Refresh Computers Tech Talk
Help and advice are given on a range of technical issues from computers to everything internet-related.
Refresh Computers Tech Talk
Let Your Browser Do The Clicking?
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Your web browser is about to get a lot more powerful and a lot more dangerous if you treat it like magic. Greg Rhodes and Adam Littlefield from the Refresh Computer Superstore unpack the rise of agentic AI in the browser: tools that don’t just show you webpages, but can click through them, fill out forms, compare prices, book appointments, and potentially even make purchases as if they were you.
We get practical about what this AI browser assistant can do well today, like grinding through repetitive shopping tasks, finding information faster, and cutting down the frustration of endless tabs. Then we hit the uncomfortable part: to work, an agent often needs access to the same things you already have open in your browser, including email, shopping accounts, and saved payment methods. Adam explains why “prompt injection” is a real cybersecurity concern, how a booby-trapped webpage can hijack an AI agent, and why supervision and strict boundaries are the new baseline for safe use.
From there we zoom out to the infrastructure powering all of this: data centers. We talk about why Central Florida and the broader state are becoming a hot spot, what new Florida rules mean for local control and public disclosure, and how massive power demand could impact the grid and future electricity costs. We close with a simple, high-impact anti-phishing habit: how to check a link before you click it on both phone and computer.
If you find this helpful, subscribe, share it with someone who clicks first and asks questions later, and leave a review so more people can stay safer online. What’s your take: would you trust your browser to “book it for you”?
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Welcome And Today’s Lineup
SPEAKER_00Hey there, and welcome to Tech Talk here on WDBO 1073FM and AM580 Orlando's News and Talk. I'm Greg Rhodes, sitting here with Adam Littlefield from the Refresh Computer Superstore. You can contact the Refresh Computer Superstore by calling their free tech support hotline at 407-478-8200. Or if you have a comment during the show, go ahead and use that open mic feature inside the WDBO app. You can also check out the website over at RefreshComputers.net or stop in at the Refresh Computer Superstore in Longwood at 820 East State Road 434, just three and a half miles east of I-4. Store hours are Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. until 7 p.m. And now for Adam Littlefield.
SPEAKER_01Well, thank you, Greg, and thank you, everybody, for tuning into this episode of Tech Talk with Refresh Computers. This is our Sunday edition of Tech Talk, so we've got a ton of different segments to talk about today. We're gonna be talking a lot about what your web browser can be doing for you. It's capable of a lot more than I really always thought about, and more than I think what I would trust. So we'll get a little bit into that. We'll also talk a little bit about some IT plans that we have available at Refresh Computers. Just uh talk about those. So if you're a business, I would definitely suggest tuning into that next segment. We're also gonna be talking about data centers and kind of why Florida, you know, we've been seeing them pop up more and more lately. That that'll be, I think, a really interesting one for us to get into. And at the end, we'll uh get another quick tip into you know how you can actually check a link before clicking on it. And that I think is gonna be an important one for a lot of our listeners.
What An Agentic AI Browser Is
SPEAKER_01So let me start off very broad with this one. I I've always been a big push for AI. I I always have been, and this is something that is a little new to me. It's something I have to play a little bit with before I can fully back it, but it is something that a lot of our browsers now are capable of doing or are being changed to be able to do it.
SPEAKER_00Whether you agreed to it or not, exactly.
SPEAKER_01So your web browser now they're integrating ways for it to be able to shop, book appointments, and click around for you. And I guess the biggest question in the air, and kind of I guess what I started this off with to feel like is should you let it do that? Right. So, you know, this isn't something I want to say is new specifically, but it is something that is finally being pushed to the masses. I've I've seen that this has been going through a lot of testing for a while, which is basically allowing a genic AIs to interact and use your web browser that just won't doesn't just show you website, but it actually will use them for you.
SPEAKER_00Now we've we've used the word agentic a few times. What exactly does agentic mean when it comes to these processes?
SPEAKER_01To put it in plain English, basically agenic AI means the AI can do almost anything that you're able to do. So your normal internet browser, it's a window to the internet. It shows you a page, and you, the user, you're doing the clicking. You click on the link here, you go and read this article, and you click back, go to this next link. That's what you do. A agenic browser is an assistant. You give it a goal, you tell it something to do, it does the clicking for you. So you tell it in plain language what you want it to do, and it will execute it through your browser, just like you, as a person were doing it yourself.
SPEAKER_00So think of agentic as like agent-like.
SPEAKER_01Right. Right. And the the easiest way I explain it is imagine you just told the computer, you know, you type in, find me a flight to Atlanta under $300 and book it. And you got up from your chair and you you let somebody sit down and just lightning fast can click through and load stuff and purchase you that ticket in a fraction of the time that you yourself would have been able to. You know, us as humans, we have a lot of preference that we end up taking, you know, what airline we want to fly on, what amenities might be there. And, you know, again, that that raises the the question to me is is that something that is taken into consideration when an agentic AI does something like booking a flight?
SPEAKER_00Right. How detailed can you actually get with this agentic AI to make sure it's again, preferences are there for a reason. It's because that's what you prefer. Yeah. I'm rather picky when it comes to booking things like hotels or even like uh rental cars, things like that. I don't necessarily want the very cheapest thing. I want the most expensive either. I want I want to figure out what exactly fits best within my budget, but also checks the most boxes for me.
SPEAKER_01Right. And you know, we have done some talking before about how AI is starting can start learning you as an individual. We've talked about that with Chat GPT, Grok, Claude. They can kind of remember some details about you so they can understand that, you know, that Mike over here is is six foot seven, and he probably wouldn't want a regular cram seat on an airliner. Maybe he wants the one with a little bit more leg room. With this Agenic AI, I don't believe it has the capability just yet to take something like that into consideration.
SPEAKER_00And especially when you consider a lot of those kind of what we're talking about with the these remembrances that the AI systems can have for you, a lot of those are getting more and more locked behind paywalls than what they were even just a couple of months ago. So that's something else to consider is if you're utilizing some of these free services through your browser as opposed to your paid for subscription that you might have.
SPEAKER_01Exactly right. You know, a lot of these services that can prov that can do this are now becoming monthly subscriptions. Almost feels like everything else in our lives now are becoming monthly subscriptions. You know, why not our assistant be like that as well? And, you know, the the way I kind of look at that is, you know, a lot of businesses, you know, a lot of uh CEOs, for example, they will hire an assistant that can manage a lot of stuff that an Agenic AI would be able to do. Could make appointments, could schedule appointments for you at places, book lunches. But again, the problem is the human factor, the personable factor as well, and the preference. Right. You know, it's I I have to do a little bit of playing, I think, to really be able to back something like this. But again, it does have its uses. Sure, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00And uh, I mean we're we're getting into some more of the niche aspects of this. This is supposed to kind of just be for like a quick check on a lot of these things, right? We're kind of getting into like the the weeds of it a little bit where eventually those uh those Tesla robots will be able to go pick up your dry cleaning for you as well. But I think that there's there's a big part of what AI seems to miss on is the nuance of a lot of these situations.
SPEAKER_01And you know, a lot of uh what I call that nuance because a lot of what I see for AI that's being applied to autonomous vehicles right now, they refer to it scenarios like that as edge cases. The basically the 0.1% possibility or the 1% possibility happening that AI that the AI may make the wrong decision. And something like this, there is a lot of preference, but you know, let me get a little bit into the useful stuff because there is, you know, some stuff I can think of that would be useful for this.
Helpful Uses Without The Hype
SPEAKER_01You know, it good example would be comparing prices, you know. If you've got an item that you want to just pay the best price for, you can go into the an Agenic browser, tell it to compare prices across, you know, five, ten different stuff uh stores. You could have it go through and fill out the same info, you know, on form after form. Simple things like that, digging an old receipt out of you know, maybe your your emails. All of these are useful ways to use this. And I'll tell you, a couple of these, me personally, I go to Grok or Gemini to do right now. Things like setting reminders, comparing prices. So to have it built into an to the browser instead of having to go to a website, I think that's something that could be gen genuinely useful. You know, a lot of a lot of the power of AI bots like Grok, Chat GPT, Claude, you know, just to name a few of them, like like Greg had mentioned, are behind paywalls. So it's interesting to me to to have the ability inside of your browser now built in. So let me get a little bit more into that as well. Um, you know, maybe you're someone that that just finds crawling the internet just frustrating. You know, you you don't want to click through seven, eight, ten, twenty different websites to try and find what you're looking for. An agenic AI in your browser may actually benefit you a lot for that sort of situation. Are there any situations you can think of, Greg, that you might use something like this?
SPEAKER_00Well, if I'm someone like our uh good friend Dave, who has 5,000 tabs open on my uh on my computer, it might be helpful to use something like this to find a specific tab. Things like that. I've I've also thought about if you're someone who's big into sports, it can very very much help you try and find some certain statistics and how to interpret those and things like that. I can see that being very helpful as well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and that's actually that's actually a really good point. I didn't even think about, you know, the sports angle that you could have on it. I'm sure this is something that may be able to help like stock traders even in the future. You know, talking about all of this, what it can do for you. Here's the part that kind of makes me a little reserved about it is when you have something that can do a lot of stuff like this, there's a lot of stuff it can do to you because there's a lot of information you have to give it, and you don't really know what it may be capable of to do this.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, not thinking just off the top of my head, our main focus on this has been something like shopping. Right. Well, if you're gonna let it buy tickets for you, it has to have access to your payment information, right?
SPEAKER_01And if it has payment to your payment information, you don't know if it's suddenly gonna mess up and buy a thousand rolls of triple ply toilet paper.
SPEAKER_00I didn't need to buy out the entire airplane. I just needed one ticket.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. You know, it is situations like that, and you know, let me let me put it in like a broad idea here. You know, on your computer, you're logged into things like your email, your bank, shopping accounts, all of those accounts that assistant will have access to. Almost like somebody that can sit in front of your computer. Whatever you have access to, they have access to. And through your browser, they are acting as you with all of your access.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, this with your permission. We mentioned agent-like, and uh, so imagine if you had that person sitting at your desk and you handed them your debit card to go pick up your dry cleaning, like I mentioned earlier. That's that's exactly what you're doing right now. It's just all virtual.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. And you know, there like always with technology, there are new scams and new things that are gonna be coming out that can actually cause a lot of problems with this sort of information access.
Prompt Injection And Other Threats
SPEAKER_01I know a brand new kind of attack is called a prompt injection. Basically, what that means is there's a booby-trapped webpage, it has just hidden instructions that can hijack the assistant. As the assistant's, you know, looking through that webpage to try and find information, it may find those instructions that hijack the entire assistant, tell it to do something you never even asked, and it'll, you know, like forwarding emails or making a purchase. And you may not even know it happened until it's too late. You know, AI thinks a lot faster than myself and a lot, a lot of people. Most humans, AI reacts and can do stuff faster than any human can. So giving it a lot of this access is a little uncomfortable to me. Right.
SPEAKER_00And especially like you mentioned, all of the new scams that we've been monitoring that have been coming out based around AI. So again, we're talking about how AI can help you in these situations. AI comes right back around and can be used on the other side of these situations as well. So, what are some really kind of tips that we can maybe use to kind of protect ourselves from these situations,
Safe Rules For Using AI Agents
SPEAKER_00too?
SPEAKER_01Well, the the best thing I would recommend is to supervise it. A lot of AI stuff right now is supervised. It's on the tag of some AI, it's not on the tag of others. But if you are interacting and using AI, don't walk away and just let it do its thing, you know, especially if it's an Agenic AI.
SPEAKER_00Watch the kids in the sandbox. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01Watch what's going on, watch what it's doing. Imagine it's it's like you're watching a new employee on their first day that you've kind of just let them take the reins. Let see what they're gonna do, see how they do it. I do know that some of these a well, not some of these, most of these Agenic AIs do allow you as well to jump in and stop whatever it is running. So if it's getting somewhere that you don't want it getting into or it starts going off the rails, that's a way to save yourself. Never turn it loose on your bank, your health records, anything that has to do with your money. Keep all of those out of its reach. You know, maybe set up an account specifically that is only for the AI spending, only give it funds of what you're comfortable of it possibly running away and losing. It's it is a chance. But also treat it like a sharp but kind of gullible intern. It it'll be very fast and helpful, but remember, you are still in charge, and there could be something on a website that tells it to go off the rails. I did see a uh a news story back on Thursday night that actually kind of made me think about it a little bit with Anthropic. I saw that several of their AI models had actually had breached, well, not breached, but left containment of their testing environment and independently accessed three organizations without anybody's knowledge at the time, you know. And something like that was nothing more than a miscon a misconfiguration that just allowed unintended internet access in their network. That's it. So if it's something small like that, that a large company like Anthropic can have an AI run away and and do that because it had access, kind of think about it before you let your Agenic AI, you know, start booking those appointments and and those hotel rooms for you. But again, if you are if it sounds like something you'd use, give it a try, supervise it, take some of the tips that I just said into effect so that way you can come kind of protect yourself. If you missed any of those as well, go to refreshcomputers.net, click on the podcast link, listen back to this first segment, listen um to the whole show because we've got a lot of other segments coming up. Um, I believe we're going to a break now. When we get back, we're gonna be getting a little bit into our uh managed IT services, what we do at Refresh Computers, and you know, if you're a business, I would suggest maybe listening in. This could uh very, very benefit you.
SPEAKER_00You've been listening to a Sunday edition of Tech Talk right here on WDBO 1073FM and AM580.
Refresh Plus For Home Computers
SPEAKER_00Welcome back to Tech Talk here on WDBO 1073FM and AM580, Orlando's news and talk. I'm Greg Rhodes here with Adam Littlefield of the Refresh Computer Superstore. And you can contact the Refresh Computer Superstore by calling their free tech support hotline at 407-478-8200. Or if you have a comment during the show, we'd love to hear it. Utilize that open mic feature inside the WDBO app. And now, back to Adam.
SPEAKER_01Well, thank you, Greg, and thank you, everybody, for listening to this Sunday edition of Tech Talk with Refresh Computers. If you missed any of our previous segment, we talked a lot about AI, how it's coming into your browser, what you may be able to do with it now. Go to refreshcomputers.net, click that podcast link in the top right corner, just listen back to the show. There was a lot of information we talked about there, a lot of good stuff that can be done for you, but there's also a lot of risks to consider. You know, computers nowadays it's kind of, I want to call it almost the Wild West. There's just a lot going on all the time. There's always new scams. And with this segment, actually, I'm gonna get a little bit into some programs that we run at Refresh Computers that can help you as a consumer or you as a business protect yourself a little bit, especially with all these changes going on. So let me get a little bit into the consumer program we have. It's called Refresh Plus. It's a uh a consumer level managed IT service. So, pretty much what that is is we we have a manager that we install to your system that'll let us just monitor the hardware and we'll get any notifications if there's any errors that are going on, if there's any hardware, like imminent failures that may be coming up. Some hardware does give errors that we do catch. We also do get reports about any viruses that may be caught. We do provide any virus with Refresh Plus. Another thing that we provide as well is uh three free remote sessions a year. Normally, our remote sessions are $50 per 30 minutes. So you'll get three of those 30-minute segments with Refresh Plus. I believe the signup cost for that is only $90 a year right now. So, you know, $50 per remote session, that's already gonna stack up to $150 value. And the nice thing with Refresh Plus is it also does give you access that if you ever had to bring your system in, you're put into our technician's priority queue. So if yours is comes in and they've got a queue of five or six other machines, yours is gonna be pushed right to the front of it. So as a consumer, you know, if this is something that interests you, give us a call. Our phone number is 407-478-8200. This is something that I've gotten set up on hundreds of our customers' computers now. And I I have not had a single complaint from any of our customers about this service. It's it is nice to really have an IT that you can personally call on when you're not at work.
SPEAKER_00Exactly.
Managed IT For Small Business
SPEAKER_00Now, let's say I am a small business owner, but I yeah, I'm so small that I can't really afford a my own IT group there on at my office or even within my building. Do you guys have an option for some managed IT for that as well?
SPEAKER_01We do, yes. We call it Refresh Managed IT. That is a uh sliding scale program. So the cost of it will really depend on how many systems you enroll to the program. That's something that you can always call and talk to our store manager Casper. He's a he'd be one of the best guys to talk to with about that. Our managed IT services handles everything that our consumer one was that I mentioned previously. Things like active monitoring, security updates, support, all of that. We do also offer a ransomware rollback feature as well as backups for additional cost. Again, depends on you know what amount of systems and storage. So the managed IT is a nice sliding scale for your business. And like Greg was saying, if you are a small business owner and don't really have the access to get a full managed, you know, like person in home or in office, managed IT from Refresh Computers, I think, is your NS best bet because we also do offer on-site visits with this program. Um, I believe that also does scale with the amount of machines you have, but we can provide on-site services with this, just like we do as our regular on-site services, but with this, they're included into the price.
SPEAKER_00And it's so key to have that on-site able to help you out in the moment IT, as opposed to some random 800 number. You can actually have somebody in your local area that'll come and take care of that service call for you.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. And if again, if you have any questions, give us a call. Our number is 407-478-8200. Ask for me, Adam, or our store manager, Casper, if you have any questions about Refresh Plus, the consumer level, or Managed IT, which is our business level. Um, I think we're going to another break here. So when we get back, we're gonna be talking about why uh Central Florida is becoming the next hot center for data centers.
SPEAKER_00You've been listening to Tech Talk right here on WDBO 1073FM and AM580.
Why Florida Is Getting Data Centers
SPEAKER_00Hey there and welcome to Tech Talk here on WDBO 1073FM and AM580, Orlando's News and Talk. I'm Greg Rhodes here with Adam Littlefield from the Refresh Computer Superstore. You can contact the Refresh Computer Superstore by calling their free tech support hotline at 407-478-8200. Or if you have a comment during the show, we'd love to hear it. Use that open mic feature inside the WDBO app. Don't forget to check out the website over at RefreshComputers.net, or you can always stop in at the Refresh Computer Superstore in Longwood at 820 East State Road 434, just three and a half miles east of I-4. Store hours are Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. until 7 p.m. And now back to Adam Littlefield.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Greg, and thank you, everybody, for tuning into this episode of Tech Talk with Refresh Computers right here on Sunday. I believe it's August 2nd. Can't believe it's already already August. Where did July go? I know. I didn't even I didn't even notice that yesterday was August 1st. It July went by so fast. So before we get into this segment, I do just want to give a quick mention that we are within our tax-free holiday season right now. So if you have a Windows 10 computer sitting around and it's not eligible for upgrade to Windows 11, check out our website, refreshcomputers.net. We've got our whole live inventory there that you can browse through. All of those machines that you see on the website are available in store as well. So if you want to see it, come by our store tomorrow. We open up at 9 a.m. And any of those devices we can go ahead and show you. And again, any purchases, any any units that are under $1,500 are gonna be tax free. So it there is no better time really to do that sort of upgrade right now, especially with school season coming back so soon. So, enough of that. Let's get into this segment. That I know we've talked a little bit about in the past, data centers. Nobody. So, data centers, just to give a quick rundown, just for any of our listeners who aren't really familiar with them, these enormous warehouse buildings, they're they're you know football field-sized buildings that are filled with computers. These large data centers are what are running a lot of our AI that we use. They also manage a lot of cloud services that are being utilized. So files that are stored in Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, all of those are stored in data centers. A lot of questions that you may ask AI or just anybody that's using AI, a lot of that is actually ran through a computer in a data center and sent back to your phone or your computer when you're interfacing with it. So why Florida? We actually had a new bill, a new Florida law, go into effect on July 1st that changed a lot of the regulations on these data centers. And you know, last week the lawmakers in Orlando were even debating how far to let it go. There's been a lot of changes on data centers, and Florida's kind of gotten the big target on its back now. It used to be the state of Virginia, believe it or not, that was being loaded up with data center after data center. And Virginia, I think, actually has so many of them now that I believe a quarter of that state's power grid is being used entirely for data centers. My goodness.
SPEAKER_00And I think that's why you've seen such a major push from a lot of these states that are getting proposed for these increases in AI data centers to increase their power output. You're seeing more applications and the re-interest into nuclear power. You're seeing some of the older plants actually being recommissioned, including right here in Central Florida. So it's uh definitely a process that's been changing some things when it comes to how our electricity is uh put together.
SPEAKER_01Right. And the unfortunate side effect, I would say, with AI is AI is only as good as how much computing power it has. And to get AI to where it is now, we have to have tons of data centers that are crunching tons and tons of information to get a lot of these AI as good as they are now. You know, we as humans have our brain, our own, you know, neural net, I'll call it, because that's what AIs run on our neural nets. Our brain is able to do all of that processing on board for everything we do in everyday life. So data centers are kind of that by a thousand. The power usage, the physical space usage specifically, are two of the main things that are kind of being stressed now with these data centers.
SPEAKER_00And that's what has made Florida so appealing to a lot of these data center programs, is because of the vast amounts of open land that we still currently have. Yeah. Even though we have seen that influx of building here in the state with people moving into Florida in record numbers over recent years, there are still a lot of undeveloped areas. There are. But those are becoming fewer and far between, especially when you start putting in these data centers.
SPEAKER_01Right. And you know, I I always made the jokes to my family that the beaches on Florida keep getting smaller because the the state is sinking, because we keep building on it. And I I don't want to say that these data centers make me feel that way, but they do just a little bit. A little bit. A little bit. Just a a hair, little bit. You know, these data centers, they they are helping our AI boom. And that's that's what we're in right now. We are in an AI boom. Some would say an AI bubble, but you can continue. Yeah, uh, you know, there are a couple names for it. I was gonna say the AI revolution because we are starting to see the transition of AI from just assistance to the physical side of it with uh robotics, autonomous vehicles. You know, I I know you and I were talking one of the breaks about Florida, uh not Florida, the United States, changing a lot of legislation for autonomous vehicles being introduced into the country. Right. So there is a lot of push for AI. And the problem is that part may hit your wallet.
Power Grid Stress And Your Bill
SPEAKER_01And that's the whole point of what this topic is about, because we all take our power off of the same grid. The power that is being used in this recording studio right now, the power that's being used in your home, the power that's being used in my home, there are power grids that we all feed from. The problem, too, is with having all these data centers coming in and just stressing all of our power grids, you know, it could mean that the cost of power may at some point go up from your utility provider. You know, these places use enormous amounts of power. And even just a single large one can use as much electricity as a small city right now.
SPEAKER_00And you've seen a lot of pushback from local municipalities, like you mentioned, including right here in Orange County and Orlando, but you're even seeing it from the national government. You're seeing recently the Trump administration pushing through that the additional costs of running these kinds of facilities will not be pushed back onto the consumer. Now, exactly how they're going to figure that out and change those around and manipulate that for the power companies is yet to be seen. But it's definitely, I bel I believe, a step in the right direction.
SPEAKER_01I believe it's a step in the right direction, too, but there's a part of me that can't stop thinking about it as electricity is a commodity. You know, it's something that there is a limited amount of that we as just a collection generate in our state, in our municipalities, everywhere. So the fact that there is, you know, that limited amount of production, these AI data centers are taking that up more and more and more. The thing that spooks me a little bit is I remember, oh man, I don't even remember how many years ago it was, there was a pretty bad snowstorm that hit Texas. And I actually I wouldn't say it was a pretty bad snowstorm. It was pretty bad because it really showed how easy it was to cripple the electric grid in Texas.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, especially specifically Texas, right? Just because of how unique the Texas power grid is compared to the rest of the United States. But they uh yeah, it was just a freeze, really, and it really took most of the state offline.
SPEAKER_01It did. And you know, the the way I'm looking at it is all of this generation of power that we have, I know that we will scale up and start generating more. But our infrastructure and our grid, I don't know what kind of stress that could or could not put on it.
SPEAKER_00And you're already seeing concerns about it with the ch with the increase in electric vehicles around the country. You're already seeing concerns from these power companies. Now you're going to add an additional major drain on that system. How exactly are they going to take those steps moving forward to upgrade the grid?
SPEAKER_01And that's that's I think just the million-dollar question that nobody has the answer to. Multi-billion dollar question. Probably is multi-billion dollar. And, you know, that's I think the the twofold part of this is that Florida is a very attractive place for a lot of these data centers to be coming to. You know, we here we have tons of land, we've got a business-friendly climate. Fiber connectivity has been growing exponentially across the state as well. And, you know, even there's there's the big players, the ones behind those services are scouting, and they're scouting hard where they can put their next data center. Florida's got pretty much everything they need to just plop it in like a Lego.
SPEAKER_00And we we mentioned some of these municipalities. Some of them have taken a bit of a stand against them, voting against allowing new AI data centers for at least a moratorium period for more review. But there are some other areas that honestly are desperate for the money and they need the money, they need the that influx into their in their into their communities, and their commissions are kind of pushing these through, whether the people are saying they want it or not.
New Rules Local Control Disclosure
SPEAKER_00Exactly.
SPEAKER_01Now, the new law I did mention that took effect July 1st, like uh you had mentioned, Greg, it aims to stop utilities from shifting that kind of price gouge, I guess I'll call it, off to the consumer. So myself, you, many of our dis uh many of our listeners. So, you know, your regular homes, your small businesses, you shouldn't have to pay more to power that operation just because there is a data center sitting in the backyard of that of that, you know, sit neighborhood or your business, wherever it may be. It it actually gives your local city and county some real say about, you know, the rules and if they can say yes or no to a development project like that. It also is going to require some public disclosure on the deals. So, you know, it's not like a lot of their agreements and deals can be made in the shadows, and just you watch a data center pop up overnight out of the blue. These are very large buildings, and you know, I'll give it, I'll give it some upsides. You know, these buildings that, like I said, they are they can be multiple football fields in size. So that's that's establishing construction jobs, you know, those are massive construction projects. There's tax revenue to be had from the construction, the property, and you know, just being part of modern tech economy instead of watching it pass by for a lot of these sys a lot of these companies. If they don't take the the leap, they're gonna get left behind as a as a business, you know, just viewing it as that if they don't push their data centers and just let somebody else roll with the ball, there's gonna be a lot of people, a lot of companies falling off.
SPEAKER_00Like you mentioned, there are a lot of incentives that are going out right now to try and promote the building of these AI data centers, especially from the national government. Again, I'll mention it again, the Trump administration, very much in favor of continuing the development of AI across the country, especially when it comes to the AI race against China, which we've constantly said as seemed to have taken a quick step up when it comes to AI development, and that a lot of that has to do with whether China's playing the game fair or not. But here in the United States, it is a concern of making sure that we're keeping up on the technology of AI here in the U.S. So we'll see if that continues as the focus of this moving forward.
SPEAKER_01Right. And you know, it's been a topic that, you know, myself and Dave and you, Greg, have all talked together about on the radio, is kind of the idea of how regulated a lot of this is going to be becoming. Because we do have the digital aspect of the actual AI agents that you can, you know, whatever you're gonna use it for, whatever regulations may come on that side. Now we're starting to see it on the hardware side too, where there are a lot of restrictions coming out that are keeping these data centers from, you know, like I said, being put in the back of your neighborhood or behind your business.
Data Centers In Space And Quantum
SPEAKER_01I do remember a while ago, Elon Musk talking about wanting to put data centers up in space. And, you know, I I think we're kind of at an injunction point where that may be the direction we may have to end up going.
SPEAKER_00And even someone like Elon Musk has gotten pushback on that kind of proposal from other people in the AI space, including Sam Altman, who said that he's insane for thinking that he can put data centers in space. So there's there's so many ideas on how to get there. And again, we we'll continue to talk about this here on Tech Talk because it's a AI isn't going anywhere, and neither is Tech Talk, so both are gonna keep on going. But I think that there's what we're I think what really is gonna be the big next step is what's the next phase when it comes to memory storage and memory processing, things like that. When when is it gonna take that next step down? If and if you get what my drift is. We went from so from hard disks to now solid state drives that hold multiple gigs. Those are still rather large blades when it comes to these data centers. Yeah. What's the next step that we're gonna be able to make those even smaller? Hopefully help with the some of these electricity problems and concerns and cooling issues that we have with these AI data centers. That'll be the next big step.
SPEAKER_01And you know, this is something that I've always kind of held close to heart that technology always is changing. There will always be something new coming out. And, you know, maybe, maybe it'll make Dave happy to hear me say this, but I think quantum computers may be the next step for that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we've talked about that a few times.
SPEAKER_01We've talked about that a few times, and you know, the computers running in data centers right now, a lot of them are conventional hardware like you know, our computers at home or larger, you know, server computers. So it's it's not like they're running anything foreign right now, but we may see quantum computing become the next logical step to really beef up the efficiency and what it's able to do and also what you know is gonna be built next in in this state.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. If you've been following with these AI data centers, what are your thoughts? Are you okay with the data with a data center maybe going in your backyard, or are you definitely one of those that are against it? Let us know. Use that open mic feature inside the WDBO app. Coming up next, we're gonna have our Windows tip of the Sunday. Yep. And one Saturday, we're gonna have a new one here for you on Sunday coming up right after the break. You've been listening to Tech Talk right here on WDBO 1073FM and AM580. I'm Greg Rhodes, sitting here with Adam Littlefield from the Refresh Computer Superstore. You can contact the Refresh Computer Superstore by calling their free tech support hotline, 407-478-8200. Also, don't forget to check out their website over at refreshcomputers.net. And now back to Adam.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Greg, and I want to say thank you to everybody who tuned into this episode today of Tech Talk with Refresh Computers. It's nice Sunday, and I'm happy to be here just giving just a bunch of information on the air. You know, we talked a lot about data centers today. We we talked a lot about Agenic AI browsers. A lot of foreign language being used with those, but we try to simplify it and just get it as easy to understand as possible. If there's any of that you missed, go to our website, refreshcomputers.net, click the podcast link, and listen back to this episode and any of our other episodes as well, because we've talked about tons and tons of stuff going back years, and it's kind of cool to see how everything kind of has progressed up to this point now. You know, we're talking about data centers in our own backyards and browsers being able to do stuff for us, you know. And data centers in space. And data centers in space. So again, listen to this podcast and while you're there, look at our our inventory. We have our full inventory of laptop and desktop computers there. We are in that tax-free holiday still. So check out the inventory and come by our store tomorrow on Monday if you have any questions, and we'll be happy to help you out. So for this segment, I'm just gonna be giving another little quick tip that we've been doing on all of our shows these past couple of months.
Check Links Before You Click
SPEAKER_01This one's actually how to check a link before you click on it. This is a big one that I've had a lot of my customers just having trouble with lately. You get a link in an email on your phone, and you don't really know what it's gonna be doing. And a lot of scammers actually count on that, so you don't know where it's gonna take you or what's gonna happen when you go to that link. A lot of times these links can download things in the background that you may not be aware of. They may redirect to a site that is not the one you're you're wanting to go to. There are a lot of redirect websites now that actually allow people to mask their link. So that's something just to be aware of. I know one of them that was a big name was like AdFly. It's still a name that's used today. So that's a name to be looking out for if you see that. I wouldn't suggest clicking on it because there's really no way to verify where that link goes until you clicked on it. And that's the problem, is when you click on it, it might already be too late. So if you're on your phone, all you have to do is press and hold on that link. Don't just tap it. When you hold your finger on it, uh a preview will actually pop up showing the real web address of where it's gonna lead to, you know, as long as it's not like a redirect link, like add fly, like I mentioned. If the text claims to be your bank and the the preview shows, you know, some random string of letters and a weird ending. That's that's probably your answer right there. Just probably not the real thing. Don't don't click on it. It'll probably take you somewhere to another scam that'll pretend to be your bank, and that's a whole other mess that you just don't want to get yourself wrapped into. On a computer, there are a couple way things you can do for this. You can rest your mouse pointer over the link. Don't click on it, but just put it over it. You'll see the mouse icon change and just leave it there. If you look in the uh bottom left or the bottom right corner, you should see a little gray line come up, and that'll actually tell you what the true destination is of that link, where it's going to be going to. And you know, you give it that same test as you do with the phone. Does the address match the company or business it claims to be? If not, you probably shouldn't click on it. Something that I've noticed as well is that sometimes that little pop-up does not come up in the corner. What I've done to check some links before is what you can do is hover your mouse over it and right-click it. And you can, there's an option that says copy link address. What I will do is I'll actually open a notepad and I'll just paste. I'll right-click in the notepad and I'll hit paste and I'll look at the website right there in that notepad. And if it's something I don't recognize, if it's something really weird, I don't go to it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Anything really weird? Yeah. Just in general, probably don't go to it.
SPEAKER_01Just don't go to it.
SPEAKER_00Go directly to your bank's website. Go directly to your whichever antivirus program that you already have installed on your computer. Just go directly to their website and see if it's actually something.
SPEAKER_01And you know, the golden rule of all, the main one of all, if you don't know, just don't click on the link. Yeah. Just don't click on it. You can give us a call, 407-478-8200. You can bring your computer by. We can take a look at it, try to see if it's something legitimate and kind of help out because in today's digital age, you just you don't know what's real and what isn't anymore. Um, so I think we're getting to the end of the show for this
Final Reminders And Sign-Off
SPEAKER_01weekend. Um, next weekend on Saturday, we'll be getting to you with uh some new hot topics. These'll these will be some fun ones next weekend. So this has been Adam Littlefield, and I look forward to uh speaking to you all again next week.
