Rob Fried On New Challenges In Digital Forensics

📝 Take the Forensic Focus International Well-Being Study The following transcript was generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies. Si: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Forensic Focus podcast, where Desi and I demonstrate our professional levels and skills by arguing over who’s going to press the record button before we even start. It’s been a hot minute since we’ve been on — one of my children’s phrases, “a hot minute.” And if they listen back to this, which they tell me they occasionally do, they will be absolutely cracking up at that. But anyway, it’s been a little while since we’ve been on. Life has been interesting for everybody present in this call. I’ve moved house. Desi has some exciting news, which he may or may not share on this podcast, but it is exciting news for those of us that know him. And Rob apparently has dominated the world, taken over, written 15 books. His Amazon rankings were very impressive. We can come back to that. So we welcome back Mr. Rob Fried to the channel — nominally because he’s published a new book, but also because we haven’t talked to him for ages and loads of stuff seems to have happened in the interim. Rob, how are you doing? Let’s start with that. Get The Latest DFIR News Join the Forensic Focus newsletter for the best DFIR articles in your inbox every month. Unsubscribe any time. We respect your privacy - read our privacy policy. Rob: Doing really good. I’m glad to be here at this early hour for me, but you guys always do this to me, so I figure, you know, why not give it back. I’m up at the crack of dawn and ready to go. Doing really good — I have a lot going on, keeping a very busy schedule these days, but everything is going really well. I can’t complain. Just keep doing my thing every day and happy to join you guys again. Desi: It feels like it was only a month ago that we were talking to you about your other book, and I’m sure it’s been much longer. It always feels like that whenever we catch up with you — like an old friend, even though neither of us have met Rob in person. We’re all spread out over the world, but it just feels so good to come back and chat. And I think again, it only felt like yesterday that I was seeing all those posts of people sharing photos of your book on LinkedIn, reading it all around the world. Really cool to see. Si: It’s funny you should say that, because I remember posting a photo of Rob’s book last year. It was down in Portsmouth, behind Nelson’s flagship — HMS Victory. I sent that out and it was actually at a conference, an annual conference that I’m going to next week. It’s not down in Portsmouth this year — it’s up near Warwick. But yeah, it’s almost exactly a year since that book was published. Rob: And that leads me to another book for next year. I’m trying to pace myself. Si: One book a year is good. That’s Stephen King level output. Desi: I was thinking the same thing — Rob’s like the digital forensics equivalent of Stephen King, pumping out a book every year. Rob: The content is important to me, but the collaboration is equally so. Continuing to find people to write with and to get unique perspectives from both the law enforcement side and the private sector. It’s nice to merge expertise together and put something out that will resonate with the community. I’m really happy to continue doing it for as long as I can. I’ve been writing for about six years now, since just around the start of COVID, and it’s been a really rewarding experience. There’s never a shortage of things to write about — only a shortage of time. I try to figure out late at night or early morning how to balance it without upsetting anybody in the household. But it’s been a really good experience and I want to continue to give back to the community as much as possible. Desi: So what is the new book? For people who may not know who you are or have picked up one of your books before — is it along the same vein as the last one, incorporating more professionals into it, or are you going in a different direction? Rob: Every book I come out with is essentially a new edition, adding articles and chapters covering different topics that came up that year. Part of the cadence is related to writing for a magazine — I do that every couple of months and the next one’s actually due today. It basically forces me to put something out there that’s at the top of my mind for that moment. Finding someone to write with is always the challenge, because everybody has their own busy schedules. It’s almost like doing a group project at school — who do you want to work with? Are they going to meet the deadline? Are they going to take this seriously? Some of the people I’ve collaborated with have written some fantastic articles that I said, you know what, do this one on your own. Some people have gotten published entirely on their own just from that spark of trying to do something together. It’s been rewarding not just for me but for others, and there are really three different communities I reach out to: e-discovery, forensics, and the private investigator side. There’s a lot of people who would gravitate to this type of content. Desi: And is the book still aimed at more of a broader audience than those three? Rob: Yes, generally speaking. There are some new topics — I hadn’t written on AI yet, just because there’s still so much developing in AI for the digital forensics industry. The documentation side of it, are people thinking about the policies around usage of AI — I recently became an assistant professor at a local university here, and one of the things I was pretty much shocked at was that the syllabus is now 10 pages long. It used to be two pages — here are the dates we’re going to meet. Now it’s all these use cases of AI and when and how instructors can incorporate it into lessons. It’s taken an interesting turn for me to see how it’s applying in the academic world. People are putting some structure and policies around it, and I’m saying to myself: all these regulated industries, they’ve got to start doing the same. Everybody’s using it right now. Are you using it cautiously? Are you thinking about all the things down the road that may come from your usage — what queries you ran, how you structured them, what information you fed it? These are fascinating things to think about right now. Si: I’ve yet to enjoy the experience of teaching in this new AI era to that extent. I did a course recently that was supposed to largely focus around AI, and I think you’re right — one of the interesting issues at the moment is the sheer plethora of tools that are available. Theoretically Copilot is certified for UK government use, which to a certain extent I find deeply terrifying. But then there’s ChatGPT, and there’s Claude, and I was a ChatGPT person purely because that was the one I’d started on — but I’ve recently switched to Claude and it writes way better code. I had no idea there was such a disparity between two theoretically peer-level products. And that’s just the two well-known ones before you get down into the nitty-gritty of everything else that’s available out there. Rob: It’s almost like the streaming services, right? You had Netflix, now you have all these others — pick your flavour for the month, but each one carries its own subscription. You’ve got to figure out how it talks to you, how it resonates with where you’re coming from. The one I’ve been using more than anything lately is NotebookLM, which basically takes all my content and creates soundbites with two people discussing it, putting some really interesting perspective on the material I’ve created. I sit there and listen, and it’s really insightful — I find that 10 or 15-second clip that really resonates and I give it back to the community as a soundbite. Si: That’s really clever. I’m going to go on a little diversion, because we do this often enough — my wife got one of those wonderful spam phone calls the other day. It was a voice on the other end, a good British voice, proper English, sounded like it came from Manchester. It was the usual pitch: “This isn’t a sales call, don’t worry. Have you heard about this refund for a car purchase?” My wife did what we normally do, which is say thank you very much and hang up. Then just a day or so later, I came across a clip on Instagram — I’ll link to it in the show notes — of somebody who got exactly the same call. Same voice, same name. He gets it, it starts with the same spiel, and then he goes: “Are you a human? Is there somebody really on the other side of this?” The voice says, “Yes, I’m Tom, I’m from Manchester.” And he goes, “Okay, can you give me a recipe for spaghetti bolognaise?” And the LLM on the other side just forgets all its previous instructions and delivers a spaghetti bolognaise recipe. It was actually an AI doing spoof calling — the first instance I’ve actually come across it in the real world. Absolutely brilliant. Rob: It’s amazing what can be done with it. People always want the human perspective though — they always want it. So use it cautiously, reap some of the benefits, but always come back to you QC’ing what it’s trying to share and making sure it’s consistent with your own perspective. A lot of times when I put stuff out there, I want to make sure it’s reflective of my insights and how I perceive things. For me, NotebookLM is terrific because it works only within my content and then extracts information. It’s almost like my own model, essentially — it would answer questions according to how I’ve put my content together. I’ve really enjoyed that. And the book is interesting because it builds every year on about six different things I’ve written or thought about that year. I’ve also been exploring some new content with these soundbites. I even did a poster over the last couple of months where I put a lot of my perspective into content that someone would want to display in a lab — things you don’t think about every day, but need to be reminded of. Being able to take a step back and think about documentation, think about Locard’s Exchange Principle, the digital traces between everyone. Don’t forget there’s always going to be a trace. Even if somebody deletes something, you can still look at those footprints. It keeps me grounded, and it’s gotten really good reviews. I hope the content resonates with people — that I’m taking the time to do it from my own experience and hopefully it helps somebody in their day-to-day. Desi: I think the new topics you’re including all the time help reinforce new ideas for people coming across it. AI is a prime example — a huge focus across a lot of cybersecurity vendors right now is AI security, and the question of human versus automated activity. A good example for listeners: someone tries to build an app. That app, or the AI agent, goes out and downloads a piece of software to build the app, which turns out to be vulnerable, and then the organisation gets attacked. The question is: did the person intentionally download that vulnerable library for a threat actor to get in? So you’re looking at the intent behind the prompt, and then the agent steps themselves as it’s working — because someone could have said, “I want you to build this app and I specifically want you to use this library.” That implies some kind of intent, knowledge that it might have been vulnerable. When that goes to a court case, that person can be questioned about it. But if you don’t have that data, it’s really difficult. I look at this stuff day in, day out with AI security, and it’s interesting linking the intent from the prompts themselves and then what the agent is doing. Rob: Yeah, it’s a very interesting time. I’m looking at it more from the corporate perspective — how they’re using data to make decisions, and how we’re using it as examiners. I think I have a talk coming up next week on that: how are we using it as investigators? Looking at some of the court cases that have come out, and some of the government regulatory bodies that are providing criteria — like what you said, Si — giving people the opportunity to say, here’s some guardrails so you can use it in an educated way. That’s really important. If you don’t put that out there, people will go from one model to another. Some of the regulatory agencies are getting smart about it, because you have finance, pharmaceuticals, critical infrastructure — huge industries. You want to make sure people are educated about what they should and shouldn’t use at this point, and who to trust. But you can’t stop it — that’s why we’re in an industry like this. And since we met last time, I took on a new role. I was thinking about how to build out a digital forensic lab — which isn’t really written about much in terms of “here’s what you need to think about.” So I took the initiative to put that into perspective, looking at a forensic lab as a whole with other roles, and then specifically from the digital forensics side. One of the big topics is data culling, which is a huge topic right now. Full file system, full images — the real use case for those approaches. That’s a really important topic to discuss because you want to be aware of data volumes in your project, but you also want to be consistent in your approach. Somebody’s going to say: if you did it this way for two other matters, why did you do something different for this one? And if you don’t have good documentation for that, you’re not going to remember exactly what those reasons were. A lot of times, to be honest, a lot of counsel doesn’t join calls as much as they used to in order to guide the process. So as the expert, as the consultant, you really have to guide that process and make sure you have all your ducks in a row before you get on a call or arrive on site. You may lose the opportunity to go back out there again, so there’s a lot on the line at every step when you’re figuring out your methodology. If somebody says, “Let’s do a targeted collection,” really vet that out. Make sure there’s enough time and emphasis in that regard to ensure you don’t have any issues down the road — either missing something, or finding that a folder or files have been moved. There’s a lot at stake there. Paul: Hi folks, this is not a glitch — do not adjust your sets. I’m popping in to your regular programming to remind you to complete the DFIR mental health and wellbeing survey. This is your chance to have your voice heard and add to the evidence base, so we can continue to campaign for the support DFIR should be receiving but aren’t. Please click the link below and complete the survey. Now back to your regular programme. Si: Targeted collection is actually a really interesting topic. The issue from an investigative standpoint is you highlighted — you might want something in future that you didn’t collect. But the issue from a full legal perspective is somebody from the defence turns around at a later date and says, “You didn’t collect this. This could have contained exonerating evidence.” Why didn’t you collect it? How do you know it didn’t contain anything relevant? That’s a real issue. Rob: Right — you focused on what you’ve collected, but did you focus on what you’ve excluded? And then the other side of that is if you over-collect, everybody’s using the buzzword now — full file system. But if you over-collect and something else gets exposed, because these methods filter some things but not everything, then that’s an even bigger issue. People don’t really know what the value of all that is if all you’re trying to do is recover text messages. Si: I’m just going to highlight a difference for listeners here. This is a significant difference between UK, Australian and American law. In the UK, we can collect everything and if we find something more, great. In the US, you have very targeted scopes of allowed investigation, and if you step outside that it suddenly becomes inadmissible. That’s my understanding. Rob: I look at it also in terms of GDPR — everybody thinks about the personal privacy aspects. But I think the targeted approach is more along the lines of data volumes, how much needs to be reviewed, and also people inadvertently giving out privileged information — doctors’ contacts, family members, exposure of information that has nothing to do with the case at hand. But then when you think about how all this data is stored and people wanting deleted material recovered, now you need that and more. What I’m thinking about at that point is: based on the case at hand, is there ever going to be a need to go down a certain path? If yes, let’s do it this way. If no, we can look at the targeted approach. And the targeted approaches are getting really, really good. I have new solutions that I’ve either vetted or purchased now where you just put an agent on the device remotely — you put a link, an email, you don’t even have to send out equipment. There’s still equipment I like to send out because I like having local control of everything, but the industry has done a really good job over the last few years meeting the threshold of keeping it convenient and keeping it defensible. It’s interesting to watch. Desi: It doesn’t seem that long ago that Si and I were talking about how everything was moving to the cloud and how that was going to work. And then it kind of wasn’t talked about much, and it seems like everything just migrated and those tools are now out there and trusted. Rob: There are some people who push back on that a bit, but I think everybody knows that the efficiency of being able to send things directly to the cloud — not needing as much physical hardware — is appealing. But then you have the people who are really security or privacy focused. I had one person who wanted to throw equipment into a fire pit after we were done, because they didn’t want any traces of anything. That’s the extreme of what’s going on — your data is out there. Does it need to be in the cloud, or can you keep it local? I always think it’s a healthy conversation. From a cost perspective, it’s about the same thing, to be honest — sending out a kit, sending somebody out obviously involves travel, but there are a lot of advantages to doing this remotely. And one of the things you have to deal with now that you didn’t used to is navigating the human element. I remember going into offices all the time and people would just hand over their devices. Now you’re having to do that over the phone. People are a bit hesitant about it. I’ll never forget — I was on a call once and she goes, “Oh, I’ve got to go make lunch for my kids.” That actually turned into a whole conversation, and then with her lawyer she came back and said, “We’re pulling the plug on this.” And, you know, we’ll see you another time. Desi: This is probably a good opportunity to hire Tom from Manchester to handle the human interaction side of these collections. Rob: Yes, exactly! The soft skills definitely come into it. But the technology has to be really good, because if you’re relying on SaaS-based technology, cloud-based technology, and it doesn’t let you pivot quickly — especially if you’re not sending anything out — two minutes of you trying to figure out next steps is like an eternity, not only for you but for the person on the other end. You’ve always got to have a Plan B in place. Si: It’s always interesting what happens when you take something that we as technical users say “all you do is click this, that and the other,” and then you give it to somebody who’s got the technical skills of a grapefruit and say, “Can you just click this, that and the other?” — and then you realise there’s a lot more that you have to explain than you anticipated. The other problem is that a lot of forensic examiners got into this industry because they like computers, not because they like people. And all of a sudden you’re asking them to phone up, build a rapport with the person on the other end, and get them to hand over all their data. “I’m not so keen on this anymore.” It is an interesting pivot in the industry that’s changing the skill sets required to move forward. Rob: And it’s about being comfortable throughout the whole process. That’s why it’s really important for us to be collaborative with developers on what should and shouldn’t be on the screen, to let everybody do their thing and feel comfortable. You’ve got to have a level of trust. But for me going out on site — I’m the one who has to prep, make sure I have all the cables and everything else. Data cables are really interesting because everybody always has charging cables, so you’ve got to make sure they have the right type. You send out forms on how to prep the device beforehand, and half the time those forms aren’t even looked at. So you just have to buffer your time and approach it with: “Whatever we’re going to do together right now, I’m here to guide you through it.” And like I said, if something needs to pivot, you already have that in mind. Because if you don’t come prepared, it will go sideways really quickly depending on people’s time. People don’t realise how much things take, and when you’re pushing things to the cloud it takes even longer. There’s just a lot involved, but it’s an exciting time to be in the industry. It keeps it interesting, keeps it busy, keeps me on my toes. I like that energy — being able to pivot from a sales-type call to scoping to a technical call. I really enjoy it. And then being part of other industries too — going out to PI organisations. I just became VP of the SPI, so giving back to that community. There’s just a lot I enjoy about connecting everybody together, and at the weekends I try to relax as much as possible without writing. Si: You try to relax by writing a book. This is a good way to get it out of your system. Rob: So it’s the ultimate edition. I don’t know what the next one’s going to be called, but I think you did challenge me, Desi, on that. You’ve just got to bump the version number up. Si: Exactly — you sorted that by putting a version number on the cover. I think that’s genius. Rob: It’s a labour of love. Right now a lot of my focus is on building up my practice for the organisation I just joined. Great group of people — they’ve been in e-discovery for 20 years, never had forensics in-house. They approached me about the opportunity and I said, I love building, I love putting workflows together, bringing people together. I’ve assembled a great group to help me and it’s been really rewarding. Work is really enjoyable every day. My decompression sometimes is just to write about what I’ve had to encounter that day, why it’s important, and how I can look at it from a different perspective — because not everything goes smoothly all the time. You have those challenging conversations, either internally or with clients. My wife is in the medical field, so it’s like — everything with her involves people in genuine crisis all the time. Take a step back, appreciate what we’ve been challenged to do, be truthful, don’t over-promise. Keep to deadlines. If you say you’re going to do something, do it. You’ll be very successful. Part of the reason I went into academia after so many years in the industry is that I was hiring a lot of people from the new generation coming out of school and I saw some knowledge gaps, and also some things that are important to focus on. I bring in so many real-world examples of why it matters. To see the questions I’m able to pose and the responses I get, and to link the theory and course material to real-world practice, has been a really interesting experience. I really encourage those who have been in the industry for a long time to consider it, because so many colleges and universities need to see the experience you bring into the classroom. Some of the stuff I have to teach — I’m teaching Mac file systems tonight. I don’t dive into that from such a technical perspective every day, but I’ve been on the stand with Mac cases, so I can really appreciate the differences between Windows and Mac. I can say to students: you need to understand that you’re going to be given something that’s a bit of an anomaly at times from your daily usage. But you have to learn it, because you’re in a profession that’s constantly changing. If you want to stay current, fresh, and marketable, you have to continue to educate yourself. I also just took on a volunteer role on the university senate for the adjunct faculty — polling on faculty policies just yesterday. It opens up so many interesting doors when you explore something and just go with it. Desi: I don’t know how you have time for all of this, Rob. In my mind I’ve been trying to figure out: he’s doing this, writing a book, decompressing by writing, teaching — I honestly don’t know how you’re fitting it all in. Well done. Si: He sits on three different boards. So you’re an assistant professor — and where is this? Rob: At Hofstra. And I’m also a fellow at Dr. Henry Lee’s Institute. We’ll have our symposium again this year, which I’m really super excited about — I’ve locked in some great speakers so far. I also help the university with their master’s in investigation programme. I also help run SPI with my good friend and fellow PI, Mike [surname unknown], here out of New York. Advisory boards, trying to put thought leadership out in a lot of different ways. This year I’ve also gained a lot of followers, not only from the book content but from some of the things I like to speak about — topics that are important but also reflect my forensics background, going to university for forensic science. I keep a really strong connection there. I was just at a cigar event last night with former and active law enforcement. And then I remembered we had this interview, so I didn’t smoke any cigars — I always end up with that raspy voice. Si: I’m not sure I can imagine anything quite as fundamentally American in my head as a bunch of PIs and police officers sitting around in New York smoking cigars. Rob: They didn’t spare any expense — they had my name on one. No, it’s a lot of fun. You never know who you meet. I met one of the top people in the NYPD doing automotive infotainment system extractions, and he had just retired. Those connections are so interesting to me. The camaraderie — people are retired, I’m still working, the private/public sector barriers come down. I’ve always gotten along very well with law enforcement, and to be in that environment where they’re talking shop in their world, I still learn a lot from the investigative stories. It’s such an interesting world when you can move between different industries and professions and navigate within them. Si: It is fascinating to do that, and I get to do it quite a lot as well. The conference I’m going to next week is a geo systems one — we will get them on the podcast sooner or later. They make LiDAR systems for road traffic collision and scene reconstruction. They bring together a whole bunch of people, and at the last conference I learned about what happens when you fire a 9mm pistol into an electric car battery. I learned about determining stab wounds on bones after cremation — which involved pig carcasses and knives, and was presented after lunch, probably not the best scheduling. I learned about people using GPS jamming on ships moving drugs across the Atlantic. All of this is absolutely fascinating. But I think at the end of the day, you come away buoyed up and excited about being part of this larger industry. You also come away thinking: how can I apply what they’re talking about in my own world? What techniques have they brought in that I haven’t seen before? What can we share that would be useful to each other? That collaborative element is what I think will really make a difference in the long run — thinking a little bit outside our constrained space. Rob: Everything is digital. Everything has footprints associated with it. So it’s a matter of finding your niche at these conferences — tagging along with colleagues who’ve been before, using the opportunities organisations give to attend. I love giving my teams the opportunity to go to these conferences because they may pick up on something that’s very interesting to them and develop an expertise in it. I was just out in Nashville — my company is based there now. I was there last week for a conference for private investigators who work with law firms. Same thing: they were talking about trucks and semis that get into accidents and the information retrieved from those collisions. You never know what cases come across or what industries they touch, so it’s always good to build up those connections. They may have the information you need to tap into for your case. That was the first conference I’d gone to for that organisation, and I’m so glad I took the time, because otherwise I’m just on a listserv with these people. You don’t know people until you meet them in person. But you can see the passion in those who come to a conference to speak and put their content out there — it’s palpable. And when you’re able to reach out to them afterwards and say, “I know this is your expertise,” you can hand something over and feel good about it, knowing what they’re capable of. Si: Going just very briefly back — your own conference is still a work in progress, but have we got dates set yet? Rob: I usually do it in September and October. Right now there’s Legal Week in New York City, and then there’s another big one, so I’m trying to find a time that works for everybody. The September/October timeframe has always been our sweet spot, and I definitely want to get you guys involved again in some capacity. Last year’s conference — it’s amazing I can say “last year” already — was really good. We brought together a lot of people talking about AI. This year I want to focus on open source intelligence, and people who deal with corporate investigations, which is a pretty hot topic right now. I can’t believe it’s the fifth year already. Si: That is amazing. Five years is incredible. Rob: My wife was hanging up shirts the other day and I pulled out the 2025 one, and underneath it was the 2024. It’s just getting older. But what makes me feel really old now is that I’ve got a 10-year-old, and what he said to me the other day made my heart skip a beat. He goes, “I want to be a coder and a forensic scientist.” So what I’ve been doing is giving him some books to read — Mac file systems and things like that. It’s amazing to see. That’s a lot of the reason why I write — I want to reflect to my children that I love what I do. When I do a LinkedIn post or something, I involve my son so that he at least sees this is something that’s important to me. It’s a lot of voluntary work, and even putting a book together is an expensive venture. But for me, it’s the opportunity to leave a little bit of a legacy. Maybe they’ll get involved, maybe they won’t, but they know I’m going out tonight to teach and that last night I went out to a cigar event. Just trying to keep it all in perspective — I’m at a good stage right now and I’m just enjoying what I do. I love these opportunities to get together with you guys — it’s almost like a friendship at this point. I’ve been following Forensic Focus since I was right out of school, and to see it develop into such a great resource, with so many different facets, being able to meet other people and see the interviews you do — the amount of effort that goes into the content you put out there is really phenomenal. Kudos to you for continuing to keep that up. I know how difficult it is to keep information flowing. Rob: And with three kids aged 10 and under, there’s no shortage of demands on your time. Si: You get to a point sooner or later where you have children who are 20 or older, and it changes things. But the ability to give them the view that you can do what you enjoy, and give them permission to do the same for themselves — it’s hugely gratifying. Although, if you can keep your son interested in coding and wanting to be a forensic analyst, good on you. I’ve failed miserably on all three of mine — none of them have anything to do with this whatsoever. Rob: My dad was in banking for 50-plus years. Seeing him go to work every day in a suit, taking the train — that commitment and dedication was interesting. And now you’ve got phones and instant messaging and your hair can go on fire at any point of the day. It’s a different world. But if we still hold on to the value of having learned a skill, navigating, doing things outside the job itself — it’s rewarding for me to see my kids reflect on what I’ve put together. My son is amazing on the coding side — “look what I just did” — and he’s just trying to show me everything. I’m like: just make sure you don’t publish that on a public Google site. Remember those guys I hung out with last night? They’re at our front door. Si: One of my formative memories of wanting to be in IT was actually going with my father into the New York office of the bank and seeing the PDP-11s running the systems at the time. That was one of the points where I thought, these computer things, they’re kind of cool. Rob: I just brought up my dad in class last week, because he had his main office on Fifth Avenue and his backup office on Sixth Avenue. When I was a kid I asked, why are we going to two offices? He said, “This is a disaster recovery site.” This was in the late eighties, early nineties. I was teaching about backup routines and the whole thing was a completely different perspective back then, with different formats and data. But we’ve been developing these policies and procedures and they’re still very relevant today. It’s amazing — you see the evolution, but you also have those memories of how technology has developed. I hope we continue to see a nice evolution, and a lot of collaboration between law enforcement and the private sector, so we can continue to use the information available to us for good — to help support the cases and matters and the people we serve in the courts. Si: Well, I think we’re coming to the top of the hour now. As always, Rob, I could quite happily sit and just chat nonstop. But you’ve now committed to writing another book by this time next year — version three. We look forward to hearing about the conference when the details become available. Please, obviously, we’d love to be involved, and maybe in six months’ time when you’ve got all the details, come back on and we can talk about who’s confirmed to speak, what the topics are going to be. Desi: We can also discuss the first draft of your next book in six months’ time. Rob: One of the things I’ve been doing lately is coming up with some interesting swag to get the book into people’s minds. I came out with this — I’m going to try to send it to you guys — it’s my logo inside a magnifying glass on a USB drive. And it lights up. The difference between a light and no light? One penny. So this thing shines blue. And then when I see you guys, I’ve got my next challenge coin to bring along. Si: Ah, now it’s starting to become a collection. Although I’ve moved, so I have no idea where anything is. I’ve still got Desi’s challenge coin somewhere. Desi: What was really embarrassing for me was that we met in person once and Si had the challenge coin, and I didn’t. Si: I totally forgot about that. Yes. Desi: I’ll bring a whole bunch — I’ve still got a stash. I’ll bring them along for you too, Rob. It’s got an actual cipher challenge that still no one has solved on the coin. Si: I spent quite a lot of time on it at the beginning, and then it faded into obscurity. Now you’ve reminded me. Rob: The hidden secret lives on. Well, it’s always great catching up. You guys are top of my list whenever something is either coming out or I’ve got an idea. I always feel the connection — not just because of the great conversations, but because of what you guys put out there in general. I always feel your podcasts are really personal and really fun. I want to continue to be involved and support you however possible. Looking forward to more collaboration down the road. Desi: It’s been a pleasure having you on as always. And actually, I was just looking through our archives — I think this will be our actual first podcast of the year. We’re in March already when we’re recording this. Our last one was the holiday special in December. Si: It has been a busy year so far. But we have something else booked already, though it’s a little way in the future. I think you and I need a proper catch up, Desi. Desi: Yeah, so we’ll do an in-between one, and then for listeners there’s one coming out probably end of April — we’re recording it start of April. I was only talking to someone the other day and we said, “Wait, it’s March already?” It’s just gone so quick. Rob: I’m already thinking April 15th is right around the corner. That’s tax day here. Si: Oh no. We’re past that. Less painful — well, I won’t say less painful, it was very painful — but less urgent. Desi: Alright, we’ll leave it here. For our listeners, thank you for joining us. Thank you so much, Rob, for coming on again and discussing the new book. Be excited for the symposium — Si and I had a great time last time and we hung around for a few of the talks, which was awesome. And quickly — is the book out now? Rob: Yes it is! It’s on Amazon, but also Walmart, Barnes and Noble — it has international distribution, so you should be able to get it in the UK and Australia. It’s available in paperback, audio — which my AI narrator did, and they always mispronounce a couple of things, but you can go in and edit that — Kindle, and eBook. Everything. Desi: Perfect. We’ll share all the links so everyone can grab a copy. We’ll probably also include links to your older books, because they’re still really good reads to see what’s changed. Rob: On Amazon they’re shown as a series of four. The last one featured Dr. Fred Cohen. The one before that had Lee Felsenstein, who was involved with some of the earliest personal computers. Before that, Dr. Ralph Friedman. A lot of great people. And I couldn’t believe that last year I had the opportunity to sit down with Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf, who developed TCP/IP. I had dinner with those guys and now they’re on my wall. My kids are like, “Who are those guys?” And I say, you know that YouTube you love watching upstairs? That’s why you have YouTube. And then we talk about the need to transfer data even faster — what other technology is out there to allow data transfer to go even faster than TCP/IP. Those guys spent three hours talking with me about AI and they’re still cutting edge in their eighties. It’s amazing. When you write a book, it takes you into these different arenas where people want to hear what you’ve written about and what your perspective is. It’s opened up a lot of doors. I’m extremely grateful. Si: Question for you as an author — and this one threw me the first time someone asked me — how do you feel about signing copies of your book? Rob: When I see personalised ones on eBay, I think, wait, I remember that one! No — I think it’s a connection for people, knowing they’ve met somebody who’s actually taken the time to complete a book. Because writing is difficult, but getting it across the finish line is even more difficult: the cover, making sure the bleeds are right, the colour, the distribution, and then after all that, you’ve got to market it. So when somebody actually wants your book, you’re like, sure, I’ll sign that copy — what else would you like me to put on there? I’ve gotten some really interesting requests for inspirational messages. I’m just so happy to give this stuff out and that people take the time to read it. But I did find used copies on eBay and I thought, oh man. I write the content so it doesn’t get outdated quickly, but it’s a nice feeling — very inspirational, actually. It makes you want to keep writing because you have a little bit of a following when people chase you around at conferences asking for your book. That’s always a nice thing to have. Desi: Cool. Well, thanks for your time, Rob — we’ll leave it there. Thanks everyone for listening. You can grab us on our website — the video and transcript are there if you’re listening somewhere else. We also pop up on YouTube, and most people are listening on their favourite podcast app. We’re on pretty much everything. All the notes and links will be in the show notes on all those platforms. If you want to chat with Si and I, we do have a Discord server — you can get to that from the website. Si is a moderator and I think I’m listed as an admin, so you can find us pretty easily. And if you have ideas for guests you’d like to see on the show, drop into the Discord. Thanks everyone, and we’ll see you all next time. Si: Excellent. Amazing. Thank you.