317: Is That An Arm In Your Pocket?

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

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. How goes it today, Brian, out in the sunny side of California? It's sunny today. Yesterday we had what other people call weather. Yeah, we had a sprinkle yesterday. That's it. Hey man, thunder and lightning. We rarely get that here, so it was very exciting. Scared the crap out of my kid.

That's right. First time. I was waiting for the dogs to go bug nutty, but I forgot that we're from Chicago. They don't get scared because it happens every day out there. Although, I'm glad I'm not in Chicago right now. Yes. It's pretty crazy out there. I hope everybody's staying warm.

Yep. So we've got a little follow-up here on that Gizmodo story that you've been posting on. I saw! You beat me to them, so I have not read these yet. I'm interested to hear what you have to say about them. Yeah, these are the two new ones from Kashmir Hill. How she's cutting out the big five of the tech companies, the tech giants.

So she did week three was Google. That's got to be a tough one. Week four is Microsoft, yes. So, it turns out, yeah, Google owns the planet. Nothing works on the internet without Google. Right. Period. Everybody's fonts are loaded from Google. All the tracking is from Google.

Basically, everything is from Google. And a lot of people host on Google. So, and she couldn't get an Uber because they use Google Maps. She couldn't get a Lyft because they use Google Maps. And she was late for a meeting because she had to take a bus. And all in all, yeah, Google is pretty hard to avoid anymore.

Right. Yeah. So they're up there right now with, yeah, you just give up the ghost on that one. Right. And week four is Microsoft. Okay. Microsoft was a little easier. Yeah. I'd imagine it would be. Although they're pretty big in the hosting game these days as well. Yeah. Yeah.

It did jammer up a bit, but not nearly as bad as Google or Amazon. Right. And you can avoid things. You can, you know, as long as you're using a Mac, you're not going to be using too many Microsoft products at all there. You just avoid Office by using Google Docs. Well, there's still, there's still a lot going on.

I think the first or her, her ping back rate was the same as Facebook as she was browsing the web for Microsoft. Right. There's a, there's a lot of tracking stuff out there for basically everybody. These guys are just following you wherever you go. Right. And, uh, it's a fun series.

I'm, I'm actually really digging it. I'm glad she's doing it and not us. Well, we wouldn't be able to do a show. That's the, that's the problem. Hey, how's the weather, Brian? Oh wait, we already did that one today. Yeah. We did the weather. Okay. I got nothing. No, right. See you next week.

Okay. This episode is sponsored by Eero. Now we're going to leave. Bye. And I do want to throw in a quick note. Uh, I went to my Instagram thingy this morning, my app, and I noticed that, uh, under messages, there are a lot of people that are trying to send me like direct messages on Instagram.

Right. And, uh, just don't, just don't, cause I'm not going to accept it. I, I do not use Instagram as a, uh, communication platform. If it, if I do talk to you on Instagram, it'll be because I comment on your photos, but I'm not going to have another channel of communication.

Well, don't you, you don't need to worry about that pretty soon. Facebook's working on integrating all of that stuff. Well, they're not integrating with my email. So if you need to get ahold of me or ask me any questions, you can just email me J at JPD.me. It's the easiest way to get in touch with me because most other platforms I'm tending to ignore any direct message stuff just because it's, I hate the fragmentation.

I'm like, Oh, I got to go here, I got to go there. Yeah. Talk to me in one place. That's it. On a related note, as much as I appreciate everybody's, uh, there's a couple of people in particular that are always commenting on the Grumpy Old Geeks Facebook stuff and sending us messages there. Facebook is horrid for me being able to grab these things or get back to you.

So I apologize if we don't write you back on Facebook. I just can't stand it. Yeah. And honestly, uh, podcast at Grumpy Old Geeks goes to both of us and we have a contact form on the site, but, uh, you know, that's the easiest way. We never even used to check Facebook at all, ever. We'd post, post and run, hit and run.

But Brian has more patience than I do. And I'm still on Facebook as opposed to Jason. That, that helps too. You know, claim, claims he's done with Facebook, but still Instagrams all the time. Ah, I like it. It's easy. It's easy. In the news.

And speaking of Facebook, uh, they got bitch slapped big time by Apple. Yes, they did. It's been an interesting news week going on with these big guys. It's like watching the, uh, you know, you're like the small kid on the playground watching all the big guys getting a big fist fight and you're just sitting back having popcorn, just having some popcorn watching.

I was thinking the same thing. You know, we're talking about Cashmere Hills articles about the big five and they're all basically fighting with each other right now. It's like a knockdown drag out title fights going on. Um, yeah, so they're not, uh, nobody's playing well with each other, although they seem to be solving their differences. I did like, uh, recodes, uh, tagline for their article about it.

Apple boo fast and broke Facebook. Yep. They sure did. And they also broke Google. Yes, they did. So we, what we found out this week was, uh, Facebook wasn't the only company that had an app out there that, uh, they sluck through, through, uh, Apple's, uh, guidelines and, uh, tracked you everywhere.

Google had one as well. So, uh, Apple said, Hey, no way, can't do that. You're, you're breaking our rules. And they basically rescinded their, uh, their internal certificate programs for both companies for a brief period of time as kind of a warning shot across the bow, I suppose. Yeah, and the, the one thing I love about Google's is that they came out first.

They, they owned up to it and said, Oh, Oh, you guys really care about this? Well, then I guess we're, we're taking it down. We're taking it down. Our bad, our bad. And then even after they said that, then Apple still revoked their enterprise certificate, which that was just like nicely done, Tim Cook, because you gotta, you gotta let these people know.

And by revoking that enterprise certificate, because it's part of the enterprise developer program, not the regular developer program, all of the in-house apps that they built for all their employees that they run on their iPhones internally broke. So poor people couldn't get their lunch. They couldn't call their, their shuttle to go across the campus because the campus is so damn big and all sorts of other internal things, scheduling.

Like I, it's, it's insane how much people put on these internal apps that they've built on another platform. Which I loved. It's like, you know, it's justice. I just wish it was still broken. I wish Apple didn't reverse track and give it back to them so quick, but I can understand why they did.

We know why. Yeah. Again, as, as we're discovering basically five companies rule the world and we need all of them. We can't, they all have to be running, which is the craziest thing. If you take any of these things down, we're screwed. Everybody needs everything. Now we need, we need these five companies.

We can't have a world without Facebook or a world without Google. Things break. Everything relies on them because we're, nobody does their own stuff anymore. No. And I think it's really funny that how much of Google broke when the iOS certificate was broken, because you'd think, you'd think the company that made Android would, would not be reliant on internal iOS apps.

I know they've got, you know, the iOS division that makes all the apps and stuff, but you wouldn't think that that many, you know, other employees, Google, yeah, would have so many devices that it, you know, threw a monkey wrench into it. But, you know, at least it was a nice little bitch slap. It, it screwed them up for a day.

And, and, you know, Tim Cook's back like, mess with us again, bitch. I'll press that button again. Yeah. Well, you know, so we had Facebook, uh, have that happen to it. Uh, we have not, we've gone to two shows a week for, I don't know, we've been doing this for quite a while now. And I was about to say, you know, nary a week goes by that we haven't had something, uh, Facebook, it hasn't been in the news for something horrible, but I have to revise that.

Nary a, a half a week goes by because we have a new Facebook story every episode and we're doing two a week. Um, they've had a rough time of it, but it doesn't seem to matter because yay capitalism. Yeah. Facebook scandals are not stopping it from making money. This stock shot through the roof.

It went way up a couple of days ago. Their earnings reports came out. They're making money, making money, making money. And the company is, is doing gangbusters still. So, uh, as we always say in the security segment with, with Bittner, uh, to what end these things? Uh, there's no, there's no repercussions.

There doesn't ever seem to be any repercussions. Growth even went up. Hashtag quit. Facebook has been trending for almost a year and they thought they had maxed out in the U S and Canada. Growth went up. More users signed up. It's free. How is this happening?

Remember what I said about the law of unintended consequences? Yes. Uh, the first, the first thing that we have to talk about is our president. Everybody talked about how he's never going to get elected, but what that, what did that do? Got him in the new cycle every day. So when people are talking about how horrible Facebook is, a lot of people are like, well, let me go check this out and see how bad it is.

And then they, you know, then growth, then you get growth. Well, again, going back to the cashmere Hill articles, when she did the one on Facebook, her editor wasn't on Facebook, read the article and then figured I better sign up for Facebook. Yeah, this sounds, this sounds great. This sounds horrible.

I should get on it just like everyone else in the world. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. Stockholm syndrome, maybe for a lot of people who can't get off of it. And I definitely have a lot more respect for everybody that's quit it. I used to just kind of roll my eyes at it and like, oh, whatever, what are you going to, is it really impacting you that much?

Is it that bad? It's just a way to stay in touch with friends. But this company is so horrible. Yeah. I have so much respect for the people that have been able to do it. I am not a, I'm not a capable, sadly. Yeah. I don't have respect for the employees who are still there. No, I don't.

That's, that's a problem. I don't, unless you're really actively working within to try to change the system and not, Sheryl Sandberg can go piss off. I was going to say something stronger, but then tried to, I decided to get it. You toned it down. You toned it down. No, but just all, even the day-to-day employees, it's like, you know, you work for one of the most evil places in the world and you made it that way.

Yep. That's it. I mean, granted, you're not working like at Auschwitz, but you know, there's, there's always next quarter. I do like how I tone it down and then you kick it up a notch. Dropping the Nazis. Of course, man. Godwin, Godwin's law. We got to pull that out every single episode.

So Slate had an article that I thought was pretty interesting. Facebook paid people $20 a month for access to all their digital activity. Why did they sign up? Yeah. So they, this is the question, right? We're really trying to figure out, do people actually give a shit about privacy or not?

Turns out no. Turns out no. No. They went over to a subreddit called Beer Money, which I thought was pretty funny, where people find little ways and little hacks to get just a couple bucks from these little services every month. And, you know, people get gift cards for doing things. They get cash for other things.

And the people who signed up for Facebook's research VPN, they knew exactly what they were doing. And what they said was basically what it boils down to is they know everything already. Why shouldn't I just get a few bucks out of it? They, they've, they are more defeatist than we are. They are way more defeatist than we are because they don't know everything.

They know a lot of things, but they, they know more now that you've given it to them. These apps raid your messages, your text messages, photos that you send to friends and family and all that. They're, they're getting all that. That's more than they're getting right now. That's frightening to me. Why?

Okay. For beer. Yeah. Beer money. They do it for beer money. Unbelievable. Yeah. And this is why Facebook could keep on doing it because they had, you know, all these, all these sheeple lined up, ready, ready to get their $20, you know, teat suck every month. And they just said, come on down.

We'll take you. The only thing that Facebook I'm sure is upset about is that they got caught. Pretty much. Yeah. You know, I'm sure that they're just really sad that they got caught. They pretty much just wish there was a world with no Apple and everybody had Android phones. Yeah, maybe, maybe.

I don't. Yeah. I, I, I really don't get it. I don't understand it. Um, I mean, I'm willing to sell off some of my privacy. Obviously it's, it's, I'd rather I didn't have to, but it's just the way it is right now. But this extreme and just be this defeatist about it and just say, well, whatever.

It's bog. I just, I don't, I almost feel like we should just stop the podcast. I'm done. Stop the podcast. Stop the podcast. The thing about it is, you know, what we just talked about, you've got the five pillars of technology out there right now and you can't get rid of them because there's so many people are dependent upon it.

So I can see why people are defeatist and just say, well, it is the way it is. You know, I, I think back to the, the internet when we first started on the web and how glorious it was, how, how beautiful it was. And you know, not anymore. I remember a web before cookies.

We couldn't track you if you wanted to. Yes, we could query strings. That's how we did it. That's exactly how we did it. Yep. When cookies came out, man, that was so nice for us. That was so nice. Cause before that everything was query strings and people were like, you know, emailing people with their session IDs and their query strings.

And we're like, don't do that. Don't do that. They can log in as you. So we had to, and then we had to have like tons of hacks to make sure that those things didn't really persist. We had all sorts of stuff and we kept everything in pipe delimited text files that we had to grip in Pearl. That was because we didn't know how it, how to use databases back then.

Nope. That was the fun days, the fun days. Cause we were just figuring it out. So, you know, who else is figuring things out? Who? Lime. One of our favorite scooter companies. Well, they're figuring out that they're having a problem keeping their C-suite and their, their, their, their main guys.

A couple, a couple executives have hit the road. Right. And it turns out there are even more. So the head of finance, Scott Mallett and human relations chief, Rosemary Carbone have left the company and, uh, they're, they're really trying to figure out how to grow because, you know, they've gone from nothing to now.

And this is, this is what really upsets me. The $2 billion valuation that they have for a scooter company. For fucking scooters. For a two year old scooter company that everybody hates. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I, I, if I was one of the, I realize it's only 10 in the morning, but I need a fucking drink.

I know. Oh man. So I don't understand why these people would leave unless there's, I don't think that they would leave of their own accord. So I bet there's something behind the scenes there because you're at a $2 billion company that didn't exist two years ago.

Yep. You're in the upper echelon. You're the head of finance and the human relations chief. And I, I still don't even know what the human relations chief is, but you know, I can see human resources, but human relations chief, that, that sounds like a bullshit title to me.

Right. Anyway, that means you probably have really disgustingly sick stock options. Why would you leave? That's what I want. That is a good question. So, yeah, I don't, you know, I, even if I was, if I was at Facebook, even I would stay if, you know, if I hadn't, if I answered your own question about earlier then.

Yeah. But if I hadn't vested yet, I would stay, but I'm just saying for, you know, people who got in with the, the, the F you money out of the gate, cause that's what these people would have if they stayed around long enough. And I'm sure, you know, it usually takes four years to completely vest and I don't know how long they were there, but, uh, it's just interesting that things are not that not good enough for, to keep them around.

So what else is going on over there? Yeah. And, uh, it says Lime's team grew over six times last year and leadership changes are natural in any company, especially fast growing companies like Lime. A Lime spokesperson said, we are grateful for the contributions every employee has made to Lime, including Rosemary's and Scott's.

And we are excited for the future as we continue to build out the Lime team globally with exceptional talent. Yeah. That's how that goes. So I don't know. I don't know what's going on over there. I want, we need some Lime insiders. We need some, you know, Lime whistleblowers or Lime blowers.

Lime blowers. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm sure we'll hear something soon. I'm sure. Now let's go back to BuzzFeed, BuzzFeed, which, uh, just laid off a whole ton of people. Um, a lot of people felt this was the, uh, the last shining hope of news on the internet.

And it seems to have come crashing down. Uh, there's some interesting details that have now come out about this. Now I, I figured a lot of, you know, BuzzFeed's traffic wasn't necessarily so much the news. It was their quizzes and all that sort of stuff, uh, that they have up there. You know, that's what gets the page views and pays for the news.

Um, what came out is that most of these were created for free by members of the user community, BuzzFeed community. So they didn't even pay anyone to create all these things that drove most of their traffic and made them the most money. Yep. Um, and the second highest traffic driver worldwide has been a community user in Michigan who is a teenager in college who for some reason makes dozens of quizzes every week.

So slate went and interviewed, interviewed her. Her name's Rachel McMahon. She's the 19 year old attending a grand Valley state university in Allendale, Michigan. She just got a buzz off doing it and never even thought to ask about getting paid for it. And now she's like, I think I might be the reason that there were so many layoffs.

We're all doing this for free. She still doesn't seem to mind doing it. Uh, but they did ask her, would you take a job with BuzzFeed? And she basically said no, because they're firing people left, right and center. And I don't think I would have my job for very long. Because there are more people like her out there that are still going to give them free content.

User generated content is, uh, for free. Again, I don't understand the gameplay here. It hurts you. It hurts you if you do this. Like you should get paid for your work. You should not do things for free. And these companies are, are obviously willing to take the content for free.

Wouldn't you? I worked at a company that did UGC. And what we did was we took in photos for our site for JPEG magazine. And then we've made a printed magazine that made money. And if your photos were chosen for the magazine by community votes, you got paid and you got a free subscription.

So we actually gave people money for their work. You know, the people on the website didn't get anything, but you know, that's part of the play in the game to post your photos and try and get in the magazine. And, you know, at least, I mean, we thought about that before we even launched the company.

Like people are going to get paid for their contribution and other companies are just like, why, why would you do that? Why would you do that? You know, and honestly, I have to come clean here too. I, my company met blogs. We ran that for eight years. Nobody got paid.

It was all free. It was, it was the Huffington post before the Huffington post. And, you know, we made some money off of it. Not a lot ended up costing us, you know, tens of thousands of dollars personally at the end, but you know, while it was working, it was working, but we didn't pay anybody.

That's the, that was the thing about it. And I think that was, we had a lot of internal discussions about that. And I was of the mind where we needed to make it a co-op. So when money came in, people got a fair share of the pie. Everybody gets a piece of the pie. Yeah. My, my business partner did not agree with that. So we, we butted heads over it for eight years until we finally had to just close the doors.

But I think that people that are nowadays who are doing this. Yeah. And she's like saying that, you know, she feels responsible for it. And one of the guys that got fired at Buzzfeed replied to her tweet says, you absolutely are not responsible for that. And I, I think she is partially responsible personally.

She is too. Yeah. Personally. Yep. Yeah. I'm not trying to make her feel bad, but I'm not going to try and make her feel better. That's for sure. Yep. Now, speaking of weirdness that has come to pass that I think that we predicted, oh boy, I'm worried about this health insurance.

Giant Aetna is teaming up with Apple to introduce a new wellness app called attain. Now the attain app is expected to launch in spring 2019 and its program is open to anyone covered by Aetna. So they basically realized that these watches have some health benefits if you use them correctly, which is cool.

I like that. And I, I like the idea of, of people using these things to, to help with that. However, there, this is a slippery slope here. Um, the thing that they're going to do is they're going to give you a free Apple watch series three that you will earn back by engaging in healthy behaviors like exercising or sleeping better because all this data will be sent to your insurance company.

Yep. How long is it going to be before that's a requirement for insurance? I believe we've predicted this, uh, a little while ago, maybe since, since the first health trackers came out back in the days of Fitbit. This is testing a float balloon out there with a carrot to see how it's going to go over.

That's all I think it is. And pretty soon we need to fix our insurance situation. But then again, as we've already discovered and talked about in this episode, nobody cares about their privacy. So I guess everybody's going to be fine with, uh, insurance companies tracking your every move and everything you do. Well, since I can't get insurance, I don't give a fuck.

Hey, if they want to track me so I can, can actually get insurance, I might be up for it. Right. You know, if that's, if that's the only way that I can get in now, I'll take it. I'll take it. Well, they'll probably take you that way then. Yeah, maybe. Uh, and speaking of sleep tracking and maybe they won't figure out our yoga hacks, Jason.

I'm super fit. All I do yoga all day long, man, I ran 20 miles at, you know, I basically put the thing on for the, uh, the indoor walk and just put it, hang it on the dog and let her rip, let it go, let it go.

And, uh, their sleep tracking stuff is interesting too, because I was doing a lot of sleep tracking with my Apple watch. And, uh, I think it was, I think it was just called sleep track or sleep watch was the name of the app that I was using at first. And then I got the aura ring and what I, what I found out, well, the aura ring just really hurt.

Right. It really hurt. I'm trying to sell that thing now. So if anybody wants a shiny brand new, uh, aura ring size 12, it's the second generation when it works, but my hand, it doesn't fit my hands right. So it, it actually kept me from sleeping cause I kept waking up because my hand hurt. Oops.

And I don't like sleeping with my watch on. So I had to, I just stopped sleep tracking altogether because I think it was actually making me more anxious going to bed thinking that I got to get to sleep soon. What's my resting heart rate going to be? Uh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh. And, and you know, yeah. Well, you are that personality type.

I am. I absolutely am. And, uh, I, so there's a new, uh, article in the Washington post called go to bed. Brain researchers warned that lack of sleep is a public health crisis. Oh no, Oh no. It's a crisis. Uh, it kind of is for some people, but, uh, I think it's just for people who track their sleep.

I think, I think a lot of people I know sleep just fine, sleep long enough and don't really have a problem with it. It's people who are dicking around on the internet all night and try and go to bed and can't fall asleep and are like, yeah, you know, miserable, put the damn phone down people. Yeah. Night mode. I got special lights.

You know, I go to bed at, uh, between nine and 10 every night and I wake up at four in the morning, I get, get my hours, not nearly enough as from what they say, but I wake up feeling fine now, you know? And I think I could maybe cause I'm getting older and I also don't do anything physical during the day.

I just stand here and talk. So it's not really like I'm burning a lot of calories, but, uh, it's an interesting article. I liked it. And I think, you know, for the people who do need it, because I do know some people that do not sleep nearly enough. Um, and this does affect your brain when you can't sleep and it's worth digging into.

I mean, it really does affect your brain. I remember the myth busters episode that they did about that, where they want to see what was worse, a sleep impaired driving or alcohol impaired driving and sleep impaired driving was way worse. Oh yeah. Way worse. Yeah, really is. That's why I like some of those new cars. Um, although I, the, the first one I saw it in was a Cadillac, but I guess Cadillac is not going to make cars anymore.

So, uh, you're probably not going to find it, but they have, you know, they've got built in cameras and things now that will pay attention to your eyes and make sure you're not nodding off and they'll warn you and eventually stop the car. If you start to nod off, which is good. Um, until somebody rear ends you and kills you, but, uh, you know, you take it one step at a time, I guess.

And there's another good book that I reviewed on the show before called why we sleep, unlocking the power of sleep and dreams by Matthew Walker. Highly recommend that book if you're into this territory. And, uh, Matthew Walker was also in the Jordan Harbinger show. I'll link that up in the show notes as well. But, uh, if you're having trouble sleeping and you're fuzzy and foggy all the time, read the articles, uh, read the book and get some tips and take care of it because it does, it adds up over time.

I'm just happy that like at this point now, since I'm not a coder and I don't drink Mountain Dew all day, that I can't actually go to sleep. So it does help. So we were doing all these health related stuff and I came across this article over on recode. Uh, the title is what's all this fuss about digital detox and does it really work?

Okay. First off, they don't answer the fucking question in the article. Okay. There is no discussion about whether digital detox works or not in this article at all because no one really knows yet because nobody's really done a conclusive study yet.

So once again, fuck you headline writers. I'm sick of this shit. And secondly, with things like the fireside conference that we attended or the ridiculously super expensive offline retreats they're talking about in this article that, that people go to, it's a fire festival type shit that, you know, real people could never ever go to, there's a reality to these things.

We don't need or even want to go completely dark. What we need are blinds, not dark, even an on an offline retreat that I went to with fireside conference. I still wanted to be able to text my wife, talk to my kid, my mom, a handful of friends to be able to contact me.

Maybe devices need a, these people only setting on everything. I think they probably do. It's just too difficult to set up or we just don't know how to do it yet. Or we're just too lazy to do it yet. But I don't think anybody needs to go completely off digital. You can't in this world anymore and you shouldn't even want to. You need some self-control. Yeah, that's funny.

That's funny. Self-control. Oh man. And I would like to point out Betteridge probably is shaking his head going, yeah, does it really work? No. They answered it in the headline. So good old Betteridge's laws of headlines. But I, you know, I was with you on that.

I like being offline during the day when we're walking around and doing stuff and not having to check my phone all the time and trying to engage with people more. But, you know, after dinner, I needed to talk to people. I needed to open the phone and text and say hi and let people know things were going okay.

And they didn't kill us in the woods of Canada and we weren't eaten by bears. Yeah, that's important. My wife was concerned. Yeah, I was concerned. I had a bear finder app on my phone. But yeah, I, you know, the digital detox thing, it's, it's tough because we are all addicted nowadays.

Yeah. And, you know, addiction is a tricky thing. Go on a cruise if you want to have a digital detox. Seriously. Because you can't afford to be online on a cruise. All that, what, Pogo or whatever those companies are. I did a seven day cruise around Hawaii and by day, by day three, I was shaking because I couldn't call or talk to anybody.

By day four, it passed. And then, so I had three, three days of digital quote unquote detox. It was actually really boring. Well, we are all used to having those, uh, those pleasure buttons hit all the time, aren't we? Yeah. Somebody liked my post. Ooh, somebody liked my post. Yep.

Yep. Uh, and some interesting news that I caught this morning, U S department of justice bans all internet gambling after reversing opinion just in time for the big game just in time. Yeah. Well, it doesn't go into effect just yet, but, uh, what they're trying to do here is they used to say for online gambling, you know, interstate transactions were bad.

You could not do that. But then they're like, ah, just for sports betting, just for sports betting. There is also a carve out for horse racing, but they've reversed that. So I'm wondering how this is going to work. And they're saying that people are going to be moving more towards, uh, guess what? Crypto.

Cryptocurrencies. That's right. Because there is no law. So it's a, it's an interesting read if you're interested in how internet gambling works. I'm looking at you, Jordan Cooper. I'm guessing this might have a, an effect on your livelihood with, uh, all that, whatever the hell it is you do, I said, I was, you mentioned that you didn't even know what he was talking about half the time.

I don't understand what his tweets are and I'm pretty into the sports balls. So I look, I read it and it was, you know, indecipherable is language. And I think that that's how like my parents felt when I would talk to them about computers back when, when I was a kid, like, what, what language do you speak?

Young man, are you possessed? Let us call an exorcist for you. It's like, okay. Well, yeah, I think it's going to affect Jordan. So, uh, good luck there. I have a feeling he'll be starting up a new podcast. That's all about Bitbro. Yeah.

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Visit Eero.com slash G-O-G and to check out enter code G-O-G. That's E-E-R-O dot com slash G-O-G and to check out enter code G-O-G. Security? Ha! We're back this week with Dave Bittner from the Cyber Wire podcast.

Dave is also the co-host of the Hacking Humans podcast, along with Joe Kerrigan, where they take on social engineering. What's going to scare the crap out of us today, Dave? Well, before we get to any of that, what the hell do you have against Maryland? I don't know.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Have you ever been to Maryland? Of course I've been to Maryland. I lived on the East Coast for 10 years when I was a kid. All right. Where? Where'd you live? I lived in Virginia Beach. I lived in North Carolina. Not Maryland. I lived in Pennsylvania. Not Maryland. I've never lived in Maryland. I see. I've been through Maryland. I've driven through Maryland.

I see. All right. Okay. Very good. Just wanted to check. You seem to have this ongoing, not low level, constant hostility towards this great state that I inhabit and love. This great state that I might point out has four real seasons.

This great state where they didn't try to build a city out in the middle of the desert. Hey, we had rain yesterday. It's snowing here right now as I speak. See, this is why people troll on the internet because it's so much fun to chap your dazzle.

Yeah, yeah. All right. I know. I'm a new target. Let me also remind you, Dave, that Jason has a low level hostility for everything. That's true. It's like, yeah, it's that scene in one of the Avengers movies with the Hulk.

I'm always mad. Pretty much it. Right, right. All right. All right. I've said my piece. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Don't really think that I care that much about Maryland. I honestly don't. It's okay. Right. The opposite of love is not hate.

It's indifference. Yes, exactly. That's it. That's it. All right. Fine. Fine. Fine. I think it's cute that they let you have your own state and everything. Yeah. It's nice. It's a wee. Yeah. That's great. That's great. That's just great. It's kind of like a chihuahua of states.

Uh-huh. It yips a lot. It's tiny. I mean, you get to look down on Washington, D.C. They're nothing. So you got that going for you. We do. Yeah. We do. It's nice. Yeah. Yeah. We have the same number of senators as you. You know that, right? Sixth biggest economy in the world. All right, guys, shall we talk about something that people actually care about?

Yeah. All right. Well, listen, I know you guys have covered the whole Facebook certificate kerfuffle earlier in the show, so I don't want to spend a whole lot of time with that, but there's a couple of things I wonder about here. I'm not sure if you guys touched on earlier. To me, a lot of this is sort of a shot across the bow from Apple to say- Knock it off.

Yeah, just to both Facebook and Google, you know, you do need us, and, you know, here's our walled garden, so be good. Play by our rules. We can make life difficult for you. Straighten up and fly right.

Yeah. I saw someone saying this. It's good that Tim Cook is kind of sticking with his guns here, and there is some real privacy stuff coming from Apple. There's no doubt about it now, so. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I saw someone mention this week that maybe Apple is the actual, the default regulator that Facebook needs.

I was sort of puzzling through it in my own mind this week about, you know, could it, would, I guess Facebook is too important to iOS for Apple to do something crazy like, say, knock it off or we're going to kick you off this platform. Right. But it certainly seems like there could be some sort of negotiation going on where Apple could say, if you're going to be on our platform, we need you to do that.

I don't know. It's really hard to think about because who do you guys think has the real power here? Apple. Apple. They control the actual device. Yeah. But if, if Apple kicked Facebook off the device, how many people would, would go to Android?

I think none, I think it would be a single digit percentage. You think? Because people are not going to change. I would be thrilled. I wouldn't be checking my Facebook when I'm out and about then. I would just wait until I came home and looked at it on my desktop. I would, I think it would drastically decline usage on Facebook.

I think Apple would win, when, yeah, Apple would win this fight, in my opinion. I don't think it'd be good for either of them. I think they'll both take hits, but they'll both be a bit bloody, but Apple's going to come out on top. Hmm. All right. Yeah. That's interesting. Interesting to think about. I was, I was, I could see both sides of it.

I was just trying to think who had, who needs the other one more. Right. And, uh, I, I'm not sure where I land on that, but I think, I think, I suspect you're right. I think what we're really discovering again, and we're, we've been talking about this woman's articles a lot. Um, I blanking on her name again right now, Kashmir Hill, who's doing, she's doing the thing where she's trying to avoid each one, uh, for a week.

Um, how intertwined they all are now. Um, it's, it's weird. You can't, you can't live without Amazon or Apple or Facebook or Google, and they can't live without each other. It's kind of strange. Um, yeah, it's a Mexican standoff pretty much.

Yeah. And, and I think, I think Mark Zuckerberg got a very terse call from Tim Cook last night. And I think, uh, what's his name over at Google probably got a very terse call from Tim Cook last night saying, guys, okay, you, you, you, you can see what we can do now.

And, you know, just by turning off that enterprise certificate for a day caused havoc at both of their campuses. So in the, in the, it didn't at least, you know, go to the consumer side of it because they didn't break the rules on the consumer side. Yeah. They broke the enterprise developer rules. So they were punished accordingly.

Yeah. Right. And they should have read the EULA. That's fine. Yeah. Who reads EULAs? I was surprised and pleased that Apple did this. Me too. Because I figured both of those organizations were too big to have something like this happen to them.

I, you know, but, uh, I, my, I applaud Apple for, even if this is just a shot across the bow, cause they've, they've had their certificates restored. Um, even if this was just a shot across the bow, I think this is a good message for Apple to send. Yeah. And it falls right in line with, again, Tim Cook's apparent belief in privacy.

And, uh, you know, we're not going to let you guys get away with doing this to people. So I think it was also a good message to send, not just to Facebook and Google, but to all the developers to reinforce the notion that we're serious and nobody's too big to not be held to these rules.

Yep. So, yeah, we'll stick your feet to the fire. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Well, time will tell, but interesting to see how this one plays out. Mm-hmm. The sales of Android phones to the Facebook campus have gone up exponentially today. That's right. Now, this next bit is, I thought, a really interesting story.

And I'm curious if you guys covered it this week. The Japanese government plans to hack into its citizens' IoT devices using standard passwords passwords or, like, the default passwords and, uh, basic password dictionaries so they can figure out, like, what devices are vulnerable and get in touch with the, the proper authorities to get these things fixed because they've got the Olympics coming up and they're scared of the Russians.

Mm-hmm. So, and of course- Justifiably so. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, of course the people are up in arms. Well, if the people were so up in arms, maybe they should change their goddamn password. I don't see what, yeah, I don't really see how they have a right to be up in arms about this. It's, this is all out there.

The government isn't really hacking into anything. They're just looking and going, hey, what's going on here? Well, I, yeah, I think this is fascinating. A couple thoughts came to mind for me. First of all, if this were in the U.S., you'd run afoul of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Right. By attempting to break into someone's computer without their permission. But if it's the government that's doing it, are they really? Well, that's my next point is one thing I thought of was if you want someone to be doing this, isn't the government who you want to be doing this?

Yes. You don't want to spawn this out. And I'm not saying the government's intelligence agencies. I'm just saying, you know, the government, just some organization at the government who has no real, um, no real interest in anything other than the security aspects of this.

They're not interested in what you're saying or what you're doing or what your cameras are watching or anything like that. They've just been, it's a bunch of people who've been tasked with checking this out. To me, that's a pretty good, that's a pretty good, uh, set of people to be doing this. Yeah. Um, doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

I understand why people are upset about it, but like Jason said, we'll change your passwords. Change your passwords. You're good. Yeah. Can't they just get a dump from Shodan? Just call it, call them up and say, here, here's a couple thousand bucks. Can we just get the, the database for the cameras in Japan? Let's geo filter Shodan and here's your list.

It's all out there already. Yeah. I think what they're doing though, that's a little bit, uh, more than Shodan does is they're going to be using easy to guess passwords and actually trying to get into the device. They're going to try and brute force into these devices, which I think that that's part is a little sketch, but it may be a little too far, but I mean, I can see, I can see why they're finally getting tired of this.

Yeah. As, as we should be, everybody should be. I think if they were to me, if they're going at it with hard coded passwords, that's different than trying to dictionary attack, you know, brute forcing with common passwords. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Hard coded passwords.

I think devices shouldn't have hard. No, you should be going after the manufacturers and not allowing them. Yeah. You know, the first thing any of these devices should do is require you to change the password before it will go to step two of the setup. Mm-hmm. Yeah. But that's, I mean, that's for the future.

What they're trying to do is retroactively find out what's already out there. Yeah. Right. You know? Right. Yep. Yep. And I would like to point out the Amcrest cameras that, uh, I talked about, you weren't here, Dave. I talked about them with Joe Kerrigan. And those, um, those require you to change your admin password the first time you log in.

Ah, excellent. Yeah. They're, I mean, they're, they're pretty well done cameras and you can, you know, you can FTP your files, you can put them on different services, you can put them on your NAS if you want. And so that's, those are the cameras that we talked about that, uh, you definitely want if you want to have a little more control over where your video is going.

Mm-hmm. And, uh, I, I do like them. I do like them. The only thing I didn't like about them was the field of view is too narrow. So that's why I went with my other ones. But from a technical aspect, I think those Amcrest cameras are fine. If you like really terrible user interfaces as well. That's a checkbox.

I'm really selling them out there. People who are out there shopping, you know, I really, yeah, what I really want is a horrible user interface. Well, that's, so, so they're for windows users. Okay. That's all. They're just not for Mac users. There you go. I think we can all agree on that. Yes.

There you go. Okay. We'll see. We'll see how this goes with, uh, the Japanese. But I think if it's, if it is a success in Japan, maybe other countries will get on the bandwagon. If only we had a cyber department. If only we had the internet police.

Where are the internet police? Well, apparently it's Apple these days. Speaking of the internet police, our next story, uh, has to do with the authorities shutting down the exdetic marketplace. Right. It's a nice little play on words, I guess. Um, so this was an online marketplace and folks would buy access to hack servers.

Uh, and they actually arrested some folks in Ukraine and, um, says they've been around since 2014, but really got to be widely known in 2016 after a report came out from Kaspersky. And this was, uh, sort of a, an invitation only marketplace where folks could buy and sell access to hack servers all over the world, pretty inexpensively.

And, um, the FBI, along with the, several of their pals overseas, seize the domain, shut down the servers. So check one off for the good guys here. Yay. Yeah, no, this is a good, this is a good thing. I like putting in some good news every now and again. Yeah. Nice.

And that ties in nicely to our next story, which is we're coming for you. The global police warn about DDoS attack buyers. And this comes from Europol, who is, uh, actually one of, I guess, I guess they're going to be the internet police force for a little bit.

Uh, they've got the, they've got the user list from webstressor.org and which was shut down a while ago, but, uh, they've gone after a couple of people already and arrested them. But, uh, they say a further 400 users of the service are now being targeted by the NCA and partners.

So this is going to be interesting if these guys in the NCA is a UK's national crime agency. Right. Right. And they're going to be going after people who actually bought DDoS attacks from webstressor. Yeah. And so hopefully the people who also, you know, bought the lists from exdetic will get, you know, get their comeuppance too.

Yeah. This is sort of, uh, I guess to use an analogy, um, if webstressor was the person manufacturing the heroin, uh, now they're going, they, they shut that, that part of the food chain down and now they're going after the, the, well, not the users, the dealers, dealers, I suppose.

The next level down, um, the folks who are out there buying the services to, uh, to stress out these, to, well, to DDoS people. And, um, so they're going down to the next level. And, and I suppose there's a lot of people sweating bullets because they probably thought enough time had passed since they took down the webstressor that, uh, they were going to be okay.

But no, that seems like they were just building their case. Here's what's, here's, what's really kind of scary. So they're going after 400 users, right? Yep. Webstressor had 151,000 registered users. Yeah. That's a lot of people looking to DDoS somebody.

That's a lot of people. And I'm just wondering if when, when they count registered users, maybe it's the people who, not the people who actually paid for the DDoS, but people who are actually putting up servers to rent for the DDoS. So maybe that's the next round, you know, 151,000 people.

That's a lot. You're going to need a lot of cops. You're going to need a lot of cops for that. That is, it does seem like a high number. And, but it's, it's interesting to see both this story and the one before how we're sort of chipping away at these things and trying to make these things less profitable and, uh, just put a little pause in the folks who are doing this, make them think twice that they're not immune folks from around the world might come after them.

That's good. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, all they're going to do is move to Russia where nobody cares. You know, there's that, there's that, there is that. So I ran across this over and gadget and it's just, it, it warmed the cockles of my heart. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

Um, yeah, it's, it's fun. Oh yeah. It's how Huawei, um, planned international robot, robot espionage via email. Uh, as and gadget points out, it's 1% James Bond, 99% Mr. Bean. Right. And as you go through and read these bumbling corporate tinged emails that, uh, basically talk about how they're going to steal all this data.

It's kind of hilarious. It really is. It really is. Like they're, well, and what I love, first of all, they're trying to steal the information from about, about a robot named Tappy. That's, that's a great place for this all to begin. Clippy's big brother.

Yeah. And, but the, the two sides of this, you have the very serious folks from the mothership and then these poor saps who are on location, who are just sort of desperately communicating back and saying, please stop. We can't. No, we need you to go. We need you to go in and steal.

It's great. They refuse to provide us the details of robot hardware and software specifications responses. This is a kindly reminder for the information that we need. Can you please go get it? But they're not giving it to us, but we need it. Yeah. You don't understand.

They're really mad at us. They're really mad at us. Oh, it just brightened my whole day reading through those. I was just so wonderful seeing basically attempts at robbery in corporate ease. So good. I know. I was reading this this morning. I had my muffin and my coffee and had my iPad and I'm scrolling through them.

And when it got to the part where they stole the robot's arm, I almost blew coffee out of my nose. We've got the arm. We've got the arm. And I could just see them like trying to like abscond with it in the night, like under there. Is that an arm in your coat?

Or are you just happy to see me? I have no arm. Oh, this arm. Oh, this arm. This thing. No, this is not from Tappy. This is from Tippy. Tippy. And somebody goes in to check on Tippy and he's missing his arm. Or Tappy.

Yeah. Oh, we said we took it by mistake. Yeah. Oh. Oops. Oops. Was that wrong? Should I not have done that? Was that wrong? Oh, so good.

So good. So good. Dignities that Tappy the robot had to suffer at the hands of these people. Yeah. Well, this last story here is another kind of fun, kind of interesting, but also a little disturbing one. This is about smart light bulbs and how even if you discard a smart light bulb, it may have your Wi-Fi password stored on it in the clear.

What? Yeah. Yeah. I saw an article about how people are theoretically going around in people's dumpsters looking for them just so they can get Wi-Fi credentials. Yep. Yep. Wow. That's a new type of war driving. Yep. Yeah. I mean, I don't know how, first of all, how often do you throw away a light bulb?

And LED light bulbs are even, well, they lie and they say they last forever and they do not last forever. They don't even come close. No, they do not. They fail. They fail quite a lot. But I get, what I'm, my point is the odds of you finding a light bulb in someone's garbage is probably pretty low.

But it's just one of those things to be thoughtful about and careful about that when you're throwing these things away, maybe hit it with a hammer or something before you do. Because what they found was the hardware inside of this LED bulb just stored the Wi-Fi credentials in plain text, unencrypted.

Yep. There you go. And it's been updated since then. It never ceases to amaze. Yeah. The manufacturer has since pushed out, or not pushed out, made available an update. So, because we all update the firmware on our LED light bulbs regularly, right?

What are you doing this weekend, honey? Well, I've got to update all our light bulbs. Still downloading. Right. Exactly. Why are we sitting in the dark? I can't find the USB port. There's no light. Have you tried rebooting it? Yeah. So, there's that.

So, I thought that was a fun one. But it's the shape of things to come, right? Yep. Yes, it is. All these new vulnerabilities we hadn't thought about before. Oh, we thought about them. Just the people who made the stuff didn't. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. The we did. The collective we, the three here on the show.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe we should go into the light bulb manufacturing business. There you go. And make millions. Millions. The most secure light bulb you've ever seen in your life. It has nothing in it. I'm going back to dumb light bulbs. I love it when, well, I both love it and hate it when an idea that I had becomes an actual retail product.

Has that ever happened to you? Oh, Jesus Christ. I would have been millionaires many times over from doing this show if we just weren't so damn lazy. Yeah, exactly. I had an idea years ago when LED lights were brand new. I thought someone needed to make an LED bulb that as you dimmed it, the color temperature got warmer like a regular incandescent bulb.

Mm-hmm. Because one of the problems with LED bulbs was as you dimmed them that less light came out, but they still stayed the same color temperature. And that just felt weird because you're used to bulbs getting warmer as you dim them. Well, sure enough, I was in the Home Depot recently and you can buy bulbs that as you dim them, the color temperature changes to be warmer.

I feel both vindicated and angry that I didn't jump on this patent earlier. It is a very good idea. I'm going to have to go buy some of those. I will first make sure that they don't store my Wi-Fi in plain text. Yeah, those leak your credit card details when you turn them down.

Yeah. Depending on the brightness, it depends on what data it's leaking out to the world. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And for some reason, the manufacturers decided to store all this data. So now they really know I like a nice, warm color profile. I don't know what they're going to do with that information, but they've collected it and it's an open database somewhere.

Every ad that you see is going to be in that color palette from now on when you go around the web. Wow. All right, gentlemen, that's what we have this week. I will talk to you guys next time. I'm not as depressed as I normally am at the end of this. It's true.

It's true. Not so much bad news this week, huh? We had a fun robot. We had fun light bulbs. We didn't talk too much about Facebook. Smacking people. Yeah. No, this was a pretty good one. This is a pretty good one. Chalk it up as a win. We haven't had one in a while. That's right. That's right.

Don't get used to it. Yeah. No, no. It'll swing back the other way. It always does. But we'll take it when we can get it. We'll see what Facebook does for us next week. Cups and doodads. Brian, I checked out the Brave browser this week.

Didn't one of our listeners yell at us that we should be using this one? Yeah, I think so. And I gave it a shot because I ran across it and did a little digging on it. And I'm like, I checked it because, of course, I wanted to make fun of it because there was an article about it, you know, cracking open the Bitcoin side of things.

I'm sorry, their cryptocurrency called the Bat. They have the Bat and the blockchain and all that stuff. So I'm like, OK, let's check it out. See, I just clicked I clicked and went to the home page and I'm already so turned off by this browser. I hate their their marketing. I can't stand it.

Oh, the hipster. You are not a product hipster chick with glasses. And then the other guys have UPC codes on their heads. Yeah. OK, well, let me know how it actually works here. But they're on a mission to fix the web, Brian. OK, yeah, yeah, it's got a built in ad blocker.

So I was checking on that. But you can earn rewards and give back to your favorite publishers, which means that they have a built in token system into the browser. So it's kind of like Flatter built into the browser. OK, and well, that's a nice idea. But do you trust this browser enough to give them money?

No, here's the thing. It's all based on their blockchain tokens. Oh, God. So you can earn you can earn bats or you can buy bats, of course, because that's how things go. And of course, there are zero publishers that are signed up to take this at this point.

You know, of course. Yeah, it does. It does work with. Well, here, let me let me run through the I got I got a list here for you. OK, the downside is no syncing across computers. So there's no built in sync. So if you have it on two computers, yeah, I'm already out. Yeah, exactly. It is fast as hell, though.

And it does use Chrome extensions so you can get everything to work. If you only have one computer, it's fine. So for the other downside is, of course, blockchain and that it doesn't have a decent ad blocker. I'll give it that. OK, all right. Another downside, it doesn't import from Opera natively.

You have to export and import. But all the other browsers, you can just do a straight import. OK, well, Opera is kind of a fringe browser. Yeah, I mean, it took me like a minute to do that. Yeah. Another the upside of the import, though, it's the only browser that I've ever used an import function on that imported the bookmarks bar properly.

Oh, really? Yeah. The first time it's never worked. Yeah. I've always had to rebuild my bookmarks bar. It was always annoying. Yeah. It worked perfectly on that. So they fixed that downside. This is a big downside. Brendan Eich is the founder. OK. He's the asshole that wrote JavaScript that I almost got in a fistfight with at a Mozilla conference.

And now I think I should have done it because of all the pain and suffering JavaScript has brought to the world. I agree with that. Yep. I mean, not necessarily hitting him, but the pain and suffering. Yeah. Yeah. No. And this was the first time that he was demoing JavaScript to web developers. And it was a Tetris thing that he made, and he was just a dick to everybody around him.

And then I was, of course, Microsoft was buying the beer that night, and it was free, so there was much beer to be had. And my friend actually had to, like, drag me out of the place before I decked him because he was such a snot. He was such a snot. So anyway, it's not ready for use as a primetime full browser.

Not yet. Out of the box, it's decent. The no syncing across computers and the bat thing, the bat's stupid. And the interesting thing is when I signed up and turned on the bat, it turned on auto-contribute immediately, which I'm like, okay, I've got no bat to contribute, but there's also no publishers out there who want it.

So it doesn't really matter. You're kind of screaming into the void at this point. I like the idea of being able to automatically deal with publishers, and that's what Flatter was supposed to be. But it didn't really work. Yeah, I don't know. It's just, I don't know.

And the best part is they funded the entire company on an ICO. Oh, no. Yeah, they raised, like, $32 million or $37 million in an ICO, and that pretty much funded the company. God, I can't believe this stuff is still going on. What a crazy world we're living in.

It was a couple years ago. You know what? This guy should give up on the browser and just focus on the bat. Like, do a thing. Make a plug-in for all the different browsers. Screw doing your own browser, because that is something that we need out there. Not necessarily the way he's doing it, and they're doing it right now, but we need a Flatter.

We desperately need something like that to reach critical mass and to get people using it. Yeah, I think what really should happen is Patreon should buy Flatter, merge it all in, because they've got a couple other things they bought. They bought kit.com, which is a cool little site that I have little kit pages for podcast gear and stuff like that.

And then really focus on the technology to build in, to get a simple extension for all of the different browsers, and just pop it in. So you can Patreon, you can Flatter, you can, you know, all the different types of contributions that you can give should be under one roof, I think, because so far I'm trusting Patreon, but I know a lot of people don't.

They've made some mistakes. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, it's a step in the right direction, but I think it's half a step in the right direction, I guess. And while we're just here, I want to mention this really quick, because I know some people are waiting to hear from us about it.

We still don't really know what's going on with private internet access. We're going to find out. We'll get back to you all. Yeah, because the article that you posted, Brian, was from April of last year. It's not a, it wasn't a new thing. So we're, we're trying to find out what the hell's going on.

Yep. And Microsoft is finally dropping the hammer. They're saying no more old Skype for you. If you're on a PC, you are being forced to upgrade to version eight, but you can backgrade to an older version. They're only putting this, like, you must upgrade on the latest old version, like 7.4, but you can go back to a version of 7.3 and then still use it.

But you have to find it from a download site. But at least the article in Bleeping Computer actually tells you how to check the MD5 hash to make sure you actually get an official one that's not, has been tampered with, with, you know, crypto miners or ransomware or any of the other.

It's bat country. So this is an interesting one, but I don't know how they're going to do this on the Mac, because I still know people who will not upgrade to eight because they still have their version of seven. And I mean, I upgraded to eight because I use stuff with Ecamm's call recorder and I didn't need it to screw up.

Yep. Yep. But man, it's Skype eight. What the hell is that thing? I don't know. It doesn't work. I don't know. It doesn't. It's horrible. Brick-a-brick.

I stumbled across a band that I don't know how I feel about them. I'm wildly amused. Oakley Doakley, a Simpsons-inspired metal band, is coming to Southern Diddley, California for three doodly shows. I almost feel like I need to go see these guys.

So they dress up like Ned from The Simpsons. The band members Head Ned, Dread Ned, synth player Zed Ned, guitarist Shred Ned, bassist Bed Ned, who apparently likes to sleep in. They encourage venues they play to offer drinks like the white wine spritzers or Flaming Moe's, especially at the house at Moe's Tavern.

And they're also delighted when fans show up dressed as Ned. They call them bonus Neds or any other character from The Simpsons. I think I need to go as the, I'm going to dress up as the Ned Pirate Roberts. That'll be it. Oh, that'd be nice. So, yeah, it's, I don't know how I feel.

I, I'm glad that they exist in the world. I'll put it that way. I, I went to go read the article, but I couldn't read it because you have to subscribe or something. And, uh, but I did, I did turn off their blur and then they just had junk lorem ipsum underneath the blur. But I did get to the, the main video for white wine spritzer.

Yes. I watched the video for white wine spritzer. I love these guys. Right? I love these guys. I mean, I'm generally not in on joke bands anymore, you know, cause I'm not Dr. Demento and Weird Al Yankovic and 13 years old, but this is pretty good.

This is, this put a smile on my face. I gotta say. Yeah. But they do need to do the, the Ned Pirate Roberts. That would be good. Uh, so thank you for that one. It was, it was very good. Uh, I found an article over at the New Yorker called the seductiveness of instant nostalgia.

Did you get a chance to read this one? I did. What do you think about this? Because it's an article about how people are basically making algorithms to give you that little nostalgia boost every day and products that are their only reason is to send you shit that you did 10 years ago or five years ago.

That's their only thing for throwback Thursdays and all that sort of stuff. Um, you know, it's natural human nature to do this. It's just so much easier now than it ever was before. Right. And it's become commodified and it's become a product for these companies that have so much data about us already. Yeah.

The thing about it that gets me though, is these third party companies that are out there doing it because what you're doing is you're giving them access to your entire history across multiple services. Yep. Uh, what, uh, what privacy, you know, protections do they have in place?

None. I'm guessing. I mean, again, as we're finding out through this episode, nobody cares, but us. That's true. Yeah. Cause you look at time hop and time hop came out of one of my most hated companies in the world for square and it was, you know, just an easy thing for them to do.

And then they turned it into a little company and then off to the races. But, uh, I thought it was an interesting read on how, you know, it's, it's kind of a, it's a nostalgia hack. It is an algorithmically driven nostalgia hack to get people to just, you know, Oh, that's what I was doing.

You know, I don't, it's cheap content. It's cheap content. Yeah. Yeah. It's recycling and repurposing content and selling it back to you and hoping that you'll share it and put in more things and keep going everywhere for all this stuff. It may, I'm not surprised it exists and, and I'm not surprised that it's popular.

It's part of human nature. I mean, I personally like some of the spot Spotify ones, at least as a curiosity, like, you know, top songs of the year that for you, um, time capsules based on date of birth, create a collection of songs that are, you know, time specific, but I'm such a weirdo with my music and like none of it applies to me, but, uh, it's cute.

It's fun. It's, it's just the worry is where is this data going and who are we giving it to and et cetera. Et cetera, et cetera. I only worry about that with the third party ones like time hop. Yeah. You know, third party ones. Spotify already has Spotify has this data on. Yeah. I've been using Spotify. They know, they know everything about me and they're keeping it to themselves in theory.

In theory. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's an engagement hook for them to keep you to come back to the site. Exactly. Now, I mean, I like it when it's built into something like Apple photos, which is, you know, your stuff is on your drive and it's just built into the, the actual system, except the part, the part where Apple photos.

And you have to use Apple photos for it because Apple photos is terrible. Yes, it is. Uh, I can't use it. I have to use it to sync my iCloud photos for my phone just so I can, you know, not be paranoid that I'm going to lose everything before a sync. Yeah. Um, but now see what we sync on, on my wife's iPad is synced with her phone for photos and, and the iPad is great for watching the little photo things that they come up with.

And they're really good. Like, you know, Christmas memories and all that sort of stuff. My kid loves just sitting and watching those. So I'm into it. It's, it's, it's, I don't mind these algorithmic things. Sometimes it's just, you want to know who's getting what. Exactly. Yeah. So I would, I would skip time hop, but it's an interesting article.

It's not long. Definitely check it out. Uh, it's in the New Yorker and I went down the rabbit hole last night, uh, on George Carlin and I found two videos that I wanted to pull out and put in the show notes. One is called, uh, Oh, it's, it's just called George Carlin, the champion of dirty words, but he's talking about the word fuck.

It is a classic, classic bit. And he's, it's the young George Carlin when he was spunky. Uh, the other bit is about dumb Americans. And this is the old George Carlin, the crotchety George Carlin, and half of this could have been straight from our show.

And I'm sure we probably stole some of it from him because it is really, really good. Really, really good. I'm going to, I'm going to leave these in the brick of rack in the show notes. So I recommend if you need somebody to yell, fuck at you a lot and, or call you dumb and fat, George Carlin is the man to do it.

So if you want to break from reality, go check these out. Gung Hei Fat Choi. Uh, by the time this show comes out, which will be Monday, that means, uh, Tuesday, the day after is Chinese New Year. So happy Chinese New Year.

That is a, uh, something we celebrate in our household here. So looking forward to that. And also by the time you hear this, the Rams will hopefully have won the Superbowl. Go Rams. Uh, I, I, I'm going to watch the puppy bowl, but, uh, what is it the Chinese year of? What are we going into? Uh, I believe it's the year of the pig. Okay.

In fact, I know it's the year of the pig because I had to make a shirt for my kid. So there's, there's a hint. Yeah. Until next time, I'm Brian Gilman. 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. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 317. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, and get links to stuff we like. And if you're listening to this in the overcast player, please press the little star next to the episode so we can get some credit.

We love it. Now, stay grumpy. Say what you want about America, land of the free, home of the brave. We got some dumb-ass motherfuckers floating around this country. Dumb-ass motherfuckers. You know? Yeah. Now, obviously, that doesn't include this audience.

I understand that. You seem intelligent and perceptive, but the rest of them, holy jumping fucking shitballs. Dumber than a second coat of paint.

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