One of the things that was top of my mind when Brad and I first spoke about launching Defrag was to get tech folks out of California; to highlight the fact that innovation occurs all over the place, while giving our California friends a chance to step out of the echo-chamber that is so often existing in the Bay Area and the Valley.
By all accounts, it worked and folks just “felt” differently when they were at Defrag.
This morning I awake to a NYT’s piece about how California is going to take control of people’s thermostats (in times of crisis). The piece actually kind of strikes me as something I expect to hear coming out of California, until I read this last little bit (quoting):
“Mr. Somsel, in an interview Thursday, said he had done further research and was concerned that the radio signal — or the Internet instructions that would be sent, in an emergency, from utilities’ central control stations to the broadcasters sending the FM signal — could be hacked into.
That is not possible, said Nicole Tam, a spokeswoman for P.G.& E. who works with the pilot program in Stockton. Radio pages ‘are encrypted and encoded,’ Ms. Tam said.”
“That is not possible”???!!! - I almost blew coffee through my nose when I read that. I mean, unless PG&E has surpassed certain government intelligence agencies in their encryption standards, it most certainly *is* possible. Not only that, but it presents one hell of a nice target (if you’re a bad guy), and the fact that she’s out there saying its not possible will almost inevitably be seen as a challenge by some (we all know that).
Wow.
I guess I *really* wouldn’t want to be running a California-based data center if this all comes to pass…
