378: Doctors In a Tube

This episode is brought to you by Hover. Go to hover.com slash GOG and 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. Guess what day it is, Brian? What day? iOS 13 day. Actually, it's the day after. It is. I did it all yesterday. Oh, man. I did it today. I was busy yesterday. Right. Doing things. Right. So what do you think so far? Dark mode's nice. I like that. I enjoyed that last night. It does seem to cross

across almost all the apps that I normally use. So that's super peachy cool. Seems to be a little buggy with messaging so far. My messages aren't syncing very well across all my devices. Sometimes I'll get a message on my phone, but not my computer or not my iPad or vice versa. So I already heard 13.1 is coming on Monday. So hopefully that will fix some of these things. But other than that, I haven't

noticed too much of a change. I haven't delved into some of the newer features yet. I did set up my contact thing with my Memoji, which is just stupid. Some of the updates and notes seem to be pretty cool, making it more powerful because, you know, I love my notes. I love being able to sync that with my wife and stuff like that. So having checklists and things like that in there seems great. I don't use Apple music. So time sync lyrics, a big feature they're touting does nothing for me. All the stuff

with the privacy with face ID. Ditto. I haven't been able to use Apple login yet. I'm looking forward to that, but I'm already logged into all my apps. So, you know, yeah, me too. That's the thing. I don't have to like really sign up for anything new. Yeah, but yeah, I've had that same message problem as well. So that's kind of annoying. Yeah, but so far so good. I run my phone in black and white. So dark mode actually means nothing to me. Yeah. Well, you're weird that way. Yeah. Yeah,

I know. But that's that's OK. That's OK. Yeah. Well, this is a non-judgment zone. This is a safe space, Jason, for your oddness. Yes, it is. This is the main place for my oddness. Come on. Who are we kidding here? Yeah, I did update my watch, but man, that took forever. As did I. And I started to I don't know how bad yours was, but when I first started to do my update, it gives you that I felt like I was back in Windows world. It said nine days to update. Oh, man. Mine just

said, well, yeah, three hours for mine. And then a few minutes later, it went to seven days to update. And I was like, oh, my God. And so I started to Google it going, well, how long is this update going to take? Because, you know, I got a life to lead, ChaCha, and I want to get my step counts in. Yeah. So I stumbled across a trick and I don't know if you do this yet or not, but basically you can speed up the software update dramatically by turning, starting the update and then turning off Bluetooth on your phone because the watch defaults to trying

to transfer things over Bluetooth. And if you shut shut it off, it'll go to Wi-Fi. And it's a lot faster. Yeah, I didn't know that. So now you do, man. And I did it. And it was a game changer. It went from nine days to 30 minutes. Yeah, mine literally did take about three hours. You know, 35 minutes in total once I found that figured out that trick. So next time you got to do an update, do it. All right. Turn off the Bluetooth. Oh, do it. Did we did

we pay attention to see if Bluetooth was turned on or off with this update or have we just given that up? I know we haven't talked about it in a couple of years. Well, this time it would have been invalid anyways. I wouldn't have known because I manually switched it off and had to go turn it back on anyways. So. OK, well, I meant for the iOS update, not the not the watch. Oh, right, right. Yeah, I did not. I think it was it must have still been on because I had to go in and turn it off. So I since I got the Apple watch in the ear pods, I have Bluetooth on all the time now anyways. Right. So, yeah, it just seemed to be before in the

old days it would turn it off or on. Yes, depending on the cycle. Wow, that was a lot of Apple talk for us. We never do this. I know. I know. Let's not do it again for a year. Oh, wait. Yeah. Damn it. Next week we got iPad OS. We're going to have to say something. No, I'm kind of forward to that one. Yeah, I was really bummed to find out that didn't come out at the same time. I'm like, damn it. So we got a little follow up here. A ton of people sent me this link and it is Wells Fargo to pilot dollar linked stable coin for internal settlement.

And they sent it to me because we do like to bash on the cryptocurrencies. Yes. But I would like to point out that this is an internal tool to speed up settlements, which is actually a good thing. But, you know, it's also Wells Fargo who has a tendency to create fake accounts for their customers so they can charge them more. So I take anything that Wells Fargo does with a grain of salt. Yeah. Yeah. That's a yeah. It's just an internal thing. And it's not it's it's not it's it's funny money just within the company. That's it. So there you go. Yeah, it's

it's actually a good idea to do what it does because you do have the ledger, the blockchain behind the coin. So you can actually, you know, check all your transactions. But it's just to move money around internally, which hopefully will make things faster for any Wells Fargo customers left.

I don't know any any of my friends that still use Wells Fargo after the big debacle. But so, yeah, it's interesting. But since everybody sent it to me, I had to talk about it. Yeah. Well, hopefully now when I snap a photo of a check and deposit it, it won't tell me it takes three days for the money to show up anymore.

Yeah. Who knows? Who knows? I don't know. I don't know exactly what they're going to do with it. But I gave up on that that take a photo of a check thing. It was it's always bugged me. I'm like, OK, now I still have this check. But did it go through? And can I get rid of the check? When can I get rid of the check? You have to keep the check until you see that the money is actually deposited in your account. And even then I suggest you keep it for, you know, it's gets ridiculous, doesn't it? Yeah. Who the hell's writing me checks? I still get quite a few checks,

but I just don't trust it. You know, I'm just always worried that they're going to come back in five days after I threw the check away on day four and say, hey, do you still have that check? Because there was something wrong with it. And then I have to go get another check. And it's just like, oh, man. First world problems. Yeah, really, it is. So it is storm area 51 day. Oh, man, I forgot. I had tickets booked and everything. Exactly. Did you get a chance to watch the video that

I put in the show notes? I didn't watch the video you put in the show notes because it is everywhere online. So, yes. Okay. It was pretty epic. Yes. Yes. The there was a news guy out there. They actually some guy did the Naruto Naruto running right at the very end. And I just lost my shit. It was really funny. I'm willing to bet that there are far more reporters there than people that showed up to do this. It looked like all the photos, either people had guns or cameras. That was about it.

Hey, that's America. Yeah. But I mean, the guy who did the run, that guy wins the internet for the Amazon is back in the news while they're in the news every day. Yeah. This one, I just love Amazon

crowdsourced their Q&A because Alexa doesn't have all of the good stuff that Google does, you know, because you ask Alexa questions. She goes, Oh, I don't know. No, no, no, no. So they crowdsourced a bunch of questions and the community has come through and it is possibly go wrong. I know. I know. I'm just looking at this scratch in my head going, Hmm. Well, a doesn't Amazon have

enough money to maybe like hire people to answer these questions, you know, professional Googlers who can go find the answers in the Philippines. So no, they went to the community and I can, this thing is just, I, I I'm shaking my head. It's only a matter of time, Brian. It's only a matter of time before somebody games the crap out of this thing. Oh yeah, of course. Of course. So yeah. What are you going to do? What are you going to do? Uh, I don't, I, I still don't have any more Alexis in my

house. I actually got rid of my Alexa app this morning. Ooh, I forgot. I'm like, I'm looking around. I'm like, I literally don't have any more or echoes in my home. I gave, I gave all of my echoes to you. I, yes, you did. And most of them have ended up at my mom's house. Okay. So your mom is under, uh, the watchful eye of Alexa full time. That's all right. That's all right. It's I, you know, I still find them very useful. It's a great music player. Um, you know, I control my, my, my lighting

now since I have my Phillips Hughes, um, you know, and, uh, I, I like being able to ask it basic questions and, you know, knowing the weather, you know, quick and easy Fahrenheit to Celsius calculations, all that sort of stuff. For me, it's very useful and, you know, I'm not planning to murder anyone. So I'm all good. You see, nobody plans to murder someone for the most part.

No, no, no. It's one of the very definitions. There is premeditated murder, Jason. Well, I know, I know, but it are Alexa. What is premeditated murder? You're welcome, everyone. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much. Uh, I still, I, for, for the basic stuff, Siri still works for me fine on the watch. Yeah. See, I just never use Siri. Well, I use my watch for timers in the kitchen constantly.

So that's, that's the nice thing about the watch, but you know, I guess the other thing that Alexa did that was her echo, whatever did that was really nice that you could have multiple timers running. Yes. Yes. I use it all the time in my, in my kitchen for that. Yeah. Well, not going back.

All right. That's fine. There you have it. I'm not giving them back. I'm using them all. I know. Yeah. Well, Facebook has unveiled its plan for its oversight board. Yes. Finally, there will be some sort of independent oversight board when they take down your content for no reason whatsoever, rather than that horrific system that they have where you send a message into the blue and nobody ever responds in theory, in theory, this is all in theory. Yes. The firm insists the panel, which will hear its first cases in 2020. So it'll start up next year. We'll have

power to override decisions. It makes over contentious material and influence new policy. It is being dubbed these Facebook Supreme court, and it will eventually compromise 40 people around the world, but we'll be much smaller at first. Now experts are questioning how independent this board is and what are the motivations behind setting this up? You know, they're saying Facebook does not have a court. There's only one vote that counts the majority shareholder Zuckerberg.

And, uh, it's just kind of silly. So there will be 11 part-time members. Again, this is a company that is rolling in money, but still won't put enough money into it to have like full-time people. That's just 11 part-time members. Uh, we don't know who any of these people are. Uh, and I did also note that, uh, to get to this court, you still will have to go through all the existing bullcrap stuff that doesn't work. All of this content kind of works in real time. You need to get this stuff

down fast. So exactly that with 40 people, you know, and no fewer than 11 part-time members. This makes no sense. This is a weird star chamber thing that they're doing. I don't quite get how this is actually going to move the needle on anything. Yeah. I don't really either. Other than I guess the whole concept being, you know, it'll settle policies in the future. Like, okay, you know what? We've gone

through this now. We're going to stop, you know, teach the, teach the AI that breastfeeding photos are okay. We've made a decision. Okay. That's the only thing I can imagine, right? Like that's going to, this has to be for high level stuff. Yeah. It's going to get to the point. So basically we're going to have an RTFM of what's allowed on Facebook because right now on social media, we have no idea. It's completely capricious and it's not even consistent. So the theory, I guess here would that this board will create a consistency and a real policy about what kind

of content's allowed. Yeah. That's, that's about the only thing I can, in theory, we've been still waiting for, you know, delete my messages feature for how long now? We're never going to get that. We're never going to, that's never even discussed anymore. Wasn't that, it should have rolled out six months ago, according to Zuck's timeline. Yeah. Rolled out pretty quick for him. Oh yeah.

And then went away real quickly. Yeah. Okay. Well, there's a lot of protests going on around the green movement today. And yesterday Jeff Bezos came out and announced a new massive commitment to fight climate change called the climate pledge. How about you just don't send the five items I ordered at the exact same time in five different boxes. Let's start there on five different trucks.

Yes. But you know, they're going to start rolling out electric vans and all sorts of fun stuff. And they're trying to beat the Paris accord by 10 years. All right. Well, Hey, look, a hundred percent on board with this. Love the fact that they're doing it. Shamed into it by their own employees, even better shamed into it, shamed into it by their own employees. But you know, did Bezos, was he one of the shareholders that signed that whole, uh, we're not just beholden to shareholder interest?

Oh, the CEO pledge. Yeah. The CEO pledge. Is he one of them? Because if so, sounds like he's taking it semi-seriously. I don't know. I'd have to go dig up that PDF with all the signatures on it. This is a great move. This is a great move. I'm glad he's doing it. One of the biggest companies in the world. Good. Get on it. Every little bit helps. Yeah, of course it does. Too late. I mean, we lost 2 billion birds in North America in 30 years, so it's a bit late, but okay.

But they've been replaced all by bird scooters. That's right. Now, I have two stories in the notes about WeWork and their IPO, and we're not going to talk about either of them, Brian. You know why? Why? Because WeWork isn't a goddamn tech company. That's why. I guess I need to stop talking about Uber and Lyft and... Because they're not tech companies either.

Nor is Airbnb, nor is... Well, here's the thing. At least Uber and Lyft have more technology than WeWork does. They do have an app. Right. They literally actually are tech companies. I guess. Because that's all they have. Because all they have is the app. That's right. They don't actually have an employees. Yeah. Other way around. Yeah. WeWork is just a, you know, they're a real estate company. And who cares? Just because they say they're a tech company just to pump their valuation,

and sometimes they show up on TechCrunch, does not mean they're tech. So I am going to put them on the ban list right next to Kanye West. Okay. I'm with you on that. We're not going to talk about WeWork anymore. All right. Moving on. Good plan. Moving on. So in tying in with the problems that Amazon Alexa might soon be seeing with their outsourcing and crowdsourcing of their answers, I stumbled across this article called See How AI Stereotypes You over at Lifehacker. And there's a

program called ImageNet Roulette. And you can use it to... It does facial recognition algorithms, which, you know, they're just going to go ahead and call AI, whatever. And you can play around with it and put up your own pictures and stuff. And this was designed as part of an art and technology museum exhibit called Training Humans to show us the messy insides of facial recognition algorithms that we might otherwise assume are straightforward and unbiased. So you can do things like take a picture and

you'll see all the various tags that the people who are the AI put into this database. And boy, oh boy, there's some racist ass shit in there. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Tags including things like orphan, rape suspect, mulatto, negro, blackamore.

It's a little crazy. So it's a fun article to go through. But yeah, all these mechanical Turks and you know, these are not unbiased objective algorithms. This is all based on the work of people and people have put in some really crappy shit. Yeah. You're surprised?

No, I'm not. But I think it's just important that everybody knows. Yeah. It tags like grind, nerd, wonk, dweeb, non-smoker. Another one was just face. Somebody was really lazy that day.

This database is a complete mess. Like it's a joke. You can tell who's hung over at work that day. It's like, what's this? Face. It's just a face. It's just a face. And like this ImageNet database is like being used by basically everybody. It's like one of the biggest ones out there. Most accessible sources of training data for image recognition algorithms. So awesome.

Yeah. Great. Who made this thing? Don't really know. I'm not sure who actually made it, but Quartz reports that it was assembled from images collected online and tagged mainly by Mechanical Turk workers. Bingo. There we go. Mechanical Turk. Classified images in mass for pennies on.

That's why you get what you pay for. All right. Mechanical Turk for the win or not. Oh, and I found this one over at Business Insider. Companies like Walmart, CVS, and Amazon are beefing up their health care strategies. Here are their plans to upend the $3.5 trillion industry. And I think the winner here is going to be Walmart because they're going to start putting, you know, little health care clinics inside of their big superstores.

Yep. And I saw this when I was in Chicago. We used to have a supermarket called Jewel. And inside the Jewel, they started to put clinics, little tiny clinics. I think they were powered by CVS. Right. And they got so popular so fast that, you know, there was a, you had to get on a waiting list to go in. There were people lined up to get into these clinics at the grocery stores.

Who'd have thunk it? So I think this is genius. Convenience. Convenience. It's total convenience. I get it. Like why, why go and sit in a doctor's office and make an appointment if you can just pop down to the Walmart, do some shopping while you're waiting in line to get your flu shot. Well, it's not even a flu shot. I mean, they're doing more than flu shots.

Yeah, I know. You can get a flu shot at the at the drugstore, you know, get those anywhere. But, you know, if you need to get like emergency care, things like that, they're doing that stuff there. Yep. Plus, the doctors can just watch you with the cameras while you walk up, walk around the store and see the horrible things that you're buying to eat. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. You are now banned from the Twinkie aisle.

Spent a lot too much time in the liquor aisle there, buddy. Yeah, definitely. That would be that would be great if they had like, you know, had your rewards card and they banned you from buying certain things just for your health. Right. You know, you know it's coming. But yeah, yeah. No more Twinkies for you, mister. Stay out of aisle 12.

So I think this is a smart move for Walmart for sure, because, you know, Amazon is just kicking the crap out of them online. So stick to what they got. Real world problems with real world locations, which is what they specialize in. You've got the physical space. You've got people coming there already. Why not give them more services? Makes total sense. And next quarter, Amazon is going to have doctors on drones. So they will drone in a doctor to your house, lower him down on a cable. He'll check all your vitals and then he'll suck him back up into

the drone and take him off to his next appointment. They're not even going to do that. They're just going to put doctors in a tube. Doctors in a tube. There we go. And yeah, they can actually put them in the back of the the delivery vans because, you know, the first delivery in the morning, they can drop the doctor off. He can check you out. And then when your next package gets delivered in like half an hour, he can just get on that truck and hop a ride to the next appointment. That's right. Or they'll ship the doctor in four separate boxes to my house.

I'm assembly required. Oh, man. I thought this one was kind of interesting. Automatic has raised $300 million at a $3 billion valuation from Salesforce Ventures. All right. Now, they're, you know, Automatic is pretty big already. I think they were already valued at $2 billion before this bunch of cash. And there's one thing in here that good old Matty Matt said that

just kind of really, really frightened me. What we want to do is become the operating system for the open web. We want every website, whether it's e-commerce or anything, to be powered by WordPress. Shudder. Shudder.

Mission accomplished. Well, it's, yeah, it's pretty bad already, but like, you know, if, if, if you're not on Squarespace, you're on WordPress, come on. Yeah. I mean, they're running like, I think it was a 37% of all the major websites in the world. It was just pretty damn big for something that is just so, so bad. Yeah. You know, the first year that we did this show, I think everything we did was complain about WordPress. Like every episode we complained about WordPress. Now we don't deal with

it much anymore. So we don't. Well, speak, speak for yourself. Uh, one o'clock in the morning last night, I'm on a email chat with the WordPress.com help desk, trying to get grumpy old geeks moved over to WordPress.com. So at least then we don't have to deal with it. It's in their hands, but yeah, I just thought that was a, it's very interesting that they're taking the money. And, uh, but that

quote really kind of, kind of frightened me just a little bit. Yeah. Matt. Yeah. Go read the book of anti-fragile. Well, competition is good and diversity is good because somebody figures out a way to hack WordPress, which they do every single day, you know, then the web is just basically dead open for business. Well, yeah, it's open for business for spammers

and hackers and everybody else. So write a bot, take down everybody. Remember zoom, Z-U-M-E, Zoom A. Not the Microsoft, uh, music player. No, that was the zoom with an N. Zoom with an N. Yeah. No zoom with an M. They, uh, were the robotic pizza company. Oh, great. That's just what I made. Yeah. They, they, they were the, the company that did the, the robot pizzas. I think we, I think we had a show title about them with their robot pizzas at some point. Well, they are now

offering a combination of bespoke mobile kitchens that double as food trucks and delivery vehicles combined with AI systems designed to better understand and respond to customer demand based on location, traffic patterns, and the like, I don't know what the like is. They, they have, they have, get this, they have partnered with and pizza. Okay. Ampersand pizza and pizza. It's a,

it's a pizza chain. They've got 36 to fast casual locations, but they're going to be using zoom's forward mobile kitchen trucks to expand outreach in Washington DC. Now these are pizza machines, right? These are machines that make pizza. Right. Well, it's not like you're going to have self-driving trucks that have, you know, pizza machines that are just going around with the AI making the pizza as they, you know, they kind of want you to think it's, it's a dude in a truck.

There's several dudes in a truck because somebody still has to hand people the pizza. They still have to load the dough in it's saving like one really stupid step, which is actually the part where you want people that know how to cook to make the good food. The whole thing is just silly, but come on, go die in a grease fire AI pizza trucks.

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purchase. That's hover.com slash GOG to get your awesome domain name today and get 10% off your first purchase. And we thank Hover for supporting our show. security? We're back this week with Dave Bittner from the CyberWire podcast. The CyberWire is a free community-driven cybersecurity news service based in Maryland. Dave is also co-host of the Hacking

Humans podcast, along with Joe Kerrigan, where they take on social engineering. I'm talking a little faster right now because Brian has his first heart out. So we got to light this candle and get this puppy going. Yeah. Yeah. I think we all remember what it was like to have our first heart outs. Yeah. That's why I have a kid.

Okay. How's it going, guys? Nice to be back. Going good. Going good. Can't complain too much. Well, we can. That's why we're here. Well, we can. That's the point of the show. Yeah. Yeah. So what are we leading off with? Interesting developments this week on the podcasting front? Yeah. Yeah. This ties into something that we talked about before. So this is a little bit of follow-up. Now, this company called Descript, D-E-S-C-R-I-P-T, they've launched a new podcast

studio and a product called Overdub. Well, Descript got a bunch of funding. So they went on a, you know, a buying spree, as you do. They got a new pair of pants and they bought another startup, which is what you do when you get some money. And the startup that they bought was called Liarbird, which we all played with. Yeah. And it's the one that will, you know, create audio from your voice. So you can have new words that you can put into different things based on training and quote unquote, AI.

Descript is kind of an audio editor and transcript editor, which is kind of cool. It hasn't really worked that well in the past, but it's getting to the point where it's actually kind of cool. Now they've upped their game and the tech is kind of neat. Well, what they're saying is when you take Descript and you power it with Overdub, which is actually Liarbird, you can actually fill in words that you need to put into your podcast that you didn't actually say. Now, I think it's, I think

it's awesome. And that they're trying, they're trying. We knew this is what it was going to be used for at some point, but they do have an ethics statement, which I thought was pretty fun. Well, who doesn't these days, but go on. Yeah. Did you guys actually read the ethics statement?

No. Uh, no. Okay. Because I figured. I didn't think why. I didn't think you did. No, I'm not going to lie to you. I did not. Here we go. I'll just give you a little taste here. Generative media, the field of research that relates to quote unquote, deep fakes and other forms of synthesized audio and video is advancing rapidly. In many use cases, the results are already indistinguishable from real

media. This technology has exciting applications such as Descript's Overdub feature, but it also holds the potential for misuse. While Descript is among the first products available with generative media features, it won't be the last. As such, we are committed to modeling a responsible implementation of these technologies, unlocking the benefits of generative media while safeguarding against

malicious use. We believe you should own and control the use of your digital voice. Descript uses a process for training speech models that depends on real-time verbal feedback, ensuring that individuals can only create a text-to-speech model of their own voice. Once created, the user is the owner of their voice and has the sole authority to decide when and how it is used. Descript's generative media features are

currently in closed beta. As we look toward a broader release, we will remain in conversation with leading machine learning researchers, ethics professors, and the broader public about how to best develop and implement this technology. So there you go. They're thinking about it and they're putting it out there up front because they're the first out of the gate. They're thinking about it, but they're not really, there's nothing there. Like, how are they going to do any of this?

How are they going to enforce safeguarding against malicious use? How are they going to enforce that you're the only user and of your own voice and you have the sole authority to decide when and how it's used? How? How are they going to do that? For me, the, the obvious use case of this is let's say I've hired voiceover professional to do the voiceover for my corporate video and they do a great read and it's perfect.

And now the corporate folks have come back and said, Ooh, we just need to change a couple of words here. So rather than going back to voiceover professional for another round of recording, which could also make the cash register ring, um, if I had this, screw that guy out of their job.

Yes, exactly. Precisely. So you could, um, just make the changes and have it sound like that person, be a sound alike, uh, but it could also be convenient for that person. I mean, for me, all the voiceover stuff I do here, if I had an editor, if we found there was an error and we needed to change something, it'd be great if I didn't have to come back in and rerecord that.

If the editor could just do it. Now, maybe there could be a system where, uh, you know, I get pinged on my mobile device that says, Hey, editor Bob is, is editing something in your voice. Are you okay with this? And then I respond and say, yeah, sure. I trust editor Bob or something like that. That, that sounds reasonable, but I don't know.

You're going to have a lot of trust in editor Bob. Well, you still have, but you still have to train this. Remember you have to train it. You and I both went through, uh, you and I both, Dave went through the training process to do that. Right. And it's a bunch of random sentences that are shown to you. So unless you have your voiceover talent trained up on the AI reading all of those things, then it really doesn't, you can't just say, Hey, take this voice and clone it with this tool.

Yeah. So that's, that's kind of one of the safeguards. Well, but you don't need a live voice to necessarily to train it. You can write like what, you know, Dave's use case scenario is talking about is you already have, you know, an hour of this guy's, voice that you just feed into the system.

Yeah, but you don't, Brian, Brian, you didn't go through the training. You have to read specific sentences so they can match it to the sentences. Right. But I'm saying you put those sentences in your script. Yeah. Just put those sentences in your script. Yeah. You'd have to know what all the sentences were first. Right. Yeah, exactly. But you have to go through their entire system and get all of the sentences to read.

Yep. Yeah. Well, and that's how it is now, but you know, it's going to get better. It is absolutely going to get better. And speaking of getting better, I included a couple of links to some research that some folks have been doing about real time voice cloning.

And this is basically taking five seconds of audio sampling from someone and being able to use that to turn into speaking in their voice.

And I have to say it's coming along really fast compared to what we did with Liar. This is pretty impressive stuff. I don't know if you guys had a chance to listen to any of it, but I would love, what this made me think of was what happens if this thing gets to listen to several hours of my voice?

Because it's pretty close with only five seconds. Whatever they're doing here is pretty impressive. And I guess the shape of things to come. Yeah. It's still in the research phase. Yeah. Well, for the next month and then it'll be a product. They'll get funding and then we're off to the races.

That's true. That's true. Yeah. The rate of change accelerates. I have a little bit of follow up from last week. Remember, we were talking about privacy and we were talking about how easy it is to de-anonymize data.

And I was wondering about, are there ways to prove that you've anonymized data and not be able to get it back? I actually heard from Joe Kerrigan, our buddy, who said that we should look into differential privacy, that that is one of the primary ways that they've come up with to do just that.

So I've got a couple of links here to both the Wikipedia page about differential privacy, but also a fun YouTube video that involves nose picking. So that's always good for differential privacy explanation. Basically, what they do is with differential privacy, they're able to inject a certain amount of noise into the results.

And by injecting that noise into the results, you can't it gives you plausible deniability. So you can't know for sure that any individual's answer is accurate. But with a large enough data set, you get the same overall results that you would have gotten otherwise. That's interesting.

Yeah. These companies should start doing that then. Well, one of the things the video talks about is how very few companies are doing it. Apple's doing it. Google's doing it. But evidently, it's not widely adopted these days.

Yeah. Yeah. So interesting. It's a good video. It's a fun little six or seven minute video. I recommend it. It's a nice little explainer. Cool. Bittner approved. That's right. Okay. I think this next one is not going to be Bittner approved.

Millions of Americans, medical images and data are available on the Internet. Okay. Yes. Go figure. An AWS bucket. Yeah, probably. Basically. What it is, is like x-rays, MRIs and CT scans are done by third parties all the time.

And these third parties don't really have the best security practices in place. Right. And of course, they do go out, get their AWS buckets, forget to set a password and Bob's your uncle. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so it's, this is going to keep happening and everybody's making a big stink about this because they're medical images.

Right. Yeah. And they're tied to, you know, personal identifiable information. So we need something like GDPR to go against these companies and say, hey, you screwed up. Yep. We want your monies and we want you to fix it. Yeah.

This is, it just comes back down to that because you can, you can take out medical images and data and replace it with just about anything. Millions of Americans, blah, blah, blah, are available on the Internet that they didn't know about. Yeah. The, um, we, we covered this, uh, on the cyber wire this week.

And one of the major concerns with this sort of information is that it can be used for social engineering, where if you receive a call from someone who says, hello, this is so-and-so from the CAT scan lab. And, uh, I'm just reviewing some information from the scans that you ordered from Dr. Jablanovich.

Uh, but before I do, yeah, before, before I do, I just need a little more information from you and away you go. Social security number, please. Yep. Yep. Yeah. So. Yeah. We just want to verify, uh, what was that first high school you went to? Cause you know, you might've been injured there from, from, from looking at your CT scan with this thing, this might be a high school injury.

Were you playing high school sports? What high school did you go to? Um, oh, maybe you tripped over your cat when you were a kid. Oh, you had a dog. Oh, what was your dog's name? Your first dog's name. Well, and the other thing too, is that, you know, a lot of these types of tests and scans are done at bad moments in people's lives.

You're injured, you're sick. You don't, you're, you're uncertain, you're scared. And so that emotional component makes it even more susceptible to social engineering. Yeah, definitely. Oh, there we have it. Yeah. Uh, so, uh, interesting article from the folks over at vice, uh, sort of piling onto something we've covered a bunch of different times, but really laying it out there, uh, under the light of day.

This is about, uh, folks using license plate scanners and the databases that they build and these private networks of tracked license plates and how easy it is to basically get someone to track someone for you.

They went through and, um, um, got permission to track someone and, uh, the ease with which they could track someone was pretty remarkable. A little bit chilling. Um, cost 20 bucks to look up a license plate, 70 bucks for a live alert.

So if a license plate passes by one of the scanning locations or vehicles that feed into the system, it'll let you know where it is in real time. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's awesome. Well, I can, I can actually see some good uses for that though.

If you're worried about a stalker and, or an ex-husband who's violent and you get an alert that his license plate is in the neighborhood, batten down the hatches and call the popo. You know, there are some good uses for it. Yeah, but I would love, I, I agree, but I would love to see that alert only available with a court order.

To certain people. With a court order. Yep, I like that. Just convince a judge that you're in danger. Another good use, obviously, the Amber Alerts, because we always get license plate numbers for the cars. Like, you can stop texting us all now. You have a solution here. Right, right. Yeah. But yeah, I agree.

It needs, there needs to be oversight and there, you, this shouldn't, this shouldn't just be available for 20 bucks to anyone, you know, which it kind of is at the moment. Yeah, yeah. One of the things that this article noted that I thought was interesting, they say, one legal issue with industry use of license plate data is that the Fourth Amendment does not apply to non-government entities.

A private investigator or repo man or an insurance company does not need a warrant to search for someone's movements over years. They just need to pay to access the DRN system or find someone willing to share or leverage their access just like, just like Motherboard did. Great.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, I think the bottom line with this is that we just need some regulation, right? What? We need, we need some GDPR. That sounds, that's crazy talk. I know. That's what everybody tells me. It's crazy talk regulation.

I am, I am throwing a monkey wrench into the gears of commerce. I realize that. But, um, yeah, regulation would be a really good idea here. What do you think it would take? What do you think would be a test case? Do you think somebody would have to use this to trace some, you know, senator going on an Appalachian trail trip or something to visit their girlfriend?

That would be the thing that would... Uh, it's going to have to burn a lawmaker. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I really do think that's what it's going to take that or it's going to take a handful of people that use it to like kill someone. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And proven in court and not even just one time won't be enough.

It'll have to be like a scourge. Mm-hmm. Like, oh my God, you know, five people have now died because they were tracked with their license plates through this system. Right. Yeah. What's the body count going to be? Yeah. It's going to need a body count. Before they'll actually act. Yeah, a body count or a senator losing his job because he's banging some, somebody else.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Well, we know that they don't lose their job for that. Otherwise, we would have no senators left. And that is where we are today. The interesting thing about these cameras and people having them everywhere is I want to talk about Ring for one more time because I mentioned how terrible they were.

It's interesting. We've got a story coming up in Apps and Doodads called A Brutal Murder, A Wearable Witness and an Unlikely Suspect, and they tracked this person's Fitbit to when their heart stopped. Oh, yes. Mm-hmm. So they went around the neighborhood and got all of this ring video from different times and trying to track different people that went through.

Not one single ring camera could read a damn license plate. The video was so bad. They had pictures of the guy's car who probably committed the murder, but they couldn't get a license plate off of it because ring cameras were so bad. And also, they only caught the beginning of the person and then they shut off and didn't give you any more video like I complained about with the crazy guy outside my house.

It's like, okay, I got him walking up to my house, but then it's dead for five minutes. I'm like, that kind of defeats the purpose of the whole thing. So hopefully, well, not hopefully, I'm guessing these people have better cameras on their license plate readers than, you know, trying to get a cabal of, you know, local crazy housewives with ring cameras trying to set this up.

Yeah. Well, you just need that, you just need that Star Trek technology where they say, you know, zoom, on screen, magnify, enhance. I always think of it, I always go Blade Runner. That was the first time I really remember seeing it. Yeah, that was definitely a Blade Runner thing.

It was cool as crap. Yeah. I remember the first time I showed my dad Photoshop, he's like, this is just like Blade Runner. I'm like, what better? Watch this. Yeah. Then I showed him how I could copy and paste somebody's head onto somebody else.

And he's like, wow. Like, this was on Photoshop too, by the way. The beginning of deep fakes. Right. It was. Right. It was. Yeah. Nobody complained about it back then. Why all the hubbub now? No, no, no. Plenty of people were worried about that sort of stuff back then. That's when Photoshopping, you know, magazine articles or magazine covers and women and all that sort of stuff.

That was a huge big deal when Photoshop came out. Remember, National Geographic got in trouble for rearranging the pyramids. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Because it looked better. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. We know better than the ancients. We went to art school. Right. Right.

Exactly. All right, gentlemen. Well, that is what I have this week. I will look forward to chatting again next time. All right. All right. Have a great weekend. Enjoy your lack of privacy. I shall. Actually, we don't need you next week, Dave. We got everything we need from you this week.

We will actually just replace you next week. Yes. You've given us enough words. Right. Yeah. Right. What is this funny paragraph here in the notes? The quick brown fox jumps over the... The quick brown fox jumps over the... Sure, I'll read that for you.

No problem. The funny thing is, my boss asked me to read the same thing last week. Interesting. Yeah. I don't know what that's about. All right. Well, they'll be checking your license plate to see if you're trying to drive into work tomorrow. They'll stop you. Right. They'll use the facial recognition to watch me walk into the building with my arsenal.

Apps and doodads. Brian, I got a new Fitbit. I didn't even think they were still around. Weren't they going to switch to being a B2B company? Well, yeah, pretty much. I'm just going for the healthcare side. I got a Fitbit Inspire.

Okay. Are you inspired? I am inspired. I am inspired. It works pretty well. It's the only one that they have left that you can get a belt clip for. Because my problem is, I am on a treadmill desk all day. My hands are on the desk, editing and doing the magic that makes the podcasts go.

Well, that means my Apple Watch ain't doing jack squat for me. So my steps are ridiculously low. And I wanted to start, I started at the beginning of September when I got this thing. And I'm only wearing it when I'm on the treadmill while I'm working. And I want to see how long it's going to take me while I work to walk across America.

So I want my 3,000 miles. I always wanted to walk across America, but ain't no way in hell at 48 years old with a gammy leg that I'm ever going to do it. So I'm like, oh, let's set a challenge. Tell me about it.

Dude, I can barely walk on this treadmill. Come on. So I got it as a fun little thing to, you know, keep track of it. I'm up to 70 miles already. I got to say, Jason, it's $99.95. You could have gotten a $5 pedometer. No, no, no.

It's the $69 version. I didn't get the HR. I just got the basic Inspire. Still could have just got a $5 pedometer. No, those work. Those work even worse. Trust me. I did get one a while ago and tested it. And it's, they're bad. They're really bad. But so I got this.

I'm tracking it. And you know what a regular $5 pedometer doesn't come with? An app? Badges. You don't get no stinking badges for $5. Right. So, so far it's working really well. It's a nice, easy Fitbit. I remember now why I really like the Fitbit so much.

You just put it on and go. You don't have to really worry about it. It just does its thing. It sinks and you're done. And it's ridiculously accurate because my treadmill has a step counter on it. But it goes away after I turn the power off. It's just for that session. I did a couple of tests where I walked five miles and it was off by two steps.

Right. So, I mean, it's ridiculously accurate when you're on a treadmill with the Inspire. So I like that. It was just, it's just something to do because I just was worried that I was losing all my steps and I'd made a fun game out of it. I wanted a game. I need something to entertain me while I'm stuck in my goddamn garage seven days a week.

It's the little things, Brian, that keep us going. It's the little things that keep you going. Exactly. And speaking of Fitbit, I found this great story over at Wired called A Brutal Murder, A Wearable Witness, and An Unlikely Suspect. It is called The Telltale Heart Fitbit Murder.

It's a long read, but it's very fun. It's a good read. It's a little sad. Well, it wasn't very fun for the person that died. Or the, you know, suspected murderer. Right. Which they never proved, but he ended up, yeah, spoiler alert, dying.

So it was an interesting story, though. I liked it. It's a fun little story where everybody dies. Exactly. It's kind of like Game of Thrones. Right. Uh-huh. Oh, and Facebook. Facebook just can't stop trying to get into your pants and your bedroom.

Anywhere that you don't want them to be. They have, I can't, do you remember the name of the first one was just called Portal, right? It was just little swiveling camera that had AI that kept the camera on your face or body as you moved around the room. And nobody wanted it. Yeah. I mean, there was the little portal that looked like kind of like an iPad with a thing.

But the first one was the one that you put in your bedroom. It was called, does this dress make my ass look fat? Oh, right. Echo. Yes. Yeah. That one is like, it could, you know, take pictures of you in your outfit and nobody bought that one, I think. Yeah. So. Well, they're giving it another go.

This is a, they're launching Portal TV, a $149 video chat set top box that equally nobody will want to have. Yeah. We don't, they want you to basically put this on your TV and it's a clip on camera for video calling AR gaming and content co-watching because, you know, you want to make sure you watch a TV show with somebody that isn't with you.

You know, we used to do that a lot over regular things. If we had this back when we were watching the World Cup, when you were in Venice and I was in Chicago, we totally would have bought this. Probably. But no, we wouldn't have bought this because, you know, it wouldn't have been made by Facebook.

And it wouldn't be a company that we don't trust at all. It would have been like some third party company out of nowhere where we would have hacked it together ourselves and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Which we did. Connectix, we used Connectix Quick Cams. Right. The 16 grayscale cameras back in the day. I like this idea.

I just wish it wasn't Facebook. Yeah, me too. I mean, all of the stuff with the Portal, I think is great. I would love to have these things if it just wasn't made by Facebook. Yeah, I agree. And who else is going to make it? Okay, Amazon. We've already got that. Same issues. Yeah, but you've got those.

You already own those. Yep. Google, same problem. Apple. If Apple made them, I would be more inclined, but they already do make them. It's called FaceTime on an iPad. So, but I like the idea of just having the camera over the TV so you can like, you know, watch each person's living room and be able to like, you know, do stuff together and say hi.

And it'd be nice to be able to just flip to that little set top thing. I think that would be cool. I mean, it's just video conferencing. So, yeah, but Facebook has a way of making simple video conferencing absolutely creepy. So nobody wants to use it.

Exactly. Way to go. They've done a very good job of that. I'm guessing you're not going to buy one. No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm never, I don't, well, I never say never, but I never plan to have any physical Facebook device ever. Good idea. Good idea. Except for that app in your phone, which kind of turns it into a physical Facebook device.

Because it's listening to us. Of course it is. Always. And I saw this one just this morning on Twitter, and this is a hat tip to Paul Cloutier. And he says, every once in a while, I remember why I love the internet. And it is a Twitter account called, Can You Pet the Dog?

A catalog of pettable and non-pettable dogs in video games. Great. This is what the internet was made for. Damn it. It's great. I mean, you don't get it because you don't play video games. No. But there are certain dogs that you cannot pet in a video game because they will kill you. That's right.

Media candy. I watched a bunch of stand-up comedian specials, all of which are on Netflix, because Netflix sure puts a lot of money into stand-up these days. Yes, they do. Yes, they do. So I caught up on all the stand-ups that have been making the waves and causing all kinds of consternation out there.

I saw Dave Chappelle's Sticks and Stones, which I thought was funny. I don't really see what the big deal was there. Oh, because he told the truth. That's the big deal. Whatever. He's a comedian. Get over it, people. Exactly. That's why I loved it so much. I loved that special. Yeah. I also saw Bill Burr's new one, Paper Tigers, which I thought was very good.

I loved that one as well. And then I saw Colin Quinn, who I did not realize was still around as a stand-up, Red State, Blue State, which was okay. I think he tried to be very poignant and meaningful, but it's Colin Quinn, so how poignant and meaningful can you be? Yeah, I'm skipping on that one. I never liked Colin Quinn, ever.

Yeah, that was definitely the weakest of the three that I watched, so take it for what it will. Now, Dave Chappelle and Bill Burr, I loved both of those. They were really, really good. And did you ever finish watching The Chef Show, season one? No, I kind of gave up on it. I just didn't find it very interesting.

Yeah, I mean, I went through it. The only one that I completely skipped was, after about 30 seconds, was the Gwyneth Paltrow goop special. Right. Could not watch that, but I watched the rest of them. I kind of got into it. I enjoyed it. But season two is now on, so I'm going to check that out probably this weekend, maybe.

But yeah, you know, it's popcorn. You can put it on in the background and not pay attention to it, and look up every now and again, and it's kind of fun. Right. So, good background show. Fair enough. And there's some news about Battlestar Galactica that came out this week.

Yes, yes. Because everybody is spinning out their own networks, including NBC Universal, which is going to call it the Peacock. So everybody is mining into whatever content they have, because, you know, if you want to get us to subscribe, you better have some content.

And we're going to get a, well, they said a reboot of Battlestar Galactica by Mr. Robot Sam Esmail. But it's not a reboot. But it's not a reboot. He did take to Twitter to clarify that it will be a new story within the mythology. But we don't know when or what or anything right now.

And I'm not particularly thrilled about this because we all know how I felt about Mr. Robot. Well, here's the thing. I mean, he took a great story, Fight Club, and turned it into Mr. Robot. So we'll see what movie he steals from next to turn Battlestar Galactica.

Yeah, we'll see. You know, but none of the original people are going to be involved, unfortunately. Yeah. I mean, if he turns like, you know, the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, which, you know, actually might work because they're on the run from. I don't know. Yeah, who knows? Just pulling it out there. But we'll see what he comes up with.

Now, this one I didn't even know about. The Dark Tower Amazon pilot will be helmed by 24 and Predator 2 director Steve. Stephen Hopkins. Did you know that Amazon was doing a New York Tower? Yes. Well, when they announced the movie, the plan was that there was going to be a movie and then a follow on series that I believe this.

I can't remember if they said at the time that it was going to be on Amazon, but it was the plan was a movie and then a series. And I kind of thought I kind of figured the series was just going away because the movie bombed. Yeah. And that's because that's what I thought, too. I thought it was going to be I thought it was like on TBS or something where the series was going to live.

Right. Between movies. But yeah, since the movie was so unbelievably God awful and they do say the series was originally going to tie into the 2017 film of the same name. And the plan now is for the show to be a more faithful adaptation of the book series because they know they stepped on their dick with the movie.

Yes, because they really did screw it up with the movie. So I will be cautiously optimistic about this. Did you ever go and watch the movie? No. OK, don't. I had enough enough friends of mine that are big fans of the book told me do not. I'm not even a fan of the book and I can tell you don't see it.

Right. It was it was it was just incomprehensibly bad. So bad. And I love Idris Elba. You can pass on, you know, McConaughey. But anyway, moving on. Amazon Music rolls out a lossless streaming tier that Spotify and Apple can't match.

Neil Young wept and Neil Young wept and Neil Young actually said, Earth will be changed forever when Amazon introduces high quality streaming to the masses. This will be the biggest thing to happen in music since the introduction of digital audio 40 years ago.

And I'm sure he was saying that completely and utterly fucking sarcastically. Dear Neil Young, that high quality audio is still going to be listened to out of ladies in a tube and crappy headphones. Yep. Yep. No, this is just they're like, we got it.

Let's just put it out. You know, somebody's going to like it. We can add it to a press release somewhere. Nobody really cares. Oh, man. And I do have a cool article over on Billboard called Shirley Manson says her podcast. The jump is a revelation in my life.

So Shirley is, you know, fully on the podcast bandwagon now. All right. Well, I love her. I love her and I love listening to the podcast. So that's great. Keep doing it. Yep. She is. They're working on season two right now. That's why I put it in here because this is kind of follow up. We talked about it when it came out and you liked it.

I liked it. And hopefully season two will be just as good. Mm hmm. At the library. I went back and read one of my old favorite books. I remember a long time ago, I think when I was moving and we were still doing the podcast, I told you I did a big call of my books and some of them I kept for no reason whatsoever.

I was just like, I've had this book forever. I've carried it around from every single place I've moved to. I must have it for a reason. Yeah. And I went back and read one of them this time. And it was Eon by Greg Bear. And it was a very long, very deep, very hard sci-fi book.

And I loved every every page of it. Okay. I'm really thrilled. So I went back to read it and I discovered that there are follow ups that I'd never knew existed. So I'm going to be delving into that world for a bit. Okay. We'll talk to you in about six months when you finish them all. Yep. They're very long. Remember, remember the rule that we had that everybody.

I know. I got to break it up. I got to break it up. Yeah. Okay. I'll break it up. I'll read something else first before I read the next. Yeah. For new listeners who don't know our rule, it's basically we used to read all of these anthologies back to back to back because you couldn't wait to get to the next one. And it turns out that's a really bad idea.

Yes. You got to break it up. You got to break it up. Otherwise, it's by the time you get to the end, you're just like, I'm so sick of these characters. Can they just go away? And it just ruins the enjoyment. So that's the rule. That's the rule. Thai food is delicious, but you don't want to eat it four days in a row. No, unless you're in Thailand.

Then it's okay. Then it's okay. I read a permanent record by Edward Snowden. Ah, the book the government doesn't want you to read. Well, the book the government wants you to buy so they can take all the money from it. Actually, there's nothing in here that we didn't really know, but it's the backstory behind, you know, his life and how he grew up and how he got into where he was and what he did.

And some of the stuff in there, we didn't know, like how he got the stuff out, why he got the stuff out and what he did. And I thought it was a great book. Honestly, I really did. Excellent. Yeah, I have no complaints about the book at all, except for I wish there was more about his life in Russia after, you know, the exile.

But yeah, it'd be interesting to know what's going on there. Yeah. And there's some stuff about it, you know, but all in all, I thought it was actually a pretty good book. I read it in a day and a half. So I mean, I powered through it. It was all in all. I thought it was a great read and it's a light read. So you can just punch through it pretty easily.

And if you're getting it on Audible, thank God. Edward does not read it himself. He they have a professional reader in there because I don't know if you've ever heard him speak. Not the best speaker on the planet. So but yeah, I give it a thumbs up. I think everybody should read it. I think you should steal it, though.

I don't think you should pay for it because the feds are going to take all of the profits from the book because they say he violated his NDA, which he actually did. And a lot of other things. But so go steal Edward Snowden's new book, Permanent Record on shelves now.

All right. Moron of the week. Elon Musk is my moron of the week. All right. Well, actually, you know what? It might be Elon Musk's legal defense team. OK. Because remember the whole kerfuffle with the diving crew and the kids in the cave and all that?

Yes, yes. And a pedo guy. Yep. Yeah, yeah. Vernon Unsworth and Elon got into a kerfuffle and Elon called him a pedo guy on Twitter. And Elon is coming out and saying, no, no, no, that doesn't mean he's a pedophiliac, you know, whatever.

And a pedophiliac is like what? A necrophiliac versus a pedophile. Well, I guess. Anyway, it's a long morning. Yeah, I'm just going to let you hang on that one. Yeah, yeah. Hang out to dry. Thanks for thanks for coming in and saving the day. No problem, man.

No problem. Yeah. So they're saying, no, no, no. This is just what we called creepy old guys in South Africa when I was growing up. Right. Right. All right. And I also have Bruce Herring from Deadline. He put a spoiler in his title.

I was I'm a fan of MasterChef and we're still working our way through the finale. But I wake up the morning after the finale. And in the title, in the headline of his article is the name of the winner.

Fuck you, Bruce Herring. Are you stupid? So I left a comment and, you know, I didn't use profanity. I did not use profanity when I when I called him out. Jason, you are so good at being a jerk.

You don't need to use profanity. That's how good you are at it. This is true. This is true. I called him an amateur and asked if he'd ever used the Internet before. So I have now been banned for life for commenting on Deadline. And people, there are racist people in the comments talking about the whole thing.

And it's just like screaming. They're just horrible human beings. And I just call the author an amateur. So I get banned because this fucking asshat has never been to Internet school and doesn't know how to write a headline for a show that people haven't watched yet because I don't know fucking DVRs fucking idiot.

So Bruce Herring needs to be fired from Deadline. And if he owns Deadline, the board needs to oust him right now. That's all I'm saying. All right. Well, I'm going to take I feel better now. OK, I'm glad I'm going to take your Elon Musk as moron of the week and turn it around and also make him hero of the week because he saw a story on Twitter from Newsweek, the headline being massive semen explosion after blaze hits bull artificial insemination facility.

Firefighters forced to dodge projectiles and tweeted, told you AI was dangerous. Yeah, it's funny, man. It's pretty good. It's really funny. It's pretty good. OK. Yeah. He made up for the other one.

There you go. Closing shout outs. I got a quick shout out to a friend of the show, MXV. He just finished his 15th, I believe, Riot Fest gig as a photographer over there. So he posted up his photos over at punkvinyl.com.

You can check out the couple of days of Riot Fest and a secret show with the descendants. It's pretty good stuff for my former photography student. He's done well with himself. So cheers to MXV for those photos. They're pretty good. I checked them out. They're good. And I would like to say, please, everybody hit those stars on overcast.

We're losing ground. We're losing ground. Get us back up to the top. Yeah. Yeah. We haven't asked you guys in a while. So if you've got that overcast, open up, just hit a bunch of stars for the past episodes and the one you're listening to. Helps us out because we just like it.

Yeah, basically. It doesn't really help us out much at all, but we like it. We like it. We like to see that you guys are listening. It's fun. So until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, go to patreon.com slash GOG.

Call 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 clicking that PayPal button. Your support really keeps us going and we really appreciate it. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 378.

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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