy Young
um And I, as I get older, the more I realized like time is shrinking. Like, Like i said, you know, I used to think that that would never happen. But now I look around and it’s just shocking.
19:17.77
Andy Young
um So I think that’s… Keep an eye on that, man. Quantum computing, especially out in the cloud. That’s going to go nuts.
19:25.93
Tim
is going to be.
19:26.04
Andy Young
and Yeah. Makes you always want to invest in Microsoft and some quantum computing companies because…
19:37.66
Andy Young
Yeah. If it is even, you’re already on Robin Hood.
19:41.03
Tim
yeah
19:41.28
Andy Young
in yeah Because if it’s even like slightly real of what they’re saying, it’s going to go and insane.
19:50.44
Tim
right
19:51.58
Andy Young
Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s just’ going to be a game changer. I don’t know any other way to put it. Especially if we find a way to power it through nuclear fission, which has been… something that’s been popping up. I think a new record was just set on that in France. They ran it for like 20 some minutes.
20:08.74
Tim
oh yeah I heard how hot I got too that’s it’s pretty crazy Yeah, like 400 million degrees or 400. I can’t remember what it was something.
20:17.56
Andy Young
Yeah. That can create a lot out of steam.
20:20.12
Tim
That’s a lot of heat.
20:21.58
Andy Young
Yeah. When you think how small, how small could you get that then? ah You realistically could run your car and you could run your whole house.
20:33.47
Andy Young
You know, off of two grams of this stuff or even like two tenths of a gram of this stuff. Yeah.
20:41.10
Tim
Hopefully it doesn’t blow up though.
20:44.00
Andy Young
Yeah, if it melted down, that could be problematic. Yeah, that’s a lot of radiation.
20:47.91
Tim
you might have we might all have to go to the moon then
20:48.18
Andy Young
So who knows?
20:51.98
Andy Young
Hey, and it’s come full circle. It’s come full circle.
20:56.99
Tim
we found it there it is uh
20:59.00
Andy Young
It’s done. Bingo.
21:04.07
Andy Young
Oh, man. Well, I think that about does it for today, doesn’t it?
21:08.26
Tim
yep
21:11.41
Andy Young
All right, then.
21:12.92
Tim
Yep, that’s all of the episode. Join us next week for more practical tech insights for your businesses. so
21:18.78
Andy Young
Yeah, thanks for listening.
