461: Fyre Sale

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. Are you well rested after your vacay? I actually am. It was kind of, it was nice. No, I didn't even open up my laptop for four of the five days. I noticed we didn't have any socials going on. I was like, yeah, Brian really is taking this seriously.

I really did take a vacation and it was pretty rejuvenating. That is up until basically our last full day when Beirut exploded. Because the quarantine family that we are hanging out with and went down on our break with are Lebanese and lived in Beirut.

I still had family and friends in Beirut. So that day it was all CNN all day on the TV and a bit stressful. But other than that, it was really nice to take a break. Well, that's good. Yeah, we were going to have a show on the 5th come out, but I kind of called the play on that one the day before.

I'm like, yeah, you know what? We're going to skip this one. And it turns out I'm just psychic because the guest host we had lined up, Eric Hundley. Well, he's right in the path of that hurricane that came through and he lost power for like a day. It went out right before we were going to record. So all is good.

Yeah, I was wondering where my new show was as I was getting ready to drive back to Los Angeles. I was going to listen, but I was actually proud of you because you were practicing what we preached. We've been talking on this show about the importance of taking breaks and you knew I was going to be gone.

I was kind of in the back of my mind. Well, you know, Jason actually really likes doing the shows, whatever. But I was going, he should really take a break. Yeah, I did. I did. It was nice. I gotta say. Excellent. Well, speaking of taking a break, we're also moving our drink update. It was going to be the day this is coming out, Saturday, but we can't do that because I believe you're having a chimney sweep come and Mary Poppins and the whole deal.

Well, the chimney sweeps already come. They're rebuilding the smoke box, which means they have to rip apart the entire living room. So, and it's going to take all day. So we have to wrangle the beasts all day and it's going to be a nightmare. So, yeah, yeah. Home repairs. We'll move it to next Saturday, August 15th.

August 15th. We'll figure out a time and we'll post that on the website. I did get some good feedback on, hey, I went to your website and it's got no news about the drink up. And I'm like, yeah, we should probably add something up there for it. So I will do that this week once we figure out a time. Excellent. All righty. And a little bit of follow up, because right after our last episode came out and Bittner and I were talking about the Twitter hack.

Well, they got caught. They got got. Well, the alleged hackers, alleged hackers. That's right. I believe there's a not not guilty plea coming. Probably, probably. But got a couple articles in the follow up. The first one is how the alleged Twitter hackers got caught and TLDR on that one.

Bitcoin tracing. Yep. Yeah. Don't use the same wallet for your same nefarious purposes is the lesson there. Right. And we got a another link from a friend of the show, Lockhead from Minecraft tricks to Twitter hack a Florida teen's troubled online path.

And it talks about one of the alleged hackers and how he became who he was. So good reads on that. Did he listen to a lot of Marilyn Manson or is that kind of more a 90s and aughts thing? All bad kids listen to Mary Marilyn Manson. I think that's a Gen X thing. That's for us. Not.

OK, but yeah, it's we told you that they were going to get these guys fast and they sure shit did. Boy. Yeah. Boy, did they. In the news. Well, this came across the desk last night.

A little breaking news, which I'm sure is everywhere right now. And everybody's seen it. Trump issues orders banning Tick Tock and WeChat from operating in 45 days if they are not sold by Chinese parent companies. Tick Tock. Yes, I see that one. WeChat. Not a chance in hell. So, well, I mean, this is a horrible precedent, too, because, you know, we do this.

That means other companies or other countries retaliate. Exactly. And the fact that he wants a giant chunk of the purchase price to go to the Treasury because he can't run an economy. Well, that's not even that's not even friggin close to legal. He can't do that. That's ridiculous. I saw some comments on Twitter about that saying it's like a mob boss asking for extortion money.

That's what it is. Yeah. Straight up what it is. Yeah. So the WeChat thing is interesting because, you know, it's basically Tencent and Tencent's massive. And Tencent also has a lot of stakes in video game companies.

The big one being Epic Games, who make Fortnite. Now, you know, you can piss off the Tick Tock people. All they do is dance and make stupid videos. You piss off the gamers. Ooh, that one's going to be tough. But yeah, by all means, please do it.

Please do it. I just want to see what happens. I just want to watch the world burn on that one. It would be interesting. You know, and it's Microsoft is basically pushing forwards with talks to acquire a Tick Tock, as it were. So, you know, Microsoft will finally have a social network in theory. Well, they've already got one.

They've got LinkedIn. Oh, right. That's true. Okay. Yeah. Merge the two. I want to see people dancing for their resumes. Link to talk. That'll be it. Dance, monkey, dance. And Microsoft is actually going after the entirety of Tick Tock now.

They're like, yeah, we just want the whole thing. We just don't want U.S. rights. So we'll see how it plays out with that. But it's going to be an interesting 45 days. It will be. It will be. We're going to be talking about this a lot. I hope not. I know. In other news, Facebook apparently grew a pair. They finally, finally, finally took down a post by President Trump.

Okay. Yep. Day late and a dollar short. That's basically what everybody's saying right now. But yeah, this was a clip from Fox News interview in which he said children are mostly immune from COVID-19. Twitter required the Team Trump campaign account to delete the tweet with the same video and thus removing it from President Trump's personal account as well.

And Facebook just straight up just took down the post and said that that is misinformation. So finally, we'll see. We'll see if he continues doing it. So obviously this is an about face for Facebook because Zuckerberg has long been a proponent of free speech on his site. Basically, whatever.

Go for it. So they finally did take something down. So we'll see what happens now. Yep. We'll see what happens now. And yeah, that video, basically everybody banned it. Everybody in the world banned it except for Fox News. So that tells you how far up Trump's ass they are. Yes. Anyway, I found this one and I was just like, I was so, so loving this.

U.S. Marshals Service National Online Auction. Now they're selling off the Fyre Festival swag that they got in the bust for the Fyre Festival. Now I'm looking at the prices on this and it is just beyond belief.

If somebody is buying a hat for $325, a sweatshirt for $395, another hat for $405, sweatpants $200. Now the thing that gets me is like, why not just go make your own now? Because it's not like there's any companies that are going to be around to enforce the copyright on the Fyre brand.

Exactly. I was actually tempted. I wanted to go pick up a baseball cap, but not at these prices. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I can just grab this image and upload the logo to my site of choice to make a hat. Wait, we can't find one. That's why there's no Grumpy Old Geek.

I found a couple of them, but they're a pain in the butt. So we'll get there. Got you. I have some news about Jake Paul, one of my favorite YouTube people. Not really. I was going to say, you're confusing the hell out of me right now.

Yeah. This guy is a real piece of work. So first off, he's basically being connected to a riot in an Arizona shopping mall about some sort of Black Lives Matter thing going on. And he said he was trying to find people protesting against the death of George Floyd, but it ended up being criminal trespass and unlawful assembly charges filed against him.

Because, you know, why not? They're dropping that. The Arizona police, they're dropping those charges because they're going to step aside and let the FBI go after him for that and for having a whole bunch of guns in his house, in his mansion here in L.A.

So the FBI broke in and seized guns from his mansion. Of course, he's also in trouble here because he's thrown widely publicized and posted online parties, ignoring social distancing in the middle of the pandemic. So people are pissed off at him here. Calabasas Mayor Elisa Weintraub said she was considering all options for punishing the YouTuber for all of that going on.

And we've even had news in L.A. now, which is kind of crazy when you think about it. But they are considering basically shutting down power and water services to any houses seen having parties. The problem with that is the timeline, because it could be up to 48 hours after the party.

So it's not really a deterrent. It's not like they're going to shut it off mid, you know, mid twerk. There's a whole process that goes into that. And it seems kind of toothless. But the thing about it is it's like if you're the Airbnb owner that has the house, they might come after you as well and turn off your power.

There's a lot of different things that could happen here. But, yeah, as far as a deterrent goes, I'm pretty sure that a global pandemic hasn't deterred them. You know, buying a few candles probably wouldn't either. Yeah, I know. It'll just be candle parties. That's fine. Yeah.

And it's funny. I went I'd never watched a Jake Paul video until this happened. And I went and watched like two of them last night just to see how much of a douche he is. It's just garbage. Yeah, it is garbage. Well, I don't get it. I guess I'm not a not a millennial anymore. No, they don't like scripted programs with, you know, value.

They just want people being real dancing, keeping it real, keeping it real, trying to die. Oh, yes. Well, that's how it goes. Now, Anthony Lewandowski is back in the news, our favorite guy.

Well, after a couple of years, like three and a half years now, it's been since the Waymo Uber lawsuit started. Time flies when you're having fun, eh? Well, he's going to jail. Three and a half long years. Yeah. We've been talking about this. Yeah. He's going to jail with a caveat, which I'll get to in a second.

He's going to pay $756,000 in restitution and a fine of $95,000. Okay. And yeah, he's got an 18 month prison sentence, but he doesn't have to go until the threat of COVID-19 is over. All right. So, never.

Exactly. Since we'll talk about that in a little while, never. Here's the rub. Here's the tickle bit. He has filed a $4 billion lawsuit against Uber. All right. So, if that lawsuit goes through, well, he's still outside.

He could be going to jail a billionaire. Well, if you're going to go. Yeah. Might as well go good. I mean, doesn't this, I mean, if he obviously wins this lawsuit, I would consider him to be quite the flight risk. Ah, yes, that's true.

That's true. Yeah. They need to, you know, Epstein them. So, the interesting thing is I read through his arguments about the lawsuit that he filed against Uber, and they actually sound like they hold water.

So, we'll see how that plays out. And, yeah, Google wants, you know, wants them to win, wants Lewandowski to win the suit against Uber, because then they can get paid, because they're like, there's no way in hell this guy's going to ever be able to pay us back the money he owes us. The $179 million that he owes Google, or Waymo, or Alphabet, or whichever branch you want to say.

This is like machine learning AI. Yes, yes. Figure it out. Either way, it's an interesting twist in the case. So, at least he's good, well, theoretically, at some point in the near future, will go to jail for ripping off Waymo. I'll believe it when he's actually behind bars and I see it.

Yep, me too. And a little bit of good news, or at least a really cool photo. I ran across this. British astronaut Tim Peake shared a photo on Twitter recently showing people what re-entering Earth looks like, tying in with the moment SpaceX's first-ever manned spacecraft made its return, which was also cool.

But this photo's pretty amazing. It's just a shot out as they're re-entering, and those aren't stars streaking by, but it certainly looks like this is straight off of a Star Trek intro sequence, doesn't it? Sure does. Looks like they're going warp speed. Yep. Really, really cool. So, check that out.

Link in the show notes. Security? Ha! We're joined again this week by Dave Bittner. Dave is the host of the Cyber Wire podcast, and 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.

Brain fart there. You've got to take a deep breath before you go into this intro, because, you know, if he adds one more podcast to his quiver, we're going to have to have oxygen tanks. I know, yeah, I usually have a nice joke podcast at the end of that, but I was starting to get oxygen deprivation, and it's getting a little woozy.

Yeah, yeah. You know, actually, before we jump in here, I was worried about you yesterday, Jason, because I saw a story come by where it had to do with L.A. County police going to someone's house and a Rottweiler.

Oh. I was like, please don't be Jason, please don't be Jason, please don't be Jason. It was not me. Like, ten minutes later, I saw you tweeting about something, so I was like, oh, okay, it wasn't Jason. No, we're all good here. We stay out of the, we try and avoid the long arm of the law whenever possible.

Yeah, that's good, good. So, I said, Brian and I do part of the show in the morning, and then we do our little security thing here in the afternoon. And in between those two times today, I tried to pay my CPA online. Well, Bank of America said, no bueno, no bueno.

So, I had to call in, spend 15 minutes on hold with the worst hold music you've ever heard. It's one of those kind of things that, like, it's, Brian, you probably know what this is. It feels like a rolling crescendo that kind of loops in on itself. It feels like it's always, you know, escalating that kind of musical trick.

Oh, yes, yes. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's what their hold music's like. So, you just get anxious. Right. It's terrible. It's just like the anticipation is like a Michael Bay movie. Like, come on already. I think an entire book could be written at some point, investigative journalism-wise, about how we've ended up with the most annoying music that's supposed to be non-annoying.

But that is where we end up at. So, it's pretty crazy. It's supposed to just relax you and keep you calm while you're in an elevator or waiting on hold. And all it really does is make you go slowly mad. Yeah, they should be called murder tunes. Because that's really what all you want to do.

So, once my murder tune was done, I finally got to talk to somebody. Turns out that there have been some charges on my account. And she's going through and we're listing them. And then I see these ones for Kindle services. Now, normally, you'd think those are something you bought on Amazon Kindle, maybe. But then I'm thinking, no, that should come through as Amazon.

And then I noticed, and she noticed as well, that there are international transaction fees attached to those. They were like, you know, $10.49, which I think is usually what you would get dinged for for your $9.99 Kindle Unlimited subscription. Well, you know, we saw those things.

And she's like, yeah, there's a bunch of these in the past couple of days. I'm like, not mine, not mine. So, they went back and she's like, we can go back a whole year and track these. We're going to open up a ticket on it, start an investigation. But we're going to refund you the money. International stuff is going to take a while.

I'm like, it's 31 cents a shot. That's fine. So, then I went and did a little deeper dive and I went into my Kindle Unlimited subscription on Amazon. Completely different credit card, turns out. Okay. So, they were doing one of those things where they ding you for a little bit of money to test the card, test the card, until they can go and get it all.

Oh, I see. Yeah. I have to say, thank you, Bank of America, for your fraud protection because, yeah. A phrase rarely uttered. A phrase. So, they reached out to you, they detected it and got in touch with you? Yeah, because I was making an online payment to my CPA.

And I'm like, okay. It came back as like, your card's been locked, please call this number, decline, blah, blah, blah. I see. And so, they had a flag on those transactions already. And then when I made like, because the transaction to my CPA was like 575 bucks for my taxes.

And it was big enough where they're like, hold the phone, hold the phone. Let's do a little investigation on this one. So, they were very cool on the phone, too. She was really good. She made it a very strong point out of the gate. This is Charlene. I'm from Missouri. It was not part of it.

It is part of the Bangladeshi script. Yes, it was not like, hello, this is Charlene, and I'm in Missouri. How can I help you? Nope, nope. She had, unless she's got really good voice training, she sounded pretty normal. So, at least for somebody from Missouri. Did you start off with annoyance that your charge didn't go through, which then turned into gratitude that it was for a good reason?

Honestly, I'm never annoyed by that. I'm annoyed by their hold music, but that's what annoys me. I'm always annoyed by that. I'm always annoyed by that. I remember, I can't remember what I was purchasing. Oh, it was around Christmas time, and I went to get like a lot of booze. Like my wife was like getting stuff for people in her office and stuff like that.

And it was like a $500 run at Ralph's, and they didn't accept it, and they didn't accept it. And then I called in and said what I'm doing, and they said, okay, it's going to run, and like it took 30 minutes of repeated attempts to get my credit card to actually process. And I'm like, huh, you guys are a-holes.

Depends on who it is. I've had to do that with Amex, and Amex is like under two minutes to get it fixed. But this was a debit card on a business bank account today, so I'm very happy that they took the time. As the phrase goes, your experience may vary.

Yeah, yeah. But there are some times when I get the fraud calls. We talked about it on the show one time. I got a charge on Virgin America that somebody was buying drinks on a flight to San Francisco, and I'm like, nope, sitting in my living room right now, definitely not me.

I'm sure your account has noted that if anything takes place that isn't online and is outside of a five-mile square radius, this should be checked into. Exactly. Yeah, I'm geo-fenced. I can't go anywhere. You are very tightly geo-fenced.

Yeah. Very tightly geo-fenced. Yeah, that was a fun experience. Well, it worked out for you. It worked out for you. Yeah, because if they were going to take everything, then yeah, that would have been a statistic after that. That would have just broke me.

Well, I have a short little story about something that isn't working out very well for any of us. This comes from Krebs on Security. A robocall legal advocate has leaked customer data. Yes, this is the Isn't It Ironic news segment. It's a California company that helps telemarketer firms avoid getting sued for violating laws.

So that tells you what kind of company this is to begin with. But they accidentally has leaked the phone numbers, email addresses, and passwords of all of its customers, as well as the mobile phone numbers and other data on people who have hired lawyers to go after telemarketers.

So, yay, they're called the Blacklist Alliance, a lovely little name, and they provide technology and security to marketing firms concerned about lawsuits under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, a 1991 law that restricts making telemarketing calls through the use of automatic telephone dialing systems and artificial or pre-recorded voice messages.

And, of course, tons of people continue to do this and get sued all the time, and these jerks try to stop them and help them. And, yep, they put all their data out. Whoopsies. Yeah, yeah, this is interesting. I think I may have shared this story with you guys before that I have an acquaintance who basically his hobby was making money off of telemarketers.

It was about $600 at a time. He's a lawyer and not my favorite person in the world. But this is what he would do. And so it's interesting to me that this organization has a no, no, really do not call list, you know, which would include.

Someone like him, you know, it seems to me like they had a list of people who are litigious when it comes to these sorts of things. And so it makes sense. It seems to be that that might be the only way to get us off these call lists now is everybody needs to file one lawsuit against one of these companies and you will get on the real do not call list.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, yes, very ironic. Well, I mean, our segment is full of these today. Yes. So let's continue along. It keeps getting better. Well, Canon, the makers of cameras and copy machines and fax machines and all those good things.

Printers that never seem to work. Yeah. Never buy a Canon printer. Oh, man. Well, turns out they've been hit by a ransomware attack. All right. Oh, so they got away with, was it, 10 terabytes of data, private databases, and all sorts of goodies.

And it affected a lot of different things, including their email, their Microsoft Teams account, and the whole website for the USA and a bunch of other internal stuff. So Canon has disclosed that it is real and they're working to address the issue. Yeah.

Evidently, this is affecting some of the users who have, I guess, Canon has a feature, I guess, for photo storage or who knows what. But you can, they give you 10 gigs of storage for free. And that's been locked down by the ransomware. Right. This is allegedly from the Maze gang, who is a very active, well-known ransomware gang.

And as this story describes, what they do is not only do they lock up your files, but they steal a bunch of them. And then part of how they put the screws to you is they threaten to release the information publicly unless you pay them back. So it's sort of insult meet injury.

Yeah. I would like to see Maze meet baseball bat, but. Yeah. They're very active and very successful. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. Do we know where they're from? Maze. Yes. My money is on Russia somewhere, but.

No, you're right. It's Russian Federation. Yep. Yep. Russian Federation. The Russians. All right. Fucking Russians. What you going to do? Speaking of Russians. Yes. Let me get my stuff back here.

So are you gents aware that the U.S. has put out a $10 million reward for information leading to the arrest or identification or something of folks who are interfering with the U.S.

election? I know where one is. I've heard of that in passing. I've heard of that in passing. I've heard of that in passing. Can I get $10 million bucks for pointing my finger over to the White House? Foreign. It's got to be foreign. Sorry. Oh, damn. I know. I know. Yes.

So when they announced this, there were no shortage of exactly that line of humor. Roger Stone was a popular target as well. But it's a real deal. The other thing that's been getting a lot of attention is the PR with this that the State Department has put out includes the classic picture of a faceless hacker in a hoodie.

Right. Isn't that Zuckerberg? Let's do a little. Yeah. Yeah. So one thing we were talking about in one of our back channels here at the Cyber Wire was it seems to me that if we want to replace the hacker in a hoodie imagery, and I think everybody agrees we want to replace the hacker in a hoodie imagery, we need to come up with something better.

And nobody seems to have come up with something better to replace it. I was curious what you guys thought about that. I just think we use a shot of Keanu Reeves from The Matrix. I don't know. See, the hacker thing with the hoodie is good. I don't feel the need to replace it.

I'm okay with it. It's kind of old and tired. Now that we know that most hacking comes from internal threats, you could just basically use any iStock photo of a bunch of nerds sitting in a cubicle farm and just point to hacker is here because most of your threats are internal nowadays.

Well, yes. So I think, Jason, your point is a good one that it is an old stereotype. Yeah, an old trope. These days, the hacker groups, there's a lot of professionalism that goes along with these sorts of things.

These groups are run like businesses. But, Brian, to your point about The Matrix, I mean, those are the other stereotypical images we see. We see the hacker in the hoodie. We see The Matrix, sort of binary waterfall of ones and zeros, right?

The glowing green characters. Lots of times we'll see an image of a lock over on a computer screen or superimposed with the images. Someone, you know, again, hacker in a hoodie leaning over a laptop, something like that.

But those are the ones that come up over and over again. And I don't know. I just – I wish some – we had some good creative juices, some creative organizations that could come up with something better that would stick. It's just not as interesting as just having a frumpy guy in a button-down T-shirt or a button-down shirt sitting at his desk.

Well, you know, you can use a picture of Keanu from The Matrix when he first comes into the cubicle farm. Before he gets the phone the first time, he's just sitting at his desk, staring – in the suit, staring at his computer, hating his life. That's kind of more of what it normally is nowadays. That's true.

That's true. All right. Well, to get back from our little side trip there, what's going on here is that evidently in promoting this bounty for election interference, the U.S. has been sending text messages out to Russians and Iranians.

OK. In their native languages. And so we've been seeing a lot of reports from folks in that part of the world saying that they woke up with these text messages on their phones. And, of course, they immediately assumed that it was some kind of fake thing, some kind of hack, because why would the United States State Department text you directly and offer you $10 million for information about election interference?

To flip on your friends. That's exactly it. If you send me $2,000, we will send you $10 million. We'll send you $10 million. Right. Yes. I mean, I know we need some money in our government right now, but come on. We're still waiting on that sweet TikTok money. That's what the government's waiting on right now.

Right. Right. But honestly, this seems like, you know, a pretty good idea to have somebody that's in country flip on their friends who are trying to do this. They get paid. They can get the hell out and move on with their life in hiding for the rest of their lives. Yes.

Forever. Yeah. We'll see what comes of it. We'll see what comes of it. Yeah. It's, it's complicated. It's certainly given the situation, the political situation right now and motivations of various groups and so on and so forth. It's, it's, it's complicated.

So. Oh, it also opens the door for great misinformation possibilities. Like somebody could, somebody could actually try and flip on somebody and they just come up with something else to get their, their enemies arrested and taken away. So it's like, you got one hacker group here, you got one hacker group there.

The one hacker group turns in the other hacker group that had nothing to do with it, but they basically can place false information on their systems if they hack into them to make it look like they were going after the election. And then, then they have one less hacker group to deal with. It's a possibility. I'm just saying, if they're going to get creative with it.

Throw money at the problem. Yeah. That's what we do best. That's what we do best. So my last story, uh, this week, uh, bad news for the folks at Intel, um, evidently they got breached, although I'm not sure if they've admitted it's a breach yet.

There seem, you know, when these companies have their information leaked out there, there's a lot of dancing around the term. Was it a breach? Was it a, was it a leak? Was it, um, an inadvertent misconfiguration of an Amazon A3 bucket, you know, that sort of thing.

Uh, but the bottom line is, uh, Intel had about 20 gigs of source code and internal documents released on a hacker forum. All kinds of interesting stuff in here. I mean, these are, these are internal secret Intel only documents about how some of their technology works.

Uh, uh, technical documents, um, marketing documents, roadmaps for, for products, um, binaries, uh, schematics, documents, tools. I like this one, binaries for camera drivers, Intel made for SpaceX. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Uh, horrible training videos, someone said. Is there any other kind, really? Um, uh, schematics, uh, marketing materials. So a whole hodgepodge, uh, of stuff. But I, I think, I mean, look at this list we have today.

We have Canon, we have, uh, Intel. These are big names. These are not folks who, who are scraping together money or going through the couches for coins to hire their security teams. Right? You get the feeling that cybersecurity defense is not really up to snuff anywhere.

Well, yes. And, um, it seems as though that warning that it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when is coming true. Mm-hmm. And it doesn't matter how big a company you are?

Yep. It doesn't seem to matter. And, uh, yeah. Yeah. So, going back to the original idea of we should be trading all data as if it's toxic, which none of these companies seem to do, because you know it's going to hit you. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah, if all of this data were encrypted at rest, if it was encrypted on, on their own internal servers, then it would be worthless.

They could get it, but if they can't unpack it, it doesn't do them any good, at least not now. Yep. Well, it's not happening. Yeah. That's our takeaway is it's not happening anywhere, really. And honestly, you know, the larger the company, the larger the, the attack surface for these people.

And it only takes, you know, a little bit to get, get your foot in the door, get your little baby toe in the door, and you can work your way through and, uh, work your way up. You know, we've seen it done a million times, and it just seems like these systems, like these massive corporate networks need to be segmented a lot better and not, not talk to each other so much.

You know, let's go, let's go, let's go back to the Battlestar Galactica idea. No networked computers. No networked computers. Everybody gets a zip drive or a floppy, and you just have to, we have to use sneaker net to move things around. Corded phones everywhere. Yeah. Exactly.

Although I'm sure the fucking Israelis will figure out how to get those from a distance in the dark, too. That's true. That's true. They, they, they seems to be one of their specialities, isn't it? Those Ben-Gurion guys, man. I tell you. Evil geniuses. Yeah. Really, there's nothing that gets in their way.

They find a way through everything, and they do it in the most clever ways. The hat's off to them, for sure. All right, gents. Well, that's what I have this week. Gosh, hang in there till next week. Good to have you back, Brian, by the way. Yeah, I'm torn on that.

But, yeah, it's nice to be back. I mean, selfishly for myself, it's nice to have two people to talk to instead of one, but I do understand the impulse to not want to come back from vacation. I'm on board.

There is that, yes. Yes, I am on board. It's nice to be back as well. So, yeah, we'll have more fun next week. All right. Take care, guys.

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Ups and doodads. Instagram has launched reels in over 50 countries, including us, the U.S. Now, let's talk about this. It's another notification I'm going to have to clear out all the time with the same content being posted in 18 different places.

Can't wait. Well, here's the thing about it, man. It's not really a thing, as far as I can tell. They're really hard to find. You have to go to the Discover tab, and you have to look for them. There's no way to just go to the reels section like you can with IGTV.

And the design is just piss poor, and it is the same thing as TikTok. It's useless content. Absolutely useless content. To us, Jason. To us, because we are old. Yeah, well. I was going through it with my roommate, and she's like, where the hell is it?

I can't find it. I'm like, go here. You can see a couple of them here, and that's it. And then you can swipe up and go through them. But as far as, like, you know, rolling this thing out, this thing is not even, you know, it's not even, it's not fully baked. It's, like, not even in the oven yet. It's terrible.

Yeah, well, absolutely terrible. Give it a couple months and a couple app updates, and it'll be pushed front and center, not just on Instagram. It'll be added to the Facebook timeline and pushed up and top, so you can't escape it. Yeah, just give them time. I don't understand why they always seem to launch so piss poor with these things.

It's not like they didn't even have, they had the back end for all this already. They had a TikTok clone called Lasso, like, three years ago. So all this stuff existed. You just need to bolt it into place better. Yeah, because Lasso was a standalone one, but that failed miserably.

So they're like, oh, let's just keep it in Instagram since everybody's already in Instagram already, and then we can run our ads in the same app. But it's like, it's getting, the beauty of Instagram when it started is it was one thing, and they did it really well. And now it's just a dumpster fire. It's like, do you ever watch any IGTV videos?

No. No, of course not. Why would I? Yeah, exactly. It makes no sense. Yeah. So. Well, I, for one, appreciate Reels being hidden away and hard to find because I don't give a shit. I don't want to see it. Exactly. I don't want to see it anyways. Yeah. And this was a fun one, automated mistake by Apple kills all Mac developers apps.

Now, this is one guy's, one guy's app, Charlie Monroe. He created the Downey video downloader. And they basically made a mistake on Apple's side. And some AI was going through and flagged his apps as malware, and they wouldn't turn it back.

They wouldn't fix it for 24 hours. Right. And all of his users basically got a warning that popped up that said, this program may, you know, may harm your Macintosh. Please turn it off or delete it. Right. Which really, you know, screwed the pooch on him. And Apple was just like, meh, shit happens.

Well, yeah, it does, doesn't it? But that'll destroy you as a developer because, yeah, if you're smart, you get that notification. You delete that. You never go back. Exactly. And so hopefully Charlie is smart and is putting together a lawsuit against Apple for, you know, ruining his business.

So I, I, that's, I, I would believe that that's something actionable. I could be wrong, but I'm not a lawyer. Yes, we're not a lawyer, nor do we play one on this podcast, but it seems to me that that would make sense as well. I think he's got some, you know, he's got a valid point that, you know, that was totally not his fault.

There was a mistake on their end and it's going to destroy his business. Yep. So hopefully he has the chance to at least email all of his customers, but I don't think, I don't know if he gets email addresses from the app store now. And I knew he couldn't in the old days, but maybe they changed that. I've left the, the, the developer side on Apple a long time.

ago. Yes. Never looking back.

Media candy. I watched a really cool new four part series on Netflix. I actually, no, not Netflix. I'm so used to saying Netflix on Amazon called the last narc. Now, did you ever watch Narcos, Brian? No, no. Okay. Just kind of not in my interest area.

Gotcha. Yeah. Narcos is fantastic. I loved it. But, uh, the last two seasons, especially the last one talked about, uh, Enrique Kiki Camarena, who was the DEA agent that was murdered. Now this four part series goes through and talks to a lot of the people who were part of the kidnapping, part of the plot and part of the murder of him.

Right. And it's kind of crazy to actually see the real guys and the real agents that worked on this. And, uh, yeah, it's, if, if you're a fan of Narcos, you have to watch this. It is a barn burner as it were. And it's just, it's beautifully shot too.

And yeah, I just, it's four hours and a little under four hours, but well worth it. Well worth it. If you're into that kind of thing. Cool. And umbrella Academy season two is out now. Oh God. I never watched season one. Was it worth it? Oh man. It's such a good show. Such a good show.

I am actually pacing myself on this one. I'm only two episodes in and they're, they're great, but I'm pacing myself on this one because I, I burned through season one and I'm just, I want to savor these because there ain't shit else to watch right now. So, but I'm saying, but everything is pretty much on par with season one.

So if you liked season one and you didn't know season two is out, definitely, uh, definitely check it out. All right. And we did a couple, uh, comedy specials because I found a new comedian who is not new. She's been around forever. Like she's been doing standup for 25 years. Her name's some more.

Now, a lot of people are going to know her who people in the reality TV world might know her because she's kind of been adjacent to that. Uh, she's black woman comedian in the mid forties and some seriously funny shit. We were crying and went back and found a cut.

She's got two specials on Netflix. She's got one on Amazon and some other stuff that, uh, actually it's on Showtime. We had to get a trial, a free trial to watch it on Showtime. Uh, but man, she is funny. Oh God. Filthy as can be. I mean, you can't watch this with the kids in the room by any stretch of the imagination, but if you want some seriously funny, filthy comedy, go check out some more.

Those links will be in the, in the show notes. All righty. Finally, almost done. Uh, the broken, I had a little time off. It's great. Uh, AMC did a really short series called the broken and the bad with, uh, Giancarlo Esposito. If you've watched breaking bad, you know who he is.

Uh, Gustavo Fring. Yes. Um, so the Mandalorian. Yes. Also in the Mandalorian and everything else on TV right now. He shows up everywhere. Uh, he's amazing in this, but it's, he's in it for like 30 seconds because these are short stories about things like, um, shifty lawyers, uh, meth labs, uh, just all sorts of con artists, all the stuff that kind of ties into what it seems like what they used for research on the show.

Right. But using real people and real stories and they're eight minutes long and there's only six of them, which is kind of a bummer. So all in all, it kind of ties into about one episode of a regular TV show, like coming in at around 45 minutes to an hour ish, but, um, yeah, they're on the web.

You can go check it out on the web and, um, it's, it's a fun little watch. If you just want something that's short and sweet and in and out, good stuff. All right. Very cool. All right. Well, uh, we have had two new shows drop this week and I watched both of them. Uh, the first being Muppets now, the Disney plus original, uh, reboot of the Muppets show.

Huh? So that good, eh? Well, I'm not sure who they made it for. And I think there might be some problems. Um, they, they are only, they're dropping these, uh, episode by episode. So there's only one episode out. So perhaps it will get better. I'm just not sure what age group they're making it for.

The, the charm of the original Muppets show and any Muppets show that actually works is the show is actually for children with kind of some snide, uh, jokes that kind of fly over the heads of kids and hit the parents and make them laugh. I don't, I can't, I can't see a kid sitting down and watching this and getting much out of it.

This seems to be made for adults, but it's not funny enough to be just an adult show. Got it. I don't know. Hopefully it'll get better. I, uh, the conceit is kind of clever that they're trying to create this new streaming show and they're up against deadlines and all that sort of thing, but, uh, relying way too heavily on celebrity guests instead of just the Muppets by themselves.

In fact, the Muppets are never actually really all together because they're kind of doing it in these, you know, like streaming almost COVID times, but they're not talking about it being COVID, but like, it's all just like zoom windows and that sort of stuff. And I don't know. I don't know. Not, uh, sounds kind of terrible.

It did say, well, episode one to me was kind of terrible and I was a bit sad about that, but I will continue on with it and see if it gets better. So we'll see what happens. The nice part about doing it where they're not dropping everything, every single thing at once is they can go in and fix things as they come out. Hopefully.

Exactly. Yeah. And the first episode of any season or series is never really that good. I mean, Star Trek next gen. Come on. That was one of the worst episodes ever made. They got their legs under them eventually, but you got to look at it. It's like, give them, give them a little time to, to figure it out. Let me immediately crap on that point because the other show that I watched was Star Trek Lower Decks.

The first episode dropped and oh my God, I was dying laughing. Oh, good. I really thoroughly enjoyed it. Uh, there's no link in the show notes because CBS's website is so foobard. I can't get to it. They're using redirects and all this other kind of crap. So you cannot find a damn link for anything.

Um, it was hilarious. I was a little worried because the opening sequence, I thought, uh, cause when we first talked about this, I was like, this could be really good if they paid reverence to Star Trek and didn't crap on Star Trek too much and just kind of made it funny. Uh, the opening sequence is kind of crapping on Star Trek a little bit.

Um, but once you get into the actual show, I was just dying. It's that good. How long is it? Are they like short or long? They're like, uh, you know, 27 minutes to me in a standard 30 minute format, you know, but no commercials. Okay. Dropped all at once or singles one by one.

So I'm very much looking forward to the next one and, uh, catch up easily. It was awesome, man. It was really funny. It was really well done. I thoroughly enjoyed it. All right. So we have some news from Richard Hammond from the grand tour. I'm not sure if, or when that show is coming back on Amazon, but, uh, Amazon has decided to throw him more money.

He just announced this week that he'll be doing a new science show. He'll be teaming up with Tori Balachi, the ex myth buster. And they will be basically dropped on a desert Island and, and have to, I suppose, solve problems using their knowledge of science and mechanics and all that sort of stuff.

We'll see. Please tell me, please tell me they're going to have to use coconuts like Gilligan's Island. It's gotta be, there's gotta be some Gilligan shit in there. They're trapped on a desert Island. Well, if Richard, if Richard Hammond doesn't come out wearing a coconut bikini in the first sequence, I'm going to be very disappointed. That seems something more Tori would do though.

That's true. So I'm looking forward to this. I think it could be kind of interesting. It's a, it's an interesting combination of personalities. So we'll see. Alrighty. Uh, I've, I saw this one. I just thought it was funny. Uh, Netflix is finally giving you a playback speed adjustment on their Android apps.

Okay. Uh, there was a whole brouhaha, uh, last year when they were talking about doing this and, you know, everybody came out, Aaron Paul, Brad Bird, Judd Apatow, all these people were just like, dude, don't do that. Let us watch it. Like make them watch it the way we intended it.

Well, the way you intended it generally isn't a big giant theater, but they're sitting in their home, scratching their balls on the couch. So you, you lost your point right there. Um, yeah. And look, what about the pause button? Musicians lost this battle a long time ago. So shut up, let people do what they want to do.

Yeah, seriously. They're going to do it the way they want to do it. And, uh, iZotope has a new podcast called Headroom. It's, uh, I, I use iZotope products all day long. They're, you know, it's, it's audio repair and enhancement software. Yeah. And so they came out with a new podcast with musicians mainly.

And, you know, the, the first one is okay. The problem that they have, it sound, it sounds good because it's iZotope. Uh, the problem is that the hosts are plotting and slow and they don't edit the actual show. Oh, no editing.

It's really tough to listen to unless you're doing it on the aforementioned, you know, one and a half X. And if you use overcast, it's even better because they cut the silence in between. I tried to listen to it without it because I was, I'm trying to listen to more new podcasts again, just to do it and get back into my groove.

Um, and I listened to them at 1.0 with no enhancements and it is almost unlistenable. I'm so, I'm so spoiled by, you know, either good editing or good software. Right. But the, you know, the stuff was really good. The, the actual content is really good.

Um, the first episode was with David Mash talking about, uh, machine music and, uh, some of the old days of MIDI and stuff like that. It was, it was pretty cool. It was pretty cool. But the problem is that, yes, uh, the editing is terrible. Man, if you learn about the early days of MIDI and how difficult and weird all of that was, uh, if you did not have respect for Howard Jones, who was one of the first musicians that basically went on stage with a stack of synthesizers, all controlled by MIDI and no band, you will

go, my God, that man is a genius. Serious talent. Um, and this came on last night. Big brother is back. Uh, this is an all-star season. I, I, if you've listened to the show for this long, or if you've listened to the show for the run of the show, you know, I'm a huge big brother fan and it is new content is something to watch three times a week, be it as vapid as you want it to be.

I don't care. I'm very excited, but it was weird because it was obviously no audience, Julie standing there by herself, you know, trying to talk to people. Um, it's really weird. It's really weird to have no audience there. And, um, they've, they sequestered everybody for, you know, 14 days, multiple testing and things like that.

So everybody's clean and they actually did kick out two contestants that were going to be on the show right before they went to air because they tested positive. Right. So, and it seemed like one of the guys had like, you know, a series of negatives, then a positive, then a series of negatives. But the, uh, we were trying to figure out why they wouldn't just throw out that false positive, but the insurance company, man, imagine trying to insure a show like that.

No. Aren't we all living in a big brother house right now? Kind of, kind of. Okay. Yeah. Except for Logan Paul. Yeah. He might be living in the big house soon. Uh, the fun part is that they're taking the crew and, and cycling them out in 30 day cycles.

So they'll have one crew in for 30 days, then take them out, sequester them again, bring a new crew back in, which, you know, that's going to be, oh man, that's got to be maddening for the crew. They, I hope they got hazard pay for that. Yeah. I imagine they probably didn't, but they certainly should have.

Oh, definitely. Definitely. Spending that much time in that house with those people away from your family. I think that's more torturous than actually being on the show. Probably. Well, and then they, I mean, they would also have to then quarantine themselves for like 14 days before going back to their family. So it's well over a month that you have to spend away from, from everybody that you know.

Yeah. I'm getting, so you think two months on, you know, 14 weeks on either. So that's your 14 days on either side. So that's two months. Wow. A quick bit of follow-up because I watched a little bit of it on my new TV that finally arrived. Thank you, Amazon. Ordered it July 23rd and it arrived on August 6th.

How's that prime doing? All things considered, that's still not bad. We're very spoiled. Oh, yes. Especially for a $300 50 inch TV. I'll take it. And I just want to close out this segment. You have to check out, well, you don't because you'll probably hate it.

It's a band called Ruskaja. Now, found out about this on the last drink up. And it is a kind of, it's a Russian heavy metal polka band that kind of sounds like Golgo Burdello, but also kind of like Rammstein in the middle, plus some wacky Russian metal.

It's really weird, but I found it quite toe tapping. But since we talked about it on the drink up, I finally went back into my to-do list and found it. So there's going to be a link to the video, one of their videos in the show notes. If you want to just hear something random, bizarre, and kind of fun, go check out Ruskaja.

I listened to the YouTube link that you put in there and I actually rather enjoyed it, but I think that's enough. I think one single does it for me. Kind of one and done, yeah? Yeah, yeah.

So I've been walking a lot more, Brian, and getting my steps in and trying to get fit again because the weather is not volcanic outside anymore. And so I've been trying to get back to my inner Zen.

And when I go for walks now, I've been listening to the Alan Watts collection. Okay. I know this is at the library and that's audio, but close enough. Close enough. Close enough. Alan, if you don't know who Alan Watts is, he's kind of, he died in 1973, but he left behind a trove of just great stuff.

He was kind of a philosopher who married Eastern and Western philosophies and just had some really good ideas and some really good, just concepts. And he's got a great voice. He's just got a really cool voice to listen to. So when I just, I just pop one of these on and go walk for an hour and I just feel calmer when I come home.

I got a link to the entire Alan Watts collection in the show notes. It's not cheap. And if you're going to buy it, yeah, be prepared to shell out quite a bit. Don't go to Sweden. But yeah, it's, I love Alan Watts.

He's very fun. And I started also listening to when I, when I need a break from Alan. I talked about this, I think a long time ago, but it's an old Chinese folk novel called Monkey. I read, I read, I read this when I was like in my late teens, early twenties, and I just remember loving it.

It is a very old Chinese folk novel about basically a stone monkey and his adventures. It's kind of hard to explain, but it's really fun. And, uh, it's, it makes you think a little bit sometimes near the end there, but I just love this book.

Uh, I know a lot of people who listened to the show. I think the last time I talked about it, uh, wrote in and said, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I read that when I was a kid too. Not a kid. It's, this kind of comes, read this around the time when you'd normally be reading Ayn Rand shit like that. Oh yes. But it's fun. And 1984.

Yeah. You get into your deep philosophy phase. Exactly. Exactly. Cause I remember what made me think of this as I was doing a lot of meditation back then in my, my late teens, early twenties and, um, listening to Alan Watts kind of like brought me back and I'm like, Oh yeah, I remember Monkey. I want to get that.

Now the caveat here is, uh, you can buy it to read it, you know, in book form where you can get the audio version. Like I do, the audio version is kind of old. It's very kind of old. It sounds old. It's got crackles and pops. Like they, like they recorded it from a, you know, old vinyl.

Yeah. Like old vinyl. Um, but the guy who's doing the voices is fantastic. It just kind of takes you away from like the hyper overproduced stuff that you hear nowadays. Yeah. And I enjoy that part of it. So listen, if you're going to get it on audible, listen to the sample first before you throw down your cash.

Right. Excellent. And, uh, you know, Jason, you, you sent me a message as I, as I was checking into my, uh, vacation home, uh, for the weekend about a new book that had come out and I had gotten the email from Amazon as well. And I was quite excited. I thought it was a bit weird because, you know, Christopher Moore just released a book, Shakespeare for squirrels that we, we both read.

And, uh, we got a notification from Amazon that a new title had been released, idiot, a humorous fantasy. And I was like, that doesn't seem right, but you never know. He, he does recycle his characters in books and, you know, maybe he was working on it and just kind of did a twofer and snuck one out on us that we were going to get an extra book from him.

Uh, and the other thing that thing, the thing was interesting too, is like the, the cover art was not his standard fare. So I'm looking at it going, maybe he's trying something new here, you know, well, you know, we had, we had noir, which was not his standard covered art fare either. So it was not out of the realm of possibility.

Uh, and I was almost getting ready to buy it, but then, you know, kid yelled or something like that. And I had to get a scooter out of the car. And so I was distracted and I didn't, and I'm glad I didn't because a retraction has been released by Amazon. And the other thing that I thought funny because I didn't read it at the time is, is then I read the brief synopsis of the book that was in the email.

And I was like, this sounds really familiar, but again, he's revisited these characters a couple of times. So you never know. Uh, so Amazon sent a retraction saying that, uh, we're contacting you about the new release idiot humorous fantasy. The title was incorrectly attributed to the author.

You follow Christopher Moore. We're sorry about the inconvenience this has caused. I'm assuming that would mean that they would refund people as well, instead of just being sorry about it. But I'm sure I didn't purchase it. I don't know. Uh, so then I followed up a little bit about this and Chris Moore, of course, has tweeted about it.

Uh, he's saying that is not my book. They are even using the plot from fool as the description. Hence, no wonder I thought it was so familiar. Yeah. But do not buy that book, idiot. It's not mine. I'm trying to reach Amazon to pull the link. And then he got a bit more into it. And it turns out there are some publishing companies in, well, let's just say other countries, uh, that basically do this a lot.

And authors are constantly, uh, fighting against it. So they basically rebrand and re-trademark, uh, an existing work and try to sell it. Interesting. Interesting. So, uh, yeah, I, I basically, I quote unquote bought it.

Right. But I got it through, uh, Kindle Unlimited. So it was more like borrowing it. So I went to, I went to go find the, I went to my digital purchases and I'm trying to find out like where it didn't show up in my purchases. I'm like, oh, maybe they refunded me already. Cause I didn't realize that I'd gotten it through Kindle Unlimited cause I just hit, you know, buy.

Yeah. And, uh, yeah, it was, it's still in my library for some reason. I figured they would have pulled it by now, but it's on, on my Kindle, my actual Kindle device that I have my paperwhite. So I'm, you know, obviously going to delete it and return it.

But, uh, yeah, I was, I was very surprised by that. And, uh, yeah, these people are scumbags. Yep. Also Amazon's fault. True that. Closing shout outs. Uh, we were going to do feedback loop in this episode, but we have so much of it.

Uh, we would be here all day and, uh, we've got stuff to do. So we're going to pull all of that. We're going to move all the feedback to it's regularly scheduled, uh, Wednesday release, Tuesday recording for us. Uh, so that might be an all feedback episode cause we have so much and obviously we're going to get some more in before that as well.

Thank you everyone for writing us. We really do appreciate it. Sorry. Some of the stuff might be a little dated by the time we get to it. Uh, but again, uh, a mountain of feedback. This week. Yes. Thank you very much for everything that we have to go sort through and edit. Oh yeah.

And, uh, I'm glad you're back. Uh, I'm, I'm somewhat happy to be back. Yeah. Not going to lie. Floating around in a pool, drinking beer is more fun than podcasting, but I'm happy to be here. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. This pays better, but not by much. Not by much. At all. Until next time.

I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. 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. If you want some swag, then head over to gog.show slash shop. No baseball caps yet, but we're working on it.

Your support really keeps us going and we really appreciate it. Show notes for this episode are at gog.show slash 461. And 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.

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.