495: Gotta Spend Money to Lose Money

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. Exciting stuff. Exciting. What do we got today, Brian? Oh, we got a bit of follow-up. Unsurprisingly, the hacked Florida water plant didn't apparently need a genius to do it. Windows 7 PC is still in use. Shared passwords across the board. They might as well just had a post-it note up on the monitor saying password is 12345.

Yeah, and they used the remote access program TeamViewer. So while they weren't able to actually do anything, this is not exactly a good situation. This is what we've been talking about. Desperate need for infrastructure improvements. This is our shared water supply, for Christ's sake.

Windows 7 has been on the outs even longer than Adobe Flash. I don't know why anybody's still using it. They don't even release security updates anymore. But yeah, the cost of doing business involves actually updating some stuff, but nobody wants to do that. Oh, no, no, no. Not in the budget, Brian. Not in the budget. Let's try again next fiscal quarter.

Yeah, speaking of not in the budget, Parler is back online after Amazon kicked it off the internet. This is the second story that tells us that they're back online without them actually really being back online. Okay. Yeah, so in a press release and shared with Engadget and several other publications, the company said it has a new backend that is built on sustainable, independent technology and not reliant on so-called, air quotes, big tech for its operations.

Basically, meaning it doesn't operate. So before when they came back online and it was basically just a landing page saying, hey, we're coming back. Now that there's some more links and stuff, but features like account creation aren't functional yet.

You can also see links to download the mobile app, but tapping those do nothing, as neither Apple or Google have allowed the company back on their respective app stores. So it's kind of back? Not really. Not really. Can you log in at least or no? Well, I didn't. I don't even want to visit the site.

Okay. Don't want that. Don't need that in my breadcrumbs. Yeah, exactly. Keep that out of your history. Yeah. Well, I got an email from Quibi this morning and I was like, wait, wait, what? Was it a very short email? It was. It says, hello, Quibi has recently become part of Roku.

As a result, your account information will now be governed by the Roku privacy policy. Please familiarize yourself with the new terms. Thank you. No. Here's the part that gets me on this. A, it's funny to get an email from Quibi. I'm like, oh, blast from the past. And also it's like, okay, so you can sell my information to another company and force me to use their privacy policies and their terms of use, but I don't get a say in it before you implement it.

That's nice. Thanks. Well, things are very not the way that we would build things. And I have a feeling that might be a recurring theme in this particular episode because obviously, should you and I have done this, we would have included the, and you can click here to opt out. Or you can click here to opt in.

Yes. Yeah, that would be better. Oh, come on. Even better. I'm not going for pie in the sky here, Jason. I'm just going for least common possible thing they could have done. Not trying to boil that ocean? Nope. And speaking of that shit and set visibility to zero, I know you're not a huge Facebook user, but they have made some changes to their desktop version now.

I don't know how this works on mobile, but if you try to delete a post now on Facebook, you don't just delete it like you used to. You move it to the trash where the items are deleted after 30 days. Oh, lovely. Lovely. So they make it even more difficult.

It's not a one-click thing to delete something now. You have to click through a couple things. Or it's moved to a trash. Yeah, you know what they did there. They took a hint from the account retention department that said, oh, you can delete your account. We're going to leave it in limbo for you. It's not going to delete right away.

You can come back any time in the next 30 days and just log back in, and your account will be resuscitated and brought back to life. Then they're like, eh, 30 days? That seems kind of short. What if they change their mind on day 31? Well, you know what?

31 days is too long or too short, too short. Yeah, let's just make it 90 days. So that's what it is, I believe, now is 90 days before your account is actually deleted from Facebook. You can't goose the process, nothing like that. I got some choice words to say about Facebook later on, but yeah.

Well, I still have some more to say about Facebook here right now. So even though they may let me keep a post that I have decided to delete for 30 days, so on day 29, I could go back in and repost that post, nobody would fucking see it anyways. Because while we're still talking about Facebook, I have a theory that I am now in algorithm jail, and I'm kind of over Facebook at this point.

All my old reasons for wanting to be on Facebook, the contact with friends that I don't live near, or frankly, just contact with friends because it's been a year that I can't be near anybody, even if they live down the fucking street from me. All of that stuff, Facebook has completely killed them. I used to post, and a whole bunch of friends would see my posts and like them and comment on them and conversations would start and all that sort of thing.

At least for the last three to four months, anytime I post now, it's fucking crickets. It's like the same three to four people that see my post, and that's it. And I'm convinced that I've gotten into algorithm jail because I used to post constantly. I was always on Facebook.

I was a Facebook power user. Throughout the pandemic, I have slowed my role considerably on Facebook. I don't post anywhere near as much anymore. And now I'm convinced because I do that, I've been kicked down the algorithm and barely anybody sees my posts anymore. You'd think it would be backwards.

You'd think. Yeah, common sense would dictate that they would want you to have more engagement with your friends, which would then in turn make you post more. That's common sense, but this is the internet. It's Facebook, and it's the internet. So, yeah, I'm almost positive that this is what's happened to me.

And now, like, it's an inverse feedback loop. Before, I had the regular feedback loop. I posted, people interacted, made me want to post more. Now I post, a fucking tumbleweed blows by, and I'm just like, why the fuck am I on this thing? Yeah. I've asked you that for years. Why the fuck are you on that thing?

Yeah. So I'm working my way out the door slowly. I do want to end with a little bit of a positive note here in the feedback section. My mom got her second Moderna shot yesterday. What a goddamn relief. Excellent. Excellent. Good news. In the news.

Well, Brian, this is a breaking news. Bitcoin now trades above $50,000 for the first time. And when I was looking at this, it already dropped below $50,000 of coins. Yes. Well, you know what I did this morning? I sold my Bitcoin. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you.

I doubled my money in Bitcoin and I'm out. That's good enough for me. Okay. What's the final tally? Because you had Ethereum and didn't you have something else? Ethereum and Litecoin. I ended up losing money on Litecoin. I think I basically broke even on Ethereum. I ended up, let's see, I initially put $20 in each. So 2020, then put another $200 into Bitcoin about a month back or something like that. So I had $260 total in there. I ended up cashing out at

$550,000. Not bad. Not bad, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good for you. A lot of people are not going to have that experience. Well, let me tell you about my GameStop stock. No, I'm just kidding. I didn't buy any of that shit. Yeah. This is getting ridiculous. This is getting ridiculous. Everybody that's jumping on board with this, even financial institutions like MasterCard and the Bank of New York and all of these people are going to say, hey, the Bitcoin's okay because everybody's using it. No.

This is, mark my words, this will not end well. No. This is going to end horribly. We will be talking about the great Bitcoin crash within at least three months. Well, yeah. Yeah. Start the timer. Start the timer. Because this is, you know, when we started this show, Brian, you were Mr. Regulation, Regulation. I'm like, oh, come on. Give it a break, libtard, snowflake, mofo. And now I'm like, you're taking my guns and you want to regulate my cyber currency.

Exactly. This is just a bad situation getting ready to get worse. I mean, if you think that, I mean, come on, Elon can make a tweet and completely change the face of a currency. That's not good. That's not good.

He's not allowed to do that for his stock. Why should he be able to do it for a currency? Because it's unregulated. Yes. That's why. And yeah. And the other thing about Bitcoin that drives me crazy is this comes up every now and again, but it should be front and center about how goddamn horrible it is for the planet.

Yes, it is. It is the it's absolutely horrific for the planet. The amount of of energy being used to for Bitcoin right now is but then again, climate change deniers, whatever. Yeah. And just look at also the e-waste. I saw another article this week where they said that the e-waste from Bitcoin miners who throw out all their old gear to buy new gear, which why are you out? Donate it to a school, you fucking savages. Equals the waste produced by the entirety of

Luxembourg in a year. That's great. Yeah. And I mean, I know Luxembourg isn't that big, but it is a beautiful place and I highly recommend everybody visit it. It's one of my favorite places on the planet, but it might be now filled up with the whole Bitcoin machine. But yeah, this is not going to end well and it's really starting to irk me among many things. But now let's go back to some Facebook news here. Facebook investors are trying to

figure out if there's some shenanigans going on in the boardroom here because this is interesting. Yep. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Didn't need betterage on that one. All right. This is the anti-betterage. A Delaware judge ruled on Wednesday that Facebook must furnish some internal files to Rhode Island's public employee pension fund, which is questioning how the company came to terms with the US FTC in the agency's sweeping investigation of the misuse of consumer data. This comes back to

Cambridge Analytica. Yep. They got dinged for $5 billion. Well, turns out $2 billion of that might have been a little greasing of the wheels, let's say to the FTC to keep Zuckerberg out of this personally. So there was no personal liability for the Zuckster. Right. And they're saying, did you guys overpay out of our money $2 billion just so this little prick doesn't get, you know, the government

colonoscopy that he like full and truly and well deserves? Right. Along with, you know, Sheryl Sandberg too. But, uh, yeah, so I am, I am on, I'm on pins and needles to see how this comes out because you know that they, uh, tacked on some extra cash to keep the Zuck safe. Well, of course they did because like, let's face it, Zuckerberg is an intimidating man with his rippling muscles underneath those, uh, underneath those hoodies because, uh, here's the other report. And I just

love this one. Uh, Zuckerberg has reportedly said Facebook needs to inflict pain on Apple. Yes. Because Zuck is the big man now. Yeah. He's pissed off at Apple. Uh, as we've been talking about in the show, the war is brewing between the two. I can't see Facebook winning because Facebook is nothing and Apple actually makes things that everybody uses, but okay.

Uh, but yeah, he's really going after them now. Apparently he's, he's amped up. He's, he's doing that M&M thing in the mirror in the morning when his hoodie and he's, we're going to fucking inflict pain on Tim Cook. I'm taking him down. This is funny because here's the problem that Facebook is having. And this goes directly into the next story I have here, which is Facebook is going to, uh, try and make a watch next because they failed. So, you know, spectacularly with their phone. It's not, not just their phone. They, they failed with their lady in the

tube. That thing ain't doing well either. Nobody wanted that. Portal sold out. I completely sold out. Single person that has one. So if they sold out, they had a very limited supply. I was going to say they only made seven of them, but everybody that I saw that reviewed it says it's one of the best video conferencing platforms out there. The problem is that nobody trusts it. Yeah. Nobody trusts it. So now that they, now I love this. This comes from, uh, ours technica, which came from another source because that's the way it works, but the other

source was behind a paywall. So I'm going with ours technica today. Uh, Facebook is building an Android smartwatch and it should hit the market next year. And I love this little, little buried in here is a nice little dig. Will the project be successful? Let's just say that every word in the phrase Facebook Android smartwatch is cause for concern, but this comes back to Facebook, not owning any platforms like distribution platforms. They have a website and they have APIs

and they have apps that go on other people's, you know, actual distribution platforms, the phones and all that good stuff, but they don't actually, they're beholden to Google and Apple for their mobile, uh, you know, complete experience, which for the most part they're screwed. If anybody decides to just go delete, which is what's happening right now with the whole kerfuffle with Apple, because Apple is saying, you guys are collecting way too much data and we just want to tell everybody

what you're doing and we're going to make it really hard for you to do that in the future. That's what it comes down to. Yep. And fucking Oculus, the motherfucking Oculus. After Facebook said, you have to merge your Oculus account with a Facebook account. Well, it has now been two months since all of the purchases that I had on the Oculus have completely disappeared.

I am over 150 emails into Facebook right now. I have gotten one reply that said, Hey, we got this. We're sorry that, uh, you're doing wrong here. Well, what's, what's actually is your problem? So I sent them back the thing crickets. So now like three or four times a day, I just email them and say, hello, anybody fucking home. And you know what you need to do, Jason, it's time for the public shaming. It's time to take this private conversation public on Twitter. Cause that's the

only way you're going to get a result. Yeah, that's it. I actually did go to the Oculus forum and posted something there yesterday and say, Hey, who else has this happened to? Cause maybe we can start a class action lawsuit because I'm sure I can't be the only one that, uh, you know, is having this issue, but it was president's day yesterday, which usually means nothing for customer support anymore because none of it's in America, but I'm going to give them to the end of the day to see what's going on. And I just, I don't know what to do anymore. I don't know what to do anymore.

Yep. They've let you, uh, they've left you hanging. No, they, they, they sold me a very pretty, uh, paperweight that I would have to rebuy all of my content on, which I spent like over 150 bucks in content. Right. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to give them an extra 150 bucks for fucking me. Give them money for the privilege of fucking me.

No, thank you. Got to have that side hustle, I suppose. Yeah. No shit. No shit. Uh, speaking of that, uh, work from home. We've got some work from home news. Spotify has come out and said, fuck it. You don't have to come back. Okay. They've announced their work from anywhere program through which it will allow employees to set up shop pretty much wherever they choose. It will largely be up to employees, whether they venture to an office once it's safe to do that again, or mostly just work from home or from anywhere with a decent internet

connection. If they choose a location where there's no Spotify office close by the company will set them up with the coworking space membership. Hence the information about we work surviving this in the last show. Hmm. Yeah. So they're calling the move a new way of collaborating that allows spotifiers to work from wherever, for wherever they do their best thinking and creating.

Now this all sounds wonderful and it sounds like it's across the board and it's going to be a few, uh, uh, a complete shift in the way that people move and work moving forward. Where are they going to go? All that sort of stuff. There will be a few limits on location, however, based around time zone requirements and regional entity laws.

Also, I got into this a little bit because I happen to know a few people that work over at Spotify. Basically the higher up the chain you are, the closer you need to be to a fucking office. So, so if you are one of the people that is going through say playlists and all of that, by all means sit on a beach in Aruba. If you happen to be a lawyer for Spotify, you're staying in fucking where the office is. Exactly. Yeah. That's how that works. Oh man. It's

what it's going to, it's going to be like that after this pandemic, I swear, I want to go to an office now. I'm not, I'm so thrilled that I might be starting a real job when this pandemic is over because I am so done with work from home. I did it for 20 years. One year doing it with the entire family at home. Get me into a fucking office.

I know. I'm like, I'm, I'm scoping out coworking offices right now. Cause I think maybe, you know, if you time it right, you can still get a pretty good deal because they're desperate. So like lock in a good deal while the pandemic is still here. And then, you know, just don't go over and go use somebody else. No, no, no. I'm going to, it's a, it's a much more a fancy pants place. Calabasas. Yes. Uh, Kardashians have been seen there. So I'm hoping to get, I'm hoping to get more. You're going to be in a cubicle right next to Kim Kardashian who's

shooting her web shots. Oh, actually, uh, um, Jada, Jada Smith shoots her show from that office. So I'm hoping maybe just to get some business out of it. But, uh, yeah, uh, I I'm trying to get, since the Kardashians do show up, I'm trying to get a little bit more knocked off the rent. Cause I'm like, that's not a perk. That is not a perk. That is a definite negative. No, seriously. If Yeezy is going to be swinging by, I want another 15% off. I want

it off now. And, uh, I saw this one over at science alert and thought it was pretty funny. AI can now learn to manipulate human behavior. Uh huh. Uh huh. Yeah. Yeah. They're saying now that they can, uh, they did a bunch of different experiments, three to be precise. And, uh, over the course of the experiments, the AI figured out how to, uh, juice the results to get people to pick things that, uh, they normally wouldn't have picked from the, the control rounds.

Right. Okay. Um, why did you make this? Why? Yes. Why do we need this? Did we need, uh, machine learning to figure out how to influence us? Did you not see the last election cycle? Yeah. We're, we're pretty good at this already. Stop taking the jobs, man. Stop taking the jobs.

Well, a cozy bear and fancy bear are going to be definitely out first. Uh, speaking of tag, you're at Russia. Uh, tick tock is now turned into, uh, basically how all the, all the kids are organizing over in Russia for their big protests. So I'm like, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. Your turn. Yep. It is your turn. Fuckers. And, uh, we got, uh, one more, we got one more city. Minneapolis has banned its police department from using facial recognition and

that includes the douchebags at Clearview AI. Well, that's good news. Yep. Yep. We only have, uh, well, we were like 0.001% of the police offices or, uh, police departments around the country. So it's a long road, but, uh, we'll get there eventually.

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Media candy. In a surprising bit of news, Dave Chappelle got his show back and got paid. Yeah. Can you believe that? Comedy Central actually did the right thing. I'm shocked. I'm, I'm, I'm surprised Comedy Central has any money. That's true too. Well, it's, it's, you know, Viacom. Oh wait, I'm surprised they have any money too. But, uh, they gave him a couple million bucks and gave him his name back. So

all's well that ends well. That's a, that's surprising good news. Yeah. Unless you're Joss Whedon, then that's not ending well at all. Now everybody on the Buffy cast has come out and, and, you know, canceled him, but here's the funny thing. I thought he was already canceled. So he's getting double canceled. Can you get canceled twice? Um, I, I don't know. I guess so. I suppose this is, this has been very sad news for, for my wife. She is of the perfect age. So her and her friends have been commiserating first. We, first we lost Harry Potter and now

now we're losing Buffy, but you don't lose the shows, just the creators. Well, you always say, Brian, you can separate the creator from the art. Sometimes I'm not so much with Michael Jackson. Okay. Okay. Well, you gotta, you gotta clarify these rules sometime. Yeah. It's complicated. I might need AI to figure this out.

I think so. Because, uh, yeah, you've made some questionable decisions with that statement in the past. So, well, I don't, uh, I don't care. I've never really watched Buffy anyways. So for me, this is no big of a deal, but, uh, yeah, I don't know what it was. There's so much canceling going on right now. It's a little crazy. I'll get into that later when I talk about, uh, something.

So, okay. I'm going to talk about something. I still love Buffy, so I'm still going to watch it. You know, and I come from the era where, yes, I know everybody that works in Hollywood is a raging asshole. So I, I used to work in Hollywood. I know that we get treated like crap to get your job done. That's what happens. Yeah. That's the job. Yeah. No snowflakes in Hollywood. Also in Hollywood. Now we're getting AR with, uh, for all mankind. This is, uh, the Ronald D Moore show,

which neither of us will watch. Nope. I tried. And, uh, you know, I'd rather they spent the money on better writing than a little, you know, thing like this personally. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. This AR thing actually sounds much more interesting than the show itself. But the problem is you need one of the LiDAR enabled devices from Apple, which I do not have. Me either. So now there was apparently a desktop version that you could check out and I'm like, what's the point of that? That's no fun.

So, and I saw this over at Ars Technica and I thought we should just wrap up here. And it's a review of the stand. It says it starts out strong and then whiffs the landing. Uh, yeah. Yeah. I watched the, I watched the last episode last night, which means I can finally cancel CBS all access until they bring some Star Trek. Uh, they did whiffed landing. I don't understand why they spent the entire last episode focusing on what was basically a coda and only the extended version of the book, but they did. And it was like the weakest part of everything. So way

to, uh, way to end it. Great job. Yep. Bravo. Uh, so you're getting rid of CBS all access, which will, which will soon be paramount plus. Yes. So when you come back, you'll be coming back to a new service. Um, I have been on discovery plus quite a bit recently. And when I popped on undercover billionaire was a show I really liked, uh, Glenn Stearns, billionaire dude, went undercover and in 90 days, he had 90 days, a hundred dollars and a pickup truck

to build a million dollar business. I won't spoil the first episode or first season, but he's backed with a second season with three billion or three, I'm just not billions, rich people this time. Uh, it's a Timbaland's wife, Grant fucking Cardone douchebag. Right. And, uh, some real estate chick from Fallbrook, California. Grant Cardone is the biggest whiner on the planet.

Mr. Big muscly bound guy. Just like, Ooh, I'm, I'm having such a hard time. This is so bad. And the chicks are out there just killing it. It's so much fun. It's only halfway through the run and it seems like they're releasing them every two weeks or so. Um, which is interesting, but they're coming out faster on discovery plus, which is a surprise, which is why I wanted to bring it up because what you said about discovery plus is there's like none of the new shows.

Yeah. Period. Right. And I found that in the food network for sure. I'm like, yes, what the fuck? What the fuck? They're pushing some things and some things are exclusives only to get you over there. But, uh, in terms of like their bread and butter food network, uh, yeah, it's all their, all their longstanding shows. They're not bothering to fill those in with, with recent, uh, recent stuff.

So that sucks. So if you want, uh, if you're lured into discovery plus by some of their newer shows like Giada and what's his face go to go to Italy, that's great. But if you're paying for discovery plus to get access to all the shows that you know and love from broadcast, you're fucked.

Well, that's funny. That's the actual show that I signed up for to watch. Right. I still haven't watched it yet. Um, here's the great part that with the food network stuff, I never watched the food network. So everything is new to you. Yeah. It's all new to me. It's great. Yeah. So I have thousands of hours of crap to watch when things are not going well. So I just want to say undercover billionaire season two is out right now, halfway through it. And there was another one I found called undercover billionaire comeback city, which also is only six episodes, but pretty fun.

I enjoy that series for some reason. I don't know why I do. That's fair. Look, all I want from discovery plus is some clarification of what their policy is. Uh, I know I've tweeted them. I saw that you tweeted them. Some of our other listeners have also tweeted them because obviously people have discovered that, you know, a lot of shows are not up to date. What's going on. Can you tell us what's happening? Nobody has responded because I don't think there is a policy. I think it's just a big

old mess over there. Yeah. So it's, I'm sure the lawyers are the problem, you know, and, uh, here's, here's one other thing that I use the Roku app to watch it. There is a glitch and I think it has to be in the Roku app, but it might be on other platforms. So if you're listening to this and you have discovery plus, if you pause a show, hit play, then anywhere between 30 seconds and two minutes in, it'll stop and it'll like just chunk for about five seconds and then come back.

No buffering screen or nothing. It will just lock for five seconds and then come back. Interesting. If, if, tell me if, if anybody's listening that has, has the Roku app, if you have this problem too, cause it's, it's now that we know what it is, it's okay. We expect it, but man, it was maddening when we first started watching. We're like, what the fuck is wrong with this thing? Come on. All right. So I watched something sort of now. This is, this is my wife's thing. And I initially was just curled up on the couch with my book and I wasn't

going to pay attention to it, but I slowly got sucked in. Not for the reason you'd think this is crime scene, the vanishing at the Cecil hotel over on Netflix. I don't know if you remember this. This is when the, uh, the girl, Elisa Lam, Chinese Canadian came to LA to visit, stayed at a really shitty hotel downtown. That's like infamous. I mean, the, the, uh, the, the hillside strangler guy stayed there, all that sort of stuff. Uh, or sorry, the night stalker, that guy, uh, really bad hotel.

Like you should not be there, but you get, it gets into it. They, they tried to spruce it up. They made like a little hostile thing that was three floors while the crazy people stayed on the other floors. This is a very hostile, hostile. It was, this is the girl that vanished. And then they found her in the water tank. And then people had been drinking the water for like weeks, all that sort of stuff. Do you remember that? It was a big deal. No, I don't. Okay. Well, maybe you should watch this, but okay. So she disappeared and they never really figured out what happened except for the

fact that they, once they started to get into it, they found out she was kind of manic depressive. There's this creepy elevator footage of her that, that, uh, it totally like one of the first things that really went viral on the internet in terms of like true crime and all that sort of stuff. You can tell she just lost it. Basically she wasn't on her meds and she probably just did this herself. But, and this is why I got sucked in what they call the internet sleuth community.

Oh God. Yes. This entire documentary is about web sleuths. Really. It's about these morons with YouTube channels and podcasts that cannot let anything go, that think that they are smarter than police, that think that they can figure things out better than police, that then start to go to the hotel. These people are fucking nuts.

And this ties directly into cancel culture because this is, there are so many people out there with so much free time that don't know what the fuck that they're doing and they should not have internet connections. I, I didn't want to watch this at all. Uh, my wife was watching it for the actual, like she was hoping to, you know, get a really good, like true crime documentary type thing.

We both started just getting fascinated and our jaws were dropping because the entire thing is interviews with these web sleuths and these people are fucking nuts. They're fucking crazy. And there's tons of them. Oh yeah. There was another series that I reviewed a while ago. My, my, maybe it's part of this series.

I was about this guy that like killed some cats and then the internet sleuths got on top of it to try and track them down. And I'm pretty sure that they aren't the ones that did it. Pretty sure that they weren't the ones that cracked the nut. But, uh, my friend, Steve Isaacs, uh, he's an old MTV VJ. He, he made a tweet that I thought was perfect. He's like, Netflix has a huge catalog of amazing true

crime that you can watch for hours on end. The vanishing at the Cecil hotel is not one of those. Yeah. It was, it was, it was just a shocking to me and I felt dirty afterwards and it had nothing to do with the actual crime. It just had to do with these fucking crazy people. Also, it's not a very well done documentary because it tries to lure you in on what it's supposed to be about, but they have no information. They don't know shit except for what is kind of obvious. And, you know, Oxum's razor

here, people, we know what kind of happened to her, but not for these fucking people. And somehow they've managed four episodes, just interviewing these nutbags and it's insane. So here's the, here's the difference, Brian. They're on Netflix and we're not. Maybe we should try it. Yeah. And the thing is this whole thing was produced by Brian, uh, Brian Glazer and Ron Howard. And if I were them, I would be so embarrassed to have my name on this.

Oh man, it must be, you know what COVID times, they get over times, I guess so. Um, and then to kind of cleanse ourselves after watching those, uh, this show has been around for a long time. We've never watched it. It is produced in Toronto, Canada. And it's, uh, so again, this is a big on my wife's to, to watch list, but I have to say utterly delightful. There's a show called Kim's Convenience. It is one of the best comedies I've seen. It's four seasons in it's fucking hilarious. And I mean, you want to talk

cancel culture. They don't give a shit. Like the first episode isn't, is just insanely like the racist jokes, the homophobic jokes, they fly left, right and center. It is fucking hilarious. It's so good. See racism and homophobia are funny. Yes, they can be. How old is this series? Uh, not that old.

They're still producing it. So I think the fifth season is coming soon. So I highly recommend it, man. It is very funny. Okay. Yeah. I'd need some non snowflake comedy. Um, so I'm in, I'm in, ups and doodads. So I've been rewiring my studio here and I've been having these power issues and like, you know, little clicks and pops in the audio and lights flickering and stuff like that. And I'm like, I figured all the power from the house. Cause I'm

in a garage. It's just crappy. And then one day I'm moving stuff around and I noticed that, uh, I, I, cause I have, uh, like, you know, general power strips around here with a bunch of stuff plugged into them. You know, the cheap and cheerful ones we all pick up everywhere. Yeah. Oh, these are monsters. These were monster power strips, but, uh, I noticed that one of them had fused to the actual extension cord that it was plugged into because I had overloaded it so much.

Uh, so I went out and I bought actual really nice monster power strips, the like 2000 jewels, uh, which make your own Pulp Fiction jokes on that one. Uh, but I plugged those things in, not a problem anymore. It's perfect. I can even run my space heater and all of my lights and everything and not a single problem. So if you have weird issues in your house and you've been using these cheap ass power strips forever, it might be worth upgrading those is all I'm saying.

Yep. Keep the power clean. Yeah, definitely. Uh, and this week I have done almost entirely the show notes that I put into this episode on my iPad. I have gotten, I've, I, you know, I got the 12 inch iPad pro. I could never get the damn multitasking to work right. So I spent five minutes and figured out how to do it. So now I've got a split screen with reader on the hat on one half and the quip app that we use not quip the toothbrush, but we use quip the collaborative editing software from Salesforce

to do the show notes for this. And it's great. I can just sit there in the backyard and just scroll through stories, copy, paste, move them around. The entirety now is just done on the iPad. It's awesome. I highly recommend it. I just, I know I'm late to the show on this one, but I was like, once I got it, once I got it cooking, man, it's like, wow. Multitasking is neat, neat, very neat.

Uh, so it's notes plus. I've been taking a lot of notes because I've got a lot of, uh, scripts that I have to write and I like to write them in longhand. And most of the, um, note taking apps do have like handwriting recognition, but getting them to export into plain text is like a Herculean effort, notes plus lets you like dump an entire notebook as plain text. So you can just go to your heart's

content and then just dump the whole thing, bring it into a text editor later and then, you know, put it back together. So it's coherent. Um, and the handwriting recognition is phenomenal. I mean, I got terrible handwriting and it's like 99% on, on picking up everything I do. And it's only 10 bucks works great on the iPad pro, uh, with the pencil. And I use that. Um, remember I told you about that screen protector I got? That's like, I think it's paper-like was the name of it. Oh man,

it's so nice. If you're using a pencil and writing on it, it really does feel like paper. It's really cool. There you go. Highly recommend it. All of those. All right. Uh, since we've gotten our audio situation so dialed in here, I've been using my Sennheiser headphones forever. And, uh, our sound now is so good. You are hearing yourself bleed through constantly. So I got the Sony MDR 7506 professional large diaphragm headphones at your recommendation with nice big ear copies. And

you can't hear me any, you can't hear yourself anymore. So problem solved. Now they're nowhere near as comfortable as my Sennheisers. And they certainly music doesn't sound as good, but, uh, for this particular application, there you go. Yep. You find these in every radio station on the planet for a reason there, there, there, you know, neutral response. They do fit. They, they, you know, that you'll break them in. Those cups will break in over like, you know, a couple of weeks and they'll be fine. They get, they get comfier like an old pair of tennis shoes.

Now let's move on to clubhouse. Oh yeah. Clubhouse. Uh, I found this one over at pointer.org and it's called factually. What will fact checkers find on clubhouse? Well, turns out that most of the article is not a lot because there are so many issues with the fact that you can't go back to listen to any conversations. You have to listen in real time and take notes because you quote unquote, can't record the conversations. I have a video. I have a video PSA coming out about that very shortly

that you can see. It is so easy to record the conversations. You just can't do it in the app. It costs you about a $3 for a cable and, uh, anybody that's recorded the radio can do as I said in the Warner brothers music, a big conference room to the head of Warner brothers music, some 25 odd years ago, anything that's digital can be recorded. If you can hear it, you can see it. You can record it.

Yes. Period. Um, but yeah, I'll talk about that in a second, but, uh, uh, it's an interesting, it's an interesting take on fact checkers. And the thing about this article, if you go and check it out there, it's a series that they do that fact checkers actually write. And there's a whole bunch of articles about fact checking, which I thought was fascinating. I'm like, oh, I'm not going to read them because I don't care that much, but people who are interested in fact checking can go check out those articles. Right. So check it out. Check it out. So over at Vox, they have a very long article

that's entitled you've been invited to clubhouse. Your privacy hasn't. And this details all the horrific things that they do privacy wise, which is basically everything. Uh, they suck up all your contacts. If you don't let them have your contacts, but you're in somebody else's contacts, you're a shit out of luck because now you're in their system. Uh, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You can read all about this if you want to get into it. What drives me crazy is that, you know, okay, hold on a second.

Okay. They're valued clubhouse is valued at a billion dollars right now. They are a billion. Oh God. They are valued at a billion dollars right now. Uh, as you've already pointed out, uh, the content itself is somewhat suspect. Their privacy policies are somewhat suspect as this article gets into half their site doesn't work. Settings pages have serious glitches.

Sometimes the link led to a redirect to a real privacy policy. Most of the time it didn't. This is also true for what's new fact community guidelines and terms of service. Imagine a world in which Jason, you and I built up a website that didn't work. That links didn't work.

That was horrific privacy wise. That didn't really have any content that was worth anything. All it got really was buzz and you're valued at a billion dollars. That's where we're at now. We did it wrong. We just did it all wrong. We did. We, we created good websites that actually worked. Which was wrong. Which was wrong. Yeah, exactly. Wow. No. And, uh, everybody's gunning for clubhouse. Now everybody has, uh, a knockoff coming and it's going to be interesting. I think clubhouse,

their first mover advantage, isn't going to stick on this. I think they're going to get their lunch sheet and it's even Mark Cuban's in on it. So we talked about that last episode and I don't, I don't give any credence to Mark Cuban, but, uh, Twitter spaces are coming out and you know, Facebook's on it. Everybody's going to be on it because here's the thing about clubhouse. Not that hard to do.

The whole thing about it is not that hard to do. It's all turnkey. Shit. They're using backend from guests. Wait for it. China, of course. So, uh, yeah, there's a lot of, uh, tech issues here that are not hard to solve, which means they could have actually spent a little bit more time and I don't know, made their four page website actually work. I don't know. Yeah. And, uh, yeah, when I was talking about, uh, the, the calls on clubhouse

and how you can record them, there's a great article by Preston Byrne. He's a, he's an attorney, uh, does mostly crypto stuff. So don't, don't hold that against him, but he does a really good article called you really shouldn't record clubhouse calls because, uh, just because you can do something doesn't make it legal. And, uh, we've talked about this a little on the discord channel too. Uh, but, uh, yeah, just assume, just assume that if you're on clubhouse,

you're being recorded because you probably are pretty safe to say. Uh, also found this one over at Vox, how the COVID-19 pandemic broke next door. Now you and I can argue till the day ends that next door was broken pre COVID-19 as we called the app. It's the best way to find out which of your neighbors are racist. That's what it's exactly what it is. Yeah. But this article gets into that since COVID-19, a lot of people have turned to next door for local information, for staying close to neighbors, for figuring out what's going on in the neighborhood, for talking

about stuff. And basically this entire article is, uh, if you try to go on and do the right thing, you're going to get shut down. So it's people that actually have knowledge and are doing the right thing and are trying to, you know, spread good information to keep their communities healthy and safe and being shut down by crazy anti-vaxxers and nut bags that live next door.

Yeah. Fun times. And this article really gets into one where basically one guy who was basically, who told his neighbor to delete a post and accused the neighbor of lying because the neighbor was spreading anti-vaxx and crazy information and, uh, next door shut him down. Yeah. Well, I got a story about getting shut down real quick.

Our friend, Eric Hundley, who runs the unstructured podcast has been building up his YouTube channel, doing live streams for the past year and got up to about 15,000 subscribers, which is impressive. Very impressive. Well, last weekend in the middle of a live stream with a Bitcoin professional, uh, just, it was just a Q and a asking information about Bitcoin and how it works and things like that.

YouTube suddenly decided to deactivate his channel midstream and shut him down and take him off the internet. They turned the sprinklers on as, as we are often like to say. And, uh, yeah, for basically didn't tell him anything. He's been fighting to get it back, found some secret links to get into some secret backdoor things to get it turned back on. And they finally turned it back on yesterday, except they did not turn on seven months worth. All this stuff is seven months old.

Right. Or older. It's like discovery plus. Exactly. Discovery plus is bought Eric's channel. Uh, so this is a cautionary tale. Uh, but we've said it before and I feel bad for Eric because he has put so much work into it and does make money off of it and, uh, didn't do anything wrong. You know, if he was doing something wrong, I'd been like, yeah, you know, if you're talking about how the frogs are turning gay, well, then I'd be like, shut your

ass down. He was just doing a informative Q and a, and some troll probably came in and reported his channel. Right. And, uh, the fact that they didn't give him the option to appeal that before just taking them off the internet, you know, that's on YouTube. So if you know anybody at YouTube that can help get Eric's, uh, content back, drop me a note, jpd.me and I'll put you in touch because it's, it's bullshit. And, you know, there's a lot of work that went into that and he shouldn't, he doesn't deserve it.

I read extraterrestrial, the first sign of intelligent life beyond earth by Avi Loeb. Now Avi Loeb is a learned man, a very smart man. Uh, he is professor of science at Harvard university. He is chair of Harvard's department of astronomy. He's the founding director of Harvard's black hole initiative and director of the Institute for theory and computation within the Harvard Smithsonian Center for

astrophysics. He knows his stuff. This entire book is purportedly about the, uh, you remember that big cigar shaped, maybe, uh, thing that came through, uh, yeah, 10 years ago. I can't remember what it's called. It was about a year and a half ago, a year and a half ago, whatever. I don't remember.

Uh, so this is supposedly just about how this is, this could have been extraterrestrial life and, um, maybe about two paragraphs, maybe a whole chapter was actually about that. This could have been one pager. This could have been an article on, uh, say the Atlantic or something like that.

Instead, I read an entire book about his life, which admittedly was fascinating. Uh, he certainly really loves his wife. I definitely got that from the book. I did not get much about the, how this could have been intelligent life. Interesting. It's funny that you read that book because you said that there's no way you were going to read that book because I had told you about, Dr. Avi Loeb and, uh, uh, you can go, uh, check out, follow your different episode 202, uh, link for that will be in the show notes where Chris Lockhead, uh, interviews Dr. Avi Loeb.

Well, let me tell you how the hype machine works because when Lockhead, when Lockhead started posting about it, I was like, "Shit, I guess I have to read this book." Turns out I didn't. You can listen to the podcast. I should have just done that. Yeah. Cause I think, I think the podcast was half, I think the, the breakdown is about the same.

Yeah. As far as, uh, Avi's life and then the, uh, the extraterrestrial stuff. But I, I like Avi. He's a smart guy. Very nice too. Look, like I said, I, I, I, I didn't not enjoy reading the book. It's just not what was on the tin. Yeah. Yeah. I kinda, I get that. I haven't read it, but I have it. But, uh, now that, now that I know, I probably won't read it, but I gotta tell you when, uh, when we interviewed him for the show,

I just go in and do sound checks. But when he, when he came on, this guy had his background was exactly that title that you just, all those titles that you read. Yeah, his background matched it like to a T it was like the most beautiful study with books everywhere. And I'm like, it wasn't fake. It wasn't a digital background. This was really like his study. And I'm like, damn, bro. Smart dude. Really smart dude.

Knowledge. You got some knowledge up in there. I am reading a replay by Ken Grimwood. It's a story about a guy that like, uh, the, the long and short of his, uh, this guy is 40. He dies, wakes back up in his 18 year old body with all of his knowledge, something that we all would really like to have happen to us. I'm not going to give any spoilers, but I'm about a third of the way through. And it's, it's, it's a delightful little read. Someone on discord recommended this channel.

I thought that was interesting. So cool. Yeah. So far, I'm really digging it. I'll have the full, uh, the full write up next episode.

We are joined again this week by Dave Bittner. Dave is the host of the cyber wire podcast and also the cohost of the social engineering podcast, hacking humans with Joe Kerrigan, as well as the cohost of caveat with Ben Yellen, where they discuss law and policy, as well as surveillance and privacy. Welcome Dave. Hello. Hello. Nice to be back.

Do we have any star Wars talk this week, Brian? Nope. Anything on your mind? Nope. Nope. Nope. Haven't been reading the comics. Don't know what's going on. Don't care. No, no, no, no, no Mandalorian cancel news that you want to discuss. Oh, gee. What's her face? What's her name?

Yeah. Yeah. I'm the same. She will not be rehired. Yeah. She will not be rehired. Right. Look, you know, yeah. Yep. Look, uh, you know, a lot of people are getting canceled. Sometimes it's a little questionable. Sometimes, uh, pretty fucking obvious. I just think about everything that she has thrown away. Uh, you know, I mean, you, you get a role, like, I mean, maybe she can still go to conventions and sign autographs and, and all that sort of thing,

but she got a movie deal with who? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, she, she was going to have her own series. She went from having her own Disney star Wars series to doing, uh, doing a movie with, uh, what's his face? I can't even remember his name. A little annoying guy. Yeah. Yeah. She would have been set for life just for doing the convention circuit and all that kind of stuff. And, uh,

she just couldn't, she couldn't help herself, I guess. Nope. Couldn't do it. So if she ever does conventions, I might actually go to one and just like draw a little Hitler mustache on her, on her promo pic and have her sign that. I don't know. You know, she, I mean, she could totally take you out, Brian.

She, she may not be a nice person, but she is still incredibly physically fit and capable. True. True that. I'll have a lightsaber with me and I'll have you with me behind me, Dave, and your star and your, uh, and your stormtrooper outfit. But as we know, stormtroopers can't shoot for shit. So you might want, you might want to find somebody else. Aim at Mark Hamill, Dave, aim at Mark Hamill. Yeah. You'll turn around and you'll say, Dave, get her. And I, and you'll see this stormtrooper sprinting away in the other direction.

Do people not read their morality clauses anymore? I was wondering about that as well, because I remember a couple of times in our distant past, we had signed on with various, uh, podcast networks that promised many things, didn't deliver none of them. But the one thing that they did deliver was a gigantic morality clause. Yeah. We're like, have you heard our show before?

We'll sign it, but, uh, okay. Maybe she did the same thing that we did. We just signed it and ignored it. I'm sure. Have you looked at my Twitter feed? Yeah, there we have it. There's our Star Wars news for the week.

That's all we need. Okay, cool. I saw this one come through, uh, ZD net and this, uh, actually, no, this one comes from Eric Hundley, a friend of the show. I got other ones that came through the others. Uh, this solar winds attack took more than 1,000 engineers to create, says Microsoft.

That seems like a lot. More than word. Yeah. We covered this today on, on Cyber Wire. And, um, you know, do you smell the BS on that number? Microsoft says a lot of things. And our take is that what the, when they say 1,000, what they really mean is a lot. And, um, we're, we're with them on that. This, this was, it was very sophisticated.

It means more than one. Yeah. Yes. But a thousand is a lot of people. So, um, I don't know if a, if a thousand stands up to scrutiny, but we will, we're on board with the, the notion that it was a lot. More than one. That's it. Yes. A couple, three. And folks who knew what they were doing. I mean, you know, this is, this is not skids fooling around. These folks knew what they were doing.

Yeah. It's not Vlad in his grandma's basement in Moscow. Right. All right. Okay. I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't, uh, a little crazy on that one. Cause I'm like a thousand is kind of a lot. I mean, that's, that's how many people it took to make Google maps. And this was not Google maps, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Think about how, what it takes to organize a thousand people on any sort of development project. I mean, especially in Russia. Geez. Oh yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I wouldn't

know, but, uh, well, it's a lot of something you're not telling us. You have no idea. My ransomware as a service company is doing just fine. Thank you very much. All right, comrade. Yes. Uh, this other one that came in though, uh, new site, new site, new type of supply chain attack hit Apple, Microsoft, and 33 other companies. Now this one was scary for me. Uh, what

they're doing is basically using open source software in kind of hijacking the public repos by putting in code that is named exactly like other code that's in the repos up, upping the version number and keeping all the dependencies the same. So it looks the same, but it is not the same. And when people go to do pull requests on the packages, they're getting code that is not the actual package. Now, I always thought that there was a lot more,

uh, security in place to prevent like, you know, fraud or namespace collisions, but, uh, nope, not at all. If only it was on the blockchain. Oh man. Yeah. This is, uh, one of the, one of the downsides of open source software. If you've ever run a WordPress plugin or installed a WordPress plugin and had to update it because one little library somewhere, I'm looking at you, Tim thumb,

uh, will, you know, basically expose every piece of software that you've ever installed because one person screwed up. And this is like that nobody screwed up. They did this maliciously. And it's, uh, you know, it's, it's a bad day for open source software, I think. And for these repositories, they're really going to have to scramble to kind of have some kind of mechanisms in place to make sure that what you're getting is what you're getting. Yeah.

Sums be damned. I mean, you know, my feeling has always been open source is absolutely great until it's not, you know what I mean? Like it's, it's a wonderful concept until all of a sudden your ass out in the wind. Yeah. And I, um, it's all, it's worth noting that, um, the, all the, basically all of these companies gave this researcher the maximum amount, uh, that you can

get from their bug bounty programs. Yeah. Some of them even more than that because, uh, if this was a big deal, a big, big, big, big deal. Yep. So I'm, I'm, I'm really curious how they're going to start to mitigate this because yeah, I have no idea. I have no idea. Yeah. So speaking of somebody that has an idea, but I think they may have no idea. Bloomberg is back in the news with their supply

chain hack that we talked about. Was it two years ago? It was 2018. I think then the first one came out. It was 2018. Yep. Yeah. And even back then we're like, show your work, show us one of these boards that has been compromised in the supply chain attack with this grain of rice chip that you keep saying exists, but have not been able to produce. And they're back again, saying the same thing. And everybody's just scratching their head going, you guys are really willing to die on this hill. Aren't you?

Yeah. They're doubling down on this and, but still no evidence. None. They've got, they've got more people talking about it. They've got some folks who are on the record. But if you break it apart, if you really parse what people are saying, there's really, there's nothing new here. And folks like NSA are still saying, in response to this new article, they're saying, nope, still nothing. We don't know what you're talking about here.

You know, they talk about in the story how this could be some bit of embedded hardware that's in one of the internal layers of a multi-layer printed circuit board. You know, we're all familiar with printed circuit boards. And I think most of us probably think about how they have circuitry on one side of the board and circuitry on the other side of the board. Well, for many, many years, there have been multi-layer printed circuit boards, which have more than just the two sides. There are

layers embedded, sandwiched within the circuit board. And that would be a place where you could hide something. So like an espionage Big Mac. Well, they, a sesame seed. But they, they, they allude to that in the article. But again, show me, show us an x-ray, show us something. There's no, if they keep saying this is a hardware-based thing and there's no evidence. There's no evidence. And you have so many other security

researchers are saying, why would they do this in hardware when you could achieve the same thing through software? It's just, it still doesn't make sense. I don't understand the timing of it. Why, why Bloomberg decided to double down now? You know, I know some of the people who are mentioned in the article. One of them is a co-worker of mine here from DataTribe. And I, I just don't get it. I don't

get it. Well, we remain skeptical. Yeah, we remain skeptical. And until Bloomberg actually comes up with some evidence, I don't think there's much more to say about this. And what, why would you read, why would you double down on this with no new evidence? That's, I just, it doesn't make any sense.

Do you guys have any thoughts on this beyond, am I missing something here? That's what I want to know. Am I missing something? Because to me, it's ridiculous. What are they, what are they at about this? What, what do they have to gain? You know, it's like, everybody forgot about the last article. It was fine. It was quiet. It had gone away. You know, it's like that time you really, really got drunk at the party.

And some journalist has got something over one of the editors there. That's all I can think. Yeah. It's like, why would you say, Hey, look, I found these photos on the phone at that time. I really got drunk and got really stupid and puked in the, in the fern, you know, here, let's look at them again and post them to Instagram. Like makes no sense. You guys got away with it. So what the hell?

Yeah. Yeah. If they come up with some evidence, great. But until then, there's, there's no, it's up to them to make their case. And it's up to the journalists to make their case. And, and they have not as Supermicro again, has released another statement saying, there's nothing to this.

We don't understand this. No one has, we, there's nothing here. I don't know. It's just a real head scratcher. I don't, I don't get it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We're all, we're all in the same boat then. Yeah. Something crazy on the internet. Imagine that. It's weird. Seriously. Uh, I saw this one over at the verge and I, I, I kind of like this one. Chrome for iOS will soon keep incognito tabs

even more secret with face ID. This is, so if you have, you know, your, your phone's unlocked, you're, you still have incognito mode open with your, you know, I'd say, yeah, probably Pornhub tabs open. Just, I'm just throwing, is there any shame anymore for looking at Pornhub is, are people really using incognito mode at this point or just, uh, just saying to hell with it?

I, I'm guessing they probably do just to keep the wifey, you know, away from it. So there's no history in your browser history. Yeah. I mean, that would just be, that's, that's literally the least you can do to cover your tracks. Right. But, uh, or even if you're logged into like, say your, your company's VPN and you're looking at spreadsheets on your phone for, you know, the projections for next year's grand takeover, and you want to keep it secret,

uh, to be able to lock that tab with some kind of, you know, extra security, I think is actually kind of a good thing. Just, but the, the thing is nowadays, it's like, okay, your phone's open already with face ID. Um, why do you need it again? Is this one of those like scenarios where, okay, I unlocked my phone, I'm in Chrome and I hand it to someone else with it unlocked, and then they start poking around and then you get to that next level of security. It's like,

I like the idea, but it seems like a, a pretty big edge case. Um, I think, well, I mean, signal works this way, right? Where you can have face ID, a separate, a separate layer of face ID for the signal app. And I think that's good functionality there as well. Um, you know, I, I don't, it's, it allows you to have different tiers of access to your device. You know, you could

say to your boss or to your spouse or, you know, whatever, a significant other, a trusted friend, you could say, here's the unlock code for my phone in case something happens to me, but you could still have some things that have a different degree of security on them that you don't provide access to.

And why not? Yeah, I, I guess. Yeah. I mean, why not? I liked the idea when I first heard it, I was just trying to break it down and see if it was actually useful as we were talking, you know, let's try and do a live, you know, devil's advocate, but I think, yeah, it's probably pretty good. I think it is. I wish, I wish more apps that were security focused included that functionality to give you a, a granularity to the amount of access you want to have on a per app basis. I think there's

some good, uh, usefulness there. I like the idea of it. It's, it's good in signal. So why not? All right. And a couple of listeners sent us this link. I was actually, I saw it as well and I thought it was kind of funny, but wasn't going to put it in the notes. But since we got some people sending it to us, here it is. Uh, this is over advice. Is this Beverly Hills cop playing sublime Santeria to avoid being live streamed? Now, first off, uh, it's absolutely criminal that they were not

playing Axel F by Harold Faltemeyer being the Beverly Hills police officers. So very poor choice. I mean, they should have that just ready to play at a moment's notice. Um, here's the story. Last Friday, a man entered the Beverly Hills police department only to be treated to a mini DJ set that could potentially get his Instagram account banned. So Senate Devermont was at the department to file a form to obtain body camera footage from an incident in

which he received a ticket he felt was unfair. Now, Devermont also happens to be a well-known LA area activist who regularly live streams protests and interactions with the police to his more than 300,000 followers on Instagram. So this guy is on the police's radar. He's a pain in the ass. He is a gadfly to them. So I am wondering whether, you know, they have this music system ready to go for just anybody, or if this is very special treatment for Mr. Devermont.

So the idea here, of course, being if they start playing copyrighted material while they're being recorded and it goes up, then obviously the streaming services, uh, machine learning systems will copyright systems will grab it and immediately shut them down. Now, the problem here is, of course, they didn't do that. They don't seem to work and all these videos are still up. So clever idea, though. I will give the Beverly Hills police a thumbs up on being clever enough to give that a go.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, there was another, we, uh, Ben and I covered this over on caveat, uh, this week. And, uh, there was another case where a different police officer, I think with a different person, uh, started playing some Beatles songs because the Beatles are famously, uh, uh, look prickly when it comes to having litigious. Yes, that is the word I was looking for. Yes. Um, and, uh, but right,

you're right. It didn't work. Uh, I, I, I also give the police points for trying to be clever. Um, um, you know, seems to me to be kind of a, not kind of, seems to me to totally be a dick move on the cops part. Yeah. Um, you know, I mean, they're, they're, they're allowed to be videotaped while they're working. So, you know, yeah. And, uh, my recollection too, is that, uh, the police department, um, it was Beverly Hills, right? The police department said they're reviewing the

policy. So it sounds like they're probably going to get a slap on the wrist and say, knock it off. Now, is there a distinction? I, I understand they're, they're allowed to be recorded while they're working. Uh, is there a distinction between actually in the police station versus just out in public? Because he did go into the police station itself to start recording these guys.

Hmm. It's a good question. I would imagine. Yeah. I would imagine that, um, the public areas of the police station, like the lobby would be fair game. Uh, you can bet that there's lots of recording devices already in that lobby. Um, I would think, yeah, I mean, if you're back in a, in the working areas of the police station, they could make a case that that could be off limits.

And I could, I, that seems reasonable to me, but in the public areas, I don't, I don't see why they would, uh, why they'd feel like they'd need to shut that down. I mean, it, it, yes, it's a pain in the ass and, and it, it, it makes, who, who likes that to happen to have someone come in holding a video camera, pointing it at you. It just, it makes you uncomfortable. But if you're a cop, that's part of the job now. Yeah. True. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But come on guys. Axel F theme.

Come on. Yeah. I mean, that would actually get goodwill from, I think people would get a really good chuckle out of that and be like, ah, very clever, sir.

You know, it's going to totally fly over like half our listeners heads. They've never seen the movie and never heard of it. Yeah. I'll tell you what though, it does have legs. So worth, worth the rewatch. You know, uh, this weekend, uh, uh, we, I watched, um, coming to America with my son, with my 14 year old Jack, uh, because the coming to America sequel is coming out.

Very exciting. Hadn't seen coming to America in a long time. Probably. I remember I did see it in the theaters and I don't know that I've seen it since. I probably did over the years, but let me tell you, um, I think it's 1988 that movie came out and let me tell you, movies were paced a lot differently. Yes, they were. They are today. I mean, this movie is slow, slow. Also, um,

I am not a huge fan of, um, of, uh, the director of this film, um, John Landis. Um, I think the way I describe it is, uh, I think John Landis is a bad director of good movies. Okay. In other words, I think that some of the, you know, I mean, think about some of the movies he's done, the blues brothers, great movie, uh, trading places, great movie, uh, this movie, great movie,

not really selling him as a bad director yet. I'm saying, yeah, you're making your case yet here. Well, but I think these movies are good in spite of him. I think his skills as a director, uh, and there are things when you watch his movies for me anyway, when I see them and I go, oh, Landis, you know, like the way that he shoots his movies, the way he edits his movies, the shot selection, the, there's all sorts of things that are, that are his movies that I'd think as a director are

sloppy. I find him to be a very sloppy director, but in spite of that, I have to admit the movies are great. So I know I'm contradicting myself here. Maybe somebody else can kind of, you know, get, get the nuance that I'm going for here. But, uh, yeah, this ties into something Brian and I were talking about earlier in the show where you can make a horrible website and a horrible product and

yet still get a billion dollar valuation. So John Landis is the clubhouse of movies. Well, there you go. Or clubhouse is the John Landis of apps. Yes. There you go. That makes sense. I'd say my, my favorite thing that John Landis ever directed is thriller.

Oh yes. I think, I think he actually, I think that he did a really good job on, but canceled, can't watch it anymore. Well, that's me. I won't watch it anymore. Can't watch thriller. Why? Uh, I have Michael Jackson issues. Ah, okay. I thought you had something against zombies.

No, I love zombies. All right. Well, it's totally fine. No reason to cancel them yet. Now, right. You know, they make Hitler jokes on Twitter. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, the royal penis is clean. There you go. Oh boy. Okay. That's usually my line.

I don't know why, but that scene sticks out more than anything else from coming to America. I always remember that line. Yep. It was a good one. My attire. Jack noticed it. That's for sure. Okay. Before we get into any more trouble and we get canceled, let's call it a day.

Yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough. I saw this and I was just a head scratcher. Intel is mocking Apple with their new ad campaign saying that, Oh yeah. You have the new M one Mac, but you can't do this. You can't do that. Oh yeah.

You want to want to launch a rocket. Better get a PC. You want to touch the screen. Better get a PC and all this other crap. And I'm just like, just the desperation smell that's coming off Intel right now is just, it's palpable. Yeah. I just don't, uh, a bad choice on a, on a PR firm or an advertising agency.

I think here, um, I don't, we don't need Intel and Apple like attacking each other. Just tell me what your fucking product does. That's all I want you to do for your advertising. Thank you. And Apple is not attacking Intel. Apple's just moving on. They're like, you know, I, it's just not working out. It's not, it's not, uh, you, it's me. We're just better now. I don't, I don't need Twitter beefs as advertising. No, seriously. It's like, okay. PCs are good for PCs. I, I'll,

every computer I have here is Intel except one. So, Hey, the way it is, but don't, don't be petty. Intel. Don't be petty. Yes. Petty inside. That's what Intel is now. Oh, and I found this one. There is a crowdfunding campaign to set a, send a flat earther to space. Can we just crowdfund hitting him over the head with a hammer? I think that's going to be cheaper. And probably, uh, since the

GoFundMe campaign has only raised 250 pounds out of 250,000 pound gold, he can afford a hammer. He can even get one of those Pentagon hammers for that much. Yeah. I, I, I don't, uh, I don't agree with spending this much money on idiocy. No, no, but it's still funny. It is funny.

Got to give him that. Over at Patreon, we've got no one. No new people. Sad Christmas. Nobody on Patreon. Over at PayPal, we've got Natalie, Linda, Andrew, Raj, Logan, Patricia, and Nathaniel. Thank you so much. Over at Twitter, Ma6502 writes in, that's one strategy to control the narrative. And this is from Axios. The new media mogul, Anderson Horowitz, one of Silicon Valley's most formidable venture capital

firms, is doubling down on content, putting some tech media outlets on edge. This is A16Z, a multi-billion dollar firm that invests across industries, has announced in January that it's building a new and separate media property because everybody else does. Why not then? Why the fuck not? Yes. So why it matters. They aren't interested in traditional journalism, but in an era where content and reaches power, it wants to exert more influence over how people think about tech and

business issues. So it's basically creating a propaganda house. Yes. They have a big stake in, yeah. They have a big stake in clubhouse. Yes. Hence the billion dollar valuation for something that can't even have a fucking site that works. But Andreessen Horowitz is the big dog, you know, they've been around forever. Yeah. Mark Andreessen, the old days,

before Mose, what was it? Mosaic. Mosaic. Yes. Mosaic. My first browser. Yes. Mark now looks like a super villain. He kind of looks like, what's his name from Daredevil? The Vincent D'Onofrio character.

Oh, okay. Kingpin. He looks like Kingpin. That's it. It's very scary. And Corestar writes in, this story could be titled under, what could possibly go wrong? Those crazy Ruskies are about to add the third dimension of traffic. Flying taxis to hit the skies in 2024. Yeah. I'm going to actually file this one under, we'll have self-driving cars in five, 10, 20 years. Yeah. But hey, good. Some of these startups are getting million dollars in funding and yeah, it's the only trickle

down economics that ever seem to work. So none of this shit's ever going to happen. Oh, flying taxis could hit the ground in 2024. Yeah. Matt writes in, if Apple gets into some sort of crypto, it should be the apple seed. Then you can buy a new laptop with apple seeds. Too corny? Yes.

And Sherman writes in, what up geeks? I thought you might get a kick out of this. Just more proof that the only way to get a company to do anything good for consumers is to shame them into it. And this is AT&T scrambles to install fiber for 90 year old after his viral Wall Street Journal ad.

I saw this thing happen in real time and I'm like, I was pissed off. I'm like, okay, so this guy's got money. He can take out a Wall Street Journal ad and then he gets fiber. But everybody else in North Hollywood is still stuck with crappy internet. I know. 90 year old Aaron Epstein, stop showing off with your $10,000 print ads. Just tweet them like everybody else does. Exactly. Fucker. Of course, he actually got a result. Yeah. There's that. See, it's gonna cost me $10,000 to take out an ad

against Oculus just so I can get my $150 worth of content back. Yep. That's the way it works. You gotta spend money to lose money. And Jennifer writes in, stolen Tesla totaled in downtown streets. The owner was interviewed. His description of the outcome, true words, could not be said about the guy who stole it. Watch the interview goes into tech stuff about Tesla. And this is a link over from the wbrc.com website. Stolen Tesla totaled in downtown during high-speed joyride. I watched the video and I

didn't really see anything about getting into the Tesla stuff. So I don't know. Okay. Don't know what was I'm glad you watched it. I didn't. I read the article and I'm like, oh, you gotta make me watch something. I know. I hate that. We need transcripts for everything. Yeah. Speaking of Vincent's back.

Vincent. You know, sometimes when I see Vincent's emails come in, I feel like we've been emailed by Burroughs himself. Vincent, if you could siphon off a little more of that whiskey fund over to maybe our Patreon, that would be appreciated because your whiskey fund is epic, my man. You know what we're doing on our podcast now, actually, Jason, when we go into the feedback section, we're playing

Vincent Roulette. Who's going to get him? This time it's you. Okay. Yeah, that's it. So we got a couple here from Vincent about how the red envelope works on Chinese New Year. Yes. And all of that. So here's the thing. All of these are going to be in the show notes. We're not cutting Vincent off. He's not getting cut off here. But there are so many of them.

There are so many words. We are going to save you the hour it would take to read them. So yes, we've got a couple of good videos about Chinese New Year here. And then he's got another one that apparently all the COVID in the world fits in a can. And this one was kind of interesting that when you take in take into account how many people have been infected and what the size of the actual virus is and how teeny weeny tiny it is. It can all fit in the can of Coke. All right. So that's pretty good. New Coke. And yep. New variant.

Sorry, it's infecting me. Like I'm just I'm reading him and I'm turning into him here. And some Pornhub news. Apparently, one of the big guys, Grant Thornton is leaving Pornhub because they're being audited. And yep, he's out. So there it is. All right. I think you get him from now on. You do much better. I actually tried to go through and read it and then I start to like lose track of my mind

completely. It's awesome. Thank you. I'm going to get time for that. Chris writes in love the show. Gents, check out the head on HBO Max. It's six episode miniseries set in Antarctica. Binge it over the weekend and love that it was more mystery like the movie White Out than a sci-fi fest like The Thing. Stay grumpy. I am three episodes into it and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. And speaking of things that move very slowly, this moves very slowly. But I do enjoy it.

There is a good call out to The Thing in the actual movie itself. So it's pretty funny. Cool. Highlander writes in in light of what's gone on in Washington last month. I thought this song is really meaningful. Cyberpunk's leaky mix. And this is from partition 30 or it's partition 36, the optic nerve. So that link will be in the show notes. He says, thanks geeks. Great show. Well, thank you very much Highlander. Thank you. And Jake from State Farm writes in. Hey grumps.

Nobody gets the Jake from State Farm joke. Everybody gets the Jake from State Farm joke. Okay. Just Jake. Saw you were talking about Pornhub verification and there's a strong incentive behind it. If they allowed people to upload porn that had children under 18 and did nothing about it, they could be complicit in distribution of child sexual abuse material, the term replacing child porn. This carries a mandatory minimum of five years in federal prison. On a separate note, law enforcement and lawmakers are going away from saying the term child pornography for a good reason.

The word pornography implies consent, whereas no minor is legally able to give consent for this. Hence why it is now called child sexual abuse material. CSAM. It's wordy, but it makes a lot of sense. We have a link in the show notes from there. I hope you guys are doing well. All right. Yeah, obviously that's a huge issue and part of the reason, but the article that we were specifically criticizing last week regarding Pornhub attempting to use biometrics for user verification rather than basics like needing to have a company or social security number in order to get paid, which also

provides basic verifications and age. Yes, we, we get, we get why they're doing it. It's just why use biometrics. Yes, exactly. And the other thing is guys, guys, guys get a branding company, get a branding company, child sexual abuse material. Come on. Child porn rolls off the tongue. Child sexual abuse material does not. You're turning into the LGBTQ LBF plus. They actually have like, you know,

punctuation in the name now. Come on. Everybody needs to get a better PR company. All I know is I need to, I need to isolate you saying child pornography rolls off the tongue. Because that might be the most fucked up phrase you've ever said. Oh, Jesus Christ. That's one of them days, one of them days.

If that doesn't make the, if that is not in the end clip of the show, I'm going to be so pissed off at you. Because if I would have said it, you would have fucking done it to me. Oh, that's, that's the, the plus you have in the editor. Anyway, moving on. Canceled. Oh, canceled. And over at iTunes, we've got a couple five stars.

Dr. Drorzy, Drorzy gave us a five star from the UK. It says they will read your review in the show, even if it's one star. But I find that five stars are more appropriate for them with a, I can't even see the emoji, but there's an emoji there. There's some sort of emoji. Yes. Thank you. Yes. Thank you, Drorzy.

Nick Dawson gave us a five star review as well. Says what a great show. I've been listening for the past two years and I love it. There's something for everyone. They bring great news and they discuss the audio quality and production value is outstanding. I do not know how anybody could give less than a five star review. I agree. All right. And we've got a Chaz Trish review. It says, perfect. And in parentheses, almost. Got a five star. Ticks all the boxes. Disgust. Right on point.

Sarcasm. Not nearly enough. Yeah, right. Politics. Piss off if your views don't match my own. Tech. Enough to keep the title. Security news is the most helpful, especially when giving Mac OS upgrade advice. Right, Dave? Thankfully, these dummies match by innate bias, which is all that's important in news these days. Am I right? I think he meant to match my innate bias. Okay. Yeah. If you want your

question or comment right on the show, head over to gog.show/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/review and toss us a five star and snarky review. And if you're still listening on the overcast player, click those little stars. Please, pretty please.

Closing shout outs! Speaking of production values, we lost one of the greats in audio engineering and music mixing console pioneer. Rupert Neve has passed away at 94 years old. He basically invented the Neve 8028 mixing console, which was integral to the classic rock sound of the 70s. He made all kinds of stuff.

Basically, everybody that's ever done anything loves Neve consoles, loves Neve electronics. It's the best sound of all, especially at the iconic LA recording facility, Sound City Studios, of which you've probably seen the documentary. We reviewed it on here and said it was great. So yeah, absolutely fantastic stuff. So he shall be missed. I've used some of his plugins, actually. The plugins are very good too.

Yeah, man. They're really beautiful. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. 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, please visit gog.show/donate to help us out. We'll love you forever or visit gog.show/shop and pick up some good old-fashioned GOG swag.

If you can't do that, then please pass the show along to a friend. Word of mouth is the only way the show grows, so spread the grump far and wide. Show notes for this episode are at gog.show/495. 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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