400: Bad Request

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. Welcome to episode 400. Insert some sound effect here. Whee! 400 fucking episodes. God damn, this has been a slog.

Yeah, I can't believe we're at 400. It's pretty crazy. I remember people were asking us, are you going to do anything special for 400? And I think our response collectively was, get through it. Yeah, if we can publish it on time, it'll be a fucking miracle. Yeah, we don't have time to plan special things.

No, so I just want to talk for a second about the title of this episode, Bad Request. I noticed that season four of Mr. Robot, they use all of the HTTP status codes. And I thought that was clever. Quite clever. If only the writing for the show was as clever as the titles.

I tell you what, man, there's only two episodes left. Out of everything after season one up until season four. So season two and three just were utter crap. Yes. I'm really enjoying season four. So it looks like they're going to stick the landing. Is that what you're telling me? I don't know. Who knows? There's two episodes left for them to completely ruin it.

But so far, it hasn't been bad. There have been a couple stinkers, like the one that I mentioned where they were walking through the woods most of the episode. That one was really boring. But for the most part, I am finding this final episode of Mr. Robot actually enjoyable. Excellent. Well, looks like we're turning this bit of follow-up into a little media candy.

So let's continue it. I want to give a shout out to a friend of the show, Sean, who posted on Facebook and alerted me to the fact that, well, the Grand Tour Presents Seamen dropped, which we knew was coming. But also that The Expanse season four on Amazon dropped last night. And I did something very stupid, Jason.

What did you do, Brian? Well, my house has basically been plague central for the last two weeks. So a smart person would have gone to bed very early to try to beat this whatever that's lingering around. Instead, because my wife demands that we watch one episode of Miss Maisel every single night, I watched a Miss Maisel, then waited for her to go to bed, then watched The Grand Tour Presents Seamen, and then because I couldn't help myself, watched the first episode of The Expanse.

So I think we kind of had the same trajectory last night because I had to wait for my roommate to go to bed, and then I watched The Grand Tour Presents Seamen. And as I was getting ready to fall asleep, you hit me up on Slack and say, The Expanse season four has dropped, or Amazon dropped The Expanse is what you said.

And I'm like, they canceled it? I was like freaking out. I'm like, oh, no, it's been canceled already, and it hasn't even run. Not knowing that we'd already talked about on the show that it has already been picked up for season five. So you had to explain to me like I'm a fifth grader that no, it is just out now.

Put down the hard kombucha. You've had enough. It's on now. So what did I do? Popped another hard kombucha, planted my ass on the couch, and watched episode one of The Expanse season four. I guess we're here. Let's go ahead and review them. Let's just do it. Let's do it. What did you think of Seaman, to start with?

A little salty. I thought it was absolutely perfect. It's what I want from the Grand Tour. I will say I don't care about the lack of cars. It doesn't matter what they're doing, but I felt that way about the Grand Tour all along. For me, it's all about the three personalities and the interactions.

It does not matter at all. I don't care about cars, so I thought this was fine. The only thing I can say about it, which is my complaint since they've moved to Amazon anyways, since they started being the Grand Tour, overly scripted still. It is pretty overly scripted.

My complaint about it... Oh, and by the way, I do agree with you completely. The cars are incidental to the plot of the show. It's always been that way. I've never been a car person, but I love Top Gear. It's about the three guys. The problem with this one is, yes, the three guys went on this crazy boat tour, but they weren't together very much.

No, that kept them pretty separate. Especially James May was almost always out of the mix, doing his own thing. Yeah, I thought that was a big mistake, and it really kind of fractured and fragmented the show for me. Yeah, I can see that point, and I agree with it. I like it so much better when it's just the three of them doing...

I applaud the idea of this format, though, by the way. This whole season is going to be almost basically mini-movies, or basically movies. It was an hour and a half, wasn't it? Yeah, it is a movie. Because I was up really late. That's all I remember. So I like that idea. I like it being the big trips, getting rid of the whole audience thing, getting rid of the car thing as much as possible.

Fantastic. But yeah, keep the group together. Don't separate them. Makes me wonder if they dislike each other a little bit right now. Who knows? It could be. It could be. I did like that Jeremy did drop a Deliveroo mention in the show, but he didn't do it. I saw that as well. He didn't do it with proper panache.

Deliveroo! So we know he doesn't listen to our show. I want to give a shout out to Jeremy as well, who seems to have come around to the climate change issue. He mentioned it multiple times that, yes, climate change is real. So his heart expanded three times in this episode, apparently. Yep.

And it seems like his belly is not expanding. It seems like he lost a little weight. He has definitely lost some weight. Noticeably so. I think maybe that farm show that he's working on, probably, you know, working out in the fields in England, probably dropped a few stone. Yep.

Okay, so let's move on to The Expanse. I had completely forgotten everything that had happened in season three. So thank God for that little recap, which brought me back up to speed, especially since I had just been living in the world of the first book, which is the first season. So I was taken a little aback going, oh, yeah, I forgot all that happened.

I forgot where they're at right now. I was pleased and surprised to find out that Jeff Bezos didn't demand himself to be written in. I was expecting a little bald head Bezos as part of the OPA or something like that as a little cameo. Or one of his spaceships to make a cameo is what I was thinking.

Or that, yeah. But I loved it. The origin penis going through the gate there. I really enjoyed the episode so much so that I really did have to force myself to put down the remote, turn off the TV, and go to bed. I was ready to dive straight into episode two. Oh, man.

It was an act of will to stay up to the end of the episode. And I actually have to go back and watch the last ten minutes because I was fading so fast. I don't really remember what happened. Well, you were hard kombucha. I was just Earl Grey teed. So it was easier for me. Oh, God. Caffeine at night.

You're a monster. You're a monster. It doesn't affect me at all. Then why bother? It tastes good. Brian, do you remember a while back when Apple cracked down on their ad targeting and stopped letting people do the, basically, personalization through Safari?

Yes. How's that going? Seems to be going fairly well. It actually works. Maybe I should use Safari. Yeah, maybe. But remember the law of unintended consequences that we talk a lot about on the show? I think we should just officially call that the law of technology at this point.

I think we should call it the grumpy old law. Okay. So what I read over on Stratechery, which I still love that newsletter, even though half the time I can't read it because it's too goddamn long. He makes a very good point. So ads for people who are browsing on Safari, the price for those have dropped about 60%.

Okay. And ads for people who use Chrome have gone up, like the cost per ads because they can be tracked, right? Yeah, tracked and targeted. Makes sense. It makes sense. Well, what we didn't plan on, and I love this, well, advertisers want to go where they can track people, which means people like Google and Facebook just get more money.

Yes. That's kind of it. Amazon and Facebook and Google basically just get more money because they're the targeted platforms. I mean, Google is always going to get the same money because they're Google. They're serving the ads anyway. But basically, we've given Zuckerberg more money, not less.

Yeah. Unfortunately, that's not terribly surprising, right? Yeah. Advertisers want to know. They want to know what's going on, even though the other grumpy old geeks rule is statistics are meaningless, and most of that tracking is meaningless. But they want to know anyways, and they will pay more for that, so.

Well, ad retargeting is not meaningless, so it does actually matter. Does it, though? Does it really? Because here's what ad retargeting does. As soon as I buy something. It creeps everybody out. As soon as I buy something, I see ads for the thing that I already fucking bought for three months. That's what it does. See, there's the big problem with retargeting.

It's like, yes, I did just buy those vitamins. No, I don't need to buy any more vitamins because I just fucking bought the vitamins. Thank you very much. And especially when you do gag gifts for people. Or Christmas time, if you're sharing a household connection. Oh, my God. Okay, so here's the workaround for that.

And this is a pro tip for everybody listening. And we've talked about private internet access and VPNs on the show before. Go to gog.show slash VPN, sign up for private internet access. And when you're shopping for your lovely housemates or your wife or your spouse or your kids, sign in through somewhere like Czechoslovakia.

And then the rest of the household, when you sign off, they won't get what you just bought based on your retargeting unless you share the same Amazon account. And in that case, you're screwed. Then you're screwed, yeah. But if you're just searching for things, looking for presents, because here's the fun part.

I will search on Amazon for something for my roommate. Well, when she logs into Facebook, she gets retargeted ads for shit that I searched for on Amazon under my account. Yep. I mean, Amazon has ruined Christmas. In more ways than one, Jason.

In more ways than one. In more ways than one. So I just thought it was very funny because, you know, yeah, this is like your rule of self-driving cars. It's all or nothing. Every browser has to go all in on this or, you know, it doesn't really matter. That's right. And Chrome is never going to go in on it because they're owned by Google.

Google. Well, speaking of shopping, I found a really interesting article over on the Wall Street Journal about all these big brands and online startups finding success means getting into store shelves. It's not enough to just be an online brand anymore.

Even though American shoppers will buy almost anything online when it comes to household mainstays from razors to tampons, et cetera, et cetera, the old-fashioned store still beckons. Studies have shown that people like to go out and buy these at regular stores all in one. Just, you know, your monthly trip to Target or whatever, rather than signing up for all these ridiculous upstart online subscription services.

Who wants a subscription to razors? I know it's a big deal, and we'll edit that out if they ever decide to finally advertise with us, as they do with every other podcast. But people are generally, overall, do not like it, and these brands have discovered that the only way that they're going to move forward is to get onto actual shelves, which is starting to happen.

I'm seeing a lot of the razor brands that used to be subscription services and online, they're in Target now because that's the only way it works. There's some actual statistics on this stuff. After more than three years after Unilever, which is the huge European giant company that does Dove soap, Axe body sprays, blah, blah, blah, they paid over a billion dollars, a billion, to buy Dollar Shave Club, the razor subscription service.

And according to Unilever and the financial reports, that is not making them any money still. Huh, interesting. So, a friend of the show, Trent, who's one of their lead iOS developers, might want to be looking for a new job to keep those puppies fed. Well, as we know, in this economy 2.0, not making any money tends to be a good thing, apparently.

Well, here's the other funny thing. Well, A, you mentioned statistics, which obviously we know don't matter. But these online companies are what drove a lot of brick-and-mortar stores out of business, so there are less shelves to actually get on. Yes, but now they need to be in them.

So, we may see a bit of a resurgence in smaller brick-and-mortar companies that are just stocking these sorts of things. In fact, that's quite a good business idea. Brian, I think we might be on to something here. We might be on to something here, but like everything else that we think of that's a really good idea, we will do absolutely butt-kiss about it.

Yeah, yeah, there's that whole we're old and lazy thing that really gets in the way. Yeah, so Procter & Gamble has also done the same thing. The CEO, David Taylor, is saying his company is still figuring out how to turn recently acquired online brands into profitable businesses.

They have not done so yet. They bought several companies that originated as online-only brands, including Native Deodorant and Walker & Co., which sells grooming products for men of color. Dozens of online consumer product startups are finding their success depends on getting on the shelves of Walmart and Target and other traditional retailers.

So being an online cool brand with a subscription service is a failure as a business. You've got to get on the shelves. Well, it's a failure as a big business. For mom-and-pop shops, you know, for lifestyle businesses, I think it can still be a fully viable option. But when you want to sell your company for a billion dollars to the Unilevers of the world, yeah, I mean, these people work in volume, you know?

They sure do. Have you seen Harry's Razors at Target? Because I'm sure they're probably there too. I have. I actually bought one once just to see what the big brouhaha was about. Was it any fucking good? No, I hated it, actually. I just went back to buy Mach 3. See, me too. Yeah. I had Dollar Shave Club for, you know, like maybe three months.

And I found out that there are places that you can buy the, you know, basically the razors and the blades that they source, you can get for like, you know, far less than they actually pay for going through Dollar Shave Club. Because you don't have to pay for shipping through Dollar Shave Club and all the other crap that they sent you.

Sorry, Trent. I do have to say though. Yeah, sorry, Trent. The, uh, there's some, one of the facial goos that Dollar Shave Club sells as an upsell was actually really good. I forget what it was called. Dude, check out, check out Jack Black from Sephora. I've been using that shaving cream for years. It's the best.

Does Jack Black actually get any money from him? It has nothing to do with that Jack Black. Oh, too bad, man. I miss that guy. I want a, I want a tenacious D movie. I want another one. Damn it. I love the pick of destiny. I like the show. The movie failed me a little bit, but yeah, it is what it is.

YouTube is in the news again. As of Wednesday, they have announced that the video service will start policing material that insulted or demeaned others because of their race, gender, or sexual orientation. So, YouTube is dead. Basically, they have to hit the off switch.

Yeah, that's it. I mean, Jesus. Or at least certainly the comments off switch. So, this policy will apply to videos and comments directed at anyone, including public officials, private individuals, and YouTube creators. Now, Jason, what is the stat on the amount of video that is uploaded, like, every minute on YouTube?

Oh, it's like 27 years. So, how exactly are they going to do this? AI! Of course, the AI that's been working so well so far. I think your prediction is right. The future is almost here, and all we are going to be doing is uploading and then policing other people's content.

That is going to be everybody's full-time job. That is all anybody is ever going to do anymore. And we're just an idiocracy sucked into a chair getting fed some blue goo. That's pretty much it. Yeah, so they say they're going to... Idiocracy meets WALL-E is the world that we're making for ourselves.

Yeah, so they're going to roll this out in the coming weeks and months. Thousands of so-called raiders will be hired by YouTube, and they will screen flag videos for prohibited content. So, there is some outsourcing there to the general public. Everybody will be flagging things. As we know, that works ever so well.

Oh, yeah, great. I mean, seriously, we need to go into the mental health sector because everybody's just going to go insane. Yes. YouTube has said it has put together guidelines for weighing the context of the videos and comments to properly identify harassment. As we all know, we should see if those guidelines will be, you know, put across the board evenly, which seems to be a huge issue for tech companies who decide, well, your guideline applies here, but not here.

As they point out, enforcing the policy will be challenging. No shit, Sherlock. YouTube does not want to stifle debate, disagreement, or legitimate criticism of public officials, but it wants to draw the line here at harassment. You, sir, shall not cross this line.

Yeah, so we will see what that's going to mean. YouTube said the new policy expanded its definition of harassment, which has covered making explicit threats, inciting people to harass someone else, and revealing confidential personal information, or otherwise all the comment sections everywhere, to include implied or veiled threats.

So, that's going to be really interesting, particularly as we know most of the people that will be hired for this will be English-speaking as a second language at best. So, nuance and veiled threats are going to be quite interesting. Yeah, I wonder if they're going to pull that guy's entire account who is griefing that one guy over being gay.

Remember, we talked about that ad nauseum. And all they did was demonetize him, but it kept his videos up. That guy's account should just be deleted. Agreed. Now, this next one, I just get a chuckle from. Twitter is funding research into a decentralized version of its platform.

Okay. Well, Jack said, Twitter is funding a small independent team of up to five open-source architects, engineers, and designers to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media. The goal is for Twitter to ultimately be a client of this standard. Five.

Five open-source architects, engineers, and designers. You want to basically re-architect the foundation of social media, and you're willing to put five people on it. You know when you could have done that? 1990. I mean, this whole thing comes down to, basically, Twitter's trying to figure out a way where they don't have to do what YouTube just said that they're going to do.

Yes. If we decentralize, we are no longer responsible for the content at all, and we do not have to moderate or give a crap. Yes. Yes. It's called the Blue Sky Team. Well, that's appropriate. Yeah. This whole thing is, I mean, and here's the funny thing.

We do have a platform out there that is decentralized, and you can spin up your own server, and it's called Mastodon. Oh, I thought it was called Elo. No, Elo is not decentralized. I have a Mastodon account. I don't think I've ever logged back into it once. You know what, I logged into it once, and it turns out that the only people on Mastodon are teenage Japanese women.

That's all that was there. Everything was in Japanese. Sounds like a win. Well, if you read Japanese, but they weren't posting pictures, so, meh. Anyway, so, yeah, Mastodon is out there right now. So, that's, why don't they just, you know, take that platform and run with it?

Yeah. Well, it's open source. They don't even have, all they got to do is fork it, you know? So, what's the big holdup here, Jack? I mean, I can tell that you're, you know, you are serious about your dedication to this new goal, because you have, you know, you have tasked five individuals, up to, I'm sorry.

Up to five. Up to five individuals to handle this entire thing that will be the future of Twitter. We are going to send five, it's like sending five people to bars saying that this is going to be the future of humanity. What the hell? Well, this is not surprising from Twitter.

Oh, Jack, Jack, Jack, you are too funny. I have a feeling we will hear about this about two more times, and it will quietly go into the night. Yeah, much like most of the features that Twitter promises. So, there's been more data crunching on that Brookings Think Tank study and analyzation of the 2016 U.S. Census and the data from McKinsey and all that that talks about automation and artificial intelligence and how it will affect Americans unevenly.

The recode has a very long and very interesting breakdown of all the numbers and how it's going to affect people based on occupation and education and age and race and gender and location, et cetera, et cetera. Of course, this is all pie in the sky stuff and we're not sure. Yeah, so what they're saying is they have no fucking idea what's going to happen.

Well, they say it quite well. I will read the exact quote. The robots will someday take our jobs, but not all our jobs, and we really don't know how many, nor do we understand which jobs will be eliminated and which will be transitioned into what some will say will be better, less tedious work. But the interesting thing about this is just that I like the gender thing, which it basically says, men, for once, will be getting the short end of the stick.

Jobs traditionally held by men have a higher average automation potential than those held by women, meaning that a greater share of those tasks could be automated with current technologies, according to Brookings. Because men are dumb. Well, we tend to have more manual jobs and more easily replaceable jobs by machines and artificial intelligence.

Yeah, basically because we're dumb. Yeah, I mean, there are more guy truck drivers than women truck drivers. And as we've been talking about, truck driving is probably going to be one of the first things to go. Definitely. And I certainly have noticed this. In 20 years. In 20 years when we get the automated cars, finally, maybe.

I don't know. I've certainly noticed since having a kid. I've made the joke many times to my wife that I've basically been transitioned to nothing more than a pack mule. That's true. That's true. If I could get a robot to carry around all my wife and kid shit, I'm out of a job with my family. Well, once those automated bird scooters come into play, you're sad, man.

Yeah. And I found another really interesting article over at The Atlantic. As a couple of our reviewers and commenters have pointed out recently, we're the best Gen X podcast out there. So this is something that is Gen X related. How the loss of the landline is changing family life.

I really like this article. Did you get a chance to read it, Jason? No, I didn't. And I just remember, hang up the phone. I'm on AOL. Yeah, well, I mean, this is kind of about that. The author writes, my tween will never know the sound of me calling her name from another room after the phone rings. She'll never sit on our kitchen floor, refrigerator humming in the background, twisting a cord around her finger while talking to her best friends.

I'll get it. He's not here right now. And it's for you are all phrases that are out of the way of the modern domestic vernacular. According to federal government, the majority of American homes now use cell phones exclusively. We still have a landline. We never use it. I don't know why. Well, I don't know why we keep it. So we just do.

It's there. You like wasting money. That's why. Well, it's just like one of those one of those ISP based ones. So it's like eight bucks a month. Oh, that's not a real landline then. It's not a real landline. No, we have one of those too. That's not a real landline. Yeah. So there you go. But this whole article gets into the concept of how the shared family phone used to serve as an anchor for the home.

This is written by Luke Fernandez, a visiting computer science professor at Weber State University and co-author of Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stupid Feelings About Technology. From the telegraph to Twitter. We should get him on the show. That sounds like a book we both definitely need to read.

Yeah. He says, home is where you could be reached and where you needed to go to pick up your messages. With smartphones, we have gained mobility and privacy. I'd like to argue with him about the privacy aspect of that. But I mean, he points out like the privacy of your parents don't know who's calling you and all that sort of stuff anymore.

But the value of the home has been diminished and has its capacity to guide and monitor family behavior and perhaps bind families more closely together. And I kind of really do agree with that to some sense. Yeah, but it was a forced bonding. Here's the thing that they don't address.

Most of family life, Jason, is forced bonding. Yes, it is. Let me tell you right now. Because as soon as everybody in my family could get a cell phone and not have to hang around the kitchen, twiddling their finger around the cord, waiting for somebody to get off so they could make a call.

We did. We got cell phones. First, we had pagers. Then we had cell phones. And we were glad for it. Yes, we were glad as teenagers who didn't want our parents to know what we were doing. Oh, man. Yeah. Well, the article does point out both sides. So plenty of people don't lament the passing of the family phone.

Michael Mueller, the 27-year-old son of Cheryl, the artist in Brooklyn who we talked about earlier in the article. Again, I love this read. I think it's really good. Says he enjoys the constant proximity of a cell phone and prefers texting over calling, which he says people only use when they want to extract an answer.

Text is so much easier to take as much time as you want to think about it. He told me if he has kids, he's not sure he'll get a landline for his family to share. I don't think anybody will. I think it's gone the way of the dodo, but I'm just pointing out it's a bit sad. It's not that sad. I don't miss it one bit.

I really don't. It was a pain in the ass. You don't have kids. Like I said, I'm on AOL. That's really. I had a separate line to run my BBS and all that sort of stuff. Because you're a privileged fuck. That's why we couldn't afford a separate line.

Me and my white privilege. It's got me so far. Here I am doing a podcast for free. You're getting paid, bitch. Shut up. Beer money.

Security? Ha! We are joined for this 400th episode by Dave Bittner. Dave is the host of the Cyberware podcast. Dave is also the co-host of the social engineering podcast, Hacking Humans with Joe Kerrigan, as well as the co-host of Caveat with Ben Yellen, where they discuss law and policy, as well as surveillance and privacy.

And I'm trying to be that guy from the FedEx commercials way back in the day. How fast I can get through that? We've got 400 episodes. We've got 400 episodes. Yep. As someone who does a daily, let me just say, that's adorable. Amateurs. Rank amateurs.

Actually, I think, coincidentally, we are coming up at the end of this year on 1,000. Wow. Wow. All that and $3.50 will get you a coffee. I know, right? Yeah. I know. I'd be curious to check our run times together. See how your thousands measure up to our 400.

Because we used to do two-hour episodes. God. But we were crazy. Boy, did we. Yeah. That's a good question. You probably have more run time than we do, because we try to stay at around 20 minutes every day. Must be nice. Oh, to only have 20 minutes. But the problem there is you have to do it every day.

You do. Yes, you do. We did try that for a brief period. It did not sit well with us. No. Well, it kind of did, but Brian complained a lot, so we killed it. Really? Brian's the complainer in this pair. Huh. For once.

I'm not making any money. I'm going to take my blankie and go home. Well, the thing about doing a 20-minute episode versus an hour episode is you still have to do the same amount of prep. Well, here's the thing. Our episodes were five minutes, and it still took four hours.

They were never five minutes, Jason. As per usual with us, we say we're going to do five to 15 minutes, and 35 minutes later, we're still talking. Up to Speed never got that far. But here's the thing. We were pioneers in the daily tech show. That show Up to Speed, we did about five years ago.

If we'd have kept with it, we'd have been pioneers. But we only did 40 episodes. I have no interest in being a pioneer. I have an interest in paying my mortgages. You're a kept man. Shut up. Isn't there that old, I think it was, wasn't it Mark Twain who said something like, sorry for the length of this letter.

I didn't have time to write a shorter one. I think that has been attributed to Mark Twain, Abe Lincoln, and many other people. So Dave, you guys always talk about Star Wars on this segment, and I couldn't care less.

But you did something the other day that actually intrigued me. So I want to talk to you about your trip to Medieval Times. Oh yes, the cultural juggernaut that is on par with Star Wars and the Avengers. I have been to Medieval Times probably more than I've seen Star Wars.

Okay. Well, this was my first time. Yeah, this was my first time. Oh my God. You're a virgin. And there's a Medieval Times about 15 minutes from my house. So the fact that I'd never been. I think we have to drop a caveat in here. You did go with, what, 35 children?

Yes. Although this was a middle school field trip. So the entire, for folks who'd never been, Medieval Times, the arena itself, the floor of the arena is probably about the size of a hockey rink. And I did a little quick back of the napkin calculation.

I figure there are about 800 seats around the arena. So figure 800 screaming middle schoolers. That was my day. I'm very sorry to hear that. I believe you probably did not have the same joyful experience that Jason apparently has when he goes.

Yeah. It was fun. I have to hand it to the folks who do the show. They're, I mean, they're the real deal. They handle those horses well. And the stage combat was pretty good. You could, you could tell which ones were actors who ride horses and which one were horse riders who.

Needed a job. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My favorite. There were a couple of things that were noteworthy. One of the knights said something to the other group of knights, something like, allow me to ask you all a question. What do you guys think about this?

Okay. That's great. Broke character a bit there. And then the other thing that struck me was, especially in this room full of middle schoolers, there's pageantry and there are these beautiful horses. And there was a woman who was a falconer who had this bird flying around and there was orchestrated music and an amazing sound system and incredible lighting and beautifully written scripts.

And terrible food. The thing that I thought the food was pretty good. I think they're wrong with turkey leg and a beer. Yeah. The thing that got the biggest reaction out of the crowd was when one knight kicked another knight in the nuts. I was about to say, did everybody go crazy when the horses took a big crap? Yeah.

Well, there's that. There is that. There is that. But you can't go wrong. It's a joke that always kills. It passes the test of time, does it not? Yeah. So the show was fun. It was actually the bus ride that was murder. Oh, God.

Noise canceling headphones. Yeah. You should have had more mead. Beer wench. Beer wench. Please, beer wench. Stuck in a yellow school bus for, it was only about 20 minutes, maybe a half an hour with these. Felt like an eternity. It did. And I really felt trapped in there.

And these were not terribly bad kids or anything, but it doesn't take that many of them to just make it, make you feel like you can't get out of this, this box full of noise. So anyway, glad to have gone for my son, Jack. We had a good time together.

I'm glad to do it for him. I don't, I'm curious to know how different the nighttime show is than the special show they did for kids, which probably the same. Well, they had things like messages about cyber bullying. Oh, you don't get that. I have not been to a medieval times in roughly 15 years, so I don't, maybe things have changed a bit, but I do not recall anything about cyber bullying when I went.

I, there was saving of wenches and things of such nature. It was all kind of shoehorned in there to, I guess, to make it the excuse that this was an educational endeavor. But it could be. Yeah. I went to my first medieval times show in Kissimmee, Florida at the original OG medieval times.

And I still have my pewter cup that we, that I bought when I left. It's, it's sitting right here. And honestly, it's actually next to the bandana that I have for the state of Maryland flag on my, on my shelf of keepsakes. And ever since then, I used to take my brother every year when he was a kid and I went with many girlfriends and people like that.

And I always sit in the green night section, which always took a little, little greasing of the palm of the ticket person. Oh. And I went anywhere between five and 25 to get the seats for the green night because he's the villain. You always have to root for the villain. Oh. And the last time I went, I actually got hit in the head by the damn Hawk.

Really? We were sitting in the front row, which I've never sat in the front row. That was the only time we sat in the front row. And the Hawk came swooping down on its apex to do its figure eight. And the damn thing hit me in the back of the head. Wow. Well, I don't think we can top all this hot medieval times talk, so I think maybe we should just call it a segment.

Now, you know how I feel when you talk about Star Wars. You're welcome. Now, let's get to a little follow up. If anybody's interested, I did post a bunch of pictures over on my Twitter feed. So it's at Bittner if anybody wants to see it. That's all there. All right. So I do have a little bit of follow up.

We've talked a lot on this segment about, obviously, security and such things. And specifically, we've been talking about DNA testing and we've been talking about biometric markers and how they are basically unchangeable. Turns out that's not true if you're willing to go the extra mile. So three months after his bone marrow transplant, Chris Long of Reno, Nevada, learned that the DNA in his blood had changed.

It had all been replaced by the DNA of his donor, a German man he had exchanged just a handful of messages with. This, of course, makes sense. It's the goal of the procedure. Weak blood is replaced by healthy blood and with it, the DNA it contains. However, four years after this procedure, it was not only his blood that was affected.

Swabs of his lips and cheeks contained his DNA, but also that of his donor. More surprisingly, his sperm apparently switched DNA to the donor. No longer his. So apparently one can change one's DNA if one is really...

I was going to say, the man, Bruce Banner, signed him. Committed. Don't make me angry. This has been kind of a known thing for some while now. They're called chimeras, which is, of course, after the Greek mythological character, which is a fire-breathing female monster with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail.

Or every ex-girlfriend I've ever had. Hey, you know. Well, you know, if you didn't take them to medieval times, they might have stuck around a bit longer. Zing! Yeah. So, yeah, this has been happening a couple times. So, apparently, if you get bone marrow transplants, your DNA can change.

They don't know exactly how. They don't know exactly why. They can't pinpoint exactly what will be changed. But this does obviously have some cybersecurity implications because DNA is not necessarily the unassailable thing it once was.

There are cases that have been found, sexual assault cases and things of that nature, where DNA analysis did not work out the way it was meant to because people involved had had bone marrow transplants. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. Interesting.

Yeah. If you get profiled before you get the transplant, you're out of the database, basically. Yeah. And if you're one of the ones that donates, your DNA is now in somebody else and can get you flagged for things. Oh, that's right. If your donor's a villain. Yes. Hmm. That's why I only have Bam Bam spit in the tube when I send in my 23andMe.

Yeah. This reminds me of a case from a few years ago where there was a woman in Canada who was, I think she was applying for social services for her children. Mm-hmm. And in order to do that, somewhere along the line, she had to submit a DNA test of the kids, I think, and compare, they had to confirm that these were her kids.

Right. And it was a very routine kind of thing. And when the DNA came back, they were not her kids. And so this started a whole thing. So then they had to test the postman. Well, but up to and including getting the obstetrician who had given birth to the children to come testify that he was in the room when the children came out of this woman's body.

Right. And long and short of it is that it turns out that this woman had, when she was in the womb of her mother, had absorbed her twin. And the DNA of her twin had intermingled with her own, including in her eggs.

Wow. And so her children actually had the DNA of her absorbed twin. Interesting. Science is weird. I know, right? Yeah. Yeah. But it does, like I said, it leads to the problem of using these biometric markers for security because it's not always the case, is it?

Mm-mm. It's not as black and white as people seem to have leapt in to think it is. No, biology's messy. Mm-hmm. If you're doing it right. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Something that rarely happens after a trip out to medieval times.

That's right, exactly. Yeah. See, I don't know what your guys are talking about, man. I pulled some serious tail coming out of medieval times. I'm sorry. Yanking on the horses does not count. Mm-hmm. No, no, no. I've actually gotten some in the parking lot, so you guys just don't know what you're talking about.

There's nothing that puts it up. In the Midwest, there's not a lot to do, man. And if you take a girl to medieval times, you are a knight in her shining armor. It is well known in those pickup playbooks that one should always head out to medieval farms. Medieval farms. Renaissance fairs and medieval times is the best place to go pick up chicks.

Nothing puts a woman in the mood like making her eat with her hands. So, hey, man, I was finger-licking good. Well, speaking of messy, before you guys, you guys are the ones going down the nasty hole on this one, so finally not me.

Only one person mentioned a pulling tail, and that was you, Jason. Dave, what are you doing next year? We're looking for a new co-host. So, speaking of things that are messy, encryption is messy. And U.S. senators have threatened Facebook and Apple with encryption regulation.

Brian is the fan of regulation. And Senator Lindsey Graham has come out saying, you're going to find a way to do this, or we're going to do it for you. We're not going to live in a world where a bunch of child abusers have a safe haven to practice their craft. Period. End of discussion. And I would like to start the discussion with Spock saying, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

And Lindsey Graham, go suck on a rock. But... I don't know, Jason. Normally, I would fall down on the side of, okay, encryption, you know, even though there are some bad things that come with it, the overarching thing is good. We should have privacy and encryption.

However, a few weeks back, we discovered just how much child pornography there is out on the web. And it's a little bit frightening. It's frightening, but it's still a minuscule amount of the shit that happens out there from day-to-day interactions. Like, oh, I don't know, your banking information, everybody's banking information, the entire e-commerce structure of the entire world.

I don't think anybody's arguing about encryption for financial data. We're talking about the encryption for, like, Facebook Messenger, which is a well-known use case scenario for, unfortunately, pedophiles and things of that nature. It's all over that. Does Facebook Messenger need to be incredibly encrypted?

So we covered this a little bit on Caveat recently, right after this... I was going to say, someone called Ben Yellen. Yeah. After this hearing. And the Facebook security folks made an interesting point, which is that they have indicators on their platform when child pornography is happening that's all behavioral-based.

So they don't need to see inside the files. Metadata. Well, metadata, but also sort of like the path of you do this, then you do that, then you do this, then you do that. And evidently, when you do those things, it raises a flag.

So they were making the point that they don't necessarily have to be able to see in the specific files to alert law enforcement that they need to take a closer look here. A couple of things I've seen since this that I thought were kind of funny. One was, someone on Twitter said, you know, Lindsey Graham wants to legislate math, which I think is good.

The other one was, these child abusers are using water. They're drinking water every day. We're not going to allow these child abusers to keep using water, period. We're going to have to restrict water. Which I think is a similar kind of thing.

Encryption is not hard to get your hands on. No. That's the thing. It's not. And all they're going to do is move someplace else. Yep. Because it's open sourced. You know, they can make, you know, their own website and their own server where they all go talk to each other that is fully encrypted that nobody can break.

It has nothing to do with the availability of it. I agree. I agree. But one always forgets that criminals and people with very, very serious problems tend to be lazy and stupid and don't do that sort of thing. That is true.

Well, good. That's fine. That's fine. Then, you know, they'll get, no, I stand by the fact that these people need to stand their ground on not allowing a backdoor into the encryption for these messaging apps, period. Facebook won't have its own backdoor, please.

Facebook does not exactly have a good track record of this. No, they don't. But they're trying, I mean, they're trying to revamp their image or whatever. But still. Let me ask you a question, Jason and Dave. Would you trust Facebook's encryption? If I had a mouthful of water, I would spit it across the room right now.

There you go. So what you're saying is on the public side, they have to stand to say that they will never do that. But on the back end, they say, shh, here are the keys. Until it goes to court and then it's brought out in public that they have given law enforcement the keys and then nobody trusts them again.

And then that's the end of the business. No, and then no repercussions like everything else in the tech world. I think also let's keep in mind that just because we can't do this today doesn't mean we won't be able to do it ever. Right. There could be some clever technological solution in the future where everybody gets what they want out of this.

We can't see it right now, but that doesn't mean it's impossible and we shouldn't be working on it. Fair enough. Yeah. Well, I mean, Dave, we talked about this before. What was that company that actually lets you do, you know, SQL queries and all that stuff on encrypted data without ever decrypting the data?

That would be InVail, sponsors of Research Saturday. That's what I thought. Yeah. Yeah. So they use homomorphic encryption. That's what it was. Homomorphic. Yes. Yeah. So that's a special. We need pedomorphic encryption. There you go.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, you know, advances are happening all the time and we could get there someday. We're not there yet. It doesn't seem like it's right around the corner, but who knows? I just see this as grandstanding by dumbass politicians.

Well, it is. And it does. It always points to what we talk about all the time in this segment, which is the lawmakers are woefully undereducated on all this stuff and well behind the times. I think you could have just stopped at woefully undereducated, but that's just me.

So you guys seen any good news stories lately? Rings had a rough couple days. Oh, I fell into a burn ring a shithole. Oh, my God. Even today on just flipping through the channels on the morning news, there was a woman in Calabasas this morning who had video of a guy that was harassing her.

I mean, everywhere. It's everywhere right now. And it's still driving me crazy because I have to say this. Everybody is saying ring cameras have been hacked. They have not. Ring cameras have not been hacked. The ring website, ring.com, has been hacked by a credit stuffing attack because people have shitty passwords.

Right. That's all this is. It's all it is. People are reusing passwords. That's in all of these cases that people are reusing a password from somewhere else. And that's what's getting them. Yep. So if onepassword.com, who now has $200 million in the bank, would like to advertise on our show, we will educate the people about how to use a password manager.

Oh, man. It's just been driving me crazy. I love it. I love the fact that this is out there. And I also love the fact that a lot of this came from a podcast. Have you guys heard about Nulledcast before, Dave, over at the CyberWire?

Yeah. Over the past couple of days, it came to my attention as both. I mean, this is right up our alley, right? Both security and podcasting made its way into the CyberWire slack for sure. I have to say, well, why don't you describe what it is first?

And then we can talk about it. Okay. So Nulled is basically a message board for people who like to hack things. I went and checked it out and I was going to sign up for an account. And then I'm like, no, I've already got too many targets on my back. I don't need to sign up for an account there just to dick around.

But they have a Discord channel and they do a podcast every week called Nulledcast. Now, is it technically a podcast if it's not distributed through all the other venues and it's a live stream on Discord? Absolutely not. No, it's not. It's a live stream on Discord. Yes.

It's a channel on Discord that they do whenever they want to do it. And they were live streaming on Discord some of these hacks. And, you know, the two sides of this is, yes, they brought it to, you know, the public's attention by being on, basically, broadcasting that they're doing these hacks and sending them out to their friends and the people who listen to the show.

I don't think it's quite what companies had in mind when they had bounty programs. What do you mean? Well, showing how things can be hacked. Bringing it to light. Live streaming it. Live streaming it to everyone. Yeah, they weren't going for a bug bounty because there's no bug here.

That's the thing. This is not a bug bounty issue. This is a human issue. But once they started to do this, then, yes, it definitely got the – Vice basically has been breaking all of the different news on this and it's fantastic. And what's his name?

Was it James Cox is the main guy behind this? I hope – God, I hope so. Well, it's funny. I know a programmer named James Cox from England and I thought it was the same guy, but it's not. But his last name definitely is Cox. But he's the one at Vice who is asking for information about this and posting these stories or at least getting the intel on it.

And I just love that they were like trolling the message board and people are saying, it's fucked, dude. It's everywhere. I'm quitting. It's on mainstream news now. LMFAO, doesn't matter. Nothing's going to happen, which would be Brian.

That's the Brian Vice. Nothing's ever going to happen, man. And well, Chance is the guy who is the main guy on the quote unquote show. Chance and FaZe – and they're like, only Chance and FaZe will get arrested. Don't worry.

And – Oh, good. Yeah. So, you know, some people are jumping up and down and somebody said, is the podcast dead? And another user replied, nope. Tune in Friday. Like and subscribe. I love it. Like and subscribe. So, I kind of want to tune in tonight to see if it's still there.

Generally not a good idea to broadcast your crimes. No, no. It's kind of rule number one. Going back again to my point that criminals are lazy and stupid. Yeah. I mean, this is outright, you know, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, I would imagine.

This is – you're not allowed – you can't do this. In fact, quite often I'll – like I'll be talking to some of the partners we have over on Cyber Wire about the research that they're doing. And they'll talk about how they discover this vulnerability and I'll – and I will ask them, you know, did you – once you discovered this vulnerability, then did you go any farther?

Did you see how far in the system you could go? And they all have the same answer. They're like, no, Dave. No. That would be illegal. We stopped right there. Actually, actually, what I love is when they say, well, Dave, in the United States, that would be illegal. In Israel, you're just fine.

No, Dave, we did not open the pod bay door. Right. Exactly. No, it's very funny. My favorite story out of these, though, is the Ring hackers that demanded $350,000 in Bitcoin from a Texas couple. And they used the Ring doorbell to actually ring the doorbell in the house to make it sound like somebody was at the front door and then talk to them in the other room through the cameras and the speakers in the cameras.

And I love it. They thwarted the robbers by unplugging the cameras. That was it. That's all you got to do. Unplug the damn cameras. And as I look over right here on the side of my desk, I have six Ring camera batteries lined up because all of my Ring cameras are unplugged.

Yes. My first question, but I didn't get the chance to ask it, is do you still have your Ring cameras up, Jason? Well, they are up. The doorbell is still actually working because it's on the outside of the house. And I do like to know when people come to my front door and who they are. The rest of the cameras, on the other hand, are not active right now.

I did go and change my password to just something else. It was a unique password anyway, but I jacked up the character count and I also turned on two-factor auth just to be safe because I didn't have two-factor on. And, yeah, well, honestly, the only reason the batteries are out on these cameras is because we've had so many problems recording this show.

Everything in this house that can push a bit to the internet has been turned off. But, yeah, Ring is in a little bit of trouble right now, I think, just from a PR perspective. Yeah, exactly. There you go. Well, Gizmodo did a whole other study as well, which, while I guess technically probably isn't Ring's fault, it does kind of show the problem with relying on third parties and different apps and trying to do interfaces.

They have acquired data over the past month connected to nearly 65,800 individual posts shared by users of the Neighbors app. Now, the problem here is that the Neighbors app postings have very specific geotags, which is— You can turn that off, by the way.

Well, you can, but some people don't. That requires some level of knowledge, which most people who have Ring cameras and use the Neighbors app do not have. So the long and the short of it was basically they were able to produce extremely detailed maps depicting the locations of tens of thousands of Ring cameras across the 15 U.S. cities with varying degrees of accuracy.

So because of the interface with the Neighbors app and how the postings are made, basically you can create an entire map and you can exactly figure out who has Ring cameras, where they are, and who they are through the app. Not good. Yeah, and I thought interesting also that they combined the video postings with the location data to nail down and verify exactly where they were.

Yeah, not what one hopes for. Yeah, yeah. You know, this next one about the doorbell cameras, this is an article from Slate saying that if you use a doorbell camera, you should have a sign on your house that says you're using it. Yeah.

This is another thing Ben and I talked about over on Caveat about whether or not there is a legal obligation to do so. For example, here in Maryland is a two-party consent state. Same as California. Yeah. So in order to record you, I have to have permission to record you.

So this brought up the question, if I have an Alexa in my house, which is, do I have to let you know that there's a chance you might be recorded? I think the difference, well, I suppose there isn't a difference now that I'm thinking about, because I was about to say there's got to be a bit of a difference because with an Alexa, you have to use the keyword to start a recording in theory.

But I suppose with the Ring doorbell, you have to press the button to start. No, you don't. No, no, no. It just does motion. That's right. Yeah, it's motion capture. So, yeah, that should be a problem. The interesting thing about the Slate article is that apparently Ring does provide stickers and things of such nature that you could put up.

It's just people don't. So the argument here is it's time for a new social norm. You should be aware of this. If you own a doorbell that has an embedded camera, you should notify visitors they're being recorded. You should put up signs and you should seek consent, and I agree with this one, before posting a video that includes them, because we've had lots of viral videos now of people not knowing that they've been recorded by these Ring cameras and being put online, which should actually, and is in some states, because of two-party consent, illegal.

But you're on my property. I mean, we've had this discussion before about the Alexas. You're in my, like with the Alexas, you're in my house. Right. Ben seemed to think that there was not a legal obligation to inform someone with this. Yes! That's his opinion. I'm with Ben. I think it's, be that as it may, shouldn't there be?

Well, I'm all with you on the social norm part of it. Yeah. And I think that's the point of this article. It reminds me of another story. I can't remember if we talked about it here or not, but I think we did. It had to do with Airbnbs in that if they record you inside of an Airbnb, you have no redress because you're a guest in someone else's home.

And you may not even have a dress. Yeah. You're not, you're not, you're not in a hotel. You're in someone's home. So they have a right to record you inside their home. That was the story about the guy in Arizona who found out he was being recorded and stole the camera and got arrested for stealing someone's property.

Right. Right. Yep. Yeah. So I do, I, here's the thing about the ring stickers. I just want to point this out. The ring stickers, all they say is protected by ring. It does not say you are being recorded. Right. Anything about them, my, around my home, of course, because I'm you, me, I'm me.

Everything says this, this property is protected by 24 hour video surveillance. So, so that's, I think it should. And yeah, that's, those are the stickers that I put up in the signs that I put up. So I want people to know that when they come up, that they are, you know, basically being filmed. The bright lights that come on are kind of a laser scanners that activate whenever somebody crosses a threshold.

Yeah, the laser scanners, the Rottweilers and all of the klaxons going off, you know, the kind of a, they're kind of a hint that you're being recorded. Well, Jason, I mean, if you think, if you think about this, because we live here in Los Angeles, Jason, this is something you and I run across all the time. We're, we're always going across movie shoots, television shoots, commercial shoots, et cetera, et cetera.

They're always done out in public, which to some degree means if you're out in public, you're out in public. However, there is a law that requires all these productions to put up a big ass sign that says, if you come into this area, you agree to be recorded. You agree that the, that any recordings of you can be used, you know, can be released publicly, et cetera, et cetera.

I don't see any difference to this. That's a commercial agreement though. People are posting these without, without trying to make any money. So it's a different type of situation. But people are making money on these things. They have, and they have done so. No, well, Ring is, but we're not. Ring and people have been putting it up on their YouTube channels, which are monetized.

Okay. For the most part, they're not. I mean, yeah, if somebody does post, if somebody posted on YouTube and they make money off of it, then the person in that video does have a case to go get, go after them for sure. Absolutely. They didn't sign a release. Yeah. They did not, they did, they did not give their consent.

They did not sign a release and they did not get paid. That's a different beast than just posting it to the neighbor's app. So, okay, regardless of legalities, I 100% think it should be a social norm. I don't think you should be having all these cameras and recording everything without letting people know. End of story. Next on Grumpy Old Geeks, Brian bitches about everybody having a you are being recorded sign in their front yard and how ugly it is.

Because everybody in my neighborhood has a goddamn ring doorbell. So there's just going to be signs everywhere. You're being recorded. You're being recorded. You're being recorded. Fun times. This is, that's, it's just going to get worse though. That's the real problem.

That's why I think we need to figure out something now, early. Well, here's the thing. We don't have to figure it out because you just have to understand that when you leave your house, you're being recorded, period. That's the way it's been. I mean, up until this ring thing came out, even before that, there are security cameras everywhere where you're being recorded when you're out in public.

Yeah, sort of. I mean, yes, there are, but there are also regulations about how long things are kept, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You tell me that there's, there are regulations when I worked at Kinko's that said that I had to delete the footage after a certain period of time. Probably not them, but there certainly are now.

Okay. Next episode, dig me up that regulation. I'd love to see it because I don't think there is. Well, Kinko's is out of business, so that's going to be a problem. I'm sorry. FedEx copies. I'm sorry. Well, finally, I've got, the FTC is warning people about buying internet connected toys.

And I thought this was nice. It's the most wonderful time of the year. Yes, it is. They want you to ask, does the toy come with a camera or a microphone? What will it be recording? And will you know when the camera or microphone is on? But according to Jason, it doesn't matter because you should just know that you're being recorded all the time anyway.

So who gives a shit? All right. So now. I actually had a conversation with this recently with Emily Wilson, who's a fraud specialist, Shortsworth Company called Terbium Labs. And she was on the Cyber Wire talking about this very thing.

And she made the good point that we're creating these online profiles for children by having their data collected without their permission. And we need to be mindful of that. And one of the things she suggested was create a fake persona, a fake profile for kids when you're spinning these things up so that it can't be.

So it's harder to connect with the actual child. Right. For now, but when the when the child grows up and then they can, you know, link the two at some point, then how does that work? You know, I mean, it's a parent's job. Unfortunately, it's part of a parent's job now to usher their children into the Internet and the Internet age.

So that falls on the parents when the kid starts to become old enough to monitor all these things, make the decisions, discuss with the with the child about why and what you're doing, et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, that's just part of parenting now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I was going to say the onus is on the parent. Right. Right. And you don't get to choose your parents and they're good parents and they're bad parents and they're good parents online and bad parents online, good parents protecting their kids privacy and bad parents not protecting their kids privacy.

But I don't know. I mean, I go out of my way at this point. Maybe it's just I'm lucky because my son just isn't old enough yet to really notice or care. But I do not have any Internet connected toys for him. None. Nothing whatsoever. Nothing that sends anything to a cloud.

Nothing that connects anywhere. Except your echoes all around your house. Yeah. But he doesn't use them, really. He just asks for music. Yeah. There's just there's going to come a point, though, where to in order to be part of the social group, he's going to have to have that stuff. I know. Just the way it is. Not looking forward to that.

But I'm sure Uncle I'm sure Uncle Jason will send him a ring camera. I've got everything on its way. Yeah. Yeah. Don't even open up those echoes that I sent you. They are. They're Trojan horses. Anyway, I was just really happy that the FTC put this out. I mean, it is basic.

But, you know, you have to talk to these people in basic terms because they don't understand technology. And they do have a site called Protecting Kids Online, which has a bunch of different topics. Also very basic. But, hey, it's a start, man. It's a start. Yeah. And what I've seen with a lot of these toys is that they actually don't have a lot of setup and management, which is one of the FTC's points.

And that is a good point for regulation to step in. If you are buying smart toys for children, I want to be able to make sure passwords can be changed. I want to make sure they're set up. There's management controls. I want to make sure that there's off switches and things of that nature, which a lot of these toys don't have. Well, and as we've talked about on this segment so many times, what I'd really like to know is if their AWS bucket is secure.

Chances are no. Let's not go crazy now. Baby steps. Baby steps. Decorate our expectations. Yes. Yes. All right. Well, let's wrap things up. I wanted to share that we got a suggestion from a listener who is also a friend of the show.

She goes by the name Koi Zero on Twitter. And she suggested perhaps a new theme song for the Security Ha segment. Yeah. I listen to it. Certainly touches on a major topic that we discuss on a regular basis. I'll leave it up to Jason if he wants to use it to play us out.

I don't want to go to jail or pay the copyright fees for this because this is a Sesame Street clip. Eh, no one's listening. Yeah, Sesame Street, come on. Our tax dollars paid for it. You can blame Sesame Maniac who posted it on YouTube. Now we're just fair using it.

Anyway. We're actually talking about it in the news. So this is a news segment. You hear that copyright people at Sesame Street? It's a news and it fulfills their educational mission. Yes. And it's for the children. For the kids.

Fur. Fur. I am covered with fur. From my snoop to my spur. I'm a furry fella. Fur. When you stroke it, I purr. When you poke it, I curr.

It's maroon and yellow. Fur. Keeps you warm when it's fur. Don't you wish it you were. Fairly bursting with fur, fur, fur. Yes, fur is beautiful. Fur is clever.

Furthermore, I love forever. Fur. Unforgettable fur. Ups and doodads. I found this one over on the next web and I thought it was pretty funny. It's an article entitled, I want to meet the person who buys the $53,000 Mac Pro.

Me too. Because, yeah. And if you spec out the new Mac Pro with everything that you can put on it, it comes in about $52,000. But if you toss on a copy of Final Cut and Logic, then you're over the $53,000 mark. This doesn't even factor in tax.

Imagine tax on a $53,000 Mac Pro. You can get a Cybertruck for that. Think about it. Which probably has a pretty powerful computer in it. Yeah. If you could just render video while you're hauling logs in the Cybertruck. I bet you can. And this doesn't even, the Mac Pro can actually run six of their new $5,000 monitors with the $1,000 stands even.

That doesn't even factor in the $1,000. Well, they're $6,000 if you get the new nanoscreen on them. So, $6,000. That stand costs almost as much as my Mac does right now. I'm telling you. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. I don't care. I mean, these are Pentagon numbers.

This is the $500 hammer and the $1,000 toilet seat. Come on. It's a powerful system. There's no doubt about that. What the fuck are you doing? Oh, I guess you need it for the AI. Right. Now, the first time a Mac Pro becomes sentient, then I can believe that it's worth $53,000.

Until then, I'll be sitting here on my iMac, my dumb little machine that still is overpriced for what it is. Yes, it is. Well, maybe you can use it to render this video. FX Home, the company behind the visual effects software HitFilm, has created and released a trailer entitled The Rise of the Dark Side as an homage to Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker.

Now, do you get to say it's an homage because you did not pay the licensing fees? Yes. This is my question. Similar to what the company did when it released an Avengers-themed trailer, it's also releasing a series of tutorials on how to use its software to recreate the effects you'll see in the video.

They'll be releasing seven tutorials in the next few weeks, so you can put yourself basically in a Star Wars trailer. I'm, you know, it's brilliant marketing. There's no doubt about that because I'm sure an awful lot of people are going to want to try this out and download and purchase their software to do so.

I do wonder, did they get licensing? I could not find any... Copyright theft. I couldn't find any information about that anywhere, so maybe one of our listeners does because if they did not get licensing to do this, it's bullshit. Yeah, it kind of is.

You're using somebody else's IP to sell your own product without paying for it. There has to have been some kind of deal because, you know what it might have been, though? Like, well, no, I mean, these are both Disney. Avengers is Disney and Star Wars is Disney, so you'd think the mouse would have smacked them down by now.

They're good at that, so there must be some sort of deal. Yeah, they're really good at that. Yeah, you're dead faster than Darth Maul in episode one. Jeez. So, I watched the video. Well, not dead. Spoiler alert. Oh, God. He came back in a cartoon, right?

And Han Solo. Oh, okay, man. Whatever. I just don't care anymore. I really don't care. So, I did watch the Rise of the Dark Side trailer. And at the end of the video, there's the two wonks who are the guys who, you know, worked on the VFX for it.

Yeah. On the desk, there is a BB-8 toy and a motherfucking Blue Yeti. The bane of the podcaster's existence. I'm sorry, the podcaster with taste's existence. Right. Now, the only saving grace, which I love, I love, I was cracking up when I saw this, the Blue Yeti's not even plugged in.

Excellent. It's not plugged in. So, they slapped it on a desk just to show that they're cool guys with a Blue Yeti, and it's not even plugged in. Which, by the way, is the best use of a Blue Yeti to date. True. Don't plug it in, and you don't talk into it.

Oh, I just, I mean, I was in tears. I was laughing so hard when I saw the thing wasn't plugged in. So, I got this through my RSS reader yesterday, and I thought of you, Brian. This is from The Verge. You can now replace Alexa's voice with Samuel L. Jackson.

They talked about this a while ago and said it was coming, but it is apparently here. Now, did you do it? You didn't just think of me, Jason. You basically gave me homework because your roommate refuses to allow you to have any ladies in the tube in your house. All my ladies in the tube are at your house.

That's true. That's true. So, I did do it. You know, 10 years ago or so, when we all had, like, the plug-in GPSs, and we could do things like get non-licensed Darth Vader's voices. Well, you could get licensed Darth Vader's voices.

You could do that as well, but I did it so early that there were the unlicensed ones. Oh, okay. And that was great. I loved it. I remember going to Hawaii and driving around with the GPS and, you know, stay on Target and all that sort of stuff going on, and it was clever and fun and cool.

This did not have the lasting power as that did. I installed the Samuel L. Jackson voice. I thoroughly enjoyed it for about an hour or two playing around with it, but I quickly discovered I found it grating and annoying for just using it to do what I wanted to do day to day.

Also, there is the fact that my son, who is three, is starting to interact with the lady in the tube, and I do not want Samuel L. Jackson's voice coming back. While there is a safer work version of his voice that you can turn on, it's still a little, yeah, why would be the question, because the funny bits are not being safe for work.

But maybe I'm just, maybe I'm just too saturated in Samuel L. Jackson. I've seen too many credit card commercials with him. I've seen too much of, there's too much Samuel L. Jackson out in the world for me to want him. No, no, no, no, there is not.

There can never be. Bite your tongue. You're an evil man. What have you done with Brian? Get off my show. I will give you back one of your ladies in the tube, and you can play with it, because I turned it off. Oh, man, well, there's five bucks out the window. Too bad, too bad.

And if anybody wants to watch a fantastic Christmas movie that is not Die Hard, and Die Hard, by the way, is a Christmas movie. I'm glad you agree with me. The Long Kiss Goodnight is one of Samuel L. Jackson's best movies that nobody ever really talks about.

But The Long Kiss Goodnight with Geena Davis is one of the most fantastic movies ever made. With Geena Davis. How old is this movie? Oh, God, it's mid-90s. Okay. Oh, you've never seen The Long Kiss Goodnight? I have not. Oh, my God. Okay, that is your homework.

You have to watch The Long Kiss Goodnight. Jesus Christ, I've got The Expanse. I've got Mrs. Maisel. Okay, throw them all out the window. I'll even give you a pass on Discovery. I still haven't seen Discovery. The Long Kiss Goodnight is fantastic. Oh, man, my favorite line. When you see them coming around the corner, you've got time to comb your hair.

And when you see the movie, you'll understand what I'm talking about. All right. So good. And on that note, Siri still sucks balls. It is so terrible. Okay. I got an email the other day from MacPaw, the people who make CleanMyMac 10.

Yes. Software we both use. Yeah. You can now give the gift of CleanMyMac 10 for Christmas. And it's only $19.98 instead of $39.95. Wait. Is that a flat-out purchase instead of the subscription? I believe that's for a year. I believe that's for a year.

Wow. So. Jerks. Assholes. I want my discount. I want my money back. I was so pissed off. But guess what I did? What? I bought copies. I bought three of them for my three Macs for when my subscription runs out.

So I'm going to save myself $60. Oh, does it work that way? Is it? You can just buy it. It's a gift card. You can. All right. Is there any small print about when it has to be used by? If there is, I didn't see it. But I got it for myself. So if there is, I'm going to be making a return.

So. Okay. It seems you can select a date. Hmm. Okay. I will be doing the same thing. Careful. I'm like, okay. You just save me $60 next year. Dipshit. Wow. Oh, that pissed me off so much when I got that email. You have no idea. We are really becoming grumpy old men because this has just made me flashback to my dad when he would see commercials about like, you know, Time Warner Cable offering discounts to new people.

But and he would just go, but I've been using them for years. Why don't I get the discount? Yep. Yep. It's bullshit. Oh, and remember when Netflix, it was like somebody did a deep dive investigation that if you just sign up for Netflix, you get all the DVDs sooner than people who have been subscribers.

Yep. Oh, so angry with that. Yeah. Oh, such a load. Oh, man. There's nothing for customer loyalty anymore. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. You just get the shaft. Well, we did move over to wordpress.com for GOG.show a while ago, and I got this email this week, and I, again, was almost in tears when I saw this.

SFTP is now available on wordpress.com. The internet's most flexible platform just got even better. Now you can tweak your design to match your vision, upload custom themes and plugins directly to your site, and manage your database with PHP My Admin.

Wow. This functionality is only available to our business and e-commerce plans. The good news is, because your website is already on one of those plans, SFTP access comes at no extra cost to you. You know who else that functionality is available for?

Everybody. Everybody back in 2000. 2001 is when SFTP really got traction, so there you go. Oh, God. I was crying. I'm just like, yeah. I mean, it's a good thing. But, you know.

18 years too late, but it's a good thing. The funny thing is, if you do self-hosted WordPress, you know, from wordpress.org, you have to use SFTP and it comes built in. Oh, dude, this one is driving me fucking nuts too. When you're a business class customer on wordpress.com, you get that little menu bar at the top of your pages when you're browsing the site.

Same menu bar as you get when you have a self-hosted version, almost. There is one link that you do not get as a paying, paying customer, which is while you're browsing your site, there's a link on self-hosted that says, edit this page.

Right. Nope. Can't fucking do it on wordpress.com. Looked everywhere. Cannot find it. There's no way to turn it on. It's just gone. One of my most used features on the sites that I self-host. I'm browsing around.

I'm like, oh, I got to change that. Just click edit page. Boom. You're in. Nope. Can't do it on the expensive version that we pay hundreds of dollars a year for. Fuck you, wordpress.com and your SFTP. Although the SFTP will actually be much more helpful when we try and do design upgrades.

Like we're going to do a design upgrade. You should do. Well, it says the guy who doesn't do shit on the website. Thank you very much. Hey, man, I didn't even have the password until two weeks ago. Bite me because I knew you wouldn't do anything with. Oh, you do have the password now. You have admin access. What do you do?

Hey, Jason, can we get a new page up there? I go and deal with all the feedback and giving how much we get now. That's a fucking full-time job. So bite me. Copy and paste, bitch. Well, you do it then. You're fired. Good luck. Seth!

Seth! Come back! Oh, good. More shows about the FR25 1918 XYZZ and how it wasn't quite as good as the mini fridge. Dave! Dave! Come back! He does enough shows.

Shit! You're stuck with me. Big shout-out to our hosting partner, Art19. We moved over to them from Libsyn about a month and a half ago, and we've been holding our sphincters ever since, worrying about what our bandwidth bill is going to be.

And it did turn out to be a little high, but they said, you know what? That's a little too high. We're going to cut you some slack. So a friend of the show, Roddy Swearengin, because he's the one that brokered the deal for us, got us a good deal, and we are going to stick with those guys because they're stand-up guys.

And the stuff that we get through Art19 is fantastic. It takes me an hour longer to do the shows every week because it's more complicated. But do they have SFTP? No, because you don't need SFTP. They've got drag and drop, which is even better. So as far as podcast hosting goes, those are my guys now.

So love you guys at Art19. Thank you so much. And we have a fucking modern interface. Suck it. Suck it, Libsyn. Hey, hey, hey. We may be going back to them. Never. Don't burn that bridge. Never. And I have an ask for the audience, for our power listeners out there.

And this is going to be a strange one. I get it. I'm working on this new show called Calm the Beast with Dan Nitro-Clark, played Nitro on American Gladiators. I've mentioned it a few times on the show. Go to calmthebeast.com. You can subscribe to the show from there. I'm looking for feedback on the show.

We're trying to get this thing going. And, you know, we're just we're kind of muddling through, but we don't really have that much feedback from the listeners yet. And I know that a lot of people that listen to this show came over from Jordan Harbinger's show where, you know, I produced that show. It's in the same vein as the Jordan Harbinger show.

We interview really cool people, give you life tips and things like that. So if you have some extra time and want to subscribe to a new show that's in that vein, please do and send me feedback. I'm just jay at jpd.me. Would love to hear from you because as we grow the show, it's new. We've only got 20 episodes out and we're going to be changing it as we go because that's how shows go.

You know, you modify them as you go. So I would really appreciate anybody who's really interested to go give that a listen and just send me your feedback, good or bad. Be brutally honest. I would really appreciate it. Excellent. And I just want to give a shout out to all of our listeners. We were just making a joke about the sheer amount of feedback we're getting.

But honestly, that amount of feedback is the reason we are still here and recording episode 400. 400. And to everybody that has been signing up on Patreon and or PayPal, especially the people who are doing the very cool thing of giving at least eight bucks a month, if not more, that's a buck a show.

Roughly, it's it's it's really the only reason that I'm still here. Jason would still be here because he's got nothing else to do. Oh, yeah, that's right. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFilippo. Don't listen to that other guy. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks.

To support the show and keep us on the air, go to patreon.com slash GOG. 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 giant PayPal button in the sidebar. Toss us a few bucks and we'll love you forever. Your support really keeps us going like Brian mentioned, and we really do appreciate it like I just mentioned.

We really appreciate it. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 400. 400. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, and get links to stuff we like. Stay grumpy. Writing email to Seth. Opportunity to host established podcasts.

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