488: On a Safari

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

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Jason, I have got what is relatively typical for people to get when they are in sub-30 degree weather with rain and snow. A bit of a sniffle. In COVID times, I might as well be a leper right now.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, you can't be going out like that. No, no, no, no, no, no. I have been locked down at home even though I just had a sniffle for like one day. And yeah, I'm not going anywhere. No, no, no. And you just shut everything down, right? Because it's better safe than sorry. So no, not going to see the in-laws, not doing nothing.

I'm just staying at home and trying to stay away even from the family in my own home right now, just because we can't be too careful. No, you can't. No, you can't. And we talked about this on the show before. It's like I have allergies. And in the mornings here in L.A., like anybody with allergies, it's just a sniffle fest.

Yep. And you kind of have to ride it out before you can put your mask on and go to the grocery store. Otherwise, you might just get shivved in the frozen food section. Yeah. Yeah. So good times. I actually think it might even just be allergies because it's very specific and it's usually only in the morning. But again, you know, be the good guy. Be safe. Be like Bob as the memes go.

Yeah. I think I think what people need to realize right now, at least in L.A., what I'm trying to get people to understand is there are two different reasons to leave the house. One is you want to leave the house. You want to go see family. You want to go see friends. You want to go do something really fucking stupid.

Then on the other hand, there's need to leave the house. You need food. You need toilet paper. You need baby formula. Do not confuse the two. If you want to go outside, fucking don't. If you need to go outside, do it carefully, do it quickly and get the fuck back home.

There you go. So part of my just sitting around at home thing has been obviously it's Christmas season and we're all trying to cheer each other up. It's been Christmas for quite some time for a lot of us. It has been. Yes. For seven months. So I've been having the lady in the tube play, you know, just basically just saying lady in the tube play us some Christmas classics and, you know, a bit of eggnog and some, you know, a bit of a going crazy stir brain from being at home and not doing anything else.

I got to thinking the other night, uh, what I, what really hit me and, you know, because we have ladies in the tube now and you can say lady in the tube, when was this song recorded? All the Christmas classics that we listened to, uh, for, for listeners that are about our age, they were brand new songs for our parents.

Huh? Now that's really true. And it's a mind fuck. Think about it. Okay. And then I did a deep dive. Like I went into the Wikipedia of Christmas music and all that. It was basically just religious songs up until right around 1940.

Maybe the thirties is when the first couple of songs really started to be recorded, but you got your Bing Crosby's and all that. Every single song that we hear when you say play Christmas classics. And we think that these songs have been around forever. They were brand new. When our parents were kids, they were hearing those songs for the first time. They had never been recorded before.

Now tell me that's not a mind fuck. That is crazy. Crazy. When did O'Tannenbaum come out? Oh, German friend. I don't know that one specifically. Um, that's probably a bit more of a classic one, but certainly the recordings that we know, uh, very well about them were probably brand new for our parents. Yeah.

Yeah. Especially like, you know, Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer. Guessing that's not an old Norse tradition. No, definitely not. I believe that was an advertising jingle originally, actually. Probably. So there you go. And I wanted to give a quick reminder to all the, uh, folks out there listening. Uh, if you're not a Patreon subscriber, I don't know if we ever really mentioned it.

We certainly never push it on the show, but we will right now. Just a reminder of what you get. You usually get early access to the episodes, depending on our recording and Jason. Yeah. And they are ad free. So, uh, and you can stream those into your players as you wish you'll get a link for that. So, um, you know, it's a little plus and, you know, help us out for the holidays. There you go.

Yeah. It's, it's literally the least we could do, but yes, as soon as I, as soon as I put the show into publish, because they come out at midnight usually, uh, when we're ahead of time, which hopefully we are more often than not, especially lately. Then, uh, yeah, they come out immediately on Patreon. I just, I put it in, I hit post and then I move on to the rest of the stuff.

So, and yes, ad free. Yes. And a little followup here. I thought this one was pretty funny. Uh, this is over at Jalopnik. It says, I paid $250 to drive for Lyft last year. And, uh, he breaks down his operating costs and, you know, what he basically paid in taxes and reimbursements and all that stuff. But it basically, uh, he says, my car is now essentially worthless, but I knew that was a possibility as a full-time driver. And yeah, he technically paid about $250 to work.

Yep. How's that, uh, gig economy working out for everybody? Yeah. But the previous year he did make $5,000. So he did, you know, Wow. That's a, yeah. Yeah. Big money, big money, no whammies. And Brian, do you remember the Domino's lawsuit that we talked about with the, uh, ADA and the Americans with Disabilities Act and all that goodness?

Yeah. Well, you know, cue predatory lawsuits. Now I put, uh, some stuff in the show notes here just for you. So you could see a letter that my friend got from an attorney and basically what they do now is they send out scrapers to websites for mom and pop shops. This guy doesn't have a, you know, it's not a big company that he has, but they send these things out there and then they say, okay, well, you're not in line with the ADA. We're going to come after you

and you need to pay us money. That's the types of stuff. And it's not even like anybody with disabilities that that's looking at this, they're robots. Robots are going out and doing this shit. And here's the really fucked up part. So my friend's site is hosted on Weebly. It's a drag and drop builder that's owned by Square. You know, they have no access to the source code on Weebly. My friend called Weebly and Weebly is like, uh, we believe that you'd be

fucked because we ain't going to change shit for you. So now my friend is in the process of Weebly wobbling his way out of Weebly. And, uh, cause if you can't fix it and he's going to get sued and it's, you know, I think the basics are like 50 to $75,000 dings on this. So it's just this predatory bullshit. And I looked up this attorney. He's, he's a total douchebag down in San Diego.

And I'm sure that there's going to be lots and lots of these people. What's this guy's name? I would just say his name. Why not? Uh, actually, you know what? It's the holidays and I don't feel like dealing with douchebags. I'm not going to say his name. I don't feel like getting a letter from them personally. Yeah. Me either. If this guy's already going to pursue this kind of crap, look, you know, smart companies, uh, and smart lawyers would make an immediate partnership with web design

development companies and say, we can either sue you for this amount of money, or you can hire our friend here to fix your site for you at the low cost of $50,000. Exactly. Or 49,999. Exactly. Earl Scheib, the web development company. We'll save you a dollar. So yeah, keep your eye out for this people. It's, it's out there and it is complete and utter bullshit. I'm relatively sure GOG.show is

not ADA compliant. Uh, pretty sure we can fix it if we are though, if we aren't, you know, because we have a WordPress site. We have a WordPress site. We have access to source code. These drag and drop builders, they, they don't have access to that, which means I bet these guys are specifically going after drag and drop builders like this, where people can't actually fix the problem. Oh yeah. Just troll the sites. Yep. So yeah, just keep an eye out for that folks. Keep an eye out for that.

In the news. Well, I'm sitting there watching CNN last night, looking at the scrawl go by, having a nice, uh, nice cup of, uh, eggnog, just relishing in the fact that the electoral college is the greatest institution on the planet because there wasn't one bad elector out there

this time. But there's amazing shadow electors. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, yes, we have a new president. It has been, uh, well, until January 21st can't come soon enough. Uh, so anyway, I'm reading, reading the, the scroll, having my nog and I saw this come by and it's like the federal

trade commission is going after nine of the major social media firms and, uh, asking them for all of their data on how they track data and things like that. And I was like, say what? I know I saw this too. It made me very excited. I almost spilled my eggnog.

Yes. This is, uh, I mean, this is something that has been on my wish list for, uh, since the internet and, uh, yeah, they want to, they're basically saying to all the biggies, uh, what exactly are you doing with the data? Yeah. And what exactly, what, what data do you actually have?

Yes. You know, it's like, okay, using algorithms. Yeah. Let's roll, let's roll this thing back about five years, 10 years now and say, Hey, this is what they should have done back in the day. Uh, but now it's like, okay, might be a day late and a dollar short, you know, the cows have left the barn and the barn's on fire and all that good, you know, all that good stuff. But, um, and this isn't part of anything that this is, this is like an exploratory panel right now, which means they probably won't even reply.

It's just like, okay, you know, we need to do, we need to get the San Diego lawyer on the case. Exactly. Let's get that, let's get that asshole on it. So it's just, I was just amazed. I was amazed. Yeah. I mean, this is something I want to see happen. I, I want to, uh, a hundred percent, uh, try to figure this out. Um, you know, this is really interesting and this is stuff we should know. This is, uh, this isn't like black box. So let's, uh, we don't want to know how the sausage is made stuff. This is very much. Yes. We want to

know how the sausage is made because we're the sausage. We're the sausage. Exactly. So here, tell me, Brian, which one of these doesn't belong? Discord, Facebook, Reddit, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitch, Twitter, WhatsApp, and YouTube. Which one of those doesn't belong? Uh, what's the odd man out? Discord. TikTok. Why TikTok? Because that is the Chinese company out of all of those. Oh, okay. I see what you're saying. Yeah. Well, is it though? Well, it still

is as far as we know. At this point, it's a bit like saying Facebook is a U S company. I mean, technically it is, but I mean, this shit's all global now. They've got offices everywhere. Yeah. But you're talking about U S offices. There are, but I mean, just how, how long have you been talking about TikTok where they have to divest their Chinese interest? And so they're mainly a Chinese company at this point still because nobody knows what the hell they're supposed to be doing. That's true.

I just thought that was fun. Yeah. Oh, wait, I got another fun one. Uh, the FTC is also suing Facebook for illegal monopolization. Where the fuck has the FTC been for the past 10 years? I don't know, man. Apparently they hit the nog early too, because they had some nog and Red Bull because they're really like, you know, on a tear here.

Yeah. I know. I'm very excited about this as well. Yeah. Yeah. Even though that most of their teeth have been pulled with all of the defunding of the FTC and their litigation arm, but, uh, Hey, yeah, that's screw it. Let's try it anyway. So they're, they're going after Facebook, uh, uh, basically about the WhatsApp and Instagram buyouts saying that they stifled competition. They did and, uh, continue to do so. So they're going to be, uh,

investigating that, seeing if, uh, they need to roll back those mergers. But the problem is the FTC approved those mergers. So, uh, it's going to be a little, that's a little tough. No, no take backs. That's Zuckerberg is just, he's got a t-shirt that just says, you know, no take backs. Well, he's got his own other problems right now. I particularly enjoyed this article, Facebook kowtowed to conservatives and got nothing in return, which is basically what we're seeing

play out right now. Uh, we've all known, you know, it's, it's been a lie about the, about how, you know, liberal media has been getting a free pass and conservative media is being stifled. That's been, even though conservative media continues to scream to the rooftops, this is happening. We know it hasn't happened. We've talked about it on this show about actually Facebook actually promoted conservative media over liberal media. That's the reality. That's what happened because they were worried about it. So they basically gave conservative media a free pass.

let them do what they wanted. And, uh, they kind of hope maybe they'd get something out of that, but no, it's a conservative, uh, it's a conservative government right now that is, uh, basically trying to screw them. And the, this article points out that, you know, they did just enough to tick off conservatives to basically say that, uh, everything that you did to help them didn't count for shit. Well, you know, they lost the election, so there you go. They didn't, they didn't go far enough. Nope, not enough. So they have to kind of go all in.

You got to be parlor to make them happy. And even parlor isn't making the conservatives happy these days, apparently. So no, apparently not. And then I saw this article and I thought this was really interesting. Now, you know, I'm not a gamer at all, but, uh, I saw this new lawsuit exemplifies an existential debate in sports video games. So this is basically three Californians are saying that, uh, the video game publisher electronic arts is secretly manipulating them and suing,

uh, the basics being here that there is AI technology known as dynamic difficulty adjustment and it's FIFA, Madden and NHL games, three of the biggest sports games on the planet. And they're basically suing to say, you're juicing these games to make us spend more money.

Okay. Because you can buy things like loot boxes and all that sort of crap. Oh, loot boxes should be outlawed no matter what. Oh, I agree with that a hundred percent. When I first did my little dive into playing, I was played one of the Star Wars games on my phone. Oh, that was so bad. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just like, I didn't know any of this sort of stuff. And I was like, oh, okay, this is getting a little boring. I need to, I need to amp my game up a little bit. And I bought a loot box and got like nothing. I'm like, yeah, exactly. That's why, that's why they say it's gambling because you're, you're giving money and you don't know what you're going to get in

return. That's why EA had to go fix that Star Wars game because it was all based on loot crates and everybody's just like, no, excuse me. That's bad. Yeah. So they got into this a bit more. And according to Tom Brabs, who is a, an actual FIFA coach who runs a YouTube channel called Brabsy TV, having recorded and studied hundreds of my own games, along with other people's, I've drawn too many comparisons to just pass this off as merely nonsense. It honestly would not surprise me if this tech is being used. So yeah, there's, there's a real

thing here. And if you go back through EA's patents and various things that they've gotten, they've definitely like, they've got this technology. So it's almost impossible to prove that they're using it, but it's there. So the lawsuit may reveal something here. And yeah, it's just like, you're juicing it. As soon as you get good, you increase the difficulty to make us spend more money to keep playing the game. I'm sorry, but games just like, when did games become so evil?

I'm sorry, but they've always been that way. This is, this is why I called bullshit on this. If you go back to, oh, say Mortal Kombat in the 90s, you know, okay, you're, you're playing the computer. The computer gets harder as you go. That's the way it works. And it costs you more quarters because you're not good enough as the computer. So you have to keep paying and making it go. No, no, there's a, there is a definite difference here, Jason. Now imagine, I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think the Mortal Kombat was actually harder because the player

was better. It did do that. That's what I'm trying to get to. Only as you got further along into the game. I, there were levels where it would tweak the difficulty. There was no magic AI slider in there. You know it. Bullshit. Absolutely. Well, it wasn't called AI back then, but it was dynamic difficulty for damn sure. For damn sure. You forget where I used to work.

I used to work at a place where they made the fucking thing. Midway. Sorry. No. Yeah. That shit is real. It's always been there. That's why it's just like, okay, now they might be just dipping a little too hard into the box of loot to get more loot, but that stuff has always been there. Well, it's also become a bunch bigger business now, hasn't it? I mean, people's, people actually make a living playing these games. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God. Anyway, we'll see

how this one plays out, but loot boxes should definitely be banned across the board. No matter what. If you want to buy an upgrade, buy an upgrade, you know, that's just all. That's all I'm saying. Yeah. Um, so have you ever heard of strip chat? I'm a married man. Of course not. No, I haven't. I actually haven't heard of them. I haven't either. Okay. I'm single.

I'm like, I haven't heard of me. I don't know what the hell's going on. Um, it's apparently like a cam bot type of thing. All right. And, uh, so I just like this because I put this one in here because it was just funny and we need a little more funny strip tech, strip tats, strip chats, AI powered anal edicts helped it reach nearly 1 billion new users in 2020. Our team has developed a machine learning algorithm to identify particular sex acts within the live streaming video. We've called our AI analytics and it analyzes live video as it

happens, allowing us to bring live anal and live blowjob scenes happening at the very moment, right to the eyes and hands of our users. In 2020, the total traffic to both categories approximately doubled. It brings a new visceral meaning to our saying analytics are bullshit.

Yeah. Oh my God. And all they did was add a dash. They added a dash in the press release, but I just thought that was just too damn funny. It's pretty funny, but, uh, let's, let's keep on the porn continuum here because there was a big story, uh, that came out. Pornhub just purged all unverified content from its platform. They are removing- I would like to state before you get going into this, that Pornhub is so big that this was on the morning news, like on, on, like ABC,

CBS and NBC this morning on my regular TV. That's how big Pornhub has become. Please continue. Yeah. I would like Pornhub added to that list of people about, uh, what data they're collecting and what they're doing with it. Because I would, I would argue Pornhub is probably bigger than Facebook.

Let's be honest. So, uh, Pornhub is removing all videos on its site that weren't uploaded by official content partners or members of its model program. And let's be honest, that's not a big bar to get to. Oh no. You fucking upload a picture and you're part of its model program and you agree to give them some of your money. Right. So yeah. So this came after last week, uh, basically there was a piece in the New York times opinion section that followed the lives of child sexual

abuse victims whose videos were uploaded to the platform. So MasterCard and Visa basically did an investigation and said, you cannot use our cards anymore. That's it. So you cannot, people cannot pay for their Pornhub. People cannot pay for Pornhub using MasterCard and Visa anymore, which is a big deal because obviously this is how they make money from the dumb people that actually pay. Uh, so there you go. Bob's your uncle. So part of this process now to,

to make things right and, and get their big business back in business is, uh, we're going to pull absolutely everything that we know could possibly potentially slightly be illegal. Yeah. So what this actually means is that Pornhub, unlike every other social network out there, like Facebook or Instagram or Tik TOK or YouTube or Snapchat or Twitter will actually have verified

content that has been reviewed. They are actually going for the, we're not just a platform argument. Now think about this for a second of all the big companies out there. It's a porn company once again, leading the way and doing what all these other companies should be doing, which is modify or modifying, not modifying, not modifying, moderating, monitoring their contents. And they issued the

statement in today's world, all social media platforms share the responsibility to combat illegal material. Solutions must be driven by real facts and real experts. Pornhub's announcement says, we hope we have demonstrated our dedication to leading by example. Take that Zuck. Now, having said all that, I would like to point out that the only reason that they are doing it is because their business was threatened. It's not like they're doing this out of the goodness of their hearts.

Oh no, God, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. MasterCard and Visa literally have them by the balls. Yes. They got pulled kicking and screaming into doing this, but it is funny. Oh, it's great. It's absolutely fantastic. Oh, good. God bless Pornhub. So anyway, I just, I, I, I, so many, I'm just going to move on to the next one.

Okay. That's our porn segment. Yes. Yes. Uh, well, uh, since, well, we can tie this one in Oracle has been getting fucked by the state of California for far too long. It's decided for some strange reason we're going to Texas. No laws. Yeah, that's true. No regulations, no taxes. No taxes. Yeah.

So, uh, and you know, we've been saying this for a while that Silicon Valley is just unraveling, you know, HP is gone. Now Tesla is leaving and now Oracle and, uh, Chris, a friend of the show, Chris Lockhead called it, uh, the Silicon Valley Texas, but, uh, I would like to call it the great bait and switch because after this last week, we know that Texas has a, you know, a hair up its butt and they're going to get all of these companies to get to Texas. And then they're going to try and

leave the union. They're all like, yeah, let's secede. Let's secede. Which we hear every fucking time. You know what? They never do it. Go. Yeah. And I think we should, exactly. We should call it Texit because, you know, Brexit has been so good so far for the, for great Britain, you know?

Yeah. Oh, man. But, uh, the fucked up part is only the unwashed masses that work for these companies are going to be the ones that have to move to Texas because the bosses have said, you know what? We're rich. We're rich, bitch. Uh, and if there was ever any doubt that Larry Ellison is a supervillain, he has moved to Lanai, which he owns 98% of. Yep. Believe it or not.

Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Well, he's not the only one because, uh, Hawaii is apparently good for all supervillains. Let us not forget that, uh, Mark Zuckerberg owns a shit ton of Kauai. Oh God. And he lives there. Well, part-time anyways. So yeah. Yeah. Hawaii. Good for supervillains and, and me.

A little farther to get there now though. Oh Jesus. Yeah. I'm, I'm going to be more Caribbean man now, I guess. Yeah. I was going to say, just head down to the Grand Caymans. I'm sure there's enough supervillains down there to choke a horse. True. Or at least a lot of their money. Well, they're the good supervillains because you don't know who they are. That's, that's the sign of a proper supervillain. Anyway, I saw this one. I just had to chuckle. Former Salesforce chief scientist

announces new search engine to take on Google. Okay. Richard Socher, a former chief scientist at Salesforce. Uh, he's an AI guy. Right. Right. He has decided to obviously to spend a butt ton of money and bought you.com. Okay. And this is going to be a new search engine that is based on trust built on kindness and facts and, uh, and it will never exist.

This is, yeah, this is ridiculous. This will go away. We'll never hear about this again. I did sign up for it. I'm on the wait list. I'm on the wait list too. Yeah. Uh, that's the one thing about this is they're using that, that, that wait list tactic, which I hate so much. It's like, okay, you're on the wait list. Now here's 17 other things that you can do to get bumped up the way. Yeah. So my code will be in the show notes. If you would like to get on the wait list yourself, using that

bullshit method to promote yourself is a good way to start on your kindness and trust and facts. Exactly. What a, you know, I was just like hypocrite motherfucker.

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Security. We're joined this week by 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, as well as the co-host of Caveat with Ben Yellen, where they discuss law and policy, as well as surveillance and privacy. And Dave, it's apparently bring your kid to work day. Well, it's bring your furry to work day.

That's right. You're, would he, I guess, I, I, I. Well, his name is furry junior on the, on the window here. Yeah. I was gonna, I was gonna say, should I refer to him as a cub, but I suspect that probably could mean something completely different. I don't want to step, I don't want to step in that. Don't want to step there.

Yeah. I think that, I think that might be, uh, uh, labeled to call the child protective service. I see. I see. I do have a quick question for Jack before we get too, too much further here. Uh, how often on a, uh, like say five to six times a day, does your dad break out into song and dance around the house? Probably, um, five to six times maybe. Okay. That's what I, that's kind of what I pictured.

Yeah. All right. Yeah, that's true. I would say, I'd say that's accurate. So for those who are not familiar, this is my son, Jack, this is my youngest son, Jack. He is, uh, just turned 14. Uh, he's been a guest on the cyber wire a few times, but this is his first time on grumpy old geek. So Jack, welcome. Thank you. You're finally old enough to be on grumpy old geeks. Finally. Cut off his 14,

I guess. Uh, well, certainly humor wise. Yes. Right. Yeah, that's true. You're right in the butter zone for that. Right. So gentlemen, since we have, uh, an expert and, uh, uh, expert junior with us here, let's talk a little bit about the Mandalorian. And, uh, I found this last week after watching the episode because I was unaware of some of the, uh, the back history of this latest episode, uh,

operation cinder. Now this apparently comes from a video game. And since there's only one person here now that has probably played this video game, Jack, can you, uh, tell us a little bit about operation cinder? Yes. Um, so operation cinder was a plan in inputted by the emperor after his, uh, not death, right. Not death, whatever you want to call it. Um, basically his, you know, final stand

that he put in place for when he dies. Uh, and it was the emperor, the empire had all these satellites and they like struck laser, like weather lasers at planets to make all sorts of hurricanes and tsunamis and that type of stuff to wipe out planets and empire soldiers that were left.

It's not completely stated like how widespread if it was all the galaxy, if it was only a couple planets, but that's essentially what it was. So it was kind of, uh, if I can't have the galaxy, nobody can, so I'll destroy it all. Huh? Something to look forward to before January.

Yeah. Oh man. Operation cantaloupe. That's called, uh, now this came out of battlefront two, right? Uh, right. Yeah. You play as a pilot. You start right after the battle of Endor, play as a tie fire pilot that is, uh, questioning her allegiance to the empire.

See, I, I was not aware. I mean, I was aware of the fact that there were animated series that I have not watched that have become Canon, but I was not aware that actually some of the video games are Canon now as well. Who knew? Yeah. Well, Jack knew. So there you go. So what's funny is I actually have battlefront two and I started to play it, but I didn't quite get far enough into it to get to the, you know, the, the nuts and bolts of it. So maybe I'll go back and play it. It sounds interesting.

It was definitely an enjoyable episode, but, uh, as much as it can be with Bill Burr in it, because I, I am a big Bill Burr fan as a comedian and it still bumps me to see him in Star Wars universe. Oh, man, that makes me so happy. I think it's one of the best casting decisions ever. I love when Bill's on the show. I mean, who knew that Boston was part of the Star Wars universe?

Hey man, it's the way it goes. Well, there's, they've got, I mean, they've got Brits, so why not Bostonians? Right. Yeah. I, I like, I like Bill Burr. I think he's a good choice. I was happy to see him back as Jack and I were discussing after we watched the most recent episode. I was a little surprised that they sent him on his way, that they didn't ask him to, since he knew, knows Imperial stuff and they're heading towards an Imperial ship, why not keep him with them? Maybe they

don't trust him. Maybe they're just, you know, this way they can bring him back later. I, as Jack said, I think he will most likely be back. Right, Jack? Right. There's no, I don't think there's any way that they're not going to bring all these characters back. Yeah. I was actually reading a, uh, uh, an article about it as well, saying that, uh, they kind of almost have to bring him back because you can tell that they're building up to a magnificent seven type moment and you need seven.

Ooh. Mmm. Mmm. Mmm. Seven's good. Seven's good. Yeah. Sticking with, sticking with the Western theme and all that good stuff. Yeah. That's a good point. I wonder which town they're going to have to save when they get all seven together. I don't know. It feels like they've saved almost every small town in the universe already in this season. Exactly. It's kind of their thing. Yeah.

Bill Burr's, uh, story with Star Wars is quite interesting. He didn't, he was, he was a Star Wars hater at first. Yes. Yes. He was not, uh, very fond of the series. You know what he is fond of though? A paycheck. I was going to say money. Bill Kaching Burr. Right. He was hesitant right until, uh, Jon Favreau gave him the digits. Um, so yeah. So what do you guys, uh, we've got one more episode

to go this season. Oh, that's it? Yeah. That's it. We're coming. Yeah. Big, uh, big season finale. Any, uh, any predictions for what we might see in this final episode? Uh, I'll be sad when it's over. Big battle. I can predict that. Big battle on the ship and cliffhanger. I think that's pretty safe to, uh, safe to assume. Jack? I think that they were teasing, you know, baby Yoda or Grogu, uh, calling

out to, you know, other force beings when he was sitting up on the rock. So might see some, uh, you know. A little, uh, Luke Skywalker action. You're right. Space facts. Yeah. He said a space facts. Come on, everybody. By the way, props to Jack for actually being able to remember the name without having to Google it like the rest of us. Yes. I know. Like Goo Gone? Oh no, that's the stuff

I put on my shoes. To be 14 and remember every obscure tiny character again as I once did. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I, I'm with Jack. I think, uh, we're going to see some kind of, uh, situation where at the last, you know, when everything's bad and it seems like there's no hope, uh, at the last minute, maybe some Jedi, a Jedi or some Jedis are going to show up and perhaps a new hope Jedi.

Right. Right. Right. I mean, they have kind of casted him is what I've heard, or at least there's an actor that everybody in the world is saying, this is a young Mark Hamill and he is connected to Disney. So. Right. Right. I don't know his name. Jack, do you know his name? The guy who we're talking about here? Yeah. Sebastian Stan. Thank you very much. We just need him on call for all future Star Wars episodes. Right. Exactly. Seriously. He's in our encyclopedia.

And I thought. He's our, he's our grow Google. Right. Very nice. It must be interesting though, Jack, for you, for you, because I certainly, I think for Dave and myself and maybe Jason as well, though Jason was not as into Star Wars as a kid as, as Dave and I were, um, we certainly knew the stories and the characters, but I don't think maybe you did, uh, Dave, but I certainly didn't know the ins and outs of like the filmic universe, the actual universe that like, I didn't really know

actors' names so very well. I didn't, I wouldn't know if an actor was attached to Empire Strikes Back when it was coming out, but these are all things that are just out there for kids these days. And, and Jack, you seem to know them all. So it's, it's a different fandom than, than what I experienced, certainly. Yeah. I think, you know, partially the internet is such prominent. To blame.

Right. As a, as a new thing and this new era of Star Wars fans. But, uh, yeah, it's, you know, when you're got, you know, days without, uh, weekends with no deadlines to handle or, you know, all you gotta worry about is, you know, Y equals X plus B or whatever, you know,

you have lots of time on your hands. All right. Lots of time to Google Star Wars. Yeah. See, I thought it was, I was, it was a big deal back in the day for me that I knew like who Peter Mayhew was, you know, like, you know, that was, that was high level stuff, but that's nothing these days. Yeah. I mean, you, you didn't know potential casting announcements and the fact that Bill Burr was not a fan of Star Wars before being in it.

Yeah. Yeah. There was so much, it was so much easier for them to contain information too. But, uh, well, and the whole marketing machine was different too. They use so much of that now to hype things up with who's attached and who's not. And, you know, it's so, it's all very different, but it's a far cry from sending Darth Vader to Kmart, right? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And mailing away your proofs of purchase to get your, uh, your Boba Fett action or your, yeah, your Boba Fett

action figure back. Yep. I remember when that arrived, I was at my grandparents' house and it came and I was jumping for joy. Yeah. Me too. Me too. You were at my grandparents' house. That's creepy. Huh? Well, you were at my grandparents' house. That's, that's not right. That's not right. I didn't want to say anything. Uh, do you guys, do you guys remember like all the, um, the fan magazines that would come out between the movies, the really thin ones that just, you know, were just there to get your money. They might have like one or two extra pictures.

So you'd have to like flip through and see if they were worth getting. So you could cut out the pictures and put them on your wall and you have to beg your mom for the annual calendar. Cause you might get a screenshot from the upcoming film. I remember there was a, I got one and it had like a picture from return of the Jedi before the movie had come out and it was the coolest thing ever. Now they were called stills back then. They weren't screenshots. Yeah. Giant fold out poster of Darth Vader that you had, you know, that staples and all that stuff to get out and put in

your, put up on your wall. Finally dogs that are barking that aren't mine. Yeah. That's great. That'd be Dexter. Yeah. Yeah. Is he a squirrel serial killer? Uh, he fancies himself a killer of everything alive. That's not him. Um, but he's just a bully. He's, he's really not a tough guy. He likes to think he is, but he's, he's not, he's, he's pretty easy. Jack,

how would you describe Dexter? Dexter is, uh, he's probably the prime example of all talk. Uh, you know, he, he, he, uh, he finds himself running at things. And then once they bark back, he'll run, you know, right back at you in worry. Yeah. Yeah. He is a bully. Yeah. He's a bully.

Right. He, he folds any, any pushback and he folds, but, uh, he's got a lot of bark in him as you just heard. So, yeah, he's our dog and we love him despite him being a bully and kind of a jerk. Family. What can you do?

Exactly. Exactly. He's family. He's, he found us, you know, we rescued him. I don't know how many years ago now, Jack, six years, something like that. Um, and, uh, yeah, he's family. He's family. All right. Well, uh, Jack, thank you for joining us. You're welcome to stay or you can, uh, you can pop off if you want to. We're going to talk about, uh, some cybersecurity stuff. So if you want to stay and, uh, add your commentary, you're welcome to, but don't feel obligated.

Okie dokie. All righty. All right. Well, thanks for stopping by Jack either way, if you don't chime in or not, but, uh, it was invaluable to have somebody else who knows more about star Wars than these guys on for change. These kids, these super fans who claim to know everything. And then it just showed up by the 14 year old who comes again. Now, let me explain something to you. There's so much more to know now though. Like, right. I mean, yeah, you like, I, I can't, I can't even catch up with the animated

series. Now I found out I have to play games to understand the full canon of the universe. This is a full time job, right? Now if I started the star Wars podcast and I could write everything off now. Yeah. I thought I was hot stuff because I'd read splinter of the mind's eye before empire strikes back came out and you know, yeah. So, all right. Shall we do some, uh, security then?

Sure. Well, let's talk about what's going on with this whole solar winds kerfuffle. What's happening? Uh, so this is, uh, again, what we in the biz refer to as a big deal. Um, capital B capital D. Um, and so solar winds is a company that, um, one of the products that they provide is called Orion and it is a platform for controlling your servers, managing and controlling

servers. Uh, so imagine, uh, imagine a dashboard and it's, uh, do, you know, keeping an eye on all your servers, making sure they're up and running, uh, can do things like reboot them and, uh, you know, all that sort of day to day management kind of stuff provides you with one place to keep track of everything that's going on, alert you if there's something that needs your attention, uh, you know,

day to day work a day kind of stuff. So lots of people use this software, lots of, um, government organizations. Um, it's originally sort of came to people's attention because this was part of the fire eye hack that we were talking about in the past, what week or so. Right. And just to clarify is solar winds, Orion, it's, it's just software. It's not hardware. They don't have like a network

device or anything. Uh, I believe that is correct. I believe we're talking about software here, but I am not, I honestly, I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I've, I've not seen anything in the stuff that we've covered that talks about any hardware. Okay. So, um, what has happened here is much like, uh, what happened with Ukraine with that, um, tax software where there was code injected

in an update of the software. That's basically what happened here with solar winds, Orion, um, someone, and by someone we mean Russia. Yes. Cozy bear, correct. Cozy bear. Yep. Which is typically the, the quieter, stealthier, uh, department of the bears, right? There's fancy bear and cozy bear

and cozy is the quieter one to tends to keep to themselves more. So the suspicion is that, uh, cozy bear inserted this software into one of the updates for solar winds, Orion software. So when, if you were someone who used the software, you would go to solar winds, you would update to the latest version. As part of that update, there would be code that would then it's basically malware. It would

install malware, reach out to a command and control server, um, and give them access to your network. Uh, and then basically it opens a back door. Yeah. And so through that back door, now they can, they have access to do whatever else it is that they want to do. Um, and customers of solar winds includes the Pentagon, the state department, NASA, NSA, the postal service, NOAA, the DOJ, um,

the office of the president. So nobody of note, 425 of the fortune 500, um, all of the, uh, all the top 10 telecommunications companies, all five branches of the military. I'm just going to, I'm going to say somebody at fancy or cozy bear got, uh, got some extra rubles in their paycheck last month.

Uh, yeah, I think so. And, um, um, the folks at solar winds are saying that they think about 18,000 of their customers were potentially affected by this. Um, what's funny is they're sort of spinning that as a good thing because it could have been about twice that number. I think use the software, but only that

number had, had updated to this version. Oh God, somebody in PR earned their check that week. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry you lost your legs, but Hey, you still got your head. Right. Right. The good news is only 18,000 of our 36,000 customers are potentially exposed to this.

Um, so these are early days for this breach. We don't really know the extent of it, um, or how bad it is, the degree to which they were already exfiltrating data or installing other stuff or whatever. Um, so this is a big, uh, example of third party risk and how this sort of thing can get

into systems at all levels. Um, I think overall people are, I think using this as an, as an example of this can happen to anybody. Um, I don't know that there's, there hasn't been a whole lot of finger pointing and people saying, ah, you, you know, you did the wrong thing or saying that solar winds was, uh, neglectful or anything like that. Yeah. I mean, I think, um, when we're talking about

a nation state actor, uh, like cozy bear, they have the capabilities to do these sorts of things. Um, I think it's, uh, I guess I was going to say it's brazen, but, um, it's only brazen at the point where it's discovered. Right. I mean, they were just, we don't know how long it's been in there.

Um, so I'm sure we have kind of a, we have a window that we know that it's been in there from when the update went out. So correct. Yeah. You know, we do have, we do at least have some kind of timeline with the window. Now, the interesting thing is that this is coming out like, you know, now with the administration switch that it's kind of odd timing. It's like, why didn't they wait a bit until there, you know, Oh, you know what it is. That's what I was thinking about. Okay. So,

you know, the cantaloupe loses and then they're like, okay, well, he's not going to, he's not our friend anymore. We don't really need him to protect us for anything. So let's just go to town. And then they, then they screwed up and got caught. But yeah. Yeah. I mean, I wonder how much of this is, um, because fire, I discovered it, put the word out and then they started looking for it and now cats out of the bag and here it is. Right. My, my impression is this was very

stealthy. Um, and, uh, was, was running very quietly. Yeah. Everything I've read about it is like, these guys were like, they weren't rushing to do anything. They covered their tracks. They were very meticulous about how they actually use the exploit. It wasn't like, Hey, we're in, let's just start trying to get Bitcoin scams, you know? Right. Right. And that's, and that's cozy bear versus fancy bear. Cozy bear is the reputation for being quiet and fancy bear has the, the reputation for kind of being more of the bull in the China shop.

Fancy bear, the way to easy way to think about it is fancy bear is more like fozzy bear. Very nice. So I'll have to take that to my editorial team. Just a quick question about why this was so big is solar winds and Orion in particular, like the only game in town. Why were so many people using one product?

Yeah. That's a good question. I don't know the answer to that. Um, it could be that they were kind of, um, think about a company like Salesforce, you know, when you're, when you're at a certain level, well, yeah, when you're at a certain level, uh, you may not have a whole lot of competition and how many, how many, um, how many providers do there need to be of, uh, server management at this

level? Well, and if you're, once you get into the government stuff, because my, my uncle actually did a lot of work with the government, you have to get vetted and do all this paperwork every year. You can't just sell your goods to the government. So it could be a case of this is the company that went for that market, did all the, did all that stuff. And all of a sudden the de facto providers.

So, yeah. Yeah. Now one thing just to head off, uh, anything that people are hearing, uh, because as with these things, um, the conspiracy theorists all start their engines and there are already folks who are saying that, um, one of the voting system companies used SolarWinds software, um, which is true, but they did not use the Orion software, which was the software that was

cracked. So, or, or, uh, infiltrated. So, um, there's, I don't think there's anything to this notion that there could be any trouble with the election as a result of this. There seems, there's no evidence of anything like that. So if you hear those conspiracy theories coming along, there's nothing to them that we know of so far. Okay. Good to know. All right. I guess the other

thing is, um, you know, the question of how does this affect me? Uh, and the answer is probably not very much, um, that we know of so far. This is espionage. So, um, this is spy versus spy. Um, this is what they do. So we'll see if there's any response. We'll see if there's any, I mean, this isn't, this isn't considered criminal, you know, because it's, it's espionage. We do it to

them. They do it to us. Um, so who knows, maybe we'll kick some, um, some Russians out of the U S or do something diplomatic like that. But, um, like I said, hack them back, hack them back. If we aren't already, I mean, probably are. Yeah. So, um, the game is afoot. It's an interesting one. A heck of a

way to end a heck of a year. Yeah. Yeah. No doubt. Talking about a cherry on top. Yeah. I did include a link. Um, uh, the, uh, journalist, Kim Zetter has a nice explainer thread on Twitter that really lays out some of the basics in a way that's really easy to understand. So, uh, she's a really good writer. Uh, always recommend her stuff. So we'll have that in the links as well.

Very cool. Awesome. I bet you were hoping for a slow couple of weeks heading into Christmas, Dave. You know, I was when, when this, when news of this, I was sitting on my couch, uh, with a cocktail in hand when on Sunday night, when news of this started to break and it quickly became apparent that this

wasn't just some small little breach. And, um, I was sitting there going, oh, oh, how much, you know, what, how, uh, so I just started, started reading up on it. Um, but we'll see. Um, this is, I think it's going to be slow moving cause it's not like it's making its way around the world and shutting down systems and ransoming things and things are going offline. And it's, you know,

it's not like, um, uh, what was, um, not, not at you or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. It's not like that. Yeah. Right. Right. I always like yet. Yeah. Better. Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, I did too. I did too. So. All right. Well, on that happy note. Yeah. We'll see you again next week, Dave. All right. Very good. Well, have a good week. Thank you for, uh, indulging me and having, uh, young Jack on the show. He was very much looking forward to it. It was a pleasure to hear

from furry junior. Yes. It was a pleasure. And it was nice to have somebody knowledgeable about star Wars on the show. Baby furry. Yep. Yep. That's right. That's right. All right, guys. I'll talk to you soon. Media candy. Somebody linked this to me on Twitter and I just thought it was pretty funny. I finished watching star Trek, the next generation to decided to double down on being a

nerd and analyze the scripts over seven seasons. And it's a series of graphs that are pretty funny and they go, uh, you know, average warp factor per season, which is pretty fun. You know, when, when were they in a hurry episodes with alien race, racist mentions versus season. So you can see which ones start eight versus episode number, which I don't get that one, uh, crew total lines versus season. So you can see who had the most lines per season. So you can skip the Wesley season.

Uh, yeah, I think everybody can skip that one. Uh, God, we'll fucking Wheaton, but God damn, they did not write that character very well. Well, let's talk about will Wheaton for a second here because, uh, I'm going to move this up the list cause fuck discovery, man. I can not like that show.

Uh, I, I, the mirror, you know, you, you just jumped forward in time. You're exploring this amazing concept and timeline. And then you go back to the fucking mirror universe, mirror universe and time travel. And this is, I remember, I asked you, how is she going to get back to do that other show? Well, this is the lead in for that. Now here's why we're going to get back to will fucking Wheaton again for a second here is because I went to go, I got my days off, you know,

on when the new episodes launch. Cause I can't remember if it's Wednesday. Cause it used to be Wednesday and now it's Thursday, blah, blah, blah. I go pop it up. It says discovery next episode. I click it and it takes me to the ready room with will Wheaton. Have you watched that? No, I don't. I don't watch wrap up shows ever. Okay. Um, I don't either anymore. And, but it, it took me five seconds, I think to almost drop my beer and dive for the remote. It was so annoying.

It was just like, I, I, I don't know what happened to him. I mean, it's bad. You should just watch the first 15, 20 seconds. I'm sure it follows. I'm sure it follows the very specific formula of the wrap up shows. And I, I know you, you do not have a wife, so you have not been subjected to watching the wrap up shows for any of the real housewives. I've seen them. I've seen them. So yes, I know what to expect from these sorts of shows. It's not that Brian, it's not that it's Will's exuberance

for nerddom. Oh, well, that's what I'm talking. It has nothing to do with the wrap up. I like, I like watching the talking dead. You know, I like watching the talking dead more than I liked watching the walking dead. So it's not the wrap up show. It's Will Wheaton himself and his faux ebullience. When the show starts, you just have to see it to understand what I'm talking about.

I think it's Will Wheaton. He is who he is, man. He, I mean, God watches, look at his Twitter feed. He gets excited about fucking board games. That's true. I think he's excited about having a job and getting paid, which, you know, I guess, I guess I would be that excited. Okay. Mystery solved. Mystery solved. And I found another awesome Reddit, uh, Reddit stream here.

I guess what there's subreddits or comment. I, I never know the terminology with Reddit because it's just like completely different from everything else. Um, it is Joe Rogan fans learn how shitty Spotify is. And it is a massive thread on how crappy Spotify's interfaces. And I just loved it.

It's pretty bad. I, uh, did you see, uh, this was actually breaking news. I saw it late last night and I didn't put it in the show notes because whatever, but just to continue with Spotify's podcasting. Did you see that they got the former Prince and princess, uh, to do an exclusive holiday podcast? Oh, who gives a fuck? I know people do. I don't know why. Yeah. Well, they also thought Michelle Obama's show was going to do gangbusters and they couldn't get the money or like the numbers

up to pay her the money to get, you know, the buyout. So they actually had to release it to the world. So I think, uh, that, that, that whole experiment night might not really be working as well as they thought it would. Um, I did watch heaven's gate, the cult of cults on HBO max, not on my Roku.

Cause I had to watch it on my, that beautiful URL for the show. Oh, isn't it great? They need to fix that. Isn't it great? I mean, it's like, I think they're using the same software that, uh, Apple TV plus is using. I really do. And I love that it's, uh, it's hbomax.com slash series slash earn, like as in where you put the dead bodies, colon HBO, colon series, colon GX seven, two Q you don't, it reads like an Amazon title. It's great. Uh, I do want to say a quick shout out though,

to, uh, Steve Hassan, who's in it. He's a cult expert that I know from the Jordan Harbinger show and a really good guy. And he was in it quite a bit and did a really good job in it. But, uh, there were some things in there that I didn't really remember about heaven's gate in the fact that Nichelle Nichols, his brother is one of the guys that killed himself. Yeah. Yeah. I forgot about that. Believe it or not though, the website's still up. You can still go to heavensgate.com and all their bullshittery is still there. And you can listen to Will Wheaton delightedly talking about it on

one of his wrap up shows. Yeah, I know. I did do some research after this cause we were like, whatever happened to that house that they killed themselves in? And, uh, turns out the neighbors all pitched in and bought it and bulldozed it and even changed the name of their street.

Good. Nice. Well done. Yeah. Uh, I finished, uh, I, I basically binged and finished the queen's gambit. Um, it is every bit as good as everyone says it is. Really? Absolutely phenomenal. Jason, you will love it. You will love it. It's really fucking good. I know we don't do, uh, we don't like do year end wrap ups or anything, but I, this is in my top three shows of the year.

Hands down. Damn it. Hands down. Like it's, it's, it's this it's Ted Lasso. And, uh, I was going to put Picard in, but I'm not so sure. I don't know. Yeah. Picard's not in my top 10. Picard isn't in my top 10. Yeah. But, uh, but this, this definitely is dude. You got to watch it. It's really, really good. I'm halfway through episode two. I just, by the time of night. Slow start.

Okay. When does it pick up? Uh, by end of episode two, episode three, when she gets a little bit older as soon as she gets out, it's really good. Yeah. I need to get rid of the past this kid shit. I'm like, okay, I know she had a shitty childhood. Let's get onto the chess. Let's move on. Yeah. It's, it's, uh, it was phenomenal. I was really sad that it was over. Okay. Well, I will, I'll, I'll do my best. I'll do my best. Ups and doodads. We got a big, sir. Update.

We did. We did. I did it last night. Oh, I didn't even see it. Okay. Uh, it seems to have, uh, sped things up considerably. Although you're about to talk about a story that might've helped too. Mm-hmm. I got this as a hat tip to friend of the show, Eric Hundley. Uh, I've, I found this fantastic. Uh, first there's a YouTube video called is Chrome killing your Mac book. Now Betteridge would say, no, it's not. But the YouTube video says yes. The YouTube video says yes. And

there's a website called Chrome is bad.com. And this comes from a claimed developer, Lauren Brichter. Now, uh, I'm pretty sure if I, unless I've gotten it confused, Lauren Brichter is the one who, uh, pioneered pull to refresh, uh, cause he had that app Tweety that was then bought by Twitter and then everybody got pulled a refresh and then they patented it and then let the patent go to the world. Um, but I believe that was Lauren and, uh, but it's been a long time and

I'm old. Uh, anyway, I think he's made up for it in here, but basically what he's saying is that there's a process that goes along with Chrome that sits in the background that you can't see an activity monitor. That's always updating, like checking and updating Chrome and Google products for you. And if you have to uninstall Chrome and make sure this keystone thing is gone. And the one process that peaks up is like the windows server. And that was one of the things that's always been

running on my computers all the time. I'm like, what the fuck? But here's the problem. It doesn't happen when Chrome is running. That's why it's been so hard to figure out. And he has figured it out. I uninstalled Chrome on every computer, but one of mine. Oh my God. It's incredible. Yep. It's incredible. Yeah. Chrome has been screwing us up for so long. It's like my 16 inch $4,000 MacBook Pro

when I got it out and got everything installed and it just is a dog. And I'm like, what the hell is going on? Got rid of Chrome brand new machine. Yeah. I wiped Chrome as well when I saw this and it was instant. Like on that next reboot, I was like, oh my God, everything is running so much faster.

And then the big Sur update made it even faster. I'm like, I don't need to buy a new laptop for 20 years. Oh, good. Good. Except my M1 machine gets here first week of January. So I got to, I have to, I didn't want to, but I have to try. No, Eric Cuddly got one too. And he's like, this thing is the fastest machine I've ever had. And he runs on battery all day long. And then

he immediately installed Chrome. Yeah. He's it, but he's the first one that tried it and said, you're not going to believe it, do it. And because here's the other thing that I was going to talk about today was that I have switched to Safari because I thought the problem was in Vivaldi.

And there was some issues that I was having with Vivaldi on Big Sur. And so I'm like, ah, you know what? Let's just try Safari and go back to it and give it a go. The one nice thing about Safari is the fact my bookmarks sync on every single device I have. Yep. With, without doing anything. Yep. The downside is you got to use Safari. Yeah. That's the problem. You told me you were doing it. So I actually put

Safari back in my, in my little bar here so I could actually see it and remember that I have it. I've launched it a few times. I even imported over my bookmarks from Vivaldi in the hopes that I'm going to switch to Safari. Now that I got rid of Chrome and my Vivaldi is working fine, I don't, I'm not switching. I'm not going to do Safari. No, no. If Big Sur, if this Big Sur update fixes Vivaldi, I'm going back to it. Um, cause yeah, the, the, the UX is terrible. If you're using one

password and the built-in Apple saved passwords, you have multiple competing dialogues popping up over your form fields, which will drive you crazy. So you have to pick one. Yep. So I picked of course, one password because that is the winner. And, um, so now I have to like, if there's a password that I had in my key chain that I have to go back and find, it's a pain in the balls. But, um, yeah.

Yeah. Okay. I'm going to check out this Big Sur update for sure. Yeah. Vivaldi seems to be working fine for me and I'm, I'm just sticking with it for now. It's, I can't stomach Safari. No, no. And unfortunately I have to keep Chrome on at least one machine because to publish this show, I have to use Chrome for one of the, one of the things that we do, like the dynamic ad placement marker only works in Chrome. Of course, it drives me crazy. Uh, so fix that art 19 pretty pleased with sugar on top.

And since we've got all these USB C devices now, I noticed that all my, uh, Western digital, you know, hard drives that I use for backups and all this stuff that, you know, it's the, they're the old ones. They're the USB threes with that, that wacky plug that, uh, only goes to USB two.

So I'm like, okay, you know what? I need to, I need to consolidate all these things and get to a USB C drive. So I went and did a little research by research. I mean, I went to Amazon and put in four terabyte passport. And what's the first one that came up? And then I ordered it. That's it. I just wanted a USB C portable hard drive from Western digital because those passports work for ever. So I got the WD for TB, my passport ultra for Mac silver,

portable external hard drive, USB C. And I'm going to save you the time on the rest of it, but, uh, four terabyte drive, USB C faster than shit, uh, $116 and 45 cents. My God, four terabytes for $116. I can't wait until they come out with the 40 terabyte drive just so they can call it the WD-40.

Nice. It's going to be awesome. I know. Every time, every time us old people like, you know, put up a new hard drive that's cheaper than the last one, it's just like, do you remember in my day? But I tell you what though, the joy still doesn't stop when I see, I just bought four terabytes for 115 bucks. That's amazing. I can't, can't recommend this drive enough.

What I needed it for was for a time machine. So I can take it around to my different machines and whatever machine I'm working on, I just plug it in. Do the backups. Yeah. So it's just doing the backups while I'm working and then just switch machines. So, um, it's one of the bigger ones, but it is powered by USB C quiet as can be, uh, 115 bucks, four terabytes. No fucking brainer.

Yeah. Adding to cart. Exactly. And if you wanted to buy it, you can either buy, what would that be? Uh, let's say, well, uh, 16 terabytes, or you can buy a new pair of Apple headphones. No, thanks. Yeah. The AirPods max are out and they're as silly as everybody thinks they are. Uh, we're not, I mean, why are we surprised? Cause they did make a deal with beats and beats were the most ridiculous overpriced bullshit headphones ever. So,

Oh, and they're so uncomfortable. Yeah. Can't wear them. Uh, but I mean, if you really want, you know, a 10 chip, uh, computer in each ear, uh, nine total microphones, nine microphones, nine times headphones and a pair of headphones and the digital crown, the digital crown. Um, yeah, I did whatever, whatever. I think the best part about this though, is some of the other articles that came out in this one surprised me. This is at the next web.

The AirPods max case is an abomination and an insult. And at the top it says proof that the only thing Apple gives a fuck about is your bank account. And I'm like, okay, let me, uh, let me read this article thinking it was, you know, for the case. Well, it's not about the case. It's about the upsells that Apple has been doing constantly. Uh, and yes, the, the case for the AirPods max is a bra and it's stupid and it's silly and it covers all the wrong things. You know, let's, uh, let's protect the big

metal pieces that are made of titanium and aluminum and just leave the strap out there to the wind, whatever. But, uh, yeah, it's a, it's a really good article about, it's like, okay, now you don't get power bricks. Now, next time it'll be cables and all this other crap. It's just different ways that they can upsell you on other shit like dongles. Yep. Speaking of upselling, you're, you're not getting the iPhone 12, are you? I'm still using your iPhone eight and it works just fine for me.

There you go. Okay. Uh, this came out with the new, uh, iOS update and I saw this over at wired, how to use pro raw on your iPhone 12 pro love that love that you can actually get raw now out of the iPhone 12 pro and pro max and pro maxi pad. Uh, I've had to use a filmic pro to get raw on the iPhone since it makes a huge difference on your image quality. If you're going to be using them for anything other than Instagram me or whatnot, but if you actually need good quality images out of

your phone, you want to save it raw and then bring it into light room or whatever and fix it up. So this is cool that they finally put this in as a, you know, just a base feature, which you're never going to get. Cause you don't care. Nope. I could just hear you on the back end.

It's like you thought you were talking to somebody who cares about photography. Ah, forget. I forget. Seth's not on the show this time. Just you. No. Uh, last app that I tried was Otter transcriptions at otter.ai. Cause, uh, for some work that I'm doing, I had to have some good transcription stuff going. And did you get good transcription? It's pretty good. Cool. I got to say, I've been using descript that app that, uh,

that overcharges you and, uh, was done by the guy that, uh, groupon, which, you know, I, I, I hate descript so much and they charged me for another year without even giving me a notice that they were going to charge me. So I'm stuck with it and they won't give you a refund cause they're a bunch of fucking assholes. So that was it. And you run out pretty quick on your, your transcription. So I'm looking around, I'm looking at rev revs too expensive. It's like a buck and buck and change a minute. Trent is decent. I've used that in the past and there's a couple other ones out there.

And I just gave Otter a try. And with Otter, I pay 20 bucks a month and you get a hundred hours of transcription. All right. And here's the kicker. It's got a great interface. It's really easy to remap the, the speakers. And if you just go through the beginning of the transcript and get all the speakers kind of lined up, you click a button that says rematch and they're like, okay, come back in 10, 15 minutes and we'll give you a new version of it. After that first pass

and when I go back, it's almost flawless with how it, how it breaks up the, the people talking. It's amazing. And for 20 bucks. So since I did all my research with the other stuff, I'm slapping all the grumpy old geeks shows through there. So, um, we've got, we're going to have transcriptions going up with the other ones and they are labeled at the bottom of the show notes. You have to go to the website for it. If you're on Patreon, you still have to go grab those from the show notes. It is

labeled like ridiculously bad ML transcript. So we're not saying that this is, is, you know, it's not, it's not canon. No, it's not. It's, uh, it's actually kind of amusing if you want to have a beer and read along at home. But you know, for, uh, ML transcripts and the price fuck, it's great. I got to say just in principle, I'm not entirely sure I want these things out there

to be Googled into the big, uh, internet bot and have some mistranslation of something I said attributed to me forever. That's why I labeled it as, as ridiculously bad ML. We'll, uh, we'll keep that label in mind. Well, we do have an audio archive of it right next to it that somebody can actually listen to. So we have people, the proof is in the pudding. People do research. Hey man, then we can sue them for slander. That's fine. I don't think we can sue

them for slander for something published on our own website. We can fix it and post. There's a lot of holes in this theory here, Jason. Just don't tell that asshole lawyer down in San Diego. We'll be fine. Moron of the week.

Our moron of the week this week is Jason for putting fucking transcripts. That could say anything on our site. Okay. Anyways, no, uh, I'm a huge fan of the IFL science site. Uh, if you're not a regular viewer, you should be. And, uh, I won't get too into this. Um, the story is every bit as life affirming and wonderful as you think it would be from the title. White supremacists taking ancestry tests aren't happy

about the results. Yeah. It's a great read. All righty. Did they get a transcript? Probably. I said I was white. Not, not white. Shit. That's going to be transcribed. Wonderful.

Well, the Zodiac killer is in a bunch of hot water. Oh wait, they haven't caught him yet. Anyway, uh, the cipher has been deciphered, which I thought was pretty fun after all of these years. Not very helpful. Not very helpful at all. No, we just found out that he doesn't know how to spell paradise. No, no. Unless he actually has a pair of dice. Maybe start looking at, start looking at

dice stores. Yeah. Joe, man, I got this pair of dice. It's dope, man. Come on over. Play some dice. Yeah. Oh, we're getting goofy. Anyway, I just thought it was fun. Okay. And there's some cool space news. Uh, solar system super highway could speed up space travel. Future deep space missions might take as long as you think. Researchers have discovered that there is a network of routes and routes, depending on what part of the country you're from, that will let probes and other

spacecrafts travel outward at a quicker pace. It's kind of cool. I thought this would be much bigger news. I thought this would be on CBS, but no. Uh, porn. Buried in science news. There's no porn in space. So yeah, they've actually found that there are basically pathways through our solar system that will let us travel faster. Interestingly enough, they all start in Texas.

No, can you go faster than light? Is this? No, no, no, no. It's going to take like something that used to take a hundred years will could take 10 basically. So asteroid. So like they found out asteroids near Jupiter, for example, could reach Neptune's distance in less than 10 years and 100 astronomical units, about three times Neptune's distance from the sun in a hundred years.

Spacecraft would theoretically be faster. So it gets super sciencey. It's worth the read though. Very cool. All righty. Over at Patreon, we've got Steve. Steve. Fucking Steve. Over at PayPal, we've got Ralph, Mark, Michael, Justin, Linda, Sean, Nathaniel, Andrew, Logan, Raj, and Natalie.

Thank you all so much. Oh no. Martin's did not, uh, his stocks did not perform this week. I guess not. Oh man. That's a significant chunk of our revenue that we lost there. I know. God, man, we might be going under. Damn market. And over at GOG.show, Barrett wrote in one of the best Trump deep fake videos ever link is in the show notes. It was amusing. It was pretty good. It was pretty good. And Peter writes in check out the comply memory foam tips for AirPods pro just got mine last week. Definitely feel the difference

and they are more stable. I haven't been taking them out for a run yet, but they stick in the ear much better than the default Apple ones. And that's at comply foam.com. I've noticed on my Apple AirPods pro that the little clicker stops working a lot of the time now. So might have to take those back in, but they don't fall out of my ear right now, which is a good thing. All right. And Neil writes in, saw this news article pop up and immediately thought of Brian. Canada is really going to shit since his arrival. Keep up the good work guys. Love the show. And while once a week is less grumping, it means every episode has

a bitner, which makes the week a bit brighter brighter brighter. And this is a Ontarian leaves package of poop on porch. And it apparently got stolen only 40 minutes later. And I have even our neighbors, when we moved in said, you know, especially around this time of year, a lot of people just wander around and grab packages. So get them right away.

Yep. Definitely. Get those ring doorbells. No, thank you. Justin writes in, love your show. Listen every week. I imagine you've seen things like this before, but thought I'd pass it along just in case. Good holiday fun. I bet they don't have this in Canada. Go freedom. And this is from rage industries. It's basically one of the, it's a rage room where you get to go break a bunch of stuff. Yep. Well, we have those stupid things here in Canada too. So I have a link in the show notes for battle sports, which has their own

rage room. And interestingly enough, a website for a company that didn't bother to brand their website name at all. The URL is webdesign.shareddank.on.ca. And I haven't seen this in a long time. Oh man. What do we call those? It's a tilled. Tilled. Tilled brown mad slash service underscore website, underscore Maddie slash home.html. So some good branding there. Woo doggy.

But yes, we have them. Henry writes in, in regards to the Mandalorian show ever using the word slave one to describe Boba Fett's ship. If you listen to Mandalorian episode 14, using the English sound description audio setting, the narrator calls the ship slave one. It is worth a relisting to episodes in that audio mode. They sound like great audio books. I bet they're using one of those shitty AI translations and they never actually said slave one and somebody's going to get sued. No.

Ralph writes in high grumps. Hope all is well. Here's my nominee for this week's latest sign of the times award, courtesy of the New York times. And it's an article titled bad sex in fiction award is canceled as 2020 was bad enough. Oh yes. A sad day indeed. Anyway, stay healthy, stay grumpy, and be careful out there. Will do. I guess we're sliding into the holidays because not a lot of feedback and no iTunes reviews. Actually, we need to talk about that. We need our break is coming up.

We'll talk about that off the air. If you want your question or comment. I'm like break? Where's a break? I don't know. Can't we take at least a week off here? 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. And if you're so inclined, please head over to gog.show slash review and toss us a five star and snarky review. You didn't come up with something funny, so I'll just read it as is. And if you think about it and you're using overcast, click the little star next to the episode. Jason's notes,

something funny. I'm busy this morning, man. My second show of the day and I'm sure the AI transcript will fix it. Closing shout outs. Sad news in this week's closing shout outs. Tommy Tiny Lister is dead at 62.

You may remember him as the president in the fifth element among many, many, many other movies. I saw the headlines and I thought he was a rapper. Nope. Nope. And Eric Engstrom, one of the pioneers behind DirectX, has died at 55, which is crazy.

Way too young. And speaking to somebody that wasn't too young, though, John Le Carr. He died at 89. He was one of my favorite authors. He wrote Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, and many, many other ones. But the George Smiley series was fantastic. Highly recommend those.

Never read them. Oh, really? Yeah, I should, I guess. I don't see you as a spy guy. I'm not really into those kind of books. That's the thing. Yeah, but you saw the movie Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, right? Yes, yes, that was good. Okay. Yeah, the books are kind of like that. They're slow like that, too. So if you're, if you like that kind of slow burn, but you think a lot and I love the George Smiley books. They're really good.

Cool. Anyway, until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. The 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 and pick up some good old fashioned GOG swag. If you can't do that, please pass the show along to a friend. Word of mouth is the only way the show grows to spread the grump far and wide. Show notes for this episode are at

gog.show slash 488 along with the abysmal AI translations. 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 or whatever that got translated as. Stay rumpy. Great. Contributed to Brian Schulmeister. First result on Google search.

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