257: Is AI Porn?

Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFillippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame. Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFillippo.

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. How's it going, Jason? You might hear some noise in the background today because I am in the garage now in the valley, in the lovely San Fernando Valley. I don't have that Marc Maron money coming yet, but I have my garage. Excellent. The thing about the garage is, well, it's just full of my crap right now, trying to unpack.

But I got my studio set up, studio's working, back on my lovely RE20 again, which makes me happy because as much as I like the AT2005s, there's just nothing like being back on my home mic. Okay. Now, we're starting about a half an hour late today because I told you this morning that there's a tree service down the street cutting down my neighbor's trees.

Excellent. And I went and talked to them. I'm like, yeah, about an hour. What they didn't tell me, that was an hour for that tree that they were working on. They're going to be there all day. So in the background, if you hear a chainsaw, it is not Ash versus the Evil Dead coming to get me.

It is the fucking tree service that won't go away. Also, across the street, my neighbor is building a pool. So there are dump trucks and little backhoes driving all around. And of course, because it is the valley in California, every neighbor, I think, coordinates with their gardeners so that there is never a break in the leaf blower or weed whacker or lawn mowing situation.

It is a constant cacophony. And that is until I can get this, you know, you know, ancient garage with broken windows soundproofed. There might be a little background action. So that is why I just wanted everybody to know that I'm doing my best here, guys.

I'm really doing my best. Well, there you go. Fun times. Yeah. Yeah. That's just part of this fun move. I swear to God, every inconvenience, every pain and ache that I have, just my anger grows to the fact that I had to do this.

So I might be a little grumpier than usual because for the past five days, I've been getting up at five o'clock in the morning to unload and unpack. And I'm about 80 percent done. All right. Well, I'm going to be a little bit grumpier than normal as well, because I want to give a shout out to anybody out there that is a single parent, because my wife is off at an offsite conference this whole week.

Her work has to do it every year, basically. And last year she got off of it because she was still on maternity leave, but not this year. So I've been single dadding it all week. And boy, oh boy, am I tired. So hats off to any of you out there that are doing this. I mean, I've even got help. I've got a nanny for a couple hours every day so I can take care of what limited work I'm doing for the show, all this sort of stuff.

But I basically passed out on the couch at like 10 p.m. every single night this week. And I'm up early and I'm taking care of the kid. And I've really enjoyed it. I've had a great time with my kid, but I'm damn tired. I hear you, brother. I hear you.

So low energy show. Awesome. Well, it might be high energy in spots because of the grump. But we appreciate everybody putting up with this bullshit that we've had to deal with for a little bit. Hopefully by next week, I'll be back in the saddle full time and be able to do my goddamn job.

So we'll see. We'll see what happens. And speaking of bullpucky, and you'll notice I said bullpucky, we've had a lot of people complain shockingly about our uses of cuss words on the show. Because even though we tell them it's a show for adults and we have the explicit tag and delicate sensibilities have been hurt.

But there may be less cussing for me moving forward because this week, as I was taking care of my kid, I was still also on the phone with things like health care providers and dealing with my father and all that sort of stuff. And I had a particularly horrible phone call with a particularly useless person.

And I hung up the phone and went, fuck. And then my kid started running up and down the hall going, fa, fa, fa, fa, fa. Now. Oh, your wife's going to love you when you get home. You can just say, honey, I took him out to noodles. We were at the noodle joint.

I was thinking noodles, but I have gently nudged him to have fa mean fall throughout the week. So crisis averted there. But yeah, I've definitely, we've hit the point now where I need to start watching my language around the youngster. So we shall see how that goes. And it just made me think of my dad because my dad was heroic at not cussing in front of us as kids to the point where I still vividly remember to this day he was fixing something around the house.

I was maybe 10. I don't know. But I knew what the word fuck meant. And I knew the word fuck. But my dad was fixing something around the house. He had a hammer and he hit his finger with a hammer like bad. And he screamed, fiddlesticks. That's how good he was at it.

Oh, man. Okay, hats off to your dad. I shall endeavor to follow in my father's footsteps these next, what, 10 years or so until it doesn't matter anymore. See, I am following in my father's footsteps. But even toned down, my dad, I swear to God, they based Al Swearengen's proclivity for profanity on my dad.

He got a paper cut and it sounded like the worst thing that you would ever hear coming out of the mouth of any sailor from any era. My dad likes to, he likes to swear a bit. So. Nice. So, a bit of follow-up.

I have spent the last week, is my first week with the Apple Watch. And I like it. All right. What do you like about it? It is by far the best fitness tracker I've ever had in my life. I enjoy the notifications in terms of, like, getting a text or an email or whatever and all of that sort of stuff.

It's nice to be able to leave your phone in your pocket. Dude, get rid of email notifications. Get rid of email. Texts are fine, but email, no, no, no, no, no. I get so little email these days, it actually doesn't really bother me too much. It will eventually.

It will eventually. The things that do bother me, however, is I tend to wear my watch pretty close to my wrist. So, if I bend my hand, it'll open up Siri. So, I'm going to have to figure out something to do something about that. Yeah, turn that off. It's basically useless in terms of reading.

So, it's nice to see the notification, but I'm never going to read or respond to a text or anything on the phone. That's just kind of silly. A tip on the text. You can set up your own different automatic replies. So, when somebody sends something, like, I have one set for on the air, and that's it. So, you can set those up for defaults, and you can just scroll through and do that.

But for most of it, yeah, you're not going to actually reply to it. But I will say the voice-to-text on it does work pretty well because it is using Siri on the phone. So, if you want to dictate the response to a text, it does work. Give it a shot. I will have to get into that and do that a little bit more.

I'm trying to think if there's anything else that I really don't like about it. No, it's all pretty good. Especially, you know, you showed me a couple apps and a couple different complications, as they call them, to set up for different faces. The one thing I would say is the touchscreen's not 100%. Sometimes, you know, it takes a couple goes to get it to do something.

And deleting stuff. I know there are people out there that just keep every single text message they've ever had in their life. I call them animals. I like to delete things. And deleting, you can't sync. It doesn't sync with your phone or whatever. So, you have to individually delete text messages.

And that process is painful. Swipe. Hit the trash can. Confirm. Swipe. Hit the trash can. Confirm. Sync it, people. Sync it. I just do it later in the Messages app or on the phone. Makes life a lot easier. No, you can do it in the Messages app.

It doesn't sync with your phone, though. Oh, they were supposed to be working on that. Yeah, well, they haven't yet. So, that I find very annoying. I'm also on Sierra, not High Sierra. I think it's a High Sierra feature where it actually syncs. So, if you're still on Sierra, then that might be the reason why.

I am not. I am on High Sierra, so it is just not working yet. Well, then fuck Apple. Yeah, exactly. In the news.

Crooked Facebook. What'd they do this week? Actually, something kind of good. A year after, and this is from the Guardian, so they toot their own horn quite a bit here. A year after the Guardian revealed Facebook's secret rules for content moderation, the company has released a public version of its guidelines for what is and is not allowed on the site, and for the first time created a process for individuals to appeal censorship decisions.

Which is kind of crazy that you couldn't do that before. So, Facebook is, you know, throwing stuff out there to try to rehabilitate their public image. But, what we also discovered is they don't really need to because they're making money hand over fist. First quarter earnings report beat all Wall Street estimates, and this company showed no signs of impact whatsoever from the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Investors liked what they saw. Facebook stock is up almost 7% in after-hours trading since this came out, so nobody cares. That's pretty much what we thought was going to happen, but, you know, at this point they're trying to clean up their image so there's not a reckoning with the government stepping in and saying, hey, regulations, regulations, regulations.

And, although it seems to me that a lot of the internet is growing up very quickly this week, because we're going to talk about YouTube in a second, but between the kerfuffles at Facebook, Twitter just being Twitter, and the YouTube stuff, and GDPR coming, you know, up online pretty soon, it seems like the internet has decided to start to grow up a little bit.

Because I don't know about you, I got probably 30 emails in the past five days of everybody updating their privacy policy. Yes, I did as well, and I saw somebody actually complain about that, a friend on Facebook, and I wrote him and I said, why is this a bad thing?

Now you know all these different services that you forgot you signed up for so you can go and kill your accounts. That's true, yeah. I got every email for every Twitter account that I ever signed up for, because, you know, they don't kill people. They just let them languish, because that's a user, and they don't want to kill old users, unless it's a bot.

But, yeah, none of my accounts got swept up in the great bot purge of last month. So, yeah, about 30 emails I think I got, because I think I still have about 30 Twitter accounts. Right. That I never use. Maybe the internet will grow up a little bit. That'd be nice.

We could even stop doing our show if everybody got their heads out of their asses. Oh, no, man. This is my retirement fund. Between this show and my shit Seneca says Twitter account, I'm going to be raking in the money. That's right. Well, speaking of Twitter, Twitter also had good news.

Now that it's making money, apparently. Who knew? Well, they cut costs. Yeah, they did cut costs, so that's technically not making. Well, it is. Whatever. Yeah. Get you on a, yeah. But they're hiring again after a few years of shrinking headcounts, so they're now expanding their stuff back up again.

So, look at Twitter go. Okay. Who wants to work at Twitter now? I don't know. They wouldn't hire us anyways. We're too old. We are too goddamn old. Yes. And you mentioned YouTube earlier, so YouTube has dropped another. YouTube is basically dropping thousands of creators again as their policy is shifting.

The future of multi-channel networks like Fullscreen, Ritual Network, BBTV, and more are in question as thousands of creators are being purged. It's the great purge over Twitter, Jason. What do you think about that? I think that they should invest in more security guards, because look what happened last time.

Yes. It is probably a, it's an interesting policy for YouTube to take after there was so much uproar about, you know, people being dropped and not being able to make a living, and here they are doing it again. Yeah. And I think they have to, because this comes with growing up, you know, people that have shit content on the network and trying to game the system, they need to get rid of these people.

I mean, and when you look at the amount of people on YouTube, it's a drop in the bucket. It's nothing. Yeah. It's next to nothing. Yeah. And if they're purging them, it's for a reason. Granted, they don't always have the best reasons, as we found out in the past.

Yes. But they are slaves to their own algorithm, and that's what they're always going to be. They are Google. I know you, Alphabet, sorry, Alphabet, are slaves to the algorithm, and if they can find, if somebody writes a, you know, just an algorithm that day that says, oh, okay, well, if we get rid of these people, we're going to cut down on this many complaints and save this much money, well, then, yeah, they'll kill them.

That's what's going to happen. Right. Now, Snapchat has also put out a new pair of its spectacles. What? Remember the glasses that were sitting in boxes because they couldn't sell any of them because nobody cared? Well, they think they know what the problem was, and guess what it was, Jason? What was the problem?

Apparently, those first pair, they weren't waterproof, because that's really the only difference. So, yes, that must solve the problem. Oh, because now you can, now Scoble can Snapchat in the shower, like he could with his Google glasses.

Well, these are more expensive, and they're water-resistant, and obviously, you know, now they're going to shift more of these. Now, interestingly enough, there is a, Kurt Wagner has a long, fawning story over at Recode that actually should probably have an ad tag on it. He's in love with these glasses for some reason, and he gets into it, and it's a very long article.

It's an interesting read, but he's saying, his point is, it's not so much the glasses now, it's what they could be in the future. Oh, fuck off. Now, how often do we have to yell about people who talk bullshit about what could be versus what actually is?

These glasses are fucking dumb. They are. They're two little cameras that do nothing. What they could be is what they are. Yes, it is what they are. Now, we all understand that in the future, there will probably be great leaps and bounds and augmented reality and all that sort of stuff, but that isn't what these are.

These are two little Bluetooth cameras stuck to some glasses. That's it. This is not, this is, this is not even, this should not even be in the same realm as AR. Yeah. Just because you use your eyeballs to look through the plastic and press a button to make the camera work, that has nothing to do with what it could be in the future.

There's no technology here that, that would point to this being an AR play down the line. They are literally sunglasses with a camera stuck to the side of it. That's it. And this whole article is just talking about how they're positioning themselves for the AR future.

Recode, fire Kurt Wagner immediately. Now, on the flip side of things, I also found the best article I've ever read in my entire life over at Recode because it agrees with me. Of course it does. This one's by Bill Harris and it is called Bitcoin is the greatest scam in history.

This is the greatest article in history. I loved it. It's really good. I loved it. Yeah. I'll just, we'll just put a link in the show notes. It basically goes through all the crypto bros fawning and claims that it's a good thing and there's use for it and refutes them step by step, destroys them step by step, talks about how it's basically just, the only useful thing is for criminal enterprises and that's it.

Yeah, that really is it. I, I, I really liked the opening line. I'm tired of saying, be careful. It's speculative. Then be careful. It's gambling. Then be careful. It's a bubble. Okay. I'll say it. Bitcoin is a scam. Yes. You know, colossal pump and dump scheme, the likes of which the world has never seen.

And the reason I really like this is because Bill Harris is not somebody you dick around with. Former CEO of Intuit and a founding CEO of PayPal. Come on. This guy knows money. Yes, he does. So listen to him, people.

Great article. If you're still thinking, you know, that, that Bitcoin is cool. Go read this, please. Yeah. Oh, but the blockchain is going to change everything. Oh, blockchain. Now, this one, I, my, my jaw hit the floor on this one.

Flickr has been bought by Smug Mug. Now, Smug Mug has been around forever. I think they, they, they were really close or predated Flickr. And the problem with Smug Mug wasn't the service itself.

It was that it was just so damn, but ugly. The CEO, Don McCaskill, I've met him actually on a, at a Flickr panel at one of the, uh, internet worlds that we were hanging out with. And, you know, we'd talk shop cause I was running JPEG magazine at the time and he's a great guy. Love him.

They just never had any designers and it was so hard to use. And I just was not a fan of it. But now Flickr being part of Smug Mug, that's interesting to me because we all thought Flickr was dead. Right. And with the Oath takeover, uh, we thought it was just going to languish.

I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm happy that they divested Flickr from Oath and it will have a new home. I don't know if Smug Mug is the place for it to go, but between the two of them, they do have some of the biggest photo, uh, communities online. Right. You know, it's better, I guess, than Adobe buying it.

I suppose. Yeah. Who knows? I mean, Flickr is so dead. I wouldn't, if I was Smug Mug, I would just wouldn't have wasted the money on it. I mean, it's so strange. It's a strange buy for me. They must've got it for like nothing. I'd imagine so. I mean, it can't possibly be worth that much.

Yeah. And right now, I mean, I went the, this morning and checked out Flickr and had to go through the two factor Oath to sign into my Yahoo account to sign into Flickr. So they're going to have to decouple the entire authentication system from Yahoo, which is going to be fun.

I am sure. Have you ever, have you ever done one of those before? Like a verification system migration? No. They are hell. Absolute hell. So I, I'm curious to see what they do with it. Now, Amazon is in the news this week again, because apparently nobody was buying their cameras to let people come into their home and drop off their packages.

I can't imagine why nobody was buying those. What could go wrong with that? So now some genius at Amazon has come up with, Hey, if you've got a smart car, you know, something with one of these new fancy services that have apps and APIs for your car, we're going to drop off your packages in your trunk.

We are literally going to put your junk in your trunk. So you have to have one of these new cars from General Motors or something like from Volvo. It's something with OnStar or OnCall or one of these things that has like the built-in cell modem that lets a remote service unlock the car when you lock your keys out.

And once you do that, then people can just put your packages in your trunk. I didn't realize this was all so difficult. It is. In a lot of places, theft is really rampant with these. What they need to do is start giving you Amazon, basically lockers for your house that you can bolt to your front porch and let them put stuff in it.

Although today I'm having an air conditioner delivered from Amazon, so I don't think that would fit in the box. Probably not, no. And it's a lot of low income areas too. If you're in an apartment building, you know, it's hard to keep an eye on that stuff. So I can see where, I see what they're trying to do, but I think what they, they need to get this drone thing going because if they drop the packages on the roof, people can't just walk on by and pick up your package.

But then you have, then you have the problem of rain. There's always something, Jason. There's always something. I mean, how would you fix it? What would you do? I don't know. It's a tough question. I mean, I don't live in an area where, where it's a problem. And, you know, you can talk about how low income areas, this is an issue, but in a low income area where there's lots of theft, do these people have these cars that allow you to do these systems?

I mean, you know, it's, it's, it's, this is really rich whitey problems, isn't it? Mm-hmm. And we said this before. They are fixing the problems that they have in rich whitey land. Mm-hmm. You know, that's the entire thing. It's like, oh, well, I can let, I can let the delivery guy into my mud room where I take off my boots so I do not track anything onto my, you know, Egyptian carpet.

Not yet. No, that's not the way it usually works. Yeah. It's like somebody's getting toilet paper delivered, they leave it out front and somebody walks by and steals it, you know? Yeah. And they can't, they can't afford a Ring doorbell to track that either, even though in, in Amazon bought Ring for the same, same reason. So. Well, and Amazon's other big play was, well, we bought Whole Foods, let's put Amazon lockers in all of Whole Foods.

Not a lot of Whole Foods in low income areas. Exactly. 7-Elevens, they were trying it. We talked about that too, and I'm, I don't know how that's going, but yeah, Amazon needs to next buy 7-Eleven and turn them all into Amazon Go stores. That would be kind of cool, actually.

There you go. I'm just, I'm just throwing it out there. You know, I'm idea man today. I'm back in the Valley, not Silicon Valley, San Fernando Valley. I'm in the land of porn, so you gotta, you gotta think, think outside the box when it comes to porn.

Moving on. Gmail is getting its biggest upgrade since 2011. Woohoo. Have you checked it out yet? I don't have a Gmail account. That's right. Of course you do. Oh, actually I do. I have a backup Gmail account, but I never log into it. Okay. How do you, how do you use Google Docs?

I'm just constantly logged in, right? Like I never unlogged in, so I'd never really check my Gmail and I've just been in and and I can get into my Google Docs anytime I want. Oh, there you go. I checked it out. It looks a lot like Inbox. We talked about Inbox when it first came out and it annoyed the hell out of me, but I loved it, but it annoyed the hell out of me because it did, it was like a, it was like a half measure.

Right. It's like, I, okay, for some things I still have to go to Gmail, but like a lot of the stuff I can do it on Inbox. The boomerang feature that I pay for through boomerang was great, but I only worked in Gmail on a browser. Now it's built in, but it did work in Inbox and there's all these other things that just were like these weird half measures.

So I checked it out this morning. I think it looks great. There's a lot of things that I can't find anymore. I can't find where my vacation messages are and things like that, but it's, I'm glad they finally updated it. And the new thing that's coming out is this new, uh, was it confidentiality mode?

So they're going to let you send emails that expire. Okay. And you can delete emails that you send. So if you are sending an email to somebody else on Gmail, you can set an expiration date for it. So it will delete it. And if you send it to a non Gmail account, it will send them a link that they have to go to a browser and then there they can view the email only for a certain amount of time.

Now it's, it's almost as if Google isn't aware that screenshot exists. I was just going to say that screenshots, screen capture, all that kind of stuff, copy and paste. Who knows? Aren't we just solving problems that don't really exist again?

We're solving problems that AOL figured out long, long ago in their, in their walled garden. Um, yeah, the expiring emails is kind of silly because what, what also happens is if I send you an expiring email and you read it, it doesn't matter, whatever. And something in that is subpoenaable.

Well, they can just subpoena me because it's still in my sent email. It doesn't get deleted from the sent email when it expires, which is really stupid. It should, that is all traces of that email should be gone from the world. This needs to be get smart style or nothing. Yeah.

And you know, even when you delete an email, it's stuck in your trash for 30 days. And then after that, it'll be permanently deleted, but it could say on the servers for Google for 60 days after they disappear from the trash and Google's not clear on really how long it comes back to staying.

And this is all like, you know, where, where you come in, what does deleted actually mean? What does delete really mean? I, I, I still need to know that. You're never going to find out that answer. Yeah, I know. So new Gmail, check it out. If you like it. I want to talk to you real quick about a new podcast called the Tech Meme Ride Home.

Techmeme.com is a great website for finding great news in the world of tech. We use it all the time to find stories for this show right here. Host Brian McCullough from the Internet History Podcast distills down the top stories and posts of the day from Tech Meme into a 15 to 20 minute podcast that comes out Monday through Friday at about 5 p.m. Eastern time, just in time for your daily commute.

If you want to be savvy about some of the news we talk about here on the show, then Tech Meme Ride Home is just the podcast for you. Subscribe to Tech Meme Ride Home and your podcast player of choice by searching for the Tech Meme Ride Home. 25 years ago this week, Mosaic came online.

And rocketed us to these wonderful careers that dead ended. It was a fun time back then, you've got to admit. It was. It was the wild, wild west. It was everything that was good about web development. It was so much fun. We didn't even have the center tag. No, just blink.

No background colors. Nothing. Nope. Nothing. There was a time when I had the HTML 1.0 manual printed out in full, bound with a clear cover and a cover sheet that I made in Kai's Power Tools on Photoshop 2 because I worked at Kinko's back then.

And that's overnight. That's what I would do. I would read the HTML 1 spec, which was very short. It was not that long. Yes, it was. I wish I still had that. I don't know what happened to it. I'm sure it's some move out of my hundreds of moves. It got thrown in the dumpster of history.

But man, I wish I had that because it was a fun document back then. It was so much easier to do web development back then, not nowadays. Well, actually, it is because, you know, you just go to Squarespace. Oh, that's right. Drag and drop and you're done. That's right.

So I put two links in the show notes here. The funny thing is, Wired posted a link to their 2010 basically announcement that, hey, this is Mosaic in 1993. Great. April 22nd. They're like, oh, we don't feel like writing it again. We wrote it. We wrote it eight years ago.

Go ahead and just post that link. But in that one, there is a link to the first article in Wired called The Second Phase of the Revolution Has Begun by Gary Wolf. And this came out in October of 1994. Right. And that one's fun to read. I highly recommend that one.

It was a fun read. Apple is getting rid of its airport wireless routers, according to a report from 9to5Mac. They're discontinuing all airport base station products. They will be available through Apple.com, retail stores, and resellers while supplies last.

This is sad news to me because I love my time capsule. It's so convenient and simple. It's just funny. I think you've been spending so much time in Canada, you said router instead of router. I know. I just realized that after I said it, too. Too much Canadian time. When I came back here, there was my Apple basically mesh network, which is, as we know now, not a mesh network.

But I had two airport extremes, like the latest and greatest, and a time capsule, a two-terabyte time capsule here. And so, in totally unrelated news, I now have a two-terabyte time capsule and two extremes for sale, if anybody is interested in them.

I have one two-terabyte time capsule also for sale, if anybody is interested, because no point in keeping it if it's not going to be supported. Well, that's the thing. They are going to keep supporting it for the near future. They don't say when they're going to stop support for it. So, you've got a couple years out of these things, I think.

All right. I'll keep mine for a while. Yeah. It is super convenient, super easy, and I'm not looking forward to having to find a replacement in the future. Yeah. Yeah, I mean... But there's plenty of things out there, so... Well, I mean, for backups, I recommend the Synology. I'm going to keep going with that. But for the Wi-Fi side of things, my Eero is unbelievably so much better than my Airport Extremes, because I am about 150 feet from the cable modem.

At the cable modem now is one Eero base station, then two different beacons in the house, and I am in a garage that is, you know, 25 feet from the house. I get, like, four bars. Right. And full speed.

On the Extreme, I got, like, one bar in a tenth of the bandwidth that I could get. So, it's a pretty good system. So, I'm not going to miss these Apple airports that much. Eh, I am. Anyways, we have a lot of big Amazon news this week, in addition to them just basically killing their earnings.

Shocking. If you are a stockholder, you're a happy man this week. They have announced a whole bunch of new Alexa news, including what Slate is calling game-changing technology, something called Alexa Blueprints. Basically, it's a set of tools so you can build your own skills, trying to make it more like an actual digital assistant.

So, they talk about, this article talks a lot about it, but then it says Alexa Blueprints don't really fulfill the need, but it's taking a big step forward. So, once again, we have another article talking about how great something is going to be maybe in the future as opposed to what it actually is right now.

Yes, because in the title, game-changing, not so game-changing. Not so game-changing. Right now, it's a set of 20 skill templates that you can customize for devices in your home, most of which are just kind of fun things. Inspirations lets you populate Alexa with a range of your favorite motivational quotes, just what everybody needs.

Birthday Trivia lets you input information about household members, which is then transformed into a quiz game, and Family Jokes lets you keep track of favorite jokes and use Alexa to recite them for good laugh. Interesting enough, I like where they're going with this, although it does kind of destroy the we're-not-saving-any-information-about-you thing anymore, because obviously a lot of this information will be stored on Amazon's servers.

So, that's kind of changing the way the whole thing functions. Right. Well, it's turning people into turnkey developers, is what it basically is. It's like, okay, here, you can take what we-these are some triggers that we have, and we're going to let you put in some data for the triggers.

It's kind of- Yeah. When it gets down to the bare bones, that's what it is. Yes. I haven't played with it yet, because life, hell. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Soon, though, I definitely plan on playing with this, and I'm so bummed. I got an email this week from Amazon, because I'm still an Amazon developer, about doing a webinar for, it's basically UI for voice, like, you know- I signed up for that.

Oh, you did? Good. I was- Yes. Oh, good. I'm glad you did. I was going to suggest it to you, but then I knew that if I suggested it to you, you'd be like, I'm too busy for that. I am too busy for it, but I'm going to do it anyways. Oh, cool. Yeah, I got the same email, because I'm also an Amazon developer, so you and I will maybe hop on the phone while we're taking it, so we can laugh at them.

Oh, well, the problem is, I can't take it, because of the timing on it. That's why I'm sad about it. Oh, gotcha. Yeah, it's perfect timing for me, so I'm happy I'll be able to do it. Awesome. So we'll have that on a future show, because I wasn't going to be an Alexa developer, but I'm getting more and more intrigued with it, because everything seems to be going that way, and I like Alexa so much more than Siri or Google Home.

Me too. So it'd be fun to play with, especially when you sneak into your friend's place, open up their phone, and then install your skills that you can then, you know... Mess with them. Totally mess with them. But one of the interesting things in the article that you posted was that now, since the ecosystem is not locked down to trigger words from Amazon as much as it was, then that whole thing,

like when Amazon was laughing when you asked the Echo if it could laugh, and everybody got that really weird, creepy laugh, and everybody knew that was from the built-in software. Now that whole thing comes into question, so there's not going to be any way to track those kind of things.

So that whole meme of Amazon screwing up is gone completely, which I guess is pretty good for them when you think about it. Yeah, it is. It definitely is. Well, the other thing that they're doing is they're moving into basically kids, which is smart with these voice things, because I know my kid is already very intrigued by it.

He can't say anything yet, but he loves when I talk to it, and he looks over at it, and he runs over, and he pushes buttons and things like that. So this is definitely kid-friendly. So they have announced a kid's version of Alexa called Free Time, as well as a kid-friendly model of the speakers called an Echo Dot Kids Addiction.

That's kind of lower priced. It's basically wrapped in colored rubber case, and that's about it. But there is a one-year subscription to something called Nanny Alexa. Of course, not included in your Prime. It's an additional subscription. Thanks, Amazon. But Nanny Alexa is basically controllable via parental controls, so you can make it harder for kids to do things like shop, listen to songs with explicit lyrics, et cetera.

And you can even block how much they're allowed to use it, timing-wise, all that sort of stuff. It's pretty cool. So I'm going to be checking this out probably in the next year or so when it seems to, well, when they've worked out a lot of the kinks. Yeah. And when they go on sale. And when they go on sale.

So it's a great idea. Very smart of them to do this. So I'm very interested to see how it all ends up working. Interesting, interesting. You have to have a trigger word. Fa, fa, fa. If he's still doing that in a year, I'm going to be worried. I thought of a great use for the echo buttons because I was reading all this stuff about kids.

I'm like, okay, here's a game, hide and seek. Right. No, that is pretty good. You take the buttons, you hide them around the house, and then you let the kids go. And then the kids who get the buttons first, you know, they can win. Yeah. Of course, I could think of much cheaper things to use. That's hide and seek.

But, you know. Yeah, like other people. But still. Or, you know, a light. Something. Or a piece of paper that says, I got it. You can do a lot of things. But, look, man, work with me here. Work with me here. Hey, you know, you came up with something else and nobody else has.

Besides fart buttons. Yes. There's a link in here for The Verge. It's a little bit of an older article, but it's about how to control your Sonos with Amazon Echo. And I have not. I've tried. I'm still trying to get this thing to work. And kind of getting there.

But, man, it's not great integration. So, hopefully, next week, I'll be able to talk about that. And I wanted to kind of revamp my work slash podcasting area. I had to get a few new things this week, so I'll run through those really quick.

I needed a new pair of headphones because kid. So, I got the Sennheiser HD559 open back headphone. It's a pretty decent price over at Amazon. It's $100. You save $50 if you're a Prime member. And they're great headphones. I'm using them right now. First time doing a show, but I've already listened to music and things like that.

They're super comfortable. Great audio response. Pretty happy with them right now. So, I recommend them. I also needed to get a new keyboard. I was still using an old PC keyboard, and that was just starting to seem silly. Plus, also, kid. He liked playing with it a lot and broke a key.

So, first, I was like, I need a new travel keyboard. Maybe I can get a travel keyboard that I can just use, and that'll work, and I'll be comfortable with it sitting at my desk. So, I got the Logitech Easy Switch K811 wireless Bluetooth keyboard for Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Apple TV.

I got that one because it's kind of cool. It has a bunch of different buttons, so you can control which thing you're setting. You pair it with all the stuff, and it works. So, you know, if I'm sitting around, and I don't want to get out my laptop, and I've got my iPad handy, but I have to type a really long email, I use this. It's great. It does not work, though, sitting at a computer doing real work.

It's too damn small. It's good for travel. So, I asked you, what do you do? With your Mac, and you did the Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad, and they came out with it in Space Gray. So, that is what's sitting in front of me right now. Oh, you got it? Damn. I did, yes. I went to Space Gray one.

Damn it. Yeah, it looks really nice, I gotta say. I might have to spill something on this. So, yeah, I used that keyboard for my iMac. When I got the iMac, I did the upgrade and got the keypad because I love the Numeric Keypad.

Yeah, me too. It makes it bigger, and you also get the fully-sized arrow keys, which is important, I gotta say. Yes. I hate the little tic-tac ones where they split the up and down into half size. Cannot stand that. But, yeah, this keyboard, it's like $150.

Love it. Bluetooth works great. You charge it with, was it USB-C or one of the little ones? It's a little one. And the charge lasts for, you know, a couple months. Yeah. I don't think I've actually recharged this since I got it.

It's a great keyboard. The only two complaints I have is the power button is too small. It's tiny. So you have to kind of like futz with it to switch it on and off. It's a little, I mean, it's just a little tiny switch that should always be on once you get it. I know. It's just tiny. Okay.

Minor quibbles, Jason. I said minor quibbles. And the other thing, I wish it had, I wish it had little stands so you could prop it up. Oh, okay. It doesn't have that, so I'm going to have to order a little something because I like my keyboard angled. Oh, well, there you go. I like it as is because it's a little wedge and a little bit of angle.

It does have a little bit of incline in it, but. A little bit, but not enough for me. I'm picking. Oh, my God. Okay. Well, there you have it. I was really hoping that Logitech was going to be better because I like the look of it. I like it a lot. Don't get me wrong. It's great. It's just, if you're going to sit and, you know, work for hours at a time, it's too small.

Okay. It's not a big enough keyboard. And so this is a shout out to the audience here. If you guys have a good PC keyboard, I need one. I'm in search of a good PC keyboard because my PC right now, I'm using a wired version of this Magic Keyboard with the numeric keypad.

And like I've mentioned on the show before, the numeric keypad decides to change its mind often. And sometimes it's a keypad, sometimes it's arrow keys, depending on the app in Windows 10. So I want to get like a good PC keyboard that I can use for games and just, you know, long-term typing and stuff like that.

Because I do a lot of the show notes when I get it out of the box and back into my life. So, yeah, if you have any good keyboard recommendations, please send them over. Twitter at JPDeaf. Or you could email us, podcast at Grumpy Old Geeks. Or go to GOG.show and use the feedback form and send us what you like.

Media Candy. I finished Lost in Space. And? It wasn't bad. Oh, good. It was fine. You know. No spoilers, though. I'm only on episode four.

All right. Then we'll wait until you finish to talk about it any further. It's worth the ride. You're going to enjoy it. Okay. I'm trying to. It's just by the time I'm in bed at night and boot up the TV to start watching, I get about ten minutes and fall asleep. Right.

So, hopefully next week I'll get through it. What I have gotten through is the first five episodes of The Americans. Have you started watching that yet? I have seen the first episode. I really enjoyed it. Okay. I'm curious to hear what you think of the next several.

Okay. Because, yeah, I miss the show so much, but it's been kind of a letdown for me so far. Episode five started to pick back up and get into what they need to be getting into. But, yeah, so bad. Well, it's the last season, so we'll see what happens.

But I've missed the show as well. I really did enjoy the first episode, so I will go into the other ones forewarned. Okay. And, yeah, if you get caught up by next week, we can talk about it some more. Westworld is back. Did you catch it? I watched it. What did you think? It was awesome. I just thought it was a very good start to the season.

It was great. I really enjoyed it. That's all I had to say about it. Okay. Go to Reddit if you want more deep dives. Yeah, we're not going to spoil this at all. No. And The Walking Dead. I am so over that show. Never watched it. You never watched any of it?

Nope. Wow. Okay. Well, season seven is 1700, it feels like, is now over. And I really couldn't care less if I ever see another episode of that show. I really, really just, this is the sunk cost fallacy in action.

Yes. And, you know, I'm just so far into it. Seven seasons. It's just like, oh, get to the fucking point. And there is none. So I am done with The Walking Dead. I just, I can't waste my time on it anymore. I had so, so many high hopes for this season. I actually enjoyed watching The Talking Dead with Chris Hardwick after the show more than the show itself, because I think Chris is a great host.

But the show itself is just so god-awful now. I don't know what happened. Right. Well, speaking of wasting time, I have continued to watch The Clone Wars, the animated Star Wars thing, every now and then. And my opinion of it still stands.

Some hits, some misses overall. It's okay. Nothing to write home about. But, you know, it's 22 minutes or something long, and it's a good last thing to watch before I go to bed. Yeah, exactly. And apparently there's a whole other animated show called Star Wars Rebels that I was not aware of that just wrapped up and had their finale.

And on Thursday, Disney slash whatever they are these days, it's just Disney, right? There's no Lucasfilm involved in them anymore. That's what they put on the business cards, but it's all Disney. It's all Disney. So they announced another animated show, this one called Star Wars Resistance, and it will take place in the time period right before The Force Awakens, and will follow a new character.

I can't even, I'm not even going to attempt to pronounce the character's name because they just like to throw in a bunch of weird letters that don't belong together. Let's just call him, let's call him Kudzu. That's about as close as we can get. A young pilot recruited by the Resistance and tasked with a top secret mission to spy on the growing threat of the First Order.

Does not sound all that promising, but it is interesting that Resistance will feature the voices of both Oscar Isaac and Gwendolyn Christie, so both playing the same roles from the film. So that's interesting. So who knows? We shall see. I seriously doubt I'll watch it. Okay.

This just out this morning, Star Trek 4 has a new director, and it is not Quentin Tarantino. It is S.J. Clarkson, who is the first female director in the franchise's history. Of feature films. Of feature films.

Yes, yes, yes. Sorry. Plenty of female directors on the shows. Yeah, yeah. I mean, if they had no female directors for the entire run of Star Trek. That would be something, wouldn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I think there would be a hashtag if that was the case. But this is interesting because I looked her up because I'm like, okay, that's cool.

Who the fuck is S.J. Clarkson? And I went and checked her out. Apparently, Life on Mars was a show, which I never saw. But she's directed episodes of Heroes, which was good. House? I never watched it. Dexter? I loved House. I know you did. Dexter, which we both somewhat enjoyed for parts of it.

Jessica Jones, both like, and The Defenders. So. All right. She's got a good resume, but you will notice that none of those are films. So. No. So, first film. That'll be interesting. Look, I gotta be honest. The last movie kind of bummed me.

I'm a little, I almost feel like the reboot of Star Trek now needs a reboot. Yes. Tell me about it. Yeah. Did not care much for it. Also, in reading through this story, I see Danger Will Robinson, Danger Will Robinson, bad, bad, bad.

Sources say a key plot point sees Pine's character running into his father in a time travel ploy. Fuck you and your fucking time travel shit. You get one time travel. Write a goddamn story. You get one time travel card per reboot. That's it. I agree. This is bullshit. This already sounds bad.

Yeah. So hopefully that is not true. Hopefully they can save this franchise. Right now, it's not, it ain't doing so great. I saw the last Star Trek with my friend in the theater, and I fell asleep in the middle of it. It was that bad. Yeah. It just wasn't that bad.

And I look over to him, I'm like, okay, like you can read the plot points before they happen. I'm like, okay, that's going to happen. That's going to happen. Because it's, they have the timeline, you know? Yeah. It's like if you, if you blocked out the hero's journey, it's like, okay, I've got two hours and 22 minutes.

You know what beats are going to happen at each different point. You can just know what's going on and they really need to get out of that formulaic bullshit and do something new. Because yeah, I'm with you, man. I, I was so disenfranchised with the franchise after the last movie.

I just don't, I didn't care. I even went back and watched it on TV. It was better than I thought it was in the theater, but I was still bored to tears, like for most of it. Yeah. Yeah. It's sad. Oh, well. Something that I don't want to change though is Dead Can Dance. They're one of my favorites, uh, weird alternative bands and I never, ever want them to change their formula.

I want it to be exactly the way it is. And luckily enough for us, we're getting something new. Brandon Perry, half of the duo, the other half being Lisa Girard has announced that there is a new album currently being mastered. So we were going to get a brand new album again, the first in six years. And before that we had to wait like forever because they were basically disbanded for about 15 years.

So we're getting a new one. Very excited. I love everything that, everything that they do. It's just fantastic. Dead Can Dance is definitely one of my favorites. So this is, this is very good news. Have you ever seen them live? No, I wish. Oh my God. Yeah. Seriously. One of the best shows I've ever seen.

No, I missed them like three times in Chicago and that just kills me that I, I never got to see them. Well, hopefully they will tour after putting out the album so you can see them. Security. Hey, the boys are back in town.

Dave Bittner is back from San Francisco. I'm back for my travels and Brian is here. Still at home. So just back safe and sound. How was your trip, Dave? Tell us about RSA. You know, I had a good trip to RSA.

Were you able to get past all the birds and into the door? So we need to talk about that because this was my first experience with these little scooters and at first as I, we were walking, did a lot of walking. Our hotel was near the convention center and so walked back and forth regularly and at first I saw these people scooting around on these cool little scooters and I thought, oh, isn't that neat?

That's fun. And I think as you mentioned in a previous show, every now and then I would see two people piled on top of one of these scooters. And again, as you said on a previous show, one of the things that hit me was what is the weight limit on these things? What I don't understand because we don't have these in my neck of the woods is when you're done with it, do you just leave it?

Is that? Yep. Yep. Anywhere you'd like. Anywhere you'd like. And so then how do they get charged? Well, they outsource that. They pay bounties to go pick them up and you take them home and you charge them and you get five bucks a day. Okay. Well, see, because that's the other thing I saw, which was people who had one scooter that they were using as a cart to have like half a dozen other scooters across that scooter to taking somewhere.

Who knows where? But so, yeah. Yeah. Scooter were everywhere. Yeah. I think Dog the Bounty Hunter is now Dog the Bird Hunter because he's out, you know, hunting bounties on birds. So if you see a giant man with bad hair and tattoos riding a bird carrying a bunch of birds, that's Dog.

Okay. How the Mighty Have Fallen. So the show itself was good. We had a good time. Me and the rest of the Cyber Wire crew out there. It seemed to be a low key event this year. Seems like I think a tone of anxiety from last year had died down quite a bit.

I think as the tools mature, people are, it's becoming, we're heading more towards business as usual, I think. In fact, one of the people I interviewed said that we're probably maybe within five years of hitting kind of a business equilibrium where we're not going to have these year after expenditures that go up at a rate faster than the other parts of the business.

You'll be able to budget for your security and that'll be it. And, you know, you'll be able to do long-term planning. So that's kind of interesting. But I have to say San Francisco is a city that I have always loved. In fact, my wife and I started our honeymoon in San Francisco almost 25 years ago.

Started in San Francisco, then drove down the coast. And I think it's a wonderful city. It's a special city. I love the cable cars and all the touristy stuff. But it seems to me like it ain't the place it used to be. No shit!

Yep. And I have to say, you know, last year we stayed in a sort of out-of-the-way hotel in San Francisco because it was what was left. I think we ended up going at the last minute. And so we were in a bad part of town. And that was fine.

And I could kind of deal with that. Well, this year we were in a good part of town. And I have to say the situation with the homeless people there is absolutely heartbreaking. And just because there's so many people who clearly have serious mental health issues who just aren't getting the help that they need, it just casts a pall over everything.

It was really outstanding to me how much of a problem this is. And I guess part of what really bugs me about it is that this is not a city that does not have money, right? Yeah. There is so much money in San Francisco. There's so much wealth and the disparity is heartbreaking and shocking. I'll share one story with you that has stuck with me.

I was walking along one morning towards the convention center on my way to the show. I had a little spring in my step. And as I look over to the side of the sidewalk, there's a little alcove there, a little cutout. And there's a homeless person who's kind of grimy and, you know, sleeping on their side in the fetal position.

They're, you know, dirty, unclean, but either out cold or sleeping. And as I walk by, I notice that this person has their pants are around their thighs. So, their butt's hanging out. And so, my first reaction was, oh, you know, oh, well, it's a, you know, what are you going to do, right?

So, but as I pass by this person, it strikes me that this is a young woman. And here she is with her, you know, bottom hanging out. And I don't know what this says about me. It's one of the reasons I've been thinking about this, but it triggered all these different feelings like, okay, you know, what do I have to do to return this person's dignity to them?

Is this, you know, is this a dangerous situation for this young lady? Is this different than it would have been for me had it been a man? And again, I've been deep in self-examination about this, about, you know, am I part of the problem as the patriarchy that my first inclination is to try to take care of this, you know, pretty little lady?

I don't think that's what was going on here, but the feelings I had were real. And anyway, I put it out there to see what you guys think about it. Well, I think it's a function of the way that we were raised in the time period in which we were raised. I don't think it's a bad impulse to want to help someone anyways.

Because you do, like, if anything, I think, you know, the impulse that you would want to check and monitor would be, why wouldn't I help if it were a male as well? As opposed to, why am I inclined to help a woman? Right. So, yeah, but I mean, it's just, yeah, I don't know what else to say about it.

I just find something deeply broken in our current situation as a country, given these situations that we find. It's the same here in Santa Monica, a deeply, incredibly wealthy area with a massive homeless problem. And all of Los Angeles in general is a very expensive, very wealthy city with a huge homeless problem.

And a lot of it is, is mental health issues, which we know, you know, that's, that's a Reagan thing who stopped and stopped all that. And I just wonder what it's going to take if, if we're even going to try to fix this problem or if we're just going to go the way of creating walled communities.

Well, I don't mean to make it the, the social justice segment, but, but it's something. Okay. I just want to chime in after, as someone who has lived in San Francisco for many, many years, that's Tuesday. Yeah. What you're seeing there is just a standard Tuesday.

And by the end of the evening, she'll be back up, moving around, turning tricks and passed out again, over and over again. That's how that works. So it's, you know, she got, she got messed up, dropped trial and fell asleep. I've seen it by men, women, and all races and genders and everything in between.

It is just the problem of San Francisco homeless people because they don't want to address the problem because San Francisco hippies are just a bunch of ninnies. So I, well, it's not just San Francisco. The thing is, we're seeing it everywhere now. So San Francisco specifically has a lot of laws on the books that make it impossible to help the homeless.

Right. So it's a completely different conversation between San Francisco and LA. LA has got its problem too, which is unbelievably massive, but both of them have different laws on the books that make it extremely difficult to help the homeless. Therein lies the rub.

So can we talk about some security? So, oh, actually, before we start, did you step in any man poo? I did not, although I did watch my step because I had experienced that last year. So I knew to keep my eyes peeled, keep my eyes down on the sidewalk to make sure I didn't hit anything.

So moving on to security, personally, I was visiting my parents' house again. And my father, as he often does, says to me, Dave, I have a situation here with a computer. And that means it's time for Dave's free lifetime unlimited tech support.

Dave speaking, how may I help you? And so I go in and he has a simple little problem with his mail. He uses a Mac, as we've talked about here before. And so a button had disappeared on mail and I had to put it back. But in the course of doing what I was doing there, I wanted to look something up.

So I pop up the browser and create a new tab to have Google load up. And sure enough, guess what's back? The adware page. Oh, how did that happen? Different from the first one. So you can imagine my glee at discovering that, yeah, this had come back.

Yay, a problem to solve. Yeah, exactly. Right. Everybody enjoyed dessert. I'm going to close the door and. I didn't want to watch MASH reruns with the family. That's OK. Anyway, I got rid of it. We installed a another version of some antivirus software that hopefully will be a little more vigilant than we had on there before.

Last time we had this happen, I installed the 30 day trial. Right. Because I figured in 30 days, we'd that would be enough time to figure out if I had if I was dealing with something persistent. Right. Because it would keep still still be popping up. Well, the problem is, though, that you're dealing with your father who's clicking on the wrong thing.

So that is the consistent threat. Well, this is what I now know. Jason, thank you very much. So, yes. So we have reinstalled the active version. We did do a scan and we found the basically the droppers that had installed this new round of adware. So once again, I think that we're clean, but you can bet your bottom dollar when I go back there sometime this week.

That's going to be the first thing I check. And yeah, I'm sorry. I don't make light of it because I know what I'm dealing with here is a fraction of all the crap you've been dealing with. You've been dealing with lately, Brian. But it's just, you know, as your parents age, it's the children become the parents.

It's true. Yes. Yes, they do. It's sad, but true. It does seem to happen. So to be continued, this one, I will keep us posted as this one goes on. Hopefully this is the end of it. But I have a I have a bad feeling about this. All right. So we're going to move on to some feedback here that we moved from the feedback section just so we could talk about it.

And this is everywhere now. But Elaine was the first to write in. Hey, guys, I saw this article about someone who submits their DNA to a genealogy website, which leads to a distant relative of theirs being identified as a murderer. And yes, we are talking about the Golden State Killer. This is a big deal on many fronts, mainly because Patton Oswalt's wife is the one that wrote the book about this, that got this brought back into the limelight.

And they finally have an arrest. And Patton was the one who, like, really kind of shoveled this through and kind of kept it going after his wife's death, which I think is a great story on its own. The other side of the story is, oh, shit, somebody spit in a tube and then now they're going to jail.

Yeah. Well, lesson number one, if you've committed murder, don't don't go to Ancestry.com. They didn't, though. That's where the rub comes in. That's what makes this so interesting and so juicy for us to talk about. Yes. And there's there's two issues here that I think that are fundamental that we should talk about.

One is nobody's owning up to being contacted by law enforcement about this. Ancestry.com and 23andMe are both saying they didn't talk to us. And they well, they might not have had to have. The speculation is that the lab techs sent the DNA in.

And got the reports back and then used it legally through the system and then found the people and then backtraced it. But it's a theory at this point because nobody knows unless I unless I've missed some new news. No, I think you're right. They pretended to be a customer and then found who was closely related and use that, you know, reverse engineered that and found found who they think is the guy.

Are they allowed to do that? I think that what they're going with is they're not not allowed to do it. Again, this is what we talk about a lot on the show about how the technology is far surpassed our laws and our ethics regarding it.

So I'm I'm sure it's not illegal, but it probably should be. Yeah, it's interesting because the people they would have gotten hits on on either of these. Let's just for sake of argument. Let's say it's Ancestry, even though we don't know if it is, you know, whatever. And the Ancestry esque website that they use, whoever they got the hits from, those people gave permission to be matched and to be contacted.

So that permission was given. They have the DNA sample. I suspect the DNA sample that they submitted were from crime scenes, right? So they legally possessed that. I suppose you could say that they committed fraud if they said that the DNA, if they somehow violated the EULA, which probably somewhere in there says that you are the person whose DNA is being submitted, right?

Could it be? So maybe there's an out there. Definitely. It's interesting. I'm not sure what to make of this because I see a lot of people are really upset about it. And so far, I'm not. And I'm wondering why I'm not. So I was looking forward to speaking with you all about this.

Well, you're not because. Yeah. OK. OK. I'm not upset either. But you've seen that some people are, right? Are you upset? No, but we're not upset because we like the outcome. We would be upset if we felt differently. We like this because we caught a serial killer.

Yay. That's great. Well, we can all imagine the slippery slope that then starts to happen. And then we start to like it less. What do you imagine the slippery slope could be? I don't know, though. I don't know if I don't like this slippery slope. Yeah. Yeah. Like, red team this out.

Tell me what you see happening with this. Well, I mean. What? I don't know. You know, this is there's all kinds of sci fi stories that you could start to spin off of this. I mean, things that aren't illegal when you did them that become illegal later.

If you imagine that had a handmaid's tale type of environment taking place here and the ability to go back and find these things and trace you through your DNA, through not even just your DNA, through anybody you're related to his DNA. And they're able to zero in on you for things.

It's I don't know. It's it's it feels very it feels very surveillance state to me. Yeah, I can't disagree with that. And I don't like surveillance state. I mean, I know that we're heading that way anyways, and we're kind of doing it to ourselves with things like Facebook and Instagram and tagging and everything.

And it's fine if it's a personal choice. It's something different if it's a governmental choice. And if it gets to that level, that's where I start to really get disturbed and the red flags start to go up for me. It doesn't it you know, in this specific case, when it comes to solving a crime and it's especially a violent crime.

But let's just go back to even a crime, even if this was shoplifting, say it was a minor crime. Right. If there was enough DNA on on tap that could trace back to the person who solved the crime. Do we want a society where they can actually do this to people?

Because this comes back to what I think of is the traffic camera. Automated law enforcement is creepy. Yeah. Which I think is weird. I don't like it. Exactly. That's what I'm thinking about, too. But in this case, it doesn't bother me. And that's one of the psychological problems that I think that as a society, we need to figure out how we want to deal with this stuff going forward.

And it really is it's a discussion. It's not just I don't want it to be like a snap judgment. I want it to be. I agree. But the problem is with all these things is the longer that we wait to have the discussion and the more this goes on, the more accepted it is.

And it kind of becomes just this thing where, well, we've been doing it for so long now. We can't just take it back. We can't pull it back. And people become immune to it and just say, well, that's the way it is. And that disturbs me now, it seems to me like these are the things these are the fundamental issues that you would hope eventually could become constitutional amendments.

Right. You know, but but I think I was thinking about this today, that I think because of the age of our legislators and because they are most many of them, I would dare say most of them are of a generation that has a very small online footprint.

That it's going to be it's going to be a lagging indicator, as it always is. Policy always lags. But it's going to be really laggy before all this stuff affects them. In other words, we're going to have to have a generation or two come up through Congress for the people who actually feel this stuff rather than kind of try to understand it sort of.

Yeah, I agree. And that's that's something I find terrifying, because, again, of the whole sort of thing where the longer we wait, the more normalized this becomes and the more accepted it is. And you're raising a generation of people, the people that would be the next in line to make the legislation because they actually understand the technology, but they don't see it as weird in the same way that I think all three of us here look at millennials and their massive oversharing online as like, oh, my God, why would you ever do that?

Why would you put out all that that much information? But to them, it's totally normalized. It's it is what it is. And they don't care. I think I think what this really comes down to for me when that's what I was thinking about before was that the fact that the technology is always advancing. So when we first had DNA testing, there could have been false positives.

And, you know, it's like, oh, you match one of 300 million people. Now it's down to, oh, now that we have enough data, we can see what your cohorts are in this data set and then extrapolate from that. And it's only going to get better as we go forward.

And I think that we really need to take progress into account when we're making these laws going forward. And nobody does that. And that's what really, you know, just looking at the I hate to keep bringing it back up, but the Facebook testimony was just such a it's a bang your head against the wall moment with these 80 year old guys telling Zuckerberg how his service works.

It's like, come the fuck on. Come on. Well, something I can easily imagine is, you know how you can go to the pharmacy at the grocery store and they have that little blood pressure set up there where you can sit down and put your arm in the cuff and it'll take your blood pressure. That's great. Right. I mean, you know, it's a nice public service for people.

I can easily imagine the cost of these DNA tests coming down to the point where you could have something like that at the drugstore. You go up, you know, you prick your finger or you, you know, spit in a vial or something like that. And they do run a test and exchange in exchange for getting all sorts of medical information about yourself.

That you're likely to have Alzheimer's or heart disease or whatever other ailments in exchange for that, they get your DNA to do with what they want or, you know, so I could see that trade being not that far away because the price of these kits just keeps coming down.

There was actually a show that I did when I was producing for other clients for the After On podcast for Rob Reed and he had a lot of genetic scientists on and talked about that exact same thing because right now a full DNA spectrum costs about a thousand bucks in about five years.

It'd be about like 50 bucks and people will trade that, you know, you'll get the free, yeah, you get a free Domino's pizza for your sequence, you know, right. And then that is just out there forever. And I think that is definitely coming faster than we actually want it to or think it will.

And that's all the people who say, well, I have nothing to hide. And that is and there's plenty of people who say that. And that is part of why we have legislation to protect people from themselves. Yeah, good point. Yes, we do. Look, I mean, I think this could be solved. I mean, this is what exactly what task groups are for. If the government, I think they need to recognize that they don't know what they're doing.

So you establish a tax force and then you implement the task force recommendations. Come on, Elon Musk, get on it. But it's never going to happen because you know why it's not going to happen? What did we discuss when Donald Trump was first brought into office? Where do we begin? Well, yes, where to begin is a good point.

But there was one thing specifically in this particular segment. It was his cell phone and it is a security nightmare and it is still ongoing. We are over a year into this administration and two congressional Democrats have sent a formal letter to top White House and law enforcement officials seeking more information about the president's use of an unsecured cell phone.

Now, reportedly, for a while, his cell phone was taken away from him, you know, and some child lock was put on a cabinet so he couldn't get into it. But apparently he's got it back now. So we've got a real problem. And, you know, if we can't even stop the president of the United States from making a pretty basic security error, how are we ever going to legislate anything else?

Well, and simultaneous to this are the reports. I want to say it was Homeland Security who said that they had evidence of a not insignificant number of stingray devices around Washington, D.C., which, of course, the cell site simulators. Yes. So away we go.

Yes. Good times. I don't know. Well, I it boggles my mind that the Secret Service allows this to happen. But I suppose you can't we're now we know you can't just tell the president what to do. If you have a president who wants to do what he wants to do, he has a lot of leeway.

And I guess most presidents respect their security experts. Yeah. This particular president has a thing about expertise. Most presidents up until this point were smart. So therein lies therein lies the rub. But who is the boss of the Secret Service?

So somebody's got to tell them that somebody somebody can override them. They're not they're not an entity unto themselves. So they can say, Mr. President, put down the BlackBerry and they could and then he could just say, go fuck yourself. And therein is the end of the issue.

Right. So who does he respect? Would if if his generals came to him at the Joint Chiefs of Staff came and said, Mr. President, this is a serious national security issue. My my sense is that he's just too impulsive. He can't help himself. Yeah. So. Yay. It's so irrational.

It's so irrational. It's so irrational. Can I go get a little bird scooter and scoot around? Yeah. OK. Moving on. Got a couple of quick stories to cover here. There was a story came by on bleeping computer about some research and security firm checkmarks who turned an Amazon Alexa into an eavesdropping device.

Oh, great. Yeah. Well, what's clever about this is that there was no real hacking done. They were just clever humans who used functions built into the Alexa that basically I guess the Alexa has a wait mode where it listens to see if you have more to say. And they were able to use that to capture audio for, I believe, up to 16 seconds.

Amazon, to their credit, has closed that loophole after being informed about it. But I think it speaks to the issue of all these microphones were putting all over the place. And as we all said, when people started putting these little talking cylinders in their homes, that this is inevitable. And so away we go.

Yeah. The lady in the tube problem. The lady in the tube problem. So finally, I read a really interesting research paper this week, and we don't have time to dig into it, but I put it in the show notes because it's particularly good. I hope you guys take the time to read it.

I actually spoke with one of the researchers earlier this week. He's going to be on a future episode of our Research Saturday show. It's a research paper about artificial intelligence and machine learning. And one of the things that struck me was how this team defined AI and ML.

I'm just going to read this, and Brian, bear with me. I want to get your comment on the other side. So here's what they had to say. They said, AI refers to the use of digital technology to create systems that are capable of performing tasks commonly thought to require intelligence. Machine learning is variously characterized as either a subfield of AI or a separate field and refers to the development of digital systems that improve the performance on a given task over time through experience.

Okay. Are we good with that definition? I just, I need someone to pick something. Because what we seem to be getting, in this show alone, I think we got five different definitions sent to us. Some of them claiming to be authoritative, some of them not.

You know, this seems reasonable to me. Can we all get on board? Can we put together a task force and say that this is the law of the land for these definitions? Well, I think we're the task force. I think next episode, it's just going to be me, you, and Dave sitting down, going through all the research and saying, this is what you people need to do.

Yeah. No, I do. I like this. I very much like this. And the funny thing is, we just keep trying to avoid going back to this conversation, and we just, it's like, we're like a goddamn boomerang. It's so funny. This makes sense to me. This is basically how I would define it, and how I have been defining it.

And all of our, many of our younger listeners are telling us we are desperately wrong. Is that right? So, there's enough differentiation here, though, for you to be okay with how they're separating AI and ML. Yeah, I think so. The problem here is, there's one missing point, is what is the definition of intelligence?

Well, yeah. Because a performing task commonly thought to require intelligence. But I like the nuance there. What does that mean? I do like the nuance. I definitely like the nuance, but if you've got to get pedantic and you've got to dive into intelligence, because, Dave, you'll always tell me I'm Mr. Pedantic, whatever.

I believe that's Captain Pedantic, yeah. Captain Pedantic to you. But, yeah, I think we need to figure out what intelligence means, because we still don't even understand what human intelligence is. That is an issue, certainly. I mean, we still have the Turing test to fall back on as well, although, you know, theoretically, it was beaten.

A couple of years back. Yeah, I suppose it is sort of a I know it when I see it definition, but I like the direction. It's like porn, according to our senators, if we go back in time. Okay, show title, AI is like porn. That's all we got. Yeah. Oh, man. Well, Dave, I'm so glad you're back.

We missed you so much. Thank you. Good to be back. I'm glad you're safe and sound back in your new place. Sounds like the trip went well. Yeah. More or less. Something like that. All's well that ends well, right? Well, it ain't ended yet, so I'll tell you later.

Well, good to be back, guys. I'll talk to you again soon. All right. Great. Talk to you soon. We're on of the week. This is over at technologyreview.com, which is actually a really great site, but not so much this news.

Customer service chatbots are about to become frighteningly realistic. And here we go. Bettinger's Law in Action. Would your banking experience be more satisfying if you could gaze into the eyes of the bank's customer service chatbot and know it sees you frowning at your overdraft fees? No.

No. Why would that make anything better? Well, professor and entrepreneur Mark Sager thinks so. He's won two Academy Awards for novel digital animation techniques for faces used on movies, including Avatar and King Kong. And he's now basically started a company called Soul Machines, which is developing expressive digital faces for customer service chatbots.

You know what would actually make customer service better? Not talking to fucking bots. Humans. Humans. With answers. It's the answer that increases your experience, not the customer service chatbot face. Yeah. I don't understand.

Who gives these people money? Well, they're trying to get out of that uncanny valley, and they think that is going to be the way to go. But no. Yeah. You know, get a better search engine. Work on that AI, that machine learning. So when I type in a question, I get the answer I'm looking for.

That's all it should be. I don't care what my bot looks like. I want an answer. That's all. Yeah. I don't want a face on my bot, period. Yeah. Basically. Keep your face out of my bot. Give me the damn Microsoft paperclip. I'm fine with that. Clippy lives.

Feedback loop. We've got some new Patreon subscribers this week. Pavel, Seth, and Anthony. Thank you all so very, very much for your filthy lucre to help us keep this show going. Yes, we appreciate that. And we got a donation over at PayPal from Joseph, and he sent a note.

Speaking of data hanging around in the afterlife, I recall you mentioning a few episodes back that you're a cyclist. Yes, I am. Well, if you use Strava, kindly be aware that wiping your profile does not remove the data the website claims it will remove. Includes a link. I've had two deleted accounts. The first one was kept all my comments and rankings, but listed the user as Strava athlete.

And then the second account I was playing around with had the rankings still hang around post-deletion. I contacted them about the first one, and they re-ran the deletion. Question mark. And the comments disappeared, but the rankings were still there. Whether it's by design or shit-coding, well, another example of why you can't trust anyone with your data.

No need to mention this long spiel in the podcast. Well, too late. Besides, we thought it was interesting. It is something that this is just a recurring topic on the show, what delete means. And we're increasingly discovering that, who knows? Is it by design? Probably. It's also a lot of these companies just don't think about it.

So, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I just deleted my Argus account, and I just gave up. I'm assuming that they just have that data, and I'm never going to be able to get them to admit it or delete it, and it is what it is. Yeah, kind of. I mean, you put it out there, it's out there.

I mean, as an X-coder, I know that sometimes we actually did do the deletions, and sometimes we didn't. Sometimes not so much. Yeah. Depends on the CEO and their vision of the future. Yeah, and I don't use Strava. I don't need a social network to keep track of my biking.

You know, I'm already annoyed that the Apple Watch, that Jason made me become a fitness pal friend, so I get notified when he takes a walk, like I care. Well, then turn it off. I get notified when you take a shit. Come on. So, we can do it. You know what? Let me see if I can just unfriend you.

And then over on Crooked Facebook, actually, a quick note about that. I know some people have started writing us or putting comments. I don't know if you've noticed, Facebook is a bit hard to use. It's really difficult to find communications in Facebook, which is odd for the largest communications network on the planet, but it is what it is.

Comments and all of that just end up getting lost in the mix because the UI is so bad for running a page. But we appreciate and see everything you send us, but it's really hard for us to go back and grab a lot of this stuff for the show. So, not the best way to get in touch with us, but by all means, keep doing it. Jay gave us a five-star review on Facebook.

It's a GOG haiku review in three verses. Two guys, they're old friends. Damn, the world has come to this? Subscribe to this pod if you write to them. Don't mention AI or pods, or they will roast you. Do you disagree? You lame millennial dork. Cut off that man bun. Okay.

Thank you. I definitely cut off that man bun. Yes. Over on Twitter, Mitch writes in, well played, new, what we do all day Twitter handles. If only I could bike, snowboard, and scuba for a living. All I have to do is make a YouTube channel. Am I right, guys?

Hashtag problem solved. And following that up, write, film, sleep, repeat, wrote us. I thought we would be interested in the latest creepy Facebook work. And this is a link from BBC. Facebook explored unpicking personalities to target ads.

Basically, a patent was filed by the social network describing how personality characteristics, including emotional stability, could be determined from people's messages and status updates. That's nice. Oh, yay. That's not creepy. No. That's not creepy at all. And Shane writes in, and this was a long one, so I had to tie it all together.

Here's authoritative, then. The in-memorial for Arthur Samuel in AI Magazine, written by John McCarthy and Ed Fiegelbaum. All three were AI pioneers. McCarthy coined the AI term, Samuel coined ML shortly after, and Fiegelbaum was another luminary.

Well, the piece doesn't specifically mention your gold standard that ML leads to making Mr. Data or Daniel Uval. Yeah, it's a long day, dude. These were researchers in the real world field of AI. While you can achieve AI without ML, it would be more difficult.

And I guess it gets down to the definition of what is intelligence. But we don't want to do that any more than we want to know how many angels dance on the head of a pin. And I'm biased by sci-fi just like you guys. So cheers. I just hope we can all get off the machine learning kick because I'm afraid that global warming versus climate change is next.

Yeah, you know, we gave up on this battle a long time ago, except we keep coming back to it and getting annoyed because, you know, it's what we do. It's shit to talk about on the show. That's right. Matthew tweets us and says, collect and trade crypto kitties in one of the world's first blockchain games.

Breed your rarest cats to create the perfect furry friend. The future is meow. I think we've talked about crypto kitties before. We did on episode 238. It's based on Ethereum and you have to buy into play. Yeah, you have to spend money to play. So go crypto fuck yourself. Stuart writes in, I'm offering Jason lots of hugs.

Well, thank you, Stuart. See, people like you. One. One. Okay. Mr. Sacks wrote to you and said, I'm just going to leave this here and see if this turns up in a GOG podcast rant like I hope it might. And it's a link to a YouTube video. It's a link to a YouTube video by Squarespace on how to start a podcast.

Right. It is a 14 minute video of this young lady going around trying to find gear to start her podcast because she wants video and she wants audio. And I'm not going to get too ranty about it because a lot of the gear that she bought is great gear.

The problem is who the fuck can afford it? She got like these Lumix G5 or GGR5 or whatever. Two bodies are $4,000 with lenses, which are another thousand. So just the cameras are like, you know, six grand out of the gate.

She did get some nice Shure SM7Bs fine, but you need cloud lifters for those. Plus, her mixer was wrong or her interface was wrong. That was an underpowered interface for those microphones. But the rest of it was okay.

It wasn't great. I would not send this to somebody if they asked me, hey, I want to start a podcast. What should I go do? I would not send them that video by any stretch of the imagination. But, you know, there's so much money to be made podcasting, Jason. Of course, you can afford all that gear.

Oh, yeah. My God. But the funny thing is she's talking about, you know, the gear that she needs to start a podcast. But she has a professional film crew follow her around New York City. Like, why don't you just grab the camera from them, turn it around, and ask what they're using.

Oh, short video then, I guess. Anyway. Yes. So thank you, Mr. Sachs. But yeah, for wasting 15 minutes of my time this morning and giving me almost an aneurysm, but not as much. At least she didn't get a blue fucking Yeti, is all I got to say. Right. Over on GOG.show, Ivor writes in, it really sucks to be Facebook right now.

And there's a link to where countries are Tinder boxes and Facebook is a match. Yeah, over at the New York Times, false rumors set Buddhists against Muslim in Sri Lanka, the most recent in a global spate of violence, fanned by social media. Does it suck to be Facebook, though? Doesn't seem to.

Because the stock price keeps rising. No one seems to give a shit. Zuckerberg still has a job. I suppose it's a plus that it's not just our country that Facebook is screwing up. No, that's true. They're an equal opportunity fister. Yes.

Marios wrote in, hi, I enjoy listening to your show every week as I learn a lot in a short amount of time. Yes, two hours for a podcast may seem long. Let me tell you, it does when you're doing it. But it would take me a lot longer to find, read, and digest all the content you guys pack in these two hours. Great work. I thought you might find this article about AI refreshing.

This is artificial intelligence. The revolution hasn't happened yet. On. Over it. Medium. However, I did really enjoy this article because it does kind of follow along with where Jason and I have been settling with this issue. It doesn't fucking exist! Most of what is being called AI today, particularly in the public sphere, is what has been called machine learning for the past several decades, as we said last week, the week before, and the week before that.

Dwayne writes in, regarding password managers, not sure if you guys have ever heard of Bitwarden before. Completely open source, password manager with extensions for just about every browser out there. Desktop apps for Windows, Mac, Linux, mobile apps for iOS, blah, blah, blah. They even provide a Docker image if you would like to host the back end on your own server.

That's an interesting take. For $10 a year for the premium personal version, you can unlock an additional two-factor authentication, blah, blah, blah, more business plans, blah, blah, blah. And by the way, keep bashing the term AI. We don't have true AI yet. So I have not heard of Bitwarden, but that's a pretty cool model that you can actually grab it and run your own server.

Yeah. And totally open source. Very interesting. Mm-hmm. Have to check that out. Beta Bucket wrote us today. I know you are recording today, but you should check this out. Rule by Machines. And this is a link to the National Review. I did not check this out yet because... He just sent it in. Yeah.

Just sent it in. Oh, and I'd like to do a shout-out for Beta Bucket because he's one of my co-leaders over on the Clash of Clans. You guys are still doing that? Yeah, we still have the clan. I just booted a bunch of people out the other day. Clash Royale, our Clash Royale clan.

And yes, if you ask me what the name of the clan is, it is GOG.show. So you can't get in, so it doesn't matter because we're full up. I kick people out all the time, and it fills back up within seconds. So sorry, everybody that wants to play.

But yeah, we're full up right now. Next week, we'll kick some more people, so keep trying, I guess. But it's at GOG.show. There you go. Now let's get back to Beta Bucket's comment. Yes. He says, Epitomized by Zuckerberg, China's social credit score, and the English NHS, everyone now is looking for a way for AI to run things for us.

We are trying to make Frank Herbert's prediction of Butlerian jihad and Dune come true. It was a rebellion against the AI that ran people's lives and a rebellion against humans thinking like machines. Yes, I'm very aware of that because I read those books every five years. Yeah, a very interesting concept. I mean, I want to go back and read this whole article.

It might make it into next week's show. We'll definitely check it out. Thank you. Beta Bucket. Over on iTunes, Kevin Motion, which is how I'm going to pronounce that, from the UK writes in, Awesome. Love this show. It gives you a great perspective on what's really going on in the big worldwide web.

Jason and Brian bounce off each other well. Highly recommended. Thank you. We also got a five-star review from Mexico. I believe this is our first review from Mexico. And it's about as close as I'm going to get to that name. Awesome podcast. I love the show.

It's a shame that it's weekly based. It helps a lot in the daily commute and some Spanish there. Okay. Yeah. Way to go. If you want your question or comment read on the show, head over to GOG.show slash support and send us your feedback or question 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, tell your friends. Closing shout-outs. My closing shout-outs this week are to you, Brian. Aw. And also, everyone over at the Jordan Harbinger Show for their support and all my friends during this fucking ridiculously miserable hell month of a move.

God, this has been terrible. Happy to be helpful. Yeah. This has been a rough month for both the Grumpy Old Weeks, but hopefully we're settling into better times. Yeah. Wait for the wheel. We'll be back up top soon. But man, and thank you guys for listening still and talking to us and tweeting and every now and again Facebooking us.

But it's been a real help being able to chat with everybody while we're going through this stuff. So I very, very much appreciate all of your support. Yes. Unfortunately, we have a death in the family. Bob Duro, 94 years old. He was the guy who composed some of the great pieces for Schoolhouse Rock.

Right. I loved Schoolhouse Rock when I was a kid. Not ironically as a hipster, like a lot of people do now, but I'm sorry, Conjunction Junction still is my favorite. Can't go wrong with it. It's sad news to hear. So, you know, I love Schoolhouse Rock as well.

I grew up with it. It's fantastic. And there's nothing ironic about it. So I learned more about our government from Schoolhouse Rock than I did from high school. So shame it doesn't work that way anymore. Yeah. Yeah. One quick shout out to Bear the Hairless on Twitter and everybody else that includes us in their follow Fridays or whatever the hell you people do over on Twitter.

We really do appreciate the support, even if it makes our Twitter notifications completely useless all week. Yeah. I swear to God, I've stopped checking because it's like we always have a notification. I'm like, somebody wrote us. Nope. Just another like on the follow.

I'll send you my ban list. 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 us a one-time or recurring donation, go to GOG.show and click on the PayPal button in the sidebar.

Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 257. 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. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out.

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