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

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Brian, the official trailer for Dune has come out, and I know that this isn't media candy, but we had to talk about it now. Immediately. What did you think? Yeah, it's okay. I mean, I'm going to watch the movie. I don't have... Look, it's got to be a Game of Thrones-style series to do the book justice, but it seems fine.

The one thing I'm a little bit bummed out about is, as this is not really a spoiler alert, hashtag spoiler alert, if you've read all the books, you know that the real star of the series is Duncan Idaho. So, and if this, if the movie takes off and they end up doing all the movies, I'm not looking forward to a lifetime of watching Jason Momoa.

Yeah. Because he plays Duncan Idaho, so... Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, casting is always tough on these things, so... I liked it. I thought it looked good. No, it looks really good. You know, no sting in his flying underwear. That'll be a bummer to not see that.

But, you know, it seems fine. It's a nice trailer. It seems to hit a lot of the keynotes. I'd like some of the design that they went with. I dislike some of the design they went with. I'm not crazy about the Bene Gesserit look, but, you know, it is what it is.

Yeah. I got to say, though, best sandworm of all of them so far. Well, yeah. I mean, we've got the technology now. We have the technology. That's right. We finally have the technology to do the sandworm proper justice. Yeah. It's a good-looking worm, so I'm looking forward to this. That's what we came out of the Dune trailer.

It's a good-looking worm. Good-looking worm. And everybody, enough already. Stop. Stop telling us to watch Ted Lasso. I get it. And I figured out who obviously was tweeting me, which I mentioned on the last show. It's Jason Sudeikis is the one that keeps liking the tweets when people tell me to watch Ted Lasso because it's his show.

Yeah. Yeah, we'll watch it. I think, by far, this is something that we've gotten the most feedback on. I don't know why people are – obviously, somebody has reached out to our listeners and given them some cash to promote it, apparently. Because, yeah, every single message we're getting is telling us to watch Ted Lasso.

Okay, we'll watch it. Do you know what it's about? Soccer player, I think, right? I remember seeing a trailer for it a long time ago before people started just basting us with this go-watch-it and going, Oh, that looks interesting. I should watch that.

It's about an American coach and his coach that come to England to coach a soccer team. We'll see. It sounds right up my alley, actually. Exactly. I watched the first episode last night, and I'm in love with it, so I'm going to keep watching it. It is very funny. So, yes, please, enough already.

We get it. We're watching it. Shut up. Okay. No more messages about it. And speaking of shutting up, Jesus, Crispy, Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash are peppering television everywhere with these fucking Prop 22 ads. Remember, they are not profitable companies.

Not profitable companies and taking the money that they could be paying to the drivers and telling us to vote for a proposition here in California, so they have to pay the drivers even less. Yep. So, if you think that they're a good company, all of them, all three of them, no, they're not. They're not.

They're just trying to save their bacon, and yeah, and I feel it's probably going to work. They're pretty good ads, unfortunately. Yeah, I have a feeling it's going to pass, too, because most people don't really look into things or listen to us.

No, no, nobody listens to us, and they don't understand the nuance of the problem here. Yeah. Anyway, so, Brian, you updated our news story. Which is not live yet, yesterday, with some new designs for some t-shirts and stuff and mugs and the like. Yeah, you had done some research because we were a little annoyed at the inability to do a shirt that we had liked or get a hat, which we couldn't do with our current store provider.

So, you had found a new one, and I had finally logged in and uploaded our basic logo to kind of see what happens, and it auto-populated about 7,000 products, all of which looked pretty good with the logo. So, yeah, I was pretty excited about that. Then what happened?

You sent me a text and said, hey, you know, once we put the masks and stuff that we have from our other store up there, we should be good to go. And I'm like, okay, let me get on that, because I've got the original Photoshop docs. And then I went back, and it turns out the original docs don't work, so I had to redesign the whole thing to make it work for the new style of masks that they have.

And I uploaded, of course, Team Jason first. Yes, of course. And within 10 seconds, I get a note from them saying, I'm sorry, this is in violation of copyright. If you would like to fight this fight, then send us a note and tell us why, and if you have copyright, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So, I think your immediate email back to me was, oh, for fuck's sake. Yep. So, I went through the rigmarole, I sent in the documents and everything, and they say, I got a note back this morning, and they say, we show this listing was incorrectly flagged by our security system, and we apologize for any trouble this may have caused.

This listing has been unsuspended, and we are having our system updated to help prevent this from happening again. Now, here's the rub. Now, hold on, there's a kicker here. There's a kicker. Unfortunately, once a listing has been unsuspended, it is unable to be added to a storefront.

Why? I would argue that actually, there is no unsuspension taking place here, because if an item has been taken down and been suspended, but if you tell us if it's unsuspended, it can't go back up and we have to rebuild the item, it has never been unsuspended, has it?

No, it has not. No, it fucking hasn't. If you wish to have it available for a storefront, you will need to duplicate the listing instead of relaunching it. Please allow a full 24 hours to pass before relaunching or launching a new listing to allow the system time to update.

We apologize for the trouble and any inconvenience this has caused you. Thank you, Team Teespring. I'm not impressed. Team Teabag. Actually, I didn't intend to discuss this on the show with you, but I actually have a real issue with this, and I'm starting to think maybe we should not use Team Teabag.

I don't know, because it's the best one so far. We can get the stuff we want. Well, sort of. Here's the deal. Everybody's got their flaws. This is a big fucking flaw, though. A big flaw is, yes. By the way, Teespring, you need to fix this, because if something is suspended and taken down, and then you go through the process to realize, oh, this shouldn't have been suspended and it shouldn't have been taken down, you need to be able to put it back up, not have people have to recreate them.

No, they should immediately relist it to the store, period. That should be the process. So, if you're crappy programmers, can't figure out how to do that, because obviously you have crappy programmers, because we were automatically suspended for something that was absolutely not our fault.

There's a database entry that is flag, and then you unflag it. Unflag it. That's it. Exactly. Oh, man. It's irksome, but like I said, every single one of these stores has issues.

Like, some of them have serious issues. Well, I would categorize this as a serious issue. Yeah. So, I guess all of them have serious issues. So, it's which serious issue do we try and, you know, turn a blind eye to? So, way to go, Team Teabag.

Awesome. In the news.

Oh, TikTok, TikTok, TikTok. Oh, by the way, time is TikTok-ing away for TikTok to sell. That's right. There's some interesting things that are happening with the old talk of the tick. And they were going to launch a transparency center here in Los Angeles where people could go and apparently get, you know, white glove treatment to be shown the algorithm and how it creates what it creates.

Which is interesting. I'll go back to that in a second. Well, since they can't open it right now, they did a virtual tour for a bunch of journalists. And so, what they're trying to do is say, look, this is our algorithm. This is how we craft it. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we know that filter bubbles exist.

And we are doing our gosh-golly-darnedest to make sure that we bust those filter bubbles. And, you know, this all comes with the TikTok-ticking for them to sell the company based on the pumpkin in charge. Which we now have, you know, basically two different timelines on which this thing is supposed to be sold.

One's in November. One's in a couple days. So, nobody knows what the hell's going on. So, I just thought this was very interesting how they're trying to do this. And I think part of this is, and this is why I brought it up, is because, you know, the Chinese have said, oh, we are putting export regulations on content delivery algorithms.

You don't get our code for what you're trying to be transparent about. Exactly. Which is them just trying to basically throw a wrench in the works for this deal because they're pissed off at the pumpkin. Well, you know, all of these machinations going on. But I think what they're trying to do here is say, hey, we're giving away the algorithm here.

We're giving away the secret sauce so we can get around it being part of this deal. You know, I think they saw this coming and they've been working on this for a while to be putting things out there. To say, hey, this isn't such a secret sauce. It's kind of just the basic stuff, you know? Yep. So, it's interesting.

It's interesting. But, yeah, the next couple of weeks are going to tell the future of the TikTok. I'm sure it'll be fine. It's too big to fail right now. Nothing's too big to fail, Brian. MySpace. Tom. Ask Tom. Just ask Tom. I'm sure Tom is quite fine.

I'm sure he did okay. He hasn't popped up with, you know, his next startup, which means he probably owns an island somewhere. Yes. And I saw a really interesting article this week. The real reason there was a beer, hand sanitizer, yeast, and pasta shortage. Obviously, we've been dealing with these sorts of things through the goddamn half year of a pandemic so far.

Where we've seen grocery stores stocked, unstocked, et cetera. I've noticed that hand sanitizers, not hand sanitizers, but the wipes have been impossible to find again recently. And I've also noticed that paper products seem to be not impossible to find, but certainly aisles aren't as stocked as they used to be.

So, we're going through yet another one of these waves of things not being available. And they've gone really deep into why things haven't been available. And it turns out it's not the items themselves. It's the packaging. Right. I actually just listened to a podcast about this last night, and I was like half asleep, so I can't remember which actual podcast it was on or I'd link to it.

Yeah. But, yeah, they go into the details about how hard it is to retool the machinery to actually get this stuff to do. It might have been Kotki Ride Home. Yeah, because there's always been two supply chains. There's been the B2B, the business-to-business, shipping to restaurants, shipping to all that sort of stuff. You know, gigantic, massive, like even bigger than Costco-style, you know, pallets of poo paper and things of that nature.

And there's been the commercial aspect, which is, you know, for us, going to grocery stores and all that sort of thing. And apparently, you know, the demand has been so high. We've run through all of that, and they have to retool the stuff for B2B for consumers now. There aren't enough cardboard boxes for pasta.

There aren't enough paper satchels for yeast. There aren't enough plastic canisters for disinfectant wipes. And that's the reason. And it takes a lot of money and a lot of time to repurpose things. Yeah, and a lot of people to get trained up on the machines and all that stuff. Exactly. Yeah, I'm pretty sure what Kotki Ride Home did was just read this article on the air.

That's why I know it. This is the exact same thing. Yeah, exactly. So, and they talk about beer specifically. Since America has been forced to do more of their drinking at home rather than at bars, demand for kegs has plummeted, while demand for retail containers has skyrocketed. In the spring alone, that translated into a shortage of aluminum cans, which saw nearly 30% rise in demand from March to early May.

And just a 5% swing can be significant enough to disrupt the beer industry's supply chains. This is why we can't have nice things. Well, no. It just means we need to get a tap in our homes and buy kegs. Exactly. Well, that's what I was thinking. It's just like, okay, well, that's fine. But there could have been solutions to these problems.

You could have just shipped the B2B version to a grocery store and let them tear it apart and stock it. Well, for some of the stuff, you know. For some of the stuff, yeah. You can't really just have somebody sitting there with a bunch of kegs at the grocery store. That would be called a bar.

But they do serve food at the grocery store, so I guess they can get around that. Work around. Work around. Work around. Yeah. Or just have everybody buy bulk because that's what everybody wants to do anyway. Exactly. That is what people have been wanting to do anyway. And I haven't been to Costco since the pandemic started, but I'm sure that they've been stocked.

Yeah. And if you're looking for wipes, Target's a good bet every now and again. Every now and again. I've been stopping at the Target down in Orange County when I visit my mom every weekend and have not been able to find a wipe there for two months now. See, the trick is you need a local so you can go talk to the people who work there and they'll tell you when the trucks come in with the different stuff so you can get there in the morning.

I know all the delivery schedules for all my local grocery stores and big box stores. It's kind of scary, but yeah. Yep. It's the new reality. And speaking of the new reality, I also saw this article. Your phone can show you just how much your life has shrunk in the pandemic. Now, obviously, we know phones.

For me and you, it's fine. Yeah. Yeah. It's really not that different for me because I've structured my life that even pre-pandemic, I didn't really leave a three-mile square area unless I went to the airport to go very far away. So those trips have gone. But yeah, so this is written by an author who signed up for the Google Maps timeline.

And I love this. Every month since COVID-19 began, Google Maps timeline has taunted me with my monthly update, an email summary of my personal location history, where I've been, how many places I've visited, how much distance I've covered, and what percentage of the circumference of the globe this accounts for. I'm not sure whether Google means to ridicule me, although how else you can describe someone showing someone exactly what the worst year of their life looks like.

And I'm sure I could unsubscribe from the service if I wanted to, but I do not. I continue to open it each month because the numbers are painfully fascinating. Painfully fascinating. I think that might be a show title right there. And I love this part. Since April, the email has opened with a trigger warning.

This timeline email is an automated summary of places you've been, which may be fewer this month due to COVID-19 response in your area. Oh, my God. Do we really need a trigger warning for something that you signed up for? Yes, apparently we do. Actually, and tangent, speaking of that, I was on Patreon earlier today.

So, you know, along with trigger warnings, we apparently are now need to be so coddled into everything. I went over to Patreon because we had had one or two new subscribers. Thank you very much. And I usually send everybody a personal message when they subscribe and, you know, say thank you so much for supporting the show and all that.

Now, when you click message on Patreon, it gives you a little message along with the window. It says, here is a secret. Messaging someone is an enjoyable experience. Oh, go fuck yourself, Patreon. Fuck yourself, Patreon. I don't need a little encouraging note about a note I'm about to write anyways.

And you know what? It's not really. Messaging is often not an enjoyable experience. No, it's not because it's usually customer service. Yes. Yeah, it's funny. I don't know if you notice on LinkedIn, too, if you have to message people. It gives you options at the bottom for one-click messaging.

It's like, hey, thanks you. Thank you for the follow or blah, blah, blah. It's just like all these little one-click things. And I'm like, how lazy do you have to be? I mean, I purposely don't follow people on LinkedIn who send me the generic, like, things. It's like, hey, I would like to join your network.

I'm like, okay. Well, no, fuck yourself. You're not going to join my network because you didn't have the 30 seconds to write a note and say why you found me, how you found me, and why you want to follow me. So, no, you don't even get an automated reply. You just get a lifetime ban, dickhead.

But, yeah, LinkedIn has been adding those things in, like, you know, the auto-replies. I'm like, how lazy do you have to be? Pretty, pretty lazy. But, you know, messaging is an enjoyable experience, so use a canned response. Yes, messaging is so enjoyable that I just need one click to do it.

Christ. I found this one last night, which really kind of freaked me out, and it was over at CNN. They've done a deep dive on Amazon Basics products, and it turns out a lot of them are really crappily built and tend to burst into flames. Hang on a second. You mean the basic products, which can show up, say, within three to four hours and cost next to nothing, are not great and well-made?

Nope. Apparently not. Well, it's shocking. Yeah. So the CNN reporters used the keywords fire, dangerous, and burn and went through Amazon Basics, and they found 1,500 reviews about Amazon Basics electronics and appliances posted by U.S. customers from 2016 to early 2020 that described safety-related issues.

It was at that point I went around my house and found every single Amazon Basics cable that I have and unplugged them because I have a bunch of them. And the pictures on the Amazon article are, you know, this guy whose cell phone blew up because the cable shorted out.

And I'm like, I have a really amazing fear of fire. Fire! Mad! Well, you're in the wrong state right now. Tell me about it. That's why I'm prepared to go at any given moment. But, yeah, it's one of those things where it's like, yeah, they buy companies that make and sell cheap shit.

They slap the Amazon logo on it and send it out. And all of the reviews were verified, so they did buy those actual products. And, you know, the Amazon Basics products that I love are my plates.

I have a dishware collection by Amazon Basics, which is great. Looks just like the ones that my dad got. I think it wasn't Bristol Farms, but one of those highfalutin places that cost him like $300. And I got mine for like $27. And they look exactly the same.

Nothing says Bachelor more than an Amazon Basics plate collection. Dude, they look good. I'm telling you. They look really good. I'm sure they do. I'm sure they do. Yeah. And so, but the thing is, my soup bowl is not going to short out and burn down the house while I'm sleeping.

So, you know, caveat emptor on Amazon Basics. That's for sure. Yeah. That's, I mean, that's definitely making me think twice. I certainly have a couple of phone charger cables that are from Amazon Basics just because you look at the price and you go, well, why would I pay more? Well, now you know why. Exactly.

Yeah. Now, you know, the more, you know. Yeah. And, you know, the past is the beginning is the past is the beginning. Facebook is launching campus to keep college kids connected. Oh, great. Which is what Facebook was initially. Initially. That's what it fucking was.

Well, sort of. I mean, we must always remember that Facebook started as a by Mark Zuckerberg, basically going through gopher sites for photos of people. And doing hot or not on all the chicks. Yeah, it was a hot or not clone. That's all. Yeah, that's what it was.

But they are relaunching this. So Facebook is embracing its history with the launch of Facebook campus, a college only social network or social networks. It's basically a white branded service for every single university. So it would be basically specific to the college that you're going to.

So all you need to do to get started, apart from actually attending the school, is to punch in your college email and graduation year. And by default, your name, profile, photo, and hometown will be carried over from your regular Facebook profile if you want. Or you can edit that because you're trying to set up a new identity because you're going to college.

Well, or you're going to college from home at this point, hopefully. Because all we've seen is cases rising anytime a college tries to open up. But there you go. Did you see that graph? Did you see that graph that came out? I did. Oh, my God. This is this part where college is reopening and boom, through the roof.

Who'd have thunk it? Who'd have thunk it? And Brian, I don't think we can say white labeled anymore. I think we have to go back to OEM. Oh, okay. White label is triggering. I'm pretty sure it is. I don't think you're allowed to say that anymore. White labels matter, people. Yes, they do. I want to use that as a show title, but it would actually trigger people.

No, you cannot. I forbid it. I forbid it. And then finally, I saw this in the news, which I thought was interesting. Microsoft Teams will bring fans into NFL stadiums virtually. We had our first NFL football game last night, and the season is starting up.

So just like the NBA, the NFL will use Microsoft Teams to bring fans into stadiums virtually when the season starts. A mosaic of virtual spectators will be displayed on LED screens in stadiums and on broadcast during key games. Each game's home team will invite some fans to watch games together in a VIP teams meeting, and they will see a feed of the game alongside a gallery view of other fans, and they'll be included in mosaics as well.

Audio from the meetings will be mixed with augmented crowd noise that has been customized for each stadium. Now, this is kind of cool. I mean, you know, you got to adapt. Oh, I want the over and under on how many dick pics are going to be shown on that first game that they do this.

They better have cock recognition technology. I'm telling you. You know that they're actually going to have AI's people people doing the monitoring on this because it's a big deal. Now, I mean, I think this is kind of cool. I like to see the way that technology is being used to adapt to these strange circumstances we find ourselves in.

And I actually am not surprised that they're using Microsoft Teams because in my limited usage of Teams thus far, I've got to say their video has been great, far better than almost any other competitor that I've used. Certainly way better than Zoom. So I can understand them using the technology.

Microsoft Teams is supposed to be a business thing. This is like LinkedIn launching videos or, you know, trying to compete with TikTok to me. I just find it strange that they don't try to stay in their lane.

Everybody's trying to be everything to everybody at this point, aren't they? Well, they've got video technology, so they're going to use it to their advantage. And it's a good one. So, again, I understand why they're using it because I really do, from my experience, it's been the best. But it just seems it just feels weird that, you know, here I go.

I launch Teams because, you know, that's that's my work thing. But I'm also going to watch the football game in it. It's no more weird than Apple having its own dedicated studio network and making TV shows. OK, I like my iPad, but now I got now I got people badgering me to go watch an Amazon original or I mean, Apple original called Ted Lasso.

Thank you. That makes no sense to me. But like I said, everybody is trying to be everything to all people now. Yep.

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

And a big shout out to Ben Yellen for joining us last week, even though he's not up on his Star Wars canon, which was fairly disappointing. That's the only reason you get to keep your job, Dave. I was going to say, I mean... We were going to ask you to clear out your Dropbox. Yeah. I say there aren't many things that I would consider to be disqualifying, but that's probably as close to the line as we can get in terms of things.

But no, I listened to the episode. I thought it was great. It sounds like you guys had a good time. I did talk to Ben this week, and he said he had a great time as well. So it seems like it worked out. Yeah, I think I might be having a few days off in the coming future, and we might hit him up to be the actual co-host for the episode.

We shall see. Oh, cool. Yeah. He would like that. Yeah. Yeah. He's a lot of fun and certainly knows his stuff. Yeah. Yeah. That's a rarity on the show. It's true. It's true. He puts the rest of us to shame. The IQ goes up a few points when he walks in the room.

That's right. That's right. I'd ask you, Dave, but you know how much work goes into it, so don't tell Ben what it actually takes to be a co-host on the show. Maybe we can get him for one at least before he goes, are you shitting me? Right. You want me to do what? Effort?

No. Oh, God. So I have a bit of follow-up. We spent some time, actually almost an entire segment, discussing MTV a couple weeks back and going down memory lane. And lo and behold, Biography just put out an MTV documentary called I Want My MTV, a two-hour special.

I watched it. I don't know if you've had a chance to see it yet, Dave, but it will take you down memory lane. Unfortunately, I think there is a market for another documentary. There was very little camera time or interviews with the original VJs. It was mostly a lot of the original bigwigs congratulating themselves and patting themselves on the back for being so incredibly innovative at the time and for doing a shit ton of cocaine.

Oh, great. You're not really selling me on this, Brian. Yeah. I mean, it definitely sounds like something I'd like to check out. Did you have any sense that they had trouble getting participation from those original VJs? No, no, because they definitely did do short interviews with all of them.

I think it was more the story that they wanted to tell was more about the actual way that the company was run. I see. So, but you did get an awful lot of footage, really interesting stuff about how the logo was created and the decisions that they made to basically create and get it up and running and how difficult it was at the time because absolutely no cable provider wanted to carry

them, so how they had to sell it and kind of the downfall as well as, you know, they glossed on it briefly at the very end about how, well, nobody cares to watch videos anymore, so I guess we're going to become a reality TV station. Right, right. Yeah, it was interesting.

It was definitely worth it. But like I said, I do believe that there is definitely a market for another take on this and really diving into the VJs in particular. Yeah, no, I'll definitely check that out. That sounds right up my alley. Yeah, very good. All right. Well, let's get to some security news here, sort of, first off here.

Our mayor, Eric Schintzetti. Yep. How do you really feel, Jason? Yeah. Jiminy jeepers. We now have a COVID-19 contact tracing app here in Los Angeles, sort of. They partnered with the, I can't even remember the name of the damn app, but I use it every day.

Citizen. I was going to say community, but that's a TV show. Citizen, the slightly less racist version of Neighbors. I've had no racism come my way on the Citizen app so far. Yeah, because it's much less about chatting and social, and it's more like you actually get information about crimes that are occurring near you.

Yeah, and people actually going to the scene and sending you videos and stuff like that. Unfortunately, the Falafel King burnt down yesterday, and that was the daily news, because there's always an assault down the street for me. But anyway, back to the actual COVID-19 thing here. They put out an app called Safe Pass.

My roommate and I signed up for it, so we're giving it a shot. I did notice that half of my Bluetooth devices frits in and out now that that thing is running, which is kind of annoying, especially since my AirPods are on Bluetooth. But of course, they say they're going to, you know, delete all the data.

Yeah. We've lost Jason. It's funny. This is the second time we've had a big cutout on the show, and the previous one happened while we were discussing, like, basically how we've become a third world nation, and our infrastructure is toast, and that's when we had a cutout.

Jason, we totally lost you there for, like, almost a minute. The mayor's goons were listening in, and they cut the line. Second time in this show.

Garcetti's just standing out there with a sad face. I'm sorry, Jason. We're going to have to take you in. Yeah. Why don't you love me? Why don't you love me? Yes. They say it's not a replacement for formal contact tracing. So this is contact tracing light. What does that mean, exactly?

Well, because, you know, they still have people on the phones actually doing real contact tracing. Yeah, yeah. You know. Of course. This just adds to their arsenal. So did you install it? Yes, I did. I have Citizen, but I have not installed their contact tracing app yet.

Yes, my roommate and several of my other friends have installed it. We have it. And you fill out a simple form talking about if you have any symptoms or things like that. It takes about two minutes to go through the setup. But once you're done, that's it. It just runs. So we'll see.

We'll see what my battery life's like. Like I said, all my devices have decided to go cannywampus. But, you know, it's worth a shot. It's worth a shot. It's like, you know what? If I am around somebody that has it, I would kind of like to know. But, you know, I'm sure the numbers are – you're getting a small, small percentage of the population who actually installs this app and uses it.

Well, yeah, it does require an awful lot of effort. You have to install it. And then should you actually get COVID or feel symptoms, you actually have to tell people that. Yeah, you have to report it to the app. Which is kind of a bridge too far, I think, for many people. And some people – and, you know, I had this conversation with my roommate this morning.

She's like, do I even want to tell anybody that I got it? Because that might screw up my gig or whatever, you know. Some people might just say, I'm taking some time off and never tell anybody. You know, is there a stigma around getting it?

You know, the good thing to do would obviously be to tell everyone and call everyone you know. But as we've learned, not a lot of people are good. So it's just one of those things. Yeah, what if it affects your ability to get insurance in the future? Exactly. Yes.

Well. So there's a lot of ifs out there with this. Do you guys get the sense that we're sort of – this horse has left the barn in terms of the COVID tracking apps? If you'd have only known about this in February. Oh, never mind.

Yes, I think the horse has left the barn for the most part. I mean, yeah, I think so just because I don't think anybody is going to be bothering to install it. Or do anything with it. But in theory, the horse has not left the barn because obviously things are still not good. And we're seeing signs of second waves in Europe already.

So it's kind of – it's coming again. It hasn't really left. We certainly could be using things like this. It would be helpful. It just seems to me like when we were on the leading edge of this and everyone was still in a mode where they felt their civic duty was there to do whatever it took in the real – It's gone.

It's long gone. Well, exactly. And now we've switched into, I don't know, malaise and conspiracy theories. Yeah. And people kind of just being done with it and getting back to normal life. I mean, we really do have like a separated society now.

I have certain – even just amongst my friends, you know, half my friends have basically just thrown their hands up in the air, generally single ones and, you know, people that don't have elderly family that they're visiting. And they're just going back out to the bars and restaurants and living life like they used to.

And then the other half is like me, just cowering in our little foxholes still, feeling kind of like an idiot. Well, there was – You'll get the last laugh. Yeah, exactly. Yep. Yeah, there was an interesting article in the New York Times that I'm going to have to dig up.

But it talked about, you know, the psychological implications of all of what's been happening and saying that, you know, we do turn into kind of selfish assholes after a while of being, you know, away from other people and how when we go back to, quote, unquote, normal life, nothing's going to be normal because everybody has this psychological damage from everything we've been through.

And I think, like you said, your single friends, Brian, they have been the ones that have, you know, the most impacted because they haven't been out and their social game is probably really off right now. Yeah. And it turns people selfish. Like I tell them too, I don't blame you. I don't blame you for going back to your regular life.

You, you, you know, you're hanging out with a set group of people. You all do the same thing. You don't have anyone you're worrying about, but please stop inviting me because it's annoying because I can't go. And I don't, you know, it's, it's just like, just, I want to, I want to, I just, yes, of course, I want to go watch the baseball game at the bar.

Yeah. You have to stay in and practice the violin. Yeah. And, you know, it does kind of feel that way. You know, sad me, poor me. Right. Right. Yeah. But I agree with you, Jason. I think it's going to, it's going to be a bit of a psychological shit show when, when this ends.

And, and we all have to remember, it's not going to end with a magic bullet. Even a vaccine, if it comes, it's going to be a slow rollout. This is the whole process of getting back to whatever normal is going to be, is going to be taking period. It's going to go over a long period of time and, and people are messed up.

Here's the thing. Here's what I've been thinking about since today is September 11th. And we talked about this in the show already, or maybe later. I don't know. The timeline is screwed up. Whatever the timeline is. We're, we're 19 years into 9-11, right?

Mm-hmm. And life still hasn't returned to normal since 9-11. I think we are going to be stuck with this, at least, you know, for the three of us, for the rest of our lives, because, you know, we're not spring chickens. And we're going to be, the ramifications of all this are, this is going to be normal now.

You know, things change. Like, you know, you still have to take your damn shoes off to get on a plane. Yeah. And if you want, now, if you want to get on a plane, go with God, because you might be meeting him soon. Well, you know, my wife and I have talked about that quite extensively, because she went and she taught law in China for a couple years after she graduated and things of that nature.

So she's lived over there. She knows the culture very well. And she said, look, you know, masks are normal. They've been normal in Asia, because Asia has dealt with pandemics in the past. And wearing a mask, there's no stigma to it. People just wear them.

They were wearing them before COVID. They, it became part of regular life. And I don't know if that's going to happen here, because we have things like Sturgis. And, you know, America, we have, we have Olympic gold medalist volleyball players screaming about freedom and wearing a mask is an infringement on our freedom.

So it's not really built into our culture. But again, I think it's going to be, we're going to have a split society. A lot of us, even in America, will be wearing masks from now on. That's just going to be normal. I think about my grandparents and their generation who lived through the Depression and how that left them with a sense of hoarding things.

You know, I remember when my grandfather passed away, we were going through his house. Like he had, down in his basement, he had basically a room full of canned goods, you know. And he was, you know, he had a, he worked the rest, most of his life. He had a good union job.

He was, you know, solidly in the middle class and all that kind of thing. But that had been put into him that, you know, you don't, you hang on to things. You don't throw things away because you don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. Yeah. I'm already there. I got him. I'm with him. You know, I have a really good friend that's a very well-known and famous and well-off individual due to what he does for a living.

But he grew up on the streets, dirt poor, and there's no such thing as enough money. He knows, theoretically, he has more than enough money to live the rest of his life very comfortably. But that mindset is in him and it'll never be enough.

And I just think the kind of, yeah, we're just, what we're going through psychologically with this whole thing is going to affect a lot of us for the rest of our lives. Agreed. Good times. Good times. Well, I got this other post over at ThreatPost about the EFF making a stink about contact tracing apps and privacy and seems a little, we'll just move on from the contact tracing.

It'll be in the show notes if you want to read it. But let's move over to Amazon and the NSA. Now, oh my goodness, Amazon appoints ex-director of the NSA to its board of directors. And that would be General Keith Alexander, a man who has very few friends in the circles that I run in.

What about you, Dave? As this article says, he was a polarizing figure during his time at NSA for the mass data collection. I mean, obviously this is an interesting move and I think the real story here is how much Amazon is going after government contracts on the, you know, the Amazon, the AWS side of the house.

Yeah. Where Amazon was going after that big Jedi contract. So, so is Amazon now the Sith? Because they obviously aren't Jedis. So. Yeah. Well, hmm. Well, it's, it's an interesting move because as we know, he, he's a man with a very special set of skills.

And one would, one would wonder why Amazon would want that set of skills. He has his very special Rolodex is what he has. That too. Yeah. Yeah. And, and I think Jason, you've nailed it there. I think this is a, this is a, who, you know, who will take your phone calls?

How will, you know, we don't want to lose this Jedi thing or whatever's coming next, next time we don't want to lose that. So let's, let's give some of these high level people some very cushy spots on our board and take very good care of them and, you know, give him free Amazon Prime for life and see what that gets for us.

Right. I thought, I thought it was funny. I thought, I thought his compensation was fairly low. It says, according to the filing, he's going to get 288 shares of Amazon stock, which are going to be spread out over three installments of the next 14 months. 288 shares of Amazon, you know, it, it, it is a sizable amount of money.

Yeah. It's a sizable amount of money, but it's not like, okay, like, you know, here's 20 million. It's like, you know, here's a million bucks. Yeah. But the job is going to be, can you make a phone call for us once every couple months? And that's it. Yeah. And the next 10 billion contract will take care of you.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it does, it puts him on the hook for things too. You know, he, he has responsibility being a board member. Uh, he has liability issues. And of course they get insurance for all that kind of stuff. But, um, yeah, I, I, I think that Jason is exactly right here that this is, they're, they're buying his Rolodex and his contacts.

Wait, wait, wait. I got, I, I'm going to, I have to, I have to splice that together at some point because that, those words have never been put together in that order. The entire episode is going to be an hour long loop. Jason is exactly right. Jason is exactly right. There's the show title. Yeah.

Make, turn that into your ringtone. It's going to be, yeah. When, when you call, that's what it's going to be. Even though you never call me. No. Yeah. No. No, you don't. Interesting. Well, some more government news, customs and border protect protection.

I was going to say, I always want to say customs and border patrol, but it's customs and border protection. Uh, they have now signed on with vigilant to get their entire database of real time license plate numbers and a GPS coordinates.

So they can track basically anybody anywhere in the U S for the most part, wherever vigilant has data. And, you know, we've talked about the license plate readers ad nauseum on this show. Yep. And this one is just, because I think you talked about it on, on many of your shows, Dave, where customs and border patrol has what it's jurisdiction between, uh, 200 miles from any border.

Correct. Yes. Yes. Any border, uh, yes. Any border, which, you know, includes body of water. Um, yes. And I forget what the incredibly high percentage of citizens live within that zone, but almost all of us. Right. Because, uh, most of our cities are built on in, in, uh, you know, they're, they're on rock and roll.

That is true. Uh, however, they're also, they're also built on the water, on harbors for shipping and so on and so forth, or, or the great lakes and all that. So, um, but this gives them, this gives them eyes in the middle of the country where they didn't have it before.

Um, and it's kind of interesting and, you know, the company that they're partnering with vigilant is, you know, have you, have you covered them? I think we talked about them before, but you know, it's, they've got a subsidiary that, uh, actually gives cameras to repo men who are always out driving around.

They have fixed cameras everywhere, and they also give cameras to police departments so they can have mobile cameras and fixed cameras. And now CBP has bought cameras as well. You know, this whole thing is just – it's like – it is a total panopticon.

You cannot leave the house. We need one of those James Bond flippy license platey things coming up soon. Yeah, or I think of Kit from Knight Rider. Yeah. He had one of those too. Yeah, I did. I forgot that. Well, I think – we talked about this on Caveat, and it was in the context that Customs and Border Protection had to publish a report, a disclosure report, which they are required to do.

I believe it's every year. And in this report, one of the things that they highlighted was basically there is no practical way for U.S. citizens to escape our license plate scanning web. It is everywhere.

It is ubiquitous. There is no practical way for anyone to opt out, which I find chilling. Yeah. Yeah, quite chilling. Quite chilling. And they have the ability to load unlimited number of hot list files or records, which means that they can put any license plate into the database and get basically a text when they say, oh, found Joe over here.

You know, I'm sorry. It's Customs and Border Protection. It's not Joe. It's Jose. So they're looking for Jose. And, yeah, this is a mess. This is a mess. The other part of this that gets Ben Yellen's hackles up is that many law enforcement agencies are using sort of this third-party access by buying someone else's database.

They avoid having to get their own warrant. Yep. Right? They avoid having to get permission to gather this data on their own. They merely buy it. So I believe there's a number of states who are trying to work on legislation to sort of tamp this down.

I hope so. I hope so. Because I remember years ago, I mean, when I lived in San Francisco doing the startup thing, they equipped the city buses with cameras on the bumpers. And they were doing license plate reading as they drove around the city. And those license plates were getting pushed back because they were basically sending you a parking ticket if you were parked illegally.

And how much you want to bet the city of San Francisco was getting extra money to take all that license plate data and dump it back into the database. You know? Yeah. You know, this happened to me once back when I was working in Baltimore City. I was downtown right near the aquarium.

And I had a parking space in a private parking garage. Right? My company was paying for me to park there. Very nice. Secure. All that kind of stuff. But one day, I had actually, I was, for some reason, I had my wife's car and her tags were expired.

And I didn't, I didn't notice that her tags were expired, you know, about a month out or whatever. For whatever reason, hadn't been renewed, hadn't gotten to it. You know, shame on us. But I go to my car at the end of the day and there's a ticket on the windshield. Because the police have just gone through and they're just cruising the private parking garages with the scanners and just tag them and bag them, folks.

I had the same thing happen to me twice at LAX when I parked in long-term parking. Came back from a trip and there's a $275 ticket on my car for expired tags. And here's the thing that pissed me off. And I fought it and I actually won. The new tag was in my glove compartment.

I just didn't have a screwdriver to take the stupid thing from the dealership off to put on the new sticker. So I fought it and I won and I got the ticket, you know, removed. But their system is so dumb, they don't even check to see if you have actually renewed it.

Even though this is the state system that's doing this, which is just ridiculous. It was a pain in the ass. But yeah, even at long-term parking at the airport, they cruise too. It's annoying. And speaking of computers reading things that they generally shouldn't be doing, Portland has adopted the strictest facial recognition ban in the nation so far.

Now, this is good news. I think it'd be better if it wasn't Portland because Portland's kind of a shit show right now. But, you know, I would prefer this was anybody but Portland. But they have actually banned the acquisition and use of facial recognition technology by any city bureau in Portland, period.

Cops can't use it. You know, courtrooms can't use it, period. You're done. You cannot use it. But there are some loopholes in here that they can use. Private entities can still use it, but not in places of public accommodation.

So that means, you know, basically facial recognition is banned by the government, period, done. And private entities in public spaces. Like, you know, if you go to the bank, you can't use facial recognition. You can't get it on the subway or going to the airport, which is interesting.

But you can use it in public schools, which I thought was strange, private clubs, places of worship, or workplaces. Now, if you have a factory, they say, you can use it inside of the factory, but you can't use it in the lobby, which I thought was strange.

But it's places of public gathering, you know. So good for them to do it. And, you know, hopefully it'll set a precedent. I just wish it wasn't Portland because Portland doesn't really have the best track record right now. Yeah. What are your concerns with Portland, specifically?

Well, the fact that they basically turned into the, you know, fourth season or third or fourth season of The Wire for half of this year. And, you know, the no-law zone happen. Right, right, right, right. So little things like that and the fact that they're still having protests and all that crap.

But, you know, the protests were – and as a caveat to that, the protests were, you know, extended because of the, you know, unmarked federal goons that came in and rented cars and kept stoking the fires. But Portland still is just kind of a shit show right now.

This list is interesting. I mean, public schools, private clubs, places of worship, or workplaces. I suppose that – I mean, is that – here's the list of places that have been shot up recently. Yeah, could be. Could be. Yeah. I get the list.

I get the list. I'm happy about the side where the government can't use it. And the other, you know, private entities that can use it, that's on them. You know, at least there's no liability for the government at this point. So it removes the liability from the government for using it because they are forced not to use it.

Does that mean they're actually not going to use it? Who knows? You know, we've had a couple stories this week, especially on the East Coast, about cities using that to get people from protests. So I don't know. We'll see. We'll see how this pans out.

But maybe basically the city council saw what was going on on the East Coast with Florida and New York and the other places that we saw where they were using, like, archive footage from the protest to go back and arrest people.

Because I think at this point in Portland, if they started doing that, they would have to arrest Portland for all the protests. So maybe they're like, you know, we're just going to stop you guys right now. Right, right. Yeah. I think it's a good start. What do you think, Brian?

You've been awfully quiet. I don't know. The Portland thing is – I wish it wasn't there as well. I agree with you just because it's such a polarizing shit show right now, Portland in general. You know, it's definitely – Republican and Democrat have completely different opinions about what's going on there.

So to have this as a precedent is unfortunate because it's going to be tainted by that. But I support the idea. I think we all agree that facial recognition does need regulation. It shouldn't be used. It's not ready for prime time, specifically for police. But I don't like private corporations using it either.

Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. I mean, it'll be an interesting test bed, right? We'll see, you know, what works, what doesn't. How – do some people find workarounds? As per usual, yes. In general, that probably will happen. But, yeah, it's just – for me, it's unfortunate that it's Portland because the results will be tainted because of the political environment.

Right. And as we know, AI always has a workaround because AI is people. They could be using it and then send Joe or Jose back into the room to say, you saw this guy doing the thing and you remembered him from before, right? Right? Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

Know what I mean? Know what I mean? Say no more. Put him in cuffs. OK. You know. It's – like you said, Brian, there are workarounds to this. But, yeah. No.

Well, but I mean, doesn't that – part of what that I find interesting about that is the use of facial recognition as a secondary means of verification, as, you know, one of many bits of evidence to build a case rather than the primary thing.

Yeah. Let's figure out who was this person. Well, let's throw it at facial recognition. You know, if – to have a preponderance of the evidence including facial recognition and – then I guess I'm a little more OK with it. But who chooses that, right?

Yeah. How do you – who's to decide? And that's where the problem lies. Yep. All right. Well, this has been a fun week. Woo! Aren't they always? Hey, man. We're back in the saddle. That's great. Yes.

Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. All right, guys. Well, it's good catching up and I'll see you guys next time. All righty. Apps and doodads. Well, I got this note from Bruce Schneier, the famed security expert.

And the reason this is in apps and doodads and not security, ha, is because this is about WordPress. And after all these years, I found this just very amusing. He's moving his blog from movable type. You remember movable type?

I remember movable type. To WordPress business. And like I've been talking about, WordPress business is good. But he's using the concierge service at WordPress to have them move it for him. And I'm like, oh, what could possibly go wrong? What could possibly go wrong? I'm sure they put their best and brightest on it.

Well, they've got good people over there. I'm not going to bang on them. It's just taking a movable type blog and moving it to WordPress in this day and age. I'm like, it has to be just a nightmare. And I was like, movable type, are they still around?

And holy shit, they are. You can still go get a movable type website. Nice. And it costs you like 500 bucks a year, which is why, sorry, Ben and Mina, you failed. So many reasons why they failed, but I told you PHP was going to be a thing.

Pearl was not. Sorry. I told you. You didn't listen. Go screw yourselves. Anyway, it's really funny. But here's the one part. The programmers here will get a kick out of this. So all of the pages on Schneier.com all ended in .html.

So, you know, pretty URLs are a thing nowadays, and you don't have .html anymore. You haven't for like, oh, I don't know, 15 years. Yes. It's been a long time. They had to go reprogram all this WordPress crap to have .html on the end of every single page.

And I just looked at a new entry on Schneier on security. And, of course, new blog post has .html on it. And I'm like, oh, my God. Seriously? Seriously? You kept the naming convention and just didn't do redirects? Oh, I'm sure. Yep. Redirects probably would have been a smarter move.

But, I mean, obviously, he wants to keep it because of all the people that have linked to him over the years. Right, but you do a 301 redirect, you're not going to lose any SEO juice. It'll be just fine. But I just thought it was funny. I mean, this is like, you know, okay. And the security guy, the security guy, Bruce Schneier, the security guy, is moving to WordPress, which is known, as we talked about on the last episode, for not being the best when it comes to security.

But I guess the business and concierge classes. We cannot throw stones because the business and that, they handle a lot of that stuff for you. But, yes, self-hosted WordPress and rando plugins that you get off the internet, like a one-night stand. Expect to, you know, have to take some penicillin after a while because you're going to get a virus or two.

Yeah. And guess what, Jason? We have another streaming network. Oh, you've got to be shitting me. I don't know exactly who's going to be signing up for this one. And I don't blame them because they probably want to make some money for what they've got. But the Grammy Museum, it's been closed since the beginning of the pandemic.

And most of the filmed interviews and performances in its archives have remained locked behind its downtown LA doors. But they are bringing it to a subscription service. They've digitized. Well, it's all been digitized anyways. But they're calling it Collection Live. Just rolls off the tongue.

Come on. Where's Grammy Plus? Exactly. Come on. And it's launching September 17th. It'll be $2.99 per month or $29.99 for a full year. It's basically going to be interviews and special performances and things of that nature. So it's hard to see what exactly the consumer base would be for this other than people that are super into the music industry already.

I just don't know if they're going to get that many people that sign up for it. Okay. Okay. I think probably not. Yeah. Me either. So I bought something new this week. All right. Something big.

Something big. This is my first new camera in a very long time. I got the Nikon ZX-FX format mirrorless camera with Nikkor Z24-70mm F4S lens. And got this from our good friends and partners at Adorama.

That's a hefty price tag, Jason. It was $2,400 plus tax. But there is not the – I did not do my research. G-O-G dot show slash donate. So I didn't realize that – you know, I knew that this was an evolution in cameras from Nikon.

It's got these Z lenses which have a bigger aperture so you can get more light through. So they work better in low light. And it's mirrorless with a full-frame sensor. So when I press the shutter button, there's not two clicks. There's one, which is disconcerting. But the thing that I didn't figure out until I got it and was trying to use it on a shoot the next day was that there is a new memory card format that nobody told me about.

And it's called the XQD. I have more – I have more compact flash cards and SD cards and micro SD cards than I can throw it. It's incredible how many cards I have. And then I get this thing and it's like, nope, we changed the game on you.

I'm like, you fuckers. It's probably in the manual. It is in the manual. That's the funny part. But here's the other funny part. It actually uses two different types of cards. You can use the XKD card or you can use the CFexpress cards, which are another new format, which are faster than the XQD cards.

But to use the CFexpress cards, you have to update the firmware on the camera, which means you have to buy an XQD card with a card reader that reads XQD, upload the firmware to it, plug that back into the camera, update the firmware. Take that out, put in your CFexpress card, and then go ahead and format that.

Then you can use it. But you can't – there's no way to update the firmware on my $2,400 camera without going out and spending $200 on a card and card reader that I will probably not use ever again, which I think is a fucking design flaw. The XQD cards are fast enough.

I'm going to keep using it. I'm not going to spend the money on the CFexpress card. But it's just one of those design flaws that I'm like, look, it's got USB-C. I plug this thing into my computer. It should mount the card. It should mount the card as a drive on my computer.

Nope. Nope. Just sees it as a camera so you can download the photos, but you cannot upload anything to the camera. Nikon, this is a flaw. This is a big flaw. It's even got Wi-Fi. It's got built-in Wi-Fi, so I can, you know, stream it where I can, like, use this thing to attach to my computer wherever I'm at and transfer over Wi-Fi.

It's got Bluetooth. You'd think that that would be another way to put something on the camera. Nope. Nope. Nope. I got to go out and buy a card reader, which I have almost none of anymore, and a card that is gigantic.

It's ginormous, but that's how you can get the great 4K video out of this thing. Now, on the upside, the camera's beautiful. It's amazing. I love this thing. It doesn't have the same resolution as my D810, which I've talked to on our Discord channel with people about, but it looks better.

So there you go. But I'm mainly using this thing for video even, which is even, you know, more ironic that I'm not even going to use it as a still camera. It's going to be a video camera, but, yeah, I got a new job, and I got to learn how to use this thing soup to nuts in the next five days because I got three of them coming that I have to set up in a studio.

So I'm like, I best get to cracking on it. Right. But if you're a Nikon guy, man, this thing is beautiful. The lens, it feels like a great Nikon even though it's a mirrorless camera. And for $2,400, it damn well better. It damn well better.

Brick a brick. Brian, we've been saying that the United States is becoming a third world country for about seven years now based on infrastructure and our notices of what's going on with broadband and the roads and the electrical grid and just about everything that, you know.

And if you pay attention, you notice these things. Well, it turns out we were correct because the Social Progress Index has come out and it scores countries on 50 aspects of their quality of life. And we took 28th place. We're 28. We're 28.

Yeah. Well, there's just about one thing that we're number one in and that's coronavirus deaths. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm not sure if it's ironic as we're in the middle of discussing our crumbling infrastructure and I lost my entire connection or somebody is listening to us and doesn't want this recorded.

Yeah. No, you're just like you're talking about, oh, yeah, we're number one in COVID-19 cases and then boom, you were gone. Okay. I did want to mention something about we're number one in COVID-19 cases because today is the 19th anniversary of September 11th and which was a terrible day.

We both remember it probably more than we ever want to. But, yeah, we have the same death toll from September 11th about every three days now. And people seem to kind of forget that. Yeah, they do. They don't seem to care. It's kind of a big freaking deal.

And, yeah, no, it's like, you know, the difference, I think, is September 11th was visceral, visceral, visual and visceral. I made a new word, visceral. And everybody saw it. And we all got PTSD from watching CNN on a loop that day. But this is this is not in our face.

All these numbers are abstract unless you know somebody that died, which, you know, at least I know four. I don't know how many, you know, a handful. Yeah, a handful. Yeah. Everybody that I know has lost somebody at this point. But, yeah, people just keep thinking it's a nothing burger. But, yeah.

Anyway, back to your point. Actually, back to the point is here's the here's the worst one. When it comes to discrimination against minority groups, the U.S. took a dismal 100th place. Yeah. So, yeah, it's not the change we want to see in the world coming at this point.

No, no, it's not. And, you know, as I saw you put this article in and I scanned through it, of course, my mind immediately went to the opening scene of HBO's newsroom, which was so good. Eight years ago now at this point. And unfortunately, the show never quite lived up to the promise of this initial sequence.

But if you've never seen it, do go and watch it, HBO's newsroom opening scene, Why America's Not the Greatest Country. We have the link in the show notes. And I would like to point out that there is no fake news in this whole rant in this thing. That is all real. Those are all real statistics as of eight years ago now.

We are not the greatest country in the world. We could be, but we aren't. Brian, make America great again. Yes, please. Anyways, I saw this and I thought this was really interesting. If you were not in California, you have probably not seen the skies firsthand.

Maybe you've seen some photos that friends of yours have posted. But it has been apocalyptic here recently. I'm not anywhere particularly near a fire here in Santa Monica, but the light has been strange. We've got red sunsets and everything is going on.

It is weird. It is strange and you feel off. It's very Blade Runner-esque. Yeah, it is. It is. Or Mars. Or Mars. Yeah, I didn't even think about Mars. But yeah, people have been doing the mashup with Blade Runner. And I think my friend Eddie Codell did a bunch of drone footage from San Francisco yesterday and somebody put the Blade Runner soundtrack to it.

And it was just, it's pretty eerie. Pretty damn eerie. It is eerie. But I saw this article and I thought this was hilarious. Our phones are color correcting the apocalypse. Yep, they are. So yeah, the sky is so weird and the light and the color is so wrong that if you take a photo with your advanced AI phones and the cameras, it is color correcting it so they don't look quite right.

So you actually have to go in and fix the settings yourself or take a photo with a real camera because it is color correcting everything. Might I recommend the Nikon Z6 from Adorama? Check the link in the show notes. Yeah, I thought this was really funny because the crappy thing about the color correction they're doing is it's kind of beautiful light.

You know, this is kind of, we have the magic hour all day long. So you should be able to get, you know, sunset photos all day. But yeah, that's a bug, not a feature. Definitely. And I saw this one. I just thought it was funny because we talk about it all the time.

There's been another electric scooter accident and somebody's been injured this time. Okay, who is it? Rihanna. Okay, what was she doing? She's said to be recovering after a fall, which reportedly saw her suffer bruises to her head and face. It comes after photos have emerged of the singer in a car in LA last week with her injuries said to be visible.

Her representatives say she's fine and recuperating well, but she flipped over on an electric scooter last week, not wearing a helmet, obviously, and bruised her forehead and face. Hang on here. Hang on here. These things keep going back and forth and it's driving me crazy. Everybody's saying electric scooter, electric scooter, and then somebody goes electric bike.

Was it an e-bike? Was it a scooter? Some people can't figure out what the hell they were riding because Simon Cowell broke his back and it was first reported that it was a scooter, but no, it turned out it was an e-bike. Right. And it's like, I don't know why these people can't figure out that one simple fact. You throw E into the equation and it's all over.

Yeah. Well, hey, man, that's the one drug I never tried, so I can't make any fun of it. I'm like, man, maybe if I was on E, I'd write crappy articles too, but who knows? No, you wouldn't. You'd just lay in your bed and be happy. Trust me. Do you have some? I could use that right now. I wish.

Closing shout outs! And a shout out to Dame Diana Rigg, who passed away this week at the age of 82. You would know her from Game of Thrones, you youngins. You super old people will remember her as the super hot chick in Avengers. All right.

Sorry, Dame Diana. You had a good run. Oh, man. I mean, amazing. She really kind of normalized a female action hero. She was the first. Yeah, yeah. Like I said, 82, good run, and probably a good time to get out if you got to get out now. That's true. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister.

And I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks 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, please visit GOG.show slash donate to help us out. We'll love you forever. Or visit GOG.shop once we get it working, finally, and pick up some good old-fashioned GOG swag if they let us get it through.

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Stay grumpy. Like, good afternoon. My name is, you know, like, Lars Ulrich from Metallica. I've worked for years to get where I am today. Years and years of playing clubs and recording demo tapes. Me and my buddy, like, James Hetfield here, have shed blood, sweat, and motherfucking beer to get where we are today.

Beer. Good. And now we're fucking wealthy beyond, you know, like, belief. I mean, the other day it was, like, obvious to me how much money we have, because our bass is, you know, like, motherfucking Jason Newstead bought his very first gold-plated Ferrari, and the fucking thing came with, you know, like, a crew of naked Filipino sex slaves and this Mexican houseboy, all free, just because he's from Metallica, you know.

That's fucking rich, man. So where was I? Oh, yeah. All you post-pubescent boys who have bought, like, our albums and our T-shirts and our concert videos and, and, and... T-shirts. Good. Yeah, T-shirts. You loyal fans who, like, bang your heads at our concerts and pay, like, $200 for a ticket, $20 for, like, a CD, like, $50 for a Metallica T-shirt, and, like, $100 for a genuine Metallica cock ring.

You're all fucking awesome, and we'll never forget you. You fucking made us rich. You fucking made us popular. You got us under the cover of, you know, like, Kerrang! magazine. I worship you. You, the Metallica fan. Beer. Good. Unless you download it until it sleeps from Napster.

Then you're going to motherfucking jail. You're motherfucking meat. You'll be some fat, greasy, tattooed bastard's buttery cornhole. Who do you think you are? I mean, just, you know, because you, like, made us rich, you think you can get free stuff? Songs that we spent upwards of, you know, like, 24 to 48 hours writing and recording?

I mean, James blew up for you. He ignited into a fiery inferno for you people. Fire bad! Fire bad! Our team of lawyers and researchers have your names, and we're going to hunt you down like the table-scrap-pilfering grab-asses you are. Grab-asses bad!

So to conclude, rock on, Metallica fans! We'll see you on tour this summer, and you Napster users, we'll see you in jail getting gang-raped! Money good! Napster bad!

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