347: Meh ¯\(ツ)/¯

This episode is brought to you by Chartable.com. Chartable helps podcasters understand, grow, and monetize their audiences. Sign up for Chartable podcast analytics for free right now at Chartable.com slash GOG. 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. It's been a week since the Game of Thrones finale aired and the internet has roundly basically determined it to be a pile of crap. Seems to be. Seems to be. It seems to be. I was okay with it, like I mentioned. It was what it was. It's fine.

But since the internet has determined that it is a horrible finale, this guy over at Slate by the name of Sam Adams decided to interview somebody familiar with that feeling in an article entitled What It's Like to Write a Finale Your Fans Hate. They decided to go talk to Battlestar Galactica showrunner Ronald D. Moore.

I was like, you get one guess who that is. Yes, which Battlestar Galactica has been voted as having the worst ending in science fiction history. I love this. Yeah, they, io9 wrote an article that said, did Battlestar Galactica have the worst ending in science fiction history?

It ended in parentheses right after. It says, for once, Betteridge's law did not apply. I love that. I love that they called it out, even. Exactly. So it's kind of a funny interview in which I was kind of hoping that maybe Ronald D. Moore, in the 10 years since Battlestar Galactica's horrific ending, would have taken some ownership of it, maybe admitted that perhaps it wasn't the best thing that had happened.

But no, he's pretty arrogant throughout this entire interview. He's standing by it. He's standing by it, and he's an arrogant prick. And, you know, now he's off to go ruin Outlander. Yeah, well, I mean, that's going to be on Apple, right? I believe so. So nobody will ever see it, so it'll be okay. That's true.

Yeah, and I saw over at BGR, Google searches for how to cancel HBO spiked after Game of Thrones finale. Shocking. They've got charts and graphs and everything to go along with it, and it's pretty funny. I mean, it is a huge spike. Now, I know you and I are techno people. We're into it, but I don't think I would go to Google. I would just fire up the app and figure out how to cancel it there.

Yeah, but if you have cable, you have to actually, you know, a lot of people have cable. Yeah, exactly. I'm like, why do you need to Google it? Okay. Well, you know, a lot of people think Google is the internet, so. True. And they're not necessarily wrong. No, they're not. And I did read an interview with one of the head guys at HBO. I think the head guy at HBO. He's like, yeah, we expect it. And, you know, we just hope that the attrition rate is less than the stick rate.

And, you know, because they're going to make their money no matter what. And there will be another show that will get a lot of people watching HBO. It's not like, yeah. I'm not canceling my HBO account. I actually am keeping it, so. Me too. I enjoy Real Time with Bill Maher. They have a lot of documentaries, and there's all kinds of stuff on HBO that I enjoy.

I got to say, I just finished Succession this week, and fantastic show. I can't wait for season two. But I'm sticking with HBO. HBO and Netflix are not going anywhere. No, no, they are not. And I don't believe that CBS All Access will be going anywhere anytime soon, at least not for science fiction fans, because the first teaser trailer for the new Star Trek Picard series dropped. And, Jason, I got the feels.

Oh, I got the feels and the chills, and I got goosebumps now. I'm just thinking about it. I'm goosing, bumping up. And, yes, it is a phenomenally wonderful teaser trailer. I cannot wait for an actual trailer. I am so excited about this show. I cannot contain myself.

Yes, I couldn't contain myself so much. I'm like, hey, thanks for the reminder. And I went and canceled CBS All Access. I'm not paying for the Twilight Zone until, you know, for the whole thing, especially since you told me that Hulu has all the mashes. Yes, Hulu has all the mashes, so you can go through. This is our brave new media future is going to be short subscribes and then unsubscribing and then resubscribing when things come back.

That's that they're gaming us this way. And this is the way we're going to have to go about ungaming it. Yep. And I think everybody should use privacy.com slash GOG accounts so they can set their spending limit. And if they do the math, they can figure out when their show is going to end and then just have the spending limit on the card cut off.

Or you could just be a decent citizen and go cancel. And I have to say CBS All Access was a breeze to cancel. I went to my account page. Yeah, went to my account page. There was a cancel button. They're like, oh, we don't want you to go. Would you would you stick around if we gave you a month free? I'm like, no, I'll save that for next time. I'll see you in December when Picard drops.

Exactly. And here's here's one of the checkbox on the little form. They say, why are you leaving? And there was a checkbox that said my favorite show just ended. So I checked that. Yes. And there you have it. I liked how they handled it. It wasn't one of those things where you have to call, sit on the phone and wait and have somebody sit there and like guilt you into sticking around.

No, they did it like, you know, like adults. Right. So thank you, CBS All Access. I'll see you when Picard lands. That's right. In the news.

Facebook removed 2.2 billion fake accounts from its platform during the first quarter of the year, nearly double the number it took action on in the prior quarter. To put that in perspective, it took down nearly as many fake Facebook accounts as there are real ones in just the first three months of 2019.

Wow. That's a lot. There is only like there's 12 people left on Facebook. There's 12 people on Facebook and a gazillion bots. Basically, the company says the increase is due to the uptick in automated attacks that create many accounts at once. And then on a call with reporters on Thursday, Guy Rosen. Wait for this one.

Vice president of integrity. That ain't the biggest bullshit title I've ever heard of. Basically, the only reason I put this story in here is because they have a vice president of integrity. No president of integrity, just a vice president.

Yes, yes. Said that in light of this wave of fake account attacks, the company is also sometimes blocking ranges of IP addresses to stop spammers from connecting to its systems altogether, a.k.a. something that all of us that are sysadmins would have done, you know, 20 years ago. Right. But the systems that we built back then were not we didn't deal with engagement metrics and shareholder value.

So it's interesting that there are so many fake accounts. I don't really understand what the point of setting up fake accounts is other than faking, well, faking stats, which you can do anyways and everybody does. But, you know, I just don't get it.

I don't understand the point. I don't understand why. Why do you why would you want fake accounts? The algorithm. It's all about the algorithm. If you post some news on one, you use your fake accounts to like the post so it shows up in other people's places. You go to different groups.

You post fake news on the accounts, fake engagement. There's a million reasons you want fake accounts. Well, let's start setting up some fake accounts and get some algorithmic stuff going for grumpy old geeks on the on the book of the face. You'd be my guest on that one. Actually, I don't want to do that because I hate interacting on there because it's such a horrible cluster F of a system.

Sorry to everybody that writes this on Facebook. It's just such a pain in the ass to respond. Yeah, yeah. We do respond on Patreon dot com. So if you want to go send us a message there. Oh, man. And hat tip to my sixty five oh two on this one. He just sent this one over on Twitter.

CrossFit Inc has suspended their use of Facebook and associated properties, a.k.a. Instagram. OK, because apparently they were targeted with the the Banting seven day meal plan users group, which has one point six five million users was shut down with no explanation.

Or warning from Facebook. Right. And then they reinstated it with no warning or explanation. So they have a bunch of people up in arms. And this just comes back to, duh. You know, if you're going to be like CrossFit's a cult already. So I feel like this is like, you know, OK, they shut down a Scientology group for a while.

I'm not going to cry about it. It's hardly that bad. And I see their point that, you know, if Goop is a if they don't shut down Goop, why are they shutting down CrossFit? True that. True that. So this is the problem when you're just a platform and then you decide to start becoming editorial. And Facebook, this is like this is like cops in a shitty neighborhood stopping people for jaywalking.

You have real issues on your platform with real bad actors. Work on those. Well, you know, they just did kill 2.2 billion user accounts. So that's true. You got to give them a little credit for that. But this comes back to, hey, man, don't build your house in somebody else's backyard and get pissed off when they turn the sprinklers on and ruin your day.

True, true. CrossFit, you have enough money where you can go build your own platform where people can actually have discussions in your system. It's not that hard to do. It really isn't. And, you know, there are people out there who you can pay to build it. They're called programmers and designers, not just going on a free platform.

You guys have more money than God. So why not spend a few bucks? So I don't feel bad about CrossFit leaving Facebook and Instagram. I actually give zero fucks about it. I actually think it's a good move. No, it's a smart move on their part, you know, because now they are not beholden to the Zuck.

And this next one, I think, is really funny. It's Apple is trying to do privacy preserving online ads. Okay. What this is, is they're trying to break this cycle where, you know, somebody buys an ad, user clicks on ad, goes to website, buys something, what they bought gets sent back to advertiser.

Mm-hmm. Right? That loop. Yep. Well, they're trying to stick their browser in the middle of that loop. Okay. And then randomizing. They still want to send the data back to the advertiser, but they want to randomize the time and the user IDs so they can't actually connect a click on an advertisement to an actual purchase.

But they can say that someone did click on your ad and someone bought something from the site. Confirm that your ad worked. Yes. But we're not telling you who did it. Yeah. This is a whodunit. Well, we just don't know. I like that. That's great. Okay. Yeah. I don't know if it's going to pick up, though.

I mean, look at do not track. Yeah. Do not track was do not use. Right. Nobody did it. And so this comes down to the browser vendors having to implement this. And, well, considering that Google has a vested interest in getting that data back already and they have the biggest browser on the market, what do you think the odds are of them implementing this in Chrome?

Not good. Not good at all. Might mean I'll just start using Safari. No. Good luck. I know. Good luck with that. Have you actually tried it lately? No, no, I haven't, actually. I did. It's just there's some things that work and some things that don't.

And the things that don't really, you know, chap my dazzle. So I'm sticking with Opera again. All right. So I'm going to reopen the file. We have nobody to blame but ourselves for this story. Amazon investors reject call to limit facial recognition system sales.

Yes. So Amazon shareholders have voted against the proposal to limit the company from selling its facial recognition technology to law enforcement and government agencies. Now, full full disclosure here. I'm an Amazon shareholder. I voted for it. OK, I'm just saying. So the proposal which highlighted concerns over the recognition spelled with the K, which I know drives you crazy system related to civil and human rights and shareholder value.

There's that shareholder value failed to pass at Amazon's annual investment meeting on Wednesday. On the same day, the House Oversight Committee held a hearing on facial recognition tech. They also shareholders rejected a proposal for Amazon to commission an independent report on the impact of government use of recognition. Amazon's board has urged investors to vote against these.

Of course, shareholders also voted down other proposals, including a request for the company to detail its efforts on how it addresses hate speech and the sale of offensive products throughout its business. We also rejected the call for Amazon to produce a report on its carbon footprint and fossil fuel use, along with how it's tackling climate change.

And we also declined to back a measure, urging Amazon to change how it reports gender pay disparities. So whose fault is it? You guys suck. We suck. You guys suck. Yeah. So, you know, shareholder value.

Shareholder value. The masses have spoken. We'd rather have money than anything that makes sense. What I love about the recognition thing that came up, the proposal, was done by a bunch of nuns. Not many people are reporting on this, but I found one article in the Washington Post that talks about nuns leading the charge to pressure Amazon to get religion on facial recognition.

Nice alliteration there. Good for you. But yeah, Sister Pat Mahoney, she was the one that led the charge on this. And they're like this group of churches who put all their money into different funds and are trying to raise awareness on corporate malfeasance and stupid shit that they do by voting against the things that they don't like.

So, right. And good for them. I mean, I'm not really a big fan of the church. I find myself on the side of nuns. I know. Who'd have thunk that? Who'd have thunk that? Yeah. I'm not a big fan of the church. But hey, if you're going to finally do something decent, be my guest. Be my guest. Yes. Well, in continuing Amazon news, they have decided to gamify work.

Yeah. How nice of them. They've turned to video games to make warehouse work a bit less tedious while boosting worker productivity in the process. According to the Washington Post, they have gamified warehouse workers' tasks by reflecting their progress in a video game format displayed on small screens at their stations. If they need to pick up a particular item to put it in a bin, for instance, this object could light up on the screen depending on what the game is.

The approach is merely an experiment at the moment, but it has already rolled out to five warehouses in the U.S. and the U.K., which to me implies that it is not an experiment anymore. It is rolled out. Right. It is no longer an experiment. There are reportedly several games people can play, including ones entitled Mission Racer, Picks in Space, Dragon Duel, and Castle Crafter, each with simple graphics similar to old Nintendo titles like the original Super Mario Brothers.

Now, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that playing is optional for now. Yeah. And the company doesn't penalize those who choose not to participate for now, but they are rewarding people who do with points and goodies such as swag bucks, an in-company currency they can use to redeem on apparel and other items.

Now, is swag bucks on the blockchain? I hope so. Do they have a game called Find Your Soul, which you, like, at the end of your shift, you have to go around and figure out where your soul went after 12 hours of putting shit in a box? Yeah, this is pretty frightening to me.

I, you know, I'd love to hear some actual interviews with people that are doing it. But, sadly, I, once again, I think we've done this to ourselves, and I'm sure some people like it. You know what? If it, if it breaks up some of the tedium, eh, what's, what's the bad, you know? It, yeah, it might have some unintended.

Despite all our rage, we're still just a rat's in a cage. Yeah, it might have a few unintended consequences here and there. You think? Yeah. Yeah. So, but, eh, they're trying something, at least. To take the minds off of the, the working, the working class. What are you going to do?

Uh, GitHub has launched sponsors, which lets you pay your favorite open source contributors. Okay. I thought this would have, I, I wish this was around when I was working on open source stuff. Me, too. I think it would have been nice. Well, this is the whole micropayments idea, right?

Let's just, okay, somebody did this on that. Let's toss them a buck or two. I, I like it. It's great. Yeah, it's like, uh, Patreon, you know? It's Patreon. Is it real money? It's real money. Or is it, thank God they didn't roll out an ICO. Git bucks. Yeah, Git bucks. Although, GitHub is now owned by Microsoft, so I wouldn't put it past them in the future.

No, no, you know what? I never see Microsoft. Actually doing a cryptocurrency. I think they know better. They know better. They're too smart for that crap. Yeah. And they're, I mean, they're making, they're making a pretty big comeback. So good for them. Good for them. Of course on this though, some open source developers are upset about this because they don't want financial interests to influence what people are going to work on because there are a lot of open source projects out there that are just shit work.

Now, honestly, I think those should be the ones that people get paid more for. If you're going to be out there doing open source drivers for like old soft, like, you know, or old hardware that you need drivers for, for different operating systems or things like this, the utilities out there. I think those people should even get even more money than the glory projects, like something like jQuery or crap like that, you know?

Right. I agree. Because that's really, that's the, you know, scrubbing the toilets of the internet right in that crap. And finally, Netflix is releasing 56 new original movies and shows in June, which is actually two of them will be good. It's actually down from May, which was 62 originals.

Well, that pace is, you can't keep that up. That's insane. Well, they've got the billions. That's what they're doing. So, hey, we get a new black mirror next month, which is not too bad. Final season of Jessica Jones, hopefully, fingers crossed. And I think Orange is the New Black is coming back.

Final season as well. Yeah. Final season. I stopped four seasons ago on that one. Yeah, it's a couple seasons too late, but I'm still watching it, so I'll finish it out. But yeah, they're cooking right along. I just, I think, what, out of those 56, what, half of them have to be comedy specials?

Probably, or, you know, licensed shows from other countries or things of that nature. These are all, these are originals, though. These are all originals. Yeah. Wow. That's what I'm saying. Wow. It's good to be Netflix. Yeah. Their production team is in full swing. I mean, this is what you get when you spend literally billion, what is it, $8 billion this year they're spending?

Yeah. Something like that. Pretty crazy. Yep. We're in the wrong business. Again. Yes, we are. Again. This episode is brought to you by Chartable.com. Chartable helps podcasters understand, grow, and monetize their audiences.

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Sign up for free. If you've got a podcast, you have to do it. Security? Ha! We're back this week with Dave Bittner from the Cyber Wire podcast. The Cyber Wire is a free community-driven cybersecurity news service based in lovely Maryland.

Tornado-ridden Maryland, apparently. Dave is also co-host of Hacking Humans, along with Joe Kerrigan, where they take on social engineering. Little weather incident there, Dave? We had a tornado yesterday. Wow. Right? Literally in my backyard. And it just wasn't the it wasn't just the tornado of home runs against your Orioles?

Thank you very much. Yeah. No, it was not. They whiffed so many times like Superman. They stirred up the atmosphere and turned back time. They were saying that at the last game against the Yankees, there were more Yankees fans at Memorial Stadium than Orioles fans.

Oh, well. So there you go. Yeah. But actually, we had a tornado yesterday, a little one, just a category one, which is enough. But yeah, it got really dark here. Here at our offices, we actually spent a little time in the stairwell because we all got our the alert to take shelter now on our phones.

Wow. Duck and cover. Duck and cover. Yeah. But wrenched a tree out of the ground next to my house. Lost a little flashing on the side of my house. But no, nothing. No big deal. Nobody got hurt and nobody got hurt here.

There was someone who near us whose house basically got bisected by a tree. Wow. But they're fine. No, I don't think there's any serious injuries or anything like that. But yeah, you know, the weather's broken pretty much.

The weather's broken. It needs a reboot. The weather's just broken. And yeah, we've had the rainiest 365 days in history of this area. Yeah. Well, we're not immune from any of this here.

It has been cold. Cold. And it's not supposed to be cold here. Not at this time of year. California cold or cold cold? Well, I'm California cold. California cold. Okay. But still, I mean, millions of people have put sweaters on top of their bikinis. You don't understand the pain this is causing us.

Oh, yeah. Look, we don't pay these property taxes for this shit. That's right. Somebody call the Chamber of Commerce. Get this taken care of. It was 65 degrees at my house yesterday. So, of course, my roommate said, we need a fire. Oh, wow.

Stoked up the fireplace. And yes, we had a fire in the fireplace at 65 degrees. Why does your house have a fireplace? Because they're awesome. Because they look pretty. Okay. It's an ornamental decorative fireplace. We need somewhere to take our Christmas photos. I see.

All right. Well, that makes sense. And look, it did get down to 40 degrees last night. So, you know. Goddamn freezing. They do come in handy. I can agree on that. All right. Well, a couple of stories to lead off with this week. Graham Cooley wrote an article over on Tripwire about how millions of Instagram accounts showed up in an unsecured AWS bucket on the web.

Yep. We talked about this a bit on our previous show. It was a, I believe, a Hong Kong-based company. No, it was Indian-based. Indian-based social media company. Yeah, that was busy scraping a bunch of influencers' accounts for all their info. And those pesky, unsecured AWS accounts.

Yeah. I thought, what is interesting about this is that it seems like it's more of a scraping process than anything on Instagram's side that was insecure. But it's just something to pile on, you know, to them. And then related to that, which I'll get to the relationship in just a second, Google revealed that they had stored some passwords in plain text for, oh, 14 years or so.

Give or take. It said a small percentage of G Suite users had their passwords stored in the clear. But it was something that had to do with an administrator console, some sort of bug in there that would allow these passwords to be stored.

And if you were an administrator, you could see the passwords of the folks whose accounts you were under control of, which is not good. But what really, the reason I wanted to talk about this story is that it was about my reaction to it, because we've been reacting to this endless flow of stories about Facebook and how they've been losing passwords.

And we've just been getting angrier and angrier and more wound up. And somehow when I saw this about Google doing pretty much the exact same thing, somehow my reaction was like, no, no, you know, all right. I mean, I'm sure Google was trying to do the right thing.

And it got me thinking, like, why do I give Google the benefit of the doubt when I don't give that to Facebook? I think there's a two pronged reason for that. One, this is the first real one that we've heard from Google. With Facebook, it seems like it's every week. It's another instance.

So there's the pile on effect there. And in addition to the pile on effect, I think there's also we've become almost immune to these stories now. Like, to a certain degree, it's just like, oh, it's almost expected. We just know, of course, this happened. Of course, they didn't keep the data secure.

Who would? Who does? I was also wondering to myself, do I have in my own mind, the way that I categorize these companies, do I have less of a personification with Google than I do with Facebook? Facebook is Mark Zuckerberg. Yes. And Apple is Tim Cook.

Right. And with Google, I think, pretty much, I think of the Google logo. Yeah. They've done a very good job of not being personified in any way, shape, or form. They are this faceless kind of just thing that's there, right? Yeah. And in this case, it seems like that pays off for them.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because there's nobody to focus your aim on, really. Right. Nobody like, not that goddamn Zuck again. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Right. That silly little kid. Larry and Sergey have gone dark, so we never really hear from them anymore.

And Eric Schmidt has stepped down as the CEO of Google and Alphabet. And real quick, we had Eric Schmidt on the Jordan Harbinger show this week. Oh, dude. And since the show's out, I can share this now because we actually talk about it in the outro on the show. When Jordan was breaking down the equipment, Eric wanted a picture of all their gear because their video setup is really cool and small and impressive.

And of course, what did Eric Schmidt pull out to take a picture of all that gear with? His iPhone. Of course he did. He pulled out his iPhone. Yeah. Do as I say, not as I do. Say, not as I do. Yeah. This was also the day, though, that he stepped down as chairman of Alphabet.

So we were wondering if he'd had that kept in a box in his drawer for the day that he quit so he could open it up and start using an iPhone. Did it still have that new iPhone smell? Yeah. The problem was he made an unboxing video, but then they couldn't put it up on YouTube because, you know. Right. Right.

I just thought you guys might get a kick out of that one. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. So I'm with you. I had the same reaction. I'm like, eh. So? Yeah. Yeah. We just don't care anymore. We don't care. Speaking of caring about privacy and data, GDPR has turned one year old.

Yay. Yeah. Seems like yesterday. Yeah. Turns out. Turns out it hasn't really had the effect that everybody thought it was going to have. Sort of. Yeah. It's really turned into a way to report breaches. Right.

That's it. They've got lots of breaches under their belt now. You know, well over 100,000 complaints on privacy. There's been significant fines. I wouldn't say it hasn't done anything. 56 million euros. One of which was 50 billion euros against Google from the French.

Right. So not really the, you know, the windfall I'm sure that they were hoping for. But it comes down to the fact that who are the internet police? We discussed this when GDPR was going to happen. Who are the internet police that are going to actually levy these fines and go after these people?

Turns out there are no internet police. And it has also made it very hard for smaller businesses to get funding because they have to spend a lot more of their nut to cover stuff like this and engineer around it where the big companies are just like it's a rounding error. Yeah.

And it's hard for a lot of little companies to jump in now and compete with them because this is just another nail in the coffin of, oh, the big guys are already too big to compete with. Too big to fail. So it's another unintended consequence of it's like, you know, it meant well, except for now we all have to click on a fucking accept cookies link everywhere, which is still stupid.

We've had that's been for ages, though, because I was programming a lot of bands websites and I still had to put geo filters on for the UK and things like that to do the cookie awareness thing. So, yeah, if anything, it's made it easier for programmers because now they can just put it up everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. It was a it was a thing before GDPR.

I know, but still hate it. I hate it. I hate it. The last paragraph of this article that you shared caught my eye. It's from Reuven Carlisle, who evidently is a Washington state senator. I've never heard of him, but all right. He co-sponsored the recent privacy legislation and he said GDPR is the global standard, but the history of deployment of technology in the United States is more aligned to the opt out approach.

Without that, you fundamentally alter the value proposition of innovation. And my thought was the value to who? Yep, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So I thought that was interesting. Just the assumption that the best thing is whatever is best for the companies, not the people.

Shareholder value. Of course. My take on that. Yeah. Shareholder value. Yeah. Now, in addition to tornadoes and the Orioles, you have some other disasters unfolding in Maryland right now, Dave. Oh. Hackers have been holding the city of Baltimore's computers hostage for two weeks. Yes. 13 bitcoins are standing between the city of Baltimore and many of the services and processes its citizens rely on after hackers seized thousands of government computers at the start of the month has been going on for well over two weeks now, and there's no clear end in sight.

They digitally seized about 10,000 Baltimore government computers and demanded around $100,000 worth in bitcoins to free them back up. So typical ransomware attack. How's that going for you? It sucks. I have to say. I categorize this as insult to injury because Baltimore had just gotten through a scandal with their mayor where the previous mayor, she had been caught doing some funny accounting with some children's books that she'd written.

Children's books. And they'd been bought up by organizations that were supporting her election and so on and so forth. And she made a lot of money and she stepped down. And right after that came this ransomware. This is a city that cannot catch a break.

And, you know, this is even worse. My understanding is that still a lot of stuff's down. They were able to get some of the real estate transactions up and running. And a lot of them, they're falling back to, you know, paper backup systems.

But there hasn't been a lot of clarity here. Baltimore's been keeping information kind of close to the vest and not really saying, oh, we have, we're okay because we have good backups or we're totally screwed because we have no good backups. They're not really saying much of anything.

But it seems as though it's taking them a long time to get things back up and running. I guess that's not surprising for a big city. When Atlanta went through this, where they took them a couple months and I think it was $17 million or so that to get things up and running and rather than pay the $50,000 ransom.

Yeah. Can't you guys just start a GoFundMe page or something? Yeah. I mean, I understand you can't. You can't pay off these people. I understand that. But it just seems insane when you realize the actual cost of working around it is considerably more. But what are you going to do?

Yeah, it's a shame. I, you know, I, I, and I suppose part of it is maybe Baltimore was, was more, um, liable to have this happen to them because it's an underfunded city. And maybe the, they didn't have the defenses that a more well-funded city would have.

I don't know that speculation on my part, but it just seems like, boy, it would have been nice for these ransomware folks to hit a rich city that, rather than one that's gone through all the suffering that Baltimore's gone through. Yeah. You need to get all the people in the city of Baltimore IT department to listen to the Cyber Wire and Grumpy Old Geeks, and maybe they would have had backups.

Yeah. Yeah. I, we'd, we'd work on it. Um, yeah. As much as I feel bad for you, Dave, uh, about this, of course I do. Um, I'm more mad at you because I, I saw this article earlier in the week and I was immediately hit with a, with an earwig that I have not been able to get rid of.

The music man came out of the heavens to me and all week long I've been walking around going, there's trouble right here in river city. Yeah. Yeah. So I blame you for that. Well, I'm happy to take the blame there. You see in the document, I posted a picture. Yes. That, that is me.

It looks like you. So I assumed that is me. And I am playing Harold Hill in a local theater production of the music man. That is amazing. 10 years old. So I do actually have all the lyrics to trouble memorized.

And let me tell you, when you go through the process of memorizing the lyrics to trouble, they are forever stuck in your head and you will spend years at a time saying, friends, let me tell you what I mean. You got one, two, three, four, five, six pockets on the table.

Pockets which mark the difference between a gentleman and a bum with capital B and that rhymes with P and that stands for pool. And I could go on, but I won't. Well, the photo and the link to the song will be in the show notes. And I highly recommend everybody go check it out. Yeah, please do. God, I, I, I, I feel for you with the, once you learn these things, they just can't be unlearned.

I dated, I dated a girl who was in Brigadoon. I went to every rehearsal for Brigadoon and every showing of Brigadoon. I never, ever want to hear Brigadoon ever again. Yeah, I, I, trouble's kind of fun to know and it's fun because not a whole lot of people know it because it's hard to learn.

But, uh, there are times when you're just like, get out of my head, trouble, get out of my head. So I, I can relate, Brian. I know exactly what you're going through. Excellent. And, uh, just tying back before to the kind of general, like, feeling that you had about the, the Google thing. I had this, the same feeling about this particular story.

Snapchat employees have reportedly snooped on users with a tool called SnapLion. Now this is a bombshell motherboard report that again, I just kind of shrugged at immediately and went, well, of course they did this. Right, right, right. That's the feeling now. Well, of course this happened.

So there's some tool known as SnapLion and with it, Snapchat, uh, employees can view user, user local location information, save snaps, phone numbers, and email addresses. So, you know, God mode and, uh, people used it. Are we surprised?

No. Okay. Anyone, anyone, anyone who has ever worked in tech or programmed a single line of code would not be surprised that this tool exists. No. And that it gets used inappropriately. Of course it does. Right. Right. Okay.

I was, I was thinking this morning when I, after, after I saw this, I was like, I remembered when I had God mode at Technorati on the, uh, the trending topics list. I may have said this one on the show before, but we had a list of trending topics that everybody was watching because we were kind of a big deal when we were out there way back in the early knots.

And of course, one day I had a bug in my bonnet and I randomized the placement of impeach Bush in the list as a trending topic. And it eventually made CNN until, until I removed it. And then once I removed it, it actually became a trending topic.

You created the news. I just put my finger on the scale. Everybody else took over. So talk about God mode. Yeah. Yeah. That was fun. That was really fun. So things might not always be what they seem when you've got 20 somethings.

I actually, I think it might've been a 30 something in behind the wheel of that much power. Sometimes you just, when you're hung over, maybe still a little buzzed from the night before, uh, you tend to do some kind of crazy things. So, well, to be fair, Jason, I mean, no matter how old you are, you've always had the maturity of a much younger man.

Oh yes. And I, I take that with pride, take that with pride. Yeah. I'm sure he just hasn't gotten the fart sounds loaded into his soundboard yet. Otherwise we'd be hearing it right now. That's right. Oh no. We'll stay away from the farts. We'll stay away from the farts.

Did you ever take a dump and made you feel like you just slept for 12 hours? That one better for you? That's staying away. Okay. Keeping it classy here. Hey, it's Al Pacino, man. That's a, that's a, that's an Academy Award winner right there. I stand corrected. So London's, uh, they're going to start tracking wifi users in July.

Right. This will be by default instead of opt in. Apparently, apparently they're taking a note from our playbook here. How is this possible with GDPR? That's, I, maybe it's because they put up a sign. Huh? I bet it's, I bet it's in the TOS when you sign up for the free wifi that you will be tracked.

You will be tracked. So it's, it's one of those things that they're saying is everything's going to be anonymized. Again, everything's anonymized and depersonalized. Yeah. That doesn't work. We know that doesn't work. But my point is, again, I would just kind of throw my hands up in the air and say London is the most insanely videotaped city in the world.

You cannot go in or out of a tube station without being on camera. So who cares if they're tracking you when you're in there? They, they, they, they know where you went in and they know, they know where you're coming out anyways. True. Right? I mean, that is absolutely true. You, there is no being anonymous in London.

Not at all. None. Anywhere. So who gives a shit? Again, it's the erosion of everything right now. We just don't care. That's kind of why I put this in here. I wanted to get your take on it. If it was the same as mine and mine is like, yeah, yeah, you don't have to use their wifi. What's your take, Dave?

Yeah. I think we have a show title. There's going to be trouble. Meh. Well, let's go into this last one, which unfortunately I had the same feeling about.

Uh, yeah, we've seen a lot about deep fake recently, uh, which is using machine learning to analyze footage of real people and then churn out convincing videos of them doing and saying things that they never did before. And then they haven't done in real life. Now, thankfully, researchers are pushing the tech even further with an algorithm so powerful that can turn a single frame into a full motion movie reminiscent of the photographs and paintings you see in Harry Potter.

So this basically only needs a couple shots of someone's face and then can create convincing videos of celebrities. Did you see any of these videos? Yeah. Yeah. It's something as the article says, the results are extraordinary and terrifying. It's funny.

I did not see the mention in the articles that I'd read about the Harry Potter thing, but that is one of the first things I thought was that that's what it's like. And I could, I can see someone applying this sort of thing to your old family photos, you know, from a hundred years ago.

Which would be cool. That would be cool. Yeah. Yeah. But I guess not so cool when you're putting words in other people's mouths. Yeah. From single photographs. Couple this with all the other stuff, like we showed the Joe Rogan video in voiceover last, you know, last show.

So you take the tech from that company, you put it with this company and, you know, you've got deep fakes 2.0, but even worse because you're dealing with people that are, you know, dead. We are, you know, we're really need some sort of future verification of like, this is actually real.

We, somebody has to, yeah, on the blockchain, everything goes on the blockchain because we are rocketing towards this. I mean, it is coming fast. Look what our president tweeted yesterday, the video of Nancy Pelosi, right? Yeah. Where the doctored video of her, which made it look like she was slurring her words or drunk or something like that.

And the, I mean, come on, the, I suppose I shouldn't give him any credit for, um, any sort of judgment on when it comes to these things, but that's, it's insane. Take that to the next, um, it is insane. You could take that to 10 levels higher than that, which is just someone slowing something down and, um, yeah, imagine, imagine what they have available now in other countries where

there isn't the, uh, folks who are going to go run around and do the fact checking and find the actual source of things. How, what a powerful tool that could be for, uh, folks who are up to no good. Yeah. It's, uh, it's terrifying. And I look at it from another angle though.

I think it's kind of cool to be able to go back and see dead people talk, you know, just from the fun side of not, if you're not doing anything nefarious to take historical people, like even the Mona Lisa one was kind of cool. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there, there's a cool use of the technology, but you know, regulation and, and of course it's going to be used for evil as well as good.

Of course it is. As, as we say all the time in this episode, I just want it to be used for entertainment, put that in a video game and it's cool, but you know, I'm, well, when you think about that, the people that should be really terrified of this technology right now are your multimillion dollar actors. We don't need you anymore. Oh yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. This is why they're always like trying to write this into even 10 years ago. They're trying to write it in the contracts. You do not have, you know, avatar rights to me after I'm gone from the footage from this movie. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I bet you George Lucas does though. With the original Star Wars, they sold, they sold those rights, which is why, you know, they, they could have done, they, they, their articles came out about how the fact that they legally could have done a completely CGI, uh, Leia, um, because she did not own the rights

to it, but they decided not to just to be decent people. To be sporting about it. Yeah. They had to, well, yeah, but now, now that she's gone, let's see how decent they, they become. Mm-hmm. Well, yeah. When all three of them are gone. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That'll be interesting.

Hmm. Yeah. Well, good times. Interesting times. Interesting times. Yeah. All right, guys. Once again, we've, uh, managed to depress ourselves. So that's good. I'm more of a meh. Meh. Yeah. I can't be, I can't be bothered to be depressed anymore.

It just takes too much energy. Yeah. I'm going to go put on my, uh, pure white suit, my straw hat and run around in a tornado. Why don't you sing us out, Dave? Oh, I can do that. Let's see here. Well, you got trouble, my friend. Right here. I say trouble right here in River City. Why? Sure. I'm a big player. Certainly mighty proud to say.

I'm always mighty proud to say it. I consider that the hours I spend with a cue in my hand are golden. Help you cultivate horse sense and a cool head and a keen eye. Do you ever take and try to give yourself an ironclad lead from a three rail billiard shot? Well, just as I say, it takes judgment, brains, and maturity to score in a block line game. I say that any boob can take and shove a ball in a pocket.

And they call that sloth the first big step on the road to the depths of degredi- I say first, medicinal wine from a teaspoon, then beer from a bottle. And the next thing you know, your son is playing for money in a pinch pack suit. And listening to some big out of town Jasper hear about horse race gambling. Not a wholesome trotting race, no, but a race where they sit down right on the horse.

Like to see some stuck up jockey boy sitting on Dan Patch make your lead boil? Well, I should say. Now, friends, let me tell you what I mean. You got one, two, three, four, five, six pockets in a table, pockets that mark the difference between a gentleman and a bum with a capital B and that rhymes with P and that stands for pool. I can keep going.

That's amazing. Bravo. And all week long, you're ever sitting, you could be frittering away and say your young men will be frittering. Frittering away there, noontime, suppertime, chore time too. Get the ball in the pocket, never mind getting dandelions pulled or the screen door patch or the beefsteak pounded. Never mind pumping any water till your parents are caught with a cyst turned empty on a Saturday night and that's trouble.

You got lots and lots of trouble. I'm thinking of the kids in the knickerbocker, shirt tail young ones, peeking in the school house, window after school. Trouble, my folks. Right here in River City. Travel with a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for pool. Now I know all you folks are the right kind of parents. I'm going to be perfectly frank. Would you like to know what kind of conversation goes on while they're loafing around that hall?

They're trying out Bevo, trying out Cubits, trying out tail or maids like cigarette fiends and bragging all about how they're going to cover up a telltale breath with send send one fine night. They leave the pool hall, headed for the dance at the armory. Libertine men and scarlet women and rag time. Shameless music that'll grab your son, your daughter with the arms of a jungle animal instinct, mass stereo.

Friends, the idle brain is the devil's playground trouble. We have to release that. Unbelievable. Now I'm never getting this damn song out of my head. As I said earlier in the show, once it's stuck in your brain, forever will it be there.

So shall it be. Unbelievable. This is the way, when I get old and I have Alzheimer's, this will be like the calibration thing to tell how bad it's getting. Someone will just come up to me and say, Dave, can you do trouble? And as long as I can still do trouble, it's probably the last thing that's going to go.

Yeah. Yeah. So anyway. That's a sad and crazy flowers for Algernon episode right there. The last thing to go is trouble. Trouble. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. All right. Well, I'll leave everybody with that. Awesome. That's something that nobody asked for, but. You got it now. Yeah, exactly.

You're welcome. You're welcome, people. Yeah. Cheers. A little follow-up here on the Rodecaster Pro. It sucked. Oh my God. What a steaming piece of shit. They do not allow, they should not be allowed to put pro in the title for this.

Yes. It did not do what it says on the tin. No, it didn't. The pops and clicks in the last two episodes were from that. When we did VoIP, it sounded terrible. And that was just using it as a straight interface. The fact that it is, you can only do 24-bit 48K, which screws up a lot of things when you're working in a mixed bitrate environment like that, when you're doing audio, the soundboard is useless with only eight pads.

The audio quality and the preamps are crap. They're making updates to the firmware all the time, and I'm hoping that there's going to be a firmware update that turns it from a, it's cute, but it's a cute box of shit. It turns it from a cute box of shit to a cute box of stuff that actually works.

I'm actually bummed out about this because I like how it looks. I was kind of hoping that, you know, we would get rid of these Studio 192s and I'd have one of those cute little boxes sitting on the desk here. But no, that is not the case. No, it is. Much like everything that Rode makes, it's almost, it's almost good.

I don't like their microphones. I mean, we had those Rodecaster podcaster mics. Those were shit. Yep. Everything else that I've listened to, it's like, no, I'm, I'm done buying anything from Rode until they fix this one. Cause this is a very expensive, pretty little box sitting on my desk.

Yeah. So I think maybe for in studio stuff, if you've got four people sitting around with mics, it might be okay. But if you need to do anything on the internet, which it says is what a lot of it is for, forget about it. And, and the fact that every time I turn it off and turn it back on, the date changes.

It's like, okay, that's a pretty big attention to detail screw up. And I'm like, if they can't get the little things like keeping the date right, you know, it's just going to trickle downhill from there. It's like, uh, yeah, that's, that's the M and M's challenge. Yeah. So right now I'm back on my PreSonus Studio 192 with my nice RE20.

And I'm very happy because everything works and everything sounds great for only 200, for only $200 more than the Rodecaster Pro. That's right. Yep. And I did get a piece of software this week called a Fargo. This is from Rogue Amoeba.

Yeah. I installed the trial on that quite a while ago and I liked it. It was cute. It worked well. Yeah. It's 50 bucks, so it's not cheap, but for a soundboard, it works. It's fantastic. Much better than the one that's built into the Rode Procaster or Rodecaster Pro.

Sorry. Can't even get the name right because it's such a dumb name. Anyway. Yeah. This thing is, uh, it's pretty nice. It comes with some pretty good stuff. And of course. Oh, they even have an X. It sounds so much better than the ones that came on the Rodecaster Pro.

Yeah. Seriously. Clear. No, it's beautiful. The way they're supposed to be. So. Yeah. I was going to, I was actually going to download it and get this as well. But then I figured if we had two of us on soundboards, this was just turning to a morning radio zoo show. Yeah. We don't want that. I actually just like it because I can play the interstitials while we're doing the show and I don't have to go back in logic and re, re put everything.

Yes. Yes. Saves me some time because now that we're doing this same day, I need to get everything to the point where it needs to be quickly. I like quickly. Now, speaking of doodads, I saw this, this, this was making the rounds, this new Ford delivery van with the delivery robot.

Did you get a chance to watch the video? I watched it. It looks ridiculous. It does look ridiculous. I mean, the whole point of this case, you got a self-driving van and you got this little robot that looks like one of the robots from episode one of Star Wars, the battle droids. Yes. It looks just like that.

And walks all weird. Yeah. Yeah. And just like the ones in episode one. The fun part about this one, though, is in the video, it cracked me up. The thing is smart enough to walk around a fallen scooter on the sidewalk. That was worth the price of admission.

I mean, I was busting up that they put the, they put a scooter. I much would have preferred, I much would have preferred it just would have stomped on it and smashed it into nothing. That would have been much better. That definitely would have been better, but then it would have fallen over and broken your package. That's true.

I do a lot of note-taking and I've switched from Evernote to the Notes app on like Apple's Notes app that's built in everywhere. Yep. So I was intrigued when somebody talked about Simple Note this week. I think it was, I heard it on Matt Mullenweg's new podcast, which actually isn't too bad.

And so I went and checked it out and I'm like, oh, Simple Note is made by the people that make WordPress automatic. So expect it to get hacked any day now. That's not a selling point for me. Well, it is free.

So you have that and it does sync with your WordPress account. If you use your WordPress account to log in on all the platforms, they've got it for Mac OS, Windows, Android, Linux, and iOS. So you have clients for all of them. It syncs pretty fast. It is super simple.

So you organize things by tags, which is the way that you, instead of folders or things like that, it's got Markdown support, which nobody uses. Except like 12 nerds who have podcasts somewhere. And it's pretty quick. And you can put in bulleted lists like to-dos and shopping lists and things like that.

And you can share them with somebody else too. So you can have shared lists. Nothing that I can't do right now in the Notes app on Apple. So yes. As you were listing all these things off, I said, and I can do that right now. And okay, I can do that right now.

So yeah, I'm sticking with Notes. Yeah. Some people don't have Macs or iOS. So if you have a Windows machine and an Android phone, I say, check it out because it does the thing that we've already had for a couple of years now. And it's free. Well, this is nice. If I were still on Windows, I would definitely be very happy about this because I would be able to go back and forth between my iPhone and Windows very simply.

But I don't anymore. So there you go. There you go. Yes. Now, I found an interesting article about the potential for the future of dining. You know, sit down at a table, Jason. You put on your VR headset and on the plate in front of you is what you don't see anymore is just this mess of stuff, a hydrocolloid called agar agar, which is just a low calorie thickening agent made from seaweed that's been 3D printed into the shape of a sushi roll.

Now, while you're eating it through the lens of the headset, you see a perfect sushi roll. You pick it up. Aromatic diffusers activate. You smell the ginger, the wasabi, and the soy sauce, and you put it in your mouth. And lo and behold, you taste sushi, even though you're just eating seaweed paste. Well, that's the idea.

There's a company out there called Project Nourished that is trying to develop this to provide its customers what it builds as a gastronomical virtual reality experience. Now, the cool thing about this, obviously, is, you know, you could have much lower calorie meals, but you'd get the sensation of like eating steaks and things of that nature.

Just because most of what our taste, our sense of taste is actually doesn't come from taste. It comes from smells, vision, touch, even hearing. So they they're saying that they can do this for us in the near future. Of course, the rest of the article talks about how insanely far off all this is.

Oh, it's not going to be any time in the near future. But it is kind of cool. I mean, given climate change, the death of species and all this and are over farming and, you know, how cows are destroying our environment, would this not be cool if they could actually get there? I would love this.

If they could make this work, this would be kind of neat. Amazing. Dieting would be so easy, right? Yeah, seriously. And your neck would be all buff because you have to keep on a VR headset while you're chewing. Now, if they could if they could actually just tie this into like, you know, a toilet chair that you could just sit in and never have to go anywhere, you're set.

Mediocracy is almost here, almost here that are Wally pretty close. But no, I mean, it would be tough because there are a lot of textures that are kind of tough because I did have sushi yesterday and man, that yellow tail was just buttery delicious. I don't know if you can do that with seaweed paste, but or that, you know, the textures are going to be tough, really.

Yeah, always. But hey, why not? We're going to have fake meat soon anyway from, you know, real, real cow cells and pig cells. So who knows? Yeah, I don't put anything past anybody anymore. We are definitely moving closer and closer to sci-fi.

Yeah. And one good thing that I saw this week is Senator Josh Hawley. He's a Republican. He put in a bill to ban the sale of loot boxes to children and two other Democrats have signed on to support. So we have bipartisan support to get rid of loot boxes for children.

Can we get a can we get it for loot boxes for adults, too? Because I hate loot boxes. Yes. Loot boxes suck. Yeah. It's just we're going to ship you our junk. Well, the thing is, I mean, I think you're thinking of loot crates, which was one of our old sponsors, which was crap.

Oh, yeah. Loot boxes are in game things that you can get like a chest. You can, you know, buy a chest for 500 gold, but you don't know what's in it. So it's it's tantamount to gambling. So. Oh, yeah. Yeah. OK. I'm not a gamer. I was not even aware that that's what it is.

That's bullshit. Yeah, that's that's one of the things. And, you know, sadly, Clash Royale has a huge loot box system in it. And yeah, you just kind of it's a random cut of the draw on what you're going to get. And like they had to have they had to redo a bunch of games because they were loot crate or loot box based.

And, you know, people are fighting back against them because it is, you know, you go spend like the way it usually works is you'll go spend like a hundred dollars on all these gems and then you can trade the gems for gold and then you can spend the gold on a box or things like that. And when you get the box, you could just get crap in the box.

It could be like, here you go. Surprise. You got a box of shit. It's like, you know, Jack in the Box's original name didn't work very well. It's like one of those cards against humanity Christmas presents. We're literally going to send you a box of shit for five dollars. And they actually do it. At least they say it on the tin. That's the problem with the loot boxes.

They don't. So with children, kids are spending all of mommy and daddy's money to get all of these loot boxes. And oh, you know what? I actually do remember this. When I was stuck on playing that Star Wars game for a while, they had the same kind of thing where you were basically taking a chance.

You had no idea what you're going to get. Exactly. But you pay for it. Yep. It's a load of crap. I hated that. Yep. And what I like about this. Today's digital entertainment ecosystem is an online gauntlet for children. Inherently manipulative game features that take advantage of kids and turn playtime into paytime should be out of bounds.

Well, playtime is paytime nowadays, my friends. So hopefully, hopefully you guys will make some differences here because I hate loot boxes. Now, going back to talk about Amazon for a second, Amazon is working on a device that can read human emotions.

I wonder if they're testing this on all of their employees playing those video games in the warehouses. Hold on a sec. Amazon is developing a voice activated wearable device that can recognize human emotions. So they're doing a mood ring. They're doing a mood watch, basically.

Okay. A voice activated mood watch. All right. Alexa, how am I feeling today? Technology for the win. God damn it. I didn't hit the mute button fast enough on mine. She's like, I don't know that one. Yet you don't.

Not yet. Yeah, so it's unclear how far along the project is or if it will ever become a commercial device. Amazon gives teams wide latitude to experiment with products, some of which will never come to market. Work on the project, codenamed Dylan, was ongoing recently, according to the documents and the person who requested anonymity to discuss an internal matter.

A beta testing program is underway, the person said, though it's unclear whether the trial includes prototype hardware, the emotion detecting software, or both. So here's what happened. Somebody got fired from Amazon, took a couple of documents with them on a project that will probably never see the light of day. And Bloomberg, because as we know, Bloomberg is really good sometimes with their tech reporting.

Yeah, they just decided to put this out as an article, which has been seen everywhere. Wait, didn't Bloomberg do the secret chips on the board that nobody could ever find? Yes, that's what they did. That's what I thought. Yeah. But this just reminded me of some other Amazon vaporware that I think you and I have completely forgotten about, even though they put it up on Amazon itself and we signed up to be notified when it was released.

Where is our Alexa for our car? Exactly. Where is that? Where is that thing? Hmm. Yeah. Probably lost in a warehouse somewhere. Some guy's too busy playing a video game. That's right. Brick a brick. Either it's been too long or I never heard this story in the first place.

But a guy who spent $800 million in Bitcoin on two pizzas in 2010 speaks out. You never heard the pizza story? I guess I somehow either didn't or it's just blown out of my mind for a long time ago. So if you've heard this, perhaps you can pronounce this guy's name. Oh, don't even get me started on that.

Laszlo, I got no problem with that part, Hansik, Hanyuk, or something like that. Or as he's better known, the Bitcoin pizza guy. He's given his first TV interview since the incident back in 2010. When nobody realized a cryptocurrency would be a thing, he made the mistake of ordering two pizzas with the novelty currency.

He's a computer programmer from Florida and he was the first documented person in the world to make a purchase of any good with Bitcoin. Doing what any sane person would do, he decided to spend it on two Papa John's pizzas, which cost 10,000 BTC at the time, exchanged with an 18-year-old in a Bitcoin forum.

At the time, it was worth less than a penny. Now, one Bitcoin is worth around $8,000, which is $800 million. So he spent roughly $800 million worth on pizza, if you look at today's exchange rate. And Papa John's, too, which is not the best.

Horrible. Not the best. Horrible, yeah. So the interviewer asked him, are there nights you wake up where you think, I could have had $800 million if I hadn't bought those two pizzas? And he said, I think thinking like that is not really good for me. Really, you think? Oh, good times.

Yeah. Hello, Florida. That's what you get. I found this article over at the Washington Post. It's how San Francisco broke America's heart. There's a quote in here that just drives me crazy. This unregulated capitalism, unbridled capitalism, capitalism run amok. There are no guardrails, says Salesforce founder and chairman Mark Benioff, a fourth generation San Francisco.

He's calling it a train wreck. Pot, meat, kettle. I hate this guy so much. He's all like, capitalism is horrible, horrible capitalism. Did you know that Salesforce is the biggest employer in San Francisco?

Yeah, you're causing the problem, my friend. Uh-huh. And I do seem to remember that Salesforce was going against that new tax to actually give money back to help the homeless problem, too. Yep. Yeah. Do as I do, or do as I say, not as I do.

Exactly. Go die in a fire. Closing shout outs. As much as I love all of you loyal listeners that listen to the show, everybody out there that's listening, my closing shout out this week is for the most rare thing of all, friends. Actual real world friends of mine that listen to this and support me.

That's incredibly rare. You know that, Jason. You know, as somebody who's worked in the creative industry for a long time, friends never pay attention to shit you do. No, they don't. No, they do not. But I have a handful of good friends that are always telling me that they've listened and talking to me about it.

So shout out to all you guys. Thank you so much. It means a lot. Yeah. I would do a shout out to mine, but I'm pretty sure everybody stopped listening a while ago. People used to hit me up all the time like, hey, let's talk about this. Nope. Crickets now. So I don't know. I don't know if I have anybody left that still listens.

So I'll be out here all by myself. Well, you know, it makes you feel any better. I don't listen to our show either. Yeah. Sometimes I wish I couldn't either, but sad job of the editor. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister.

And I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks, those of you who still do. 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 347.

From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, and get links to stuff we like. Stay grumpy and have a nice holiday weekend if you're here in the United States. Friends, the idle brain is the devil's playground trouble.

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