409: Furby Trumpskin

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 Brian Schulmeister. Gong hai, fat choy, Jason. Happy Chinese New Year. Gesundheit. That too. Oh man, so I'm looking at the notes here and it seems like our follow-up section is all just media candy follow-up. Yeah, well, you know, there's a lot of stuff that we watched in the last couple days and a lot of things that came out.

So, and a lot of news about stuff that we like. Yeah, so let's get to it. What do you got first? All right, first up, Avenue 5, the new HBO show starring House in Space. House in Space. Yeah, Hugh Laurie. House with a lot of hair in space. He normally doesn't have.

Yeah, so we got Hugh Laurie in this. We got Josh Gad. We've got Zach Woods from Silicon Valley. And I actually kind of know Susie Nakamura, so I wanted to really like this show. Okay, so you didn't like it.

What did you think? I don't know. I liked it. I liked it. It's hard to tell from one episode. I thought a lot of the jokes fell flat. They certainly swung for the fences. I think maybe they got a base hit at best. How drunk were you when you watched it? Not.

See, that's the problem. Oh, well, I think it's a bad sign if you have to be drunk to watch something. Well, it's a comedy. I don't know. I was tanked and I watched it and I loved it. I thought it was funny. I'm not done with it. I'm going to keep watching to see what happens. And I think this is definitely, I guess I can get to this. Well, no, I'll get to this now.

Because a lot of those things that we're about to talk about in our intro slash media candy segment, these are shows that are not dropped in batches. We got to wait. And I like that. Okay. Yeah. So, yeah. And, you know, comedy is, it's different for everybody because I watched the Joe Coy special that you recommended last week and I made it 10 minutes in. I'm like, this is the dumbest thing I've ever seen and turned it off and gave it a thumbs down.

So, that's how comedy works. I like the show. I mean, yeah, some of the jokes did fall flat. Some of it was a little over the top. But, you know, for a pilot, basically is what that is. I thought it was decent. It was okay. It was okay. Yeah. So, I'll keep watching it.

If you want to bow out, I'll let you know. Because, you know, this is a new series and it doesn't have Brian's rule of threes. So. I know. I know. But, you know, I'm getting older. I'm bending my rules a bit more. And, also, you know, it's only 25 minutes.

It is short, which is nice. Yeah. It's super short. So, it's worth it for that. Anyway, I finished Lost in Space Season 2. What'd you think? Absolutely loved it. Liked it a lot more than the first season, even. I'm with you on that. I liked it a lot more than the first season. It's getting better as it goes along, which is shocking.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I thought it all came together at the end and I thought I had one more episode and I was just like, wait, this feels like a finale. Damn it! I didn't get in finale mode. You know how, like, when you're watching the last episode, you have to, like, get in the mode that this is going to be the last one of the season and you want to pay attention to everything?

Yes. Yeah. Didn't do that. But, like, halfway through, I noticed. That's part of the problem with, you know, getting the full dump and being able to binge. You slide into that last episode not ready. I know. It should tell you, like, you know, one to go, two to go. Like, it'd give you some kind of countdown.

If only they had a listing of all the episodes. I know, but when you're binging, you can't go back. You don't want to go back and look at the episodes and count. Who wants to count? So. You know, one thing that I wish they didn't do, I wish they didn't put the synopsis right up there with the list of episodes because I feel like I'm always getting spoilers when I'm looking to see how many episodes I have left.

Hate that shit. Hate it. And my roommate loves to read them. So I'm like, why would you read something that's going to tell you what's going to happen in the show? Why not just watch the fucking show? Right. Please. Let's just watch the show. Anyway. Well, we also got news that another series that I broke my rule of three for is coming back for their second season.

Altered Carbon is returning to Netflix on February 27th. Very excited about that. There will be a new lead, but that doesn't matter because, you know, everybody is just a sleeve cover. Very clever device to get rid of troublesome cast members. I know. I wouldn't know when I saw this. I'm like, yes. And then I read it and I'm like, no, because I really like Joel Kinnaman.

I think he's a great actor. Yeah. And I loved him in The Killing. That's the first thing I ever saw him in. And ever since in his career has been like on super straight up trajectory. But I really liked him in this show. I'm going to miss him. Well, at least it's coming back. I'm happy about that. Yeah. If you haven't seen The Killing, check it out. It's an awesome series.

All right. I wish we'd think about that. Sex Education. Well, here's the thing. It's like four seasons and it's already over. So it fits your rule. You can watch the first couple and see if you're into it or not. It does. Sex Education is also back on Netflix. I watched the first episode. And going back to your comedy is subjective thing. You probably will never watch the show, but I found it absolutely fucking hilarious.

I watched the first half of the first episode last night before I fell asleep because I was pooped. It's good. It's good. I'm going to keep watching it. And Gillian Anderson is like super hot in this. Oh, you will enjoy the show. She gets her moments. Excellent. Excellent. And let's talk about the big thing that we've all been waiting over a year and a half for Star Trek Picard. The first episode dropped and I dropped my wallet into CBS's coffers.

Mine too. And this isn't a year and a half in the waiting. We've been waiting for this since the last episode of Next Gen. Well, beyond an official announcement I'm talking about. Yeah. Like we finally knew it was coming. What did you think? All the feels. I had all the feels. I mean, there's not one feel that I didn't feel for the entire hour. I want to go back and watch it again for sure.

I liked absolutely everything about it. I really did. I liked the fact that it's kind of dark. I liked the fact that John Luke or Patrick Stewart really leaned into his age and his aging with the show. You know, Picard is not a young man. Not that he was in Next Generation. But he's definitely not a young man in Picard and he plays him as an old man. So it was amazing.

And the funny thing is because I've actually finally now paid for CBS All Access. I took a quick look around. There's absolutely nothing else besides the Star Trek stuff on CBS that I am slightly interested in. So I will be canceling as soon as Picard is over. Reapplying when the next season comes along.

But because I have easy access now, I went and watched an episode of Star Trek Discovery. I picked up from where I left off. Holy shit buckets! Somebody stop the presses! Stop the presses! I decided to pick up from where I left off and I watched an episode after Picard. That was probably a bad idea because Star Trek Picard is Star Trek. Star Trek Discovery is a sci-fi shoot-em-up show.

It does not have the feels that Picard gives you. No, it's a completely different beast. Are you on season one or season two? Season two. Oh, you actually made it to season two. Okay. You never know with you. No, I dropped off somewhere like three episodes into season two is kind of when life got too hectic and I just stopped going to Sweden to get it.

So yeah, it's not bad. It's just not Picard. No, it's not. It gets better as the season goes to it. I like this. I like season two a hell of a lot more than season one. So stick with it. It's it's it's it's a good watch. I highly recommend it, which is why I've been saying it for a fucking year and a half to go watch it.

Well, I did. So shut up and we've got Picard. So shut up. The other thing I also watched on CBS is they have a couple of these Star Trek shorts. They're actually pretty good. Do they have the Will Wheaton one? What's called the Ready Room? Or is that? No, I don't think that one's live yet or it's YouTube only or something.

Okay, I want to dig that one up because basically he's doing, you know, the talking Borg. Shut up, Wesley. Hardwick. Yeah, that's what they should have called it. Seriously, I want to check that out. So hopefully by the next episode, we'll we'll have that in the can. But yeah, I did. You don't want to pick up on the Big Bang Theory on CBS All Access.

I know how much you love that show. You know, I find young Sheldon to be far funnier. You actually watch that? No, I'm fucking kidding. In the news. Well, in addition to Chinese New Year, the Saturday, which is when this episode comes out on Sunday is the Grammy Awards.

The Recording Academy's annual event honoring the music industry or something like that. Or something like that. I used to care about such things when I was in the biz. Then I stopped caring even before I got out of the business. And now that I'm not really in the business, I really don't care anymore. What is more interesting to me is the fantastic drama that is currently going on.

We had the former CEO, Neil Portnow, who stepped down after some not very bright comments he made a year and a half ago. We got a new CEO, which was a woman, because there is a lot of issues with that in the recording industry. And he was part of the problem.

She's been placed on administrative leave now because she is she is she has come out swinging. She's made a lot of comments about things that have been going on. And the Recording Academy was not happy about that. So she got placed on administrative leave and she has now filed a charge of discrimination with the Los Angeles Office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, alleging that she was pushed out as retaliation for raising complaints about sexual harassment and cracking down on a culture of corruption and self-dealing.

Some of the complaints specify, of course, and this is where we get into the sad. But, you know, here we go. We've got me, too. We've got our music industry. Harvey Weinstein, the former CEO, Neil Portnow, has been accused of raping an unnamed female artist after a concert at Carnegie Hall.

And there she is basically stating that the Grammys are completely rigged. That part, that's the one thing that doesn't surprise me out of the whole thing. Yeah, I mean, it doesn't really surprise me either. It's just a different thing being, you know, we all kind of we all kind of know wrestling is fake versus Hulk Hogan coming out and saying, yes, wrestling is fake.

That's kind of where we're at right now with the with the music industry and the Recording Academy. And boy, oh, boy, right before music's biggest night. Gram-me-too. I, hey, that's a good one. I like that. So, yeah, I will actually be watching the Grammys this year because I want to see what is mentioned.

I'm expecting quite, well, I'm hoping for quite a number of the female artists that win their awards to come up and at least mention this and give us some thoughts. So we'll see what happens. Lots of pontification probably going on this episode of the Grammys. Do they actually have a host for the Grammys or is it like the Oscars where it's just like throw things at the wall and see what sticks?

I don't know, actually. I don't know. I think is it Alicia Keys that may be hosting it again? She did it once. I don't know. We'll see what happens. I haven't watched the Grammys in 20 years. I haven't watched the Grammys sober in 20 years. Oh, man.

Well, speaking of people who are probably not sober very often, YouTube moderators are being forced to sign a statement acknowledging the job can give them PTSD. That's right. Somewhere in that statement that they're signing is the you can't sue us. We have to go to arbitration.

Arbitration. Yes. I understand the content I will be reviewing may be disturbing, reads the document. Oh, yes, of course. It is possible that reviewing such content may impact my mental health and it could even lead to post-traumatic stress disorder. I will take full advantage of the We Care program and seek additional mental health services if needed.

I will tell my supervisor or my HR people advisor if I believe that the work is negatively affecting my mental health. Well, it will. I'll tell you right now it will. And especially for what you're getting paid. Right. It's not worth the money. Yeah. Go be a barista. If you need the money that bad, just go sling some beans, sling some Java because it's not a good job.

It's not a good job. It's not a good job. And I don't know about you, Owen. I worked in the porn industry for quite some time and every job that I ever had had a clause in it that says I may see disturbing material as part of my daily duty for years.

I started working in the porn industry in 99 and I did see so much disturbing material. Some of it by choice. No, most of this not. The company I worked for, we had fatgirls.com and transsexuals.com and a slew of other really random fetish and niche sites.

And yeah, if it's not your cup of tea, then it's definitely not your cup of tea. But it's a job. So I took it and it paid well. So I could afford, I could afford my shrink after that. Right. Well, I've got a story that continues with the theme of it's one thing to kind of assume this is going on.

And it's another thing to have it just printed in black and white for you. Also, the ongoing theme of our show, which is statistics are complete and utter bullshit. Yep. Yep. So Netflix has changed how it counts viewing popularity to pump up its shows. Netflix final earnings results for 2019 are out and obviously they're facing more competition than ever.

So their stats aren't quite where they want them to be. So what do you do? You change the way you do stats to make them look better. And that's exactly what they did. So they're explaining their new method for measuring statistics. The new phrasing it's using is called choosing to watch. And as such, 76 million households click play and let The Witcher stream for more than a couple of minutes in the first four weeks since it was released.

Yes, the results have to be graded on curves because that is what's going on. They used to basically have, I think, they believe that reporting households viewing a title based on 70% of a single episode of a series or entire film, which is what they have been doing, doesn't make sense for them anymore because their numbers are down.

So what they're doing now is if you watch at least two minutes of a show long enough to indicate the choice was intentional, they say, not say you went to the bathroom or you went to go heat up a pizza. Yeah, it came back and something started rolling. So, yeah, that's it.

We didn't have good numbers. We've changed the way we do our numbers. Now our numbers look better. And you know what? I watched about two and a half minutes of The Witcher, which is probably why they. Well, you chose to watch the show, according to Netflix.

I know. And I chose to stop watching the show and I chose to give it a thumbs down. Yeah, my not my cup. I'm just over that kind of genre. So it's funny, though, that that was the show that they used to benchmark it because I'm sure they spent a fortune on that show.

Oh, yeah, they definitely did. I mean, it looks pretty good. A lot of people I know really like it. So at some point I'll give it a shot. But I'm just kind of, you know, from our intro segment, I'm buried in media right now. Buried in media. Yes. So let's talk a little bit about Uber. I just loved, loved this article and it will spoil it all by putting it in the title.

But the title is just so good. OK, but have you just tried making them employees? Yeah. So Uber is doing everything in its power here to fight the implication of California's new independent contractor law, AB5, which basically said, hey, you got to make them employees.

You can't just consider them contractors because they're working full time for you. So Uber has made it a high priority to start adding all these features to its app, which is only for users in California because they want to specifically undermine the case that the company is anyway controlling the course of work for its drivers.

So they're throwing a lot of money and a lot of program programmers at their platform to modify it specifically for California so they can get around this lawsuit. So what's the latest piece of misdirection they're doing? As the Wall Street Journal reported today, a small subset of drivers performing a small subset of rides in three small cities in California will get an obtuse bidding system for fares, which one assumes is meant to show that the drivers are able to set their own prices, which is an important element of contract work.

So they are setting the base price as well as the minimum and maximum fare. They will decide who gets more rides based on how little they're willing to work for, and they will apply this system to only trips originating at airports in Santa Barbara, Palm Springs, or Sacramento, which is supposed to prove to the courts that Uber is totally, totally cool with this whole thing, and look, they're contractors.

Oh, my God. So, yes, this is part of, you know, it's basically just going to mean that this lawsuit goes on forever and ever. It's something Uber can point to and say, this is why your wages look like they do, because of AB5, you'd be fine if we didn't have this stupid thing. Let's go back to the way it was before.

Yeah, it's just a long con to get gig workers to fight against their own best interests. Yeah, that's really it. Yeah, it really is. And at the end of the day, according to one estimate, if Uber were to treat its drivers as employees, it would cost them in the ballpark of $500 million annually. So, with all the work that Uber is piling on to its developers to get out of this jam, not to mention, let's be honest about it, the more expensive part, their lawyers.

And the lobbying. Wouldn't it just be cheaper and easier to make them employees? Yeah. Well, I mean, this is just for California, though, right? That $500 million? I'd assume so, yes. Yeah, yeah. So, that's what they're trying to avoid.

Once it happens in one place, then everybody else is going to say, well, we want to be employees, too. And then the shit really hits the fan. Well, it's just forestalling the inevitable. The shit will hit the fan with Uber because they are not a profitable company. No, they're not.

They're not. And I don't know if you've noticed this because when I go to LAX, I can take an Uber there, no problem, right? Get one easy, drop me off, have a nice day. Getting from the airport, completely different story. Do not get me started.

I went through the shit show that is the LAX renovation to make things easier. You think it's hard as a single male, Jason. I had my family with my three-year-old. The fucking buses that they get you on to bus you over to the area where the taxis and all the ride-sharing things are.

There's no seatbelts. There's no safety. There's no nothing. People, it's like goddamn Lord of the Flies getting on these buses because they're small. Nobody waits in a line. Everybody just jams in, throws their luggage around. There's no luggage racks. How do you get a bus to take somebody from the airport to where they get in their cab and you don't have fucking luggage racks?

Well, I have a hack for you for that, Brian. You can do Uber, what's it called? The super expensive one. My wife looked at me and said, we're doing that. Uber Black can come pick you up. Again, if you have a rule, why do you let people, if you pay more, you can break the rule.

Brian, here's the way around it. You grab the first bus that goes to the next hotel. You hop on. They've got luggage racks. They don't have seatbelts, but they do have luggage racks. And then you go to the first hotel, you get off, you call an Uber. That's how you do it. Or what I chose to do is I go down to the taxi aisle, the taxi stand at the bottom, where there are a hundred taxis that nobody is going to because everybody is stuck trying to get to their Uber because they think it's going to be better.

And you just take a taxi home after you wait a minute and a half. Yeah. This is what I tried to play by the rules. I did. I will play by the rules. The rules fucking suck. Well, silly rabbit. Nobody plays by the rules. Yes, I know.

Uber Black it is. Yes, it is. Or you can get a bird. Strap your kid to the handlebars and just bird it home. That would have been safer than the damn bus was. I'll tell you that. Okay. Well, Google is in the news again. Google's latest user hostile design change makes ads and search results look identical.

No, they don't look identical. One says ad next to it, so it's not identical. One has a favicon next to it, and those are the ones that you can click on without having to charge somebody for an ad. But the deal here is that, yeah, they're calling it their latest dark pattern.

I'm like, it's not a dark pattern. They're just not showing that it's a big ad anymore because Google needs more money. Because what they found out was, oh, if it's an ad, people don't trust it anymore, and they want to have their native natural search results, the organic results.

Yes. Well, here's the deal. Last time I checked, you don't pay for Google. They can do whatever the fuck they want, so shut up and learn to look for the ad if you don't want to click on it. The outrage over this just irks me to no end. Because it's a fucking company.

They're going to do what they're going to do, you know? I just don't get it. It's like, oh, we want you to tell us. We want you to hold our hand and say, this is an advertisement. Well, they do. You just have to be a little more eagle-eyed to figure it out. And half the time, what I'm looking for is the ad.

You know, I go out of my way when I'm searching for something. What it usually is is there's an ad for company A. Right underneath it is the organic result for company A. So I will click on the organic result so they don't get my money for something that is already there. That's one thing that they should do is if the ad and the organic result are in the same page, just show the organic result and don't show the fucking ad.

That part I find skeezy. Yeah, but then Google wouldn't be able to dip their beaks in. That's true. That's true. That's why they wouldn't do that because that would not make sense for them. Look, I agree with you. I find this – I looked at the results myself.

It says ad. It's right there. It's just not as obvious as it was before. But put on your fucking thinking caps, people. I think we really do need to start teaching classes about – for the kids and for the older peoples and for the people that haven't been on the internet as much as we have over the years.

It's just common sense. Look, of course they're trying to get – they're trying to make their money. Don't send money to the person that says that they have a million dollars that they'll release to you if you send them $500. Of course that's not going to happen.

Of course every post the Kardashians make are ads for something. Of course they are. You just have to be aware of these things and you should be. We need internet savvy classes. Speaking of the Kardashians and postings on Instagram and all that, remember when there was a big brouhaha about how they were doing ads and they had to push hashtag ad in their posts and all that?

Yeah, yeah. I don't think anybody does that anymore. And you know why? Because there's no internet police. Who's going to – It is what it is. Yeah, no, according to the FTC, you have to specifically state something as an ad. And I do see it sometimes. Like Tony Hawk will do that when he's doing an ad.

But yeah, a lot of these people still don't do that because what's going to happen? Nothing. Yeah, nothing's going to happen. And speaking of nothing happening, Amazon Ring sales have nearly tripled in December despite all the hacking and issues that they're having and always being in the news for negative press.

No such thing as bad press, Brian. Just ask Mark Zuckerberg. This is true. This is true. After Cambridge Analytica, the stock price went up and more people signed up than before. That's right. And Ring's online sales in the U.S. grew by 180% in December compared with the year earlier, according to new data from JumpShot, which is a data analytics firm that tracks URL data from samples of tens of millions of people.

They suggest that reports of Ring hacks in early December, which led to consumer groups issuing product warnings and prompted at least two class action lawsuits, have not hurt sales at all. So there you go. Yeah. It's the way of the world, man. Yep. At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out.

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Security? Ha! We're joined again this week, as usual, by our good friend Dave Bittner. Dave is the host of the Cyber Wire podcast. Dave is also the host of the social engineering podcast, Hacking Humans, with Joe Kerrigan, as well as co-host of Caveat with Ben Yellen, where they discuss law and policy as well as surveillance and privacy.

It's been a week since we talked, Dave. Have you added any new shows to your repertoire? No, not yet. I'm working on it. Where's that Star Wars podcast? I know. You know, we're trying to get our schedules together for that one. Okay. For grumpy old droids?

Yeah. Yeah. I like that. Yeah. I thought we'd go with space horses just to annoy you, Jason. Oh, okay. Perfect. Perfect. So I got a quick story here that just cracked me the hell up. I'm talking to my brother on the phone the other night. And we're talking for like two hours.

And we mentioned Picard on the call. And as soon as we get off the call, he's like, they're listening to me. I've got Picard ads everywhere. And I'm like, let me explain to you the Bader-Meinhof effect. Because I guarantee if you opened a web browser in the past week, you've been getting ads for Picard whether you like it or not.

You cannot turn a corner without ads for Picard. And the BDS is all in on advertising for Picard. Yeah. They're everywhere. And I'm just like, I'm like, this is the Bader-Meinhof effect in action. They're not listening to you, dude. They're definitely not listening to you. I did find a massive, massive bug in the iPhone 11, though.

He's got an iPhone 11. I've got an iPhone 11 Pro. I'm using AirPods to talk to him. And every five minutes, it would cut out. He couldn't hear me anymore. So I'd have to hang up and call him back. And we did this for over two hours, which was annoying.

I don't know. That feels like every cell phone call I ever make to anyone. Well, the sound is fine. I could still hear him. He just couldn't hear me. So I'm like, okay, let me test this out. I unpaired my AirPods 2s, which I was talking to him on at first. And I paired a set of old AirPods, the ones that last about 15 minutes now.

Same problem. Five minutes in, nothing. And then I just got rid of the AirPods and held the phone like a savage. And it worked the rest of the night. So there is a major flaw in the iPhone 11 or 11 Pro that I have that just cuts out your AirPods.

I can still hear just fine. But you can't. The microphone stops working on old AirPods and new AirPods. Really weird. Yeah, I wonder if, hmm, it's interesting. I wonder if you tried a different phone.

I mean, in other words, is it that model phone or is it your particular phone? Yeah, I don't know. I've only got one iPhone 11 Pro because they're really expensive. I don't keep two of them around. I mean, you know. Come on, for science, Jason, for science. For science. Okay, patreon.com slash gog or gog.show slash donate, please.

Please send us your phones. As with all things Apple, I mean, I'd imagine if you Google this, if anybody else is experiencing it, it's all over their forums because, you know, that's where people go. I'd rather bitch about it on the show and have somebody else tell me what to do.

Oh, yes. Take the lazy man's route. I see what I've seen. The lazy web. The lazy pod. I have noticed that my original set of AirPods are becoming shorter and shorter with their battery life. Yes. Yes. I think I'm at the tail end. Makes me sad.

Well, I just bought the AirPod 2s because my AirPods were the same way. The wireless charging case is really nice on the 2s. Basically, they're exactly the same. They just have better battery now. So, you didn't get the fancy ones with the noise canceling and all that?

No, I didn't get the Pros. I just stuck with the regulars. Gotcha. They were on sale one day for like $159 with the charging case. So, I'm like, eh, that's good enough. It is infuriating that at the price point, they're built to fail after about a year. Mm-hmm. Mine lasted two. Right. Mine lasted two.

But still, yeah, it's really annoying. Really annoying. Yeah. But there are no Echo Pods, I tell you. Oh, my God. The Echo Pods work fine, except they're massive. They're really hard to fit in your ear. And when you listen to music on them, the audio quality is god-awful for music.

Well, that's a deal-breaker for me. Yeah, that's what I mean. That's why I just, I haven't, as soon as I listen to Spotify with them, I put them back in the drawer. It's like, no, I can't, I can't do that. So, I got a little Facebook thing here that I put in the notes, and there's a screen grab that you guys can see.

Yeah. And I'm going to call this section, what the unholy fuck? So. You're so eloquent, Jason. I know. I know. I'm using my words, Dave. I'm using my words. Oh, very good. Your big boy words. You should have heard the original title of this podcast, tech shit. So, I have two-factor authentication turned on for Facebook.

Good boy. Now, I have multiple devices, and that was something that I needed to do. I needed to log in on a different machine, and I couldn't log in because I needed to get my two-factor working. And now that I don't have the phone, my old phone that had the app all set up with it, it wouldn't, I couldn't get the activation code, and they weren't texting it to me like they said they were.

But, so I was having a hard time getting in. I had to go to another machine that was already logged in and then change my two-factor settings. And by the way, they don't ask for your password when you change your two-factor settings once you're already logged in. Bug. But this is an email I got, and it said, hi, Jason. We noticed you're having trouble logging into your account.

If you need help, click the button below, and we'll log you in. This was an open email that was sent to me by Facebook, completely bypassing my two-factor auth, and just doing a straight email. Wait, did you actually try it? Did it log you in? It did.

It fucking did. I was hoping and almost going to give them the benefit of the doubt that it would just take you to a page where you'd still have to use your 2FA. Nope, nothing. It logged me directly into my account and gave me access to my two-factor auth, which I then changed.

So that means all I have to do is basically get somebody's email account, and I can take over their Facebook account. Huh. I just try a couple times with the wrong password, and it will send me this email to log me back in. Is that not a glaring hole or what?

Well, so let's walk through this together. So how is this different than the situation when you've lost your password or you can't remember your password, and they email you a link to reset your password? Is it the same thing? There's usually a security question involved with that.

So you'd still have to know the answer to the security question. This just logged me right in. I didn't have to do anything else. Yeah. It just seems to me like this is just sloppy as hell. I agree.

Yep. I agree. Yeah. But you're not on Facebook anymore, so you don't care. No, by the way, quick, quick update. Yeah. It's going very well. I'm not really missing it. I feel as though there are some things I'm missing out on, but that's okay.

My skin is cleaner. My hair is glossier. My teeth. Right. Exactly. Right. Yeah, exactly. I just – I have more bounce in my step. The weight of the world is not crushing my spirit nearly as much as it was before when I was on Facebook every day.

Just the regular world is crushing your spirit. You don't have to augment it. Yeah, exactly. So, so far, so good. I'm hanging in there, and I don't really feel the pull back to it very much. Great. Do you find yourself more active on Twitter, or are you just staying the same?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, Twitter though. So you just replaced your heroin with morphine. Yeah, exactly. No, there's definitely a lateral move that happened there. But I have always considered my Twitter account to be more of a professional account, and I considered my Facebook account to be more personal.

More furry, yes. Yes. So there is much – I do not do as much sharing on Twitter as I did on Facebook in terms of personal things. Yeah, that's how I treat them as well. Twitter is very much for – I can't really call what we do professional, but you know what I mean.

The things we do to pay the bills. Yes. Yeah. It's still so funny that everybody is like, Twitter is such a cesspool. It's a horrible place. Listen, my Twitter account is like one of my favorite places to be because I have it curated to within an inch of its life, and I have mute filters for everything.

Right. If only Facebook would do that, then it could be – you could improve it so much, but they do not have meaningful content filtering. Yeah, yeah. I've said it on the show before. If you added mute filters to Facebook, it would be a completely different beast. Well, give us a true timeline and add mute filters.

Yeah. Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Please. Chronological only. But whatever. I'm still – I'm still – I'm okay on Facebook. I just – I log in every three days, and there's like 20 messages, and I have to tell all 20 people. I'm like, don't message me on Facebook.

Yeah, yeah. I never said that was an option. So let's get to some actual news here. Okay. Glenn Greenwald has been charged with cybercrimes in Brazil. Oh, the irony. Oh, the irony. So – Glenn Greenwald, of course, famous for being the person who Edward Snowden made use of to release his documents.

Yeah. Glenn Greenwald – Glenn Greenwald. That's a tongue twister. And Laura Poitras were the two people that he went to. And, yeah, the interesting thing here is that I found this over on Tech Dirt, and it said the similarities between the U.S.'s case against Julian Assange – geez, I can't speak – and Brazil's against Glenn Greenwald are uncanny.

And it's kind of interesting how the two kind of coincide, saying that Glenn Greenwald actually directed the hackers on what to do to get the information on the current president and some of his judges in the Ministry of Justice. Yeah. I mean, that is slightly stepping over the journalistic line, is it not?

But, I mean, he's kind of moved on from just being a journalist at this point. Well, no. I mean – Well, I mean, he is – I mean, he owns the Intercept, and the Intercept of Brazil. He's a founder in that. But he did state that, like, I would never do that. I know very well from working with Edward Snowden that that's the one thing I can't do, and I would never do that.

So he's sticking to his guns on it, and it seems like a lot of people in Brazil are saying, yeah, this case is just – it's bullshit and it's flimsy and should have been given – it shouldn't have happened in the first place. Yeah, that's generally been our take on it, that it's a reach.

It's a political reach from the Brazilian government more so than Assange's. But these things are messy, right? They're messy. Yeah, you poke the bear. Bear pokes back sometimes. Yep.

Well, I saw this story, and I thought it was really interesting. We know that Jeff Bezos had his mobile phone hacked back in 2018. But now they're saying that this was done by the Saudi crown prince. They were having a friendly WhatsApp conversation, and then the Saudi prince basically sent an encrypted message to him that basically opened up the phone, and the intrusion was possible that way, probably triggered by an infected video file sent from the account of the Saudi heir to Jeff Bezos.

And that's how they got in, and their large amounts of data were exfiltrated from his phone within hours, according to a person familiar with the matter. And, you know, we don't really know what happened after that. Well, we know a divorce happened after that. Right. A lot of money was lost by – Penis gate.

So that kind of came out of it, and it's not really clear why the prince may have done this. But it's kind of strange to have it play out at this level, right? Like, wow. Yeah. Yeah. There's plenty of intrigue to go around here.

I mean, obviously, Bezos also owns the Washington Post. Yes. Which is where Jamal Khashoggi did a lot of work. Yes. Who was, you know, killed by the Saudis, or so we've come to believe.

Yeah. So there are people questioning if that – if it's related to that at all. One of the best things I saw on Twitter this week was when the Saudi – the Saudi – one Saudi organization said something along the lines of, we really need to investigate this and get down to the bottom of it.

And then somebody tweeted back, shame you killed the journalist. That would have been great at it. Zing! Oh, yeah. That was good. That is good. That is good. Yeah. So I guess – there's other stories I've heard that they were blackmailing him with some of the stuff they got off of the phone, which had to do with the affair he was having that led to the divorce.

Because Saudi Arabia doesn't have enough money. Yeah. Well, that slightly goes against the story that has been painted so far of Jeff Bezos being the stand-up guy saying, you know, I'm not going to be blackmailed. Put it out there. I don't care. Right. Right.

So, yeah. Yeah, but speculation as to whether the Saudi prince's phone was hacked and that's how they got through – A double hack? Well, no, the prince wasn't aware that he had been hacked and it was used to spread among the people that he knew.

I can't believe the Saudi prince forwarded that email from a prince of Nigeria. I really just can't believe it. Hey, Jeff, you need some extra money? Check this out. Yeah. Yeah. Click here for free Amazon Prime. Oh, God.

Yeah, it's interesting. It's interesting. I just – I love the fact that Gavin DeBecker is the man on the case for this because he's no joke. When you need something done, go to Gavin. Yeah, he's for real. I met him a while back. He briefly dated Alanis Morissette when I was working with Alanis, so I got to talk to him a couple times.

He is the real deal. That is so weird. I know. It was a very weird time in my life. Very odd coupling. There's nobody involved, it seems. Yeah. Yeah. I think Gavin lives in Bali, so it's a strange place.

He's living there with Russell Simmons and Tony Robbins. Oh, man. There's a strange crew in that neighborhood, I'm telling you. So I – this came across Reuters, which I thought was very interesting. Apple dropped plans for encrypting backups after FBI complained. Dash sources.

Okay. Dash sources. I've heard two sides of this. Apple is saying that, no, it had nothing to do with any pressure from the FBI, but the FBI – there's some ex-FBI employees and ex-Apple employees saying, no, no, it was pretty much the FBI.

They didn't want to poke the bear on this one either, and we're just going to leave the iCloud backups unencrypted so we can have some introspection for law enforcement. Do you guys back up your phone to the iCloud cloud? No. Well, I do not, but a point of clarification, your iCloud backups are encrypted, but Apple has a key.

Yes. Okay. Yeah. So as things stand now, it's encrypted, but Apple can get in, and Apple has been very cooperative with law enforcement. When law enforcement comes, Apple will turn over your iCloud backup. Right. So this was heading towards them changing that so that they did not have a key.

And like you said, Jason, one of the stories that Apple is saying that is plausible is that so many people come to Apple and say, I need access to my iCloud backup and I've lost the key, that Apple is seeing this as a customer service thing.

So there would be lots of people disappointed if they could not get access to all of their precious family photos and all those kinds of things. Which is very plausible. All of those kinds of things. Very plausible. Yeah. Yeah. Very plausible. So, yeah, it's interesting. Part of this story that I think it's underreported is this, is that how much, is how much Apple does turn over the iCloud backups to law enforcement when requested.

Yeah, and I think that's a sticking point for Apple, too, is that they get pissed off when the government comes after them saying, you guys are, you know, blocking everything. They're like, dude, we give you shit all the time. Quit complaining in public and we're not going to fight you as much. But no, you know, the government keeps saying, we need this, we need the master key.

And Apple's like, we give you as much stuff as we possibly can. There comes a point where we have to treat our customers like they're our customers and treat their privacy as sacrosanct. Well, Apple's in a real sticky position there with that, aren't they? Because they don't want the PR of being seen as giving things over all the time.

But obviously, they have to if there are things of subpoenas and whatnot. Yeah. So, the reason I don't do it is because it's expensive. Yeah. That's the same reason I don't do it. It takes forever. It does. If it were, I don't know, just a couple bucks a month or something for unlimited storage, because I want to say my iPhone is 64 gigs.

Yeah, I think so. But, you know, it starts at like five bucks a month for five gigs or something. I'm like, what? That doesn't mean no good. Yeah. I was paying 99 cents a month forever just because I had photos up there and it just crossed the boundary. So, I just had to up it to $2.99 a month.

And honestly, it should be when you buy that phone, you should get backups to the size of your phone. If I'm spending the money for a 512 gig phone, which is, you know, I should have backups on iCloud for the space for my phone. Yeah.

That's the idea that they're hitting you on a subscription model for the phone that you purchase anyways to realistically use it in the way that they intend and push you to do is ridiculous. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. I agree. Even if they're charged, I don't have so much of a problem with them charging for it, although I think it would be great if they didn't, if it were just something that, yeah, you spend all.

Drop all this money on an iPhone, which is a premium device. And one of the benefits is if you want it to, it'll be backed up all the time. But even if they wanted to charge me a couple bucks a month for that, I would probably go for that. But this nickel and diming is just, you know, silly.

Yeah. It's definitely silly. So, I do local encrypted backups. I do the same. Yeah. I do the same. Me too. Brian? Yes. Local encrypted. Yep. Okay. So, I just Googled what the actual costs are.

And it's 99 cents for 50 gigabytes. For 200 gigabytes, it's 299. And for two terabytes, it's 999. This is the popcorn model of the movie theater. And so, I just spend 999. I get all of it.

I get the big Coke and the big popcorn, you know. Free refills. Yeah. And it's funny. 2 terabytes is actually cheaper than the Google stuff that I was talking about earlier in the show. Because for 999, I get 1 terabyte on Google. And 2 terabytes is 1999. And then, of course, the next tier, you know, 99.99 for 10 terabytes.

But I only want 2.5. Nope. You're going to pay $99 a month. Jerks. Yeah. So, yeah. Well, that's actually more everywhere. Yeah. But those Apple prices are more reasonable than I was imagining them in my mind for some reason. I guess it's been a long time since I looked into it.

But at the same time, why? When you're dropping $1,000 for a phone. Yeah. And also, why not have that first tier, the whatever it is, 299 a month. Instead of being 50 gigs, make it 64 gig. Make it align with the products that you're selling.

Right. Right. Yeah. Ugh, boy. No, it's really obnoxious. It's really obnoxious. But, yeah. So, I'm paying 299 now for the 200 gig plan for just the photos that I have for iCloud. But the nice thing is now, I can probably kill that because Google Photos just backups automatically for my phone.

As soon as I take a picture, it just uploads it to Google Photos, which I'm already paying for. So, I might even kill that 299. Right. I do the same with Google Photos. Yeah. Which is probably the most irreplaceable thing on my phone or the thing I want to save. I want to be careful about it.

The photos, yeah. I guess it's precious to me. Yeah. And I have to say, Dave, that you were so spot on with the search over time. It's uncanny. It's uncanny. I was telling my brother about this and I made him a gallery of just him because I tagged him at like age 20 and it has him going back to like kindergarten.

Yeah. And it just automatically did it. So, I sent him the gallery and he's like, holy shit, that's creepy. Yeah. It's really creepy. I'm like, I'm taking the stance that that is really cool technology. I like it. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty soon it will be bringing up pictures of your ultrasound. Yeah.

I do have a picture of him as a baby in the delivery room when he was born, me holding him. So, I want to tag that one and see how it goes from there. But he just came out and he still looked like a lizard. Yeah. From zygote to the grave.

That's right. Their new tagline. So, I got another article in here from Fast Company. It's a long read, but it's really interesting. It's called Inside the $10 Million Cyber Lab Trying to Break Apple's iPhone, going along with the iPhone theme. And it is interesting that they do talk about that iOS 8 was really when things went sideways for law enforcement.

And they used to just put detectives on a plane with a phone. They'd send them to Cupertino and they'd come back with the phone and the thumb drive and life was good. Not so much anymore. So, is that when the Secure Enclave came along, I guess? Yeah. Yeah. That's when everything was encrypted. Right.

So, that's really, I think it was 2014, 2014, 2015, when it all went sideways for law enforcement. So, they built this massive room that signals can't get into. There's no RF going in or out because they don't want somebody trying to wipe their phone remotely.

So, they have to protect the phones from any kind of signal coming in. It's pretty interesting. You know, and I'm just like, yeah, well, burden of proof is on you. So, you got to figure it out. And it's just, it is an interesting story to see the other side of the coin, you know?

So, it's well worth the read. It is definitely, it's even labeled in the article, long read. Good. Yeah. I do like long reads. Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. Well, I found this story and I just thought it was funny and on topic in a number of ways, given the things that we talk about in this section.

But you guys remember Furbies, maybe in a particular day. Are you kidding me? Oh, my gosh. That's a bit of a thing for you. Yeah. We were, uh, when Furbies came out, yeah, I was, I had my video company and we had several Furbies all over the office talking to each other all frickin' day long.

Yeah, so they were these little animal looking things that were very popular around 1999, 2000. Um, they were called Furbies and they talked and the commercials advertised them as learning English over time. So, the people in charge at the NSA once believed that they contained an internal recording device and they feared the toys would spill secrets into their cutesy voices.

So, according to a 1999 BBC News article, anyone who came across a Furby on NSA premises was instructed to contact their staff security office for guidance. They were banned as a threat to national security. Um, you'd think somebody might have opened them up and taken a look before banning them because that actually wasn't the case.

The Furbies came pre-programmed with words in English and Furbish and couldn't actually record or play back anything as Tiger Electronics president Roger Schiffman ended up issuing a statement assuring the intelligence agency that Furby is not a spy. So, a little much ado about nothing there, but very funny and interesting that, uh, you know, this has been going on for quite some time.

People have been worried about the recording devices. Yeah, they do have microphones so they could respond. I mean, they can, they can sense sound, but they can't record anything. Have you ever seen any of the videos on YouTube of naked Furbies where they've taken the fur off of them and it's just, you just see the mechanics of them?

Disturbing. Absolutely disturbing. I have not, but why am I not surprised? You have. Well. What are you doing to that Teddy Ruxpin? Right, exactly. I was, I was doing a search for naked fur or something and naked Furbies came up and then off, off we went.

Um, but, uh, back when Furbies were hot, there was some articles about how, actually how cleverly designed they are. It's, it's very funny. I just did a Google search for naked Furbies and it said, did you mean naked furries? My Twitter feed is still not recovered from last week, by the way.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah. But the, the, the, one of the really cool things about Furbies is there's a single motor in there and there's this complicated series of gears and cogs that, uh, enable the Furby to do all the different things that it can do and to have it move its eyes and its ears and its mouth separately.

It's, it's, it's a very clever bit of engineering, especially for back when it came out. Right. So, uh, and to be able to manufacture it so cheaply. Very cool. Yeah, they were fun. I bet I still have one in a box somewhere. Yeah. Well, you know, there's newer ones now too.

They have, um, their eyes are little LCD screens so they can look around more and they can move their eyes around intently. Oh, man. Oh. Yeah. Don't tell Glenn Greenwald. He might deploy some of these. We should just start, start dropping them in, uh, in the parking lot over at NSA.

Just leave them on people's cars. Could I have to leave that one to you? You're the closest. I am. I can practically see the place from here. Yeah. Fly over with a drone and start dropping Furbies on, into the NSA campus.

That won't attract attention. Oh, man. I wonder if you can wrap it in, like, a Donald Trump skin. Donald Trump skin? Yeah. It sounds like a, uh, terrible. That's the worst nursery rhyme ever. Yeah. I was going to say. Oh, man.

Somebody's going to say, shut up. You're talking politics again, guys. Yeah. I was just saying. Guilty as charged. I was just thinking. Donald Trump skin. Somebody needs to make the book. Oh, my God.

On the upside, we have a show title. We're going to, yeah. We're going to weave some, uh, weave some thread out of this hair. Well, on that note, gentlemen, I shall take my leave and, uh, I will see you guys next time.

Of naked furries and Trump skins. Ups and doodads. So, Brian, in the quest to find video games to play at night, because I still am a 15-year-old boy at heart. Yes. Uh, my friend Jordan Harbinger and I, we tried Borderlands 3.

Miserable game. When we were done after, like, you know, an hour or two-hour session, we both had headaches and we had zero fun. We're like, we're, no, no, we're not going to play this game anymore. That sounds like me playing any game. Yeah. But, uh, for us, it's all about the fun.

If you're not having fun, then there's no point in doing it, even if you paid for it. So, we dumped it and moved to Gears 5, which a lot of people and, uh, friends of the show and fans of the show have recommended. And we fucking love it. It is awesome. We can play for three hours and it feels like five minutes. It's great. Which is a sign of a good game.

So, uh, thanks to everybody who recommended Gears 5. Uh, we love it. And, uh, we're, I think, a little over a third of the way through already. So, good stuff. Excellent. And, uh, I actually, we signed up, we both signed up for the, uh, the unlimited gamer package on Xbox.

So, you get, like, a hundred games. It's a subscription. Yes, it is a subscription. But, uh, do the math on it. I paid $60 for Borderlands 3. It cost, and, uh, it cost me like $100 for the all-you-can-eat games. So, if you're, if you're playing a lot of games, man, that thing really does come in handy.

There's a lot of games on there. I know, Brian, you are bored out of your mind now. I'm going to take a walk and probably on a bike ride. But, it's still fun. Um, uh, Google Photos update. All right. I've been, I've been uploading for, I can't, what is it, like two, three weeks now? At least two weeks.

Probably three. Yeah, probably three. I am almost at a terabyte of photos on Google Photos. All right. The search is incredible, I have to say. Like, if I type in my brother's name, there are, there are photos that show up that have, like, half of his face and a reflection and a picture on the wall, and it still shows up.

Yeah, but that's almost not useful. You don't want that. Well, no, I mean, actually, it's pretty good because then I know he was there. It's, it actually comes in handy. I mean, then you can create a gallery from a search term and then, you know, call the gallery as you need to. Right. But here's, here's the thing that's pissing me off now.

I'm at almost a terabyte of uploaded data. So, the packages that you can do with Google Drive is you can get one terabyte a month, or one terabyte for $9.99 a month. Two terabytes, $19.99 a month. The next upgrade that you can go from two terabytes is 10 terabytes, which is $100 a month.

Somewhere in there needs to be a, I don't know, a middle ground. Can I get five? Can I get five, anybody? You should be able to buy, buy terabyte, of course. Yeah, exactly. But, yeah, that's not on the pricing plan. And I haven't seen what the overages are for if you go over two terabytes.

But I think I'm going to be safe at the two terabyte range. But I'm telling you, no data caps for uploading. Fuck, yeah. Use it while you can. That's right. That's what I'm doing. That is exactly what I'm doing. Spectrum Internet in LA. Oh, yeah, you're my fan. Or I'm a fan.

You're my faves. And we're actually recording this show right now using Vivaldi. I have switched over. There are almost no problems with this browser except for one. And that is every now and again on one password, it won't autofill.

And that's annoying. Yes. But you can just copy and paste it in. And then you can save the credentials in the browser, which are encrypted and tied to your name. You can actually set your own encryption password in here, which is nice. So it can be separate from your login to Vivaldi Net, which is what you use to sync your browsers from multiple computers.

So that's nice as well. So if somebody does get your login credentials, they can't actually go back and find all your passwords. That's good. Yeah, it's a good thing. It's fast. It's really lightweight on the memory. It doesn't spin up like brave. So far, I'm going to keep going with it.

But I've transferred this to all my computers now. And even on the air, it works great. So fingers crossed. All right. I'm going to give you another week. Let me know after another week and then I'll make the switch. Yeah, I will. I'll let you know. Because, yeah, the opera thing has me really scared now with the fact that they're just doing predatory lending to keep the lights on.

That's not good. That doesn't have me scared. That just means I can't support this company. Yeah, it's not a good company to support. And, you know, just the fact that everybody packs on us for it. China. Your browser's from China. Yeah.

Hey, it's Chinese New Year. Support. Represent. But you do have to remember that Vivaldi was made by the original team that made Opera. So that gives it some good cred. But, yeah, so far so good.

And it's better than Chrome, which is just about every other browser out there. Right. All right. Well, one of the reasons I don't want to switch this week and I'm thinking about switching next week is I can only hand one tech debacle a week. Okay. After I forgot to put this in the show notes, but I'll just talk about it really quickly.

After last week when Dr. David Teeter decided he needed some support, some inspiration for his workouts and exercise and all that. And he requested me on the activity app for my watch so we could, you know, see what each other are doing and all that. And then you decided, okay, well, I'll get on board too.

And you sent me a request that never, ever appeared. And then I tried to send you a request that never, ever appeared. Yeah. And then David, Dr. Teeter's stuff was not updating in my app. He was just showing zeros. And I know he was doing more than zero.

Are you going to get a check on him? Did you do a welfare check to make sure he's not dead? I did. I did. I was like, you haven't been laying in bed for the last three days, have you? No. Okay. All right. So something is wrong with my watch. I fondly remember the day when Mac stuff just worked properly. It never broke, but those days are long gone.

They are just like PCs. See, here's the thing. I think we make that up in our head. I don't think there was ever a time when Mac stuff just always worked, especially when you go back to System 8, System 9, and things like that. You had to reboot that thing five times a day, and it would crash all the time. And OS X, there was a small window when OS X did kind of work.

It was like 10.5, 10.6. I can't remember where. But yeah, we give too much credit to Apple for things just quote unquote working because my memories are it never worked. That is part of the cult of Mac, though, the general belief that Mac stuff just works and PC stuff doesn't.

So I went on a day-long odyssey yesterday to try to get my watch to work, and I had to find use of your time. Just, yes, a total waste of my time, except for the fact that I get to talk about it here. You know, I googled all the stuff, and I followed all the basic steps.

Sign out of your iCloud. Sign back in. What a pain in the butt that was. Kill a chicken. Yeah, yeah, and kill a chicken, wave it over your head. Eventually, what I had to do was unpair and repair my watch. Oh, man. That broke down three times while trying to do it, and it took three hours.

Did you remember to turn off Bluetooth, the trick? I did. I did. That sped things up a little bit, but it was definitely, there were a bunch of hitches. There were a bunch of mistakes in having to restart the whole process a couple times. At the end of the day, but after it finally repaired and everything, and I had to redownload the steps app, it didn't copy over that as part of the backup that I had.

Don't know why. No idea why. But I had to do all that, and eventually everything got back to normal. You guys are both now my friends on the activity thing. I had next to zero steps yesterday because, you know, I wasn't wearing my watch at all yesterday while I was, because it was constantly updating.

But today, I'm going to kick your asses. That's what it comes down to. Oh, you probably are. I did, geez, when I did 10 miles the other day, because I was just talking to my brother on the phone, which I'll talk about in, well, I've already talked about insecurity since we're in absent dude ads. But, yeah, yesterday, after walking 10 miles, I didn't feel like getting out of bed.

I was like, oh, man. So you're probably going to kick my ass today because I'm on the air all day long. Maybe I'll jump up and down a lot. Yo, you know what? Yoga! I'll just turn on a seven- Just turn on the yoga feature. I'll turn on a seven-hour yoga session and just kick everybody's ass.

That'll be it. That is true. So the other day, I had to return something to Amazon, and one of the, depending on, you know, where you order it from or who it's from or what it is, you know, sometimes you can just drop it off at FedEx. Sometimes you can't. If you want it to be free, sometimes you have to take it to one of their drop-off locations, and Amazon has a bookstore, I put that in quotes, relatively nearby to me, and that's one of the places I could go drop something off for free.

I call it a bookstore in quotes because only half the store is books. The rest of the half is, of course, their electronics and all their crap. And as I was returning my item, I looked over and I saw that there was a whole new series of shows out again, and they look great. I have the five. I think they're on the seven now or something like that.

And I'm like, wow, man, shareholder value. You guys just roll these things out all the time. And a lot of companies are doing this. Most of the time, it's no big deal, but you are a Sonos fan, and you've had Sonos for quite some time.

I have five Play 1s in my house, yes. Yeah, yep. They are basically saying all the old devices are now obsolete. That's it. Some of the old, not all, but some, yes. Yeah, well, so we've had Under Armour pulling the smart plug on some of its fitness devices it used to sell.

And the other day, Sonos announced its decision to put the legacy tag on a slew of older devices. So anything like a Play 5, you have a Play 1, a bridge or zone player lying around. The company is telling you that it won't get any more updates ever, and it could hold back your entire new setup, new devices included, from receiving future updates.

Yeah, if you've got one old one and a whole new setup, if you update that old one, it could brick your whole regular setup. Sean Bonner had a massive Twitter rant about this that I saw. And I'm like, I was on his side. I'm on his side, man. That's bullshit. That's total bullshit. Yeah, it is bullshit.

But they're doing it. So they're saying that they're going to try to work on a way to segment older hardware and avoid the situation. But there's not a lot of shareholder value in them doing that. So we'll see what happens. Yeah, it's a fucking speaker. What the hell do they need to keep updating? I don't get it.

It's a smart speaker, Jason. If you just had a speaker, there would never be an update. It's just a speaker. Yeah. God. I miss my old JBLs, I got to tell you. Yeah. I mean, I use this. Mine is basically on a loop playing Pandora all day.

I've got a Pandora station that we play in the house that has been running for four years at this point. And I'm sure Jeff Stott, the musician, loves us because he gets so much money from us because it is on all day long and half of the songs are his.

But yeah. Pennies from heaven, Jason. He's getting pennies from heaven. He is getting pennies from heaven. That's right. Or pennies from Woodland Hills. That's what he's getting. Yeah. I would be super pissed if I had this happen. But I guess the thing is, though, I probably don't need updates on it, but I would be really upset if I had one old speaker that I really liked.

Because I think Sean's complaint was the Play 5, some of the features on it are going to get turned off, which is being able to plug in your phone and play through that. Right. And, you know, that seems like a, I don't know, a feature. Yeah. That's kind of one of the reasons you'd buy something like that.

Yeah. And I'm thinking, man, I wish I'd have had one of those because the Play 1s don't do that. You have to do it all over the app. And I'm like, ah, it'd be great to be able to plug in a phone for like when people come over and you have a party. But no. So, yeah, I'm on everybody's side here that's going against Sonos on this.

For sure. They need to figure this out and make it right. Agreed. But they probably won't. So I saw this story. It's kind of an older one, but it's very funny. I enjoy this. I don't know if you've got a CVS near you, Jason, or have much experience with it.

Oh, yes, I do. Lots of experience. It's basically where you just go to get medicine, grocery items, toiletries, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, it's a drugstore. Yeah, it's a drugstore. Everybody knows them because they have comically long receipts, like ridiculously long receipts.

Insanely long receipts. What's the longest one you got? At least four feet. I've gotten a six and a half footer. Wow. I got a six and a half footer. We were cracking up so hard, me and the checkout lady. It just kept going and going and going. And I held it up and it was taller than me.

And we just fucking lost it. It was so funny. It's insane. And people have been making fun of it for a long time, like in 2018, when Twitter user went viral because he uses CVS receipts as a replacement window blind. Well, another customer blew his receipt up and turned it into a Halloween costume, which is kind of funny.

But I love this idea. One artist, an industrious artist named Catherine Hughes, is using those never ending paper receipts as inspiration for a line of handmade scarves, which you can find on Etsy for $20. They measure 58 inches long by 10 inches wide. It'd look just like the real thing. It's still shorter than my actual longest receipt.

Yeah, it's so good. I totally want to get one of these. I think it'd be hilarious. That's too funny. And another funny one. I don't know how old the article is, but the story is old. When a man took a joke in a Pepsi ad seriously, chaos ensued. Okay. Now, I don't know if you remember this old ad, but it was back in the day when Pepsi had points in the cap and you could redeem them for stuff.

There was one where they had a Harrier jet for 7 million Pepsi points. All right. Well, this guy did the math on it and said, well, you can buy points. So he basically got a Pepsi. He's got 15 points from the cap itself, which is what you have to do to get your starter points.

Right. Then he did the math and he's like, well, a Harrier jet costs about $20 million. But if I buy the Pepsi points, it's only going to cost me $700,000. Wow. So he went to his lawyer, had them craft a check for the points and tried to get the Harrier.

Nice. And Pepsi's like, dude, it was a joke. It was a joke. He ended up going to court over this thing. Right. And you have to finish. Go read the article. I'm not going to spoil it here, but it's crazy. And it's very funny.

Well, I love the guy for doing this. He should have stopped at the going to court point because this is why we can't have nice things. Yeah, it really is. It really is. Like he made his points. He made his points. He didn't have to go to court. No, he really wanted the fucking jet.

I know. That's the problem. He's like, no, no, no. I'm serious. I want that damn jet. Oh, man. So NASA has narrowed down the Mars 2020 rover name to nine finalists. Let me guess. They're all very boring.

Yeah, they were submitted by, you know, basically grade schoolers. Okay. So here we are. Endurance, tenacity, promise, perseverance, vision, clarity, ingenuity, fortitude, and courage. And I'm just thinking, what?

No rover McRover face? What rover McRover face? That should be Musk McMurk's face. Yeah. So if you don't know what rover McRover face is, I have a link to Bodie McBoat face in the show notes if you've been living under a rock for the last couple of years. But yeah, very boring names.

Very boring. Kids these days, man. Come on. Well, you know, I'm sure they came up with some great ones. They just didn't get submitted by the teachers. They didn't get, yeah, they didn't, they didn't get through the vetting process. I'm sure there's much more fun ones than this. Closing shout outs.

T.O. tweeted us, you had to mention Monty Python on your last show. You just had to. And we did. And unfortunately, Terry Jones has passed away at 77. Brian, we have to be careful of the power that we wield. It's getting a little frightening sometimes. Yeah.

I'm just going to say, it's power. I'm drunk with power, Jason. All right. Terry Jones, unfortunately, did pass away. He was also a director, screenwriter, and author. He was like an amazing guy. Obviously, he's been ill and dealing with degenerative disease over the past few years. So it's been quite sad and somewhat unexpected, or it's not unexpected that he passed away, but it's always sad to lose a python.

Yep. And we did. My buddy Carl, a.k.a. basically World Party, the band, has a pretty awesome way of looking at the passing of individuals. He always says something along the lines of, I'm so glad I didn't miss him or her, meaning how wonderful a thing it was to be alive on this planet at the same time, which is quite the sentiment, really.

And I'm glad I didn't miss Terry Jones. Yep. And when the news came out, I just have to say, fuck you, planters, because at the same time, they decided to kill Mr. Peanut. So in the trending topics, the trending topics, you have, oh, R.I.P. Terry Jones.

Under that, R.I.P. Nut. Because, of course, it's now the late estate of Mr. Peanut, since he apparently has been killed off by some smarmy ad agency. I'm like, you know what? Timing on that kind of sucked. Well, yeah. Leading up to the Super Bowl, Jason. The peanuts have gone all in on the Super Bowl.

Oh, God. We're not allowed to say Super Bowl. Sorry. The big game. Oh, that's right. The big game. Dumbest thing ever. Jesus, some people. And I do want to give a shout out to our friend of the show, Zane Lamprey. He's got a new show out called Crafts and Crafts. The first episode is out with Jack Maxwell from The Booze Traveler.

So, it's a fun watch. Not The Booze Traveler. Not The Booze Traveler. The Booze Traveler. Okay. Yes. Because it was apparently a rivalry for some time because Zane had three sheets and he had, you know, The Booze Traveler. Right. But they all seem to get along. They seem to get along.

It's pretty funny. I like it. Because neither of them have a show on network TV anymore. No, they don't. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. 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 and we'll love you forever.

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