189: Ello, Dolores

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Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFillippo here with my Canuck co-host. Brian Schulmeister. Hey, Brian Schulmeister. Yeah, I'm still up here. I got another week, so take off you hoser. I'm buried in snow and maple cookies. I just eat them all day. Jason.

Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Stuff all over me. Just cookie crumbs everywhere. I can see that right now. Shirtless with maple syrup poured all over you. Because I'm using that image to make me never want a maple cookie again, so. Hello, ladies.

Hello, ladies. Yeah. You know how hard it is to get that maple syrup out of the chest hair. It's just not pretty. Yeah, it's not pretty at all. You really kind of have to basically just go roll around in the snow. How much snow do you have? Lots? Lots, lots, lots, lots, lots. Good.

Thanks. I got a little too. I took the bam, bam out. Go ahead and drink. You're in Canada, so you're already drinking. It doesn't matter. Yeah. I saw you. I saw you. Yeah, you posted on Twitter like, I'm preparing for the next Grumpy Old Geeks, and it's a picture of you drinking a beer.

And I'm like, I don't think he understands what prepare means, but. Oh, well, you don't give yourself enough credit, Jason. That's how we recover. Sometimes the best way to prepare for you is with a beer. Likewise, my friend, likewise. Oh, damn. I completely lost my train of thought now. I got this picture in my head now of maple cookie nipples. It's wrong. It's just completely wrong.

It's wrong, and Instagram would definitely ban that, but we'll get to that later. Yes, we will. Yes, we will. Anyway, it's been driving me nuts this week. Ever since last week, when you talked about how people keep calling AI, well, non-AI.

Every non-AI article just calls it AI. And it's not true. It is not artificial intelligence. It's not. It's not. It's not. Machine learning, fine. Artificial intelligence, fuck, no. It's not. Stop. Yep. So we have a couple things about it. And it's just, facts nowadays aren't. There are no more facts.

I cannot open up a newsletter. Even the New York Times newsletter I get, it has 10 articles on fake news. I'm like, shut the fuck up. This is the stupid shit that you guys published day in, day out that got numbnuts elected. So stop writing this shit. You are out of ideas.

Go back to fucking journalism and go find some other story. Don't talk about fake news anymore. It's driving me batshit. Because it's not fake news. It's lies. It's the internet. It's bullshit. Go look at Snopes like a fucking human. All you need to know, just being 100% in a post-fact world, is Beyonce was just nominated for a Grammy in Rock.

The Rock category. Are you fucking kidding me? Okay. And by the way, I'm sorry for all the F-bombs. I'm getting them out of my system right now because there's so many things that have pissed me off since our last episode that I just need to get it out of my system now.

I'll tone it down in a little bit, but man. I'm sorry I air-wormed you with that AI thing. It's been driving me crazy basically this entire year. It's everywhere. It's just everybody is calling it AI, and it's not artificial intelligence yet. We are not there, people. No. It's not there. Stop calling it that.

Oh, it's too damn late. Nobody listens to us. No, it's pattern matching. It's decision trees. There's no intelligence behind this whatsoever, and there's very little intelligence behind the people who are writing it, which we will talk about in our next section. But it's nuts.

Yeah, there's no more news. Even The Onion now, I can go to The Onion now, and it's so close to the fake stuff that people are posting that it's just like the Onion has to be pissed off. It's got to be. I mean, they're almost out of a job. Yeah. Like everybody else. So, what are you going to do?

No. Literally, language is literally useless now. There's nothing even. It's like, that's why I'm just trying to find articles this week. I'm going through it and just like, I don't know what I can trust anymore. And it's insane. In the news.

Well, we can talk about the Amazon store that just involves you walking in there, swiping your phone, and then walking out again without having paid or made any interaction whatsoever with any actual employee. In the old days, we called that shoplifting. Yes, we did.

But everybody in mainstream media, whatever that means, has covered it to death, so we're not going to talk about it. What we will talk about is how that is just a continuation of what we've been discussing, the Uber firing everybody as soon as they can. So, all the driving jobs in the world going away, all the trucking jobs in the world quickly going away, and now Amazon is rapidly shooting us towards all the cashier jobs in America going away, which is roughly 3.5 million.

There's an article in Vanity Fair that basically gets into this because of the Amazon announcement. But they did have one shining light, sort of, in the article, so I'll just read this paragraph because it gets into what we've been talking about.

Not everybody in Silicon Valley is sanguine. Shit, I can't even say the word right now. I'm pissed off. About a future where millions of retail or trucking jobs have been replaced by machines. A growing number of tech leaders, including Y Combinator Sam Altman, have begun advocating for a universal basic income.

Welcome to the bandwagon. You're only a couple years late. Yes, it is becoming increasingly clear that this is very important, that this needs to come to pass, at the very least, that we need to be talking about this at the highest levels of Mr. Trump. We're looking at 3.5 million cashier jobs in America going away, as I mentioned.

There's another 3.5 million truck driving jobs that are also going to be going away shortly and does not even include all the people that are supplementing slash basically have all their income coming from doing things like Uber and Lyft and all that sort of thing, which is also just going to go away.

Well, here's one. Just because there's cashiers, there's also baggers. There's people who get the carts out. Stock boys will always have a job because somebody's got to put the shit on the shelves. But there are more jobs than just the cashiers that go into making a place work.

What about, you know, never mind. Continue. I just want to say he's just being very narrow-minded with his assessment there. Although there will need, there maybe will need to be one person to check your ID when you want to buy your artisanal beer from your Amazon Go store.

No, I'm sure that they could actually attach that directly to your account and verify your age and either serve it to you or not serve it to you based on that. So I don't think you'll need that. The one person that you will still need is the security guard when the system breaks to stop everybody from running out. Now, there are, I know what you're saying, but there are like actual laws.

Like in California, you can't go to self-checkout without a person taking your ID and swiping it. Even if you put it in your phone, it wouldn't matter. They have to hold it and look at you and do it. We don't need no stinking laws. We've gotten rid of language and facts. Laws are next. Laws are next. Four score and 12 months ago, I bought me a sandwich at Amazon Go and it was stale and I'm returning it now for a refund.

Right. So now Vox also came out with an interesting article, and this is definitely more short term than long term, but it's running along the same concept. Automation is inevitable. Here's how to make sure we create jobs, not just destroy them. This gets into the Federal Reserve and how the Federal Reserve basically will play a role in this.

When society invents a new technology that makes workers more efficient, it has two options. It can either employ the same number of workers and produce more goods and services, or it can employ fewer workers to produce the same number of goods and services. The Federal Reserve, basically when the Fed pumps more money into the economy, in theory, people spend more, which would create more jobs.

If the Fed fails to supply enough cash, then faster technological progress can lead to faster job loss, which is something that, in theory, we are experiencing right now. So basically, if you're worried about technological progress leading to mass unemployment, as we very much are, and we do think this is already underway, we should be very interested, according to Vox, in what the Federal Reserve will do, specifically next week.

They're meeting then, and in theory, if they raise interest rates, that could be bad. And if they cut rates instead, that would spark a big economic boon. That would help reverse the declining employment of recent years. I call bullshit. I don't think it'll matter, because we're looking at basically completely removing an entire workforce in specific areas, not decreasing it through automation.

I mean, we're talking decimating it through automation. Yeah, yeah. And this has all happened before. This will all happen again. We'll get to, you know, we're coming to a time of upheaval. We know this. Go back and listen to any episode of the show previously. And we know it's coming. The Fed isn't going to save us.

So, start to figure out something new. I don't know what it is. I seriously, you know, everybody made fun of me for all the prepper bullshit I used to do, but I'm thinking I gave up too soon. I think I was too early an adopter at this point. I think growing your own lettuce in your backyard might be a good thing.

I think more of the, if you were to focus more on, like, yeah, the creating your own food and composting your own crap to continue to create your own food rather than the gun aspect of it, I'm on board. See, well, that's the thing. You focused on the gun aspect. I bought one gun. That's it. I didn't care about the guns. The other stuff was the stuff I cared about.

It was the more fun stuff. The gun, I just had to have the gun because I like shooting guns. They're fun. But you were the one that focused on that because you have, you know, to stick up your ass. But that's your perspective. I go with whatever you want. That's okay. I have a maple cookie shaped stick up my ass.

Yes, you do. And I used to, I did reviews on survival vodka. That's how I was deep into it. Remember my survival vodka video? I got to dig that up and put it in the show notes. Yeah. Yeah. Because that was pretty funny.

You should probably find that again. Yeah, that was good stuff. So speaking of all this stuff, almost all the jobs created since 2005 are actually temporary. This comes from a survey conducted by economists Lawrence Katz of Harvard and Alan Kruger of Princeton. Ooh, smart guys.

They show that from 2005 to 2015, basically most of all these jobs that have been created, about 10 million of them, are contractor work or independent contractor work and temporary instead of full-time positions because everybody wants to be able to sit home and watch Netflix and binge while they pretend to work, I guess.

But yeah, it's interesting. Full-time jobs are going away faster than we thought. This is definitely one of the areas I'm going to give millennials a pass. They want a lot about a lot of stuff. But one of the big complaints that I've been hearing from millennials is that there isn't any full-time work. Everything is contractor work out there and it's a pain in the ass.

So this 100% backs up what they're saying. And going back to the AI thing, a friend of the show or a friend of mine, Joey Ito, has written a little piece for the New York Times called, Well-Intentioned Uses of Technology Can Go Wrong. In it, he writes, The bulk of today's artificial intelligence research focuses on machine learning.

See, machine learning, not intelligence, where engineers train machines, quote-unquote train, so he's even saying it, machines to augment the collective intelligence of our governments, markets, and society. This, quote-unquote, extended intelligence, or EI, will likely become the dominant form of AI, because there is no AI.

But here's what he says. Here's the rub. The algorithms that create, quote-unquote, EI are trained by humans and can propagate the same biases that plague society, perpetuating them under the guise of smart machines. Now, we have covered this same topic on the show before, where programmers do put their biases into that decision tree because the machines themselves aren't intelligent.

And in some cases, neither are the programmers. So, just saying. I'm just saying. Just saying. And, see, this is one of the, the next one is one of these stories that made me kind of go ballistic this week after Brian put the earworm, the AI earworm, in my skull.

Uber bets on artificial intelligence with acquisitions and new lab. So, Uber has bought. Yeah, not so much. Yeah, Uber has bought a company called Geometric Intelligence, which is a company that takes big data and tries to whittle it down to get the most out of it that it can. It's trying to get the blood from the big data orange.

And they're trying to basically get us to self-driving cars faster. And in more Uber news that pissed off absolutely everybody this week, Uber released an update that now collects user location data in the background and is collecting it for up to five minutes after your trip ends, even if you're not actively using it.

They say this is to improve their service. Obviously, this upsets most people who have any vague sense of privacy. They're not happy about it. You can, however, turn this off. So, that is useful. We have that information in the show notes, or you can obviously just Google it. But not the best move, right, Uber?

Good job. No, not good. Not good at all. I understand why they want it. Everybody wants more data. And they can figure out where you're going to be. They can do predictive analysis with their new AI, fuckwit, and figure out where you're going to be. And then there's just an Uber waiting for you. I'm sure the drivers are going to love that.

Yeah, yeah, I know. And this has actually finally prompted some people to basically remove Uber off their phones. We'll see how long that lasts. Also, apparently, Naked Capitalism, which is not as exciting a site as it first sounds, has run a series of articles about Uber.

And it gets really deep into basically all the reasons I've hated them all along. It's basically Uber's Ponzi scheme economics, cooking numbers to show investors, drivers, and the press that it does much more than it actually is. This gets really deep into it.

If you want to really understand why I hate Uber, go ahead and check this out. Brian just hates everything, though, so it's okay. You can figure it out. You don't have to read the article, but yeah. Here's the deal. Uber lies about their numbers. Yeah. I have some other people that lie about their numbers, too.

Well, I'm mad at them, too. Well, see, this is when you start to go down the rabbit hole and you end up hating everything. See, that was the perfect segue because I opened up your next story for you, but you missed the cook. Oh, sorry. Volkswagen, which is also a lie about things. There we go. There we go.

He's slow when he gets there. I think it's all those maple cookies. They've gone to your brain. It is. I'm on a sugar high. So Volkswagen has announced this week that they are spinning off a company that will be focused on, air quotes, new mobility solutions, such as ride hailing and on-demand autonomous vehicles.

The German car giant says it hopes to generate a significant share of its sale revenue from these new services by 2025. So basically, they're being smart and positioning themselves for the future. And the company is named Moya, M-O-I-A, will be headquartered in Berlin, where they will test out new services without really specifying exactly what they're going to be, other than mobility solutions.

Okie dokie. And you could just be standing out on the corner and they're like, no, no, no, your car's actually there. We got you where you needed to go. Trust me, the data says so. The data says so. We're Volkswagen. We don't lie about anything. Why would we lie? Who else?

We have no history of this. No. And there's an interesting article and video from Reason.com. We love the Reason people. It's called, Sorry, Elon Musk, Driverless Cars Will Take Longer Than You Think. And this goes into the deep well of how actually difficult it is on general streets with all of the craziness and randomness that goes into driving anywhere that's not on a freeway in a controlled environment of the freeway or expressway or tollway, depending on where you're at in the world.

Some autobahnage. Some autobahnage. Who knows? But when you're on the streets. And that's why I thought Pittsburgh was an interesting thing for Uber to go there, because that is one of the most random places to ever drive. But they're saying, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a harder problem than you think, Elon. Honestly, just go to Mars first.

And when you get back, maybe we'll have the cars done. Yeah, I mean, and I've always said it has to be an all or nothing thing as well. I mean, there are so many different reasons that this is going to take longer than we all think it will. Yeah, I still don't I still don't I still don't agree with your all or nothing premise, because I still think that self-driving cars are going to be safer than people that aren't safer than people that are driving.

They'll get out of the way faster. I still don't think it has to be an all or nothing thing. But time will tell in 12 years when we're still doing this show and not making any money, we will have the same conversation and then one of us will have to buy the other person a drink. On the plus side, though, we will be making more money than any cashier, driver or truck driver.

That's true. Yeah. Hey, Echo. Can you speak Chinese? Can't fucking speak English. What are you talking about? No, I can't. But China has now rolled out their answer to the Amazon Echo. I put this in the news just for the name.

The Ling Long Ding Dong. Oh, you got it. No, no, no. No, no, no. That's not real. That's not real. The company is Ling Long and the product is named the Ding Dong. OK, I thought Amazon. I see now. OK, this is a this is a knockoff.

It's a Ling Long Ding Dong, Jason. It is the Ling Long Ding Dong. No more Yankee, my wanky. Donger needs voice recognition to go buy food. Yes, it is the first Chinese voice activated cloud based smart home speaker. So it is the Echo of China.

So I personally would give anything to be able to call my Echo right now the Ding Dong. Yeah, we're going to cover the Echo when we get to software apps and gadgets shortly. We have some very specific. I have some very specific issues to take with it. Yes, you do.

And in further Chinese news, I came across this story as well. A Chinese online lending service has leaked onto the web a bunch of naked selfies from women that they used as collateral. So there's some interesting distortion.

Yeah, well, they call it banking. And finally, the last little bit of news that I saw that depressed the hell out of me. Why being an in and out manager is better than being a lawyer? Why did this depress you? Because just about anything is better than being a lawyer. No, I don't know. I don't know. Some people seem to enjoy it.

There's some good lawyers out there. Oh, that's right. You married one. You have a bias. Yes, I do have a slight bias there. So anyways, this is a good, good point by point takedown of being a lawyer. And if you could actually end up being an in and out manager, life's pretty good.

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And thank you to AgileBits for sponsoring Grumpy Old Geeks. Security? Ha! Brian's still in Canada and Dave's still in Baltimore, right? That is correct.

Okay, Dave's in Baltimore. Is it cold out there in Baltimore? It is cold today, and I was told by a friend that it's getting really cold tomorrow. It's going to be in the teens, so I've got that to look forward to. It was four degrees this morning. I figured all of us now are freezing our gonads off.

We had to break out the winter coats. It is cold. What is that noise? I'm in the basement. It doesn't seem to matter where I move. I got myself away from the heating system, but now I'm near plumbing. It sounded like you just shook up a bottle of Fanta and unleashed it upon the world.

That's a new side channel hack. He's just going to spray Fanta on his computer. I've actually built a very large vodka shot machine down here. Do you call it your left arm and your right arm? Exactly. Highly pressurized. All right.

So, Dave, what do you got for us this week? Oh, well, more good stuff. Let me first, Jason, let's find out. How's your camera system doing? I am terrified now. I have a follow-up later on in the show about it, but so far, I'm actually loving it. I've updated the firmware seven times because every time I turn it on, there's a firmware update.

That's a good sign. Yeah. Yeah. It works well. It works well. I can actually connect to it from the outside and I look at it. Yeah. I'm sure all those people in China are really enjoying the high-resolution pictures from your camera system. As long as somebody in China is keeping an eye on Bam Bam.

Brian, drink. You know, I was fascinated with Bam Bam as all of Jason's Instagram followers. Exactly. Exactly. It never gets old. So, yeah, that's my exit strategy. I'm basically going to move there with Bam Bam and she'll be a celebrity and then I can be famous in China. Just a quick tip to the wise.

Dogs don't always get off very well in China. True that. True that. Keep that in mind. Keep them under, yeah, keep them under watchful eye. Well, you know, a week doesn't go by without there being something new with our IoT attacks. And this week, some fresh fodder for IoT attack cannons.

Brian Krebs from Krebs on Security has the story once again. Two parts to this story. First of all, there's a bunch of Sony IP cameras. And these are more professional-grade cameras. These are ones that you'd see in, you know, enterprise, you know, big office buildings, things like that.

Mine is so not professional-grade. The brand name is Smonet, so. Yes, right. It sounds like someone leaned on the keyboard. Exactly. It came up with the name. Gazootite. Exactly. But these, so these Sony cameras, it's part of their Ipella Engine IP cameras.

It's a Sony series of cameras. Turns out they have a couple of back doors built into them. Oh, good. Sony, they're known for never putting a back door into anything. Why would they? These back doors were put in on purpose, so it seems, for, you know, functionality testing and so on and so forth.

Root kits for checking piracy, I'm sure. Yeah, so the, um, a quick scan of the net, uh, found there were at least 4,000 of these devices reachable online. Um, Sony has, uh, made available a patch, but, uh, these patches don't happen automatically and, um, you have to manually put, put in the firmware update.

And you know how often people do that with the camera that's sitting up in the corner, you know, minding its own business that you don't even know that's been attacked. So, not good. Uh, the other part of, the other half of this story is that, um, there's a security firm called Cyber Reason.

Um, and they've found, um, a security hole or security issues in, uh, basically a bunch of these sort of no-name brand cameras that you see on Amazon. Jason's house. Like, exactly, Jason's house, right, right.

And, uh, they all, you know, they all come, uh, out of the box with, uh, username, password, uh, you, the username is password and the admin is 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8. Oh, see, mine, mine came out of the box with username, admin, and password blank.

Oh. Oh, nice. Yeah. All right. Very good. Forward thinking. Yeah, exactly. Right. So, um, these devices are, you know, easily hackable, standard IoT hacking things. Uh, you know, what caught my eye, uh, one of the researchers, um, from Cyber Reason said, uh, uh, the, uh, the code built into these devices shows the manufacturer does not appear to have made security a priority.

People using these devices should simply toss them in the trash. There is no firmware update mechanism built into these cameras. There's no way to patch them. The version of Linux running on these devices was, in some cases, 14 years old. The other code libraries on the devices are just as ancient.

These devices are so hopelessly broken from a security perspective that it's hard to really understand what's going on in the minds of people putting them together. Profit. That's what's in their minds. Well, yeah, it's not that hard to understand. Yeah. Hey, once it's at the door, it's not our problem.

Right. Right. And of course, that is the big problem with these IoT devices. So, but of course, you know, no one that, no one that we know would ever make the mistake of buying some cheap, no name brand camera system. Nope. Nobody at all. Hey, it's got four and a half stars on Amazon. Yeah.

So I've got a, I've got a, I've got a good friend in, uh, in cybersecurity, uh, Mr. Monkey 13, who listens to this show. So I'm going to give him my IP address and I'm going to see if he can hack my cameras because it might be a fun challenge for him. I've been trying to, I can't quite do it.

So I think my skillset is not nearly up to, uh, up to snuff, but he's, he's actually a professional and, uh, knows what the hell he's doing. So I'm going to give him the shot to see if he can hack these and then we'll, we'll have a followup sometime on a, on a future episode. Nice. Yeah. All right.

I'm sure none of our listeners are going to have at it. Uh, that'll never happen. Got to find my IP first. Yeah. Well, you know, check the grumpy old geeks Twitter later this week. All right. Moving on to our next story. Um, story in Wired called never, ever, ever download, download Android apps outside of Google play.

Um, there is half the time inside of Google play either. So if you have an Android phone, just don't download any apps. You can, you can play snake and calculator. You can spell boobs on calculator till the cows come home, but just don't buy any apps. Well, there's a new, uh, new bit of, uh, malware called Gooligan.

I love that name. Good name. Yeah. Yep. And, uh, Gooligan, uh, has, has at it with all of your Google accounts, all of your, um, tokens to get into your Google accounts. So Google play, Gmail, photos, docs, uh, G suite, Google drive, all that good stuff. All the, all your Googs are belong to them.

That's right. And, um, basically what happens is you, uh, you download one of the infected apps and, uh, we've got a list on the, the folks at checkpoint security who, uh, who discovered this. They have a really nice, uh, page outlining everything with Gooligan.

You can go look at that, but it looks like there's probably, oh, about a hundred different apps that, uh, are infected with this. Everything from, um, you know, things called daily racing, billiards, uh, to, uh, sexy hot wallpaper.

So now if you install these, do they take you out? Or what is supposed to just be a three hour tour? Gooligan! Yeah. Uh, hey little buddy, can I have my address book back?

Right. Exactly. Nobody thought that when they saw the name, just me. Okay. Just you. Yes. I was thinking football Gooligans. All right. But, uh, so the, the, the, the, the, the point that Wired's making in their story is, um, don't download stuff from outside of the Google Play store.

Yes, the Google Play store is not perfect, but it is way, way safer than sideloading any of these apps. As we've said many times on this show, the great thing about Android is that you can load anything you want on it. But the terrible thing about Android is that you can load anything you want on it. And, uh, this is certainly an example of that.

Um, so, you know, buyer, buyer beware, you know, check it out, make sure you don't have any of these apps, uh, installed and, uh, you know, just be safe. Stay, don't, don't load these janky apps, folks. Don't, it's not worth it. I gotta go, uh, go delete my sexy wallpaper app right now.

But, but do you have the mild, hot, or spicy sexy wallpaper? Spicy? You should see what happens when I flip resolutions. It's fantastic. Oh my. Yes. Yes. Uh, so in privacy news, uh, cause some clever entrepreneur has come up with something called, uh, anti-facial recognition glasses.

Uh, is it a helmet? Got that real zing to that name. I know. Well, you know, it came to mind to me was the, uh, the ads that were in the back of, uh, comic books when we were kids with the, the x-ray vision glasses, you know, that made the promise that you'd be able to see through pretty girls dresses or, you know, um, and I, uh, uh, so I've heard from a friend.

And that it didn't actually do that. Uh, my first picture disappointed with the world and on my path to being a grumpy old geek. Exactly. And I still had, I still don't have those beach, uh, beach buff muscles that they, they, uh, they promised as well. I still, I still get sand kicked in my face when I go try and pick up on the little girls at the beach.

No idea what we're talking about. No, but if I, if I was picking up on little girls at the beach, somebody should kick sand in my face because that's just gross. And sea monkeys are just little shrimp. Yes. True that. True that. They don't actually play with each other and wear crowns and hold scepters and build little castles.

That's all. There's no king shrimp. At any rate, um, this is actually kind of clever. What they've done is they've made these glasses that are sort of, uh, the frame of the glasses is covered with some of this super highly reflective, uh, material.

You know how like 3M and other companies have this, this material that is super reflective. You see it on backpacks and running shoes and, and so forth. Um, you mean reflect your technology. Yeah. And so what you see, if you go look at the footage that they have on the, uh, on, on their website, the folks who are selling this stuff, basically what happens is when a camera is in night mode, when it's blasting you with IR light, these, uh, a version of these glasses are super reflective to IR and basically blast out.

Everything around them. So your face becomes just a big white ball of hot, uh, uh, hot nothing. Um, by the way, ball of hot nothing is one of the apps on the Google play store. But, uh, uh, so, you know, if you're, if you're someone who's, uh, interested in not, uh, having your face being seen by all of the cameras around you, uh, you know, this is a clever little thing, something, um, something that you may want to check out.

Now, when I used to read Mondo 2000 back in the day, I was thinking about this, uh, just trying to come up with cool hacks like this to figure out how to get around security cameras and night vision. Cause it was new back then. And I was thinking, why don't I just make a necklace of IR lights that, you know, when it, when it gets dark and the camera switches to night mode, you just turn those on and it floods out so much IR that your head is just like a cone of light coming out and they just can't even see your face.

Yep. That's basically what this is. Just, I mean, that's the effect you get with this is just reflective rather than it's, it's passive rather than active. Yes. But you're foiled by this thing called daylight, which it tends to be half of the time. Yes. It's only a nighttime hack.

So that's true. It's a nighttime hack. No need to throw away that paper bag yet. Yeah. Anyway, something clever was not at the, wasn't, wasn't at the top of our list of things this week on the cyber wire, but thought, uh, it's fun enough to include here. Everybody might get a kick out of it.

Uh, you had a couple more stories, uh, that to include, uh, this week, uh, some stuff about visa cards. Yeah. But I, I also just threw in the show notes for everybody's listening pleasure. Uh, your story with the glasses reminded me of this great song by a band called information society called mirror shades.

Uh, so I threw that in there and it's a good listen. Uh, this is from their album hack done way back in 1990, which is very William Gibson influenced and way ahead of its time in terms of subject matter. Well, since they stole the name, I'd, I'd hope it'd be William Gibson influenced. Yeah. There you go.

So I did have, I found two other stories. Uh, one was from, this is from boing boing. Uh, crooks can guess visa card details in under six seconds by querying lots of websites at once. Assuming of course that I guess you are on multiple websites, but as fair enough and easy to do these days is, you know, basically there's four big e-commerce sites at this point.

Well, you don't have to, no, no, no. The way this works is it's, it's basically just testing to see if the, if you can get the CVV. So what it's doing is they have a list of e-commerce sites that let you ping them to run the credit card through to see if you get an author or not. Uh, so what, um, this is, this is a problem.

Uh, I'm going to date myself again. Uh, when I was working in the, let us call it somebody will date you. The, he's getting good at this. Oh, score one for Bittner. Damn burn. Yeah.

Well, so continuing on back when I was working in the porn industry, we had a problem with people doing, doing this exact same thing. People would send us credit cards and try and do a $1 transaction to see if the card was good. Cause people would buy like batches of hundreds of thousands of cards and they would go to the porn sites.

So the porn sites got really good at this kind of thing. But since porn has been on the wane, uh, you can go to all of these idiots who are running, uh, their own transaction servers now who'd never had to deal with this. And basically you can ping these sites up to 20 times per IP address, trying to get the details of a credit card to see if the CVV matches.

So if you've got a card number and an expiration date and you're looking for that CVV, that's how you do it. So you have a list, a database of all the websites and all the gateways. So you can just, you know, hammer them and it takes under six seconds to actually run it through thousands of, uh, different sites because you're looking at only 999 options for a three digit CVV.

Yeah. I thought it was interesting how it sort of whittles away at the information it needs. That, uh, you know, the card number gives it a certain region and then, uh, you know, their cards can only be, uh, valid for 60 months. So there's only 60 guesses for the month and year that are possible.

And then the CVV is only three digits. So that's 999 guesses. And so it just kind of, you know, bangs away. It's sort of like one of those movies where they fill in the codes, you know, there's a 10 digit code and they're filling in one, one code at a time. You know, they're locking in one code at a time.

They just, they bang away at, at, at each part of the card until they get to get everything they need. And I guess, you know, uh, uh, Jason, is this something that they could just script? It's already done. There's a tool for it. I saw a video of a guy that was running the tool and all you do is you put in, put in the card number and that's it.

And, uh, it'll run the rest and it comes back almost instantly. Yeah. And this is out in the wild. They've already got, they've already got tools for it. It's pretty cool. All right. Yeah. That's how, that's how it works. I mean, when you have a limited data set that you can only, you know, you know, if my Amex expired in 3029, it would be a little bit more, you know, a little bit tougher, but, uh, since it doesn't, it could be a 303029 would be when it expired, but, uh, the expiration

date actually makes it easier for them to, to guess this number. Right. Yeah. And then I just want to, oh, go ahead. Well, I was just thinking, you know, how long, how long are we going to go before there needs to be, uh, you know, uh, uh, a step up in security of our credit cards.

I mean, obviously you've got chip and pin for when you actually have the card, but this kind of thing with e-commerce, uh, you know, what's the next step for that? When it starts costing more for them to pay out the, uh, you know, the, the fraud than it does to fix the system. When that tipping point hits, that's when it'll change.

But until then, they're just going to keep, keep dealing with it. Yeah. You're absolutely right. Yep. Keep those 22% interest rates. Yeah. And finally, also from boing, boing, I came across the, uh, NSA's best employees are all leaving. Um, apparently it seems all the younger NSA employees are bummed out by the agencies lying and lawbreaking and are leaving for private sector jobs.

Um, and, um, the current, or I guess former NSA director, Keith Alexander blames Edward Snowden and the media because it's always the media's fault. Trump. All right. So, uh, let's dig into this a little bit. First of all, if you go to the, uh, actual story that boing, boing, uh, scraped this from, uh, it's on cyber scoop, which is actually a, uh, you know, really reputable, uh, organization, good reporting organization.

Unlike boing, boing, who just copies and pastes. Continue. So, uh, certainly that is part of the story. I think certainly morale, uh, is an issue at NSA. Um, you know, all the Snowden stuff has not helped.

Um, but I would say really probably the big story here is just there is this huge shortage of people, uh, for cybersecurity jobs. And so what happens is in the private sector, particularly if you have a security clearance, um, there is just sort of an endless bidding war for people to, you know, they call it butts in seats to put people on these contract positions to do these jobs that require a security clearance.

So, um, what that means is you end up with people who are just kind of, you know, on, on a bit of a carousel, you know, cycling from job to job, uh, and making more and more money. And so it's hard for the government to compete on the, uh, just on the dollars and cents.

Um, that's a, that's a huge part of the story. It makes no dollars and cents. Yeah. Uh, it's also interesting that, you know, uh, Alexander, um, you know, is talking about, uh, people leaving to go chase more money. And, uh, what is Mr. Alexander doing now?

Oh, same thing. Yes. Chasing more money. Yes. He has a consulting firm, uh, where he makes a lot more money than he did when he was working at NSA. Not to say that he hasn't earned it, but, um... Do as I say, not as I do. That's the, well, but that's the reality of the situation right now.

I mean, if you are a cybersecurity person and you have a clearance, you are a hot commodity. Um, and so, you know, the, the, the, the demand is way outstripping the supply right now. So, um, I certainly, the morale thing is part of the story. But, um, from, from, from my perspective and the people that, that, you know, I know and talk to, and, you know, we're right down the street from NSA.

And, um, so I do cross paths with a lot of these people pretty regularly. I believe it's more of the bidding war thing that, uh, is at work here rather than, uh, you know, people feeling bad about, uh, the allegations, uh, uh, true or not from, from, from, uh, Snowden and things like that.

Well, I, I, I suggest you go, uh, put on that clown outfit and go run through the NSA campus for a little while and see what they kind of do and see if they, how their security is. You know, actually funny story, uh, I used to, the, the way that I used to, uh, go to work every day was right past NSA headquarters and, you know, it is right.

It is Port Meade and NSA is, you know, uh, five miles from my house. Um, and there is a gas station on, on campus there that had actually has very cheap gas. So I would stop there on my way to fill my car with gas.

Um, however, uh, you have to be really careful to not take a wrong turn on the, uh, NSA campus. Because, you know, and, and they're pretty clear about it. You know, it's like, do not go past this point if you do not have, you know, if you are unauthorized and there are people with guns and all kinds of checkpoints and things like that.

But, uh, it's a pretty intimidating place. Uh, so you kind of need to know where you're going. Uh, even if you just want to buy gas. Well, you see, they've already got you because once you put the gas in your car, they put the nanobots into the gas to track you once you leave the gas station. So you're already on the grid. I don't think you have anything to worry about.

I, no doubt. I think just by driving on to the campus, you know, my license plate is, uh, in the, in the database. You're on a list. Yeah. Oh, well. Okay. Well, I'm going to go try and find a date. Thanks, Mr. Bittner. We'll talk to you next week.

Maybe. Bye, guys. Bye. My new book this week is, uh, from the aforementioned Joey Ito, Whiplash, How to Survive Our Faster Future of Future by, uh, Joey Ito and Jeff Howell.

Yes. Uh, I didn't know Joey was putting this book out. I was very surprised. It's apparently been nine years in the making. And, uh, the interesting thing about Joey is he is a complete 180 degree version of us. He's an optimist.

Strange. I know. I'm like, where do you come from? They still make you. Um, and the funny thing is he's older than us, but he uses, uh, he sees technology as an empowering thing instead of us who are in the purely dystopian camp. So I, I'm comparing this book to the inevitable from Kevin Kelly that we reviewed a long time ago, uh, with, uh, Kevin Kelly has 12 technological forces that will shape our future and Whiplash

has nine different areas of technology that we should be paying attention to. I like Joey's book more. It's, it, it, it is more upbeat and it's more along the lines of, Hey, this stuff might actually give us some, some cool stuff in the future to make us live longer and be happier.

I'm waiting for the part where he starts discussing the jobs. He has mentioned it several times in the book. I'm only about a third of the way through it and I'll have a final wrap up, but I'm hoping you'll pick it up and check it out too. All right. Yeah. Let me know. I mean, I'm definitely going to be interested in that. I mean, I, I, it's, I, I love the idea of being optimistic.

I just find it very difficult given what we know about, uh, work and, and money and finances and how people are going to survive and we'll see, but I love a good historical precedent of technology fucking everybody. Yeah. There's that too. Um, I finally finished Washington.

I don't really have too much to add from what I talked about last time. It's definitely worth it. If, especially if you have like three months to read a book, uh, cause you know, it's 900 some odd pages. Um, it was fantastic. It was very well written. Um, yeah. So quite good. Um, I did find a book that I desperately want.

Uh, this is by a Japanese architect named Yusuke Unu, I believe. Uh, he's known for his 360 degree books that bring images to life in 3d apparently. And he's got one out. That's the earth and the moon, the solar system. It is fantastic looking. I mean, talk about a great Christmas gift for someone.

This is a really cool idea. We have a link in the show notes so you can take a look at it. How much is it? Uh, I have no idea actually. Oh, $29 and up from different sellers. And, uh, we also, I've also got a link of the show notes to Amazon, which does carry some of his previous books.

They don't currently have the solar system one, but they have one called a snow white, which is really cool. Mount Fuji, which is pretty awesome. That one's $114, but it's pretty intense. So there's some really good stuff in there. This is, this is, I've never heard of this guy before. It's really cool. Should everybody should take a look at it? I will definitely go check it out.

I'm looking for Christmas presents right now and, and, and, and some Hanukkah president president, not presidents Hanukkah president. That would be something good. We could use a Hanukkah president. Wait, wasn't that supposed to be Joe Lieberman? Software, apps, and gadgets.

I have talked about the Giro revolutionary, revolutionary carry on luggage before revolution Larry, revolution Larry. That's a new, that's a new eighties, uh, eight bit game. I'm going to Kickstarter soon. Um, speaking of Kickstarter, this luggage was Kickstarter. Uh, I got it for two 79 for the pre-order price.

Now they're selling for 450 bucks. I think base price, but it finally arrived. It got here. I couldn't fucking believe it. All right. It's amazing. I'm a little shocked. It is hands down the best carry on luggage I've ever seen. Wait, hold on a second.

Have you gone on a trip with it yet? I have packed. I did a full, I did a full pack because I waited so long for this thing. I wanted to see, I had to do it for the show and I did a full pack for it. Um, it's, it's great. It's got giant wheels on it. So it's, uh, the, the interesting thing is they had to re-engineer it a bit from when they originally did it to be more stable when it was packed.

So when it's unpacked, it has a tendency to fall over. So they say store it flat, but as soon as you put stuff in it, it balances perfectly. That's a feature. Well, it is. Cause you're not going to carry it around empty. You're not gonna be rolling around with it. So, um, but, uh, it's got, it's got built-in USB ports and a slot for a battery.

So you can, and it's got two, yeah, it's got two USB cables inside. So you can plug in any battery that you have. So if you even go get like a cheap battery, uh, from Amazon, plug that into the two ports. So you have on the top of the bag, you have two USB ports to plug in your phone to charge without having to open up the bag or get everything out.

Um, the handle works as an iPad stand. So while you're sitting there, or I'm sorry, a tablet stand there, there are a brand agnostic on that, but, uh, you can just sit your iPad there while you're waiting for your plane. The, the insides are just the way the thing is laid out is really cool.

And I fit everything where it needed to go. It's got a cable pack on the back. That's always accessible. All in all, this thing is cool. You know, I mean, in the last, the last one I paid for a long time ago, I had an Eddie Bauer that lasted me like 15 years. I think I got that for 189 bucks at, at target.

So two 79 for this one, for the pre, you know, the prepaid price was pretty decent for 450 to 500 bucks. Not exactly sure if it's a value, but you know, inflation has been here. So since then, so I'm not sure if people are paying that nowadays for carry on, but I tell you what, this thing is great.

And I got it in Tron colors. It's got, it's black with like these neon blue wheels on it. So if I'm going to do some, uh, some light cycle carry on racing, I'm set. No, I mean, I would say the pre-order price that you paid is fair. I wouldn't pay. I would not pay the four to 500 bucks.

Not at all. So yeah. Eh, eh, you know, there you go. You got a good price for it. It just, you know, took like a year and a half. Uh, it's four months late. That's all. But I did pay for it. I looked at the thing. I paid for it a year ago. I got it. I got it like December 3rd last year and it came on the sixth this year.

So basically a year between payment and delivery. So it's like slowest Amazon prime delivery ever. Yeah. I want to do a little followup on my shuttle pro V2 that I use for my editing. So any, uh, budding editors out there, if you're podcast editors or anything like that, I cannot live without this thing anymore.

I, I am hooked to it. Um, I've kind of rewired my left hand to know where all the buttons are. I've got one, two, three, four, five, nine buttons on top, two on the side and four on the bottom. Plus a shuttle in the middle. Funny thing is I never use the shuttle. The shuttle is just a place where I rest my hand to get to the buttons, but having all those quick key commands and using a mouse in my right hand, I almost never have to touch the keyboard anymore.

And I found that my, my editing times have actually gone down, which means I can get more jobs in. So it's not like before it's like, Oh, I'm, I'm thinking, Oh man, if I get faster than I'm not going to get paid as much hourly. Well, no, it turns out I can actually just get more jobs. Right. So it all balances out and I can have more clients.

So it, it, it, it, in the end it works out. I did have to switch up my mouse. So I talked on the show before I used to use a Logitech MX master mouse. Yeah. Uh, once I moved to Sierra on the Mac, this thing glitches all the time. It like loses signal hand over fist.

I was using it on Bluetooth and I went to the little RF, uh, dongle thing, same problem. And I checked the, the message boards on it. It is apparently a huge problem and you can't just wire it in. It has to be wireless, even though it's got a USB plug to power, the battery on the front, which sucks.

If I could just keep it plugged in because my keyboard's wired. I like wired. Wired is good. But, uh, yeah, unfortunately I've had, I've had to lose my MX master and gone back to a magic mouse, which is just, yeah, I'm not, I love the magic mouse, but once you get your workflow down, muscle memory takes over.

So I am just, I'm, I'm having to relearn my right hand again, which is not fun. Insert joke. Yeah. Yeah. Except I use my left hand for that motherfucker. Um, boom. Anyway, the Smonet four channels, 70, 720p wireless home surveillance security camera system that everybody mocks me for on security.

Now, fuck you, Dave Bittner. Um, that's what I'm using. I like it. It's done a good job so far. I don't know if I'm being hacked at any given time, but it, it covers all the doorways to my house, no place where I'm going to run around with my bare ass hanging out.

So that's fine. And if people in China want to come take, take a look at my doggie, go for it. But, uh, yeah. And it, I put in a little hard drive so I can get up to 30 days worth of a recorded video and go back and scrub it and see what I was doing back then, or see what the dog was doing while I was gone.

Uh, but so far for 220 bucks, it's great. The only thing that I'm kind of, uh, that I'm actually a little bummed about is that I didn't get the, the eight camera one. Right. I would like a few more cameras now, now that I know that this thing works and works fairly well, uh, for what it is, I had to say this is, uh, you would say this is the perfect home surveillance security system for somebody that doesn't care about security because they may get hacked.

They may get hacked, but you know, I'm, I'm, I'm smarter than the average bear. I've got it. Uh, you know, I would say if you know how to sequester it from your main network and still be able to tunnel and remap your ports and get your DMZs down and do all that stuff. Sure. Then go for it.

It's, it is a cheap alternative if you know how to use it. Um, but yeah, I, so far so good. And, uh, like I said, I, I'm running through my, uh, but yeah, whatever I got, I got security. I got, I got securities in place. Yep.

I got some, and like I said, on security, I'm going to have a monkey 13, give it a, give it a whack and see if he can do it. He's broken into all my WordPress sites before. So I'm, I'm fairly sure that he can probably, if, if, if this thing is hackable, he will be able to do it. Gotcha. Uh, last thing I got for right now is the, uh, Triton square water bottle.

This comes from clean bottle.com. Great little device. It is a, it's a water bottle, no BPHs or whatever the acronym is that's supposed to kill you that we've all been drinking for years that we've all survived. Um, BPA, uh, BPA. That's it. Um, but the nice thing about it is it's got two caps on it.

So you can open it from the top and the bottom because water bottles are a pain in the ass to clean, but this lets you clean it soup to nuts very easily. Um, but the nice thing about it that I'm telling you it does that it's square because I throw it in the car on the, on the driver's seat. I don't know when I stop at a light, it doesn't fly, roll off and I have to go find it fits really nicely in my backpack.

Um, I just like these things though. The handle grab on the top, that feature in and of itself is what makes it a non-starter for me. Cause I can't put it in my bike. I can't put it on my bike and the little things. Well, this isn't for your bike. This is for everywhere else. You have, you have bike bottles already, you know, this is for travel or, or just going around and it won't be like, if you knock it over, it's not going to roll off your desk or your bed stand.

Um, I've got a bunch of these. I'm giving them out for Christmas. I really like them. I, once you start using it, it, you'll see, oh, that assumes that I'm going to give you one, which I'm not because you ate all my fucking maple cookies. You hairy maple covered bastard. I haven't ate them all yet. I'm going to bathe on them later tonight. Jeez. Uh, Pokemon go is still going on and not just with friends of the show, uh, Dr. David Teeter apparently.

Uh, but you know, they finally started to, uh, basically make some money off of this. They are adding 10.5,000 gym and Pokestop locations at Sprint stores because Sprint's paying for it. Oh, wait, wait, wait, Radio Shack. There still are Radio Shacks apparently.

Oh, okay. Who knew? Yeah, no, I thought, I know that they were, they, they sold the, the locations, but I didn't know they were still labeled Radio Shack. I thought that was just a done deal. Maybe we can get our, uh, maybe there's a Pokemon called, uh, the Trash 80 that we can go catch. Teeter, go, go catch us a Trash 80 and let us know.

Yeah. Go find out about that. Yeah. So, you know, we knew that was going to happen. Eventually they finally got around to it. So they're monetizing that way. Uh, Christmas time is here. As Jason mentioned, if you do not want to get somebody a Triton square water bottle for Christmas, LA has five stocking stuffers. I actually quite liked this little list.

So we have the link in our show notes. It's got a couple interesting small items that, uh, would work really well for stocking stuffers. I particularly, even though I've quit smoking, dig the Saberlite rechargeable flameless plasma beam lighter. That thing is cool as hell. It's like a little lightsaber in your pocket.

It's like a little lightsaber. And of course I like the, is that a lightsaber in your pocket or are you just happy to see me? Uh, and I like the scientific magnetic space putty. Uh, both of all of these items on this list are actually quite cheap at the moment, including Jason's Illumabole toilet nightlight that he talked about a few episodes.

I was wondering if you were going to remember the Illumabole. Yes, I still have mine. Of course I can remember. Uh, sometimes I listen to you. Uh, sometimes, sometimes. And as far as the scientific magnetic space buddy goes, I'm fairly certain that LAist and Boing Boing are using the same shop provider because Shani Jardin, uh, has posted about this goddamn magnetic space putty about a thousand times on Twitter this week.

And I'm so sick of looking at it and I'm not going to buy it just for that fact alone. I love you, Shani, but goddamn, stop it with the space putty. I'm buying it. It's going into somebody's stocking. Okay. Just don't send it to me. I'll throw it in my Illumabole. If you do. I will.

That's where your maple cookies will end up anyways, too. Okay. I figured you'd put my maple cookies in your square Triton water bottle and shake them up and make some putty. Anyway, um, New York times has an interesting article called the gadget apocalypse is upon us. Now I, I really enjoyed this article because you know what?

It really has come to pass. I used to love getting gadgets where we come from a gadget generation and nowadays everything's a fucking app. Everything's an app on the phone. I mean, it's the same thing I've been saying, like, why would I go get this when I already have the app on my phone? Yeah, no, it has come to pass that the gadget economy is, is starting to go by the wayside.

Sadly, it's sad. It is a bit sad. I miss my Coleco football, man. That was the greatest game ever. I'm interested to see. I think that's probably different for, for kids toys, but I'll let you know as the years go by. Jeez. Oh, thank you. Yes. So there was one great line in the New York times article that just had me LOLing.

So, uh, the gadgets that were kickstarted have been kickstopped too. And that is very true of pedal. We kickstarted pebble smartwatch that we talked about a bit last week, which Fitbit has purchased. Um, but, uh, they didn't mention at the time that, uh, basically they're getting bricked.

So if you've got a pebble smartwatch, uh, it's basically going to be, well, they're just saying there's reduced functionality. They're not being very specific, but by all, by all accounts, it's just going to get bricked. So it's not going to work anymore. Yeah. Do you, I don't know if you remember the old watches that Microsoft put out that, uh, this was way before the internet was really a huge thing and the internet of things was non-existent.

I had one of those watches that, uh, would update itself with news and weather from the radio. Do you remember those? Right. I vaguely remember that. I vaguely do remember that. Yeah. This was, I mean, this was right. I mean, this was before Palm was a thing or, uh, I, I mean, I still had my Casio PDA that had a, uh, uh, cellular modem on it to get me like four, you know, actually I vague, I vaguely remember the print ad.

It was like a guy, a kid looking at his watch and they had like the little animation, you know, little lines coming off from the radio going to the watch. Yeah. I had one of those. I bought one of those. It was 280 bucks and it was unbelievably useless.

So I was just thinking about that when we were talking about the gadget, the gadget verse, you know, cause I used to waste money like that on gadgets. Now I waste money on gadgets like, you know, Apple watches and Fitbits, but, uh, so a Microsoft watch and an Apple watch. Yeah. Um, and I also waste money on things like, uh, the Amazon echo.

Uh, now this thing has gotten so much worse in the past few weeks. It barely understands what I'm saying. Really? It's, it's gotten so terrible. Like even today, like even, so I've got two, I've got the main echo and I've got the echo dot.

Right. And after I kept joking around on the show, just yelling Alexa all the time and having it do things and interrupting the show, I switched it back over to use the phrase echo, um, as my, as my open word. Well, the other day I got a, uh, I got a sandwich from the local sandwich shop and I'm pulling it out and I'm just, you know, talking to the dog because I have no one else to talk to.

And I'm like, Oh, I got your fries. And I said, Oh, look, and I said, Oh, look, a pickle. And my echo turned on. So it turns out when you say pickle, if you're, if your echo is set for echo, uh, it will respond to the word pickle, which made me think of the wonderful lines from Sean of the dead.

Hello pickle. So I will, uh, I will have to try that one. When you get home, you can call your echo pickle and it will, it will pick up. Absolutely. Way to go. Amazon. Yeah. Chinese for pickle is ding dong.

You really have to listen to the whole podcast.

Media candy. Spoiler alerts coming here. We're going to talk about Westworld and black mirror for a little bit. So, uh, you might want to skip ahead a few minutes. If you have not seen the end of Westworld or, uh, black mirror, I actually, I, Brian, have you seen the end of black mirror now to be, no, I have not.

I have, I've only seen three episodes of black mirror. I've not gone in and seen all of it yet. So, but from what I understand, it is not a serial. It is just what it is. So you feel free to talk about it. I'll get around to it at some point. No, what we'll do is we'll table that discussion for a later date, because I want to talk about specifically the last episode of black mirror, who does have Diane from Trainspotting in it, which I thought was really good.

But, um, we, we talked about not watching black mirror after the election because we just, we had enough bad news in the world, but I finally powered through it. And, uh, there, there are a couple episodes later on that I actually thought were, were, you know, more uplifting than, than depressing.

Um, and there's a shitty episode in there too, but, uh, for the most part, I thought it, I thought it was good. So I, I recommend definitely, uh, getting to the end of it. And, uh, and I, I have to make fun of a friend of the show MXV for just one second because he was a guest on the show. So, you know, we have a little relevance here.

Um, I texted him. I'm like, Hey, last episode of black mirror season three has Diane from Trainspotting in it because we just did the Trainspotting episode for does it have legs? And he's like, what's black mirror? I'm like, have you never fucking listened to our show? You sound like Brian right now. The words that come out of our mouth, apparently just go in your ear holes and out the other one.

Because how many times have we talked about black mirror on this show, Brian? Uh, a lot, a lot. He's like, what's that? I'm like, uh, you might as well just listen to static then. Well, let's, let's swing back to Westworld in a second then, because I only put this story in to continue to make fun of MXV.

Uh, final records have outsold digital downloads in the UK last week. This is obviously a story that he will run around saying, look, see everybody. It's awesome. Except for the fact that it basically skips the point that no one buys digital downloads anymore because everybody is streaming. Yep.

Way to massage the numbers and make a shitty fake headline. Yep. Good job. Um, and a good news that I think we can, we can reconcile, uh, MXV and I on, uh, the Jesus and Mary chain have announced their first new album in 18 years. I think we will both agree that that's a good thing.

He can buy it in vinyl. I will stream it. It is called damage and joy and it comes out March 20th. Okay. Uh, let's, let's circle back here to Westworld for a second. Yes. I loved it. I thought it was amazing. Um, I knew that they, they wrote that first season as a standalone just in case they didn't get picked up, which I think most people in production need to take that into account, not hedge your bets that you're going to get another season and write that shit.

So if it ends, we're all good. And that's exactly why I have my, I only watch a show if it's made in three seasons rule, except that you watch this one. So good on you for at least breaking your rule for once. Well, to be fair, I did know that they shot. This is a self-contained thing. So I felt, I felt pretty safe going in to do it because I figured I know they made changes.

They did a little post-production, but I figured that the overall arc and I still, I would stand by and say, spoiler alert, that if they stopped right now, that is self-contained. I'm fine. If they stop right now, although I do want to say, I think it's probably a good idea that they stop right now, but they won't, they won't same with stranger things, stranger things didn't, doesn't need to come back either.

But, uh, uh, the one thing that I am excited about is the cheat at the, not, not a cheat, but the, uh, the little bit of spoiler at the end where they, where you see the samurai's fighting and the guy goes, oh, it's complicated. So I'm like, no, it's not complicated. I want Japan world.

I want feudal world, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And it remains to be seen if they're actually going to follow up with any of that in the second season, third season, whatever that obviously it's doing so well that this is basically being tipped off as the next game of Thrones for HBO. It's going to be around for a long time.

We're not going to have Anthony Hopkins, but we all kind of knew that too. There was no way that this guy was going to be doing more than one season. Um, I, I loved every aspect of it. I think it was very well done. I like it more than game of Thrones. I think that there's an intellectual element that isn't just, you know, tits and swords.

Um, although there's a lot of tits and we finally got some swords. Uh, it's a great show. It's yeah, it's, it's, it's absolutely fantastic. Like it was, it did exactly what I wanted it to do. Um, didn't disappoint at all. No, it definitely did not. So I'm, I'm looking forward to, I am looking forward to season two.

Uh, unfortunately it's going to be over a year. Of course. Getting it. Yeah. Uh, the one thing that, the one thing that I wanted to, to mention was, I remember the head security, head of security. He kind of, he kind of just disappeared. He was nowhere to be seen those last couple episodes.

Now, is that just a production thing or is that intentional in that, you know, maybe he was killed as part of the, the single story arc and they cut that out. So now second season, he'll reappear from nowhere with some bizarre, strange story. Who the hell knows?

Who knows? They definitely dropped the ball on him. He just disappeared. Cause remember they had to go do reshoots on like seven, eight, nine, and 10. So maybe in between then he got a job and had to go be on another movie. That is very possible as well. It could just be as simple as that.

So who knows? I mean, we've got a year and a half to speculate basically. Yeah. So, uh, speaking of a game of Thrones, which is coming back soon, unfortunately, um, I'm excited. I'm not, it's sadness porn. I couldn't care less. I'm going to watch it just to, you know, have, have completion, which I need to, but I found the axis of awesome is a, uh, Australian comedy rock band who they, they did a, a great video a long time ago about how all pop music is basically four chords.

Have you ever seen that one? No, I'm, I'm only aware of my new Zealand pop comedy. You know, that's a flight of the Congress. I hate those guys. This is, this is basically an Australian version of tenacious D for the most part, because this guy's, he's fat and he looks like Jack Black, but he can sing really well.

So can Jack Black. But, uh, they did an awesome video called Rage of Thrones. I found these guys this week. This has been around forever. Um, but you have to watch the video if you watch Game of Thrones or especially if you read the books. I will take a look at it then. Oh, you haven't watched it yet?

No, I, I didn't. Oh, you're missing out. You're definitely missing out. I just, you know, you put in something about Game of Thrones and I know you rag on the show all the time and I like it. So instinctively, I don't watch it. Oh, that's fine. That's fine. No, this is, this is actually really funny. So check it out.

All right. And I'll dig up the other, uh, video from Axis of Awesome where they, they go through like all the, the greatest pop songs in recent history and show that they all the same four chords, which is awesome. Yeah. Definitely throw that in there. I want to see that one too. So I'll watch them both tonight. Excellent.

While you're eating my fucking maple cookies.

I've just discovered that Jason has been false going me the entire time while we're recording this podcast and he got upset when I leapt in right after he said go.

Yeah. Yeah. God forbid you actually do what I say you're going to do for once. How many episodes? God did forbid it then apparently because we had to screw up and start again. Anyways, the web's not dead is the area of the show where I like to find random silly links about the web that are actually kind of interesting.

The first up is 15 incredible GIFs, just to piss off Jason, GIFs that show how things really work. I love this. This is fantastic. I, I, you know, a visual explanation showing how the Pythagorean theorem works, uh, Vines wrote, you know, just going out what, how an actual lock and a key work in a GIF is fantastic.

Uh, I thought this was brilliant. I didn't know how a sewing machine worked. This perfectly illustrated it. I feel smarter having looked at these silly animations. Yeah. I'm, I'm glad you have. I, I've seen these all years and years ago. So I've been smarter than you for years. And, and, and, and, you know, the, except I'm the one with the maple cookies.

Uh, you know what, the reason that we have to do this show that I'm going to have to edit this show for six hours is because you were, you're calling me from a fucking third world country that has no internet. So don't even tell me you're smarter than I am at this point. You're going to fuck off to north of the border where you can't even get on the internet.

You know what else we don't have, Jason? What? Cheeto McJesus. Cheeto McJesus? That's my name for Trump. I don't. Oh, okay. You lost me on that. Cause I, I mean, I do miss the ketchup flavored lays up there.

So I'm thinking, shit, do they have Cheeto Jesus up there? Hmm. That sounds actually like it might be good. My wife loves those and I think they're gross, but thanks for the segue because the second link that I have in the web's not dead. I will say sometimes these links are wildly disappointing. So I threw this one in one of the colored circles on food packages, including bags of chips, their registration marks and set colors.

And that's it. It's just for printers. How boring. Yeah. The fact that you had to go look that up kind of scared me a bit, but. I don't chase after the links and the web's not dead. These just appear. I didn't. I didn't appear like Jesus floss.

They appear like Cheeto McJesus. Okay. Well, yes. And maple cookies that I have in YouTube notes. Uh-huh. You know what? It's, it's, it's not that far of a drive up to Toronto. I might just come up and kick you in the nuts after we're done with this. My, my maple cookie laden nuts.

Are you kidding me? Love it. I like nipples. Oh boy. But Instagram doesn't let me see them ever. Well, unless it's on a dude. Somebody has come up with the brilliant idea of, of starting the genderless nipple challenge because a nipple in and of itself is not offensive to Instagram.

But if you, you know, zoom out, then the whole world goes to shit and dogs and cats are living together. It's a horrible existence. And I'm just like, I'm just like, I'm just, if you've ever wanted to just stare at different nipples all day long, then this is the page for you.

And the one thing I've noticed, nipples are gross. Yeah. I didn't really enjoy, you don't need closeups in HD. That's all I'm saying. Yeah. I'm like moisturized. Jesus. Yeah. Instagram accounts I didn't need to know existed.

I know. Case number one. So I came across something that's called the Snow Guardian. This is a, Jason, I thought of you. I don't know why. I'm sure I'll find out really fucking soon. Every day for 40 years, Billy Barr has collected data about snow in the town of Gothic, Colorado, where he lives.

He does it just to pass the time, not having much else to do. Okay. I have no one really to talk to. I can see how this may come to bear. And he's just been doing it for no reason whatsoever, but climate scientists eventually found out about him and the data he's been collecting for 40 years is now invaluable and is definitely proving clear evidence of climate change.

See, right there. That proves that no matter what I do, I'm a genius. This guy's a genius too. You do something long enough, somebody's going to need what you make. Damn it. So they've made a short film, which is called the Snow Guardian. And he's going to be a movie star. See? He lives by himself in a remote cabin, town always hard hit by winter.

Every day he goes out, records figures like temperature and the height of snow in a notebook. Then he goes, sits down, opens up a can of beans. Yeah. Anyways, this is pretty cool, huh? Hey, man. Dude, Billy Barr, you're my hero.

Our first comment of the week comes from the website from fan of the show and friend of the show, Lawrence Lee. We love you, Lawrence. He says, if you haven't checked lately, you should. This comes from HasTheLargeHadronColliderDestroyedTheWorldYet.com.

And I can tell you right now, I don't even have to click on it, but it says no. But there might be some things that we talk about in the close of the show that might bring that into question. But yes, I am a fan of the single-serving website because I did have DoIHaveBigFlu.com, which made me a ton of money.

I like these types of sites. But this guy is not really monetizing the way he should. Well, I think you'll be shocked to know, Jason, that actually, if you click on the link, it does not say no. Oh, I'm sorry. It says nope. Oh, really? Mine says Berenstein. Oh, mine says, hello, Clarice.

Yes. And then we got some comments over at iTunes. Our first is a five-star rating from Gadlaw. It's the best podcast in the universe. I love that title. This man has taste. He does. Or lady. I don't know if Gadlaw is a guy or a gal.

So I'm just going to go with the gender neutral side and say, thank you, Gadlaw. You rock. Thank you, Gadlaw. Okay. So he says, I go to the kitchen. Lots of work there to do. I look at my big list of subscribed podcasts. And what one do I always listen to?

This one, Grumpy Old Geeks. Sure, I'm grumpy and old and a geek. That's a good reason to listen. But I listen to these guys because they are entertaining, informative, knowledgeable, and witty. And they are talking about stuff I'm interested in. Now, if they would quit making my Ling Ling Ding Dong turn on, I'd be good.

Listening now while cleaning the macaw cage. Ling Ling Ding Dong. Thank you, Gadlaw. Thank you. Ling Ling Gadlaw. This next one comes from a friend of the show, Chuck Fieric. Always entertaining. I love the structure and opinions on the show.

It's always a blast to listen to. We appreciate that, Chuck. And rock on, dude. Yes, thank you very much. And another five-star rating. This is from Sparky Elemental. I'm guessing this one might not be a guy. This one could be a chick.

But you never know. Everybody likes a sparking unicorn. The Grumpy OGs. Never really liked podcasts, but I needed something besides my stale music for a road trip and found GOG. I don't have many friends into tech, so having a source of discussion, even if I can't participate, is awesome.

I'd love more content, but I know how much work that'd be, so I'm just making my way backwards. Keep it grumpy. Thank you so much, Sparky Elemental, and I'd highly recommend stopping around 50. Don't go further. Actually, you know what? I actually want to bring this up, because I went back to some of our old shows when I was digging stuff up for a couple weeks ago about our icons where you could donate whatever the hell we call them, because I already forgot about it again.

Me too. They weren't bad. We were definitely long-winded and didn't know where to shut the hell up, but that hasn't changed. We were also drunk. That, too. That, too. And by the way, I'm only saying Sparky Elemental might be a girl, because I have many girlfriends named Sparky.

So, I know some people like Dave fucking Bittner might be upset that I have girlfriends. Girlfriends, not girlfriends, but, you know, we go. It's weird, because most people would say, like, they had a dog named Sparky. No, I have a dog named Bam Bam.

Drink, Brian. This next one comes from Dr. Dr. Mariel from Reddit. I love this pod. Keep up the good works as it's appreciated. We will, Dr. Mariel. And sorry, guys, we haven't been on Reddit that much. I had a really, really crazy week and didn't get to most of my link action.

But next week, next week, I promise we'll be back on the Reddits. And I keep posting the links. There's some really good stuff up there. And you guys are, it's fun. It's fun to go check it out. And I appreciate the feedback all the time. And by the way, thanks for all the feedback. Head over to GrumpyOldGeeks.com and Reddit and send us your feedback or questions that we can read on the air.

Big shout out to all our listeners in Sri Lanka, Estonia, Libya, Mozambique, Qatar, and Malta. We actually do have single listeners in all those places. And I just want to throw out a challenge to all you folks.

Go tell a friend. Tell a friend. We want to see those numbers double by next week. Honestly, it's awesome that you're listening out there. And we're so stoked that we have that kind of reach. And definitely tell a friend unless it's going to get you into trouble and thrown in jail.

But otherwise, we appreciate it very, very much. Thanks for listening. Yep. Thank you so much. We got some breaking news as we went to record. So some sad news. Rest in peace, both John Glenn and Greg Lake from Emerson Lake and Powell.

And as you know, I was friends with Keith Emerson. So that's the second from that band to pass this year. 2017 is a motherfucker. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Emerson Lake and. Well, Emerson Lake and Palmer was the first band, but Emerson Lake and Powell was the first concert I ever went to in my entire life.

So. Oh, yeah. Sad. And on good news. Happy birthday to Sinead O'Connor, a friend of me. Is she still in the nut ward somewhere in the suburbs of Chicago or has she gotten out and is getting better? I believe she is out and getting better now than last I heard. So good.

Hopefully she's hanging out at a Chuck E. Cheese, not next to a Hustler store, which is another big kerfuffle news lately that we didn't cover. But if you've heard about that story, it's pretty funny. Yes, it is. Before we go, we have to have a little discussion here because, Brian, you put in the show title possibilities.

Hello, Dolores, with our little nod to Westworld. And I had to find the video on the Mandela effect because you were referencing Hello, Clarice from Silence of the Lambs, which never happened.

I am aware of the fact that it never happened, but I do appreciate you throwing that in there. And let's make sure that people go to the show notes and see the Mandela effect video that you put in. But it is so prevalent throughout pop culture that everybody would get it when we titled the show Hello, Dolores.

So I want to know if anybody out there knows where Hello, Clarice came from. We had a little discussion on the side. We can't figure it out. Brian has a theory that it comes from Saturday Night Live or some other cultural sort of sketch comedy show after the after the movie came out is my guess.

But we have no idea. So if you know where Hello, Clarice came from, please let us know until next week. Until next week. Hello, Pickle. Thanks for listening. I'm Jason DeFillippo, and all my info and links are at about.me slash JPD.

And I'm Brian Chalmester, and you can follow me on Twitter at SlenderFox. Grumpy Old Geeks is a partially fan-supported show. If you'd like to help out, please visit patreon.com slash GOG and sign up. Even as little as a buck a month helps keep us on the air, and we do take one-time donations. Just go to grumpyoldgeeks.com and click on the PayPal link in the sidebar.

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-star. Or 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, let us read on the air, or find links to our awesome sponsors and stuff we'd like.

For the new subreddit at reddit.com slash r slash GOGpodcast. Join in and throw us some links so we can use them on the show. We're also on Twitter at GOGpodcast and on Instagram at Grumpy Old Geeks. Intro music for the show is provided by the band Among Us. Find them on iTunes, Spotify, and Apple Music, or any exclusive tracks when you sponsor us on Patreon.

Outro music for the show is provided by Andy Stochanski. 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. Voiceovers for the show are by Robert Fogarty. You can check out his writing and editing services at scribblepinch.com and Bob's Your Uncle.

Show notes for all the links discussed in this episode can be found at grumpyoldgeeks.com slash 189 and thanks again to 1Password for their support of grumpy old geeks. Good morning. Dr. Lecter, my name is Clarice Starling.

Can I speak with you? You're one of Jack Croft's, aren't you? I am, yes.

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