243: Never Grow Old

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. Big changes in the DeFilippo household this week, Brian. Uh-huh. I'm sure you could tell if you've looked at my Instagram at all. Hard to miss. Hard to miss. Yes, I have a new puppy named Dino. I didn't go with Pebbles because he's more of a Dino than a Pebbles.

I kind of wish you would have because, you know, it's just more fuel to the fire. I know. I really, I wanted him to be a Pebbles, but like- Your trans dogs. Yeah, I know. If you ever watch the Flintstones and when Fred comes home and Dino just jumps on him and starts licking his face, that's this dog. Completely.

And I'm like, and he even kind of looks like Dino. He's a Rottweiler-Doberman mix. Okay. It's 12 weeks old. 12 weeks old. If you've ever had a 12-week-old puppy, they're just energy, poop, and razor-sharp teeth. That's all it is. I've got all of that except for the razor-sharp teeth.

Yeah. They're blunt, but they still hurt. Yeah, this one's kind of broken too. He's got like mad separation anxiety because I'm like his fifth home in three weeks. Poor little guy. So I leave the room. He wails like you would not believe. So it's going to take a lot of work to get through this one, which means it's hard to go to the grocery store. So I've been relying on Amazon Fresh again.

Okay. Oh, dear. I mean, I remember a couple shows ago I started talking about them when I'm like, oh, I can get my dog food from them for $4.40 instead of $7 at the grocery store. I'm like, oh, it pays for itself. I'm in. Well, it turns out they jacked up the price on me by over a buck.

Oh, no. As soon as they hook you in, they start jacking up the price. It went from $4.44 to $5.62. Damn it. That's the way this all works, man. I'm not telling you. Well, that's the basic business model of cable TV. Yeah. We'll give you a year cheap and then, sorry, we're raising your prices. I know. But it's still cheaper than the $7, so I'm sticking with it.

And they've got like a 50% hit rate. It's really comical. Like, you know, people are dropping off these groceries that are just like, you know, you can tell they're on their way home from work. So it was interesting yesterday because I got a delivery. I got a, you know, pretty substantial delivery.

The guy dropped off a bunch of bags I signed for it because there was some wine in there because I can't go to the grocery store because of the crazy dog. I get it in the house. I unpack it. And then I get to the last bag and I open it up in this giant box of family-sized Rice Krispies. I'm like, I didn't order any Rice Krispies. And I start looking through.

Oh, they gave me somebody else's bag. So I call Amazon. I'm like, okay, tell the guy to turn around, come back, pick it up. No, no, you know, no fuss, no muss. I call up Amazon tech support or Amazon fresh support. They're apparently different. I got this snarky, very tired kid who was just like, Amazon fresh support.

What can I do for you? I'm like, oh, your driver just left the wrong bag for somebody else. And you want to just have him come back and pick it up? He's like, sir, you have two options. You can keep the bag and use what's inside of it or you can recycle it.

We do not have a way to contact our drivers. I'm like, uh, you're Amazon. How could you not be able to contact your drivers? I just went through the thing where the guy scanned my driver's license. I signed for it. So he's got an app. He's got an app for that. Why doesn't he have an app that you could just go, hey, turn around and go get the groceries that you just dropped off.

You idiot. And, uh, nope, no way, shape or form. Can you get in touch with them? So I have a big box of families, some families, groceries who are probably very sad because there's like pancake mix and blueberry muffin mix and syrup and basically the fixings for a pretty fine breakfast.

If you're into that kind of thing and it's all mine now. Thanks. All right. Well done, Amazon. Well done, Amazon. So, Hey, if you'd like free stuff, go to Amazon fresh because that family got credit for the stuff that wasn't delivered. Plus they got a bunch of bonus credit for the mix up.

So they're going to get some free delivery extras right now using Amazon fresh since it's such a fuster clock, you can get tons of free stuff. So I highly recommend checking it out. I've used them twice and both times they just didn't deliver some of the things that I had put in there. So, uh, I, I'm not a big fan.

I've been, I've been on the losing end of this. Okay. I mean, they didn't deliver one of my bag. Well, the time they didn't deliver my bag, which was the important bag. Cause it had all the beer and wine in it. Uh, I called them up. I'm like, I can, I have my stuff. And they're like, sorry, you got to reorder it. We'll give you a refund and a $10 credit for the delivery, blah, blah, blah.

And you know, I can't remember if I told this on the show, but like an hour later, the driver snuck back onto my porch and left the bag, didn't touch the doorbell and then ski daddled off. So I got all the refund. I got the credit and I still got my beer and wine. That's why I'm like a big fan of fresh right now.

Cause I just get all this free stuff. That sounds good for you. Yeah. And on the, on the other side though, uh, I'm on the puppy diet. So if you've ever had a puppy, they're a handful and, uh, I've lost five pounds since Sunday afternoon. Well done. Like solid, solid weight loss, not like water weight or anything like that.

This is running your ass off crazy stuff. So it's fun. It's fun, but it's a lot of work. So you sound tired. I am very tired. All right. Let's get onto some more followup. What do you got? All right. Well, this is a little hat tip to Anthony Ross back over on Twitter who, who basically got beat us to the story.

Uh, we had it in our notes, but, uh, he tweeted almost immediately after our last episode where we talked a bit about, uh, Walmart's kind of shenanigans, uh, about how they were, uh, you know, the trickling down and, and look at that, uh, that tax break and how it's helping everybody with the super bonus out.

Well, yes. Walmart raised, uh, may have raised, uh, what's the $11. I don't remember what the $11 wage went from nine to 11. So Walmart raised to 11, but they laid off thousands by closing a bunch of Sam warehouse stores owned by Walmart the same day. And they did not tell the staff until they came in to find a note on the locked doors.

Uh, that was the same day the white house press said, yay Walmart. Um, so yeah, there's also an article that we have in our show notes over at thinkprogress.org that kind of goes through the entire, uh, debacle that's going on right now. So yes, uh, you know, in theory, this, uh, this, this tax break and what Walmart decided to do was lauded by Fox news and, and, and the administration.

Uh, but 9,000 people did lose their jobs. Um, and then there was more additional news that has come out since then. According to business insider, about 3,500 co-managers will be laid off across the country at Walmart. Now they will be replaced by new assistant manager positions, which will have lower salaries.

The laid off workers will be able to apply for these new jobs. They do not get them automatically. So you can apply to have your salary cut if you'd like over at Walmart. Uh, so how is that little thousand dollar bonus coming? Is that helping out a lot? Yeah. Oh, and by the way, you only get that as we pointed out, if you've worked for the company for over 20 years, most people haven't worked there that long.

And this is actually on a sliding scale that they are not explaining how it works. So you don't know exactly how much money you're going to be getting, but, uh, if they, with the 2.1 million employees and the amount of money that they have pledged to kick back down, it averages out to an average bonus of $190 per employee.

And this is just a one-time, one-time bonus. Awesome. Now on the flip side of that, there's news that came out about Apple and what they're doing with the ungodly sums of money that they already have. And theoretically what they'll be getting through their new corporate tax benefits.

Um, what will be happening is, whoop, I actually pasted something in the wrong place. Sorry about that. I just confused myself. All right. What will be happening is, uh, they are going to repatriate almost all of its $250 billion in overseas cash, create 2000 or 20,000 new U.S. jobs, open a new U.S. campus and add 350 billion to the U.S. economy.

So there, this is now being trumpeted as, Hey, this, this is corporate tax cuts are great. Look at what Apple's doing. So we shall wait for the shoe to drop because it probably will. Now you're a genius. You're a genius. You're a genius. Everybody's a genius. Yes.

And then in two weeks, we're going to find out that something really, really bad is going to occur with Apple as well. Well, hang on. Let me, let me follow up on that for a second. Cause I've been hearing all about this on talk, talk radio, which I listened to in the mornings here. And they were talking about how Chicago is going to bid on one of these spots for the new campus and apparently when it starts, it's going to be like a thousand to 5,000 new jobs and it's all phone tech support.

That's all it is. Yes. So they're going to, Chicago's trying for that. We're trying for Amazon too, but who knows which, which of the fives that we'll get, you know? But yeah, everybody's got a story about, I've got a big story about all these great new jobs that are coming later.

So we'll get to that. Okay. Yeah. But Apple did drop some other news this week. We talked about the intentional battery slowdowns that they've been doing because the older phones can't handle basically the new operating system and the speeds and everything. So in a, in their mea culpa and, and, and, and, you know, trying to avoid being sued into oblivion, uh, they're going to, uh, a future update will allow a future iOS update will allow you to, uh, turn off this battery, battery throttling feature, which I guess is good,

except for the fact that I'm assuming that they did it for a reason. Yeah. So are we going to have some exploding iPhones now, along with the exploding, uh, galaxies? Who knows? Who knows? Oh, we haven't, we have a new guest on the show. Apparently we do.

Okay. Oh, that's great. Hi, Dino, who should be named Pebbles and I shall refer to you that way. Uh, I also have some followup on the bird, which is, uh, here in, uh, Santa Monica. It's the, these scooters that you can rent with your app. It's the, the Uber of scooters. Um, the city of Santa Monica is, the city of Santa Monica has filed complaints against the company because they don't have proper permits.

Bird is saying that they have, that's still ongoing. I've talked about that before. Uh, but the city has basically said, you guys, uh, we're going to start going after the riders at this point because you're breaking vehicle laws. If you're riding this without a helmet, if you're riding this intoxicated, if you're leaving the scooter in the right of way, if you're just dumping them on the sidewalk, if you don't have a valid driver's license, if all of these things that, you know, theoretically you shouldn't be able to do, they're going to start cracking down on it because everybody is doing those things here.

People are just going crazy with these things. And we do have our first serious injury, at least the first reported one. So somebody, a woman was riding a bird and she collided with a car and is in the hospital. So well done bird. All right. Was she wearing a helmet? Uh, no, of course not.

Well, she should get a ticket then as well. You think, see now, in my opinion, bird should be supplying these. They should have like a little locked helmet on each of these things because, uh, you know, you're providing the scooter. You should provide the helmet. No, definitely. If you go on a Segway tour, they give you the helmet too. Yep, exactly.

Now, Brian, I found an interesting article over on Gizmodo. It's titled how DNA testing botched my family's heritage and probably yours too. Shocking. Yeah. Shocking. And it comes back to pretty much everything that we said about the whole, you know, 23 and me test, like how mine was all over the place and my dad's was all over the place.

And it's interesting, there are a couple of quotes from this article that I thought were very telling and made a lot of sense. Uh, the first one is they're not telling you where your DNA comes from in the past. They're telling you where on earth your DNA is from today, which makes sense because everybody's self-reporting now, you know?

Right. You can't really go back and get grandma's DNA because grandma's gone. So it's, it's one of those things where it's interesting. Like, I never even thought about like, you know, how the timescale works on it. Yeah. We don't have historical DNA records, right? We're kind of the first, we're the test batch. So in the future, a hundred years in the future, they're going to have great records, but for us, eh, and it's interesting.

The second one was if the messaging of consumer DNA companies more accurately reflected the science though, it might be a lot less compelling spit in a tube and find out where on the planet it's statistically probable that you share ancestry with today, which yeah, yeah, that's not really a, that's not really hot marketing.

No, it's not very interesting. So, uh, yeah. And another, another thing from this article now, Brian, this is a quick, a little aside here. Do you say all of the sudden or all of a sudden, all of a sudden, see, that's the proper way to do it. And in this article, it pulled me out of it because she says all of the sudden, and I, I don't know anybody that is basically, you know, over 30 that uses all of the sudden, I think it's gotta be a kid thing.

I didn't even know that was an option. That doesn't seem correct to me. I've, I've researched this before. Yeah, it is. It's apparently a thing. It's like, I think kids, when they were hearing all of a sudden, they couldn't process it and they went with all of the sudden. It drives me crazy. Every time I hear it, there've been epic Reddit threads about this.

Apparently the variant all of the sudden was in print six years before Shakespeare. So it's been around a long time. That's the thing. It has been around. Bringing it back. Yeah. It has been around, but I've never heard anybody use it until recently. Like in the past two years. Very strange. Now, just because I'm an idiot and I love to give you and Bittner things to make fun of me for.

I did not buy any more Chinese webcams. No, no, no, no. Barrett Reese sent in a very funny comment on one of my Instagram posts when I, when we were trying to figure out what Dino is made of, because I know he's a mix. He's a Rottweiler mix, but we didn't know. So he put in this, uh, funny or die video called dog DNA.

And did you get a chance to watch the video? What do you think, Jason? No, you did not. What's the, what's the interest level that I have in your dog's DNA? None, but it's a funny or die video. So, uh, but it's a, it's a, basically this guy that's walking around like basically the silver Lake area and everybody's like, Oh, it's a rescue.

What kind is he's like? I don't know. They're like, take the test, take the test. And my friend, I thought it was just a joke. Then my friend's like, well, get Dino tested. I'm like, it's a funny or die video. There's no doggy DNA testing. He's like, Oh yeah, there is. Of course there is.

Of course there is. And of course you're going to do it. I've already bought it. It has arrived. I just have to figure out when I can swab his tiny little cheeks. Uh, the wisdom panel 3.0 breed identification DNA test kit has arrived from Amazon. It's like 75 bucks.

Well worth it for the entertainment value we're going to get on this show because I bet he's going to come back that he's more Italian than I am. Well, you're going to be able to find out where on the planet it's statistically probable that, uh, other dogs share his DNA. Exactly. Exactly. How exciting. So this will be fun. It'll be a couple of weeks till I get it back, but I got to keep an eye out for that.

All right. New bounty, everybody. Not, not only do I want you to go find Jason's DNA out on the dark web. Now you go, go get his dogs. And my dog's DNA too. And just a little follow-up on my duck, duck, go experiment. Um, yeah, fuck it. Went back to Google. I had to.

You duck, duck, went back to Google. Yes. Yes. Duck, duck, go away because your results just aren't as good. I'm sorry. Because half the time I'm searching for a video or images and their video and image search just isn't up to snuff. So. Yeah. Well, Google's just way too far ahead with that, particularly the image search.

The image search is fantastic. I use that almost daily. And the way to scope it for size is really helpful. Mm-hmm. Yep. So. Sorry, duck, duck, go. Duck, duck, gone, daddy, gone. In the news. Brian, I have not heard more news about a single topic today than one single thing, and that is Amazon has changed their pricing on Amazon Prime.

Yep. If you turn on the TV or the radio, you could not get away from this. This was big news. This was big news. I thought maybe Trump tweeted out that his Prime price had changed, but I went to Amazon.com and found the actual press release that they made on this. Mm-hmm. Here it is.

Yes. The price of the monthly Prime membership for new members increased from $10.99 to $12.99 on January 19th, 2018. The price of the discounted Prime student monthly plan for new signups increased from $5.49 to $6.49 on January 19th, 2018. Existing monthly Prime and Prime student members will pay the new price for renewals happening after February 18th, 2018.

Annual Prime members continue to pay $99. Annual Prime student members continue to pay $49. For more details about or to make changes to your membership, go to Manage Amazon Prime membership. That's it. That is the entirety of what Amazon said. And I have heard probably three hours today on the fucking radio about Amazon's Prime price changes.

Look, technically, my Prime price is not changing at all. I'm a Prime member. I'll continue to pay $99. I've been paying $99. That's what it is. And why wouldn't you do the annual anyways? It is cheaper than doing it monthly. Low-income? I don't get it. Low-income? This is where they screw the low-income people because they can't pay that whole $99 in a chunk.

So they get it for a month or two when they need it, and then they dump it and go back and forth probably. Well, look at me being a one-percenter. There you go. You entitled fuck. That's right. Anyway, Bitcoin this week. What a crazy week for Bitcoin.

Yeah. Cryptocurrency bros are all crying in their milkshakes right now, aren't they? Oh, man. Yeah. It's been fun watching the justifications for this, like people trying to talk about it. Oh, God.

It's rigged, and it's a game, and again, I think I can state for both of us that Grumpy Old Geek's official position on any cryptocurrency is treat this money like you're taking it to Vegas. Yep. That's about it. It's just be prepared to lose it.

If you don't care about losing it, then by all means, have fun. Yep. Because it's funny. I was talking to a friend of the show, Jeff Donaldson, about it because he threw in some money, and I'm like, yeah, you know, because my pool from $300 got up to $4.75, and I'm like, yeah, I think I might pull it out now because, you know, that's a car payment and an insurance payment right there.

That's, you know, that's a decent chunk of change. I could use that, and then I, you know, forgot about it and didn't do it, and then I woke up the next morning. It was down to $280. I'm like, oh, guess I'm going to hold for a while. Yeah. That's kind of, I'm sitting there, too. It's like, take it out.

Why? I'm like $4 a head. Yeah. So I'll just wait. Yeah, the transaction fees will kill you at this point, so why even bother? Exactly. I'm just going to let it ride and see if it goes. My thing is, if it gets up to $500, I'm going to pull it, but before that, I'm going to keep it. Just like your friend who was trying to get his up to $500.

If it gets up to $500, I'll keep it. The only thing that's keeping me afloat is Ethereum, so. Yeah, Ethereum's actually doing relatively well. That's the thing that's kept me above as well, so. Yeah, so. There you go. I didn't even want to, like, you know, slack any of my friends who I know have, like, you dollars in Bitcoin.

I'm like, I don't even want to poke that lion today because I get some very grumpy replies. Yes. Well, speaking of grumpy people, YouTube has made a lot of people very angry this week. Oh, so butthurt this week. Yes. All you people that think you are making money off your YouTube channel. It's going to make, it's going to be a lot harder now as part of their process of trying to clean up their ad revenue sharing program and clean up YouTube in general, because of all the stupid idiots that are on there doing offensive content to get views.

They are basically dumping everybody that doesn't make a lot of money. You don't get to be part of their program anymore. You don't get to generate ad dollars. You need to generate 4,000 hours of watch time over a 12-month period and attract at least 1,000 subscribers.

If you're below any of that, no money is for use, which is kind of bullshit. That's not what YouTube is about. The whole point was anybody could put stuff up to monetize, even if it's a small trickle, even if it's a hundred bucks a month, why not? You should be able to get paid, but YouTube has said, no, we will not deal with this anymore.

It's their platform. They can do what they want. It is their platform, but my argument with this is it's getting hard to claim that they're just a platform because now they're making editorial decisions, aren't they? No. You're still getting hosting for your video for free. Don't forget that. So you can put up any video you want.

I suppose that's true. You know, it's not like, it's not a charity, but the headache for them with all of the crap advertising going out there, a barrier to entry for somebody to have a much more robust platform with better views kind of makes sense for them. It's like, why are they going to, you know, have these lower level people that are going to be able to put ads on and, you know, just create an account, put some ads up that are, you know, or put some videos up that aren't really going to do much and pump and dump and move things around.

It's got to be like, you know, swatting mosquitoes for them. So I can see why they would want bigger targets for them to police when they're trying to figure out who can put what ads, where makes sense on a, from a business, you know, standpoint, it sucks for the little guys, but most of the people that are getting booted off of this, you know, the, the lower tier aren't making that much money anyway.

Nope, they aren't. So yeah, I'm, you know, cry me a river. Sorry. Yeah. Well, part of this process involves the fact that Google who own YouTube and Facebook have had a lot of problems over the last year because, you know, people are just putting up stuff and there aren't enough people doing vetting.

And what we've discovered shocking and what we've been screaming at them for a long time about is that their AI, their AI patrolling doesn't work that the, you know, the machine learning and all that sort of stuff, the automated algorithms going through trying to vet content is miserably bad, horribly bad.

You know, we've talked about, we have, we have a Nazi problem on the internet because their algorithms cannot figure out who a Nazi is. So what they're doing is they're starting to hire on a ton of people. I think the entire island of the Philippines from last I could tell is already working for Facebook doing this, but they're going to be hiring a lot more.

So this is again being trumpeted as, look, we're getting all these new jobs. Let's see. YouTube is going to be part, Google is hiring over 10,000 positions this year. That is basically all just people vetting content. Facebook announced in October that it was hiring a thousand more people to work on vetting and taking down problematic ads because they're in a lot of hot water for all that.

They have now announced that it will be 3,000 more in addition to that, that they'll bring on by the end of this year. So, you know, people stopping all these crazy things that are being posted. So a lot of, a lot of real human eyeballs are being put on all the content going through these giant platforms now.

So, yay, lots of jobs. Boo, these are incredibly shitty, incredibly low paid jobs. Well, you know, some people that just had shitty jobs that got fired from Sam's Club might be able to get a job here. It might be just a, you know, might be a horizontal move. You might not be going vertically, but it's a job.

Well, they aren't even announcing technically if the jobs will be here in the U.S. They're just saying jobs at the moment. And as we know, a lot of this stuff goes overseas. Most of it does. Yeah. Especially for this content filtering stuff. Yeah. Now, I found a few articles that are more big think articles that I really enjoyed.

The Tyranny of the Internet is Forever over on Salon. This is a guy, Victor Mayer-Schonenberg, who wrote a book called Delete, The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age. This is a great article. Did you read this, Jason? I started to, but puppy. Yeah, I get it.

Well, go back at some point. It just talks about something that you and I have thought about and wondered about and what we're doing. You know, like you have that app that I've now also use on Twitter that goes back and deletes any tweets that we made that are over X amount. How does that work again? X amount of days. Six months old or something like that.

X amount of days. Yeah. You set the time limit or a number of tweets that you always want to keep in rotation. Yeah, well, this article goes into great detail about various case studies and different things that have happened for people that have had digital traces left behind that don't necessarily reflect the person that they are anymore and how it destroys their life.

So this is a lot about what are we going to do about these digital footprints? What are we going to do about all these breadcrumbs that we leave behind when we know, you know, 10 years, 15 years on, you're a completely different person, but you still have this past haunting you. And it's really interesting, gets really in-depth about it. I think I actually want to go and read this guy's whole book on this.

Yeah. It's pretty cool. When I started to scan the article, it looked to me like the guy who was having the first issues was, it was about, but it was about a record that was a public record already that then just got digitized and put online and searchable. Right? So that, it's still a public record.

You know, that's where it gets- Yeah, but it's the ease of finding things. Exactly. Yeah, that's where it gets dicey. That's the real, yeah, it's the ease that we have these days of finding out all this stuff. It's not having to go, there's public record in that I have to go down to City Hall and pull records and look through it to find something.

And then there's public record, I just typed it into Google. Exactly. Yeah. The ease of access to information is a double-edged sword for sure. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And another interesting article that I saw, this is over in the UK, and as we always say, Europe is just so much more refined and civilized and ahead of the game here.

Ooh, yes, sir. Yes, it is. The UK's Office of the Children's Commissioner has basically come out and said that you need to stop letting your kids get on social media. You are putting your kids under significant emotional risk, which I kind of agree with.

So this is a pretty interesting stand to be taking. There's articles upon articles upon articles that have been coming out and study upon study upon study that have been coming out about how maybe social media is not really so good for us. This is the first, like, real office, governmental entity coming up and saying, hey, we got to knock this stuff off.

Yeah. I mean, even the parents should get off social media, to be honest, but you can only deal with the children, but I definitely think so. Get them off of there. Yeah, her name is Anne Longfield, and she talks about how basically people, particularly younger children, start to follow things like celebrities or online celebrities, and then they're being exposed to unrealistic lifestyles, which we totally understand, that undermine children's self-worth.

She particularly singles out Snapchat because they have a feature. Now, I'm not even aware of this because I'm not a kid. There's a streak feature in Snapchat that basically gamifies the hell out of things and gets kids to just go on and on and on and on and on and just never leave the system.

So, bad, bad stuff. Yeah. Yeah, it definitely is. I would, you know, if I had a kid, I would definitely not let them on social media. I can tell you right now, Dino's never getting on there. He's, you know, he's done. He's got to share his big sister's account for now. But, you know, that's how it goes.

I would like everybody to take a note of this, and please do note when Jason opens up another Instagram account just for the separate dogs. Look, I've opened this fucking account up. Because we know it's coming. I opened this account up so you would shut up about dogs in my Instagram feed. The only reason that the new ones were on my feed was because it's such a pain to take the pictures and move around and do all that stuff.

I just, I'm like, screw it. Here you go. Here's some dog photos. But I cut it. I'm done. There's no more on the feed. Just so you'll leave me alone. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Moving on. What's the other big think thing you found? There's another big think piece, and this is a stunningly long article, but well worth the read.

This is all about Alexa and Siri and all the various different controlled by voice items that are out there now and how they are not the greatest thing in the world. The one thing that I really took out of this is because I just can't let this go, and I know you can't either. Here's one paragraph I just want to read straight up.

When it comes to Alexa, the press shouts about AI, artificial intelligence. But to quote Mandy Patinkin, I do not think that word means what you think it means. I'm so mad that they used that instead of us. We should have had that one. I know. Artificial intelligence doesn't actually exist. What we call AI is actually machine technology that forces human beings to change their behaviors to suit the machine, which is the main crux of this article is talking about how we aren't changing machines to help us.

We are changing our behavior to talk to the machines. Exactly. Yes. Yes. Yes, it is. So that's what this entire article gets into about how Google Maps. We talk like Cortana wants us to talk. We don't talk the way that we do. We are forcing ourselves to act more like machines.

Machines aren't getting more human. And it's really interesting. And the more you think about it, the truer it is. I personally wasn't thinking about that. And then I realized, oh, my God, I'm totally changing my behavior. I'm not changing its behavior. It's not learning anything about me. It's learning how to teach me to be it.

Exactly. Yes. And I mean, I hate to ramp or hound on the dog thing. See what I did there? You learn early on in dog training that you have to prevent the dog from training you because you can easily fall into these traps where you're doing what the dog wants you to do.

And you're not thinking about it, but your life is easier. It's the same exact thing. Alexa and Siri are definitely training us. And I found myself this morning trying to figure out how to tell Siri to do something. And I just I gave up. I'm like, just go away.

There's just some things that I'm just like, just give me my phone. I was just I was in the bathroom and I couldn't reach the phone from where my from my my current perch, as it were. So I was trying to get it's a tough, tough life over there in your house. I haven't trained the dogs to go get my phone yet. But yeah, so I was trying to get Siri to play something for me.

And no, that doesn't work. Right. Oh, man. And I found one this morning that's pretty interesting. Remember payola back in the day, Brian? You're old enough to remember payola. I do. I miss those those heady days of the music industry where the cocaine flowed like wine.

Yes. Well, you should get into tech journalism because it's apparently coming back with a with a bang. And we knew this was happening. This is an article in the outline covering some of the news outlets that are getting paid paid to pay to play. Basically, there are PR firms who are contacting these stringers who write articles for Forbes and because nobody has staff anymore.

You get you and I can go right for Forbes. It's that ridiculous now. So it's like. And we we'd make just about as much money as we do with this podcast. Well, you probably make more money if you went in the more now. Yeah. So, yeah. Mentioning Forbes will cost twelve hundred bucks. Inc. magazines eleven hundred.

Entrepreneur costs nine hundred. And poor Huffington Post is only five hundred dollars. Well, look, it isn't just these these bigger players. You you and I, through the Grumpy Old Geeks email, we get two or three of these a week where people are like basically basically telling us.

Here's a story. We'll pay you. Of course, they'll only pay us like five bucks. But my favorites are the one where, hey, I heard you have amazing guests on your podcast. Would you like to have my author come on? Like, wow. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. No. Ups and doodads.

So, Brian, last week we talked about a little Star Wars action on the show. We sure did. And you know what? Pretty favorable feedback, I got to say. Pretty much. I haven't heard. I mean, we have had a few, a few that we'll talk about later, probably in feedback.

But for the most part, everybody seemed to be on on board with us with our. I think so. Take, which is, you know, phew. I was worried about that. Big time. You were. Yes. Look, come on. Who cares? If somebody disagrees with our thoughts about The Last Jedi, we've called we've called the president of this country, horrible things, and we don't worry about the any anything from that.

Oh, we used to. But now we now zero fucks given. Well, now we have almost everybody. Exactly. With us there. Yes, we were pioneers there, too. So anyway, before I saw The Last Jedi, I had gotten into playing a little Battlefront 2 on my Xbone, and it's really fun.

I even I was even like hitting you up on Slack. I'm like, man, you should try this. This is pretty cool. I know. I know. If there were like if I had just happened to have a gaming system sit around, unfortunately, I don't like. Well, I do. It's the Wii. I don't think Battlefront 2 is going to come out for the Wii. No, it's not. It's tempting.

It looks great. But the initial investment involved for me to get this going and the reality that I'll be trying to sell an Xbox online in six months is keeping me awake. Okay. But I mean, yeah, the graphics are beautiful. It's fun playing as the Empire. But in one of the cut scenes, I got to play as Luke Skywalker, which was really fun.

Got to whip around a lightsaber for a while, squash some bugs. Now, were you young, virile, happy Luke Skywalker? Were you grumpy old geek Luke Skywalker who had given up on the force? I was middle-aged Skywalker. This was in between. So. Okay. This is after, because, yeah, this is after Return of the Jedi where this takes place.

All right. But it's, I mean, it's just a fun game because I haven't, Battlefront, the original one was multiplayer. I bought it. I got all set up and I was ready to go. And I'm just like, it's only multiplayer. I don't like starting off a game that's only multiplayer. There's some training stuff, but then you jump right into it.

And people have been playing this thing for years. And it's like, oh, I'm just gonna get my ass handed to me over and over again. I like standalone games personally with stories. That's my job. Right. So Battlefront 2 has that. So it's really nice. And I was just, I was having a blast with it. I, I, I can't say enough about it.

I'm just having fun. I can't do it right now, but soon I'll get back into it when I have calm between the storms. Because it's a really nice, I played it because I was sick. I played it for like five hours and it was really nice to get back into a game. I got to say, cause just everything kind of disappeared and I was just into it and learning how to play again.

It was, it was really fun. Okay. Yeah. So that's just saying, if you ever get some extra money. The money is not the issue. It's the, the time and the motivation. Okay. Now I have, I have some, uh, I don't want to call this journalism because I'd like to call it focused Googling on my part.

Right. So my friend Jeannie Cool, uh, posted a link on her Facebook page that was titled app creates contracts for one night stands to prove sex is consensual. All right. Yes, I saw this. This made the rounds. This is everywhere. So it didn't smell right to me. So I went and dug deeper and I followed the trail to the quote unquote app and I got to legal fling.io and it says right there, get explicit about sexual consent secured in the blockchain.

This showcase is powered by live contracts.io. As soon as I heard blockchain. Yep. Um, I'm, I'm on, I'm on that one. So to get to live contracts.io, it's a company called legal things one. Now legal things one.

I, I'm looking around. Oh, guess what? It is. It's a fucking pre-sale for an ICO. What? Yep. So this whole app is what? Just like a, an, an ad to get you to an ICO. You gotta buy the tokens to create the contracts, which then you can use in the app to prove consensual sex.

Gotcha. Oh, talk about a long haul for a little payoff. But, uh, as we're recording this now, the pre-sale ends in 22 hours and 45 minutes. So we won't be able to talk about this till next week to see what happens, but I want to keep an eye on this because it's, it's just feels like a massive scam to me because there is no app.

There's nothing there. There are some very clever press releases going on about this, but there's literally, it's just like cryptocurrency. There's nothing there. No, there's nothing there. Good times. Well, net neutrality. We are still in a wasteland of who the hell knows what's going to happen.

Uh, but if you want to check and see if you're, uh, if your providers are, are screwing you and throttling you, uh, there's an app for that now. Okay. There's actually been apps for a while, but I just thought I'd talk about this because I think it's interesting and you should be checking to see what's going on with your various streaming services and your service providers.

Uh, there's an app called we, he, this is the new, this is the new one. It tests streaming speeds of seven popular apps, including YouTube, Amazon, NBC sports, Netflix, Skype, Spotify, and Vimeo, and tell you which of them are being artificially slowed down by your internet provider, which is pretty cool.

This is available for Android. Unfortunately, it is not available for iOS and Apple didn't really say why they say that the developer, they told the developer it has no direct benefits to the user. I see lots of benefits to this. Okay. Yes, I do too. So you can't use that one.

They do have, there's another one called Uniprobe, which stands for open observatory of network interference. Rolls off the tongue. So this is part, part of the tour project. It's been around since early 2017. Uh, this is available for iOS and, uh, Android. So I would suggest checking this out and seeing what's going on.

See if anybody is violating your net neutrality rights. Interesting. You know what? I have noticed a very big uptick in, and this could just be a, uh, you know, just a bias now because I see more commercials on TV and I may have just not noticed it before because now that I have Xfinity stream, I'm watching actual TV and you have to skip the commercials, but, um, I've seen a lot of zero rating plays going on out there.

And that's the one where you get free bandwidth for a service. If you sign up for another service, right? T-Mobile, there's a lot of that. T-Mobile was the first big one. So yeah, I've seen it for, uh, Hulu and I've seen it for Netflix so far. And yeah, I've seen the Netflix one. I can't remember who it was with, but sign up and get free Netflix for a year.

Blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. No data, no data cap, you know, no data cap. So that's all zero rating. That's not the same as the, you know, the rollback of net neutrality. That's just the, the lax rules on zero, zero rating. That's the thing I wish I'd had TV before. So I could tell if it was before or after, you know, this announcement, but I just got it.

So it feels like to me, just looking at it as an observer that, oh my God, now it's everywhere, but it could have been there before. And I just missed it. No, I think you're right. It's everywhere now. It's certainly ramped up. All right. Well, I guess Xfinity stream is zero rated.

Now that I think about it, you know what? My, I looked at my data cap or my data usage for this month so far. And I'm only at like 300 gig, which this is the 19th. For me, I'm usually pushing like 800 gig at this point. And I'm watching a ton, a ton of streaming TV now in HD, which I leave on all day to, you know, just have noise in the house.

And my, my, my usage hasn't gone up at all because the TV's through Xfinity. Interesting. I just, I just thought about that. Epiphanies are us today on Grumpy Old Geeks.

Media candy. Brian, last week you talked about a new show called Somebody Feed Phil and how I had to watch the trailer because it looked like it was going to be a happy show. Yes. I have watched them all and I, I, I am very happy to report that show is awesome.

Isn't it though? It just feels good. Yeah. This guy might not be the, the best food critic on the planet, but I tell you what, his smile is infectious. I'm just happy watching it. I was so mad when they were over because I'm like, oh, well, you can go back and see the original show that he did, which was very similar.

That was on PBS. I think it's on Netflix as well. So you should take a look for that. Okay. If you can dig up the link and put it in the show notes and I'll send it out to everybody because man, Somebody Feed Phil made me very, very happy. I really, really enjoyed it. Yes. It's very good. We're trying to parcel it out over here at our house because we don't want it to end.

So we've already, there's unfortunately only six episodes, but there will be doing more. I've heard that he's already started to shoot some more of them. So I cannot wait. It's just, he has a love of life that is just so endearing. I could watch him do anything, but it's great because he has such a joy for food that he's doing this.

It's amazing. Yeah. And here's the thing. I hope, I don't even care if it's manufactured for TV. He does such a good job of it. I can't tell, you know, it's not, it's not. He's actually been, the reason I first found out about his first show in the first place was he was a recurring guest on the Adam Carolla podcast for a while.

And I think Adam had to have him stop coming in because he's too damn happy. This is who he is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Adam cannot have happy on his show. No. Well, speaking of things that aren't that happy, Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams has hit Amazon Prime. I started to watch it.

I mean, this has been out already, I think over in Europe. So it's not new. Some people have seen it already, but this is the first run for me. I'm about seven of them in their hit or miss. They're definitely hit or miss. Pretty mixed reviews on Amazon.

Yeah. I really never needed to see a Bryan Cranston sex scene. I'm just going to leave that one there. That was, yeah, that was not good. Something broke there. It was just my brain, breaking brain.

They should have called that episode. But so far, I mean, they're a little lighter than Black Mirror. But I mean, this is old Philip K. Dick stuff. So, I mean, this is like, you know, sci-fi canon from the old days. Now, are they all based on Philip K. Dick actual stories or is it just kind of an inspirational?

Okay, cool. They named the story that it's based on at the beginning of the episode. So you can tell which one it is. So if you've read it, you probably know it. Okay. There are a couple that I found really engaging that I really liked. And there was one, I think it was episode six, that I really enjoyed, but the ending was kind of too heavy-handed and kind of bummed me out.

But so far, I mean, it's a thing. I put them on when I'm kind of playing Battle Royale and keep them on in the background so I don't get too into it and too depressed. But production quality is good. Casting is amazing. I mean, they've got tons of A-listers on there.

Steve Buscemi's even in one. And Sookie from that stupid vampire show, True Blood. True Blood. Yeah, she was on there. You know, look, I'm into sci-fi anthologies. I love that. I mean, I love the old Twilight Zone. I loved Twilight Zone when they brought it back.

I liked the X-Files aspect of it where they didn't do the overarching storyline and it was an anthology. That was great. I should go watch this. It's Amazon. It's Prime. I'm a Prime member. It's free for me. Maybe I'll give it a go. Why not? Oh, when you just mentioned X-Files, you got it.

I'm telling you right now, go watch episode three. No. That's it. That's all you have to watch. No. See, I'm not interested then. I want the main story to wrap itself up. That's all I care about of the X-Files anymore. Oh, because episode three was such a perfect throwback to the old ones.

And even Mulder mentions it when they're going to this town to investigate. He's like, let's get back to our bread and butter. And I'm like, yes. And it was a perfectly executed episode. The rest of them, eh, I don't get about it. All right. So let's talk for a second about Star Trek Discovery.

Because you mentioned the parallel universe thing, and I finally got caught up. And just so everybody knows, we're a week behind because we're recording on Fridays. It airs on Sundays. So we're back to episode 11, I believe, what I'm talking about now. But I see what they're doing with the parallel universe thing, and it is exactly what I predicted at the beginning of the show before, you know, the whole thing happened.

As soon as they introduced the spore drive, I predicted exactly what's happening now. And, yeah, it's, I get what they're doing with it. I totally get it, and I know how they're going to wrap it. So I'm not that excited to watch it. We both do, yeah. Yeah. You know, I'm not thrilled with the plot.

It's nice to have Star Trek on TV. I will stick with that. I do wish, again, like I said, I say this every time we talk about Discovery, I'm watching Star Trek Voyager off of Netflix late at night as kind of like my go to get myself relaxed and go to bed thing.

I miss that aspect of Star Trek. I miss the feel-good anthology-esque almost, you know, one episode wraps up, doesn't carry over to the next really all that often, just pleasant, happy, moral tales. I miss that. This doesn't have that.

But it looks damn good. Yeah. It looks really good. But, yeah. And like when you mentioned Voyager, I got to say, go watch the Orville because it's damn good. And I cannot wait for it to come back. I am really looking forward to the Orville coming back, even though I'm the one that crapped on it as when we first came into it.

I'm like, this is the dumbest thing I've ever seen. What do they think they are? Star Trek? And well, actually, yeah, they do. And it's working. It's winning. Right. So, some follow-up from last week. I put some Murder City Devils in the show notes for everybody if you want to go hear what I was talking about last week.

They were, I mean, they were only active from like 97 to 2001. They were a very short-lived band. But I put some links to their Spotify albums and one track on YouTube. So, check them out if you like some meaty rock and roll punk rock, you know, inspired stuff. It's good.

I love them. I love them. Yeah, I listened to the single. It was really good. I liked it. So, yeah, since we talked about music last week and we got such good feedback about it, I did want to mention some other things. One of my favorite bands of all time, Eels, are back with a new album called The Deconstruction.

And the single is also called Deconstruction as well. So, title track. It's really good. I kind of lost touch with the Eels for a few years and he's kind of back to his bread and butter sound. So, I really enjoyed it. It's a great song if you ever liked the Eels in the first place. I've never heard the Eels. I've never heard the Eels.

What are they like? I'm sure you've heard Novocaine for the soul. They're all rock, basically. Straight up all rock. I think you'd really enjoy them, actually. Go back and listen to their first couple albums on Spotify. They're the best. I shall do that. Yes. Get right on that. And the Let's Feel Old music segment, I found a link called 13 Great Albums That Will Turn 30 This Year from the site ilikeyouroldstuff.com, which is kind of funny.

Oh, I love that. So, The Pixie's Surfer Rosa is turning 30 this year. Oh, you've got to be kidding me. The Church's Starfish, which is one of my favorite albums of all time, is turning 30. Jane's Addiction's Nothing Shocking, 30 years old. Sonic Youth Daydream Nation, Public Enemy, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.

U2's Rattle and Hum is 30. Metallica and Justice for All. The Go-Betweens, 16 Lovers Lame. And somehow, I don't know how this made the sound of this list, Roxette, look sharp. Yeah.

One of these things doesn't belong. One thing is not like the other. And then related to that, just because the Facebook algorithm then had to throw this up to me, 40 Years of Goth, Essential Albums from the Genre's Beginnings. And I agree with almost all of this.

This is from postpunk.com, which is a great website. If you're into goth music or just want to experience the music that Brian grew up listening to, this is it. Almost all 40 of these albums are fantastic. I listen to the music that Brian grew up with because I grew up with it, too. So, I'll pass on this list.

But I will probably go look anyway. You will look at it because curiosity will get you there. And two of my favorite alt bands from the 90s, Ned's Atomic Dustbin and The Wonder Stuff. They have already talked about them because they're doing a co-headlining tour in the UK in March and April, sadly not coming to the US.

But they have announced that they've partnered up with Frothblower's Brewery Company to launch their own limited edition ale, Ned's Wonder. I would like to have this beer. Well, no, it is a good name, although I do wonder why they didn't end up going with Atomic Wonder.

I think that might have been a little bit better. I think Atomic Stuff. Oh, Atomic Stuff is good, too. Maybe we should make our own. Okay. I will see if I can get you... Slender Grumpy. Well, get some Slender Grumpy beer. I'm going to see if I can get you a six-pack of this for the Twitter bet, but I'm going to have to see how much it will cost to ship it from the UK.

Okay. Okay. I will take that if you can find it. All right. At the library. I have not read a book in over a month now. The reason I have not read a book is because with my limited amount of free time, I have taken a course on Coursera.org from the University of Michigan, Data Science Ethics.

How's that going? I finished ahead of time. I have thoughts. I have lots of thoughts. Are they ethical thoughts? They are ethical thoughts. The first is I really enjoy the subject matter. Obviously, I mean, I took this primarily because we talk about this sort of stuff all the time on our podcast.

I took it because I work in the technology industry and data and big data is becoming more and more important. It's fascinating to me. So it was interesting to get into the ethical ramifications of it. The caveat is, of course, there are no laws and there's rarely right answers, but it's just what we think.

And in particular, when you take a course, it's obviously what your professor feels and what he thinks. So for the most part, I agreed with him about where he was going with all of his thoughts on what is ethical and what isn't with data science. Sometimes I didn't necessarily, but it was a good course.

I'm glad I took it. Now, this is the first course I've ever taken online. That's an interesting process. Okay. Do tell. Brian, do tell. There are some aspects I like. I like the fact that I could basically do it on my own time.

Now, obviously, you have deadlines and things have to be done by certain dates, but I'm basically plowed through the whole thing in two and a half weeks. You're supposed to take four. I like the fact that I could just speed ahead and work at my own pace and get things done ahead of time. That was pretty cool.

I don't like the fact that the professor himself does not seem to be involved anymore. It's teachers' aides that go in and talk about your discussion questions for every week and every segment and all that sort of stuff. I also hate the fact that it is very—it's like they all went to social media school.

They can't just say, oh, yeah, what you said is right. They have to go, well, I see what you said, and I see why you think it's right, but have you thought about this completely unrelated thing that doesn't have anything to do with the question? And I'm like, are you just making a comment to make a fucking comment because you guys have been told that you have to make comments on everything?

Can't you just go, yeah, that was right. Moving on. But apparently they can't do that. The other thing that I can't stand is the final is an essay, which I get, and it's peer review. Well, I don't want peer review. Yes. Like, the professor doesn't even go in and do it.

It's peer review. So I haven't been able to finish my class because I finished it early. I have to review three other people's final essays and give them ratings on it, and I have to wait for them to do mine. So I don't know what my grade is yet, and I can't complete this damn thing because nobody else is catching up to me.

Oh, that's some bullshit. So that aspect of online coursing, I don't care for. But it was a great experience. I'm happy I did it. I'm looking forward to being able to put my little certification on my LinkedIn account when I'm done. And I'm going to look for some other classes that are of interest.

I mean, again, like I said, I'm really into big data and the ethical ramifications. And the joke I made with some of my friends when I was out doing this was, this is actually going to make me even less hireable, because who wants somebody that's going to sit there and say, hey, ethically, you shouldn't be doing that. Exactly.

Way to go. I'm never getting a job at Amazon or Facebook now, much less Uber. This is your career in a nutshell. Yeah, pretty much. Let's do everything that we can to be unhireable. Yeah. So there you are. So I'm done with that and I've got a book in the pipeline. I'm going to take a break.

I'm actually in terms of coursework. I'm going to actually go back and get my certification for Google Analytics. I don't know why I never finished it, but I'll just get the certification because why not? So that's my next that's my next school thing. And I'm going to actually start reading books again, which I'm thrilled about. Yeah.

Yeah. I need you back on the books for sure. Yes, I know. Unfortunately, I didn't read a book this week either. I did get one in the mail from the old Amazon. It's Alfred's Essentials of Music Theory, a complete self-study course for all musicians. A book plus two CDs.

Mm-hmm. Now, what part of that sentence was problematic? Two CDs. Yes, exactly. You don't have a CD player anymore, do you? No, I don't. I do not have anything in this house that can play a CD. You can go to Walmart and pick something up for $10, I think.

Well, I would like to get them ripped, but the whole plan to get it ripped was I was going to go over to a friend of the show MXV's house, watch the XTC documentary, and rip them then, but in between them came Dog. Right. I am stuck here with two plastic discs that if I squint really hard at, maybe I can see the music, but so thanks to a friend of the show, Trent Hamilton, for hooking me up with

this book and some other stuff on learning music and piano, and as soon as I can, as soon as I get the CDs going, I will definitely get back into it, because it looks fun. I mean, it looks like it's pretty much for everybody, like flipping through it. A lot of works, I mean, you have to write in the book. It's like a workbook, which is cool.

I haven't done that in a long time, because most of this crap, it's like you read it, you forget it. This one, you actually have to write things out in the book and do all sorts of things, which looks fun. Hey, music theory is really cool. I think you'll find it pretty interesting. Everybody's always told me that since I was a kid, and I'm like, eh, nah, and now that I'm finally 46 years old, and I'm like, hey, I should have listened to that.

Maybe let's give it a shot, because it might be up my alley. I think it will be. I think you'll enjoy it. Security? Ha! Happy birthday to you.

Cha-cha-cha. Happy birthday to you. Cha-cha-cha. Happy birthday, dear. The Cyber Wire, hosted by Dave Bittner. Happy birthday to you.

And many more. Thank you very much. Happy birthday to the Cyber Wire. Two years now. That's well done. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Who knew? Bravo! Shattering of applause. I did a little bit of digging, and in two years, I've done over 1,200 interviews. Wow. Damn, boy!

You'd think I'd be better at it by now, but, you know. No shit. I was going to say, but... Practice does not always make perfect. No, evidently not. But thank goodness for... Somebody rode the short bus to interview class. Thank goodness there's editing, yeah. So, and I've got good writers.

So, no, we're, you know, time flies, and there's never a shortage of news. But, yeah, two years, two years of doing a daily, no small tasks. So, thanks for the... No, it's not. That's a lot of work. We lasted two weeks doing that. Yeah. Well, thanks, guys.

I appreciate it. And thanks to everybody who listens. And, you know, it's nice that we get so much cross-pollination between the two shows. We see a lot on... As you all do, we see a lot of people saying they found us through you, or they found you through us. So, it's really been a nice thing over the past couple years. So... Yes, it has. All right.

Well, I want to start off this week with a correction. Last week's show, I sort of offhandedly mentioned we had a story about some drone stuff that was the drone legislation where you couldn't drone while drunk in New Jersey. And I offhandedly mentioned a story that I think I've mentioned at least once before here on the show about...

I don't think you've mentioned it on the show because when you were saying it, I'm like, that's a terrible story. I've never heard that before. I should look into what's going on with this story. Sorry, perhaps not. But I'm sure our listeners will let us know the exact episode if I did mention it where it is. But... So, what I mentioned was a story of a groom being killed on his wedding day by a drone, basically having the drone cut his jugular accidentally.

And one of our listeners sent me a note on Twitter that said, oh my gosh, that's quite a story. Can you point me to where the story is? And I, of course, said, well, of course I can do that. And so I went and looked it up and could not find it. It turns out I'm pretty sure it's a hoax. And it's enough of a hoax that Mythbusters actually did a segment on it.

So it was a well-spread hoax. The thing I'm dealing with personally is that I have a specific sense memory of when I first heard about this story. You know how that happens to you sometimes where you're like... So, I guess I just fell for the hoax at the time and then irresponsibly just started repeating it as you do.

I think where it came from is there is a video on YouTube that I put a link in here for where a groom does get whacked by a drone. And so I suspect that's probably what caused the hoax is someone took that video, came up with a different description of it, and off we go to the races.

So I have a link in there to that video. I have a link in there to a little clip from the Mythbusters thing. But I just want to send out an apology and a mea culpa for putting out that wrong information. I do try to get it right, as we all do. And in this case, it looks like I came up short. So, thanks to that person on Twitter for bringing it to my attention, and I'm glad we're able to make it right.

Yes. Great. Now we're going to be on Trump's fake podcast news list next year. Way to go, Bittner. Way to go, Bittner. We wanted to throw out a little something for our listeners on the right, a little fake news. There you go. Well, just keep everybody on their toes. All right.

Now, let's roll with that theme for a second here, because in the chat on the GOG.show Clash Royale clan, somebody talked about this video of Twitter employees talking about all the crap that they do behind the scenes.

And so I went on a hunt, and I found it. And it's breaking. Hundreds of Twitter employees paid to view everything you post in private sex messages. Both in quotes. Well. Which I love that. There's a lot of quotes going on here. Yeah. Because it's not, that's like, you know, a very little snippet at the end about people looking at dick pics to take them out.

So, it's a Twitter, but in the middle of it, a Twitter engineer answers the question that you guys have been talking about if anything is ever deleted. So, I'm like, okay. And he says no. And I'm like, okay, good. Let me follow this on. And I originally found the video from Steve Rombaum's Twitter feed, who, I love Steve Rombaum, but on this one, I'm afraid, Steve, you're a little off.

Because the video comes from James O'Keefe, who, if you guys don't know who that is, look him up. He's a total scumbag. Project Veritas is the organization. Project Veritas. Exactly. And he's got a new book out. Yes. But he is known for taking videos surreptitiously and editing them to hell and back to- To prove his point.

Whatever that may be. Yeah. Remember, the acorn video was the first one that really came out about this guy. Well, he also got caught trying to fool some, I believe it was Washington Post reporters who didn't take the bait. Yeah. Yes, he did. So, anything coming from this guy is immediately suspect.

Having said all that, however, we have often discussed what happens when employees get God access. And we do not trust people. Of course they're looking at everything. Of course they're looking through your private DMs. Of course they're doing all that.

You get a bunch of, like, 22-year-olds, you give them God access, you think they're not checking out the Hot Chicks account? Come on. Give me a break. Yeah. As we talked about it once before, you know, my friend who used to work in the parking lot photo mat, they had a drawer full of duplicates they called their Who's Your Daddy folder.

And so this is not, you know, just for the digital age. This is not just a digital phenomenon. This is something as old as time. Somebody somewhere has, like, you know, Sanskrit tablets stuck in a drawer somewhere.

Carved on a stone wall somewhere. It was a copy of it. Exactly. A tale as old as time. Your selfies and the dicks. Yeah. The other thing that struck me about this is the irony of this video complaining about violations of privacy. When the video is entirely made up of secret, unauthorized recordings of people.

Yes. This does not escape me. And also, I think there's so much, what I characterize as bar bravado, which is if you're in a bar and someone's drinking and you ask them to basically brag about themselves and their capabilities. They will. They will. And so I don't count that as reliable testimony.

There's some interesting little things in here, but boy, do you have to take it all with a grain of salt. And as Jason said, I wouldn't trust this guy as far as I could kick him. Yeah. Yeah. And I love that. Just to add to your point about getting people drunk in bars and talking about themselves. In Steve Rombaum's tweet, he's like, that's Private Investigator 101.

You know, that really is. You find your mark, you get them drunk and let them talk. That's PI 101. That does not always create valuable and useful information. So that needs to be kept in mind. Yeah. And unfortunately, I had bought the guy's book before I, you know, did my research on him because I'm like, oh, this might be an interesting book.

And then I did the research. I'm like, oh, oops. Fortunately for me, Audible has a return policy. So I clicked, bought book by mistake, got my money back. Oh, good for you. Good. Well done. No money for you, James O'Keefe. Scummy scums a lot.

Scummy McScumface, that's what we'll call him. The internet has deemed it so. I saw this come across my table this week. BitTorrent users beware. Flaw lets hackers control your computer. And this is a flaw in the transmission app for Macintosh for downloading BitTorrents, or as I like to call it, my day trip to Sweden.

Yeah, visiting Sweden. Yes. Yes. And what it does is it's kind of this weird DNS attack, but it's only if you have a certain set of tools turned on so you can remote access your transmission account from somewhere else.

And it's that part that has the flaws, just not the app itself. So this was a couple of friends sent this to me, but if you don't turn that stuff on, you're fine. Kind of an edge case. So it's a very big edge case. So in transmission, developers said they're working on a fix, but not very specific about it because it's a distributed open source team.

Transmission is free and open source. So, but just don't turn that on and you're fine. Yeah. Are you guys familiar with Jason's Deli? Do you have any Jason's Delis around where you are? My kitchen, baby. Yeah. No, I don't think that that's a, they're not here in California.

I don't believe it. Okay. We will, this, this caught my eye out of self-interest because the Jason's Deli that is a stone's throw from my house is actually on the list of ones that were breached. Oh, exactly. All right. We have a new, would you like a pastrami in front?

We have, we have quite the cyber hunt going on, on the dark web right now. We have Jason's DNA, soon to have Jason's dog's DNA, and now Papa Bittner's credit card. There you go. All right. All right. Jason's Deli is a chain of delis, a popular place. I forget how many states they're in, at least 20.

So, you know, they're all over the place. And this week they announced on their website that they verified what had been suspected since late last year, that they had a major breach. Up to 2 million unique payment card numbers have been impacted.

That's a lot. It's a lot. And, you know, the usual stuff, name, user, everything you would need to compromise someone's credit card. And so they know this because the card showed up on the dark web for sale. So if you've had anything to eat at a Jason's Deli and you used a card in the past six months or so, be on your lookout for false charges on your credit card.

And you may want to, if you want to be proactive, you may want to go and get that number changed. Actually, this reminds me, a friend of mine I was talking with earlier last week was saying that he has a thing activated with his credit card where basically any time anything is charged on his credit card, he gets a text message.

That's pretty handy. I have that with my Amex. It works with my Amex. That's not a bad idea. No. Let's see if my card's that bad. I actually caught a guy on a Virgin America flight ordering cocktails using my Amex. And I called them and I'm like, Virgin America just tried to charge some cocktails on my card and I'm in my living room.

New cards on the way. It seems like it probably wouldn't rise to nuisance level. I suppose, you know, you have things on auto charge. If you're automatically paying your electric bill or your mortgage or something like that, you'd get those. But those are things you want to get. Those are reassuring that you know you do that. So just put that out there.

If your credit card company allows you to do that, I think that's a pretty good one to activate. I agree. And Amex lets me do it with only with, you can do it with all transactions or card not present transactions. So I just have it for card not present transactions. Smart.

Which works very well. And the interesting thing is the Virgin America one came back as a card not present transaction. So I'm like, how did they do that? That's kind of crafty. Because you usually have to swipe the card. Interesting. And I just love how since the Jason's Deli hack came through a POS system, which is the most appropriately named piece of technology in the last 20 years.

Yep. Now, I've got to say, yeah, they're bad here. We've got to take a page from Canada. They have little handheld things that they bring around. There's no more POS terminals. It's fantastic. Right. It's so much better. So they've got to get on that. Now, this next story, Jason, obviously, I put in for you because of the three of us.

Of course, Brian's back. So let's talk about tech we can fuck. Because of the three of us, there would be one that would be potentially at risk here, except for the VR aspect, because we both hate VR. So if you've signed up for SynVR, which is a virtual reality adult app, apparently the 20,000 people that did sign up for it may have their todgers out in the wind a little bit.

London-based cybersecurity firm. There's a backdoor. I love it. Digital interruption found a hidden backdoor. This is like some sexy talk for a security story, which allowed hackers to access members' usernames and email addresses. It did not let them get into payment information, which is nice. However, as we all know, there are some things that potentially you may sign up for on the Internet that you probably don't want people knowing that you've signed up for.

Or maybe it's a good idea because if you're doing your porn in VR, you might want your people that live in the house, family members, roommates to know that they could be walking in on you at some point. Yeah, putting a blindfold, basically a blindfold on yourself while you're doing that, that's asking for trouble, right?

Yeah, put the old sock on the door. Let's see. So I can't hear anything and I can't see anything. Oh, this is great. Yeah. Hmm. Yes, I can't hear it, can't hear it, can't see, and I'm furiously wanking. I swear to God, if Jason borrows my haptic gloves again. Right, exactly.

Well, you start walking around, next thing you know you're outside, you're walking down the street, you know. Boy, I didn't think I'd have to get in a car to get to this chick's house in this game. Wow, this is so realistic. It feels like I'm actually driving. What's the problem, officer?

Oh, you're not wearing pants, sir. Oh, okay. But in the game, I am, you see, so. Yeah. Right. All right, so something that went viral this week is Google's new, well, it's not new. The Google Art and Culture app has been around for a long time, but it has claimed the number one spot in the app download store this week.

Because of one specific feature, they basically, you would take a selfie and then they would match it against all the various different pieces of artwork that they have in their database and throw back the, you know, basically match you, match your selfie to a famous painting. And people have been posting these left, right, and center and all over the place.

So, as seen on social media immediately. So, what are the terms of service on that Google Arts and Culture thing? Is everybody now in the NSA facial recognition database? The short answer is no. They do have TOS that says that this stuff isn't being stored or saved anywhere.

But then again, as we all know, nothing is ever deleted and everything is stored, so. Okay, question. Have you guys tried this? I did. I have not. I can't figure out how to do it. I've got the app and I cannot find the button in the app to do it. It is buried. It took me a couple minutes to scroll down and find it.

I'll tell you offline. But you think it's going viral and they didn't put a big button front and center or even throw it up on, like, the little homepage of the app where they have, like, cool new features. It's not there. They buried it. It's crazy. I've searched many, many, many crappy BuzzFeed and Engadget and Gizmodo articles and everybody talks about it, but nobody says how to fucking do it and it's driving me crazy.

All right, I'll walk you through it, Jason, because, you know, you're an internet professional. I'm sure you would never be able to find it yourself. The time has passed now. I had really great mess. Like, you know, you get a puppy, you don't shower for four days, and you have really crazy Nick Nolte hair, you know, in his mugshot.

I was rocking the Nick Nolte. I was ready for the spotlight, Mr. DeVille, but no, I could not find the button, so Google misses out on bad hair day. Well, I have a very similar story, so that's a very nice segue, Jason. I wasn't you complaining about the UI.

Remember just a couple days ago when everybody in Hawaii thought they were going to die for about 38 minutes? Good times. Oh, yeah. Except for the guy that was playing golf, who's the winner of the whole day. Yeah. Well, the problem seems to be the UI on their menu for their system. Now, every story said somebody hit the wrong button.

That is not the case. Did you take a look at the screenshot of the menu that these people use to send these alarms? It is a 1991 HTML 1.0 disgusting mess of stupidity that isn't organized in any way, shape, or form that one can figure out.

How this has never been redesigned, how they don't have a better system is ultimately totally beyond me. Now, I know this is more a UI thing than, say, a security thing, but if these kinds of systems are built with such bad UI, how have we not seen more of this, and how will we not continue to see more of this?

And then, of course, the next thing that was then discussed is how easy are these things to hack? And apparently not that difficult. I mean, this is designed by engineer. You know, we've done it. We suck at it. We know it. But until there's a budget for a designer, you're going to get shit like this. Well, yeah, a couple things.

First of all, you'd think a message like this, there would be a, do you mean to send? Yes. You know, just some sort of, yeah, do you actually mean to scare an entire state and make them think that they're going to die? Considering I can't delete my trash on my desktop without multiple confirmations, you'd think they would have that.

Yes, exactly. The other thing, there's an animated GIF making the rounds about, with sort of a funny behind the scenes of this, where the person is about to click on the correct button, and at the last minute, an ad pops up that makes the whole interface shift down a little bit, and he clicks the wrong one.

And you can see him, whoa, no, no, no. That's making the rounds, and that's, yeah. We laugh, but. Yeah, exactly. So that's a good one. A couple other things about this one. There's been some photos making the rounds that the folks here stick their passwords on sticky notes on their computers in the control center.

And, you know, that's bad, but, you know, on the other hand, it depends on your threat model, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, it might not be as bad as it seems, but generally not a good idea. No. And then the other one I saw, again, for Jason, did you guys see the stats from Pornhub about this?

No. Yeah, so there's a story making the rounds, and I can't believe that I'm the one bringing this to the show. There's a story, Pornhub published a graph that showed. How we've ruined you. I know. At the moment. Papa, bucket, chicka, pound, pound, bit. At the moment that the alert went out, the usage of their platform plummeted, right, as everyone thought they were going to die.

But then when the message went out that all was clear, the usage skyrocketed because everyone needed to release the tension, as it were. And the stress, yes, yes, absolutely. So that's making the rounds.

So the missiles were actually launched at some point. Very good. Luckily, Pornhub's navigation is much more straightforward than this alert system, so everybody was able to take care of the problem quickly. I just love that story because it absolutely makes 100% sense, you know.

It's a human behavior in a nutshell. Yes, it is human nature. So that's out there. That graph is making the rounds, so check it out. Well, on that note, gentlemen. Yeah, this has been a stressful show. I've got to go take care of something. While you guys finish up the show, I'm going to go publish.

I would like to finish if you guys would let me. I'm going to go publish the Cyber Wire, if you know what I mean. Yeah. All right. All right, guys. Until next week. Feedback loop. We've got some new Patreon subscribers this week.

Thank you very much to Andrew M., Chris C., and Maddie's K. And Maddie's K. I wrote in a bunch of times, but this is the one that really stuck out to me. Yo, don't know if you saw this, but Toggle, Toggle with no E, of course, made a game about startups. And it's a startup simulator.

And I played it. I played it for a while. And, you know, apparently I cannot win in startups in the real world, and I cannot win in the virtual world either. It's all rigged. You can't do it. That's right. You can't do it. That's right. But it was a cute game. Check it out. Yep.

Also, thanks to Dobby Wanglass, who wrote in as well. Ah, oh boy. Hey, guys. Really liked your talk about episode eight, and I agree with most sentiments except regarding the force abilities. I'll explain a little more in detail on my YouTube channel. Same as my screen name. I'll send a link to the specific episode if you like.

But the takeaway from that part is that I'm a big fan of all the books, and after watching episode seven, I mentally partitioned the new trilogy as fan fiction, and to me, the canon will always be the novels. Okay. Now we go deep down the Jedi rabbit hole here. So thanks for writing. If anybody wants to check this out, we'll have his YouTube link in our show notes.

He gets super deep into it. So you're into Star Wars and not thrilled, and you're saying, to hell with it. I reject Disney's reality, and I create my own. Exactly. Which is basically that in a nutshell. So fair enough. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, yeah, I glazed over when I got to Yuuzhan Vong, and I'm like, I don't, no, no, no, no.

I've seen some movies. That's about it. All right, next up comes from John H. You two have fun commenting on the product names on Amazon, and I never realized how long and descriptive they really were until I picked up a cheap computer mouse. Hang on. I've got to take a breath for this one.

Yes. Vic Singh Upgrade Full Size 2.4G Wireless Mouse Optical Mice 6 Buttons Nano Receiver 18 Month Battery Life 2400 DPI 5 Adjustment Levels for Laptop, PC Computer, and MacBook Dark Black. Guess it makes it easier to find what you want without having to read the details on the product.

John, you win. Yeah, I would like to officially proclaim the Grumpy Old Geeks Amazon Maxim now, which is the cheaper the product, the longer the title. Oh, yes. We'll call this Brian's Law. Brian's Law. Yeah. And cheap as in quality, not so much price.

Yes, that's what I meant. Yeah, it's not so much. It's the one that you can buy that will fall apart the quickest has the longest name. Yes, the longer description, the lower the quality. They're an inverse ratio. Yes. Also, thanks to Kate S., who says, congrats on reaching your goal of 500 bucks a month.

Enjoy a bit of Bitcoin humor. A boy asked his Bitcoin investing father for $10. Father, $9.82? What do you need $10.08 for? That's actually pretty good. That's pretty good. And what's the difference between an average Bitcoin miner and an average plumber?

An average plumber can at least solve a block. I didn't get that one because I'm not a plumber. I didn't get that one either. I don't know plumber humor. And God knows I could never fix a pipe in my house. But I bet it's funny. The first one was great, though. I'm going to use that one. The first one was really good. I like that. Yes, thanks. And over on PayPal, we had a direct donation from Peter Kay.

So thank you so much for that. Over on Facebook, Danny C gives us five stars. My Mondays are more cheerful as I listen to the guys while I work. Entertaining, funny, and I can relate. Appreciate your time and keeping the episodes coming. Well, we'll keep on keeping on. Trucking on. Yes, we will.

Yep. And over on Twitter, we had a couple different things going on. So some highlights here. John Holbrook wrote us and said, I got a laugh with how your latest show showed up on my truck stereo. And he sent a picture of the last shit. Oh, my God.

That's nice. That's nice. I like that. That's pretty good. Link will be in the show notes for that one, for sure. Yep. And David J. Fidley wrote us as well. He was complaining about the YouTube thing that we discussed earlier and sent a nice little middle finger that we could pass along to. YouTube for screwing people that don't make a lot of money.

And Geek Corner UK says, is there a way to rate podcasts in your app? I would really like to rate GOG podcast without having to use iTunes, please. Well, that's not how it works, unfortunately. Overcast is just a player. They pull in an RSS feed and spit it back out. But if you are using the Overcast player, please go in.

Next to the play button, there's a little star. Click on that star. That keeps us up in the recommendation ratings. And we really want to beat the ATP podcast, please. Because it's just fun. Because Marco is the head of the ATP podcast. And he makes Overcast.

So it's just fun to be able to beat him on his own platform. But yeah. Sorry, Geek Corner UK. You got to go to iTunes. So go to GOG.show slash iTunes. And it should load up. And you'll have to go through that rigmarole. We appreciate it. We really do. We do. And 6502chip wrote us, I loved your Last Jedi discussion.

I hope Jason has Dave Bittner on Does It Have Legs in the Future? I agree with your movie assessment, but I would have loved it anyway. It was fun. Hope to see more of that every once in a while. That's what I've been hearing. Everybody liked Bittner being on the show more. So he's more than welcome to pop in every now and again, as long as we don't have to pay him.

I know he's pricey. He's pricey. With those dulcet tones of his that out-dulcet my tones. I wonder where that woman is these days. I wonder if she still pines for you, Jason. Well, I doubt it, because you're the one that made up the whole dulcet tones thing. She never said that. Mr. Dom says, laugh so hard, Leia floating back into the spaceship.

The Mary Poppins scene. Yes, yes, it was. Okay. Yeah, yeah. And Dinkle said, we are getting closer to the actual hashtag internet of shit, and sent a link. Fart tracking pill spies on your gut gases. I love it.

Yeah. Okay. 650 Chip also writes back in, Bright is the type of movie I would have been perfectly happy to rent at the Corner Video Club back in 1986. It's good at what it is. I agree. It's exactly good at what it is. It is not war and peace. It is just a fun action movie.

I just don't want what it is. That's the problem. Well, see, the thing is, you don't know what it is because you haven't seen it, so whatever. All right. Over at iTunes, we did get a five-star rating from Beta Bucket. I think I recognize that name from your clan, Jason. Oh, really? Is Beta Bucket and the clan? Awesome.

I believe so. I think I've seen that name swing by. Entertaining and informative. Brian and Jason do a fantastic job every week of being both informative and hilarious. I look forward to Mondays just to find out who's to blame for this week's digital misadventures on my commute. Thank you. Thank you. And just a quick bit of clan news over for our GOG show clan.

We're going to be doing purges every week because there's a lot of people that signed up and aren't playing, and there's a lot of people that want to come in who are players. So check the clan news if you're in there because we're going to start kicking out the lazy bastards. All you lazy bastards, you get in the boot so that people can come in and want to play.

I do like the fact that last week you bemoaned the fact that we were doing a review of a Star Wars movie as the geekiest thing we've ever done on our show, and that you're talking about checking the clan news. I stand by that, by the way. I totally stand by that. Not the clan you might be thinking of if you've come here from Google. No, no, definitely not. Yeah, no, if you still think that my stuff's nerdier, go check out Dobby One Glass' review of, I'm sorry, I still win on that point.

Yes. You do. I will give you that. If you want your question or comment right 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 snarky review. And as always, tell a friend.

Closing shout outs! As you probably heard by now, the Cranberry singer Dolores O'Riordan has died, sadly. This was on last Monday when our podcast was first coming out. She died at the age of 46. We still don't have much news as to the cause, but my God, she had a voice and she will be missed.

I felt like I got punched in the gut when I heard that. I really did too. I was driving around and I looked at my phone and I saw the news and it was just sad. I mean, those first two to three albums of theirs are just phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal. And she was an amazing force of nature and just what a voice.

And to have somebody just a little bit older than me and younger than Jason pass away. She's the same age as me. I'm 46. Very. Yeah. No, it was a punch in the gut for a couple of reasons there. But yeah, no, I was texting with a friend. And we did not mention her. We did not mention her on the show.

This had nothing to do with us. Well, we did talk about their new album a little bit ago, but we didn't, no, we didn't go down that route. It's not our fault. Not our fault. But it's just a shitty way to start 2018 because, man, I loved her so much. Yeah. Me too. So there you go.

Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, go to patreon.com slash GOG. Toss us a buck a month and we'll love you forever. If you'd like to give a one-time donation, go to GOG.show and click the PayPal button in the sidebar.

Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 243. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, and get links to stuff we like. Stay grumpy, and we'll see you next week. At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out.

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