176: Ready Player Pobama

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 176 for September 9th, 2016. I'm Jason DeFilippo here with my co-host.

I'm Brian Schulmeister. Hi. Morning, Jason. Good morning. I bet you're getting tired now. I have no concept of what morning actually is. Or what day of the week it is. I woke up, well, I'd say this morning, but I woke up around four-ish or something like that and forgot today was Friday.

Yeah. So, yeah. This whole week has been jacked up because of the holiday. Since we had two Sundays in a row, everything's just kind of wonky. There was a holiday? Yeah. Well, I see you posting that you're going to the pub quite a bit, so I can see why you won't remember things. Yes, the mother-in-law's in town, which has allowed me a couple escapes here and there, so that's been nice.

Already running out the door. Damn right. So, I got a little follow-up on people who listen to the show on Android. Oh, really? If you are so excited to listen to Grumpy Old Geeks and you have an Android device, we are on Google Play Music. Their URL sucks, so we made a quickie, easy code.

So, if you go to grumpyoldgeeks.com slash Google, it will take you to our page on Google Play Music. And even if you use any device and you're a Google Play Music fan, you can sign up to the show there and get every episode as it comes out. Yay! We're in other places. Good for us. Yeah, yeah. I looked at the stats. We've been there for two months or three months now.

Oh, okay. And I just keep forgetting to tell anybody about it. We've gotten, you know, everybody was always talking about how once Google gets into the podcasting game, it's going to be like, you know, a game changer and everybody's going to get so much more traffic. We have gotten a total of zero listens on Google so far.

Yeah, I never understood that. Nobody is really, as far as I know, I don't know a single person that uses Google Play for anything. I don't either. So, there you go. Yeah. Don't believe the hype, kids. Yes. And now, since you have a little one, and I'm sure you're going to want them to grow up to be big and smart.

No, I was hoping for a dumb kid. Well, you know what? Nowadays, ignorance might be bliss. That's true. It might be happier. I found an article in nature.com. It's How to Raise a Genius. Lessons from a 45-Year Study on Super Smart Children. So, maybe you can check that out and get some tips and tricks for raising the little tyke.

I was scanning through it. It seems to be a lot of STEM, which makes sense. You know, science, technology, engineering, math. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Cool. Well, thank you for that. I have it bookmarked, so I will do a deeper dive later, because, yes, I would like to have a smart child. That beats dumb.

Yes, definitely. Yeah. So, through my day job this week, I met a guy named Sean Blanda. He's the editor over at a magazine called 99U. Okay. Not heard of it. Yeah, I hadn't heard of it either. He's actually leaving there to go travel the world for a couple months. But he wrote a great article called The Creative World's Bullshit Industrial Complex.

Okay. Now, he and I have a very similar job of, you know, since he's an editor and I'm a producer, you know, we get people coming to us who want to be either in the magazine or on our shows. Right. And we have to deconstruct if these people know what they're talking about. Right. Nine times out of ten, they don't. No, because they're just, you know, they're trying to make their way in the world with nothing.

Yes, they're parroting other people's hard work, and they are... Much like this show. Ah, yes, but here's the difference between them and this show. We actually have a body of work to fall back on. A lot of these people don't have a body of work. And to that, I actually have been, since I've been fixing up my website, if you ever want to find out more about my body of work, you can go to jpd.me slash resume, and actually, you can see my bona fides there.

Oh, bona fides. Yeah, just to know that we... Well, you know, well, most of the time, we do talk out of our ass and don't really do that much research, but you can see that we do have, or at least I have... I know you do, too, but you don't have a resume anywhere. No, I don't.

You can see all of the horrible jobs I've had over the past 20-some-odd years. We've done some stuff. We have several hundred websites between the two of us. That is very true. So, I know that you're baby-bound, but are you caught up on Mr. Robot? I am, as per usual, just one episode behind.

I never get around to seeing the Wednesday one in time for this show. I'm trying to work on that, but it did not happen due to crying baby. Okay. Yeah, well, okay, we can talk about it. Well, maybe not talk about it next week, but... I just want to say, this episode, I don't know who they brought in for the cinematography in this episode, but it is one of the most amazingly shot episodes of television I've seen in a long time.

It is cinematic. It is gorgeous. Is it Fincher-esque? Yes. Oh, shocking. Yeah, but done really well. There are some long shots in here and just like one-take shots that are just amazingly cool. And it was a good episode.

I think it was the best episode this year. Wow, you're back on board. Or are you just trying to get that guy who gave us a one-star rating to come back? He can fuck off and die. I don't care. All right, well, I mean, I've been enjoying it. I still, you know, it still is what it is, and I'm still upset at the basic overall premise, but it's been enjoyable.

I like the conversations going on. I like the side plots, and it's interesting. I'm still with it. Yeah, and they did have the best hack of the season this week. It was about as realistic as you can get. Oh, good. So, yeah, I was just watching. I'm like, damn, that's how you do it. So, not too bad.

And as an experiment for the show, I was going through my Amazon cart this week, and I was, you know, just, I had to pick up some stuff for the house. Right. And I noticed that Soylent was on sale. Soylent, too, the stuff that you don't have to have a blender for, because I don't have a blender.

Right. The stuff in the bottle. So, I'm like, eh, what the hell? Let's give it a shot. So, you're basically on my son's diet. Yeah, pretty much. And eating like him. I'll send you a bottle. We have a couple extra ones sitting around. I'm good. I'm good. It's a preemie nipple. Come on.

Slow drip. Yeah. So, here's the take so far. The bottles are super, like, cheesy. I mean, I guess they're probably, you know, made of the vegetable stuff that will decompose faster. Yeah. But they just feel, like, cheap. And, like, they're not even printed on. Those are wraps around the bottles.

Okay. Which is very interesting. And they have a safety cap on top with, you know, plastic you have to take off. And once you get into that, then there's another foil cap. I'm like, okay, that's kind of silly. Double protection for your Soylent. It tastes like Elmer's glue with a little bit of vanilla extract in it.

That's about the consistency. Not exactly horrible. I mean, if you've ever had a protein shake, this is like a super thick protein shake. Okay. Taste, taste, meh. You can, you know, knock it. I recommend having a cup of coffee on the side with it to kind of wash it down.

But, and it's cheaper than buying the coffee version that's out there, which is redonkulously expensive. Okay. This stuff, this stuff was 34 bucks for a 12 pack. So, if you do it, even use it for one meal, it's cheaper than going to Subway. You know? Yeah. That's kind of how I looked at it. Is it enjoyable?

So far, so good. It filled me up. I'm not hungry. I had it. It's 11 o'clock here now. And I had it at 6.30 this morning. And I haven't had anything to eat. And I usually have some kind of breakfast in between. So, it is actually fairly satisfying. Okay. But, you know what happens when you have pizza every meal for about 25 meals?

Well, that's why I'm not going to use it. You do not want pizza. No, I don't. That's why I'm not actually, you know, this is, if I'm going to have, you know, if I don't have time for a lunch, if I've got shows coming up, I'm not going to, like, have this as part of a, like, a set plan. I'm just giving it a shot to knock out a few meals here and there as an experiment.

I'm not replacing my diet with it. Gotcha. Well, there's no way in hell I'd do that. I actually like food. And I like cooking. I am super happy that we're not in the same city and definitely not in the same room. Here's the deal. No farts. Nothing. Yeah. Yeah. We'll see. I have an iron gut. Oh, God.

In the news. So, did you get to watch the Apple keynote this week? No, I just paid attention to their Twitter account. Yeah, that's all you needed to do. Hopefully, somebody didn't get fired from this one and it was just a buffer time.

Time lag issue. But, yes, somebody over at the Apple social media team tweeted the picture of the iPhone while Tim Cook was in the middle of his spiel before he actually showed the phone. Yes, which, you know, is theoretically a big deal. But, really, who gives a crap? Nobody cares. Nobody cares.

This isn't job-esque presentations. This is just whatever. Yep. And everybody knew what it looked like already anyway. So, it didn't really matter. Yeah, pretty much. It's been leaked for a while. There's no real surprises. Everything that we thought was going to be there is there. None. The things that we thought wouldn't be there aren't there.

Bye-bye. Headphone jack. Bye-bye. Are you going to get one? No. No. I'm on the other, every other thing anyway. So, I will probably not get the 7, maybe a 7S, maybe, depending on what happens. I have next to no interest in losing a microphone, or I mean a headphone jack.

And, really, the quality from everything I've heard, unless you spend a lot of money on Bluetooth headphones, are not good. So, maybe they'll solve that by the time I get around to it. And, I hate, hate those stupid little earring-looking dangly bit things that they're trying to get us to use. Yes, the Uhura pods.

Yes. Those are horrible, horrible looking. And, you're going to lose those every two minutes. Yep. It looks like you have ear snot. Yeah, pretty much. Ear snot. So, yeah, I have to get one, because my 6 Plus is dead. It barely works nowadays. So, I'm going to wait.

I have to wait until November to get it, but I'll be picking one up. Okay, good. I wish my 6 Plus still worked, but it's like, it's been fixed so many times, and the buttons just stop working, and, ugh. I mean, the waterproof thing is a plus. I like that. Stereo speakers, who cares?

That's ridiculous. I mean, I guess millennials are listening to their streaming crap on their actual phone, and it just means more idiots, like, riding around on their bikes in the boardwalk, blasting their crap out of their phone, which is, I'm not happy about. I certainly would never listen to anything that I really wanted to listen to with stereo speakers on a phone.

Yeah. Longer battery life, they always promise that. We never really see it. So, we'll see. Well, I'll tell you, the battery life from iOS 10 has gone in the crapper. Right. My phone is, it's terrible now. And I did update to the final version of it yesterday, and half the apps still don't work right, even with their updates.

The Audible app is almost useless, and the battery life is just terrible. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not thrilled about it either. I found it to be the same. So, whatever. So, speaking of Apple stuff leaking and everybody knowing ahead of time, a trademark attorney named Brian Conroy is one of the people that thinks he'll be able to find all this stuff in the future.

Apple does trademark all this stuff. Things like the Iris Engine, Smart Button, Touch Bar, and Control Strip are all current trademarks that we haven't seen all of this stuff yet. And the way it works, apparently, is if you're signed up to the Madrid Protocol, which is a large number of countries, you can set up a trademark by filing within a country, which they are our public record, but the only way that you can find out about them is to go to the country where the application was filed and go into the local patent office and do a manual

search of their systems, which is how Apple has been hiding all these things. Yep. You need boots on the ground and asses in the chairs. Exactly. Good for him for trying it. I like how he doesn't tell anybody what country he founded it. He's just like, you know, I spent a lot of time on this. Yeah. I'm not going to tell you.

I'm like, good for you. He's basically got a scoop. He knows where it's at. Of course, you know, we can probably search for his airplane records. No, he paid somebody to go into the trademark offices. He didn't actually travel to the country. They're smart. Yeah. He had an agent on the ground. Yes.

And then speaking of iOS 10, there is a secret browser. Ooh, secret. Basically, they're turning iMessage into what we always thought it would be, which is a thin layer for application running. Yep. Yeah. I haven't played with it that much. Me either. But it's cool.

I like it. I like that idea. I like the idea of just, you know, being able to basically tap in keywords like an old school, you know, line based OS. Yeah. We'll see how it goes in action. Yeah. Now that I know you have iOS 10, maybe we can play around with it. We can. Yes.

Let's send each other stupid crap and annoy each other. Yay. Stickers. That's what I want. Can you send me some stickers, please? Yeah. Stickers. More stickers. Whatever. I do love my emojis, though. So I guess I shut up. Now, another reason to stick with iOS is the fact that the Samsung Galaxy Note 7s just keep exploding.

Yes. Apparently they do. Yeah. When charging, they have a tendency to go boom. And I found a story from St. Petersburg, Florida, where a guy's Jeep caught on fire. His brand new Jeep. Oh, poor guy. Yeah, I saw this on the news, and they're actually even asking people not to take them on planes.

Yeah. They haven't done a ban yet, but they're thinking about it. Yep. Yeah, it's not good. And this comes, the big issue here is this is Samsung's own battery department that makes these things. Yeah, I know. Not good. No. They are finally releasing some dates on when you can get the replacement version, but only if you're in Australia so far.

So if you're in Australia, you can get one starting at September 21st. If you want to buy a new one, you're out of luck until October. Nobody, they haven't said anything about any of the other markets yet on rolling out the replacements. Yeah. Samsung, it's Australian for exploding, mate. Yeah. Oh, fun times, fun times.

Yes. And we follow Airbnb a lot here, particularly the situation here in my hometown of Santa Monica, where I basically lost my mind a few episodes ago because we banned it. We said, hey, you don't get to use this as a money-making proposition. We're going to tax you, and we even like fined somebody a lot of money.

Airbnb did not take to that very well. Okay. They're filing a counter lawsuit against the city of Santa Monica, arguing that the city's rules, which were voted for and legally enacted, are unconstitutional. Okay. Airbnb is basically saying, screw you and your rules.

We want to do what we want to do. And it looks like they're going after the First Amendment and Fourth Amendment. Yes. Yes, they are. Imagine that. Yeah. Free expression. I do not believe that basically using their service to get around paying taxes over turning your properties into rentals is free expression.

Yeah, that's a, I mean, that is a stretch. Unlawful search and seizure? What the fuck? Yeah. Yeah. Nice try, Airbnb. I hope this gets shot down and you guys get fined up the ass for this crap. Yeah. Good luck with that one. Yeah. I mean, the basic legislation here in Santa Monica, it was put into place to stop what are being called rentalpreneurs, people who use services like Airbnb to lease out many, many units in the area.

There's been a lot of them. So, you know, it kind of got ridiculous. And the city was saying, well, first off, we want people to actually live here, not buy the properties and just use them as short term rentals. Secondly, even if you are going to do that, where's our money? There's this thing called tax. We all have to pay it. So they said to hell with this and wrote some pretty tough legislation.

And Airbnb is just not liking any of that, obviously. So screw you, Airbnb. Okay. When we were on the Grime Life podcast recently, we were talking about YouTube demonetization. Yes. And I found a medium from the Internet Creators Guild, who I believe we've made fun of on the show before.

Yes, we did. They have an article that kind of explains what it is and what the changes are. I'm not even going to bother reading this on the show because this has such a small, narrow window of people that actually give a shit about this. The link is in the show notes.

Go check it out. Grimfieldgeeks.com slash 176. Yes. PewDiePie happens to be listening. He can go read this. Yes. I figured, you know, since maybe we have some listeners in Santa Monica and Venice since you're over there and everybody is taking their own videos. to post on YouTube that maybe some of your friends might be interested in this.

That appears to be the only thing that people in Santa Monica and Venice do. They go down to the boardwalk and they shoot videos of themselves. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yay, LA. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, there's a lot in there about how people are kind of getting screwed on this, but at least one of the policies is that YouTube will let you know when your video has been demonetized.

How nice of them. Well, since 2012, they haven't. Yes. Basically, they would just turn off the money hose and not even bother to tell you. And then you have to, like, go say, hey, I got to pay my rent. Where's my rent money go? That was here every month up until now. Eh, we didn't feel like giving it to you anymore.

Hmm. So, I'm somewhat familiar to what these two podcasters might have experienced once. Yes, could be. It could be. So, yeah. Hopefully, you have those Airbnb rentals lined up because you're not getting rent from us. Yeah, definitely. And we've been talking a lot about cord cutting, and you're kind of sort of doing it.

I actually just signed up for my Hulu without commercials this morning. No, good for you. Yeah. No, I did. I went and looked at some of the stuff on there, and they've got a bunch of my favorite shows that I would like to watch the day after when they come out without having to go to Sweden. So, I'm like, eh. You know, I canceled my Spotify because I don't use it anymore, and I transferred that money to Hulu.

And so far, I'm still under what I would pay for cable. Yeah, but you're also only getting Hulu, and the problem is things are split up all over the place. The whole idea of cord cutting was, you know, hopefully we would save some money, and people have kind of figured that out. It isn't quite the bargain anymore, as everybody is rolling out their own pay services at lower levels and then upping it if, of course, you don't want to have commercials.

You know, it's only a matter of time before CBS pulls all their stuff from Hulu, since they now have their own all-access streaming thing. So, you're going to end up paying $10 here, $10 here, $8 here, $6 there, ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. Yeah, I went and looked at, you know, for a full package of cable and internet where I'm at.

It's like $250 a month. Wow. That's actually fairly pricey. I'm considerably less than that for both. Yeah, that's, you know, that's the full package with everything. I mean, I could get it down to probably like $170. That's about where I'm at. Yeah. So, right now, I'm paying $100 for internet.

I'm paying $15 for HBO, $10 for Netflix, and $12 for Hulu, and that's it. So, I'm still coming in under. And it's more TV than I can actually watch anyway. So, it doesn't really, I mean, that's enough. It's honestly enough. And my TV came with a coupon for three months free of CBS, so I'm holding on to that until Star Trek airs.

And then I'll just use that. I'll just use that when Star Trek comes on, watch that, and then I'm done with it. Very smart. Yeah, well done. Yeah, so it's not quite what we were hoping it was going to be. I don't see myself doing the cord cutting anytime in the near future, especially since there'd be no way for me to watch my beloved Dodgers.

Yeah. So, self-driving cars. We talk about it a lot. Vox did a big old survey, what I'd like to call a big-ass survey of Americans, and wanted to see what they thought about them. Basically, not much. Americans are not big fans of self-driving cars, which you would never believe given the media and press that it gets.

Americans aren't concerned about the economic consequences, which is what you and I scream about all the time, that people will be taking a large part of the workforce all of a sudden will not have jobs, and we have no way to really take care of them. They also, most Americans believe that self-driving technology will make traffic problems worse, not better.

I agree with that in a mixed system. As I've always said, the only way it works is we're all in or not. And, let's see, most Americans think that self-driving cars will reduce accidents and auto-related fatalities, but not as much as we would hope.

See, and here's where I land on this spectrum. This is all speculation. We don't have them. We don't know. So, this is just farting in the wind. It doesn't matter. I think the best part about this is 78% of people say they've never used a ride-hailing service. I was about to get to that.

The next part of the survey actually gets into the ride-hailing services, Uber and Lyft, which, you know, if you just went by media or our podcast or anything else. Everybody would be in an Uber everywhere they went. Everybody is an Uber driver, and when they're not driving an Uber, they're taking an Uber.

That's what you would think from the news. 78% of people have never, ever used a ride-hailing service. And of those that have, 9% use the service less than once a month. So, it's basically just a few jack-offs in San Francisco that are always sitting around in an Uber, and then they're fucking writing medium articles about it.

Yep. They're part of the industrial bullshit complex. Exactly. And then Recode.net also had a bit going on about ride-sharing impact. Car sales have not gone down at all. Yeah. Not one minute. So, even millennials are actually getting cars.

So, again, it's all farting in the wind about all this ride-sharing stuff. It is not happening to the level that you would think it is, given the way everybody talks about it. People are still buying cars. Most people have never even used a ride-sharing service. It is really kind of restricted to San Fran, and I'd say L.A.

New York. New York. Big time. Big time in New York. Well, because, yeah. New York, nobody has a car, and everybody lived off cabs. So, yeah. There you go. There was actually a really good piece on Freakonomics this week about Uber. And did you listen to that one yet?

No, I haven't. It's saying that Uber is like an economist's wet dream, like all the data they have. Oh, yeah. And they say that most of the impact isn't really there unless you own a taxi medallion. Right. That's about, those are the people that are getting hit the hardest, but the drivers aren't so much.

Yeah, makes sense. So, it's an interesting one. Definitely check that out. We can talk about it next week. It's a really good episode. I think you'll dig it. Will do. I'm definitely downloading them all. I'm just not finding time to listen to anything. Yeah. On NationalGeographic.com, I found a great article.

Were humans built to drink alcohol? Now, going with Betteridge's Law of Headlines, I had to check it out. Turns out, Betteridge be damned. We are built for drinking. Of course we are. One of the first things we did, besides fire, was figure out a way to get drunk. Yep. There's this guy, Patrick McGovern.

He's 71 years old and a biomolecular archaeologist, which is an awesome, awesome title. I want that on my business card. I know. Well, you better go back to school then. Ah, to hell with that. We're in the millennial age. We'll just wig it. Yes. Go watch some TED Talks and then they'll get you set up. Then I'm an expert.

Exactly. So, here's a little excerpt. Alcohol is good for you. We're biologically adapted to moderate drinking. What's this moderate crap? I was going to say, man, go big or go home. It kills harmful bacteria. If you were in a situation 2 million years ago where your life expectancy may only be 20 years, you'd look for anything that may extend it or keep disease at a minimum.

What choice did you have? If you just drank raw water and you run a very high risk of getting disease. And people would have empirically realized that. They see a guy drinking out of the stream. He died. But the guy over there having a beer, he lived until he was 30. Damn right. Beer it is. So, yeah.

Damn you, Betteridge. And in a good way. A happy result. A happy result, finally. Speaking of happy results, it's been Burning Man week. I know. Oh, God. You know, there is nothing. I have a new thing for most annoying person in the world on the internet.

Who would that be? The person who has gone to Burning Man for the very first time and just gotten home. Ah, yes. Are they on their way to the STD clinic? All they fucking do is post 10 gazillion pictures and talk about what a transformative, amazing experience that it was and start referring to themselves as burners.

Fuck you, people. Just get over it. You're not the first. People have been doing this for years. It's not that big of a fucking transformative experience. You're going to be back hating your job in two days. Just get over it. True that, true that. Well, White Ocean was a camp that Paul Oakenfold, and he founded back in 2013, and some Russian billionaire funded it.

Oh, kind of like the U.S. government. Yeah, yeah, kind of. So here's the deal. They went out for a little party, and they came back, and somebody had completely trashed their camp, cut the electrical lines, so all the food spoiled, stole all their stuff, glued their trailer doors shut, and flooded the camp with 200 gallons of water.

That's kind of funny, actually. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it sucks. That totally sucks, but you know. You still can't help but chuckle. Come on. It's not that transformative of experience. People are still assholes. Yeah. That's true.

There are assholes in the desert. Go figure. They're just naked and haven't showered in a week. They're stinky assholes. Yeah. I don't know if you guys talked about it in security, because obviously, I didn't wake up that early. But Mother Jones has a nice little takedown of the actual newly found email situation and the entire FBI report on Hillary Clinton's email.

It's just 14 quick excerpts that basically say, look, she was dumb but didn't do anything bad. Yep. And it's interesting that the one email that was in there, what was his name? Colin Powell. That was it.

Yes. That's the name I was reaching for. He said that he never said anything to her. And oops, here's the proof. He's like, this is how you get around it. So not only did he say something to her, he said something about how you should get around these rules because he broke them all the time, too. Exactly.

So where's the probe into him? Oh, God. Anyway. So, yeah, it's a tempest in a teapot. Get over it. Move on. Well, except nobody is. So, of course not. Security.

And we're back again with our good friend Dave Bittner from the Cyber Wire. How's it going, Dave? It's good. It's good. Nice short week, but still plenty going on. All right. Hit me. All right. Well, the big news this week was the House Oversight Committee brought out their report on the OPM breach to bring you up to date.

Remember back earlier this year, OPM is the Office of Personnel Management. And they had a major data breach where 21 plus million individuals got their personal information released or stolen from OPM. To make it even worse, these are people who had clearances or were applying for clearances.

So, not only did they get all sorts of personal information about them, the kinds of questions that you ask someone when they're applying for a clearance, but also many of their fingerprints. Yeah, this was a bad one. It was a bad one. I mean, it's really one of the biggies and needless to say, a serious one.

And real quick, on that note, this data hasn't been released, right? The theory is that the Chinese took it and they're just using it for their espionage crew? That is correct, right? None of this data – a lot of times what happens when you have a major breach like this is that the data ends up on the black market somewhere.

This data has not, which reinforces the suspicions that this was China and that, you know, they're going to be using it for espionage kinds of uses. So, Congress came out with their report, the House Oversight Committee, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

I think, unsurprisingly, it really comes down on the leadership who has since resigned, but basically saying that OPM has failed to set up how they described it, basic cyber hygiene, and, you know, really ripping into them. The good news is that since then, OPM has put in a lot of systems to make sure this never happens again.

We're actually – we're going to be interviewing today on our show Malcolm Harkins from Silance. They're one of the companies whose software actually helped detect the breach. So, they have – they're sort of on the inside of this. So, we're going to sort of get the inside story from him.

One of the fun things about – if you can label anything of this as being fun, the people who broke in and got the data, they registered the domain names that they used to help them exfiltrate this data, the names are registered under the names Tony Stark and Steve Rogers.

Nice. Well played. Yes, well played. So, the entire report is online. You can – it's easy to find. Search for OPM breach report and you'll find the report if you want to read a long government report. Yeah. If you really want to be bored.

Yeah. So, it's out there but that was the biggie this week. Other things that are going on. There's a new backdoor for the Target's Mac users. Eek. It's called Mokes. And what's interesting about this is it is particularly capable.

It can make screenshots. It can record keystrokes. It can capture audio. It can go through Office documents and scan through removable storage devices. It's new for Mac. A version of this was out earlier this year for Linux and Windows. It has not yet been – they don't know how it's being delivered or pushed.

To user systems yet. That is still mysterious. Kaspersky Labs are some of the researchers who found it. So, Kaspersky actually has details how you can poke around on your Mac system to make sure that you have not been infected. That was the first thing I did this morning.

Yep. Yep. So, you know, better safe than sorry. In general, we see fewer of these things on the Mac for a variety of reasons. But you shouldn't have a false sense of security. It's worth checking out the information on Kaspersky's site.

And just for safety's sake, make sure that you haven't been affected. Yeah. It's interesting because as I was reading that, I noticed that the original Mac – or our Windows and Linux versions, they basically use a cross compiler. So, moving this to Mac wasn't that big of a deal.

So, maybe we'll see more of that in the future. So, once you – you know, like Java, write once, run everywhere. So, hack once, hack everywhere. Yeah. The bad guys are using the same tools. Lovely. Yeah. I found one, which is a Google login flaw. You know how when you go to a website and you're like, hey, log in with Google, and it bounces you over to Google and then back to the site that you're trying to log into?

Sure. Well, a couple of guys found a flaw in the redirection process that lets them actually pull credentials. It's kind of a – it's not an easy hack, but they have kind of a how-to on how it works on their site. It's also not an easy-to-understand hack. Like, I was looking through the article myself and it's – you're right.

It's complex, but they seem to have it working. As a web programmer for 22 years, I kind of got it pretty quick. I saw where the holes were. But, yeah, if you're not – if you don't have that level of expertise, it's not really something that's going to jump out at you.

But you want to protect yourself against this, just enable two-factor auth, you're good to go. Yeah, now, what's interesting to me – an interesting part of the story is how Google responded to this, which is sort of a non-response. Yeah, it is a non-response.

Google said that – basically, they said, we don't consider this vulnerability to be that serious, and we've got other systems in place to help prevent the phishing that this would take advantage of.

What's your take on that? I think it's that they don't know how to fix it at this point. So they're just saying, yeah, you know, we've got other things that will take care of it if it actually happens. But, you know, it is a viable attack. So you think it's woven too deeply into the fabric of Google's login system to make a meaningful change?

I think so, and I think it's probably going to take them some time to figure it out. Because when you're dealing with redirect hacks like this, it's kind of the – you know, you're dealing with the nature of the beast with when you're passing credentials back and forth and you're passing tokens, you know, around. Men in the middle of tax are, you know, fairly – they're not fairly easy, but they are – yeah, I guess they are kind of fairly easy now that I think about it.

But they're pretty common. Yes, they're common as well. So, like I said, the best thing that you can do is definitely turn on two-factor auth. And, you know, they're using different systems to actually, you know, replicate the Google login screen and things like that. But just pay attention to your URLs, know where you're going.

And, yeah, I mean, it kind of goes with common sense like when you're clicking on – like don't use Google to sign up for a site that you don't know. You know, it's basic standards and practices and trust. So, you know, don't go to a Russian porn site and try and sign in with Google.

Always good advice. Always, yes. And not completely unrelated, there was a new hack that came to light this week where photos – it's actually an Android vulnerability involving photos.

There's a researcher named Tim Strasier who I actually spoke to yesterday. He's going to be a guest on our show next week to talk about this. Good guy. And what Tim discovered was that there's a vulnerability in Android with the EXIF data with image files.

Okay. Now, I don't know about you, but to me, there aren't many things more benign than an image file, right? I mean, it doesn't do anything. Well, there was a recent hack on iOS with a TIFF. You can have malformed TIFFs that gave you root access.

Right, right, exactly. So, but how this works is this involves the EXIF data where if you format your EXIF data, say, for example, the GPS data, right? So, the GPS data is expecting a certain number of characters.

And the way that – my understanding is the way that Android interprets the EXIF data, it's not checking properly to make sure that the number of characters is correct. So, if you put in the incorrect number of characters or let's just say unexpected data in certain slots in the EXIF data, you can trigger a buffer – what's it called?

Buffer overflow. Buffer overflow, that's right. Buffer overflow and kaboom. Wow. Yeah. Tim Strzeer discovered it. He sent the bug in to Google and I think part of the – Google has since patched it.

I think one of the cool things about this is that Google gave him $4,000 as part of their bug bounty. But Tim decided he wanted that money to go to a local charity, a place called Girls Garage, which is a workspace for girls who are age 9 to 13. And so, Google went ahead and doubled that money.

So, Tim found the bug and this place that does good for girls gets $8,000. That's great. I think Apple is doing that too with their bug bounty program. Yeah, that's right. Apple has finally implemented a bug bounty program and they're doing the same thing.

If you want to send it to charity, they will match the funds. Yep. That's very, very cool. I think that's great. Now, we talk about the Internet of Things on this show quite a bit and how it's a bad thing for a lot of people who buy these off-the-shelf devices that they can't tinker with or even test the security of before they get them.

And they're becoming huge in botnets and DDoS attacks and just being able to poke around someone's home. Level 3. Level 3 has a really good write-up on the security of IoT devices. It's a fairly long and dense article, but we always put in links like this.

If you're curious and want to get up to speed on what the threats are and where you can kind of cover your own ass with best practices, definitely go check this out. The link will be in the show notes at GrumpyBuildGeeks.com slash 176. Yeah, Level 3 is actually one of our research partners.

We have Dale Drew from Level 3 on our show pretty regularly to share about the stuff they're working on, this sort of thing as well. To me, when you sort through all this, if you want the short version, scroll down to the conclusion paragraph, which really gives you an overview of what's going on here.

To me, the take-home was that, you know, obviously there are best practices that if you get an IoT device, the first thing you should do is go in and change its password. Always. And many, many people don't do that. But the problem is there are many, many IoT devices that don't even give you the option of changing your password.

And so Level 3 pointed out that this means that you should really take time and research the devices before you buy them. Make sure that when you're installing something in your home that it will give you the option to properly secure it. And I think that's an angle that hasn't really been talked about that much.

No, that's actually a, there's a market opportunity there for somebody to build a site around that. So if you're listening to this, go out and build that. Right, right. A database of what devices allow you to go in and secure them. That's a good idea. Yeah, kind of consumer reports for IoT. There you go. I like it.

I like it. Get on that. I'm done building websites. That's all you. All right. So moving on, there's an article in PC World. This attracted my attention from the headline. The headline is, Why Quantum Computing Has the Cybersecurity World White Knuckled.

Oh, dun, dun, dun. Right. And then goes on to say that something might happen in 2026. Okay. Slow news day. Right. So, boy, we are white knuckled and holding on to the bar as tightly as possible for the next decade.

It is a, you know, it's a breathless headline, but it is a serious topic. It's about quantum computing. And, you know, the encryption that we use today will be easily broken by quantum computing. Should these quantum computers come online, quantum computing is a different kind of computing.

It doesn't use the binary ones and zeros that our computers use today. They use what are called quantum bits or qubits that can, through the mysterious quantum, they can simultaneously be ones and zeros through a state known as superposition.

This is the same as quantum entanglement, right? It is along the same lines. As, who is it, Richard Feynman said that, you know, anybody who says they really understand quantum stuff is, you know, either lying or fooling themselves or something like that.

But there are people working on this. You know, to me, quantum computing is kind of like fusion energy where no matter when you ask about it, it's always 20 years off. Yeah. And quantum computing has been that way. Although, you know, they are saying that slowly but surely we're getting closer to it.

You know, researchers are making breakthroughs. We spoke with Jonathan Katz from University of Maryland, who's a crypto guy. And he was saying that, you know, what they're working on are next generation encryption schemes that won't be vulnerable to these kinds of things.

So that the notion is that we've got to get these next generation, we've got to switch over to these next generation crypto schemes ahead of time so that we're not playing catch up when the quantum, you know, because if someone tomorrow made a huge quantum breakthrough and all of a sudden quantum was easy, fast and cheap, basically the encryption schemes that the internet relies upon wouldn't work.

They'd be easily cracked. So, yep, so beware the quantum leap and get your quantum safe computing when it hits you in 20 more years or 10 more years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And finally today, you know, last week we talked about the problem with St. Jude Medical and the pacemakers and the folks at Muddy Waters Capital who teamed up with MedSec, a cybersecurity company,

to publish what they claimed were some vulnerabilities in St. Jude's pacemakers. And that wasn't enough. They went ahead and they shorted St. Jude's stock to profit from this report. And of course, lots of people considered this to be in extremely bad taste or bad form, to say the least.

Well, St. Jude has responded and St. Jude is suing Muddy Waters and MedSec. Good for them. You know, I got to agree. I mean, there are those who say, well, of course they are. That's really the only thing they can do. You know, they have to respond whether or not this is a – basically, St. Jude is making a defamation claim, which is very difficult to win.

But I think it's good that St. Jude is fighting the good fight and maybe, you know, shot across the bow to other investment companies who are thinking about teaming up with cybersecurity researchers to do similar things of finding vulnerabilities and then trying to profit off of them.

So I think there's a little cosmic karma going on here where hopefully – I guess what I'm trying to say is I think people are probably rooting for St. Jude. Yeah, I am. Even though they may have an uphill battle on – against – with their case, I think they've got the popular support from most people.

Team St. Jude. Yeah, that's right. That's right. All right, man. Well, thank you for stopping by and scaring the crap out of us as always. It's my job. Yeah. Well, go have a nice, safe, and fun weekend and try and recover from the holiday weekend, which screwed up everybody's week.

All right. Good talking to you, Jason.

Comment of the week. We got a comment at grumpyoldgeeks.com from Anonymous. Anonymous. Anonymous. It was regarding episode 174, Singapore taxis. Okay, so I lived in Singapore for five years and rode a motorbike every day to work.

Haven't been in Singapore. I know how dangerous that is for you, man. Good luck. This is one of my go-to websites when I lived there, Singapore Reckless Drivers, a YouTube channel. Link in the show notes. Have you watched the video? I did. Oh, my God. Yes, I know. I've been to Singapore. Unfortunately, I didn't see anything like this.

But now I know how dangerous it was actually driving there at night. Oh, it's scary. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. When you told me that they were going to test driverless cars there, I had to send it to you. All I can say is the programming on those taxis better be damn good. The show is amazing.

The politics are hysterical. This is a free country, and you're just doing what comes naturally in a democratic nation. Shifting to 1Password has just made my life so much easier. I bought it on your advice, and it's worth every penny. Hey, we got one. Ask them for a sponsorship as I recommend it to all my friends, and I would say I have persuaded four people to purchase it.

Keep up the good work. Thanks, Anonymous. Yeah. Hey, 1Password. All right, trickle-down passwords. That's what we're all about. Yeah, there you go. All right, this one comes from Gray Panther. Your recent episode gave me the much-needed push to write up my thoughts on the limits of science. Enjoy. There'll be a link in the show notes.

He said, unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way to comment on individual episodes, so unless you share this in a future episode, listeners won't benefit from it. Well, we're certainly not going to share it in a past episode, so we'll have the link in the show notes. Thank you very much.

Did you get a chance to read it? I did not. Sorry. I gave it a skim. Yes, it's talking about science. Okay. So give it a jingle if you want to. Okay. Science is not truth. Science is not math. Okay. Anyways, there we go. We got some five-star ratings on iTunes.

Thank you all very much. The first is from Schwellschultz. Schwellschultz. Schwellschultz. Grumpy goodness. Love these guys. Savvy, smart, and oh-so-grumpy. Thank you very much, Schwell. Thank you. Thank you. Next one comes another five-star. Old, grumpy, geeky, and can relate.

This comes from Monkey13. John Chevron. Thank you very much, John. Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three others to kill again. Oh, wait. That was the Wizard of Oz. This is GOG. And if you're old enough to know what the Wizard of Oz is and you happen to have worked in pretty much any tech field over the past 25-plus years, then most likely you are jaded and bitter.

I know I am, so I really enjoy listening to Jason and Brian talk about what's going on nowadays with their own take on it all. I wouldn't miss an episode. You better not. Yeah. Oh, I gotta say. Well, thank you, Monkey13. Yes, Monkey13. Monkey. Hmm. Wizard of Oz reference.

Interesting. Do you fly? Hmm. All right. 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. They really do help us out. It'll only take a minute or two. Just go to grumpyoldgeeks.com slash iTunes, and it'll take you right there. I still haven't finished the book I've been working on.

I used to read a book basically in a day. Now it's taken me two weeks to slog halfway through one book. Yeah, you're usually Mr. Speedy Gonzales on the book scene. Try having a kid. No, thanks. So I got a couple here. Okay.

I finally hunkered down and got through The Gunslinger, Dark Tower, episode one. Yeah, that's basically the only way to do it. Agreed? Now that you've made it through it? Yes. It's terrible to get through that. But I did. I made it.

It is so rough, but it's worth it. It's worth it because you have to. And it is just one of the best series ever written once you get past. So I've started on episode two or volume two or whatever you call it. And I'm like, you know, what, I'd say about an hour into it.

It's a 12-hour book. I'm about an hour into it. And so far, that first hour is better, like five times better than the entirety of the first book. I know. I have to explain this to every single person that wants to finally read it. I'm like, the first book will suck. It will just suck.

You will hate every second of it. You will go, I don't want to read this, but you have to. So, yep. And trial by fire, Jason. It really is. It really is. And I've just never been a Stephen King fan. But, you know, the movie's coming and you swear by him. So I'm going on your recommendation here.

So this is just so not what you would think of with Stephen King. I mean, this is not, you know, a horror book. This isn't it. This isn't Tommyknockers. This isn't any of that. This is a wholly realized, amazing world. I think you're going to love the ride, man. Yeah. So, I mean, like I said, even when I first got into the beginning of book two, I'm like, oh, this completely changes the dynamic of everything.

And I'm like, this is cool. This is a neat, neat concept. And I'm down for the ride now. So, yeah, it's amazing. I'm quite jealous of you. I'm thinking back going, oh, wow. Reading that for the first time. How amazing. So this will be my dune, my dune, because I'll be going through all seven of these.

Yeah. That's going to take you quite a while. I also listened to Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff. That is the only book by Matt Ruff that I have not read yet. Really? I haven't read any of his other books. Are they any good? I'm, well, I reviewed The Mirage a couple weeks ago, which I thought was okay.

I'm a huge fan of Set This House in Order. I'm a huge fan of Fool on the Hill, which is the first book I ever read by him. And I really like Sewer, Gas, and Electric. He had a book called Bad Monkeys, which was kind of more experimental. I think I talked about that on this show maybe like about a year, a year and a half ago that I wasn't crazy about.

So, more hits than misses. Okay. Well, Lovecraft Country is a hit. It's a total hit. It's like an alternate history where Jim Crow laws are still in effect, like into the past World War II. And it's about this guy whose uncle, I think, writes the Negro travel guide.

Right. So, like where it's safe to travel, which was a real thing back in the day. But it also brings in a lot of Lovecraftian magic. So, all in all, it was strange, but really fun. I found, like, I couldn't put it down. I, like, cooked through it. Right.

Yeah, that's kind of how I feel about most of his books. Okay. So, yeah, I think you found a new author then. I think you like a lot of the rest of his stuff. No, definitely check it out. I'm glad to hear about the Bad Monkey one because that's the one that keeps popping up. But if that's not a good one, I'll check out the other ones. Yeah, I'd go back and do Fool on the Hill first.

Okay. And I also have a link in the show notes to a Reader's Guide to Lovecraft Country, which is, like, has links to all of the historical stuff that he talks about in the actual book, which is really cool. Yeah, it's cool that you did that. And one that we haven't read yet because it doesn't come out until September 20th, but if you want to pre-order it, I'm throwing this in here.

And I'm going to get a hardcover for this one because it looks fantastic. Atlas Obscura, An Explorer's Guide to the World's Hidden Wonders is coming out. And, you know, we both recently fell in love with that site. So, I think this will be a cool coffee table book if I ever buy a coffee table. But I'll still have the book. Yeah, it looks really cool.

The hardcover price is, like, only five bucks more than the Kindle price anyway. Exactly. So, why not get this one in glorious physicality? No, yeah. And it looks cool because it's, like, you know, one of those books that has, like, a bunch of different facts on each page. So, it's, like, you know, what was that?

There was a bathroom reader that I used to have that had a lot of stuff like that. So, this could be the new bathroom reader. But definitely check it out. Link in the show notes. Software, apps, and gadgets. I got a new online course.

Okay. Yeah, I signed up for Masterclass.com. These guys have been advertising everywhere. But it's one of these courses where it's, you know, it's an e-course. But if you want to learn filmmaking, you can, say, learn it from Werner Herzog. If you want to learn acting, you can learn it from Kevin Spacey.

You know, screenwriting from Aaron Sorkin. I went with novel writing with James Patterson. Okay. So far, it's really good. It's really well done. The videos aren't super long, but the knowledge that he's dropping in those videos is really good.

You get office hours, so you can actually send stuff in, and he might do video replies. Otherwise, you can have, like, peer-reviewed stuff for your writing and things like that. 90 bucks. Not bad. Not bad. Yeah, I remember seeing buzz about the Dustin Hoffman acting one and the Kevin Spacey acting one, obviously.

They've got some big, I mean, Usher teaches the art of performance. Okay. Serena Williams tennis. I mean, this is pretty interesting. And quality of classes is good, I'm assuming. It's stellar. I mean, this is a really professionally done course, for sure. And I think when I'm done with this one, I'm definitely going to do the Aaron Sorkin one because I just love him so much.

I just want to hear him talk for a couple hours, you know. I think that'll be just fun. That one would be interesting. And obviously, I'm assuming you'll do the Annie Leibovitz photography one when that comes out. I might. I might. I've, you know, I've done a lot of photography, so I don't know if Annie's going to be teaching me anything that I couldn't figure out from anywhere else.

I've seen so much of her stuff. I've watched so many of her videos. I know, well, no, I just I've followed her for, you know, 20 years, so I don't know if there's going to be anything new is what I'm saying. She can teach a lot. She's fucking amazing. But, you know, and also writing.

I do a lot of photography. That's my hobby. You know? Yeah. I did an online course with Creative Live with Zach Arias. That was actually a good hands-on course. I highly recommend that if you want to learn just a lot of. For me, it was a refresher. But if you want to learn the basics of studio photography and flash photography, Zach Arias on Creative Live.

Excellent. Well worth the money. The Annie Leibovitz one. I think you probably need to be an advanced, more advanced to get anything good out of that. Yeah. So moving on. I found one for you. You did. It's called Smart Halo. I love this thing.

There's a link in the show notes. It's basically a cool little device that you pop onto your bike and it does all sorts of things. Like it can give you directions, you know, GPS kind of thing. Lots of, you know, metrics on your riding and it looks cool. It also, you know, serves as a light and a bunch of other things.

I totally want one of these things. Okay. Well, you can order it. And here's the kicker. Most funded smart biking device on Kickstarter. Yeah, I'm not thrilled about that. Yep. You know what that means? That means they're going to miss every single deadline because the more money you get, the harder it becomes. Well, and this is why I'm not, I will not pre-order this.

It's just not going to happen. When I hear, I'm going to keep an eye on it. When I hear that they're actually out and you can just take a regular order and they are shipping, then I will get one. This is cool as crap. It looks really great. If you're, if you're a big biker like I am, I think you need to take a look at this. But yeah, because we have learned our lessons, do not pre-order this.

Yeah, definitely. And it's interesting because they give you basic statistics on it, size and make sure, you know, how you can put this on your bike and everything about it except for the weight, which if you're a hardcore cyclist, you want to know how much this thing weighs and how much weight you're adding to your bike.

So it's really interesting that they should know that they should know that they haven't made it yet. I suppose that's true. They haven't really made it yet. We know we're going to make it about this size. We'll see what it ends up weighing. Yeah, so I mean, if you're really, really into cycling, you want to know exactly how much this thing weighs.

So I thought it was intriguing that they did not include that metric. That what they should have done is taken the shape and milled one out of lead and said, it will be no more than this much. That is funny and very true. I got myself a little bit of technology this week.

Last week, I ordered the Knox Labs V2 Raven because I figured I need to take a look at what this VR crap is and what's going on and get myself a cheapy cardboard way to check it out. I got it. It's interesting. But, you know, VR just isn't quite there.

Okay. Not up to the Brian standard of virtual reality yet? You know, it's fine. It's, you know. You're sticking a cell phone in a cardboard box. It's not like an Oculus or, you know. That's the thing. It does make me want to go try an Oculus and see what that can do versus this.

I mean, this is fine. I get it. I watch the Stranger Things quick, you know, YouTube 360. Cute. Clever. I ran through most of Google's demo products, you know, that they released for the cardboard, whatever app that's called. I've looked around at a bunch of stuff. What is more intriguing for me right now is content creation rather than content consumption.

Because I think the consumption level isn't really there yet. But I would love to kind of delve into actually creating some of these things. Yeah, I might pick one of these up just so I can try it with my Ricoh camera. Just to have like a show notes. This thing's like 15 bucks. Oh, yeah.

That's nothing. It's cheap. A cheap way to get in. I got the V2 Raven because it's black. As opposed, you know, it's a little bit more stylish. But, you know, there you go. Go get one, Jason. I think it's worth just playing around with since it's such a buzz item out there right now. And everybody's producing content with that.

So worth looking at. Yeah, definitely. Especially since I own the camera that can make content for it, you know. Yeah. Yeah. You should put we should put together a Grumpy Old Geeks 360 of your studio. I can do that. There you go. Right now. Make it so. Well, not right now.

Let's finish the show. Oh, shit. I've got a whole bunch of kid shit. I held off on doing this. I might as well do this now. OK, I'm going to go. I'm going to go get a glass of water. Go ahead. I'll be back in a little bit. OK, no problem. PictureThisClothing.com. I am not quite there yet because I still have a newborn.

But I thought this was cool as hell for later on in life. And I don't even see why it needs to be just for kids. I would I would say for the inner goth or club kid or whatever. Draw something. Send it in. They print out a fucking dress or a T-shirt out of it. Pretty cool. Oh, that is kind of cool.

So, yeah, it's a neat little concept. And I love this sort of stuff. It's it's really interesting. So I will definitely have this bookmarked for when we get to that point. Sleep Pillow Sounds is an app for $2.99 that is genius. If you have a newborn, you know that they like to hear sound all the time.

White noise, rain, whatever. There's a great little app. Piece of cake. Tons and tons and tons of sounds in there. So you can find the one that you're like. And basically just use that one over and over again. Oh, it's easy. I was going to say you can also. Well, it's 50 bucks and get the dome, which is that white noise device that I have.

It's basically a fan. You can change pitch and volume by turning the things. Those things are amazing. I have one of those as well. But I think you if you if you do have the kid, you're going to want the backup app for when you're out and about and you don't have it with you. So you can just play it on your phone, slide the phone in next to the baby's head.

See, there's your use for stereo speakers. You got to get the seven just so you can have stereo for the baby. Yes. White noise stereo. Very useful. Anyways, didn't somebody release an entire album of that? And it was like three seconds long and they gamified Spotify with that.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We talked about that. Yeah, it was a band. It was a band to just had to had him play it over and over while they go to bed. Yeah, there you go. The other thing we have the four moms mamaru, which is a baby swing. It is pretty fantastic. Kid likes it. Great way to shut him up.

I saw this in some of the pictures that you were posting before before he was born. And I'm like, what is that Star Trek fucking thing you got in the background? Yeah, it looks like a Star Trek pod. It's got great design. It does look really funky and futuristic. I wish there was an adult version of this. I would totally buy it and I would sit in it.

It looks insanely comfortable. The kid loves it. It has an app, of course, because why wouldn't it? So you can control it with Bluetooth so I can be sitting on the couch. And if he's starting to stir, I just crank up the speed a little bit and turn up the white noise generator because it's got sound effects in it as well. And boom, right back to bed.

Oh, great. So you have an Internet of Things baby device. It is my first Internet of Things device that I'm actually using. Hopefully somebody doesn't hack it and throw the kid out. Yeah, that would suck. One other thing that we've got, and I haven't tried it yet.

I thought we would try it by this point. So I'll probably talk about it again next week is something called the Owlet. This is basically, for lack of a, I may change my mind because I may like it. But right now, I think it is designed to attack your fears as a new parent.

Okay. It doesn't really do too much. It's a sock that has, it's an Internet of Things thing. It's a sock with a base station. You put the sock on and it monitors your baby's heart rate and oxygen and gives you alerts if it dips below certain levels. So you don't think you're, you know, if you're sleeping, you think your baby's dying and you wake up and you go save your baby.

Gotcha. So this is for people who are hypochondriacs about crib death. Yes. Again, praise on the fears that hit you when you have a newborn. So we got it. I haven't used it yet. Yay us. But I'll give it a go just to see how it works. But just even browsing online and reading through some of the forums and stuff, apparently the error rate on this stuff is high because kids kick off socks.

And if the sensor goes off, then all of a sudden it just starts bleeping bloody murder and you wake up terrified. And the only thing that happened is, you know, the baby moved the sock a couple inches. You know, you know, here's the deal. Duct tape. Yeah, basically duct tape.

So I'll give it a go. And I think we're going to try it out during the day because I do not want to be woken up at like 4 a.m. thinking my kid is dying. Definitely. So related to that post on the New York Post, actually, Stop Worrying Parenting is Far Less Important Than People Say by Anna Davies.

This is worth a read if you're going crazy as a new parent because everybody has their opinions and tells you them about what you need to do. It doesn't matter that much. Keep them alive. You're good. Make sure they get to high school and you're done. Yes. Keep them off the pole. There you go.

That's all you got to do. OK, so my last one, Zane Lamprey's back again. He has now figured out that he can make hoodies very well. Yeah, because I have I have the drinking jacket that he made, which was extremely late, but also extremely well made and very comfy.

And I wear it all the time. So this this new one is called the Adventure Hoodie with a three instead of an E in the middle. I don't know why he felt the need to do that, but maybe it's a trademark thing, but it was a Kickstarter. I know what I'm getting into now.

But yeah, fifteen hundred and twenty five backers. They've raised one hundred ninety one thousand over, which is on a twenty five thousand dollar goal. And there's still thirty three days to go. I bought the Adventure Jacket, which is basically the the limited edition Adventure Jacket, which is the top of the line one that you can get because it looks looks decent.

You know, yeah, his last black, the build quality is so good on the last one that I'm like, yeah, it looks good. Yeah. The black ammo limited looks pretty nice. Have you noticed that this is basically everywhere? What do you mean everywhere? Like I see ads for it. It's on Facebook. It's all over the place.

Oh, well, that's probably why he's got one hundred ninety one thousand dollars. Well, friend of the show care running the PR on this. So well done, Karen. Oh, good on you, Karen. Well, she got me a good job. She got me. Why didn't you give me a coupon? Well, I didn't even know you would purchase it.

OK. I'll get one with a coupon. Jerk.

Media Candy. Now, this is one I put in the show for you, Brian. It's behind the scenes at Ready Player One, the shoot that they're doing over in England. Jolly Old, as they say. Yes. Jolly Old. Looks all right. Makes me want to read the book again because I can't remember what the book's about.

Oh, really? You don't remember? I vaguely remember, but I'd like to hear it again. Yeah, it's a great book. I think it's super interesting. This they can make a really good movie out of this. So we will see if they do. Chances are not so much, but, you know, it looks about right.

I was just talking about Ready Player One to somebody just the other day, and I can't remember who it was. So if you remember who you were, let me know. And I'm sorry I disappointed you. But yeah, this follow up Armada sucks. Sucks balls. It was a horrible book. But Ready Player One was fantastic.

So I'm looking forward to it. Spielberg's doing it. How bad could it be? Pretty bad. Yeah, I know. AI. I know. I'm trying to be positive. Mythbusters Build Team are back together. I'm very happy about this. They're one of my favorite trios.

The other trio I'll talk about shortly. But Carrie, Tori, and Grant are shooting a new Netflix show because Netflix has all the shows called White Rabbit Project, which will be much the same as Mythbusters. Yeah. See, they're my least favorite part of Mythbusters, so I'm not really that excited about this. I'll probably watch it.

But yeah, I just like the main guys. These guys were just meh. Yeah, but you're not going to get the main guys back together. And I like the B team. Carrie's hot. Grant's funny. Tori's great. I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, I know. And talking about threesomes, my other favorite triplets are back together.

Frosty, Heidi, and Frank was a radio show here in L.A. over 10 plus years on the much-missed KLSX talk station. When that went under, Heidi and Frank went on their own way. Frosty kind of quit and left. Heidi and Frank have been doing the morning show here in L.A. on KLOS 95.5 for four years now.

And after a seven-year absence, Frosty has rejoined the show. I could not be happier. The triplets have chemistry that – I mean, I listen to them every day back in the day on KLSX. And I'm starting to listen to them every day again now. So if you are a fan of good talk radio, you're going to get two hours a day of bullshit.

Just go to HeidiandFrank.com. You can actually subscribe to listen to their podcasts of the radio show without the commercials, which is fantastic because, man, they cram in commercials. Yeah, so what I've done is I have an iHeartRadio account. So my iHeartRadio account is tied to my Amazon Echo.

So now when I come down in the morning, I can just tell my Echo to turn on the show. And then I can listen to it while I'm checking my email on my Chromebook and feeding the dog. Fantastic. Yeah, I'm really happy they're back. I mean, I loved that show. And it just wasn't the same when it's not all three of them.

So there's a lot to be said for chemistry. That's all I got to say. Oh, definitely. And by the way, just a shout out to iHeartRadio. I love that site, man. I can listen to basically any radio station I want to for free. It is kind of cool, actually, that you can do that. So, you know, you just got to find out where the good shows are and what market they're in.

So, yeah, that's the one I haven't listened to in a while. I should throw Kevin and Bean on there, too. They're always fun to listen to. Yep, they are. I can't believe they're still on the air. They've been on forever. And they're not in the same room. That's the crazy part. He lives in, like, Montana or something ridiculous. I think it's up in Seattle, like an island out off of Seattle or something.

Middle and nowhere. But sounds beautiful. I guess you must have one of them fancy ISDN lines. Narcos. I am working my way through season two, which is, eh, I'm having a hard time getting into it. But the show's already been renewed for a third and fourth season, which is very interesting because if you know how season two ends, it's very strange that they would renew it for a third and fourth season.

But so we'll see how that one's going to shake out. Spoiler alert, he dies. Yes, he does. And if you haven't, if you didn't know that already, very sorry, but it's been in every newspaper that I've run across. People are sad that he dies.

I'm like, did you ever watch the news? He's dead. Yeah, this isn't made up. This is, yep. Yeah, this is pretty much a docudrama. Yeah. So I've got some interesting news coming up about how a lot of podcasts are being adapted to TV shows.

Oh, they are? Yes. Well, Lore got picked up by the guys who do The Walking Dead, so that'll be interesting. They're doing one for Startup, which will be interesting. And the reason I mentioned the Startup one is because somebody just released a show called Startup on Crackle. And it looks interesting.

It's more of a cyber drama deal. And it's got What's-His-Nuts that plays Watson on Sherlock. I can never remember his name. Oh, Martin Freeman. Martin Freeman, yes. And he's one of the hobbits. He's in it.

So, you know, decent production. Crackle has money. So it's a 10 episode show. It's already out. All 10 episodes. You can go watch it now. And it is spelled the exact same way as Startup the podcast is spelled. So we'll see what they do when it comes to TV. And we'll figure out how that's going to work.

But yeah, a lot of podcasts are moving into TV, which is fine by me because all it's going to do is, you know, make people know what podcasts are a little bit more and maybe listen to our show. Yeah, we thought about that with Google and how that really worked out for us. Exactly. And going back to print media, Wired is going to be guest edited by Barack Obama.

Barack. Oh, really? I was going to say President Barack. And then I just shortened it to Barack. Barack. Yes. Obama is editing the November issue of Wired. The theme is Frontiers. It'll be on the newsstands and tablets on October 18th. Or actually, it's on tablets on October 18th. Newsstands October 25th.

But it's interesting. I hope he uses the words, the best words, because he's got the best words, the biggest words, the most best words there are. Well, he's editing. He's not writing it. So we'll see. OK, we'll edit the best words. Yes. It's the first time a sitting president has ever edited a magazine.

OK. Yeah. Well, I'm looking forward to it. He's a smart dude. He is a smart dude. I'm I'm I'm I'm beyond intrigued to see what he does with the rest of his life after he gets out. He's going to be a gazillionaire fairly short. Oh, yeah, I'm guessing. So he's planting all these seeds right now. But for when he walks out of that that door and yeah, you're going to it's not going to be like W who disappeared into corporate speaking, you know, circuits.

I think Barack is going to be, you know, we're going to see a lot of him in the future. Now, here's an interesting one. This new movie is coming out called Morgan. It's it's, you know, one of those AI type of movies. Well, the the guys who made the movie said, hey, what if we have a real AI cut our trailer for us?

So they got in touch with the guys who made Watson and Watson analyzed the movie, figured out what all the scariest parts were, pulled them out and then they put them to music. And the trailer is actually pretty good. Here's the problem with this entire story.

We haven't seen all the movie. Right. How do we know these are the best scenes? We cannot write the story until we actually see the full movie and then see the trailer. Mm hmm. Right. This is true. So we'll see. We'll see how it goes.

It's a non story until we see the movie. Well, we have a lot of non stories on this show. That's a good point. Yeah. I just thought it was intriguing. And there's a little bit at the end of the video. The video will be in the show notes and where they talk to the people who made it. And there's a little story behind it.

But the article on on it as well is in there. So I'm definitely seeing the movie. And, you know, I just think she's gorgeous. I love Kate Mara. Mm hmm. Amen, brother. Mm hmm. For one of the week. Aquafina apparently is the world's biggest bottled water brand.

I didn't know that. Nor did I know that there was an organization called Accountability International who I desperately want to work for. They just sound great. Aquafina has changed its labels to specify PWS, public water source, under pressure from the aforementioned Accountability International.

So, yeah, it is just water from your sink that's been filtered and purified. Yes, they run it through a filtration process. That's the secret sauce. That's why it always tastes the same. And I'm so happy that you went in because I meant to go do this and, you know, got caught up with baby stuff and put in the Penn & Teller bits about the water bottles and the water surveys and how they just ran out in a restaurant and filled it up from the tap and nobody noticed.

Yep. It's the water sommelier. Yes. Yes. If you haven't seen this episode of Bullshit, I recommend just going and watching the whole series, obviously. Oh, definitely. Yes. But, yeah, the whole episode on bottled water is very eye-opening. And, yes, it all comes from the tap.

Yes. I don't buy bottled water ever. I have a filter. I installed filters in both my tap sink and I've got filtered water coming out of my fridge. I have a nice little, you know, recycled plastic bottle that I use for everything, including my bike rides that is BPA free and all that sort of crap.

And there you go. If I fill up, I leave the house, never buy water. Oh, good for you. Yeah. Good for me. I only drink distilled water, so I buy it by the gallon. There you go. Yes. So this next one is the strangest thing I've seen in quite some time.

It comes from the Daily Dot. The article title is Inside the Twisted Campaign that's Putting Trump Ads on Pornhub. I still don't know what he's trying to accomplish here, but it has basically really silly pictures of Trump with quotes that he has said.

So if you search for, say, Latino on Pornhub, there will be an ad that pops up that says, I love Hispanics. And if you're doing anal sex, it says a picture of Donald Trump that says, no, I'm not into anal. Yeah. The other good ones, you have to treat women like shit.

You may get AIDS by kissing. This is very, very strange. I love this. I was not aware it existed, obviously, but I love this. Yeah. You know, the thing about this is it's like some kind of weird art trick because half the people that are into Trump think it's great.

The other people who are against Trump think it's great. So I don't know what the action, what he's trying to do, but it's so bizarre. And that's pretty much his entire campaign in a nutshell. Jason, whatever he does, those of us that are kind of desperately hoping he's not going to win, go, oh, my God, I love that.

It's got to be over. There's no way that this could possibly be good for him. And everybody that supports him goes, oh, my God, this is the best thing ever. I love me more now. Yeah, that's about it. Yep. Link will be in the show notes for the article if you want to go see all the crazy ads or you can just go to Pornhub and search around. But the article on the Daily Dot does contain pornography.

So, you know, view at your own risk. Open at your own risk. Yeah. Yes.

Do you know the Defense Intelligence Agency is on Twitter as well as the FBI and some other things? Oh, yes. Yes.

They get around. They're at Defense Intel, and apparently mostly their Twitter feed is exceedingly boring because, you know, you don't really tweet secrets or things like that. No. But apparently on September 3rd, they had a really interesting tweet for once. President, what did you call him?

Parak? Yeah, Po-bama. No, that would be wrong. Yes, Po-bama. Po-bama. Po-bama. Po-bama. Po-bama. We have a title now. Po-bama. He was in China. He disembarked from Air Force One.

And he actually came out from the belly of the plane, which is a faux pas, as it were. It's a protocol spat. You're not supposed to do that. You only do that in cities where security is a big concern. Instead, there's supposed to be a rolling staircase that meets him, and he disembarks from the plane that way. Unfortunately, China did not do that, so he had to come down the belly.

And DIA, the Defense Intelligence Organization, tweeted, classy as always, China, with a photo. And then, unfortunately, had to delete it because, you know, can't be snarky and start off incidents. Yeah, God forbid anybody have a sense of humor anymore. I know.

Well, speaking of somebody that does have a sense of humor, Merriam-Webster's Twitter account has a great sense of humor. They got in a little spat with this guy named Gabriel Roth, who I never heard of. But he was talking about how, you know, Merriam-Webster's use of the word mad is basically turning them into the chill parent that lets their friends come over to get high.

And, you know, he has a little spat back and forth. And at the very end, Merriam-Webster just writes back, no one cares how you feel. He's like, damn, shut down. Shut down. Yeah, as of September 7th, when this article went up, that got 6,641 likes.

Yeah. Okay. Good on you. Welcome to Twitter Spat of the Week. Yes. Closing shout-outs! My first shout-out goes to Seth and Chris over at The Grime Life.

They had us back on this week, so there will be a link in the show notes to go check it out. Even though Mr. Chris Papsmear spelled my name wrong in the show notes, an error that has been rectified by this recording, which will probably be unrectum-fied by the time he hears this. Interesting.

Yeah, it's interesting. And Chris also has a new podcast where they mispronounce actors' names at an alarming rate. So, pot kettle black, bitch. Their show covers the latest in independent Hollywood, international movie and trailer news, film festival roundups, etc. If you're into that thing, it's extremely thorough and very informative.

It's called Under the Noise. Okay. Yes, I was listening this morning when I was walking the talking, I'm like, okay, it's Tony Shalhoub, it's Keira Knightley, it's Wiz Khalifa. How do you fuck up Keira Knightley? Keira, apparently.

Oh, okay. And Tony Shalhoub. It was fun to be back on their show again, so I do appreciate them asking us on. But yes, they had to bring up my mispronouncing his name again, so F you guys. Yeah, yeah. Pot kettle black, bitch.

My next shout out goes to make America smart again. This is a little thing from... Good luck with that. Yeah, seriously. This comes from Shepard Ferry. So I bought a t-shirt, which is a very nice t-shirt, and they got some stickers.

I love swag. They're going around and doing screenings of idiocracy to raise awareness for maybe Mike Judge. Who knows? But anyway, it's a really cool shirt. Links in the show notes to go buy one if you care to. And they have some swag as well.

I always like me some Obey Giant stickers and stuff like that. Yes, you do. Mm-hmm. And thank you for listening. I'm Jason DeFillippo. You can check me out at jpd.me, where you can find links to all my social media and contact info if you want to hire me for your podcast editing and producing needs.

And I'm Brian Schillmaster. You can follow me on Twitter at Slender Fungus or look at slenderfungus.com. You know, you can hire me, too. I just felt like I should pimp myself since Jason's doing it. Hell yeah, boy. Except they can hire you to come change their baby nappies now. Getting real good at it.

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