349: Pika-Poo

This episode is brought to you by Private Internet Access. Get protected with the only no-log VPN tested in court against the FBI. Go to gog.show slash VPN, sign up today and get protected. 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. That's where you went. Okay, a little slow this morning? Do you have another night? A little slow this morning. No, I just, I don't even know what happened to me anymore. I'm just tired, Jason. I'm just tired.

You're an old man. I'm an old man these days, an old dad. But here I am and I'm good and we've got some follow-ups. So I spent this morning with about my phone going crazy with robocalls. Shocking. And as we talked about, our country is going to try to do something about it.

Thank God. Finally, there's some different things going through the House and the Senate that hopefully will help out. But of course, because we can't really ever have any nice things. Our favorite person, Ajit Pai, of course, the FCC chairman, said this month that the commission would vote on a measure allowing phone companies such as AT&T and Verizon Communications to analyze network traffic to spot and block certain robocalls without running afoul of federal rules. So, you know, we're getting another, they're basically deputizing the communications

companies to go ahead and start to block these things as well. Hopefully. However, where's that other shoe? Yeah. Some businesses fear it could result in carriers also blocking automated calls from legitimate firms. Banks, collection agencies, and merchants say automated calls are crucial, even though some consumers may find them annoying. So representatives from these trade bodies that lobby on behalf of debt collectors, banks and health care providers and other businesses are meeting with the FCC officials and urging them to delay the vote and instead seek public comment.

Here's my public comment. All of those agencies that you just rattled off, those are all the people I don't want calling me. That's it. Yes, but they do have legitimate reasons to be calling you because they want their monies. So there are reasons to have these robocalls. So there should be a little bit of a way to kind of detect the differences between legitimate businesses that are doing it and spam stuff. So I'm fine with

that. But the thing that I find funny is that they want to seek public comment because we all know how well FCC's systems for public commenting work. Exactly. You got to die before they actually listen to you. And it's mostly all spam stuff. Anyways, they rigged the system, as we knew last time around.

If you're not dead or Russian, nobody listens to you at the FCC. So we'll see what happens there. I just I'm happy there's movement. There's a movement from the FCC side of things. There's movement from the House and the Senate. So something's got to happen because, like I said, my phone is useless. Like, it's basically useless because we get so many of these robocalls these days.

I'm fine with that. I just don't answer the phone by anybody that's not in my contact list. It's simple enough with that. That's where we're all at with that these days. Now we have some more follow up on Amazon. Now, remember, there was this huge contest that they ran for their HQ2 that basically involved cities bending over backwards to take it up the butt to have Amazon come move there. Right.

So people got super pissed off about this, particularly the New York City version of this, because of the amount of political subsidies and city subsidies and et cetera, that the project was that Amazon, Amazon was basically going to be paid to open up an office in New York. Yeah, yeah. It was ridiculous.

So they backed away. Yeah, they backed away from it, thankfully. Now what we're finding out is, of course, Amazon is going to go ahead and move there anyways. Now, the space isn't going to be quite as big as their HQ2 project, but they're still going to New York, thus proving that you don't need to give these companies these insane subsidies just to move there. They're going anyways.

Yep. Save your money, people. If they want to come, they're going to come no matter what. Exactly. So I got a little follow up on space junk. Pew, pew, pew. Are we shooting it out of the sky? No, we're actually going to be using different techniques, but this is an article from last year that I missed. And I found this hat tip to Arrow Dork on Twitter, one of my favorite Twitter accounts. And they said that this was one of the most underreported news stories

of last year that was super important. Now, there is a company that's out there that is trying to get these things out of orbit. And they're coming up with novel ways to do it. They're trying different things. So they sent up this satellite called Remove Debris. Catchy name.

Yeah. Yeah. Really says it says what it does there right there on the tin, doesn't it? And there's video in this article about of them actually trying out a net. So they they sent up their satellite and they launched it from the ISS and they spit out a test satellite that they could capture and, you know, try and deorbit. And they did with a big old net. They just threw a net at it.

So fishing in the space in the sky. Yeah, kind of kind of the same way that people are getting drones out of the sky. They're just going to try and do it. That's great for capturing it. But then what happens? Well, then you you can use that to deorbit it because I guess you bring it in to your thing and then bring that down. OK. Yeah. I'm not sure exactly all the technicals on it, but they're starting to find out ways to do this stuff. Well, good. You know? Yeah. I just it's it's a simple solution. Simple, low cost. Because they were talking about space harpoons, too. And I'm like,

you know, that's that's cool and all. But what happens when harpoon hits it and then it spits out the little tiny pieces that come out? Yes, that doesn't seem well thought out to me. Space harpoons. Unless it's just a big plunger on a rope, you know, shit in space, except you're in a vacuum. So I guess a plunger wouldn't really work. Oh, yeah, there's that. Yeah, there really is that. Oops. Didn't think about that. But it's, you know, unless we come up with space

eagles to get it out of the sky like we're doing with drones over in in Europe. But yeah, it's cool that some people are still doing stuff on it. I recommend going to check out this article. It'll be linked in the show notes because the video is pretty cool in the news. We've talked in the past about Spotify going after Apple in the App Store and how there's these issues with payments and how, you know, Apple runs their own little world there and

you have to pay to play. Right. And Spotify is going after it as well. Apple has launched a new page on their website called dedicated to the best store experience for everyone. And it's under principles and practices. Did you get a chance to flip through this site or mini site as it were? I scanned through it very quickly. It's it's very pretty. It's very pretty. It looks very aptly. And you know, of course, they're spitting out all of their their stats. And this is all the stuff that we do for you.

You ungrateful curs. We are a store that welcomes competition. Yeah. Except for the fact that you can't set any defaults on the damn iPhone except for Apple apps. But it's an interesting thing. And people are pushing back against this saying that, yeah, you know what? You kind of defeated your own purpose here and gave us all the ammunition we need by putting this page up. This is exactly what we're talking about.

Yeah. Yeah. You guys don't get it, do you? This is what we're mad about. It's just kind of cute that Apple is coming out swinging, but they're swinging in the wrong direction. Yeah, that may not have been the best idea there. But hey, you know, they're dedicated, right? They are dedicated. We're going to see how this shakes out in the coming months and years, I'm sure. Now, every now and then, when I'm browsing around looking for stories to talk about

on the show, I it always catches my eye when somebody uses one of our own taglines. So here's the title of this article. Sell your data, earn passive income. What could go wrong? Yep. Now, obviously, this article is going to be right in our wheelhouse. I thought this was interesting. So market researchers at PwC, that's PricewaterhouseCoopers, estimate that in 2018, companies that collect personal data to use for targeted advertising brought in $178 billion in revenue. Data brokers last year earned a further $21 billion,

and these numbers are only trending up, obviously. By 2025, PwC expects the global data economies to be worth more than $400 billion. Wow. That's a lot of, that's a lot of datas. That's a lot of monies for a lot of datas. Yeah. So the theory is it's about time we get in on the action and we should be able to sell our own data and earn passive income. So here comes a whole bunch of companies dedicated to doing that. The so-called data exchange,

a new breed of tech startup promising to cut us in on the share of the vast wealth being created by the sale of our personal data. They are billing themselves as disruptors of a top heavy and exploitative industry. These companies promise to build platforms where we can collect store and ultimately sell our own browser histories, Fitbit analytics, bank statements, Instagram posts, Spotify habits, and all the other data points that drop from us all the time.

So great. Each startup in this economy has staked out their own particular niche. There's a couple already. Streamer wants to let you sell data in real time. Every lane change in your Tesla and adjustment to your smart thermostat can be added to the aggregated data sets that will offer to corporations on a subscription basis. There's another company and I do love this name.

Universal basic data income, which is bringing all the analytics in-house and selling only insights it can glean from its users data rather than giving the data away itself, which I kind of like that idea better than the other options, but I don't really like any of these. And then there's another one called Ocean Protocol, which is on a mission to sell your data to AI companies equalizing access to data for all its website announces. So IBM and Microsoft won't be the only companies with access to

massive stockpiles of our personal information. Everyone will get them now. You get my data. You get my data. You get my data. Yes. And in return, you'll get some crypto tokens that might be someday worth something if enough of us decide to join these things and sell our access because these don't, these markets, these markets don't actually exist yet. I'm sure these companies are getting tons of funding for something that doesn't exist yet. A number of these companies have launched. Data is only available in aggregate, so these startups will need to attract a lot more users before they can start compensating people in

any kind of meaningful way. So it's coming people. Well, here's the funny thing. I guess all of these people read Jaron Lanier's book because he talks about this in his last book that we reviewed. Was it the, I can't remember if it was the like 10 reasons to quit social media. Yes.

It was that one. Okay. I'll dig that up and put a link in the show notes. If you haven't read that book, I recommend everybody listening to the show, go read that book. It's fantastic. But this is one of the ideas that he staked out there. And apparently a couple of people have read the book and are jumping on it. Yep. They did. They name checked him quite often in the article, actually. So, okay, cool.

And then I found another one that says what we've been saying all the time. We should opt into data tracking, not out of it says duck, duck, go CEO, Gabe Weinberg. Yeah. Okay. There's not really much else to add to that because we've talked about it to death here. Yeah. I mean, it's the duck, duck, go guy. We know that he's, he's all about this. But I mean, his point in this conversation, if there's a conversation with Kara Swisher over at a recode and his point was instead of waiting for a comprehensive privacy bill to work its way through Congress over the many and many, many years that

it'll take, he's proposing a small, simple tweak to us regulations, basically putting in an opt out. That's it. He says that that'll fix everything. No, it won't. Well, it would, if it could actually be adopted, but it'll never be adopted. Exactly. And even if it's adopted, can you actually trust them to do what they say they're going to do?

Well, then we get into what does delete really mean again, that argument. Yeah. Things like that. Yep. Now I found this one on TechCrunch this morning, which I thought was pretty cool. Uber Eats. Micromobility services are growing faster than Uber's core ride-hailing business. So they're pivoting. Well, they just have a bunch of irons in the fire with their Uber Eats and their scooters and all that kind of thing. But it's interesting that their side hustles have grown

230% in the last year, or actually just Q1, and ride-sharing grew just 22%. And I'm looking at that, and what that just tells me is people just want to stay home and bring me some shit. I don't want to go out. There is a lot of that. I mean, that's kind of what's happening right now. Like, you just see it with Postmates, the rise of all these different services that basically just bring everything to you instead of you going out into the world to forage for it yourself.

It's the Deliveroo economy. It is. It really is these days. Yeah, except Skip DoorDash. We'll talk about them in a little bit in security, but I hate those guys. I have yet to get an actual meal on time that hasn't been flipped upside down and shaken, not stirred. Oh, this one, this is a head scratcher here. I thought you might get a kick out of this. Cameo, the celebrity shout-out startup, nears a $300 million valuation.

Yeah, I've been aware of this company for a while. It's kind of like a side hustle for celebrities. Yep. You can go and pay them, pay the celebrity a couple bucks and they will do a little video shout-out for you or an audio shout-out. You tell them what you want and they'll either accept it or deny it and then they'll make a little video for you. And they can go up to, I think the most expensive one I saw was Kevin O'Leary from Shark Tank. He was $999 for a shout-out. You can get Tony Hawk

for like $150. And I think Charlie Sheen is like $275,000, which is probably his only income right now. Probably. There's a lot of people on here, though, that are famous folks. But these things are really not huge, huge money. It's like Caitlyn Jenner's bringing in $2,500 a week. And of course, the company takes 25% of that. Of course.

And another real housewife brings in $2,800 a week. How is this worth $300 million? Yeah. Well, you think I have an answer for you? I don't. I don't understand valuations of any of these things. They make no sense whatsoever. It's a great idea, but I mean, it's never going to be a gazillion dollar business, especially it's just not. Because at some point, to make the kind of

money to be a $300 million company, they would have to have basically every celebrity known to man. And the pricing would just go outrageous, like to the point where nobody's going to pay $5,000 for a 30-second video from somebody. No one can't afford that. I know. It's ridiculous. It's unsustainable.

So it's a cute idea. It's clever. I know Gina Grad does that. She's from the Adam Corolla Newsgirl. She's up on it. We could be up on this, in theory. I don't think anybody would pay five bucks to have us say hello. I don't think that we would actually make it through the vetting process because you have to, I think, be a celebrity to be on there. Yeah. Nobody's going to give us five bucks just to say Deliveroo or shit's broken, you know? Yeah, I suppose. But I mean, you know, I'm looking through

the list of celebrities and I've not heard of half of these people. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I don't know who any of these people are. Not of our generation. But if we had a budget, man, it would be fun to go through here and get everybody to say, you're listening to grumpy old geeks. Oh, hey, good idea. Yeah. I mean, it's a really cool platform if you need, you know, celebrity bumpers for your podcast. But it's going to add up real fast.

I bet there's legalese in here about not being able to use them for commercial purposes. I doubt that. I doubt that. It's a deal between you and the celebrity. So. All right. Okay. We'll see. Hey, man, we got a few bucks lying around sometime after we try and go to the burrito extravaganza for what was it? Cholula. You know, we got to, we got to, we got to, we got to set aside that 60 bucks to go to the burrito experience. Well, we'll have Bug Hall, the actor from the

Little Rascals, tell, tell everybody how much he loves grumpy old geeks for 25 bucks. There we go. All right. And Uber is going to start deactivating riders with low ratings. Now, this is a thing that I thought they were already doing. This is why I thought this was so strange that this was making the news this week. I mean, I guess if you have a low rating on Uber. What would be the point in having the ratings if you weren't going to do something with them? So yes, I assume this was already happening as well. Well, the drivers can see your rating when they accept your ride. So they

can, you know, basically on their side say it. Yeah. Yeah. They can choose not to pick you up if you're a three. So this guy's an asshole. He's going to puke all over the back of my car. I'm not picking him up. So it was based on the driver, but now their Uber is literally going to pull you from the app if you're an asshole. So I guess it's a step in the right direction, but yeah, it makes sense.

And why not? I mean, it should be that way. I think it's interesting that drivers can be pulled if they fall below 4.6. That's a, that's not a bar. That's not hard to get under. Yeah. I call bullshit on the 4.6 because I've been with some twos before that are just like, there's no way, there's no way you should be driving for this company.

This did make me go look at my own rating because I had never looked at it before. Guess what my rating is, Jason? I'm guessing you're either a 4.9 or a 5. I am a 5. Yep. I'm a 5 too. So I'm a nice guy. I say nice things to the people.

You're a nice guy, at least in an Uber. That's about all we can verify right now. That's true. That's true. Yeah. If they came on the podcast, I'd give them hell. But when I'm in somebody else's car, I'm a nice guy. What are you going to say? So I have a little more information about the FCC and things going on there. Some news. I thought this was interesting because we're all talking about the coming use of 5G and we don't think too much about bandwidth uses on this. So right now there's a conflict brewing over the spectrum

band, radio, TV, cell phone, satellite, submarines, Wi-Fi, and any other device that can send or receive messages do so using specific portions of the electromagnetic spectrum to prevent interference between different types of devices. The problem is we're running out of room for both old and new technologies because we have to keep the older technologies working. Things like weather forecasting uses the band between 23.6 and 24 gigahertz. But in recent years, telecommunication,

telecommunication, telecommunication, telecommunications companies have been eyeing the band around 24 gigahertz for 5G use. Now this could be a problem because there will be bleed over and somebody's apparently broadcasting on your frequency. That's why you can't speak today.

I think so. My brainwaves are being hacked. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told the House Science Committee earlier this month that interference from neighboring bands from this 5G proposal could result in 77% data loss. That's a lot.

This will cause immediate effects like limiting our ability to predict and track developing storms and cascading ones like the potential for government agencies to halt the launch of new satellites since many of them would no longer be effective. So let's look at this a little cautiously, shall we? We should, for sure. But will they?

No. Because remember, the FCC is kind of the worst government agency that we have right now. It is pretty bad. I mean, of course, besides the executive branch, but that's splitting hairs. Now, I found a really interesting story that was kind of music related, but it was more we're just a platform. And you know, I love that we're just a platform argument. Lil Nas X. I'm sure you're aware of him, Jason. I think you can. Didn't you buy something from him off cameo just the

other day? Oh, I've yeah, I've got I've got all of his his dope vinyl in my well, apparently he's everywhere with a song called Old Town Road. It's the top single in North America and has been for the last several weeks. And it has, I guess, an all important banjo sample on it. So it's the thing that gives the song its essential vibe. He didn't write it. He bought it from a company called Beat Stars, a site based out of Austin, Texas, that sells beats to performers for bargain prices. They have over a million customers

in 160 countries. They make approximately around 40 million dollars a year and creators of the beats have things licensed on their behalf. So if anything comes out of their beats, they get a piece of the action. According to Rolling Stone, there's a dance hall producer in Albania who's bringing in over $40,000 a month just based on the beats that he writes and the different music bits that he puts up there and people then purchase and license. So Lil Nas X bought this banjo beat from Beat Stars for

30 bucks. Awesome, right? No, the beat was created by a teenager in the Netherlands named Kiyowi Rakumi, who works under the name Young Kiyo, and he stole the banjo lip from Nine Inch Nails. It was on a track called 34 Ghosts, which appears on the disc four of the 2008 instrumental album Ghosts one through four.

He put a beat under the loop and then put it up on Beat Stars, hoping that they would be able to sell it for him. Well, that's the one that Lil Nas X bought. So now this illegal stolen thing is part of one of the biggest hits in the world right now. So what happens? Yeah, where do we go from here?

Well, Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross released 34 Ghosts under Creative Commons, which means you're allowed to take it and use it, but not for anything commercial. So this kid couldn't put it up for sale and Lil Nas X couldn't take it and use it to make money. So the copyright's been infringed. So what's going to happen now? Already, the songwriting credits have changed to list Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and I'm sure there will be money and record label sort of stuff going on now. But it does. I mean,

this is the thing like this is the same thing that you see with like YouTube and all of these things when you these people just build a platform and they vet nothing, right? They just don't vet anything. And you can't do that. But I guarantee you, if I went to BeatStars right now and just started going through stuff, I'm sure we could find gazillions of things that are just lifted and stolen, slightly tweaked, slightly tweaked. Yeah, that's the thing. Where does it get to the point where it becomes a

new work of art? Yeah, that's exactly it. Yeah. To ask your wife, she's the music lawyer. She should probably know. Uh, she is aware of this. Okay. Yeah. Cause the, the, uh, the ghost album was, was, uh, licensed under creative commons by NCSA. So that is basically, uh, non-commercial.

So there you go. Share alike, which means if you do anything with it, you have to share it back, which means you are allowed to adapt, remix, transform, and build upon the material. But the non-commercial aspect is where the kid went. Yeah. That's where the kid went afoul. So he's the one that should be on the hook for actually putting it out there to sell. So this kid is the one that should be having to pay for it. Yeah. Honestly, but I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on the internet or television. I just make shit up as I see it. That's right. And we'll see how

this one plays out in very interesting news. We've been talking about our good friends over at salesforce.com for a while now and our good buddy, Mark Benioff. Yeah. You really had it out for him recently. He's like your bird. Yeah. He's such a hypocrite. Drives me crazy. It's like, I love my town. This is the greatest town. And really he says that with one hand and the other hand, he's systematically destroying the culture of San Francisco. But what are you going to do? Well,

salesforce.com, they have a big thing on their website saying Camping World is one of our leading customers using our software and Camping World spends about a million dollars a year on Salesforce. Well, Camping World's contract is probably not going to be renewed because Salesforce now has decided that they have a no gun policy and Camping World sells guns because sometimes when you're camping, you want to go hunting. You know, that's kind of the way it goes. So, yeah,

this is an interesting one because they're not going to be allowed to probably renew their contract unless they stop selling guns, which, or they're going to have to spend a couple million dollars changing over to another software vendor. And I'm curious, before I say anything, I'm curious about your take on this. What do you think? Open market. That's fine with me. Salesforce can make their own policies if they want to. We've allowed places like Hobby Lobby and all that sort of stuff to do that

in their own ways. It's not infringing on anybody's rights and they can, Camping World can just easily move on to what's the stupid monkey one. The monkey one? Yeah. The emailing program, whatever the hell that was called. Yeah, but that's a, that's a, that's completely different software. This is CRM. This is, this is, yeah, this is a CRM software. Yeah. MailChimp is a email marketing. It's not CRM.

Well, whatever. Completely. Okay. So they can go to something else. There's, there's plenty of these companies about, um, I think it's stupid for Salesforce to do it. I think they're, uh, you know, pardon the pun, shooting themselves in the foot, but, uh, you know, they can do whatever they want. It's their company. Yeah, I guess, I guess it just seems very, when you're like the top of the market and you just start making these weird arbitrary rules, who's ever, who's going to trust you in the

future? Well, that's why I say they're shooting themselves in the foot. They, they, yeah, as a company, you're welcome to make stupid decisions. It is a stupid decision. That's true. That's true. Yes. The market, market forces do not preclude stupid decisions. No, not at all. So we see it all the time. We always, you know, new Coke. I mean, come on. Well, which is coming back by the way. Yes, I saw that. Yeah. Silly, silly. And speaking of stupid companies doing stupid things,

let's talk about the North face for a second. Okay. Have you seen this one? No, I have not. No. Okay. So the North face, uh, I just love this one. So they use Leo Burnett as their ad agency. Okay. And, uh, Leo Burnett said, Hey, we've got an idea. Let's try and get you to the top of Google images. And how are we going to do that? Well, when people go on a trip, they generally Google

the place that they're going to go and they're going to look at pictures. And then we want your pictures with your gear to be at the top of Google image results. Well, some genius over at Leo Burnett is Leo Burnett. Taylor made is the full name, but I would just call them Leo Burnett from now on said, Hey, look, all the top images in Google search are the Wikipedia images, right? So Leo

Burnett in a genius move, they sent photographers around the world to get pictures of people in all these crazy locations in Brazil to say, just make beautiful photos. And then they went to Wikipedia and swapped out the images that were there for theirs. And of course, then they got to the top of Google images. And instead of just letting it be and sitting back and saying, Hey, look what we did

for you, they decided to make a video and put it up on ad age. And that's when the shit hit the fan. This is first off, it's genius, genius. This is the exact kind of hacking and marketing we would have done back in the day. Exactly what we would have done back in the day. But here's the thing.

It's not genius because there's a reason nobody does this because this is what's going to happen when you do shit like that. I would have been the one in the room saying, you can't do that. We're going to get eviscerated. And then the marketing guys are going to get eviscerated because they fucking bragged about it. If they would have shut up, it would have been fine.

But here's the other, here's the other shoe on this one. The marketing geniuses say, well, we might get eviscerated. We can apologize, but then we stay in the news cycle for three more days. And how much more press are we going to get out of that? There you go. Yep. Let's, let's manufacture, let's manufacture these images, put them on Wikipedia, and then we're going to, we're just going to leak it that we did it.

And then we're going to manufacture outrage. And then we're going to apologize. We're going to do the right thing saying, Oh, me a culpa, sorry. And then we get three more days of free advertising everywhere in the world, which they're getting on our show right now, even. And then they walk away, they walk away looking like the good guys because we're sorry. And you know, they're even sending people to Wikipedia now to go and learn the purpose and the whole thing of what Wikipedia is.

It, yeah, yeah, this is the world we've made for ourselves. Well, it's just, Oh man, it's just, I still, I think it's, I'm, I think it's genius. I think everything that they did was genius. And, um, you know, they exploited, uh, some open holes that, uh, well, yeah, they shouldn't have done it, but they did it and it was, it's, it's genius.

Yeah. Fortunately, I don't shop for North face, but even if I did, I wouldn't now. Right. And of course, you know, Leo Burnett tailor-made is not going to get any, any blowback on this. They're going to be like, see how, see what we did for our client. And, you know, if they get a sales report from the North face saying that sales went up after this whole thing blew over, you know, it's just a feather in their hat, which I'm guessing it will because people are dumb.

Genius hack. Very, very clever. Very clever.

Cybersecurity. We're back this week with Dave Bittner from the Cyber Wire podcast. The Cyber Wire is a free community-driven cybersecurity news service based in Maryland, where they probably still don't have a government in Baltimore. Dave is also the co-host of the Hacking Humans podcast, along with Joe Kerrigan, where they take on social engineering, which somebody used probably to take down the city of Baltimore. Anyway. Yeah. It all comes full circle. It's all skittles and rainbows here in

Maryland. Uh, the rainbows after the tornadoes. We had another, we had another set of tornadoes yesterday. Hmm. God hates you. Something's going on. Something's going on. I don't know, but yeah, it's bad. Yeah. Well, I guess I, I feel like I say this every week, the weather's broken and it is.

So. It's still chilly here. Still, still sweater time out there. Well, I mean, let's not go crazy. We kind of more drape a hoodie around us slightly, you know. Oh, the humanity. Yes. Yes. Over here we have, oh, the humanity. There you have, oh, the humidity.

That is true. That is true. We have the humidity for sure. Uh, well, uh, I wanted to kick things off this week with, uh, an article that I've been thinking a lot about since I read it. Uh, this is from over on Medium, a company called One Zero. Um, and the article is, uh, this ID scanner company is collecting sensitive data on millions of bar goers. Mm-hmm. Now, you, uh, the three of us are all of

similar age. Yes. And it's been a long time since I was, uh, since I hung around in bars, I have to admit. It's been even longer times since anyone really took an active interest in carding me. Um, but my recollection was when I was, let's say, college age is that you'd go to a bar, you'd hand them your driver's license. Bouncer would look at driver's license, look at you, you know, nod, whatever. And in

you'd go. Yes. Um, and that's all fine and good, right? I mean, we're checking to make sure we're the right age or we're checking to make sure there's $5 under your driver's license so that the bouncer will let you in when you're underage. Under your fake driver's license. Yes. Right. It's all, it's all, it's all good. Um, but, uh, I guess I hadn't really connected that this has evolved. And now, uh, there's this company called Patron scan, patron scan, I guess the way you say it. And, uh,

they have a system for scanning your driver's license and checking to make sure that it's authentic, but it also connects with other bars and establishments that are part of this patron scan system. And if one of these places wants to basically blacklist you, you can get blacklisted from all of them. Well, it's been a, it's been a, it's been a whole 12 hours since I've been in a

bar. Um, it's been a long time. Uh, I still frequent, uh, my local quite often. Uh, I meet friends there do. So I, I'm been around a lot now. I don't stay out late much anymore. I'm not there when they actually have lines and they're checking IDs and, and whatnot, but I do know that they have basic scanners for the early bird special. Yes. I'm, I'm, I'm the old man at the bar. That's, that's my, my thing these days. That's my, it's my gig. Um, but they, they have scanners now

because obviously IDs are not what they used to be. Our IDs have barcodes and everything. So it's very simple process to scan them now to, to verify, uh, age and all that sort of thing. And, uh, I obviously bars have blacklists. They always do. Um, there are people, I'm on many of them. Jason is on many. I have never been blacklisted at a bar. Um, let me just chime in here and say, I was not aware that bars had blacklists. Uh, well, yes, I'm just, I, this is how little I, I have anyway,

go on friends that have been blacklisted and appealed for months to get back into the bar's good graces. Uh, people do stupid shit and they will get, you know, it's very easy to get blacklisted from a bar. Basically all you have to do is put your hand on any woman that works there and you will never be back into that bar again. Um, so things of that nature, uh, to clarify, to clarify, I've never done that. I've never done that. That is not why I've been blacklisted, but stupid shit

is my middle name, but that is not the reason. Well, it even says it on your ID, Jason, which is probably why they don't need this system to stop you from coming. Yeah. Jason, stupid shit to Philippo. Yeah. Um, so yeah, the technology has definitely advanced. It's very, very, very easy to keep out underage drinkers. And, uh, you know, the, the blacklisting thing has always been kind of more of an informal thing amongst, uh, the, the bar owners, the bar workers and the people that they

hire for the door. Uh, I have a very weird feeling about this kind of connected network. Um, because you did something stupid in one bar once and God knows what the story was. Uh, the fact that you would then be barred from other bars is, is kind of draconian to me and a little bit frightening.

Yeah. I think it's also ripe for a class action lawsuit. That is definitely true. Now I'm assuming you would just get, uh, look, even, even I might be breaking some news to you guys. Even restaurants keep notes on customers. If you're a recurring customer at a restaurant, there, there are notes saying, you know, very nice or bad tipper or things of that nature. People keep track of these things.

They always have, they've always been self-contained though. And the idea of it becoming a network is what's really frightening. I'm assuming that they would just see some sort of almost like an Uber rating of somebody, um, or something of that nature. And the bar would be able to make their own decision as to whether or not they let them in or not. Uh, but it's still, I don't like this at all.

Yeah. We've actually covered software on the show before that restaurants can buy that will like manage all of that stuff for, you know, this person wants this seat. This is their favorite dish. This is their favorite wine and stuff like that. But we didn't, I don't think we went down the, the dark rabbit hole of, yeah, this guy is just a bad tipper or he's mean to the wait staff or things like that. I guess, I guess they could just put it in the notes field and they do. They just put it in the notes field. It's human nature. Of course you would write such things. But that's part of the story

here is that, uh, if someone misbehaves, according to this story, the staffer can flag their ID in the system and tag them. And this patron skin has a list of, of bad things, including assault, disturbance, drug possession, drug trafficking, fake ID, fighting, gang violence, public intoxication, sexual assault, theft, private intoxication. That's my, that's the point of being there.

Exactly. I was like, isn't that the whole point of your establishment? I've never understood that. Now I get, you know, I get over served, but, uh, but the, the, the thing that they're flagging here is that a large percentage of these get tagged with simply private, which, which means could mean anything could mean that they grab someone could mean that the proprietor of this bar doesn't like Irish people, you know, who knows, who knows?

No, I think Jason's right. I think Jason's spot on. This is, this is ripe for class action lawsuit at some point because it is, it's a very murky system, isn't it? Well, and the other thing I thought of was what if back in the day when folks were checking our, our IDs manually, if in addition to looking at your ID, the bouncer took out a camera and took a picture of your ID and then handed it back to you, would you be okay with that?

Right. And that's, but that's basically what they're doing here. Yeah. Cause those barcodes on the back have a ton of information in them. Right. And this got me thinking. So, as I said, I've been thinking a lot about this and what I was wondering is, is there a use case or can an argument, can an argument be made for an ID that verifies your age, but does not include any of your other personal information? Doesn't have

your address on it. Yeah. A case can be made for it. Who's going to make it? Right. Yeah. And that doesn't seem to be the direction we're going as a society either. Is it? It's more information, not less. Um, you know, there was the real ID that they were talking about for a while that wasn't a driver's license, but it was an ID, but I'm sure that that has all the information as well. Um, you know, I would, I would just, I would never go to a bar that had this. If they, if they installed patron scan, I'd be like, no, thank you. I will be taking my, my, my drunkenness elsewhere.

Right. And is there a EULA when you're handing them the ID that says we are going to take this, take your license and let you in the bar, but we're going to keep all the information on your license. Right. There's no, there's no consent given for them to take your information and hold it, which is what they're doing, which also comes back to case for class action lawsuit.

I particularly like the fact that, uh, they say in this article, patron scan doesn't provide any personal data to third parties besides law enforcement, but that's a yet of course, because we all know what happens because that's going to be a whole nother income stream for them. And the customer shouldn't worry about future changes to that policy because the data has no monetary value to third parties. Bullshit. It doesn't have monetary value to third parties. Right, right. Of course it has monetary value to third parties. You're getting very detailed information about people and where they,

where they go and, and their regular patterns. That is exceedingly valuable information. Yeah. If I, if I started an Irish bar down the street from Brian's bar and I can buy the information on who goes to his bar, you know, his local, and I can then, you know, figure out where they're at. I target them and say, here, check out our new bar. Here's 10% off or 20% off Guinness tonight. Come on down. Exactly.

You know, that's extremely valuable information. Yep. And also a component of this is them making the information available to law enforcement. It sounds like many of these places have a kind of a cozy relationship with a local law enforcement. Um, bars do, they have to, yeah, they have, yeah, no, no, no, no, that, that part I understand. But I guess it's, as we come back to over and over again here, it's one thing if a police officer comes

and says, here's the warrant I have for all the information you have on Brian, uh, do you have anything? And please share with me what you have. It's another thing for the police officer to walk up and say, Hey, do you log, will you log into your patron scan? I just want to poke around in here and, and, uh, see what's going on. Yeah. Can you give me a list of everybody that was here on Tuesday? Right, right. Very different, very different thing. So I agree. I, I, I'm fully

against this. This is ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah. But I can see the commercial in my head of the, uh, the, the law firm that is starting the class action lawsuit that you would see like on judge duty. It's like, have you been an asshole, but think you're wrongfully accused? Did you accidentally touch the server's butt, but you didn't mean to, and then you got banned? We'll call douche and douche law firm and we're going to get you some money. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is a,

this is troubling, this sort of stuff. I wonder where it's going to go. I wonder where it's going to go. You know, full surveillance all the time. That's where it's going. And this isn't new. This has been, I've been seeing like, you know, it's been at least like six or seven years that I've seen these scanners at bars. So they've been amassing data for a while. Have you really? I I've never seen one. I've never seen one of these in San Francisco. They're all over the place. Yeah.

In Chicago style. It's, it's kind of like a, like a handheld credit card scanner with a little laser on the front. So you can either like point it at the barcode. They've got those everywhere, but those aren't, those aren't necessarily connected. Uh, generally those just really just check age and that's that. So, well, the, the ones I looked at looked pretty much like, uh, they were connected.

It wasn't just a basic thing. I guess, you know, yeah. How can you tell you got, you got to look for the patron scan logo, I guess. Well, the, the antenna on the side of it was kind of a giveaway. Oh, you and your details. I know. What are you going to do? So this, this article was sent to us by a couple hundred people, uh, in the middle of the night, do you know who your iPhone is talking to?

This is over at the Washington post and it's an article about trackers on your phones. And when apps phone home while you're taking a nap and all of the data that is like all these apps that are running in the background and all of the crap that they're sending out. Did you guys get a chance to look at this one? Oh yeah. It made me very upset. I see this, this comes back to me. It's another meh. I, you kind of figured this is going to be happening all the time. Well, I too had this

sent to me by hundreds of people. Uh, um, I think what is troubling here is for me anyways, that this is obviously abuse of Apple's background refresh functionality that, uh, well, but that Apple's that, that Apple's not yet cracked down on it. And what's shocking to me is Apple hasn't come out and made a huge statement about this yet because you can't go and have your, your advertising

campaign right now being what happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone and then have this new story come out. You've got to do something. Uh, now I know their argument right now is, well, the stuff that we build doesn't do any of this. These are third party apps. These are that you're using, but that's not quite good enough. And, and I will bet you that all of us have opted into all of this tracking when we installed the app and clicked. I agree on the EULA. Of course, of course.

So I mean on my phone, I go, I specifically go through and don't allow background refresh on any app. I'm kind of a stickler for that except on the ones that I really need it for. But like, why does the Nike app need to be sending out my data? You know, it doesn't, it does the weather channel. I can understand because they're pinging to get the weather currently. So when you open up your phone, you get the weather, but they don't need a ton of information. They, they do need your, probably your IP address

and your location to geolocate you so they can give you the weather in your area. It's when they go above and beyond. Wasn't the weather channel one of the ones that got busted in the past year or so for, they were selling all of the location data to a third party. Yes, yes, yes, yes. I used to have the weather channel app on my iPad and deleted it after that. You know, you know what? I wonder if this ties into the same time that Byron Allen bought the weather channel. He could be the villain

because God knows that his, his Byron Allen's talk shows were a travesty against humanity. So maybe he's, he's upped his game and now he's into the data brokering racket. Could be, could be. Wasn't he on like real people or one of those? Yep. Yeah. He was on real people. And then he had a late night talk show that was one of the worst things ever. This, it should have been like condemned by the Hague

is a war crime. It was so bad. This might be one of our best tangents ever people. Yeah. He seemed like a nice enough guy, but I agree. His show wasn't that good. Well, Jason has two nemesis right now, Byron Allen and the guy from Salesforce. Mark Benioff and Byron Allen. What do these two have in common? Yeah. Jason hates them. Put them in one of those wrestling cage matches together and see

who comes out alive. Which no talent asshole will win. Okay. Yeah. So this is disturbing. Yeah. I think we all just kind of have to be, be more like Jason. And I can't believe I just said that. Go through and switch off background app refreshing on a lot of these. It's just shocking because you, I mean, I'm sure, yes, of course that it's all in the EULA, but so many of these basic apps that you think

would just get the information that they need. They're just trying to slurp up absolutely everything for no reason. Because they can. Because they can. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. But also I think the point is excellent that yes, you can go through and go through the privacy settings and disable them. But to the point that you just made, it's reasonable to think that, oh, the weather channel app, yeah, they need to know where I am to deliver me the weather. And there's no real way to know that that's all they're doing. And that's a problem. That's the problem is you don't know.

It's either all or nothing, right? It's either on or off. You can't go in and selectively set up different things. And to your point, Jason, Nike needs that information because they do things like track your workouts. So they have to get some information too, right? Well, while it's in the background? No. If you're going on a workout, then you have the app in the forefront, don't you?

I don't know. I guess. I mean, like I have my phone is tracking my steps all the time because I try to get in my steps throughout the day. So I could see a sports app doing that sort of thing in the background. Yeah. Possibly. Possibly. But I just, I go with a zero trust model on every app. I give them as little as possible. So that's just when I install something new, I check it and just turn off the things because I always have to go and turn notifications on, make sure that there's, or

customize the notification so it doesn't bug me and all that. So, but while I'm doing it, I always check all that stuff. And it, it started out with battery life. It wasn't even about privacy. I just got in the habit of it because the battery life was so bad on the old phones that you just always turn that stuff off. And I got in the habit of doing it. And now it's, now it turns out that was a good idea because of just the privacy implications. But you know, if you get in the habit of it, every time you install a new app, just go see what it does and make sure that it needs to do those things. And if it

does, then guess what? They might be taking your datas and then someday you might have universal basic data income and can get rich on the, on the blockchain. Right. Yeah. Well, I have a feeling the next time I'm sitting on my toilet with my Amazon Echo show, sitting right there next to me, looking at me, I will be spending some time taking care of my app permissions. When you're having a peek-a-poo. When I'm having a peek-a-poo, that's in a different segment, Dave. You missed that.

It actually comes after this segment. So that's right after this, the order that we're going in. So a little teaser there, everyone. So the continuum is broken. Time machine. Yeah. So we've been talking a lot about really bad things that are happening with privacy. Now I've got an actual rare, decent thing. Amazon has responded to a lot of the brouhaha about finding out that voice commands were being stored and laughed at in private forums from Amazon and things of that

nature. So they've rolled out a new feature as of this week, uh, that you will be able to say, Alexa, delete everything I said today, and it will wipe all voice recordings made from midnight that day until the moment. And a few weeks they'll be rolling out, delete what I just said, and it will expunge voice recordings of your most recent request specifically. So the next time you go, Alexa, how do I kill my wife? You can go, Alexa, delete what I just said after you got the answer.

Now here's the thing. Can't you just set that as a default? Maybe no. Oh, wait. Nice. Wouldn't it? That would be nice. Yeah. This is opt in or I mean, opt out, not opt in. You have to actually say it, but on the plus side, you could do a, and if then, if this, then that kind of thing for yourself that made a nighttime thing that you could just say, and then add that to the list of things for it to do. But of course they can't just make it that easy for you. And the big thing being... Oh, oh, wait. Wait. There's a thing here. Now,

if you say, Alexa, delete what I just said, does it save Alexa, delete what I just said? And then in court they can show that you said Alexa, delete what I just said. Yeah. Yeah. And then to an affinity loop. Yes. I'm telling you, the prosecutor can go, what did you say that needed to be expunged so rapidly? Hmm. Yes. I think Alexa needs amnesia mode. Yeah. Yeah. Like private browsing, just like everything else. That would be nice. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and then of course there's

always the question, what does delete really mean? Are you really just saying Alexa set all visibility to zero? Right. Right. Mm-hmm. You never know. Court order mode. That's what it is. Lawyer mode. Bad hombre mode. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Well, this last one I have this week, yet another story about a bunch of user information leaked online or exposed online. This is 42 million

dating app records exposed online, leaking user IP addresses and location data. This was over on Gizmodo. Another publicly accessible database. And kind of what's interesting about this one is it was from a lot of dating apps, including Cougar Dating, Christian's Finder. Yeah. Yes. Mingler,

Friends with Benefits, and TS, which we assume, or they speculate, is probably short for transsexual. Now, yes. Yes. I think Mr. Jeremiah Fowler protests too much with that. It could just be fans of TS Eliot. I think he knows exactly what TS is.

It could just be fans of TS Eliot. You never know. Okay. That's true. But it's a wide cross section of people. Yes. All over the back. We actually, yeah. We talked about this over on the Cyber Wire last week, and we made the point that there's probably not a lot of crossover between Cougar Dating and Christian Finder. And I took issue with that. I think you might be surprised. I would like to do a little cross-data analysis of these

sites. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. At my point, I said, I think you're giving the Christians too much credit. Yeah. But, oh well. And I can't help thinking of Mingler, of hearing Vincent Price. Remember the old thing with the Tingler? The Tingler. The Tingler. The Mingler. Yeah. So, other interesting things about this,

they found a bunch of Chinese text in the database, which leads them to believe that whoever gobbled all this data up might be Chinese, although it wasn't in a US-based server. So, I don't know. Not a whole lot to be done here, but it's just another example of, be careful what you put out there on these dating sites, because it seems like a higher than average hit rate that these are some of the sites that get

scooped up. Yes. And, you know, don't sign up for all of them. You know who you are. Right. You gotta increase those odds. Casting a wide net. You gotta, you never know. The heart wants what the heart wants, Brian. You just. That's true. And the heart apparently wants everything for that dude. That's right. That's right. I love T.S. Eliot.

All right. Well, that's what I have. Yeah. I mean, I could just end it right there, but. All right. That's what I have this week. I will talk to you guys next week. Have a good one. You too. Cops and doodads. Brian, you're a fan of the Amazon Echo Show, aren't you?

I do. All my family has it. My in-laws, my sister, my mom. It's a great way for us all to stay in touch with each other, especially with the kiddos. Those things were expensive when they came out, weren't they? They were. They were. They were $300 or so. Well, now you can get one for $90. Of course you can.

Yeah. It's much smaller. Yeah. The five, the five and a half inch Echo Show for $90 has just been announced. And I'm thinking of picking some of these up for the family. I think it's a great idea. We use them literally all the time, almost every day. We're talking to somebody with it. And like I said, with the kids, it's great. My kid will just pop up and talk to his niece and nephew now. And it's a lot of fun.

Yeah. I think a couple of these might be going out for birthday presents and things like that. Exactly. Or at least Christmas presents. Yeah. So, except I got to buy one for me now and I got to con my roommate and they'll let me put it in the house. I have a version one of the big one still, if you'd like it.

Oh, okay. Yeah. We'll talk off the air. All right. But yeah, I think for $90, that's a no-brainer. Yeah. Yeah. So, you can take mine and buy $90 versions for your family and friends that you want to do voice chatting with. It's quite nice. Cool. Yeah. And these new ones actually come with a camera shutter.

Smart. Because they're definitely trying to convince you that this one should go in the bedroom from all their marketing materials, which will never happen. I will never put one of these in. Never. I don't care if it's a physical shutter. You're still listening. So. Yep. Yeah. Definitely not. I still, I want them to make that little round one with no camera.

I like that thing. That's exactly it. That is, I would buy that in two seconds and that would go in my bedroom. I'd put one in my bathroom and one in my bedroom. Yep. Because like in the morning, because I get up at like, this morning I got up at 3.30 and stumbled into the shower and I'm like, oh, oh, oh.

So, yep. Okay, cool. Then we'll move on and I'll review those once we start getting them in. Now, Pokemon Go back in the news. Yay. Pokemon Go has announced Pokemon Sleep. Okay. Yes. They, they actually want to start tracking your sleep with a new app called Pokemon Go plus plus. And it's a little, little doodad, hee-ha, goo-ga that you put in your bed that just tracks movement over the course of the night.

Okay. And when you get enough, yeah, it's, you know, connects to your phone via Bluetooth and you get rewards when you sleep enough. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Right. I don't know why. Why? Why? Oh my God.

See, now, the only reason I think I really put this in here is because soon they're going to come out with a bathroom tracker. And they're going to call it. Pokemon shit. Nope. Peek-a-poo. Peek-a-poo. Oh, there you go. Peek-a-poo. Could also be the name for the Alexa that you put in your bathroom.

That's true, too. Yeah, when you forget to close the shutter. Peek-a-poo. Peek-a-poo. I think we have a show title. There we go. So I'm sure a friend of the show, David Teeter, will be buying one of these because he's such a Pokemon Go fiend. I just don't, I don't get it.

I just, I really, I'm just scratching my head on this. Okay. All right. Yeah, this is what I don't get. We talked last week, I think, I don't know if we talked about it on the show, but I know you and I talked about getting some software to use our swanky new iPads as secondary monitors because I need more monitors and my desk is too small for another monitor.

So instead of going out and buying, you know, the $700 new top for my desk, which I really want, but I can't afford, I spent 15 bucks and went and got Duet Display. So it's just a nice piece of software. It's written by Apple engineers, ex-Apple engineers. You plug your iPad into your computer and then you run the software and it basically airplays to like the second screen to it.

It's really well done. It's really fast. And right now I'm running it on my iPad Pro under my iMac and it looks great. It works really well. And for 15 bucks, you can't go wrong. They do have upsells for other things and it does work for Mac and PC even. Yes. I bought it as well.

I've tested it out. I will use it when I travel. I don't really need it at home because I do have a nice little podcasting set up with enough screen space, but when I travel, it'll be fantastic. The only thing that bummed me out is you actually have to have it connected by the cable. You can't do it over Bluetooth or wireless or anything like that.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm fine with that because then it's like charging the whole time too. That's true. It is a plus. Yeah. It's definitely a plus, but for 15 bucks, it's an, it's a nice little app. Works great. Works absolutely fantastic. My only other complaint is it does jack with my, my screen resolution every time I plug it in and bring it back and some that moves, you know, that ends up like shifting windows over a little bit.

So I have to move them back every time, but overall very well done. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't really had too many issues with the screen res. Once I got it set up and got it working, it seemed to stick every time I plug it back in, but cool. I have to play with it a little bit more. Yep. Give it a go.

And in a weird, weird thing that happened to me this week, I had, uh, do you remember American gladiators the show I didn't watch? Yes. Okay. A lot of people who listened to this show probably watched American gladiators. I personally was a super fan. Well, the guy that was nitro on American gladiators came over to my studio and he hung out for a couple hours and I'm helping him, helping him with a new project of his, but it's just really cool to have nitro in your office shooting the shit and hanging out.

And he noticed that my posture was terrible because I've been standing here. So he told me to get one of these posture correctors that he's got, that he's using because he's, uh, coming back from back surgery. So I got the Agon posture corrector, clavicle brace support strap, posture brace medical device to improve bad posture, thoracic, hephosis, shoulder alignment, upper back pain relief for men and women at Amazon for a whopping $20.

Right. Things awesome. It's just a strap. We reviewed one of these that was internet connected. Remember we, we, we talked more on of the week or something. It was, it was this with an app. Yeah. There's that. Yeah. The one that there's like the sticker that you put right on the back of your spine and you're supposed to make you stand up straight.

Yeah. That this one actually, it's a strap and it pulls your shoulders back. You can't, you don't need an app. You can't move your shoulders forward and, uh, it for 20 bucks. It's great. My back feels really good. I've been using it for a couple of, you know, two days now. And, uh, if you've got, you know, posture problems, grab one of these things.

They're cheap and they, they do what they say. It's just, it just pulls your shoulders into alignment and you stand up straight because you have no choice. And, but, and when you take it off, you still, you still find yourself standing up straighter because you're, you're building the muscles to, you know, stay in alignment.

I like this thing a lot. Okay. Um, might check one out. Actually, I would probably wear one while I was podcasting because I do find myself tending to slump forward a bit while podcasting. I just wear mine all day. Right. That's all. Well, there's a whole new realm of apps, Jason.

I don't know if you've heard this term before. I didn't until I read this article, but they're called daps, daps, daps, decentralized apps, apps on the blockchain, Jason. I have heard of apps on the blockchain for sure, but I didn't know they're called daps. They're called daps.

Daps have been one of the most hotly anticipated developments of blockchain. The technology that underpins Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Investors have poured billions of dollars into the effort yet. According to the wall street journal, they remain largely inaccessible to the average internet user. Basically, they have not caught on because nobody gives a crap.

They are basically just smartphone apps that come in many flavors from social media to gaming to finance. Proponents of the platforms have said they have the potential to change the way the internet works, bypassing gatekeepers and allowing users to connect to each other directly. I know you've heard of one of the big ones, CryptoKitties. We reviewed CryptoKitties when it first came out.

And every time it was mentioned afterwards, I was always laughing because it basically broke the Ethereum blockchain for a while because there were so many transactions. Going over it. But it was a shark fin. It lasted like a week. And everybody's like, this is dumb. Yes, exactly. And then quit. Developers have created more than 2,700 daps that have enough data to be trackable, according to a website called State of the Daps.

Oh, God. Only three of them have more than 10,000 daily active users. The most active dap on any platform most recently was Endless Dice, a gambling dap on the EOS platform that had 3,400 active users on Wednesday. CryptoKitties, which they mentioned, first got a lot of people in and is dead now.

It's completely faded. They count only a few hundred daily uses and the digital cats sell with a median price of about 12 bucks now, according to a site called KittySales. Dragon is currently... KittySales. KittySales. Yes, there are sites for all of these things. I don't... Yeah, it's...

I don't get it. Again, I don't get it. I don't get apps on the blockchain yet. It doesn't make any sense and it's stupid and nobody's using them. So dap you. Somebody quickly call Gwyneth Paltrow and Gary Vee and get them back in the studio for Planet of the Daps. Yes, Planet of the Daps. Coming soon.

Hey, nobody will watch that show too. Brick a brick. This is a bit clickbait, but at least I thought it was interesting clickbait. There's a link in our show notes to dazedigital.com, which has Bjork, Jeff Goldblum, David Lynch, and more on what happens when we die.

Basically, they just pulled some quotes from old random interviews with them talking about what they think happens and I just enjoyed reading it. If they asked me, it'd be a very simple, short article. Nothing. Nothing. Yes. Oblivion. Okay.

Now you know my... Now you know where I stand. I found this one over on Wired. Mackenzie Bezos and the pitfalls of tech philanthropy. Well, Mackenzie is going to give away half of her $36 billion. Good for her. She's joined up for the giving pledge.

And we're going to see how this plays out. Problem is, it's tough to give away a lot of money, apparently, if you want to try and do it right. Yes. And to drive that point home, Wired had another article two days later called Five Mistakes Mackenzie Bezos and Other Mega Donors Should Avoid.

Because apparently, it turns out, being a business person, and I don't know how big of a business person Mackenzie Bezos is. I don't know if... I don't know her past, if she was part of Amazon or just married into it. She was. She's quite clever. She was. Okay, good. Good. But it goes through all the different ways where business people suck at running a non-profit.

Well, look, I know this is going to be shocking to everyone, but if you announce that you're giving away money, a lot of unsavory types of people are going to try to get it. Well, yeah, obviously. That's how human nature works. So, yeah, there's a huge vetting process that has to go into this if you want to really do some good and not get screwed and not just give money away to people that do horrible things.

Right. But it's changing your mindset and talking to the people who actually run successful non-profits. This is what they should do. But all they're doing is talking to their other rich friends who say, yeah, I tried to give away a bunch of money and it's harder than it looks and it sucks. Well, go to patreon.com slash GOG.

We make it really easy for you to give away your money. Seriously, Mackenzie. Come on. Hook a brother up. Yes. And I found this one over on Medium. I'm a former elite athlete and I call BS on tech's obsession with working long hours by Jason Shen. Now, this is the long and the short of this article is just stop working so goddamn much.

Take a break and you're going to be sane. You're going to actually get more done than you would if you worked 80 hour weeks, which you and I know. Yes, we know that. And I actually just saw an article recently and if I would have seen this in there, I would have put it in there. But there's a really interesting study that just came out that said the four day work week is actually way more efficient than a five day work week.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. 37 Signals has been doing that for years. And I do believe that they've actually are they're going to put burnout in the next. What's that book that tells you how crazy you are? The it's got it's an acronym that I can never I can never remember.

Well, that one's it's a different book. But yeah, they're just going to it's going to be a disorder called burnout. And it's a thing you can be diagnosed with it. But we you and I know this. We this is something we've talked about on the show, but I'm glad that everybody is talking about it more and more now because there are a lot of people that are on the hustle train.

Got to hustle, hustle, hustle. Gary V is, you know, the the de facto leader of all that shit. And it's stupid and people need to, you know, get a clue. You don't need a side hustle. You need a side nap. Yeah, seriously. Go buy a copy of Paziz and take a nap.

I do it every day. Pokemon sleep. Oh, yeah. Get Pokemon Go Plus Plus or whatever the hell it is. But take a nap, people, and just relax. It's all good. And I put this one in here for you, Brian. Victory for fathers in a parental leave case that could be a harbinger. Too fucking late.

Well, the problem with you is you ran the company, so you could have given yourself more time off. Well, I basically did, to be honest. Yeah, you kind of did. I just kind of cut back on all my work. So my company suffered a bit, but, you know, my kid's happy. Well, your company suffered so much that you shut it down.

That's true. Well, yeah. All the crypto kitties I'm getting from podcasting. You know, I'm cool. Yep. There you go. Crypto vacation. Look, every other country in the goddamn world does this. Step up, America. Stop being so stupid. And speaking of stupid, I didn't know where else to put this because we didn't have more on of the week this week, but I feel compelled that we simply have to say this out loud.

Yes. Natural gas has a new name, Jason, according to the Department of Energy. Okay. Freedom gas. Why? They're promoting fossil fuels to go hand in hand for the Trump administration, and they took it to a new level on Tuesday with a press release touting natural gas as freedom gas full of.

And I like how the author of this article put this in. I feel stupid even typing this. Molecules of U.S. freedom. Yes, they are promoting gas from Texas as opposed to overseas. So every time I fart now, I can say, have some freedom gas.

Freedom gas. Can you feel the freedom? I just feel stupider every day in this country. Oh, man. Well, I've got a shout out to a friend of the show, Bob Fogarty, because yesterday he dropped me a heads up that Good Omens dropped a day early.

Yes, you wrote me as well. I'm assuming you watched an episode. I watched an episode. Yes, I did. Just one? Yes, I'm taking my time with this one because I waited 30 years for this thing to come out, you know, for this thing to be a thing. So after watching the first episode, did you watch one?

I did not. I finished. Well, we're already like we're teasing our media candy segment. I actually finished Fleabag season two instead. I wanted to have that done before I moved on to Good Omens. Well, I watched the first episode of Good Omens, and it is perfect. It is perfection. Okay.

What I wanted from the book, it is perfection. I think the flaming swords are a little short, but on the other hand, everything else was absolute perfection. And that's why I'm going to take my time with it, because, man, it made me happy. Buy media candy on Tuesday.

He will have watched all six episodes. Nah, probably not. Probably not. Maybe, but probably not. So I highly recommend everybody check it out, and we'll have more of a review on the next episode when Brian gets around to watch in one or six. I'll watch one. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister.

And I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, go to patreon.com slash GOG. 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 the show notes for the episode are at GOG.show slash 349.

From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, and get links to stuff we like. And if you are listening to the show in the overcast player, please keep them stars coming. We love watching the charts. It's just so much fun. Until next time, stay grumpy.

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