306: VanderZanden Event Horizon

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Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. What a week, Brian. I've had some interesting health issues this week, which has gotten me into, which I'm not going to talk about on the show because the peoples have spoken. They don't give a shit about that stuff. So I'm going to talk about the technology side of my brain falling apart.

I've been talking with my friend Kevin Rose, and he's a big, you know, health hacker guy, and he's turned me on to a couple different services. But there's one that I found that's called Prometheus. I just call it Prometheus because I think that's kind of what they were going for, you know. But what it is, is you take your 23andMe, Ancestry.com, FamilyTree DNA, or whatever data that you have about your genome.

You pop it in, and then it builds a report for you based on, was it SPpedia? I think that was the name of it. And it's kind of cool. What it does is it gives you just a better way to view the data than you get from these other things.

Because I'm like, I'm looking through my 23andMe data on their site, and it's like, okay, I'm looking for a certain thing, and it's really hard to find. And these guys just take the data dump that you can get from them with just all of your genes and all the ABG or Gattaca things, whatever.

Yes, Gattaca. And gives you a really nice report. And I'm like, okay, I like this. And here's the kicker. It's only $12. There's another one that does it for $45 that I haven't done yet. Oh, it's SNPedia. Sorry. SNPedia. Okay. So they basically do what 23andMe should be doing for you.

Yes, yes. Right. Now, how did you peruse the privacy policy or the TLCs? I don't. I give zero fucks. You've given up at this point. I've given zero fucks about my privacy policy with this stuff. No.

I honestly do not care anymore because what I care about is trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with me. And unfortunately, what I have is I have two APOE4 alleles, which means that I am extremely likely going to get Alzheimer's disease.

And that's kind of one of the symptoms I've been having, which is not good. And so I'm just going through all this stuff. And it's fascinating how much stuff is out there that you can get from here. You know, just looking at the stuff. I am going to get my full genome sequenced early next year for sure.

Just just to get it done. And then everybody can have it. I will actually even fuck it. Who cares? I'll post it on GOG dot show. You can have a copy of my goddamn genome because I am so broken. It doesn't even matter. Well, I mean, again, I would like to remind you of what I told you when we were conversing over the last few days after this.

Again, these these things are not set in stone. Genetics are just one part of a full puzzle. In fact, at the very link that you put in the show notes, when you go to the home page here for for Prometheus teas or whatever it's called, it says right here. This is for educational researchers purposes only.

I realize that most published reports about DNA variants explain only a small part of the heritability of a trade. And they also take into different accounts how different variants might interact. In addition, public reports typically ignore environmental, dietary, microbial, medical history and lifestyle factors, any or all of which may affect my true risk for any trait or disease.

So take a chill pill, Jason. Oh, no, no, no, no. I can't take a chill pill. No. Yeah. Well, I still can can't afford insurance. So I'm doing this stuff on my own right now until I can't afford insurance. But the one thing that came out of this that was really fun is RS53576AA.

Lack of empathy. You have an SMP in the oxytocin receptor, which may make you less empathetic than most people. When understressed, you may have more difficulty recognizing the emotional state of others, which impacts loneliness, parenting and social skills, which is a why I'm not a parent and be why I'm a podcaster.

Yeah, kind of hard to argue with that one, Jason. See, that's I put that one in there because I'm like, oh, Brian's going to fucking love this one. Well, I will say it's a bit like reading the horoscope and finding the one line that actually coincides perfectly, perfectly with you right now.

Yeah, but there's a lot of stuff in here. I'll send it to if you want to see it. But it's it's pretty detailed on a lot of this stuff. And the Alzheimer's thing just came up because I was having memory issues. So like really, really, really bad memory issues and and Kevin like turned me on to this stuff.

Kevin's been fucking fantastic with this. So as I get new tools as we keep going, it'll be interesting. I'm reading Dr. Bredesen's book on the end of Alzheimer's right now because they've apparently come up with a way to stave off the symptoms of Alzheimer's and maybe like completely reverse it.

If you're young enough and you start young enough, right? And so I'm going to get ahead of the game. Yeah, yeah, I'm totally getting ahead of the game because when when I got all this information, this is one of those things where it's like you get all this information and you think, OK, well, half of this is probably bullshit, right? Because like you just said, when you read the the notice, the disclaimers.

Yes, it's just like, ah, maybe some of this is bullshit. And then some of it you're like, well, that hit, that hit, that hit. So you have a there's so many like cognitive biases that come in when you have to read this stuff and then you have to go look up cognitive bias and figure out which one that you're being, you know, moved by at that current point.

But Dr. Bredesen's work has seemed to really actually work. And he's a scientist. He was on the Jordan Harbinger show. And the funny thing is, I completely spaced out when that show was going on because I'm like, who cares about Alzheimer's? Turns out I should have listened to maybe a little bit more.

But these tools are really cool. These tools are really cool. And I've got a couple more that I'm going to run on my 23andMe data. And I'll also like post when next year when I do the the full genetic sequence, where to get that done, because I'm doing research on the best places to get it done.

And so they don't swap my my spit with bam bams and then I come back as a Cocker Spaniel. Right. And a little follow up. We talked about Def Leppard. We totally already did follow up. What are you talking about? See, I'm just fucking with you. I know there was that half second there where I literally didn't know if we had done follow up.

That's how bad it's gotten. OK. Oh, God, I'm dying. I'm dying. Def Leppard, Janet Jackson, Radiohead and Stevie Nicks among the 2019 inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But my favorite one is, of course, The Cure. Yes. Cure is finally in.

So no, that's very cool. Very cool. But we talked about Def Leppard last week. So I wanted to throw this in here because those guys are getting old. So is The Cure. I mean, come on. That's been 40 years. So are we. Yeah. Yeah. So are we. You know, it's funny. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a complete load of shit.

Everybody that's in the music industry knows it's all political and it's all a joke. Until, of course, you get in. Your band makes it in. And you're like, yes, vindication. Nope. That's pretty much it. I'm like, I hate the webbies. Wait, I'm up for a webbie? All right. All right. This is cool.

Yeah. Well, sour grapes action going on. That's the sour grapes cognitive bias. Exactly. Exactly. Now, also follow up from almost like three years ago or whatever, when we were first discussing this and we were always said we'd follow up with it when we knew what happened. Well, we finally know because it's finally happened because things take forever.

Both Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams have to pay over five million dollars to the estate of get the gay family for Blurred Lines. So they finally got hit with basically, yeah, you stole the song. So pay up. That's about it. Yeah. However, I mean, you got to keep in mind that it's been over.

The song itself has made over 16 million dollars. So they're only giving up 50 percent, but they are giving up 50 percent of all future royalties as well. So that's kind of it. OK. And Brian's not being homophobic here. He's talking about the Marvin Gaye estate, not the gay estate. Just to make sure new listeners.

There's a huge party in West Hollywood right now. They're all getting money. Exactly. Exactly. No, the Marvin Gaye estate, obviously. Yes. And there's a really good article over on Slate called Google's Web of Confusion about the testifying CEO Sundar Pichai and the exchange that we talked about between the congressmen.

Just in case it didn't hit home and you didn't watch the video, go read this article and you will see exactly why we keep screaming about how our representatives need to have some understanding of what technology is. It's crucial at this point, and it's ridiculous that they don't. Yeah. Yeah. You have to have it. Yeah. Because they just don't understand the problem.

And I liked in this Slate article that they brought up the same things that I brought up, which was like, it's not a simple question. It's like, I have an iPhone. Good for you. You know, I used to work at Kinko's and people would come in and go, I have a disc and I would applaud them. And I'm like, fantastic. That's awesome that you have a disc.

What do you want to do with it? And it's the same level. Our representatives have the same level of technological understanding as a Kinko's customer does in the late 80s. That's about where we're at right now. So we need some smarter people in there.

And I'm not saying that they're dumb, but I'm just saying they don't have a technological understanding. Yeah. They don't have a technology background. And it's obvious that their aides aren't helping them out too much. Right. Yeah. Because they're too busy on Snapchat. Yeah. And I would like to point out as a little bit of follow up, Travelers Season 3 has dropped.

I got an email this morning. I am so excited for this because I needed a new series to watch on Netflix. And I'm still digging Travelers. I was kind of, you know, let down by the end of Season 1, but Season 2 really ramped it up. Are you a fan of the show or not?

I have not watched it. I recommend it. It's good sci-fi. It's really good sci-fi because it's got time travel and crazy shit from the future. I'm really enjoying it. And now that there's a Season 3, there's no excuse for you, Brian, because it is. That's true. That is my rule.

It has broken Schulmeister's rule. It has made it to Season 3. Right. And a quick story. After we did the little bit last week, or not even last week. Yeah, it was last week. See, time travel. Time travel. Right. About blogrolling.com and how Afternic is hijacking all the traffic.

I'm like, you know what? Let me try and buy it. Let me see if I can buy it back. So I got in touch with Afternic, and the guy who owns it wanted $5,000 for it. And I'm like, you're an idiot. Right. Let me introduce myself.

My name is Jason. I built blogrolling.com. I am the only person on the planet that is going to pay you to get this domain back, because I'm the only one that cares, because blog rolls are not a thing anymore. It is dead technology. I want the domain to stop Afternic from being assholes and stealing people's traffic.

Well, so I offered them $1,000. I scraped it up. That's a good price for a domain name these days. People don't understand that they're really not worth that much. No, they're not. And honestly, it's not worth $1,000, because all it was going to be is an article that I wrote that would be the history of blogrolling.com with a link to my podcast business.

But they said no. So sorry, everyone who still has blogrolling embeds on your site. You might want to go change those. And I'm pretty sure that anybody listening does not have a blogrolling embed on their site, because they all left the internet long ago.

But anyway, I tried. I tried. I really, really tried. It's funny that you mentioned that, because when we were having our little discussion about your friend Coop leaving Facebook and the walled garden stuff, in the back of my mind, I was like, I wonder if Jason wants to start back up blogrolling. No, I mean, nobody would use it.

There's no reason. It's a feature, not a product. Exactly. It really is. And yeah, Ben Trott from MovableType, they almost bought it back in the day when I was selling it. MovableType almost bought the company. And they're like, yeah, it's a feature, not really a product.

But if he wants to come work with us, great, we'll hire him. And I'm like, you write in Perl. I'm not going to work in Perl. And my prediction came completely true. This was in way early 90s. And I told Ben, I'm like, you need to rewrite MovableType into PHP.

Otherwise, you're dead. And that completely came to pass. It completely came to pass. Because guess what? Matt Mullenweg took over WordPress, which was another thing, another open source package. Did it all in PHP? Because everybody was moving to PHP at that point.

Because Perl is hard. I don't know if you've ever written much Perl. It sucks. I did not enjoy it. Oh, it is one of the worst languages to ever write in. But PHP is actually kind of pleasant. I don't mind writing PHP. And WordPress ate their lunch. So, yeah, suck it.

Suck it, Ben Trott. In the news. Well, for once, we have some good news in the United States of America. And how I regularly complain about how we're becoming a third world nation.

Because of power grid problems and all such things. But there is a little bit of good news. The internet is getting faster. Especially fixed broadband internet. Broadband download speeds in the U.S. rose 35.8%. And upload speeds are 22% up from last year. According to internet speed test firm Okla.

In its latest U.S. broadband report. So, look at that. It's getting a little better. A little better. A little better. What do you have at your house? Oh, I have no clue. I never test it. Oh, I test mine every day. I know. I decided a long time ago I don't need to know these things. Well. Good enough for us to podcast on most days.

Okay. So, yeah. My down speed is 234 megabits. Megabits, not megabytes. And my up speed is 23 megabits. That cost me $100 a month. Right. And for, you know, I used to have a T1 line at my house that cost $10,000 a month.

It was 1.4 megabits down. Crazy, right? It's insane. I love it. I love being fast on the internet. Yes, me too. And we have some more good news, at least for those of us who are fans of regulations and following rules here in Los Angeles.

Airbnb regulations are coming. Finally, after three years of deliberation, the city of LA has rules to regulate short-term rental platforms such as Airbnb, HomeAway, and VRBO. What is VRBO? You've never, oh, it's vacation rental, blah, blah, blah, something.

I've actually used them before. Oh, really? I've never heard of them before. Yep. Yep. They were around, basically, they lost, they were around before Airbnb. They just didn't have good marketing. They had a really shitty, ugly site. Yeah. See, that's why you need to hire really good web designers. I'm telling you. Yes.

So, this is the same thing. So, basically. Okay. The regulations have been passed on Tuesday. They said 120-night limit on activity, which means if you own a place, you can only rent it up to 120 nights per year, so it can't be a full-time rental, as it should be. The whole point of these things, it bans rent-controlled units from being rented out and allows hosts to only rent out their primary residence, so you can't buy up a bunch of properties and become mini Paris Hiltons.

Okay. The Hilton part, anyways. So, yeah, this is everything that Airbnb claimed to be about anyways. So, I don't see why they should be complaining, but of course they are. So, I think this is a great thing. This is exactly the way it's supposed to be.

Sure, you can rent out your place if you want. Let's keep it to a minimum. Let's not let you become crazy like landlords who just buy up all the properties in these areas and rent them out. Let's make it a fair playing field. All right. So, we'll see what happens now. It's funny. When I type in VRBO into Google, the first thing that comes up is vacation rentals by owners.

There you go. That's it. Airbnb.com slash vacation rental. So, that's why VRBO probably lost. Maybe they got bought out. I don't really know. It's been a long time since I tried them. Yeah, but I can tell you their SEO sucks because their title tag is VRBO.com pipe VRBO registration, like trademark symbol, dash official website, pipe vacation rentals by owner.

Yeah, not so great. Yeah. Lyft drivers are up in arms right now. Oh. Okay. Jiminy. They're suing the state of California. Or actually, they're suing Lyft in the state of California because they do not make the Californian minimum wage, which is $11 per hour.

Right. Yeah. Go figure. There's really not a lot to say besides that. I mean, Lyft is getting sued. Hand over fist. So is Uber. Everybody's just saying, like, look, the gig economy isn't working. Nope. It is not working. And to drive that point home is an amazing article in the New Yorker magazine.

It's called Uber is headed for a crash. And I love this. The notion that Uber, the most highly valued private company in the world, is a textbook bezel. Now, I was like, what the hell's a bezel? Well, this is John Galbraith's coinage for an investment swindle where the losses have yet to be recognized.

Play on a bezel. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So the whole point of the article is to point out the fact that Uber just keeps taking money, keeps taking money. And in like and they're just taking it out the back door and how this is unsustainable because in the beginning, the company had so much money that they would subsidize the drivers.

Well, they're not doing that anymore in a lot of places. And people are just leaving the service because it costs too much to get an Uber. It's like, OK, well, if it costs just as much as a taxi, I might as well just get my car, you know, that's kind of it. They tried to win the quote unquote hearts and minds of people across the world.

And it turns out it's just not going to work. And that's not my argument when they first came out. I said they're artificially decreasing the price. And at some point it's going to come back up and it's going to be the same, if not more than taxis. Exactly. And we've argued the point that what they were banking on is self-driving cars being a thing.

The only way the company was going to survive was to fire all the employees. A robot fleet. And then it would be profitable. Exactly. And since that's taken a little bit longer than they thought, we'll see if they actually make it. I mean, that really is the only way that Uber is going to survive.

Well, unfortunately, both Lyft and Uber are going to go public next year and they're going to make a crap ton of money and it's going to keep them afloat even longer. But nobody looks at the baseline of this. Standard investment. If you took a class on economics in high school or college, you would look at the financials of both of these companies and you would run screaming from the hills.

You would never invest in them. Never. People do because people don't pay attention. Never, never, ever. You know, and even they talk about the economics in this article and it's like, you know, comparisons of Uber to other story tech wunderkinder show Uber is not on the same trajectory.

No ultimately successful major technology company has been as deeply unprofitable for anywhere remotely as long as Uber has been. After nine years, Uber isn't within hailing distance of making money and continues to bleed more red ink than any startup in history.

By contrast, Facebook and Amazon were solidly cash flow positive by their fifth year. So, that really kind of just lays it out for you right now. You know, deeply unprofitable. There's a show title right there because that is what Uber is.

You know, I fortunately for a bunch of my friends who are angels in there, they cashed out recently. So, they'll do okay. But, man. The rich get richer. The regular people are getting screwed on all this. Yeah. So, if you even think for one second about putting any of your money into Uber, you're a moron.

That's all I'm going to say. So, this is a cautionary tale. We were right from the get-go when this started. And, yeah. It's not getting any better. Nope. Now, over at Inc.com, they have an article that I was just shaking my head up because this is just, this is the comparison that I want to put out there because these are the types of articles people wrote about Uber when Uber started.

14 months, 120 cities, $2 billion. There's never been a company like Bird. Is the world ready? Well, as we know from Betteridge's Law of Headlines, the answer is no. But, these guys have just racked up a valuation that is just ungodly.

And, Mr. Van Der Zander, I finally get to see a picture of him. If you go to the article, there's a picture of Mr. Van Der Zander riding a bird. Of course. Is he wearing a helmet? No, he's not. No, he's not wearing a helmet. Interesting. Jesus Christ.

I'm telling you. That's the thing. I mean, I was reading this article and saying, oh, this is the greatest thing ever. Woo-hoo. And, I texted you yesterday morning. I'm like, oh, no. Scooters have invaded my neighborhood now, too. And, there are Lime scooters up and down Ventura Boulevard and Woodland Hills.

And, the thing about it is, I live in the valley. This is the place where people don't scoot. Nobody scoots. They don't walk. Everybody drives in the valley. Exactly. And, I'm living in one of the only walkable areas in all of L.A. So, it kind of made sense why they were here.

So, yesterday, I was driving to the grocery store to get some stuff. And, I made a note of where all the scooters were. Today, I went to the grocery store this morning, go buy some broccoli, because we're having shrimp and broccoli for dinner, because I'm trying to be healthy now, because my brain fucked.

So, every single spot where they had dropped off the Lime scooters yesterday, not a single one of them moved. Not a single one of them. Period. Look, I've never doubted for a second that there is a small, viable model for these scooters.

That makes sense. But, it's not what they're doing, and it's not the way they're doing it. They're using Uber's tactics, which we've discussed. We've discussed this. Because, Van Der Zander comes from Uber. He's from Uber. We're at the Van Der Zander vanguard of hating Bird and talking about why these scooters are horrible and just not worth the amount of money that they are.

So, we'll just move on. Here's the Van Der Zander horizon. That's really like the Van Der Zander event horizon. We're like, everything sucks, thanks to you. Mm-hmm. All right. Well, and speaking, doubling back around to our legislators and our lawmakers not understanding technology at all, there's been a lot of hoopla in California the last couple days, because some idiot regulators are considering a plan to charge a fee for text messaging on mobile phones

to help support programs that make phone service accessible to the poor. First off, we already pay our taxes to take care of this sort of thing. Secondly, it's texting. Texting is so ubiquitous now. We do tax phone calls. Nobody will complain about that. Exactly. Yeah, seriously, because nobody does it anymore.

Don't tax my texting. So, it's unclear how much this is going to—the thing is, it's even unclear how it works. Is it going to be a per-fee text, or is it going to be a flat surcharge? And if it's a flat surcharge, then why are we describing it as a tax on text? Because some people text a million times a day, some people text two times a day.

Flat surcharge wouldn't work. And that means it's not a direct tax, then, is it? And then they're also talking about making it five years—they're going to backdate it for five years, so then you would be charged for five years of texting that you've already done? What the—what? Okay, I like this guy, Jim Wunderman, president of the Bay Area Council.

He writes, that's a dumb idea. Thank you. That's it. End of conversation. He's like, this is how conversations take place in this day and age. And it's almost like saying there should be a tax on the conversations we have. Yes, it is a dumb idea. Yes, it is. Now, I've been spending a lot of time on the Tube of the U recently because of my kid, watching things like Peppa Pig and this gecko toddler fun learning thing that he really loves and relatively decent stuff that—and I paid.

I forgot to mention, I'm a YouTube Premium member now because I got sick of the ads. Did you get YouTube Red? Is that the one? I think it's rolled into it. I don't know. It's called Premium for everyone I have. But I do get the shows, not that I care. The only reason I did it was because some of the ads were massively inappropriate, and I'd be just, like, diving across the room to get to the remote to turn off, like, the horror movie ad that popped up in the middle of Peppa Pig.

Welcome to Ashley Madison. Do you want to have an affair? It wasn't quite that bad. But there were a few that were, like, extremely inappropriate for a two-year-old. So we went ahead and did the good parent thing and boned up the cash for it. And it's a write-off anyway, so why not? So we did that.

But what I did notice, especially just even just doing Peppa Pig and these kids shows, is a lot of them aren't official. Shocking. Okay. So there's tons of people that are just ripping things and putting it up there that aren't even on the official channel. And it just pops up in your YouTube feed because YouTube doesn't really care that much about privacy or piracy.

But the thing that was brought to my attention by an article in Engadget recently is that it's big business. Not only are they making the advertising money before they get caught and pulled down, they're asking for money on Patreon. What? They're saying, if you are enjoying watching these videos, please go to our Patreon page and give us some more cash to support our efforts.

You've got to be kidding me. No. There's a person who runs Kitchen Nightmares Hotel Hell and Hell's Kitchen. Basically, all he does is rip Hell's Kitchen stuff and put it up on YouTube. Wow. And he started up his own Patreon page. And here is his exact pitch on Patreon. Okay. Hey, it's not as easy as you may think to make my content.

My content, first off? Yeah. I have to look for the best quality episodes I can find, download them, convert them, edit them, render them, and upload them. Oh, the pain! This can sometimes take at least a few hours. Especially because the downloads are usually slow and the rendering itself can take a couple hours.

Because I started making all my uploads in HD instead of 480p to give them a little extra clarity. Wow. So it's not easy, folks, to be a pirate. Oh, God. Pirating ain't easy. Wow. Somebody should tell this guy about Handbrake. You know? Go to handbrake.fr and it'll save you a little time.

We can make this actually a lot easier for you. But it astounds me that we have gotten to this level now where nobody really understands what ownership is or copyright or anything. No. Like, you have content out there. I'm making a copy of it. Therefore, I'm working. So somebody pay me.

Yeah. Oh, man. This should be a jailable offense. It should be. Now, the very next article in Engadget, YouTube removed 58 million videos last quarter for violating policies. Maybe they should have made it. Obviously, it's not moving enough.

Yeah. It should have been 558 million. Jesus. Yeah. And there is some culpability, I think, for Patreon there as well. Yeah. Patreon. You need to be checking what people are doing. You know? You can't. I mean, they're just a platform, right? Oh, that's right. It's just a platform.

Patreon is just a platform. What people do with it, that's not our fault. We just process credit cards. That's all we do. Yeah. So, was there jingle bells in the background there? Sorry about that. No, my ring just went off because I don't have new sound effects.

No, there's motion in my backyard. It was like jingle of cash. I thought that was kind of nice. That would have been great. I should. I should have set that one up myself. So, continuing on with this YouTube story, the company has taken down 7.8 million videos, nearly 1.7 million channels, and over 224 million comments just between July and September.

And YouTube noted that machine learning continues to play a major role in that effort, which is why, 9 times out of 10, when I used to put up completely legal and copyright-owned stuff for bands back in the day, they were always pulled down. Yeah. And yet, all the pirate stuff could continue on. Exactly. See, you needed a Patreon for the Goo Goo Dolls, and then your shit would have stayed up.

No shit. And in not surprising news at all, Amazon has officially killed their partnership between Whole Foods and Instacart. I think Instacart knew that was coming once Amazon acquired Whole Foods, because they already have the delivery stuff built in and ready to go.

So, actually, Instacart did something quite smart. They were basically almost entirely dependent on Whole Foods at that point, but they went out and signed big deals with all the other grocery stores, who are also competing against Amazon now, because Amazon owns Whole Foods. So, win-win. The company is actually doing okay.

It's a small hit to their business, and now you actually have a little competition, because Instacart is now dealing with all the other grocery stores. Yeah, that's good. Nice. Yeah, that's good. And Recode has the 2018 Tech Trends and Tribulations in 14 charts. It's a visual thing, so I'm not great on podcasts, but the link is in our show notes, and it's kind of funny.

It's a good look at the year. I'll just read the headlines here. Amazon's HQ2 contest played on our emotions, and that has to do with when positive and negative feelings about Amazon as that process went along. Social media usership plateaued in its most valuable regions, meaning, you know, North America, basically.

Nobody's going, nobody here is, everybody here is either on it or not going on it ever, so that's where that's at. A chart of Elon Musk and his tweets compared to the stock value. I love this one. Tesla? I love this one. I kind of hate it because now I have Tesla stock, and I'm like, shut up!

Shut up, Elon! Shut up, Elon, is what all stockholders think. So, electric vehicles had an electric year. That's, yeah, so we see that there's a lot more of those on the chart about the wildfires that burned through California here. Facebook kept betraying our trust. Yep.

No shit. No shit. The Me Too movement and how it's lasted throughout the year. Cryptocurrency bit the dust. Predicted that one. And teens think Juul is cool, but regulators not so much. Well, that's why they're teenagers. They will discover the value of regulation as they get older.

Yeah. Trillion is the new $100 billion valuation. Yeah. Yeah. That's, oh God. Oh, and Fortnite is the best thing ever, and MoviePass is dead. Yeah. Those are our charts. I love the MoviePass stock price one.

It's the parent company stock price. It's like, wow, $3,000 in December, and by August, it was seven cents. Oh, yeah. How's that giving shit away? Yeah, it doesn't work. Yeah. Well, let's finish up with another story on crypto here.

Crypto suffers a black eye after a buzzy $130 million project crumbles. One of Silicon Valley's buzziest attempts to create an alternative to traditional currency is shutting down. After raising $133 million just this April, how do you fuck up $133 million in a couple months?

Crypto. Blue chip venture capitalists like Anderson Horowitz and Alphabet's GV that maybe should not be doing their job, apparently. This shocking amount of dough was meant to build a stable coin or a currency that would be insulated from inflation and try to prevent the price sensitivity that has bedeviled other cryptocurrencies.

And here's the kicker. But BASIS felt the project would not really work only if its tokens or what BASIS created to adjust the supply of its stable coin and therefore keep its value relatively stable wouldn't be subject to U.S. security laws. Regulators have been trying to assess whether to apply standard laws that govern things like stocks to digital assets like coins, and BASIS said it was reading the tea leaves and predicting a crackdown.

Unfortunately, having to apply U.S. security's regulations to the system had a serious negative impact on our ability to launch BASIS. No shit! Laws are tough. Oh, man. Man, it's shucks. By the rules. Shucks.

So what did they do with that $133 million, I wonder? I don't know. Yeah. Maybe there's a new BASIS, like, out camp in New Zealand. Maybe. Oh, God. And it's just funny that we've been talking about why we haven't been talking about porn, then all of a sudden there was some porn news in the news, and I felt like we should discuss it really quickly, because I was not aware of this because I don't look into this sort of stuff, but what porn streaming sites are doing with your data?

Obviously, we know Facebook is doing crazy stuff. Everybody's doing crazy stuff with your data, and it's Depeche Mode. Grab the grabbing hands, grab all they can with data. Let's get data, data, data. And obviously, porn sites are collecting data as well. Of course. What I didn't know is that basically one company owns almost all the porn sites, and they're called themselves, what do they call themselves?

Where is it? Porn. Mind Geek? Mind Geek. Data analysis form. Well, that's a data analysis firm. Yeah, but they actually own the sites. Oh, okay. Which is crazy, and they keep it very quiet. They obviously, if you go to their website, it's just a very boring WordPress corporate website that does not mention porn, but they collect all the data to realize what kind of more porn they should produce because of what's popular.

Mm-hmm. Crazy. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, look at Pornhub. Yeah, treasure trove of interesting data. Yeah, they're crazy with the data, and they make really good blog posts with really nice charts, and it's like, look, people like this when this happens. You know, they've made that very public. And shockingly enough, of all the industries out there right now collecting all this data, the porn people are best at keeping it private.

Yeah. Yeah, I haven't heard. And anonymized. I haven't heard much about a Pornhub breach anytime soon. Nope. Nobody going in the back door there. This episode is brought to you by Hopsi, the Keurig for beer.

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That's awesome. And the setup for the sub was super easy. I just plugged it in, stuck in basically the mini keg that they give you, and you wire it up, and within a few minutes, it's good to go. Not quite a few minutes. You've got to chill that thing because it comes out nice and super cold.

But if you pop those things in the fridge first, it comes up super fast. It's amazing. Yeah, I had mine in the fridge because I always had... It's beer. It does not sit outside. Yeah, well, I was in a hurry when it showed up, so I plugged it in right away. Of course you were. Of course you were.

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That's Hover.com slash GOG to get your awesome domain today and get 10% off your first purchase. We love Hover. Security? Ha! We're back this week with Dave Bittner from the Cyber Wire podcast.

The Cyber Wire is a free, community-driven cybersecurity news service based in beautiful Maryland. Dave is also co-host of the new Hacking Humans podcast, along with Joe Kerrigan, where they take on social engineering. What's up, Dave? Hey, guy. Oh, wait. Sorry. Okay.

Sorry. I took off my furry head there. I'm doing good. What's that? You were a bit muffled earlier. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it just becomes so comfortable that you don't even realize that you're wearing it anymore. It's like a second skin. It's just a part of you.

It's the most important part of you. So it's good to be back. I understand people enjoyed our show last week, which is nice. Quite a bit. Yes, they liked it quite a bit. Nice and rare. Yeah, right. Exactly. We'll take it when we can get it, right?

Right. I still haven't figured out what costume I would get. I'm kind of okay with not knowing. I don't need the mental imagery. I have one cosplay idea that if I were to go to one of those, what's the big one in San Francisco?

Comic-Con. If I was to go to Comic-Con, I have one in mind that I've never seen anyone else do. And it's the outfit that Elton John is wearing on the cover of his Greatest Hits album. He's got like a white suit on. And it's iconic. Like people see that and they recognize it.

And I think that would make a great cosplay, you know, and you just have to find all that stuff. But I think people would. And it's not one I've ever seen anyone do anymore. So if someone hears this and wants to do it, send me a picture if you do. But it's on my list someday.

Anyway, so as we're recording this on Friday, of course. Friday is the day when people dump the news that they don't want anyone to notice. And Facebook said that a new bug allowed apps to access private photos of up to 6.8 million users.

The hits just keep on coming. This is a story by Tony Rom. Switched over from Snapchat for sending your news, the nudes to Facebook. Well, that didn't work out very well for you either. This is a story by Tony Rom in the Washington Post. And Facebook is saying that it was a major software bug.

Oh, you think? Well, but what's interesting and troublesome, particularly troublesome about this, is that the apps would have access to photos that you didn't even post. So your Facebook will let you. That's scary. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So they'll be rolling out tools to get rid of this. But I wonder how this will affect them for things like GDPR. I don't know. I keep saying this as if someone's going to be punished. You're so silly, Dave.

You're so silly. I mean, you know, GDPR has a 72-hour rule. And this happened back in September. It's more than 72 hours. A little more than 72 hours. So we'll see. Is this just going to pile on all the stuff that the EU is working up against Facebook?

Or will there be anything? Who knows? But as you said, Brian, the hits just keep on coming for Facebook. Yeah. I thought we'd actually go two days without a bad Facebook story. But nope. Nope. It happened. I particularly like the first sentence in this article.

Now, this is called Spy and Conquer. It is a relatively mild scene in a documentary about the sexual predator who helped transform American politics. Which one? Which one? Who are we talking about? You'll have to be more specific. This is Roger Ailes.

Oh, yes. But the interesting thing about this article, it talks a little bit. There's obviously a big documentary out there right now about it. But it talks about how after somebody quit the job working for him in the next few days, she had messaged privately people on Facebook about Ailes.

And he found out because they were tracking absolutely everything. And he called her and said, I hear you've been making threats about me on Facebook. And quoted friends Facebook conversations verbatim. So this article gets into exactly how much employments and places of your employment will contract you when you're using their devices and their bandwidth.

Right. And apparently it is they can see basically just about everything. If they want to. If she did it from a company phone, then she's just an idiot. Well, I believe she was probably writing her old coworkers who were then reading the messages. Oh, yes. At work. Therein lies the rub, as it were.

Right. One of the things that this article talks about is your employer's ability to get your passwords, which they could certainly do. But I would I suspect that if they then use that password to log into your account, that would be a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Yes, absolutely. Yes, it would. So they're capable of getting your password. But if they use it, then they're in trouble. Right. They can monitor all the traffic over their network or anything you do on a device that they provided to you or a device that you're using on their network. So if you're using their Wi-Fi, for example, even which is why everybody who is talking shit about their about their their bosses.

Here it comes. Go to GOG dot show slash VPN and get your copy of private Internet access. Yes, that is a solution. That is a solution. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. You might have to you might have to like make nice with the IT guys. I'll let them install it for you.

But then they might put a back door in and they still have, you know, key loggers going on on your computer. But, you know, yeah, actually, you know what? That might actually be a terrible idea because you would get a false sense of security thinking that you can type anything that you want. It would basically be a red flag to the IT department that you're probably doing something they should be looking into.

Right, right. So never mind. Scratch that. But you still should go to GOG dot show slash VPN and get private Internet access for all your VPN needs, except just don't install it at work. I just I just found it interesting because people don't seem to really think about it these days and they are.

They should be. I mean, especially since, you know, I think back to when I first entered the job force and Jason and I were both working in very high tech companies. But at the time period, they didn't have this sort of thing just everywhere. And certainly they didn't have IT department departments that realized that we could save all the traffic and we can look through people's emails.

We were the IT department. You were the IT department and we knew that we could do that because we were doing it. But now it's every company everywhere all the time. And that's a whole different story, isn't it? It really is. And I think people just get numb to it.

I think they just think about they're doing their their private stuff and companies allow them to do things like, you know, look at Facebook or Twitter or whatever. And I think they're obviously there are legitimate mixed uses for those. You can especially these days. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess the point is, it's hard for companies to ban Facebook or Twitter or any of those social things because there are there are so many legitimate work uses for them.

But at the same time, I think that helps numb people to the fact that they need to keep their personal stuff personal. Yep. And you just kind of get lazy, I guess, because there are no overt signs that someone is watching. So you get lazy about it. Yep. And you no longer go outside to get on the cell phone network.

So only Verizon can see what you're writing somebody. Right. You just stay in your chair and you do it. And now your boss knows. Right. I think I mentioned this on the show before, but when I used to work for a company called BLT. We did movie posters and trailers and a lot of social stuff and things like that for the Muppets even.

Woo. We worked on the Muppets. It was great. That's pretty cool. Yeah. It was a ton of fun. But half of the department got fired. And one of the girls who stayed behind who didn't get fired, her cell phone would automatically connect to the company's Wi-Fi. And we were not supposed to have any contact with the people who got fired.

And she just walked into work one day and just sent a text to one of the people who had been fired. And within 30 seconds, security was at her desk, escorting her from the building because she forgot that her phone was connecting to the Wi-Fi and then they could see everything. Wow.

And yeah, it was just like, wait, wait, wait, wait, where's she going? Wait, wait, wait, how? She's supposed to work on my project today. What's going on? And it was just, you know, it wasn't a really damning text or anything, but she was just not supposed to talk to those people while she was at work.

Yeah. And it happens because people forget that, you know, you get complacent. You totally get complacent thinking that, oh, I am using the company's network on my personal device. But since it's my personal device, I should be protected about that.

And it's like, no, you're still using the company network. Yeah. Yeah. Another thing this reminded me of towards the end of the article, they talk about how one one of these pieces of software that can look through all the data going through the network can, you can give it categories that you want it to look for and it will automatically suck up anything in that category.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Exactly. And what it reminded me of was many, many years ago, I helped produce a video that was about employment law. And in employment law, there's this whole notion of protected categories. And basically, one of the things with protected categories is it's the things you're not allowed to ask someone about in a job interview.

Like their age or something like that? Exactly. Right. Right. And I think there's six or seven protected categories. I'm sure we have some listeners who are up on the law who will let us know what they are. What's your costume preference? Yeah, exactly. Reasonable things like that.

Yeah. And I wonder if there needs to be something like that with what employers are or are not allowed to monitor. Would be nice. Are there protected categories? If I'm looking up at lunchtime something, lung cancer, is it okay for my employer to then go, oh my gosh, my insurance is going to- We have to raise this guy's insurance.

Right. But it turns out I'm looking up lung cancer because my grandmother has it or something like that. It just, I don't know. I don't know. It just seems like we're still, as long as it's been, we're still in early days where employers have so much of the advantage when it comes to these sorts of things.

So I guess- It's crazy to say that, but it's true. I mean, the fact that Jason and I can both sit here and talk about how we've been working in this for 20 years, but it's still early days. Right. I think the sad thing is that there really isn't any protection, like you're saying right now, for the employers. It's been a one-way street.

It's the employees have had all the power and have moved forward with the technology, and there is nothing legally that is protecting the employees at all. And I think there needs to be something as well. Yeah. Yeah. Well, get on that, Brian. Get on it. Well, a group of people that might be trying to do something about it, although not this specifically, a group of 15 Democratic senators have unveiled a bill that aims to protect our online data.

They noted that banks, doctors, and lawyers are all required to protect your personal information and argue websites, apps, and other online services should also have to take responsible steps to safeguard personal information and stop the misuse of users' data. I don't think any of us disagree with this. It's the implementation.

Oh, you actually have a bell? We got a bell. Our budget has exploded, Dave. Wow. Exploded. Patreon.com slash GOG. So Brian can get a bell. Oh, wow. So it is being called the Data Care Act, and it would require companies to protect your information and promptly tell users about data breaches, not this three months later crap that we're all so used to now involving sensitive data, and to not use individual identifying data in ways that harm users.

Now, that's an open definition if I've ever heard one. Weren't we talking about one of these a few weeks ago that actually had some jail time associated with it? Yeah, yeah. This one does not. This is a different one. Okay. I was wondering, is this a watered-down version of that one? Did their colleagues in the Senate take them outside and tell them what for, and suddenly now there's no jail time in it?

But no, this is a different one. That's a good question. But yeah, hopefully they will be combined in some way, shape, or form. Right, right. As so often happens. Well, I think it's interesting that we've seen several of these start to make their way through. I think with GDPR and everything, and there's even talk that, as we've talked about, the big companies want there to be some security, some predictability in these sorts of things.

Look at Microsoft with, like, we need to regulate facial recognition, and now things are coming out about AI, and they need to do that because, you know, AI. But yeah, I mean, the corporations are starting to get behind, like, hey, guys, there's going to be some bad actors out there, and we need some rules in place.

Yeah. Let's actually speak about one of these frightening overreaches right now. Jason, you actually sent this to me because I know you have a Google search set for Taylor Swift, so you're immediately notified about this particular case. Taylor Swift security used facial recognition technology to monitor concert crowds for stalkers.

Is that allowed? Yes, it is. It is right now. That's part of the problem. Security at Taylor Swift's Rose Bowl show in May reportedly uses facial recognition technology to monitor the crowd for the singer's known stalkers. According to Rolling Stone, a screen-playing rehearsal clips had a facial recognition camera hidden in it to record concert goers who were watching the footage.

It would have been even better if the song was called Honeypot, because that's exactly what it was. I like Highstand. Is that a song by Taylor Swift? I don't know. I don't think so, but, you know. A command post in Nashville almost 2,000 miles away from the venue then cross-referenced the recorded images with a database of more than 100 people who had previously stalked Swift.

It's unclear who made this list or what the criteria was for being added. Yeah, I mean, this goes on and on about it. I guess the thing for me is they did not notify anyone attending this concert that this was happening. They didn't have to. That should be a law. But it should be a law. You're in a public venue on private property.

Right. It's not really one of the things that they have to do. And we also don't know what they're doing with any of these facial images that they're keeping. We have no idea if they're just keeping a gigantic database now. And obviously, this gets into real issues because this is a for-profit organization that is now being able to tie your face as being a Taylor Swift fan.

And that's a problem. Mm-hmm. It keeps me up at night. It keeps me up at night. I'm telling you. I like using the video as bait to get you to look at the camera. I think that's clever. I love that. That is very clever. Yes. I loved it. Yes, I think it's very clever.

And the other thing that this made me think of, would we have a problem with this if there were security guards stationed at the entrances who had a printout with some of the pictures of the people they were looking for? No. No. And I know that that exists. I've worked with organizations that have that.

They've got a float. They've got... They used to call it the deck of cards of bad actors, basically. So, yeah. And the security teams were well aware of the people that had to be kept at arm's length, if not even further. Yeah. The issue isn't really with the end product.

It's the process, and it's with the fact that you're not being notified. Again, nobody knows what's happening to this data of people that aren't bad actors. How do we know that these images aren't being saved and stored somewhere? Right. That's where it gets weird, right? It's not just a printout. It's digital data that will live forever and can be used in any way, shape, or form.

We have no idea. Right. But you and I can go outside right now and put a camera outside of our house, and we can store everybody that walks by our house. We can do that, and we can keep a database of that, and we can cross-reference it. It's weird because you can do it unless it's being used for something commercial, right?

That's why you have to sign consent forms if you walk past somebody shooting an outdoor scene in a movie. I think there should be notifications no matter what if you're recording. I mean, a lot of people put the notification up for even a fake camera in the hope that the notification in and of itself will take care of the problem.

I don't like skipping that step and just making it, you know what? I can do whatever I want, and I'm going to record you and not tell you that I'm recording. Right. Oh, that reminds me of a real quick aside. Our communal friend, David Riegler, and I, we used to work at Paramount, and every day when they were filming, it was a Clueless in the park next to us, we would sneak through because we were like bad kids wearing all black, like wearing Nine Inch Nails t-shirts and

smoking and being bad, going through this Clueless set of all these people in these cotton candy colored shirts. And they would have to scrap the entire scene if we walked into it because we didn't sign releases. So we just trolled them every day because we're just like, you guys are idiots.

Get out of our, get out of our lot. I think the main takeaway from that is, man, are we old. Yeah, that's true. I remember back in my video days, if we'd be shooting in a, like a casino or something, it would be routine that you'd put a sign up that would say, hey, everybody, we're videotaping here.

If you come in this space, you, you're giving us permission to use you in the movie. Yep. And, but I wonder for this, for the security thing, do they just have to say, notice video technology is being used in, in our security efforts at this event entry in, uh, you know, indicates a permission to be videoed for security purposes.

I think that's already on the TOS for your ticket. I, yeah, I would imagine so. Yeah. Because I mean, it, since it is a private venue, they already have security cameras at the venue. I think the thing about the overreach on this and everybody's- Yeah, it's an incredibly blanket statement though. That's the problem. Yeah. I think it needs to be more specific and you need to know that the, just a notification.

I don't see, that should be a law. I don't understand why it isn't. Okay. Then I don't understand why a lot of things aren't laws. That's true. There ought to be a law. This doesn't bother me. We are old. There ought to be a law. There ought to be a law. Get off my law. Grr. Oh my God.

Yeah. For some reason, this does not bother me. Once I'm out in public, once I leave my home, I just give up the thought that we are going to be- Yeah, well, you could have just stopped with, I just give up, Jason. And the thing is, I don't just give up yet. I mean, we've all seen you, Jason.

We've all spent time with you. We know that there's anyone in this world who's given up. It's you. Are the dogs back home? No, they're not home yet. They're still at the Canyon, which is why I'm very sad. Very sad. It's very sad. They might be home by the time I go in the house, but we had a plumbing emergency where I had to ship them off for 24 hours because we had plumbers coming through and digging up the house.

Yeah. It's been a sad day. It's been a sad day. If I still had my Chinese webcams, you could go to Shodan and watch the whole debacle. Sorry about that. So this next story is from TechCrunch.

This is a popular avatar app, which is called Bumoji. Not one I'm familiar with. Are you guys familiar with this one? Not to be confused with- Not popular enough. Yeah, not to be confused with Pumoji, the bathroom app. Oh, yes, that's true. Right. Millions of users, contact lists, and location data.

Oops. So this is a Chinese-based developer, and it's one of those standard emoji things where you can, you know, you sort of design an emoji of yourself, and then it has all kinds of fun things. You can put little scenes you put yourself in doing fun things. It's one of those. But what's bad about this one, and what makes this worse than just a regular leak, is that this app was one of those apps that sucked in your entire contact list.

Right. And so the entire contact lists of, not just the people who use the app, but the contact lists of everyone who was on their phones when they joined the app. Friends of friends of friends of friends of friends of friends of friends, yes. Contacts all the way down. They've been Facebooked. We should come up with a better name for that.

I quite like that, actually. Yeah. They've been zucked. They've been berged. We'll include both Sandberg and Zuckerberg. Right. They've been berged. One of the tables inside of this database had over 125 million contacts. Holy shit.

People's phone books, IDs. I think it had some GPS information. Just bad, bad, bad. Oh, and you could find it on Shodan. Go figure. Yep. Yep. Nice. I love Shodan. We've got to get Dan Tentler on the show.

Each record was linked directly to Abumoji's unique ID, making it relatively easy to know whose contact lists belong to whom. Yeah. Ooh. Yeah. Last but not least here, this is one that I saw come by on Twitter, and I cannot claim that I've actually used this myself, but I thought it was interesting.

This is a password manager. It's called Bitwarden, and it has all the things that all the general password managers have. There's a free version, and it checks a lot of boxes here. It's open source, which is great, so everybody can take a look at it.

But the thing that caught my eye that some folks were turning, that folks were pointing out on Twitter was that if you don't want to use their cloud services, you can host it yourself. Mm-hmm. So you can just spin up your own version of this for your organization, for your family, whatever, and just have it just be independent of anyone else and go out and run it.

So if you're super paranoid and you don't want any of that stuff up on the cloud, this might be a good solution to that. You can spin up your AWS service, but make sure you lock it down. Right, right. I haven't used this myself, so I can't vouch for it, but I think it might be worth checking out.

So I include it in the notes there. I appreciate that. Now, when it comes to these password managers, I don't know if open source is actually the way to go. I'm on the fence about this, and let me hear what you guys think, because 1Password is closed source. They control everything.

They have the cloud. They've got all the keys. But when LastPass, which was also open source, came out, I mean, they got broken, basically. So it's like one of those things where it's like, okay, yeah, we want to hear about open source.

We want to know that there are people looking at the code, but a lot of the times the people that are looking at the code aren't looking at it to protect you, they're looking at it to exploit you. And when it comes to password managers, I am extremely paranoid, and that's why I like the 1Password model, where it is closed source, and only the people that work there have the keys to the castle.

What do you guys think? Well, sometimes open source giveth, sometimes open source taketh away. I don't want them to take it the way my bank account. Yeah, I think, yeah, related to passwords, I think I would probably prefer closed source.

But it's so hard to tell, because companies are so lazy these days. You just got to find a good company, right? And I think we have with... What it reminds me of is there was the thing, oh, I don't know, a month or so ago, where they discovered that the encryption on a bunch of SSD drives was inadequate.

Remember that? And basically, it was like Microsoft systems were basically taking the drive's word for it that things were encrypted. So rather, if you wanted to encrypt a volume, rather than the operating system encrypting the volume, the OS would talk to the SSD and say, hey, you want to encrypt this?

And the SSD would say, got it. And that would be that, and they'd all be happy with that. And it turns out that the encryption on the SSD, which was closed source, so no one was able to look at it, was inadequate. Some people discovered it was easily cracked, and Bob's your uncle.

So that, to me, is the flip side of it. Less eyes are not necessarily a good thing. And here we had hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of devices out there that people had assumed were secure. And it turns out they were not, and they were, in fact, easily cracked.

Right. But I also look at the flip side of that, too, with WordPress. WordPress is open source, and it's on bazillions of computers. Right. And it is a massive target, because the bigger the target, the more that they're going to look at the source and try and find a way around it. Yeah. And with this, I mean, when I'm dealing with my passwords, honestly, I'm just, this is, you know, these are the keys to your life.

Yeah. Nowadays. Well, I guess the, for me, the folks who I know who do this stuff every day, you know, the Jonathan Katzes of the world, the folks who live in encryption, they tend towards open source solutions. They think that that's the better way to handle encryption.

So, I tend to trust them, but I cannot claim to have as informed an opinion as they do. So, I'm going with what they say. Okay. How many of your friends actually use this? How many of your friends use Bitwarden? Oh, I said zero.

Nobody. I just found this. It's okay. No, I say, this is brand new. I just thought it was interesting. I saw several people who I respect saying this is interesting because of the ability to run it on your own makes it particularly interesting. And combining that with the fact that it's open source makes it something, a new entry into the password manager world that perhaps is worth a look.

And that's why I share it. Okay, cool. Yeah. Yeah. As soon as people get under the hood and vet it a little bit, I might check it out. Because, yeah, I'd like to save $100 a year. And since 1Password doesn't actually advertise on this show anymore, I'm more than happy to save some money.

But it's cool. All right, gentlemen. That's what I have this week. I'm going to go put my hoodie, I'm sorry, my furry head back on and get back to work here doing CyberWire stuff. Dave, the sexy fox bitner. The sexy fox.

You don't know I'm a fox just because that video is a fox. No, show dance. I know exactly what you are. And I should be ashamed of myself. All right. Talk to you guys soon. Ups and doodads.

I had to get a new printer. So I got the HP Envy Photo 6255 all-in-one photo printer with wireless printing instant ink ready K7G118A. Okay. Now, we all know that all printers suck. Nobody can make a decent printer. They really can't.

They're just, they're lost leaders to sell ink and ink is still too damn expensive. But this one's okay so far. And I'm sticking with an HP because basically I had to get a printer because my printer completely died. I've had that printer for so long, they fucking stopped making printers that use that type of ink.

Oh, yeah. So it lasted so long. I'm okay with it. So I'll drop 89 bucks for something that lasts me almost 10 years. I have the HP Envy 7640 series personally. We also have the HP OfficeJet Pro 8610. Now, the difference is the HP OfficeJet Pro 8610 to refill the ink costs almost $100, whereas the HP Envy 7640 only costs $40.

Yeah. The HP Envy actually isn't too bad for the ink. I mean, it's ridiculous. It's way more than it should be. It costs more than gold per ounce. Yeah. It really does. It's crazy. I wanted to check into some of the Epson printers because they have this whole thing where you can buy like a tub and like stick it on the back of it and they have subscriptions with it.

But the price is still ridiculous. By the way, it's been so long since I bought a printer. I was like, what do you mean there's an ink subscription? Yeah. Even ink has gone subscription. I'm telling you, man, it's crazy. Yeah. And people who print a lot, like yesterday, my roommate had to go. She drove to Encino to print out a document because she's like, this would take up all the ink and this would be a $40 document.

So she had to go to the office where they have toner. I do think the next time I get another printer, I am going to get a laser jet because the ink in those is still really affordable and they're great. Those color inkjet printers, I think friend of the show MXV had a couple of them and they're gorgeous.

You're not going to do like, you know, archival photo prints on them. But when you need to just fucking print a boarding pass, it's like, that's all you need. Come on. And they cost like 200 bucks. It's a little bit more up front and we're back to lasers. It's all freaking lasers, man. It's all freaking laser beams.

Yeah. Now, have you heard of Razer Softminer? No. Okay. Razer is the company that makes gaming gadgets. They make laptops, but they also do mice. I used to have a Razer mouse when I was a competitive Quake player, like Quake 3 Arena player back in the day, so they've come up with this new thing called the Softminer, which lets you use your computer's CPU and GPU when you're not using it to get rewarded with quote unquote

Razer Silver, which you can then use to redeem it for swag, Razer Swag. Now, they say here, even in the fact, is Razer Silver a cryptocurrency? Razer Silver is not a cryptocurrency.

It is a loyalty rewards program. We work with crypto mining technology to harness your computer's GPU. In turn, we award you with silver, giving you access to Razer's ecosystem and a suite of rewards. So what they're doing- How is that not a cryptocurrency?

Well, it's not because it is a rewards program. They're taking your computer, they are mining- It's a cryptocurrency that you can only redeem with them. It's still a cryptocurrency. It's not, though. It's just a rewards token thing because it's always going to have the same value. They're making money on top of you by mining cryptocurrency.

They're just seeing how much cryptocurrency that you can make for them. They're giving you a fraction of it so you can get a mouse. This is disgusting to me. I mean, it is ridiculously disgusting. This is like me collecting my Marlboro miles in college so I can get a kayak.

Yeah, it's so bad. It is so bad. They really need to get their shit together and pull this program. No, this is a bad idea. Yeah. I do like the light-up mouse pad, though. That's kind of nice. They got a giant mouse pad that lights up around the edge. That's kind of nice. But you know what?

I have a GL tech giant gaming mouse pad that costs like $12. It doesn't light up. This one probably costs $100. So I'm going to do that. And I don't have a machine that is good enough for Razor Soft Miner. Right. So come on, guys.

It's stupid. And I did order a new piece of audio gear, which I'm very excited about. And normally I wouldn't mention this before I actually get it and can talk about it. But, you know, everybody else is talking about shit before they get it and talk about it.

But I bought the Rodecaster Pro podcast production studio. This is a sexy little piece of equipment. I wish this would have been around when we started up. Yeah. Yeah. Considering the two interfaces that we are using right now cost close to $1,000 each.

This thing costs $600. And it's got four XLR ports. It's got a bunch of stuff. But it's also got Bluetooth. So you can actually take phone calls with it from your phone, which is nice. The only problem that I really do have with it is there are eight buttons on the side that you can assign sound effects to.

But you can't, like, create banks of sound effects. That's the real stupid thing that they did. Because I'm like, I need, like, ten banks of sound effects. Because even for the show. The other thing I wish that they had would be controls for some of the gating. That's in there.

I'd like those soft pads to be able. No, but not physical, right? I mean, I'm talking, like, I would like those pads to be programmable. To be anything I wanted. Oh, yeah. Like, so the sound effect. I'd want to be able to hit that pad to say, like, turn the gate off, turn the gate on, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, but it does come with DSPs.

And there are sound gates built in. There's limiters. And they've got really, like, you know, grade A preamps in them. I've watched a couple of reviews for people who got the review units. And it looks really nice. Really nice. Sorry, I just scrolled down and read the very first comment, which completely agrees with what I just said.

Okay. Please enable the sound pad function more like a macro pad. There you go. There you go. That would be good. That would be good. Because, yeah, I mean, we have sound effects in the show, but I never do live sound effects because I don't want them gumming up the tracks, you know? But the nice thing about it is I can take my iPad and then run, like, a sound editor on that with all the sound effects and run it into a separate track and then, you know, mic that back out.

So that'll be cool. Yeah. But I can do that right now with my PreSonus Studio 192 that costs, you know, $900 because that's what that does. But this only has four inputs. But it's nice because you also don't need – this is the other nice thing I like about it. You don't need to have, like, a headphone splitter and amplifier because it has, like, four outputs.

So you can do a four-mic setup with headphones for everybody, and you don't have to get another piece of gear because I've got, you know, different headphones preamps. Just some long cables. Yeah. That's it. You know, and the headphones I'm using, my Sony MDRs, that's, like, the cable on these things is super long.

So you just plug them in and go. So I'm really looking forward to trying this thing out because as a professional podcaster, I want to be able to put one of these in a Pelican case with a bunch of stuff, a bunch of booms and microphones, and ship it to a client and say, here, plug this in, turn it on, press this button, and talk.

And then when you're done, send it back to me, you know? Even better for, like, traveling or anything like that. Like, you know, if we go to the Fireside Conference again next year, that thing's perfect. Yeah. I mean, we've got a Zoom H6 that we've used for remote stuff, but this just looks way more powerful because we could do, like, you know, an XLR splitter from the mic on the stage and run it right into this and then just have our own copies.

There's so much you can do with this thing because I remember at Fireside, they were running around with Zooms, just handing them off to everybody. It's like you get a bunch of these. This costs as much as a Zoom H6. So it's ridiculous how much more powerful this thing is. So I'm really looking forward to it.

And you can record on board to a backup SD card. Right. So it's like, okay, you can line out back to your computer, do everything like we're doing right now. We use Zencaster to talk and all that stuff. But there's a backup built into the system, which is great, especially when you're out in the middle of nowhere and you just want to get a show done.

I'm really hoping, really, really hoping this thing is going to be good. I'm really hoping. So when it gets here, it's out of stock right now because it's like they've only released a limited number of them. But when it gets here, I will do a full review and let you know. But podcasters, take note of this thing.

This actually looks really good. I think this is better than the one that Adam Curry was trying to do, that he failed on Kickstarter. For sure. Definitely. Virgin Galactic has come a long way since its big crash in, I believe, 2014.

But the company Spaceship Two has reached space after months of testing, flying to an altitude of 271, 268 feet before returning to Earth. It was a very brief stay just for a test, but it's good to hear that they're back. And it sounds like they're back and they'll be going a lot more often recently.

So we'll see what happens. No, that's really good. I mean, I was there for Spaceship One's first launch for the XPRIZE, and it was one of the greatest days of my life. But there was another article that I saw like a couple of weeks ago where they're trying to redefine the limit of space. Right. Virgin Galactic is because they're like, you're like, oh, we can't get that high.

Can we just, you know, redefine space? Can we bring it down a little bit? Yeah. It's like, you know, how does a Microsoft engineer change a light bulb? Well, they just redefine dark. Oh, that's great. And then I ran across this article, which is really interesting. We've known for a long time that blue light is very bad for us.

We just didn't know why. Scientists have discovered that blue light from screens causes the eye to attack itself. What? This is pretty frightening. So it starts with one of this article starts with one of my big rants and my pet peeves about all of this stuff about technology and everything.

We tend to get ahead of ourselves. This phenomenon is ancient. Every time we invent or discover a new technology, we get so excited about its application that we overlook potential consequences. Even as we regularly watch disasters unfold due to the unforeseen, we forget to remember to check in the next time a seemingly innovative tech is introduced.

Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So what does it do? So many studies now confirm that blue light negatively affects our circadian rhythms, leading to sleep issues and causes other health problems. A new study published in the journal Nature. Oh, boy. It's causing the human eye to attack itself. Degenerative eye disease it's causing.

As with the long-term effects of cigarettes and alcohol, eye problems are chronic, unfolding over decades. By the time we realize the inevitable, it's often too late. Put your phones down at night, people. Yep. Stop doing that. Have light on in the room. Never do this in the dark. The disease occurs when cells behind light-sensitive tissue inside your eyeballs break down, resulting in continual loss of eyesight.

Blue wavelengths are suspected in aggravating this condition. The extent of their influence is debated. The study, though, offers solid proof that it is happening. Senior researcher and assistant professor, Ajith Karunith, and his team focused on retinol, a form of vitamin A, which is necessary for eyesight.

Photoreceptors are useless without retinol, which is produced in the eye. If you shine blue light on retinol, the retinol kills photoreceptor cells as the signaling molecule on the membrane dissolves. Photoreceptor cells do not regenerate in the eye. When they're dead, they're dead for good. Oh, that's not good.

No activity is sparked with green, yellow, or red light. Only blue light. Oh, shit. That's really not good. We need to rethink our monitors and our phones and our screens and how we get digital information into our eyeballs.

And until then, make sure you're in brightly lit rooms when you're using them. I just turned on night shift, and I'm going to keep it on forever. Yep. Every Photoshop doc I ever have will now be orange. That's all it's going to be. We should change our logo to orange now. Oh, man.

I do have those lighting science bulbs. They're expensive. They're like 15 bucks each. But that's what I'm running here in my studio, and I've got them in my house, in my bedroom. So I never have, like, regular fluorescents. They're nice. They're LEDs, so they're still, like, well, good for the environment or whatever you want to fucking call it.

But, yeah, there's no blue light coming out of them, which is really good. That's, you know, it helps me. It definitely helps me fall asleep. Well, it's looking like a much better investment for the cost at this point, because this seems to be a real thing. Yeah, it's not good. That's not good.

The fact that they can't regenerate, we're going to have a bunch of really fucked up people here in about 10 years staring at these phones. But, yeah, I try not to look at my phone at night anymore, and I do have night shift on on my phone. You can auto set it so it turns on at sunset, turns off at sunrise.

I do that, for sure. And on all my Macs, I have night shift turned on. It's still not as good as that old program. What the hell was that called? Flux. Yeah, Flux, that got put out of business by Apple. Thanks, Apple. Thanks, Apple. Thanks for making us all blind. Yeah, appreciate it, Tim.

Preach. Preach, Tim. Closing shout-outs! My closing shout-out this week is to my friends Kevin and Daria Rose for all the health advice they're giving me, because Daria is a bona fide PhD in neuroscience, and Kevin is a lifehacker who gets to talk to really smart people and they're throwing me bones, which I will then pass on to you as I get them.

So thanks, guys. Nice. And my shout-out is to The Cure for making it into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Finally, The Cure is one of the triumvirate bands that got me through high school, so I'd like to see The Smiths and Depeche Mode in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame soon as well. Even though it means nothing. Even though it means nothing.

And I will shit on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame every year until that happens. Until next time, I'm Brian Schillister. And I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, go to patreon.com slash GOG. Toss us a buck a month and we'll love you forever. If you'd like to give a one-time or recurring donation, go to GOG.show and click the PayPal button in the sidebar if Patreon is not your cup of tea.

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