Is the Job Market cooked in 2026
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HD: Do it now. Watching the textual talk. AC the talk.

All right, y'all let me know if y'all can hear me. Y'all can let me know. You can hear me. Welcome back to episode 2 0 6 of the Textual Talk, your boy HD in the building, and we got cyber shorty here. Hey y'all. And let's switch to the wild view real quick for the people. Um, yeah, to me, if y'all like this view or not, uh, we working well, we got, I don't really care for it that much.

I don't know why I can't get it the way I wanted to, but, um, but yeah, man, first things first. Uh, if you in the video hit like hit subscribe, share it out so we can get people in here watching meet us in the comments. We love a comment. But I think what I really want to talk about real quick is can you show everybody your book and we can, you guys, I wrote a book.

Destini: I wrote a book. I wrote a book. I wrote a book. I wrote a book. I wrote a book. I wrote a book. I wrote a book by the book, [00:01:00] by the book. Just for the people who weren't here last time. Give them like a quick one liner or three liners, however you, ooh, however long you wanna talk about the book. Go ahead. Okay.

So the book is, if you are into urban fiction, street literature, romance, thriller, suspense tech, this is the book for you. It details a story of a woman who met someone, um, and they hit it off. They had really, really great chemistry. And then she finds out that this person turns out to be a fraud. So she blocks them and this person isn't able to handle it.

And so they start stalking her. And I do mean stalking. And so I kind of talk about it a little bit from a technical perspective. It's kind of light there, but it is very, very entertaining. So if you're a reader, if you're interested in tech, if you want to learn more, if you like cyber shorty, um, this is gonna be a great read for you.

So definitely check me out. It is available for purchase right now, [00:02:00] pre-release available right now. So go by your copy, meet me in the comments, send me a review, send me a dm. I love, love, love, love, love, love, love. Love feedback about my writing, my books, my characters. So if you have something that's top of mind, absolutely share it with me.

HD: Bet. And she doesn't even know this, but what we're gonna end up doing is I'm gonna make a form and we're probably gonna do a giveaway and you guys gonna have to write some or submit some or while you want to want the book, and we're gonna buy some books and support the Good Sister. Ah, I love that. So, um, outside of that, yes, you on, you on your Ward tour, um, what you been up to since the last time they saw you?

Destini: I've been outside y'all. I'm not gonna lie, I've been outside. I've been having a good time because I finally finished the book. The book has been boggling down every piece of strength and miss mental capacity that I've had this year. And so I, you know, kind of submitting it, everything looking good, it being approved, um, has definitely sent me into a world [00:03:00] tour.

So I've definitely been on tour. I'm, I'm making my final stop tonight, so if you see me tin tonight is ai. But it's been a great, great weekend. I can't complain. I've been having a good time. I've been, um, you know, working on my landing page, working on my website, working on some other stuff that I'll be sharing out as well.

But I've just been enjoying the fact that the book is done. Finally, I have not been in the gym. I've not been meal prepping properly. I've not been sleeping well. Nothing has been going well because the book was kind of top priority. But now that that's done, I can kind of jump back into, you know, everything that I've been focused on.

HD: That's good. That's good, man. Hang on, let me, um, let me drop my baby her, her drop she did for us real quick. Go ahead. Hold on. You were now watching the test. Will talk ac and silent shorty and gimme some gunshots real quick, my girl.

But um, yeah, I had to give some gunshots. [00:04:00] Uh, you know what I'm saying? Get my Joe button on. But for me, I think I was telling you that, um, I wanted to talk about something hilarious. I got connected with this young man who was trying to get into the cyber industry and we briefly talked last week and he was telling me how he went to some event and it was a hired event and he pretty much had got like a verbal offer for the role.

Now, the whole time, I never knew what the role was or how much it paid. He got back to me today, the role. I'm not going to display his name actually, matter of fact, so we can get a, a real reaction. I'm going to actually show her the message real quick. I'm not gonna show y'all 'cause I don't wanna put 'em out here, but let's see if y'all laugh at her reaction to this.

Let me see. Gimme a second, y'all. You know, we like to do stuff in real time. I'm good for a reaction too. Okay. So I'm gonna tell you exactly how I feel. You ain't never gotta guess that. Okay? Read the part. Just start where it says today. You only gotta read it out loud. You can just read it to yourself. Or [00:05:00] actually, you know what, read it for the audience, um, today.

Destini: I don't see today. You don't see today. It's inside in your face. Oh, today, the other date they sent the offer, I requested to schedule a call to discuss the offer. How much is it? They sent it on Friday and I only had until today to respond. No. Reloc relocation package and salary is below market salary for the row 40 5K with bonuses.

But bonuses weren't specifically specified in the contract. No other packages were mentioned. What's the job title? Junior Cyber Hero. And what do I say right after that? What the hell is a hero now? I actually found the job title to that. So let me, I ain't never heard of that. Is it a junior? Hang on, lemme send you the screenshot of what it, what they have it under.

HD: So this is the screenshot that it's under on their, on their website. Like click, click. No, just just look at it. Yeah. So you can tell that it's a fuge chart. [00:06:00] Why don't they, why they don't just say that exactly. And he said what he wanted to get paid and I was like, honestly, I wouldn't probably take the job.

Uh, like look at the, look at the position overview and tell me if that says you're a cyber hero.

Destini: No. We don't, we don't, we don't need revamped, um, job titles. We just need to be clear on what folks are doing so that they know exactly what they're doing and they know how they can potentially pivot moving forward. I don't like the idea of that because this is the gag. If I go work, if I go apply at a whatever company and they see Junior Cyber Hero on my resume, nobody's ever heard of that role before.

HD: They haven't. And I'm gonna read to them the job, the position overview. So Company X Cyber Hero role is a fantastic role to start your cybersecurity career. Our junior [00:07:00] cyber heroes are responsible for, but not living it to updating and maintaining applications within client environments, building test environments, diagnosing and troubleshooting issues, help desk support, hardware support, supporting our sales team and customer calls, other duties as identified and assigned.

This is not a cybersecurity role. I can a hundred percent tell you that this would be a bait and switch where you think you're gonna be making test environments and all that. So you're gonna be taking calls, doing help desk stuff, which ain't nothing wrong with Help desk, but just call it Help desk. It's a finesse in the title 1000% because it's listed under support on the company's website.

Destini: But think about this though, as someone who is trying to find a role, you see that you gonna be like, Ooh, what's this? But that's not a real job title, but he already has experience, so it's not like he's a person. Yeah, so exactly. So he not starving for No. Well, he might be open to work, but I was like, I wouldn't relocate for 1 45.

K. Open and starving are two different things. In 2010, you probably could have relocated for 40 5K, but not in 2026. [00:08:00] Nah, I'm not even going to pretend like that's okay. Um, but while we are here, did you want to start with, actually, you know what? Go with the North Koreans, if you can pull that up. Um hmm. I said that I picked that.

HD: No, I'm just saying are you, did you only do it for me? Yes. Was that one of yours? Yeah. Well remember I told you that uh, y'all listen to this discussions in real time, but remember I told you it's really like topics, like there really aren't more like solo kind of like topics just because, um, yeah, I don't think I have that.

It's cool. Let me find it. I got it though. Over here. Okay. I'll do it real quick. And the only reason I'm starting with this is because shadow it and everything else is still like so big. So, uh, it's not gonna go nowhere either. I'll start with it. Uh, let's go. Let's get it. Americas went to prison for helping North Korea steal American Jobs and Secrets.

Two New Jersey residents. I wanna say [00:09:00] Isha Aja, Tony Wang, or is that Wong? Hmm. 42 And zinging. Danny Wong. So Tony and Danny. That's they American names, but they real names is the first ones I said. 39. Were sentenced this month by a federal judge in Massachusetts to nine years and nearly eight years in prison, respectively.

They pleaded guilty to their roles in the scheme that placed North Korean IT workers in remote jobs in more than a hundred American companies, many of them Fortune 500 corporations, and at least won a US defense contractor. The scheme ran from approximately 2021 to October, 2024. These two Americans were the facilitators, the infrastructure that made the whole operation function on US soil.

So how did this scheme actually work? The operation used stolen identities of at least 80 American citizens to pass employment background checks forward social security cards, fake California driver's licenses with photos of the North Korean operatives. False employment forms [00:10:00] submitted to the Department of Homeland Security doctor tax documents sent to the IRS and Social Security Administration and they was dedicated.

Destini: They were down for the get down. They was, they were dedicated. The companies would agree to hire someone for remote work and ship that person company equipment. Kija Wong and his network of facilitators, at least five in this scheme alone, will receive that equipment and operate hundreds of laptops simultaneously in what we are called laptop forms.

HD: North Korean operatives would then remotely connect to those devices and do the jobs all from an American IP address looking like a legitimate US based employee. Now I'm looking through the story and nowhere through the story right now did they say that these people, 'cause typically when you get this new laptop.

You have your orientation, you have to show your face for at least a couple of days and talk to your manager and everybody else. So nowhere did it say that they had to get on there and talk to these people. But let's keep on going. The skiing generated over [00:11:00] $5 million in salary payments to North Korea, the victim companies, and cured at least 3 million illegal fees and computer remediation costs.

One defense contractor had ITAR controlled data. What's that? International traffic and orange regulations.

Destini: Ah, okay. Oh my God. Jesus.

HD: Sorry, y'all. She's all bug. She don't do bugs at all. Okay, so the scheme generated over 5 million salary payments in North Korea to North Korea. The victim companies incured at least $3 million in legal fees and computer remediation costs. One defense contractor had ITAR controlled data, international trafficking arms regulations, exfiltrated by a North Korean operative who gained access through this channel.

This is bigger than these two men, the sentencing of [00:12:00] Wong and Wong. It's supposed to be. Tony and Juan, oh don't know. Brings a number of Americans convicted for aiding North Korea's IT worker scheme to at least seven since 2025, including a former active duty US Army soldier, a nail technician from Maryland, and a woman who cared for 90 laptops in her home while helping North Korean secure jobs.

At 309 different companies generating $17.1 million. Eight other defendants indicted in June, 2025 remain at large. The State Department is offering up to $5 million for information on them. North Korean IT workers have reportedly embedded themselves in some subcontractor networks specifically to reach larger corporate and government targets.

Researchers note these identities once established, keep working even after a facilitator's call or stops participating for hiring managers and HR teams. The FBI has issued specific red flags. Tech workers who push back on video calls, claim camera issues, share inconsistent background details, asked to use their own equipment [00:13:00] instead of company issued devices or route payments through multiple third party accounts.

The DOJ has recommended multi-factor authentication for onboarding, live video verification, and IP address verification. During the hiring process. North Korea is funding nuclear weapons development with American salaries. The people who made that possible weren't foreign adversaries sneaking across the border.

They were right in your backyard in New Jersey, running laptop forms and apartments. One had a background check firm shell companies in a direct line to. I don't even know how to say that. P-Y-O-N-G-Y-N-G-Y yang, I guess nine years in prison and eight more are still out there. This is an active, ongoing operation and the US corporate hiring ecosystem is still the target.

What you think about that? I think it's rough out here. Being an American, it just is, it's just, it's just a lot going on. Um, it's just a lot going on. It's a lot of things that are not still figured out. It's a lot of things that are [00:14:00] kind of in the gray area, in the gray space. So I think for us it's just, it's kind of a sticky situation.

Yeah, I agree. Um, but I just think they weren't doing their due diligence. Agreed. Because BYOB did become a thing. Well, not BOB bring your own device. BYOD. Yeah. Bring your own device became a thing. Normally in a pandemic thing times. But that's something that you have to be careful of. A lot of times, in my experience, the companies that let me use my own device, I only was using their stuff pretty much through Citrix.

Mm-hmm. Like I would start a V VPN client and you'll be on Citrix. So that's a lot of times what companies do If it's like, bring your own device and using Citrix as your thing actually kind of sucks. I'd just rather a physical laptop. Yeah. But, or, or make people use a virtual desktop. Yeah. You know, there's, there, there are.

Destini: But I'm saying it's the same thing. Yeah. I mean, but if you're not gonna put. Appropriate [00:15:00] or adequate protect. It's not enough to just be like, yeah, we let our employees use their own devices if you don't have controls in place to secure said devices. So I think now the flaw with using, because a lot of it's gonna be like session based, browser based, you know, instead of, because you don't have control over the, but I think now if you let somebody bring their own device and even if they're using Citrix, they use all the a ID fake technologies to make them look like whoever the person who identity they have.

HD: And so that's when you gotta hit 'em with that, you know, trust this or whatever. And you do have other solutions that will verify you right now today, just 'cause we felt like it, you know? So I think that might be, and I don't, I mean if you're, I don't wanna get all into that, but I guess like if you're a US citizen, maybe you don't have to do those type of things.

Destini: Um, you still do. So like even for us, like we have like, we're technically passwordless, but not all the way password list, but it was password list m ffa. Mm-hmm. So a lot of times if we seeing something [00:16:00] unusual or where you at, we kind of put, got detections in for looking for like, whether it's a hardware KVM device or a software KVM, we trying to look for that for this very reason.

Yeah. Um, two, we check locations and everything. So most people who are on our network, they have to have our identity service on the company issue machine. And so that'll let us know, are you, wherever you say you are or it's gotta be on your company, provided, uh, phone. And that's how we looked that up. So once you kind of go through the real logs and check all that stuff and make sure, the other thing is, um, making sure whatever tool you use there, geo, uh, what's it called?

HD: Not geopolitical, but uh, geo IP stuff, making sure it's like multiple sources. I feel like that because like I've ran into issues where, like in Splunk, a detection made, it's using a, uh, IP lookup and it's using, uh, what is it? Domain tools, domain tools. It's technically right, but it's telling you like, um, hey, this, um, person is [00:17:00] in Hong Kong, but really as one of our employees that works like overseas and they connect to like our VPN's data center that's close to over there.

Over there, over there. So technically they're not doing that malicious, but it's showing up as Hong Kong, but the other places is not showing up that and it's saying, Hey, this is a so and so ip. Uh, so there's a lot of different things they can do from a de detection standpoint and the onboarding standpoint, I think that, I definitely do think this comes with like HR and all the other stuff and just not being so willy-nilly, uh, to do that.

So in the beginning, hey, if you can't be on the call, okay, cool, well cancel the access. 'cause we need to know who you are on day one. If you're not gonna be on there, cancel the access. So, yeah. And, and you're fired right, today, but what did you have? So, um, I wanna talk about some hot technology. So DJI dropped.

Destini: The Osmo Pocket four on April 16th. It has a one inch CMA sensor, [00:18:00] 4K at 250, 240 frames per second. 170 gigs of built-in storage, 14 stops of dynamic range. It has a 10 bit D log for cinematic color, upgraded active track 7.0 subject tracking. Basically, if you are a creator, this is what you have been drooling over wanting, desiring, and so on.

Um, but the twist is that the us, if you're in the US, US buyers, we cannot purchase it. Now let's talk a little bit more about that. So, DJ I is currently on the fccs covered list. They were placed there on December 22nd, 2025 under the National Defense Authorization Act. That designation blocked new equipment authorizations for DJI products in the us.

The Osmo pocket for unfortunately missed the cutoff window and without FCC authorization. As we know, the FCC does not play. They cannot legally sell [00:19:00] those devices here in the US and I mean, not on their website, not on, um, BNH, Amazon Best Buy. They cannot sell that device anywhere. And so DJI in response is suing the FCC in the ninth circuit.

And that case is still unresolved until something changes. The pocket four is locked out of the US market. Um, I have the Pocket three, and I knew it was coming out because they had too many cells. When they put a sale on a piece of technology, that's how you know that something else is coming out. Last summer, when they put all of the sales on the, the meta glasses, that's when I knew that there were gonna be more meta glasses coming out.

People are not putting sales on their products for no reason. Um, but anyways, the Pocket three is still authorized, obviously, and widely used. It's still an amazing tool, but this does set a precedent. The best DDJI products going forward, wait, may not actually have the ability to reach us, creators, [00:20:00] consumers at all.

Um, so I just think about this from the intersectionality. Is that a word, intersection of, um, you just, just kind of thinking about geo geopolitics, um, creator culture, national security, those things are both very real. Um, when I saw it, 'cause I bought my, I actually just got my DJI like maybe two months ago, not even two months ago, somewhere in that timeframe.

And literally I started seeing ads for the four on TikTok like a month after I bought it. Then I like looked it up and they were like, yeah, it's here, but you can't buy it in the us. So I mean, if you can't buy it here, then I don't feel like I'm missing out because everybody here is kind of working with the same available tool set.

But I do think it's crazy that the government told us creators that you're not getting that new dj I [00:21:00] what you think? Uh, yeah man. I mean, think about it. We can't get the cool what the, what the things called those cool Chinese vehicles. Yeah. Or the phones. Yeah. We can't get 'em. 'cause of course they put like the one that goes like and stuff on there.

HD: But what, what, talking about that phones, is it like a trifold or something? Yeah. Yep, yep, yep. And it literally folds into like three. But uh, yeah, we can't get none of that cool stuff. It's, it's like Huawei. Oh you talking about Huawei? Huawei, they had a big, it was a big thing about like that surveillance and all the stuff that was going in there and um, honestly though, if they was a, so DGI and everybody else, they bring what you call good competition.

A lot of these companies in the US don't want that competition. So they're gonna pay top dollar and lobby to keep them out 1000%. Like um, I was listening to um, the dump piss me off Morning show and um, 2K and Black TV was talking about. I know you don't really play games like that [00:22:00] however, but the fellas in the chat will give me, don't do me.

Destini: I've been playing a little bit of, uh, you weren't playing no Madden. Never played. Exactly. So I know you're familiar with 2K basketball. Yeah. So there before, um, that they had 2K football. Mm-hmm. And 2K football used to compete with Madden. It was actually better than Madden 2K football. What teams was on there?

I'm thinking the same teams as what? So, so for example, so, uh, for NFL teams, so NBA 2K, it's all the NBA teams. Yeah. Just like NBA live. So NBA live was the EA version. So EA makes Madden. Here it is. So two companies, 2K, ea, ah, ea is Madden, NBA live and 2K was the football. And I wanna say, but everybody, so is there a differentiation in people like, I want 2K versus I want, because I don't, I only know people who want 2K.

I ain't never heard nobody say they want Madden and I never, well, back in the time, certain times, NBA live was good. Yeah, 2K football was good, but they had a short stint 'cause Madden went through and bought the [00:23:00] rights. So that's why they were able to continue to keep on making Madden and 2K got stalled out.

HD: But I don't know when that runs out. So two K's done, just not the, not the basketball portion. I remember 2K 16 was a big deal. The football, the football Madden? No, no, no. The 2K football. Oh, it was called 2K Football. It was called, actually let me be actually, uh, lemme see. I think it was called ESPN, y'all.

Destini: I don't know nothing about no football by, yeah, so it was called, um, yeah, ESPN 2K five. Yeah. Mm-hmm. NFL 2K. So yeah, they had 2K in their name, just like how they do now, just to have it in their name. 'cause that's their branding. Not that it is even relevant. No, it's relevant. What's the 2K, the picture? It's relevant.

HD: Oh, they could, the deal in 2025. Everything. They had better graphics and everything. That's what I'm saying, the quality. It was, it was a, it was a good game. Yeah. So they selling me in a, um, in a thing, uh, right now about it. But, um, shout out to everybody that's in here. We got, we got 60 people in here between Twitter and YouTube, so y'all know what the dude hit the like button.

Actually, I don't even gotta see it. [00:24:00] Y'all know what I'm finna do real quick, bro? Man, what's up, man? Eh, bru man. Need love too.

Yeah. So Bru man. Need love textual talking to Need Love two. Now, funny that you were talking about the DGI, we was talking about technology and stuff like that. That made me want to talk about, uh, this right here. Uh, where's this video file? It's kind of funny. It's like one of them things where people are very pretentious about it.

Where is it? Here we go. A little bit of laid back stuff for the view. Wait, what? You're not gonna talk to me because I got an Android. Yeah. You made, made a poor life decision. It was like I'm the one that's messing with the group chat. Yeah. I'm the one I can't FaceTime. I'm gonna have to go to WhatsApp or I figure out another way to talk to you and things like that.

tiktok: After the third or fourth chick told me I was whack, 'cause I had an Android, [00:25:00] I went and got an apple. That bubble went green. Kind of blew up when that bubble went green. They was like ew. Yeah. Like a green bubble was like, ew. Oh no. You have a Samsung. Yikes. If you wanna date a baddie, she wants photos, she wants videos, wants phone.

You can't send me, but can't receive those photos. Well and so they blur. You have an iPhone. All our tech guys, we got a lot of men watching this. All our tech guys. You want a badie? Go ahead and get that iPhone. You got two phones? Our homie got two phones. I got two phones now. Yeah, so you can still have your Android, you know, but go ahead and get your iPhone, that FaceTime.

Can I um, girl with the only fatigues is definitely a bird. Why can't I tag people? How was I able to tag people in the comments last time? Um, do it from your computer. Oh, this ain't the computer. I ain't logged into YouTube on here. Are you not? No. Uh, but yeah, girl in the fatigues was a, uh, was a bird. But if you really got it like that and you talking to a baddie, you'll get her to download WhatsApp.

HD: I'm gonna send it to you on Messenger. I'm happy. Download a many of [00:26:00] different apps. Back in the days when Apple did not want to enable RCS messaging because they wanted to have a hold on the messaging point. Relax. As an apple, you know how I know as an Apple user, you know how we know Apple's Petty. I need you to relax.

You know how we know Apple's Petty? Tell me. 'cause Apple actually could change that. They could make all the texts come in blue with RCS. We don't want to, you know why? Because you're all poor. No, I'm just kidding. But no, it's just funny. It's just a relax guys. I'm just kidding. Apple. And they PSYOPs, they made people feel superior because they were literally just doing the same thing you would do on any other platform with iMessage.

That's literally all it is. Somebody said the worst take ever. That that's literally all it is. I, I don't, I'm not bringing this laptop anymore. Just don't, don't even worry about it. I'm, you can just, no, I'm gonna bring my regular laptop. Is that phone logged into YouTube? Yes. This one is, well just go on YouTube and scan the QR code and log in that way.

Destini: I can't remember my password. You don't have to. Okay. If you scan it with the QR code, you [00:27:00] just log in easily. But, um, hold on. Wait is not, what does it mean? Wait, is it not? What does that mean? Wait, is it not? I don't know what that means. Uh, wait, what do I do? Where do I go? Hang on. If you have a DGI drone, you know, there isn't an American company half on par, also Samsung greater than Apple.

HD: Uh, so you know what, I have both. So look, I have the S 26 Ultra and I have an iPhone. So I have both too. I think they're better at different things. Oh, blue. But RCS no, they're, they're still green. They're, they're still green. When you text an an iPhone user, they're still green because it's, they just wanna show somebody that you're not using iMessage.

But the whole time Apple got bullied into implementing RCS because the eu, anytime the EU say the EU is not playing when it come to not playing games, the EU is never playing. EU made them implement that. They said, Hey, y'all gonna have to get all your phones [00:28:00] USBC because Apple would, apple would do any little thing to make you only buy they stuff like Auto Lightning cables was trash.

Everybody else had USBC for years. But they, but they, but they got put on. They got put on, they got put on, they definitely got put on, give it to her share.

Um, they got put on. Yeah. But they always bullied them into doing everything. Just like, I'm surprised we don't have our version of GDPR yet, but why can't we, in the US say we don't need 72 different chargers? Why can't we say this is, that's the whole PU piece. I know, but the, we're only following it because GD not really every other Apple.

Destini: Apple is only following because of GDPR. Lemme tell you why, uh, every other, um, technology provider had USBC. For example, my old, uh, MacBook Pro, I had A-U-S-B-C charger. Mm-hmm. Now it was went back to their own like magnetic Yeah. Certain charger. I hate it. But everything had USBC. Apple just finds a way, Hey, [00:29:00] we want you to buy our cables.

No, that's what I'm saying. I'm agreeing with you. But they can't do that no more. That is why the, the, the outlets of the la latest phone are all consistent. That's why on this new MacBook, it's only two, but you only got two. It's only, it's only two. USBs. Speaking of, this actually is a good segue. How has, how have you been joining your Neo since you first debuted on the show?

Don't put me on the air like that. 'cause I ain't even play with around with it. 'cause I've been using my other laptop, um, my ACEs, so I have an ACEs and I have um, uh, my MacBook. I love, love, love, love, love my MacBook down, but I don't have time when I was writing a book for the learning curve, copy paste this, that, it just, I'm, I'm used to using Word and, and pages and yes, you can get word on a MacBook, but it's different and you still have to know what you're doing.

So I really, [00:30:00] really, really am in a place where I need to play around with my MacBook a lot more. I have, I'm not able to say I've done A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and it's been better. I do like that. For example, if we in, in the studio and we sending each other links or whatever it may be, we can send it and it's just here, like the, the, what is the word?

Not usability. The continuity, the that, and the, just the ease of things just being here because we know we use our phone so much. So if I use my phone and I can use the same device that I'm already taking pictures, videos, whatever content it is, it just makes it a lot easier for everything to be in, stored in one house.

But like, I'm still very fresh, so ask me next time I should make some more. 'cause the book's done so I can play around a little bit more now. Got it. Yeah. I seen the but the sound 10 outta 10. Yeah. I saw in the comment somebody, uh, comment at the attack on Titan t-shirt. Y'all know what's funny? Attack on Titan is probably like the one anime.

HD: I believe that I could watch anime and I never have to watch. [00:31:00] Really? It's awful. No, it's very good. That's good. I just don't care for it. Mm-hmm. Uh, I think, well the ending gave me, if it took a long time to give me a twist, like I'm a person, I recognize patterns too much. I want you to confuse me and surprise me.

So if whenever I'm not surprised, I'm kind of let down. Mm-hmm. I don't want, I don't like to, you don't anticipate everything on what's gonna happen. Yeah. So the best writers to me can get throw me for a curve ball or they set something up in the pass and like, oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Hostile takeover. Got you.

Destini: Don't worry about it. So that's what happened there. Okay. Hostile takeover. Got you. We got you. We gonna have to make a, uh, we got you covered. We have to make a web series out of it. We're gonna have to find some actors. You know. I can, I can, I can act, I can be a charact. Oh, so you gonna be like Issa ray?

Yeah. Has she? No, I'm on it. I'm on it. No, for real. No, I'm. I was about to cuss, you know, I cussing. That's cool. No, I don't cuss that much online. Let you tell it.

HD: So, oh [00:32:00] yeah, this for you. Okay. How to pass the SE 200 test question for cyber shorty. Oh no, that's not what he said. He said cyber shouty. Here we go. What is the secret? Um, the secret is you have to know your tools. That is the honest truth. The SE 900 is very fundamental. The SE 200 is absolutely not, um, fundamental at all.

Destini: So you need to understand the different technologies. You need to understand the different blades, the different limitations and capabilities of the tools. 'cause I believe the 200 covers Sentinel Defender for cloud and purview, if I'm not mistaken. Um, please fact, check me in the comments if I'm wrong there.

Um, but you need to get in and start poking around and playing around with these tools and seeing what the limitations are. If it asks you a question, if you're a user and you're trying to do A, B, C, D, can you do it? Those are the type of questions you're gonna get. But believe it or not, the 200 is hard.

The 100 is even harder than the 200. So I commend you [00:33:00] for, you know, wanting to embark. Do, do you already have the 900? I I got the breakdown right here if you want me to read it. Yeah, go ahead. Uh, so the Microsoft SE 200 exam security operations analyst focus on detecting, investigating and remediating threats.

HD: Using Microsoft Technologies with an emphasis on Microsoft Sentinel, Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Microsoft Defender. XDR Oh XDR. Not purview, my bad, y'all. It tests practical skills in KQL, automated response and threat hunting. And they do mean that they, when they will ask you questions about KQL queries on the actual exam itself, like literally.

Destini: So you, you have to get in and play around with different things. Mm-hmm. If you are, um, there's a, a Microsoft, you can find a Microsoft Ninja training for every tool they have. So XDR, there should be a, there should be a a, a ninja training, um, Sentinel and Defender for cloud. There are ninja trainings for those.

Do those, and I promise you you'll be in great shape for [00:34:00] the exam. But that is my advice, is to actually get in those tools and start clicking around and messing around with things instead of kind of trying to base it off of theory or like the top of your head. You need to know where to go and nip the thing is actually possible that the user wants to do.

HD: Yeah, and I'm just gonna break it down since this whole AI breakdown gives a good breakdown. Core Top is coverage on the SC 200 mitigate threats using the vendor for cloud. That's gonna be 25 to 30% of the exam. So configuring security policies enable workload protections, server databases, containers, and managing regulatory compliance.

The next one will be mitigate threats using Microsoft Defender XDR. That's gonna be 25 to 30% of the exam, managing incidents and alerts across Defender for Endpoint Office 365 identity and cloud apps. This includes creating and managing automation rules, mitigate threats using Microsoft Signal. That'll be 40 to 45%.

Creating workspace analytics, connecting data sources, six log, CEF, APIs, creating custom re languages, queries for detection and [00:35:00] building hunting queries. And then last will be security operation tasks using advanced hunting, analyzing threat intel and managing automated investigation and response capabilities.

So to me, I would make a lab out of it. Yeah. To me, 1000%, me as a person who is, even though I have the tools I'm biased on, I've worked in many different environments where I haven't always had the same tool. I had the foundation in knowing what I'm using What for? In this scenario though, you definitely would wanna make sure you play around with all these different Microsoft tools.

Destini: You have to, you can't focus in on one A good, it's gonna ask you about every, it's gonna ask you about those three tools. It's not gonna lean to the left. For one, it's gonna ask you about all three. Yeah. So you have to know them comfortably enough. Yeah. So a good, um, way you could start off doing this is Josh Madakor has a lab he put out about three, four years ago where you're using Microsoft Sentinel and you are creating a VM instance and you're gonna take the firewall off and you're gonna log everything.

HD: It's in your signal instance, [00:36:00] like start off there so you can kind of get familiar with using Sentinel and using KQL. And then that'll just give you something, build off of all the while doing the exam and that'll help you out. Um. And let's answer a question from Jacqueline real quick. Jacqueline said 34 years old trying to live up my income.

Destini: I think we're frozen hd. Um, oh, I see us back moving. But somebody did just say we're frozen. I mean that's probably be expected. I mean we we're streaming so uh, L freeze from time to time. Probably global management degree, heavy technical sales support background. Should I get Network Plus or A-C-C-N-A for my first cert?

HD: I think you're asking yourself the wrong question. You need to figure out what do you want to do. I was gonna say the same thing, which is hard to figure out when you don't know what's out there. Uh, so I would try to do my research, get your calls in with certain professionals that could, uh, direct you somewhere.

Um, you if you have sales support background, you know, there are different roles that could be a little bit more technical in sales. Like have you thought about doing like sales engineering or you [00:37:00] can be like a security advisor, et cetera, et cetera. There are other stuff, but I wouldn't focus so much, at least not even like on those two certifications, right?

Because just getting them ain't gonna mean nothing when everybody is pretty much studying for like two, three weeks. Network plus to me, actually is harder to take plus and you're sure not gonna get CCC NA super fast, but just studying for them, it'll help you get a concept of just throwing some networking, but it's not going probably be the thing that gets you a job maybe that you want to do, especially from having a sales background.

I know you definitely don't wanna start from zero. You are a person that does have some high income transferable skills and now you need to figure out how to link them. To a road that lines up with that versus me just telling you a generic, oh, start at help desk. I only tell people that, that, you know, you may be coming from retail or you don't have any high income skills, like just start at zero.

You don't have to start at zero.

Okay. So yeah, they already gave us some, uh, some good feedback in the, um, chat. So, uh, [00:38:00] thank you for that. Now, um, what you got for us? I thought you had, I thought you had the next one unless you wanted to go ahead and talk about, uh, was it Microsoft Teams and the, the Snow malware I got No, that's yours. Hmm?

Destini: That's yours. No, I'm saying I can go ahead and do that if you want to go. If you didn't wanna go, if you wanna, yeah, you go. Okay. Let me put it back on me real quick. So another time is Hackers pretend to be IT and Microsoft Teams targeting your executives. And before I get into this, I wanted to actually look up and let me see, why are hackers able to abuse Microsoft Teams versus Slack?

HD: Lemme see something.

I wanna see what we get from Google. Lemme [00:39:00] see. Hackers are able to abuse Microsoft teams more frequently and effectively than Slack, primarily due to its open default federation settings. Deep integration into enterprise ecosystem and massive user base, which makes it a high value target for social engineering.

While Slack is also targeted, Microsoft teams open by default policy enables external attackers to impersonate internal employees or IT staff more easily. Okay. That's kind of what I was thinking 'cause yeah, like Slack also take a little bit of money to kind of like go behind and want to use as well too.

So that's one of the things you probably run into while, uh, trying to use Slack. But let's go to the story. Google Threat Intelligence group and Mandy, it just disclosed a campaign from a threat group there calling UC 6 6 9 2 newly identified previously undocumented and a playbook they're using is worth every IT and security person paying close attention to this right now the attack starts with email bombing.

So the target inbox get flooded with spam hundreds of emails in a short window specifically to create confusion and urgency. Then while the target is [00:40:00] overwhelmed, they receive a message on Microsoft teams from what appears to be an IT help desk employee offering to help them with an email situation.

The message looks internal, it comes with assist of legitimacy. The victim accepts the chat. Now this is interesting because this is a scenario of you causing a problem and trying to fix it. They do that all the time, like back in the day you get them scareware, Hey, uh, your IP was just made public. Call this number right here so we can help you out with it.

Like, that's what this is given to me. So the Snow Malware Suite, once the target engages, they're directed to click a link framed as a patch to stop the email spam. But here's the thing. If you actually on a work computer, just call it. But I will say this as an employee, the first thing that I do when I start is get help desk number.

Destini: I swear to you because there have been so many times that I've had an issue, and if you can't get into your device, you can't do [00:41:00] anything. You, if you don't have your manager's phone number and you can't get into your device, what are you gonna do? Exactly. The first thing that I do, and I have so many help desks, I'm about to show hd how many, how many help desk numbers I got stored in my phone from previous employers, because I swear to you, if, if something happens, how you gonna get in?

HD: Yeah. Um, I just think it's crazy that like, I wanna, uh, did in the, did in the article, did it show how the messages looked? That they sent them? Okay. Pla plus employers, let me see. I think it's right here. Let me see if it actually had the picture of what the, the messages look like, because that's pretty interesting to me.

Okay. So they don't have it. So I, I don't know really know how you fall for that. But, um, going back here real quick. So when they engaged, they directed to click a link frame as a patch to start the email spam. What they're actually installing is a dropper that execute a suite of custom malware called Snow.

It's three different components working together. See, my, I [00:42:00] thought they was talking about ServiceNow. That's why it really intrigued me. I'm like. People using teams to do stuff for ServiceNow because for short we call ServiceNow Snow. Mm-hmm. Why? Um, ServiceNow? Why? 'cause I'm thinking Snowflake when I hear that.

Because you got, so it's normally spelled like this service and then NOW is capitalized. So you say snow instead of saying ServiceNow. So Snow Belt is a malicious chrome browser extension that masquerades as a MS heartbeat or a system heartbeat. It establishes persistence through Windows startup folder and scheduled tasks, and it runs through a headless Microsoft Edge process that operates solidly in the background.

Snow Glaze a tunneler that has malicious network traffic by wrapping it in Base 64 encoded JSON sent over web sockets to monitoring tools. It looks like normal encrypted web traffic. And the last one is snow basin. A backdoor that enables reconnaissance lateral movement and data X field after getting in UNC 6 6 9 2 moons to the domain controllers using FTK imager to pull the active directory [00:43:00] database and registry hives and exo traces, everything used in the file sync tool called our clone, they use line wire as a fallback remote access channel to ensure line wire.

I thought they was dead. Me too. To ensure persistence even if the initial artifacts are detected and removed. So who they're targeting between March 1st and April 1st, 2026. 77% of observed incidents targeted senior level employees up from 59% in the prior comparable period. This is the deliberate escalation.

Upmarket executives have broader access, more valuable credentials, and often receive less security awareness training than frontline employees because of their seniority. Microsoft has noted the external chat warning that appears when the teams message comes from outside your organization, that warning exists.

The attack works anyway because the social engineering creates enough context that the victims dismiss it. So what should organizations do? External Microsoft team is just requesting remote access or asking you to click. Links should be verified through a known internal [00:44:00] channel before any action is taken.

Full stop, no exceptions based on urgency, and it help desk that flush your inbox and then contacts you on teams is a red flag, not a coincidence. This is a tactic directly connected to former black Basta wrestler affiliate playbooks. The group shut down, but the methods are very much still in use. So they didn't break any software.

They broke the trust that we place in internal tools. Teams feel safe because it's inside the organization. That feeling of safety is exactly what they're exploiting. The attack is sophisticated, not because of the malware. It's sophisticated because it weaponizes your belief that your company's own tools are secure environments.

They're not, not when external communications are enabled. That was the A clock. A clock, the T right there. That last part. That last line. Because as an employee, why is it not? Why? Why? Why would I not trust it? You know? Yeah. But so, but, but you have to train and teach your employees that you can never really trust.

Destini: Anything? Well, yes, zero trust. Yeah. But I think [00:45:00] also this is why security awareness should be updated to be better because bro, let's talk about it. They're not people. The threats are advancing and they're not updating the training. They're not do, tell me in the comments right now, has you, have you noticed that your employer has increased your end user training?

Are you doing the trainer training one time a year? Are you doing it twice a year? Are you receiving phishing attack simulations? Do you know how to report the messages? Phishing? Do you know what generative AI is? Has your employer taught you how to not upload sensitive data into these tools? What is happening with the end user training?

It's non-existent. Alright, I had fun with the gunshots, but, um, but no that, like, think about it like typically internally, an internal IT person is going to probably send you an email and call you too. Two, when what you're clicking on, you're gonna have access to like, Hey, can you gimme access to this?

HD: They don't use, um, like [00:46:00] typical, regular accounts to do anything remote. Nine outta 10, there's gonna be a ticket connected to everything they're doing. And it might look very un, it might look, it should look nine times outta 10. It should look different from what one of your coworkers would look like if you were to ping them.

Destini: You might see the organization or the job title or whatever it should look like. This is not one of my teammates. It should look a bit different. But I guess if it's internal and it's, it, it still might, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. How the, how you can look and it tell you who this person is that is contacting you or trying to communicate with you.

HD: Yeah. And I also want to probably, probably go back on this, like whenever I clip it up, I'm gonna try to find some more insight on like, okay, because in teams I can click on your profile to see what your exactly, uh, email address is exactly. So I definitely would say, okay, who's this person? If you're not sure who they are?

'cause it's like, hold on, I wish I, you know what I need. You don't find that suspicious. I need that. I need that sound because you need that sound because I don't have it. [00:47:00] Uh, but you need to figure out, okay, who is this person? Yeah, you can go see. And then the other thing too, if it's external, that's like a red flag right there.

But unless your job, I, I mean, most teams should show you the hierarchy of who they report to. No, I'm saying, unless you might even still see the hierarchy and have questions. I'm just saying if they're, um, like an external partner that's being brought in, it might not match the naming condi, uh, the naming condition or the organization name that you're used to seeing.

Yeah. Nah, for real. But, um, if anybody ever dealt with that, like I definitely would love to have them on. 'cause I think that'd be pretty, pretty interesting. Uh, let's see what the chat is saying. Lemme see. I get the training, but what I do is skip to the quiz, screenshot every answer, and mark what was wrong and change the answer on the next try.

Pretty much.

Lemme see. Too many people skip through trainings, especially the HR harassment and discrimination gear, at least facts [00:48:00] external shows is unknown for our MS teams org. That's good. That's pretty good. You definitely shouldn't be talking to anybody that's unknown, uh, in your environment. Yep, yep, yep. All right.

Destini: My go. Okay. Check marks supply chain attack when the security tool is the threat. So Check Marks is a security company. Their job is to make tools that help developers find vulnerabilities in their code. One of those tools is called kicks, keeping infrastructure as code secure, and it has been downloaded over 5 million times from Docker Hub.

A threat group called Team PCP has now compromised check marks for the second time in a single month. Let's talk about the timeline. So on March 23rd, this is when the first compromise occurred. Team PCP injected malicious payloads into two check marks. GitHub action workflows in two [00:49:00] vs. Code extensions via the open VSX marketplace check marks identified and patched within hours.

April 22nd. Second hit threat actors pushed malicious docker images directly into check mark's, official kicks repository on Docker hub. Overriding legitimate version tags, check mark's, official kicks repository on Docker hub, overriding legitimate version tags. They also introduced a fake version tag, version 2.1 0.21, version 2.1, 0.21.

That didn't exist in any other release. Also, on April 22nd, the attack spread further to bit Warden CLI, version 2026 4.0 was compromised through the same GitHub action actions vector. Bit Warden has over 10 million users in 50,000 businesses on this platform. The version was live [00:50:00] on NPM for roughly 90 minutes before it was actually pulled.

90 minutes. It's a long time. That's a long time. Oh my God. Okay, so what the malware actually did, the modified KCS binary generated in uncensored scan report. It then encrypted that report and sent it to an attacker controlled server. So why that is particularly devastating is because developers use kick specifically to scan infrastructure files, files that contain cloud credentials.

SSH keys, tokens in secrets. The malware didn't still random data, obviously it stole data, um, that it knew was going to be there. It also targeted AI coding tool configuration. So think clock. Cursor Codex, CLI and others. It spread by injecting into their CI CD pipelines using stolen GitHub tokens. It even had a self propagating mechanism to infect other NPM packages.

The victim had access, um, to [00:51:00] publish. So one expert described it as, and I'm paraphrasing one developer. Once a developer with the compromise bit word and CLI installed it, they could become the entry point for a broader compromise across every CI cd pipeline their token could reach. So what you should do if this happened to you, if you pull kicks from Docker hub recently, treat it as a credential exposure event.

Rotate your GitHub tokens, your cloud credentials, your SSH keys, and your CICD secrets. Check your GitHub activity for any unfamiliar repositories, especially ones with dune themed naming like, um, guesser Melange and move to Penn. The unified versions of any GitHub actions you rely on bloating references are how the attack was able to actually propagate another supply supply chain attack.

Yikes. Some, some of like the very important part for me, I had to step away very quickly, [00:52:00] but this was like super sophisticated though. Um, uh, this is a very sophisticated supply chain attack. It's not really, you know, they just broke in. They actually poisoned. All of the tools that somebody can use to break in.

And that is the bigger issue there. So when you think about the things that we trust, trust is like literally the backbone of our security strategy these days. And identities are just really important to make sure that you have them secured. So if you're starting out, make sure you're familiar with policies and users and things of that sort, because identity is always a great stepping stone to build upon.

HD: Yeah. Funny enough, ironic. You know, I told you, I said outta the blue, I got bored and say, you know, I'm gonna get SE 900. You did. You did. And I think I just passed a module where he was talking about identities and stuff, this stuff, and it's, it's, it's very foundational. Yeah. Yeah. That's what people, I'll probably, I think I directed somebody else.

They should get it too. Just 'cause it does. I think it's, um, like while, like they do have [00:53:00] like all cloud providers have there, you know, the practitioner Yeah. A Z 900 and you have, I forgot what the GCP joints is. I don't think they have like a, and I could be wrong, but I don't think a Ws got like a foundational security joint.

I know they got the security like a, like a AZ Yeah. Yeah. With a, what is it? No, it's the SE 900. That's the foundational or ac a any 900 is foundational. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I know, I think theirs is a security specialty, but I don't think they have a, a foundational one. But I said I would, I would say though, if you wanna get the SC 900, which is the security and compliance, you have to get the AZ 901st.

Destini: It does not make sense for you to get the SC 900 and you don't understand Azure. True. You have to understand like some of the cloud because that's gonna teach you just cloud fundamentals, period. Yeah. So that's just my advice. That's just my advice. Yeah. Um, so I actually want to get into the namesake of like, kind of like what inspired the thumbnail.

Yeah. [00:54:00] Hey y'all let us on the chat. How do y'all like the thumbnail? Like I'm really buying into using AI to make our, I'm with our thumbnails. I tell him every time, plug it right into a tool and pick it up, flip it and put it in reverse. Uh, what's what, uh, what Miss, uh, Missy Elliot say it's your Remedy brand.

HD: Yeah, that's what I thought about. Um, so like, I saw this article and it was like the golden era tech industry is dead. Leaving. Lemme see if we are be able a scene on the screen real quick. Okay. No, we're not. Let me do it the way we need to do it first. There we go.

Let's see. The golden era of the tech industry is dead. Lemme put it back on me.

On February 10th, 2025 at 7:32 AM the dreaded email hit my inbox after nearly six years at Meta as a content strategist, one total company rebrand and three previous mass layoffs. I got the ax, my time was bound to [00:55:00] come. I opened Joke darkly that I was a cat with only so many lies left. In six weeks, I was scheduled for a 30 day sabbatical to add insult to injury.

The company announced the layoffs were due to low performance. Despite years of glowing performance reviews in which I received high praise from my peers and managers, and the numerous messages of support from colleagues and still felt like being kicked to the curb and being caught a loser.

I went on the offensive and drafted the obligatory LinkedIn post, announcing my layoff and saying how very disappointed I was, how I planned to recharge, and yes, I was looking for work, so wouldn't everyone pretty pleased keep me in mind for open roles Outwardly, I kept it rosy. Inwardly. I was fuming. It was a humiliating, this is a first for me, and I thought I'd seen it all.

Harassing a former boss to pay months of back wages while recovering from brains. Whoa, only to be laid off. Anyway, it's a [00:56:00] formative experience. I had more than a decade of experience in my field and a big tech pedigree that had reli open doors for me. I was confident I'll find work again. I always had, now I'm stopping right here because the role they're in, I think it said content strategist, a person like that should have already started working on their own personal brand on a, a YouTube or TikTok or something else because.

That's where they probably was gonna make their own freelance money at versus relying on companies because companies are trying to strategize their content with tools like Claude and everything else now. So they don't, they don't think they have a use for you. Meanwhile, it's just certain stuff that you have that you can't teach.

The 2010s, a early 2020s, but the golden era tech, aggressive hiring, generous salaries and flowing perks to find the industry. Gourmet Mills, LASIK stipend, free therapy. The years since have been a never ending blood bath more than 1.2. 1.2 million people have been laid off in tech since 2022. According to true up io, [00:57:00] because these are only the publicly reported layoffs.

The number could be higher. Recruiters used to message me weekly, sometimes daily. A few years ago, the options were copious, the outlook, optimistic and after enduring so much job insecurity. Early on in my career, I thought I had made it in the past year though, I applied to at least a hundred roles for which I was a excellent fit.

A hundred in the past year. You ain't applying enough. A hundred. Yeah. One zero. Zero. That's a third in a year. That means you did apply a third of the days of the year because it's 365 days. But, but to some people that might sound shocking. Y'all. That's not, that's not a big number. Exactly. That's not a big number at all.

Destini: It is a, it is a little number. If on the days that he a ized, he just did two, he would up the number to 200. Exactly. Uh, I've secured referrals use to customize my resume and cover letter, which one survey is showing only overwhelmingly and slowing down hiring thanks to nothing Gemini. Openly shed on social media and simply persisted.[00:58:00]

HD: I'm a journalist and a writer by trade, so I refocus on nurturing my craft. Last year I wrote in publish of children's book, I started pitching to publications again and picked up activities that proverbially filled my cup. I learned pottery, organized community events, fundraise for mutual aid and started on neglecting home projects.

I even finished some of them some days I'm entertained. The idea of opening a business laundromats are apparently low risk, high success ventures. I agreed to Boring businesses make a lot of money. Thank you. Car washes, laundromats, vacuums, anything people always need are always good to do. But that requires more time and energy than I'm willing to sacrifice while raising a young child and entertaining my dreams about, okay, I think I'm, that made me wanna stop it 'cause I'm like, your dreams go to the wayside when you got a child.

Like do what you gotta do to take care of your child. Talking about being a star potter. But my job prospects have been bleak. I've interviewed for three full-time roles and one fixed term contract role in more than a year. I've never felt so unemployable. My story isn't unique. Tech workers across the industry are struggling to regain employment in their fields [00:59:00] despite relentless searching, experiencing burnout on top of unemployment.

People like me once heavily recruited and flushed with career choices now can't catch a break. The applications go unanswered. The layoffs keep mounting and we clamor over the few jobs left, wondering whether we've overstayed the party in Silicon Valley. I applied to hundreds of rows over several months.

But the process with considering me slow and led nowhere, technical recruiter, a capta a, yeah, ain't that cap? There we go. A cap. Who asked that? Her full name not be disclosed, told me Kaia was laid off in March, 2024 and has held two shortly. Roles since supporting herself through paid content creation aside jobs like dog sitting.

As a recruiter, I know how competitive things are in this job market. Hundreds, if not thousands of applicants for one job and hiring has become slow. Knowing this made it so hard for me to stay optimistic. Alright, I'm not finna buy the rest of this article 'cause let me go, let me eat, let me cook. Hang on, hang on, hang on.

Jimmy Cooks. Here you go. All right. [01:00:00] If you struggling right with, with trying to break into this industry and you've been trying and maybe you've been applying to a hundred jobs a year, um, maybe you need to get up with a career coach, may, you know, maybe you need to get with someone who has a little bit more experience than you.

Destini: Um, this is not a pitch for myself because I am absolutely not your career coach. I'm your author. Not yet. However, um, HD can absolutely provide you with these services. So if you are looking to break in and it's just not been working out with you, trying, you know, your methods, your madness, your way, I just think that it's so important for you to get with somebody who already is kind of experienced and they know what the field is looking for.

A good career coach is actively aware. Of what interviews look like today themselves. They're actively aware of, um, you know, how to become better and what it looks like to reflect on a past interview. Um, and so I just truly believe that if if it's not working with you, then maybe you need to [01:01:00] bring somebody else in to give you a little bit more assistance, a little bit more perspective, a little bit more advice, a little bit more in insight.

Um, there. So that's just my personal opinion. If I was trying to break in, in 2026 and I had no help and I had nobody able to, you know, kind of help me understand what's going on, I would reach out to someone that I felt like did. But don't just reach out to anybody though. Yeah. While I, I told y'all who to reach out to, and while I being on the topic of AI and people using AI to apply, I had a consultation with a guy this week and he was talking about how he was using AI to whatever tool he was using, and he was making a resumes and it was like supposed to be at s Friendly and all that.

HD: And the resume was to me, kind of lackluster, uh, just because, like, I can actually show it to you, but can you explain like how to the untrained eye, an AI driven resume might appear better than what you had, but just [01:02:00] because it was better than what you had doesn't mean it's good. It just means it was better than what you had.

Yeah, it's um, it was really because if you don't know how to make a resume. Putting it in a AI generator thing is not gonna help you 'cause you don't know how to prompt it to get whatever results you want mm-hmm. Out of the resume. And if you're not familiar with what a decent resume looks like, you're not gonna know how to do that either.

Um, so that's typically what I see out of a lot of people when I see them using those resume tools. Ah, man, I wish I could like x this thing out. Let see if I can show on my, my phone real quick. But, uh, it, it read like, it was kind of like achievements, but it kind of read like a job description a little bit.

So I was just like, Hmm, you don't got no metrics on here. It's not really showing your value. Right. Individually. And I was like, I think your strategy is off what you're applying to. Because a lot of times what I do now is I will leverage AI in a consultation 'cause I know how to prompt it to show, [01:03:00] uh, what the person may be missing out on or what they need.

And it, nine outta 10 always agrees with a couple of roles with me. Mm-hmm. And I think they were more of a fit for like sales engineer, uh, something doing something like a technical, uh, project manager or something else and they just kept on doing the Spraying Pray method. It wasn't working and I was like, yeah.

And I was telling them about, we didn't really get a chance to even dive into that LinkedIn because I tell people so many times on how Pivotal LinkedIn has helped me be able to get interviews, not even just from InMails, like, uh, clock, uh, literally just reaching out to people. Mm-hmm. And they know what I post about.

They watch the content. So I've already established my personal brand. No facts. So when I'm only telling you on the call, Hey, post more, establish your brand. I don't want you to be a cons creator, but people need to know who you are. So if you're trying to get a referral, like the days will like, Hey, can you just refer me?

I seen y'all's hiring. If I go to your page and you and you a standup guy, a standup woman, you talking, talking that talk you posting what you're doing. Yeah, exactly. [01:04:00] But also just the other things in the article about being laid off. I definitely felt him on that. Like the other thing that people aren't seeing in the quiet part out loud, and we know this and this is why people aren't industry, even though we get laid off, we tend to kind of bounce back.

We've known for most of the time, from day one that our jobs require us to keep on improving 1000%. And technology is changing. So it's making us, okay, now let me learn how to, uh, secure ai. Ai. No. And, and I don't think that if you're not used to working in a career where, um, you have to continuously educate yourself, I don't mean once a year.

Destini: No, the technology is changing month over month. That is why they have product managers, right? So they can keep building out the tools. So you have to be aware and able to grow with that, with that tool set. Whatever tool set it may be month over month, year over year, if you can start out when a product is fresh, you won.

HD: Yeah. If you can start. [01:05:00] Playing around with the tool as it first comes out, you won because you, you know, everything there is to know about that tool before it becomes, oh it used to do this, this and this. Now it doesn't. Instead it does this, this, and this. Um, and so these are things that you won't know if you're not in the field.

Destini: If you don't know anybody in the field, these are things that you just won't know. Yeah, for sure. And um, lastly, he talking about being a star potter. I'm like, come on. Like grow up a star Potter. Yeah, Potter. Like P-O-T-T-R. What does that mean? Like somebody doing pottery. Oh, I guess known for your pottery.

HD: But I'm like, you know, grow up. You got a kid, you got a kid. I didn't hear you say, you know, I went and worked at the gas station or I did, you know, Hey you, let's talk about that. Let's talk about it. The people that are losing or leaving their tech jobs are sometimes too humble to go accept a job because they feel like it needs to be this, you know, it needs to be up here to this, help me, help me with the words.

Destini: It needs to be status. Yes. It needs to be appeared to this [01:06:00] status. I feel like I need to be at this stature. I won't go take a job at McDonald's. I won't go take a job at at Kroger. I won't go take a job at Walmart at Sam's Club. 'cause I feel like I'm too good 'cause I feel like I need a tech job instead of going to go take a job to pay the bills.

And now you can't pay your rent, your mortgage, your car note your car insurance. And now you are on LinkedIn telling everybody you about to lose everything. 'cause you didn't wanna accept the job that was beneath you. Yeah. They've been saying for years, winter, the humble don't stumble baby. They've been saying for years, winter is coming.

HD: So, um, but while we are actually here, let's get into some more fun stuff of, um, like the degree meals and all those different things we've been talking about. People finishing school super fast, whatever. So we gonna let my girl Khadija talk about the degree males real quick, heartedly believe that degree males are adding to the anti-intellectual conversation and crisis in which we're seeing.

tiktok: [01:07:00] Again, earning a doctorate degree in one year is absolutely insane, especially when we're speaking about whether becoming a practitioner or a researcher. The labor and time that it takes to formulate your research question and then go through committees and comps, there's no way that you could do that in 12 months.

Additionally, the fast tracking, um, the expert needs to stop. There is this commitment to time on purpose, and you cannot try to shortcut every single thing. That is when harm and error starts to happen. No, that I think she was flexible. Oh, I hate people who wanna shortcut everything. Oh. It like, I don't even wanna affiliate with them, keep them type people away from me [01:08:00] because they don't know anything about hard work and they don't value it because they never had to do it because they've cut every freaking corner possible.

HD: Yeah. I think it's just, um, I, I saw like a lot of different things online. They were talking about the, the Capellas. They wasn't actually, they weren't talking about WGU before y'all think. Oh my gosh. Yeah. But before I had to clarify that. 'cause every time somebody talks about a degree you could finish super fast or whatever.

People get their Penn in a bunch of things. We talking about WGU and it's not always WGU. It was, um, it was like a lot of different things I saw, like where they were talking about all these degree meals where like they accept probably like 99% of the people and uh, it's a lot of women and like how it's just really making the level of the degree go down.

Destini: It is 1000% AI is too as well. I mean, we can save that for another day. Yeah. Because we can go sick in that topic. And that's, and that's where I forgot that article came. I wanna say like last week actually while I was like streaming and people were finishing that coursework like super fast. And so the thing is, [01:09:00] is this coursework that you need for your role or is it just, 'cause I was just gonna say some of it you don't need for your role.

HD: Yeah. 'cause I did that webinar and I was talking about how. I don't like that when I go to school, I gotta take all these classes I just took in high school again. Give me the stuff I'm gonna need to know to do my job. History, art, British Lit, English Lit. Mm-hmm. I don't need none of that stuff no more.

Gimme the stuff that's gonna be relevant to me at work. Give me, uh, a corporate etiquette class. Give me another corporate email class. Gimme a resume building class. But see they have those but they don't be hitting the same 'cause it, it is always some people that's like used to making resumes 30 years ago where they got you putting your address on a resume.

They absolutely were making resumes 30 years ago. They, they was mailing them. That's why people addresses on it. One, they was mailing them 1000%. The best thing that a new a university right now could do for that class is to hire a, a modern day career coach. They can hire Right C in that field. Come on, Leander.

Yeah. They can hire right. C [01:10:00] So if y'all need that work with Right. C in your university. Yeah. They really have helped. Uh, a lot of graduates, uh, get roles, uh, just based on the analytics that they can get from job applications and everything else. But, um, but yeah, I think so that's the conundrum. Like do they seem to work as valuable as what they're doing and is it is actually valuable or just some BS to pay tenure to some professors who only need to teach the kids that want to go into English and stuff like that.

Because truth be told, we've probably seen the decline in the humanities because of how technology has changed everything. I can't give a true thought on that because everything that I consume is really tech focused for the most part. So you think so? Yeah. I consume a lot of different stuff. My stuff is mostly tech stuff.

Destini: People that are in school. Okay. I don't know a lot of other folks in other genres. I said genres, right? That's not a good word. Let's see. Um, and then, so this other one I thought about was the whole degree de blade, right? And then so she was [01:11:00] talking about, uh, degrees in class. People think degrees are signals of skill, but increasingly they're really becoming signals of class.

tiktok: And that's a much more uncomfortable conversation to have, I think, because yes, degrees still represent knowledge, but they also kind of like represent something else. They represent time, they represent money, they represent stability, they represent support. Think of like what it actually takes to finish a degree.

You need financial ability to stay enrolled. You need enough stability in your life to show up consistently. You need access to guidance, whether that's professors, advisors, or parents who understand the system. Um, students whose parents went to college already know how to navigate office hours and internships and networking and you know, course selection.

I am a college professor. My daughter will be equipped with lots of knowledge when she goes to college, if she goes to college. Other students are trying to figure all of that out from scratch. [01:12:00] So when you see someone with a degree, you're not just seeing intelligence or skill. You're seeing that they had enough structure around them.

To persist through the system that kind of like quietly rewards people who already understand it. That doesn't mean degrees don't matter as somebody with multiple degrees, right? Um, absolutely they do. But we need to stop pretending that they are pure measures of merit because they're just not. The reality is that a degree signals not just what you know, but the conditions you had access to while learning all of that stuff.

HD: I agree. And if we, if we go into the class thing, let's talk about how you've rank, uh, you know, the, the esteem degrees you got your, your lawyers, your, your doctors, um, you know, your, your engineers. Um, then you get like the people with the super cool molecular microbiologists type stuff, and then you get into the, um, esteem universities or top [01:13:00] 50.

Then you got your, your Ivy Leagues and all this different stuff where people do use it as a class thing. This goes back into when people arguing last year about money in class and how, like they're not tied to each other, but most of the time they kind of are, I'm, I'm gonna say if I know that somebody got a doctorate degree, I am 1000% sure not going to assume that they are low income.

Destini: I'm not, it's not necessarily that I'm going to assume that they're. You know, at the highest income level, but I'm gonna assume that they're spending some money to invest in their education. Um, so I can, I can absolutely see the correlation in the relationship between degree and quote unquote class. And if that's all you have, if you're not exposed to anything else in your more blue collar worker, that might be something that's [01:14:00] hard for you to understand.

HD: Yeah. So I did a quick uh, search and it said, um, people with doctors, PhDs and us earn earner average salary often exceeding a hundred thousand through $120,000. Though this varies heavily by the field industry position, et cetera, et cetera. Frequently paying over $130,000, while academic roles often start lower 75 through 90 5K, top earners can make over $200,000.

While others, particularly early career academics may start closer to $80,000. And if you get into the tax brackets, that's the working class and all the other cool stuff. But yeah, and that's the interesting thing though. I actually am glad that if my kids do decide to go to school, they will not be first gen graduates because 'cause you already did the muscle work and the hard work.

Destini: It is hard if you a first gen, you know, it is hard out here, honey. Right? It is hard even from the smallest things. Did I cite this paper? Right? Did I cite this resource? Right. You know, [01:15:00] am I email talking about siting? Am I, am I emailing my professor the right way? You know, it's so many nuances that you just don't think about, that you don't like.

You just have to be kind of thrown to the wolves to figure it out. You wanna talk about citing papers? My first, like what, what was, what was, what was your style in college? Most of mines were a PA, um, so I had to write, you know what's funny, after to write, I went from straight MLA to only a P. So it's the opposite.

HD: My fine arts teacher really prepared us for college. She made us write our stuff, a PA format her and was another teacher. But I didn't have to write a lot of papers in high school. Wish I had to because I felt like I didn't need to source anything if I didn't use it in my That's so black of you. No, if I didn't use it in my writing, I didn't.

So, for example, I had this paper, I probably could find it right now in my drive. Well, it was like, uh, our video game's Good for you. So everything I wrote was really, they, they're good for you. Ping and paste. Yeah. And I brought up how like initially [01:16:00] there was, uh, no ratings, like Mortal Kombat, ESRB, and then they came in and said mature team and all the other stuff.

But I didn't really have to cite nothing. Why not? I was, that didn't come from your head. I was going through life experiences, but that's not like a, a site was like, if I use something verbatim, it doesn't have to be verbatim. It's the knowledge that you gained from that source back then though. Yeah, it was like.

If I need to hate excited for this. No, I like if you're doing a quote. Yeah, yeah. It wasn't, it wasn't no quotes. That was my favorite. When I, when it came to, um, writing a paper in college, I used to always open up my papers with a quote. With a quote, with a quote to answer the question, whatever the paper was about.

Destini: I would be like, well, let's just say the paper was about like, you know, is McDonald's good for you? That would open up the paper with a quote on why McDonald's is good for you, or how many people have consumed McDonald's. It's funny though, or something. It's insane. Like that's the type I learned to write better in corporate than I did in college.

Nah, I had a, I had a professor in college. I thought I was a good writer and so I got a paper back from her and she was like, you're not [01:17:00] good writer. No, no. What's funny, what pissed me off was like, um, my cousin that wrote a couple books at times, so he reviewed my paper, he liked it. My teacher didn't, but the thing was, if you can see that, hey, this person is trying, let them redo it.

HD: Like, I got picked, like she did, let me redo it, clock that she knew she was wrong. She seen me in the hallway and looked and she didn't wanna even come near me and she walked the other way. That's how, like she made, she's the reason why I started off college like so bad. She gave me a bad grade in English and I'm like, look, I'm expressing you.

Destini: Did you take a oh nine eight class? She was a new teacher. No. Did you take oh nine eight math? No. Or English? Mm-hmm. Because you was smart. Well, for y'all who did? Me too. I took a, a, no, it wasn't, 'cause I was smart. I think like, I mean, my a CT wasn't super high. Like I think I took a oh nine eight. I didn't, I didn't have to take that class, but I know that math was a struggle for me, so I chose to take it.

Because it had like three hours a week built in for tutoring. And I was, and after I took that, then I was good to go to the next math class or whatever, but I did start lower [01:18:00] on the, on that lens. Are your eyes dry? I don't know what that is. Yeah, you, you stressing me. I know. That's why I, I switched the camera to you.

HD: I was like, they was like, man, what's going on with his eyes? Why you was blinking. What's this? Some eyedrops. You say dry contacts. They're just rereading drops. They're fine. I see. Yeah. Just to kind of give you a little little juice there. But, um, I did take that class. If you have to take those classes in college, don't feel bad about it.

Destini: Take the coursework. It'll help prepare you to take the actual class itself and put you on a better predicament than if you would've started off doing something that was more advanced than what your skillset could actually handle. Because I knew for a fact coming in that me and math were not gonna get along.

You know that well. And so I was like, well, whatever. I can supplement it if it's three hours a week, so be it. And it was just like an hour built into each class. I wanna say it was like an hour pre, [01:19:00] you know, you can come an hour before class starts and you can redo whatever or ask questions. And we had a great time.

HD: Yeah. Like, um, I think I started off with the good math. I didn't have to retake anything. I had to retake one because I didn't have my financial aid squared away the first quarter. Let's talk, we need to talk about that. Let's go ahead, put that on, put it on the next, next, next week's docket. Let's, let's financial aid and all the challenges that you, let's talk about black people.

Always carrying people, kids on taxes and stuff. Man, we had to redo taxes. That, and that kind of stopped me from getting everything. They only, it's, so I was only able to start school because it was like, since you have tops, we are gonna let you stay here, but if your stuff isn't finished by this time, we going to make you come back next quarter.

So that's what made my first quarter so rough. I had a bad computer learning, like the, I would say like, what do you, what do you mean if you have not No, no. What do you mean by bad computer? I had a Acer that was very slow. Okay. Had a bad sound card. I had to plug in ur sound card into it. The typing was bad.

It loaded up slow. [01:20:00] So it was just not a good, it got me through school though. I be, but we did have a computer lab. But back then you used that for four years? Yeah, I wasn't, no, three, three. I did three and a quarter. I grad, I went in September, 2010 and graduated in November, 2013. Um, but back then I wasn't keen on, like, Google Docs had just got hot.

Mm-hmm. Like we just started using Google Docs and stuff like that. But it was just so much stuff I wasn't prepared for, because it had been years since my, my mom and I went to school. I mean, you need a license, semesters. You need a license and you need to even figure out if you can get a license for free.

Destini: I figured that out my freshman year. Was that nine times outta 10 your university mm-hmm. Has a way for you to get a free Microsoft license for a year? Yeah. At at least nine times outta 10. Yeah. So we, I got that and then it was just that, I think by the time the end of sophomore to junior year, I finally figured out my stride.

HD: It just was a lot. It was so hard to come back from doing bad in like some of my classes. Like I had lost my top scholarship [01:21:00] for the people in Louisiana. That's where like tops pay for your tuition. So I lost that and my homie Joey was like, Hey fool, once you lose that tops, you'll never get it back. He wasn't lying.

I did not get top back and um, I had to take a couple easy classes. So I took reading 200. Yeah, exactly. Reading 200 was so easy. I told my, my little brother, and this is also important, parents and siblings or kids, but this is really for the parents. Your child don't know what they don't know yet. 'cause they're a child.

So what they think they wanna do, sometimes they may hate you for it in the beginning, but go with your move and say, Hey, I know you wanna go to this school, go to this school close by the house first. You do good here, then we can transfer to there. My baby, my baby brother went to tech and outta all my siblings, I felt like he was the person that probably wasn't supposed to go out to school first.

Mm-hmm. And he didn't really do good there. That first year. It's, it's not necessarily hard, but it's, all of us did nine weeks in school most of the time. So in the quarter system, it's kind of like you had the nine weeks every quarter. So [01:22:00] your classes are a little longer and you're having them like, you know, sometimes like three times a week.

You have like Monday, Wednesday, Monday, Wednesday, Friday classes. Then your Tuesday, Thursday classes are super long. Like it's a lot to take in, especially if you may have some undiagnosed issues or don't know what's going on. Like with me, I knew back then stuff like geology please. I had my Motorola Joy at the time.

I made it start recording and I go to sleep back. Then I'm like, oh, I'm gonna listen back to the lecture. Never listen back to never listen. Now in today's time, I could throw that bad boy in Loom or something else, transcribe it, break down what it was about. I would pass. So y'all can use a ITI advantage.

'cause the teachers, they don't care about, look, they getting paid regardless where you sleep or stay up. So that was like some of the stuff I kind of had to deal with. And you could say it's immature, but don't make me take a class I don't want to take. Yeah, sociology was a fun class though, but I went to a liberal arts school, so that means that you have to take classes in all of these different areas [01:23:00] in order to get your degree.

Destini: Some schools are not like that, but my school was like, yeah girl, you're gonna take an art class, you're gonna take an English class, you're gonna take a history class. And I did. Yeah. I had to take all them. I had take political science. Yep. I didn't take it that far. Sociology, I took geology. Why? Why on God's green earth would somebody like me take so, or geology, I had to take world history too.

I'd rather do that. I took world history. Um, I didn't have to take, um, I had to take, Noah helped me out too, uh, by speaking, I think everybody had to take a speech class. We had a speech lab which helped. I didn't have to take a speech class because I could just go to the speech lab and do some similar, you know, we had to do one where she's like, okay, scripture thing out.

HD: Your speech is going to be for like one or two minutes and you had to practice and you had to go up there and do your speech. I had theater too in high school and, and I did a monologue. Yeah. So I was in fine arts, so I didn't have to take another type of arts type of class in college because I tested out 'cause it was dual enrollment.

So I had that and I had to dual. Oh, you was a dual enrollment type of dude. I'm had two dual [01:24:00] enrollment. Uh, but you know, even if you only had one you ate down. I never had one. My little sister is gonna go into college like a, a sophomore or a junior. What are y'all over there doing? That's just over there doing stuff.

Um, but yeah, she got so many credits right now. Like, uh, and she got, she clearly is the smartest in the family. She got the highest a CT she's gonna get an academic scholarship. She's probably gonna get tops and hopefully she applies to get some other ones. 'cause I'm, you know, she 18, I'm telling her, Hey, apply all these other schools.

She gonna give you the most money. But she want to go to wherever her friend say. I'm like, all right, just remember, think about what you gotta do after that bachelor's. 'cause you're probably gonna have to get a master's or a doctorate to do whatever you gonna do. That part you wanna go to wherever you going to owe the least amount of money.

And that's what I told her. And you know, after I, I can only tell you, I can't make you do nothing. I cannot make you do nothing. Margo? Mm-hmm. London's met police used AI to investigate its own officers and it worked. The Metropolitan Police in [01:25:00] London, Britain's largest police force, ran a week long AI pilot using a tool built by Palantir Technologies.

Destini: They used it internally, analyzing data already in their possession, sickness records over time, expenses, building access logs, public complaints. The goal was to find misconduct inside the force itself and what they found was significant. Sig say it, say it significant. What did I say? The numbers? Three.

Officers arrested on charges including abuse of authority, the SE for sexual purposes, fraud, sexual assault, and misuse of police systems. Two. Officers suspended served with notices of investigation for gross misconduct. 98 officers being assessed for abusing the shift RO for abusing the shift rostering systems for personal or financial gain.

500 officers received preventative [01:26:00] notices for similar occurrences. 12 officers under investigation for failing to disclose free Manson membership. 13 additional officers flagged for suspicious behavior currently unconfirmed. The commissioner, sir Mark Rawley, is now considering expanding this to criminal investigations, using AI to flag crime patterns, dangerous predators, and high risk offenders.

Um, so obviously this story is not simple. Um, on one side we have AI doing exactly what they wanted it to do. It surfaced some instances of corruption, um, that maybe had been hiding in plain sight. Um, but then that particular organization, senior officers were fired, filing false overtime, gaming leave systems lying about working from home, three arrests for serious crimes.

Um, so obviously there's a ton of accountability there. But on the other side, we have Palant tar, [01:27:00] a deeply controversial company. They have contracts with ice, the US military and the Israeli military. Over 200,000 people in the UK have signed petitions calling on the government to cut ties with them. Um, British mps this week called for a review of the Mets Palantir contracts after Palantir published a manifesto that some described as, and I'm quoting the British MP here, the ramblings of a super villain.

The police federation, which represents rank and file officers call the AI approach automated suspicion and warn that systems could misinterpret workload. Pressures or sicknesses as wrongdoing. So think about this, what happens when the model makes a mistake and a good officer's career is damaged?

That's kind of sad. Um, I mean, we know we got AI for good, we got AI for bad, and this is just kind of a real good reflection of that type of scenario or [01:28:00] situation. I don't know. I just think AI can do a lot of good and it can do a lot of harm to us. Yeah, it reminds me of, uh, what that is. Romeo must die, but DMX say guns don't kill people.

HD: Stupid people with guns kill people. That's the territory we getting into with the ai. All the other stupid stuff that, uh, we're going into, uh, with them. Um, let's see. We had that, that I think, let me get into this. I think this is more interesting 'cause I think it affects a lot more people, uh, just from if they got kids or not.

Um, where is it? We got the same one. No, this right here. Your favorite topic. So Roblox is launching Roblox Kids. Basically anyone nine years old and under will be put in the Roblox Kids section, which will limit what games you can play on the platform, as well as disable all communication by default. Also, your Roblox app will be blue for some reason no, any teenagers on Roblox will be put in the new Roblox Select category, which also will limit what games you have access to as well as limit who you can [01:29:00] communicate with.

tiktok: And your Roblox will say Roblox Select at the top to let everyone know you're in that group. Now this is important. Anyone who doesn't do age verification on Roblox will automatically be put in Roblox Kids. Lemme know your thoughts down in the comments. I like that Roblox. I like the ending. See, you saw my face change.

Destini: I was not feeling it until we got to the end because you can lie about your age. Even still, you can still lie about your age. You can still lie and say I'm 19. You can put in the date of birth to say that you're 19. I just think y'all should get y'all kids off of Roblox if you really knew what be going on.

Just hear me out. Get your babies off of there. Yeah, and we, I don't care if they mad. I don't, I don't care. And we talked about it last week about the cyber criminals on there offering crypto robuck. Yeah. And, and you gotta think about it. If your kid come to you and they ask you for some robuck and you say no, and then all of a sudden they've been on the game all day and they happy and they got some, it didn't come from you.

Who did it come from? And why are you gifting my child money? What you won't do, somebody else will. That part. So, uh, but no, I mean, but what are they, what system are they [01:30:00] using for h verification? Probably a question. I don't think it's a question. It's probably some AI tool. It's a tool to determine how young you look.

No, because we talked about Discord is now doing that. We never talked about Roblox doing that. It's a lot of those, it's a lot of sites online that people, women and men should know about where you gotta use some aid verification. I've used Roblox and it didn't ask me no questions like that. I haven't downloaded as a grown person, why are you on Roblox to see what the kids is doing?

Because I talk about it so much. No, not you. Oh, I'm like, I'm not playing, I'm talking about a person that's actually, Hey man, you wanna come back to the, to the virtual crib? Like all that type of stuff. Like yeah, I don't, I didn't enjoy it because it was very childish to me. Like when my first instinct was this is for kids, even though it's not for kids.

HD: Yeah. My, my siblings played it like, well I think my sister and them still be playing like Roblox or whatever. But like I, that was past my time. Like I always look at Caleb and them like, bro, what are y'all doing Caleb? Man, I'm playing Roblox. But you know, they born in 2005, 2004. So it was, it was around that time for them.

But for me, nah. I [01:31:00] mean, I barely played online game. Like, that's the thing people know, like I'm, I, we didn't play a lot of online games. We chatted online, but we didn't play a lot of online games as teenagers, as, as kids growing up, I'm, and no, lemme say that back, I'm from the air. We, we played games online, but we were not playing against other PE players online is what I'm trying to say.

I'm from the era where you brought your controller over to somebody else house and y'all got active. I want you to beat me face to face. I'm from that era because there'd be so many glitches and cheats that people be doing online. Nah, nah, nah. But the only game. I consistently play online. Right now it's Bra Hollow.

And I may do, guys, I may do that one day. I may have like a Bra Hollow in tech, like type of stream where I'm like, we should just have a stream baby. They wanna watch me play a cozy game like, uh, south of midnight that you never finished. That's not really cozy, but it is cozy. No it's not. It is. If you don't know what you're doing, you will be lost for games.

Destini: You get, you know, they have a mode where it's just strictly story mode where you don't have to do no fighting or nothing. Yeah. It be trying to get up on equip, you know, I'm a little [01:32:00] remedial with the, with the movement on the Xbox My Player be like, I think they got it on PlayStation. Now They do. I think so it's the same thing.

HD: Um, I kind of briefly wanted to talk about, oh, I just might mention it because I don't think I'm gonna go through the whole thing. But a DT was breached and I thought that was funny. I don't like that. I don't, I don't like that. I don't like it. I don't like it. I don't like it. I like it because they chose to outsource they it and networking and everything.

Mm-hmm. So I like it. It was like, Hey, tell us more than I, if it wasn't broke, don't fix, don't fix itt. Fix it. That's literally all they had to do with that. And, um, I didn't read a lot until the, there's a report that says, let, let's do that one. The one I'm gonna do is the surveillance for the cars and then we will react to some more stuff that may be pressing.

'cause I thought that that was pretty interesting. Where are we? I

think we're right here. Okay. So your next card will watch you. The government says so. This [01:33:00] one has been sent to federal law since 2021, and most people have no idea. Section 2 4 2 2 0 of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act requires the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, N-H-T-S-A, to finalize rules mandating advanced impaired driving prevention technology, and all new passenger vehicles.

The target window is late 2026 to 2027. Here's what that technology actually does. Infrared cameras mounted on your steering column or a pillar will track your eye movement, pupil dilation, and drowsiness patterns in real time. Passive breath sensors will monitor your blood alcohol concentration without you blowing into anything.

If the system determines you are impaired blood alcohol at or above 0.08 or significant fatigue, it could prevent the car from starting or limit your speed while driving. Now a lot of cars don't go into the part where it stops you from the car from starting, but you do have, what car was that I had? Was it my accord or the car?

Now I, I had a car where it was like, Hey, [01:34:00] you took your eyes too many times off the road. Uh, you need to get together. Yeah, no. Or you need to take a break. No, my car will say, you need, it's time to take a break. Yeah. Yeah. It's time to take a break. No, I think it's just like a coffee break or something like that.

Yeah. Yeah. It is that, so it kind of does all the stuff now, but I wonder like, is this one of the things where the data from what's going on with you gonna be used in court and everything else? So let's see. The government argument, the government's argument is not nothing junk driving get approximately 13,000 people in the US in 2023 alone, nearly a third of all traffic deaths that year, alcohol related crashes cost the American economy roughly $280 billion annually in medical expenses, legal costs, and lost productivity.

N-H-T-S-A estimates this technology could prevent between 9,000 and 10,000 deaths per year. That's a real number. Mothers Against Drunk Driving has been lobbying for this since 2015. The safety rationale for the core function is legitimate. The problem is everything around it, the privacy problem. These systems don't just observe, they build a biometric profile of [01:35:00] how you drive your eyes, your alertness, your patterns, your behavior over time.

And here's the critical gap in the law. No federal requirement exists mandating how automakers store share or delete this data. And that's what I was getting at before even reading it. The law does not prohibit manufacturers from uploading your biometric, uh, driving data to corporate servers. It does not stop them from sharing the data with insurance companies to adjust your premiums.

It does not prevent that data from being subpoenaed in legal proceedings that have nothing to do with junk driving. The Center for Democracy and Technology has filed formal comments using urging N-H-T-S-A to impose strict limits on data collection. No such protections have been finalized because these systems are expected to be software integrated manufacturers could up their update their monitoring capabilities through over-the-air patches after you already bought the car.

What this actually says. NHCA missed this original November, 2024 deadline. As of early 2026. The rule is still in the public comment and stakeholder review phase. Automakers have pushed back citing false s [01:36:00] rates, NH C'S own report to Congress, acknowledge the detection error rate around the legal limit would be unacceptably high given the volumes of driving that happens in the us.

Where are we at the Trump administration? Deregulation posture adds additional uncertainty about whether this move forward at all or gets quietly shelved Bills in Congress could repeal the mandate, but experts note that once a technology like this gets into market, pulling it back, its historically very difficult.

The current vehicle you own is not affected. But if you're shopping for a 2027 model, this is part of the deal. So I'm not against keeping drunk drivers off the road. I'm very much against a system that builds a biometric profile of every single American driver, stores it in a corporate server with zero federal data protection requirements and can be updated remotely to do more after you buy the car.

Save the 9,000 thousand, save the 9,000 lives, absolutely. But write the data protection rules before you mandate the hardware, not after. And yeah, I, I agree, [01:37:00] uh, wholeheartedly with them figuring that out. 'cause junk driving does kill like a lot of people. It definitely does. And I think that they're also, you have like the, um, insurance companies who are like, if you put this thing in your car, we'll monitor how you drive for this period and we may be able to lower your rate.

Destini: So you have to think about things like that, just like he said, that can be used against you. I also heard someone say that the Ora ring could also be used against you as well. If you're in a car accident and they find out you had it on, um, they might try to get the data from that watch or Lord from the ring to tell, um, you know, the insurance company, kind of what was going on with you.

Physi physically, I can't get my words right. Nobody can. What is going on? Um, I got one more. Okay. AI deep fakes in school. This is a global crisis, so Wired an indicator just published an investigation that I need everybody to listen to. So they documented [01:38:00] deep fake sexual abuse incidents at nearly 90 schools across 28 countries impacting more than 600 students.

And those are the only documented publicly reported cases. Researchers believe the real numbers are significantly higher. Here's how it happens. We have someone that downloads a regular photo of a classmate and from Instagram or Snapchat, for example. They run it through a notify app. Notify apps are AI powered tools that are widely available, often free, and in many jurisdictions operate in legal gray zones.

The app will then generate a fake nude image that will be shared in a group chat within hours and it's spread across the school. Now, the scale of this type of occurrence, nearly 30 reported cases in North America since 2023, including one case involving over 60 alleged victims. More than 20 cases across Europe, more than 10 in South America, over a dozen in Australia and the East Asia combined.

The [01:39:00] National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported AI generated child sexual abuse images surged from 4,000 seven hundred and twenty twenty three to 67,000 in 2024 to 440,000 in 2025. Unit UNICEF estimates roughly 1.2 million children had sexual DeepFakes created of them last year alone.

These images, when they depicted minors are legally classified as child sexual abuse material, um, which is obviously gonna be the law there. So why schools are unprepared, schools are managing a 2026 crisis with 2020 policies. Traditional cyber bullying protocols were not designed for synthetic media that can be created without a victim ever having taken or shared a compromising photo.

Law enforcement faces jurisdictional gaps if a student in Texas creates a deepfake using servers in Eastern Europe who prosecutes the trauma. Obvi, obviously here is [01:40:00] gonna be permanent for the victim. Victims describing behaviors such as stop, they're stopping to eat, they're constantly crying, they're being unable to return to school, and one victim representative said she knows these images will likely reach predators and she will have to monitor the internet for the rest of her life, which is not a temporary harm, that's a life sentence for something that this person never participated in.

Um, so the take it down, not the take it down Act now requires tech platforms to remove non-consensual intimate images within 48 hours. That's a long time, but fine. Um, over half of US states have passed laws addressing AI generated fake, intimate images. The UK and EU are moving to ban notification apps outright.

In March, 2026, two Pennsylvania students admitted guilt on some were fel some related felony charges for creating images of 60 girls. [01:41:00] Some schools in South Korea and Australia have stopped posting student photos publicly and made yearbook photos opt in. I kind of like that idea of that, that chef's kiss.

Um, but I just wanted to bring that up because a lot of, um, folks have kids that are online. They have got kids that are online, cousins, nieces, nephews, you know, younger people in your community that are offline. And it's so important that you are making sure that you understand the risks that are associated with your babies being online and that you are kind of also in their business.

There is no privacy when you're a child with the, with the device. There's none at all. None. No privacy whatsoever. I can go, I can go. Mm-hmm.

So with that being said, um, make sure you're watching your kids online and you never know what is going to to happen. You [01:42:00] know, keep, keep that top of mind. We good? You want me to go? Yeah, I got you. NH G's coming back to take over for us here shortly.

HD: I, she's gonna do that. Let's see.

Alright. Alright. And since, uh, she went away. Let me cover this a DT thing real quick. So, uh, a DT got breached again by a phone call. A DT is the largest home security company in the United States by revenue. They hold roughly 41% of the US residential security market. Their entire brand proposition is that they protect you, and they just confirmed a data breach.

On April 20th, 2026, a DT detected unauthorized access to its customer and prospective customer data. They disclosed this breach via an SEC form eight K fouling on [01:43:00] April 24th. After the hacking group, shiny hunters posted a threat on their dark web leak site. The message was direct. Over 10 million records containing PII and other internal corporate data have been compromised, pay or leak.

This is a final warning to reach out by April 27th, 2026. A DT says The breach was limited to names, phone numbers, and addresses with a small subset of records also containing dates of birth and last four digits of social security numbers or tax IDs. The company says no payment information was accessed and customer home security systems were not compromised.

They have contacted effective individuals and are offering identity protection services. Shawnee Hunters tells a different story. They claim they stole over 10 million records, customer data, internal corporate data information on over 1500 external users and 120 employees. The gap between ADTs characterization and the attack claim is notable.

We don't know. We don't yet know. Whose account of the scope is accurate. So how it happened, Shawnee Hunters told BLEEP and [01:44:00] computer, they breached a DT through a phishing attack. Voice phishing. Someone called an A DT employee impersonating a legitimate party and convinced the employee to hand over their Okta single sign on credentials.

Once aside that SSO account, the attackers access a DT Salesforce instance and exfiltrated the data. Now this is crazy. Now what I do know from a DT, they did outsource their IT and their networking. So somebody failed for this, and this is bad. If you're gonna be a company that is securing people's homes and their safety, you need to invest that on the other side with their help desk and security personnel.

Shawnee on Earth has been running the playbook extensively since last year, targeting employee and BPO Agent SSO accounts at Microsoft, intra Okta and Google Platforms. Then pivoting into connected SaaS applications, Salesforce, Microsoft 365, slack, Zendesk, Dropbox, and others. This is not a zero day exploit.

This is not a sophisticated national state. This [01:45:00] is not a sophisticated nation state attack. This is a phone call. Someone called and said the right things that walked on in the pattern. A DT cannot ignore. This is the third A DT data breach in less than two years. August, 2024, they had a breach. October 22, 4, they had a breach.

Now, April, 2026, they have a breach. At some point, the conversation stops being about the attackers and starts being about whether a DT has fundamentally addressed the vulnerability that keeps getting exploited. If you're an A DT customer, assume your name, phone number, and address are in circulation.

Monitor your accounts for social engineering attempts and phishing. If your date of birth or last four of your social security number were included, and you won't necessarily know, place a credit freeze. And with the three major boroughs, that's free and it's the most effective protect protection you have.

And y'all already know what I like to do or play when things like this happen. Let me go to my media asset. Where are we? Here we go. Today's video is sponsored by Aura. Aura monitors your personal data, [01:46:00] including your social security number across billions of data points like the dark web and public court records to the tech, and alert you to potential identity theft.

They give you up to $5 million in identity theft insurance should the worst case scenario happen, ice cream. They also provide a bunch of other features to keep you safe online, all inside one app. You can go to my link right now, aura.com/textual chatter to drive 14 days for free. That'll be enough time for Aura to find out if any of your personal data is exposed.

I highly recommend you do this right now because not only is the national public data not going to do anything to help you. They probably aren't even going to face any repercussions for this leak. I'm not leaving myself and my family vulnerable to data breaches. If you don't want either, you can go to r.com/textual chatter to try two weeks for free.

Now, back to the video. Today's video is sponsored by R It is r monitors your personal data, including your social security number across billions of data points like the dark web and public court records to detect and alert you to potential identity theft. Alright, sorry about that. But, [01:47:00] um, so shorty, pretty much what happened was they was notating in a DT breach that they pretty much been breached three times in the last two years.

That they pretty much had somebody get v to pretty much hand over someone's Okta SSO uh, information with an, it was an no, it was just probably a reg, probably impersonating a regular employee. Mm-hmm. And they got 'em to get the Okta information and they were able to log in, take the Salesforce entrance, uh, instance and trade data.

So it's like the third time it's happened, like I said, I'm not surprised. This is always gonna happen when we get, you know, other folks have, like, I, when I think about home security, that's who I think about them in breaks. So like who are the other big dogs? Um, so, you know, you got, uh, and I mean like, like legitimate, well you know, you got Ring now you got, are they legitimate?

Ring is owned by Amazon. Yeah. So Ring, no, I mean like, you know, do you know what I mean? Yeah, they're legitimate. Yeah. They got, they probably are better than a DT and Brinks, to be honest. Really? Probably Ring, ring. [01:48:00] Those, those digital doorbell are good. Get that. And then, I don't know, it's just been all this stuff with people, just cameras and I, I, I don't like it.

Destini: I don't like it, I don't like it that, um, you know, you got the stuff where you put by your windows in case somebody try to come through the window and all the different stuff. I like the sensors though. Yeah. So I mean, that you got smaller companies, so I don't know. Do you think the smaller companies are gonna take heat?

HD: Absolutely. Because the la I mean it doesn't matter the size of the company, anybody can have a, a security issue. No, absolutely. Now I think, like one thing I wanna get into, and it's crazy 'cause Cyber Ferry actually dropped a fourth video in this saga. But, or dude, I want to go over something that I felt like was really stupid that people were like, that I can clip up.

Okay. I felt this was. Not stupid by Anthony O'Neal, but it wasn't a nuanced enough take. I wouldn't want a six figure, high six figure job. You know why? Because the requirements that come with that, the expectations that comes with that, no company is gonna pay you six figures and not have any high expectations.

But once [01:49:00] you start making above six figures, the expectations are higher. You are reachable at all times. And I've been there to where I was making it 2, 3, 4, half a million dollars a year, and there was no, don't call me on the weekends. It's like, wait a minute, I pay you too much. Do not call you on the weekends.

If I had to find a job to where I was like, okay, pay me a hundred thousand, 90, a hundred thousand, but also give me, you know what I'm saying, a month off every single year, gimme some reimbursements, gimme a good 401k match, et cetera. I would love that. You know why? Because they're paying me to focus on or to build my side business.

So that way, if I ever were to resign, they paid me some of my time to build my business. I didn't like it. I feel like he was all over the place and I didn't like it. I don't think it landed the way he thought it was. It did not land for me at all, because I'm like, everybody who's making that money not gonna have a side business.

That may be enough for them to make a hundred thousand dollars. And if you making half a million dollars working for somebody else, they probably totally fine with being available all the [01:50:00] time. People be available all the time for less. I was just, I was just about to say the same thing. Don't let you, I'm maybe gonna name the fields, but yes, there are so many ways where you can make.

Destini: Less money. Mm-hmm. And you'd be on round the clock, start with being a CNA, what are you talking about? Yeah. So we can start right there. So yeah, I mean on call you on call for list you is on call for every day week, like 24 by seven, seven knock. So all that type of stuff, I'm like, somebody would glad to take that half a million dollars in the economy we in to be available.

HD: What you need? Alright. I'm on the way. Ain't like you said you was on call doing construction and you finna go pour a ditch or climb a telegram a lot. But a lot of jobs do have some, some on, on-call component or you might have a flex day on-call or flex days. That's funny. He's saying that after collecting multiple years off that Ramsey salary.

Exactly like the job. Like if you wanna be totally honest and I'm I'm, I'm with my blue collar people right here. The job you was doing wasn't that hard anyway. It wasn't you able to sit [01:51:00] up straight and make videos now and you built your business and content out. Yeah. I already know. Like everybody, the thing is, everybody is not gonna build a business.

Everybody ain't meant to build no business. Ram Ramsey. Uh, that is the guy. I was gonna say Jalen Ramsey, but Gordon Ramsey. It's not even Gordon. Oh, Gordon Ramsey. It's not Gordon Ramsey's. Oh, I know Gordon. But you said it's not them or is it? It's not. It's uh, so you know the guy, the white guy that's always talking about like no debt and finances and stuff like that.

That dude mm-hmm. It's him. Okay. It's him. Um, let's see, we had some other funny ones. I thought this was pretty funny. I met this dude play this earlier. Black slang is just white phrases, but in reverse white folks, you got the wrong one, black folks. You got the right one today. Oh, you've got the right one today.

tiktok: You got the wrong white folks. Don't you ever say that again, black folks. Say it again. Yeah. Facts, white folks. Shut up black folks. Keep talking. Keep talking, keep keep talking. I show some white folks. That's hot black folks. That's cold. Yeah, [01:52:00] white folks. Let's roll black folks. Let's bounce. Yeah. White folks.

I hope it doesn't black folks. I wish he would. Yeah. Rags white people. I can't believe you did that. Black people. I know you didn't. White folks don't do that. Black folks do it again. White folks. He passed away. Laid to rest black folks. He woke up dead. Come into the Lord. White folks. Don't stop black folks.

Keep on. Starts up black folks. Slow down black folks. Hold up. Hold up. Yeah. I thought that was funny. It was another one that, something like I said, Hey y'all. Our uh, grammar is basic according to, uh, black people. And uh, I didn't like that. We don't need say bounce. I'm finna ask the chat. Alright Chad, let's say you at work and this happens.

HD: What you doing[01:53:00]

know what's funny? I was listening to this song and I just really just realized he said my room was the gpo. Yeah, but back then we was just saying anything high school. I didn't know what the G-spot was.

Alright, what was y'all favorite bet? Walk verse. I know what your was. Okay, I get it. Let me think. I guess this might time. That was some of the most everybody that was, that was some of the most horrible verses ever, ever pissing me down. Like button downs on a Friday night. That's what she said. Um, hold on, let me think.

Gutter gutter. Y'all see me with on Stevie Wonder his was the worst. And you gutta gutter really had the best verse. Nah, you know why Gutter? No grocery bag. Wait, I thought it was no Stevie Wonder. He, I already said on Stevie Wonder, wait no grocery bag. What happened after that? What's happen? No, he said, oh, I'm leaving with a grocery bag.

He said something like that. Tiger actually had the best verse. No, I got a grocery bag. Take this photo if you for me some song I'm Finn look up the lyrics 'cause we, [01:54:00] I'm too loyal. Acting old. Loyal. Yeah. I'm too loyal. I'm too focused to be losing and be hopeless. Yeah, I'm looking up the lyrics. Tiger had the best verse.

Destini: Okay, let's go tiger. And this is coming from a Drake fan. Tiger had the best verse. Okay, so I'm gonna also go and say. I, I did like to, like to hear. I hate to see her go, but I love her. Watch her leave. That aint down too. You know. It's two different versions. That was a good, so that was a good caption. What everybody don't know is, nah, that was a caption.

HD: So watch this. I'm finna put everybody on game. What y'all don't know is, well, the young people man know there was a version of this with O Omarion that said of Lloyd, there was what? Wait. Huh? There's a version of this, but, um, Omarion instead of Lloyd. It's not called Bedrock, it's called Girl. You know, I don't wanna hear it.

Mm. At you. Better. I actually like the hook better. Now, if Lloyd would've saying that hook, it's much better. 'cause Bedrock is a stupid hook to me, girl. You know, like, trust me, type in am Omarion girl, you know? Oh, and I got her grocery bag. Yeah, that was a verse stone. Yeah. Yeah. I'm ready for Iceman. I'm definitely ready for Bobby Drake, the Iceman Van [01:55:00] Latton had a good breakdown of iceman actually transforming from some stuff that happened to him to where he became untouchable.

Uh, exactly. See, girl, you know what's better? I'm telling y'all here after this. I can't What? He is in the comments, girl, you know, it's actually better. I, I promise you I like that version better. It's just like, so for example, um, so it's like, it's like Shorty Lucky, remember there's two remixes. There's one with, uh, Webby.

Destini: There's one. No, no, no. There's one with Trey songs. There's one with Trey songs, and then there's one with Neo. I never heard that. You never heard the one with Trey songs? Mm-hmm. Busted Baby. Oh, busted Baby. I, I, I don't wait. What? That I'm not familiar with what you talking about, but there, so here's another one.

HD: So everybody knows Drake got the song. Miss Me, tell me what's really going on. Mm-hmm. What's happening? Before it was called Miss Me. It was called, uh, all Night Long. And that hook is better than Miss Me Too, but I think Miss Me made sense. 'cause Wayne was finna get locked up. Like I said, this is stuff, you know what I'm saying?

Old head. [01:56:00] I do have OT stuff. I I do have one more topic. Oh, what was it? Mr. Book? Okay, go ahead. Y'all go get the book. Get the book. Tell a friend to tell a friend to tell a friend, to tell a friend to get the book. I promise you the book is t the book is juicy. The book is good. I wouldn't lie, I wouldn't make this up.

Destini: If you want to take a read and give me a review, let me do, let me know. Let me know. Pull up, pull up on Shiver shorty. Pull up on the me The book signing will be in June. Dates coming soon. Um, so if you are one of our friends that is local to the DFW area, you'll be getting an invite. And if you're not HD said we're gonna do a giveaway.

So stay tuned for more details about that. But the book is tea. You can buy the book right now. I just thought about it. What we'll do is we'll do a giveaway and we'll have, we'll be giving away signed copies, okay? We can do that. We can do giveaway, [01:57:00] signed copies. Little, little, little, little stop shouty in the inside.

HD: I remember when was right there sitting by the on air sign. Um. Now, let's see, I think I said we was gonna get into fee stuff. I don't know if I got time to download her fourth one, but the context behind these guys is a black woman did a EOC complaint from her company she was working at. She got on the job through Per scholars and she pretty much found out that uh, another guy with less experience with her was getting paid one of her about $5 more an hour and then about $10 more an hour than another black person.

And so she was courageous and did it. So we're gonna try to react to all three parts. Okay. Also, we gonna have to turn some saxophones back on. Can you turn it up? Found out one of, she's real low coworkers who is a white male. We got hired at the same time, same recruiter. He doesn't have any certifications.

I have certifications little bit more, um, that's all I got. Security Plus and others, he's [01:58:00] making five more dollars. There we go, per hour.

Yeah. I can't just sit with that. So I'm trying to figure out a way to advocate for myself and basically let them know that if they don't fix this, if, if, if they don't fix this and fix it fast, then we are gonna have some issues because that honestly is an unscrupulous pay gap. And what's crazy is another.

A black woman on my team, she's a little older. I found out she's making $3 less than me 'cause she doesn't have any experience. So that would put him, well they both don't have any experience, but that still would put him at eight. That would put him at eight more dollars. I said 10.[01:59:00]

You see why they say that? They are the saxophones. You literally can't make this shit up y'all. So yeah, I'm gonna follow up on this 'cause Yeah and no. Nope. Absolutely not. Yeah. And the thing is, I think I was in initial comments like, you know, this always can go two ways. Anytime you're gonna reach out to hr, do something, you better expect possible retaliation.

But you might, you know, get the walking. When I first seen it, I kind of had a little fear in my heart. 'cause I'm a little scary when it comes to stuff like that. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. A valid concern. 1000%. And that is the reason why they don't want you to discuss your pay mm-hmm. At work. Because it will 1000% stir the pot, ruffle feathers, get people upset and angry.

Destini: And, um, I don't, I've [02:00:00] never been in a situation like that. Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. Yeah. And let, let's get the part two and then try to part three and maybe do part four next week. But here we go. Okay, you guys, I wanna give you an update regarding the video I posted the other day where I found out there was a huge paid discrepancy.

HD: So if you haven't been tracking, found out a white male coworker, he earns five more dollars, then me with less experience and less certifications. And then I did some further digging. It seems like there's a palm colored pay scale. Everybody, black or African or whatever, is on the lower end. The closer you get towards palm color, the more that you make.

So I raised this issue, right? And, um, there were some repercussions about raising this issue. Um, I didn't see this one, and I'm willing to deal with those repercussions. So in lieu of that, however, I did decide to move forward with the EEOC complaint. I actually got him, he told me in text, right? The same recruiter, because some of y'all was saying, well, maybe he negotiated.

And I was like, okay, let's try to give it the benefit of the doubt, right? I, [02:01:00] I asked him did he negotiate? He said he was told that that was a cap. The same exact recruiter told me that that was the cap. See, you know, even it's just unfair because if they told, you know, if they told him that was a cap, right?

How can you, how can anybody even negotiate, right? Just even playing a devil's advocate, how can we negotiate or whatever our, our salaries and things like that if people are lying to us and indulging in a scrupulous, engaging in a scrupulous behavior in, in unfair, um, discriminatory practices. So, yeah, I swiftly filed that EEOC complaint and um, we gonna go from there, y'all.

'cause I'm not having it. I'm not having it whatsoever. In the meantime, y'all know I'm getting back in school. So that will give me more leverage to advocate for myself. But I do feel like my brain chemistry has changed because how can you know, or how can you negotiate when people are lying? Let's circle back to that question, you know, 'cause there's all this talk about negotiation when they lie to you and they say, well this is a cop.

You see, racism isn't always outward and, and [02:02:00] extreme. It's, it's, it's like, it's subtle like this as well. But this isn't subtle. That is extremely violent behavior, especially in this economy. So, yeah, I saw that. EEOC 'cause I'm not playing with people. I'm gonna cause as much trouble as I possibly can. But ultimately that reminds me of why I, I said the end goal was entrepreneurship.

But I feel like the near goal has to be entrepreneurship as well. 'cause I can't deal with too much of people playing on my fucking heads up. I'm not a pussy. Okay. And wherever I go it's like I cause trouble in a sense because I speak up. Like I'm not just going with the flow. And that causes a lot of problems with me and certain kind of people, right?

And like I was talking to my versions like, you don't bass. I don't like that. No, they don't like that. But that's the, I'm, that's the exact kind of person I am. I'm always gonna stand over for myself. I'm, I'm even gonna stand over for other people. 'cause I just, I can't deal with certain things. This is my life.

And if you try to put me out the, the driver's seat of my life, you're a fucking A [02:03:00] and I'm gonna treat you as such. So I'm looking for a lawyer and I filed those complaints. Okay. They will see me in court or arbitration. My guess, said arbitration. You know, she mean it. I was just finna say if people don't even know what arbitration is.

Yeah. But no, I mean I'm with her. I think, you know, it's funny, people try to label women like her as like a bad employee, but in all honesty, she's just doing the right thing, speaking up for people. 'cause a lot of times what I found out in corporate is if I didn't say something, nobody else was gonna say nothing.

Destini: I think the part that is like kind of eye-opening for me is being told that there isn't a way for you to negotiate, but finding out that there actually is what the, what, what is going on there like that. What do you mean by that? Literally? Yeah. I don't, I don't, that's all I got. Yeah. That and um, just getting into Texas was good.

HD: Uh, I think at the end of the day they're gonna realize, hey, we gotta be honest. That's why California and New York and other [02:04:00] states pushed for very transparent. They put, but see, here's the thing with the freaking salary transparent thing becomes remote jobs. It'll only be the high end salary will only be for the New York.

So the Californians 1000% only. But when they come to you living here, they'll try to say, well, you know, cost of labor here is cheaper. Exactly. I don't care what it is. Pay me the same thing. Them people ain't doing nothing different than I am. Pay me the same. It do it, it'd be like California and Washington I think or something.

Yeah. I'm like, bro, pay me the same. It's not cheap out here. This ain't 2010. And they be having a nerve to like, I'm like, bro, you're trying to, I applied to this thing 'cause this was the salary range and this ain't more than what I'm making now, so why am I even talking to you? And they be like, well, you know, you got a point, you got a point like eventually like, look, don't let me take a, a screening call with a recruiter and I'm on this keyboard.

I'm be like, I beg your pardon. Lemme be saying stuff like that. I beg your finest. Pardon? Or, uh, let me see. Uh, she got part three. Let's see what she said in part three real quick. 'cause this's, actually I might have to download part four just off the strength of [02:05:00] her. Uh, sending me. Yes. Let's see. Quick. Okay, y'all, so here's a part three if you have it.

Been tracking. I filed A-E-E-O-C 'cause I found out a white coworker, he was making five more dollars an hour than me with less experience, less certifications. And I, I, you know, apparently well between my coworkers, if you black take darker Jordan voices you make. Okay. That's a pattern. Um, yeah. And I just wanna talk about that and, and just, I've been so fundamentally re radicalized by this situation and I just want black people to know ambitious black people that you cannot black capitalism your way.

Okay, you guys, so I wanna add more thoughts to the system. This, because on prior. Something like even my husband, even before the situation, you know we talk about the economy situation. Oh, people just gotta make more money, they gotta get a high parent career. I'm like, well everybody can't be in tech. We need people in all places.

That don't mean that they're less, everyone plays a role in society. Everybody cannot be in tech. And funny enough, her and I actually had that conversation behind the scenes and I was like, you know, when we actually think about it, everybody ain't supposed to have no tech job. Facts. Everybody. I [02:06:00] mean, just like she said, we need people to fulfill all, all of these roles.

Destini: And we're in a culture right now where everybody wants to have the top row. Right? But you gotta think about it, we came from a different time. Like I, me, me and my homie was talking about like, hey man, me, remember back in the day we was gonna school growing up, you know, your partner or somebody daddy something had like a regular job and he found him a little batty.

HD: That was like a pharmacy tech at Walmart or something. Like, you know, them days don't be existing no more. Nobody wanna work a regular job. One 'cause they everything's going up and they don't wanna pay. Right. Two, now you got so much self check out and everything else, the jobs are just for regular people with certain IQs they can't even do 'em.

Mm-hmm So it is like everybody in the catch 22 right now, plus you know, it doesn't matter how much you earn, if the goalpost and the cost of living that goalpost constantly moves, okay, what you make? 20, 30, 40, 50 worth thousand. Right? But now the rent is 500 to a thousand dollars more. You know now a pack of chicken is $50.

Like you can't black capitalist your, your way [02:07:00] to freedom. Right. Um, and, and I used to be one of those black folks, like, you just know, gotta be, earn more money, you know, get, you know, get on your stuff, this, that, the third. But you know, as I've gotten older and I've had more experience, I've begun to become more empathetic because just imagine like even just playing the devil's advocate.

So going back to the situation with my coworker, they told him his salary, his pay was a cap. They told me my pay was a cap. They lied to him. They didn't even give him an opportunity to negotiate. And what's crazy is the system is fucking all of us over, but they give, you know, white people a little more crumbs and cookies than they give us.

But ultimately, you know, everybody is fucked. But it's just so unfortunate because I, I, this is a systemic issue from our research, right? And just to think if you are even a black person making six figures, right? Let's say you're making a hundred thousand, 'cause six figure six figures is wide. Let's say you're a black person making 600, I mean a hundred thousand just to think you are more qualified or whatever.

You had to have eight to 10 certifications more than a, a white man's one. So you gotta have three, four degrees [02:08:00] versus a white man's high school diploma and a cer like actually I have a friend, he makes like one 60 and his credentials is like reading the scrolls of the Bible. And his boss is a high school dropout that makes like over a quarter million per year you cannot, black capitalism your way out of racism and structural inequalities.

Like this shit has changed me. Forever. Like when I tell you I'm about to lean in or read and I got all the Black Panther books and James Baldwin and all the, the ancestors and stuff like this. I, I gotta go back and, and do the work and, and, and, and 'cause the answers is, is already out there. 'cause I just have so many questions and Yeah.

Y'all, I just wanted to share that little blurb, like, racism is really fucking nasty and it's not something that I take lightly anymore. And it's just crazy because when you think about, uh, white people, you think about, you know, wealthy people when you say like the white man, but this particular recruiter was a white woman, a regular, regular white [02:09:00] woman playing into the system, participating in the system, creating structural economy, uh, structural, um, you know what hell I mean, systemic racism, equality, whatever the hell that word.

I can't think what that, you see how that works? Smiling all in our faces. Yeah. She's seeing firsthand though when you had all the stuff, when, when people talk about these elections and everything else and realize, hey, they voted just like the, the others do. So I think it was an in interesting take because we know that this happens, but when it happens to you and when you're the one that this is happening to, when you realize it, it hits a lot different.

Destini: Mm-hmm. So I do commend her for having the courage enough to, um, you know, say something and, and try to get some justice. And here goes part four. Okay guys, so I wanna add more thoughts to this because my prior videos, you guys know I filed an EEOC complaint about rage discrimination based on race and gender.

HD: I'm not gonna retell the [02:10:00] story, so if you want to know the full story, you guys to go back and watch the videos. But I wanna add, because my prior videos were, you know, really emotional, rightfully so, because I have the right to be mad, I'm angry, I'm frustrated, I'm disheartened, I'm sad, I'm all of the above, right?

But I wanna come back and just build upon this because, you know, a lot of you guys is, you know, you follow me and you, um, appreciate what I have to offer. And even I, I don't ask to be some of you guys, you really look at me like a mentor. So I'm sharing my journey. What I wanna say and talk about in this video is the importance of like, developing your professional armor, so to speak, right?

And having mentors, right? Or maybe even, you might have to pay a coach, but I would lean more towards a mentor. Is nothing wrong with paying a coach, whatever is suitable. Because I feel like, and this industry and the way of the economy and the job market at this time and space, um, it's so important to have that professional for Fortress, right?

So I've been linking up with people, you know, people above me, people [02:11:00] laterally, just to kind of gain some insight, whatever the case may be. Because I think, you know, in addition to the racism and the gender aspect of the situation, I think it's 50 50%. The race and gender. Right. And then the other 50% is that, you know, all of us, we came from the Perlis Bootcamp and I believe that these recruiters were paying, were preying upon us.

Like, I don't know, their compensation structure or whatever, I'm sure are some involved. I wholeheartedly believe these, um, even the guy who, white guy who got the highest wages, they weren't fair to him because they didn't allow him to negotiate. They told him his was a cat. They told me mines was a cat.

They told my other coworkers theirs was a cat. So they all knew that we were green and eager to get our foot into the door and this and that and the third. Right. And I think that that set us up, right? So if I were to have like constructive critique, like even for Perca is that they need to have, I don't know if it's possible, but they should have some measures in place too to protect themselves.

But at the end of the day, it's not their fault. They did what they needed to do in a sense. But when we get [02:12:00] out into this world, we have to have that armor because when you are from a disadvantaged place or space, and that disadvantage isn't always race. It could just simply being green and not really knowing what's going on.

And you know, you're at that early point in your career where you're more eager than stern and serious. Right. And you just have to learn how to, um, advocate for yourself. So y'all, I've been reaching out to people and get my mentors, especially like, you know, other black women who have navigated this space.

I reach out to this one lady, she's a senior engineer, right? I made a other new friend. He's a senior engineer white guy. I told him he'll gimme my reparations by helping me off. But no, that's, that's really it. I wanted to add that because. You know, I, I I'm just gonna update the situation because I do feel like this can, um, help you guys.

Like Yeah, unfortunately in any space. Okay, cool. She going yap a little bit. So to close it out, that's also why I made the video. I think that was one episode, one of what episode it was. I was talking about black recruiters and stuff was needed. And a lot of times you'll have, uh, yes, that was [02:13:00] like, that was like two episodes ago.

You'll have a person that doesn't really know what the job pays be like, nah, that's too low. I'm finna submit you for this. So I think all that stuff is needed. Salary transparency is needed. That's why I like that some people don't like people share their salaries, but at the same time I think it's beneficial because sometimes you don't know what you can make or if you actually be an underpinning, oh, I'm an advocate for it.

Destini: Especially with your friends. You and your friends should be honest with what, how much you make. The friends are saying the same industry. That part. That's what I'm saying. No. Facts. Facts. Facts. Yes. Um, I one thou because you might find out like what you make it. Huh? You, you just, like he said, you don't know what, you don't know what you can make.

You don't know what the limit is. Is there a limit? Yeah, but we gonna say, I wonder like I, I know something. She was doing something like healthcare related, so I know that's how they gonna feel in arbitration. What's wrong? K? When I came. Damn.

HD: If anybody know where that sound is from that video, from that, that thing be killing me every time. 'cause who told that old man to do that on that video? [02:14:00] Uh, but nah man. I appreciate everybody that's rocked with us for, uh, the last two and what, almost 20 minutes, two hours and 20 minutes. Appreciate everybody.

House will takeover drops tomorrow. Get your copy. Uh, watch us on the replay. Share this out. Give us reviews, leave us reviews everything. Like I said, join the Patreon. If you join the highest tier, maybe you could talk to me or sa shorty. Who knows? We just, we. Hmm. We'll just let it rock out. But like I always say, let's stay textual and be out.

Peace.