485: The 34 Days of Christmas

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. A very grumpy Brian Schulmeister. Yeah, well, you know, a couple days ago, we decided, fuck it, it's the 34 days of Christmas. I used to lose my mind if we even heard a Christmas song ahead of Thanksgiving, but this year's been so crap, to hell with it.

And besides, it's snowed here, so it's Christmas. Yeah, we've had our tree up for a week and a half now. We're fine. And since we are a multicultural household, we have an eight-foot blow-up dreidel in the front yard. We're like, let's just mess with everybody. Why not?

It's like, this year has been so screwed up. Time doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. So why not have fun? Yes, we're just going to have a longer Christmas. And I think for Christmas, I need to actually get rid of my AirPods and maybe get AirPods Pro. I don't know if there'll be any better, but I've just had a nightmare recently.

But the AirPods auto-switching to devices has gone off the charts. Like, I'll be playing music on my phone, and I will walk by my Amazon Echo, and it will switch to the Amazon Echo or switch back. And then I will walk down the street, and it will automatically switch to my laptop for some reason.

It's just, I cannot keep my AirPods, like, Bluetooth onto something. If I want to keep them on something, I have to turn Bluetooth off on all the other devices, because it just keeps switching. It's like, it's like gone crazy on me. Oh, that's messed up. It's been a goddamn nightmare.

That'd have been awesome if you could, like, as you walk down the street, you just switch to everybody else's Amazon Echoes. It's starting to feel like that's what's happening, but it is a pain, because, like, we'll have music playing for the kid on the show, and, like, I'll come up here to try to do something. Then all of a sudden, the kid's music is blaring in my ears.

I hear the kid screaming downstairs, why'd it go off? And then, you know, he'll pick up the iPad, and then all of a sudden, it'll switch to whatever he's doing on the iPad. It's crazy. I can't keep these things locked to anything. You're being gaslit by your own AirPods. I totally am. I'm so ready to throw them out the window.

Thanks, Apple. Oh, my God. It's a feature, not a bug. So that's been my entire week, is just me losing my mind, and I literally have thought about throwing these into the snow a few times, because I won't find them until they melt. That's awesome. I've got to get an AirPods story about that in a little bit.

Okay. First off, I do want to say I had something else, but we'll switch things up a little bit. Last week, I was really pissed off about the Apple News icon on macOS. And so I'm at the grocery store the other morning, and you can see it in the show notes, Brian.

This is an actual advertisement for Amazon gift cards that was literally on the front of my shopping cart. Right. Now, for those visually impaired people, since we are on an audio podcast, it'll be in the show notes to go check it out. It says, for everything and everyone, and the O in the 4 is an Apple Watch, and the second E in everything is an Apple News icon.

Which means that even Apple marketing doesn't know what the fuck that icon is for, because if you go a little bit farther down the word everything, there is an actual fucking N in the word that would have made sense if they used the news icon for. That's true, and they also used an iPhone, which is a rectangular object, as a O.

Yeah, I think that's an iPad, actually. Okay. Well, that looks less like a round object. Exactly. No, this is horribly designed, and by the – it's so – obviously, it's supposed to be an N for news, correct? Yes. So this is anything, and it's all to hell with it.

It's a candy cane. It's red and white stripes. It's a candy cane. It's Christmas. Fuck it. Fuck it. That's the theme for the rest of the year. It's Christmas. Fuck it. Oh, wait. Now we sound like Melania Trump. No, that's fuck Christmas. It's a little different.

That's fuck Christmas. It is Christmas. That is different. Yes, I love Christmas. It's the most wonderful time of the year. So I noticed that Bitcoin has gone through the roof again, so I thought we should revisit your Coinbase account. So you left it dormant and left your stake in there. So I was curious. How's your Coinbase account doing?

Let's discuss what going through the roof means. Okay. Let's back up to $19,000 of Bitcoin today. Right. Okay. So going through the roof is not quite the same thing that it appears to be for everyone else. So I initially made a $60 investment. This was, I don't know, two years ago, three years ago now, something like that, back when everything went crazy.

And how we should understand about how it's all going is just, you know, in general, what we say about Bitcoin all the time. It's stupid. So I made an initial $60 investment, and I split it evenly between Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. So 20 bucks each.

And for a long time, my $60 investment was hovering around 20 bucks. I haven't looked at it in probably six months or something like that. But it is back up to $48.40. So I'm just a little bit over a $20 loss at this point, mostly thanks to Litecoin.

Litecoin completely crashed and burned. I lost $15.62 there. But Ethereum has made me $2.81, and the much-ballyhooed Bitcoin resurgence has got me $1.23. I think you should cash out while the getting's good. I'm going to hold on for Litecoin to come back.

Oh, there you go. Yeah. So that's where it's at. So, you know, have fun with that, everyone. All right. All right. And we had been discussing both the horrible Instagram update that rolled out for everyone last week. And as we're discussing Christmas right now, and I really did enjoy this article, none of us are going to do this, but this article talks about how this is the perfect time to delete Instagram.

Isn't every time the perfect time to delete Instagram? Yes. But they're particularly saying now, and not because of the new updates, but because we're about to slide into the holidays, and the holidays are frankly going to suck this year. Millions of Americans are still without jobs. Hundreds of thousands are grieving lost loved ones because of the coronavirus.

New coronavirus cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are surging at unprecedented and devastating rates all over the country. And I am assuming all of our listeners are doing the right thing and staying home. So why should we watch all the dumb fuckasses that are going out and doing awesome things? I already saw yesterday a friend of mine, who will probably not be a friend of mine much longer, posting pictures from her first Friendsgiving of many.

No. And who needs to see this stuff and feel bad? To hell with it. Yeah. Yeah. This is just, it's, that's the thing. It's like, you know, everybody's going to lose so many friends over the holidays. Anybody with a brain is going to lose their friends over the holidays because I just, yeah.

I mean, it's, it's head scratching how many people are on planes right now. And I'm sure people are Instagramming the shit out of that. Fortunately, most of my friends, actually all of my friends have stayed at home so far. So I've got no one to lose yet, yet. Yeah. But you know, it's coming. Yep. It's going to be pretty crazy and it's all going to be well-documented.

Yay. In the news. We've got a little bit of news from last week. We'll just touch on very quickly since this came in right after we did the last show. Apple is going to reduce their app store cut to 15% for developers who make less than a million dollars.

And as Marco Arment pointed out, well, that's just going to make everybody go make $999,000 and cut it there. So you're going to pull your app from the app store as soon as you hit that amount? Must, must be. Because then you figure that it goes up to 25%. So how much more do you have to make to get back to that money that you would have made making $999,000?

If you're going to make, you know, $1,020,000, you're screwed. Then you just lose a lot more money. It's weird. It needs to be on a sliding scale, I think. I think that's the way this needs to go. But yeah. And here's the other fun thing. They're not actually going to auto-enroll people in this small business program that they're starting.

You have to go and opt-in. Well, that's okay. I don't have a problem with that. I mean, pay attention to what you're doing. If this is your business, you should be aware of this and go opt-in. It's not like governments go, here's small business programs. We're just going to cut you a check. No, you have to, like, file for it.

That's okay. Yeah. Yeah. And in other funny news, BuzzFeed is acquiring HuffPo. I'm like, really? HuffPo is still a thing that somebody actually wants? Yeah. I was trying to figure out why, as is everybody else in tech news.

Because everybody was trying to figure out what the deal is here and why they were interested. Because HuffPo hasn't been a thing of note, really, for a long time. It's an aggregator that has silly celebrities sort of write articles for it sometimes. And, you know, it's just not a thing.

BuzzFeed is so much more impactful and gets – unless there's just lingering traffic. The only thing that my wife and I could figure out is they must have so many deals for HuffPo content being placed into different – for the aggregator being in different aggregators.

Yeah. That might be worth it for BuzzFeed. Might be. And also, you know, it was just a stock deal to get HuffPo. They don't – they haven't released that. But here's the other thing. Verizon also gave BuzzFeed a bunch of cash. So it's like, here, would you take this off our hands? Here's some money.

You can give us some stock if it works out. Right. But, yeah. And we'll even give you Ariana for a while. That's the thing. They really need to rebrand that. There's no more Huff in HuffPo. No, there hasn't been for a long time. The Huff has left the building and I saw this when I scratched my head.

Facebook has launched a new app called Egg where users can create personalized spaces that look like Tumblr pages. No, they don't look like Tumblr pages. They look a hell of a lot worse. They are definitely the GeoCities look and feel. And I went and I downloaded the app because I like to torture myself and I was scrolling through it.

It is god-awful ugly. I don't understand anything that's going on there. It is impossible to tell what the hell is happening. But I did find the About page. Okay. And on the About page, it says, We acknowledge that a lot of this seems like misplaced nostalgia and maybe it totally is.

But it's important to note that we're not looking to create a 90s throwback platform. We built Egg to enable all sorts of content slash visual styles. Ideally, the rougher the better. The 90s infomercial slash webpage style just happened to be fun, so we ran for it.

We ran with it for this page. Okay. Yeah. What? Somebody got paid to make this thing at Facebook. Somebody's got some dirt on Zuck. Yeah. Got a pet project taken care of. I'd like to point out that the site or the app is not called Egg.

It's called e.gg. Yes. Yes. I figured I'd just drop the period. Which is even worse and silly. It makes – oh, it's experimental. Oh, I see what you did there. Yeah. Ugh. Yeah, it's terrible.

Don't waste your time. I wasn't planning on it. Well, I know you weren't. I was telling our intrepid listeners not to waste their time. So Comcast has finally gone full evil. They're going to have data caps in their entire territory now, all 39 states.

It's a 1.2 terabyte data cap. That's higher than I thought that they would go in at. Yeah. I figured it would be one terabyte. That's what most of them are. So they're going to give some people a grace period who just signed up and got slapped with it. And they're like, oh, yeah, we'll cut you a break.

So that won't go into effect until April in some places. And they're going to give everybody a grace month. So if you go over one month, they'll be like, ah, OK, we'll let you slide on that. But you've got a warning, sir. Next month, we're going to start billing you. And yeah, it's interesting that they're doing that.

And I'm just going to say again for the record, we've been screaming on this show since day one. Everybody is pushing you to streaming. Don't own anything. Don't keep it on your drive. Stream, stream, stream, stream, stream. And here come the data caps. Yeah. Well, and this is weird because Comcast is cable.

But you look at somebody like Verizon Fios, they're uncapped. In my neighborhood, I can get AT&T fiber, one terabit or 1,000 megabit, whatever, uncapped. My spectrum is uncapped until they run it through that they need to have caps to stay competitive.

But basically, anybody that has fiber is staying uncapped. Yeah. Which is smart because you can get so much more on fiber. If you gave me a fiber connection and then capped it, I would be – well, I would switch plans.

I would go somewhere else because you're going to hit – like with fiber, you're going to hit a terabyte cap pretty quick if you're doing 4K video and everything and just not knowing what you're doing. It's like Netflix just auto-defaults to 4K. Boom. Okay. There goes my data. Yep. You know? Yep. So – but it would be nice if we had a body, a governing body to keep things like this in check.

If only. If only. If only. If only we did. Yeah. And – well, it's definitely not going to be the Federal Trade Commission because they are being gutted. And we'll talk about Ajit Pai, our buddy, in a second because, oh, he's at it again. But, yeah, the Federal Trade Commission has basically cut their budgets and they're putting on a hiring freeze.

They're going to start capping vacation and things like that. But the most important thing that they're going to do is they're going to cut litigation costs for the cases that they have out there. Yeah. And a former FTC chairman, William Kovacic – Kovacic?

Kovacic, I have something like that. Kovacic. Good Polish name. He says, everything you've just recited is a breathtaking constraint on capacity. It severely limits what the institution is going to do. If I were a prospective defendant, I'd be heartened by this. And this comes on the heels of the FTC going after Facebook and Amazon and other big tech for their anti-competitive practices and their behaviors.

And they just got hamstrung. And this is – this also – this blew my mind. The Federal Trade Commission's annual budget is $330 million a year. $330 million a year for the entirety of the Federal Trade Commission. And it's funny.

They compare this to $18 billion that Facebook made just in last quarter. So that's what they're up against. Well, it's David versus Goliath, and imagine David as stupid Ajit Pai. Yeah. How are they getting anything done? Yeah.

Well, Ajit Pai was still – he's the FCC, and now he is – he's trying to sneak some shit under the door on his way out. And I can't wait for the – let the doorknob hit you where the good Lord split you, motherfucker. So what he's trying to do is he's trying to give Fox and Rupert Murdoch a lifetime pass to own as much media as they want in New York City, period.

They're trying to make the – they've got like a little thing going on right now because Fox owns two – basically two TV stations and a newspaper. They own the New York Post. And you're only supposed to allow like so many things. Yeah.

And you can't have basically a monopoly in the market. Yeah. That's what – part of the FCC's mandate. That's the point. It's part of their fucking mandate. And so Ajit Pai is trying to sneak this through saying that let's make this a permanent thing where Fox can have whatever they want in New York City.

And he's cut the public comment down to only till December 4th. So there's a link in the show notes that I want everybody to go to, click on it, sign the petition, and go to the FCC's website. Tell them to stop this shit because this is – it's a permanent lock on New York City.

New York City? So if you live in New York City, you should be pissed off about this unless you really like Fox, which – well, then good on you. But I don't know many people that live in New York City that like Fox that much. No, me either. Yeah, that's not a good thing. I'm waiting to hear what Biden's going to do about the FTC and FCC.

So hopefully all of this bad news will get turned around at some point. At some point. At some point soon. Sooner than later, please. So I think Biden's got a lot on his plate. Yeah, he's a little busy. Yeah, yeah. So at least the first member of his cabinet was for the State Department.

And let's – We could use one of those. Yeah. We could really use one of those because after everything that Bittner told us, there isn't much of one left. So – but hey, those people at the State Department, now they'll be able to use Uber and Lyft to their heart's content because the government just signed an $810 million contract with Uber and Lyft.

Just authorizing them to provide transportation for up to 4 million federal employees and their families. Okay. How about them, Apples? Well, all right. Fair enough. Yeah. Throw money at bad companies. That's fine. That's kind of what the government does. Our tax money goes to pay Uber and Lyft now.

And then our other tax money goes to subsidize the welfare for the Uber and Lyft drivers because they don't get paid enough by Uber and Lyft from all the government money they just got. Yes, exactly. Yes. It's the Walmartification, I guess, of the United States. Now, remember Austria from last week? I do. Yes.

They were trying to put a ban on content that would ruin the internet. A global ban. Yes. Well, Pakistan has joined the fray. And I do believe you and I, Brian, said that Facebook could just say, screw you, Austria. We're going home. Yep. Well, since Pakistan has done it, everybody has said, screw you, Pakistan.

We're going home because you're Pakistan. Right. Yeah. Well, we'll see what happens with all this. But, yeah, it's going to be interesting. And one of the rare times I'm going to be on Google, Facebook, and Twitter side. Yeah, exactly.

And I think what's going to happen here is everybody's basically just going to gang up on these countries and say, no, you can't do that. Stay in your lane. Stay in your lane. And if you have rules that apply to people in your country alone, we'll discuss it. But when you want to get into this global removal of content, we're not going to play that game.

Homie, don't play that. That's right. Yeah. And speaking of content moderation, Twitter has set itself up for an enormous new problem thanks to their fleets. Have you checked out fleets? You have no choice because here's the fucked up thing. Now I can't tell what app I'm in. I can't tell if I'm in it.

I was going to say the exact same thing. I don't know if I've launched Instagram or Twitter, and it doesn't matter because it's almost the same exact content. Oh, except there's just a teeny bit more hate on Twitter. Yeah, just a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. You can't really tell the difference anymore. They have all become base, belong to us now at this point.

Every app is exactly the same when you launch it. So, you know, the only difference is, you know, who you follow on any particular platform. Like I use Twitter mostly for news. So my friends are on Facebook, and I was doing kind of more brandy stuff like bands and things like that on Instagram. But the apps are virtually indistinguishable now, which is going to lead to problems that Facebook has had now and Instagram, obviously, through there.

Because it is much more difficult to do content moderation on these fleets, on temporary stuff that gets posted, and it's often posted without context because it can be a series of things that are connected to each other and explain things to each other. It's a lot more difficult.

AI has a lot harder problem with it. So Twitter, which has been all about we are doing content moderation and we are even slapping the president with content moderation, has just opened up a whole shitstorm of more problems for themselves, which is an interesting time period to do that, considering they're waving the flag of content moderation around as if they're the heroes.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think what they're going to come back with this one and say, well, they just go away anyway, so who cares? You could be a temporary racist. Of course, temporary racist. That's... Show title. Welcome to America. Welcome to America. Yeah.

It's just interesting. The fleets are just dumb. They really are. I mean, it's really hard to tell the difference. It sucks. And in sad news, the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico is getting scrapped. It's just too far gone and it's too dangerous to fix.

So that's a sad day. It's a sad day. Because it's such an instantly recognizable icon and it's, well, you know, out with the old and with the new, build a new one. Build a new one. I mean, you've got the land, so just, you know, take it down, recycle it and put it back up.

We'll always have contact. We will. And GoldenEye. Oh, that's right. GoldenEye used it too. I forgot about that. Contact was a better movie though. Much better.

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We're joined this week by Dave Bittner. Dave is the host of the Cyberware podcast and 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.

Welcome back, Dave. Hello, gentlemen. Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello. Yeah. It takes a while for the sound to get all the way up there to Canada. So you have to wait for Brian to join in.

It has to go through all the viral screens. And then it has to thaw out. TSA. And it gets two weeks of quarantine before the sound actually arrives, yes. All the vowel sounds have to be softened up. So the abouts become aboats.

And we have to stick some U's in unnecessarily. And you have to be sorry for everything. I know. Everybody's still mourning Alex Trebek. So I understand. It takes a while. Yes. All right, guys. Well, okay.

We had our fun. That's enough. Let's move on here. Dave, I've got a little low viral energy today. Sorry. I threw this one in here for you, Dave, because you tell us all the time how you used to work at Radio Shack and how it was one of the proudest jobs you've ever had.

It was. I did. I loved it. It was. Yeah. Yeah. Now you can go work for a social douchebag, Tai Lopez, because him and his team have bought the IP for Radio Shack and some of the patents and some of that stuff. So. Yeah. It's such a strange brand to want to revitalize.

I mean, I suppose it has name value, but is it a positive name value? Right. I guess my question is why? The thing, because certainly in the later days of Radio Shack, when computers had passed them by, why would you go to Radio Shack?

You'd go to Radio Shack because you needed something and you could not wait for it to be delivered by someone else. You needed it right now. Yes. So you could wait for the quality product to show up. You had to go get the janky one to get the job done. Or you'd just, you know, you'd pay $5 for the cable that cost a dollar from Amazon, but you needed it today.

And so the fact that they had something like 7,000 locations was their value proposition there. Yeah. Now I go to Target for that sort of thing. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And a lot of times Amazon can get it to you the same day if you need it. Yeah.

Yeah. And also remember the final days of Radio Shack, they basically just turned into a low-rent cell phone store. Right. That was pretty much all they had. Well, and think of – well, we can't even say millennials anymore because they're quite old, but think of Gen Z with the name Radio Shack.

First, what's a radio? What's a radio? Second, Shack is what I call my house these days. That's what I have to live in because I don't have a job. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And go fire up the old ham radio kit out in the Shack Outback and CQ, CQ. Yeah.

What I wonder is if this is going to become one of those zombie brands like – oh, gosh, Bell & Howell. It's a brand that somebody just bought up the rights to and they'll slap that logo on anything. It's an old brand that people have a certain affection for and so somebody buys it up and takes advantage of that.

Like who cares about the inner cell batteries and like – Whoever cared about the inner cell batteries. Right. So it's literally like the Christmas morning. You get a pack of inner cells. You're like, okay, these are going to last like maybe until lunchtime. Better get out to Radio Shack.

Get some more. Yeah. Yeah. I mean that was the thing. Someone would buy a remote control car and you'd upsell them to include – to buy the batteries. And that was a good business model when you had people in your store. But I don't see anybody choosing inner cell batteries over any of the big name brands with their – if they're ordering anything online.

So – Yeah. I don't know. But what about power horn speakers? Power horn. Sounds like a – like a – you know, just a – it was an Icelandic death metal cover band. A power horn. I mean Radio Shack had some good brands. You know, they made – some of their realistic speakers were quite good.

Some of their old vintage receivers back in the day were quite good in the early days of computing. People that have receivers or actual monitors these days go super high end and the vast majority of people are either just listening on their phone, God forbid, or at the very least, you know, one of the – they're listening to music on smart speakers around the house.

They're not going to go get any of this stuff. That's a great point. It's a hobby of days gone by that doesn't really – I mean I'm an audiophile and I don't – I don't bother anymore. I've – you know, I don't have a stack of receivers and, you know, just separate components and I don't even have – I don't even have studio monitors anymore.

Crazy. I think – I think you guys might have missed the whole point where it's Tai Lopez. Oh, okay. Tai Lopez. The douchebag who likes to, like, pose on Instagram in front of Lambos and airplanes that he doesn't own. So, remember who we're talking about here who is now the steward, the guardian, the caretaker, the keeper of the shack is Tai Lopez.

That is what makes this also head-scratching. Well, if Tai Lopez is listening, I do think that there is somebody out there that should be the voice of Radio Shack moving forward. And may I humbly suggest Mr. Dave Bittner who could probably start up a brand new Radio Shack podcast to bring them into the modern age.

It would be – it would be authentic. You know, you've got questions. We've got answers. And, yeah. Yeah. It's – all right. I'm game. I'm in. I'm in. Sure. Why not? They'll pay you with inter-cell batteries. Yeah. That's right. Just – yeah. Give me some Minimus 7 speakers, some inter-cell batteries, and an old TRS-80 Model 1, and I'll be good to go.

And if you'd like to subscribe to the podcast, we're going to need your name, your address, your telephone number. Oh, yes, yes. So many hours of my life wasted gathering up people's – writing it all down by hand.

Isn't that – now Tai Lopez owns it all. Isn't that really, though, for Radio Shack, isn't that – weren't they just way ahead of the game, collecting all the data? They were. They were very much ahead of the game. Now it's – that's what it's all about. Yep. That's true.

That's a good point. Yeah. They were way ahead of the game. Good times, though. I genuinely did enjoy that job. So we have a little follow-up on the August story about the Facebook security consultants who were trying to buy the CCW permits from the local sheriff's department and under-the-table bribing action.

Now, I'm sure you've seen this because it is on every news channel right now that Apple's security chief has been indicted for trying to swap some iPads for a couple of CCW permits. $70,000 worth of iPads to be precise. And, oopsie, got busted.

But they're saying that he will have his day in court and he is an upstanding citizen and this is all just completely wrong. Your take? Well, I mean, come on. Why does the head of security at Apple need to put in a requisition for 200 iPads?

You know, don't ask me why I need these. You know, we're just donating them to the local sheriff's office. I mean, I don't know. The whole thing – to me, in my opinion, it doesn't pass the sniff test. I suspect what we think was going on here was exactly what was going on here and people got caught.

Who knows? You know, everybody is entitled to being assumed innocent before being proved guilty but – Not on the show. Not on the internet. Not on the internet. But this seems – we've got the pattern here with the folks from secure – from Facebook.

So it seems like word was out on the street that if you wanted, you know, something done, this is how you did it. And so I don't know. I'm sure – well, here's the one thing we know about the gentleman from Apple. He's going to have really good lawyers, right? Yes, he is.

So – Yes, those lawyers cost exactly 200 iPads an hour. Right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So one thing I wonder about is if he ends up being, you know, found guilty, how is Apple going to sort of shed the stink from this?

You know, this is not – this doesn't really go along with Apple's brand, right? They like to be kind of squeaky clean when it comes to these sorts of things. So how are they going to answer those questions of who else knew about this and that sort of thing?

You know, I'm sure they're all going to say, hey, this is a lone wolf acting on his own. He's gone rogue. Look, he even has an Android phone. Right. Right. We never liked him anyway. You know, he was on his – we had one foot out the door. You know. So I don't know. It's a lot of intrigue.

And, of course, any story that has anything to do with Apple shoots right up to the top of the charts because there are a few things better for tech clickbait than something going wrong at Apple. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Oh, you know what else is good for headlines?

Something going wrong at Tesla. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Also in the top five. Yes, definitely. Like, people leap on Tesla news even though Elon Musk provides plenty personally, but anything with Tesla goes right up, yes.

Even though they closed at over $500 a share yesterday. Yeah. I still haven't sold any of my shares. No matter what craziness seems to surround both the company and, of course, Elon himself, he's been a consistent moneymaker for me. That's the one thing about Elon. He's a good earner. He earns.

Yes, he does. Well, this new one. We actually had a story last week about somebody who could do a quick hack outside of the Tesla with the Wi-Fi and basically inject a web page into the UI. Well, this new one is a little bit more serious.

Turns out we don't need no stinking Wi-Fi. We don't need no stinking Wi-Fi. A little Bluetooth will do you. That's right. Lenert Wouters. Great name. He's a Belgian security researcher. He basically figured out a way to, A, break into the car, and, B, clone the fob.

So, you know, he's basically got his own Tesla in 90 seconds or less. Now, I've got to ask, though, about this. Is this a use case that is specific to Tesla and the way that they do things? Or could this also be done with a Ford? Well, we already know that you can do it with a BMW.

Yeah, exactly. So that one's easy. So I do feel that this is a bit of a story that's just, again, like the Apple story. It shot up the headlines because it's Tesla. I mean, this is something that can be done with many, many cars. Right. But here's the thing about Tesla. Tesla knew about all the other hacks, the BMW hacks, because we talked about those three or four years ago.

So by now, they should have kind of maybe upped their game a little bit. He's busy. He's busy. He's not doing the shit himself, Brian. He's naming kids weird things. He's putting space cars out there. He's screwing up astronomers' lives for the rest of the five to ten generations.

I mean, he's smoking weed on podcasts. You think he's going to pay attention to this stuff? I know. He's a polymath. Polywog. So, yeah, it's a new one. And this guy did actually tell Tesla about it.

And they're going to release a patch and go about our merry way. But, yeah, it should have been something that this should not have happened, I'm thinking. No. I mean, has there actually been any Teslas that have been stolen because of this? Probably. It seems to me like a Tesla is a hard car to steal and do much with because of the way they have them.

Because it's so monitored and tracked. It's got Find My iPhone built right into it. Well, but also if you plug it into a supercharger and it has to identify itself and get authorized and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's got a super low jack.

So, it's a one-use steel. Right. It's a joyride, which, you know, that would be a joyful joyride in order to Tesla, I suppose. But this seems like a lot of work for a joyride. Yeah. Yep. So, Tempest in a teapot, is that what you're saying? I think so.

I think so. I think you guys are both right that this is, you know, another one of those things. Because it's Tesla, it gets a lot more attention. You know, Teslas, they get banged on by security researchers, you know, every year at DEF CON and Black Hat.

They, the most recent years I can think of, there's usually a Tesla that they're, you know, that's, again, it's the car that everybody wants to associate hacking with, right? Right. It's the most futuristic car out there on the street, at least in everyone's mind.

So, it's the one that they want to have the credit to hack away at. And so, to that end, I think it's probably had, it's probably been tested more than most other cars out there for these sorts of things. Much like Apple. I mean, if you think of it, like Apple and Tesla could basically lay off their entire security divisions because everybody's out there doing it for them.

That's true. That's true. I'm wondering if you can just, like, as soon as you steal the Tesla, if you can just install a VPN and pretend the car's in, like, Czechoslovakia. I wouldn't turn on AutoDrive then. Right, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, boy. So, I saw this article, and there's nothing in here that's new. It's over its late. Very little stands between the U.S. and a technological panopticon. And this ties into so many of the things that we've been talking about recently. License plate readers, facial recognition, just everything that's being stored and tracked and data and blah, blah, blah, and how it's all being tied into databases.

And, again, like, nothing new. But I am wondering, Dave, you in particular, how do you feel that this is going? Do you think that we're careening headlong into a panopticon, or do you think that there is some hope here?

I think that we are in the panopticon. I think one of the things that troubles me is the ability for the police to legally buy up all of this data that we have volunteered to hand over through all of the EULAs that we click on when we install a weather app on our phones.

Yes, we did not imply that we were here, give this to our government. Right. But we gave it to the private organizations and gave them permission to sell it to whoever wants to buy it. And so the police can buy this data that we voluntarily gave up and, in doing so, don't need any sort of warrant, don't need to go before a judge.

And so this is a great unintended consequence of all of this. I think – I suspect we're heading in a direction where we're going to see some of this stuff tamped down. I wonder if we have to see a case that directly affects a senator.

Yes. That is something that you bring up all the time when we do discuss this, is it needs to be somebody high up in power that actually gets directly affected by this. Yeah, yeah. But I – this causes me stress.

This whole – I've thought about when I – I'm about 10 minutes away from my house between here and my office. How many times am I on camera between here and there? Right. There are traffic cameras. There are ATM cameras.

There are drive-through cameras. There are cameras in other people's cars. There's a camera in my car, right? So I'm contributing to it. Mine isn't uploaded and available, but I'm gathering. So you think. That's right. Exactly. Probably. But yeah, my camera was made in China. So who knows? Who knows?

Well, yeah. And one of the other things that we talked about with the facial recognition is how bad it is. And we shouldn't be letting police use it. But as this article points out, it is getting better every single day and improvements are exponential. So it's getting real good, real fast.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I hope that we're coming towards a point where we have an adjustment, where something similar to GDPR happens here in the U.S. I don't think it's going to happen soon. I think we've got a lot of other things that will take priority over this.

I think maybe if we see some real antitrust stuff happen with some of the big companies, that will take away some of their ability to be so powerful and monolithic when it comes to having control over these things. But we'll see.

I would love to see the control of this come back in the user's hands the way – well, but, I mean, California is trying for that, right? Yeah. GDPR is trying for that. So I think there's a desire out there. I think people have – we've got sort of a learned helplessness, I think, right now.

And hopefully we can get past that. This troubles me. The reality of this troubles me, and I wish I felt like I had more personal control over it because you can do – like, the three of us, we know how to – we know everything we would need to do to do as much as you could do to block this.

And yet, we can't block this. No. Right? No. Not really. No. No, we can do security theater where we feel slightly better about ourselves, but we're still not really blocking it. Right. I mean, I think I'm probably the most secure because I just don't go anywhere.

That's the only way. Actually, that would make you the least secure. We know exactly where you are at all times. Or so you think. Right. Right. If that's really him. Jason's actually secretly recording. He's always on the move. He lives on a train, and we just don't know it.

Yes. And when I sneak out at night in a giant raccoon suit that I borrowed from Dave and basically terrorize the neighborhood, and they're like, wow, that's a big raccoon. Okay. So I don't – you know, the raccoon recognition doesn't really kick in yet, so they're working on that. But that's the only way to sneak around is go out at night and pretend to be, you know, a varmint.

I'm going to need that thing dry cleaned before you give it back to me, too. I'm just – No problem, babe. No problem. Just making a point of that. Yeah. It's all good. It's all good. You're a gentleman. I would expect nothing less. Yes. Excellent. And I can think of no better place to actually put this story than in here with Dave.

We may be 19 years too late for this, and it may not be the moon. It's Utah. I guess it's because we basically canceled our space program. So I guess they had to put it in Utah instead of the moon. We're never going to get there. But the Utah Department of Public Safety has found a curious metal monolith that looks like it belongs in a science fiction film planted in a remote part of the state's desert.

I have no idea why every article about this doesn't say 2001 other than I guess – Oh, some do? Good. Okay. All of them do as far as I can tell. It's a science fiction film. So far, no one has an explanation for how or why or even how long it's been there.

But people are saying it's a obscure art installation. I prefer to think it is the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine. I keep thinking that it's a multidimensional portal from Land of the Lost that – Ah, the Sleastax.

Yeah, what was that one Sleastax name, the one who was actually smart, who had the little vest that he wore? It's like Enoch or something like that. Elon. So it all makes sense now. It does. I think it was Enoch. I think you're right.

I do believe it was. I think it's Enoch's portal that we've – and this is the portal to the Land of the Lost. Somebody has to figure out how to open it up and put the little crystals in. And that's what I'm going with. That's what lets me sleep at night.

I just disappeared for a while wondering how I'm going to Photoshop Elon Musk onto a Sleastax. I tell you, I wanted those crystals so bad when I was a kid. That's just the one thing I wanted. I don't know. They looked so shiny, and they kind of reminded me of candy. So I just wanted to eat the crystals.

That was basically our version of the Tide Pod Challenge probably. Would you eat the Sleastax crystals? I don't know, but those Sleastax scared the crap out of me when I was a kid. I had nightmares about them. I thought they were so – like, if we went to Leray Caverns or something, there was no way you were getting me off on my own because I knew if I went around a corner, there would be half a dozen of those giant Sleastax going.

And they would grab me. I just – yeah, many times as a child, I woke up in the middle of the night just terrified that the Sleastax were coming for me. I've been to those caverns too, and that's – I don't know why they take kids down there. That was like – we had to go on three field trips to those things, and it's just not fun.

It's not fun. I was there last year. We had a good time. I was there last year. Yeah, but as kids, it's not fun. It's terrifying. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Yeah. We preferred going to Busch Gardens. That was much better. Let's go to Old Town and go to Busch Gardens instead of the damn caverns. Well, yeah.

Sometimes they make you go to Leray Caverns, and then you get to go to Busch Gardens, right? Right. It's the carrot and the stick, yes. Right. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Actually, most of the time it was that you had to go to Historic Williamsburg, and your reward was you got to go to Busch Gardens.

Exactly. Oh, Historic Williamsburg was the worst. Right. Now you all are going to experience us making candles. Step right up. Oh, my God. We did – one of my favorite trips, though, was we went there the year that they opened the Big Bad Wolf at Busch Gardens.

It's gone now, I guess, but – It is. Yeah. There's a different ride there now. But that was a classic roller coaster. That was an all-time great roller coaster, I think. That was a good one. I never got to go on it. I was too short when it opened. Oh, really? Yeah, I was too young when it opened, and I would just sit there and watch the Loch Ness Monster all day because that was – Is that still there or has that gone too?

Still there. No, that's still there. Still running. You know, the interlocking loops, that's another classic one. Yeah, yeah. Busch Gardens is a beautiful park. They do a great job keeping that place looking nice. I guess they have all that beer money that they can spend on all the plants and things.

It's a nice place to go. I enjoy it. If you can't make it to Disney World, Busch Gardens is a nice little alternative. Exactly. All right, gents. Well, stay safe because shit's about to get real. Yeah. Again. Again. It's about to get real-er.

Right. It's about to get real-er. On that happy note, talk to you next week. See you next week, guys. I won't be going anywhere.

Media Candy. Brian, I want to talk about the dangers of going to Sweden to find television shows that you are really into and really want to enjoy. Sometimes you can't find an episode. Well, Junior MasterChef Australia, I knew that there were a couple episodes missing in the middle, and I was okay with that because they have recaps at the beginning.

Unfortunately, they were elimination episodes, which really kind of bummed me out. But the nice thing about missing the elimination episode and just seeing the recap is you don't have the sadness of waiting to see these kids get kicked out. So that was actually a plus. I was going to say, and actually the structure of how those shows are done is really the recaps get you basically everything that you need to see in the previous episode anyways.

Exactly. Except when the one episode that's missing is a fucking finale. Yeah. Yeah. Whatts down in Australia can't BitTorrent right. Sorry, Stryans.

I'm sure you're just going to have to wait a week. No, it's already done. I had to go try and find the torrent, and then, of course, I found out who won, which is fine, I guess, because the person I wanted to win won. So there was at least that. But, man, it was a great show.

If you're in Australia and you can watch the recap, which I can't, no VPN in the verse would let me through the Australian content windows. I've tried five different VPNs, and not a single one of them would let me through. I'm like, you bastards.

But it was a great show. But, yeah, unfortunately, I didn't miss the end. Fuckers! And we've got some new video news coming out. Crock of Gold, a Shane McGowan story. It's called – yeah, it's literally Crock of Gold, A Few Rounds with Shane McGowan, is in, quote, unquote, cinemas and on digital and DVD on December 7th.

So I will be picking this one up. It's kind of a behind-the-scenes of his life, and it goes up to the big concert for his birthday in 2018 where everybody in the world came out and said, hey, Shane, we love you. But I'm looking forward to it. Johnny Depp was involved with this one, so that's interesting.

It's also perfect timing for the yearly kerfuffle about the fact that they used the word faggot in the Christmas song. Oh, yeah. Well – Because, you know, I've already seen articles talking about how radio stations are considering banning it or editing it. It's every year we get the same story.

Well, they should ban it anyway because I'm so fucking sick of that song. I could never hear it again and be totally happy. Oh, it's one of my least favorite Pogue songs of all time. So I'm fine with them banning that one. But I still love the fact that Cadillac used sunny side of the street in an advertisement on the Super Bowl right before – they cut it right before the line, a heart full of hate and a lust for vomit.

It's like they cut it right before that at the end of the Cadillac commercial. I just still love that. Jimmy O. Yang. You know who he is? I do. He's a stand-up comedian. He was in that show that I liked that you hated, but then I ended up hating too and never finished watching.

Silicon Valley. That one. Yes. Yeah. I watched his stand-up on Amazon. He's got some stand-up that's out. Loved it. Loved it. My roommate and I watched it last night. It's very light. It's a little raunchy. So no kids, but not super raunchy.

But I thoroughly enjoyed it. I didn't know he was that funny. I didn't know he did stand-up. So that was a nice – that was trying to find something funny for the holidays. So that was a nice pop of laughter. Yeah. He dropped in on an LA radio show, morning radio show I used to listen to all the time, Frosty, Heidi, and Frank quite often.

And he was always very funny when he showed up. So I figured it's got to be pretty good. Yeah. Definitely worth checking out. Right. And then I found this article and I posted an awful lot of points in here, but I'm actually going to cut it down because what I realized is this is basically something that you and I have been talking about for ages and then stopped talking about because we realized it was never going to happen.

This is streaming needs to pay artists more. Duh. Yeah. But there's an idea from China that could help. Communism. We will – yes, we will all get the bait the same. Nothing. So – but it gets into China's Tencent Music, which has a number of different streaming platforms under their umbrella.

And guess what they use, which is actually working pretty well. Enlighten me, Brian. Micropayments within their apps. Micropayments. Oh, yes. Basically, digital tip jars, the ability to sell small things like here's a screensaver or here's a different thing for your phone and all of that.

And Spotify rolling out micropayments. That would actually fix a lot of things. Unfortunately, I use Apple Music now, so I don't think Apple is going to roll that out. Nobody is going to do it. Nobody is. But it's actually – but the point is, and the article gets really into the finances, it's actually working.

It's working for major artists in China. It's working for smaller artists in China. They're actually getting some more money than just what the streamers were paying them because fans that are really into it, when given the option, will hand out some cash in small amounts.

Everything counts in small amounts, as Depeche Mode always said. Yeah, and that's funny because, yeah, if – that's how this podcast survives is basically, quote-unquote, micropayments from fans who listen to the show and donate every month. If we tried to live on advertising alone, this show would not exist.

Period. No, it would have been done a long time ago. Long time ago. Yep. So, I mean, this show literally lives by, you know, payments from the fans. So I can see why it works over there. Yeah. Proof positive. Proof is in the pudding, people. It is. It's a really interesting article. So if you're doubting it, go read this.

Yep. And speaking of Spotify, there's a great, great article by Jack Reciter from Darknet Diaries, and it basically echoes everything that we've been saying about Spotify and the walled gardens and shit like that. It's called Spotify, Please Stop Buying Podcasts. Period. Straight to the point.

Okay. And I love it because in the article, he actually pulls out a pull quote from Spotify's, you know, upper echelon saying, yeah, we know limited releases and walled releases really suck. And they were talking about music. They, you know, because they were, I think this is when Kanye was doing like, you know, title releases and shit like that.

Yep. Title, what happened to them? Still around. I know. The tide is out though. Anyway, so it's just, it's a really good, it's a really good read. Because it just says everything that we've already said. And I like it when I read articles that people reiterate, reiterate things we've already said.

Yes. Well, speaking of that, actually, well, first off, Spotify, please stop buying podcasts after you buy ours. Yeah. We will take the big suitcase of money. I don't know if that suitcase is big enough anymore. No, not anymore, but getting back to things that we've been talking about and articles that tell us that we were right.

Here's another one. We were complaining about the movie industry just not catching up to the pandemic. Please just let us watch our movies at home. None of us are going to a theater, except for all the idiots on my Instagram. Except for all the idiots that are going to a theater. Yes. But they're finally doing it.

They will be releasing Wonder Woman 1984 in theaters and on HBO Max on Christmas Day. So there you go. They've figured it out. And as the article says, Hollywood's we're not in Kansas anymore moment. Yes, they have finally realized that they can't keep shelving these movies indefinitely because we're looking at summer at the earliest before we all get vaccinated and feel comfortable going anywhere again.

So they are finally starting to come around to our way of thinking and just giving us the damn movies. We'll pay for it if need be. And obviously, HBO is seeing this as a way to drive subscriptions. So if you want to see Wonder Woman 1984, it'll be on HBO. Pixar's animated soul movie will be on Disney+.

DreamWorks Animations, The Croods, A New Age will be coming out, I believe, in pay-per-view or something like that. So they've figured it out. And, of course, for a lot of these multi-huge thousand people companies with a gazillion different arms, they have their own streaming platforms.

So they make the movie. They put it on their own streaming platform. Totally makes sense. Yeah. I just wish HBO Max would get with it and get a goddamn Roku app. So you figure they're going to put Wonder Woman 1984 out on HBO Max. They would at least get that Roku thing settled right now because Roku watchers are a pretty big part of the ecosphere.

Yeah, but, you know, you can stop complaining. You've got enough devices around. I know. I'm sure you can get HBO Max on something else. Yeah, I've got to dust off my Apple TV that I have somewhere in a closet. It's the only thing that runs it. God, what are you going to do? Anyway, the Grand Tour Season 4 Madagascar special has a release date, which is December 18th.

I glanced at the trailer. Looks like standard Grand Tour fare. So it's been a while since we had one of these. So I'm looking forward to it. It's hard for me to get too excited about it anymore because I really just do miss the actual Top Gear format that they did. But at least, you know, they're sticking to the travel thing, which is the only thing that really works for this format.

So I'm sure it'll be good. Yeah, I mean, that's what – because you before said that you just want them to do these. Now you're saying you missed the other one? Well, no, I missed the OG, man, when they were on Top Gear. I hated that tent. They never got the format right with Grand Tour. That's what I'm saying.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The old school Top Gear, I see what you're saying, yes. Yeah. They have to have the runway in the 747 if they don't have that. And the Stig, man. And the Stig! Yes. Yeah. We're getting our Expanse Season 5 very shortly, December 16th.

So that's pretty exciting. Did you watch the official trailer? I refuse to. I refuse. Let me go back and watch Season 4, though. Okay. I just need to get caught up. I forgot what happened in Season 4. Yeah, I'm just going to watch the endless loop recap of Adam What's-His-Face being blown into space.

Okay. And I finished The Crown last season. Excellent. Highly recommended. I know you will probably never watch it, but it was very, very good. Gillian Anderson absolutely nails Margaret Thatcher, so much so that my wife and I then decided we needed to go back and watch The Iron Lady, which we never watched, which has, of course, Meryl Streep playing Margaret Thatcher.

That was a bit of a bummer. I understand why there were mixed reviews about that movie, because it basically just went to the very end of Margaret Thatcher's life when she was suffering from dementia and did flashbacks and things like that. But it's sadness porn. Like, I understand that there are a lot of people in this world that really hate Margaret Thatcher, and maybe they got their jollies off seeing her be so miserable at the end.

But, Jesus, it was sad. Can we get one of those at Donald Trump? That I'd watch. That you'd watch. Exactly. I knew it. I knew it. I started watching Queen's Gambit because everybody said so, and then I just, right as I was walking into the studio to do the show, I saw it come across TV that the Queen's Gambit is now the most streamed limited series on Netflix's history.

So, apparently, people like it, which means I'm probably going to hate it. Yeah, I've kind of held off on it, too, because anytime I see anybody or everybody liking something, that usually means I'm not going to like it. Yeah, Tiger King or whatever that was. Oh, Jesus Christ. Yeah, no.

I watched the first episode. It was decent. It wasn't – I mean, I wasn't blown away. Of Tiger King or Queen's Gambit? No, no, no. I watched like five of Tiger King and then I'm like, why am I watching this shit? I mean, I'm nowhere in lockdown, but god damn, this is bad. No, I watched the first episode of Queen's Gambit and it's beautiful.

It's shot well. It's interesting. Hopefully, it picks up from there. So, I'll give it a shot. I'll give it a couple more episodes. And this one's for you. Jeopardy! has named Ken Jennings as its first interim host after the death of Alex Trebek, which surprises no one. I'm surprised that they're saying interim.

I wish they had some balls. Just make him the host. I know there was a big online campaign to have Jordy be – Mr. Reading Rainbow be the host. LeVar Burton, you mean? LeVar Burton. It should be Ken Jennings. Yeah, he's great. Don't F around. Don't do interim.

Just give him the damn show. That's what fans of the show want. I'd be fine with it. Yeah. Don't fuck around. No interim guest hosting. Just give it to him. Yeah, honestly. I mean, I'm not even a big Jeopardy! fan and I can get behind that because I like Ken Jennings. I listen to his podcast. I think he's a cool guy and he would do the show justice.

Yes, he would. Ups and doodads! Brian, let's talk about AirPods again for a second. Since you have your story of your AirPods gaslighting you. I wonder if what happened to you might solve my problem.

So I'm making a nice batch of Impossible Chili because I do like the Impossible Burger since I'm – you know, this whole Keep Jason Alive 2020 thing is going very well. We'll touch on that in a couple of points in this. Fake news. Fake news. Hey, fuck you. So I'm making my Impossible Chili and I yawn while I'm making the Chili with my head over the thing.

And boop! There goes my left AirPod Pro that I just bought and I watched it in slow motion tumble into the pot of chili and go bloop and promptly disappear. It was like a cartoon scream.

I'm just like, ah! Most expensive pot of chili ever. Grabbed a spoon, shoved it in there, got it up, slipped off the spoon, back in the chili. Ah! Grabbed it again. Finally got it out. Ran it under the water. Tapped it out. Grabbed some paper towels.

Dried it off. Ah, breathe, breathe. Stuck it back in my ear and it worked just fine. I tell you, man, I've had a pair go through the laundry. Worked totally fine. Yeah, but this is chili, man. Your chili was going to be the death of my AirPod Pros and it was just fine.

Maybe your AirPods will be gaslighting you soon because of the chili. Yeah, exactly. So I went out and I bought a couple of things for those. And first off, since it popped out, I'm like, okay, everybody keeps telling me get the foam tip. So I got the foam tips. The foam tips suck that I got.

They were like $12 or $13. And they sucked. So I'm going to try maybe a couple of different ones. But these just popped out just as much. And then I got these anti-slip covers. It's basically AirPod condoms that you put in that help your ears stick to it.

Those kind of work. Ribbed for your pleasure? Exactly, yes. Those actually kind of work. And it was $9 for a set of five of them with god-awful colors. I just put the black ones on and they seemed to help. They seemed to help because I had to put the other covers back on. So if anybody has any tips for the foam ones, the ones I got were the Pizzaz 3.

Three-pair replacement ear tips compatible with AirPod, AirPods Pro. Memory foam reducing noise. In-ear ear tips accessories. Fit in the charging case. SML black. Just the tip. Just the tip. Once you go black, you never go back. Exactly. And oh, I do have a little aside.

One password now unlocks with the Apple Watch in 7.7, which is great. So I don't have to type that 18,000 character password all the time. Just saying. Excellent. If you're a 1Password fan, upgrade. And you have an Apple Watch. Works great. Next thing I got was I got the Camry digital hand grip tester.

98 pounds slash 90 kilograms strength measurement meter auto-capturing electronic hand-gripped power dynamometer. What the actual hell is that? So what it does is it measures your grip strength. Oh, so it's like those old arcade games. Kind of, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, sex machine. Yeah. Uh-huh. You know it. Okay, so why did you get this? There's 1,000 studies out there that talk about how grip strength and health are very intertwined. And this goes back a long way.

Oh, by the way, the hand grip power dynamometer was $29.99 at Amazon. So I was reading up on some articles. And of course, this is a clickbaity headline, but it was interesting. It says, this one simple move could lower your blood pressure by 10% without medication. Even though my blood pressure is okay, I'm still always fascinated by grip strength stuff.

So I read it, and there's a very simple exercise where if you do two minutes of 30% grip, like holding, a couple times a week, it's been shown to lower blood pressure. I'm like, okay. So to do the 30%, you need something to tell you what your 100% is. So I got the dynamometer, and I haven't done grip exercises in a long time.

And I got the – I did the thing. I grabbed it, and I squeezed with all my might. And, like, it was so sad because it says – Lip fish. It's – yeah. It literally said, weak. So there's, like, weak, normal, and strong.

So ever since I got it, I've been using my little grippy hand things and doing curls and stuff like that. So I went from 98 pounds of grip strength to now – I'm at a – yesterday morning, I was at 130 pounds. So – which is I skipped normal and went straight from weak to strong.

So I want to get it to the point where I can break this motherfucker. I want 198 – 199 pounds because it goes 198. But it's nice having good grip strength again. I like it. I missed it. I felt like a little limp-fisted accountant sitting here typing all day.

It's like you're dating someone new. Yes. Actually, this man knows where he talks. That's right. Hey, Rosie. You got strong, baby. All right. Rosie Riveter. Yep. It was Rosie Palmer and her five sisters.

And unfortunately, my scale broke this week too. I was cleaning it and I dropped it. That's never a good sign. No, no, no. I dropped it and it landed right on the corner and basically shattered. So I'm like, OK. Well, let me look and see if I can – because it was like a nice digital $30 scale.

So I'm like, OK, let's see what the state of electronic home scales are that you can sync with apps and shit like that. And I found the Fitbit ARIA Air, which is now a Bluetooth scanner. The old Fitbit ARIA's used like shitty Wi-Fi to connect and it was a pain in the ass.

And if you had a five gigahertz network in your house, it wouldn't work because it was 2.4 and it was a pain in the ass. But this is Bluetooth, so it pairs to your app and it was under $50. I'm like, $20 more than a regular one? Fuck it. I'll get it. All right. Got it. Sync perfectly.

Works fine. Works totally fine. Except since Fitbit are a bunch of cock lickers, you can't – they don't have any apps to sync to Apple Health. So you have to buy another fucking app called – I found one called Sync Solver, which will take your Fitbit data from your Fitbit app and sync it to Apple Health.

So you have like one place to go where everything is synced. So that was another $5 on top of it. All right. Anyway, so got that all taken care of. Phew. There's Keep Jason Alive 2020 hashtag in a nutshell for this week. Seems like it's going really well and very unstressful.

No, actually, it's fucking great, man. I've lost 15 pounds since I got my first blood test and I've got a 29-day step streak on my Fitbit. I feel fantastic. I sleep great. I eat mostly vegetables now and it's crazy. I like it. Good for you.

Yeah, I'm turning into a human again. Speaking of humans, let's talk about GetHuman. If you have to spend a lot of time with customer support doing anything in this holiday season, God forbid you have to, but you generally will, go to GetHuman.com. It basically has all of the phone numbers and the decision trees that you have to use to get to humans.

Yes, this is bookmarked. This is a very useful site. This is an incredibly useful site, so I highly recommend everybody use it. So check it out. And finally, I've just been doing a lot of writing. I've got some new LinkedIn articles coming out about podcasting and things like that. And I found the Hemingway editor, which is – it's $19.99.

You can use their web version for free, but you can use the offline version. So when you're just sitting on your laptop, you don't need a Wi-Fi connection. And it has just a bunch of different things to make your writing a lot tighter and a lot punchier. And I loved it. So I used it on my latest article. And it made me think a lot more and use better words.

I had to actually use more concise words and different types of adverbs and things like that to really kind of pull it together. And it made my article 10 times better or maybe even more than that. So I really like this app. It's very clean. It's very simple. You just go in. You type. And you can work without the annotations.

And then you just flip over. And it will show you all the different – it will highlight the sentences that need work. Fix those and then go back to writing. It's great. It's $20. This looks really cool, actually, like way better than Clippy. I'll tell you that. It's so good. It's so good. You know those memes that go around sometimes where they're like use one word to describe how old you are without stating your age or anything?

My go-to was always WordStar. WordStar. I loved WordStar. You remember that? I hated WordStar, man. I hated it. Oh, the overlays that you had to put on your keyboard. Remember those?

Yeah. Just to figure out where anything is. Like for the IBM XT keyboards, you had this giant overlay and it's just like, what the fuck? So good. And I've had this for two weeks now and I keep forgetting to mention it on the show, but I'll bring it up now.

I have the BeCant IKEA sit-stand desk. Brian, why didn't you get the BeCant? It'd be positive. Why do you have to be negative and get the BeCant? I don't know because I'd be can't be bothered. It was $399 Canadian. I'm not sure the exact price in the US, which is considerably cheaper than the fancier versions out there.

But as you and I were talking about offline, a sit-stand desk has two things it has to be, flat and go up and down. Well, it needs one more thing, but yeah. It's $399 US as well, by the way. Okay. There you go. Good. It's narrow.

It's not very wide. It's only 47 and a quarter inches wide. More than big enough for me. I know that you like to have basically a house door as your desk and it needs to be that width. But this totally works for me. Yeah, because my standing desk right now is 72 inches wide.

The house door is 80 inches wide. And I was thinking of actually getting the top – like replace the top on my current desk with an 80-inch one or get another one that's 80 inches. It's like my old setup when I was doing music and all that. I had three IKEA desks, two and then one in the corner.

But nowadays, you know, my footprint is pretty tight. And this is a much bigger desk than I was used to working on because I was using one of those medical-grade standing desks for a while. Ugh, God. Yeah, yeah. If it was wider, I would definitely look into it. But I need something – I mean, if I could get a 120-inch desk, I would totally get it.

But then you're in a serious territory there. But, yeah, my 80-inch desk is perfect because, you know, I've got, you know, 27-inch iMac, two studio monitors, all this editing gear. And then if I need to, like, do something with another interface or things like that, this is just way too small.

But you're just literally running on an air. Do you even have a monitor? I do. I have a monitor set up here. I have the air. And, you know, hopefully at some point I'll actually have my mic stand and all that. This is more than big enough. Totally works. Oh, you should definitely check out – these are coming out in January. The bridge dock for the iPad Air.

So you can just, like, slide it in and then it plugs – it takes the FireWire out or the Thunderbolt, sorry, Thunderbolt 3 out and goes into your hubs and stuff like that. It's, like, $169, but it's really cool. I'm going to get one for sure. And this just in – I got this email from Amazon this morning.

Did you get this email as well about Sidewalk? I did as well, yes. Yes. So we are all under alert now that Sidewalk from Amazon is about to be enabled next year. And they tell us that – I can't wait for my AirPods to connect to every single Amazon Echo as I walk down the street.

Oh, wait. You don't have to wait. You've got that feature already. I must be in the beta program. Yeah, exactly. So they said that it's going to be coming later this year, early next year, and it's going to be on by default. And I have an issue with that being on by default because they say when enabled, Sidewalk uses a small portion of your internet bandwidth to provide these services to you and your neighbors.

Fuck you. I didn't sign up for that. I did not say that you can change the terms of service to use my bandwidth whenever you like. But they at least said at the end of the email, to disable this feature, follow these instructions, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. So I will be disabling Sidewalk before I get it.

But here's the funny part about it. When the app updates, it will probably re-enable it again because we know that that's what they like to do. Yep. Feedback loop. Over at Patreon, we've got Peter. Hi, Peter. Nice to meet you.

Thanks for signing up. And thanks to everybody who has upped their pledge as well. We really appreciate that very, very much. And over at PayPal, we've got Michael, John, Andrew, Tom, Jeffrey, Ryan, Mark, Joseph, Stavros, John, and Ariel. And Ariel says, Dear Grumps, I'm an avid listener of the show and donated via PayPal to Scaramoochies.

One Scaramoochie per Grump. To clarify, despite the use of Scaramoochies, I value you on an entirely different scale. Please keep safe and healthy. If not for your sake, then for mine. Thank you. And we've got Stu, who said, Hi, geeks. Old school hacker from Do Not Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate Days, which was before internet like Dial-Up BBS.

Love the show. It keeps me smiling during grumpy times. Sent you a 20 on PayPal. Thanks. Well, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much to everybody. I miss running my old BBS. Well, you can probably get an old Quadra for cheap and run some phone lines in and get her done. Get her done.

Nobody would connect, but you could have it. Finally, my own personal social network, like Parler. Yeah. You know what? You could call it Schrodinger's BBS because if somebody connects, does it? Anyway, Jeff writes in over on Twitter, Why are telehealth companies treating healthcare like the gig economy?

And this is a TechCrunch article, and you read this one, Brian. Yeah. Insurance companies love this model because it is cheap to operate, but patients bear the cost. Doctors in this arrangement get paid to work the assembly line. Every minute they spend listening to patients, learning about their lives, building a personal relationship, is a minute they're not moving down the line seeing the next patient and earning the next fee.

The system doesn't reward doctors for providing care. It rewards them for churning through patients. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Is this the way it should be? No, of course not. Why is it that way? Let's go back to the first line. Insurance companies love this model. Exactly. Welcome to American healthcare.

Marca. Right. Yeah. And Clearomania said the EU defense minister is looking for a new producer or just a gatekeeper. Technology is just as good as the kids using it. And this is a link to, I guess, somebody hacked into some British parliament meeting or something like that because they know how.

No, there you go. There you go. And TJ writes in, interesting investigation using social media data. And this is the Beirut Port Explosion. I watched this video. It's a forensic breakdown of the explosion. This is fucking fascinating to watch. Did you watch the whole thing?

It's pretty cool. I watched most of it. I just love the way that they actually just synced everything and then used all the models. And the data collection is, it's pure data porn. And it's amazing. This is what, in the 90s, they would give us those shitty movies.

And they would do it in episodes of 24 and shit. But this is real. It's actually real now. I know. Pretty crazy. If you haven't watched this video, definitely go check the link in the show notes and watch it because it is, I'm like, I mean, I was just gobsmacked. I'm like, this is so cool. It's real now.

It's actually real. It's like Enemy of the State, you know, that really horrible Gene Hackman, Will Smith movie. But if it was, it's now. It's so cool. Yeah. And Nathan writes in, Prop 22 is a joke. But at the end of the day, Uber and Lyft only got away with it because of those pesky kids.

I mean, California voters let them. Corporations can't enact laws of the voters to do their job. Blame stupidity and low information voters. I take some issue with that. Yes, that is true. Or we could blame a multimillion dollar advertising campaign that was full of straight up lies and misleading information, which, by the way, should be illegal.

Yeah, it should be. But it's not. And, you know, I know people that voted for Prop 22 that aren't stupid, but they were listening to their friends who are Uber drivers in other states. They're like, I got friends in New York who drive Uber. And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is no, no, no. This is blah, blah, blah. And they went with, you know, outside advice for people who don't live here or drive here.

And so I can't blame them for it. I told them they were dumb. But I'm like, you're an idiot. Vote no on Prop 22, you assholes. They're like, no, screw you. I'm going to vote yes. And over at god.show, Mr. Bubbles says, got some stuff I figured might interest you guys.

A bit of an old article, but didn't hear it on the show. And this is a GameSpot article that I didn't read. Me either. Something about being taken to court over tattoos. I totally missed this one. Sorry about that. Sorry about that. It'll be in the show notes. Yes. And he goes on to say, if you want a great short show to watch, I would highly recommend The Queen's Gambit.

Yes, everybody has been talking about that. And he says, this one's for Jason. A while ago, you talked about how you like trucking or something like that. Check out this newish podcast, Over the Road. It's a short podcast about the history and current days of big rigs. I'm not a huge trucking fan. I like cross-country driving.

But this actually sounds interesting. So I'll check it out. Yeah. And Joe writes in, new album by Brandon Perry of Dead Can Dance. Brian might be interested. Cheers. And the album is called Songs of Disenchantment. Sounds perfect for 2020. Right up your alley. Thank you for that.

I've actually randomly been listening to a lot of Dead Can Dance recently as it's bounced from my AirPods from destination to destination. Tis the season. I don't know why their music always feels a bit Christmassy to me, but it does. So always around this time of year, I end up listening to them.

I'm a casual fan of both his solo work and Lisa Gerrard's, the other main member of Dead Can Dance. But like an Amazon bucket and a password, they're always best together. Yeah, and Dead Can Dance is not a summer type of band. It's definitely a wintery band. It's not even a California type of band.

So I think moving has helped. Yeah, you're actually in the perfect spot to listen to it now because when I think of Dead Can Dance, I think of Chicago and the dead of fucking winter. That's the kind of music that I listen to during that. And now you get to experience it in all of its glory.

Yes. Good for you. And Vincent writes in, Ireland is making steps to ban revenge porn. Yay! And so apparently a bunch of Irish women have been released nudies on the internet thanks to bad boyfriends and things like that.

Yes, and also the theory here is it's getting passed around so much because there are no actual laws. Ireland is one of the few countries that doesn't go after people currently for this sort of thing. Yeah, it's not a – the non-consensual sharing of intimate images is not a criminal offense in Ireland.

It's actually encouraged in Ireland. We are going to plug that loophole apparently, which is good. That's a good thing. Yeah, and Vincent goes on to say, I wonder what the Germans' approach to this is. Funny you should ask because I happen to have an article about that.

So, you know, holiday shots and things of that nature where they are clothed or in everyday situations, those are perfectly acceptable. But they have made it clear that any pictures showing naked, semi-naked, or with intimate areas exposed in underwear, or before, during, or after sexual intercourse, which one could argue is all times.

Because I'm always either – I'm always either before, during, or after. Me, mainly after. How many years was that? Okay. Yeah, so revenge porn cases are no longer considered trivial by German courts.

Posting intimate images without consent can lead to criminal convictions and prison sentences of up to two years. So they take it pretty seriously. Do you have to have, like, you know, like some kind of signed document that says, I asked him to remove it? You know, like some kind of notarized document that says – I wish I knew you were going there because I would have prepared some incredibly long German word with, like, stop them from flopping them, document them, or something like that.

But I was not prepared. You caught me by surprise. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Keeping them boobies off lines. I think you went more Swedish chef there again. I did. I did. I was trying to go full Farfik Nugan, but I ended up going a little bit farther north.

Never go full Farfik Nugan. Oh, my God. Ralph writes in – This is minor years, okay. Yeah. Ralph writes in, hi, Grumps. I nominate the following headline for this week's best. Zoom drops 40-minute meeting time limit for Thanksgiving. Eliminating all means of escape.

Yes. There's always – my internet's going. Yeah. That's always a good one. Here's some news for Brian. And Canadian officials warn drivers not to let moose lick their cars. Okay. So I have been dating my – I've been with my wife. We've been married for, oh, God, nine years now.

But I've been dating her for 13, 14 years. And in that entire time, this is a seasonal news item that comes out every single year since I have been coming to Canada. So it is a good one, but it's very funny. You want your moose knuckles licked, but not the other way around.

Yes. They lick cars because they are covered with salt. Yes. And this is an interesting one, Toronto police pullover car with 30-year-old expired plates. And this is a guy who figured out it's cheaper just not to renew your plates and just pay the fine.

That's assuming you only get one ticket and you only get pulled over one time. Exactly. This guy only drives once a year. Yes. Every time he gets pulled over, once. So the math and the logic does not quite work out on that unless you're very lucky and nobody ever gets you – dings you for it.

Mm-hmm. Yep. Seth writes in, Jason, I think you've mentioned Rob Reed's TED Talk about the scary near-future scenario of a homicidal lunatic getting hold of the capacity to print man-made viruses in an effort to kill as many humans as possible. Or 2020. But I don't recall hearing either of you mention his sci-fi novel After On.

It seems like a GOG must-read. It's clever, funny, and we have talked about this book. Definitely. We have. We've actually had Rob Reed on the show talking about the book. I'm looking at the show art for After On, which is the podcast I did with Rob Reed for like 15 to 16 episodes or so. So, yes, Rob has been on the show.

So check the search on GOG.show. It should bring up his appearance on the show. But, yeah, honestly, I like Rob. He's an interesting guy. But After On, too many words. Cut a few. Yeah, I had a hard time reading it too.

I love my dystopian sci-fi. And if you want something of that ilk, I can always recommend one of my favorite books of all time, The Stand by Stephen King. Okay. I cannot recommend that because it's Stephen King. But we have a differing opinion on Stephen King, you and I.

Jonathan writes in, strap on your tinfoil hats and come for a walk with me. So you mentioned that tickets for concerts will require a COVID vaccine certification and that vaccine is only good for one year, maybe. So basically, you now get your prescription to participate in public life, which gets renewed each year like a subscription.

Does it come with the terms of service, too? It doesn't matter what your natural health predisposition is. This is a medicine for everyone who wants to go in public. So anyone from a less fortunate background without insurance will not get to participate in public events like voting. I'm going to stop right there for a second because we've seen the price of the vaccine.

Some are $5. The highest one is about $44. So that is $44 for a year of protection. Yeah. And a lot of people are going to be giving them away for free. So, yeah, let's not get too dystopian on that one. The very next bit was about an app for nightmares, which is prescribed.

If you come this far with me, then I think you can walk this one out yourselves. You get prescribed an app, which costs how much? And I'm sure it will also be a subscription because that's just how we live now. Stay grumpy. Yeah. Well, personally, I'm expecting there to be a national health care app here in Canada that you'll be required to show your status with before entering a business or whatever because, well, national, universal health care.

And I'm 100% okay with that given this particular set of circumstances, i.e. the pandemic. Good luck, America. Fuck you. You know, if there was anything that should be pushing America into the concept of socialized medicine and that not being a bad word or a bad thing, it's a fucking pandemic.

Oh, it's gone the other way. I know. The other way. Trust me. I still see the news. It's a travesty and there's nothing wrong with this. This is a take off your damn tinfoil hat and put on the it's a fucking pandemic and we don't all want to die hat. There's nothing wrong with the idea of you.

Have you had the vaccine? Okay. Well, then you can come into our restaurant and dine. You haven't? Well, then you cannot because it's a fucking pandemic. So anyways, related. I did see this bit of news. Qantas CEO says coronavirus vaccine will be necessary to fly.

This is going to happen everywhere. I'm sorry. It just is. So basically, if you want to fly on Qantas and you want to go internationally, you're going to have to prove you had the vaccine once it's available. And it's going to every airline is going to do that. I'm sure Southwest flying in the States won't be bothered.

But if you're planning to go internationally, I mean, where do you think you can go right now, Americans? Nowhere. Okay. We're trapped. We're trapped. Yeah. Unless Greyhound starts to have boats. We're stuck. And Leif writes in, Jason, your pronunciation of my name, Leif, was dead on.

So Leif is an annoying Americanization. And he put in a whole bunch of stuff in here that I'm going to cut about cholesterol and low-carb diets and things like that because nobody cares. At least nobody listening. I liked it. Thank you, Leif. Leif. Anyway, I love the show and want you to stay around and keep on doing what you're doing.

You guys have been helping me get through COVID while staying sane. Stay grumpy. Well, thank you, Leif. Thank you. And over at iTunes, Vargonian. It sounds like a title of one of those horrible books that L. Ron Hubbard wrote. The Vargonians. The Princess and the Vargonian.

He says, everything I want from a podcast, and it's a five-star rating. Funny, nerdy, well-produced, opinion-y. I look forward to this podcast every week. Thank you. And we've got another one from McSachewan. The podcast we need, not the one we deserve. Another five-star. Need a reminder that it's the world that is insane and not you?

Join these soothsayers as they weekly, in precedented times more frequently, highlight tech and security news interspersed with the right amount of media news and nostalgia. The banter, rants, and news make this a podcast that's well worth your time. My only gripe is that they often present arguments slash insights that force you into action.

Hence why I'm writing this on my first Apple product. Damn, we didn't have an affiliate deal. Shit. If only Apple did those. Although, given my experience with their AirPods this week, I don't know. Can't really recommend those anymore. Although I can.

Chili proof. Yes. 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 that we can read on the air. If you're so inclined, please head over to gog.show slash review and toss us a five-star and snarky review. And if you just happened to hear a snippet of our show while walking down your street and accidentally connecting to your neighbor's Amazon Echo that was playing it, welcome.

Yeah. Or look out your window and wave at Brian. Because... God. Closing shout outs! Boy, are we old, Jason. Microsoft Windows turns 35 this week. November 20th, 1985, Windows 1.0, the one that nobody saw, was released.

I saw it. Did you really? I didn't see it until, I think, two. But, yeah, pretty cool. My mom brought home a floppy of it and showed it to me. And she was blown away. And it was incredible. I totally remember this. If you actually go to gog.show and search for my first PC, you'll see the PC that she showed it to me on.

Excellent. Yeah, that was crazy times, man. Crazy times. And a shout out to Steve Wolf, who let me know this was the thing. And also a shout out to whoever rebuilt the fucking mash sets in Malibu Creek State Park. Somebody actually went back after they burnt down and rebuilt the sets.

So you can still go for a walk now and find the old mash sets. How cool is that? Except they're not really the old mash sets. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Look, if somebody's up there rebuilding the sets, you know who's probably doing that? The guys who built them the first time. This is Hollywood.

I don't think that they're still with us, man. I don't know. It was a long time ago. It's still Hollywood. I loved being able to do that. I went out there a couple times. It was always really cool. And the fact that I could someday go out there again, pretty cool. I would say take my kid. But he's never going to watch mash because.

Yeah, no, I'm totally going to do this because this is something that you can do now in COVID times and, you know, be safe and get you out of the damn house. So I'm totally good. I was so bummed. I always wanted to do it and I never did it. And then it was gone. And we're living fire season, so they might burn down again. So got to slide in that mash window.

All right. Until next time, I'm Brian Shulmester. And I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. And this show is a labor of love, but your support keeps the show going. Like we mentioned before, literally keeps the show going. So if you like us, please visit GOG.show slash donate to help us out. We'll love you forever.

Or you can visit GOG.show slash shop and pick up some good old-fashioned GOG swag. And if you can't do that, then what you can do is please tell 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 485.

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, stay turkey, and stay full this fine holiday season. And better yet, stay the fuck at home.

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