179: Streaming Gouda

Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFillippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame. This episode of Grumpy Old Geeks is brought to you by FreshBooks. I've been using FreshBooks for years and love how easy it is to use.

Go to FreshBooks.com slash Grumpy, enter Grumpy Old Geeks in the How Did You Hear About Us section, and get your first month of unrestricted use absolutely free with no credit card required. We love us some FreshBooks. And with that said, the following content contains graphic, explicit, and vulgar language. Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks episode 179 for September 30th, 2016. I'm Jason DeFillippo here with my co-host.

I'm Brian Schulmeister. No snappy intro, Jason. I was waiting for it. Well, you made fun of me last time, and I'm a sensitive flower. I don't, you know, I take these things personally. If you really did, we still wouldn't be doing this show. Eh, no shit. Yeah. A little follow-up. A couple, I think two episodes ago, we were asked by one of our listeners what we thought about Gary Johnson.

We don't do too much politics. Hard not to in election year. I think both Jason and I have made it clear that we would love the idea of third parties. Be great. Unfortunately, not the idiots that we have running now. Ah, Gary Johnson. I feel sorry for New Mexico that had this guy as the governor.

On Wednesday, he was involved in MSNBC Town Hall, hosted by Chris Matthews, and he was asked to name his favorite foreign leader. Then, basically, he was asked to name any foreign leader. Gandalf! And he basically came up snake eyes. He got nothing.

Nothing. He could not name a single leader in the world. So, yeah, there we go. This is why we can't have third parties. Well, here's the thing. On this one, you're not voting for the man, you're voting for the party. It's like, but if this is the best the party can do, I don't know if I want to vote for that party.

The voting for the man, you're voting for the party, is dangerous logic in this particular election cycle because I don't want Republicans voting for the party. Yeah, this is just a fuster cluck. It is a fuster cluck. It truly is. It truly is. So, another big nail in the coffin of voting libertarian.

There's always the Green Party. Didn't she get arrested? I don't know. I've been trying to not follow this crap. Tune in next week for our expose on the Green Party candidate. Yeah. That's not going to happen. So, in a little more follow-up, we talked a long time ago about Google Inbox, the swanky new app they had.

I switched over today because three of my four email accounts, I got down to inbox zero. I figured now was a perfect time to switch over. And as soon as I did it, I started getting all these emails where Google Apps is now called G Suite. Oh, God. Yeah, that's a really, I don't know what they're doing.

It ain't nothing but a G thing, Jason. Well, you know, they go to alphabet and then everything is a letter. Right. What are you going to do? It's a horrible name. They've never been that good at branding. No, no, no, they have not. In the news.

We just can't stop talking about self-driving cars on this show. Well, that's the thing now. The internet cannot stop talking about self-driving cars. Kelly Blue Book, which something, that's probably something millennials don't even know what it is. Never heard of it. Who's this Kelly and why is this book's blue?

What does he have? Kelly Blue Balls? What's this about? Is that a Snapchat channel? I don't know. I'm a millennial. I don't have sex anymore, so I don't even know what blue balls are. Well, that's true. They don't. Kelly Blue Book, for those of you that don't know or have never sold a car before, this is where this is your go-to source for finding out what your car is worth.

So you can then put it on the penny saver or Craigslist or whatever and sell your car and not get screwed. So they've been around for a long time. They know their cars. They have done a big study that basically says that you will have to pry the steering wheel from our cold, dead hands before we give up on self-driving cars.

Much like we've been talking about recently, this has kind of been my recurring theme as I'm reading stories and putting them in for our shows, is the technology press and the things that get attention and the supposed everything going on online in terms of media is so fucking bubble-centric.

It is purely coming out of San Francisco's ass. The rest of the fucking country does not give a shit about any of this stuff. So this study basically says an overwhelming majority of Americans, 80%, say humans should always have the option to drive themselves, and 64% express the need to be in control of their own vehicle at all times anyways.

So people don't want these damn cars. But here's the thing. If you go back and read the entire study, a lot of people don't even know what the self-driving cars do and what the different levels of autonomy are. And are just completely clueless about the whole thing. They're thinking Jetsons out of the gate.

But we just call that humanity, Jason. Yes, we call that the unwashed masses. Yes, people are going to vote that have no clue what they're voting on. This is true too. So, you know, it is what it is. Again, all we hear about self-driving cars, self-driving cars, self-driving cars, majority of the country, majority of the world.

Yeah, and the majority of the world doesn't even care about Uber because everybody's, you know, you go to Kansas, try and find an Uber in Kansas. No, everybody's got a pickup truck. That's how it goes. Right. So, I did link the full study in the show notes if you want to check it out.

It's actually pretty long and pretty comprehensive. And a lot of the, you know, the 80% thing, a lot of this stuff is cherry-picked to make a better headline. But a lot of it is pretty close to even, like 60 to 40 on a lot of the stuff. So, and it all depends on the level of autonomy.

So, you know, that's why they're saying that 80%, yeah, people don't want complete cars with no steering wheel that they can't control. But the people who are like, you know, oh, you know, the car's in control sometimes. It's got better cruise control. It's not going to hit anybody. A lot of people are in favor of that. So, it's an interesting study.

I actually spent a lot of time reading it and I was, I'm like, oh, that's, it actually does give me a little hope. But for the most part, nobody, nobody knows about this stuff and nobody cares because it's not here yet. Yes, exactly. And we don't know what shape it's going to take. No. And something that's also not here yet, Uber bought this company called Auto, which is an autonomous trucking company.

Remember that? We talked about that a while ago. They were very cute little trucks. Well, here's the deal. They're going to pivot the, uh, the auto buy and they're going to start using Uber's infrastructure to start pairing truck drivers with cargo. Okay.

And it's, it's, it's, you know, Uber for long haul truckers who need to find, find stuff to haul around. Okay. So, I mean, I suppose they have the infrastructure built for that. Sure. Why not? Yeah. I mean, if somebody's sitting home and they got a, they got a, you know, a big rig and they can't find anything to haul, might be a good option.

Yes. And, and haul it while you can, because you know, when the, when the autonomous trucks come and you're out of a job. Exactly. So I like how Uber just goes into every single industry and tries to take it all over with the express assumption that we will fire all of you as soon as possible. Yes. And, and more Uber news.

They're just saying, fuck it now. They're going to go full Jetsons. Uh, they want to take vertical takeoff and landing planes and put them on the roofs of major metropolitan buildings to, uh, jet people around like the fucking Jetsons. I saw this story. I called bullshit on this. I don't even think they're looking into it.

I think this is just a headline grab. Well, it's from futurism.com. So, you know, they're just making stuff up as it goes anyway. But still, it's like, you know, I hope they try it because I want to see, yeah, cabbies, they can steamroll. But they fuck with the FAA. That's a big difference. It's like, they can't be bothered to, to follow any city's regulations.

And they're just going to say, fuck you to the FAA. Good luck. Yeah. This coming from, you know, a company who can't even get fingerprinted drivers. I'm like, I don't want, you know, Joe pilot from down the street that has a Cessna hauling around VTOL machines over a city. Yeah, not going to happen.

Yeah. No, no. This is, this would be bad. And in more delivery news, Google's home delivery service has expanded to a bunch of different states. And they're getting out of the actual grocery business now. You know, the, you know, the, the cold food business that you can't get any lettuce from Google anymore because they have all the cabbage anyway.

But Amazon, yeah, yeah. And they're leaving that to Amazon's fresh to do that stuff. But this is, you know, they, you can buy stuff from different shops and they'll bring it to your home. If you're in, uh, let's see here, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

Right. Yes. I've never used it. I haven't either because I'm not in any of those cities. Well, they have it here in California. Uh, they don't have it here in, uh, in Downers Grove, Illinois. Right. So you're just stuck with Amazon drones. I am.

I am. And speaking of Amazon, you know, it's been about six months when I've been noticing all the Amazon trucks and people driving enterprise rent-a-cars and harassing the drivers about the stickers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, turns out they are looking at building their own fleet and saying, uh, bye-bye to UPS and FedEx.

Of course they are. Yeah. Well, why wouldn't they? I mean, why pay somebody else when you can, when you have the cash to build your own fleet, why not do it and save the money and bring it in-house? Yeah. And they certainly have the cash. I mean, it makes a lot of sense, you know, um, and Amazon's the one that's basically subsidizing the U.S. mail, right?

And they're paying them to work on Sundays right now, too. That's it. So the U.S. mail will then, uh, get dumped back on its ass and so much for that subsidy. And I haven't seen actual mail carriers on Sundays anymore. I see the Amazon trucks. It's like around here, at least, they haven't been, uh, many mail carriers delivering on Sundays.

It's just been the, uh, the Amazon-specific trucks. No, you're right. I haven't seen that either. We're going to have to, we should actually do a little research and see if that deal has ended. Could be. We had to do research? Ah, that ain't going to happen. That's funny.

It'll be interesting, uh, to see how that, uh, shakes out in a couple of years. Cause I remember UPS, uh, at least this last Christmas, they were in U-Hauls. They had rented U-Hauls that they were filling up because they ran out of trucks. Yeah. Wow. That's pretty crazy. Yeah. And the season is coming.

So I guess if you're going to make your moves, now is the time to do it because, uh, you know, December shipping season, it's coming up fast. It is. It definitely is. But, uh, speaking of shipping, Elon Musk is going to start shipping your ass to Mars. I did not. I haven't paid much attention to this because I always go, uh, stick to earth.

You got, you got so many projects, man. How about we sort out Tesla? We take care of this whole battery farm situation. Maybe even get that hyperloop going. Why are we now to Mars? Fucking hell, man. Well, he gave away the hyperloop thing. He's not even involved in that. That was a back of the napkin sketch when he came up with a dinner, when he was drinking with a buddy and said, ah, let's give this to the public.

It'll keep them busy while we're over here actually making something that'll work. All right. So we're going to Mars and he's going to do it. Okay. Uh, that kind of steals the thunder from that Mars program thing that they had signed up to where they had, they're like, it was going to be a reality program, right? I don't know.

Maybe, uh, maybe they'll rent space on Elon's, uh, big fucking rocket as they call it. Uh, there's a great wait, but why article? Cause he's, you know, the master of the Elon Musk and I highly recommend checking it out. It's the full story of the big fucking rocket.

But I think the greatest part about this whole thing is that he wants to name the first ship that goes to Mars, the heart of gold. I do love that. That is a lovely tribute. I, I, I, kudos on that one. Yes. I, I tip my hat to you, sir. Yeah. Cause, uh, was it Bezos's whore?

He's got it. He's got his rocket penis ship thing. That's been, uh, you've seen it, right? I mean, it looks like a dildo. It's bad. Um, but yeah, he's got some, you know, really emo name for his ship. Like perpetual journey or some crap like that.

I forget what it was called, but yeah. Heart of gold. That's the way to go. So what I believe he said something that he's going to need to put a million people there. If he gets, if he can get a million people to go to Mars, then the cost comes down to $200,000 per person. That's not bad. You got to get a million.

It's feasible. Getting a million people is going to be rough. That's a lot of big fucking rockets. Yeah. Considering it takes a couple of years to get there and back. And I don't think that the capacity is that great on that ship. So. And he thinks he could do it in six years. Not at the rate his rockets keep blowing up.

No, no. I think the six years thing was a big misstep. There's no frigging way this is going to happen. But, uh, I did see, you know, I did see a picture of one of the, uh, the gas tanks that they built for this thing. It is pretty cool looking. It is monstrously huge. Yeah, I mean, I'm seeing a lot of things about how they're talking about getting people there.

What I'm not seeing is a lot of infrastructure that has to be built to keep people alive there. Well, once they're there, who cares? They signed up for it. Screw them. All right. All right. Fair enough then. Yeah. No return plan. Awesome. If you're, if you're going to Mars, you just might as well stay there.

Just bring a lot of potatoes. We all read the book. Yes. Potatoes and poop is the way to go. Okay. Tell us about this new Snapchat thing. Um, well, apparently they, well, they're changing their name first off. Now they're just snap. Oh, snap.

Two snaps and a twirl. Yes. Yeah. So they changed their name and announced that they are reintroducing, uh, basically Google glasses, except they look cooler. If you're a 10 year old and, uh, their sunglasses and they record and upload video memories to Snapchat.

Yeah. It's a little, little less functionality than Google glass, but considerably less. Yes. There's no, there's no, I mean, obviously there's nothing. It's a camera. It's a camera. It's a camera with, yeah, with Bluetooth. So it'll go still go through your phone. Um, you know, it's, there was a lot of uproar about Google glass heads when, when they first came out, you know, glass holes and nobody wanted to be recorded all the time.

And I think that's still there, but like a, like it's been pointed out, well, then you're old because this isn't meant for people our age. This is meant for tweens and teenagers who want to be able to record things like their bad-ass skateboard trip and put that up immediately onto Snapchat.

And eventually, of course, their first fumbling, uh, instances of sexuality. Yes. This puts the spec, the testicles back in the spectacles, testicles while at watch. Oh, you've been working on that one. Uh, no, I just, uh, you know, thought, just thought of it. Okay. Anyways, there you go.

So, uh, they look at, they look stupid to me. Um, I do like the fact that, you know, they've already done shoots with models and things like that, that will never ever wear these things in a million years. Uh, I can find, I have no problems with this, but I do expect there to be glass free zones. Yeah. That would be nice. Uh, there's a lot of privacy issues with this obviously, but I guess the theory is if you're out in public or in somebody else's property too fucking bad and there's a naked in shape black man wearing one.

Yes. There's not much difference between holding up your phone and taking a Snapchat and then pressing the button on these things because it does light up and it's only taken 10 seconds. You can get more video with your phone. I guarantee you five seconds after some kid gets ahold of these, he's going to figure out how to turn off the, uh, the light up notification when you're recording.

Oh, if they don't, I'd be very upset. Yeah, exactly. Kids these days need to step up their game. Yes. So we've got that as the big new technology. Now that's a bit, a fond one, not so fond. Fuck you. See you later, Blackberry. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

It's been coming for a long time, but it's finally officially announced that, uh, all hardware, all internal hardware development will be officially finished and done by end of year this year. So they will no longer be designing any of its own phones. They will still outsource that function to partners.

So there will still be Blackberry phones coming for the diehards that just can't get rid of them. Uh, they just won't make them anymore. And they are allowed, they, this will allow them to reduce capital requirements and enhance return on invested capital and continue focusing on software to which I say, what fucking software does Blackberry make that anybody uses their messenger?

Their secure messaging app is the big one that the U S government uses. And if Hillary Clinton would have stuck with that, we wouldn't be in this mess. Well, we'd still be in this mess. She wouldn't be in as much a crappy Oka, but, and, and, you know, the, the entire thing about the whole Blackberry messaging system was that it was supposed to be secure.

Nobody could read them. But, uh, remember the thing with, as we're learning about everything. Yeah. Let's go back to the Indian problem with Blackberry and they gave him the keys. So it turns out, uh, everybody's just full of shit. Yes. And speaking of full of shit, our final story for news, spurred Pokemon go players are filing complaints with the federal government.

I hear a spurned Pokemon go player in the background, right? No, my spurned Pokemon son right now is a little unhappy. I feel bad for him. He had a little procedure today. His first poor kid. Uh, anyways, more than 70 Pokemon go players, uh, found who see themselves as victims of the game, uh, filed complaints with the federal trade commission since the game's July launch of the 72 complaints filed about the game.

56 were directed at Pokemon go developer with the rest spread between Nintendo and the Pokemon company. Uh, the reasons for the complaints vary. The largest number are tied to consumers complaining about the money they spent and what they received for that cash. It's a virtual game. You receive nothing, nothing.

You'll get nothing, nothing. You idiots. Uh, much of the money complaints arose after the game began to suffer server issues or after an update, remove the ability to better track Pokemon through third-party applications. One customer noted that it spent nearly $450 on the game, but then they blocked third-party applications that allowed them to cheat.

So then they were pissed off. Aw, poor baby. Uh, some of the EULA. Read the EULA. And it's a game. If you've got $450 to spend on Pokemon, you should be smart enough to know that you probably are not going to get anything for that money. I agree. Um, the smattering of other complaints involved concerns for first, the location of Pokemon gyms on private property, which I a hundred percent agree with.

Uh, the second being privacy, which we learned was a non-story about the signup thing. And just, they screwed that up at the launch, but it was no big deal. And thirdly, and I don't really understand this one is of course the safety of the children. Well, that ties back into the intelligence of the parents.

Yes. Speaking of which, let me go check out my child and we will come back for the next segment. Woohoo! And we'll be right back. But now, a word from our sponsors. So you're racing against the clock to wrap up three projects, prepping for a meeting later in the afternoon, all while trying to tackle a mountain of paperwork.

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All right, we are back this week with Dave Bittner from the Cyber Wire, and Brian is joining us today. Hey, hello. Hi. Jason, you and I have spent an awful lot of time wondering exactly what the hell they're doing over at Yahoo.

A story has come out that definitely informs us that one of the things they weren't doing was taking security seriously. This surprises you? No, not at all. Insiders have come out and basically said that since Marissa Mayer took over, security was one of the main problems that she did inherit, obviously.

But security took a backseat, emphasized creating a cleaner look for services like the Yahoo Mail and developing new products that nobody gave a crap about. And security improvements basically were shuffled off to the side. The Paranoids, which is the internal name for Yahoo's security team. I love that.

Unsurprisingly, clashed with other parts of the business over money, and they were basically overridden all the time. And there were concerns that the inconvenience of added protection would make people stop using the company's products. People did that anyways, so I don't see what the problem is. I think the fact that you call your in-house security team the Paranoids shows it distinctly where you fall on the spectrum of giving a shit about them.

I actually like the Paranoids. I think that's, you know, I can go for that. I think that's an interesting name for your internal group. Why not? If they're self-named. If they're self-named. If they're self-named, if they were listened to, and if they had really cool outfits. Right.

They had to wear like black suits and sunglasses everywhere they went. Right, and they'd always be sort of, you know, peering around corners or, you know, out of their office doors as if they were actually paranoid. Yeah, I mean, you know, this is a classic example of, you know, sort of putting the product ahead of the security.

They were afraid that if they forced a password reset that it would cause even more people to flee from Yahoo's services. So, you know, I think they were bleeding users and they were afraid to bleed more. So instead, they put their security at risk and now where does it leave them?

Where does it leave them? It could put their, it's certainly going to affect their sale to Verizon. It's certainly going to devalue their sale to Verizon. So in the end, what, you know, I guess what goes around comes around. Here's the thing about that, though.

The not telling the users to do the password reset, thinking they're going to leave. I think that that was short-sighted because if they sent everybody that used Yahoo an email, people might remember that, oh, hey, Yahoo still exists because most people had forgotten about them. I didn't even know I had a Yahoo account.

Look at that. Yeah. They'll at least get one login to cancel the account and give them a chance to save them, maybe. But they could go to the board and say, look at this spike in users this month. Yeah. I mean, one of the things we were wondering about here at the Cyber Wire was, you know, 500 million accounts.

Was that all of them? Could have been. Probably. Could have been. Much more. Certainly active ones. I mean, if, yeah. I mean, I can't imagine that there are many other people out there that would even bother. Well, speaking of Yahoo, we were, we've been joking about the fact that they're saying that it was a state-sponsored attack.

Like, like Russia, like Putin wants your Flickr login, you know? Well, it's, it's finally people are saying, no, no, no. This is probably not a quote unquote state-sponsored attack. And it looks like it was a criminal gang known as Group E and who have, who have done similar attacks on Dropbox, LinkedIn, MySpace, basically everybody.

They got to take some naming tips from Yahoo's security group. That's right. Paranoid is way cooler than Group E. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I guess, you know, groups A through D were already taken, but InfoArmor is the security company that came out with a report that, that is claiming that it was Group E.

And interestingly that, you know, they, they sold the data to two other groups, but also sold the information to a state-sponsored, you know, a, a so-called state-sponsored group. You know, we pointed out that on our show actually today that, you know, state-sponsored party can mean a lot of things and there are a lot, that's a very loose term.

So take it with a grain of salt. You know, FBI, CIA could be doing the same thing here. It's like, oh, hey, look, you know, we know they buy O-days. So if, you know, they're looking for accounts for a specific person, they would probably buy them too. Does that make it a state-sponsored attack? No.

Yeah. And, and, and, and, you know, state-sponsored, the claim that, that you've been hit by a state-sponsored group is kind of, uh, you know, someone made the point, it's kind of the equivalent of the dog ate my homework these days when it comes to cyber. Um, you know, it's much less embarrassing to get your stuff stolen by a state-sponsored attack because in people's minds, they think of, you know, massive organizations, uh, either Russia or China or, or, you know, someplace like that.

And so they're a little more forgiving because, you know, well, who could defend against those sorts of things versus, you know, a bunch of, um, you know, kids in their basement or, or whatever, you know, whatever stereotype you want to do about what comes to people's minds when they think about, uh, traditional criminal gang hackers.

Um, so it seems like this is just a bit of saving face on Yahoo's part to claim that it was a nation state when probably wasn't. Yeah. And the dog ate my homework, uh, quote came from Dave Kennedy who, uh, runs DerbyCon and, uh, wrote the, uh, social engineering toolkit.

So he knows what he's talking about. Moving on here, uh, we, we saw some, some, uh, historic DDoS attacks this week. Uh, the well-known cyber security, uh, website Krebs on security, certainly one of the most well-known and well-respected sites in the industry got taken down by a massive DDoS attack,

um, this past week, uh, over 600 megabits per second, uh, was the, uh, the data that was coming at Krebs on security to the point where, um, Akamai who, who was hosting Krebs and defending Krebs, uh, sort of cried uncle and, and said, uh, listen, we've got to take it down because it's just costing us too much money to defend against this.

Um, Akamai was hosting Krebs's site, um, for free. Uh, and so they parted ways amicably, you know, uh, Krebs said that he certainly understands. Uh, so he's been moved over to, um, Google who are now hosting the site. We'll see how they do it.

We'll see how they do with this one. Well, yeah, but then, uh, you know, right, not long after that, it came out that, uh, a company in, um, in France, um, OVH, uh, they got hit by, uh, what, by, uh, uh, a DDoS attack that was, uh, over a terabit per second attack.

Um, yeah. So, you know, before, before these two attacks this week, the largest that Akamai had seen was in the 300 gigabits per second range. So, you know, we've doubled that, tripled that, um, coming up on quadrupling that. And, um, these attacks are reportedly coming from, wait for it, IOT devices.

Oh, like you couldn't, like we haven't said that for three years. Finally. Yeah. I'm just surprised that there's so many out there. I mean, how many idiots are there installing these things? Uh, look around your city. There's, there are, there are cameras on every corner. So would that be considered state sponsored?

Yeah. Well, and, and significantly cameras were a big part of this attack. And, um, you know, one of the things about, uh, IOT video cameras is that, you know, we all are like, like we've talked about before on this show, they're sort of out of sight, out of mind. And so, um, there's just sitting up there, they're attached, attached to the network, but not many people are thinking about updating them or, or even checking them.

As long as they're still spitting out their video images, most people don't really think about them. And so they're a, a prime target for being taken over by something like this. Um, and, uh, they were, they were taken over and used in the, in the, in the hundreds of thousands to do these attacks.

So serious stuff. Now this isn't like a state sponsored attack because, you know, we, I think we've had enough of those today, but, uh, this guy from Verizon is, is faces up to five years in prison for selling Verizon data to a private investigator.

Just to, just to do just a standard lineman who got, you know, a little money under the table would go in for a couple of years and just, you know, do ping traces on people's phones, give them information on where they're at, you know, just kind of a, a man inside for this private investigator. And he got busted and he faces up to five years in prison or $250,000 fine.

And all he made out of this whole thing was 10 grand. That's it? Yeah. What an idiot. That's it. He was making like 25 to 50 bucks a hit. Yeah. Yeah. That's what struck me about this story is that, uh, you know, he, he's, you know, he's thrown his life away for, for a really insignificant amount of money.

And I'm sure he probably thought, you know, oh, who knows if this private investigator was a buddy of his and, you know, I can envision the two of them, you know, talking over beers and the, the PI saying, oh, if only I could get information. And the Verizon guy going, oh, I can get you that information. I have access to that.

And next thing you know, money's exchanging hands. And, um, you know, as these things do, they get out of hand and the guy gets busted and don't drop the soap. Now he's, uh, yeah, I mean, he's, he's, you know, $250,000 and, uh, five years in prison is nothing to, nothing to, to sneeze at.

And, um, I, I think the other, I'm glad it's that stiff. I, I want the stuff nipped in the bud. This is ridiculous. Uh, these people shouldn't be able to get away with this at all. And I want there to be this kind of heavy, heavy fines and, and jail time to make people go, you know what, it's just not worth it.

Uh, agreed. And, and I think also hopefully this will, this will make Verizon take a closer look at their information, uh, you know, their systems. And so, you know, someone shouldn't have been able to be logging in and checking this information without a good reason. You know, someone should have been tracking this and, and, um, you know, keeping track of, of who was looking at this information.

Does this person have a need for looking at this information? Um, and if not, they should, that should be followed up on, you know, there are companies who are, who are working on that sort of thing, who are, you know, they're, they have products that keep an eye on your network to make sure that, uh, you know, a particular user isn't doing something that's out of the ordinary for that user.

You know, a regular lineman shouldn't have to be looking at, uh, the specific, uh, location data for just someone on the network. So hopefully, uh, Verizon will take a closer look at this and lock this stuff down. Yeah. If you're not assigned a ticket for that, that particular line, you should not have access to that line's information.

You know, that's, that's one way to kind of have the trickle down. It's like, okay, here's my tickets for the day. I go through the tickets. I pick, pick the one I'm working on. Then I have access to the, the technical information for that phone number. And once the ticket is closed, my access gets revoked, you know, not, not really brain surgery there.

Well, it's something that I hope that Apple has going on because, uh, it's just come out that we can, uh, we can get some information from them as well. Uh, much vaunted theory that, uh, basically you were totally safe if you were just texting using Apple and using their iMessage point to point system. Uh, not so much.

They are storing who you are writing and holding that information for up to 30 days. Now they do not actually have the messages. They cannot turn that information over, but they certainly do know who it is that you are starting to write and who you actually write. You don't even actually have to write them. You could just start the message and that's stored because they're going and checking against the database to see who has an iOS device or not dependent on the way the message will then be sent.

This does not surprise me in the least. This sounds like a standard usage for, uh, the 30 days, I think is also the timeframe when, uh, text messages get archived from like, say your, your text provider, like AT&T. So if they're, if this is a, you know, if they're keeping the messages for 30 days in for, you know, just quick lookup, like if they have to do a auto complete, like you start typing it a number and it can look and see it that you've already done that conversation, things

like that from a technical standpoint, I can see why they would, why they would keep it unencrypted and just the point to point and still, you know, make sure the messages are safe, but for, for just a lookup factor, you know, like if you're trying to unencrypt 30 days worth of data, just to find a number that, you know, it's just a number that you've already got in your contact list and you're already sending things back and forth.

This doesn't seem very egregious to me. I'm not going to lose sleep over it. Yeah, I, I, yeah, I, I agree. Um, I, I think why this is news is because Apple is, uh, so overt about, about saying how much they value your privacy.

So you combine that with, you know, just the, the, the place Apple has in the industry of, you know, anytime Apple does anything, it's news because of how popular the iPhone is. So, um, you know, people love to, uh, people love to poke at Apple, um, and, and in, in a way they deserve it.

If they're saying that, you know, privacy is job one for them and, uh, we find this little, this little, uh, leak in privacy, then sure that's going to make news. But, but I agree with you. I don't think this is something to lose sleep over. Yeah. As long as you don't have a guy in there that's, uh, selling this information off to private investigators.

That's right. Yeah. Uh, so, uh, it's just sort of a interesting little fun little side story I put up today about, um, some researchers finding that speed cameras are vulnerable to hacking.

Um, I don't know about you guys, but I hate, hate, hate speed cameras. Um, I, I, first of all, I just find the notion of, um, automated law enforcement to be kind of creepy. Although I, well, but you know what? It's funny because I've actually, my, my, my thoughts on that have been shifting, um, only because, um, all of the horrific stories.

Well, there's that. I mean, but the, the horrific stories we've been hearing about, um, you know, human law enforcement, which is, I'm starting to wonder that, you know, maybe, maybe automated law enforcement might be a better way to go. Robocop ain't so bad nowadays. Yeah. I'm, I'm, uh, yeah, right.

Yeah. Please put down your weapon. You have five seconds to comply. Um, but I'm, so anyway. Overall, I find, uh, automated law enforcement to be creepy. So I, I, I, I will admit I have a predisposition against speed cameras. It's also dangerous too, because look at the stoplight cameras.

Those have been taken out of most states now because they cause so many accidents. Yeah, that's right. We still have them here in Maryland. Um, in fact, they're all over the place, uh, around where I live. There are many of them. Um, but, uh, you're correct. They've been found to, uh, to cause more rear end accidents because people slam on their brakes to not get their picture taken and the person behind them, you know, plows into them.

Um, uh, then there's also, you know, tricky things like where they find where there are red light cameras that they shorten the time of the yellow and the light so that they, they nab more people and, you know, all kinds of shenanigans like that, like that. But in this case, um, what the researchers found was that there are a lot of, um, of cameras out there that are unsecured.

They're not even password protected. Uh, you can, they were finding them, they were using the, uh, the, what is it? The Shodan, uh, network, which is, uh, allows you to, yeah, they're using Shodan search engine, which is, um, a search engine where you can basically poke around and find IOT device, unsecured IOT devices.

And, um, they found a bunch of IP addresses for these cameras and they are able to, um, to log on and monitor the feeds, but also they could go in and change things, change some of the settings. Um, you know, some of these didn't even have passwords assigned to them.

Um, and so the danger of this is that, um, you know, for example, they, they envisions types of mischief, like someone could go in and change a setting where, um, they could say that, uh, you know, your license plate is, is one that needs to be flagged or something like that.

And, uh, the next thing you know, you're getting pulled over for a felony traffic stop when you've actually done nothing wrong. So, um, it's just sort of negligence on the part of the people who install and maintain these things. You'd think that anything involved with law enforcement, uh, should have some layer of, uh, at least checking to make sure that somebody, oh, I don't know, decided to assign a password to it.

Oh, you give them, give them way too much credit. Way too much credit. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, so to wrap things up just for fun, uh, let's just have a little quiz here, guys. So, uh, we'll start with you, Jason.

Uh, which celebrity do, would you say generates the most dangerous search results? Well, I got to go with our boy, Kanye. Kanye. All right. All right. How about, how about you? What do you think? Uh, John McAfee. John McAfee. That's good.

Just for the humor aspect. That's good. That's good. That's good. Yeah. I was going to say, uh, Bill Cosby, but you know, I don't know, but, uh, every time I, every time I Google him, my computer goes to sleep. Oh, nice. Oh, good one.

Good one. Yeah. No, I, I count me among one of the many people who are heartbroken by, uh, heartbroken, heartbroken while simultaneously being, uh, disgusted and repulsed by the Cosby thing as someone who grew up loving his comedy to find out, you know, the horrible things he did.

It's, uh, makes my skin crawl. However, that doesn't have anything to do with this story. Um, they, uh, the, uh, McAfee, uh, did their 10th annual most dangerous celebrities, uh, list. And, and basically this is if you search for a celebrity, uh, on Google or one of the other search engines, uh, these are the, the searches that are most likely to come back at you with something, um, dangerous, uh, grafted onto it.

Um, and this would include things like, um, you know, particularly if you're, if you're a bit torrenting, um, any of their, their, their stuff, their, their comedy shows or their music or anything like that. So, uh, just for fun, you know, coming in at number one, Amy Schumer.

What do you think of that? That's a, that's a weird one. I find her comedy special dangerous. It's not funny. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. All right. Very good. Number two, Justin Bieber. Also, no talent, ask clown. I, I, to me, that's just, there's justice in the universe that he, I, that he's on the list, I guess.

Um, and then rounding out Carson Daly, Will Smith, Rihanna, Miley Cyrus, Chris Hardwick, Daniel Tosh. It's an interesting one. That's a strange one. Yeah. And, uh, and Keisha. Okay. Yeah. All right. Well, I'm not, I'm not too worried.

Yeah. No, uh, you know, I think the, um, the, the take home from this though, if we want to actually, you know, have a, have a serious lesson of this, um, uh, bit torrents are just, uh, dumpster fires when it comes to, uh, to having, having a malware, uh, grafted onto this sort of thing.

So if you're, if you're someone who's out there torrenting, um, either music or comedy specials or movies or anything like that, um, that is by far the riskiest, uh, thing out there in terms of having, um, you know, malware injected in the, in the stuff.

So I'll always try to use a trusted illegal source kids. Yes. Yeah, that's right. Always, always go to, go to the nice places in Sweden. Go to Bjorn's house. Remember. What am I going to do with you guys? What am I going to do with you guys? You just got to monitor our traffic, I suppose.

Yeah, that's what I want to do. That's what I want to see. Nobody needs to see that. No, what is seen cannot be unseen. All right, gentlemen. All right, man. We will talk to you next week. Have a good one. Very good. You too. Software, apps, and gadgets.

A couple of months ago, we talked about this great little graphic that, uh, showed you how to breathe properly when you needed to meditate. Remember that, Brian? And we talked about making an app. Yeah, we're going to make an app for it. Yeah, we should have done that. Yeah. Uh, it turns out we were, we were smart not to, because I just noticed that is, it is in the new watchOS 3, uh, built in, built right into my iPhone.

It's just the breathe app. And it's exactly what it does. It just shows you a little thing and lets you breathe. Ah, somebody's listening to this show. Here's the funny thing about it. Works great. Yeah. Well, it was a good idea. Yeah. It was a really good idea. Granted, it wasn't our idea, but you know, if you're going to steal it.

Well, no, it was our idea to make it an app. Yes. From a gift to an app. That's what we do. Exactly. Uh, from a whisper to a scream. Have you ever ate at Shake Shack? Shake Shack. No. Not me either. Apparently they're now in here in California, so I might have to go try it.

Uh, anyways, New York City restaurateur, Shake Shack founder, and millionaire Danny Meyer is apparently having a very good week. He's invested in a home-cooked food delivery startup, um, called UMI, I believe. Uh, he's introduced paid parental leave to all of his employees.

Nice. You should get a job there. I know. If you're hiring, uh, I could use that right now. And today he made the Apple Watch a very expensive trophy gadget at best, according to eater.com. Relevant. Uh, he has made an announcement. Now, nothing is actually happening yet, so this is kind of a bullshit story, but if he does do this, it is kind of cool.

He has made an announcement that he plans to basically give every manager, uh, an Apple Watch, and there will be a special app built in for his restaurants, so when VIPs walk in the door, they will be notified, and they'll take care of things, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, basically, they're going to update hospitality using the Apple Watch, which is kind of cool.

Okay. So if he does do that, it should be interesting. So, of course, they'll have to make all the software and all of that sort of stuff, but, uh, all in all, it's, uh, kind of a cool way to tech up an old industry. Not disrupting it, just making it better. Yeah. We'll see. We'll see if it makes it better or if, uh, it just adds more shit to the door people to do and the waiters to do, and they go, uh, this turns out to be more work than it's worth.

Yeah, and they just throw out the Apple Watches, and it sucks. Um, Meerkat. I remember Meerkat. Built a new app in secret, and almost one million people are using it. This is an article on The Verge as of yesterday, the 28th. Now, here's, what the fuck?

I talked about this app on our program about four months ago, at least. I've had it on my phone for this entire time, yet this article published yesterday says that they've built it in secret and they've just released it.

Well, how, how can that be possible? Well, maybe The Verge just doesn't have very good journalists. Oh, okay. Well, that would make a lot more sense then. Okay. So have you been experiencing spontaneous togetherness? No, because absolutely nobody I know has the app. Well, there is only one million people out there that are using it.

So, yeah, basically, uh, the idea behind this was, you know, uh, public live streaming failed, so let's make private live streaming so people can connect with their friends and do this thing that we do using, say, Skype or FaceTime, um, using their app. So, and they say that it's gaining traction among young people around the country.

I still just don't get, you know, the, this article is talking about how it's just launched and how it's been around for a long time and I've hated it. Anyways, speaking of things I hate, uh, let's, let's talk about Mercat. Um, I'm still doing my, my delete an app a day system on my phone and I decided, well, it's definitely time to get rid of Meerkat.

I've never used it. It's been on my phone forever. So I do what I normally do when I'm getting rid of an app. I Google, how do I remove myself from this app? Basically, beyond just deleting it, we want, I would like all my data to be removed from, from the program, from, from the people, from the creators of the program.

So I do that and you're supposed to write them because God forbid that they have a button or anything to do that. So you're supposed to write support at Meerkat app.co. And I wrote support at Meerkat app.co. And I got a bounce back because the email address does not exist.

Nice. So then I went to their website and found that now their support email address is hello at Meerkat app.co. Shouldn't it be goodbye at Meerkat app? So I wrote them, I wrote that address and said, I would like to have my account deactivated and ensure that all my data that you may have from me is deleted before I remove the app from my phone.

That was four days ago. Okay. Crickets. Oh, big surprise. Big surprise. So thanks a lot, Meerkat. I'm glad that you're continuing the proud tradition of online services, not giving a fuck. Nope. Or doing a damn thing that they say that they're going to do.

Yeah. This is, this doesn't surprise me. Nope. One thing that did surprise me this week, though, have you heard of the Family Hub refrigerator from Samsung? I have not until you put it in our show notes. This is an internet of things that's quite pricey.

It is very pricey. I actually saw this in a magazine, you know, one of those printed things that comes to the door. And I tore it out and brought it upstairs and put it on my desk and went and found it online. And so what the, what this thing does is the, here's the part, it does a whole bunch of stuff, but the one that gets me, the Family Hub has three built-in cameras that take a photo every time the door is closed.

You can use your phone to access photos from anywhere. So you always know what you have and what you're missing. Well, if you just close the door, didn't you just look in the fucking fridge? Do you know what you need to buy? The funny thing about that is that is the one feature that I went, oh, that would actually be useful.

They've been talking about this since the fifties. Because I could be at the store and go, do I have any Gouda cheese? I don't know. Let me pull up the app that is being monitored by other people. And then my data is being sold to third parties so that I can get at, you know, all the advertisers from the other cheese companies, not the cheese that I personally buy.

That is what's going to happen. And the other reason that these things are so damn expensive is they have to pay Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard to do all their stupid smarmy commercials for them. So here's my workaround. And this is just as douchey. I kid you not. So I look in the refrigerator and I yell, Alexa, add ground beef to my shopping list.

So when I go to the store, I pull up my Alexa app. Yeah. Now, the one thing I did find absolutely ridiculous about this is the fact that your fridge can now stream music. Okay. That's a little much. Who needs that? That is ridiculous. I could get the camera. I even get the calendar that's built in onto the fridge.

That's kind of neat. That's actually not bad because everybody's got it. Yeah. Yeah. That's not a bad little thing. You know, I didn't go through the specs and see, could you sync to Google Calendar or do you have to use their own specific app and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But streaming fucking music from your fridge.

And by the way, only Pandora or TuneIn Radio. Are you fucking kidding? Oh, man. Nobody uses that shit. Actually, I use Pandora and TuneIn, but I use it in my Alexa that's next to my refrigerator. Yeah. Anyways, for six grand for a refrigerator is what you're kind of looking at here.

That's a little much. And here's the kicker. This is made by Samsung. And it has come out this week that Samsung washers and dryers are now exploding as well. So if you would like a refrigerator that can tell you what has been burned to death in your refrigerator after it explodes and what you need to pick up from the store, I think this just might be the ticket.

It might be.

Media candy. Speaking of streaming, Spotify is the big boy, at least for music. Well, they want to take on Netflix now. They're not satisfied just doing music. And why should they? They can do video as well. Why not? They've got the infrastructure.

What they need is the clout. So they have bagged Ted Sarandos, which was Netflix content boss. And he's now on the Spotify board of directors. So expect more video and less influence and emphasis on music coming from Spotify very soon. Well, that's interesting because Spotify is in the market right now to buy SoundCloud.

So that's yeah. Somebody explain that one to me. Because they can probably get it cheap. But why that I can get dog poo for a second, you know, pennies on the pound. What good does that do me? It's you know what it is? It's free content, which is what dog poo is.

But none of the content on SoundCloud is legal. Well, no. Yes, we've been down this road. Yeah. OK. All right. Let's talk about the Netflix tax that everybody's freaking out about. And Netflix, again, good publicist to get it.

Name that, get your name out there, because it's not just about Netflix, any streaming service right now. Finally, we are starting to realize that, hey, we need to tax this stuff. So I did like this article because it kind of comes down on my opinion of things. I'm down with the tax. I'm totally OK with it. The article starts Netflix like Airbnb and Amazon has thrived on convenience.

Initially, at least all three companies grew by making it easier to get the same old things. And they had one other advantage, not paying the same taxes as their competitors. So they're going to have to start now, basically. This has started in 2015. Chicago, where you are, became the first major city to enact a 9% cloud tax on digital entertainment services, which the city said would be worth up to $12 million a year in tax revenue.

And then Pennsylvania extended its 6% sales tax to cover to digital downloads, subscription services, music, e-books, apps, and games. And finally, this is now coming to California in Pasadena. A bunch of other cities here have also done it, but they're adopting a video services tax that will basically tax streaming services.

So as they should be. Here's the problem with this. It's not we've got all this hodgepodge of laws. And the fact that this stems from the fact that, you know, municipalities cannot tax internet access thanks to the Internet Tax Freedom Act, which is also linked in the notes.

This is going to be such a pain in the ass for any of these services to actually just pay the tax because it's like, I mean, they got to, they got to fix these laws and standardize things to make it, you know, at least otherwise Netflix is going to be, you know, sitting there with accountants most of the time trying, trying to figure out, okay, Joe over here in this municipality wants his, you know, two shekels and this guy over here wants five.

And it's like, I a hundred percent agree with you. I think it's ridiculous. That's being done on a municipality basis. This should be a land of the law, land of the law. It is land of the loss right now. That's the problem. Well, and here's the thing, you know, it should be taxed, but it also should just be a very simplified procedure.

It's unfair to the companies for it to be this bizarre. Well, and I live in Chicago or I live in, you know, it's Chicago adjacent, but the thing is my billing address is in Encino. So Encino gets my money. You know, there's no real easy way for them to tax this stuff because there is no Netflix office here.

That's how it's always been. So, I mean, you can always, nobody's ever going to solve the, I have a, you know, I have an address in Delaware and I run everything through that problem, but they can make this a lot easier than it is right now. Well, I'll just move my credit card to where there's no Netflix tax. Yeah, exactly.

So that's why it should be a land of the lost. Yes, it's fine. Oh man. So yeah, the internet tax freedom act is in the show notes. I definitely recommend if you're interested in that kind of thing, check it out just to see what we're talking about. Um, and there was a big thing that was coming out today with the FCC voting on, uh, cable set top boxes and the getting rid thereof, which, uh, sadly has been delayed.

So that's some bullshit. Uh, there were some definite issues around, uh, around just throwing this thing and saying all cable providers had to provide an app. And a lot of it comes back to copyright, I believe. And also the cable, uh, industry is very large and they can say, Hey guys, uh, cut it out.

Well, time Warner cable screwed us on that here. I used to, they have, they have a decent enough app and they used to be able to let you toss it to Apple TV or Google or whatever. Uh, and then, uh, they updated the app and got rid of that. I remember that. Yeah. So it would be nice to have that back because you know, that's bullshit.

I mean, if I think if you've got one box in your household, for God's sake, come on, this is a load of shit. Anyways, it's the cable companies. That's what you get a load of shit. Yeah. Well, now the time Warner cable is now spectrum and all they're doing is running commercials about how spectrum is so awesome and it's going to change our entire experience and how spectrum really cares about us.

And spectrum is going to bring us the best things ever. Maybe they'll fix their fucking shit. We all know they won't. Well, maybe spectrum will let me out of that goddamn contract I have that I still pay on in LA. Oh wait, never going to happen. Yeah, that's not going to happen. But they have shiny, happy commercials to say how wonderful they are.

Yeah. Go fuck themselves. A woman is suing the USC chapter of Pi Kappa Phi fraternity and an event planning company called Perfect Events Incorporated, alleging that a drone had fallen on her head during a 2015 party hosted by the fraternity, reports the USC Daily Trojan.

Now, we talked about this. We talked about the problems with drones over public spaces and how this is going to be an issue. And obviously, I think that this was not, I'm assuming not legal for them to have been flying this drone around over a public space because it's not legal. And the woman is definitely not the moron here.

The moron is the fraternity. I went to USC. I went to a few fraternity parties. We've heard a lot about fraternity parties over the years now that I'm an old fart and they've gotten worse and worse. You guys are morons for fucking recording any of this stuff. Yeah, seriously. What stays at a frat party?

No drones, no cameras. No cameras. Anyways. They need to pretend it's Vegas. And the second moron of the week is my state of California. Yet again. Yes, California Governor Jerry Brown, since he has now solved all problems with the state, has moved on to the few remaining things that we have an issue with.

He signed a law on Saturday requiring entertainment websites like IMDb to remove an actor's age or birth date upon request. The purpose of this statute is to prevent age discrimination and casting a noble goal because nothing else is wrong. We have nothing wrong anymore.

So thank God that we can't know how old George Clooney is anymore. It's about the women. I was listening to Chris Pichoni's podcast and they were talking about the discrimination problem with women actors and casting agents who like, you know, are going through the list and they see the ages and then immediately get rid of them, even though they may look younger or older or whatnot.

But that's not the point. The point is, this is just fucking stupid. Of course, it's stupid. And it's probably pretty much unconstitutional. It should get shot down. The fact that we're wasting time with our government with this is abhorrent and ridiculous. Come on, people.

Get off your fucking asses and do some real work. And the second one that California did this week, they did pass the law that says if you put ransomware on somebody's computer, it is considered extortion and you can go to jail for it. Except I guess people in California don't realize that none of the ransomware in the world comes from fucking California.

Yeah. Thanks, California. Banner week here. I debated putting this story in security because the implications are somewhat terrifying.

But it's so early stages that right now I'm sticking with it's just fancy and cool and shiny. MIT's computer science and artificial intelligence laboratory, the CSAIL, as it's known, has come up with something they're calling EQ radio. It's using Wi-Fi technology to read your inner emotions accurately and from quite a far distance.

They claim it's accurate 87% of the time it reads your feelings by bouncing ordinary Wi-Fi signals off of you that can track your heart rate. There are no Onskine sensors involved. It is purely remote. And again, they're saying that it's 87% accurate to sorting out how somebody is feeling.

Ah, this is the new mood ring. Except it works. Well, they claim. They claim. And, you know, we had a story a very long time ago about Wi-Fi killing plants because the signals are so strong. And now we have...

One of the Wi-Fi killing plants story came from, I believe, an elementary school in Australia. This is MIT. Yeah, well... Slight difference. No, but here's what I'm wondering. Here's what I'm wondering. Everybody keeps saying that plants have feelings. So can they use this to find out what my plant is feeling when I play at Mozart or Metallica?

Yeah. Yeah. We'll see. Get on it, MIT. Yeah. Get some music going. Let's get some ferns. Two ferns and a Hillary. See how they're feeling. Are you kidding me?

Love it. Earlier, we were talking about the Kelly Blue Book. And it told you how much your old junker was worth. And now there is socialbluebook.com. And I wonder if they licensed the Blue Book trademark, which I highly doubt because this is the internet and nobody gives a shit.

You can log in and find out how much your social media accounts are worth. And it turns out if I tweet, it is apparently worth $8.96. I tell you what, if somebody wants to give me... Each tweet? Each tweet. So if somebody wants to give me $8.96, I will tweet for you.

Actually, I'll give you... We're going to have a sale. Five bucks. Five bucks a tweet. I was about to say, there's the rub. You can find out this number, but nobody's going to pay you. Exactly. Yeah. I attempted to use this using the link in the show notes that you sent me.

It did not work for me. When I tried to use it, Google Chrome warned me that my connection is not private. Attackers might be trying to steal my information from socialbluebook.com. For example, passwords, messages, or credit cards. And then... CERT authority invalid, which means they were swapping out certificates.

I used the site. I went and checked it after you posted this. I could not replicate it. They do have... If you're on the main site, the cert's fine. When you go in and log in, you get the cross-site scripting...

Or not cross-site scripting, but cross-site asset error. Yeah. And that's because they're pulling all the avatars from all the social networks without using a proxy to save it to their servers and upload it because they're lazy. Right. Because that's what you have to do if you actually want to keep your SSL intact without having multiple types of assets on the same page.

Gotcha. I had to pull out some nerd in them. I felt like a nerd for a second again. It was great. You totally did. Yeah. All right. And speaking of lazy, Nissan has created these self-driving chairs because standing in line is too hard. See, I love this one. I absolutely love this one.

So they're called ProPilots. Then they can be programmed to automatically follow the chair in front, turning cues into conveyor belts of fat, satisfied humans who then are launched off a cliff to die. See, the thing about this is they know that this is tongue-in-cheek.

This is marketing. This is nothing but marketing. And I think it's awesome. And I think it's genius. I know. It's pretty damn funny. Yeah. Yeah. It was a good little thing. It's fun to watch. Go check out the video. And don't forget the self-parking chairs, which I still think are pretty good, too. That's true.

That was actually good. Yeah. It's a good video all around. Yep. Watch it. And finally, well, not finally. The last thing I saw was from the New York Times. There's a study that found out that pigeons will resist misguided leaders. When the leader of a flock goes the wrong way, what does the flock do? With human beings, nobody can be sure.

Well, we pretty much fucking know, don't we now? But with homing pigeons, the answer is that they find their way home anyways. Either the lead pigeon recognizes that it has no clue and falls back into the flock. Oh, that'd be so nice. Yes, it would. Letting birds that know where they're going take over. Or the flock collectively decides that the direction that it is taking just doesn't feel right.

And it doesn't follow. Come on, America. Prove we're smarter than fucking pigeons. Good luck there. And today is International Podcast Day where us and three other people give a crap. No, we don't give a crap.

I can tell you right now, we give we give less shits than the pigeons for sure. But you're going to be hearing about this everywhere. And it's no nobody in professional podcasting really gives a shit. So if somebody's telling you to go check out the the events around International Podcasting Day, just let me say I saved you a click.

Go check out something else. Comment of the week. We have a new Patreon subscriber, David Remley. Thank you very much, David. And everybody else.

Get on that train. Yeah, thanks, David. And yes, we really do appreciate the Patreon thing because basically that's that's monies for us every month that helps us pay our monthly bills. So we really, really appreciate it. Go to Patreon dot com slash GOG. And then I go over at grumpy old geeks dot com.

We got a comment from Patrick. First time I've listened to the show drunk after all this time. And it was delightful. Keep up the good work. P.S. Love the hate. Taste the hate. Bo graphic made me laugh aloud. It's because you were drunk. Yes. So thank you. We literally spent minutes on the on the artwork.

Thanks a lot. I'm glad you enjoyed it drunk. I do, too. Yes. I miss doing it drunk. Me, too. We might have to come back for a drunk episode, maybe for Halloween. Oh, dear. This next one comes from anonymous on episode one seventy eight.

You mentioned a mystery incorporated. That was the Scooby Doo thing. Having a Twin Peaks reference. A couple of years ago, one of my kids was seriously into mystery incorporated and it's littered with cultural references. By Grafthar's hammer, Fred. You know, that's a good one. Galaxy Quest.

Someone on the show was probably a Lynch fan because they also ended the series by riffing on the Prince's Irulan opening sequence from Dune. I'm guessing you'll correct me on my pronunciation. Good enough. Okay. I'm having. I'm having.

I'm not. I'm not a crime life guy. I'm not going to like shit on you. He says he's having trouble finding a linkable link. Well, I guess it would be text if it wasn't a linkable link. But good luck with that. Also, Harlan Ellison is on the show on one story arc.

That's one thing that bugs me about the show. They have story arcs. Scooby Doo should not have story arcs. Get off my lawn, you meddling kids. That's a good point. But you also should not be watching Scooby Doo as an adult unless you are stoned. Well, he does have a kid. He's got to watch it with the kid. You will find this out soon enough.

Well, and I will appreciate the shows that do throw in things for the parents much like that. So that's cool. I really was unaware that Scooby Doo had come back at all. So I'm glad that there's a tongue-in-cheeky thing running through the new one. I will have to check it out at some point. And finally, over on iTunes, we have a new five-star rating from JoeWeb0159.

Just wanted to say I have been listening to your podcast for a while and thoroughly enjoy it. It makes me smile, gives me a laugh, and stimulates me. Ooh. I'm an old geek, just found a copy of my CompuServe 1992 membership. I worked at Big Blue IBM for 18 years, hardware field work.

I just wanted to say you're doing a great job and keep it up, Joe. And then he gives the pronunciation. Pronounced like Third Reich and Robert Lee. Reichly. It's what I was born with. LOL. Well, thank you, Joe. Reichly. Yes. And he also tweeted us over at GOG Podcast.

Soulpad.com. Very cool looking. And I did take a look at it. It's a solar, you know, it's a disrupt the solar industry, which is so new that it doesn't really need to be disrupted yet thing. It looks cool as crap, but it also looks like it's all super proprietary. And I'd be terrified to spend that much money on a system where they could just go out of business and then you would never, ever be able to get parts for it ever again.

Well, that's where the SOL and the Soulpad comes from, because you're shit out of luck. Uh-huh. Somebody was working on that. Closing shout-outs! I'd like to throw a shout-out to Brian Brushwood and the guys over at Night Attack TV.

We gave them a shout-out last week, but then we got a shout-out back on their show, 136, with Rippity D. Or the name's Rippity D. It's with Auntie Donna, which is an Australian troop, I guess. That's okay. It was a very funny little clip. Thank you very much, guys.

We'll put a link in the show notes for it. And they also mentioned when Very Fat Me was on Scam School Episode 3. And I'll put a link to that in YouTube, and you can watch me chuckle as my friend waxes his head on the table. It's pretty good. Fun times for everybody.

And I will give a shout-out to Vin Scully, or Vin friggin' Scully, who is retiring this year. He just called his last three home games, in which the Dodgers clinched the series and the division with a walk-off home run. It was quite emotional. And he will be calling his final three games ever, the games against the San Francisco Giants, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

He is a legend, a broadcasting legend. And if you've never heard him call a game, do so now. If you have, you know what's going to happen. So everybody in Los Angeles will be listening to these three games. And thank you, Time Warner Cable slash Spectrum, for basically allowing regular TV to broadcast these so everybody can watch.

Spectrum still sounds like a Bond villain. It really does. Spectra. Thanks for listening. I'm Jason DeFillippo, and 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 podcasting needs. And I'm Brian Chilmester, and you can follow me on Twitter at SlenderFuckers.

Visit patreon.com slash GOG and sign up to help support the show. Even as little as a buck a month helps keep the bandwidth, baby formula, and puppy chow flowing. If you're cheap or broke but still want to support the show, please go to grumpyoldgeeks.com slash iTunes and leave us a glowing review and five stars. At the very least, please share the show with your friends.

Grumpyoldgeeks.com is where you can listen to shows, leave feedback, ask us questions that we can read on the air, or find links to our awesome sponsors and stuff we like. We're also on Twitter at GOG Podcasts and on Instagram at Grumpy Old Geeks. Intro music for the show is provided by the band Among Us. You can find them on iTunes, Spotify, and Apple Music, and get 10 exclusive tracks when you sponsor us on Patreon.

Outro music for the show is provided by Andy Stojanski. You can follow Andy at twitter.com slash House of Andy, and he's also on SoundCloud at grumpyoldgeeks.com slash Andy, where you can listen to this song in its entirety. Show notes for all the links discussed in this episode can be found at grumpyoldgeeks.com slash 179.

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