407: The Dark Fur

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

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. I know you have a story to lead us in, Jason, but something just happened to me. My hands are actually still shaking at the moment. You may hear a little quiver in my voice. I've been close to dying a couple times in my life. I've been in a couple car accidents, none of them my fault, I'd like to stress.

I was on a plane that was hit not once, not twice, but three times by lightning, which I did find out is actually no big deal. They're designed to take it, but it certainly fucking felt like a big deal at the time. Understandable. Yeah, but this morning was the closest I think I've ever been. You sent me, we normally record very early on Friday, first thing in the morning, and you sent me a message saying that one of your puppies was sick, so we had to push it back a little bit.

So, you know, I went out in the brisk, very cold 45-degree weather this morning, suited up for my bike ride. And as I was, I have to cross a couple streets to get down to the big bike path, right? So I'm stopping at one of the streets and hit the button to cross. Crazy old homeless guy comes along, just wanders out into the street.

All the people miraculously were paying attention and stopped for him, and he weaved and screamed his way across the street safely, and I'm still sitting there with my bike, and I'm waiting, and I'm pressing the button, and I get my walk signal. Now, I'm pretty hypervigilant, so something out of the corner of my eye was bothering me as I stepped out, and I realized that there is a white car, a big white SUV, that is driving much faster than it should be driving, particularly if it's about to stop at a stoplight.

Which it didn't, and I leapt back, and I felt the wind on my face from this car going at least 60 miles an hour, that did not stop for a red light, and almost fucking killed me. And I want you to know, Jason, the last thought in my mind would have been, I wouldn't be here right now if it wasn't for Jason's fucking puppies.

Yeah, well, that's funny. So, what happened with your puppies? Oh, haven't slept, I'm going to, I'll spare you the boring details, but no sleep, and eventually at four in the morning had to go to the emergency animal hospital, x-rays galore, lots of drugs, and the puppy will be fine, fingers crossed, knock on wood, but no sleep.

All right. Well, I hope it was worth it, I almost died. Well, you didn't, so, what's the fucking point? At least that would have been a story, almost dying, shit, that happens every day. Well, I wouldn't have been able to be here to tell it. Well, it would have been on an upcoming episode of Grumpy Old Geeks when I read the police report.

What happened? All right, let's get into our follow-up. We talked about Away Suitcase and the CEO that quit because she was a total bitch on Slack to all of her employees, but then decided to come back because, you know, why not? She apologized and said she'll make it all better. I don't think that that's worked for everybody in the company.

There appears to be some people that aren't too pleased with that. Erin Grau, in particular, the company's vice president, get this, how would you like this on your business card? I just read this. Vice president of people and culture told her bosses on Monday that she planned to quit. Now, this could just be interesting timing, but I don't think so.

People and culture. You can be a VP of anything. You really can these days. The VP of BS. Great. And we talked a little bit before about YouTube's changes to children's videos, and we had talked about, hey, I wonder what's going to happen with all the ads and the creators and everything.

Well, it turns out the numbers are in. And, yeah, the creators are getting hit by as much as 50% cuts in their revenue. Yeah, I didn't see any way that that wouldn't happen, and I do think that's kind of unfortunate because, as I said, having spent the past three years, a lot of the stuff that we found for my son to watch was really good content made by people that basically made their entire living on YouTube.

They didn't have deals with Nickelodeon or Disney or anything like that. They just had a platform, and it was monetized, and they did well with it. And it's sad to see that that revenue stream is going away for them. I don't know what they're going to do or how they're going to rise to the occasion.

You know, what are you supposed to do? They can only buy one Bentley now. That's all. I don't think a lot of these – well, you know, we hear the outlandish, crazy outlier stories like that stupid Ryan. Five million dollars a year on unboxing, you know. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that Blippi, which is one of my kid's favorites, and I actually really enjoyed as well.

I don't think he's rolling around, and he's not taking money baths, and he's definitely not anymore. He took a bath, but not the kind that you're – not the Scrooge McDuck kind. Mm-hmm. So this article that has come out called The Evil List over on Slate has been getting the rounds everywhere.

Like, a lot of people are sharing this and talking about this, and it's definitely worth a read. It's a long read, but worth it. You know, it basically – you know, if you don't want to go back and listen to all 407 of our shows, you can just read this list. Yeah, that's pretty much it. The thing I find really funny about it, of course, is that they're talking about it as if the tech backlash has just started now.

I mean, come on. Yeah, yeah. We would have started the show if there wasn't a tech backlash, and that was six years ago, people. Yeah, well, let's talk about it. It's the 30 most dangerous companies ranked. Yes. So, and it definitely – some of them I haven't heard of, but some of them I have.

Mm-hmm. Like The Grid, I've never heard of. Vigilant Studios. Megvi, haven't heard of them. Airbnb definitely heard of, but let's get down to the top five. Because the top five, I think we talk about an inordinate amount on this show. Yes, number five, of course, being Uber.

Uber, of course. So, of course. And they respond and say – now, this survey was – it's basically a survey of journalists and notable people in tech and all that sort of stuff. Nobody asked me. Nobody asked us, but they don't have to. They can just listen. But one of the quotes from one of the surveys about Uber, it's hard to think of a company that has shown more disdain for governmental authority or for the safety and welfare of its drivers, riders, and employees.

Hear, hear. Sums it up. Yeah. Sums it up. Number four is Palantir. Oh, yes. Peter Thiel. Oh, God. What are you going to do with him? But, yeah, they just – they're just Palantir. That's all you need to say. Number three, though, is Alphabet.

Yes. That was interesting. Don't be evil. Well, I guess you are now. Yes, they are now. So, yes. And number two, Facebook. I'm a little surprised it didn't take number one. They'll have to work harder next year. Exactly. Come on, Zucky. You're slacking. Because number one is Amazon.

Yeah. Well, it's hard to argue with that one. We do all love our Amazon, but we also feel that guilt that we've driven every mom and pop shop out of business. We've driven every bookstore out of business in the country, and now they're getting into everything, like supporting police surveillance. Yeah.

Yeah. All sorts. It takes all kinds. Yeah. So, really good read. I liked it a lot. It was, you know, nothing surprising in this list. Nothing at all. Although, I suppose if there is one thing that's surprising, it's how high Apple was up on the list, making it to number six.

Yeah. So, because we talk a lot about how Apple's fighting the good fight for privacy, but there are a lot of things that are bad about Apple. You know, Cory Doctorow went on and wrote another novel, basically, about it. This survey came out.

So, just a couple choice quotes from it. He titled the article Against the Cult of Apple. He says, I do like that definition.

He's so, he's so writerly, isn't he? He is very writerly now. Yes. I think he still uses a ThinkPad. Yes. But hey, what are you going to do? And he basically is stating that, you know, they're just as bad as everybody else, but they've got this cult of Mac that everybody buys into, and everybody loves their iPhones, so they're getting a pass on all this stuff.

And he's not necessarily wrong. No, he's not wrong. I love my Macs. Sorry, but I do. And hey, man, if you've got to slaughter a few babies to make my 27-inch iMac, so be it. There you go. All right. It's a give and take, man. You know, you don't become the most popular company or the most profitable company in the world by, you know, playing nice.

What do you have to do? Got to break a few Chinese laborers' backs to make those omelets. Exactly. I just wish they would pay more taxes. That would be nice. We were, we've been web developers for a long time. Fortunately, no more. But I found this one. I don't know. Speak for yourself. I had to do some stupid WordPress stuff last week.

Yeah, me too. I still have a few. But I thought this one was pretty cool. Google is going to start phasing out user agent strings in Chrome. Really? Yeah. Those were very useful. Extraordinarily fucking useful. I'm sorry.

They're going to have this, like, browser hinting thing now. It's like, uh, it might be this browser. It might be that browser. But here's the thing. Every browser is different. And every browser has foibles that you always have to code around. You know, especially if you're writing that shit language JavaScript.

It's like, okay, we know that this doesn't work in here. We don't know this doesn't work in here. We got to have style sheets for this browser. Here's my IE stack. So if you're still running IE4 here, have this CSS. Otherwise, die in a fire. But, you know, user agent strings are very, very helpful to web developers.

But I guess they don't care anymore. I used to like coding. If using Internet Explorer display page saying, get new browser. Exactly. If this, then go away. So that's, yeah, it's going to start in mid-March 2020.

Google plans to show warnings in the Chrome console for web pages that read UA strings so developers can adjust their website code. And finally, by mid-September 2020, Google will unify the UA desktop OS string as a common value for desktop browsers.

Goosal, Google, Goosal. I don't know who Goosal is. Google will also unify mobile OS device strings as similarly common value. So I don't know. I don't know how that's going to work out. I'm glad I'm not a developer anymore having to deal with that shit. I was about to say, hopefully you and I will not have to find out.

Oh, my God, no. I pay for code now. You know, that's my new motto. Will you make this for me? No, no, no. I pay for people to do that now. You don't pay me to do that. I am retired. Right. People are like, but you still know how to do it. I'm like, no. Actually, no.

That part of my brain seven years ago just turned off and I deleted it. I'm just like, no, no. Unfortunately, it comes back anytime I open VI in a terminal. Yeah, I was about to say, Jason, you know better than that. You didn't delete it. You just set visibility to zero.

I set visibility to zero. So true. So true. Got me on that one. Yeah. Well, it's another day that ends in Y, so we have another new streaming service, Jason. Oh, Jesus fucking Christ. Who now? I'm going to give NBC credit for branding Peacock.

It's their thing. Not bad. They did a good job with that. They didn't just add a plus to the end of NBC. Like the Smithsonian channel. Smithsonian plus is now a thing. And they called it Smithsonian plus. I'm like, okay, why don't you just call it the Smithsonian channel and I can stream it.

Why does it have to be plus? But anyway, moving on. Peacock. So this is Comcast, basically, because Comcast owns NBC. So the cable and TV giant thinks it can get a leg up on its rivals by trying something different. They are not going to charge. It's free, but ads. So TV streaming.

Okay. So now here's, correct me if I'm wrong. Doesn't Comcast have a huge chunk in Hulu? Or did they sell that off already? I don't know. You know, it's all a mess. Everybody's just writing each other checks and taking, you know, they're all just taking our money and then they're throwing it around at each other like a bunch of kids at a playground.

Yeah. Like a really douchey snowball fight. Yeah. So this, this comes out, it actually came out yesterday on Thursday. They've unveiled it anyways, and it'll roll out in April. So they will host a mix of old TV movies and TV shows, including The Office and some new stuff, including, I guess, we're getting a Battlestar Galactica reboot.

Are you sure it's not the old reboot? The Ronald D. Go Fuck Yourself reboot? No, they're saying this is new stuff. Oh, no. Yeah. Oh, no. That's right. Oh, that's right. We did talk about that on the show. They are doing a BSG reboot and it's not going to be, uh, that's the one that's not part of the universe, right?

Oh, who the fuck knows? I don't think they even know yet, right? Honestly, who cares? That writer's room is just throwing shit at the wall at the moment to figure out something. Uh, they're going to offer other bells and whistles like sneak peeks of Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show. Boy, that would be exciting, wouldn't it? Oh, yeah. Like, oh, my God, I just got all wet for that one.

A new NBC news service. No word on if that will be fake news or real news. And a big dose of the 2020 Olympics, which, of course, makes sense for them to dump that out because that way we will be able to see all the sports. Here's the thing. If they do wall-to-wall coverage of the 2020 Olympics like we used to have as kids, I'm in.

Yep. I so miss the Olympics being on 24-7, not this just rehashed, you know, highlights best of. I want to watch shit in real time. I want to be up at 4 in the morning watching a toe-picked double-axle or whatever the hell the kids do nowadays. Well, hopefully they will do that because that seems to be a big point of this rollout.

So they should have plenty of channels and you should be able to hopefully turn into anything from the Olympics anytime you want. And it'll be for free with ads. Free! Okay. There you go. In other streaming news, Facebook has canceled two original watch series, making me wonder, in related news, if a tree fell in a forest but nobody was there to see it, would it make any sound?

Yeah. What is a watch series? They have their own streaming service, Facebook Watch. It's the little red icon that you can't get rid of anywhere. Oh, I didn't even know. I've been on Facebook for so long, I just don't know. As the article goes along, can you name a single scripted original on the streaming service Facebook Watch?

Me neither, which might be why Facebook appears to be cutting back on them. So they've canceled an original series called Sorry for Your Loss that starred Elizabeth Olsen after two seasons. Starring Mark Zuckerberg because nobody watched it. Watch. And one called Limetown, the podcast-centered mystery starring Jessica Biel.

Okay. Yeah, so, but they will be keeping the popular unscripted programs, popular, so I'd like to see some fucking stats on that. Yeah. Like, I guess Jada Pinkett Smith has a talk show, so, you know, they're keeping the stuff that costs next to nothing. Right. Right.

Because nobody goes to Facebook to watch shows. Nope. That's pretty funny. Uh-huh. And related to that, I ran across an article, just because we've been talking about all this streaming stuff and how annoying it is at the New York Times, called We're Living in a Subscriptions World.

Here's How to Navigate It. Now, dear New York Times, you've been doing a lot of really, really good journalism recently. This is not it. This article probably should have came out at least five years ago, if not earlier. The TLDR on this is, back your stuff up locally, so your local, your important computer backups and phone backups aren't in the cloud, and get a NAS and rip your own shit.

That assumes you still have a bunch of DVDs and CDs sitting around. Who has a player that they can rip it from? One wonders. Yes. One does wonder this. And obviously, this doesn't really help you deal with what's currently happening, one or two shows that you want to see on each service. So really, this is a pretty useless article.

It doesn't solve the problem. It sets out to solve. Okay. Okay. Go buy Synology and keep your old shit on it. Okay, check. I've been doing that for five years now. Now, how does that help you get the one show that you want to watch on the seven different streaming services that you have to subscribe to?

Well, I just go to Sweden and then put that on my NAS. So basically, this is a song for privacy or piracy from the New York Times. I suppose it is. Okay. Have you seen the Never Worn hashtag thing that was going around?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Let me get one of your favorite sayings. Tempest in a teapot. Tempest in a teapot. Yeah. So the hashtag Never Worn started trending on Twitter. And this is why, you know, the Democrats are always going to lose.

Most of the people that were retweeting it were Democrats bitching about it, but that just adds oxygen to the fire. Someone needs to tell these people what we've known for 20 fucking years. Never feed the trolls. But they don't understand that.

They're like, ah, outrage! Oh, my ass is on fire! Outrage! Yeah, and it's all over basically next to nothing. I saw one tweet, and I'm going to have to paraphrase here, but, you know, there was a bit of a beef between Warren and Sanders at the debate.

And it was over what happens in almost every relationship and conversation ever, a misunderstanding. That's all. Bernie said something. Warren interpreted it differently than Bernie meant. Talk it out. Done. Yeah, but it just happened to be on CNN and with the stupid interview chick that did the wrong thing.

But by the way, CNN is fucking culpable on this, by the way, because it was on CNN, but it wasn't mic'd up. They had killed the mics to the live feed. CNN decided 24 hours later to go ahead and release that crystal clear audio. Why?

Oh, interesting. Why? They were done with the debate. They thought they were off mic. They were technically off air. Thanks, CNN. Thanks, CNN. Oh, no. But so this is, you know, of course, prompted thousands of think pieces on the Twitter hashtag and how trending topics needs to go away because it's all algorithm.

It needs to go away. Well, I still like it. Number seven on that evil list. Warm spot in my heart for it. I just wish someone would. I know. You love it. I don't know why. I want Jack to be eaten by a hippopotamus on one of his silent meditation retreats and then we can go back to maybe being normal. But the thing about it is, yeah, so everybody's saying get rid of the hashtag with the, you know, the trending topic and all that because it's all algorithmically generated and there's no people involved with it.

They need real people involved. Well, I've told the story on the show before, but I'm going to tell it again real quick for the people who are just tuning in. I used to work at a company called Technorati and we had a trending topics on Technorati. Well, I was a programmer at Technorati and I ran the homepage.

And one day I said, let's just slap a little Rand slice into the array and just put in impeach Bush because that's how long ago this was. This is when W was in the White House. Turned out that got more news than anything we've probably ever done.

It made the mainstream news. And I'm like, oh, shit. Then I and then what happened after that was it became a trending topic because everybody started talking about it. You should have been fired. I got so many pats on the back. I got so many beers.

And this is why the tech industry sucks. Exactly. There is no such thing as oversight on this stuff. So it's whoever is at the helm. They can do whatever they want. Steer the discussion any way they want.

You know, the thing about trending topics and all of this stuff, it needs to be a three person nuclear key option. Three people who all hate each other. Right. This is important. They all have to hate each other, but still have to agree on things that go into trending because, you know, if they agree, then it must be proper.

But if, you know, everybody's like broing out and going, hey, Warren sucks. Boom. You know, turn it on. Well, there you have a problem. And I don't know. I just that's why I don't believe any of this shit that's happening, because I know how easy it is to game it. I've done it.

Yeah. I didn't get fired. Like you said, I should have been, but I wasn't. You should have been. At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering the brands you love across beauty, fashion, home, and culinary all in one place.

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Security? Ha! We are joined again this week by Dave Bittner. Dave is the host of the Cyber Wire podcast, and he's also the host of the social engineering podcast, Hacking Humans with Joe Kerrigan. And because he doesn't have any life, he's also the co-host of Caveat with Ben Yellen, where they discuss law and policy as well as surveillance and privacy.

Yeah. Busy man. Busy man. I would say the demonstration that I have no life is the fact that I'm here with you fine gentlemen right now. But I'm cheating. I actually want to give you a quick shout out, Dave. I've subscribed to all of your podcasts, so I can barely – I have to do a lot of scrolling to see anything else, obviously.

But when your podcasts do come on, as they just kind of – I let the podcast player play throughout the day on my speakers. And I enjoy your soundtrack choices for all of your shows. They're very soothing. Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. We actually – you know, we take a lot of time and care in choosing the music that goes with our shows.

So I will – I'll share that with the rest of the team here who helps make those choices. Excellent. So, guys, I know that you're nerds and you're sad that Star Wars is over for the main series. But someone has leaked the actual script that was going to be the first movie before The Rise of Skywalker.

And if you guys have a couple hours, you can go back and watch your nerdery on YouTube where a guy breaks it down point by point by point. But are you guys excited to hear what could have been? Much like when you get that little pain in your mouth and you can't stop touching it with your tongue.

I have looked into this online. I was unable to keep myself away from it. You know, okay, a few caveats, of course. This was an early, early stage screenplay and script.

So much probably still would have changed. I will say I like the title, Duel of the Fates, obviously. Well done there. And the story in and of itself does not retcon what exists because we have to accept that that second movie, Never Shall It Be Named, exists and is part of the canon.

So this movie does not retcon it and turns it into – it takes what they were given and made it very Star Wars. This movie is a movie I would have liked to have seen more than the one that we got. Did it have space horses? Are there space horses? Not as far as I can tell.

Again, they hadn't gotten that far yet. So the space horse guy, the guy sitting in the back of the writing room with his pet project, the horse, had not gotten his hands on the script yet. But we got to put in these horses. I drew them. Yeah, it sounds good.

I think it makes more sense than the kind of jam-packed full of plot so much so that it was kind of weird thing that we got. I have not followed up on this, but it reminds me that there is a very early draft of Empire Strikes Back that's floating around.

Have you read that? I remember reading it quite a long time ago. It's pretty fuzzy to me, but I do – yeah, I remember that too. So similarly, it has a lot of the same beats, but a lot of things have different names. And part of what's in that script is a trip to Darth Vader's palace.

Yes. Which kind of – which shows up in Rogue One. It also appears in this script that could have been. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I don't know. I'll probably check it out because it's Star Wars and I check out pretty much everything that's Star Wars.

So when I have a couple hours, inevitably, I will probably check it out with great interest. There you go. I would like to see in the movie. Anyways, we do have some feedback that is appropriate for this section as it touches on things we've talked about here.

The first is from Matthias. Once again, your favorite suite is here to tell you what's what. Listen to when Dave and you guys were dreaming about a digital ID. What do you know? Sweden has one. Of course they do. Of course they do. They've also got health care. Yes. You know, my mother's whole side of the family.

Swedish. Oh, excellent. But first let me tell you about Swish, a collaboration between our five largest banks to make it easier to send each other small amounts of money. But to really make this dead simple, they had to make a digital ID. Hence, they created Bank ID. Yes, with this you can identify yourself on multiple services and the best part for us iPhone users is that Face ID is safe enough to use with your bank ID.

So I want to go to my bank's social security to get money, to be home with my sick kids, book something website on my phone. Not quite sure what that meant there. I add my personal number, kind of like a social security number. I open up the app and it automatically opens the bank ID app for me. It sees my face and boom, I'm in.

That is so crazy convenient that I cannot live without it anymore. Take that, USA. And soon, Canada. And then he says, still waiting for that Linux answer you hinted but never delivered. I don't recall what that is. I can't remember what that was. I don't remember what it was. Send it back in, Matthias. We'll try and ignore it one more time.

This is, I mean, he's living the dream, isn't he? Yes, obviously. This is what we want. This is how we imagine it working. And of course, the Swedes have it. Yes. And I don't know if any of you have seen the Swedish Women's World Cup soccer team, but they've got a lot of things going on for them.

I know their beach volleyball team is pretty easy on the eyes as well. So they like playing with their balls, you know. Yes, they do. Hey, that's my line. Sorry, sorry. I don't know why. Yeah, okay. And one thing I really like about doing this show is like we hypothesize some things that we have no knowledge about, such as the Wi-Fi situation in the military.

And we actually have people that know these things who write in to tell us about it. So I do like this. Joe writes in and says, I believe it was in episode 405 in the Security Ha segment when you guys talked about the military being overseas and not having their cell phones. You made a comment about using their Wi-Fi and blocking IPs.

Well, as a soldier who has spent many years on various bases throughout the Middle East, you will laugh at the Wi-Fi situation in these places. While it is present on most all bases, it is not controlled by the government or military. All the bases I have been on, the Wi-Fi was owned and controlled by contractors.

All your Wi-Fi is belong to, not us. Yes, they have the locals of whatever country we are in come in and set up Wi-Fi hotspots. And in most places, we have to pay for access out of pocket. They do have secure military lines, but they only work if you have a military-issued computer. All those are locked down as well, so they are useless for anything not military-related, which is understandable.

So you cannot look up the Swedish bikini team. As for cell phones, we all had cell phones we purchased off the local economy, so you can be sure those will be doing the same. That's interesting to know. That is the situation. It is. It seems very unsecure. It seems like they are unsecure.

Well, so my initial thought is, if you're one of these soldiers who are over there, for goodness sake, get yourself a VPN. Yep. So that at least what you're doing is encrypted. GOG.show slash VPN. And the cell phone thing is interesting.

I hadn't considered that you could just buy a local cell phone. And I wonder how that clashes with the order that they had to leave their cell phones at home. Does that mean that they're still going around and on the sly buying a local cell phone?

Or is that off limits? I don't know. I don't know. It's interesting, though. Yeah. Well, thank you, Joe. This is insights that I don't think any of us had. So it's very interesting. Yeah, it is. It's just a little terrifying.

I find it shocking that we go into a country, we set up a base, and then we kind of go to that country and say, hey, can we have some Wi-Fi? You guys come set it up for us. Is it possible that the locals here could set up a really easy and convenient way to monitor all of our soldiers? Can we pay you to do that?

Would that be possible? Thanks. Oh, and by the way, the store down the street, we sell cell phones to your soldiers. Just go right there. That's our preferred vendor. Exactly. I suppose that's the way of things. Somebody in the military should go to eero.com slash GOG and get up a secure Wi-Fi system, maybe.

I'm just saying. I don't know if you guys saw this, but on Wednesday, the United States House Oversight and Reform Committee held a hearing on facial recognition technology. Oh, dear, Republican, or sorry, Representative AOC, as she's known, you know me. She basically said that this is some real-life Black Mirror stuff.

And she's not wrong. She's not wrong. No, no, she's not wrong. And I love this. These technologies are almost automating injustices because of the bias for black people to be misidentified using facial recognition. And I love it.

She's spot on. She must listen to the show. Shout out to AOC. Say what you will about her, and many people do. In fact, that's probably 90% of Twitter at this point. You got to give her a hand for branding. Like, can you think of another politician in recent times or ever that just got a nickname and, like, everybody kind of knows?

And she's done a really good job for herself. Also, she's a digital native. Mm-hmm. So, unlike most of her colleagues, she gets this stuff. Yep. She doesn't have to have her emails printed out and shipped to her in paper binders. Right. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Good for her. It's good to see that this is getting some attention. Yes. Yep. Very good. I don't know if anything's going to happen, but it's good. At least they're talking about it. Well, it is our government. Of course, nothing's going to happen. They're a little busy right now. Just a little tiny bit. A little something going on right now?

A little something, something. Now, we have talked about artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the like, and how difficult it is to be removed from these systems, which is why a lot of these companies push back on it, because once you take something out of the data set, the AI has to be retrained on a new data set that just doesn't have you.

And if there are hundreds of millions of people that are in this data set, it's a pain in the ass to redo it just because you don't want to be tracked. Oh, I'm so sorry. It's a pain in the ass for that. I know. It's so sad. It's so sad. I'm so sorry these companies that are getting hundreds of millions of dollars of funding for just having AI in their name.

It's difficult. Yes. Well, come on. Don't forget the actual scientists who have to do the heavy lifting. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, here's the deal. Some researchers have actually gone in and have started to come up with processes to remove you from those data sets without actually having the data set rebuilt.

Well, there you go. This is actually good news because it's one of those things where it's like, this is a problem that is going to be affecting big data for years to come. But some Stanford Stanford researchers have gone through and they've come up with different ways to actually pull out your data that doesn't significantly degrade the actual training set from the AI learning that's already been done.

So this is actually a good thing, I think. I think this is something that they're probably going to become gazillionaires for. But, yeah, I think this is a good step forward that people are thinking about this instead of having to go retrain the whole AI every time somebody goes, I want to be forgotten.

Leave me alone. Yeah, I think I'm going to reach out to these folks, see if I can get them on Research Saturday, find out some of the details about this. It's pretty fascinating. Yeah, definitely. You know what this reminds me of? This reminds me of one of the companies, Dave, that sponsors your show that I was fascinated by before they sponsored your show that keeps everything encrypted with homomorphic encryption.

Oh, in Veil, yeah. Yeah, this seems to me like this is in that realm of really cool stuff. Right, it's that whole high enough level of technology is indistinguishable from magic thing. Absolutely. Yes, yes. Yeah, it's in that zone for sure.

Yeah. Speaking of that, anybody hear anything from Magic Leap recently? Nope. Nope. Sorry, that just came to mind. I haven't heard from them in quite some time. Now, we've also talked about deepfakes on the show and how difficult it is to, you know, algorithmically tell if a deepfake is a deepfake.

Well, a company called SenseTime has actually tasked a bunch of researchers to actually try and figure this out. And they've said they've got the largest corpora of its kind with 60,000 videos containing roughly 17.6 million frames. They called Deep Forensics 1.0, where they got a bunch of people, 100 paid male and female actors of 26 different nationalities.

Look at that for diversity. Wow. Good job. In an age range from 20 to 45. Now, let's hold the brakes on this for a second here. Record scratch sound effect. 20 to 45. I'm thinking that a lot of politicians that are going to be the target of deepfakes are a little bit over 45.

And if that's what they're going for, this seems like a, it seems like they may have missed the mark. Somebody didn't get the memo on what they're trying to do. So they were instructed to turn their heads in nine lighting conditions and speak naturally with over 53 expressions.

And so this is, they're trying. They just put up an emoji chart and say, make all the faces. Okay. Now eggplant. With pleasure. Yes. Can I get a peach up in here?

Okay. I'm stopping that tangent. Thank you, Brian. So it's pretty cool. Excellent. Yeah. Good. Good work. Now get some old people. Well, it appears we have an unlocking phones epidemic going on right now. As much as Apple is saying that their phones can't be unlocked and Apple is refusing to give a master key to the governments of the world.

The governments of the world say, screw you, Apple. We're doing it anyways. So the FBI and our government have been pressing Apple to unlock the iPhones belonging to the man who attacked the naval base in Pensacola. Forbes discovery suggests that the authorities may already have access to tools that can access Apple's newest and most secure devices.

Uh, they, they, they uncovered a search warrant, which shows that the FBI recently used a tool called gray key to grab data from an iPhone 11 pro max. Now this one belonged to bearish Ali coach, who helped his brother convicted of a hate crime escape the country. Uh, the lawyer confirmed to Forbes, the phone was locked and the authorities didn't have access to the passcode.

They also didn't force them to use face ID to open it, but under inventory in the warrant, a handwritten note says a USB drive containing gray key was used on an Apple iPhone 12.5. The iPhone 11 pro max's model code is 12.5 boy.

That's confusing. Shouldn't it be 11 and the serial number written in the warrant confirms the model upon checking. So they don't know what data was pulled using gray key as the warrant only notes that the software was used to perform a, in quotes, forensic analysis. Mm-hmm. Let me guess, built by the Israelis.

I'm just going to throw that out there. I'm guessing, but. Yeah. Isn't this the, I mean, gray keys that we've talked about that box before. Isn't that, that's one of the boxes that they plug into, uh, via the lightning connector. Yep. Um, so what I'm guessing, and this is just a wild guess is that there, the gray key is not actually getting in and decrypting stuff.

The, the gray key is probably effectively brute forcing the password routine and, and getting the phone to not trigger the lockdown in the brute force process. That's my guess. Ah, that one. Okay. Yeah. So I went to their website to try and, to try and see what it was about.

It says, introducing gray key. The state of the art has a new requirement. Have a login sign in here, but underneath it's basically just a form that says gray key is not for everyone. We kindly request that you tell us a bit about yourself and your organization. Isn't it ironic that a company that makes something that gets you in without a passcode wants you to log in.

Exactly. I mean, why bother, right? Once I have gray key, I can hack into this anytime I want. Right. I'm wondering if, I think I'll sign up for this and see if they'll give me a press pass. Well, let me ask you this. So you guys both, do you guys both still have iPhones?

Yes. Yes. I have an iPhone 11 pro. Okay. Fancy. So you're using face ID. Yes, I am. But also you have a passcode. Yes, I do. Six digit passcode. Six digits. Okay. That was my question.

One, two, three, four, five, six. How many digits? How many digits does it take to screw in a light bulb? Yeah. How many does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop? Three. Three. I was just curious how many digits you guys went with.

Because obviously most people go with four. Mm-hmm. But as we know, the longer, the longer, with passwords, length matters. As with many things. Yeah. Back to the emojis. Right.

Okay. That's interesting. Yeah. Yourself? Are you a sixer or a four? Jason. Sweet Jason. Mine is eight. Oh, look at you. Yeah. All right. Brian's just being discreet about this.

I use 24. He's a gentleman. Brian's a gentleman. No one needs to know how long his password is. Hold on. Let me put it out on the table. Okay. So the Scottish have seen the U.S. government and said, hold my beer with this.

Because they are basically taking these boxes and putting them in vans. Yeah. And driving around. The Scottish police have bought a fleet of devices for smartphone data mining. This is pretty crazy. They're getting to roll out a fleet of what they're calling cyber kiosks that will allow them to mine device data for evidence.

They've been designed to help investigations progress faster, as I assume they would. At the moment, devices can be taken from witnesses, victims, and suspects for months at a time, even if they contain no worthwhile evidence. According to Police Scotland, these kiosks will enable officers to quickly scan a device for evidence.

And if relevant information is found, the device will be sent on for further investigation. If not, you can have your phone back and go on your way. Nice. Now, they're not able to save any data. They can only display it to an investigating officer. Famous last words.

The only information they retain is details on how they have been used, by whom, and at what times. This software is also able to segregate data based on types, such as messages or pictures, and data range to help officers find more quickly what they're looking for. This is kind of crazy.

They have the ability to bypass passwords and lock screens, and this will only be done after consultation with the police cybercrime unit. So, yeah, they've basically got these things in vans, and if you're in an area where something happened, they can take your phone and they can crack it and go into it anytime they want.

Well, that doesn't seem fair. I don't know how things work in Scotland when it comes to requiring a warrant, but... Everybody's so drunk anyway, they don't care. I would say, if this were the situation stateside, then I would say get a warrant and then have at it.

But you've got to have a warrant. That does not appear to be the case here, because it appears they can just demand your phone when they want, and now they've got all the software and hardware required to crack your phone. Passwords and lock screens are increasingly becoming absolutely meaningless, except for stopping your spouse from seeing what you're up to, I suppose.

Right, right. You know, we can stop the people that we know from getting into our phones, but we can no longer stalk governments. Yes, the people we know and love. Well, they do say, I mean, Police Scotland says it's consulted a variety of groups and experts before commissioning the technology and has given assurances, of course, given assurances, that it will only examine a digital device where there's a legal basis and where it's necessary, justified, and proportionate to the incident or crime under investigation.

Well, thank God all these organizations are always so trustworthy. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure no one will ever take one of these vans and use it on their girlfriend's phone or anything like that, or just proportionately against certain minorities.

Yeah, this is Scotland stop and frisk, so stop and download. Yep. Yeah, interesting. Well, before we close out today, I just wanted to provide a little insight into my world here, which our listeners, one of the topics that our listeners love to tease me about online, and that is the subject of furries.

And it turns out that we record this show on Fridays, and every Friday when I log into Twitter over on the sidebar where it has hot topics, things, you know, things, trends for you, I guess it's called, up on my sidebar pops up hashtag fursuit Friday.

Now, what do you think happens when you click on fursuit Friday? Oh, hilarity ensues. Unfortunately, I think I'm going to find out now. Oh, yeah. I'm putting one of these in the chat. There we go. Yeah. Now, remember, Dave is an eight, so he needs a larger fursuit than the average man would.

Well, just parts of it. So, I was scrolling through Fursuit Friday, and like much of the internet- Like we do. Yeah, for the past three or four hours. And as you do, as the internet is, most of this is adorable and innocent, and you scroll through, and some of it's actually quite impressive.

You think, wow, these people have amazing furry costumes. There's some of them that have, where the eyes are, they have LCD screens that track the person's eye movements inside the mask. Wow. So, whichever direction they're looking, the LCD eyes also look, and blink, and all these sorts of things.

So, that's pretty cool. But then you're scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. Oh, he's naked on the couch. Oh, we found the dark fur. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Right. Oh, look, it's a pair of adorable people dressed up like dogs.

And now they're- Oh, wait, that's not the position I wanted to see them in. Um, so, yeah, Fursuit Friday, uh, and I, of course, by clicking on the link, I've reinforced the fact that every Friday, forevermore, I'm going to see Fursuit Friday.

But, you know what? I'm kind of okay with that. So, these days, if it's the worst part of my day on Twitter, then, hey, I'm all right. It's kind of, uh, kind of delightful, uh, kind of whimsical. If something disturbing pops up every now and then, well, that's what you get when you sign up for the internet, right?

That's just the internet, yes. Yeah. So, uh, there you go. To all of our listeners who are even more obsessed with me being a furry than me, uh, a little insight there. It's Fursuit Friday and, um, um, waving my, my, my fur flag high.

I, I'm, I'm looking at one now. This, it's a, it's a man in a black horse, uh, outfit laying lovingly on top of a blow-up jet airliner. Where does he do? With, with a, with, and on his bed, he has, like, I can tell it's a tiger comforter with tiger pillows and, yes, it's, uh, I have to say, this is the most entertaining thing I've seen in a long time.

Entirely more pleasant than my normal Twitter feed. Mostly. It really is. It really is. Right? Yeah. I don't know. These people may be, oh, there, oh, there it is. Oh, my. Oh, my. They need to, they need to spin up their own Mastodon instance and call it Twitfur.

Oh, my God. Oh, there, there's a, there's a lot of, uh, the, the Humpty Hump going on on here, isn't there? Wow. Yeah. I. Furries are affectionate people, I think. No doubt.

There's nothing wrong with that. Yeah. I think Jason's weekend has written itself. I think so. Flying Fulf says, finally got my first hump of the decade. Hee hee. Here's part one. See, the thing about all of this is that, to me, as much fun as this looks like it might be, uh, I would just feel like I would get so hot and sweaty inside of these things that that would take all the fun out of it.

I guess maybe that's part of the fun for some people, but. You do live in a cold climate. I do live in a cold climate. That's true. Mm-hmm. Hmm. All right. Well, I guess I can't dismiss it out of hand. Or paw. Or paw. All right, gentlemen.

With that, I will see you guys next week. Cups and doodads. Part of the, uh, Christmas haul for my kid this year was something called the Osmo. Yeah. Specifically the, let's see, what's the name of the exact kit he got here?

The Little Genius Starter Kit, which is from ages three to five. Now, this is a pretty cool use of technology. You basically take your iPad, you, uh, put it on a base system, you throw this little thing on top that basically redirects the camera down and they're like little play mats and things like that.

So you, it's an interactive learning system slash game system slash whatever. And, uh, I've got to say, I'm, you know, my wife is still a little conscious about screen time and she counts this as screen time. Other than that, this thing is really cool. My kid loves it.

He's definitely learning stuff with it. I'm pretty impressed. Uh, this is another one of those things where I go, where the hell was this when I was a kid? I watched the video on this when you put it in here. Cause first I thought you meant the DJI Osmo mobile three, which I have, which is fantastic. And I can talk about that in a second. But, uh, I watched the video and I was like, I wish I'd had that as a kid.

That's pretty damn cool. It is. It isn't stunningly well done. If you've got a kid and, uh, you, you got an extra iPad sitting around because you don't want to have them use yours because let me tell you, they get addicted to this stuff and they like to play it. Um, you might lose your iPad. Uh, it is awesome. It's, he's really kind of picking up his spelling and things of that nature at the moment.

And, uh, it's, it's, it's not annoying. I, I, I don't mind sitting there and playing it with him. It's actually kind of fun. Uh, well done. Well done. Osmo. And the other side is, uh, you can use it with an Amazon fire tablet, which costs like 30 bucks. So yeah, you can do that instead of giving up your, you know, several hundred dollar iPad.

Good point. Good point. Yeah. Fire tablets are disposable literally. So he's using my super, super, super old iPad mini. And, uh, this, the software is, uh, basically fine enough to run on really old systems. So that's, that's a plus two. Oh, very cool.

Yeah. But yeah, yeah. You got me thinking about the DJI Osmo mobile three and I pulled it out of the, pulled it out of storage yesterday. So I'm like, oh, I wonder if this works with my new iPhone 11 pro and sure does. So now I've got, uh, I got a new toy to play with it. Cause I got to tell you, man, the cameras on that phone are just unbelievable.

I love that thing. Yeah. I won't know. I'll be taking your old eight plus. Well, I don't know. You better hurry up. Damn it. Hurry up. Well, I told you I want it. It's just, I'm not going to see you until we go to the podcast festival. Well, you can PayPal me now to, to lock it in.

I'm good for the money, Jason. You almost got hit by a truck. I don't fucking know. I'm short of death. I need to give you a zero fuck coin cause I'm getting annoyed at you right now. So this is the other thing I found for apps and doodads. And this is genius. As much as we used to love to shit on Kickstarter, we even had a segment called Kickstarter by balls.

This is the perfect use for Kickstarter. I like this guy, Justin Heister or Heister thought it'd be hilarious to actually physically give his friends zero fucks. The Orlando, Florida based entrepreneur decided the best way to do that would be just to have some coins printed up. Fittingly, he called them zero fucks coins and the people of Kickstarter started backing him.

He's raised $81,000 after saying the goal of $4,000. And these are a lot of fun. We should make our own branded version of these. I think they'd be quite popular. It's so funny because I wanted to do challenge coins because those were a big thing for a while. And I'm like, I did some research. I'm like, yeah, we can spend like, you know, maybe a grand and get a couple hundred challenge coins made up.

But these are way better. These are way better. Great idea, Justin. Well done. Yeah. It says zero fucks on one side. The other side has somebody flipping the bird and it says, spin on this. United States of no fucks.

I like the other one where it's a coin that has fuck yeah on one side and fuck no on the other. Yeah. Use that. They should use that at every sporting event. Pick sides. Fuck yeah. Yep. And you can get a one fuck coin. So you can have one fuck given. These are so good.

Take those to the bar. Oh, man. I know what I'm doing with my disposable income. Oh, wait. I don't have any. But yeah, it's pretty good. Well, you got 200 bucks coming your way at some point over at Tidbits. I found an interesting article called the few remaining uses of the word Macintosh Apple and yeah, yeah.

Apple Macintosh. So I was like, they don't really call them that anymore. They're Macs. Yep. You know, it's just a Mac because some people don't even remember that, you know, they're called Macintoshes because we're old. But yeah, it's very few.

You know, when you get a new computer, you do have the Macintosh HD listed as your new drive and they're like a few little tiny places. One's on the back of the box. So it doesn't, I don't know if that really counts. Right. And another one's in the, the about finder. And otherwise it's like, it's kind of been purged.

Sad. No, not really. Why not? Come on. It's history. Again, going back to the evil thing. You are so in the cult of Mac. It's unbelievable. I grew up with them. What are you going to do, man? It's, it's Stockholm syndrome. I also grew up with VHS. I don't fucking miss that. I do.

Well, actually at this point I do because of anything physical that I actually have control over. Yeah. Oh God. Yeah. I got to get the static out. Fix the tracking. Fix the tracking. Taking the pen to rewind the tape. Yeah.

Yeah. Click, click, click, click, click, click. God damn it. The nudie scene's always worn out. Yeah. Somebody always, you know, taping over your favorite show. Pause. Yes. Pause is good. And of course, blinking 12 over and over and over again.

You can tell if you were in a nerd's house because you could actually see the time on the VCR. That's right. They actually knew how to program it. Yeah. This one I put in here for you because you said you're going to be working from home again for a little while before you move up to Candonadia. And it's called how to work from home and actually get stuff done.

This is over at life savvy.com. Right. And so most of the article can be filed under no shit Sherlock. But there was one thing that stuck out to me that I've been trying to explain to people for years and fucking de-Ferris them. It's called do some work before breakfast.

I always do work before breakfast. Yes, I do too. Because if I don't do work before breakfast, what do I do when I have breakfast? I scarf my food because I'm worried about the work that I have to do. So I get some emails done. I get everything. I figure out what the plan is for the day. Then I go back and have breakfast and I enjoy it.

I play a little Clash Royale, kill some people and are usually just get killed. Talk to the clan members. Shout out to Clash Royale boys. And yeah, that's about it. So I really, I really think that's the most important tip. The rest of them are good tips. They're very good tips.

But, um, and I followed basically all of them when I, when I worked from home and I will again, uh, my thing with the work before breakfast thing is, as you know, I used to, I used to just be, be able to say I would go through my email, but there are so many venues, uh, and avenues for conversation work-wise now these days, I just say communication messages here.

You got to check your Slack. You got to check Facebook, you got to check your Twitter, you got to check your Instagram. Cause shit comes in from everywhere these days. So my thing is always checking all the communications first, always do that before breakfast because that way, you know, what's coming for your day. You know, if there are some things that are redlined that you have to take care of right away and you just kind of know what's going to happen.

So clear all that out first. You don't think about it, have your breakfast, move on with your day. Yeah. That whole never check email before breakfast thing. It's a load of shit. No, it's a load of shit. It really is. And my phone is, my phone is literally next to my bed. I'm one of those people. Cause I listened to podcasts all night long. There's always some noise in my room so I can sleep, you know, to drown out the voices in my head.

And every now and again, when I roll over and I, I'm like, I got to change the thing. I'm like, Oh, let's, let's see if anybody sent me anything. And I'm like, Nope. Great. Sleep better. I will sleep better. Once I know I do all notifications go off at 9 PM in my house. Oh, there's no notifications. I just like hit the, I hit, but I won't even check.

I couldn't get back to sleep if there was an important email. Oh, Brian, I'm codependent and I need people to care about me. So if there's nobody caring about me, then I get sad. I'm so good to start texting you at like 10 PM at night now. Okay. Well, turn about's fair play.

So three in the morning, you can expect some, some rebuttal. That's fine. I have my notifications off. Okay. All right. So I saw this one over at business insider and I just thought it was interesting. As they say, the Egyptian pyramids may align with an ancient North star. NASA scientists found that the star undergoes never before seen eclipses.

This is pretty cool. Astronomers have long understood that a star called Thubin, which may have served as the North star for the ancient Egyptians is actually a pair of stars. They recently discovered that the two stars eclipse one another. So about 4,700 years ago, when the Egyptians were building the earliest pyramids, or as some of you believe, the flat earthers met up with some aliens and they all put that together.

Thubin was likely the axis around which all the other stars appeared to spin at night. And some researchers believe that the pyramids were built to point directly toward them for that reason. So pretty cool. Today, the North star is, of course, Polaris, a brighter star to Thubin's right because of the way the tilt of the earth's axis has changed over time.

Pretty cool. Nifty. Science. Science. Closing shout outs. Shout out to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2020 inductees, Depeche Mode, the Doobie Brothers, Whitney Houston, Nine Inch Nails, The Notorious B.I.G., and T-Rex.

It's nice to see two bands that I really love in there after the cure last year. T-Rex and Biggie? I actually really like T-Rex. You did? Yeah. Oh, okay. I'm a T-Rex fan, but I was talking, of course, Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails. Well done. Yeah. It seems like Nine Inch Nails is too young to be in there. 25 years is the rule.

We're just old, Jason. I know. That's what makes me sad. Yes. It does make me sad. All the bands of my youth are eligible to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame now. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. No Beavers. Beavers. No Beavers. No Beavers given. No Beabe zone.

So I got some shout-outs. Chris Lockhead, who had me back on his show for, I think, the fourth time. I listened. You might as well just join the show at this point. Yeah. How was it? I haven't heard it, and I don't remember it. You know, it's good. You covered the same stuff we cover, so it's kind of like listening to the show with Lockhead instead of me.

Okay. Just in case when you do get hit by the truck. Yeah. There you go. And a shout-out to my friend Dan Nitro-Clark. We actually did an episode together called The Gladiator and the Geek this week, so check that out at calmthebeast.com. Which one's the gladiator? Well, you know, you pick.

Okay. You pick. Granted, I can't deadlift 300 pounds. He can, so I'm guessing he's the gladiator. Okay. And it's a fun show. I talk about some of the stuff that I went through over the holidays and, you know, some depression stuff and how to get out of it.

And so there's some actual tips and tricks in there on how to get through the holidays and not how to get through the holidays. Let's just say that. Including yourself. Including yourself. Yes. And shout-out to Zane Lamprey. I got to hang out with him on Wednesday, which was fun. I haven't seen Zane in years.

And he's as funny as ever. He's as funny as ever. New show coming out soon. Oh, there you go. Drinking show? Yes. I can't really say anything about it because it's embargoed. You can tell me off the air. I'll tell you off the air. And next time, I'll have a link in the show notes for it.

Because I do think, I don't know if I got cut, but I think I make an appearance in it. So, at least I hope I do for the trouble that I went through. I'll tell the story when it comes out. That's pretty good. Until next time, I'm Brian Schillmeister. And I'm Jason DeFillippo.

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 407. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, donate to the show, and get links to stuff we like.

And if you're listening to us on the Overcast player, click that little star. We're moving back up, people. We're moving back up. Stay grumpy. Mr. Cow. How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop? I don't know. I always end up biting.

Ask Mr. Fox, for he's much cleverer than I. Mr. Fox, how many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop? Why don't you ask Mr. Turtle, for he's been around a lot longer than I. Me? I bite. Mr. Turtle, how many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?

I never made it without biting. Ask Mr. Owl, for he is the wisest of us all. Mr. Owl, how many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop? Mr. Owl, how many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Pop?

Mr. Owl, how many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop? Mr. Owl, how many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Pop? Mr. Owl, how many licks do it take to get to the Tootsie Pop?

Mr. Owl, how many licks do it take to get to the Tootsie Pop? Mr. Owl, how many licks do it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop? Mr. Owl, how many licks do it take to get to the Tootsie Pop? Mr. Owl, how many licks do it take to get to the Tootsie Pop? Mr. Owl, how many licks do it take to get to the Tootsie Pop? Mr. Owl, how many licks do it take to get to the Tootsie Pop? Mr. Owl, how many licks do it take to get to get to the Tootsie Pop? Mr. Owl, how many licks do it take to get to the Tootsie Pop?