221: The Snark Tower

Today's show is brought to you by Eero. For free overnight shipping, visit Eero.com. At checkout, select Overnight Shipping and then enter promo code GOG to make it free. That's Eero.com. E-E-R-O.com. Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. How about a little follow-up? So for some reason, I continue to follow what's going on with the Amazon Alexa, particularly their skills. We've made fun of them repeatedly for a number of reasons. First off, most of them are useless. Second off, good luck finding anything. Third, good luck remembering what the hell the command is to turn anything on or off anyways. All the various issues that we have with the Alexa.

But they are finally addressing the one thing that I had been hoping for, which is the ability to control all your media. Now, you and I have both explored using third-party systems, all of which have sucked and not worked correctly. But they've now opened up basically the development capabilities for people to do so. And one assumes companies like Sony are already getting in there to create skills to enable hands-free control of their devices.

So hopefully everybody else will get on board and we won't need the crappy third-party stuff and we'll be able to just download an update for our TV and all of a sudden we can finally control our damn TVs. Yeah, it seems nice like you'd be able to set a default for, you know, okay, turn on the TV. It will know which TV it's going to use.

Yes. That would be very nice because that little blumpy device that you had me buy is in a box somewhere now because it barely worked. Oh, so is mine. It was a piece of crap. So, yeah. So, they finally opened up what they're calling the Smart Home Skill API. So, hopefully all these companies that actually know how to deal with their own systems will get on it and release updates for us.

Yeah, I noticed during the last Prime Day that there were a lot of Sony-enabled Alexa TVs. So, I think that, yeah, Sony definitely is jumping on the bandwagon for that. Yep. Which is nice. Yep. And last week we talked about Foxconn opening up a warehouse, or not a warehouse, a plant in Wisconsin.

Yes. Turns out the residents of Wisconsin are going to get fairly screwed by this. What? Yeah. Wait, hold on a second. Thus following in a long line of stories such as this in just the last couple months, which is, look, we're getting this big, great thing happening.

Look at all the tax incentives we're giving you to do that. Yep. Yeah. And Foxconn could be getting up to $200 million in cash every year for the next 15 years. You know, it works out to about $3 billion that it's coming out of the pockets of the Wisconsinians.

Yes. The cheeseheads take off. Yes. Mm-hmm. Good times. Winning. Yeah. Takeoff's actually Canada, but Wisconsin's close enough. Close enough. It's border-esque. So we've got the big eclipse coming on August 21st. And because we can't have nice things, there are a lot of companies selling fake solar eclipse sunglasses.

Nice. Which is not cool at all. It's been 38 years since the last total solar eclipse was visible in the continental United States. Do you remember it? And then I do not because I was five. Okay. I was, since I'm older than you, I do remember it.

I remember sitting outside in my school with all my friends and we're all like, half of us were getting blinded because we didn't have the crazy glasses. We had, you know, the cardboard with a hole in it and we didn't know how to use it. And then they all just ended up looking at it anyway. Yeah.

Which is basically what everybody does. Probably why I have glasses. Yeah. Yes. Well, you don't want to do that and you definitely want to protect your kids' eyes. So it is important to get these glasses. And because there are so many of these fake ones being sold that don't actually do anything and probably actually increase the harm that you're going to get because you'll be staring directly at the damn sun.

There is a, the proper standards and the full AAS, which is the American Astronomical Society Solar Eclipse Task Force has basically put out the safety guidelines and a list of reputable manufacturers and authorized dealers to solar filters and viewers. So check that out before you purchase them for your lovely child and yourself.

Okay. But your child is going to be screwed anyways. Well, way to start the show off. You're going to have a destroyed blind child. Okay. We've talked about this a lot on the show. And this is a very long form article. It's actually called Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation over at the Atlantic.

It is written by Jean M. Twenge from her forthcoming book, iGen, Why Today's Super Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy, and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood and What That Means for the Rest of Us. Get off our damn lawn.

This article is really depressing. It's a very long form read. It's very much worth it. I just, just this one paragraph here that I'll read. To those of us who fondly recall a more analog adolescence, this may seem foreign and troubling. The aim of generational study, however, is not to succumb to nostalgia for the way things used to be.

In other words, not to do Get Off My Lawn. It's to understand how they are now. Some generational changes are positive. Some are negative. Many are both. More comfortable in their bedrooms than in a car or at a party. Today's teens are physically safer than teens have ever been because they don't leave the house.

They're markedly less likely to get into a car accident and having less of a taste for alcohol than their predecessors are less susceptible to drinking's attendant ills. Psychologically, however, they are more vulnerable than even millennials were. Rates of teen depression and suicide have skyrocketed since 2011.

It's not an exaggeration to describe iGen as being on the brink of the worst mental health crisis in decades. Much of this deterioration can be traced to their phones. Well, the interesting thing about that is I guess my brother got out just in time. He just turned 26. So on the tail end of the millennial curve, he's more social than anybody I know.

You know, he's got tons of friends. They do things together all the time. They get out and are amongst the world. So I guess he just missed the, uh, just, just by missed it by that much. Yeah, it's, it's, and as this article points out again and again, and something that you and I have been talking about, uh, every study is just showing that whatever you're doing on your phone is making you depressed.

Social media is making you depressed. It's isolating. That makes you depressed. And every study is showing getting out of the house, being around people physically, being out in nature makes you happy. And unfortunately, an entire generation seems to just be getting sucked in by this stuff, which is understandable.

Look at how sucked in we are. And we didn't even grow up with it. We know the better things to be doing. We made it. That's our problem. Exactly. I've taken all social media off my phone and I haven't felt better in a long time. In the news.

And as we just alluded to, uh, because the younger generations are drinking less, which is probably a good thing, but millennials seem to be killing the beer industry. That's bad. I like my beer. Millennials aren't drinking enough beer to keep brands afloat. According to this, according to CNBC, Goldman Sachs has downgraded both the Boston Beer Company and Constellation brand on the data that younger consumers aren't drinking as much alcohol as older generations.

And the ones who do are drinking wine and spirits and not drinking beer. But what about all those hip hipsters in the craft brewery bullshit that's been going around for the last 10 years? That's being, I don't know. I mean, I've gone to a lot of these things and that's, that's all old people like us that are there.

Yeah. There's some younger people, but it's mostly being driven by those of us in our late thirties, early forties. You know, beardy types that are still escaping Generation X. People who need mustache wax. Exactly. So, yeah. So this is, this is not good.

Oh, well, speaking of not good, Facebook buys Oslo, which is, it's a, your favorite, Brian. It's an AI company. Yeah. They're trying to bolster their efforts to make Messenger more useful, which I would say they're probably going in the opposite direction.

Uh, this company has what they called a knowledge layer, which, you know, I like to say a very big decision tree, but yes, which is not a, I, no, it's not. So they're going to, it's a goddamn database. That's what it is.

Well, what it is, is it's a way for the guy that used to run, uh, the Android platform at Facebook to go out, start another company, get, go back, get bought by Facebook to get a real payday and then go on his merry way because he's not even joining the team at Facebook. It was a fire.

So nice. So smart. I know. I wish we were that smart. I mean, too. We had too much, too much crowd, too much beer. That was our problem. Yeah. So speaking about Facebook, we've talked a couple times about how Facebook supposedly was having a coolness problem and that the kids weren't joining.

And I think you and I, even at the time we talked about this two years ago, I was like, no way. Facebook is fine. Nothing's going to happen to Facebook. Facebook is going to destroy everybody anyways. And guess what? We were right. There you go. So, yeah. But, uh, you know, they did it a very pirate style.

They saw, they looked around, they saw what the apps were that were more popular, that were getting more popular with the young kids. And then they basically lied, cheated, stole, recreated, and destroyed those companies. Well, I mean, Facebook's issue back then was the mom problem.

That was as kids were, you know, they were having their little Facebook time and then the parents joined up and the kids were like, ah, no, mom, get out of my room. Watching TV. Leave me alone. So they went to Snapchat. Now they've grown up a bit and they're like, eh, who gives a shit?

I'll go back to Facebook. But honestly, I think Instagram is what ate Snapchat's lunch. That's easy. That's easy enough to trace. And kids still use Instagram. The interesting thing about this story is that it does the headline and the writing itself tends to make you think Facebook.

Well, no, not the actual site or app Facebook. It's the umbrella company. The umbrella company that owns Instagram and WhatsApp. Instagram and WhatsApp are massive for the younger generations, not so much Facebook itself. So it is the umbrella company, not the specific app.

Which is why they didn't rename Instagram or WhatsApp to anything Facebook. They kept it separate. Yep. You never see the Facebook logo on those things. Very smart of them. Very, very smart of them. You know, I thought we were going to get away with no Uber news this week. I didn't put in a single Uber story.

Yeah. Well, I didn't say it was about you. Nothing. It's not always about you, Brian. Sheesh. Uber Singapore stepped on their dick. Big time. So they bought a thousand of these cars called Vesels or Vesels or Vesels.

I'm going to go with Vesel. Vesel. Veseli. No, it's Singapore, not Italiano. Well, they leased them to drivers in Singapore. But unfortunately, those cars had been recalled for bad wiring because the car might catch on fire. Well, guess what happened to one of the Uber's cars with a fare inside?

Yep. Caught on fire. Oopsies. What are you going to do? And they're like, yeah, we didn't. We could have been better with that because they knew. They knew. It wasn't the executives, but the people at Uber in Singapore, they knew that these cars had been recalled and that they were a danger to the drivers and the passengers.

But they're like, eh, it's easier to apologize than ask permission. Fuck it. We'll keep them on the road. What could possibly go wrong? Yeah. But it's a recall. They're going to get fixed for free. So why didn't they just take them back? Right. But I guess if cars off the road, it's not making money.

Nope. Nope. It's not. We've had a lot of stories recently about what's going on on Twitter. Twitter? Particularly regarding our current president, Donald Trump, who uses his personal Twitter account rather than the POTUS account to make statements and communicate with the masses, as it were.

And we've also seen a fair amount of people basically considering it a badge of pride to be blocked by the account. You'll see people celebrate when that happens and LOL and screenshot it and whatnot. This could be very bad for Mr. Trump because a court has now ruled that a politician blocking followers violates free speech.

If you were going to use social media as your bully pulpit, you have to be able to allow everybody to see what you're saying. You cannot block people. The court has found that. A federal court in Virginia took on the issue on behalf of the plaintiff blocked by a local county politician and basically said, yeah, if you're going to use that to communicate with your constituents, you have to allow all of your constituents access to that.

So, Mr. Trump, better stop blocking people. Yeah, and what's going to come of it, though? Nothing. Nothing. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. I just think it's an interesting development because it's gotten to the point where, you know, we, in the back of our minds, we treat social media as just this kind of whimsical, silly little thing that exists.

No, it's for serious these days. This is a real method of communication with legal implications. Well, we'll see if there are legal implications. That's the real trick is what's going to happen to people who do it, what's the recourse for the constituents, and when can we sue the carrot?

That's really what I'd like to know. Right. Apple, Apple, Apple, Apple. Speaking of stepping on your dicks this week, everybody's wondering what the iPhone 8's going to have, what it's going to look like, all this good stuff.

Well, Apple told us themselves by putting in graphics in the new HomeKit APIs, or maybe it's the HomePod APIs, that had basically different function calls for different features that have not been announced yet, like some facial recognition stuff and the layout of the phone, which does not have a home button on it anymore.

Oh, wow. Project management fail. Yep. Big time. So, nice one. Nice one, Apple. What are you going to do? Yeah, get rid of the Home button. That's interesting. I like the developer's last name who found it is Rambo. I thought that was funny. Yeah. In good news for Apple, though, they have managed to sell a bunch of iPads again.

Initially, iPad sales were stagnant. They have taken off again. And do you know how they did it, Jason? You tell me, Brian. Got rid of the higher-end features and made them cheaper. Okay. They went the Amazon route. Pretty much. This is something that Apple is not known for doing.

Apple does not remove features. Apple does not make things heavier and thicker than previous versions, but they are now. And they're doing it to be able to drop the price, which makes sense, because iPads are goddamn expensive. Yes, they are. So this is totally making sense. I mean, I'd buy a lot more of them if they were cheaper.

I'd like having them around. No, I mean, they're fantastic. And the interesting thing is the stuff that they took off is really good for, if you're not going outside, like the anti-reflective coating. Yeah. You kind of need that if you're ever going to use it outside. Right. But, you know, I've got an iPad Pro and I love it.

And if I could afford it, I would get the new, you know, cafeteria tray-sized iPad Pro, because that thing looks fantastic, but I can't afford it. So, yeah. But yeah, for newbies who want an iPad, 329, that's doable. Yep, I agree. And you're going to want to go to our show notes for this one.

We have been following Hyperloop and Hyperloop One. And making fun of it often. Making fun of it often and the various trials and tribulations they've had getting this thing going and figuring out where it's going to be and whatever. But they've done a full test run in the Nevada desert.

It's a 28-foot-long pod in a gigantic concrete tube. And they have taken a video, and it's so cool. Well, the thing about the video is it's very cool, but they kind of, in the middle of it, go all CGI on it, and you don't get to see the full test.

I agree completely. I hated the fact that they did that. I wanted to see the straight shot, as Gizmodo calls it. It looks like a Tron-inspired fantasy. I wanted just the straight shot of the actual test without going off into CGI. CGI fantasy land. Yep. But it's very cool.

It's very cool. It is very cool. I can't wait to take one of these things. They've got to build them. They look fantastic. The sad part is, as they point out, is that great, awesome visual that we're getting of the test, you would never, ever see because it'll be completely sealed on the inside. Yeah. No windows, which is probably good because all it would look like, you know, a couple hundred miles an hour or strobe lights.

Yeah, pretty much. You know what? They just need to make it a party car. No epileptics can ride. Right. It's got to be an EDM party car. You get your free shot of Molly when you get on. It is just a dance party all the way to New York City, baby. Oh, Tesla is also, you know, not just creating the Hyperloops, but the Model 3 is making its debut now.

Yes. Well, it's supposedly, you know, the cheaper Tesla. For a Tesla. For a Tesla. It is cheap. Yeah. Apparently, if you want it with more than, you know, sitting on like a milk crate and a fan, like, you know, a handheld fan for air conditioning, you got to put out some money for these things, and a decent one is going to run you about 50 grand, which is not a cheap car.

No. If it's, the options always get you. Seriously. And, you know, I'm curious how many people are going to be pissed off about this and cancel and just eat their, you know, eat their deposit, but. I don't know. I agree that it's definitely not good for the PR that it's been trumpeted as the cheaper version, and the price point they released is the no frills, no nothing.

Oh, you want air with that model? But this is, realistically, it's not any different from how everybody else promotes their cars. Yeah, but it's all. I mean, their add-ons are pretty pricey. Right. Yeah. They are. Okay.

Bitcoin. Bitcoin. Oh, boy. Have we talked about Bitcoin a lot and still kind of been vaguely confused about it all the time? Yeah. Enough so that I, you know, I would personally never recommend investing in it. And I do believe, I think I was right. Bitcoin is divided into two.

Uh-huh. I don't really know how that works. Uh, but disagreements about how to operate the cryptocurrency have now led to a new strand called Bitcoin Cash, which is breaking off from the Bitcoin system. It's all what's called a hard fork from Bitcoin, a virtual currency. See, I don't understand any of this.

It doesn't sound good. It sounds very unstable to me, which is not what you're looking for, really, when you're trying to invest and not lose a lot of money. See, I know a lot of people now that have made a ton of money on Bitcoin and now Ethereum. Ethereum is the new, you know, pretty boy on the block.

And people are making ungodly amounts of money with that. I would like to caveat that with also people are losing lots of money. Yeah. You've got to. When it fluctuates that much, there are winners and there are losers. You've got to hang on to it for the long term. You can't just buy it and dump it. It's not a, it's not one of those types of things.

But people who bought Bitcoin way back in the day. Yep. Big money. Big, big money. And I wish I had me some from back in the day instead of being a cynical old fart and not putting any money into it. I'm still too worried about the whammies. Yeah. Well, here's the deal.

We don't know what we're talking about most of the time. And that's why we're poor. But yeah, we'll see how this shakes out. It's pretty new, like what's going on with this. So I think we'll get more info over the coming weeks. But I'm going to start diving into the crypto side more because I've got friends that are investing in it and are doing the real deep dive.

So they're giving me good resources on where to go learn about it. And you can bring it to the show and we can all learn with you. Yeah. Yeah. You know, if I might, you know, just throw like a hundred bucks or two into Ethereum and see how it does. Yeah. Take those Twitter spoils that you've made. Yeah. Shut the fuck up.

One of the problems of doing a weekly show is sometimes such a story so great hits the news. But by the time we get around to recording our podcast, it's been played out. Yeah. And this is that story. NASA is hiring someone to protect Earth from aliens. You've heard about this everywhere.

This has been played out to death. It's still a great story, though. What a job. Yeah. And it's been around since 1968, apparently. Yeah. Well, you know, Tommy Lee Jones can't keep doing it forever. That's true. That's true. Now, one thing that a lot of people have not seen is the old mission control from the Apollo days.

They're trying to restore that control room because it is a national monument, apparently. But, you know, after the Apollo missions, they reuse the same room for the shuttle missions and it's kind of beat up now. Yeah. And they're trying to restore it to its, you know, glory days from the Apollo missions.

And the city that it's in has actually donated, I think, $3.2 million to the restoration, which they're, I think they're saying is going to cost around $4 to $5 million. Right. So they started a Kickstarter campaign to get the rest of the money. It was a $250,000 minimum.

They've already surpassed that. They've got two weeks to go. And the thing about the Kickstarter campaign is the city that Mission Control is in there. Webster, Texas. That was it. I couldn't remember the name to save my life. And I hate autoplaying videos, so I didn't want to risk it.

Because the link to CNET will autoplay a video for us. But they're matching the Kickstarter money up to $400,000. So they've got, you know, I think they're at $322,000. So next couple weeks here, go throw in a few bucks. Yep. Very cool. Yep. Can't wait to see that thing restored.

Apps and doodads. I finally got my Apple AirPods, Jason. And? I do not feel any burning desire to get a watch. Okay. I do feel like a douchebag wearing them. That'll pass.

All things pass. I'm not so sure about that. The sound quality is great. A little lacking on the bass, I would say. In fact, very lacking on the bass. But, you know, other than the Sennheisers, what aren't? Yeah. You really, you know, that's a tough comparison to make there.

Yeah. So I'm basically comparing them to the, oh gosh, what were those called? The Bluetooth headsets I've had for a couple of weeks now. The Will.i.am ones, yeah. Yes. Yeah. So I'm comparing them to those. Sound is better than those. Definitely have no Bluetooth dropout issues, which I was having with the Will.i.am headphones.

What about the battery life? Battery life is better, but not great. But because they have that cool little capsule thing, it's a lot easier. I meant your phone battery life because you complained when you got the Will.i.am ones that your phone battery was like, you know, you could watch it go down.

Well, I forgot about that. So therefore, not bad. Okay, good. Yeah, because I saw no drop off with battery life when I got the AirPods. I haven't even thought about that. So it's been totally fine. Yeah, exactly. So that's for whatever reason, the Will.i.am stuff drains the phone battery like no tomorrow. This does not.

So the problem I have with it, and there are multiple problems, I'm going to have to buy the little stringy thing because I am just so used to either with old school headphones that, you know, had a cable or the Will.i.am ones just being able to take them out of my ear and drop them so that they fall across my chest.

I have to, these obviously you have to put in a pocket or something when you take them out because there's nowhere to do it. I also do not like not having access to volume as a button. Again, the Will.i.am ones had a little thing and sort of the cabled ones, so you could do volume left, right?

You can do that on your Apple Watch, by the way, just saying. I'm not going to invest $400 to be able to change volume, Jason. But you can also do forward and next and skip 30 seconds for your podcast apps. All of those things are not available.

You have to go back to basically using the phone if you want to do them, or you can double tap and leave it on Siri, but then I'm like double tapping going Siri lower, and that just seems silly. Oh, yeah. So I've turned that off and I just have it to pause now. But again, with audio, we'll talk about that a little bit later.

With audio being all over the map, in terms of loudness for podcasts and for music, I really, really, really miss having easy access to volume control. The other thing I don't like is if you take one. I was going to say, I think the one thing that I've gotten really good at is I know where the volume on my phone is through my pants, and I know where the volume is, so I just tap it through my pants.

That's kind of how I do it. Yeah, I got to tell you, in the last week, I've gotten very good at doing the same thing because I'm generally listening while I'm on my bike, so I have to catch my leg at the right proper rotation, and I'm banging on the volume through my biking shorts. Yep. It's kind of ridiculous. You do get kind of good at that, though.

It's one of those adaptations. Yeah. And the other thing I don't like, and this is just a me thing, probably, if you take either of them out of your ear, it'll automatically stop the audio. See, I love that. I would love to be able, I want it to be able to sense if I've kept one in my ear or not so it just keeps playing, because I'll often leave podcasts going, pop my thing out because somebody's asking me a question or bugging me on the street.

I want to keep it going, and I'm just, oh, hey, yeah, okay, no problem, pop it back in, and I've not had any break in the sound. So that could just be a BME thing, but you'd think it would be a setting. Yeah, I think that's a you thing, because, I mean, when I take one out, that means I need to focus on something else. So if I want to focus on something else, I don't want something in my ear.

I don't like to multi, I like to multitask. Yeah, yeah. Go do the research on that one. We know it doesn't work. But overall, they've been fine. I'm going to keep using them. The other, the last thing as I'm gearing up for travel, which bums me out, is the fact that I can't use any Bluetooth headsets on planes.

I still need to bring my cabled headset with me. Why not? Because most planes don't have Bluetooth audio coming from their entertainment centers. Like, if I'm watching a movie. Oh, okay. I thought you meant you can use it with your iPhone on a plane. I'm like, bullshit. No, no. The term Bluetooth still works.

No, if I'm using the in-plane air systems, entertainment systems, none of those have Bluetooth at this point. Yeah, but I mean, you only get three hours on the AirPods anyway, so you can bring your Sennheisers for that, because that's what you want on a plane, because it blocks out the rest of the sound. Well, that's what I always do anyway, so.

Yep, but I can't, you know, no one headphones to rule them all when to bind them, so. I just wish these weren't white. I wish they came in another color. I do wish that too, but that's, you know, that's Apple. What are you going to do? Buy a paint marker? That's pretty much it.

And a funny thing happened to me this week as I was just sitting around the house. We talked a few weeks back about Spotify spoofing different, you know, people figuring out ways to game the system on Spotify to get plays for things that they, you know, didn't really do hopping on famous people and current trends and things like that.

I gave up asking Alexa to play the Beach Boys because apparently there's some kind of rap group or something called the Beach Boy, and that's that. Good fucking luck. For whatever reason, it just will not play the Beach Boys, even though if you go through Spotify or Amazon and type in Beach Boy, it brings up the Beach Boys, not Beach Boy.

But for whatever reason, if you wanted to play it and you're using the voice command stuff, you're never going to get the goddamn Beach Boys. Now, the funny thing about this is why the hell are you playing the Beach Boys? Pet Sounds is a genius album, man. Oh, my God. Here's what you do.

I ran into this with some other artists on Spotify. Make a Beach Boys playlist. Yep, exactly. That's all you got to do. That's the workaround. I've had to do that for a couple other artists as well, that for whatever reason, the voice recognition just will not get their name.

Yeah, yeah. No, I've had the same thing happen. I just went and created a playlist, threw everything in it. Because if I'm just playing an artist, I want it to shuffle anyway, so it doesn't matter. Yeah. And I did that, especially do that with the Smiths, because it always leans towards the live tracks, which I can't stand.

So I made a Smiths playlist that just has the studio tracks. Right. I hate when they just put all of the live crap up front. I agree. First world problems. Indeed. Well, one thing that you don't have to worry about so much anymore on Spotify is the aforementioned volume issues.

Spotify has apparently, as of the end of May, made a change to its music files that went unnoticed by almost all of the service's listeners. What was apparent, however, to sound engineers and studio wizards was that the volume had been reduced on every Spotify-hosted track. It's important to note that it's only the Spotify-hosted tracks.

There are a number of artists and random things on Spotify where they are not hosting anything. It's a weird system. Using software called Dynameter, this collection of audio files took measurements of popular playlists like the Global Top 50 and albums of genres from all over the place and discovered that Spotify catalog had become quieter.

Which is good because a lot of people were engineering things to be louder than they should be or you lose dynamics. And the whole point of dynamics is to give you feeling and emotion. And people have just been cranking and cranking and cranking. So things are as loud as possible to get people's attention for some reason.

Spotify is fighting against that. I'm happy that they are doing that. I would like to see this go across the board. We do. And this is why people are losing their hearing. You know, everybody's wearing these headphones, jacking the volume up as much as possible. And then so are the providers. They're cranking, cranking the volume levels on this stuff.

Well, I mean, this came out in the iPod era. Remember when Apple came out with the like the max volume setting? Yes. Where, you know, you could put it down to like, say, seven and say, never go past this. Because, you know, people were losing their hearing because they would crank their iPods all the way up.

And there were times, man, you pop them in and you don't realize that the scroll wheel had been moving in your pocket. And you put it in and you have to like rip your headphones off your head because you just you start bleeding out your eyeballs because it was so loud. Yep. Yeah, exactly. So at least they're taking some steps to deal with that now.

So good on you, Spotify. I'm impressed. Good for you. And the last little story I saw, magnetic tape data storage. We thought that was gone for good, didn't we? Yes, we did. It's not. Okay. They've made. Yeah. So Seagate, IBM and Sony, sorry, not Seagate, IBM and Sony have made a breakthrough on tape technology, which will this will only be for archiving massive amounts of data, not an actual drive that you'll have like running in your system.

When you have to back up your AI. Yes. When you have to back up your decision tree. It's a new type of tape that can reportedly hold 201 gigabits or roughly 25 gigabytes per square inch. That does not sound impressive because you think of a tiny micro SD card that can hold 256 gigs.

But then you remember that you can wrap tape up in a circle really, really, really, really tightly. And not much. You can not much of a tape if you're only buying it by the inch, you know, it's a couple of feet. So you can fill a cartridge over a kilometer of this tape, which can store 330 terabytes of data in less space than a hard drive takes up, which is fantastic.

I mean, that's unbelievable. Getting it back off takes a little while and walking it past, you know, any kind of magnet. Whoopsies. Yeah. Same thing happens with a hard drive, too. You still have the same issues there. True. And you got to get a real big pencil to roll up that tape when it gets all garbled up.

Only old people will get that one. This episode of Grumpy Old Geeks is brought to you by the new Eero and Eero Beacon. As a Grumpy Old Geek, I've been dealing with crappy Wi-Fi ever since it was invented.

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Media Candy. Now, Brian, you've gotten me into the Geeks and Beats podcast. I was going to put this in the show notes in case you hadn't listened to it, because this episode had your name all over it. They did an episode this week on sex bots. They did. Now, granted, everything they talked about in the show, we have covered ad nauseum before, but, you know, I would just like to say, good episode, guys.

Nice try. I'll give you an A for effort there. But, yeah, until you actually have the balls to take the devices and try them out for reviews on the show, you ain't got nothing on us, baby. You got to remember, Jason, two things. First off, they're Canadian, so they're not going to do that.

And secondly, they did announce that they are kind of doing they're not doing news based shows these time this time around. They're doing kind of overall topic based sort of stuff, a wrap up of a topic. So, yes, we beat them to every single story and the whole thing, but we're news.

They just did the wrap up. So I thought it was an enjoy. It was very funny. It was I was really curious to see how they were going to skirt around many of the things that one would have to discuss if you're talking about sex bots being the nice Canadians that they are.

They did a good job. They did a very good job. You know, it's almost safe for work. It's almost safe for work. Yes. I mean, there is some teledildonics talk in there and some things like that. But yeah. And this just reminds me of the old the old FUF me days. What is old is now new again.

Isn't it though? Yes. Speaking of things that are old and now new again, I got this from Sean Bonner on Twitter this morning that made my day. Video of Jawbreaker playing their first show in 21 years. Man. Oh, I can't wait to see them. They're definitely a little bigger, a little rounder, got a little more a little more junk in the trunk, as they say, but they sounded great.

And I got a month and a half till I get to see him again in person. I saw their second to last show before they broke up. So this will be this will be fun. I cannot wait. Very excited for you. Yeah. Thank you very much. And thank you to Sean Bonner for pointing that one out. Awesome. I was scrolling about Netflix this week and I watched The Truth is in the Stars.

What is that? It is a documentary with William Shatner sitting down with scientists, innovators, and celebrities to discuss how the optimism of Star Trek influenced multiple generations. Apparently not Adam Savage. No, did not sit down with Adam Savage.

It's kind of funny. It was decent. I mean, Shatner is so... He's at peak Shatner in this documentary, I would say. Okay. There's no other way to describe it. Really interesting people. What Jason Alexander was doing in the middle of all these scientists is beyond me.

The scientist parts and the innovators parts, those were great, really interesting people that he talks to. It's good. It's fine. It's a good introduction to kind of where science is at right now in a couple different genres with William Shatner being William Shatner.

Okay. Maybe I'll check it out. It's worth it. I think it's what? It's an hour and 26 minutes. Could have probably just been an hour, but worth it. Okay. You know, I always like documentaries, so we'll go. Yeah, me too. It was fine. It was great. William Shatner is also in the news, apparently, because he's going a little crazy on the Twitter.

He's always been big on Twitter, but he's going hardcore right wing, you know, to hell with you progressive type people right now, which is vaguely against what he originally set out to do on Twitter because he was very much, we're not going to do politics.

No politics. But he's doing politics now. Yeah, he's trying to keep up with George Takei. And there, well, he's basically, he is the anti-matter to George Takei's matter. Yeah, that's what I figured. It seems to be exactly what's going on on Twitter right now. And yeah, so people are like going, well, what the hell, man? You used to be progressive as Captain Kirk and all that stuff.

Two things. First off, that was a character that was written for him. That was scripted. Yes. That was scripted. And in a nutshell, people do change and they do tend to get more conservative as they get older. So Shatner's not young. Let the man do what he wants. Yeah, no, you can't.

He's Shatner. Just let him go. Exactly. And I got two things sent to me by a friend of the show, Andy Stachansky, that I watched on the tube of the U. The first is another documentary following a generation of post-punk musicians who took the synthesizer from experimental fringes to the center of the pop stage called Synth Britannia, obviously heavy on your Depeche modes and things of that nature, really engaging and interesting and enjoyable and a lot of footage from a lot of these seminal bands that we think of now

that came out of the late 70s, 80s, that is super old and probably never before seen. I thought it was fascinating seeing like a very, very, very young Martin Gore from Depeche mode talking about synthesizer and how it changed the way he wrote.

Great. Good stuff. Cool. And then the second one is a funny little video. This is Rational Funk. This guy, Dave King, who is a professional drummer. He's also he does instructional videos on on YouTube. Most of them quite serious.

This one was episode 21, Lady Gaga and laptops. And he just kind of makes fun of Lady Gaga and laptops and electronic music in general. And Andy sent it to me because he thought I would get a kick out of it. And it was very, very funny. I particularly like the end of the clip where he's talking about how to get hired by Lady Gaga.

And you just have to dress stupid and not know any music. And then he just starts playing his playing his drums with the laptop because he doesn't know how actually how to use it. But he knows how to get a video on YouTube. Hmm. Surprising there. I'm sure he has somebody who does that for him.

Yeah, I'm sure. Now, Brian. Yes, I. I don't know what got into me. I saw you post this on social media and I was wondering this. I was like, how much wine did you have? Oh, enough. I had enough and I was out of everything else to watch.

I'd wrapped up all my I got caught up with Preacher, which, by the way, is killing it this season. Amazing show. And there it was staring me in the face. The circle. That book was horrible. The book was I thought the book was mediocre and OK, mediocre on the high side on the the high side of shitty, the low side of mediocre.

OK, OK. It was right on the tipping point where I didn't quit it, but I should have. I reversed that trend with watching this movie. I made it a minute forty eight before I couldn't take it anymore. It is so bad. So unbelievably bad.

Even with Tom Hanks and Emma Watson, it's bad. Oh, my God. You have you have no idea. And I mean, it really is. It is a complete ripoff of antitrust from what I saw. And antitrust, at least it had Ryan Phillippe in it, who I don't even like in that movie was better.

But and I like Emma Watson and I like Tom Cruise or not Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks. But this the writing in this was terrible. The story is terrible. Everything about it is terrible. And then when when you look at the production credits at the beginning, you know, you're expecting the 20th Century Fox or the Universal logo.

No, this is funded by like a hedge fund in Abu Dhabi. Yeah. Well, that's becoming more common, to be fair. That's true. That's true. But as a palate cleanser, the Lost Boys turns 30 years old last week. Wow. Wow. Wow.

Yeah. I love that. Well, that was a good movie. Nothing to complain about there. It's good stuff. I loved it. So let's continue in that nostalgia vein. The Karate Kid is getting a revival. Cobra Kai. No way. Yep. With the original two guys, Ralph Macchio, who played La Russa, and William Zapka, who played Johnny Lawrence.

They're both reprising their roles. This will be a YouTube Red series. And before you get super happy about it and think it's going to be a straight up return to the glory of the dojo, it's going to be a comedy. Well, I hope so. The original was a comedy.

Ish. It was comedy with a heart. It was a real story. This is, I think this is going to be a piss take and we'll see how well it does. Now, did we, I don't know if we talked about this on the show. I watched this on Facebook a couple of weeks ago. The guy who did the review of the Karate Kid where they actually made Johnny the hero in how Ralph Macchio was the bully.

Yeah. Did we talk about that on the show? I think we did. It sounds familiar. Okay. If not, I'm going to have to dig up the video for that and put it in the show notes because my God, that was the funniest thing I've seen. It's just like totally flipped the movie on his head and showed how La Russa was just a total dick and bully to Johnny and stole his girlfriend and broke his radio.

Whatever it was. It was funny stuff. Good stuff. Okay. I've got another headline that is what you think you want, but then you find out as you read the article that it's not what you want it to be. Nightmare Before Christmas to get a sequel next year. Not really. Okay. What they're going to do is there's going to be a comic book called The Nightmare Before Christmas Zero's Journey.

Boo. Which is not really a sequel to Nightmare Before Christmas. So thank you for that entirely misleading headline. I hate when they do that thing with a comic. They did that with Buffy. They did it with Firefly. It's just like, no, just let it die. Yeah, just let it go. Speaking of things that should have just been let go and died, The Dark Tower came out this week.

All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. What's going on in the Darklands? I'm going to get me that gunslinger. So apparently your worries have been founded this entire time. The probably worst. People are saying, okay, it's not really all that bad, but that's just a nice way of saying it's not good.

Yeah. Which is not shocking because this never should have been a movie. This should be a Game of Thrones style, eight season long, throw a bazillion dollars out of it, HBO miniseries. This should never have been a movie. And what a horrible thing it apparently is.

Um, it's, it's, as it says, one of the reviews, it's more forgettable than just plain bad. And this is one of the finest series of all times and is anything but forgettable. The funny thing, the thing that got me is it's 90 minutes. How can you do anything with that in 90 minutes?

Yeah. I mean, I know they're trying to, this is like the, they're dipping their toe in the water for the upcoming TV series and, you know, the whole planned world of the Dark Tower. But I, who knows? I bet that's all going to get scrapped now because the movie sucked. Yeah.

I thought I, I didn't delve too into this just because it depresses me, but I remember I, I did hear something after the bad reviews were starting to roll in for the movie about how they're really going to kind of pretend that the movie didn't exist for the series now, which is probably smart. And I think there's some, there's some serious rewriting going on for the TV series right now because, you know, they, they try to take on it and obviously it didn't work.

And the TV series picks up at book five, doesn't it? I think that's where it. Yeah. Hard to tell, especially because the movie doesn't really follow any of the books. See, it seems like they put all the books in the blender and just said, yeah, there you are going to go. Yeah. But they're saying Idris Elba is great in it.

Well, that's not surprising. Not so much about Matthew McConaughey, but where's their surprise there? Well, that's also not surprising. We had friend of the show, Rob Reed on a couple of weeks ago, and I asked him for some recommendations on what he was reading.

And the first book he told me was Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Nouvelle. And I went through the book and it's, you know, space robots on earth and things like that. Kind of, it's, it's an interesting book. I enjoyed the, I enjoyed it quite a bit.

So much so that I broke tradition and immediately went and got book two and went through. To be fair, you didn't break tradition. That is the tradition. This is the tradition we're trying to break. We're trying to break the tradition. Yes. Unfortunately, I did stick with tradition and went right into book two as soon as I was done with book one without that, that necessary time needed for reflection.

And when I got through book two, sadly, I was disappointed. It was okay, but, so I give, I give Sleeping Giants four out of five. I really enjoyed it. I like the storytelling. I like the writing. It wasn't, you know, it's not like super hard sci-fi.

Right. It's not exactly young adult. It's kind of in the middle of there, but it was decent. It was decent. Good space robot story, aliens and all that stuff. But on the second one, yeah, not so much. Could kind of, it's so telegraphed that, and that's the problem I'm seeing with all of these trilogies nowadays.

They're so telegraphed. I can't really even enjoy them. The only one, the only one that's done it. See, for me, it feels like they're writing for the movie deals. Yeah, exactly. They're not, they're not writing novels. They are writing scripts. Mm-hmm. And that's, that's the problem I'm having with a lot of these series now.

Yep. Yeah, whatever that weird, that was the Red Rising series, I think, that I started. Same problem with that one. By the end of the second one, I'm like, just stick, you know, shoot me in the face. It's, it's, you know, the Mockingjay syndrome. We'll just call it that. Yeah. I mean, a script is a script.

Fine. Write a script. But the point of a novel, of a book is, is supposed, it's, it's Ender's game. It's, it's the Dark Tower. It should be very difficult to adapt. You have the ability with a novel to get so deep and have big ideas and play with the space-time continuum, whatever you want to do, especially as a sci-fi book.

Why is everybody, well, duh. Money. We know the answer. It's money. It's, we could nobody, you're not going to make money being an author, but you are going to make money if they turn it into a big goddamn series starring a bunch of tweens. Yeah. Yeah. The latinum must flow, as they say, but it just saddened me that I got, got to book two and it was just like that.

I will finish this one though, because I did enjoy book two enough. Like I said, okay, four stars, four out of five for the first one, three out of five for the second one. And I have high hopes for the third, but it's going to be another year. It's another one where, you know, they, they build these things out.

So it's like, boom, one next, one year, one year. Yeah. Um, and exactly, I was going to say though, that the only book series in recent history that I have not been disappointed with when they did one. And then next year, book two is the Bobaverse series. That's true.

Those are solid. And the next one's coming out pretty soon. So, but those are also, I would argue, incredibly well-written and you couldn't just turn that you would, they're not scripts. No, they're not all over the map. You would, there, there, there are some deep ideas. There is some serious playing of, uh, over time and distances and things like that, that you could never, you would have to totally rewrite it to adapt it to be a movie.

So that's the, he's doing, he's writing novels. Yeah. Put on him. And I would like to actually ask him the question, did you have this entire thing written when you went to the publisher? Because it feels like this is, this is not one of those things where he's like, they wrote book one, then they had another year and a bigger bonus to go write book two with the, with the mandate that this is going to be turned into a three or four part movie series.

It's like, it feels like Bobaverse came in fully formed, ready to go. So I'd like to ask him that question someday. But anyway, that's what I got this week. Cool. Security. We're back again this week with David Bittner from the cyber wire.

How you doing, Dave? I'm doing well, gentlemen. Nice to be back. Shall we start off talking about the wolf? Okay. Have you had a chance to watch this, Brian? I did not because you added it this morning. I've been, I've been babying. So baby time.

It does seem to be the Christian Slater is definitely diving into that. Let's typecast me situation. Yeah. Well, so let's, let's back up the truck here for a second. The wolf is a commercial series by HP. And so far there's two of them. There's two, like seven minute movies.

And I got to say, they're better than the entire last season of Mr. Robot. Well, that's not, that's not a tough putt. Yeah. They are really good. And, and that's a hard thing to, yeah, that's a hard thing to pull off with something that at its core is an advertisement.

For, yeah, for printers. For printers. Right. But it's, it's a good lesson. You know, the whole notion of, you know, you should have your printer secure and it's well done. It's, it's sort of wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

And, and Christian Slater does a good job with it. He does a great job. I think it, like I said, I think he's better in this than he was in Mr. Robot. So. All right. Well, I guess I'll have to watch it. This is not the first time that we've had something like this. If you recall, I can't even remember what episode we talked about it on, but Symantec had done a documentary series based on, you know, Russian hackers.

I barely remember that. So this is not the first time that we have had corporate sponsored film productions, basically. Yeah. But this is really high production value. There's a bunch of them there. You can find them on YouTube as well. And I, I checked, when I checked earlier today, I think there were about half a dozen of them up.

You know, that's the problem on the YouTube channel. They break it into parts per episode. I see. But if you just go to the link in the show notes, you can watch them in their entirety. And there's only two episodes out so far, but they're, they're really good. Well, congratulations to HP for making us to, for making us look forward to the next episode of an ad.

Yeah, seriously. Hire that agency, sir. Right. And they make a good point. You know, printers are quite often a weak spot in security. People don't think about when they hose up a printer to their network that had how it can be a point of vulnerability, especially because most printers have Wi-Fi built into them and USB ports.

And so there's lots of ways to get in through that printer. Yep. And on the second episode, it's even more, it goes like more down the rabbit hole on, on crazy doctor hacking and things like that. It's, it's really fun who, and whoever wrote them, kudos tip of the hat. Yeah. Maybe they should hire, they should hire the, the writer of the commercials to work on Mr.

Robot because that could use some punching up. You know, earlier this week, um, there was a report that came out about, uh, some bad guys who have, uh, started a program they're calling leak the analyst. This is scary. I saw this coming through the, the wires this week and I was just like, Oh dear.

Right. And it's sort of been a matter of, well, how much there is there there? The group called themselves the 31,337 hackers. Um, you know, that just flows trippingly off the tongue. Well, they're elite. They are, they are elite.

They're so elite that they have a five digit number. Um, I guess on the 31,336 numbers before that were all taken. So one, three, three, seven has always been leet. So now they just, they, they, they, they're a little bit more, uh, they're getting a little bit more, uh, descriptive with it as it were.

But yeah, they're just, they're not just leet, they're elite, elite. So they, um, they, uh, they brought out the, um, uh, they basically doxed someone. Um, I guess, I guess it's not really the right way to describe it.

They, they released a bunch of documents that they had gathered up from an analyst at Mandiant and, uh, Mandiant is a, a well-known cybersecurity firm. They, um, handled, uh, the Sony hack and, uh, so they're well-known, well-respected.

They're a unit of FireEye. And so everyone was kind of holding their breath to see how much of the claims of these hackers were true, um, that they were claiming that they'd breached Mandiant's network, that they'd been, basically had free reign within the network. And they used these documents from one of Mandiant's analysts as evidence of that.

So far, Mandiant is saying, no, we have no evidence of anyone actually getting in here. And there hasn't been anything else released. So, so far, these hackers have not really, um, shown, they've not lived up to their claims, shall we say. So, it's, it's a bit anonymous, you know, lots of talk, not much actually happening.

I think that's fair to say. Um, but it certainly has people's attention to see if this is the first of perhaps many, or if this is just a one-shot deal, somebody just with a lot of bravado, um, we'll see. Right. Okay, well, I hope, you know, if they're gonna man up to it, they'll probably just release some more documents and, uh, uh, kind of put Mandiant in their place saying, oh, you know, we, we gave you a little taste, but if you really want us to prove it, here you go.

Yeah, it's been a few days and, and nothing like that's happened. Uh, really, it seems as though they only got into this person's social media accounts, a few of those. So, uh, you know, they released some emails and, and things like that, but, um. But his emails. But nothing, nothing from deep within Mandiant.

So, so far doesn't seem to be as much there as the, uh, these guys were claiming that there is. Uh, ye olde tempest in the teapot. We'll see. Hopefully. Now, we've got some, uh, senators that are on the warpath against the internet of things.

Yes. Senator Mark Warner and Senator Cory Gardner. Warner and Gardner. Sounds like a bad 70s cop show. I'm Warner. He's Gardner. Like a vaudeville team. Mammy. That's going back a bit further.

Yeah, that's maybe a little too far. Nice, Jason. Nice. God. Can't do anything right around here. So these guys want to put a bill into place to make IOT devices require software updates and, uh, password updates and things like that.

Smart stuff. It all makes sense. I would like to see this, uh, apply across the board, not just, uh, to government agencies, which is right now what the bill would cover. So you can only use, uh, certain IOT wearables within the government purview if they meet these standards. I would just like these to be standards.

Yeah, seriously. These should be consumer standards. Exactly. Right. And so I think this is an interesting way to test that out, introduce it to the government. Basically, they're saying if you want to sell something to the government, it has to meet these standards. And, but this is that, that age old argument.

Do we come at this problem through regulation, which that's what this is, or do we come at this problem through, um, allowing industry to take care of it themselves? And we already know the answer to that because the industry is not fucking bothering and the consumers generally tend not to be savvy enough to know or care.

Uh, I think we have to approach this through legislation, legislation at this point. I mean, this, I want to see a lot more of this. I agree with you. I think this is one of those situations where you're right. Neither the manufacturers nor the consumers really care about this.

The consumers just want to buy the cheapest thing they can find, find on Amazon. Jason, Jason, Bittner, a smoke detector. Now, wait a minute. Looking at my phone. That was not the cheapest one. No, it was the second cheapest one. And looking at my phone, I can tell you right now that my house is not on fire.

So, um, but yes. So I think this is one of those cases where when nobody else cares, this is one of those situations where it's time for government to look out for us. This, this is the exact point of government. This is why we have governments.

Yay. Government. Have you looked at our government lately? Well, you know, Hey, you know, I can, I can suggest more than a few things that we could just get rid of, uh, since we have to get rid of two things to replace them with one thing, right? That's the way our government supposedly working now. So there are some extraneous, ridiculous things out there.

This is not extraneous, nor is it ridiculous. This makes perfect sense. And in a perfect world, it should pass. No problem. And like I said, it should also be a consumer regulation, not just for government use. I have some hope about this because it's a, it's a co-sponsored bill across the aisle.

One's a Democrat, one's a Republican. And so here's open. Oh, fish and a bird may love each other, but where will they live? The other, uh, other people have suggested having sort of, uh, the, the cyber equivalent of UL listing, as we've talked about before, where, you know, electrical, electrical consumer devices in your home that use electricity are UL listed.

They're, they're tested by underwriters laboratory. And so before you buy something, you want to make sure it has that UL seal of approval on it. And, uh, so people have suggested something similar for cyber, but again, I don't think everybody walking around home Depot is looking for that UL signal sign.

Well, yeah, and I, exactly. And, but particularly on Amazon, no, you're going to, for everyone who goes out and looks for the cheapest device that has more than a four star rating, they're not going to care. They're not going to care. So I think I, it'll be interesting to see where this goes.

I think, I think they're off to a good start. I think starting it in the government is a nice way to test it, see how people react to it, see if there are any unintended consequences and take it from there. Agreed. Baby steps, baby steps, internet of baby steps. Now get back, let's get back to some more hackers.

Apparently game of Thrones episode four has been leaked online already after the two days before it'll actually air. Well, hopefully they have the rest of the season. So I don't have to sit there on Sunday nights with, you know, unbated breath so I can figure out if my favorite character is going to die, which they usually do.

Yes. Yes. A game of sadness porn. That's what we call it. But it's interesting that they're finally starting to release some of this stuff because HBO has pretty much taken a hard line on dealing with hackers in the past. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they, they were hit by what is apparently a rather large hack earlier in the week.

We had heard that they'd stolen all the scripts for the upcoming game of Thrones episodes. Now we're finding out there's full episode. There will probably be more. This is, you know, this is a tough thing to deal with. And for me, I like waiting until Sundays.

I like the old school method of dripping and drabbing episodes out. I'm not a fan of the Netflix dump it all at once. But unfortunately, I think that's probably because of situations like this, hacking and things like that. It's going to make a lot more sense for these companies to just kind of get everything together, make sure it's really, really secure, and then go have at it, people.

I mean, nobody's going to scoop us. What do you guys think the actual financial implications of this would be for HBO? Zero. None. Zero. There's no advertising revenue that they're losing out on. And if anything, it's just going to increase, you know, people that may not have watched Game of Thrones that are just going to be into the idea of like, I'm getting something for free that people don't want me to have, may see it and may get into it.

But they're not losing any advertising revenue at all. Yeah, it keeps them in the news cycle longer. So, hell, maybe they leaked it. Wouldn't be the first time we've heard of such things. Because, I mean, look at the Netflix breach with Orange is the New Black. Nothing really came of that.

You know, they released the whole season, I think, except for one episode. But, which, you know, honestly, if I was Netflix, that's how I would do it. Because then people are going to watch the first 11 episodes and want to watch that 12th episode to see what happened, so they better sign up for Netflix. I know.

Take off the tinfoil hat, Jason. It's okay. Well, you know, you always see people make the case, particularly with movies that are in theatrical release, that, and by people, I mean the people who make the movies, saying that when the movie is leaked ahead of time, that that has a large financial impact on the box office for the film.

I tend to not really follow that line of thinking. Only if the movie sucks. That's where it comes into play. If the movie's terrible and people get a crappy version, then they're going to watch it and go, wow, that's a terrible movie. If it was a good movie, they would want to go to the theater to see it in full definition, which I've done in the past.

Many times. I tend to agree with you, Dave, about this. I think that the financial implications of this stuff is vastly exaggerated. I think it's still not that easy to go to Sweden to get something that's been leaked. The people that are capable of doing that probably do that regardless, and probably aren't going to the theater to see the movie, or they're not paying for HBO or Netflix anyways.

I think you're attracting a certain subset of person that is interested in, capable of, and goes to the steps of downloading something illegally to watch that that personality probably isn't paying for cable anyways. Right, right.

Well, and also, as we've heard lately, that places like the Pirate Bay have just become overrun with malware in these movies. So it is much, much worse than it used to be in terms of finding yourself infected because of something that you downloaded that fell off the back of the virtual truck.

Yeah. All right. So sticking with hackers, we got a hat tip to Dr. Teeter, who sent me this story. The U.S. is picking up, vacationing Russian hackers. The United States has carried out a largely unheralded roundup of big Russian hackers over the last year, grabbing them on vacation in Barcelona, Prague, and Greece.

The arrests come as Russia's security services have struck a strategic agreement with the country's cyber criminals, allowing them to work as long as they also conduct state-ordered missions. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Remember the, I can't stop Russian hackers from what they decide to do in the morning? Well, apparently you're kind of egging them on.

So this is interesting because we haven't really heard too much about this in the news and it's been going on for over a year now. And the, you know, the takeaway is obviously if you're a big Russian hacker, don't go on vacation. Yeah. I'd actually first heard of this kind of thing. I want to say probably about two years ago, we had, I was at a conference where a FBI agent was speaking and he was talking about just this thing about how really the opportunity for

the FBI to grab some of these people is when they go on vacation. And he was, he was sort of laughing about it and saying that, you know, these guys, there are plenty of nice places to go on vacation and stay within Russia, but these folks can't seem to help themselves and, uh, with the, the money that they make, which relative to your average Russian is a lot, they like to live at large conspicuously.

Right. And so they travel overseas and, um, and this, this is not unusual for them to get scooped up while they're on vacation. So yay, yay for the FBI, right? And, and the agencies that they partner with, it's funny that word hasn't got out better than it has.

Criminals, criminals are notoriously so intelligent, you know? Well, there's that. You know what? Russian criminals are not, but you know what? Russian, I mean, well, Russian hackers are, are known for being smart cookies, but I guess you can't resist the, uh, can't resist the urge to, uh, visit that beach.

Yeah. So, and then we've got our, from my, from hero to zero story. This is my personal favorite story of the week. Uh, just two and a half months ago, 22 year old Marcus Hutchins, the British security researcher who basically was hailed as an international hero for stopping the want to cry ransomware attack, which we talked about on this show.

Unfortunately this week he was, uh, arrested on charges that he was behind a banking hack in 2014 called the Kronos banking Trojan. So not such a nice guy after all. Well, this is in, this is debatable right now because the, the jury is out. Uh, there are apparently some, uh, posts before about him actually trying to find copies of Kronos to research on some of the old bulletin boards and it's not the Pete, the Pete Townsend, uh, child porn gambit.

Right, right. Right. That old chestnut. That old, it's a cliche for a reason. This was really interesting to watch, um, as this came down, I, I, I was drawn to my attention on Twitter and, and it was fascinating to watch because it started off with, has anybody seen Marcus lately, you know, and then, um, Marcus has disappeared.

Nobody had, you know, people, friends, uh, I guess fellow travelers saying, Hey, I'm concerned. I haven't seen Marcus in, I don't know, 14 hours or something like that. A decent amount of time. Has anyone checked the champagne room? Right. Right. And then people start calling around cause he was at DEFCON, which is the big, uh, hackers convention in Las Vegas.

And people start calling around law enforcement. I believe they started with, uh, the federal marshals and the federal marshals said, Nope, we don't, we don't have him. And, uh, eventually I guess, uh, the FBI said, yes, we have, uh, we have detained him for questioning.

And, uh, last I checked today, I believe that he's got, um, they've charged him with six felonies. Ouch. Yep. That's significant. Do we know what the felonies are? I have not seen so far as we record what the felonies are.

Um, but, uh, it was an interesting commentary from someone, the EFF, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is, uh, is sort of stepping up to oversee this, to look into this, to, to offer their, their assistance and guidance.

Um, and, uh, there was commentary I saw, I'm not sure it was from them, but from someone who was saying, what if, so does that mean it's a felony? To even write this kind of code. Um, right. Evidently Hutchins was, we, we've talked about on this show, the people who write the code and then sell it as a service versus the people who actually use the code.

And I think this could be an example of, you know, if you sort of look at the drug war of them going after the dealer, not the user. Right. Or the high level dealer, not the, the street corner guy. If that's what, you know, he was up to, if he actually wrote this code.

And, and again, like you said, we don't know all the details yet. And it may be a while before we do. Yeah. Everybody's speculating that because Alpha Bay went down, they, they finally got some more information on that ties him to Kronos from back in 2014. So we'll see, man, he was, he was a young and then 2014, 19 years old.

Damn. Well, evil as the service is a game for the young. You go girl, go straight to jail. Do not pass. Go. She should have known better. And as I think we can attest to just in this segment alone, if it seems like reports of ransomware attacks are increasing, uh, malware bytes is agreeing with us.

Uh, the company released its second annual state of ransomware report recently. What I liked about this story, well, not liked what I find depressing about the story is that actually, uh, if you want to make some money or shut down a business, target a small business because they can either not afford to have the infrastructure in place to help stop these things or they cannot afford to pay them off or they cannot afford the resources to work around them once they've been hit, but larger businesses can.

So that is pretty crazy. 22% of small businesses that get hit basically get shut down. They can no longer afford to stay in business because it affects them that badly. Wow. Malware is like, you know, when Walmart comes to town or Amazon decides to jump into your business. Maybe Amazon's behind some of this.

Could be. There's my tinfoil hat for the day. Is it permanent shutdown or is it shutting down for a little while, while they get things worked out? I'm, I was unclear. Yeah. It's not entirely clear either. I just didn't have it in me to read the entire report.

So yeah. Either way. We go the extra mile here at Grumpy Old Peaks. So to our readers, if one of you would be willing to read the report and, uh, respond back to the three of us, uh, as to what it actually is, that'd be great. That'd be fantastic. Yeah.

We'd really appreciate that. Look, everybody outsources these days. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah. But I mean, this all makes sense. Uh, it's sort of a cold reality to see such a high percentage, but yeah, if you're a small business, the thing is with ransomware, even going after backups, uh, the ransom, the sophistication of the ransomware is growing.

So you could be running your small mom and pop there and your, you know, your point of sale is running on, let's say your iMac and you've got time machine running and ransomware comes along and just encrypts everything, including your backups. So now you can't sell anything.

Now you, you don't, you don't have any of your records. You can't do payroll. Yeah. That's a, that's a bad day for you. And it may take a while to, if, if you, you may, you may not have another backup. And like you said, you might not be able to afford to pay the ransom. And as we all know, you should not pay the ransom because paying the ransom is no guarantee that you're going to get your stuff back.

And all it does is make the ransomware people bolder because they got away with encrypting your stuff. Okay. Yep. Take the hit, start over, keep the cash for something else or use it, use it for your resume because you have to go look for a new job because you just screwed your own company.

Well, and if you are in that small business, make sure you have plenty of backups and that not all of them are stay connected to your system all the time. Yeah. That's the nice thing about, I use carbon copy cloner for some of my backups and it can unmount the disc at the end of the backup. Yep. Yep. That's it.

That's a good one. I've used that one myself. All right. So, uh, in our continuing, uh, story, because we just can't keep a nut, keep, keep away from it. And I'm sure our listeners never get tired of it. Two more popular IP cameras are found to be riddled with vulnerabilities. Hey, I don't own either one of them.

So I'm safe this for, I'm safe from ridicule. I was gonna say I'm safe from ridicule this week, but I can't say the word ridicule. So probably not safe from ridicule. No, these are a couple of consumer grade IP. cameras, uh, manufactured by loft tech and V start cam. And, uh, over a 1.3 million of the cameras are in use with over 200,000 in the United States.

And it's really the same old story that, um, you know, the same old vulnerabilities that they're, they send things in clear text that you have hard coded passwords and all the same sorts of things from these cameras out of China. If only there were some government regulation.

If only because apparently, obviously manufacturers and consumers are not going to solve the problem themselves. You know what we should do? We should for maybe for next week. And because I know how much we all love to have homework.

We should try to find a camera on Amazon that we think is actually secure. Uh, how about the nest? How about the nest? It's probably, yeah, that's probably good. So far so good on my nest. I haven't had any, nobody's made fun of me for having a nest cam yet.

All right, give us a week, Jason, give us a week. Yeah, let's look at, let's look into it because I am wondering like how cheap can we get down to and have a reasonable level of security? Right. Yeah. Cause the nest cams aren't cheap. That's the problem with nest cams. Yeah, no, that's a good, the nest probably is, that's probably a good starting point.

So yeah, maybe we should look into that. What is the cheapest camera we can find that we think has a reasonable chance of having decent, good enough security? Yep. And I will reach out to some of my friends in the, uh, in the underbelly of the internet and see what they recommend as well.

All right. So we'll do that for next week. Thanks. Homework. Yay. Get out of here. I don't want to talk to you anymore. I know. I just, yeah, bring bad news plus homework. So gentlemen, until next week, have fun. Yeah, next week I'll be here.

Sorry, Bam Bam ate my webcam. Right, exactly. All right, guys, take care. This kind of rolls into what we've been talking about earlier with kids going out of their mind and off their gourd by living with their smartphones too much.

Yes. I found this article on Quartz. It's, uh, been out for a little while now, but it's, uh, I kicked my smartphone addiction by retraining my brain to enjoy being bored by Jordan Rosenfeld. Okay. Do you remember being bored, Brian? Uh, well, yes, but no.

Cause I'd always heard there's no such thing as being bored. There's only boring people. Yeah. Being bored, but then finding something to do, reading a book, uh, working on some artistic project, uh, throwing a ball against a wall. Exactly. You know, but you had, you had empty space that you wanted to fill, but you could do it with creative endeavors, not sitting there reading what your friends are having for lunch.

Right. And that's the difference. And yeah, so being bored is definitely one of those, you could, uh, tomato, tomato type of things. But I, I look at it as empty space to be creative and think more and people just aren't, aren't comfortable with that anymore.

So this is a very, it's a, it's a long form article that is worth diving into if you're just trying to retrain yourself to enjoy those silences and spaces in between things. Yes. Very important and more important every day as we're quickly learning. Oh my God.

Tell me about it. Um, and speaking of empty spaces, Danzig's house is for sale. Okay. I, you know, Glenn Danzig's house in Silver Lake is, it's Las Felas actually, right? Las Felas. It looks like Las Felas to me. Yeah. It's right by house of pies there on Franklin.

We used to go by there all the time and make fun of him. And he had these big piles of bricks in his yard that he never mowed. Uh, apparently he's moved, he's moved on in his houses for sale and you can go buy it now for $1.2 million if you have the cash. That's actually not a bad price for that location.

That location in the rear of the property is a separate two bedroom, one bath additional unit that you could totally do has a, have as a rental property. Yeah. This is a good investment people. Yeah. Once you get rid of all the skulls and you know, demons that live there. Oh, come on. You got to keep that stuff.

Imagine the money you could make on Airbnb saying that you can stay in Danzig's house. Come on. That is, that is, that is some gold right there. All right. Now, speaking of LA history, Angeline, who we like to call the OG Kardashian.

Nobody really ever knew who she was. She would drive around LA in her pink Cadillac, or not Cadillac, uh, her pink Corvette. Pink Corvette. Yeah. She had billboards. You know, she was famous for being famous. She's the initial, she's the original, she is the pioneer of this. And I would argue that, you know, nobody never knew her story, but mostly nobody really cared.

Nobody cared. Yeah. That's the thing. Nobody cared about it. She was, she was a joke. Everybody's like, oh, there's Angeline. So, you know, but apparently the Hollywood reporter has an article here where they, they figured out who she actually is and did the deep dive on it.

It is a very long read, uh, which I skimmed because still to this day, don't really care that much, but I thought it was fun that they, somebody actually went to the trouble to figure out who she was and, uh, and actually publish it. So mystery solved. It's kind of cool.

Cause you do see these early photos of her before she adopted the Angeline thing and good looking girl. Yeah. Talk about, yeah. Why, why, you know, she ruined herself. I think I thought she was waking, you know, yeah, she, whatever. I mean, she's cute.

She wasn't gorgeous, but she was cute. Yeah. Well, now we know another, because we can't have nice things or mysteries anymore. The internet has ruined everything. Yes, it has. But it is bringing us ice cream that doesn't melt. Oh, this can be, uh, what could go wrong with this?

I love this. Sure. It's not a cure for cancer, but science. Damn it. Researchers at Japanese biotherapy development research center was asked by, they were asked by a pastry chef to create a brand new dessert using polyphenol, whatever the hell that is. It's a liquid apparently extracted from strawberries, what we would usually call water or juice or juice.

So, yes, the pastry chef noted that any time he added this to dairy cream, it solidified instantly. That's when they realized they may have stumbled onto something revolutionary. So, apparently, it has properties in it that make it difficult for water and oil to separate. If you add this substance to ice cream, it allows the dessert to keep it shaped for much longer than usual.

Much longer than usual isn't doesn't melt. It just takes longer to melt. Do we need to do an entire show on how all headlines are completely and utterly misleading? Here's my problem with it, though. Does all the ice cream that is injected with this polyphenol taste like strawberry?

Because I hate strawberry ice cream. What is wrong with that? I'm a French vanilla guy. What can I say? My God, that explains so much. It does, doesn't it? Hunting unicorns. Hunting unicorns. We're checking in on our hunting unicorn segment.

We started this at the beginning of the year where Jason and I both picked five tech stocks. And a friend of the show, Mike, picked five non-tech stocks as a bit of a control to see which one of us is going to get all the monies. I am still leading the pack. I wish I had this investment portfolio in my real life because I am at 37.03% up.

That's incredible. Yeah, I wish I had a... That is really good. Jason, you're doing great, too. You're at 30.09, actually. So that's great. And our control, Mike, still not bad. 14.49% up. We're all up. None of us has lost any money.

And we're all outperforming the market in general. Thank you, President Trump. I guess so. Now, we also had a side bet because Jason was so hot on Twitter that he bet me a six pack of beer, basically, that he would not lose money on his investment in Twitter.

Now, I immediately just went ahead and invested in Twitter as well. So either way, I win. Yeah, because you're a dick. Because I'm a dick, yes. But how is our Twitter stock doing, Jason? Now, this morning, it was looking pretty grim. But right now, I just went and checked, and Twitter is at $16.34.

Right. So it's a little bit above what you and I both bought it at. I think it's above what I bought it at, not you. That's true. I bought it at $16.33.2769. Wow. You're literally making pennies on the dollar.

I am making tens of pennies on the dollar at this point. But here's the deal. I am making money on Twitter, yes, this morning. And by the time, you know, the evening wraps up, it'll probably be back in the crapper. But it sadly is down from, I think it was like $18 last month when we did our hunting unicorn segment.

Yes, it was. But we got three more months to go. So the big reveal will be around Christmas. Yeah. But hey, we're in month eight now. We're starting month eight. And since I bought the stock, it has not gone below the price that I paid for it. So that's, you know. Except for this morning.

Except for this morning. But they're hanging on by their teeth at this point. So I'm rooting for them. Just hang out till, you know. All I need, January 2nd, is just, you can die in a fire January 2nd. But hang on, I want that six back.

All right. Feedback loop. We have no new Patreon subscribers this week. Shame on you all. Shame on you all. But we have some new Facebook feedback. First one comes from Katya Zalokar.

Zalokar? I'm just going, we're just going to go with Katya. Started listening to a five-star rating on Facebook. That's right. Because you can do star ratings on Facebook now. Started listening to this podcast about a year ago. And it's the only podcast these days I still listen to. The show is informative and funny and keeps me up to date when it comes to tech news.

Keep up the great work. Well, we shall. Thank you so much. We also got a five-star rating from Zabe. Great podcast. Recently discovered your show. Spent much of the aughts in tech. And your podcast reminds me a lot of discussions I've had with many of the friends I still have in tech. I'm sorry you still have friends in tech.

Me too. And we got a lovely little drawing from Sarah on Facebook. She tagged us. She started a series of drawing what she thinks the people in the podcast that she's currently listening to look like. And I've got to say, Jason, you look like a very fit guy from an 80s movie.

I look like I'm named Biff. And I look like Jerry Garcia. You do. You definitely do. Thank you, Sarah. You're a little scruffy. And she got the size of Bam Bam just about right in this one, too. Yeah. And in your lap and about to bark into the microphone. That's what she does.

Yes. Next, we got some Twitter feedback here. This comes from Ivor Tola, friend of the show. And he says, and the internet just gets weirder. Outback Steakhouse is at the center of a satanic cult. Conspiracy theory suggests that Outback Steakhouse is at the center of a satanic cult.

And somebody mapped the locations of said Outback Steakhouses. And they got themselves a pentagram. Interesting. Yeah. Danzig's house is smack dab in the center of one of those. Oh. It's not really. No, it's not even close. Yeah, it's not really. From Frosty Mint, you guys make me giggle.

And thanks for getting Road to Nowhere songs stuck in my head. Not a bad song on Brain Loop. Agree. Agree 100%. Oh. And this comes from Dyslexi Font. We talked about, like, what the hell's up with your website? Thanks for the font and website review. Especially the site review was helpful.

We will change the site. Look at us changing hearts and minds. That's right. And Lactac, do you know what this BC cash is all about? BC owners get BCC. But what happens to the old BC then? This is the Bitcoin stuff. I wrote back. I said, I have no idea.

This is why I don't invest in it. Then he sent a second one. I think I got an answer. Not that it really explains the mess. Bitcoin exchange had too many Bitcoins. Oh, OK. Our money had too much money, so we had to ditch our money. No. Seems to be the way it's going.

Yeah, because I originally thought that it had something to do with the blockchain, and there were so many transactions happening that they couldn't keep up, which is what I always thought was going to happen. It's like, you have one central registry that is a long ticker tape, basically, and everybody's writing to it, and everybody has a copy of it. How's that going to scale?

It just didn't, for me, it didn't work in the scale, like, on a global thing if everybody's using it, but I could be wrong. I'm often wrong. So we got some feedback on the website over at GOG.show. First one comes from Sean T. Hey, guys. Just wanted to drop by and say, this is by far my favorite podcast.

While everybody is chatting about how they're waiting for the new Game of Thrones episodes, which now you can get early if you go to Sweden, I'm patiently waiting for Monday mornings for the new GOG podcast. I'm 24 and have been working as an IT consultant for a bit over a year. My condolences. This show has helped me stay on top of storylines and products in the tech world and has bolstered my reputation among my clients as the kid who knows his shit.

So thanks for that. I'll continue to listen and support the show as long as you guys keep going. Also, a thank you to Dave over at CyberWire for helping me discover this show. And Bittner writes in, yay me! That's cute. Yep. Thank you so much, Sean. I'm glad you enjoyed the show. Next up is Sarah on MS Paint.

I am rising to your challenge of finding someone who uses paint on the reg. I use this program probably daily for easy resizing, cropping, and general photo manipulation. It's faster to boot up than Photoshop. And for the majority of my needs, it's perfect. Well, there's one. Yeah. And the funny thing is, I didn't know you could do photos in MS Paint.

I always thought it was still like 8-bit. You know, there's two things that come to mind from this comment. And thanks for writing in, Sarah. First, how old is your PC? Because last time I had a PC, and this was three years ago, Photoshop was a dream program on PCs.

It was way better than it was on Mac. That thing loaded in like two seconds. So I'm thinking you need to upgrade. And secondly, yeah, the one thing that I remember using MS Paint for was back in the early days of the internet, you would occasionally get a BMP or a bitmap file download.

And Paint was basically the only fucking thing that would open. True. True. Okay. We got another one here from Seth. You two recently talked about a Ready Player One trailer, and Brian got his panties all in a wad about a Rush song being used. It's weird to have to remind him that the whole book revolves around 80s culture, and the book contains a chapter that is an homage to a Rush album.

Here's some linkage. So we got a link there. It'd be in the show notes. As is per usual, Brian doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about, and his opinions are invalid. Jason, thanks for all the show notes. Keep up the good work, guys. Brian, you suck, and you have horrible taste in music anyway. I like how Jason removed all the little commentaries after the shitting on me that is like happy face and smiley LOL, which means don't take it quite so seriously.

Well, I figured you would, you know, come back. And by the way, the email address and website were obfuscated in the thing. I'm wondering if this is Seth Miranda over at Grime Life. I'm wondering. No, no. There's no way.

He doesn't read books. It can't be him. Never mind. Seth doesn't know how to read. That's true, but yeah, that's a good point. Look, I remember the Rush thing, and I somewhat like Rush. I worked with them for six years or something like that, so obviously we have the same horrible taste in at least one band, and that wasn't really...

I get it. I understand if the trailer were a literal interpretation of the book, then Rush would make total sense. I wasn't talking about that aspect of it. I was talking about the promotional text that they were throwing up on the screen being coupled with Rush at the same time. That was jarring to me.

So anyways, you're right. I'm wrong. How's that? Okay, next one. Landon Ridge. Howdy, geeks. I've been listening to your guys' podcast for a few months now, although I'm not a long-time fan. Although I'm not a long-time fan, I don't consider myself fresh meat at this point. Oh, okay. I get it. I wanted to thank both of you guys for hosting such a well-rounded podcast covering not only tech, but movies, books, and those damn Chinese webcams you guys keep talking about.

I'd personally love to support you guys' show with all the monies I could offer, but sadly, when you are an X-ray student, you have zero monies. Again, thank you for being my digital buddies during the week. While I sit and battle Northern Virginia traffic. You're welcome, Landon. You're very welcome. Next one comes from David. Hey guys, I'm listening since a couple of months on my way to work, and I've got to say, keep up the snarky work.

It's the perfect mix between techno, security, electro, science, and whatnot. The book recommendation, The Darkening Web, reminded me of the book Blackout by the German author Mark Ellsberg, which came to a similar conclusion. After a couple of days, you're pretty much fucked. And he has a link to the show here.

And he said there was even a talk at the 32nd Chaos Communications Congress about that topic, but unfortunately, it's in German. Cheers from Austria, David. Hey, Austria. Awesome. Thanks, David. And yeah, I've heard of that book, but I didn't read it because it does seem to kind of be very similar to the other ones, which is, we're all going to die.

Yeah, I'm working my way through the Ted Koppel book now. I love that book, man. Who'd have thought grandpa would be like, get off my cyber, you know? I know. It's a good one, though. 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 snarky review. And apparently, you can do that on our Facebook page, too. And a big shout out to my little brother, Gregory, for turning 26 years old this week.

He's literally 20 years younger than me by like two days or three days. So happy birthday, Gregory. May you have many more. I'm not going to sing to you because I did that last week for Dave, so I'm all sung out. Yeah. And I'd just like to give a shout out to everybody that has been participating with the show recently.

We've definitely had a massive uptake in you guys responding to us, writing us, tweeting us, everything-ing-ing-ing-ing-ing-ing us. So we do really appreciate it. It's even if you're crapping on us, we love it. Just keep writing. Yeah, keep it up. That's been fantastic.

I'm really amazed at how many people are actually coming out of the woodwork now. So definitely keep it up. We love it. Yep. Until next time, I'm Brian Schellmeister. And I'm Jason DeFilippo. 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'd like to become an official friend of the podcast, go to GOG.show slash support, where you'll find all of the ways you can support the show and keep us on the air. To learn more about all of 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 221.

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