360: Slackers

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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 am going to San Diego tomorrow to go check out the zoo. So we're recording this a little bit. Whale's vagina. Oh God, that's SeaWorld. That's not the zoo. But yeah, so we're recording this a little early so we don't have all the news that is normally fit to print.

But Brian, you've done a pretty good job. So let's get to some follow up. No worries. Yeah, I did step up a little bit. So, you know, it's so rare for you to leave your house. I wanted to give you as much time as possible to enjoy it. Oh, I thank you so much. This is the last trip I have planned for the entire year. So this will not be a problem. It's not sad. I hate going outside. I hate interacting with people.

I am fine in my little comfy castle here. I'm okay with it. I suppose if you stay in your castle, things like this that I'm about to talk about won't happen to you. Prius, our friend of the show, David Teeter, isn't the only person who had a very unfortunate run-in with an e-scooter recently. This man, Alison Medeiros, a 32-year-old Chicago-based tattoo artist, was biking home after work in the Wicker Park neighborhood a couple weeks ago when he was struck head-on by an e-scooter rider who was navigating the scooter against the flow of traffic, according to the Washington Post.

The accident knocked him unconscious, left him with multiple serious injuries, including broken bones and teeth, and a dangerous amount of air in his chest cavity, according to a GoFundMe page to help him cover the cost of his medical bills because no insurance. Yeah. Yeah. He was treated in the trauma unit overnight and required more than 20 stitches, and his jaw is wired shut, so this was a pretty serious accident.

Yeah. That's a bad one. Now, unfortunately, he was not able to ascertain which scooter hit him, but the incident occurred just days after the launch of Chicago's e-scooter pilot program launched. How's that going for you, Chicago? This could explain why he had a problem identifying it. There are 10 different companies, Bird, Bolt, Grub, Jump, Lime, Lift, Sherpa, Spin, Via Ride, and Wheel, all of which deposited their scooters in this part of the city.

Up to 2,500 scooters are permitted in zoned areas as part of a program. He has a lawyer, Brian Greening, who told Gizmodo that he's very confident he was one of the electric scooters that are part of the city's program. I think that's a safe bet. And if any one of them knows that one of their riders was responsible for the incident, they are not sharing that information with the police.

So Brian Greening runs a legal firm called Legal Rideshare, a firm that deals exclusively in rideshare-related personal injury cases. So we might want to pass that on to Dr. David Teter. Yeah, we're going to pass that on to Dr. Teter. Yes, so he said that the e-scooter companies, as well as the city, were sent letters informing them of the issue and requesting that they preserve any data related to the incident.

In other words, no deleting. Following a lack of any meaningful response, he has filed a petition in court this week naming the city and the companies and asking them, a judge, order them to turn over data, which may be related to the incident. In other words, identifying who was in the area at the time and who was renting the scooters.

So there's data on this, and they're going after it, and they should. Well, yeah, they should. They should definitely be going after it, and we'll see how that turns out. I talked to a friend of the show, Dr. Teter, this morning, and the cops have not given him any information so far. So we don't know what's happening.

Well, yeah, I'm sure that there's a lot of battles with these companies about getting the information that they have. They don't want to release it. That's bad for them. Yeah, it's very bad for them because then they might be liable for, you know, what their riders are doing. So we'll see how this is all going to play out. But I hope everybody that has been injured in some way, shape, or the tether by one of these e-scooters sues that ever-living shit out of these people.

So then maybe we'll get them off the street. Yes, there's that. And we've also talked recently about the astonishing amount of homelessness in the L.A. area right now. And we've also talked about the problems that gentrification and extreme poverty and extreme wealth in the same area has caused for both San Francisco and the Silicon Beach area here where I live, Venice, Santa Monica, and all that.

And I saw this story on local news, and I just, I can't believe it. There's somebody called the Venice Van Lord. That's the name he goes by. He advertises on Craigslist. And he's got a minivan with a mattress inside that he's renting in the area for $450 a month.

You know you can go buy a minivan for less than $450 a month? Yes, but that would mean, these are mostly homeless people that are near homeless people. Well, obviously they're homeless, they're living in a fucking van. People that probably don't have the credit history to be able to go buy anything. So, yeah, there's a lot of this in this area now.

It used to be the RVs that would just park so they didn't have to pay rent or do anything, you know, pay into the community that they're stealing things from. So this has come up as an inbuilt capitalist solution to the homeless problem in Venice Beach. There's a lot of these around, a lot of vans and people just sleeping in them, parked on the street.

And then they go down to the beach and they take their shower at the beach shower and go to the bathroom there and then go back to their vans. We've got to fix this, people. Good luck, Brian. Good luck. I know. Now, even over here at the coffee bean that my roommate used to go to, I'll tell you why she used to go to when we get the absent doodads.

But the the meth heads in the morning will flock inside the coffee bean and basically steal creamer and sugar because they can't afford a coffee to have their morning, morning, morning, morning juice. And exactly. And then wash up in the bathroom and leave it a total mess.

And they're scared of them. Like the employees are scared of them. So they're not doing anything about it. They're not calling the police because they fear retribution. Well, remember, Starbucks opened it up to everybody. The CEO said, you are welcome to come here and do whatever you need to do without having to purchase anything. OK, well, fuck Starbucks.

In the news.

We've been talking a bit about music a lot. Well, we talk about that a lot because that's part of the reason we started the show. It was the music and tech over crops and all that sort of stuff. But I have been listening to this podcast, The Secret History of the Future, which is a joint venture between Slate and The Economist. It's very well done and very, very in the wheelhouse of anybody that's listening to us right now.

You should definitely check it out. But they had a really interesting episode recently called it was the first episode of season two called A Familiar Tune. We've talked a lot about the music industry and how it's changed. And this was fascinating. It gets in. It starts way back saying this is not the first time that the music industry has been completely ripped apart.

This has happened before. And it happened to John Philip Sousa. Back in the day, people made money by selling sheet music and people performed it at home and they toured extensively. And that was really the only way to consume music. Then all of a sudden, the phonograph came along. And that screwed everybody up because we didn't have copyright laws to cover it.

And it took almost three decades to figure that out. And we're kind of going through that again. The cycle is just repeating because we're trying to figure out streaming and we're trying to figure out copyright. And we're trying to figure that out all over again. So all of this has happened before. And it's absolutely fascinating to hear about happened back in the late 1800s about how this just happened before.

Now, where it gets to in this in this episode, which is really interesting, is that AI. Yes, to be fair. In the podcast, they do say neural networks a lot more often than they say AI, which is OK. Oh, I'll allow that is getting to the point of pass.

It's getting really, really good. Now, I used to mess around with AI algorithmic based music. Even you're not immune. Yeah, even I'm not immune. You just get beat over the head with it. I used to mess around a bit with algorithmic music back in, you know, even 10 years ago. And it really wasn't quite there yet.

There was I had a particular keyboard called the Chord Chaos, and it had a setting where it basically just did some algorithmic filters and would do passages. And I knew I wanted a piano based little short blip in the middle of a song I was writing. I knew what tempo I wanted in.

I knew what key I wanted in. You could put those variables in and hit a button and it would generate different things. And I used one of those in a song that was actually commercially released. It was OK. It only, you know, it was it was a 15 to 20 minute, 20 minute, 15 to 20 second clip.

Fucking Pink Floyd. And it fit really well in with the song. And I was like, oh, that's cool. But I really never, ever use it again because it didn't it wasn't there yet. They have systems now that you can just feed in anything that you want and it will come up with something brand new in the style of that or cross transferring stuff.

So, you know, Chopin meets nine inch nails and it will come up with something. And they're starting to wonder now who gets songwriting credits for these sorts of things. What's going to happen when these things get really good? Are is there because we've always talked about automation. OK, well, there's still going to be human creativity.

What if the AI can write better songs than humans can? And they're starting to think that this is not that far off. Really interesting. I totally believe that's going to be because, I mean, there's only so many notes under the sun and there's only so many ways to arrange those notes. That exactly was mentioned in this because the theory of one guy was going off, you know, thinking about this, about what's going to happen is there are still plenty.

We are the humans in and of themselves have not exhausted the musical system. But if you've got a computer and you feed everything in and you start copying, writing everything that comes out of your AI thing, you can very quickly have every possible combination of anything ever. The monkeys typing in a room sort of scenario where no matter what you write as a human, there will be somebody who potentially could have already copywritten that because his AI spit out absolutely everything.

You know, it's funny. I used to do that thought experiment overnight at Kinko's when I had nothing to do and had been to the pub. And I'm like, OK, so your monitor is 640 by 480. Let's just let's go with the lowest range. So let's say we have an 8-bit color scheme, right?

How long would it take for a computer to generate every possible image that could be ever drawn on that in, you know, and back then the, you know, computers were so slow. But nowadays, your phone could probably generate every single image that could possibly ever be made on a 640 by 480 screen and, you know, in an 8-bit color palette in like, you know, a day or so.

Right. And you send those off to the Library of Congress on a CD and say, here's every image that I've ever made and I'd like to copyright them. You know, I mean, there are finite, everybody says it's infinite, but it is not. It is not.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's an interesting, interesting one. I might I might have to go give this one a listen because I've been fascinated by that for a while. I really do think that, you know, the algorithms for things like that are going to definitely take over because there's only so many things that really can be done.

Yep. Yep. That's very true. And these systems are getting really good. I'm actually going to download one of them and play around with them over the next couple of weeks. So I will get back to you in a future apps and doodad segment and tell you how screwed musicians are. Well, I tell you what, if you can come up with some new stuff, we could definitely use some new bumpers for the show.

So if they can all be algorithmically generated, then we don't have to pay anybody. Awesome. We don't pay anybody. Yeah, because that was me anyways, and I didn't get paid for them. Yeah, that's your music. I'm going to talk to my copyright lawyer about this. Oh, wait, I don't have one. Oh, I guess my wife. Oh. I was going to send you a letter from my wife, Jason.

All right. So speaking of automation, Amazon has announced a plan to retrain one third of its U.S. employees as automation looms. So they're doing something about it. They're going to be automation looms? That's what they're going to be? They're going to be like, they're going to plug in the wheel, Jason. They're just a loom.

We've always said AIs are humans. And anyways, so yeah, they have announced that they're planning on retraining one third of its workforce. They're going to put in seven hundred million dollars, which is to provide upskill training designed to move people into positions vulnerable to automation into new jobs across the company. As many as one robot mechanic.

No, not. Well, yeah, I mean, they're going to move fulfillment center workers to I.T. roles. They're basically going to train them to take over the machines that are taking over their job, I guess. That's what I'm saying. Robot mechanics. So we'll see how long that lasts until the robots replace the robot mechanics with robot mechanics.

And then it just spirals down. Robot mechanics all the way down. Yeah. So there are also AWS training and certifications so they can use the cloud so they can tell people to turn on the damn security feature. Yeah. This is how you turn on bucket security. This is how you tell them. Why isn't that default?

OK, anyways. All right. So moving on from that, we've talked a bit about Slack recently because Slack went public and Vox has an interesting article about how Microsoft might crush Slack like Facebook crush Snapchat. Yeah, it's not going to happen.

Well, hold on a second. Yeah. Yeah. OK. Just wait. Go ahead. Slack is losing ground already to its biggest rival, Microsoft Teams, which has copied its way into popularity. In other words, Slack has the same problem as Snapchat, which has suffered from its big arrival, Facebook's relentless appropriation.

Slack's market share is going down. It's basically flat right now. Adoption rates are declining. And a bigger portion of these companies indicate they plan on leaving the service, according to a new survey by market research firm ETR, which asks chief I chief IO officers and other leaders at the world's biggest organizations where they plan to spend their company's tech budget.

Now, why teams is seeing increased market share, relatively high adoption rates and lower rates of defection because it's free as part of Microsoft Office with most, which most businesses have. Right. It did not because it's better. No, because it's because it comes with Office.

Beta was better than VHS. Yes, exactly. Better rarely wins, Jason. Free always wins. Free always wins. Yes. So that might be a real problem. And actually, the article's main point in this is is basically kind of what we've been talking about, which is you cannot win against the big companies.

You cannot beat them. You cannot beat a Microsoft. You cannot beat a Google. You cannot beat an Apple. There are there. So you cannot beat a Facebook. They're so big that if you get close, they can. The choices are they buy you or they crush you. That's what happens. Yeah. And Microsoft actually looked at buying Slack at one point, but then said, to hell with it.

We'll just do our own, which will suck. Yeah, it'll cost less money. It'll still be ugly as sin. I've used I've used Microsoft Teams. Have you tried it yet? I have not, but I'm going to have to in the near future because it's like Microsoft Word 3.0. That's that's how I can like if you're using, you know, Google Docs today and you have to use Microsoft Word 3.0.

The difference between Microsoft Teams and Slack is Microsoft 3.0 to Google Docs. Right. That's really it. I mean, but they will get better and they will continue to steal everything that Slack implements. And please steal Slack's designers. Microsoft, your design has still sucks.

Why can't you hire a designer with all the money you have? I hear there's a free designer who's no longer working at Apple. That's true. Just saying Microsoft. That's true. Oh, God. I mean, go get Daniel Berka. He's he's my friend from Flickr and Slack and all that shit.

He's the guy that designed all that shit. Go hire Daniel Berka. Oh, wait, he's richer than Croesus right now. So he doesn't have to do anything because Slack IPO'd and nobody cares if Slack is going to go down the crapper. Exactly. And speaking of Slack, I was I found this really interesting article over at the Atlantic and I read through it and I was primed to be angry about this.

OK, I was like, it's called the Slackification of the American home. And it's about how basically homes are starting to run themselves more like businesses because we're all so damn busy and there's so much going on and we can't keep track of everything anymore, which, you know, obviously, that would be upsetting to a certain degree.

And I was I wanted to be angry about the fact that this is happening. And then I actually read the article and it makes so much sense. Do tell. OK, here's an example. Tanya Parker, a mom in Illinois, wants to better organize her family life. And a little over a year ago, the first thing she did was set her kids up on Trello, which is a web based project management tool.

Parker's four children aged nine to 18 now use it. To keep up with chores, to do lists, shopping and homework, she uses every day to keep track of what schoolwork I need to do or places I need to be or things I want to buy, says Hannah, our 15 year old daughter. And the mom says college was my first experience of having to keep track of my own stuff, and I wanted my kids to have that sooner.

So incorporating Trello along with Gmail into their family life has been a godsend, according to the mom. It's streamlined family communication, help keep everyone organized and added a layer of accountability to tasks. This kind of makes sense to me. God, it makes sense, but it makes my skin crawl.

It really does. I know. I get it. It's no different than what we did as kids, where there was a board on the wall with stars. It's just digital now, and everybody's got phones anyways. My wife and I run our household like a business.

We do a lot of this stuff already, and I can see just wrapping Lucas up into it as he gets old enough. You know, I'm not right away. We're going to start with the board and the stars. But when he's old enough to be savvy and he's got the phone anyways, this makes a lot of sense to me.

Oh, God. I'm not as bothered by it as I thought I would be. I'm so happy that I live with a fucking Luddite, because you know what our shopping list is? We do have a shared shopping list in the house. It is a little whiteboard that we keep in the kitchen, and whenever we need something, we write it down.

You know what? They have little screens on refrigerators now that are digital, and you can just put it in there, and it'll be on your phone. Fuck your screeny refrigerator. Every time we go to the store, somebody just takes a picture of it on their phone. That's where it becomes digital. You go to the store, and you buy everything that's on the list from your phone.

Can't cross it out off a picture. I love crossing things out. Well, you cross it out when you get home. When you pick it up, you erase it from the dry erase board. It's great. It's fantastic. And very rarely have we had a conflict where somebody goes to the store and buys two pouches of Mexican cheese that we need for our eggs in the morning.

I would not call that a problem. That's extra cheese. Exactly. See, that's what I'm saying. I'm like, okay, well, oh, sad Christmas. We have twice the groceries that we were going to get before, and now we don't have to go get it for twice as long. But no, I get this, but I just want people to stay away from the damn screens more instead of getting better at Trello.

Have you used Trello? Trello just makes you, yeah, I hate that. I've used Asana. I've used Slack. That's about it so far. Okay. I mean, Trello is one of those other ones. What's the other one I use? Meister Task. Jira is another one. Well, no, Jira is basically task tracking and things like that.

These are, I forget the terminology for what Trello is. I just don't like the methodology behind it. It just drives me crazy. Granted, if you have to and everybody's bought in on it, it does work. It's a busy world, man. Families are busy these days. It's not like when we were kids, Jason.

You don't get on your bike and ride down the street and play with your neighborhood friends anymore. Everything is scheduled for these kids. There's playdates. There's activities. I get why parents do this now. I totally get it. My kid's not even old enough for this yet. I just see it coming. Okay, so parents are the problem here. That's what I see.

Kill all the parents. Yeah, Lord of the Flies. I'm sure that'll work out real well. Yes, lordoftheflies.com. All right. In other news, a former Tesla employee is being sued for downloading data related to the company's autopilot feature and taking that data to a Chinese rival company.

In the court filing, ex-employee Jean-Juie Cao admits that he accessed Tesla's source code and uploaded the files to a personal drive, the iCloud, but denied that his actions constitute theft of trade secrets. I wonder how does that, how do you justify that to yourself?

Tesla understandably disagrees. Go figure. So, yeah, he's going to get sued, so we'll see what happens there. But don't leave traces, don't be so stupid if you're going to break, well, you know, criminals are dumb. There you go. Didn't Tesla just lose like 15% of their autopilot workforce?

Yeah. Yeah. I think so. Yeah, because they all went to China because this guy took all the secrets. Yeah. Hey, where'd that bit of code go? Oh, it's in China now. Okay, let's go there. Let's go there. They pay better. And finally, and good news for as far as I'm concerned, except we'll see how it plays out.

T-Mobile says that getting sued for selling users' location data violates its own terms of service. Oh, is this the arbitration bullshit? Yes. And we're seeing a lot of pushback against arbitration now, and I pray that the judges on this case say, screw you, T-Mobile.

You don't get to do this to people. Yeah, so two people have sued over the T-Mobile geolocation data thing that happened earlier this year, where they sold all the information to a third party without consent. So they're trying to get a class action lawsuit going, and T-Mobile has filed a motion saying you can't do that because you agreed to arbitration, which is buried deep in their terms of service.

Now, they do offer people to be able to opt out of arbitration, because even deeper in those terms of service is something that states they must either complete the opt-out form on the website or call a toll-free number and provide the information requested within the first 30 days of their activated service. After that, tough shit.

Arbitration it is. So let's see what happens, but I need to see somebody stepping up against this. We need T-Mobile to get spanked and say, too bad, no arbitration. You did bad things. They get to sue you. I thought of a new service just now. We read all of the TOSs, and then we find things like this, where you can opt out of the arbitration clause.

So say, I signed up for T-Mobile today. Then I go to our new website, which is fuckarbitration.com. And we give them the information on how to opt out of certain things or opt into certain things, like, you know, opt into more privacy, opt out of arbitration.

Shouldn't the EFF be doing that right now? Well, you'd think they get paid to do things like that, but, well, regardless, I have two domains to go register, lordoftheflies.com and fuckarbitration.com. I'll be back later. Hover.com slash GOG. Yes, for 10% off your first order.

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Security? Ha! We're back this week with Dave Bittner from the Cyber Wire podcast. The Cyber Wire is a free, community-driven cybersecurity news service based in Maryland. Dave is also co-host of the Hacking Humans podcast, along with Joe Kerrigan, where they take on social engineering.

We are Jason-less today, as he's down in San Diego for a friend of the show, Bob's 50th day. We let Justin take a day off. Yeah, well, good for him. I think he's earned it. Me too. And it's hard to beat San Diego, right? I mean, and weather-wise, anyway, I'm thinking it's lovely.

Oh, yes. Yes. Weather-wise, it's a lovely town. Yeah. But nothing compared to Maryland. Well, what is, really? That's right. That's right. That's right. So I wanted to share a quick story about my morning before we started, because we have people writing us, and you specifically, all the time about, oh, what should I do with my life?

I want to get into the cyber. I want to, I want to, should I, should I get into IT? Should I get into cybersecurity? How do I get started? And I just, I think you and I, and Jason as well, because of our abilities, have been, you know, the IT and cybersecurity for our families.

Right. Both immediate and extended for all of our lives. You know, certainly since I started dating my wife through marriage and through having a kid, anything with a chip in it is my responsibility. I fixed her computer hundreds of times, phones, tablets, TVs, everything, you know, I keep a good running household technologically wise.

And you know what that gets you with women? Nothing. You know what I had to do this morning? Go on. I had to replace a kitchen sink. And while I was at that, I also did the faucet and replaced the garbage disposals because we're homeowners now.

We have to do these sorts of things. Yes, yes. You know what that gets you with the women? More than the other thing? You are a sex machine. So what I would tell everybody who's writing us to do is go into plumbing. Right. Yes.

Forget this tech stuff. You know, that's interesting because not too long ago, I was thinking about this myself and I was thinking to myself like, you know, the friends I have who are plumbers, who are firemen, who are HVAC guys.

They're the guys who have the beach houses. Yes. Like, I don't have a beach house. I would love to have a beach house. I have a lovely home. I can't complain about my circumstances. I have a good job and I enjoy doing it. But like, you know, don't write off these these jobs that require, you know, the use of your hands.

Yes, they're never going to they're always busy. They also have pretty set hours. They go home and crack some beers. They're not still checking their emails like we are. Right. They've got it kind of made. I agree. I'm just saying. I agree. That's interesting. Plus, the ladies love it.

They do not care about the fact that you've kept your house virus free. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Yeah. I feel fortunate that that was something my father instilled in me was he he made sure that I was at his side when he did things like replace light switches and, you know, trap traps and sinks and things like that.

So I'm pretty fearless when it comes to that kind of stuff. I am as well. And YouTube is a godsend. Oh, my gosh. Oh, wow. Yes. You know what? I recently fixed my dishwasher. Thank you. Completely. Thanks to YouTube. Totally. It's a wonderful thing. No, it's great.

What a time to be alive. What a time to be alive. Well, moving to the other side of this great time to be alive. I wanted to share a story about some potential creepiness that I ran into last week with the weight loss tracking app that I'm using.

Now, I have been quite successful over the past two and a half months. I'm happy to say that I've lost 20 pounds. That's impressive. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it was just I just felt like it was time. I put on a lot of weight and I just I was starting to feel it.

And I decided, all right, time to get this under control. So I'd used this app before. It's called Lose It. And it's one of those apps that you can connect to a scale. And I bought a digital scale, which helps a lot also. And it tracks all your food and you can scan all the barcodes from things you eat and so on and so forth.

So that's all great. And I've been really good about tracking everything. And however, late last week, I was going through Twitter. And as I was scrolling through Twitter, I noticed that ads came up for two different foods that I had just recently logged in my weight loss tracking app.

Now, are you sure you didn't just say that out loud in front of your phone? Could be. It could be. One of them was Eggos, you know, the toaster waffles. Let go my Eggos. Yeah, they're a big hit in my house. And my 12-year-old really likes them.

And I like them, too. So I had had a couple of Eggos for breakfast. So it is quite possible that I could have been sitting there and said, gosh, this is a damn good Eggo. But I don't think so. So, like, the first one that scrolled by, I thought to myself, oh, that's an interesting coincidence.

The second one that scrolled by, I went, wait a minute. That's something that I just logged in my weight loss app earlier. So this sent me down the rabbit hole of trying to, looking at the privacy agreement for this app.

Right. Sure enough. Three days later. Sure enough, there is one. And it's all the standard stuff we talk about. We promise to anonymize your data. However, we will share, you know, some information for the use of better serving you and our clients and our advertisers and blah, blah, blah.

Right. Now, this is an app I pay for. It's like 30 bucks a year. Totally worth it. I'm happy with the app, or at least I was. So, I'm digging through this privacy thing, and it says, this is how you, if you're on iOS, which I am, this is how you can be sure that this app is not sharing any of this information.

And I'm thinking, great, this is what I want to see from an app. Give me the ability to unplug and not share the information. Especially if you're paying for it. Exactly. Exactly. So, I go in, and I'm following the directions, and I'm walking through the settings on my iPhone, and turns out I already have it disabled.

Right. So, I'm thinking to myself, crap. Because now what? Right? Yes. Now what? Yeah, because this is almost impossible to tease back layers and find out what's going on. Right. Could it be a coincidence? Could be, as we know, as we've talked about over and over again, could totally be a coincidence.

But my spidey sense is tingling and telling me, screaming at me, saying, it's not a coincidence. Now, it hasn't happened again, but boy, am I on the alert. Yeah. Well, you've got to be super careful now. You can't Google anything on your laptop related to food.

Right. You've got to basically have a complete shutdown on food-related internet activities, except for your app. I'm telling you, Brian, science is exhausting. It really is. What else we've got going on this week that you've been tracking?

Well, Jason has given us a couple of links. He has said the internet cops have finally showed up for work. Yes, they did. This is exciting. So, GDPR is finally starting to have a bit of an effect. British Airways is facing a record fine. The British authorities said on Monday that they intended to order British Airways to pay a fine of nearly $230 million for a data breach last year, the largest penalty against a company for privacy lapses under the new GDPR.

You know, a couple $230 million fines, and you're starting to talk real money. Yeah. I saw somebody did the math on this, and $230 million equals two airliners. Yeah. Well, you know, that's not nothing to them. Right. Right. Exactly.

Which is good. And then Marriott got hit also. They got hit with, what, I think $123 million for their 2018 data breach. Yeah. And that gathered additional attention because Marriott is an American company. Yes.

So, British Airways, people were thinking, okay, they're within the EU, but this is showing that the long arm of the GDPR law extends out to the US as well. This is good. I see this is a very good thing. It is. So, we'll see what happens.

Yeah. Well, and the people I've talked to this week, they've been saying that this is causing conversations around boardrooms, sort of a recalibration. That in a way, this is a good thing because now there's more certainty that, yes, these fines are going to happen.

They're going to be big. The EU isn't just going to look the other way when it comes to these things. So, organizations are like, okay, great. Now, we can plan. Yeah. But hopefully that planning. Now, we can create two forks, one that does not apply in the US.

And that is exactly what's going to happen, unfortunately. Yeah. Yeah. Now, there's another story that I haven't really been following, but I see that we've been tagged on it. You've been tagged on it. So, I'm going to kind of toss this one over to you and see what you know. What is going on with Zoom?

Okay, so you're familiar with the Zoom videoconferencing platform. It is a videoconferencing system, I believe, yes, that I had to use once many, many years ago. But what I understand is that has made me vulnerable because I used it once many, many years ago. That is correct.

Okay, great. Or at least it did until a couple of days ago. So, Zoom is a good platform. I've used it myself many times. And what Zoom set out to differentiate themselves with is that it is very easy to use. There aren't a lot of buttons to push.

There's not a lot of messing with, where's my microphone? Where's my camera? It pretty much works. It's like parent-friendly. It works right out of the box. And so, it's gained a lot of popularity because of that. Well, turns out, one of the reasons that Zoom was so easy to use is that on a Mac, if you installed Zoom on your system, it installed its own little web server.

Oh. Right. Well, that's not good. Well, it gets even better because if you uninstalled Zoom, it left behind the little web server running. Oh, I'm sure that was just a lapse of code. Well, Zoom says this is a feature, not a bug, because what that means is if someone else reaches out to you and wants you to join their Zoom conference, this makes it so that the

app can automatically be installed and configured without you having to lift a finger. Right. Except for the fact that when I choose to uninstall a program, I expect it to uninstall. That's right. No means no. So, now, what brought this to people's attention is that there was a researcher who discovered

that there was a way to use this functionality to remotely enable someone's video camera on a Mac without them knowing about it. And this person did responsible disclosure to Zoom. And Zoom basically stood by their statement that this was a feature, not a bug.

And so, the researcher gave them the amount of time. I think it was 90 days, a reasonable amount for responsible disclosure. And then made it public. And within a day or two, Apple used the nuclear option, which is Apple pushed out its own update to basically disable this web server on Macs.

Right. And so, for Apple to do that, that's a big deal. And it was funny. I was talking with Joe Kerrigan about this. We did a segment with this for the Cyber Wire. And there's a statement from one of Zoom's spokespeople.

And she says, we're happy to have worked with Apple on testing this update. And I'm just imagining the conversation of Apple saying, okay, so here's what's going to happen. Right? Yeah. We are going to do this, and there's nothing you can do to stop this.

That's right. If you want to be on the platform, this is what's going to happen. This is how it's going to go down. Are we good here? I said, are we good here? So, now, what's interesting to me is how much is this going to really hurt Zoom or not? I don't know.

I don't have a sense for that. I have a feeling that the market that they're going after are people who don't really understand the ins and outs anyways and probably have no idea what's going on and will not care. I suspect you're right. Obviously, there's a lot of irate people on Twitter, but they're probably people that weren't really using Zoom much anyways, unless, like me, they were forced to because a client wanted them to use it.

Yeah. And this may make it a little less easy to use, but it's still, it's a good service. The quality is good. The reliability is good. The times I've used it, I haven't had any trouble with it. So, I suspect that will win the day, and this will just kind of, you know, go by the wayside.

But interesting that it made it this far. It's interesting that it took the public disclosure for Apple to take notice and do something about it as well. I think that's... Well, there's two things there to unpack just quickly. One seems to be that public shaming is the only way to get anybody to do anything these days.

And that is what was brought to bear on Zoom, and then they chose inexplicably not to do anything about it. They stood their ground. The second thing is Apple really does seem to be taking this privacy thing seriously to the point where they would, you know, basically risk relationships with software developers to say, we're not going to let you get away with this.

We're going to shut this down ourselves. Yeah. Yeah. And that's a... And that Apple makes the judgment that their users are going to be okay with them pushing out an update like this. Yeah. That is not optional.

That this is, you know, this is important enough that they've earned the trust of their users that that's the right thing to do. That's interesting as well. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I ran across an interesting article over at Slate about license plate readers.

I think we've talked about them a little bit and we've talked about the different things out there that exist to like obfuscate your license plates if you're worried about this sort of stuff. I didn't realize how much these things are around now. It isn't just law enforcement anymore.

Automatic license plate readers have been around for a long time, but there are now startups like OpenALPR and Flock Safety that exist that read the license plates, but they do more than just read license plates. They can detect dents on cars. They can search for specific bumper stickers and for Lyft tags or Uber tags.

And they used to be quite expensive, but now this is just a software thing. It's not a full system. You can run the software on $100 cheapy China cameras like Jason has these days. And so the cost of admission is next to nothing these days.

And it's open to everyone. There are people that small town police departments can suddenly afford to conduct surveillance at a massive scale. Neighborhood homeowner associations are buying these things. Property managers are buying these things for their properties. And this is some serious tracking that's going on.

They know where you're going, when you're going, when you're coming back, who could be with you, what happened to your car while you were out. It's a little frightening what's going on. And there seems to be no regulation about this at the moment. Yeah. As per usual. Yeah. And I try to keep separate or I guess it's an important distinction that these databases aren't automatically tied into any sort of police database.

So it's not like, no, you can have completely private ones. You can, if you set this up and you're, you have, you own an apartment complex, you can have your own little database of every single car going in and out and what's going on. Right. But, but the, the, the second part of that is that for many, many things, that's enough.

I don't have to know who you are just for your comings and goings to be interesting. Right. Yeah. Yeah. They even talked about just a couple of neighbors chipping in and buying this together. Yes.

And then the one holdout that there was one neighbor in there that said no, but it doesn't matter because the entire neighborhood is blanketed now. Right. So even if you're the holdout, you're screwed too. It's, it's a weird world we're setting up for ourselves. And you can't, you can't cover your license plate.

I wonder if there's going to be a market for some sort of little electronic gadget that hides your license plate, you know. Yeah. Like, like, like a little LED blaster that screws the camera up or something. Or just like, yeah, I'm thinking of like little tiny vertical blinds, you know, that cover the license plate.

So when you're on your way in and out of your neighborhood, you can cover your license plate and then you get out on the open road where you're, it's legally required, you know, and then you can open it up again or something like that. Even just remember the thing that Kit had where it could, he'd flip the plate, you know, one of those, that'd be good.

I want one of those. And I got to bounce around a little bit in my notes here because the second story that related directly to this is, is down a little bit. And this is from technology review, which goes to the next step on this about how satellite imagery is getting so good that satellites will soon be able to watch and track us everywhere all the time.

Yeah. And who's going to be in charge of that? Because there can be private satellites out there as, is there any real reasonable expectation of privacy anymore? What are we going to do about all this? Yeah. I mean, license plates are enough. We have already got GPS trackers on us all the time, social media posts, everything.

And if you start to tie all this together, you will never have a private moment in your life ever again. And once these satellites get this good game over. Well, and, you know, Baltimore near us was one of the cities that was part of a test program for something similar to this. That was basically, they put a Cessna up in the air with a little array of cameras that were looking down at the city and taking shots.

And so basically you ended up with a sort of an eye in the sky that could be DVR'd. You know, you could rewind it, timestamp it. So if you wanted to know, did a vehicle leave this building at this time and where did it go?

You could do that. And that seems to me, that's exactly what we're talking about here, except with satellites. Yeah. Yeah. And there's, there's really no protecting yourself from the satellite. What are you going to, you can't stop it from seeing you. It's just not possible. So, yeah, we've really got to start thinking about what kind of privacy we want and what ethically we want to do with these things.

And it doesn't, like most things, we seem to be running forward with the technology without stopping to think about the consequences. Well, you know, yeah. Well, the law is always lagging behind these things. It just seems to be the natural, or I don't know, natural is probably not the right word for it, but it's the way of things that, in our society anyway, that the legal stuff is always playing catch up.

And I guess that one of the real issues with that is how much the acceleration of change, the pace of change has accelerated. And so it's harder for legal to keep up. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we talked a little bit in the past about the problems that Amazon had with their Alexa, about the recordings that were being made and people were listening to things.

And we kind of found out for the first time that, oh, yeah, people really are listening. It isn't just being done by AI. Right. AI is people, as we all know. And then they had the little internal message boards where they were sharing comments about some of the things that they recorded. Well, Google decided to just go, hey, Amazon, hold my beer.

Anything you can do, I can do better. Exactly. So according to Belgian broadcaster Vert News, devices with the Google Digital Assistant are recording conversations and sounds inside the homes of their owners and sending those messages to humans for review. Nothing terribly shocking there.

More troubling is that many of these recordings do not appear to have been triggered with any sort of activation phrase. And over 1000 recordings were actually fully leaked this time. Not just commented about in a private forum for employees leaked. Whoopsies.

Yeah. Isn't that inevitable? That's kind of what we were saying. You know, I, I still, Jason has decided to get rid of his. He no longer has ladies in the tube in his house. Really? Oh. Well, more because of his roommate. His roommate's a little more paranoid than, hard to believe than he is.

But it's actually true. Okay. All right. So he's gotten rid of them. I've always assumed that this thing is connected. It doesn't stay internal. It's going somewhere. It's going to be recorded. People are going to hear it. I am hoping that Amazon is much better with their wake words.

We have not heard anything about Amazon's recordings, not involved. I mean, obviously there's the occasional mistake and things of that nature. Right. Overall, it seems to be working well. And I, and I've said on the show a thousand times and I'll say it a thousand times again, don't say stupid shit to it. Right. Don't.

And until we know that there's security protocols in place, don't, don't use any health apps. Don't do, don't, don't divulge personal information. Don't do private stuff. Use it to ask for the weather and play music and you're fine. Well, you know, I just bought my parents or helped my parents buy a new TV.

And for the first time in my life, well, that's exactly right. For the first time in my life, I'm faced with a TV that includes a microphone. And it's, the TV is connected to their wifi and I had to figure out, fortunately, thank goodness, the, I was able to hide all of the apps that, that want to, you know, display when you power the thing up because ain't no way my folks were, would be able to handle that.

So I was able to get rid of that, but I don't know what that mic is doing behind the scenes. Um, you know, when, when we bought our place a couple of years back, we, we, you know, had a little bit of extra money somehow and bought a new TV as well. And we got like a big ass Samsung and it was smart.

And, uh, the first thing I did was figure out how to shut off everything because I didn't want the microphone. I'm not going to talk to my, uh, I don't want any of that stuff, especially when the reports came out that Samsung was doing some kind of iffy stuff with that information. So, yeah, it's a, again, this goes back to, uh, you know, we get no respect for taking care of all this stuff for our family.

Do we? No, we do not. We got to do some plumbing. Yeah. Well, they're quick to call us when, uh, when it goes wrong though, when, when they can't send an email that, that, that phone rings quickly. Yeah. Yeah. Jason threw this one in for you, Dave, because he knew how much he loved Apple's last billboard.

Apple has aimed a new privacy billboard at Google's controversial smart city, which is in a Toronto area. I'm going to Toronto in a couple of weeks. So I am going to stroll over to this area and see what's going on. Take a selfie in front of it. Yes. So yes, Apple strenuous privacy campaign may be hypocritical.

Some may say, I think our argument is Apple is doing this better than almost anybody else out there. So let's let them continue to roll the privacy banner because they're the only ones doing it. So in 2019, it was a billboard that they erected over Las Vegas during CES, which said what happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone.

And now they've decided to target Google specifically at the Quayside smart city that they are developing. And they put up another big billboard saying we're in the business of staying out of yours. I like it. Very nice. I like it. Me too. Well, but isn't it interesting just from a marketing point of view that we're at the point now where companies like Apple are using privacy as a market differentiator?

Yeah. Yes. I think it's a good thing. You know, I think a lot more people are are wise to the privacy issues going on now than ever were before. Certainly in the six years that Jason and I have been doing the show when we felt like we were just screaming from the rooftops and nobody was listening. Unfortunately, the takeaway that most people seem to get is Facebook is listening to you on your phone.

Right. But right now, at least they're kind of paying attention. Yeah. And Jason also found this one. Let's let's end on a kind of more amusing note. The world's first Bluetooth hair straighteners that can be easily hacked. First off, why would you need a hair straightener to have Bluetooth?

That's beyond me. Because you can. Because you can. I don't know about you, but I've never owned a hair straightener, so. I have not. But I actually when I was reading through this and I realized how often my wife forgets to unplug hers, that maybe there would be a good use for this Bluetooth app and because she could go, oops, I forgot to turn it off and turn it off, except she would have to be in range, which is the only problem.

Maybe she'd be on Wi-Fi. Can you set a hair straightener and a curling iron next to each other and let them battle to the death? Maybe, maybe. So these guys just didn't do a very good job of building their thing. They basically left Bluetooth wide open so people could get in there and hack.

And these are quite dangerous devices because you can fluctuate temperature quite extremely and basically make it so it doesn't ever shut off and, you know, potentially start a fire. Right. So some, yeah, I could imagine somebody thinking that it's off and it's cool. And so they tuck it away somewhere, leave it plugged in, but tuck it under the sink or in a drawer.

As my wife does almost every morning. Yeah. Yeah. And then if someone can remotely fire that puppy up, now you got a fire on your hands. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. So, you know, be better people. Well, and could, yeah. So could they be fined for this?

I don't know. One, I don't, can they be fined for just building it the way it was? Probably not. Probably not. If there had been an incident of something happening, then I think they could be sued. Yeah. I don't think they could be fined for this, unfortunately. If you could, again, this is legislation being too far behind, right?

We almost need, we need legislation to say if you're building internet of things devices, they need to have some security built into them. Yeah. Wow. This is a, this is a, quite a statistic. It's estimated that as many as 650,000 house fires in the UK are caused by hair straighteners and curling irons left on.

That is not surprising. It just seems to be one of those things that people forget about. Yeah. I mean, I can see it. You're, it's first thing in the morning. You've probably only had a little bit of your coffee. It's part of your morning routine. You're not fully online yet. And you just, you're done.

Maybe your kid's yelling for breakfast. You walk out of the bathroom. It's left on. So they should have auto shut off on these devices. This is the 21st century people. Right. Right. We're supposed to have flying cars and we don't even have auto shut offs on hair dryers.

Right. Yeah, exactly. Have some kind of motion sensor in there. If it, if it detects that it hasn't been touched or moved in a certain amount of time, power that puppy off. Period. If only people would listen to us. Yeah. This is, yeah. Hey, boy. We could fix so many things, Brian.

Just, just you and I. And even Jason could help. Yeah. Every now and then. All right. Well, that's what we got. Good speaking to you. Yeah. That's what we got this week. All right. I will talk to you next week. Take care. Apps and doodads.

This might actually be a bit shocking to you, Jason, but I actively searched out, found, installed and use a new app on my phone. Who are you and what have you done with Brian? I know it's been a long time since I've bothered with a new app, but I've been trying to get in shape recently.

This is kind of my new thing is for many reasons. Obviously, I have a son. I'd like to be around as long as I can be for him. He's also going to be starting athletics soon. So I'd like to be out there and helping him out. And actually, the most important thing is I want to make sure I could be still beat the shit out of him up until, you know, 15 or as long as humanly possible, as long as possible, as long as humanly possible.

So I've been kind of upping my workouts recently and I've plateaued as one often does. And I was talking to a friend of mine who happens to be a personal trainer and I kind of listed everything I was doing. And she said, well, you need to add some intervals. That'll that'll knock out your plateau and get you through it. If you don't know what high intensity interval training is, it means you burn really, really, really hard for a little bit and then you take it at more moderate pace.

Then you go back and you just get your heart rate going up and down and up and down and up and down, which is great. So I needed an app to give me timers like that. And I found it says it on the tin interval timer, high intensity training workouts.

And it does exactly what you need it to do. It's fantastic. It's super customizable. You can set your different intervals. You can set colors that the screen will go depending on the interval that you're on. You can set the amount of repetitions you do for each interval. You can set different sounds for the different events, like when you're switching into the high intensity or low intensity, which is fantastic for me because I like to do it while biking and I can't see the screen or anything, but I'll be listening to my podcast or my music or whatever, and I'll get the dings.

And I know, all right, pedal really, really, really hard for 30 seconds. Ding. All right. Normal pedaling for a minute. Ding. And it's great. It does exactly what I want it to do. Okay. Okay. Or you could just pedal really, really fast and count to 30 and then pedal really, really fast count or really slow and count to 60 and pedal really, really fast.

This from the guy who carries 17 different things in his pocket that his phone does all of them on. I look, man, you're, you're just, you actually just proved my point because I don't need my phone to count to 30, but Hey, what are you going to do? Okay. There's a lot going on, a lot going on when I'm on a bike ride.

I'm, I'm locked. Well, I got to look out for scooters. I can't be counting. Yes. And beach bunnies and things like that. I do like the USC volleyball team practicing. That's very nice. Let's just say I do my low intensity when I'm driving past that.

Oh, I'm sure you do. Something's high, but not your intensity. Now we got some samples from our good friends over at Marpack. They sent us the Marpack dome and the Marpack go. I've been using both of them. They're great. I have not used the go yet. I'm, I'm driving to San Diego in the morning and staying overnight.

So I'm going to take the go with me. I did test it out and play with it. And it's really nice for, you know, a portable sleep machine. I wish we had that when we were at fireside last year, it would have been useful at fireside. Yes. Uh, the dome is kind of the natural, uh, fan sound. And I, we actually replaced that in our bedroom.

We're using that my wife and I now for when we go to sleep at night, because she likes the white noise and it's really nice. Uh, the one complaint I have about it, um, is that, uh, you were supposed to be able to connect it to your Amazon Alexa, but the skill does not work. Okay.

Does not seem to be supported. So that's a, that's a minor quibble, but it would be nice to just be able to wake up and turn it off by voice. Hopefully they'll fix that at some point. The go is a smaller unit with some pretty clever designs. You can hang it up on things or just put it on the bedside table. That does not have the natural noise, uh, fan noise sound that the dome has, because obviously it's much smaller, but it has a couple of different great sounds.

My kid actually loves playing with it. Lucas just runs around the house with his sound machine. That's what he called it. That's cool. Yeah. So I like them both. They're good. Yeah, no, they're, they're, they're amazing. And thanks so much guys over at Marpoc for sending those to us because I've had the original dome, like the OG for 10 years, or I think it's been at least 10 years.

And I use it all the time. And when I got the new one, I just downloaded the app and I set up a schedule. So at nine at night, it turns on and at 5am it turns off. Right. And so it just does it every day, no matter what, because either I'm in, I'm always going to be in bed at 9am or 9pm.

I'm always in bed by then. And 5am, it still keeps the dogs quiet because I get up at 430 and take a shower. So it, you know, it helps with the dogs. So it like the nine to five schedule just works and I'm fine with that. I don't have any Alexas in my house anymore. So it's all good. The app was pretty easy to get set up and it, you know, it works just like the old dome, except I don't have to go press a button anymore.

And I gave my old dome to my roommate who has like box fans in her room and all this other stuff. And she's always complaining because her nose is stuffy in the morning. Like, yeah, because you got a freaking box fan to make some noise. Take my old one and try it out. She tried it for the first night and she says, this is the greatest thing ever.

So she's, she's stolen my old dome and uses it all the time now. So if you want white noise generators, there is no better version than the, the Marpock dome. And I can't wait to try the go for a actual travel because I am staying in what used to be a fairly skeezy hotel in San Diego, but seems to have been upgraded.

Cause I think the first time I stayed there, it was about $40 a night. And this time it's $240 a night. So they better have at least clean the sheets. One would hope one would hope. And speaking of OG devices, my mom had a Kindle. I got, it must be second generation.

She's had that thing forever or ever. And it finally died on her. Uh, so I ordered the new Kindle paperwhite for her and I sent it to my house because I'm the one that has to set things up. So I haven't given it to her yet, but I've got it up and running and ready to go. Let me guess. You might not give it to her. You might order a new one.

I like it. I am surprised at how small it is. I was expecting something a little bit bigger. I would like it to actually be a little bit bigger. It's, it's even smaller than my iPad mini was. Um, but it should, you know, you can increase the text size. It's got the backlighting and all that sort of stuff.

So it's easy to read on a little bit smaller. I will see if my mom likes it. I think she'd probably enjoy it a little bit bigger as well, but it is what it is. It's light. It is, uh, it's, it's a nice little device. I'm pretty impressed. Now, what I didn't know about Kindles is that you could order them with special offers or without special offers.

What a load of crap is that? Well, here's the deal. Special offers mean you pay 20 bucks less and it inundates you with ads. No, it's just on the lock screen though. Yeah. That's it. It's just on the lock screen. I, I went for the cheap version.

I've got a Kindle paperwhite and I love it. I never use it because I don't really read in bed anymore, but I have one and I think they're fantastic. And I got one of their leather cases, which makes it one of the most comfortable reading devices to hold that I've ever had. Send me the link for the leather case. Cause I didn't get a case yet for my mom.

Oh my God. I got a, I got a bright orange leather case so I could find it. Not orange, but send me the, send me the link. It's very, it's trust me. It is a classy orange and, uh, I love that thing. And when I do read what, like if I get a book that has words instead of audio, uh, I'd use my Kindle paperwhite because when it was audio, we don't call them books.

No, we call them audio books. Yes. So, uh, but here's the fun part with your Kindle paperwhite. You can listen to your books from audible through the Kindle paperwhite. And if you have the, the audio version and the Kindle version, they sync, which is really cool. So I can be reading something like actually reading on the Kindle and then.

Switch over to the audible version and put it on the nightstand and let it just play for like half an hour. Right. Well, I'm falling asleep instead of timer and it turns itself off. And then when I opened the book back up, I'm back to where I left off. It's really fancy. So Amazon did something right with that for sure.

But yeah, that Kindle paperwhite is awesome. I love those things. I don't, I, I can't see spending all the money for the one that you can take in the bathtub, but, uh, for just a regular one, I love those paper whites. Well, I spent the money for the one you can take into the bathtub because my mom likes to read in the bathtub. So.

Oh, well, there you go. Save you on Ziploc bags. I guess. Or, you know, my mom electrocuting herself. So, you know, pluses. You're not going to electrocute yourself from a Kindle. Come on. You never know. Yeah. So I've, I finally got my Logitech slim folio pro 12.9 inch iPad pro case.

This is the one that I accidentally sent to my old address. Um, yes. Which it turned out they actually got, it got sent back. So I got the money for it. So I went ahead and bought it again because my, the one Logitech keyboard I had, the removable one that was just a cool little Bluetooth keyboard.

I never used it. It was just the form factor was, it's great. It's a great little keyboard and you can use it with your phone and your iPad and all that stuff. But I never used it because you have two pieces. So I got this new slim folio pro put my iPad in it, got it set up.

And the problem with the new iPad pros is they don't have that smart connector like the old iPad pros did where you can actually plug it into a device and the device will be powered by the iPad. Which is the, which is the predecessor to this one, which I had for my 9.7 inch iPad pro with the Logitech keyboard, which is the best keyboard I've ever had for an iPad.

This one has of course a ginormous fucking battery in it that lasts three months on a charge. And I swear to God, the iPad, which weighs nothing with this case weighs more than my 15 inch MacBook pro.

It is so goddamn heavy that I'm just like, are you, are you kidding me? It's a piece of rubber with a keyboard. Why is this so ridiculously heavy? Now that said, fantastic keyboard, backlit, great key, like great travel on the keys, feels really good.

Doesn't have that bullshit butterfly switch that Apple does. It's a really nice keyboard to type on and it's got a super powerful magnet. So when you actually lock it into place, you can, you can put it on your lap and type with it. That's the biggest problem I have with most iPad keyboards is once you put it on your lap, everything just goes blue, blue, blue, blue, this one, not so much at all.

I can put this one on my lap, type on it. It's got a, you know, place for the pencil. Still, it's 129 bucks and I have used that more than I've used my MacBook pro now because I usually work in the studio on my iMac, go in the house, pull up my iMac or pull up my MacBook pro and use that in the house.

But with the new keyboard, I find myself almost never using the MacBook pro. So this has actually gotten me closer to using the iPad as a laptop. So even though it's a little bit heavier than I'd like, the, the build quality, the, the power of the magnet and the quality of the keyboard makes me recommend this.

This is a keeper for me. Excellent. Yeah. I really, really am impressed with this thing, even though it's just so goddamn heavy, but you know, as they say in the 13th warrior grow stronger. That's true. Use your high intensity training tracker.

God. Next up, I have the Breville, the barista express espresso machine, BES 870 XL. I bought this for my roommate for her birthday because she's an espresso addict or a cappuccino addict.

And she spends like, you know, anywhere between six and $12 a day at the coffee bean. And I'm like, why? She's like, eh, the morning espresso is fine at home, but it's just not that good. And I'm like, okay, well, let's fix that. So yes, let's make sure that we never have to leave the house ever.

You are hell bent on this, my friend. Oh, she leaves the house all the time. She's a real estate broker. She's, she's always showing houses and doing stuff. She's on the go more than I am. Obviously she's never home. Uh, but this is going to at least save her money. And also here's the upside. I get to use it. There you go. So, uh, the thing was ridiculously expensive for what it is.

And here's the deal. When you go to the Amazon page right now, it is 479 95. That makes me very angry. Why? Because when I bought it, it was $565. Yeah.

Yeah. That makes me really angry because with tax, it was 620 bucks. Wow. But I tell you what though, these guys at Breville make some of the best stuff. I've got the Breville tea maker, which, you know, has the magnetic basket that lowers and raises the tea for you and keeps everything warm.

It is the best teapot on the, on the planet. I love that thing so much. So I'm like, if I'm going to do something, I'm going to do Breville's and we have a matching set. Now I just need to get a Breville toaster, which I think she's going to get me for my birthday next month. But this thing is so nice. Every little detail is so perfectly thought out.

You can put the beans in. It does the grind perfectly. It's got just everything about it. If you've got, you know, if you have the means, I highly recommend you, I highly recommend you pick one up, channeling my Ferris Bueller there. It is really, really, really good, but stupid expensive for what it is.

But the coffee that comes out of it is, I mean, I, I, I can't, I can't tell you if anything that I would get at Intelligentsia is better. It tastes that good. And I've run some Intelligentsia beans through it. And I swear to God, it tastes the same as actually going to the shop.

So no hipsters, no hipsters and no line. And yeah, I can get a bag of, you know, was it black cat for $12 instead of three espressos for $12. So in the long run, this is actually going to save a bunch of money.

So I, as much as espresso as we drink, we, between the two of us, we go through six a day. Right. So if you go out and pay for that, that's stupid, it's stupid money. Uh, I talked about firewall by burner before. I cannot recommend this app anymore.

I told you that I was going to try it out. Yep. Well, the problem was I had a conference call that was coming up at, uh, three 30 yesterday and at three o'clock I'm like, Oh shit, what if she gets caught by burner? Cause this is a CIA agent that I'm talking to.

So she might have some crazy stuff going on with her number and it might get flagged and I might not get to talk to her. Well, so I go to firewall and I'm like, I need to, you know, stop forwarding because the way firewall works is it forwards your number to their server. They answer the phone call and they, they send it back through VoIP through their app.

Right. So I'm like, okay, disable call forwarding, get rid of the app. You just do all the, well, it says, nope, couldn't do it. Couldn't do it. Couldn't do it. Couldn't do it. Shit out of luck. Try typing, try calling this number, which was like pound pound 21 pound.

To disable call forwarding sent that. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. So I'm like, okay, maybe if I delete the app, it'll work. Nope, nope, nope. Go in the house, grab another phone, call my, call my phone, goes straight to the firewall voicemail.

Immediately get on the phone with AT&T, spend a half an hour on the phone with AT&T, finally get to third tier support where some lovely woman in India, it's always the women in India who can get shit done, by the way. She turned off forwarding at the network level, but it still has the forward icon on my phone and nobody can figure out how to make it go away.

So I'm going to have to wait till my iPhone 11 comes out to get rid of that probably. But this, this was such a problem that, uh, yeah, I can't recommend it because it's broken. I mean, my friend Greg made the thing, but last I checked, he was like in Bolivia watching soccer matches.

So I, yeah, well, I can blame him for making a shitty app and having no support for it. So I cannot recommend firewall by burner. Sorry, Greg, but, uh, your tech support sucks. There you go. And, uh, real quick, I did, uh, a test between Apple reminders versus things for two weeks, trying to figure out if, if I really even needed things anymore.

Turns out you do. Sorry. Okay. Apple reminders is just not there yet. I hear it's really good in the next version of the Mac OS, which I won't be upgrading to for at least a year after it's out. So audio. Cause audio. Exactly. So I'm going to have to stick with things from now on because there's just two, there's, there's so much that Apple reminders just doesn't do.

It's just like, it does enough for me. I've got to say, and I like the sync between the watch and the, uh, the phone and the iPad and the Iowa and regular operating system, but I'm not a, I'm not a power user, so it's enough for me. I think one of my biggest complaints with reminders is I'd click on something and expected it to disappear and it wouldn't go away.

It would just leave the little, um, you know, radio box checks. Yep. And yeah, that is annoying. And then you have to hit, you know, hide completed, show completed to make it go away. I'm like, that is just stupid UX. Yeah. It should just delete it. Agreed. Yeah. It should get rid of it. So I just, I went back to things cause I, I own things three on all my platforms and it works so much better.

It's expensive, but it does the things that you needed to do better. And finally, in my last software update, Firefox, I really, really, really wanted to be able to use Firefox as my main browser. Now, I would love to do so fast.

It is so unbelievably fast, except it doesn't do the things that you need a browser to do. So we use, we use, we use a service called Quip, not the, not the toothbrushes, not the subscription toothbrushes. It's Quip. It's owned by Salesforce.

That's where we do our show notes. It's a collaborative editing tool. So we're done with the show last week. I go in, I hit command A, select all, command C, copy, go over to BB edit, command paste. I get the top line. That's it. The first sentence.

I'm like, um, okay. Tried it for another two or three minutes. Nope. Could not make it actually. I even right, I right clicked and hit copy and I just did everything that was humanly possible from every menu and it would not copy and paste text from a web browser.

Second one was in the WordPress editing screen. It's really basic, uh, in the WordPress editing screen, like in, in most browsers, if you double click on a line, it will select the entire line with the new line, not in Firefox.

It just selects the text on the line. You can cut it and it leaves the new line. And that is a problem when I'm doing show notes because it adds about five minutes to my show notes preparation. And I don't want to be doing show notes any longer than I already have to. And then there was the final one.

We wanted it to be able to use Zencaster for audio. Yes. Nope. Doesn't work one bit. So, uh, the, the three main things that I use my browser for at a day-to-day basis, I cannot do, which is, I mean, these are, these are basic things.

These are honestly basic things. And if it can't handle that, then what am I going to do? Everything else worked flawlessly, but if you cannot copy paste from a webpage, how the fuck did this thing get out of beta? That's all I want to know. Anyway.

So, yep. I am not using Firefox, sadly, because it is the fastest browser on the market. Yeah. Bar none by now. I mean, bar none. It is unbelievably fast because it's blocking all the tracking stuff now. Yep. Yeah. Anyway, sorry about that, Brian.

I wish we could do it, but we can't. Oh, well. Opera it is. Opera it is. Continue on. Now, I am about to get into the Lego phase of child development, and I saw an article that caught my eye. Lego sets might be a better investment than stocks, bonds, or even gold.

Bloomberg has recently reported that the brick building kits seem to serve as a reliable asset that can pay off over time. There was a 2018 study that looked at 2,322 kits dating back to 1987 and found that profit exists across a spectrum of Lego-branded products, supply and demand typical of collector's markets.

A new Lego set will sell for a nominal retail price, and as demand exceeds inventory and the sets are discontinued, the price on the aftermarket rises. For example, a 2007 Millennium Falcon kit carried a sale price of $499. What? Who the fuck is paying $500 for a Lego kit?

Well, if you knew that in 2016 it would be selling for nearly $4,000 in the aftermarket, you would. That is quite the return. So, obviously, that's a pretty extreme case, but they have found that, in general, bigger sets like Harry Potter or Star Wars themes yield an average return of 11% annually, which is pretty good.

Pretty good. So, that's pretty crazy. Yeah, but you've got to pay for the storage space to hang out with all this crap. Yes, your kid is not allowed to play with them, because they have to be in perfect condition, and you have to store everything, unlike stocks and bonds. But I just thought it was really interesting that some of these things perform better than anything else on the market.

Pretty crazy. Oh, that is pretty crazy. I'm glad that you're moving into the Lego phase, because I'm going to hear you screaming in the background when you step on one, when you go take a pee. Are you kidding me? I have those Lego socks already in my cart on Amazon. Oh, good, good.

Yeah, oh, man, stepping on a Lego is the worst thing ever. And I found this one. This is real quick. A Japanese hotel has built a life-size flight simulator into one of its rooms. I want to go to Japan a lot. I've always wanted to go to Japan. That's one of the one places that will get me out of the house.

It's pretty awesome there. If I can go to Japan, yes. And the problem is, when I go to Japan, I don't want to stay in my hotel room. So they have a full-size 737-800 cockpit in the room. And you can get the room for $233 a night. But you can get a 90-minute lesson with a flight instructor for around $277.

I wonder if they're selling those flight instructions while somebody else has rented the room. It's like, oh, don't mind us. We're just going to go fly for a minute. That's okay. Yeah. Housekeeping pilot. Yeah. But it's pretty cool. Check out the pictures on the site.

It's over at The Verge. And, man, Flight Simulator was the first game I ever stole. So I'm a huge Flight Simulator fan. And this just looks like it would be so much fun. Nice. And I found something that I thought was more for you, Jason. I thought you might appreciate this.

And maybe, you know, patreon.com slash GOG. Spend some cash that we might be getting. Marvel is auctioning props from its Netflix shows. This will start on August 12th through 13th. And unfortunately, right now, it's just Daredevil, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist. When Jessica Jones comes on the market. I want a bottle of whiskey from Jessica Jones.

That's all I'm saying. So my birthday, you know, next year, everybody. There you go. Okay. So the whole catalog is available online. Link is in the show notes. There's some pretty cool stuff in there. Well, yeah. The first generation Daredevil costume is estimated to fetch between $30,000 and $50,000. Well, that's my income for a year.

Unless it comes with a van that I can live in. Hey, I know where you can rent one. I was going to say. Unless it comes with that, I won't be getting it. But man, it would be cool to have that Daredevil suit. Closing shout outs. And sadly, award-winning actor Rip Torn has died, age 88.

He's been working since the 1950s, nominated for an Academy Award. He obviously played Artie, the producer on the Larry Sanders show. My favorite role of his. Awesome. He was Men in Black, which is what you probably know him from. Zeus in the Hercules movies. And Patches O'Houlihan in Dodgeball, a true underdog story, which I never saw.

You're not missing much. I didn't think so. Actually, no, I take that back. Dodgeball was actually kind of a funny movie. Okay. Maybe I'll give it a go on one of those Jessica Jones whiskey nights. Until next time, I'm Brian Schilmeister. 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 few 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. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 360. 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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