469: Assed Vigilantes

Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFillippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Brian, we got a little follow-up on The Mandalorian. We do. If you haven't noticed, every TV news channel in the world also has had it. It's very exciting. I'm happy to hear that they actually got it finished and done somehow.

Yes, we'll see if Baby Yoda can save 2020. Although I... My doubts. We'll see. Actually, I guess I suppose I'm not too surprised because production is back in full swing here in Southern California. I don't know if you've noticed anything near you, but as I was taking my bike ride the other day, I end up in kind of this parking lot area up in Malibu, kind of where the path ends.

And if you're brave enough, then you get on PCH and you can continue to ride. But I like life. Don't do that. Yeah, please never do that. I would appreciate that. That is a spot that's often taken over for TV commercial shoots and things of that nature, which generally really pisses me off because it's public land.

And I'm not going to... I ignore the signs that say you cannot enter here because we're shooting because I'm like, F you. So... And I did the same yesterday because there was a full production taking place. There were... It was Saved by the Bell, actually, that was shooting. Oh, my God.

Of all things. So, yeah. Production is back. There were trailers. There was catering trucks. There was the whole deal. Some people wearing masks, some not. So, there you go. Yeah. That spot famously back in the day was for Baywatch. Mm-hmm. Exactly, yes.

A lot of Baywatch back then. Yes. Yes, there was. Yep. Yeah, I've heard a lot of people back in the production swing here in SoCal. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's all that Netflix money. They got to spend it somewhere, so... Well, on the plus side of that, maybe we'll be getting the Expanse sooner than later since everybody's back.

Well, that's Amazon, so who knows? Who knows? But speaking of Netflix, just in time for the holiday weekend, Netflix has given us a Hillary Swank-led sci-fi series called Away. Huh. And hopefully this will pass the time because it is going to be molten here in the Valley.

It's going to be 113 tomorrow and 115 on Sunday. Yeah, no climate change, but... None. Sure. None whatsoever. Okay. Yeah. And it's early September, and yes, it's even going to be... We're getting the high heat warnings in Santa Monica, which for us isn't quite as hot as you, but...

Yeah, really? Come on. It's still going to be pretty damn hot. So yeah, and most people that live in this area know AC, so I will be retreating to Orange County. Ah, good call. Good call. Yes. And hopefully the power will definitely hold out long enough because they're already saying we're going to get blackouts. So I think I'll download this to my iPad just in case.

Good idea. Good idea. And you let me know if it looks any good or not, because I'm not a huge Hilary Swank fan. Oh, I'm not at all. I'm not at all. I have very low expectations for this one because the plot is basically mom leaves the husband and the kid to go off to the stars, which reminds me of...

Sounds familiar. We just watched a series like that, didn't we? Was that the Lost in Space reboot? No, that was the Katie Sackhoff one. Oh, that one as well. Well, originally in Lost in Space reboot, the mom left too, right? I thought, no, Lost in Space is the whole family. She tried to get her kids to go, but the dad wasn't going to be involved and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I thought it was the whole... It was always the whole... It was always the Robinson family, but... Fair enough. Whatever. It's all families going into space. Whatever. That's fine. Take the kids. Gettison them if you have to. Yeah, so the only thing that would excite me more, or I guess less, than a Hilary Swank sci-fi show would be like if Jennifer Aniston was all of a sudden going into space.

Oh, God. Can you strap her to that Tesla that we shot off around the sun? I'd be fine with that. I'd probably watch that over Hilary Swank. True. In the news. Well, Walmart Plus is finally going to launch to try to compete with Amazon Prime.

Good luck. As the story says, it's the much-anticipated membership program, Walmart Plus. I'm not so sure about that. Anticipated by who? I don't know. It's finally launching nationwide on September 15th, the company announced this week, which is six months after it was going to launch due to COVID-19 pushback and delays.

They need the program to be successful in order to stop top-spending customers from fleeing to Amazon Prime. It will cost $98 a year or $12.95 a month and focus mainly on unlimited delivery of groceries and other general merchandise from Walmart stores that for orders of more than $35 will be delivered as soon as the same day.

So a little bit cheaper than Amazon Prime, but you don't get the, you know, Prime kind of same day, next day delivery unless you're buying in bulk, bulk-ish, $35. I don't know. They will also get fuel discounts at Walmart gas stations and those of partners, as well as access to Scan and Go technology, which allows shoppers to use smartphones to scan goods at Walmart stores.

They say they'll be adding more perks in the future, which we've previously talked about might include branded credit card, ooh, early availability on product deals from Walmart, and potentially access to a popular streaming video service to be determined later.

Can we get Hulu? Can we get Hulu? Most likely. So yeah, the question is, of course, you know, most people, as they're pointing out here, more than half of Walmart's top-spending families are already Prime members. So that, are they going to subscribe to two membership programs?

I think not. I think not either. And, you know, speaking of their rush to cut off Amazon, I finally got my invitation to go check out that Amazon Fresh store. So I'm going to check it out tomorrow morning. You're going to go check it out in 115 degree heat?

I hope they have AC. They open at 7, so I can beat the rush. But the thing is, I looked at the spec sheet for the store. Those carts aren't going to be available until later this year. Those little scan-and-go carts. Oh, so the main thing of interest is not available yet.

Exactly, exactly. And I did check out some of the specs on the carts. They do say you can put two bags in them and then just load up the bags as you go. Okay. Because they're smaller carts. They're only meant for just picking up little stuff. Right. Okay, that's cool. Facebook and Twitter caught Russian trolls running a literal fake news site.

So they are attempting to do stuff here. Both companies disclosed that they had suspended a handful of accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency, the Russian troll farmed behind Russia's 2016 election interference campaign. This is not the first time they've shut down accounts this year, but it seems the group has been involving its tactics.

They have gotten unwitting journalists to write for it. Basically meaning... Well, you know what that means. They were witting. It's journalists desperate to make a buck. And probably people that work for ClickFarms normally anyways. So there you go. The accounts, which were associated with a news website called PeaceData, hired freelancers to produce content.

Should have realized something when they were asked to misspell everything and put in poor grammar. But there you go. So the Twitter is now blocking links to the PeaceData website and that existing links will be de-amplified. How about deleted? Yes. What's wrong with deleting?

Why de-amplify? I still don't understand this. We find something. We know it's wrong. We're blocking them in the future, but we're not going to take down the previous shit. What the fuck's wrong with these people? I don't know. Oh my God. They're idiots. If they weren't, we wouldn't be here.

That's true. That's true. If Mark Zuckerberg wasn't the most dangerous man in the world, we wouldn't have a podcast. That's right. So I thought this was pretty funny. Spotify a while back bought a company called Parcast, and they specialize in true crime and mystery shows. Woo! Woo!

Well, those guys have decided to start a union. Hmm. I wonder who done it. Yeah. Who done it? I think they saw that Gimlet got through and have their union now, so they're like, hey, let's try this too. Why not? Right. Well, why don't they all join together?

Why not start Podcasters 542? Yeah. Yeah. That would be nice. Yeah. But I think since it is technically a different company inside of Spotify, I don't think Gimlet and Parcast hang out together in the same break room.

Now, speaking of Spotify, this tickled my little black heart this morning like you would not believe. This is an article found over at Billboard. Unfortunately, I couldn't read the article because it's part of like Billboard Plus or Billboard Extra or Billboard Extreme. It's got to be Billboard Plus.

Everything is plus these days. So it says how Spotify's rollout of Joe Rogan's podcast helped create a $4.8 billion headache. They listen to the podcast? That gives me a headache. I'm going to give you the TLDR on this. I couldn't read the article, but I got the gist of it.

Okay. And we've done this in the past. So Joe Rogan launched on Spotify, like we mentioned, last episode, all good. Now, after that happened, the stock dropped. Some of it was because of the market and some of it was because the news that came out that a bunch of right wing guests and also Joe's Pussy Party Posse, all the people who have been canceled like Chris D'Elia and all those guys.

Right. Those shows were not part of the catalog that came to Spotify. Uh-huh. They didn't want the toxic shows. It caused a big kerfuffle because, like I said, if I was Spotify, I would probably pull those shows too. You know? I'll give you $100 million. I do have a little bit of a say on what the hell goes on my platform.

Now, here's the irony. This is the part that I love. Spotify signs Joe Rogan for $100 million, right? After that happens, the stock jumps $4 billion. Right. Making it a lot more valuable. During that time, that's when Q2 closes and Spotify has to pay out a shit ton of money to their employees because they have, you know, basically stock-based compensation plans.

Okay. We talked about this on the show, thought it was very funny that $100 million just got a lot more expensive. Yep. And now the stock has corrected back to pre-Joe levels, but they've already paid out the bonuses to the employees and they still have to pay Joe Rogan. So they got fucked, which is, put a smile on my face.

And let's keep in mind that it's already an unprofitable company to begin with. Exactly. Oh, Spotify. I'm going to cancel my Spotify account. I just can't do it anymore. I like my music. I'll tell you a little bit more why when we get to apps and doodads. But yeah, I just, they're carpetbaggers.

They're going to try and do to podcasters what they've done to musicians, which is take everything and not pay anybody a damn thing. Oh yeah, of course. Duh. Yeah. And we've been saying that since the get, but now it's their business model. It is their business model. They are, they are the Uber of music and podcasts. Let's get as much as we can and give back nothing.

Can I, can I ask an honest question about, about this, uh, uproar about, uh, some Joe Rogan episodes not being moved to Spotify? Do you believe that there is really an uproar or do you believe that some of the people from cancel culture are creating a big stink because they've continued to be canceled?

Because it's not, it's, it's not that these episodes aren't available. They're just not available via Spotify. And who cares? Are, are there a lot of people? Well, I mean, I suppose we've found out there are some very strange people that go back and listen to our old episodes, but are there really that many people?

Is there that much of a demand for old episodes of podcasts? I don't think so. I mean, who wants to go back and watch four hours of Alex Jones, you know, besides Alex Jones, I can't think of anybody. Milo Yiannopoulos. Come on, man. Let's get, let's go down the rabbit hole.

But it's like 40 some episodes out of over a thousand. Yeah. What's the big deal? Exactly. And I think like it was a slow news week. So the media just kind of pumped it up and did their, their damnedest to turn it into a thing. And I'm sure that the people that were on that list were the main ones that pumped it up.

Yeah. Because Alex Jones loves the sound of his own voice. So. And there's very few places he can hear it now. Exactly. Exactly. All right. So in last week's episode, we talked a bit about a Google Nest hub being rolled out into select hotel chains as a part of their big PR move.

Amazon basically said, wait, hold my beer and rolled out a new program called Alexa for residential. Now they want to make it easier for smart homes, for people to have smart homes who don't actually own a home. This is their honest pitch. The company is unveiling Alexa for residential program that lets property managers, aka landlords, add Alexa enabled devices and experiences to rental properties.

So landlords and property managers can install Alexa devices, pre-fill in info like device name, address, and wifi networks, and pre-enable Alexa skills and set interactions with other smart home devices like lights and appliances. Residents will be able to connect their personal accounts and additional devices. Amazon says 84% of renters want an apartment with smart home amenities and 61% said they would pay a monthly fee for a voice assistant.

Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. I don't believe this at all. Why would anybody want that? Why would you want it as a landlord? Because it's something you're going to have to constantly update because these things do get old and need to be updated. And why would you want it as a renter when you can go out and get one for yourself?

They aren't that expensive. Exactly. There's nothing here that you have to build into the actual apartment. No. It's not like you have to rewire the walls and put it in. No. This is the stupidest thing I've heard in a long time. And those stats are bullshit. Total. Absolute bullshit. Yep.

I know people that own apartment buildings. And the last thing they want is to spend more money on that apartment and have another headache of something broke. Oh, you know, because they hire out all of the maintenance to maintenance companies and property management companies. So they don't want to spend any more money than they have to.

What can possibly go wrong if all the smart devices are actually owned by your landlord? I make decisions. I used to make decisions on places I rented by proximity of my landlords anyways. I said no to places that I actually loved because the landlords lived on premises. I'm like, no freaking way.

And there's no way I would rent a place that actually had smart home devices that were owned and installed and maintained by my landlord. Yep. No. I think they have these stats backwards. Yeah, me too. Utterly backwards. Now, let's talk about Amazon a little bit more here.

You've heard about the Flex Driver program, right? Yep. Yeah. So for those of you who haven't, real quick, it's basically where anybody can go sign up to deliver shit for Amazon. You just go to their website and sign up and boom, there you go. Well, there's so many people out there doing it right now, kind of like we talked about with DoorDash the other day.

Right. That more people have signed up. So what Amazon does is it tracks your phone. So when an order comes in, they pick the people that are closest to the location for pickup, like a Whole Foods or one of their pickup locations, and then they route the people based on that location.

So if you're the closest, then you get the call first. Right. Well, some very smart people in Chicago have decided to just hang some cell phones outside of the Whole Foods. In the trees. In the trees. They have phone trees outside of Whole Foods now.

Now, first off, this is amazing. It's great. This is hacking the system to a degree that I find stunning. And if I were running any kind of tech think tank or anything like that, I would find the enterprising drivers that figure this out and hire them immediately.

The second thing I was thinking of is this solves an old urban mystery for me. All those shoes hanging off trees must have been a Web 2.0 jogging group. That's what it is. Yeah, they're put there by Strava. But yeah.

No, I thought this was genius. I thought it was genius. Yeah, it's amazing. And a little bit more information on how Amazon treats these flex drivers, because it turns out they actually have an internal group called the Advocacy Operations Social Listening Team.

That doesn't sound creepy. No, it doesn't at all. It really rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? So their job is to troll private Facebook groups and Reddits and subreddits and things like that, where Amazon flex drivers hang out. Right. And what they do is they read what they're writing and see if they're going to strike or protest against Amazon, or if they're just grumbly because they don't get enough blocks of time to deliver for flex, whatever it may be.

So they profile all these people and write reports and say, hey, this person needs to be investigated because he said this, this, this, and this, sentiment analysis and things like that. But yeah, this was all because, I love this, somebody in one of these groups, I don't know if it was an outsourced agency or whoever was doing all of this tracking, they left all

of these reports in the monitoring tool on an exposed domain called sharkandink.com. And I read this first, I'm like, shark-a-dink? What's a shark-a-dink? Shrinky-dinks. I remember those. Oh, I love shrinky-dinks. I had Scooby-Doo's. Those are great.

So Amazon has confirmed that this is their program, that they are running it and it exists. So yeah, so they've got, they basically got their in-house, you know, union-busting team watching these people like a hawk.

So beware what you say on the internet. Especially on Facebook, you are not protected. No, you are not. Big brother, Big Bezos is listening. And speaking of big people listening, the Apple Google exposure notification tool has gotten a major upgrade. What I find really hilarious about this is when it first launched, it was Conspiracy Theory Central.

It's being pushed on us. We can't avoid it. It's there. And, you know, even we took to the airwaves, as it were, the podcast waves to say, no, it's just an API. You have to actually install a bit of software to plug into the API. It won't do anything.

Well, guess what, Conspiracy Theorist? Now you're right. Oh, what happened? The two companies just announced the debut of the Exposure Notifications Express, which will enable the Exposure Notification Tool to work without a public health agency needing to build or maintain an app around it, meaning you can just turn it on and it will work now.

You don't need a new app. That's not good. So states or public health authorities that don't have the resources or desire to build an app but want to take advantage of the tool will now be able to do so. So far, Maryland, Nevada, Virginia, Washington, D.C. have already signed on to use Exposure Notifications Express, while six states, Alabama, Arizona, North Dakota, Wyoming, Nevada, and Virginia have apps that use the tool.

Several other countries have apps that use the tool, but the United States has left it to individual states to figure out their own contact tracing efforts, which have been less than enthusiastic, as we know. They've announced it in April and launched it a month later. That was the original one. And it wasn't until August that Virginia finally became the first state to release a contact tracing app that used the tool.

Apparently, it cost them a quarter of a million dollars to develop the app and 1.5 million to market it. And even with all that money spent, nearly only half a million Virginians have downloaded the app, which is a small portion of the state population of 8.5 million people.

So, basically, nobody was developing second-party apps to take advantage of the API. They were spending way too much money on it. And let's be honest, it's been fucking five months. Nothing is happening. So, I guess they just decided, we're going to make it a lot easier. And now it's baked in.

You still have to turn it on. And there still has to be some sort of public-facing whatever. I don't know, maybe they must have some sort of state admin screen or something that lets you tap into whatever they've got going on.

So, it's not like it just turns on on you, or you can just turn it on unless your state has made some sort of arrangement. But it is baked in now. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah, they should have just done this out of the gate, and it might have worked. Yep. Bit late now. Bit late now.

Bit late now. It would have been nice to have at Sturgis. I'm just saying. Or just attach it to Smash Mouth.

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We've sent out the bat signal many times, and today we're joined this week by Ben Yellen. Ben is the co-host of Caveat with Dave Bittner, where they discuss law and policy as well as surveillance and privacy. Ben is the program director for public policy and external affairs at the University of Maryland Center for Health and Homeland Security.

Woo! That's a lot. So I wanted to thank Ben for coming, and I'm sure Dave brought him up to speed about what the main topic of this segment is. Obviously, you can tell by the title, Security Ha. We like to talk a lot about Star Wars here. So it's good to have a legal expert here, and I'd love to get your opinion on the Clone War and legality vis-a-vis the current state of the Galactic Empire and the Senate.

Go. The floor is yours. All right. So I knew I was grumpy, and I knew I was a geek, but I didn't realize how old I am or how young I am, because I have to say, and this is a terrible thing to confess on this podcast, that I am completely ignorant when it comes to the Mandalorian and the Star Wars universe in general.

And I realize that's going to come as a—I'm probably already off on the wrong foot with your listeners. I can't believe Dave even hosts a podcast with you. He must not know this information. I think he might not, and I might get fired. So I will hold you personally responsible for that.

But I'm afraid I can't offer you any insight on that, which I'm a little bit ashamed of, to be honest. All right. Shut it down. I'm over. Shut it down. That's the only thing I wanted to talk about. We're done. Now, if we want to go into other universes and talk about some legal implications, we can spitball.

But I've probably seen episode four, and that might be it. All right. Okay. Okay. I know. Well, there goes my whole topic of conversation. Take it away, Jason. I ruined it. Well, since we seem to be living in an alternate universe, we can just go back to ours.

Because— Okay. Not sure I want to do that, but all right. Yeah. Yeah. So I still say it's the Berenstain-Berenstein-Bear split that caused all of these problems. So I found an article over at The Verge I want to talk about. It's called, FBI Worried Ring and Other Doorbell Cameras Could Tip Owners Off to Police Searches.

Now, apparently, the FBI and police have a bug up their butt saying, hey, when we're going to go, you know, execute a search warrant, everybody's got these ring cameras now, and they might see us coming, uh-oh, big trouble brewing. I'm looking for—have you seen the world's tiniest violin anywhere?

Well, there's like, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. The sword cuts both ways. I mean, pick your metaphor here. Yeah. They were all about it. They were giving away free rings to people so the police could have access to them, and now they're butthurt because people are using them to watch them.

To do what it's actually designed for. Right. Who'd have thunk it? So there had been a lot of controversy out there because of their close relationship, particularly with local police departments. Um, so they were getting things like—they were giving things like heat maps to local police departments. You know, this is a neighborhood where there are a lot of ring devices.

So, you know, in your investigative work, just be aware of that. Uh, but the tables have been turned. So this article talks about instances, uh, where the reverse problem happens. So you have people sitting in their homes, uh, maybe their ring device detects or there's cops waiting outdoors, you know, with binoculars doing investigative work and you can ping your neighbor, you know, go onto your, uh, next door or whatever and say, actually, uh, there are cops in the neighborhood.

Get yourself out of the house before they discover your drug stash. So, uh, it's just one of those things where you can't really have it both ways. I mean, this is the way the technology works. If you're going to use the technology to your advantage, uh, you can't really complain, uh, you know, about the converse disadvantage.

Yep. I think if you have a smart home too, and your, your ring has cop detection, you can force your, your smart bidet to flush your meth as they come up the driveway. I know. Well, as long as we're going to have completely smart houses. Yeah. I mean, we should expand this even, even further. Yeah. Uh, I mean, maybe we can have an old automated system.

You could say like, Alexa, flush it, Alexa, flush it right now. Exactly. Um, but yeah, I mean, we knew that there were major privacy concerns about, uh, law enforcement making use of ring devices. And oftentimes these relationships could be a little exploitative, like they would hold these fairs in low income neighborhoods saying, Hey, free ring devices for everybody.

I'm sure this won't, you know, won't come back to bite you in the ass. Uh, and so, you know, I just think to come back and yes, they're saying overall, this is a good tool for law enforcement, but to even register these complaints is, um, a bit rich.

That's one way to put it. Yeah. And one thing in the article that we've actually talked about here on the show and Brian's brought up concerns about this is the privacy of the neighbors. When you have cameras pointed out of your house all the time, you're recording what's going on at your neighbor's house as well. Do you have any thoughts on, on like, what's your angle on that?

So a couple of things about that, you know, from a legal perspective, when you are out in public, if you're in the public view, you have forfeited your reasonable expectation of privacy, which means you don't really have any fourth amendment rights, especially if you have not, you know, tried to conceal yourself in any way.

So can I ask a quick question about that? Does that also pertain to say I'm inside my house? Uh, the camera is pointing at my living room and I just don't have my curtains closed. So that's a little bit different. It really gets to whether you've exhibited subjective expectation of privacy and whether that expectation is reasonable.

So I would say if you are in your own home, which, you know, the legal world considers one man's home, his castle. So it takes on this kind of extra importance. Uh, if you're in your home, there is a heightened sense that you have an expectation of privacy. And even if you don't close your curtains or whatever, you really have taken some subjective action to keep yourself private.

By having say a wall, a wall. Yeah. Just being in your house. And, you know, so that's become relevant. We've seen cases where the government uses infrared technology to see, you know, whether there's heat emanating from your house, uh, you know, perhaps discover whether you're using grow lights or something.

We had that, we had that concern way back in college and that was a long time ago. Exactly. Yeah, no, it's just the smell of air freshener has nothing to do with the marijuana that it's trying to cover up, but, um, yeah, so, you know, you get these cases and the Supreme Court has still said that technology is not something that's widely available to the public.

Your average person doesn't know that that capability exists and you're still in your own home trying to conceal to the outside world what's going on. So you do maintain that expectation. But like you said, I mean, it's different when somebody steps on the street, uh, when you're in a public street, you know, and I think that that doctrine has become kind of, outdated because we're in a situation now where there are cameras everywhere.

Uh, and it's not just, you know, ring devices, it's closed circuit cameras, um, you know, anything attached to a building. I used to live in Baltimore city and I know they have aerial surveillance now license plate readers. So, you know, even though you are, uh, exhibiting yourself in public, so to speak, that doesn't necessarily mean normatively that it's good, uh, you know, that you shouldn't have a expectation of privacy to a certain extent.

Okay. So in theory, if, uh, is there any legal recourse, say if somebody had a ring camera that was pointing at my, at my living room and, and I wanted that off because I didn't want what happens in my living room being recorded. Yes.

I think you would have legal recourse in that situation because you're not knowingly exposing yourself in public. So you can, there could be causes of action for that, like a, a tort. I mean, we've seen that in cases where you have peeping Toms, um, and you know, tort law will allow you to get some sort of legal relief from that.

Uh, but you know, the, the converse is if you're sitting, if you're sitting on your, you know, front steps or something in the situation, it becomes completely different. Yeah. So what if I take a, what if I mount a green laser in my living room and point it directly at that camera and end up frying the camera since the camera's looking at me and I'm looking back at the camera, could I be charged?

Do you think for destroying someone else's property? Yeah, probably. Damn. Damn. That would be property damage or there's a tort for nuisance. So, you know, if you are shining that laser and you're actually missing the ring camera, but it gets into somebody's eye and bothers them for some reason, then you could also get, you could get sued in civil court for that.

So they should have stayed off my lawn anyway. Damn it. I know. Is that the tagline of the show, by the way, get the hell off my lawn? Cause I just, I just wanted to say that. So I hope I get many more opportunities. All right. So our home is our castle and our porch.

We're asked to the wind and that's the way it is. So, uh, and, and, and, and if actually people cared about their privacy and wanted to sue about somebody's cameras and infringing upon their own personal property and into their house, they could, and that might cause a problem for Amazon's ring business model, but not enough people actually give a crap to bother with any of this.

Most likely. Yeah. And they're just not in a position to, I mean, in order to suing Amazon is probably one of the most difficult things one can do. Uh, you'd have to come up with some sort of class action lawsuit, uh, and you need to hire expensive lawyers and there have to be hundreds and hundreds of thousands of you, uh, in order for it to be worth it for you to file the suit.

And then whatever relief you're going to get as an individual customer is going to be here's your two bucks. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So that, that's how, you know, Amazon gets away with things like this. It's funny. I grew up in the seventies and the eighties. So, uh, we, we had a tradition back in the old days. Uh, basically you could moon people.

So I think that every time you're in your living room, you should just moon the camera across the street. There you go. See, that's, that's taking on your own initiative, not involving the legal system and, you know, telling the person across from you, this is officially how I feel about your camera. You become asked vigilantes.

Vigilante moon justice. Exactly. I like that. Moon, moon vigilantes. Yeah. But now you've, you've, you know, and this is a, this is nonviolent resistance. If I can say so myself, you're not confronting the person physically. It is a message. It is a message with two cheeks on it.

And I love it. Oh, cheeky. Yeah. So now let's talk about this next one. Cause I, this is just, I don't know how I feel about it, but the NSA's mass surveillance program has been deemed illegal. And this is like, this is almost vindication for Snowden, isn't it?

It really is. So just a little bit of background. I'll try and be as non-legalistic and brief as possible. So seven years ago, Edward Snowden disclosed some proprietary information of the National Security Agency. As you know, to various journalists, one of the programs he uncovered was what was called the call detail records program, where basically all of the domestic phone carriers were collecting the metadata of every phone conversation taking place in the United States.

So they had a searchable database of, you know, every call that my phone number made to another phone number in the United States. They didn't necessarily know who that other phone number belonged to, but the NSA was in possession of that data. It was turned over to them regularly on, you know, something like two-week intervals.

There was a big outcry. Congress came up with a piece of legislation reforming that program called the USA Freedom Act. That was in 2015. And they essentially ended the mass collection of call detail records. Now the records stay with the phone companies, and you can try and obtain those records through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Now, not to get too into the weeds here, that program, too, has expired and has not been renewed. So we'll see what happens with that. But basically what you have here is a legal case that emanated sort of out of that surveillance. It was this guy, Moaline, a Somali immigrant.

He was convicted of conspiring to support terrorist groups, one terrorist group, al-Shabaab. And so it was invoked at trial that some of the evidence used against him was from this call detail records program. And what the court said is that this program very likely violates the United States Constitution and the Fourth Amendment.

They didn't come up with a definitive decision because they didn't have to. Basically, they said, this wasn't the main evidence we needed to convict this guy. So we're not going to make a decision definitively as to whether this program was unconstitutional, but it very likely is.

So I see this as sort of the nail in the coffin for the call detail records program. And yes, vindication for our man Edward Snowden, who has certainly tweeted approvingly about this case. So just as part of the history lesson, wasn't this approved by General Michael Hayden?

Wasn't he the one that originally started this program? So yeah. So he was there in its infancy. I mean, it actually, it sort of developed gradually after 9-11. We put in this provision in the USA Patriot Act that said, the government without a warrant could collect tangible things relevant to an ongoing investigation.

And over time, tangible things meant phone records. And relevant was defined as loosely as humanly possible. So even if it's like, may or may not be related to terrorist activity, you know, we can still search through it. And, you know, to be honest, this was something that was promoted not just by the Bush administration, but defended pretty rigorously by the Obama administration as well.

It was so ineffective. And this is what gets me about this program, that the NSA itself, under President Donald Trump, said, we don't want this authority anymore. Even the revised version of it, it's not a useful counterterrorism tool. It's more trouble than it's worth.

Just take it away from us, you know. And, you know, it's a pretty remarkable thing for the NSA itself to say. Now, some political appointees wanted to keep the program intact, but for career officials at the NSA to say, we realize this is an invasion of your privacy, and it's also not doing anything about the terrorism problem, is, I think, pretty remarkable.

Well, because I have such a dark opinion of all these things, all that does is tell me that they have something better. Yeah. Seriously. So, you know what? You're absolutely right about that. And people who are tuned into this stuff, that's the first thing they'll say, is that when they're abandoning this one minor counterterrorism tool, it just means that they're going to be using a different legal authority.

There's an executive, like a Reagan-era executive order that, without going into too much detail, basically justifies all different types of global electronic surveillance with very little oversight. And that can be used to collect call detail records as well.

And, yeah, I mean, very few people know about it. So, yeah, if they need the information, they'll figure out a way to get it. Or they just ask Zuckerberg because that's their new tool. They just have Facebook. Yeah. That's all they need. Exactly. You can find it all there. Now, phone records, you know, that's something they may not be able to get from Facebook.

But also, phone records themselves are kind of irrelevant anyway because who makes phone calls these days? Technology has moved on. Exactly. It's not like the terrorists are picking up their flip phones and calling each other. They're using WhatsApp or whatever the kids use these days. Signal, whatever.

Yeah. Yeah. It's funny, though. There was a time, we covered this on the show years ago, when the Facebook Android app was actually recording all call metadata and passing it back to the mothership. They claim it was part of a feature set that didn't get rolled out, but they were basically keeping all of your call metadata only on Android phones because, you know, it's easy.

Why not? Yeah, exactly. Well, thank God I didn't have one of those. But yeah. Yeah. I mean, metadata is one of those things that sometimes when you explain it to people, they're like, well, it's not that bad. I mean, what information are you going to get from the number dialing, the number dialed, and the duration?

Patterns. Yeah. Big, big patterns. But I think it was John Oliver who said, if you call your ex-girlfriend at two in the morning and are on the phone for 90 minutes, I think we can start to glean some information about what's going on. Nice.

So we've got our final story here. This one is the most chilling of the bunch, honestly, in my opinion. Casco's sheriff created a futuristic program to stop crime before it happens. It monitors and harasses families across the country. And this comes from TampaBay.com. He hired Tom Cruise.

He hired Tom Cruise. Yes. This is literally the minority report. Yes. Yes, it is. And just the scope of what they've been doing over the past, you know, not dozens of years, but several years, when you read through this account of what these sheriffs and deputies have been doing, it's just mind-boggling that they've gotten away with this.

It's crazy. I mean, they say that this system was based on arrest histories, unspecified intelligence, and arbitrary decisions by police analysts. So the last two things are absolutely insane and laughable. So, I mean, it's not even worth parsing those.

But even arrest histories bothers me a lot. Yeah. You know, in a court of law, you are generally not allowed to introduce evidence of somebody's propensity to commit crimes because that will bias the jury. You know, you don't want the jury to think about whether this person is a career criminal, although that might, you know, weigh on their mind.

Although it is slightly relevant. It is slightly relevant. But you want, you know, a determination as to whether they committed this crime at this particular time. Yeah. And, you know, to use that as a tool to predict future, you know, future criminal behavior, I think, has the potential for all different kinds of abuse.

It's pretty, yeah, I mean, it's pretty outrageous. I mean, in addition to Minority Report, this just reminded me of, like, all these, like, 70s movies where you had the bad sheriff trying to get the good guys to run out of town harassing them left, right, and center. You know, that's kind of what they were doing. It's just insane.

I mean, what this says to me is what I've always tried to tell people, vote local. Local elections matter. You got to get this guy out. Right? A hundred percent. People don't pay attention to their local sheriff elections, their local prosecutor elections. They're just not on the radar.

And you have some people, you know, who even identify themselves as Democrats. Maybe they're, you know, liberal and other political issues. But they're in law enforcement. And they've been in there for 30 years. And they've never faced any type of challenge. Yeah. Because people just don't pay attention to these types of elections.

So, you know, there are a lot of good resources out there now that are holding some of these police departments accountable for these types of excesses. And so, I think finally we're getting a little sunlight on this. And I would say this is another point for the importance of local journalism.

It's one of those things where... This would never come to light any other way. Absolutely not. And that's what worries me about the decline of local news is that's traditionally how you would get these spotlight situations where people are uncovering, you know, corruption. And, you know, I hope that that doesn't go out as local news starts to dissipate a little bit and is all owned by, like, the same two companies.

Hey, we've always got the Neighbors app. Yeah. We've got Neighbors. Yeah. That's not racist or biased at all. No, not at all. Yeah. Brown people alert. Brown people alert. Lock your doors. Lock your doors. Exactly. I mean, 99% of those posts, if they're not explicitly racist, they have, like, piles and piles of code words.

Like, very urban people are outside your door. You should be extremely scared of these urban people who we don't want in our neighborhood. Yeah. It's not just the Nextdoor app. It's also, like, I was on our old, you know, neighborhood Facebook group.

Yeah. There's a lot of that in there. And so you see how that filters out to policymakers. They see that people are fearful about crime. And they know those people vote. Those people certainly do vote. And that's where you – that's why you see, you know, programs like this.

Yeah. And that's one of the problems with this particular story as well is the fact that 1 in 10 were younger than 18 of the people that have been snagged up in this program. And they can't vote. They're not voters yet. Right. So there's no democratic accountability for them, which is just terrible.

And, you know, the fact that this was happening secretly for up to nine years now. That's insane. It's just – it's insane. It's insane. You know, Dave and I talked about a university that was trying to develop a predictive AI for, you know, to figure out the criminals of the future, so to speak.

What could go wrong there? Exactly. We know that AIs have no biases whatsoever and are just purely wholesome beings in the image of God. But, yeah, it's – no matter whether it's artificial intelligence or the scumbag sheriff in Pasco County, it's dangerous.

How great would one of those AIs be is if we turned it on, it came to life, the lights all blinked on and said, we found the master criminals. Senate, Congress, and Jeff Bezos. Exactly. And as we know how the racial profiling works, all of the gorillas at the San Diego Zoo.

Oh, and that is. Yep. Well, it reminds me of – did you ever see Sacha Baron Cohen's most recent show, Who is America? Very, very funny show. I mean, not very well-reviewed. But he interviewed Roy Moore and as this – he was pretending to be this Israeli commando and said that the Israeli army had developed a new technology where you can scan somebody to see if they're a pedophile.

And so he took out a metal detector and was like, I'm just going to test this on you to see what happens. And it starts beeping. And, yeah, it was very funny, but it sort of reminded me of this. Excellent. Yeah. And if you think we're being hyperbolic about this, one former deputy described the directive like this, make their lives miserable until they move or sue.

So just to put a button on that, that tells you what their mindset was during this entire program. Of course, they're from the socioeconomic status where they probably can't sue. Absolutely. And we're talking about people who have not committed crimes. I mean, it's just insane. And, yeah, it's just crazy that this only comes to light after years of investigative work.

And we don't know how many programs like this exist across the country, probably more than we would expect. Yeah. So it's disturbing. And the statistics on this are even better. They say, oh, property crime has gone down.

But property crime in all of the six to seven surrounding counties went down at the same exact time by the same amount. But in this county, violent crime went up. Yeah, exactly. So it does not work. Yeah. And unless you're doing unless you have a control group, it doesn't matter whether, you know, in this jurisdiction, crime went down because it could have gone down in the absence of this, you know, very intrusive, unconstitutional type of surveillance.

So, yeah, it was it was not good. Yes. Vote in your local elections, people. That's right. And since I can say the F word on this podcast, unlike my other podcast, fucking vote in your local elections, people. Yes. I did it. I did it.

All right. Well, Ben, thanks so much for stopping by. This has been a blast. Absolutely. Thank you both for having me on. I look forward to being on with you again sometime in the future. Excellent. Great speaking with you. Take care. Well, not too long ago, Brian, we talked about Facebook and Oculus Quest since I just got one of the things.

Yes. And the big news was that Facebook is going to require people to ditch their Oculus account and use Facebook to sign in and merge the two accounts. Well, this is an interesting turn of events. They've had to halt their sales in Germany of the Oculus Quest.

Well, they didn't have to. They said they did it, quote unquote, voluntarily while they're dealing with German authorities. Um, turns out, uh, requiring people to do that is a no-go under GDPR. Okay.

It's the coupling ban. Right. So. Is it coupling if Facebook owns Oculus? See, I don't know. That's probably what they're trying to figure out. Right. Yeah. You know, uh, so I'm, that's, I'm guessing why they're still talking right now.

Uh, so, and they did it, you know, that's why Facebook also probably preemptively did it. Right. Just so they avoided the ban. Yeah. And avoided hefty fees just in case. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So, um, it's, it's, it's interesting. I'm going to keep my eye on it, but, uh, you know, if Germany can do it, that means that every other country in the EU can do it.

So, cause it's GDPR. That's right. Yeah. Well, I got a new app that I've been trying out. It's not a new app. It's kind of an old app. Actually. It's called zero. Yes. It's a fasting app. Originally when this came out, I made fun of it on the show and I did apologize to the creator of the app.

Cause he's a friend of mine. I said, sorry, man. It's just a timer. It's really just a timer, but it's a pretty good timer because I've been doing, uh, intermittent fasting. I've been doing a 16, eight. I have used this for a couple of months. Uh, what are you on? Which one are you doing? Well, here's the thing.

Um, you're, you're right. It is just a timer, but it's a very convenient timer. If you are trying to do intermittent fasting, um, I've defaulted to 16, eight, which does nothing for me. Uh, it helps me maintain that's, that's about it, but it does not push the needle. Uh, there was like a week long span where I pushed it to, uh, 18, six.

And when I was doing 18, six that week, I visibly lost weight. However, doing an 18, six fast in a household during COVID with everybody here and my, my, both my son and my wife are grazers. They eat all day, every day. And it is impossible for me to maintain an 18, six fast.

Yeah. 16, eight is hard enough. I can't imagine doing an 18, six with people in the house, but that is a, that is the magic number for me. I dropped weight that week, like no tomorrow. So at some point when my wife leaves the house and my son goes back to school, I will be doing 18, six fasting. Okay.

Yeah. 16, eight definitely moved the needle for me. Um, mainly because, you know, basically you have to stop drinking and don't drink till I fall asleep. Well, that's true. It does. It does cut out the night, night, nightly bottles of wine. Yeah. That are, that are, uh, I just let it go till 11 o'clock and then just don't eat till mid afternoon, which would make Jason a very grumpy boy.

But anyway, check out the app. If you're into intermittent fasting, it's, it's a really nice design. And it's, you know, the thing about it for me is I like the, Hey, you're halfway there, you know, Oh, only two hours to go, only an hour to go. Uh, those kinds of notifications actually help keep me sane because I'm like how much fucking longer till I can have a sandwich.

You know, so I haven't even launched it for a while because I find that I can do 16, eight without a timer. It just, uh, you know, I basically skip breakfast and given the schedule that I, we have, uh, with, with food, it's if I skip breakfast and I don't have the third dinner, second and third dinner with my wife after the kid has gone to bed, I'm naturally in a 16, eight.

And I saw in the notes that there is a plus plus version for 70 bucks. Basically, what does the plus version get you from what I recall? The app basically did everything already. It does enough. That's the thing about it. The $69 version gives you, uh, you know, extra content. They've got like Dr.

Peter, Peter Atiyah in there, giving you tips on fasting and health stuff like that. Here's the tip. Don't eat. That's exactly it. Yeah. Save you 70 bucks. Don't eat. If you're fasting, don't eat. Um, I don't know, extra stuff.

I, I never going to pay for it. So I didn't, I didn't really do that much of a deep dive on it. If you get the app, it'll tell you what you can get for the extra 70 bucks, but the free version gets the job done. Yeah. And I got a new app called Colibri. Okay. I don't know if you've ever heard of this one, Brian.

It's a music player. Uh, it, uh, big, big in Asia. It is. Yeah. Oh, well, it's big in my house now too, because it was five bucks. I went through a bunch of listings for standard music players for the Mac because I'm, when I was doing some, uh, cleanup on my hard drives, I ended up moving my entire old iTunes library to my SSD that I carry with me and do all my work from.

So I have my iTunes music library with me everywhere I go now. Right. And when I was going through, I was looking for something for a friend and I started scrolling through my music library and I got so damn nostalgic for everything that I've collected for 25 years. And I'm like, I can listen to this forever and screw Spotify.

There's nothing on Spotify that I ever want to listen to. Cause I don't like the interface. I don't like how it's laid out. And you don't like new music. I generally don't fuck it. If I need new music, then I'll just go download it from somewhere like you. I've paid my dues on music, but, uh, yeah, cause I never use Spotify for discovery anymore.

You know, every now and again, I'll get it one song from Fogarty and then I'll listen to the song and I'm like, okay, great, move on. But you know, for stuff that I listened to when I'm working or around the house, it's like, I've got everything that I need. Honestly, uh, it's 200 gigabytes of music. You know, I can start that to play.

And probably by the time I'm dead, I might get halfway through it. Right. And, uh, I gotta say, it sounds amazing. It is a really nice music player. Yeah. I mean, obviously it depends on the quality level that you have your, your ripped, uh, audio at. So, uh, but it's a, it's a nice looking player.

Um, for me, uh, I'm too lazy to like, I, I just feel like my iTunes library crashed and burned so many times. I know there are tons of gems on there, but I know it's a total mess. Uh, the thought of cleaning it up again, uh, fills my heart with dread and despair. Um, and I do listen to new music still.

So for me, it's worth it to just continue on paying Spotify. But, uh, there are tons of things in my catalog that will never be in Spotify because they're vaguely illegal bootlegs and things of that nature. That at some point I'd like to hear, uh, you know, I've told you kind of my overall plan is, uh, once I finally move, that seems like a good time to get like a whole NAS set up and, and put the library over there.

And then maybe at that point, I'll slowly start to try to clean it up and have it available. But the thing for me is I want it available on my phone and, and that's the pain in the ass. Right. Yeah. But I mean, the phones are so big now you can sync it with your phone. You can sync your whole music library with your phone. Yeah.

You know, that's easy enough to do now. Um, cause yeah, the thing about my music library is I always kept it up to snuff cause I used the iTunes back when we had iTunes, uh, the keep, you know, folders organized feature. So whenever I dropped anything in, it would just put it in a folder for that, that band in the album until, you know, crashes, like scrambled everything.

Oh yeah. I've never had it scramble anything. I'd lost, I've lost my music collection a couple of times back in the old PC days. And I had to sit there with the CDs and re rip them over and over again. But I just thought this was nice. It's a nice little app for five bucks. It's well worth it. Cause it, you know, comes on all of the different things and whatever.

Cause you know, Apple music is just a, it's a dumpster fire now. Oh yeah. It's a mess. I will never, ever use that program. Yeah, it is unusable, unusable. Now the, the big purchase of the week, iZotope RX eight advanced has come out. I talked about iZotope RX advanced, uh, from version five to now eight every time on this show when a new one comes out because they do keep making it better and better and better.

So if you're a podcast producer or do any kind of cleanup in audio, you have to have, you know, RX advanced in your toolkit. It's expensive. If you bought it right now, brand new, and you've never bought it before, it's a, it's a grand And that's on sale. It's usually 1300 bucks.

But, uh, since I upgrade, it was only 249, but there's some new stuff in here, man, that would just blow your mind. You can take really crappy phone recordings and it restructures them and just does the spectral repair on it to make it sound amazing.

I mean, there's so many cool new features in this one. So for 249 is well worth the upgrade. Do they use AI to do that? Uh, they know they have a neural net machine learning. They do say they do have machine learning for some of this stuff. Um, but it, it, it works fucking great, man.

That $249 will save me probably $24,000 over the course of a year. Right. Uh, so a couple episodes back, or I don't even remember anymore. You would, uh, gone off on a bit of a rant about there not being any new technology to get excited about anymore. And, you know, I definitely agreed with you, but, uh, HBO is, is claiming something different.

Jason, they are commemorating the release of the show Lovecraft Country, which I still haven't watched yet. And a unique, in a new, unique way with a series of three VR events, it describes as first of its kind. First of its kind, Jason, something new in tech.

Except it's been done before. Lovecraft Country Sanctum will transport guests into a world inspired by the show, according to a statement from HBO. So, yeah, they'll be, uh, they'll be immersed in theater, escape rooms, Afro-futuristic art installations, puzzles, and a live concert from a to-be-announced rap artist, according to the statement, which, yes, does not sound like anything new at all.

What might be new about this is only a group of 100 influencers will be invited to experience the event via the Oculus Quest headset, while fans, i.e. normal people, will be able to watch and interact over a YouTube live stream. Yeah, yeah.

I was, I, I got really excited about this until I got to the- Then I got pissed. ... of influencers. Yeah, then I'm like, well, go fuck yourself, HBO. Exactly. Come on. Very funny. And, uh, so, on the same realm I saw over on Engadget, Lenovo has a new $50 smart clock to keep things stupid simple.

So, instead of pushing technology forward, they're scaling things back. Uh, apparently their Google-powered smart clock was a thing that was very well-received, receiving 4.4 star ratings around the world, and 80% of its users said they use it in their bedrooms, begging the question, what, where did the 20% of other people put an alarm clock other than their bedroom?

So, I was wondering about that. So now they've rolled out a new one that is simpler, uh, the smart clock essential, which is basically a Google smart speaker with an LED screen to show the time. It's got a four-inch display that will also show current weather and temperature, along with your alarms and other status indicators.

Uh, it will dim its screen at night, so you won't have to deal with glaring lights while trying to go to sleep. It will act as a nightlight if you want some illumination as you stumble to the bathroom, apparently. So, uh, you know, it's an upgrade, but I started to wonder, it seems vaguely useless. Who still actually has an alarm clock?

Almost everybody I know just uses their phone or has some sort of setup, or just lay it on their nightstand, and that's their alarm clock now, which started to be thinking the opposite of what are these new technologies, where are they, why, what should we be excited about? I was starting to think about all these technologies that have completely gone by the wayside that you probably will never ever see again, other than specialized situations.

So beyond alarm clocks, I thought, you know, landlines, but barely anybody has a landline anymore unless you're in a bunker somewhere and you probably still have one. No one has answering machines anymore. Nope. Very rarely see desktop PCs anymore. I tell you, I don't know about that.

Well, that's why I included the specialized situations. You're doing video editing, things of that nature. But if you're just a standard, you know, normal, even just most people just have laptops. Let's be honest. I just bought a new desktop PC for my roommate's mom yesterday, you know. Old people.

There you go. Eventually it'll die out. Exactly. But you need, yeah, you need definitely need workstations to work on, you know, you can't do half the stuff that we do on laptops. You can't, you can't make TV shows on laptops, things like that. Go into any office. I mean, any big office, they've got cheap PCs everywhere.

They don't have laptops for that. So it's going to be a while before desktop PCs go the way of the Dodo, but. And physical media, obviously. Oh yeah. That's toast. So that's gone. Somewhere in a box somewhere. I have a USB DVD drive that I'll be able to plug in. But yeah.

God help me if I need to find it anywhere. I saw this one this morning. This just came through. This is breaking news. Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. The folks over at WordPress have made a new thing, Brian. Okay. P2. P2 has been around actually for a long time.

It's something that they built internally at Automatic to do. It's kind of like, like a version of Slack that sits on top of a WordPress install, which right there makes my skin crawl and kind of is about to give me hives just thinking about it. Nobody be logged into my WordPress install while I'm working on it.

No one. Yeah. God. I mean, things like this just remind me of, I'm sure you've set one of these up in the past. I've had to set up dozens of them. BuddyPress installs. Yep. I hate BuddyPress. BuddyPress is a giant steaming pile of shit. Still is.

And P2 is basically, they Slackify WordPress. But now, now you can get it straight from WordPress. They have a new version out and you can go set up your P2 instance on WordPress.com for free right now. There will be a paid version in the future.

You cannot install it on your own computers like you can with WordPress. This is only hosted right now. They say they're going to, in the future, have a copy that you can download and install. The old P2 you can, you can get that now, but not this super cool new one. Right. And they say, and here's the title, P2ing is the new working.

Oh boy. P2ing. I got a P2. I got a P2. Exactly. And they say it's way more than posting status updates. When you're P2ing, you can add a document, embed images, or at mention your remote teammates. And you can do it all in a simple workspace where everyone can see and access everything they need.

90s called, and they want their software back. Are you fucking kidding me? It's perfect for remote teams and digital nomads. And for extended families or anyone who doesn't like email or meetings, i.e. everyone, they say.

I love email still. I love email. And basically, you're just making the meeting digital, as is everybody's meetings right now. Okay. Just what we didn't need. Yes, another Slack-a-like. Great.

Thanks, Matt. Well, since COVID started, we've been talking about working from home. And I think we've both been skeptical, greatly skeptical, about the claims that this is the new future. This is the new reality.

People are never going to go back to their offices. Everybody loves this. This is the best thing ever. If there's a silver lining about COVID, it's the fact that we've been unshackled from having to go to a physical location for work. Fuck that. Yeah. Well, what we're discovering is this is not true at all.

A lot of people are hating it. A lot of people are getting really depressed. A lot of people are getting productivity from the initial spike from the heady days of the beginning is starting to basically plummet. And that's what we're finding out. So, yeah, this isn't going to work.

And this is a great article over on The Atlantic, Generation Work From Home May Never Recover, that basically says all of this. So, there are tons of studies on the benefits of teleworking, but most of the research is interviews and surveys with people who have self-selected into remote work, like you and I have, says Katie Pedito, an environmental design psychologist at the U.S. Air Force Academy.

So, yeah, she's basically saying, you know, we've had a lot of positive reports about this, but these are people that chose to do it, that wanted it for whatever reason, that needed the flexibility, that had the ability and discipline to do it, and have done it over many, many years.

So, you know, you talk to people who feel really excited for the first few weeks of remote work, among other benefits, who doesn't relish the chance to be out from under the literal watchful eye of a supervisor, but now a fair number of the early enthusiasts are starting to go stir crazy, she said, with no relief on the horizon, and maybe worse, no one to commiserate with at the office microwave for the 90 seconds it takes to nuke last night's spaghetti.

And they're also saying that women of all ages particularly suffer when telecommuting, so it's worse for women, with slower promotions and slower wage growth. So, yeah, we're finding out that the workplace is a complex social ecosystem, and we kind of need it. Yeah, I want everybody to go back and stop bitching about it.

So, well, yeah, you want them so you can get your house back, so you can go back to the way things were. Yeah, we long for simpler times when we were the only people that were hermits. That's right. And I guess I want to end on two bits of science that I think are great.

First off is a global wave discovery has ended a 220-year search. So, this is all about the atmosphere that's all above us and everything that's going on and how it defies analysis even by today's most sophisticated AI algorithms, blah, blah, blah.

But back in the late 1700s, French scientist Pierre-Simon Laplace started looking at this and said, despite never seeing a global weather map, he developed a theory predicting that there were continent-sized pressure waves that would periodically sweep across the globe.

And that, you know, helped lead to weather patterns and all that sort of stuff. But we were never able to find them until now. Using a new meteorological data set, we've uncovered what millions of barometer readings missed, an ensemble of waves that race around the Earth, covering it in a patchwork quilt of high and low-pressure zones.

It's pretty cool. And if you follow the link in the show notes, they have some visualizations of it. Pretty awesome and kind of crazy that we missed it all these years. Okay, cool. I'll check that out. And we've also found a third class of black hole. Pretty cool. Astronomers have discovered the most massive black hole collision ever observed and also the most distant at 7 billion light years away, meaning it happened when our universe was only half its current age.

More intriguingly, the black hole merger originated in two black holes of a size that had never been observed before. So we knew there were giant ones. We knew there were small ones. Now we found the medium bowl of porridge. Nice. Very cool. All right. I dig it.

I dig science. Me too. I also dig drones. I like my DJI drone. And I found this cool little video that they posted on a rare look inside a DJI factory. I always wondered how they put these damn things together. And it's a lot more sophisticated than I thought.

It's robots putting robots together. And it's a short watch. It's only like a couple, like two, three minutes. Do you get to see the one lone guy that still has a job fixing the robots that make the robots? No, you don't get to see the robot fixer. Oh, damn. Robot, robot fixer. But it is mostly automated.

But there are people that are doing some Q&A on the things. And they've got these really cool scanners that put them into test flight mode so they can test the rotors and things like that. And I dig it. I really dig it. Because the ones that they're putting together are like the ones that I have. I've got the Mavic 2 Zoom. I think the ones that they were showing were the Mavic 2 Pros.

But it's the same thing, just different camera. But no, it's a fun video. I enjoyed it. I would love to see a decibel rating from that factory. Oh, my God. Yeah, well, if you notice, they're in like the rooms where the robots are and the drones are for the testing. They're all enclosed in glass.

So I'm guessing they're pretty quiet. But you can't see one little glimpse of them putting together some super giant drone near the end of it, which I'm like, oh, I want to see them make that one. Closing shout outs. And a shout out to Ben Yellen for joining us while Dave is off trying on Stormtrooper outfits.

That was awesome. Yes, yes. Ben joining the show raised the IQ in the room quite a bit. So definitely the smartest guy in the room. And a big shout out to our friend Seth Miranda, who we're trying to get back on the show, but he's so damn busy, it's really difficult. He got featured on Nikon's Creators Hour, the My Defining Images segment.

And he goes through and talks to one of the big wigs at Nikon. And talks about his journey in photography. It's about an hour long, but it's really cool. It's a really fun thing. I learned a lot about Seth. And hopefully he'll be joining us again soon. Excellent. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFillippo.

Thank you for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. This show is a labor of love, but your support keeps the show going. If you like the show, or maybe even tolerate the show, please visit GOG.show slash donate to help us out. We'll love you forever. Or visit GOG.shop and pick up some good old-fashioned GOG swag.

And if you can't do that, please pass the show along to your friends. Word of mouth is the only way the show grows, so spread the grump far and wide. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 469. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, donate to the show, buy our swag, and get links to stuff we like.

Stay grumpy. And stay cool. It's going to be really hot out there this weekend. Kill the Gibson. Roger that.

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