403: The 2020 Extravaganza!

A quick note before we start this show, this is a special guest host extravaganza. Kevin Rose of The Kevin Rose Show and formerly of Dig and a million other things and Eric Hunley of The Unstructured Podcast kindly stepped in and helped out because Brian still is not back from his vacation. Lazy bastard. So let's get on with the show.

Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFillippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFillippo and I'm here this week with an all-star cast. Our first co-host of the day is Kevin Rose. Kevin is internet royalty. From his early days of tech TV to founding Dig and so many other things. And we'll be joined later by Dave Bittner and Eric Hunley of The Unstructured Podcast. Welcome to the show, Kevin. And before we get started, any chance of Oink ever making a comeback?

Yeah. Well, thanks for having me. Oink is dead forever. I don't know that I've ever been called internet royalty, though. I don't know what that entitles me to, but it sounds fantastic. That and a quarter will get you a cup of coffee. No, man, I missed Oink. That was one of the best apps that never made it.

Yeah, Oink was fun, man. It was a really cool way to kind of rank things inside of places. So you could come into your favorite cafe and say, show me the best coffee here or show me the best entree here if it's a restaurant or show me the best roller coaster if it's an amusement park. So it was kind of nuts, but it was fun.

Yeah, it's like the burgers here are fantastic, but skip the onion rings. Exactly. That was so long ago. What year was that? Like 2011, 2012? Yeah, that sounds about right. Somewhere around there. It's crazy. Wow. That's amazing. So you and I have known each other since the early days when I started working at Technorati and you were just like with hat in hand trying to get funding for Dig.

Yeah, I mean, we became friends and started going out and having some cocktails together or beers, I guess it was at that time. Oh, everything. We drank everything. We did other things too, but yeah. There's a lot of debauchery for sure. Let's start off the new year with some good news. And I found a couple links here that I want to point out here. 52 things I learned in 2019.

This is a Medium article. And one thing that really like stuck out to me was drunk shopping could be a $45 billion a year industry and only 6% of people regret their drunk purchases. Wow. I thought that was amazing. 6% that's it?

Yeah, it's funny. It's funny you should say this. My wife's probably going to kill me, but she just like was, she was trying on this dress yesterday and she's like, yeah, I bought this when I was drunk. And she was actually pretty happy with it. She was like, ah, you know, this is a purchase I wouldn't normally make sober, but I was, you know, people, I think they feel a little bit more risk-taking when they've had a few and buy stuff they wouldn't normally buy when it comes to like clothing.

So I don't know. I don't, I don't personally do that. My worst is like Amazon supplement shopping where I like end up with more Omega threes than I thought or something, but like, I don't do the, do you do the drunk shopping? Oh my God. That's 90% of my Amazon bill. Are you serious?

Drunk shopping. Yeah. What do you buy? I want that microphone. I want that interface. What do I want today? Last time I bought three, was it a Lumix G7s? So I, so I could do video in my studio, like, you know, they're on sale for Christmas. They're usually like $900 and they're on those, they're on sale for 500. I guess I can, it's almost like it's free because it's on sale.

So, yeah. You know, what's funny is I've, I've, I've really tried to cut back on that. It's hard because it's, um, especially with, you know, around the holidays when they do those Amazon prime days or whatever it may be. And there's always something you're like, well, that would be cool, but do you really need it? You know, like, that's what I keep coming back to is do I, do I really need that? Like dry air fryer, you know, that I'll use like twice and then get rid of. So I've, I've been, I've been better lately.

I've got one of those. I got one for Christmas last year. Dude, everybody has one of those. Yeah. It's fantastic for hush puppies and French fries and reheating, uh, you know, things from the store, but it's so massive. I'm just like, I don't want this thing. It's just, it's a burden, but I'm with you with, you know, I think both of us are pretty minimalist at heart. We don't want a lot of junk.

Yeah. So my drunk buys are basically things that I need for the studio that when I'm rational, I'm like, I can't really afford that right now. I shouldn't get it. I should wait, you know, a couple of weeks. And then when I've had a few, I'm like, ah, fuck it. I'll, I'll figure out somebody to pay for it later.

Yeah. That's, I think the, the go-to for me has been adding things to my cart and then going back the next day and saying, do I really need this? Like just giving yourself a buffer of 24 hours will do wonders. Cause you, you, oftentimes you realize like, ah, it was just like going to be an impulsive thing, but I, I don't need this. And it's, it's not going to, you know, add to my life in any meaningful way.

Yeah. Do you remember Google goggles from back in the day? No. Google goggles was one of the lab projects where, uh, before you send an email between certain hours, between like say 10 at night and six in the morning, you had to solve a math problem before you could send the email.

That's amazing. That has saved my career so many times. I can't even tell you. It is not even like hard math. Yeah. So would it just stop you? You hit send and it prompts you with something or how did that work? Basically you'd hit send and it would pop up a dialogue and say like, what's six times seven divided by 2.5. And it's like, oh, oh shit. If you can't figure it out. And if you're, if you're too drunk to even open up calculator and make it work, then, then you definitely shouldn't be sending the email.

I wish Amazon had something like that, but it's not in their best interest because then they would be losing money because obviously it's a $45 billion a year industry. And Amazon is like, drink up people. Let's go. Yeah. That's just insane. I wonder how they even calculate that. It must be an extrapolation from survey results or something.

It has to be, has to be because, you know, there's, there's no other way to quantify that. It's not like there's, uh, there's not breathalyzers in our phones that we know of. Speaking of Amazon though, have you seen their opening a homeless shelter inside their HQ in Seattle?

Wow. Crazy. I didn't hear about this. Yeah. They're, they're, uh, partnering with a nonprofit called Mary's place, which they've been working with in the past. Um, they've got a shelter out of a travel lodge on Amazon's campus since 2016, but they've got a new space. That's going to have enough beds and blankets for 400 families every year. And it's not owned by Amazon, but they're going to pay for the nonprofits, utilities, maintenance, and security for the next 10 years, or as long as Mary place needs it, which is pretty cool.

That is cool. So how, how does that work? Is it essentially, you said it's like on their campus. Is it, is it in the middle or what is it? I don't know what the layout is of Amazon's campus up there, but obviously they've already got a travel lodge on the campus. So it's got to be pretty big.

Yeah. I wonder, uh, that's one of the things that I've, I've seen, you know, coming from the Bay area and living out there for so long, it's just been heartbreaking to see there be so much wealth in technology and these companies that are, you know, obviously just massive, but yet we can't figure out the homeless problem in San Francisco.

And it's been, it's, it's been such a struggle. So I don't know that it feels kind of weird to me that they, it would be on campus. Like, what's the point? Is it just so you can see the homeless people? So you can think like, Hey, we're doing something positive. It it's, it's strange.

Well, here's the deal. They've got, they've got space. So if they just, you know, if they don't need the office space there because they're offsetting people to other parts of the countries and they're not building more office space for more staff.

On site at Amazon HQ and they've got extra, you know, old office buildings that they're not using. Why not revamp them to, you know, be something else that they could actually at least offset some of their, probably their CapEx, honestly, to write it down and say, here, look, we're, we're turning this into a charity and we can write that down.

So they're not actually losing money on it and they've got the space. So why not? I guess that, that makes a lot more sense. I was thinking in terms of like, we want to do something positive and we want to show our employees that we care. So we're building a homeless shelter in the middle of our campus, you know, that, that seemed odd, but if it's just extra space and it's something on the side, like why, why not? That sounds great.

Yeah. It says the space will be able to accommodate 275 people each night and that it will offer individual private rooms for families who are allowed to bring pets. It will also feature an industrial kitchen that's expected to produce 600,000 meals a year. Hmm. Wow. That's not insignificant. I mean, they're granted, there are 12,500 homeless people in, in Seattle, but it's a, it's a drop in the bucket, but you can't fix that problem overnight, but at least it's something, you know?

Yeah. It's, it's challenging in that I've, I've heard of multiple solutions, you know, proposed solutions for this type of problem. And one of the things that I've, I've heard, and I don't know how much truth there is behind this or how much data there is behind this, but in terms of, um, cities that offer better and more different types of funding and support tend to attract more homeless people.

I wonder how you split the load like that, right? Cause imagine you have someone like Seattle that just like triples down on the amount of resources that they're offering. Then all of a sudden people start migrating there from different cities that need the support. And then all of a sudden they're stuck with the majority of the burden for the region.

It's just, it's tough. It seems like a larger federal government needs to figure out a way to evenly disperse the burden. Yeah. I mean, you do run into the law of unintended consequences when you try and fix this problem, because it is a big problem. I was thinking, you know, with San Francisco, okay, we build a couple of hotels.

We start putting people up at night, but we force them to take coding classes at night and they have to pass, you know, they have to pass a quiz every night before they can come back again. And that way you're at least like training them to do something else. Yeah. It's tough, right? Because there's like a certain foundation of knowledge that you need to be able to even do basic coding.

Yeah. I was just using that as an example, but train them to do something, you know, this wing is sponsored by Caterpillar. We're going to teach you how to drive a backhoe and we're going to get you a job. You know, there are ways to offset this if you're creative about it. Right. Not just saying, here, here's a free hotel tonight and here's a free meal.

I mean, granted, in extreme circumstances, that's really necessary. But for the long term, let's try and do like, you know, re-education for people to get out there. And a lot of the issues I know people are going to, I can see the emails coming right now. A lot of homeless people are mentally ill and we need better mental health care for those people.

Yeah, no doubt. I know that's a big piece of it, at least it was in San Francisco, is the number of people that are just talking to themselves on the streets and obviously need medical compliance in terms of taking the right medicines. And yeah, it's a whole can of worms, man.

And, you know, props to the people that are trying to, they're spending day-to-day trying to figure this stuff out because it's not an easy one to solve. So have you seen the latest Segway, the S-Pod? No, I haven't. I have seen, well, you talk about the one that is not, doesn't have like anything to touch.

It's like something you can just, there's no handlebars, I guess is what I'm saying. I have seen that one. Oh yeah, yeah. That's, I know a lot of people that have that one and think it's actually really fun. And I am going to send you a link here in the chat and check this thing out because this is, we are approaching Wall-E faster than you could imagine.

Whoa, crazy. Does that not give you visions of Wall-E? It's totally Wall-E. The fat people going around the ship, just sucking on their milkshakes. So is, well, this is a wheelchair though. It's meant for people that have, have disabilities, right? I don't know about that.

I don't know about that. It says, it says wheelchair. They said it was based on the gyrosphere from Jurassic World, but you know, here's the thing. It gets up to 24 miles an hour. Wow. Do you want to be sitting in that thing without a roll cage at 24 miles an hour? And then like, you know, hit a bump and have it fall on your head?

No thanks. Yeah, absolutely not. But look how big it is. You see the animated gif of it? It's massive. It is massive. Well, actually it might not be massive. She just might be very wee. I didn't know that Segway had so many different products. Have you looked at their website lately? No, I just...

Do you do a dirt bike now? What? Yeah. What is this? Have you seen this advanced personalized robot, the Lumo? I have not. They got tons of stuff apparently. Wow, tons of stuff. Wow. Dean Kamen must be rolling over in his grave for getting rid of it.

Didn't he pass away? Dean Kamen is still around. Are you sure? No, no, no, no. Dean Kamen is not dead. Yes, he is. No. Yes, dude. You just said he was rolling over in his grave. He's dead. Oh, sorry. No, no.

Oh, sorry. I bought Segway from Dean Kamen. You're right. You're right. The guy who bought Segway. Yeah, I'm like, Dean Kamen is working on fixing the water problem around the world. Okay, sorry. Yeah. So the guy that bought Segway, Jimmy Heiselden. Yeah, he died on the Segway.

He died on the Segway. Yeah, I'm like, Dean Kamen is so not dead, man. I would have totally, like, that would have been, like, Steve Jobs level, like, sadness. Do you see this little auto-follow robot looks amazing? Yeah, I've seen that one. You're talking about the Lumo?

Yeah. Yeah, I have seen that one. I know people that have the Ninebot and a couple of these other ones, and they love them. You remember Merlin Mann from back in the day? 43 folders? Of course. He's got one and loves tooling around San Francisco on it.

Which one does he have? He's got one. I don't think it's one of the ones that they're showing here, but it's one of the no-hands ones. The Ninebot. I so want the dirt bike. These Drift W1s look really cool, too. Self-Balancing Electric Skates. Oh, those? No, no, no, no, no.

Those are terrible, dude. You can't get one. I forbid you to buy one of those. So I was on TikTok recently, and I saw some electric skate videos, these, like, strapless skates. They're crazy what kids are doing with them. Yeah, but you're old, man. You can't get them.

I know. You're not allowed. Well, maybe I'm old enough now to where it doesn't matter, right? Like, I don't have to be cool anymore. No, I'm talking about recovery time. Yeah, you can get one and be fine. But they look pretty cool, though. This Ninebot 1, that one looks cool.

Yes, I have seen that one, and that one I've actually thought about getting, because I thought that was kind of cool. Because it's like, have you seen the one wheel where it's like a plank with a big wheel in the middle? Adam Savage has one of those, and he rides it around San Francisco all the time. This one is kind of like that, but smaller. I thought this one is kind of cool.

Gosh, there's so many cool devices out there now. It's insane. Yeah, too bad you're up in the land of rain where you can't. Well, summertime's great out here. These guys are really killing it. Yeah. So, yeah. I mean, I guess to the listener out there, if you haven't been to Segway's website, Segway.com.

Yeah. It's worth a visit. There are like 30 new devices. It's insane. Yeah. They've got, oh my God, these scooters. Do these scooters, are they self-balancing? That would be good, because then Bird could at least have them self-balanced and maybe walk their way back to a charging station instead of littering the shit out of the sidewalks.

Yeah. So, what kind of gadgets have you been diving into lately? That's a good question. I mean, you've hooked me up with all the podcast gear, so I'm set there. For me, this year, entering into a new decade has been all about how can I take an aging body and maximize my healthy years.

Not that I'm that old, but I'm in my early 40s now. And so, just figuring out how to optimize sleep has been a big thing for me. And so, I have tried almost every single sleep device out there, from the Oura Ring, to the Whoop, to all the Fitbit devices, to the Garmin devices, to one called Dream, which is an EKG that fits over your head.

Can you sleep with that thing on? Yeah. I mean, it's not the most comfortable device, and it does move around. I tend to toss and turn a bit, so I have woke up a couple times with the little diodes off their mark, so I wasn't getting the best monitoring. But, you know, it's interesting to have wear these multiple devices at once.

Like, last night, I slept with the Whoop, the Garmin watch, and the Oura Ring, and then compared the data in the morning. So, you're not having sex with your wife anymore, is what you're saying. That's pretty much it. Yeah. Yeah. These are basically birth control devices.

You can – well, no, the biggest birth control device that I wear, my wife will tell you, is the Dexcom Continuous Glucose Monitor, which is actually an implant in my side. Yeah, that's kind of – She's not too into the implant. Oh, yeah. Cyborg Kevin, not so sexy. Yeah, exactly.

So, you know, I love testing this stuff out, though, and figuring out how we can get reliable data, and then what can I do in terms of interventions to increase the quantity and quality of my sleep. And so, for me, that's been – I mean, sadly, it's a lot of the stuff that you already know.

You know, keeping a cold environment for your bed, cutting out alcohol and caffeine, getting to bed at a predictable hour, meaning that you do the same routine every single day. And those alone – I mean, we both – Matt Walker, the scientist of the Berkeley Sleep Lab, wrote a great book, Why We Sleep, and it has a fantastic TED Talk.

Yep. And it gets into a lot of the things that you can do there as well. But it's been fun to kind of diagnose and then actually see – make these changes and then see it reflected in the data. Yeah. I've – you know, I've done my fair share of that, too. I had the Oura Ring, and it basically hurt my finger.

Were you working out with it? No, no. When I slept, it hurt. Oh, weird. Was it too tight? No. I had the perfect size, but it dug into the fingers on the other side of each finger. So, when I was sleeping, my hand hurt because the two fingers that were adjacent to it were sore.

So, I gave it to my friend Dan Clark, Nitro from American Gladiators. He tried it out, and he's like, this thing makes my fingers hurt. So, I had confirmation on that. But I think the baseline for a sleep device is that it actually doesn't interrupt your sleep in any way, shape, or form.

That's why I was wondering how the skullcap thing was actually helping you because I think that you're screwing up the data by having something that's not letting you sleep as well as you would if you were just butt naked in a cold bed, you know? Yeah, well, that is certainly true.

I think it all depends on how uncomfortable you perceive these devices to be. Like, for me, it's padded. It's soft. It's thin. It's not the worst thing I've ever had, like, on my head, you know? So, it's like, I can sleep with it. There has been a couple times I've woke up and had to adjust it a little bit.

But, you know, I think that what they've shown is that the actual data coming out of the EKG is, you know, it's very similar to what you would do if you did an actual sleep study in a lab. And so, it is going to be the most accurate data in terms of being able to properly detect what stage of sleep you're in.

I have used it now for a couple months. It's called the Dream, D-R-E-E-M. And I will say that I would not buy another one. Okay. There we go. Just because it's, you know, it kind of confirmed what the other devices were already telling me.

Right. So, it wasn't like it was so wildly different from the other devices that I thought to myself, like, oh, I'm so glad I have the most accurate one here on my head. And it is more uncomfortable. But, you know, as any proper geek, I just love to experiment with this stuff and see what's going on. So, yeah. Yeah.

So, I mean, the thing about sleep is we're dealing with Schrodinger's cat here. It's like cat dead, cat not dead. Sleep good, sleep not good. By actually measuring the sleep, you fuck up the sleep. Because I think that we're also in, we're introducing anxiety about recording.

It's like, okay, time to go to sleep. Like, I wear my Apple Watch to sleep and I've got the sleep watch app. And so, I have to, I'm like, I'm going to bed. Done. And then I wake up and then I'm like, okay, I'm up. Done. And I found that the best device for tracking my sleep is actually the bed itself.

Because I have a pod by 8sleep. It has heart rate monitors and body temperature monitors built into the actual bed. So, as I'm sleeping, it's reading all that stuff and I don't have to do anything. I don't have to wear anything. You know, passive monitoring, I think, is really the way to go with this.

And I wake up in the morning. I get my sleep report. I check it with the day before. It's like, when did I go to sleep? How long did it take me to fall asleep? When did I wake up? What was my time to leave the bed? Those are like the main things. And it shows me my heart rate throughout the night, which I think it's skewed because I have dogs in the bed.

So, that kind of blows the numbers a bit. But that passive sleep tracking, I found, is the best because I don't have to think about it. I don't have to worry about it. As soon as I get in bed, I know it's working. And that, for me, has been one of the biggest game changers. Because what I found is, yeah, go to bed at the same time every night if you can.

But more importantly, wake up at the same time. Because that's what the Marines do. I don't know if you know about how the Marines do sleep training for new recruits. But they just force everybody every morning to get up at the same time at Reveille. And going to bed will take care of itself.

You'll go to bed when you're tired, but you'll still wake up at the same time every single day. Right. Yeah. So, that is definitely... I wasn't aware that the Marines did that, but I'd heard that as advice in the past. The only issue I had with the Sleep 8 was that I didn't see a proper...

Well, two things. I didn't see a proper breakdown of different stages of sleep in the email that you had sent me. Oh, I'll send it to you again. Yeah. It's got a good breakdown. Does it? And then has it been... So, one of the things that I can appreciate about some of these other devices is I know that they've been clinically validated and that they've been compared.

Like the Garmin, for example, they've done studies with the actual gold standard of these devices in a laboratory and have proven that they're very close to the actual gold standard. I don't know how much validation has been done. Because like, I'll give you a great example.

Fitbit, I just got the latest one because I was curious about... They offered a new paid kind of enhanced sleep-like thing now where they're doing a monthly paid thing. I got it, paid for it, tried it out, and it was wildly off from all of my other devices. Oh, wow.

And there was one night where I just like, you know, thrown out my back and I got very little sleep and it was like, congratulations, you had a great night's sleep. And I was just like, this device sucks so bad. So, you know, they... And it's such a popular brand. I just worry... I'd have to see...

Have they actually done studies with the Sleep 8? I don't know if they've done studies with it. For me, at least, you know, if your scale is off and if it's consistently off, but you get data over time, then it kind of balances out.

So I'm just going with that premise that, you know, even if it's not exactly accurate, but it tracks exactly the same over time, I can at least get some kind of correlation with how my sleep goes and how I feel in the morning. So I can look at my sleep score when I get up and like, I'm having my tea in the morning.

You know, it'll give me my report. I'll see. It's like, okay, you hit 100 last night. You hit every marker. If I feel like shit, then I know it's off. But the numbers that they give me pretty much correlate to how I feel in the morning. Well, that's good. I mean, I'm not ready.

I have a mattress that also does sleep data as well, sleep number, but it's horrible. Like the UI and like the, the data it provides, like it, they, I've compared it to all the other ones, including the EKG cap that I wear.

And I, it's so bad. I won't even look at it. I don't care. And then they are making the same claims that sleep eight is where it's all integrated in the mattress. There's nothing you have to do. We can capture all this data. And it's just like, it's not accurate. I can, I can tell you that based on, you know, uh, all the five devices I'm wearing with that all say the same thing, except for the mattress.

So I hope, uh, hopefully, I mean, it's different tech, different people. So you can't just like say all mattresses are flawed, but I'd be curious, right? You know, one thing I will tell you that you should check out. I think you'll really like it. Um, go to Apollo, a P O L L O neuro in E U R O.com.

So this is a device that, um, I'm a beta tester for. I'm not an investor in any way. I should say I'm an investor in or labs just for full, full disclosure, but I do use all the different sleep devices, but Apollo, they sent me a beta unit. It essentially is this wearable that you kind of either put on your wrist or I put it around my ankle and it creates this little beautiful, very different feeling, like micro vibrations

that kind of simulate, um, human different frequencies. And they similarly, almost like human touch. And it's said to work on the nervous system and, um, you can do things. There's different settings that apply different frequencies. So I use this one that is called their sleep setting and I press play and it sends these vibrations like down my leg.

You can physically feel them. And then after about, I don't know, four or five minutes, you just kind of don't even notice it anymore. It kind of just like becomes a thing and it lulls me to sleep. And I, I, it just puts me right to sleep. If I wake up in the middle of the night, you know, get up, use the bathroom, something like that, come back to bed. I just grabbed my iPhone or I tap on the side of the device.

Um, the beta unit I have actually doesn't work properly, but the, I'm assuming the production one, the fake set, but you can just tap the side of the device to restart it. Um, and it, it is this beautiful kind of like the best way I can describe as you feel these like waves of energy kind of pouring over your leg.

And then it, it kind of puts you into, it's almost like you're, you're rocking yourself to sleep. Um, and it's a cool looking device too. I got to give them that. Yeah. It's cool. It looks really nice. Yeah. Yeah. They're just, they're just a very small team. They're just getting off the ground.

They're launching into this month end of January, um, to the world. You can pre-order it right now. Yeah. $199 pre-order. Yeah. And I actually talked to him about that. I was like, Hey, are you guys going to eventually go to like more of the whoop model and whoops, another fitness band where they've, they used to charge you a couple hundred bucks for the device, but now they've gone to like a, you know, $20 a month kind of thing.

And so I think eventually they'll get to a more kind of monthly, you know, pay a very small fee per month and you have access to it, but I've loved it so far. So anyway, if it's, uh, I don't know what their return policy is. Let's see here. It didn't say, but I would, I would recommend it, especially check the website, see what the return policy is.

It may not be for you, but, uh, for me, it's been awesome so much so that I, he asked me to return the beta, um, and I was like, dude, I'm, I actually went on his website and bought one personally and didn't get any discounts or anything like that. And it was like, dude, I'm just going to buy one and I'll give you back the beta one when mine arrived.

So it's, it's been pretty cool. It's funny. They, they have a 30 day return policy, but if you click on the link, it goes to a 404. So, yeah, I mean, they're just get there. There's like team of like, you know, five people or something. So I'm assuming that. Yeah. 12 month warranty, 30 day return policy. So you can try it out and go from there.

Uh, yeah, no, that looks cool. I, I would be interested in that one for sure. You should try it, dude. Like it's, there's, I'm, I'm telling you, I was very skeptical, like something that applies vibrations to my leg, like sound very woo woo. But then I kind of dug into the science and there's actual, there's actual published papers on these different frequencies and that them being able to induce certain states of calm.

And, uh, I was like, shit, well, like, why not? And, and, uh, gave it a shot and it was, uh, pleasantly surprised. Cool. I will definitely give that one a shot when they actually go to, uh, production. Yeah. So, um, yeah, you can do, yeah.

One 99 for the pre-order, say 45, 45%. They were saying that, uh, the actual price is going to be three 60, but we know that's bullshit because that's a made up number, but, uh, 199 bucks for now. Yeah. Yeah. Might be something to try out. Especially if you have sleep related issues, you know, or anxiety, there also is an anxiety setting.

And, um, you know, if the, it's like energy setting, anxiety, social, there's one called social and open, which I thought was interesting. So like cocktail parties, you know, have it around your ankle hit play. Like I, I am definitely one of those people that I'm a geek at heart.

So like, you know, I have no problem meeting new people and hanging out at cocktail parties, but I have to have like two or three cocktails to make it comfortable. So like, you know, like little things like that are just like awesome little crutches to hopefully, uh, help with that stuff. Interesting. So I, my, my regimen right now has no gadgets in it.

Oh, by the way, the one thing I did want to mention, I tracked a sleep watch versus my eight sleep data. They matched up pretty much exactly as, uh, as the time went on. I tracked it for a month with both of them and the data from my sleep watch, which is on my Apple watch.

I've got the series five and, uh, it matched up almost identically with the eight sleep, which I was very impressed with. I'm curious how accurate that sleep watch app is. Cause that's a third party app. That's not an Apple app. Right. Um, so I'm curious, like, is there real scientific rigor around that app?

Like I, I'm skeptical until I see that they've actually done the work, you know? Oh, of course. Of course. He wouldn't be, wouldn't be a nerd if you didn't, you know? Yeah. That's kind of the point. But, uh, I, the thing about it is it, it tracks with the mood. I always like compare the data to how I feel in the morning.

And if the data matches, then for me, that's a good bellwether. If it's, if it's actually tracking properly. And especially if you know you have a really bad night's sleep and then you can check the data. Cause that's where I've seen a lot of false positives where I, I was tossing and turning. I knew I had a horrible night's sleep and I wake up and I'm like, oh, I feel horrible.

And you check four devices and one of them says you slept fantastic. Then, you know, there's an issue. Exactly. Exactly. So my, my sleep now, I play two hours of Xbox before I go to bed. Jordan Harbinger and I have been killing Nazis every night over the break.

Been fantastic. I, I down a bunch of CBD and magnesium out like a light. That's, that's it. That is my, that is my recipe. Don't hide your beers. You have a beer every now and then. Oh no, I, I have a couple, uh, I, I drink white claw, uh, hard seltzer.

I have a couple of those cause that's all I can drink anymore. All of our days have caught up with me to the point where I can't drink anything else but that. So I give it about another three months and I'll just be sober forever. So I love that you're on white claw now. That's so funny. Do the white claw pure with nothing in it?

No sugar, no flavor, no nothing tastes like a gin and tonic. It's actually pretty good. And it's only got 5% alcohol. Whereas a gin and tonic has a lot more. I thought you were doing those dark beers. I can't drink beer anymore. None. You're done. I'm done. I can't drink anymore.

Is it your stomach? It messes up or what's the deal? Uh, everything. It depends. It depends on the type of liquor. And, uh, like, it's funny if I drink beer, I have sinus problems. Like I'll wake up and I can't breathe and I get bloody noses. If I drink vodka, I turn into a zombie.

If I drink whiskey, I just turn into an asshole. So there's all sorts of different issues, but they're all different, but they all still affect my stomach really badly. My liver just is like, dude, just stop. So I'm down to the white claw and that like, you know, next is just seltzer.

So I, I, I'm resigned to the fact that, you know, this year is, is going to be my year of sobriety forever. And I'm fine with that. I did. I had my fun, man. We did good. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I'm, I'm with you on that one. Like I don't need it anymore. No. And you know, the social issues, they're still kind of there, but not as much as they used to be.

You know, I, I was, I'm like you, it's like, you go to a cocktail party, you need a, you need a little social lubricant to get in there. But for now it's like, you know, I've kind of, I'm 48. I've been around the world a couple of times, met thousands of people. I'm like, you know, everything that I thought was going to happen, that was going to be bad, never happened when I meet new people.

So I'm like, well, shit, I'll talk to anybody now. I don't care. It's all, it's all good. So I think just experience and time got that social anxiety out of me. So I don't need booze to go to a party anymore and have a good time. That's awesome. Yeah. Awesome. Well, well, man, thanks for coming on.

I appreciate your, uh, your technical expertise in the sleep department. And I'm still going to, all I can vision now is you go into bed, you got this thing hanging out of your side, you got seven watches on one arm, three on the other, you got two rings on in a, in a, like a little EKG helmet.

I mean, that's basically been, been me, uh, for the last few months. I've cut back though. I only have three things, three sleep devices on now. So that's good. Only three, only three. Yeah. I mean, it's, I don't know. I just, I love geeking out on this stuff.

You know how it is. You find something you get obsessed over and then you go really deep on it for a while. Yep. So, so here's the, here's the real question though. Has any of this actually helped you sleep better? Uh, well, I will say that the one thing I was not aware of is I knew how alcohol would impact sleep because you know, it's a no brainer and it certainly does, but I didn't know the effects of caffeine on my sleep.

And it was crazy because, well, I'll give you an example. If I didn't drink any caffeine for a few days and I slept, I would wake up kind of feeling the same as I would had I drank caffeine and that I'd feel pretty good rested wise and things like that. The things that changed though, on the analytics side is when I looked at the data, my deep sleep really increased when there's no caffeine involved.

Oh, so that was, that was a, I've always been the kind of person that when you look at my aura data or my other devices, my deep sleep was lacking. It wasn't at that spot where it should be. So seeing that, uh, caffeine is the real culprit and not so much alcohol was, was an insight that I didn't have prior.

Interesting. Interesting. Because yeah, alcohol helps with sleep after like so many drinks and it, it screws up your sleep when you have too few. I know it's just generally called passing out, but you know, we've done that for how many years? It's like, ah, I need to sleep. Let me do a shot and I'll be out in 10 minutes.

But, uh, caffeine has never really been a problem. I don't drink much caffeine. I mean, we talked about this. I think when we did the AMA on your show, I quit caffeine pretty easily and stayed off of it, but didn't really see that big of a difference, especially with sleep or anything. So I have a couple of glasses of tea in the morning.

I don't drink caffeine past 12 ever. And, um, it hasn't affected my sleep, but you know, people like, we talk about genetics all the time and people have different genetic tendencies on how caffeine is metabolized. So maybe you're definitely more caffeine sensitive. Yeah, I think I am.

And my wife's even worse than me. And so we got her to cut back quite a bit and her sleep has just gone through the roof. So, um, she wears an aura ring to bed and she's seen it really improve with, with less caffeine, but you know, obviously all the fun stuff that you want to do, you just can't do anymore. So that's, uh, to be expected.

Yeah, but there's more fun stuff, you know, you transition into other stuff. You have kids now. Those are fun. I've got, you know, I got three dogs in the house. Now we've just got a new puppy. That's fun. It's like you find other things to fill the time. Exactly. It's called growing up. I guess we're adulting now.

I know it's weird. We're in our forties, finally time to be adults. Dude, I got, I got a year and a half and I'm 50. That's crazy. I know. I told my dad the other day, I was like, now that I'm getting to 50, I should go get health insurance. I might, my health insurance kicked in for the first time in years yesterday.

So I get to start going to the doctor again. And he's just like, how crazy is that you're almost 50? He's like, I feel like I'm 18. He's, uh, like early seventies. Wow. Crazy. He had you pretty young. He did. He did. And he's in so much better shape than I am.

It pisses me off. Every time I see him, he's out in the garden, like on the weekends for eight hours a day, just, you know, throwing bags of dirt and digging and doing all this stuff. And he's just healthy as a horse. Eats one meal a day and drinks like, you know, a bottle of wine at night. That's it.

And he is healthy as can be. It seems like that should be your lifestyle. Yeah. I wish it was. Yeah. I, you know, I would rather be outside digging things and being in nature than sitting here in front of a computer any day of the week. Well, you got to find a place that gives you both.

You know, the cool thing is you can move anywhere. Well, I'm going to garden cast. I'm just going to start building gardens and I'll just wear a lav and just do garden casting. I want to do that. Sounds amazing. We're doing in the beats today. You would probably be huge on that. That would be awesome.

I'd listen to your garden cast. If I took my tech knowledge and applied that to gardening, I'd be like, okay, we're going to do an A-B test on these beats. We got dirt A here. We got dirt B here. We're going to put them down. We're going to water them the same and see what we got. Grumpy old gardener. Grumpy old gardener.

Oh, great. There's my new show. All right, man. Thanks for coming by. I appreciate your time. And I'm so glad we finally got you on the show. Yeah, it's great. Great to be on, man. It's awesome.

Security? Ha! A quick note before we dive into security with Dave Bittner. Dave and I do get a little deep into Star Wars for the first few minutes of this segment. And there are spoilers. So if you want to skip those spoilers, if you haven't seen the finale finale, finally, finally, well, then just skip ahead a few minutes and you should be A-OK.

We're joined again this week by Dave Bittner. Dave is the host of the Cyber Wire podcast, and he 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. Dave, did you have a good holiday?

I had a lovely holiday. It was actually, at one point, my wife and I were out somewhere, and I said, gosh, I'm surprised this place is so crowded. It's not like it's Saturday or anything. And she said, it's Saturday. I'm like, oh. Right. Nobody knows what day it is.

Nobody knows. I lost track of what day it was. And it was delightful. I took lots of naps, ran a bunch of errands at my own pace. So, but I have to say, coming back this week for this grueling two-day work week, oh, boy. Tough.

I don't know if I can handle it. Oh, so many emails to catch up on. Yeah. How about you? Did you get a chance to unwind some? No. This was the worst holiday ever. Aw. Well, remember, my house got destroyed right before Thanksgiving. And in between Christmas and New Year's, we finally got floors back.

So I have a whole home again. But yeah, it basically ruined the holidays this year. And I'm not a holiday fan anyway. But it's still nice to have the Christmas tree up, which we couldn't. We had to take it down early because they put in new floors and all this crap. And before that, we had the asbestos removal and, yeah, and the best part was- 2020 needs to be your year of self-care, you know?

It really does. It really does. I tell you what, though. New Year's Day, I went for like a five-hour walk because I'm like, I've got nowhere to be and nobody wants to talk to me. It's the greatest thing ever. Oh, isn't that great? It was 67 degrees and sunny here in Southern California.

And I'm like, I am going to take advantage of every second I can of this. No computers required. Oh, wait. I said, except I had my iPhone with me and I had my, now that they call them hearables, I mean, my AirPods. Stupid crap. No mountain lions or anything ruined your walk?

Nothing like that? No, no. No man poo. Cougars. No, that was all in all. It was a great day, I got to say. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. I don't want to get used to it because this is an election year, as we know. Yes. So, last time we talked, you were going on to see the new Star Wars movie a couple days after we had recorded.

I was. I was. And did you? I did. I've seen it twice now. Okay. And your take? I have to channel my inner Brian since he's not here now. I know. I feel like we're kind of cheating on him, having this conversation without him. But screw him. He can learn how to read a calendar and show up for work.

Well, you know, because all it means is that we're going to have to do a recap when he comes back. Oh, no. No. He is denied. He is denied the force. I am going to use the force. Okay. All right. We'll see how that works out. Yeah, I'm sure. I very much enjoyed the film. I thought it was a good end to the saga.

I thought it was very gratifying. What else can I tell you about it? I thought the pace was relentless, especially the first time through. It was like they were not wasting any time for anything. It was like, here's something, and now we're on to the next thing, and just try to keep up.

Okay. And I was fine with that. How about you? So the first time, I have a confession to make. The first time I watched the movie before we had the show, I watched it at 2X. And I thought it was perfect pacing at 2X. I thought it was fantastic at 2X.

And I really enjoyed the movie at 2X. I went back and watched it again at 1X. And I made it, I tried three times, and I made it 20 minutes in each time, and I'm like, this is crap. I'm turning it off. Don't you think you sort of prejudiced your viewing, though, by having your first experience be at 2X?

Well, I just, I had to get through it. And, you know, I'm not like the super fan that you guys are. And I found so many holes in the damn thing that it was like Swiss cheese. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I have to say, though, the podcast Hello Internet, which I'm a big fan of, they did a Star Wars Christmas special.

And just about everything that they talk about in the show, I agree with. So I am definitely biased, because I think that they knocked it out of the park. Yeah, I listened to the Incomparables Star Wars shows, and I thought those were quite good.

I picked up some things there. So I'm sure some of the things they said have sort of seeped into my thoughts as well. I have a list of notes here of things I wanted to comment on. By all means. One of the things, I enjoyed the fact that 3PO had a cloak when they were on the hacker planet.

Okay. To me, this addressed an annoyance that I had from Return of the Jedi when they went down to Endor, and everyone was wearing camouflage, except they had 3PO with them. Giant golden robot. Right, exactly. Here we are in camouflage, and here's our Oscar statue with us.

So that was kind of, I don't know if that was an intentional hat tip, but I thought that was funny and good. Something that someone mentioned on the Incomparable that struck me, resonated with me, was that Rey is the good person in a bad family, and Kylo is the bad person in a good family.

Interesting, yeah. I think that's interesting. Something I noticed on my second viewing, which is when at the end of the film, when Kylo goes to the Emperor's Palace, after he has fought Rey on the Death Star, the derelict Death Star, he shows up in an old-style TIE fighter.

I didn't even notice that. Yeah. So you see the shot of the old-style TIE fighter parked next to Luke Skywalker's X-Wing. So I assume this means that he went scrounging around the old Death Star and found himself an old-style TIE fighter.

Now, the problem I have with this, and here I'm getting too much into it, is that those old-style TIE fighters are not light speed capable. So I'm not sure how he managed to... We'll just say he used the Force. Let's just say he used the Force.

I mean, they've already got the whole teleport thing going on with the Force time. Right. When they have their conversations. Yeah. I think they say in Star Wars famously, you know, how fast is light speed? And they say light speed is the speed of plot. I love it.

Yeah. Some of the Star Wars writers have said that. Or the people who are in charge of keeping track of what is and what is not canon. I do have to say, though, that, you know, I thought Force time was really stupid in the last movie. And in this movie, it all paid off when they did the lightsaber swap.

Yeah. You know, that at least there at least was a payoff for the whole shenanigans with it. Yeah. So that was pretty good. And Kylo does his little shoulder shrug, which is just like his old man. Yeah. He does the thing, Dad, and Han says, I know.

You know, it's a nice callback. I should go watch it again. Now I'm getting, meh. The Emperor's support mechanism that he had, that thing coming out of the ceiling that held him up, that reminded me of Captain EO from Disneyland.

Oh, I haven't seen that in so long. Yeah. The bad guy who's a gal in Captain EO. Well, it could be changed now that the documentaries have come out. Right. She's supported by this thing that's a lot like the mechanism there. So I thought that was funny.

I had some questions like, how do they man all of those Star Destroyers? Yeah, exactly. Is he making, is he making like golems out of the planet dirt to come out there? Right. I mean, they did say that they're, you know, they were just going around the galaxy taking all the children. The younglings, taking the younglings to man the starships.

I saw something funny on Twitter. Someone imagined the conversation between the Emperor and one of his contractors, and the contractor was like, yeah, so what's the deal with all this stadium seating here in this temple? Yeah. And the Emperor's like, we're going to have events. So I don't know who all those people were in the Sith temple.

I didn't really feel like they had to be there. It's the Darth Vader temple, kind of like the Steve Jobs temple at Apple where they have all the events now. Right, right. And there's one person's job to sit in the front row and go, woo, yeah, yeah. Exactly. All right. Great idea. Yeah. One more thing.

One more thing. I was delighted that Han Solo showed up, an uncredited cameo from Harrison Ford. It was very nice. It was noted that the little droid hacker, the little, hey, hey, guy, was voiced by the woman who played Moaning Myrtle in Harry Potter.

No way. Yeah. How about that? Interesting. Yeah. Trivia. Trivia. All right. I wasn't sure about light speed skipping at first, but then someone explained that basically light speed skipping is a response to the fact that they can be tracked through light speed now.

And so that makes a little more sense. Okay. But, you know, here's the problem I have with the whole light speed skipping deal. Is that, okay, in the last movie, you go to light speed around anything that is solid and it blows up. Right. So how did they- We're just going to pretend like that movie didn't happen.

At least I did. Oh, really? That's it? Okay. See, here's the thing, Jason. Okay. When it's a movie that you like, you can overlook all of these things. When it's a movie that you don't like- Suspension of disbelief is strong in this one. Yes. Then they're insufferable. You can't stand them.

So I totally cop to that. I mentioned the pace of it was just kind of relentless, but it was good. I got weepy twice. The first time was when Chewie hears that Princess Leia has died and he falls to his knees and calls out.

I got misty during that. And then at the very end when Ray visits Luke's old homestead, I didn't see that coming. And I figured it was just going to end with all of them hugging. And then she went back there and the music played and- He said, tell them about the music, man.

It's it. Oh my gosh. John Williams basically carried this movie. That's it. Yeah, that's true. And boy, did they use that. The whole thing when Luke pulls the- By the way, I suppose we should say this is a spoiler. I will preface this before we come in.

Don't worry. It's a little late. Yeah. But when Luke pulls the X-Wing out of the water and they're using the exact music from Empire Strikes Back. Yeah. It is the exact music. The kiss at the end.

I was okay with it. I thought the two of them had built up so much sexual tension over the course of these movies that it felt like a release of that more than like, it wasn't one of those things where like, oh, we're going to be boyfriend and girlfriend now.

It was just like, we have all of this tension and we have to let it out. That said, I would have liked it better if it had just been take my hand because Kylo kept saying to her, take my hand, take my hand throughout the movies, take my hand.

If she had taken his hand and they'd embraced or something like that, I think that that would have been better. But the kiss didn't bother me. I know the kiss bothers a lot of people. Didn't bother me. I was expecting his lightsaber to go off. Boing. Right. Of course. And then my last note here is Lando is as smooth as ever.

Yes, he is. Yeah. So overall, a thumbs up from me. I enjoyed it. I feel like I can rest easy knowing that this is what we're left with from this series. Thank God it's over.

It's over. Yeah. It's finally over. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I just need to drink a big cup of don't give a fuck and go watch it again so I don't try and pick it apart and I can just enjoy it for what it is. Yeah. It is by no means perfect, but no. I enjoyed it very much.

No. They dug themselves into too big of a hole to make it perfect. Oh, what did you think of the chewy metal thing? I mean, besides being just total fan service. Yeah. It was cute. Yeah. Cute. I mean, yeah, it was cute. Why not? Yeah. Well, people make the mistake of thinking that that these movies are good.

Well, but more serious than they are. I mean, remember, Return of the Jedi is the movie where, you know, Chewie does a Tarzan swing. Oh, that's right. And does the Tarzan yell. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're not beyond sort of breaking the fourth wall and being a little silly from time to time.

Yeah, definitely. So speaking of cute things, though, my friends Zaddy Diaz and Steve Wolf showed me the greatest Instagram photo of all time. I have a link here in the show notes, Dave, if you would like to take a look at it. It's the Baby Yoda Tree Topper. Yes. I'm looking at it right now.

Wow. I looked at that and I'm like, how did you do that magic? The doll doesn't come out till March. And they're like, we took a screen grab and printed it out and cut them out and put them on the tree. Right, yes. The magic of two dimensions. Oh, paper craft.

You are so wise. And I think in my comments, I'm like, make a YouTube video. Tell people how to do it. Retire. I saw a different one that I think, actually, I think an official one that was a paper craft, a folding paper craft that put the little baby Yoda inside his little levitating baby bucket.

Oh, nice. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Oh, if you can find that link, let me know. I'd love to put that in the show notes. Okay. I'll look it up. Yeah. Yeah, the link's in the show notes to Zeddy and Steve's Baby Yoda. So if anybody wants to go look at that, check it out. Yeah, it is cute. They did a good job with it. Yeah. Yeah.

So to get to some actual news, it's Star Wars. Yeah, I know. It's the first show back of the year. Nothing much has happened, really. Yeah. But one thing did happen to me. I used to do, you know, I did my DNA testing with 23andMe. Right. And I sent it to another company called Promethease, who did a little bit of a deeper dive on it.

That's where I found out I have the two APOE alleles, which means I'm like 9,000 times more susceptible to getting Alzheimer's disease. Thanks, guys. Didn't need to know that. Well, they were bought by MyHeritage. Now, I've been getting emails from MyHeritage and like, okay, we got your data now.

We're going to just not really do much with it. It's all cool. Hang back, dude. It's all good, you know. And I'm like, okay, well, let's see how this plays out. Well, after the data transfer has occurred, the company transfer has occurred, what do I start getting from MyHeritage?

What do you think that would be, Dave? Uh-oh. Well, all sorts of solicitations? No. I start getting emails from MyHeritage telling me how many new relatives I have. They are running my genome against other people in their database and telling me that there are other people out there that I'm related to, which I did not give them permission to do.

Oh. Period. So when you sent your thing to Promethease, you were just after medical information. I was just after information, I unchecked everything or checked everything that said don't use it and unchecked everything that said do use it.

Like all of my permissions were basically show me the numbers. That's all I want. Right. When MyHeritage took over, they just took my genome and ran with it. They're like, hey, look at all this new data we got. Fantastic. And I, yeah, I'm willing to bet that you fell into the thing that all of us do with everything we opt into, which is.

The EULA trap? Yeah, the EULA trap that if this company gets sold, then everything you've agreed to, all bets are off, and we can do whatever we want forever. Yep. Yep, pretty much. So I got that first email, and I'm like, oh, let's go to MyHeritage.com here, do, do, do, do, do, delete account.

Or actually, at first it was like, how do I remove my data from MyHeritage? You know, through all of the, you know, the rigmarole of getting it done. I disabled my MyHeritage account and got rid of the data, then I deleted my MyHeritage account. But as we all know, it's probably still there.

Now, why did you not want these connections? Because I don't want, I don't want new family members. I turned that off on 23andMe because I kept getting it every day. It's like, you got 24 new members, you got 36 new members. I'm like, well, this is just going to keep going, and there's nobody that I want to meet that I'm related to.

Sorry. I know the people that I'm directly related to, and I don't want to hang out with them most of the time. Yeah, I mean, that's fascinating to me because, as you know, and as our listeners know, my situation is the opposite of yours. So, when I get a notice of new family members, it's kind of like, ooh, what's this?

What's this? You know? Yeah. It's not like, oh, another one of these jerks, you know? Yeah. That's interesting. That's fascinating to me. Just, it's not something I'd considered, but it makes total sense. Yeah. Well, I mean, you should embrace ignorance is bliss. The fact that you don't know them.

I mean, at least on my side of the family, I've just got, yeah, no comment. But I did not want that. That is not what I signed up for when I sent my Promethees, sent them my data. So, it was really kind of annoying. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, moving on, it is now January 3rd as we're recording this, and the California Data Protection Google DGAP is now in effect, even though they don't enforce it for another six months.

Mm-hmm. How do you feel? Do you feel different? Well, I feel really annoyed about the 400 emails I got about, we're updating our privacy policy. Yeah. While I was trying to enjoy my holiday. Right, right. Yeah. Did you get any of those? No.

No. Oh, maybe it's because they know that I'm in California. Yeah. I mean, I'm seeing them on websites I'm logging into. I'm seeing, in addition to, it's the typical, hey, we use cookies kind of thing. Oh, and also, if you're in California, read this. Mm-hmm.

But, yeah. Yeah, maybe they're just doing, since they know that I'm here and I signed up with my address, or they know my IP address is a California-based IP address. Mm-hmm. They probably send them to me. But, yeah, I got at least 100 for all of the sites that I'm signed up for. It's crazy.

Wow. Well, this guy, Damien Finol, has created a directory of company pages that allow California residents to opt out of their data being sold and request their information. It's at caprivacy.me. It's a little homegrown effort. Mm-hmm. He's, you know, just trying to put all these links together.

It's, you know, like a little wiki kind of thing. So. Yeah. One thing I've noticed is that a lot of these data brokers seem to be sticking their head in the sand when it comes to this, or taking a wait and see, like, how hard is California going to come after these people, and will we be first, and that sort of thing?

Will we get a slap on the wrist the first time? I've seen lots of reports that some of these data brokers, they haven't done a thing. Well, we've got six months before they can even start that process, because the enforcement doesn't start for six more months. Mm-hmm. You know, it's like GDPR. They had that grace period.

Right. So this is, you know, we're in that little era right now where they can, like, they have to start getting their shit together before they start getting slapped. So hopefully they are taking that into account, because as soon as six months rolls around, I guarantee you California is going to start sending out notices and fines and taking people to court, because there is one thing that California is really, really good at, and I've learned that over the 20 years I've lived here.

They are really good at being an enemy to its own people. I can tell you that without a doubt. The Franchise Tax Board, which is like the state's tax collection agency, those guys are some of the most vicious people you ever meet.

Now, Jason, couldn't you say that they're good faith regulatory enforcers? Yeah, except they ruined my last company by going into my bank account and draining it completely. And I talked to my accountant. He's like, I've had seven of my clients had the same thing happen, because what they're doing is they are, they're, it's a whole long story, but basically they were stealing the money because they didn't think anybody would go after them.

But fortunately, I had a really good accountant who knew really good tax law and went back after them and got a lot of the money back. Because they were just like, yeah, you know what, we think you're going to owe this much based on how much you've made before. So we're going to take out the money that you should be paying at the end of the year now.

And we're not going to tell you. And we're also going to charge you another $25 every time that we look at your bank account to see if we can take more money. It's wow. No, they bankrupted my last company because of that. And they bankrupted a bunch of people that I know. So California, yeah, you don't want to get on their bad side.

So I think that this might be a thing that these companies really kind of want to pay attention to. Trust me. Yeah, we'll see. Time will tell. It's interesting for sure. Yeah. So I think this is going to unfortunately be the one that most of the country goes with.

You know, I don't think there's going to be a, you know, a national privacy, you know, bill because nobody can agree on it in Washington because they can't agree on anything at this point. So California has taken the charge. And I think that this is going to be it. And everybody's going to take this as, you know, step one as far as regulating privacy for the users.

What do you think? I've heard both points of view on that. Plenty of people have said that since Washington is basically in a coma when it comes to getting anything through that. Unless it's talking about flavored vaping, then you're toast.

Right. That it's unlikely that anything could go through. But on the other hand, if people feel like the California laws are over the top, could that be enough of an incentive for D.C. to get their act together and do something in a bipartisan way and and push something through?

So that's the possibility. I don't think it's going to happen under this administration, certainly. Well, there's no time for it to happen. Well, it depends on who gets reelected. Yeah. But if we have a new administration there, I'd say we have a better chance of of something happening.

But who knows? It's also chaotic right now. It is also chaotic right now. And hell, we might be at war by this afternoon. So who knows? Yeah. Did you see about the wise data breach of 2.4 million customers? Pretty soon you're talking about real numbers.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we always talk about breach fatigue on this show. But so they had a breach that lasted 23 days by an employee's mistake. Now, I would like to point out right there, this is an employee's mistake. He spun up a database, took off all of the protections, which, why?

You know, no security access protocols or anything. And it was out there for 23 days. And somebody found it from, what is it, 12 security found the breach? And they keep saying breach here, which bugs me. This is not a breach. This is a fuck up.

That's all it is. It's an accident. It's like, it's an idiot who left his data out there. Nobody was breached. Nobody actually tried to get through their security to get this data. Do you agree with me on that? Because it just seems like gross negligence to me.

It is. I suppose you could look at it from the point of view that if the front door of your house is open and I come in and take your television, have I committed burglary? Yes, I have. But you didn't use a breaching tool to break the front door down.

No, no. I guess it's not breaking and entering or the breaking part of breaking and entering. But I think the, what, the DC, I can't, what's the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act?

Yeah. Doesn't really differentiate on that, does it? Right, right. In other words, if you go into someone's system without their permission, that's all it takes to be in violation of that. So I suppose technically that is what that is. I'm with you in spirit, though, that certainly, yeah.

No, it wasn't like someone was trying to break in. The researchers happened upon it. The people who look for these sorts of things happened upon it. Somebody with a Shodan account found it. Oh, real tough, you know? Right, yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. And then this guy still has his job?

Why? This pisses me off. I'm sorry. This pisses me off. Do they really want someone that careless and stupid working for them? Yes, it was an accident. But I'm sorry. Common sense dictates that somebody that's that dumb should not be working for your company. Yeah, I don't know.

I always try to give people the benefit of the doubt, but I don't know. Not on this one, man. I just don't know. What we always say on the show, nobody ever gets fired. That's true. That's true. Yeah, they don't want to take the HR hit. They're like, oh, he might sue us for wrongful termination, so we'll just keep him around.

I'm like, well, that's dumb. I'm like, yeah, they said it was an accident, but we are very, very sorry, and we're taking it very seriously. Your security is important to us. Sort of. This guy not suing us is more important. Right, right.

It's the immediate thing we have to deal with. Yeah, and speaking of IoT devices here, have you heard of SB 327? I have heard of it, but I will admit I'm not that familiar with it. I think the CCPA has been sucking up all the oxygen in the room.

Yeah, it really has, and I've started listening to the Internet of Things podcast with Stacey Higginbotham, which is the greatest name ever. Yeah, I've spoken to Stacey on our show. Really? Cyber Wire, yep. She's very smart. I really like her.

Yeah, she really knows her stuff, and yeah, enjoyed her conversation a lot. Oh, that's cool, yeah. So I found out, I was listening to her podcast last night, and I came across this whole thing about SB 327, the IoT Device Security Act, and I was like, wow, I didn't even know this existed.

It's like, wow. I don't know how, we've been talking about, you know, the S in IoT is for security for so long. Right, right. You know, but it's a new law that demands that companies building connected products implement, quote unquote, reasonable security features.

That's specific. Yeah, exactly. There's a link to the bill in the show notes, so if anybody wants to dive into it, but yeah, it's kind of vague. Yeah. On what reasonable is. You know, let's define reasonable at some point here. Yeah, yeah. There's another thing in here, in this article that caught my eye.

And it says, if the company must implement a secure password on a secure enclave early on in the manufacturing process, doing so will add even more cost and complexity. And they go on and they say, best practice would involve flashing a custom device identifier on each product along with a device firmware right before it leaves the factory.

Otherwise, it's just too expensive. No. Otherwise, it's too expensive to still be selling crap at dirt cheap prices. In other words. Yeah. If we value, how much do we value our privacy?

See, it has a value. Is it worth 20 bucks on a video camera to have some sort of guaranteed or, I don't know, certified level of security? I'd say for a lot of people, it is.

Absolutely. Especially when it comes to cameras. Yeah, yeah. All kinds of things. Those teddy bears that your kids have, all that stuff. So, I think this notion of having security built into the hardware and having things like secure enclaves.

I mean, our phones have them. Certainly, our iOS devices have them. A lot of the Macs have them now. I know it's a thing on a lot of the other devices as well. So, it's on the expensive premium devices. Why not have it trickle down to everything else?

Somebody come up with something that may not be as elegant and sophisticated as what's in, you know, an iPhone, but still make it a standard. Why not? If it's in everything, it's not going to be expensive to manufacture. Somebody will come up with a cheap way to make it work. Exactly.

Exactly. And that puts your product actually at, you know, yeah, it might cost a little bit more, but people are going to want that product because it is doing the thing that it's supposed to do. It's like, okay, am I going to get the cheap camera that they skimped on and my security is, you know, compromised easily by this camera?

Or am I going to go to the product that says, hey, look, this is what we did. We are, you know, compliant with standards and security and your chances of getting hacked are less likely if you use our product because you can never say something's unhackable. But it's less likely to happen if you use our product.

Won't people buy that product more and offset the cost, you know? Yeah. And put some sort of stamp on it, some sort of seal of approval that says it's been checked by the equivalent of a UL listing or a good housekeeping seal of approval or something. GOG, seal of approval. There you go. Right.

We get one half of one penny for every device. Hey, man, that's more than we get now. I'll take it. I'll take it. I'm playing the long game here, man. There you go. There you go. Yeah. Running out of time on that long game, Jason. We all are, I think. Oh, God. Don't remind me.

But, hey, my health insurance kicked in yesterday, so now I can go to the doctor. Wow. How decadent. I know. I know. Wait. What country do you think you live in? Oh, well, can't afford food to stand. It's the country I live in now. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, man. Well, it was great talking to you, Dave. And next time, maybe Brian will be back if he can clear his schedule to join us. Yes, indeed. Well, happy new year. And I will talk to you soon. In the news. And for the ghost of Christmas future, we are now joined by Eric Hunley of the Unstructured Podcast.

Welcome, Eric. Hey, hello from one of your old stomping grounds, Hampton, Virginia. Oh, that's right. You are. I went to Prentiss Ann Junior High School, which has been burnt down for years. Well, I hope I'm not talking to the felon. No, no.

I was gone. I was long gone. I was long gone. But I used to live about two miles from the end of the runway for Oceana Naval Air Station. I used to spend my days at Lynn Haven Mall back when I was a mall rat kid. Please tell me you weren't one of the people who was complaining about the noise. No.

Well, I love the planes. My mom complained about the noise because all of our pictures fell off the wall every time an aircraft carrier came in and basically shook our condo so bad that all of the pictures fell off the wall. Sounds of freedom, right? Oh, yeah. 72 hours of freedom every two weeks.

Great. USS, let's fuck up your house. That's what that was. Well, you know, they had to travel somewhere. Yes, they did. And this is back in the days when the F-14 was king. So you just go by and it was totally Top Gun.

Top Gun all the way down. When the jets worked. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not these joint strike fighters that fall out of the air every six seconds. Yeah, you know, a little dust and goodbye. Yeah, it's kind of, yeah. Our joint strike fighters are kind of like the Apple keyboards of the last three years.

People dusted them and they just go down. And we have to admit their timing is perfect since most of the conflicts are in the desert. Let's make things that are sensitive to dust. And then they'll have to come in for repair. Exactly. Ka-ching. Thank you, industrial, you know, military complex.

We appreciate that. So let's start off here. There was some good news for the year. I did a little bit of this with Kevin. We're going to keep going. 19 good things that happened in 2019. This is over at the Washington Post. Did you get a chance to go through these? I did. And honestly, the last one kind of annoyed me a little bit.

The last one annoyed you. So we're down at number 19. Much was written about a democratic recession around the world with reason. But that made all the more impressive the many popular uprisings on behalf of liberty and free expression. Even with the United States abdicating its traditional role as an advocate for freedom and with China and Russia pressing their authoritarian models, people rose up and spoke against corruption and for dignity and self-expression, often at great risk and against great odds.

This happened not only in Hong Kong and Sudan, but also in Algeria, Lebanon, Bolivia, Chile, Iraq, and even Russia and the United States, a.k.a. Puerto Rico. Well, the Iraq thing might be a little interesting now that we're probably going to war with Iran in about 17 minutes.

But there you go. I guess we're no longer abdicating. I don't know. I mean, what does that mean? Abdicating our responsibility. So one second, we're either in everybody's business and driving it down their throat, or if maybe we take a break for a minute or kind of step back, then we're abdicating.

Yeah. Either we're the policemen of the world or we're not. You know, it's like one way or the other. Which way do you want it? Do you want us to fix your shit or do you want to do it yourself? Come on. Hey, we killed a general today. Washington Post. Are you happy now? Yeah. Have we unabdicated?

So I don't know. But there's a lot of really good stuff in here, especially on the first one I really like because there's a new treatment for people with cystic fibrosis. And I have known people with cystic fibrosis, and it's a terrible disease. So right there, that's a win for the year.

That's all. And Ebola might have an actual vaccine coming. Awesome. Another win. I agree. And they did roll back some gerrymandering going on in Virginia. That was very good. Oh, that's good. That's good. And it shows in 2018, Americans gave $428 billion to charity.

Now, that's 2018 because we're not going to know 2019's numbers until probably 2021. Sure. But still not bad, which is more than the entire national economy of Norway. Suck it, Norwegians and your black metal cats. Oh, perfect black metal.

Here's the thing. There was actually a lot of good stuff happening last year, but we all focus on the negative because that's kind of the premise of our show here, I guess. Plus, it bleeds, it leads. Yeah. Yeah. What also made me happy, though, is Travis Kalanick has quit Uber's board and he sold off all of his Uber stock.

Finally, the general has left the building. Now, what bugs me about this, as anybody who's listened to the show for a long time will know, he's now worth $2.5 billion. So, destroy the working class, be a dick, you know, perpetuate sexual harassment in your ranks and walk away with $2.5 billion.

That's how you get rich. Just be an asshole. But did you notice the tiny bit of irony, though, that as a dick, he would leave and create a startup, which would be a WeWork variant? Oh, see, they all, they flock together.

This is, this is everybody just, yeah. They went to the same, drank from the same Kool-Aid. They do. They do. They drink from the same unfiltered water that they used to sell in San Francisco last year. Or maybe that was two, three years ago. Remember that? The pure water, unfiltered from nature with, you know, E. coli and every other thing that you could get.

It's like, this is natural. It's good for you. You should buy it now, dude. And fuck measles, man. We're not going to, that doesn't exist. We're just going to drink this water and we're all going to be fine. You know what all these people have? They have fucking brain parasites. That's what they have.

They've all got brain parasites from the crappy water in Northern California. Jack likes to travel quite a bit. Yeah. Yeah. You know what he's looking for? He's looking for a cure. He's out there. He's like, he's traveling the world trying to find a cure. Oh, my God. Yeah.

God, Jack. Oh, at Jack. Well, good times are all around. Spotify, of all people, is coming to the defense of advertisers everywhere. They are going to stop running political ads beginning early 2020, which is basically now because they don't have the infrastructure to vet the ads properly.

The way you should do it. Listening to that, Mark Zuckerberg. You know, I don't know. I guess I'm jaded and cynical. I'm kind of like, so what? I mean, why don't we get the networks to stop it? Because at this time of year, I don't even want to watch any TV.

Even with the DVR, I can't hit fast forward fast enough. Here's the thing, though. People listen to Spotify a hell of a lot more than they watch CNN or Fox News. I can guarantee you that. That's true. I don't know. I'm kind of like, I kind of feel like network TV was propped up every four years or every two years by political ads.

Well, political ads, pharmaceuticals and lawyers. Yeah, that's pretty much it. Yeah. Ambulance chasers, Oxycontin peddlers and shysters. That's about it. So you can OD and then you can sue them. Perfect. It's the circle of life, my friend.

It's the circle of life. And they raise money and send somebody to Congress. We're good. That's it. You know, if you survive your Oxy habit, then you become a lobbyist. That's how it works. So I'm happy about this. That's fine. I do pay for Spotify.

One of the few things I pay for. So I don't hear ads anyway. But I do hear ads on Pandora, but I haven't heard any political ads yet. So I don't know what Pandora's stance on political ads are. What are your thoughts about Spotify running ads against podcasts?

Because some people are a little kind of annoyed about that. Annoyed is not the term I have. Really fucking pissed off is what I am. Here's the thing, though. It's voluntary. You do not have to have your show on Spotify.

And if you are a podcaster, it's up to you. Do you give up those ad dollars for, you know, not getting that distribution? And here's the deal. I don't know anybody that's got a podcast on Spotify that's actually seeing any reasonable numbers whatsoever.

It is less than a percent of our listeners for this show on Spotify. I don't think. Yeah, I think Spotify is more international now. They've got South America, a lot of Europe. I think they're starting to take over Canada a bit. Oh, no, they beat Apple Podcasts in Canada as of the last show we did.

So, yeah, they're the most popular podcast player in Canada for all 12 people. Hold on. That was Spreaker, though. No, it was Spotify. No, Spreaker stats were saying that the Spotify. Oh, so that was just one data point. Yeah, if you listen to Lipson, well, you don't like to listen to it.

If you could read the Lipson stats, I think you'll find that Spotify numbers are far more marginal and still 10 percent, which is sizable compared to everybody else. But yeah, but whatever, whatever. I just want. Yeah. As far as political ads go, I don't think anybody should ever run them.

That's how I stand on it. Yeah. Can we get back to the Lincoln Douglas debates and just move on? Yeah. OK, there you have it. CRISPR babies. Remember CRISPR babies? Yeah. He, Jean-Cou, was the doctor, and I use air quotes around doctor, who created the first gene-edited babies, and he was trying to basically make them HIV resistant.

Yeah. From what I understand, while he did that, he also shortened their life by a few years. I think it was seven years. Yeah. So it's like, OK, you won't get AIDS, which you probably wouldn't have gotten anyway. Hey, man, if you want to make an omelet, that's how it works.

Mengele would be proud, is all I'm saying. I'm glad. I'm glad that, you know, they put him in prison. I just, I don't trust China. Well, yeah, here's the thing. He got sentenced finally, which is amazing to begin with, that China went after him. I think this is all PR on China's part because everybody's like, oh, well, apparently you can just do whatever you want in China and get away with it.

But the Chinese are like, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, defone. We're going to take care of this. So, yes, they sentenced him to three years in prison and gave him a three million won fine, which is in the U.S., it's $430,000. Yeah, and that'll be one-tenth of his bonus when he gets picked up by somebody for a job.

Yeah, when the Russians hire him, when he gets out of jail. Oh, Americans will hire him. What are you talking about? This guy, no. Oh, my God, no. The Americans are not going to hire this guy. This guy is persona non grata in the U.S. No, this guy screwed up. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know.

I mean, Operation Paperclip can run. Oh, snap. Busting out World War II. Okay, I'm impressed. I'm impressed. Somebody else knows Operation Paperclip. All right, yeah. Werner Von Braun was actually kind of a douchebag, but, you know, that's what we do.

But you do know that he was a big playboy in Hollywood. Like, once he got here and he got his fame going, and if you look at the old pictures of him, I think of Werner Von Braun as an old guy, like kind of Einstein-y looking. But when you see pictures of him in his heyday, he was a handsome, tall dude.

He was the master race. He was embodying the master race. There you go. The master race gets him. And if you're a Tom Lehrer fan, who cares? Where's they go up? Oh, wait, wait. No, the old line was, once the rockets are up, who cares where's they come down?

That's not my department, says Werner Von Braun. That was his job. So, yeah, this guy, he got three years in jail, and two of his fellow researchers were also sentenced. One got a two-year jail term, and one got an 18-month suspended sentence.

It is encouraging, though, that China can be embarrassed into it. Hopefully, they're doing it for the right reasons. I don't want to be cynical on this one. I'm hoping that they're looking at this going, yeah, this is bad. Granted, you did give us a black eye for this.

You should have come to the military and done it under adult supervision instead of doing it yourself. That's what I worry about. Yeah, that's what really has me worried. I'm hoping against hope that this is something that they're actually taking seriously because, yeah, it's just not cool, man.

It's not cool. You can't make people willy-nilly. Oh, actually, you can. You can just go screw and have trailer park babies all you want. You just can't use a microscope to do it. Yeah, this is – I know what you guys are saying about AI, that you're not necessarily fans, but I kind of feel like we're in the creepazoid race between AI and CRISPR, and I'm not sure which is going to cause more damage first.

CRISPR. Absolutely CRISPR. I recommend going and checking out Rob Reed's podcast, which I produced from episode 1 to 19. Nice. I produced and edited that show. I mainly edited, but I did produce a few live shows. It's a great, great podcast with some of the biggest thinkers in the business about this type of stuff.

And the genetic modification stuff is so close to being done in your garage that it is terrifying. Yeah, Jamie Metzl has talked about that where he compared it – what was it? Like from the technology to get us on the moon – I forget the amount of time.

He said this is the equivalent of it, and it took place in three and a half years. Yeah, it's insane, and it's just getting faster and faster and faster, and there's no regulation. Actually, Rob Reed does have a fantastic TED Talk that he did recently, like maybe seven or eight months ago, about this very topic.

I highly recommend – I'll dig it up and put it in the show notes. Everybody should go listen to that if you don't want to sleep ever again. That's all I'm saying. Oh, great. Yeah, it is really scary. Grumpy Old Geeks has taken a dark turn. Well, have you listened to the show?

We do that every week. Sorry. Okay, next up we have Uber and Postmates suing California over the AB5 statute. Now, this one I think there's going to be some mixed feelings all around. Listening to the show, I know you and Brian, and especially Brian, I think we're pretty much – Yeah, don't lump us together like that.

In favor of the AB5 statute. And I guess I'm a little bit more into that cynical libertarian-ish vibe where I worry about unforeseen consequences. Right, okay, so we're talking about California's new AB5 statute about gig workers and the one that was just passed to, quote-unquote, protect Uber and Lyft drivers, which was the goal of it.

Right, but gig workers aren't only Uber and Lyft drivers. They happen to also be how many independent riders in California. And as a blog guy yourself, I'm sure you can say, uh-oh. I have gotten at least 50 tweets from people about this who have lost their jobs because the parent publication said, we can't hire you anymore because of AB5.

So there's your unintended consequences right there, which is bullshit. Yeah, I mean, it's – I understand the goal is pure, but the fact remains. And I have a friend, Brett Allen, who does the Open Mic Podcast. He's a retired military guy.

And he was making ends meet, doing gig work, Uber, whatever he could do to take care of his kid. Right. I don't want to take that out. And I don't want to say that his salary or his wage isn't pure enough or proper. That's wrong.

Right. And this comes down – what the crux of this is is the ABC test. And for people who don't know, this is a – it was basically a ruling in California courts against – it was Dynamics versus the Superior Court.

And they took this ABC guideline and then now have made it like the law of the land. And I'm just going to read it real quick because it's very, very stupid. I'm just going to say this right out of the gate because I read this and I'm like, what?

Makes no sense. Part A, is the worker free from the control and direction of the hiring entity in the performance of the work, both under the contract for the performance of the work and in fact? Part B. Wait, what does that mean? I have no fucking idea what that means.

Oh, God, I hate lawyers. Is the worker free from the control and direction of the hiring entity? Well, no, you're getting paid. You're obviously under the control of the hiring entity. So, no. Part B, and this is the real sticky wicket here. Does the worker perform work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity's business?

This is the gotcha. This is the one because, no, the business, like for, say, a blogging platform, I have people write for me and that is my usual course of business. So, I hire contractors to write for me.

So, it is not outside the usual course of business, which is why all of these publications are firing people who live in California, which sucks, really sucks. You see, this is what, okay, this is what irritates me because this is pure freaking hypocrisy.

Who would not be affected by having somebody outside the course of their business? Oh, how about the housekeeper that the freaking politicians have? How about their daycare workers? How about the people who do their pools? Oh, we don't care about that.

Well, here's the fun part. I'll get to part C in a second. The bill exempts certain types of workers, such as certain investment advisors. What the fuck? Workers providing licensed barber or cosmetology services. Huh? Licensed physicians and surgeons, people who make shit tons of, okay.

Licensed attorneys, dentists, architects, engineers, and accountants. Every, I'm sorry, physicians, surgeons, attorneys, dentists, architects, engineers, and accountants. The people that can make a fucking living doing whatever they want to do are exempt from this.

But the people who need it the most are not. Exactly. If your color is blue, you're screwed. Yeah, really. So part C is, is the worker customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as the work performed for the hiring entity?

Okay. This whole thing is just, it's ridiculous. This is, it's stupid. It is absolutely stupid. And I'm glad this is finally coming to a head now that it's actually enacted in law. Because, you know, I had brushed it off for, I mean, we've been talking about this for a couple months, and I really hadn't dug into it.

And now that I've dug into it, I see how fucking stupid it is. It's like, okay, you're trying to get people who drive for Uber and Lyft to become employees if they work X amount of hours a week. I get that because that's the problem. Well, it's never going to happen.

And the thing is that there's a lot of people, and you probably know some of them, be it comics, be it actors, be it, I mean, there's a lot of people who depend on gig work, and they need that crazy flexibility. And no employer is going to pay benefits on that if they're only pulling 20 to, you know, 30 or whatever.

Yeah, exactly. It's like, you know, hey, look, I only make like, you know, 100 bucks a day on whatever thing. I need to make $180 a day just to make it through the fucking rent cycle. So I'm going to go out and drive for a couple hours because I got nothing else to do, and I want to pad my income.

It's great. Okay, even if it totals up to 45 hours a week, I'm still making money off of it. Granted, you know my history with Uber and Lyft on this show, and I still think that they are criminally fucking underpaid for what the companies make. That's a different issue than this.

Like, this is actually going to punish the people who need the money that are doing the work. Right, because the company will pass it on. I mean, they'll just say, okay, well, then we'll just move out of the area and remove the opportunity. Oh, they don't do that.

No, they don't do that. It's Uber. Uber just says, fuck you. We're still going to drive. We'll figure it out later. That's what they do. Or you're a publisher, and they'll just fire everybody and hire them from Arizona. Yeah, I mean, this is a ridiculous bill, and this is California being an enemy to its people yet again.

So now that I've had the time to dig into it over the break, I am actually really pissed off about this, because we do have Gavin Newsom, the handsome governor now. And I was talking to Kevin Rose earlier on the show.

Like, I've met Gavin Newsom, and actually, no, no. I was talking to Chris Lockhead on his show yesterday. I do so many podcasts, they all get confused. When I met Gavin Newsom, when I was running a blogging network, ironically, which all my people would have had to have been fired by now.

I met him at City Hall, and he was a really nice guy. And he even said, because this was right when I met him, was when the Chris Nolan Batman movies were coming out. And he's like, yes, I am Bruce Wayne. He was, like, equating himself with, you know, Christian Bale, because they do kind of look similar.

Well, at least they have the same hairdo. But at least Christian Bale can act. Gavin Newsom cannot govern. I will just say that out of the gate. Well, it's not like he's going to relate to the people who are affected here. Yeah. I mean, he's a child of Getty's lawyers.

He's never related or dealt with any of this. Yeah, but, you know, there are exceptions for people who come from privilege. I look at Anderson Cooper. Of course. He has gone through a bunch of shit, came from privilege, and has stepped up and done the right thing for what he does.

But Gavin Newsom, no. He hasn't even, you know, his first order of business is becoming governor, was supposed to be addressing the homeless crisis. Hasn't done a damn thing. Anyway, we're getting off tech. So let's get back to tech. So I think this is really going to fuck up a lot of people, especially in California, because this is a California bill.

But it's a bellwether for a lot of other states, because they look to us on what things should happen when it comes to tech, because we now have the new, you know, the new privacy laws, which Dave Bittner and I talked about previously. And I think this is a bad thing.

I think this is a bad bit of legislation. Eric, I finally updated to Catalina on all my main machines, which, as an audio engineer, that is verboten.

You don't do that. Now, what drove you over the edge? Okay, because I'll be honest, I went to Catalina because I decided, audition will work with it. I'm not doing Audacity anymore. And no matter how you try, I'm not doing logic because it's just hard. Oh, I'm sorry.

It's just pretty. Okay. That's fine. You want to use the ugly software that's even more difficult than logic. That's fine. It's not, though. I wrote a book on Flash, dude. You wrote a book on Flash? What? Yes, I'm guilty. What?

You wrote a book on Flash? Actually, Macromedia Studio MX, but the interface. Oh, my God. You know what's funny? I probably bought that book. I think I probably owned that book. That is too funny.

Yeah, Macromedia MX 2004, before Adobe came in and snatched their soul. Oh, my God. I think I did own that. Actually, no. I bought it. If I bought that book, it would have been in 1999. So, no. That was before me. Why do you care about Catalina?

What was the big thing? Catalina, I'm lazy. My laptops went to it, and I decided, okay, well, I'm going to have all the machines go over to it. I don't really have anything that was 32-bit. So, I was like, eh, why not?

I mean, I'm kind of dumb that way. I did keep my... I'm kind of dumb that way. Well, I kept my iMac on Mojave. Yeah. And then I replaced the spinning disk in that, because I had the hybrid disk. Oh, yeah. The fusion drive.

Oh, God. It was... What a steamy piece of shit that was. Oh, it's horrible. So, I put in an SSD, and then when I did the automatic download, and I was like, all of a sudden, it was Catalina. Calm me down. I was like, oh, screw it. And just installed it. Yeah, I pushed back quite a bit, because I use a piece of software called iZotope RX-7 Advanced, which I know you use as well.

I do, but I had it installed at Mojave. So, when I did the iMac, I did the Mojave point, or High Sierra point. I installed iZotope RX-7 just to see if it would make a difference, then pushed it to Catalina, and I had no problems. Yeah, the thing with that is, for the audio people out there, the installer is what's broken.

The software is not. So, if you have it upgraded and ready to go, and you move over to Catalina, everything works. So, yeah. So, I got over to it, and here's my reason for getting over to it, and this is going to make me sound like a fucking idiot. I love this. I wasn't getting text notifications from my roommate, and this was going on for quite some time.

And I'm like, every other machine in the house, all my iPads, everything else. I got two iPads, I got three laptops, and I got an iMac 27-inch 5K. Well, the 27-inch 5K was the only thing that wasn't actually up to Catalina at that point, or iPadOS, or all that.

So, I turned messages off on everything, and I still wasn't getting notifications. Because I thought it was a thing where, like, if one machine saw it, and it thought you were active on that machine, the notification would happen there, and then you wouldn't get it on another device. So, this is my programmer brain at work here.

What I didn't notice is that in the new iOS, there's a little half-moon setting next to your text messages. Yeah, I have that turned on right now. I had it turned on for my roommate. I never turned it on myself.

I don't know how it got to that point, but that mutes notifications from that person. So, it was basically in the phone. And if you go to it, you click on it, click on the text message, click on the person, and then you go to info, and then there's a little slider that says hide notifications.

Turn that off, boom. Bob's your uncle, I'm done. So, technically, I didn't have to upgrade to Catalina. Yeah, but it's nice that you didn't. You know what? You're not immature at all, because I find anything but a blue bubble in text offensive. It's been a weird week trying to figure this out.

And in doing this, I also noticed that my iPhone 8 Plus, the port where you plug in the lightning connector stopped working 50% of the time. I'm like, what? And then I jiggle it, and then it works. I have an embarrassing story for that.

Okay. Hit me. Is this a pocket lint story? Yes, it is. I knew it. I knew it. But worse, though, I had to take it to the damn genius bar. They stop, they look at me, and they go, hold on. I need to get a special tool.

Tweezers. Bastards got a paper clip. Yeah. And they held it in their hand, kind of palmed, looked at my eyes, looked at the bottom of the phone, tried it open with a casual ease, and then started to pick it out.

And I work in IT and felt smaller than a freaking mouse. Here's the funny thing. I have not looked for the pocket lint problem yet. I bet. I bet. I would consider doing that. Too late. Don't take it.

Because as we were recording this, I got a note from my roommate that my new iPhone 11 Pro has arrived. Oh, nice. I ordered a new phone because this one's paid off. And I'm like, okay, well, $33 a month. It pays the tax for $95. And then I get a new iPhone because I haven't had a new phone since the 8 Plus.

And I wasn't excited about the 8 Plus. I'm like, oh, it's another fucking phone, whatever it is. It's a good time. But the iPhone 11 Pro is the first phone in maybe six years, seven years that I've actually been excited to get. I've been waiting all day.

I'm like, where's FedEx? Where's FedEx? Where's FedEx? Come on. Give me my phone. Give me my phone. Huge upgrade. Do you remember the old days of the iPhone that you didn't have a password? You would just do things? That's what it feels like on the X or in the 10 and higher. Yeah. Because it's doing the facial recognition.

And it's like, oh, you want to pull the password from Safari? Cool. And it just doesn't work. Yeah. And you feel like the old days when you're not like, oh, wait, let me put my thumb here, you know, like an animal. Yeah. Like an animal. That's right. You know, I have an iPad Pro 12.7.

And that's the only machine that I have that has FaceTime on it. Or not FaceTime. Or whatever it is. Yes. You know what I mean. Yeah. That totally hooked me. I'm like, bleary eyed, one eye open, you know, hair's a must, sitting on the pot in the morning to play some Clash Royale with my friends.

GOG.show is the clan, by the way. I swipe up, and I'm like, and it opens, and I'm like, play, woo! I'm like, of course, I always have a landscape, and I keep putting my freaking left hand over the camera. So I'm like, oh, damn it. I've learned to not do that. Yes.

I've been trained like a monkey to not do that. And I love that part. But here's the thing. The three cameras on the iPhone 11 Pro. That's what I want. I want that fucking wide-angle camera. I have a new puppy, which means I need a good camera. Instagram, watch out.

Yeah, yeah. I can hear the unfollows from here. I can. Oh, my God. Yeah. But here's the thing. I just want that thing. But since I do have Catalina on everything now, something else happened. I have been a Things fan.

And I say fan. I hate Things because of their upgrade cycle. I have spent probably, what, $450 on Things over the years. I bought it at version one. Bought the iPad version. Bought the iPhone version. Bought the Mac version, which was, you know, $100 right there.

iPad or Things 2 comes out. Buy the iPhone version. Buy the iPad version. Buy the Mac version. Version 3 comes out. Same thing. I have moved everything from Things to Reminders and Notes since everything's at Parity now because the new Reminders on Mac is awesome.

Does everything I need it. Does everything I need it to do. Everything. I'm so happy to hear that because I thought about buying things. I actually think I did buy it and haven't used it yet. Well, I just saved you $100 so you can send me $50 and we'll call it even. How about that? Yeah, it's in the mail. Appreciate it.

Yeah. Things is beautiful. Reminders is not. But here's the deal. Reminders does what it needs to do. And when I'm out on a walk, I can look at my watch and say, add blah, blah, blah to the shopping list. And it just does it. And it's one thing. I don't have to come up with like another term to tell Siri on how to get things to where they need to go.

I don't have to do all this cross pollination. I don't need an if to recipe to make it work. Special calendar. It just works. It just works because it's built in. And, you know, I'm like, okay, you know, you German assholes don't get any more of my money.

You know, here's the thing. If it was $10 to keep using things every time, I'd probably still use it because I was embedded in it. But it took an hour to move everything from things to reminders and notes. And I'm like, well, I'm done.

I just saved myself another $100 for the next upgrade cycle. And it works because I'm on walks every day. And I just double tap my AirPods or talking to my phone. And I dictate notes and dictate reminders. And it just works. I live on notes.

I mean, all of my interview research is all in notes. Just one note after another. Oh, you're an animal. You're an animal. We use Quip, not the, as you've seen, we use Quip, not the toothbrush, but the Salesforce-based, you know, collaborative document editing solution, which works for us.

I would love to. But it's like every time I try to get away, it's like it took me forever to get off on Dessie. You just get used to something. And it's like, oh, so much work to do and to move. Well, here's the deal. You don't do collaborative editing. For this show, we have three people editing every document all the time.

So it works the best. And paper for Dropbox does not work. Google Docs is a shit show. This just does what we need it to do. And when I have a complaint, if they change something, I write to support and they fix it. They're really good in support here. Makes sense.

Makes sense. So, yeah, I'm down with the reminders and notes. And I have to say, on the app side, I have been playing Wolfenstein Youngblood on my Xbox every night for the past couple of weeks with Jordan Harbinger. We just like six o'clock rolls around, like ready to play.

Yep. Play for three hours. Go to bed. Sleep like a baby after killing Nazis. My vision has improved, which is crazy. When I go for a walk in the morning, my vision is better. But we actually finished it last night. I got to say, that game is awesome.

If you have an Xbox and you have somebody to play co-op with, it is awesome. That actually makes sense about your vision, because I know you can do visual exercises by focusing on different lengths in the room. And since you spend so much time in front of a monitor, if you're at a different distance there, you maybe were exercising your eyes like you haven't.

Absolutely. Yeah. Because I've got, basically, I sit in my bed. So, at the end of a queen-size bed, then another, you're like three feet, and then there's a 55-inch plasma TV that I bought from the set of Entourage back in the early 2000s. Look at you.

I got this thing for $500, which, back then, it was like a $3,000 TV. I know, and now you're like 75-inch for $600. I want to get rid of this thing so bad. It is a massive space heater. I literally have to turn on my air conditioner and open the windows, or I get sweated out of the room.

It is a sauna box, and I can only imagine how much electricity this damn thing's pulling. It's going to be cheaper to just throw it away and get another one. But, yeah. Well, now you can tell it was on Entourage. I don't have any papers for it, but if you go back and watch season five and you see Turtle play an Xbox out by the little lounge, that's my TV.

I have that TV. There you go. Take a screen cap of that and post it on there. Yeah, honestly. But I got to say, Wolfenstein Youngblood is awesome. We started playing World War Z last night. We're trying to find another good co-op game. And, by the way, if anybody out there is listening, knows of a good co-op game for two players, for Xbox One, let me know.

Because Jordan and I love to play every night, and we just like doing two-player co-op. And World War Z is kind of janky. It was only $16, and I guess that's for a reason. Aren't there other Wolfensteins? Yeah, but we're going to check those out, but we're kind of off the Nazi thing for a bit.

We want to do zombies, cool. We'll move to zombies, or we might try some ghost recon or some other stuff. But, yeah, it's all about the co-op, though, because he and I play really well together. Because, I mean, I worked with him for seven years. We're basically married. So, it's kind of like, okay, I'm going, okay, fine.

You know, we have shorthand for everything, and it just works. That's cool. JBL is making some self-charging headphones. That, in of itself, I think is freaking awesome. But what I find fascinating is that Harmon has put them on Indiegogo to fund the campaign as well.

There's a lot of craziness going on. Well, you know, Sony has started doing this, too. With new products that they have coming out, they will put up a Kickstarter Indiegogo campaign to see if there's market penetration that actually want these things. It's kind of brilliant. I mean, it's your market research. And, at worst, I feel comfortable investing in that because they have the scale.

They have the connections in the factories, be it not their own necessarily. They do have the connections. I'm sure that the product will come out maybe a year late, but it'll come out. It's always going to come out a year late, no matter what. We had Zane Lamprey on the show when he was doing his second adventure jacket or drinking jacket.

And he said he has the most popular fashion Kickstarter of all time. I mean, he is hands down the master of Kickstarter for apparel. And he's like, 99.9% of all Kickstarter campaigns are late.

Yeah, I know. I invest in them like a moron. My Lumi keyboard. I don't know where the fuck that thing is. It was supposed to be here in October, and it's still not here. What's so sad is I have a pair of 360 glasses that I ordered in 2016.

What? They've been shipping now for two months, supposedly. Oh, my God. I'm so sad, though. I've invested in these, and I literally forget that they're out there. Yeah. You know what, these guys are just making money on the interest on your money at this point.

They might be, but it's kind of like a long-term Christmas. Like, oh, oh, that. I remember that. Yeah. The thing I got that was going to be cutting edge when I ordered it is now, like, outdated technology. How awesome. But I got it. Well, a little longer, it'll be collectible.

No. You tell me one thing that you ever bought on Kickstarter that became collectible. Oh, God. Well, it's going to be possibly the pebble. Oh, yeah. A couple of watches was actually pretty awesome. Sorry, but I like that. Yeah, I know a lot of people that really like that. Yeah, the guys from The Morning Show, Kyle Roderick, I think he had one.

Kyle and his brother really liked those things. But, yeah, Android, no thanks. Well, I mean, it was kind of nothing. It was really cool for the time of 2013. Look, man, I had a fossil.

I think it was a fossil watch that ran with. It was head of Microsoft OS and got the updates from the radio signals. Remember those? I had one of those, and I thought it was badass. I loved it. I'm like, I get weather on my watch. That's awesome. I don't have to. I don't have to. I don't actually have to open my Razor phone to get my weather now.

Oh, there you go. Yeah. What else you got? Okay, next up is, well, another investment opportunity. No, I actually did buy it, the smart mic. I think it was about two months late. Another Indiegogo, yes. Well, and it's actually available now, too, on Amazon.

Okay. I wind up saving maybe 20 bucks in the end, but I helped fund it. It's pretty damn good. You'll like it. I was cynical about it because when I'm on everything, it's like, okay, well, it's a wireless Bluetooth lavalier mic.

And as you know, if you're trying to do – Is it really a lavalier, though? It's kind of just its own unit. It's just a microphone. It's a clip-on microphone. It is. It's also a receiver, though. So you could take two, and they can receive each other, so there's more to it.

But you clip it on your collar. It fits in the same manner as a lavalier. It's got Qualcomm inside of it. And shockingly – Qualcomm inside, what nobody cares about. It's like, hey, man, does that have Qualcomm? All right. I'm in.

Well, I care a little. When I think of Qualcomm, I think of Eudora back in the old days. When I hear Qualcomm, I think Eudora, which was the best male client of all time. But I don't think of them for anything else. That's true. But then keep in mind that being Qualcomm is slightly less embarrassing than Intel lately.

Doom, doom, doom. Surprisingly, though, I tried it. You know, I'm going to try to do more Instagram video. People are on me. But it sounded great. Oh, cool. And I was shocked. I haven't gone outside.

It does have a little windscreen you put on and things. So I haven't – it's windy as hell here, as you know. So that'll be a true test. Oh, yeah. You're right on the Chesapeake Bay. Mm-hmm. Nice. Okay. Well, I've been actually experimenting with getting my Zoom F1, the lavalier Zoom that I have, to be able to pipe into my iPhone to be able to do recordings through that.

Because a friend of the show, Seth Miranda, who was on, he's always walking around doing Instagram live stuff. And he uses one of the new Go mic packs. And he ties that in. The lavalier on that ties into the Go. And then that ties into his phone.

So he's got all of that. So I finally got all the cables. I got this Rode TRS to TRRS cable last night. I got it all set up. And I looked at it. And I'm like, okay, I got this box. I got 14 fucking cables all daisy-chained together to make this whole thing work.

And then I'm like, you know what? When I was researching this cable, I saw that Rode makes a SmartLav that is just for smartphones. And I'm like, oh, so the SmartLav Plus lavalier microphone for smartphones is what I bought for $55.

And that's what I'm going to go with. Yeah, and they're not bad. And honestly, this one's $139 at Amazon. So it's not a... So I can get three. I can get almost three of the SmartLavs for one of those. True. And you could be wielding a cable like an animal.

Oh, sorry. I'm sorry. But here's the thing. Yours is a brick that you have to clip on your shirt. That's true. Yeah. Well, thank you, Eric, for joining us today. Even though you wrote a book on Flash, I didn't know that.

That might have swayed my decision to have you on. But I thought you performed admirably. So thank you for joining us on Grumpy Old Geeks this week. While Brian is off doing what the fuck ever Brian does when he's in Canada. I think he's at a bouncy house or some trampoline place with his kid.

Who knows? But he will be back on Wednesday. And I'm sure I'm going to get a bucket of crap for this episode. But hey, who cares? I had to do it myself, damn it. First show of the year. And we're glad to be back. It's a longer show, but don't get used to it.

So thank you, Eric, for joining us. It was a pleasure to have you. No, it was awesome coming, seriously. I really appreciate you having me on. Closing shout outs! Well, that's it for this 2020 extravaganza. And a big thank you to Kevin Rose and Eric Hundley for stepping in.

And hopefully Brian will be back on the next episode, unless he's gotten stopped by Canadian Customs for some reason or the tether. But we hope to have the whole gang back in action. So thank you very much. And thanks for letting us take a break over the holidays. We really needed it.

So thanks again to Kevin Rose and Eric Hundley. And of course, as always, Dave Bittner. And I'm Jason DeFilippo. We'll see you next time. And thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, go to gog.show slash donate. Toss us a few bucks a month and we'll love you forever.

Your support really keeps us going and we really appreciate it. Show notes for this episode are at gog.show slash 403. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, donate to the show, and get links to stuff we like. Stay grumpy.

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