209: Smalt & Pppr

This episode of Grumpy Old Geeks is brought to you by FreshBooks. FreshBooks cloud accounting software helps freelancers master their admin and paperwork and makes filing taxes a breeze. Go to freshbooks.com slash grumpy and start your free 30-day unrestricted trial right now. Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFillippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I am Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. How was traffic today, Brian? It was... Of course, you live in Los Angeles. What else did you expect? I know. It takes an hour to get anywhere, either down the block or all the way to my parents' house.

I got to say, let's do a little post-mortem on the show last week. I don't remember any of it. I didn't think you might. When would you have, like three and a half beers? I had like three and a half beers. That's how much of a wuss I am since having the kid. I know. I was getting all this feedback. He's like, Brian is slurring a lot. I'm like, well, what about me?

And they're like, oh, you just sound happy. I'm like, I showed up pissed and kept drinking the whole show. And then you're the one that just went down the tubes. I had three and a half beers in two and a half or three and a half hours or however long we were there. And I listened back to the show. I didn't even think I slurred that much. I think it's just a thing people want to pick on me.

Of course they do. But all I know is just, I, I, all my takeaway is I can handle my liquor and I'm a happy drunk. Yeah. Sometimes, sometimes it's a, it's a roll of the dice with you, Jason. I have, I have, I have evolved my alcoholism into the fact that I'm a happy drunk.

Okay, good. That's nice to know, but it was a ton of fun. I got to say, it was definitely a ton of fun. Yes, it was. We won't be doing it again for a long time. No, we won't. Mainly because I'm not going back to the Valley. Neither are you. And I don't think you're coming to Chicago anytime soon.

And it's going to be a while before I'm hopping on a flight for, uh, for just pleasure as opposed to family based travel. So yeah, it'll be a while. Your pleasure or leisure? Uh, I don't know. Let's get paid for this stuff and perhaps I'll get out there quicker. All right, let's move on to the next story.

Okay. Speaking of California, you guys are apparently, uh, just crushing it with the economy. Oh yes, we are. Uh, there's a, it's a big deal here. There is a, there's a fairly strong movement that says, uh, to hell with it. We don't need the rest of the country. Let's, let's, let's do it on our own.

Yeah, that, that ain't going to work. No, we need, we need your water. Let's be honest. That's true. That's true. Um, and here's the funny thing about this. Governor Jerry Brown is, you know, in his fourth term. Yes. Uh, he considers immigrants a major reason reason for the state's success.

They are promoting clean energy, uh, government accountability. Yeah, we've got, we've got that going on here. Wow. You know, basically everything that the rest of the country doesn't have, you guys have, and you're crushing it. Hmm. There are two things we need to solve here. Traffic and homeless.

Once we get those licked, we're looking pretty good. The rest of the stuff here is working pretty well. We've kind of sorted out a lot of our issues with taxation. We've definitely figured out a lot of, uh, the government waste that was going on. We've managed to survive a couple massive droughts. We're doing all right here. So far so good.

It's amazing. And, you know, every time I hear the name Governor Jerry Brown, I just think of the dead Kennedys. And, uh, I guess Jello Biafra was wrong. Uh, you know, he's, he had, he had a few years off in between his governorship. So perhaps he's picked up a few things. He's no longer moon unit Brown.

So, um, anyways, I remember being, uh, basically goat seed by Jello Biafra at a, at a hackers on planet earth conference. So, you know what, I, I, you guys did better with Jerry Brown than Jello Biafra as governor, I'm guessing.

Oh yes, definitely. California Uber all is under Brown. So, uh, so yeah, for the most part, we're doing pretty well. Uh, we have long documented the issues happening in San Francisco, uh, on this show. And I've been giving you the play by play as, uh, my particular area, Santa Monica, Venice beach gets worse and worse.

Uh, you know, it's, it, it's not the state's fault. I blame this squarely on the tech industry. Um, and it's a weird thing when your little neck of the woods, your tiny little neighborhood ends up in the written about in the guardian, a British paper. Oh, really?

Yes, but we have been, uh, trend trouble in Venice. Can this trendy LA enclave reconcile a deep divide as the neighborhood floods with tech workers and new wealth? It's homeless population keeps rising and a political battle is raging over what to do. This is true. So, but come on, I moved, I moved to Santa Monica.

Santa Monica in 1994 and it was a shithole back then too. So. Yeah, but now there's billionaires floating around. But yeah, now you've just got a bigger, like, you know, divide in the people because of the tech industry. Yeah, and I still say we have bigger problems.

I call them Prius. Uh, yes, of course you do. Yeah, but it's an interesting read. It kind of goes over a lot of what I've been talking about happening in this area and kind of just what happens when these tech, these tech companies move into these areas.

Um, and, and, and the clash between basically what is new money and, and the people that were living there beforehand. And a lot of these tech companies, they move into areas that are artsy fartsy because they want that cachet that comes with it. Right. So it's, it's a bit of a clash.

And you're, when you start to drive out the artistic population that attracted you to that area in the first place. And one area that may be happening in is my potential second city, probably where I will end up with at some point. Uh, that would be Toronto. Um, Google is currently eyeing Toronto's location of a new high tech district.

Um, they're not one of many companies that have currently at least thinking about, if not have already moved into the downtown Toronto area. Now that's going to cause much the same situation that I'm seeing here in Santa Monica because the downtown Toronto area is a bit artistic.

It's already expensive. It's going to get even more expensive. It's going to drive out younger people that aren't doing quite so well, all of that sort of thing. But again, also good for the city. Um, and it's hard not to see this as a smart move for Google, given the potential problems that they're starting to run into now with the tech work visas in the USA.

Yeah, definitely. And, and here's another thing. Toronto cabbies are the worst in the world. So if, if they can bring Waymo to Toronto, that's a win for the entire city. Yeah. That's true. I, the Toronto transportation system needs some help.

Um, too many cars and I refuse to take Uber. So there's, there's some problems going on there. They do have, they do have light rail, you know, like light rail on the street, which was decent. But yeah, it's fine. Yeah. The fact that you have to, when you get off the plane at the airport and you have to explain to the cab driver and show them a map of where you're going, that is a problem.

They just don't know the city. It's ridiculous. It's very true. I, I, I, I seriously think they just hire millennials for, for the cabbie positions. I deserve to be a cabbie. I don't need to learn the roads. You need to tell me where the roads are. No, it's a different, it's a different world now, Jason.

They all have their, uh, their, their, uh, you know, their maps and their, their, all that sort of stuff is ready to go now. It's no big deal. Oh, come on. No, I was there when I was there with Sean Bonner. We actually had to pull out our Apple phones and show them where to go because they didn't even have that much technology.

So maybe it's gotten, it's gotten better. It's gotten better. Oh man. So I found an article by Michael Cattell or Cattell called the commodification of people. Yes. And I thought this was just right up our alley. Our corporate overlords, power and privilege, tech and society.

Yeah, pretty much. And he's talking about how big data is driving what happens to people in the future. And, uh, he kind of breaks it down that no, this kind of sucks. Um, quantification requires standardization, but people aren't standardized in the data collection methods we have for analyzing people aren't perfect.

Shocker. So shortcuts have to be made in proxies must be used to reduce the rich complexity of the human experience into discrete buckets. But at the end of it's a very long article, but at the end of it, he's like, yeah, using big data to put people in buckets doesn't really work that well. No, I mean, we, we already know this.

We know it doesn't even work that well just on advertising. Now, if you try to move it into this, into basically deciding how people's lives are going to go, that's totally messed up. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Big data. That's what I have to say about that. Sorry.

I just spent two hours in the car with my kid is all I got. Uh, see, you needed a self-driving Prius to get you back home. In the news.

Well, in addition to big data causing us woes about our future, we still have our job-killing robot problem. Okay. You know, the one that nobody, the one that nobody wants to bring up. And let's talk about bringing back coal miners jobs. Uh, yeah. 76,000 people work in the coal mining industry and 22 or 2.2 million work in tech.

Yeah. Let's focus on the coal miners. Okay. Go ahead. I know. Yes. So anyways, uh, what has happened in the last year? North American manufacturing companies have bought a total of 9,773 industrial robots valued at approximately $516 million. That's only in the first quarter of this year, 2017.

We should have been in the industrial robot business. No shit. This is a 32% more robots this year than at the same time in 2016. It's the strongest first quarter on record for robots ordered by North American companies ever. Um, and basically it's a significant jump, obviously from the previous year.

Now, here's where we get into the fun stats. Every one of those robots takes away at least three human jobs. All right. But, but here's one thing that I just want to play devil's advocate for a second. Do they factor in the jobs that are created by creating the robots and the maintenance on the robots?

No, because those are different companies. You're getting ready. No, I understand that. But, you know, there are people that are actually getting new jobs to make the robots. Yes, they're displacing the old people that whose jobs are losing. So I don't know. I started to think about that. And I'm like, I was just the other night. I just started thinking about it.

I'm like, well, here's the problem. Here's the massive flaw with your, with your, where you're spinning out on right now. Um, once you've created the first robot, then it's an assembly line, which means a robot is making the robot. Okay. Yeah, that's it. Okay.

We still have, we still have robot maintenance people, but yes, I can see where, where things are. I, I, I understand the, all I was saying is it's just not a, it's not a one to one, it's not a one to one ratio. That's all. Only about 160 human workers are expected to be employed by the plant.

Uh, this is talking about Adidas's new plant in opening up in Atlanta. That factory will be entirely staffed by large robots. Uh, this is also another one of these things that Trump claimed is, you know, he's helping companies stay in the U S but that's basically no jobs. It's all just robots. So yes, there are there.

We have opened up some jobs obviously in the robotics field, but I don't think it's causing, it is far less jobs than they're actually being taken away by all accounts. And they're more high tech jobs, you know, we're losing low tech shoemaking jobs to the high tech robot jobs, but in, in disproportion to the whole bit.

Yeah, yeah, no, I understand. I was just saying that we've always talked about that and it just dawned on me that, oh wait, we never factored in the fact that there are other jobs being created by the people who make the robots have to maintain the robots, make the parts for the robots, all that stuff. You know? So I think we've always just kind of inflated it and like, Hey, I made a robot, like, you know, like one person made a robot and then we lost, you know, 2000 jobs.

So if you give this article a good read though, one of the things that it says is the robots are getting cheaper and cheaper and smaller and smaller. So parts, not so much going to be an issue. They're getting to the point where it's just, if your robot breaks, toss it in the trash, order a new one. That one will be created by a robotic plant on a robotic assembly line.

Kind of like my shitty Epson printer over here. Yeah. They're going the way the printers. Yeah. I basically buy an $80 Epson printer for the $60 of ink inside and the $20 printer that's wrapped around it. It's almost cheaper to just buy a new printer than buy new ink.

Oh, not almost. It's pretty, I mean, it, yeah, it's like by five bucks sometimes it's ridiculous. Yeah, this is absolutely ridiculous. Uh, somebody who does not have to worry about any of this, even as Evan Spiegel, uh, from Snapchat. Unfortunately, if you were by, if you bought Snap stock and your hopes that you'll be able to avoid the upcoming robot, robot apocalypse, uh, that's not going to happen for you.

So, uh, I mean, I really sad people in Venice this week. Yes, there's, there's some, you know, the, the beer consumption has gone down. Well, the cheap beer consumption has gone up. The expensive beer consumption has gone down. Uh, yeah, it's, I, people ask me, are you going to buy snap stock?

And I was like, fuck no, no. And we actually, we actually read the, the numbers before that went, uh, to IPO. We know better. Yeah. There was no way I was going to buy this. So Snap has reported a net loss of more than $2.2 billion for this quarter, uh, over 2 billion of which basically is attributed to, and this is in air quotes, stock-based compensation, uh, related to RSUs with a performance condition tied to its recent IPO.

Basically, Evan Spiegel took his payout as his sense is incentive for taking the company public early, which they gave him, even though all they're doing is losing money and they've got nothing going on and their stock price is tanking. So, well done there. Well done.

Good. You're showing, showing strong leadership skills there, buddy. Uh, Snap has finished March with 166 million daily active users, which is not bad until you start to realize that Instagram stories, which was rolled out quickly, basically just a couple months ago to say bye-bye to Snapchat, has over 34 million more daily active users than that.

So, see you later, Snapchat. Man. Nice knowing you. Uh, that was, uh, I think this is, this is a liquidity event as they say. Uh, yeah, I'm, I'm glad I didn't buy and I, we knew that we, I mean, we knew those numbers were bogus when we were reading the, the, you know, the sheets that they were sending around before that, but they did have a really swanky presentation.

If you remember. They did, they did, they did, they had a basically, yeah, it was great. It was almost like a PowerPoint. It was awesome. So, yeah, I, no way. No, it was dumb. Anybody that bought into this was dumb. The only person that's coming out of this is with anything is, is Evan, because he's getting out with his $2 billion and Miranda Kerr.

So, good on him. And whoever shorted the stock. Yes. Which is probably Zuckerberg. Probably. It would be smart of him. Now, in a slightly more depressing story, which I don't entirely understand. So, I, I feel bad for all these people. These are the family members of three victims of the 2015 terrorist attack that occurred out here in San Bernardino, California.

This is the one where, you know, they had the iPhone that they had to break into, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. They are suing Twitter, Facebook, and Google, alleging that they knowingly and recklessly provided the terrorist group ISIS with accounts and aid in the spread of extremism.

Now, you and I have long gone on saying that, that all of these companies do not get away, do not get to get away with the, we're just a platform bullshit. But that's more in relation to, they have to police their own content, et cetera, et cetera. I don't think that they're half, they're required to, to do that level.

And I don't think that they're culpable for these sorts of events. Do you? I mean, it feels there, there's a, there's a terms of service. And if these people broke the terms of service by what they were posting and Facebook and Google and Twitter did not delete their accounts based on their own terms of service, then yes, they are actually culpable for what these people are claiming.

But if these people didn't post anything that broke the terms of service, then no, they are not. Yeah. And that seems to be the case. And I am not a lawyer. They're, they're basically seem to be stating the case that, well, you're just, you've allowed them to join your systems, which lets them be in contact with people.

And therefore it's kind of your fault that they're getting going further and further. And then, then, then where do you draw the line? Where do you draw the line on who can join my club? You know? Yeah. Could you have sued the post office? Yeah. I mean, what if they just sent letters?

Could you sue Ma Bell because they made phone calls? It seems a bit, yeah, it seems a bit of a stretch to me. Yeah. Reaching is what I was going to say, but yes, it's, uh, yeah, I feel really bad for them and they're just, you know, I'm sure they're hurting and they're just trying to figure out how to, how to cope with it.

But I don't think that they're going to win this one. Yeah, I don't think that they are either. The same thing occurred after the 2015 attacks in Paris, where the relatives of a woman who was killed sued Facebook, Google, and Twitter last year, specifying specifically that the, that they all profited from ads on extremist videos, which.

See, I'm looking at this, I'm looking at this, like, like the, the families of nine 11 suing American airlines because they own the planes that were taken over to, you know, fly into the world trade center. I think it's, I mean, it's just, it's a different point of perspective on what these companies were providing.

And it, and, and honestly, they have to prove that these, the terrorists who did the San Bernardino attacks would not have done the attacks if they did not have their Twitter account. It's like, you know, that doesn't make any sense because they would have found another way to do it.

They would have used WhatsApp or whatever. There are so many ways to communicate or they could have just texted each other. It doesn't mean just because, you know, they were going to do a thing and then they went to Blockbuster to get a movie doesn't mean that Blockbuster is culpable for renting them, you know, jihadi number three, uh, with the rock.

And then they went and blew up something. There's, there's just, there has to be a connection there that ties the service to the act. Yeah. They can't sue Al Gore for creating the internet. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I get you. Yeah. I, I feel, I feel bad for him and I know what they're trying to do, but, um, I just, and it's just, it's sad that I don't think that they're going to win and they're just going to spin their wheels.

Yeah, I agree. So let's, uh, drop, let's drop the, the super sad thing and just go to something frivolous and meaningless. But I like, I like this little mind concept that was dropped on us. Uh, I've, I've, I'm a fan of Farhad Manjoo, who's over at the New York times these days.

I used to write over at slate. Um, he put a quick, uh, survey together. Um, which tech giant would you drop Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and Alphabet, the parent company of Google are not just the largest technology companies in the world. They are also the most powerful companies of any kind, essentially inescapable for any consumer or business that wants to participate in the modern world.

And he calls them the frightful five, which I like, uh, which, which is most unavoidable. It's a new Adam Sandler movie coming out next week on Netflix. Yeah, Christ. Anyways, I thought this was really interesting. And part, he does an article of it where he talks about all of them specifically, but then it's just, there's just the survey itself where you drag and drop and you decide which one, um, the order of which that you would be willing to get rid of them.

Which I thought was great. And I did it too. And the thing that I find really funny about this is we all try to be, I think there's, you know, we can go to, to, um, uh, hidden brain podcasts and you are not so smart podcasts and start to tear this apart. Because I definitely think that there is a, let's make ourselves sound better than we do because everybody says that they'll, they'd get rid of Facebook first.

But I bet if you really had a gun to your head, Facebook would be almost the last one to go. Yeah, not for me. That'd be, that would definitely be the first. Amazon would be the last. Yeah, it's an interesting thing to do. I actually would probably go ahead and get rid of Alphabet first.

Uh, Google is basically our, our gateway to the world. I would not get rid of Alphabet because I, Google is, it, it, it is the locker of human knowledge. I would not get rid of Google in any way, shape, or form. There are, there are, there are other search engines. Have you tried Bing?

No, but I'm saying there are other search engines. Yeah, no, no, no. I would, I mean, basically it would be Facebook, Microsoft, Alphabet, Apple, Amazon. Right. Actually, no, Amazon, Apple.

I would get rid of Amazon before Apple. I would actually be pretty quick to get rid of Apple, particularly after I saw the, the, uh, Android phone that you brought with you, uh, last week. Pretty fucking sexy phone, wasn't it? Yeah. I've used PCs all my life. I could easily switch back to a PC and that phone was totally fine.

I could lose my iPhone. So Apple is, is on the chopping block pretty quick, which I don't want to say given the amount of Apple stock I have. Well, there you go. I can't get rid of my apples. I can't go back to Microsoft. I know you've used it forever, but I just can't, I can't, I can't go back. I can't, I can't.

Well, people do seem to mostly agree with you, Jason, because as far as the survey goes, the most popular first dropped, uh, stock or stock company is Facebook. And the most, the, the one that people want to hold onto the most is alphabet. Oh, see, I know I got rid of alphabet before that.

It was, it was Facebook, Microsoft, alphabet, Amazon, Apple. That was my run. There you go. What was yours? Uh, let's see. Out of those, I see it's changed already because I've had more time to think about it. I initially went, I think, uh, I initially went Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Amazon alphabet.

That was my original order. Okay. Well, uh, speaking of Facebook and getting rid of it from your life, there's a Mashable article that just came out. Here's how to remove Facebook from your life and never miss a beat. Um, now the funny part about this is if you open up the Mashable article, there are multiple related articles in here, which I find very funny, which is how to completely delete Facebook from your life.

And wait, where's the other one? Oh, these, these damn, uh, AB tests. They got rid of the other one. There was another one in there about, uh, that they had in there. Oh, here it is. The time has come to remove Facebook from your life. So I think what they do is I think they have a bot that like every three months posts a, Hey, it's time to get rid of Facebook posts because it's clickbait.

Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. Because everybody thinks about it for a while. Then they find this, an article like this and they go through and they read it and then they never get rid of Facebook. Pretty much. Yeah. I mean, I, I would love to, but I just, I need it for certain things. I've also, I mean, I skimmed over this and I was like, okay.

No, no, no, no, no. We don't have to talk about the merits of the article because. Yes, yes, we do. Okay. Because this just pisses me off. But it's unmaskable. And again, and again, it doesn't matter. I've read 20,000 articles that are exactly like this and it pisses me off. So you've decided to dump Facebook. Okay. Premise statement.

Now here you set your, your first paragraph. You've set what your entire article is going to be about, but you're worried, worried about missing out, struggling to stay connected or getting left behind by the almost 2 billion users on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's platform. Don't be. And then you go through the entire article.

There's not a single fucking point that supports that. Nothing. That's because it's unmaskable. That's what I'm saying. It's, there's, I mean, how many useful articles are unmaskable? None. Well, that's my whole point. I mean, it was a, it was kind of a joke that I threw in there, but yeah.

But it's not just mashable. This is everywhere now. This is the clickbait nation. This is what we have created for ourselves. Yes. Okay. Well then let's talk about getting rid of Amazon or not. Or not.

I am very impressed. Amazon has introduced the Echo Show, which is like, you know, point and click video conferencing for the home. So we talked about the other new Echo that lets you have a fashion show in your bedroom.

I personally think that this Echo Show was rushed out. I don't think that they were quite ready to release this into the wild yet, but I think that the derision and, and laughter that basically they became almost, they were mocked incessantly for the Echo look. And I think it was like, we better throw something out real quick that people actually like.

If you notice, there are a number of the Echo, wag the Echo. There are a number of promo videos about this Echo Show out there that mentioned the Echo Dot and the original Echo. No mention of the Echo look whatsoever in those promos. I noticed that too. So I think it was nevermind that whole thing of creepy thing about putting a camera in your dressing room for the young ladies.

Look at this thing so you can talk to your parents. Yeah. Here's grandma. Everybody loves babies. Oh, and it's funny because it's got poop in it, you know? Exactly. Exactly. I think it was a nevermind that flawed marketing plan. Now let's roll this out real fast. I like this thing.

I like this thing so much. I immediately bought some Amazon stock. Finally. I was like, I've been meeting two for a while. Okay. Wait, wait, wait. You bought Amazon stock, but did you buy the Echo Show? No, not yet. I want to make sure that I want to make sure that my parents can actually figure out how to use this thing.

I don't know how. Okay. I don't know if you know how these things work, but maybe you should have bought this for like 230 bucks to find out if it was any good before you dumped your money into Amazon stock before everybody bought it and finds out it's a piece of shit. That's not how I work, man.

Of course not. And by the way, if we did, we were not doing the segment this week about our stock game, but I'm kicking your ass. I'm up 25%. So maybe my method works. You know what? Trust me. You're the one at a BMW and I'm the one at a Ford.

So of course your method works. Okay. Although you know how to marry better than I do. Bam Bam didn't come with a dowry. That's true. So let's talk about this thing. Yeah, it is. It's I, I'm probably going to buy one. If it works, if it works and the reviews come in that it is decent, I'll pick one up because yeah, I agree.

I'm not only am I going to buy one, I'm going to get one for my sister. I'm going to get one for my parents. I'm going to get one for up my house and I'm going to get one for my in-laws house. It's, it's no brainer. It's no brainer video conferencing. Yeah, no, that's the whole, I mean, this is, this is the holy grail of video conferencing.

We've been waiting for since 1970. It really is. I mean, this is honestly what we've been waiting for since 1970. It's got a touch screen. It's got an address book and we've got, now we've got ubiquitous wifi in the home. You know, all of the, all of the pieces have come together to finally give us the one device, the one true device that lets us talk to people.

Now, the only thing that I have a problem with is I know everybody has FaceTime on their phone. How many people have you ever FaceTimed with? Uh, actually that again, I think the world changes when you take the baby out of the equation.

But Jason, if you take the baby, before the baby, will you let me finish? No, I would just, I just want to, I want to make sure that we're talking pre-baby PB. Why do you know how many people in the world fucking have babies, Jason? You cannot. Well, there you go.

There's a huge motherfucking market that you're just deciding to discount. Because you haven't done that. No, I was just asking you, did you use FaceTime before you had a baby? Yes. How often? Not very. See, there we go. Okay. Great, Jason. You're actually making my fucking point too, which is once you have a fucking baby, you're going to want the fucking shit out of this.

I'm never going to have a baby. So it doesn't matter. I want to have it just so I can talk to my dad. Okay. But my dad can't figure out how to use FaceTime. So there. Okay. Brian has walked away from his microphone and is now punching something.

Well, I just love it. You're trying to make, nobody, I'm not going to do this, but I'm not going to have a baby. But I want it anyways to talk to my dad. What the hell was your whole point then? I don't know. I'm making this shit up as I go along. Have you ever heard our show? Well, everybody's going to love this segment because I don't think I've fucking gotten so frustrated by you in a long time.

Anyways, as you were saying, this is the holy grail that we've been waiting for since the 70s in terms of video conferencing, except for the fact that another company invented it and it had been around for a while and Amazon decided to invest into it and then just fucked them over and released the product that is exactly the same as the Nucleus, which is the company to which I'm referring.

Yes. The Nucleus got, oh man, these poor guys. But well, as poor as they could be, given the fact that Amazon did invest $5.6 million into their startup. Yeah, but here's the deal. It's a hardware startup. So $5.6 million in a hardware startup is a drop in the bucket.

Outside of the fact that they are now basically virtually out of business. No, they're not. That's the funny part about it. These guys have doubled down and they are going after Amazon now. They're like, you know, we were in the Amazon ecosystem. We really wanted to be part of the whole, you know, Alexa API system.

We've been approached by Target and Walmart and all these other big box retailers and we turned them down because we were partners with Amazon. Well, seems like we're not partners with them anymore. So we are going to start exploring deals with Target, Walmart.

They're already in Home Depot. You can go buy one of these today at Home Depot. Yeah. And are you going to run out and buy one of these at Home Depot or are you going to get the Amazon Echo Show? Well, I'm going to get the Echo Show, but guess what? There you go. Yeah, but I'm the guy that buys the iPhone. I'm not the guy that buys the Android.

There are people out there that buy the other versions of everything. So if, you know, these guys are at Echo or at Home Depot and they see it and they're like, oh, OK, I can do that. They see the Target or wherever. And if they can drop their price point under $230, which is what the Echo Show is, they have a really good chance of at least stealing some marketplace because if Walmart or Target or any of the other big boxes get behind it, the marketing push that they will put behind

it to say, hey, we got this too and it's better or at least, you know, you know, cheaper. If they can make like, you know, a low rent Echo Show that they can sell a gazillion of just like Android phones, they've got a chance to stay alive.

Slim. I don't know. I'd give them a shot. I'd give them a shot. I don't know. Well, look, again, you're talking about like an actual physical retailer. But yes, OK, Walmart and Home Depot and all these stores, they have an online presence, but they're destroyed online by Amazon. If you're going for a video conferencing product to keep in touch with your family, chances are you don't live in the same area.

So you're probably not going to drive down to the Home Depot, buy two of these, one for you and one for your family. And then you're going to box that up and ship it out to your other family member. No, you're going to go on Amazon. You're going to order one sent directly to your house. You're going to send one directly to your parents' house. I'm going to tell you who should buy them right now, which would be Google.

Google needs to buy them right now and make this the Google Chrome nucleus. And then, you know, just double it down with that and use the have the device. And maybe you have like a Chrome in the nucleus that then can stream to the TV. So you can put the little box wherever you want and then stream the video to the TV.

Or they could do something. Google could figure out something to do with this, you know, since Nest is kind of in this weird limbo right now. But I mean, if Google bought these guys, they could buy them for a song right now because I'm sure that they're, you know, their woofy is through the floor since the show is out.

I mean, they could buy them for probably less than the $5.6 million investment that Amazon put in. But yeah, you know what, though? Shame on Amazon for doing that. That was a dick move. It was a dick move, but still probably going to buy one of these damn things. Yeah. And to follow up with the dick moves that Amazon is going on, Amazon is going after podcasters right now.

Big time. I was listening to the Sam Harris podcast, who is one of the biggest podcasts on the planet. You know, he's getting like 500,000 downloads at minimum per episode. And he just he's just like, oh, yeah, Amazon just decided to delete my affiliate account.

And they say we will not there. There are no recourse. You know, there's no appeals program or appeals process whatsoever. So he's just out all the money that he ever had. And then in his tweet thread, I noticed that John Gruber of Daring Fireball, who is a not insignificant Apple blogger, also had the same thing happen to him.

And so I did some research on this. And what it turns out is about, you know, maybe five or so years ago. And I know you've heard this where popular podcasters would say, go to our site, go to Adam Carolla dot com slash Amazon. Click on the link and bookmark it. And every time you shop at Amazon, click on that bookmark and then we get some money.

Right. Back then, that was not against the terms of service. Now it is. Why? Because here's OK, I'm going to tell you my theory because I know I've been thinking about this for a couple hours today, like really trying to wrap my head around why Amazon would do this to take away because it's a very short sighted move because these people are now never going to trust Amazon again and they're never going to get any revenue from them ever again.

What it is, is when you when you have people bookmark a link to your Amazon, you know, click through, there's no HTTP refer link that comes through. So it's not not a link on a page. So if somebody clicks on a link on grumpy old geeks dot com to buy something from Amazon that we post, it shows that it comes from our domain.

But if it's a bookmark, there's no information on where that link comes from, like no or no origin for that link. What I think is this is algorithmically decided because I bet there are so many people out there sending automated links through different bots to go to Amazon to like, you know, try and spoof the system or just do do whatever they're doing with their their automated tools.

And it says, OK, if N percent of the links to this affiliate account come with no refer, ban the account. And right. And I think that's what's happening. That's my gut feeling. Just just from, you know, so many years of programming and just knowing how these idiots think.

And I think that's what is going on. And it only because it only seems to be happening for people who promoted the bookmark my Amazon link. Right. You know, we've never done. Yeah, we've never done that. We don't have any problems with it. But I know Dan Carlin does it. Adam Carolla does it very ineffectively because obviously we covered that on a previous show.

You go to his Amazon link and it clicks to an image of Amazon. Well done, Adam. But this is this is really specific to that exact program that was going on. And Amazon wanted them to do that back then, which is why it's such a dick move to pull the rug out from under him right now.

So I'm thinking that this might get reversed, but everybody needs to speak up about it. Who's had this happen to him? But they say, you know, there's no arbitration, nothing. It's like it's it's done yet. It's not subject to appeal. Decision is final. Well, welcome to our brave new world.

I mean, that's you know, I actually that happened to something very similar to that kind of happened with us this week. I never told you about this, Jason, because what's the point? Facebook decided that placing one of our regular posts that we always do for FreshBooks when they're advertising with us where we say, you know, Grumpy Old Geese is sponsored by FreshBooks, they decided to basically say we couldn't do that post.

They took it down. They said it was it was against their terms of service about branded content. And I just wrote back. Exactly. I wrote back and I said, how? And nobody ever wrote back to me. And there's no way to appeal the process. And after about 48 hours, they just decided to put the they decided to put the post back up.

But it's Facebook and the algorithm and the post is now two days old. So nobody's ever going to see it. Yeah. No appeals. No nothing. No. Thanks a lot, Facebook. Yeah. Which is in we. I mean, we've talked to ad nauseum about how Facebook hates businesses because it's like they let's let's let's lure everyone in with their business pages.

Make them pretty. Here's your big banner. Here's everything. Oh, wait. Now you got to pay for it now. Now you're not even if you pay for it. We're not even going to do it. Yeah. You know what? If you're a business, just go go to Twitter where you can't buy an ad. Yes. But yeah. Yes. Come on over as a business.

Now we're not going to let anybody see any of your content unless you pay for it. Oh, and if you do pay for it, our our stats on what actually people see is going to be so convoluted and not make any sense and be kind of lies and bullshit anyways. So it's completely useless. Thanks a lot. Yeah, here's here's the here's the the the bow on the cake of the Sam Harris thing.

Sam goes off on a little rant on his latest episode, which he could have literally copied and pasted from Grumpy Old Geeks episode one, where we talk about if you build your house in someone else's backyard, don't get pissed off when they turn on the sprinklers and rain on your parade and then he follows it up with.

But you can follow me on Patreon. I was I was I was on a walk and I started cackling in the middle of the street. I'm like, do you not understand? You are one of the greatest thinkers. You're like the greatest thinker since Hitch died.

You like took Hitch's crown and now you're sitting there. And do you understand the ludicrousness of what you just said? It's got to make money somehow, Jason. I just got kicked off a platform and lost all my monies.

But go over to this other platform and give me your monies. Oh, oh, it's so funny. I mean, it honestly is just like I just really wanted to bring this up because I don't think any of the new listeners know our position on on this whole when you build your life on another person's platform that the rug can be pulled out from you at any moment with and you have no recourse.

It's it's over. It's over. Like YouTube stars. Look at PewDiePie. PewDiePie. NotiePie. Now, who is he? Have you heard of him since then? No. You know, that's what happens. Now that Jason's done talking, make sure you visit Patreon dot com slash GOG.

Let's talk about our good friends at FreshBooks for a minute. As an independent contractor, I've been creating and sending invoices to clients for over 20 years. Sending manual invoices is a pain in the bootay. FreshBooks dot com has created a super intuitive tool that makes creating and sending invoices ridiculously easy.

With FreshBooks, you can create and send invoices in about 30 seconds. No joke, I do this every week, many, many times. You can add your own logo and color scheme so that your invoice reflects your brand. Just really simple, clean, consistent and professional looking invoices.

When you email a client an invoice, FreshBooks can show you whether they've seen it, which puts an end to the guessing games. Trust me, you want an end to those guessing games. With their online payment system, you can set yourself up to let your clients pay by credit cards straight from their invoice. This really is a game changer.

I get paid so much faster now. And here's my favorite part. You don't have to have that awkward chat with your client about past due payments. FreshBooks automates late payment email reminders so you can spend less time chasing payments and more time working your magic. And you can see who's late right from your dashboard.

So adding a late fee is a breeze. Right now, FreshBooks is offering a free 30 day trial to our listeners. Go to FreshBooks dot com forward slash grumpy and enter grumpy old geeks in the how did you hear about a section because you don't want to be doing invoices the old fashioned way. FreshBooks dot com slash grumpy.

That is grumpy old geeks in the how did you hear about a section. Enjoy. Security. And we're back this week with David Bittner from the cyber wire with no booze.

So, yeah, and then real cyber, real cyber information this time as opposed to us. Yeah. Boy, you miss out on a week and you miss out on all the fun. Yeah. Well, I don't know. It was definitely fun. But, yeah, the jury's out on whether or not we we did you proud or not.

We definitely we definitely did not do him proud. It's just that we embarrass him horribly. That's the that's the only question. So I think we're OK. Well, he obviously hasn't listened to the show because he's back this week. That's true. That's true. So I woke up this morning to to an interesting bit of breaking news that hackers had hit dozens of countries with a stolen NSA tool.

But I only heard about specifically the UK National Health Care Service. I have a lot of friends that are still over and across the pond and a lot of posts on Facebook about this. Apparently, if you were in an emergency room, you would not be getting served because they could not confirm anything about who you were, your identity.

Nothing was working, which my mind says, how about you just fix me anyways and we'll sort out the details later. But that's just me. Yeah. Here's my credit card. My leg fell off. Give me some Robitussin and let's put me on my way. We worked this out afterwards. Yeah, exactly. So what quickly became apparent is it wasn't just that.

So take it away, gents. Well, this was the result of some of the information dumped from NSA hacking tools, allegedly from the NSA. The group, the Shadow Brokers, who we've talked about before, claim to have released a bunch of high-end tools that they claim is from NSA.

And so the bad guys have gotten their hands on these tools and are making hay with them. In this particular case, it seems like Russia was the hardest hit, but the most publicly hit were these hospitals in the UK. And hospitals are notoriously slow when it comes to patching.

But as we all know, they have critical systems. The funny, we covered this on the Cyber Wire and there was commentary that it was so bad that they sent workers home. Well, if you're in the hospital, you can't go home necessarily.

And of course, that's why the bad guys target hospitals, because they're highly incentivized to pay and get their files back, get their systems back up and running. In fact, it can be quicker for them to pay the ransom than it is to restore from backup. And the bad guys know that.

Maybe this will incentivize them to upgrade. Maybe they need some of those time machine devices that we all have. Or just not run XP. Yeah, but that would, you know, entail spending a lot of money to update infrastructure. Well, they have to do this enough times, then, you know, the cost-benefit analysis swings towards giving Microsoft a few ducats to upgrade.

True that. Yeah, this is a pretty widespread attack. Kaspersky was saying that there have been over 45,000 attacks in 74 different countries. So it's a big one. Yeah. And it's ongoing. So let's see where it shakes out. But yeah, not good.

Back up, folks. Of course, the president dropped the long-awaited cybersecurity executive order yesterday. Let's just go ahead and say long overdue. I believe this was promised within 30 days, about, oh, 90 some odd days ago. Absolutely.

Long overdue. But word on the street is that it's best that it was worth the wait, that the changes that were made in this document were good changes for the better. I actually spoke with Eric Geller, who's the author of the article that we linked to here.

He was a guest on Friday's edition of the Cyber Wire to sort of go through the executive order. And he commented that perhaps the most interesting thing about the executive order was about how nonpolitical it was and noncontroversial. It's pretty much a continuation of the Obama administration policies.

Of course, the Trump spokesperson couldn't not get in a dig to Obama in the press conference about the executive order. But when further questioned, he said it wasn't that Obama did anything wrong. It's just that he didn't go far enough.

And so this policy sort of takes it to the next step. It's getting overall positive reviews in the community. There's a generates a lot of reports sort of trying to establish where we are when it comes to cybersecurity with the government before taking a lot of action.

Some interesting things. This is a big part of it's being run by the Office of American Innovation, which is headed up by Kushner. When I think cybersecurity, I think him.

Yeah. Well, you know, you always want to go with the boss's son-in-law when, in fact, that's something that we recommend on the Cyber Wire. When you have cybersecurity issues, the best person in the company to handle it invariably is the boss's son-in-law. You can't go wrong with that. No, that couldn't possibly go wrong, which is why he's in charge of basically everything from last I've seen.

The thing that we didn't know is that swanky flak jacket that he wore over to the Middle East. Those were all floppy disks in his pockets. So he was carrying the cyber with him. You know, I told myself before we started this segment I was going to avoid being political whatsoever.

I'm trying to do so. I will just continue to say that I actually do agree and I'm okay with this cyber order. Even though I don't think it needed to be an executive order, by all accounts, this is a nonpolitical thing. It makes sense. It's following existing policies, just keeping them going further.

Some oversight is being built into it. So good. I'm happy. It is a good thing. And I think it's also telling that when you look at Trump's requested budget, there are cuts across the board, across the government.

But one of the places that he has chosen to increase funding significantly is in cybersecurity. So, clearly, this is something that the president feels needs to be a priority. If I don't have any government employees, none of them can get hacked.

Well, you know, actually, that brings up a good point is one of the problems for executing the policies in this executive order is that he has not filled so many positions in the government. So, the people whose job it is to see these things through, they haven't been hired yet in a lot of cases.

Yeah, that is a big problem across the board. Yeah, so execution could be a problem. But again, positive reviews pretty much universally. So, and it also points out that cybersecurity generally is not a political thing. But it's the sort of thing where both sides of the aisle can generally agree on what the problems are and what the best ways are to come at them.

Yep, as it should be. This should not be politicized. This is, I mean, this is the biggest problem we've got facing us moving forward. It really is in terms of actual, you know, real security. So, let's get on the cyber. I was going to say the second biggest problem, but I'm going to stay out of that one. See, I still have to make up for last week.

Sorry. I'm doing my bit, and every time I try to get out, you guys drag me back in. Okay, well, let's talk about some fun stuff. Spider Oak has published the biggest data breaches of 2017 so far. Today's might be up on the list now.

Well, we weren't hit that bad. So, this is, you know, that's just ransomware. These are breaches where actual data was exfiltrated. And we start off with the Washington University School of Medicine with 80,270 patient records that were taken. And I didn't know it was that big.

That's a pretty big one. Then we have the... That is... Yeah, that is a big one. And of course, patient records are particularly valuable on the black market because not only do they contain things that can't be changed, but also if you're going to blackmail someone, you know, information about their medical condition.

Let's say someone has a medical... Let's say someone has HIV and they don't want anyone else to know about that. That's a prime target for blackmailing someone. So, that data goes for a much higher price on the black market than other data. And I would like to point that out first because when we get into the rest of these, the numbers are higher, but the value is lower.

Even though, you know, we've got some with, you know, hundreds of thousands of records. These are... This is under 100,000 records, but the value of the data that was stolen is actually much higher. Hey, hold on a second. You're telling me that somebody knowing that I eat at Arby's every now and then is less valuable than getting my complete medical records?

Yep, that's right. Hard to believe. But did you stay at a Hilton or actually a Holiday Inn? I know you wouldn't go to a Hilton. I know you and Paris are on the outs, but if you went to a Holiday Inn and ate at Arby's, then went and got a shirt at Saks Fifth Avenue, then you cover the next three and then you're really screwed.

I think I'm safe from all of those. Okay, yeah. Intercontinental Hotels Group, they originally reported that they had 12 of its properties hacked, but it turns out it was over 1,200. Oops. Oh, those pesky decibel points. I was going to say, a couple orders of magnitude, but hey.

Yep. And yeah, Arby's, 355,000 credit and debit cards taken. And they pointed out that it was only the company-owned restaurants and not its franchisees. I think they were taking one for the team there. Yeah, I think so too. Plus, I mean, do you actually know what of any of the places around you?

Oh, are you a franchisee or are you owned by the company itself? Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, let's get to these last two real quick. Saks Fifth Avenue had a bunch of stuff taken and the IRS on the list as well with up to 100,000 taxpayers may have had some of their personal information stolen.

So that rounds out the top five of the five biggest data breaches so far this year. And I expect that number to rise considerably since we're only in May. Yeah, it's – yeah, we're just beginning the year. Yeah, I mean, it's a numbers game. I wonder if someone could run the numbers on this whole list and figure out what are any one individual's odds of having some bit of personal information rolled into one of these attacks this year.

Of course, there are – I can't remember off the top of my head, but there is that website that – where you can go put in your email address and it'll tell you if you've been part of one of the major breaches. Well, yeah. You guys remember which one that is? Have I been pwned? Yeah, that's what I'm thinking of. Have I been pwned?

Yeah. That was a big one. That was just for your email address and password though. It doesn't go with your credit card data. Right. That was that one site that got shut down recently. I can't remember what the name of that one was. But yeah. Right. Or you could just go to the dark web and buy your own information back and buy some dumps and see if you're in there.

Unfortunately, they sell multiple copies, Jason. So I think purchasing your own data, unless you put in the clause one time only. I was just saying to find out if you're in there. I know this. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. That's why you can buy it for five bucks because they've sold it 10,000 times. Yeah. And speaking of personal hacks, Barrett Reese sent us the new IoT Malware Targets 100,000 IP cameras via known flaw.

I think we've discussed this one in length, mostly regarding Jason's camera system that he set up around his place. So thanks for that, Barrett. But we've talked about it quite a bit. I don't think there's any new info since Jason actually switches cameras. My cameras are still fine.

They're all good. As far as you know. Well, you know, here's the thing. I run them through my Chinese router that tells me all the data that comes from the cameras. As far as you know. As far as I know. Yeah. And speaking about things that we now know, the San Bernardino attack where we had the incredibly crazy whole brouhaha about the iPhone and unlocking it and how we were going to do that.

We finally have a real price tag on what that cost. Earlier, there was a paper made estimate that was $1.3 million based on the fact that then FBI director, boy, things change in a week, said that the cost of the FBI was greater than what he'd made in the seven years and four months leading up to his retirement.

Obviously, assuming that his retirement would be later than it actually was. Yeah. He was optimistic. Well, maybe the price works out with the pro rating because it was slipped that it was actually $900,000 is what and the FBI ended up paying to get that phone unlocked.

So and the thing about the thing about the $900,000 is we don't know if it was this is a one off or if they just bought the tools that they could then use over and over again, because I bet that's what happened. Yeah. I mean, by by the phrasing, one would assume it's the FBI purchase software to crack the iPhone.

So I would assume I would not pay that much money for a one time use. I would I would say I would like the software that does this all the time. Thank you very much. Yeah, I would like I would like to be the contractor that got the one time $900,000 fee. But I mean, I know at the time we were talking about that Israeli company was the one that did it.

So I'm assuming it was them. But they're not saying they're saying it's classified. They won't tell us. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I mean, that's the pretty the the the scuttlebutt is that it is that Israeli company. But no one has confirmed that. It's just interesting how how do you set your pricing when it comes to these sorts of things?

If you have a tool that that no one else seems to have and you can do something that someone who has pretty much an unlimited amount of money wants really, really badly. Yeah. How does it work? I also wonder whose budget does this come out of in the FBI? Who has, let's just say, a million dollars sitting around to be shuffled around from budget to budget?

Who who signs off on this? And is there I don't know. Are there millions of dollars sitting around for contingencies like this? I suspect there may be. Well, I would I would actually hope so. To be honest, I would hope so.

No, it's. Yeah, that's a good point. That's an excellent point. And we know that we know they've paid over a million dollars for zero days in the past. So they do have a discretionary budget on things like this. And it was, you know, domestic terrorism. So they get a blank check on that. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's a good point.

So let's move from domestic terrorism to theoretically overseas terrorism. The ban on laptops is now starting to spread. Officials are saying this was supposedly going to be announced on Thursday of this this last week. But, you know, shit's happened.

That's kind of taking precedence. John Spicer's too busy hiding behind bushes to actually make the announcement. So we haven't heard it yet. So we have not gotten this announcement yet, but it is still expected to be coming. It will be a full ban on laptops in all cabins of flights from Europe.

So not just the Middle East anymore. Now, also, if you are flying back from your trip abroad to London or anywhere else over there, you will no longer be able to have your laptop with you in the cabin once they pass this, which is, I gather, is going to cause a bit of uproar. A lot of international business travel.

They want their damn laptops. So this is going to be a problem. Well, the issue, I think, really, is the fact that once those laptops are in the, you know, in the luggage area, if they catch fire, you can't do anything about it. And if you guys watch the video on this article, it is terrifying.

Yeah, it is. The FAA has recorded over 33 incidents in just 2016 of personal electronic devices carried into cabins by passengers causing fires. Of these three were laptops. Two were tablets. There is a genuine concern about this sort of stuff, which is, I say, go Tesla, get on your batteries quickly, because we are having a lot of problems with these old ones, tinkered or not.

But the fact that you can turn them into basically a bomb is a concern. And I think that the putting in the cabin or taking them out of the cabin and putting them below is just, first off, just for Jason. Like Jason said, you've got a bigger problem if it catches fire down there.

Secondly, the idea that they can't be controlled via remote is somewhat ludicrous. Especially, yeah. I mean, that's silly. I mean, you can just set a timer. Yeah, you know, yeah, you really, you really can. So. And, you know, what they were worried about before is that they were coming up with ways to actually put things in the compartments of the devices that were completely transparent to x-ray, but then could be turned into, you know, like kind of a polymer that, you know, you mix two components together and boom, you have, you have bomb.

Right. So. I'm actually surprised that we've been given the leeway with lithium ion batteries that we have so far. I agree with you. I agree too. I agree too. I mean, as someone, you know, I, I've dealt with the really big lithium ion batteries for, for broadcast video cameras and the airlines limit the size of the battery you can bring

on a plane at all because some of those batteries are really big and the, the, the, uh, the incendiary capabilities of them is significant. And once they get going, you can't put them out. They just burn until they run out of fuel.

Um, so I think it's surprising and it's clearly because, you know, these items are so popular that, uh, you're going to tell me I can't bring my phone on board with me. You're going to tell me I can't bring my laptop on board with me, but I don't know. I, I, when you run the numbers, I guess, do we have any plane crashes that have been, um, you know, the result of a battery?

No, no, I don't know of any. So, so there's not yet. And, but as much as I'd like my laptop with me on my flight back from London, I also do not want to be that first statistic. So I think, I think it's more dangerous to put it in the, the cargo hold. Honestly, there's, there's definitely the.

The security aspect of this, which is a lot of this is being done to allay fears, but doesn't actually really do anything about the consequences thereof. The second being, I think that, you know, we are looking and definitely need some sort of revolution in battery technology. We talk, uh, stories are coming up all the time.

So luckily there are a lot of people working on different battery techs. Uh, we, we bring them up on the show fairly often whenever there's an interesting story about them. Uh, let's get moving people. This is a, let's, let's, let's sort it, let's sort out this battery thing and get these things safer. But here's the deal. I think that's not really what the real story.

I mean, yes, I think it's actually more dangerous to put the batteries in the hold, but the real story is that they're, they're doing this because they think the terrorists have figured out a way to put a bomb in a laptop, get it through the x-ray and then get it on the plane. What's to stop them from putting a bomb in a laptop, getting it through x-ray, going to the bathroom, taking the bomb out of the laptop, putting it in their pocket and, you know, or just whatever.

I, you know, I mean, there's just other ways to get around that problem. If they figured out a way to get a bomb through the x-ray, therein lies the rub. So, well, and I wonder too, if, if by putting the bags underneath, by putting the, the electronic devices underneath, is there a higher level of scrutiny of a bag going through there?

Is there more powerful x-rays, more detailed x-rays? Can they take more time to sort through a device that they may think to be a problem? That's something I don't know the answer to it. Maybe it may not be. So perhaps there's a higher level of scrutiny for the bags going underneath than through carry on.

I have heard that that is true, that the scanners that they're using are significantly more powerful, that profiling is actually done out of the public eye. You know, you can, I will tell you, you profile people that get pissed off. You just tag their luggage. They don't know. I will tell you pretty much again, back when I was traveling with, with the high capacity broadcast video cameras, every time I had a hard case with batteries in it, when I got

to my destination and opened the bag, there were those little, little bits of paperwork inside the bag that said, um, thank you. We have taken a look at your, at your stuff. So, um, you know, batteries get looked at. I don't think there's any question about that.

Okay. Well, that's, that's actually a little better to know. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, the FCC, uh, the net neutrality stuff that has passed the house, we are waiting for the Senate to theoretically do something about it. Uh, and John Oliver wasted no time. Uh, he led the charge last time around.

He's doing it again. And the Oliver effect has once again taken down the FCC website. So go to go FCC yourself.com, uh, cause this is an ongoing battle and net neutrality again is something that should not be political. Uh, but it is, and, uh, we got to do something about it.

You're here. It's interesting. We reported on the cyber wire that it's not just John Oliver's viewers who took it down. Incidentally, someone also unleashed a DDoS attack on the FCC's website as well, sort of to add injury to insult or insult to injury, whatever that saying is.

And, um, but the bad part about, uh, them doing a DDoS attack is that that actually keeps people who want to make real comments from getting there. So it actually causes a problem. Pull out your tinfoil hat. False flag operation could have been us.

We don't, we, we saw John Oliver coming. We didn't want the comment. So we're just going to take it down. I will also, I just, I want to point out, and I think this is, this is, uh, extreme fuckery on the FCC's part. Uh, the process of commenting this time, they have changed because of John Oliver last time around.

They have made it so insanely difficult. It is a labyrinth to get through, to be able to make and express your opinion about this ruling. So screw you guys, uh, for that as well. That's bullshit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So Oliver was doing a service by making it much easier to find.

So hats off to him for that. Exactly. And I think it was two weeks ago. No, it was definitely last week's show. It was last week's show. Last week's show, I brought up the, uh, the, in an effort to reach across the aisle and point out wrongdoing on both sides. I brought up the, uh, entire thing that happened with Huma Abedin and the John and Wiener, who was their husband at the time, who, uh, Hillary Clinton had forwarded emails to Huma and Huma had forwarded them to Wiener to print out because she didn't have access to a printer for some strange reason.

And, uh, again, uh, at the time FBI head Comey, uh, had provided this report. And what we discovered, uh, actually is that, uh, he was kind of massaging the truth a bit and making it sound much worse than it actually was. Chances are she did not, she did not make a regular practice of doing that, which is what Comey said.

Uh, there was only a couple examples of which she probably did it. And most likely most of the emails that were seen actually only ended up on the computer as a result of backups of her BlackBerry. Now, why you still have a BlackBerry is beyond me. And secondly, if you've ever tried to like hack into an old backup of a BlackBerry, it's not that easy.

So Wiener was way too busy doing wienery things to try to figure that out. Carlos Danger, in effect. That's the part that I find fascinating is, is could those emails been, have been put on there as a result of backing up? So it's sort of an accident, you know, they, and if they go and they scrub or, uh, you know, search through the laptop for matching emails basically.

And they, and in that automated searching, if it comes across matches, if it, if matches are hit and it's the result of someone just backing up their phone, not really, you know, just not really thinking of it, I need a computer to back this up to, I, that's a really interesting possibility.

Well, I mean, I've, I said, even at the time with the Hillary Clinton email server in our house thing, the more dangerous aspect of all of this is the fact that most of these public servants don't understand even the basic tenants of technology. I'm far more concerned about what these people are doing with their phones at all anyways, regardless of where that mail server may be.

Yeah. So there you go. There you have it. Well, that's it for this week on security, I guess. So we will wrap it up and, uh, we'll talk to you next week, Dave. Bring us, bring us something, bring us something scary next week. Oh, wait. Oh boy. It's what I do best.

Yeah. Yeah. This week wasn't bad enough. I'm not, I don't have the, I don't have the shivers. I can you, I mean, think about it. This week we were actually praising president Trump for the job well done with the cyber security executive order. So imagine that, imagine that.

We'll still get hate mail for it. So don't, don't pat yourself on the back yet. We're still going to be told that we're a bunch of liberal snowflakes. Even if we change, we should title this show praise for Trump and they will still call us snowflakes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, interesting times, my friends.

Interesting times. Indeed. That they are. Indeed. Everybody definitely go check out the cyber wire at the cyber wire.com and listen to Dave Bittner's dulcet tones every weekday. Thanks guys. Thanks guys. At the library.

Before we get to at the library, I want to have a little bit of followup to the security segment that you just listened to because that was recorded on Friday. And since then, some new news has come out. A 22 year old British researcher who has the twiddle, twiddle handle, twiddle, Twitter handle, malware tech blog, eventually saved the day by registering a domain that he saw in the source code when he was trying to figure out how to like get some more information on the botnet.

And that turns out that that was the kill switch. When someone registered that domain, the whole botnet went dead. So crazy. Yeah. He just, he just happened to turn it off. I mean, this was like a three's company moment, you know, but that's awesome. Good for him.

But now all they have to do is tweak the code and obfuscate that domain on the next iteration of the code. Now that they know that that's a, a, a point of a point of problems there. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, you know, it's like that first death star that they built. Yeah.

It's like, oh, as soon as they figured out that, you know, that, that, that pipe goes all the way into the middle. Yep. Yep. Okay. Let's, let's, let's plug that hole. And also in a highly unusual move, Microsoft has issued patches for Windows XP. Wait, the stuff that they aren't supposed to support anymore?

Well, you know, you can get support for them, but it's custom support only that you have to pay for. So they've issued free support, uh, uh, fixes and patches for XP, Windows eight and windows server 2003. And in a quote in this article from the verge, Microsoft says it was painful to witness the attacks.

I'm like, well, maybe write better code assholes. Yeah. Okay. You can blame Microsoft or you can also get mad at, you know, every single institution that's still using an operating system that's over 20 years old. Hey man, Fortran, Fortran forever. Yeah. All right.

Moving on. Uh, I finished for, we are many Bobaverse book two by Dennis Taylor. It basically seamlessly continued from the first story, uh, exact same stuff going on. Just continued. It was a fun read. Um, and I'm ready to take a break, but look forward to a third one coming whenever it might come.

Yeah. About a year probably. Uh, yeah. And like I said, it, it, it did really pick up the instant, the last one left off. Right. Yeah. I mean, it basically could have been the same book there. There's, you know, you know, sometimes, you know, in a series, another second book will have a different tone, different something.

Uh, no, this is the exact same thing. Just continuing. So, and which I'm fine with because it's a very good thing. It's very funny. It's very clever. Keep it going. I enjoyed it a lot. Yeah. Good. Yeah. I did too. You know what it might've been? And he made, it may have come to the publisher with like a, you know, 800 page manuscript and they just kind of sliced it at 200 pages, 200 pages, 200 pages.

Like, okay, we got four books. We're good. Here we go. Yeah. Sounds about right. Uh, I read astrophysics for people in a hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson. Were you in a hurry? Uh, I, no, I was on a plane, so I was definitely not in a hurry. Well, I was in a hurry to get off the damn plane, but a short book, uh, really good.

Uh, unfortunately I knew everything in the book because I've, you know, been down that road. Uh, if you don't know much about astrophysics, then pick it up. And I was reading it because we interviewed Neil deGrasse Tyson last week for the Art of Charm, which comes out on Tuesday. So I highly recommend checking that out.

And I have a copy. I have fortunately Jordan and, uh, Jen from the Art of Charm sent me a copy of the book signed by Neil deGrasse Tyson to me. So I have an autographed version of this book. Woo. So maybe I can return my audible copy and get my money back. Yeah.

I mean, I, it's something I'm, I'm not going to pick up just because you don't have to trust me. I, I've, I've read enough about this. I know enough. Um, I do enjoy his voice. Um, he was actually just on Corolla too. So he's definitely doing the podcast rounds right now. He was fun. He's always fun to listen to, but I don't need to read this book.

Um, yeah, we got him for over an hour, which is rare. Um, cause he only, I mean, his whole thing is we tried to get him forever and he's like, I'll only do 15 minutes, 15 minutes. And he was just in town for San Francisco for a talk and, and we got him for an hour and 20 minutes. So, and, uh, it's going to be a great show.

So definitely check that out. There will be a link in the show notes after the show comes out because the, the Art of Charm doesn't come out till Tuesday, but yeah, I'm, I'm, it's a great show. And I know Dr. Teeter, I'm just a fan of the show, friend of the show.

One of my best friends, Dr. David Teeter, shut up. I know I can, I can hear him shaking his head right now. Uh, he's not a fan of Neil. So tough titty. Um, but I also reread an astronaut's guide to life on earth. What going to space taught me about ingenuity.

I was going to say ingenuity, ingenuity, determination, and being prepared for anything by Chris Hadfield. It'd be really interesting if it was about ingenuos cause I didn't know there were hot chicks in space. I know that's what I was thinking. I'm like, Barbara, but, uh, it's a great book.

I've, I've loved this book. I reviewed it on the show before, but if you have never read this book, it is awesome. We're interviewing him in two weeks. And so I had to pick it back up and reread it. And on the second read, it's actually better. So make sure you give him shit about maple cookies. Cause he's Canadian. I will.

Yeah. You went to space and you didn't bring me back any maple cookies. I better, I better hear, I better hear that in the interview. No, if you have, if you haven't checked out this book, definitely. I highly recommend it. If you like space people like Mike Massimino and, uh, all those guys, Chris Hadfield's book is the best.

Caps and doodads. Learningmusic.ableton.com, uh, is a very cool site, uh, get started making music. It's a tutorial series that they have released for free on the basics of making music and very specifically using their program, Ableton live, uh, which is what all the cool kids use to do music these days.

So it's, uh, if you have any interest about basic level, I mean, starting from the ground up about how to deal, uh, deal with all these software programs to build your own beats and put together your own songs and it doesn't have to be electronica because, you know, this is all sample based has some real instruments stuff in there like that.

Uh, it's worth checking out. It's a really cool thing that they put out for free. So, uh, I've just started playing around with it a little bit just because I've, I haven't done any music in a long, long time and it's my Ableton skills are way down. So it's a lot of fun. Totally cool to play with. I checked that out and I was totally taken in.

I almost like, you know, it was late for the show because I was playing around with it. I love, I love this thing because, you know, I got a keyboard and I'm trying to learn music and I saw this and I'm like, Oh, this is, this is interesting. And I just kept going down the rabbit hole. I really enjoyed this site. Yeah, it's super cool. So a tip of the hat to a friend of the show, Miller, who actually posted this up on his Facebook thing, which is how I found out about it to begin with.

So very, very cool. Thank you, Miller. Uh, so windows is coming out with windows 10 S shortly. Okay. So you only can buy shit from the windows store. Now they're finally trying to lock down their ecosystem like Apple does to, you know, stop the, the rampant, rampant, uh, malware and all the different other things flying around.

So yeah, it makes sense. Yep. So iTunes and Apple music are coming to the windows store this year. I wonder how much they will suck. Uh, as much as they do on every other platform, because iTunes is the biggest steaming pile of poo that, uh, Apple has ever put out.

I think about the most disappointing thing of me moving over to full Mac and all Apple ecosystem was the fact that I waited long enough that iTunes was already shit on Mac too. Yeah. Yeah. Like at one point iTunes was actually great on Mac and I was like, Oh, finally, I'm going to switch away from, from this horrible experience of using iTunes on my PC.

And I'm going to get to a place where my music library is going to be a glorious existence. And by the time I got over there, it was bloatware and complete shit. iTunes has reached parody with windows on windows and Mac. Yes. You know what I want? I want a copy of win amp to run. Oh God.

I miss win amp. Who knew that that was just going to be such a wonderful program to look back on down the AOL hole went win amp. Well, hopefully Trent Reznor is involved with this new version. So, you know, I'm sure it'll be fine. Yeah. Yeah. Cause you know, he's great at UI.

Yeah. He said, I mean, he's an expert at it. So Apple is, is quaking in their booties a little bit because their iPhones aren't really selling in, in China as much as they had hoped that they would. That's because there's basically an app called WeChat that is beyond popular in China and it does basically everything.

It doesn't matter what device you have anymore. Or you install WeChat on said device and you've got a messaging system of a way of making phone calls that don't use your, you know, all the cell phone technology. It's all, you know, it basically everything is built into this.

There's QR codes. It's also got, you know, it's got shopping built into it where they've already made deals with a very various different online retailers. It's got credit card capabilities so you can make your payments. It's got everything. So, and it's hugely, massively popular in China.

So people are just buying crappy phones, dirt cheap, installing WeChat and they're good to go. They don't need anything else. But here's the other thing. In China, the cheap phones aren't crappy. We talked about this last week. You know, you can get something that is just as good as that Android phone that I showed you for 200 bucks or maybe even cheaper.

Yeah, yeah, and if I didn't give a crap about my ecosystem and I had a one-stop app that I just used for basically everything in my entire life and it ran on a device like that, I'm done. Stick a fork, stick a fork in me as we'll get to. Yes, yes, Mike, I was going to say micro Donald's.

McDonald's has invented the fork utensil that is a holder made of French fries. The funny part about this is, I mean, it's a joke. The whole thing is very funny because they're promoting their, you know, their new sandwiches. But they got Anthony Sullivan, who is one of the pitch men, you know, the guys who do the infomercials to do the actual ad.

So it is funny as hell. But it's, I mean, it's a joke. But yes, it's, I thought, I thought this was one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time. But yes, you can get a fork and it's, I mean, this is a limited supply, but you have to get a signature crafted recipe sandwich on May 5th, which is nine days ago when this comes out.

So sorry about that. Sorry about that. I just saw it and I thought it was funny. And then I just scrolled down. I'm like, oh shit. But it's still a funny video. Go check out the video. Mm-hmm. Okay. And finally, I found this thing about these crazy blackout blinds.

These come from Europe. But since you have a, since you have a small child, Brian, I actually thought of you. If you need to like, you know, close the windows, but you still want to have the baby have, see something, you know, pretty. This is a Ukrainian company that designed these blackout curtains with its kind of pointillist skylines of different cities.

And they're very cool. They're very cool looking. My, my only complaint here is that it is not a blackout blind because light does come through them. If there's a hole in it, it is technically, yes, not a blackout blind. It's just a blind with a hole in it. There are many, many, many, many, many, many holes in these, uh, that let it light, which is the, by definition, not a blackout curtain, but they look cool.

Well, they black out some. So yes. Okay. It, I had, I do have to say in the title of the article, blackout is in quotes. Yeah. But they're cool. Aren't they? I've said that they're very cool.

Yeah. I mean, they've got the egg in London, so you can put these in your room. It's not the egg. It's the gherkin. Whatever it is. I don't know what it is. It looks like a very misshapen penis. I don't know. If you can't tell the difference between a fucking pickle and an egg, I am not coming to dinner at your house.

Well, you did and we couldn't figure out what the mystery beat was. So this is a problem solved.

Media candy. Twin Peaks is coming, Brian. Are you ready? I'm very excited. I can't believe it's this quick, though. I mean, it's like, what, a week away now? It's only been two years that we've been talking about this.

Yeah. But then it was, it's not going to happen. Then it was going to happen again. You've got to put it away in that little side cubby hole of your brain and then it's just like, oh, there it is. Okay. And then you pull it back out and it's like, oh, Twin Peaks is ready. Here it is. Yes. I'm very excited.

The trailer, it gives away absolutely nothing. No. But it looks great. Nothing at all. You know. That's all right. The show is, the show is about the destiny or about the journey, not the destination. So. Yeah. No. So I'm okay with that. Well, hopefully they already signed on for another season because, you know, the way Twin Peaks works is you just don't find anything until there's two seasons and then a movie.

That's right. Yeah. I'm looking forward to it. I can't wait. I am very excited. Now, have you seen the trailer for absolutely anything? I scanned through it. I think I might be at peak Peg. Well, this is the important part about this is this is not about Peg.

This is about Monty Python. It may not be about Peg, but he's in every single, every single scene, every single scene, every. I'm so sick of Peg. I am so sick of seeing Peg. I'm done with Peg. OK, I'm not. I'm a beggar.

No, wait, let me take that back. Let me take that back. We have a title. Jason is a beggar. No, I love Simon Peg. He can do no wrong in my book. And I'm just I'm really looking forward to this movie. I mean, it's a couple of years old, but it's finally gotten a release date.

But yes, the entire cast of Monty Python is in it. Never a good sign. Well, you know, it's maybe not, but I don't care. You know, it's directed by Terry Jones. Screenplay by Terry Jones and Gavin Scott. Simon Peg, Kate Beckinsale, who usually, you know, cannot stand because she's in those damn underworld movies.

But she does wear very nice pants in those underworld movies. But the interesting thing about this, it does have Eddie Izzard or Eddie Izzard, as you like to say, if you're a fan of his. But this is Robin Williams's last movie. Unfortunately, he's just the voice of a dog. OK, I'll check it out.

Why not? All right. I'm at peak peg. OK. Well, you are a pecker. Yes. Blade Runner has their new trailer out this week. Did you watch it? I did watch that. It was fantastic. I am as excited for this as I am for Twin Peaks coming back. I'm cautiously optimistic on Blade Runner as I am with the new alien movie.

So look, both of them are going to look really good. And I'm not sure there's going to be much substance there. But they're going to look really good, much like all the women in Los Angeles. Yes, they're going to look really good. Just nobody's home. So I'm in. I'll watch. I'll go.

All right. Me too. I'm very excited. Looks good. Oh, and finally, I have another video in here. Well, not finally. We got a lot to go through. Did you watch my aha video that I put in here this week? I started it and I didn't quite understand what the hell was going on. So this is from Musicless Music Video.

This is a guy who takes music videos, takes out the music, and then replaces everything with just normal Foley and sound like, you know, background sounds. So instead of the music playing over it, you just get to hear like what would normally be going on.

Thank God we've cured cancer. And in this one, you do get to hear the Take On Me chorus a couple of times. But it's the way they do it. This is like how, you know, it's funny. If you watch the whole thing and got into it, it's actually really funny because there's some bits in here that are really good.

And just the sound effects are very funny. I was I found it extremely enjoyable and it's just it was a lighthearted video that I needed on a really bad day when I was just work to the grind. I will give you that then. OK, thank you. Yes, I know. It was the aha I needed, not the aha I wanted.

Right. I think I still think the single best aha moment of all time is the Family Guy take on that. Still haven't seen that because I don't watch Family Guy. Oh, my God. I'll throw the clip of the show notes. It's worth it. Just it's they redo the video. It's very funny. Anyways, I discovered some new music this week.

I found a new artist completely that I'm totally in love with. K dot flay. It's very, very millennial of her. But I love her stuff. We have a link in our show notes to there's a song called high enough, which is doing pretty well right now. She's currently on tour. I am hoping to be able to check her out when she plays L.A., but it won't be until October 1st.

And she's opening up for Imagine Dragons. So I have to see if I can stomach the idea of actually buying the ticket and then leaving before Imagine Dragons get anywhere near the stage because I can't stand them. I've never heard of Imagine Dragons. You're lucky. Anyways, I'm old.

I don't don't know about this new stuff, but this is a good song. I really enjoyed the song. Well, that is why I'm here, Jason. I am giving you new stuff to listen to. She's got I actually highly recommend the entire album. It's all very good. I've listened to it for a few times. Is it on Spotify? It is on Spotify. So good stuff.

I'll add it. Also new. The Cranberries are somewhat back. It's not a new album per se, but is an acoustic take on our various best hits of theirs. Different. It's all acoustic versions. I think I have listened to it a few times now.

They also recreated the cover art from the No Need to Argue album, except with them currently now. Dolores are right and still looking beautiful. And she's still got that pants tightening voice. I got to say that's yeah. Well, she's she's got a great voice. They sound great. The acoustic versions of the songs are very enjoyable as far as I'm concerned.

My wife made a good joke about the cover. Dolores and three Mumford's. I was because I was good because when you when you put this in the notes, I clicked on it. I'm like, wait a minute. I have this album. And then I finally got it. I'm slow. Yeah, the guys have gotten beardy and a little chunkier and look like Mumford and Sons now.

But I honestly, they could have put a bunch of different guys in there and I never would have noticed because that's not who I ever looked at. So, yes. Well, there you go. Friends of the show. The Google dolls also have a new EP out called You Should Be Happy, which is worth a listen.

We have Spotify links for both the cranberries and the Google dolls in the show notes. I will actually also add one for the K-Flay album. So that's great. And I enjoyed the new Google dolls EP. We have, you know, you have history with the Goos. I love the Goos.

I enjoy their music. I'm one of those weird dudes that like the Google dolls. Sorry. There are there are plenty of them. So there are many of them out there. They are touring this summer. So you have your chance to see them. I'm sure they'll roll through Chicago. They always do. Well, give me some tickets, damn it. You got me tickets last time.

It worked out well. Yes, you're one of those guys who loves the Google dolls, but does not pay to see them. Yes, I will not pay to see the Google dolls and I will go see them for free because, yeah. And are you going to get John on the show before he goes on tour? Well, that's the problem is he actually doesn't live in L.A. anymore.

He lives in New York. So getting him on the show involves him being in town. So hopefully they will be out in L.A. for some rehearsals before they go out on tour, at which point I'll try to get him to come down. One show that won't be happening is Old Chela 2 or Desert Trip.

That happened last year. And basically the rumor was Led Zeppelin was going to reunite for it, but that went away and therefore the entire show went away because really, who else are you going to get? I mean, yeah, when you had the Rolling Stone, you blew your nut last year by getting all the old bands together.

And the only people you had left that you could have really booked was Led Zeppelin. And they said no. So too bad. Yeah. Well, you know what? They're just going to wait for other people. You know, it'll be Justin Timberlake and, you know, 2027 or whatever like that. But that's too bad.

That's too bad. Everything I know about the people that went to that show enjoyed it. So. Yeah. I yeah, I was hoping that they would do it again, too, personally, because I didn't get a chance to go last year. Not that I would have been able to this year either. It's going to be a couple of years before I get to go to a big festival again. But I wish they were to keep it going.

It sounded really nice. Speaking of festivals, I'm going to Riot Fest this year. Oh, I heard. I'm going to go see Nine Inch Nails for the first time in my life. Oh, really? Well, they're fantastic live. I don't know what you ask. Ask him what's going on with iTunes when you see. Well, I will. I'll just have a big sign.

Make a big banner. Fix iTunes. That'll be it. Your UI sucks. Yeah. Because the last time you're like, oh, you need to go and go see The Cure. And I did. And it was one of the best shows of my life. I don't think it's going to be as good as The Cure, but I am. But they're they're a very good live band.

But, yeah, do hold up a banner that says your UI is like putting my head down a hole. Oh, you thought it was bad with the Juicero and that whole kerfuffle.

By the way, there are still Juicero ads all up everywhere near where I live, which is how I know I'm in Silicon Beach hell. Juicero has basically died a death a thousand times over. But the billboards are still everywhere around here. Well, I think we've been one up. We now have small smart smart salt coming soon on Indiegogo.

This is not a joke. The world's first smart centerpiece designed exclusively for your indoor outdoor dining area. It holds salt and plays music and has a light in it. OK, that's it. Oh, and it's called smalt.

And that's all you really need to go. Fuck you. Yeah, we're reaching. We're really, really reaching. What about what's the pepper? What's the pepper mill called? Hmm. You know what it is?

It's pepper with no no E. Oh, yeah. It's like flicker, but pepper. It's it's PPPPR. Yeah. Pepper. Pepper. Pepper. I swear to God, we need to register that domain because, you know, it's coming. Yeah. We're saying it as a fucking joke, but somebody is looking at smalt right now going, hmm, pepper.

Yeah. Well, because smalt's the speaker. So you have to have, you know, like a subwoofer. So pepper will be the subwoofer. Oh, pepper is is we're going to we're going to get all hipster here. Pepper is vinyl that actually crush. It spins your records and crushes your pepper at the same time.

Oh, man. Holy shit. We're going to Indiegogo this crap. Oh, man. The best part about this article, I still think, was they do have the Internet of Shits tweet in there because I love that Twitter handle or Twitter feed. They're like, wait, these are all just words.

You're like replying to the smalt's press release, which is just all I got. You know what? Now I got to pull it up because I was I was laughing when I read it and I was just like, what the hell are these people thinking about it? And I'm looking at it. It does kind of look like a Google Home.

Smalt is a smart centerpiece designed exclusively for your indoor outdoor dining area. This multisensory device engage all of your senses, ensuring a fun and lively. That's it.

I love those. Some of the replies in here are just fantastic. What the fuck does it do? It's smalts. What, what, all of my senses? Do I put it in my ears? Oh, God. Yay.

Yay. Yeah. Yay, Internet. Brick-a-brick. The X-37B space plane has returned after two years of a secret mission. This is the Air Force's plane. It looks kind of like the shuttles did, but it's half the size.

It is weird. It's a horror story monster come to life. I just I look at this thing and it's just like it's got no eyes and it's got like it's cowl over its head. And I think it's going to like open these giant jaws and rip my head off. It's a very scary looking plane. It's a scary looking plane.

But yeah, two years straight up there. Just landed last week. Got a sonic boom in Florida. If you happen to be living there, looks cool as hell. And I'm just like, wow, what, what were they doing? We will never know. We'll never know. And it's, I mean, when you look at the people standing next to it, it's tiny.

Yeah, it is really tiny. I'm thinking like real genius space laser type of stuff up there. But who knows? Who knows? To serve and protect. But what you can get are sparkly lightsaber churros at Disneyland. Oh, God. Sold at the churro cart located outside of Star Tours.

The lightsaber themed churros are coated in vibrant colored sugar, either blue or red, depending on if you're feeling light side or dark side. It's not just any dyed sugar. It's shiny and filled with edible glitter and stars. Does it get much better than that? I think not, says Pop Sugar. And I say, fuck you.

There was nothing wrong with the original churro. I do not need it to be blue or red. And I don't need edible glitter and stars unless it's on a stripper. Edible. Yeah, exactly. Edible cancer on a stick for your children who, when you give them these probably seven dollar churros are going to seven.

Please, Jason. You haven't been in Disneyland in 20 years. Yeah. OK, so these $14 churros. The first thing they're going to do is go wrong, wrong, wrong, and then whack them off with each other. And well, that's probably a little too descriptive, but they're going to hit the churros together and then there's going to be $28 of churro on the floor and then nobody gets to eat anything except the birds.

God, I want a churro right now, though. And I've had two friends posting pics with them on Instagram and I'm just like, no, no, no. Yeah, it is wrong. There's nothing wrong with the originals, please. I love you, but I'm going to unfollow you if you post any more churros. Bill Gates has seven predictions for the future.

This comes from futurism.com. What they've done is kind of trolled his old talks, like in the past couple of years, and did a just kind of an amalgamation, as it were. So just a couple of them that I want to run through real quick because we're running along.

Africa will become entirely self-sufficient in terms of food production. Good luck, you're in a desert. In the year 2035, poor countries will no longer exist. Well, if they're less rich than the richer countries, that means they're poor, so that's a poor choice of words.

And countless jobs will be lost to automation. Yay! Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. Okay, there you go. All right, Bill. Feedback loop. We got a lot of feedback this week.

The first comes from our site, GOG.show, from Kevin Kayes. Hi, where's my weekly dose of GOG? You're listening to it. Well, the last one was in my liver in a sweaty bed in Los Angeles going, why can't I feel my toes?

And then... Yeah, last week was late because after I left, after my three and a half beers, the rest of them partied all night long. So, and then Jason had to fly back home. Actually, I went to bed at six o'clock, so we didn't party all night long. We had partied enough until you left.

Our friend of the show, Michael Burns, stuck around for about an hour and then we went to bed. I was in bed by six o'clock. Nice. We drank enough that I was still hung over for a day and a half when going to bed at six o'clock. So, yes. Sorry about that. Then I had to fly. Anyway, you got your show.

Shut up. Fair enough. Next one comes from Andy. Been a fan for a few years now. Saw this story and thought you might appreciate it. Twitter users exploit Trump website vulnerability to mock president slam GOP health bill.

This comes from The Hollywood Reporter. Mm-hmm. Yes, and I enjoyed this. I have not seen this. Oh, and it's going to autoplay, so I cannot see it because goddamn autoplay. Tell us about it, Brian. Yeah, it's just autoplayed for me, too.

That's the problem with autoplaying videos. Yeah, but I can't hear it when you play, so it's all good. Reddit users found a glaring vulnerability on DonaldJTrump.com that allows people to create their own URLs within the official site. So, links to Trump's campaign website with the URL, My Plan to Fuck the Poor, started to spread on Twitter early Tuesday morning with many people initially under the impression that they were real because it does link directly to the press release section of the president's website.

Wild cards gone wild. So, fake URLs just started to go everywhere. My detailed plan to destroy the people that voted for me, LOL suckers. Another bill I did not read that will endanger human life. How I plan to eliminate disability. My tax return history.

I had those 30,000 emails all along, suckers, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Okay. Good times. Our next comment comes from Joseph says, hi guys, enjoy your show. Haven't given you any money yet, but cross your fingers. I may develop some more generosity in the near future.

We are waiting with bated breath. Sending you generous vibes. Yes. What I can give you, though, is a book recommendation. I recently read a trilogy called Red Rising by Pierce Brown. Of all the stories I've ever read in my life, this is one of the most gripping and exciting. That is quite high praise. At the start, it feels a little like teen fiction that soon vanishes.

I highly recommend. Anyways, keep up on the good show. Thanks, Joseph. Thank you. All right. We will potentially check that out. We'll, we'll Rochambeau to see who has to take a look at it. Yeah. Definitely. All right. Next one comes from Joe Rischel.

Okay. We liked it. We liked Joe. He's been around for a while. Great show. You guys should drink more. LOL. It was hilarious. Thank you. Thank you, Joe. We appreciate that because there was a little trepidation there. Yeah. It was, you know. Yeah.

What are you going to do? Next one comes from Steve. Hi, guys. I began listening to you about a year or so ago. I've been listening to the current podcast since November, 2015, and I'm up to date with them because I listened to around 50 different podcasts and I'm a completist. I'm only up to episode 90 on my catch up list. Only about 104 more to go.

Yay. Well, you've made it through the ones that sounded a lot like the last week's. Yeah. Consider that one a throwback Thursday episode, I guess. Now, Steve then goes on to get really into Doctor Who breakdowns and recommendations.

I'm not going to read it because we've gone on this enough. But if you're really interested like I am, this will all be in the show notes. So there's some interesting stuff in there about how to potentially start getting into it, which I'm still not sure if I'm going to because, again, everybody's opinion is different.

OK, TLDR, start with Eccleston. That's pretty much it. All right. Next one comes from Tony D. Hey, I'll just started listening and I was intrigued by a quick comment one of you made about tech myths, especially specifically wondering if the Facebook Messenger app was always listening and trying to serve you ads based on what it overhears you're talking about.

This made me wonder about the existing affiliate networks and data that is shared among various websites. And I was hoping you all could provide some insight into how purchasing something from one vendor makes ads for that vendor show up when you visit other people's websites. OK, this is my dear Watson cookies.

Well, cookies and retargeting. Retargeting is what this entire thing is about. So if you go to Amazon and you search for something, they will share your unique ID and your search term with all of the ad networks who then send you the ads.

That's how that works. So all of these people have incestuous ad deals. So Amazon has probably ad deals with every ad network on the planet. So if you went and typed and I've done this, unfortunately, in the past poop emoji, try it.

Trust me. It's kind of funny. Every site you go to, you'll get a poop emoji swag for about three weeks. Yes, because I'm saying that because right next to me is my poop emoji pillow that I won on the morning dump podcast, which is no more.

And I did that once and I will never do it again. Yeah, I've got poop emojis following me around because I got one of those pillows just recently. Yeah, yes, they're cute pillows. If you go to my Twitter account, JP Def, you will see a picture of me with my poop emoji pillow.

I just posted it the other day as my background. There you go. Next up, Ryan Wall. Hey, guys. Wanted to say I really enjoy the show. I don't have the time to keep track of everything in the tech world and I like your condensed version once a week. The level of sarcasm is also highly appreciated. I also quite enjoy the security segment and I question concerning VPNs.

I understand the basic concept, but I was wondering if you're still vulnerable to a man in the middle attack. Short backstory. My ISP is Comcast and I found out that by using their modem, they maintain some sort of remote root level access to the device. Yes, they do. I had a technical issue and the tech support person was able to remotely reset the machine and the password for the Wi-Fi network I had set up.

Now, obviously, I should get my own box. I understand that. Yes. But if an ISP maintains that level of access on their modem, could they perform some sort of man in the middle attack and see if all my traffic, even if it's through a VPN, very much enjoy the show and hope to hear a response. Cheers, Ryan. P.S.

I may be a silly millennial, but I try and listen before I make a comment. Some of us aren't simple outrage machines that deserve everything with no work. Nice. Okay. Good for you, Ryan. Ryan. Yeah. Ryan, Jason and I kick this around internally. We are going to ask some learned people to make sure that what we believe is actually true.

So there will be some follow up possibly next week on the show, if not true. But what the way Jason and I both understand it is, no, they should not be able to see anything. So you should be okay. Yeah. With a VPN, it's a discrete tunnel between you and the VPN server.

And the fact that Comcast has root on your router should not matter one bit. I have the same router that you probably do. Yeah. And so does Brian. And if, trust me, if they could see the shit that's going through my VPN, there'd be a knock at the door.

And there hasn't been anybody showing up in windbreakers. So I think I'm all good. So yeah, the Swedish task force has not been dispatched yet. Yes, they have not. I should say, no, they have not. Yes, they have. Oh, that would be bad. Okay. Bye.

We will follow up with you next week if our learned sources get back to us with anything different. But we're 90, I'd say 98% sure about that. I'm 99% sure. But yes, we have punted this to Dave Bittner and he is looking internally and will get back to us with, as Brian would say, the learned response.

Yes. Over on Facebook, we got a message from Raul. Love the show, even though I'm a filthy millennial. I don't, did we ever call them filthy? Because that seems to come up a lot. I don't, I'm sure if anybody did, Brian, it was you. Look, if there's one thing you millennials do, it's shower. I'm cool with that.

That's true. They are very clean and smell good. You have apps for it. I mean, Jesus, fuck. Here is a link pertaining to terrible Indian coders and outsourced IT. This is following up on some of the stuff that we talked about and got in trouble with a couple weeks ago when we talked about this, even though it's kind of true.

Only 36% of Indian engineers can write compilable code, a study. So, yeah, I mean, this kind of, it is what it is. I don't even need to click the link. I know this one's true. We all know this to be true. So, and again, it's, it's, it just is what it is.

Now, there you go. Moving on to Twitter, Atria Mystery Bus. The GOG podcast confirmed that the two Mitch Rapp books written by Kyle, Kyle Mills author fit seamlessly into the series Vince Flynn created. Yes, absolutely. We did. I can look at you, Jason.

You, you were a learned, you gave a learned, learned source. And I, I stand by that. Um, Kyle Mills, you're a fucking great author and you did a great job. Yep. Uh, Bayrod wrote us, uh, episode two Oh eight. Somebody knows how to party.

Appreciate what you do. Thank you. And Jay Vig writes, uh, how fucking shit faced were you guys for episode two Oh eight? Best pod ever. You're welcome, Brian. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It makes me want to, it makes me want to up my Patreon pledge. Well, apparently we didn't make you one of that much cause you didn't, but that's okay.

We still love you, Jay. Um, but even though you, you, you cater to Brian, not me, that's okay. I know you have favorites. That's okay. Well, you know, I don't have the dulcet tones though, Jason. Of course not. Uh, Barrett Reese says the drunken ending to two Oh eight can only be described as Epic hashtag pre-licensed.

I wish I remembered why that would be funny. Oh, the guy that got the, the goo bang and was like, I'm downloading all this pre-licensed content. Oh, there you go. Yes. Yes. The pre-licensed, uh, I'm, I, I woke up the other night just thinking about that.

Just cried laughing. It was just, I don't know why it was that funny. Kenny from London writes the legendary return of drunken ranty Brian caused me to laugh like a madman on my walk home. Got a few stares. And over at iTunes, we got some ratings as well. So lots of feedback this week, uh, from Wilson, a five-star rating.

Uh, love the podcast. I've only recently become interested in tech, mostly due to a fascination with hashtag AI. He didn't do the hashtag. I just added that. So I was looking for some good podcasts to become more informed. I was listening to the cyber wire podcast and heard reference to the grumpy old geeks podcast. I'm glad I subscribed.

These guys are hilarious and talk about some interesting topics. I highly recommend this podcast to anyone interested in the stupidity of the internet and people in general. Enjoy. All right. Thank you. Well, so next one comes from J Vig. One of my favorites.

I'm also a grumpy old geek, 22 years in tech. Good on you, brother. And I love that they are too. They aren't afraid to call out the industry on its nonsense. I like that they curse and tell it like it is. Well, fucking a right. The occasional political doesn't bug me the way they claim it does for others.

Especially now that it's calmed down a bit, a post-election and inauguration. Yes, we've tried to tone it down, but, you know, booze kind of bubbles things up last week. Sorry about that. There are times when they are harsh on some tech things that I think they could like, but missed a facet of.

Overall, they are funny and refreshingly honest. Well, thanks, J Vig. And as long as that tech thing isn't Uber, because fuck them. Fuck Uber. And then we got our three-star rating from Keith114643222. So he thought long and hard about his name.

Content is okay, but unbearably unable to keep political comments out of an otherwise promising podcast grew old quickly. Unfortunately, the unbearable political people are able to stay out of tech. So we got to talk about them every now and then. Yeah. Hey, hey, hey, go back and listen to security this week.

We gave props. We gave props. We did. So, you know, we gave props to your side of the yard. So now I'm sure you're okay with us making political comments. Well, actually, we don't even know what side of the yard he's on. Maybe he just doesn't want to hear politics. Yeah, I know. I'm just, look, I'm playing devils or whatever. Okay.

Next one, we got a five-star from Hardcordo. Salty old geeks. Great podcast. It gives me enough salt to make it through the work week. Make sure you get a smalt. Smaltty old geeks. Great to keep up on some security news, new products, and learn about all the things to piss me off.

All right. Thank you, Hardcordo. If you want your question or comment read on the show, head over to GOG.show slash support and send us your feedback or questions that we can read on the air. And if you're so inclined, please head over to GOG.show slash iTunes and toss us a five-star and a snarky review.

Shout out! My closing shout out comes to the fans for not revolting after last week's crazy episode. The peasants stink on ice. Okay. All right. And Jordan and Jen for an awesome wedding. And also, Joey Ito, friend of the show and old friend of mine who had a baby yesterday.

I saw the photos. But he's having a baby, so he should get an Echo show. Yes, because, you know, most of the population does do that, Jason. Fucking breeders. Yep, that's us. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks.

GOG.show is our home base where you can listen to old shows, leave feedback, ask us questions, get links to our awesome sponsors, and stuff we like. If you're an app person, you can listen to us on the Podcast One app for iOS and Android. Get it at podcastone.com slash apps. If you'd like to become an official friend of the podcast, go to GOG.show slash support, where you'll find all the ways you can support the show and help keep us on the air.

To learn more about all the people who make the show possible, head over to GOG.show slash about. Show notes for all the links discussed in this episode can be found at GOG.show slash 209.

At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out.

It's discovering the brands you love across beauty, fashion, home, and culinary, all in one place. Whether you're getting ready for crisp mornings, cozy nights, or everyday moments, QVC has what you need for the season ahead.

With brands like Laura Geller, Philosophy, Ninja, and so many more. Shop now at QVC.com. This January, Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship takes over the ocean. The inaugural Brews Cruise sails from Miami to the Bahamas aboard the Norwegian Jewel.

Three straight days with pool deck bare knuckle fights in the Caribbean. Massive parties, beach events, DJs, cigars, tequila tastings, and nonstop action. The lineup reveals coming soon. Cabins are disappearing fast, and the prices won't stay this low. Reserve your spot with just $200 down at BKFSEA.com.