311: Fursona Non Grata

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

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Brian, I got a little follow-up here. Okay. And on past episodes, we've talked about when people build their houses in other people's backyards and get pissed off when they turn the sprinklers on at 3 in the morning. That is my metaphor for building your online identity on somebody else's service.

Yep. Well, Patreon has been in the news. Yes, they have. So they've been kicking some people off. Good. Yeah, it is. It is good, but people are upset about it and they're wondering, hey, what's going on here? This is free speech, man.

Well, no, it's not. It never has been. We've said that before. It's not free speech. It's not the... In fact, this is actually a good thing. I'm actually very pleased with Patreon because this is a platform coming up and saying, hey, maybe we're not just a platform. Maybe we have some responsibility to our users.

Yes. Jacqueline Hart, Patreon's head of trust and safety, said her team watches for and will investigate complaints about any content posted on Patreon and on other sites like YouTube and Facebook that violates what it defines as hate speech. That includes serious attacks or even negative generalizations of people based on their race and sexual orientation.

And so here we go. If someone has breached Patreon's policy, the company contacts the offender with a specific plan, which usually involves asking for the content to be removed. And here's the kicker. And for a public apology. Now, another interesting bit here, Ms. Hart said around 10% of Patreon employees were dedicated to her trust and safety team.

That's quite a bit. That's impressive. That is very impressive. That means they're actually taking it seriously. Now, the interesting thing I thought about this was the fact that they aren't just... Well, and it makes sense because of what Patreon's business model is. They aren't just looking at their own stuff, content posted within their own thing.

They are dedicating resources to go out and look at other people's platforms to see what these people are posting, which makes sense because Patreon is basically just a way to get money for what you're producing elsewhere. Right. Because you're generally going to be posting links to that content on your Patreon page.

Yes. Well, it's interesting that they have to do that. That's unfortunate for them. That is a... You know, they should be getting kickback money from YouTube and Facebook because, in essence, they're basically turning themselves into the net police, which we talked about. Yeah, they are. Who are the net police? Well, we found them at Patreon. Well, if you want to make money on Patreon, apparently Patreon is going to be the net police for you.

So... Yep. Some people have gotten very butthurt about this, including Sam Harris, who pulled his Patreon support. And he was pulling... He was raking in a lot of money every month. Right. And built his own system, which is what you should do if this is your bread and butter. You know, build your own system.

It's a pain in the ass. Took him a long time to do it. And it's just one of those things you have to do if you're going to be serious about it. Now, we still do use Patreon. It's one of those necessary evils for us. I don't even see it as a necessary evil. I have no problems with it. They seem to be doing okay.

We're not hate speech. Some people think we are, but... Yeah. It's a very convenient method for people to throw us a couple bucks because they appreciate what we do because we have no option because podcasting is a free format. We cannot charge for it. Well, we could, but, you know, that gets super complicated and nobody would pay.

So, the way to do it for us is to be free and be half advertiser model. Thank you, advertisers. And half donation model. Thank you so much, donation people. If you do not want to use Patreon, we have a button for PayPal on our site. It's very simple. So, and Patreon seems to be working for a lot of our listeners.

And we thank you all who are using it. And I'm happy to hear that Patreon is actually taking their role seriously and aren't just, like I said, being a platform and throwing their hands up in the air and say, you can do whatever you want here. We're just a platform. And the nice thing about this here, it goes on here.

The conversations with creators can quickly become complicated, nuanced, and, well, human, she said. Among other challenges, Patreon has to decide what qualifies is a sincere and thorough apology. Still having human moderators has changed its users' behavior more than simply deleting accounts would.

Now, I like this. They're not using AI. They have humans that are doing this, which is good. They have humans walking into the flame wars and saying, settle it all down, people. The nuanced part with the sincere apology is interesting. I would like to see some of those conversations because, you know, it depends on who you get that day.

The thing is, it is a nuanced thing. You can't, I like the fact that they're doing this more than just slamming the door and saying, you know, too bad, you screwed up, you're not coming back. If you can have the conversation with the creators or the crazy peoples that are, you know, flinging shit around the walls and say, you know, hey, how about, that's not cool.

And if they realize that and apologize for that, we've all moved on as a species. Yes, maybe they can, maybe Patreon is making a better internet for everyone. I doubt it, but it'd be nice to think that. It would be nice to think that, but we'll see how this scales as they grow. Yeah, exactly. Because a lot of people are using Patreon now.

They've really, they've done pretty well for themselves. Well, certainly they filled a niche that needed to be filled there because there's contents free and somehow we have to get paid to produce it. And Patreon kind of slid right into that box. So yeah, because flatter didn't work, you know, we really had high hopes for flatter, but that's just too complicated.

This is, they make it easy. People don't like fractions and buckets, Jason. I know. What's a bucket? I, I has a bucket. Oh man. And another little bit of follow-up. New York mayor to unveil. Unveil? Stay here all week.

The veal's great. Tip the waiters. New York mayor to unveil a plan guaranteeing paid time off aiming for a first. So this is pretty interesting. Mayor Bill de Blasio is trying to get a bill passed that will force people to give their employees paid time off.

That's nice. Somebody's leading the way. If only we did it everywhere. Yeah. Maybe he listens to the show. I doubt it. I doubt it too. Yeah. I love the fact that Republicans were quick to criticize the plan, arguing that would hurt employers and workers. It's certainly not going to hurt the workers. Nope.

And I think almost every study has proven that, you know, time off makes you a more efficient employee. Having breaks, not working 10 hour days, working, getting breaks throughout the day, taking vacation times. All of that makes you a better employee. Countless studies have said that already.

So I don't under, we're, yeah, we're in a post-fact world. Whatever. It is one of those rare cases where the Venn diagram of the stories and sites that I read and the stories and sites that my wife read have crossed over.

Okay. And that PopSugar and People, as well as Engadget and Recode, are all going crazy over the fact that Jeff Bezos is getting a divorce. To which I say, who gives a shit? Okay. So we're not going to talk about it anymore. Yep.

That's fine with me. No shit given. But it is everywhere on every news item, on everything, on every, every goddamn place. So, but we don't care. Good for him and her. She is now going to be the richest woman in the world if, if the things pan out the way they should legally. Which is kind of cool.

We'll see. We'll see. We'll see. All right. Moving on. So over on Recode, as we, as I just mentioned, there was an interesting podcast, which I listened to some of it, about America desperately needs fiber internet and the tech giants won't save us. So there's this great, they talk about how nationwide access to high-speed fiber internet, which is already standard in parts of Asia and Europe, is important for everything from the future of work to the successful deployment of 5G wireless networks.

She also talked about why Google's ambitious attempt to compete with the telecom giants, Google Fiber, is all but dead. Basically stating that all these big tech companies that we're going to save us with putting all their money that they're making from us into infrastructure, are backing away from it. Verizon did exactly the same thing.

Their shareholders are impatient with long-term capital gains needs involved in making sure that there's a great last mile access in America. So nobody's going to build this bridge that we need to have because nobody wants to piss off their shareholders. Right, right. Just because of the length of time that it takes to recoup that.

And this was a podcast with Harvard Law School professor Susan Crawford about her new book, Fiber, The Coming Tech Revolution and Why America Might Miss It. Now, I read the whole transcript of it, and after reading the transcript, I don't know if I need to read the book, but it was definitely a fascinating read, and yeah, I read it.

This is the one time I read something and you listened to it. Yes, I know. It's very strange, right? Yeah. Freaky Friday. It's Freaky Friday. What I found interesting, though, one thing I didn't get, which is maybe the one thing in the book that I need to find out, is how important is this high-speed fiber internet to 5G wireless networks?

Because we've talked about 5G before, and if 5G can exist without the fiber, we probably don't need the fiber because 5G is supposed to be just stunningly phenomenal in terms of bandwidth. Here's the thing about it. You should have read the whole, or listened to the whole thing. They talk about that. You have to have fiber for 5G.

Okay, somebody build us some goddamn fiber then. Yeah, exactly. But what they're doing is they're building private fiber networks for their 5G systems. Right, proprietary, blah, blah, blah. Yes, exactly. So you're not sharing the tubes. So everybody's going to have their own set of private fiber tubes.

Yay, net neutrality. Yeah, exactly. And we need regulation to fix this problem. We definitely need it. That's the only way to do it. We need to treat the internet like electricity. Or roads. We don't want private roads. They're supposed to be public by the government for everybody to use.

This is just as, if not more so important. Yeah, it really is. And a funny thing happened to me the other day, actually, that is relevant to this. An AT&T tech rang my doorbell, and he needed access to the pole in my backyard to install fiber for my neighbor. Sounds like the beginning of one of those movies that you like to watch.

I was wearing my negligee. I need access to the pole, please. Well, I started chatting with the guy because, you know, I love cable techs. I love chatting with cable techs. They're fascinating guys. Ooh, the plot thickens. Yes. And so I asked about the fiber and the speed and the pricing and everything.

So it turns out I can get gigabit fiber to my house for about $90 a month. Wow. Yeah, and that's, you know, $1,000 up, $1,000 down. It is bi-directional. You don't have to rent the equipment. It comes with it, you know, so there's no monthly fees.

And right now I'm paying $90 a month for $250 down and $20 up. So I think I'm going to be having to try the fiber once I hear from it, you know, from my neighbors, see if it's, you know, it works fine. But yeah, but that's just going to make me a very part of a very small subset of Americans who's going to see this in the foreseeable future.

But I'm looking to my gigabit overlords for $90 a month, man. That's not bad. No, it's not. Because I thought AT&T Internet was still like ISDN based. So because I used to have AT&T Internet and my router would reboot 150 times a day.

Not joking. And they said, well, yeah, there might be some line noise. We can send out a tech and all this stuff. And I'm just like, you know what? I'm going back to cable. Thank you. Goodbye. Right. Switching gears a bit. I just thought this was really interesting because we are grumpy old geeks and it is highlighting how far along we've come and how long the Internet and blogging and all this stuff has been out there.

This is a really good article over at Slate called The Outrageous Mommy Blogger Who Refuses to Stop Writing About Her Kid Highlights a Key Parent-Child Generational Gap. Now, we've spent a lot of time talking about how millennials don't seem to give a shit about anything and put their entire lives online. Well, this generation coming after that may not feel the same way.

These very young kids who are being written about and have been written about for since their birth by parent bloggers are starting to become old enough to see stuff of themselves and understand it online and ask their parents, why do you have all these pictures of me up here? Exactly.

Why are you talking about me? That's super embarrassing, mom. I can't believe you put that out there. So they're starting to go, wait, hold on a second. Yeah. I don't want my life out there. And these are young, young kids. And what's really interesting, at least in this particular Christy, Christy Tate, this particular blogger, is she gives herself all the psychobabble justification about how it's important for her to put her message out there and talk about her experiences and blah, blah, blah, blah.

Yeah. And it's key right here to say that she does not need to write to survive financially. She is a lawyer. She is just doing this for fun. She's a narcissist. Yeah. She's basically a narcissist and she's using her family and her, especially her kids as, you know, they're getting the fucking, you know, friendly fire from her narcissism, which is kind of bullshit.

So like, and she's like, mommy, I Googled myself and I'm on what, what, what, who, where? And, you know, we're going to have to talk about this, mom, because this is bullshit, because my friends have Google, too. And, you know, it's a fascinating thing because, you know, yeah, chickens are coming home to roost for all of these, these mommy bloggers and parent bloggers and all that stuff.

And it's not just mommy blogging, because as the article gets into this same blogger, she talked about things like her therapy groups, which is, should be fucking illegal. Yeah. So she's been in trouble a couple of times about the things that she's decided to put out there. And the article goes on to say that, you know, surely this is, she's an extreme case when it comes to narcissistic self-justification, but she's not the only person out there.

There's an entire generation of writers, Instagrammers, and YouTubers who have just turned their family's daily dramas into content. Oh, no, Brian, we call them influencers now. Oh, yeah, they're influencers. Yes. Well, their kids are getting pissed off about this. So I think it's really interesting to see what this follow-up generation to the millennials, how they're going to feel about social media.

Now, obviously, it's a different thing when you're in control of it yourself, but this is a good taste. And I argue, I think this is great that this is happening because these kids are growing up being wary of it and going, I'm not so sure about this stuff. Yeah. It's like, if I want to do it myself, that's fine.

But I don't like you doing it for me. And then we've always talked about, it's like, are kids going to be able to sue their parents for the photos that the parents posted online when they come of age? Yeah. Because they didn't give consent, but I guess they don't have to give consent because they're under their care.

But it is interesting because I think this is going to make these kids super savvy, super savvy about how things work online. I think so, too. So that's a good thing. Talk education by trauma. Great. Moving back to Amazon, they have a new ad strategy, free samples based on what it knows about you.

Okay. They're going to start looking at your purchase history, and they're going to start sending, if you're a Prime member, start sending you free stuff in the mail. Right. Which is interesting, I think. I don't know if I have a problem with it. People have been, savvy companies have been doing this in a lesser big data way for a long time.

I mean, anytime I go into Sephora with my wife, because she's a member, they kind of know what she likes, and they give free samples based on the amount of stuff that you purchase and all that sort of stuff. So this is nothing terribly new, except for the big data aspect of it. Now, the one thing I'm concerned about is, is Amazon bullying companies into giving them free samples, or is Amazon paying for those samples and then giving those samples to customers?

Well, it looks like the brands are paying to send the samples. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Yeah. Yep. Okay. Hey, Amazon. Yeah, they're getting, Amazon's probably getting the data, going to the company and saying, hey, we've got all these people that are going to fit your demographic.

Would you like to pay us to send your free samples? So you're going to pay for the samples, you're going to pay us to do it, and then we're just going to profit, and then maybe we'll get some more money off the top of the sales that you're going to make through our platform. That's triple dipping. Amazon is literally going to take over the world.

We are all just going to be little Bezos. Now, this comes back to our talk about broadband before. Amazon has more money than God. Why don't they just start running fiber networks, and every Prime member gets fiber to the home? Well, very soon, Amazon may only have half as much money as God, because he is going to have to split it up.

That's true. That's true. Well, I'm not talking about Bezos himself. No, I know. I know. Well, I mean, they're getting increasingly savvy. There's no doubt about this. I mean, this makes sense, and every story I read about Amazon makes me more and more concerned about Amazon.

They're doing the same thing with advertising now, so that's the next article that we're going to talk about. Amazon will win advertising dollars away from Facebook amid privacy concerns, a new survey suggests. Amazon could double its ad revenue among top U.S. ad buyers in the next two years, giving it 12% of total ad spending in 2020, while Facebook will be expected to lose about 3 percentage points.

At that time, Amazon is just sucking up everything, and I can't believe that they're moving fully into ads, which is kind of crazy to me, because it's a store. Stores aren't supposed to have ads except for their own stuff. Well, you pay for end caps in a regular store. That's advertising.

So stores do have advertising for other products. You know, there are ways that you can pay to get your product in front of other people in physical stores. Right. So that's nothing new at all. But the thing that concerns me about this is the article doesn't address, which is it's advertising for non-physical goods.

It's all wrapped into one thing here because it's a smaller subset of the market. But if I'm promoting a new movie with a $20 million ad budget, it's going to Google and Facebook and YouTube. You know, it's not going to go to Amazon in a smaller subset that they might go buy some IMDB ads, which is owned by Amazon.

So Amazon will get a little bit of money. Jason, why wouldn't it go to Amazon? Because Amazon is a streaming service that has movies now. You would advertise in that aspect of Amazon's presence. It would totally make sense to advertise there. I'm not going to advertise a movie on launch on Amazon, but eventually they're going to get a sliver of an awareness campaign when the movie hits streaming.

And, you know, that sliver is definitely going to Amazon. And, you know, and how much of Google and Facebook's revenue comes from selling advertisements to other websites? It's a giant chunk that Amazon will never even be considered for or capable of delivering, you know, because that's website advertising. They have nothing to do with that.

So I just would have liked to see that distinction in the article. Well, there's one other distinction I would have liked to have seen in the article, which still pisses me off to this day. It's driving me insane. The article points out that Facebook is expected to lose three percentage points of market share in that time. And then later on in the article, it says Instagram is expected to see a two percentage point increase in that time, helping to balance out its parents company loss.

But it seems to differentiate the two. Stop treating Facebook and Instagram as separate entities. They're fucking not. It's the same thing. Stop it, journalists. You need to stop it now. Because later on, again, it says Facebook has been warning investors for years. It has maxed out the number of ads it can put into its core Facebook app.

A few of its other big properties like Messenger and WhatsApp don't yet generate meaningful revenue. Instagram does. It's its other big property. Stop treating them separate. So annoyed by that. I mean, everybody does that. Even the people that are like, quit Facebook.

Quit Facebook, but stay on Instagram. Same thing. Same bucket. Your data is going to the same place. They own it. But Instagram is more fun. That's fine. But don't pretend that you're getting out. Yeah, it's just as creepy, everyone. Speaking of creepy, I've ran across a long form article over on Slate as well.

Which smart speaker should you trust most and least? And because I've got a cold, I just dumped everything in here. The TLDR on this is actually, they don't have an answer. Okay. There's no answer. They don't answer the question here. They just say they're both kind of bad and they run through everything that has gone on.

And they say that maybe you should look at Siri from iPhone because Apple at least seems to be privacy conscious while Google and Amazon do not. Right. But the other ones work. That's the thing. There's a difference there. Yeah.

And the one thing that I thought that was really good about this article, the only thing, because it doesn't answer the question, which is probably not the author's fault. That's the editor that writes the tagline in the headlines. He points out, on the other hand, most of us have cameras on our phones and laptops, too. And we have AI devices on our phones and laptops, which illustrates a broader point.

These privacy risks of smart speakers and virtual assistants might be more obvious than those of other computing devices and services that were already largely accepted, such as Gmail or iPhones. But they're not necessarily any more dangerous. For the most part, they present the same risks just in a tube. Right. Exactly. And I think Bittner has brought up that point several times in our security segment.

Yep. Yep. It's all the same. Everything that you're worried about with your Amazon Alexa or your Google Home, you should be worried about that with your phone. Security? Ha! Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, 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 Maryland. Dave is also the co-host of the Hacking Humans podcast, along with Joe Kerrigan, where they take on social engineering. Pa-choo, pa-choo, pa-choo, pa-choo, pa-choo! Before we dig in today, I have an ever-so-brief little bit of fun, furry follow-up.

Okay. From my son, Jack, who listeners of the Cyber Wire are familiar with, because he drops in on the show every now and then. I went home, and we were talking about my new furry mask, which, as everyone knows, I love a lot. And I, uh, he said, uh, he looked at me and he said, so, you're a furry now?

And I said, I, well, I'm not sure yet. He said, what's your fursona? Oh, no. No. Yeah. So, a couple of things. First of all, have you checked his closets recently? Yeah.

Precisely. Precisely. My, my son is, knows the lingo. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but. Wow. A little surprising, perhaps? Yeah. Yeah. So, there's, there's that.

Okay. Yeah. I'm looking forward to the continued follow-up on this. Yeah. Yeah. We'll see. We'll keep an eye on things. Yeah. All right. Note to self, take off those crazy furry hoodies that my son is currently wearing. Let's just kind of go regular for a little while. That's right.

Great. Well, we have some interesting news. As if Britain doesn't already have enough to deal with with Brexit, I found this really interesting. The government communications headquarters, the UK's counterpart to the NSA, has fired a shot in the crypto wars. They made a post to lawfare titled Principles for a More Informed Exceptional Access Debate.

Basically saying, hey, this is a nicer way for us to compromise all your encryption and get in there if we want to. They're calling it, this approach, ghosting or ghost, not like dating. I guess dating is the ghosting one. So, this one is just ghost. And they just laid out six principles for the debate, which sound pretty good.

Privacy and security protections are critical to public confidence. Therefore, we only seek exceptional access to data when there's a legitimate need that access is the least intrusive way of proceeding and that there is appropriate legal authorization. Okay. Reasonable. Investigative tradecraft has to evolve with technology. Okay.

Reasonable. Even when we have a legitimate need, we can't expect 100% access 100% of the time. Okay. Yeah. Targeted exceptional access capabilities should not give governments unfettered access to user data. Okay. Any exceptional access solution should not fundamentally change the trust relationship between a service provider and its users.

Okay. Transparency is essential. Okay. Unfortunately. Here's the other shoe. But there's more. But there's more because the proposal for undermining end-to-end encryption using a technique that they are coddling ghost does none of those things.

It goes completely against all six of their points. And I find it a really interesting concept. So, applying the idea to WhatsApp would mean that upon receiving a court order, thank God they at least have to get that. The company, WhatsApp, would be required to convert a one-to-one conversation into a group chat with the government as the third member of the chat.

But for the WhatsApp user experience design, users can verify the security of a conversation by comparing security codes within the app. So, for this to work, they would have to have a way of forcing both users' clients to lie to them by showing a falsified security code, as well as suppress any notification that the conversation's keys had changed.

This is insane. Well, that's the government. That's what the government wants. What the government wants, the government gets. But I do find it just hilarious that it basically goes against all of the principles that they so carefully set out and obviously thought about. Right.

Right. Don't see no transparency going on there. No. It's like if you really want to do something that people are going to get upset about, you call it the Patriot Act, right? Yes. Mm-hmm. Yeah. They did note that this would be unconstitutional in the U.S.

Constitution. Schmonstitution. It's just a piece of paper. Right. Right. Unconstitutional once they were caught. Yeah. Once they were caught. Yeah. Yeah. I guess what I was left thinking about here was, are two people entitled to have privacy between them?

Yeah. Well, we used to think so. That seems to be less and less important, or at least certainly not enough people are making a stink about it as we're seeing it eroded day by day. Not just by government agencies. I mean, this is most of the frustration with your Facebooks and social medias, isn't it?

It's the fact that our privacy, whatever we would consider to be our privacy, is consistently being violated by all players, both government and commercial. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And there's no real meaningful legislation or regulation. Or recourse.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yay. The horses have left the barn, so. Well, the other thought I had was, how does this play out on the international stage, where what happens if an American is chatting with someone from the UK over one of these apps?

Or anybody in Europe with GDPR. Right. Right. Yeah. What's the level of protection? Who gets to say what the level of protection is? Well, that is such an interesting point, because any country can do whatever they want now, but everything is so global now with these apps.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Well, look at what Australia has just done with their new legislation to be able to backdoor all encryption. Yeah. You know, like I said, 25 million people in Australia, yeah, just pull out, screw it. Well, and what happens if- No iPhones for you.

What happens if my data runs through your country? In other words, let's say- Bounces off a server somewhere. Right. Let's say I wanted to get access to something, and so in order to do that, if your country has better access to encrypted data than mine does, do I intentionally route it through your country so that it can get looked in on?

Or I don't know the answer to that. Yeah. It's just something to think about. As you like to say, Dave, it's a sticky wicket. It is a sticky wicket, indeed. Except those damn Australians. Watch this place. Yeah. So, I found a new company called Zerodium.

Right. I think Zerodium is how it would go. And I don't know if it's new, but this is like the leading exploit acquisition platform for premium zero days and advanced cybersecurity capabilities. Yes. We pay big bounties to security researchers. Ooh, big bounties. Up to $2 million.

That's right. Now, this comes back to what I said long, long ago that Brian called me an idiot for, thinking that, oh, maybe there are people inside these companies. You have to be more specific, Jason. Brian calls you an idiot lots of times. Yeah. Yeah, I know. I know. Such a bud.

Such a mate. But, you know, you see $2 million for a bounty and you're working in those companies. What's to stop you from hiding it where you can hide it and then leaving the company and selling it? I think idiot is a little harsh and not entirely what I said at that point in time.

I just said I found it somewhat inconceivable that somebody at a place such as Apple would be doing that. I don't doubt human nature at all. And I don't doubt that things have eroded even within Apple's corporate culture to the point where there are perhaps people attempting to sneak these things in.

But I did say at the time that I felt, again, specifically talking about Apple, that their quality control and their systems would discover these things and it would be very, very difficult for anyone to do it. But I think things have changed. Have you used iOS lately? Well, exactly. That's my point. So we've been doing the show a long time, Jason.

Things change. Yes. Yes. There was an interesting... It's now plausible. There was an interesting conversation about this company over on Smashing Security. Graham Cluley and Carl Theriault were talking about them. And someone said that these folks are the equivalent of an international arms dealer when it comes to zero days.

In other words, they're not paying $2 million to get this zero day for iOS and then selling it to Apple. They're paying $2 million and they're selling it to the highest bidder. So they're selling it to the government agency who wants the new zero day, the access, so they can get in the dissidents' phones without anybody knowing.

So that's where the high money comes from. So there's certainly a little bit of ethical flexibility here, in my opinion. Ethical flexibility. That is the world we live in right now. It's ethical yoga. It's insane. That's right.

Yeah, I just hadn't seen this site before, so I wanted to bring it up and show it to you guys and see what you thought. But yeah, you're right. I think it is basically digital arms dealers. I like that analogy. Yeah. Now, there was a really interesting article over at Slate, Why Did China Steal Marriott Customer Data?

And every time that we've had these big hacks, other than the financial gains from a hacker per se, or even a government who may want to do some financial... financial buggery as well. I've always wondered, what's the point in getting all this data if it doesn't include any financial data or any way to make money?

And this is a really interesting article that kind of opened up my eyes to the fact that it's kind of what we've been talking about with everybody just trying to suck up as much data as possible. China is sucking up as much data as possible about Americans or other people. Why?

They're not sure, but perhaps they'll find something to use it for in the future, so we might as well just get it all now. It's kind of crazy. The other thing is that I've heard is that they're sucking up encrypted data. So they're sucking up data that they can't decrypt right now.

But maybe they will. Banking on the fact that in the future they will be able to decrypt it with quantum computers or whatever, new breakthroughs. Right. So storage is cheap, so why not suck it up even if you can't look at it? No reason to not hold on to it. Also the reason why Facebook doesn't feel the need to delete anything, or Google for that matter.

Yeah. Set visibility to zero, storage is cheap, let's hold on to this. Yeah, this story reminded me of another sort of, kind of, well you'll see, sort of related story. A buddy of mine, his name's David Hobby, he runs the Strobist website. He teaches people how to take photos with off-camera flashes, and he's built quite a business there.

He was working for the Baltimore Sun as a photographer when the Monica Lewinsky story broke. And up until that point, the photographers for the Sun, they would go out on a photo assignment and they would take all their photos, and then they would make their selects, and they would turn in their selects to the editors, and they would get rid of all the photos that they didn't want used.

Well, after the Monica Lewinsky story, of course the first thing that happened when that story broke, was all the news organizations started combing through their photos to find Monica and Bill Clinton together. Right. Because there were cases where they were together. And so, but who knew that in the future, the fact that the two of them being together would be interesting.

So after the Monica Lewinsky story, all of the photographers had to turn in all of their photos. They were no longer allowed to delete anything, just in case. Just in case. Just because you never know. So that's what that reminded me of. And now we can train facial recognition to comb through all those photos and find pictures of two faces that match the data set that you're looking for.

Yeah, that's a good point. So keep everything and then set your bots on it later when you need to find something. Yeah, yeah. It's funny though. iPhoto does that right now, or I'm sorry, Apple Photos does that now. You dump in all your photos and it puts, it does facial recognition on everybody in your data set.

So you can go back and search for anyone. And Google Photos does that too. And it does it actually much better than Apple Photos. Yeah, yeah. It's interesting because what I'm hearing from folks who are, who are handling data privacy for companies, they're saying there's this shift from data being valuable to people thinking of data as being radioactive.

Right. That you don't want to store too much of it, that it's going to do nothing but bad things for you in the future. People's personal information, that sort of thing. Well, China disagrees. Well, but that's the interesting thing, right? That for a nation state, they're in a different situation than a private organization. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Why do you think the NSA built that giant data center out in the middle of nowhere? So they have a lot of hard drives to store all this crap. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep. So that's, that's that. So yeah, it's interesting that they had to turn in all their photos now.

Yeah. Which is, which is interesting as a, from a photographer's point of view, because to me that would change the way that I work knowing that I don't get to say what other people see with all of my photos. That could change the way I, you know, taking test photos to, you know, just.

I don't know. I, I, just an interesting thing to know that someone's looking over your shoulder when you're taking pictures. Yeah. Hmm. Didn't think about it that way. But yeah, I mean, I don't think it really matters though, because the, the companies are paying you to go out and take pictures. Right. Unless you're, unless you're a freelancer.

Yeah. So. Right. Right. Yeah. But you may not want to do a bunch of test photos of, say, your girlfriend before you go out. Exactly. Yeah. Just testing the card. Make sure it works. Honey, show me your hoogers. Let's go. No one's ever going to see this. Yeah.

We were thinking it and Jason said it. Yes. Of course. He always does like to come in and paint out that obvious point, doesn't he? We can count on him for that. Yes. The unfiltered mind. Yes. Dave and I do the innuendo and Jason paints you a photo.

Just flies on in and strafes the ground. Yeah. Well, there you go. With friends like these. And we love you for it, Jason. We love you for it, Jason. We love you for it. Yes. Okay. Well, let's move on to the next story, please.

Yes. Okay. This was, this is a little bit older, but we haven't done a security segment since then. But there was a motherboard article which says, I gave a bounty hunter $300 that he located our phone. And this has been making the rounds and it's gotten so far as to get the Senate involved.

Yep. I'm sure they'll fix it all, won't they? If they open the government. Yeah. No. What government? So, yeah, these guys at motherboard basically paid somebody $300, gave them the phone number and said, find this phone.

And, you know, it was all a structured test case to see if they could do it. And sure enough, they did. And everybody's up in arms about it. And this motherboard article goes into great detail onto the companies and the ways that they got the data and the ways they access the data. And what do you guys think about this?

I think I know. We should, we should be up in arms and angry. This is a, I, where is this in the terms of service? It's probably in there, sadly. Oh, yeah. When we made our deals, when I re-upped my phone with Verizon to get an iPhone. This is outrageous that they're doing this.

It's insane that they're doing this. This is not what we signed. This is not what I'm paying them as a service to do. It's not like I'm getting the phone for free. This isn't a Facebook situation where, you know, I'm using the service for free. And, well, they got to make money somehow. These companies are already making a ton of money.

Now, they're just gilding the lily, double dipping. And I think what's particularly bad about this is that AT&T had previously been caught doing this, said they weren't going to do it anymore, and got caught doing it a second time. Well, guess what? They just said that they're not going to do it anymore again.

Again. Yeah. So, yeah, AT&T made a statement the other day, along with T-Mobile, which has made a similar, I mean, they're all basically backtracking and saying, we're not going to sell any more stuff to location aggregators. It's not going to happen.

I hope there's follow-up on this because, and I suspect there will be. Boy, if only these companies had some culpability or something would happen to them for doing this sort of thing. But as we know from doing this segment, that tends not to happen. Yeah.

So there's another one coming out now. This hasn't been confirmed yet, but there is a whistleblower that's saying that Amazon Ring stores your doorbell and home video feeds unencrypted and grants broad unfettered access to them. So sources familiar with Ring's practices have told The Intercept that the company basically stores the video feeds from its customers' homes in unencrypted format and allows staff around the world to have essentially unfettered access to these videos.

Yeah. You can go in and delete them if you want. It's unclear if you delete them if they are removed from their storage there. I'm guessing probably not. But yeah, if you're an engineer for Amazon's Ring project, you can watch videos. There are stories about co-employees ribbing each other the next morning because of the people that they saw going in and out of the house for romantic encounters.

Yeah. Again, horrible. This strikes me as one of those things where a company goes from startup to a major company and they skip a couple of the maturity steps along the way where, oh, gee, isn't this fun?

Yeah, there's a boss mode where the CEO, well, of course, the CEO can read everybody's email. And eventually the company gets to a point where, no, you can't do that. And there are legal reasons. You would have thought that Ring being purchased by Amazon would have made them go through some of these sort of steps that somebody would have said, hey, it's probably a bad idea for this stuff to be unencrypted.

Hey, remember, we're in a move fast and break things economy where that's rewarded, right? That's true. And that's exactly what they're doing. They're moving fast and they're breaking things. It's a feature, not a bug, man. Come on. Yeah. It's an interesting question. I wonder if there are any providers of this who allow you to set your own password on an encrypted version of saving your stuff in the cloud.

I don't know the answer to that. But for somebody out there, you have a competitive feature you can target now. My feeling with all of this IoT stuff is that you should always be able to choose where things are stored or saved rather than have to use their particular version of it.

I think that should be required by law. Mm-hmm. But it's not. Oh, silly Brian. Silly Brian. Maybe I should run for Senate. Oh, no. That would be a mess. Well, let us opt in. If we want to share our stuff, fine. But make it the default that the data is private and encrypted and they cannot look at it.

That to me seems like the way it should be. Unless granted access specifically. Yeah. You're asking me to put a camera in my home or on my front door. How do we get here, right? No, it's mind-numbing, isn't it? It's so frustrating that I actually dread doing this segment.

I had a better time doing guns than talking about security. Nip, nip, nip, nip, nip, nip. Zip it, zip it. It is insane how we've gotten here where it's almost like when these things happen, we just shrug and go, well, of course they did that. Mm-hmm. When it shouldn't be that way.

Yeah. Convenience over security. I think it's the resignation that nothing's going to happen, that there are no rules against this. As horrified as we are, right, there will be a slap on the wrist maybe. What will they fine them with?

Because we agreed to this. Yeah. We desperately need privacy regulation here in the U.S. Yes, we do. We just desperately need it. Or we just give up entirely. Put everything out there for everyone to see. All the time. That's one way to go.

So do they have Ring cameras in Europe? Can you buy these in Europe? Because it seems like this would fall under GDPR. That's a good question. I don't know, but I'd imagine so. I think it's a worldwide product. I don't know. We'll have to research that for next week because it seems like if these claims actually turn out to be true and they're storing Ring video data for people in the EU, then they could be in a little hot water.

Or financial hot water, at least. Yeah. The GDPR stuff seems to actually, there are significant financial repercussions, which, again, we need here as well. But we still don't know where the internet cops are that are going to be enforcing GDPR. Sure we do. They're with Patreon, remember? From earlier in the show. Oh, that's right.

They all work at Patreon. Yeah. I don't know if you guys saw this one, but I just, I got a chuckle out of this one. Apple trolls CES with a giant dig at Android and Alexa privacy. They got a big ass sign across from CES that basically said what, you know, what happens on your phone stays on your phone.

Every time I look, Apple, as we all know, has probably done the best with privacy of most of these companies. Microsoft also does pretty well, but when I saw this story, I just thought, in my own mind, I was remembering a scene, and I can't remember the movie it's from, but remember thou art mortal. Remember thou art mortal.

Remember thou art mortal. Eventually, Apple, you will fuck up. Right. Yeah, I don't think this is a very good look for Apple, trying to stay above the fray. I just, I don't know. I get what they're doing, ha ha, but.

Yeah, it's clever, but you will have a screw up. Right. And this is not a good look on anyone. No, hubris gets you every time. Yeah. Let he who is without breach cast the first stone. That's right. That's right. And finally, Samsung users are perturbed because they can't delete Facebook off of their phones.

Now, I haven't tried this on my, my phone, but I don't have a Galaxy S8. I've got an S7 edge, but I think I had to manually install Facebook on there when I got it. But then I, of course, deleted it immediately because I stopped using Facebook. But it's interesting that, you know, you get this crapware on your phone or your computers that you can't get rid of.

And Facebook is now turned into that crapware. Facebook, I think, has obviously made a deal and done this purposefully. I was just reading this one paragraph in here. It just absolutely baffles me that if I wanted to completely get rid of Facebook, that it essentially would still be on my phone, which brings up more questions. Can they still track your information, your location or whatever else you do?

We, the consumers, should have say in what we want and don't want on our products. The answer to those questions is yes. We just did stories about how on Android, Facebook is sending, getting everything, every website you go to for no reason whatsoever. So obviously, this is why Facebook wants their app to be undeletable.

And, of course, Facebook says that when the app is made inactive, that it is not tracking anything or keeping track of anything. Heard that before. Yeah, we've heard that before, too. And then we've heard a lot of, well, that was, you know, we're the whoops.

That was a mistake. We're going to turn that off now. Right. Bullshit. Yeah. We should just change the name of the segment to Broken Record. I don't, it's one thing to. Same shit, different company. Yeah. It's one thing to have your phone delivered with an app. I can, I, you know, for Facebook to pay Samsung to have the phone come with Facebook.

Reinstalled. Yeah. Okay. Fine. Great. All right. That's, whatever. But to not be able to delete it. Yes. No. That, that would. That. And again, will there be repercussions? Yeah. Is it all on us?

Is it on us to know this and then go, well, I'm not going to buy another Samsung phone. This appears to be the world that we've decided to create. This is all on us. So, because nobody else is doing anything about it. And again, no repercussions. It's on us to know that the ring is doing this and not to get a ring doorbell.

It's on us to know that Samsung phones are doing this and not to get a Samsung phone. Yeah. I don't, I don't get how we got here. It reminds me of, you know, there are those specialists who will help you. Find scholarships for your kids for college. Yeah. They'll go through and find every possible thing that you could, you could be eligible for.

Is it, oh, you have a great, great grandfather who's Native American? Here's, here's $500 for college. You know, that sort of thing. Yeah. Like there need to be EULA consultants that anytime you want. You're making me think like I use like a broker to buy cars or a broker to get insurance.

There needs to be like privacy brokers now. Right. Right. How much privacy do you want? Where's your line? Here's everything. Mm-hmm. Yeah. But it'll all change in two weeks, by the way. So, you know, you'll have to keep me on, on a retainer. Maybe there's, yeah, maybe some kind of AI and even maybe we could put it on the blockchain.

I'm just, just spitballing here. Oh yeah, there we go. Just spitballing here. Yeah. Yeah. Using only Australian servers. That's right. That's right. All right, guys. Well, I know. Cheerful as always. I know. Hey, I will not be here next week.

What? Okay. I know. I'm getting a tooth pulled. Oh. Yeah. Can we do it right after you get your tooth pulled? That would be fun. I wish. I wish. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. We'll see how it goes. We might find out the true fursona of David when he's on the next room.

My true fursona. My true fursona. Yes. I, yes, yes, yes. So this is my first experience having a tooth pulled. So it'll be an experience. It's okay. Enjoy the drugs. Okay. Thanks.

I will. Till then, I'll see you in a couple weeks. Cheers. All right. Cups and doodads. I have been coming around more and more to the internet of things, so long as I'm buying things from trusted sources and whatnot, or at least semi-trusted sources, as it goes.

I mentioned over Christmas, I kind of kitted out my parent-in-laws, mother-in-law, father-in-law, whatever they are, my in-laws' house. Yeah, just stick with in-laws. Yeah, with the in-laws, with Ring and an Alexa show and all that sort of stuff, and they've got a nest, and they all connected together really cool, and they want to do some lighting, and some electrical stuff, and all of that.

And I was like, yeah, this is actually all kind of cool, as long as you stick with reasonably trusted things. And I remember back before I bought my place here in Santa Monica, when we were still renting, we had a place with a second story and this gigantic window that, you know, when the sun would set, it would basically blind everyone upstairs, and that's where the kitchen was.

Yeah, I remember that. So I, it was terrible, and it was also, you couldn't reach, you couldn't reach the window because it was over a staircase and all that sort of stuff. So I convinced my landlord at the time to get me to buy basically a very expensive system, a wireless system of blinds.

So you could just move them up and down, you know, with a remote control. It was crazy. It was awesome. But it was also crazy expensive. But I've always thought about those, and I was like, ooh, it'd be great to have those again and everywhere, but I just don't want to spend that kind of money. Ikea to the rescue.

All right. Following up on the success of their wireless chargers and their trad-free line of smart lights, the company is now offering remote-controlled window shades. These can be controlled by Alexa or Google Hub or Siri as well. How awesome is that? Shades up, shades down.

So they're currently offering two options, both of which are powered by a rechargeable battery and require no wiring. They're each controlled by a small disc-shaped remote control or, again, your smart hub. The Kadrill, a light-filtering window shade. And the Future, a blackout shade. Unfortunately, they're not available here yet.

They're only over in Ikea Germany. Aww. Since lucky Germans. But apparently they are going to come soon. They're listed in five different sizes, and the price is reasonable. I mean, as soon as these are available and I can get them, I am getting them. How badass is that?

The only way that I think that these would be the best things ever, is if you could say, you know, hey, lady in a tube, shields up! Why wouldn't you be able to? Well, because you'd have to, like, be able to set. You could use some if this, then that, maybe, or something like that. Or write your own skill, I guess.

Yeah, write your own skill. How bad would that? That would be totally fun. Shields up! And have it play, like, the little red alert sound when they go down. Oh, and you have the smart lights that switch to red and you can blink? Beep, beep, beep, beep. See, this is the future we always thought we'd have. Yeah, that's the fun future.

That's the one I want. Yeah. So for Christmas, I got a gift from my family back in Chicago. They sent me the Air Fryer XL by Kozina with Air Fryer Cookbook, over 50 recipes, and a basket divider. I'm just going to say right now that the Air Fryer is this year's Instant Pot.

Yes, it is. I've been seeing so many people talk about this thing. Yeah, it totally is. But now I have an Air Fryer and an Instant Pot and a Crock Pot, which I'm using the Crock Pot today to make some Gourmet Sobsi, which I love to death. But I tried out the Air Fryer.

We've tried it on a couple different things. It's incredible. The only thing I want to know is how good are the chicken wings? Haven't done those yet. They're coming. All right. If you tell me that it makes delicious, crispy chicken wings, I am all in on this then. I'm pretty sure it will. The first thing we made were Brussels sprouts because I love some fried Brussels sprouts.

So we tried it with that, and they come out crispy. There's even some blackening on them if you cook them just right. It's insane. Then we did some hush puppies in it. Awesome. Came out nice and crispy. We did try some homemade battered cod, which did not come out that well because we fucked up the batter on it.

But all in all, this thing is pretty cool. It's pretty cool. The only big problem with it is it's big, and we don't have a lot of space in our kitchen, so we've had to kind of move some stuff around. This is much bigger. This is like twice the size of an Instant Pot. That could be a problem because I have a relatively petite kitchen.

Yeah. The thing about it, though, is you're frying without oil. There's no oil required. Hence the name, Air Fryer. Exactly. And as someone who also has a deep fryer tucked away in the closet, I'm going to try some tempura over the weekend and see how this thing fares.

Ooh, man, homemade tempura. That would be awesome. That's why I had a deep fryer. We used to have parties at my house. My dad and my brother would come over, and we'd get a bunch of vegetables, make some homemade tempura batter, dip them, put them in the deep fryer, have some wine and nosh on them, and they were delicious. So if I can do that with the Air Fryer without all the cleanup of a deep fryer, oh, I am so in.

I'm just throwing the deep fryer out. Forget it. There's no reason to have it. Cleanup sucks on those things. Very cool. Very cool. Yeah, let me know about the wings when you get around to it. I will. I could be sold. And I am reaching that point in time with my young boy's life where it's time to start potty training.

Okay. And I've heard horror stories. I've heard some people just take to it. I've heard used stuff like technology and different things, and I've heard just do it. So I found a link over on Fatherly called the Best Potty Training Seats and Products as Recommended by Real Dads.

And this got posted on my Facebook because I was like, I can't believe it's this time, but it's going to have to happen. So this is all over the map. They're built in potty seats, which you kind of need to get, which we've already found one and we like. But the interesting thing to me is that they recommend Cheerios.

Cheerios? If you have a boy. What do you mean? Because you put them in the bowl and they aim at it. Oh, my God. It makes it a game. And I thought that was insane, but I didn't even mention it. I just put the link up there saying I'm starting to look at this. My feed was filled with parents, with kids somewhat older, boys somewhat older that said Cheerios, 100% Cheerios.

Everybody used the Cheerio method. Wow. To which I also, like, later on in this article, there's also targets, toilet time targets. They're like stickers that you can put in your toilet. And I was like, after I saw all these posts about the Cheerios, I was like, I have a feeling that having been in many public restrooms, in bars and at sporting events and things of that nature, men seem to have forgotten this.

So I think I'm going to buy Cheerios or toilet time targets in bulk and do us all a favor and start putting them around everywhere in public urinals because grown-ass men can't seem to put it in the urinal anymore. So obviously we need to gamify things. And I blame this on the decline in smoking because cigarette butts in the urinal were irresistible targets for all of us.

So since smoking has declined, I have found there to be more piss all over seats and everywhere. The funny part about this is, like, it might have been 10 years ago, there was a study done where they would go into a urinal and they would put a sticker of a fly on it. And then they tested the cleanliness of the bathroom.

We aim. Yep. Yes, it works. We aim for stuff. We are stupid. Yes, we are cavemen. We are cavemen. So, yeah, I'm going to be buying Cheerios in bulk, apparently, pretty soon. Mm-hmm. My least favorite is walking into a bathroom and some guy's doing the Superman method.

You know what I'm talking about? Yes. I hate those people so much. You're not that good. No. You're not. Brick-a-brick. Brian, I've started to check out a site called physicsworld.com. Mm-hmm. Getting a little edumacation?

Uh, no. It actually just makes me feel really, really stupid. Oh, okay. Because my brother's the physicist. I'm the black sheep. I never took physics in high school, and I didn't go to college, really, except for anything but photography. But I like reading this stuff because I think it's fun. Mm-hmm.

I found an article that says, Our universe has antimatter partner on the other side of the Big Bang, says physicists. Okay. And I thought, that's pretty cool. Now, I don't really understand almost anything in this article because they start to get into, you know, some really crazy stuff at the end.

By factoring in the observed density of dark matter, he says the quantity yields a mass for the right-handed neutrino of about five times 108 GeV, some 500 million times the mass of the proton. I'm like, okay, yeah, you lost me there. But the idea that we have an antimatter, anti-universe is pretty cool.

And they're not exact mirror images of one another, which sidesteps thorny problems such as free will. That's the really cool part. But on the other side of things, there's an antimatter Grumpy Old Geeks podcast, so subscribe on antimatter Patreon. Anti-patreon, yes. And in the antimatter universe, we all have, like, Spock beards.

Oh, yeah. Everybody has a beard. Yep. Or I guess all the bearded millennials are clean-shaven. Yeah, they're clean-shaven. That's pretty good. Now, I read an article over on BuzzFeed called How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation. It is a really, really long article.

I stayed up and I read the whole thing soup to nuts. Okay. And as I was reading it, I just, I had many feels about it. And I'll read just a little bit here. For the last decade, millennials has been used to describe or ascribe what's right and wrong with young people.

But in 2019, millennials are well into adulthood. The youngest are 22. The oldest, like me, somewhere around 38. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Really? It's the tail end of Gen X. Yeah. Yeah. I was about to say, there's no way that I'm that close to being a millennial. 38 seems pretty old for a millennial.

I would say topping out around 30. No, no, 38 is the last year of Gen X. We've looked it up. Okay. All right. Yeah. Jordan Harbinger kept always saying he was a millennial. I'm like, no, you're not. No, you're not, dude. You're not a millennial. It's right. It's right on the cusp. You know, you can put one side on either side of the border.

But this is required a shift in the way people within and outside of our generation configure their criticism. We're not feckless teens anymore. We're grown ass adults. And the challenges we face aren't fleeting, but systemic. I'm sorry. 22 year olds are not grown ass adults.

You're just getting started. Grown ass adults don't ride around on scooters. That is true. That is true. It just keeps going on and on and on and talking about how hard it is to be a millennial and how they're all burnt out because they have to work all the time. Hey, guess what? It was hard to be a Gen Xer and we were all burnt out.

And there's a bunch of movies and articles about that, too. Get over it. Yep. Here. Well, let me we'll get to that in a second. Sorry. I'm jumping the gun. Brian, hold my artisanal beer. Let me dip my beard into it. Hold on. Yeah. For many millennials, a social media presence on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook or Twitter has also become an integral part of obtaining and maintaining a job.

The purest example is the social media influencer whose entire income source is performing and mediating the self online. But social media is also the means through which many knowledge workers, that is, workers who handle, process or make meaning of information, market and brand themselves.

Journalists use Twitter to learn about other stories, but they also use it to develop a personal brand and following that can be leveraged. People use LinkedIn not just for resumes and networking, but to post articles that attest to their personality, also known as their brand, as a manager or entrepreneur.

Millennials aren't the only ones who do this, but we're the ones who perfected and thus set the standards for those who do. Oh, fuck you. I think somebody just triggered Jason. Do you need to do you need a safe space?

Yeah. Keep holding my beer. The thing that annoys me so much with millennials that they think they invented social media and how to master it. They learn to use a tool that other people made, specifically our cohort, the Gen Xers and the people older than us. I worked on taking pictures with your phone using goddamn Pearl scripts that you don't even know what Pearl stands for, little kids.

What I say is that all the millennials did was ruin social media, not master it. Now, see, for me, and I'll just interrupt your rant here because I like to do that. I agree with you 100 percent. The things that happened with millennials is that social media hit critical mass.

When we had it, it was a very it was a much smaller group of people that were doing it. We were all doing it. Most of us were involved in media or entertainment or tech in some sort of way for millennials. Now everybody's got it. That's the only difference we had at first. Bitches. Yes. And we didn't use it as a marketing tool.

We had fun with it. It was a way to communicate with our friends. Monetization of social media is the devil. That's what that's what ruined everything. I think. I'm with you. I'm with you on that. Again, another point I have about this article so far is I really think that this idea of the social media influencer is much like social media itself blown way out of proportion.

I would like to see an actual I know this is these are really hard statistics to get. I would like to see how many people are actually social media influencers as their sole entire income source. I don't think it's that big. I don't think it's as anywhere near as big as as millennials like to play it out to be or the social media influencers, the few that actually do it.

Make it sound like there are there's no that's a side hustle at best for ninety nine point nine nine nine nine nine nine nine percent of people that do it. Yeah. And, you know, people burn out on it. It's it's a terrible thing to do to yourself even. So I want to I want to write a Chrome extension that turns influencer into douchebag on every web page that I go to.

I think I wonder if I can write that in Perl. By the way, Brian, you know what Perl stands for? I don't remember what Perl stands for anymore, but I used to code in it all the time. Practical Extraction Report Language. That's what it stands for. I still remember it. God damn it. I didn't even have to look that up. And if I'm wrong, well, then I look like an asshole.

Well, we are old. Our memory is going. You got to fucking tell me that. I mean, all in all, I thought it was a fantastic article, but it's not applicable to millennials. It's applicable to everyone. Right. You know, I'm 47. I work nonstop. And, you know, so does my 60 year old roommate.

We're up before the sun and it's 10 at night when I was writing this thing last night and I didn't go to sleep for two hours. Then I get up at 5 a.m. Well, actually, I got up at 4 a.m. today just because I had work to do. That's just the human condition for people like us in the U.S., you know, for what used to be the middle class or the myth of the middle class.

You know, you always talk about the middle class going away. I don't think it ever fucking existed. Oh, it definitely did. There's no doubt that it did. The 50s and 60s, my parents' generation. Without a doubt, my parents had jobs that at this point in time, my mom didn't even work. She took off work to to raise myself and my sister.

She didn't go back to work until later. So there was a good like 12 to 15 year chunk where sole income was from my dad for what would as a job right now, barely, barely pay a rent. And somehow we they managed to own a house, two cars, you know, coach my soccer team, all that sort of stuff.

It was a solid middle class living. There's definitely existed. I never experienced that. So I don't I never saw it. You know, my grandfather worked in the coal mines in Pennsylvania, 14 hours a day until he retired, then a few years later died from coal dust in his lungs. My grandmother worked her entire life in the post office until she got, you know, she would work all day, come home, take care of the family, turn around, do it again.

Then she got dementia and died. My dad worked six days a week with a two hour commute and he's 70 years old with five more years until he can even start thinking about retiring. That's the kind of way it is for a lot of people, not just millennials. Right. You know, that I think, you know, the golden age of leisure like you had was just for fucking brochures trying to sell you a home in a Pontiac.

And if you don't know what a Pontiac is, look it up, kids. Right. But I don't think that was everybody. No, it wasn't. And, you know, certainly, I mean, I remember now looking back on it, there were periods of time where my dad worked two jobs to make to make that dream work. But for some people it did. I mean, there was definitely a middle class at some point in time, but I think it's it's mostly gone now and certainly our generation hasn't had it, not just the millennials.

Right. Yeah. But I mean, this the silly idea that only millennials get burnt out is ridiculous. It's absolutely ludicrous. I think it's ludicrous. Even I believe you use the L word. It's ludicrous. Like I did fairly well for myself financially when I was I had a really good streak of luck and I was working in the music industry when there was actually money in the music industry.

But I started my own company and I worked 24 seven. I worked myself to the bone. The reason I'm podcasting now is I got totally burnt out running my own company. I couldn't deal with it anymore. I was done. I was just done with it. So that WordPress killed me. That's it. I couldn't do it anymore.

Yeah. What killed it for me was the fighting, having to work more and more and more for less and less and less money. And I was just like, I'm already working myself to the bone running my own company. I got more rant here, but, you know, forget about it. Just guys, just quit whining about it and get back to work. Have a cocktail, get over it, get up, do it all over again tomorrow.

You know, you can take time for yourself and slow the fuck down and smell the roses. And it does make it a lot more bearable. You still got to do the work. You still got to pay the bills. And that's just the way it's the way the world is, you know? So that's why this I just I got my goat this whole like, oh, you know, you guys sold us a bill of goods because we're going to go to college and spend all this money.

I'm like, well, if you'd have done your due diligence beforehand, you'd have seen that you can skip college, learn a skill, learn a trade and get to work and not have any college debt. But you didn't. So there I know. I know people are going to say some jobs require a college degree, but if you didn't want to get into that system, you could get around it.

There are ways to get around it. We're moving on now to the world's safest airlines named for 2019. I like this article. Hmm. I miss traveling. It's funny that you actually mentioned this because I was looking at my phone today and I use that app called TripIt, which I think I talked about on the show before.

And as part of my like little home screen on my iPhone, it tells me you have no trips planned. And I was like, yes, I know. And that's sad. It's called having a child. Yeah. I haven't had a trip planned for quite some time. Dogs for me. Yeah. I tell you, there are more parallels than you believe.

Anyway, the top 20 safest airlines for 2019 are Air New Zealand, Alaska Airlines, All Nippon Airways, which I will never fly because they like to drink, American Airlines, Austrian Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific Airways, which I love, Emirates, EVA Air, Fin Air, Hawaiian Airlines, KLM, Lufthansa, Qantas got the number one spot, Qatar, Scandinavian Airlines System.

That's a mouthful. SAS. Singapore Airlines, Swiss and United Airlines and the Virgin Group of Airlines, Atlantic and Australia. That rounds out the top 20 safest airlines. And those are non-budget. So they have the top 10 safest budget airlines, too.

And those are in alphabetical order. Flybee, Frontier, HK Express, JetBlue, Jetstar Australia slash Asia, Thomas Cook, Valeris, Viewling, WestJet and Wiz. OK, so I'm not going to be flying Southwest anytime soon because they're not.

Not on the list. If they can be beat by an airline called Wiz, and I'm going to pass on that one. And didn't we fly WestJet back from Canada? We did. But they suck compared to Air Canada. I'd much rather take the Air Canada flight. Guess who's not on the list? Air Canada. Yeah. Well, that doesn't mean they're horrible.

It just doesn't mean they didn't make the top 20. Top 20 safest air. I like safe. I'm going to go with safe. Yeah. All Nippon Airways, not safe. Well, apparently the way it works is you can still drink and drive a plane. How it works.

Yeah, that doesn't exactly fill me with warm, cushy feelings. I should be the one drunk on a plane, not the pilot. I have a strange closing shout out today. It's Hunter Douglas. They make blinds. They make quite expensive blinds.

We put a hell of an investment into them when we bought our place. So we spent a lot more money on these great blinds, including blackout blinds in our bedroom and what is no longer the baby's bedroom because it's not a baby anymore. It's the toddler's bedroom. They broke. They're good at fixing them.

They have a lifetime warranty. And not only do they take care of fixing it for free. It does take a while, though, two to three weeks. They come with temporary blinds and they even have temporary blackout blinds. So my kid will be able to sleep and I will be able to sleep while these things get repaired for free. I love you, Hunter Douglas.

Well, too bad they don't have the little widget to, you know, say shields up. Yeah. Otherwise, I'd be driving to Ikea right now and buying those and putting them up and saying, ah, to hell with your Hunter Douglas blinds. Just kidding. Okay. But for now, Hunter Douglas wins the day. Yes. And their customer service was absolutely fantastic.

So I will give them the closing shout out. And I have a feedback to all of the listeners who have written in about our non-lethal force segment. We have never gotten so much feedback in our entire lives. And we kind of knew this was a touch button topic. And I blame Bittner.

But anyway, thank you so much for everybody that has written in with all of your great feedback and very measured feedback. Yeah. I must say, I have to say, I'm very surprised. We got very constructive, very positive feedback for the most part. So thank you to all of you who wrote. Yeah. For the most part, I think there was out of, you know, the dozens of emails we got, there was one guy that was like, you guys are idiots, hung up the phone.

But to be fair, they could say that about anything. Oh yeah. Well, I mean, we, we, we generally are. That's okay. But thanks again for all the feedback on it. You can stop writing in or I may actually, you can keep writing if you want, but we are going to step away from this topic for the show and not touch it because you know, until there is technology that we can talk about with it, we're just going to let that one live somewhere else.

So thank you again, everybody who wrote in. 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. We promise there's no hate speech or racist stuff here, you know, so please Patreon, don't kick us off.

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. Show notes for this episode are GOG.show slash 311. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, and get links to stuff we like. Stay grumpy.

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