173: Economy Drone.0

Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame. The following content contains graphic, explicit, and vulgar language. And with that out of the way, welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks episode 173. I'm Jason DeFilippo.

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Free at last, Jason. Free at last. We are free at last. Yes. A little bit of change going on here. We will not be with Blog Talk Radio going forward. And so you people who are bitching and moaning about the intros and outros ads, well, all for you. We're gone. They're gone. It's done. It's over.

Yep. No part feelings with those guys. They just have a different business model that isn't quite helpful to us. So we have parted our ways with them. If you'd like to advertise with us, please send us an email to podcast at grumpyoldgeeks.com. Some people already have. Yes, we will gladly take your money. And some people actually already have, which is very funny.

Yes. We will. There are other changes that are coming. We're not going to announce them until they're in place because I don't like to jinx things. Yes. I am worried about how this is going to screw everybody up with their feeds again. I know. Tweet us. Go ahead. It's going to be screwy for a bit because now we're back on a different feed.

Yeah. And here's the deal. Here's what's going to happen. I'm going to try and post this to both platforms if we still have access tomorrow. Actually, we're recording this Thursday night, just so everybody knows, because Brian has some issues to deal with in the morning. Yes, I do. We're recording this a little bit early, but it will come out at the same time and hopefully it will come out on both feeds, but we'll see how this works out.

We're going back to our original Libsyn feed, which after looking at the stats as I have been uploading shows, it seems like about 70 people never moved over. So 70 of you are about to get a whole ton of new shows. Nice.

Yes. And we've already gotten some some tweets about it. So, yeah, it's like, oh, I'm listening to shows for May. And this comes from and I love the name because it's it's Anwar McAnwarface. So he was the first one to point out the fact that he's like, hey, I'm getting a bunch of shows.

It's like, I missed you guys. I'm like, well, we missed you. So, yeah, not that hard to find us. No, here's the thing, though. If people manually subscribe to the feed in their podcast player, then they would never know because the the iTunes feed is the one that really kind of triggers the switch.

So it's one of those things where we're kind of screwed if we don't post some kind of, hey, we've kind of moved thing, which always we talked about doing and never actually did after get around to it. Yeah, that was only 30 episodes. We didn't post anything.

So sorry about that, guys. Welcome back. So I've got a I've got an interesting article that I found from Tech Republic. OK, it's called Myth Busted. Older workers are just as tech savvy as younger ones, survey says. Well, yeah, I believe that.

Yeah, me, too. So because you know why? We know technology at its core and how it works. And the millennials are just Snapchatting. That's how it goes. Yeah, that's the argument I've been making for a long time. If anything, I think people that are a bit older understand technology at a base level way more.

We had to actually do this stuff before there was an app on your iPhone that automatically did everything for you. Yeah, we did the stuff that made the app. So we understand more at a fundamental level how technology works. Yeah. But you try and get a job nowadays with that rationale.

And yeah, no, you'll be you'll be serving the food in the commissary to the 20 somethings. That's how it works. Well, we'll see about that. We have some stories later that'll blow your mind on that front. There will be no jobs. It'll blow our mind. Okay. Moving on. Anyways, we talk a lot about your favorite publishing platform.

Medium. Medium. And somebody agrees with you out there. Really? This guy is Mark Lowenstein. He is an industry analyst and consultant by trade. By weekend, he is an exercise and outdoor enthusiast.

And he writes running guides for many, many areas. Okay. He's a content creator, as they say in the lexicon. Exactly. He's content creating when he's not analyzing how content creation doesn't work. I love it. So he started a pet project called Great Runs, which is a guide to places to run in the world.

It's something that you and I will never, ever look at. Absolutely not. When he was trying to figure out how to do it, he was recommended Medium and he gave that a go. Now, he likes a lot about it because it's a 2.0 blogging platform, allowing anyone from amateurs to professionals to corporations to post stories within minutes that look professional and bada bing boom, great.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But did he finally, at some point, get to my problem with it? Yes. Then he gets into the downsides. Discovery. Very hard for people to find your stuff. Monetization. Does not exist. Except for Medium. Yes, correct.

Not so much for you. And it's an awful CMS. It's actually, see, that's where I have a problem with that. I think the CMS is really nice. I don't have a problem with the CMS. The CMS is one of the things that I actually really like. Medium got back to them about that point and said, well, I guess you just don't like our personal style of a CMS.

And I agree. I've used Medium before. I actually think the CMS is fine. You know, can't do a lot. But what you can do, you can do pretty easily. It makes sense. Real quick, do you remember from one of our very early episodes that we had an article where they spent, like, I think two to three months working on how to do the underline in CSS properly?

You remember that? Like, that was, when you go back to how Medium thinks, it's, they are artisanal with how they do their CMS. And, you know, like, literally, they spent months figuring out how to recreate a link in and underline in a link, so.

I know. It's hilarious. I know. Too much money. No little sense. Anyways, this guy has decided he's giving up on Medium and he's hiring a WordPress developer and starting to migrate content to the WordPress site, which to him feels very 2005, which I agree with. But hey, again, if you want to control your content, then you have to control your own content and not use free services, right?

Well, yes. Yes, obviously. It's not that anyone does that anymore. Medium's spokesperson did respond to this article that's saying they are launching a beta creative exchange, which enables writers and brands to work together to create great content and make money. In other words, to do branded articles, which isn't exactly content or monetization of individual created content.

There you go. Okay. I'm with this guy. You know, he's come to the conclusion of all of the things that we have said along the way. So what I should tell him now is, Mr. Mark Lowenstein, you should have been listening to Grumpy Old Geeks for the past three years because we could have saved you a lot of time.

Because you need to own your content. If it's in somebody else's house, they can lock the door and kick you out. So boom. There you go. And one of the only reasons to put your content onto free platforms is if you're getting the eyeballs. And as you said, you're not getting that with Medium either because there's no discovery method.

Yeah, that's the value proposition of Medium is that if you create viral content, they will bubble it to the top. But you have to bring the audience with you. You know, you have to have your fans. You know, I tried with their platform. Doesn't work. Whatever. Moving on. Yeah, just to circle back to we had talked a little bit about the Led Zeppelin court case about music plagiarism that they won.

Apparently, the entire testimony from Jimmy Page was released by Rolling Stone last week. So you could read it in its entirety. I would hesitate to do that because according to Salon, it's a conversation so mind bendingly dull. It could be excerpted in This Is Spinal Tap as showing what can happen to a rock band when its best days are over.

OK, so don't read it. It's very boring. And basically, they're going to the fact that maybe a court isn't the best place for this sort of thing because there's so little substance in the actual testimony and music professors arguing are not really all that interesting and nobody can really figure out who's stealing from what.

And they weren't even allowed to introduce the fact that Led Zeppelin basically stole blues and folk music from people as well. So what the hell is the whole point in this case? OK, that's kind of what it came down to. OK. Yeah. OK. Moving on from from this story, I think we're done with it now, right?

We don't have to come back to it. We are not coming back to it again until there's another lawsuit. OK. Thank God. Because the stories even themselves are mindbendingly dull. Yes, they are. What's not mindbendingly dull is the Rogue One Star Wars official international trailer.

And I put this in the show notes just for you, Brian. The other countries get better trailers. They do. Because you know what? They have to tell a different story. They have to they have to make sure that the actual movie is telling a story that people can walk into who have never seen the original movies, all 14 of them.

And, you know, be entertained. So it's it's a good it's a good trailer, I think. It's a great trailer and it makes me really want to see the movie. I'm pretty excited about this. There's an actual real war. Yeah, and they show those those death bot whatever death troopers, the black the black storm troopers.

Yeah, so they can sell more toys. That's exactly. I'm surprised that they haven't made pink ones yet. They will. We'll have rainbow troopers by the end of the year. Give it give it time. Give it time. I will. We've always talked about sleep and productivity here and there on the show.

And I found a great article in Fast Company about why six hours of sleep is as bad as none at all. And it's about a study that they've done with people who were up for two days straight and three days straight. And the two days straight people performed about the same as people who got six hours of sleep over a couple of weeks.

And, you know, I can I'm with with them on this one. I can attest to that because when I don't get enough sleep, everything goes cattywumpus. I think six is hard and is too hard and fast of a line to draw that I know people that do perfectly well with six hours of sleep.

They say that the norm is somewhere between six and eight. So it depends on your personal your personal system. You'll learn what what you need and what you don't. It's not that hard, people. I need 12. Can I get 12? You're different. I know I would prefer 12. I'd prefer you slept 12 hours to me. Hey, what's that mean?

And this is the last one I threw in for you because you have you have had your epic rants. We will say we'll say Brian takes over the soapbox rants on the vaccination of children. And scores of students without vaccine proof were sent home the first day of school in California.

This comes from the Sacramento Bee, which is, you know, right up the road from you if the road is long and straight. Brian is now masturbating. Congratulations. I support this 100 percent. I'm very happy. Good.

In fact, I'm sitting here with a sore arm because I just re-upped some of my vaccinations. I went the other day, went to CVS. They got a minute clinic. You can sign up online. They save your place in line. You show up. You get it done. And you don't kill other people. That's how society works, fuckers. Okay.

What vaccinations did you get at the local drugstore that are going to save us from the dengue flu or whatever you're carrying now? Oh, whooping cough. Whooping? Whooping cough, which has had a comeback recently, particularly here in Santa Monica, because of idiots that don't vaccinate their kids. Okay.

Well, I'm glad that you are keeping the world safe against the whooping cough. I am. I'm going to whoop that cough. In the news. And in sad Star Wars news, Kenny Baker passed away.

He's most famous for being the man in R2-D2. Poor guy. Having to sit there in the... Man, I can't even think how hot it was out there in the desert in that tin can. Yeah, both him and Anthony Daniels. That just must have been insane.

Yeah, before we feel too bad about it, he was 81. That's a good, nice, long life. Oh, man. Maybe we should try that regime. Maybe that could be the new hipster regime. We'll just get in a garbage can and wander around in the desert. Yeah, go out to the desert in the middle of nowhere.

Sounds like fun. Well, in other funeral news, Gawker.com is dead. Really? Couldn't happen to a bunch of nicer people. Yep. Univision has bought basically the six main sites. Yeah. And they're shutting down Gawker.com.

Oh, okay. But they're going to keep like Deadspin will stay up. Gizmodo will stay up, right? Yeah, all the other stuff. Basically, anything that's not doucher.com is dead. And they got it for a cool $135 million. So, when your mom says that, you know, there's no money in blogging, you can point to that.

Yeah, sure. Or your Medium account that's doing nothing. Yeah. Or your podcast. Ah, yes. Ah, podcasting. Yes. And in more bad news, the Hyperloop project, which is very exciting.

And they were originally going to do a circuit between Los Angeles and San Francisco, which would have been fantastic. Because you guys can't figure out how to get a goddamn train to run on flat ground up the five. Well, we also can't figure out how to get a goddamn Hyperloop running between up the five either.

Even though the Hyperloop is actually, the testing ground is in the middle of San Francisco and Los Angeles. Yes. Well, you know, it's not happening here anymore because we can't have nice things. It's going to Dubai. Which is interesting because there's, you know, all the news I saw this week was about how the internal team at Hyperloop has been blowing up.

Like, one guy had a noose left on his desk. It's like a mess over there. Yeah, apparently. I just wish they'd get this together. I don't care. It looks cool as hell. It's probably going to work. We're most likely looking at the future of long distance mass transportation, but we can't have it.

We'll see. We'll see. Because, you know, I think the one thing that has me dubious about this is all the material scientists that came out when Elon posted his white paper on it saying that when you have something that long, the material stretches so much on either end that it's going to make keeping the vacuum an issue.

So we'll see how they have to figure that part out. But, you know, if they can figure it out. You should have said Dubai-us. Dubai-us? Because it's moving to Dubai instead of dubious. Dubious. Okay. Fail. Well, Uber, your favorite company.

Yep. Next month, they're going to be deploying their self-driving cars on the city of Pittsburgh. Take that, millennials. How's that Web 2.0 comedy do for you? Yep. Yep. 100 modified Volvos are going to be unleashed on the road.

They will have a liquid-cooled computer in the trunk. So if you get rear-ended, you're in trouble there. There will be staffed by one engineer who will be behind the wheel and a co-pilot to observe and take notes. All right. So two people in each of these. Okay. Uh-huh.

And, you know, that still fits with Uber because you're not supposed to have somebody. If you're driving an Uber, you're not supposed to have a passenger in the front seat, which on so many occasions, with one in particular where the guy had brought a date on his Uber driving, which was pretty funny.

Right. Yeah. So we'll see how this goes. And if you do get picked up by one of these, your trip will be free. Yeah. That's how Uber gets you. Remember all those cheap prices you originally had here? Not anymore. Yeah. A hundred Ubers in the city of Pittsburgh. I, you know, honestly, that sounds to me like more Uber drivers than Pittsburgh needs because the city of Pittsburgh is not very large.

So we'll see how the Pittsburghers take it because they have a history of not going in for that kind of thing, you know, because of the steel workers and all that stuff. So we'll see how this goes. There might be some spike strips involved. I doubt it. We can't stop progress, people. Oh, yeah. Ah, yeah. So Uber has basically taken their first salvo into firing every single one of their employees.

And now Amazon is as well. So Amazon's drone delivery idea, they are all in on this. They are spending a ton of money and a ton of infrastructure. Just recently, they've already bought their own fleet of trucks. They've introduced an Uber-like crowdsourcing delivery service.

They've got robot-powered warehouses, and they're continuing to invest into plans for drone delivery. It showed off an Amazon-branded Boeing 767 airplane, one of more than 40 in its planned fleet. They are all in on transportation. And the final endgame, of course, will be skip all the roads, skip everything else, fly in drones for delivery, and fire everyone.

Yeah, that's how it goes. They will still need pilots for Prime 1, which is their actual plane's name. And they did a really good paint job on it. I've got to give them that. It's pretty cool. But, I mean, the guys that are delivering right now, they're in. They're coming to my house in enterprise rental cars.

You know, they have outpaced UPS and FedEx at this point in DHL. DHL. And they've already been renting the entire United States Postal Service on Sundays. So. I know. It's amazing. They rent the Postal Service.

They rent a government agency on their days off. So, what are you going to do? It's Amazon. They've got more money than, well, Bezos, I guess. So, what are you going to do? Yep. And Bob Lefsis, our favorite music analysis guy.

Your favorite, my least. I'm not a big fan either. But he occasionally hits one out of the park. And he finally did. It's as if he'd been listening to our podcast. He put out one called The Great Con. And it basically says there aren't going to be any jobs. Did you read Farad Manjoo's article in yesterday's New York Times?

Nope. Which is the one we just referenced about the Amazon drone delivery. Oh, okay. That's why I put that story in right before this, Jason. Yeah. Well, I mean, if you read it, that means I don't have to. Yeah. So, he's like, it sounds all very good. It's all very efficient. But where is everybody supposed to work?

The good news is you can have instant access to products at a cheap price. The bad news is you can't afford to buy anything. And he says, it's not a level playing field, folks. And those in the media are envious of the billionaires, which is why Henry Blogg had started Business Insider so he could sell it. Why Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher left the Wall Street Journal so they too could become rich.

Either you've won and you've circled the wagons or you're one of the small cadre with a chance of succeeding because of your relationships and status or you're completely left out like you and me. Okay. It's a good read. It points out a lot of the problems that we have with what's going on right now. And not a lot of good news.

Yay. Okay. Happy Friday, everyone. Yeah, well, what are you going to do? Nothing. Well, you're not going to buy anything from Amazon. So, here's the upside of this. They're going to invest in all this infrastructure. This is kind of like the original web bubble where people invested all this money into infrastructure that we enjoy today.

Even though these companies, you know, lost a lot of people and all this stuff, but now it comes back. So, what's going to happen is they're going to be the ones that are on the hook for finding jobs for people so they can buy products from them. Right. That's really because it's like, okay, you take away all the jobs, right?

Yep. Well, if there are no jobs, how are we going to buy the stuff that you're selling? Yeah, that is the problem. So, somebody over there is probably thinking about this at some point at some level because they have to be. They're smart people. We need drone purchasers.

Well, we need drone pilots. We need drone repairmen. We need robot repairmen. We need tire fixers. As we used to say in the old days, the world needs ditch diggers. That's true. So, I think we're all going to be – we're basically going to become maintenance men and janitors for the economy 2.0, as you like to call it.

Yep, 2.0. Remember Kim.com? Yeah, sure. Yeah, he ran off to New Zealand to avoid getting all his monies taken from the United States government. Yeah, since he made all his monies on piracy. Allegedly.

Allegedly. Remember, allegedly. It's just a service. What people do with it is their own business. Here's the deal, though. They kept all his money without actually charging – he has not been convicted of anything, and they've kept hundreds of millions of dollars from him. Yeah, that's kind of screwed up.

Yeah, it's completely and utterly screwed up. So, he came and fought, and Virginia Judge said, no, no, no, no, no, no. You can't have it back. So, it's very interesting. It's very interesting. He's launching a new service, and I saw a video on Twitter today with him, and Kevin Mitnick was in his house, so that's very interesting.

And John McAfee and him are in a big feud. But the point of the entire thing was, though, that apparently you can become a tech mogul, and the government can take your money because they want to. You can become an anything, and the government can take your money because they want to. Exactly. That's what governments do.

And now, let's move on to the next story. The DEA is accessing millions of travelers' records to find cash to seize. Okay. So, they're just checking you out and saying, well, you know, if you took a day trip and have a lot of money, we're going to keep it.

That's it. I mean, that's what they've been doing. And the other one that I need to – Well, you've always had to claim if you took out more than – if you were taking more than $10,000 out of the country, you've always had to claim it. Yeah, but they've been going over and above and beyond. There's another article that I need to add to the show notes that shows that government seizures this year alone have surpassed the actual take from every burglary in the country.

Wow. That's pretty impressive. That's what I'm saying. These guys are just like, you got money. We're going to take it now. Just go back to the John Oliver piece on, you know, public seizures. Okay. This is kind of a big thing. The only thing that really got me about the TechDirt article is that they still use the .shtml extension on their URLs.

Like, 1996 called and they want their Perl server-side-includes back. Yeah, that's pretty funny, actually. I'm surprised. They can't. They must. Whatever. No, nobody's using shtml anymore. Come on. We stopped doing that in 1997, I think.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, speaking of stealing money, your poor parents, the grandparents, are they safe online? They're the ones that always seem to be falling for cyber scams. And there's a really interesting article by Jamie Winterton that argues that they're not dumb.

It's just they don't – they're not used to this. They're not as built into the idea of everybody being full of shit online like we are. And they don't actually have good sources of information for them to go to to find out what's a scam and what's not. So I like that. I think it's an interesting take on it rather than just going, oh, God, they don't know what they're doing.

No, they're probably more savvy to in-person scams than we are, you know? Yeah. But you know what they should do? They better call Saul. Yes. I can't wait for that show to come back. I still – I got to catch up on it. I watched two episodes, but I'll get there.

Yeah, it's really good. Yeah, but it's a really good article that says that, you know, most grandparents, most people our parents' age, they don't – they get all their information about cybersecurity and what's going on basically from us. They don't have any kind of learning network that they actually go to. So there's a little opportunity for you there, Norton or other folk.

Get on that. Yeah. Make a senior citizen's portal. Seriously. Maybe Yahoo could do it since they have the Yahoo bar on every old person on the planet because they're the only people that has kept them in business for this long. It's true. My dad uses Yahoo for his homepage. Oh, that's so sad.

So the Justice Department is going to end the use of private prisons for federal prisons. This isn't state and local. This is just federal. It's a start. It's a start. It is a massive start. And, you know, I kind of think that Orange is the New Black.

This is why this is in the tech segment here because I think Orange is the New Black has really started to put that into the zeitgeist that privatizing prisons is a bad idea. And then we had that one, I think it was a vice article, that massive one where the guy went undercover into the prisons that we covered.

That was really amazing. John Oliver's done some stuff on this as well. I mean, there's certainly no lack of light being shined on it at the moment. And, you know, I'm sorry. Sometimes government is good. Not everything needs to be free market. It is not always the way it works.

And we certainly have heard enough about how these prisons are horrible places and they're just not good. And how many judges do we have to indict for basically starting inmate farms for kids who have done, you know, oh, they got caught with like two joints and they get 15 years.

You know, it's ridiculous. It's an Arizona one in particular. I think there was one judge in Arizona. I don't remember. Yeah, it's ridiculous. All right. So good news there. And a little bit more good news as well to wrap up our segment after we just finished all the bad news about never having jobs again. NASA has just taken all the scientific research it funds and made it available for free.

Cool. Very cool. They just, they're launching a new public web portal that anybody can access and all research will be there. Nice. Which is pretty badass. Well, you know what? It should be because we paid for it. Exactly. It's ours. Yes. If it has been funded for NASA, it came from our half a cent a year that we give to NASA.

Yes. And God knows that's considered too much by a lot of politicians. That half a cent a year. Where we get almost all of our science. Now, I can't wait until they accidentally publish the stuff about the aliens. Whoops. That wasn't supposed to be in there. Oh, yeah. That's coming up later in Grumpy Old Geeks.

Security? Ha! All right. We're back this week with our good friend Dave Bittner from the Cyber Wire. How's it going, Dave? It's going good. It's been a busy week. You want to jump right into it? Let's jump right in. All right. So, the big story of the week, of course, is the hack into the NSA, the NSA leaks.

Obviously, we've been following this hot and heavy on the Cyber Wire. This is what we would call a big deal. You say? Yeah. So, there's some, for people who haven't been following the story. So, there's been a cache of data that's been released that the bad guys say they have gotten in and gotten a bunch of data from the NSA.

And what they're saying is, they've teased the leak by releasing a few zero-day exploits. So, these are serious hacks that need to be patched right away. That's why they're called zero days. And so, they are saying that they have much more of this that's come from the NSA, and they will sell it to you for the low, low price of one million Bitcoin.

Yes. It roughly translates into about $550 million, isn't it? Half a billion dollars. Yeah. Yep. So, pretty soon, you're talking about real money. Yeah. But what's interesting is that the people who are looking at this, the emerging consensus is that the leaks are genuine.

MIT's technology review has looked into it, and also Cisco and Fortinet, two well-known cybersecurity companies, they've confirmed that the – I'm sorry, hardware. Cisco, obviously, is the hardware company with the routers and so forth. And Fortinet have also confirmed that the zero days are genuine, and they're rushing out patches.

Also, Juniper Networks is investigating zero days that affect their stuff. So, you know, we've got people like Edward Snowden who's weighed in. Of course. It's the Russians. Yeah. So, he thinks that it's the Russians who are doing the hacking as opposed to insider theft.

He's saying it's probably Russian intelligence services and that they may have gotten the files inadvertently left behind on a staging server. But a lot of other people are saying that it could be disgruntled insiders who walked out with the files on a USB drive or something like that.

And they're saying that because there's stuff in the leaks that people are saying were unlikely to be accessible because it's the kind of thing that should have been on an air-gapped computer inside of Fort Meade. So, Fort Meade is where NSA is. An air-gapped computer is a computer that – it ain't hooked up to anything.

So, that's where you keep your safe stuff. And so, they're saying there's some stuff on here that would be the kind of thing that would be on an air-gapped computer. So, you know, compromised or disgruntled insiders could have been working for the Russians. So, even if it was an insider, that doesn't rule out the Russians.

So, that's sort of where it stands right now. Still investigating. Obviously, there's a lot of discussion about zero days. There's discussion about NSA hoarding these zero days. There's sort of a generally accepted practice that when you find a zero day, you release it.

You contact the manufacturer and tell them – We found a bug. Right. And so – and actually, the Obama administration had set a policy for what you're supposed to do when you discover these zero days. So, there's – some people are looking into whether the NSA actually violated that policy.

So, that's ongoing. So, you know, it's – this is a big deal and it's still developing. So, this is one we're going to keep our eyes on. So, speaking of the auction, which just sounds like a PR stunt. Yeah. They're not after the money.

Yeah. Do we know when it's supposed to end, though? I do not. I do not offhand know when it's going to end. But I do think it's – to our point that they're not actually after the money. The auction site was Rickrolled. So, there you go.

So, we're dealing with serious people here. Well, it just points out to the fact that the auction is not their primary concern when it comes to this sort of thing. And, you know, hey, I am all for a good fun Rickrolling. So, there you go. And isn't WikiLeaks claiming that they have the pristine data?

I believe so. But, you know, WikiLeaks says a lot of things. So, we'll see if that comes to pass or not. That's true. That's true. And that dump that they did recently of the Turkish emails that had all the – over 80 variants of malware in it doesn't really give them a lot of credibility right now.

That's right. That's right. Obviously, WikiLeaks has their own political motivations, which they're not shy about expressing. So, you know, stay tuned, folks. This one is interesting and it could get even more interesting. And speaking of – we were talking about the air-gapped computers.

I found an article this week that talks about a way to get information off of air-gapped computers. We've seen it before with using speakers and, you know, low-frequency noise to actually talk to an air-gapped computer. And this one is using hard disk noise, the little crickety-clack if you actually still have a platter hard drive, which I thought was pretty novel.

Yeah, we actually reported on a similar technique a couple of weeks ago where instead of using hard drive noise, they were using – the researchers were using fan speed. So the idea is you would have a compromised, let's say, phone in the same room as the compromised computer.

The phone would be listening for the change in the frequency of the fan speed. And by being able to control the change of the fan speed, you could basically – that would be a way that you could get data out of the computer. Yeah, and all these methods are so slow. I mean, you're talking, you know, what, half a baud, if that?

Yeah, yeah. They're saying this one's – the one with the hard drives is about 180 bits per minute. So think about, you know, if those of you who've been around long enough to have enjoyed the wonder that was a 300-baud modem, this is an order of magnitude slower than that.

But, you know, if you're trying to get sensitive information out of a computer, you can probably afford to be patient. Yeah, yeah. If you're looking – and it has to be something small. You're not going to even get a JPEG out of that inside of a couple months. But if you're looking for, like, say, a cryptographic key, which could be, you know, 256 characters, that's doable in that time frame.

Yep. So clever humans coming up with new ways to compromise seemingly uncompromisable systems. Yeah, and on this one, you can thwart the bad guys by just buying an SSD. That's right. That's right. So speaking of government compromises, a few days ago on the Krebs on Security blog, security researcher Brian Krebs talked about there's been a massive email bomb targeting .gov addresses.

And this is kind of a way of DDoSing someone's email box. So, you know, DDoS is distributed denial of service where basically you flood a server so that it can't do the things it's supposed to do. What the bad guys are doing in this case is flooding someone's email by just signing them up for an endless stream of newsletters.

Oh, man. And it makes the mailbox unusable because you're getting two or three subscription requests per second. And so even if you're going through and, you know, manually deleting them or and then, you know, you have to go through the trouble of unsubscribing and so forth.

So, yeah, they're not sure why whoever's doing this is doing this. Again, they seem to be targeting .gov addresses. But, you know, it's kind of a kind of a new one to slow down someone's productivity and make someone have a bad day.

Yeah, this this this this reeks of being done for the lulls. That's right. That's right. Yeah. More of an annoyance than anything rather than actually doing damage or stealing information. But just kind of, I guess, because we can. One thing I found this week, which was very interesting in this, I got this from The Verge, which is usually not my bastion of security news.

But it's an article about states using facial recognition to sniff out fraud. So if you get a driver's license and then you come back with a fake name to get another driver's license, they're using facial recognition now to match your face to see if you're already in the database.

And this guy that was on the run from the law for over 40 years got busted for and they got him for Social Security fraud because he was collecting two separate checks. Ah, yes, yes. Yeah, very clever.

I mean, I think, you know, the the days of of I've been told the days of being a teenager and finding someone who was over 21 who kind of looked like you and borrowing their driver's license or something like that, you know, thanks to facial recognition, it's harder to do those sorts of things.

And, you know, I think this is a this is a good example of where facial recognition is being used by the good guys to help stamp out fraud and try to track down bad guys. You know, a driver's license is something that pretty much everybody needs. So if nothing else is a as a form of ID.

So if we can help find people who are misusing driver's licenses, well, here's a good use of facial recognition. Yep. Same with passports, too. They're they're tying these databases together because if you have a passport, it gets scanned just as just like the other ones. Yeah, that's right. That's right.

And so I think we'll see more of this is these databases are linked together and are able to talk to each other. Article in eWeek this week about people falling for phishing scams.

So there's a company called Duo Security and they had a what they call their Duo Insight tool, which basically allows organizations to sort of send out test messages to their employees to see if people are susceptible to falling for phishing scams.

So let me ask you, Jason, what percentage of people do you think would fall for a phishing scam? Off the top of my head and after some of the tests that I've actually performed at some of the companies I've worked at, about 40 percent, 40 to 50 percent.

40 percent. All right. That's that's you. You don't have a lot of faith in humanity, do you? No, I have empirical testing data is what I have. Right, right. Logic and facts. Well, you're not that far off. They found that 31 percent of people clicked on a link, which, of course, can lead to bad things happening.

But what impressed me was 17 percent actually provided their username and password. Oh, man. So nearly one in five people, you know, basically gave up the goods. And then they also found that 68 percent of end users were running out of date operating systems or out of date web browsers.

So, again, you know, making the point that part of protecting yourself is making sure that all your stuff is up to date, your OS and the software that you're using. Yeah, indeed. But, you know, pebcac is always the problem, you know. Well, so related to that, there was a funny story on the Sun Herald news site that the headline kind of grabbed my attention.

It said, here's a Hillary Clinton expose that's strictly for suckers. And this is related to to phishing attacks. You know, there are a lot of people out there. I don't think this will surprise you, Jason. There are a lot of people out there who do not like Hillary Clinton. Oh, for shame.

I don't know if this has crossed your awareness barrier, but there are people out there who do not like her. And so regardless of what you think about her, there are people who are taking advantage of this. And so they send out an email that says, you know, click here. This particular one that they were talking about.

Click here to see a video of Hillary Clinton accepting money from the leaders of ISIS. Oh, my God. Okay. And there are a lot of people who, in response to that, they say, well, I want to see that. And so they click through and, of course, kaboom, they are infected.

There goes that grenade again. That's right. That's right. And part of the point that the article was making here was that if something like this actually happened, it would most certainly be on the mainstream media. So for the people out there who think that the mainstream media is hiding everything from them and that emails like this will show them the real truth that the mainstream media is hiding, regardless of your political stripes or affiliation, no.

Believe me, if there was a video of Hillary Clinton accepting an envelope full of cash from the leader of ISIS, I think that's probably something the mainstream media would be interested in. So beware. I think the bigger point is that the people who are doing the phishing are being very successful by addressing people's baser instincts and their emotions rather than their beliefs.

Yeah, the phishers, they've embraced clickbaity headlines is what they've done. Yeah, exactly. And it works. It does, sadly. And finally, to wrap up this week, I went to use my debit card about a week ago and it was denied.

And I said, well, this is strange because I was pretty sure there was money in my account. And so I called my credit card company and they said, sure enough, my card had been part of a massive leak of credit card numbers. So they sent me a new credit card and this was my first experience with a chip and pin credit card.

Oh, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. And so begins the dance of having to use a chip and pin credit card. It struck me as funny because, you know, a couple of years ago there was a commercial about how much faster everything was with a credit card than, you know, paying with cash or paying with a check or something like that.

And thanks to chip and pin, it is way slower, much more annoying and intrusive. And so what this has done is it's really pushed me towards Apple Pay. Apple Pay is great. I can load. I was actually talking to a security expert this week for the Cyber Wire and he was saying he's done the same thing.

And it's made him seek out merchants who accept Apple Pay because it makes the exchange so much faster and so much easier. And also you have the security of the biometric using the fingerprint on your device.

Yeah, all in all, I use Apple Pay on my Apple Watch and I can go to Trader Joe's and be in and out of there lickety split. Yeah, yeah. So the chip and pin thing, yes, it is more secure, but boy, it's a shame they couldn't have done a better job working it out in terms of convenience for users.

It really does slow everything down. Yeah, it does. Oh, man. So thank you very much, Dave. And sorry about your new chip and pin status with the rest of us. We'll be talking to you next week. Everybody, go check out the Cyber Wire podcast.

Links will be in the show notes. Thanks, Jason. Bye-bye. Comment of the week. We have a new Patreon supporter. It's about damn time. Mr. Jack Engel, thank you very much, sir.

Yes, thank you. Especially now that we're no longer getting those half a pennies from BTR. Yes, indeed. So Jack also left us a note on the website. These comments are really directed at you guys personally, but if you want to paraphrase, go ahead. So this next bit is paraphrased.

Thanks for all your efforts. I'm a bit perplexed why people are so irritated by you guys having pre-, middle-, and post-podcast advertising. I tried to start a show, and man, the time it takes was unbelievable. So if you guys can put in the effort to create a show for our education and entertainment, these naysayers can at least hit the fast-forward button.

I gave you stars in iTunes and posted a Facebook for you. Thank you very much. So when you guys get down on people that are not really doing anything for real to grow our business, I love it.

Anyhow, that was my diatribe. So thanks for reading. Now get back to work. Jack Engel. Thanks, Jack. We are working. We are working our ass. Yeah, you're 57. So, you know, you're used to either paying for content or assuming that there will be advertising to pay for said content.

You're not this whole generation of people that want everything for free and no ads. So thank you. But the ads are gone now temporarily anyways until we figure out some other way to monetize our business. There will be ads, but they will be not those canned, really bad ones.

Yes. For Geico. We got a comment. Unless Geico wants to pay us, by the way. Oh, yeah. We'll take your money, Geico. Podcast at grumpylegeeks.com. Geico. Just send us your checks. Twitter. We got a comment. This is from Rico, also known as TheWampster. He sent a link.

Going to concerts regularly leads to a happier life, according to a new study. So this is a study out of Australia where they surveyed 1,000 Australians. It would be weird if they surveyed 1,000 New Zealanders, since it was a study in Australia. So they found that anybody who attended any sort of communal musical experience, whether that be a concert or just a night out dancing, reports higher level of satisfaction with their lives.

Well, we knew that. Music is good for you. MDMA. Interestingly enough, though, this effect does not seem to be shared among the people making the music. In fact, they tend to live much shorter lives and are less happy. Good to be a musician. There you go.

Yeah. Well, does that work if you're a DJ, though? I don't know. They're not really musicians. So I think they just get the happier thing. Yes, definitely. OK, Ross. This comes from iTunes. Ross, 1-222-4-3-2-1-4-4-4-3.

I think that might be his phone number. Dude stole my password. Seriously. This is a five star from iTunes. Hands down my favorite podcast. These guys make listening to podcasts fun and entertaining. Great topics in awesome format. Always enjoy Fridays when they come out with a new episode.

Oh, thank you, Ross. One, two, two. Yes. We got another five star rating from iTunes as well. This is from Old Female. OK. The title is refreshing. This podcast hits all the right notes. The chemistry of the presenters is great.

They obviously work hard to gather the information and think about it before presenting it in a fun format. None of the condescension founded many tech casts. Really? Oh, seriously? We're pretty – I don't know about that. We work really hard to be condescending assholes. I don't know how that skipped by.

She must have got our happy episode. I guess so. The one. And none of the fanboy stuff or sales pitches for the latest and greatest. Just enjoyable all around and well done. I look forward to each episode. Thank you, Old Female. We are very happy to have you, Old Female. I think that's my favorite commoner's name so far.

That is hands down. Sorry, Beach Mama. You have been un – you've been dethroned by Old Female. I miss Beach Mama. I do, too. If you're still out there listening, drop us a line. Yes. And for anybody who doesn't know who Beach Mama is, she was our first fan three and a half years ago.

And we miss her. We miss her greatly. So this next one comes from Jack Engel again. It says his title is Engineer. Love these guys. The only issue is I use them to wind down at the end of the night, but wrong choice. I could have told you that one, Jack. I get afraid that I'll miss something, so I stay up even later.

Thanks, guys. He says sarcastically. I'm sorry. Thanks, guys. He says sarcastically. Yeah. There you go. You gave the proper spacing in there. Thanks, Jack. And you did exactly what we asked you to, which is awesome. You wrote us, and then you went and gave us a five-star anyways. So we appreciate that. Yes. Okay, so everybody that's listening now, Jack has subscribed to Patreon, so he gave us money.

He wrote us on the website, and he went to iTunes. Be like Jack. Be like Jack. I am Jack's favorite podcast. Indeed. 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 Jack listens to shows and leaves us feedback. And better yet, he asked us a question that we 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 like Jack. They really do help us out, and it'll only take a minute or two. Just go to grumpyoldgeeks.com slash iTunes, and it'll take you right there.

Software, apps, and gadgets. McGill University is going to be using drones to paint murals on their buildings, which is pretty cool. And they also have a little video of a tiny drone that can paint portraits on this page. And the video is pretty awesome as well.

But the main reason I put this in here is for the poem that they used for the story, because I love it. One drone, two drone. Red drone, blue drone. This one flies a little far. This one photographs a car. Say what a lot of drones there are. This little drone paints art with dots. The friendliest of the air robots. Sensors teach it where to land.

Inkblots made as if by hand. Like all drones, it isn't manned. I think the Dr. Seuss Foundation will be wanting a stipend for that. I liked it. I'm sure you did. Well, I will check out the video on that one.

And you need to check out the video on the Omnicopter. I would like to, but, you know, CNET throws up about 7,000 videos at once anytime you load a page. So I will not be looking at it anytime soon. It's so unbelievably bad. What I'm going to do in the show notes is I'm going to take the YouTube video for the Omnicopter.

If you want to go to CNET and get inundated with autoplay shit videos that they throw at you that have nothing to do with the article you're looking at, be my guest. But these guys made an octocopter that works on all six axis, axes, axes, axes.

And the way they designed this thing is the thing is so cool. This thing is super cool because, you know, you know, with normal drones, you've got you just got the four rotors or the six or the eight rotors. But these guys built this thing so the rotors can go in multiple directions and can pivot and move on any axis.

It is insane. This is the future of the copter, I think. I mean, it's just it's so rad. All right. Pretty cool. You just talked about shit videos. Now let's go literal and talk about the Internet of shit.

A Roomba went up against animal poop and nobody won. This is a great story about, you know, somebody uses a Roomba and it works all right. You know, it can clean up your house a little bit, but you stick a piece of animal poop in its way and it just spread it all over the house.

There's a lot of pictures. I don't need to see these pictures. Not for the squeamish. No, I 25 foot poop trails all over the house. Well, this is what happens when you're a bad pet dad. Internet of poop. The Internet of poop. So I'm just moving on from that because nobody wins in the Internet of poop.

No, no. I found this thing just before we went to air today. I found this thing called the trust bag and I found it really annoyingly through a Facebook ad. It's a bag that is made out of, you know, you've seen those guys that go fishing for sharks, you know, like the shark armor.

Yes. Yeah. It's a bag made out of that. I don't need a bag made out of that. It's well, if you're in Rio, you might. But even though that's turned out to be pretty funny and not true. Anyway, if you're in a place that somebody could steal your stuff, this is the bag that you want.

It's also slash proof. So and that's not slash from Guns N' Roses because there's nothing that is slash proof because everybody likes to rock. I would buy a slash from Guns N' Roses proof bag. OK, well, check it out. They also have a T-shirt that you can buy that is also slash proof.

And they show a very lovely lady getting diced to pieces by a knife, which is very scary. But it's worth checking out. And it's not actually that expensive compared to what you get. It's 150 bucks. You get a bag, Jason. You get what?

You get a bag that you can't steal. It's a $150 bag. That you can't steal. Right. It is an unstealable bag. Sure. Well, I mean, I guess if you have bolt cutters and you can take the lock off, it's stealable. But if you have if you have a pocket knife like most criminals that are just walking down the street, you're OK.

OK. It's cute. It's ridiculous. What the hell do you have? What's going to beat my bag? I have a normal backpack and it does me quite well. No, I'm talking about the next story. Move on. I don't care about your backpack. OK.

I got I got these. I came up. OK. Let's start with I got a new TV and we're putting it up in the bedroom because we're about to have a child. And for three months, we're probably not going to leave said bedroom. So it'd be nice to have a TV in there. Apparently now all TV manufacturers consider it a feature to have a blinking red light that blinks constantly when the TV.

It's off to let you know that it's waiting for you. This is not a feature. Sleep mode. Except you can't sleep if you're in the room with it because the damn blinking red light is going 24 seven. When I turn something off, I want it fucking off. Well, at least it's not blue. Blue light's the worst.

At least red light, you know, is soothing. It's like it's like having a Cylon in the room with you. If it were six, I'd be OK with that. My TV is not six. OK. So I found the light dims, original strength and blackout edition. These are as you're I'm sure you're going to point out, Jason.

Just say it. Just say it so I can counterpoint. Slightly more expensive versions of duct tape. No, electrical tape, not duct tape, electrical tape. Except they actually look a lot nicer. And particularly, I would agree with you about the 100 percent, the total blackout edition. Perhaps you're better off just getting tape.

But they do have the nice little shape. So you're actually only going over buttons or little dots or things. So it doesn't look like you just taped your nipple up like you were in 1975. Scissors. Oh, can you cut a perfect circle? Yes, I can. Bullshit.

I have a protractor. All right. Shoot a video. I will shoot a video of me cutting a perfect circle in electrical tape with my protractor for shizzle. Anyways, the really interesting thing is the 50 to 80 percent one that I really like because it actually just dials everything back because everything is so damn bright these days.

So if you still want to be able to see and read the things without it being glaringly bright, like, say, the DVR that I have, this is fantastic for that. Oh, my God. The funny part about this is I thought you put these in the show notes, ironically, like like people would pay for this shit.

Okay, so I'm the one that thinks that people would pay for this shit. And apparently you're the people. I paid for that shit.

Media candy. Jason's all riled up over bad robot. Not bad robot. Mr. Robot. Mr. Robot. And we are recording a day early because I have to deal with something Friday morning. So Thursday night is the night I usually watch it. So he cannot wait.

So I'm going to take off my headphones. No, you can leave them on. You can leave them on. There's no spoiler alert. No spoilers. No spoilers. I just would like to say that I am so profoundly disappointed in this show now that I want my last six weeks back. That's all. And then you can tell me what you think next week.

All right. I'll watch it tonight. I'll text you. Oh, please do. Please do. Because that would be very interesting. All right. Angry Brian tweets in the middle of the night. Yay. The animated adventures of Firefly teaser is out.

And I just have to say that I shut up Star Wars motherfucker. I got myself a Firefly Woody off of this one. I liked it. I was happy. And I cannot believe that somebody actually made this. They're going to get sued into the ground. But I give them total props for giving it a go.

I don't think that they're going to get sued into the ground unless they're trying to make money off Fox. It's Fox. I know. But they have no they have no aspirations of doing anything with the property ever again. Yeah. But it's Fox. You know what? If Joss Whedon wakes up in the morning and just turns on Fox, they will turn his TV off.

They hate him. Anything that he does, they destroy. So and even though he didn't do this, he is Firefly adjacent with this. So we'll see how it goes. Right. I mentioned last week about Werner Herzog's podcast appearances.

He's been on the circuit, man. He did Marc Maron this week. Yeah. Lo and behold is the name of the movie. And turns out Lo was the first thing ever sent across the Internet, which is pretty cool. So nice tie in there. Trailers up. Looks good. Looks interesting. I'm in.

Yeah. I will definitely check it out. It looks interesting. It actually comes out tomorrow, the day or actually the day that you're listening to this, hopefully, which will be Friday, August 19th. It comes out so you can get it on Amazon and the streaming services. You don't have to go to the theater because nobody goes to the theater to see a Werner Herzog movie because no theaters in America or generally anywhere actually show his movies.

That's very true. Yes. I'm always hesitant when there's a big new sci-fi movie coming from any of the big studios. And I was scared when I heard about Arrival. And the first trailer came out and I'm throwing all my money at the TV screen right now.

Yeah. No, it looks good. And you actually beat me by like 10 seconds to putting it in the show notes because I was busy watching it. It looks really good. I'm in. It looks fantastic. Yeah. It's not Independence Day, which is a load of crap.

This is smart. It looks it's about translationing and translation. Translation. OK, English boy. Yeah, I'm a little tired. Anyways. All right. It looks great. I can't wait to see it. Even the trailer is fantastic. I'm a little worried about the cast, but every clip, all the clips look fantastic.

So I'm all in. I'm going to go see this in the theater. Yeah, it's like 80 percent of the movies in the trailer, but they have to do that for these movies that nobody's ever heard of. That's not a remake or a sequel. Exactly. They're usually crap, but this one looks good. So we'll see. Yeah. Yeah. I stayed away from all the remakes this week, but I will mention that they're redoing Jack or Jack Ryan for Amazon with the guy from the office.

They're redoing The Crow, which is sacrosanct. You should not touch that. All these all these remakes are just making me mad. But we talked about Atlas Obscura for a while, how we love the site. We're like we're huge fanboys of the Atlas Obscura site, and they now have a podcast. Of course they do.

Of course they do. It's in conjunction with Zipcar. So what they're doing there, they're based in New York. So they will they go and they get a Zipcar and they go investigate something that is a Zipcar away. That's a smart way to get funding.

Except that their first episode came out on July 15th and it is now August 18th and there has not been a second episode. And the funny part was I actually enjoyed the first episode quite a bit, except for the Zipcar, you know, reach around. But for the most part, I thought it was a an actually entertaining podcast because like the main guy from Atlas Obscura is in the show doing the driving with one person who knows where they're going and another person who doesn't.

It's kind of like the dollop, but with actual places where they go. It's interesting. So but no second podcast. There's just one. We're waiting for episode two. OK. Yeah, there we go. They must have actually figured out that making a podcast is fucking hard.

Making a podcast is hard. And speaking of podcasts, I discovered the black tapes. I can't believe I didn't. This is one of those ones that I think that I skipped because it looked like it was derivative. And, you know, because I had discovered lore, which I really liked.

And then I saw that the, you know, the art for the black tapes. I'm like, oh, God. OK, lore got popular. So everybody's going to rip it off. Well, no, this is actually not that this is a radio docudrama. It is The X-Files meets The Night Stalker meets Serial.

And it is thoroughly, unbelievably enjoyable. And fortunately, I came to it at the exact right time because I got to listen to the first two seasons in order. Like I got I had a migraine one day and I just sat in a dark room with no lights on and listen to this horror podcast because it's, you know, it's pretty, pretty much about horror.

And the paranormal and stuff. And then when I got finished with the last episode, the next step, the final episode of season two came out the next day. And I was just like, woohoo, I highly recommend it. It's fun. It is a whole ton of fun. I think the acting is good. I think the writing is better than the acting.

But for the most part, for a podcast that you don't have to pay for and you want something fun to listen to since we don't have the X-Files anymore, check it out. Right. OK. I was hoping for a little more excitement from you, but I have a hard time.

I don't do fictional podcasts. I haven't been able to get into it. I understand it harkens back to the early days of radio and all that sort of stuff. But for me, I can't do it. So do me a favor. But next before next week, just give it give the first two episodes a listen.

When you're out on your bike ride, just give the first two episodes a listen and then you can shit on it all you want. OK. But, you know, do me that. Do me that. Do me that solid. All right. I'll do you a solid Internet of poop. Totes cray cray redic. There's a BBC documentary about the hum.

This is something that has been going around for years about people who have this this noise in their head. We used to call it. We used to call them cray cray. Yeah, there's a lot of people walking around Venice like that. Exactly. And it's a it's it's just it's a well-made documentary.

And I remember the first documentary I saw in the same phenomenon where they took them to like a cave in Belize and they went down like six thousand feet to see if they could still hear it. And of course, they did. Yes, because it's in their head. Yeah, it's called it. Well, generally, it's called tinnitus. But the these people have, you know, it's trust me, just go watch it.

It's 15 minutes. It's enjoyable. And it's one of those things where you'll either see contrails or you won't. But but it says that journalist goes on a thrilling quest to pinpoint the source of the strange hum. Did she pinpoint the source of the strange hum, Jason? Of course not. OK, well, I'm not going to go waste 15 minutes of my life.

OK, fine. Well, let's end on a fun one. George Joseph Gordon-Levitt goes unnoticed as he plays drums in a subway station. This is a little video where Joseph Gordon-Levitt sets up his drums in the middle of a New York subway station and plays a little punk rock riff.

And he's pretty good. I got to give him credit. He's good. Yeah. You didn't think so? No, I think it's good. It's just I totally would do the same thing. I wouldn't notice him. I would be like, oh, God, another crazy person playing drums in a place he's not supposed to. And I'd walk away quickly. That's what most people did. That's what I'm sorry. That's what everybody did.

And one guy just yelled, you suck. But it's a fun video to watch. Highly recommended. Stop playing drums. I'm in a subway. I want to go home. Moron of the week. And now I just got to say again what I told Jason during the break.

All right. So this is a story of the two heroes of the week and then the entire media, which is all morons of the week. On Tuesday this week at the Olympics in a 5000 meter heat, New Zealand runner Nikki Hamblin stumbled and fell on the way down. She tripped up American runner Abby Augustino and both women were soon lying on the track and were injured.

They knew they had no chance to finish the race anymore. Obviously, they would not win and they were fairly injured, but the two actually basically cheered each other on and helped each other up. And they finished the race basically limping and holding each other across the line, which is a wonderful display of sportsmanship.

And it was a very nice thing. But then it had to become an Olympic moment. And the media does what they did and destroyed anything wonderful about it as they basically plastered this all over the media and forced us to go, hey, isn't this nice? Oh, oh, so screw you media.

You kind of ruined something that was pretty damn cool. Of course they did. Well, so do you remember a pepper spray cop guy from, you know, UC Davis, the guy that sprayed all the pepper spray in the kids faces? Well, the chancellor of the school has spent over four hundred thousand dollars to clean up her online reputation.

You can't scrub my mind. No, you can't. And the Internet never forgets. So thank you for employing people to the tune of four hundred thousand dollars. on, yes, what is a fruitless exercise? We appreciate that.

Oh, fancy. Fancy. Oh, fancy. I found something really fun that's probably going to get me killed. Probably. And I'm going to probably say I'll get me killed, too, when everybody has this out on the Santa Monica boardwalk.

Indeed. So lately I've been going on Sunday mornings with my old friends and we have old man skate club. So we go skateboarding on Sundays and, you know, pushing around the parking lot. It's good for us. Gets us some cardio. Not too much injury going on.

But then I saw this thing called the kick stick, which is a stick with a motor in a wheel in it that you just kind of push on the ground behind you. And it will get you up to 30 miles an hour. It's like a, it's like a, what do you call it? It's like a jackass version of the Segway.

Yeah. That's kind of what it is. And these guys are just flying with this thing. It will probably kill me, but I want one so bad. I think it's going to hurt quite a lot of people and it's going to have a lot of collateral damage. The thing that I want it for, here's the, here's the great part about it.

It folds up so you can put it in your backpack so you don't have to like have it out all the time. But I live at the top of a hill so I can skate down to town, get my groceries, get my burritos, whatever, throw them in the backpack, pull out my kick stick, and then not have to push all the way home uphill. Because that part sucks.

You know, I'm too old to be pushing uphill all the way. So I think this might be a good thing to get me home without a coronary. Yeah. Yeah. You are going to die though. Yeah. But check out the site. It's Rise Robotics. They've made some really other like cool stuff. You know, this backpack air compressor thing because the whole goal of what they're building is for an exosuit.

So these are like the spinoffs of stuff that they've created before they can build the exosuit. So it's a fun site. Definitely check them out. Yep. Pretty cool. I'm normally totally against the idea of the pop-up, the pop-up shop, the temporary thing. We're not going to actually make this for real.

We're just going to take over a space for a brief period of time to get buzz. But I can't stay away from this one. The Scum and Villainy Cantina. Okay. The Scum and Villainy Cantina is located less than 12 parsecs away in the wretched hive of Hollywood. Yeah. There aren't a whole lot of details yet as to what kind of food or libations will be served or the opening date.

But the bar's website notes that the cantina will be fully immersive and that costumes are encouraged. You are advised to leave your droids at home as everyone knows that cantina bartenders won't serve their kind. I have to go to this. Okay. So who are you going to dress up as? I'm not because I'm just going to go.

Because you hate fun. I know. Yes, I hate fun, Jason. Come on, man. You'd be a good Obi-Wan. That's true. I don't have that kind of hair yet. I'm still young. I could be, you know, from the first three movies, Obi-Wan.

Now, back in the day, we always talk about some gopher because we were both on gopher long, long ago.

Oh, yeah. I'm sure that most people don't even know what that is. No, they don't. They know what FTP is, maybe. Maybe. Maybe. They know it's that annoying thing that they lose the password for when they have to log into their website to post their selfies. Yes. That's pretty much it.

But before FTP and before the web, there was gopher. I always liked gopher. I thought it was an extremely compact and efficient way to disseminate information. It was. I loved it. That's how I started on the internet. I had my gopher client. Me too. Because it started back in 1992.

It was actually my very first paid thing on the internet that I ever did. Really? I was attending USC as part of my work-study program. I built and maintained USC's gopher site. Well, look at you, Mr. Stud. Damn right. So there's a great story on MinnPost, which is, I'm guessing it's Minneapolis.

But here's the deal. Go read it. It's the history of gopher. It will get you up to speed on what us old people used to like to do back in the day. It will get you up to speed on things you never need to know about ever again. No, but you know what? If you're playing pub trivia and somebody busts out a gopher question, it might come up.

That's true. And because I do love single-serving websites, because, you know, I had, do I have pigflu.com or do I have Ebola and all those different things that made me a lot of money because I was smart about it. I found thingsididlastnight.com.

I'm going to leave it there. You have to go check it out yourself. This guy is not monetizing it the way he should be, but it's pretty fucking funny. You should just do things I did the other night and then do it your way, Jason.

Could be. Could be. Yes. I have included an animated GIF because that is the way we're going to say it. I don't care what the creator thinks. In our show notes, we've talked a lot about different meditation techniques and Buddhify, which is one of our favorite apps.

This is just a great animated GIF for slowing down your breathing and taking a few deep breaths throughout the day. I find it relaxing. The funny thing is, once I saw you posted this, I started doing it. And you got relaxed. I want to make an app for this.

I know. Oh, Jason, let's do this. All right. This is going to be like, and we'll sell it for like 99 cents and people will love it. Okay. We're calling Trent. We're going to have him do this right now. We're going to have the Grumpy Old Geeks Relaxation app. Yes. Okay. You hear us, Trent? We're coming for you. You're going to make this for us and we're all going to be rich.

Maybe we should pull this off. The show notes. Okay. What do you got next? And finally, I love this. Kyle McLaughlin, who played the lead role of Muad'Dib in Dune, also well known for Sex and the City and Twin Peaks, of course, as well, was somebody tweeted him.

Can you please explain Dune to me? And he did in fantastical emoji based fashion. He tells the entire story of Dune with emojis. Yes, he does. It's stunning. And if you read the recap on it, it is spot on.

It is. He tells Dune and the whole process of it with nothing but emojis. But because it's the internet, instead of actually, you know, letting that stand as a work of genius, instead, he immediately was tweeted. Can you also now help us understand Twin Peaks? Oh, no.

See, this shouldn't be a thing. This should be a one and done. It is genius. I had to include it. Did he do Twin Peaks? No. Okay, good. Good. I don't know if we have the coffee or the apple pie emoji for it, but no, this was unbelievably amazing.

Yeah. Yeah. You can sit there and just kind of study it for about a half an hour and then it all hits. It didn't even take a half an hour. I got it right away. I've read Dune. I understand it. It was really good. Obviously, I went a little too deep into it then because it took me so long.

Are you kidding me? Love it. So last week, I gave you another link because you're the Star Wars fanboy. And so you can make your, you know, your Star Wars toast. Yep. Well, now we have Toasteroid, the first app-controlled smart image toaster.

So you can actually, you're not locked in. You can make your own toast with your own logos or whatever you'd like. Oh, boy. And I figured this would be right up your alley. So now you can have, you know, you can have whatever toast you like. Breakfast will never be the same again.

No, it won't. That's what they say. But yeah, it's on, it's on Kickstarter. Shocking. Yep. Not backed yet. It's $104,000 out of $150,000 goal with 31 days to go. So if you want, if you want your Toasteroid app and, you know, toaster, then get on it.

You can preview the brownness before toasting. You can send a toast message to your loved one. You can turn your morning. Previewing the brownness sounds like somebody who doesn't wipe well. The world does not need this. We do not need reminders of what we should do throughout the day on our toast.

No. It should say eat less bread. Carbs kill. Anyways. Okay. So Gene Bransfield, who is a security researcher with tenacity, turned his wife's grandmother's pet cat Coco into a roaming detector for free Wi-Fi networks by using a custom built collar.

So he has weaponized his cat to be able to hack his neighbor's Wi-Fi passwords. And it's called War Kitty. War Kitty. I fucking love it. Oh, my God. I mean, as somebody who has done War Driving, War Kitty sounds awesome.

Why go out and drive around the neighborhood? Just send your cat out. Oh, my God. I wish I could send my dog out, but she'd probably get shot. Yeah. So, but you can get all your neighbors, you know, Wi-Fi passwords and stuff. So send your cat out. It's awesome. And then I decided we need to have a tinfoil hat segment.

So we have to get Bob's your uncle on that and make a new bumper. Uh, people have no idea why these passenger jets are flying in and out of Area 51. It's about a fleet of passenger aircraft that are typically parked at Las Vegas, Macarian International Airport that you cannot buy a ticket for that do not have any logos.

It's just a plain white, plain white with a red stripe down the side. Uh, and it is basically, uh, they only fly to Area 51 and back. They fly to a couple other places. It's called Janet Airlines and Janet stands for just another non-existent terminal. And it's what it is.

It's people that work at Area 51 and they commute. They just fly them there. That's their, that's their bus. It's their Google bus. That's the Area 51 bus. There's nothing really, you know, X-Files-y about it. This has been in the news many times. So the guy at Laddibble, which, Laddibble, uh, didn't ever, it's, it's called Laddibble.

So, uh, he, he had never seen any of the previous documentaries on it, which I have because I do have many a tinfoil hat. Exactly. I know from whence I speak. The people at Laddibble are, are normal people, Jason. Well, you know what? They should, uh, they should hire us to write those articles because then I could have saved them some embarrassment.

They just wanted page views and they got them. Closing shout outs. We are wrapping up the Olympics. This is the final week. Thank God. I have a little bit more to say about it, uh, as we get to the very end next, uh, uh, which is Sunday. Uh, but I know this is on Huffington Post.

I tried to find a different link that had as many of the good images, but I couldn't, uh, Huffington Post. Foo Yan Hu, uh, is a Chinese, uh, athlete, Chinese swimmer. Uh, she is definitely winning the Olympics and having the most fun of anybody there.

And I will just direct you to the link in the show notes so you can see all the wonderful memes and GIFs and everything else that have been created from this insane, wonderful, bad shit, crazy woman. Okay. She is having the time of her life there. No one is having a better time at the Olympics than her.

What did she do to, to, to garner so much media attention? She is very expressive. Uh, she does not hide, uh, any of her reactions whatsoever. She didn't actually think that she had won. She had thought, uh, and then she found out through a reporter that she had tied for third place and basically loses her mind.

And she's smiley, happy, dancing. Uh, she's insane. You, you just have to go look at all the images. I love her. She's fantastic. And, uh, one more shout out. And this is an FU shout out. An FU shout out since I brought up the Huffington Post to Arianna Huffington, who destroyed journalism as we know it, and then decided to leave the company with big bags of money.

Screw you. Oh yeah. You don't have to get me started on that one. We didn't talk about her at all. I realized maybe we should dedicate a whole segment. Well, more on of the week next week. It'll just be about Arianna Huffington. Okay. I'd have to bust out my Metblogs, uh, historical context on that because I did Huffington Post before Huffington Post was a thing.

So yeah, but that's just sour grapes. Well, no, because I actually paid some of my writers and she didn't. No, why, why pay? When do you get it for free? Yeah. And that's why the company died. So anyway, uh, speaking of getting paid, unfortunately, as much as I tried, I really tried up to speed cannot exist with just me at the helm without getting paid.

Um, the thing is I have a full-time job. I have four side jobs and I have a dog that requires massive amounts of exercise and you put those all together. And what I thought was a nice block of time to do a daily show turns out it takes about four hours by myself to do 10 minutes of audio.

And I cannot tell me sister, I can't do it. That's why I couldn't come back to it. It's just too much work. Unless we were full-time podcasters, we can't do it. Yeah, if, you know, if things work out with grumpy old geeks, then, you know, maybe we'll get a daily grump like we always wanted to do. But in its, in its incarnation, Up to Speed is a dead show now.

I'm sorry, we're killing it. It's done. I'm going to put it, take it out back behind the paint shed and put a bullet in its head just like in V for Vendetta. That's all we're going to do. Having said all that, I almost guarantee you in two months I'm going to get an email from Jason saying, hey, I'm going to bring it back. Is that cool with you? Nope, not going to happen. Not going to happen this time.

I learned my lesson. I tried. I mean, I did five episodes on my own. This week, though, I got behind because my dog got sick. And then once that happened, then it was just a, just a cascade of failure. Just trying to get, I'd get my, my, my stories together.

But the upside is, is that my workflow for getting all the stories for Up to Speed that I, that I built will help this show. We'll do nothing but help this show because I can get through a thousand stories in under an hour now. So that will help grumpy old geeks.

But the downside is, yes, I won't be able to do that 10 minute recap every day. It was, it kind of makes me sad because I was really kind of having fun doing it, but. Hey, you know, I, I, I'd love to do it too. And if you guys really want to hear that, then head on over to patreon.com. Or if you've got people that you know that want to advertise on our show, podcasts at grumpy old geek.com.

We make the money. We'll do it. That's, that's what it comes down to. Yeah, that's pretty much it. It's because I can't, I can't have all the jobs that actually, you know, get me to zero every month, do those and do a show that I don't get paid for as much as I'd love to. So sorry, everybody.

I'd love to. And thanks for all the great feedback. We had, I had a ton of great feedback this, the last two weeks on doing it. And it's just, it's just unsustainable. Sadly. Next time Jason will listen to me. No, no, dude, don't even go there, man. It's, I did learn a lot from doing this and I, I, I optimized my workflow.

All right. So anyway, thanks for listening. I'm Jason DeFillippo and you can check me out on Twitter at JPDeaf. And I'm Brian Schulmeister and you can check me out on Twitter at Slender Fungus. Grumpy Old Geeks is back to being a 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, but still want to support the show, please go to grumpyoldgeeks.com slash iTunes and leave us a few words and five stars or tell a friend about the show. Be like Jack. Intro music for the show is provided by the band Among Us. You can find them on iTunes, Spotify, and Apple Music.

Or you can donate through the Grumpy Old Geeks Patreon page at patreon.com slash GOG to get 10 exclusive tracks. Outro music for the show is provided by Andy Stuchanski. You can follow Andy at twitter.com slash house of Andy. And he's also on SoundCloud at grumpyoldgeeks.com slash Andy. Show notes for all the links discussed in this episode, but maybe not that gif, can be found at grumpyoldgeeks.com slash 173.

This is for you new people. I only have one rule. Everyone fights. No one quits. If you don't do your job, I'll shoot you. Do you get me? We get you, sir! Welcome to the Roughnecks.

This January, Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship takes over the ocean. The inaugural Bruise Cruise sails from Miami to the Bahamas aboard the Norwegian Jewel. Three straight days with pool deck bare knuckle fights in the Caribbean. Massive parties, beach events, DJs, cigars, tequila tastings, and non-stop action.

The lineup reveals coming soon. Cabins are disappearing fast, and the prices won't stay this low. Reserve your spot with just $200 down at bkfsea.com. At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out.

It's discovering something new every day. Start with today's special value. Then, explore exciting finds across the brands and categories you love. From beauty and fashion, to home, culinary, and outdoor living.

Shop now at qvc.com.