490: 2 Acres of Hope

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. Woohoo! Back for 2021. Are you ready? Mm-hmm. See, I was watching a special the other night, an old Cat Williams special called 2012, and he was talking about the Mayans and how, you know, the world was going to end, oh, apocalypse, blah, blah, blah.

And I'm like, God, I hope the Mayans weren't dyslexic. And they just got 2021 and 2012 mixed up. Yes, and the big meme going around is, aren't we all worried about the fact that it's literally 2021, as in W-O-N? Yes, 2020 did win. Yes.

Yes. And it's also the same year as Mad Max, so I need some of those leather pants. Well, to be fair, Los Angeles is starting to look a little beyond Thunderdome-y, isn't it? Oh, you have no idea. You have no idea. You've seen the flash mobs, the COVID-idiot no-mask flash mobs?

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. I've doubled up on my bear spray when I go out now. Yeah. Well, I'm set to come back in three weeks, so. Well, at least the good news there is you can get your damn microphone back. I'm happy about that. Very happy about that. And I don't know about you, Brian, but, you know, there weren't as many as there usually are because of the circumstances, but those year-end wrap-ups.

No, there weren't a lot of them this year, but they're annoying anyways. Well, I mean, actually, I think I may have a different opinion about year-end wrap-ups than you at this point. Go ahead. Tell me yours. Oh, no. They were all just—everybody was trying to find the silver lining, you know, in the giant pile of crap that was 2020.

Well, yeah. And some of them—I think you have a link later in the show that we'll talk about that actually is not a bad one. Yeah. Most of it was horrible. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, Happy New Year. I actually had—now that we're past the new year, I know that there was a certain degree of hope that was floating around because, you know, we had a vaccine and Operation Warp Speed was coming along.

Unfortunately, Warp Speed seems to be more along the lines of the Enterprise-D crashing in Star Trek Generations than actual Warp Speed. It's not going— Warp Speed is more of a Warp Core breach at this point. Going very well. So, you know, we'll all have to wait to be controlled by Bill Gates from the microchip from a base amp or foot pedal controlling our brain for quite some time.

And, you know, we had hopes for the Biden administration. So, us libtards were feeling a little bit hopeful going into the new year. It's now four days, five days in. It's not feeling so hopeful anymore. In fact, I actually heard—well, let's be honest, Trump's not leaving. Unfortunately, my hope that he was going to go to Mar-a-Lago and just sit there didn't happen.

I shit you not, the current actual plan right now is the Biden administration will set up in another building and they are going to turn off the electricity and the water and stop food deliveries to the White House. They are treating him like squatting ravers.

I was going to say, that's the exact same stance that shitbag L.A. mayor Eric Garcetti took for people having COVID parties. That's exactly the same stance. Yeah. So, there you go. Happy New Year. Yeah. Although, I did see an article this morning that Trump has one of his planes booked for a trip to Scotland right before the Biden election.

So, we'll see how that turns out. Oh, well, that's been denied. The Scottish PM basically said that that is not essential travel and he will not be allowed into the country. Damn it. Let him in. Let him in. Let him in. Build a wall around the golf course. Problem solved. Yeah, man.

Oh, he can't go anywhere. That's why he stayed in the White House. He can't go to Mar-a-Lago. Nobody wants him there. He can't go to Scotland. Yeah. I don't know. I hear Haiti's nice this time of year. Papa Trump. Well, there's a big bit of news in the gaming world as far as grumpy old geeks go.

Clash Royale, the clan is on basically kind of hold right now. The guys who make the game called Supercell have kind of ruined it with their new game dynamics and we've all been miserable the past couple months. So, we're taking a break right now.

We may come back if they fix it, but if you go join the GOG.show clan in Clash Royale, it might be a ghost town for a while. Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. I know you guys are really enjoying it. Yeah. I mean, I haven't missed more than like a day or two in the four years I think it's been since we started that thing, which I can't believe it's been four years.

But, yeah, it's gotten to the point where it's not as much fun. So, we're hanging out on Discord, on our Discord channel for Clash. And come in there if you've got good game recommendations because we're looking for the next big one that we can all jump in and play because it has been a ton of fun. I've met a lot of really cool people in there.

So, it would be nice to have another game that we could bounce to that's not this one. In the news. Well, we had some interesting news about Ticketmaster over the break.

And somewhere in Seattle, an aging Eddie Vedder is pulling a bandana off his gnarled head going, We were right! We were right! Yeah, they had to pay a $10 million fine because they hacked a startup rival called Songkick.

I remember Songkick. I actually knew some of the people over there. So, according to court filings and previous reports, Stephen Mead left Ticketmaster rival Songkick in 2012 after signing a confidentiality agreement and joined Ticketmaster parent Live Nation direct competitors.

He then allegedly shared Songkick's login information with Ticketmaster employees, including Ticketmaster's former head of artist services, Zizhan Zadi, who pleaded guilty to wire fraud and conspiring to commit computer intrusions based on his participation in the scheme, according to the Department of Justice.

So, here's the thing. Is it really a hack if they actually gave him the login info? Well, we've discussed that, and yes. Well, we've discussed that about situations with previous clients and all that, which is why, you know, you scream at them to change passwords and all that sort of stuff.

Because it doesn't matter if you have the password legally for a period of time. If you are not legally supposed to have it anymore, you're still breaking the law by using it. Yes, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is a bitch. Yes. So, yeah, awesome.

Ticketmaster and the Department of Justice says they didn't just kind of do it. They brazenly held a division-wide summit at which the stolen passwords were used to access the victim company's computers as if that were an appropriate business tactic. Oh, my God, that's great. And promoted the employees who broke the law.

They've already paid them $110 million back in 2018 over a lawsuit where they basically were accused of abusing its market power to control ticket sales. Ticketmaster is horrible that way and has basically done a Microsoft circa 1980 on all competitors. They've just stopped them left, right, and center.

But this is just a new low. It really is. Good job. And in other big, big news, Google workers have announced the plan to unionize, which you cannot throw a rock and not see a news story about it. And Google laughed. I was going to say, good fucking luck, Mr. Alphabet unionizers.

I think at this point, since Jack Ma has disappeared, they might find out where Jack is if they keep pushing with this, because they'll probably be joining him at some point soon. Yeah, well, I wish him the best of luck. I wish him the best of luck. I want it to happen. We'll see. Good luck.

But we know how these things work. Yes, we do. And I saw this over at the New Republic. And I just – this is one of those ones that I just love because it's – Everything we've been saying for years. Everything we've been saying for years. But the title is great. Instacart is a parasite and a sham. Yep, been saying that the whole time.

It basically goes into how – look, if you've listened to this show more than a day, you know that the gig economy is crap and it's doomed to fail. The only people that have gotten out recently are, of course, DoorDash because they went public and filled their coffers.

Now people are going to be cashing out there. So I would definitely recommend not buying stock in DoorDash. And this just goes through everybody saying, you know, yeah, these people are making insane, ridiculous, obscene amounts of money but have never turned to profit. Oh, wait, wait, wait. They had a quarter once.

They had one quarter once. Because of a pandemic. Yeah, and they just went back to it. And basically they're also profitable on the backs of the restaurants because they're screwing them. They're not just screwing their own gig economy employers. They're screwing the people that they're actually taking the services from. Yeah, screwing the restaurants.

Also screwing the – basically anybody that you can get delivered through one of these services. The grocery stores are like, yeah, we don't think we actually make any money with you guys. So I'm wondering if grocery stores are going to start pulling access to them. And this comes back to what I said before.

You know, there are ways to do this that aren't going to break the bank, still let you make money and still employ people properly. Not as many people, but at that point you're not screwing everybody. So people get paid, just not as many of them.

And still back in the gig economy here. I love this one. Gig companies seek labor deals to avoid workers becoming employees. And this is over in Europe. And they are scrambling right now trying to get deals in place. So all the different EU companies don't go, yeah, you should treat people right because Europe has a tendency to do that type of thing.

Well, we knew this was going to happen as soon as we saw what happened in California. As soon as they broke it and were able to keep everybody as non-employees, we knew that was going to set the precedent and they were going to chase this everywhere else. There was also another precedent in Italy that they're trying to use as a measuring stick for the rest of them.

I guess Spain is the next one that's up right now. And they're really, really trying to make sure that they can get through in Spain so they can keep doing what they do. Well, as you also know, if you've listened to this show, and if you haven't listened to this show before, welcome. This is what we do.

So, since the gig economy is done with the news right now, let's move on to our good friend, AI. Oh, yes. I love this one. Chat roulette is back. Oh. Yes. That's a flashback. Literally. Tell me about it. Yes. The great dickening is what they should call it.

So, since it is back now, and they're trying to make it more consumer-friendly, right? Oh, okay. Yes. They have brought in a company called Hive. And this is an AI company. And they're, you know, it's basically hot dog detection is what they're trying to find here.

Yep. Now, it's, of course, AI-based. They are an AI specialist. Right. Now, this, of course, really got me going here because I read the article. I actually read it. And we always say that AI is people, and it's still fucking people.

Hive's co-founder and CEO, Kevin Guo, says the company's tools benefit from its workforce of more than two, million people in more than 100 countries, annotating images with labels that include male nudity, shirtless mail, and gun in hand. Okay.

Gun in hand. I guess that's a euphemism. He says the distributed workforce inspired the company's name. This training data feeds Hive's model for predicting user behavior. Yes, so AI, still people. Still people. And to connect this to the previous stories, these are not full-time employees.

They are, of course, gig economy workers doing this. Yes, they are. Yes. You get a few shekels per schlong is what you get. Two shekels per cock. That's what I'm – two shekels per cock in every pot. That was the promise of our forefathers.

Yes, it was. Oh, God. Now, in good news for AI, which I still think, you know, this is just good old-fashioned machine learning. This is a two-acre vertical farm run by AI and robots, and it outproduces a 720-acre flat farm.

Cool. This is actually really cool and good news. That is good news. Yeah. So I was checking out the pictures. This place looks really cool. This is very, you know, utopian instead of dystopian, which is not our normal fare. No, because there's so little of it. There's so little of it. There's actually only two acres of hope in the known universe right now, and this is it.

So it's definitely worth checking out, and hopefully they can, you know, basically franchise this thing and get them everywhere because it uses 95% less water, 99% less land, and is actually, you know, it's growing things.

It's actually working. Excellent. That's the great part. That's the great part. They're using drones and robots to improve crop maintenance, which just makes me think it's like those towers in the Matrix. We just got to plug some people in there, and we're all good to go. That's what they're not saying. That's what the AI is.

They've already got people mulching in the background. Somebody let an AI watch the Matrix and has built this thing. Exactly. Proof of concept. Proof of concept. And I saw this over at Fast Company. This is just a fun read if you're into this sort of thing. I won't cover it too much here, but it's called The Turing Test is Obsolete.

It's Time to Build a New Barometer for AI. And it goes into the history of the Turing Test, and, you know, I'm a Turing nerd, so it's well worth the read. And they're just saying that, yeah, it's time. It's time to kind of figure something new out. All right. Well, let's get back to the dystopian aspect of AI.

All right. So, like, as we've been talking about for quite some time, AI does have quite a lot of biases in it, particularly against, oh, I don't know, black people, because it tends to be a lot of whiteies that are running these programs and feeding in white people into the algorithm. And white in, white out, as they say.

Wax on, wax off. Self-driving car. A study has now come out saying self-driving cars are more likely to run you over if you are black. Okay. Just like a soap dispenser, which they've also studied, which did not recognize non-white skin tones very well, so would not dispense soap to Asian people or black people.

Dude, I ran into this at O'Hare. One of the maintenance guys was just bitching and moaning, and he's like, this goddamn thing. He grabbed a paper towel and had to stick a paper towel under it and move it really fast so he could get some soap on his hands so he could go back to work. He's like, this fucking thing. Only white people can wash their hands.

They've taken these soap dispensers and put them in cars like flux capacitors because they're doing the same damn thing. The study has basically found out that systems are 5% less accurate at detecting people with darker skin tones, and that held true even when taking into account time of day and partially obstructing the view of the pedestrians.

So if you have got darker skin, you're going to get mowed down a lot quicker. Oh, God, please don't put these in cop cars. That's all we need. They don't even need that system. They do it anyways. Well, that's what I mean. It's bad enough as it is. Let's just not exacerbate the problem here.

And I saw this one over at Geekology. A Tesla autopilot drives from L.A. to San Francisco with no human interaction. And basically, this guy went from, you know, he started at SpaceX and went up to Kettleman City and got to San Jose.

Now, two things here. Basically, he was on the 5. Now, your kid can drive the 5. It's pretty much a straight line. It's also the 5 during a pandemic, which normally I would say would actually probably help a bit. But L.A. is a fucking wasteland of people not paying attention. So at least once they got out of L.A., it was probably like three other cars on the road.

No, it was actually – I watched a lot of it because I wanted to see how they were dealing with it. And, I mean, I could almost smell Cowshwitz as they were driving by. There were a lot of semis. There were a lot of semis on the road because, you know, still got to move some stuff around. But it's still an easy drive. I mean, it's such an easy drive.

Right. And he went to San Jose, which is like right before things actually get difficult. Yes. You know, it's like, okay, if this guy drove to the Tenderloin and then parked in San Francisco, then I would be impressed. But, you know, basically this is the easiest route you can take.

Now, that said, I would love this on the 5 because I hate that drive. I've done it like 50 times. And, yeah, I would pay extra for that ability for sure. But then again, I'd probably fall asleep and run into a semi like the one guy did.

That would be my problem. But anyway, hey, AI, self-driving cars in the gig economy. We're back, baby.

Media candy. Well, we did have a nice long break, Brian. So we watched a lot of stuff. At least I did. Here's the one thing I didn't watch a lot of. Wonder Woman 1984. I made it 36 minutes before my brain melted and I had to turn it off.

You? Haven't even tried it because I don't have HBO Max here. So it didn't really have the ability to watch it. And basically, reviews seem pretty split. People who like sci-fi movies hated it. And people who have never seen a sci-fi or superhero movie ever liked it.

Okay. It was, yeah, it was not good, I thought. So there you go. I'm not exactly rushing to watch it. Don't, don't. It's two and a half hours, man. Oh my God, again? Yeah, exactly. Which means there's like, you know, I think basically I got to 36 minutes and probably at minute 37, the final fight scene started.

So what's wrong with these directors and editors? Let me tell you something. Disney Plus has a backlog of a lot of the old Marvel stuff. Some of those Spider-Man cartoons that my kid loves and that I enjoy as well. Three minutes. They took three minutes to tell the story and it was wonderful.

Do people really think we need two and a half hours of fucking Wonder Woman? Apparently. Okay. Another one I didn't quite make it through was Greenland. Another end of the world type of kind of deep impact Armageddon.

Here comes the asteroid type of movie. I have not heard of this one. Oh, this has, oh, what's his nuts? I like the guy. Let me pull it up here real quick. Gerard Butler. I like Gerard Butler. And I bet this is, I mean, I was, I was kind of getting into it. And then I went over to watch Wonder Woman because it is a dystopian movie, you know, Greenland.

And I guess Wonder Woman might be too. I just couldn't figure it out. I'm going to save it and come back to it because it was pretty decent up until the point where I turned it off. It is reminiscent of just about every other disaster movie that you've ever seen. Remember that John Cusack one with the earthquake? Yeah, vaguely. In the ships and all that stuff.

It's kind of, kind of on that par. So not a great movie, but something you can have a couple of beers and kick back and watch. It is available now on demand. I did watch Soul on Disney+. Did you get a chance to watch that? No, because during the break we watched enough kids' movies and I want to watch this prior to watching it with a kid to see if it's age appropriate.

I don't think it is age appropriate, at least for your kid. That's what I figured. No, but it's good for you and the wife. Cool. It's a fantastic movie. I loved it. Absolutely loved it. Yeah, everybody seems to think it's great and, you know, it's Pixar, so. Yeah, yeah. I mean, they've been hit or miss for me lately, but I really, really enjoyed it.

I still need to go see Inside Out. Everybody says that was better. I loved that one. Yeah, everybody says that was a great one. What was the other one? There was another one in between that I didn't get into. I don't know. But anyway, Soul, good stuff. And I've been watching Your Honor on Showtime. This is a weird one.

This is a very weird one. It's, I don't know, it's getting mixed reviews as well. It's Bryan Cranston, and he plays a judge, you know, of course, the good guy who has to do bad things. Right. That's his thing now.

Yes, the good guy who has to do bad things with a very stupid kid. It's nine episodes. I think five are out now. I've only watched four. We're saving the other one because we went back and started to watch Succession because that is a much better show than anything we've watched over the pandemic so far.

I did watch The Minimalists. Less is now on Netflix. Now, this is the second movie The Minimalists have made. I think the first time I mentioned that there didn't even need to be one Minimalists movie. That is a good joke, but I'm fine.

Now we have two. And yeah, I don't get it. These guys are, you know, the poster children for minimalism. They started in October 2009 when they started with a blog. Of course, it always starts with a blog. Well, I had a blog called Spartanized, and that was in 2007 because I lived out of my car.

Or I didn't live out of my car, but I lived with enough stuff to basically get everything in my car, and I had a Ford Escort to move whenever I wanted to. And now you have a wall of microphones. Yes, I do. Because minimalism is bullshit. It is. You know what it is? It's a fad diet for your stuff.

The same with the Marie Kondo stuff. Yeah, you're going to get skinny for a little bit, but it's going to come back. It's always going to come back. So it's a, you know, it's a short-term fix for a long-term problem. The amount of stuff you have is not what makes you sad, people. It's not. Okay.

It's the rest of the world beating you down. Pretty much, yeah. I mean, you buy the stuff you need. If you don't like it, throw it away. Give it away. Sell it. Do something with it. Don't hook the ills of the world on the fact that you got drunk and went on Amazon last night. That is, the problem is, why are you getting drunk and going on Amazon every night?

Fix that problem first. It's not the stuff. And I did watch Death to 2020. I watched it last night. What did you think? I thought it was hilarious. They threw a gazillion jokes at the wall. Some of them stuck. Some of them didn't. But enough of them stuck that I was laughing and tears at some points.

It was pretty good. It was pretty good. Because when I first saw it, I'm like, I don't need another recap. And then I'm like, then I saw it was the Black Mirror guy. And I'm like, okay, fuck it. I'm in. And then, you know, within the first 10 seconds. I couldn't believe that was Hugh Grant. I could not believe it.

It was amazing. I pegged him, like, right at the first thing. Because I saw him in something recently. And I'm like, hey, that's Hugh Grant. Holy shit. Oh, that's right. He was in that HBO thing recently that everybody made fun of with Nicole Kidman. But, yeah, he was great in it.

And, you know, I honestly, I was getting ready to turn it off even before I started. And then Sam Jackson comes on. I'm like, well, I'm in. If Sam's going to do it, I'm in. I'm in. And just some new stuff that came out that I'm going to check out this weekend. This is for fans of the show.

The History of Swear Words with, of course, Nicolas Cage, which is a strange casting decision. That's out today on Netflix. And if you're a Neil Gaiman fan, his audio of The Sleeper in the Spindle is available for about three more weeks for the world for free.

So there's a link to that in the show notes if you want to go check that out. Pretty good cast. Pretty good cast. I watched The Midnight Sky on Netflix, the dystopian George Clooney movie. How'd that go? It was okay. I liked all the sequences on the ship.

I thought that was very well done. But he directed it. And I just, actors should never direct themselves. So if you really want to watch about an hour and a half of George Clooney looking like modern, current David Letterman staring into the camera pensively, then this is the movie for you.

Okay. It's a miss. It's just not. There are so many better things out there that do what this does. So. Okay. It was fine. It burned two hours. Okay. What I did really enjoy and I was very surprised by is I watched Palm Springs, an Adam Sandberg comedy that basically is the premise of Groundhog Day.

It's take Groundhog Day, get rid of any of the philosophy, and just make a lot of fart jokes. Okay. And it was thoroughly enjoyable. I loved every second of it. I highly recommend it. It was a great escape. It was very funny. And I normally don't like Adam Sandberg. I think he's too much.

But Adam Sandberg towed down his Sandbergness. So it was very good. All right. I am watching The Stand on CBS. I'm now three, whatever they're up to now, which I think three episodes, could be four. Can't really remember. Thoroughly enjoying it. It's a very well done remake.

All right. We'll talk about The Stand again in a moment. Yeah. And Star Trek Discovery continues on. What have we got? One more episode to get through before I can cancel CBS? Oh, shit. Now I have to wait for The Stand to end. I think it goes to 14. So two more episodes.

All right. Well, yeah. It's there. Okay. I mentioned this, I think, in our Discord chat. I almost threw my remote through the screen with the Die Hard tribute. You caught that homage to Die Hard? That was terrible. Yeah.

This show is just like a fucking participation trophy for inclusion. It's like, oh, God. I think the best line in the last episode, this isn't really that much of a spoiler, but close your ears for 10 seconds. The guy saying that everything was made of shit was fantastic.

That was good. That was very funny. But you know what I do miss? I miss like, you know, I want the Deadwood of Star Trek. Like, you know, what they did with DS9 back and they had Quark's bar and they literally had a hollow brothel. You know, people were going to screw holograms back then.

But they, you know, they toned it down. See, what you need is you need the Mandalorian of Star Trek. I do. I really do. That's what made me think of it. I was just like, I need something that's edgier. That's at least like, you know, let's do this thing. It's a weird thing because the thing about Star Trek Discovery is I think that's what they're shooting for because it goes against so many of these Star Trek, you know, Federation type principles.

Like, they're kind of a-holes. They do the wrong thing all the time. You don't have that, you know, we're good people trying to do good things feeling from it. And I just, they're failing. It's not working for me. What I will say is it looks gorgeous. It's beautifully directed.

It's just the stories are shit. The stories are shit and the main character's acting is shit. Oh, yeah. She's horrible. Oh, God. Yeah. But, I mean, you got Jonathan Franks behind the wheel. Yeah. Doing the directing. Of course, it's going to be good, you know? They need to bring in Robert Rodriguez like they did with the Mandalorian. And, like, you know what?

Yeah, we need Quentin Tarantino behind Star Trek. Well, he was supposed to do a Star Trek. We'll see. Oh, man. That would be great. I doubt it's ever going to happen, though. Speaking of Star Trek and a bit of good news, it has been confirmed that the ashes of James Doohan, who played Scotty, are aboard the ISS, which is pretty cool.

They basically smuggled it up. Richard Garriott, one of the first private citizens to travel on the space station, managed to smuggle some of his ashes into the space station's Columbus model. He took a labinated picture of Doohan and some of his ashes and put it under the floor of the Columbus. He didn't tell anyone about the scheme.

Only he and the family knew until now. Unfortunately, they didn't talk to the scientists, and then the ISS blew up. Because maybe we shouldn't be sneaking shit to the ISS. All I can think of is the scene in Pulp Fiction about the watch.

Where was James Doohan smuggled on the ship at? Yeah. I mean, I'm happy it happened, but it probably would have been a good idea. You know, in this world that we live in now, maybe we shouldn't find out that you can actually smuggle things into space. Exactly. Although I'm sure the Russians have smuggled some vodka up there on occasion.

Yes. I think I read that. Yeah, I think they have. There's been a wonderful thing taking place on Twitter. You have to be of a certain age. Now, to be fair, I never liked this band, but I am enjoying this immensely. As the article at the Washington Post states here, A strange ray of light appeared at the end of one of the unhappiest years in recent memory when Max Collins, frontman of Eve Six, do you remember that band, Jason?

I know the name, but I couldn't tell you the song. The Heart in a Blender song. Nope. Couldn't tell you. Okay, well, you'll have to Google it. I'm sure I've listened to it, but yeah. He returned to the controls of the 1990s rock band's dormant Twitter account and tweeted, I was literally a virgin when I wrote the Heart in a Blender song. And since then, oh boy, has he kept up on Twitter.

Really? It has been amazing. The account can best be summed up by Inverse writer David Grossman, who tweeted, Eve Six Twitter account redeeming 2020 inch by inch. As they point out here, Twitter and aging rock bands have long been strange bedfellows from Smash Mouse endless battle with the Shrek movie franchise, which we have covered here, to Trapped defending statutory rape and then getting their account suspended, which we have also covered here.

Nobody is using it quite like Collins is. It's amazing. It's filled with self-deprecation. We're the youngest band on the heritage circuit. Faux maybe rivalries. The guy from Third Eye Blind paying a million dollars for opposition research on Eve Six and Road Stories, which have been amazing.

He is spilling the beans on 90s alt-rock bands, and it is hilarious. And I hope this guy gets a book deal. All right. I'll check it out.

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Big sir. Big sir. Big sir. Big sir. Yes, sir. Little update on that. Because right when we went to break, we were just getting that kind of going on everything. You went balls to the wall and did it right away. Yep. But I'm an audio professional and found out that you never do that when you're running with audio on a Mac.

But turns out it's not too bad. Everything works. Just fine. Yeah. I got everything working. There was one thing that I was waiting for, and that finally updated. So I updated all my machines to big sir. And yeah, because I was listening to the accidental tech podcast and they made one very good point, which was, okay, the old OS no longer in development.

So the only updates are going to be on big sir going forward. So you might as well switch. So I did. Everything seems to be working. This was not a compared to some of the recent updates, which took almost a year to be able to use with some of my software. This one was pretty painless.

No, they fixed things pretty quick. As we discussed at the time, it was, there was some definite slowdown issues if you leapt in immediately, but everything's running along hummingly now. Yeah. Yeah. And everything is running along even more hummingly on my Apple M1 Air. Not a minimalist.

Not a minimalist. I, I, that's, that's, I've, I've have four computers that I use now. I have an editing station, which is an iMac 5k. I'm recording this on my, my master beast. This is a MacBook pro 16 inch loaded to the gills.

That's my main like workhorse computer in the house, in my desk, on my uplift desk. Not an uplift desk. One of those ones that you can raise and lower with your hands. I got that with a Mac mini loaded to the gills so I can edit in my bedroom.

And then for the roaming around, I have the new Apple M1 Air. And I got to say the M1 Air is pretty fucking snappy. I've heard people say it's better than, than older MacBook pros. Well, some people were saying is better than the brand new 16 inch that I'm running here.

And I have to tell you, it is not by any stretch of the imagination that good. You know, it's a, that's a 15, the M1 is a $1,500 laptop. The MacBook pro is a $4,400 laptop and I don't care what kind of chip that Apple's going to put in it. It's not going to bridge that gap.

And there's only two, uh, Thunderbolt ports on it because that's all they can use with the M1s right now. So I think though, as soon as they come out with the power versions to the next MacBook pros, like the, the big MacBook pros and the IMAX that are going to have the next M level chips, basically are just going to blow the doors off of anything you've ever seen.

Right. There, I mean, it is incredible. The battery lasts for like a week. That's the other thing. It's incredible how, yeah, I mean, it lasts for like 17 hours and you just forget and it just keeps going and going and going. So all in all, that was a really good purchase.

I have to say, I will think about getting one, although I'm still considering going all PC again next time. Yeah. And they're still working. That's the thing with the M1s is that, uh, it's not an Intel chip anymore. So you can't run things like, uh, parallels yet. They are working with the parallels people to make that work, but parallels on my 16 inch MacBook pro runs faster than almost any PC I've ever had.

So that works really well. And I did try brave again on the M1 because, um, you know what? It doesn't have anymore. That horrible CPU issue that we had forever. Okay. So it might have it, but the M1 might just be fast enough that you don't even notice it, but it is a, it's, um, basically it's got native support for M1s.

Now everything else runs through Rosetta. I think Chrome has it, but you know, we just covered all the issues with Chrome a couple of weeks ago. So, um, and I don't know if you've seen this, Brian, cause we've been Vivaldi guys for so long on all of my Vivaldi machines. I am running into video problems every now and again, like some videos will just fritz out and they won't even play.

Right. You just get like, you know, uh, it looks like a Mondo 2000, uh, video. No, I haven't, I haven't seen that. And we've been playing a lot of video on these laptops. Interesting. Yeah. Maybe I've got some kind of video conflict on mine, but, uh, yeah, I get that like at least once or twice a day and you have to reboot.

It's weird. It works fine. Like if I just open up Safari and run it works great, but it's just like particular videos. Like I was watching the trailer for cocoon from the, I am from IMDB this morning, completely freaked out. Open the same URL up in Safari works fine. I don't get it weird. Yeah.

So if anybody's had that issue, let me know if you've come across it and if you have a fix for it. Uh, did you get any good gadgets for Christmas, Brian? No, I did. Good. Uh, cause I got it for myself because that's what I do. When I heard that DJI was, you know, possibly getting banned here in the U S I immediately ran out and bought the DJI pocket two.

I've always wanted one of the pockets because I like them. It's literally just a cam book camera and a gimbal in one, and you can clip it onto your phone. Um, a couple hundred bucks, but 4k really compact and nice. And it's, it's cool. I just wish we weren't under a fucking pandemic so I could go out and use it.

Yeah. I've been using my, yeah, I've been using my Mavic two mini to go out and see the world. Cause that's, that drone is so much fun to have a blast with it. Um, it's just, it's really cool. It's really cool. Uh, so I got to say so far, the DJI pocket two does what it says it does.

It takes video at 4k with a gimbal. Beyond that, I haven't had much use for it. I like products that do what they say on the tin. Yeah. And it was also, you know, like a Christmas deal. So that was kind of the other impetus. It was like 70 bucks off. So I'm like, if I'm going to get one, might as well get it now because a DJI might not be available for a while.

Um, and, uh, also it's cheaper. So whatever. Uh, and I got the breathe app, another one of those apps that, you know, makes you happy, makes you, I just, I look at the homepage and I think bullshit. It is bullshit.

Okay. It's absolute fucking bullshit. Uh, but they're bullshit with a budget. Okay. So they've got ads everywhere. So I checked it out even before I finished signing up and confirming my email address. I got, I got two emails from breathe when I signed up through the app.

First one was upgrade, upgrade, upgrade. The second one I got was please confirm your email address. So they put you on the list before they even, even do it. Now, uh, when I was going through some of the, uh, the goal setting in breathe, I got to the part where it says achieve success.

Yep. Okay. Okay. That's not good. That's not good. I'm pretty sure, uh, an audio program that is just teaching me how to breathe is going to make me achieve success. Then there was press pause for your dogs. Now, even I'm not going there.

And the final, final one that was the nail in the coffin was manifest abundance. Take the secret and shove it up your fucking ass. Breathe. I'm not into that shit. Yeah. That is a, that is a load of crap that a lot of people buy. So I can see their target market. Yes.

And, uh, we have one more app called Rune, a friend of the show, Matt or a killer Q as he is over on discord. Um, he said friends with benefits of the show, Matt, uh, I, I don't, I haven't got any benefits. I don't know what you're talking about. Uh, Rune is basically software.

So you run your local library and you can connect to different devices. Yep. Looks pretty cool. Looks cool. Uh, I was reading up on it on the discord channel as well. And the, the nail in the coffin for me was apparently you cannot stream to your phones only to other equipment, which is like, oh, can we fix that?

Yeah. That seems silly. Yeah. Especially for people with like teenagers that are just sitting in their room and don't have hi-fi equipment or me who doesn't really have hi-fi equipment anymore. I've got my Sonos system, the Sonos ones. And I thought this would be it.

This would be perfect. If I can stream my library to my Sonos, fantastic. Now the, the problem that I had with it was it, there is a Synology model or module that you can get to run on your Synology, which I thought would be perfect. I run it on my NAS. My processor is not good enough. So I'd have to get a new NAS to run this and I'm not going to have a dedicated computer for just running my music to my Sonos.

So whatever. And also, uh, subscription, you got to pay for a fucking subscription for it. For a piece of software. For a piece of software that does not change over time. Yes. Uh, if there's an update, yes, I'll pay for the upgrade. In the future. But I'm not going to pay monthly for something that streams my music.

Sorry guys. There's, there's, there's this whole, uh, program. Actually, there's a handful of them out there that are monthly subscriptions that not only stream your music, but have all the music on them. Exactly. And it works to your phone. Go figure. Uh, they do have a partnership with Tidal, by the way.

Oh, joy. Yes. And they also have a, uh, a device. They have an appliance, a music appliance that you can plug in and it starts at, wait for it, $1,500. So it's a, it's a hard drive and a chip for $1,500. I can buy two Mac minis and run them in parallel.

So I can double rune. If I only, there was still a radio shack for 15 bucks. I could go build one of those myself. No shit. No shit. And since I was bouncing around on Amazon, I got, I got a, you might also like this notification. The dash smart shelf.

Now we've, we've made fun of this in the past, I believe. Yes. It's basically a scale that you put in your, in your closet with your stuff on it. And when it, when the weight gets low enough in whatever you put on top of it, it will remind you to order some more and, or you can have it set to order some more for you.

Well, now I love this because it's 12 bucks, 12 bucks for an auto replenishment scale. Fine. Right. Okay. Uh, so I read the first review, which is a five out of five stars from James Carroll. Great way to make money. This is awesome. I put a stack of $100 bills on this and use them to pay for stuff.

Once my stack gets low, Amazon just sends me another. Don't even have to ask the federal government could really use these. That's hilarious. I was actually just thinking what happens if you put an Amazon dash smart shelf on top of an Amazon dash smart shelf. Does Amazon actually just blink out of existence? We need to try this.

Well, the singularity happens. That's what happens. And, uh, just a quick note, rested peace. Flash. Finally, we've only been talking about how flash is going away since we started this podcast. Steve Jobs was still alive. Yes. But after December 31st, it is officially done.

Finally. Until it comes back again. And speaking of things that are hilariously obsolete, I did like this link. It's just, you know, it's just a time waster from demilk.com. 30 things from the past that look hilariously obsolete. Today, you will see the stereo systems that would work with Rune in there that nobody has anymore.

And my God, that McDonald's ashtray. I have to go look at this. I will definitely check this out when we're done. At the library. I found a couple of fun websites over the break.

The first one is Complexity Condensed, which isn't actually a website. It's a newsletter. I should have remembered my notes before I even started the segment. It's a weekly newsletter that explores complex events, concepts, and ideas, and explains them in exactly 500 words.

Did you get a chance to check these out? I signed up for it, and I must be in between because it's been like five or six days, and I have yet to get one. However, I did go to the website to see what exactly I was signing up for and what I'll be getting. And I read the How Does Bitcoin Work one because Bitcoin's been a bit in the news. And I don't really feel like I got a condensed explanation of how it works.

I mean, I got the very basics of it, but not as much as I wanted. Well, it's only 500 words. Yeah, but still. Check out some of the other ones. I didn't look at the Bitcoin one because I already know how Bitcoin works, so I figured that wasn't going to be that useful. But some of the other ones were pretty good.

And I think he's on break right now coming back from the holidays like everybody else. Ah, there you go. So I am signed up, so I'm looking forward to it. It seems like an interesting thing. It says three- to five-minute read tops, which I can do every morning. That's cool. Learn something new every morning in 500 words. I'm into it. Well, it's once a week. It's not every morning.

Well, get on it, dude. That's why he does have a back catalog. Go check those out. And I found the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. It's a compendium of invented words written by John Koenig. Each original definition aims to fill a hole in the language, to give a name to emotions we all might experience but don't yet have a word for.

So it's Sniglets for emotions. Pretty much. Okay. It's great. I like Vemodlin. The frustration of photographing something amazing when thousands of identical photos already exist. The same sunset, the same waterfall, the same curve of a hip.

The same close-up of an eye, which can turn a unique subject into something hollow and pulpy and cheap, like a mass-produced piece of furniture you happen to have assembled yourself. I love that. And the other one I had was Chirosclerosis. The moment you realize that you're currently happy, consciously trying to savor that feeling, which prompts your intellect to identify it.

Pick it apart and put it in context, where it will slowly dissolve until it's little more than an aftertaste. I live in that. I know. That's why this is one of my favorites. Some people shoot for Keto. I get Cairo. It's good stuff. There's a bunch of them. It's basically an old Tumblr account is what it looks like, but there's a lot of them in there, so it's fun.

It's fun. And since you mentioned The Stand, we've always talked about The Stand, I got The Stand, I got the audiobook for The Stand, and I'm going through it one chapter at a time, which is how you do audiobooks. That's how you do books, Jason.

That, too. That, too. Yes. It's great because they're short chapters. They, like, perfectly fit into my walks, like 20-minute chapters, so I can do, like, a little over a mile and come back and feel like I've made progress, which is good because it is a 48-hour audiobook.

It's a big book. It's also the newer version with the stuff added back in. Ah, right, yes. It's not the OG. I did go back and reread that as well. Okay, so is it worth the extra stuff? Stephen King got me when he told me why he did what he did, so I was like, okay, that sounds good.

I'll listen to it. I mean, you know, we'll see if you like it. It's hard to tell. Like, I love The Stand so much that for me going back and getting all the extra stuff, definitely worth it. Okay. But, you know, I really liked the book, so more was better for me.

All right. Moe, better, moe. I'm liking it so far. Yep. Security? Ha! We're back again in 2021 with our man 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. Happy 2021, Dave! Woo! Beee!

Hello. Who's the grumpy man now? I am very, I'm very grumpy. Is it purely because we have no Star Wars to discuss? No, no. No. We went through years of that. That I can deal with. That, that I'm prepared for.

No, I, all right. So imagine if you will. It's Tuesday. It's the day before a long winter break. Mm-hmm. It's the last day of work before I take a week-long vacation. Wrapping up things, one of the last things I did was I upgraded my edit system to macOS Big Sur.

As part of the process, I decided that I was going to install the system on a brand new SSD drive because the spinning internal drive of my 5K iMac is a little pokey and why not? Okay. So I have an external SSD.

I install the operating system. It all goes well. The last thing I do before I leave for a break is I start running Migration Assistant. Migration Assistant tells me it has about 11 hours worth of work to do. This is no problem.

This is nothing unusual, something all of us Mac users have been through before. Mm-hmm. So winter break comes. I enjoy a lovely Christmas with my family. Decide on the Wednesday during break to just swing by the office, not far from my home, check to see how the computer's doing.

Come in, the computer's off. This is not good. It's not what it should be. Power on the computer. Startup chime happens. The meter comes up with the progress bar, the Apple logo.

Goes for what I would consider a reasonable amount of time. Computer powers off. Not good. Power computer on again. Startup chime. We go through this dance several times. I boot into recovery mode.

Recovery mode works. For some reason, who knows what happened. I'm okay. I can live with this. I've got plenty of time. It's the middle of vacation. Not a big deal. I've been using Macs for a long time. I'm used to this particular brand of pain.

Reinstall the system. Everything goes fine. Go to run. Migration assistant. Look for my original user account. Gone. Hmm. That's interesting.

Where did it go? Just gone. It's no longer on the internal hard drive. Well, this is not a problem. I have a time machine backup. I have a backup that I ran. The last thing I did was make sure before I did migration assistant the first time, I made sure time machine was up to date.

Go look for my time machine backup. Gone. Blank drive. Blank drive. Nothing there. I'm having Windows flashbacks. This is weird. Well, all right. Look to my external RAID, my high-speed RAID, which I use to store media and so forth.

Place where – in the days before SSDs, we would stripe hard drives together to get speed. And this is one of those – blank. Empty. The entire RAID is gone? The entire RAID is gone. Oh, my.

The drive works. It's as if it had just been initialized. Still has the name of the volume is there. There's just no data on it. Oh, shit. So, I went into this thinking that I was really covered in terms of backups.

Not expecting that my time machine would be wiped clean in this process. And so began a great journey of restoring files, using advanced software to undelete things on files, restoring files from the cloud.

The good news is that the day-to-day stuff, the stuff that we need to do, the work that we do at the CyberWire, it's all already cloud-based. It's all – we're on board with that. So, there's nothing that would keep me from doing the work I needed to do. But it's the furry folder.

It's the furry folder. Absolutely. You're one step ahead of it. I understand. All of my – shall I say personal files are gone. Now, the restoration software worked very well.

I got back way more than I expected to. Stuff that shouldn't have actually been there has shown back up. Really, stuff I meant to get rid of for good. I got a nice knocker from the restoration hardware. So, I don't know if this type of software has gotten better over the years because it's been a while since I've had to use it.

What did you use? Which one was this? I used two different ones. Hold on. I'll look real quick here. I used Disk Drill. Okay. That sounds safe.

And Stellar Data Recovery. Okay. All right. Sounds stellar. And they both – they were about $100 each and they both did a remarkable job of getting all kinds of things back. However, while you get your files back, you don't get your file names back.

Oh, no. So, I have a folder with about 10,000 MP3 files. None of them that have names. Now, let me tell you, they laughed at me when I started every one of my interviews with, will you please say your name and spell it?

Who's laughing now? Oh, I think they're still laughing. They're still laughing. We're laughing for sure. So, there's going to be an intern who's going to be cursing because they're the one who's going to have to go through. You're employing the people. Well, Dave, it's very good of you.

It's an unpaid position. So, yeah. My vacation was cut a little short. Hey, Jack, get over here. I've got something for you to do. Having to deal with this. And anyone who's been through this knows the sinking feeling that happens.

And imagine me going from volume to volume, starting off with, well, that's odd. Well, I'll just go to my backup. Not a big deal. Uh-oh. Well, let me just go over. Uh-oh. Yeah. I know that. I'm sorry.

We're not laughing at you. We're laughing with you. I know. I know. We've been there. We've all been there. And I've been going through all the different stages of grief. There is a sort of a cleansing thing that happens when you realize that some things are just gone and you have to let them go. And that's okay.

I've been through this before and I will go through it again. But it doesn't get any more fun when it happens to you. I'm sure people will write in and they'll have all sorts of things of, oh, I told you so's and why didn't you's. Oh, nobody ever writes in. It's okay.

Nobody cares. Sure. Shame on me for not having unplugged my time machine before I ran the upgrade. Whatever. I mean, yes. Well, that actually is a really tough thing to do. Had it all worked fine?

Salt in the wound. It all works great. It all works great right up until the moment when it doesn't. So, yes, I've been kicking myself for all these things. But anyway, so the healing process is underway. So if I sound a little down in the dumps, if I don't have that usual pep in my step or lift in my voice, that is why it's been.

So the file Lust for Life has been deleted. So do things that have happened to me in these situations happen to you as well as in like you're just about to fall asleep, then all of a sudden you remember something specific that you know is probably lost? Yes.

Yeah. Oh, yes. And yes, you go through that thing. You're like, well, it doesn't seem like anything too bad or irreplaceable has been. Oh, crap. And of course, it's the middle of the night. That's when you reach for that bottle of feels and you tip it up to the end.

So I'm well along the road of getting things back and reinstalling things and getting things up and running. But it'll probably be several months before I am fully done with discovering things that I just want to reach for that are no longer there.

Yeah. Well, you will find out things you can now live without. You know, minimalism, as we discussed a little earlier in the episode. Yes, we discussed that. We also discussed, Dave, you missed this part where all of our move to Big Sur was actually quite flawless and everything seemed to work.

Yeah, fuck you guys. Fuck you guys. Fuck both of you. Fuck both of you. Fuck you, Jason. Fuck you, Brian. Fuck you both. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. I don't like to curse, you know. I generally don't. It's something I generally don't want to do. Let me just say, without reservation, fuck you guys.

Both of you. Fuck you guys. That's my new ringtone. I think we have a new MP3 to send you, but don't worry, we won't name it. I tell you, I feel much better now, actually. Boy, that really lifted my spirits. I feel like I've been wanting to get that out for a while.

I'm glad we could be here for you, Dave. All right. So, how was your break? Because as you were going through this, I felt so bad, I actually found a Star Wars story for you to lift your spirits. Star Wars, the High Republic trailer reveals Lucasfilm's new interconnected mega story.

Yeah. I did see that. And I guess I'm on the fence. I can't say I've ever really been into the books or the comic books. Yeah. That's my problem, too. If it's not TV or a movie, it's kind of under my radar. Okay, well, fine. Fuck you guys.

I tried to help. But you know what, Jason? I will say, the thing you put in here, you put in this link to Radio Shack stuff. That did lift my spirits. Yeah, this came across my Twitter, and it's a link to some apparel and collectibles, so you can get an old Radio Shack t-shirt.

Yeah. And have you purchased yet? I have not yet. Today I – I don't know if you guys know. I have a love for the Muppets. And so today I ordered a Kermit the Forg t-shirt, which is a deep cut for an old segment that was on Sesame Street.

I tell you, if you want to laugh, go look it up, Kermit freaking out. Go just do search for Kermit the Forg on YouTube, and it's very, very funny. Anyway, no, but this – I mean there were a couple of t-shirts that I liked on here. I liked the one with the color computer logo.

I liked the one with the old Model 1. It made me think that I wish that I had not lost or gotten rid of my old Radio Shack name tag from when I worked there. I still have my Kinko's name tag. I still somewhere have my Disneyland name tag in a box somewhere.

My wife has all of her Disney name tags, but she also has lots of name tags with names that aren't hers from when she went to Disney. Yes, well, way back in the day before – I think they make you check these things in and out with scanners now, and they've got trackers on them because they are high-quality trading objects on the Ebays and things of that nature for people that have never worked there.

But back in the day when I worked there, and probably your wife as well, there used to just be a big bucket. It was like the lost and found of name tags. And I would always search through it to find really funny names, and I'm sure I have a couple of other people's names as well. Yeah, I know we have an Aretha. Nice.

But she said you could just order them. Like it was no – just went in and they'd send you whatever you wanted. So, yeah, different time. It's funny. I still have pretty much most of my old name tags from all the companies I worked at, Paramount. And the funny one I still have is Warner Brothers Records.

And that was one that I tried a year and a half after I got fired and still let me in the parking lot. Yeah. Also, different time. They weren't so good with the security back then, were they? No, this is about 10 years ago. So actually, it was longer than that.

Longer than that now. Yes, the chalet is gone, but my pass probably still works. Well, speaking of things not being as secure as they once were, we have discovered that the SolarWinds hack has gotten a bit deeper, specifically into Microsoft systems, than has been previously disclosed.

They now have confirmed that they have found compromised code in their system and says the hackers were able to gain access to source code. They say that none of it was modified and its investigations will continue. And, you know, a lot of googly gawk about you don't need to worry about anything, even though we're kind of telling you that maybe you do need to worry a little bit about some stuff, maybe.

We don't really know here. So I have two jokes here, and I wasn't sure which one to go with. They accessed the source code and 10 billion lines later figured out they'd only seen the code so far for Clippy. Or now they know how to access your brain once you get the COVID vaccine. Ah, very nice.

Very nice. Yeah, I will add that Microsoft's attitude towards source code is that they assume that the code is available, so they don't rely on the source code to be a security element. Yes, and if you use Microsoft products, you know they don't rely on the source code for much.

But evidently a lot of the source code for older versions of Windows are just out there. So I think this is kind of – the actual getting of the source code is not a big deal. Of course, the breach itself, the fact that they got in to get the source code, that's the big deal.

But the fact that they got the source code, eh, probably doesn't really mean much. Yeah. And the other security story that I had over the break was just something we kind of already knew, which is our cars track an awful lot of information. And they're recording all kinds of data and much more than you would probably expect.

The thing that I did not know about this story, and I don't know why I was surprised I shouldn't be, is the fact that there is basically a company that exists purely to mine that data and extract it for the police. And anybody else that basically wants to buy it. Anybody with a credit card.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I noticed when I got my current car, when I got – I think we may have talked about this, that when I hook up my phone with Bluetooth, the first thing it does is suck in all of my contacts. Yeah.

Yep. Which is justified in that it wants to show me pretty pictures of everybody when they call me. But I turned that off right but quick. Too late. It's already gone. Well, and the thing that I don't remember if we talked about it in security with you, Dave, or if this is just something that Jason and I talked about quite a while ago is when you sell the cars now, half the time the dealers don't really know how to wipe the data and clean it out for the next person.

Or if you sell it, you know, if you use the penny trader or whatever and sell it personally, people aren't wiping their cars first. And that process is not as intuitive as you'd think they should be making it considering, you know, most people don't keep their car for the life of the car anymore. Right.

Right. Yeah. And it's funny. You know, I didn't even think about that. And I work at this show. And when I traded in my last car to get my new one, I didn't do anything. I just thought, here are the keys. See ya. Somebody's got your full contact list. Yeah. I know my contact list is in there.

So, yeah. Sorry. Any, you know, C-level celebrities that might get a call. But, I mean, it gets more involved when you think about, like we talked about specifically, like I bought the BMW and I can open the car with my app. And you actually have to untether them.

Now, if I just sell my car and I see it on the street, my app will still unlock the car. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I remember, I think we did talk about it here. I talked to a guy who was a security researcher who had a, he sold a Ford Mustang. And long after he sold the car, he could still bring up its location on GPS.

Yeah. I remember that story. Yeah. And he could remotely start the car from his phone. Yeah. And this was a couple years ago, but he couldn't get Ford to really do anything about it. Yeah. Well, fortunately for him, the app sucks so much right now, it connects about 10% of the time. So I don't think he's, I know with mine, it's just like, you have to go to your car and repair physically because, you know, you updated the app so it doesn't work anymore.

Please go get some new security keys. I'm like, I just want my butt to be warm when I go to the grocery store in the morning. Please, can I just start it from the house? So, I mean, it's an interesting thing to think about. Do we consider that the keys to the car are your form of authentication?

That appears to be the keys. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it always has been so, but I think as technology has moved on, they need to have some other ideas here. Right. And it doesn't seem like this information is being encrypted while it's being stored on the car or anything like that.

Because why would you do that? Yes, because, you know, if you have the phone that opens the car and you can get to all that information and it's unencrypted and, oh, look, they also happen to have a, oh, here's the home address. Let me drive by. Oh, look, they have a ring door lock.

Hmm. Interesting. Right, right, right. Well, at least the good thing about the Fords is even if I start the car with the phone and I go out to the car and I get in and then you have to press like the brake and the power button to get it to fully start so you can drive it, if you don't have your fob with you, you cannot drive the car.

So it will not allow you to start it and it will turn off after 15 minutes. So you can't actually steal it. I know that's not the case with the Tesla because I remember hearing a story about a guy that basically left his fob on the wheel of the Tesla and somebody else started the car with the phone app and then they basically drove off and, you know, destroyed the fob and the car worked just fine.

Interesting. That's A-level laziness to just leave your keys on the wheel of the car. I think I also covered this before long, long ago when I used to take the urban escape and evasion classes.

I learned that most rental car companies will take one of the key fobs, take off the cowling for the steering column and basically put the fob in the steering column and put it back on. So there's always a fob in the car. Right.

Yeah. Smart. Yeah. Real smart. Yeah. That was just one of our tips on how to steal a car in my urban escape and evasion class. Also note that that class exists. Yes. Good to know. Good to know. And if anyone I know would have taken it.

It would be Jason. Yeah. It's a fantastic class. Yeah. It was a fantastic class. I learned how to pick locks. I learned how to get out of zip ties and steal cars. Yeah. Practical stuff. You have very interesting weekends compared to me. Yep.

Was there anything there on data recovery? No. Sadly. No. Well, yeah. Unplug the time machine before you start the update. We just thought everybody knew that one. We just thought everybody knew that one. No. But if there is an emergency and you need medicine and you can't get to a pharmacy and you need to break in somewhere and get antibiotics, break into a vets because the stuff they give to animals is the same they give to humans.

So if you need antibiotics in a pinch, go rob a vets. Okay. Yeah. Also, that's where all the gangsters go to get their bullets removed. So that tracks. Well, I know that from watching Breaking Bad. Yes. But I saw a story today where they were wondering if maybe vets could help with the applying of the vaccines because vets know how to give living animals shots.

So if they're – it was just an interesting possibility that they could ask vets to help out. Can't be any worse than half the phlebotomists I've had this last year. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. That's an interesting idea. All right. Well, the final thing I wanted to share this week was an interesting story that made me go, hmm.

And this is actually over from John Gruber's Daring Fireball. He was commenting on a story on The Atlantic that was called Facebook is a Doomsday Machine. Yes. He must listen to our show. Hi, John.

Right. We're all in agreement there. Yes. But the interesting thing that he presented in a way that I don't think I'd ever really crystallized in my mind, and I'm going to quote Gruber here. He says, this is the problem we collectively have not grasped. How do we regulate, via the law and or social norms, a form of mass media with amorphous content?

When you make a movie or write a book or publish a magazine, the speech that matters is the content of the movie, book, or magazine. When you post something to Facebook, the speech that matters most isn't the content of the post, but the algorithm that determines who sees it and how. Three billion users effectively means there are three billion different Facebooks.

That's the mega scale, which LaFrance equates to the mega deaths of strange lovey and doomsday device. I think there's something to this, and I hadn't really thought about it this way that, you know, you look at a day's New York Times and there it is.

That's the New York Times for this day, but there is no way to say in that same way, here's Facebook for this day and date or this time. And I think that's an interesting, I hadn't really thought about it in this particular way, this notion of amorphous content.

I found interesting and I wanted to see what you guys thought about it. It is interesting. I mean, one of the things that could help fix it, which is, I mean, we're never going to get it because it's not built into their business models, is an actual recent timeline. A timeline that is specific and rooted in real time in that we will see updates as they were posted.

And that is what we've all wanted to have back again because it was actually useful and you could actually see things in context in terms of at least your friends. Now, how you solve the, you know, you subscribe to this and you follow this and you are friends with these people, but not these people. I don't necessarily see that so much as a bad thing until, you know, you get stuck in these bubbles, but the algorithms help greatly with the bubbles.

I think if we went back to a straightforward timeline of display of updates, that would help greatly. What do you think, Jason? Yes. Ryan got it in one. Can we please, can somebody please send me an MP3 of Jason agreeing with me so readily and please don't name the files.

So I just have to search. My name is Jason DeFilippo. That's J-A-S-O-N. Yeah. I do think that that would help tremendously. I think that's when social media started to take on, when we started to see the real negative effects of social media was when we could no longer rely upon our timeline.

Uh, when we, when we realized we weren't even seeing updates from some friends at all. Uh, if we just had a real timeline and you can, I don't understand how that ruins the business model. You can still place advertising in there. I really don't get why they do what they do other than they want to manipulate us.

Engagement. It's all about enhancing engagement and keeping you on the site longer. But I would be far more engaged with Facebook if I were getting my friends updates in real time in order. I really would be, but here's the thing. You can get them in real time. You just have to, and this adds to it.

You have to scroll down to most recent and click it every time. That still does not give you all your friends, Jason. That doesn't. It really doesn't. It's not a true recent timeline. I a hundred percent promise you. Okay. I don't, I don't look at it enough to get the full scope. I do.

It does not solve the problem. What it does a really, what it does a really good job of doing is giving you all the pages you subscribe to that aren't real people in real time. Oh yeah. But it does not give you all your friends updates. It still doesn't. Well, I'm glad that I've brought Brian to my level of grumpiness this week.

Yeah. You just, you actually did just make me really angry again, especially now that like A, we're stuck in COVID B, I'm in a different city for most of my friends. I'm relying on social media to stay in touch with my friends and see what's going on. God damn it. Yeah. Uh, well.

Minimalism. I'm going to trash my machine. Right. Yeah. Just run migration assistant. Good stuff. Yeah, that'll do it. I'm going to leave my, my, uh, my backups plugged in. I'm sure it'll be fine. I'm sure it'll be fine. All right, guys. Well, uh, good catching up.

Happy new year. Happy new year. And I'll talk to you guys next time. All right. So as we discussed at the top of the show, year end lists, uh, normally aren't all that great anyways, but, uh, after the year of 2020, nobody really wanted to revisit it with a list of anything.

Uh, but there was one good one and this was written by, uh, by, whoa. You just cut something. Oh, sorry. I just killed more in the week. I was like trying to read the guy's name and it just went away. I had a feeling that might happen, but we'll leave it in for color. Sorry. Okay. There we go. Whoever the fuck I was.

Martin Harback. Martin Harback wrote this list over sadly on LinkedIn. So I have the link to it directly if you want it. Uh, there's a, there's a writeup on it over at, uh, Lad Bible, which, uh, the title is 2020 had some impressive technological and scientific achievements as it did.

So here's the bullet point. Full post from Martin 2020 was, uh, basically defined by COVID, but Africa was declared free of polio AI solve protein folding. One of biology's greatest challenges, machine learning. SpaceX launched the first ever commercial space flight.

Solar power saw a major breakthrough by harvesting invisible light. Tesla became the world's most valuable car maker, a clear indicator of the huge momentum behind electric vehicles. Also good for my portfolio. Scientists ran an artificial sun at a hundred million degrees for 20 seconds, an important step towards sustainable fusion power.

And if you have not seen the video for that, oh my God, I have not. And why are they doing that? Well, yes, we could do, I'm hoping we never, well, we, we die. So we wouldn't do a moron of the week segment on this, but, uh, the internet survived the biggest capacity stress test in history.

Zoom became the most downloaded app of the year and video calling kept us close while we were forced to be a part. Not sure that's a good plus there. Uh, researchers found a way to turn CO2 into jet fuel. A new enzyme was created with the potential to break down plastic bottles in hours. Amazing researchers, scientists, and healthcare professionals around the world helped develop trial and deploy multiple COVID vaccines in less than 12 months.

Plus get Bill Gates to control your brains. Just a few of the many incredible achievements in science and technology this year. So let's not forget them to celebrate as we end the year. So that is a great list. That is a great list. And since your kid is turning into a space nut, I found this over at Ars Technica.

There's an insane amount of cool space things happening in 2021. And there's a very long list here and they all seem pretty good. Uh, the James Webb Space Telescope is the one issue that, uh, they're, they're, they think is going to happen this year, but you know, it hasn't yet.

It's been kind of plagued, but we shall see. Yeah. You've got the Mars fleet. It's been plagued like all of us. That's true. That's true. Uh, but there's a lot going on this year for sure. So a lot going on in space and the longer we can keep a star link from Elon Musk off of it, the better.

Yeah. Yeah. But, uh, the one, uh, one thing at the very end is the Russians are sending up a test satellite platform that might be able to clean up some of the space junk because since we are launching so many things into space, it's getting crowded up there. Yeah. This stuff doesn't come down often.

Often. Uh, space lab that kind of came down, but it's sky lab, sky lab. Sorry. Oh yeah. Do not to be confused with Skynet. Feedback loop. To start off with, I want to thank everyone who donated, whether it's through Patreon, PayPal, or sending links to your friends.

The generosity you guys have shown over the break has been incredible, incredible. Some, some of these donations are just like mind boggling. So thank you very much. And over at Patreon, we've got Marcus, Ms. BGK18, David, and Ed. Thank you.

And at PayPal, uh, we got quite a bunch over the break. Thomas, Helen, Scott, Rachel, Adam, Michael, Andrew, Doug, Nicola, John, Charlie, Matt, Simon, Shaleen, Jonathan, Nikolai, Michael, David, Judge, Matthew, and John. Thank you so much. I think we have all the apostles in there now. The book of Gog.

The book of Gog. Okay. So, uh, we are going to officially call feedback bankruptcy on this one because we've been getting so much stuff in and most of it's out of date now. So thanks for all of the notes. Uh, I'm going to put all of the links in the show notes though.

So if you want to come check out what everybody's been sending, uh, I will leave that in for everybody to, uh, go, uh, check out yourself. Excellent. Perfect. Yep. So, uh, we're back to regular shows. So 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. And thank you again for listening. Here's a whole nother year coming. Closing shout outs. Sadly, we lost Mary Ann from Gilligan's Island, Don Wells.

She died at age 82. I was always a Mary Ann guy. Uh, me too. Me too. I think he comes with the goth thing, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't know. Sultry redheads. It is what it is. You know, it's, it's a, it's a good, you know, chest of your sexuality, I suppose.

I guess so. I guess so. You know, as you know, as I was watching all the things come in, everybody was going team ginger or team Mary Ann. I'm guessing chicks don't sit around and go, God, I was so team professor. I was so team Gilligan. Oh man, sir, team howl, you know, it's like, we're just a bunch of fucking pigs is what it comes down to.

Pretty much. Yeah. But anybody that was a, that was team, uh, howl was a, you know, sugar daddy for sure. Just saying, uh, we also had another major celebrity come down with COVID-19. Now, uh, we talked a lot about the show. We used to love a show.

So Jeremy Clarkson, uh, has gotten it as well. What I thought was interesting was what he said about it at the end, because it's true, no matter how much we try to tell ourselves. Otherwise he said, we kept being told, we know a great deal about COVID, but what I've learned over the past 10 days is we don't, we don't know how long we're infectious for.

We don't know how to tackle it. We don't know what it does to us. We don't know how long the antibodies last. We don't know how easy it is to catch it twice. And we certainly don't know if any of the vaccines will work long-term. I don't even know if I'm better now. Yes. But you know what we do know?

Dr. Drew can get it. I, I, I, this situation is exactly what the, the German term schadenfreude was invented for. I know. Motherfucker.

Oh God. My friend Caleb was like, anybody that wants to talk shit about Dr. Drew can meet me under the overpass at the 101 and the 405. And I'm like, I have discussed this with many traffic experts and they, they agree that the, uh, the 101 and 405 does not have an underpass to meet under. Oh yes.

And congrats to Thomas Benjamin Wilde Esquire. We talked about his song. I've no more fucks to give. We've actually used it on the show a couple of times. Um, and hopefully we had a little something to do with this. He came in at number one on Dr. Demento's list of songs for 2020. My big takeaway from this is Dr.

Demento's still doing it. Yes, sir. Ree. God damn. I got to go listen to that. I miss Dr. Demento. I did. Apparently I'm missing it for no reason. Yeah. I miss being the age that Dr. Demento was the best thing in the world. Let me tell you. Getting up at, at, at, uh, one in the morning in Chicago with a tape recorder held up next to the radio to record the show that I could listen to the next day and hoping that they always closed it with some Tom Lehrer.

That was, that was my childhood. Oh, I love Tom Lehrer. I know still with us, knock on wood and a young weird Al sending in his tapes. Yep. Yep. Uh, the old days, the old days. And, uh, I did finish actually switching us over to the new store. So if you go to gog.show slash shop or gog.show slash, uh, I, I made a couple of them because I couldn't even remember which one it was.

Gog.show slash shop works for me. Yes. And, and slash store also works. That was, that was it. So, uh, uh, we had a little kerfuffle with Teespring again. So, uh, some stuff will be coming back up because they're AI like to think that we are in copyright infringement and they have to send the same thing.

Yeah. Apparently our show title and in a public domain emoji is copyright. So we got, yeah, we got a lot of pain in the ass, but hopefully we'll get this all worked out and we'll get some new designs up. But there's some stuff up there that Brian designed, uh, the masks will be back up.

Team Brian is going to be a little late because that's the one that we got caught on and have to resubmit. So, uh, but, uh, now that it's set up, we will start putting up more stuff and more designs because it's, uh, yeah, the, the transition is complete. So 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 copywritten GOG swag.

And if you can't do that, then please pass the show along to a friend. Word of mouth is the only way the show grows. So spread the grump far and wide. We really need to change that one because it creeps me out every time I read it. Show notes for the episode are at gog.show slash 490. 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 spread. Those like heads say spread podcasts, not viruses. Yeah. Fuck you guys. Fuck you guys. Fuck both of you. Fuck both of you. Fuck you, Jason. Fuck you, Brian. Fuck you both.

Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. I don't like to curse. You know, I generally don't. It's something I generally don't want to do. Let me just say without reservation. Fuck you guys. Fuck you guys. Fuck you guys. At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out.

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