484: Space Karen

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. How's the Great White North treating you, Brian? Nice. It's been very nice. Cold. I'm not used to that. Lots of stairs. Lots of stairs. That's good for you.

Our house, you know, we're four stories, you know, from basement to loft where I'm currently recording, which will be my future podcast studio. I've got a couple duvet covers thrown about since we have no furniture, no rugs, no wall hangings, no nothing yet. Yeah, you do sound like you're in the Batcave right now.

Yeah, yeah. I'm working on it. It's a work in progress, as we knew it would be. Alrighty. Alrighty. Well, you got out just in time because, yeah, not good here. Really? Yeah, I saw. I mean, you know, it's funny because you watch the news here and the numbers are bad, but nowhere near as bad as they are across the border.

Yeah, it's bad. It's bad there. You know, I see, I see, you know, people are calling for a nationwide lockdown. The commander in chief is completely absent. He is obviously just checked out and is sitting in his bunker tweeting. Yeah, no national leadership, no nothing. And, you know, California, I guess, is locking down. Everything's gone purple.

Yeah, I hope so. I hope so. I hope so. We had a pretty big scare this week. So it's been a very stressful week. So yeah, fortunately, knock on wood, we're still okay. But we still are in kind of the window of where we still could get sick. So it's been a blast.

Yeah, sorry to hear that. Yeah. You know, here, it's, you know, we had had hopes that we'd be able to do porch visits and things of that nature with our friends, but basically, abundance of caution, as numbers are going up, where we're basically just seeing our immediate family. And that's that. So and our family is doing the same.

Yeah, it's, we're back to full lockdown. I'm back to full on delivery mode. Nothing, not leaving the house, not going anywhere after this scare this week. It wasn't even my fault. Damn it. So we're, you know, it's good every now and again to get a scare, but not get the Rona. But there it is. Yeah. Hey, everybody, let's socially distance Zoom Thanksgivings this year. That's the deal.

Oh, God, yeah, you have no idea the fights that are going on across the country right now. But it's family. But it's family. Well, yeah, that's nobody gives a shit if it's family. If you're all dead. Anyway, moving on to some fun news. I found this over at VentureBeat. And it's called You Can't Eliminate Bias from Machine Learning, But You Can Pick Your Bias.

Oh, yeah, we can pick our racism. Exactly. And it's a pretty long article that goes into, you know, how this works, sort of, you know, it's a very top level overview. And I love it at the end says, What does all this mean in the practical sense? In a nutshell, data science is hard. Machine learning is messy. And there is no such thing as completely eliminating bias or finding a perfect model. Okay, isn't that what the whole point of the whole damn thing was supposed to be in the first place?

That was the point. It was it was let these computers do this for us with nothing but data. Therefore, they will not be tainted by human humanity. Yes, it says there are many, many more facets and angles we could delve into as machine learning hits its mainstream stride. But the bottom line is that we're foolish if we assume that data science is some sort of a be all end all when it comes to making good decisions.

Well, you know, if look, humans are really good at making bad decisions already. So why don't we just keep people employed and fuck this machine learning? AI is people, Jason. I just think it's funny. It's funny that, you know, we're now, you know, in our mid to late 40s, both of us, some of us later than others, but we're still governed after all this time and all this technology, we're still governed by the same basic thing that we learned literally when learning basic garbage in garbage out.

In the news. Remember when the Trump administration thought TikTok was a grave threat to America and it needed to be banned? Yes, and somebody gave them a mirror and said, you're the grave threat to America. Oh, wait, wait, wait, that's that's something completely different. Yes, I do remember the yes.

Well, along with abandoning any hope of like trying to stop anything with COVID-19. We've also basically given up on TikTok. The Trump administration seems to have completely forgotten about it. The ban was supposed to go into effect the other day based on the August executive order that had already been amended once in the original order.

We were supposed to basically there was credible evidence that ByteDance, which is TikTok's China based owner, might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States. Now, the Twitter in chief is the only person that's actually taking action to threaten and impair the national security of the United States, not the kids on TikTok who have actually been doing some great jobs.

I saw some articles saying that actually the people on TikTok, the kids are doing a better job lampooning everything that's going on right now than Saturday Night Live is. Oh, Saturday Night Live is just a dumpster fire. But do you remember that simpler time, Brian, that simpler age long ago? Well, maybe not that long ago when the worst thing that we had to worry about was an app.

Oh, beautiful days. I miss those days. I miss those days. Now, to be fair, all of this was, of course, still occurring during the pandemic. We are so pandemic fatigued that we even forget that the pandemic was going on when we were worried about this app, too. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah. So, basically, they were supposed to sell TikTok to an American owner.

And as we talked about on the show, it was a lot of grift and bullshit that basically sold off portions of TikTok to Trump's cronies. That hasn't happened yet. And as TikTok's tens of millions of U.S. users have noticed, TikTok is still working in the U.S., although it did not meet yesterday's deadline.

Last night, the Commerce Department said it was holding off on its would-be ban. Today, TikTok told the federal court that the Trump administration had given it in ByteDance another 15 days to work out its Walmart slash Oracle deal. And this is all, of course, coming after, you know, TikTok has complained the Trump admin hasn't said a word about the plan because they're not doing anything except for filing stupid lawsuits that are being rejected left, right, and center regarding the election.

So, that is all that's happening right now. So, it's basically a free-for-all except for the fact that it's basically a netherland for people that are stuck mid-law suits or mid-executive orders because there's nothing coming out of the White House to clarify anything. Anything.

Anything whatsoever. Well, on the heels of Prop 22 being passed here in California, DoorDash has finally said, we're going public, mofos. Of course they are. This is their only chance. This is the only time that they are even going to approach profitability.

So, if you are one of the stakeholders and one of the people involved, if you're in the C-suite, get the money now and get the F out. Definitely. So, DoorDash is still losing money. They lost $149 million on $1.9 billion in revenue last quarter.

So, yeah, it's, you know, the same old, same old. But the thing about it is, you know, a lot of these people don't really realize is that their business got such a boost from the pandemic that it's, you know, this is just kind of a – it's an anomaly.

It's a blip in the radar. It's a one-time bubble. Yes, and it will eventually go away. So, I think it'd be silly to buy DoorDash personally, not, you know, withstanding the fact that I hate them and all their ilk. But anyway, yeah, I think we're going to see as many of these companies that are in this space going public as fast as humanly possible.

Yeah, I agree. I mean, the passing of the Prop 22 obviously was a win for DoorDash as much as it can be. But DoorDash in and of itself, inherently, it's a non-profitable business. It's razor-thin margins. You have to not only screw your employees.

You also have to screw the restaurants. And basically, you're screwing the consumers too with insane fees that you tack on. And the investors. Everybody's getting screwed by DoorDash. Yeah, everybody's getting screwed. Everybody's getting a shit sandwich delivered. Yeah, generally cold. Cold shit sandwich.

So, you know, Uber and Lyft were the big winners from Prop 22 because they actually have an avenue to make some money. DoorDash is – their only hope right now is to go public and make a ton of money. And like I said, I really do think that anybody that can is going to get out as soon as possible and take whatever money they've made and run.

Because it is not – it's not a good business model. It just isn't. No, they're going to run to the hills. Run to the hills. And speaking of Uber, Uber is reportedly in talks to sell off its self-driving unit. Okay. There you go. The next step for Uber's self-driving unit could be a sale.

As first reported by TechCrunch and later Reuters, anonymous sources say Uber is in talks with self-driving tech startup Aurora about a sale of their ATG units. So, they're getting out of that business apparently. Not surprised. Not surprised.

Nope. And, you know, they shouldn't have been in that business to begin with. They really shouldn't have been in that business. It's one of those things where it's like let somebody else do the heavy lifting on it and then when self-driving cars are a thing in 20 years, you know, again, then you can lease the cars and then have your own business.

But, again, this is the whole thing about how you and I apparently don't know how to run a business because basically you're just an app. You've made a lot of money. You have a lot of people investing in you. Rather than improve your core service, they just took all this money and threw it away at subsidiary services.

Yeah. Instead of, you know, maybe paying the drivers better or better rates for the, you know, the peoples, they just, yeah, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars they invested in this, which was just – it was a waste of money. Waste of money. The hubris. The hubris.

The concept of a core business model seems to be completely lost in Silicon Valley. Yeah, everybody's got to, like, you know, keep buying everybody else and thinking that there's something that they're not. You know, look how well it worked out for WeWork. Yeah. And speaking of the opposite of people thinking there's something that they're not, these are people who definitely know what they are.

1.4 million people apparently refused to sign a no bigotry agreement with Airbnb. Yeah. It was just a pop-up that said, you agree that you're okay renting your place out to anybody regardless of sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, ethnicity, national origin, whatever, race, religion.

You're okay with that, right? And 1.4 million people said, nope, not okay with that. See, the funny part about that is I figured it would be higher now that I've seen the election returns come back. I figured that would be much higher. Well, again, how many people actually read the terms of service?

Yeah. And out of those 70 million people, how many can read? Yes, exactly. So, yeah, this was just a simple pop-up that came up and 1.4 million people clicked reject and decided to forego the use of the platform. One can only assume that there's a parlor version of Airbnb coming out soon.

White B&B. Exactly. Oh, God. So, Facebook is trying to mitigate some of their issues with their moderation queue. Oh, really? So, instead of – yeah, yeah. This comes back to what they were saying, you know, I don't know how many congressional hearings ago where they were going to make the AI the superstar of Facebook and use AI to, you know, basically help them out of the ditch that they've dug for themselves.

I mean, they've got 15,000 people right now doing content moderation, but that's not even enough. So, what they're going to do now is they're going to sort the content for quicker moderation. And I looked at the graphs on here and what they're trying to do with it. And, you know, as we know, it's not AI. It's just, you know, filtering and things like that, which makes sense.

Totally makes sense. They should have been doing this from the get-go. It's not – it doesn't seem like it's all that hard. It's like, okay, let's, you know, de-dupe the shit. Let's put some counts on it and let's bubble the stuff up based on certain criteria. And Bob's your uncle. You know, it's not really rocket science when it comes to that stuff.

So, I'm just surprised it took them this long. But then again, we still can't even delete our messages. So, what are you going to do? What are you going to do? Just Zuckerberg. All right. Well, there could be censorship coming to the internet worldwide now. I meant to TLDR this one in the show notes.

And, of course, I forgot about it. So, I'm just going to TLDR it from memory here. But basically, in a ruling on Thursday, the Austrian Supreme Court ordered, pursuant to local defamation rules, that Facebook had to remove a post insulting a former Green Party leader and keep equivalent posts off its site and do so on a global scale, which might possibly happen if they could ramp up their moderation efforts.

But the point being here, of course, is that Facebook usually, and most social media sites, and anybody claiming to be a platform will basically follow local rules locally using geo-blocking and geo-filtering and not apply those rules globally.

The courts here are basically saying, no, no, no, no, no. You do have to do this globally. You can't get away with just doing it locally. And if that continues, obviously, that is a very far-reaching consequence for the internet in general. If we all have to follow everybody's rules globally, it kind of comes a race down to the bottom.

And who's got the craziest and most restrictive rulings? And we're going to have to follow those everywhere. That is the real worry right now. No, this ain't going to work. This ain't going to work. It can't. I can't. Yeah. No, they do not have the jurisdiction to do this. And there's just no way in hell that this is going to go through.

I'm so fond of saying on this show, if only we had some sort of international body that does rulings. Yeah. But at this point, it's like, okay, it's Austria. Who cares? You know, Facebook can just turn off Facebook in Austria and say, just fight me.

Facebook would leave Austria before actually having to implement this everywhere because it is a bit of a slippery slope situation. So that is problematic. And also, who the F cares if you're not in Austria about somebody posting something kind of snarky about the Green Party member in Austria? How many views is that post getting outside of Austria?

Exactly. And welcome to the internet. Come on. You can't. We can't moderate YouTube comments. You think this is going to happen? Exactly. Exactly. And in Turkey, Google got hit with another, you know, coffee creamer fine of $25 million. Woo!

That's nothing. No, I just threw it in because every now and every time that Google gets fined, I like to at least throw it in the news here. So, but they're just, you know, this is another algorithmic judgment because they say that they're prioritizing their stuff over other people's stuff. Blah, blah, blah. Yes, we know.

Yes, that's their business model. We get it. Yeah. Mm-hmm. There was a, oh man, I meant to dig this up. I saw it the other day. It's somebody wrote a browser plugin or an extension to turn Google search results back into the old days. So everything looks like it did like back in, you know, the late 90s.

I wish I could get the results I got in the late 90s. Yeah, when it worked. Yes. I mean, it works now, but it's, you're just getting, I mean, nobody goes past the first page. Nobody goes past the first three results anymore. And the first three are usually ads. Yeah. Yeah. They're all ads now. Jeez.

But yeah, yeah, I miss the old days. But I think this removes most of those ads. I'll dig it up and see if I can get it for next week's show. Okay, cool. And speaking of the aforementioned, please, for the love of God, stay home for Thanksgiving. Just pop in a good old Stouffer's microwave Thanksgiving dinner and get on the phone or on a Zoom call with your family instead of exposing them and you because we have a vaccine.

It's coming, but it ain't fucking here yet. All right. So we got to hold on a little bit longer. So because it's not safe to travel, Zoom is lifting its usual 40-minute limit on free video chats for Thanksgiving. So starting at midnight on November 26th through to 6 a.m.

Eastern time on the 27th. There will be no 40-minute time limits for free calls, so you can all sit and have a socially distanced Zoom dinner and be happy. The thing that really gets me about this one is, of course, all you have to do after you get booted after 40 minutes is call them back.

Call them back. Exactly. So it really wasn't that big of an issue. Yeah. I know. It's like, come on, guys. You just call them back or flip over to FaceTime or something else. But yeah. With everybody's wonderful internet connections, it's not like the call didn't break up a couple times anyways. Yeah, seriously.

Seriously. I did end up paying for my Zoom subscription for the year because I just needed it for work. So I can do that. But here's the one thing I want to do on a holiday. Zoom with family. Come on. I know. Everybody should be taking this as a blessing.

You're not going to have to listen to your crazy uncle rant about how Trump actually won the election. Exactly. And how COVID doesn't exist. Fun times. And of course, ISPs are, you know, they're licking their chops right now because everybody is staying at home. And those data caps are making them a good chunk of money.

It's so funny because the entire time we were doing this show, I was screaming about how data caps and throttling and paying for bandwidth was coming to the US because they had it in Canada. I get to Canada, unlimited bandwidth now. Oh, man. And you guys are starting to get throttled and data capped.

Yeah, I know. Fortunately, I'm still on Spectrum, who's trying to fight the lack of data caps. But as we covered on the show, they got dinged because of the merger that they did. And they agreed to the fact that we're not going to have data caps on our service for four years. And, you know, they advertise it on TV as saying, hey, come to Spectrum.

We have no data caps. For four years. Because the courts are forcing us to. But yeah, and at the same time, they're petitioning the FCC to lose the, you know, lose the bandwidth caps because it's like, we can't be profitable. Bullshit. You can't be profitable.

You can't be greedy Scrooge McDucks, you assholes.

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With brands like Laura Geller, Philosophy, Ninja, and so many more. Shop now at QVC.com. We are back again this week with Dave Bittner.

Dave is the host of the Cyber Wire podcast, and also the co-host of the social engineering podcast, Hacking Humans with Joe Kerrigan, and also the co-host of Caveat with Ben Yellen, where they discuss law and policy, as well as surveillance and privacy. Welcome to Bum Follow-Up with Dave Bittner. I was about to say, also the co-host of Colonoscopy Time with Katie Kirk.

That's right. My new co-host. I am doing well. I have to say I'm in a much better mood this week because I have food in my belly, and so that makes me happy. I have to say, overall, just a quick follow-up on the whole colonoscopy thing.

It was not nearly as unpleasant an experience as I feared it would be. In fact, it wasn't really that – it wasn't a big deal. In fact, I enjoyed it immensely. I've signed up for another one next week. Exactly. Did it help the doctor was wearing a furry mask?

Well, it didn't hurt. Let's put it that way. So, yeah. The worst part was not being able to eat solid food for the two days, basically two days – the day before and the day of, not being able to eat anything.

So I got hungry, and I found myself saying, oh, I'm hungry. I'll just have a snack. I can't have a snack. I'll just have a milkshake. Yeah, yeah, and, you know, the prep stuff where they make you drink the stuff to clean you out, not nearly as bad as I thought it would be.

I didn't have any cramping or anything like that. It just basically, you know, floods your system and everything comes out, and that's that. The actual procedure was – it reminded me of – remember that Bill Cosby routine where he gets his tonsils out, and the anesthesiologist is like, all right, count backwards from 100.

He says, 100, 99 – that was me. I was – the woman who's the anesthesiologist, she said to me, all right, I'm going to start the anesthesia here. You know, you might feel a little bit of stinging in your hand where the stuff goes in. I was like, okay, that sounds great.

Next thing I knew, I was – I woke up in the recovery room, completely done, have no recollection of anything that had happened. Everything went well. I don't have to go back for another decade, and when I do, it won't be that big a deal.

So my tips to everyone is that it's not that big a deal. I put it off for a couple of months because of the yuck factor, but don't put it off because it's a valuable thing, and, you know, colon cancer is one of those things that can sneak up on you, and if it makes itself known, it's usually too late.

Right. So get it checked out ahead of time, and, you know, it's one of those unfortunate little nuisances of life, but I would say go do it. It's not that big a deal. All righty. All right. Do not wait for the Star Trek scanners that do not invade the body.

Yes. Right. Right. The other big news for me last week was I got the new iPhone. Treat yourself for your little procedure. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And as I think we talked about before, I wish I could be more excited about it.

My overall excitement over new gadgets is not what it used to be when I was younger. Oh, look. I got a phone. Great. Yeah. I mean, I have to say the camera is very nice. It has a much better camera than what I had before. I usually upgrade every couple of years, so I think I had a 10XS, and this is a 12, and so I have all the fancy new camera stuff, so that's fun.

It's the same one they use for your colonoscopy. That's right. Yes. That's right. Yeah. Although I got the iPhone Pro Max, so it's definitely not going to fit up there. It's not that I've tried. Well, at least on the first time. Maybe after two or three times, it'll fit a little easier.

That's right. You were out. What do you know? Right. Ew. Where is my phone? What's that ringing sound? You don't hear that? I totally hear that. You don't hear that? Yeah.

So, but, you know, it's cool. It's fast. I got a lot more storage than I had before and all that kind of stuff. I guess my son is excited because he got my hand-me-down phone, so he's happy about that. But, yeah. You know. Yeah. It's a phone. But, you know what?

Actually, the thing that's relevant to us here is, you know, Apple does a remarkable job of making the upgrade pretty easy. You get the, you take the old phone, you take the new phone, you put them next to each other, you scan a barcode, and most of the stuff just transfers automagically, and it just works.

I will say the hardest part of upgrading, the pain point of upgrading, the part that made me want to bang my head against my desk was the security stuff. It was things like LastPass, it was things like LastPass, it was things like Google, all the stuff where I have two-factor authentication, all the authenticators.

They do not like being on a new device. And also, they don't like, you sort of get trapped down these little holes where it's like, well, just disable this. All right, I've disabled that. Well, now that you've disabled that, you can't do that. You need to enable that. Well, you can't enable that on your phone. You have to do that on the web. So you end up in these circles of having to go, so at one point I'm sitting there, I have my laptop open, I have my phone next to me, I have my YubiKey to be able to scan that, and finally got it all working.

But it seems to me like this is an area that requires some attention. Even though the providers of this have made it a lot easier, it's a lot better than it used to be, it ain't quite there yet. Right. Yeah, you know what you've forgotten, that list of things that you had next to you, which would have made it a lot easier?

A big bottle of scotch. Yes, that's true. That is true. Right. Yeah, that was the other thing during the colonoscopy prep. No alcohol. Oh, God. Are you kidding me? Two whole days.

Yeah, I know, right? Yeah. Murder. I'll take the cancer. Screw it. The cancer survives the amount of booze I'm drinking it deserves to win. That's right. Yeah, that is some apex cancer right there. So, shall we talk about the Mandalorian?

Spoiler alerts. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think the biggest Mandalorian news this week is Baby Yoda is off into space with SpaceX and NASA. Yes. It's amazing how they were able to get a Baby Yoda toy. Nobody else can. Yeah. They probably got it off Etsy.

It's a bootleg. They said a bootleg to space. Right. Right. So, what did you guys think? It continues to be the best Star Wars that's out there right now. That's for sure. I'd never personally followed the cartoons. I know you're not supposed to say cartoons.

Whatever you adults call cartoons these days. But apparently it's following along quite well with the storylines that came through on those. It's nice to see more Mandalorians. I have to admit I'm getting a little – I'm a little bumped by the sci-fi actors and actresses that are basically just bouncing from series to series and only are in sci-fi stuff anymore.

It's bumped me a little bit to have Starbuck be a Mandalorian. Yeah. Yeah. Instead of this is the way, she should have just said so say we all. Yeah. So, you know, it's a recurring thing. Some of the BSG cast has now shown up on Star Trek Discovery.

You know, I get it. You got to work. And, you know, certainly people – it's a valuable skill in much the same way that actors and actresses that do doctory stuff, doctory shows, have managed to, you know, learn that lingo. And it comes off the tongue easy. You know, it's not every – To be able to spew technobabble.

Exactly. Well, it's a skill and I get rehiring people that are good at it. But it does bump me. It does bump me. Yeah. But you also have to remember that the producers of those shows know that these people have fan bases, very rabid fan bases.

Yes. They're into sci-fi. So that's just, you know, that's just marketing right there to bring them along. It's like, oh, let's get our BSG fans to watch some Mandalorian. And maybe they'll sign up for a Disney Plus account. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So – but it was good. She's a great actress. I love Katie Sackhoff.

I loved her at BSG. And now I love her as a Mandalorian. And it's – I'm not disappointed by anything that they're doing with the show so far. I'm excited to see – to see where they're going to take it. Yeah. I enjoyed it as well.

I'm really liking this thing that they're doing with the Mandalorian character this season where they're kind of – they're revealing how insular his world has been. And that, you know, when the new Mandalorians show up and they take their helmets off and he's like, whoa, whoa, guys – and his first response is, where did you guys get that armor?

Because you can't possibly be – who did you steal the armor from? Because there's no way you could be Mandalorians. And they're like, oh, he's one of those guys. He's one of those weirdos. Right. Right. Right. So I think that's fascinating that we're kind of going on that journey with him as his world.

We're kind of finding out that he's a bit of a country bumpkin really. Right. Right. Exactly. Despite – He's like a moisture farmer. Presumably being well-traveled. Yeah. So I enjoyed that very much. I have a little bit of an eye roll that as much as I loved – what's her name?

Bo-Katana. That's her name, right? Bo-Katana. I think that's the new character. I thought she was very cool and I thought she kicks ass. And I'm happy that two of the three new Mandalorian characters are women. I think that's amazing and awesome and really cool.

I had a little bit of an eye roll that they have boob armor. You know? Like, okay. You know. All right. I get it. I guess, you know. Let's give us a sex appeal. This is a series that involved Carrie Fisher in gold beginning.

So let's cut some slack there, of course. And George Lucas' famous edict that there's no underwear in space. Right. Right. Great. Yeah. No, but I agree. I mean the storytelling continues to be compelling and I'm just – I'm really enjoying it.

I'm looking forward to each new episode. I think they're really just hitting it out of the park. I did enjoy the Apollo 13 homage because when I was watching, I'm like, this looks familiar. And then I found an article on The Collider about how Bryce Dallas Howard actually threw that in as a shout out to her dad from Apollo 13.

So I thought that was pretty fun. That is. That is. I can't believe it was – that Apollo 13 was 1995. That was that long ago. Right? See, for me, like 1995 still feels like, oh, that was just a couple of years ago, right? That's the problem.

Well, but you know, I don't know about you guys, but for me, Apollo 13 is one of those movies that if I come upon it when I'm flipping through channels, I have to stop and watch the rest of it. Yep. It's one of those handful of movies. It's just good. Yeah. Yes, it is. So shall we actually get on to some security news?

Sure. Let's do it. So it is that most wonderful time of the year. So, of course, Mozilla has come out with their creepiest gadgets of 2020, so for your gift buying needs. And I'm not sure why we're shocked or surprised anymore, but it's basically everything is super creepy.

There's no privacy anymore. I mean, we've just spent eight months basically inviting friends, family, co-workers into our houses over Zoom, so everything is creepy and there's no privacy anymore. But they did it anyways. They looked at over 130 products and here's a surprise.

Most Amazon and Facebook gadgets fall into the super creepy category. I didn't need an article to tell me that. Yeah. With Facebook's Portal and Oculus Quest 2 VR headset, Amazon's Echo Show and Echo Dot smart devices, the Halo fitness tracker, and of course, the Ring security cam and doorbells sitting among the worst on the list.

Only the Kindle and Echo Buds were found to meet acceptable privacy standards. I would be concerned if my headphones did not meet privacy standards, but apparently... I can tell you why they meet privacy standards, because about a day after I got the Echo Buds, they've sat in a drawer unpowered. That's why they're the most secure headphones in my house.

Yeah. Who thought we'd be in a time when we'd have to do firmware updates on our light bulbs? Well, Jason, again, as I always like to say, Jason has a mattress that came with terms of service. I actually did have to do a firmware upgrade on my Elgato key light this morning.

I'm like, really? Come on. Yep. Mozilla has recommended that people buy exactly zero Facebook devices, because it's Facebook. So there you go. They should have listened to our show. We've been saying that since the day they were announced. Yes. Google, rather surprisingly, has fared better than most of its big tech brethren.

The Google Nest Mini, Nest Audio, Nest Thermostat, Nest Security Cam, and Nest Smoke Detector all landed in very creepy. Not quite as bad as Facebook and Amazon's products. So that's a plus, I suppose. One we always talk about, Apple, also emerged relatively, well, they say unscathed, but they're in a little creepy, with the Apple Watch, AirPods, AirPods Pro, Apple TV, and even the HomePod all being there.

Related other items, Nintendo Switch, Sony PS5, Microsoft Xbox Series X, and S are no biggie as far as privacy goes. So that's all right. Roku, not so good. But as they say, given Roku devices are ad factories, this isn't surprising. I mean, I guess anything that has a smart assistant built into it or has access to a smart assistant automatically puts them in that category privacy-wise.

Yeah, exactly. So if you want the list, the link is in the show notes, and you can buy things at your peril, I suppose. But, you know, I have a lot of these items, and I'm like a security professional of sorts. Of sorts. You're a security pundit.

Yes. No, I think, yeah, between all of us, we have at least one of everything here. So. That's true. Oh, dear. And speaking of creepy this week, the internet lost its collective shit this week, the day that Big Sur launched, because everybody's Mac slowed down at once.

I don't know, were you guys hit with this? Because I sure as hell was. I was, yeah. Yep. Slows down. Absolutely. I was running some audio editing software, and I was like, what the hell is going on? Like, I couldn't, I could not work.

Everything just got super laggy. And then we had a Zoom meeting a couple minutes later, and everybody who was on a Mac who logged into the Zoom meeting was like, what's going on with Zoom? I can't, it took me forever to log on. And only afterwards did we find out that it was, no, it was Apple's doing.

Yeah, yeah. It's this, this phone home to check the security certificate thing wasn't doing the soft fail that it was supposed to do. So it was hanging and everything was going cattywumpus. I found an early one, like an early post on Reddit where they're like, oh, it's this. If you turn off your Wi-Fi, everything works again.

But if you turn it back on, it starts to die. So somebody figured out the process that it was the OCSP process. And fortunately, threw in a quick line that you could add to your Etsy hosts file, which I did, which 99.999% of people in the world won't know how to do. Nope.

So I slapped that in there and everything worked again. But I spent, you know, at least 45 minutes freaking out because I too was in the middle of a Logic session and everything was going fine. But in the background, Vivaldi decided to update on its own.

And then when it restarted, it just took everything with it. And I was like, oh man. And then like, you know, when you, the plugins that I run in Logic, they all phone home when you boot up Logic to make sure the certificates are valid and that you're, you know, actually licensed to use it on that machine.

So I couldn't even boot Logic. It was annoying as hell. I was running Isotope at the time and that's where I was seeing the issue. It just couldn't, it was unusable. Yeah. And of course the internet then lost its collective minds because apparently they were unaware of the fact that this sort of thing was happening.

Yeah, that's a big thing. That's where it really gets, they're like, wait a minute. Every time you launch an app, it's sending, it's sending a ping back to Apple saying what app you're using and what time and what your IP is and all this stuff. And it's doing it in the open. Oh my God.

You know, what are we to do, Lucy? We obviously don't own our own computers. I know. It's like, oh, this is the beginning of the end. This is the beginning of the end. Like, uh, this has been happening a long time, everybody. Yeah.

So Dave, uh, what's, what's it like on your side of the aisle? What did, what, what are the actual professionals saying? Not just us bitching and moaning about it. Well, I think along the lines of what you said, I mean, this is a, this is what failed here was the fail safe. The, it was, it did not fail gracefully.

Um, I think they found themselves and I guess it was the, uh, the load of launching Big Sur made something give out or, or was made, made their servers inaccessible. Um, right. And so it's, it's just the way that the DNS didn't, it failed improperly.

It like, it, it kind of like, Hey, we got this and it used, it's supposed to do this soft fail where it's just like, it should just like go into the ether if it's unreachable and you still get to use your apps. But it was like, Oh, Hey, we got this. And then everything would just be like, well, we're waiting.

Right, right, right. Do you have an answer yet? Do you have an answer yet? Do you have an answer yet? Yeah. We'll just sit here and wait for that. We're good. We can wait. So what an interesting way for Apple to discover a bug in their system. Um, I probably, I guess one of the worst ways, um, yeah, uh, you know, Apple has responded and, and, uh, they're making some changes.

Um, they said, uh, that, um, the security checks have never included the user's Apple ID or the identity of the device. Um, they've stopped logging IP addresses and, uh, with developer ID certificate checks, uh, and they're going to remove IP addresses from logs.

And they say over the next year, they're going to introduce several changes to their checks. They're going to use a new encrypted protocol for developer ID certificate revocation checks. Uh, huh. Uh, strong protections against server failure.

Uh, huh. Uh, and the new preference for users to opt out of these security protections, which is interesting because... How are they going to do their checks if you opt out? Does that open up? Is it a, is it a free game? Like I can just start installing pirated software left and right if I opt out?

Right. How does like, Jason, you were talking about, you know, for example, all those plugins that phone home to make sure that you're authorized. They're going to have to figure out a way to make those still work. The funny thing is it wasn't the actual phoning home to the plugin. It's the app itself that does the phoning home that was hanging it.

It's not the, it's like, so I'm launching, say, say I'm launching, uh, iZotope neutron or neutron three. So it's the, it's the authenticator that was hanging, not the actual authentication process between the authenticator and iZotope. It was the actual neutron app that was trying to get the certificate thing from Apple.

So it's a different part of the process. Either or, it doesn't matter if they're actually going to let you opt out of these kind of protections. So they're going to have to figure out a different way again. But I'm, but what I'm saying is like logging out, like getting around the Apple protections for the security thing doesn't actually get you around the protections for pirating because it still has to do the license check.

You're not, you can, you can still opt out of that right now. Anybody that's stolen Photoshop over the past 15 years knows that, knows that you can block all of the, the Adobe auth servers pretty easily. I know not of what you speak. Oh, sorry. Did I let the cat out of the bag there? I'm a paying member now, but there might've been a few years in there.

Yeah. Oh, who know? We have all probably made the little aggressive use of little snitch from now and now and again over the years. All of us. Yeah. Yeah. That's what it's for. That's why we bought it. Yeah. Sure.

It's to protect us from other people. Yeah. No, I used to actually have to do it in my Etsy hosts file. Every time I had, I had a list that I had in a notepad that I would just copy and paste every time I got a new machine to make sure nothing ever phoned home to Adobe. And then when little snitch came out, I'm like, well, you just saved me a step.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, little snitch. I will give you my $20 now. So in some more crazy consumer news, if you want your devices to be asked to the wind, well, Tesla has a problem right now. And I think this goes actually- They have a few.

Just a few. Yeah. This goes with other wirelessly connected cars, but a non-profit, non-partisan group called Consumer Watchdog put out a video showing how they made a little box that could hack the wireless connections of your Tesla and take over the screen with a, this Tesla has been hacked message.

Or, you know- Drive it off a bridge. Or saying, you know, you have a, you have a firmware update, click here and then load malware onto your car and then off to the races, literally racing off a cliff, like you just mentioned. So did you guys get a chance to watch the video?

No, I haven't seen it. It's pretty straightforward. Guy gets in his car, the other guy's standing outside, got a little box and he, guy goes to navigate some maps and then it looks like a browser window that pops up and with a page that says this car has been hacked.

So I don't know how deep the, the actual hacking quote unquote goes, or if it's just injecting a URL into the, the Tesla screen that it can pop up in the in-car browser. But the fact that you can do it is a problem. The fact that you can do it.

And they say that you can do this on a massive scale. Just, you have to up, like, you know, up the output of the power on your wireless signal. So you could be driving down the freeway and doing this to people's cars, which probably is a very bad thing. Yeah. Yeah. That's fascinating. Well, so it's just some kind of man in the middle thing.

Mm-hmm. Huh. Yeah. So it's just another one of these, you know, wireless car hacks. I mean, it doesn't seem to be as bad as the one where they took over the Jeep, but I think it, it could be close to it if they put, if they get the right, you know, malware onto the car using this technique to pull up that screen and get user interaction.

Yeah. You know, it reminds me, I want to say it's been a couple of years now. I was talking with a gentleman who's an expert in this space about the, these sort of connected cars and the security of, of cars as the cars get more and more capabilities for, you know, being able to, to do things on their own.

You know, like, like, I guess probably all three of us, our cars have a sort of the lane control kind of thing, or if you wander off towards the edge, it sort of nudges you back into your lane. Um, you know, and that means that the car is capable of taking control of the steering wheel.

Right. Um, but this, this guy I was talking to, the security guy was saying that, yes, these are interesting stories and they make great headlines, but the simple fact of the matter is, is that the vast majority of people in the world are not psychopaths and they're not out to kill each other.

So just like the fact that, you know, there are plenty of, um, you know, guns available, but you, you really, it's, it's few and far between, uh, not as much as we'd like, but you know, that people decide to go into sniper mode and just pick people off for the fun of it.

Uh, so it's the same thing with cars. There's really, it's, there's not a whole lot of motivation. Uh, there's not a whole, there, there, if you want to bump somebody off, there are much easier ways of doing it than hacking into their car and driving them off of a cliff. Right. So it, it, it's interesting, but probably not something that people have to worry about, which is not to say that this isn't a concern and Tesla should fix it.

Of course. Right. Exactly. Having said that, I just still would prefer having a car where people could not do that. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. I mean, this is an issue that, yes, I would call your dealer and let them know that, uh, you'd like to have this tended to, I'm actually surprised that we're this far along and something that, that seems this easy to do is doable because, um, every year I want to say at, uh, I can't remember if it's DEF CON or Black Hat, you know, those two bump up against each other.

Um, they have a car hacking exercise and, and it's quite often Tesla's and they have contests for hacking the Tesla's. Um, so it's not like people aren't beating on these cars to, to try to, to do this sort of thing. And, uh, I think overall they're pretty resilient.

So I'm kind of surprised that's, that this is still an issue here in, in this way. Of course, if someone wants to send me a Tesla for evaluation, uh, I'm more than happy to take it out. Yeah. I'd be happy to, uh, to get, provide my professional opinion as a security professional.

Uh, I would be happy to provide my, my opinion on that. And don't forget to send the power wall as well, because I want to be able to make sure that that's secure too. Yes, absolutely. And, uh, and the solar panels actually to power, the power wall would be nice because those might be hackable too.

Send anything and everything except for Elon, because he's got COVID. So I am, I am due for a new roof anyway, so I might as well put the solar panels on the house. Yeah. I think, I think three model S's would, uh, would not go amiss. I think, uh, no, no, I don't take the model three, but at the model, why not?

Let's, let's do go with the model S. If you're going to, if you're going to hack it, hack it big, man. Hack it big. That's true. That's true. All right, guys. Well, this has been fun. I'm glad that your bum is okay, Dave. My bum is secure. Yes.

Safe and sound. It's covered in the best, best scar jeans. That's right. It's everything's good. Yes. Five by five. All systems nominal.

Media candy. I finished long way up on Apple TV plus, and, uh, it was, I really enjoyed it just like long way down and long way around. Uh, but I, they did follow the trend of the other two series with the shitty last episode.

And it's like the last episode, it's always them going like, you know, thousands of miles with just little montages and then talking about how great the trip was and blah, blah, blah. And then rolling into their final location with a bunch of other bikers. And yeah. And, uh, the rest of the show I thought was great, but yeah, they, they still do have the shitty last episode problem.

Okay. I got to say, I mean, if you like the other two, it's, it's worth watching. They get past the, oh God, how do we charge our motorcycles thing after the first couple episodes when they finally do actually figure it out. And, uh, I finished Fauda the first three seasons of Fauda, which is pretty good.

You know, it's an Israeli show. So you're, there's lots of, uh, lots of subtitles, lots of dubbing and things like that. Cause it's either in Arabic or, you know, Hebrew and all that good stuff. But, uh, it's weird how they did the, the voices on it, but it's a really good show. It's kind of like, instead of Jack Bauer versus the terrorists, you know, it's basically, you know, Israeli special forces versus, uh, Hezbollah and all that stuff.

Not Hezbollah, was it, uh, I can't even remember. I'm so, it's like, we, we powered through that one. So my head's still a little bit scrambled, but, uh, it was good. It was a good show. I enjoyed it, but here's a tip for you, Brian. I needed something really good after watching Fauda because it's not a happy show and we're not getting any new MasterChef junior here in the States because, you know, lockdown and everything, but yeah, be bad press to kill kids.

Yeah. Well, in Australia, they said, fuck it. They have, and it's down there. It's called junior MasterChef. So I, Australia, well known for its cooking. Uh, you have no idea, dude. These kids kick the shit out of American kids.

It is incredible what these kids can do. I watched the first half of the first episode and, uh, cause I just went to Sweden and got the whole, the whole season, season three. And, uh, I mean, I have always said on this show that MasterChef junior is the best show on TV.

If you want to feel good, the Australian version delivers just as much as the American one. So, you know, if we can't get the stuff that we need, you can still go to Sweden and, and dig it up around the globe. So I highly recommend it. Go to Sweden via, get to Australia via Sweden. Exactly.

Yeah. Well, there, there is a show for you to watch that it may be not so much feel good, but it's certainly extremely good. The crown is back. Jason season four has dropped every single episode. I've seen two of them so far. Um, definitely picked up. Uh, it's better than the last season was.

Uh, Jillian Anderson is unrecognizable as Margaret Thatcher sinks into the role as well, if not better than Lithgow did into Churchill. Um, it's phenomenal so far, really enjoying it. Okay. I tried to watch the first season. I just couldn't get into it.

I just didn't, I wasn't in the right mindset, but now that winter's coming, I think this is more of a winter show. So I would recommend you go back and give it a go. It's quite good. Um, it, like I said, season three kind of lost a little bit because John Lithgow wasn't on it and they didn't have a strong, strong presence like Jillian Anderson's Thatcher.

So, uh, it's definitely picked back up for me and really enjoying it. Uh, and I got a bit excited this week. As you know, I'm a huge fan of Depeche Mode and all of a sudden there were teasers and, and stuff appearing all over the internet from Martin Gore coming from Mute Records, which is basically where his solo stuff comes out on.

Uh, he has done a number of solo albums over the years, Counterfeit and Counterfeit 2 being, uh, covers that, um, really great albums. Uh, he's also released a lot of electronica, instrumental stuff. That's a little bit more boring. So I was kind of hoping that we were going to get something where he actually sang and performed songs and all of that again.

Unfortunately, I found out this morning, nope, it's just another instrumental album. So bummer. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, well, uh, yeah, you know, that's, that should be illegal. And in the COVID days, if you're one of the world's best songwriters, you should actually have to write actual songs and not just release instrumentals.

I'm just saying. Seriously, seriously. And I did find a new, uh, podcast that I tried out, uh, from the EFF. Uh, this was a real surprise because Cory Doctorow is not involved with it since he's Mr. EFF, but it's called how to fix the internet. And, uh, I listened to the first episode this morning.

Well, I listened to most of it because I wanted to stick some ice picks in my ears by the end of it. Uh, it's, it's basically all about the first episodes about the FISA court. Um, and yeah, not a real page turner on that. One there, I'm telling you.

And, uh, they, they could really use some editing on that show for sure. Uh, yeah, I can't, I can't recommend it. Unfortunately, I tried, I gave it a shot on the plus side. It's nice that somebody is doing a podcast about the stuff that we find way too damn boring to talk about, but we probably should be talking about.

Well, we do talk about some of this stuff, you know, but, uh, yeah, they just, they actually talk about it with knowledge and, uh, legal professional opinions and things like that. We just make fun of it. We're, we are the, you know, basically the dick jokes of the internet. So, uh, yeah, that's how it goes, but you can give it a shot if you want to.

I'm sure some people will find it fascinating. I just wanted, it made me go back to bed. It really made me go back to bed. Apps and doodads. Boy, I really just took one update for me to not ever want to use Instagram again. You know, I didn't know what everybody was talking about.

And I was talking to a friend of the show MXV yesterday and he's like, those bastards moved all the best buttons. And now I can't, you know, it's like, I'm like, what are you talking about? I opened it up. Everything was the same. And then like five minutes later, I didn't even have to update the app. Then I got the new interface and I'm like, are you kidding me? It's horrific.

Of course, you know, this is one of those things that we're all going to complain about it and nobody's going to stop using it. And three months from now, it's just the way it is because your brain wraps yourself around it. But just like every other app, it's now, you know, it's five times more swipes to get to what you want to do. Reels will launch all the time because they put it right where your thumb's going to go.

And I don't give a shit about reels. Notifications no longer appear the way that they used to. That's gotten all strange and bizarre. And yeah, everything is horrible. Navigating it now is such a pain in the butt. And I don't want to buy anything through Instagram. I don't need a fucking mall.

It's funny. I actually bought something through Instagram last week. Of course you did. I got a set of Darren Brown playing cards because they're beautiful. And I wanted to test it out and see what the actual process was like going through the store and everything. And it wasn't too bad.

I wish you could turn it off so you didn't have to see them. I also wish that they showed my friends photos. That's all I really want. I don't really do that anymore. Yeah. No, I get to see three photos. Then it says you're done. And then it shows me random shit that I've already seen because the algorithm is terrible.

It's useless. It's useless. But are we surprised? They are owned by Facebook, which has stopped showing us our friends' updates years ago. That's true. That's true. Yeah. That new Facebook update. Ooh, that's a winner. No, that's a winner. So you put in Big Sur here.

Did you upgrade? I did. You're an idiot. You do audio. We have an audio podcast. Did you update it? Crazy man. Here I am. You hear me. Yeah. Maybe that's why you sound like you're in a cave in Big Sur. No, that's because I'm actually in a cave.

Unfortunately, not in Big Sur. That would be nice. Yeah. So what do you think? It's fine. You know, most of the – I'm sure, you know, as soon as I say this, we're going to get 7,000 people writing in saying, well, they actually did this to the kernel that did – But for me, mostly, it's just, you know, they've changed some icons.

They moved some stuff around. It's prettier. I like it. I think it's prettier. I think it's slower. I updated my Air, yeah. So just not a production machine. Yeah, my Air just, like, got really slow. The Messages app is broken as shit. The AirPod switching is kind of nice.

Yeah, I did like that. I enjoyed that greatly. You know, they did a good job with the bar at the top, the menu bar icons. I like those. They're definitely more useful now, quicker to see and make some changes. But overall, it's pretty superficial, and it did slow things down a bit.

So I hope they fix that part. Yeah, so I think you – this is the trick now. You have to go buy one of the new M1 processor-enabled laptops to actually make it work. That's why they had to make the processor so fast is because it really shit the bed on the old hardware. And, you know, I've got the latest Air top of the line that they made, 16 gig of RAM, and, yeah, it just dropped.

And the other annoying thing is I had to update – I had to pay for updates to some apps. I had to pay for an update to Bartender. Of course, everything. Yeah, Bartender. Bartender 4 is out now. It works really, really well on Big Sur, though. I've got to say that was an update worth paying for. And since it was, you know, like, you know, just a cheap update, it was $7.50 to upgrade.

To buy Bartender new is $15, and it's well worth every penny. It is a fantastic app and just lets you organize your menu bar so much better. I did have to pay – oh, and Bartender 4 does not work on previous versions of the OS. It only works on Big Sur. Pain in the ass.

I had to upgrade to Little Snitch 5. We talk about – actually, at this point, we've already talked about Big Sur and Little Snitch 5, so I'll leave that to the episode – the segment that we haven't recorded yet that you've already listened to. Yes. But, yeah, it's another one of those things you had to do.

I was smart, at least this time. I got the family plan for cheap, and so I can run it on all my machines. Right. But I also made the jump to Apple 1. Okay. Because I wanted the 2-terabyte iCloud backup because I've got the Google backup for 2 terabytes, and that cost me $19.95 a month.

So to do the same and get the 2 terabytes on Apple 1 or Apple – like iCloud plus all the other stuff you get with it is another $10. And I'm kind of looking forward to the Apple Fitness thing that's coming. Right. So I just made the leap, and I got the premier tier, so I got everything.

It's like the full boat. So $29.99 a month. Okay. And it gives me all of that stuff. I got to say, because I've been using Apple News Plus now too, because I got it. So I configured it, and it's on my iPads and stuff. That Apple News icon does not mean anything to me.

It looks like an S. It reminds me of like the salon. It does not say news, yes. No. You have to really squint to see that they're trying to turn that into an N. It just looks like an S to me. And I'm like, it's really bad design on that icon. I know that's a tangent, but whatever.

It annoys me. But yeah, so with that, I got Apple Arcade. And I'm like, okay, now I've got all these Apple Arcade games, and I got into the early launch for the Backbone 1, which is like a controller that you plug your iPhone into that gives you triggers and thumbsticks and D-pads and all that stuff.

Turns it basically into like a PS5 or an Xbox One controller. Right. It was $100. It's really well made. You don't have to power it. You don't have to plug it in. Like, you know, juice it. No charging. You just plug it into your phone and go. It works for some of the apps on Apple Arcade, but not a lot of them, turns out.

So there are a lot of compatible games with it. I got the Call of Duty Mobile, which I started to play, and it's pretty fun. It's a really nice piece of kit if you want to play games and actually have decent controllers. So I'm going to keep working on that one. But if you can get in, it took me like a month and a half to get mine because I was just on a waiting list.

But yeah, it's pretty good. I got to say, it's pretty good. I'm curious about the Apple Fitness. So once that actually launches, I'll have to get your review on that. Yeah, certainly. I've got – because I've been trying to do these yoga classes here in my studio. I've got space set up. I've got my yoga mat. And now that I've got the room for it, I want to – I don't want to go to the Beachbody route like you went just because I still have that MLM taste in my mouth and I just don't want to give them any money.

But let's just go with the – if you're going to go cult, let's go full cult and go full Apple. Fuck it. In for a penny, in for a pound. You get your yoga suit that looks like Steve Jobs' black turtleneck.

Oh, God. No, I got the Borat onesie. That's how I do my yoga baby. So – and I do have one little link in here that if you do have to look at CNN and a lot of us are looking at CNN still every now and again for – just to see if the president has finally fucking absconded to wherever he's going to go.

There's a low-bandwidth version. It's at light.cnn.com slash en for the English version. And it is full-on 1993 link list. That's it. It's amazing. Perfect. I just loaded it right now. It's beautiful. It's beautiful.

It's fast. You just see the headlines and you're in, you're out. Bookmark that puppy and you'll never have to worry about going to CNN again and having the 8,000 megabyte page loads with all the images and all the crap that drives you crazy. No ads, in and out.

Right. Yeah. Put this puppy on your phone. You'll thank me. By the way, since we've mentioned this just a few times, I just want to give my prediction here. I think that President Trump will move to Mar-a-Lago prior to Christmas and he will never leave there again.

He's just going to sit there. He's going to be on Twitter. He's going to proclaim that the new White House and that he won. And come January 21st when Twitter shuts him off, he'll move over to Parler and that'll be that. I don't think he'll ever come back to the White House again. He'll go to Mar-a-Lago and that'll be it. Okay.

We'll note that one. My prediction is he will leave the country by the end of the year and will never be seen again. That'd be even better. I hope you win. I hope I win too. I don't know what you have to do.

I don't know what you have to do if you're semi-famous and right-wing to actually get kicked off of Facebook. I really don't. I mean, I know that it's really easy for you or I to get kicked off Facebook. That would happen in two seconds.

But apparently you can even propose beheading two top public officials in a Facebook post. And then Mark Zuckerberg, if you're Steve Bannon, will say he didn't really break any rules here. Yeah. See, here's the fun part. We're recording this on Tuesday morning.

And very shortly, the Zuck is going to be speaking in front of Congress again. And you know he's going to get hit with this one. So we're going to have to pick up. We're going to have to have a follow-up next week. We'll have a follow-up on this. But to me, this is just insane. Like, what do you have to do?

I don't know. Like, if saying that we're going to put people's heads on spikes isn't enough to get you kicked off of Facebook, I don't know what is. Exactly. I don't either. It makes no sense.

No sense whatsoever. All right. Good. It's not just me sitting here mystified. No, no. I've given up trying to figure it out. I mean, eight years of this fucking show, we've got to throw up our hands and just go, eh, Zuck's going to Zuck. Zuck's going to Zuck. So I do have some heroes of the week.

You're fellow Canadians now. Some researchers have found out that hyperventilating may combat alcohol poisoning. So if you need to sober up faster, breathe faster. Okay. Yeah. It's just a way to move the alcohol into your lungs through the blood and get it out faster.

They've got a device that's basically like the size of a briefcase that they said they're going to try and, you know, they're working on now. It's just clinical trials right now, but they say that they have a device that can measure how much alcohol and how fast you have to breathe to get it out of your system faster. So, you know, who would have thought that just breathing would help?

All right. Well, good news is winter is coming. You can have that morning brandy or 50 and just breathe really fast before your first Zoom call. Yeah. Do some jumping jacks maybe. And there you go. I love my fellow Canadians.

They do the important work. Feedback loop. Over at Patreon, we've got Anne and Chloe. Welcome to the club. And over at PayPal, we've got Andrew, Natalie, Logan, Raj, Linda, Jonathan, Nathaniel, Adam, Michelle, Modus Praxis, and Chucking, he says, Chucking 10 British quid your way.

Cheers. So thank you, Modus Praxis. All righty. Over at Twitter, CoreStar writes us, thought this story might be up your alley. The mind boggles at the need to acquire the latest and greatest. I'll stick with my three-year-old Moto G5 and both kidneys. Thank you very much. And this is a man who sold his kidney to buy an iPhone in 2011, is now bedridden and requires daily dialysis.

But at least he can tweet from his phone. At least he can tweet. Yeah. Don't upgrade to the iOS 14, dude. You're going to hate it. And Modus 6502 writes, wonder what Brian thinks about this. And this is how Ticketmaster plans to check your vaccine status for concerts.

Yeah. I've talked to some friends about this. It's pretty insane. So this is a framework that they're trying to work on to safely bring back concerts in the post-pandemic world. So basically, the plan at the moment involves the Ticketmaster digital ticket app, which is a steaming pile of shit.

Oh, yeah. The third-party health information companies like Clear Health Pass or IBM's Digital Health Pass and testing and vaccine distribution providers like LabCorp and CVS Minute Clinics. So the theory here would be, after you purchase a ticket for a concert a year in advance, because that's what we do now, I guess, fans would need to verify that they had already been vaccinated.

So basically, which would provide approximately one year of COVID-19 protection, although that isn't known yet. We don't know that yet. We don't know that. So this is part of the problem with this plan is there's too many unknowns still. But the idea, basically, you go get the test from LabCorp or CVS Minute Clinic.

They provide some sort of verification that you did so to Clear Health Pass or IBM Digital Health Pass, which will then have an API that sucks into Ticketmaster's digital ticket app. So you are verified that you have had the vaccine within some undetermined period of time that may or may not mean shit.

And then you can actually rely on the door guy at the venue who gets paid next to no money to make sure that you got the green checkmark on your app before they let you into the venue. Or you slide to get 20 bucks and just go right in. Exactly. So there's a lot of bullshit going on here. And this is a lot. This is a lot.

This is safety theater, as we like to talk about. And it gives the people at Ticketmaster something to do since they can't sell any tickets right now. Yeah. This is just a this is the marketing team at Ticketmaster, not the health and safety team at Ticketmaster. No. Also, by the way, America, like you think you think in the Midwest they're going to they're going to give for this?

You think they even use apps to get into? They still print out their tickets. Come on. Yeah. And after using the Ticketmaster app, I print out my tickets, too, because it sucks. Yes, it's horrible. Anyways. Yeah. So I don't see this. Something like this will roll out.

I don't see. Hopefully it will be adopted. It's not a bad idea if the science lines up and it all makes sense. But who the heck knows? Who knows? So next one we got from Jeff Henderson. And he writes FDA clears Apple Watch sleep app that intervenes to stop nightmares caused by PTSD.

Yes. This looks interesting. It's Nightwear. Yes. And it's a prescription app which monitors the wearer's heart rate and movements while they sleep. And if they're having a nightmare, gently prods them out of the dream without aiming to wake them up completely using these smartwatches of vibrations. I don't know about you, but that would probably wake me up completely.

It would totally wake me up completely because I'd think I got a spider on me or something. But the interesting part here is it's a prescription app. Have you ever heard of a prescription app before? No, this is the first time I've heard of such a thing. Yeah. Does that mean you cannot get it without a prescription?

I cannot download this? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe you have to have a code. Some kind of doctor's code. So I don't know. It seems to have been passed and vetted for actual science. So good. That's great. I mean, you know, I have a wife. If I have a nightmare, she'll just punch me.

Exactly. Hopefully your nightmare is not about her. So when you wake up, it's just like, you know, oh, my God, I'm stuck in Jacob's ladder. I can't get out. Well, for the last nine months, it's basically been a nightmare. So anyway, I'm stuck in the same house again with the same people.

Anyways, over at GOG.show, Nico writes in, this would be the Brit that gave us the money. Hello, gents. Just PayPal 10 British quid. Your direction so Jason can get a White Claw and Brian a Tim Hortons. I'll trade you, Brian. I'd rather have a Tim Hortons. You can have my White Claw. Dude, I had a breakfast sandwich on Sunday.

Sadly, doctors say I'll never eat Tim Hortons again, so eat them for me. I will. Really enjoy your show. Been a listener since a year before your outgoing glorious leader got elected. I truly hope things swing around so you can host twice a week again. But hey, uncertain times and all. Got a question if you get a chance to cover it?

In light of theloser.com mentioned in the latest podcast, do you guys know what the future for the lesser known domain extensions are? Examples, .gold, .bet, .eco, .beer, etc. Do you recon these will start picking up sometime in the future as .com, .co, etc. are getting saturated?

Also, I believe Google doesn't really care about domain extensions these days in terms of SEO, or is that a fallacy? We've talked about this a long time on the show now. .com means nothing these days. Just get whatever domain you want. While nobody really knows how Google's algorithm works, probably Google itself doesn't even know anymore.

The .com gets weighted a tad, but it's more important if you pay, let's be honest. Yeah. So, yeah, basically alternative TLDs are a thing. Most of my domains now are alternate TLDs.

Like, you know, my website's at jpd.me. I've got jpd.productions. Go.g.show. Go.g.show. Yeah, get the one that works for you. And, by the way, if you want to do that, go to hover.com slash gog to get 10% off your first order. But, yeah, it's one of those things where I think that I love TLDs, you know, new ones.

I wish there were more of them. I really do. So, yeah, they're not going anywhere. Because .com is, I mean, the namespace is saturated. .co is great. But, yeah, that's getting saturated. Get whatever you want. There's over 400 extensions at Hover now. So if you can't find something there.

Nothing really matters anymore. Yeah, the only one that bugs me is .ly because that's Libya. And they kind of have control over that because I had Dastardly. That was going to be my next company. And when the Libyan government says, hey, we can take your domain if you have content that we disagree with.

Yeah, that's a non-starter. So read the terms of service on the TLD you get. But for the most part, they're all good. Just don't go to Libya. That's funny. I had a Libya extension, too, for a while. We did short links for Coldplay. So we had CLD.ly or something like that. I can't even remember what it was anymore.

But it was weird sending money to Libya. Yeah, it really was. It really was. And Chris writes in, hi, Grumps. Chris from Malta writing in again, this time with a question. I listen to your show on Overcast, and the audio quality is way better than other podcasts that I listen to. Kudos to that. However, I'm always amazed at the way your conversations sound like you're right next to each other, even though you are so far away.

Even farther now. Now, even across different countries, exactly. I do a lot of audio calls at work, and the connection always feels a bit laggy, and those milliseconds irk me so much. Do you call over professional podcasting software, or do you use any other application that can be used in an office environment?

I'll anticipate you bringing up the fact that Malta is an island in the middle of the sea by pointing out that we have dedicated fiber links between offices, and I can ping Microsoft and Google DNS servers with less than one millisecond. Wow, I wasn't going to bring up that fact, but you put it in here, so I did. Thank you. Curious to know your take on this.

Other than that, thank you so much for your show. I always look forward to new episodes. P.S. Jason, I'm the guy with the nickname Cuckoo on Discord, who pointed out the proper way to take AirPods out of their charging case. And I appreciate that more than anything else, because that was driving me nuts. So we use squadcast.fm.

If you go to gog.show slash squadcast, it'll give you a nice link that'll give us a little kickback, so appreciate that. But this is professional podcasting software. It is meant to do remote calls to record them, and we get local versions of each other's calls. So that's why we sound like we're in the same room, because Brian is recording locally, I'm recording locally.

We can do video, but neither of us wants to see each other, so we don't use the video portion of it. But the audio side of things is fantastic, and squadcast is the best in the business right now. So check them out if you need to record shows. And we don't really have lag on the VoIP side of things.

There's literally no lag when we're talking to each other. No, and don't forget the human factor as well. Some of the lag is just people not being comfortable talking into microphones or Zoom calls and all of that yet. You have to remember, Jason and I have been doing this almost eight years now, and we are very comfortable, and we also know each other very well.

So the pauses and lags and weird human tics don't exist between us, generally. And if they do, I edit them out. Barrett writes in, those damn S3 buckets again. And this is from Slashdot, credit card numbers for millions of hotel guests exposed by misconfigured cloud database.

Is it really misconfigured if people just don't put a goddamn password on it? I think it's configured as is, yes. As is, yes. So this is Prestige Software's cloud hospitality, which is used by hotels to integrate reservation systems with online booking websites like Expedia and Booking.com.

This has affected 24.4 gigabytes worth of data in total, according to the security team at Website Planet, which uncovered the bucket. This goes back, well, okay, they're also saying that many of the records contain data from multiple hotel guests that were grouped together, so it could be well over 10 million people exposed.

And it goes all the way back to 2013, which is crazy. And it's still live and in use when discovered this month. Oh! Awesome. Oh, way to go, way to go. And, yeah, if this has been running since 2013, you know, when you were setting up an S3 bucket in 2013, it's not like it is nowadays.

And I don't think Amazon goes back and says, hey, all these old buckets that were misconfigured with no access controls whatsoever, you might want to, like, you know, audit your shit. Amazon might want to think about adding that as a feature to their buckets and go back to these historically open ones.

Because I remember, you know, it was so much easier to just set world read and write on a bucket than it was to actually do the access token swap and things like that. So I was guilty of it back then. You know, you could probably find some mild buckets out there from back then.

And, okay, moving on. JD writes in, hey, guys, love the podcast. I found it a couple of years ago through the Jordan Harbinger Show. Jason, I know you are all about security cameras. I'm looking into getting one from my apartment. The landlord sends people to do maintenance and repairs while I'm at work, so I can't just have a security system. But at the same time, I'm not comfortable with people coming in and out while I'm not at home.

Any advice for a decent camera setup that uploads to the cloud? I'd prefer something that is decent quality and also doesn't have privacy implications like Amazon Ring cameras. But maybe I'm being just too picky or unrealistic. Hold on. Two thoughts here. You want to set up a camera in your house, but you're worried about privacy implications.

Okay. Well, first off, setting a camera in your house has privacy implications. And number two, why can't you just have a security system? All modern security systems allow you to let people have access, either using codes, thumbprint. I mean, there are apps.

All modern security systems will allow you to allow people into your house. So I don't quite understand that, either. Yeah. Yeah. You know, he's in an apartment, though, too, so it might be a little bit trickier to have a security system installed in an apartment. You'd have to get something like SimpliSafe with all wireless and shit like that.

But besides that, he asked for cameras, so I'll tell him about the cameras that I recommend. I prefer the Logitech Circle 2 cameras nowadays. The quality is the best I've seen. The Logitech Cloud service that they have is really good. And I think I've got five cameras on mine, and it's $14.95 a month for all of them.

It all goes up. It's got decent people recognition, much better than rings recognition, which doesn't really exist. And you can have it record all the time. You can have it record different hours. You can set up schedules. With mine, I use my Eero to turn off the actual Wi-Fi to the cameras during the day so it's not sucking up bandwidth while we're working.

But you can set that in the cameras. They're just great little cameras. I really like them quite a bit. And mainly just the quality is really good. So the problem with a Ring camera is, like, you know, that three-pixel face that's breaking into your house. You can't really ID somebody from that.

But these are, like, you know, HD cameras. So check out the Logitech Circle 2. Ring, when you absolutely positively have to have video of something that happened 30 seconds later. Yeah, Barrett writes in again, have to disagree with Brian's review of the Fire Stick.

We've had multiple versions since they were first announced and now have the small 4K stick on a kitchen TV with no issues with Netflix, Hulu, and plain old Amazon Prime video. Anyhow, stay grumpy. I guess your mileage may vary, but for me, they're slow as hell. There's always video lag going on.

And definitely, like, anytime trying to switch things around, it's like, you press the button, nothing happened. You mash the button five more times, and all of a sudden, it goes, like, 18 times back in the menu. Great. Thanks. And Vincent writes in, only seeing this appear in my feeds. We need GOG expertise to improve thieving best practices.

And this is the Microsoft engineer gets nine years for stealing $10 million from Microsoft. Yeah. This guy. He got greedy. He figured it out. But then he got greedy. Yeah. It's a pretty interesting read. So link is in the show notes. Yeah. I definitely recommend checking that one out.

This guy was just an idiot. He's just an idiot. And he says, P.S. Happy Singles Day, 1111, invented by Jack Ma, the Alibaba joker. P.P.S. He also made mini Singles Day on 1101. Can you believe that guy? Well, he's smart because they made how many billions of dollars this year?

Yes. I am a very happy shareholder at Alibaba. Yeah. I bet. I bet. And he says, will Jason and Brian buy, or what will Jason and Brian buy on Black Friday or Cyber Monday? Brian, you? Anything? I am buying a snowblower. I shit you not.

I'm getting furniture. I'm getting a rake. I'm getting a snow shovel. I'm getting a snowblower. I'm getting a power screwdriver. I'm in full on. I just bought a house home improvement mode. Oh, yeah. This is perfect for you. It's a big. Yeah. We're spending a lot of money coming up. Yeah.

I'm just buying presents for people. I'm just going to watch the garbage sales and buy presents for people for Christmas because I think I've got enough stuff for me. I'm good. I'm good. Seth writes in, just curious what torrent client y'all use. I used to use transmission but have been without a computer for quite a while.

I recently purchased a new iMac and I'm looking to visit Sweden in the near future. Any advice on torrent clients and can you point me to any good resources on staying safe with VPN downloads? I'm a little out of the loop and I'm not finding good resources in my searches. Love the show and thank you. I still use transmission.

I use transmission and I use private internet access. So gog.show slash VPN for that. And yeah, just turn on your VPN and torrent away. That's the best practices for staying safe when you're downloading from Sweden. Just turn your VPN on.

That's it. Yep. There you go. And Jason writes in, what kind of crazy country did Brian move to? 12 videos on how to navigate one intersection. And this is the new Canadian intersection has 12 instructional videos to learn how to use it. Oh, have you seen this, this, uh, I have.

And to begin with, I did not move to Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. I am in Toronto. It's a bit like saying, what are those crazy Texans doing when you live in California? Oh, okay. I don't know what they're doing over there. So, but it is, I mean, there's nothing more Canadian than the fact that they released 12 videos on how to navigate the intersection.

So it's, it's pretty awesome. Every conceivable scenario, um, a beaver crosses the path. This is what you should do. It is, it is, it is none more Canadian than that. It's pretty funny. So well done there. Uh, Landon writes in, I've been using the Netflix browser on my PC when I decided to switch on over to the Netflix app built into windows.

I read that using the windows app streams videos in 10 ADP as opposed to seven 20 P through Google Chrome. I figured it was a good idea. However, now my continue watching tab. Isn't the first thing on my home screen anymore. I have to scroll through half a page of BS suggestions to find a smaller box to jump back into my shows.

A small gripe, but it puts me in a grumpy mood and made me think of you guys. Cheers. All right. Dan writes in, Hey geeks, just thought it worth mentioning, mentioning that the dev behind reader app did something pretty cool. I shot a video of a UI glitch that appeared after upgrading to an iPhone 12 pro and submitted it in a bug report.

The dev noted that I was on an old and unsupported version of the app and sent me a free code to get the latest version from the app store. Super generous. I write not to share a tip on how to get free app codes, but to reinforce that this is a developer worth supporting. I've been using reader since version one, but recently added that, but the recently added features didn't excite me.

So I skipped the upgrade that said, I think all RSS using Apple device, using listeners of the show should go check out this app and fuck Trump. Thanks Dan. Yeah. I'm a huge fan of reader. I had also had every version since, uh, since version one, I get it on, you know, iOS and the Mac and I love it.

That's how I do all of my work for the show. Yep. That's a good app. And, uh, we have no iTunes reviews this week. Oh, sad Christmas. I know. If you want your question or comment read on the show, head over to gog.show slash contact and send us your feedback or questions that 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. We would appreciate it. I hate having this section empty. Closing shout outs. And of course, again, a big closing shout out to NASA and SpaceX.

And I don't know if you saw that. I saw this in TMZ, uh, after Elon Musk was getting all uppity about his COVID test. Some, some doctor called him space Nancy. Yes. Space Karen. Space Karen. Space Karen. Space Karen. You're right. Yes. Oh, it was so good. And I saw the hashtag.

It was actually trending, which is fantastic. Oh, it was so good. So good. Yeah. I wanted to watch it, uh, the launch in real time with, with my kid. Cause I watched the last one that way, but, uh, they kept, they pushed it back too far and it was past his bedtime here. So we had to watch it. Uh, we watched the video the next morning. Awesome.

Good job guys. Good job. Until next time. I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. This show is a labor of love, but your support keeps the show going. If you like the show, please visit GOG.show slash donate to help us out. We'll love you forever.

Or visit GOG.show slash shop because you're going to need those masks still and pick up some good old fashioned GOG swag. And if you can't do that, please pass the show along to a friend, not in person. Just text them. 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 484. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, donate to the show, buy our swag, and get links to stuff we like. Stay grumpy and watch your family eat turkey over the goddamn computer screen.

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