493: Poverty Mode

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. Welcome back, Brian, to the United States. I'm back in paradise where crazy alt-right wing and anti-vaxxers stopped all the vaccinations at Dodger Stadium. You wanted to come home, man. Well, not really. But all my stuff is here and I've got to work on that.

Yeah, what a difference, America. I'm in COVID land here and the only reason, we're actually still in quarantine. We're quarantining for two more days because our wonderful mayor decided to impose a 10-day quarantine on people returning to Los Angeles and tell no one about it.

Okay. The only reason I know is we Googled, like, what are the restrictions coming back and all that sort of stuff and we found it. There was a small sign near the luggage area. Okay. When coming into LAX that you could scan a QR code to learn information about the quarantine rules coming into Los Angeles that everybody just walked past.

Yep. Yeah. So there's an app, apparently, but it didn't work very well. My wife signed in some sort of form online letting them know that we're here and what our address is. There's been zero follow-up from anyone.

Of course. No, there are no rules. There are no rules whatsoever. Yeah, I have noticed that. We broke some of the rules. I dared to go out for a walk and very few masks still. Some people are double masking. Other people are not wearing anything.

We are doomed. Of course. No, no, no. You have no idea how bad it's been here. And now that because our governor is, you know, getting recalled, he decided to just open up outdoor dining again because why not? Oh, that's why – because he's getting sued. Anyway, so we – you know, the rules here are, you know, eight feet apart, the table is eight feet apart, and you can't co-mingle households.

Who's checking? Who's enforcing? Absolutely nobody. Are the waitresses supposed to come over and say, do you all live in the same house? What's the deal? How does this work? Show me your papers. Show me your papers. Because if you drive up and down Ventura Boulevard, it is just tons of families all getting together saying, fuck it.

We're screwed. We're screwed. We are screwed. You should leave as soon as you possibly can. Yeah. Well, yeah. The problem is, you know, there's a better chance of us getting the vaccines earlier here than in Canada because – Oh, we're going to talk about that soon.

Okay. Yes. Let's move on. Because all of this COVID talk is – we're going to lead into the technology side at some point here. Because you just described that you must be tech savvy to even find out what the rules are when you came into the airport. Yes. And we'll talk about some more stuff very, very shortly.

But I do have a couple bits of follow-up from when we were gone. Okay. Project Loon is now toast. Okay. Is it because we talked about it a couple weeks ago? So, therefore, it must die? I don't know. It was very slow to – I mean, we've been talking about it for a long time. But I don't think the GOG curse got Project Loon.

I think technology has advanced far, far more than they thought. Well, I think the very first time we talked about it, we said it was a bit loony, air balloons. But, you know. Yes. And since that – since the project started, 75 percent of the world had internet access.

So, they were trying to get the last 25 percent. Well, since then, 93 percent of the world is now online. And the other 7 percent are like, we don't give a shit. The other 7 percent are like privileged rich people that have opted out. They're all in their bunkers in New Zealand telling their kids to read books.

That's right. So, yes. Project Loon is gone. Okay. And we've also talked – we all, you know, ad nauseum talk about the gig economy. Now, Instacart is laying off a ton of people. Here's the long and the short of it. The headline is they're saying it's because it's – the unionized workers are getting laid off, right?

Yeah. Well, it just turns out a lot of people are getting laid off because grocery stores have finally come to the realization that they're not making any money when they use these services. And they could hire people themselves. Exactly. We've got staff. We've got infrastructure. So, they're just – they're building it out themselves and saying, screw you, Instacart.

And pretty soon – well, DoorDash is actually probably the best position to, you know, go through this because they white label their delivery technology. So, you know, you can use the DoorDash infrastructure to get your deliveries and use your own staff.

Instacart, on the other hand, eh, who cares? Anthony Lewandowski, one of our favorite people that we love to hate. He got one of Donald Trump's golden pardons. Amazing. You know why? Because he could afford it. He could afford it. He bought it, basically.

Those pardons were going for about $2 million a pop, and he got it. That's why Tiger King did not. It's not because you're gay, my man. It's because you have no cash. Yep. That's it. And I was going through my old domains, and I found something I registered about 20 years ago.

And it was a site called visibilityzero.com. That's how long ago we knew that everything, nothing gets deleted. It's all just visibility set to zero. The funny part about it is whoever owns it now, because I let it drop once like $5,000 for it, I'm like, good luck.

Good luck with that. Yep. Yeah. We haven't talked about scooters in a while. I saw that a new company is in the news, or not that new. They've been around, but they're called Spin. And they have realized that one of the problems is that these stupid scooters clog up sidewalks.

Oh, really? Who do you think? Yeah. They want to use machine learning to create what they call their valet technology, which will have remote operators, which doesn't make sense about the machine learning part, reparking the scooters with the help of front and rear-facing cameras. So they're going to throw cameras on the bikes, which will probably get beat off pretty quickly.

And then they're going to go ahead and park them for us. Okay. So where's the AI here? Because machine learning, why? Because you have to throw machine learning into any press release to get money. So the hope is eventually these will be taken over by machine learning.

But in the meantime, when children are walking down sidewalks and you have to go across streets and you don't want to bang into somebody's expensive Tesla, we're going to have real people do it. Okay. This is what it's come to. This is what it's come to. And a little Bitcoin follow-up as well.

India is going to propose a law banning private cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, instead saying, use our own government-backed one, which is something we've been saying since day one. But they kind of know how Bitcoin, the internet, and all that stuff works, right? You don't really – how are they planning on banning it?

That's what I want to know. They can ban it. They can – well, okay. No, you can probably never truly ban Bitcoin, but what they can do is they certainly can block all of the cryptocurrency things like Coinbase and things like that. They can make sure none of those apps work in their country. So they can make it difficult for people to use Bitcoin.

Yeah, okay. But you can still – yeah, make it difficult, but it is still possible to use Bitcoin. But as we've been saying all along, there's no government in the world that wants this. They want backed systems. And that is what India is going to try to do. And this is just one of three stories I have in the show notes today that tie directly in with the book I just finished reading, The Ministry for the Future.

Which we will talk about later. All right. I was going to do a pimp for GOG.show slash VPN for the people in India to get their VPN on. But people in India can't listen to our show. So that's – yeah, there you go. They can ban us.

They can't ban Bitcoin. In the news. Okay. Dick's around the table now. Everybody's going hog wild and not for hams hog.

This is Tim Cook's hog this time. There's a storm of brewing between Apple and Facebook big time. And I'm just going to sit back and watch because it's kind of fun. I did see that Facebook is going to ask iOS users on their next update to allow them to track you, please.

Yeah. Before you install the update. Dems the rules, baby. Yeah. So this comes down to the privacy, you know, health card that is going around with what your app does and how you have to display it on the app store because Tim thinks everybody should know who's tracking them, when, where, and why, and how.

And, you know, the Zuck said, well, we don't like that very much because – We don't want people to be that aware. Exactly. Here's the thing that Mark doesn't understand. Nobody gives a shit. Nobody gives a shit. This is all a tempest in a teapot and you're making it a bigger deal.

This is the, what, the Barbra Streisand syndrome. You know who actually looks at the privacy cards? Tech journalists. That's it. That's it. So they can write stories about it. That's it. Yeah. Can we eek a story out of this, please, please, please? So this will be a fun one to just kick back and watch billionaires squabble at each other in a little bitch fight.

Maybe something good will come out of it. Maybe we'll eek it back a little bit of privacy. You know, Tim could always just ban Facebook. That would be awesome. He could throw down the Trump gauntlet and say, you know what? No more Facebook on our website.

It's too hateful. It's too hateful. Hey, if Parler can go, so can Facebook because they are technically just about the same damn thing. That's true. That is true. So let's go back into our little COVID corner for a brief second here. I found a few interesting articles. It's obviously been on my mind as I've switched countries and kind of seen what's happening here.

And how bad it is. COVID on my mind is the worst cover song ever. My Corona is probably the worst. Oh, God, that one again. There you go. I found a really interesting article over on The Atlantic. And I've realized now that we're almost a year into this how much I've actually missed a whole class of people.

The article is called The Pandemic Has Erased Entire Categories of Friendship. And obviously, you know, I've managed to stay in touch with close friends with Zoom calls and lots of texting and all that sort of shit. And but this article is really interesting in that, you know, friends of friends, you know, my really good friends, I would go and meet at the pub and then I would hang out with their friends.

But I'm not really good friends with them. But I miss seeing them. Coworkers. You and I don't have that situation, but my wife has talked about this, you know, you know, just there's no we don't have a word for it in English. Other languages do. And they get into that in this article about people that are acquaintances, but close enough that we almost have to call them friends in English that we do not see.

We're not close enough to them to, say, maybe do Zoom calls or FaceTime or meet up for a socially distanced walk with them. I think about all the bartenders that I know, like I don't see them like I really have to go out of my way. And there's just all these people that were part of the fabric of our daily lives that we have not seen for almost a year now.

And that's a weird thing. It's killing me, too, because a friend of a friend, your friend, Brian, who is, you know, I was becoming friends with and we were going to start hanging out because he moved literally across the street from me. No, he's across the street from me. We see each other all the time and we wave, but we can't get together and hang out.

Right. And now he's like got a big smoker and he's cooking barbecue. And I'm like, this really sucks. I want to go hang out with Brian. And I, you know, want him to come over here and hang out in the studio and have some fun times, you know. And it's like, damn, this sucks.

Yeah. Yeah. So I just thought that was a really interesting article. One maybe plus here I saw as well. And this is this is obviously talking about European football, not American football. Football matches have less conflict without crowds. So as we've known, they've been doing these things called ghost games where there's basically no fans or a very severe limit to the amount of fans that are allowed at matches.

And a doctor, Michael Leitner at the University of Salzburg, watched videos of 10 ghost games played by an Austrian team, FC Red Bull Salzburg, who have won the Austrian Bundesliga two years in a row, both pre-pandemic and during the pandemic. And he studied the games between the differences between having full crowds and having no crowds or very small crowds.

And he found out that there were 19.5% fewer emotional situations without fans present. So basically less arguments, less fights, less all of that. Referees were involved in almost 40% of the events that he tracked. Without crowds, this fell to 25%.

There were also slightly fewer fouls, substantially fewer yellow and red cards awarded. And on the other hand, there was an increase in examples of good sportsmanship, or what we're calling good sportspersonship now, because politically correct, such as helping up an opponent.

So apparently not having people in the crowds makes the players nicer people. Yeah, because crowds are awful. Yes. That's pretty much what we could, yeah, yeah. Okay. But isn't that part of the fun? Yes. Of course it is. Kind of like, okay, you have now taken all the fun out of football.

Like, come on. Come on. So there you go. And what I was talking about two weeks ago, when I was talking about getting my mom signed up to get her first shot, which she got, and she's due for a second shot pretty soon. But, you know, here's an article saying exactly what I said.

A big hurdle for older Americans trying to get vaccinated using the internet. It's difficult. You have to download apps, or you have to go to websites. And you think, oh, surely people over 65, some of them know how to do that now. They've been around enough. Well, what about if you get a 404 error?

Or what about if the link is wrong? Are they tech savvy enough to know, okay, well, I just take off this bit of the URL, and I can go straight to the homepage, and then I can click my way through there to find the form? No, they don't. Not very few of them have computer skills to that level. Hell, very few people my age have computer skills to that level.

So this is the next part of the technology of COVID that we're going to talk about, for sure, because since you went through that, I have been going through that with my roommate trying to get her 92-year-old mother vaccinated, which is going to happen in 29 minutes, actually.

And here's how we had to go to a store that she rarely goes to, run into a friend that she kind of knows here and there, get in a conversation about their parents and who's getting vaccinated and who's not, and find out from that friend that, oh, Albertsons, the grocery store has vaccines going on right now.

So then you have to come home, find the Albertsons website that is not publicly available through a series of incantations, chicken killings, and Google searches to get to the Albertsons website to the part where you can do it.

Go through pages and pages of signing up, printing documents, all of this crap before you can get an appointment. And then once you get through that, then you can get an appointment and go in. That's how it works nowadays. Yeah, it's a little bit crazy if you do not, and people are just like, why aren't all these people going and getting their vaccinations?

Why are there empty appointments all the time? Because it's hard. Because you started with the highest age range, and this stuff is hard for us. Yeah. It's like, I can't even tell you, we were reloading, reloading, reloading to get an appointment. And older people aren't going to think to do that, aren't going to spend the time doing that.

They're going to look at the site, if they can even get that far. And if it says no appointments are available, they're just going to walk away. Yep. And the funny part is, on that same website, it said no appointments available at the Albertsons. But if you went to the Albertsons website, there were appointments available.

So these, as we've talked about before, many millions of times government websites are fucking terrible. The infrastructure to have all of the APIs talking to each other and keep together in real time so everybody's updated and everybody knows where you can go, when you can go, how you can go.

It's just garbage. Yeah. It is absolute garbage. I mean, it's 2020, you know? Come on. It's a fucking website. You can't figure this shit out by now? Oh. Yeah. So, yes, the technology behind it is, it's abhorrent.

Yep. It's just non-existent even. Should have gone to a ticketing agency. They know how to do this sort of shit. The Ticketmaster would have at least got this shit done, cost you an arm and a leg, and maybe a kidney. It would have charged you a ton of service fees, but. Yeah. And you would have gotten like a free Pearl Jam album, but there you go.

Woo! Then you'd want to kill yourself. Please. Can I have COVID instead? All right. So let's get back a little bit to technology news. The Independent Facebook Oversight Board has made its first rulings. There were more than 150,000 cases submitted. Six were chosen.

Six. The cases were emblematic of bigger thematic issues and content moderation, such as censorship of hate speech, female nudity, and COVID-19 misinformation. Five decisions were released today of these six from the 150,000 that were submitted. Glad these guys are working hard.

According to the board, the cases were debated by five panel members, each of which included a representative from the place where the post in question was written. The panel sometimes requested public comments and integrated them into their decision before finalizing a decision. A majority of the board had to agree. Now, here's where it gets interesting.

Michael McConnell, who is director of Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, said he agreed to join the board because it recently dawned on him that, and I quote, The real decisions about what people can say and how they say it in our world are no longer based on Supreme Court decisions, but by companies like Facebook instead.

There's a chilling sentence if I've ever heard one. That's the big takeaway from this story. Let's get on to the rulings. The five rulings shared Thursday are detailed in the link in our show notes for we're in favor of overturning Facebook's original decision to remove a post.

So it seems the boards are basically saying we're going for free speech here for the most part. A lot of them were obviously four out of the five. That's quite a lot. Next up on the agenda is its biggest case to date. Should Donald Trump be allowed back on Facebook? Yeah.

Now, they're going to say yes, judging on their current decision so far. On the plus side, there won't be a conclusion revealed for more than 80 days. So enjoy your 80 days of peace. Yes. And I have a link to a TechCrunch article on how you can go give feedback to Facebook's oversight board.

And the really chilling thing is that Michael McConnell from Stanford Law, he used to be a judge, a federal judge. Yes. And he's just like, fuck it, give up. I'm going to Facebook. Let's try and make some change from the inside. And, of course, Robin Hood's in the news.

That's all that's in the news. Do you even want to talk about this? Because, I mean, I'm going to leave a bunch of links here. But this is like one of those things where I'm like, half of me is just like, tee-hee-hee. This is funny. It's fun to watch.

Here's the thing, though. If you break the system, you're going to kill your mom and dad's retirement. That's the other side. That's the, oh, fuck. There's the tee-hee-hee. This is fun. And the, oh, shit. Look, I have no sympathy for the hedge funds. I think hedge fund trading has gone completely bonkers and way out of proportion to what it should be.

I've read some articles saying that hedge funds actually do serve a useful purpose in terms of keeping prices on companies that have gone wildly overvalued in check. I can understand that. I understand the anger. I understand the joy and pleasure of what they did.

I think it's fine. They did not break any rules. They broke – if they did break a rule, they've been breaking the same rules that the big guys have been breaking for a long time to game a stock. They gamed a stock, and good for them. That's awesome. The idea that they want to take down all of Wall Street, I don't think you wanted to do that.

No, that would be a bad idea. That's all I'm going to say. That would be bad. Let's destroy money as we know it. No, thank you. Yeah, the law of unintended consequences there would be very, very bad. And unfortunately, it's these people that don't really know what they're doing.

They're going to be caught holding the bag. Eventually, the stock will crash. And a lot of people will – the smarter people, the smarter Redditors are probably already selling and getting out now and making a lot of money. They're gone out. They pulled theirs out already. So it's going to be the poor saps that wanted to get in on a good thing and maybe even have a real philosophical, like, fuck these guys.

I'm sticking in it for the long haul. You're going to lose all your money. So, sorry. Yeah, that's how that works. Yeah. When the readjustment comes, stay away from the windows. You will be readjusted. Yeah, stay away from the windows is all I got to say.

Yeah. And I've been saying this for eight years now. Driverless cars and robots. We'll need maintenance, and we're all going to be robot mechanics in the future. And now Amazon. Amazon is finally bringing it home. They have a page called Mechatronics and Robotics, a career for your future that reads like something straight out of Starship Troopers almost.

They've committed $700 million to retrain 100,000 employees by 2025. So you can go sign up now if you want to be a robot mechanic. I swear to God, if I were 10 years younger, I'd be signing up. I'd be signing up for this. Absolutely. I really would be.

If you're in your 30s right now and you're working in tech, go sign up for this. Yeah. That's it. That's what you need to do. Oh, the future is great. It's exactly dystopian. It's exactly what we've said the whole goddamn time we've been on the air.

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Media Candy. Well, in fun news, Netflix's Sandman cast has been revealed. And I got to say, I am pretty okay with the entire casting decision so far. All right. Yeah. Good to see Gwendolyn Christie getting work. I enjoyed her in Game of Thrones.

Yes. Fantastic. I don't know who Tom Sturridge is, but he's got the look. So, and he's British, so hopefully he can pull it off well. Now I'm going to be singing that fucking song all day. You've got the look. That was Roxette, right? Yeah. Kind of Gwendolyn Christie could play Roxette if there was a Roxette documentary.

Make it happen, people. Make it happen. And I don't know if you got this email, but I got it. And it said, you're getting $4.99 a month in credit from Apple TV Plus through June. I did not because I canceled my Apple TV Plus because it was coming up for renewal. And we switched to my wife's because hers came in later and she's got it for longer.

So she probably got it. Yeah. I've got, they say, it basically just says, we're applying $4.99 in credit to your Apple ID each month. You're subscribed from February through June to keep enjoying Apple Original Shows and Movies. That's it. No further action is required. Well, there is a further action required.

I'd have to enjoy an Apple Original Show or movie. There is the, besides Ted Lasso. Yeah. That's the only thing. They're trying to keep you hooked until Ted Lasso comes back. Right. And a little follow-up on Greenland. I did finally finish the movie. Mm-hmm. Do not bother. Okay.

Bad ending. Bad ending. I'm not on it. Do not be on it. I did watch The Night Stalker on Netflix. It was a good documentary. The only downside of it is they did not go into the abuse that he had as a child that basically turned him into a manufactured psychopath.

I would have really liked to have seen that because, you know, there's a lot of science behind why he became who he was and what he did, what he did. And I would have liked to have seen that in the documentary. But otherwise, it was a pretty good documentary on the stuff that happened. Not for me.

I don't like these sorts of things anyways. And I grew up here and I remember vividly the terror that everybody felt here. No, I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah. So I watched Tiger on HBO Max. Mm-hmm. Nah. Skip it. Okay.

Skip it. It was one of those things where if it was just his career, I'd have been fine with it. But then they got into all of the Rachel Yucatel shit, who was a garbage person, and all the other people behind it. And I'm not a fan of that part of it. It was good to see his career and what he did, how he came back, and all the other stuff.

It was a really interesting thing. And, you know, terrible father just beat the – you know, just beat golf into this kid from day one. Very Jackson-esque, you know? Right. But, I mean, the golf part was actually quite fascinating. And The Expanse, we've got one to go.

One to go. I can't believe it's almost done. What do you think of this season so far? Okay. Not enough happening. Not pushing. The fact that there's only one episode left, and I feel like nothing's really happened, is kind of a bummer. That is it. That is a huge bummer. And they've only got one more season in the contract for Amazon.

It'll get renewed. You think so? Yeah. Okay. Well, I mean, God, they keep making the grand tours, so there's a very low bar to be had here. But, yeah, this season has been just a snore fest. Yeah. Really, nothing's going on.

Yeah. Speaking of nothing going on, The Little Things, also on HBO Max, came out this week. One of those big movies that, you know, they were supposed to be in the theaters. It was a simultaneous release, HBO Max and in the theaters. Wow. 75% of that movie was somewhat interesting, and the last 25% also garbage.

All right. Yeah. Rotten Tomatoes will back me up on this one. They're like 46%. Yep. And, of course, the movie that was supposed to save cinema from COVID that you've already seen and hated, Tenet, I watched that on the plane. Wow. No real story to speak of.

I suppose we were supposed to be impressed by the cinematography of things moving forward and backward at the same time on the screen. You can see that on TikTok. Yeah. Who gives a fuck? It's got better plot lines on TikTok, too. Exactly. Like, people have figured out this technology and these tricks.

Sure, not as wonderful in 40 millimeter whatever, but who gives a shit? God, that was a waste of time. Yep. Told you. Yeah. I did watch Mulan, though, also on the plane, and that was delightful. Really? Yeah. Highly enjoyed it. All right.

Okay. Not up my alley, but okay. And I saw this one this morning. I thought of you and me because I want to see this. Newtly released footage of a 2007 Daft Punk concert in Chicago. And this was Grant Park.

And I watched a bit of it this morning. I'm going to put this on in the background while I'm working today because. 2007 was peak Daft Punk for me. Like, I know they got bigger because they got, you know, pop after this, but this was as good as it got. And the concerts in this era, I saw them.

They did, well, they did L.A., but obviously I saw them in L.A., but they also, they played the dance tent. They closed out the dance tent at Coachella. This is before Coachella jumped the shark for this year as well. And it was one of the best shows I've ever seen in my entire life. Wow. Yeah. I've never seen them, so I'm going to watch this and enjoy it from the salad days.

And it's funny because they did it in Grant Park. And the last time I was in Grant Park to see a concert was in 1995 on June 29th where I saw the Village People. Wow. Yep. The last time I saw a concert in Grant Park and it had to be the Village People.

But I got to say, they were pretty damn good. I'm sure Donald Trump was there. Apparently he's a big fan. Tried to play their music all the time. He played them on his way out the door. Quick Clash Royale, one month check-in.

I signed off a month ago and I'm not going back. Okay. Clan, you know, the clan's still there if you want to go join and play. I'm sure there's still a few people left. But they screwed up the game mechanics to the point where it was just no fun anymore. So I've just been kicking it with Alto, with Alto's Adventure and Alto's Odyssey.

I'm level 49 in Alto's Odyssey and level 60 in Alto's Adventure trying to get to the end. But they're very zen. You can just play that game, put some headphones on. The music's great. The visuals are great. And it's just a little physics game that is really fun.

I highly recommend it. And my position in gaming is I think I'm one month out from being reminded every five minutes by my iPhone that I have a free year of the iPhone gaming thing if I want it. And I just ignore it every single day. It's funny. I've got that, too. And I went and I installed, like, two games and haven't played a single one.

Because I get it. I also get it with my super Apple program that I get. So a little more Apple news here. Apple has said that, oh, go figure here. If you have a pacemaker, don't put a giant magnet next to it.

That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. There's a pretty – people were making a big deal about this that, you know, the MagSafe stuff in the iPhone 12 could affect a pacemaker because it's a big magnet. Well, I'm pretty sure people who have pacemakers already know not to put big magnets next to it because death.

But, yeah, this is for those people who didn't get the memo. And the new version of iOS 14.5, which will come out probably in a month or so, will let us unlock our iPhones while wearing a mask as long as we're wearing our Apple Watch.

Okay. Could have used that, I don't know, a year ago. Just in time for me to get my vaccines. Exactly. And Barrett had sent this one in to us. Microsoft has patented a chatbot that could imitate deceased loved ones, celebrities, or fictional characters.

Well, they've done so well. Because they've got such a great track record of their bots. When was it? It was three days? No, it was like 17 minutes before the one became racist. Before it became a raging racist. Yes. Oh, good. Well, a lot of people's grandmas are racist, so.

That's true. That's true. Not too far to go. No, that one actually might work then. This might be a solid product. And I've been using Gemini 2 from MacPaw. Have you ever heard of this one? I have. Yeah.

It basically lets you locate and remove duplicate files, even if they're in remote corners of your system. Gemini 2 scans your whole disk speed of light fast, no matter how massive it is. Now, I want to take a break here and say, let's be a little honest here.

Speed of light fast. Maybe in an alternate Werner-Wingi universe, you know, where speed of light is not a constant. But yeah, it's slow as fuck, but it does get the job done. I've been trying to get through all my old hard drives that have all these, like, you know, okay, backup from this computer, backup from that computer.

And they're all the same shit, just, you know. Backed up multiple times, yes. Yeah. I have pulled out 600 gigabytes so far, and I probably have a lot more to go. But it's nice to be able to know that, you know, you're finally getting close to having it clean. Right. Maybe.

And as I'm deleting all this stuff, I'm like, why don't I just delete it all? Because who gives a shit? That's, I mean, I have so many backups of, like, you know, 20 years of work and stuff like that. And they're all on CD-ROM. And they're probably all not readable anymore. And I don't care. Yeah, a long time ago, my CD-ROMs were dying, so I just did disk images of them.

Right. And there was some kind of Unix, it was like OS 10, like, 0.1 or something, you know. So I'm ripping them. And the visibility bit was set to zero for a lot of them. So I'd have to go manually into the folder in a command line and type make dir and do, like, a blank folder.

You couldn't make it in the Finder, but if you did make dir and then created a folder, then all the files would pop up. And I'm like, do I really, really care if I have the source code to a website that I did for a client 25 years ago? No, I don't.

So I think all those are going away. You can probably recycle those CDs now because, yeah, they're goasters. I don't even know where they are, to be honest. It's just gone. That's fine. I did find a cool Google Chrome extension that works with the Brave browser called Change Case.

Okay. And it lets you in line change things to, you know, different cases, small caps, title caps is the one that I want. So you can easily do that instead of having to go to a website and pop it in. But the thing about it is I don't know which version of title case they're using.

Are they using AP or this one or that one? Not like I really give a shit which one. It gives me title case. I'm done. Right. And it's free. Okay. And real quick here, back to Apple real quick. They've got this new thing with Fitness Plus, which I still haven't played with.

I haven't done my workouts or anything because I just don't care anymore. I COVID care about my workouts. This is a new thing on Fitness Plus where you can add these walking, basically kind of like a mini audio book to your watch.

A guided walk. Right. Yes. Yes. And, of course, they say on CNET, Apple's new celebrity guided walking tours on Fitness Plus are watch-only immersive podcasts. Well, no, not a fucking podcast. And the article goes on to explain how these are all podcast-like audio experiences.

So get your fucking shit straight, CNET. Period. Okay. Well, I took a bunch of my Echo products, my Amazon Echo products, to Toronto to set them up. So I had to actually come home and then realize, oh, I no longer have a – I don't have music in my bedroom anymore.

And I don't have a Fire TV stick to do my workouts in my bedroom because I'm still COVID caring. So I had to order new ones here, which is fine because I'm going to need more in Toronto eventually. So these will get moved with me too. So I ordered the all-new Echo fourth generation with premium sound, smart home hub, and Alexa charcoal.

Now, this is the ball. And I was reading the reviews on it because I kind of wanted the same one that I'd had before, which was the stick. But now that I have a ball, whatever. So now you have a lady and a ball, not a lady and a tube. I have a lady and a ball now. But the sound on this thing, which was what they were talking about in the reviews, I can confirm this.

It is great. Really? It leaps forward from previous devices. Like so much so that I actually even had to be like, turn the bass down. It was way too high. Who are you and what have you done with Brian? Well, maybe I'll put it back up if I listen to that Daft Punk thing on it.

Yeah. Yeah, the sound is phenomenal. It's still mono though, really. But I mean, they do some good tricks on it. So I eventually have to get two balls. Put the stick in the middle and take a photo because I'm 12 years old still. And I got the Fire TV stick 4K streaming device with Alexa voice remote Dolby Vision.

Don't put the 4K stick in the middle of the balls because then you're like Michelangelo's David. You don't want to put that out to the world. Yeah, no, I want to get a version one, the tall. Yeah. More accurate representation. I'm just saying. They've really streamlined set up on these things.

I've got to say it was quick. It was easy. It just pulled in all the settings from the previous ones that I had, the ones sitting in Toronto. I mean, I plugged it in and, you know, 10 minutes of downloading all the apps, you're done. And it's completely set up, which is nice. Cool. Cool. I bought a new bike helmet this week, too, from Thousand Bike Helmets.

I always hate going out on my bike because the helmets are stupid looking. You just look like a twat, right? I just don't like them. And then I found Thousand through Chris Lockhead. And they're cool looking. They're supremely cool looking, I think, personally, for me.

Okay. You don't like them? Fine. You can wear the space helmet. These are, when I see, okay, these are actually probably okay for if you're riding a bike. But these are the douchebag motorcycle helmet guys. They kind of look, well, yeah, the little tiny brain bucket ones. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I'm riding a bike, and it's fine.

It's got the little, it's got the sun visor, whatever. I would argue you're riding a half bike, half motorcycle. Yes, I am. I am. It's basically a moped. You're a half douchebag. Brian, let's be honest. I am full douchebag all the time. It doesn't matter what helmet I'm wearing.

I just prefer not to look like one. So I got the stealth black monochrammed with my initials because I'm cool that way. But they're $100. And the other thing is I got this super swanky, you know, Bluetooth helmet thing.

Bluetooth doesn't work on it. Charges, can't pair. It doesn't turn on. It's a piece of garbage. Of course, I threw out the receipt, so I can't return it. And I'm just like, eh, whatever. I like these helmets. I like the story behind them. There's a new podcast out that I produced for Chris Lockhead called How to Be a Bootstrap Entrepreneur on a Mission with Thousand Helmet CEO Gloria Huang.

And she's local here in L.A. And the whole company is here in L.A. Cool. And it's a good story. It's a really good story. So a link to that will be in the show notes. But check them out if you're looking for a bike helmet because I like these better than the other ones. That's just me. Brian, I finished the stand.

All right. What did you think? Juice was not worth the squeeze on that one. It's all I got. It's like 48 hours of audio book. And, yeah, yeah. You know, Stephen King, for me, I've said it a few times.

I don't think he knows how to stick a landing. He reminds me of the guy on ABC's Wide World of Sports with Howard Cosell, the skier at the very beginning, who's coming down the mountain and then just eats shit and flies through the flags. That's how I feel about every Stephen King ending to all of his novels.

All right. I enjoyed it. I'm fine with it. I thought it was great. There was an interesting tie in, though, with the audio book because Grover Gardner reads the audio book, but he also reads the Vorkosigan series. And so I'm listening to this and he's a great, great, you know, reader of audio books.

But there's a weird thing at the beginning of the book where they're in the compound and, you know, things are going on. And this guy is reading a flimsy. And I'm like, flimsy. I'm like, am I reading a fucking Vorkosigan book? Because flimsies in the Vorkosigan novels are everywhere.

That's like their paper. They always hand out flimsy. So I was definitely taken out of the book by the fact that the stand had flimsies in them. Okay. That was really weird. It was just a really weird crossover. I did try and watch the first episode of the stand series on CBS last night.

And no, can't do it. Can't do it. Casting's all wrong. Casting is all wrong, which is what you said, too. Yeah, that's a problem, right? Yeah. And I always thought Flagg would have black hair, not blonde. So right there, I'm just like, nope, can't watch it. Done.

I also don't like that they do that time jumping thing. It's like, I want to see it in order. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's just like, nah, I can't. And then I just finished it and I had a bad taste in my mouth from finishing the book. Okay. Fair enough. So I had a palate cleanser.

Palate cleanser. I'm reading Calling Bullshit, The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World by Carl T. Bergstrom and Jevin D. West. All right. I've talked about these guys before. They're college professors who have a class called Calling Bullshit and follow them on Twitter. They're awesome. But the book so far, I'm like a couple chapters in and I'm laughing my ass off.

It is funny as shit. And these guys are like our spirit animal for sure. Excellent. I finished a book and I'll get to that in a second, but I'm also on a bit of a cleanser from it. I am halfway through the latest Bobiverse book, which finally came out on Amazon Kindle.

And it was slow going at first, but I'm halfway in and now it's just a fun roller coaster and I'm really enjoying it. And I desperately needed that kind of silly humor book after reading The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, which was highly recommended by a bunch of folks on our Discord. It is one of the best books I've ever written.

You've written it? It's one of the best books I've ever read. It really is. I wanted to kill myself a quarter away in the book. It was so depressing. It's near future. It's very realistic. It's hyper realistic. It gets into politics. It gets into ecology.

It gets into the world basically falling apart and how little anybody can actually do about it because politics. But it picks up. It gets better. They solve problems as much as they can. They bumble their way through. It's very realistic. It's extremely good.

I cannot recommend it enough. The whole India Bitcoin thing straight out of this book. An article I just saw right before we started to record, so I didn't get it in the show notes. China has opened its national carbon trading market yesterday. Straight out of the book. Got another story coming later.

Straight out of the book. Like, it is worth the read, man. Go for it. Is it a monster book? No, it's not a monster book. It's not a monster book. It took me a couple of weeks because it was so damn depressing at the start. Okay. Well, yeah. The stand took me a couple of weeks because it was so damn big, and it was just depressing because he couldn't stick the landing.

But that's just – I'll finish. When I'm done with calling bullshit, maybe I'll try this one to get back into it. All right. Security? Ha! We're all back again with 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 Ben Yellen, where they discuss law and policy as well as surveillance and privacy. The gang's all back. The gang's all back. Woo!

We're getting the band back together. That's right. That's nice. Hello, gents. Hello. How are we doing today? Everybody doing all right? Beach keen. Doing okay. Reentry has been welcome to COVID land, but, you know, at least I came back to – I said I was hoping when I first left, I'm coming back to a Trump-less country.

Mostly achieved. Yes. That's right. So we will be optimistic. He's been quiet. Yes. Too quiet. I believe his lawyers have told him he better shut up. At least the ones that haven't quit. Yes. Yeah. So I have to ask – we've talked about this on this segment with you before, Brian, about, you know, immigration and what it takes to get through.

Is it different in COVID times? For the U.S.? Either way. I mean, guests coming back since that's the one you just did. Going to Canada, if you were just an American citizen, you would not be allowed. That's it. Like, I got in because I'm married and my kid is both.

So, you know, I'm fathered in, as it were, rather than grandfathered in. So I would not have been able to go to Canada at all. Canada has now instituted even more policies. So when we go back, hopefully we will be able to get our vaccines here. And that will save a lot of the effort.

But when we go back, at least right now, they are requiring, obviously, and have been requiring COVID tests. So you have to prove that you've had a test within three days. And they've done this whole thing now where you have to stay. They will do a rapid test when you arrive, even if you've had the COVID test.

And you will have to stay in a hotel of governments choosing. You get to select from their list for three days until that test comes back. So that's just going to Canada. Now, coming here, it's a free-for-all. But that's changing. In fact, I think it just changed the day or the two days after we came back in is when Biden installed and instituted the you have to have the COVID test if you're coming internationally.

But what about the actual process at the airport? Was there anything strange with it? I mean, they're obviously always behind glass already. But was there any extra checks? Or did they just shuffle you through? They pretty much shuffle you through. The weird thing is, obviously, anytime anybody is checking your ID, they make you pull your mask down.

So you're like, well, shit. Whatever was in the air here. Turn your head and hold your breath. That's a bit of a drag. Everything else is pretty much the same. They try to minimize contact as much as possible. So you do a lot more lugging of your own luggage over to some carrying carts and stuff like that.

So they never really touch your luggage anymore. So that's about it. All right. I don't know. Someone asked me this week if I would go on an airplane right now. And I don't think I would if I – not unless I absolutely had to.

You know, the airplanes are – we flew Air Canada. They're very strict and have been and have been known to be in that they've banned people for life from their airline if they do not wear their masks during the whole flight. They do not serve food anymore.

They don't – they'll bring you a drink and it's very much hurry up with your drink and get your mask back on immediately. We had a whole family on our flight to Toronto that was basically refusing to wear their masks and they got the riot act read to them.

They were basically like, if we have to warn you one more time, you will never fly on this airline again. Now, would I fly a lot of other airlines? Probably not. Having said all of that, from my research and reading up on it, as long as you have a plane in good working order, their filter systems are apparently very good.

You are safer in the plane if people are wearing their masks than you are in the airport. The airport is the scary part. Hmm. Okay. That's interesting. Good to know. So, that's what I know about all that. But I do have a story to tell upon my reentry.

We have talked a bit about Amazon's rings, how they've teamed up with police and fire departments and all that sort of stuff. So, I have a bit of a news about that. There's been a lot of controversy about this program, but it has definitely ramped up. There are now over 2,014 police and fire department partnerships in the U.S. with Amazon Ring.

1,189 of them were added last year alone. Montana and Wyoming are the only two states where they don't have some kind of deal. And apparently, these departments are making use of these team-ups. Ring has said that the department requested videos for over 22,335 incidents last year alone, which is quite a lot.

Now, we've got some sorts of privacy that's been added to these things. They finally have end-to-end encryption. Many of us would argue that should have been there to begin with. But the EFF is still saying that this is not cool. Just because you're comfortable sharing videos with the police department doesn't mean that your neighbors or passersby have granted their consent.

And this amounts to a massive and unchallenged surveillance network, according to the EFF, which has been my argument for quite some time. It's what do you do if somebody's ring doorbell is pointed directly into your window? That's not cool. So, that brings me to my story.

I moved to Toronto for three months to set up the new house that we had purchased there. We own a condo here in Santa Monica. It's a small unit, about 10 people. While I was in Toronto, the HOA sent out an email saying, since coronavirus hit, there's been an increase in homelessness in the area.

There's been an increase in crime in the area. All of that's very true. And they now want to install a camera in the back of our unit. We have one of the backward-facing units as well. So, they want to put the camera there. So, it looks at the stairwell.

It looks at the garage door because there has been, like, one homeless person got into our garage. Most likely because somebody wasn't paying attention. Everything is locked. There's gates. Blah, blah, blah. So, I voted against it because I was like, you know, it's mostly security theater anyways and what's the point?

And honestly, they just look ugly and they don't include – they're not good for resale value and I'm looking to sell in the near future. So, I didn't want – I voted no against it. But, you know, everybody else voted for it and I didn't give it a second thought. I'm like, okay, so there's going to be a security camera in the back of our building now.

We get home late at night from our flight. Very tired. Just put all of our stuff away. Go to bed. The next morning, I'm making coffee and I pull down my blinds to the back area and I look up at my usual nice view of palm trees and things of that nature and I see a security camera pointing at me in my kitchen through my mirror.

Not my mirror, through my window. Just imagining you standing there in your boxer shorts and a t-shirt like with a, you know, a five o'clock shadow and a mugging. A mug of coffee. And I think that's odd that it would be right there. I wonder if they have checked to see where this video camera looks at.

And I write my HOA very politely and I say, I may have an issue with placement. Can I please have access to the camera view? I get a very, they were obviously aware of the fact that this, they knew what was going on when they installed this because the email that came back with access was, we understand you may have an issue with placement of this camera.

And so then I looked at the footage and put it on in real time view and because it's only records, it's only recording for motion and all that. And I do a little test. I walk from my little kitchen table where I'm sipping my coffee over to my kitchen to refill my coffee.

I come back to my laptop and there I am refilling my coffee. I have triggered the motion sensor. Please tell me you did the risky business slide into the camera view. I was a tad disoriented at this point still from travel and the morning and the fact that all of a sudden I have big brother watching me.

So I fired off an email and I kind of just said, yeah, you're going to have to take that down. Now, luckily the HOA understood, but I could see a situation where you would just be shit out of luck. And it was very disturbing and it was very, I very much felt like my privacy was being invaded and I was not cool with it at all.

Yeah, it's weird to have a camera that you know is pointing into your business and basically your only option is keep your blinds closed all the time. Or buy some spray paint. Or that, or just knock it down with a baseball bat. Yeah, that too. And it was a ring camera too.

I was just like, what's wrong with you people? It was a ring? Mm-hmm. Oh, God. Yeah. So, and, you know, I didn't ask, but I was like, did you guys opt in? They probably did. So now there's footage of me getting some coffee at the local police station. I mean, is this a management company who's- No, it's self-HOA.

So we know all the people. And that's probably why it was such a painless process of just kind of like, come on, guy. Right. You know, we're going to have to move that camera. You can't have it pointing into our unit, for Christ's sake. Yeah. The big thing in my neighborhood nowadays, which I've seen come through the neighborhood app quite a few times, which I just get, I just, this just makes me laugh and tickles me pink.

It's, I would show you video, but someone stole my ring camera. In my neighborhood, people's ring cameras are being ripped off and stolen before people break in now. So that's the new hotness. Well, they just basically pry them off the wall and run.

It's like how, you know, because everybody, remember back in the 80s, I guess it was, everybody got car alarms and that led to carjacking. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Exactly. So people will find a way. And most people are too lazy to do like the hard wiring and drill, drill these cameras in and all that.

They just go with battery packs and stick them up. Right. So there you go. So even if you don't have ring, you might be in, in some degree of trouble here. I saw this story and I just couldn't believe how long it took for anybody to figure this out.

But this was with ADT, which is a well-known, well-established, been around forever security company. A former ADT security company employee has admitted to breaking into the cameras he installed in users' homes in the Dallas area to watch their private moments. He has pleaded guilty to computer fraud and now faces up to five years in federal prison.

According to the Department of Justice, Aviles, as I'll just use his last name, has admitted that he would take note of the homes of women he deemed attractive to log into their accounts and view feeds from their cameras for sexual gratification. He was able to access customers' footage by adding his email addresses to their accounts, which he would do either without their knowledge or there were times when he told them he needed temporary access for testing purposes.

He claims in his plea papers, he said he accessed over 200 customers' accounts more than 96,000 times or 9,600 times over the course of four and a half years. If it was 96,000 times, I don't think he was doing any work. Yeah, that's right.

Exactly. And I think he could say in court that it's like, no, I said testes purposes, not testing purposes. So they just misheard me. That's all. I knew what I was doing. His right arm looks like Popeye. He was a southpaw. Come on.

Oh, I see. Well, yeah, you know, it's got to get a little strange. I just can't believe that this went on for four and a half years and there's absolutely no oversight whatsoever. Nobody – it's insane to me. Yeah. I mean, I blame ADT here.

Oh, yeah, 100%. I think obviously they're going to be the focus of all the lawsuits that are coming. Count on it. Wait for it, right? Yep. And rightfully so. At least 200 of them. At a basic level, they should have had something that looked for a common email address across multiple accounts.

How hard would that be? And I don't know. We crossed the threshold of 200. Maybe you've got an issue here. Maybe there's something going on. And so I think they – it seems to me like they deserve the reputational damage that's coming their way. Who's – would you allow – would you – these people are allowing security cameras in their bedrooms.

Yeah. I mean, they go everywhere, right? It's not unintentional in my kitchen like the Ring outdoor camera was. This is – these companies will wire up your entire house if that's what you want. So who's watching the watchers? Yeah. It was another thing I thought of when I saw this story was I kind of stopped and took inventory in my mind of how many cameras are in my bedroom at any given time, you know.

And I mean there's – when my wife and I are asleep, there's two cameras in our room at least because both of our phones are on our nightstands. Right. And so cameras, you know, internet-facing connected cameras are ubiquitous and we just don't really think about them, that they're just everywhere.

Yeah. They're in everything now. I mean some TVs come with them now with cameras built in. Right. So you put a TV in your bedroom and God knows those – we've heard so many stories about Samsung in particular, their models, their internet-connected models. You really got to look out for them. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think about too, you know, you think, well, that camera's on the nightstand. It's, you know, it's laying there. It's facing the ceiling, whatever. But there's all kinds of times when I'll come out of the shower and she's sitting there in bed. Then it's sexy time. But you pick up your phone and you check your email, right?

And where's the camera pointed out? I know, Dave, because I've been watching. The cameras – You really need to stop using your phone on the can. I'm just saying. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you might want to try Manscaped.com.

Too bad they're not still a sponsor. I know. Yeah. FurryDave.com. FurryDave.com. That's true, actually. Dave does not Manscaped. No, no. Are you kidding me? I do the opposite thing. I just – I rub Rogaine all over my body. It's all just – I bathe in this stuff.

So I, you know, save all that money on costuming. Yeah, absolutely. Right. Oh. Man. No, I have – I actually do have a camera in my bedroom, but there's a hard switch on it. So I only turn it on when I need to watch the animals when I leave the house.

But I make sure that that thing is definitely hard switched off. When I come back in the room because it's the last thing – well, that's the last thing I want out there. But it's the last thing anybody wants to see. Nobody – trust me. I know from experience here, nobody wants to see this.

My defense against this is my diet. I just eat a lot. I have a birth control physique. I don't have to outrun the bear. I just have to outrun you. I just have to be less attractive than you. And people just move on, move on.

Next, next. Speaking of next, we got this one over at TechTart. Michigan State Police officials are dodging public records obligations by using encrypted messaging apps. Oh, joy. What's good for the goose is not apparently good enough for the gander. So they're using the old, you know, the signals and the – what's the other one?

Telegram. Telegram to basically communicate with each other and not be susceptible to, you know, subpoenas and law enforcement and things like that themselves basically because they know how to get around it. What do you guys think about this?

Are you surprised? Because I sure as shit am not. No. I mean, as soon as I heard that they were basically taking off body cameras and leaving them in their cars when they went off to do things that they kind of knew that they were going to be nefarious about to begin with, no, of course I'm not surprised. Are there good cops out there that aren't doing this?

Of course there are. Is this probably systemic? Of course it is. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think this goes back a long way before this. You know, cops would have their own private cell phones and they'd – you know, if you were someone who monitors – what do you call it?

Police scanners, you know, that sort of thing, monitors that traffic. You know, cops have code to talk to each other and say, let's take this offline. And OK, I grant them that. But this – to do an end around on the public records thing is not cool.

But the thing I – what this reminded me of was it seems like this is – I don't know that I've ever seen someone really punished in a meaningful way for any of this public records stuff. I mean, we saw in the last presidential administration, just everybody was using their private email addresses for public business.

Butter emails. Butter emails. Yeah, but it's – nobody – it just seems like you get a slap on the wrist and say, oh, don't do that anymore. But then nothing else happens with it. So – Yeah. I suspect what's going to happen here is these folks will figure out how to dial it in to get enough traffic on the public channels so that it doesn't draw attention to itself.

But if you need to communicate, you know, people are going to find a way to do that. And that's the world we live in. Yay. Crime finds a way. Right. Oh, I miss Jurassic Park.

I want to go see that again. I saw that. That was one of the only things I've ever seen in one of those 3D TVs. My friend had this massive 3D TV and he had rumble seats. So, like, rumble lazy boys. So, you sit back, you put the stupid goggles on, and then when the T-Rex comes at you, it feels like, you know, you're getting a nice, you know, butt massage.

Yeah. I got to say, it was awesome. It was awesome. I wouldn't want to watch, you know, like, The Good Place like that. I got to say, though, it was pretty good. Yeah. That movie holds up. It really does. Oh, my God. It's so good. So good. Yeah. I'm looking forward to my kid being quite old enough to watch it.

He's not there yet, but he will be soon. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think he's there yet. What is he, five now? Four. Still four. Four. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I think I was a teenager and it still scared the crap out of me. Man. Yeah. There's a good, there's a YouTube video out there that looks into the original Jurassic Park and then the sequels and analyzes how Spielberg's use of aspect ratios is one of

the main reasons why the original is such a superior movie, that it allows him certain ways to frame things that the choices they made for aspect ratios for the sequels don't do. So if you're into that sort of thing, the cinematography side of a movie like Jurassic Park, hunt that down.

It's pretty easy to find on YouTube. Cool. Oh, I'll check that out for sure. And I did just download the new Jurassic Park game for my Oculus Quest. So I get to run away from raptors in my living room looking like a nerd, but that's the security footage I want to see.

That's what I want to look through the window and see you running back and forth with your headset on, slamming into walls, tripping over furniture, terrified of being chased by raptors. That is a pay-per-view channel waiting to happen.

Coming soon to a TikTok near you. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So my final one comes from the No Shit Sherlock Files. Facebook ad services let anyone target U.S. military personnel. This is over Wired. Researchers warned that an advertising platform with categories like Army and United States Air Force security services could be abused.

Now, do we really need researchers to tell us this? Because it seems pretty fucking common sense. I thought it was the weirdest thing ever, too. Because I remember, I haven't done Facebook advertising for years now, but years ago when I was doing it, I would see that as a category. And I'm like, that's odd.

That seems not quite right. But yeah, it's still there. I mean, I understand state and I understand basic demographics, but do we really need to dial it in quite that far? By how high your security clearance is. Are you a five-star or a four-star?

Where do you work specifically? Well, actually, I mean, you can dial that in, right? You do location and then you do armed services and you can probably figure out Area 51 employees pretty quickly. Well, if somebody's phone spends nine to five in the parking lot at Fort Meade every day because they're not allowed to take it in with them to the skiff, you know, then you might be onto something there.

Yeah. Yeah. But you guys remember the old Jordan Harbinger video that he did, I think at DEF CON, where he goes into how he trolled people on LinkedIn for top secret clearance because he just searched for top secret clearance and got to all these people who had top secret clearance.

It's not hard. It's not hard. But like, why did they make it so easy? I guess. Yes, they can. Yes. Reid Hoffman and Zucker, you know, they're just, they work for the poots. They work for the poots. That's all it is. So I just thought that was, I'm like, do we really need a researcher to tell us this?

And can I get that job? Because I, we do this every week and I'm sure that researcher gets paid a hell of a lot more than we do. Yep. Captain Obvious reporting for duty, sir. That's all I got this week, guys. All right. Very good.

Well, Brian, welcome back to, uh, yeah, America. I mean, it is in some, it's, you know, I, look, I will tell you that in the past couple of weeks, I have noticed a real shift in the folks that I've been interviewing.

And I do probably, I don't know what, two or three interviews a day on average. And there is more of a hopeful attitude that people have. There's more, there's more bounce in their step. Like you can tell people are looking towards the horizon more that, that good things are probably going to come.

So, um, you know, I think let's, let's, uh, let's, let's take that for what it is and, uh, and enjoy it. Okay. I shall try. How did it, how'd it go? And, and, and keep your blinds down in your, in your, uh, you're in your condo.

Yes. Keep your blinds down. I'm worried more about the micro than the macro these days. That's a plus. Yeah. That makes sense. That makes sense. All right, guys. Well, stay safe. I'll talk to you guys next time. All righty. Feedback loop. Over at Patreon.

We've got Dave H. Pete and Dave and Gorham fracker. Hey, Jason and Brian been listening for a few years and thought it was about time. I throw money at you. Thank you. And, uh, in case you didn't get it, Gorham is goddamn in Firefly and fracker is fucker in BSG. In case you didn't get it. I got it.

I got it. Okay. All good. And James and James says, did you ever check out the good job brain podcast? Uh, do you remember that one, Brian? Cause I'd looked at the show art for it and it was familiar, but I don't remember if I listened to it. No, I don't remember it. Okay. Also, have you tried listening to or reading the Dresden files?

Uh, they're good magic books based in real world Chicago, read by James Marsters, who played spike on Buffy. Uh, no, I haven't, but I did read, um, Ian Tregellis's milkweed series from you, Brian. Yep. And looking at the, the descriptions of the Dresden files, it really reminded me of the milkweed series, which I really enjoyed the Dresden files too.

And before I even saw you put this in the show notes, I was thinking the exact same thing. I was like, didn't I read these? Oh, wait, no, that was a different special. Yeah. Yeah. No, the milkweed series was pretty good. And he goes on to say, also episode 183, Jason lost his pager, throwing it at a squirrel.

I need for info. I need more information. No. Yeah. You gotta go to Patreon for that one. No, nope. That one stays here. All right. So Steve also sent us a message.

So how to age a programmer seems to come down to what editor they use. Keyboard shortcuts make editors very sticky. He was talking to someone this week who didn't use visual code since he knows Eclipse. Shortcuts started to wonder how old I was. Never moved off VI for most things except coding. Sort of proud that I started using visual code this year.

Old dog, new tricks, et cetera. Eclipse. Man, I forgot about Eclipse. I used that for a couple of years. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I love VI. I still know all my VI shortcuts. It's just muscle memory, but I never coded in it. I never coded in it.

Yeah. Now, Allison writes in, regarding non-offensive kids TV shows for the Wildcats age group, check out the reboots of Carmen Sandiego and the Magic School Bus on Netflix. The Dragon Prince, also on Netflix, is also great, but might be a little old for the kid because it has parental death.

Okay. So did Bambi. I've been watching the Magic School Bus. I do enjoy that one. It's pretty good. I like both the old and new. They're both really, actually, very funny for kids. So thank you for that. Over at PayPal, Adam, Charlie, Jeffrey, John, John, Jonathan.

I bunched all those together because I thought it was funny. Joseph and Judge. And here come the M's. Mark, Matt, Matthew, Michael. Some N's. Nicola, Nicolai, Scott, Simon, Thomas, Tom, Doug, and Shailene. I love how you took credit for alphabetizing that because I did it this morning.

I don't know why you bothered doing it. Because it was more fun. You caught it. I actually didn't remember if I did it or not. And over at Twitter, Mot6502 writes in, I bet this is giving HR departments a massive hard-on, a wristband that tells your boss if you are unhappy.

Yes, the wearable technology called a mood beam isn't here to monitor your physical health. Instead, it allows your employer to track your emotional state. The gadget, which links to a mobile phone app and web interface, has two buttons, one yellow and one blue. It's kind of like the little smiley face and unhappy face saying, was your shitter clean at the airport?

The idea is that you press the yellow one if you are feeling happy and the blue one if you are sad. Aimed at companies who wish to monitor the well-being of staff who are working from home, the idea is that employees are encouraged to wear the wristband. They can say no, or can they? And press the relevant button to see fit throughout the morning week.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The mood beam co-founder, Christina Colmer-McHugh, originally came up with the idea for the product after she discovered that her daughter was struggling at school and she wanted a way for her child to let her know how she was feeling. The wristband was launched commercially in 2016.

With many children, especially teenagers, likely to balk at the idea of having to press a button on a wristband to let their parents know how they're doing, how probable is it that employees would be willing to do the same for their boss? Actually, I think the relevant question here is, are we fucking adults or not? Like I said, use your words.

Because I can almost understand this for little kids. I can. Yeah. Sure. Okay. But we're fucking adults. What the fuck is wrong with people? I know. This is the dumbest fucking piece of technology I've... No, it's not the dumbest piece. I mean, we have 400...

No, we've had... We've covered way dumber pieces. ...93 episodes. Yeah. And I read the book, Interface, by Neil Stevenson and J. Frederick George, way back in the day. And they were pollsters that used this same type of technology, but it was more biofeedback to figure out, like when they're watching debates, like when the crowd would go from happy to sad about what the candidate was saying.

So I'm like, why doesn't she make it with biofeedback device? And instead of having buttons to press, because I'm feeling murderous would be a button I would press quite a lot, and they don't have that option. I'm feeling disappointed by humanity. Yes, well, that's the only button you need, my man.

That's the only button you need. Yeah. Grim Ghost writes in, so what do you guys think of this? And this is from Forbes. Drone swarms are getting too fast for humans to fight, U.S. General warns. General John Murray, head of Army Futures Command, told a webinar audience, oh, great, a webinar, at a Center for Strategic and International Studies that humans may not be able to fight swarms of enemy drones and that the rules governing human control over artificial intelligence might need to be relaxed.

This is the third story that is directly out of Ministry for the Future and got super depressing because basically the drone swarms got so good that they destroyed nation states and it was just a bunch of terrorists using them for a while and then eco-terrorists, and there was basically no stopping them.

Well, that was also out of a Daniel Suarez book called Freedom TM. It's not exactly a new concept, but we're actually getting there, so that's wonderful. Yeah, we just need the, you know, the magnetic pulse thing to, you know, boom, done, they all fall out of the sky.

Or more eagles, as we found out. Yes, eagles. Ivan writes in, know you're a fan of single-purpose sites. Not sure this falls into the category, but without a doubt, it is fun. And this is at 2020game.io. Did you play this? Yeah, a little bit. It was funny. It's funny.

I went through the whole game and I gave the developer five bucks because I thought he deserved it. It's a pretty fun little game. And Strickey sent in a link from change.org. Donald Trump is scheduled to arrive in Scotland later this week. He always flies into Glasgow Prestwick Airport. Please sign the petition to change the name to Joe Biden International.

And that is A-level trolling right there. Fucking love the Scots. I fucking love the Scots. And I scrolled too fast. Travis writes in, these companies are just flat out evil. Guess they got to try to figure out a way to ever be profitable.

And this is Lyft Test Program offers drivers more rides in exchange for 10% pay cut. Unbelievable. You can go into priority mode, which means they'll root you more of your drives, but you have to pay them 10%. So fuck that. Fuck these companies.

And they're calling it poverty mode, which is awesome. And I think our show title. Yes. Of all the things I've seen Uber and Lyft do, this is the ickiest. And that would be saying something. That's saying a lot. That is a lot. Yep. Awesome.

And Michaela writes in over at GOG.show. And this is Michaela who basically runs our Discord for us. So thank you so much. She sent the link from nationalgeographic.com. Has science solved one of history's greatest adventure mysteries? And I will let people read this, but I will read her entire coverage of this verbatim.

I posted this in hashtag good vibes on Discord, but I think it'd make a good in the news or maybe even media candy, considering, well, Disney's Frozen helped to solve Dilatov's pass. Specifically, the code used the movie for snow. You can control command F and for let it go, let it go. And the explanation for, I'm not reading this correctly.

You can control command plus F for let it go, let it go in the article for explanation on how they worked it out. Everything before that is pretty much explanation of the initial event. Michaela, how is this relevant to our show? Technology, man, technology solving 60 plus year old mysteries.

This is fucking hype. There was a lot of sketchy stuff around the past incident that made it easy for conspiracies to bloom around the event. And like I thought, avalanche covered most details, but it didn't cover all of them to my perception, but turns out I just didn't know physics. I'm stoked. I can't wait until we can control command F and get to the real situation with the conspiracy about the Capitol riots.

Maybe Aladdin will solve that one. My favorite one of the week though, man, was the guy that turned off the refrigerator in Wisconsin is a flat earther. And this is the, this is the best one I've heard yet. The sky is actually a dome constructed by the government to keep us from seeing the face of God.

Okay. I love it. That's a good one. That's a good one. Adelente writes in, Hey guys, wanted to hear your thoughts on this. I checked Apple's new privacy nutrition labels. Many were false. Yeah. We talked about this a little bit earlier. The only people reading those labels are journalists for articles like this.

My TLDR on this is Apple's privacy definitions are somewhat limited in terms of what we'd expect from privacy. Many developers have figured out the workarounds to continue to collect data and be approved by Apple. And of course there's the kicker. Apple's privacy labels are not only an unsatisfying product.

They all should send a message to lawmakers weighing whether the tech industry can be trusted to protect our privacy on its own. Yep. Yeah. But as we've seen, federal judges are saying, well, I'm just going to join boards of tech companies because, you know, the government can't do shit.

And Eric writes in, Hey Grumps, not so much for Jason, but I thought Brian and son might enjoy this very British kids program. Hey, Dougie, how a cult CB show became the surprise TV smash of lockdown. And so is there's no penis in this one, right? That's no, no penis in this one magic penis from the article.

It wrestles with some of life's biggest philosophical questions from the nature of existence to the meaning of art. It is littered with pop cultural references, apocalypse now, Donkey Kong and the cure to name just three. I got to actually check it out. I know my kid has watched this on YouTube, but I did not actively watched it with him.

I did Google it to make sure it's something I'm okay with him watching on YouTube back in the day. And that was fine. But now I'm going to have to sit and watch it. Good for you. Yeah. And Vincent sent in about seven emails again this week. So we'll run through them really quickly. Vincent says, Hiya, let's fly to Yukon for your COVID vaccine.

Egypt, Canadians, please dish out some of that Singaporean punishment. I bet these rich cunts spit gum on the ground too. Selfish monkeys. I think Vincent really drinks quite a bit before he writes us. I do too. That's what makes it great. Yeah, that's what makes it great. And this is the story about the Canadian CEO that had to resign because he got caught flying to a remote region to get the vaccine.

So, dick. Plus this opinion piece on how rich people get the nice things first, such as a house in a terrarium on Mars. And this is from newwestrecord.ca opinion. Here's how these millionaires managed to skip the vaccination line. Then he says, only a little grumpy this week after late shifts with very pleasant Canadian customers.

It happens here in Ireland. Woman suing Facebook for account hacking that was not resolved. Dublin woman sues Facebook over her account being hacked. I read through that. I think she's got a case. Cool. It's interesting. And hashtag Deliveroo Riders Strike. This was happening in Dublin this Friday evening.

Not sure this was actually trending, but good on them. Jason, you got it. Deliveroo! Strike. And Eddie writes in, I got two different texts on my iPhone this week from two random Gmail accounts with a link which I didn't open.

What do you think the scam is? Going to need a bit more information. Could be meat, could be cake, to quote the great George Garland. I don't have my Kreskin hat to see what's in the envelope. Basically, you know what to do.

You don't click on the links. There, done, solved. Yep. And Fiend of the Show Barrett writes in, quick note about how screwed up the COVID vaccination process is, at least here in my state. I volunteered to be part of a vaccination site yesterday. The plan they had was to stick with what was supposed to be the 1B group people, which were people actually working in the medical field with real patients.

So they had sent out a link to register for the shot, and those idiots passed the link to just about everyone they knew. Since its government-run created website, as we mentioned earlier, of course, it included no way to block people who were not in the medical field. We had scheduled about 435 people for the day, but ended up turning away about 80 who were mostly not in the medical field and included people who thought they qualified for just being over 65.

Luckily, at the end of the shift, they still have to use up any open vials, 10 doses per vial, so I was able to get my first Moderna shot. Oh, congrats. I've got another shift tomorrow night. I also now have full access to the registration system, and I realized that we let many people who weren't qualified through just out of pity. I wasn't about to turn away the 92-year-old man whose granddaughter brought him in.

So my 75-year-old mother-in-law has been frantically looking for a place to get hers. Guess who's getting on the list? Nepotism! Anyhow, my arm is sore. I had a mild headache this morning, but I am otherwise fine after my first dose. Stay grumpy. Fuck Trump. The long national nightmare is finally over.

Is it, though? Yeah, kind of. I'm happy now. That one's over. Yeah, that one's over. Everything else is... Hey, look, man. After the last four years, everything's fine. Yep. And then he did send a link in from the, we'll get to fixing that in a bit pile.

When Adobe stopped Flash content from running, it also stopped a Chinese railroad. That one was really funny. Yeah. So I love the writing on this. Adobe's Flash, the web browser plugin that powered so many crappy games, confusing interfaces, and animated icons of the early web like Homestar Runner is finally gone after a long, slow, protracted death.

So, but in China, in the city of Dalian in northern China, they were using it to run their railroad systems. Yes, a railroad run on Flash, the same thing used to run free online casinos and knockoff breakout games and mortgage refi ads. Oh, God.

So, yeah. But, you know, they've known this was coming for years. Yeah. But just when it went away on Tuesday, the railroad network ground to a halt for 20 hours because they didn't bother changing technology.

I'm surprised it was only 20 hours. Well, the way they decided to get it back up and running was not to write anything new. Instead, they installed a pirated version of Flash that was still operational. You know, it's great.

It seems to be known as ghost version. Strong bad would be proud. Yes. Oh, God. And over at iTunes, Edgy writes with a five star. Look forward to it every week. Need someone to bash every tech idea that's out there? This show is for you. Negativity at its best.

Yes, it is. And Mark from Vermont also gave us a five star and a very succinct review. My favorite podcast. Thanks, Crumps. Well, you're welcome, Mark from Vermont. Thank you. 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 or just say we're your favorite podcast. That works, too. That works, too. And if you're still on Overcast, click some stars every now and again. We're out of all the lists, but it'd be nice to get back in just a little bit.

Closing shout outs. So since we've been off, it's been two weeks. A lot of people have died that we would normally put in here, but there's just too many. And I want to end this on a happier note. So that's about all I got. Welcome back, Brian.

Welcome back to the U.S. Thank you. That's awesome being here. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Your support keeps this show going. And if you do like us, please head over to GOG.show slash donate to help us out. And we will love you forever.

You can also visit GOG.show slash shop and pick up some good old fashioned swag. If you can't do that, then just tell a friend. Honestly, please, please, pretty please tell a friend. Word of mouth is the only way we get to keep doing this. So spread the grump far and wide. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 493.

From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, donate to the show, buy our swag, and get links to stuff we like. Stay grumpy.

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