475: Stay Drunky

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 a very silent Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo.

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. We are doing a very rare, very late recording. Well past your bedtime, Jason. Is this why you've got your dulcet tones in full effect? Yes, it is, because it's everybody else's bedtime, too. So we don't want to wake the puppy up tonight.

All right. Well, yeah, I've lasted until near my kid's bedtime, so there may be some yelling in the background as he's forced off to sleep. But I'm here. It's a late show for us for once, and that means I'm at least a half a bottle of wine in.

Oh, nice. I am about five Guinnesses in, so. Sweet. Should be nice and quiet and lubricated. So a quick note. The show next week, we're going to have one episode next week. We're going to kind of combine the two because you got stuff to do. I got stuff to do. So we're going to have a Friday episode. Go figure.

And that'll be it for next week. It might be a little longer one because we've got some extra stuff in there. But yeah. So timing is going to be off next week just because life happens. Yeah. I'm a bit busy. You're a bit busy. Tell us about it. Everybody's a bit busy, even though we're not supposed to be doing anything.

Exactly. I actually have to go to an office next week to go meet a client and their team. So that should be interesting. Oh, okay. Masked up, I assume. They better be. I certainly will be. Yeah. That's for damn sure. I'm doing things like selling a car. All kinds of craziness going on.

Because I'm working on getting rid of the Mini Cooper that has served us so well for so many years. But honestly, the wife hasn't been going to work. It has literally been sitting on a street for six months now. Did you at least get the registration fixed?

Registration sorted. Yeah. All that stuff is taken care of. So it's ready to get rid of. So I'm going to just sell it. So yeah. Lots of very busy right now with all the preparations for the incoming move. So yeah. Busy. Busy, busy, busy.

All right. So we have a little bit of follow-up here. We were talking last week about the standoff between Facebook and Europe, basically, because of the data transfer rules that GDPR was saying to Facebook, like, you can't do this. This is against our rules. And Facebook said, well, fine. We're just going to leave.

Well, they blinked first. We're going to take our toys and go home. They blinked. So they said, we of course won't shut down in Europe. And the reason we won't, of course, is precisely because we want to continue to serve customer and small and medium-sized businesses in Europe, said Facebook VP Nick Clegg during a live-streamed EU policy debate a couple days back.

However, because they can't just say, we're going to stay. They have to throw in there like, I got to warn you, though, there will be profound effects on scores of digital businesses. Not us. Not us, of course. We're worried about the little guys that we serve. And there's going to be profound effects against them if you guys don't solve this problem and figure out a way to make this work.

We have a major issue, which is that for various complex legal, political, and other reasons, question marks are being raised about the current legal basis under which data transfers occur. If those legal means of data transfer are removed, not by us, mind you, but by regulators, then, of course, that will have a profound effect on how not just our services, but countless other companies operate.

We're trying to avoid that for you, or as they would say, for the children. For the children in Cambridge Analytica. What a load of shit. People like that. Such horse shit. Yeah, we care about the small businesses. Oh, we care about them because they pay for us.

Yes, because they all spend thousands upon millions of dollars on advertising, and it's our only revenue. So, of course, we care about them for their money. What we used to give away for free, we now charge for, so we need it back. So, please, think of the children. Think of the children.

So, they blinked, but, of course, couldn't help but, you know, desperately try to pitch their stupid case. Yeah, it's a law for a reason, guys. Get used to it. It's a reason GDPR exists. Mostly because of Cambridge Analytica. Go figure. Yes. I did see a news report today that, and we didn't include it in our show notes, but since we mentioned them, just as an aside, the head of Cambridge Analytica has been barred from running a company for seven years.

I saw that, too. Yeah, I meant to put it in. I'm like, you should be barred from running a company for ever years. Exactly. Seriously. Lock him up. Lock him. Oh, wait. They don't do that anymore. Never mind. No, they don't do that. So, I saw this over at TechCrunch, and I thought it was an interesting read.

It's called Tech Must Radically Rethink How It Treats Independent Contractors by Adam Jackson. Did you get a chance to read this? I did read all of this. I'm going to let you go ahead and sum it up, and then I'm going to call the absolute, complete, and utter bullshit that I saw on it. Yeah, I knew that was going to happen.

So, Adam is saying that, you know, everybody's going to be a contractor going forward, and tech companies especially need to embrace the freelancitude, the 1099itude of everyone, and get them more invested in the companies, and bring them into the fold, and make them feel more at home.

Because nobody in the future is going to have just one job. They're going to be bouncing around to multiple companies, multiple divisions in your company, and you need to make them feel at home. Well, you know, there's one way to make them feel at home. Hire them as an employee. That's one option.

Or keep them as freelance contractors, but give them equity and make sure that they're covered for healthcare, especially in the United States, which is the only way to get proper healthcare is through your company. I really wish that that was not the way. Well, you know, then we'd be socialist.

No, I'm fine with that. Yeah, so is the rest of the fucking world. Yeah, I'm fine with that. Or pay your own healthcare, which is what I do now. Single payer would be fine. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I do. My healthcare costs more than my car every month, but hey, it turns out I need it right now, so I'm okay.

Okay, tangent. I'm good with healthcare right now, but going back to freelancers. Yeah, like reading this article, I'm like, I'm just shaking my head going, what's your point? What's the point of this? Well, his point is that we should be doing it better, which I 100% agree with.

The big bullshit marker that flashed up immediately is when I read this particular part. Contracted work has only become mercenary through the treatment of the freelance worker. Where tech has succeeded in creating hundreds of thousands of independent contractor positions, it has also led the way in reimagining how we may treat them and reward them for their work.

Oh, really? Yes, they have, actually. But not in the way they think. Not in the way they think. They're doing it the wrong way. Yeah, at least he does call out Uber and Lyft and all of those guys in the article. That was pretty decent. Well, I mean, again, you know, one of the arguments that we've made a million times on this very podcast is that Uber and Lyft are not tech companies.

They're fucking taxi cab companies with an app. Yeah, the app is how they get – it's basically logistics. They're a logistics company. It's a logistics company, so they're not tech companies. So, you know, I think it's a good think piece in terms of, sure, we could go this direction.

But the way that we go that direction is we either socialize as a nation so that the basic needs are met, or the concept of an independent contractor changes radically from what companies treat it as now. That's it. End of story.

Yeah, but soon it's not going to be we, since you're buggering off, you bastard. Going to the socialist great white north. Anyway, so the great streaming consolidation has begun for me because I get CBS All Access right now.

And as we know, well, Paramount Plus or whatever the fuck they're going to call it next week. Paramount Plus, yeah. So I saw a deal and I took the deal. I canceled my CBS All Access and then I signed up for CBS plus Showtime through my Apple TV.

And then I got Showtime and basically I get Showtime for like a couple bucks a month now and CBS All Access for about the same price. Yeah, I think we talked about it. It was $9.99 to get CBS All Access and Showtime through Apple.

Right. Or it was $9.99 for CBS All Access in and of itself ad free. Right. Yes. Well, here's what I was, here's what I was, let me explain what I was doing. I was doing the $5.99 a month for CBS All Access with ads. Yeah, that's what I'm doing.

So that was the ad version. Yeah, exactly. But if you go to the CBS All Access site, if you would like to add Showtime onto your package, it brings it up to $14.99 a month. Ah. So you can go to Apple and save an extra five bucks, which is what I did. Yeah. So as these things come around, I see a lot of people, if you're going to be a savvy, you know, streaming consumer, you're going to have to spend an inordinate amount of time doing all this bullshit shuffling to at least find the right deals and move things around.

Well, that's what we've said was going to happen. You know, as soon as we started to talk about cord cutting and all that, I was just, they're going to nickel and dime you, and it's all going to be deals, and it's going to be, okay, if I switch my phone from Verizon to AT&T, then now I can get this, and you have to weigh the cost benefit over everything.

And basically, they find a way that you never win. Right. And you have to time it just right, so you're not paying for an extra month of the previous one that you're moving. Yep. It's, I mean, we covered this literally seven and a half years ago, and it's finally coming true, but you have to, I mean, there's going to, you know what we should start is a website on basically how to save money on streaming.

I was just saying, instead of doing this podcast, we could probably just start a subscription-based website. Of course. Yes, exactly. Which basically told you, here's how to get what you want to get at the cheapest you can possibly get it and how to package it together. And it would be a full-time job. It would actually probably involve more work than this podcast currently involves, but we'd probably make a lot more money.

I was going to say, we might actually make some money. There's the difference. So instead, we'll probably just throw those tips in here all the time for free on this show. I don't know, man. Streamcheap.com. That has a nice ring to it. Yeah, you go see if you can find that. It's probably already gone.

Probably. Probably. Well, anyway, so at least, you know, that's happening. So I'm keeping an eye out for those deals. So if our listening audience runs across any of those cool deals, send them our way. We generally see them because we follow 5,000 articles a week. But every now and again, you find something neat, as it were.

So I did end up still keeping Spotify, though. Yeah, I pay for Spotify. Just if nothing else, out of guilt for the music industry, I will probably continue to keep paying for Spotify. Oh, God. Don't even get me started. There was one article that I forgot to put in here where Daniel Eck just started, like, a $1.2 billion fund for moonshots and, like, AI and stupid shit like that.

And I'm like, why don't you pay the fucking artists? He could have taken that $1.2 billion and spread it out over all the artists on Spotify so they could pay their goddamn rent. Exactly. I'm like, you know, you greedy piece of shit. Well, that's the thing. I read the article and I'm just like... That's the thing, isn't it?

It's really hard to take any of these motherfuckers seriously when they're sitting on... When they've got a billion dollars to spend on another startup that'll make them more money or another fund that'll make them more money, but they aren't paying any of the fucking people that have actually made them that money.

I know. I know. It's just like, come on. It's revolting. It is. It's really disgusting. Let them eat cake. Get out the guillotines. I'm with those Bezos guys now. I know. Seriously. It's just like, come on. Oh, my God. So, I don't know. We talked about the watch battery problem last episode.

And I found a couple of different places and different fixes and tips and tricks. And some were basically unpair and repair your watch. That was the big one that everybody said. That takes all day. It takes all day. Fuck that noise. But the one thing that I did find that worked a little bit was background app refresh was turned on by default now.

This is the old Bluetooth problem. Every upgrade Bluetooth comes back on. They turned on background app refresh for every single app that's on your watch. So, you go through and turn that off. It was fine. But then they came out with an update, which was supposed to be fixes for other things. But I think they snuck in a battery fix in there because my watch seems to be doing much better now.

It's back to almost normal. Yeah. My watch battery aspect is completely back to normal. My phone battery is also back to normal. But I don't know if that's because I took off that stupid contact tracing app that nobody else is using. So, it's either that or the update that came with it.

But my watch is still having two significant issues. And I think this is just Apple saying, you have an Apple Watch 3. Time for you to pony up some more cash. My Apple Watch will reboot randomly two to three times a day for no reason.

And it still flashes on at night no matter what. Okay. So, the update didn't fix either of those issues. Okay. Well, yeah. Well, I mean, it is time to upgrade. Come on. No, it's not. The watch is barely two. It's a watch.

No, it's not. It's a computer on your wrist, dude. It is not a watch. Whatever. I'm not giving him another $300. It works just fine except for the fact that it doesn't work just fine. I was going to say, it doesn't work just fine. In the news.

Saw this one over at NBCnews.com. Strange place to find actual news. You never think that the big three are going to be giving you news anymore. Actually, just a quick aside. I've added them all to my rotation. It used to just be like Wall Street Journal, like newspapers. I've put most of the big network news back in my rotation because they actually have good journalism because they can actually afford it.

Yeah, they're still doing pretty good work. I'm surprised. I'm very surprised. Well, a former YouTube content moderator describes the horrors of the job in a new lawsuit. So Jane Doe is suing YouTube for having to watch murders, abortions, child rape, animal mutilations and suicides and basically drove her freaking mad, which obviously it would.

And here's the weird thing. It doesn't say if she was a contractor or not, but it says YouTube's wellness coaches weren't available for people who worked evening shifts and were not licensed to provide professional medical guidance, the suit says. It also alleges moderators had to pay for their own medical treatment when they sought professional help.

Sorry, YouTube. You're going to get whatever you deserve on this one. YouTube isn't. Here's the problem. She's working for a contracting firm, Calabra, and she probably signed a contracting firm with Calabra. And I'm sure YouTube has a 7,000 page legal agreement with Calabra for their contracting.

Yes, as we've discussed before with what happened with Facebook and all of the contractors for moderation. Yes. Okay, big tech. You want to fix the freelance economy? Hire all of your content moderators. Hire internally. It is an extremely, you know, it's a quarter of your business to do this.

It's 99% of your job. If you want to be just a platform, you have to be, you have to be, you have to take care of what's on your platform. Yeah. So, you know, hire these people, treat them well, because these are the frontline workers for you. And they're, they, this job is not easy. It is a terrible job.

It's a horrible job. And outsourcing it just makes you look like a bunch of fucking douchebags. So, well, oh wait, maybe they just are forgot about that. There's, there's that there's Occam's razor here. You know, are we trying to save money or are we just a bunch of douchebags? Oh, you know, it's, yes, it's, it's the douchebag conundrum.

Anyway, so, uh, this one's a weird one. I, Jeff Bezos is going to basically start taking your kids to school for you. Some kids, underserved kids. Underserved kids. Yes. And he's opening up Montessori type schools and, uh, where the child will be the customer.

First off, as a parent, go ahead, go ahead. As a parent, I do not want my child referred to as a customer. Exactly. Way to, way to like get that capitalism burned in their brain that you, sir, are a customer. No, no, no, no, no, no.

I, uh, my kid is a student, not a customer. That is the worst fucking branding I've ever heard in my life. It just reminds me, it reminds me of Tyler Durden and his speech at the bar. He's like, what are we? We're consumers. Why do I know what a duvet is? Because I'm a consumer and your children are going to know, oh, you know, Amazon paid for my education.

So I, I, I am a dutiful consumer and customer of Amazon. So yeah, get them young, brainwash them young. But, uh. It's a horrible idea. Absolutely horrible idea. I mean, I, I don't mind the, look, I love the fact that he's considering throwing his money in and trying to help underserved kids.

Step away from it. I want this like eight steps removed from Bezos. Just, just provide the money and let other people do all this stuff. And don't, don't, don't call the children customers. And also just to flashback to you really quickly. I know what a duvet is because I'm an adult and I'm classy.

Not because I'm a consumer. Yeah. Because I like to have women over to my house sometime and you know, they like to snuggle under a duvet. That's, that's how that works. Yes. You don't want to stain sheet. No, no, you don't, but you can get a new one on Amazon basics really cheap.

All right. And pivoting over from Amazon to Walmart, we've all been scratching our heads, trying to figure out why the hell Walmart wants in on Tik TOK. And, uh, it's led to a thousand different jokes and many of which we've repeated here. And somebody thinks they've cracked the code over at Vox at recode and they have an article called why Walmart thinks Tik TOK is the future of its business.

And the TLDR on this one is, uh, they're going to be the e-commerce fulfillment for Tik TOK, which will eventually try to sell shit on his platform, which will eventually drive away everybody that is there in the first place. Well, no, here's the thing.

Look at, look at your wife. Your wife finds ads on Instagram that she really likes and she buys things. Now, if your wife just happened to be on Tik TOK instead of Instagram, Walmart would be getting the money instead of Zuckerberg. But Instagram hasn't quite even cracked it yet. So Walmart may even have a point here because there's still very few instances where you can actually just click on something and buy it through Instagram.

It's mostly just their ad sales are really, really well. Walmart is definitely going in hard on Tik TOK in that we're going to be straight up the platform. If you, if you see an ad, or if you see a post from an influencer, hashtag ad, nobody gives a shit about that anymore. And you click on it right away, it'll get, it's going to take you straight to our fulfillment centers and we're going to, we're going to, and our e-commerce centers and we're selling it to you immediately directly.

Of course, who knows if that'll ever happen. We'll give 30% to Tim Cook and Nick Cadre. Exactly. Or the workaround is it, is to just actually open the ad in Safari and you're, you're clear. And I have bought things off Instagram.

I bought, I bought a lot of stuff off Instagram actually. Um, especially after six Guinness, especially after six Guinness, I've actually got something that I bought that'll be up in apps and do dads very shortly. Um, the thing about it though, is the great part about these, uh, I, I covered this, this tip and trick long ago on the show when, and what, as soon as Instagram started doing ads for like that anybody could, you know, sell stuff on, it's like, okay, you click on the ad, you see how much it costs.

You copy and paste the title of whatever it is, put it into Amazon and you can get it for a third of the price. Right. So I don't know if Walmart has, uh, engineered around that or not, but it is Walmart. So they do sell stuff pretty cheap anyway. Yeah, they're good at that. So I'm, I'm sure that'll work well.

So it actually does kind of make a little bit of sense if TikTok was going to allow them to go ahead and do that, which if it's theoretically a U S company now. Yeah. We'll see how that goes. Anyway, nepotism, um, Google maps has actually started to put out a new layer on their map to show you, uh, uh, COVID-19 density to wherever you're going, which is, I think, pretty cool.

It's not in mine yet. I tried it. I don't have it yet, but yeah, I tried to load it as well. And I'm curious about where they're mining that information from since Johns Hopkins. Okay, good, but they're the only reliable ones left. Exactly. So you get it from Johns Hopkins and then that that's where you build your, your data.

And it's based on people per 100, like cases per 100,000 and it's color coded and all that good stuff. But, uh, yeah, I, I think this is actually a pretty good little use of Google maps. You know, it's like, okay, am I going into a hot zone? Well, I mean, we've kind of given up on the fact that people are staying at home because they aren't so I, I suppose being well-informed is pretty good.

Sturgis, not good. Don't go there. Sturgis was dumb. Sturgis was just dumb. Okay. I think we can all agree Sturgis was dumb. Um, but you know, around here, I don't know what you've seen lately, but, uh, at least here in our little slice of Southern California, people are respecting the mask rule.

You know, I go out all the time now because everybody is basically following the rules. People are walking around each other, staying far apart. I can tell you exactly what it's like here because I'm in a community that people flock to on weekends during the week.

Uh, locals, all good. Everything's good. People are wearing their masks. I have noticed that people have stopped crossing streets and things like that, but at least they mask up. So that's fair enough. And we're outdoors and you know, it is what it is. Uh, weekends, total shit show because that's when everybody comes into town from, from outside, from other parts of LA.

So, and they're not so much. Nobody's, nobody's wearing a mask coming in. Exactly. So I would like them to pay attention to these sorts of maps and, you know, be aware of like when you go to a, when you go to a different place, when you're going to go ahead and exercise your right and get around the, get around the city and get around your state, uh, mask up.

It's nice. It's neat. It's neat. Uh, yeah, but I've definitely noticed that, uh, you know, during the day and during the week, you know, we all, you know, we all tip our hat and say, how do you do? And, and, you know, separate as we go. Granted, I have a separation device called 120 pound Rottweiler that I'm out walking.

So people are going to, people are going to move to the other side of the street anyway. So I recommend if you can't get a mask, get a Rottweiler. Right. But I think this was good. This is good on Google for this one. All right. Excellent. I've got some news about AI. Yes.

Yeah. GPT-3, uh, the, the GPT-2 was the so dangerous, uh, uh, open source AI that we were not going to release it to the public. And then they turned around and didn't started to license it. And then they released a newer version that's even better. And one can only assume more dangerous.

Um, well, we read the article on the show, so yeah, we know how dangerous it can be. Microsoft has announced that it is, and I'm scratching my head on this exclusively licensed open AI sophisticated GPT-3 language model that can generate disturbingly human-like texts and applications ranging from commercial bots to creative writing.

They've already invested $1 billion last year to become their exclusive cloud partners, and they will now get access to the language tech for itself and it's for Azure cloud customers. So, um, they've also gained access to the source code that it could integrate into its own product. So prepare for a disturbing and terrifying clippy.

I am so, I'm so surprised that, uh, Bezos didn't outbid them on this one because I'm a little surprised as well. Cause this seems to be the, the winning game in town right now, man, you put GPT-3 and uh, and the lady in the tube, and then you, you really are getting really close to Skynet.

Um, but the thing that has me scratching my head is, is that the article says exclusively licensed, but at the same time, open AI has said that others can continue to use the model. The deal has no impact on continued access to the GPT-3 model through open AI's API and existing and future users of it will continue building applications with our API as usual, which does not mean exclusively licensed.

Exclusively licensed. Exactly. They keep using that word, but I don't think it means what they think it means. I spent, I think I, sometimes I think when we re-brand our show, it should just be words matter. Yeah, no, I, I don't understand that one bit. I mean, granted, it'd be great if I could just spin up an Azure, uh, instance and start using GPT-3 cause that would be kind of fun.

But, uh, if I can just go to open AI and use it anyway, then yeah, it doesn't make any sense. And you know what I've just figured out is my new mission in life is to start up a company in which I can get a billion dollars of investment and provide exclusive rights to them while still letting everybody else use it.

Exactly. That, that is my new goal in life. Oh man. You know, Elon really did, uh, he, he really did sell somebody a bill of goods when he invested in open AI because- He really did. You know, a good chunk of that, that money is going to him. Oh God. And it's just, it's still, it's a head scratcher because open AI is, you know, they're building these things and Elon Musk is the one that keeps saying AI is going to destroy the world, but he's investing in it and making it and making money on it.

He who, he who controls the space controls the universe, Jason. Yes, that's true. That is true. Oh, and, uh, now this is over from the verge and I want to, I want to caveat this.

So say the, the title of the article is Facebook is turning VR into a platform, but some indie developers fear its power. Um, I would just like to say Facebook is turning into Apple. That's, that's what they could have done because this entire article is about, uh, mainly this guy named Guy Godin who created an app for Oculus Rift called virtual desktop.

And, uh, what it lets you do is create a desktop in VR and, uh, you can tie it to your PC, right? Right. Well, you know, Facebook says, well, that's kind of cool. We should do that. And, you know, they're working on it.

And, uh, he's been kicked off the platform a couple of times and comes back and he's like, he says every year at Oculus connect, I'm crossing my fingers. Well, you know what, dude, just make some phone calls, get the zuck on the horn and just, just get hired by Facebook and liquidate because they're going to eat your lunch.

So just do it and get a job at Facebook. If this is what you really want to do, get inside Oculus and make good software because this is the Apple model. They find something they like and they just take it. They build it into the platform and Bob's your uncle. Well, I mean, this isn't exactly new for Facebook.

Facebook has been doing this since day one. So now they're just doing it in this particular arena. So they've been doing it since they got pissed off at Snapchat. Yes. That's really it. It's like, oh, well, Snapchat did this. Let's do that too. You know, after they bought Instagram, it was just basically a free for all.

Oh, wait, Facebook actually is based on the model that my space did. Friendster did. Oh, yeah, you're right. They have actually been stealing everybody else's ideas since day one. Well, look, it's a long play model as well, because eventually there's going to be sales done through VR and the whole point will be then Facebook will have their store and they'll take 30% of your sales.

Mm hmm. Yeah, that's OK. I still want to try that new Oculus. It looks pretty sweet. Although I've used mine for a total of like three hours since I got it because I've just been so damn busy. I'm just like I got it when when business was down and I was really bored and now business has kind of picked back up and I'm like, I don't have time to go play in virtual reality.

I need to play in reality for a while because bills, you know. But anyway, and this next one is Brian, we're going to have we're going to have a little chat about this one because I'm sure you have thought. I was going to stay away from this one. I was shocked you put it in the notes.

OK. Facebook vows to restrict users if US election descends into chaos. I would like to say, well, it already has. So what are they restricting at this point? But yeah, they're saying that they're going to restrict the circulation of content on its platform.

If things go awry and do we really trust them to do anything? No, I mean, I have heard some grumbles and some rumbles and I've seen some articles talking about how social media companies and ad companies, web web ad companies in general are going to put a kibosh on any political ads post election, meaning, you know, say after November 3rd, as we all know, it's going to happen.

There will be a contested election. They're not going to take any political ads on either side. So Trump's rigged ads that he's been crafting will probably not air. Theoretically, that's what people seem to be saying. And let's be honest, this is a partisan discussion.

It's not going to be Biden's team running inflammatory false ads after the election. It's going to be Trump's party. And they're already prepped. I mean, we all know that they're already ready. They're ready for this.

They have ads ready to go. And all these companies are coming out and saying, OK, well, you know what? If this happens, we're not going to run any political ads post election day. Good. I would like to I would like to point out that the flaw in this plan, you're going to take away the power to the person who loses in this, which would well, it loses in the public court of opinion, which is probably going to be Biden.

He's going to be the, you know, the subject of most of the ads. It gives it takes away his power to retort because the president of the United States already has a megaphone with the White House briefing room and the mainstream media. So I think that this might be kind of a backfire situation here.

I mean, you might have a Ralph Nader thing going on. I don't know. I mean, the president is increasingly calling out the mainstream media. So if the mainstream media is lying, he can't use the mainstream media as his megaphone because they'll probably be Fox News. Come on. OK, Fox.

And well, you can't stop Fox News unless you just, you know, got nothing there that won't get me in significant. We can't say anything that will not have pellet black helicopters showing up at our house in about 25 minutes. So, yeah, I think shutting this, shutting this down will actually have a beneficial effect.

I really do. I think and I don't care. It doesn't matter to me who wins. Well, yes, it does. What I'm what I'm saying is I want an accurate count and I want a real I want a real, real judgment of what's happening and I'm willing to take my time and and not listen to it.

What I would like is is a is a pledge not just from social media companies. I would like a pledge from all media outlets to be fair and balanced and count things as they come in. Do not speculate. Do not bring up your accurate cast bullshit. Do not run 24 seven coverage where you're breathlessly talking about every single ballot found stuffed in the ass of some fucking Barney the dinosaur character somewhere, which is what we're going to get.

I want the I want the media to take a pledge to fucking chill. Like it's not going to happen, though. No, it's not going to happen. So I think it's a good move that that that the social media companies are talking about this. I don't it'd be nice if they were doing it ahead of time.

Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, yeah, I'm sorry. Putin is just licking his chops right now. Let's just be honest with that. He's just like, yes. Yeah. It's going to be a goddamn mess. But, you know, here we are. So it is what it is. It's you're getting out.

So good for you. Yeah, I am. You have it. You have a guest room, right? Four floors, man. Four floors. Is your kid allergic to dogs? Oh, yeah. Well, no, my kid isn't. But my wife is. So damn it. Well, we can we can. We got a garage. You can move into the garage. There we go.

OK. Grumpy old geek studio north. So to have to pivot away from the political discussion and just to the stupid we have been drinking, I would like to preface that. There was one site yet that hadn't launched onto stories and all that sort of stuff, but they found it.

Pinterest. Oh, God. Pinterest. They found a new way to break copyright law and steal other people's images, right? Exactly. Pinterest is stepping up its efforts to lure influencers to its platform with a new set of Instagram-like features. They have introduced two new features for creators who want to have more permanent presence on their platform.

Story pins, which is its version of stories, and creator profiles, which allow influencers to show off their work. Story pins, which is now available to a select group of creators, looks a lot like stories on other platforms. Shocking. So photos and vertical videos with overlayed text, voiceover narration.

These do not need to link back to an outside website because, of course, they're trying to push stuff on Pinterest itself, which is stolen and copywritten and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Brian, I would like to ask you one simple question.

Have you ever heard of a Pinterest influencer? No. Exactly. That's my point. Actually, that's not true. I have to say that's not true. Sure, they're not big and they don't make the cultural zeitgeist like Instagram and things of that nature.

But certainly, I mean, I know people that are really into baking and they follow certain people's pinboards and things of that nature. And, you know, what I found, actually, I find myself on Pinterest a lot these days, sadly. And, of course, it's mostly copywritten and stolen material.

Well, look, I'm looking for print out coloring pages for my kid to keep him occupied during the day because sometimes you just need a fucking half hour and there's nothing like he's totally into the planets. I'll print out like seven different planets and then he can color them in and it buys me a half an hour.

And they're all on Pinterest, all of them. And they're all stolen from somewhere else where you would actually have to pay for them. So be it. I need my sanity. I'm a coloring book. I'm a coloring book. So I think that there certainly are, to some degree, influencers on Pinterest. There are people that have created great collections of things in certain zeitgeist dressmaking.

But are they making money, though? No, of course not. That's what I'm saying. They're stealing other people's content. How could they be making money? That's what I'm asking. Because influencers on TikTok and Instagram, these people get like hundreds of thousands of dollars for their ads when they pimp a product.

So I'm just wondering if there is an analog to that, to what's going on on Pinterest. No, but obviously that's what they're trying to build over there because they realize... Pinterest makes all the money. Never mind. Nobody cares. That's what's going on there. We got to be like everybody else now.

I can't wait for LinkedIn stories. Are they already there? Are they there already? Yeah, they are. I think they launched this week. Shit, man. We got to go make one where we pretend that we've gotten fired and we're escorted out by security with our cardboard box. And then we just say, I need a job.

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

How's fall treating you there, Dave? Summer's gone. Remember the great mood I was in last week? Oh, yeah. I was actually going to write you, because it was only a few hours later, really. Well, then, yeah, Ruth Bader Ginsburg died that night, which made me think, like, this is what I get for expressing publicly that I was in a good mood.

Well, I actually had to edit the outro for the show, because the first thing I said was, well, nobody important died this week, so I guess we got no shout-outs. And then immediately, I took that out, because I don't want to get blamed for that one again. We're still already on the hook for David Bowie. Yeah, it's hubris, right?

Hubris gets you every single time. Yes, you taunted the universe, and the universe laughed in your face, Dave. That's right. That's right. So, you know, we'll go with neutral. Neutral. Just sending that out to the universe. We take the good. We take the bad, right?

Take it all. There you have. Like, half of our listeners have no fucking clue what we were just saying. No, but the other half are doubled over laughing. Oh, I'm sure they are. We've got a little news, but first I want to mention that there will be no security segment next week, because we're doing one show next week.

So, everybody, get your Dave fix in right now, because he gets the day off. Right, right. Give you a day of rest, Dave. Don't know what I'll do with all that free time. Start a new podcast. Exactly. No, shh, shh, shh.

Someone might hear you. The dulcet tones of the geese of Baltimore. That's what else I have that one. Yeah, yeah. You know, we were talking about, over on Caveat, we were talking about helicopters, which is something we've talked about here.

And for me, how anxiety-inducing they are. The brief period of time when I worked in Baltimore City, where there are always helicopters overhead, and I hated it. And I actually heard from a listener who said that he was a former soldier who spent time in Afghanistan, and for him, helicopters were, like, they would put him to sleep at night, because he knew if there were helicopters overhead, he was much safer, which I thought was interesting.

As long as it's their helicopters, not the other. Yeah, yeah, right. But, you know, he had a pleasant association, a comforting association with overhead helicopters. I'm born and bred in L.A., so it's pretty, I'm pretty used to it, too.

It's not something that ever really bothers me. The only time I get freaked out is when I hear them coming in super low, and then it's like, oh, boy, that means something's happening right outside. Right, and you hear the music. What's funny, I mentioned this on the show not too long ago.

We're in the flight path for this military base up north, like a little south of San Francisco, and they've been moving Cobra helicopters and Blackhawks from the base up north down to a little south of L.A., and the flight path is right over my house.

There is nothing like eight Cobra attack helicopters flying above your house at about 110 feet to wake you the hell up. Yeah, they go right off the coast past me as well, so they kind of go over both of our houses, Jason. So it's always a little bit, you know, I can tell, like, if I'm doing a bike ride, all of a sudden everybody turns around and stares out to the ocean, and I look over there, and there's just like, it looks like an invasion.

It's like Red Dawn. It really is. It really is. And those things, I mean, it's not like Blue Thunder where they have whisper mode. These things are loud. Yeah. They are very loud, very intimidating, and, I mean, I can see the face of the pilot. These things are that low, and it's like, man, I would not want to see one of those things coming at me.

But, you know, a well-armed militia is going to take care of everything, right? Oh, yeah, exactly. These fucking idiots. We've got drones, guys. Sorry. Anyways.

Yeah. I saw this one this week, and I thought it was pretty interesting. 179 arrested in massive global dark web takedown. And this goes back to something we've talked about with the old dark web, when the government takes over one of these, you know, dark web websites.

This one was the Wall Street market, and it was seized by the German police. But we've had the Silk Road and Alpha Bay here in the U.S. for takedowns. And then they just sit there, and they watch. They wait. They gather intel. And then when you're at least – They collect their big data. Yes, they do collect their big data.

And when you're least expecting it, boom, they come and get you. And for the German police, this was a good one because they actually got to the actual server for the Wall Street market and could go back through the database and just start tracking everybody. And it's pretty cool because since that's their purview, a lot of these people are outside of their jurisdiction.

So they put together little packets of information saying, hey, guys, would you like to know what's going on in your neck of the woods? Here you go. So they were very friendly with other law enforcement agencies and sent out these info packets, and people have been moving on them.

And one of my favorite ones is – this one's from Ohio. It was a group called Pill Cosby. You've got to give them points for creativity on that one. It's a beautiful name. It's very, very old school, very dial-up modem. Come up with something topical.

Yes, that is true. Very nice. Yeah, and those guys were – they were charged with mailing out over a million pills laced with fentanyl. A million. That's a lot. Normally, I'm fine with like, let's legalize drugs.

It's all good. It's good for the common good. But, you know, fentanyl is evil, and people like sending out counterfeit drugs that basically kill people. You know, take these guys down. The more the merrier. Get them off the streets. So I thought this was a good story. I thought this was a good use of our taxpayer money.

Well, and good to see the international police playing well with each other. You know what I mean? Like the German police going ahead and, hey, we're going to help you all out. Here's what we found. Go get them. Yeah, I agree. And it's always impressive when the word of these global takedowns is released and you see the massive amount of coordination because it all has to happen at once because, of course, communication over the internet is instantaneous.

So to be able to pull something like this off when they're able to grab – nab people around the world in this sort of way is pretty interesting. And then also, of course, you know, it puts everybody on edge and makes them think twice about the markets that they're using, which is part of what they're out to do here as well.

Yep. Scare the crap out of the idiots, you know. It's about it. But it doesn't seem to stop them, you know. I like this. They say, but even if law enforcement is playing an eternal game of whack-a-mole, it's at least gotten extremely proficient at the whacking part. Well, and that's a good thing because as we've talked about a lot of times, we know criminals are inherently lazy.

So maybe the mulling will be going slower than the whacking and that's the only way to get ahead of the game here. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But there is a lot of money in it, so there will still be mulls. I agree. Yeah, wherever there's a market, there's going to be people to fill it.

But I think it's that general disassociation that happens where – and this has happened, I think, as long as computers have had modems where you feel safe behind your computer screen and somehow, you know, disconnected from the bad things you may be doing back from even the days of phone freaking and all that sort of thing.

Yeah, it's definitely – you feel one step removed. It's not like you're running down to the local park to score your weed. That's visceral and you know you're doing something wrong or at least you used to be doing something wrong. It's legal now. If you're going to a park to get your weed in California, you're stupid.

Yeah, go to 7-Eleven for mine. But yeah, I think that that's a general – I mean that – if you take it one step further to something that isn't really illegal, but that's what facilitates trolling and the horrible online congress and conversations that we have these days.

It's because you come up with a name like Bill Cosby and you sit behind your monitor and you feel like you're not connected to yourself anymore. One of the only good things in my opinion that Facebook ever did was forcing real names. It's interesting though.

I – you know, when I got into computers long ago, I thought about the whole hacking thing. But then I kind of knew how the networks worked and I knew that they can catch you. There's – there's – you know, there's no silver bullet for hiding yourself online. If they want to get you, they can get you.

That's why I always stayed on the path of the straight and narrow, at least when it came to – at least when it came to computers. When it came to computers, I did. Yeah, yeah. No, it's a good story though. It's a good one. It is a good story. Yeah, absolutely. Well, here's a bad story for you.

Let's balance it out. Shopify says two support staff stole customer data from sellers. Rogue members of its support team stole customer data from at least 100 merchants. Oopsie. Well, like you were just saying, you're going to get caught.

There will be a trail. And so even if you're on the inside, it certainly facilitates the process of stealing and doing things of that nature. But everything is tracked. You're going to get caught. And I'm glad they caught these people. That's pretty messed up. Yeah, and if you're on the inside, it's even easier to get caught because they have monitoring in place.

At least they should if they're worth their salt, you know. Looking at you, Twitter. You know what this reminds me of? Back in the day when I was in college, so that would have been the very late 80s and the very early 90s, I had a part-time job working at Radio Shack.

I know. Write your own joke. So – but I enjoyed that job very much. But this was back in the day – Don't you really need to have my address every time I bought a battery? Yes. Yes, we did. How else were we going to send you our sale flyers?

How else would you know that Minimus 7 speakers were on sale this week? 50% off. Right. So we had a coworker who was gathering up credit card receipts, not the receipts, the – what's the piece of paper with ink?

The carbons. The carbons. The carbons. Thank you very much. Boy, I haven't said that word in a long time. Yeah, I know where this is going. Yeah, I worked at a bookstore. I had a shady coworker that was doing something very similar. I worked at Kinko's and I was that shady coworker. You can always count on you, Jason.

Somebody had to pay that AOL bill. It wasn't going to be me. Yeah. So this was in the time before they started making the carbons where they would sort of semi-self-destruct when you – and it was in response to this. So we had a coworker who was gathering up the carbons from the trash and then was using them to buy things, who knows what.

But at some point, law enforcement – I think it was the FBI, but I don't remember – came to the store and wanted to speak to a manager and went back and figured out who was scheduled when and when the customers were there and which customer bought what and which person in the store helped out that customer.

And that person was not long – well, certainly was not longer in our store, but I believe also did a little bit of time. Ooh, I got lucky then. Yeah, you did actually. I don't think it was this person's first run-in with the boys in blue.

Yeah, no, I would always get mine from a different shift, always get it from a different shift, never get it from the time you're actually working. And I only used it because you needed a credit card to do the AOL free trial. You know, you'd get 30 hours on the disk.

Here comes the justifications. You had to put in the credit card, and I never used it past the 30 days. No. But you needed credit card numbers. I mean, why try and risk it when you can just cancel it at, you know, hour 29 and not have their card get dinged for it?

So there's – I mean, there are ways to get around things, but – So crooks are lazy and stupid, but Jason was hardworking and smart. Hardworking and ethically crooked. I was an ethical criminal. That's right. One of Michael Jackson's least known songs.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Oh, my. Anyways, we've spent a lot of time talking about data collection and how basically this is the way we've decided our internet is going to go. And instead of paying for things, we will just let them take all of our data so they can send us ads uniquely targeted to us, which are so helpful and make our lives better.

Just like Radio Shack. Just like Radio Shack. Yeah. And there's a new thing out there called The Markup. It's a nonprofit investigative news site, and they've released a new tool called Blacklight, which is designed to present all of the information from any website that you visit to figure out exactly how they're tracking you, who's tracking you, and who's getting the information.

Now, this isn't something real time, which we're starting to see browsers roll out, but you go to Blacklight's site, you enter in the website that you would like, they scan the site, and then they show you exactly how many trackers on it, what they do, and who they're potentially sending your data to, which is kind of cool.

Yeah. Transparency that I'm sure most websites are not thrilled about. Yeah. I was looking into this earlier this week. First of all, it's a really interesting tool. Everybody should go check it out, and it's fun to play with. But the other thing about this is if that you're someone who is in charge of a website, and who isn't these days, you should go put your own website through it to see if you're not inadvertently sharing information.

Because as the folks who built this point out, if you're using, for example, the free version of Discus, there are all kinds of tracking tools that are piggybacked onto that to sell ads. Yes. If you have Facebook links, there's all kinds of things.

So it is probably more likely than not that you may have some of these tracking tools have their tentacles into you that you may not even be aware of. Yes, especially if you as a company have gone cheap and decided to use free versions of everything to build your site.

Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Absolutely. No, it's a cool tool. Yeah. And I would like to just tell you right now, I just scanned GOG.show. No ad trackers found on the site. Zero third-party cookies. Tracking that evades blocking cookies was not found. Session recording services not found.

We did not find this website capturing keystrokes. Facebook Pixel not found on this website. And Google Analytics remarketing audiences feature not found. So you are safe to go to GOG.show slash 475 for the show notes for this episode. There you go.

There you go. At least there's one place on the web that's still pure. That no one who would have thought. Who would have thunk? It's GOG. That's right. It says no ad tech companies were found on this website. That's right. Because we're stupid and we don't monetize properly.

I know. I was about to say, this could explain why we don't make any money and have no listeners. Exactly. Shit. Right. Right. Yeah. Oh, God. Well, I'm sure you guys have seen the Amazon announcements for all their cool toys that came out this week.

And I use the word cool very facetiously. But there is one that I actually thought was pretty decent. And that's Ring's traffic stop feature on its new dash cam that they're going to sell for $200, which you can probably buy for a hell of a lot cheaper somewhere else.

But this is basically a camera that you put on your dashboard and one camera faces out, one camera faces in. And if you're getting pulled over, you can say, hey, lady in my car, I'm getting pulled over by the popo. Start recording. And it will then start pushing audio and video up to the cloud.

And I found it very interesting that they decided to promote that quite as heavily as they are, given their hand-in-hand relationship with the police for their ring cameras. Isn't that interesting? Yes. That's right. Oh, yes.

Here, have some data over here. And over here, just stop being nasty to people. Okay, let's see what we can do here. Now, there are a lot of privacy concerns about this because if you're, say, in a state like California, which is a two-party consent state, how does this work?

Do we have to put stickers on the window? Oh, well, that doesn't work because you have to roll down your window when the popo pulls up and tries to ask for your license and registration and insurance card. You don't roll down your back window. You would just put it there. That's what I mean. So everybody is going to have to put stickers everywhere saying you are being recorded.

I'm pretty sure – well, first of all, I'm pretty sure – I know for a fact that here in Maryland, which is also a two-party consent state, that that does not apply to the police. So if the police pull you over and you record them, they cannot come after you for wiretapping.

Forgot about that. Good point. Yeah. And somebody – I mean the reason I know that is because somebody tried it. We may have even talked about that on the show a couple years ago. There was a guy who – the guy was being an absolute jerk on his motorcycle out on like Route 95 or something.

Remember that? Yeah. The cop came up and pulled a gun on him and so – but he had a GoPro on his helmet. He published the video footage and in retaliation, the police tried to come after him for the wiretapping laws saying that he didn't – it wasn't two-party consent.

Yeah, because there was audio on – there was audio on the video. That's why. Exactly. Exactly. And I believe it was Maryland's attorney general or someone high up in law enforcement in Maryland said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Nice try, gentlemen, but no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Put it back in your pants, Barney Fife.

This is going to court. Exactly, exactly. So – but, you know, it's – that is something that Ben Yellen and I have talked about over on Caveat is if you have these devices in your home, if you have these devices in your car, for example, if you have a dash cam in your car and it's always recording audio, do you need to have some kind of warning for the passengers in your car that they are going to be recorded?

Yeah. I think you do. I think you would. I mean, you know, the argument is, of course, it's your own home, it's your own space or whatever, but this is a different world now. It's not like – I mean, you know, you can record 4K video and pristine audio of anybody that comes into any property you own now with them having no idea.

I mean, the cameras are so small now, you can really hide them and nobody would ever know. And that's – right. Kind of weird. This actually begs the question about Uber and Uber drivers recording video and audio when you get in a car. I was never told that, you know, this ride was going to be recorded.

But if they're recording my audio in California, are they outside the scope of the law? Well, I know, for example, with Airbnb that there have been issues with that because I am allowed to videotape you in my house.

That is legal. So if you are a guest in my house, which you are when you're renting Airbnb, I am allowed to videotape you when you are a guest in my house. Right. Even though, you know, it's against Airbnb's terms of service.

But there's nothing illegal about me making a recording of you when you're inside of my house. So I don't know how that extends to the car, but I'll ask Ben about it. Yeah, that's – yeah, get Ben yelling on the horn because I want to know about this one.

Do you remember the story? One of my favorite stories was the guy in Arizona who found the security camera in the Airbnb he was staying at. And then he took the camera and took it to the police station and said, this guy is recording me. And then they arrested him for stealing the camera because it wasn't actually his property. That was a fun one.

Insult to injury. Exactly. Wonderful. So I think this is going to be an interesting little device. I just hate rings so much. I would like one of these because, you know, we have a problem with people breaking into our cars here.

All around my neighborhood, people's cars get broken into all the time. It would be great to have these things. You probably shouldn't even bother because given Ring's track record with the cameras, the camera wouldn't turn on and start recording until after the person is left with your stereo. Right, right.

Exactly. Exactly, yeah. It will show the window shattering and then that's it. Right, right. It will trigger with the sound of the jack coming down and then running away. Or it will show the Ring camera in their pocket as they run away and they take the camera with them.

You just hear it rustling. Yeah, exactly. How different is this than all those ones, the cheap ones you see in every taxi cab and every Uber and all that sort of thing? Couldn't you just buy one of those? Those record locally usually. They don't send it to the cloud. It's the cloud recording that you're interested in.

Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, the way we got around it here was when we want to, you know, if we thought that they were in the neighborhood that night, I take my, the Logitech circle cameras. Those work on, they kind of have a rechargeable battery built into them, but the actual power cord when you put it on the base is USB.

So I would put one of those on the dashboard and plug in a USB power brick and let it sit there and record that way. You could get a good 12 hours out of a charge on it. But at least that was going up to the cloud all the time.

And of course, you know, 15 to 20 times I did it, nobody broke in. But don't know if that's because maybe they saw the camera sitting on the dashboard because, you know, there's the lights on the camera that show that it's doing the night vision. Yeah. So I don't know. Right. And there are other devices for dash cams that are designed, you know, the backup batteries for dash cams that are designed for that.

And they specifically, they use a different kind of lithium battery. I want to say like a lithium polymer or something that is much more able to handle the temperature differentials in cars and that sort of thing. So they exist.

They're not cheap, but they're out there. If you want to, if there's something you want to hardwire in, those are available. That's cool. Yeah. I think with this though, right after these come out and we figure out what the sticker looks like that you're supposed to put on your car. Just put on the sticker. You put the sticker on.

That's pretty much it. You don't even need the camera. You don't need the camera. You need the sticker. Yeah. Yeah. This house is protected by a Radio Shack security system. Yep. If you break it, you will get mailings the rest of your life. My dad used to sell West Tech security systems and that's what he, you know, when people couldn't afford the security systems he was selling, he would just give them a couple of stickers and say, here, just put these on your door.

It's just as good. Yeah. Nice. Nice. Yeah. Yep. Cool. And finally, I just, I found a really interesting infographic for the security world for those people out there that still aren't using a password manager or anything of that nature.

Now, the data here was sourced from howsecureismypassword.net. You can see the graphic over at gog.show where you will not be tracked and we will not monetize you at all because we are morons, but that's the deal. So it is time it takes for a hacker to brute force your password and it goes from four to 18 characters, numbers only, lowercase letters, upper and lowercase letters, numbers, upper and lowercase letters, and symbols.

And as somebody pointed out, the caveat here is there is no rate limit being considered on this particular graphic. So if a website is smart enough to say, you've tried 17 passwords in one minute, we're going to shut your account down for an hour, this does not apply.

But, you know, a lot of sites don't bother with that, so I guess it still applies. It is fascinating how quickly people can hack into something and then you can get to something where there's a seven quadrillion years before they could hack it. Right. Yeah. And I think a lot, I think this is if you're, you know, the rate limiting is if you're using the password form.

But if you have the hash table from the passwords from the database and you want to run it against the hash table and try and get in, I think that's probably what these numbers reflect for instantly and 25, you know, because if you have that, then there is no rate limit and you just, you just run a brute force attack on it and see what comes back.

But yeah, I'm trying to do this onto an actual website would, wouldn't be that feasible because even, even if you're the rate limits off, you're going to kill the server. Right. You're practically DDoSing them. Yep. Not practically. You are. Absolutely.

Yeah. I think charts like this are really helpful for kind of showing your friends and family. Yes. To say, okay, look, here it is. So how long, how many characters is your password and how complex is it? Because, okay, two minutes we're in and it can really open people's eyes.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And again, it's like, you know, it's one thing if you're using it for Domino's pizza and you don't have your credit card stored in there. But anything with your credit card stored, if you're not using a very strong password, you are dumb. Yep. Yep. Speaking of rate limiting, something I've been thinking about is how to rate limit Halloween candy this year.

Because I suspect we're still going to get some kids coming around trick-or-treating. And I don't want to interact with them because of COVID, of course. Mm-hmm. But I still would like to have them able to get candy.

And, of course, I can't just leave a bowl out on the front porch because then some kid like Jason is going to come along and he's just going to dump the entire thing of candy into his bag and off he goes. So I've been thinking about is there some way that you can have a button that you press and a piece of candy falls out of the sky, you know?

Well, you have a drone. You have a drone. So you can put the candy on the drone. So you can just drop that. I was thinking a candy trebuchet. So you can sit on the porch and just basically fling the candy at them and make the little buggers do some work to catch it. I'll tell you exactly what a friend of mine up in Seattle has done.

He's pretty crafty and he was dealing with this as well because, as we all know, Halloween is going to mostly be canceled. Nobody's going door to door. And if they do, you want to stay socially distanced. He built a giant, like, alien-looking creature that will sit on his doorstep.

And he can actually – and it's got a big, long tube. So it goes downstairs, a big, long tube that ends in, like, a bowl. And when kids come up, he's going to basically fire candy out of the alien's mouth that will then go straight down to the tube, six feet away, where they can get their candy.

I love it. It's pretty cool. I love it. I've got to find the picture of it and put it in the show notes. That's pretty cool. Yeah. All right. So I just need to find myself a long tube. And a vomiting alien. No, you can build whatever you want. Go Star Wars style. Make it a giant lightsaber that you slide candy down.

Oh, see? Now you're talking my language. I figured I wasn't. That's good. Yes. All right, guys. Well, so nothing next week. So I'll see you guys in a couple weeks, right? Yep. See you in a couple weeks. Enjoy your time off. I will. Cops and doodads.

Ryan, my new laptop arrived. I thought you were broke. 16 inches of beauty. Well, I was broke, and I paid off all my credit cards, and then my credit score dropped 30% – or 30 points. And everybody's like, oh, you need to keep at least 9% on the balance books to keep your credit score up. And I'm thinking, oh, well, I don't really need to keep my credit score up.

But guess what? I have an Apple credit card, and they're charging 0% interest for a year for a new MacBook Pro. So why the fuck not? Do not take financial advice from Jason. Oh, God, no. Oh, definitely God, no. This is – I am the worst. I am the – I think there's a reason – what was it?

Mrs. Shinyside called me Jason Despendipoo. And who was shitting on me earlier for not upgrading my Apple Watch that's only two years old? Well, see? Don't take advice from me. Brian is – he's, you know, practicing what he preaches.

But, man, this thing is big. The funny thing is, it feels big, but it is exactly the same size as my 2015 15-inch. But it's just – it kind of sucks. I got to say, it kind of sucks because the trackpad on this thing is almost the entire bottom of the laptop.

Right. And I'm like, this is just – like, half my – it doesn't work. It doesn't work right. And that stupid touch bar, God, filthy kid toucher bar is what they should call it because, God, you get butt raped all the time when you just, like, roll your fingers across it. And it opens up 17 new documents and sends off emails you're not supposed to.

My wife's had that touch bar for about two years now. She hated it the first year, and now she loves it. So I think you'll eventually come around to it. Yeah, I'm sure I will. But I'm used to being able to rest my fingers on the function keys without anything, you know, happening. And that's not how it works, actually.

Story of your life. Yes. Yes. I put my fingers on it. You put your fingers on the function keys, and they don't work. That's pretty much it. It is the story of my life. But so I spent the last several days getting it set up.

And it's a sad day because this is the last show that we're going to do with my trusty PreSonus Studio 192 because I'm going to move over to the laptop, and I'm going to move to the MixPre-6, which is, you know, a beautiful interface. But I've used this interface for five years now for this show.

Yeah. And I'm going to retire. For a couple of years. For a couple of years. But, dude, the MixPre-6 is small. It's very convenient and handy. It's beautiful. You'll be fine. Well, yeah. Yeah, I know it is. That's the thing. But also, the sound quality is just buttery.

It's so buttery. Those preamps are so good. Link in the show notes for that. Go buy it from our friends at Adorama because it is the best thing ever. I actually bought a MixPre-10 for my new client, and I can't wait to play with it. But, anyway, back to it.

It's been fun setting up a new laptop. I've got to say, it's very Zen-like. It's very Zen-like to do that. I just don't have the time for that shit anymore. I get pissed off. Well, it's having a four-year-old, you know? I would love to sit and play around with a new laptop. But, you know, I would start working on it, and then I'd have a kid smacking keys and deleting things.

And I just don't have the time for that kind of stuff right now in my life. Maybe in a couple more years on this show, I can start talking about, like, getting new tech and setting it all up. But right now, it's like, plug and play or get the fuck out of here. You really think we're going to do this for a few more years? Not in our numbers right now.

Not in our numbers. That's right. I have to do it at night because the dogs like to come over and, you know, we have a new puppy who's a dribbler. So I can't let her anywhere near it. So I can't be working on it during the day. But at night, I'll, like, you know, watch some TV and get it set up. And it's just, it is, for me, very, it's very cathartic and very Zen-like.

And it's just like, ah, it's just nice to have a new machine. And I got to say, they fixed the keyboard. That's the main point of this is they fixed the keyboard. No more butterfly? Oh, God, no. This keyboard feels great. It feels great. So I did a little side-by-side test, like typing on the 2015 and then typing on this.

And it does have a shorter throw for the keys, which is okay. That's fine. But it's not that stupid butterfly keyboard, which is just garbage. But, yeah, man, it's, I got the 16-inch, 32-gig of RAM, 2-terabyte SSD, which was, you know, more than I wanted to pay for.

8-gigabyte graphics card. So that's why I'm getting rid of the PreSonus, my iMac, the whole nine yards. I'm selling all this stuff to, frankly, pay for it. And it's going to be my new machine. So I'm kind of excited. It's the first computer I've bought in, like, four or five years.

I'm sure if we went through the shows, we would find out that's not true. Well, no, no, no. It's the first major computer. I did buy the new Air a while ago. But I'm going to sell that, too, because I just don't need it. You also bought a Mac Mini? That I sold already.

That's gone. But you bought it. Well, I bought it and I sold it because it didn't do the job. I thought it was going to do the job. Okay. So if it doesn't do the job, then I get rid of it, you know? Okay. So I'm just, I've been working my way back to you, babe, as it were, with trying to find the right tech.

But, oh, my God, it's nice. It's so nice. Anyway, let's talk about Amazon. And I think we have these out of order here. I think you should take this away about everything that Amazon announced this week. Okay. I will announce everything except for the thing that you put in the show notes, which is the one I really want to talk about.

But I am excited about some of these things. So we have a new Echo, which is a new round look. Didn't you just buy one last week? I did just buy one last week. I actually don't like the new round look, so I'm glad I did because I like my little squat cube. There's a new dot and a dot clock.

Both will come in round shapes as well. The fabric finishes are nice. Apparently, there's a new one with three different colors, charcoal, glacier, white, and twilight blue. Now, I have a charcoal, so obviously, there was some crossover there. And the charcoal is nice. I really do like it. So it's a very good-looking device.

They have many of the Smart Hub features of the Plus, which is what I just got, as well as compatibility with Amazon Sidewalk, the thing we don't understand. Yeah, that weird thing, yeah. So the price is the same. And again, I will recommend the buyback program because if you send something in now, you'll get a semi-decent price for it, but you get 25% off the new thing, which is nice.

So can't beat that. Blah, blah, blah, post-consumer, recyclable, fabric, blah, blah, blah. Other shit, blah, blah, blah. A lot of stuff about pledging to be like, you know, eco-friendly. Eco-friendly. So, yes, they will apparently, even the Dot will have better sound quality with a 1.6-inch front-firing speaker.

I will believe it when I see it. I was going to say, I believe it when I hear that. I'm never going to own a Dot because I actually like sound quality. That's pretty important to me. That's why that bag of, you know, echoes I gave you, that there were so many Dots in there because they're just garbage. Yeah, they're just garbage. And I seriously doubt the new ones are any better.

The new Eros, we have an Ero 6 and the Ero Pro 6. So, the Ero 6 will be the slightly dome model while the Ero Pro 6 has a slightly square shape. That's about all we know about that. Yeah, I'd see the Ero Pro 6, I'm actually looking forward to.

The one thing that you couldn't tell from the announcement is if they're going to be beacons for the Pro 6. Because I've got, I mean, my current setup is I've got an Ero, like I've got two of the big Ero routers. One where the actual cable modem is.

And then I've got three beacons inside the house. And then in my studio, I've got another one of the big Ero routers. And then everything in my studio is Etherneted into that. Right. Which actually gave me a, like, 35% signal boost.

Yeah, and I didn't see much when I looked through the specs that would make me think that I need to get a new Ero. But if you don't have an Ero yet and you want one, it's probably a good thing. Yeah. Yeah. They are a little bit better. But I wouldn't personally replace if you already had one.

Yeah, there's no reason to replace it. Yeah. We're getting a new show. And I love the show. And this one has a smart follow camera similar to Facebook's portal. I'm not too thrilled about that. Dude, it's creepy. It's creepy. You've got to admit it's creepy. Come on. I think I might get used to it.

What I do like about it is the separation of the speaker from the actual physical monitor itself now, which I think is actually good. Because right now, the way it's built, it's louder in the back than it is in the front. Oh, it's like a mullet. Kind of. Yes. Party in the back, business in the front.

And I think that this separation of the two and having the speaker in the bottom with the monitor slightly raised up is going to fix that so you'll get better audio. But we'll see. So they're calling it a new audio beam forming technology, as well as computer vision.

While you're interacting with Alexa, the device uses the sound localization and computer vision modules to triangulate in and turn the screen directly to face you. Now, here's what I love. Alexa is not identifying a specific person, just a human shape, except for the fact that they're already modeling your voice.

Right. So they can connect the voice to that shape. Exactly. Yeah. So that's a bit troublesome. And they don't really, really mention that at all. But obviously, they've already been able to identify your voice. So now they're going to get your shape to it, too.

So they will be able to identify a specific person. That's kind of bullshit. And since the Echo Show is mainly used in the kitchen, they could actually give you recipes based on your shape and say, you might want to lay off the pasta tonight there, Joe. Actually, they're just going to be double up on butter, fatso.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You'll like it better. Trust me. Oh, God. Anyways, so I'm excited about it. I'm going to get one because I do like the show a lot. And it's kind of cool. So we'll see. And I've given up all privacy, like we've always said on the show.

We're getting new Fire TV sticks with enhanced processors, HDR compatibility, plus Dolby Atmos. No 4K, though. I actually was thinking of getting one of those. No 4K. Yeah. That's kind of stupid. We talked in security about the car alarm a little bit.

So we, yeah, and the dash cam. So I'll skip all of that right now because we talked about that already, which there's some weird stuff. Yeah. They're launching a new gaming streaming service called Luna as a competitor to xCloud and Stadia, and it comes with Twitch integration.

So there's that. I think Luna, I think sleep. Luna, sleep. It's like, why would you name it Luna? You know. Well, I get that. It should be extreme Luna or something like that. I kind of like the fact that they aren't going crazy with their naming. And they also did something very clever with Luna, and they basically built it as a kind of a web app inside of the app so they can get around the Apple 30% tax.

Well, everybody's going to be starting to do that now, right? Yeah, yeah. We didn't even put this in, but there's a whole coalition now about everybody going after Apple. So, yeah, yeah. Apple's on its heels right now. Yeah, they definitely are. But, you know, it's still Apple.

So, yeah, there's still a $2 trillion company. So they're like, screw you guys. I'm going home and swimming in my money. So let's talk about the thing that we have gotten 7,000 messages about from our show since this announcement yesterday. Yes, they have announced a new tiny drone that will autonomously fly around your home and send alerts if it detects intruders, fires, or emergencies while you're away.

Yes, the camera itself, the Amazon Ring with all of its security issues and all the things that we've talked about for years since it first came on the market on this show has now decided it's a good idea to put a drone in your house. The always-home cam is what this is called.

Now, can I ask you a quick question, Jason? Sure thing, sure thing. Because I watched some of the demo videos, but I didn't watch them with sound because kid, wife working, a bunch of other things. My Roomba is loud as fuck. Drones are loud as fuck. Yeah. Is this Amazon Ring drone quiet?

It doesn't matter because it flies around the house when you're away. It does not matter. So does my Roomba, theoretically, does not turn on while I'm at home. It turns on. My Echoes do not start doing random things. They do random things because the technology is not that good yet.

You want to bet me a million dollars that somebody's ring drone isn't just going to take off in the middle of the day while people are home? Oh, I'm sure it is. But that's not the problem. I've read 25 articles about the always home cam. No one, I say this, I say this not to be told you so, we're always right kind of guys, but I'm going to say this, we're always right kind of guys.

No one has talked about the cat problem because if you have a drone flying around your house and you have a cat, that cat will try and kill that drone no matter what, which is going to lead to many always home cat bills because their little paws are going to get chewed up in the props.

Dogs too, they're going to, this is going to, anybody that has an animal, this is the dumbest thing to ever buy, but it's also the dumbest thing to ever buy because it's a dumb fucking product because we have cameras in our homes. We put them in, in strategic locations and you know, this makes no sense from a product development standpoint whatsoever.

This is some nerd who got extra pictures of Jeff Bezos' dick and said, Hey man, I'm going to release these unless you let me make my, my home cam drone, because this is the dumbest product I have ever heard of in my entire life. Yeah, I see no use case scenario for this unless you're a super villain with a gigantic mansion inside of a mountain.

Yeah, there's, there's literally no reason to buy one of these. This is the dumbest thing ever. And they're like, Oh, but what if there's smoke and you have to like, go find out where it is. Well, if you properly placed your in-home cameras already, you don't need to know that. I'm sorry. What if there's smoke?

You mean the fire alarms that we can buy that are connected to our phones? That are connected to everything. Exactly. Okay. That's covered. Yep. Yeah. Everything, everything here is covered. So why would you need a drone to fly around? We're not fucking Iron Man.

We do not need shit like this. There is no reason for this to exist in the world. So, I mean, it's, it's cute. It's funny. But the fact that they made it and it went to manufacturing, somebody should be fired. It's not just a manufacturing.

It was a big part of their fucking presentation. Somebody needs to be fired over it. This is the next fire phone. You know, honestly, it is the dumbest thing that anybody could ever buy. And you can't even control it remotely. You have to set a pre-programmed path for it to fly around your house, which makes no fucking sense.

Once again, I've also played around with the Roomba's pre-programmed paths. They do not work as, as advertised. Right. And they're also sending back maps of your house back to Roomba. Yeah. And now Bezos has them. Yeah. And now Bezos is going to have like literally, you know, maps of your home.

Which will be sent to the police. Yeah. Oh, God. Yeah. Yeah. You think that does this make my ass look fat camera was bad. Once again, everything that we say that we get mad about China for doing as a government, we let our private companies do for us.

And we pay them to do it. We pay them. Yeah. So, Brian, on a previous episode, we talked about gigapixel AI and how it put pictures of Ryan Reynolds in random windows in New York City when they ran it. Not Ryan Reynolds, the other guy, though.

I thought it was Ryan Reynolds. Wasn't it Jake Gyllenhaal? No, I thought it was Ryan Reynolds. Ryan Felipe. No. Yeah. It was Felipe. Hang on. Okay. Break for Google. Turns out we were both wrong. It was Ryan Gosling.

There you go. It was a Ryan. At least I got a Ryan in there. So I was, we were talking about ads on Instagram today, and I saw that I follow Topaz Labs, the makers of Gigapixel AI and several other AI pieces of software for photography, and they were having a sale.

So I saved about $400 on the Topaz Labs utility bundle today. Okay. Because I've been looking at these for a while, because the Sharpen AI, the denoise AI, and the Gigapixel AI are something that I would really like for some of my old photography that was on film.

And there's a new one called JPEG to RAW AI. Of course, they have to have AI in it. Even though all it does is convert JPEG to RAW files. Okay. It does some other stuff, too. All of these do a lot of stuff. Um, so I, I bought all of these and, uh, next show, well, actually, if you want to follow me on Instagram, uh, my handle is at JPD, um, and please don't try and steal my username.

I get so many emails every day about people trying to steal my username. Um, but I'm, I'm going to start playing with these because, uh, yeah, I've got like, you know, all of this old stuff on black and white film from, you know, shit, I got my first camera when I was 15, so that was 1986, long time ago.

Um, and I scanned all the stuff, so I want to kind of enhance it and check out if this stuff works. So, um, yeah, I picked that stuff up on, uh, because of the sale that I found on Instagram. Go figure. Yeah. And I also bought this week, the JBL speaker, uh, the Bluetooth speaker that you recommended.

Yeah. It's a great speaker. Yeah. It's a great speaker. It does not do anything that I needed to do, but if I go out by the pool or go outside, it's fantastic. And I tried to, what exactly did I buy it for Jason? Going out by the pool. Exactly. That's so, so look, man, I, I, I trust bro, you know, it's all good.

It's all good. I tried to plug it into my computer and use it as an external speaker, but there's a ton of line noise on it. And I tried to use it as a speaker so I could like, you know, mount it to my bed frame so I could listen to podcasts when I go to bed. So I didn't have my phone in the bed, uh, nope, too loud, too bassy, but, uh, when you take it outside and you, you plug it in and you jack it up with the Bluetooth, holy shit.

That's a good speaker. Oh yeah. It's amazing. It's a really good speaker. Sound that comes out of that little tube is as good as like some of the first studio monitors I ever bought like 20 years ago. It's amazing. Oh yeah. No, this thing is amazing. It was like what? 90 bucks. Yeah. So yeah, it's also an older version.

So the, the newer version I think is a lot of people were complaining about it, uh, probably for the reasons that you would like. So you might want to research the newest version that came out. I just bought this one. I'm not going to come buy another one. As you said earlier in the show, you buy shit, you return it and you buy new things.

Yeah. I already threw the box away. So I'll keep it and just, I'll put it in the hot tub that I haven't been in two years. Cause it's for outside sound. So when you're ready for all that, in fact, one of the reasons we're not doing a show next week is I'm doing another one of those trips with our, uh, our quarantine team as it were.

And, uh, we're going to be out in Palm Springs by pools again. So yeah, I've charged that thing up and it's ready to go. Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's in what I really like about it is you can kill a man with it. If somebody breaks into your backyard party, of course, the thing is, the thing is made of just like titanium.

It's not small, but it is strong. Yeah. It's small, but it is heavy and you can hurt somebody with that thing. Also waterproof. Right. So if it bounces off their skull and then goes into the pool, you're set and then you can wash the blood off easier.

Or isn't covered in blood. Yes. Exactly. Get, you use the chlorine to wash the blood off and then you disappear the body. You're going to be in Palm Springs, man. There are services for that. There are Uber for dead hooker removals over in Palm Springs. We know that. Come on. Things I've never needed for 100, Alex.

Things I've never needed that I will ever admit to for 100. And I saw this one because one of our friends got one of these Star Wars arcade machines. And this is the, it's basically the old Star Wars with the grip that you can play the Star Wars.

You can play Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi on, right? Gee, I wonder which one of our friends got that. Ah, this would be Jason, the, I can't believe I'm flaking on his last name. Oh, yes, I can. I've had beer. The wrestling podcast guy.

Oh, okay. Gotcha. Yep. Yeah. He got one for his, his speakeasy. And I saw that and I'm just like, oh my God, I love that. But these things are like three quarter size. So you have to bend over. But then I found this version at Walmart with a bench so you can sit down and play it. And the old Star Wars Vector games are some of my favorite in the world.

And then I saw the price and I'm like, are you serious? That's it? It's 499 bucks. It's super cheap. But, you know, if you spend another 1500 bucks, you can get a main cabinet with 10,000 games in it, but you won't get the, the cool controller.

So I would want to go see this one in person before I bought it. But, uh, I have played all of the Star Wars games in the cabinet version for my entire life. And I do loves me some Star Wars Vector games. Yeah. Pass. You didn't like them? No.

You're older than me. Oh, that's right. You don't like video games. And I don't like games. Nah, wet blanket. And, uh, finally for our, our friends who have Nikon cameras, uh, Nikon has finally released, uh, some webcam software. So you can use your mirrorless camera in a few DSLRs to, uh, actually use as a webcam instead of having to get a capture card.

So that link will be in the show notes. Jenny cam is very excited about our high quality cameras that she'll be running now in her forties. I had shit her fifties, man. Oh, that's right. She's way older than us. I know. Yeah. Uh, if you want to, if you want to find out what happened to Jenny cam, I can't believe I'm going to say this, Brian.

There's a reply all episode about Jenny cam where they tracked you down. Oh God. Jenny cam.

It's a sad day on the internet. Long cat has, uh, passed away at the age of 18. Sad day. Nobiko was the cat's real name, but we all knew, knew it affectionately as long cat. How do cats usually live to what?

Uh, about 18. Okay. I guess he is a long cat then. Not a medium cat. Nope. Yeah. 18 to 20s, you know, decent sized cat, but this one was a, you know, big cat. So, but maybe long cat had a good run. All right. I mean, we, we, we, we have, we have marked the passing of grumpy cat, obviously, because I was not aware of long cat actually.

Oh yeah. I've never seen long. Oh, okay. Well, you're not big on the Chan boards. So no, no, I'm not. Sorry. Uh, we have some other sad news as well from our BSG family, uh, battle, battle star Galactica actor has, uh, um, suffered a brain injury and there's a go fund me.

Uh, they've kept it quiet for a long time. This was a, what's his first name? I can't remember. Hogan. Why am I not remembering his first name? Michael Hogan. Michael Hogan. It's in the URL. Sorry to say, I just saw that in the URL. Hey, bottle of wine. Michael Hogan.

It was a half a bottle when we started, so we know what Brian said. Well, we've been going for an hour now. I know. My Guinness is empty, so we need to hurry this shit up. All right. So Michael Hogan, unfortunately, suffered a fall after attending a Battlestar Galactic convention in February. He's kept it quiet for quite some time, but as a result of the fall, he suffered a brain bleed that has since left him paralyzed and with cognitive impairment.

So obviously this is horrible and they've had to be socially distant through all of this with his family. So that sucks, but everybody's opened up about it now, so they're talking about it. They've re-released some of the BSG podcasts that go back and talk about the episodes that he was on and they talk about the GoFundMe at the beginning.

So if you love BSG and you've got some ducats to spare, link is in the show notes. Yep. I threw him a hundy. There you go. You know, he was a good guy. I didn't like his character very much, but I thought he was a great actor. I loved his character. I thought it was great. He was one of the tribe because he was a drinker, that's for sure.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's sad news. All right. Until next time, I'm Brian Shulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks for listening to the quiet episode of Grumpy Old Geeks. This show is a labor of love, but your support keeps us going. If you like the show, please visit GOG.show slash donate to help us out.

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