251: SpaceForce2000

This episode of Grumpy Old Geeks is brought to you by RxBar. For 25% off your first order, visit rxbar.com slash GOG and enter promo code GOG at checkout. They are delicioso. 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. You ready to make fun of me, Brian? I'll go easy on you, but I do think that, you know, the great Santini Schulmeister made another prediction that's coming true. Yes, I'm moving back to Los Angeles, God damn it. What? Yeah. Unfortunately, that's where the work is.

That's kind of true. So that's why a lot of people live here and pay outrageous rents and property taxes and whatnots. Unfortunately, after being unceremoniously and fired from The Art of Charm a month and a half ago and starting the new show, the new show is not quite caught up to my personal savings, which I am burning through at an ungodly rate.

So I'm actually moving to Los Angeles to save money, believe it or not. After running the numbers, if I don't do something now, in a month and a half, I'll be homeless. So it's been an interesting week. A lot of stress. Lots of stress. Yeah, sounds like it. Well, I'm happy to have you back in the city that you hate, sort of, because you're very far north and not really technically in Los Angeles when you are here.

But, yeah, you know, hey, we're going to start a podcasting consulting empire, right? That's right. We are going to join forces and tell other people how to do this crap and take some of their money. Basically, doing another cross-country move by myself. Yay. But this time with two dogs. That should be fun.

Yay. Ah, you're soliciting people on your Facebook. You've got a couple of friends that are happy to join you on the drive. I think Mr. Robert Fogarty is going to join me, I think, hopefully. Because he's done it before and he's a fine traveling companion. I'd imagine he would be. Yes. Very chill. And the dogs like him, which is important on a trip with the dogs.

Yes. Anyway, let's talk about some geeky stuff. All right. So I saw a video this week from the lovely people at SpaceX called the Falcon Heavy and Starman. It's just kind of a little, you know, montage talking about, you know, the Falcon Heavy and Starman and his Tesla off to the nether regions of the galaxy and back again.

I thought it got really dusty in the room for me when I watched it for some reason. Could be just the mood I was in that week. But did you get a chance to watch it? I did watch it and it was beautiful. I actually have a video a little later on in the show that did the same thing to me. But yes, this was, look, man, we are in a place where anything, anything that is good news, that is progressive, that is moving forward, that is reaching for the stars, basically makes us feel good.

And we need it now more than ever, as they say. Yes, we are. We are consciously trying to ungrump. This will be a conscious ungrumping. Oh, I didn't get that memo. You should see the rest of my stories. I know. I like to start with the with the good stuff, because, yeah, we're definitely not going to end on a high note this week.

Well, unfortunately, I took your space story and immediately replaced it with a space story that is not quite as nice. Silicon Valley can't leave anything alone. They're not content just to screw up Santa Monica. Nay! They also must screw up the stars. It's amazing how much stuff is constantly being shot off into into our atmosphere and put into orbit around us.

On the 12th of January, a polar satellite launch vehicle rocket blasted off from India's east coast. And we knew what was on a lot of it. I think because you're kind of required to tell people the large Indian mapping satellite, dozens of secondary CubeSats, those cool little tiny satellites that are basically just boxes.

And there was some other stuff on there. Somebody snuck in some cargo. Yeah. Four small satellites that probably should not have been there. Space B123 and 4, which were briefly disguised by the Indian Space Agency as two-way satellite communications and data relay devices from the United States.

No operator was specified. The Spectrum, the IEEE folks, have revealed and done the due diligence on this, that these are the first spacecraft from a Silicon Valley startup called Swarm Technologies, currently still in stealth mode. Not anymore.

Not anymore. So yes, even though these things shouldn't be up there and didn't get permission because the FCC denied them permission for their application to put these things up, they did it anyways. Because that's what Silicon Valley does. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's what they do.

Yes. So you can't do this. Well, screw you. We're going to do it anyways. And now we've got these guys' satellites up there and they're going to keep doing more. So the FCC has basically said, you cannot do any more. But I don't see why that would stop them. And if this is finally confirmed, 100% for sure, this will be the first ever unauthorized launch of commercial satellites.

Yay. Woo-hoo. That's a good one. Well, keeping up with the good news, Elon Musk crashed a panel at South by Southwest, the Westworld panel, which I thought is pretty funny, to talk about space travel. And he said, there are a lot of terrible things happening all over the world, all of the time. There are lots of problems that need to get solved, lots of things that are miserable and kind of get you down.

But life cannot be just about solving one miserable thing after another. That can't be the only thing. There needs to be things that inspire you, that make you glad to wake up in the morning and be part of humanity. That's why we did this. But it's just funny that he's at the Westworld panel, and the Westworld is a show that is a series of terrible things happening one after another.

That is basically, that should be the tagline for Westworld, a series of miserable things. Yeah. But look, I like Musk more and more every day. I know a lot of people gave him some crap for, you know, wasting the resources of putting one of his own cars up into space.

But God love him for it. It was genius. It made people happy. It did. Yes. Yes, it did. So good on him. And continuing follow-up, we talked about Spotify going public. Their first day of trading will be April 3rd. And as we've discussed, they are kind of doing this weird, they're not doing a traditional IPO in which stock is sold in advance of opening day to institutional investors.

They're just doing a direct-to-market sort of thing, just so anybody can get in there. And we're expecting, well, everybody is expecting some pretty crazy, bonkers stuff to happen with that. I personally, I'm, you know, I'm not an investor. I just play one on this podcast. I would not buy in at the beginning. That's just me.

Yeah, it's going to be kind of crazy on day one. Let it settle and see where it goes. Yep. Yes. I will certainly not be buying any. I guess you're not. No. No. And we've talked a lot about what Facebook is doing with their feed and for news publishers and whatnot.

And Wired got into it pretty big. They did a really long article talking about how Facebook is not a good friend for news publishers and the skulldudgery. And I was going to use the F word there, but, you know, I'm trying to be conscious about not cussing so much since everybody gets mad at us for some reason.

Yeah, it's a good long read about everything that's going on and they get into some real numbers, which obviously Facebook doesn't provide. But there's third party people that are tracking these sorts of things. So, yeah, it's not good. So, if you are a publisher still trying to make a living off your Facebook feed, I'd suggest you find a new home.

Yep. We've only been saying it for five years. So, glad Wired is saying it again. Somebody will eventually listen. No. And you originally had a story about Disney a while back and how terrible they are with the city of Anaheim.

Yes. And how they're basically, you know, bilking the city for lots and lots of tax breaks, not paying the employees very much. And this is kind of an older story, but I found it and I just it kind of broke my heart that these people are basically living in abject poverty and can't, you know, get a sustainable wage out of the happiest place on earth.

And it's about a woman that worked there for over a decade and ended up dying alone in her car and was over a month before they found her. It was just like, man, way to go, mouse. Yeah, it's it's that's a pretty depressing story. I mean, I, you know, I know there are a lot of Disney life of lifers, the people that really just they started working there.

Like, like when I did when I was 15 years old and they're still there now. And, you know, you can work up the ranks. You can get yourself so that you're not on stage, as they say. You can get yourself to management and things like that. But some people don't. And, you know, it's not it's not really any different than if you were working at Burger King.

It's not a living wage. If you're an adult, if you have kids, if you're trying to move on, you cannot make it doing that. It's it's. But remember, kids, just be a good, kind person and everything is just going to work out fine. In the news.

Brian, I put this one in the news just for you, your favorite company in the world. Bird, the Uber for scooters, has just raised a hundred million dollars in financing. Yes, of course they have. I was hoping for a bird free week, but obviously you scuttled that.

And so did some of our listeners, which I'll get to. Just a quick side note. I took a I took a bike ride this morning before the show, as I usually try to do every morning. And I saw about eight, eight birds parked. On the bike path, not on the side of the bike path, on the bike.

Nice. And I decided, you know, I the obvious thing would be to call a grouping of birds, a flock of birds. But I'm proposing we call them a douche of birds. A douche of birds sounds good. I like that one. There's a douche of birds on the bike path. So in the article that I found with the the money figures for this, there was a video of how bird works and I watched it.

And me being me, I figured out how to basically disable all the bird scooters in your neighborhood. All you need is a can of black spray paint. Yep. Because all you do is you go up to the bird scooter and you scan the QR code that's on the scooter and that unlocks it and lets it go.

Now, there's a couple of things. I think the spray paint might be a little bit too malicious, but what you can do, and we've seen this from stories in China and India, you can make stickers. Yes, you can. So what I suggest is go to take – you find the prime bird. You find one bird scooter that is going to be prime bird.

You clone that sticker and you put it on every single bird that you can find. So none of them – like they're trying to unlock it and it's unlocking something across town or locking somebody out of the scooter that's on it. Hopefully, in transit, it just locks up and they run into a telephone pole. But there's so many ways that you can screw with them.

And yes, they're probably illegal, but I'm not advocating it. I'm just telling you how to do it. If you're doing something illegal to a company that's operating illegally, it does the tree – when the tree falls in the woods. Yeah. Hmm.

Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. So last night I was going through the show notes and I saw that as well. And then a listener, Sean, sent us a message on Facebook through Grumpy Old Geeks on Facebook. And he sent a photo of scooters he's been seeing around D.C. this week. And he said that he's never actually seen anybody riding them, but they've just started popping up anywhere.

So I did a quick Google search and lo and behold, Washington, D.C., you know, here come the clones, basically. In Washington, D.C., there are two different companies, a California-based Waybots, which I've not seen or heard of here, but they've launched in D.C. And LimeBike, which also has dockless bike operations in the city, is now adding scooters to its fleet this week.

So there are two different companies going with a bird's business model in D.C. The same thing is in here. There's not really any regulation specifically for this stuff, except for the regulations that exist for all powered moving vehicles. Exactly.

Now, I thought you told me that the bird was only in Santa Monica, but they're also in Venice, Westwood, Los Angeles, Pacific Beach, and San Diego. My friend Jordan saw some actually in the wild in San Diego when he was down there. So they have expanded. The bird has flown the coop, as it were. It is spreading.

Speaking of things happening here in the city of Santa Monica, we've been battling against Airbnb and some of the other companies like HomeAway, which is another one. And the city of Santa Monica has won. The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California ruled in favor of the city of Santa Monica this last Friday in litigation against Airbnb and HomeAway, saying that basically the city gets to make their own rules and you have to follow them.

That's the way it works, people. So today's decision affirms the city of Santa Monica can take reasonable steps to protect residential units from conversion into de facto hotels, while also allowing individuals to share their homes with guests for compensation in authorized circumstances. We applaud this important ruling.

So well done, city of Santa Monica. And speaking of that, there's a site called CityLab, and they did a very, very in-depth and very, very, very long write-up on Airbnb's lasting effects in New York City. The TLDR version, Airbnb is not good.

It has drastically driven up rents. The rich are getting richer, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You can go read it if you want to. It's everything I've been saying about Airbnb. It's everything Jason's been saying about Airbnb. It's everything we've been saying about these Web 2.0 companies that are awesome. And basically, yeah, they're finding out that this is not good.

It is screwing up cities. And don't tell me that Airbnb is just a fucking platform. Let's see. I already got to the fuck bomb. I get worked up. Because that is Airbnb's excuse. Airbnb is saying we are just a platform. And if people choose to use our platform in ways that are illegal, there's nothing we can do about it.

Bullshit. You can do something about it. You can fix this. This is programming. I've already fixed this in my mind. I've already written the PHP code and the MySQL database. You can put caps on how many days per year a property is rented. You can vet if a property is registered with local governments into paying the appropriate taxes and increase the amount of days that that property can be rented in a year.

If they meet those things, you can fix this. This can all be fixed relatively easily. And there's no reason. There's just no reason for Airbnb to do it because they're making money hands over fits. So yeah, no, it's a very simple fix. It is. It is. They can fix this, but they don't want to.

Take a break. Take a break. Deep breaths. Deep breaths. Now my turn. Lyft. Lyft, the wonderful car sharing company that threw me out on the 405 because Jesus, they are testing a Netflix-style monthly subscription plan now.

Makes sense. That's the way everything eventually tries to go, subscription models. Yes, the CEO says, we are going to move the entire industry from one based on ownership to one based on subscription. Okay. Now, some of the prices that they have in there, you can get up to 30 standard Lyft rides for $199 a month.

And another package was priced at $300. And another at $399 for 60 rides. And individual rides up to $15 were covered under the all-access pass. And it's kind of confusing how they're trying to push this off right now because I don't think they know what they're doing yet. But I just want to say, I lease my car, you know, with insurance.

It costs me about $320 a month. And guess what? Unlimited rides. I can take as many rides in it as I want. That's the thing. A subscription model should be all in. It shouldn't have caps. So that's kind of, here, we want to give you a subscription, but we're going to cap you off.

It's basically just a discount for heavy volume users. And what happens if your ride is over $15? Well, you're going to get charged the extra, of course. Right. But if it's under $15, you still get dinged for something that's up to $15. Nope. You don't get it back. Nope. They're just going to like to screw you.

You know, yeah, subscription. It's a, I hate subscriptions so much. Although technically I have a lease, so that's kind of a subscription for three years. It is, but you know, it's, it's yours-ish. Yep. Ish. That's, that's true.

It's ish mine. Now, this is a kind of a funny one. Twitter has reportedly suspended users that steal memes and force viral tweets. So everybody is suspended? I was going to say, you mean people using the platform for what it was intended to do. Oh, okay. And they call these people tweet deckers.

Tweet deckers. Because they hang out in tweet deck chat rooms and, you know, plan the downfall of the meme and take it over. And this is nothing new. I remember way back in the day when Dig was a thing, the original Dig that Kevin Rose ran. All the power users would get together and basically pump and dump links, you know, just like people do with, with cryptocurrency.

But they just do it with their wuffy and their, you know, their, their clout on the system. So this is nothing new, but, uh, yeah, at least one of the names I thought was pretty funny. Holy fag was suspended as part of it. Uh, and so damn true, uh, meme provider, girl posts, and poor Dory.

Dory got, uh, got suspended along with common white girl. Okay. Oh, Geary. Common white Geary. I don't know what a Geary is, but yeah. So it's just funny that, you know, Twitter has so many problems that this is what they're, you know, focusing on right now. I mean, that's, that's what I was thinking when I, when you, when I saw the story is like, we can't, you can't manage to get off racist, but, uh, we can stop some people from doing too, too many memes.

So thanks. I know. And, uh, follow that up. Wired has another great story this week. I can't wait to give them my money because when I have some again, um, they're really knocking it out of the park. They got some great writers over there now, but there's an article titled bad actors are using social media exactly as designed.

Yep. They're not really kind of like going outside of the bounds of what the platform is meant to do. It's, you know, you create a bomb, it's going to blow up at some point. But as Jonathan Albright, research director at Columbia university's toe center for digital journalism told the New York times, Facebook built incredibly effective tools, which let Russia profile citizens here in the U S and figure out how to manipulate us.

Facebook essentially gave them everything they needed, which is true. That's, that's what a self-service ad platform will do for you. Yep. Well, South by Southwest is going on this week. And, and as, as per our thing, we don't talk about it because we hate South by Southwest. Uh, but there are some stories coming out of there.

I just love this one. Um, YouTube has been having some problems recently, uh, with, uh, all kinds of bad actors using the platform as in the way that it's intended to be used. Yes. Uh, so they're trying to, uh, battle back on this a little bit. So I just love this sentence.

Let me, let me read this and then let me translate it. YouTube will add information from Wikipedia to videos about popular conspiracy theories to provide alternative viewpoints on controversial subjects. Let me translate now. YouTube will put facts over bullshit, but they can't come out and say that because they're pussies.

So yeah, that's what they're going to do. They're, they're going to put, basically they're turning YouTube into pop-up video. They're going to drop text boxes over, over these stupid videos saying, yes, we actually did land on the moon. And before you think I'm making that up, they use that as the example. Tell me chemtrails are in there too.

Please tell me chemtrails are in there. Yes. Yes. Showed examples of information cues for videos about the moon landing and chemtrails. The two things that they mentioned. Yes. Awesome. So that's great. But here's the real kicker on this. The very next day, Wikipedia said, hey, what? You're doing what?

We were not given advance notice of this announcement, said the Wikimedia Foundation in a statement on Twitter. So YouTube going ahead with this gigantic plan and forgot to ever mention it to Wikipedia. Now, they don't have to because Wikipedia information is free to use on the internet for anyone, but still would have been nice.

It would have been kind of a nice heads up, you know? Wow. Yeah. But people just do what the hell they want to do. That is really, I'm just stunned. Every day, every day I'm getting links for this show, every time we sit down to record this, I am just constantly stunned.

There are just no rules anymore. Everybody just does whatever the hell they want. Well, fortunately, there are some people on the job, and it looks like the SEC has finally come out and dusted off whatever rock they've been hiding under because Equifax's former chief information officer just got charged with insider trading.

Good. Remember when we talked about Equifax and how mysteriously a bunch of C-level officers were dumping stock in that one little period when nobody knew about the hack, but they did, but they never told anybody? Yep. Turns out, turns out, you can't do that.

What? You can't do that. Oh. So, yeah. Oops. Oopsies. Yeah. He made over $950,000 on his stock sale. Wow. And if he would have sold it after the breach, it would have only been worth $117,000. Hmm.

Hmm. Way to go. Way to go. So that's number one. Theranos. Remember Theranos? I do. The blood testing company that was basically nothing. Yeah. Well, the SEC has charged Theranos with massive fraud, and the CEO was stripped of everything, stripped of her control.

She has to give back all of her shares. She's going to pay a $500,000 penalty. And if the company is ever sold, she will not profit from it until more than $750 million is returned to allegedly defrauded investors and other shareholders. And she can't be on the board or an officer of a public company for 10 years.

Good. So, yeah. Occasionally, something good happens in the world. Yes, yes. And, of course, Wired again comes up with another story. Theranos and Silicon Valley's fake-it-till-you-make-it culture. And it says, The Theranos story is an important lesson for Silicon Valley, said Gina Choi, director of the SEC's San Francisco Regional Office, in a statement to the press.

Innovators who seek to revolutionize and disrupt an industry must tell investors the truth about what their technology can do today, not what they hope it might do someday. Hey, 23andMe, watch your backs. No doubt.

I'm Italian, damn it! Oh, man. And now France is getting in the game. They are suing Google and Apple over abusive developer contracts. Okay. Unfortunately, it's not a lot of money. They're only trying to get fines of about $2.5 million from each company, which is, you know, drop in the bucket for them.

But at least they're going after them for basically tweaking the developer contracts to not be friendly to the developers. Right. What are you going to do? What are you going to do? You're going to sue, I guess. Yes. We're going to sue. All right. Well, that's good. And speaking of abuse, oh, Snapchat.

Oh, my God. My jaw hit the floor when I saw this. Oh, my God. Snapchat ran an ad that joked about Rihanna and domestic violence. This was approved by a human being. This is not surprising. So the ad was placed by a mobile game developer.

Actually, you know, we should be yelling at them as much as we are, if not more than Snapchat. Yeah. For coming up with this concept. Would you rather? I hope somebody got fired. Oh, yeah. I just don't want to give that company any press. Yeah. So it was a little ad that popped up that said, would you rather slap Rihanna or punch Chris Brown?

Classy, guys. Keep it classy. Yeah. So this renewed criticism has sent Snap's stock sliding on Thursday again. The company was provided some insight into its advertising review process when asked about how this happened and how it plans to avoid similar mistakes in the future.

The vast majority of ads placed on Snapchat are now self-serve, meaning that advertisers follow an automated process designed and purchase their own ads on the platform rather than working directly with Snapchat. This is basically how everybody works now. So you put your thing up, it supposedly gets reviewed by a bunch of really tired people in the Philippines who suddenly say yay or nay.

And what do you expect is going to happen? Like, there are cultural issues that people may not get. There are just exhaustion. There's just, I don't care. So I'm just going to click on approve, approve, approve, approve, approve, approve, approve. Now it's lunchtime. So shocking.

This is this. Oh, well, thank God. AI will come along and solve all these problems, right? Oh, I know. I can't wait. Jesus. Oh, man. Now, in some interesting news, Cloudflare is in the news. They were being sued by an adult publisher called ALS Scan for what is basically copyright infringement because of their caching system.

Right. Because, you know, we use Cloudflare. Almost everybody uses Cloudflare nowadays, and they have a giant CDN that caches tons and tons of stuff. And Cloudflare says, we're just a platform. You know, they're using their safe harbor provisions and saying that, look, you know, even if we take down those copies, it still doesn't take down the website that's hosting them.

So what's the harm with us just hosting the copies of the files? And finally, a judge says, no, that's not really how that works. So, I mean, the main point is that, yes, Cloudflare is helping these sites actually get their copyrighted stolen stuff out there.

And it's going to a jury trial, which will be interesting. A lot of it was shot down by the judge on both sides. But this is a major one because this is going to kind of state what CDN's can and can't do. So it's kind of an important case to watch. So we will be watching it.

You know who else is going to be watching this? Pinterest. Yeah. Pinterest will be watching this very closely, I think. And in the Wall Street Journal this morning, I caught this article for the six seconds I was allowed to read it. The IRS is going after Bitcoin traders. I'm sorry, holders.

They're going after Bitcoin holders. They've got a bunch of data from Coinbase, which they got last year. So now expect to pay taxes on that money that you made or didn't make in some cases. But, yeah, and there are a lot of people, I guess, that are trying to get around that by saying, oh, here it is.

Here's the money. I'm sorry. I forgot to file. Here you go. Here you go. What do people think? Why do you think you wouldn't have to pay taxes on this if you make money? What is wrong with people? It's cryptocurrency, man. Hey, man. No government. Decentralize. No government.

Decentralize, man. Whatever. Bro, I'm going to get on my bird. I'll see you later. I'm heading to Mexico on my bird. If you're in San Diego, you could make it to the border on a bird. Maybe. I don't know. I think you'd probably have to charge it up a couple times. Could be.

So, yeah. If you made money on Bitcoin, go talk to your accountant and get that taken care of because they're coming for you. Yep. This episode is brought to you by RxBAR. RxBAR is a whole food protein bar.

What does that mean? Their bars are made with 100% whole ingredients. Seriously, no BS. RxBAR's core ingredients are completely simple. It's like eating three egg whites, two dates, and six almonds. That's it. And, of course, delicious flavors. And it turns out real food ingredients actually taste really good.

Go figure. You can actually taste the cacao, the real fruit, the spices, like sea salt. With Brian's baby and my two puppies, our hands are quite literally always full. So, RxBAR is fantastic for a quick breakfast or snack in between cleaning up the collective poop that we both have to deal with.

RxBAR's are amazingly delicious. Like I said, I've tried just about every bar on the planet, and these are hands down my favorite. They come in 11 flavor varieties, so you can get a bar for almost any mood, like sweet or savory, chocolate, or fruit flavors. There's always something to eat.

Personally, I love the blueberry bars for breakfast, a peanut bar for mid-afternoon when I'm feeling indulgent, and the chocolate and sea salt when I sit down for my nightly reading session. RxBAR's are gluten-free, soy-free, dairy-free, no sugar added, no artificial colors, artificial flavors, preservatives, or fillers.

They're just full of goodness, I tell you. They're absolutely fantastic. For 25% off your first order, visit RxBAR.com slash GOG and enter promo code GOG at checkout. Again, 25% off your first order. RxBAR.com slash GOG. Enter promo code GOG at checkout.

And please to enjoy... Ups and Doodads! Can iTunes really get any worse? Oh. I don't even know what to do anymore. I have to force quit it, like, two to three times a day now.

Podcasts won't update. Sometimes it just won't play. It is such a piece of crap. Is Apple ever going to fix this? Nope. Okay, moving on. I don't think so. Okay, yeah. That's why I don't use it for podcasts at all. I only use it now to check my rankings in the podcast charts.

That's it. Yeah. I don't play anything, nothing. Yeah. It's horrible. And Twitter, because they can't seem to figure out what the hell they're doing anymore. Now they're working on a camera-first feature that could threaten Snap. Okay, that might be a little hyperbolic in the title there.

But it's a new function that would combine location-based photos and videos with Twitter moments around notable events. And companies could sponsor events or place ads in between tweeted real-time photos and videos. The feature would resemble how Snap collects location-based snaps around certain topics and displays them together as a highlighted post on its Discover tab, a feature that has proven popular with advertisers.

Okay. We'll see if that makes it into the wild. I doubt it. I'm calling this segment Insta Scam of the Week. I'm finding all these ads on Instagram. And all you do is you basically go to the website that's there and then go to Amazon and search for the same thing.

Yes. This week I found the Slim Selfie Drone Camera. And it retails at $89.99. So I went over to Amazon and found something that is basically the same thing, although the title is a little different. It's a little more verbose than the Slim Selfie Drone Camera.

This is the JJRC-H49-SOL 720p Wi-Fi FPV Ultra-Thin Foldable Selfie Drone with Beauty Altitude Hold Mode RC Quadcopter RTF Black. And that retails at $47.99. Yeah. Good job.

I love that. I just keep them coming. I like these. They're very funny to me. And a friend of the show Burns wrote in, said, Geeks, this is either a query for opinion or a tip for next week's apps and doodads. Know anything about an app company called Trim? For clarification, this is supposed to help with reducing the cable internet phone bills, not a new dating app.

I was going to say. I like the idea of an app that lowers my outrageous internet bill, which sounds similar to the app that would fight tickets for you. I'm concerned that if I go through the sign-up process, they're going to want banking information. If it sounds too good to be true, it's probably too good to be true is my initial thought.

Now, I went and looked at it. I haven't used it. I went and looked at their about section. Nothing, nothing in the about section fills me with any confidence. They have every buzzword in there. They're building an AI. We're building the equivalent of a self-driving car for your financial life.

I don't trust anyone with my finances, but me. And yeah, of course, you have to give them all your login info and details for anything that you want their AI to run for you. What could go wrong? What could possibly go wrong? Reading through the terms of service is a real treat as well.

Having said all that, I am curious, just not curious enough to give it to go with my own information and my own finances. It'd be great to have something automate that. But for now, you know what? You could just call your cable company yourself and say, this is ridiculous, and they'll probably chop off $10 for you.

Yeah, yeah. Just renegotiate yourself. So I looked at the jobs page at Trim, and you figure it's a software company. If they're making AI, they need to be hiring lots of engineers. Well, not really. Marketing, marketing, growth, growth, marketing, marketing, growth, growth. That's it.

They're hiring one software engineer in San Francisco, a chief of staff of special projects, a product designer, a contract recruiting talent for talent acquisition, and then growth associate, paid acquisition, growth manager, paid acquisition, market associate, content, marketing manager, content.

Everybody's worried about marketing instead of making the damn product. You know, and I'm glad that you found that because that alone tells me everything I need to know about this company. I would not use them. Yep. All they're going to do now is market the crap out of something. They're not building anything anymore.

This is another one of those companies that we just talked about, about Silicon Valley, about how they have to be honest about what they can actually do now, not what they hope to do. Because everything in their about section and everything on their website is what they hope to be able to do.

Yeah. God, it's ridiculous. And I play Star Wars Battlefront 2, and we covered this on the show a long time ago. But when it first came out, there was a huge backlash because of the loot box system and paid upgrades and all the crap that you have to do.

And loot boxes are going to basically be illegal soon. I think because I remember doing another story about the fact that it's kind of gambling because you're paying them money and you're gambling on what's going to be in the box. So they're pulling it. They're pulling all of the loot crate crap. Changes are coming out March 21st.

So by the time you download the update, which should take about until March 26th, because the updates take forever, you'll be able to play it. And it's got a whole bunch of new stuff in a linear progression system, which I'm really looking forward to. So once this hits, I'll go back and start playing it again because I got a little bored with it.

But now that I know these updates are coming, I might jump back in. Nice.

We got the most comments we've ever had for any single thing from last week's HODLer comments that we made because we were uninformed. And we all conveniently learned about that Sunday night. So thanks to everybody who wrote in to tell us.

And go ahead, Jason. I didn't get any of these comments. I don't know what people were saying. What was it? Everybody explained to us what a HODLer actually is, which then John Oliver conveniently did. So we knew. Okay.

Gotcha. Yeah. Yes. Yes. The cryptocurrency segment on John Oliver was pretty good. I have a link in the show notes for that. If you haven't seen it, definitely go check it out. Yes. Very funny. Very funny stuff. I saw something today. It makes me want to.

I don't know what I want to do. Whatever it is, it's violent. There's a new startup out there called Radio Yo. Okay. They're building a decentralized ecosystem for podcasters, online broadcasters, independent media, and online publishers worldwide using a cutting-edge cryptocurrency called the Rayo.

Speaking as a podcaster, do we need a decentralized ecosystem? No. Okay. We actually have a decentralized ecosystem. That's how it works. Right. There's absolutely nothing that they're building that is of value, as I see. But their video is worth watching if you want to.

If the word blockchain makes you angry, like it does me, go watch the video. And at the very end of the video, I had to watch this entire thing because they were talking about their ICO and all this other crap. Disclaimer. Citizens of the United States are prohibited from participating.

The crowd sale of the Rayo token is not the sale of a security. Radio Yo, stupid name, will use the proceeds of the crowd sale to advance the purpose outlined in its white paper. Virtual currency is not legal tender, is not backed by the government, and accounts and value balances are not subject to consumer protections.

Derp. Yep. The information in this video does not constitute investment advice or an offer to sell or invest in securities. People who participate in Radio Yo's ICO should not have a reasonable expectation of any future profits or the Rayo increasing in value based on Radio Yo Inc. creating a blockchain-based broadcasting and services platform.

They just said, give us your money and we're not going to give you any. We're not under no legal obligations to ever give you anything in return. And if you go look at their timeline, it's just, it's ridiculous. Yes, they're selling vaporware. Absolute vaporware for no reason for something that doesn't need to exist.

And I found this as a paid advertisement in a newsletter that I read it. I was just like, oh man, what's going on? I don't know anymore. Radio Yo. Yeah. God, give me a break. Ricky Gervais special. Have you got a chance to watch it yet? I did watch it. It was great. Okay, good. I haven't seen it yet.

So I was hoping you had. I know you're a Ricky Gervais fan and I'm always on the fence with him. So I figured I'd get a review from you first. I'll just put it in the notes. I thought it was fantastic. I was laughing really, really hard. You know, the people that get offended from us on our podcast should never, ever watch this.

It is. Oh, yeah. It is. It is. Oh, he just went for it. He went for it. He's like, I'm just going to be offensive. There you go. I'm just going to. Awesome. Well, I mean, that's what he does. Yes. And it's amazing. It's really good. I highly recommend it. Okay. I need something like that nowadays.

Yeah. No, it was very good. If you just called it blockchain, it'd be even better. I thought it was actually somewhat poignant because I was actually watching it as I got the news about Stephen Hawking. And, you know, Ricky Gervais is a very science guy, so it was kind of good. It was good timing, and I really enjoyed it, so I definitely recommend watching it.

Something I will not be watching, The Last Jedi is out on streaming digital whatevers, and for the first time in my entire life, I don't care about watching a Star Wars movie again. That's pretty telling, I think. Yes, it is. And speaking of which, also on Netflix, along with Ricky Gervais, I was looking for something that I could maybe throw up on the TV for the kid that I would enjoy as well.

So I finally went back and started to try to watch Star Wars The Clone Wars. Now, I suppose this is interesting to people because it fills in a backstory, and it is one of the few things that is still officially considered part of the canon since Disney bought them. But it's also produced by George Lucas, and there's a lot of Jar Jar Binks, so that basically tells you all you need to really know about it.

Well, that sucks. I added it to my queue. It's not bad. But now I have to remove it. There are episodes that are quite good. There's a lot of interesting stuff happening, but it's got that vague Lucas stank about it. Oh, yeah.

Misa no like that stank. I know a lot of fans that are even friends of mine who are super fans of that that really enjoyed it and tried to get me to watch it ages ago. And I'm like, I don't have time in my life for another cartoon. Yeah. But you have a kid, so you have an excuse. I do. So it's okay.

I don't know. It is what it is. And as we've discussed, also on Netflix, Jessica Jones, which I finished last night because it is so good, I binged it. Oh, my God. You took my spot. I am still. I just finished episode six, and I'm savoring it. I'm taking some time off.

Also, you know, my whole life flipped upside down this week, so I didn't really have a whole lot of time to do it, but I'll get to it. Yeah, it's great. It's fantastic. And now I'm pissed because I'm going to have to wait like two years for another one. Yeah. So that sucks.

And you'll note that in this segment so far, we have discussed one, two, three, three things from Netflix. You know what we haven't discussed? Anything from Amazon. Amazon Prime's streaming numbers are out, and they are surprisingly underwhelming, is the title of the article. And yeah, basically, Amazon is producing a lot of shows, not anywhere near as many as Netflix, but their hit rate is drastically lower.

They are not doing so great. And this is not surprising. I mean, you think about this stuff, and The Man in the High Castle should have been one of my favorite shows. It's horrible. It's horrible. It's horrible. The Tick is great. Jean-Claude Van Johnson was pretty damn funny. But I think they have a serious problem with their user interface.

Yeah, it's bad. I think the app is the biggest problem. It is bad. Yeah. You can't find anything. It only shows me the same stuff that I've already watched. And to scroll around it and find stuff is painful. Yeah. They have a discovery issue, for sure. Well, all the services, though, to be fair, Netflix isn't great either.

It's hard to find things. Yeah, but it's no Hulu. That's true. I'll tell you that. Oh, my God. That's the worst of the bunch. But Amazon is a close second to Hulu. Netflix is at least, you know, at least I get good recommendations from Netflix every week. Because, of course, every Friday there's a new comedy special to watch.

Because they do a new comedy special every week. I know. It's ridiculous. And most of them are terrible. Yeah. But there are a couple good ones. There are a couple good ones. Not many, though. I still want to go back and watch that Chris Rock one again. I thought that was really good. It was good. Really good.

But speaking of things to watch, I found is a very short, short watch. It's a Monty Python and the Holy Grail trailer is a serious action drama. It's a couple minutes. It's kind of cute. I thought it was kind of fun. I liked it. It was cute. This week at the library.

This week at the library, privacy and how to get it back by B.J. Mendelsohn. Now, B.J. showed up on my radar because he sent us one of his comics that he just wrote to review for the show. And I haven't gotten around to reading that yet.

But then I saw this on his blog. And oh, my God. What a kindred. He's a kindred spirit, I think. Yeah. I got to say, I was I was cautious about this because I was like, oh, God, this this is going to be a book that's going to feel like work or basically just listening back to our own podcast.

And I'm right. It did. And it was. But in a good way. So I know at one point you and I had talked about writing a book as Grumpy Old Geeks. And we ditched that idea because, you know, no one reads and who'd buy it. But we don't need to anymore because this is pretty much what we would have put together. It was very well done.

And yes, everybody should read this. And it's not very long. No, it's pretty short. But it gets to the point and it is definitely worth it. We'll cover B.J.'s comic on the on the next Grumpy Old Geeks when I get around to actually reading it. Yeah. Now, I had an interesting Twitter conversation with Richard Kadri and the artist Coop, because I guess they're friends on Twitter.

And I just saw Coop say something about him. They talked about the Sandman Slim series. And I'm like, oh, oh, I didn't realize that was you. So just just tweeted at him randomly. And I'm like, you know, Sandman Slim reminds me of John Constantine meets John Wick. And he's like, well, that's that.

It's interesting. You should say that because the director of John Wick is directing the Sandman Slim movie that's there should be filming pretty soon. So that is pretty cool, I thought. Yeah. So if you haven't checked out Sandman Slim, I highly recommend the first book. I haven't gotten to the second one yet because I'm trying to take our own advice and not dive into a series and binge the series because it never ends well.

No. It never ends well. It never ends well. Security? Ha! We're back this week with Dave Bittner from the Cyber Wire, not the Cyber Sex Wire, as we covered last week.

No, decidedly not. No. Not sure what I'm walking into here. But no, it is not the Cyber Sex Wire. That's something completely different. I don't know. That's our new show that we're starting next week. Okay. Fair enough. You need a host? I'm telling you, man.

We're keeping the band together. Right. Okay. Very good. All right. So, gentlemen, how's it going? Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. It's been interesting. All right. Not clicking the links. Not clicking the links. I upgraded my PC and even put virus protection on it.

Wow. Yeah. And I am not infected. The doctor came back with a clean bill of health. I do not need penicillin for my PC. Belt and braces. Excellent. All right. Well, lots going on this week. I know you guys already talked earlier in the show about the Equifax executive who is charged with insider trading.

A couple of just quick notes about that. I don't know if you guys touched on the fact that interesting that no one's getting in trouble for the actual breach yet. That it's playing against the rich people rules that's getting this person in trouble, right?

Right. Yes, exactly. Insider trading. That's what we're going to go after. The rich people rule just being basically you shouldn't have gotten caught. Yeah. That's right. That's right. That's like, yes, good insight. So I have an interesting little bit of insight.

I was speaking to someone at an event this past week. Someone was talking to me off the record, so I can't say who it was, but it was someone who is sort of deep inside of this world who knows what they're talking about when it comes to this Equifax stuff. Did he have a very thick Russian accent?

Did not. Did not, no. Okay. Just checking. But some interesting insights into how this possibly could have happened from someone who had a bit more empathy, I guess, than most, and sort of led into our conversation by saying that patching is hard.

And of course, we all know that. You have large systems. It's difficult to keep up to date. But one of the insights he shared was that the system that got hacked at Equifax was not the system with which they make money, right? So this was not something they charged for.

This was more of a customer service side of things. So right off the bat, it's a system that is costing them money, not making them money. So it's not necessarily going to get the same attention. And I'm not saying any of this is right or wrong. It just is. It just is. Right. That another system will.

But the other insight that he shared that I never thought of was that to upgrade a system like this to have to take it down to patch it opens you up to criticism from folks like the SEC who will come at you for saying, why is the system down?

Why are you not letting your customers have access to their information? So there's a pressure there that I hadn't really considered before. Again, not saying whether it's right or wrong or they should have had systems in place to take care of this. But it's an interesting insight that sort of why we've all been saying, why didn't they just patch?

Why didn't they just patch? Well, there's multiple reasons why you could understand that they would delay patching. And it was interesting insights. Yeah. I mean, you know, it is complicated. And but at the end of the day, it's it's their business.

It is their business. It is their responsibility. Yeah. Yeah. Put up a site scheduled maintenance. Remember when we just get a notice that we'll be down for scheduled maintenance? They could have got around it with that. Yeah. Well, I heard one another person in the financial services industry saying that they got crap from regulators when they made all of their customers go to two factor authentication.

Because the regulators said this is slowing them down to have access to their information. What are you talking about? God, things more secure. You know, I mean, but that's the reality of the world that we live in now. Any change gets anything gets you're going to get grief.

So it's suck it up and do the job that you do, the best job that you could do and try to keep his information as safe as possible. And, you know, don't feed the trolls. Yeah, absolutely. God. Yeah. Would you rather have a few disgruntled customers or all of your data stolen? I mean, let's weigh the alternatives here.

Yeah. No, no. Again, not in any way justifying. I just think they're interesting insights from someone who has, you know, a little more knowledge of how actually things work behind the scenes than I do. Yeah. Right. Just because something's hard, though, doesn't mean you have to you don't have to do it.

That's yeah. Oh, my God. It's hard. I believe they have learned that lesson now. Yes. I don't think anyone in that industry is going to make that particular mistake again. Luckily, there are plenty of other mistakes. Yeah. We have all new mistakes to make.

No shortage. Oh, man. So have you guys ever heard of Phantom Secure, the phone that is like one of those secure phones? Yeah. I think we talked about it once a long time ago. Well, the CEO just got busted by the feds for selling these phones to the Sinaloa drug cartel.

And now every time I look at this, I read it as Shinola drug cartel, because I grew up with Steve Martin and it just keeps coming up. But yeah, they grabbed this guy and threw him in jail. And he's Canadian, believe it or not. Canadians do evil things, too. It seems unlikely. I'm going to need to see some genetic.

I need some 23andMe genetic testing on this guy. I don't believe he's actually Canadian. Well, his name is Vincent Ramos. Oh, but yeah, he was charged with racketeering conspiracy to conduct enterprise affairs as well as conspiracy to distribute narcotics and aiding in a betting.

So apparently this phone was custom made for the drug cartel. You know, pick your pick your clients a little more wisely next time, I guess. You know, it's funny because I was reading the story and it made me flash back to to my early 20s, you know, back when there was like you would install like high powered Windows NT servers with 32 bit, whatever.

And I would have that on my laptop. And I remember reading that technically you weren't allowed to take that software out of the country. Right. Oh, yeah. Yeah. They were classified as munitions because of the type of encryption that was built into them. Yep. There was a famous case related to that where someone in protest of that put the encryption algorithm, had it tattooed on himself and left the country.

That's for DVD. Yeah. DVD encryption. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know why I thought of that, but it did. It just reminded me of that. It was interesting to me, this article that it said that this phone was custom made for the drug trade, but then also talked about all the customers that they had.

It's like the smart way to go about this is if the drug trade is financing something like this, then finance this thing and just distribute it. Have it be a cost of doing business. Why have a paper trail of some sort of billing system or something like that?

That struck me as a little odd. Well, you're assuming criminals are smart. That's true. Well, that is part of the problem. I am curious as to what exactly the customization, particularly for the drug cartels, was. I mean, because this is just secure in general. It could be used for anybody.

I mean, is there like a little side latch where you can put your Coke? Could be. Yeah. The phones are actually hollow and they still shove them up their butts to mule the cocaine through the airports. That's what it is. It's a special polymer. Long and skinny. It's a special polymer that does not get feces inflected on it.

I remember years ago working with a client. We were helping with some video stuff and this was a very large government contractor and they were working on a way to modify BlackBerry phones by replacing some of the internal guts to give the phone this sort of security to have built in encryption.

You know, if two phones had this device built in, had been modified in the same way, when they connected with each other, they would automatically go into an encrypted mode. And the point that they were making was that at the time, you know, this is BlackBerry world pre-iPhone days.

It looked like a regular BlackBerry. So part of the security was the phone itself didn't draw attention to itself. If you were a person of interest, the phone just looked like a regular BlackBerry phone. That was interesting. And nowadays, if you have a BlackBerry, you're definitely a person of interest because who the hell uses BlackBerry?

It's true. Well, yeah, exactly. Well, I think we've talked about the story before, but China is starting to basically gear up to roll out their social credit system. The idea being if everything you did on Facebook and Twitter counted towards a government imposed citizen score, all your online behavior would be analyzed and assessed to come up with a measure of your online reputation, character and trustworthiness, which could then be given out to employers, banks, prospective partners, all of that sort of stuff.

They're rolling it out. Details are sketchy. None of us would ever work again if this rolled out in the United States. I just guarantee you that. Yeah. Well, that's probably true. I had a couple of thoughts about this. The first, as I was reading and I thought, well, you know, we have our own version of a scoring system that you are that you can't opt out of, which is, you know, your credit score.

Yeah. So not entire, you know, before we get all righteous and indignant about this, we have something like this going on, not social. And then the other thing I was thinking over on the Smashing Security podcast, Graham Cluley was talking about this and was saying that, you know, this could spawn a whole business of bots that automatically like everything that the dear leaders are doing in government.

So to raise your score, you know, every time someone in government does something, you can like it and share it and enjoy it and just have that be automated to try to raise your your social credit score. I know what I'm writing this afternoon. I mean, certainly the system will be hackable as all things are.

The thing that really got me about this as I was reading it is they said details are sketchy at this stage, but it's due to be up and running by 2020. And my mind, because I'm old, automatically went 2020. That's so far away. And then two seconds later, I went, holy crap, that's two years.

Yeah. You forget how far we've come. I heard somebody say this week, whenever they hear 1970, they think, oh, that's 30 years ago. Yeah, I do, too. I do, too. I know. I know. Yeah. Getting old sucks.

Yeah. It's not a wimps. So a report came out this week about Madison Square Garden. They have been secretly using face recognition tech. Now, this is somewhat not surprising, I guess, because we know that this has been in airports and things like that. The difference being, of course, that we know that they're in airports.

Madison Square Garden is the one of the biggest places I've heard of that has been doing it secretly and not telling anyone. They declined to confirm or deny, of course, and still not telling anyone and offered the following statement. Madison Square Garden continues to test and explore the use of new technologies to ensure we're employing the most effective security procedures to provide a safe and wonderful experience for our guests.

Of course, they don't describe, not in addition to them just using it and not telling anyone. We have no idea what they're checking for, against, where the images are coming from, what happens if someone gets flagged using face recognition? It's basically a big black box. Mm-hmm. That's the way it's going to be.

Yeah. I remember, you know, they've been using this for several Super Bowls now and they've announced it. Yes. So this notion of using it in a sporting event or a large arena is not new, but, you know, I was thinking about how in public spaces there is no expectation of privacy, right?

And that's how you're allowed to take someone's picture without their permission if you're out in a park or something like that. And so this would seem to naturally extend to that. But then again, I feel like this is one of those areas where we haven't quite caught up with the technology.

There's so many cameras we're on these days and we keep hearing about how they're going to be networked together, how they're going to be able to cross-reference and track your movement and those sorts of things. AI will track it all for us. Yeah. And I just, I wonder, how are we going to start bumping up against Fourth Amendment issues and just general privacy, you know, the policy lags.

Well, when you attend an event, you sign off on a whole bunch of waivers by just buying that ticket. That's true. So they can totally say that, no, you bought the ticket. It's on the back. Read the fine print. Here's a magnifying glass. We'll wait. Because, you know, if you go to any sporting event, there's all sorts of indemnifications about you getting injured by floating, like flying balls and things like that.

So the same with this is like you will be recorded if you enter this venue. It's going to be on the back of that ticket. So they can probably do whatever the hell they want. Right. Yeah. Yeah, probably. And, you know, so as we've talked about before, this spawns that whole market of disguises.

Right? Yeah. You don't want your face recognized. You know, fake mustache and a nose and ears or whatever. What does it take to trip these things up, throw them off? Yeah. Also a pair of ill-fitting shoes because they have gate recognition.

They've got all sorts of recognition that they can run on you. Plus, then you're going to have to basically leave all your electronics at home. Don't wear that Apple Watch. At some point, you know, the only way around this is just to go to the concert naked. That's about it. On a bird. Yeah. On a bird with a mask.

Yeah. In other words, go to concerts the way we already go to concerts. I was about to say, just go to insane clown posse shows and you're fine. Yeah. Fit right in. It's the dawning of the age of Aquarius. Oh, my. Just don't drop the beer. Oh, man.

So a judge in California has finally said that us users of Yahoo can have our class action lawsuit and get our 15 cents. We are set. And you get $2. And you get $2. And you get $2.

Here's the upside, though. Yahoo isn't Yahoo anymore. Now it's owned by Verizon, who actually has money. That's true. You know? So Verizon tried to block it and saying that it was meritless. But nope, nope. The judge came back and said, ah, I don't know. I think this is going to go forward.

Plaintiffs' allegations are sufficient to show that they would have behaved differently had defendants disclosed the security weaknesses of the Yahoo mail system, said Judge Lucy Coe from – where's she from? Well, she's from California. Who cares? Damn liberals. That's right. But yeah.

Yeah, it's interesting. We're going to – we'll see what happens. Yeah, the argument being made that had they been informed sooner, they would have chosen another email service. And I think that's a reasonable claim to make. Me too. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. So – People had to spend money on credit monitoring.

So, you know, there is money out of pocket for this breach. So I'm very happy for the handful of attorneys who will get very rich off of this. Congratulations to them. Yes. Well done. Well done. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You figure three billion people were leaked and Verizon bought Yahoo for 4.5 billion.

Oh, man. If this – even if everybody got a dollar that was in the lawsuit, you know, it's – man, that just doubles the price of Yahoo. Yeah. Oh, fun times. Yeah. Do your due diligence before you make a cybersecurity company purchase. Social media, whatever.

All right. Well, I wrapped things up this week with just a fun video from a gentleman named Dan Tentler. He's the founder of Phobos Group and he's got a bunch of videos of him doing presentations that are on the YouTube and a funny, funny guy.

One of his specialties going around and basically finding unsecured devices on the internet. So it's one of those videos – I think it's one of the comments was they needed to put a helmet on before watching this video because they keep smacking themselves in the forehead.

And it's true. I mean, you've got the usual stuff like, you know, cameras, baby monitors and so forth. But he also finds things like industrial control systems, steel manufacturing controls. So it's a video.

Oh, good. He's like, oh, you want to tip over a container full of 500 tons of molten steel? Just press this button right here and it'll tip over. Originally, you had a bunch of links in the show notes and I watched the first video and I don't think it's this one, but I watched one this morning that I think the title was What Can Go Wrong.

Yes. And it's like an hour and 15 minutes of him just going through Shodan and showing us all of the different things. I watched it on like one and a half X, which you can do, but it made – he's a funny guy and he's like, this is why we drink. Right, right. And just to give our listeners a little behind the scenes thing here, before we went on, I was looking through our show notes and I was like, oh God, who's the idiot who pasted in all of these video links?

This is a mess here. God, what a jerk. How would anybody – oh. And it was me. Yes. Yeah. I'm like, does he seriously want me to go and find the URLs for all these damn DEF CON videos? Come on. I didn't. Sorry, guys. I wish you would have left them though because now I want to go back and watch some of those videos.

They look pretty good. I'll have to go through the history and find them. I left the one in, yeah. So you can find – just find some of his other presentations on YouTube. There are plenty of them and Boyer, they a lot of fun and he's pretty – he's a good presenter but it's one of those things that is simultaneously hilarious and terrifying.

Yes. Yeah. I started following him on Twitter after watching his presentation because he's a funny guy. Yeah, he is. Very funny guy. All right, gentlemen. That's what I've got this week. All right. Thank you. All righty, sir. Come back and scare the crap out of us next week. It's what I do.

Brick-a-brick. Filmmakers Alex Garouche and Wiley Overstreet are making all these kind of crazy things about the universe, which is a bit of a theme this episode, I guess. They have a YouTube channel called To Scale where the pair examine the scale of the universe and they have put out a latest video called A New View of the Moon, which basically this guy wheeled out this gigantic telescope to all these different locations around LA and just

let random people stop by and take a look at the moon in, you know, more powerful than anybody would ever see it generally because not many people have access to this kind of telescope. And the soundtrack and maybe just my mood and state and things that I've been dealing with this week, it got dusty in the room.

I watched it this morning and it definitely was a little dusty. Yeah. It's a... Which is not... I'm like, looking at people, look through a telescope is not something you'd really kind of think is very emotional, but it's a very well done piece. Yeah. It's nice. It's very nice. And one of the sequences was shot just literally down the street from my house, so I'm kind of bummed I didn't know about it and didn't get down there to see it as well.

Yeah. Yeah. 12-inch telescopes are pretty powerful. My ex-girlfriend had a 10-inch telescope that she made by hand and it was pretty awesome. And over on Mental Floss, I found a more accurate world map wins a prestigious Japanese design award. And this is called the, uh, the Authograph World Map.

And it's, uh, it's pretty damn cool. It's, it's a great design and it, uh, it's unlike the projection that we always see, which is the Mercator projection, which we've been using since 1569. Things aren't lined up. Things aren't the right size. This tries to fix that a little bit and cool enough, it, it can actually be folded into a sphere so you can actually feel and see the real earth as it actually is, which is pretty badass, right?

I like that. So it's cool looking. And if you've, if you've never seen any of these alternative maps, prepare to have your mind blown. And I've included a link in the show notes from the West Wing, uh, the Gale Peters projection. It is still one of my favorite moments of all time from almost any TV show, but definitely the West Wing blows your mind.

I remember, I remember that, that's that bit perfectly. And I watched it again this morning and I'm like, yeah, that was a good bit. I miss the West Wing. Don't we all do that? I want a copy of this. I want a copy of this autograph map though, to hang on the wall. It's pretty cool. Yeah. It's really cool looking. So it'll, uh, yeah, it'll change your mind about some things.

If you've never seen this, this sort of thing before now for a while, I've hosted a lot of my photography stuff on the site. You pick, but kind of got away from them because they, they don't do a couple of things. They don't let me turn on pop-ups or turn off pop-ups for people that are coming to look at my portfolio or download my entire archive, which would be very nice, which is a, which is a deal breaker for me.

But I was checking it out the other day to see if they fixed anything that I, you know, would bring me back as a paying customer. No, they haven't. But I also saw in their blog, you pick is building a new economy around photography, dot, dot, dot, using blockchain. So they're trying to do the same thing that the Kodak is doing, or not even Kodak, the company that Kodak licensed their name to around blockchain for photography.

Oh, joy. Stop it. Yeah. Just stop it, people. Well, on Tuesday, our president, Donald Trump said he wants to create a U.S. Space Force. Yeah. During a speech before service members at the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego, my new national strategy for space recognizes that space is a war fighting domain, just like the land, air, and sea.

We may even have a Space Force, he said. We're doing a tremendous amount of work in space. As I said, maybe we need a new force. We'll call it Space Force. That is an exact quote of our president. Did you ever see the movie Megaforce? Yeah. Yeah.

I think our Space Force should have those uniforms and flying motorcycles, too. I definitely think. I think Space Force should be built on Megaforce. Yeah, I agree. And it's also worth mentioning, as we're discussing the Space Force, Trump also managed this week to misspell CORE in Marine Corps by spelling it C-O-R-E in a tweet.

Yep. Yep. Yep. You can't make this shit up. Yep. And we also had the big student walkout this week protesting gun violence, and the NRA wisely kept their mouth shut. No, they didn't. No, they didn't keep their mouth shut in the exact period of time in which the walkout occurred.

They, of course, tweeted a glamour photo of the AR-15, the same gun that was used to kill the students in Florida that prompted all this. So, thanks a lot, NRA. Thanks for keeping it classy. Wow. Oh, my God. I mean, that's... That's just brazen.

That's worse than the Rihanna one. Honestly, that is worse than the Rihanna one. Mm-hmm. Wow. And because we had to get there eventually, the time has come. Next week, representatives from a startup called Nectomy will pitch their idea to an audience of investors in Silicon Valley.

According to their website, the company is, here we go, committed to the goal of archiving your mind. That commitment is not in doubt, but one can question what they mean by mind and your. Their plan is to take living people, preferably those already on their deathbeds. Thankfully, they at least prefer that.

We hope. Pump them full of embalming fluid, killing them, and then freezing them, and then scan their preserved brains into a computer. To do what precisely? Because this technology doesn't exist. It isn't there. It's not going to be here for generations. Are you kidding me?

People are going to give them money. And their lives. The first feature of your product is it kills me? Hmm. Where do I sign up? Where else could they go? I don't even know what Silicon Valley could. Where else could they go from here?

I swear. This sounds like it's a plot line from the Silicon Valley show on HBO. It really does. Well, there's no difference anymore. There is no difference between that show and Silicon Valley. That's why I can't watch the show. PTSD, big time.

Oh, my God. Yeah, let's kill our users and do nothing with their brains. Okay. Thanks. We've got some new Patreon subscribers this week. John C., Marcus M., Jay Cummings, Cal S., and over on PayPal, Stuart L., Joseph L., Chris M., Brennan M., Jonathan A., and what is the final thing?

Oh, Grump on Tiny Dancer and buy some beer. Thank you, Jonathan, for that note. Yes, thank you. Over on Facebook, Brian wrote in, said, Dig Reader just announced it's shutting down. If you guys would like to share alternatives or what you use as an RSS feed, that would be cool. I know you have a favorite, Jason.

Yeah, everything I do is go through Feedly, and that ties in with your Google account, so you can put it across different platforms. But, yeah, Feedly is what I use. I highly recommend it. I'm even going to give them money when I have some again. Awesome. And we have a five-star rating over on Facebook from Elizabeth, who says, why the hell is this podcast so entertaining?

Is it A, grumpy? B, old? C, geeky? Keep it up, you weirdos. Thanks a lot. And a lot of people chiming in on when they first heard the term cyber. We had a lot of AOL and a lot of Gibson, so those teams seem to be the big ones. And speaking of that, over on Twitter, Radio Teacher wrote us, The oldest reference in my library is Hackers, Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Stephen Levy in 1968.

I read this first in the mid-1980s. Cyber was never used by itself. Cyber crud, cybernetics, cybernetic were used, and it was used in a poem near the end of Chapter 8. Interesting. Thanks. And Chad Fackler writes in over on Twitter, Please don't listen to the Goop podcast for the love of dog.

Not a typo. If you want to kill off 20 IQ points, do it the old school way. Alcohol. Yes, sir. That's the way we do it. And I did look. It is Gwyneth Paltrow and Oprah. Oh, joy. Yeah, yeah. Two people I never want in my podcast player.

Two bad tastes you don't want to have together. No, no, no. And Chad also writes in, Quit telling the yucks from California that the middle of the country is nice. We don't want them here. I don't need to see any more hipsters than I already do. And that reminds me of the time when we were talking about moving to Iceland.

Yes. It was about another horrible president that we had. And all of the people in Iceland were like, We don't want Americans here. You people are ugly. Stay there. And I'm like, You soulless pieces of crap. I'm never coming to your country. Yes. Just remind me, people from Iceland are dicks.

Yeah, but it's cool there. I can't even say this name because, you know, Twitter grabs the stupid and does. Anyways, X-Drucy or whatever says, It's a great way to introduce our office hashtag Luddites to today's hashtag technology news and our fast hashtag evolving tech world.

Hashtag management tips. Hashtag Wednesday motivation. Hashtag Wednesday motivation again. Well, yeah, because it's Wednesday and you got to be motivated twice. Apparently, Mike McNeil, 19, writes in. Love the show. As a 50 year old computer science grad, your perspective often mirrors mine. Congrats on your 250th episode.

I've been listening off and on for the last 25 or so. Well, thank you, Mike. And welcome to the show. Yes, thank you. We had a lot of people writing in over at GOG.show. And in the interest of keeping this under four hours, we're just going to do a few of them. DMT says, Hey, Grumps, you guys always cheer me up. Super glad to have found you. Thanks to Bittner, I put in the effort to scroll to the bottom of the episode list to listen to the first one.

And I did that on an Apple Watch to test the app OutKast. Really not terrible, by the way, for phoneless listening. So that was a lot of watch scrolling. Now listening to 250, you've managed to add some grump to my life. To wit, about seven minutes into the episode, you discuss photos being usurped by the Internet. You both use the word copywritten to describe these photos.

Your show notes are copywritten. Photos are not. They're both copyrighted, though. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Just grinds my grumpy gears. He has an actual point on that. I will concede that point. He actually has a point. Yes. Yes. Note taken. Thank you. Yes.

At around 38 minutes, you lay into Mashable for misspelling holders. When I first encountered HODL in reference to cryptocurrency, it took me a second to realize, read Google, that it's a crappy acronym for hold on for dear life. I learned something new. Read stupid that day. All right. My pedantic self will go back to the episode now.

Stay grumpy. Thanks. Thanks for the feedback. We appreciate it. Marcus writes in. Hey, guys, I've been listening to your podcast since December of last year, and I just want to say that even though I'm what you may consider a millennial, I enjoy every minute of your show. Monday mornings is the only day of the week that I actually look forward to the commute to school and work.

You guys have actually gotten me to start reading again, and I've not been disappointed by any of your recommendations so far. Well, we'll see if we can fix that in the future. Congratulations on your 250th episode, and sorry it took so long for me to pledge on Patreon. Hey, man, better now than never. Also, fuck all of these fragile people that complain about the cussing.

Still not sure how people have not realized that on the free and open Internet, they don't have to listen if they don't want to. Tell me about it. Never change, guys, and I hope my pledge helps you to another 250 episodes. Well, thank you very much, Marcus. It's much appreciated. Yes, totally appreciated. Armin writes in, hey, guys, discovered your podcast about two months ago, and you two are a godsend.

I think that's the only person in the world that would describe us that way. No doubt. The podcast makes my work day so much more bearable. You guys have given me some great tech Internet tips, and I can't thank you enough. Now I need your help. I'm an avid Chrome user, but I keep hearing you guys recommend Opera browser over and over again, and I've downloaded it on my PC, and I love it.

It's great, and I love the built-in ad blocker and VPN. The only problem is I like to use the same browser on both my PC and my iPhone. Sync bookmarks and history and all that. The problem is that, okay, yeah, they don't, yeah, it doesn't sync to Opera Mini, apparently, but Jason's solution and mine as well is, sadly, we just use different browsers.

Yeah, that's pretty much it. Sorry about that. Yeah, we don't have a hack for that. It just is what it is. Yeah, and if I need to move something over, I use Pinboard, because Pinboard will sync between the two, and you can just go to your Pinboard site, and it's just a place to keep it. If you want just a persistent, you know, clipboard.

So use Pinboard. If you happen to have a Mac, it's also a lot simpler than that, because you can just copy-paste, and they go, they pass between each other when it works right. Yeah, if you have that turned on, I don't have it turned on, because it works about one in ten times for me. But, okay, so Dan writes in, my wife just bought a new MacBook Air for school, since the baby spilled water on the keyboard of the old one, and it finally died.

I'd like to have that not happen again. Do either of you use keyboard covers? Trying to find a good one is damn near impossible. Thanks. No keyboard covers. I use square bottles, which are locking bottles. There'll be a link in the show notes for them. They don't roll away if you knock them over, and they don't spill water everywhere, but it dawned on me that your baby is the one that spilled the water, and there's no way a baby's going to get the lid off of this.

So, my entire recommendation is dumb. I was wondering where you were going with that one. No, I kind of have the same issue right now. I just keep moving my keyboard higher when I'm not sitting at the desk using it. And, yeah, I got nothing. You're right.

I mean, I even Googled in Amazon search keyboard covers, and they all look like they're crap. So, if you do end up finding something that you like, let me know, because I have a baby, too. Yep. All right, over at iTunes. We got some new reviews. Jacked In from Canada writes, The Last Beacon of Hope of the Internet.

Thanks for being able to summarize the frustrations of dealing with the tech we love. Keep up the great work, Stetler and Waldorf. Thank you. We also have a five-star rating from Stay Grump. Grumpy for all. I love the show. I'm only 22, so not quite an old geek, but still grumpy as hell at the state of the world.

I agree. All right. And Mackesian, or Mackeson, well, let's see, Mackeson, writes in, worth your time. They take top tech stories and break them down for you with humorous banter. Ooh, we banter. They also cover movies and shows you might consider, and they'll let you know what's worth your time.

You'll have a laugh, and after a decision to unfollow a ton of podcasts, including The Art of Charm, well, then make sure you go subscribe to The Jordan Harbinger Show so I can get paid and have a life again. Brian and Jason have come out on the top. You guys are definitely worth two hours a week. See? Somebody's in for the two hours. That's what I'm telling you.

One. One person. No, more than one. All right. Thanks a lot. If you want... Just not me. 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 and snarky review.

And as always, please, pretty pleased with sugar on top, tell your friends. Yes. Closing shout-out to Stephen Hawking. He will be missed. And his final words, this comes from over at Boing Boing.

If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared. Or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology-driving ever-increasing inequality.

So he's just saying the problem is capitalism, which I think we've said before, too. So we're as smart as Stephen Hawking. How about them apples? We are. And I would just like to point out that these weren't his last words. They were just his last public words posted on a Reddit AMA. Right. I'm sure this wasn't what he said as he shuffled off this mortal coil.

Yeah, it's probably, oh shit, was my last words. Yeah. All right. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFilippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, go to patreon.com slash GOG. Pass us a buck a month and we'll love you forever. If you'd like to give a one-time or recurring donation, go to GOG.show, click the PayPal button in the sidebar.

Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 251. 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. Okay, last one to kill a bad guy buys the beer. We're driving to Florida. At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out.

It's discovering something new every day. Start with today's special value. Then explore exciting finds across the brands and categories you love. From beauty and fashion, to home, culinary, and outdoor living.

Shop now at QVC.com.