351: Let Them Poke Cake

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

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. I'm sick. Oh, no. Yeah, me familia put together a good run of almost two months straight without anybody getting sick. My son came home from school on Monday with basically Niagara Falls for a nose. My wife fell on Tuesday. I heroically lasted until last night.

But yeah, we're all sick. Great. Man, I'm going to buy you vitamin C. Dude, I take vitamin C every day. You can't even imagine the amount of pills I've started taking since we've talked to people that have kids a bit older and they just say the first year in school, forget about it.

And we're almost through. Almost through. Okay. Get you a bunch of Z-packs and echinacea and all that crap. All that crap. Yeah. My God. I was down with a migraine this week. So at least fortunately, I only lost one day compared to a cold. Yeah.

It's a little follow up. This one is near and dear to my heart. Yes. Unfortunately, it's only in the EU and not here. New law requires electric vehicles to make noise at slow speeds. Yay. We could really use that here in Santa Monica. We could really use that here anywhere because I almost got run over by a Tesla Model 3 the other day, backing out of his driveway, not paying attention and almost ran over me and the dogs.

How does that even happen anymore? All these cars have sensors and rear view cameras. That thing should have been beeping like no tomorrow. Yeah. Well, the way his driveway works, he was coming out behind a giant hedge and the hedge was so thick I couldn't see him. And he obviously couldn't see me.

And he didn't have one of those mirrors that he should have to be able to see people walking down the sidewalk in front of his house. So he missed us by about an inch. Gotcha. And that was terrifying. He almost got little Dino, which made me very angry. You don't want to make Jason angry. You don't want to make me angry.

I've seen how those Teslas burn when they are, let's say, compromised. Look, this is a no brainer. People have been saying that this should have happened since the first Prius rolled off God Hell's assembly line. So why is it taking it so long? Why isn't it happening here?

Come on, people. Exactly. Even just give us some backup beeps like every transit van on the planet. Some kind of noise that we know you're there because there was nothing. And the thing just came out of nowhere. If my head was turned by like, you know, a quarter of a degree, little Dino would have got his head squished.

So I am very much for these things making some goddamn noise. Here we go again. Turn it up. Bring the noise. That's right. And a little follow up about Apple's sidecar. Well, it turns out Luna display, which is not the one that we got, but a different one for using your iPad with your Macintosh.

That one that was expensive and requires dongles and things like that. But they they say they're sticking in there. They're going to try and write it out. There was a statement from them say, you may have heard the news. We did, too. Apple has decided to dabble in the connected workspace domain that we know super well.

Brian, do you know how well they know it? How well do they know it? Super well. They know it super well. Their PR person earned their salary this this month. I'll tell you that much because this is a very fun. Yeah. Apple doesn't dabble in anything. I've got to tell you. Also, you know what? Apple's sidecar doesn't need dongles.

Exactly. And it doesn't cost seventy five dollars. Yeah. Or around that area. It might have been seventy nine. I don't know. But here's the deal. There's a seven in front of it. So and a dongle and a cable. Yeah. So we're going to see how that goes out. You keep your head in the sand for a while. But sorry, Luna.

You've been Sherlocked. Yeah, you've been Sherlocked, Luna. Sorry. So Apple's decided to dabble. Dabble. I ache an ass. In the news. Well, you can't open up a newspaper.

Well, you can't open up a newspaper. We can just leave it at that. They're all gone. I get the New York Times delivered in in Dead Tree format once a week. Well, yeah, you have dogs. You need somewhere to put down paper for them to crap on. So I suppose. Hey, I've got a kid. I'm sure paper mache is in my future. Maybe I should get the paper.

Yeah. Well, anyways, you can't open up a Web page on a news site without seeing all the screaming headlines about how Washington is going to regulate big tech. And the question is, why now? Well, of course, and it's because of changing politics amongst us masses. The people were pissed and we're pissed across the lines, Republican or Democrat doesn't matter.

So basically, it's now politically cool, acceptable and a good move to be against big tech because we're also fed up with them. So all the politicians are, of course, now taking it on. And again, it is it's a cross platform, which is a and surprisingly, it's actually Democrats more than anybody else, because once the party of Silicon Valley's modern progressivism, now we're just pissed off and exhausted by its successes.

So the Democrats are leading the charge here, but there's no bad there's no bad side for Republicans to be against tech now. Tech is the new evil. Well, yeah, yeah. There's an interesting opinion piece by Kara Swisher, of all people, which I tend to agree with over at The New York Times.

It says the people screaming for blood have no idea how tech actually works. And we've seen this in the Senate hearings. True. These people have no clue what they're talking about. So the fact is, yeah, their heart might be in the right place, but their head is definitely not because they don't know what the hell these things are all about, how they work, any of that.

Look, if you don't know how to get your email, you can't really write legislation about splitting up big tech. Yeah. We have most of these old people have had their emails printed out and handed to them every morning. Yes. Sad, but true. Sad, but true. And thanks to Consumer Reports who have been doing a study on scooter injuries and fatalities, we now know that eight deaths have now been tied to the e-scooters, which, you know, your Scoot Scoot has a body count big time.

It does. It does have a body count. But, I mean, they're estimating that there were more than 3.5 billion rides. Significantly. That sounds about right. Eight deaths is not that significant. So, you know, should there? My argument would be, I don't care.

Well, I don't care. I do care about the deaths, but the deaths isn't the main issue. Look at the traffic problems it's causing. Look at the injury statistics. Those are super high in comparison. The deaths, yeah, there is a body count, but it's statistically safe, safer than flying, safer than driving, safer than everything else.

The problem is everything else. It's that our streets and our streets and our cities are not set up for these things. It's causing massive problems for pedestrians. It's causing massive problems for people who are handicapped. It's causing massive problems for people walking with their pets. We don't have a lane for these things anywhere.

They're either in the street or they're on the sidewalk, neither of which are safe. And we just, that's that. And that's kind of the gist of the article that friend of the show Mike sent me this morning, which is from the Santa Monica daily paper. Boom in electronic scooters or electric scooters is leading to more injuries, fatalities. A lot of the same statistics, et cetera, et cetera.

What I did like about this is what's going on in Paris. Paris has had enough of this. Paris has said Mayor Anne Hidalgo announced new regulations on Thursday, limiting the number of scooter operators and imposing a five mile per hour speed limit in areas with heavy foot traffic. And there is 135 euro, approximately 150 bucks fine on anyone who rides a scooter on a sidewalk.

There you go. That's what we got to do here, too. Yeah, that's what you got to do. We'll see if it now we need a new scooter police force. So we have to we have to task our our police with people on fucking scooters instead of actually real crime. They already are there.

We, you know, especially as summer is coming out, you know, everything went kind of lax for a while, but we're about to get a shit ton of tourists in town. You know, the signs are up on the on the boardwalk and on the bike path every day. No electric scooters. But you've got to have the people out there. You've got to have the cops out there writing the tickets because everybody just ignores it because we're all animals.

Animals, completely scooterized animals. Scooterized animals. There we go. Scooterized animals. It's about to get worse. It's about to get a lot worse. Not content with just putting scooters out there. Bird is now adding mopeds. OK, mopeds.

Rather than stand on one of these single rider electric scooters, users of the Bird app will now be able to rent time on the Cruiser, which seats two. It has a 52 volt battery. We aren't sure yet what sort of range it's going to have or what speed it will go up to. What speed it will go up to.

But Bird's website claims that the onboard motor is strong enough to tackle hills, so it must be reasonably powerful. Hydraulic disc brakes provide the stopping power. Helmet usage is still recommended. Helmets are required by law. By law, yes. And depending on the speed and strength of the engine, unfortunately, again, this is one of the situations where our laws are behind the technology because the laws only relate to gasoline-based engines, not electric engines.

So we don't know. Oh, yeah. But you need to have a separate license. You need to have training to ride mopeds with certain size engines. Certain size engines, yeah. Mopeds, actually, you only need a regular driver's license to ride a moped. You don't need a motorcycle license. Depends on the size of the engine, again.

So we'll see how that goes with battery-based stuff. We'll see. Yeah. But, I mean, it's bad enough here now. And, you know, riding a moped, it is kind of easy, but not in traffic. Yeah. I mean, you can still go buy a motorized bike right now.

Oh, yeah. They're everywhere now, too. There's no legislation on that, of course. And those go up to 20. Well, there is legislation that caps it out at 20 miles an hour. You can't go over 20 miles an hour on it, the assisted bikes. Yeah. So this is kind of just an offshoot of those, except they took off the pedals. That's it. No, they actually still have pedals.

Pedals are provided in case the battery runs out of juice. Okay. Okay. I wonder if you get a discount if that happens. I wouldn't want to pay the full fare. Yeah, seriously. I'm like, I had to, I was schvitzing by the time my ride was over. Is there a schvitzing refund?

I rented this, so I didn't have to schvitz the whole point. Well, Uber is also in the news because they can't make the flying cars work now. So they're just going back to good old helicopters. Uber can barely make driving cars work. And between the scooters and the mopeds and everything, now we have no flying cars.

But if you need to get from lower Manhattan to JFK, you can now take Uber Air or whatever they're going to call it. Uber copter, Uber copter. All right. And all they're doing is they're just, you know, white labeling another source from a provider called Heliflight. That was one hell of a flight.

I can't believe we made it. So the price isn't that bad. That's what got me. That's why I put it in here. It's like you can well, first, you have to be an Uber top tier platinum and diamond member or or diamond member to be able to get in on this. The rides is a shared ride.

So you have to get enough people. Two hundred to two hundred and twenty five dollars, depending on demand pricing, of course. Oh, so that could be surge. Yes. Surge in the sky. That's right. And but it does include an Uber to and from the both helipads. So that's actually not that bad.

I've been in New York traffic trying to go to JFK. I would have gladly paid two hundred and twenty five dollars to get the hell out of New York. Yeah, I was just thinking that, too. It's actually not too bad. I wonder if they give you you still get your bottle of water. That's all I'm concerned about. I haven't gotten a bottle of water in an Uber forever.

Yeah, me either. Well, if you do Uber black, you still get it. But we don't do Uber black anymore. But the thing is, does it come with a parachute? Those those helicopters, man, those things go down like five dollars all the time. That's that's a dangerous piece of airspace. I know my friends who live in New York don't want to go on those helicopters.

They hate the things. Right. So they're kind of scary. Kind of scary. Well, somebody who also should be scared right now is Mark Zuckerberg. They're coming for him. They're coming for him. Yeah. Shareholder revolt gets bloody in this Business Insider article.

And Zuckerberg says, let them like cake. Exactly. Let them poke my cake. Oh, man. Yes. It's the latest shareholder meeting. Sixty eight percent of outside investors want the company to hire an independent chairman. And that's up from 51 percent last year.

Yep. And now New York City comptroller Scott Stringer, who's a Facebook investor, has called for an independent investigation into the company's governance structure. OK, this is not everybody's going after this guy. They can't stand this whole class A, class B, classist voting system because they have they have the power inside of Facebook to say, screw you, we're not going to do anything that you say, which which kind of defeats the entire purpose.

Yeah, it doesn't. It defeats the purpose of going public. Yeah. I mean, it's still I mean, you still you need to vote with your wallet. You you need to sell your shares. That's it. Sell your shares and stop using it. Yeah. That's about the only way it's really going to change or if they can really get Zuckerberg out.

I mean, I'm telling you, he just needs to go retire to his volcano lair, stroke his hairless cat and just fuck off. Nobody wants this guy around lasers, freaking lasers. Yeah. Yeah. Nobody wants this guy around anymore. I don't know what the appeal is.

I don't know why he's staying. I really don't. Other than a giant F you. I mean, this is very much ego. What's the Uber guy that didn't want to leave either? Travis Kalanick. He eventually got pushed out. At some point, Zuckerberg is going to just go. All right. To hell with it. And he's going to resign. He's going to go start off a big nonprofit or something or just take money baths.

Who knows? Sooner the better. Yeah, he'll go into philanthropy like he already has with his wife. I guess somebody needs to get to his wife and say, can you just get this guy to step away? She's got all the money around the house. Oh, that's true. It's like a happy marriage. It means he's not never, never home.

So exactly. Retirement is not good for marriages. Oh, man. What you going to do? What you going to do? Well, not invest in Facebook. That's what I decided to do. Oh, man. Have you seen this YouTube decision not to go after this homophobe?

YouTube is having a hell of a week. They're back and forth. They're back and forth. This guy, Steven Crowder, is like, ugh. I think we need a new segment on our show. Like, who's had the worst week ever? So this week, it's definitely YouTube. Yeah, it's really interesting. So this guy, Steven Crowder, has been going after Carlos Maza from Vox for years now.

Just being a twat, you know, calling him a lispy queer, gay Mexican, and all sorts of other really nasty homophobic slurs. But YouTube says the videos as posted don't violate our policies. I 1,000% guarantee that if you and I put up a video under Grumpy Old Geek's YouTube page, which barely exists, don't bother looking people, and said any of this stuff, it would be taken down immediately.

Exactly. This is, you know, this guy, Steven, has a big following, so they're slothed the move. They want the views. Yes. And, yeah, I just can't understand. I've read the policies, and I've watched the video. There's a supercut of the video of Crowder mocking Maza, and it blatantly breaks all the policies.

Clear as day. But the same thing happens on Twitter all the time. Our president has clear as day broken Twitter's policies. Over and over and over. Does not matter. To the point that Twitter is actually going to put up a flag that says, oh, this post is against our policies, but you get to read it anyway because it's in the public interest.

Yes. You know what's in the public interest? Civility. I miss civility. I know. Amongst the peoples. But, no, you don't get that anymore. You know what? We used to have two really important things pre-internet and pre-Trump. We used to have civility, and we only talked about politics once every four years.

Yeah, no shit. God, I miss that. Not every four minutes. Yes. Man, I miss that, too. But this is such bullshit. I mean, if you go watch the video and you read their terms, this is completely against their terms. Of course it is. There's no black and white here. No, none whatsoever.

It is completely against their terms. So, you've got that going on. Earlier this week, it was basically, YouTube is basically helping pedophiles and serving up content that they'd like to see, which shouldn't be up there in the first place, parents. What the hell's wrong with you?

But they've done one good thing. They've finally banned content from neo-Nazis, Holocaust deniers, and Sandy Hook skeptics. So, they are capable of doing this if they want to. They're capable of doing it all, but they're not willing. That's what we said last episode. Yes. So, they said on Wednesday that they're going to update their hate speech policy to prohibit videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation, or exclusion based on qualities like age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation, or veteran status.

By the way, that's exactly what Steven Crowder is doing. Exactly. Yes. Yes. So, we have once again updated our policies and made it even clearer that somebody should be taken off their platform, but they're not taking them off. Yeah. I don't get it. I don't get how YouTube can waffle on one and be so stringent on the next.

It makes no sense. The right hand does not know what the left hand is doing. Well, you know, private company. They can do what they want. Yeah, they can. They can fuck up like everybody else. Mm-hmm. This episode is sponsored by Privacy.com.

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Get on it now. Privacy.com slash GOG. 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 that apparently has no natural lakes.

So, I'm wondering where they're stealing all the turtles from. Dave is also co-host of the Hacking Humans podcast along with Joe Kerrigan where they take on social engineering. You have no real lakes. You only have reservoirs, it turns out. That is true. We have no naturally occurring lakes. Evidently, the glaciers didn't make it down this far to carve out bowls to fill with water to make lakes.

Okay, so you guys went out with spoons and trowels and made your own? My house is next to a lake, which is one of the man-made lakes. It's actually really a stormwater management lake. Would it be Pretty Boy Reservoir? Yeah, there you go.

And so, basically, they just dammed up a river valley or a stream valley in this case. And that's how we have our lakes. And somehow, all the critters make their way to them. My lake has beavers and turtles and clams and great blue herons and the occasional bald eagle.

And it's lovely. There's owls. Look at you. Yeah, all kinds of stuff. People come by and they go fishing. And there's bass and catfish and all that good stuff. Okay, we get it. There's some shit in your lake. Jesus Christ. Well, you asked. I just asked if there was a lake.

Yeah. That's all. Not a real one. It's a fake lake. But we'll take it. All right. All right. So, before we get started today, I want to share – I want to run this idea by you guys. Okay. I was driving around the other day thinking in my car, as I think probably all of us do.

And I was thinking about one of the stories we talked about, about facial recognition. And I was thinking about a possible extortion scam that you could run using facial recognition. And who better to kick that around with than us? Right. Exactly. I had a potentially illegal idea, so you guys came to mind.

Who are my – Let's do it in front of 10,000 people because that's the way we rule. Who are my two most devious friends? And so, I was thinking – think about your local, like, no-tell motel, right? Okay. Or even your low-end franchise, the place that doesn't get updated very often.

The one that keeps the light on for you? Exactly. Okay. Exactly. Now, they probably have some kind of El Cheapo, Amazon, bought-used-from-Jason camera in the lobby. Chinese, yeah. Gotcha. Yeah. And I'm guessing that those cameras are probably pretty easy to break into.

Right. So, step one, break into camera of local, no-tell, motel. Mm-hmm. Step two, run footage through facial recognition software. Mm-hmm. Step three, take database – Profits! Yeah, that's definitely right. Take database.

Step three, profit. Profits! Send out letters to people who ping at local, at local, no-tell, motel. Right. No-tell, whether or not they're there for legitimate business or not, just the specter of the letters. I'm just here for the Danish's. Yeah, just the specter of getting the letter.

Because one thing we hear about is that lots of people with these extortion scams, they have a hard time explaining to their spouses these emails that they get, even when they've done nothing wrong. They get in big trouble, some of them hire people to help explain that, no, this is a scam, your husband or wife wasn't actually out on the internet looking for love in all the wrong places.

But it seemed to me like this might be – when it comes to a facial recognition use, this might be low-hanging fruit for some enterprising scammer out there. Now, I've got to say, you are living in the right part of the world for this, I would believe, given the Washington, D.C. area and all the sorts of high-end people that are around your part of the world.

It's true. It's true. See, here in Los Angeles, we would have to go to the very high-end hotels to get the actors and actresses and whatnot. Yeah, we've got to go to the Four Seasons to do that. They are not going to anywhere to keep things on the down low. So this is all on you now, but we will help. There is a no-tell motel that is famous for being just that in town.

It's called Brown's Motel, and it's one of those motels that's been around for 50 years. It's been there my whole life, and everybody just seems to accept that that's what it's for. It's an afternoon delight, kind of hourly rates kind of place, and it just keeps on chugging along.

I guess there's a good enough business in that, but I can't imagine. Imagine that. Well, that's true. Yeah, you are correct, sir. We do like to pretend we are better than we actually are. Yeah, that's true. That's true. I mean, when I've checked the rates there, they're very competitive.

STDs by the hour. Right, exactly. Making online reservation, booking flights. Bed bugs at no extra charge. And the place has probably long since been paid for, and the land and all that kind of stuff. It's been there for 50 years, so who knows?

I don't know. It's probably a family business. But that's what made me think of it. I actually drove by that place, and that's what made me think of this devious plan. So first of all, I wanted to see, have you guys heard of this happening before? I couldn't recall hearing of this specific scam of using facial recognition with a hotel system.

No, I mean, I've heard of hotel systems being hacked, but not the cameras and then running it through facial recognition before. It does seem, sadly, like a no-brainer. I'm sure if it hasn't been done yet, one of our 10,000 listeners is on it. Well, and would it be easier to just get the registry of who – well, I think – so here's the thing.

With the facial recognition, you can't lie about your name, right? You can't pay cash and not show them your ID or anything like that. It short-circuits that whole sort of no-tell part of it. Right. But isn't most of this – isn't most of the extortion business – it doesn't even have to be based on truth.

You could just send out targeted letters to certain people and see who bites, right? So you don't even need the high-tech end of this. Right. Well, but I think – But it helps. You probably get a higher – you probably get a higher hit rate. Yeah. Especially if you were able to get folks who – again, like we said, even if they were just there, the specter of some kind of scandal will probably scare folks enough that maybe you could profit.

I don't know. If someone – I mean, you could even easily just set up your own camera outside of a place. I like it. Yeah, without even having to hack – look, see, we're already making your plan more illegal and better. Well, actually, it's actually far less illegal.

That's what I was going to say because at one time I was going to be training to be a private investigator and a lot of private investigators have long lenses and sit in their car and take pictures of people going in and out of hotels to find out if their spouses are cheating on them. You could just sit there and take pictures of everybody coming in and out of that hotel with a long lens from across the street, which is completely legal because they're in the public space.

Look at any paparazzi in the world. They'll tell you that. Then you just take all those photos and run them through facial recognition. That way you do not run afoul of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of trying to hack into somebody's webcam. There you go. Or you could just hire a PI to sit out there all day and then give him a cut of the profit and Bob's your uncle because he can at least run the license plates and then you don't even need facial recognition.

You could just have a PI with a license plate scanner that just takes pictures of the car and see who it is. Oh, shit. That's a senator. Cha-ching! See, there you go, Dave. Great, great tech idea that we just took lowbrow and made it even better. So there's my retirement plan.

Okay. Now, what was the name of that hotel? Browns. Okay. Browns Motel. I know where Jason will be parked in a rented car in about two days. All right. I'm going to look up the link for Browns Motel so we can include it in the thing here while you're looking at the next.

It has nothing to do with the Cleveland Browns. What's that unsecured camera search engine? Showdown. Showdown. We should check and see if they're on Showdown. Yep. Yep. Yep. And if you see a black Explorer with two dogs in the back sitting out front, you might want to go away.

Yeah, here it is. All right. I got the link here. I'm just going to drop this in the show notes here for both of you to enjoy. And I think you'll see that I'm not – I didn't undersell it. This place is exactly as I described it.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's it right there. Oh, boy. Yes. Rooms of the World. Proudly hosted on Photo Bucket. Yes. Yeah. Rooms of the World. Paris, China, Tropical Tahiti, Africa, India, Las Vegas, Hollywood, and Cape Cod.

They even have non-smoking rooms and a new ice machine. A new ice machine. Yes. Yes. Oh, see our rooms here. Hold on. Let me come click and look at the rooms. Travel to the Orient by staying in this majestic red room decorated with authentic Chinese furnishings that reflect the East. They're not kidding.

These are the rooms of the world. They are. They are rooms of the world. Yeah. I'm actually rather impressed. Yeah. All right. Well, I mean – Vegas is a little lackluster with just a bed sheet that's got a roulette wheel on it, but hey. Yeah.

Africa, similarly, looks like they got some rub-on decals of a zebra and a tiger and put them on the wall and a zebra bed sheet. It kind of looks like my son's room at the moment with the monkeys. Right. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Hey, but if you look in Paris, they've actually got, you know, a four-poster with some draping going on over the bed.

This is in there. Yeah. Next time I'm in Ellicott City, I know where I'm staying. That's right. Yes. Wait. You mean Paris isn't available tonight? No. Well, it's available in an hour and a half anyways. Hey, and there's a full-on CRT TV in China. Oh, man.

I am glad I looked up this link. Mm-hmm. This is a treasure of the old internet, I've got to say. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep. Well. Yeah, you can't even zoom in on the pictures. They don't even open into larger pictures. No, and sadly, there's no picture of the lobby, the hotel lobby, so we can't verify that they have a video camera in the lobby, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say they probably do.

Well, they've done a good job of securing their directories, so unfortunately, I can't roll around too much on their website here, as I wish to. I tell you what, though, I am looking at the source for the homepage. All tables. Nice. Font tags.

Mm-hmm. Yes. No blank. Paragraphs. No blank. Mm-hmm. Yeah, bulleted lists with font face, Ariel, you know, yeah, yeah, they totally are still using the font tag here. Taking it old school. Nicely done. Nicely done. See our rooms here, you will be delighted. And I was. And I was.

Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. I would say that I would drive by and do a field trip to see what the camera situation was in the lobby, but I don't think anything good can come of that for me. Take the whole family. Book a night out in the Orient.

Right. Exactly. I walk in the lobby and, welcome back, Mr. Bittner. Would you, back in the China room tonight or will it be India? Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. Every, every actual image on this website is hosted on PhotoBucket, which you can scroll through.

Even the, the home and room buttons are there. Yeah. Nicely done. Oh, okay. This trip down memory lane. All right. Shall we get to some actual security news here? Well, it's all downhill from here, but I guess. If we must. Exactly.

Well, well, this does kind of tie in. Google confirms that an advanced backdoor came pre-installed on Android devices. It's not a bug. It's a feature. Yes. Yes. The old Brown's Motel backdoor. That's what we're going to call this one. Have you guys heard about this one yet with old Triada?

Yeah. I mean, the, the, the story came out in 2017 about this, and it seems like Google's just confirming the report from 2017. From two years ago. Yeah, exactly. Right. But it's an interesting story about basically these, these third party providers sneaking in this, um, I don't know, you know, system level software to be able to do stuff on your device.

What leaves me scratching my head is why would you go to this trouble for adware? Is it really just adware or just a total Trojan? That's, that's what I'm thinking. That's what I'm wondering. That's what I'm scratching my head about. I, there's been no indication of it being anything else, but, and maybe if you have access to the third party vendor, well, maybe it does make sense to do it.

If it's, if there's money to be made, somebody's going to be doing it. So maybe I'm overthinking it, but, um, that, that's the part that had me wondering. Yeah. It seems like it has access to all of the installed apps. Plus, uh, it was talking to, it says no fewer than 17 command and control servers, which is pretty insane.

Yep. Um, and just the fact that they got it built into the firmware is pretty crazy. Right. Well, I mean, that's entirely why Apple's business model is control everything, isn't it? Yes. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No outside vendors have actual access to the OS, which I think is a good thing.

Me too. You know? Yeah. Right. Right. And the, the, I guess the case here is that when you're selling your own version, you got your own phone and it has, you're manufacturing your own phone and it has its special fingerprint scanner built in that, uh, that disc image of the OS gets sent off to the folks who make that scanner.

They wire in their own stuff to make the scanner work and then they send it back. You install it on the phone and off you go. And it's that white when they went, when it got sent off to the third party folks is when the bad stuff got put in the system. Right. But why are they sending off the entire OS image to a third party when they can just get, Oh, I don't know.

Maybe the drivers. Remember, remember when you could just download a driver for say your fingerprint scanner. It seems a little overkill that they would send off the entire OS because I mean, how many do you have to go in order? Like, say you have five vendors for different pieces of hardware.

You have to start at the top and say, okay, well vendor number one here, implement your stuff, give it back to us. Then we're going to send it to vendor number two. Then they're going to implement theirs. It seems like, you know, it's a really strange way to do this type of attack or at least how they're doing it.

I just don't understand why you're sending off an entire OS image to a third party and then getting it back and just installing it. Could it be the low level at which it has to interact with the system that that that would be beyond what you could accomplish with a plugin? I don't know.

I don't know. It has to be. Otherwise, otherwise, why would they do it? Yeah. Because it seems it seems like a hell of a lot of work and a lot of, you know, finagling just to actually get some software installed. But it's it's a little I don't know. Something smells funny. Something smells funny here.

Yeah. It's odd. There's a lot of odd things about this that it's taken two years to get the confirmation from Google that, you know, it's it's a strange one. So we'll see where it goes. Well, maybe the company has gone out of business that was affected by this for the most part. That's why they could put it out now.

You know, it's like, OK, once every it's like the Kennedy report, once everybody's dead, then we'll release the report. So once the company goes out of business, then Google can come back around and say, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. There. Yeah, that happened. It happened. Don't worry about it. We fixed it. Blah, blah, blah. But it's what happens when you're running an open source OS, I guess.

Right. That's why Android phones are so much fun to play with. You just never know what you're going to get. Everything pre-hacked. It's like, you know, those plugins from WordPress that were coming pre-hacked. It saves you a step, I guess. Right.

I saw this over on the courts. It's how a crew of fraudsters allegedly stole $19 million worth of iPhones. So that's what? That's a lot. Four iPhones these days? Yeah. Seriously. Yeah. If you get the one with 256 gigs of storage.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The Titanium X Super version. Yeah. I think. Well, if you get one of those new monitor stands, that's what picks you over the top. Apple's new. That's true. The new $1,000 monitor stand. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, my God. So what this really boils down to, it's just kind of a not so much social engineering, but just identity fraud hack. These guys were getting people's identities, going around to different states and setting up new accounts with different cell phone providers and getting the best phones they could get coming back and selling them on the black market.

Right. And they did it for a very long time in 34 states. Wow. That's pretty impressive. A lot of road miles. The thing I, yeah. The thing I wondered about was, so you get this new phone, you, you upgrade, basically you're going to, let's say an Apple store and you're saying, you're pretending to be someone else.

And you're saying, I want to update my phone to the latest phone and I want to put it on my bill and pay for it over the longest period of time possible. And they hand you that phone, brand new phone, and you walk away with it. Well, Apple knows the serial number on that phone. Apple knows everything about that phone.

Right. Wouldn't it be easy to basically brick that phone? Well, you have to think first, is it Apple or are they going to the actual like AT&T or Sprint or T-Mobile stores? Right. I wouldn't assume that they're going to the Apple stores. Granted, yes, they do have the numbers and they might brick the phone once they figure out it's stolen.

But by that point, by that point, they sold it. They've already sold the phone. Right. Not their problem. Yeah. And it's not the problem of the people whose identities were stolen. It says in the article that the carriers took the brunt of it, which makes me think that they were going to the carrier stores.

Well, that makes sense if they've been doing it for a long time anyways, because Apple only in the past couple of years started selling the phones and doing all that. You had to go or you would go because you got the upgrades and you got the deals and all that sort of stuff. It's only been recently that we're paying full price for phones and everybody's gotten rid of it.

Everybody went to their providers to get their phones up until recently. So, yeah, it's I mean, it's just been a long running, long running scam. And I'm glad these guys are finally caught. But there's only six people that ran the ring. And I'm sure there were I'm sure there were lots of lots of underlings.

Yes. Yeah. People who actually had to go run and go into the stores, you know, for here's 150 bucks. Go in there. Go get a phone. And yeah, that's what it said in the story that basically they got 100 bucks per phone that they got and they were sent around all over the country. And there'd be a basically someone who went into the store and then they'd also have a driver.

So they had some manpower behind this thing. Yeah. It's mafia mafia level organization. Yeah. Yeah. Knowing how some of these scams work, you always have a driver because you don't want to have all of the stuff left in the vehicle. If you're the if you're if you're driving around by yourself doing these scams, I know I know how this worked with check scams.

So you'd have one driver who would drive people around. He would be the lookout to look for law enforcement coming. And if somebody was coming, they'd honk the horn. You get back in the car and you'd leave and just leave all the shit and walk out the door. Yeah. And also, if you're caught and you're the one driving, all the evidence is in the car.

So they want to get out of there as fast as they can with the evidence. Then they'll swap cars, swap the stuff and then and ditch the car. You just know so much about this world, Jason. You really do. I wasn't going to say it, but let's just say I know this from experience.

There is another thing. It's like an onion. I've known him for years. And every single time there's something a little bit more to unpeel. Yeah. Yeah. There's the other thing that caught my eye in this article was that one of the reasons that they got caught was that some of the people in the ring got arrested for other crimes and in the in the course of searching their phones and laptops that uncovered information about this crime, which I thought was right.

That's how it usually happens with 18 or eight, not AT&T scams, ATM scammers. So you'll have the main guy who's getting the accounts, making the cards, and then he has an army of kids that go out and just hit all the ATMs. Right. So if one of those kids get busted, then they generally go back to the main guy because this was a big thing for a long time.

My friend actually had my ex-girlfriend was holding onto a cat of Kevin Paulson, who was a very famous hacker back in the day because he was in jail and she took over his cat because he was running the same scam and he got busted because one of his kids got caught. Now he's a security researcher and writer.

He's very famous. You can look him up. But yeah, he got busted for doing the same thing. And a lot of those guys get busted for the same thing because they didn't have like three levels of separation between the main guy and the people who are out running the scam. You have to you have to have separation of power on that stuff.

And a lot of these guys aren't either prepared to do it or smart enough to do it. So that makes sense that, you know, just one underling got caught. They grabbed his laptop and then they could backtrace it. Yeah, yeah. Well, we've talked about the ring doorbells before and the police wanting to have access to the footage.

Jason, you still have your ring? I actually got another one. I have three rings in the house now. Yeah. Do you take advantage of the ring neighbor app? Yes, I do. And I look at it. I don't post to it. Yeah. How do you? So you like it? It works well. It does what it's supposed to do.

It shows me how batshit my neighbors are for the most part. So there's entertainment value. Yes, I know which neighbors are racist and which neighbors are racist. I see, right. For the most part, that's about it. And then there's the neighbors who are racist. Yeah, yeah.

Well, this story from CNET was about the ring cameras being used by police and police actually giving away ring cameras for free, but making it conditional that if they give you a free camera, you have to provide them access to the footage should there be a crime committed in the area that they're interested in.

Now, what do you guys make of this deal of having to provide the footage in exchange for a ring camera? Is that simply a deal that some people would be willing to make? And so it's a good deal? I think it's a deal that many people will be willing to make, and it's awesome for the cops. Yeah.

Hell no on my count. No, no, no, no, no. We know I got ring. Look, I got ring cameras in my backyard. Guess what's in my backyard? My hot tub. I ain't. Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, no, sir. Thank you. Yeah. I think it's, it's something a lot of people are going to do, unfortunately. And, and it's, it's, we're, we've, we've been bred to do it now.

I mean, our entire society now is trading our privacy for free or low cost service. This is just an extension of that. Now the ring folks have said that this is not, they don't support this notion. They don't, they, because they provide the ring cameras, we distance ourselves from this yet.

We're giving them all the cameras. Well, well, yeah, it's a little more nuanced than that, but, uh, not, not that much. Um, evidently ring provides law enforcement with free cameras. Every X number of cameras that are sold in an area, they have programs where they'll provide them to law enforcement because remember ring makes money off of the subscriptions.

So it's three bucks a month forever and it doesn't take that long to pay back the hardware, right? So, um, but I've never paid for a ring subscription. I wonder what I'm missing. Hmm. I don't know. Don't know.

All my rings. I get, maybe it comes with the first, the first year for free, but I do not pay for any of my rings. They were expensive enough. So they must come with a year free and I haven't hit that year yet, but I don't, I don't pay anything for that.

And, and by the way, when we're talking about ring, always remember we're talking about Amazon. Right. Right. So ring is saying that they are against the police officers making this conditional. And, uh, so they're checking with the police organizations that are, that are making this conditional and saying, Hey, cut it out.

We'll see how far that goes. And as we've talked about before, we, we, we had a discussion about this, about how it's different if a police officer knocks on your door and says, Hey, can I look at your footage? You're going to feel a little bit coerced by that. Or many people are Jason won't, but most people will.

Yes. Jason will say, meet Bam Bam. Now get off my porch. Exactly. Come back with a warrant. Right. Right. Joe law. Exactly. Um, I don't know. I, I mean, I, I think Brian, you, you nailed it here where we're, we're willing to give away our privacy for a very low price.

Now the police aren't able to get this on demand. They still have to come to you and say, please throw the switch so we can get this footage, but they, you have to have the switch thrown. Correct. But they, yeah. Right. So it's all, it's recording all the time. You don't, you don't have the ability to turn it off, but they still have to come to you to actually look at the footage.

Correct. Right. Correct. But they could come to you and say, Hey, you know, we gave you this camera and the, here's the deal. And then also how do you define, you know, major crime, minor crime, you know, what, what, what's the definition here that allows you to come and use this since you signed off on doing it?

Um, you know, I just, I find it a sad state of affairs. We're, we're, we're basically creating our own police state. We're doing it to ourselves. And this is just another extension of that. Hmm. Okay. Uh, here's the deal. Don't, don't get a free camera from a cop. No, actually don't take anything from a cop.

But look at, look at it from the average person's point of view. You, you, you, okay. This is a camera that points out. It points out my door. It's not pointing in my house. I am getting it for free. I wanted one of these things. They're quite pricey. They're just going to give it to me.

How cool is that? Why would I say no? Yeah. That's yeah. Yeah. There you go. It's a virtual, virtual neighborhood watch. Yeah. I say no, because I don't trust the damn cops. Well, that's, that's you, Jason. You, I, you are, I think you are very much an outlier compared to most people.

Ah, well, people need to learn from my mistakes. Since you haven't, they must. That, that, that needs to go on your headstone, my friend. Oh, it will. People need to learn from my mistakes.

Do you remember the demotivator posters? Yes. There was, there was one poster that I used to have in my house that they don't sell anymore that I always wanted to, to get a new one for. It was a ship in a dry lake bed, fallen over, just kind of rotted out and eaten.

And it's sometimes your life is a cautionary tale for others. And that's, I know, I know that to my core. So there you go. All right. All right. Cautionary tale will be my, that'll be my autobiography and on my headstone.

Well, let's talk about a story that strangely for this segment, actually, well, sort of, kind of in a roundabout way is, is a good news story. I suppose Microsoft, uh, discreetly wiped its massive facial recognition database. So they've been, uh, very vocal about their desire to properly regulate facial recognition technology recently.

We've been very much pro Microsoft and pro Apple in this segment, because they do seem to be the two companies that seem to give a shit about privacy and these sorts of things for us. So they had this massive database of 10 million images of some 100,000 people called MS Celeb.

Now they were, they were able to do this because they pulled, they pulled basically creative commons license images from the internet of celebrities. So, you know, you don't have to, as we've discussed at the, at the Brown motel or whatever it was called, if you're a celebrity paparazzi can take photos of you, you're out in public end of story.

Those, those photos are out there and they're completely legal to use. So Microsoft put together one of these things, huge database, used it for facial recognition stuff, licensed it and sold it to military governments around the world. So they could, you know, people could build up and test their own facial facial recognition systems.

And they said, okay, this is probably not a good idea. And they decided to go ahead and get rid of it. Unfortunately, once a data set exists in the world and there are copies of it, one cannot get rid of it. Microsoft just no longer publishes it. That's it. It's still out there. So good slash bad, I suppose.

What do you guys think? Are you saying once you post something to the internet, other people copy it and you can't get rid of it again? Except for Hulk Hogan having sex. Yes. Unless you're Peter Thiel. That's actually a very good point. Yes. Well, I added to this that journalist Kim Zetter got caught up in this.

Evidently, she was well known enough to be considered one of the celebs. Yeah, it was an interesting, that was like a little side bar on this whole story in that some authors and journalists were included instead of just, you know, straight up movie stars and things of that nature, which I, you know, I would be upset that I was in it, but also kind of like, hey, I guess I am a big shot.

Yeah. I mean, she said on her Twitter feed, she said, what's especially egregious about this is that I don't publish photos of myself online or anywhere. My Twitter profile doesn't include a photo. The jacket of my book doesn't have an author photo, nor does my book publishes website. I ask people not to publish photos of me.

So, I guess, is it that age-old opt-in or opt-out dilemma? Well, she can say that all she wants. If I just, I just typed into, I typed her name into Google image search and there's about a thousand images of her. Yeah. So, you know, it is what it is. You can try to not publish.

She speaks publicly. She appears in public. She appears on TV shows. So, you know. Yeah, just because she's in public means that somebody can take a picture of her, post it to the internet and say, look, there's Kim Zetter. There's, you know, 150 different images of her speaking publicly.

So, yeah. So, she has unrealistic expectations. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, that's fair enough. I mean, look, there's less photos of CGP Grey on the internet than there are of her. So, it's like, she's obviously not doing a good job of it.

Yeah. I think she doth protest too much there. I mean, don't get me wrong. I agree with her that this is creepy and you don't want to be in this sort of database, but she's a little unrealistic in thinking that just because she doesn't publish photos of herself, that doesn't mean photos aren't published and in the public domain. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, anyways, I'm glad Microsoft decided to can it, but it's a bit late. Yeah. That horse has left the barn. Yeah. This last one I have this week, this is about one of the things that Apple announced at their Worldwide Developers Conference.

This is sign in with Apple. Yes. Yes. I've been waiting to hear what you thought of this. Well, just to review, I mean, this is, we're all familiar with sign in with Facebook or sign in with Google, these sort of, these attempts at sort of a universal.

Mining all of your information by pretending to make things easier to log into. Right, right. Well, there you go. Trading convenience for some of your information. Here's your free ring. Mm-hmm. So, Apple is taking a shot at this. They're having sign in with Apple, but what's interesting about Apple's is they're building theirs in such a way that, according to Apple and some of the people who've looked at this, should make you untrackable across the internet.

And what's interesting, doubly interesting about it is they're requiring that if you have any of these universal sign-ins in your apps that are in Apple's app store, you must include Apple's as well. I can't wait to log into Facebook using my Apple ID.

So, there's, oh, isn't that interesting? Isn't that interesting? So, they're strong-arming. That's some of the pushback they've gotten is that they're strong-arming developers into implementing this, but it seems to me...

Is it really, though? Is it really? Because they're already... It's their playground. You want to come play in their playground. Well, you're never going to be able to sign into Facebook with your Apple ID because... No, I know. ...Facebook does not offer anybody besides Facebook login. So, that's a no-brainer. I think people are upset because, yes, they are forcing it, but if you are offering alternate ID account creation with your app, they're just saying on our platform, you have to use ours too.

Yeah, right. And that is, to me, valid. Absolutely valid. You want to play it... Like you said, Brent, you want to play in our playground. Yep. You don't have to use us, but you have to either... If you do use us, these are the rules. Yeah, either handle user creation yourself, or if you're going to offer multi-party logins, we just got to be one of them.

You can have everybody else out there, but we get to play too. And Apple has many, many rules about being able to put an app up in their store and get apps on their devices. This is just another one, and I like it. I like it a lot. I can't wait to use sign-in with Apple. I mean, particularly, we were talking about it on our other show, that one of the best features is that it creates temporary email addresses.

So you don't even have to use your own personal email address to sign up for things anymore. That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. It's about sign-up. So if your Uber account is tied to your Facebook account, what you're going to have to do is disconnect your Facebook account from your Uber app and then re-sign in and create a new account with Apple.

Yep. If you want that to be the way. Of course, they're still going to have it and keep your shadow profiles, but what are you going to do about that? But baby steps, this is good. This is very good for privacy. Yeah. I'm 100% behind it. I think it's... This is what... When you and I talked about this last week, Brian, we said, it's about fucking time.

Yeah. What took them so long? What took them so long? Exactly. The thing... Well, what is taking them so long and what is a bit of a worry about this now is they're getting under scrutiny, obviously, by the government at this point, as we've been talking about in the past couple of shows. And this is them pushing into a whole nother area and opening themselves up to even more antitrust.

We'll see what happens, but I'm down with it. It's... For people that live within the Apple ecosystem, this is an amazing thing that's being rolled out and I can't wait for it. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see how it actually works in the real world and what attempts all these marketers make to do an end around and still be able to track you.

Once we're able to get data back and people can test it and see, does it really make a difference? Yeah. We'll see. But I think it has the potential to be disruptive. I think so, too. I think if it rolls out and it's just met with great acclaim and users really like it, this will be one of the first things that have come out in a long time, at least from a major tech player that is basically saying, we see what you're doing.

Here's the way that we're going to do it. And this is consumer forward. This is not about data. This is giving consumers privacy. And if everybody looks at that and sees that it's a huge hit, maybe that'll maybe change some minds over at the other people's, at the other companies. Hey, maybe there's a different way that we could be doing this.

Yeah. Now, if I could just sign in with my iTunes Ping account, then we'd be ready to go. Oh, Ping. I don't miss you at all. Do you still have your .me address? Well, of course I do. Yeah. We all do.

I think you're talking about actually .Mac. .Mac? Oh. Well, there was . .me is different. .jpd.me is my main account, but that is like Mauritius. .Mac. .Mac came first. Okay. Yeah. Or Mac.com.

Mac.com is what I'm actually thinking. Okay. I think you're thinking Mac.com because I don't think I can get an email at Mac.com anymore, but that's my actual Apple sign-in is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, at Mac.com, even though it doesn't matter. Even though it doesn't really exist anyway. Yeah.

Right. .me is a completely separate TLD. Seriously, I think it's Mauritius. The island's Mauritius. But yeah, jpd.me. jpd.me if you want to email me and tell me how wrong I am all the time, like everybody else on this show. We only do it because we care, Jason.

That's right. The opposite of love is not hate. It's indifference. Exactly. We would just not talk to you. Well, let's tune in next week with some more fun facts about Baltimore and their hooker underground. Yeah. So maybe you guys need to find your local version of the Browns Motel.

Oh, I know exactly where it is. I will have a photo for next week. All right. All right. There we go. We're good. We're good there. We're going to look forward to that next week. And maybe we have a running gag now. Maybe some viewers, your listeners can. Oh, yeah. Tweet us. Tweet us your locals. Your local. What's your local no-tell motel?

Maybe we can have a Hall of Fame for. Excellent. We will send stickers to anybody that shows us a camera in a lobby of it. Oh, there you go. That's good. That's good. Yeah. We want the sign and the camera. And then you go back with a sticker and you put it right underneath the camera. Okay.

That's the way it's going to work. The rooms of the world. We'll actually send you more stickers if you actually get it on the camera. Yeah, exactly. Okay. All right. All right. Challenge accepted. Challenge accepted. Cups and doodads.

Brian, it's great. Since I've lost so much weight, I can wear my aura ring again. Oh, joy. The fun thing about it now is I actually do get the sleep tracking on it. It doesn't hurt my hand because since I lost 25 pounds, I don't have those big, fat, chubby fingers anymore.

And the problem I had before was the damn thing hurt so much that I couldn't sleep at night, which completely defeated the point of sleep tracking if the sleep tracker that you really like can't actually let you go to sleep. So I busted the thing back out, juiced it up, updated the firmware, which is a nice upgrade.

It actually works 100% of the time now. And I'm getting some really good sleep tracking. I dig it. The other thing about it, though, the main reason I'm wearing it is it's really damn stylish. It's a good looking ring. I'll give you that. Even my roommate's like, I'm glad you're wearing that ring again.

It's a nice looking ring. I'm like, yeah, that was kind of the main reason. I found it in a drawer when I was doing a clean out trying to find some more like SD cards. Again. I still haven't found my original stash. I bought like a bunch of them because you can get micro SD cards for next to nothing now.

So I bought a ton of them. Right. And I still have not figured out where my original stash is. I have torn my place apart. That's the problem with micro SD cards. They're freaking micro. It's right there on the tin, Jason. It really is right there on the tin. So but I got to say, man, I'm digging the aura ring again.

It's a good looking ring. It's a good looking ring. I could care less about the rest of that stuff. You've got your watch. You could be doing your sleep tracking with that. I can't. No, I can't wear the watch at night. The watch is way too much. I hate wearing a watch when I sleep. I don't wear it either. I don't wear anything when I sleep. Yeah. I used to wear it. I used to wear it.

Well, yeah, me neither. But, you know. Oh, natural. Geeks. So natural. Which nobody ever wanted to get in their head ever. No. No. If I wear my watch 24 seven, it just kind of you get that like weird lizard skin behind the watch.

It's gross. And, you know, I don't I don't like it. But yeah, so I take mine off every night and just put it on my cool little charging stand I have. And it's always juiced. And then I just put it back on in the morning. But the ring I can wear all the time. Right. And it's really nice. So if you haven't checked it out, check it out.

The link will be in the show notes. It's it's if you're looking for sleep tracking. This is the least invasive thing that I've definitely seen. Cool. Well, I'm continuing my my quest to basically simplify my workflow and and match it across all my devices. You know, do they have the same apps running everywhere?

My Mac, my new iPad that I've just got and my iPhone, my iPad and my iPhone. I'm putting all the apps in the same places. So it's a mirror image with each other. My big problem was browsing. It's just it never really worked out well for me because I like using Opera on my desk top and Opera's browser.

Well, as you know, went away and they brought out a new one called the Opera touch. And I wasn't so sure about it, but I tried it for a week. I went and switched to it on all my devices and flow, which is their version of I don't know why they got rid of sync, but they have flow, which isn't as robust.

It's basically whatever is open on your desktop. You can then open up on your mobile browser and vice versa. It's just, you know, whatever windows are open. You get to see everywhere that is great for my phone when I'm out and about, but I would really prefer a more robust sync for my iPad. I would love to be able to get to my bookmarks, my history on both devices, et cetera, et cetera.

So not quite there yet. I do wish that they would build a slightly more robust browser, but the browser itself is fast and super easy to use. Yeah, I told you it's a really nice little mobile browser. It really is. Yeah. I'm just, I have to keep Chrome on, on my iPad because it's just not a good enough browser for, for iPad usage.

Yeah. I still just use Safari on, on most everything for just because of the bookmark sync. So I never use Safari on my desktop except to sync my Opera bookmarks. And then it's a workaround that I suppose I could do. Yeah. Or, or Opera could just do a better browser.

That would be key. That would really be key. Just like their, their old mobile browser did all that. I don't know why they got rid of it. I really don't. It doesn't make any sense to me. So. Well, I think they're just trying to simplify. I mean, you, running three browsers on multiple platforms, that's a, that's a pretty big outlay of cash, you know?

Well, tough shit. Tough. Tough Timmy said to Kitty, but the milk's still good. That's right. So I saw this one article and I just put it in apps and doodads. And I just think it's funny. It's mind blowing what people write for their promos these days.

This is over at Engadget and it's Google Maps has rolled out a new feature. It shows your speed while you're driving. They then said, you'll know if you're breaking the speed limit without looking at a sign. You're supposed to be looking at the signs when you're driving. You're not supposed to be looking at your phone.

Okay, that's it. Okay. The nice thing about this, though, is it does map to CarPlay. So I've got it on my, my display in the car. I don't give two shits about it. I know if I'm speeding or not because I do. I see the sign.

I see the speedometer in the same field of view. I don't have to take my eyes off the road to know that I'm speeding. I know that I'm speeding because I'm always speeding. So who writes this shit? I don't know. I don't know. Okay. Anyway, it does. It has started to show up in Google Maps for CarPlay.

So I do see that. But I'm like, yeah, I'm in L.A. Getting to go the speed limit is like, yeah, getting to go the speed limit that like it should have confetti going off and like celebration. Woohoo. Oh, like if you type birthday on Facebook, it should go. Yeah.

Or if you type congratulations on iMessage, you get the balloons and everything. Same thing. You're speeding in Los Angeles. Well done, sir. Yeah, it must be four in the morning. Nobody's out except for the police. So slow the hell down. But I did see Google Maps could save your life with new tools for natural disasters.

Okay. This is this is actually a good thing. So if you're stuck in a hurricane and you're trying to get out, it will show you like where where you don't want to go. It'll it'll tell you that you're in a hurricane without you having to look out and see that you're in a hurricane. Don't have to look out the window to see that that cow is flying by.

No, it's not Twister on your inboard dash cam. No, it's I mean, it's about flooding and earthquakes and hurricane, all that stuff. The one thing that it doesn't have that I really, really want are wildfires because that's that's where I'm at right now.

I'm in wildfire country. Yeah. Yeah. And that was one of the things that was so hard this last fire season when we had like we were packed up and ready to evacuate. We evacuated my roommate's mom because she was like, I mean, she could see it from her house and she got the mandatory evacuation order.

And it's like, it would really be nice if you could open up Google Maps and see where the fire was. That was the biggest issue. Nobody knew exactly what was burning where because it changed so fast. Changed so fast. Yeah. Which is exactly what Google Maps could and should do. Yeah.

I mean, come on. Can we have Blaze instead of Waze for the fire season? Hey, man, I worked in marketing. I know my shit. So it would be nice if there was that kind of level of specificity on where to go because fire season's coming.

I've actually got a fire season go bag ready to go. I've got all my my important papers like in one little thing where I can just grab and go. Because after last time when we were packing up to get out of here, it dawned on me how unprepared I was if we had to evacuate fast.

Look, that's actually a fantastic idea for everybody that's listening right now. If you've got a free hour or two, any weekend coming up, just do that. Pretend that you have an emergency and you have to get out of the house. You will discover how unprepared you are. And it's so easy just to get something together.

I've got a safe and I've got a go bag for all of us. And I've got a couple of things in the car just ready to go in case there's any emergency. If you've never done it before, just like Jason discovered, you will be panicked. So just do it once and just to just just to test yourself.

Well, I recommend doing it a couple of times. Do it, do it with a one hour turnaround and just set a timer and say, we have one hour to get in the car. Everything that we leave behind will be gone. Yep. That's the mantra. And then once you figure that out and you start to, you know, then like maybe a week or two later, once you've got your plan together, give yourself half an hour.

Yep. And then one more time, knock it down to 15 minutes because that's going to be, I think 15 minutes is about the most bare minimum that you're ever going to get. If you have to leave in under 15 minutes, you're, you're really screwed. So, or you're not watching the news, but give yourself those drills.

If you're in, I mean, anybody anywhere is going to have natural disasters in the Midwest. You're going to have tornadoes. You're going to have all sorts of things where you're going to have to leave the house. And if you are not prepared for that, man, it is just, it's, it's really stressful and it's surreal. It's like, I'm leaving now. And when I come back, this could all be gone.

It's like, what do you prioritize? How do you prioritize it? Are your offsite backups in sync? You know, which hard drives do you grab? It's, it's really important stuff. If you really care about that kind of thing. And if you're, if you're not that kind of person, then well, let it burn, baby.

Let it burn. Now I have a DJI Osmo mobile one, the original DJI Osmo mobile one. And the problem with that was when they made that thing. Oh, let me, let me explain. Let me explain first. It is a gimbal that you can plug your cell phone into.

Right. And then do like, you know, cool handheld video. That's very smooth. When they, yeah, it's a stabilizer. It's a gimbal. And when they made the first one, this was before Apple decided to go full phablet. And so it really worked well with my iPhone six.

It balanced perfectly. But then when I got an eight plus did not work at all. I had to literally tape like a quarter and a nickel to the side. I like had to like dig in my spare change to figure out how to counterbalance. You had to MacGyver it. Completely MacGyver it. They did not. They did a shit job with the engineering on the mobile one, but I'll get to why this is important in a second.

Now they have the DJI Osmo mobile two. It's $139 and hopefully it's a little better engineered for bigger phones. Pretty cool. $139 for what it is. It's just a gimbal that you can just, I mean, it seems ridiculously cheap for what it does.

Right. Now they have the DJI Osmo pocket, which has a built in camera, little 4K camera, which is like the coolest one. You just stick in your pocket, pull it out and you have a full on 4K camera gimbal and you can plug it into your phone too. So you can use that camera with your phone, with the gimbal and do all sorts of fun stuff.

That unfortunately is $349. That ain't cheap. That ain't cheap. That's not like 139 bucks. Yeah. I can do like a, you know, a three beer Amazon buy on that one just to say, ah, let's try it. Why not? But the thing is I've got all of the accoutrement for the DJI Osmo mobile one.

I've got the stand, I've got the, uh, the pole with the tripod adapter. I've got a bunch of batteries. I got the case and all that stuff. So I'm like, I really don't want to upgrade because it, I've got everything that it needs to do. Right. And so I'm going crazy.

I'm like, man, what can I do? And I found an iPhone six plus that will work with it. And I'm like, do I really want to have two iPhones, you know, just to do this? Then it done. I mean, let's try it with the old, uh, the old Android phone. My, uh, galaxy, whatever, seven, uh, galaxy S seven edge.

That's what it is. That little, that cool one that you saw, the stainless steel one that friend of the show. Uh, oh, I can't name her for giving it to me because that was, that was, it was an under the table gift. But anyway, you know who you are and thank you very much. I never used it with it because back in the day, this is for Android people who have DJI stuff.

Uh, it could never do 4k. They finally upgraded the software where like with older Android devices, you can use it. You can use 4k video now with it. So it is back out. It is back in action with an Android phone of all things. So the whole point of this is if you have an Android phone and you want to get a cheap gimbal, go find an old Osmo one Osmo mobile one.

And they work great. I've been out shooting video with it all the time now and it works fantastic with those and the 4k video is stunning and it is actually the camera on those galaxy S seven edges is better than the old iPhones that actually work with the damn thing. Right.

So it's just really cool. You'll be seeing some on my Instagram soon, but, uh, I really want that DJI Osmo pocket. And I thought about that for you because you have a kid and when you're out on the, you know, doing stuff with the kid and the family and stuff, that might be a good little gadget for you with the kid because it's so small instead of having, it's much nicer than the videos I'm taking with my phone for sure, which are bouncing all over the place and blah, blah, blah.

So, yeah. And it's, it's, it's, it's so much easier because you literally pull it out of your pocket and press record. You know, it's not like you have to come like pull it out. I know you make fun of me for my single service devices, like my zoom H one, where I just pull it out and press the button and record. This is kind of like that though.

But when you're, and when you're talking with video, do you really want to like have both hands holding the phone, trying to press the buttons for record? This is one hand operation. You pull it out, you press record, you point it at the kid and you get really nice video. So for 350 bucks, I think this might be good for people with kids for sure.

Yeah, I think so too. I would not mind having one of these. All right. Well, your birthday's gone. So I guess it's Christmas time for you. Hey, Father's Day. Yay. Hey, just drop a hint to the wifey. I will. And finally in, in the, the doodad portion of the show, I saw this over at futurism.

Behold, Jeff Bezos just showed off a pair of huge Mecca hands. That's just a great visual. It is a great visual. And the video is just so fun. He's just sitting there. I mean, he's like going full Ripley in aliens.

Yeah, totally. I'm like, where's the rest of the device? I mean, this is full on Ripley from aliens. And I, I can't wait till we all have these. That's all I can say. Really? I want Mecca hands, please. Well, we're recording this on June 7th.

And yesterday was the big, uh, Normandy D day 75th anniversary. Yeah. And it was a pretty, pretty emotional thing for a lot of people. A lot of people. In fact, one of the weirdest stats I heard was that this may be the very last one with any surviving members. Yeah.

Yeah. It's scary how fast they're going. Yeah. So, uh, I found an article over at national geographic called top secret maps reveal the massive allied effort behind D day. And I'm a map junkie. I love old maps and checking this out was really cool.

So if you're into, into things like, you know, world war two history, which I am a huge history buff. It's really good. Uh, the maps are really cool. And in the middle of this, surprisingly, there's a video that they did. With one of the guys who jumped into Normandy and it's a video of him flying with his family in the same plane that he jumped from on D day.

Wow. It's really cool. It's a really cool video and a really cool guy. And it's, uh, it's well worth the watch. I mean, if you're not in the maps, go check out the video. At least it's about nine minutes and it goes through him and his life and, you know, his time over there. It's, it's really a really cool, uh, article.

So hats off to national geographic, national geographic, still heading it out of the park. Yeah, definitely. And this next one, I know Brian, you're not going to give two shits about, but, uh, over at science alert, one of my new favorite sites, it says your crippling stress could affect your dog more than you think.

Study shows. Oh, poor Bam Bam. Poor Dino. I know. Well, it's, it's, it's even definitely worse for Bam Bam than little Dino because Swedish researchers have studied a bunch of dogs and it was a, basically what they do is they take hair clippings and check the cortisol levels in the hair, which is how they determine dog stress, which is a very good way to do it.

You know, because your cortisol levels come out into your hair over time and cortisol is the stress hormone. So what they found is female dogs are way more attuned to human emotions than male dogs. Same for people. Apparently to say exactly the same for people replace dogs with people.

And this is the same thing, exactly the same thing, but it's, uh, it's kind of sad because it's like, you know, these dogs, uh, take on your stress levels and I can, I didn't need a Swedish study to tell me this. I can tell when you're like, when I'm freaked out, Bam Bam is freaked out.

Dino just walks around with his tongue hanging out going, what can I pee on? And where's the ball? Yeah, but like Bam is, yeah, exactly. And I mean, I cut his balls off so he doesn't, he's not the humper, but, uh, Bam Bam is very attuned to my emotions and it's always funny when, when you're walking your dog and your dog doesn't like somebody on the street, everybody says, oh, that dog's got a good, you know, got a good nose for people.

No, the dog is reading you. You don't like that person, which means the dog doesn't like the person. Right. If it's a female generally. Right. And Bam Bam is a very big girl. So if she doesn't like you, watch the hell out. But it's an interesting read and the science about it is interesting, but here's the deal.

Be nice to your dog when you're stressed and you can, uh, you don't, you don't want your dog stressed. It's bad. They don't really have a whole lot going on besides licking themselves, eating, pooping and sleeping. So again, don't, not, don't make a miserable, not very different from people. No, definitely kind of the same.

They just don't have to pay the bills. Dogs. They're just like us. Closing shout outs. Shout out to our friend Supercell from the Clash Royale clan. He left us sadly without saying goodbye and went to a new Sri Lankan clan, but a super cell was a good guy.

So hopefully you're still listening and we miss you pop in over and say hi or goodbye. I can't believe you guys are still doing that. Dude. We've got a really good clan going over there. And I think we have one open spot right now. And, you know, if you can hit me up on Twitter, if you want to get a slot in, we can, we can boot some stragglers.

We always do that because, you know, people come in, they, they wane off, but we've got a really strong clan going over there. It's really fun. We play every day. We chat every day. It's, it's one of those things that started out as a Lark, but actually turned out to be really fun. Yeah. All right.

Awesome. I won't be joining again. It was fun while I was there though. I did enjoy it. Yeah. Yeah. We don't want you back. That's okay. That's okay. You suck. Yeah. I'm not good. And I only play for like a week and then I quit again. So yeah, it's the way I work. Uh, we are recording on the seventh. The woman's world cup starts today.

I'm very excited about this. It is in France, the 2019 world cup, the USA and France are the two favorite, very favored nations as it were. Um, there's obviously a bunch of us centric Fox sports ads, which are all very well done, but hats off to Nike and Gatorade for the female empowerment videos, uh, commercials, ads, whatever that they did.

They're phenomenal links are in the show notes. Go watch, watch them. They gave me all the feels and I'm really looking forward to this world cup. It should be fun. So until next time, I'm Brian Schillmeister. And I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks for listening to grumpy old geeks to support the show and keep us on the air. Go to patrion.com slash G O G tosses a buck a month and we'll love you forever.

If you'd like to give a one time or recurring donation, go to G O G dot show and click the PayPal button in the sidebar. And don't forget those overcast stars. We're still kicking ass, but Joe Rogan has taken first place again. So let's take them down. Show notes for this episode are at G O G dot show slash three, five, one.

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