365: Supreme Pizza Court

This episode is sponsored by Privacy.com. It's the burner phone for credit cards on the Internet. To sign up for free and get a $5 credit, go to Privacy.com slash GOG. That's $5 free to spend anywhere by just signing up. Privacy.com slash GOG. Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the Internet and who's to blame.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo and I'm here with my guest, Christopher Lockhead. What's going on, Christopher? It's so great to be here with you. I get to get my grump on. It's a true honor. I don't know about that, but, you know, I really appreciate you stepping in for Brian this week. He really needed some time off and hopefully someday he'll return the favor and we'll go from there.

But he's up in Canada land with the kitties and the families and basically sitting at Tim Horton's shoveling food in his face and drinking beer. So I'm jealous. Is he talking about the couch? Yeah, pretty much. It's all about Canada. And of course, he's not going to bring me back any maple cookies because he's a dick.

I thought maybe he might bring you back some beer or maybe some Canadian cannabis or something like that. Well, we don't need cannabis down here in California. We have we have plenty of our own. But he knows I love the maple cookies. I love the maple cookies. And after almost seven years of doing the show, not once has he brought me back a box of maple cookies.

And I don't expect that to change. One of my fondest memories of my childhood is one of my grandmother's grandmothers loved them. And every time I went to go see her, sure enough, we'd have tea and maple cookies. Yeah, they are the national treasure of Canada. I forgot you're Canadian.

Yeah, Montreal, Canada, originally, and then lived in Toronto for a while before I moved to Northern California, Silicon Valley area. Nice. Well, why don't you tell the good people of Grumpistan here what you do? Well, mostly I'm a binge consumer of grumpy old geeks. That's mostly what I do.

And when I'm not doing that, I have a podcast called Follow Your Different. And I've written a couple of books. My first book was called Play Bigger and my second one was called Niche Down. And I'm a former Silicon Valley public company chief marketing officer. And now I spend most of my time writing and podcasting.

And, you know, in that journey, I got to meet you. And it's been a lot of fun, Jason. Yeah, it has been. It has been. We met like, what, two years ago now, I think? Yeah, something like that. Yeah. I was actually digging around some of the old emails getting ready for today. And, yeah, I think so. And it's cool, you know, because I first heard you on Jordan Harbinger and then found Grumpy Old Geeks.

And it's one of my top five podcasts. I just love you guys. Oh, well, that's sweet. Thank you very much. So, in marketing, you were basically my sworn enemy back in the day because I hated the marketing team. But I've come to love you guys. Yeah, I was the chief sworn enemy.

I was the worst of the worst. You were the grand poobah of marketing guys. I was one of them, anyway, for a little while. But, you know, I tried really hard to work closely with the engineers, you know. One of the, if you think about marketing and tech, generally the sales organization hates the marketing organization and the engineering slash product organization hates the marketing organization.

So, I tried to do a lot of things to break down those walls. And one of the coolest things I ever did in my career was when I was at this company, Mercury, which ultimately we sold to HP, twice a year, me and the head of engineering would swap jobs for a year. And he was in Tel Aviv, Israel, and so he would come to California and he'd take over my calendar and meet with my team and do whatever.

And I would do the same thing in Israel with his team. And, A, I just love hanging out with the geeks, love talking product strategy, new features, what we should do, what cool stuff's coming. And, B, by doing it, you know, it helped to break down exactly that friction you're talking about.

Yeah, it's really good to have that collaboration. That was one of my job titles for a long time was basically I was like the UN of the companies I worked at because I worked at a lot of ad agencies. And the artists didn't speak engineer. The sales didn't speak engineer.

So, I was the guy in the middle who had to translate. I'm like, no, no, no, you can't sell that because that's impossible to the sales guys. And the artists, I would go, no, I gave you a spec. That's how you do it and this is why. And I'd have to explain everything to like, you know, a four-year-old. And then everybody got it, everybody got along.

And at the, you know, the end of my tenure at some of these companies, all of the teams would go out for drinks and wouldn't sit at separate tables. They would all sit together. So, I think I did my job well. Yeah, I think that's cool. And listen, I love technology and I love geeks and I love getting into it with them.

And, yeah, it's cool, man. Listen, if you're going to be in the technology business, don't you have to at least love it? I would hope so. That's the fun part of it. Well, speaking of technology, let's get into some now. Google, this is some follow-up on the Google Voice issue where everybody found out that Google was listening to your conversations through assistant and sending them off to real human beings to actually do quality assurance.

And, of course, we know here on the show that, duh, they're going to do that. But everybody's up in arms about it. And the Germans have said, nein, nein, you cannot do that. So, in an agreement with Germany, Google has decided to – they're going to halt all of that for about three months.

But only in Germany. Only in Germany while the investigation is going on. Now, Chris, do you see this as a big deal either way? Are you surprised that these people are actually listening to your conversations? No, I mean it always freaks me out and we hear stuff like this almost daily it feels like.

And I'm trying to remember who I heard say this, but I heard somebody say recently they called it the surveillance economy. Yeah, that's really – that's pretty much it. There's actually a really good book on that that Brian and I both started reading and we couldn't finish it because it was so depressing. Yeah, it's terrifying.

Mm-hmm. You know, we're wiring up our houses and our front doors and our this and our that. And, you know, there was – I remember hearing this – I think you guys covered this. There was a story a little while ago, maybe a couple years now, where there was some IoT sex device that was like tracking all of your orgasm data and like – Oh, yeah.

Yep. They were surveilling everything. And most of it, of course, we're doing voluntarily. Of course. Of course. Yeah, the Internet of Spooge. Those are the good old days. They don't know much about those anymore. They seem to have gone back into the shadows. But they're there and they're still cooking.

I'm not sure how their EULA has grown since then. But EULA is not a euphemism, by the way. I'm trying to think. Is that next to the vulva or something? Yeah, where guys can't find it. Oh, man. So in the same vein, Apple has had the same kind of kerfuffle because a Guardian article came out last week saying, Uh-oh, people are doing this with Siri, too.

People are listening to your Siri triggers and listening to that to see if what has been heard is correct or not. Well, in true Apple fashion, they've come back the right way. They came back and said, We are committed to delivering a great Siri experience while protecting user privacy.

While we conduct a thorough review, we are suspending Siri grading globally. Siri grading is what they called the actual project that they were doing it. Yeah. And additionally, as part of a future software update, users will have the ability to choose to participate in grading.

Boom. Drops the mic. That's how you do it. So they did the right thing, which is very, very cool. And hats off to them. But, A, why were they doing the wrong thing in the first place? Why didn't they start there? So a bit of a bummer on that. But again, hats off. They did the right thing. And the other one, I can't help but notice, like, the use of language.

You just, like, participate in grading. Grading sounds weird to me, but it doesn't necessarily sound bad. Or more importantly, it doesn't describe what they're actually doing. Right. So it's sort of a weird use of language, isn't it? It kind of is.

It should be Siri quality assurance or voice quality assurance or something like that. Or analyzing Siri analysis of the shit you say. Yeah, that's kind of it. Yeah, it's, you know, that's just internal speak. And nobody would have ever heard about this program unless, you know, somebody had actually spilled the beans on it.

Well, and it was like when the kid hacked, figured out how to hack FaceTime a few months back, right? They didn't. Apple hadn't found that hole. The kid found the hole. And there you have it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. The one thing, though, is, I don't know, you tell me. You track this more closely than I do.

But of the mega monster tech companies, I feel like I trust Apple a little bit more than some of the others. Yeah, that's pretty much the feeling around here. It's that Apple, you know, while not perfect, still does more than any of the other companies to keep people safe.

Well, and I think Tim Cook recently said, if he didn't say these exact words, I thought I heard him say something like this, which is sort of your data is your data, right? That they proclaim to start with that kind of a position. Right. Yeah. He doesn't want anybody else to be able to dick around with it or see it.

That's why they drew the line in the sand with the San Bernardino shooters, you know? Yeah. They're like, look, you know, we're going to live and die by this decision. And he stuck by it. And fortunately, they came out on the right side of it. And there's still, I mean, you know, there's still all these Israeli companies that can get into them anyway with all of their fancy gadgets.

But, you know, at least from Apple's side, they're doing they're doing their due diligence and they're putting in the hard work to make it difficult. Yes. And long may they do the right thing. Long may they reign. Yes. Well, that they're probably going to reign no matter what. Do the right thing or not. I just hope they're nice to us as they as they lord over us.

In the news. Oh, Lyft is back in the news. Turns out that their electric bikes in San Francisco have decided to catch fire, halt and catch fire. There you go. Back to some old tech.

You know, it reminds me, you know, that expression when you're like excited or maybe you've got a sports team or maybe even in business, you know, people say, ah, we're on fire, right? Yeah. Well, they're on fire. But it sounds like they're doing the right thing. You know, as soon as they knew their products were exploding, they got rid of them.

On the second one, I guess there were two of them before they pulled it. And they still say they don't know if it's actual malfunctions or just good old fashioned vandalism, which might actually be the case against these things. Because, you know, these these rental bike that that business is really heating up, as the kids say.

Oh, dad joke. And there's some people who don't like these things, apparently. Dr. DeFillippo. No, really? I haven't noticed. And apparently people do nefarious things to them to try to get rid of them. So I don't know. I don't know how you would booby trap one of these things, but maybe that's going on.

It's pretty easy to punch a hole in a lithium ion battery. I found out the hard way when I was drilling, I was drilling old hard drives the other day and I had an old iPhone that I needed to drill and drilled it. And of course, it exploded because I forgot. Oh, the entire thing is a giant lithium ion battery.

And I said I was just cracking up. I mean, the thing started going. As soon as I realized what I did, I was just like, oh, you got to be shitting me. Was I really that dumb? Yep, I was. I love that on a regular basis, you do stuff like drill old hard drives and shit. But, you know, the thing about taking up space.

Exactly. Get rid of that. The thing about Lyft that I do think is great is if you contrast this to Boeing, you know, when the trouble with their new plane started. Yeah, they were literally on the phone with the president. Yeah, with the Max on the phone with the president saying, hey, man, don't ground us.

You got this, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Mm hmm. And so I know you don't love these things. And look, I will admit, you know, I may get in trouble with you. I have been on one of these things and they are fun. But I also I understand, you know, the point that you guys make over and over and over again, which is they're really dangerous and there's no control over them.

And people don't wear helmets and, you know, et cetera, et cetera. But just to be clear and just to be clear here, these are the bikes. These are not the scooters. These are the actual bikes. These are the electric bikes. So you think about a giant battery right where your junk is between your legs.

That's what's exploding. Got it. I've been on one of these, too. I have a neighbor who has two of these. And my wife and I borrowed them the other day and I thought they were wonderful and horrible at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. I've had my eye on a rad power bike for like a year now and I really want to get one.

But then I'm like, then I'll never, never pedal anywhere. And it's just going to be like a moped. Yeah, that's what I thought. She's like, oh, this would be so great because we'll get on the bikes and go further than we would normally go and this and that. And I said, yeah, but maybe we're also not going to get any exercise.

Yeah, but hey, man, if you just want to go for like, you know, a ride ride without actually going to get exercise and just get some fresh air and relax, I think they'd be perfect. Or if you've got to come back from the store with a butt ton of groceries, you know, they have their uses. I think they totally have their uses.

The other use case we thought they would be good for would be sort of, you know, going for maybe an early dinner during the summer, you know, nice, nice evening. You sort of whiz around on one of these things to a spot that you wouldn't otherwise go on your normal bike. Yeah, and then you show up not sweaty.

Yeah. And you can you can have a meal and ride home if your bike's still there and somebody hasn't stolen it because they're really expensive. So they're cool. They're a little spooky, though, but they are cool. But biker or or scooter, it sounds like Lyft is trying to do the right thing here.

Yeah, but I do beg to disagree with your take on the scooter. Everybody on those looks like a douchebag. I don't care how fun. Damn it. Have you ever actually tried one, though? Hell no. Hell no. I know better. Look, I was a skateboarder for like 20 years. I know how little wheels and roads work.

So, yeah, you're cooking on that thing with that little tiny ass wheel. You know, it doesn't take much to throw you. No, I get it. They are spooky. And I haven't done it very often. Just a couple of times. I did think it does make you feel like a kid, like you're whizzing around. There's something I get why it's attractive, but it scares the shit out of me, too.

Scares the shit out of me watching these people drive in in, you know, small towns like Santa Monica. It's it's terrifying. And I almost got clipped by one guy right down the street from me. And we'd have been in the hospital. Easy. Easy. The thing, too, is it's weird to just see them thrown down like in the middle of the lawn or like they're just on the side of a sidewalk or whatever or somewhere like they're just they just drop them wherever the fuck they want to drop them.

It's a little weird, isn't it? Well, it's because people are savages. People have no respect for other people. That's just how it works. It's like, OK, if you're going to if you're going to ride a scooter, put it out of the way. You know, do you want this on your lawn when you come out? No. So and they're in my neighborhood now everywhere.

So I see them all the time in the sidewalk when I'm trying to walk my dog. And there's like four of them piled up. I got to go around them because I can't move them because I got, you know, 200 pounds of, you know, teeth and asshole that I got to keep from eating the neighbors. So, yeah, they're just a pain in the ass.

Now, let's move on to some Facebook news. This one, I just every day, I just want to shake somebody and say, what are you thinking? And this is Facebook trying to come up with a brain computer interface to read your mind so you can type without using your fingers.

It's cool science. I love everybody that's doing the science, except I just don't want it to be Facebook. And they've made some breakthroughs here. And they had a couple patients that were going in for epilepsy surgery. And they actually put electrodes literally on the brain to get this thing to work.

Would you let Facebook put electrodes on your brain? Exactly my point. No, not in a million years. Right. That's terrifying. I mean, Elon Musk, maybe. But Zuckerberg, hell no. I don't know, some ding dong, super ding dong college, you know, medical research center with some awesome people.

And, you know, Stanford or I don't know, one of the big UCs or I don't know who. Well, this is coming from UCSF. It's coming from UCSF. This is where the research. I don't know, I understand, but it's still Facebook. It is. Exactly. Because isn't isn't that hospital, the Zuckerberg Hospital now?

So, yeah, maybe he's so. So let me understand this. So Facebook is working on integrating your brain into their platform. And of course, they're working on being a new digital money. Right. Currency. Yep. So Facebook is going to be in your brain and in your wallet at the same time.

Think it and you shall spend it. That's about how it'll be. Right. You'll just be able to think about buying something and they'll just be able to buy that for you. Yeah. Yeah. In my youth, that would have been a lot of hookers and blow. That would have been bad. That would have been very bad. And who doesn't love hookers and blow?

Seriously. But yeah, do you really want Facebook to have that in your in your search history? I don't think so. Well, and so our integration with the machines just continues to accelerate. Yeah. And Elon Musk has his company, Neuralink. They're doing the same thing. There are a bunch of companies out there doing this right now.

What's the other one? Kernel is doing it. And a lot of them are trying to do over the skull reading. And some of them are trying to be more invasive because to get the real data, you really kind of got to go inside and see what's going on. But I think Elon Musk is going to be the one that probably pulls through with the their tech is kind of neat because just the way that they're doing it, with these micro holes in your brain and putting in these just little tiny, basically sensor clusters that they've that they've developed, which is pretty cool.

And the robot that puts them in is pretty cool, too. I got to say that. But I still I don't want anybody drilling holes in my brain, although I guess given another 20 years and I, you know, got arthritis and I can't type, I'll be like, hook me up to the machine, whatever. Well, so this is the thing with the integration with the machines, right?

I really want to get your theory on this. So, you know, there's this emerging theory. I know that you've heard that we human beings as we know it are actually, you know, for lack of a better analogy, the caterpillar to this new thing that's going to emerge as we merge with the machines, some new entity, some new creature, some new I don't know what some butterfly that is some combination of human and AI and robot and machine.

And and so what's going on here? Here's here's the upside to all of this stuff. You and I are going to be long gone before any of this is a reality, like a serious reality, because everything is working around reading right now, not writing. It's not like Neo, where they plug in a, you know, a dat tape and, you know, you know, Kung Fu.

That's what I would want. But they're just trying to figure out how to type right now. So when do you think we're completely merged, but with the machines, 60, 70 years. OK, so we are at 70 years. So if you reverse engineer that statement, we are at the end of the human being as the human being has been known.

Yeah, well, look at it. We were the like probably the last generation that had a nice life before the Internet came around. Yeah. You know, we you know, we got to grow up to our, you know, 20s, early 20s, right before and late teens, early 20s, right before the Internet hit.

And then ever since then, everybody's grown up with it. So it's been a completely different world. Even before video games, right? The video game of the day. Remember the Pet Rock? I do remember the Pet Rock a little before my time, but I do remember it. I didn't have my sister wanted one.

And I said to her, I was a cheeky bastard back then. I said, well, I can just go out in the field and catch you a wild one. No shit. Yeah. And I will name him George. No, but like that was a thing. That was a real thing. Imagine trying to pull that off today. Well, I mean, digital marketers try it every day.

Would you like, you know, your pet? Well, actually, we'll get to this later. Your pet cartoon that just lives on your phone. Remember the Tamagotchi? That was the same thing. Yeah. You know, just people marrying digital friends or whatever you want. Digital boyfriends and girlfriends, right?

Yeah, that's typically just a Japanese thing. But it does happen. It does happen. Now, this next one I thought was pretty interesting. And I can say this is almost a little bit infuriating. Bollywood rapper sets viewer record, though YouTube isn't talking about it.

Now, this is this guy called Bad Shaw. And he's he'd had a video called Pagal. And it's a little hip hoppy dance video. I watched it. You know, it is what it is. It's entertaining for what it is. But this guy broke just about every record on YouTube. Seventy five million views in one day beat some Korean boy band beat, you know, Katy Perry.

Just it just knocked everybody's dick in the dirt with his records. And YouTube, up until the point where he came out, was touting everybody as like record breaker, record breaker, record breaker. You know, here's here's a bottle of champagne and an award for you.

This guy does it. This guy from India does it. Crickets. And he's pissed. He's really pissed. And I don't blame him one bit. And so what do you think is going on here, Dr. Grump? Here's the thing that's happening. And this is what also pisses me off. What these guys do is they just buy millions and millions of views.

They buy ads that play the video. And if the video plays for like more than four seconds, boom, it's triggered as a view. So it goes into the count. So Sony. I just want to make sure I understand what's going on here because I read this three times. OK, they buy so they put up this video. Yes. In addition to that, they buy ads for this video that get shown in other videos.

Yes. Like when your video is over snippet of their video embedded as an ad in other videos. Correct. Which they pay for. They pay for it. Yes. But every time somebody sees the snippet, that gets count as a view of the full video.

Exactly. Yes. In other words, they are buying from YouTube an increased number of views, essentially. Yes. All roads lead back to YouTube. And it used to be that we thought douchebags were the people who hired these firms who would get a bunch of people in a room or sometimes just do it with algorithms and change IP addresses.

And, you know, you are in your podcasting business. You can pay people to download your podcast and artificially inflate its position. Right. Correct. And you can do the same thing with reviews. You can pay them to automagically generate all these reviews that are all bullshit.

Right. Exactly. But now you had to pay a third party to do that on, you know, Apple podcasts or in this case in YouTube. But now you can pay YouTube to do it. You can go directly to the well and just give them the money.

That's right. That's crazy. It is crazy. And the funny thing is, all these other people did it, too. Taylor Swift has done it. Everybody who has one of these record-breaking music videos that have come out recently, their music label has put a big chunk of money behind the launch and has done the exact same thing.

But when this guy does it, turns out it doesn't count. So where... This may not be a perfect analogy, but would this almost be like an author, by way of example, buying ads in the New York Times and then magically making their ranking on the bestseller list better?

Yeah, that's kind of close to it. It's a manipulation, right? You're buying views from YouTube for YouTube videos. Yes, exactly. I mean, is that not the most disgusting thing you've heard in a while?

Well, it's just... You just scratch your head and go, what the fuck is going on? So, I don't know where... Who thought that was a good idea? This is, you know, to the point on Apple versus Google, right? Who thought that was a good idea? Yeah, I can tell you.

The people at YouTube who want all your monies, the bean counters. They said, hey, well, we can sell ads. We sell ads. So why don't we just sell ads? Okay. Yeah, but why do you have to sell the ads and manipulate the numbers? I mean, technically for them, it's not a manipulation. That's a feature, not a bug, my friend.

If the video is played long enough, then it counts as a view. So even if it is just you look like the video is playing, you watch a video, it ends, the ad video comes up, it's playing. At the same time, you're probably in the search bar trying to figure out what next video you want.

You're not paying attention to this video. And by the time, like, four seconds goes by or five seconds, however long it is to trigger the view, you've just hit search and you're gone. But they still get the view and have to pay YouTube for that impression. I get it. It's crazy. And look, you can call it whatever you want.

But it is the expression I like for things like this is it's lying with the facts, right? It's like, well, somebody did see it. Okay, great. They paid for that. The whole implication of those numbers.

And, you know, I'm not even sure we should have these numbers. But, you know, we do right now. There's been talk of Instagram getting rid of the likes thing, right? I think didn't they didn't they demo that in a country somewhere where they took away the number of likes and a bunch of quote unquote influencers lost their minds?

Yeah, they lost their shit on that one. But, you know, this just comes back to everything Brian and I have always said, because we know the inner workings of this stats are bullshit. All stats are bullshit. And in this case, it is so egregious what YouTube is doing that it's just like, OK, now I'm just that I'm fine.

Whatever they're going to manipulate them. Right. But the thing is, why did they stop promoting the fact that these records were broken with this guy? That's where I have the problem with it. They're going to do what they're going to do. As Ali G calls it, a little bit of racialism.

I think it might be a little bit of racialism, just a little bit, which is crazy because India is like their biggest market. They've got their biggest channels in India. So why wouldn't you be like screaming to the heavens? Look, one of your guys just got to number one. So something else is going on.

Maybe they're finally. Yeah, he is one of the biggest media markets on the planet. India makes all the films and, you know, incredible technology. I don't know. Maybe half of YouTube got built in India for all we know. It wouldn't be unusual.

Well, no, no, we we know that that's not the case because YouTube actually works. So strike that one. Uh-uh. No, no, no. So it's just interesting. I'm going to keep an eye on this one because it really kind of bugs me that this is going on.

But this comes back to YouTube changing the rules whenever they want willy-nilly. And this is why you have the Germans trying to unionize against YouTube. All the YouTube users over there who are creators are unionizing against YouTube because YouTube just they say play by the rules.

Then they don't tell you what the rules are. And even if they do tell you what the rules are, they'll change them and not tell you. So this is so now they are blatantly saying you can pay us to manipulate our charts. Yes, that's that's. I think that's been that way for a while.

This is nothing incredible. Yeah. So let's move on to some Domino's news. Ah, Domino's pizza. I think they've really kind of come a long way in the past couple of years. I actually was eating Domino's when I lived in Chicago and I would go to their website and I would order my pizza. And I had for a while it was flash, but I think they moved to dynamic HTML now or whatever the kids call call that.

And it's a cool process. And then it tells you where it's at in the timeline and who's going to deliver it and all this stuff. It's really cool. Well, if you're blind, you're shit out of luck. You can't use the website. And some guy Guillermo Robles got really pissed off and is suing Domino's because he's blind and he can't use the website because it's not it doesn't have the accessibility features.

So he's suing them to make them compliant. And he's he's specifying that the Americans with Disability Act covered this particular use case, except from my point of view, that's bullshit because the ADA was passed in 1990. Which, you know, as we all know, there was no mobile apps.

There was barely a web in 1990. And if it was, it was text based. There were no browsers back then. But the court held up that he was right. So now Domino's has to take this to the fucking Supreme Court, the Supreme Pizza Court to get this overturned.

Now, where do you stand with Domino's on this? Are you with Domino's saying that they should not be forced to, you know, make their site accessible for the blind? Or are you with Mr. Guillermo that it should be blind accessible? Go. I'm not sure how I feel about, you know, the law of it.

Maybe they should be. I don't know. I'm not an expert in these things. But here's the thing that really strikes me. Why the fuck wouldn't they? Their Domino's Pizza, whatever the cost is, who cares? Wouldn't you want to attract blind people as customers?

Their money is good, too. And forget the money. Wouldn't you don't you want to be seen as a major corporation who's trying to, you know, do the right thing to be welcoming to people? And why would you ostracize these people for? I get that there's incremental costs, but you're fucking Domino's Pizza.

Why are you fighting this? I don't get it. And look, I don't know. You know, I think there's things about the Americans with Disabilities Act that I've heard small business people say is over the top and too expensive. I don't fucking know. But what I do know is, hey, Domino's, as a three-time marketing guy, you are failing in marketing.

This is an easy marketing win. If I was Domino's and I got caught doing this, I'd be like, oh, you know what? Sorry, this is completely stupid. We're going to not do this anymore. And oh, by the way, if you're blind, we're going to give you three free pizzas because we're so stupid. We got it wrong and we want to say sorry.

If I was the chief marketing officer at Domino's, that's what I'd be doing. Well, you have a very good point there. I think their stance is that they don't want to be having to do this at the point of a gun. Now, I get where you're coming from. It was a completely missed marketing opportunity. You know, they don't have to give their entire website and rebuild their builder to be, you know, blind capable.

All they do is they spin off a separate text site that can be read by a text reader with a bare bones ordering system. That's all it really is. It doesn't have to be this, you know, multi-million dollar accessibility play. It doesn't have to look beautiful. Obviously. Don't need a designer. You need an interaction designer.

It just needs to be functional for people who are sightless. I don't know how that technology works. It sounds like you have some ideas. There's people who know how to do this. The technology gets better and better all the time in this domain. I have a friend who's hearing impaired and the technology is getting better and better for him.

I would imagine there's technologies that help the sightless that are hopefully getting better on a regular basis. And so to your point, yeah, why not just make this easy and get after it and do something nice and do something smart? And oh, by the way, that would also endear you to people like you and I who are sighted.

But hear about this and go, oh, look, they did something nice. Excellent. Very smart. Fantastic. Some free pizza, too, would be nice. Yeah, it would be nice. Always love free pizza. Yeah, I think somebody on their website said it was too hard and it was going to cost too much and didn't know their ass from a hole in the ground on this one because it really isn't that hard to make something that is.

I mean, OK, let me let me roll that back for one second. The way their site works, it's very dynamic. So all of it's built on the fly, basically from JavaScript and where you're at and what you're building and all that stuff. Go old school, go text based, because all they need, all they need is for their web browser to read to them.

That's it. What would you like to do today? Would you like to order a pizza? Yes, please. Where are you at? What's your address? Thank you. What would you like on your pizza, sir? Would you like a sandwich? Would you like some hot wings with that? Done. Your order is placed. It'll be there in 30 minutes or less.

Pizza, pizza. The other thing is, hey, guys, who's going to stand up and say, I want to be the pizza company who I don't even know what the exact right language is, but who is the easiest to do business for as many types of differently abled people as possible?

Yeah. Why wouldn't you say that? First of all, I don't know. There's probably an untapped market there, right? For people who, if you make people who are different feel welcome, right? Secondarily, so there may be some real business opportunity there. It's probably not small numbers.

Secondarily, I'm going to feel better about buying your pizza if I think you're a good company and you're trying to do the right thing for people who need an extra hand. Isn't every other American or human being going to feel the same way about you and your brand if you're trying to do the nice right thing?

I'm with you. I'm totally with you on it. Yeah, it is a big fail and a big miss. Yeah, total fail, total miss. The other bummer about this is back at the beginning of the year, Jace, they launched an awesome campaign that was genius, which was this loyalty program that they give you Scooby Snacks for every pizza that you eat.

And they will even they will even give you their loyalty coupon point Scooby Snack thing. I forget what they called it. If you buy a Pizza Hut or a local pizza or whatever, they were just they said they were trying to provide incentive for people to consume more pizza.

And whatever pizza you consume, you you got your Domino's points or whatever they called them. And it was a highly innovative campaign. And they were doing what category leaders should do, which is expand the size of the overall market category for everybody. And it was a very cool campaign.

And then here a few months later, they get this thing wrong. Yeah. Well, this has been going on for a couple of years now. This has been going on for over three years. Do you figure in three years time, somebody at Domino's corporate would have stood up and said, hey, guys, let me let me explain something to you.

This is not going to look good. Well, the other thing is, how much money have they spent on lawyers? Oh, way more than it would have taken to fix this thing. Way more. Right. And and are they who are they? Are they fighting with the ADA? Who are they? Are they fighting with the government? Who are they fighting with?

They're fighting with Guillermo Robles. He's the guy that actually filed the lawsuit. It was brought it was brought by him. Yeah. One guy. So let me understand this. They're making this sightless guy pay all this money in legal bills. I guess so.

But well, he won his case. So maybe that was part of the win that he got his money. But now they're taking it to the Supreme Court. Supreme Court. Wasting the Supreme Court's time on this. Yeah. Oh, I hope I hope this guy Robles gets two hundred and fifty million dollars. Or at least free pizza for life.

Something. Yeah. Now, speaking of somebody else that's got a little PR problem this week, Mr. Tesla, Mr. Tesla over there, they they did something that they on paper. Really good idea. Dog mode for their Teslas. So you have your pups in the car.

You want to run in the store. You press dog mode. Car shuts off, but keeps the AC on. And on that big, beautiful screen, it says, hey, I'm just stepped away from the car. My dogs are OK. The air conditioner is on and it's X degrees. Please don't break my window. Right.

It sounds like a really cool feature. Yeah. Turns out it didn't work. Well, it doesn't work in some cases. So this guy figured out Raul Sood figured out that he when he set the fan temperature, it it shared the fan speed.

It basically disabled dog mode. So he went into the store thinking his pups were OK. And then he was just checking on his phone because you can monitor your Tesla from your phone. Of course you can. And he saw it. It got up to 85 degrees. He's like, what the hell? Went out. And sure enough, dog mode was off.

And so he'd figured it out. And but to Elon Musk's credit, he sent him a tweet. He sent it or this guy Raul sent a tweet to Tesla and he sent a tweet to Elon and Elon just wrote back immediately fixing, you know. So that's good. They got on it right away because this is a bad one.

Somebody's dog dies in your Tesla. Hey, you're never going to get the smell out. But B, what if it's a baby? You know, it's even though I love my dogs more than children, but it's still a bad, bad thing to have happen. But at least they're on it. But this was definitely some engineer needs to get slapped in the dick for this one.

Your brain works in mysterious ways. I also love the shit that pisses you off. The other thing that's interesting to me about this is, did you see the name of this guy's this guy, Raul's company? Voodoo PC? Yeah, he's the founder of Voodoo PC.

And I don't know if this is the same Voodoo PC or not, but there this says Wikipedia says Voodoo, Voodoo, Poo, Voodoo, geez, learn how to talk, Lockett. Voodoo PC, aka Voodoo Computers, was a luxury personal computer brand and company.

Um, as a niche PC maker in Calgary, Alberta, founded in 1991, that was acquired by Hewlett Packard in 2006. Yeah, there it is. Raul's, there it is. Voodoo PC. I remember Voodoo's. Yeah, I totally remember Voodoo computers. Those were, those were big things back in the day.

No, they were fancy ass. I couldn't afford one, but I remember them totally. Yeah. So, I'm glad this guy's engineering chops let him figure out what the issue was and tell them, say, hey, look, here. He's a very crafty dude, Raul. Mm-hmm. Yes, he is. Crafty enough to own a Tesla.

Yeah. And, and start a company called Voodoo PC. Yeah. Well, this is a new one. The Federal Trade Commission is looking into the Amazon and Apple deal that basically put anybody that was selling Apple computers, refurbs, or used computers on Amazon out of business.

Have you heard about this one, Chris? I love this. It's so, it's, it's like, it's Dr. Evil shit. Kind of, yeah. Well, it's, it's, it's, uh, Commander Commerce of Evil because this is, you know, that deal that Apple made with Amazon because Amazon and Apple just butted heads for years because Apple wouldn't put their stuff up there because there were all these third parties.

They were selling Apple stuff and they wouldn't let anybody sell it at a discount. So Amazon's like, okay, fine. You can be the sole Apple provider. We'll let you do it. Come on in. You know, they opened the kimono and then they hugged and it was all that.

But it turns out there's a little bit of fallout from that. Well, it looks like, uh, it may be against the law. Yeah. I think it's what that, I think that's what it's called. It's called illegal under antitrust because what they're saying is they cannot, do price fixing, which is exactly what that is.

You know, it's like, okay, well, if you're going to have this product on here and you say that nobody else can have it because it's being sold at a lower price and then you don't let them sell it there. Well, that's price fixing. Uh, you're out. And yeah, so the, the FTC is none too happy about this because a lot of people lost their livelihood when this deal went through.

Well, and you know, Amazon, I think has to be a good, has to try to be a good monster company. Right. And a lot of negative gets talked about, uh, in regards to a bunch of things they do. And I think some, some of it is deserved, but there is a flip side of the coin, which is there are a lot of small companies who have a sizable business and Amazon's been a great partner to them.

You know, my wife and I have chickens and chickens like, uh, dried mealworms. And, uh, um, and so we get mealworms. And then when we want real worms, we get uncle Jim's worms on Amazon. Now, you know, could I have found them somewhere else?

Maybe, but being able to buy from small vendors like that on Amazon to many of us, it's just super convenient. And, you know, those companies get to expand their customer base and drive some revenue. And so that's the positive side. Yeah, but what happens when big, what happens when big worm moves in?

Well, see, that's the problem. I think Amazon has to say, listen, we're a marketplace, right? We're a marketplace. That's what they're supposed to be doing. And, you know, to your point, there should be competition. And if there's 15 worm vendors and let them duke it out. Exactly.

Exactly. Now, Amazon is taking the side that, oh, there was a lot of counterfeiting going on. Or actually, I think Apple was the one that was complaining that a lot of counterfeit Apple goods were being sold on Amazon marketplace. And that's why they didn't want to be commingled with these other vendors. I call bullshit on that because it says right there on the top who you're buying from underneath the title of the actual item you're buying.

It's like sold by Apple computers or Apple. Sorry. It's not Apple computers anymore. It's just Apple. And then, you know, you're buying something directly from Apple or it'll say provide a service by another name and you can look up the vendor. So I think Apple's argument is bullshit on that.

Not only is that bullshit, I totally agree with you. In addition, I'll put I'll see your bullshit with more bullshit. I'll raise you some mealworm shit. Yeah, exactly. Why isn't Apple going proactively after the counterfeiter? Oh, I'm sure they are.

I'm sure. Why isn't there? Why isn't there a process in place for Apple to say, I believe this is a counterfeiter and have to prove that it's a counterfeiter before they get wet? Like you just can't whack the whole marketplace. It's just not right. Well, as we've learned, obviously you can, which is what exactly Apple did.

But now they're finding out that they're retro. They're finding out that there are repercussions for their actions with this. And you know what they could have done? They could have worked with Amazon to find out who these counterfeiters were. They could they could order the product, find out it's counterfeit and say, we got counterfeit goods from this person.

Shut their marketplace down. Tell us where they're shipping from. Give us their home address. We're going to send some really scary guys with baseball bats to their house and then problem solved. Well, and look at I think Amazon has done a pretty good job on the counterfeiting front. I think many people feel comfortable buying, you know, there's a lot of sports memorabilia on there where you want to know it's the real thing.

I mean, there's a lot of stuff on there that you want to know is the real thing. And for the most part, I don't know, you tell me, I haven't heard a lot of shit in the news about a lot of counterfeiters on Amazon. Amazon, I don't know what they do, but they seem to have done a pretty good job on this. Oh, their counterfeiting is so rife on Amazon.

It is ridiculous, especially in the book publishing division. You can actually put up a book that you self-publish, which is a book that you scanned from an actual publisher, have it have it made print on demand by Amazon's printing unit and sell it and get the actual book that was the legitimate book bumped out of the marketplace of mice and men by Jason DeFillippo.

Exactly. But it's that's how I mean, there's so much counterfeiting going on on Amazon. It is ridiculous. So it's it is an actual problem, right? Don't they let the wisdom of the crowd surface these things and they have a process for getting rid of these folks? No, it's it's a really terrible process.

Amazon is in the same problem there. It's the problem. The same problem that Google has is too many, too many complaints. And there's not enough police. So that's completely wrong on this. They're they're failing in this regard. So maybe Apple has a point on it. Yeah. OK, well, they have they have a point to a point, you know, up into a point because it's still it's still Apple.

And the fact that Amazon does have counterfeiting going on in the marketplace, that should not stop Apple from selling their actual hardware that is certified by them under their name and under their store and still have these other people still sell side by side with them.

You know, the counterfeiting problem and the sales just because the counterfeiters are shitting in the well of the mom and the pop stores who are actually taking refurbed equipment and selling it at a profit that should not put them out of business. The counterfeiters, there are separate there are separate problem that has to be dealt with, but the mom and pop shops who have made a good living up until this point should not be penalized because Amazon can't figure out their counterfeit problem.

Amen. Hallelujah. Yeah. And also because Apple just says so, you know, and I think that's what's really going to bite them in the ass just because Apple says so does not make it so. So, you know, we might see Apple pulled back out of Amazon, which is fine. I'm never going to buy anything Apple on Amazon.

I go to the Apple store. I just buy it online, have them deliver it. I just bought a new MacBook air. It's that's I bought from Apple directly because that's the best place to buy anything Apple anyway. So I don't get this whole problem, but I, this is going to be, this is going to be a problem for Apple for sure.

Cause the FTC ain't fucking around anymore. Well, you know, it's interesting. I mean, you and I talked about this when you were on my podcast with the, with the Facebook fine, you know, it's like, it sounds like a giant number and they say it's the biggest number of all time, if I remember right. But the reality is it's barely a slap on the wrist.

And so, you know, some of these companies can behave badly and, and heretofore with big tech, um, the government isn't really whacking them all that hard. So it'll be interesting to see how this plays out. This one's going to be interesting because it doesn't just affect Apple. It affects Amazon as well.

So Amazon's reputation is going to be dragged through the mud for this also. So when, when two people at the party and they both get arrested, one person's going to talk first. And exactly, I think Apple might, I mean, I think Amazon might cave first on this one. Well, I just like to see them be a fair marketplace.

And you know, the other thing that does happen on Amazon, on Amazon, of course, we all read the reviews, right? And so if you're a shitty vendor and you're a forger and this and that, you're going to get whacked ultimately in the reviews, aren't you? Yeah. I wonder how many people actually read the reviews though.

That's, I mean, that's a caveat emptor, but when I buy almost anything, unless it's something I've bought before, but if I'm buying a new thing, I'm at least going to glance at the reviews because there's always choice. Right. But are you looking at the product review or the vendor review?

That's what I'm talking about. I don't know how many people actually read the vendor review. Oh yeah. I don't know if I read the vendor review. I read the product reviews. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's just, they just need to fix this. Let the, let the people back in, let them sell their stuff.

Come on. You're going to make more money, Amazon, because you're selling more stuff. Who cares? Well, and you're supposed to be a marketplace. Mm-hmm. Well, one last piece of Amazon adjacent news here. Amazon backed food delivery startup, Deliveroo, acquires Edinburgh software studio, Cultivate.

I had to put this in here because of course it is about Deliveroo, who I love. Well, I don't love them. I don't know them. I've never ordered from them because I don't live in the UK. But you do love the name and you love saying it. I, the fans love it. The fans love it.

So I. It is a great company name. You got to give them credit for that. It really is. It is so British. It is so British. Well, they bought a, basically a startup that is a software company up in Edinburgh called Cultivate. Now I love Edinburgh and I love the fact that it's crap.

Yeah. It's not Scottish crap. You got to, you got to, you got to say it for vim and vigor. Edinburgh is one of my favorite cities in the world. So I'm really happy that, oh, it's so cool. So cool. And if they're embracing tech and they're going to turn it into a tech hub, you know, like how Dublin has turned into a tech hub and tons of other cities in Ireland.

I would love to see Edinburgh become a tech hub because it's just going to, you know, clean the place up because last time I was in Edinburgh, scary place, very scary place. Tons of fun, little dodgy at night, little dodgy at night. Even during the day, the first time I got there, I walked off the train and by myself first time in a foreign country alone in about an hour into it.

I almost got run over by the queen, literally almost got run over by the queen. And a couple of days later, at your hotel, she was on her way up to the castle and I'm just walking around. I'm going up the street and I see all the people lining up.

I'm like, oh, what's going on? You know, I totally Forrest Gumped this whole thing, completely Forrest Gumped it, got up to the top of the hill and I'm like, what's going on? And I find a place, you know, all these motorcycle cops are there. I got my camera, you know, because I, I, I'm shooting film back in the day and I like kind of, I'm, I'm waiting.

And I see some cars start to come up and I'm like, okay, let me scooch, scooch up to the line a little bit. And this motorcycle cop like hits me just with his butt. Cause he was turning around and I flew forward and almost went like under the wheel of the first car in the queen's progression.

Like my head was about like six inches from the wheel of the car. And he, like, he grabs me by the back and pulls me back up. And then I start to take pictures. Your head was six inches from the queen from getting run over by the queen. The queen, the first car in the queen's procession. There's one car in front of the queen.

So he pulls me, I stand back up and I start to take pictures. And the next picture I got was of the queen waving to me from about four feet away. Unfortunately, in front, unfortunately in the car behind them was a Charles and die, but the light on the windshield, like a starburst.

And I couldn't get a shot inside of it, but it was princess. I got to see princess die in Charles. Wow. That's cool. And then I totally forced gummed it. Cause I had no idea what I was doing. I just got there. I'm like, I'm going to Edinburgh. My girlfriend was in Paris with her friend and I was going to meet him in a couple of days. And I'm like, I get to Edinburgh and I'm walking around like a stupid American.

I'm literally wearing a Ren and Stimpy shirt, like an ugly American and almost get killed by the. So handsome in that Ren and Stimpy shirt there, Jake. Oh my God. I was a train wreck. I was a train wreck. But I'm glad that Deliveroo is helping this company like really grow and they're going to bring in a bunch of new employees and really try and make it, you know, work on making it a tech hub because this company has a lot of like community outreach as well.

So I, I, I'm really happy about that because I love Scotland. You know, if I could move to Scotland right now, I would in a heartbeat. Oh, wow. I had no idea. You know, of course, Lockhead, my family's originally from Scotland and my aunt actually lived in the United States and then moved back to Edinburgh a few years ago.

And so I go back and see her every once in a while. And I love it. I mean, first of all, it's the only country in the world where I don't have to spell my last name. That's true. Yeah. The other thing that's awesome is everybody talks like my grandparents. Oh yeah. That's so cool.

Dude. So maybe we need to do like a podcast road drift to Scotland. I would love it. There's got to be some people in Scotland. We need to put on some podcasts. Absolutely. Hey, maybe we can get these guys. We'll go to, we'll go to cultivate and go check them out and maybe get some delivery. And maybe my auntie Ellen, we want to do an episode with us.

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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. Cyber Security, I can speak well today. Dave is also co-host of the Hacking Humans podcast, along with Joe Kerrigan, where they take on social engineering. Hello, Dave.

Hello, hello. And hello, Chris. Dave, it's great to hang out with you. Yeah, yeah. Nice to make your acquaintance. I'm a big fan. Oh, thank you very much. I love your intellect and your grump. Aw. It's a dangerous combination.

Yeah, when Dave first started with us, he was not grumpy at all. Well, he was, but now he's finally releasing his inner grump. Sorry, I've let my grump flag fly. That's right. That's right. You got to let your grump out and let it run around the backyard every once in a while. Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. So, we got a little follow-up to start with here. Yeah. Marcus Hutchins. This is a surprising one. Marcus Hutchins, as people may remember, is the guy that stopped WannaCry, but also turned out to be kind of a black hat hacker on the side.

He was like, you know, he's Batman and the Joker in the same body. Mm-hmm. Yeah, kind of like, who's the guy from The Incredibles Syndrome, right? He causes the problem to be able to solve it. Oh, yes, yes. The other term I like for that is firefighter by day, arsonist by night.

Yes, yes. Yeah, so Marcus basically got off with time served, and he's been sent back home to the UK, or I don't think he's actually, I don't think he's gone yet, but he's going to go back home and probably not be able to come back here to the States for a while anyway.

How do you feel about this? Do you feel like justice was served? Absolutely. Well, I think he shouldn't have been in jail in the first place, but because, you know, he did good. He did the good thing. So that should have wiped away, that should have wiped the slate clean, as far as I'm concerned. I mean, I don't really remember too much about what his actual crimes were.

Can you, do you remember off the top of your head? Yeah, he's, well, the government alleges that he was responsible for writing the Kronos Banking Trojan. Oh, that's right, yeah. Not insignificant. That's true. This is, it's not like he was out there doing little script kitty graffiti type things.

This is something where organizations and individuals would have had real harm because of this Trojan. Now, he says that he did it in his teen years, and I believe him. He says that he did a lot of stupid things when he was a teenager, who among us hasn't done that.

And in our 20s and our 30s and in our 40s. Yeah, yeah. So the judge evidently took that all into consideration. I'm trying to continue the streak into my 50s. Yeah. There you go. Rekindle that flame. But the judge evidently took that into consideration and let him go with time served in consideration for what he did with WannaCry, being able to basically hit the kill switch for that.

So we'll see. I have to admit, personally, I don't have strong feelings about this either way. But it was interesting for me to watch as this played out. When he first got nabbed by the feds on his way out of Las Vegas a couple years ago, coming out of Black Hat and DEFCON, there were lots of people who were friends of his who rallied around him and said, this is absurd.

He did not do this. He's innocent. He did nothing. This is government overreach. He's a hero. He stopped WannaCry. And as time went on, that message kind of shifted a little bit to, he deserves the best defense team there is.

We should raise money for that. And so it was interesting to see as he, as it became clear that he was, that he admitted, I mean, he came out and he admitted, he pled guilty to, to the Kronos banking Trojan, that people's stories didn't so much change as they evolved.

He's still, you know, still a good guy. As the story evolves, you know, your, your response to it has to evolve as well. Right, right, right. It's just interesting to me that I guess the, the, all the folks who are out there saying that he didn't do this, he was innocent, um, had to take stock when he came out and said, yeah, actually I did it.

So there you go. Um, but we could just get Jussie Smollett to do the same thing. Then we can move, move on and get the next season of empire. He's a, he's a victim, Jace. Come on. That's right. He's a victim. Yeah. Uh, so, you know, he, he did two years in prison, so that's not too bad. So, you know, I'm trying to figure out, do we know here how much damage he caused?

That's what I'm trying to figure out here. Kronos is, I mean, it's, it's still banking passwords and some other stuff that he did. So he, it's not a good thing that he got busted for. Yeah. It's not insignificant. No. I mean, it was, it was, there's meaningful amount of money, right?

Yeah. This is very meaningful. This is the incident which ended up costing billions in losses. Oh, that's want to cry. They're talking about want to cry for that. They're talking about want to cry. Yeah. So he stopped want to cry. Yeah. He stopped want to cry. Got it. He, he stopped want to cry. He figured out, he had a suspicion that if he did a certain thing, basically, if he activated a particular domain name that want to cry was looking for, that that might function as a kill switch.

And it did. So some people take issue with what he did because he was rolling the dice a little bit that, that that was going to happen. It could have, it made things worse. Um, I think his supporters would say that he took a close look at want to cry and figured out that it was most likely that that would happen.

And that may very well be the case. Um, so there are two very separate things, but as we said, I think the judge took into consideration appreciation for having stopped want to cry, which was a big deal, big deal.

BFB, a big, big, I mean, a big one. And so, um, and he was only, he was looking at 10 years in prison. He served to plead guilty, you know, pleaded out and did a good thing. So I think that, I think the balance sheet works out for him. Yeah. Yeah. Is he the Charles Bronson of, uh, hackers now?

Is that what's going on here? Uh, I don't know that that's the right analogy. Maybe more like the Mr. Magoo. I, I don't know. I mean, you know, the people who aren't fans of his will say he got lucky. He was, he was more lucky than, than smart or skilled.

Um, but then his supporters will say, no, he, he had the intuition to go looking in the right places and do the right things and, and really saved the world a whole lot of headache and money. So. Yeah. Um, so yeah. Interesting one. It's, it's over.

Here's the deal. You know, he may end up having a giant career now. As a, um, gentleman hacker. I'm sure he's going to do just fine probably. Yeah. He's got a tremendous name recognition and street cred.

So I think he's, he's going to do well for himself. And he, he hasn't gone back to England yet because he's still interviewing with the CIA and NSA and trying to figure out which job to take. Well, we'll, we'll see if Chris, as long as he doesn't, as long as Putin doesn't get ahold of them. Yeah.

We're good then. So we got some fan feedback here from our friend, uh, monkey 13, also a cybersecurity specialist. Good friend of the show. Good friend of mine. He says, I know the joke is getting long in the tooth, but I thought I would send this over in case Dave is looking for a new project. And this is the led fursuit head.

And, um, I don't know if you guys watch the video for this, but I swear Adam Savage right now is salivating over this because he couldn't do a build this good. Yeah. No, this is, these are some mad skills as they say. Uh, I'm impressed by it. I can't say that I'm going to go out and do it to, to the, uh, the fursuit head that I have courtesy of Brian and Jason, but, uh, yeah, don't be, don't be selling ours on eBay just yet, buddy.

Oh, no, no, no, no. I've, Oh, believe me. That's a family heirloom now. That's not going anywhere. Uh, but, um, I, I don't, I don't think I have the skills to pull off what he pulled off. And as the more I watched it, the more impressed I was like, Oh, look, he put lights in his head. Oh no. He put lights and fans and power.

Yeah. It's a whole 3d printed, you know, basically for, you know, Furby head and it's got all these controllers. It's got an Arduino in it and it's got like, it's got enough fans to get, to get, to gain lift. Yeah. What's in our, did you say Arduino?

Yeah. He's got an Arduino board in there, which is a microcontroller. So to control all of the led lights and do a light show inside of it, it's pretty cool. Yeah. And the, the other thing that I actually left a comment on the YouTube video. Okay. Because, uh, you know, my inner, my inner Furia obviously is coming out to help the, help the gentleman.

Uh, he's, he says with all those fans going, he can't hear a damn thing. So I'm like, well, why don't you just like put an omni-directional microphone in the ear and then puts it route, some headphones in through the Arduino. So you can pick it up so you can hear what's going on outside. Hmm. I thought that was a damn fine idea.

So hopefully, you know, the fursuit head 2.0 will come with audio. I wonder too, if just a regular set of noise canceling headphones would get him anywhere with, you know, is it similar to the drone on an airplane that it would help cancel out?

If you're standing behind a 737 from the looks of it. Well, the fans inside. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Well, my hat's off to him. I, it's quite a project. It's quite a project for sure. And it, it could also maybe be called a, um, uh, a woman repellent mask or.

Oh, I, I wouldn't know if I'd go there. The, the, the furry community might take issue with that. And. Oh, there's a furry community. Oh, yes. Oh, Chris. Oh, dear, sweet Chris. Where have I been on you? Oh, dear, sweet, innocent Chris.

Somebody missed a few episodes. I must have missed those episodes. Well, let's just move on to our next story, which is related to this one. And that is that the last BronyCon is taking place in Baltimore. Uh, BronyCon has been running since, I think 2012 or so, or 2013.

Uh, and these are fans of the My Little Pony TV show. And they come, many of them dressed up as ponies. And many of them are bros, which is why it's called BronyCon. And for whatever reason, they're, this is going to be the last one.

And so people are, they're going to go out with a big celebration. I was going to say a bang, but that's too easy a joke to make. So caught myself there, but too late. Uh, they're going to go out with a big celebration. Um, I was chatting with someone here at the office today and, uh, actually it was Joe Kerrigan and I were chatting about this, that perhaps the best they can hope for is that they made it this many years without any major incidences or embarrassments of having BronyCon for six years in a row.

Everyone seems to have been very well behaved. And if, if, if anybody listening has not seen the Brony documentary, I believe it's still on Netflix. It is a must watch. You must watch it. I watched it with friend of the show MXV and we were, we were wrapped. We thought we were just going to like, you know, have a beer, watch it and just make fun of people.

It's, it is fan. It's fascinating. This entire community is just fascinating. The, just what they built out of this little TV show, you know, Twilight Sparkle has done some good for the world. I got to say. Yeah. Yeah. It's all, it's all done in sincere good faith.

That's the thing. That's the thing. Yeah. It's not, they're not doing it to make fun of anything. They sincerely love the show and they love the messages that the show spouts and they, they live it. It's like, what planet are you from? I don't get this. Right.

They're from the neighborhood of Maple Leaf. They're from Ponyville. They're from Ponyville. That's it. They're just from Ponyville. And Chris, if you're, they are, they are, you have to go watch this, Chris, because I guarantee if you're not up on the furries, you're not up on the bronies. You gotta, you gotta edumacate yourself on this one.

Yeah, no, I guess I gotta go all in. And what I'm wondering is, you know, should we start a Kickstarter or GoFundMe or something like that and maybe see if we can raise some money for them to keep going? To keep going? Don't stop. I guess the bronies would be a subset of furries, I guess.

I don't know. I guess, I guess they might be furry adjacent. Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. Interesting. Or they might be furry questioning. Oh, could be. Furry curious. Furry curious. Yes, they're furry curious. Which I'd have to say that that would be the category I put myself in.

All right. Let's, let's talk about some actual cybersecurity here. Let's talk about the capital. Do we have to? I know. Well, I did have a link to the, the Les Mis flash mob in Orlando from a few years ago, but we'll save the audience for that one. That was, that one was just for you, Dave. I appreciate it.

I loved it. I got a, I got a warm feeling in my heart. I would leave that link in the show notes for anybody who wants to go see this Les Mis flash mob. It's some of the best advertising. It's the best advertising I've ever seen. Yeah, it is. Completely. Like, imagine if you're in the mall and the whole cast just shows up and sings Les Mis and then evaporates.

Well, the other thing that's great about the cast, if you watch closely, the cast is playing the part of shoppers. One of the gals has a Starbucks cup in her hand and a bunch of them has shopping bags. And so they just look like random shoppers. And then they will walk in and start singing with these insanely great voices.

It's so cool. I know. While I'm watching it, I'm just thinking to myself, this is, you know, when you see them on stage, it's like they're, they're superhuman. It's like, they've got the costumes, they got the makeup and they're singing. And it's like, these aren't real humans up there. And then you see them at the mall and you're like, oh, that's Joe.

You know, it's like, wow. Yeah. They look like people you work with or whatever. Exactly. And there was the big fat dude with a little girl who was just standing there in the middle. And like, everybody starts singing. I'm like, dude, get out of the way. Get out of the way. And then in the middle of it, he joins in too. I'm like, plant.

Total plant. Oh, you fell for it. I did. He got me. He totally got me. Yeah. Damn. Okay. Capital One. What's going on with this, Dave? Well, so this week, a woman got charged by the feds with stealing over 100 million people's information from Capital One.

This is a woman named Paige A. Thompson. And the FBI snatched her up. And there's a lot of interesting things about this. This woman evidently has some difficulties in her personal life, seems to be, it's likely that she's dealing with some mental health issues.

So, I think people have been appropriately sensitive and, I don't know, being respectful of that. Not, I guess, giving her a little distance and privacy for that part of the story. And, but with that said, and maybe as a part of that, she was not particularly stealthy.

Do you think? Right. Well, up to the point of it seeming like she wanted to be caught. She was posting all the information about the data she was gathering in public forums, I think, including GitHub. Yeah. She posted the data on her own GitHub account.

Yeah. Yeah. And her handle is erratic. Her handle is erratic. Yeah. She just wanted to brag about her achievements. Yeah. Well. Yeah. You usually get that from teenage hackers, not somebody who's been established in the business. But I think you're right, Dave, with the mental issues and personal life issues that, you know, she just, I don't know if she was looking for attention or just broke and needed something to do.

But. Yeah. Yeah. It's actually kind of a sad story. A hundred million people's credit application information. Yes. Yes. It's a, it's a lot. It's, it's a lot. Listen, I have empathy for people with problems, but like, holy moly, you just stole a bunch of very important shit from a lot of people.

Yeah. And posted it publicly. I suppose one way to look at that though, is that if I come across an open Amazon web services bucket, it doesn't matter if there are a hundred million in there or 10 million in there or a billion in there, transferring it from point A to point B, about the same amount of effort, you know, I mean, to make, take more time, but it's not harder to grab a larger

number of, of records than it is once that bucket is unlocked or left open, I guess is the way to say it. Of course, Capital One is taking some heat for the way they've responded. I love, I don't have the exact wording in front of me, but in their initial reaction, Capital One put up a web page that was titled Facts and it said, no social security numbers

or bank account information have been revealed except for 140,000 social security numbers and 80,000 bank account numbers. And it was literally that ridiculous. There are no infidels in Baghdad.

Right. My comment on Twitter was that this is what, this is corporate communications in a post, post truth era. And so there was lots of mocking of that statement. It seems as though they've, they've gone in and massaged that statement a bit.

Yeah. But we'll see. I remember the Iraqi information communications minister, right? Baghdad Bob. Baghdad Bob, yeah. That was his name. Yeah. Love Baghdad Bob. He's the greatest PR guy ever.

But just, yeah. Just because you say it doesn't make it true though. That's the problem. Right. No, no. He's, he, I mean, I'm surprised he hasn't come out of retirement for, you know, there's, there's a market for his skills. He should work at Equifax.

Yeah. Right. Right. Oh man. Hey, by the way, I was one of the ones affected and I have, I have done my moral duty or whatever it was. Yeah. Your civic duty. My civic duty was to not get your $125.

No, I'm not holding my breath. I love the fact that the, the FTC came out and said, guys, guys, guys, take the credit monitoring, please. Yeah. I was wondering, are we reaching the point where we can opt to get our credit monitoring consecutively because we're getting it from so many different sources now.

I don't need, I don't need credit monitoring from half a dozen different breaches at the same time. Let me string them out over the next 20 years. Well, there's that. And then there's the other thing, which is, so wait a minute, am I, maybe I'm not like processing this transaction properly. The idiot asshole company who did this breach, I never even did business with them.

I never did a thing with them and they had all this shit on me. Right. So they did this to all of us. This is now the company you want me to proactively monitor my shit that the reward for you. Yeah. You have to give him, give him your information.

Breaking the law and invading my privacy is I proactively let you invade my privacy as a service for a decade. That's the reward for you breaking the law and invading my privacy. This is a great country or what? It's, that's how it goes. I mean, am I, you know, misconstruing this or is this the craziest place?

Fucking thing ever. This is not a penalty to these people. No. And I think this whole affair has revealed some of the absurdities in the whole credit reporting system when it comes to privacy is that, you know, none of us can opt out of it.

It's, it's part of the way that our financial system functions here. And you can't say, no, you're not allowed to track my credit. It can't be done. Yeah. As Steve Rombaum says, privacy is dead.

Get over it. Hmm. Yeah. I'm not quite over it yet. Listen, listen to more episodes. Go back to the beginning of the show. You'll get over it in about 20 episodes. So the other thing about this capital one hack, which is a big problem for Amazon now is that they are right on the cusp of getting awarded project Jedi from the defense department, which is $10 billion over 10 years to revamp the, the computer systems over there.

And, uh, you know, obviously the, the orange in chief came out today and said, you know, you got to go back and take a look at this now, make sure that this is, uh, above board. So it's not a good time for them. But what I really like is that, um, capital one basically said that, you know, this doesn't really, this could have happened with anybody, even if these were our servers, it had nothing to do with Amazon.

It was something completely different. Right. So at least capital one did the right thing in that case. Yeah. And by the way, I think it's worth mentioning that, uh, capital one is generally considered to be a very tech savvy company. As far as financial services companies go, they, they pride themselves internally of being very on top of these things.

So, uh, it just goes to show that this, this can happen to anybody. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, these systems are so complex. There's always going to be some kind of hole you can find if you dig hard enough and long enough. There's just, there's nobody's safe. If somebody's coming after you, they're going to get you.

There's just, that's the long and the short of it nowadays. It's just how bad is it going to be? Yeah. And there's so many people banging away at it. That's the thing. It's, it's you against the world. And they only have to get right once. You have to get right every day. So it's, it was at the CIA's motto too, you know?

Yeah. Something similar to it. Well, we've talked about Amazon and the ring cameras and the cops. Yeah. Well, there's a whole bunch of new news this week about the whole, uh, ring gate, ring worm. We'll call it ring worm. How's that? Have you ever had ring worm?

No, I haven't. And I would prefer not to. I have. Yeah. When I was in, I was a teenager, I worked at a, um, like a plant nursery, you know, where they grow trees and flowers and things. And evidently slogging around in the mud and your sneakers, uh, some, one of the things that leads to ring worm.

And it's, it's, uh, it's not fun. It's not fun. So it's sort of a blistery kind of thing on your feet. Wow. It looks like the photos I'm seeing on the internet look like you've been attacked by some kind of an alien with suction cups or something. Yeah. That's pretty much it. Yeah. It doesn't look fun at all.

No. No. And the description, I love this. This is the WebMD description. Ring worm isn't a worm. It's a skin infection that's caused by a mold-like fungi that live on the dead tissues of your skin, hair, and nails. Yeah. Good times.

Good times. This is why, this is why one of the rules of the internet is never Google a disease. Yeah. Now I'm going to get ads for ring worm for the next two years. Uh, yeah. No. I, yeah. Anyway. Enjoy those, those ads for Sav. I like that though.

Ring worm. That's a good name for it. Go on. Yeah. Okay. So it has come out that Amazon and specifically the ring division of Amazon actually provides the cops with scripts that they have to use social media, talking points that they have to use.

And like, basically is it the entire ring PR department tells the cops what they can say when they join this program, which is just mind boggling. It's just like, you know, they get, they get, uh, Gizmodo got copies of the press packets and all the talking points. And I just, I, I didn't dig deep enough to go get them.

I just didn't feel like reading them. Cause I'm sure it's going to be really boring, but, uh, that's just crazy that once these cops sign up to it, they have to follow what ring says. They can't even use their own voice in talking about the product or the program or what the benefit is going to be to the community that they're putting these cameras in.

It's mind boggling in order to get free stuff. Yeah. And I'm going to tell you right now, I've got ring cameras. They kind of suck. They're not that great. So I, well, so you can get free crappy cameras and they're, and they still made in China, by the way.

So don't even go there, Dave. Well, I, I, I followed, uh, your lead and I don't have the ring cameras, but I did install the app, um, just purely based on my, my curiosity of what you said is that it's a great way to find out which of your neighbors are racist.

Yeah. That's a, that's also what's the other neighbor one. Um, right. Right. Basically all of, all of these community watch ones, you can completely find out how racist your neighborhood is. They should have a racism score because as far as I can tell, if you're Brown and you walk into any neighborhood in the, that has one of these communities going, you're screwed.

It's just like, everybody's going to be peeking out their windows at you. Forget it. Yeah. Yeah. Car turned around in my driveway. Anybody recognize this car? Looks suspicious to me. Yeah. That's it. Man walking dog. Haven't seen him before, but I haven't gone outside in three years because I'm too scared to go outside.

Have you seen this man? Right. Call the, call the police. Get your gun. Yeah. I, I, I, this. Partnership between the police and ring. Um, I don't know what to make of it. I, I suppose. I mean, look, this isn't the first time that a private organization has offered up their stuff to police departments to, to try to, to better make people safer, make communities safer.

I think it's this online component that makes it, gives it the, the sort of creep factor. Would you agree? Oh, absolutely. And there's also another company that I'm researching for next week that actually puts in license plate reading cameras in your neighborhood to track all the comings and goings of every car in your neighborhood.

Yeah. Yeah. I think Brian and I talked about that maybe the week you were gone. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of condo associations are using it. Um, but this is a blanket, a whole neighborhood. Well, and, and, and the, and the thing is that it's, it's become a plugin.

It's, it's a basic, any of, any of these camera systems, the industrial ones, um, you basically press a button, you pay a fee. And now congratulations, you're reading license plates. Yeah. Do you guys have this up there in Santa Cruz, Chris?

I, I haven't heard of this. I mean, the cops have, you know, of course the, the dash cams and the chest cams and this kind of stuff, but I have not heard of this going on yet. I've read it in other places and where the cops give out these ring things to people. And, you know, they're just, Hey, 19, 1984, your neighborhood fast with amazon.com, you know, and the, but the weirdest thing about this is they're also listening to everything inside everybody's house too.

So now they're monitoring everything outside your house and in your neighborhood and inside your house. They're everywhere. Amazon's everywhere. And for the most part, we paid for it. Yay. Yeah. That's why, that's why I like to say for them to survey our surveil our house and now our neighborhood, you know what they should do.

They should probably buy the next move they should make. They should buy next door. And then that's the one I was thinking of. That's the one where you can find out if everybody's racist. Yes. Next door. Yeah. That's the, that was the big thing with next door. Yeah. The heavy users of next door are people who want to report the crime.

And they were like, yeah, there's, there's, there's people of, uh, that are not white going door to door trying to sell shit. They'd have that, that one shows up from, right. I mean, so yeah, they should buy, you know, it's like, uh, uh, Microsoft buying LinkedIn. It's like, well, why would they buy LinkedIn?

Well, here's why they sell technology to knowledge workers. They now have an opt-in database of virtually every knowledge worker in the world and what they do and where they're going. And so they, they now can literally, it's the greatest, uh, customer surveillance opportunity ever.

They know everything that's going on in the working world and people opt in and tell them. It's so funny. I have to, I have to say, Dave, you're going to, you're going to tear me a new one for this one. I just know it. So, you know, we're, we're on a corner where we get to see a lot of what goes on in the neighborhood and a lot of our, a lot of our neighbors, they call the police fairly often for domestic disputes and things like that.

Okay. And we got frustrated because I had a little monocular where we used to be able to look out and see things are going on. It's actually the same one that Jack Bauer wore in 24 on a lanyard around his neck when he was gone. It's a piece of shit. It fell apart. Like the, the rubber got moldy and we're like, we need to up our neighborhood old, old lady with cats game.

So I went out this week and I bought a nice pair of big old Bushnell binoculars. Oh, nice. There you go. So we can, we can really get into it so we can see exactly what's going on. Cause my neighbor across the street had her daughter committed last week and we saw guys showing up with lanyards and we're trying to figure out like where they're from.

Like, are they, is this like a pet team that are coming to do like psychiatric evaluation and take her away? Or is this an intervention where people are going to come and talk to her nicely? And then, well, when the ambulance showed up to take her away, we're like, ah, okay, it's, it's something, but they didn't handcuff her. So it's not the pet team, you know, trying to figure all this stuff out.

If we could have read those lanyards and figured out where they were from, we'd have been in business. So now we can't. Why don't you just fly your drone right over them and just zoom right in on them? Well, I'm not going to be insensitive. It's their daughter. She's, she's got problems. I mean, she's severely mentally ill, so I'm not going to go fly my drone over there.

I thought about it though, but I didn't. I mean, an open window, that's one thing, but. Yeah, I literally, I literally pulled up my, I went to subway, got a sandwich, pulled up my little tray and looked out the window and watched it like it was TV. Wow.

So, but yes, I mean, there's, but that's different, I think, than, you know, filming it and giving access to everybody in the neighborhood, which is what, you know, a lot of these things are doing. Anyway, the ring thing, let's get back to ringworm. Cause it also came out that the cops are giving Amazon ring your real time 911 call data because they're trying to figure out if like a ring person, like a, like a call center for ring can look

at things that are going on in a neighborhood with when they get the, the information from the 911 call with the address. us, if they can access the ring footage to see if it's a false alarm or whatnot, which is interesting. Yeah. Sort of do a kind of a clustering kind of thing where if a bunch of different people report something to, to have that coordination, I could see there being value in that.

And I suppose, I mean, 911 data is public for the most part, right? Not, not necessarily real time, although most, um, aren't most of those systems online, basically an online version of a, an old police radio scanner.

I know ours is. Well, maybe not 911 calls. I thought they were encrypted now. No, we can hear, um, we can hear, uh, the cops talk to each other. We can hear, uh, fire and rescue. Oh yeah. Fire and rescue. Police are encrypted. Police have been encrypted for a long time.

Well, yeah, there was a story about that recently though, that, uh, that some, um, communities are taking off the encryption because they, they've been, they've been sued that that is, that should be open for, for transparency that that should be in the clear.

Oh, that's fantastic. I thought you could listen to cops talk to each other. Yeah. Yeah. Not really. If you, if you listen to those police scanners, you can get some stuff, but not, it's not like the old days of going down a radio shack and buying a police scanner and being able able to hear everything. Right. Which was the coolest thing.

I want that back. I want my own police scanner. Yeah. Well, the, the notion here, I think is that the, the basic, um, dispatch channel needs to be in the clear, but then if they need to, police should be able to switch to a private channel, but that's not the channel where all of the, the, the, you know, the organizational stuff is going on that, that needs to be in the clear there that it is in the public interest that people like reporters should be able to know where the crimes are happening, where

the fires are happening so that they can follow up on things that there's a public interest there. So some communities are pulling back on that. That's valid. I think that's a valid use of, of, oh, you know, just the open data. We should be able to know that. But when it comes to, you know, send Joe around back with the sniper rifle, we want that encrypted.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I see. I can see that. Yeah. So, well, it's, it's just interesting how ring has been in the news with the cops and have their toes so deeply in there. Yeah, I guess it's a little chilling, but, uh, I'm not, I, I, I wonder if, if someone had come to me and said, Hey, we're going to give you a free ring camera.

We want you to put it on your front porch, aiming away from your house and we're going to pay for everything. We're going to pay for the camera. We're going to pay for the service. Uh, you get access to it, but also if they need to, the police get access to it. I'm not sure how I'd feel about that.

Well, the thing is, even if they give you those cameras and they pay for everything, you're not in, you're not required to give them the footage. They still have to ask you for that footage. Right. So it's not real time on demand for them. Yeah. They can't just turn it on and look at your front door.

Yeah. Even if they gave you the camera. I might consider it. Yeah. Even if they gave you the camera, it doesn't matter. That's part of, that's part of the terms and conditions that they have to ask you permission to, to review the footage. If there's a crime in the area and they want to review cameras in the area, then they have to ask you permission.

Right. Because, yeah, otherwise it's, you know, it's search and seizure. They can't go in and just take your stuff. Yeah. It's technically your video that was captured on your property. And part of what some of the pushback they're getting is that, is that request at all coercion?

If a police officer shows up on your front porch and says, hey, you know, we're, we got a crime here. We really need the footage. How much are you really going to feel like you can say no? Huh? You, you, you've seen my doormat. Come back with a warrant. Yes.

Yes. Yes. I know. I know. We have established the outlier status that is Jason. Well, I mean, you got to set a baseline. You got to set a baseline. And I don't think of it is, is being, you know, disrespectful to the police. I just think of it as managing expectations.

When you come to my house, if you want something, come back with a warrant. Yeah. That's all. No, totally reasonable. Totally reasonable. Interesting thing is, you know, where's the line here, right? Because of course you can make a powerful case for how this could make your home and your neighborhood safer. And, um, you know, there's a lot of people who say, well, if you're not doing anything wrong, why do you care?

You know, that, that, that whole thread. And then of course there's the obviously terrifying 1984. Is this going to turn into Hong Kong where we're now going to start walking around with umbrellas so that people can't, you know, use face recognition and shit on us. And so I just, I don't know where that line is.

I mean, do you guys have an opinion? I think most of us don't know where that line is right now. I think that line is moving all over the place in a very random way right now. And we're all wondering where it's going to settle down and what are the forces going to be?

That'll get it to settle down, whether it'll be a regulatory or consumer based or, or what it's, it's kind of all over the place right now. I think the thing that's the biggest issue right now is that the cameras are so low, low grade and low tech.

Once these things become like ultra HD and you can actually see people in them clearly, then the, the landscape's going to change quite a bit because right now it's really hard to actually figure out who that is at your door. If you don't know who they are, even ring says they're HD, but they're not, I'm sorry.

I've got three ring cameras around my house and you know, even a skunk is, is hard to discern as a skunk. I'm like, is that a womp wrapped or is that what is it? Is it a beaver? Oh, okay. I have a 4k dash cam in my car and you can pull license plate numbers from it remarkably well.

Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. Okay. Why did you want such a device, Dave? Um, partly because I love gadgets. Um, partly because I feel like in today's environment, you need to have evidence of your actions and other people's actions.

And so for whatever the a hundred bucks or so that it costs and my own, I would, since I was able to install it myself and that was fun for me, um, I figured why not? Does it track your speed too? It, mine does not out of the box.

There's an extra little GPS device you can put on it that can do that. Um, mine does not. Mine just has the time and date and the footage itself. Um, and you can always correlate that with the onboard computer if you ever have to like, you know, go to court.

Right. The thing that spooks me about this is how quickly we can be lulled into giving away our privacy. You know, one of my favorite examples right now is the state farm program they have, they call drive safe and get discounts, you know, and they're like, they'll give you 30% off your auto insurance.

If you download their app and they track everything you fucking do in your car. Yeah. And yeah, and that, that shit terrifies me. And then I scared the shit out of myself. I, I signed up for this thing called clear at the airport. Yeah.

You know, and I was there with my family and there was a whole group of us and we were late as you often are. And they were like all these nice friendly people saying, you want to go to the front of the line and all you got to do is this thing and whatever, whatever. And then in, in, in two seconds, I give them my fingerprints and I can go, I'm going to the front of the line.

I'm going, what the fuck did I just do? Who the hell is clear? I don't even know. Is this the government? Is this the TSA? I don't even know what I just did. Yeah. You just gave your, all your information to a private corporation because clear is not run by the government. No, I found that out afterwards and then I shat myself and went, what did I just do?

Yeah. Oh, see, you just, you gotta, you gotta do your research beforehand, man. Well, sometimes your wife is screaming at you at the airport and you can't do your research. Well, here's the deal. You're, you're, you're an ex-CMO. That, that's brilliant marketing. It is brilliant. How are we going to get people to sign up?

Well, they're, they're stuck in the line. They got nothing else to do. Let's just scan them right there. Boom. Done. Bob's your uncle. No, and I saw one recently. It's a wonderful service. It really is. But now I'm terrified. Like what the fuck? I, every time I go, I was terrified. I saw one recently where an insurance company was tracking people's activity.

Like they give you a discount for exercise and so forth. Yep. And so someone has come up with, it's basically a little swing set that your phone sits in. A little USB powered swing set. So you set your phone in this little swingy thing that plugs into a USB port on your computer and your phone just swings back and forth all day long.

So it seems as though you're out there getting your steps in. I love it. I love it. I absolutely love it. Now you guys, because you guys are the technical geniuses, you're going to have to build a hack for the state farm thing that makes a guy who drives like me to say that I drive aggressively is probably accurate.

Let me say it that way. And, and, uh, and re-swizzle that thing. So, you know, so it looks like I'm driving nicely and get my discount. Mm-hmm. Or just don't get your discount and not worry about it. Yeah. That's what I'm currently doing. Yeah. People are worried.

Yeah. People are working on it. I guess that's the way the system is supposed to work. Yeah. It's a feature, not a bug. All right, gentlemen. I think we've covered a lot this week. I think we have, too. Thanks, Dave, for stopping by. All right. I'll talk to you guys next time. Talk to you next week.

Closing shout outs. I would like to thank Mr. Christopher Lockhead for joining me today to give Brian a little vacation. Thank you very much. And also go check out my episode on his podcast. A little nepotism action going on here. A little reach around, a little quid pro quo.

I was on his show this week talking about all things podcasting and grump. And I can't even remember what the hell we talked about. I forget these shows after we do it. We did have a good grump about podcasting. And when I listened back to it, our conversation about who should and shouldn't be allowed to go to Disney World, I thought it was pretty funny.

I forgot about that one. See, told you I forget all this stuff. So thanks for coming on, man. I really appreciate it. Jason, thank you for having me. It's an absolute thrill to be here in Brian's shoes, which I can't really feel, but it's great to be here. And I'd just like to shout out to Candy Dandy, Sarah Knox, and Jamie Jay.

Until next time, I'm Christopher Lockhead. And I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, go to patreon.com slash GOG. Toss us a buck a month and we'll love you forever. If you'd like to give a one-time or recurring donation, go to GOG.show and click the PayPal button in the sidebar.

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