373: We’re a Happiness Podcast

This episode is brought to you by Hover. Go to Hover.com slash GOG to get 10% off your first purchase. 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. I'm a broken Jason DeFilippo. Again. I fell down and went boom. Everything hurts so bad. And this was Wednesday. Like, oh, God, getting old is terrible.

Heating pads are nice. And, you know, I do hope you maybe go see a doctor. It's not that. It's not like I don't need to go see a doctor for this. I need to get 10 years back on my life. It's nothing major. All right. It hurts really bad. You know, nothing broken.

There's a lot of strained and popped things. But I will. I will recover. Maybe you need those robotic pants for old people that we keep hearing about them. Keeps them steady. Yeah. Well, here's the other thing I should do. When I go hiking, wear my hiking shoes. That's a good idea, too.

Yeah. Yeah. They made them for a reason. Yeah, I usually do. And this time I was just late to get out of the house because it takes like half an hour to get to the trail. And my buddy was waiting for me. And I just like, I can wear my my little low, low top Nikes with no tread on some of the steepest hills in Los Angeles.

That doesn't work very well. Anyway, I got a little follow up here. I got a note for Oliver who got the Uber credit card. So I got my Apple card and there's actually no number on the back of that one either. So I was I was talking out of turn on that one.

The Apple card is really kind of swanky. It's it's nice. It's way too heavy. But but it is a conversation point. When I hand it to somebody, they're like, oh, I haven't seen one of these yet. So anyway, here's the issue. If you lose your card, you are kind of in a pickle when there's no phone number.

Yes, you are. I was trying to figure out, OK, well, if I lost my wallet and my phone, if somebody stole my wallet and my phone and I could borrow somebody's phone, how would I get support to tell that my card was gone? Well, on the Apple website, it will take you about 10 minutes to find the phone number for Apple card.

But it is there. It is there somewhere. So I'm sure somewhere I tried to go with Goldman Sachs because that's the issuing bank. Yeah, good luck that I thought it was going to be much easier than it was. But yeah, you can find the Apple card on the Apple site, but it is buried.

Stick those numbers in a little note on your phone. But the whole point is, if you lose your phone, if you have your phone, you just go to the wallet app and press a button and said, my card card's been stolen. But they just assume that you're still going to have your phone. Yes, it's like, uh, come on, guys, think a little bit more outside of the box on that one.

Yeah, but that's it's Apple. You know, we can't we can't be bothered with that. Well, since we discovered that unsurprisingly, AI is people and everybody, everybody that has a has a voice assistance, actually, you know, is being farmed out to contractors to actually listen to them to improve them.

Because AI is people. I feel like I want to say that seven thousand times this episode, but I know I'm preaching to the converted already on here. Yeah. Yeah, but since that Apple has decided to fire more than 300 of their contractors in Cork, Ireland, these were all hired as part of the grading program that reviewed audio recorded by Siri.

And there you go. So they've decided to terminate the program after temporarily suspending it, apparently. So a lot of a lot of people lost their jobs now. Well, I mean, the difference here is what they're going to do is they're not going to send out that audio to contractors. They're going to have to be an Apple employee to listen to that now.

So they're bringing it in house. Gotcha. Which, you know, I think is the right thing to do. At least it's, you know, you never know with contractors, as we've seen with all the Facebook people who were, you know, doing everything for Facebook. You never know with those people. You never know. Apple employees, I'm guessing they vet a little better than the contractors because the contractors are like, if you have a pulse and you can click a mouse, you're in.

You're in. For a week until we fire you or you go insane. Yeah. So that's the only difference is that they are going to keep doing it and they're going to bring it in house. But now it's going to be opt in. And I will probably opt in. Well, that's nice of you. I'm not. I never say anything around Siri that really matters.

I don't either. I just don't feel the, I'm firmly in the camp of that data rights are human rights. I'm on a, I'm on a bandwagon push about that. Okay. I just want to see my, I want to see my services improve. That's all. Yeah. Me too. And I'll rely on you to help me get there. Sure thing. And normally I would wait to put this into media candy, but the show will come out on Saturday.

And by Monday, this, this offer is gone, but you can now pre-order Disney plus for less than $4 a month. That's actually going to roll out at $7 a month. So you will be saving quite a bit of money. Uh, the catch here is you have to pay for three years up front.

Yeah. I'm not really into that one. I did it. You did it already. I already did it. I went through, we have a link in the show notes. That's the whole process. I, I, you know, I've got a kid. There's no way I'm not going to have Disney plus, uh, the Mandalorian looks amazing. There's no way I'm not going to have Disney plus, uh, you know?

So yeah, it's a, this was a no brainer for me and, uh, I just saved a, saved a good amount of money. So just wanted to lay that out there for people, uh, because most of us, most of our listeners are probably going to want to have this. So you get a little savings if you get in quick. Yeah. I mean, the issue for me is it's like, it's 140 bucks or 141 bucks for three years.

I'm going to sub and dump, you know, when the Mandalorian's over, I'm good. I'll come back later when there's something else like I do with the, you know, the CBS one. Right. And I'll keep doing that, but they can have my monies. I'll pay my monies and I'll watch it without going to Sweden because it's, you know, seven bucks a month, but I'm not going to shell out 140 when I am, you know, in between jobs right now.

Which is a dumb idea. Understood. Well, maybe I'll share my password with you. Or I can come over to your house. I can just come over to your house and we'll watch the Mandalorian together. We'll get a Snuggie, sit on the couch, you know, have some cocoa. That sounds like fun. Not. Okay. Let's talk about Uber and Lyft again, because they're in the news once again.

They have been slashing driver pay in recent years and now take a larger portion of each fare and far larger than the companies publicly report. Whoopsies. Yeah. Yeah. So Jalopnik did a study on this and they went out and asked riders to give them breakdowns on things and they received over almost 15,000 fares from different drivers.

They came from a web form where drivers can submit fares individually and via email where some drivers sent us all their fares from a given time period. What they've discovered is Uber keeps roughly 35% of the revenue while Lyft kept 38% of the revenue. These numbers came in line with a previous study done by a guy named Lawrence Michelle at the Economic Policy Institute, which concluded Uber's take to be roughly one third or 33%.

So, yeah, the thing is, that's 10.6% and 8.5% higher than Uber and Lyft publicly report figures. Yeah. So they're lying. They are pocketing even more money from the drivers. Yep. They are lying. Yeah.

Keeping tips and eating all your food. And that's the gig economy. I was listening to KROQ the other day and they had a bunch of drivers on from DoorDash and Uber Eats and all those delivery services. No Deliveroo, but all the locals. And 99.999% of all of these drivers have, at almost every time, eaten some of your fries.

Lovely. Yeah. They sample your food. Get over it. So gross. That's so gross. That's why I will not do Uber Eats. I guess, you know, if they start sealing the bags, maybe that would be a good thing to do. But the only thing I ever get from Uber Eats is the godmother from Santa Monica, from Bay Cities here in Santa Monica.

And that comes wrapped with tape on it. Okay. Yeah. Sandwich, I think, is a little harder. You don't have a big bite of sandwich. I can't take a bite. I think the last time I did DoorDash was when I got El Torito and it came, the bag was sealed, it was stapled shut, but all my food was upside down. No, that's just what you want, Mexican food.

Yeah, she just shook the bag and it took her 45 minutes for a less than half mile drive. Nice. Yeah. No tip for that one. So there was no tip for it to be stolen on that one. No tip to be stolen there. Well, Uber and Lyft are also in the news for something else.

Now, before I go into the story and read the headline, I would like to remind our listeners and everyone, Uber and Lyft don't make money. They lose money. They are non-profitable companies. They are not making any money. Understood?

There is no profit. However, they did manage to find $60 million to fight gig worker protection legislation, Assembly Bill 5, that's currently making its way through California's legislature. Completely unprofitable company, companies, no money whatsoever, somehow able to scrape up $60 million to screw their employees by making sure they're not employees.

Remember, Brian, you know, Uber is tightening the belt. They cut out that $250,000 a year for balloons. Can't have a balloon because we need $60 million to make sure you keep being screwed. Yeah, and it's funny that Uber and Lyft both put in $30 million since Lyft loses far less than Uber does.

I shouldn't say makes far less. I should say loses far less. Loses far less. This is the new value of a company. We lose less than they do. My God, I don't understand this world. It's not how profitable you are. It's like, how long can you keep up the charade until you fall off the cliff?

So there's nobody else there. That's basically it. Yep. Oh, man. And speaking of Uber, this one just chaps my dazzle. A beautician has made, like, a scheduling app, and she named it after beautician slash barber, which is, you know, her profession, called Boober.

Okay. Which is a, you know, a concatenation of beauty and barber. Got it. Clever. Very clever. It could be Bober, but it could be Bober. And, of course, Uber is going after her, saying it's a trademark infringement, which is utter crap. Are they also going after Justin Bieber? Yeah, they might be.

So, it's, she's going to fight. Good. Good for her. She's just like, I'm not giving this up, you know? Yeah, why should she? That's ridiculous. Yeah, it's scheduling for beauticians and barbers. It's not taxis and ride sharing. Right. Or scooters or sandwiches.

Right. You know? Well, thank God Uber's got the money to fight this battle, too. Exactly. Because, you know, you know, if Boober can be in the market, it's going to take away so much market share from Uber. Because people are going to be so confused. It's like, I wanted a ride to the airport, but all I got is this fantastic hairdo.

Well, I found another headline that I just loved, and this is continuing the Uber and Lyft news. The story basically is Lime, the scooter company president, saying that maybe our scooters are better business than Uber and Lyft because they've kind of had some troublesome IPOs and they're not making any money, as we've discussed.

So the headline is, scooters may be better business than Uber or Lyft, says Lime president Joe Kraus. In related news, hamburgers may be better business than pizza, says Ronald McDonald. Exactly. And speaking of companies that lose a lot of money, let's talk about Peloton.

I don't understand how this whole thing works because, I mean, they lost $245 million last year. Is that less or more than other biking companies? Who lost less?

And they sell a bike that is extraordinarily overpriced, have better margins than Apple, still continue to lose money. Not only do they sell you an incredibly expensive bike, Jason, it's a bike that comes with a subscription. Subscription. Yes. Exactly.

Exactly. But, you know, even with $245 million in losses, the two top execs are going to take home $21.4 million each. Wow. How does that work? They better, I hope somebody tells them that those Pelotons only have one wheel when they try and make their getaway for the shareholders.

They're gaining on us. They're gaining on us. Wait, we're not going anywhere. Well, you have to keep in mind, Jason, they're not a bike company. They're so much more than a bike. This is what we've learned from their IPO. Oh, boy. I can't even make it through the fucking story.

This is just so ridiculous. OK, so the IPO has a statement that says on its most basic level, Peloton sells happiness, not bikes, not subscriptions, happiness, not fitness, not fitness, not sore butts. I don't know.

But of course. Coronaries. But of course we do so much more. The prospectus declares itself to be a full-fledged innovation company because they sell a fucking bike with a subscription and an iPad taped to it and an iPad taped to it.

It refers to itself as a technology, media, software, product, experience, fitness, design, retail, apparel, logistics company. Are you fucking kidding me? You sell an exercise bike, dude. I used to get them at Kmart for 30 bucks. Oh, man, the people that believe this stuff.

This last sentence. It is an opportunity to create one of the most important and influential interactive media companies in the world, a media company that changes lives, inspires greatness and unites people. Now they're a media company. Yeah, they are. I mean, they do have warehouses of people riding bikes all day long for those live things.

The interesting thing is, of course, you know, it's it's exercise gear. You're going to use it for a month and get rid of it or you're going to put your laundry on it. That's what everybody does with it. It's it's it's the most expensive laundry rack in the known universe. Exactly. It does apparently hold its value very well, though, on eBay.

If you try and find them, they do hold their value. They sell for quite expensive, even though they've got your sweat all over them. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, if somebody's trying to get your DNA, go buy your used Peloton. It's covered in it. But I saw I found an article a while ago.

I need to dig it up, see if I can find it. It's a guy who, you know, DIY at his Peloton and basically got like, you know, a $50 exercise bike, taped an iPad to it and like got a subscription to the thing and did it for like under 200 bucks or whatever.

Ten times less than what a Peloton costs. Unbelievable. It's all about happiness, Brian. We're a happiness company, Jason. We're a happiness podcast. This episode of Grumpy Old Geeks is brought to you by Hover.

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

What's up, Dave? Hey, guys. Good to be back. Had a nice vacation last week. Where'd you go? I saw all the photos. Yeah, I traveled the south, headed south down Skyline Drive, which I had never been on before and is amazing. As I was going, I don't know if you're familiar with Skyline Drive, but it's a road that runs along the ridge of the Appalachians for about 90 miles.

And every couple miles, there's an overlook to pull over and enjoy the view. I've done that a couple times. It's really nice. It really is. I kept thinking as I was driving along there that what a wonderful gift that these folks back in the 1930s gave to us in the future.

It just made me think about what sort of gifts are we leaving for future generations after us, other than, I don't know, higher water levels or something. Yes. Lots of plastic. Lots of plastic in your drinking water. Yeah. But no, we headed south, went to the Leray Caverns, visited the center.

Been there, too. Those are fun. Yeah. Went to the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta, which was sort of the whole point of the trip. They have the Jim Henson collection, which was very neat. And then the Atlanta Aquarium, which is amazing. We have a nice aquarium here in Baltimore, but this one takes it to the next level.

Headed east to Charleston, enjoyed that city, went to Fort Sumter, and then headed north to Williamsburg, did Busch Gardens and the Jamestown Settlement, and a couple hours in Virginia Beach and headed on home. But I have to say, driving in the south is just pleasurable.

I really enjoyed it. The roads are wide open. And every now and then, Waze would take us on some side road where we'd go past cotton fields and little tiny towns with old gas pumps. And it was just a really great way to unplug because when I was driving, I wasn't on my phone and I wasn't on my laptop.

So to have a couple hours here and there of just enjoying driving, it was a good vacation. So anyway, it's good to be back. I missed you guys. Hope everything's going well. Going well. Do they still have the Big Bad Wolf at Busch Gardens? They do not. The Big Bad Wolf, I know.

It's a great ride. The Loch Ness Monster is still there, which is a classic. Yes. The Big Bad Wolf is gone. It's been replaced by a ride called Verbolten. So still a German theme. And it's supposed to be a trip through the dark forest of Germany.

And it's a very good ride, actually. It's a worthy successor to the Big Bad Wolf. It's both indoors and outdoors, has several ride elements that you don't see coming. And so it's a good replacement.

But yeah, I do miss the Big Bad Wolf. That, too, was a classic ride. I was there the weekend it opened. I was there on a school field trip from Virginia Beach when I used to live down there. So we went up to Busch Gardens, and that was like the opening weekend. I have a fond place in my heart for the Big Bad Wolf.

Yeah, it was a great ride, and it's a beautiful park. So I had a good time there. Well, we're going to talk about security cameras for a little bit right now. Okay. Because we have talked about them in the past and all of the different ones that I've tried. And well, today we've got a meth head wandering the neighborhood trying to break into houses.

Oh. And as we sit here, I'm waiting for the police to show up because he's terrorizing my neighbor, trying to get into her house, and she has kids inside. And this guy is tweaked out of his gourd. Now, hold on a second, Jason. You posted some of these videos hours ago.

6.30 this morning is the first time we saw him. Is there not a police officer there yet? Because they have not shown up. Maybe if you granted them access to your ring cameras, they'd be more responsive. Well, let's talk about that. Let's talk about that ring camera for a second. Okay.

I would gladly give them footage, and I've got it prepared and ready to go for them. But the ring footage is shit. Utter shit. Because I posted the videos in our show notes, so you saw them. Yep. The first video shows the guy walking across the other side of the street. Mm-hmm. And in the second video that I posted, which is from my Logitech camera, you see him actually come up to my house and, you know, trying to peek around and see what he's seeing.

Oh, I thought both videos were ring footage. Your Logitech is considerably better. Exactly. Yes. The problem with ring is if you go with the default settings, it'll trigger for 30 seconds, take video, and then lie dormant for another four minutes and 30 seconds.

Before it can be triggered again? Yes. That doesn't seem... Smart? Yeah. That's one way to go. Doesn't seem sane. Yeah. So I went and I tweaked the settings to, you know, most frequency, so I'm seeing more.

It's still cutting out a lot when people walk by, because I've got it in a place where people do walk by, and it's garbage. Thanks for the tip there, Jason. Actually, I'm going to go and modify my mom's. Yeah, you have to. You have to. And I'm looking on the Ring app for other people who have seen this guy, because he's tried...

We've got video of him, surprisingly, not a lot from Ring cameras, from regular cameras. You have him trying to break into people's houses, like, you know, five o'clock this morning. Still, obviously, no police. And your tax dollars at work? Yeah, no shit. Or not. So, yeah, the Ring stuff is absolutely useless.

But there are people in my neighborhood. We've had a rash of break-ins in my neighborhood over the past 10 days. Almost none of these break-ins triggered a Ring camera. Hmm. They're absolutely useless. And some people are theorizing that if you cut the Wi-Fi to a house, you know, you just use a Wi-Fi jammer, that it disrupts the Ring from recording.

I think that they are thinking way too outside the box for some of these criminals. Most meth heads don't have Wi-Fi jammers on them. No. Exactly. They're just garbage cameras. And, you know, this one woman, like, somebody broke into her house when she was in. She had three Ring cameras around the house, pointed right at where the guy came in, and none of them triggered.

It's ridiculous. That's, oh, hmm. How do you suppose that could be? Bad settings? I'm not sure. Oh, the police are here. Yay. So, that's a good thing. Do you have your come back with a worn doormat out?

No, I don't. Did you pull it inside? No, I don't. No, thank God I don't. Does it flip over and say, welcome to the boys in blue? Yes, it does. Enjoy this lovely buffet of free donuts.

That is a really good marketing idea. Somebody should make that. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Just, it flips over. When you're in trouble, you have three donuts, and on the other side, it's come back with a warrant. Yeah. Never mind what that said previously. Cover your bases.

Right. Yeah. So, they're finally getting this guy, thank God, because he's a mess, and he's been around here for hours. But, finally, I think once it was, he was trying to get in the house with the kids in it, then I think that really lit a fire under their ass.

Now, when you say trying, because I watched the footage of this guy, and if, before I, knew anything about this story, I thought, yeah, this is a guy wandering around, and he looks kind of shifty, maybe a little nervous, peeking at things.

But there wasn't anything that made me go, oh, danger, danger, danger. I would have thought this was a guy who was checking cars for loose change or something like that. So, I mean, is that the kind of, when you say trying to get into people's houses, is he going, jiggling doorknobs? Yes.

He's opening screen doors and trying to, you know, open the doors and walk in. I see. And if you notice in one of the videos, the second video, he is actively hiding his face from a jogger that's walking by, or a walker that's walking by, so he doesn't see him.

This guy is, like, you know, he's messed up, but he knows not to, like, make eye contact with people. Right. Not his first rodeo. Yeah, exactly. So, the point of this story, though, is that all of the, well, ring camera sucks is the main point of the story.

That's the takeaway. That's the real takeaway. The Logitech camera is, you saw it so much nicer. Yeah. And I don't even have that at max settings. That's only at 720p. That's not at 1080. It goes even higher. And the biggest issue with both of them, though, is no onboard storage. So, if you do lose your network connection, nothing's getting recorded.

Which is why, in my studio, I have multiple cameras that actually have SD cards in them. Right. And just, you know, like, you know, there's about a week and a half of data on the cards and just overwrites as it goes. But I am seriously tempted to, like, just, A, get rid of the ring cameras, find a sucker and pawn them off, and put some nice cameras outside that at least have SD cards in them.

Because if, you know, if something happened and, you know, there's a blip in the Wi-Fi or it just can't connect fast enough. Because, you know, the Logitech is always pushing video. The ring is not. It has to be activated and triggered. Right. Let me ask you this. So, the cameras that you have that do onboard recording, are they also sending things to the cloud?

Yes. Okay. Gotcha. I've actually, well, I've actually got it sending three places. They're Amcrest cameras. Okay. The ones that I did have to update the firmware on the other day because they were the ones that were vulnerable to the listening and listening in hack. Of course. These can go to Amcrest Cloud, which is their cloud service, which will store it for a while based on your subscription package.

Right. They also upload to my Synology, which is in the house. And they've got onboard SD cards. Right. Okay. Great. The obvious problem, you know, for our listeners is if the recording is on board and someone can smash and grab the camera itself, if it's not going anywhere else, then not only do they have the camera, they have the recording.

Right. Yeah. So, as long as it's going to multiple places, then you're in good shape. Yeah. Two is one and one is none. Yeah, exactly. And these Amcrest cameras that I have, they're interior cameras, but when I got them, they were about 90 bucks each. I checked Amazon the other day because my roommate broke one and I had to get a replacement and they're only 50 bucks now.

Wow. And they're, yeah, they're pretty good. I'll put a link in the show notes to them. They're in their pan and tilt. So, you can actually log in with your app and move them around and night vision, person detection on them. So, you know, you can set it to trigger when someone walks in the room. And don't forget, you can get, you can get the aftermarket license plate reader software and put it on there.

There you go. That too. That too. But definitely upgrade the firmware when you get them. But yeah, so it's been, been a harrowing morning around here. And of course, I know it wasn't going to do any good because this guy is so tweaked out of his mind.

But of course I got my, my paintball gun ready with my PVC riot rounds and pepper spray ready to go in case he tried to get in the back. Now, what about Bam Bam as a deterrent? It had no effect. Oh, okay. This guy, this guy doesn't even know.

I mean, he is, can't walk a straight line. He is out of his mind, which is why it's like, you know, even the paintball gun would be last resort because I don't think he'd feel it. Right. You know, uh, he would feel Bam Bam, but I don't want to, I don't want to put her in that position. Right, right. Yeah. Poor Bam Bam.

So you could let Bam Bam out in the backyard, for example. And she was, and she was barking at him and he was just still wandering around. Not doing anything. It was unfazed. Wow. So that's, you know, that's living in the land of meth heads here in Southern California. I'll, I'll share a quick story with you, uh, just because it's funny.

Um, my only experience crossing paths with, uh, meth heads in a similar kind of way is, uh, one day at my old office, uh, which is also here close to where my current office is. Um, next door, next door to the office was a deli and there was a parking lot.

And, uh, this office is parking lot bordered a residential neighborhood and there was a line of hedges in between the business and the residential area. And I would often park over there, park away from the office, you know, to get a little, get a little walk in between where I parked and keep the car away from the other cars, blah, blah, blah.

So, um, one day I get out of my car, it's midday, lunchtime rush, and I hear all this rustling in the hedges and this gets my attention. It could be a deer, it could be a raccoon, could be who knows what.

And they're, they're rustling and rustling. And, and, and suddenly I hear where distinctly human noises and they're rustling and rustling. And I come to realize that these are human noises of pleasure. Oh, homeless fellatio?

Well, I didn't stick around long enough to investigate closely. I went over to the deli and, uh, cause I knew the owners of the deli and I said, uh, this was Joe's deli. And I said, Joe, I think there's something going on in the hedges over there.

And Joe had, Joe was one step ahead of me. He had his binoculars out. This ain't Joe's first rodeo. No, it was not. And Joe said, uh, yeah, the, uh, police are on their way. And, uh, sure enough, the police came and rounded them up and got them dressed and sat them on the curb and let them cool down a little bit and hauled them off in the back of the car.

So I don't know what overtook them that they thought that that hedgerow was the place to, uh, express their affection for each other. But, uh, that was one of the stranger experience, stranger experiences of my life. I have to say I'll take passion over thievery any day though, I suppose.

Yes. In the upper Haight in San Francisco, when I first moved up there, it's right by the end of Golden Gate Park. And, uh, that would be the Eastern end of Golden Gate Park where it just kind of pulls out on Haight-Ashbury area. There's a McDonald's there. And that's where the homeless people used to go sneak in the bushes.

Well, not really in the bushes. There was, there was one trash can right by the drive-through and they would stand behind the, well, one person would stand behind the trash can. The other one would be on their knees performing homeless fellatio. And the only thing that I'm loving it, this, yeah, I'm loving it.

Have it your way. I just can't, I can't imagine the smell. Oh my God. No. Oh, bad, bad, bad stuff. Yes. That's what San Francisco was known for back then. This was before the man poo problem. It was homeless fellatio was the problem. Wow. Shall we talk about some tech news?

I was wondering myself, why should we bother? I mean, it's all downhill from here, really. Well, I don't know. The Apple news is kind of big. It is. The iPhone hacking news is pretty big. Have you guys covered this one yet? We have. We have.

It's just sort of breaking as we record this. So, yeah, it's in today's CyberWire. And I have to say I'm trying to calibrate this one in my head as to how big a deal it actually is and how much does it sort of shake my perceptual foundation of the relative security of iOS devices.

Right. But that billboard isn't looking so like it's such a good idea now, is it? No, it's not. No, it's not. I guess I can run through this. The folks at Google's Project Zero found a number of websites that were taking advantage of zero-day exploits where if you visited this website using iOS, seven of the exploits involved Safari.

Basically, they got root access to your phone. Yep. Not good. Access to all the databases on your phone. So, even encrypted communications, all your photos, basically everything. There's not a whole lot of good news here.

The good news that there is is that this has been patched. So, update your iPhone. Make sure you've got the latest stuff running. The other semi-good news is that it's not persistent.

So, if you reboot the device, it goes away. They're out. But how often do you reboot your iPhone? I basically reboot my iPhone when I install an update. Get a new one. Get a new one, yeah. Yeah, now, the thing I...

Now, is there... Do we have any idea of how many people might have actually been affected by this? Project Zero estimates thousands a day. Oh. That's a lot. And they also assume that this is a tip of the iceberg kind of thing, where these are just the websites that they've found that are doing this.

So, no real way to know. I suspect it's possible that Apple might know the extent of this. Now that they know what to look for, they might be getting data back from the phones to, you know, just to look at attempts to get in.

One thing that was interesting to me that I wanted to ask you guys about was if you read the teardown of the implant itself, which is one of the final write-ups on this.

They walk through what it does. And one of the things it does is they demonstrate how it was able to get all of the data out of things like WhatsApp and Telegram and iMessage, which are all, of course, end-to-end encrypted chat clients' apps.

So, this got me thinking about, well, doesn't iOS encrypt data at rest? Well, it does. But if you have root access to the device, it doesn't matter, right?

Right. Because you still have to decrypt it to see it. Correct. It's decrypted when you type it, and when you view it, it's going to be decrypted. So, there are going to be points in that chain where, obviously, it will be decrypted information, and then it can pull it from there. Yeah. The other element about this that caught my eye is there's a bit of an insult to injury part of this, in that when it communicates back to its command and control servers, all the data it sends back, it's sending in the clear.

So, if you're on a public Wi-Fi or whatever, this is all going out over the internet in the clear. Oh, that sucks. Yeah. So, so far, as far as we know, all they were doing is stealing data.

There hasn't been any attempts to ransom or anything like that. No. Nobody's heard anything, so we don't really know. They're just grabbing it all. No, and I haven't seen any specifics about what type of websites these were on. Yeah, it would be nice to know that.

Well, it could help us understand if they were targeting specific groups or specific people or anything like that. So, I thought I read somewhere that it was mainly Middle Eastern. Is that right? Okay. Yeah, that's in one of the write-ups. I read like 17 of these this morning, so I can't, it's all kind of a jumble.

But I do, one of the articles did peg that it was, they were Middle Eastern websites. Okay. Not surprising, I suppose. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So. That seems to be where the action is when it comes to iOS exploits. That's, that's where the money is. That's where the action is, so.

It's fucking Israelis. Your work's not mine. I know, I love them. I love them. They're just so good. They're so good. And I did, I did go through that very deep dive that they posted on Project Zeros. Yeah. And, scarily enough, on a blogspot.com domain.

Well. They still got, yeah, they still got that dog in the, in the pen. My head hurt after about, you know, three scrolls. Wow. It was incredibly detailed what these guys went through. I mean, you know, I, I was thinking it was going to be fairly straightforward, but the math involved in just the whole logic, like flow and everything, I was just like, it made me feel really, really stupid.

I just got to say that because it was, it was very deep what these guys did for these exploits. And the, you know, the investigation that these guys at Google did is just, you know, stellar. It really is. And, uh, good for them for publishing this stuff and, uh, you know, good for Apple for patching it.

But the fact that it was out there for what they're saying is probably a couple of years. Yeah. I like that Google only gave them a week too. They're like, you guys, this one's bad. You get a week instead of two months or 90 days. Mm-hmm. All hands on deck. Yeah. But Hey, at least, uh, Apple got the patch out in a week.

They did. Good for them. Yeah, they did. It's the other thing I looked into after this story was there's this whole thing that there is no antivirus on iOS. Yeah. The Apple does not allow it and they do not allow it because they say you don't need it because everything, apps are sandboxed.

Everything goes through a review process on the app store. And so there's no reason for it. Um, and so I suppose Apple is running checks on the system level for a variety of issues and keeping its eye out for things running in ways they're not supposed to.

Um, but there really is no, there's no opportunity for any sort of third party auditing of what's going on on your phone at this sort of level. Right. Yeah. The antivirus is at Apple, you know, it's, that's in the review process. Right. So it's, it's a, it's single point of failure.

So if something gets through, then it's through. Yep. Which, you know, as deep as this stuff is, it's not like even so much a virus. It's like a system flaw. Yeah. Yeah. And again, one of the things I'm dealing with is just trying to figure out, try to settle in my own mind, how much does this shake my feeling of confidence in the security of iOS itself?

And I don't, I haven't, I haven't answered that yet. What do you guys think? I'm not going to lose sleep over it. Yeah. I, you know, this is great fuel and fodder for Android lovers to turn around and go, ha ha happened to you too, but it happens a lot less. We've got one, so one thing got through.

It sucks. It's not good. Well, 12 things actually got through. 12 things. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, I don't know. It'll be interesting to see as more of these are discovered. It's something to look for now. Other researchers will surely jump on this and start looking around themselves.

Yeah. Yeah. And this, this was from back in, this was from back in February too. So, you know that they've been hands down, like trying to fix all this. And figure out more flaws like this and, and fingerprint these things. So when they do come through the app store, they can keep an eye out for them, you know?

So I'm hoping, you know, hopefully in iOS 13, they didn't go back and turn back on all the bugs again. Like they did a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, exactly. That would be nice, but I'm looking forward to 13. We'll see. Lucky number 13.

There you go. Now, this one, I just, we had to have something a little bit lighter. NASA astronaut accused of identity theft and first criminal allegation from space. All I can say is it's a good thing we're spinning up a space force. That's right.

That's right. Yes. Oh my God. See, President Trump saw this coming. Yes. That's it. Start sending up, oh God, computer scientists to check everybody's computers on the space station, except everybody's dead because there's a robot up there right now killing everyone.

But yes, Anne McLean, the astronaut, was basically peeking into some private financial records that she wasn't supposed to be peeking into and did it from space. Like, you think nobody's watching when you're up in space? Yeah.

If there is a single internet connection that's being kept an eye on 24-7, that is it. That is the one. See? And if she would have gone to GOG.show slash VPN, she could have got private internet access. I never would have been able to trace that.

It wouldn't have gotten caught. Exactly. You know, I don't know who this one is actually on, though, because, you know, if you are in a situation with somebody that is very close to you and it goes sour and you had shared your passwords with them at some point, change your password.

True that. Right. And how are you going to, I mean, you get into your word against theirs that you have revoked their privileges to access that account unless you change the password. Yeah, that's the one clear way to ensure the fact that I am not, I don't want you to access this anymore.

Well, here's the thing. He's like, she's in space. She's not going to be checking the account. I got some time. I'll do it on the weekend. What's she going to do from space? Oh. Oops. Well, Amazon delivers there now, you know.

God. Right. Well, it makes for a fun story. It is a fun story. It's run of the mill, you know, but it just happened in space. Yeah. The other thing is I wouldn't have thought that the folks on the ISS had this kind of free time on their hands.

Well, I mean, I guess you got to have a little downtime. I just didn't. You got to have your own rack time. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. Why not check out what your ex is up to? I guess. I have the wholeness of humanity floating underneath me that I can look out, but I want to see how much money.

I'm going to wellsfargo.com. Yep. Let's see if this motherfucker's cheating on me. God damn it. Oh, look. Madagascar. Yeah. He got it. He bought her. What? Oh, Tasmania. Right. That's how it goes. I believe it was actually a she and a she, wasn't it?

Yes. Yes, it was. It's her wife. Yeah. She was her wife down on, down on earth. Oh, okay. And they're in the midst of a custody battle over their son. Good times. Yeah. Yeah. Change your passwords when that stuff happens. Lots of layers. Yeah. Lots of layers. I don't know how I missed the wife and wife thing.

Oops. Anyway, I found this one over at the New York Times, which is a pretty interesting one. How China uses LinkedIn to recruit spies abroad. Yes. Now, we know this is possible because a friend of the show, Jordan Harbinger, did a talk at DerbyCon years ago now about how easy it is to get people with top secret clearances to tell you just about anything they want to know.

So, but now they're like, wait, we don't even have to leave the couch anymore. We can just sit here and have people come to us. We could do it from space. We could do it from space. Right. Right. So, yeah, they're just using LinkedIn to try and get people to come over and then, you know, flip them as agents.

We covered this on the Cyber Wire. And one of the interesting points is that they tend to look for people who are at transitional points in their careers. So, you're getting ready to retire. They'll reach out to you and say, please come and, you know, do a presentation over here in China.

We want to learn all about your expertise. And of course, we'll pick up the bill and you go over and it's the thing that always happens with recruiting spies. It's one little favor at a time until they have so many favors from you that you feel like you can't say no to them.

Yeah, they get you that way. And that career transition is important because that's how Jordan did it, too. He posed as like an HR woman for a lot of it to say, hey, you know, tell me more about what you do there. You know, what are your what are your qualifications? What did you do at Raytheon in that top secret missile department?

Because we need to know if we're going to get you a job over at Boeing, you know. Right. Right. And also, those transitional periods can be times of financial uncertainty. And so that's an element as well. Preach it, brother. Yeah. Well, let's end on a downer again.

I've saw this. Yay! I saw this over on Twitter and we knew this was coming. This is a photo at an airport posted by a woman named Window Snyder on Twitter, who is in security to some degree, gathering from her a little about her thing, which is security, blah, blah, blah.

So there you go. This is a poster at the airport. Privacy. I'll just read it really quickly here. Privacy information, biometric boarding. As you approach the E-gate or camera, your photograph will be taken and provided to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, CBP. CBP will compare that photograph to the images associated with your passport, visa, other travel documents, or prior border inspections.

CPB will delete photographs of U.S. citizens collected through this process within 12 hours. For certain non-U.S. citizens, this photograph may be retained in secure Department of Homeland Security Systems and uses a biometric confirmation of departure from the United States as required by law. Insert code.

So, jumbo stuff. All CBP partners, such as airports, air carriers, their system integrators, and or vendors will immediately delete any photos taken during this process. These entities will not retain any photograph taken during boarding for any purpose and are subject to DHS compliance audits. If you do not wish to have your picture taken, please see an agent to request alternative procedures for identity verification and or biometric confirmation of departure from the United States.

So, it's here. Uh-huh. My first thought was, um, narrator, the photographs were not deleted. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And some of the, many of the comments are along that line, including one by T-Profit, which is, by delete, I assume they mean store forever and share with whomever the government wants for any purpose, also Palantir.

Right. Yeah. So, uh. Also Palantir. So, yeah, it's, it's here now. Um, I don't know how I feel about this at all. I'm, I'm not cool with this. Well. I don't have a choice. I was going to say, here's the problem with that. Nobody gives a shit what you feel when it comes to this.

Yep. It's here. I wonder what the alternative procedures are and. Strip search. What kind of red flag does that raise? Right, exactly. Strip search, put on list. Yes. Yeah. I mean, they've already got your retina scan and your thumbprints and. So, what are you going to do?

Yep. And this is when you're leaving the U.S. They want to make sure you left. They want to make sure you left. Otherwise, they put you on a list. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. At least that's what they say. That's what they say. Yes. Yes. Welcome to the United States. We're just going to take every scrap of DNA you have.

And if you're not out of here by lunchtime, we are going to send ice after you. What, what is the situation that you think could lead to this being changed? Let's just let that silence it. We should have just ended the segment right there. No, none.

No answer. I don't, I don't know. I don't know. It seems that we are just going further. I mean, luckily we're having, we're having local governments and things of that nature starting to ban things like facial recognition. Maybe we can get to people going, hey, this is not cool.

This is not America. This is not what we do. But I don't know. Oh, it is what we do now. It is what we do now. That's the problem. Yeah. Right. Well, on that high, happy note. Everybody enjoy their travels for Labor Day weekend. Yeah. Don't leave the house.

See, the thing is, yeah. Do what Jason does and just watch, monitor the neighborhood through security cameras. Yes. Because if you fly, you have to deal with this now. If you're driving, there's license plate readers everywhere. Just be a Jason. Stay home. Jason was right all along.

Stay home. That's right. Told you. I'm ahead of the curve, man. I'm always ahead of the curve. Yes, exactly. Ahead of the curve. That is right. See, the problem, Jason, is with you just staying at home. People are trying to come to you like meth heads. That's true. That's true.

And look, I left the house for one day this week and almost like, you know, broke myself for forever. So I went for a walk and almost died. So that's what I'm telling you, man. I'm staying at home. All right. Wrap yourself in bubble wrap. Cups and doodads.

So I've been looking at potentially setting up a VPN at the router level because I want to be able to run my Apple TV through a router and be able to say that I'm in Toronto because for some reason here in the United States, Nick Jr., which has all of my son's favorite shows, does not go on to Netflix.

They decide to go to Amazon and require you to get a secondary, not even Amazon Prime. You then have to pay for the noggin subscription of $7 per month to be able to get some of the shows and you still have to buy the other ones. While in Toronto, in Canada, they're all on Netflix.

Oh, so there you go. So if I connect my Apple TV through a route, through a VPN, say I'm in Toronto, boom, I pay for Netflix. I get my shows. Insane, right? So I was looking into it and unfortunately, it seems to be rather complicated. I was kind of hoping I would be able to take our preferred VPN of choice and just be able to do some software fling managing these, but it's not that simple.

I'd have to buy a router, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you put in a nice link in the show notes. So thank you for that. So it is something I'm looking into, but it's going to be an outlay of time and money, both of which I do not have at the moment. Yep. And the workaround right now is loaded up on your laptop using a VPN and AirPlay it to the TV, which works quite well.

So it's not as sexy and not as nice, but it does the job and it's free and it's free. Yeah. You already own the goods. And good old Apple. Finally, they're going to start letting third party shops do official iPhone repairs with genuine parts.

How nice of them. That's good. Yeah. Because the wait lines at the genius desk these days are out of control. Well, I told you the last time I went to Best Buy and it wasn't too bad. It wasn't too bad at all, except for the line cutters, ass wipes. But yeah, the service was just fine at Best Buy.

But now that'd be great if mom and pop shops can actually get the right tools that they need. Yeah. Good job, Apple. That's the way to do it. Yeah. Getting there. Let's just say you're getting there. Getting there. Slowly. Yeah. And I saw this bit in the news as an app and a gadget that I can't really understand the need for.

But Nike now has put out self-lacing shoes that can be controlled with your Apple Watch and Siri. Oh my God. Yes. Because tying your shoes is apparently too hard. Get a pair of Roos if you're that lazy and just slap on the Velcro.

And you can have presets for... Okay. Okay. In case... One for every family member. Who gets the shoes today, Joe? Set it for mom setting. Oh, thank God we all have the exact same size feet. I guess the theory here is you can go from a relaxed fit while sitting at your desk to a secure hug for running sessions.

Jason, maybe you need this for your hiking. I found a use case for these shoes. Except they hit a rock and then, you know, they short circuit and then I can't get my foot out. And then it squeezes my foot and pops off. Well, I'm sure maybe you can, you can, if that and it could like sense, you put it, you can sense that you're tipping over.

Yeah. If my Apple watch triggers a fall, then it'll send an iftita thing to my shoes that will run it through the satellite. All right. Now the 300 bucks seems like it's worth it for this stupid thing. Oh my God. What do you need?

What do you need? Here's what you don't need. Open source self-driving. What could possibly go wrong? I saw this video of a Toyota Corolla hatchback flying through a heavy rainstorm. And as I ran through the... Flying? Well, going 40 miles an hour. I thought this was one of those new, you know, we were supposed to be getting the flying Ubers any day now.

That's true. Yes. No, no air Uber yet. No. Okay. Well, as I kept reading this, this isn't one of the major companies. This is a guy who runs Open Pilot. Open Pilot is an open source self-driving package.

They tried to actually sell this a while ago. And in 2015, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration shut them down. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. And HTSA, that was good for you. So he said, fuck it. Let's just open source it.

Great. Yeah. That's what you're going to do. So they do have a warning saying that users are on their own if something goes badly. Yes. I'm sure that will work in the court of law. Yeah. Caveat emptor. But yeah. They said they've racked up about 10 million miles soon.

Yeah. Well, it's being kept alive by self-driving car enthusiasts. Okay. I prefer it would be kept alive by, you know, shouldn't this be a software software engineers? Well, it depends on how you use it. I mean, you can write all the code you want, put it in your car all you want, but don't drive it on a public road.

Well, that's the thing. I'm sure they are, aren't they? Well, if they're racking up 10 million miles, it sure as shit isn't in the parking lot at the mall. Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, this has got to be illegal. And at the very least, I'd want to know.

They need to put a big sticker on their car. Well, I'm sure there's got to be some cameras taped to the car. Well, yeah. At least look out for that. But, oh, no. You know why? Because I think it takes over the cameras in the car and it uses those cameras. Oh, yes. Yes. There you go.

Yeah. So, okay. Well, good luck out there. Like, it's not bad enough. So, we've got the fires going on in the Amazon. Not good, obviously. And thankfully, we're kind of chipping in and doing our part.

The G7 Summit's on right now and the world leaders there have pledged to offer $20 million to help tackle the raging fires which are sweeping across the Amazon. That's great, right? Sounds like a lot of money. Sounds like gas money to get the firefighters there. Well, yeah. It doesn't really sound like a lot of money, but it certainly doesn't sound like a lot of money in comparison to another statistic.

Okay. Yeah. People online who have heard this have pointed out that Netflix paid over $100 million just to buy Friends. Now, are we talking the TV show Friends or just buy Friends in general because nobody will hang out with them? Yeah. Probably just buy Friends in general because the, you know, Netflix and chill hasn't been, he's been very lonely.

Nobody's taking him up on it. Nobody. Poor guy. Unbelievable. Five times as much. Yeah. So, we can stream Friends. Awesome. Well, you know, here's the thing. You don't want to go outside because the air is so bad because the Amazon's on fire. So, you want to stay inside. True. True. True. True that. Why not? If you're going to stay inside, Netflix wants you watching Netflix.

Yeah. Get on your couch. Enjoy Ross and Rachel. Yeah. Remember Foursquare? I do. It was very popular amongst me and my friends for quite some time before we realized, what the hell are we doing? I, yeah, wasting a lot of time and giving people a lot of data.

I'm the mayor of blah, blah, blah. Yes. I'm head twat of the coffee shop. Yay. Yay. I just never liked Dennis, one of the founders. He was always a prick to me in person. So, I have a grudge against Foursquare. Also, I thought it was dumb. One of many. Yeah.

Look at the long history there. But anyway, so they're still around and they're going to earn a hundred million dollars this year or they're going to come close to it. Didn't they rename their app to like Swarm or Swarm or something like that? That's when they lost everybody.

That was like the worst pivot in the history of the universe or worst brand. Like everybody just quit it at that point. Here's the funny thing. I saw somebody post a Swarm link this morning on Twitter. Really? So, yeah. I was like, hmm, I think Fogarty still uses it too, friend of the show. I think he's a Foursquare guy, Sailor Swarm guy, whatever they call it nowadays.

But Foursquare said, hey, you know what? We got a lot of data and we're really good at figuring out where people are. And the thing is, the thing is, they've got a lot of data from people from about 10 years ago. Ah, but they use that data to figure out how to do a lot of the geolocation stuff on the phone that other people are not very good at.

Right. So they use that data to actually build out the technology for tracking people, which is apparently second to none right now. And they sell, sell all of it. Every last bit of it. All right. Yeah. Yeah. So that's really all they got to make money with now.

Well, that's it. They're tracking you and they basically sell it back to anybody who will pay them. So it's an interesting article. It's a little annoying. OK, fuck that. It's a lot annoying. They're just yeah, they're just they're they're full on data brokers now.

So if you've got Foursquare still on your phone, you know, you're just feeding into the beast or Swarm or in some cases the app for your your favorite store because they could be sending data back to Foursquare as well. That's true. That is very true. Yeah. Data, data everywhere.

So go read the article. Let us know what you think. Drop us an email or a tweet. I'm curious to see what the what you guys think about this, because, yeah, I think it's skeezy. Look at you dropping a call to action. Yeah. Come on, people. Up to feedback loop. Bit of sad news.

Mythbusters star and race car driver Jesse Combs died at 36 after a jet car crash. She was attempting to break her own land speed record. And yeah, unfortunately, things went awry. So sad news. Yeah, very sad. She was great. Yeah, I really liked her, too.

I love the episodes that she was on and she was pretty fantastic and did a lot of cool stuff. Pretty awesome. But sad, sad in there. And better news. Alex Trebek is beating the Jeopardy of cancer. I don't understand that headline at all. Has finished. It's just hacky.

It's so hacky. We got to fit Jeopardy in here somewhere. Come on. We need the SEO. How are we going to shoehorn the word Jeopardy in here? But that is good news. He's finished chemo and he's gone back to work. He's feeling well enough to go back to work. So I'm very excited and happy about that. That's great news. And a final shout out to Chris Lockhead and follow your different podcast.

I just recorded an episode with him yesterday, so I will keep you update when it comes out. It was a good time. I had a nice time talking to him. It was a lot of fun. Chris is awesome. I've been on the show twice now and it was fun. No, I got to catch up. That's why I did number one. Until next time, I'm Brian Shellmaster.

And I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, go to patreon.com slash GOG. Toss us a few bucks and we'll love you forever. If you don't like Patreon but still want to support the show, you can give a one-time or recurring donation by just going to GOG.show and click that PayPal button. Your support really keeps us going and we really appreciate it.

Show notes for this episode are GOG.show slash 373. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, and get links to stuff we like. Stay grumpy.

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