432: Unified Theory of Oprah

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. Thank God it's Friday. Am I right, everyone? Is it? Is it Friday? I haven't checked. Says so on the calendar thingy that no longer has any meaning. Okay. Heard a good joke, Jason. Number one trending joke in Germany right now. What borders on stupidity?

Canada. And Mexico. I didn't even know the joke. I pulled that one out of my ass. That's nice. We're doing a great job. Yeah. Yeah. So we talked about the Apple and Google, you know.

Yep. Get together like cats and dogs. Shotgun wedding. Yep. And so, did I not say that they are going to have to have some kind of Batman Dark Knight kill switch? Yep. And then the next day they came out and answered some questions. It says, the company's promised to use the system only for contact tracing and to dismantle the network when it becomes appropriate.

Well, therein lies the rug, right? Yeah. That's going to be never. Yeah. So, that thing is going to be here for the rest of our lives. Yeah. Well, it's funny because you talked about this. Some readers have asked me whether the system might be put to other uses, such as targeted advertising.

That's what it's for right now. Yeah. It's already done that. This exists. It's already tracking us everywhere. They're just repurposing it, so. Yeah. And so, you know, eggs are the new good. They're, oh, wait, they're the new bad. Wait, they're the new good.

Fat. Fat's the new good. Fat's the new bad. No, fat is definitely, fat has always been bad, everyone. But it's delicious. No, wait. It's delicious. You're talking about fat that we eat. Yes. Because the new thing right now is one of the biggest determinators of whether you die from this or not, especially you Gen Xers, the kind of somewhat younger people, is if you're severely overweight.

So, that's a huge thing right now. So, everybody's like, lose the fat, fatties. Well, out of the five people I know that have died, at least three of them were very skinny. So, blows that curve. Sorry. Not necessarily. You're using personal experience versus overall statistics, Jason.

Right. Let's not Dr. Oz this shit. Jesus. Or Dr. Fillet. Or Dr. Druitt. Yeah, yeah. Or any doctor that's ever appeared on Oprah. I was going to say, Brian's unified theory of Oprah is coming true every day. Look, I've said this since day one.

If you have a doctor attached to your name and you've appeared on Oprah, you're fucking meaningless. Do not pay any attention to any doctor that's ever appeared on Oprah. Yep. That's kind of how it works. Yeah. God. And so, oh, and masks. Masks were, no, don't wear them in case you're, only use masks if you're actually positive and sick because, you know, we don't want to do that.

Now, it's like, oh, everybody's got to wear a mask. And it's like, okay, which one is it, guys? Which one is it? Well, okay. First off, the science is pretty much there on masks. If you're sick, you should wear one. The reason that we're telling everyone to wear one is the same reason. And I just saw this story here in Santa Monica, Venice Beach.

You know that big skating pit? It's called a skate park. It's not a skating pit. Whatever the fuck you kids do. You know that big skating park that's here? Yeah. They're filling it with sand because people can't stop going. Okay, well. And this is why we're telling everyone to wear masks right now because we're also fucking stupid.

We can't do shit unless we're forced to do it. So, sick people are not wearing masks. So, now everybody has to wear masks. And we have to fill in fucking skate parks with sand. We have to shut down the fucking beach for everyone because nobody can do shit. Well, also, there's this thing called asymptomatics.

I'm very angry this morning. Yeah. I'm fucking sick of this shit. Well, people can be asymptomatic. So, you know, that's kind of one of those things where you might be sick and not know it. But it's still funny. But here's the one that – can I at least get to my point before the show's over?

No, I'm angry. Okay. This epidemiologist proved that 10,000 steps is a lie. So, 10,000 steps is good. Now, 10,000 steps doesn't mean shit. So, it's – So, we've talked about this on the show before. It's a meaningless metric. It is a meaningless metric.

You know, I've seen for women it tops out at 7,500. But here's the deal. Walk till you can't. That's about it. You know, it all depends on where you're at personally, where you're at fitness-wise, where you're at weight-wise, all that sort of thing. I mean, I've seen numbers like for men in our age group, Jason, we're supposed to hit 20,000 steps.

Yeah, I would love to. Some of us have jobs. I would love to, too. I used to hit over 10,000 steps a day with ease. Now, I'm lucky to go over five. Exactly. Let's be honest. Where am I supposed to go? I can't walk anywhere. And walking with it – well, as I discovered, biking with a mask sucks balls.

Yeah. Oh, my God. Anything with a mask sucks balls. Yeah. It really does. Yeah. They're not fun. But, hey, I got this at the bottom. I'm just going to move this to the top right now. Okay. My buddy Coop from Art of Coop. Yes. The guy that does all the naked lady art?

Yes. He's got his own mask line out through Threadless now. So, Threadless is producing masks, and you can get Coop's designs on them. And, of course, he's not taking any royalty on them. And 100% of the proceeds go to MedShare up until $100,000.

Now, I want to call on Threadless to say, why not all of them? So, why is there a cap? Try not to be a profiteer, guys. I know you've got to put some work in for it, but keep it at cost. You know, pay your employees, pay your costs, pay shipping and everything.

But let's try and maybe stay even on this one. Well, let's – Maybe 5% over. Before being too judgmental about that. Yeah, I am working with some people that work in the music industry and particularly the event industry.

And as Mayor Garcetti has said here in Los Angeles, don't expect there to be any events until 2021 at this point. So, you want to do something and you roll out – You know, merchandise is one of the few things that a lot of these companies can do.

So, you want to roll out merchandise and masks are the new everything. And you want to tie it to a charity, of course, obviously. But you also still have to make your payroll. That's true. So, I'm not going to be too judgmental about companies not giving everything to charity or only going up to a certain amount because they're trying to keep people employed and they have to make their payrolls.

Yeah, yeah. I wasn't saying, like, cut out the payroll. I'm like, pay your people, pay the shipping, pay all your costs, make sure you're doing it. But, you know, I guess, yeah, it depends on which side you're looking at it from. I can see, you know, after the $100,000, maybe just cut the percentage back.

I don't know. There are ways to do it where it just keeps giving back. But, you know, right now, hey, look, it's $100,000. It's $100,000 they didn't have before. Exactly. So, I guess that's the way that goes. But I ordered four of them this morning. Keep people off the unemployment rules if you can. Oh, definitely, definitely.

And while you're there, at least buy some of Coop's prints, too. They're really good. I've got them all around my house. They are very beautiful and very naked. Do you wear a naked lady on your face when you go out? No, I didn't get the naked lady's one. I mean, it's been a long time, Jason.

I wouldn't blame you. No, no, no. Since you've had a naked lady on your face. I'm just saying. It is a long time since I've had a naked lady on my face. That is sadly very true. In the news. Well, we've been scraping the news to try to find some actual news.

And apparently, we're going to talk a lot about Amazon. Because Amazon is one of the only games in town these days. Going to be for a long, long time. And will be for a long time. The United States of Amazon. Like I said, we don't even have to change the letters. Amazon fired two more employees this week who are openly critical of working conditions during the pandemic.

So, yeah, that's great. UX designers Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa were also both members of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice. So, they've been agitators within the company for a while for a greater good. Which, fine. That's fine.

You can do that. So, ironically, the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post was the first to report the firings. So, I guess there's still journalism over there for now. The Washington Post has seemed to be pretty independent about when it comes to Amazon reporting. So, that's good. Yeah.

Yeah. So, this is coming as workers. And at least 74 of the retail giants' warehouses and fulfillment centers have tested positive for the virus. So, obviously, this is not ideal optics for Amazon. They're not talking about the violation. Of course, they've said, once again, that these employees have violated the don't talk about internal business practices without executive approval thing.

So, yeah, I mean, we've discussed this. We've discussed this before on the show. And, you know, there comes a tipping point where it's like, okay, well, if you're going to be an asshole, you're not allowed to work for us. End of story. You know? And right now, the climate crisis is kind of the last thing on the table since nobody's driving.

The air has been cleaner than it's ever been. Have you looked at the stars? Have you gone out and looked at the stars at night? No, because I'm so fucking dead tired from having a kid and dealing with that all day that I'm asleep basically when the sun goes down. Yeah, I've been. I hear they're pretty. Dude, you got to go out. Right now, it's overcast.

But, like, the next clear night, go outside and look up. It's going to be like you've never seen in Los Angeles before. I was out there for, like, five minutes the other night at midnight just looking up going, wow. Even Dr. Teeter called me from San Francisco, and he said the same thing. He's like, I've never seen it like this before.

It's crazy. I hope Dr. Teeter never shows up on Oprah because then we'll have to stop listening to him. Yeah, that's going to be bad. That's going to be bad. So, speaking of Amazon, my little town of Woodland Hills was going to be ground zero for Amazon's first actual grocery store.

Right. They took over a Toys R Us, which they put out of business to make a grocery store. And, well, they were kind of getting ready to go. And then all of this happened, the whole C-19 debacle. And so they've decided to turn it into a dark store.

They're basically just using it as a fulfillment center right now for all of the other places around here. Okay. Well, fair enough. Yep. Fair enough. Yeah, because nobody's going to be going to the store. Oh, wait. All their other stores are open. I know Whole Foods is open, which is right down the street.

So I guess it's good enough for, you know, inventory at the warehouse. And, man, speaking of, we talked about this when we were just bullshitting this week. I had to go, you know, I'm just ordering everything online now, not going anywhere. And because we have been doing grocery runs, like, once a week, one of us will go out.

And then we'll just have the hazmat suit on and spray down with Lysol and come back, do the whole nine yards, right? Right. And now it's like that's not an option. So I finally got my delivery time. Six days. It takes six days to get a slot now. Yeah.

Like I said, my wife has been a ninja about this. She's basically just reloading every single delivery app and has a list of things ready to go and finds windows when they open up because people cancel or whatever. So, yeah, that's how I got mine. Yeah. There was nothing for two weeks. And then it finally opened up and I got something coming, you know, five days after I had put the stuff in my cart.

I'm like, hey, or six days, six days. So I'm like, hey, I'll take it. I'll take it. And you can modify the order right up until they go pick it. So I'm like, I'm just adding to it. I hope you have an SUV, my friend. Yeah, it's pretty crazy, everything that's going on right now.

But speaking of Amazon, again, in a wonderful bid to try to save some money, even though their stock keeps going up. And Jeff Bezos has made billions of dollars since this started, but he can't pay anyone.

He doesn't pay any hazard pay. And he hasn't upped any money for anyone that's working for him. The other thing that they're doing right now is they've slashed all commission rates for programs that give publishers a cut of sales. Yes, we indeed do this as well.

We've never made a ton of money off of this, but, you know, we've made maybe a couple hundred bucks a year on our commissions going through Amazon. But that's all been slashed. It's been slashed significantly. They told everybody on Tuesday through a lovely email that we got that it will begin starting to cut commission rates beginning April 21st.

Now, this program drives significant revenue for online websites who link out to Amazon in their content. It's especially important for online publishers like BuzzFeed, the New York Times, and Vox Media that publish buying guides that drive readers to buy products from Amazon for kind of the sales.

They are going down significantly from 8% for things like furniture and home improvement products to 3%. Yep. Yep. Yep. Look, man, I got kicked out of the Amazon affiliate program for no reason. For no reason whatsoever.

I couldn't get a straight answer. All I did have been selling for them since the affiliate program came. So, you know, I'm like, fuck those guys anyway. So, it's the whole thing. You can't build your house in somebody's backyard. No, you can't, except for the fact that Jeff Bezos' backyard is America.

Well, I mean, the thing is, it's still a company. They still got to do what's best for the company. And you can't be surprised when things like this happen. No, not surprised. It's just, you know, poor timing, as per usual. There's no explanation as to why. They're not saying why they did it.

They're not saying anything. They're just saying, eh, we're doing it. I'm sure there's an algorithm somewhere that's telling them to do it, you know. There's some quant in the back room with a couple of econ guys and said, hey, we need to do this right now, sir. And they're like, okay, well, let's do it. Let's do it. Because I don't know why Obama works at Amazon now.

Obama, well, let's do it there. It's actually a pretty decent Obama. Oh, well, you're right. Yeah. Well, then it just turns into Elvis when I say thank you very much. Yeah, the thank you very much was not Obama. Thank you very much. That was definitely Elvis. Yeah. Oh, so the Jedi thing, we've learned a little bit more about this.

The Pentagon's inspector general could not definitively determine whether the White House influenced the procurement process for a major cloud computing contract. So this is the thing that was going between Amazon and Microsoft for a while. And they've been looking into it as to who, you know, was there any influence that made the decision about who's going to get it, which ended up being Microsoft, I believe.

Right? Yes, Microsoft got it. Microsoft got it. Amazon is butthurt. Microsoft got it. Amazon did not. So there's been an investigation into this because obviously there was seems to have been a bit of a pressure from somewhere high up. As we know, Trump does not like Jeff Bezos very much because he's just the actual billionaire as opposed to a fake one.

Well, and he owns the Washington Post, which is very critical of Trump. You know, there's a direct line as to why Trump doesn't like Bezos. Yes. So they looked into this and they could not find any pressure by any senior DOD leaders. So they're kind of letting it go through.

But they did want to point out investigators were unable to rule out whether the White House interfered with the contract award because the Department of Defense's general counsel instructed senior Department of Defense witnesses not to verbally answer questions about communications between the White House and Pentagon because of the assertion of presidential communications privilege.

Oh, you mean his tweets are his tweets, his appearances on Fox News saying, I hate Jeff Bezos. Yes. Did you see any of this? We're not allowed to answer that. No, no. It's yeah. These are confidential communications.

Yes. Oh, God. And Vox put out a think piece about this is the end of the office as we know it. This is one of the many, many, many things that are driving the economy these days. These think pieces to get the click baits, to get the links to Amazon that no longer will make anybody any money.

But this is one of them. And it's pretty interesting. It's it talks about if you return to your office after this is over, you'll probably notice some differences upon entering the building. The doors may automatically open so you don't have to touch handles before you board an elevator.

You might tell the elevator where you'd like to go rather than pressing the many buttons within the elevator. If this works as well as my Amazon Echo is currently working, which it's not, this is going to be great. I'm going to end up in the basement. I was going to say, can the elevator just take me back home so I don't have to go to work?

When you reach your floor, you could walk into a room full of dividers and well-spaced desks instead of the crowded open floor plan you're used to. So that's a plus, actually. Plus, we're going back to the normalcy of cubicles. Cube farms are fucking ridiculous. But they're better than open offices.

Yeah, in Cuban and common areas like meeting rooms and kitchens, expect to see fewer chairs and post documentation of the last times that they were cleaned. Less noticeable is more frequent cleaning policies, antimicrobial properties woven into fabrics and materials, amped up ventilation systems, or even the addition of UV lights for more deeply disinfecting the office at night.

Those UV lights are awesome, by the way. That's what they use to clean hospital rooms. Yeah. And they're they're badass. I'm like, I don't know why people aren't out there making these for the home right now. I know there's some people they are some DIY stuff on how to do it, too. But there are two things that show up in my Instagram feed ads right now.

Buku custom masks and the little UV thing that you use for your keys in your phone. Yeah, yeah. But I'm talking about whole house ones. I want to I want one to be like, you know, just wheel into a room and it boom cleans the whole living room, move it into the bedroom, cleans the whole bedroom.

Those monster ones. I know they got to be expensive as hell. I've got sure they are. That's probably why we're not seeing ads for them. Yeah, yeah. I know Jordan and Jen just bought one that's like it's kind of looks like a little garbage can, but you put your phone and your keys in it and you close the lid and then it does the UV disinfectant.

Yeah, I get ads for that like no tomorrow. Yeah, I'm trying to figure out I've got a SteriPen, which is used to sterilize water if you're out like, you know, it's in my earthquake kit. So, you know, because when when there's an earthquake, the water here goes to shit in a real quick way. So you use this to use the UV light.

I'm thinking if I can make a box to just stick the pen in and put my phone and my keys in when I come back from, you know, foraging in the woods to see if that would work. But I don't know if it if it works, but I want to see more of these UV lights. That's one of the things I think almost every office is going to have going forward.

Yeah, well, one of the things they don't discuss in this article at all is the cost of doing all these things, which most companies will not have any liquid funds to do. So, you know, I see this rolling out eventually, but I don't see how companies are going to be able to afford it right now because all this stuff is expensive.

Exactly. And that's why when you're saying this, I'm like, expect people to come back to this. I'm like, no, no, there's there's there's not like, you know, this Blackwater team out there of of anti antiviral cleaners that are they're all rolling into all these big office buildings right now, setting this all up for us.

No, they're not. No, they're not. This isn't some X-Files Black Ops type of thing where they're just, you know, black helicopters and black vans going around every night, just making your office nicer. So you don't get to get the covid. So, yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's a throwaway line at the end of the article.

Coworking spaces will probably never be what they once were as they forgo hot desks and communal spaces for more sanitary and less profitable private areas, meaning we work is going to be out of fucking business. Coworking is dead. I'm telling you, right, dad. Coworking is completely dead. Everybody's going to figure out how to do this stuff from home.

We've been at this for well over four weeks now. It takes three weeks to change a habit. Everybody's going to be in the habit of working from home. So co-working is not going to be a thing. I guarantee it. But everybody will still be writing their screenplays at Starbucks once that reopens.

At least here in L.A. Yeah. And I saw a great article over on Slate. Can you get food and groceries delivered by drone yet? And we all know the rule. If the headline is a question, the answer is no. Thank you, Betteridge. So this is one of the business ideas that suddenly makes a lot more sense in the age of the coronavirus.

But that does not mean you can get a pizza airlifted to your home yet. So there are a couple areas in the country that have drone delivery service as a pilot project. And they've seen upticks in orders. But in general, no. There really aren't that many places yet because we haven't really figured out how to make that safe or how to deal with air traffic control systems or anything like that.

So regulations in the U.S. aren't likely to loosen quickly or dramatically enough to allow drones to fill the sky and solve a lot of the transportation bottlenecks caused by the coronavirus any time to actually be helpful to us. What we've discovered, actually, is that the only real use of the drones in the coronavirus era is to put a loudspeaker on them and to fly them around and scold people for being outside.

Stay the fuck at home. Yes. And that is basically all that's happening. We've seen that in China. I think we talked about it when it first happened and even included a clip. European countries like France and Spain are doing it. Cities throughout the U.S. are starting to actually do it as well.

Police departments in Elizabeth, New Jersey and Daytona Beach, Florida, a little bit late Florida, have been flying drones that blast messages from local officials ordering people to abide by social distancing directives. The Elizabeth drones are additionally threatening blasting warnings like summonses have and will continue to be issued to those found in violation.

Fines are up to $1,000. You have been advised. Yeah. Yeah. And I wonder if they're using any facial recognition to start profiling people. Easy enough, right? There's high definition cameras on those things. Yeah. Yeah. Even my little cheesy $1,500 one has an amazing camera on it.

So, yeah. Save all that footage for later use in the MLAI world where we go back and start to profile everybody who was an asshole and didn't stay at home for our shadow database that I hope hopefully somebody is building right now.

Well, because I want to see these people punished, but that's a different story. Yes. Let's talk about that at a different time. All right. NBC Universal's Peacock launched and sort of, kind of, sort of launched. If you are a Comcast customer and you have an X1 or Flex set-top box, you'll be able to check it out soon.

But it's going to be another couple months until it rolls out. I'm probably guessing. They're saying July 15th. I'm guessing that's going to take a little longer since a lot of people are going to be stuck at home. How do you put out a press release that says it launches today when you can only get it if you're on Comcast?

And even then, it should be available within the next two weeks. That's not launches today. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Well, I mean, the early preview started on the 15th. So, just if you're one of these few people, and I love that they say, if you're among the, in quotes, millions of Comcast customers who meet that criteria, should be available within the next two weeks.

Yes. So, they're starting, they're trickling, they're rolling it out. There are more people subscribing to Peacock today than ever before, Jason. That's right. They have record number subscribers, Brian. Yes. Yes, they do. Oh, God. Is there anything on there that we want to watch? No.

No. No. Well, no, that's not true. I mean, I know people that are so addicted, a friend of the show, Mike, to Seinfeld, that he's probably creaming his jeans right now because all of Seinfeld's database will be available to him. And the office. I'm just like, what? I don't get people who buy these services who just want to watch reruns.

I get it for the kids who want to watch movies over and over because I know you and the Toy Story and the Frozen. Oh, my God. I've watched Toy Story about a thousand times, Moana a couple thousand times. I am basically living in Disney+. How is Moana? I've never seen that.

Dude, I actually. Moana is getting me through. For the first 300 times, it was good. No, no. I'm still down. I actually try to push the kid to watching Moana. Moana is getting me through the coronavirus. There's no doubt about that. I love that fucking movie. Really? It's amazing. I love it.

Love it. Okay. I want to see that one. And I still have never seen Inside Out. I want to finish that one. I haven't seen that yet either. So that's on the list. Yeah. I heard it has all the feels. So I want to check that one out because, yeah, I could use some more feels right now.

Dude, Moana will put you in a good mood. Great movie. All right. All right. What was the other one from last week that's going to put me in a good mood? Oh, shit. I don't remember, man. Last week feels like eight years ago. Kind of does. And by the way, that was four days ago that we recorded. Oh, Christ. I don't remember.

I really don't. Go back and listen to the show, Jason. I'm going to have to go back and read our own show notes. Damn it. Oh, shit. My story. Okay. I'm really paying a lot of attention. So we don't have more on of the week this week, but I have a special entry.

Google's former CEO hopes the coronavirus makes people more grateful for big tech. Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, thinks the coronavirus... Goggle. Goggle. Yeah. It's too early for me to have beer goggles, but here I am, thinks the coronavirus pandemic should teach Americans to be a little bit grateful for powerful tech companies and angry at their government.

Yes, let's shift the blame from the people that have been stealing our data, making all the monies out of us for years and years and years, and be thankful. Get down on our knees and say, thank you, big tech, because you're actually donating a tiny sliver of your money to help save us, and you're keeping us entertained.

Fuck you. Well, I'm kind of on his side a little bit, because without them right now, you would not have grocery delivery. You would not have food delivery. We would not be talking right now. So there's some things that he says that are true, but I do think that he did it in a very arrogant, bullshitty way.

Yes, he did. Remember, Eric Schmidt is the guy that said, hey, if you don't have anything to hide, don't worry about it. So you've got to put in a few grains of salt with that one. But yeah, I get your sentiment with it, but I am kind of happy that these tools are here right now.

I am also happy for them, but fuck you. Yeah, here's the deal. Eric, don't gloat. Don't be a dick. He's being a dick. At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out.

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

How is it going today, Dave? You know, it's not bad, actually. It's been a good week, I have to say. And I've been trying to think, well, a couple of reasons that have come to mind. First of all- Have you just accepted the dark void into your heart? Yes, I have embraced that the weight of the world has crushed my spirit.

And having accepted that, it's much easier going. No, spring has sprung here in Maryland, and it's quite beautiful. And so the flowers are blooming, and the trees are budding, and we've had those kind of days where it's cool in the morning, but the sun is warm in the afternoon.

And so that time of year always lifts my spirits and gives me a certain sense of hope. So I've been enjoying that, trying to get outside as much as possible. So that's been nice. What else? Would this be a good time to actually ask you, since we had somebody write in to us, have you been wearing pants as you've gone outside?

Because apparently that's an issue in Maryland. Yes, Josh sent this in. Is this Bittner? Grump on. And it's a link from Yahoo News. Maryland police remind residents to wear pants to the mailbox. This is your final warning. Yes, I love this story so much.

Not only because I can relate to it, but I actually have a friend who got pulled over by the police one time, and the police officer said to him, sir, where are your pants? So anyway, this story comes from, there's a little town called Taney Town, and it may as well be called Taney Town.

Taney Town is one of those lovely little... Apparently Tate Town. Yeah, Tate Town is what I was thinking too. Yeah, very nice. Ding, ding, ding, ding. So Taney Town is this little whistle-stop town, single traffic light, historic town out in the western part of Maryland.

Very cute, little blink-and-you-miss-it town. So it is literally right next to Mayberry. So there you go. And so if anywhere there would be that a local would be wandering around without pants, and that the warning would work from the police, you know who you are, knock it off, it would be this cute old town.

I suggest everybody go look up Taney Town, Maryland on Google Maps, and be ready for the nostalgia, and quaintness of it all. Well, and if the Google camera van drove by at just the right time, apparently you might see somebody without pants on it. That's right.

It would be funny if it actually turned out that it was the letter carrier. Hey, I got a strong union job. What are they going to do to me, right? Exactly. So the other... Actually, hold on. Before I go any further, because we're getting too far into this, I'm going to pour myself a lovely beverage here.

Let me just open up the... Okay. I'm not drinking beer today. Going on to the hard stuff? We've moved on to scotch. Yes, actually. I am going on to the hard stuff. This is Sagamore Spirit Rye.

Oh, very nice. Whiskey. Yeah, I guess this is from Kevin Plank, the guy who does Under Armour. This is one of his little side projects. When you're a rich guy like that, your side projects involve manufacturing whiskey and things for fun.

So I don't know. Because we're in Maryland or something, this stuff is all over our office. So I went and stole someone's bottle off of their desk because nobody else is here. What are they going to do? Right. Exactly. Exactly. I'll just refill it, dilute it. They'll never know the difference. But so anyway, let me...

Hmm. Ah, yeah. Okay. Well, Ben. Smooth. Join in. So... Brian's like, damn you all. Right. Yes, I've got a full day of parenting still in front of me today. God, what a pain.

That's what it really is when you really need a drink. So the other thing that happened to me midweek is I slept through the night. Oh, congratulations. Like a toddler. I slept through the night. Not like my toddler.

Not like. Please tell me what that's like, Dave. Yeah. I slept two nights tonight. I slept through the night and woke up in the morning thinking like, whoa. Was it a dream? Was it all a dream?

I feel well rested. So I hope that it's a sign of things to come, but we'll see. So it's a long roundabout answer, including a trip off to no pants town. But the answer is it's been a good week.

And I have to say, I'm feeling in better spirits than I have been lately. In better spirits and drinking spirits. That's the way to do it. That's right. Yes. The two may not be separated from each other, actually. Not for long. Yes. I'm going to throw out a quick PSA, since this technically used to be the cybersecurity segment.

Right. It's like when Howard Stern stopped playing music on his show. So, guys, go change your Zoom passwords. We know that password 123 is what you've probably done, because everybody does it. Like, oh, I've got to sign up for a thing. Okay, here's my password I use everywhere.

Yeah, well, over on the dark web, over 500,000 Zoom accounts are for sale, and even more than that. I guess that makes it a lot easier to do some Zoom bombing. Yes, it probably does. It does, and I think there's a good point to be made here, and that is that I think for a lot of people, they kind of categorize their passwords into different degrees of importance and security.

So, most people have one or two passwords that are kind of their throwaway passwords that they've been using forever, and when they sign up for something and they don't consider it to be important, they just toss that password in there, and off they go. Because what could possibly happen? What's the worst that could happen if someone gets the password to my Zoom account?

Right. And I think that's a lot of what's going on here is people put in their tried-and-true passwords into Zoom, because it seems like these accounts that are being sold are basically the result of other breaches, where they've been cross-checking against other breaches in an automated way and finding what works on Zoom, and so it's just credential stuffing.

Yeah, I was going to say, ye olde password stuffing accounts. Yep, yep. So, use a password manager. Let it automatically generate your password. And life will be good. Yes, it's very simple. And when you're using those password managers, I know at least one password has the feature called Watchtower that looks for breaches on the dark web, but they've also got warnings that say, hey, this is a reused password.

It only takes a password game, you know, unless you're a podcaster, then you've been busier than ever.

Oh, you know, you know, that's another thing I wanted to bring up with you guys. In the past week, two different people have reached out to me and said, you know, while I'm stuck here at home, I'm thinking of starting up a podcast. Yep.

Now, I'm generally of the mindset that I think if someone wants to start a podcast, they should totally start a podcast because, you know, I'm more power to them. Right. I just give them a set of things to think about before they do that.

Do you really want to do this? And here's here's what I've learned. Well, I mean, the thing about this is, of course, number one, you tell them, are you hoping to make money? And then you say, well, that's not going to happen. And the second thing that you need to tell them is, is this something you plan on doing once you're allowed to go outside again?

Because if the answer to that is no, then don't bother. Save your money. Well, here's the here's the funny part. So I did an hour and 40 minute Facebook live with Chris Lockhead last night, which is up on the book of the faces. I don't know. I think he's going to cross post it to LinkedIn.

So you don't need a Facebook account to see it. Oh, good. LinkedIn account. Yeah. Yeah. Or actually, what we're going to do is on his podcast Lockhead on Marketing, we're going to take the entire audio from that our session last night and make it into a podcast episode. So people who don't want to have an account can go listen to it.

But when I was done with that, that show, I went to went to the Twitters and I found somebody who had tagged me on a tweet that says it's a sign of the apocalypse. Amazon is officially out of podcast mics. Oh, wow. You can't buy them from Amazon anymore. Interesting.

Yep. Yep. Everything is backordered now. So you can't even buy your own podcast mic. So. Wow. So we can start selling things on the black market. Those of us who have collections, right? I'm looking at my wallet. You can upload that Yeti. Yep.

I'm like, OK, you know, I got a blue snowball here and I bought it ironically to make fun of people. But 500 bucks and it's yours. I, who would have thought suddenly it was, it had great value. Podcast wartime profiteering begins. Yeah. Yep. You know, hey, man, it's not an essential item.

So I don't feel bad about bilking somebody if they want a blue Yeti. That's fine by me. And in the coming apocalypse, you can beat someone to death with it. But yeah, it's possible use. That is the best possible use. You don't want to use it as an actual microphone, but as a home defense implement, go for it.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've been getting that question a lot. So that's why we did the giveaway last night. So it was just kind of an AMA, but we're going to end up doing it again. We had 375 comments on the show. Wow. So there are a lot of questions we didn't get to that I want to get to, and we're going to be kind of keeping on with that.

So yeah, there'll be more about that in the show notes in the next week or so where that stuff can be found, because I'm cool with giving away my info. I'm not going to do a course. And if I do a course, it'll be a free course just to do it, because I don't really care and I need something to do as well in my spare time.

And it's not because I really care about giving away, but what it really is, is just self-preservation. Because I'm sure, Dave, you get sick of the question, like, how do I start a podcast? I'm like, oh, God, here we go again. So I just want to put it in one place and say, here, this is how you start a podcast.

And this is how you do it. This is everything. Leave me alone. I want you to publish that so I can just send out that link when people ask me. Yep, exactly. I mean, I refer to some of your stuff all the time when people ask me, what equipment should I buy? I'm like, here's Jason's list of good equipment to buy.

And just send them that. GOG.show slash Adorama is the place to go right now. Right. So anyway, I want to talk about this new security lapse from Clearview AI. These are the people who were scraping all of the social media accounts and had like the three billion photos.

Well, apparently they left, left theirself ass to the wind and people could go get their source code and all of their keys to their Amazon buckets and even their Slack keys. And I'm pretty jaw on the floor on this one. What I was really bummed about is you couldn't get to those three billion photos because that would have been a fun download.

Hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. The source code is going to be interesting, though. Yeah. Well, what do you think is going to be interesting about the source code? I just want to see what they're doing. I really want to see what they've cobbled together from other sources.

How much of it's open source? How much is like custom code? You know, are they just using off-the-shelf libraries to build their stuff? Or have they written their own algorithms? I don't, I'm guessing I can't get the source code without probably breaking some kind of law. So I'm never going to see it.

But it just would be interesting to kind of, you know, scroll through and see what's what with what they're doing. I mean, they've got their Mac app, their Windows app, and their iOS app that was all leaked. So what I really want to see, though, is the server-side apps.

You know, what's actually doing the recognition? That's what I want to see. Not just the front end to the APIs. I want to see the API source code. That would be fun. Yeah, I think it'd be interesting to see with a company that has sort of proven themselves to be running fast and loose with so many things, does that extend down to their code?

Is their code just as sloppy and cobbled together as it seems like many, as the company, I suppose, is? Yeah. Or is there more discipline there? And we can guess what the answer probably is, but it'd be interesting to find out for sure. Yeah, you know, like how you do one thing is how you do everything.

So I'm guessing you're right, Dave. I'm sure the source code is crap, too. We'll see. I wonder if, I mean, there's no consequences for this, right? None. There never is. There never is. There never is. We know that. And especially now.

Now more than ever. There are no consequences for shady behavior. At some point, you know, if a factory spills a gazillion gallons of mercury into the local stream, there's the potential for consequences there. Hey, somebody might turn into a superhero.

Right. Mercury man. Mercury man. I know. I'm just a cockeyed optimist. Yeah. We thought we'd have beat that out of you by now, but apparently not. You're all just bright and cheery now because you slept two days.

Yeah. Well, and I'm drinking, too. That helps. It always helps. It can't hurt. It's a good thing I'm not an angry drunk. Well, let's give it time. Let's see if we can bust that myth. Yeah, that's right. You speak too soon, Dave.

You speak too soon. That's true. So some of the COVID-19 scams are starting to come out, including text message ones. And these are fairly insidious because texting is how a number of government agencies are getting a hold of us these days and plausible as well, because we know these tracking programs are starting.

So some of the ones that are coming in say things like, someone who came in contact with you, tested positive, or has shown symptoms for COVID-19, recommends you self-isolate, get tested. More information at. And I wouldn't click on it, but I know plenty of smart people that probably would.

These are getting pretty crafty. And those are all over the place right now. It's just been a pivot. I mean, all the fishing stuff, all the, you know, they've all just, they're using this because it works.

Everybody's scared. So why not? Yep. Special place in hell for these people. I agree. If there were consequences, I would agree with you. We shall see. Timothy writes into the show, excellent show guys, a little depressing lately, but what isn't fair point.

I found this article bug bounty programs are being used to buy silence that I thought it would be good if you and Dave comment on, especially since it is not COVID-19 related. So he gave us the link from a Schneer.com. Schneier. Schneier. Bruce Schneier. Yeah. You know, I'm German.

I should have got that better, you know, drunk. So there you go. Yeah. So it got into basically they're using this to buy silence rather than bring light to these problems these days. And my, my thought immediately, because I am depressed and angry all the time is how could it go any other way?

Hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, I mean, aren't these bug bounty programs, don't you have to, like when you post a bug, isn't it public or does it just go straight to them and then they can like sweep it under the rug? I guess that's what it really comes down to. Yeah. I, I guess, uh, I guess it depends.

I think the point they're making here is that some companies are saying in order to get paid, you have to sign an NDA. And yeah, so the bug may never see the light of day. Um, I don't like that. No, it kind of goes against the original theory behind bug bounty.

Yeah. It goes against the spirit of the bug bounty program. The whole point is to actually fix the bug. So, I mean, if somebody was unethical, they could report the bug, sign the NDA in like a month or so, figure out if it's still there or not.

Or give them 90, give them the 90 days that everybody's supposed to get to fix a bug. If the bug's still there, then they could probably pass it off to a cohort, which then goes and sells it on one of the, uh, the exploit services and say, Hey, okay, this has been verified by the company that it's a bug and it works and, uh, then at least double dip, you know, if the company's not going to actually act on it, which is what they should do, then, uh, yeah, maybe just do a little double dip in there.

You know, just this morning, I was talking with Joe Kerrigan about this because at Johns Hopkins, uh, Information Security Institute, where he works, uh, he's the guy in charge of, uh, bug reporting, of reaching out to the companies when their students or their researchers discover bugs, they go through him.

It's his job to reach out. And he was saying that it's sort of split between, you know, half the companies are, are happy and they want to help and they want to patch things. And the other half want to come at you in a litigious kind of way to say, why are you, why are you reverse engineering our code?

Knock it off. Because it exists, you dumb ass. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is interesting though. I, I, I mean, I guess I just hadn't thought it all the way through. It makes sense that some companies would want to basically buy, buy your silence, which is what, what they're saying they're doing here.

Don't like it. Don't like it. I wonder if it comes down to the complexity of the bug and the ease to fix, you know, if it's just a simple bug, it's easy to do. They'll knock it out and throw it out in the next release. But if it's something that's like core to the system and it's going to take them six months to do, you know, I can see why they would want to shut the thing down for a while to give them a little bit more time.

So I understand. Maybe they should put in time limitations or something of that nature instead of this attempting to shut it down. Like, let's keep this quiet for four months until I, until we can fix it, et cetera. Why would they do that when they can just say, you can never talk about it? It doesn't cost them any, any different to say four months versus ever again, you know?

Right. That's the bad part is if they buy you off, you sign an NDA and then they never fix it. And now you're not allowed to tell anyone. Right. Well, at least you've got the money. Well, I mean, that's what, that's what you, but here's the thing. Here's the thing. You look, you look at it and you go, well, you know, I don't feel like signing your NDA.

I am actually going to go sell this exploit to a, you know, of, you know, foreign actor now, so let's just, well, then you become like a really bad guy. You're kind of, you're kind of wearing a gray hat and then you're just going to black. Yeah.

Yeah. You know what? If the price is right. Well, we know what Jason's hat's going to be then. We're in a down economy, man. You gotta, you gotta look out for number one. I lost my job. That's when you, yeah. I need the biggest paycheck I can get. Yeah. I suppose they can come after you for that though.

So. Yes. Oh, they can. Well, that's why you do an arm's length. You know, transaction. So you pass it off to your bud who passes off to another bud. I like how we're going back to our initial kind of thing that we did in security in which Jason basically comes up with a way to do the most illegal thing possible.

It's always a mastermind that he is. Yes. The flawless record in doing crimes throughout his life that has led to his volcano island and his. His lair. His lair. If I did not have, have such a fear of prison, I would totally be that guy.

Oh yeah. You would have a shark boat in two minutes. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Totally. Totally. If I, if I had no conscience and wasn't terrified of going to jail, then dude, I'm so, I would be so terrible at this, but I would have somebody else take the fall. That's what I'm good at.

Yeah. Cutouts do it. Well, the last thing I had in the show notes for this segment was kind of more just for the two of you and it's too long to read, but I guess we'll do it anyways. Uh, this has been kind of making the rounds. Uh, someone on Quora asked, why do some British people not like Donald Trump?

And I'm a huge fan of British humor and the British in general. I'm an Anglophile. I grew up on Monty Python and dry wit and Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England wrote quite the response, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I mean, it's preaching to the converted at this point, but I guess we'll just put it all in the show notes because I'm not going to read the whole thing.

But I assume you gentlemen enjoyed it as much as I did. Yes, absolutely. I did indeed. I did indeed. Absolutely. I did indeed. I don't even, I was going to read the last line, but I don't want to ruin it. So we'll just leave it in our show notes.

It's quite wonderful. Yes. So on that note, uh, yeah, anything else going on? How's that whiskey going down? I wish I had some myself. It's not bad. You know, I'm about halfway through it. Uh, so yeah, it's tasty. Keeping my, my throat warm.

You know, the problem is I have one more Cyber Wire thing to do today. Oh, I'm going to listen to that one. I know I have. I have, I have one more script to read. I've done the daily briefing. So I've done, I've done the podcast. I have one more thing I have to do for Cyber Wire Pro.

And so I'll just say, I love you guys. Dave, I suggest you, you embrace your true password. Embrace your true Maryland nature. Take off your pants, put on your furry mask and record away. That's a solid plan.

All right, gentlemen. Good talking to you. Have a good week. I will talk to you guys next week. All righty. So as part of my surfing to maintain some semblance of sanity, I just find some fun stuff every now and then.

Mental Floss is a great site for that. And I saw this one, which I thought was great. The Origins of 62 Last Names. Did you know the last name Thomas basically means twin? It comes from ancient Aramaic. Yes. So, you know, anytime anybody had twins or triplets or something like that, they ended up getting the name Thomas because that's what it meant.

So this is a kind of fun list. They did a good job. And they didn't just do Anglo-European names, which is really nice to do a lot of Spanish and different languages, which is great. But they could have done with more interesting slash obscure ones rather than, you know, there's a lot of Baker, Cook, Smith.

Kind of obvious where those came from. Could have left with more random ones, I think would have been nice. So, yeah, these are cool. And it's interesting. My uncle was able to trace back my mom's side of the family quite a far bit back. That family name is Kidder, K-I-D-D-E-R.

And what it came down to was the first Kidders were basically the kid, like baby deer handlers for the king in England. So they were called the Kidders, you know, because that was their job title, because that's how they did things back then, which is half of this list.

So my family comes from basically the deer keepers to the king of England. Oh, yes. Well, Schulmeister basically means schoolmasters. So I come from a long line of principals. Oh, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, DeFillippo is an impossible one to trace nowadays, because when everybody came over to Ellis Island, they Americanized their name.

So Phillips is basically a bastardization of my last name. So basically that side of the family is just impossible to trace. So, but this is a really fun list. Yeah, I liked it. It's interesting. And I love this one. Ford files a patent application to help sniff out stinky ride hailing cars.

So we've got the metrics of, are they a good driver? Have they raped anybody this week? Have they gotten into many accidents? Well, now Ford is saying that we want to put sensors in cars to basically get a smell-o-vision. So you can put in different types of smells that you are not a fan of.

I would put patchouli at the top of my list. So it's like a scratch and ride? Yeah, kind of, yeah. And it's funny, they actually have patchouli in this list, but I'm like, it's not about an allergy. It's about the fact that it is the stinkiest hippie damn smell in the world and should never be there.

But, you know, if I get in a car and it smells like good pizza, I'm down. Okay, well, we might have to make a side trip over to my pizza shop. Fun tangent here. I always had a huge crush on Drew Barrymore, and I met her a couple times, and she stinks of patchouli all the time.

Oh, no. It ruined my crush. Dude, you just ruined half my childhood. I hate you now. Sorry, man. I hate you now. Sorry. She just douses herself in it, apparently. Oh, well, I had lunch next to her at Sushi Roku one day, and she actually smelled like flowers, so I had that in my head.

But now, I'm going to dismiss this comment as fake news. Fake news. Fake news. Don't ruin my Drew for me. So, this is actually a pretty interesting idea. Granted, it's just a patent application, which means it'll probably never see the light of day, but I think it would actually be a good thing to have in the world.

I'm down. I'm on board. Not that anybody's doing any ride sharing at the moment. Yeah. Not that anybody might be doing it in the future. That could be an industry in trouble as well. Yeah. Well, they're all going to be in food delivery, so we can actually, you know, they can use the sensors to, like, I can smell if my food's any good when they put it in the car.

I'm like, that's tomato smell off. Take it back. Give me a new batch. What you need is one of those fancy little, what are they called again, where you can tell what direction everything is? A compass? No, not a compass. Crap. I wish I was.

We've got to stop doing this so early in the morning, because my brain never works right. You need to tell if your food is upside down or not. Oh, yeah. So, you need a gyroscope inside of the actual delivery. They're a gyroscope. I don't know why that was not coming to my head. Probably because it's eight in the morning. Yeah. Well, you know, there's no reason we can't do this at eight at night and just have drunken old geeks for the next six months.

You know, that's a good point. We'll have to look into that. In the meantime, if you want to get off this crappy rock, we've apparently found a new one, which is kind of nice. A new Earth-sized planet has been found in the habitable sweet spot orbit around a distant star. Kind of cool.

So, this planet, which is called Kepler 1649c, doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but there it is. It's around 1.6 times larger than Earth, making it very similar to our own planet in terms of physical dimensions. It's close to the star, much closer than ours, but the star is a red dwarf, which means it isn't quite as hot.

It gets around 75% of the light we do from the sun. Perfect for goths. I was going to say, we're going to call it planet goth. Yeah. And it orbits so closely to its star that its year is just 19.5 days, which means we'd be out of lockdown in a jiffy.

We would be, but the 1.06 times larger means that the gravity is probably stronger. So, we'd have to get more buff. And as we know, goths don't like to get buff. Well, there is the whole subsection of BFGs. Big fucking goths? Okay.

Well, this is the last one. It's just, I found it very fun. It's guns and movies replaced with selfie sticks. And there's a ton of them in here. And they're just hilarious. I mean, they're really funny. So, if you want a visual thing, since we're audio only podcast, go check it out.

It'll be in the show notes at gog.show slash 432. It's very fun. Very nice. Closing shout outs. This is a shout out to my friend, Steve Lappin. And this is, I'm actually pre-recording this and we'll drop it in in a second here because it's going to take me a second to record this.

Steve was the first friend I had in LA when I moved here in 1995. He was an intern at my first website, Spew, and turned out to be so much more than that. He showed me and my girlfriend the ropes of LA since he was a SoCal native. And he taught us how to say Sepulveda and Cahuenga properly.

And that the CYN on street signs stood for Canyon. He took us to Soap Plant and Wacko and was our tour guide for years. Showed us all the great clubs, restaurants, and dive bars. And was the first person to take me to Jumbo's Clown Room when it was even sketchier than it is now.

He had Crohn's disease, which he told me would one day require them to remove a huge chunk of his intestines. So he treated every meal like it could be his last. So he was an unbelievable gourmet cook. He made some of the best meals I ever had. But Steve was also a scientist. He was a molecular biologist.

So through research and testing, he kept his Crohn's at bay. Steve was part of the Spew family. And when we were up for our very first Webby Awards, he was right by our side in San Francisco. He had Bimbo's 365 when we lost. And to cheer us up on the way back to L.A., we stopped at Harris Ranch and had an amazing steak dinner.

And he even bought 50 pounds of meat for the road. It was one of the best weekends I ever had, even though we lost to a jerk in a bathrobe. Screw you, Bianca Smutschack. One day, he showed me a programming book, and he said he was going to learn to program the robots they used in his lab. And he did.

And he went on to a fantastic career in medical robotics. He eventually had two beautiful daughters, who I'm guessing are as heartbroken as I am right now, because Steve died this week. So, farewell, my friend. You will be as missed as one person can be. Peace.

Well, I'm so sorry for your loss, Jason. That does suck. In the irony stakes, John Conway, inventor of the game of life, has also passed away. So, he has passed away from COVID-19. We have a link in the show notes if you are not aware of the game of life.

Pretty cool. Yep. Yep. Sorry, John. See you later. Again, with everybody else. And Brian Dennehy, one of my favorite actors, is now gone as well. He did not die from the C-19. He died from natural causes at 81. So, he had a good run.

Great career. One of my favorite actors of all time. You will be missed, sir. Yes. And I want to leave this on a little bit of upbeat news. Wow. A little bit. Did you find any? Yes. Twit. This Week in Tech, one of the proto-tech podcasts, who we always like to refer to as our very big, clean-mouthed brother, and there's a reason this show exists because of Twit, because I was a fan, turns 15 this Sunday.

And they're going to do a special episode with the original cast, including my friend Kevin Rose and my other friend Patrick Norton. And Robert Heron, I believe, is going to be on there as well. And, of course, Leo Laporte. So, they're going to do, basically, a call-in show, which I think the original, they were all in the studio, in the old studio, the OG studio, which I think was Leo's garage back then, or his loft, before he became a big deal.

But I'm very amazed that it's only 15. I thought it was going to be 20 at this point. But, yeah, Grumpy Old Geeks would not exist without Twit. And this is really fun. So, I'm definitely going to tune in on Sunday for this one. Excellent. Very cool. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmester.

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. And if you don't have any bucks, just keep them to yourself. Your support keeps us going and we really appreciate it. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 432.

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 and try and stay... I don't know. Positive. Active. Something. Something. I think everybody's grumpy.

We were good with... I think we got grumpy on lock. Yeah. All it took was a pandemic. Everybody's on board. All right. Let's do happy face. Happy face. Yee. Ready? Yep. At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out.

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