340: Spoiler Alert, Everyone Dies

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. Man, people did not like it when I was in a mood last week. They didn't? I saw only positive feedback. Oh, I got some negatives. I got a few negatives. I haven't actually seen any positives. If you got some, send it my way. There are the Twitters. Okay. Now I have to go check those out because I could use a pick-me-up.

A total rarity for Twitter is there's some positive feedback. Of course. And the fact that I'm the one that's on there all the time and I didn't see it is also ironic. Yes. So I found this over at the MIT Media Review. There is an article about how to hide from the AI surveillance state with a color printout.

Right. And some Belgian researchers have figured out a way to print out basically like a crowd scene that you can have on your shirt. They're put in front of you that will actually stop the YOLO. Like the, yes, I know. We talked about that before.

The open source object recognition system, YOLO V2, and stop them from actually picking you up as a person. Right. So after reading this, I'm thinking, my God, we truly live in a Gibsonian world right now. We kind of do. You know, and somebody's going to make a lot of money making hoodies with patterns and all of that.

And wasn't there, I seem to remember a while back, and I believe it was friend of the show, Sean Bonner, that brought it to our attention. Wasn't there a pair of glasses that you could wear that actually stopped security cameras from being able to see your face? There's been some of that. I know that we've blue skied on the show, and I thought, you know, just really bright, reflective LEDs and things like that in glasses would do it.

Yeah, just pretend you're in the band Orbital. Yeah, exactly. Or just a big turtleneck that would just, you know, shoot IR light up. So if you're at nighttime, you can't see it. There's a lot of that stuff out there. But I was specifically thinking when I saw this about the third book in the Blue Ant series from William Gibson, where he had the world's ugliest T-shirt that would remove you from all security cameras.

It would actually, like, erase you, which is kind of cool. But if you haven't read the Blue Ant series from William Gibson, it's Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, and Zero History. Everybody should read those. They're fantastic. I love them to death. And as I was going through it today, I'm thinking, man, I should reread those. That would be fun.

I never got past Pattern Recognition. Really? I don't know why. I read and enjoyed Pattern Recognition. And William Gibson is always someone I forget about as I'm going on to Amazon.com and looking for something new to read. I don't know why I have some weird mental Amazon block on William Gibson.

Yeah, well, I think part of it is because he keeps announcing a book on Amazon that keeps getting pushed out by years. That's true. His latest book has been pushed out so far, it's ridiculous. I don't even know when it's coming now. But Pattern Recognition is my favorite of the bunch. Spook Country comes in at third and Zero History comes in at second.

But they're all fantastic. I really, really enjoyed them. But yeah, Pattern Recognition is a classic. And when I was researching this, I came across Adam R. Harvey's work. And he's an artist who does a lot of stuff with surveillance and, you know, thwarting surveillance.

He's got this really cool project that he did where you had like this little GPS spoofer that you could keep next to your phone. And it would check you in at the pools of the rich and famous, like all of the tech bros, you know, Eric Schmidt, Jeff Bezos and things like that.

So you could check in at their pool. It was pretty funny. That's funny. It was very funny. What's not funny, though, is how Amazon is tracking their workers. Seems like they've got some A-machine eye learning, however they're doing it. But some documents that The Verge got were fairly interesting.

They have a really high turnover rate because they have these automated systems that make sure people are just going and going and going. Mark Schnell! Schnell! Arriba! Andale! It would be more appropriate, probably. But yeah, it's a really interesting thing.

Like this one warehouse outside Baltimore that has about 2,500 full-time employees, they had a turnover rate of 300 full-time employees from August 2017 to 2018. Which is a lot. That's quite a lot. That's a decent turnover rate. But it turns out it's like, yeah, hey, you can't tow the line.

You can't work at Amazon. So this is what's going to be happening in the future. So get used to it. Yeah. Remember when we thought about these things when we would blue sky? I love that term. So now that you used it, game on. When we were blue sky in these things as kids, when we saw where things were going, when we were realizing what was going on with technology, the idea, at least in my mind, and I'm assuming yours

as well because you and I seem very simpatico with our initial exuberance and misplaced hope for the future. Yeah, misplaced hope. The worst Star Wars movie. Yeah, that's true. When we thought about these sorts of things, it was kind of it was more to reward people.

It was like, oh, we would be able to see who the best employees are and who's actually really providing value and functioning. And we can promote them and give them raises for the value that they're providing to the company. But the reality of these tools is that they're being used to fire people.

We were thinking utopian and it's gone the other way around. Yes. Yes. Going above and beyond. Yes. We would be able to find out who went above and beyond and reward them. You're fired. You're fired. That's the world we live in now. You're fired. Yes. Welcome to work. You're fired. Oh, way to go, Amazon.

And this is only going to get worse because the way it works with these algorithms, I'm sure, is the harder the people work, the baseline for the bottom line goes up, goes up exactly because they're talking about people like skipping pee breaks. Even, you know, we've heard about people wearing diapers to work at Amazon, and that is just gross.

I don't want to I don't want to have that vision in my head of whoever packed my I don't want to worry about the boxes I'm picking up that they have fecal matter on them. Oh, maybe that's a new study we can do. How much poop is on Amazon Prime? Yes. We can see. Poop on Prime. Yeah. Poop on Prime.

I know that we have enough labs in San Francisco because they're used to dealing with man poo. Maybe we can just send them up to San Francisco. I think they're flooded. Oh, yes, they are. Well, Facebook is back in the news. Three privacy investigations in one single day. Wow. That's impressive.

Yeah. Irish Data Protection Authority is looking into the breach of hundreds of millions of Facebook and Instagram user passwords that were stored in plain text on its servers. Canadian authorities confirmed that the beleaguered social network giant broke its strict privacy laws. And that's number two. And the last one is going into this 1.5 million user email addresses that they were scraping and illegally looking at people's contact lists when they weren't given permission to.

Right. So good day at Facebook. You want to know my problem with this article? I know exactly. And with Facebook in general. Yeah. I think it's the last sentence in the article. Well, let's start with the beleaguered social network. Yeah, beleaguered way he can ask. Except for the fact that there is the last sentence in the article.

You might think a trifecta of terrible news would be crushing for the beleaguered social network. But its stock is up by 6% at market close, adding some $40 billion to its value. And we'll talk more about those billions numbers in a little bit. Yes, we will. In the news.

Our good friend Jack Dorsey from Twitter met with the president of the United States to talk about the health of Twitter's public discourse. Talk about an irony sandwich right there. I can't think of two people less qualified to have this discussion.

Exactly. Oh, so this is an article over at TechCrunch, but I'm only going to read the update. Dorsey tweeted at Trump, thanking him for the conversation. Twitter is here to serve the entire public conversation, and we intend to make it healthier and more civil, Dorsey wrote. Thanks for the discussion about that.

Washington Post reports Trump complained that the company unjustly limited or removed some of his followers in his session with the Twitter CEO. In fact, Trump was just tweeting about that earlier in the day. So this whole thing is he brought in the CEO of a major tech company to say, way am I losing followers?

Yeah, that's it. Well, because you're a douchebag. Honestly, you've broken the terms of service and you shouldn't even be on it. Yeah. And that's the other thing, because I wonder if they talked about the new scheme that Twitter's talked about saying, you know, we're going to flag fake news from Donald Trump when he actually posted.

I wonder if Jack had the cojones to actually talk about that in the meeting. I'm guessing no. Yeah. And in sad news, Slack has filed to go public. Well, it was fun while it lasted. Yeah. So and of course, of course, they reported one hundred and thirty eight point nine million dollars in losses on revenue of four hundred and point six million dollars.

So that is the that is the thing. If you lose money, you can go public. Well, on the upside for us, Jason, I know you're not on Facebook anymore, and I'm kind of tasked with managing the Grumpy Old Geeks Facebook account. If we're done with Slack, we keep getting notifications that they would like us to come build a common culture across Grumpy Old Geeks by using Workplace by Facebook.

Oh, great. Great. I've actually stepped back from Slack quite a bit this last week because it turns out Slack is just as toxic as everything else was if you don't treat it properly. Right. And being always on, always expected to reply all the time, it's toxic.

And I'm just pushing back against Slack. You know, not everybody needs to get a hold of me 24 seven. That's what the telephone's for. If there's a problem, call me. Otherwise, I'll be off doing my job that I'm supposed to be doing, but not sitting there bitching and moaning and chattering and doing other shit.

It's like I've gotten so much more done this week by just taking three hour breaks, just completely turning off Slack this week than I have in the past six months. So I'm like, OK, we've identified another problem here with the always on society we have. Now, let's go back to what we discussed at the intro segment.

The fact that Facebook added 40 billion in value in one day. Yep. One day. One day when they were hit with three separate lawsuits. Yes. Well, they are also expected to be fined up to five billion dollars by the Federal Trade Commission for privacy violations. This penalty would be a record by the agency against a tech company and a sign that the United States is willing to punish big tech companies.

However, however, the social network disclosed the amount in its quarterly financial results, saying it estimated a one time charge of three to five billion in connection with an ongoing inquiry by the FTC. And so they've they've basically built it in. It's about the cost of their coffee, because when you make 40 billion in one day, five billion, that would be so much.

Yeah, so much. It's OK. So that will they'll pay their fines and the fines, as we've talked about so often on this show. And we'll probably talk about it again with Bittner in the security segment. The fines are not enough. And some lawmakers are noticing that there is a representative, David Cicilline, a Democrat from Rhode Island, who said that a fine in the low billions of dollars would amount to a slap on the wrist for Facebook and that Congress needs to act.

Facebook must be held accountable, not just by fines, but also by far reaching reforms in management, privacy practices and culture, said Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat of Connecticut, over a tweet. Of course, a tweet. Yes. So we'll see. I mean, you know, five billion is the most that the FTC has ever done, but we know it's not enough.

It's not enough for these companies. Here's the deal, though. I mean, at least we're getting something out of them. If they're not going to pay taxes, at least we can find them. Yeah. We'll get something out of them. We're getting the money out somehow. That's right. Seriously. So there we go. But I think Facebook has a larger problem that is looming.

And as we've always said, all of this has happened before. All of it will happen again. Their acquisition of Instagram is having some growing pains as people are growing up and the next generation is coming in. Instagram has grown to over more than one billion monthly users.

And it's ushered in a very particular look. I just love this article over at the Atlantic because all they do is crap on millennials. It's quite funny. Bright walls, artfully arranged lattes and avocado toast and millennial pink everything with all that carefully staged, color corrected, glossy looking aesthetic. Photos that play into these trends perform so well on Instagram that the look became synonymous with the platform itself, then seeped into the broader world.

Even if you don't use it, you've undoubtedly encountered Instagram walls everywhere. They are all over the place here in Santa Monica and Venice. Pop up experiences like the Museum of Ice Cream or brightly patterned restaurant bathrooms just made to be photographed. Now, no one has capitalized on this better than influencers, your Kardashians and all of that sort.

And all these people we don't even know that somehow managed to make money. Some of the smarter ones made thousands of dollars on photo presets that take anyone's pictures and make them look Instagrammy. Instagrammy. That's what I called my grandmother. Hey, Instagrammy. Instagrammy. Just add water.

Anyways, but the thing is, the 15-year-olds and the younger generations that are coming up now are over it. They're done. Avocado toast and posts on the beach. It's so generic and played out at this point. You can Photoshop any girl into that background and it will be the exact same post, said Claire, a 15-year-old who has to be referred by a pseudonym because of her age.

It's not cool anymore to be manufactured. So we have a whole group of younger influencers that are basically rejecting all this filtered, cultured, curated feeds. They're posting crappier pictures just using their phone. No more big cameras. They're not worried about lighting. They're posting the same content multiple times because who cares?

And yeah, so the old rules of Instagram are gone. New rules are coming in. And I would not be surprised to find out that the millennials and younger people will find a newer app to go to that isn't full of these older millennials. So maybe film will come back.

No photos. You know, just do that. Let's bring film back. We'll see. So Matt Klein, a cultural strategist at the consultancy Sparks and Honey, also says he's seen a gradual shift away from the rainbow-colored pre-planned photos that dominated the platform. We all know the jig is up, he says. We've all participated in those staged photos.

Not all of us. We all know the stress and anxiety it takes and we can see through it. Culture is a pendulum and the pendulum is swinging. That's not to say everyone's going to stop posting perfect photos, but the energy is shifting. Okay. Who cares? A lot of people do, just not us.

Yeah. I found an article over on The New Yorker called A History of the Influencer from Shakespeare to Instagram. Oh, this is a good article. Did you get a chance to read this one? I did. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Yeah. The elusive quality of influence, the difficulty we encounter when we try to identify its sources or measure its effects, is equally destabilizing.

Influence works best when it's wielded obscurely in the shadows and behind the scenes, and this has clear social consequences for a society engaged in building a digital influence economy. I love this. I love this. Based on available evidence, it seems that we can't construct an influence economy without stoking a culture of skepticism and paranoia.

The fear of being influenced affects our sense of reality and our ability to trust our own judgments about what is true. That right there sums it all up. Is our world right now. In a nutshell. And it isn't just influencers. It's, well, it's our president.

It's everybody. It's everybody. This is the way things have gone, and I'm not cool with it. Yeah, yeah. It's the, our world is becoming more Machiavellian than people actually give it credit for, because a lot of this stuff is just meant to get you to buy some shit.

Not to say that it always wasn't, but the degree of control and, and the fact that we see the sausage being made and we understand it now is, is the true super difference. And it's so hyperinflated and there's so much more of it. Um, you know, I'm not going to sit here and pretend that this is a brand new thing that, because record labels have been doing this since the sixties.

I mean, people have been doing, you know, people have been doing this forever. It's just, we've hit this like critical mass of it. And we're also aware of it and it wears us down. I mean, episode one of this show, we talked about how do you make money on the internet? You sell a course to teach people on how to make money on the internet.

Yes. And this whole influencer economy thing is now people have figured out that all of the tricks don't work anymore. So they sell courses on how to be an Instagram influencer and how to get fake followers and how to really ramp shit up. And it's, it doesn't work. It's broken. It is a broken system.

And, you know, I guess kudos to the people that made the money, but you're all a bunch of douches. In my book. But anyway, speaking of at least some whack-a-mole going on here, Facebook has sued Instagram bot sellers in New Zealand. Yeah.

These guys down there, there's three guys, Arend, Nolan, Leon Hedges, and David Passanen spent years with bot farms selling their, you know, ill-gotten wares for fake likes and fake followers and things like that. And Facebook is actually finally going after them.

Now, there are a lot of these guys out there. Oh, yeah. A lot. This is, I think this is PR. I really think this is just a PR spin saying, hey, look, we're trying guys. Because I know so many people that are buying hundreds of thousands of Facebook followers and Twitter followers and Instagram followers, fake engagement and all this bullshit.

And at the end of the day, it's just a mess. It's such a mess. And the way that Instagram could fix this right now is just turn off your fucking API and you're done. You know, turn off the Instagram API. Guess what?

Then nobody can programmatically game your system. That's it. Yes. Why would they do that? Then they'd lose money. Yeah. Of course, because that one billion engaged users every month would probably go down to like maybe 200 million, 250 million. Mm-hmm. Because I know people that have over a million followers that are all fake.

It is in Twitter's and it's in every social network's vested interest to have these fake accounts. It makes them money. It keeps the shareholders happy because shareholders need to see growth. And if there's no growth with, you know, active monthly users, the amus, then they're going to, you know, their market share is going to tank.

And then they're going to be like, oh, it's a fading trend. So fake people are just as good as real people to these social networks. So that's why I look at this and I'm like, this is just an olive branch to the shareholders to say, look, we're trying, you know, but they're really not. They're really, really not.

Well, keeping in the influencer theme that we're kind of running with right now and tying this into something that you and I talk about all the time, which is no business plan and hope to sell out. And if you don't, everything falls apart. There's a really good story on Recode about a company going through this right now, the digital media lifestyle brand Brit & Co.

They're a buzzy digital media brand for millennial woman who happened to be laying off most of its employees after an acquisition failed to pan out. CEO Brit Morin, a prominent Silicon Valley executive who is also the figurehead at the core of the site's brand, told staff on Monday that the company is dealing with financial issues after acquisition talks crumbled and was until recently working to secure a last minute investment.

Obviously, they did not get it. She had to answer questions from her 50 person staff about whether they will receive any more paychecks from the company. She told her Recode that the company was not shutting down, but confirmed that it was laying off a large number of the staff. She did not have an exact number, but said that a decent sized team would remain decent sized team for a brand like that could probably be about two people.

Well, yeah, 50 person staff and you could have three people and that's it. Yeah. And she says we see the Brit & Co brand being valuable as a brand and less as a digital publishing business, meaning we're now nothing. Yeah, I mean, I've never heard of them. How are they valuable as a brand? Well, you're not a millennial woman, to be fair, Jason.

That's true. So she actually had the company which ran a lifestyle website that reached 130 million people. At least they say it reached 130 million people a month, mostly young woman. But yeah, so some staff has been frustrated that she wasn't being transparent with them about the company's financial woes, as you should be.

She answered questions at the company meeting on Monday. The answers were described as tight lipped and she did not identify the possible acquirer that fell through. And the meeting lasted about 15 minutes. So you get a 15 minute saying you no longer have a job. Yes, you get the email that says conscious uncoupling.

We could not sell our load of crap to somebody else and we had no business plan to keep running it ourselves. How much you want to bet it's goop? Probably because goop could use a younger audience, right? So there you go. And in news that sounds interesting to me, as we all know, I'm a big Elon Musk supporter and I think Tesla is going to pull it out.

And Elon always seems to find a way. But right now it's not looking too good for them. Tesla's 2020 self-driving car promise sounds too good to be true because it is. Yep. Even Elon Musk seems a little skeptical of his promise to get one million completely self-driving Tesla robo taxis on the road next year.

He made this claim. It's not going to happen. And a bunch of other ones on Monday. About what's ahead for the electric car company. I do wish he would keep his trap shut a little bit more. He unveiled a new microchip that he claimed would be objectively the best in the world, predicting that fully autonomous Tesla's capable of operating without a human driver would be on the road by mid 2020.

And the company would have a fleet of robo taxis out next year as well. This is not the first time that he's made these kind of stupid predictions. And he does make a point at the very end of the article. Sometimes I'm not on time, he says on Monday, but I get it done. And he does do that. I just wish he'd stop throwing these deadlines out there and making these claims because I'm a shareholder.

Nobody asked for him to come up with this timeline. Nobody said, hey, come on. Yeah, we were totally fine waiting in one million robo taxis. No way. I mean, if you had a Tesla, would you lease out your car for the day? No, no, they're too expensive. They're too expensive.

Do you want somebody's somebody else's ass juice on your seat? You know, you don't want any of that stuff in your car. You don't want to come in there and find like old French fries or, you know, anything like that. Old French fries would be like the one of the more pleasant items I could think of. I was trying to be optimistic.

Yeah, after the ass juice, I could. Yeah. All right. And one new one last bit of news. Google Wing has landed the FAA's first approval for drone delivery. So. All right. As of Tuesday, they authorized Alphabet's Wing Aviation to start delivering goods via drones later this year.

They'll do commercial packages and unmanned aircraft in Blacksburg, Virginia. It will be partnering with the Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership and Virginia Tech as a participant in the Transportation Department's Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration Pilot Program. That's quite a mouthful. This is important because this is the first time it's happened and it'll probably make it easier for other companies to do it soon as well.

These are certifications for drone delivery of items such as food, medicine and small consumer products. It'll be able to send drones beyond the visual sight of the people operating them. And the devices can only be operated during the day and a pilot can operate as many as five drones at a time, which begs the question, why only in the day if it's already out of the visual sight of the people operating them?

Because you still need to be able to see things like power lines and stuff like that. OK. Yeah. Wings drones have a wingspan of about three feet, so not insignificant and weigh approximately 11 pounds. They can carry packages that weigh up to a little more than three pounds. So not your big Amazon deliveries or Google store deliveries.

Still get my in and out from that. That's all I care about. Yeah. So I'm looking forward to this. I think this is a good step forward. The FAA is finally like letting these pilot programs start because it's coming no matter what. It is coming no matter what. My concern is always, as per usual, the noise.

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That's E-E-R-O dot com slash GOG and at checkout, enter GOG. Security? Ha! We are back this week with Dave Bittner from the Cyber Wire podcast.

The Cyber Wire is a free community-driven cybersecurity news service based in the beautiful state of Maryland that everybody loves. Dave is the co-host of the Hacking Humans podcast, along with Joe Kerrigan, where they take on social engineering. Well, hello, gentlemen. Hi, Dave. Listen, before we get going, I have to share that I am currently dealing with a personal security issue.

A home invasion. Okay. There are raccoons in my house. Uh-oh. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, the beautiful state of Maryland. The woodsy creatures. Do you guys have raccoons out there? You must have raccoons out there. We, no, more possums.

We have some possums and things of that nature, but- I've got raccoons and coyotes. You've got some where you are. I've got raccoons, coyotes, possums, hawks. I've got all sorts of stuff. I have homeless stuff. Yeah. And Snapchat-fired employees. That's what I've got. Yeah. I've got meth coons that walk around the street, too.

They look like raccoons, but they're like, meth. Where do I get the meth? Meth. Well, these raccoons have taken up residence in the space between my first floor and second floor. Ugh. Oh, no. Dude. Yeah. That's not going to be fun.

No. It's a mama with some babies. Uh-oh. Yeah. So, as we record this, the raccoon people are at the house. The raccoon people? I think I saw that movie. Wasn't that one of the monster movies from the 40s?

Yeah. The raccoon people. It was the really two-star follow-up to the cat people. That's really what it was. Right. Because of that 55-gallon drum full of radioactive material I keep in the backyard, the raccoon people- Well, look, we know Marvel's looking for some new characters now.

So, yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So, they are at the house right now, and I am told, my wife just texted me, and she said, Trapper Brad is here. Trapper Brad.

Yeah. Well, at least they didn't send Trapper John. Yeah. We did a lot of mash side-outs recently. She said he's setting up a trap to get Mama Raccoon used to a trap being at her entrance point, and then laying down eviction fluid to encourage her.

Yeah. To encourage her to take... I think we've all... I wish we didn't have a show title already. I mean, I think we've all laid down a trail of eviction fluid from time to time. Am I right? Some eviction fluid. Well, he's like trying to lay down welcome fluid, but...

Well, yeah. To encourage Mama to take the babies and move on, and they're going to come back in a couple days to reevaluate to see if Mama and the babies have moved on. All right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Eviction fluid.

Okay. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I'll be Googling that one later. Probably get on a watch list for that. No, no. I would not do that. Yeah. Who knew that was a thing? But I guess that's... I mean, that's... What I'm hoping is that I'm going to get away without them having to tear out any drywall.

That would be nice. Right. Yeah. Yes. I would actually be really surprised if I get away with them not having to rip out any drywall, but I don't know. Maybe Trapper Brad is a master at this sort of thing. We'll see. Well, if your home ends up being torn apart in the next couple of weeks, I might have some good news for you.

You can always hop on a plane and come out here because reservations for the Star Wars Galaxy Edge opens at Disneyland Resort here on May 31st. And starting next week, you'll be able to place your free reservations to hopefully get in because once you buy into the park, that does not get you into Star Wars land because they're expecting such a crush.

So, you have to register first and hope you get in there. I don't know what to make of this. If you go, please do not beat up Chip and Dale. They have nothing to do with your house. Yeah. I just... Yeah. There you go. Or what's his name? Rocket Raccoon. Oh, Rocket Raccoon.

That's right. Yeah. I think... I keep thinking about the Avatar land in Florida, which still has like three hour waits to get on that ride there, which is, by all accounts, an amazing ride. But nobody cares about Avatar.

So... No. I don't know why more movies are coming. Right. And so, I just... I want to go see the Star Wars thing as soon as possible. But I can't imagine it's going to be less than a year before... It's probably... Who knows? I mean, Harry Potter lands, they're still crowded on busy days.

I don't... I think it's going to be quite some time before any of us see Star Wars land. Although I am hoping to attempt it at some point this year. I still... Disneyland, I don't think they publish it publicly. But if you're an employee at Disneyland, they give you estimates of crowds per day.

They've been doing that ever since I was 15 and worked there. So, you can kind of... If you have an in, you can kind of find out what the slow days are expected to be. And so, we're hoping to maybe pull the kid out of school, take the wife out of work. Yeah. Not podcast that day and try to run down on a slow day and try to get in.

Well, here's the upside. By the time you can get in, you can use your AARP discount. That's true. What did you do when you worked there? I was... They hired... Smoked a lot of weed. No. Sadly, no. Macked on a lot of tourist chicks in the summer, though. That was a nice plus.

I was able to start working there at 14 because they had relaxed the rules about it and you could work food services. So, that was... I bussed tables at 14 off of Main Street at one of the restaurants off of Main Street. So, that was my first job. All right. Cool.

Cool. And my wife worked in Florida. Cool. Child labor. That's great. Yeah. It was awesome. Hey, it led us into the park whenever we wanted to and I got a little money. I was thrilled with it. It taught me responsibility at a young age. And how to pick up chicks. You could work. That's right. Yeah. There was definite side benefits.

Yeah. All right. Well, yeah. Obviously, I am so jonesing to go see the Star Wars stuff. I just remember how much basically my head exploded the first time I rode Star Tours. Oh, yeah. You know, and this is going to be that times 100, I think.

Oh, yes. Don't get your hopes up. Don't get your hopes up. Oh, it's going to be good. Disney knows what they're doing. Yeah. Yeah. It's going to be good. Yeah. It's not going to suck. Yeah. So, yeah. Well, you know what? Maybe we, I wonder if there's a way that we could. Misa thought that about episode one. Damn it, Jason.

Just saying. All right. I wonder if there's a way we could plan and we go together, the three of us. We could do a live podcast. Let's talk to them about it. Yeah. I need to figure out some way for there to be a cybersecurity angle.

Yes. And Jason can dress up as Jar Jar. Yeah, that's it. I'll dress up as Jar Jar. We're just going to hack the reservation system, and we'll all just go in with our hidden Zoom labs, and we'll actually just get a show done. Yeah. Speaking of that, should we get onto security at some point?

I suppose. I was just, I was doing the Rocket Raccoon Google while you guys mentioned that, and unfortunately, from February 8th, 2019, well, it's Guardians of the Galaxy. Right. Oh, okay. That's Marvel. That's owned by Disney. That's true. And they have the ride at California Adventure.

Mm-hmm. Unfortunately, the raccoon who inspired Guardians of the Galaxy character has died in February, so hopefully your raccoons will come off better. I hope so. Somebody asked me today if they were going to be relocated to a farm upstate or that sort of thing.

Kind of like all of our dogs did when we were children? Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. I don't know what Trapper Brad does with them when they, so hopefully he just- He eats them. Well, hmm, I hadn't considered that. Trapper Brad taxidermy is in full swing. Yeah. It's just a fringe benefit.

Free meals. Mm-hmm. All right. Anyway, security. Yes. Go. So it turns out those Amazon employees that have been reviewing your Alexa recordings, they also have access to your home and personal data. Mm-hmm. So they can listen to you do silly things and then actually look up where you live.

And then- Not to point out the obvious, but doesn't Amazon have your home address already? Well, they have it better than Logitech, as you'll find out later on apps and doodads. So, yeah. But I wonder, did these people have access to your home address?

Yeah, they probably should not. But, I mean, you know, there you go. Yeah. Yeah. I call this one the tempest in the teapot. I don't think it's a big deal. It's- Right. Well- And most of these people are in the Philippines probably, so they're not going to just swing by and say, hey, I heard you like furries.

Anyway. Philippines to Maryland, it's quite a pricey ticket. Yeah. So the thing is, I was thinking about, in many parts of our lives, there are people with whom we have to trust with personal information. Right. The people at your doctor's office, the doctors, the nurses, the administrative people at that office, they have access to that information.

And so, and then there are HIPAA regulations that try to help control how that data is used and who can see it and where it goes and all that sort of thing. And so I wonder, this is like that. There are people who are going to, in the course of their businesses, have to have access to this information for different reasons.

And I wonder if we need some sort of HIPAA regulation for personal privacy in the online world. Would be nice. But again, I have to point out, in terms of at least home address, if you purchase a property, that is a matter of public record. True. You can Google anybody that owns something and get their address.

Now, you don't necessarily know if they specifically live there, if it's just a property that they own, all that sort of stuff. But I mean, all of this is out there publicly right now. Should it be? No, of course it shouldn't be, but it is. And yeah, I don't know how we roll that back and try to.

Yeah, the scary connection I made with this story was the worst case scenario is that you connect that one of these people listening to these recordings happens upon a particularly some sort of spicy lovemaking session that accidentally gets picked up, becomes obsessed with whoever was part of that lovemaking session and decides to go knock on the front door.

Yeah, I mean, I suppose that could happen. Although for me to get particularly obsessed, I would think I would need video. I'm not really an audio kind of guy. You're more of a visual learner. Yes, I'm more of a visual learner. All right. I can respect that. Well, we're doing a good job staying on topic this week.

Oh, God. Yeah. All right. So moving on. Speaking of visual learning, a teenager is suing Apple for $1 billion claiming facial recognition led to a false arrest. This is an 18 year old from New York who said he was arrested because what he believes to be Apple's facial recognition system.

New York Police Department officers arrested this guy November 29th after he was falsely linked to a series of Apple store thefts in Boston, New Jersey, Delaware and Manhattan. The real perpetrator used a stolen ID that had his name, address and other personal information, but no photo. So the lawsuit is claiming that Apple programmed its stores facial recognition system to associate the real thieves face with this person's details.

However, Apple is saying that they do not have facial recognition in their stores. So. Yeah. There's a lot of weird stuff with this story. Someone pointed out that most of what we have to go on with this story is from the people who are suing Apple.

So we have one side of this story. Like you say, since then, Apple has said they don't use facial recognition. It's my understanding that Apple contracts out the security in those stores. Obviously, they have video cameras. I can't help wondering, is the facial recognition just Bob, the security guard, recognizing that's AI is people.

Yeah, that's the facial recognition in the store and somebody got lazy or somebody made a mistake or, you know, connected the dots in a wrong way. I think certainly this person was wronged. Yes. But one billion dollars wronged?

Well. I mean, don't get me. Billion is not what it used to be. No, it's not. We get that. See, you'll be talking about real money. Especially when you're Apple. Yeah. How many? I don't know. How many iPhones would that buy? All of them. But, yeah.

Or about two of the new iPads because they're so damn pricey. I just, I couldn't, I'm just imagining this guy talking to his lawyer and kind of like that scene from the social network where his lawyer says, listen, we're going to go after Apple for a million dollars. And he says, how about a billion dollars?

And his lawyer says, I like the way this is going. I think that was Austin Powers, not the social network. It was the social network. It was the whole thing where they. Yes, there was that scene. Thank you, Brian. Thank you. Thank you. It wasn't done with quite that voice, but you did kind of meld the two together.

I will say. So, I also have another facial recognition story. Last week, writer Mackenzie Fegan boarded an international JetBlue flight without so much as handing over a boarding pass or a passport. She looked into a camera before being allowed down the jet bridge. She wrote on Twitter, did facial recognition replace boarding passes?

Unbeknownst to me, did I consent to this? Yes. It apparently has started. There's a number of different airline facial recognition software systems out there now. They're currently in places like JFK Airport, LAX, although I haven't seen them.

And I just flew in and out of LAX recently. Oh, they're there. Just because you didn't see them doesn't mean they're not there. Well, they still took my boarding passes and all that sort of stuff. So airports are starting to use these now. And there's some interesting laws about this. If you're a U.S. citizen, well, right now, anyways, your photo will only be retained for up to 12 hours.

If you're a departing non-U.S. citizen, however, they will keep your photo up to two weeks. If you're a non-U.S. citizen, I don't know why I'm saying it wrong, arriving at a participating airport, they can store your photo for 75 years, which brings up a number of privacy and data issues about who has access to this information.

Yes, that seems a little crazy. Now, apparently, at the moment, you can still opt out, but you have to know that you can opt out and they don't necessarily do a good job of telling people that. Shocking. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. So, yeah, I have not seen this yet personally, but it's not surprising it's coming.

No. And I suppose for we know for international flights, if you have a passport, you're in that database for facial recognition because your passport photo gets put in there. And that part we know about. So is this was this person taking a domestic flight?

No, she said international. International jet blue flight. Okay. Okay. But I guess the weird thing is not handing over a border pass or passport because at that stage, you'd assume. Yeah, I don't know. It's it's just kind of there and they don't really tell us. Mm hmm.

Are they relying on there under being a lack of pushback or are we is this one of those things a death by a thousand cuts erosion where we just get used to it? And next thing you know, it's everywhere. Oh, you mean every week? I've already I've already bled out.

Exactly. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there's that. Just look for the smoke detectors next time you're at LAX because I'm sure that's where the cameras are. Yeah, there's that. Well, but how do we feel about this?

Well, let me roll into the next story and tell you how I think most people feel about this because you and I and Jason probably feel a little differently about this than most people. But when you've got a study coming out that millions of people are still using one, two, three, four, five, six is their password. I'm guessing they don't give a shit.

Yeah. Yeah. So this is the UK's National Cyber Security Center that did the study that found that one, two, three, four, five, six was the most widely used password on breached accounts. They ran through all the different accounts and public databases of all the breached accounts to search through words, phrases and strings that people use. 23 million passwords were one, two, three, four, five, six.

The second most popular string, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. And other in the top five included QWERTY, password and one, one, one, one, one, one, one. Most common name, Ashley, followed by Michael, Daniel, Jessica and Charlie. Soccer teams, of course, because this was in the UK.

Blink-182 chopped the charts of music acts, sadly. Strange. But then they also quiz people about their security habits and fears, and they found that 42% expected to lose money to online fraud, and only 15% said they felt confident that they knew enough to protect themselves online.

So I don't think people care about security much because we've been shouting from the rooftops and not just us, it's hit mainstream media that you need to secure passwords, you need to change passwords, you should be using password managers. Two-factor-off. And nobody cares.

Yeah. I wonder how much this is in people's minds in a similar way to public health. In other words, if you- Well, considering we have measles outbreaks everywhere. Well, I mean, that's a good point. But if I say, if you asked people, how many of you expect to get a cold this year?

What percentage would say, oh, I expect to get a cold this year? But they don't fret over it, or they don't obsess over it. Some people do. They, you know, this number that you quoted with 42% expecting to lose money to online fraud, does, that doesn't mean they're going to lose their retirement savings necessarily.

I think there's just this- Maybe more like we, I put nine bucks in on something and didn't get it. Right, right. Or I got signed up for this fake subscription service or something like that. That's interesting. It's just fascinating to me where this sits in people's minds.

This is beyond my capability to completely fix this. So what's my risk analysis? My risk versus analysis, yeah. Right, exactly, exactly. Well, like we always say, go out there, get yourself a password manager.

Just do it. Just do it. Just do it. Do it. Do it. You can do it. Well, this last story I put in this week, this is from the Washington Post. First, and Senator Ron Wyden, he's a Democrat from Oregon, and he's a ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee.

He says that Mark Zuckerberg should be liable for the company's privacy missteps. He should be viable personally. Lock him up! Lock him up! Lock him up! Now- Well, we talked a bit earlier in the show that the FTC, that Facebook is expecting a $3 to $5 billion fine from the FTC.

But then they also made $40 billion in one day after a lot of bad news rolled out about Facebook. So again, even a $5 billion fine is nothing but a slap on the wrist to these types of companies. Yeah. And when they announced- And it's meaningless. Right. When they announced that they'd set aside these billions of dollars for the inevitable fine, their stock price went up.

Yes. Yes. Six percent. Six percent. So fines are obviously not doing it with these companies. No. They just aren't. At least, you know, we're still waiting to see what's happening over in Europe, where the fines are in the $22 billion range, which might be a bit more harmful.

Yeah. Four percent of annual earnings is a little more than what, you know, they're going to pay over here. So that's the max that they can get from GDRP. And that's what they're going after with the Irish one that we talked about earlier. Mm-hmm. We'll see. Yeah. Interesting point, I think, that Senator Wyden made.

He said that as Facebook's majority shareholder, that insulates him from accountability of Facebook's board of directors and from their shareholders. So part of this is, I think, does some of that control have to be taken away from him?

Right. And could you do that through a massive personal fine? I don't see anybody talking about jail time for him, and I don't think that's what the FTC does. Why not? Damn it! Yeah, I don't think the FTC generally locks people up, but they can coordinate with other agencies who do.

Yeah, because I mean, Facebook's got those super shares. He is the de facto president of one of the largest countries in the world. Yeah. So why is he not being held responsible to that level? I can imagine, and I suppose this could be a bit of a stretch, but I could imagine there coming a time when Zuckerberg can't travel to Europe.

That's true. That's true. Do you think that's a crazy idea? I don't think so. I don't know, but considering he owns his own island in Hawaii, I don't think he cares too much either. He's like, Europe? It's cold there. I'm never going there. Right, right. Or he just buys Europe.

Well, yeah, there's that. Screw you guys. Maybe not Europe, but the UK could probably use some money soon. Right. Brexit ain't going so well. Welcome to Facebook-a-stan. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, Wyden's been saying a lot of smart things a lot recently, and I see his point here.

And as we just always say, there's no accountability. There's no pain inflicted on these companies for the horrible things that they're doing. The money, the fines, just they're not enough. Things don't change. Everything continues on as before. Trust me.

Everyone dies. Everyone dies. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I have to say, I was given a little bit of a boost this week when I saw that a bunch of the folks involved in the whole opioid thing got hauled off in handcuffs.

So I think that's, I think that's good. Yeah. That's nice. Some of the folks from the pharmaceutical companies, some of the, what do you call it, pharmacies, all those places. I think we may be seeing some accountability there. So I'd like to see a lot more of this corporate crime being punished in the way that we are, rather than, say, these idiot parents that bought their kids into school.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Just saying. Find the parents. They don't need to go to jail. But some of these people that are running these companies, they should go to jail. Yeah. All right. Well, with that, gentlemen, I'm going to put on my raccoon furry head and head on home to try to- To your new wife and family in the middle of- Exactly.

Right. Exactly. To crawl into my crawl space and live a life of ease and pleasure. Down some eviction juice or whatever. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Some eviction fluid, I believe it was called. Oh, yes. Yes. So wish me luck, and we'll check in next week to see what has happened in the next episode of the Bittner Home Invasion.

Best of luck. Thank you. Cops and doodads. Well, earlier in the show, I was worried about drone noise, now that they're being approved by the FAA. But I will talk about something else that's annoyed me to death for a long time. Restaurants.

They're too damn loud, Jason. Yes, they are. And it's not just weird old thing, right? They are crazy loud compared to the way they used to be. Yeah. I used to live next to Cha-Cha-Cha in the San Francisco Upper Haight, and I couldn't get to sleep at night because it was so loud.

Yeah. Well, noise is increasing everywhere, and obviously the restaurant is a big issue. Both Zagat and Consumer Reports surveys have found that excessive noise is the chief complaints diners have ahead of service crowds or even food issues. Not being able to hear the people we're dining with can make connecting painfully difficult, especially in a world we're all trying to unplug and connect in person again.

But there's an app coming to help us because, of course, there is. We'll see how useful this is because, as we've talked about on the show previously, nobody's downloading new apps anymore. Right. But I might try this one. It's called Soundprint, and it's basically Yelp for noise levels in thousands of restaurants, bars, and cafes across America.

Okay. Cool. It runs off Citizen Science. Define that. Define that. I don't know. It's so you have an app in your damn hand. That's a citizen science these days. So the app has a decibel reader, and its noise reviews are generated by Soundprint users. So you go into a restaurant, and you have the app.

You just turn it on for a few minutes, and it uploads everything, and now you've got it registered that there's this many decibels in this restaurant. So, interesting concept. Interesting concept, as long as it's only recording the decibel level and not the conversations that people are having around them. Yes, which is illegal in many states, such as ours.

Yes, as long as they're doing that. So it can't record anything, I suppose. It could easily be done by just running the decibel meter and not actually recording it. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's just basically running the levels. Yep, exactly. So I'm reporting those. So interesting, but again, this seems like one of those businesses that isn't really a business, and maybe they're hoping to get bought by Yelp.

That seems to be the exit strategy there, because I don't know how you're going to make any money with this whatsoever. Yeah, this is a feature of a review app. That's all it is. Yes. So, not a product. Yes. Do they actually say why restaurants have become louder? Because it doesn't seem like anything has really changed that much, besides maybe, you know, the architecture of the place, open plan.

Well, the architecture has definitely changed a lot. It's the open plan. It's the, you know, we don't have curtains and things of that nature being taken out. Everything is glass and steel, and people have their phones. I mean, really, that definitely adds to noise in situations. Well, not if they're not talking to each other.

Not if they're not talking to each other. Yeah, but the music has definitely gotten louder in restaurants as well, because of the psychological aspects. You know, we've seen all those kind of studies where this kind of music relaxes people, so they'll stay longer and order more. So, you play that in your slower time periods, but when you're busy time periods, if you play this kind of music, it gets people in and out of the doors faster, and, you know, who knows?

We're all getting gamed all the time. True that. True that. And I got new doodads this week. All right. Yes, I've got the Dyson Pure Cool TP04 HEPA Air Purifier and Tower Fan White Slash Silver, except I didn't get the White Slash Silver. I got the Black, but I couldn't find that one on Amazon.

Ah, you need TP for your bunghole. So, these are pretty cool. I'm not as paranoid as my wife about air levels and all of that sort of stuff, but she always wants to have air purifiers going in the house. So, we got two of these, one for our bedroom and one for our son's bedroom.

And then I kind of, you pick your battles in marriage as in life, because these things aren't cheap at all. They're quite expensive, but they're very fancy. It comes with an app. Oh, God, of course it does. They look fantastic. Wi-Fi enabled everything.

You can control everything. You can put schedules on them, all that sort of stuff. And they seem to do the job. I couldn't really tell you. They work as fans quite well, so I'm happy about that. And they look much better and sound a lot nicer than our previous fans did.

So, for all of that, it seems fine, and it seems to be, you know, pretty close to best in class in terms of actual filtering, but I don't know anything about that, because the thing I had to stop myself from saying to my wife is, we spent an exorbitant amount of money on our property and our property taxes to live four blocks from the beach with the cool ocean air blowing in to ensure that our air quality is phenomenal.

But, okay, we'll spend $549 each on two of these things to make sure that our air is okay. I'm surprised you didn't go with the molecule. That was $799, and my wife likes Mr. Dyson quite a lot. Okay. See, I went with... Also Alexa enabled.

Okay. See, I've got air cleaners for my house, too. I went with a Honeywell Air Genius 5 air cleaner slash odor reducer, 250 square feet. I've got two of those in my house, and they work fairly well. I have no problem with them.

You have to clean them fairly often, which is the downside. You put that on your schedule, and luckily, I can just put that on my Amazon subscribe and save and get filters sent every couple months. Yeah, the only problem with my filters, one, they're washable, which sucks, and there's a big filter that goes into the back of it that you can wash.

You're supposed to wash, but when I got it, it was white, and after two years, no matter how much I wash it, it is a very dark gray, no matter what I do. And the downside is, I can't replace them. I cannot find a way to buy that big-ass filter that goes with them, which sucks.

That sucks. Yeah, because these things are $230 each. Not cheap. Not cheap at all, but I tell you what, they work. They really do work. The Dyson one seems to be working quite well as well, so we'll see. And now, finally, for the end of this segment, I have a question for you.

We have talked about my impending potential iPad replacement procedure, and my wife has decreed our new plan. Okay, what is it? My birthday is coming up, so we are getting rid of the very old iPad mini that we've been using for my son for, you know, desperation, last resort at restaurants and or on the airplanes.

My wife's regular iPad will become my son's, my newer iPad mini will become my wife's, and my wife said I need to get a new iPad. So I'm asking you, who is very knowledgeable in these sorts of things, what should I do?

Should I get an iPad Pro, or should I spend less money because I'm not a superpower user and get the iPad Air? I gotta say, just from using just about every iPad that's ever been out there. That's why you're the person to ask. The iPad Pro 12-inch, the new one, the version 3, is the best iPad I've ever owned.

I love it to death. It is insanely expensive. It is ridiculously expensive. It's like I should just get a new laptop. Expensive. Yeah, I mean, it was like $1,300 with the pencil. And then, you know, I did skimp on the cases because I found really good, cheap cases.

But for the most part, I just, I can't go back. It's so beautiful. It is so unbelievably beautiful and fast. It's got Face ID with it, so you don't even have to, you know, press the home button because there is no home button anymore. You have to press the top button. But all in all, man, I swear to God, it is just insane.

But for you, what I would say is go to the Apple Store. Pick them up. Yep, that's the plan. And take a look at them. But for me, I'm going to have this thing for a couple years, and I'm going from a 9.7-inch iPad Pro, which is still an amazing little machine.

But just the size of the 12-inch, it's just making things so much easier to read because as you get older, your eyes start to go. And reading, and it's so light. It's super light. So I just take it out of the case because the case is magnetic. You just pop it out of the case, and that's what I use to read Kindle in bed at night, and you barely notice it's there.

It is so beautiful. And I just can't go back. I really can't go back. And just the new form factor with the square edges like the old iPhone 4 and 5 had, I love it. I really love this thing. I'm never going back.

I'm going to get myself to the store, and I have a feeling the iPad Air will be more than enough for me. Yeah. Hold it in your hand. Take a look at it. But, man, that 12-inch, I just got to tell you, it's nice. Especially when you want to watch movies on it. That I will not be doing. Oh, boy.

All right. Just saying. Moron of the Week. And a quick little funny story before we move on to Moron of the Week. I told you I was in a mood last week before we started the show. Well, Logitech, or Logi, Logi, whoever they're called now, they came out with a new Smart Folio for the new 12-inch iPad, which has a built-in covering case with a keyboard.

And I ordered one. And it's $140. Looks great because the Smart Folio case that they had for the 9.7-inch iPad Air was the best case ever. The keyboard was amazing. It used the smart connectors to power it. There was no easy, and it was awesome.

I loved that thing. It made it into a laptop. Well, so I ordered the new one. And I'm like, oh, it's been a couple days. Where is it? I kind of want to dig into this thing. Well, turns out my shipping information on Logitech.com was to my old address in Chicago.

And so I'm like, track package, see if I can do it. It had just been delivered. And the assholes that live at the new place will not forward it on to me. So I made $140 fuck up right before the show last week, which is why I was possibly and partially in a bad mood.

Somebody got a free iPad holder. Exactly. Exactly. Somebody might get a free broken window next time I'm in Chicago, though. So we'll see how that works. Well, now you put it out there on the world, so I wouldn't do it. We've talked quite a bit about avoiding ads on the Internet, and I don't see too many ads anymore through a combination of actually paying for content that I find worthwhile or ad blockers or whatnot.

But I still play occasional games of Words with Friends on my phone. Oh, wow. You're the one left. There's a couple of us. I have a couple ongoing games with friends of mine that no longer live here. So it's kind of fun as a way to keep in communication with them, even though we could go like six months without actually saying anything to each other, just playing the games.

But every now and then you get the message like, how's things, blah, blah, blah. So it's nice for that. And I don't mind it. And, you know, it's word games. So it keeps the vocabulary up and going. So it's fun for that. But I've never paid for it because why? I found the ads to be. Not too annoying because, you know, my friends only play like a game a day at best.

So, you know, I can sit and wait through a 10 to 15 second ad after I make a move. And it's not too annoying to me. However, I think advertisers have started to figure out that we don't pay attention to their ads anymore. And I hate Letgo as a company and everybody else that puts fake close buttons on their ads.

Oh, God, I hate that so much. You get that fake X over there and you click on it because you think the ad's done because you weren't paying attention and it takes you to the install page. Does anybody ever really do that? Does that ever really work? Does somebody go, well, I meant to close the ad, but now I've got this page to download their app.

So I might as fucking well. Does it ever work? It must. I can't. It can't possibly work. So annoying. I hate the lies. It's all lies. Damn it. Okay, moving on. Moving on. I found this one, which just tickled me.

Social media influencer plotted to take Internet domain at gunpoint and it didn't end well. Shocking. Yeah. So there was this domain, do it for state dot com, and the owner would not sell it. Right. So this guy that really, really wanted it, really wanted it, hired his cousin to break into the guy's house and force him to transfer it to him at gunpoint.

Well, the guy who owned the domain, apparently an ex Navy SEAL, took the gun from the guy and shot him. Yeah. So, yes, he shot the victim multiple times, not just once, because I would shoot him multiple times, too, because get the fuck out of my house.

Well, the guy who originally wanted it, Rossi, Rossi Lothario Adams, the second can face up to two decades in prison. And he was found guilty on Thursday for hiring his cousin to break into the house in 2017. Man, I should have.

If he listened to our show, he would have known that he could have gone to hover dot com slash GOG and availed himself of the 400 plus extra new TLDs that they have. Yes, you could have got to do it for state dot anything. Anything, because nobody else is buying that domain.

But now he'll be do it for the prison. Oh, my God. Bend over for the soap dot com. Yeah, don't drop the soap dot com. That's it. And this next one I found over on the Twitters. Nike has filed a trademark application for Crypto Kicks.

That's right. Crypto Kicks. Yes, this is a new thing that will be coming out from Nike that they have filed an affidavit that they plan on using. So it is their new cryptocurrency tied to their shoes and a reward system. So what are you going to do?

What are you going to do? Crypto is everywhere. It's in my shoes. Brick a brick. I haven't done an onion of a week for some time, but this one just killed me. Everybody should click on this link. It's in our show notes.

The title, The Onion Proudly Stands with the Media as the Enemy of the People. OK. I just have one choice quote from this article. It's very hilarious. Honestly, you empty headed dipshits who can barely process a simple headline or understand its meaning should be happy we interact with you at all. I love the onion.

I love the onion. It's so good. And a YouTube link came across my path at some point. How to make over $2,000 per month charging electric scooters. This actually probably should have been a moron in the week. Yeah, I was wondering why it was in here. Yeah, I think I probably misplaced it. Might have had a bit of wine that night.

But yeah, this is everything that's wrong with scooters and people and YouTube and everything. I watched the whole thing. I watched the whole thing, believe it or not. And yeah, this guy's math. You wasted 14 minutes. I wasted that much time on this dude. And it just shows the silliness of trying to make money charging electric scooters and driving around.

And he does all this math on how easy it is. And, you know, like, oh, these are the times when you can go out and get more money and find them easily outside of your house. He's like, but you can't see him at night. You might trip over them and break your leg, which costs a little more than you're probably going to make charging the scooters. He doesn't actually put in the cost of electricity and the gas that he spent driving around for two hours, which can be quite pricey.

I don't know if you've noticed, but gas is very expensive at the moment. Yeah, no, it is over four. Some of the people in some of the people in the comments start to break down the actual math and saying this is completely not worth it. You're ridiculous. Yeah. And I love that he was trumped by one guy with a U-Haul that the guy was paying for to drive around and pick up other scooters.

That was great. It's just like, yeah, just stay at home. Don't do that. Sell something on the Internet. Go listen to episode one of Grumpy Old Geeks and start from there. Start a podcast. Hell, why not? Yeah, exactly. And I found this over at Mel Magazine this morning, and it just put a smile on my face.

What it's like to see Endgame, that would be Avengers Endgame, after a 59-hour 22 Marvel movie marathon. Now, I love this because he actually, like, you know, talks to sleep expert Dr. Bruce, who wrote one of the best books on sleep and figured out how to try and stay awake the entire time.

And he didn't. He had to take some naps in there. But it's a very funny read. And I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it. And, you know, because we bitched and moaned about going to the Lord of the Rings marathon, which was like 15 hours or something like that.

And this is a 59-hour marathon. It's just crazy. People are crazy. It is insane. And just to think that, you know, that's an hour and a half work week. I mean, a week and a half of full work week right there.

Wasted watching movies you've already seen. Yeah, movies you've already seen. It even says, it's like, well, I checked out during Ant-Man vs. Wasp because my daughter and I watch it all the time, so I didn't really need to see it again. I'm like, okay, you've seen all these movies already. You don't need to go back and see them.

I still haven't seen that movie, though, Ant-Man vs. Wasp. And I have never finished Ant-Man. It was really good, but then I fell asleep and accidentally deleted it, so maybe I should go back and watch that. I like both of those movies much more than most of the rest of them, but I'm somebody who does not care, so. This is true. This is true.

But I can't believe there are 22 fucking movies. That's insane. That is insane, yes. And people are treating this like it's the end of the world. I mean, people are crying and people are going absolutely nuts. I mean, look, I get it, I guess. I mean, I'm, you know, there's those tentpoles of sci-fi that I'm super into.

I like my Star Trek. I like my Star Wars. I was very into Lord of the Rings, but I wasn't this into it. These people are insane. Yeah, they're a little younger than we are, though, and they also have less to look forward to in the future than we did back in the day. So I think we were more optimistic about the state of the planet back then.

That's true. That is true. Closing shout outs! I got a shout out over to Jessica Tork over from teachable.com. I think Tork is how you say her last name. It's an odd last name. I like DeFillippo. She made a video on how to boost confidence on video.

And I like her videos. She's pretty savvy when it comes to this stuff. In about seven minutes and 40 seconds into the video, I get a shout out. I was like, what? Well, I like that. So I give her a shout out back. So she's one of my shout outs of the week. All right.

Check out the video. I mean, I was I was looking for something that night and I came across the video and I just watched it and just ended up going through it. It's like a 10 minute video. And she's got some really good tips, actually, on how to, like, relax more and be be better on video. But my tip was, you know, film it three times and throw the first three out.

And then the next one is probably going to be the best take, obviously, the more practice you have. But that was in regards to podcasting. When you start a new podcast, record three shows and throw out the first three. Yep. Like we did. That's right. I think more than three, but no, we did three.

Number four was our episode one. All right. Yeah. Number four is our one. And I want to give a shout out to our listeners. If you are listening to the show, chances are you are very into the Avengers or Game of Thrones or both. And, you know, most likely all of your favorite characters are now dead.

So hang in there. You'll be fine. You'll be fine. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFilippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, go to patreon.com slash GOG. Tosses a buck a month and we'll love you forever. And if you'd like to give a one-time or recurring donation, go to GOG.show and click the PayPal button in the sidebar.

Also, if you would be as so kind, if you're listening to us on the Overcast player for iOS, click those stars, people. We are right behind Joe Rogan. We are almost at the number one spot for the most recommended show on all of Overcast, which I'm sure is pissing a lot of people off.

So keep it up. Keep it up. And I want to just state for the record, none of these are fake stars on our end. Everything is real. This is all coming from audience interaction. That's right. It's all you guys. So if we can hit number one, that is going to be party time. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 340, where I will post a picture of where we're at at the time of publishing.

And 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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