483: What is “Loser.com”?

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, the Canadian version. I was going to say, today on About Technology. Yeah, not quite that bad yet, but, you know, it is what it is.

It's in the poost. It's out in the boot. Yeah, I was able to enjoy the five tense days of an election with some degree of calmness. Brian, it feels like it's been three months since I've talked to you. It's only been a week, Jason. It feels like three months since I've talked to you.

It's been a long week. It's getting longer the longer you're on Twitter. A coup in plain sight talk and basically, you know, second by second, blow by blow account of lawsuits. I've actually sworn off Twitter as of this morning because I just can't take it anymore.

Yeah, it's getting bad. It's getting bad. Yeah. I'll just wait for the big news to roll in on the alerts on my phone. You know, at this point, I don't care anymore. I've given up. I've given up. I don't give a shit. I'm like, okay, he won the election. I'm good. I'm good. Call me in four years when we've got to do this bullshit again.

Well, I mean, honestly, it is somewhat out of our hands now, isn't it? We did what we could do. We voted at this point. It is up to the powers that be with the big guns or the big lawyers, not us. See, the funny part is, too, you think about the last four years of hell we've all gone through.

We went through it for no reason because all we had to do was, you know, he got voted in and then four years later, we fill out a ballot and we mail it in and we're done. Nothing we did or talked about or all the agita and the stress that happened in between then and now made one fucking little bit of difference to anything in the world.

So it was just like, so now I'm just like, screw it. I don't care. I'm going to go do what I did for the first 44 years of my life before Trump was in office and ignore the fuck out of politics. It's just a better way, isn't it? It really is. There's nothing you can do. I'm not about to go run for city council.

I'm too fucking old. I just don't care. I know. You know, I briefly thought about it like four years ago when, you know, when the agita first hit us. So then I was like, who am I kidding? There's gonna be pictures of me wearing makeup and that's that. Exactly. Well, this is California. That might actually help you out a bit.

That's a good point. It's not like Governor Newsom isn't caked in that shit. Yeah. Well, and now you live in a country where, you know, the prime minister wears blackface. Yeah, that was a big oopsie there. Anything is possible, Brian. Anything is possible. If you dream a little dream, you can...

Oh, God, fuck it. What do we got to talk about today? Well, speaking of being here in Canada, I've got to say that as much as the web was completely unusable beforehand, you move outside of the U.S. and you still have U.S. accounts. Forget it.

Like, I am doing CAPTCHAs, I am having to get text code sent to me or email confirmations every single time I sign into anything constantly. And it doesn't remember. It's not like PayPal remembers that they just sent this to me an hour ago when I logged into PayPal.

I have to do it again for every single site. Oh, man. Can't you change your default address to Canada so it doesn't happen all the time? But this isn't my default address yet. I'm going back. You're going back for a couple weeks to pack up your shit.

Just pretend. Yeah, yeah. Anyways, the VPN does wonders for that. It does get rid of it right away. But it is a pain in the butt. And these systems that are supposed to be ever so smart, not so smart. Yeah, but you'd rather them be not so smart and protect you than not protect you.

Yeah. You know. Yeah. It's a give and take, Brian. It is a security battle. I'm still waiting for the actually getting something. When am I going to be given something? It's just take, take, take. Oh, poor baby. But I do have some good news for you.

I believe you were bemoaning the fact that Swingers was actually shutting down for good. They are back. Yep. Yep. The iconic diner known for its, let's be honest, crappy food and only good place to eat at 3 a.m. Is back. They shut down early on in the pandemic after nearly 30 years.

But the general manager of the Beverly Boulevard location has gotten together some PayPal donations and some GoFundMe type money and is opening it back up. Interesting time to do so as there is no chance of ever making a profit right now.

But okay. Yeah, that's kind of silly. And, you know, I was bummed that it closed. I don't care that it's back because, you know, I'm almost 50 now. When I would go to Swingers, I was in my, you know, 20s and 30s and drunk. Yes.

Really, really drunk because that's the only really way you want to eat there because the food is terrible and you're usually, you know, getting fries and ranch at 3 in the morning. That's what you need it for. I don't need that anymore. Exactly. At 3 in the morning, I'm basically getting up to let the dogs pee and, let's be honest, pee myself because I have to do that four times a night because I'm pushing 50.

So, again, going back to Swingers. Going right back to the kind of a silly time for Swingers to reopen. It's not like there are bars that you're closing out to then go to Swingers for right now. Exactly. You are so drunk sitting at home on Zoom without your pants that there's no way you're going to go, like, hop on that bird scooter and zip on down to Swingers to, you know, rekindle that, you know, that old feeling.

And speaking of politics and politicians in general, I just thought that this news article was appropriate. Man missing most of his brain challenges everything we thought we knew about consciousness. Okay. Yes, apparently you can basically just not have a brain and you're okay.

If I only had a brain. So, this came out in 2007. Scientists reported that a French man in his mid-40s walked into a clinic complaining of a pain in his leg. As a child, he'd had the same problem as a result of the ventricles in his brain filling with sebrospinal fluid.

So, the doctors decided to scan his brain to see if this was again causing the problems. And to their astonishment, they found that the ventricles had become so swollen with fluid that they'd replaced virtually his entire brain. Oh, my God. Leaving just a thin cortical layer of neurons, yet miraculously, the man was not only fully conscious, but lived a rich and unhindered life, working in the White House, and living with his soon-to-be ex-wife and two moron sons.

I see what you did there. I see what you did there. Yes, yes, yes. Knew that one was good. Yeah, I got to get him in while he's still there. Yeah, it might be a while. That's true. No need to rush. No need to rush on that one. In the news.

Well, Jason, you were right. I made the mistake once again of being optimistic and assuming that people had brains instead of just swollen ventricle sacks. But no, no. Uber and Lyft got the result they wanted election night here in California.

California residents approved Proposition 22, which lets delivery and rideshare companies continue to classify their workers here as independent contractors, rather than employees, thus not having to provide unemployment protection, minimum wage, sick leave, or other benefits to their gig workers.

Any change in this law will now require a 7th, 8th majority in the California legislature, which basically means it's never going to happen. Yep. Oh, God. So there you go. This turns over AB5, the 2019 California law that required companies to reclassify their independent contractors as full employees, which they never had to do because they instantly just started fighting it.

But to be clear, it only turns over AB5 for drivers. Yeah. This doesn't turn over AB5 for, you know, the people that it should have been turned over for, like, you know, copywriters and truck drivers and things like that. This goes to just Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, and, you know, the gig economy shit that they're trying to pull.

The real people that need AB5 overturned are shit out of luck. Yep. Yep. That's true. So this law would have cost these companies, which would have had to give workers salaries and benefits hundreds of millions of dollars per year, as they should have to do. But they all teamed up, as we know, we've talked about that, and poured more than $200 million into a bid to get this passed, making it the most expensive ballot measure in California since at least 1999.

They spent more than $6 million just to collect enough signatures for Prop 22 to appear on the ballot. They shelled out roughly $10 per signature is the cost that worked out to. More than $82 million went to TV and radio ads, and they also sent messages to its users via their app to push them to vote for the proposition.

That's just the basics there. I really enjoyed this Vice article. Proposition 22's victory shows how Uber and Lyft break democracy. The corporation spent millions to mislead voters about an anti-labor ballot measure, won, and reaped billions on the stock market.

This is not healthy. Yeah, and? So of the $203 million spent by them, some $57 million was contributed by Uber, another $49 million by Lyft. But by Wednesday morning, after news of this passing, of course, Uber saw a return on its spending of nearly 19,300%, while Lyft saw a more modest return of only 3,670% because their stocks shot through the roof.

Yep. To recap, as the article states, corporations with some of the most exploitative labor practices in existence wrote a law to crush labor, spent hundreds of millions of dollars to create propaganda to convince or, failing that, mislead voters, won, and saw massive returns on their spending as stock prices wrote.

This sort of flagrantly anti-democratic behavior is normal for corporations in America, where they are empowered to write their own laws and buy support for them among the public. Yay. Yep. Yeah. I mean, there's a reason that we've been bitching about that thing for so long.

Yes. And, you know, as soon as I started to see the ads, I'm like, this is going to pass. As soon as I saw the ads, I knew it was going to pass. Yes, they're incredibly misleading. Yeah, and they did a great job on, you know, fucking everybody over. So, you know, kudos to that ad agency.

May you rot in hell. Yeah, it is what it is. But what are you going to do? Oh, don't use Uber, Lyft, or DoorDash. I canceled my DoorDash account after it passed. Good for you. No more. Yeah, no more. And they couldn't, they could never get my order right anyway.

Assholes. It's not like they had a good service. So this one just came in. EU hits Amazon with antitrust charges. A huge fine could follow. Coffee cash? Oh, yeah, pretty much. Pretty much. The EU's investigation found that Amazon feeds non-public seller data, such as the number of products ordered and the seller's revenues, into its own retail algorithms to help it decide which new products to launch and the price of each new offer.

And, yeah, it allows them to marginalize third-party sellers and cap their ability to grow. We knew this. Amazon, of course, says, we don't do that. We would never do that. But the EU says, yeah, you do. But you do.

You actually do. Yeah, you do. Yeah. We know you do. Everybody knows you do. Just because you say it so doesn't make it so, you know, Jeff Trump. That's how it goes. So, yeah, we're going to see if they get dinged for this. At least the EU does have a tendency to dish out, you know, fines with a B in front of it instead of an M, which we do here.

Actually, here in the U.S., we do a T-H, not a T for trillions, a T-H for thousands. If that, yeah. If that, if that, yeah. So what are you going to do? What are you going to do? So we laugh about AI here all the time, but apparently there is an actual use for AI right now, although I would still argue it's not AI, but nobody wants to listen to that argument anymore.

But there you go. So unless you're a physicist or an engineer, you're not really going to give a crap, but apparently AI have got the ability to solve partial differential equations, or PDEs, as they're called, which are a category of math equations that are really good at describing change over space and time, and thus very handy for describing physical phenomena in our universe, such as like seismic activity, safe planes, et cetera, et cetera.

Apparently, they're very, very, very hard to solve, but the AI is doing it. When it comes to safe planes, I mean, so they can rewrite the manual for the, you know, the 737 MAX, because that's pretty much all that needs to be done to make that plane safe. Yeah, that was just a bug.

Extra training. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. So, yeah, apparently the AI is really, really good at it. It's a thousand times faster than traditional mathematical formulas, and maybe we'll be able to solve even bigger things. Faster planes, safer, bigger, faster, stronger, Jason. Woo-hoo.

Thank you, AI. Until something goes wrong in the black box and we don't know what, or why, or how. Or how. Exactly. Yeah. I saw this one, and I just had to chuckle. Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt is reportedly becoming a citizen in the European island nation of Cyprus, which could cost him $2.5 million, but give him tax breaks that are obviously far more than that.

What? He didn't want to just move to Cyprus, California? It's a lovely suburb. I'm sure it is. I'm sure it is. And every time I think of Eric Schmidt, I remember that classic line, if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear. Okay. Well, now we know that you're moving there, and we know what to do with your tax benefits.

Yeah. Yeah, go die in a fire, Eric. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. At least he didn't go to New Zealand and try and build one of those, you know, villainous lairs in an active volcano like everybody else did. Because New Zealand said no more, but apparently Cyprus is still open for business.

Passports for sale. That's basically what's going on there. Yep. And a little bit of cool space news as well. We've been hearing about fast radio bursts for quite some time. And everybody immediately went, ooh, could be aliens. And scientists went, hold on a second here, everybody. We don't know what they are, but they could be very interesting.

Well, we've discovered that they are actually in the Milky Way. We've detected them coming from our own galaxy. The theory here is that these are events that take place from a magnet star, a type of neutron star with an incredible magnetic field. And we've had three separate studies that have come out at around the same time that seem to be showing that this is definitely the case.

So there you go. Not aliens, but something very cool and new that we're learning about space. And it's relatively close to us, if you consider our own galaxy close. Oh, Magnetar is my new stripper name. Not like I had an old stripper name. I think you were DoorDash.

That was me. I'm making a dash with a door. Nobody needs to see this. Let me get the fuck out of here. And this is a pretty fun one. The Fed's just seized Silk Road's $1 billion stash of Bitcoin. All righty.

Yeah. That's about it. Okay. That's all I got for that. I don't care. It's like, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Wait, there's... Well, Silk Road's been shut down for a long time now, right? So this money's just been sitting in a wallet somewhere? Yeah. And somebody came forward and finally unlocked the wallet for the government and said, here you go, guys.

Go buy some cages for those kids. Perfect. Perfect. Well, that can fund the investigations into voter fraud. Oh, yes. That's right. That's right. Could have actually bankrolled some actual voter fraud since there was none to begin with.

You know? Billion dollars. Shit. Maybe I'd have given them another round. Maybe we should have paid that U.S. Postal Service guy more than $130,000 to lie. Well, obviously it wasn't enough. It wasn't enough. Damn. Just saw that one. That was zing. He's still never leaving.

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

And where every now and again, I am an unwitting guest host. That's right. Yes, we featured you on our recent show. That's what I get for rolling my own backup of our recording for this show. I can just borrow from it as need be.

I thought it was nice to pop you in there and give the show a little promo. A little flavor. A little flavor. No, I appreciate that. It was a good bit. And it was very fun to hear Ben's take on it. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, check it out. Caveat. So I'm grumpy today.

I'm just warning you. I'm very, I'm actually really grumpy today. Let me just start off by saying that there are many things for which I am and should be happy about. Yes. I'm happy about the outcome of the election. So that's all good.

But I am grumpy today because I am old and I am 51. Is today your birthday? No, no. My birthday is over the summer. My birthday is in July. Gotcha. But because I'm over 50, that means I have to get a colonoscopy.

Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. And I'm getting my first colonoscopy tomorrow, which means today is prep day. Now, have you ever been through this before? Have you ever had to do anything to clean yourself out this way?

No, I haven't. But I've heard the process is not fun. Yeah. I haven't either. And like you, I've heard from other people that this is not fun. And so, and I'm already in, I swear I am so damn grumpy right now because I am not a happy, hungry person.

And I started off today. Oh, I'm so angry. I am so angry right now. I started off this morning. I had to go get a COVID test, which is no big deal. Although now I recalibrated my sense for how far back my sinuses go into my head. Yes.

The brain ticklers. Yes. So that was fun. The lady was delightful and very friendly as she was shoving this thing through the back of my skull. So that was fine. No problem, you know, in and out over at the hospital. But then today I can't eat anything solid because I'm preparing myself for the great clean out, which is going to happen tonight and tomorrow morning.

So today it's just been clear liquids, which means fortunately I can drink my Diet Mountain Dew, which is the nectar of the gods. That's my preferred caffeine delivery system because I'm not a coffee drinker. Man after my own heart.

Yes. I prefer my caffeine delivered cold. Well, here's the funny part. I used to drink – when I'd come into work in the morning, I would buy a 12-pack on the way into work. This is back when I was a coder and I was working, you know, 18 to 20-hour days. I would put it next to my desk. I would open the top and I would drink them warm because my theory was it would get into my system faster if it didn't have to warm up on the way down.

Sure. That's solid logic. Why not? I thought it was scientific. Yeah, sure. Why not? I mean, so I can drink that. That's fine. Soda and things are fine. I'm drinking white grape juice and I'm drinking chicken broth so far, which is the most – but there's just nothing – you know, there's nothing that sticks to my ribs.

There's nothing that makes me feel like I've had a substantial meal. And so I just want to eat some – I want to have like a big plate of nachos or a big plate of – I want to eat something substantial and I cannot do that and I will not be allowed to do that until tomorrow afternoon.

So tonight – so when I hang up with you today, I'm heading over to the pharmacy to pick up my kit, which has evidently two bottles of stuff that I drink, one tonight and one tomorrow. You know, I might as well be from everything I've heard, so it will clear me out and then I'll go in tomorrow around midday and have this procedure done.

Tomorrow we're off at the Cyber Wire for Veterans Day, so taking advantage of that to go have the procedure done. So the actual procedure, I'm not worried about. I'm not nervous about it. I'm not – I don't feel shy about it. I'm totally fine with that. But I am just – I am grumpy because I do not like being hungry and there's nothing I can do about it right now.

So I'm trying to be patient, but that's my story, damn it, and I'm sticking to it. Suck it up, snowflake. Come on. Yeah, I know, right. Yeah, the big – yeah, I mean talk about your first world problems. Yeah, I can only have chicken broth today. Right, exactly.

I'm unhappy with the choice of unlimited food I'm allowed to consume today. You know, it's not – it does not take the form that I wish it – it does not fill my belly to my satisfaction. Oh, God, goodness. I do hear gin is clear, though. Gin is clear, although they do specifically say no alcohol because it dehydrates you.

That's really why you're angry. Now we know. We know why you're really angry. This has nothing to do with food. Right. I can't drink today. Yeah, that's what it is. Jesus, I'm sober. For the first time in 51 years, I'm sober.

Right, right. I'm reminded of that episode of WKRP where they were doing the sobriety test with Johnny Fever. He just kept getting faster and faster. Right, the more he drank, the better, the faster he got. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Oh, that's a classic. So I say that to just give everybody a warning that if I am – if I'm curt in my responses today, there's a good reason for it.

And I appreciate everyone's well wishes. I'm sure everything will go fine tomorrow. I was going to say I have no worries about that. It's just a routine test. But, man, I can't – tomorrow when I'm done with this thing, I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm going to go somewhere and get some food, some fast food.

Some ribs. Get some ribs. Yeah. Get a bunch of French fries and I don't know what. Long John Silver's for everybody. Right, exactly. I'm going to go someplace with an all-you-can-eat buffet and get my money's worth. It's going to be the Wednesday colonoscopy special.

Waitress, bring me a tub of tater tots, please. Yes, exactly. I got plenty of room. So a little spoiler alert coming here for people who have not seen this latest episode of The Mandalorian. So we're going to have Mandalorian Corner, even though Brian is not here right now.

Okay. I thought we could tackle this together. Yeah, I'm game. All right. What did you think? I enjoyed it very much. I think they continue to be doing a great job. I think it's hard to match up to that first episode of the season, which was outstanding.

Yes. So I think, you know, anything following that is likely to be a letdown. But I enjoy these little side adventures. I think they continue to handle the characters well. It was interesting to see the state of things with the X-Wing pilots kind of, you know, playing the part of the state troopers.

That was really cool. I got to give them that. And especially since I hate spiders. So I'm glad they came to the rescue with spiders. That whole spider thing creeped me the fuck out. Yeah. And we find out that Baby Yoda is a baby killer. So he's just ZFG. He'll eat anything that doesn't eat him first.

I saw someone today tweeted that they'd like to see some kind of story written, some short story or film made about how after Yoda died, Dagobah returned to it to being this lush planet because he wasn't there to eat everything. That'd be great.

Right. What do you think the odds are that maybe he's, like, holding the eggs safely in his tummy and helping them, you know, hatch? No, I don't think so. I thought maybe that might be an option. Or, yeah, he's just a dick. Okay. Yeah, I think he's just a little kid and he just wants to eat all the cookies.

I love that he did use the force to bring the eggs over to the side of the container. I thought that was pretty fun. He's like, you are mine now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I like the frog lady character was very interesting, particularly how when she was freaked out, she reverted to leaping around like a frog.

I thought that was a nice little touch. It was cool that she hacked the robot, too, so she could actually talk to him. Yep. See, all in all, I thought this was a solid episode, you know? I thought it was pretty good and it's a two-parter, so, you know, we get to see how it plays out. Well, they didn't get to the planet yet and they were kind of living along in space, you know?

Right, right. So we'll see because once we get to the next planet, we'll see. Yeah, yeah. Again, back to those X-Wing pilots, you know, interesting that they kind of, they saved his bacon, but then they also left him on his own. Right.

They're like, there's a limit to what we're going to do for you, buddy. You did us a solid, you did our people a solid, but, you know, from here on out, we've done our part. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Turn that squawker back on. Yeah, we're even now, so, exactly.

So, yeah, I continue to enjoy how they're fleshing out the world. I think they're doing it in a very smart way. There's, you know, there aren't things that are happening where I'm going, ugh, or really, or that doesn't make any sense, or it doesn't, everything seems to feel like it fits really well in the world.

So far, so good. Knock on wood. Yeah, yeah. I think it's what happens when you get people making this content who are the types of fans that we are and have a tremendous amount of respect for the content coming from that direction.

Yeah. No, I think it's, I'm really, it's, for me, it's the best thing on TV right now. I'd agree. I'd agree. It's the thing I'm looking forward to week after week, so it's a nice escape and continues to be very well done. Yeah, can't wait for the next one.

Definitely. Now, next up, we got about 15 people sent this in to us, but it's funny that you put it in the notes before I did. Yeah. Well, at least they sent it to me on Twitter, too. Okay. Surprise, surprise.

Well, I mean, the, you know, the joke of the, of the world right now is whatever happened and the, the, the unexplainable press conference that happened at Four Seasons Total Landscaping Company, uh, and which...

I know. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's really hard to find words nowadays. Yeah, yeah, it's a friend of mine, uh, said to me, um, uh, since the place is, uh, situated right between, um, a, uh, an adult bookstore, um, and a crematorium, uh, it's a great place if you want to tell somebody to fuck off and die.

Exactly. Haven't heard that one yet. That's a good one. Yeah. Um, so, you know, that has been on everyone's, uh, uh, minds. Yeah. Cause, cause it's just, it, anyway, uh, but of course where anything fun is, if there's a location to be had, uh, not long after that location draws people's attention, the furries come a running.

And that is what has happened here. There have been some folks who have created, uh, a scene with the virtual furries running around and frolicking all over the Four Seasons Total Landscaping Company. Uh, and I have to say, I, I am in full support of this activity.

I think good, good, good, this deserves whatever mocking can, can be thrown its way. So. Exactly. Exactly. You know, in the old days, we used to put this in Second Life, but, uh, now it's in a platform called a VR Chat. But, uh, yeah, I'm not familiar with that one, but, uh, it's, it's awesome.

It's just awesome. I heard somebody say, I don't know if this is true or not, that the location of, um, Four Seasons Total Landscaping is actually right next door to the location that they used for Fred Sanford's, uh, company in Sanford and Son.

The exteriors for Sanford and Son is right next door to this place. So if you go to Google Maps, evidently you can look at it and you go, oh yeah, that's Sanford and Son. So I haven't checked it myself, but I heard somebody say that, which is kind of fun also. And probably half of our audience is going, what's a Sanford and Son?

But that's okay. That's true. Yeah. I'll just, uh, yeah, I'll just drink my chicken broth and, uh. Leave it to you to figure it out. Yeah. All right. Now this next one I found over at the Writer's Detective Bureau podcast. It's a podcast I listened to. Uh, it's a police detective in California named Adam, who is also a writer.

And he gives people tips on how to make their writing more realistic from a police perspective, which I think it's really cool. It's fascinating. It's a great short podcast and you get to learn all about the procedural in and outs of how detectives work.

It's really cool. It's interesting. Yeah. It was just this random find that I found and I just, I have listened to it religiously. He's coming up on episode 100 and there's all this real fun stuff in there because people are like, I've got this plot line. I'm trying to do this. And how would I do that?

And what would the detective, like, you know, all the detectives do and the policemen and all that stuff. So this episode, someone asked about partial license plate numbers and is it feasible to give a detective a partial license plate number and how does that work? And he went into the inner workings of the DMV and they don't have partial license plates in the DMV.

They don't have the ability to search for partial license plates in the DMV. So, which I thought was, I'm like, what? Really? That surprises me. It's a very antiquated system. I'm telling you, this is worth listening to. It's like, you know, 10 minutes of the show is really worth listening to.

And what he told us was, well, since Carfax is out there now, they have partnered with local law enforcement. So you can actually send a partial license plate to Carfax and Carfax will give you back some different options where you can then get the VIN number and then you can take the VIN number and go to the DMV.

And then you can actually get the owner of the car. Oh. Yeah. I was going to say, I would imagine that this is the sort of thing the data brokers would have easily accessible because they will have, along with the license plates that they gather, they'll note a lot of times what kind of car it is because they can do basically the facial recognition version of image matching for vehicle types.

Yep. Yeah. And they don't have that in the DMV. It's like, you know, either two-door, four-door, sedan, truck. You know, it's very limited information that the DMV actually has on your vehicles, which I also, I thought, was very interesting. So what they do, hmm, here's how they do it.

Yeah. This is the deal that Carfax and the police have made. So if there is an accident with a car, that accident report goes to Carfax. Then they can match that accident report to the VIN number, and the VIN number goes into their massive database of every car that they have in the system.

So that's how they can tell if a car has been in an accident and get, you know, the relative damage to the vehicle from the police report. So that's the deal. It's like, okay, the cops get free information from Carfax, but Carfax gets free information from the police. Isn't that interesting?

And there's even carfaxforpolice.com where you can go read up on it. It's – I thought this was a very interesting symbiosis between the two organizations, and I don't know if I have a problem with it at all. Well, a couple things come to mind.

First thing is a couple years ago, not long after I got my dash cam for my car, so I was riding high on having that. A couple days in a row on my way to work, some Yahoo in a Toyota Prius was lighting up the highway like he was Mario Andretti, just weaving in and out and, you know, cutting across traffic lanes.

Basically being a Prius driver in general. Yeah. So – and on day one, I was like, all right, you know, who's this jerk? But the second day that it happened in a row, same guy, I went and I pulled the footage, pulled it up, and I was able to get the license plate information off of it.

So I was curious, what could I find out from this license plate information? So I ran a search on it, and actually what I could find out is it would match it to the car model and color. Really?

Yeah, just by saying, you know, Maryland license plate, this number, it came back to me and said that's a white Prius. Wouldn't give me anything – wouldn't give me the owner's name or the owner's address or – I don't think it gave me a VIN number, but it gave me the model – oh, the year also.

It gave me the year of the car, the color, and the model, which I thought was – I was surprised it gave me that much, honestly. So I don't know where that's coming from. You just Googled it? I did a Google search, and I don't think it was like Maryland MVA that came up.

I think it was something else, and I suspect it was one of those sites where if I wanted to pay $20, they'd probably give me a lot more information. But I was surprised that that much information was available just for the asking. That's crazy. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, yeah. It's like anybody who wants to find out where anybody lives, you can Google it now and spend $15, $20. And you will get – so much information, it will make your head spin. That's why it's like – we talked a long time ago about personally identifiable information, and it's like game's over, man.

Game over, man. Game over. The other thing that this story reminds me of, the guy from the Writer's Detective Bureau podcast is I am friends with a gentleman who used to be the chief of police for our town.

And I was having a conversation with him once, and he was talking about how every now and then someone would come to talk to him, to talk to one of the high-level police people. And they'd come in saying that they were in the process of writing a book, and they just wanted to come in and ask a few questions.

They're writing a mystery novel. Well, and for the purposes of this book, they wanted to know, you know, is there a perfect crime? If let's say the person in my book wants to kill their spouse, what would be the – what would be – you must have thought about this, chief of police.

What would be a way that someone might be able to do that and get away with it? Yeah. He's like, this happens just more often than you'd think, and, you know, basically they say, oh, I don't know, and then they leave and they're like, okay, put a tail on this guy.

You know, like if somebody turns up dead, you know, this guy's at the top of the list. So anyway, funny stuff. It's so funny. I had a cop friend. He used to run a skate shop out in suburban Chicago, and he – crookedest cop I've ever met.

I mean, he was just as crooked as they come. And he was a professional photographer for Nikon as well, which is crazy. So he had his hand in a lot of different things. Yeah. Yeah. When he got fired from Nikon, he actually flew to New York and ransacked the Nikon board meeting wearing a gorilla suit.

That's how crazy these guys are. He's got style. Yeah. Yeah. And basically this guy was as crooked as the day is long, and so were all of his buddies on the force. And they were just – they brought in photo books of them with all the dead bodies that they found. They're like, you know, posing like Weekend at Bernie style.

Oh, wow. And they had their entire – like it was just – it was really gross. But we'd ask him all the time that same thing. I'm like, how can you kill somebody? He's like, oh, it's easy. And he would just go off on a rant on how you do it. And we're just like, I wish I had taken notes. I was like 15 at that time.

I was thinking – if I was thinking, I'm like, this is gold. I should be writing this down because someday I might need this. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's funny that you have the – there's that – when you're a teenager, you have that empathy gap where you're like, oh, that would be cool. And then the older you get, you're like, I don't really want anyone to die.

Or the list gets much smaller anyway. I guess you realize that the stakes are so much higher. Yeah. Yeah. So my last story is – I saw this on Cribs on Security this morning. Ransomware group turns to Facebook ads. And I was like, hey, what?

Let me check this one out. Have you guys heard about this one yet or covered it? I have. I mean yet another use for Facebook. Yeah, I know. Facebook, the gift that keeps on giving. Yep. Yep. So yeah, these guys – Oh, go ahead. Facebook's solution to everything is more Facebook.

Exactly. Exactly. So the Ragnar locker team basically stole a bunch of information and then they used somebody's hacked Facebook account to run ads against the company whose information they stole saying, pay up, bitches.

Yeah. That's kind of it. They publicly shamed them with a hacked Facebook account. And unfortunately for the guy whose account they hacked, they got almost – what was it? Almost $700 worth of – or $659 worth of ads out of them. Hopefully Facebook gave the money back.

Yeah. Well, it also strikes me that if you were to hit a company with ransomware, but then also as the ransomers do these days, they extract the data and then they use that as leverage to get the company to pay the ransom.

Yeah. Could you then – could you use this method? Could you go on Facebook and target people who are customers of that company, right, and then basically run ads to them and say, hey, I got your information?

Yeah, probably would not surprise me in the least. Right. Attention companies of Acme, you know, printing. You – I have your – we all have your information. If you don't want your information released, you should get in touch with them and tell them to pay the ransom.

Yep. Which, of course, is no guarantee the information isn't going to go out anyway, but that's the world we live in today. Yeah. It's so funny. Right before COVID hit, we were coming up with a plan to run Grumpy Old Geeks ads and geotarget them to very specific locations in Silicon Valley, which were around the Facebook headquarters, around the Google headquarters, around the Apple headquarters.

So anybody that worked in these geotargeted locations would get Grumpy Old Geeks ads. They were like, oh, IT people listen to our show. Lots of IT people listen to our show. So let's target those people. And then, you know, right as we're getting ready to, you know, put the plan into action, of course, everybody locked down and out the window.

Right. Right. No, that's interesting. That makes sense. I would love to have heard about how that worked. Yeah, me too. I really would have. I really would have. Yeah. Well, maybe next year. OK. Well, you didn't seem so grumpy this time, Dave. I know you said you were grumpy, but it didn't really come out.

No. You know what? I have a lot of energy and I'm channeling my grumpiness to try to distract me. So I don't know. I'm kind of all over the place. I'd say I'm a bit of a spaz this afternoon because, again, I just want to eat something so bad.

I just want to shove some food in my mouth. And I'm sort of ashamed to say it because I, you know, I'd like to think that I'm in better control of my impulses. But apparently you're the baby Yoda of podcasting. Yeah. It's been a long time. It's been a long time since I've fasted and evidently it does not suit me well.

So you get used to it. You get used to it. I'm sure I will. Again, this is just a nuisance and I should stop complaining and be like you said, be such a snowflake. But but hey, what good is having a show called Grumpy Old Geeks if you can't come on and complain about things? Exactly. That's why we have it.

This is therapy for us. Yes, exactly. I do feel better, actually. Yeah, see? There you go. It doesn't pay the bills, but damn, we feel good after. Yeah. So there's something. There's there's that. All right. Well, good luck with your colonoscopy. Thank you. I'll provide an update next week when I find out, you know.

Oh, that's OK. That's OK. Oh, no, no. I'll give you every detail. I don't know. How many fingers am I holding up? Right. Exactly. Yikes. Moon river. All right. Have a good one, Dave.

Media Candy. Found some good news for you, Jason, this week. I thought this was super interesting. It actually, I guess this was about two weeks ago, but I didn't see it until this week. Danny Elfman, the lead singer and one time Oingo Boingo frontman, has released an actual pop single again.

What? Not just not just his soundtracky stuff. It's a full on sounds kind of like Oingo Boingo song called Happy. He was slated to actually play Coachella this year to, you know, one of those legacy acts to show up and was going to make this kind of a signature thing as part of the show.

A brand new song. But since it got shut down, he released it anyways. So I'm assuming you've listened to it. I have not. I have not. I saw this because I'm going through my notes on my computer that doesn't actually have a speaker. And I was like, oh, I need to go listen to this. And sadly, I haven't.

I believe you'll be happy. Well, it's called happy, but I don't know. There's just no happiness anymore. So we'll see. Well, it's, you know, it's about Halloween. So how happy is it going to be? Oh, perfect. Perfect. There you go. I think you'll really enjoy it. So ping me when you've actually listened to it.

Well, next week on Media Candy follow up. And we had the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, such as it was. It was a virtual event. So if your idea of a good time is watching a bunch of aging rockers sit on a Zoom call without playing any music, then this was the event for you. Stab me in the fucking throat with a fork.

The sad thing is that it does. And it was because I watched a lot of it. No live performances at all, obviously. Yeah. And literal Zoom calls. That's all it really was. And it's really sad because this year, two of my favorite bands of all time were inducted. I would have loved to have watched Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails perform at a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony.

But it was not to be. If you have any such interest in actually seeing their Zoom speeches, links are in the show notes. Well, hopefully they'll have a makeup, you know. I seriously doubt it. It's just way too much to get together, right? Like, good luck.

By the way, because, I mean, Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails, let's be honest, they're richer than fucking gods. But, I mean, as soon as something is cleared enough for them to all get together and perform, they're going out on the fucking road because it's been a year. They're going on tour. Exactly. They're going on tour.

They ain't going to Cleveland. They're going on tour. Yeah. I got to say, I saw Nine Inch Nails, they're part of the set at Riot Fest a couple of years ago. Damn good show, man. Damn good show. They're always solid live. I haven't cared much for their recordings over the past few years, but live, you can't beat them.

Oh, man. Yeah. What did I call it? Trent's Tambourine of Doom. He loved that fucking tambourine. I'll give him that. Yeah. Well, you know, all he does is work out now since he doesn't drink. So he beats the crap out of it every night, I'm sure. Okay.

Beating the tambourine. That's what I haven't heard before. Also, your other stripper name. No. No. Okay. Okay. I found myself with a little time here, not much. And once I finally sorted out some VPN woes, because, you know, Star Trek or CBS All Access is quite onto the VPN game and weren't keen on me watching anything here in Canada, I did finally catch up on Star Trek Discovery, seeing Episodes 3 and 4 of this third season.

Yeah. And? I love this season. I was meh about season one. I was okay with season two. I'm all in right now. I love it. It's okay. I love it. I thought episode four when they went to the Trill homeland. That was fun. I thought that was straight out of Star Trek The Next Generation.

It felt like a 90s episode when they ended up on, like, Planet Risa or whatever, the Pleasure Planet. Like, it was people in fucking sleeveless robes wandering around. It was great. I know. But, I mean, you think Trill, you think DS9, you know, but... Yeah, I know. But still, it felt that way to me.

It had that feel. And I'm interested to see what they're going to do with it. I mean, they can't go back home. No, it's over, yeah. It's too much of a glaring plot hole. So the fact that they're, like, hanging out with, like, an ancient ship in basically what is a galactic wasteland, like America, in four more years, like, it's awesome.

Yeah, and with the only drive that can actually get them around the universe with the spore drive that nobody else has. Yeah, which is some convenient writing. Very convenient. Very convenient. I'm guessing they figured that part out a long time ago. I told you that there was going to be something that they were going to have to do to get rid of that damn thing.

Yep. But I got to say, we chatted a little bit about this on text one night. The weakest part of the show is the star. Yeah, she's a horrible actress. I hate to say it. She looks great. She looks the part. You look at her.

I just find her acting leaden. And I'm not thrilled about the two new actresses, actor and actress they added as the Trill and the Symbiont. They also felt really flat to me and just, ugh. Yeah. Which is horrible because the rest of the cast is awesome.

Yeah. Even the new guy that came in. Well, who will hopefully be back? Booker? Hopefully he'll be back. Yeah. Booker was great. But yeah, she's always exasperated. Yeah. Everything is like the most emotional moment of her entire life.

And I'm just like, come on. You're just trying to get a Coke from the replicator. That's all you're trying to do. You don't have to go, this Coke is going to be the greatest Coke in my family is with me. Now that I've found you across the years and the stars and I just, this is the greatest Coke.

I mean, that's how she acts. It's terrible. Yeah. I'm not a fan either. You and I definitely agree about that. She is the weakest link. You are the weakest link. And Spotify is, this is some more media news, but it's podcasting news, which drives me crazy because I always talk about the goddamn carpet baggage that are coming in and ruining our gig, not giving us any of the money.

Yeah. Ruining this incredibly lucrative gig we have. Well, you know, I'll talk about that in a second here. Spotify has bought Megaphone, which is a, it's basically a hosting platform. It used to be Panoply, which they, which did a bunch of really good shows back in the day.

And, uh, they, they finally said, Hey, you know what? We can make more money actually, you know, hosting podcasts than making podcasts, which we probably should have done from the get go. Um, and now that, uh, and now Spotify is going to buy them. They're going to get a bag of money and all that good stuff.

Great. Yep. Just what we need. More consolidation. Thank you, Spotify. And I don't remember, did we talk about the Spotify payola thing on the music side of stuff? I did. I don't remember. Did we talk about that last week? I think we did. We talked about a little bit about how they, they're like, they want musicians to actually pay, like take a lesser cut.

Okay. We did talk about it. Yeah. I've talked to, uh, the, but the anger in the music industry is, is going, is building on that. So I expect we'll hear more about that pretty soon. Yeah. Yeah. I'm, I'm on the fence every day about whether we should pull our show from them because it's like, I don't know. All two of our listeners over there.

Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. We're up to dozens. Sorry. Yeah. And then we figured out 2% of our audience comes from Spotify from the downloads, uh, did ran the numbers on it for the last year. And, uh, so we did 1.3 something million downloads of this show over the last year and like 27,000 came from Spotify, which is, you know, not huge, but you know, whatever, whatever.

Yeah. We're never going to make any money from this bastard. Um, and, uh, now Wondery is trying to sell itself. Okay. Uh, you know, they did Dirty John and Dr. Death, which both I think got TV deals out of it. And, uh. That's worked out so well for all the rest of the podcasts that have had TV deals.

Oh man. I, I, I watched some of Dirty John cause it had a Christian Slater in it. I think it was Dirty John. It might've been, I'm pretty sure that it was that one. It was terrible. It was God awful. Right. Um, so turn that one off. Yeah. All of these podcasts to TV deals. There's a reason your podcasts stay that way.

But here's the great part. Wondery is looking for three to $400 million. That's so am I. Yeah, exactly. And it's funny cause, uh, we'll talk about the, the new Apple hardware that came out, uh, today. And I was looking at some of the acquisitions that they made for their, you know, their semiconductor, uh, fabs and, and talent that they got.

And they were buying, you know, semiconductor companies for like, you know, $250 million. And they made something. Yep. They actually fucking made something. They made something that's really hard to do. These guys talk into a microphone. You are not worth 300 to 400 million fucking dollars.

But this is also probably why, well, the funny part is Hernan Lopez, the, the guy who, uh, founded Wondery. Uh, I don't know if you noticed, saw this one in the, uh, the LA times, but it's been going around for a while. We knew this on the backend. Uh, he's, uh, he's in a little trouble with the law right now.

Yeah. So, uh, I think that that's probably going to be, uh, the downfall for this deal and Spotify actually passed on the buy. They're like, you know what? We're good. We're good. Yeah. It was like, we don't need Spotify took Joe Rogan and they're passing on you.

How bad are you? Exactly. Uh, under active investigation for fraud. Well, I guess that's, I guess that's the line they won't cross. We can have Alex Jones back and the frogs are gay, but nope, nope. Sorry, Hernan. You're out. You're out. And it's funny.

I was listening to, uh, this week in tech the other night, like half asleep. And I, and they were talking about this deal and Leo's like, man, I could use some of that juicy podcast money. And I was thinking twit.tv, you know, this week in tech, one of the oldest podcasting networks around period.

I mean, they're the godfathers of it. Uh, I, why haven't they been picked up yet? I don't get it. I just don't get it. Yeah. So, well, you know, I, I wonder why nobody throws us any cash too. Yeah. Well, it could be just because we suck, but, uh, you know, you look at the Gimlet deal.

That was, that was garbage. I don't know. I just don't know what these people are thinking. They aren't. Fucking bagging fucks. Apps and doodads. Brian, the, the hunt is over. My quest, my quest for a hub for my, uh, my MacBook and my air and all that good stuff is finally over.

I went with the bridge stone pro. Now, are you sure those aren't tires? That's what it does sound like. Uh, it does sound like a set of tires. Uh, it's, uh, you know, it's a multi-port hub. It's not really though. Cause it sits underneath your computer.

So you don't even see it. It's, you get like, you know, a bunch of thunderbolt ports, you get a bunch of USB ports, you get a display port, you get a headphone port and a, uh, uh, SD card port in there too. And, uh, and it tilts your laptop up for you.

Yeah. Which I don't really care about. I care about that. It's tilted up because that way all of the heat, when the fans come on and it tries to achieve lift off every time I turn it on, then yeah, I care about that. But, uh, um, and, but then the nice part is it's one plug from the, uh, the hub to the computer.

And then you still have, at least on a MacBook pro, you've got three ports open, right? So you can still even plug more shit into it if you want to. Um, it was like 250 bucks, but they were running a deal where I got 40 bucks off. So it was still a little over 200 bucks with shipping. I, it arrived today.

I plugged it in works as advertised, you know, I got tons of shit plugged into it and it works. And when I need to do it, I can just unplug the one plug after I unmount all seven hard drives that are attached to it. But, uh, yeah, it's, uh, it's not bad.

It's not a bad piece of kit. And the power brick on it is three times the size of the actual hub though. Oh boy. Yeah. Okay. It's huge. It's huge. All right. So, and, uh, this next one I put in for you, it's called Kittle. Yeah. I took a look at it.

Um, this is sponsored by Google. It's supposed to be a Google search engine. Um, I'm a bit gun shy of these things having been burnt by YouTube for kids, uh, the app, which, which, uh, definitely features Russian crazy videos all the time in it.

Um, but, uh, I, I haven't had a chance to poke around with it too much, but what I've seen, I like, I, I'm not quite ready to open up, uh, the browser for my kid yet and let him know that that world exists, um, because he's goddamn smart. And I mean, you know, digital native is no joke, Jason.

I mean, this kid's barely over four and he knows how to work my iPad better than I do at this point. Perfect. You built in tech support, built in tech support in a few years. Definitely. There's no doubt about that, but this looks cool. So if you've got a slightly older kid out there, you might want to take a look at this and I'm going to be poking around with it over the next couple of weeks too, just to see, uh, what actually comes up as I search for things and how I can break it.

So yeah, before my kid breaks it, you know? Yeah. It's a visual search engine for kids. I don't even know if we said that yet, but that's basically what the, what the promise is of it. So if you've got a kid, check it out. I don't, and I don't think Bam Bam knows how to use a mouse yet. So we're going to pass on it.

Yeah. Uh, so when I came to Canada, I was trying to, uh, pack lean and mean because we were just basically taking three suitcases and whatever we could bring with us is what we brought with us. So I did not pack my Apple TV. I went, all right, let's give it a go with just an Amazon fire stick because it's a very small.

God damn. That thing's a piece of crap. Good. I'm glad I didn't buy one. No, it's, it's horrible. It is slow. It is sluggish. I've never actually tried to use it day to day. Like I've had it for a long time and I've had it, my TV in the bedroom in my place in Santa Monica.

So like when my kid's watching something and if I want to watch a soccer game or a baseball game, I can run in the back, like load up Fox sports or whatever and watch the game or just have it on. Um, so that doesn't actually involve like switching between things or, you know, trying to, you know, then go to, uh, you know, like, uh, whatever, you know, Netflix or something, some other huge integrated app on top of it.

Um, and it was fine for that purpose, but trying to actually use it as my only thing to watch TV, I was ready to throw it out the window two days here. So of course I ordered immediately a new Apple TV, uh, that came here the other day and my God, God, that experience is so much better.

I got the new Apple TV 4k. Uh, I was hoping to get another year of, uh, of Apple TV plus out of that. Um, I'm pleased to say that I do get to enjoy three months of Apple Arcade, something I will never use instead, which is a bit of a bummer.

Well, your kid might. Yeah. Well, I don't want him on games yet. Like we're already trying to limit screen time as much as we can. So that's, that's not something we want to get them into at this point. Uh, but, uh, the Apple TV 4k is, uh, it's just such a better experience for, for be, you know, just running apps and watching TV and streaming it.

I can't, I will never use that fire stick again. I will burn it in a fire before I actually use it again. Um, so it's great. So we will eventually bring my other older Apple TV over here and we'll have the two of them. And one thing that they did is they made an attempt to fix the biggest problem with Apple TV, which is the remote.

The remote. I was going to say, does it come with that same shitty ass remote? Basically, but they've put a slightly upraised ring around the menu button. So it's easier to find menu. That's all they did. I just put duct tape on mine because the problem was you didn't know which way it was up.

Well, now you do because you've got that upraised ring, right? So, okay. So that it helps with that. But yeah, I have a sticker on my remote at home too. It was the only way I could tell what the hell was going on. Best thing to do is just use your phone. I just use my phone with mine. Yeah. The remote app on the phone is perfect, especially when you have to type in passwords and crap like that.

Yep. Um, yeah, it works great. And there's an Apple watch app for remote as well. Yeah. I'm sure that'll be useful. Yeah, of course. I haven't tried it. Cause I'm like, I, I, I'm old. I can't see like squinting at my watch for that. I've got the older Apple TV with the one that came out right before the 4k.

And, um, I have to use it every now and again. I don't use it mostly because I've got a Roku TV and, uh, I have to use the Apple TV when I want to get anything on HBO Max because fucking Roku still does not have an HBO Max app. Right. Assholes.

Um, but I will say that, uh, I do like my, my Apple TV and I know what the problem with your Fire Stick is. There's just not enough processor. No, it's just a USB stick. They're tiny, which is great. But, uh, you know, in terms of trying to use it as day to day to do anything, forget it.

It's useless. Yeah. We've got a Roku stick in my roommate's bedroom. And every time we try and watch something on the Synology, uh, like streamed over the, you know, the house network, if it's an MKV, forget about it. It will, there's no sound because it doesn't have the processing power to actually transcode the audio.

And I know that there's a way that you can do it in the Synology, but I've got an older one and I don't want it to catch fire while it's sitting out here in the garage all by itself. So I have to transcode everything in handbrake anyway now. But, uh, yeah, we found that out the hard way. There's just no juice in those little sticks. Nope.

You need something with some power to it. Yeah. Speaking of things without any power though, do you remember the Slingbox? Uh, vaguely. It was, uh, did they beat Roku out of the gate? I think they did. I think they were one of the first of those type services. Well, what, what Slingbox was, it was a box that you put in between your cable box and your TV and then when you left the house, you could actually stream to wherever you're at.

Yeah. Which, which is awesome. Like awesome. I would love that right now, especially since I still have cable in Los Angeles and I'm sitting in Canada. Well, uh, it turns out, uh, you're not going to get one anymore. Yeah. You know why? Because, uh, they don't want you to be able to do that. Well, there's a, there's no real, you know, there's no real market for it anymore with all the streaming services.

And, uh, so they're shutting down their services permanently in two years and they're going to have like this tiered, uh, degradation and, uh, different models will become inoperable over time. You know, the sad part is that they become inoperable. If they kept running, those things would end up becoming extremely valuable.

And let me tell you why there is a market for this. I would pay you money to install a Slingbox on your TV set right now so I could get access to all your channels. And then I would put a Slingbox here. And if you wanted to watch Canadian shit, because we have a lot of weirder other stuff on our Netflixes and all that sort of stuff, you would be able to access that.

How great would that be? Well, we have a very smart audience who likes to do hardware hacking types of things. I bet there's a Raspberry Pi solution out there that will let us do that type of thing. So, uh, guys, if you're listening to the show and you know about something that is like, you know, uh, like Slingbox OS open source type of deal, let us know.

Cause maybe, uh, you know, you throw me a few bones to upgrade my internet access because that's what I'd have to do. I only got 20 meg up. Uh, then I would be more than happy to slap that puppy in here and let you watch all the soccer you can, you can handle. Sweet. Actually, soccer is much easier to get here.

Thank God for that. Okay. This is the food network that you're missing. I really miss the food network, man. I knew it. I knew it. So, uh, the big one more thing event from Apple was a, was a thing today, which I didn't watch because I've learned my lesson over the past 30 fucking years.

Didn't they have like three events in the last three months too? That's why this is one more thing. Yeah, exactly. This was the third. Because we, we couldn't apparently edit our program down to one event. Yes. Yes. This is the return of the King of, uh, uh, no way.

Return of the King was the second one, wasn't it? No, that was the last one. It was the last one. Okay. Yeah. Cause that's when you'd get the King, Jason. I know. I can't remember. You know how long it was ago that we watched those long time. God, if there was another one after that. Oh, Jesus. Oh, the Hobbit.

And the Hobbit two, electric boogaloo. And the Hobbit three, three D. Fuck. Anyway, so the new M1 powered Macs are out and, uh, they actually look pretty sexy. I gotta say the specs on them are pretty damn amazing.

I saw somebody post online. Oh yeah. Let's use a first gen Apple device. Shudder. Oh God. No, never, ever, ever. I, I mean, I at least waited a year before I got my 16 inch MacBook pro and it still sucks. So, um, but you know, these things seem to be the next wave.

The, the battery life is incredible. Everything's faster. So I didn't even bother to go look at Intel stock today because I'm sure it was in the crapper. But the sad thing is my Apple stock didn't really go up. So I was like, come on, come on, come on guys. Go up so I can sell it. I'm sick of this.

Um, but, uh, yeah, we got a new, uh, MacBook air. We got a Mac mini and a new 13 inch MacBook pro, which, uh, none of which I will be buying because I have enough processing power in my house to launch like, you know, the next 17 Tesla missions.

So I'm good. Yeah. When you really think about it, I mean, how many times could we say, send a man to Mars with just our phone? Yep. We don't have a moron of the week. We have a hero of the week.

I can't figure out who owns this domain because obviously we have who is privacy nowadays, but loser.com just go to loser.com. You've probably seen it by now, but if you have it, if you're one of the very few people who have been living under a rock, just go to loser.com.

That's all I'm going to say. And you know, this is a multimillion dollar domain and that they have the hatred in their heart to do what they did. I salute them and they are a fucking hero. It's a beautiful domain. It's the most beautiful domain I've ever seen.

So beautiful. Feedback loop. Over at Patreon, we've got Desiree. Thank you, Desiree. She's our staff. What is it? Archivist. Yes, she's one of our Swedes, but she's the one that went back and found the first instance of Bittner and the first instance of the furry comments, which we haven't even talked about with Bittner yet.

I'm saving that for when you come back on. And we've got Nolan, Graham, Miscellaneous, Misk, Leif, and Sockis. I believe it's Leif. Leif? You should be old enough to remember. Oh, wait. It was Leif Garrison. Or was it Leif Garrison?

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. No. I mean, my Nordic shit there. Sockis and then Brian with a Y. Yes. Like everybody who sends us feedback thinks yours is spelled with a Y, which it's not. It is not. And he has a message for us.

Would you like to read this one? Or would you like to paraphrase it? I'll paraphrase it again because this obviously, this happened the episode I was gone and this isn't the only comment that come in. I actually, I deleted the other ones that came in because I didn't really need to get into it. I assume you slandered Indian programmers again.

You did it in your not so careful verbiage as per usual. Right. And in the past, when we have slandered Indian programmers, you have jumped on just as much as I have. No, I agree. But I also explain it. I'm talking about when we, when you outsource to an Indian programming company, not, not just, you know, not Indian programmers in general.

We're talking about these, these low rent, a hundred dollars for your code that should have cost you about 10 grand Indian developers, companies that exist out there. You know, I'm pretty sure you were on the episode. I'm pretty sure you were on the episode. We were talking about this because we were talking about how iPhones were going to move to India to get made, but they were going to keep them in, uh, in India.

Or maybe that was, no, no, no. It was, it was with Eric because I remember, uh, cause I was off for the week and then all of a sudden I saw all this vitriol coming in and I was like, oh, what'd Jason do now? Okay. So yeah, let me explain here. So this is a long running joke on the show. We bang on Indian programmers all the time because it's fun to do because we both got burned with, you know, basically the fiver of India is what we had to deal with back in the day.

Now I know dozens of Indian programmers. I've worked with dozens of Indian programmers over my career and I have very many friends who are in the tech industry who are Indians and, uh, they get a chuckle out of every time I bag on them because they are smarter than I am. They build better software than I do.

And it's just fun to bust their balls. This is just busting people's balls that I'm friends with. So this is no slam against, you know, Indian programmers in general. This is because back in the day we got shit code from them and it's just fun to remind them over and over again about how bad it was back in the day.

This is no slight, I'm not a racist. Give me a break. This is just busting my friend's balls. Okay. That was almost as long as his, uh, his screed against you. Fair. Okay. All right. Well, there you go. No, I'm with you on this. I know. Well, I didn't listen to the episode, so I have absolutely no idea what you exactly said, but I do know Jason has a habit of like, uh, you know, not covering his ass when he says these things.

Yeah. I just assume everybody's listened to every single episode of the show and have, have, has an encyclopedic knowledge of everything we've ever said. So, you know. Only Desiree has that. Obviously. Obviously. And over at PayPal, we've got Navlin, David, Theodore, Florian, Breed, Andrew, Mark, Michael, as this is the late night, I was going to say Raphael, but it's Michael and Ralph.

They're going to become one person, one Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. And of course, our great friend, Martin. Another good stock bet, apparently. Apparently. And over at GOG.show, Brian, who spells it correctly, with an I, wrote in, not sure if you guys have seen this or not. Your old Android device will no longer support many websites in 2021.

According to a report from Android Police, how do we get Android Police, but not Internet Police? I know. I get, what the hell? Yes. Many secure websites will no longer work on devices with Android versions prior to 7.1.1 Nougat. Would you trust an operating system called Nougat?

Is that Ted Nougat? He's deliciously racist. In a loincloth. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, basically, the certification nonprofit organization Let's Encrypt recently announced that its partnership with certification authority IdentTrust will end on September 1st, 2021.

With no plans to renew, they are planning to completely switch over to its own root certificate and stop default cross-signaling for IdentTrust on January 11th. Basically, meaning your old Android ain't going to work anymore. Here's the easy fix. Go download, download.

You got me on the loincloth. Go download. Go download bridges. Download bridges. Okay. There's definitely some popping going on with this new microphone. That's crazy. I would say just go download Firefox because Firefox ships with its own root certificates and they update it.

The old built-in browser that comes with the old versions of Ted Nougat will not work. So you can sidestep this by just going to either buy a new phone or download Firefox. There you go. And Barrett writes, And for a good laugh, head on over to loser.com.

All right. One of the many people who sent that in to us. Yes. Should we place our bets on how soon Trump will manage to get permanently banned from Twitter? And this is an article from The Verge. Trump, I'm telling you, man, you got me late at night. I should be asleep right now.

It's six o'clock. I go to bed at seven. I've been up since three in the morning. All right. All right. Trump will lose his Twitter public interest protections in January, which means he could lose his account. Praise be to Allah for that. I'd imagine he will as soon as he doesn't have the special privileges of being a world leader anymore because God knows he's not going to change.

Oh, no, no, no, no. So he'll move over to whatever the right wing version of Twitter is. I can't remember what it's called anymore. Yeah, I can't either. Something, something, it actually will probably go back to LO. That'd be awesome. Ralph writes in, Hi, Grumps.

Research into COVID-safe concert venues is yielding some potentially promising results. Everything from ventilation systems to seating alternatives to snack distribution options are being investigated. This article is a bit long, but very interesting. And this is over at the New York Times, coronavirus study in Germany. He offers hope for concert goers.

I have been following this story for quite some time, well before the New York Times synopsis about this. But analysis of an indoor concert staged by scientists in August suggests us the impact of such events on the spread of the coronavirus is low to very low, as long as organizers ensure adequate ventilation, strict hygiene protocols, and limited capacity, according to the German researchers who conducted the study.

I don't know the last time that you went to a concert venue, but I do not remember there being any, there was no ventilation. There are no hygiene protocols, and I'm packed in like sardines. So then, there is no argument for not having such a concert.

Dr. Michael Geckel, part of the team at Martin Luther University's Halle Wittenberg, who conducted the study and has obviously never been to a concert in his entire fucking life, said in an interview, the risk of getting infected is very low. So, again, for venues of almost any size to achieve the kind of strict hygiene protocols and the adequate ventilation discussed in these studies will cost a lot of money, more money than

any venue has after having been shut down for almost nine months now. The limited capacity is a real problem. So basically, there is an argument here, Dr. Michael. It's a financial argument. Venues cannot afford to get themselves up to the capacities required and the things required for this, and the reduced capacity required basically makes it a money-losing proposition for the venues, for the artists, and for the promoters.

Trust me, I've talked to venues, artists, and promoters, and at the level of the number of people that you have to cut it back to to make it safe, it's not financially viable. It just isn't. I can see this being good news for small-scale local events, churches, things of that nature.

But even then, they'd have to have that infrastructure in place for the various protocols. The ventilation alone, schools don't have fucking proper ventilation. I'm sorry. I've been to a lot of concerts in my life. Most concert venues don't have the budget to clean the fucking bathroom. Exactly. So I don't think they're going to put in space-aged ventilation systems.

Look, I don't think people realize what a low-margin industry, the music industry, really is, especially touring. It's just very low margin, even with the incredibly large ticket prices compared to when we were kids. The people don't have this kind of money, and it's just never going to work at reduced capacity.

It's just not. RIP concert. And it goes on to say, hey, Grumps, got to love those algorithms. Tweets have spoken. Twitter search links Trump to loser. I tried this out, so if you did search for loser on Twitter, it was pretty fun.

It was pretty fun. James sent in, yeah, this week brings a chuckle, and this is a link over at YouTube, the Mandalorian Green Child of Mine, Sweet Child of Mine parody. I didn't get a chance to look at this one. Was it good? I don't know. I hate Guns N' Roses. Yeah, same here.

So anyway, Vincent writes in, dear B&J, that sounds wrong. Please read the company name in the article aloud like you do in your Amazon shopping order voice. That might cheer me up because, for some odd reason, the alcohol aisle was closed at 6 p.m.

today in the local supermarket here in Dublin. What blasphemy. Level 5 COVID restrictions doesn't mean alcohol is non-essential, last time I checked. I'd say it's more essential. Exactly. And this is a link from The Guardian. Company forced to change name that could be used to hack websites.

The company now legally known as that company whose name used to contain HTML script tags limited was set up by a British software engineer. Now, the original name was basically a cross-site scripting tag. Yeah. Backward Chevron, Chevron script source equals HTTPS colon slash slash MJT dot XSS dot HT Chevron LTD.

There. That was my Amazon. You had to add the other quote. Oh, sorry. End quote. Yep. Yep. So, pretty good. Pretty good. Funny. Clever. Yep. Mario writes in, hi, I thought you might find this interesting if you haven't already covered it on the show. Reminds me of all the dirty laundry that poured out when Verizon bought Yahoo.

I almost said Amazon. That would be funny. FCC fines T-Mobile $200 million over Sprint's alleged abuse of low-income subsidies. Turns out, Sprint was claiming that there were a whole bunch of people claiming the low-income monthly subsidies, and they were just pocketing the cash.

That they got from the government. Aww. Motherfuckers. God damn. We are in the wrong business, and we're way too ethical. We're in every wrong business. Yeah, that's the problem. There's your problem. We're actually nice guys, believe it or not. And over at iTunes, we've got one from Lil Slime.

This is a five-star, and the title is Excellent Perspective. The Pi 400 Plus just shows everything goes full circle. Remember the Commodore VIC-20, 64, and Amiga 500? Certainly do. A keyboard with all computing built into it. When are we going to see the return of the five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy?

Just saying. Go work for the military and work in a missile silo. It's 747. Oh, it's 747. Yeah. Yeah. If you want your question or comment right on the show, head over to GOG.show slash contact and send us your feedback or questions we can read on the air. And if you're so inclined, please head over to GOG.show slash review and toss us a five-star and snarky review.

And here's where Jason pimps overcast in the desperate hope that we'll get back to number one. I give up. Fuck him. Okay. Shout out to everyone who voted. I know it was a million years ago now, and I'd say it doesn't matter who you voted for, but if you are one of the 70 million people that watched the last four years and said, yeah, let's have some more of that, you're fucking insane.

Yep. Pretty much. And of course, a shout out to Alex Trebek. I mean, my God. I'm so glad I went to one of the tapings. I got to experience that. Jeopardy is just one of those shows that I have watched on and off my entire adult life, and it's sad that he's gone.

Yep. We saw it coming, but hey, at least you got to see the election called. Yep. And this is a shout out to listener. I don't know how to pronounce this. It's Shelches? Sure. Something like that. I was going to say shekels, but it's something like that. Over on Discord, who lost their mother this week to C19.

So we're very sorry for your loss, and we just wanted to give you a shout out and say stay strong, and you have our sympathies, for sure. Definitely. And to everybody else, wear a fucking mask. Please do. 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, or tolerate the show, please visit GOG.show slash donate to help us out, and we'll love you forever. Or visit GOG.show slash shop and pick up some good old-fashioned swag that we still need to update.

Seriously, you need to update. And if you can't do that, then please pass the show along to a friend. Word of mouth is the only way the show grows, so spread the grump far and wide. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 483. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, donate to the show, buy our swag, and get links to stuff we like.

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