369: Scroll and Weep

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

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Brian, guess what episode it is? What episode? 369! And you know what that means since I'm just a kid. Mm-hmm. If you guys are really us, what number are we thinking of? 69, dudes!

Just because. Just because. You know, I'm worryingly interested in the follow-up to that movie. I cannot wait for that sequel. I know! I know! It's weird. It's just a silly comedy and it's, you know, 30-some-odd years old, if not more than that, but I'm very excited.

I know. I just... I don't... Here's the deal. I don't think it can be bad. Well, I've said that about many, many things. And boy, does the world like to prove me wrong. Well, yeah, yeah. Misa, I think you're right. Yeah. How could new Star Wars possibly go bad?

Oh, man. Oh, well. We've got a little bit of follow-up here. I saw this article and I had to laugh because it is what it is and it's what we've been talking about a lot recently. Do tech companies really need to snoop into private conversations to improve their AI? Yes. Yes, they do.

This is a Betteridge's Law of Headline breaking headline. That's right. Well, the argument in the article is that they could probably do it other ways, but it's considerably more expensive. And that humans are the cheapest and most possible way to do this, according to Meredith Whitaker, co-founder and co-director of the nonprofit AI Now Institute.

So it's easier to use people. AI is people. AI is still people. That's right. Yep. And we talked about the kerfuffle with everybody snooping in on your ladies in the tubes and whatnot. And Microsoft was called out last week for Skype and Cortana.

And instead of doing what everybody else did, which is shut the programs down or figure out how to do an opt-in or opt-out, Microsoft just said, screw you guys. We're putting it in our privacy policy and you can suck a dick. Yep, basically. And again, as I've been saying, this is the only way to make these products better right now.

There is no AI. It doesn't exist. It's people making sure that these things are working and training them and getting them to the point where they don't need to listen anymore. But it's going to be a long, long time. We're not there. Yeah. And I think it's funny, though, that both of us were like, oh, Microsoft will do the right thing.

They'll do the right thing. And I guess the right thing was. Well, the right the right thing is, do you want us to keep working on this product and do you want us to keep making it better? Keep making it better because if you do, this is what we're going to have to do. Or you could still opt out because, you know, if I'm making, you know, if I've got a top secret clearance and I'm making Skype calls to somebody who also has top secret clearance, you could think that you had a reasonable degree of privacy on that call.

I would hope if you were somebody high enough in the military that you had top secret clearances. You're not using Skype. Yeah. Well, go back and listen to Jordan. I know. I know. Listen to Jordan Harbinger's talk at Derby Cod about people with top secret clearances and how dumb they actually can be.

I know. OK, well, this one I saw at the L.A. Times and I'm like, OK, slow news day. And it's Netflix's biggest bingers get hit with higher Internet costs. And this is another one from the first year that we've been talking about. It's like, OK, you binge more.

You pay more because now everybody has caps. Yep. So I'm like, file this one under no shit, Sherlock. OK, you have this much bandwidth and you want to watch stuff that uses that bandwidth. Well, either be responsible and check your usage or pay the damn bill and shut up.

Yeah, exactly. OK, I agree. Now, we did we did actually talk last week about how podcasts might get music in their shows. And there was there was the press release that sound exchange teams with podcast music dot com to connect labels, music publishers and podcasters with new licensing service.

Now, Brian, you have something to say about this. I did. I looked into this because I, you know, I'm like, all right. I believe I said that there's no way in hell this is rolling out anytime soon in the way that they're promoting it or that they are kind of consciously making us thinking about it.

Because if you hear this, you go, oh, great. Well, I can sign up with a service and I can go get a Rihanna song and use it for the theme for my podcast. No, you effing can't. No, you can't. Because what they actually have available are basically sound effects CD ROMs.

I checked it out. There's 726,726,663 tracks, which sounds really impressive until you realize you can get like 20,000 tracks onto an old sound effects CD ROM. And that is the vast majority of their catalog at the moment is sound effects CD ROMs.

It is licensed little, little beds of music. You can, you could, you can buy these things anywhere, all the time, everywhere. And when you buy them, you own the rights to them. Yeah. Now, are you sure that this is kicked in on their site or is this just the old pod music site?

I don't know. Maybe, maybe there's more stuff coming. But if you put out this press release that makes it sound like you can do major labels and music publishers and I log in and I look at it and I go through all the tracks and I see no major labels at all. And no songs may have jumped the gun on that press release.

They may have jumped the gun on that press release. So we shall see what happens. But I, I'm 99.999999% positive. You will not be getting any Taylor Swift tracks anytime soon. It's going to be more and more of this stuff. And they're taking, you know, you can, you can fill out if you're a music producer, meaning if you just sit there and write little beds here and there, you can put your own stuff up there.

Just like millions of other sites that are out there right now as well. So, and is anybody going to vet it? Because we had this problem too. Remember, we talked about this problem where there was a producer who was putting stuff up that basically just took a Trent Reznor bit and, and tweaked it a little bit and put it up. And then that became a part of a major hit song.

And, you know, are they going to vet all these things that are being uploaded to them? Hell no. Of course not. Well, so there we go. All right. So it's just another sucky service that does the same thing that it's always been doing. Yep. Okay. And sticking to the podcast side of things for one second here, because this is relevant to our listeners.

Pandora has jumped into the podcasting realm and said, Hey, we want your podcast on Pandora. So I went through, I'm filling out the forms. I'm like, Oh, Hey, I listened to Pandora during the day. I'm never going to listen to a podcast on it, but Hey, if somebody else wants to, they can.

Yes. It's the old internet theory. Be everywhere. Yeah. Well, not, not on Pandora, because I read the actual terms of use. I know. Shocking. Shocking. I read the terms of use and they are just so broad in the regards with what they can do with our content. Meaning they want in a revocal license in perpetuity with the ability to archive and modify our content.

Do you remember a long time ago? And we will not mention who they were when we, we joined up with a, one particular, uh, podcasting, uh, blog talk radio farm. Yes. And the initial contracts that they sent us was about basically the same thing, you know, in perpetuity throughout the known universe and beyond.

We will own everything that you have ever done. If you fart anywhere near a microphone, we get it. Yes. Until Zinu comes home. Yes. Yep. I remember that. And I remember, Brian, you just happened to have a lawyer as a wife. Yes. And she got out the marker and went squeep, squeep, squeep, squeep.

Yeah. It took us. I think it took longer to get the contract negotiations done than we were actually on the network. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. When we got screwed by loot crate, that was pretty much the end of that deal. Yep. Anyway, so I, let me, let me get back to where we were here because it's probably around, uh, the dynamic ad insertion, why they, the ability to archive and modify the content.

If you sign up for dynamic ad insertion, but in the, in the, in the terms of usage should say, if you decide to use dynamic ad insertion, we will have the ability to archive and modify your content. Nope. So, uh, and here's the other thing. Dynamic ad insertion will never be on this show.

Never say never. Uh, I'm saying never because sponsorships, they're vetted by us and they're the only way advertisers are getting on the show period. But I'm sure there's going to be some AI dynamic ad insertion at some point, which will be guaranteed to please our, our listeners. Well, yes, that came out this morning.

If you follow my Twitter, of course. Uh, but anyway, if you hear an ad on our show ever that is not read by us, then just let us know because somebody is ripping us off and we would like to, we want, we, we don't make very much money on this. So they're not going to make any money, but if they have it, we want it back.

So, and, and as far as Pandora goes, there's enough venues out there where you can get this show. So, and who the hell is going to use Pandora for podcasts anyway? In the news. Hat tip to friend of the show, Christopher Lockhead, who sent us this story via email and said, yes, once again, you guys nailed it.

Uh, going right back to it again. AI is people. Uh, this is over at the wall street journal. AI startup boom raises questions of exaggerated tech savvy. Yeah. Flat out lying. Flat out lying. So this is in particular, the story is about a one startup called engineer.ai.

Now they have a .ai domain. So obviously they must have artificial intelligence. So they say they use artificial intelligence technology to automate the development of mobile apps, but several current and former employees say the company is exaggerating its AI capabilities to attract customers and investors.

It's more than an exaggeration because as you get into this, you find out that they are basically using app farms in India, which are people. Yep. And, and as we've talked about before, you know, you know what the state of AI, if I set my, my app to be developed by a mobile, like an AI to do the mobile development or I send it off to India, the result is pretty much the same.

You're going to get a non-working app back. Period. Basically. Yes. Yeah. So the, they've done a deep dive on this. The wall street journalists talked to a bunch of people. They do not use AI to assemble code for apps as it's claimed. They do rely on human engineers in India and elsewhere to do most of the work and that its AI claims are inflated even in light of the fake it till you make it mentality common among tech startups.

This is the world that we are now. They're only starting to build the technology needed to automate app building in the last two months. The person familiar with the company's operation said adding the company was more than a year away from being able to use any AI for its core service. However, they put AI in their name because they get funding.

I was going to say, there are some really pissed off venture capitalists that read this, read this story. They're like, or are they really? Are they? Because if they're even, if you're a venture capitalist with a grain of fucking integrity or, or brains to you, you know that this is all lies.

Uh, how many VC pitches have you done? None. I've done at least 50 of them. And yeah, it does run the gamut from, holy shit, this guy is the smartest person in the world to, uh, how are you alive? Yes.

Well, speaking about companies that lie, let's talk a bit about B work because they are trying to go public. Yes. This week they released paperwork to go public. Uh, they tried to defend a whopping $47 billion valuation, which is multiples larger than it would be if it were just considered a real estate company, like its main competitor, IWG.

But, uh, they are saying they are much more than a real estate company, even though all they do is real estate. Uh, they are a tech company because they are innovative and flexible and they're much better than a regular real estate company, which is a tough argument to make because, uh, IWG has substantially more square footage, more customers, and has actually made a profit.

Yet its market cap is just 8% of what a soft bank's latest funding round thinks we worth is work. And it is worth pointing out that we work has not made any money. They are operating at a huge loss, losing 900 million in the first half of 2019. You are a douchebag, but they're a tech company.

Yes. So basically they're just trying to push this, we're a tech company by using the word tech 123 times in its public filing. That's more than the video calling software company Zoom, which is actually a tech company did in its 2019 IPO filing, but less than Uber did. Which is another company that has to contend with arguments that is basically a taxi company.

And as the article points out, space as a service does not a software company make. Nice. Nice. Now I found another one about we work over at the verge and this is by Elizabeth Lopato. I love Elizabeth Lopato. She just tears the, uh, the S1 filing apart and they, she posted the org chart and she says, this is the plan structure for the week company after its IPO, as it appears in its S1 form.

I try to explain it, but I don't understand what the fuck is happening. And she goes on to say, there are two ways the company makes money from people paying fees to lease its shit and from sponsorships and ticket sales for events. So I, I didn't even know we work was an event company too.

Well, I'm sure they lease out their spaces for events, right? Hmm. Could be, could be, but this whole thing comes down to the, the guy behind it. The guy behind it is a total loon. Oh, you think? I mean, we've been talking about, we work for quite a while. Cause remember they, they were trying to spin off into like 70,000 different things as well.

Yeah. Yeah. That's why they're the, we learn and yeah. Yeah. But this guy is like, he's a piece of work digging and read about this guy because he is, uh, he's basically a giant thief. I mean, this guy is going to go down, go down hard or become president, you know, or, or become president.

That's right. And somebody tweeted something this morning that was even funnier. They're, they're like part of, part of like one of the deals they have is we work has to like over the next X amount of years, donate $1 billion to charity. And they're like, how are you going to donate a billion dollars when you don't make any money? Which, well, that's the big question of this show these days.

None of these companies make any money. All they do is lose money. Yeah. Well, this isn't about losing money, but this is about probably losing your job. UPS ventures invests in self-driving trucking startup. Now. Right.

They're, they're in for the long haul. Or don't drink. Uh, uh, but the thing about it that caught my eye was the name of the startup is too simple ink to you simple ink. Now I kind of want my self-driving truck to be too.

This shit is hard. This shit is hard. Ink. Exactly. Holy shit. Have you seen how this has to work? Ink. Yeah. So I was just like, oh man, could you at least like have them rebrand? I mean, this is almost as bad as what can Brown do for you.

No, that was not a good one either. Look, I, I, there's only so worried about this that I can be because as we've always discussed with self-driving cars, it is going to be years and years and years. They always make it sound like it's just around the corner. I'm more worried about the trucks. I think that's going to take even longer because I think that no, I think that's going to take less time because freeways are pretty basic when you're in a city with lots of people running around, it gets more difficult.

Oh, I think, you know, the tech is easier, but the, the God, please let there be legislation and rules and regulations because I'm going to be super worried about an AI truck carrying, you know, 10, 20,000 tons of stuff barreling down the freeway while I'm just driving by in my BMW.

Well, we talked the, I can't remember how many episodes ago there, there has been a run where a beer truck ran, you know, for a couple hundred miles on the freeway with no interaction from the dude in the back. I will make exceptions for beer. That's true. If that thing tips over and spills, I'm okay with that.

Oh my God. Free beer. Yeah. I think it was a Budweiser truck. Oh, well, I am trying to lose weight. Well, Google employees have, there's another one. They refuse to be complicit in border agency cloud contract. And this is a new petition from people inside of Google saying, no, stop working with U.S.

Customs and Border Protection. Let me, just a quick lesson in language. Google employees refusing to be complicit is not signing a fucking petition. Yeah. Refusing to be complicit means quitting. That's about it. So here's the thing though. If, if they can keep their jobs and make Google stop it, that's fine.

But they need to have the courage of their convictions to walk out the door. If Google says, no, we're going to keep doing it. Yes. That's 810 Googlers and 58 supporters have signed on as of this morning. I'm looking forward to hearing the report about the 810 Googlers quitting their jobs.

Yes. That's never going to happen. The new 810 Facebookers have now. Yeah. Now I've got a story about Huawei again, because I know one of our listeners in particular thinks that we don't cover them enough. And here's some interesting stuff fresh on the heels of, hey, we would never do any spying.

Come on USA, let us back in with our technology. Even though you kind of caught us doing some spying. Well, there's some more spying going on. Yep. Huawei Technologies, the world's largest telecommunications company, which dominates African markets and has sold security tools that governments use for digital surveillance and censorship in that country, have been helping them spy on political opponents by breaking encrypted communications, social media, and using cell data to track their whereabouts.

Yeah. They swear that they're not doing it though. You surprised? They have never been engaged in hacking activities, said a Huawei spokesman in a written statement. We completely reject these unfounded and inaccurate allegations against our business operations. Our internal investigation shows clearly that Huawei and its employees have not been engaged in any of the activities alleged.

We have neither the contracts nor the capabilities to do so, except they do. Okay. Now let's just, let's put this in perspective here because have you heard of the Great Firewall of China? I have. Yeah. Guess who built that? We did. We did. Yeah.

Yeah. Cisco is all over that thing. So I don't see China banning Cisco. I don't know how this is going to go. Me either. It's going to be interesting. What is going to, I think what it's really going to come down to is the fact that, oh shit, we can't make 5G transmitters, but Huawei can.

And we would like to have 5G. Can we have some of your 5Gs please? Yeah. Can I borrow a cup of 5G? Yes. Because it's interesting. I was, I forget what articles, I read so many damn articles this week, but it was actually a podcast, I think.

But they were talking about why we need 5G in the cities just for the self-driving cars alone. Yeah. Because there's so much data that's going to be required to make sure you don't die. Exactly. And you, I guess each connection point can handle like 1 million connections. Yeah. 5G is pretty impressive.

I mean, it's impressive stuff. I'd like to see it rolled out, but without the little Chinese spying bits in there. Yeah. Well, you know, you got to give to get, Brian. You got to give to get. That's true. Well, don't we? That's what we all do now. You get, all the companies get everything and we get very little in return. Because with all that free bandwidth they have, they can easily send everything back to China.

Just G-zip it, you know? That's right. Well, AT&T and T-Mobile have started working together on Shaken and Stir, you know, the new technology that's supposed to stop caller IDs from being spoofed. So they're, they're coming together.

They're shaking hands. So we'll see. We'll see. We'll see. Verizon, they started back in March. Again, development back in March. Sprint said it's going to do the same thing. But hey, look, they're starting. They're starting. That's good. At least. Because, you know, basically the only phone calls I get anymore are from my own number.

I don't get those. Yeah, I don't get those anymore. But I swear, ever since, you know, everybody's been talking about robocalls are so bad. Robocalls are so bad. My volume has tripled. Yeah, mine's up. Mine's up again. It was down for a while. And then I'd say within the last two weeks, it's really kicked back up again.

Yeah. And I'm using that AT&T like fraud alert system. So it tells me it's like, you know, spam caller or possible fraud alert. Yeah. And I'm like, why didn't you just like not put the call through? Yeah. I mean, at this point, I just don't answer my phone unless I get a text first saying somebody needs to talk to me about something.

That's it. Well, or if it's somebody I actually know. Right. Because it's going to be pretty hard for them to, you know, spoof somebody I know. Unless they've cracked my machine, downloaded my contact list or bought my contact list from somebody else who has slurped it in, you know, here and there. Okay.

Never mind. We're screwed. We're screwed. Is your dog slowing down a little? Having skin issues or digestive problems? Top veterinarian Gary Richter reveals these aren't just signs of getting older.

Their own dog food might be to blame. See, many dogs lack vital nutrients and may even contain harmful ingredients that could damage your dog's health. Yes. Even if the food is labeled organic, premium or natural, it's unfair, but don't worry. Dr. Richter used his 20 years of veterinary experience to find a solution.

It's an easy way to get your dog the nutrients they need to thrive every single day without even changing their food. Just by adding this one thing to your dog's food, you can support their immunity, digestion and help their skin and coat health. That way, your dog can live healthier and live better.

To find out what these healthy ingredients are, just watch the video at HealthyDog3.com. Again, that's HealthyDog3.com. Your dog will thank you. Security?

Ha! We're back this week with Dave Bittner from the Cyber Wire podcast. The Cyber Wire is a free, community-driven cybersecurity news service based in California. No, wait. Maryland. Dave is also co-host of the Hacking Humans podcast, along with Joe Kerrigan, where they take on social engineering.

Dave! Hello! Happy to have you back here. Well, thank you. It's good to be back. It's been a good, busy week of security stuff, and I'm looking forward to sharing it all with you guys. All right. Let's get into it. Look at that enthusiasm! Why don't we start off with the hack of the week?

Right. I feel like we should have some kind of wacky morning zoo sound effect or something, right? Yeah, definitely. Where's your sound pad, Jason? Oh, let me see here. What are we looking for today? What are we looking for? I don't want to hear any fucking shit, and I don't give a shit. No, wrong one.

Wrong one. That's the wrong one. No, no. That would work. That would work. Yeah. Closer. Maybe this one. You know, it's funny. I was actually thinking slide whistle would do that. There you go. There you go. All right.

So this company is called Biostar 2. No news what happened to Biostar 1. It's a biometrics lock system managed by a security company, Suprema. And they use fingerprints and facial recognition technology to give authorized individuals access to buildings. They are used by banks, by the UK police, and defense companies as well.

And they've suffered a major data breach revealing the fingerprints of more than 1 million people as well as unencrypted passwords, facial recognition information, and other personal data. Who could have seen this coming? Oh, man. It's time for you to go change your password. Oh, shit. Oops. Nope.

Can't change that. Change your face. Change your fingerprints. Yeah. Not good. Not good. No. Two things come to mind here. One is what you just pointed out, that you can't change your biometrics information. That's forever. But also, this is, I think, one of the hazards of when you have a whole lot of different organizations relying on a common vendor.

Yep. For a service that, if that vendor screws up, then the potential damage could be huge, which I think it is. Shouldn't the government be the vendor? Shouldn't the government be the one that's writing the software, keeping the data? Free markets. It's all shared.

Jason, capitalism, free markets. We wouldn't trust the government with this. I don't know. I mean, that is one of the promises of the cloud, right? This is higher security that they're, by aggregating it all, you have more security people keeping an eye on everything.

And I don't know that that's- Ask almost any actress in Hollywood if they agree with that statement. Well, I don't know that it's not true overall, but, yeah, greater risk, greater reward? I don't know. Yeah. This stuff keeps happening.

They say this service here is used by 1.5 million locations around the world. Yeah. Pretty crazy, right? And I do want to make an actual, I want to correct myself. This is not really a hack because, once again, it was a database that was publicly available.

Right. Don't! Yeah. There we go! Right. Yeah. So, negligence. Yeah, negligence again. Mm-hmm. So, do we think we need regulations here?

Do we need, obviously- I always think there should be regulations. No, no, no. Shouldn't this company be basically put out of business by GDPR? Well, BioStar 3 is spinning up as we speak. Exactly. When in doubt, rebrand.

They got a big red button on the desk that just says, shit, rebrand. Yeah. Well, I mean, think about how much the damage actually really is to these people now, because you'd imagine, okay, you have high classified clearances, a lot of these people, and now your fingerprints and all your biometric security stuff is inherently flawed moving forward.

Can you even do your job anymore? Mm-hmm. Because you've been compromised. I worry about the poor cat burglars. Right. You know? They wear gloves, and now their fingerprints are out in the world. What are they going to do? Well, I mean, we had this, what, years ago here in the U.S. with the OPM breach.

Plenty of people I know who have security clearances had all of that data, which I believe includes fingerprints, was compromised, and they've still got their clearances. Just, it's a different world. Yeah. Good times.

It reminds me, the Biostar 2 thing reminds me of back in the day on the Benny Hill show, he had, Fred Scuttle had a rocket ship that would take him to the moon, and it was called the Indestructible 2. I thought it was something really evil that some of these people could do.

If they're still pimping the data on the dark web, shuffle the fingerprint data in all the rows in the table, and then give it and sell it out that way. Or the facial recognition data, shuffle it, and then put it out there. So, you know, it's not now when Harry met Sally, it's when Harry is Sally.

He shows up, scans his fingerprint, and a picture pops up. I'm like, sir, can I see some ID? And it doesn't match. I wonder if LifeLock protects you against these sorts of things. Well, but I think, Jason, though, I mean, that's a really good point that doesn't get a lot of attention, which is not just the theft of data, not just the security of data, but the integrity of data.

Yeah, exactly. Which is if someone gets into a database and starts monkeying around with things, how do you know, how do you verify, how do you confirm that the data that's in there is the correct data, that it hasn't been messed with? Well, hopefully you can, I mean, if you found out about the breach, you can go back through the logs.

Well. Like, you know, most databases log automatically for selects, or not selects, they never log for selects, but they do for inserts and updates. So you can go back through and find out if there's an update trail. Well, I mean, if it's your company, you find that you've been breached.

If only the stuff was on the blockchain. It does fix everything. The log, the log basically is the blockchain for a thing. So it is actually a valid point. If it was on the blockchain, it would actually work, but it's also the same as the logs. You can go back and actually see where it is and then roll back to like, you know, a safe state.

But it comes down to what these people are buying in the, in the dark web. That's the data integrity that is, you know, probably flawed. And what if, what if somebody starts putting in other people's data before it goes out? Because they have a plan to do something with that person and they want them to be like, you know, okay, I got the Ashley Madison data, right?

Right. I'm the first guy that got it. I hate my neighbor. I'm going to put my neighbor's name and address in there. Right. And make it, make up an account for him. So when this breach comes out and people can go search this data, he's implicated in it and he never signed up for Ashley Madison.

Right. And then, then I don't have to hear him like, you know, play an Xbox till four in the morning, burping and farting, drinking Bud Light. Right. And like with this database, you, you put your fingerprint in on some other poor saps name and then you go out and commit a lot of burglaries and leave your fingerprints everywhere. Yeah.

But here's the thing, that's not the same data that the company will be using. That's only data for people that are nefarious that are going to get that data. It's a database deep fake. Yeah, kind of, kind of. Reminds me of, I don't know why this reminded me of this or why I'm even bringing it up, but back on, do you remember the TV show NYPD Blue?

Yes. Yeah. So there was a, uh, storyline with NYPD Blue where there was some guy, some horrible guy who was like a rapist or something and he was paying prostitutes to get the used condoms from them so that he could sprinkle his crime scenes with other people's DNA.

Genius. Genius. I don't know what made me think of that, but. Does somebody have insomnia and have been going back to your NYPD Blue episode? You might have picked an NYPD Blue episode I'd like to see less than the one where Dennis Spranz is at.

Right. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Well, this, going back into biometrics, Amazon claims that recognition can now detect fear. And it basically, it's scary when I walk into a thing and I see a little recognition sticker on a camera, I'm like, oh shit, I hope it doesn't think I'm black.

It's amazing that this technology can detect things like fear, but still can't spell check. Exactly. God, I, you know, Brian, I, I let, I let it alone. Cause we got so much hate mail for me talking about, why does he always talk about recognition with a K? Why is he so mad about that?

And I'm just like, cause it's dumb. Um, you show me one other Amazon web service that's actually misspelled and I'll eat my hat. Nope. You know, anyway. Bam Bam can detect fear, right? Oh yes, she can. From about a mile away.

Yeah. Uh, I have thoughts about this and what I, so my thought process was I could imagine a, an idealized law enforcement situation, right?

Where if law enforcement were truly trained to deescalate situations, to protect and to serve, right? Uh, I could imagine, I could imagine there being some sorts of a heads up display or something that a police officer could have where if you had a system that was feeding back, you know, 75% chance that this person is panicking or something that's, I think I can see usefulness

in that, but we're not in that idealized situation these days. So, no, I, I, you know, I, I'm with you. I can see a lot of idealized situations of this as well. Like if you have all your cameras at a mall running through recognition and then you get a spike of a part of the mall where everybody turns to fear, then you know something is happening and you can set an alert to security and then they can go investigate, you know?

Right. I could see worse. I could see use case scenarios for dating. If I were a dude, I'd want this on my first date. I would, I would like to know what she's thinking right now. Well, that was the promise of Google Glass. Move away from baseball. Move away from baseball.

Yeah. There's a 75% chance that she was disgusted by that last joke. Yes. Yeah. Well, I mean, now you just have to go hack, you have to go hack your dates, uh, Apple watch so you can get biometric feedback on the fly and just pipe it into your smart contact and then you'll figure it out.

Amazing. Look, my, my question about this is as we've discovered with facial recognition in general, it's, it's not that accurate. Are they overblowing their abilities here? Yeah. Of course they are. Yeah. Of course they are. Right. Of course they are. This, this does not work consistently.

I'm sure we can tell if you're scared, but we don't know who the hell you are. That's what, you know, and they've also like, uh, tightened up their, their age identification, which is another thing from this, uh, this PR thing that came out.

I bet they use that database they bought from the Russians from face app. Oh God. Oh God. That stupid thing. Um, but yeah, I mean, I, why, I, I don't know. Why are you writing this? Why are you writing the software?

I don't get some of the things that they're doing with it. Because we can. That's why everything gets done. That's what drives Silicon Valley. Because they think someone will pay for it. Yes. Yeah. And that someone doesn't have to be here in the United States. Or a good guy. Right.

Right. Yeah. Oh man. There's got to be some tie in with this, this, you know, age generation to, to catch a predator somewhere. We got to figure this one out. If pedophiles everywhere could like age verify, is she under or over? Oh, nope. Under, uh, move on next.

You know, if only there were some sort of ID. I told you. Oh, nobody's ever faked those. No, not anymore, man. You can't. This is true. It was pretty damn hard. I mean, I, in college, I used to just take a little piece of chalk and a, and a number two pencil and I could change, you know, birth dates around so I could get into bars.

You cannot do that anymore. No, no. Especially with all the software now that scans it and runs it through. And because you have to, you have to hack the barcode. You have to have to hack the mag strip. Then you have to hack the, uh, was it the, uh, whatever chip is they're going to put in for him now with the real ID.

Oh, yeah. It's such a pain, such a pain to go underage drinking nowadays. I, I, I, you know, maybe that's on the plus side for these kids. There are all these apps that deliver alcohol to you. Right. That's true. That's true. And I guess an extra 20 would probably get that booze through the door.

That's my guess. That's yeah. That's what I was going to say is because it's still as effective as ever to tip the bouncer, uh, slip the, slip the bouncer a few bucks. I suppose, I suppose it's more expensive than it used to be, but yes. Well, what is it work?

I get wine delivered to me all the time and they don't look for an ID. They just ask for my signature, you know, granted, uh, you don't look like you're under 18, but he wasn't even ready. Well, I got no hair and a hat. I look like a chemo baby right now. So kind of do look a little young.

I still get carded all the time. Right. It's because I never leave the house. I don't have all that sun damage. Right. Anyway, I put this next, I put this next one in here for you guys. Instagram users who post pet pictures are more likely to get hacked. Go ahead. Just start.

I put this one here for you. This is, this is my Christmas present to you. Uh-huh. I'm not entirely sure I understand this. Why would you want to hack these accounts so you can see more pictures of their fucking pets? They're influencers. They're influencers. Who are they influencing? That's the question I always have when I'm, I'm told somebody's an influencer.

Who are you influencing? It's influencers all the way down. Yes. Mm-hmm. Right? Exactly. Well, better change your password, Jason. So. I use one password. I'm sick. The point here is that people use their pet names for their passwords.

Yes. Right. Or their security questions. Right. Right. So, Jason, how many, not necessarily now, but in the course of your life, how many times have you used a pet name and a password? Ever? I think until probably the year 2000.

Okay. I use it as I, cause you know, I had a little dog named killer and he died and I felt bad. So I had to put his name in there. It was an homage. Yeah. Yeah. And then after that, I, you know, just make shit up and remember, I literally have like a lookup sheet that's encrypted in one password.

That's like, okay, this is the question. This is the answer. And, um, I use, I let's, let's say for the sake of argument, you pick, uh, vegetables. So vegetable names. So I went to Rutabaga high school, you know, I went to my dog or my favorite pet was celery.

Right. Right. And then I just use that everywhere. So I create my own lookup table, which are just easy things to remember. And I just use that never put in actually what they ask for. What are you, what are you stupid? Yeah. Never put in what they ask for. So that's how, that's how I get around it.

So, and, and two factor off. So nowadays it's not that big a deal, but I can see how some of these influencers. Yes. I'm, I'm using air quotes over here. I can get caught up in this because they are techno morons. They just know how to stand on a beach and put a pithy slogan over there.

Yes. You know, over the photo with them and their dog and their chihuahua. Usually. Right. So I just, I thought it was funny. I thought it was funny that yes, we're, we're oversharing. We're sharing our pets names and people ask for pet names as security questions. So ergo, someday you're going to get hacked.

I am. I agree. But anyway, this next one, researchers hacked a Canon DSLR with Bitcoin demanding ransomware. No, they didn't. I would like to point out that this headline is total bullshit.

Because all they did was they, they did, they were able to hack into the Canon using the PTP unauthenticated protocol that shares your photos over your wifi, which is slower than dog shit. So I don't know why anybody would ever use that stuff. Hmm. Plug it in or take your card out.

People don't be a savage anyway. So they were able to get in and encrypt the file system on it. And they left like a JPEG that said, give us Bitcoin or we'll, you know, delete your data. Right. Okay. Right. This was not, this was, there was no Bitcoin demanding ransomware.

This was, they encrypted, they encrypted the data and put up a JPEG. That's it. There's no ransomware. Unless I guess if you count ransomware as that, that's, it's a stretch though, to me personally, because you can't type it, you can't type it, you can't type in an unlock key.

Oh, okay. There's no, there's no actual code being run on the camera itself. They were being, they were able to get into the file system and do some shenanigans, but they did not put an executable on there that would let you unlock the data by typing on your phone.

I mean, phone or camera, like phone to camera, because I know like the cameras that I have that have this, this protocol, you, there's an app on your phone that you can move stuff around with, but still they didn't put an app on there. It was just, they, they got in, encrypted it, boom, Bob's your uncle.

So in this proof of concept that they've done here, how would, how would they decrypt the files if you paid them? Meet me at Denny's parking lot, or I'm sorry, uh, oh, it was a dear Waffle House.

Everybody goes to the Waffle House to, to do nefarious stuff. So meet me in the Waffle House parking lot at midnight with the cash, and then I'll, I'll unlock your camera for you. I see. But I mean, it's an edge case. It's cute. I like it. I think it's, I think it's, it's good that people are thinking about this stuff. I wish the camera companies would think of this stuff.

Yeah, I was, we were talking about this over on, um, smashing security. And I thought that if what they really should do is brick the camera, that that would get a professional photographer's attention. Right. But you know what that doesn't do?

Does not actually, um, do anything to the memory card that's in there, which is where the actual photos are stored. Yeah. Yeah. I guess I was thinking that the, the camera has so much value, but you know, if you're a pro, in other words, if you, if you are out at a wedding, you're a wedding photographer and you're shooting the wedding and suddenly your camera gets bricked and it says, send me a hundred dollars in Bitcoin and I'll unbrick the phone, which is a pretty good chance that

you might send them the hundred bucks while you're at a once in a lifetime event. I think it's funny that both you and I, Dave, have swapped phone and camera just subconsciously as we've been talking about. Oh, have we? Did I say phone? Yeah. Yeah. You did say phone there.

And I said phone before, meaning camera. Wow. That is funny. They're kind of the same thing these days for most people. Yeah. That's what it really is. That's, that's how like deep, deep that, when I said it, I'm like, I thought I said camera. Then I, no, I heard phone. What's going on with that? That's weird. Okay. No, I totally thought I said camera.

Oh boy. You said phone. All right. Well, yeah. So that's bad for the folks who sell the cameras. Well, it's good for people who buy cameras because they'll be cheaper in the future. But I mean, it's, it's, it's a cool proof of concept and hopefully it'll get somebody to work on their security, especially if they're putting out a protocol.

That is unauthenticated that anybody can get into. It's like, I mean, that's, that's bad. Come on. There's no way around it. That's bad. Yeah. And, and these cameras are going to do nothing but become more connected, right?

That's, that's the direction things are heading. So these legacy protocols, you know, time to jettison them or move on to something, something more, more secure. Yep. Yeah. And I mean, this is the new one. PTP is the new one. It used to be PTP IP. So this is the newer version of it.

Oh, is that right? It's like that other company. This is, yeah, this is PTP two. Oh, okay. So soon we'll have PTP three. Right, right. Okay. So I know you covered this one over on the cyber wire. This guy got the license plate. No, and it was a total disaster or was it a hacking humans?

I can't remember. We covered it on the cyber wire. A couple of my colleagues here actually saw this guy's presentation at black hat and said it was very entertaining. So, yes, go on. It's a good one. Yeah. He got, you know, what, $12,000 in parking tickets and is still fighting with the city to get them taken off because he doesn't have any parking tickets because, you know, the null record in the database just attributes everything to him.

Well, let's, so let's just back up here. And for folks who might not understand, can you, can you walk us through what he was trying to do and what actually happened? Yeah. So the word null in programming means nothing, zero. And in databases, it is the same thing.

So he thought, okay, I'm going to put null on my license plate. And when a license plate reader sees it, it should register as nothing. Nothing. Did not work that way though. No. Turns out backfire, I think is what the saying is. He, yeah.

And then he started getting tickets for like images that license plate readers could not recognize, but had done some nefarious stuff. Like, I don't know, made a right turn on red. And it's, it's, it's a cool thing for, I mean, I give this guy so many props for even thinking of that.

I'm just like, as soon as I saw the headline, I'm like, I just got to, this guy got the license plate null and I'm just like, oh shit, I think I want to marry this guy because that is so cool. I know exactly what he was doing there. And unfortunately there were the consequence of unintended side effects.

Well, when I saw this, I wanted to ask you guys, are there any other words you could think of that would have similar on, you know, consequences when placed into a database? Oh, uh, unfortunately, you know, you can't do backslashes and stars and friends on here, or I could do a SQL injection attack with my license plate.

Yeah, exactly. Oh my God. What if I put it? Oh my God. You know, DEL star from users. If I did, if I put that in there and just made a fake license plate and drove around with that just to see, see if that worked. That's interesting. What if you put a sign on the back of your car that was formatted like a license plate?

So the readers would load that data in. Right. Like you put a big bumper sticker that looked like a license plate with that. Right. Yeah. Interesting. Somebody will have to try that. That isn't me. Right. Right. Someone with a lot less to lose. Well, just take the car out of the equation, just wear a hoodie and a mask and hold up a fake license plate you made and just walk through a crosswalk at any intersection in any major city.

It's going to get scanned in red. So I think, I think that there are ways around it that you don't have to use your own car. Well, I would say what if you stick it to the wall in a parking garage where they cruise around the garages scanning license plates, right?

Oh, that's true. If you have to get to one of the posts inside a parking garage, that would be a possibility. All right. Possibility. I still think, I like it better on somebody else's car. So we can make magnets, then we can just drive around and find some asshole that didn't park right. It like, you know, the back corners out in the street and you just slap one of those on the back of the trunk.

So when the guys come by with the auto readers and the buses or the cop cars, he just immediately gets flagged. All right. Okay. Set warrants equals 200. Armed and taped dress.

All right. Well, you keep coming up with these ideas and I will not have co-hosts pretty soon. I'm sure of that. Hey, I just put it out. I just put it out there. Yeah, you just put it out there. That's true. You're just the evil mastermind. You have minions. I'm like Elon Musk in Hyperloop. I put it on a napkin and then the world takes it away from me.

That's all I want. Practically the same thing. Yep. Kind of. Yeah. Well, I thought... Neither one of them are ever going to work. Yeah. Well, I thought I'd end this segment with a little fun game for us, for, well, for you and Jason and Dave. So, we're all very into our tech here and kind of laugh at the overblown nature of all of it.

So, I've listed eight of some of our favorite companies in our show notes here. Amazon, LinkedIn, Facebook, Microsoft, Palantir, Slack, Twitter, and Uber. I'm going to now read some mission statements and I want you to guess which company it's from. Okay.

Here comes the first one. We ignite opportunity by setting the world in motion. Any guesses? I'd say Uber because it's motion. You got it. Okay. Hang on. Okay. First one down. Oh, sorry. Ding, ding, ding, ding. I'm winning. Oh, we didn't... This isn't a... Wait. I didn't even get to answer.

All right. This is the shittiest game show ever. I thought we'd both put in an answer and then whoever got it wrong... Okay. Never mind. We'll start with number two then. We got one down. That was just a practice round. So, I guess at pub trivia, everybody gets to just say whoever says it for the fastest. Everybody takes a drink.

That's the way it works. All right. Good. All right. Make work life simpler, more pleasant, and more productive. Slack. Yeah. I was... My initial response was LinkedIn. Yeah. It's Slack. All right. There you go. Very good. All right. Give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly without barriers.

Twitter. Twitter. All right. You guys are good at this. Be Earth's most customer-centric company. Oh, my God. Microsoft. Yeah. I'd say Microsoft. Amazon. Oh. Amazon.

What? Yep. The Earth's most customer... That's the one who have no telephone you can call, right? That's right. Okay. All right. Google was on here. Yeah. Oh, God. Okay. Go ahead. Okay. Our mission is to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more.

Oh, Palantir. Could be Microsoft. I'll go with Microsoft. It is Microsoft, although it could have also been Slack, unfortunately, that the way this works is that one got knocked out already, right? So... Yeah. That was Microsoft. We're narrowing them down. Yeah. All right. Connect the world's professionals to make them more productive and successful.

LinkedIn. That's easy. Yeah. LinkedIn. That one's LinkedIn, yes. Yeah. Give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. Facebook. Facebook. Yeah. That one's kind of widely known. I love this one, and we all know what it is at this point. Our mission is to help our users, the people doing the hard work on complex real-world problems.

Our software separates families. That's right. Your privacy is important to us. Oh, Palantir. That's how we eat. Yes. God. Your privacy is so important to us, it pays my mortgage. I just thought that was fun because these are so airy and bullshit.

It's so funny because when you put this in here, I'm looking at it, I'm like, oh, maybe he wants to make an anagram out of the first letters of all of them. And I'm like, so of course I cheated. And I went to wordsmith.org to the anagram server and typed it in.

So here's what we got. We got flat sump, flap must, flap smut, fats plum, fats lump, fat lumps, I think that might be that is because that's what we're all turning into by using these guys.

Stamp flu. Okay. Yeah. And yeah, that's it. That's about it. No, I just put them in alphabetical order. You definitely overthought it to cheat. All right. What do you mean? So hold on. I'm just, I went to one of these websites that does an automatic mission statement generator.

Oh, nice. So I'm going to put in, it's asking for a company name. So I'm putting in grumpy old geeks, grumpy old geeks. All right. Next. What personality best describes your brand? Grumpy. Well, our choices are creative, sophisticated, funny, authentic, exciting, powerful, thoughtful, or rugged.

Let's go with rugged. Rugged. I like rugged. Okay. Very good. Very good. What industry is your company in? Oh, select entertainment. All right. That's debatable. Some may say. All the people hitting next and their podcast players disagree.

In four words or less, what's the main good or service you provide? Separate people from money. I'm going to say entertaining podcast content.

There we go. All right. Next. That's awesome. Who do you provide it for? Geeks. People of the world. Geeks. Okay. Geeks. And how do you help your customers? I argue we don't. By numbing the pain of their daily lives.

I feel like you may have filled this out beforehand. Like I cheated with the Enneagram generator. Oh, oh man. They want me email. All right. Burner email time. Here we go. And that's how a true security professional does it, people. Yeah. Yeah. Take notes, everybody.

Take notes. All right. Generating mission statement for grumpy old geeks. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. You ready? Mm-hmm. Our mission at grumpy old geeks is numbing the pain of geeks' daily lives with strength, resilience, and grit.

All right. We sound great. Not really the payoff I was hoping for, but whatever. I mean. It's more of an elevator pitch generator. Yeah. I get the feeling they more put in your stuff and then pick out a few things from the rugged category and shove them in there, so.

Yeah. Yeah. You know what I think about these guys? They get the gong. All right. Good enough. God, we've turned into the security zoo. Yeah, exactly. All right. Traffic and weather on the eights.

That's right. 73 degrees in West Covina, 73 degrees in Anaheim, California, 73 degrees. It's always 73 degrees. Put me on a gurney. That was an hour of journey. Okay. I think we've done this enough now.

All right. All right. Sorry, people. See ya. Ups and doodads. Long, long ago on an internet far, far away, I signed up on Amazon to get a notification when Alexa Auto is going to be released.

So did I. Yeah. Since then, I've sold my old car, bought a new car, or at least a new car. And the new car I've had for a couple months now, and it's incredibly awesome. But it has CarPlay and Siri, and I love it. So I went back and I looked at the page for Alexa Auto, and I'm like, not going to waste my time on a test run for that one.

I haven't gotten my invitation yet. Jerks. I wish I could send you mine, but I don't think it works that way. Yeah. After seeing your CarPlay integration, I'm fine with that. I'll get that in my next car, and that'll be that. So nice. So nice. And speaking of Amazon, this was just a matter of time.

Amazon has rolled out subscription and discovery boxes. They had to put the discovery on there, but they are subscription boxes of shit that they probably couldn't sell. Yep. And they shove it in a box and sell you the box. Yep. A whole box full of crap you don't need or want.

Yeah. My jaw hit the floor when I saw this one this morning. I'm like, okay. Somebody's going to buy it, man. Somebody's going to buy it. Yeah. I mean, if it gets rid of shit they can't sell, they're going to go a whole hog on this. No two boxes are the same, because whatever's in the throwaway bin over there.

Right. And I found a really interesting article as I've gotten my Phillips Hue lights, and that's become a bit of a conversation. More about that on the next episode and feedback, because a couple people have written in with some thoughts on that. But I did really enjoy this article over on Engadget. Smart homes are a broken mess, and Nest wants to fix it.

This is Rishi Chandra, who is the lead for Google Nest products, and it's his job to have a vision for what's coming. And he doesn't have the answers, he admits, but he has an idea of what he'd like to see, which AI, well, no, when you really get into it, it's Google will develop a solution and force everybody else to use it.

This is what he's hoping for. Oh, my God. But he does really get into it. It's quite an interesting article. It's definitely an interesting space to be working in right now. But he gets into the main problems being that there are tons of varieties of devices, none of which speak to each other.

There's too many devices. There's too many protocols. There's no communication between different manufacturers and different brands. Oftentimes, there's no communication within the same brand, even if you get a couple of different devices, multiple apps, like everything has to have its own app. Nothing is connected very well, even though Amazon and the smart ladies in the tubes are trying to kind of be a bridge in between all these devices.

It doesn't work that great, as we all know. So, yeah, it just gets into all the problems right now. The smart home is not smart yet. It really is not. And it does need a solution. And there does need to be some standards and practices across all the different brands. Yeah. The IEEE needs to get on this and just, you know, build a spec.

Yeah. Build a spec. Build a spec for IoT. Oh, and by the way, guys, when you do that, build in some security. Please, please. Please. Yeah. Yeah. Encrypted by default would be nice. Yes. But yeah. I mean, look, we have TCP IP. That works. We have HTTP.

That works. And we can talk to each other. We have browsers and we have UDP, which is what we're doing the call on. You know, there's all sorts of things. There's all sorts of practices and standards that have been built that work. That work. Now, something that doesn't work. I saw this one over at The Verge.

Smart ovens have been turning on overnight and preheating to 400 degrees. Oh, that's great. Yeah. This is the June smart oven. And a friend of mine actually got one of the first gens of these. I think he had like a pre-release version. I'm like, that's even worse.

Yeah. I want a pre-release oven. A pre-release remote controlled oven. Right. June keeps saying that it's, you know, pebcac. So, problem exists between chair and keyboard, for those of you who don't know that one. Yeah. User error is what they're claiming.

These things are 1500 bucks. I just got a new toaster oven for 30. It works great. No, that was Gen 1. Gen 2 is out now for 599. And it's billed as seven appliances in one. Oh, air fryer, dehydrator, slow cooker, broiler, toaster, warming drawer.

Okay. You just slid that one in there. And convection countertop oven. I have one, too. I paid $70 for mine because mine is specifically made with a big dent in the back so you can fit in a 12-inch pizza. Oh, fancy.

It is fancy. But it does everything that this one does, too, except for the air fryer thing, which also is just a convection oven, if you think about it. Yes. Anyway, this is pretty funny. But one guy left his taters in there overnight, and it came up.

Fortunately, they didn't catch fire. But yeah, death by potato is a bad way to go. Yes. Well, the other thing I wanted to point out about this, it does come in with a built-in camera so you can take selfies of your food. Oh, great. Which isn't a selfie, I would like to point out, but they call it a selfie.

It's called a photograph because you're not fucking in the oven with it. Yeah, well, speaking of more solutions to problems that we didn't have, once I saw you put that in there, this scrolled across my feed, so I had to put this in as well. Devices and appliances you could theoretically tweet from ranked.

A refrigerator, a flip phone, a Kindle, a smartwatch, a Roomba, an iPad, a pager, a toaster, a washing machine, and a video game console, a car, a fitness tracker, and a scale. These are all things that you can now use to tweet from.

Okay. Just what I need. Just what I need. Yes. Okay. What are you going to do? Well, this goes into the, are you fucking kidding me news? Isn't that our show? Well, that is kind of it, but Snap is back with new spectacles.

Just what we've all been waiting for. These capture 3D video and aim for the luxury crowd. Oh, yeah. Great. Yeah. 380 bucks. Yeah. 380 bucks. They're still doing those vending machines?

Maybe we should hit one and. I'll have to go bike around the neighborhood today. Yeah. We can sell them for $3.80 because that's going to be the drop. Yeah. Oh, but my God. I mean, and they are just as dumb looking as the other ones, but except they're stylish now. Right.

Totally stylish. No, they're not. You can literally be called six eyes now instead of four eyes because these have little two cameras over each lens. Now, does anybody that's listening to the show, do you see any of these in the wild ever? Because I don't anymore. I don't see Google Glass ever.

I don't see Snap Glasses. I don't see any of these in the wild. And I live somewhere where you'd think they would be. Well, Google Glass went underground. They went corporate. So that's that's you're not going to find those anywhere. But yeah, I told you one douchebag that I've saw I've seen in the the snap spectacles and he is a bona fide douchebag.

So, you know, your mileage may vary if you wear your Snap Glasses. But yeah, I don't understand why. Why? Because I know they still have a warehouse full of the other ones that they can't get rid of. So let's do this, guys. Let's make a bunch of stuff that nobody wants.

Learn zero lessons from it and say, well, you know what the problem was? It wasn't expensive enough. I think I think we can do better. I really think we can do better. Let's let's more than double the price. We should sell more than twice the amount.

Yeah, I look forward to these showing up in the Amazon Discovery boxes shortly. And we got a question last week on or earlier this week on feedback asking about the Mac apps that I use. I have a very comprehensive list in in the show notes.

So you can go check out all of those. And I am now going to do the world's fastest run through of all the software on my computer. Here we go. Take a breath for this one. Porn. There's no porn on my computer. No, that's in the cloud. Sorry. Of course, it's always in the cloud.

Opera. Spark. Things three. Fantastic L2. One Password, Dropbox, Text Expander, Reader 3, Screens 4, BB Edit 12, Scrivener 3, Highland 2. Not to be confused with Highlander 2, which is one of the worst movies ever made. PDF Expert, Day 1, Transmission, Handbrake, VLC, Bartender 3, iStats Menu, Little Snitch, CleanMyMac, X, Tyke, Timeline, Logic Pro X, Sound Studio 4, Audio Hijack, Loopback,

Farago, iZotope RX-7 Advanced, iZotope Ozone 8 Advanced, iZotope Neutrino 3 Advanced, Ophonic Leveler Batch Processor and Multitrack Processor, Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer. And I'd like to mention at the end here, Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer are fantastic apps, but I am being forced to move into the Adobe Creative Cloud because I need to learn Audition.

Oh, God, Audition's horrible. Oh, don't. Stop, man. Sorry, buddy. Stop. It's a really, actually, maybe it's gotten better because I had high hopes for it when I first, I just, I started to use it when we first started our show. So it's been six years. Maybe it's gotten a lot better. It's gotten, it's gotten a lot.

I started my seven day free trial and it's gotten a lot better. It's great. It's powerful as hell. Yeah. Okay. You know, it's just ugly. But it is ugly. It is really ugly. Yeah. And, but with that, then I get Photoshop and Illustrator included. So I know how to use those and I'm still trying to find my way around Affinity.

Photo and Designer. They're beautiful apps, but I just still don't know where everything's at. Yeah. You know, it's hard for me after like 20, 30 years of using Photoshop. It's just so comfortable. I started with Photoshop too. Yeah. You know, I was a Mac to CI.

Oh, that was fun. I just hate the subscription model. Dude, 600 bucks, 600 bucks a year. I got to pay to use this thing. It's like, damn. I found this one over at dig in my daily dig newsletter, which I highly recommend subscribing to you.

Get some good stories out of there. And it's called, I've seen the worst in humanity. The hard reality of being a brand social media manager. Sing it to me, brother. I was, there's some quotes in here that I really thought that you would like. It's like, just because you can turn on a stove does not make you a chef, which is, which is pretty good.

And there's one paragraph I'll read. The fact that social media managers must have varied skill sets is echoed by Nathan Alibach, the social media manager of Stakem, a brand that has gained notice for its quirky online persona in recent years. Alibach says the position straddles many different areas of expertise, including research, copywriting, brand strategizing, analytics, reporting, and visual production.

The multifarious demands of the job make it amorphous and hard to pin down in neatly delineated terms, which in turn leads to people sliding it or brushing it off as something an intern could easily do. Boom. Boom. Yes, I was, I was doing brand social media management for quite a long time.

And I believe, I don't know, it was like one or two years into our show's beginning when I just started screaming, just because you have an iPhone doesn't mean you know how to run social media, but that's the way the world went. I think we even have a show title about interns and social media because it's just got to be such a things like, no, no, our interns can do it.

We don't need to pay for that. And got so devalued that, uh, yeah. And then just interns run the world now. Yeah, no, it's a, that is a, like a jack of all trades position. You have to know so many things to be, to do it effectively. Yes. Otherwise you can just open Twitter and fart at it and it'll, it'll still make a post, but it won't make a post that will make you any money.

No, I just really, really enjoyed this one. And we both love XKCD on this show. And, uh, I found this one and it's just going to make you climate change deniers can suck it. Go look at this. It's the timeline of earth's average temperature since the last ice age glaciation.

When people say the climate has changed before, the kind of changes that they are talking about were very, very, very, very, very subtle compared to the time kind of changes that we're having now. And a story, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, and weep.

I didn't, I, you know, here's the thing. I didn't weep that much because I'm going to be dead. I'll probably be checked out by then. That's right. It's one of the, it's not going to affect you. Yeah, exactly. It's one of those. Sorry, bro. Sorry. Uh, we, we liked Aquanet.

What do you, what do you want to do, man? Come on. It was the eighties. We didn't know any better. We had to look good. Uh huh. And a friend of the show, Fogarty sent this one over to me. And I swear, I wish I was rich and had a big mansion because the Fantasy Island tattoo golf cart is, is up for auction and starting, starting bid is 7,500.

It has been museum exhibited and it does run. That's amazing. It is so cool. And the second one I put in here for you, Brian, this is the Toys R Us George Barris Jeffrey mobile hot rod built by Dick Dean with custom enclosed trailer.

Also museum exhibited. That is cute. Did you, did you look at the pictures though? Cause if you, if you go around back, there's a spiral staircase to leads up to, wait for it, a bar. I see a bar stool, so I'm sure they used it as a bar.

That is amazing. Love it. Is that not the coolest thing? It's a minimum bid is $20,000. Oh, patreon.com slash GOG. This is the artifacts of Hollywood and music auction at GWS auctions. The links will be in the show notes for these. Start at the beginning and go through.

Actually bidding doesn't start till August 31st. So there's some really cool stuff in here. If you have, if you have the means, then definitely check it out because there's all, there's a ton of Elvis stuff in there, which is kind of neat. And one of them that you can, you can even buy Marilyn Monroe suitcase. So maybe she left some drugs in there for you.

Maybe. In this last one, I threw in here for you again, Brian, Johnny Marr invites nuisance fan on stage to accompany him with this charming man. Did you watch this one? I did. It was, it was charming. It was charming. The kid could play. The kid could play. I just like the banter at the beginning. The banter at the beginning is what the really fun stuff was.

But, um, I see, I've seen Dave Grohl do this on this. There's a thousand videos of Dave Grohl bringing kids up on Foo Fighters concerts that just knock it out of the park. So this is kind of the same thing, but I just liked the, the interaction with Johnny Marr at the beginning. So yeah, it was very cool. I liked it a lot.

And speaking of musicians that I grew up with, I have a closing shout out for the godfather of goth, Peter Murphy, who suffered a heart attack during his New York city residency, not on stage, but he had to cancel a show, uh, and he had to be hospitalized. Um, he is 62 years old, which is insane.

I can't, uh, we're getting older, man. And, uh, my musicians, uh, that I love are getting a lot older, but, uh, apparently he's recovering nicely and all the shows will be rescheduled. So, uh, well done, Peter Murphy. Hang in there. Hang in there, Peter. I'm not ready to lose Bauhaus yet.

One more tour. Bring it on. Until next time. I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks for listening to grumpy old geeks to support the show and keep us on the air. Go to patrion.com slash GOG tosses a buck a month and we'll love you forever. If you'd like to give a one-time or recurring donation, go to GOG.show and click the PayPal button in the sidebar show notes for this episode or at GOG.show slash three, six, nine.

From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, and get links to stuff we like. Stay grumpy.

At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering something new every day. Start with today's special value. Then explore exciting finds across the brands and categories you love.

From beauty and fashion to home, culinary, and outdoor living. Shop now at QVC.com.