386: Jobsian Slip

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For 10% off your first order, head over to hover.com slash GOG and get your domain today. 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. You know how I've been talking about potentially switching over to Windows in the near future, like this may be my last Mac? I've had my dad's old laptop basically since he passed, and I just kind of shoved it in a corner because, you know, who wants to think or deal with that?

But in the process of procrastinating on other things that I should be doing, I decided, okay, now it's time to deal with all the... I literally have a stack of three computers. A super old PC from my wife and my wife's old Mac. I had to take care of my old Mac. I had to remove the drive because I didn't want to throw it away with the drive in it because, you know, security.

And then my dad's laptop. So I started to deal with my dad's laptop. I figured, you know, I'll wipe it and do a fresh install and do all the updates because my sister could use another laptop. So I'll just clean it up and give it to her to use. And, you know, it was nice.

It was nice being in Windows 10 environment. I forgot about it. It's been so long. It's a clean, great, good operating system. But the one thing that I seem to have wiped from my memory, updating and installing Windows takes forever.

Even on a fast machine, it takes forever. Even on a fast machine. This is not a very old laptop. It's a Dell Inspirian. It's fine. Two days. What? It took almost two days once to do the fresh install.

And then one of the updates kept catching and wasn't updating properly. But I would miss the notification. And I was just like, okay, I guess I got to try this again. Finally figured that out. Did the troubleshooting. Got the install finally working and the update. My God, what a process.

It makes the Apple Watch updates look like they are taking place instantaneously. Yeah. I just set up my PC on my secondary station here. Since I'm not going to be doing my podcasting course, I'm like, oh, well, I guess I can make that my gaming station now.

Right. And so I plugged it in and, you know, had to go through the update cycle, update Norton, get all the antivirus stuff. And fortunately, I could just turn around and go to my iMac and work all day. Yeah. It's like, look, turn around. Okay, need a reboot. Need a reboot. Six reboots later. And the thing is, I mean, it's only been down for, I don't know, maybe four months.

Right. And then I pull it back up and then it's a day of updates and it's insane. It is insane. It's absolutely insane. And then, of course, you know, the next day, the first thing I do when I turn the thing on now is check for updates. Yeah. Because there's going to be an update. There's always updates. It's funny. I listen to a live radio show here in California in LA called Frosty, Heidi and Frank.

And they've just moved to a new studio and they've got all these new computers and they're all Windows machines. And invariably, at some point during the three-hour broadcast that they do starting at six in the morning, I hear the Windows update sound. Oh, yeah. Bleed through because all their computers are updating every morning.

That's so pathetic. Yeah. It's pretty funny. It is nice, though. I got to say, like, dicking around on Windows for me has been, like, fun. It's a good operating system. I actually like the OS better than I like Apple's OS. But, yeah, we'll see. I wouldn't go that far.

But the only thing for me is it just doesn't have logic on it. I wish it had logic so I could, you know, do my music stuff on it and my podcasting stuff on it. But, you know, I'm not going to go Pro Tools. No way in hell. I like Pro Tools. What are you going to do?

Sound Forge? Come on. No. But I hooked up the Rodecaster Pro to it, so I do have, like, another station where I can record shows in case the Mac takes a dump with Chrome. Like it did before. Right. So there is a backup. But, yeah, I just, I basically, you know, fire it up and play StarCraft.

But what are you going to do? What are you going to do? So you've been kind of out of it a little bit sick all week. I've been in a mood all week, and I don't really know why. But something hit me yesterday, and I've been unable to stop thinking about it. Now, we've had no lack of crazy news since this administration took place.

But today, I realized that you and I, Jason, now live in a country that has decided it's important enough to protect us from mango-flavored vape pods. Okay. But we can still go buy military-grade assault rifles.

Okay. And this is where my head's been stuck at for two days now, and I'm in a bad mood. Well, you should stop reading the news and not give a shit. I know. Like the rest of us. To be fair, our country doesn't have a lock on stupidity. A little bit of follow-up here. The UK is finally abandoning its unworkable porn block plan.

Now, remember, this is the plan where you had to go down to the local market, prove that you were old enough, buy a porn card or a porn pass, which, you know, could potentially be tracked and all that sort of stuff. So, but they've finally decided that this is a stupid idea and unworkable.

So they are jettisoning the plan, but they're not giving up on their plans to censor the internet entirely. They're looking at broader regulatory regimes. We don't know what any of that's going to be, but they've realized that this is a dumb plan, and they're going back to the drawing board. Wow. Okay. If we could just get them to do that with Brexit, then maybe everything would be okay.

Maybe. Yes, sir, sir, I'm here for my wanking card, please. Can I have my wanking card? I must go wank. Can I just put that on my oyster? Ew. Well, I found this one over at the New York Times. It's called, Why Don't Rich People Just Stop Working?

A question that we have asked on this show for several years. Hmm. Turns out, they like money. That's really the long and the short of this article. I also like money, but if I had a couple mil in the bank, or maybe a bill, I would just basically go do good deeds.

I would work on a charity or something. I wouldn't continue to try to stockpile crap, but hey, maybe my lack of drive in that aspect is why I don't have a couple mil in the bank. That's kind of what the article says. It says these people are basically addicted to money like alcoholics are addicted to booze.

I'll take the booze. More fun. I know. Well, I need the booze to think about all the billionaires and the millionaires that I'm never going to be. And I love this. Limitless opportunity, extreme isolation. They already own the present. What else is left but to buy tomorrow? And the tomorrow after that, suddenly the fetish of the super rich for space tourism starts to make sense.

Well, that's exactly like that article that we talked about a couple shows ago about Amazon and Bezos said. So I guess there's some truth to this. Yeah. So, I mean, this is kind of a follow-up since we have been asking this question. Why don't these guys just retire and give their money away?

And some of the interesting things in here that I think that if they had a little bit of, like one little ounce of introspection bone in them, they would realize that, you know, they're all freaked out right now because the market's going to crash. Because they've got all the money. Nobody else can survive anymore.

And they're like, oh, how can we stockpile our wealth? Should I get bullion? I'm like, well, they get gold bullion while the rest of us are hoarding bullion cubes. So we can make soup out of the raccoons that we have to trap in our backyard when the market crashes again. And I'm like, guys, just give your money back to everybody so we can just keep the cycle going.

Come on. If you pay your employees better, they can continue to buy the products. Exactly. Come on. That's the way this has worked for many, many years now. Yeah. It's a self-sustaining system if you don't try and hack it and just keep all the money for yourself, which you don't need.

Yep. And on that note, I have been, it's what, October 18th. So since September 1st, I have been, I think you could call it underemployed. I've been underemployed for six years. Yeah, but I didn't marry up.

Bam Bam's not bringing in that kibble money like she was supposed to. Right. I left the Jordan Harbinger show. It was an amicable split and I still do some stuff with them, but I had job opportunities that I just said no to because I'm like, you know what? That's not what I want to do. And I'm like, I'm just going to kind of take a break, you know?

And then what happens is going to happen. And the first couple of weeks, tough, because I'm like, I was used to working an extra 50 hours a week. And I'm like, okay, well, I don't have to do that anymore. What do I do with myself? And it's gone on now for, you know, it's coming up on two months.

And interesting thing happened. I just, you know, we're thinking about how these rich people need to keep stockpiling their money. I'm like, I have found myself profoundly happier basically if I just make my nut and I'm not like striving to become the next podcasting millionaire, even though that would be nice.

Patreon.com slash GOG. But, you know, just taking a break and slowing down quite a bit, not having so many inputs and just kind of chill. It has been just amazing, just stepping out of the rat race for just a little bit has been so peaceful and so calming.

I'm still a grumpy old geek. Don't get me wrong. I think these people should give all their fucking money back so I can have some. But surprisingly, it's like anxiety is not there that I thought it was always going to be. It's like, okay, we keep doing this stuff over and over. We keep making ourselves miserable, doing these commutes, doing these drives, making everything go.

Staying up till 7, you know, 8, 9, 10 at night, just doing work, waiting for the next Slack message, waiting for the next email. I'm like, I still find myself checking email way too often, even though I know nothing's going to be there. Just spam. Yeah, lots of spam.

But it's like, wow, all of the things that I thought were going to happen didn't. And, you know, it's like, what is the old Mark Twain quote, you know, I've had a great many troubles in my life and most of them have never happened. Right. So, you know, take a step back every now and again.

You're in a position where you can breathe too. So, take advantage of it when you can. Yeah, and I mean, we've talked multiple times about that study and there have been subsequent follow-up studies that have kind of shown the same thing, that happiness and finances and income levels are a bell curve.

And you really don't need that much money to be happy. And once you get past a certain amount of that money, you start to become less happy. So, there's a, just live your life, people. Be happy. The other thing that having no money is really good for is not spending a lot of money on Amazon stuff, which I, you know, I am notorious for doing.

But it also helps with that guilt of, like, you know, we make fun of Amazon all the time, how they're taking over the world and they're going to eat everybody's lunch. Well, you know, we should step back and not give them so much of our money. Well, it's kind of not an option now to give them any more of my money because they kept it all. So, it's like, I feel better.

I don't spend that much money on Amazon, so I'm not feeding the beast that we talk about all the time. And, wow, it's like, why don't you just take a little step back? It's amazing how many things change. Speaking of that, I should probably order my lunch on Amazon. In the news.

Well, the Zuck is on a transparency tour. I'm not sure what that means entirely, and neither can anybody else, because he just did a big live stream of his social media companies' normally closed Q&As, and he did a big talk at Georgetown University about the company's decisions not to ban outright false political ads and about free speech in general.

And according to every article I've read about this, nobody can figure out if he actually said anything or not. Well, here's one, I can tell you one thing that he said that basically everybody was scratching their head with. When he basically started off the speech, he rewrote history.

I did see that. Yes, I remember feeling that if more people had a voice to share their experiences, maybe things would have gone differently. And it's like, I didn't, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And this was like talking about the Iraq war and the students at Harvard and all this shit.

I'm like, no, dude, we all know. It would have been called the protest book if you would have done that. Not the Facebook. It is called the Facebook because you mined face pictures of all the female students at school. And put in a rating system.

And put in a rating system. I don't think there was any discussion about Iraq on that site. No, you ripped off hot or not. That's it. That's all it was. You just took everybody. That's insane that these, I bet you he actually probably believes that in his own mind now.

That this is what happened. Yeah. It's insane. Absolutely fucking insane. He's huffed his own glue so damn much that he actually believes his own PR. It's like, wow, you have the balls to get up there and say that when we all have seen the social network. Yes.

And even though a lot of that movie was, you know, bullshit, the Facebook in the beginning was exactly how it was portrayed. I want to rate my classmates. That was it. So. Yeah. Yeah. You little lion sack of shit. But I love the transparency tour.

Remember when he went on a tour, like, was it two years ago where he drove around America to meet the unwashed masses? Yep. Yeah. Maybe this is a little bit more of that. Well, I'm sure, you know, he wanted to discuss the Iraq situation with them. Exactly. How are we doing over there?

Is Kuwait okay? You know, we're really worried about Kuwait. The funny part about this whole transparency thing is, you know, he's pushing for less transparency because he's, you know, pushing for the end-to-end encryption messaging that they want to roll out on Facebook that everybody's got their panties in a bunch about in law enforcement.

Everybody else is like, okay, it's never going to happen because you can't even get delete my email working. Right. But a lot of people are saying, well, it's going to be harder for us to handle child exploitation on your platform if everything's encrypted and we can't see the messages.

And Zuckerberg comes back and basically says, well, by the time you're reading the messages, the, you know, the cows have left the barn. So we're going to work on more ways to prevent this from happening from the get-go. Which I think is smart, actually.

It's like, okay, we're going to put in things that say, hang on, let me rephrase that before I go down that road. It's smart and up to a point. What he's saying is we want to look at profiles that have people who are older talking to multiple minors who they have no connection with and trying to message them and blah, blah, blah.

Well, that's assuming that somebody actually states their actual age on Facebook. Which is a pretty easy thing to not do. Okay, I'm 15. I live down the street. Where are you from? Okay, let me do a little recon on you.

Exactly. Figure out what's what. Let me tailor my profile to you. And then I'm going to go after you. Yeah, they kind of, you know, skip that one in there in his grand master plan. Right. I mean, it's a step in the right direction, but at least, you know, at least come out and say, oh, our platform doesn't actually have real names.

Anybody can make a profile in 10 minutes, populate it with a bunch of fake data, and then go out and swing an election or get a 12-year-old to take her top off. So, you know, that's really like the giant hole in the border wall of Facebook and child protection.

Right. Right. Well, just saying. That's all I'm saying. So we've been screaming about how the platform excuse is getting pretty stale as these companies become bigger and bigger and take over more and more of the bandwidth and air that we breathe in our society.

And it's always refreshing when learned people seem to come back to our way of thinking and talk about it as well. There's a link in our show notes to an article over at Slate, which is taken from testimony from Danielle Citrone, who is a professor of law at Boston University.

And she writes about privacy, free speech, and civil procedure often. So she gave testimony to the House Energy and Commerce Committee that basically says what we've been saying all along. Enough is enough. They cannot get away with the platform excuse anymore.

These companies need to start policing their own platforms. And if they're not going to do it, then somebody else has to. Yeah, because a lot of the confusion that has been going around about this, you know, about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

Yeah. This goes back to the CompuServe prodigy lawsuits way back in the day. And a lot of this stuff was written in to say, hey, look, here's the deal. We're going to give you guys the ability to monitor your platform, edit your platform, and take down egregious content without having the ramifications of getting sued out of existence almost, which is like what happened to Prodigy.

But they haven't taken advantage of that for the most part. They've kind of skirted it. You know, it's kind of one of those things where it's like, yeah, but we can do it, but should we and all this stuff? And they're like, no, no, no. The whole point of us giving you this on a fucking golden platter was that we want you to make sure your platforms are safe.

Very similar to the airwaves and the radio. You know, the government gave the bandwidth, but there are some laws and some things that you need to self-regulate and do in exchange for getting that. But it's no different, really.

Well, okay, it's a little different. Mildly different, yeah. Let's not go down that road, but yes. But still, the fact is, it's like, okay, there's free speech and then there's free speech. You know, is it like free as in beer? But no, it's, they need to really either, and this goes back to something that we've always talked about, which really drives me a little bit mad, is we talk about the algorithms and how everything is algorithmically driven now.

Yes. And they have so many algorithms to tell me exactly what I should be looking at that day. And, but they don't, they just won't go to the extra step of filtering that content for something that might be harmful or abusive because it might sell an ad.

You know, part of me is like, okay, just give me the, give me the stream. Just give it to me the way I always wanted it, which is, you know, just give me a timeline. Timeline. And I'll figure it out. It's, it's this weird fucking hybrid that, that we've all come to live with now. It's like, okay, I go to a thing, I see some stuff and it's what you want me to see.

I would like it unfiltered to the point where it's like, I don't know, this is, I'm having a hard time trying to articulate this because it's like, okay, I want them to monitor for nasty content. Yes. And then, but in everything else, I want unfiltered.

Yes. You know? Yeah. So where, where does that needle fall on, on that scale of what they should be pulling, what they shouldn't be pulling and how they deliver it? It is a, it's a complicated issue because then it is complicated, but to a certain degree, you know, we can, we can argue and quibble about the specifics on it all we want.

The reality though, is that Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and et cetera, all have existing terms of service. They have created rules. They're just not enforcing them across the board and they're not enforcing them at all in some cases.

Right? Yeah. Like, yeah, we, there is content that should be pulled from our streams at all times. Basically every single fucking tweet from our president, but we choose not to do it. Right? That's the problem. That's the real problem here.

Brian, it's in the public interest. You can't do that. It's such a lot of public figure. What's this? Have you seen this new bullshit where you can't retweet shit from on Twitter from politicians who basically lie and say things that are outside the terms? I'm just like, why don't you just, or you just pull those tweets like you would to say me if I did it, Brian, you're just not culturally relevant enough.

I'm sorry. Apparently not. Apparently not. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, when you were bringing this up about the algorithms again, it just really gets under my skin. We've talked about it a couple of times about how we just want our straight timeline. And I think one of the biggest changes in the internet from when you and I started, one of the coolest things was the customization aspect, right?

Like we love to be able to customize stuff and we could make things, dial things in exactly the way that we wanted them. And that's been taken away from us and been replaced by what they want. And that is a cultural change in the internet that took place very slowly. But now we're totally screwed.

We do not get to customize things the way we want. We only get it the way the companies want it to come. And that's becoming really annoying. And I know I mentioned this before on the show with my kid, because as I launch these different apps to get these different shows that he wants to see, I should be able to customize my homepage on those apps.

So I only see the shows that I want my kid to see. But instead, I get pushed what they want, which is why I'm fucking stuck in Paw Patrol hell now. I never wanted my kid to see Paw Patrol, but they shoved it at me every time I launched the apps. And eventually, he wanted to start seeing it.

And that's where I'm at now. Like, I can't even control the TV my kid gets to see because they control it. It's so annoying. It is. I mean, but that's the great trade-off. If it's their platform and you're using their platform and it's, you know, if you don't like how the platform works, then you got to go to Sweden, you have the right.

Yeah. You have the right to walk away. You have the right to walk away and buy the shows that your kid wants to see or that you want your kid to see. Right. That's that. I mean, that is just the great trade-off. It's well, you know, I can go onto Amazon and buy it, but Amazon also pushes shows on those pages.

I can't go directly to purchase shows page. I have to go into through their homepage and guess what, you know, everything's being advertised to me there. I do miss all of the customization stuff that we used to do. And, you know, it's like, I think this all started really when MySpace went away because you look at MySpace.

MySpace was really the last big quote unquote platform where you could make your own. Ugly as shit if you wanted to. Do we blame mobile? Because that's a big part of it. One of the main reasons that Facebook looks the way it does is they were mobile first.

I think they were just like, hey, look, you know what they were used to? There were kids that were coming up when MySpace was there and they said, MySpace is ugly. We want a clean interface. And it was a breath of fresh air, honestly, when Facebook first came out with just, okay, everybody gets the same interface.

Yeah. And, you know, half of me was just like, well, that's really fucking lazy. But then the other half of me was like, well, it doesn't look horrible. Thank God I don't see all these animated. I can actually read the text because somebody didn't put it in blink mode. Yeah, because, you know, not everybody's a web designer or a designer or even has taste.

Yeah. So, but, and I would argue that Facebook doesn't have taste or decent designers because I've never liked the Facebook in their face. Zucker Blue. That's right. Zucker Blue. All right. We've been on a hell of a tangent. Should we get back to the news? I guess we should.

But yeah, I don't know. I miss, I miss that old customization days. I think it's, it's, it's a big part of where we've gone wrong on the internet. And again, like, like you were saying, and like I was saying, it was a cultural shift from being able to, you know, choose our own landscape and our, and what our eyeballs saw to the companies now doing it for us.

And we don't get a choice anymore. And it's horrible. And in the old days, you and I would just like, you know, grab the APIs, pull our feeds and then write our own front page to it. But nowadays, nobody's even giving you decent API access because all of the nasty bot people have screwed it for everybody. Yep. Okay.

Moving on. Okay. I'm sorry. Netflix has missed its subscriber numbers again for the second consecutive quarter. Speaking of a page you can't customize. Speaking of an interface that doesn't let you. Yes, exactly. They've added 6.8 million subscribers in the third quarter instead of the 7 million it expected.

Really? That's not 200,000. Jeez. Come on. But that's the way our, you know, shareholder value works. They expected to add 800,000 subscribers in the U.S. and 6.2 million in the rest of the world. Instead added 500,000 here and 6.3 million internationally.

They blame the domestic miss on a price hike, which has led to slower U.S. membership growth. I blame it on the fact that all they really have is Stranger Things at this point and a lot of bad comedy specials. But, you know. So, we're going to see what happens because it's not good for them to have these kind of numbers drop before all their competitors come to market, which they all are soon.

Apple TV, which I don't see as being too much of a competitor, but we'll see what they roll out with, is coming on November 1st. The, what I'm calling the Netflix killer, Disney Plus, will be two weeks after that. And I do think it's time for me to sell my Netflix stock because I don't see, I don't know what's going to happen with them.

There's a lot of interesting articles out there. Like, I'll have a link in the show notes to one over at Fatherly, which asks why, or says why families will ditch Netflix by 2020. And it's Disney. It's just, Disney has, if you've got a kid, you want Disney Plus, you don't want, you don't want Netflix.

And how many streaming packages is any family going to be willing to pay for? Probably just one. And Disney's going to give you a hell of a lot. Yeah. I mean, they're coming out of the gate swinging. And don't forget Quibi or whatever the hell that one is. The three minute. Is that the one? Yeah, it's like the short one. Jesus Christ.

That's not going to do shit. Well, they just made a deal with T-Mobile to be like, you know. Basically zero rating, I think, on their platform. Right. Thank you. Thank you, Net Neutrality, going bye-bye. Yeah. But anyway, yeah, I'm keeping Netflix because I like it.

I like the comedy specials. Most of the stuff I watch is either on Netflix or HBO. And I would like to point out, with all of this talk about all the streaming services and, you know, the Great Wars, Apple and Disney and Netflix, you know what? Nobody ever, ever mentions.

What? Hulu. You never see Hulu anywhere. Well, Hulu is going to be packaged as part of the big Disney Plus thing. You can either get Disney Plus Basic, which is like six bucks a month, or you can pay 10 and you get ESPN, Hulu, Disney, blah, blah, blah. That's why it's really going to kill Netflix.

Well, I mean, I get Hulu for free right now because I pay for Spotify. Yeah, me too. Yeah. Yeah. And I saw today when I was doing my updates on my Xbox because I have to go in every, you know, couple of weeks and update my Xbox in case I want to actually play it, not wait four hours. You can now, like, there's a gaming package on the Xbox that you can pay for where you can get a bunch of games, you know, subscription service.

And of course, that also, if you want, comes with Hulu. It's like Hulu is just an add-on nowadays. Yeah, it really is. I mean, there's nothing really on it besides MASH and, you know, some TV shows that come out, you know, later than they should.

I can get it from Sweden faster or just put it on my DVR. Yeah. So, yeah, what are you going to do? I love this one. Let's get back to some other tech news here. Amazon's customer business says bye-bye to Oracle databases and they move to AWS. Make sure you lock those buckets.

Lock those buckets. That's true. Oh, man. Yeah. I mean, I really don't care about Oracle. I hate Oracle. Larry Ellison is just a twat nugget. So it always surprises me how big a company Oracle actually is, because when you just look at it on paper, you're like, they can't be that big, but they're massive.

Oh, yeah. I mean, Oracle databases are incredible pieces of technology, but they cost a bloody fortune and just the manpower to keep them updated and running, which is what, you know, Amazon was saying. It's like, we're spending more just to keep the disk spinning than we are on the actual databases.

So they moved everything over. And here's the part that the main reason I threw this in here is because Amazon migrated 75 petabytes of data from 7,500 Oracle databases. 75 petabytes.

That's like a brain. It's Bezos' brain. Really? He's been uploaded. Get him out of Oracle. If you want to know how much tracking that Amazon is doing on you. 75 petabytes. My God.

And, you know, this probably isn't even the big stuff. This is just the, you know, the edge cases for all the different divisions in Amazon. This isn't like the main tracking on what you bought. This isn't the big data. This is like, you know, the medium data. Yeah. 75 petabytes is just, that's a mind boggling amount of fucking data on everybody that's shopped on Amazon.

Even if you, I would just like to know what the size of the catalog on Amazon is with, you know, the, the images. Right. Just give me that. Just what's available to buy. Yeah. I guarantee you it doesn't even come close to a petabyte.

So that's a, that's a lot. I don't know, man. I think it might just because every product's name is now 7,000 characters long. That's true. That's true. Yeah. That's why they actually had to make the move because the text field in the Oracle database wasn't big enough.

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

Hello. Fun to be back. Hey, we got some rain last week. That was exciting. We got some hard rain. How's it going out there? Are you guys still on fire or what's up? No, no, we're good. We're good. Oh, it's good. Yeah, for now. I got some wind to clear out all the smoky smell.

Yes, it's been quite pleasant this week. Okay, well, good. Scrubbing the ash off the car has not been great. Oh, wow. Yes, I do have to say condolences on losing Elijah Cummings, though. Yes, yes. Yes, he was a dear, dear man. I did have the privilege of meeting him a few times, and he was the real deal.

He was, to me, he represented a public servant rather than a politician. Ah, yes. What's that? Well, I guess I was about to say a dying breed, but that's inappropriate.

Yes, too soon for the jokes that are now coming. Then I caught myself, and I said it anyway. But, yeah, just old school, great guy, and he's certainly going to be missed around here and also on the national stage. So, thank you very much.

So, we've got a little follow-up. Yeah. Zappos is back in the news because they finally settled the 2012 data breach. It's timely. Can't rush these things. Apparently. That's right. Yeah, everybody's going to get a free pair of Reebok pumps.

Not even. Not even. No, you just get 10% off a pair. I got the email last night, and I was pissed off. It is infuriating. I mean, yes, Daddy needs a new pair of shoes. I'm definitely part of this breach. I got a lot of pair of shoes from Zappos.

I've been using them for a long time. I'm wearing mine right now. This is infuriating that they can get away with this, that the settlement involves us giving them more money. Yeah. We have to give them money to save. I get more. Look, 10%.

I get more discounts from Zappos in my email inbox every week than this. Well, that was my initial thought, was that everyone at Zappos is so nice that if you called them up and just asked for 10%, they'd give it to you. They would. They would.

Actually, they'd probably give you 20%. Right. Just for calling. Yeah. Yeah. This is the system gone insane. This is ridiculous. Yeah. Especially since the lawyers are going to make 1.6 million in cold, hard cash.

And I guarantee those Italian loafers that they're going to be wearing around are not going to be coming from Zappos. That seems to be the message with all these class action suits, isn't it? That the folks who really make out are the lawyers. And more and more, it seems like the companies themselves are getting barely slapped on the wrist.

Yeah. It's ridiculous. It is ridiculous. I wonder what kind of reform we can see with these sorts of things. It seems hard. In today's environment, where it seems like things are sort of stacked in favor of the big companies, hard to imagine any meaningful reform on this. It is difficult, but we have at least two people running for president that are all about this sort of thing and reforming these sorts of things.

That's true. Yeah, that's true. Well, until then, go spend your credit as you can. It's shocking to me that they were able to get away with this. I mean, of course, I'm going to take advantage of it, but you know.

Right. You're not so upset that you're not going to use it, but you're not going to take your money elsewhere. I mean, you're going to spend money with it anyway. I'm not going to, like, go to a store to get a pair of shoes. Yeah. You're not an animal. I mean, come on. Oh, God.

Yeah. Well, there still is a final approval hearing that's coming up, so if you want to fly out there and really make a stink about it to get that $2, then by all means, feel free to. $2. God, you're getting cheap shoes. Step it up a little, Jake.

No wonder you fall and break your leg all the time. I don't have to go anywhere, man. These Crocs are comfy. Hasn't anybody ever told you that? Oh, I'm sorry. I upgraded Uggs because winter's coming. Oh, Ugg boots. Yeah. No, thank you.

No, thank you. I still look at all the girls in L.A. that wear Uggs, and there are a lot of them generally with the juicy on the butt with the tramp stamp hanging out on the back. And you've got to think, in the middle of summer, wearing Ugg boots, how bad do those feet smell? Oh, man.

Those girls don't smell. Those girls smell like roses. That's right. No, they smell like juicy fruit because they're on their way to the strip club. It's not sweat. It's glistening. Yeah. Yeah. So, Dave, you and I were talking last week about maybe there being a system where all of our security cameras can talk to each other, and then we have one unified system, and then the world is a much better place.

And that system can talk to the police without your approval. That was part of it, yeah. Yeah. Well, Nest is actually going the opposite direction, and they're going to start pulling back access for a lot of companies that they're going to be dealing with for, you know, their devices and the other devices' access to them because they don't want a Cambridge Analytica moment, which is probably going to come anyway.

But they're going to try and actually, you know, vet their partners who want to connect to their devices. That's a concept. What a concept. They're kind of going the Apple model, right? We control everything. We have it all locked down. We don't want third-party people doing stuff.

Well, no. You know, you can be a third party and access their devices, but they just have to, they dictate the terms of the interaction, and they're going to be a little bit more hands-on. Well, that's a good thing. Allowing people to come through. Yeah. But I see this as something that is going to kind of put any kind of kibosh on, you know, a global system that you and I were talking about, Dave.

Even though I was on the lines that I don't think it's ever going to happen because these people can't talk to each other. But I see this as kind of backing that up, and everybody's going to start pulling in to themselves a little bit more. Right. I suppose the unspoken subtext of this article is, so what was going on before they decided to make this change, and what prompted them to do that?

Like you say, I mean, Cambridge Analytica didn't just happen, so this, I don't know. Well, they canceled their, they had their first interoperability, like, works with Nest program that was going on, but they canceled that in May, so, you know, they've been thinking about this for a while, going, uh, anybody look at our agreements with these guys, because I think we've been leaking data like a sieve, so maybe, maybe somebody smart over at Nest

finally came back and said, hey guys, let's, like, kind of lock this down a little bit. Yeah, I wonder what ability they have to claw that back retroactively. Well, once it's on the internet, who knows? Yeah, yeah, interesting. Well, I put this story in here, uh, this week, you know, it has come up countless times with the three of us that no one ever goes to jail, and we're frustrated by that.

There's an article here from NBC News, and the title is Jail Time for Tech Execs. A Democratic senator is proposing it, and it's Senator Ron Wyden, who is a Democrat from Oregon. He's, uh, very big on the tech stuff. Yeah, he is. He shows up in just about every article we have where there's a senator.

Yep. Yeah, that's true. Um, and basically what he's doing is proposing that tech companies have to provide, uh, a, a for-fee version of their sites. And Brian, this is exactly what you've been talking about for, forever. Yep. Uh, they have to offer a version of this that, that has privacy features.

Um, also interesting that they'd say the fee would be waived for low-income people. I think that's appropriate. I think that's very good. Yep. Yeah. Um, so... Makes sense. Smart. Never gonna happen. We'll see if this goes anywhere. Never, ever gonna happen, but I do love it.

Uh, the other thing that I thought really interesting is that it will actually create criminal penalties for up to 20-year prison sentences for, uh, senior corporate executives who lied to the FTC, which is something most of them have done. Mm-hmm. Yeah. We're gonna see, we're gonna see a new, uh, title in the C-suite.

It's gonna be, uh, CSL, the Chief Sacrificial Lamb. So, it's gonna be the one person that comes in, like, look... Right, it's a guy who's, he's got a rap sheet a mile long already. Yep. He's like, look, we're gonna take care of your family. I'm a prisoner for hire.

Right, right. That's it, yeah. Exactly, yeah. He's, he's pissed off for being out of the joint, and he's just looking for a reason to get back in there, and... He just, yeah, he wants to go back to his three hots and a cot, and he's just like, oh, man, this life on the outside, you and your fucking Teslas, man, we don't want to be around you guys.

Right. Put me back on the block. Yeah. Well, I mean, Wyden always seems to have some pretty good ideas. None of them ever seem to come to fruition, so we'll see. But back to what you said before, though, Brian, I mean, we have a couple of presidential candidates who would be on board with this sort of thing, so...

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think it's safe to say everybody over at Facebook will not be voting for Elizabeth Warren at the moment, but, you know, we'll see what happens. I'm sure they're actively moving those little slider bars to... Funny, I haven't seen any of her campaign ads on Facebook.

Did you see the thing, speaking of all this, did you see the thing where Zuckerberg spoke to, I think it was Georgetown University? Yes, we talked about it a little bit earlier. Okay, all right, so you guys covered that, and what struck me was how he's kind of retconning the origin story.

Did you touch on that? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. All right, well, I won't rehash it. I'll enjoy that when it... I'll hang up and listen over the air. But do you have an opinion?

I think it's absurd. Yes, we use some stronger words. I think it's absurd, and I think it's despicable. I think... No. And I hope... I hope to hell he doesn't get away with it. Let me... Posit the question that I came up with as well, now you can answer.

I... Do you think he actually believes it now? Do you think he has convinced himself that this is the origin story? Hmm. That is an interesting question. Oh, boy. Because we all know how the brain works and how we kind of, over time, change things and meanings, and we're not reliable to remember things.

However, this is so thoroughly documented. Right, right. There's been major Hollywood movies about it. That's exactly it, yes. Speaking of movies, though, when I think about this, you know, I can see, like, before he went in front of Congress and did his testimony, and he had his training from his PR team and all of that stuff, I envision Zuckerberg in kind of a clockwork orange scenario where they

keep his eyeballs open and they just show him the history of Facebook that they want to promote. You talked about Iraq. And maybe... It was a forum for political unrest. Exactly. It was not hot or not. Yeah. So maybe he's been brainwashed by his PR department so thoroughly, and I don't know.

I just find him to be sort of impenetrable when it comes to trying to get a bead on any sort of authentic personality in there. Because he's a robot from the future. It very well could be. I...

Yeah. And I consider myself a, you know, pretty good judge of character. You know, usually I can get a sense for someone, but him, I just can't get anything real out of him. Yeah. No, his face is like a lump of wet pasta. There's just no emotion.

Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. I think a clockwork Zuckerberg blue would be, you know, how I was thinking of it. But he could be the Zuckinator coming back in time. Right. Coming back in time to change the past. So maybe in the new future, after he's taken over the world, he's back to change the timeline.

And in the original timeline, or maybe it's a Berenstain Bear type of thing. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If we fire up the Wayback Machine on the internet, we'll find out that there was actually a hotbed of political discussion on the first Facebook now. We're just in a different time.

The three of us have been moved to a different timeline. Wouldn't that be strange if only the three of us had any recollection that it all started out as a hot or not thing. All of our searches started coming up, and people started writing in and saying, what are you guys talking about?

It's all... Actually, I shouldn't give our listeners any ideas. It'll totally gaslight us. That's true. Jesus. Like, things aren't bad enough right now. Right, exactly. We're not being gaslit on a daily basis just reading the news, but okay.

I said this on the Cyber Wire last week, because what we all need is just a little more low-level anxiety in our lives. Yes. Or did you say it last week? Oh, God. You have to go back and listen to those old episodes just to make sure.

Mm-hmm. If they exist. Well, here's something we talk about all the time, or do we? Harry Potter, Wizards Unite, and Pokemon Go have been tracking their users' locations. This is not surprising, given that the whole game is based on where you're walking around at.

However, what they've discovered, this company called Kotaku, I believe, has revealed that they're gathering a surprisingly large amount of data, including probably location records taken... They found location records being taken every hour, so that's also assuming when users were not playing.

Whoops. So that's how they know where you live. Yes. They blame this nonstop data collection on a bug in the Android version that they have now fixed. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. All right. Interestingly, I don't really know much about what you can dial in on the Android side of things in terms of location data, granting apps permission to have location data.

Do either of you guys have any sense for that? It's Android. They can take whatever they want. We all know this. Come on. Yeah. I'll have to ask Joe Kerrigan about it. He's an Android user, and I don't know if you can... I suspect you can probably enable it app by app, but I don't know.

Yeah, I believe you can. Yeah, I'm sure you can. Yeah. So... I don't want to have to exhume the corpse of my Android phone to find out. But the problem with these sorts of games, of course, is that if you turn it off or switch it off, you can't play the game. So there's a presumption that you're only taking the data and the details that you need, and obviously that was not happening.

Right, right. Well, and iOS has that option of tracking your location only while you're using the app. Yeah, exactly. Which seems to be handy for this sort of thing. And I love now in iOS 13 where it actually tells you, it's like, oh, this app has tried to use your location this amount of times in the past week.

Would you like to keep using it, or would you like to change your setting? And I'm like, no, Dark Sky needs to see where I'm at, so you're good there. And I don't have the Facebook app, so I don't know how many times that's gone. But have you had that pop-up, Brian, from Facebook yet? Oh, yes. Always for Facebook.

How many times? I think one time it was 120. Oh, God. You know, I haven't seen that yet on my phone. Really? I'm on the latest version, and I have not seen that particular pop-up. Interesting.

I definitely have, but maybe you have better security settings on yours than I did. Or worse. Or worse. One or the other. Yeah. Speaking of bad security, the Samsung Galaxy S10 fingerprint reader has been a bit of a problem. Apparently, you could lock it with a 3D-printed fingerprint at any point in time, but recently a buyer discovered that if you install a third-party screen protector, anybody's finger can unlock the phone.

Mm-hmm. Whoops. Well, there's your problem. And their solution, of course, is basically don't use third-party products. Yeah. Yeah. How could this have made it through testing? It's not that anyone ever uses a third-party screen protector on their phone.

Yeah. I don't know how that made it through either. Pretty crazy. Yeah. I'm trying to think. Does it sort of, does it blur the fingerprint to the reader? It has to do with, oh, God. I thought it was like ultrasonics. Like, it was like the way that it was bouncing off to get the actual print off of it, and the protector interfered with that in some way, shape, or form.

But do you think the default would be don't unlock? Exactly. That's what you think. Right. Right? Right. Right. When in doubt, just unlock it. It's fine. Yeah. Hmm.

So you guys see a bunch of phone thieves with, like, gloves that have just, like, they cut out fingerprint-sized versions of these, you know, screen protectors, and just wear them on a glove, and just go, hey, thanks for your phone, buddy. Oh, yeah. That's a good idea. Boy, I like the way you think, Jason.

Jason always thinks like a criminal. It's exciting, and yet terrifying. Isn't it? Well, I also, I got another one for you. Never carry spark plugs and a square-barreled flathead screwdriver in your car, because those are considered car thief tools, and you can get arrested just for having them in your car.

What? Not in Maryland. I, probably, probably in Maryland. Yeah, because what you do is you take, you take the spark plugs, you smash them, so you get the handful of ceramics. Yeah.

The ceramics will break any car window, because the density of the ceramics is higher than that, and the square-barreled flathead screwdrivers, and I think it's cars like, you know, anything built in the 80s and below, you just jam that in the ignition and twist it, and it will start the car.

I went through, I went through some, some urban escape and evasion training a long time ago, and these are one of the things. Before we all get too worried about Jason and his criminal proclivities, Dave, later on in the show, you'll hear a story about how he stunned himself with his own stun stick. That's true. Yes. One doesn't need to worry too much about these things.

Yes, that's coming up on Absin' Doodads next, so please stick around for that story. I wonder what this tastes like. It's even dumber than that. All right. We'll all look forward to that. So the Justice Department has taken down the world's largest child exploitation site on the dark web.

Okay. And this is, this site contained more than 250,000 unique videos, eight terabytes of data. And yes, this was Jong-woo's son. He was 23 years old. He was already in jail serving an 18-month prison sentence in South Korea.

And turns out they got him because, well, somebody had the beautiful idea of viewing the source on the web page where he leaked the IP address. Oops. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Does, you know, we always say criminals are dumb, but that is like over the top dumb.

So, yeah. Well, this was not a small operation. No. And they've, they've arrested dozens of other people all over the world. So this was, this, this is a big win for international law enforcement. They got them partially also because of being able to track their Bitcoin exchanges, their payments.

Wait, are you saying Bitcoin, the anonymous cryptocurrency is not anonymous? That is what I am saying. Well, that's, that's what the IRS was saying anyway. So, yeah. The, the really heartbreaking part about this is that there were active abuses going on with this group that they have, you know, they discovered and shut down.

So, um, you know, your heart goes out for, uh, all those kids and their families and hope that, um, they, uh, have the opportunity to heal. Yes. And it, but on a good note, at least 23 minors were identified and rescued as a result of the investigation.

So there's at least that there's at least that. I mean, yeah, this is one for the good guys and, uh, real good. It's, this is great coordination again, internationally. And, uh, I, hopefully that I, it's funny because I guess there's, it's hard to know what the scale of something like this is.

Um, when I think about this sort of thing, I think about, for example, when, uh, when Jeffrey Epstein was, um, arrested and you think, wow, it's great. This person who did all these terrible things are arrested. And then also I thought he can't be the only one who's nope doing this kind of thing.

And I'm sure it's the same thing here. So hard to know if this, how big a dent this makes in this sort of thing, but, uh, it's good. It's good. Yeah. Yeah. No, and look, any dent they can make good on them. That's, you know, just keep going guys. It's, it's, I think this is definitely a win for the good guys for sure.

It's, you know, it's heartbreaking for the kids, but at least some kids have been, you know, rescued. So that's even better. Yeah. So we'll see, we'll see how Zuckerberg's new plans come into play with, when you have things like this, you know, that's, we talked about this at the top of the show, Dave, where, you know, Zuckerberg is saying, yeah, we're going to still do end to end encryption, but we're going to try and do it from the, you know, proactive side of not letting these things

actually escalate to the point where people can, you know, get to the children. Even though my, my, my take is that, uh, well, you can make a fake Facebook account and be anybody you want to be online. So we'll see how that goes. But anyway, at least we're ending on a high note this week.

Yeah, it's good news. It is good news. It's a sobering, but good news. Cups and doodads. Well, a couple of years back, I talked about the trials and tribulations of trying to get my TV hooked up to my, to my ladies in the tube situation and that never actually worked out.

But Amazon appears to have solved that problem. Now I will know, hopefully by the next show. And as we were making fun of Amazon product names earlier in the show, um, they do it themselves to their own products. Now I was looking at the all new fire TV cube hands-free with Alexa and 4k ultra HD streaming media player.

Basically it looks like a little Rubik's cube. And they are saying that this will in fact interface with your TVs and everything else. You'll be able to turn them on and off by just saying, you know, Alexa or whatever your code word is. So I'm going to get one, uh, and check it out.

Now, as much as I actually prefer the Apple TV UI, it does appear if this works that Apple will be my phone tablet computer ecosystem, but my home ecosystem is going to be all Amazon because if this thing works, that's that I will, uh, I will probably not be using my Apple TV much anymore because I, you know, everything's available on, on, on the Alexa as well.

So there you go. And if that can control my TV and everything says, it's also controls, uh, compatible sound bars, AV receivers, everything. If this actually really works out, I'm definitely going to get one for my mom too. Okay. Well, good for you. I like my Roku TV still.

It has everything. I don't have to install other apps on it. It just works. Uh, I did buy a sound bar this week. I'll have that next week. I'm still testing it out. It, uh, it is annoying to have to have another remote control for the volume, but it, uh, it does.

Yeah. It does. Some things really good. It does. Some things not so good, but it was like, you know, it, it, it fit. It was kind of the, I had to find one that actually fit in the space that I had because, you know, my TV is above the fireplace and we can't actually hang it anywhere because like it's brick and it would cost more than the TV literally to actually drill holes in the fireplace.

So I'm like, okay, let's just get a sound bar and we'll try that. And I'm like, uh, you know, it's okay. I think drilling holes in brick is really not that difficult. I have a drill that can do that. I do have a drill that can do that too, but it's not my fireplace. Don't forget that. Okay. So if I screw up in the fireplace, fireplace breaks, I don't know.

Remember that underemployed thing? Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. I do not have a fireplace or chimney replacement budget. I'm sure you can learn how to do that on YouTube. Oh, great. Yeah. Maybe there's a masterclass on rebuilding. Masterclass on masonry.

Yeah. Thank you. Uh, speaking of Amazon, I got a note this week that, uh, Ford and Alexa have hooked up. All right. And I apparently now can use Alexa in my Ford Explorer, but you've got CarPlay in there already, right?

Yes, I do. So who cares? I do. Uh, the thing is, I mean, the way it works with iPhones is you have to actually plug it in via USB and then your phone drives the interface. Right. So I got to say the new, uh, the new CarPlay upgrades are amazingly nice.

Well done Apple on that one. But if I've, if I want to use Ford and Alexa, I have to run the Ford Alexa app on my phone when I plug it in. Okay. So I'd lose CarPlay. Right. So I'm like, okay, it kind of works.

So, well, I think it's a step in the right direction. It actually does me no good. No good whatsoever. Yeah. Yeah. What are you going to do? Yeah. CarPlay. That's what I'm going to do. And I stumbled across this one and I just thought it was, it was awesome. Uh, you have to be of a certain age to, to really appreciate this one, but I thought you and I definitely did because you and I had a lot of iOmega zip drives back in the day.

And, uh, it was really funny. I just, I loved some of the writing on this article, especially this opening paragraph. iOmega is best known for its high capacity disk drives of the mid to late nineties. 100 megabytes was considered monstrous at the time that randomly stopped. Stopped working and destroyed data in the process. Thanks to the company cutting corners and churning out hardware that wasn't very durable.

Yeah. That's what I remember about it. Yep. Yep. Do you know, did you know that iOmega actually did not make zip drives or zip disks? They actually did not make anything. They just, uh, third party branded it. OEM. It's like a Trump steak. Guess who made, guess who made zip drives and zip disks?

Who? Epson. Really? I, when I first got the, my first paying web gig, when I moved to California and my first job ever on the web was to build the corporate website for Epson America. And I found out like looking around the office, I'm like, man, you guys got a lot of zip drives around here.

It's like, yeah, they give them to us for free. I'm like, can I just like walk home with a stack of zip disks? Cause this was right at the end when zip disks was like, he's on the decline, you know? And they're like, yeah, Epson makes these things. They don't brand them. They, iOmega is just a third party company that sells them all.

That's amazing. I mean, at least, I mean, okay. Yeah. They did tend to die at the least opportune moment, but you got to admit they were better than PsyQuest. Oh yeah. They were great at the time, as long as they worked. It's just, they broke on you.

It was always a pain in the ass. Anyways, the whole point of this is some kid managed to figure out how to basically connect to an iOmega zip drive from his Apple watch, which is pretty cool. Pretty good hacking. It was. I, you know, I'm looking at it. I'm like, this is really useless, but then the nerd in me was just like, good on you, brother.

Good on you. I know. This was fun. Yeah. I think I want to go get that, uh, that little app he's using though, that rumpus rumpus. Yeah. Put it in my rumpus room. Oh, so back to Amazon. I, I, I got this a while ago.

I'm very disappointed in this product name. The Streetwise Lightning Rod 7 Million Stun Stick. Yeah. That's, that's not enough there. No, it's not. It doesn't really tell you exactly what it does. It doesn't really pop or paint a picture. Oh, trust me. The motherfucking thing pops. I'll tell you why in a second. So I, I usually carry a stun stick when I'm out in the early morning with the dogs because we have a really bad coyote problem in my neighborhood.

And many pets every week go, go to the great, uh, pound in the sky. And, uh, I just don't want to walk in my backyard and be mobbed because coyotes can jump a six foot fence and they do often poop in my backyard in the middle of the night.

So when I come out in the morning, I want to have something that's not bam, bam to get rid of them. So I have a stun gun, basically a giant stun gun. This is the new one I bought because my old one was a little long in the tooth. About $35, depending on the whim of Amazon. When you load the page, reload a couple of times, it might get you down to the same price.

Well, this new one I got, uh, has a new feature on it. At the very end, there's the stun gun, but this new one has these new long metal strips that go down the barrel of it that are about a foot long, which are the anti grab strips.

So if you're trying to shock somebody, nobody can grab it and hang onto it and try and take it from you. Right. Well, I forgot about those this morning. And I was, I was fiddling with the prongs on the front because they looked like they were a little out of alignment. So I was just like, okay. And then I turned it to stun mode and press the button to test it, to see if I got the arc.

Oh, I got an arc. Jesus Christ. Stunned the ever living shit out of myself, held onto it for about a 10th of a second. My arm was numb for an hour and a half. Wow.

Okay. I'm going to go give it a five-star rating because please do include your entire story. Oh, I'm absolutely, I'm absolutely putting the whole story up there because if you can't write a fun Amazon review, then come on, there's something wrong with you. But my God, I'm like, now I know what 7 million volts actually feels like a lot of, you know, security experts and self-defense experts say, well, these things, all they're going to do is piss somebody off and then they're just going to make you hit them harder.

Uh-uh. Nope. I tell you what, you get zapped with it. It's effective is what you're saying. It's very effective. I'm like, it did piss me off and I did want to punch it really badly. But then I'm like, you're the one that pressed the button, you idiot. So, um, and I mean, my, my roommate was in the house, like in the bathroom and she heard me scream and I'm like, it was like, it was like a cartoon bubble with all of the, you

know, the percent and pound signs coming out of there for like four minutes. I'm just screaming. My fingers were numb. She's like, you fucking idiot. But at least it, uh, I didn't need my, I didn't need my tea this morning because it woke me the fuck up.

I will guarantee you that. So if you are looking for a, uh, a stun stick, I highly recommend the streetwise lightning rod seven million stun stick for approximately $35 on Amazon. Nice. Now, finally, I saw this one over at the verge and I just, I just had to throw it in here and the title of the article is does praying burn calories.

Here's the Pope's $110 e-rosary. Yes. They made, they made a prayer tracker for you. The smart rosary. Okay. All right. Awesome. I love one of the early reviews on the Google play store.

Good fitness tracker app helps me work out regularly. Didn't understand how praying works though. Maybe need some tutorials for now. Four out of five. You have to be in Italy to get it. But, uh, yeah, it's pretty funny. So a hundred and 110 bucks to, uh, you know, track those prayers.

I saw this one over at Vox Recode because I think that's actually what they call it now. I, I heard Kara Swisher on a podcast, call it Vox Recode and it's called Generation Z doesn't always want to hear from you. So it turns out that the Generation Z, those born after 1998 and have, you know, they are, have been online since the day they were born.

They, they came into this world with a Twitter account. Yes. Ready to go. Now the USB sticks shoved up their ass, personal profiles on my space. All, all, all set up. Well, they are saying that, uh, yeah, you know, we're cool with not being reachable all the time.

They're pushing back and actually seem to be more, um, hands off than the previous generations like ours. And, uh, it's, it's an interesting, uh, take, I mean, it's a decent survey, 1500 people. So not a small, not a small sample size.

Yeah. Although I do wonder if it's more the age that they are specifically, and if they're going to end up being, uh, less that way as they get a bit old, older, because Generation Z is in that kind of timeframe right now where you, you basically want to be left alone. You want, you don't want your parents to know what you're doing.

You don't want to be contacted. You just want to go out and do your own thing. And basically usually not good things or things that society or parents or, or, uh, you know, authority figures want you to be doing because that's that prime age range, right? Where I, certainly you and I were fucking hellions and we didn't want anybody being, being able to find us.

Yeah. They did. That's let's break some glass and fuck shit up. Exactly. That's the age range that they're in right now. So I do wonder if it's partially that very well could be. That is an interesting take on it. Um, so yeah, we'll see. I really liked the end here.

It says Generation Z does tend to differ by gender in one important way. Optimism about tech. Gen Z women are markedly less likely than other generations and less likely than their male peers to be optimistic about technology's impact on society.

They're also more worried than other groups about online safety and security and their personal information getting into the wrong hands. So Brian, when we retire, we are going to hand the reins over to a couple of girls from Gen Z and then they can run with it because, uh, it sounds like they're right in our wheelhouse.

Exactly. Well done. Gen Z. I'm impressed. And another article I found this morning over on Buzzfeed news because they do news. Now it's called porn stars versus Instagram inside the battle to remain on the platform. Well, I think they're, they're allowed to be on it as long as they don't show their pink bits.

Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Basically. I mean, the, the, the women on, on Instagram are not showing their naughty bits, but here's the problem. It comes down to the moderators and the moderators are pulling people with apparently no rhyme or reason.

And it's really affecting these women's ability to make money. Are you saying a social media giant is not following the terms of service that they have in an even handed and, and regular manner? Why would I ever say something like that, Brian, that sounds, that sounds like balderdash sounds like balderdash and poppycock.

Well, there is no cock in this one because they can't get anybody to go to their websites and they're losing thousands of dollars a month because since, you know, the other legislation has gone into play and there's no more Craigslist, there's no more adult sites. And these women are, they're trying to find a place to call their own and at least get their, get their message out there that they're available for a good time.

Well, this is the problem. So, uh, like I always say, you can't build your house in somebody's backyard and get pissed off when they turn the sprinklers on. So I feel bad for them. I wish they had a place where they could go that was safe. You can't build your whorehouse in somebody else's backyard. I can build it in my backyard.

Come on by. Jason will build you a site using rumpus. Using rumpus. That's right. Oh, put the, put your rump on rumpus. That's it. I want to give a shout out to Microsoft tech support, which actually did help me solve some of the problems when I was working on my dad's Mac or Mac laptop.

So there's that. They actually have a support department still. It was great. Can't believe it. Is that a Jobsian slip? Called it a Mac? I think so. A Jobsian slip. That's a good term. Yeah. I'm so into Apple now that it's unbelievable. Also, I want to give a shout out to our friends at Node Host.

We're all doing, well, I'm doing my personal hosting there. Jason still has some stuff there too, I believe. And I mentioned how my spam has ticked up a bit because they don't have any server side spam killers and they're actually well, well into the process of adding that service. That's customer service for you. There you go.

Yeah. No, they're good guys over there. Definitely. Yeah. And I don't know if you watched this morning, but I did watch the astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir do their historic spacewalk. Well done, ladies. Well done. I watched a little bit of it and it was up in space. Let's be honest. Yeah.

It was. She's like, I looked under the plate. There's nothing extruding. Moving on to the next. I'm like, okay, this isn't really, we're not watching BSG here. This isn't the expanse. Nobody's being blown out of an airlock. Yet we didn't get to the end.

Maybe that was the second half of the spacewalk. Well, hopefully not. Until next time, I'm Brian Schilmeister. And I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, go to patreon.com slash GOG. Toss us a few bucks 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, really, really appreciate it. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 386. 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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