445: User Generated Incarceration

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. What a week. What a week. Yes. Quite the week. Another one. Yeah, I think it's going to go on for a little while. Yeah, it is. That's what's going to happen. I think so. Yes. So, yeah. Not going to talk about that.

Nope, let's move on. A little bit in the news. So, yeah, we talked a little bit about the Dallas Police Department's attempt for, shall we say, user-generated content. Yes, user-generated incarceration. Yes, that didn't go so well. Oh, good show title. Yeah, and the FBI has had a taste of that itself as well.

So, the FBI asked for evidence of individuals inciting violence during protests. And people responded. Boy, did they respond. Oh, what did they do? What did they do? Lots and lots and lots and lots of clips of the cops beating the shit out of people. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of that going around.

I actually... There is. I got to say, I took every bit of social media off my phone, out of my bookmarks, and all my quick links, because I am tired of seeing those videos. I can't watch it anymore. I've hit a breaking point. Last night was it for me as well.

Yeah. I saw a clip of the 74-year-old man in Buffalo. I don't know if you saw that one. Nope. I'm fortunate enough not to see that one, but I've seen enough of them. I've spent quite a lot of time in Buffalo. My heart hurts for that city right now. The uproar was immediate. Well, I'll just explain it to you, Jason.

74-year-old guy, just standing there. Police rolled by. They pushed him over. Okay. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. Way to go, way to go. So, yes, you know, in going with your shout-out at the end of last show, there are lots and lots and lots of good cops out there.

But for anybody that's saying it's just a few rotten apples, there's a couple fucked-up trees, people. Yeah, there are definitely a few fucked-up trees in this orchard. That's for damn sure. Yeah. So, we also, let's see, we put out our show on Wednesday. We recorded on Tuesday, but we played along with the hashtag Blackout Tuesday, as did most people.

I have a couple things that I think I learned from that, non-sociological. This is just tech sort of stuff. I didn't miss Instagram one bit. Nope, me neither. Not at all. I scrolled a couple times, just saw everything was black, and went, well, that's great. Fine. Yeah. Really made, really, the ads really brought the room together, though.

Yes, I texted you immediately on Tuesday. I was like, boy, it sure makes the ads pop, doesn't it? Sure as hell does. Yeah. I learned that Facebook's timeline, even with all my various hacks in place, is so disjointed at every single level, comments, timeline, everything.

Like, nothing is linear. You have to spend more time trying to get things into linear order than it's actually worth it. It's like a fucked-up episode of Memento, you know? Yeah, it really is. Like, you know, especially if it's a non-friend comment thing, if you're commenting on any kind of entity, like I got into a bit of a spat with the city of Santa Monica, you can never see anything in context, because Facebook will not display things in correct chronological order, unless you fucking force it to.

Yeah, because, yeah, I've got the most recent tab, like, it's at the top of my list on the left with the new design, so I always just click that first, but it's still out of order. It's like, I don't know, let me explain to you what most recent means, Mark. I don't quite understand, like, how you're supposed to have conversations when you can't have them in context, because nothing is displayed chronologically.

It's insane to me. It's insane. Well, that's seven years, Brian. We've been talking about this. It makes no sense. The algorithms just are destroying the conversation, and, you know, we can only talk about this so many times. I guess we can keep talking about it, because it keeps happening.

Seven years of this. And when something big is going on, it really becomes highlighted. Like, when we're just in kind of our normal day-to-day pre-coronavirus, pre-mass rioting and looting and civil disruption state, it just kind of, well, whatever, who cares?

But it really comes into focus how we're kind of basing our lives on these social media sites, and they're so useless when this sort of stuff happens. Yeah. It's like, I'm trying to follow protests in my area, and it's like, you know, okay, I look at it, it's like, okay, this protest is planned for this time, and then, you know, it's just all out of order.

I'm like, okay, where are they at now? Who's going where? And it's like, I'm literally trying to help protect my friend's store to make sure that people aren't coming at him. And it's like, oh, no, we moved over to here, which was a post from six hours ago, and then followed by a comment two seconds ago, and I'm like, this makes no sense.

It's making me insane. So I just had to, I had to, I just, I'm off. I'm done. Call me, call me in 2022 when this shit's over. Didn't miss Instagram, Facebook, utterly useless and just frustrating, and Twitter just carries on and can't really be bothered by large social movements except for, you know, making sure everybody knows you're a social media warrior, and silly things like replace a letter to make something awful.

My argument being no letters need to be replaced, everything is awful. Everything's awful. So, I mean, remember back, I think, I mean, this was somewhere between episode number two and episode number 10. When we first started doing this show was basically when Arab Spring was around, and everybody was making their icons green, and we came up with a term for it, and I cannot remember the term.

I think we made it a show title, but who can scroll back that far? We've done too many shows. And it's like, that's what just reminded me of the whole Blackout Tuesday thing. I'm like, okay, sound and fury signifying nothing, because that's all it is, again. And it's like, yeah, it means nothing.

And most people did it fucking wrong, because they hijacked. They used the wrong hashtag. They used BLM and Black Lives Matter for their protest. You know, it wasn't protesticon, but it was something close to that, is what I called it. I even came up with a business model around that, if you remember.

I've got to go back and find that episode. But yeah, all these stupid things do is just screw up the timeline, and also, you know, screws up the communications for people who are actually trying to communicate. It's like, okay, I'm in Houston. I'm going to use BLM Houston.

BLM, like, hashtag BLM, hashtag Houston. That way, everybody is on the same page. That's what hashtags were fucking invented for, if you go back and read the history of your hashtag. And, you know, these people just going, I'm going to sit in my house, watch some TV in my sweatpants, play with myself, and post a picture of, you know, a black image.

Okay, great. And you did it wrong. You fucking did it wrong. So, you know what, guys? Stop. You're socialing wrong. Completely socialing wrong. Well, at some point, Jason, when the vast majority of people are socialing the way they're socialing, at the end of the day, we end up being the ones socialing wrong, because that's what everybody does.

It just chaps my dazzle. Chaps my dazzle. And just to end this on, I think, kind of a happy note, after we've just been bitching, this is the one other thing that really did stick out to me. And so, overall, regardless of all of this, the ability of humans and humanity to find humor in it all, the jokes, the memes, the gifs, yeah, it's mostly black humor.

No hijacking of black movements intended here, just black humor. But that's my favorite kind anyways. It is amazing. I mean, stunning how we are able to always rally and just rip the shit out of everything. My favorite that I saw, I can't remember if it was last night or this morning, because time becomes a loop, was, of course, the picture of Trump standing in front of the church, holding up the Bible, but somebody replaced it with a porn video called Black Wives Matter.

That was genius. It's pretty funny. Gotta admit, it's funny. In the news. So, this morning, I woke up to another vision of the apocalypse, which all of the local news stations were saying, oh, my God, the Amazon Fulfillment Center in Redlands, California, is on fire.

The one million square foot facility was burning to the ground. I'm surprised that the local news was actually carrying anything, because as I was watching, I tried to scan over to local news yesterday, because we were having another big protest in Santa Monica. You know, you want to watch the local news, because CNN isn't covering it, and I want to know, do I need to batten down the hatches again?

Is it getting bad? But obviously, local channels thought everything was solved, because they were just running the Charlie Sheen show. I was watching Judge Judy instead. Yeah. So, there you go. Everything must be fun. Yeah. I watch Good Morning LA on Fox.

Yes, I do watch Fox in the mornings, because they do have a Good Morning show. And they were the first people to actually point out the fact that, no, it's not Amazon that was on fire. It was Amazon's two blocks away, and Amazon finally came out and said, hey, guys, it's not us. Don't worry. You're still going to get your dog food, your kibble, and your sex toys on time.

Don't worry about it. But it was insane, this building that went up. I mean, it's massive. And it burned in like two and a half hours, but the fun part about it is, there's a Twitter account that, this is the tech tie-in here. I'm getting to the tech tie-in.

It's not just that Amazon was burning, because everybody would have been conspiracy theories out the wazoo. There's a guy who follows all the emergency stuff on his radio. And whenever there's a big event, like a three-alarm fire like this one was, he goes to the scene and then live streams it.

Right. Because he's, I guess, a budding arsonist or trying to learn the tactics of the LAFD, or he's just a fan of fire. But he was the one that was there and periscoping the fire first thing. And like the news was trying to get a hold of this guy and figure out like, hey, did you set the fire?

Because there were apparently several explosions heard before this thing went off. And he's like, no, I just, I just follow stuff around because I got nothing else to do. Okay, you go, man. But it's pretty interesting that a guy on periscope is the one that broke the fire.

So it was interesting. But yeah, did you, did you see this thing? No, I haven't seen anything. I only woke up about 10 minutes ago. Okay. So yeah, this thing started about 530 in the morning. And by 730, this entire 1 million square foot building was gone. The only thing that is left are the walls around the side, the entire like roof caved in.

And it's just gone. It was right next to the 10. And that's what, that was the tip off. I'm like, okay, well, I did a Google map search because Google is our friend. And I'm like, oh, the Amazon place is up the road. That's not it. And I also thought that Amazon's got to have a really good fire suppression system in their warehouse.

They have a lot of good suppression systems. Yes, they do. Yes, they do. Employee dissent, fire, you know. Free speech. Minimum wage. Oh, wait. No, they're doing okay with the minimum wage. Never mind. Yes. But anyway, yes. So, yeah, it was not Amazon.

But I think everybody this morning that was watching the news and watching this thing burn was like, oh, my God, how much later is my shit going to be now? That's all they cared about, I'm sure. You know. Oh, the other thing was, it's because I think Amazon uses that place to park some of their trucks because it was lined with Amazon Prime truck, like tractor trailers that burned.

Right, right. So, people thought, oh, no, it's an Amazon warehouse, but I guess they just, you know, when they're not using some of their semi-trailers, they park them there to keep them out of the way. Right. Well, we got another little bit of hyper-local news that went national. This happened in Santa Monica, and this video did the rounds amongst all my local friends before it leapt to the national level, as it were.

I don't know if you've seen this video, Jason, but the video involves an attractive young woman pulling up along a very, you know, hoity-toity shopping district here in Santa Monica. She leaps out of a Mercedes SUV and goes over to a man in an orange vest who is busy installing, you know, plywood over windows for, I don't know if that particular store had already been looted or if they were just protecting it for future possibilities, whatever.

So, she leaps out. She asks to borrow the drill from the worker and poses for a picture of her drilling in and helping the community by putting up some plywood. All right. She didn't actually do any drilling. She then hands it back to the worker, thanks him, and goes back into the SUV with her photographer, who she also identified as her boyfriend, with an offhand remark saying, boyfriends of Instagram.

She laughed, seeming to acknowledge her companion's assist with her fake photo op and threw out a flippant BLM before leaving the scene. Okay. So, this got passed around a lot here in Santa Monica, and people were just saying, you know, what a horrible person this is. Turns out. Turns out.

This got shared by some famous people, and then it got viewed over 13 million times, and then the person was identified, and she turned out to be Fiona Moriarty-McLaughlin, a commentary intern for DC Examiner, who was basically also an influencer.

Oh, an influencer. Yes, an influencer. So, this caused her to immediately deactivate and shut down all of her social media, as it should, because- Instant karma. Instant karma. Yes, exactly. So, fuck you, Fiona.

Yeah. Well, her name is Moriarty, so she's, you know- Well, yeah, she's on the evil side. Inherently a villain. Yes. Hang on, I just, did she think this was not going to get found out somehow? You know, that, this is the weird thing that is happening right now.

We, maybe, again, like we've always talked about on the show, maybe technology has just moved on too fast for the human brain to understand. Because on all levels, even people that are making a living using their cell phone cameras to shoot fake photos of themselves doing wonderful things, seem to forget that we all have cameras in our phones.

Influencers forget it when they do stupid shit like this. Cops forget it when they push over 74-year-old men. Do you not understand? We all have phones? You are all being recorded all the time. Yes, and your stupid shit is going to get posted and you will get identified.

Yeah, panopticon fail. That's what, it's really just a panopticon fail. Yes, it's shocking to me. Now, I just have a link here to a Twitter thing. I saw this just a little bit before I woke up and this is pretty amazing. We have a proof of concept, Jason, basically that Donald Trump's tweets going through the regular algorithms and filters of Twitter.

Would get his account banned immediately. I saw this and I dropped my bacon. I literally dropped, I was having a piece of bacon and I dropped it when I saw this. I'm like, how good is this? I love these people. I love them. Bizarre Lazar set up an experiment. He started about 12 hours ago or, well, no, this was done on June 1st.

So a little bit earlier in the week. He set up an account and just started literally retweeting word for word every single one of President Trump's tweets. Within 12 hours, his account was temporarily limited. He was asked to remove tweets and then his account got suspended. Yep.

This is at suspended the pres, P-R-E-S on Twitter. And I'm like, you, sir, are a mad genius. I love you. And this just shows the bias. This shows the bias against. Oh, wait. I thought social media was biased against conservatives and Republicans.

Brian, I guess they might be, oh, I don't know, wrong. They might be actually wrong. Oh, wait. We've had court rulings that they're wrong. So I guess, yeah, I don't know. But anyways, genius proof of concept.

Genius. Does not look good. Jack does not look good. Even though you're trying to do something, this does not look good. Bizarre Lazar, you win the Internet for the day. Yes. And Snapchat has jumped on board, sort of. They will no longer promote content from Trump's Snapchat account and its app.

The company announced the change will make Trump's Snapchat posts more difficult to find in the app, although the company isn't removing any content or changing how his posts appear to subscribers. I'm not, you know, I'm not big into Snapchat. I don't even have it on my phone anymore. What they're basically doing is not giving him free advertising anymore.

They will not amplify his posts by putting them in the Discover platform, et cetera, et cetera. So that's actually, I guess, kind of a good thing. At least they're doing something. It's a step. It's a step. If they really wanted to do it, they would just cancel his account, like everybody on social media should.

But nobody's going to do that. But in following in line with the campaign, you know, which basically told that Twitter is censoring the president, even though they're just putting a label on it, which is censoring, the campaign is coming around and basically now accusing Snapchat of trying to rig the 2020 election by not giving them free ads.

Yeah, well, yeah, they can go fuck themselves. So that's all I care about. They can go fuck themselves. Yes. So while we even have the low-hanging fruit of social media, Snapchat, getting in there and doing something about what the president's doing online, Zuckerberg is staying course.

He's holding firm. He's holding firm. There was a Tuesday Q&A meeting with around 25,000 employees, which got very tense as they took, and I love this, they took pre-prepared and pre-selected questions that did not go well for the Zuck.

Yeah. Mostly involving, you know, why are you doing this? How are you allowing this? What's the justification for this? And he went on to say that after reviewing and studying up on the history of the situation, he decided that the right action where we are right now is to leave this up. He does not see this as being read as a dog whistle, even though everybody else does.

And he's just going to keep it. But we've had more pushback. All of his employees are pushing back. More people are leaving. The really most interesting question of all of this was he went through the process of the decision-making to leave his stuff up. And it was a very small group of people, of course, involving Sheryl Sandberg, who in my eyes can do no right.

She's just horrible. She had no right. She is the problem. She needs to lean out the door. As far as I'm concerned, she may have done some stuff for women's rights, but she's a fucking horrible COO. And policy VP Joe Kaplan, the one person not involved in this discussion, was a vice president of integrity.

They have a vice president of integrity who was not at all involved in the decision about whether Facebook should have any integrity or not. Exactly. So Facebook will not be doing anything along those lines, and God knows whatever reason.

But God knows that they have the ability to do it, because guess what came out this week as well? Oh, hang on, hang on, hang on. Before we go down that road, I got to say, did you read Kara Swisher's op-ed on the New York Times about this situation? No, I have not. Oh, she just took him to the mattresses.

She's just like, this is, you suck. You absolutely suck. You can't be fired, so you're a little dictator inside your own fealty, and you have not done the research. I would like to see your research. She basically said, Mark, show your work. Show your work.

And for Kara Swisher to say that, to come out against Facebook, who is, you know, with Recode, Facebook is a lot of her bread and butter, so they can pull her access at any time. So that was a ballsy move to go to the New York Times and not even on her own platform to do an op-ed and say, Mark, you're being a dumb shit.

That is, you know, I'm not a huge Kara Swisher fan, but she just, she went up like, you know, my heart grew three times that day, I'll say. I like her a lot more now because she, she just, she's calling his bullshit. And even doing it, she just realized also that, you know, she's got a big platform at Recode, but not as big as the New York Times.

And they let her like, Kara, would you like to take the mic for a minute? And she dropped it on her way out the door saying, fuck you, Mark. Excellent. Well, in case you think that it's just too difficult for these platforms to take care of this stuff, or Facebook and Instagram in particular, nope, their tools work pretty well.

And they accidentally blocked the seek hashtag for nearly three months. Mistakenly. This came out in, in March, apparently, as a result of a report in March. The company says it first became aware of the block on Wednesday. So starting in March, they blocked the seek hashtag, which is pretty benign, if you ask me.

You know, do you have any idea if, what would happen in this country if Christianity got blocked? Christianity, Jesus, hashtag Jesus. If hashtag Jesus, Jesus, Jeebus, got banned, do you have any idea the, the bullshit that we would have to listen to?

But since it was seek, you know, it took three months for them to figure it out. But this is, it's the same exact thing. It is exactly the same thing. I'm not, and then, you know, of course, they made the statement that they quickly moved to unblock them. I would argue after three months of people complaining, that's not very quick. Our processes fell down here and we're sorry, they said.

Now, one they did move a little bit quicker on is they also managed to somehow put in a spam detection system that caused users to be unable to post or interact with the hashtag Black Lives Matter hashtag, which one would argue. Oh, God. Oh, how do these people stay in business?

Well, we don't stop. Can't stop, won't stop, Jason. First one's free. In case you thought this was all limited to online stuff, well, we of course know that racism is not limited to online or limited offline.

It's very much online. But I had no idea it was so much in gaming. And gaming systems seem to be doing a better job of dealing with this than our social media do. Call of Duty developer will crack down on racist players. Activision and Infinity Ward are responding to Black Lives Matter protests with more than just delayed Call of Duty seasons.

Infinity Ward has vowed to crack down harder on racism and its military shooters. There's some irony there, I think. Including more efforts to monitor and identify racist material, more in gaming reporting systems, and increasing the number of permanent bans to deal with habitual offenders. So racism is rife in online gaming as well.

Good times. It is, but there's a lot of self-policing going on. I played a lot of Call of Duty. And, you know, if they're racist in our group when we're out there, they're instabanned. They're always instabanned. And, you know, anybody says the N-word, they're out of the group. Period. And, you know, a lot of the players I play with, I mean, it's a very diverse group.

It is the world that plays Call of Duty. But there are assholes out there, like there are in, I don't know, the world. So, I mean, yeah, shit happens like that. But just because it's a military shooter, Brian, don't immediately go that everybody's racist on there. I didn't say everybody.

I know. But it is a slice of the world. It's the population. Right. You know, half the damn people I play with are every race that you can completely picture in the world. And we all get along, except every now and again, I'd say like 3% of the people that come in are just asshole racists.

And they instantly get booted and blacklisted. So, you know, it's an easy way to self-police on these game platforms. And I'm glad that they're stepping up. But, you know, I would like, you can't just kick somebody off your platform because they're a racist. They have to do some racist shit, you know.

So, when they do racist shit, you kick them out, you block them. Yeah, that's, you're not going to know that somebody's a racist on these platforms until they do the racist shit. Yeah, but being a racist is not a crime. Doing racist shit gets you banned from the platform. And that's pretty much what we do.

Excellent. Excellent.

At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering something new every day. Start with today's special value. Then, explore exciting finds across the brands and categories you love.

From beauty and fashion to home, culinary, and outdoor living. Shop now at QVC.com. Apps and Doodads.

We've got a quick audio episode here on Apps and Doodads. I got my Sound Devices Mixed Pre-6 version 2 yesterday in the mail. Is it fancier than mine? It is fancier than yours. This one does 32-bit float, which I don't know if you know how that works, Brian, but it makes it impossible to clip audio anymore.

It's nice. Yes. Razzmatazz. Yeah, it is. It's got some razzmatazz. Unfortunately, Logic, which I use to edit my shows, does not support it yet. Damn it. But I'm going through, because I set yours up a long time ago before I gave it to you, and that's what you use right now.

And it's a beautiful device. Yep. And nice and small. Yeah, it's very small. They put a lot of quality into that device, which is why it's $900.

I'm trying to get most of my clients moved over to it, so I had to go buy one so I can sit here and say, nope, go here, press this menu button, do this, because it is a professional device, unlike the Rodecaster Pro, which is the Rodecaster Amateur, which is, don't even get me started.

I'm going to put it in a box with a blue Yeti and just set it on fire. But if you are looking to start a podcast and you have the means, I recommend the MixPre-6 version 2 or the MixPre-3, which is about $200 cheaper. The MixPre-3 will get you a couple inputs, but the MixPre-6 will get you four XLR inputs, which is what you need if you're going to have a host and three guests.

Right. So you always future-proof, if you can, for the money. And it is just, I'm so glad I got this thing back. I'm going to retire my PreSonus Studio 192s, my beloved Studio 192s. Almost nobody has these things anymore because they stopped making them a while ago.

But if you're interested in an awesome audio interface that just works day in, day out, it's a workhorse. It is rack-mounted, though. That's the only thing. But hit me up. I'm going to be selling my 192s. But I love these things so much.

But all my clients use the MixPre-series now, so there's no reason for me to keep using the Studio Series for PreSonus. Right. But most people aren't producers like I am and don't have clients, so they can just use it. And it's an amazing device, which is what I'm talking on right now and have been for six years.

I did find an awesome article over at Rogue Amoeba called Enhancing Microphone Input with Audio Effects. Now, I'm a huge fan of Rogue Amoeba. They, you know, they've had Audio Hijack from the old days, which lets you, you know, just take any audio input and record it.

Yeah. You know, that was the way we stole, you know, streams back in the day. And they have a lot of features in Audio Hijack now, which you can do microphone. You can do basically signal enhancements. You can put a gate on it. You can put an EQ on it.

All sorts of different features on it in real time. And if you use that with Loopback, which is the best thing that has ever come across the Macosphere as far as audio goes, which it's a routing app. It lets you, like, create all these virtual devices and do routing for all of your different things that we all use.

All the professional podcasters use Loopback. But this is a very simple article on how to take Audio Hijack and Loopback and add audio effects to your input so you can enhance your microphone for things like live streaming on Skype or Zoom or any of the apps that you're running to give you, like, better sound.

And so I recommend anybody who is a new podcaster or getting into podcast, even, like, you know, anybody in the podcast spectrum who has a show, make sure you have Audio Hijack and Loopback. These are the two things that make having a Mac for doing audio just a must-have.

And I also got to do a quick shout-out to Farago or Farago. I don't know how you want to say it, but that's their soundboard app that we use very judiciously. I'm not even going to open it right now because I don't need to. I don't want to drive that one home, but the three of those are like the holy trinity of audio software apps that you have to have if you're a podcaster.

So definitely check those out. Yep. Brick-a-brick. Now, my friend Sean Bonner, who we've talked about on the show, my ex-business partner and man about town, he posted a blog post on his blog.

His bloggy blog. That's where you generally post a blog post. On how to do social distancing werewolf. Now, werewolf is one of those games that you play with a bunch of people around a table after having multiple rounds of cocktails. And it's a very social game.

It's about lying and deception and all these crazy things. And he posted how to do it over the internet. And I am totally going to give this a try. Do you want to join in for when we do this, Brian? Because it sounds like it's going to be a ton of fun. Let me look into it a little bit more and see if I probably know.

Probably know. Okay. But I put the link in the show notes. It is Social Distancing Werewolf. And definitely check it out because I think this is a cool way to do remote gaming. It's well thought out and all the instructions are there.

So, if you're a werewolf fan, and I know a lot of people who listen to the show are werewolf fans, give it a read because it's just something to pass the damn time. Start another GOG gaming group, Jason. I can. I can. Maybe that's what we should do next time.

We still need to do another drink up. Drink up round three. Yeah. I think it's too late to do it this weekend. But why don't we shoot for next? Yeah. Let's shoot for next weekend because, unfortunately, I forgot to cancel the Zoom subscription. So, we paid for it. So, we might as well do something.

We got another month of Zoom. So, we might as well have some fun. And a callback to something we haven't recorded yet because we do this out of order and security hasn't come up yet. Because we paid for it, we get end-to-end encryption. That's right. That's right. So, we're joined again this week by Dave Bittner.

Dave is the host of the Cyber Wire podcast. Dave is also the co-host of the social engineering podcast Hacking Humans with Joe Kerrigan, as well as the co-host of Caveat with Ben Yellen, where they discuss law and policy as well as surveillance and privacy. Must be a busy week over there at the show, I'm guessing. Just a little bit.

Well, before we get to anything, first thing is first. I have to thank Jason for – I don't know if Brian had anything to do with this or if this was all – Just financially. He did a post-facto split. I'm like, you want to get in on this thing that I just bought?

And he's like, yeah, yeah, why not? Tremendous personal sacrifice on Brian's part. Yes. So, I got home earlier this week and there was a cardboard box waiting for me and I opened it up and inside was a life-size cardboard cutout of a stormtrooper.

And I smiled and I laughed and it made me happy and it made me feel good. And so, Jason, thank you so much for that. I do appreciate it very, very much. You're welcome. Like I said on Twitter, we make dreams come true on a budget. I'll tell you that I set it up in my living room to start and I am going to bring it here to the office.

I haven't brought it in yet because it's big and, you know, it's hard to move. But it's hard to move and not damage. Probably not the best time to like walk it down the street either. Well, there's that too, yeah. Actually, he can hide behind it and fit in. Right, yeah, it uses a shield against those bullets.

So, I set it up in the living room and the way our house is configured, you come down the stairs from upstairs and you sort of, you turn right at the bottom of the stairs and you face the living room and there's the stormtrooper. So, I came down the other day to start my day, came down the stairs, turned and the stormtrooper was there but he had been turned to face the wall.

So, somebody got up for a midnight snack or something and came downstairs and got a little startled by whatever, TK-407 or whatever his name is.

So, yeah, thank you. Thank you very much. I really appreciate it. It was really nice of you. You're welcome. And I figured in like a worst case scenario, you can poke the eyes out and walk around with it and kind of feel like you're a stormtrooper. Right. What I need to do is when we open up again and I find an event that the 501st is doing.

Just like you duct tape it to yourself. Right. So, it used to take a couple of bungee cords and just strap it around my midsection, punch out the eyes. I'm here, guys. Just stand next to him. That would be funny.

That's because you guys didn't get back to me on Twitter. Here I am. Right. Right. How are you guys doing? So far, so good. So far, I'm alive. It's been a week. Yeah. Keep thinking it's going to get a little less interesting, but it doesn't.

You live in interesting times. Yeah, I feel today kind of like I'm having a bit of a Rodney Dangerfield moment where I'm like, yeah, I'm all right now, but last night I was in rough shape, you know? Last night I woke up in the middle of the night, I woke up in the middle of the night, I woke up in the middle of the night from a nightmare, and it was a nightmare, Dave.

Here we are. I know. I'm still in it. I'm still in it. I cried out, called out. I was so scared. I actually turned the lights on in my room. I can't remember the last time I was so unnerved and scared by a dream.

Alexa, panic mode! Yeah, the iron bars fall and block all the windows and the hatch opens to the spiral staircase to the underground bunker and all that stuff. But no, it was a little unnerving, but I'm actually in good spirits now.

It's good. I have to say I worried about you a bit this week. It was a bit of a rough week at times, and I don't know how close any of the – I mean, the protests were fine. It isn't the protests that we're talking about. It was the rioting and the looting that came along with it. I don't know how much of that you had to deal with personally or got near you.

I'm guessing not much. No, not much. In fact, something that lifted my spirits was my actual hometown here, which is Columbia, Maryland, had a Black Lives Matter demonstration organized by a bunch of high school-age kids and drew probably 4,000 to 5,000 people.

Just had a peaceful march through which – where we are downtown, which means around the mall, but around the mall to the lakefront and just – I think it went as well as it possibly could have in all the best ways.

And so it was nice to see that possibility happen. And then, of course, right down the road is D.C., which is a different story. Been watching that, yeah. Yeah. Interesting to see them painting Black Lives Matter on 16th Street today.

Which I have to say I think is pretty cool. It's a funny way – a funny expression of a little bit of a pissing match between D.C. government and the federal government over who owns this street. Yeah.

What was it they named Black Lives Matter Park down the street as well? Oh, is that right? I didn't – I hadn't caught wind of that. Interesting. All right. Yeah. Your mayor is doing, you know, top-level trolling to the administration right now. Got to love that. Yeah.

Well, you know, they don't give them the vote in Congress or anything, but at least they can flex their muscles some. Yeah. Take what you can get, man. Take what you can get. Yeah. No, it's been absurd. I mean the whole thing with the president in front of the church.

I've been to weddings at that church and just to see him there, just – yeah. It's a place I don't think many of us thought we would ever find ourselves and – Holding a Bible like one would hold a rotting fish. Right.

Right. Speaking of rotting fish, did you see the protesters using the inflatable alligators and sharks as riot shields against the police? I did in France. Yes. Yes. I love that. I love that so much. Today they win le internet.

That's right. That's right. Well, I was wondering were they going to break into a song from Les Mis, you know, about the barricade. But, yeah, I love that. I was actually thinking, you know, those little floaty things are probably pretty tough. They have to stand up.

They take a beating. Right. I've seen my son go at it, so. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I wanted to actually bring something up really quickly because Jason mentioned this so many times, the Guy Fawkes masks. Because I have been switching back and forth between various national coverages, which means the big three networks, Fox to, you know, know thine enemy, MSNBC and CNN.

And CNN, Charles Cuomo, repeatedly, every single time he talks about the podcast, he talks about, or talks about the podcast, talks about the protests. He talks about people running around in Guy Fawkes masks, of which I've seen zero. I've seen two.

Out of the tens and hundreds of thousands of people, I have seen two. Right. So that's just his go-to verbal tick, apparently. Yeah. Yeah. He's trying to, you know, flex his knowledge of anonymous, which has nothing to do with any of this.

And, yeah, yeah, it's kind of stupid. Cuomo, I'm done with Cuomo. I turned him off a long time ago. I've seen one, and it was a hand-drawn thing. Like, someone had drawn the image of the mask on a piece of cardboard and had stretched that around their face.

Yeah. Yeah. So misinformation comes on all forms and flavors, does it not? Yes. Imagine that. Fox on a budget. I love that. So we can maybe move on here from one crisis back to the OC, the original crisis. We all follow tech and security, all three of us here.

And we've talked a lot about the contact tracing apps that we're going to save our collective asses. It is now June. Where are the contact tracing apps? I haven't heard anything about them. Well, I can answer that question.

Good. All right. Got to earn your pay somehow. That's why you're here. Yeah, I know. I know. Usually I just toss these questions over to, you know, Ben Yellen or Joe Kerrigan, my experts, you know, the guys who make me look good. But so as you guys are probably aware, the latest iOS update enabled the contact tracing on the iPhone.

Yep. We all have the API now. Yeah. Yeah. Although I, but I do not, I don't, I have not seen an app be available in the app store. It may be, and I'm just unaware of it. But I can say that they have had success with their contact tracing app in France.

They're getting high marks for that and not so much in the UK. Theirs is not going as well. So there's a number of usage around the world. Well, it is. I think a lot of it comes down to culture as to what people are willing to do for the greater good.

Yes. The French are known for being surrender monkeys. So, of course, they would. No, Brian, we're renaming them surrender gators. They're surrender gators now. Surrender gators. Okay. All right. But, yeah, theirs is going well.

They're getting a good amount of adoption and it seems to be working for them. Right. Does it, does it surprise, I guess, who's leading the charge here in the US? There's been, the messaging has been, other than Apple and Google working together to develop something, and there's been competing versions or alternate versions, things we've talked about at some folks that I've interviewed.

But there hasn't been any, you know, messaging thing kind of like fill out your census form, you know, install the contact tracing app, do your part, be a good citizen. I've seen nothing like that here stateside. Yeah. Well, most of the charging is done right now by police and unarmed protesters.

So, I think they're a little busy at the moment. There's that, yeah. You know, is it because it's, well, it's what kind of the things that we talked about. It has to be an all in or nothing thing. And there's, there's no national leadership. So, it's been punted to states. And, you know, I know that there was a one state that put out a contact tracing app, I think, a month ago or something like that.

And they, and everybody immediately discovered that it was basically sharing information with, I think it was a whatever's left of Foursquare, that company. So, it was kind of like, oh, that's great. Oh, Foursquare, Foursquare's massive, by the way. They're not, it's not whatever's left. They're a massive company. Whatever's left of the public facing one.

Right. Yes, yes. Which we all remember and, you know, becoming mayors at the coffee shop sort of thing. Yeah, they're all B2B now and they are gigantic. But, I mean, we have to hit 80% on the contact tracing app. So, without 80%, then they're pretty much useless is what all the scientists said. I've heard 60 is the number that I've heard batted around as the minimum.

We also were told at the beginning not to wear masks and now we have to wear masks. Yeah, yeah, that's absolutely right. Everything is provisional. Everything is provisional in this world. Yeah, so, I don't know that we're going to see much.

Because it seems to me also that we're in the midst of reopening now. I mean, as we record this here in Maryland, we're kicking in another level of reopening this afternoon. Allowing some restaurants to open and hair care places and things like that.

So, I'm not convinced that the data is driving all of that? It's not. It's not. It's not. We're seeing the stats already. Florida is just announcing now that after, you know, whatever, they've been reopening for over a month now.

And numbers are through the roof. So, now is exactly when we would need these contact tracing apps. If we're going to do this, which we are, inadvisedly, and with bad results everywhere they've done it so far. Oh, well, whatever. We're screwed.

I think also, one thing I noted earlier in the week was there was a, I believe it was a police chief who was referring to some of the ways they were tracking protesters and so forth.

And he was using the term contact tracing, which was stupid of him to do. Yes. Yes, it was. Because they are not the same thing. What he was doing is not the same thing as the contact tracing. But talk about torpedoing the messaging for this thing you're trying to get people to install as a public health thing.

That sort of messaging is just the exact opposite of what needs to be done. Yeah, I agree. And actually, this kind of rolls me into the next thing because for me, this is, and you guys can correct me if I'm wrong, but for me, this is a messaging error as well.

Stories have come out about Zoom and, you know, obviously they've gone gangbusters since COVID-19 hit, probably because, you know, not necessarily because they're the best program for video conferencing, but they certainly have the best name. It worked really well and they were in the right place at the right time.

And there's been a lot of frustrations and a lot of problems with their encryption and their privacy and all that. And we've discussed all that and they've worked very hard to try to fix that by bringing in armies of consultants and security engineers and everything. And this week, they've announced that they will have end-to-end encryption if you pay.

And they say free users for sure. We don't want to give that. Eric Wan said, the CEO in a company earnings call. And his reasoning behind this is because we want to work together with the FBI, with local law enforcement, in case some people use Zoom for a bad purpose. Now, be that as it may, that may or may not be true.

It's certainly not the best time to try to get that message out there. Right. And I would argue that the messaging that they should have used is we are a company who is in the business of making money. And the way software works now is we give you limited features for free and then we expect you to pony up for professional services.

Is that not a better messaging that makes more sense and is really true? Pretty much. Okay. That's what I would have gone with because that's the truth. It's like, come on, guys. You want the full feature set? You got to pay for the full feature set. I have no problem with that. They are, I mean, like you said, they're a company looking for profit.

That's just, you could have stopped a company. They're a company. They're a company that wants to make money. And right now, you know, they have an unparalleled opportunity as a company because so many people and businesses are using their services. You want to lock them into subscriptions, especially for larger companies, so that when this is all over, you have them as clients, as customers.

And why wouldn't they try to force and get people into paid models right now? Yes, and, however, the flip side argument to that is, should there be a privacy and security tax?

In other words, are, if someone cannot afford it, should they be left out of the ability to have? This is America, Dave. The answer is yes. Yes. Wholeheartedly, yes. No, I've seen those arguments as well. And they, you know, particularly they're talking about nonprofits and things of that nature.

But what government, or what governments, what private companies have always done is they've reached arrangements with nonprofits for special, with educational facilities. I mean, this is, Microsoft does the same thing. Apple does the same thing. You know, everybody. Adobe does the same sort of thing where there are, you know, if you are a legit nonprofit and you're worried and you want these extra layers, but you can't afford it, then these big companies make deals with nonprofits and institutions directly.

The other side, the other thing, too, that makes me chuckle is because, you know, they say that the free version isn't going to have encryption because we all know that criminals have no money. That was another point that I was like, hmm. Yeah, I don't know. But in Santa Monica, the organized criminals that were rolling in to do the looting were pulling up in BMWs and Mercedes.

I don't know if you guys saw this, but the folks who make the Signal app, which, of course, is the end-to-end encrypted messaging, it has video functionality, audio functionality. So they're working on a group video component to their free app, free service.

And they were putting out the word today on Twitter, kind of trolling Zoom a little bit. They said, hey, if you want to come work on our team that's going to be enabling group end-to-end encrypted video chat, Zoom on over to our jobs board and check out if it's available.

Yeah, well done, well done. Nice. So, you know, that could be an option soon and certainly one that is being used by a lot of people these days. Yep, yep. So I just thought that it was a strange messaging way to go about it, that, you know, bad timing dimension.

Yeah, bad marketing. And there's a really valid and very simple explanation for doing what they're doing, which is they're a business. Yeah, because when you add encryption onto, I mean, what is already a very, you know, data-heavy service, your costs go through the roof, man. I remember when it was, like, expensive just to roll out HTTPS.

And that's why, I mean, I know this came from Facebook, but they're like, when we have to put HTTPS on every server that we have, we're going to lose, because this is back when servers weren't as powerful. They're like, we're going to lose 20% efficiency on those servers, so we have to add 20% more servers just to encrypt everything.

I mean, I know it's gotten a little more efficient nowadays, and the algorithms have gotten better, and the computers have gotten faster, but there is still not an insignificant hit to encrypting everything that goes through their pipes. So, you know, it makes sense to me why they would charge for it, and like Brian said, they're a business.

That's what they do. Who's surprised? The FBI angle was definitely just a step on your dick. Oh, yeah, it was a horrible thing, but the idea that Zoom is some benevolent thing that's just come into existence to help us fight the man and fight the power is absolutely ridiculous. Yeah.

Yeah. People should be pissed off that Zoom exists because now they have to work from home and have to buy nice shirts, you know? That's why they should rise up against it. They're saving on pants, Jason. They're saving on pants. Right, exactly. The money you would have spent on pants, you can spend on nicer shirts. Or end-to-end encryption. Encryption. Yeah.

Well, that's right. You cannot have it all. Next on the Supreme Court, pants v. Encryption. So I had an interesting conversation earlier this day. I interviewed a gentleman named Daniel Katz. He's a researcher at Norton LifeLock in their research group, and he and his team have introduced a new tool called Botsite, and it is both a browser plug-in and they have an iOS app.

And basically what this does is in real time, as you're scrolling through your Twitter feed, it analyzes all of the accounts and gives you a percentage score as to what they think is to the likelihood of those accounts being bots or not.

Huh. Cool. Pretty cool. Boy, that's nice. If only Twitter would do something like that themselves. Gee, I wonder why they don't. Yeah, if you guys have had time to check it out or install it, it's actually kind of fun.

And, you know, it tells – what's interesting is, like, if you go through your regular feed, like, if you – you know, we all curate our feeds. And so the vast majority of the folks who I see in normal everyday interactions are most certainly humans. But when you start seeing the replies to things, for example, if the president tweets something and you see that those folks are trying to amplify that, that's when you start to see, oh, yeah, that's a bot.

That's – you know, that's a bot. That's a bot. So it's a fun thing. It's a free thing that they put out here. And I've been enjoying playing with it. I have to say I think it's an enhancement to Twitter and helps you – it's kind of like having that person leaning over your shoulders who has expertise on this sort of thing to remind you to say, you know, that could be a bot.

There's a 50-50 chance that that's not a real person. Oh, I found one already. My friend just retweeted Anonymous Op Minneapolis at Anon Op USA, and it comes back as 60% human but with some bot-like characteristics.

Lori, we're going to have to have a chat. So, like I said, I interviewed this guy for an upcoming episode of Research Saturday, so you can check that out. And it will probably be out in a couple of weeks if you're interested in the stuff going on under the hood. But in the meantime, check it out.

It's a fun tool. It's free. And I think it's a good thing to add to your Twitter feed. Excellent. I've just scrolled through most of my Twitter feed, and everything is pretty clear except the Will They Suspend Me Twitter account that we talked about in the news comes back as likely human.

Likely human because it just retweets politicians' tweets to see if they get banned or not. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, in my interview with Daniel, he was saying that one of the things they had to make adjustments for was that a lot of celebrity accounts behave like bots.

Yes. A lot of celebrities behave like bots. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. So do check that out. I think it's a fun one. And if nothing else, play with it and see what you think. Excellent. I will be installing that. Yeah, this is fantastic because Long John Silver's is trending right now because of that stupid thing that Barstool Sports put out that they got me on.

It's America's favorite food chains. And it says, based on 2020 data from the Public Information and Statistics Society. Now, I looked at this and I didn't even think about it. I'm like, there's no way Denny's is number one in California. It's got to be In-N-Out. And then a friend of the show, David Teeter, just said, the Public Information and Statistics Society, a.k.a. PISS.

But, yes, because they labeled Long John Silver's for Maine and there is no Long John Silver's in Maine. And it's just fun to watch how one tweet can get something into trending based on misinformation. Chuck E. Cheese is trending now. Are there actually Long John Silver's anywhere anymore?

Yes, they're very hard to find. A friend of the show, Fogarty, and I found one on our way back from Chicago last time I moved back to California. I know there's many times that's happened. Right. Yeah, about two years ago. We found one in New Mexico.

Wow. New Mexico. Huh. Interesting. Yeah. And I forget what. It's one of those places where you're like 7,000 feet above sea level. It's like a super high desert. Right. Where the fish are known to be. Right, yes. Exactly. We're in the high desert. Right. And we found the Long John Silver's in like this janky part of town and we got to roll in and get some – I got a three-piece before they closed down and it was glorious.

I love Long John Silver's. It's one of my favorites. I grew up eating that. The last time I think I saw one was in West Virginia, so they're few and far between, but yeah, I agree. It's kind of a treat when you get to have one. If it's something you grew up with, which like you guys, I did. Yes, I love Long John Silver's.

That's why I was like so excited when it was trending. I'm like, oh, maybe they're relaunching the brand. Please. Yeah. No such luck. Going to their website. In this day and age, my friend. Yeah. Yeah. There is one in LA. All right, gentlemen. Yeah. No, there's not. They say there is, but when you go there, it's abandoned.

I've been there. Really? The Gardena one? Are you sure? Yeah. Yeah. We went there. It doesn't exist anymore. Yeah. All right, guys. We'll take care. I will talk to you guys next week. Try to stay safe. Try to stay sane. We'll just hang in there and do our best.

That's right. Yeah. All righty. Closing shout outs. So another Santa Monica thing that happened. This is the day that we actually had the really bad looting in Santa Monica. I think it was last Sunday, I believe. Yeah. And I watched this unfold in real time on local news, so it's pretty cool.

And I did want to give this couple, I don't know if they're a couple or not. I don't think they're a couple. Yeah. I don't think so either. But they were running around and trying to basically stop people from looting, saying that this is going against what we're all doing here, obviously, and all that sort of thing. And they are heroes. They threw themselves in harm's way.

If you watch the video footage of this, there's flashbangs going off on them. She almost gets destroyed with somebody swinging their surfboard or skateboards trying to bust through the REI there. Total heroes. Absolutely amazing. I tell you what, man.

I was watching this in real time, too. And the guy that had the hammer that was wailing on the door, she put herself in between that guy and the door. And I'm like, I wouldn't have balls to do that. I'm like, damn, girl. And then the other guy jumped in to help her. And yeah, they were throwing fireworks at him.

And they ended up walking away. They did come back and get it later. But I got to say, man, they got balls. They got balls. They were out and about after that, too. The news caught up with them a couple times. And they kept on trying to basically just stop looters, which, you know, unfortunately, as you just pointed out, sadly, was to no avail because the looters did come back and ransacked the REI after they left.

So, yeah, kind of sucks. But heroes, absolute citizen heroes. Amazing. Yeah, I was watching. I'm like, holy shit. I'm just like on the edge of my seat. I'm like, don't hurt her. Don't hurt her. Because it's like it was crazy. That guy with a hammer was just kind of terrifying.

And a shout out to Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, who did possibly one of the coolest and most heartwarming things that you will see in the next couple of weeks. They got in. They were contacted by somebody from San Dimas High School and did a video congratulations to the San Dimas High School 2020 grads.

Awesome. So cool. That was so cool. Very, very cool. Yeah. Yeah. It's worth the watch. Link in the show notes. 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 we really appreciate it. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 445. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, donate to the show and get links to stuff we like. And if you're still looking for the masks, go to GOG.show slash shop.

I just got my shipping notification for my masks, so they're on the way. Mine are finally arriving as well, believe it or not. Yep. Yep. Just a little bit of hiccups there in the pipeline, but they are coming and we're probably going to need them for a very long time. So get on that. Stay grumpy.

At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering the brands you love across beauty, fashion, home, and culinary all in one place. 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.