498: Snakes on a Blockchain

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. Have you had an NFT week? Yeah, let's have some NFT follow talk. It's the only thing out there in tech news this week and general news in general.

You know something's jumped the shark when Lindsay Lohan is releasing NFTs. Yeah. No, I did a lot of research on NFTs this week because I did an episode of Lockhead on Marketing that we recorded that comes out same day this show comes out where I swear a lot about NFT.

Well, there's been some news, obviously. If you're a new listener to this show, I come from a music business background. So that is my particular focus, especially when I'm looking around at news. And I found the Rolling Stone Field Guide to Music's Potential Crypto Boom, which is an interesting article talking about it.

You know, we've spent a lot of time on the show, obviously, talking a bit about the music business and about how streaming has basically screwed artists. They're not getting paid anything, basically. And then COVID hit because the only way musicians were making money was touring, and they can't tour right now.

So good time for NFTs to roll out for musicians, maybe. A way to put up a tchotchke that people will pay for and own. That's in air quotes. So they talk a little bit about this. And the thought experiments go beyond just what we're thinking about, which is, you know, the Kings of Leon releasing a song or something.

Or Grimes releasing her artwork with dubiously licensed music behind it, which we're not entirely. You know, as you get older, your professional circles change a bit. My circles used to be the musicians and the roadies and things of that nature.

Now it's the music lawyers who are all scratching their heads at NFTs and going, you've got to be kidding me. I have to deal with this. But that is what it is. But in this article, they talk about what if there was a merch royalty. So the artist got a cut every time a branded hoodie or piece of art was resold or a system to ensure accurate paychecks for musicians.

I like the idea of the transparency of being able to see where the music comes from and goes to or the money and all that. More like the money. A merch royalty. Now, hold on a second. If I buy a fucking t-shirt, don't I? Now I no longer even own the t-shirt.

It's basically what I'm being told. If I go to a show and I buy a t-shirt, I no longer completely own the shirt. And if I sell the shirt to somebody, now I have to pay you a buck or two as well? This is getting fucking stupid. Yeah, getting a little ridiculous.

It's getting a bit ridiculous. But it does kind of get into a bit of the finances. And in terms of artist revenue streams for merchandise, touring, licensing, streaming royalties, performance royalties, all that sort of stuff, it does exist in kind of a muck. And so much to the point that basically, you know, as an artist, you have to hire accountants and managers and all that sort of stuff to basically audit your record label every couple of years.

Because that's the only way you're actually going to get paid because you don't actually see what's going on. And the idea that basically blockchain, not NFTs specifically, but just blockchain being applied to that whole process would increase transparency, which I like.

I like that idea. That makes a lot of sense. The other idea here, which again, it doesn't have to be an NFT, it could just be blockchain, would be that it would basically kill the scalping ticket market. If you can hold tickets within the blockchain, then there is transparency as to who owns it and why.

And it would basically, theoretically, kill the scalping market. Okay, I like that. Fair enough. But again, doesn't require an NFT, just requires putting things on the blockchain so there's transparency. Right, yeah, you'd make a private blockchain, a music business only blockchain for that.

Or a blockchain, like an artist-specific blockchain. Every artist could have their own blockchain now. Oh, great. Yay. That's what we need. I don't think you're in the spirit of the show here, Brian. We want less blockchain, not more, as far as I can remember.

So I did try and buy that Kings of Leon album. Okay. And I was going through the process, and the process is not for mere mortals. You know, you thought it was hard to get a COVID vaccine? Oh, my God. You have to set up, you know, you have to get your Ether wallets.

And I set up MetaMask and all this crap and got it all done. And then I went to go buy some Ether, because you can't just pay cash. You know, that's, I guess, against the whole point. They couldn't just do it right at the door and say, here, you know, convert some cash into a fucking album for me.

No, I had to go buy Ether. And so to buy $100 in Ether was going to cost me $9.50 in just transaction fees. So Ticketmaster would be proud on that one. So, yes, I abandoned that silliness right there.

And I'm like, I don't even like Kings of Leon. So, you know, if it was at least a band I liked, I might have gone a little bit farther. But, yeah, the joke for the bit was really not, the juice wasn't worth the squeeze on that, for sure. Especially it wasn't worth $9.50 in just transactions alone. Yeah, that's ridiculous, of course.

Yeah. Yeah, but I would have been anonymous. And this is one thing I talked about on the episode with Chris Lockhead is that, you know, all of these transactions are quote unquote anonymous. So, let's say I'm an artist and I put some pieces out there and I start buying up my own art under pseudonyms just to jack the price up.

And over time, it's just a game of hot potatoes. So, the first person to actually buy that piece of art is then stuck as the owner after I've completely inflated the price artificially. I expect to see that happening for sure, you know. Yeah. It's just, it's so, it's such a silly, silly thing.

And this is what really just, it kind of broke my heart. Some guy took an actual Banksy, a certified piece of Banksy art, burned it, but not before scanning it and creating an NFT out of it and then sold the NFT.

Right. And I do think it is, you know, completely appropriate that the piece in question was called Morons because it just, it keeps it alive because the piece is of an art auction. So, you can't get more meta than this. But it sold for $379,000.

Okay. Well, that's a bargain price because you can buy Jack Dorsey's first ever tweet for $2.5 million. I was going to say, it just keeps getting better from there. This is getting so ridiculously stupid. Yes, it is his first tweet, which says, just setting up my twatter, T-W-T-T-R, from 2006.

And you can, he put it up on Friday with a link to a digital platform called Valuables that allows for the buying and selling of tweets autographed by the creators. Just talk about a name being the exact opposite of what it is because that shit ain't valuable at all.

Nope. In no way, shape, or form. So, yeah, you can buy the first ever tweet. Yeah. And guess who else jumped into the sell your tweets market, which, of course, you knew this was coming. Elon Musk. Oh, no. Because he needs the money. Like Jack needs the money.

I have a rant coming, which we'll address this very specifically. I have a follow-up rant as well. And, you know, since it is on the blockchain and we've talked about how Bitcoin in particular is so terrible for the environment. Ethereum also not that great for the environment as well.

So, there is – we now have the new eggs. Is NFT good for the environment or bad for the environment? Or is it bad for the environment or badder, badder, badder for the environment? So, Wired had an article called, NFTs are hot, so is there an effect on the Earth's climate?

But then over at Medium, there was a piece that actually did a pretty good job of debunking everybody's case that NFTs are going to basically ruin the world as we know it. It says that the way Ethereum works is – think of it as a train that just is always going.

And, you know – What's the name of that show? Snowpiercer. Yeah, Snowpiercer. That's it. On the blockchain. And if there are empty seats, the train still keeps going. But if you put transactions on the train, it doesn't take up any more actual energy from the train because the train is still already going.

Where it comes down to it is I think a lot of people are saying that they're equating the mining of the coin and they're taking that into account. But you mine the coin once and then there's just the fractional transaction cost as it goes forward. It's like saying I'm deforesting the rainforest because they use paper to print currency.

And every time I use that currency, I lose another tree. And that's just not how it actually works. Okay. Once that thing is done, it's made, it's created. That energy is gone. But, yes, there are transaction costs that go along with it. But those are minuscule compared to what it takes to actually mine the currency.

Right. I'll talk about more currency mining in a moment. But, yeah. All right. So let's pass judgment on NFTs here. So my take on this is that they have potential maybe in the future. There are a lot of aspects about blockchain in the music industry that I like.

But I don't see music fans rushing to purchase NFTs from artists. Look, you can't get fucking anybody to buy anything from an artist at this point. So it's very small scale stuff. Transparency and payments for artists and labels and everyone else in the money chain I see as good. Killing the scalper and secondary ticket market would be good.

Buying some bullshit NFT of Grime's artwork to support an artist. Stupid. Fix the way artists get paid for what they actually do. And we don't need this shit at all. And as far as NFTs in general, to me, this seems like a rich get richer scheme. We'd see very rich people getting very rich, putting up NFTs.

The main people profiting off them so far are already rich and famous because, you know, that's the way it works. Sure, some digital artists happen to be in the right place at the right time and just scored a big windfall. But I'd be fucking shocked if anyone gives a shit about these things any more than your average person gives a shit about cryptocurrency in general.

So, yes, the rich get richer is definitely what's going on here right now. And I talked to my dad who's, you know, been in the fine art sales, you know, business, like literal business for over 35 years. And he's like, yeah, this is not surprising.

Art collectors always want the cool new thing. They want to be the first to do anything and they want to have bragging rights about it. And that's never going to change. And he sees it as a fad, which we all agree on that. I'm pretty sure everybody agrees at this point it's a fad if you're – unless you're one of the millionaires who are making more millions.

And he's like, yeah, a lot of people are going to get suckered by this and a lot of people are going to lose a lot of money, which is what we've been saying as well. So, an actual art professional is on our side with this one. And, you know, I'm worried – this is what really worries me is that a lot of people who missed out on the blockchain or the Bitcoin rush are going to see this as a way to jump in and maybe get a piece of that action.

Yeah. Because it's a new thing. Yeah. Yeah, that's 100% why this is so much bigger than even, you know, Bitcoin was when it first came out. It's – everybody feels like they got left out. They didn't quite make their bones on GameStop and everybody is about making a quick buck right now and everybody wants to get in on this.

Yeah, and if you just look at OpenSea's rate of new NFTs being minted and put on the service, it is going to be – I mean, this is an epic shark fin moment. You look at it, it is a shark fin big time. It is going to be very steep and it is going to fall very, very quickly once people realize that, no, nobody is going to buy your gift.

So just be really, really careful out there, people, seriously, because just don't waste your money on it. It's a fad. I give it, you know, three months at the most before the news cycle has completely forgotten about it. It might pop its head up here and there again, but this thing is dead in the water.

Deadline had a really funny article particularly about the Kings of Leon album on NFT. For those of us old enough and those listeners that haven't only existed in the streaming world, but those of us that remember, oh, I don't know, maybe being young and having an album and then having compact discs and then, oh, somewhere in between there was cassettes and then all of a sudden we were ripping everything and then we gave up on that and we just started streaming.

For those of us in this age group, I like this particular quote that said in the Deadline article, so go ahead and buy the Kings of Leon NFT. It may be someday worth a lot. Just like that digital compact cassette holding open your door, it will likely offer perfect sound forever as was promised at the dawn of the compact disc age.

That was before it was discovered that CDs degrade over time because the recording layers are made with a dye that is extremely photosensitive. So it may not be worth anything. And as a final note, as we were putting together this segment, I did search and I am shocked and amazed that Amanda fucking Palmer has not done an NFT yet.

But Jason, you will be delighted to know that she has launched a podcast. Great, great. Just what I wanted. Just what I wanted for Christmas. Oh, God. And one little bit of follow-up from eBrown16 over on Discord. We kind of pooped a little bit on Turkish Airlines last week because I didn't do any research on it.

It just sounded terrifying to me. He said that it's super nice and part of Star Alliance. It's got a way better premium product over the Atlantic than most U.S. airlines, which obviously is not hard. Low bar. Unfortunately, United is in the Star Alliance.

And I think maybe they relaxed the membership requirements for that one because United. Yeah, I was a member of the Star Alliance for a long time. They had their rewards program. You know, remember back when we could travel and all that? Yeah. And, yeah, the biggest bummer of all of it was that I would have to fly United domestic.

That's not good. In the news. Well, even though we just shat all over NFT, you crypto bros out there who missed out on the first round of Bitcoin, you're in luck because here we go again.

Are you ready for the Chia Network, Brian? No. Chia. Chia. Chia. Yeah. Bram Cohen is behind this one. Bram Cohen is the inventor of BitTorrent. So he has decided to jump in here and create a cryptocurrency that is not as bad for the environment.

Okay. He has a long history of stealing things. Yes, he does. He does. So what this one does, you can actually start mining now, I guess. You give up hard drive space on your computer. And what it kind of does here, from what I've gathered from a couple sources here, basically it fills up that hard drive space with like bingo cards.

So if you have, you know, more bingo cards, you have more chances of getting a bingo. It's just like, you know, going to play bingo at the, you know, with the veterans hall. Okay. The more cards you have, the bigger the chance you get. And that's how they farm.

The Chia coin. Okay. And yeah, that's kind of it. That's kind of it. Not going to be doing that. I found this from Mark Fraunfelder's Magnet newsletter, which I thoroughly enjoy and pay for.

So I recommend everybody does that because, you know, support Mark. But yeah, he's the one that put it on here. And he said he was thinking about going to get a 12 terabyte hard drive and hooking it up to a Raspberry Pi. So it's a low energy mining rig. And yeah, I don't know.

That's actually not a bad idea just to hedge your bets. Nah, I'm not on board with any of this stuff. I think it's all stupid. Okay. How much money did you make off your last Bitcoin run? I mean, 300 bucks. There you go. So it's, you know, it's something. Not much.

Let's be honest. All right. In real news, not this bullshit. Google is going to stop selling ads based on your specific web browsing. The Alphabet Inc. Company said on Wednesday that it plans to stop using or investing in tracking technologies that uniquely identify web users as they move from site to site across the internet.

It's a big call from a big company. They are one of the biggest out there. They accounted for 52% of last year's global digital ad spending of $292 billion, according to Jounce Media, which is a digital ad consultancy. So they haven't been terribly specific about what they're going to replace it with.

And there's a big caveat here. We will not be tracking you across other websites, but anything that we own, we will track you across. And we will call that first party data. And since they own some of the biggest sites on the internet, YouTube and Google search to begin with, they're not exactly going to be losing out on much of their data.

It's other people that will be losing out on a lot of data. Yeah, that 52% just went up to 62% global ad spend. I've read a lot about this, and a lot of people have come to the exact same conclusion, yours truly included, is that they wouldn't be jumping on this unless they had something better in the wings.

And that's what they've got. So, yeah, this is not some altruistic way for them to say, hey, we're protecting your privacy by turning off third-party cookies. It just means we're going to eat more of the cookies. That's all. Yes. So, yeah.

We have a bigger and better cookie monster that we will be unrolling. Oh, and I saw this one over at Wired, and I had to chuckle. Gig companies fear a worker shortage despite a recession. So, turns out, turns out here, even though, you know, we have massive unemployment in the U.S., thanks to the pandemic, people don't want to drive for Uber and Lyft anymore.

It could be that they have figured out that as, you know, contract drivers, they're just getting fucked in the ear while being hung upside down over a snake pit for driving for these companies. Who would have thunk it that maybe somebody has finally figured out that working for these companies is a bad idea?

Yeah. And I put working in air quotes. Yeah. I mean, you know, obviously, these companies have promoted the unicorns out there, the people that actually make a good living working for them. But the vast majority of people don't. I think we saw a number of reports that talked about how, you know, basically they were clearing less than minimum wage when you took into account all the costs involved, your car, wear and tear, service, gas, all that sort of stuff.

It's, yeah, it's not a real job. It's just not in general. So you can get lucky, just like you could potentially get lucky mining ChiaCoin. But chances are, it's all gamble. So speaking of that. I think you actually have a better chance of making more money on ChiaCoin than you do as an Uber driver.

Probably. Probably. So we've talked a lot about universal basic income over the years and how we think it's kind of a good idea, but we haven't really seen any large scale examples of it. We need to study it a bit more. And Stockton's basic income experiment has apparently paid off.

I think we talked about this when they launched it. So they did a small demonstration program sending payments of $500 a month to 125 randomly selected individuals living in neighborhoods with average incomes lower than the city median of $46,000 a year. They were allowed to spend the money any way that they want.

They were not obligated to complete any drug tests, interviews, means or asset tests, or work requirements. They just got the money. No strings attached whatsoever. And this is a relatively common, highly effective method of poverty alleviation used all over the world in low-income and high-income countries in rural areas and cities, and particularly for households with children, but not in the United States, because we don't do anything that is known as family benefits.

In fact, we spend less of our GDP on what is known as family benefits than any other country in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, except for Turkey. All right. Second mention of Turkey on the show. Mm-hmm. Yep. So we got rid of that because we kind of feel that if you're on welfare, you're a loser, and the best route out of poverty is not a handout, but a hand up.

Let's get you a job driving for Uber. Hustle. Hustle. Hustle. Yeah. Come on. You know, rise and grind. Let's go. That's right. So, unfortunately, the study has proved that to be false. Actually, giving people money helps. Okay.

How did they test? Well, they basically did A-B comparisons. They had groups of people that didn't get the money, and they had groups of people that did get the money. And we basically found out that giving people some guaranteed income did not stop them from working. It basically gave them a hand up to do things like, you know, get a better laptop or get a suit or whatever that enabled them to go out and get the stability that they needed to find and go out and find and take a new job.

All right. The people that got the money were healthier, happier, and less anxious than their counterparts in the control group. So, cash is a better way to cure some forms of depression and anxiety than Prozac, said the former mayor of Stockton, who spearheaded the project. So many of the illnesses we see in our community are a result of toxic stress and elevated cortisol levels and anxiety directly attributed to income volatility and not having enough to cover your basic necessities.

And that's true in the public health crisis we're in now. More work, less destitution, more family stability, less strained social networks, less stress, fewer incidences of homelessness, and fewer skipped meals. That is what UBI could give the country.

All right. All right. I really, really hope that they did something for the control group after it was done because that would suck to be in that control group, really. It's like, oh, we're still miserable. Thanks for nothing. Literally, thanks for nothing.

Oh, man. Facebook is back in the news this week with some new AI. So, they've got a new algorithm called Seer. And what this does is it takes billions upon billions of images, of course, from Instagram.

Right. And without explicit permission, you signed away those rights when you- Terms of service. Signed up for Instagram to let them do this kind of thing. And apparently, it is reaping results. Okay. So, the interesting thing here is there is a guy, Jan Likun.

He's Facebook's chief scientist. This is the guy who basically came up with deep learning back in the day. So, they, you know, they went to the top of the mountain to find the guy who did the thing to, like, do their thing. Right. Which is pretty interesting.

But, yeah, this, it's an interesting new way to, like, train, literally train algorithms without having to tag images. Like, it just looks and looks and looks and learns and learns and learns. And it's pretty interesting.

I got to say, it's pretty, pretty interesting. Self-supervised learning. Kind of like what people do sometimes, I guess. That's how we're raised. But, yeah, I'm going to keep an eye on this one because this is, you know, honestly, stop saying AI. It is a new way to do machine learning.

But it sounds like a pretty cool one. All right. Too bad Facebook's the one that's doing it. Because all they're going to do is try and figure out if there's a nipple in my shot. Or sell me more ads. Yeah. Hot dog or not? That's it. That's what they've done. They've done millions and millions of compute cycles to figure out hot dog or not.

Pretty much. And I can't even count the amount of people that sent this one into this week. John McAfee charged with securities fraud for pump and dump cryptocurrency scheme. Yep. And, you know, the head scratcher is here. Wait, wait. You can actually get in trouble for doing something with cryptocurrency?

Turns out. Not technically. They're getting him on the fact that he basically did not, he was not upfront about the fact that he would, they were basically ads. Yeah. They were ads. He specifically told people that, you know, this is a really good buy.

I am not going to make any money off of this. I do not pump and dump for my own gain. I do not own any of this cryptocurrency, but you should buy it because it is a cool thing. And by saying that. That wasn't true. That was not true. And apparently, he was such a security expert.

He did a lot of his planning over DMs on Twitter, which can be subpoenaed, where they found the proof that he was actually behind trying to do this. So, he's never getting out of jail. He's done. He's cooked. He's cooked. Yeah. It's kind of sad.

It is kind of sad. You know, he's like your crazy uncle that you want to kind of see succeed, even though he's, you know. Well, I wouldn't say succeed. I see him more as a person to not emulate. Like, you know how we have role models? Yeah, cautionary tale.

We have role models out there that we want to emulate. And then there's John McAfee, who anything that he does or he's involved in, I know, don't get involved in that. Yeah, kind of like Kim. Yeah, kind of like Kim.com, you know. It's like interesting, interesting cat, kind of funny, but you don't want to be hanging out with him.

You really don't. And here we go. This is a funny one. Chamath Palahapitya, who is the chairman of Virgin Galactic. He obviously doesn't want to be involved with Virgin Galactic anymore. Even though he's the chairman, he decided to sell off all of his personal stock in the company to go do other things with the money and start up new initiatives.

But he's going to stay chairman of Virgin Galactic because he believes in the mission. Yeah, if I were the rank and file over at Virgin Galactic, I'd be polishing up my resume right now. Look, you can sell, you can do whatever you want with your stocks and all that.

And I agree that you should have the right to do that. But I would just say if you're the CEO or you're the chairman or you're high up in any company, quit the job before you sell all your stock in the company you're working for. Yeah, really, really.

I mean, this one, it's a head scratch. So I'm not alone here, right? This is like a really bad move. No, this is not. This is, I agree with you. It just, it sends a message, as they like to say.

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Media Candy. Well, we're at week 365. We are basically at the point, coming up on the anniversary of the last day that, at least here in Los Angeles and California, that we actually went outside or did anything ever.

And I remember I had tickets for a couple shows, all of which quickly got canceled and have been rescheduled. Hamilton, I remember, yeah. I was going to go see Hamilton. I was going to see Dead Can Dance. There was a whole bunch of stuff coming up and all of those things. Well, Hamilton got refunded.

You got lucky on that. I got lucky on that one. The other concerts that I had tickets for have had, like, five to six rescheduled dates at this point and just keep rolling and rolling and rolling. But according to the Wall Street Journal, we might be getting concerts back sooner than I would have thought.

Fans could be back at concerts this summer. Industry executives, who are quick to note the business was among the first to shut down because of COVID-19 and will likely be among the last to come back, are cautiously plotting a gradual return to live shows as infections appear to subside and vaccination rates rise.

According to Live Nation Entertainment's chief executive officer, Michael Rapinoe, a real peach of a guy, he told investors the world's largest concert promoter thinks it can begin staging outdoor amphitheater shows by midsummer. And Jay Marciano, the chief executive of the rival AEG Presents, says he believes full-capacity club and theater shows will be possible this fall.

Which is pretty incredible. Just as a touchstone here in terms of how much money is involved with these sorts of things, global revenue from concerts before pandemic rose to $26.1 billion in 2019 and began before falling to $6.5 billion in 2020.

I would love to see where that $6.5 billion is from because there hasn't been a single fucking show. Overseas. I know they have festivals in New Zealand. So, yeah, in the United States, no. Yeah. Europe, no.

So, we'll see. Maybe it's all from New Zealand. I know a lot of, I know, you know, just from being inside the industry, I know a lot of tours are planned. I know that all the work has been done and everybody's just waiting to press go. A lot of tour routing has been done. There are talks and murmurs of there actually being outdoor festivals this summer.

We'll see. Unless they're in Texas right now. Yeah. I'm not sure what's going to happen. And I'm not sure how ready people are to go back. I mean, I know, you know, even in this article, they interviewed a couple, you know, fanatics that would basically go to a show right now. But your standard rank and file, I'm not sure.

I'm not ready to go back to a show. I can tell you that much. Not until I get vaccinated. Yeah, I watched the news yesterday and they had a concert where they had like six different groups of people all segmented by, you know, different levels of protective gear.

I think everybody tested negative before they went in. But now they're trying to see if I apparently they're trying to test the efficacy of the, you know, the covid test, because if they said that everybody tested negative when they came in and they're going to track everybody once they leave. It's like, are you just expecting there to be false positives or false negatives coming through?

I'd imagine. Yeah, I don't quite understand how it how it works, but everybody seemed to be having a damn good time. So I think a lot of people are ready to go back to concerts, especially if you live in Colorado. I know people are and I get it. And it's it's it's really up to your own level of personal comfort and all that, I suppose.

And but here's the here's my thing. OK, I would like to go out and eat at a restaurant. I don't want to go out and eat at a restaurant on the street with cars driving by and gigantic concrete bunkers set up to make sure that the car doesn't run into my table outside in the restaurant.

I would very much like to go to a concert. I don't want to go to it. I'm not going to go to a concert until I can go to a concert without wearing a mask and I can go to the fucking bar and get a beer. I just need it to be back to normal before I'm into it. That's just me. And God bless all you people that are that are raring to go and are happy to do it.

Good for you. Yep. Canaries in the coal mine, unfortunately. So I think I think the way you want to go, Brian, is not going to be till next year. Yeah, I think so, too. Yeah. And this is a head scratcher. Sort of. Jack Dorsey's Square has acquired Tidal.

Okay. You know, with all of the idiocy in the NFT space that Jack is, you know, dipped his willy into, it seems like, you know, you can easily extrapolate out that he's going to try and figure out what we were talking about with how to get artists paid. Right.

Since he has a payment processing company that also works in crypto and has some ideas, I guess. So, yeah, Tidal is now Undersquare. I'll be interested to see what they do. Again, see my rant earlier in the show.

If we could actually fix artists getting paid for what they originally do and what they are currently doing, i.e. their music, I'm interested. Let me hear more about it. If the idea is now we're just going to add micropayment tip jars to the stream, that's bullshit.

Yeah. Yeah, I think the real way to get rid of this problem in the music industry is just kill all the music industry execs who take all the money. Start there. It's like, you know, Shakespeare famously said, kill all the lawyers. So that didn't work out.

No. Yeah. That wouldn't go over well in your household. No. So I watched the documentary on Patrice O'Neill called Killing is Easy. Very sad documentary. He was an interesting cat for sure.

Definitely not the nicest person on the planet by any stretch of the imagination. He was one of those guys that, you know, there's always that saying, the comedian's comedian. Like, other comedians loved him. The public, lukewarm. Yeah. Yeah. Because it was really hard to tell when he was actually making a joke or if he was just a misogynistic piece of crap.

And it seems to, if you want to err on the side of caution, go with a misogynistic piece of crap. Well, he definitely came from another time. Like, his comedy would not fly in today's environment at all. No, no, no, no. Barely flew in, you know, his time.

Barely flew then, yes. Ten years ago, you know. I mean, he's no, he wouldn't have been much older than we are at probably our age. So, yeah, different times, different times. But it's an interesting, it's an interesting watch. Kind of sad. But, yeah, he was, he was definitely, yeah, he was him.

That's about all you can say about it. Condor Season 2 is back. And it was apparently back in June, and I missed it. Because it was, it's an AT&T show. There's this really weird AT&T network that it was originally on. So, you kind of had to go to Sweden to get it.

Or if you had, like, some weird direct TV package, you could watch it. Right. But for Season 2, they've moved over to Epix, which I am a subscriber to. Because I forgot to cancel my subscription last week after watching, by any means necessary, the Malcolm X documentary.

Don't! But so, fortunately, I can watch Condor Season 2. Because Condor Season 1 was great. It's based on Three Days of the Condor. And this is just new stories after it. So, if you like spy stuff and CIA stuff and assassinations and all that good spooky stuff, check it out.

Right. Well, I saw some things this week. My kid is super into snakes right now. And we had fired up Disney Plus at some point. And an ad for The Jungle Book came up with the big snake caw on it. So, that was it. Okay. All game over. We're going to have to watch The Jungle Book.

All right. Fine. I have fond memories of it. Kipling, the author on which it's originally based. Much like Patrice O'Neill, a troublesome individual. Wildly racist. But, of course, even back in 1967, Disney was aware of what their target market was and erased all the racism.

Or most of it. So, it was great. I really – I mean, the songs are top notch. Like, you cannot beat the songs in the original Jungle Book. They were fantastic. So, it was fun to go back and watch that again. We've been listening to the soundtrack repeatedly from The Lady in the Tube since then.

Really good songs. All of that was wonderful. But, as anybody with kids know, Obsession sets in and the ad for The Jungle Book 2016 appeared and there was an even bigger real-looking snake. So, we had to watch that one as well.

Surprisingly good, I've got to say. This is Jon Favreau did it. Yeah. I really enjoyed it. Great casting for the most part. Bill Murray's in there. Christopher Walken is in there. The one big misstep, the snake, caw, Scarlett Johansson.

Aww. Somebody, for the love of God, tells Scarlett Johansson she's not allowed to sing anymore. Ooh, that's even – ooh, ooh. She sings the main song, Trust in Me, which the original version is unbelievable. Her version sucks. It just plain fucking sucks.

Why wouldn't you get, like, Gaga in there? Somebody who has a voice. I don't know. Scarlett Johansson is just getting some sort of pass in Hollywood and she pretends she can sing. Yeah. It happens. Yeah. Ghost in the Shell, for example. That was bad. Anyways, they were both great.

I actually highly recommend seeing the new Jungle Book. Technically, it's a masterpiece. It's wonderful. Okay. Maybe I'll do that. I would recommend if your kid is into snakes, go get Rikki-Tikki-Tavvy. Yeah. That's a good idea. Yeah. I think next on the list is, you know, as we've always talked about, one of my favorite movies, Robin Hood, because they've got the hiss.

So you should enjoy that. We'll see. Just don't let them watch Anaconda. Or snakes on a plane. No, that one you can let them watch. That's great. So the adult movie that I watched this week and my wife and I were quite excited about because we both grew up enjoying Coming to America, the first movie.

Coming to America 2. If you enjoyed Coming to America, you will have a nice nostalgia trip with Coming to America 2. If you've never heard of Coming to America, you will not understand this movie at all and wonder why it got made and why there are so many famous people in it.

All right. Did you watch Coming to America before this to get caught up? I did not. I did not because I have fond enough memories of it and I don't know if it would have legs or not. Okay. Yeah. Bittner said that it was a very slow watch when he talked about it a couple weeks ago. Pacing was definitely different back then.

Yeah. I don't know. I'm going to obviously watch it, but I think I'm going to watch Coming to America first. Just do a back-to-back Saturday, you know, sit by the fire, have a cocktail, and just watch them both. Because it doesn't seem like you have to think very much. No. Not much thinking required.

So Mike wrote in, Gents, I've heard you mention Kim's Convenience on two episodes now, and yes, it's excellent, but have yet to hear you mention that Kim, Paul Sun Hwang Lee, is also one of the X-Wing pilots in The Mandalorian Season 2. Just an interesting bit of trivia. I did not know that.

Yeah, I do remember that. I just didn't, you know, didn't come up with Bittner, where the Star Wars news goes. So we have some breaking news. Apparently, Season 5 of Kim's Convenience is the end, and not without some drama. Most of the actors are not happy about not getting a Season 6.

So they were renewed for both Season 5 and Season 6, but according to a post on the show's official Instagram account yesterday, co-creators Inz Choi and Kevin White decided to move on to other projects at the conclusion of production on Season 5. So the show's producers, Thunderbird Films, decided not to continue without them, and the actors are heartbroken.

Lou said, I feel like my journey with Jung was cut short. I feel like you, the fans, deserve better. But I'm proud of all that we accomplished together in five seasons. Thank you for the love and support. This isn't goodbye, only hashtag OKCU, which I love. That's very funny. To me, this sounds like a money issue, and I'm wondering if Netflix, because it's become a big hit on Netflix, is going to step up and say, we'll bring you guys all back if you do a Season 6,

and here is a large, let me back this truck up to Kim's Convenience, full of money. Yeah. I watched the first half of Episode 1. It was funny. It was funny. I just didn't have time to keep going. Not your thing. It was OK. It was OK. It was just, yeah, definitely.

I'm not, you know, me and sitcoms don't get along together. But it was definitely what you said. They don't pull any punches in that show. Ups and doodads. So, Brian, I got some new toys this week. All right.

I got the Glidegear TMP100 Adjustable iPad Tablet Smartphone Teleprompter Beam Splitter 7030 Glass with Carry Case No Plastic All Metal Slash No Assembly Required. All right. I've been doing a lot of reading for the podcast course that I've been filming.

And I thought, oh, God, I can't memorize all these scripts. So let me just get a teleprompter. Because it was like, it was 200 bucks. And you put your iPad in it. And I got some software called PromptSmart, which was really cool. It's voice recognition based. So as you're talking, the script will scroll automatically for you.

Nice. It was working great until I put in a word that it could not understand, which was notably my own name. And it hung. It could not get past my name. Right. So that was troublesome. So I had to go back and edit the script. And they do a thing with subscriptions.

And it's kind of annoying because I got the cloud package so I could have it on multiple devices and edit on one. And it would cloud sync to the other, blah, blah, blah, all this crap. And they have a desktop version. I thought, oh, it should be part of the same package.

Let me get the desktop version because it'll be easier. Nope. Uh-uh. Another subscription on top of it. So, yeah, that was a bummer. So I'm on the fence with this. When it works, it's fantastic. It's really fantastic. But I also learned that reading off a teleprompter is really hard because you just look like a crazy person because your eyes are shifting all over.

So you have to learn to unfocus what you're reading so you're looking directly at the lens. And then I figured out, well, I don't even need it that much because if you just do bullet points and talk like a human, it comes out even better. Right. So all of this stuff is really cool. But the purpose that I wanted it for, it just didn't work.

But the one purpose that I found that is awesome is using the iPad as a second display and doing Zoom calls or any call where you have people, like a Skype call or, you know, any video call that you have to do. You use your iPad as a second monitor, put that on the teleprompter, and you're staring directly at the person the whole time.

Right. It's great for that. And we talked about duet display a long time ago. That was before Sidecar came out. Yeah. Yeah, I got it. And I used it the one time I installed it to see if it actually worked. And I went, oh, cool, neat.

This works. And never had a use case for it ever again. And then Sidecar came out. I use it sometimes. Sometimes. It's better than Sidecar. That's for sure. Yeah. So it does have some extra stuff that's pretty cool. And you can use it for almost like a back to my Mac sort of thing now.

It's pretty neat. But it didn't do what I needed it to do with the teleprompter, which was flip it. Left to right and right to left because it's really hard to press a button with a mouse when you're going backwards and forwards and up to down looking at it on a teleprompter. So in comes Luna Display.

And I got to thank a friend of the show, Eric Hundley, for this one. It's $80. And it's a little plug that you plug into your main computer that then broadcast to the iPad. Now, I don't know why it needs a dongle when we have things like Bluetooth and cables.

I was going to ask. It's a thing. It's a thing. You've got to pay $80 for it. It comes with software to do it. But it has teleprompter mode, which is pretty cool. I've got a video in the show notes where you can actually go and see how they do it.

But between the two of them, it's really cool for video calls because you never break eye contact. And so it's $280 total plus the iPad and, of course, a DSLR behind it that you have to use as a webcam. So it's an expensive option.

It's not a cheap rig. No, it's not a cheap rig considering there's a $2,000 camera on the back end of it that goes into a $600 video mixer that then goes into another mixer. But the teleprompter and the dongle are cheap, I guess.

So anyway, things that were not cheap also was the iMac Pro, which Apple has decided to stop selling, which is good news because that means that new iMacs are going to be on the way. And hopefully with the snappy little M1 whatever next-gen chip they're going to have is.

And I'm looking forward to that because my iMac is getting a little long in the tooth and I love it. But, yeah, I want me like an M1X, you know, iMac. I really want one of those for sure. All right. Yep.

And last week I asked about that new app, Dispo, which is now valued at $200 million after their funding round. And I just want to do a quick follow-up on this. And thanks to everybody who, you know, tweeted or emailed me that had an invite. But, Brian, I had a reflective moment.

I had a very reflective moment. Okay. And this whole invite thing just pissed me off. You know, Clubhouse did it. These guys are doing it. Other apps have done it over time. And I'm not going to review anything that's not open to the public anymore. All right.

I'm not going to buy into this bullshit hype cycle for an app, which I can tell you right now is a dud. Yeah, it's going to fail. You got to wait a day to get your photos back. You know, this forced nostalgia bullshit is really just annoying.

And the fact that these guys are going to make a ton of money on it for a gimmick, it's not worth $200 million. I'm telling you right now, it's not worth $200 million, period. It's an app that makes you wait for your pictures that have no filters on them just so you can relive what it was like to overpay for a disposable 35-millimeter camera because that was the shtick at weddings, you know, when you were 20 years ago.

Yeah. No. I like progress. I like filters. And I like being able to see my photos right now. So there you have it. Cool. Yeah. I'm not a fan of that process either, but I get why they do it because, you know, tech and press. And media. So it hypes up their apps and people feel like they need to get involved when they otherwise would probably just go, oh, there's this app out there that does this.

Oh, well, I don't need that. Hell with that. Which is how everybody would react if they just put this out. So there you go. I am in the process of slowly getting our house ready to pack up and move to Toronto for our final move. And part of that process is kind of going through everything and getting rid of stuff we don't need and figuring out what we do need and ordering a bunch of things.

So the Amazon truck is coming all the time here. And I went and finally got some of the things that you recommended because I can't really use them with my setup here. But once I get to Toronto, they will be part of my podcast setup. I got the gaming mouse pad XXXL extended large mat desk pad, 36 inches by 16.5 inches, GL Tech mouse pad, long, non-slip rubber mice pad, stitched edges with portable bag.

That's great. I can't wait to start using it. Must have. Yeah, it's way too big for the desk I'm currently at, but it will be perfect for the desk that I will be at. I also got the App Home Upgrade headphone stand hanger hook, aluminum stick-on adhesive, underdesk, dual headset holder mount gaming accessories for all headphones, comma, silver.

Yep. Which will be nice, again, when I get there. Here does not work. Fantastic. I got two of them right now. Yep. And while I was at it, I wanted to do a little cord management both here and when I get there. So I got the 16-pack multi-purpose cable clips holder for organizing cable cords home and office self-adhesive cord holders.

These things are great and they're super cheap. Yep. I actually saw this in the notes and I went and bought them yesterday. So they get here today. These look fantastic. Yeah. And a hat tip to John, aka CyVeteran over on Twitter. He sent this link. It's how AirPods are deep cleaned.

Now, there's a trigger warning at the beginning of this video and I was just like, oh, you got to be kidding me. Kids nowadays, why do they need a trigger warning? Oh, my God. Oh, my God. That's disgusting. That's pretty much how that thought went in my head as I was watching it.

It is so gross. Yeah. I give my AirPods a little scrapey scrape once a week. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I don't end up with one of the ones in these videos. Yeah. A little Q-tip, a little alcohol, you're good to go so it doesn't look like a horror show.

It's so gross. So gross. And Tom wrote in and he wants to know how we rip CDs nowadays, to which I said, what's a CD? He's currently using iTunes and wants to know what settings we use now that file size is not really an issue anymore. Back in the day when I did this, and I guess I'm feeling like a trailblazer right now compared to Tom because it was at least 10 years ago.

I use iTunes MP3 format because at the time that was the most compatible, and I did it at 256. These days I probably ripped FLAC. And I've dropped a link in the show notes, MP3, AAC, WAV, FLAC, all the audio file formats explained from whathifi.com, which is a pretty good run through of the different formats.

So you can read through that and make your own personal choice. Excellent. Excellent. Yeah. The biggest problem nowadays is finding a CD player to rip those CDs. Exactly. Oh, my God. And Dulopar writes in, and he would like to know, if we have an opinion of audius.co.

So we have talked about this on the show. First time was back in 2018. And then there was another one back in 2019 when we were talking about how. So now 2020. Yep. We skipped a year. We skipped a year. We skipped a year. Damn. It must still be a thing now.

And he goes on to say that their TOS on page 18 has a lie in it. They say you can delete and disconnect from the platform. But when asked, they say they cannot delete accounts. As it's blockchain-based, that may well be accurate. Well, I mean, are we surprised that a tech company has lied in their terms of service?

Yes. So I actually went to the site to go check it out. And I got a big warning that said, since they haven't applied as a U.S. security, that I can't use the site as a U.S. citizen. Ah, there you go. Yeah. Yeah. Very, very interesting.

It's, yep, it's on the blockchain. Right. Go figure. And Barrett wrote in to say the Sing app, and this is S exclamation point or bang, NG. Bang. App looks horrible, but nothing surprises me. Who wants to switch apps just to listen to premium content?

And this is a link to Yahoo Finance, Our Lady Peace, to release single as NFT through the Sing app. Canadian rock band Our Lady Peace will release an additional single from its forthcoming album, Spiritual Machines 2, as an NFT. This single will be available next month through the Sing app, which launched its NFT minting option today for content creators and artists.

We pulled the 11th song off the record so it can be an NFT, and it's going to have a bunch of other unlocks as well. Raine Maitis, the band's lead vocalist and chief product officer at SingSaid. So, yeah. B-side, basically, is an NFT. So, there you go.

And blah, blah, marketing, blah, blah, bullshit. And it's important to note out here that the lead singer of the band doing this is also the company's chief product officer. So, there's that. Yeah. That could be why he's doing it. Yes. Take that with the biggest grain of salt that you can find.

Yes. Moron of the week. Our moron of the week is Burger King UK. This is an easy one. This is an easy one. For National or International Women's Day, they put out a tweet that said, Women belong in the kitchen.

I'm not sure I even understand what point they were going for. They were trying to say that only 20% of chefs are women and that they should be represented more in the kitchen. Followed by their next tweet was, Bitch, make me a sandwich. Security?

Ha! We are joined again this week by Dave Bittner. Dave is the host of the Cyber Wire podcast. And 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.

And today, gentlemen, I do have to apologize if you hear some banging in the background and people whistling. My neighbor is getting his house redone on the Property Brothers show, and they didn't clear it with me first. So they are making a lot of noise outside.

Oh, wow. But there's some beard people on staff to keep those two brothers perfectly coiffed and trimmed. Not today. Today, it is the Mexicans unloading the buckets and buckets and trucks and trucks of nails, glue, caulk, and right now flooring is going on right now.

Yes, yes. No, the brothers' property were here yesterday. And it was kind of interesting because there was a doctor outside in the back of a pickup truck. It looked like they were giving COVID tests to the crew. Yeah. Normally, they're here for several hours, and they've got, you know, giant cameras and scrims and doing things like that.

Well, turns out about 45 minutes into getting set up, everybody jumped in their cars, packed up, and ran off. So I'm wondering if somebody got a positive test that day because they did not film a thing for the rest of the day. And they never came back, and they're usually here all day.

That's interesting because the tests are supposed to be preventative, i.e., if you're okay, you go into the production. And if we're supposed to catch the people who are not okay and send them home, not shut down the whole thing for the day. That's the entire point of it, isn't it not? I have no idea. I'm just telling you what I witnessed.

No, it's funny because I take my daily bike rides, and I go up the beach, and there's a big parking lot up near the end right before it starts to get into Malibu area. The Baywatch parking lot. Yeah, because it's so remote, they shoot things there all the time. And there's always a production going on, commercial or TV shoots, when they have to do their beach scenes and all that sort of stuff.

And that's all started and ramped up again, and they do have big COVID testing areas before you get in. So like right where the people drive in to go to the production, they have COVID tests set up. It's pretty cool. I've often wondered, can I just stop on my bike and get a quick test?

Probably. You look like you belong on a crew, so I'm guessing you could fit in. Now, Brian, where you live there, is that where the famous Open to Three's Company was shot? Yes, and the house itself is a literal five-minute walk from my place.

Ooh, that's exciting. If I went out the door and just down the street, one street over, that is the famous house from the shot from the front. The current owners hate that fact, and they have put up very large hedges, so you kind of have to peek through the gate to see the house.

But it looks exactly the same. Fresh paint, obviously. But yeah, it's right there. And most of it was shot on – the opening was shot on the boardwalk just right down here at Venice. And they reference a lot of places that aren't around anymore, but the shell of the place still is.

One of the bars that I go to was the inspiration for the lounge and all that sort of stuff. The Regal Beagle? Is there a Regal Beagle? It was never named the Regal Beagle, but the building itself still stands and is still a bar. Yes, I think if you want to – when we first found that out, you can go back to one of our episodes called Come and Knock on Our Door.

Late to the game as usual, but I still get a kick out of it nonetheless. No, it's pretty crazy. And I do have a Regal Beagle t-shirt that I occasionally don as I walk around the area. I can tell who's old and who isn't by who recognizes it. Right, right.

That's cool. I got a little follow-up on One Division from our last chit-chat. You said that it was hard burn to get into it, and man, you weren't kidding. That was – ooh. I thought it was funny that in the credit scene at the end of episode one, I'm looking at all the gadgets and gear on the table.

And I noticed there's this little gizmo with some lights and slidey bits, and I'm like – I looked literally right now to the left of my monitor. There's that same gadget, and that would be the Rodecaster Pro mixer for podcasters.

And I thought, hmm, what secret government agency is podcasting their whereabouts? Well, everybody has a podcast these days, Jason. Everybody has a podcast. That's true. That's true. No, it's just colorful little blinky bits and things.

So that's all. I put a note in here that along these lines, the Death Star used a Grass Valley 1600 switcher to fire their super lasers. Nice. Back in the day when I was in that world, it was always exciting to be – basically anytime somebody moved one of the fader bars on a switcher, they'd go – Because they could.

Yeah. And I do believe in episode one, the midichlorian detector was a lady's Gillette razor. Yes. Yes, that is correct. Yes. And there's famously the ice cream maker being carried out of Bespin. Right, right.

The Bespin ice cream maker. Yes. Which evidently has become a Comic-Con thing. Like they have the – like that guy has become something that lots of people dress up as. So they – in the same way that they get all of the slave Princess Leias together, they get the Bespin ice cream guys together to do a group photo, which I just – I love.

I mean, you know, that's just the – that's the way of it. I mean, I remember back in college, I was – you know, I double majored and one of mine was music and I had – I was really into synthesizers and I had all kinds of different little pieces of equipment that had flashy lights and faders and buttons. And my roommate was a cinema major and he would use shots of my stuff for like sci-fi-y things.

Yeah. You just kind of grab what's around you and looks modern. So it looks incredibly outdated in the future. Right. Right. Nice. I did finish WandaVision, by the way. No spoilers. My take on it is the juice might not have been worth the squeeze.

It was – it was enjoyable, but I don't think it stuck the landing. That's just my take on it. Did you enjoy the finale? I did. I did. But I think you're – I'm not – I take no issue with your assessment.

I can completely see how that would be the conclusion someone could make. I enjoyed it. You know, we watched it together. My family and my youngest son, Jack, was really the driving force behind wanting to watch it.

I'm not sure we – my wife and I would have made it through the speed bump you have to get over in the beginning to get to the good stuff. Yeah. But I'm glad we stuck it through. And, you know, like one of the things my wife said is that there's – in the Marvel universe, there's just so much to keep track of.

And you kind of need a – We call it the MCU. Yes, thank you very much. In the MCU, you need like a Sherpa to lead you along some of these stories. And for us, that's our son. So you can say, well, who is that? And what does that have to do with this? And he, of course, has all those answers. But I enjoyed it.

And I was lost on half of it. It's like you do have to have – you know, you need – was it MCUpedia to be able to look stuff up or something that will just – you know, like they have – what do they call that on – when you're watching an Amazon Prime show?

Oh, the X-ray. X-ray. They need an X-ray for anything Marvel, period. Because you need to pull up and see, okay, what's the seven movies this person was in? What's the Easter egg that's happening right now that I know I should be, you know, having a bit of nostalgia for, but I'm not quite getting it.

You know, it's like, come on. Well, if I want to date myself, I'd say, you mean like pop-up videos? I love pop-up videos. Yes, pop-up videos. Wow. Right. Pop-up, pop-up videos. I remember being really annoyed when pop-up videos first came out because I didn't know they'd come out and I'd be watching a video.

I'm like, what's all this crap on the screen? I just want to watch the video. I will say, I can see you being annoyed as a viewer. Imagine if you were the artist, as I worked with quite a few of them and they were made fun of incessantly in their pop-up videos and they were not pleased about any of that. Yeah.

I bet. I bet. Pop-up podcasting. That's our new thing. Okay. We're just going to have somebody come in with random like voiceovers going. On episode 423, they mentioned the Three's Company house before and the Regal Beagle was mentioned in episodes 242 and 192.

And here comes a little pop-up right now. It took 25 minutes for them to actually get to security in the security segment this week. Over time, the security section became less and less about security. There was the great episode where they exclusively talked about the ice cream maker from Star Wars.

Yeah. Oh, and okay. So I got a little follow-up, one more little bit of follow-up from last week because we talked about the Tom Cruise deep fakes. Yep. Now, let's play headline roulette because I didn't read the articles on this one because one of them was behind a paywall and the other one I just didn't really care anymore.

So we have deep fakes are risky business, warns creator of viral Tom Cruise. And then we have another one. That was from the Times in the UK. Then we have Tom Cruise deepfake creator says, public shouldn't be worried about one-click fakes. It's almost as if they're discussing eggs.

Nothing matters anymore. Yeah. Yeah, well. That's journalism for you. Who needs to read the articles? Good times. Wow. So I do have a little bit of security news here, although it's not so much for the security implication.

I just think this might be one of the worst versions of punching down I've ever seen. We're all familiar with the big SolarWinds hack and how horrible that was. And it's going to be years and billions of dollars before we've wangled our way through and found out what's actually happened and how many people have actually gotten hacked and how bad it actually is.

But the former SolarWinds CEO, Kevin Thompson, felt free to go ahead and blame the entire thing on an intern. This bus conveniently was driving by as the intern was walking to work. They are blaming it all on an intern who worked at the company and who used the password SolarWinds123 on GitHub back in 2017.

Of course, it doesn't actually really answer any questions like, why would you give an intern the responsibility for setting such an important password? Right. Yeah. Right. No, this is bullshit, I have to say. And has been recognized as being so within the security community.

This has pretty much been dismissed as for exactly what you just said, Brian. So let's put the security of the free world in the hands of an intern that somebody has a policy issue here, a policy problem within their organization. So and that starts at the top.

So this is I don't know if it's just getting more attention than it deserves. You know, it was the quote pulled from from a lot of testimony, but yes, it is one piece of it. But to put any of the real blame on this poor intern who was just probably doing what he was asked in between running out for ham sandwiches for the development team.

I think it's just it's silly. It's just silly. It's nitwits. It's nitpickable. Well, it's just the kind of story that is perfect for our show, though. It fits right in. Yep. So I this is back in the news.

Talon and Flock are back in the news. And there's a big piece over at Vice by James Cox, who is a fantastic writer. As far as I can tell, I like this guy. This guy has done a really deep dive on Talon, which is the you know, the whole program of all of these networked surveillance cameras and Flock or Flock, which is a company that will put these into your, you know, your HOAs or your neighborhoods or whatnot.

And they're pricey. They're not they're not cheap. They're, you know, anywhere but over fifteen hundred to twenty five hundred a year per camera. Jeez, you get a Chinese camera. They do that for free. Exactly. I know. So it talks about how everybody's circumventing the laws and they're building this super system for just tracking everybody.

We knew all this. We've talked about this in the past. It just seems like nothing that anybody says is going to stop it because it just keeps growing and growing and growing. It's kind of a little unnerving. The scale to which this has grown at this point. Thoughts, gentlemen? Well, I think the focus here is on license plates.

Yes. And I think that's a like there's a huge gaping loophole with license plates because driving is a privilege. So because driving is a privilege, you have to have a license plate on your car. It is not legal for you to hide the license plate of your car.

So there's a publicly displayed way to track you wherever you go. And that's really what this article reflects is the reality of that. I don't know. I mean, this whole notion of having cameras at the entrance to your neighborhood, I guess for people who can't afford gates, to have cameras at the entrance of your neighborhood.

And if a car comes in that doesn't belong to someone who's on the database who lives there, they get flagged, potentially cross-checked with a list of troublemakers and rabble rousers. I feel bad for the new delivery guy at Domino's.

He must be getting over all the time. Right. And so if there's a problem, then you can notify the police. I mean, I can see there – I can see believing that there's value in this, but I just see how this could all go horribly wrong and end up profiling people in all sorts of – not end up.

I mean, I'm sure it is being used to profile people in all sorts of ways. I don't know. What do you think, Brian? I hate this stuff. I really do. I wish companies like this didn't exist. I think they trade on fear. And, yeah, I find the whole license plate reading thing and the automation of it and all of that abhorrent.

I think that this stuff sort of be outlawed in the same way the facial recognition is starting to be slowly seen as a not good thing. And, you know, I don't know. I don't know how we band together and get rid of it when it's so obvious that law enforcement and individuals, you know, HOAs and neighborhood associations push for it because they think it's an actual effective deterrent, which I don't think it is.

Here's the funny thing. Like in my neighborhood, we get robbed all the time around 4 in the morning by people who come to the neighborhood. I've talked about this many times on the show. Remember when my roommate's car kept getting broken into and they come and they steal the titles out of the car and then they fake it to kind of put on another car?

And it's a whole scam that they do around here, but they also steal just the general crap out of your car. But it's usually between 4 and 6 a.m. And what they'll do is they have one car like as kind of like the kind of fallback car and there will be just people walking through the neighborhood checking door handles.

Happens all the time. And none of the cameras on the houses have enough resolution to actually catch much of, you know, the people, let alone the license plates. So I can see where the people in my neighborhood would be like, we need to install this.

We need to install this. This is a bad thing happening to us all the time. And, you know, even with as somebody who has been a direct recipient of the theft, I would not have this in my neighborhood in any way, shape or form. I'm like, OK, if you want to catch them, sit outside with a cop at four to six in the morning and wait for them to come by.

But do not put an automated system in my neighborhood to catch, you know, petty criminals. But this is what this is where, Brian, your point comes into, you know, just laser sharp focus is they're trading on fear, completely trading on fear. Like, what would you be giving up to have, you know, these petty criminals caught?

It's not like they're coming through murdering everyone in the neighborhood every day. It's like, OK, they're breaking into your car that you were too stupid to not lock at night. OK, a little personal responsibility there. Fine. They're not breaking windows or doing things like that. Does that justify giving up all of the rights to anybody that drives through your neighborhood?

I think not. Yeah. And who monitors this stuff? We've seen time and time again, anytime that there's a large amount of surveillance, people end up, the people that have access to it end up using it for things that they were not supposed to. Tracking a young, attractive woman in the neighborhood, for example.

Watching Brian make his coffee in his kitchen. Watching me make my coffee in my kitchen. You know, all the things that Randy sorts of people who would want to see a hunk of meat like me making my coffee, you know. Sure. I mean, this stuff is always misused. Always. And it's going to be.

Mm-hmm. If there's one thing we've known from eight years of doing this show is it is always going to be misused. Period. Always. There's not – we have not had any stories of amazing, you know, surveillance network actually used properly by the people who set it up.

Never. Ever. You know? It's – yeah. So I'm just – I'm glad people are still, you know, keeping an eye on these people, but I just don't know if there's any way to stop it because it is within the bounds of the law. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

And you're in a public – if you're in a public place, there's no expectation of privacy. License plates are publicly viewable things, and I guess one of the game changers here is that you have these commercially available databases of license plates, and that's different than it used to be.

I would love to have a conversation, and maybe you can bring this up next time you speak to Ben Yellen, about that whole idea of if you're in a public place, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy because it feels like that needs to be revisited now that technology has gone the way it has.

Because it was one thing in 1950s when you were walking down the street and you would think that you don't have any privacy, but that was before, you know, 4K cameras were trained on you at every single second and recording you forever digitally. Like, it's different now.

It is something we talk about a lot over on Caveat, that very thing that these things need to be revisited because it just doesn't mean when it used to. Yeah. To be private in a public place doesn't mean what it used to. You know, you used to be able to wear a hat and sunglasses, you know, and that's all you would need, and it's just not that way anymore.

So, yeah, I agree. Yeah, what we have to do now is tattoo a QR code on our forehead with our terms of service, you know, that says, do not film. Or it's like, okay, here are my pronouns, and here are my recording requirements. You can only film me if the light is right and you're getting me from my best angle and I'm not doing anything stupid.

And I get first right of refusal on anything that you post to Instagram. Right. Right. Yeah, and, you know, I used to remember, again, it's changed a little bit, but this goes back to, like, my bike rides going through commercial shoots and things of that nature. They just have cameras trained on you, and they just put up a big sign now saying that if you come into this area at all, you are agreeing to your likeness being used.

And you used to have to sign stuff. Like, it just feels like that in public being photographed or videoed thing has started to seep into even places where there used to be laws and very strict laws and rules about it. It's all kind of just gone away. If you're out in public now, it's game on.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and there's so many more cameras. I mean, we all have one on us all the time. Well, everybody's carrying one, yes. Right. And I live in the – I live in, like, Instagrammer central and TikToker central. Like, I can't go out of my house. Everybody is out there shooting themselves doing stupid shit.

Like, it's constant. So, like, I must be in the background of a gazillion TikToks. Right. Right. And the funny thing is, I mean, that's not an exaggeration. Even just driving over to your place the other day to drop some stuff off, you would just see people running around with cameras filming themselves or filming their friends.

That's all it was. That's all people do here. It's really bizarre. It is. Yeah. Wow. Well, I have a story here that just only – it caught my attention basically because of one paragraph in it and it made it worth sharing.

This is a – it's a sad story, a local story here in the Baltimore area of a gentleman who's a retired Maryland police chief and turns out that he is a serial – or he's alleged to be a serial arsonist.

He would maintain a list of people who had in one way or another wronged him and he would go around in the middle of the night and set their things on fire, including their homes and their cars and all these sorts of things. Does he look like Steve Buscemi by any chance? He does not.

Damn. But there was an interesting paragraph in this description of how the police ultimately tracked him down. One of the pieces of evidence, it says, in addition to the coded target list and internet search history, investigators used his Apple Health app to show he was up and moving when fires were set during the middle of the night.

Interesting. Interesting. Ratted out by his – Yes. And certainly don't Google how do I set my neighbor's house on fire. Right. If you are planning to set your neighbor's house on fire. Yeah. Evidently, this guy had a folder on his computer that was named Fires and had a list of people who – the grievances he had against people.

And this story, which we'll link to, actually has some of the security camera footage of this guy pouring gasoline all over the driveway of someone who had wronged him. Another police officer, I believe. The other interesting thing, I mean, speaking about facial recognition and all that kind of stuff, one of the other police officers who sort of put two and two together, and this took place over several years, he recognized the guy because of his gait, because of the way he walked.

Yeah. Interesting. So, yeah. Isn't that interesting? So they got old peg leg. Right. Exactly. Right. Right. Captain Two Toes is going down. Yep. Yep. Yep. Anyway. Why didn't he just put it on Google Docs and save everybody some time?

Might as well. Yeah. Chief of police. Wow. So we got a little listener feedback here from Jonathan. He says, on the Microsoft security blockchain thing, I live in Denmark, and we have a government system called NEMID. It's like your social security on steroids with two-factor authentication plus a physical code card, which is a backup.

When I changed phones, I had to use the old phone to authenticate the new phone, or I could have used the card. It has lots of codes hidden in a big block, so it's not just the same number each time. It's a fantastic system, but I'm sure Americans would think it's too invasive and socialist. Everything you do in Denmark is linked to the NEMID.

Keep it up, guys. And, Jason, if you have too many mics, could you send one to Ben Yellen? He needs an upgrade. Yes. I will note that Ben has been sent a new mic, and thank you very much. He will – he – not unrelated to this message, although, Jonathan, I – it was noted by many other people that Ben's mic was subpar.

And part of that is the mics that we had sent Ben. Part of that is just Ben that I don't – you probably noticed that Ben is a person who has – how should we say this? A high dynamic range. And so part of what we had to do was send him a microphone that could handle the sound pressure levels that come out of him.

And we believe that we have finally cracked the code on that and that we're at a good place right now. For the audiophiles, what did you send him? Do you know the make and model of the microphone you have sent him? Because I could probably use that for some of mine. We just sent him – we sent him one of the Audio-Technica large diaphragm, you know, mics that – sort of a standard mic that we – the one I'm talking into right now.

Okay. So – and that can handle the dynamic range that we need from him. But, yeah. All right. Well, the NEM ID sounds interesting. I like it. They have a backup physical card, which is pretty cool. I like it. I mean, this is not too different from what Microsoft is trying to head towards with the story we talked about last week.

I'm down for this. I think it's great. I wish we had something like this. I can't see it ever happening here, but it'd be great. I suspect we'd probably see it at the state level before anything else. And so your progressive states will get it before your – Yeah.

California will have it. Texas never will. Right. Yep. Absolutely. There you have it. All right. Well, before we go, something I've been thinking about, a question I wanted to run by both of you that I've been – for no particular reason I've been thinking about, but I thought it'd be fun to talk about here.

So, if you had to choose one song to represent the music of the 80s, the decade of the 80s musically, and you had to choose one song to play to someone who was not around in the 80s or has no idea what 80s music is about, what song would you choose to be the representative piece of popular music for the 1980s and why?

I have to tell you that I thought more about this particular bit than the rest of the show that I've done right now. An hour and a half show, and I've spent more time contemplating this, picking it apart, coming at it from different angles.

At first, I thought, well, it would have to be something that was just very popular, but then I was like, no, I was so niche, and I listened to weird alternative music that they now play in Whole Foods, so I should go that direction. Should it be Michael Jackson? Should it be Paula Abdul? I don't know. I don't know. But I did end up on something that I'm very confident and happy with.

All right. All right. Well, before we get your answer, Jason, how did you approach this question? Exactly the same as Brian did. I spent more time thinking about this damn question than any – even more than NFT, I've thought about this question. Okay. Good. Good. I, too, when the question struck me over the weekend, I spent a lot of time thinking – in fact, my initial answer, I changed my initial answer because I think I came up with a better answer, and I will share the reason with you.

So why don't we start with you, Brian? What was your answer? The safety dance. Oh, good one. Men without hats. Good one. There is nothing more 80s. And it also started as alternative but went mainstream. Good one. Yep. That's a good choice. I have to say whenever I hear a safety dance come on the radio or whatever, I do turn it up, and it makes me happy.

Yeah. Excellent choice. Excellent choice. I didn't see that one coming from you, Brian. I'm impressed. Thank you. Jason, how about you? Hungry Like the Wolf by Duran Duran. Ooh, that screams 80s. That's true. Yeah. The only problem I have with that one is it's such a visual, too.

You don't just hear the song. You see the video. You see the video in your mind's eye. Yes. I don't find that disqualifying, though, because I think video is such a big part of 80s music. True that. And I mean, I would put the video for safety dance in that category as well.

Exactly. Yeah, that was quite memorable. Yeah. Not good, but memorable. My choice is, drum roll please, Beat It by Michael Jackson. Yeah. Yeah. And also a very strong video. So I started out, and my initial choice was Thriller.

I thought, what could be more 80s than Thriller with that music video and all the different elements of that? But then I actually was, I heard Beat It, and what struck me was the Eddie Van Halen guitar solo. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Right? So we have everything about Michael Jackson. There are synthesizers, a drum machine, Michael Jackson, all 80s things. But then an Eddie Van Halen guitar solo, also 80s. Super 80s. Yep. Super 80s.

So that's my answer, is Beat It by Michael Jackson. But I think, I like all these, I think all these are good answers. Come on, Eileen was way up on my list as well. Oh, did you hear they remade that? Oh, God, no. I heard it on K-Rock the other day. It's terrible. That's a horrible idea.

Oh, it's terrible. I mean, it's worse than the Africa remake. Oh, We Are the World. That is an ultimate 80s song, and it's got everybody. Yeah. See, this is the problem with this question, because I went to Cindy Lauper. I'm sticking with Safety Dance. I didn't think of We Are the World.

That's, oh, that's pretty good. I mean, that's got everybody. That's pretty good. That's got Bono next to Phil Collins, sitting on Sting's lap. I mean, come on. That's pretty good. The only person not on We Are the World is Prince, right? Yeah. He sat that one out. Yeah. Oh.

All right. Well, I'm sure our listeners will have opinions, and I would love to hear what their opinions are, and not just their choice, but the argument for why they think it's a strong opinion. I think that could be a fun thing to contemplate. But I think this should be a top fiver, because, you know, I would throw in Karma Chameleon in there.

All right. On our future BuzzFeed article. Exactly. Right, right, right. Right. We surveyed 500 podcast listeners and came up with top five 80s songs. Oh, God. Am I going to have to be at Survey Monkey today and make it up a survey for this?

Yes, you are. Oh, no. So I didn't mean to give you homework there, Jason, but I mean, it is the thing all of us spent the most time on this week. Oh, by far. It really is. Yeah. It might not have been the most time, but I definitely put the most cycles into this.

For sure. I went to Spotify. I listened to tracks. Yep. Yep. Yeah. All right. All right. Well, good answers all around. It's funny that none of us have strong opinions to the contrary with any of our choices, right? No, they're all like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, I would say, the only thing I would say about Hungry Like the Wolf is that I would, is maybe I would choose Rio instead. See, I was on the fence with it. I was on the fence with it. I mean, I toggled between Rio, Girls on Film and Hungry Like the Wolf, because to me, Duran Duran just is quintessential 80s from the synthesizers to the hair and to the outfits.

And I mean, prime Simon Le Bon. It's hard to not pick a Duran Duran song that would work. Yeah. Planet Earth would work. The Reflex with the same crazy video. Yep. And you've got to go to the Deep Cuts, New Moon on Monday, or The Chauffeur. I mean, come on.

There's so many. The Chauffeur, still one of my favorite songs of all time. One of the greatest songs of all time. It is fucking amazing. Yep. Oh, next week on Songs of the 80s. Next week on 80s Music Corner. Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars.

Right. All right, guys. That's all I have. I'll talk to you next time. Over at Patreon, we've got some new subscribers. JC, Luke, and Anonymous. Thank you very much. And over at PayPal, we've got David Breed, Mark, Andrew, Michael, and Ralph.

Thank you. Over at iTunes, we have a five-star rating from AcidRain5047, who gave it the title 496. I'm assuming that's the episode he did just listen to, or she. Freaking love you guys. I just found the show at the end of 2020. Crazy year. I'm part of the GOG family now.

Keep up the good work. Thank you. Best pod ever. Love, Bitcoin. Ha, ha, ha, ha. All right. Well, thank you, AcidRain5047. And we have another five-star from Exclusives Aren't Podcasts. Person after my own heart. One of my staple listens.

Well-advertised. Grumpy old geeks, but not just. Highly knowledgeable, very funny, and somewhat sarcastic. Somewhat? Sadly, this podcast is one of the highlights of my week. Sadly? Come on. Yes, they sometimes talk politics, but it's a huge part of tech these days. Get over it.

Here's hoping they go back to twice weekly one day. Thanks for the hours of entertainment, guys. Well, you're welcome. And until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFilippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. If you enjoy the show, please consider visiting GOG.show slash donate to help us keep the lights on and we'll love you forever.

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