380: Echo Chamber

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. Heard you had a week today, Brian. I've had a week. As anybody that listened to the previous show knows, my laptop went boom, thanks to some spilled water on it. And I had to do the show at your place because I didn't have anything to do it off of and off my iPad and good times. So let me start with the non-tech stuff that's going on that, you know, because it's the Grumpy Old Geeks law that you cannot have a computer disaster

occur at a convenient time when nothing else is going on in your life. Well, that's how it goes. Yes. Yeah, that's just how it goes. So that all happened on Monday. I went to your place on Tuesday. On Tuesday, my wife found out that a close colleague of hers had passed away unexpectedly in Toronto. So she took the red eye last night to fly out for a memorial, which meant I'm on daddy daycare duty full time. And I usually don't do the morning shift with my son. And boy, oh boy, it takes an extreme amount

of patience to get a three-year-old to do anything in the morning. Well, that's not surprising. No, no, it's not. It's a three-year-old in the morning. Come on. So congrats to her for all that. And then she's flying back first thing Saturday morning because then we are going to my uncle's memorial service. And my aunt called me midweek when I was trying to deal with all this and told me that she would like me to speak. So I've been writing a eulogy while still dealing with all these tech problems. So good times.

Good times. Anyways, on to all the things that I discovered about the Apple universe this week. I've known, you know, I haven't been to an Apple store in a long time. And I know, you know, if you need the geek squad, not the geek squad, the help desk, the genius bar, whatever they call it, it's a good idea to make an appointment online ahead of time because otherwise you're just going to sit there, you put in your name and you wait until they can take you. What I did not realize is that if you walk in with two grand and throw it down on the table and say, I would like that MacBook Air right

there, they will say to you, uh, could I have your name please? And we're going to put you in a queue and somebody will be with you in about 30 minutes to sell you the computer that you're looking at right now. Customer service of the future. Yes. So I did not have 30 minutes because I had hightailed it back from the Valley at your place and I needed to go pick up my son. So I walked out annoyed and left and came home and purchased it online for pickup. And about two hours later,

I got a little ding text message saying my MacBook Air is ready for pickup. And, um, I had to wait until my wife came home, went down. So now it's, it's relatively late at night and I'm like, ah, well, that's okay because obviously a time machine backup, uh, you know, using the migration assistant, that's probably going to take quite some time. So it'll just run overnight and I'll wake up in the morning with a, with my computer back the way it was just slightly smaller. That's the promise of the technology that we pay for. That is the promise of the technology. Um, that is not what occurred.

Uh, I went to bed and it said the nine hours were remaining on the migration assistant. I woke up in the morning and looked at the migration assistant and nine hours were still remaining. Oh, Jesus. So it had hung in some way, shape or form. So here we are. Nothing's working. Uh, I stop it. I restart it. It basically errors out a couple of times. At this point, I'm like, oh boy, oh boy, Houston, we have a problem. And my wife is like, well, why don't you make an appointment for the genius bar?

I was like, I had to have to take the time machine. I'd have to take the computer. And then I would have to wait the 10 hours or whatever there. If they would even, I'm like, this is probably not a possibility. I Google it a little bit and they say, you know, I see something that says, boy, doing time machine backups over wifi is not recommended because it craps out a lot and it takes forever. So plug in that ethernet cable. And I'm like, there are no fucking ports on this computer. I would love to do that, but there are no fucking ports.

Dongles, man. It's all about the dongles. I ordered the dongle that, uh, well, that's the other thing about this computer. Like I do miss the extra two inches. I'm sure I'll get used to it because it's a 13 inch screen and I had 15. It's forcing me to go into my room more and use my, well, we'll get to that in a minute. I'm getting ahead of myself. Um, yes, I did get the dongle that you recommended. So that's nice. It still doesn't have an ethernet port. So it didn't help, but I have to say, this is a beautiful looking computer. I love the,

the touch ID. Wonderful job, Mac, that you've taken such a beautiful piece of equipment and made completely and utterly unusable unless you slap on a Frankenstein bolt to the side of it that lets you actually plug stuff in. Yeah, I know. It looks so ugly with this bolt on it, but it's the only way I could actually use the computer. Yeah. I can't believe you're doing, uh, your time machine

backups over wifi. Do you have like an old, uh, air time capsule? Yeah. Yeah. I've got the old, uh, it's the whole, it's the one that, you know, it's the time capsule plus the router system. So that's what I've got. So, Hey, it's a backup, right? Anyways, I, I, I stop it all. I do, I do a fresh, it says you'd better do a fresh install if one's crapped out. So I have to reinstall Mac OS. Fine. Then I start the migration assistant again. And this time I figure, okay, just documents

and settings. I have a, I had a whole bunch of applications. I don't really need anyways. This will be a cleaner install. It'll be nice. I'll only install the apps I need. That works. Takes seven hours, but all my documents just for docs and just for docs and settings, but it worked.

So then I spent that evening. This is now Wednesday evening reinstalling software that I use. And lo and behold, I had really, really old versions of software that you couldn't get downloads for anymore. So a lot of people got money out of me as I purchased updates and upgrades and new versions of software. Yeah, that's fun, isn't it? What I wasn't going to do, because everybody's trying to move to subscription models. I use Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel quite a bit, but I am not going

to pay that subscription for it because I have a purchase copy. And the one nice thing about the backup assistant I have to say is you can go in and you can grab individual files. Like it's not an all or nothing package that you bring over. So after I did use the migration assistant to do all my documents and settings, I was able to basically go in, grab Word, grab Excel, grab the preference files, grab the library stuff for it, copy it all over and they work. Wow. That's amazing. That is amazing. So I am

basically, mostly back up and running. The reason I'm doing this show off my iPad is because I don't have the right fucking cable for my monitor. So I ordered that yesterday or two days ago, and it was supposed to arrive yesterday. I was here all day yesterday working on my computer and not a knock on my door, not a ring on my phone. I got the notification that nobody was there. Sorry we missed you. So I'm still

waiting for my monitor adapter to be able to hook up my monitor. Oh man, your monitor just doesn't have HDMI? This is a fairly old Dell one. I'm due for an upgrade with that as well. Okay. Yeah, that's exactly what I'd like. I've got a 4K monitor and I've got a, just basically can just run HDMI through it. You can't get the 4K with the HDMI, but it at least has an HDMI port. Right. So that little

Frankenstein bolt has a, has an HDMI port on it. Works well, but yeah, that sounds, that sounds kind of par for the course nowadays. I'm sorry to hear it, but yeah, I'm sure we've given a lot of people PTSD from your experiences so far. So that was a good time. So I want to, I've got a bit of follow up with some other tech stuff. While I didn't experience any Bluetooth weirdness when I did my iOS upgrade, my wife did, and she always has Bluetooth off and she said it turned it back on for her.

Okay. So that continues. The, uh, the Bluetooth thing is a pain. I have to, I got in my car the other day and my car wouldn't recognize my phone. I'm like, what the hell's going on? Then I'm like, Oh, Bluetooth. So I got to go repair my phone to my car. So my car will work right. Yeah. And I have noticed that I have one recurring issue that's completely random with my iOS upgrade. Cellular data keeps randomly turning off. That's weird. I know I'll be like out on my bike ride or driving to

the fucking Apple store for whatever dongle I need now. And you know, I won't get any emails or texts, which, you know, okay, fine. Yeah, that's good. What's wrong with that? And then as soon as I get home and reconnect to wifi, and I'm like, Oh, cellular data switched off again. It's happened to me like three times since update. Well, time for what's time for a new phone for you anyway.

I'm on an eight. I thought you were on a seven. No, I got an eight. Oh, okay. I'm fine for now. I think. Okay. Anyways, I thought you had a seven. That's been my week in a nutshell. All right. Well, let's get to some actual follow-up here. I got an email about the Yahoo customer data breach security thingy Madu about the, uh, the class action lawsuit. Yes. Yes. With oath.

Oath. Oath. Uh, so they've got $117 million fund that they're paying out from. Well, basically if I want to get my a hundred dollars or even up to $358 and 80 cents, it's the same thing as before with, with the other ones. You have to prove that you're, you had credit owned that. Yeah. It's like they make this just so easy for them to keep the money. What if I don't want credit monitoring

service? What if I don't want it? It's such a joke. Yeah. It's such a bullshit, but it's out there now. It's at Yahoo data breach settlement.com. If you want to go, it's not even worth filling out the form to even get free, you know, credit monitoring because everybody's got free credit monitoring now. Yeah. And we've talked to before about DNA data and how, you know, it's, it's, once you put it out there, it's out there. Yep. Right. Or once your family puts it out there, it's out there. That's exactly. We've got some more data. We've got some more DNA stories

throughout the show today, but I got an email that says my heritage acquires Prometheze and SNPedia. I've used Prometheze in the past to upload my 23andMe data to get some, you know, just get some more human readable results on what it all means. So they've got it now, you know, and now my heritage has it because Prometheze has gone out of business and been acquired. And they say that, you know,

they're not going to do anything with it, but now I'm going to get a new, I'm going to get a new MyHeritage account. It's going to give me even more stuff. Great. That I didn't ask for, that I didn't want my data run against. Right. And so I went to Prometheze and tried to delete my data, to delete my genome. Nope. Can't do that. Can't do that. Can't do that. I have to, I have to go through an email to get to security and have them delete it manually. But who knows if MyHeritage

already has it and has ported it over and they're already running crap against it. It's like, yep. Yep. Once it's out there, it's out there. And honestly, it's like, okay, 23andMe already has it, which means everybody else probably already has it anyway, or will at some point. So yes, the horses have left the barn. That is true. Yep. And we've made fun of Goop many, many times on this show just because it's Goop. And I saw this over at Ars Technica. So I did find this on a tech

website. So there's our tech tie in. Goop settles lawsuit and can no longer make health claims about vaginal eggs. Now that, that alone right there, are eggs good for you? Are eggs bad for you? Well, we definitely know vaginal eggs don't do squat. Well, you do have to squat. Oh, you do.

Ew. So according to the Santa Clara County district attorney, Jeff Rosen, the company claimed that it's jade and rose quartz eggs after inserted into the vagina could balance hormones, regulate menstrual cycles, prevent uterine prolapse, and increased bladder control. Goop advertised that the inner judge flower essence blend, also a blend of essential oils meant to be taken orally or added to bathwater could help prevent depression. Well, the company has now agreed to refund any customers who bought the

eggs or the flower essence, and they have to pay out $145,000 in civil penalties. But here's the kicker. Goop has also agreed to no longer make any claims regarding the efficacy or effects of any of its products without possessing competent and reliable scientific evidence that substantiates the claims. All right. So I don't think that'll matter to anyone because the people buying this stuff don't care anyways. Right. But that's not the point. The point is that somebody is out there looking out

for these morons who are buying things to shove up their hoo-ha thinking it's going to give them enlightenment. Snake eggs. Snake eggs. Exactly. So if they can only prevent measles. In the news. Now, this was a head scratcher, Brian. I saw this over at TechCrunch, and the headline is Facebook promises not to stop politicians' lies and hate.

Well, I'm pretty sure that's not how they worded it. Facebook confirms it won't fact-check politicians' speech or block their content if it's newsworthy, even if it violates the site's hate speech rules or other policies. All right. Well, that's one way to avoid any problems on your end, I guess.

Yep. It's no longer against our terms of service. I'm scratching my head. I am too. I'm scratching my head. What's the point of having hate speech rules and policies if politicians can just post things that are against the policies? Well, and then where do you define politician? Like, if I ran for like a local board, I'm a politician.

Don't catch her. Yeah. Whatever. Or I'm in a union. I guess I'm a politician. You can't just make this for one group of people and not for everybody else. You can't have different standards. So now it's basically it's game on. But by seeking neutrality, Facebook may become complicit in the misinformation and malevolence some politicians will use it to spread. It leaves users to fend for themselves as they try to discern fact from fiction and opinion from reality. I thought they were trying so hard

to make everything peachy keen for this upcoming election. And now they're just like, fuck it. They threw their hands up and we're out. I think you that's the exact right analysis. That seems to really be the case because all we were hearing was, oh, don't worry, we're going to fix it. We're going to work really hard. We're going to spend a lot of money. We're going to have a board of ethics. We're going to have all these sorts of things. And now they just went, fuck it.

Yeah, seriously. They're like, we give up. We can't take it anymore. We just can't take it. Great. Well, that's that's going to be awesome. I'm sure this is going to work out well. Yeah. And we got some Uber news today. Uber has launched Uber incubator to help develop new products and services. So there is basically a startup incubator. Right. And what they're going to do is they're going to help, you know, people use the Uber platform to come up with

new business ideas and test them rapidly to see if they're going to work. And then, you know, probably take a percentage because right now, Uber has no idea how they're going to make money in the future. That's anything besides Uber Eats. That's right. Because, you know, the actual car service is on a fairly steady decline into the abyss. Incubator tip number one, you don't have any employees, only contractors. Exactly. Exactly. So and they're also starting an entrepreneur in

residence program. They've got all sorts of things they're trying to do. But I'm pretty sure this is just like we got to take some of this money that we still have and try and find a new business model. So let's get some more brains in here who can help us figure this out. And then, you know, hopefully one of these will hit and we will make money that way and we will pivot. That's what incubators are for, man. You get like 100 companies in there. One hits, 99 fail. Then you make your

money off the one just like a record label. Yep. So and here's the big one for the week. When rides go wrong, how Uber's investigations unit works to limit the company's liability. This was over at the Washington Post and it's been making the rounds. Did you read this? I did. I did. Did this not anger you immensely? I've been angered immensely by Uber since they first showed up. Right. This is nothing

new. This is I am not surprised. I am not. This is Uber being Uber. They don't give a shit. No, they don't. And they have a special investigations unit and it's 80 people in Phoenix. And they're the ones that you get to talk to if, you know, you've had a problem with a driver. And here's the real kicker, though, because they got people who work there and they got them on the record talking about

what the job is and, you know, where they're at. It says the agents are forbidden by Uber from routing allegations to police or from advising victims to seek legal counsel or make their own police reports, even when they get confessions of felonies. Wow. Said a former investigator.

Yep. And it's been corroborated by interviews with other investigators, alleged victims and plaintiff's attorneys. So. As he goes on to say, Uber's investigative process is broken, according to people who have worked there, stymied by Uber's insistence that its drivers are independent contractors and not employees, and therefore it isn't responsible for their actions.

Yeah. And and here's the thing. Yeah. They've got guys who had, you know, three strikes and still let them drive for them. And then the guy goes on to rape somebody. It's like you can't turn the blind eye to that. Look, just because you don't want to be liable. And it's a contractor. We have nothing.

It's not our problem, man. Not our problem. And, you know, I guess this is another reason why they they want people to always be contractors. Exactly. Exactly. Completely limits liability. We see your game, Uber. We've seen your game since day one. Other people are catching on. Finally. Finally. I don't think Uber is going to be around too much longer, at least not in the form it is now. They're going to be around for a lot longer. I'm sorry, but they're not going away anytime soon. Sad. It's a Hydra. Once you chop the head off of this one, another one will pop up.

We still have Lyft because all the people that get kicked out of Uber go drive for Lyft because they don't share their data with any of the background check companies because they can't because that would mean that they know about what these people have done. Right. You know, it's just like, you know, they're Uber rape mobiles for the most part, it seems. And I love this. This comes from Tracy Bradine, Uber's global head of women's safety. At the end of the day, we're not the judge and jury to determine whether a crime has occurred. We're here to gather

information. Make a business decision. We're not law enforcement. Right. Fuck you. Yep. Well, there you go. Another reason to delete that app. Delete that app, people. I don't have it on my phone anymore. Let's talk about another Hydra, Amazon. Oh, yes. Now, we do have some hope for Amazon. Bezos signed on, agreed with the whole new CEO deal where we're not just about shareholder

value. We're going to have higher values. He's taken some promising steps. So I'm wondering what you think about this one. Now, we've talked a lot about Amazon's recognition software in the past, which, you know, facial recognition stuff. They've marketed the tech to corporations, law enforcement agencies. And this has led to outrage both inside and outside of Amazon because, you know, they're marketing it to ICE and other things. And people are like, hey, hold on a second.

First off, this technology is not ready for prime time, as we all know. And secondly, there's some dubious agencies we're dealing with at this point. And stop it. They haven't. Maybe they will. We'll see what happens. But Bezos did just drop a bombshell. He wants regulation. He thinks the government's taking too long to do it. So they're going to drop their own principles.

Okay. Are they any good? Well, there's no details yet. Oh, damn. I want to read them. Yeah, me too. Well, here's where I'm going to be hopeful. I'm going to be hopeful that Bezos has taken this to heart. This whole, we're not beholden to just shareholder value. We need to be good people, good corporate entities. We need to do the right thing for humanity. So hopefully, he will get a good board of people together to draft some decent legislation. Hopefully, it'll be good. We'll see.

We'll see. But hey, they're being proactive. And I'm wondering if they're talking with Microsoft on this too, since Microsoft wants regulation around it, maybe they should put their heads together and come up with something together. I agree. I think that would be a good idea because we know Microsoft has had a pretty good track record for the most part. For the most part. Yeah. Sometimes. Sometimes.

And we spent a lot of time talking about all these, the tech unicorns of 2019. And I will include WeWork in this because they did as well, even though it's not a tech company. I know, but you got to admit the news this week that they ousted the CEO was pretty damn satisfying. Is it though? Because it's just Uber all over again, isn't it? Like they got rid of, you cut off the head and you're still a shit company.

It's Kalinook 2.0. Exactly. Anyways, I found this page over on Recode slash Vox slash whatever they are. And I'm going to keep doing that because it's so confusing because they have multiple logos on their page now. But I bookmarked this one because I think this is great. How the tech unicorns of 2019 are doing on the stock market. Some 84% of US tech companies that went public last year did so without turning a profit. The last time unprofitable tech companies went public at this rate was 2000, the year the dot-com bubble burst.

Oh no. Yep. Oh no. In 2019, these companies are riding high on venture capital money and investors hunger for growth above all else. Even more concerning, all economic signs are pointing towards a recession and these companies do not do well during recessions because the money doesn't keep flowing in. You have to rely on your own profits, which they don't have. So this page is basically an IPO tracker that will update stock

prices every few minutes. They've got Lyft, Zoom, Pinterest, Uber, Fixer, Slack, and Peloton. Fiverr, not Fixer. Sorry, Fiverr. I'm reading off my iPad, which is a bit further away than normal. Sorry. And they're going to be adding WeWork if it goes public and Airbnb when it goes public.

So it's going to be a cool, quick visual perspective on how these companies are doing. And obviously, none of them are doing particularly well. Awesome. I got to make a little widget for that so it just sits in the background and I can chuckle. Of all the public stocks on their tracker right now, only Zoom is making a profit. The other companies are not. Yeah. Zoom has a product that's been road tested and they spent a long time doing it. The audio sucks, but it does what it's supposed to do. It does what it says on the day for high quality.

Yeah. I mean, if you want to make a quick video conference with a bunch of people, it's great. But yeah, there you go. Now matches back in the news. Okay. Oh God. We've known for years that the match group are a bunch of skis balls and slime bags. Well, the FTC is finally, you just, they're done. The FTC says that most consumers aren't aware that 25 to 30 percent of match registrations per day come from scammers. And that includes romance scams, phishing scams, fraudulent advertising

and extortion scams. During some months from 2013 to 2016, more than half the communications taking place on match were from accounts. The company identified as fraudulent. Right. Okay. And, uh, you know, it basically goes on to say that they just didn't do anything about it. And match of course is coming back. We try, we're just, we're just the platform. Yeah, no, I mean, they, they, they say, they say that 85% of potentially improper accounts, they're killed. They kill them in the

first four hours and, uh, 96% of the accounts within a day. That's bullshit because the numbers don't match up. Right. Obviously. So that's why the FTC has taken them to court. So we'll see how this is going to play out. I don't see myself ever needing to use a dating app. I'm fair. I'm pretty happy in my marriage at the moment. But if I did, I think I would try to find one that basically required proof of proof of identity. It's, it's possible. Yeah. I don't know any that do, but cause I don't know

any dating apps. If anybody's listening that are on the dating apps that do require proof of identity, let us know some names so we can put them in the show notes. This episode of Grumpy Old Geeks is brought to you by our good friends at Hover. Look, you need your own domain name. If not for your business, then for your family. You're just way cooler. If you can drop an email address with a custom domain name, trust me, I do it all the time.

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and get 10% off your first purchase. We're back this week with Dave Bittner from the Cyber Wire podcast. The Cyber Wire is a free community-driven cybersecurity news service based in Maryland. Dave is also co-host of the Hacking Humans podcast, along with Joe Kerrigan, where they take on social engineering. I need a breath.

Dave Bittner: It's pretty good. Yeah, it's pretty good. Dave, did you see me wearing your Maryland swag? Dave Bittner: I did. I thought, you know, it's funny. My first reaction was, I didn't send Jason a hat. Dave Bittner: But you sent me a sticker. Dave Bittner: I did send you a sticker, which you put on a hat, which is very clever of you. Dave Bittner: Yes, until you wash it.

Dave Bittner: Yeah. Dave Bittner: I just imagine you like strutting down the street Dave Bittner: with all of your Maryland shirt and your Maryland hat and your Maryland flag, Dave Bittner: just with the Maryland state song blaring behind you, you know. Dave Bittner: And everybody in California has no idea what that is. Dave Bittner: Right, exactly. Who is that disturbed young man?

Dave Bittner: Had an Oriole sitting on my shoulder, tripping away. Dave Bittner: Right, yeah, exactly. Dave Bittner: Right. It was eating some steamed crabs or what, yeah. Dave Bittner: Oh, that sounds good. I'm down for that. Dave Bittner: Yeah, yeah. See? See? Dave Bittner: Better than that Guinness blonde that they make in Maryland. Dave Bittner: Oh, no, no. Dave Bittner: Well, we got some listener questions, actually, on one of the topics that we talked about before. And this comes from Liam. Hello from the land down under. I've been a listener for two years now and enjoyed every bite of it with a Y. Thank you very

much. Question about the so-called burner emails. Is there a service you use or do you just create a free email with Google or Yahoo? Keep up the good work and stay grumpy. Dave Bittner: I don't do anything nefarious enough to need a burner email. Dave Bittner: Oh, Brian. Dave, I know you use a different service. I put a few in the notes here. Is one of these one that you use?

Dave Bittner: No, no. I just spin up Gmail's if I need something disposable. That's the easiest, I think. Dave Bittner: Okay. Well, we've got a couple here in the show notes. We've got MailDrop, Mailinator, TempMail, and GorillaMail. So give those a shot if you want a service. Or if you're like Dave, just spin up a new Google Mail. Yeah. Speaking of Google, this is an interesting one.

Google wins case as court rules right to be forgotten is EU only. So there was a lot of news about people who were saying, hey, we went to Google and said, take us off the Googles for the EU members. And Google's like, okay, we did it. You're out. But only for people that live in the EU, if I'm in the United States, I can still search on you and still find the stuff that the people in the EU can't see. And they were like, sacrobleu, that's not fair. And so they went to

court over it. And the court has ruled that no, no, we only have jurisdiction in the EU. So go suck on a baguette, Frenchie. Dave Bittner: Wow. That's unfortunate, actually. Dave Bittner: Yeah. I would prefer it not work that way. I think it actually makes sense. Dave Bittner: Well, let me, I mean, it does geopolitically, but it's not what you'd hope for. Dave Bittner: Let me just first comment that no one frames a geopolitical story quite like Jason does. Dave Bittner: We do have a lot of listeners in France, Jason. Well, we have a lot of listeners

in France, Jason. Dave Bittner: Right. Dave Bittner: I don't, I don't even know if this guy's in France that sued him. So I was just making that up. Dave Bittner: Yeah. So what strikes me is that Dave Bittner: You could spin up a VPN, tell them you're in the US, and search for your next door neighbor and right to be forgotten is meaningless then. Dave Bittner: Right to be forgotten has been forgotten. Dave Bittner: Yep. Dave Bittner: Yeah. So it's, yeah, it's meaning, it's meaningless. It's

basically now meaningless. Dave Bittner: I wouldn't go that far. Who's going to spin up a VPN and do it? Dave Bittner: Everybody. Especially if you go to GOG.show/VPN. Dave Bittner: Of course, of course. I tell you what, Dave Bittner: Go tell your mom. Mom, go spin up a VPN and search for me in Canada. Dave Bittner: Yeah, Dave Bittner: But my mom is probably not searching the neighbor next door. It's the generation that...

Dave Bittner: Oh, come on. Dave Bittner: Well, maybe she is. She's... Dave Bittner: Exactly. Dave Bittner: I don't know. But, Dave Bittner: You know, this is for the more savvy generation that's doing the deep searches and Dave Bittner: dives on people and they're savvy enough to get a VPN. It really does make the right to be Dave Bittner: completely non-existent. Dave Bittner: Well, here's the thing. Nobody would Dave Bittner: have ever known if these guys didn't get a bug up their ass and sue Google for it.

Dave Bittner: Right. Dave Bittner: Everybody would have just assumed that it was gone from the internet Dave Bittner: for good and wouldn't have gotten a VPN and tried to search anywhere else. Dave Bittner: Now we know. Dave Bittner: Yeah. You know, that's the... What is it? The Barbra Streisand Dave Bittner: Right. Dave Bittner: So it's their own damn fault. Dave Bittner: Now, this one, Dave, I think this one's Dave Bittner: right up your alley. I'm sure you've covered this on the Cyber Wire. "Botnet uses recent Dave Bittner: vBulletin exploit to block other hackers." Dave Bittner: So this is not unusual behavior for botnets.

Dave Bittner: And in fact, we've seen... There's some malware. I can't remember off the top of my head Dave Bittner: which one it was. It was probably two years ago or so. There was one that famously, Dave Bittner: when it found its way into a system and decided it was going to take up residence in Dave Bittner: there to do its botnet-y badness. Show title, therefore, if you want it.

Dave Bittner: I like that. Dave Bittner: So one of the things it would do was to check to see if there was any Dave Bittner: other malware in there. And if there was, it would remove it. Dave Bittner: Right. And patch the system Dave Bittner: and kind of get everything up to date. Dave Bittner: Yeah. It basically went in and cleaned house, Dave Bittner: got the system as pristine as it could be. So the reliability of its own botnet would be assured Dave Bittner: and then would do the things that it did. So this sort of thing is not

Dave Bittner: new, but it is interesting. It's the kind of thing we see a lot with these guys doing botnets, actually. Dave Bittner: Oh, that's interesting, because when I first read the title, Dave Bittner: I thought this was one of the ones where the botnet was going in and patching Dave Bittner: the bulletin so that it was no longer exploitable. But no, no, it's the other way around.

Dave Bittner: They're just saying, no, we got here first. Right. You know, this is our playground, Dave Bittner: kid. Go find a new corner. Dave Bittner: Exactly. Exactly. Right. Yes, that is what they're doing. Dave Bittner: Yeah, that is pretty much it. I just I like the ones that were going in and just, Dave Bittner: you know, being white hats and trying to fix everybody's thing. We talked about that one.

Dave Bittner: White bots. Dave Bittner: Yeah. And then there was the other extreme of that. Dave Bittner: There was the one that was going around in bricking devices that were vulnerable. Dave Bittner: Yeah. Dave Bittner: And they were using the rationale that better to be bricked than

Dave Bittner: turned into a botnet. And... Dave Bittner: Yeah, that's a dick bot. Dave Bittner: Yeah. Dave Bittner: White bots and dick bots. Dave Bittner: Yeah. So, you know, I guess going around and destroying other people's equipment, that falls astray of the... Dave Bittner: That might not be legal. Dave Bittner: Yeah. Dave Bittner: Yeah. Dave Bittner: Yeah. Dave Bittner: Yeah. Dave Bittner: Yeah. Dave Bittner: Well, the problem is even the ones that went in and cleaned up and actually patched the systems were ran afoul of the computer fraud and abuse act yeah yep absolutely absolutely yep

so uh if you're still using v bulletin welcome to 2019 i was gonna say is anybody's i remember using v bulletin ages and ages ago in the 90s when it first came out yep doordash has been breached yes i got uh i got an email and i didn't even remember i had a doordash account i d i did because i talked about it on the show all my food came upside down every time i worked from doordash

so i got i got the notification but the thing is you know they have a password reset link in the list here i looked in my one password i don't have it because i made the username and password in the app right so it never made it to one password so i don't even know what my username is what email i used to sign up with it nothing so i tried all my email addresses i couldn't find it

so i don't know what what the hell's going on but i got the email and i tried the email address that they sent the email to and they still couldn't find an account so i don't know what the hell's going on over there somebody dashed off with my my username apparently yeah i i i don't think i have any experience with doordash it's uh it's hard to know don't don't i'm pretty sure my my oldest son got banned from them because i think he complained one too many times i think they're pretty quick with

the banning over there who knows but oh maybe that's why i'm not there because i complain every time it doesn't sound like you um uh so related to this story um zach whitaker posted over on twitter that uh doordash has um in their um what do you call these things guys when you robots yeah the robots

text file to disallow uh the page on their site that has the notice of the security breach so that google can't index it oh clever yeah nice huh nice work yeah now we've talked about uh genetic testing and all the good stuff we talked about it earlier in the show even and now the justice department has issued draft rules on using consumer genetic data in investigations

this is interesting this is very interesting i think yeah uh trying to i guess set some boundaries proactively so nice so as to not have them put upon them yeah yeah yeah here's a here's a little quote prosecuting violent crimes is a department priority for many reasons including to ensure public safety and to bring justice and closure to victims and victims families said deputy attorney general

jeffrey a rosen in a statement we cannot fulfill our mission if we cannot identify the perpetrators forensic genetic genealogy gets us that much closer to being able to solve the formerly unsolvable but we must not prioritize this investigative advancement above our commitments to privacy and civil liberties and that is why we have released our interim policy to provide guidance on maintaining that crucial balance most critically the department guidelines clearly state that a suspect shall not

be arrested based solely on genetic association generated by a genetic genealogical service boom so you've got to have you got to have more more dirt as it was and this is just a little bit of extra evidence this reminds me of uh when i guess seat belt laws came into to be a thing at least around here uh you couldn't pull someone over just for having their seat belt off you had to get them for something else

yep and then you could write them a ticket for yeah then you could write them a ticket for not having their seat belt now i also think similar to that if a police officer wanted to pull you over for not having your seat belt on they'll find a way they do tend to yes follow you home and so i wonder how that's going to apply here in other words if they have some sort of genetic link how hard is it they'll find some other evidence

somewhere yeah yeah i don't i don't know the answer i mean it says if a suspect is identified using genetic information the sample must be directly compared to the forensic profile that has already been uploaded to the fbi's uh codus system the combined dna index system so they have to it has to match something they already have on file which means that you know they'd probably have to go back and get a subpoena to get their dna data run it then put it in the codus system then arrest them

yeah i thought this uh comment from um natalie ram uh she's an assistant law professor at the university of baltimore um she said we are gal we are nearing a de facto national dna database uh we don't choose our genetic relatives and i cannot sever my genetic relation with them there's nothing voluntary about that here here yes i know many relations i would like to sever my genetic ties with but

you're kind of stuck once you're stuck yeah interesting yeah well at least they're being proactive that's i think this is good they're trying to at least say that you know we're not going to just willy-nilly scrape up everything and you know go back to all of these cold cases but it's a good it's a good starting point i think for the discussion i think so i agree i think it's good to have guardrails on this stuff and it's good that they recognize that that they're not they're not going as far as they can before they get slapped back they're actually it seems like they're being

thoughtful about it and trying to get ahead of it so i like it so uh the amazon ring comes up here pretty regularly and everything around that uh there was a story recently this was from cnet and it was about a plan that ring had they have since abandoned where they were going to use 9-1-1 calls to

automatically activate the cameras no no no no no no no so in other words somebody calls 9-1-1 near you and every camera within range of who knows what the range would have been but within a certain range of that 9-1-1 call starts recording right and then the police come to your door and ask you

very politely if they can have the footage i or if you opt in i think they just just take it right away yeah yeah that's uh that's a no-no so i explain to me brian you're because i'm not having the strong uh response to this that that you are in that i i guess if you opted into this i could see the

value of it so explain to me what's making you have that reaction well i would never opt into it anyways and it's not my reaction is based solely on i hate the idea of of company of once i buy something not being fully in control of it at a visceral level it bothers me the very idea that i could have a camera that i paid for for my own use so i can see who's at my door on my phone that somebody

else some other entity entity is able to control that system i do not like that sam i am it i don't know why it bothers me so much and i know i'm starting to become very old school because because it doesn't really seem to bother other people as much as it bothers me but just the very concept that anything that i have purchased and i own is being controlled by somebody unknown to me at any time really bothers

me mm-hmm mm-hmm jason what about you i would opt in for this if you could do it on a per camera basis mm-hmm like if it was right my front-facing camera outside the house and my the cameras like that point to the street that you know cover my cars not mike not not i don't have multiple cars the household i i gotta i gotta put a camera i gotta put a hundred dollar camera on my veyron out yeah yeah exactly

no but i don't want it to trigger the one in my backyard because that covers the entire backyard including the hot tub which you know there could be some nasty white man ass showing up on the ring right right but if it was for the the outside facing cameras i would totally opt into that i don't see a problem with that as long as i can select the cameras that they can trigger mm-hmm i tend to

agree with with what you say jason i think as long as i could opt in um i can see the value in this i can see the public good in something like this even police state slippery slow yeah yeah yeah yeah even to trigger the recording i don't know i yeah huh can you tell i i just don't want i don't want unknown fingers on the button that control things that i own yeah no i guess that's reasonable that's

reasonable absolutely reasonable yeah most of these services they can probably still turn it on already and not tell you i'm sure they can i'm sure they can so i mean i honestly i wouldn't have a problem with it just because there's so many break-ins in my neighborhood i would love to catch these bastards mm-hmm and if if it means like i drain a little extra battery here and there and i would like a notification every time that it is turned on because that means something's going on in my neighborhood

and i would want to know what's going on it would also you know behoove them to say let me let me look at the footage before i turn it over just don't automatically let them have access to here's an idea what if you got an alert on your phone that said something popped up that said 9-11 in your area enable camera yes or no there you go that's all you need would that do it brian if it was opt-in yeah yeah yeah they say in the thing that this was going to be an opt-in system i'd be okay with

that i'd want some very stern promises that if you have opted out of this they cannot control your systems at all mm-hmm yeah i think if you combined that and also it didn't automatically turn the footage over it's still up to you as to whether or not you want to turn the footage over in other words even if you said yes to the pop-up on your phone it started recording then but you still had to you had the ability to review the footage and choose whether or not to give it to them

well yeah that's what i was saying that would be a nice nice thing to have because it's like there might be something i don't want since this pandora's box has already been opened i think that's best case scenario that's that i would be okay with that mm-hmm well related to that um someone this came by on my twitter feed i thought it was interesting i don't recall having seen this and jason i thought for you in particular uh you might be interested in this it's a an open source software project called zone

minder are you familiar with this i am not i'm looking at it now yeah so this is an integrated set of applications which provide a complete surveillance solution allowing capture analysis recording and monitoring of any cctv or security cameras why don't any of these companies have a sense of humor and just brand themselves big brother because it's copyrighted yeah yeah isn't the statute on that coming out that's got to be 50 years old yeah well it's a probably 120 years thanks

to disney now so that's right so i was thinking in in your case where you had some cameras that you felt like they weren't triggering fast enough um the fact that this is all open source by their own admission you have to be a little techie to to know how to install this sort of thing but you certainly fall into that kind of category and uh it seems like it has a lot of interesting little plugins and tools and since it's all open source um might be interesting because you have a lot of cameras

you have old cameras laying around that you don't really use anymore right yeah and i have ones that can be used with this like a lot of these ones like the logitech cameras and the the ring cameras you could probably couldn't use with this you have to have actual standalone cameras i've got a bunch of amcrest cameras that would definitely work with this yeah yeah so there's things in there like some uh there's facial recognition stuff i think you can get license plate scanning there's it seems like different people are doing different types of plugins for it but the fact that it's all open source and

you can dial it in is interesting yeah license plate readers facial recognition all the things that we've been railing against in this segment uh now we're all happy about let's get it installed let's get it ourselves exactly yeah oh man you can even run it on a raspberry pi nice but it does and it says right here advanced ai powered detection as long as big brother is me yeah i can't wait to go over to your place next time

right well how many how many cameras did you count when you were here uh at least nine no they're not nine yeah wait wait a second i think there is six seven eight oh i was off by one totally yeah well actually no i was way off base it's not excessive at all actually you didn't go in the house if you go in the house and count those there's 11 here

oh that was just the outside of the house i see yeah that's just the outside there's eight well there's there's it's spread between inside the studio outside the studio and then the front of the house on the side of the house yeah jason is a surveillance state i kind of am yeah it's fun you know jason one thing i'll share with you that um that i experimented with um on i have a my house backs up to some parkland and i have a back deck and i was having trouble with people stealing things

off of my back deck like turtles uh all those turtles you stole it was uh bicycles were being stolen my kids bicycles were being stolen off the back deck and um oh man yeah so one of the things i did uh was rig up a um with the smart system that we have in the house for controlling the lights and those sorts of things i rigged up a motion detector combined with a that so i had motion detector that

triggered a switch like an outlet a ac outlet which powered up a basically like a big pumpkin blinking red light so anybody comes onto the deck this light starts blinking okay oh god oh god right um but it was really it was was not expensive to do but i thought it was sort of an extra um hey somebody's watching

and you know you're being triggered by motion to to help uh convince people to maybe explore someone else's deck than mine well i got two options here we the new amazon echo bear trap is that you can put at the bottom of the stairs that might be good for you and uh you could probably get like a surplus emrad somewhere to just you know blast them with sound when they come up and jiggle their intestines once

they step on the deck and they're not authorized well i do all right i i do already have a uh an electric fence um wire going around because it's actually two decks that are stacked up on top of each other and the top deck is screened in and i was having trouble with raccoons tearing off the screens to come into the screened in deck which let me tell you when you walk out into your screened in deck and you're not expecting to come face to face with a raccoon not fun so um i got serious and got

myself a uh an electric fence charger ran a little wire around the perimeter of the top deck and haven't seen any raccoons lately wait did you say your wife's not going out there and unplugging it so the raccoons crawl back in so what was it barry the raccoon guy can come back oh no oh right right this is this is actually a different set of raccoons this is uh oh these actually exist

what was that extraction fluid yeah reaction fluid yeah yeah honey i need barry to come back uh to uh inject some more of his extraction fluid yeah uh anyway the point is i am totally capable of taking things to the extreme going off and spending too much time on amazon figuring out how to

how to uh come up an extreme solution to a minor issue that's why we're nerds yeah that's what we do right i i say to the guy who has 11 security cameras and scoffed at me because i said nine right yeah that's way off all right well good luck with it all let me if you if you do explore this zone minder thing i'd love to know

what you think about it um uh seems like it might be interesting for you yeah definitely definitely i will let you know how it goes all right all right well i'm going to run along here gentlemen i will talk to you guys next time all right hold on a second i got to go uh mute my devices because they're all going to go off during this segment of course they are all right let's get into it and i'm sorry anybody that has

the ladies in the tube uh you might not want to be playing this out loud put headphones on because it is going to be it is going to be fun you mean put on your echo buds yeah oh yes yes we'll get to those in a second first we're going to talk about out of the 15 things that they announced the echo studio which is a 200 smart speaker with dolby atmos and 3d audio support and pretty ugly like all of them yeah but you know you can stick it in a corner so that's kind of nice i i actually of all

the things that they announced most of them i found laughable that one intrigues me just because i i like good sound of course you do of course you do and now yes the echo buds which are the airpod uh you know competitors and and other assistants out there are there are other companies that make these that are pretty much the same and i end on par with the price point 129 bucks and uh sweat proof got bose noise reduction in them it's kind of nice they actually look pretty decent yeah i wish my airpods

had noise reduction in it yeah and i like these since they are actual you know earbuds they actually go in your ear instead of airpods which kind of hang out and look like you have ear snot but or it's very very cold and icicles icicles uh but you know if i was in the market i would try these out yeah me too i'm happy with my well i could be happier with my airpods now apparently yeah yeah so we'll see how this goes um if anybody gets them let us know their pre-order is up now they come out uh the day before

halloween now they've got echo frames which are alexa enabled glasses so okay yeah i mean i don't understand this product really here's here's what it is i'm just gonna i'm gonna put this in t in a nutshell echo is like frank's red hot amazon wants to put that shit on well yeah i guess that's it right because yeah you know i i i mean i under as much as i as much as i despise the google glass i at least

got it heads up display all that sort of stuff this is just glasses with speakers in it that's it yeah okay so that's i mean that's really so uh then you've got the echo loop which is a ring but they can't call it ring because they own ring yeah that's exactly it yep so we've got uh got the echo loop and i saw a like a hands-on with that and it looks kind of dumb yep um whatever that's why we

have self you know what the echo loop is 129.99 the echo frames are 179.99 and the echo buds are 129.99 out of the three of those i'm gonna get the buds because the buds do everything that the other two do already and it's already in your ear you don't have to the the taking a call on the echo loop just looks ridiculous because you have to like speak into your hand and hold it up to your ear looks like uh you know a 1960s sci-fi thing it's just silly or just it's it's kind of like something that gets

smart even though it's not in the shoe yeah see if they had echo shoes that would be awesome you know because you know they're gonna hear this and of course that's next well they've already got the big you know kerfuffle over them stealing the uh the birds uh all birds shoes right so if they had echo birds that's there you go echo birds echo location that's what we'll call it and of course we've got a new dot with a clock right whoo okay don't care about that the echo flex

now the echo flex is interesting it's kind of like an echo dot that you just plug into the wall for 30 bucks or 25 bucks speaker's gonna be crap on it we know that so whatever the one that here's the head scratcher echo glow which is just a light ball doesn't have doesn't have a microphone doesn't have a speaker it's just a ball yeah with lights in it i get it for a kid's room but you can get you don't need one that is controllable by alexa nope 30 bucks for that one now we got the echo

show eight another one of those uh tv ones so it's eight inches of course and uh 130 bucks i i love my show absolutely love it it's great for being in touch with family okay okay and we got the echo speaker gen 3 which is a speaker okay gen three yeah now we're getting to getting into the good stuff here the amazon smart oven because why because why i yeah why okay uh does not have a microphone on

board but it can you know it's controlled by your other echoes around the house but you can if you have an echo show you can scan your packaged food and then it will set the microwave for you are we all so stupid and lazy no here's the thing we'll get to why that's actually kind of cool in a minute okay okay that's actually not a bad thing uh the ring fetch which is the the dog right tag which you know

works on the not yet ex or semi-existent sidewalk operating system that they're working on for you know broad spectrum uh iot devices on the 900 megahertz spectrum which apparently they said they rolled out here in la which is scary um that's no price no announcement on that but you know if they do come out with these ring fetches they need to come out with uh dog traffic control systems because the

biggest problem in my neighborhood is everybody's got a dog and like you know you're always bumping into people coming around corners you want to be able to route the dogs away from each other alpha vector five we've got a pit bull coming in hot yep exactly exactly and uh we've got the new eero yep uh i don't know if i care about this one that much because the new eero is advertising maybe you should have said that oh no no i like these this well they they are advertising but i i've got to say the

eero pro that they sell is the one that i would get because the new ones uh they only go up to 550 megabits per second and a lot of people now that's you know we've got gigabit now and in our neighborhood that's true so if you get the small ones it's not really future-proof i've got two of the big pros and a bunch of beacons works great um but yeah if you're if you're in a low bandwidth area they look nice and they still the beacon still work you can plug those into the wall but

these are little desktop units so but here's the here's the thing they're cheap that's the good bit they're 99 bucks for one 249 for three that's good so that's i mean that's less than one of the pro stations that i have and i have two of those so you know for price it's actually pretty good and a bunch of new ring stuff that nobody cares about because ring ring cameras well don't buy any have they improved the cameras because it says something about 1080p streaming and all that sort of

stuff so that might uh if they've improved the cameras that's your main beef yeah i don't know i mean i got the latest and greatest cameras when i got them not very long ago so uh but these are in-house cameras these stick up cameras and they're you know yeah whatever whatever i don't need any more of those now over at vox recode whoever they are they have a an interesting uh article saying amazon's alexa powered ambitions contradict its promises to protect your privacy and it's a

interesting piece but it goes back to what we were saying that just get over the fact that people are going to be listening to your calls if you don't explicitly go in and turn it off this is a lot of words that just say oh they're they're making it opt out not you can't have speech recognition at this point in time without humans reviewing things it's the tech isn't there yet so that's the deal if you want to use speech recognition people are going to be listening yep and over at about amazon.com

there's a big propaganda piece it says new ways alexa makes life simpler and more convenient now it's a ton of propaganda totally but the kicker the kicker and the one thing that everybody has talked about and the only thing that really should matter from this entire echo chamber of of announcements is actor and producer samuel l jackson is the first celebrity voice we've created for alexa using neural text-to-speech technology simply ask sam to tell you jokes

information about the weather set timers and alarms play music and more all with a bit of his own personality you'll be able to interact with samuel l jackson in explicit and non-explicit versions as soon as they said explicit take my 99 cents i'm gonna go buy a goddamn echo just for this actually that was what okay okay that's funny uh two things here first i want to know how much they paid him oh i'm sure he's still probably carrying the bags of money because it's got to be insane

amounts of money to to own the rights to your voice basically um i want to see what other celebrities are coming along that that's going to be interesting to me because there are definitely some people i would love to have a darth vader one that would be awesome and one of my favorite things i ever had was a gp gps that allowed me to buy a darth vader voice for it it was the best thing ever um oh yeah yeah yeah i did the best part about that is when you make a wrong turn and he says your lack of i find your

lack of face i love that so so get on it people get on that i think the real big takeaway from all of this amazon uh information that we've got is the upsells and incels because we didn't have any of that before you bought the device you use the device now it's like oh if you want this feature that's 99 cents if you want this feature you can add that on for a buck 99 if you want this feature it's that is

completely new and nobody's talked about it and i'm like wow they're gonna make all the monies yeah because you don't just buy the device anymore you buy the device and now you have to buy all the options that's the way it's gonna go man and and these guys are revving these echoes like so fast it's like every week there's a new version it's crazy there's an article over adventure beat about amazon sidewalk and how their success is definitely anything but assured because there's so many competing uh basically protocols out there that are going to compete with sidewalks so uh it's

it's an interesting read but there this is definitely not something that is guaranteed to survive so if you're interested in that go for it now here's the one that makes me happy amazon's echo show can now identified household pantry items held in front of its camera why you might ask is it a hot dog if you're blind and you have a can of something and you can't tell what it is

alexa can now tell you but then alexa can also go to the microwave set the timer for you you can open it and put your food in and and it will cook it for you at the right temperature in the right time now they worked with blind people to actually make this thing work so it's not just you know some tech dude pulling an idea out of his ass and this is this is just what i like to see this is the kind of use of tech that really gets me excited about the possibility of things that you can do

with it i see that and honestly a lot of this stuff is the same way i'm trying to become more optimistic and just even though we know the dark underbelly of all the crap that they're doing to us i'm like i'm 48 i don't have that much time left i might have some fun with this stuff before i'm dead instead just crapping on it every week it's good to see you having a positive outlook i'm trying to i'm trying to just because it's like when we were kids growing up with this stuff we would have killed for this kind of technology and now what we do is like yeah but they're evil and they're taking all of

our data who fucking cares anymore they've got it i just yeah now i'm turning into facebook i'm gonna throw my hands in the air and just say might as well rejoin i don't care i seriously i'm gonna go order all these echoes now excellent there was a little bit of uh all uh of alternate apple news now we've always had to go through the apple store which is great and the apple app store and they vet

things and they check things out and it's why it's been a fairly secure and uh a safe operating system and environment right for the most part yes we've had no no challenges and no alternatives well somebody's just decided that must end you will no longer need to jailbreak your phone if you want to use alternative apps we are going to end the hegemony of the apple app store so this is a developer riley tested and he thinks he can bypass all the restrictions uh he's launching

an unofficial air store that will theoretically let you push the boundaries of the ios without either jailbreaking or worrying that apple will pull access sort of now the way he's going about it oh you naive little man you naive little man so the way you're going about is basically you have to set yourself up as a developer account and you sideload the apps from the air store which apple will shut down in 10 minutes well you have to have this like you have to install

a little server in your house to keep pinging it every week so it doesn't actually automatically get yes uh deleted thus making it not that simple no it's not very simple at all and apple is gonna put a you know put a stick in the spoke on this one as soon as it can figure it out well you know it's clever it's clever but he should have just kept it for him and his friends honestly oh man so i'm still using this roadcaster pro talked about it on the show

it's it still drives me insane as we the 10 minutes it took us to get started this morning we'll attest to um there is one feature though that i found last night that i thought was amazing you can pair your phone to it over bluetooth so you can take phone calls with it and route it into your podcast oh that's nice it's really cool but the reason i needed it was i'm sitting here i'm working i'm walking on my treadmill doing stuff i want to listen to a podcast but i wanted to listen to it through my studio monitors instead of on my airpods if only you had a lady in the tube

i've only had a lady but it still wouldn't pick up it doesn't it's not going to match with overcast so i'm going to lose my place and things like that i wanted to use overcast on my phone so i i'm like oh maybe i can try it with this paired it with the roadcaster and within like literally 30 seconds i had beautiful audio coming out of my studio monitor so if anybody has a roadcaster pro try it it's really fun because i know a lot of people are like what am i going to do with this bluetooth thing i'm not taking phone calls but what it does is it turns your entire studio into basically your phone without

plugging it into anything it just automatically plays it was a really nice feature that's all and uh finally we talked about the lumi keyboards wait for it wait for it shipping late what yeah kickstarter project shipping late who would have who would have thunk it oh gosh you had such faith in them they but they said they say that's next month they're only going to be like a couple weeks behind they're showing the production line it's pretty impressive but yes i know they're late

fake video fake video yeah it's a deep fake with with keyboards now so i just said screw it and went out and bought some midi cables so i can hook up my my keyboard and start making music so all right i'm gonna be calling you for tech advice on that because i've never done it before oh good good times ahead for you this is uh it's gonna be a nightmare oh thanks no problem closing shout out

i would uh like to give a shout out to apple but i didn't exactly have the best time of it so yeah i'm inching closer and closer to well i've said maybe pc was going to be my next computer until my computer blew up but i'm inching closer and closer to going back to pc whenever this one dies we'll see the interesting thing about this that we've talked about kind of off and on is that and even with these security cameras that i have when we were techs growing up we built shit and it was more fun

yep you know it's like you said like now it's just you're you're picking widgets and that's it because i was trying to get out get out of you i'm like which one did you get and you're like i got a macbook air i'm like yeah yeah no shit dumbass what's in it and then you're like this this no what else i'm like it comes on it comes in three configurations who cares it's boring like it's not i remember three to five pages of drop down options every time i bought a computer in the past that was fun that's when i could really get into this tech specs with you but with this it's

it's a macbook air jason i know but i'm trying to figure out which one you have because mine is you know mine is not the fastest so i'm just wondering how much better yours runs than mine everything comes down to whipping out the dick doesn't it no it's a game well yeah i guess it is because i was getting ready to say it's a game of inches so it really is and i'm missing my two extra inches on my monitor let me tell you yeah it takes some getting used to it's going to take some getting used to all right well go get your dongle on i'm waiting for another dongle to show

up so i can have my big extended monitor anyways until next time i'm brian schulmeister and i'm jason de filippo thanks for listening to grumpy old geeks to support the show and keep us on the air go to patreon.com slash gog toss us a few bucks a month and we'll love you forever if you 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 at gog.show slash 380 from there you can find links to old episodes

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