355: Phone Bones
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Summary
In this episode, the hosts discuss technology news, online platforms, security, and consumer devices. Topics range from Slack’s direct listing and Facebook content moderation to phone unlocking claims, Apple repairs, and a disputed claim about skull growth linked to phone use.
- The hosts discuss Quibi’s planned launch, UK enforcement involving Kodi, and a lawsuit against Pandora over song lyrics.
- They consider US wealth inequality, Slack’s direct listing, and YouTube’s handling of children’s content.
- A report on Facebook moderators leads to discussion of the material they review.
- They cover a Washington state ruling against Comcast and a delay to the UK’s online pornography age verification policy.
- With Dave Bittner, they discuss phone unlocking claims, LinkedIn’s data collection, a Florida city’s ransomware payment, and exposed Facebook IDs in court documents.
- Jason DeFillippo describes an iPhone screen repair at Best Buy, and the speakers discuss planned Apple hearing protection features.
- They discuss a Harry Potter mobile game, the LUMI keyboard, and IKEA smart blinds.
- They question a claim linking phone use to bone growth at the back of young people’s skulls.
Key moments
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Quibi, Kodi, and song lyrics
The hosts discuss Quibi’s advertising sales, UK enforcement involving Kodi, and Wixen Music Publishing’s lawsuit against Pandora.
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Wealth, Slack, and YouTube
The conversation turns to US wealth inequality, Slack’s direct listing, and YouTube’s handling of children’s content.
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Moderation and consumer protection
The hosts discuss Facebook content moderators, a Washington state ruling against Comcast, and a delay to the UK’s online pornography age verification policy.
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Security with Dave Bittner
Dave Bittner joins discussions of phone unlocking claims, LinkedIn’s data collection, ransomware, and exposed Facebook IDs.
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Criticism of a Forbes article
The speakers criticize a Forbes cybersecurity article they consider misleading.
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Apple repairs and hearing protection
Jason DeFillippo describes an iPhone screen repair at Best Buy before the speakers discuss planned Apple hearing protection features.
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Games, keyboards, and smart blinds
The speakers discuss a Harry Potter mobile game, the LUMI keyboard, and IKEA smart blinds.
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Phone bones and closing updates
The speakers question a claim linking phone use to skull growth, then mention Andy Stochansky’s White Elephant Orchestra project and a possible delay to the next episode.
Full transcript
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This episode is sponsored by Privacy.com. It's like a burner phone for credit cards. To sign up for free and get a $5 credit, go to Privacy.com slash GOG. That's $5 free to spend anywhere, like Patreon.com, by just signing up at Privacy.com slash GOG. Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFillippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.
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Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Just a note to new listeners, this show is published twice a week, but each show is different and covers different topics. Both shows cover the latest interesting tech news, but Wednesday covers the latest in TV, movies and podcasts, book reviews, our Moron of the Week, listener questions and feedback.
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Saturday covers cybersecurity with Dave Bittner from the CyberWire, apps, gadgets and the latest weird stuff we find on the internet. Got a little follow up, Brian, from Quibi. Quibi. Quibi, Jeffrey Katzenberger's new little thing for more short videos to just erode our attention span even more.
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Yeah, the new streaming service that will be Small Bytes. Small Bytes. And it's not launching until April 6th, 2020, but they've already sold $100 million in ads out of their $150 million in like ad inventory. So two thirds of their ad inventory. But this is not surprising. Even when we first talked about the announcement, just the stellar, you know, it's it's all A-list directors that are signing up to this. It's all A-list stars that are signing up to do these things. So this is hardly surprising.
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But it's interesting because you would think that it's going to be based on views. And we don't know if anybody's even going to be watching yet. Yeah. But again, you can't argue with a star power. It's it's it's the same theory that, you know, gets any movie greenlit. No matter how crappy the script is. If Tom Cruise signs up to it, it's it's a done deal. It's going to get done. It's going to get funded. This is all A-list people doing A-list stuff. And, you know, regardless of our personal feelings about it, you know, it's going to do all right one way or another.
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And remember, it's Jeffrey Katzenberg in charge. Say the launch doesn't go as planned. Do you think he's not going to be able to turn around and resell all these little small bites in through different venues or put them up on YouTube and monetize them there? It's the content is they're doing this right. It's content based as opposed to we created a platform. Now we hope something's going to happen like Vine or whatever content forward. So content's always going to make money one way or another, particularly again, A-list.
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Yeah, I mean, you get the Spielbergs with his bite sized little Dubaflatchy. Now, it would be perfect if Tom Cruise came on because he's short. The videos are short. It's a match made of heaven. Yeah, Danny DeVito and Tom Cruise heavy. Oh, God, there'd be an episode of Twins for you. Well, you heard that Jason Momoa from Game of Thrones basically said he's totally on board with Peter Dinklage doing a remake of Twins. That would be hilarious. It would be. I love Peter Dinklage.
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Jason Momoa, eh, take him or leave him, but it would still be fun. You know, I think he actually brought a lot to the DC universe. He's one of the, besides Wonder Woman, you know, I think that that's it. Obviously, they can't get a Batman, right? Superman is a piece of wood. So he's done all right. He did all right as Aquaman. As crappy as that movie was, I thought he was engaging as the character.
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Okay, because yeah, I was like, didn't you not like that movie? Oh, I hated the movie, but I thought you can't argue with the guy's cult of personality. He's like the thinking man's rock, which isn't saying much. Yeah, really? Come on. We were talking about Cody last episode because somebody was asking how to get Cody, and I found this over at Torrent Freak.
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Cody add-on developer arrested on same day as popular repo goes down. So if you're in England and you want to be doing anything with Cody, just be on the lookout that they are kind of on the hunt for Cody people. In the UK, it makes a lot of sense because you have to pay for your TV license.
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You can't just plug in a TV here like we do in the States and stick up an antenna or steal your neighbor's cable. You know, it's a government-based organization for TV licensing and for money. So the government is invested in Cody not getting off the ground there. Right, and the first lawsuit we ever heard about somebody going after someone selling Cody boxes, also in England.
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Yeah, in England. So I want to throw it out to the fan who wrote in and asked about Cody. Just make sure you get a VPN and protect yourself. Just be safe out there. GoG.show slash VPN. That's the way you do it. And we have more lyrics in the news.
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We were just talking the previous episode about Google getting spanked and caught red-handed for stealing lyrics from other lyric sites and cutting them out of getting their clicks and their revenue. A little more lyric suing going on here. Streaming sites such as Spotify and Pandora often offer up lyrics to whatever song you're streaming, which is a nice feature.
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But one music publishing company is saying, no, it is not okay for you to do that. Wixen Music Publishing, which is a big one. Full disclosure, I did one at their website quite a while ago, but nice people over there. Has filed a lawsuit against Pandora for copy infringement over some of the song lyrics it's been displaying.
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According to Billboard, Wixen claims its artists, which include Tom Petty, Rage Against the Machine, and Weezer, are not covered in the lyric licensing agreements Pandora has in place. So they claim to have notified the music app of this in early 2018, but the company didn't agree to take down any of its lyrics until just last month.
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They also sued Spotify last year for $1.6 billion for the same thing. The case was dismissed once Spotify agreed to work with the publisher on a broader business partnership, meaning money flowed. The case was dismissed. So, you know, bad news for Pandora, but they're not having to pay anywhere near as much as Spotify did.
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They're only going to be ending up paying $150,000 in damages for each of the unauthorized songs used, which lists about 100 songs. So about 15 million bucks. I can't believe that Pandora makes 15 million bucks anymore. Yeah. Well, I mean, I listen to them all day in the house. That's true.
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That's what pumps through my Sonos. You know, this is the thing that happens. Like, we get siloed, right? Just because I don't use Pandora. I just assume nobody else does. Exactly. Yeah. No, I use Pandora all the time. And I do like the lyrics in the Amazon Music app because you can just hit a button and it will actually play along with the lyrics karaoke style.
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It scams me while I kiss this guy. In the news.
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Well, we've talked a lot about the disintegrating middle class and wealth inequality on this show, particularly. It is a tech-related issue to some degree because it's certainly quickening it. And we're creating an entire generation of Silicon Valley uber nerds that have all the monies and don't pay their employees very much, if at all.
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So a new analysis has come out. And it is considered to be eye-popping by some people. Eye-popping! Adding to the mountain of statistical evidence showing the severity of U.S. inequality. An analysis published on Friday found that the top 1% of Americans gained $21 trillion in wealth since 1989, while the bottom 50% lost $900 billion.
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That is a lot. That's a lot of money. That is a lot of money. And if you look at the chart, it is quite eye-popping. It really kind of is. So Matt Burdick, founder of the left-wing think tank People's Policy Project, broke down the Federal Reserve's newly released Distributive Financial Accounts Data Series and found that overall, the top 1% owns nearly $30 trillion of assets, while the bottom half owns less than nothing, meaning they have more debts than they have assets.
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That would be me! That is, I am somewhere hanging desperately in the middle there. Okay. Yeah. Falling and falling and falling. I am definitely in the more debt than shit that I own camp. But you have a bed with a subscription.
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I do have a bed with a subscription. There's never been a better time to be poor. Actually, you're kind of right. Oh man, free shit from podcasting goes a long way. That's why we do this. My favorite app, Slack, which has basically turned into the thing that we hated that we were running away from.
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Right. Getting away from email, getting away from instant messenger. Slack has basically taken over everything. And they've IPO'd. Which was interesting. Well, they kind of IPO'd. They did a Spotify IPO, right? They did the work. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. They did a direct listing instead of the typical IPO process.
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And raised quite a bit of money. Yeah. They basically popped and it went straight up. When I checked it the first time, as soon as I found out it went IPO, I'm like, well, shit, maybe I can get in on this. And by the time I checked it, it already doubled.
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It's dropped back down to in the mid-30s range now. But yeah, I like the fact that their stock symbol is work. That's the one thing you're not doing when you're on Slack is getting work done. Yeah. It's a good product.
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I know you have your issues with it and we make fun of it and whatnot. But I certainly, I've used it a couple times in work situations. I've really enjoyed it. You and I use it and it works pretty well for us. We're not intense users of it by any way, shape, or form. But you are with your other deal.
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I get that. So it's a solid company that's doing well, that has income streams and revenue plans. And we know where it's going. So it's a company that I would theoretically invest in, except I think that they're eventually going to be doomed because Facebook has their version.
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And don't tell me that Microsoft has their version. And there's a bunch of versions of this already. Well, there's even an open source version that you can install. That's out there right now. But Slack just does it right. And with the scaling with it, you know, this is Cal Henderson. This is the guy that built Flickr and is like the genius behind the scaling over there.
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He knows who he's doing. And Stuart Butterfield, who I, you know, butted heads with after one of our company's things. But who haven't you butted heads with, Chase? This is true. Well, actually, Cal Henderson. I still like that guy. He's still, you know. And I guess some of the big guys over there that are going to make out are Stuart, Cal, Matt Howie, which is a surprising one.
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He's a major guy over at Slack. But the big winners were, of course, the investors Excel and Andreessen Horowitz. Right. Walked out of there with a metric shit ton of money. So they are on their way to their trillions that they are going to have.
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But I'm actually really happy for them. Those guys have worked their ass off over the years. They've made solid products. So I don't begrudge Slack for cashing out and making some decent money off of this. Well, they're not actually cashing out. Cashing out would have been if they just turned around and sold to someone. So, well, yeah, yeah. But I'm sure that I mean, like at least getting a really nice payday.
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They're getting a hell of a payday. They did. They're living the tech dream. Yeah. Because that Yahoo payday from Flickr did not work out to be the one that they wanted. I mean, they did OK, but it's not like this. This is this is truly fuck you money now that they have. So good for them.
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Honestly, good for them. And here's the trick with them. Let's get them to write another video game, because obviously that's what they're terrible at. And the first video game that they made, we got Flickr. The second video game they made, we got Slack. We might get cancer cured if these guys keep making video games because they'll come up with something.
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Well, they certainly have the time and the money to do it now. And the talent. Honestly, you got to give it to them. Those are some very talented people over there. And this is an interesting one. YouTube is weighing major changes to kids content because the FTC is digging into them. They're actually thinking about spinning off all children's content into its own siloed children's YouTube.
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Good. Good. I agree. As somebody who, you know, has to show different things on YouTube to my own son, he's still too young to do it himself. Well, that's coming real fast. I would love this. I would love to have this happen. And you don't have to take the kid's stuff off YouTube in general, but you should just have your own siloed app that has all the other content off of it and a very good filter on the ads.
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We ended up having to pay or deciding to pay for YouTube because they kept doing things like dropping horror movie ads in between fucking Peppa the Pig videos. Yeah, that's stupid. Yes. That's so stupid. So good. Again, this is a no-brainer.
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Why are they even thinking? Just do it. Yeah. Seriously. This should not require that many meetings. No. But, you know, when you're a gazillion dollar public company, you have to do your due diligence. But it makes sense. It makes sense. Thank God the FTC is, like, trying to shove a flashlight up their ass because I think that is the thing that everybody's getting scared of now, which is great.
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Good. See? Regulation. Good. Well, this isn't even regulation. This is the threat of regulation. This is fear of regulation. Yes. It's fear of regulation that is forcing. Companies will not do these things in and of themselves and by themselves. We are aware of this now because it doesn't ever happen.
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They need to be scared into it or forced into it. So, come on, government. Get on. Yeah. Because when you're dealing with all these monopolies, the market will not self-adjust. No, it doesn't. People, they have no reason to do this on their own because they are the leaders. Because monopolies.
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Yeah. You can argue the invisible hand from Adam Smith all you want. It doesn't work in monopolies. We don't. Right. There is no invisible hand. We need a government hand in there. Yeah. So. Well, I hope they make the right decision there. Me too. I'm sure they will screw it up.
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Oh, yeah. They just haven't had a good track record lately. Speaking of people without a good track record, recently, Facebook. Mm-hmm. We are back again with Casey Newton over at The Verge. Yep. And he wrote a new article called Bodies and Seats, which is another look at these content moderators from that company, Cognizant, that he wrote about before that we talked about.
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Mm-hmm. I read this article this morning. I couldn't bring myself to do it. I read it. Yeah. I am so fucking angry after reading this. You have no idea. Because nobody is seeing what the problem here is.
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The problem isn't Facebook. The problem isn't content moderation and the shit that people have to see. The problem is people. The fact that there is this much evil shit going on on Facebook is so disgusting to me.
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And the stuff that they talked about in this article, I'm just going to be angry for a long time. Yeah. The animal abuse that they talk about in here is just, it infuriates me. So what I want, I don't want content moderators. I want fucking vigilantes. I want people to go out and find these people and do the same shit that they did to these animals.
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Oh, it's just, it's so disgusting. I recommend nobody read this article. I'm sorry. I couldn't bring myself to read it. I saw you put it in the notes and then a friend of mine actually texted it to me like two days ago or whenever it first came out. And she's a huge animal lover like you are and would rather, you know, if somebody kills a person, somebody hurts.
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Yeah, I don't care about that. You must die. So she sent this to me as well and just said, I can't believe how sick most people are. And I was like, it's not most people. It gets conflated because of the internet. But yeah, there's a lot of messed up people out there. The fact that they need tens of thousands of people all day long looking at shit that these people are posting means that the problem is endemic.
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It is not just these one-offs here or there. It is a terrible thing. And when people get twisted that way, it's always been that way. And when people get twisted that way and they don't stop, it's they won't ever stop. It's like people who get pissed off at us and give us one star reviews because of, say, an advertiser.
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They don't stop posting the review, even though we keep saying that doesn't have anything to do with us. When people get weird, they get weird hard. Yeah, no, I just, you know, I can see a very nice revenge story where somebody goes to work at one of these places and just starts taking down names and addresses and paying these people a visit in the dark of night because the law enforcement doesn't seem to be picking up the slack on it.
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I'm just saying, you know, it would be nice if law enforcement would get involved. Yeah. Some heroes have baseball bats is all I'm saying. Oh, boy. Well, there's a lot of pissed off people in Washington state that may want to take a baseball bat to Comcast. Oh, boy. I don't know why we're surprised by this, but the extent of it just starts to feel weird.
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Is there ever any really repercussions? There isn't really like when we found out that like Wells Fargo was juicing accounts and making up stuff and they got slapped with a fine. But Wells Fargo is still one of the biggest banks in the world. Nothing is going to happen to Comcast here. They're going to have to pay a fine. In fact, that's exactly what's going to happen. They've been ordered to refund nearly 50,000 customers and pay a $9.1 million fine when a judge ruled that it violated Washington state consumer protection laws hundreds of thousands
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of times, 445,000 times specifically to be exact, almost half a million times in a scheme that inflated bills. Yeah. And you wonder why Comcast is the most hated company in America. Yes. They were tricking customers into buying near worthless protection plans without disclosing its significant limitations.
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Comcast violated the Consumer Protection Act again more than 445,000 times when they charged tens of thousands of Washingtonians for a service protection plan without their consent. Each wrongful monthly charge was a separate violation. So check those bills when they come, people. Yeah, they were asking for more than $171 million, but unfortunately, they only got a $9.1 million fine.
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It's unclear exactly how many refunds are going out or what they'll amount to, but at least something's happening. The one good thing that came out of this, and I love this, thank God, because I even just had somebody out to blow the dryer duct. These are the things you do when you're a homeowner.
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You have to get your dryer ducts blown out every now and then so they don't get all messed up. But when the work was done and I signed off the waivers, I had an arbitration clause I had to sign because they don't want to be sued. Well, Comcast had arbitration clauses.
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It puts in its customer agreements, but the judge said, tough shit. You don't get to do that. Good. Thank you. Set that precedent because this arbitration everywhere stuff is starting to become ridiculous. And frankly, I think there needs, this needs to go to the Supreme Court. Damn it. Yeah. Yeah.
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The arbitration shit is just terrible. Mm hmm. Yeah. What is also terrible is the United Kingdom again is in our news and they, they, they kind of screwed up. They kind of screwed up. I love this because we talked in the past about their, their age verification system for people to watch porn in the UK.
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You need your porn ID. Porn ID. That's right. Well, it turns out since they can't figure out how to Brexit properly, they still have to deal with the EU and they forgot to file some paperwork. So giving a statement in the house of commons this morning, digital minister, Jeremy Wright said the government failed to notify the European commission of age verification standards.
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It expects companies to meet in line with EU law. Not having done so means it can't legally introduce the policy at this stage. I love this. It has come to my attention in recent days that an implementation process was not undertaken for an element of this policy. And I regret to say this will delay the commencement date in the region of six months.
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So it's not a change to the policy, but it is delayed it for six months until they screw up Brexit again and something has to happen again and it gets pushed back again. No porn IDs for you. No porn IDs from you. And sorry for the Dobby voice, but I will cover the snaps and doodads in a second.
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But yeah, I've been playing the Harry Potter game. I had a feeling I might. But you know what you did? You actually buried the headline here. UK AIDS checks for online porn delayed after bureaucratic cock up. Cock up. Did you not notice that? I missed that. I can't believe I missed that.
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I was not stepping on it, waiting, figuring you were leading up to that. No, sorry. I missed it. I missed it. Good thing we both review these things. That's why we're a team. Wondercock powers. Activate. This episode is sponsored by Privacy.com.
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That's $5 free to spend anywhere by just signing up. Privacy.com slash GOG. This one's a no-brainer, folks. Get on it now. Privacy.com slash GOG. Security? We're back this week with Dave Bittner from the Cyber Wire podcast.
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The Cyber Wire is a free, community-driven cybersecurity news service based in Maryland. Dave is also the co-host of the Hacking Humans podcast, along with Joe Kerrigan, where they take on social engineering. Good day to you. Good day. Hello, Dave. Happy summer solstice that we're around, right?
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You wouldn't know it here. You wouldn't know it here, because we have, well, I guess you'd consider it warm weather, but it's freezing for us. It's overcast and 67 degrees. Oh, poor babies. Yeah, it just hasn't gotten any better. It's about 80 degrees here today. Cool, low humidity.
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Well, by cool, I mean low humidity. Right. And puffy clouds. So we'll take it. We'll take it. It's supposed to be hot next week. Yeah. So there you go. Well, Mark writes in, there are an actual cluster of no-tell motels at exit 12 on the I-40 in Memphis, Tennessee.
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Their claim to fame there have over the past two to three years is that several people have complained of bad smells in their rooms. Further investigation found a dead prostitute stuffed under the bed and left to decompose. I think we have a winner. We have a winner. Ding, ding, ding. Ding, ding, ding. Yeah.
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And we've gotten quite a few on Twitter using the hashtag no-tell motel challenge, and they're all as decrepit and wonderful looking as you'd expect them to be. Yeah, but most don't have a body count. No. Well, those that you know of. Yeah. I mean, how long does it have to go?
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I guess if you're someone who's responsible for cleaning one of these places, you probably know better than to look under the bed. Yeah. It's probably just on the bed or in the bathroom or go in the room, basically.
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You just want to avoid that as well. You open the door, you spray some Lysol, and you move on to the next room. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Oh, thank you, Mark. That was a good one. I guess. Everybody's trying to get us to not go to a motel or a hotel anymore.
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Everybody's sending horror stories. It's like, oh, man. Oh, so this is a new one. Celebrite says it can unlock any iPhone for cops. Fucking Israelis again. Telling you. Can't leave anything alone. So, yeah.
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Celebrite says that they have a new product, the UFED Premium, that can extract files from many recent Android phones, as well as the Samsung Galaxy S9 and iPhones running iOS 12.3. All right. What do you guys think about that? They're crafty.
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Yeah. And I guess it's important to realize that claims don't necessarily mean that they can actually do this, although... It was on Twitter, man. Come on. It has to be real. I stand corrected. There was no video. I would like to see some video.
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Right. And I would love just a technical explanation, which I guess they're not doing, because... Because then other people would be able to do it. Other people would do it or... And Apple would fix it. Right. Apple would fix it. So, because when you think about how iPhones are encrypted, it just leaves me scratching my head as to how this could be possible.
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But if they've figured out a way, you know, hey, clever solution, the cat and mouse continues. Life will find a way. Yeah. So, I found it interesting in the article. They talk about a competitor called GrayShift. And Apple has actually put out patches against GrayShift.
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In the past, because they have these gray key devices. Right. Those you can actually go see in action on the tube of the U. Yeah. But the interesting thing about gray key is that it was actually founded by a former Apple security staffer.
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Which leads me to think that back in the early days of the show, when I said people that work at Apple were putting in back doors so they could go actually make money on it in the future, bingo. Oh, man. Wouldn't that be something? I don't know. I would imagine there would be a metric ton of lawsuits hitting them if that were the case.
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Right. Exactly. You would receive the full force of Apple's legal team, which we all know is significant. But it's interesting to think about. Well, when I read that part, it made me think, how does this person circumnavigate that reality?
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If you are a former Apple security person, how do you prevent stepping on toes and making sure that you're not taking advantage of stuff that you learned at Apple or at least legally not being liable for that? Do you remember the process of white rooming from back in the day?
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Go on. Have either of you heard of white rooming before? I'm familiar with clean rooms, but no, not white rooming. Okay. It's not the same as a clean room, but basically what it was was somebody who is knowledgeable about the spec. And this is how they actually created the first IBM PCs with the CMOS chip back in the day.
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Somebody who knew how the CMOS chip worked would go into a room and write a spec. Then another engineer would take that spec and create the program from it. But since there was enough of a difference between the two, it didn't tell them exactly how it did it.
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It just said it needs to do this, this, this, and this, but it didn't tell them how to do it. You know, it was like basically writing a functional requirement. So once you have the functional requirement, you can then go and engineer from that. So there is one level of separation between the person with the knowledge and the person who's doing the engineering.
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That's how we have the personal PC because the original CMOS chips were built by, you know, one company and then they were reverse engineered and then they, they kind of white roomed it to another person. I think this was documented in a triumph of the nerds, that old TV show way back in the day, which I think you can watch on the internet archive.
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If I'm not mistaken, three-part, uh, it's basically like a three-part series of the history of personal computers with Apple and Microsoft and all those guys. It's fat. It's a fascinating watch. I highly recommend checking it out if nobody's seen it. But you know, I think the only way that this guy can probably get around that is to white room different specs and say, Hey, look over here.
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I can't, I can't tell you exactly how, but I can tell you where to look. Mm-hmm. You can leave a trail of breadcrumbs. Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah. And I suspect one of the other things the article points out is that this will be an on-premises tool. Uh, so the police will be able to have it on site.
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So with that, I suspect it's only a matter of time before the videos do pop up and also before Apple gets their hands on one. Yeah. Right. Um, so this next story I put in here, this is, uh, an article, uh, published by a gentleman named Corey Profit and it's titled nefarious LinkedIn.
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And it's really a look at, uh, all the things, all the information that LinkedIn pulls from you when you log in to LinkedIn, all the things that it scans your browser for. The data collected by LinkedIn. Uh, and I was curious, uh, from, from your guys' point of view with all the experience you guys have with, uh, web development, would you make, what, what you make of this?
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Um, it's the way of things these days. Sadly, uh, we would never have done this as developed developers back in the day. We would only grab the information that we needed. That was the point. Why would you get more? Um, I don't know why LinkedIn feels the need to get all this information. I don't know why it's taken so long for people to kind of notice that they're doing it.
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That's kind of curious to me. Um, but then again, I don't also understand why anybody's on LinkedIn anyways. Hmm. Yeah. I'm, I'm really on the fence about LinkedIn already. I was just, I'm like, all I do is go there and approve or deny people who I don't know for the most part.
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So I'm like, what, I don't get any value out of LinkedIn whatsoever. And almost everybody I know has never gotten any value out of LinkedIn. We don't work in environments in which we would. I do understand that particularly, you know, professional environments, lawyers, things of that nature, they do get a lot of value.
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So it is a valuable service. It wouldn't be around anymore if it wasn't. Um, I still, this is strange to me and, uh, alarming, I would say. Yeah. I mean, my understanding is that there's a lot of, uh, recruiters and headhunters who make use of it, but like, like you guys, you know, my, my employment is odd enough that I've never been approached by anyone to try to hire me away.
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You know, there's just not a lot of that going on for me, but my understanding is that if you're in certain lines of work, you just get hammered by them. Yeah. And it's also really good for intelligence agents to turn people and find people with top secret security clearances and things like that, which is, you know, half of what I think half the people do there is try and turn people or steal them away.
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But, uh, yeah, Jordan Harbinger did a really good talk at DerbyCon about that. I don't know if you guys remember that one, but it was really good where he basically got, he got into these, uh, top secret clearance rooms in these groups so he could profile people who had top secret clearances and it was super easy.
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Interesting. Oh, by the way, it is actually the clean room technique. You were right, Dave. Oh, is it? Okay. Yes. I, yeah, white room, clean room, but, uh, I put a link into the show notes that describes the, the actual premise of it. Yeah. As I'm reading through this article, I'm starting to understand a little bit about why they would do such things because there are various extensions that do things like yank out all email addresses from, you know, page upon page upon page.
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And they're trying to find things of that nature and then put you on a restriction or a blacklist if you're using those things to kind of scrape their sites. Uh, but shouldn't you just be searching for things you're aware of instead of grabbing everything? Mm-hmm. Well, I mean, scrapers could be looking at automated scrapers.
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Yeah. But then you just kind of limit your searches to things that you're aware of that do those sorts of things rather than scan the entire system to find every extension that you have. Yeah, but it's an arms race. So I can see what they're just, they're, you know, they're trying to find new people who are doing new things.
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So I can see how that might be actually valuable to the, to the web designers over there at LinkedIn. It's still, it's just kind of creepy. It's creepy, but not surprising. Yeah, that's true. That's true. So this next one. Nothing surprises us anymore.
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Come on. We know that. That's for sure. So this next one that's been gaining attention is, this is covered by Naked Security over at Sophos. This is Florida City will pay over $600,000 to ransomware attackers. This is the city of Riviera Beach in Florida, evidently a city of about 35,000 people.
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Wow, that's a lot per capita for paying out. It is. They're paying over 600 grand via Bitcoin to the criminals who ransomware their equipment. There are some interesting details here.
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They got phished, apparently, and that's what triggered it all. So nothing unusual there. The council had already authorized almost a million bucks to pay for new computers and new laptops. So they kind of moved that forward, that buying cycle, they moved forward on that.
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So it doesn't sound like that's going to be too much of a hit. But the real story here, I think is- Well, the fact is they're not going to get the new computers now. That's the real hit. It's like, oh, that $941,000 budget? Yeah, well, it's $341,000 now, and you all get Chromebooks. Oh, you know what?
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Yeah, you're probably right. I was doing the math wrong there. I was thinking, hmm, I was not factoring in that the $600,000 was being taken away from the- Yeah, it just goes poof, goes bye-bye. Okay. Well, I think what's interesting here is that they've decided to take the risk of paying to get their stuff back.
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Not setting a good precedent. Not setting a good precedent, but perhaps with a city this small, perhaps just taking the practical course- Start over. Well, when you look at like Baltimore, which ended up paying $18 million for, against a $100,000 ransom request, it doesn't, I cannot blame some of these cities for saying, you know
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what, a $600,000 roll of the dice versus multiple millions of dollars, what do we have to lose? Where is that? But don't you just open yourself up to being a target all the time now? Yeah, you absolutely do. You absolutely do. Can't you just hire Blackwater for like half of that and have him go find the hackers and unlock it?
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I've got- I'm on a vengeance kick this week, sorry. I see. All right. This week? Yeah, true. Well, there was a 47-year vengeance kick. Yeah, well, hopefully next week there'll be a break in the clouds and it'll be a different- Friendlier Jason will be here for all of us.
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We've all been waiting. But there's some interesting statistics in this story. A company called Coveware, which helps companies or helps folks with ransomware recovery, they said that 96% of companies who pay the ransom get a working decryption tool.
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Right. So that's pretty high odds for getting your stuff back. Well, that's not what we're used to hearing. We're used to hearing that like a lot of people just never get their systems back and the Bitcoin just goes off into the ether. Right. So- Right. And I wonder how much of it is if you can determine which system they're using to encrypt your stuff.
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Like they talk about here, you know, like GantCrab is one of the popular ones that's being used. If you know they're using GantCrab and that's one where there are decryption tools, then you take that into consideration of how likely it is to get your stuff back.
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But I guess I wonder if we're going to see a shifting tide here where city after city ends up paying way more in remediation costs than the ransom would have cost. Are they going to say, you know what, let's just try to pay it first and see if we get our stuff back.
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And if we do, in the meantime, let's shore up our defenses. But this might end up being the cheaper way to go. Yeah, it certainly is right now. But the tide will turn if they keep doing it. That's the thing. The price will keep going up and up and up as we're real as these guys are realizing, oh my God, they're going to pay it.
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Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it's it's it is a slippery slope because, yeah, backups are much cheaper. So maybe people will get better at backups. But as we know from history, that probably won't happen. But it's in the ransomware guys' best interest to hand the data back.
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It really is. And I think maybe most of those statistics that we hear are for personal computers and not companies. So if there's a, you know, if there's a group out there that's going after companies and asking this much money, it's in their best interest to unlock the systems. Because if they're if they're flagged as being group X and then, you know, one one city pays for it and doesn't get their data back and group X does another city, well, then there there is no reason for them to pay the ransom whatsoever.
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So it just cuts into their bottom line. By the way, I have a great new job opportunity for people to be posted on LinkedIn. Now, if you are a ransomware guy, cabal, if you're a ransomware cabal out there, what you really need is a CFO. You need somebody to run the numbers to get you to the highest possible point that you think they'll pay off versus the number that they have to spend to just go around you and rebuild everything.
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So they're way underpricing themselves right now. We need the money ball of ransomware. Exactly. Exactly. We need some deep data going here. Right. Right. Seriously. Mob accountant is going to be the next big thing on LinkedIn. That's right.
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Mm hmm. Yeah. Must speak Russian. So, yeah, it's interesting. I'm I'm I'm going to be following this. I want to see if they actually get their data back. Yeah. What what's the over under on this? What do you guys think? What's the what's the chances of them actually paying it and getting it back?
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I think they'll get their data back, but I think they'll get hit again within the space of a year. Yeah, because they don't have enough money left over to go buy new computers and short them up. I wonder if they'll say, hey, we'll pay you the hundred thousand dollars and the ransom folks will say, tell you what, let's make it two hundred or I'm sorry, six hundred thousand.
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Let's make it a cool million. Right. And and you're on negotiation because why not? Why not? Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see this play out. Mm hmm. Well, this next one is a little infuriating. The FBI and DHS blunders reveal names of child abuse victims via Facebook IDs.
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Hmm. Now, this one is. Hold on a second. I thought you couldn't be a minor on Facebook. Well, if your parents have consent, parents give consent. Yeah. I will tell you with two kids under my belt that Facebook is extraordinarily loosey-goosey with that whole you need to be 13 thing.
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I'm shocked by that, Dave. I am shocked by that. I know I'm not revealing anything here. Yeah. Yeah. So good day, sir. I simply will not buy this. Heavens to Murgatroyd. What are they thinking? Get Mr. Zuckerberg on the phone immediately.
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Get him on the horn. Get him on the horn. So, yeah, these unsealed court documents had the initials of some of the children, but it also included their Facebook ID number, which all you have to do is go to Facebook.com slash ID number and you can find out who they are.
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So, oopsie. Oopsies. I'm actually surprised Facebook never closed that loophole that you keep putting the ID number in and that they didn't mask it, that they didn't do something with it. It's kind of crazy. It's a feature, Brian, not a bug. It's a feature, not a bug. That's right. Yep. And I wonder if this was just simple ignorance that the folks who made these things public just didn't know.
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They thought they didn't know what those strings of numbers were. It's the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. Aren't they the smartest people in our country protecting us from the neighborhood? It's the guy at the FBI that knows how to do Excel. That doesn't necessarily mean anything. Right. Yeah, exactly. That's my point.
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The person who made this public might not have had the... They just saw a string of numbers and said, well, that's not a kid's name. We're good here. Yeah, that looks complicated. It must be techie. We can get by with that. Look, I just do pivot tables in Excel. I don't know what you want from me. Right.
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Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't make it right. It doesn't make it good. It doesn't make it good. No. No. But yeah, I don't think that there's anything nefarious here. I think it's just, yeah, it's another case of, you know, just people don't really understand what they're doing when they're doing it. Yeah.
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Yeah. Well, this last one I put in because this makes me grumpy. Okay. Okay. You're on the right show for it. This got sent around here among our staff. We have a little editorial channel that we use on Slack for sending stories around, and this one got slung around, and it got my attention because the headline, this is on Forbes, and the headline is, Critical Security Warning for iPhone Users.
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Mm-hmm. So, I mean, obviously, that's just something important that I needed to click. It's critical. It's a critical security warning for iPhone users. I'm an iPhone user, so I clicked through, and it's pretty much a clickbait article. What it comes down to is that not all developers are using best practices when they're developing their apps, and so they should be designing in security from the get-go, and they don't.
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So, of course, that could lead to some vulnerabilities. There's nothing that you can really do about this as a user because there's no real way to know which developers are and are not using best practices. There's no patch. There's no update.
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There's no indication. There's no warning. It's just a critical security warning for iPhone users. This is a disgruntled Android user. Yes. It is. The reason I am calling out the iOS numbers rather than the Android ones has nothing to do with me being an Android fanatic.
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Yeah, there's the game. There you go. Yes. Everybody seems to think iPhones and iPads are more secure. Right. They're not. Right. Except they are. Yeah. See? See? See? They're dangerous, too. The other thing I love in here is he kind of tries to turn it around to say that Android folks are actually better off because...
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What? Yeah. At least we know when we're being owned. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. He says... Let me find it here. He says... First of all, he says, these security issues need to be addressed in a mature and non-emotional way so that users of the iOS platform can be better protected from those who would do them harm.
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So here we go. Here we go. Android users also need to pay attention to security issues, but as the platform is often viewed as less secure than Apple, they tend to be more aware of the dangers. So... No, they aren't. Judging from everybody I know that uses an Android, they are not more aware.
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Right. In fact, once you become aware of those sorts of things, you know what you do? You go get an iPhone. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Exactly. So this just annoyed me because it made me grumpy because it's just totally clear clickbait because anything Apple gets clicks, calling something a critical security warning for iPhone users.
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This is BS. There's nothing actionable here. And so shame on this guy. Shame on Forbes for publishing it. But hey, they got me to click through. So there you go. Let me break this down for you. Let me break this down for you.
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This is Davey Winder. He's a contributor to Forbes. To be a contributor to Forbes, you basically have to know how to smash on the keyboard with both hands and have letters come out. Yes, that is true. He's got a neck tattoo, which gives him cybersecurity cred. And he's got like a Dothraki beard going on with a little clip on it.
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And... And yes, he's the only three-time winner of the BT Security Journalist of the Year Award 2006, 2008, and 2010. That's right. And he was also fortunate enough to be named BT Technology Journalist of the Year in 1996 for a forward-looking feature in PC Pro called Threats to the Internet in 2011.
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So yes, he won an Enigma Award. He is a... He's a journalist. Well, I'm sure he's... Let's also keep in mind that his personal website is happygeek.com, while we are the grumpy old geeks. This is true. So we are in an epic battle with this man.
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Yes, it's our... It's our natural enemy. Yes, exactly. This man is our nemesis. That's right. Yeah. Dave, I'm glad that you finally discovered what makes our show so grumpy.
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You stick within your certain cybersecurity area, but all we do all week is read horrible, misleading headlines and crappy, big click-baity stories all throughout text, or all throughout the whole tech sector. So that's why we're always grumpy. So you got a little taste today. Yeah. Yeah.
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Well, when this came up and I read it, and as I was going through, I was getting grumpier and grumpier. I thought to myself, well, this isn't going on the cyberwire, but I know just where I can talk about it. Exactly. Here we are. HappyGeek.com, because you're believing your own crap.
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Yeah. Well, all right, gentlemen, that's what I have this week. I will talk to you guys next time. Apps and doodads. Apple has completed a best buy repair partnership with nearly 1,000 new U.S. locations where you can go get your Apple stuff fixed up when you drop it a lot.
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I only put this in here because I have actually tried this. I went to best buy because my iPhone eight plus screen had a crack in it, and I'm going to unload it soon because I want to get one of the shiny new ones when they come out. And I had to get that fixed. So when I went to the Apple website, they gave me an appointment at a best buy.
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So I'm like, well, fuck it. I'll try it because it was like four days before I could get into the Apple store. And it was like the next morning at best buy. So going to best buy and they send me to the the genius bar or the geek squad bar as it is now. So I have to say that best buy is trying to replicate the Apple experience down to a T.
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They made me wait 45 minutes and in turn took people without reservations in front of me and made me just stand there like an idiot for quite some time. Because there's you're in a queue like you're lining up to go on Pirates of the Caribbean just standing there.
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But I was the only person in line and they let people in front of me when I had a reservation and they didn't. Thank you, best buy for that. But I have to say that once they got my phone, he did apologize for the wait and fast tracked it. And I got it back in about an hour. Not bad. Not bad at all.
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It cost me 30 bucks because I had AppleCare Plus and it's got a six month warranty on it in case it like, you know, doesn't work. But yeah, I mean, it was it was actually a fairly pleasant experience. So I was I was fairly surprised.
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I'm sure they cloned my phone while they were in there and are selling everything that I had. But yeah, I have to check my bank accounts daily because this is the geek squad after all. Yes, that is the worry about it. But I'm glad that they're doing something because Apple stores are insane and trying to get to the genius bar these days is useless.
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Oh, it's it is not worth going there. So it's this is this is actually a godsend to be able to run into a Best Buy because the nice thing about Best Buy is there's nobody there. There's nobody there. So it's pretty simple. Apple should just buy them all out and turn them into Apple stores.
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Yeah, they kind of are already. I mean, they do have a pretty big Apple section and it's it was if it wasn't the 45 minutes of standing there. Yeah, like watching the people who cut in line in front of me, I probably would have been OK with it. But that beyond that, it was it was still a pleasant experience.
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So if you got to get your phone fixed or any of your Apple stuff fixed that these guys cover, I recommend checking out Best Buy first. Gotcha. Excellent. Well, Apple has some new features coming in iOS 13 that I'm quite excited about. According to the CDC, some 12.5 percent of children between the age of 12 and 19 and 17 percent of adults between the ages of 20 and 69 suffer for some degree of noise induced hearing loss.
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I've always been very. Wait a minute. Adults between 20 and 69. Isn't that like almost all of them? Yeah. Well, you know, it's a pretty wide swath. Yeah. Adults. Yeah. Yeah. I guess if you're 70, you're cool. That's the way it seems to be working. Anyways, I've always been very cognizant of this, having been in the music industry for a long time.
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And I had custom made earplugs made for me a while ago for concerts and things of that nature that basically just lower the volume all over the spectrum. So I can still hear the lows and the highs. So very nice. And I definitely have had some hearing loss. I don't test 100 percent anymore because I was around a lot of loud music all the time.
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Also, as you get older, you lose those high frequencies, too. Yeah, you do. You do. So the Apple Watch is going to gain the ability to gauge the volume of sounds around you and warn you when surroundings get dangerously bad, which happens way more often than you think. In a 2012 study conducted by the New York City Department of Health suggests the average volume of certain outdoor locations exceed federal and international guidelines set to protect public health.
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And if you're concerned about privacy, you can take some solace in the fact that your watch won't be listening all the time. Apple says that if you choose to use that feature, which you will not be automatically turned on, the watch will record one second snippets of audio every few seconds to check ambient sound volumes, which is kind of nice.
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And the iOS volume indicator will also visually warn you when you crank your music up over a certain threshold, which is also nice. And in the health app, they will basically start recording all this stuff all the time and put you into two categories, OK or loud. So there's going to be all this sort of stuff geared towards saving your hearing in the next next iteration of the software, which is nice.
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I'm glad that they're putting this in there. Yeah. You know, in the first part of my career, I was using my eyes a lot. So I have had a eye exam every year since I was like, you know, 10 because I want to be a photographer. I needed to see. But now in the last seven years or so, I make a living with my ears.
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So I am really, really careful about being around loud sounds. I've always got earplugs in my bag just in case. Like, hey, you want to go to a concert? No, let me get my earplugs or things like that. But I don't have the fancy custom ones. But maybe I should think about getting those because they are wonderful because you really don't lose any sonic quality.
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It's amazing. Can you have them done at home or do you have to go in somewhere to get your ears molded? There are companies that do it at home, but I wouldn't. I'd go and get it done by a pro. Okay. If you can throw a link in the show notes to someplace that might do that, I would be down for giving that a shot because I am very protective of my ears nowadays because this is how I eat.
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As I mentioned before, the Harry Potter mobile game is out. Yes. Niantic has finally launched it. I downloaded it this morning. And fuck, it's pretty cool. I downloaded it as well. And then I went, what am I doing?
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I'm never going to play this and immediately deleted it. Oh, well, good for you. I, the first thing I did was got Hagrid was in my garden this morning, so I had to release Hagrid. And the, the AR has gotten so much better than Pokemon Go.
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Oh, really? I mean, it really looked like he was, dude, it is cool. It looked like he was standing there in the garden and you have to like run some spells on him to release them. And, I mean, it looks really, really cool. I'm almost tempted to install it on my iPad so I can take my iPad around and use it.
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Nerd! Because it's going to be even cooler. Yeah, dude, it's a Harry Potter game on the phone. So, yes, it's a nerd thing. But, man, I, and I could check the map and there's, you know, some stuff around here to go check after, after we're done with the show today. I can wander around and do some more stuff.
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And the Whole Foods, I think that's where you go battle other wizards is in Whole Foods. I'm sure Whole Foods is thrilled about that. Uh-huh. Like that parking lot doesn't suck enough already. Mm-hmm. But, uh, so far, man, it's, I think it's kind of, kind of cool.
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It really is. It's better than Pokemon. Based on your Echo, I will install it and give it a go. You're a Harry Potter fan. Come on. I am, but I'm not a gamer. I just, I can't, and no, but I will install it just to see how far AR has come, so. Yeah, and somebody who, like, takes those bike rides every day, you're going to be out, you'll be able to do tons of stuff.
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Like, you know, I actually have to travel. Like, crash my bike because I saw Dobby. Well, you got to pull over and then, you know, you can get an alert on your watch that says something's nearby. And then you pull over and then you pull out your phone and look like a twat and then you catch it and then you move along. Yeah. Or I could just, you know, take my bike ride.
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Mm-hmm. All right. Moving on. I found a new thing. It's a Kickstarter project, which makes me very sad, but it's called the Lumi. Mm-hmm. I've been waiting for this forever. Somebody has finally made a rock band for a keyboard and they made the keyboard to go with it, plugs into an app on the iPad, and you can learn to play piano with a rock band type interface.
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That's actually really cool. I'm thinking of this for my son, definitely. I bought it. I immediately bought it. $249. Jeesy, creesy. Nope. Well, when I got it, it wasn't. Okay. Mine was, which one did I get?
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I got it for less than that. I think I got it for 197 pounds. Oh, no, no, no. No, it's 249, 197 pounds. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I got it much less than that because what happened is this hit everywhere. Like, I opened up my news and it was everywhere and I'm like, let me go check.
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And I got the original pack for super cheap because it was, like, basically going to sell out. Right. So, I immediately got it and I am so looking forward to this. Now, they're on the stretch goal phase where they're at $940,000.
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If they get to, like, $1.5 million, they're going to release the creator pack where you can actually make your own games that you can share, which are basically songs, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I'm really looking forward to this. I mean, it's a tiny keyboard, but it's got, you know, you switch the stuff at the top so you can play all of the notes.
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But I'm just looking forward to this because I've just wanted this. Like, trying to learn piano has been so hard for me. Oh, very cool. I just looked at it. You can connect. If you buy two, you can connect them together so you have a bigger, bigger canvas. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's connectors on both sides. You can actually buy as many. You can make an 88-key keyboard.
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That's very cool. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to see where this is at around Christmas time because I do want to. My kid is just so into music, and I'm trying to figure out the best way to get him started, and something like this would be amazing. Yeah, it says estimated delivery October, so I'm guessing it'll probably be here in Christmas time or maybe spring.
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But as soon as I get it, I'll bring it over, and we can play with it because. Excellent. Yeah, I want to see it. Yeah. Yeah, no, I'm in on this one like whole hog because I just have been trying and trying to learn how to play, and I need the visuals for it, and I think this will do it because I am one hell of a fucking rock band player.
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I was ranked in the top 250 of expert guitarists of all time on Rock Band 4, so this is my jam. I'm looking forward to this one. And I threw this one in here because you talked about getting these IKEA smart blinds.
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Mm-hmm. The future and the control. They finally have a release date, October 1st. That's amazing. I had smart blinds in one of my previous places, and they were crazy expensive, but they were the most amazingly wonderful things I've ever had. They were awesome.
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So I like this. I have pretty expensive blinds in my place right now that I'm not going to change, but at some point in the future when I have a new house, I will probably be getting these. Because the price is right, they look good, and you can't beat the convenience and the fact that I could actually, you know, tell Alexa to open and close my blinds.
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Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to get them for the studio because I've got a couple windows in here, and I think they'll be cool for the studio because they are blackout blinds, which is perfect. Yep, which is perfect. The only problem is that they're battery-powered. It is what it is. Yeah. I mean, I've got so many, like, recharging stations for all my rechargeable batteries.
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I don't think it's going to be that big a deal. Every Saturday morning, I literally pull out every battery and everything I own and just charge it all. I do. It's part of my morning routine on Saturdays just to make sure everything's charged because we live in, you know, a place that could either fall out from under us or burn us down at any given moment.
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So it's nice to have your batteries charged. I'm reading through this really quickly, and I'm not seeing it, but it will be really nice. I'm assuming that there will be an app of some sort that would, if it could just tell you the battery life on the app, then I'm all in for sure. Yeah, it says there's a mobile app so you can set timers for the blinds so you can, like, have them open up in the morning for you if you want and things like that.
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So, yeah, it's going to have its own app. Well, it's the smart home app for the Treadfree, which is their hub. So I'm going to have to get that hub. But I don't care. I mean, for the price, it's not bad. No, for the price, it's, I mean, the ones that I had are, like, five times that price.
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Yeah, it's $136 for the actual blackout curtains. So, I mean, just a couple of those and tie it into my Alexa. It's all good. Yep. Oh, hang on. The bitch woke up. Here's, where's that mute button again, Alexa?
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Oh, there it is. Shut up, girl. In a tube. Brick-a-brick. We like to make fun of millennials a lot on this show. Fucking millennials. Well, the XKCD guy has a very nice comic this week.
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I'm not going to ruin it for you, but I'm just going to tell you that there is a link in the show notes. And we're guilty. We are guilty. Yeah. Yeah, he kind of takes us to task on that one. That is totally geared at us. What is the next generation under the millennials?
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We'll have to start making fun of them now. Generation Z. All right. Gen Z, you are our new targets. Yes. You're in our crosshairs, Gen Z. We're coming for you. We're coming for you. Which also... And you can airdrop us all your complaints. Exactly. But us saying that alone actually drives home the point of this cartoon even more.
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Exactly. So I saw this at the Washington Post and I was like, oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, what? This can't be real. I'm just going to read the title. Horns are growing on young people's skulls. Phone use is to blame, research suggests.
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Yes. What? Horns? I read the 7,000 articles that have been posted debunking this after that. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yes. So let's first explain the original article.
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New research in biomechanics is suggesting that young people are developing horn-like spikes at the back of their skulls, bone spurs caused by the forward tilt of the head, which shifts weight from the spine to the muscles at the back of the head, causing bone growth in the connecting tendons and ligaments. The result is a hook or horn-like feature jutting out of the skull just above the neck.
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Number one, horns are at the top of the head, not the back. Yeah. They aren't horns. They're just bone spurs, which will get you out of Vietnam and make you become president. There you go. Hey, yo. Hey, yo. The rest of the articles criticizing this study is that correlation is not causality.
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This is occurring. This may have been occurring for the entirety of the human nature. There are many different things that could be causing it. Even sleeping on big pillows regularly can cause it, not necessarily the phone use. So there is no necessary connection between these things. Uh, so you can keep on using your phones.
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Phone use may not be causing these things to happen. It's, uh, we don't even know if it's happening more than it used to happen in history because we didn't look at these sorts of things until recently. So we don't know what the hell's going on. So modern life is not necessarily transforming the human skeleton. We just don't know. Okay.
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Now I'm bummed because at the end of the Washington Post article, it says the unusual formations have captured the attention of Australian media and have variously been dubbed headhorns, phone bones or weird bumps. I wanted, I really wanted phone bones.
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I mean, I generally phone bones. Oh, you're on Tinder. Oh, I see. The phone bones. Closing shout outs. Another quick shout out to a friend of the show, Andy Stochansky and his new musical project, the White Elephant Orchestra.
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They got a really good, well, they, he, he got a really good, uh, write up over on buzzbands.la. So the link is in the show notes. Uh, second single is also out tremolo, which I believe is all over the YouTubes or his website, white elephant orchestra.com. So check that out. And, uh, and Jason, you and I need to talk about this because Andy does want to come on the show and talk to us a little bit at some point.
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So we should schedule that in. Okay. Well, turns out, uh, I'm going to be in your neck of the woods probably next week because I've got jury duty. So just expect that the show might not be coming out exactly when it's supposed to on Wednesday. Right.
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Kind of like this Wednesday. Um, I have to call in and it turns out I have to call in for five days. If they don't pick me in five days, so be it. But if they do pick me, I got to go to Santa Monica and sit in the room and do the thing. And then if I get put on a jury, God forbid, then that could screw everything else up.
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So we'll see how next week's going to play out. But I'm doing my civic duty. Wait, you couldn't get an exemption for being a podcaster. I probably could have. Actually, you probably could have, or at least a delay. Well, I'm self-employed, so I can probably get out because I'm self-employed. But this is actually something I've always wanted to do.
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So I just want to see what the process is like. I've never done it. And bring a book. That's what I plan on doing. It's mostly sitting around being bored. Yeah, that's fine. You know what? With as much as I work and as much crap as I do, sitting around being bored sounds like a great opportunity to do nothing.
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You're like Adam Carolla saying he wishes he could go to jail for a while so he could get some sleep and get in shape. I know. Exactly. I'm so with him on that. If it just wasn't for the butt rape, then I'd be down. But yeah, so keep an eye out for that next week. At least I'll maybe get some stories out of it.
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Maybe. Maybe. 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 couple bucks 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.
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Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 355. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, and get links to stuff we like. Stay grumpy.
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