271: There are FOUR lights!

This episode is sponsored in part by Betterment. Get up to one year managed free by visiting Betterment.com slash GOG. This episode is also sponsored in part by Privacy. To sign up for free and get a $5 credit, go to Privacy.com slash GOG. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and

new civilizations. To boldly go where no one has gone before. Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFillippo discussing 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, a very excited Brian Schulmeister. Yeah, something's up from that intro. I can tell. Yep, Picard's back. Guess who's back? Picard's back. I'm very excited about this. So this was announced a couple days ago at some sort of Star Trek Las Vegas convention thing. There's going to be a new show. So Star Trek CBS All Access will now have two shows. That's right. Oop-tacked

and Picard back. But Picard back. I like that. Who knows when the hell we're actually going to get this? They haven't even started. So it's going to be at least, I'd say, two years. But I'm very excited to have him back, you know, and basically so's everyone. The internet melted down. Yeah, the internet shit their proverbial diapers that day. Yeah. And for good reason. There's some interesting articles out there. I particularly like the one over at Salon that talked about if the Trek universe presented a leader like Picard, a genteel yet firm boss with a deep appreciation

for Shakespeare Earl Grey tea, expansive thinking and universal understanding. And maybe because back then we all thought we were just shy of getting to a better place with regard to how we treat each other. Boy, is it good to have him back because we need him right now. Ain't that the truth? Ain't that the truth? Yeah. So very exciting stuff. I'm pleased. It's it's it's it's been a shining star in a year of crap. Ain't that the truth? And speaking of Star Trek, we've had a transporter

accident. That's that happens every now and again in the future. And now there are two grumpy old geeks a week. Wait, hold on. Does that mean does that mean on Thursday we'll have beards and we'll be the evil versions? Exactly. Or or maybe Mondays. I don't know. One day a week we're going to be bastards. So the usual Monday episode will be a recap of the news of the week and security how like usual plus some apps and doodads and bric-a-brac and maybe some other stuff that we'll throw in.

And Thursday's episode will be any breaking news since the last episode that we want to make fun of of course because it's not really worth it if we can't make fun of it. And media candy at the library moron of the weekend feedback loop. And this is a transition for us. So maybe a little bit bumpy while we smooth things out and figure out how this is going to work. So keep your seatbelts fastened until the artificial gravity returns because in the future obviously things do break.

And this is like I said this is all subject to change. We're feeling it out. But we hope that two shorter episodes will make it easier for everyone to hear the whole show every week and easier on us so we don't have to do marathon editing and prep sessions and can break things up a bit to fit with our new schedules. Because Brian has baby schedule and I have heat stroke schedule and all sorts of other stuff. And hey we get to sell more ads. This is true. Yes. How about a little follow-up? Well movie

passes have had a bumpy ride themselves haven't they? Oh my goodness have they ever. Yeah well shockingly enough what we've said since day one their their business model could not sustain itself and it didn't. And then they almost ran out of money and then they got more funding again. And now they've gone ahead and made a change to something that makes a slight bit more sense. They're charging nine dollars and ninety nine cents again. But you get to only see three movies a month instead of the

unlimited all in that they originally promised that everybody was very excited about. You know that's still you know like 333 a movie. Still not bad. They're still going to be losing money. Just not as much. As much. Yeah. Oh man. Talk about uh yeah plugging the holes on the Titanic with toilet paper. That's all right. Yeah. It's it's I can't again this is one of those questions that I always have. Who's investing in this at this point? Well nobody. There therein lies the problem where

they're out of money. Yes. So good times. And we talked in the past about the Reds hydrogen one phone which is going to have some sort of 3D thing that can't be visualized on the internets or interwebs. You have to see it in person because supposedly it's really cool and you just can't see it any other way. And guess what? It's not coming anytime soon. It's been delayed again.

Again. You know that that pesky FCC. You know what are you going to do? Yeah. You have to you kind of have to get those things sorted out before you actually say when things are going to come out. Yeah. Let's just it's just feeling like a Kickstarter at the moment but we shall see.

Which is surprising coming from you know the people that make the red cameras which are like the staple in Hollywood now. You'd think that they'd have their ish together by this point but I guess going from a camera to a phone it might be a little harder than people thought. Especially a cool Star Trekkian space 3D phone. That's right. That's right. Well and uh we talk a lot about the gig economy and we rail about it and how it's not really that great for people. Apparently the High

Court here in California has decided uh we're right. Oh wait somebody somebody agrees with us. We're right again. Yes we're right again. So uh some of the innovation that Silicon Valley sorts like to blather on about compromises creative approaches to short changing the workforce. The gig economy is in large part a euphemism for reclassifying droves of tech sector serfs as independent contractors to avoid such supposedly outmoded paradigms as minimum wages, overtime, and health care. You know all those

things companies are supposed to provide to their employees. But if we don't if we say you're not an employee we don't have to. Well the court has said this is a load of shit and uh you can't do that anymore. Uh and of course all these Silicon Valley companies are such as uh DoorDash, Postmates, TaskRabbit, Instacart, etc. etc. etc. etc. Uber, Lyft are all getting together and saying that this was going to decimate their businesses while stifling innovation and threatening the livelihoods of millions

of working Californians. My argument would be you are already threatening the livelihoods of millions of working Californians and they're trying to help and fix that. Yeah yeah you're the problem not the solution. Yes. Maybe look in a mirror. So I'm quite pleased with this decision and uh I hope that this sort of thing continues because uh this stuff ain't right people. It ain't right. It was a good idea to try but you know maybe it's just not working. Not working. In the news.

Speaking of things that might have been a good idea and not really working. Facebook. Yes. Social media in general of course we talk about but Facebook had a uh had an interesting apology this week because there was a big earthquake and and Facebook has a little section on their site where you can log in and say hey I'm safe if you're if you're in the the area. Well somebody didn't get the memo on uh a

certain word and what it did was it triggered the congratulations animation on Facebook. So you're you're logging into your you know earthquake thing and you say I'm safe great and then the balloons start popping confetti starts coming out like woohoo woohoo and well I mean I suppose we are happy that you're safe. Honestly I don't see the problem with it because I would be very excited that I'm safe

too. You know here's the thing it's a total screw-up but why do we have this at all anyways and why isn't there a setting again let's go back to what we always talk about if we had built this we would have made a setting to turn the stupid infantile stuff off. I don't need balloons and things to appear every time I type the word congratulations. I don't want them to appear.

But there may be a setting but Facebook settings are so convoluted and you can't you could never find it even if you wanted to. I know it's so dumb. Yeah I it's they have that on iOS too anytime you type certain words you get little things in in iMessage or messages. Yes because we are now all five years old. Oh yeah. None of us are adults anymore now we need cute animations all the time. This was a fun

one on my birthday on my watch on the notifications when you pull it down. I could clear my notifications all day but at the very top there was a little picture of a balloon and it said happy birthday and if I clicked if I pressed the button then balloons would come up on my watch and fly up and pop and stuff like that and I couldn't get rid of the notification it was there all day. Oh god. So I could give myself balloons all day long because I am five years old. And I need I need my watch to

affirm myself worth. Exactly. Jesus Christ people. Is this really the world we want? I turned 47 not 4.7. Come on. It's a rounding or decimal point error. Oh boy. Yeah well fun times this week for Alex Jones our favorite conspiracy theorist asshole. Just asshole actually. He's just an asshole. He was

kicked off of basically YouTube, Facebook, Apple. They all kind of rushed. Apple was the first to kick him off. He kicked him off the iTunes platform. Yep. And said nope no more you broke our broke our rules. And this is very funny. If you go listen you can go type in conspiracy theory podcast into the search engine on iTunes and there are probably thousands of people just like him. He's just the

most famous. Well see this is the problem I have with this. I'm interested in what your problem with this is Brian. Well I don't mind the fact that they've booted him for breaking the terms of service. He has and I do understand that this is well this used to be a democracy. We're holding on tight trying to keep it one. And in that you know everybody has free speech and and certainly it's a

slippery slope to remove anybody just because we don't like what they're saying. But having said all that first off he has not been censored. He can still put up anything he wants on his own site. Nobody's stopping that. His podcast is still there. It's not he they didn't take down his podcast. They just removed him from the iTunes directory. Yes. And as far as his presence on platforms. Well they are just platforms. They don't they're not required to put everybody up

there. Right. That's what they're just hearing. They're just a platform. And if you break the rules of the platform they can remove you. And he is breaking the rules. The problem I have is the inconsistency. Get them all off then. Get everyone that's breaking the rules off. You can't just pick one person and do it to them. Well apparently they can because it's their company and they can do what they want. Right. Yeah. That's the interesting thing about this is it's like it's just because he's the

biggest loud mouth they go after him first. And I'm fine with him taking him down. I don't like the guy. But nope. That doesn't mean that they should. Yeah. Like you said be consistent. But you know who is being consistent? Twitter. The Nazi platform. Exactly. So Jack Dorsey came out and said we didn't suspend Alex Jones or Infowars yesterday. We know that's hard for many. But the reason is simple.

He hasn't violated our rules. We'll enforce if he does. And we'll continue to promote a healthy conversational environment. Have you fucking read Twitter? Healthy conversational environment my ass. By ensuring tweets aren't artificially amplified. And that was the first first of a series of tweets. And he goes on to say accounts like Jones's can often sensationalize issues and spread unsubstantiated rumors. So it's critical journalists document validate and refute such

information directly so people can form their own opinions. This is what serves the public conversation best. Oh, where to start? Would you like to take a crack at it first, Brian? I just say this. Hey, Twitter is your platform, man. You're the one that loves it. I hashtag seek Kyle. I'm so over Twitter. It's this guy is so full of shit. And outside of the fact that everybody's been tweeting him tweets from Alex Jones that are breaking the terms of service.

So he has broken the terms of service. There are I mean, when this came out, people just started forwarding, forwarding, forwarding, forwarding, forwarding. Look, this is breaking the terms of service, forwarding, forwarding, forwarding, forwarding. So he's first off, he's lying. He's flat out lying. He has broken the terms of service. You've just decided that you're going to take a stand and let and do the whole everybody gets a gets a fucking voice thing. So fine, go ahead. It's your company. But man, I'm done with Twitter.

So our president also has broken the terms of service. Yes. Countless times. And they still keep him. So remember, remember when I said all those terrible things about Jack Dorsey and called him out for being alt right? Well, my opinion. Yeah. Pretty much done changed. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty, pretty sure. He's got some tiki torches in the closet there. That's all I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what what he's thinking at this point. But all right, whatever. That's my opinion of Twitter just keeps going down and down. I couldn't get much

worse, but it definitely has now. And I'm so glad that we sold the stock from our little stock trade thing. If I had it still, I'd feel really bad. Hey, man, I made some beer out of it. So I'm happy. That's true. You did. You did. And Uber has had some bad news this week as well. In addition to the California high court has already been talking about the thing that we just mentioned. New York City has taken the lead and done exactly what Uber and Lyft were

desperately hoping New York City wouldn't do, which has set a massive precedent that almost every other city is now going to follow. There's going to be caps. How many of these rideshare cars can be out there? There's going to be minimum pay rates for drivers. There's going to be all the things that Uber did not want. And it is in their biggest market in the world. So suck on it, Uber. I love it. Love it. Love it. Me too. And then just jumping back to Facebook really quickly. This is a very long form article. We've talked a lot about the people you may know thing in our

security features in the past. The controversial feature Gizmodo has put together a 10 year history of how this is rolled out, the problems it's had, and how creepy it is, and how we still don't even understand how the hell it works. So it's a good read if you're into this. And it's just really curious because, you know, all you people that are a butthurt that you think Facebook is listening to your phone and serving you as should be a lot more worried about how this feature works and the fact that we don't know how it works.

I would like to point out really quick here that this article is by Cashmere Hill, who has written every single article on this topic that we've ever seen. And all she does is take the previous one, add a few more sentences, republish it. So I think this is just the culmination of all of her previous articles on this whole thing.

I think she's slowly putting together a book. She has to be. Article by article. Sentence by sentence. One paragraph every month until she gets a book. Yeah, it's like the old school serials, like the way sci-fi used to come out. Can't wait for the next next paper to arrive.

Oh, God. And I swore I thought we would never talk about SoundCloud again. They're still here. Well, yeah, sort of. Not really. Somebody was just like with MoviePass. Somebody looked at a failing business model and said, you know what that needs? The same thing, but more.

Let's double down on it. Let's double down. So we're going to get a company called Audius has just raised $5.5 million to decentralize music on the blockchain, Jason. Oh, you have got to be kidding me. Who gave them this money? I want to go sell them a bridge.

Me too. So you can go read all about this. It's a little bit ridiculous. They're starting small. They're going to be hopefully, you know, just unsigned electronic musicians. You know why? Because no major labels can let their people be on this and it's not going to work. But, hey, you know, you got $5.5 million.

So I have a few parties and we'll talk about you shutting down in about a year. Kleiner Perkins is even in on this. You know what? Yeah, we can sell them. We're in the wrong. Why are we podcasting, Jason? I mean, look at these people are just throwing money at the stupidest ideas in the world. Let's just go find another.

Well, hey, Snapchat's about to fail. We're about to talk about that. Let's do a Snapchat clone and get some money, Jason. No, Brian, I know. I know what it is. Podcasting's hot right now. We need to put podcasting on the blockchain. Pod chaining. We're going to be pod chaining. Pod chaining across the universe on the Starship Enterprise.

Sorry, that's Dr. D'Amendo stuff coming back to me there. Yes, block casting or pod chaining. I don't know which one I like better. But I do know that I don't like Snapchat very much. And I love I love this title of the article from Gizmodo. Sure looks like Snapchat's becoming a thing we don't have to pretend to care about anymore.

Thank God. Well, fortunately, I stopped caring about Snapchat a long time ago, but I just love to make fun of them. Yeah. They have lost three million daily users by the end of June. They said they were peaking at 191 million daily users earlier this year.

So down a good chunk. And of course, they blame their redesign. It's like, oh, our bad redesign. We feel that we have now addressed the biggest frustrations that we've heard, except everybody's gone and nobody's coming back. But yeah, but if I love this one, they got a two hundred and fifty million dollar investment from a Saudi prince for two point three percent of the company.

This was right before their earnings were announced and everything kind of went cattywumpus. Now, the interesting thing about this is. Snapchat lost three hundred and fifty three million dollars last quarter, right? This guy invests two hundred and fifty million dollars.

That's not even three months. Well, you know, three months to lose. As we've learned math and finances don't matter for these companies. No, it doesn't. And I just this is what boggles my mind, too. How the hell can Snapchat cost three hundred and fifty three million dollars a quarter to run?

I don't know. You tell me. I really don't know. Three hundred and fifty three million dollars for an app that you post pictures to that disappear. I can't even imagine what an employee at Snapchat does all day. I really can't.

Like, what are they fired? All the engineers. So there's no engineers. Nobody's working on the platform anymore. So as far as I can tell, the money is just being spent paying content providers to put their content up on Snapchat. So Snapchat has some content. I can't even. And there's got to be like project managers that, you know, are keeping in touch with vice and making sure that they're using the cool new, you know, make sure that you put bunny ears on those people that you're investigating and whatever the hell Snapchat does.

Yeah, I just don't know. And also, you have to remember that Snapchat does have revenue. So they're actually losing more than three hundred and fifty three million dollars a quarter. Yeah. Oh, it's like it boggles the mind on how these people stay in business. Mm hmm.

Oh, man. Elon Musk. This one. This one I thought originally was a joke because of some of the numbers. It's like Elon Musk tweeted that he would like take the company private when Tesla hit four twenty per share. And I'm thinking, oh, somebody's having a pot joke, you know.

But of course, everybody went crazy catty wumpus. And I think now he's got to stick by it, even if it was a joke. I think this is amazing. This is great. I'm as an old longtime shareholder. I'm thrilled about this. And I think he should take it private.

I think he what he's discovered is is that this isn't really the public sector isn't really the game for him. He doesn't want to have to meet expectations and continue the the crazy rat race that we always talk about is the real problem with with our current economic situation. It's what is Apple supposed to do?

They already have everyone. And how does that how is that a bad thing? And why would they lose money? Because they can't get new people. It's the same thing with Tesla. He's doing fine. He's just not meeting these expectations. And if he goes private, he can just do what he wants. And I'm kind of OK with Elon Musk doing what he wants.

So what happens to your stock? I'm not very well versed in how this works. Whatever, if it hits 420 and he decides to take it private, that means I will basically be bought out of all my shares. So, OK, yeah, interesting. I mean, there's that he's talking about doing some other funky stuff where you can stay invested in it as a private company.

I haven't read up enough on that yet, so I totally want to because I think I would stick with him. But we'll see. OK, that's cool. It's cool. And we did talk about stock buybacks last episode a little bit. There's an article on Vox called Stock Buybacks Explained. It's a very long article, but I'm going to put it there if people want to read it.

It goes through everything on all of the stock buyback stuff and how it ties into the tax cuts that Trump put out there. And I would kind of screws people over sometimes. But I will let you guys read it and come up with your own decisions. Now, this next one, Ryan, I saw this.

This was over on Naked Security. Facebook wants to be the future of online banking. See here in a nutshell is how you fuck your future by going for short term gains.

You've given up all your credibility, Facebook, by going for short term gains. And you cannot pivot this way now because no one, no one is going to give you their credit cards or banking information. Yes, Facebook, Facebook has asked big banks to share their customers personal financial data, including card transactions and checking account balances.

What could possibly go wrong? Yeah, no. And I swear to God, if I have any card with any company that's going to give Facebook any information, I am canceling and never using that company again. Well, why don't you cancel and don't use Facebook again as well?

I don't. I don't. You know, I'm not giving Facebook any information besides what they already know, which is carefully manicured garden. Jason, my carefully manicured Facebook garden. I know. I know. Apparently, everybody is saying, no, you can't have.

What? That's shocking. Yeah. Oh, my God. Yes. And they're saying they're saying that, you know, we don't want to do everything with it. We just want to be able to show your checking account balance when you're using, you know, the Messenger app inside of inside of Facebook.

I'm like, you know, there's an app for that already. I really don't need you to do that. Honestly, it's already creepy enough that PayPal ping. Well, used to ping me on Facebook whenever I would make a transaction. Yeah, I don't like that at all. I like my separations. Yeah. Yeah. Well, especially after Facebook's recent history.

And, you know, and we know that they were trying to go after medical data as well, which is just like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. So they couldn't get in our, you know, in our hospital beds. Now they're trying to get into our banks and they just don't stop. They just don't stop.

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That's Betterment.com slash GOG. Betterment. Outsmart Average. Security? Ha! We are not back again this week with Dave Bittner from the Cyber Wire podcast because he's in Las Vegas sweating his balls off at Black Hat.

But he did finally notice that the deluxer has Wonk-a-vaders, as he posted on Twitter, which is cool. What's a Wonk-a-vader? They've got elevators that go at crazy angles. Oh, okay. He's never noticed that? Because, you know, it's a big pyramid. I don't think he'd been in there before. Oh, okay. I've been in there before.

I just thought everybody knew that. That's funny. So, we've got a couple stories this week. We're anxiously anticipating Bittner's return with news from Black Hat and all the cool stories if he doesn't get his computer hacked and can't actually post anything. But the first one I've got is DARPA takes aim at deepfake forgeries.

Remember deepfake? Yes. The AI program that can make movies with different people's faces from different scenes and things like that. Yes. Well, DARPA apparently is very upset about this. Well, somebody should be.

Yeah, but, you know, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is DARPA, you'd think they'd have something else to do, but they do have a media forensics program. And the whole point of this is they're worried about, you know, nation states using this to, you know, destabilize world politics by making fake videos.

So, they do have a horse in the race. I've got to say that. But they're making headway on figuring this out, which unfortunately they published, which means the people who run deepfakes can now go figure out how to fix it. Apparently, a lot of the photos that people use on the deepfakes, they have their eyes open.

So, when it's mapped onto the other face, the eyelids are a problem when they try and make the person blink. Because a video, a five-minute video of Barack Obama telling everybody that, you know, he likes to smoke ganja and, you know, rape little babies, doesn't work well if he doesn't blink.

So, the program tries to make him blink, and apparently it's not very good at blinking yet. So, they have created blink recognition technology to help ferret these things out. Have they tried the blink tag from HTML 1.0?

Oh, dad jokes. Dad jokes now. Dad jokes. Oh, man. So, at least somebody's, you know, going after this. Because it's something that we worried about when we first saw some of the original things out there. Oh, it's definitely something to be worried about. I mean, we're rapidly getting to a point where we're just not going to be able to trust anything.

You know? That's that. So, I'm glad that somebody's trying to figure this out. Yeah. I think at some point, we're going to have to have encryption in the chips on the cameras to verify, like, actual videos. You know what might fix all this, Jason? The blockchain! Damn right.

All your videos are belonging to blockchain. Great. Now, this came out of Black Hat, too, which is pretty fun. This comes from IBM. IBM has a cybersecurity division called X-Force Red. Nice. I love that.

IBM is so stodgy. I can't believe that they went with that name. That's so fantastic. I know. Those guys don't have to wear ties. No, they don't. Where do you work? X-Force Red. You know what they do have to wear ties? They have to wear those skinny, like, vinyl ties, like Max Headroom.

All right. So, they have to wear wraparound sunglasses. Oh, I can just see all these guys looking like Max Headroom. Well, apparently, the smart city systems of the future, well, yeah, you know, the IoT. Yeah, they put the S in the IoT. They have discovered 17 zero-day vulnerabilities in smart city systems, which could debilitate core services.

Oops. Yeah, there's a laundry list of these things here. And most of it comes back to a lot of just hard-coded admin accounts with, you know, usernames and passwords you can't change. It boggles the mind. I mean, it just boggles the fucking mind.

Now, we just recently talked about how San Diego basically rolled this out. Yeah, and they're making it worse, you know. There's authentication bypass, SQL injections, pre-authentication shell injection flaws, or some of these other ones. Oh, there's just so many of them.

Authentication flaws, unencrypted communications. Unencrypted communications, that's really something you want with your smart city system. Yeah, oops. Oh, God. Yeah, so hopefully these people are going to start getting on the ball because, I mean, granted, my little IoT light bulbs, somebody hacks my little IoT light bulbs, yeah, it's an inconvenience.

If somebody hacks the streetlight system for an entire city, that's a bigger problem. Although, you could have a lot of fun with it, I gotta say. Oh, boy. Yeah, you could have a lot of fun with that. And we've talked in the past about how cash is starting to go away, and Jason and I are both big believers in cash.

We both carry cash on us at all times. Not that much, though. Not that much, not that much. Yeah, if you see us on the street, it's really not that much, honestly. It's like six bucks. You get six bucks. But, you know, it's going away. It's out of vogue. It's out of fashion. People like using their phones.

They like the cashless society thing. There's a really good article in The Atlantic that says how this could possibly be not so good and could embolden Big Brother. So it goes into just the idea that basically cash has now just become information. It's just zeros and ones.

And wherever information gathers and flows, two predators follow closely behind it, censorship and surveillance. The case of digital money is no exception. Where money becomes a series of signals, it can be censored. Where money becomes information, it will inform on you. And the one thing they didn't really get into in this article is when money becomes information, it can be hacked and stolen a lot easier.

So the other thing that they don't really talk about here that gets me, it's like, yeah, okay, Big Brother, surveillance, hacking, all this stuff. Fuck that. The IRS, the government in taxes, when everything is digital, they can just take it whenever they want.

They can't do it now, but they can track it easier. So it just becomes one of those things where it's like, oh, there is an upside to that, actually. Now that I think about it, in the future, maybe we don't have the IRS. We don't have to do our tax returns manually. They just do it anytime there's a transaction.

They take their cut and then they leave us alone. Wait, are you talking about something that we would consider to be a flat tax that would make sense? No, it doesn't even have to be a flat tax. It could, well, it could be a flat tax. And at the end of the year, they basically, you know, reconcile everything themselves, give you a list and say, here's what you earned.

Here's what you did. Here's what you, here's what we got from you already. And here's what you owe that we just took yesterday. Nevermind. You don't have to do anything. Or here's some money back. Right. You know, that'll happen. You put in your estimated earnings and then they just handle it because everything is cashless now. Not going to happen, but at least hopefully it won't happen in my lifetime.

So anyway, yes, I still like cash. Me too. And I got to say, you can't snort Coke with a QR code. Cops and doodads. So like I mentioned before my birthday was a week ago and I got a birthday present from my dad and my stepmom.

Yes. Now I opened the box up and I'm like, you got me a toy for my 47th birthday. They got me a Cosmo. They got me a Cosmo robot toy. Okay. Apparently they got one for me and my brother who is 27 and they must have seen it on a TV show.

That's what they were saying. So they got us each one of these things. Now they're not cheap. They're like 180 bucks. Yeah. They're, they're, they're very much not cheap, but they said that they were the cutest thing they've ever seen. And so they got us them and I'm like, okay, it took me a week to, you know, take it out and charge it up and try it out.

So I tried it out yesterday. This is the coolest little robot I've ever seen. Oh, you're going to love this thing. I figured it was going to be a positive review. Yeah. Your kid would love one of these. The first thing you do is you set it up with facial recognition. So yeah, you know, you type in your name on your phone after you get it set up and you stare at it and then it starts saying your name.

It's like, Jason, Jason. And it's like blinking and running around, moving its arms around. And it is so cute. And then the dogs came over and of course we're like, what's that? So they were, they wanted to play with it too. It does not have dog recognition per se. It can see that it is a dog and it will say pet, I guess.

But I'm not letting the dogs get close enough to it because it is small enough that one chomp from Bam Bam and there goes Cosmo. Right. It's very, I posted a picture on, on Bam Bam's Instagram. If anybody wants to go take a look at the size difference, but this thing is cute and it plays games and it's kind of like a Tamagotchi where you have to take it out every day.

It'll, it'll send you a notification to your phone. It's like, I'm ready to be, take, yeah, you have to feed it. It's like, I'm ready to be fed and I'm ready to be played with. And if you play with it, can you turn that off? If you play with it every day, then it unlocks new games because it has games. It comes with these little blocks and you play a game.

Like the, the first one is, uh, you two blocks, like one, he's got one block. I've got the other block and the blocks flash colors. And when the colors match, you have to press the first person or the first entity to press the cube wins. And you play till five and it was fun.

It was actually fun. It's, it's, I don't know. It's cute. I'm sorry that I don't have cute technology like this. Anyway, I don't have, it's not a killer drone. I'm not going to figure out a way that I can turn my Cosmo into a robo assassin device, but it is just something that is cute. And the, the facial expressions, it just puts a smile on my face.

I don't know why. It looks cute. And I'm looking at it and, uh, my son is still too young for it. This is a three and up because of small parts and things like that. But the problem I would have with this, uh, getting it for him, say when he was three or whatever, much like getting a pet, um, it sounds like it's going to be a lot of work for me because he's not going to be the one that makes sure that it gets fed and woken up every single day.

That's going to be my ass doing it. So I think I'll wait until he's old enough to have a phone and I can take care of it himself. Okay. Well, at least it doesn't poop. So you don't have to take it out at three in the morning. And there's a new one that just came out. That's like the big brother to Cosmo, which I'm sure is like probably $300.

But, uh, I saw a quick review of it and it's black. So it's like that one would be the assassin bot, but I don't know. Just next time you come over here, I come over there. I'll bring it with that. You got to see this thing. It is cute as hell. And I'm sorry. It just made me laugh. So that was my, my weird birthday present from my, my parents.

I don't know why they thought that sending a 47 year old man, a toy robot would be good, but it actually worked. Right. Uh, next thing I got is, uh, the geek bees two piece smart wifi plug socket outlet compatible with Alexa, Google home app, remote control, timing socket for Android and iOS.

I bought these like a year and a half ago. And we talked about it a little bit on the show. I, they sat in a drawer. I never use them because I couldn't figure out what the hell I wanted to use them for. There's nothing really I want with Alexa for power and stuff like that. But I did find a use for them finally, because I'm like, I bound and determined.

I'm like, I'm going to find a use for these things so we can talk about it on the show. Come hell or high water. So in my bedroom, I have my media center. I have my TV, my Xbox, Apple TV, and, and direct TV controller. I'll go into one power strip and then that goes into the wall. So I put the geek bees socket between the power strip in the wall, set it up.

So I can turn off the entire, the power to the entire unit, basically with a tap on my iPhone on the app works like a charm, really easy to use. And the thing about it is, I don't know if you know much about vampire power or what they call standby power officially, but a lot of these devices are sucking juice all day long.

And I have some smart power strips that we talked about on the show that I implemented back in Chicago and had a huge savings on my, my power. And I'm thinking, okay, well, hell, if I can just turn the whole thing off with a touch of a button, instead of having to crawl behind it and find the button on the power strip and all that crap, let's use it.

It's worked great so far. I can't wait to figure out how much power we've saved, but, um, it's, it's, it's a great little use for, if you've got anything that you basically just need to turn off or on, they're good for that. I mean, because that's literally all they do. It's, it's like a power gate. Right.

Look, I've got two comments on this thing. Uh, how in God's name, do they not include a USB plug for power on this thing? That seems like it would be a no brainer because, you know, you might want to just stick in something like a charger phone with it or something like that. So no USB on it is, is ridiculous.

I don't, I don't understand how that would work though. If, if you just, if, I mean, USB would always be on. So I don't, I don't get what the use case would be because it is just a socket. It's a, it's an in-between to your, your outlet in the wall. Whenever I do anything with sockets these days, I always make sure I've replaced all of mine so that they have power and USB.

Right. Just because everybody wants to charge and stuff like that. It just makes sense. So I'm, I'm a little surprised that they didn't stick one on the side of this thing. It's, it wouldn't be that much for them to do that. And secondly, when you look at it straight on, it looks like it's screaming in pain and terror. Yeah, pretty much. But it, for what it, for what it does, it actually does the job.

So, okay. I just don't, I would feel bad every time I looked at it. It looks like it's very sad. It kind of does, doesn't it? Design flaw. Yes. But anyway, if you need something to just turn things off and on, like an outside light or something like that, then I will probably use them with my Christmas lights this year for sure.

I think that'll be an easy one. Oh, that's, yeah, that's a no brainer. Definitely. So, and I have a little gaming chair follow-up on the Thic Max, Thic Max, I don't know what the hell they were thinking. Ergonomic high back, large size office desk chair, swivel black PC gaming chair with lumbar massage support and retractable footrest.

Yes. So, it does have massage support in it, which I didn't realize that it actually has a massaging lumbar support. You have to plug in a, I could plug it into a Geekbee's USB if I had one. It's basically just a little pad that goes on your back that you can slide up and down to adjust to different spots and plug in, plug it into USB power.

I plug it into a little anchor battery and stuff it in the back and it's got a switch for two-speed vibration on your back, which is actually really nice. Turned out to be really nice. The headrest doesn't really fit right, so I took it off. So, it's like, it's a decent chair for, you know, what I paid.

It was like $198 or $189, something like that. I can sit in it for like seven hours and not feel any strain when I get out of it. So, that's a plus. It is definitely made for people who want to sit in one position for a long time and stare at a screen. That's really what it's made for.

So, I'd give it a four out of five so far. All right. Funny little anecdote about Fic Max. When you talked about them last week and I was getting ready to do our social updates, I went to Twitter to try to find them so I could include them in the update. And they had been banned by Twitter.

So, Jack Dorsey has banned a company that makes chairs but can't ban Alex Jones. Yeah. Go figure. Yeah. Go figure. I'm just going to stop right there. There are so many things I could say there, but I'm just going to stop. Oh, man.

And I'm trying to use my PC again now that I can. Yes. I got it set up with this new monitor that I got. Mm-hmm. And I have to switch over to some decent recording studio software. So, I got PreSonus Studio One version four. And I'm working my way through that.

The only reason I'm going to mention this here is if anybody who listens to the show uses Studio One and has some good tutorials that I can find because the tutorials I found are terrible. If you've got some good tutorials or a book to get on Studio One, please send them my way. Jason at GrumpyOldGeeks.com.

I would be much appreciated because it's decent so far, but there's a lot to learn in it. It's like learning logic from scratch because every single one of these things, every single one of these DAWs has their own language. And it's like I would rather just find something to get up to speed quick.

And someone asked me about why I love my iPad Pro so much on Twitter, and it just comes down to these three few apps. Airmail 3. I love Airmail 3. I use it on my Mac, and I use it on my iPad, and it syncs together, and you can do all sorts of fun stuff with it. Like, you don't have to have Boomerang on Gmail.

Like, it's one of those apps that I used to pay for where you could, you know, schedule things to come back if nobody replies after a certain amount of time or just a snooze mail to come back later or black hole mail, which is my favorite. So, you never see it again. Great app for that. Run that on my iPad. I also run Reader 3 on the iPad.

So, that's how I get through all the news every week, all the huge amounts of news. I sit out in the morning on the deck with my coffee, and I just scroll with my Apple Pencil on my iPad and just go through hundreds of articles every day. It makes it super easy. And then I just save those to Pinboard and look at them later. The last app that is a must-have is Things.

You know I've had my love-hate relationship with Things over the years. Yes. There are Things 3 now, and I started with Things 1 in our first review, and when they went to Things 2, my epic rant about why are you charging me another $100 for an update? And they did it again with Things 3.

But you know what? The damn thing works. Because the nice thing is, you can do an integration with Airmail 3. So, if I have an email that I want to add to a to-do item, Airmail 3 integrates with Things, so I can just have a little button that says, open it in Things, and it'll just immediately create a to-do for it.

And I can just set the little parameters for it. Fantastic little piece of software. So, those three things are what kind of get us through this show every week, at least on my side of production. Right. And then somebody on Twitter asked us what we were using to delete our old tweets, so I just want to re-mention that on the show.

We both use tweetdelete.net, since people have been asking. And that got me thinking, I wonder, because when we first looked into it, the quality of plug-ins and extensions for deleting things off Facebook was pretty dire. They didn't work well. They really kind of sucked. I wanted to see if they were any better, so I did a Google search and, of course, ended up at Lifehacker because they throw everything at the wall to see what sticks.

And apparently, there is a new version of the Chrome extension that we had talked about way, way long time ago on the show. And the title of the article is, Quickly Delete, Here's a Facebook Post with this Chrome Extension. But as I went through and read the article, it doesn't seem that it's all that quick. So, it doesn't look like they're any better.

You're kind of shit out of luck if you want to just go through and start deleting old Facebook posts. Yeah. It's just going to take some time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Guess who wrote that fucking article? You're my favorite person in the world. Thank you. So, yeah, Social Book Post Manager. It does work. And they have actually added one new feature that makes it much easier.

You can go by year. And you used to have to go by year and then select a month. And you can only do that month. Now, they have a selection for all months. So, you can delete all posts within an entire year. So, that's an upgrade. That's definitely an upgrade. And it does work. You only have to run it four or five times to get it to delete it all.

It's not great software. But it does work for the most part. You just have to run it a couple times to get everything out. Right. So, and I got one for you, Brian. Parenting in the age of Alexa and her ilk. Did you get a chance to read this one? I did. I did. What did you think?

It's going to be interesting. My son is already actually saying, well, he doesn't quite say it correctly. But he goes, echo, echo. Because he hears us talk to it enough to kind of know what's going on. And he knows to expect to hear music and things like that coming from it. So, it's going to be interesting to see what happens.

Especially as he starts to really kind of connect the dots and is able to start asking questions. It's going to be something that I'm going to monitor. And if it feels weird, I'm just going to disconnect them and take them away. Which would suck because I've gotten used to using them. But we'll see what happens. Yeah. I think the real fun part of this article is that one of these kids' first words were, hi, Google.

You know? Yeah. Yeah. That's what's going to happen. That is what's going to happen. Yeah. And as these things get better and you can actually voice print to the different devices. You can so, you know, it's like, okay, if it hears your kid, then it knows, okay, kid mode. And then if it hears.

Yes, kid mode or shut it off completely or, yeah, whatever. And if it hears you and it can tell if you're slurring or not. It can either be in regular adult mode or drunken mode. So you don't want to be sending anything different. But, yeah, I thought it was a decent article and something to think about since you have a kid and how it's going.

Yeah, definitely. I did enjoy the article. And I found one for you, Jason. Okay. It's a site called Does the Dog Die? Okay. So if you're excited for a new show and the trailers look pretty violent, so you're a little worried about that, you can stand a little fighting, but you really hate torture scenes or you hate puke shots or you need to avoid strobe effects or your actual dog just died.

And rather not be reminded by a movie, don't watch John Wick. Look up the title on Does the Dog Die? A site that collects warnings about anxiety triggers and unpleasant elements in over 6,000 movies, TVs, books, and video games. Oh, my God. Yes, because we are living in the triggered society now.

Yeah. You know, I can see how some people might get upset by certain things in movies. They just turn the movie off, but I'm an adult. I know that it's not a real dog dying. I know. The puppy didn't actually die in John Wick.

Yeah. There's something at the very end of every single movie that says that no animals were harmed in the making of this film. Yeah. Unless you're coming from the Ukraine. It's like, no, he actually killed a dog. It's okay. No, we didn't. And the people. And the people. This is actually a documentary. We kill everybody.

Magic Leap is in the news because they finally released their little gadget. They've leaped. They've leaped. The Magic Leap 1 Creators Edition is out. And for a mere $2,299 or $95, you can get yours. Yes.

And what I really love was The Verge got their hands on one. And the journalist who has been tracking Magic Leap for years is just, she's so in love with it and just loved the idea of it and basically believed every press release they put out.

Which was kind of let down when she actually got to try it in person. Wait, it wasn't that interesting or that good? It wasn't as good as they promised. The field of view is very small. Who would have thought that? Yeah, exactly. Oh, my God. It's not Star Trek technology for how the umpteen billions that they've done.

I mean, I think the glasses look decent. The pack looks decent. It's not bad. You know? It's not bad. It's okay. It doesn't look quite as cool as I thought. It looks a little clunkier and goofier than I thought it would. It looks like you're a really bad, happy robot from 1950s movies.

But it's all right. You know, I don't have much faith in this because in addition to Magic Leap actually leaping, the guy in charge of Magic Leap's market strategy also leapt out of the company. So he decided to wash his hands of this.

And even though this was his baby, he quit. So Jeff Gattis, the company's VP of product marketing, who also oversees product management, left after more than two and a half years there as they went to market. Interesting. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. I got to say, the one thing that I thought was very clever is the way that their headband expands.

I thought that was very clever. If you watch the video on The Verge, it's a good video to watch. But the way that you put it on, it's like a really nice system, I thought, for actually sizing to your head. Right. I mean, there's so many cameras in that thing. I had no idea. Yeah, there's quite a few.

I think in the future as computing power gets a little bigger. You can also, I mean, the demos that they're showing are with a little pack that you can put on the little circular disk, like disks of Tron computer that they've got. I think in the future, they were talking about there's going to be another upgrade where you can have an actual PC backpack and go with that.

So you can have like full on, you know, immersive VR with more computing power. I think the real limiting factor, though, is that field of vision that they've got is way too narrow compared to everything else. And it seems like after everybody's been talking about these HoloLens, which is like, you know, been out for a couple of years already, is the winner so far still.

Yeah. I was surfing around YouTube one night after a couple of cocktails, as I sometimes do. Not very often. I'm not one of those big YouTube searchers, but I ran across this. Actually, no, this one might have actually come from a fan of ours on Twitter.

Sunday morning TV memories, 1964 to 1976. And it's all about different things you would see on Saturday mornings, the cartoons, the commercials, and all the different shows. And it's like a half an hour long. And I was transfixed. I'm like, oh, my God, I remember that.

I remember that. Oh, that was a great show. What happened to that show? Oh, man. And then, of course, after that's over, then you go down the rabbit hole. I'm like, oh, what happened to Tom? You know, where's Captain Caveman? I want to watch some episodes of that. If you're if you are, you know, if you were watching TV up until 1976, like some of us were, this will be a wash or a wash, a walk down memory lane.

Because even the stuff from 1964, the earlier stuff we saw in reruns, you know, we didn't have to see it new. So most of this stuff I've seen and it was great. Nice. Very cool. We've talked about sleep a lot on this show. And I just this this crossed my eye and on inverse.com.

And I just thought it was really interesting. Have you ever had the nightmare where you wake up in the middle of the night and your body is frozen and pinned and you can't move? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Apparently, everybody knows like literally everyone. They've done some scientists have studied this phenomenon and found that it's a neurologically driven process.

So this it's not a cultural thing. It transcends. Everybody has had this. And the reason is because when we're asleep, we are actually physically paralyzed for a big chunk of that time. Yes. Yes. Who knew? So if you if you have a problem with if something goes awry with your sleep process and you wake up during that period, you literally cannot move.

Yeah. Before you go into REM sleep, you are your body basically just freezes you out. There's a new book that I was reading called Why We Sleep, and I was just listening to it the other night before I read this. And that was part of the book and talking about that system where it's like, you can't move.

You're screwed. Yeah. Because it's like, what kind of weird evolutionary trigger is this? It's like, OK, let's make us just, you know, food for any predator that's around where we can't actually move for a couple hours a night. So what is the evolutionary need for sleep was what the whole chapter was about.

So I'm I'm going to review this book maybe next week or the week after. I'm like almost done with it. But it's a great book if you're interested in the science of sleep and all the new stuff that they've been figuring out in just the past couple of years. It's crazy amazing. But, yeah, I think that it's terrifying when you wake up and you're just like, oh, what the fuck?

You know, yeah. Speaking of what the fuck, the EPA is now allowing they're now allowing asbestos back into manufacturing. What could possibly go wrong? You want to talk about like Saturday morning TV memories or childhood memories. All I remember from being a kid is asbestos, asbestos is killing people.

We have to tear it out of the walls. It's killing everybody. Well, thanks for bringing it back. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you know who's really happy about this? Every single mesothelioma lawyer in the world could get even more of those commercials on late night TV now. And my roommate sent this one to me yesterday and I just had to laugh.

Brodcom founder billionaire busted in Las Vegas for rooms stocked with drugs. This is an interesting story. Henry Nicholas III, the billionaire co-founder of tech giant Brodcom, was arrested after cops say they found cases of hard drugs in his Las Vegas hotel room.

Here's the thing. He was there with his girlfriend, Ashley Fargo. You know who Ashley Fargo is? I'm guessing this relates to a bank. She's the ex-wife of Wells Fargo heir, Brian Fargo. She had a balloon in her mouth and had apparently OD'd on nitrous.

Wow. That takes effort. That takes a lot of effort. I mean, I've tried. I've definitely tried. You have to remember that when you're sucking on that balloon, there is no oxygen going in. So every now and again, take a breath of real air. That's how the pros do it. That and other drug taking tips on the next episode of Grumpy Old Bugs.

I grew up in a nitrous world, and that's pretty much all we had in the Midwest to get that. And, you know, that was a nice thing. When we first started out, all we had was whipped cream. So we'd go to the grocery store and sneak some puffs off the whipped cream. Right. And put them back, of course. You're welcome for that, Midwest people who have all of our spit on your whipped cream.

But then, of course, we moved into, you know, whippets and crackers and all that stuff. And then once we got old enough, we could go to the dental supply shops and get six-foot tanks of nitrous. That's why I have no brain cells left. Apparently, Henry Nicholas III has no brain cells left because they found tons of drugs in his room.

And the security had to come in because they said they had a bunch of cases that looked like they might be used to carry weapons. And now, apparently, in a hotel, if you have something that looked like you can put a weapon in it, they are allowed to come in your room and search. Yep. Yeah. So they found heroin, cocaine, meth, and MDMA.

Some of the pills were stamped with Winnie the Pooh. And this got me thinking. It's like, billionaire. He's a billionaire. And he's staying in a hotel. Yes. You'd think you'd have enough money to, like, maybe get a private villa or something like that.

And then I started talking with my roommate. And it's like, oh, these people are just so rich. They don't think anything could ever happen to them. And then it got us onto the topic of the term that has been recently brought into the lexicon called affluenza. Have you heard of affluenza before? I have.

I, it's, yeah. Here's the Wikipedia definition. Oh, it's a dream. I know. Oh, I really wish somebody would come over and give me a case of affluenza. Affluenza is a portmanteau of affluence and influenza is a term used by critics of consumerism. It is thought to have been first used in 1954, but it gained legs as a concept with 1997 PBS documentary of the same name and subsequent book affluenza.

The all-consuming epidemic. Now, all it is, is rich people not giving a shit is what it is. And I would like a case of that. Me too. Closing shout outs. Big hat tip to Justin Vandenberg for help with my cabling issue for my new 4K monitor and my old ass MacBook Pros.

I was using the wrong cable and it wasn't working right. And then he pointed me in the right direction. So I appreciate it, Justin. Thank you very much. I am now in 4K goodness. Nice. And I just wanted to say thank you to all of our listeners. Thank you for listening. Thank you for the support. Thank you for chiming in on us changing up the show and giving this a go, trying twice a week.

Thank you for all the feedback in general. The show is a lot more fun when we have a give and take with all of you. And thank you in advance for hanging in there. And I hope you like what we end up doing with this thing. So thank you. 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.

Cost 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 and click the PayPal button in the sidebar. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 271. 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. Jean-Luc Picard is back. Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo!

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