166: Bye, Bye Kanye

Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFillippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks for July 1st, 2016. I am Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. What's Shag and Bee? Not much. You got me up super early in the morning for our later segment of security, so I'm somewhat shell-shocked.

Yeah, I was shocked that you actually showed up. You know, I'm just preparing for my future by being up at 5 in the morning. Yep, at least 5 in the morning. You should have just stayed up all night to do it. That would have been better. No. So I noticed something this week. I got a couple Amazon deliveries, and I thought I'd mentioned this on the show before, but apparently I hadn't.

I don't get regular Amazon deliveries anymore like I used to from UPS. Right. I get guys in enterprise rental vans. Now, are they branded? No. Well, they're branded enterprise rental vans. Oh, really? Yeah. So not here. Here we're getting no longer UPS. Amazon has its own big white trucks here that are branded Amazon, because you posted this, and then I was riding my bike yesterday.

And, you know, I saw like eight Amazon trucks driving around. They're all white. They all look like they're enterprise rental vans, but I did not see any enterprise branding. I only saw Amazon branding here. See, and those Amazon trucks, I don't see those as much anymore. But if you notice, those are magnetic stickers that they slap on the side.

Yeah. So they're probably just covering up the enterprise, you know, logo. I guess. I mean, I figured that's a dumb cross promotional possibility there. Why not take some bucks from enterprise? I know. Or at least get the free vans. Yeah. It's weird because, like, the guy I talked to wouldn't tell me who he worked for. I'm like, do you work for Amazon or do you work for UPS?

He's like, I can't tell you, man. It's none of your goddamn business. Here's your package. Sign for it. Shut the hell up. That's pretty much it. I'm like, why are you guys doing these vans? I'm like, are you just out of trucks? He's like, look, man, this is what they give me. You know, he wasn't very. There's the top notch grumpy old geeks investigative journalism at work.

That was pretty much it. I need to find. It's the same guy, though, that drops my stuff off every time. So if I get a different guy, I'll ask him. But yeah, this dude, he's like, you know, he's like, you know, 22 with dreadlocks down to his butt. And you can tell he doesn't want to be like delivering my dog food and shit.

So no, probably not. So we've talked about the self-driving cars a bit in the past, and we finally have our first case of a death. OK. It happened a month ago, which is very odd. But yesterday, Tesla put out a blog post or two days ago saying that. Yeah.

Yep. A friend of Tesla was actually killed. But it the there's an investigation being opened into the cause of the crash. OK. And it's you know, what they said was because he was driving down the highway in a semi cut in front of him to make a left hand turn.

But either in the guy didn't see the the semi because the theory is that he was watching a movie and the self-driving auto, the autonomous part thought it was an overpass. OK. It got confused, I guess. But, you know, I mean, I've said kind of from day one, the only way this is going to work is if we're all in or not.

We can't have the mix. So, yeah, here's the deal. We'll figure out how this goes. But we I think this is going to start happening faster and faster. So the cases that we were talking about before are going to start happening, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

And we talked previously about the legal implications and how that's kind of just starting to get hashed out a little bit. And there was an article in Recode about this. Volvo did a survey of about 50,000 people around the world. And they they kind of said, well, whose job whose responsibility is it if a self-driving car crashes?

And 79 percent of people think that the car makers should assume the liability in the case of crashes. And 55 percent of people said they still wanted to have a steering wheel in their self-driving cars. Now, there's been some studies about the if that'll actually help or hinder. Apparently, people seem to think that having these steering wheel in there is when people will reach for it in a panic and make things worse.

My issue being if we make the car makers liable, nobody's going to want to make these damn cars. Yeah. Or they'll just have to make them really good. Yeah. Yeah. The interesting thing, though, is, you know, because Tesla's isn't actually a self-driving car. It's, you know, it's assist mode.

Yes. It's not like the full, not a full. Yeah. You're supposed to be watching the road, but it's like, you know, it's like enhanced. It's enhanced cruise control. People with no enhancements are not watching the road. This is true. This is why I've come. I've come full circle on this since doing this podcast and basically walking around Santa Monica.

Bring it on. Get rid of self self-driving cars. I mean, individual driving cars completely because nobody in this goddamn city can drive. Well, you know, if you're a grumpy old geek long enough, you always come back around. It's the way it works. It's just the way it works.

That's true. Mm hmm. We've also made fun of, in the past, psychological studies and things like that. Well, yeah. The science is having some issues. Yes. And I love this one. This is called cluster failure. Why fMRI inferences for spatial extent have inflated false positive rates.

Now. Very early. Can you translate that to English? Yeah. What they're saying is that the way people are using fMRIs has basically been wrong. In about 40,000 clinical studies that use fMRI might be utterly useless.

Oh, great. Yeah. So all of those things that magazines have been touting, it's like, oh, we found the piece of your brain that handles this thing. Right. Yeah, probably not. They probably have not found it. So, yes, it's an I just say you just call it an F-U-M-R-I because it's, you know, why bother?

You went for the whole story just for that joke, didn't you? I did, but I had a feeling. No, it's I just love it because the link in the show notes goes to the actual the sciencey part. It doesn't go to the, you know, the dumbed down version. So if you want to go read what they're talking about and get get the actual science behind it, it'll make your head hurt.

But it's the it's this is the part that matters. Instead of going to read something that has been, you know, cross posted from boing boing or whatnot. Right. All right. Let's get to it. OK. In the news. We talked a lot about Brexit last week because it was brand new.

We're about a week into it now. Some people really didn't like what we had to say about Brexit. Well, one person really didn't like it. Yeah. And we'll talk about that next segment. We'll talk about that next segment. But I would like to point out that basically everything that we had commented on it. We weren't wrong. No, we weren't.

If anything, we were we were a little soft. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because the pound is basically still at its lowest in over 30 years. Things are not going very well. A trillion dollars of value disappeared in one day from the public markets. Um, uh, the leadership that was pushing for Brexit over in the UK basically threw their hands up in the air and said, we don't know what the hell to do now.

And, uh, I don't want to be prime minister. Yeah. So it's not going very well. But, uh, you know, if you want to really delve into this, one of the better articles out there, uh, Glenn Greenwald, of course, over at the Intercept, uh, Brexit is only the latest proof of the insularity and failure of Western establishment institutions.

And it goes into rather good detail about why this is happening and why people are basically saying, screw you, uh, screw you politicians. You all lie. We don't want to believe in any of you and your media leads to hell with you and you people with your facts and your science screw you too.

Uh, which does not bode well for our collective future, particularly here in the U S since we have an election in a couple more months. So yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm worried less and less about our, our election, but. Oh, well, we'll see. I mean, you know, who knows? We'll see what happens. And I still stand by my original thesis that I, that I put out probably a year ago that Donald Trump is actually running to get Hillary elected because they're friends.

We'll see. I would like that. I, I, I still think, yes, the biggest episode of punked ever, you know, given to the, by the hand of man or however you want to say it, but we'll see. We'll see. So again, just a, uh, Grant Greenwald goes, you know, this is, this is basically an anger and screw you vote.

And generally what happens with anger and screw you votes is you end up screwing yourself. Um, that kind of happened. Uh, and also the, yeah, you know, and it's also, there's the funny, funny vote. Like, uh, we did in California where we elected Arnold Schwarzenegger as the governor. That didn't work out so well either. Yeah.

It wasn't the best of times. No. Uh, so with the pound being down so much, uh, basically there is an influx of tourism to London from the rich Chinese and middle Eastern tourists who are there to buy heavy, high end luxury goods at a, at the cheapest price you've been able to get it in 30 years.

So good for luxury British companies, not so good for regular British people. Yeah. So yeah, that's how it goes. Um, I found a nice bit on, um, Samantha Bee's full frontal, which I haven't seen yet, but you know, I was about to say the same thing.

I keep hearing that this is a very, very good show and that she's knocking it out of the park. Uh, I watched the clip that you posted, which was fantastic. Um, yeah. Yeah. And the clip that I posted that'll be in the show notes is David Tennant reading some of the Twitter insults to, uh, to Donald Trump and they're pretty good.

Yeah. That was very funny. Uh, those, yeah, it was very funny. Uh, anyways, and you know, you've made it as big news when you get the, the Hitler meme treatment. So I popped that in there as well as quite funny. That one was really good too. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't seen, I haven't seen angry Hitler in a very long time.

I'm glad, I'm glad this brought him out of retirement. Yeah. And this one worked very well. They did a very good job with it. So quite funny. That is in our show notes. So you should check that out. And, uh, the last bit, I just liked this quote. This is from Salon Brexit versus Braveheart. Will the Celtic nation seek revenge on England for its historic blunder?

As we know, we're basically heading to a breakup of the UK. Um, but, uh, the quote in here was just too good. Many people in Britain are already calling for a repeat referendum, apparently on a principle that the whole country got drunk last Thursday and now repents of its actions. Anyone who has spent significant time in Britain would admit that seems plausible.

Yes, that is true. Yes. And it's Celtic, not Celtic, by the way. Sorry. Again, early. Um, yeah. Moving on from that stuff. Uh, Elizabeth Warren is, uh, taking on Apple, Amazon, and Google saying that they are trying to lock out competition and, uh, we need to open this up so there can be more competition, which certainly we agree with, but I don't think that's ever going to happen.

Well, where's the, what, what, why are they, why is she saying Apple, Amazon, and Google? Apple sells computers, Amazon sells everything, and Google sells search. So are they, are she talking about like the three of them are in collusion together? Not so much collusion. I don't know. I don't know.

Well, obviously, I mean, just popular opinion. Look at it. You look around and you just see they are basically monopolies within their industries. Yeah, that's true. So, okay. Yeah. Not included in our list was Facebook, uh, which certainly has platform power that freaks out everybody in the media business. That's the biggest, scariest one of the bunch.

Yes. Which we will get to in just a second. Ah, uh, and interesting Google news though. They just finished their first, uh, or actually not that at first, their, I think third or fourth undersea cable that goes from, uh, the West coast of the U S to Japan.

Okay. It's a 60, this is, this is insane. 60 terabits per second. Wow. That's how much bandwidth that thing can like can haul. That's insane. And that's quite a lot. Yeah. And the funny bit is, uh, Google has 10 or a 10 terabits of that 60 just for, uh, data center access.

So their data centers can talk to each other. It's not, this isn't like public internet. This is just so their things can talk to each other. Like, wow. Yeah. That's pretty crazy. Yeah. Cause Microsoft and Google are in, I'm sorry, uh, Microsoft and Facebook are going to be doing another one, uh, to, from the East coast of the U S over to Europe.

Yes. And it's going to be like a, it's going to be even crazy faster. It's like 140 terabits or 160 terabits. I'm sorry. But yeah, this thing is, it's crazy. Yes, it is. Crazy bandwidth. It's crazy bandwidth. Um, big news. Facebook pulled the rug again out of businesses from under them.

So, uh, if you, uh, if you did what you had to do back in the day or not even that long ago and you brought your business over to Facebook and you put all your efforts and time and everything into your Facebook, uh, platform, guess what? It don't mean anything anymore. Nope. Uh, they, this is the thing when you build your, when you build.

You build your house on somebody else's land. Yep. Um, yeah, they, you know, bring your business to Facebook, bring your audience to Facebook. Thank you for the audience. Now get the fuck off of Facebook. That's pretty much it. If you want any of your things to be seen, it's really, you know, again, just a couple months ago, I was working on a bunch of instant article projects for various publishers because Facebook on, you know, this is a great way for you to publish your content on Facebook.

And now Facebook just said basically the newsfeed. Well, yeah, we're going to focus on friends and family. So if you're, if you're, if your stuff goes viral, good for you, cause then it'll get shared. Otherwise you're screwed. Yep. We're going to bury you if you post yourself. Yeah. And, uh, I, you know, I hate to say I told you so, but haven't we been saying this since episode one?

We've been saying this for 20 years, dude. Yeah. Well, recode.net now has a nice article saying everything that we've been saying for years, which is don't, you should be afraid of big, of big things like Facebook because they will screw you repeatedly. Do not build your business on other people's land.

You know, it's funny. I was thinking the other night, I'm like, how are we going to protect against this and like future generations? I think we need to make a children's book called no walled gardens and we can, and we can explain to the kids like why it's dangerous to have a walled garden. I'm going to have a cute little puppy in there.

Oh yeah. You know, they stopped bringing food over the wall. Oh wait, I think it's a little grizzly. Well, the whole point is to scare the crap out of the kids so they don't, don't make the mistakes again and again and again. You know, it's going to be interesting to see what, what people are going to be saying about this.

And you know, the whole, I told you so only has so many shot and Freud points. It kind of sucks, but Hey, you know, it's your fault. Yeah. I think the verge had a, had a funny tweet where they like posted a link to it and it just said, bye. So bye Facebook. Um, also something that's leaving Facebook is paper.

The news reading app that, you know, has been stagnant for ever. I mean, it's over a year that they, they haven't updated this thing. They're finally killing it. I launched it twice. I never launched it. I downloaded it when they first did it. So then I checked it out again, two weeks later and I never used it again.

Yeah. The only thing that the only other Facebook app that I have is messenger. And that's just because you have to, if you want to send somebody a note. Yeah, I know. It's insane. Everybody uses that now, right? Oh, well. Yep. What's not insane though, is Barnes and Noble. Yes. They're going to start serving booze instead of just coffee.

Very smart. Very smart. Yes. You need to pivot as a bookstore because especially with Amazon opening up their own pseudo bookstores, that is a genius idea. Go there, buy a book, read, have a beer. Yeah. And get drunk enough to buy a book. Yes. And then Uber home. Uh-huh.

Yeah. And you're a little self-driving Uber. So yeah, no, I think it's a very good, a very good move because. Smart. But I don't even, okay, I guess there's one over at Third Street Promenade. I was about to say, I don't even know where there is a bookstore anymore. It's funny. I've got, I've got a really nice, you know, mom and pop bookstore here in town.

Oh, cool. And across the street, and I was sitting there last night, I actually tweeted about this. I'm like, I'm standing on a corner. In front of me is a board game store with a bunch of dudes inside playing D&D. Behind me is a model train store on one, over one shoulder. Over the other shoulder is a, is a bookstore.

I'm like, when the hell am I? It's like, it's like I time traveled back to the days when you could, you know, go out and buy things that, uh, people generally used to do. Right. Yeah. That's very cool. Well, uh, speaking of booze and getting it anywhere and everywhere that you want, as of today, customers here in Southern California can order alcohol and food at the same time.

What a concept. From a number of delivery services, uh, which is okay. I mean, yeah, it's DoorDash is doing it, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, I'm sure there's a, an excessive upcharge for this. And I figure if you're going all in on that, just go outside, go, go, go, go to a damn restaurant.

Yeah. Get off your ass and go to a restaurant. People. Sometimes you're working late and you want some pizza and beer. I, you know, I see the, I see the need for it. Cause there are many times where I wish I could have got some beer with my pizza. No, that's very, I mean, that's why pink dot was doing well many years ago.

Cause you could get a sub and some vodka. Basically that was it. Yeah. Yeah. It's ice cream hooch. And well, if you, if you needed porn, you had to go to Cosmo. That's what Cosmo was good for. Ice cream and porn at 3am. Okay. But yeah, pink dot was the way it was.

I know people that actually moved to get your, your like move their, their apartments cause they were like right on the edge of pink dot territory. And they're like, they saw an apartment open across the street that was in pink dot territory and they literally moved just so they could get pink dot. I'm like, Oh, to be in your twenties and silly.

Yes. So the sun. Yes. Has gone blank. The sky's gone out. I know. What are we going to do? This is a little frightening actually. That's the thing about it. Yes. I mean, just the, the oncoming solar minimum happens every, you know, couple of years. But the thing about it is it is still kind of creepy.

It's a little creepy. It's a little scary. And I'm prepared for the onslaught of idiots saying, what about global warming and ice age is coming. What are we talking about here? You people know nothing. Oh, shut up. Yeah. The, the, the scary part about it isn't that the sun is, you know, going through its solar minimum. The fact that when the sun goes into a solar minimum, uh, we aren't as protected as we are from the other cosmic rays that are hitting us from the other side.

Yes. So, uh, there's been an uptick in cosmic ray intensity since, you know, the solar minimum has started. Yes. Which is, you know. Which means more skin cancers. Well, and it also means telecommunication interruption, more space debris. Um, so space junk starts to, uh, collect outside of the, uh, the atmosphere and, uh, it's interesting stuff.

It's interesting stuff. So, you know, we got a while for this cause I think it, uh, was it peaks at 2020. Yeah. So it'll be, so it'll be a couple of years while this is going on. But, uh, the pictures of the sun without any, uh, sun spots or eruptions are pretty cool. Yeah, they really are. I mean, it looks like excellent Photoshop work.

Yeah. It's basically a, an orange gradient ball. Yeah. It's very nice. Soothing almost. Well, you know, as we're basically getting skin cancer and then starting to freeze to death while still having global warming going on, at least we can now all sing happy birthday to each other without paying up.

Yeah. Finally. Yeah. Finally. It's been, uh, it's, it hasn't been in the public domain for decades. That changed on Monday when a federal judge signed off on a settlement between Warner Chapel music and a group of plaintiffs putting the song back in the public domain and Warner Chapel will also have to refund a total of $14 million to be distributed among a group of people who have paid license fees for the songs over the previous five decades.

I'd assume that include places like TGI Fridays and whatnot, where they come and sing to you when they give you your free cupcake. No, that's why they always, that's why they never say sing happy birthday. Some, some places do different ones. That's right. They make up their own stupid songs. Yep. Yeah. I think I would have preferred the one from, uh, the Flintstones.

Happy, happy birthday. Oh, I remember that. Yeah. It was a good one. They should have licensed that one. Anna Barbera might still be around. Might be, um, I found an article about audio quality, which I thought was perfect. A little tip of the hat to Vinacore, who is also getting married this weekend.

So congratulations. Uh, but this is all about how basically we have gotten to the highest level of technology we can possibly get with digital audio and any increases that we do beyond this are beyond the limits of human hearing anyway. So it doesn't matter. And then it goes into the trend of returning to crappier sound quality, such as vinyl that a very small niche market is doing.

So there you go. Oh, so you, you congratulate with one hand. Let's tab with the other. Okay. Kiss and a smack. It's a kiss and a smack. Okay. You know, uh, the other news that's going on in the audio world right now is Apple is in talks to acquire Jay-Z's title music service.

Somebody has to, because it's a disaster. Um, and anything is better than, uh, iTunes. So sure. Okay. Why not? No, no. Well, who cares? Rich people games. I'm not using Apple music. I'm not using title. I just don't care about any of them.

I'm stuck. I'm, I don't know what you're using vinyl. You're going over to Vinacore's. No, I'm not going over to Vinacore's side. Every time I want to hear an album, I have to drive across town. Yep. It's nice. I mean, it sounds good, but, uh, I, I don't want to move them. You know, I'm going to have to actually have to go help him move them because he's getting his floors redone.

And that's thousands of records. It's 10,000 records that we have to move. Just show up with your iPhone and say, all of that stuff is on this. Yeah. It's all on this thing that's in my pocket. No, I know. No, I know. Anyways, uh, the other thing that is kind of interesting and not really music related, but sort of, cause I've gone to a number of high profile events and, and releases and all that sort of thing where basically you had to leave your bag, you leave your phone in your car or you put it in a bag that they stuck in a locker.

And when you were done at the event, you could go back and get your phone because they didn't want you taking photos. They didn't want you taking videos. They didn't want you recording things. They didn't want you uploading things. They didn't want you spoiling things. Um, so Apple is patented the technology to block iPhone cameras in sensitive locations.

Meaning if you were say an event, uh, you were the troubadour or something like that, you could basically install something that would block iPhone cameras from working. So everybody just gets Androids and if that doesn't work. Okay. But anyways, there's creepier implications here.

It's my phone. It's my camera. How can, why are you able to turn it off? Oh yeah. No. What, you know. Yeah. How easy is it going to be to get one of these devices that shuts things off? Would I be able to install it on my private home?

How does this work? So this is an interesting thing that's coming and we'll see what happens. Oh, well then people will just have to go back to film to go take pictures of things. We're going back to vinyl. We're going back to film. I'll get a reel-to-reel tape recorder and stick it under my, under my shirt.

We're all going Luddite. Yeah. We're going backwards and backwards. Yes. And finally, Google, uh, has apparently decided to try to be somewhat less evil. Uh, they have launched what is called my activity, uh, which allows you to basically go see everything that Google knows about you in theory, or at least what they're telling you that they know about you and remove embarrassing stuff.

Okay. I logged in and basically all I see is a list of the various things I've watched on YouTube because I think I refused everything else and allowed that for some reason, which means I'm going to go and turn that off somehow. Oh yeah. Yeah. I'm looking at here now.

Yeah. There's just a bunch of, oh no, it's got all my search history too. And all the places I've visited. Oh, see, I shut off my search history. The funny thing is I turned it back on like two weeks ago because there was some, some feature that I needed to have it on for. Right. And, uh, then I went and turned it back.

I thought I turned it back off, but I guess not. Well, if nothing else, those of us that are into this sort of thing can use this, my activity to make, make sure that we have things on or off as needed. So, uh, it's interesting. I mean, I would go in there and take a look and see what you've got in there because it's, it's your, it's your right to remove this stuff if you want to.

And I'm happy that Google did this. Yeah. The interesting thing is I know I had this off a long time ago. I mean, forever. I've never had them let them track my activity for anything. Right. But it's got search. I'm like looking back here. Once I turned on the follow search history stuff, they back populated this with all of the stuff that they weren't supposed to have.

Right. So they don't actually remove it. It's just disconnected from your account until, unless you switch it back on. Yeah. This is, that's bullshit. That's some insidious shit right there. Oh, that's so delete is not delete. No, it's not. Yay.

Google. Don't be evil. My ass. We'll be right back. Enjoy a word from our sponsors. What is Loot Crate? Loot Crate is the best way for you to support the show. With Loot Crate, you get collectibles, apparel, and more from your favorite pop culture franchises delivered right to your door every single month.

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I woke up super early so I could join in on the new security segment with Dave Bittner from CyberWire. Morning, guys. Good morning. Good morning. It's way too early. All right. So the first bit of news that I saw that intrigued me because I am a frequent international traveler.

U.S. Customs now wants to collect social media account names at the border. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. This is a non-story because they're making it optional. So to me, that just means no big deal.

But I do see the slippery slope potential here. I see a couple of things. I mean, yes, it is optional. So you can say no. But you need to know that you can say no. That was my question. Yeah. This sort of falls into the line of when a police officer pulls you over and says, can I search your car?

Right? Everyone says you should say no. But a lot of people think, well, if I say no, is that just going to make things worse for me? Because then does the police officer bring in the dogs or, you know? Exactly. Now, see, I'm wondering, is this going to be like any online forum where you get the little asterisk next to it and a little thing that says, you do not need to put this information in?

Or is it just going to be there? And if you know it's optional, you just don't put it in? Right. Right. Exactly. And could you have a border patrol person, you know, looming over you and asking you, well, why don't you want to fill out your social media information?

Yes. Or even just flat out lying and saying, you need to put in this, why did you leave this blank? Maybe they don't know. Maybe they're just intimidating. I've seen that process happen to other people going through customs before. Yeah. On the flip side, I mean, it is a good investigative tool for them if someone's willing to give them that information.

It does help them do the job they need to do. But, you know, it's something that everybody should be aware of because it is optional so far. Yeah. And right now it's just a proposal. So they have the public has 60 days to comment on the proposal before it be formally considered.

Ironically, even though they want to collect online information, your comments cannot be taken online. You have to mail it to them. You should mail them a mail them a letter that says I've left my comments on social media. We'll see how that goes.

Yes. And everybody just everybody just put down at Bill Gates when you come through. I'm sure that'll be fine. Well, yeah. I mean, first off, you just could make up stuff anyway. And secondly, they'd have to have a whole department just to track Jason because he shuts down and reopens social media accounts like no tomorrow. Damn, Skippy. Catch me if you can, bitches.

So the other news story I saw, because friend of the show, Fergal, happens to work over there and he's been very busy this week. Symantec really screwed up and you need to go update Norton Antivirus if you're using it right now. Right now. Yep. Yeah. I read the I read the technology side of this and it's it was, you know, this is a Jean-Luc Picard.

It's a hard forehead slap moment if there ever was one. Yeah. They've had a busy week over there, apparently. But it was discovered via the Google's Project Zero cybersecurity analysis group, which we've talked about quite a few times. And it is a core engine bug. So they have some patches.

Go do it. Yeah. And this I mean, this speaks to the point that, you know, obviously you always want to keep your stuff up to date for something like your your your security software. Having auto update on is generally a good idea so that these sorts of vulnerabilities don't just lurk in your system without you even knowing about it.

Yep. Yeah. But this one was really bad. It's like the the system that they use to unpack everything that you download basically had kernel root access. So if if if anybody knew about that, that was the you mean the attack surface right there for everybody that has anything Norton installed.

It was just like, oh, man. Yeah. So far, no reports of anybody exploiting it. But, you know, just because it hasn't reported doesn't mean it hasn't happened. But but that's good news in that there hasn't been any wide exploits of it reported so far. Yeah.

And they reacted quickly and they've done a very good job of trying to get the word out, too. So well done for them on that. So this is my favorite story of the week. A large botnet of CCTV devices. I love this. Knock the snot out of a jewelry website.

As we've mentioned before, the Internet of Things is going to screw us all at some point. And researchers over at Securi, we talk about quite a bit because they have a very nice WordPress package. They discovered this botnet of twenty five thousand five hundred CCTV cameras who were performing the DDoS attack.

And in one hundred and five different countries around the world. I love it. Yeah. So this this is a story that we'd actually spoken to someone about about a week ago on the Cyber Wire. We talked with Wesley Weinberg, who's a researcher. And one of the things he's researched are these embedded security cameras.

And I think, you know, you walk around, you see security cameras. They're everywhere now. And I think people tend to think of them the way they used to be, which is just a video camera, you know, hosed up with some coax cable to some sort of DVR that can record, you know, lots of different video streams. Well, they're not that way anymore. Each of these video cameras, these IP connected video cameras, there's a little computer running in there.

And so if someone could get get access to that computer, then they can use that computer to do something like run a botnet. And they're particularly vulnerable because most people don't really think about them as as having that capability on their network.

So if you have CCTV cameras, they should be segregated. They should be on a separate network from the rest of your important network stuff, because if people get access to them, they can they can use them just like they could use any other kind of computer.

Yeah, and it goes with printers as well. You know, any IP enabled printer can be a be part of a botnet. Anything that has an IP address and is connected to the Internet is that new refrigerator you bought your light bulbs now. It's going to be a fun world. Yeah. Yeah.

Seriously, your your Hughes will be attacking some poor schmuck over in in Istanbul tomorrow. Who knows? Fun times, fun times. But I just love that there are so many of them and so widespread. Do we know what the brand of the actual cameras that they were using or is it just a completely, you know, big swath of different types of cameras?

I don't know. I did not see in the story. The gentleman we talked to when we talked to Wesley Weinberg about it, he researched Sony cameras. He was just looking for something that was widespread, readily available, you know, reasonably affordable. And so that was what he did his research on.

And he basically found that, you know, they're pretty easy to get into. And once you're in, you're good to go and doing whatever you want to do. So the other thing, too, is that a lot of these cameras use the same guts. You know, you can go if you go on, for example, for personal use, if you go online to, say, Amazon and buy one of these IP security cameras, the internals of them are usually, you know, there's only a handful of suppliers of these.

Oh, yeah. Good point. Good point. Yeah. Once the bad guy figures out which one you have, and evidently that's not that hard to do. They just, they have at it with whatever malware they use for that specific device. Now, in a very funny story, a burglar who dropped his phone in Dublin, California, apparently has no right to privacy on that phone because the judge ruled that it was abandoned property and he would not be coming back for it.

So once the cops actually got this phone, they dialed 911. Very simple, you know, tactic and found out this guy was actually part of a kidnapping scheme like a couple months ago that they didn't even believe the people that they were actually kidnapped. This is one of the strangest stories I've heard in a long time.

But the fact that, you know, the guy's lawyer was fighting for the fact that his phone wasn't, you know, admissible in court was head scratching. Well, the lawyer was trying to make the case that because he had his phone locked, that he had some reasonable expectation of privacy.

But they actually called 911 from the lock screen. They never unlocked the phone. Exactly. Exactly. Right. So the judge said that, no, when you are in the course of committing a crime, when you accidentally leave evidence behind, you have no expectation that that evidence will not be used in an investigation against you.

Yeah. Yep. Fair enough to me. Yeah. This is, this seems pretty much like instant karma on. Yeah. Yeah. That's a bit like, you know, saying if you, if you had like a zipped up bag with you and you went and broke into somebody's house and you put a lock in the bag. No, you can't open that up. I should have privacy.

My favorite part of the story is that he fled the scene when he heard one of the residents say, basically, honey, get the gun. So I imagine him getting to wherever he fled to and sort of patting himself down and going, oh, where's my phone? Oh, where's my phone?

You know. Hey, honey, can you call my phone? I can't find it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I need you to do a favor for me. Will you go pick something up for me? Oh, man, it's, it's something straight out of three's company. So the IRS hacked again and they're finally getting rid of that ridiculous pin system.

They had the identity protection pin system, which turns out to be not very protective of your identity. Yeah, I've been signed up for that for a while. It's been very annoying and obviously stupid. So you were, you were a victim before. Yes. Ah, see, that's, I was not.

So I'd never got one of the pins. Yeah, and yeah, it's sort of like closing the barn door after the horses left. I mean, you know, only, only the people who had already been victimized got these, these pins. But what I, what I think is interesting about this story is, is it reiterates the problem with social security numbers.

You know, I, I'm old enough that, that I remember when I went to college, your social security number was basically used for everything. And you would just, you memorized it and would tell anybody who asked for it because it was your student ID number. You know, one of my first insurance programs outside of college used our social security number as our ID number as well.

And not only did they use it, they printed it on all the letters front and center that they mailed to you. Right, right, right. It was insane back then how, how willy-nilly people tossed these numbers around and, you know, were ruined that day now because of it.

Yeah, and, and I think, you know, sooner or later we're going to have to, to have some sort of enhanced ID system beyond the social security number because, you know, just a string of numbers is not, not secure enough to, to use with something as important as, oh, I don't know, your tax return.

Yeah, well, I've got a catchy name for that. We'll call it the number of the beast. I can't imagine anyone having any trouble with that. So another story that caught our eye this week, there's a, a student at RISD, the Rhode Island School of Design, who's come up with a system of basically disposable fingerprints.

So this is, uh, kind of a little, uh, uh, uh, uh, silicon rubber device that you can slide over your finger that has, uh, a fake fingerprint pattern on it, um, so that if you are in a situation where something requires your fingerprint, you could use this instead and, and thereby not reveal your actual fingerprint.

I think this is interesting because, um, you know, your fingerprint is not something that you can change. So if someone gets your fingerprint, they've got your fingerprint. Um, that struck me, oh, we had the family down in Disney World earlier this year for a vacation and Disney World uses your fingerprint, uh, to allow you access to the parks.

They, they, they scan your fingerprint to match to your ID or your, your, your ticket into the park. So, you know, what happens if the, the Walt Disney World system gets compromised and, uh, now someone has a whole lot of information about me and my family as well as my fingerprint information.

So this product could be used in a situation like that, where if you didn't want Disney to have your fingerprint, you could slip this on your finger. You could use it while you were staying at the park and when you're done, throw it away and Disney does not have your actual fingerprint. I wonder what the data retention on those fingerprints for Disney is because they should be killing those as soon as your, your ticket is done.

They should not be hanging onto that, but you know, they are, come on. You know that they're not doing that, come on. I like this. I like this thing. I want, I, I gotta get me some of these. Yeah, it's an interesting thing, you know, and, and I think, um, again, you know, this, this, this notion that the, these things that, that are part of your identity that cannot be replaced if they're compromised, you know, your health information, the, the, and, and something like your finger, any of these biometric types of things.

Yeah, I was going to say all the biometrics, you can't change them. That's right. They're with you forever. And so, uh, the, if, if, if they get compromised, there's no way to change them. Hmm. Yeah. This is crazy. Yeah. Yeah. So it's an interesting, interesting technology and, uh, and, uh, you know, just the kind of creativity we'd expect to see out of the Rhode Island, Rhode Island School of Design.

So kudos to them. Definitely. Like this. So if I could, uh, actually, uh, join you guys and slip into grumpy old geek mode for a moment myself, uh, there's a story here we saw about, um, people reselling hard drives on eBay and Craigslist. And surprise, surprise, surprise, these hard drives are often still ripe with leftover data.

Hmm. Shocker, shocker. Yeah, big shocker there. Yeah, because if you're going to be selling your, your hard drive on eBay or Craigslist, you're probably not that, uh, technologically savvy to begin with. Yeah, just leave the pictures to your kids on there and your financial data.

I'm sure whoever buys it, the first thing they'll do is do a secure reformatting of it without looking at any of the data at all. Oh, yes. Uh, and, and again, I am old enough and grumpy enough to remember when hard drives were actually expensive, uh, and therefore, uh, you know, something that, that you, that you valued, something that was precious.

But they are not anymore, folks. You know, terabytes of data are, are, are cheap. They're easily available. So if you need a new hard drive, buy a new hard drive. If you need to get rid of a hard drive, hit it with a sledgehammer, drill through it, throw it in a fire, you know, just get, don't, don't resell your hard drive.

Uh, it's just a bad idea. Yeah. And I wonder how many, like, people just out there trolling every day looking for, hey, is there a 50 megabyte hard drive out there? You know, they look for the old crappy ones because those are the ones that are probably still going to have all the good data on it because that's like, you know, the, that would be what I would look for as an identity thief.

Like somebody who's looking for, um, that is selling these hard drives, looking for the old ones, the 250 gigabyte ones or something like that. You know, the things that you can get on a stick now with a, with a pack of bubble gum for free that people are trying to sell. Yeah.

Yeah. And, and it also points, you know, it brings up the point too of reselling things like old laptops. You know, there, there are, there are proper ways to reformat a drive before you dispose of it. You know, if, if destruction is not an option, you know, there are ways to, to rewrite multiple times all of the blocks on the hard drive with random data, uh, so that it is, it's really wiped clean.

You can't just do a reformat that just rewrites the directories, you know, that, that, that ain't good enough. Yeah. Quick format. Don't work. Yep. Yep. All right. All right. Dave, thank you for joining us, Brian. Glad you could get up. Why don't you go back and take a nap and then we'll talk to you in a little bit when we get back and do our regular show.

Yeah. Let's have a little nap break. I think, and be sure to check out the cyber wire podcast and the cyber wire site at the cyber wire.com. We'll talk to you next week, Dave. All right. Thanks guys. Take care.

Comment of the week. We have a new Patreon supporter, Doug Flewellen. I'm assuming I'm pronouncing that at least close to correct. Sounds somewhat Welsh. Uh, thank you so much, Doug. And if you want to support the show at Patreon, go to patreon.com slash G O G.

Now we have a, we come to our iTunes one star of the week. Um, this comes from now it's really hard to tell what his name is because he uses some several different characters in here. It looks like second drew to N D R E W or vagish Andrew kind of look.

Oh, Andrew. That's it. It kind of looks like Andrew. Yes. If you squint, if you're clever. Yeah. Um, so here we go. Well, Andrew is not a fan of the EU. Apparently I will give him points for the emoji combination. He put in the review. Yes. Because the review is actually from emoji.

It is a sad face, the EU flag and a fart. The fart. Yeah. And the one star is for your Brexit scaremongering. And you live in Australia. You don't need to worry about this. What are you complaining about? You're just a commonwealth country. Yeah. So here's, I would like to, uh, I would like to back this up for a second though, because we've actually talked about Andrew on the show before on August 15th, he gave us a five star review.

Oh. And as an IT tech who enjoys providing tech help and deal with stress and annoyances that IT causes people and sometimes computer related Tourette's. This is a great tech reality check show. So thank you for your original five. And, uh, we'll just leave that one star there for a ride.

You're all, you're allowed to your opinion about it. We were just giving you a reality check on Brexit. And, uh, I'm sorry, but seems like we were right. Anyways, everybody's a critic. Yep. Okay. Uh, we got some other iTunes ratings, which are a little bit nicer.

Uh, we have a five star rating from name currently taken. Love these podcasts. I found these guys on a whim when searching for something new to listen to while on a trip, very entertaining, informative, and funny. I don't understand why some other reviewers are claiming that they are negative or swear a lot. They give their honest opinions, which may not always be sunshine and rainbows.

If you want that sort of thing, go watch some crappy children's programming. Jason and Brian are awesome as they are. The Brexit show had me laughing out loud. Keep up the good work, you guys. You have a new fan. Excellent. Thank you. Name currently taken. We lose one. We win one. Yes. And, uh, we also got a, uh, five star from Gabriel Pagan or as Brian would say, Pagan.

Uh, it's called my type of people. I've been a grumpy geek since my parents got me a TI 99 slash 4A instead of the Atari 800 I wanted. Haven't stopped being a grumpy geek yet. Happy. I found this podcast. They talk about the subjects that matter. Technology, pop culture, bit of politics, which with an actual point of view, these two don't people don't like.

Exactly. Therein lies the rub, my friend. Yes. We want opinions, but not yours. Yes. These two don't recycle opinions. They actually formulate their own. Revolutionary, eh? I love them so much. I opened this app. I despise. See, he hates iTunes too.

He's like, I opened this app. I despise just to give them a review. So thank you, Gabriel Pagan. And, uh, we appreciate that. Yeah, we do. And related to the iTunes conversation, we got a comment on our website. Um, no check on the box, so we will leave this anonymous. Uh, Brian, you hate iTunes.

I hate iTunes. And I've heard you talk about a problem with the size of your library. That's not the only problem. That's what she said. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Uh, I've been looking for an alternative as well. I'm currently trying out Clementine. Uh, link is in the show notes there. And just now I ran across TruSpan. TruSpan allows you to browse and span the media in your iTunes library.

I don't have all that many music files, so have no need for it. And don't know if it might help you in any way. But when I saw it, I thought of you, so thought I'd pass the info along. Uh, thank you so much. Um, let me know what you think of the Clementine player. I'm terrified to mess about with my very fragile system that I currently have in place for music.

So, um, yeah, I don't know. I think I'm kind of stuck with iTunes. Yeah, sadly. Uh, I, yeah, you know where I'm at with that. Yeah, I just gave up. Yeah, I want to get, I want to, I think what I want to do is I want to go find an old copy of Winamp and run it in a virtual PC, you know?

Yeah, I, I'm looking at the screenshots, uh, from the Clementine player and it's not too ugly. It's pretty fucking ugly. Come on. It's very orange. Yeah. Well, Clementine, I suppose that makes sense. It's called branding, Jason. Okay. Well, it's crappy brand. Anyways, thanks for the tip.

I will take a look at it, but I, I don't see myself changing. Anyways, uh, you can find us on Twitter at GOG Podcast, on Instagram at Grumpy Old Geeks, or at Patreon at patreon.com slash GOG. We have a website at grumpyoldgeeks.com where you can listen to shows, leave feedback, or better yet, ask us questions that we can read on the air.

If you have friends, please tell them about the show. And please, if you like the show, drop us an iTunes review. And then don't go back and change your iTunes review when we said something you don't personally like. They really do help us out and only take a minute or two. Just go to grumpyoldgeeks.com slash iTunes and it will take you right there. And we'll be right back.

But now, a word from our sponsors. Uh, yeah, I finished, uh, but what if we're wrong? Thinking about the present as if it were the past by Chuck Klosterman.

I believe I said last week that I was of the opinion that this is either really, really smart or really, really dumb. What's the verdict? I haven't been able to formulate a verdict. I still feel the exact same way. Uh, let me read the blurb really quick and you can tell me what you, because you don't know anything about this book, right, Jason?

Not a thing. All right. Let me give you the blurb and then you can tell me what you think it might be about. But what if we're wrong visualizes the contemporary world as it will appear to those who will perceive it as the distant past. Klosterman asks questions that are profound in their simplicity. How certain are we about our understanding of gravity? How certain are we about our understanding of time?

What will be the defining memory of rock music 500 years from today? How seriously should we view the content of our dreams? How seriously should we view the content of television? Are all sports destined for extinction? Is it possible that the greatest artist of our era is currently unknown or where they're still widely known but entirely disrespected?

So. Okay. What do you think this book is about? Um, mental masturbation. Yeah. That's really what comes to mind. It's like, it's a thought experiment. It's a thought experiment. There's no real cohesive thing to it.

It is. Yeah. It's, it's mental masturbation. As with all mental masturbation, some of it's quite good. Some of it is not. So, uh, it's a grab bag. I don't know if I could actually really recommend the book. I love Klosterman, which is, I like his critiques.

I like his writing about music. I even don't mind his fiction so much. I just don't see why this book exists. Yeah. It seems fairly pointless to me. It does. I could see this being a series of articles in the New Yorker or something like that. Sure.

Okay. Uh, but as a book, I don't know. I don't think it was worth it. And, you know, again, some of it seemed brilliant. Some of it seemed stupid. Okay. Well, there you go. There you go. Um, I'm not thrilled that I wasted my time reading it. So I, so I think that's pretty much your, your verdict.

Don't buy this book. Yeah. I'd skip it. He's, he's written much better things if you haven't read his other stuff. So, um, and going back to what I've been saying that Amazon is actually quietly and quickly becoming the absolute best way to get notified about authors releases, um, particularly the ones you're interested in.

I got an email this week, letting me know that the swore the second formic war in the, uh, Orson Scott card enders series is coming. Um, again, they're kind of beating this into the ground, but I just can't stop reading him. So yeah, you have fun with that one. I'm done.

I'm done with him. Yeah, I know. I know. I feel the same way. I'm going to do it. I feel the same way about the new dune books that the sun keeps pooping out that are generally crap, but I just can't stop reading them because I don't know. I'm stupid. Yeah. Orson Scott card is just such a vile human being in my book.

I don't want to give him any money. I know. That's the thing, you know, I know. But the first Orson Scott card was so good. He's got two. He's got two good books. Okay. I give him, I give him that. Ender's game was good and Empire was good. Yeah. That was it. Okay. But, uh, beyond that, he should go die in a fire.

Uh, yeah. Personally. Yes. Software, apps, and gadgets. I was Googling around to solve some more issues that I continue to have because I've transitioned from PC after 30 years to Mac.

Um, and I ran across something that I am not having a problem with, but maybe you are, Jason. It seems to be affecting quite a lot of people on Macs. Are you having trouble pasting Chrome URLs? Every now and again, it'll, it'll happen. Yeah. Okay. Apparently it's happening. Not that often, but. Uh, the problem seems to be cropping up on Macs running both OS X Yosemite and El Capitan affects some users' ability to paste URLs into programs like Apple Notes and the Microsoft Outlook desktop application.

Uh, two, two applications I do not use. So. Yeah. So apparently a lot of people do as part of their regular workflow and, uh, a fix is coming. So if it's been driving you crazy soon enough, you will have that taken care of. Okay, great. Yep. Matters not to me when Iota, but.

The world is not you, Jason. Yes, it is. We're doing it for the people. Um, now here's an interesting story that comes out of a motherboard. Okay. You know those little stickers that you get on, uh, all of your hardware devices, like your Xboxes and your Playstations that say, you know, uh, warranty void if sticker removed.

The lawyerification of everything. Yeah. It turns out those are bullshit. Oh, good. Yeah. Um, and, but most people. Because I've been cutting those tags off my, off my mattresses for years. I know. Tell me about it. And my pillows. Uh, no. The Magnuson Moss Warranty Act is, uh, an old bit of legislation from 1975.

But, uh, you, you cannot tie the conditions of a warranty to the consumer using a specific device or parts. Like, if you want to take apart your, your, your Xbox and put in your own pieces and parts to replace something, if it does not in, in something else breaks, that is not related to directly related to what you fixed.

Then they are still by law required to, um, basically deal with a warranty. So, uh, and there are places where you can get, you know, those fake stickers made up for you too.

If you, if you really need one, but it's true. You can always do that yourself if you wanted to. Yeah. It's so annoying though. It's just, come on people. I mean, I had the red ring of death so many times on my, uh, Xbox. I went through three of those things and then finally they just said, no, we're not going to fix it anymore.

I'm like, ah, thanks dicks. Yeah. Um, you know, I, I, we, we did the review of those headphones that were out a little bit ago, the powered ones that allowed you to shape your hearing to your own personal, whatever, and you could put effects on it and all that crap.

That was just, um, apparently this is a, an area that a lot of people have leapt into. There is a new set called the even hair phones. Now the earphones, earphones, sorry. This is what happens when you make me get up at five. All right. No, well, I can see why, because the girl in the picture has very big hair.

So I wonder if that was really subconscious. That might've just been interesting. Hmm. Okay. Well, anyways, there's a link is in the show notes. Uh, these are supposedly earphones that tune themselves to each individual's hearing. They do a map of your ear and then can create basically a EQ thing that supposedly makes your hearing better.

Okay. Work better. Makes it sound better. I think this is a load of crap. Well, I really, I really do. I just don't, they're 99 bucks, which isn't too expensive. But the bottom line from Mossberg's review is, uh, buy them at your own risk because their impact on your particular hearing might not be dramatic.

Okay. Well, for something that is claiming to be a dramatic, you know, change to your hearing. Okay. Yeah. I just, I don't understand it. I don't get it. Just get yourself a good pair of Sam, like the, our, uh, Sennheiser earphones. Those are genius.

They're beautiful. They sound amazing. You don't need to have all this fancy EQ and going on. And I mean, sure. If you have some weird ass particular position or I guess these work really well, if you want to listen to things really, really, really low and be able to hear a bunch of different distinct elements.

Okay. Yeah. I get that then. But, uh, what the hell are you doing? Listen to it in earbuds in that case. Exactly. Yourself studio monitors and listen to something really, really nice. Anyways, seems silly to me. And they're, and they're just kind of hideously ugly with the black and white sides to it.

I can't stand that. That is just hideous. Yeah. They're fantastically ugly. Uh, an app that is coming out that I'm sure we'll be talking about in the security segments at some point. Uh, uh, it's called a mobile passport. I somewhat like this idea. It's basically taking the passport to the digital age.

This has been released, uh, by the U S government. It is, uh, basically you'll be able to use. This app to go through, uh, cut us customs. Okay. You still have to have your passport on you. And I would highly recommend that you always have your passport on you. Your passport doesn't run out of batteries.

Yes. There are many reasons to still have your passport on you. And they specifically state that, yes, you will need your passport on you. However, you will be able to whip out your phone. Now you'll be able to do a bunch of pre-screening on the questions, et cetera, and hand this over to people and you wave your phone over a scanner. Boom.

Done. Okay. Yeah. That's when they install the malware. And, uh, can you watch everything that you do from then on? Yes. That's, that's, like I said, I'm sure there will be some discussion about this in security at some point. However, I do appreciate the attempt to take us into the 21st century with this sort of stuff.

And it makes sense. I mean, I've been doing Nexus and global entry for a while, which is a card, not an app, but, uh, it still goes a lot faster. And I'd like to see, I mean, this kind of makes some degree of sense to me. Um, at least you have your information backed up on your phone through their app, which they seem to like, no word if they ask for direct links to your Facebook and Twitter accounts through the app.

Well, you know what? They just, they just scrape that. Then the interesting thing that sucks for you is it's not in LA and it's not coming anytime soon. Yeah, of course not. Nope. I've got it here in Chicago at O'Hare. So, you know, well, I'm not going anywhere. So there's, there in lies, the rub on that one.

You want a lot of rubbing going on here, Jason. I know there is a rub, rub, rub, rub, rub, rub. Yeah. So we've had the internet archives way back machine for a long time, back when I used to go take screenshots of websites that I did a long time ago for some unknown reason, because it doesn't matter and nobody wants to pay for websites and doesn't care what nobody cares what you did in the past anymore.

Anyways, there is now something called the, uh, the software heritage. It is the library of Alexandria for crappy code. Okay, what, what, what is this? Well, as they explain on their website, they aspire to collect, preserve and share all software that is publicly available in source code form.

Okay. So it's pulling things from GitHub, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, you can't get old versions of copywritten programs like Microsoft Word or Final Cut is purely public domain. That way they stay out of legal problems. And I don't really understand what it's for. Um, software is fragile, Brian.

Unlike words carved in stone, it can be deleted or get corrupted. Can we stop old code from fading away? Somebody got money for this, man. I'm telling you. Yeah. This is just, oh. That's dumb. So. Yeah. So.

There you go. I don't, yeah. We salute you, Software Heritage. They are, yeah, they already archived 2 billion source files drawn from millions of projects. I wonder if they have their old postcard, uh, CGI scripts. Yeah. Remember those things?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Image, there are pearl scripts with, uh, using image magic to drop pixels. We will put your, your typing on it. Uh, I still have that code. I think I can, we can post it on the grumpy old geek site and then they can grab it. And let's make some grumpy old geeks postcards using it.

There we go.

Media Candy. There is a third Star Trek Beyond trailer that just came out. I saw it. Uh, if you remember, the first one did not do very well. It felt very strange because it was a Beastie Boys soundtrack and Star Trek combined with modern real world always feels super strange to me.

Um, yeah, it wasn't received well. Even the actor and co-writer Simon Pegg was not thrilled with the first trailer. The second trailer actually made me interested in the movie. It was a pretty straightforward trailer and kind of gave an idea of what the movie might be about and didn't have stupid pop music all over it.

So it was enjoyable. Uh, apparently they didn't learn a lesson. No, they did not. No, because when I think of things that make me want, you know, that Star Trek is lacking, I think Rihanna. Yeah. This, in the song, I mean, you know what? It's a music video.

Keep that shit to a James Bond movie. You know? Yeah. That's where that belongs. Yes. The third trailer is out and it has a Rihanna soundtrack tie-in and, uh, basically makes me not want to see the movie again. So good job guys. Yeah. Way to, yeah. Set phasers on none.

Keep pop culture out of Star Trek. Just don't do it. Anyways. Top Gear is in trouble. No shit. Really? I mean, no shit anyways, but apparently it's in real trouble. Matt LeBlanc is allegedly planning to quit the show if co-host Chris Evans is not removed from the team first.

Uh, they are not getting along. Ah. Yeah. Oh, well, that's nice. So anyways, I, like I said, I watched one episode. I'll never watch any again. So I am waiting for the grand tour. I was listening to, um, some podcast last night and they said that it starts to get better around episode three, like three, four and five are decent.

But, uh, then he followed up by saying, yeah, don't even bother wasting your time. It's like, it's got better, but it's still not good. Yeah. I'll wait for the grand tour. It's all about the guys, as we've said all along. Uh, speaking of podcasts. Oh, wait, wait, another, uh, Top Gear note. They finally canceled Top Gear America after six seasons.

I didn't even know that was still going. I, I saw that this morning too. And I was just like, that was still on. That is news to me. Like when REM announced that they were retiring and I was like, you guys, what have, what have you've been doing for 10 years? Yeah. Yeah.

Uh, okay. So back to the speak about podcasts, Aiden Syed from the original serial podcast is getting a murder retrial, uh, due to an unreliable cell tower location tracking, which was covered in depth on like three or four of the episodes of the original serial. Um, I just think it's funny because this cannot be mentioned without serial being mentioned.

Um, I, what are they, I mean, I don't know what they're going to do about this. They should probably just do live podcasts from the trial if they can, because nobody cared at all about their second season at all. Yeah. Their second season was, was terrible. Yeah. Um, I mean, it wasn't terrible. It is what it is.

It just, it wasn't as compelling a story and it didn't catch people the way that the, uh, the first one did. Yeah. And the interesting thing is it, um, Adnan's or Adnan, his, uh, lawyer, you know, it was, was fighting for the fact that the previous lawyer who's now dead.

Yeah. Um, it was incompetent, was incompetent, not because of the stuff that, uh, came out on serial. That's not the, the point. The point was that she didn't, uh, cross examine the cell phone expert. Right. So, you know, it was that part.

It wasn't the actual information. It was the fact that she failed to cross examine an expert witness for the prosecution. And that, that alone is, you know, uh, what, what triggered the retrial. So we'll see. Right. Yep. Pretty much everybody I have, have read up on, uh, that was involved with the original trial still thinks he's guilty as hell.

So we'll see. Yeah. We'll see. Uh, orange is the new black has been out for like a week or so. Um, I got sick last weekend, uh, which was a perfect time to sit in bed with my little iPad pro and binge watch the whole thing. Okay.

Uh, I liked it. I thought it was decent. It's not, you know, as good as it used to be. It's, it's time, it's time to really let her out of prison and move on. Um, I think they have two more seasons. It's exactly what I mean. Okay. I think they've got two more seasons, but, uh, my interest, uh, petered out last season.

I, I haven't even thought about watching this. I know my wife wants to, but this is better than last season. So, you know, it's, it's, it's, it has that house of cards, uh, you know, junior slump. So season three, wasn't that great, but season four is, you know, decent. Um, and as a side note on mother Jones, there is a, a novel length article called my four months as a private prison guard.

I watched the, they have a video and accompanying video and some of the, uh, the in prison footage is just terrifying. Um, but I, I still have to go back and read this whole thing because it's really long, but it, uh, it's pretty good. Right. Yeah. If you're just into orange is the new black, this would give you a little perspective on how, how sanitized it is for television.

Right. Right. So have you heard of Juno, the Juno mission? Uh, no. It left, uh, five years ago. Oh, that's the one that's going to Jupiter. The big one, the basketball court one. On July 4th, it's going into orbital arrival. So, uh, America F yeah.

Okay. Uh, you should, yeah. So, you know, the 4th of July where that thing's finally going to supposedly, hopefully with, with any luck, go into orbit around Jupiter. Um, NASA has really kicked up their social media game. I've got to say, uh, Weezer and nine inch nails both have songs and videos for the project, uh, that you can watch.

Uh, I particularly, I did like, you know, the, the Resner and Atticus Ross thing sounds like everything that they do because that's what they do now. They just make those sounds, but the video is very informative. It's very cool and well done team over at NASA about kicking up your game and not being boring.

Uh, very well done. Very informative. I urge you to watch it. This is pretty exciting stuff. I will be, uh, tracking this on the 4th. All righty then. Yeah. Anyways. Uh, and then I've just, uh, we, I went to go see the cure this year. Uh, can't believe they're 40, but apparently this is their 40th anniversary year.

There's an article in salon about how a band turns 40 with style and how the cure endures. It was a, it was a good article. You don't see a lot written about them. Um, so it's worth a good read if you're a fan. All righty. And, uh, speaking of somebody who's in their forties, um, I got to put this in the show notes.

I, I, I saw it this morning. I forgot to grab it. Uh, Tony Hawk, 48 years old and on the 17th anniversary of his landing, his first 900 went to his, his skate ramp at his office and did it again at 48. Well, good on you. Yeah.

It's, it's, it's, he didn't make a lot of them and was very upset by the end of it, but he landed it basically threw his pads off and walked out, got in his car and got the hell out of there. He's like, basically a mic drop and I'm getting out. Awesome. Uh, and I didn't know that they redid danger mouse.

The old, yeah, the old, uh, cartoon from the eighties that I loved as a kid, there is a new danger mouse out. It came out in 2015 and Stephen Fry's actually one of the voices in it. And that's what got me to check it out. And I watched the first episode and it's actually pretty fun. So check them out.

It's on Netflix. So got a bunch of episodes up there and they're like a half an hour long too. All right. I vaguely remember danger mouse. That's interesting. Yeah. Danger mouse and Penfold. So, and in final, final news, uh, preacher has been picked up for season two.

So now you, you are safe to watch season one and they've got even more episodes coming with season two. Um, I've got episode five queued up and ready to go, but the show keeps getting better and better. I love it. I'm a huge fan of the show, so I'm glad that it got picked up for another season. All right. I will check that out since they've made it to another season.

Ah, Kanye West. It's been a while, buddy. I've missed you. Not really, but, uh, I saw this in Esquire. Um, and it, the, the article is titled, this is why there's a naked Taylor Swift in Kanye West's new, not safe for work video.

Okay. Uh, I watched it. Yep. Pretty fucking terrible. It was a really bad video with, and I didn't even like the song, but, uh, it, what, what the, what, what's he thinking? What's, what's happening to this guy? He's just insane. What, why, why was there a naked Taylor Swift?

I still don't, I still don't know. Okay. Well, I went to the page right now and the video has been suspended either due to a copyright claim or for violating the terms of use or for just being stupid. Okay. Uh, I, I, I, I don't get it. I, I watched it.

I don't understand. It's just amazing that anytime he releases anything, people actually talk about it. There's some idea that this is some sort of commentary on being famous by having fake dolls and lookalikes laying in a bed naked and running a camera over them really slow. Yeah. Okay.

I'm sure that there, I'm sure that there is some deeper meaning, but no, honestly, there's fucking not. That's, that's the thing. I'm fucking sick of all the goddamn commentary about this shit. There is no fucking deep meaning to this. It is stupid. I was being facetious. Oh, just checking. No, this is, this is some like, you know, college art school wannabe level shit going on here with this.

I'm putting it. I'm a fit. That's a, we're putting a ban on Kanye on this show. That's no more. He's, he's already in the hall of fame for more on of the week. That's it. Okay. Bye-bye Kanye. It's been, it's been reels. Ooh, fancy.

Fancy. Ooh, fancy. There is an app called, or I guess a free service called Do Not Pay. Do Not Pay? Do Not Pasko? It is an AI lawyer chat bot, although the AI might be stretching it. It's a chat bot. Okay. And it has successfully contested 160,000 parking tickets across London and New York for free, showing that chat bots can actually be useful.

It is dubbed the world's first internet lawyer by its 19-year-old creator, who is not a lawyer. London board second year. That's the best part. Danford University student, Joshua Browder. So, what do you think, Jason? Success rate of 64%. So, it's taken 250,000, 160,000.

So, 64%. That's not bad. Not bad. 4 million dollars worth of parking tickets. Not bad. I like it. I like it. Especially since he's 19. This kid has a future. I believe he does. I am down with that one. Yep. Nice job, kid. And the other thing that I found this week, it's kind of like the TARDIS.

It's in a store. I forget where it's called or where it's at. It doesn't really matter. But the entrance to a room through a thing. But I don't want to even spoil it. You have to go watch it. But when you're done watching it, scroll down and read the comments.

Because the comments are the best part. I was cracking up. But this is one of those ones where we just tell you to go check it out because it's so funny. We can't step on it. Yeah, you can't. So, enjoy that one.

The web's not dead. Oh, no, it's not. This is another one you're going to have to work for. Sorry, guys. Go to our show notes. You'll find the link. This is a dad in, I believe, England that got pissed off with his daughter's selfies.

He said, you're self-obsessed. You've got to knock this out. This is ridiculous. Stop. And she wouldn't. So, therefore, he started copying them. They're fantastic. Yeah, you really kind of got to go see these. He poses himself. He dresses the same.

He draws the same tattoos onto his body. It is fantastic. And the best part about it is she's the one that's posting him. She's now reposting his. And this is great. So good. Very funny. So, take a look. So, yeah, we're making you work for it this week, people. Yes.

Grumpy Old Geeks dot com slash 166. They say in life, the only true constants are death and taxes. Yes. I think they might actually be true because apparently a kilogram doesn't weigh a kilogram.

Well, you'd think that there would be gravitational fluctuations based on the moon and the tides and they're like, you know. No, no, no, no, no. Okay. No. So, basically, the unit is based on the weight of water, specifically a cube of water, a tenth of a meter on each side at just above freezing.

Okay. That used to be the case, but since 1875, the kilogram has been defined by one specific platinum cylinder known affectionately as Le Grand K. Le Grand K? Yes. It's like Super Special K. Yeah.

And it's officially known as the International Prototype Kilogram or the IPK. Okay. It stands an inch and a half high and wide and is housed in a vault outside Paris inside three concentric glass containers to protect it from dust and other weight-altering debris. Okay. So, you can see that it's not very useful and you can't get at it or use it.

It's Schrodinger's Kilogram. Well, and even touching it deposits oil from your finger onto it, which then changes the weight. So, they're getting rid of that and they're going to change it all slightly and they're going to use some scientific method that can be recreated in any lab so that we can always have a constant one kilogram weight.

The catch being, it is going to be slightly different from what we have been using, which wasn't very steady anyways. Okay. The world is all a construction of our own minds and it means nothing and everything falls apart and the center does not hold. Yeah. Who uses the metric system anyway? Jeez. The rest of the goddamn world.

And scientists. Yeah. Now, the one I found this week was this kid who basically makes lasers. Yes. If you look at it, go watch his YouTube channel, which I spent a lot of time in after I saw this video. Like for laser tag?

No, like death robot lasers. Things like that. Oh, great. Just what we need. Yeah. So, this kid made a 200 watt laser bazooka. And I'm looking at this. You have to watch the video. You just have to watch it because this thing is so terrifying. Of like, why haven't people in, you know, dark, like suits with dark glasses shown up and hauled this kid off and gotten him a job at Sandia by now?

You know? I'm a little. Yeah. The terrifying thing to me, I did watch the video, is the fact that not only did he build it, but the fact that somebody who could build it could title their YouTube video with eight exclamation points. Yeah. That's a bad combination. I used eight exclamation points, and I built a laser bazooka.

A laser bazooka out of basically broken parts. Yep. Now, the thing that scares me about this is it's like, yeah, you know, it burns through an entire computer case. If he could focus this thing properly, this thing could probably take down a plane.

Yeah. Yeah, I'd imagine. Yeah. I mean, it'd have to be really focused, but, you know, this thing is insanely, like, powerful. And he made it in his garage. Yeah. But definitely check out some of his other ones. He made a lightsaber in one of them. It was pretty good.

He's like, nobody should have a laser this powerful. And then he's like, let's set something on fire. Yes. Awesome. Oh, I only need to be a kid again nowadays. And I found one more. Again, you're going to have to work for it. The link is in the show notes because I'm not going to, no pun intended, step on it.

But I think the people over at Business Insider must be located in one of the states that have legal weed now. Okay. Because they asked, here's, or they did a video showing, here's what would happen if everyone on Earth jumped at the same time. Okay. I've always wondered that.

So, you know, light up, order a pizza, and go watch the video. Plan on it. Closing shout outs. I'd like to give a shout out to friends and family in Canada. Today is Canada Day.

So, happy Canadian Day, or whatever you call it. Hey. Enjoy some poutine. Enjoy. Definitely. And happy 4th of July, since that will be coming up, and we will not be having another show before then. So, everybody get your barbecue on. Try not to blow yourselves up or lose fingers.

Yep. And I will be at a friend of the show, Mike Vinicore's wedding on the 4th of July. So, that'll be fun. And I'm sure he'll be just complaining about you the whole time. Of course. That's kind of why I brought him up a couple times today. Yes. Well, thanks for listening. I'm Jason DeFillippo, and you can check me out at jpd.me.

And I'm Brian Schulmeister, and you can follow me on Twitter at SlenderFungus. Until next time. Grumpy Old Geeks is a partially fan-supported show. Check out our Patreon page at patreon.com slash gog. We really appreciate your support. If you don't want to or can't donate and still want to support the show, please go to grumpyoldgeeks.com slash iTunes and leave us a few words and five stars and tell a friend about the show.

Intro music for the show is provided by the band Among Us. You can find them on iTunes, Spotify, and Apple Music, or maybe even Tidal. Or you can donate through the Grumpy Old Geeks Patreon page at patreon.com slash gog and get 10 exclusive tracks. Outro for the show is provided by Andy Stochanski. You can follow Andy at twitter.com slash houseofandy.

And he's also on SoundCloud at grumpyoldgeeks.com slash Andy. Show notes for all the links discussed in this episode can be found at grumpyoldgeeks.com slash 166. Tonight we drink! Ha ha! At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out.

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