411: Avast, WeMateys

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. Brian, I thought today we would do a little follow-up at the end of the show and talk about Picard and The Good Place without spoilers. So what do you think? Did that sound good? Did not get to see The Good Place last night.

No! You're the one that made me start watching that goddamn show. Hour and a half run time. It wasn't a full hour and a half. It was only an hour and eight minutes because the end of the show was...

Well, then, yeah, take out the commercials and at the end they have a round table with all the cast and Seth Meier. Well, see, I would have no interest in watching that part either. You know, I didn't either. I was going to turn it off and I'm like, yeah, put this much time into it. Let's see what they have to say.

And it was actually pretty touching. All right. And it was short. Let me go ahead and make a counter suggestion to your suggestion about having Media Candy at the end of this show. Let's leave Media Candy to Media Candy. We will do that on Tuesday and it will come out on Wednesday. You know, we don't need to do a Picard wrap-up.

Wil Wheaton's got that covered. And I didn't get a chance to see The Good Place yet. So, I will watch it at some point over the weekend. Okay. Well, I am worried, but I did see your tweets about it because, in my opinion, The Good Place perfectly wrapped up last episode.

In fact, when my wife and I were watching it, we turned it off and went, boy, that was just a really good show. I'm glad they ended it that way, only to find out that there's another hour and a half to go. So, I'm terrified that they're going to screw it up, but according to you, they didn't. So, I will look forward to seeing it this weekend. Okay.

Okay. Get on that so we can talk about it. But, yes. Ronald D. Moore had nothing to do with The End of The Good Place, which was my tweet. Because that was my comment to you. It was like, last episode directed by Ronald D. Moore, it will ruin the entire show. He did not actually direct it. Yeah, and, you know, before you get too mad at me, remember, you called me or slacked me at the premiere of Avenue 5 and forced me to watch it that night, only to find out that you didn't watch it the next morning because you wanted to talk about it.

So, do not be a hypocrite and get all mad at me for not seeing The Good Place. I'm not getting mad. I mean, that was a half-hour show, but you made me watch four fucking seasons of this thing. I made you? Yeah. I made you watch one, and I told you it was good. You and the Grumpy Old Geeks Army had gotten me to watch it because I got so many comments.

Everybody's like, no, Brian's right. You should really, really watch The Good Place. And did you enjoy it? Absolutely. Then shut the fuck up. You shut the fuck up. In the news. Let's go. In the news.

Remember two years ago at a Facebook conference, they promised us a clear history button so we could take control of our privacy. See, after they started having all their big privacy issues. Was that before or after they gave us the, we'll be able to delete our messages link button thing?

Did they ever see? Oh, yeah. We never got that one. But two years later, we finally have our clear history button that they've been promising. And we have a link in the show notes so you can go push it. I'm assuming the reason it took them two years to make this button is they had to figure out a way that it's still advantageous for them to have us clear our histories.

No, I'm not sure how transparent all of this is, but you can see all the third-party website, etc. stuff that Facebook has been tracking and gathering data from and sharing information with. And you can erase all that data. No, no, no, no. You can set visibility to zero.

Visibility to zero with all that data. You can now prohibit third parties from providing Facebook with info tied to your account. You're actually able to turn. Well, you'll still get ads, but they'll be less relevant to your interest. So hopefully we'll see less stories about how our phone is listening to us if people do this, because it will stop that process from happening.

And, yeah, they've even got a little switch to basically turn it off forever, except if you do that, you won't be able to use Facebook login anywhere. Which you shouldn't anyway. Which you shouldn't anyways, but unfortunately for me, because I use Buffer to do our social media apps, they have to connect to Facebook and Instagram.

So if I turn that on, I can't use Buffer anymore. Got it. There are a lot of features that are of convenience or necessity that this would then break. It's a feature, not a bug. Yes. So it's there. I don't know if you did it. I did it. There wasn't anything particularly surprising in there.

All the sites that I go to all the time are listed and whatever. I mean, I cleared it. I haven't really noticed much of a difference. But then again, I have ad blocking on. Exactly. I don't see ads anyway, so it makes no difference to me whatsoever. Basically, the internet is collecting a lot of information about me, about things I don't see.

Yeah. So I browsed through it, and we'll talk a little bit more about the privacy thing and Facebook and security in a little bit. But there's almost nothing in there. I don't use my account to log into any other sites because I just don't. And yeah, the sites that do collect data on me, there's nothing out of the ordinary there except a couple parenting things.

And I'm guessing that was because you put a link in the show notes to something and I went to it. I'm sure. Yes. Yeah. Because I'm like, why is that here? Why do I? Daddy info thing. No, I'm not a daddy. I got my puppies. I'm a puppy daddy, not a baby daddy.

That's right. Yeah. So finally, and there was an injunction by a judge to actually slow down the rollout of this. So they do have a little bit of leeway on why it took so long because some Texan judge said, no, you can't roll that out because we got a pedo and we might need some info on him.

And he might clear his history if you do that, even though somebody should have just tapped the judge on the shoulder and said, they don't actually delete anything, dude. It's just not visible. Yeah. Yeah. All right. All right. Moving on. We're going to talk about Peloton, even though Peloton is one of those companies that claims to be a tech company, but it is not a tech company.

It's a bike with a TV on it. They're showing tech company tendencies from what you put here. They are. They are. They're doing exactly what a lot of tech companies are doing. If you recall at all, which you probably won't, although I think we talked about it on the show because I do like to bring in the music industry stuff.

The National Music Publishers Association sued Peloton back early in 2019, accusing it of using songs in its workout videos without obtaining the proper licenses for them. You cannot do that. Yeah. That's why you have licensing for music. Yes.

So Peloton's workout subscription members who pay $468 a year. This is the biggest shocker of the entire article. I'm like, you pay $468 a year? That's the subscription. Get a bike and use your headphones. On your $2,000 bike, you still have to pay almost $500 a year?

Yes. What's it, Jesus? Again, showing technology company tendencies. Exactly. You know how you lose weight with a Peloton? You can't afford to eat. After you buy the bike and pay the subscription, you can't afford food. Yes. Well, you know, only ultra-rich people with incredible multi-million dollar mansions that are in perfect shape have Pelotons, at least according to their ads.

I know a few of them, actually. Yes, we both do. So after that lawsuit, all these subscribers who are paying all this money had to deal with limited selection and terrible music as a result. So Peloton fired back with a countersuit, which is another tech company tendency, which accuses the National Music Publishing Association of seeking super competitive licensing prices.

In other words, prices much higher than normal, say more than a restaurant would have to pay to be able to play music or something like that, that violate untitrust laws as well as sabotaging its negotiations with individual publishers. Unfortunately, the U.S. District Judge, Denise Coates, said, nah, screw you. I don't know if that's unfortunately.

I think that's fortunately. Well, unfortunate for them. Unfortunately for Peloton, yes. But fortunately for everybody with a brain. Yes. So basically, they were able to go out and make licensing deals themselves with individual publishers, and they could have done that, and they failed to do so.

So she said the company failed to sub in songs owned by others, especially since it previously said that it reached agreements with all major publishers and with many independent outfits. The judge wrote in a ruling, it is true that every copyrighted work has a tenet, has at least some monochrome of originality, but recognition of that fundamental tenet of copyright law does not explain why songs not controlled by the music publishers cannot substitute in exercise programmings for songs they do control.

So use the other music that you have access to and stop stealing music. Yeah, or just go to SoundCloud like everybody else. So I did like this. The National Music Publishing Association president, David Israelite, told The Hollywood Reporter, Today's victory is a reminder that tech companies, like Peloton, not a tech company, cannot build businesses that are reliant on songwriters without asking their permission and paying them.

In other words, you cannot steal other people's stuff and make a business out of it. Pinterest. Don't even go there. Judge Coat has dismissed all of Peloton's counterclaims, which were only meant to distract from their failure to license 2,468 songs. We are pleased that Peloton's attempt to divert attention from the heart of the issue, properly paying creators for the music on which its billion-dollar business was built, have been defeated.

So good. Now, I just want to talk about how this is basically the new tech company's business as usual. I know this because of my wife and what she has to do for a living, which is basically going after tech companies for stealing Universal Music's content. Okay.

I was going to say, let the new users know what your wife does. She's a lawyer for Universal Music, and she works basically with mostly tech companies. So this is their business as usual. Now, launch first, ask permission later, and how that would be okay if they came back and dealt fairly with the labels.

It would be. This would all be okay if they came back. There's an understanding. You need to get your product out the door. You have to be first to launch. You have to be best in class. All of that sort of stuff. You've got to go, go, go. And licensing and doing all these legal arrangements does take some time. It would actually be okay with most of the labels if you went ahead and did that and just kind of said, look, we got to get out the door.

We're going to use all this stuff. We're going to come back to you, and we're going to pay you for all this fairly. The thing is, they don't. Right. And the labels usually have to file a lawsuit against them because they never come back and do the right and fair thing. So that's the new normal now. Yay. Welcome to the world, Brian.

Well, it keeps my wife employed. There you go. Yeah, it keeps you in formula and we're long past formula. In fact, shout out to my son who is officially now potty trained. I have changed my last diaper. I saw that. Congratulations. Yes, it's a wonderful feeling.

I'm sure it is. I wish I could. I wish I wish Bam Bam were the same way. Yeah. Man. In other news, Apple and Broadcom have been ordered to pay up to $1.1 billion in total to Caltech in a patent case. So let's see.

What is this about particularly? Wi-Fi chips. Wi-Fi chips, which were used in iPhones and data transmission technology. Broadcom is one of those companies that I am aware of. And I know that they do things and widgets and stuff. But I couldn't tell you if I have one in my house or not.

They do com things that are broad. Yes. It's like Qualcomm. They do com things that are qual. That are qual. So Apple has to pay $837.8 million specifically and Broadcom owns $270.2 million. So the statement from Caltech was, we are pleased the jury found that Apple and Broadcom infringe Caltech patents.

As a nonprofit institution of higher education, Caltech is committed to protecting its intellectual property in furtherance of its mission to expand human knowledge and benefit society through research integrated with education. So they're obviously both companies are planning to appeal. But for a nonprofit, getting a couple of bill, not so bad.

Yeah. Well, a bill, not bad at all. Yeah. So, yeah. I mean, if they infringe on the patents, they should pony up, especially if it's for Wi-Fi chips. I mean, that's a pretty big one, you know? Yes, it is. So Huawei, back in the news, we've basically said, no, we're a little bit scared about this.

We don't want to use their stuff to build our 5G networks in our country, which means we're going to be a little bit behind. Which means we're not getting a 5G network in our country. But the UK said, screw you, we're doing it anyways. Oh, yeah, UK. Yeah. Well, they got a lot of problems going on right now, but this is definitely going to be one of them.

So despite classifying the company as a high-risk vendor, the British government said it would go ahead and use this high-risk vendor, but with some restrictions. And these are somewhat wise. The company's products will not be allowed to be used in the network's core, the most sensitive portion of their telecommunications grid.

Grid, it will also limit the use of their equipment to 35% of the system. Oh, and we won't put it near, like, military bases or nuclear sites. Okay. Yeah, what could possibly go wrong? What could possibly go wrong? So we'll see what happens. But they're charging ahead and using these devices that we kind of know are security threats.

So, yay. Good luck with that. 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. Whether you're getting ready for crisp mornings, cozy nights, or everyday moments, QVC has what you need for the season ahead.

With brands like Laura Geller, Philosophy, Ninja, and so many more. Shop now at QVC.com. Security? We're joined again this week by Dave Bittner.

Dave is the host of the Cyber Wire podcast. Dave is also co-host of the social engineering podcast, Hacking Humans with Joe Kerrigan, as well as the co-host of Caveat with Ben Yellen, where they discuss law and policy as well as surveillance and privacy. And soon to be Geeks on Broadway will be our next show.

That's right. Yes, absolutely. For like the last five minutes we've been talking about Broadway shows. Brian is eager to be our producer. I will produce. I will produce. I will. Heavy on the mute button. Riding the auto-tune. Yeah, that's probably the way it is these days.

So before we jumped in here today, I wanted to just do some quick follow-up with you all. I heard your discussion on a recent show about Picard, and I just wanted to weigh in and also share my enthusiasm for the show. I've only seen the first episode so far, but I'm very pleased with it.

Yes. It feels like Star Trek. It feels like the Star Trek I love the most, which is Next Generation. I'm on board with you guys that I think it's great that Patrick Stewart is not pretending to be 40. He's playing Picard as an old man.

Overall, I think they did a really good job. I thought there was a couple points where there was a little bit of clunky writing where they were kind of, you know, laying some pipe of, you know, Bob. Who's Bob? Well, you know Bob. He's the guy from such and such. Like, okay, all right.

Okay. Laying out the story. But that's fine. We'll forgive him that on the first episode. But, yeah, it made me really want to look forward to the next one. So I'm excited about it. I watched the second one. It's quite good. I'm happy about the show, yeah. Yeah, it's good to also keep in mind that the first two seasons of The Next Generation, frankly, sucked.

Yeah, they were quite terrible. If I ever see that bar station again or whatever it was. So, you know, while you're going on the history that's already been built, you do have to give them a little time to get their footing. I'm sure it won't take two seasons. It should probably only take a couple episodes.

But it feels good, and I enjoy it a lot. So I like this kind of more morally ambiguous Star Trek universe for our morally ambiguous times. Yes, and in episode two, they actually dropped the F-bomb. I know.

Pretty surprising. I was shocked. I almost dropped my wine. Yeah, me too. I was like, what? Phasers on stun. Fuck you. The fucking hubris. That was great. I do have the same complaint with Picard as I do have with The Mandalorian.

It's just too damn short. I don't mind it. I don't mind it. Episode two was only 38 minutes, and it ended very abruptly, I thought. It was a really weird, like, cut point. But, yeah, I'm in. I'm all in. Yep. Yep. I'd rather them leave me wanting more than making me feel like I'm – Yeah, making me feel like, oh, is this over yet?

Yeah. So we'll see. I will definitely check out the second episode this weekend. So looking forward to that. I logged into Facebook the other day, and I got a big banner at the top, which you guys can see in the show notes. It says, it's Data Privacy Day. Jason, we want to make sure your privacy is set the way you want.

Privacy Checkup guides you through your most important privacy settings, like who can see what you share and how to keep your account secure. Yes, I posted, oh, the irony. Yeah. I'm like, well, when you handle users' data, shouldn't every day be Data Privacy Day?

Right. It's the one day a year when we don't get hacked. Right, right. Yeah. So we've already talked. Did you follow through with this? Did you do your privacy checkup? I did my privacy checkup, and there were a few settings that I did actually change.

So, yeah, I don't want the world to be able to see my phone number and my birth date. There's no need for that. I'm old. Fuck you. But, Jason, that's how everybody knows when it's somebody's birthday now. That's it. We don't have reminders.

We don't remember birthdays. It's only Facebook notifications. So if you turn that off, nobody will know when your birthday is. Well, here's the thing. It was on for years, and nobody gave a shit about my birthday. So even now that it's off, nobody will still give a shit about my birthday. I'm an old guy that nobody cares about. So I don't care.

Well, make sure your puppies have a Post-it note in their bed. Well, I forgot their birthday this year, and I'm a bad dad. So that's how it goes anyway. That's like missing seven birthdays. It really is. It really is. So we got some feedback from Matt 8 and Grant and said, Jason, get rid of those bloody cameras.

And this goes on to talk about Ring Doorbell and how they give Facebook and Google your user data. And there's actually a lot more than Facebook and Google because they are packed with third-party trackers in the Ring app. And it's a very, very interesting story that's coming out.

I've got a link to the EFF article, which really goes into detail on what trackers they have, what they're giving up. They're giving your device IDs, your location, times of day where you're looking at your cameras, all that stuff. It's kind of creepy. A couple times through this episode, Jason, we've talked about how tech companies, you know, just this is what they do now.

And Ring seems to be following in just with that. It seems like every week there's a new story about how Ring is genuinely awful. Yeah, and they're so awful. And we talked about the Amazon employee revolt.

And I found the article on Medium that talks about the Amazon employees' climate justice, where everybody just goes on and bitches about something they don't like about Amazon, which kind of defeats the purpose of the whole thing.

Come on, guys. Focus your message. When you have too many messages, it doesn't work. Anyway, Max Elizer, he's a senior development engineer over at Amazon. He says, the deployment of connected home security cameras that allow footage to be queried centrally are simply not compatible with a free society.

The privacy issues are not fixable with regulation, and there is no balance that can be struck. Ring should be shut down immediately and not brought back. This is coming from a goddamn Amazon employee. I kind of concur with these things. I mean, I don't mind the idea of you using a video camera for your door, a camera for your door.

I don't like the idea of them being networked and centralized. Yeah. That's just me. Apparently, nobody cares. I wondered. But the bigger issue, Jason, that you sort of led with is that is there no company that spins up today that has any sort of online presence that can resist the pull of the easy money of sharing all the data?

Yeah. See, I've got these Amcrest cameras, which are, you know, they're just refurbed Chinese cameras. Those were the, you know, the original Chinese cameras that we all made fun of me for. Right. And they do have an Amcrest cloud, but I've never heard of any, anything happening with those.

And they're, they're very highly technical. I couldn't, I can literally set up my own FTP server and use those. Yeah. You know, they, they will SFTP the images straight up there, or you can use like web dev or things like that, or, you know, just pump them straight to a Synology. But that's onsite, which is not really what you want.

Yeah. But I know it's, the thing is, there's no plug and play easy ones. You still have to have your own setup to do it. And that's, that's the allure. This is the, you know, the easy way to do it. Right. And yeah, I mean, I'm talking more about beyond the cameras.

I'm just saying basically any business that has an online presence these days, when the time comes and they're, and when the time comes that they're collecting data, they don't seem, none of them seem to say, you know what? Selling this data, making money off of this information that people have shared with us, that might just be morally wrong.

That is never the decision that seems to be made anymore. I know it's adorable, isn't it? But the other thing about this, which, which Jason and I have been talking about a couple of times recently, is it almost seems to also be an exit strategy. Because what we see with these companies is when they start to fail, their last ditch effort for money or the very end, the end game to basically, you know, get the CEOs a check as they shutter the doors is look at all the data we've collected.

We can sell this. And this is our exit strategy. 23andMe, like we talked about last show. You know? Yeah. I really think we have to shift the perception of data not being valuable, of data being radioactive.

Or at least shift ownership of it. Give it back to us. It's our data. And if you want it, you pay us for it. One or the other. I don't care which. Yeah, but you try to educate the unwashed masses to that. It's difficult. We've been doing it for seven years and nobody fucking listens.

Hell, I don't even listen and I'm on the show. I've got ring cameras everywhere. Therein lies the rub. Did you hear something, Brian? Did someone say something, Brian, on this show just between you and I? I don't know. I heard something. I don't know what it was. So apparently there was a big cyber attack on the UN.

And guess what? Shockingly enough, they decided not to publicly disclose it. So this happened in Europe on August 30th in 2019. IT officials working at the UN Geneva's office issued an alert to their tech teams about a hacking incident saying, We are working under the assumption that the entire domain is compromised.

The attacker doesn't show any signs of activity so far. We assume they established their position and are dormant. And yeah, they covered it up. They tried to hide it, et cetera, et cetera. And the TLDR on this, I put a whole bunch of bullet points in here, but it's really not that interesting. It's just another hacking into secure networks is security experts coming out and basically saying, You need to stop hiding this stuff.

You need to be open and transparent when hacks occur. So the executive director of Privacy International hoped revelations about the incident and the way it was handled might have a good effect on UN cyber security. If there are no consequences for the UN agencies for failure like this, they will build more problematic systems.

There will be more breaches and nobody will ever know. You know, so basically, hey, let people know because without transparency, no one will be motivated to push for change. And I tend to agree with that. I heard someone made the comment that if it turns out that this attack on the UN was from a member nation, should that be considered an insider threat?

Hell yeah. Why wouldn't it be? I mean, it's pretty straight up. Yeah. Do you think they should be booted from the UN if they're actually actively trying to hack the UN? Well, thankfully, it was somebody in the UK. Well, I mean, you know, I mean, it's actually not a crazy question because I think as we've talked about before, espionage is on the table, right?

Espionage is kind of everybody does espionage. So espionage is not illegal. Espionage is just espionage. And we all know, you know, the five eyes all have eyes on each other, too. It's not like we've made an agreement and we're not going to keep looking into each other's stuff. Right.

Right. So if that's what this is. And it might be the four eyes soon if the UK keeps going with Huawei. Yeah, that's a good point. Nobody's very happy about that, you know. And the story we talked about previously, you know, the US is saying, look, this might actually get you kicked out of the five eyes if you keep wanting to put Huawei stuff in your system.

Yeah. But remember, they promised not to put any of the Huawei stuff on their nuclear weapons. Or reactors. So there's that to be thankful for. Oh, thank you for that. I put this story in here from Fast Company. It's titled, Apple and Google's Tough New Location Privacy Controls Are Working.

And to me, this is sort of a good news, bad news scenario here. The good news is since Apple launched iOS 13, the background data location has dropped by 68 percent. According to Location Sciences, a company that tracks that foreground data sharing down by 24 percent.

Android users are opting in only about half the time. So that's the good news that these methods that the device manufacturers are putting in place seem to be working and having an effect. The bad news is the trackers are just going to pivot and come at you by other means.

Well, yeah, of course. Wow. People got educated and started turning this stuff off. We still need this data. Let's figure out another way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're not going to come in through the front door. They're going to come in through the window. So anyway, I think it's good, though, that at least they but one of the points they make in the article is that the the accuracy of the their ability to track your location has probably gone down for the moment.

So it's 10 feet instead of two feet. Right. They can't tell what side of the street you're on or what aisle you are in at the Walmart. Oh, no, no, no. Walmart has Bluetooth beacons. They can tell exactly what aisle you're in. Yeah. Right. Probably facial recognition, too.

Yeah. Well, we've. Well, then they'll know your exact location about 40 percent of the time because we know how well facial recognition works. Yeah. Right. Right. Well, we've talked a lot about basically, you know, wanting governments to have subpoenas to be able to get data out of companies, out of tech companies.

And that is happening. Facing an increasing number of requests for its users information. Google began charging law enforcement and other government agencies this month for legal demands, seeking data such as emails, location tracking information and search queries. Fees range from forty five dollars for a subpoena and sixty dollars for a wiretap to two hundred and forty five dollars for a search warrant, according to a notice sent to law enforcement officials and reviewed by the New York Times.

So, you know, a spokesperson for Google is basically saying this is intended in part to help offset the costs of complying with warrants and subpoenas. But there's a good news thing in here somewhere in that the thought is basically if we start charging fees, that actually puts some weight onto the issue.

And maybe we will get less, you know, just kind of ridiculous requests for data. So now that it's rate, it's rate limiting. Yeah, it's rate limiting. It's like charging five cents for a catch for a packet of ketchup at McDonald's. And so you don't just go up and just grab a whole handful and throw them out.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I don't have a problem with this. I think this doesn't seem like an unreasonable fee to me. What do you guys make of it? I think it's I think it's completely reasonable because they have to hire staff to do that. You know, it's not it's not like it's free for them.

And the way they were saying now with these new geofencing requirements, the actual queries are way more complex and they have to spend a lot more time on them. I'm sure there's a staff of, you know, probably, what, 50 to 100 people that have to just sit there. And handle, you know, government requests. And it's silly for a private company to have to pay for that out of their own pocket.

So it's like just cover the cost. And these costs are not, you know, egregious in any way, shape or form. No, they're fairly low. And it's important to point out that they're not going to ask for reimbursement in some cases, including child safety investigations and life threatening emergencies. So I'm totally down with this. I think it's fine.

Yeah. Yeah. I think it helps prevent fishing expeditions. Yeah. If you can just send in as many requests as you want and then just clog up the system with with silliness. I think I think this is a good like you said, it's a good rate limiter. Yep. Yeah. And the other big news was what was going on with Avast this week.

And we got some feedback from Jeff and a few other people. But the story has changed pretty quickly since it launched. Wonder why. Yeah. Wonder why. So I well, I I put a picture of why in our show notes, which was a vast stock price.

Yes. It dropped considerably. If you look. Yes. If you look at the stock price, which has been going up and up and up and up and up and then it fell off a cliff. And that is what got the CEO and board's attention that they made this decision. But I'm getting ahead of ourselves.

So let's start at the beginning here. Obviously, Avast is an antivirus software that, you know, you can say anti-vaxxer. Anti-vaxxer. So we'll get into that on the next episode. The next episode, we will definitely an antivirus software. So you think, you know, you install an antivirus software.

It's it's trying to keep you safe. Right. Well, they had a whole second division of their company called Jumpshot that basically grabbed all your data's packaged it and resold it everywhere. Yay. Now, Brian, the data was anonymized. Uh-huh.

Right. So sure it was. They so, yeah, they basically had clients that include Google, Yelp, Microsoft, McKinsey, Pepsi, Home Depot, Condé Nast, Intuit, and many others, which is kind of amazing. Some clients paid millions of dollars for a product that also included a so-called all clicks feed, which can track user behavior, clicks, and movement across websites in highly precise, I'm sure anonymized detail.

Jesus Christ. I mean, this is egregious and insane. Yeah. I mean, these people need to be shot. Taken out the back behind the woodshed and shot.

This is a company that should actually have to go out of business in my mind. And, you know, what a betrayal of trust that is. It's insane. Right. Yeah. And this gets to the fact that your antivirus software has special privileges by necessity to your system.

It has to be able to look at everything. It has to be able to look inside of stuff. I mean, this is like setting up a security camera, say, called Ring, that you give access to your – and then all of a sudden, they turn around and package that data and give it to, I don't know, law enforcement.

Let's stay in the real world, Brian. That could never happen. That could never happen. Let's not get out of control here. Let's not get too breathless with our speculation. Right. Sulemi. Yes. So, as a result of this, this news coming out and, as I said, Avast's stock price taking a nosedive.

500 to – 550 to below 400 or down on 60 points, 13 percent according to your screenshot here. I'm sure it hasn't picked up much since then. Right. And Andrei Vilcek, who is the CEO of Avast, said, and I quote, Avast's core mission is to keep its users safe online and to give users control over their privacy.

The bottom line is that any practice that jeopardizes user trust are unacceptable to Avast. We are vigilant about our users' privacy and we took quick action to begin winding down JumpShot's operations after it became evident that some users questioned the alignment of data provision to JumpShot with our mission and principles that define us as a company.

We are so vigilant about our users' privacy that we set up an entire division that basically destroys your privacy. Now, to be fair, and maybe it's too fair, but a point of fact is that all of this JumpShot stuff happened before the current CEO's watch.

So he came in after all this stuff was set up, and I think perhaps to his credit, he got in front of his board and said, okay, gang, see what I told you about this? Now, hold on. Before you give him any credit, let us keep in mind that as he came in as CEO, he was aware of the program and did nothing until there was a massive expose thanks to Motherboard and Vice.

That is correct. So not a lot of credit to be given there, then. It's not like he said, this is an unacceptable program. We must shut it down immediately. Right. If you want me to take the job, here are my demands. We must immediately shut down JumpShot.

Yeah. So we'll see if Avast can survive the reputational damage. I'm sure they'll be fine, as has every single company that we've talked about in this segment. Every single one. Every single one of them is fine. Experian is still in business and doing better than before.

People are buying more rings than they were. Yeah. If anything else, their stock price is going to go up because their profits will increase. I just love that Avast basically means stop. And yeah, maybe they should stop.

But my God, how bad is that? We're so desensitized doing this segment. And Dave, you live in this world 24-7. You're pretty desensitized, too. But when I read this story, my jaw did drop. Anyways, moving on.

We have a little bit more follow-up. Joe wrote us, he actually wrote us two things. One will be in the next episode. But this was follow-up about something we'd been talking up here. For follow-up on my info about military Wi-Fi and cell phones. Cell phones were acquired in a few different ways. When you're out on patrols on the town, you could easily stop in a local market shop and purchase a phone.

Another way for those who never left the base was to have a local national who worked on the base get one for you. And lastly, on the larger, more established bases, the military would allow the locals to set up shops on base to sell things. Several of them sold cell phones. So that's how our military gets their phones.

I'm guessing there were probably background checks for the people who were setting up. Oh, I'm sure there was. Oh, I'm sure there was. Don't be. I'm sorry. What am I thinking? Uber. Yeah. Uber sets up their cell phone shop. That's right. That's right. Yeah.

It's fascinating that that's how it works. It is. It is. And part of me thinks that's crazy because what a way to get devices on the inside of the wall at the base. On the other hand, I mean, certainly the military must have considered this and pondered it and done the risk reward of it.

Perhaps it's better for the service to allow the soldiers to be able to stay in touch with their loved ones back home than the slight risk of whatever they think these devices might be able to do when they're inside the wall.

They're all pre-programmed for the stingrays that circle the base. Right. Right. Right. It saves time. It saves setup time. Exactly. Yeah. I don't know. It's a head scratcher. Yeah. I don't get it. I don't get it. Well, this one I do get, and I think this is fantastic, so I want to end on a high note here.

I linked to the Boing Boing story, but this came out a while ago. A TikTok video shows a clever AirPod trick that lets students talk in school without getting in trouble. And the crux of this hack is you swap AirPods with someone, and then you use text-to-speech on your phone to type messages to them, and then they're read over your AirPods.

So you have two-way communication. It is fucking genius. You're right. What a time to be alive. I mean, I used to get upset at the toys that my son has compared to the toys that I had growing up. But cheating is so easy now for these kids.

This is amazing. It's so good. It's so good. And what world do we live in where you can just wear your AirPods in class? I just don't get that. But I do have to point out, gross. Swapping AirPods with somebody is gross.

Because I don't know if you've met teenagers lately. They're generally not the most hygienic creatures on the planet. It's a little antibacterial wipe. You're fine. Still. Oh, man. Yeah. I love it. I just love this. In terms of the wearing them, what I've noticed lately more and more with AirPods, especially with these kids today, is that they just leave them in their ears all the time.

Yeah. They're just hanging out of their ears. Constantly. All the time. You see the little double tap when somebody's talking to them. It's like wearing earrings. Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah. Right. So maybe the teachers have just been worn down and they have to pick their battles. Maybe. I don't know. They've got pot fatigue.

I'll ask my son about it. Yeah. I'll ask my son about it. He's in middle school. He's right in the thick of these things. Excellent. Yeah. Get us some inside info. It did remind me. We've got an inside man. Yeah. I got a guy. Right. I got a guy on the inside. It did remind me that back when I was in college, so this would have been around 1990 or so, so we're talking pre-internet days, my college roommate who was an electrical engineering major, so he had one of those fancy HP calculators.

Oh, yeah. And the HP calculators at the time, the state of the art was you could transfer programs from one calculator to another using infrared, so you could hold these calculators next to each other, and one would blast to the other the program that you wrote, and that's how you would transfer them.

It's kind of like the old bump app. Yeah. There's no internet. There's no Wi-Fi. There's no wireless communications. This is all before all that. So what my roommate and his buddies did was somebody came up with basically a chat program that used infrared to communicate.

So while they were all taking their tests, they could communicate with each other because they were allowed to have their calculators. The fact that you guys figured that out means you all passed electrical engineering. To me, that's just a straight up, that's a pass.

Sure, you're using it to cheat on the test, but hey, look what you did. Yep. Yep. Well, and this guy, this roommate is now working for NASA. He's literally a rocket scientist. And my hat's off to him because what a clever hack. That's amazing. Yeah.

Very cool. Mm-hmm. Yep. All right, gentlemen. Well, that is what we've got this week. I will see you guys next time. I'm sure we'll be talking about how Avast was dissolved and all is well in the world. That's right.

The ring is out of business. There's no more Avast. And we can all go back to the way things were in the 70s. Excellent. Facebook just decided to take a little break. They're pausing their business and they're just going to shut down for a while to reconsider, to think about what they've done. Yes, they're very nice. Apps and doodads.

We talked a little bit about Byte in the last episode, the reimagined, recreated Vine from one of the creators of Vine. And Engadget asked the question, can Byte recreate the magic of Vine? So is Betteridge right? Yes. With his Law of Headlines? They pointed out everything that I pointed out, which is we've already got TikTok and everybody's on TikTok.

So why are they going to go to Byte? Exactly. Yeah. So that's that. That's that. There it is. To have you log back in since you since your first login to Byte to check it out? No, I haven't because I did it and I'm like, this is dumb. And it's like I said, it was the same thing that I thought with Vine.

I thought it was dumb. And I was too old for Vine when it came out. And the novelty wasn't there for me. And I opened up Byte and I'm like, there's a bunch of stupid kids doing stupid shit. I ain't nobody got time for that. I'm an old man and I got shit to do.

So, no. Yeah. I also didn't find the Rottweiler channel. So if there's a Rottweiler channel on Byte, maybe I'll sign back in. I'm sure there is. I stumbled across some other company that's out there that I was not aware of called Community. Have you heard about Community yet?

I can't believe you've never heard of these guys. I follow a lot of people that use Community. A lot of comedians use it. Cesar Millan uses it. So I see this stuff all the time. So, yes, I'm familiar with Community. Tell the audience who they are.

I was not aware of Community, but I've been very aware of multiple companies like this. This is just the one that happened to, I guess, make it pretty well. So if you've ever stumbled across a tweet or an Instagram in which a celebrity posts their phone number, in quotes, so they can interact with you and text you directly, unless that celebrity is drunk and takes down that post the next morning, in which case it might have actually been their real phone number, you've actually subscribed to a newsletter of automated updates that will be sent by text.

Yes. So it's basically just faking closeness to a celebrity for money. You're signing up for a service run by a tech startup called Community. They help manage direct messaging with large audiences on behalf of celebrities and other well-known figures as a way of monetizing their social networks. So what do you actually get?

It depends on what their team puts together. And having done this for a living for a long time, I was approached by many, many, many, many companies trying to do this earlier. I haven't really worked in the music industry for the last couple of years, so I've been out of it. I obviously wasn't around for Community coming around.

But I guess if you're a fan of a celebrity and they actually put the effort in, that was the problem that I always found with the people that I worked with. It all depends on what the artist is willing to do. If they're willing for me to come over and take a bunch of pictures and a bunch of videos and have them write out a bunch of things so for the next couple of weeks, I can actually push out good content, that's great.

If they're not, you're going to get shit. Yeah, so the first one that I actually did with this and texted somebody, just because I was curious on how it worked, and by the way, Ashton Kutcher is the evil mastermind behind this. Of course. That's why this one's got enough money to run for a long time, even though it's probably not making any money.

So Burt Kreischer, one of my favorite comedians, he put up his number and there was one specific thing, and I follow him on Instagram like religiously because he's just too fucking funny. He replies to his text messages from the crapper, so I found that pretty funny.

But I think the first day he had like 35,000 text messages, which means you're not going to get very much personal attention. No, of course you're not. That's even for somebody that isn't that well-known because I've never heard of that guy. You've never heard of Burt Kreischer? Oh my God. Machine!

You need to go watch his specials on Netflix, dude. You fucking love him. He's a fat guy who takes his shirt off and does his whole stand-up routine without his shirt on. It's funny. The guy is really funny. He lives just up the road. I could just walk down to Venice Beach and see a dude do that. You could actually just take your shirt off and talk to yourself in the mirror.

Hey, I've been working out a lot. I've got my Peloton. Oh God. But yeah, so with comedians, it's pretty good because you can get tour date updates if you're going to go see them on tour. Okay, but should you have to pay for that? Shouldn't that be going on their social media and on their websites for free?

It does. It's just another avenue for them. I don't think they pay for this. At this point, I think it's pretty much just they're doing the old tech thing, get everybody in the door and then figure out the monetization. And then figure out how we're going to charge later. Yeah, of course. Yeah, I mean, there's, again, I've seen countless companies trying to do this time and time again over the last 10 years.

Every single one of them has failed. My argument to the artists every single time they came around is your social media and your website are advertisements for you. You can't charge for them. You're promoting the things that people are paying for. You don't charge to give promo materials away.

Right, but you don't get charged for the community text. Well, again, if the point is to monetize it, that is what's going to have to happen at some point. At some point. I mean, it's basically probably going to be ads. Otherwise, how is the company going to exist? Yeah, it's got to be ads at some point. And what is the point of doing it?

Yeah. Yeah, you know, it's like, oh, you're going to go see this comedian at this place? Well, here, go have lunch at this place down the street. You know, things like that. They're going to have to have some kind of model on it. But yeah, I just know that, you know, the people that are doing this have millions of followers and the chance of you actually getting a text back from somebody is just ludicrous.

Yeah, you're better off just using Twitter, right? You have a better chance of getting somebody to respond to you on Twitter. Absolutely. If the celebrities are there, which most of them are. Yeah. You're going to get a reply from their team, generally not them. Yeah. So we've picked on VR and AR an awful lot because for a while there, it was the buzzword.

I was going to say, is it still a thing? I mean, yeah, yeah. VR and AR were the proto-blockchain. And then Uber came along, so we made fun of them. Then Bird came along, we made fun of them. So I haven't made fun of VR and AR in so long because it seems to be kind of dead.

Well, yeah. Well, it hasn't been pushed in the news all the time and you weren't getting multi-million dollars for it anymore, which you did for a while. I'll ask my favorite question that I always like to ask. Anybody hear anything about Magic Leap recently? Nope. Nope. Maybe they need AI to go with it.

That's right. AI has definitely replaced AR. Well, NASA is actually putting it to good use. So thank God we found a use for it, Jason. So studying the astronomical number of stars in our galaxy is generally done using legacy tools still, like scattered databases, maybe even paper and pencil.

And it can be hard to use that great multi-purpose pattern recognition engine, the human brain, to full effect on that information. So Tom Grubb, an engineer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, has basically pulled together with a bunch of colleagues a VR environment to examine animated stellar neighborhoods and arrive at novel classifications for star groups.

Pretty cool. They found a really good use for AR and VR. Well, I got to say, remember, I don't know, I can't remember the name of the app. It's like some Stargazer app for the phone. I think it was called Stargazer. That thing was... Because that's... Everybody had that. Everybody had that as well as...

What was that stupid music recognition one that everybody... Shazam. Everybody's first app, Shazam. Yeah, yeah. I do like that, like, you know, I can just go, hey lady in a tube, Shazam, and it'll work now on my iPhone. But yeah, that stargazing one was the first use of AR that I've ever seen.

And it was really, really good because we're in Los Angeles and you can barely see the stars. The stars we see are fat comedians on corners with our shirts off. Exactly. Has-been stars. A lot of those.

So it was really cool to be able to see where the constellations were by just moving your phone or your iPad. It's much better on an iPad Pro, by the way. Like that big one, you hold it up and you look around. It's really cool. I wish I'd have brought that with us to Canada because it would have been really fun to see since we could actually see the stars and see if it actually worked.

Because here in Los Angeles, they could be feeding me a big bag of bullshit because I can't see the stars anyway. Jason, let's be honest. By the time it got dark enough for us to see stars given all the free beers we were being plied with, you couldn't have seen shit. I did want to have one moment where I went out in the field, found a dark spot, laid down and looked at the Milky Way and I did do that and I passed out for 10 minutes.

Oh yeah, that was the night we all wondered where the hell you went. And ironically, I was going on a beer run because they forgot to deliver our beer. But yeah, no, I think this is cool. This is a really good use for it. Yeah, I think so too.

So good on you, NASA Space Force. Yeah, and this new app that I'm going to talk about here, it's called Double Take from Filmic Pro and a hat tip to Mustafa over on Twitter for bringing this one back to my attention. They said it was going to be part of Filmic Pro at some point, but it's not built in yet.

So they released their own app called Double Take and what it does is it lets you use multiple cameras on your iPhone at the same time. So you can be, you know, filming, you know, you can actually put your camera on a table and get both parties in a conversation at the same time using the front-facing and the rear-facing cameras.

It's pretty cool in that respect. And I'm sure Apple will roll that out as their own capability pretty soon. Oh, they might, they might. But the thing about Filmic, which is really cool and why I love the Pro app is you can set focus points and exposure points for the scene and you can move the focus points as it goes.

So you, instead of like, you know, you just never freaking know with the damn iPhone where it's going to focus. So it's a really nice app. I mean, it's like, I think it's 20 bucks for the Filmic Pro app, but if you have an iPhone Pro or anything like anything with a really decent camera, just get it because it's going to be so much nicer than the stock camera app.

It's really cool. So I was playing around with it this morning. So yeah, Double Take's free. So you can get that now and you can record it and it'll do a bunch of different modes. You can do separate videos where it'll save the video file separately. You can do a picture in picture mode. So, you know, you have, you can do the front-facing camera, like smaller and then the rear-facing camera bigger because if you're like, you know, just walking and talking and you want to do some kind of like, you know, narration or things like that and you can do side-by-side mode, which is pretty cool too.

So that would be good if you have like, you know, two people like sitting across the table having a conversation that you want to record. Side-by-side mode would be pretty cool for that. So I just got to say, it's a pretty nice app and it's free right now, but you do have to have an iPhone 11 Pro Max, 11 Pro, XS Max, XS or XR.

All right. So this won't work on the iPhone 8 I'm getting from you next week. No, it won't. So you have to have a modern phone. Who needs it? Well, I tell you what, man, the iPhone 11 Pro is, it's stellar.

I love this thing and I do not miss the size at all. All right. Well, I finally switched over browsers. I am fully on Vivaldi right now where I'm recording the show and looking at the show notes in Vivaldi. Pretty cool. I moved everything over and I got to say, the good thing about switching browsers is it's a really good time to review your bookmark situation because I keep my house very orderly and clean, but my digital life is a fucking mess.

I had to really go through a bunch of my bookmarks. If I only had the time to finish that, that would be super nice, but it is nice to kind of clean it up a little bit, which I have done. I have not entirely deleted Opera from my system yet, so the Chinese are still looking in on me a little bit because I'm not entirely trusting Vivaldi yet.

I've been burned before, so Opera is still sitting there. It's a good idea. So far, so good. Yeah, my biggest issue was that whole logging into some things that I couldn't get into and I knew I was already logged in in Opera, so I'd go over to Opera and figure out how to transfer the login.

That whole Facebook issue that we talked about on the last show, on the last show with security where I got that link, it's just like, hey, we see you can't log in. Would you like us to do it for you even though you have two-factor authentication enabled? Yeah, so it actually did work out pretty well for that, but yeah, so far with Vivaldi, I'm having no problems and I like the little add-ons with the Note stuff and I love their download manager.

It's really cool. It's a little sidebar. It's really nice. I also like the fact that it's got the zoom built into the bottom bar so you can like crank things up and pull them back down. It's really good. Screenshots built in, really nice. I have to say that I think the biggest issue I have though is just one password because sometimes it doesn't autofill and you have to like copy and paste over.

I haven't had any problem with the autofill not working. What I have noticed is the touch fingerprint to unlock doesn't work often. Interesting. Yeah. That's odd. That's odd. But as far as your bookmarks issue goes, everything for me is in the bookmarks bar now.

I never go to anything besides my bookmarks bar. Oh, I know. I like how it did that. So what I'm trying to do now is I'm trying to organize them into folders. Like I've got a Grumpy Old Geeks folder. I've got a news folder, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I've had folders for years. My bookmarks bar is meticulously organized.

And if there's something that I want to bookmark and go back to later, I use Pinboard and I never save it to a local bookmarks file. I just throw it in Pinboard and tag it so I know what to go look for later. Right. But that gives me, it's like, when I first started shuffling around, I had a bookmarks file from that I've probably kept since 2000.

Half the sites no longer exist. Way more than half, brother. Way more than half. And I finally just said, you know what? Screw it. Let's start over. I declared a bookmark bankruptcy and just created my folders up and now I've got like everything.

I've got four distinct links on the left and everything else are folders along the way. And, you know, I've got my, that whole like speed dial set up. The start page in Vivaldi is pretty nice because you can, you can like set the things that you want to be in there and then you can, then it just kind of auto populates the rest.

Yeah. You know what I don't like about that actually, which I liked more about Opera. I don't like that it goes and pulls a screenshot of the page. I prefer just the, the icon because. Oh, I love the screenshot. It makes it so much faster for me to just pick them out of a lineup. I thought it was better the other way.

Oh, well. Can't win them all. Nope, you can't. Can't win them all. Let's talk about another company that isn't a tech company but thinks it is again. Okay. So WeWorks is in the news. The, I love the headline, are WeWorks in revolt now that the company is taking away free beer?

Okay. I barely remember that you got free beer there. Me either. Yeah. At the same time as Wall Street was side-eyeing WeWork for its dubious finances, the company has come under fire for fostering a frat boy work culture with mad men levels of drinking. This has also included a couple former employees suing them because they were fired.

She'd been fired for reporting sexual assaults at two company events and her assailants had been too drunk from the free beer to remember the incidents. Not good. So they're now trying to grow up and tamping down on workday alcohol consumption both within its corporate offices and in the workplaces its subleases.

I agree with that. If you're going to drink at work, work at home. They shouldn't have free beer at the corporate office. I'm sorry, but that's a little much. But they're a cool, hip company that we're promoting a lifestyle. That's right. I forgot. Every tech company has free beer.

Yes. They're not in the business of real estate and leasing out offices. They're a tech company, man. Come on in. Have some kombucha and then chase it down with a beer. I remember when Dig got its first office and Kevin invited me over to come check it out and there was a beer fridge like in the kitchen, free beer, as much as you want.

There was a tap built into the counter. Just like we work. I'm like, is that really a good idea? He's like, it sounded cool on paper. Yeah. It's great on paper until you realize people don't necessarily have self-control. Exactly.

You know, one beer leads to two, two beers leads to three, three beers leads to floor. That's the way it works. Three beers leads to HR. That's where that leads. Yeah. Well, that's what they were discovering. So they're back in 2018. They tried to limit tenants to four 12 ounces a day.

I'm sure there were the beer police making sure that everybody was taking care of that. So now they're just phasing it out. They're going to be offering kombucha, seltzer, cold brew, and tea. So, yeah, well, and as the article states, in a way this is fitting since WeWork is going through sober times as well.

It's announced plans to lay off almost 20% of its staff globally, shut down its restaurant co-working subsidiary. I'm sure the We Educate thing that we talked about once never even got off the ground, so there's no need to shut that down. And they're engaged in talks with lenders for a $5 billion debt package. Woo, doggy.

Soon you're talking about real money. Yeah. Yep. And then they did an interview with somebody that works out of a WeWork location asking about the beer situation. And he was like, it was more of a punchline than anything else. So look out how cool we are in premium or whatever.

And then, of course, the kegs seemed poorly maintained. They were always lukewarm and flat and possibly skunked. It was clearly meant to be more of a draw of a thing than it actually was. And he says, another funny thing, a while ago, maybe around when we first moved into WeWork, they had this company-wide announcement that they were going with all vegan or plant-based foods.

You know, another hip and cool thing, right? Yeah. So you could bring in your own stuff, but anything that they provided would be plant-based. So they have a lot of food events like Taco Tuesday or whatever. So that was the big thing. But then this past fall around Thanksgiving, I saw a message that was like, please join us for a Friendsgiving celebration featuring food from our good friends at Chick-fil-A.

Yeah. I'm sorry. I know it's a hate-filled company, but damn, those sandwiches are good. But now we have an alternative. Go to Popeye's. They're even better. That's true. And then they asked the guy if he liked working in WeWork or do you prefer it to a traditional office? And he said, I don't know.

I do think that, and this goes back long before these current problems, it's a gimmick. Yes, it is. I feel like I get the business idea and why it would be effective both for individuals as well as companies like mine to rent out space, but it just seems like everything is like the beer. It's a perk, but it's not really adding anything.

It's loud. It's noisy. You see everybody else. You can hear everybody, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It's a dumb idea. And now they're looking at a $5 billion debt package. It's funny. Yeah, the noise would be just the worst because I used to work in a co-working space.

I've worked out of some shared spaces too and you have to go outside to do phone calls. You can't do them in the office because it's too loud. Yeah, even the, I mean, here's the funny one. The one co-working space I worked at in San Francisco for a company, Metrically, that I used to work at was right next to a coffee shop.

So we had a big room on one side, a wall, a door, and then a coffee shop on the other, but the door was never closed. So you got all the noise from the coffee shop. You got all the noise from the entrepreneurs, you know, writing their next startup. And there was one conference room that you could go in to like maybe take a phone call if you could book it because everybody went in there to make phone calls because it was too goddamn loud.

Yep, good times. So on the heels of this, I would like to point out that there is a new podcast from Wondery called We Crashed, The Rise and Fall of WeWork. I do like the title. Yeah, I listened to the first two episodes that are out now and it's a great podcast.

You got to go get it. Just go get it. All right. Link for that will be in the show notes. And I saw this this morning and I just had to laugh. Elon Musk just dropped an EDM track on SoundCloud. I'm surprised he didn't just push it out onto every Tesla so when you started your car you'd hear his music.

Well, he may have. You just don't have a Tesla to find out. That's true. It's the new unlock sound is his oonce oonce EDM. I'm not an EDM fan. Any stretch of the imagination but I listen to it and it's not bad. It's actually not bad, you know, and he is dating Grimes so I'm sure he got a lot of help.

There's no doubt about that. But the thing that caught me is I looked at your, I saw this all over the place too. It was headlines everywhere. But I looked at your link to it and it's got a photo of him in his home studio. God, it's good to be rich and have rich boy toys. That is like multi-million dollar recording studio that he built for himself.

I know. I was looking at it like Jesus, man. I was like, I would have killed to have a setup like that when I was working on music. I know. It's like, wow. So if you can't get something decent sounding out of that, he's got problems. Yeah. Yeah. Lack of talent is the only explanation for that because damn boy.

Closing shout out to friend of the show, John Chevron. He's been working on a documentary for quite some time called The Baseball Furies. And it is how punk rockers love baseball. And the trailer's out.

The link is in the show notes. It is really cool. I got to say, I mean, he's been working on this for years. And what did you think? I watched it. I would love to see this documentary. I thought it was great. And I think they keep pointing out something that, you know, they're not that different. There is. And I remember this from my own experience.

You know, when I was a kid growing up, I played baseball. I played soccer. I loved baseball. Then I got really, really into music. But I kept up with the sports as well. And an awful lot of the people that I hung out with, the crazy goss and the electrodes and the industrial guys and the punk rock guys and all that, you know, it wasn't cool to talk about it, but we secretly all still really followed baseball and liked baseball.

So there's a big crossover there. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to put a link to the trailer and also to the website that right now they're looking for funding to get this thing, you know, packaged up and put it into a feature length film. But I think it's pretty damn good. Yeah, obviously this applies to American punk rockers because the UK punk rockers, they got no time for baseball.

Right, right. I was pretty impressed that like the, I remember when he did the Steve Albini one because we were talking about gear before he got into doing this. And I think he, I can't remember, I think he went out and bought a Presonus Studio 192 like I use. So it's pretty cool. So yeah, go check it out.

And I mean, I'm not a baseball guy, but I thought it was very interesting to hear how it, how everybody was like a closet baseball fan. It's pretty good. Gotta do something when you're on the road, man. And you know, it's always hurry up and wait. So you get to your hotel, you check into your room, you got six hours to kill before sound check.

There's a baseball game on. There goes three of those hours. Or six, depending on if it's a Cubs game and goes no time. So another shout out, I mentioned Zane Lamprey's Crafts and Crafts last week. The show that, I was at, the taping that I was at is now out with Dan Nitro Clark from American Gladiators.

And I have a cameo at eight minutes and 41 seconds where I get shot with a American Gladiators toy cannon by Zane. Now, when I went to this taping, I thought I was looking pretty good. I've felt good. I felt svelte. I've been, you know, trying to lose weight and taking walks every day.

I saw the clip and the diet is now in full swing. I am not going to eat until 2022. Well, you know, the camera adds 10 pounds and then YouTube adds another 15. Oh, well, I need to look good on camera.

Get that Peloton, Jason. 468 bucks a year. Plus the 2000 to actually get the bike installed. Yeah. That'll stop you from doing any more any more DoorDash runs. Yeah. Because you won't be able to afford it. I won't be able to afford my beloved Paquito Moz.

Oh, man. And shout out to our good friends in the UK, at least the ones that are still there because a lot of my friends have actually left the UK and now live in parts abroad in the EU because it's Brexit day today as we're recording this on Friday.

Do they have deals in place? Oh, what a time to be alive. I know. The memes that are going around around Brexit day from the expats talking to the people who are still there are like, nice to know you, brother.

It's been fun. It's been real. But yeah, you should have got out when you could. you know, it says it starts at 11 p.m. London time tonight and I recommend everybody in England today. Well, actually, it'll be over by the time this airs, but they should be watching The Purge for tips on how to survive.

I don't think it's going to be that bad, but it ain't going to be pretty. It ain't going to be pretty at all. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFilippo. 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.

Your support really keeps us going and keeps us on the air and we really, really appreciate it. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 411. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, donate to the show and get links to stuff we like. Stay grumpy.

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