492: Silovaya Ustanovka

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, this is episode 492. I went back and did the math. We have done 307 episodes since Trump won the election. Yes, we have. We're mostly a Trump show. I don't know if that would, if you, you have to put a qualifier on that.

Yeah, I suppose we do. Well, with any luck, this is the final show recorded under a Trump administration, but we still got 25 hours to go, so we'll see. Yeah, we're getting there. We're getting there. Soon. Soon. Fingers crossed.

Hopefully we can have the next show title called Armageddon Averted. Yes, that would be nice. Yes, and we will be taking next episode off, so you can come repatriate your sorry ass back to the United States for just a little while, I guess. Yeah, well, there's time enough to pack up and get everything together, so thank you for that.

I'm impressed that you've decided to take it off because normally you would be scrambling to find a guest host because no vacations for Jason. Yeah, Jason says, fuck it. Jason needs a break. Yeah, I would do the show, but it's too rough to move back across countries and do a show the next day, so a week off.

Yeah, well, after 307 episodes, I would like a breather to kind of just like, and get back to what we were good at, if we were ever good at anything, that is, I guess. But yeah, since we don't have an ad next week and you're going to be traveling, and I have to say that I never really heard of Blue Monday until yesterday, and I have to say it's a thing.

I'm aware of the song by New Order. Blue Monday is apparently the most depressing day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. So January 18th, because it's like right in the middle between the last holidays, the next holidays, the days are darker, it's colder, it's crappier.

Trump's still here. And I've been talking to a bunch of my friends, and we've all been like just super tired, lethargic, and just like can't move. And then I'm like, oh, those are all the signs of depression. And yeah, so hopefully everybody will be on the upswing now. So when we come back, everybody will be chipper and cheery.

I was like, how's this Monday any different from any other Monday since March? Yeah, well, we have things to look forward to, I guess. I guess. And it's funny, one of the things we have to look forward to is the transfer of the nuclear football. And I was reading an article this morning in CNN, and they kept talking about Biden's biscuit.

And I just thought that was fun to say, so I wanted to bring it up. Good old Biden's biscuit. I like that. And speaking of things to look forward to, my mom actually got her first vaccination shot yesterday. Bastard. I know. It's pretty cool. I mean, here's the deal, though.

They open it up to 65 and older in Orange County. They've got the Disneyland mass vaccination site, right? And you have to register and all that sort of stuff. And I hear that they just opened it up in LA as well to 65 and older. So either we're burning through every single vaccine we've got left or there is some sort of stockpile somewhere.

But we'll not get into that. But here's the thing. You're 65 and older, right? My mom is a little bit older than 65. She's in her early 70s. The way that you register is either via an app or a website. Okay. My mom does not know how to download apps.

I venture a lot of 65 years and older do not know how to do that. Okay. Sure. You can register on the website. My mom is totally capable of that given the amount of shit she orders from Amazon. She has learned how to register to a website. Once you register the website, demand is so high.

Demand is so high that basically it's all a bit janky. You have to keep revisiting the website. You have to keep reloading the website. We did it for my mom two nights in a row, basically incessantly, to finally be able to get her one of the very few spots. There is no way that most people of that age range are capable of doing this.

So I am assuming everybody that is showing up to this thing has kids that are taking care of it for them. You got to make it a bit easier for these older people. That's all I'm saying. It's a government website. What do you think the odds of that are? I know. I know. Oh, well. Not going to be there.

But she got it. And I'm very pleased about that. So she is. And it was the Moderna one. So she has got a fairly high level of protection already before the second shot. So good. Cool. Yay. Now I want to get mine. I do, too. I do, too. I mean, just come on, guys.

Hurry it up. Hurry it up. And I saw this and I just – now, I put this in here and I didn't even really have to read it because I've read so many of these damn articles. It's called The Bitcoin Dream is Dead by James Zerwischke. Okay. And he says, Bitcoin's recent 25% plunge illustrates why it will never be a true currency.

And here's what I love about this. Bitcoin has become our new eggs, Brian. Bitcoin is great. Bitcoin is terrible. Bitcoin is great. Bitcoin is terrible. So do what you're going to do. I'm fully on the side of Bitcoin is terrible. It will never be a true currency because it will never be backed by any government or entity whatsoever, which means it will always be prone to chicanery and gaming the markets and all of that sort of stuff, which we've seen going on.

And the quick rise and plunge was – I mean, you can see it on social media. When the rise was happening, everybody was doing the whole, I don't know about this stuff, but I've got mine. And if you use my referral link here, you'll get 0.001% of 1% of a Bitcoin.

And it got pushed up really high. And then, of course, it plunged a little bit when people pulled their money out because they made some. Now, I agree with all of that. I think it's bullshit. Having said that, I also threw another $200 in and I'm up like 15%.

Hypocrite. So I'm not crazy, but shit, man. I haven't been to Vegas since my kid was born. I'd always earmark a couple hundred of bucks for gambling cash. So why not? Still, that money probably should have gone into Apple or Tesla and I'd see a longer, better return.

Yeah. But hey, this is fun, I guess. You know, why not? Why not? That's what I figured. And, you know, I'm up. So I should probably pull out. Yeah. I mean, it was never designed as an investment vehicle. That's the big thing. And also the fact that so many Bitcoin have been lost to time.

Yes. Yes. There's the story about the guy that was basically says he has like over $400 million in Bitcoin on a USB stick that he threw in the trash. And he's willing to share $55 million or something like that of that with his town if the town bands together and goes through the dump to find his USB stick.

And, of course, there's this story, which is a bit of follow-up. We talked about Mt. Gox when that whole thing happened. They went bankrupt in 2014. It was the world's largest Bitcoin exchange at the time, holding 850,000 Bitcoins from thousands of users. And, again, this is why it's never going to be a true currency.

They went out of business and nobody got their Bitcoin. None of them. Yep. No one. I remember. Yep. Creditors may finally be able to get a portion of those Bitcoins back. One of Mt. Gox's largest creditors, CoinLabs, said in agreement with itself, Mt. Gox's bankruptcy trustee and another group may allow creditors to recover as much as 90% of the remaining Bitcoins, according to Bloomberg.

How many is that? I want them all back. However, on the plus side here, Bitcoin was only trading at $489 when they went bankrupt, and it's currently trading at around $37,000, so about 75 times higher. So I would take my 90% and be happy about it.

Yeah, no doubt. Seriously. Yeah. Oh, man, yeah. You don't want to get bit bupkis, but you want to get something. Yep. And I remember when they were talking about the whole bankruptcy thing, and it's like, oh, man, even if he just kind of paid off what was owed on it and kept the Bitcoin, he'd be so far up.

Yeah. So far up. Instead, he's in jail. Good. In the news. Guess who's back? Parler is back. Oh, God.

Not really. The articles that are being floated around make it sound as if it's back. They're like, Parler's website is back, but the service is still unavailable. Parler's website is not back. It's a fucking one-pager saying, we're going to try to get this back. It's a coming soon page.

It's a coming soon page. That's it. It is not back online in limited form. It has a message from the CEO saying, hello, world. Is this thing on? Being cute. We will resolve any challenges before us and plan to welcome all of you back soon. And that's it. Does it have one of the old, like, 1990s GIFs of the construction worker guy pickaxing his way through the website?

Oh, I wish it did. It would be so amazing. Now, that would have been clever, but no. Yeah. No. So, in an interview over the weekend, he told Fox News he was confident the platform would be back up by the end of the month, which is doubtful because just a couple days ago, he told Reuters it could be never because it is complicated.

And per CNN, Parler's domain is currently registered with Epic with a K, a DNS provider known for offering a safe haven to websites like 8chan and the Daily Stormer in the past. A tweet from Dave Temkin, who is Netflix's vice president of Network and Systems, so he knows a thing or two about this, suggests Russia's DDoS guard is hosting the website.

And I would like to make a point of fact here. He doesn't just suggest it. He actually shows his work. They are hosting his website. So, good on that. I, for one, hope Parler gets back up and running and Russia gets all of the right-wing crazies information. Now, I can't – did we talk about this on last week's episode about the Pirate Bay and Parler?

I don't recall. Okay. I don't listen to the episodes. Okay. I mean, well, it was one of those things where we were speaking, but I always forget afterwards. And I could have just had this conversation with myself that we were going to have this conversation on the show because I am probably insane. Peter Sund from the Pirate Bay, he posted an article saying, hey, Parler, you guys are fucking idiots because we were a bunch of kids and nobody to this date has been able to take down the Pirate Bay.

We still – it's still online. And we were a bunch of dumbass kids with no funding and we figured it out. Why can't you? Right. I got to find that article and put it in the show notes. It was just funny. It's just like, okay, this is how people have come to rely on cloud services and other people's hosting.

It's like, no, no. If you're smart enough, you can hit your own boxes, put them in a cave somewhere, and be really tricky with your DNS and proxying and stay online no matter what. I mean, granted, you can't get on the app stores, but you can still keep your website up. Therein lies the problem because even if they do manage to get a Russian cloud service up and running and plug everything into it and get that app back out there, there's nowhere for that app to go.

Yeah, there is. The browser. Yeah, they can do a web-based, yeah. Because, I mean, what is it? It's a front end to a fucking database. It is not like 3D rendered combat in a game-like situation. It's a bunch of text in videos, which is basically what the web is for and what a browser is for.

They don't need an app. True, true that. Yeah, unless you're going to be uploading your driver's license photos and you need the app to do that for you. What kind of idiot would do that? What kind of moron would upload their driver's license? Oh, Jiminy. So, here in California, Uber and Lyft drivers are fighting back.

Yay. They're going after California. They're going to sue to overturn Prop 22. Okay. They're basically saying that it is illegal and unconstitutional. Hold on a second. We passed a proposition and then Uber and Lyft spent a lot of money to overturn that proposition and now we're trying to overturn the overturning.

Yes, pretty much. Okay. In a nutshell, it's a little more complicated, but yeah, kind of like that. Kind of like that. So, they're saying that, yeah, some of the language in Prop 22 made it almost unreversible.

You know, you have to have this crazy amount of people signing on to get it flipped over. And I mean, it was genius how they did it, but that's where the drivers are saying, in that genius is where the unconstitutionality lies. So, they're going to be fighting against that and hopefully get it overturned.

So, good luck to them. But as we know, Uber and Lyft have bigger, bigger wallets than you do. I know, but you know what? Because they keep all the money that you just earned them. What we need is just a whole bunch of these tiny little lawsuits against Uber and Lyft all over the country. And eventually, we'll just bankrupt them.

Well, they don't make any money, so it should be pretty quick. Yeah. Hopefully. Well, one would think. We've been saying that for a couple years now. Coming up on eight years, we've been saying that, yeah. People still keep investing. It's like Bitcoin, I guess. It is. In some good space news, Virgin Orbit just launched their first orbital rocket.

They got something into space. They've earned the orbit. Yeah. They have earned the orbit title, yes. And it's pretty fun because they're doing horizontal launches off of a 747, which is always fun. Looks like a big missile, which it actually kind of is.

It's just a big missile. But, yep, it worked. So, this is good news for them. This is good news for them. I don't know where Virgin Galactic's at. I know they've been trying to get their ship up, but that's just for tourism. This is actually, you know, this has payloads and satellites.

Yeah, very cool. They actually delivered a payload for NASA on this one. So, congratulations to them. More shit in space. Just what we need. More shit in space, exactly. And I threw this one in because I thought it was kind of funny and somewhat topical. And because we've talked a lot about what I would consider to be flawed science before.

And there's a bit of this in here. So, this is from IFL Science. And it's according to a study. This is how to tell if someone's lying to you via text. TLDR came from the GOP. Okay. No, I'm just kidding. That came from Ted Cruz. You know it's a lie. Anyways.

So, there is a popular newspaper that published an article with the title, How to Tell if Women Are Lying to You in a Text. And it came kind of from this study. The piece links to a pre-pint study by researchers at Cornell University and claims that women use longer sentences and non-committal words when they want to deceive people via messaging apps.

So, they got into it a little bit here. And it explains the team used a massive database of existing communiques sent over an Android messaging system by a large number of men and women, including students and non-students. Parler? That would be... Well, that's all lies then.

C.1 I made. It points out that pre-existing studies investigating lying by text have had small sample sizes. And this piece of research aims to correct that. All right. Very next paragraph. The researchers started with 1,703 conversations and after removing all those that didn't contain any lies, were left with 351.

If that is considered a large sample size, I would love to see the studies that had a small sample size. My girlfriend texted me she was at the store. Lying bitch. There's my study. That's pathetic. I'm sorry. That's just pathetic. Right? Like, am I crazy?

Because at first I just, like, put this story in for the story, but then I was like, they specifically went out of their way to say that their research aims to correct small sample sizes, but they have an incredibly small sample size. Yeah. I mean, just any, you know, get a month's worth of text in any relationship, you're going to come up with more than 351 lies.

It's ridiculous. It's crazy. So, yeah, it goes on to say that women's sentences are 13% longer when they're lying, whereas men have marginally longer, 2% sentences. So, we basically cover up our bullshit with some shit. Yeah. I mean, that's what they always say. The more you explain, the greater chance that you're lying.

Yes. So, big sample size there.

Media candy. So, last week you called media candy your week in escapism, and I discovered a bit of escapism of my own this week. I realized I have a basement, and I can go sit down there alone and listen to music, which I did, and it was wonderful.

Oh, that's nice. Yes. And we did get a new common sense with Dan Carlin, as it called garbage in, garbage out. I was very shocked to see that pop up on my phone and downloaded it and listened to it basically immediately. And I've got to say, as some other people on our Discord channel have pointed out as well, it's good to see the last four years have frazzled him as much as the rest of us.

Yeah. Yeah. Welcome back, Dan. Oh, wait, he's not back. This was just a one-off. We'll talk to you again in five more years when you have another episode out. And this just, you know, my heart grew three times that day when I saw this.

Spotify's big bet on podcasts is failing, Citi says. Spotify's multi-million dollar bet on podcasting may not be working out, Citi analysts wrote in a note on Friday to clients. I could have told them that long before, but they don't listen to the show. We did, actually, yes.

So here's the deal. They put in all this money and now the investors are saying, where's our return? Well, there is no return yet because they have not seen any material positive inflection in app downloads or premium subscriptions, which was the entire point of all that money.

So Rogan did not do for Spotify what Howard Stern did for Sirius. Correctamundo. All righty. Well, shocking. And that's only part of it, though. You know, the Rogan play was to get more people, to bring more people into the Spotify ecosphere. The other side of the podcasting thing is, oh, they're generating content now that, you know, they don't really have to pay royalties on.

You know, it's a one and done. So that's why they always want to, you know, that's why they're a big push into podcasting. Hey, look, a bunch of stuff people can listen to instead of listening to music that we don't have to pay anybody for. How awesome is that? Because we're fucking evil. So there you have it.

City says, nope, not worth it. Sell. Sell your stock. Great. Well, I have some more podcasting news, and I personally just love this headline. Apple, the company that basically invented podcasts, have reportedly decided to give this whole podcast thing a try. Well, as we know, that headline is bullshit because they didn't invent podcasts, but they popularized them.

They certainly did. And they have been the number one place to go for almost everybody to get their podcasts. But apparently they are testing the waters and talking internally about coming around to a podcast subscription service, which would make sense because they've gone into subscriptions pretty hardcore because they've got news and fitness and cloud storage and TV subscriptions all packaged together or available separately.

It's like build your own. And they're kind of going, well, why don't we throw podcasts in as well to this? See previous article. Yes, see previous article. That's why. There you go. See previous article. Also, there is worry that they will be dealing with some antitrust headaches if they do this as well, which doesn't make any sense to me because basically everybody goes to Apple for their podcast now anyways.

No, not everybody. About 60% at this point. They're getting whittled away on. And the thing is, the thing that killed Spotify on podcasting is their app is so terrible. That's one of the main reasons that they're not getting picked up for podcasting. Their app is god-awful. The Apple podcasting app, I would argue, just as bad.

So if they really want to spend money to get people to listen to podcasts on their iPhones and their iDevices and their Macs and all that stuff, put a little bit more effort into the app itself and make it actually great. And then you don't have to pay for content because everybody's going to use your app anyway.

There you go. But that involves effort. Yeah. Well, it involves spending engineering time and money. The same thing they're going to have to do if they're going to generate content, you know? Right. Six of one, half dozen of the other. And they know how to write apps. They don't know how to make content that well. I mean, look at Apple TV+, for example.

Speaking of pluses, our final non-streaming plus is about to fall. CBS All Access is about to be rebranded as Paramount+. All right. That will launch on March 4th, and they are hoping to take away attention from all the other pluses with some originals, including The Offer, a 10-episode scripted miniseries about the making of Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather, which sounds awful, a new iteration of MTV's Behind the Music, which could be okay.

Could be good, yeah. But it's MTV, and I don't trust the people that are producing things over there anymore, and a revival of The Game, which I'm not even sure what that is. I was going to say, because The Game for me is the Michael Douglas movie, the fantastic Michael Douglas movie with Sean Penn.

Yeah. I love that movie. That is one of the greatest movies of all time. And it's David Fincher, too, so you can't go wrong there. There you go. I don't know what that is, so it is what it is. Plus, there will be more than 30,000 additional episodes and movies from Viacom, CBS's various content houses, including BET, Nickelodeon, MTV, and Comedy Central.

Hopefully, they will not pull a Discovery Plus and only have some of the episodes. It would be nice if they did all of them, so we shall see what happens with that. Yeah. I mean, it makes sense to do Paramount Plus, because everybody knows Paramount, and CBS is like, eh, whatever. You know.

There's that. And I got a little personal Disney news this week. What will a million distraught Disneyland superfans do now that the annual pass is dead? So, during this hiatus, the Disney California parks have been closed, and they've decided to sunset annual passes. They're all done as of Thursday, and when the park eventually reopens, the annual passes will be replaced by some other loyalty program yet to be determined, according to the park's president, Ken Potrick, which will be bupkis, I'm sure.

So, yeah, they're estimated over 1 million annual pass holders, and all of a sudden, they're not going to be able to go to the park all the time anymore. It was a really interesting article, and just sad, because this was another part of my youth. I think I had an annual pass every year from, like, 13 until I went off to college.

Yeah, I mean, if you live that close, it's a no-brainer. No-brainer. And I found one more TV show for the kid, and I like to throw these in when I find ones that are decent ones. This is called Wild Kratts. It's all about animals. It starts with some actual, like, science and real learning.

Then it goes to an animated thing, which is actually fairly educational for animated. And then it ends up with the real animals again at the end. It's non-offensive, and that's what I look for in a kid's program. Okay. Low bar. Very low bar. Low bar, but amazingly hard for people to scale.

Yeah. And I got a new TV show that I ran across. It's called The Hustler with Craig Ferguson, of all people. He's back on TV. I love Craig Ferguson. I used to love The Late Late Show. And this is kind of a... It's just a fun game show where they have five people together.

One person is like... It's kind of like the mole, but for... It's not as adventure-oriented. It's five people sitting around answering trivia questions and trying to figure out who's lying. It's fun. Cool. There's been... There's three episodes so far. I actually really enjoy it. We kind of burned through those first three pretty quick, and I'm looking forward to it.

Hopefully it'll stick around because Craig is funny. I like him. He is a funny guy. At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering something new every day.

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Apps and doodads! Ryan, it's a brave new world. Okay. I had to use brave. I tried it. It's working. Vivaldi was giving me so many problems now. Yeah, I saw you posting about all those in our Discord, and I have none of them.

Yeah, whenever I create a new window, there's no keyboard focus in the actual location bar, which is what is kind of, I don't know, expected. After the 10th time where I hit command new and start typing in a URL and it's not there, I'm like, what? Why isn't this working? Oh, no focus. No focus.

And then the video problem keeps hitting me over and over again on all my devices. See, and this is why Parler can't be on a web-based app. So I just said, screw it. Let's give this a shot because one thing I also forgot is, I don't know how I forgot this, on iOS now, you can set a default browser.

Dope. Yeah. And the Brave browser works great. Everything syncs and it's faster. It uses almost no CPU on the desktop. I mean, right now, we're doing this over Squadcast. I've got three tabs open and Brave's clocking in at about 30%.

And Vivaldi, when we would do these, would clock in at about 75 to 80 on mine. Right. So there's definitely a lot less CPU churn. That problem is gone with the crypto mining in the background that they, you know, lied about and shit like that.

That's done. Yeah, there's that. I turned off everything and then just created my little sync circle and it seems to work fine. It's, everything works as expected, which is all I care about anymore. And I know people are still saying that the new Edge browser is the best one out there.

And I'm like, okay, so who wants my data? Does Brave get my data or does Microsoft get my data? Does Google get my data? Who the fuck gets my data? I don't care. This is working right now. I'm going to give Edge a shot just to, you know, see how it works across all the different devices. But for now, Brave wins. It is a brave new world.

Sorry. Stick with what, stick with what works, man. If Vivaldi still works for you, don't switch. But if you start to run into crazy issues like I was having, then it's, this is a good alternative. Everything works and it's fast. Cool. And we covered this for a long time.

Fitbit has finally joined Google officially. The EU gave their blessing and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And Fitbit CEOs had a huge sigh of relief. Yes. We're getting our money and we don't have to pivot. Yes. Fitbit CEOs everywhere cried out in orgasmic joy.

And of course, because why not? Here comes the naysayers. This is over at Business Insider. Privacy and antitrust experts described Google's $2.1 billion Fitbit deal as sinister. It's crazy. This has been allowed to happen, they say.

Oh, and Dr. Christina Cafara, an expert in antitrust law, told the insider, Fitbit lets you track vital signs and other intimate aspects of your health. That is invaluable data. No, it has a value on it. That's why they paid $2.1 billion for it. Let me explain to you what invaluable means.

And then she goes on to say it's incredibly sinister. And then Ray Walsh, a digital privacy expert at ProPrivacy, agreed Google was in a strong position to use data for many purposes besides advertising. Mwah. He says, although Google has promised to keep Fitbit users' data in a silo that is completely separate from the data it uses for advertising, it seems plausible that Google will still attempt to exploit the health and location data acquired from the devices.

Of course they're going to attempt to exploit the health and location data acquired from the devices because they paid $2.1 billion for it. This weekend, duh. Yes. I mean, none of this is surprising. It's actually a good move for Google. Yeah.

Yeah. Fitbit gets to stick around even though, you know, this closed right as I got rid of my Fitbit. And that was, that was just a coincidence. I didn't even care that Google was taking it. Who cares? My nest still works after they bought them. Whatever. There you go. And this one, I just, this has been making the rounds.

This is over at the SF gate. I tested the dumbest PPE of all time, the rich guy COVID helmet. It's called the microclimate air and you do look like a total douche when you, when you wear it. The only acceptable wear of this would be a cosplaying.

That's it. I, I, actually on a plane, I think that would be, I think it'd be fine on a plane. I wonder if they let you take this on a plane though. I don't know. It's pretty intense. Like if I walked, if I walked into LAX wearing this thing, I'm wondering what would happen. Somebody try it.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if this guy tried it. I skimmed the article and I have to say the reason I put this in here is because it's damn funny writing. Yeah. This guy, this guy's pretty good. It was pretty good. It's well worth the read. And in big purchase week since yesterday was the big anniversary of the Northridge earthquake out here and we're in red flag warnings and everybody's losing power left, right, and center.

My roommate and I went halfsies on the Duro Max XP 5500E gas-powered portable generator. 5,500 watt electric start camping and RV ready. 50 state approved. The podcast must flow. Yeah. I mean, I do have my APC UPS backups out here, but still.

The reason we actually got this is we have, you know, an exorbitant amount of value in our refrigerator with Enbrel because she has to take that for her RA. Right. And if the refrigerator goes out, that's like, you know, tens of thousands of dollars worth of drugs that could go bad.

Right. So it's like, okay, let's spend a couple hundred bucks on a generator. That seems very smart to do. Cool. Very good purchase. Yeah. Very heavy too. I can't get it out of the box by myself. It weighs 120 pounds and I already pulled my shoulder and back out the other day just getting it into the backyard.

So hurry home, Brian, and get out of quarantine so you can come help me move this damn thing. Okay. I'm on it. I've been doing a lot of my weightlifting since I bought my stuff. So I can help you with that. So I've been doing a lot of like sitting around at night and just kind of scrolling through the phone, doom scrolling and all that sort of stuff.

And, you know, you do that and it's been quiet in our house at night, which is nice. But Instagram, Instagram reels are driving me fucking nuts. They ignore any and all sound settings. I don't, I normally keep my phone on complete mute, total shutdown.

nothing should make a noise. And they put that Instagram reels button right where the home button is on my phone. So when I'm scrolling through Instagram and I'm going to hit the home button and switch to another app, it'll switch to Instagram reels and I will hear cat noises or shitty music or whatever people are doing on reels because I don't care.

Loud. Very loud. It sucks. And I went to Discord, our Discord channel and say, maybe it's just me. And I said, is anybody else experiencing this? Does this happen to you? And of course, I got some fixes, but the fixes are only temporary.

Anytime you reload the app, any setting that you did to kind of mute it is gone and the loud noise comes back. So, you know, fuck them. That's bullshit. Yeah. Well, it's Instagram. It's also Facebook. As we know, Facebook settings never stick.

Like, how did that get through Apple's quality control stuff? Because the fact that the app ignores your phone's Uber settings, your God settings, that shouldn't be allowed to happen. That's true. That's true. I was going to say, Apple's not in, you know, they're not in the quality assurance business, but if it overrides the actual hardware setting.

Exactly. That's what it does. That's fucked up. That is fucked up. Yeah. Instagram is, become utterly useless. I get three pictures from friends after like seven hours and then it's just the recommended stuff. And I know that I've got more photos from friends than that. Yep.

Because everybody tells me, hey, can you go like my photo? And I get there and I'm like, it's not here. They're like, yeah, it is. And then I go to their page and it's there. But when I go to my stream, it's not. So, it's becoming more and more useless. That's exactly what Facebook is. Exactly. It's, so I'm like, okay, why bother anymore? Might as well go post my pictures on Parler.

Nobody's going to see them. Or everybody does when it gets put up in a... It gets hacked. Yeah. And speaking of Instagram, I got an ad for this course from Skillshare this morning because I'm a Skillshare subscriber and they send me, you know, hey, check out this course emails every day, even though I've turned that off too.

Speaking of somebody who can't remember a fucking setting, this is capture Instagram-worthy portraits. Level up your portraits with this fun step-by-step class from YouTube star and photographer Jessica Kobisi. Now, I would like to say that a class to make an Instagram-worthy portrait, a picture of a turd is an Instagram-worthy portrait.

You're not really calling the bar high here. You gotta light that turd, Jason. I know. I mean, come on. It's like, you know, Guggenheim-worthy portrait? Sure. Getty-worthy portrait? Sure. Instagram-worthy portrait? Wow. Yeah.

Okay. We're really devolving here for our artistic skills is all I gotta say. Right. And I did find something that I thought would make a good gift for people. You know, this is one of the rare occasions if I actually saw a friend's actual post on Facebook and it was actually something that I thought was interesting and I follow the link to it and it's from a site called My Photo Bags.

Not the greatest name, but basically, you can get jigsaw puzzles and who isn't doing jigsaw puzzles for the past year? Everybody is. But it's kind of a cool gift anyways. Jigsaw puzzles from various different magazines, newspapers, etc. from any date. So you could do basically the idea here being I get your birth date and that's a gift for you.

The New York Times page from your birthday and it has a jigsaw puzzle. Pretty cool. I just thought it was a neat idea. Yeah. except it doesn't load for me. Damn. Oh, well. None for me. None for me. Again, Parler cannot switch to an app-based version.

At the library? I finally called Laundry Files bankruptcy and gave up on it. Yeah. I figured you would. I just wasn't getting anywhere in it and it felt like torture. So I might be done with Laundry Files.

I will return if they return Bob and the other main characters and all of that sort of stuff. But otherwise, nope, I think I'm done. I did move on to a recommendation from some of the people in our Discord channel. The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. I'm about a third of the way in.

It's incredibly well written. It's very, very good. I don't know how any of you that have ever read this have ever slept ever again. But it's fiction, right? Yeah. Too close? It's a little too close for comfort.

Okay. Well, speaking of too close for comfort, I've been reading The Stand. Yeah. Which is also pretty too close for comfort. I'm into book two now. So people are coming together at this point in the book.

This thing is just, I had to stop because I can't, I've been making the mistake of listening to it before I go to bed at night. Oh, not a good idea. Bad idea. Really fucking bad idea. So wondering why I'm like, my CBD field subscription has been getting renewed a little bit more than before because I have to like take a big hit every morning just to stay on track.

Very well written. Liking it a lot. Liking it a lot. I don't think I'm going to go watch the TV series when I'm done with it though because why? I think you'll wait a while. Like if The Stand becomes one of those books to you like it did to me where you just, you think about it a lot and you realize just how good it was, you'll eventually want to see the miniseries.

Eventually. Not anytime soon though. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's so vivid and everything right now. I just feel like if I started to watch that then it would just kind of, I don't want the abridged version. That's why I got the super deluxe unabridged with extra shit version and I'm liking it a lot. Right.

And I found this one article and we were talking a little bit earlier about you found an article where the writer was just hilarious and it was some of the best writing you'd had read and it's just really, really funny. This article is way up there. The author here decided to review a book that was self-published on Amazon because Amazon allows self-publishing now and this is a masterclass on why we need gatekeepers in all media and in particular publishing.

Oh no, if we had gatekeepers, we wouldn't get gems like this. Well, yeah, this article was so fun to read and it almost made me want to read the book almost. Almost, yeah. I will just read the title of this article. The link is in our show notes. I highly recommend reading the article in full.

My Antifa Lover is one of the worst romance novels I've ever read but it does manage one stunning feat and I will let you discover what that stunning feat is on your own. Yes, it's a pretty good article. Pretty good article. But yeah, man, if we had gatekeepers, well, this podcast wouldn't be here. That's true too.

That's true too. Security? Ha! We're joined again this week by Dave Bittner. Dave is the host of the Cyber Wire podcast. Dave is also the co-host of the social engineering podcast Hacking Humans with Joe Kerrigan as well as the co-host of Caveat with COVID-free Ben Yellen who will be joining us today.

Hi, Ben. How are you guys? I heard you had the plague. I got the plague. I was in the hospital for three days which was rough but now I'm like probably immune for a few months so I can go crazy. I can do podcasts in person if I wanted to.

Right. I'm going to send you to the store to do all my shopping. I know. I can tell people like if, you know, you need someone who can expose themselves in a grocery store, not literally. God, I was going to say, hey, you might want to rephrase that. Jason, you got busted for that once, didn't you?

It's still a restraining order about that, isn't it? He's not allowed in any Whole Foods on the... Allegedly. Allegedly. East of the Mississippi, right. But yeah, no, I'm back and better than ever.

Rearing to go. Good to hear. Oh, good. Before we get going, we have some very important news. There's nothing more important that we could possibly talk about as we follow the travails of Dave and his inability to unplug his time machine when updating his system. He lost something very important to himself and was even discussing potentially going to Sweden to get it.

I'm here to tell you, Dave, and I know you know already because I saw your Twitter feed, The Muppet Show is coming to Disney Plus in February, all five seasons. Yes, yes. Congratulations, Dave. I am very excited about this. Ben, I know you're a Muppet fan too. I am. In fact, the day I got engaged, we saw the Muppets movie, like the more recent one, not one of the original great ones, but the one with Jason Segel.

Oh, okay. The mediocre one that we get as old people. I don't know if we've ever mentioned this and I don't remember if you were involved in this yet, Jason, if you had already left the company, but I was working for a company a long time ago and we did build one of the very first iterations of the Muppet website.

Really? Oh, no. I left when we were working on Barbie. Ah, yes. Well, it was later than that. So I was one of the lead programmers on the original Muppet website. That is amazing. That's fun. Very cool. Yeah. No, I'm very excited about the Muppet Show.

Folks may know the first three seasons of the Muppet Show have been available on DVD, but seasons four and five have not been available. Like many shows, they've run into all sorts of clearance issues because they're all these songs that they used on the show before you had things like streaming rights and all that sort of stuff.

So evidently, Disney has ponied up the cash. They're going to show all five seasons. Word on the street is that they've found some really good quality copies of these shows. These were shot on video, not film, so there's only so much they can do with them. But I'm excited.

A lot of these shows I have not seen in a long time. And to me, the Muppet Show is really the pinnacle of... It's the Muppets at their peak abilities. All right. Well, we will pencil you out for any shows post-February 19th for at least a couple weeks. That's right. Yeah.

All right. So shall we get to the question at hand for Mr. Ben Yellen? Since we got Ben Yellen on the horn, might as well, eh? Let's do it. That's right. I'm ready for you guys. A listener wrote in last week and asked us a question and we kindly said, none of us happen to be constitutional lawyers, but we happen to know somebody who is.

All right. So here it is. Holly wrote in and said, would you guys kindly have a segment on the show regarding the First and Fifth Amendments? They kind of go together like peas and carrots. What types of speech are protected by the First Amendment and what is not? How is this related to private-owned platforms, even if those platforms like big tech are viewed as a monopoly?

How those things not protected by the First Amendment are often covered in a company's TOS. As an IT professional and not a lawyer, I am exhausted just listening to these people and I know you guys are friends with more than a few lawyers. Maybe we can make pamphlets or an instructional PowerPoint. More on PowerPoints later.

Much appreciated. Love the show. All right. Where do I even begin? So, first of all, these are great questions. I should note that the First Amendment begins with Congress shall make no law, abridging freedom of speech, freedom of religion, etc. What that means is it's a right that protects you against government action, not against private action.

And I know this because there was always some smart kid in eighth grade civics class, you know, when the teacher says something and the kid starts talking back and the teacher says, you can't say that and the kid says, it's my First Amendment right and the teacher says, fuck you, no, it's not.

What school did you go to? You had a rough teacher. It's pretty rough, but that might have been a paraphrase. Yeah, but not that much of a paraphrase. So, that's the first thing you should know is that it is a right against government action. It protects you from being criminally prosecuted for your speech.

So, there are some restrictions on speech that are generally acceptable under the First Amendment. Things like time, place, and manner restrictions. I can't go to Dave's house as much as I'd want to with a bullhorn and scream at him at three in the morning. That probably violates some sort of local ordinance.

And courts have said that's fine because it has nothing to do with the content of the speech. No matter what I said into that bullhorn, it's illegal because I'm, you know, breaching the piece. What the Supreme Court really disfavors are any sort of content-based restrictions on speech.

Basically, anything where they're restricting somebody from saying something based on the content of what they're saying. Very rarely will they allow content-based restrictions on speech. Basically, any content-based restriction is subject to what we call strict scrutiny, meaning the government has to have a damn good reason to do it.

Is this where the proverbial you can't yell fire in a crowded theater comes in? So, great question. Oh, oh, oh. Dave and I have talked about this. You teed him up. You teed him up, Brian. You teed him up. That is a slow one over the plate for Ben. Go ahead, Ben. Take a swing, my friend. It really is. I'm going to swing for the fences here.

So, everyone always mentions that as, well, you know, you can't say anything dangerous because it would be like yelling fire in a crowded theater. So, a couple of things about that. First, I should note that the quote says the Constitution wouldn't protect you from falsely yelling fire in a crowded theater.

People always forget about that part. Second, that was in a decision called Schenck v. United States during World War I that's been largely disfavored. The justice who wrote the opinion, Oliver Wendell Holmes, reversed himself and said in subsequent rulings that he disavowed his previous desire to restrict First Amendment rights.

And that case was about political protesters during World War I. And so, that line was used to justify restrictions, speech restrictions on political protesters during World War I and was largely disfavored. And Justice Holmes himself in later decisions said that it's more valuable to protect the market of ideas.

So, I think that line is invoked too frequently. It does not carry the force of law. It's from a decision that is not, you know, among most constitutional lawyers is not looked fondly upon in history. Now, would you, would I go yelling fire in a crowded theater?

Probably not. It's both the morally wrong thing to do, but to me it's not entirely clear depending on the circumstances whether it would actually be illegal to yell fire in a crowded theater. Well, I mean, it's great that you wouldn't do it morally, but as we have discovered with the internet that there are quite an awful lot of people that don't really give a shit about morality.

No, there's not. I mean, whoever Q is obviously doesn't give a shit about morality because, you know, he's caused millions of people to believe in a vast global conspiracy and people have, you know, committed violent actions on the basis of that belief. So, yeah, there certainly is a moral side to restricting speech.

The last thing I'll say on the First Amendment is that there are certain categories of speech that fall outside of First Amendment protection entirely. So, things like false advertising, certain obscenities, certain types of pornography, speech that, quote, incites imminent lawless action, and I'll talk about that a little more in a bit.

Those are things that don't have any First Amendment protection at all. Okay. So, in terms of the Internet, can the government restrict what you post on the Internet? If it falls outside those areas of First Amendment protection, then absolutely.

So, that's why the government can prosecute you for possession of child pornography, for example. For things like, you know, your Internet speech inciting a riot, the bar is incredibly high because the standard, and this comes from a case called Brandenburg v. Ohio, is that your speech has to have the tendency to promote imminent lawless action, and the imminency element here is absolutely crucial.

Will it, like, directly lead to violence? It can't be something where we're all just talking and theoretically discussing what it would be like to overthrow the government. If we're not going to be inspired to literally storm the Capitol per that conversation, then it still is protected speech. So if I said, you know, theoretically, it would be better for, you know, so-and-so to be assassinated, that is constitutionally protected speech.

If there's a mob of people carrying guns and that person that I want to assassinate is in view, you know, then we get into some constitutionally squishy territory. What an interesting hypothetical you use about storming the Capitol. Now, what if that actually happened?

I know. I just made that up out of thin air. You know, obviously our democracy is strong enough that thousands of people aren't going to breach the Capitol grounds and storm onto the floor of the House and Senate. Could never happen. So that's the government side.

So what about these platforms restricting speech? Basically, these platforms, it is their full prerogative to moderate content as they see fit. It's their platform. They are private entities. If they want to ban a certain type of speech entirely, then they can ban that type of speech.

You know, if I wanted to host a exclusively conservative microblogging website, and I just decided to delete all liberal posts, nothing would prevent me from doing that. that's a perfectly constitutionally acceptable thing to do because it's a private entity.

Some people will say, you know, well, yes, they're private entities, but they've become, you know, somewhat of a public forum because we discuss all types of policy matters. The president makes personnel announcements on Twitter. It's a public forum. I think that's a reasonable argument to have.

I don't think in terms of the constitutional precedent that it's ever likely that a court would hold Twitter or Facebook to be the type of public forum where the government could regulate speech. You know, people have tried to analogize with other cases where, for example, there was an old town in the deep south in the 60s that was owned by a private company, and they tried to put restrictions on speech, and the court held in that case that the private company was standing in as the government,

so therefore the First Amendment could be invoked against that private entity. But that's really, I don't think, applicable to something like Twitter and Facebook. And what people talk about with this whole Section 230 thing is, can Twitter or Facebook be punished or sued for their content moderation decisions?

And the way the law is structured right now, with some exceptions, they are largely immune from these lawsuits, because we want these organizations to not have to constantly worry about the threat of being sued when they make decisions about content moderation.

So I hope that sort of answers the question. Shall we move to the Fifth? Fifth Amendment. Yeah, so I'm not exactly sure. The Fifth Amendment has a lot of elements to it, and I'm not exactly sure which one the listener was referencing. There are a bunch of Fifth Amendment rights, due process, which applies against the federal government.

So government cannot take away my life, liberty, or property without some sort of due process. Now, of course, that implies that they can take away my life, liberty, and property, just as, you know, there has to be some sort of proceeding for them to do that.

Civil forfeiture, civil forfeiture, civil forfeiture. Yeah, civil asset forfeiture, for sure. It does say that if they take your property, they must provide you just compensation, which, you know, obviously that's not what happens with civil asset forfeiture. And the right to tweet is not a God-given right and part of this life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

Now, if I were dictator, it would be, but unfortunately that has not happened yet. So you still have to wait a little bit of time for your right to tweet to be incorporated into the Fifth Amendment. There is also, you know, a bunch of other procedural rights. The one that is invoked most frequently is the right against self-incrimination.

So the Fifth Amendment says you can never be compelled to be a witness against yourself in a trial. And that not only applies to trials, but it also applies in other public government settings. So that's why you see these congressional hearings. Some CEO gets up there, you know, and he's accused of polluting the, you know, such and such river with his dirty oil, and they ask him about it.

And he says, you know, on the advice of counsel, I'm invoking my Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Luckily, everybody just posts their crimes online now for us to download the view. Yeah, exactly. There's a picture of me storming the Capitol with the metadata, and I'm going to tag all my friends.

Oh, and also I'm wearing a GPS monitor. I am a smart criminal. Yeah. Now, Ben, hasn't the Fifth been rolled into some conversations about passwords and whether or not you're compelled to share your password and so on?

Am I right there? Absolutely. So there's a lot of controversy on this issue on compelled decryption, where the government forces you to either enter in your passcode or do something like use your handprint or facial recognition.

It's a very complicated issue, and there has been a split among our circuits on this. It's something that is currently unresolved. Generally, the right against self-incrimination only applies to what we call testimonial evidence, so something that's either written or spoken, that's where the Fifth Amendment applies.

So it wouldn't apply, for example, if you were forced to be in a police lineup. So that's why there might actually be a distinction in the law between facial recognition, unlocking one's iPhone, for example, using Face ID, and compelling somebody to actually type in a passcode because that's what we say in the legal world the content of one's mind.

I have a question on this. Now, if I am setting up my phone with facial recognition and I have trained it to also recognize a hand gesture in front of my face that is not just my face, but I'm throwing like a gang sign in front of my face that kind of gives it a unique perspective that I also have to know, now, would that be, is that kind of a loophole that could maybe get me out of something?

Like, okay, I'll stare at it all you want, but I'm not going to do the secret bro handshake to unlock the phone. So a couple of things there. That might help because conceivably then you would have to be forced to reveal the contents of your own mind being, you know, what's the symbol I throw up to unlock my phone?

There is this doctrine, however, unfortunately for you in this scenario, about inevitable discovery that law enforcement can be, can get kind of a get out of jail free card to get somebody's information if you know, it was inevitable that they discover it in the first place.

So if law enforcement can prove pretty definitively in court that whatever incriminating information they're looking for is on your device and that you know how to get into your device, courts have ruled that you know, because it's inevitable that that information would be discovered or divulged, you know, we're not actually going to make law enforcement go through that whole process for Fifth Amendment purposes.

It seems like a Schrodinger's cat situation, though. It's like, okay, we know it's on there, but we can't get to it. But if we know it's on there, what is it? And how do we prove that it's on there if we can't get to it in the first place? It seems very much as the cat alive or dead scenario. It is. Or who's that artist Escher in Escher painting with the stairs that go nowhere?

Yeah. That's kind of how I feel about it. I've never understood the reasoning behind this doctrine. It does not make sense to me. I think it's one of those things where there's been a carve-out for law enforcement because judges are just as eager as prosecutors in many circumstances to find incriminating information on somebody's phone.

shocking. I know. Shocking. You'd think they'd all be strict privacy advocates. That's certainly a doctrine I don't agree with. Unfortunately, I'm the bearer of bad news on what the doctrine is. Well, I hope Holly is satisfied with your answers there, Ben. And I think we have a new show coming called Let Me Splain with Ben Yellen.

Legal-splaining. Legal-splaining. Or Ben Yellen fire in a crowded theater. I will get on my fire in a crowded theater soapbox. All right. Awesome. I had one story I wanted to put in here that kind of ties into what we were talking about, specifically the Capitol riot.

And I know this is ongoing and this is just where it was at late last night. A Capitol rioter allegedly planned to sell a laptop from Nancy Pelosi's office to Russia. So she supposedly got in there. The FBI is now investigating this. The claim came from a former romantic partner of Pennsylvania woman Riley Williams, who we do know was there, did go into the building, and has been charged with disorderly conduct in entering a restricted building.

According to court documents, Williams' supposed ex, who is now identified as W-1, contacted an FBI tip line and said she intended to send the laptop to a friend in Russia, who then planned to sell the device to SVR, Russia's foreign intelligence service. W-1 claimed to have seen footage of Williams taking the laptop.

However, W-1 said the plot fell through and that Williams either still has the computer or has destroyed it. Now, they have confirmed that a laptop was stolen from a conference room at the Capitol. However, they are saying it was only used for presentations. That made me look up what was Russian for PowerPoint.

Silovaya Ustanovka. All right. Yeah, and she has been taken into custody, by the way. I believe she turned herself in. Was this a plot point in My Antifa Lover, the book we talked about on At the Library?

I think it might have been. I'd like you guys to write some fan fiction on this. I will say, I did see a tweet from someone that got like 400,000 likes that was basically like, this is my ex girlfriend from middle school and she stole a laptop from Nancy Pelosi's office and tried to sell it to the Russians.

So, yeah. I mean, it's pretty crazy. It's pretty crazy. So, Ben, I have one more question for you because I think we feel, I feel like we kind of skipped over this and I know this is probably a question that some of our listeners want to follow up on, so I'm going to be the bad guy and do that, or the good guy, depending on your point of view.

So, we talked about types of speech and whether or not you are directly inciting people to do things. What is your take on whether or not President Trump in the speech that he made before the Capitol riot as to what the legal point of view would be, the case that could be made or not, as to whether he was actually inciting people to do what they then did?

I think his conduct, unfortunately, because I think it's morally abhorrent, doesn't quite meet the legal standard of causing imminent lawless action. What about Giuliani? Giuliani to me comes closer because what he said is we need to have trial by combat.

If that's not an explicit call to violence, I don't know what is. Now, the problem is that it was still largely theoretical and neither Trump nor Giuliani were in the Capitol standing next to people with guns, right?

There still was a little bit of distance between that rally and the storming of the Capitol, and I think that distance is what's going to save Trump and Giuliani from prosecution. In this case, it's possible they could be prosecuted. Luckily, there's many, many things that we can prosecute them for.

Yeah, but even though Trump said, we're going to walk to the Capitol, I'm going to walk with you, you know, bridging that distance gap, kind of saying, yeah, we're here right now, but let's go. We're going to take a walk, guys. So what I always go back to is what Michael Cohen, Trump's former fixer, said at a hearing a couple of years ago, that Trump is basically a mob guy.

I mean, he's lived his life basically as somebody who's part of the mafia, and he knows how to use language that comes just short of the line of meeting some sort of legal standard. So you'll notice that Republicans in the House of Representatives during the impeachment debate kept referencing the fact that he said, we're going to go to the Capitol peacefully, you know, which is a total wink and nod to his supporters who are, if not literally carrying pitchforks, are certainly figuratively

carrying pitchforks. And it's coming in the context of telling them for two months that this election has been stolen, there was fraud, you know, we're about to affirm the results of an election that wasn't fair. So, you know, in that context, of course, you can understand it in the real world, why people were inspired to commit violent acts.

I mean, if you legitimately thought that your government was going to be overthrown by someone who was, you know, fraudulently elected president, you might resort to violence. And so, you know, the fact that he propagated that lie certainly makes him morally culpable.

And I know that's not what people want to hear because they want to see him behind bars. I just think because there is that separation between when the speech happened and, you know, the fact that there was at least an opportunity for cooler heads to prevail while this throng of individuals walked towards the United States Capitol, I think that probably releases Trump from criminal liability on that question.

All right. That's what I was looking for. Disappointed. We'll get him on something. I mean, maybe not. And when we do, we'll have Ben Yellen back on. Tell us why. Explain us why.

That's right. I will read that criminal complaint ten times, you know, as soon as it's released just out of Schadenfreude. And by the way, might I just add that if this is the sort of conversation you enjoy, you should check out Caveat, the show co-hosted by me and Ben Yellen, a part of the Cyber Wire network.

This is what we do every week. Yeah, absolutely. It's just, it's more of a PG version of this podcast. We bring out the worst in everyone. You sure do. So, yeah. I'm not allowed to throw F-bombs on that podcast, which is why I love coming on your podcast.

Okay, gentlemen, until the next time. Until the next time. Until the next insurrection. Yeah, exactly. Always good chatting with you guys. Feedback loop. Over at Patreon, we've got Vernon MCC, Manuel and Rafal.

And over at PayPal, we've got Linda, Natalie, Andrew, Logan, Michael, Raj, Nathaniel, Michelle, John, Andrew, and Al. Unless that's AI and it's spelled wrong, I can't tell. It's ML, machine learning. It's ML, yeah. We got a PayPal donation that doesn't exist from AI.

Oh, thanks to you all so much. Over at Twitter, DST writes in, not something you see every day. And this is from Ars Technica. Samsung's top executive gets 30 months in prison for bribery. It's back to jail for Samsung's leader, Lee Jae-yong, also a.k.a.

J. Wiley. So this is a pretty crazy story. I don't think I knew too much about this. It's been a legal battle for something called Choigate, a major 2016 South Korean political scandal that led to South Korean President Park Gen-hee being impeached and removed from office.

It's named after the president's top aide, Choi Soon-sil, a member of a shamanistic cult that was found to be masterminding South Korean government policy via her influence over the president. You know, we covered this when it first broke back in 2016, but I guess we missed the whole shamanistic cult, like crazy chick.

Yeah. Pretty crazy story, but you know, good. Justice is being served. I'll go search out the podcast that's all about that. I'm sure there has to be one right now. Of course. InMod6502 writes in another reason to keep looking for an alternative, and this is Goodreads plans to retire API access disables existing API keys.

If a book falls in a forest, does anybody hear it? Yeah. Yeah, it's Goodreads. Who cares? Yes, news that surprises nobody. They quietly announced the depreciation of their public APIs by quietly, they basically just shut them off immediately without warning, but not many people noticed.

Yes, and it's deprecation, not depreciation. I made that mistake to a lot of computer science kids, and they would always mock me. So I'm not mocking you, I'm just informing you so we don't get the emails, so keep the emails at home. Mockery is the sincerest form of informing.

Yes. Ann Strickey sent a link over to TikTok, thus causing me to actually look at a TikTok video for the very first time ever. Clever. Funny. Yeah, it was the Animaniacs one. The Animaniacs about the Capitol riot, yeah. Yes, and disgruntled Cincy Sports Van writes in, never understood why everyone uses Venmos at the public, not even sure why the public stream exists.

So we can all see that Mary paid Lisa for this month's share of rent. Yippee! Agreed. And Craig writes in, as the podcast has taught me, if it's locked into an app like Spotify, Audible, or SiriusXM streaming platform, it's not a podcast. And this is a press release from SiriusXM who are saying they are the new destination for original, exclusive, and popular podcasts.

No, you're fucking not. You added a bunch of radio programs. That's what you do. Yes, and if it's exclusive, it's not a podcast. Yes, so it's just a whole bunch of crap. And actually, this is a very good reminder that I need to ensure that I go and cancel my auto renew on Sirius.

So thank you for that. Yeah, definitely. Sirius. Man, they're just too much money. Yep. And over at GOG.show we got Bearded and Balding who says, Guys, I love the podcast along with the Smashing Security, Hacking Humans, and the Tech Guy podcast. It's all very entertaining. I realized in a recent episode that you are SW fans.

That would be Star Wars. I would like to send you a picture of the four Phantom Menace pictures I finally got framed after 20 years. I've sent the image over, blah, blah, blah. We got the image. Hope you like them. Just don't make it public or tell Disney. Well, we just made it public, but we're not going to share the photos. Did you get a chance to look at them? I did not because by the time I clicked on the link, they had been removed.

Oh, okay. Well, too late. They're very cool. They were very cool. That's nice. Yeah, so thanks for sending those in, Colin. I'm sorry, bearded and balding. And Armchair Rambo writes in, I'm going to try to get through this parsing here. Hey, guys, I don't remember how much for a biz shout out, but sent you $10 PayPal.

Thanks for talking about Brave Browser. I'm using it and observing carefully. Keep it up and this could turn into something beautiful. My biz I'm trying to pimp is Rocket Surgery Studio in, I'm assuming that's Minneapolis. Yes. I have a basement studio. You guys aren't invited either. You work on-site and remote now.

Used to go to Harvard, you go to online school now. Your opinions are among the few a person can take at face value. Now, that's valuable. P.S. You're allowed to be wrong. Love it when you backpedal and tell a story of pure fuckery cautionary tales from the laboratory. Thanks, Rambo. Okay. All right.

Link to his Rocket Surgery Studio is in the show notes. Yes, it is. Vincent writes in, oh my God, Vincent. Jiminy jeepers. Okay, we've got a few links from Vincent here. WhatsApp clarifies Facebook data sharing as users flock to rival Signal.

Okay. Oh, man. I have a link somewhere that I have to put in here about how Signal is basically a tool of the CIA. Really good. Okay. I got to make a note of that. You guys can go read that on your own, but it's like, wow. I found this from an actual source that I kind of trust.

He's like, yeah, this guy did all the research and found out it was that Signal was actually funded by a spinoff of the CIA. All right. Tinfoil hat time. Or you just keep text messaging people like I do. Yes.

And Vincent goes on to say I've always assumed anything on WhatsApp was being shared to Facebook anyways. Has uncle, auntie, and elder from your various extended circles moved to Signal? Nope, not on mine. I've gotten five notifications from Signal today that one of my contacts is now on Signal. Welcome to the world of tomorrow should be the automated message from me per notification.

Okay. To follow up on my last email about people leaving WhatsApp to go to Signal, they can't handle it. And this is, yes, Signal has been down because it was Scalability is a bitch. Scalability is a bitch. And I sent a link to the donating thing over at Signal, which the other article that I said don't donate, they've got enough money in the bank from the government.

I'll save my money for gog.show slash donate because fuck it. I assume anything I type is open season anyway. And hi, if you're reading this, you have just won the Spanish lottery. Kidding. And Dave's fuckity fuck outburst was the funniest thing I've heard in yonks. Do they use yonks to mean a long time over there across the pond?

No. No. Nope. And he sent us the link to the Urban Dictionary definition of yonks. Okay. Come on. I guess this would work for people who have moderators and knights in shining armor to shield them from troll baddies. Tracy Chu launched Block Party to combat online harassment and abuse.

This is a link over at TechCrunch. What do you think? I think my friend. I think that's a lot that you sent us. Good stuff. Good stuff. All right. John writes in just catching up with episodes over here in the UK while enduring lockdown again.

Agreed on a massive hunt. Not funny anymore. They even comment in the show about how they jumped the shark years ago. I must have been asleep when they made that joke because I fell asleep watching the damn show. Discovery is on UK Netflix so you can use VPN to view it and therefore drop your CBS all-access subscription.

Yeah, but do they have Picard and do they have the stand because there you go. Yeah, just power through until the stand's over and cancel that. Wait till Picard comes back. And then when you come back it'll be Paramount Plus. Whatever the fuck they're going to call it. Then they'll change it again later.

Whatever. Highlander writes in, Do you remember the over-the-air television from the 1960s? Did you know it still exists? The point being, if you are going to be fed a bunch of crap from both the mainstream media and social media companies, you may as well not pay for it. Take back your life. Unsubscribe. I guess I could get CBS over the air, but I wouldn't get Discovery, Picard, or The Stand because those are digital-only exclusives.

Yep, but you can buy an antenna and watch regular TV. I did that when I lived in Chicago. We talked about that on the show a couple times. And Dan writes in High Grumps on episode 491, you mentioned Henry Rollins in the film in the 90s. I haven't seen that, but did want to recommend one that he did this past decade.

Check out He Never Died. It's an interesting film that may only appeal to a small number of viewers, such as Henry Rollins, but I think it's excellent. Hank is perfectly cast as a tough guy who doesn't enjoy being around other people. Give it 10 minutes and see if you feel compelled to finish.

By the way, fuck all Republicans in the House, except for the 10 that voted to impeach. They are spineless cowards. All right, Dan. Barrett writes in Call Me Crazy, but I picture the traitors more as Motel 6 type of people than Airbnb type of people. And this is a link over to BuzzFeed that Airbnb has canceled all reservations in D.C.

during the inauguration. And I think they just live in their RVs until they blow themselves up, personally. I wish they'd hurry up with that. Yes. All right, and over at iTunes, we got a five-star rating from Dave Fur Trooper Bittner. I do not believe this is the real Dave Bittner, but he does give it a go to recreate Dave's rant without actually spelling out the fuck word.

It was quite impressive. Yes, yes. Thank you. Good job. Good job. If you want your question or comment read on the show, head over and toss us a five-star and snarky review.

Come on, guys. A few more reviews. Let's go. Let's go. Come on. It's new year. Get on it. Yep. Closing shout outs. Well, I don't know what to say about this one. I like this headline though. Phil Spector transformed pop music and destroyed lives.

He died and I just say welcome to club Michael Jackson, another musical genius. I will probably never seek out to listen to and I'll always feel icky when I listen to anything they were involved in if I'm in a grocery store or whatever. And somebody that did pass away from the music world that doesn't make me feel icky Sylvain Sylvain rest in peace.

He was the New York Dolls guitarist. New York Dolls are one of those bands that you probably haven't listened to but every band you liked did. Yep. They were fantastic. Yep. Until next time I'm Jason DeFillico. And I'm Brian Schilmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks.

This show is a labor of love but your support keeps the show going. If you like the show visit gog.show donate to help us out. It's better going to us than signal. We'll love you forever. The CIA doesn't love us. They don't fund us. Or visit gog.show shop and pick us 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 so show notes for this episode are at gog.show slash 492. 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.

And do check out our new merch swag. There's only been one purchase so far. Stay grumpy.

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