510: Delightfully Evil Algorithm

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. I think Apple had something come out yesterday, Brian. Oh, wait, wait. No, they didn't actually have anything come out. It was all about what might be coming out in the future. Yeah, I saw. I never watch these things. I saw you tweet it a couple times as you were up on it.

And I saw, yeah, there was a lot of, wow, this might be cool whenever it shows up. In the fall. And of course, it's going to be two years before it actually works correctly. That's how Apple works. There was some neat stuff. But man, they really need to bring in some professional talent for that thing.

The nerds were definitely running the keynote. I mean, Craig Federici was kind of painful to watch on some of those. And I'm pretty sure Susie Sibilance was running the soundboard as well because, oh my God, my ears hurt. I stopped watching because there was so many S's throughout the whole thing that it was just, it drove me crazy.

Well, the production quality has gone down quite a bit since Steve Jobs left. I think James Cameron fucking directed this thing. Are you kidding me? Pauly Shore wrote it, though. That's the downside. So, yeah, there's some neat stuff in there. I'm looking forward to it when it does actually come around to shipping.

Right. Yeah. Nothing really caught my eye. Nothing seems to have blown up the Twittersphere either. Oh, God, the universal control thing is awesome. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah. I like that part. That's the one I dig the most, I think. But, yeah, I've got enough tools around here to do that already.

So, I don't kind of honestly need it. Yeah. Well, it's just made half your gear redundant now. Yeah. So much for Luna Display. They might as well pack up shop. But, yeah. Oh, well, that's $100 down the tubes. Shit. Thanks, Apple. There you go. We have a little bit of follow-up here. Jenna wrote in and said, Hi, guys. I heard about you on Hacking Humans. I've been listening to the newest each week and working my way through the rest.

Don't. Don't do it. Stop. Just wait for the new ones. The old ones, no. Yeah. Had the shows about NFTs. Which one? We've been doing them constantly, basically. We haven't been able to avoid these stupid things. On While Cooking and My Husband Overheard. He then sent the link from Kotaku to me. You've probably seen it already, but it made both of us think of you.

So, yes, we did get that, which is the NFT market has collapsed. Oh, no. Oh, yes. Yeah. Oh, yes. I mean, who could have predicted it? Us. So, according to the math run here, the overall NFT market has suffered a near 90% collapse since its peak, the peak being May 3rd.

A month ago. This is a very quick shark fin. I told you it was going to be. $100 million in crypto collectible sales in just one day. There has been just 19.4 million sales in the past week. And this is from, I think, two weeks ago already, this article.

NFT art sales are even lower, plunging from single days with millions in sales to just 3 million in sales globally for the past week. And that's including both primary and secondary sales. And the number of active NFT wallets, the accounts being used to purchase the tokens, has fallen from 12,000 to 3,900.

Okay. I want to put this in perspective here. People are spending May 3rd, $100 million in quote-unquote crypto collectibles, a.k.a. receipts, for a gift or whatever, a JPEG, a movie, whatever. $100 million in a day. You know, I knew that there were stupid people in the world, but I didn't know there were that many rich, stupid people in the world.

Jesus. We've got to figure out how to tap into that market. Sorry. How are you going? Done. Missed that one. I knew the NFT thing was collapsing just because there are a few people that we know and a few people I follow on Twitter that have gotten heavily into it and starting to – and they started to wind down the if-you-can't-do-teach path, which is never a good sign.

Oh. That means they weren't able to sell anything, so they pivoted to teaching people about how to get their own photography up on NFTs. And then I definitely knew that the NFT market was completely tanking when there started to be a sense of desperation in the tweets about, I've just minted new photos.

Please go look at them. Oh, now I've created a full gallery of all my photos of NFTs. Please go look at them. Retweet, retweet, retweet, retweet, retweet. Nobody's fucking buying. Nobody's fucking buying. Oh, shit. Here's the thing. I got another story in a minute here, but I think the canary in the coal mine now is if there's a new technology and Mark Cuban is on it like flies on shit, run.

Run. Because his picker has been so off for so long that if he comes out saying this is the next big thing, find a way to capitalize on it in the next two weeks because that's about all it's going to last. Seriously.

Yeah, pretty much. We also have a bit of follow-up Barrett tipped us off to here. It looks like we can fly our drones at least for now. The Pentagon has changed its mind about DGI drones, which used to be called DGI, now what they're called Dajing Innovations. Well, that's – Well, yeah, whatever.

But they're trying to use the full name. Well, because they have to in the government documents. They're trying to do the reverse of KFC. Full reverse KFC. Which, if everybody remembers, is Kentucky Fried Chicken, but then everybody decided fried was bad. So, boom, rebrand. Yep.

So, yeah, they've cleared two drone models so far, the Mavic Pro and the Matrix 600 Pro. So, those are fine for government and military service now. And they're not too worried, apparently, about the Chinese government phoning home on these things. Well, speaking of Mark Cuban and things dying on the Vine, Clubhouse is – yeah.

I thought you were going to talk about Vine. Oh, well, Vine's already gone. Sorry. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. This is an opinion piece by John Brandon over at Forbes. The drop-in audio app Clubhouse is dying. It was fun while it lasted. Well, I posit – Was it? I posit the headline is totally false because Clubhouse was never fun.

So, we talked to the professionals over at Business Insider, and they say Clubhouse downloads are falling off a cliff. The app was downloaded only about 900,000 times in April. I wish our show was downloaded only 900,000 times in April because we'd fucking retire. This is down from February's peak of 9.6 million.

Well, yeah, big dip there. And this is after they've launched the – this is, I'm guessing, the iPhone app because the Android app is out and it's done a couple million in downloads so far. But here's the thing. It's boring. It's dead.

It was always going to be dead, especially after Zoom fatigue from the goddamn pandemic. Oh, yeah. What is Clubhouse? Clubhouse is a webinar with no video. That's it. It's a webinar with no video. And you have to show up on time. So, I just think Clubhouse is the NFT of the social network, darlings, and it is shark-finned just like the rest.

And Mark Cuban jumped on this one too, and he was going to launch Fireside. I wonder how that's going now. I'm guessing a lot of – I'm sure it's not. Yeah, I'm sure a lot of people are getting little notifications in their emails this week about his NFT project and his Clubhouse project.

So – Both be shutting down, so start looking for new jobs. Yeah, Clubhouse is definitely dead. I mean, first off, nobody wants this kind of – if it's not on demand, forget about it. That's just the world we live in right now. Nobody wants to just sit on what is basically a phone call.

That's with bad quality and all that sort of stuff. It's not great. It's not a great experience. The whole mystique of you needed an invite to get in there only lasts you so long. That's already done. And everybody else is rolling out their competitors. Twitter is rolling out a competitor.

Facebook is rolling out a competitor. There's this thing called the telephone. Yeah, yeah. There's that too. So, bye-bye, Clubhouse. See ya. Wouldn't want to be ya. In the news.

Well, here's a little bit of big news, and I love the title of this. Kind of a big announcement. This comes from Joel on software.com. Turns out Stack Overflow has been sold, which is pretty cool for them, for $1.8 billion to a company called Prosus, who also happens to be the largest shareholder in Tencent.

So, that's a pretty big company there, I'd say. I saw some of the immediate hot takes on this is, best start checking that code. Yes. That you're stealing these days, because you want to make sure that isn't phoning home. I know. I mean, I got to say, we talked about this over lunch.

We actually had lunch this week and saw each other in person. And I mean, good for them, because Stack Overflow, back when I was a programmer and you were programmers, you know, that saved our bacon so many damn times. Yeah, I got, anytime I was stuck on anything, I went to Stack Overflow and found a solution.

Yep. Within about 25 tries, because that's about the average time. But still, it was fun. It was fun. And you kind of figured things out a little better, too, because it's almost like pair programming, because people were explaining how they were doing it. And then you could figure it out, not just copy and paste. You could just copy and paste. But if you don't figure out how things work, then you're probably going to have crappy code and break it.

But anyway, I'd love... If only they would have added a clubhouse-like feature. So then you could get in a room and discuss in real time the code. Clubhouse Overflow. I'm just kidding. Yeah. There you go. Well, good for them. I'm glad they made some money, because they never made any money off me, but I made a lot of money off them.

Amen to that. Yeah. So we have some Twitter news. Twitter is once again facing blowback for taking action on a political leader's tweets. No, Donald Trump has not come back. But Nigeria has some issues going on over there. And Nigeria said it has suspended Twitter for allegedly undermining the country by removing a tweet from President Muhammadu Buhari.

I think I got that right. Twitter said the post violated its abuse policy by threatening to punish secessionists that allegedly attack government buildings. And the attorney general over there, meanwhile, claimed the nation would prosecute people who tried to circumvent the suspension using VPNs and similar tools. Good luck with that.

But, yeah. So there you go. Twitter has taken a stand again and pissed off the entire country of Nigeria. Well, one side of the country in Nigeria. The other side, I think, is okay with it. So there you go. All right. And they're basically saying Twitter is unlikely to find a happy middle ground in Nigeria.

It's just a question of how much damage the social media giant suffers. I think you could remove Nigeria from that statement, and it works perfectly. But, I mean, how many people are on Twitter in Nigeria? I mean, because Twitter, as we know, doesn't have a huge user base. Don't be so U.S.-centric.

There's probably quite a lot of people in Nigeria. Well, I mean, how many? Not compared to in the U.S., but yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's only, I think, what, 170 million active monthly users on Twitter. But here's the thing. When you try to be a global company, you've got to be a global company.

Twitter doesn't try and do anything. We know that. That's a good point. Jack doesn't. We only have half a CEO. Not even a half a CEO. And speaking of him, hat tip to Moss 6502 for sending this link on. I remember seeing this when it first came out, but it's nice to have a follow-up from the NME here.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey sent beard shavings to Azalea Banks so she could make an amulet to protect him from ISIS. I wonder if she can make another one to protect him from Nigeria. Maybe. Maybe it's time for a shave off a little bit more of that beard. He's pissing off so many people, he's going to be clean shaven soon.

Yeah, he's going to look like Mr. Clean by the end of the week. And I got this one over from The Verge. Facebook to end special treatment for politicians after Trump ban. So apparently this oversight board is kind of doing a good job, apparently. Well, I mean, it's basically saying you need to have rules and they need to be consistent, you dumb fucks.

Yeah, and Facebook's like, oh, shucks. Darn it. I didn't think anybody was going to notice. Just the world. I know. Because, you know, I was thinking about this this morning after I reread this article. So basically they're just going to say, oh, politicians need to be treated just like people.

And there's a line from The Hunt for Red October, which I love. It's like one of the guys like, I'm a politician, which means I'm a cheat and I'm a liar. And I'm like, you know what? That is all politicians. They are cheats and they're liars. And they'll tell you anything that they want to to get in office.

So saying that politicians have to have some kind of magical platform to stand on where everything that they say can be rebroadcast to the world is a flawed argument to begin with, Mark. So maybe they need even more oversight than less, you know?

That's my stance on it. Like hold them to task and say, no, this politician, what they just said is utter bullshit. Put a little poop emoji next to it. That's your flag. No argument for me there. I've always felt that political statements are, you know, should be held to the same standards that we hold.

Oh, I don't know. Advertisers. You can't have false advertising. We look into it and we bust you for it. Yeah, there's no there's no FTC for political speech, unfortunately. No. Oh, well. And BBC News is reporting that the G7 countries have struck a deal that will have multinationals like Apple, Amazon and Google pay more tax.

Now, before you fall completely asleep thinking this is incredibly boring news, this is incredibly important news. This is a good thing that will stop tax havens and people running off and corporations basically just hiding all the money and not paying taxes anywhere. There will be a minimum corporate tax rate of at least 15% to prevent countries from serving as tax havens.

So no longer will Apple or Microsoft, Microsoft in particular, does this with Ireland. I know Apple does this with quite a few countries. Put a big base of operations somewhere that has a super low tax rate and funnel everything through that. Mm-hmm. Yep. So they can – it's the reason Amazon pays zero, zero dollars in U.S. taxes.

Yeah. Zero. Mm-hmm. We have to stop it. Unfortunately, things move slowly and that's how they point at the end of the article. There's also the matter of timing. It takes years for countries to reshape their tax loss. I'd say do it quicker. We all get more money. Yeah, we need it.

We need it. Although, yeah, speaking of Amazon, we might have a mass redistribution of wealth coming up very soon because Jeff Bezos is going to fly on – he's going to be one of the first passengers on his own Blue Origin rocket in July.

Are you saying the redistribution will be all over the Pacific Ocean? Exactly. Exactly. And he's taking his brother with him. Look, I – there are many things I think about Jeff Bezos, but I 100% have to give him props for putting his money where his mouth is this time.

I know. I mean, it is a ball view. He's getting his ass on this fucking plane. I mean – Yeah. Yeah. But – Yep. Man. I got to give him props for this one. I know, but come on, man. You don't see Elon Musk hopping on a fucking rocket. No shit.

No shit. He's not up there. Nope. Oh, well. He just sent one of his cars. I know. And a dummy in a space suit. Maybe that's what Bezos is going to do. He's got – he pilfered Madame Tussauds, and he's putting a wax dummy of himself in the rocket just in case.

Right. Then he can say, I've been resurrected. Yeah. He came back from heaven with next day prime delivery. Good luck, Jeff. I hope you make it. Me too. I hope it works. You know, I'm all for this. And again, like I said, I'm blown away that he's going to be on the damn thing.

So, impressive. Don't say blown away. Slip of the tongue there, apparently. Yeah. All right. So, we already talked about Clubhouse, which is basically just a glorified webinar. Let's now talk about the other thing that has taken fire across the internet, the mailing list. Again.

Which we've had since 1980-something. But, you know, okay. It's a big deal now. Yeah. Because we've had Substack, which is a newsletter subscription product that's blown up pretty big. We've talked about it on the show a couple times about how it's kind of stacked, pun intended, against the creators.

We have no idea who they're funding to bump it up and who they're paying and who they're not paying and blah, blah, blah. And quickly, into the breach. Not quickly at all. Facebook's Bulletin newsletter platform is coming. All right. So, Facebook's got one.

Twitter's got one. Substack's on their own. There's a million of them. And I posit that we have reached peak email newsletter. I think so. I basically spend time unsubscribing from them every morning. I think we've hit too many of them. So, the company will use Facebook to market Bulletin.

So, they're basically spinning off a different thing because they surprisingly have recognized that Facebook does not have a good brand look. Oh, really? So, Bulletin will be a – I'm trying to understand how they figure out this is going to work.

They're basically trying to separate Bulletin from Facebook. But then they're promoting Bulletin's connection to Facebook as the main reason Bulletin is good because you'll get promoted all over to the 2.9 billion people on Facebook. But it's completely different and it's separate and we want to make sure that people understand it's separate but it's connected all the way because that's how we get any market share for you.

Yeah, this is like – this is the worst skirting of antitrust laws I've ever seen. They're trying to divest themselves and say, no, it's not part of Facebook. I don't give – I don't care what they say about brand or any of that shit. This is – they're trying to like show the government that, hey, look, we're doing the right thing.

It's a separate company. This time when we copied somebody else's business idea, we've made it separate. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. The newsletter in the morning – now, I've got like 15 of them that I have to go through and it's getting crazy.

I think the new one that I like though is Source Code from Protocol. That's a pretty good one. They do a good job of summing things up fairly well. But – Right. Yeah, between – like so many of them. So many of them. You went a little subscription mad for a while and got me on a couple of them and I've slowly removed myself from them as I'm realizing I just wake up and go, oh, God, too many emails.

Delete, delete, delete. Well, they've turned into the same tech website problem where everybody has the exact same stories. Yeah, exactly. You know? I mean I think the one that really anybody – all they need are the Business Insider one that says 10 things in tech you need to know today. Boom, done.

It's like – it's a great one. If only somebody would have come up with that idea as a podcast. Oh, wait. Yeah, I guess. That went really well. Oh, man. So I've been talking to a lot of my friends that work and I've been asking them, you know, what's been your company policy?

What have you heard about returning to work and stuff like that? And it's still all over the map. People are kind of – a lot of offices want to get back going full time again. A lot of employees do not. And there is some concern that there will be another wave in the fall when a lot of companies are really thinking about coming back into office.

And that includes Apple and The Verge has reported that about 80 Apple employees have written and edited – good thing they edit it. It's best to do that because especially if you wrote it at night while you were drunk, you really do want to edit that before you send it on to Tim Cook. Yeah. I'm just saying. To rethink plans requiring staff to return to the office in September, they felt actively ignored by leadership, which claims people are eager to return to in-person collaboration and wanted an option for full-time remote work rather than the plan twice a week.

Now, I agree with their thoughts. However, I would say being actively ignored by leadership is not the same thing as leadership has a different opinion. Yeah. And by the way – And are saying something that you don't like. Yeah, their company, their rules. Exactly.

There's a lot of that going around now and it's a lot of people who are just like, well, I don't want to go back to the office. I'm like, well, if you want a job, you might have to. Listen, my kid doesn't want to finish his lunch. You know what my job is? Make him finish his fucking lunch. Yeah.

If you've got product to ship and you work better in person, you might have to go be in person. Yeah. I mean, I get it. Like we can look at this. We can see what jobs work from work from home and which ones don't. I still think if you as an employee want to move up in a company and think you're going to be able to do so working from home, think again.

Yeah. Forget about it. Forget about it. You're going to be the last person to get the raise. The person that gets the raise and the person that gets the promotion is the person the boss sees. End of story. That's the way it works. That's the way it's always worked. It's never going to fucking change. Yeah, pretty much. I mean, I'm with you on that.

You know, it's like, just don't, they're whining about this. And it's like, yeah, okay. If your job does not require you to be in the office, fine. But there's sometimes there's going to be give and take. There's absolutely going to be give and take. And yeah. And I do see this as whining.

I see this as totally like, I'm the most important person. Me, me, me. Not the company that's hiring me. It's me. I have an opinion and my opinion is not being, it isn't just that your opinion isn't being heard. It's, you're not doing what I want you to do and I'm going to take my crayons and go home.

Here's the deal. You got a job at Apple. Be fucking happy, A, you have a job and B, you have a job at Apple. By the way, Apple is, Apple is a fucking astonishingly good employee. Now, you can at me with specific instances. There have been. There will be everywhere at every company.

I know five people that work at Apple. They make a shit ton of money and they don't work that damn hard. Yeah. I mean, the people I've met when I was in San Francisco that all worked at Apple love it. It is like a cult over there. I mean, they absolutely love their job. They are, you know, dedicated to the quote unquote cause.

And I mean, you can kind of look at that. Look at the keynote that came out yesterday with all of the features that they've, you know, been working on. They did all of that shit in a pandemic, right? You know, it had to be incredibly hard. So you have to have dedicated employees for that. If 80 people are going to come piss in the well and, you know, screw it up for everybody, that's kind of annoying.

It's annoying because, you know, the other hundred thousand employees that work at Apple are probably like, shut up, man. We got a good gig going here. Just look, if you're really concerned about your health going back, that's understandable. Work that out with your immediate supervisor. But if you're working in the big glass building, you'll be able to see if anybody in that thing sneezes.

Exactly. Oh, I forgot about that. Remember the story when everybody was walking into the walls when they first got there? So good. Maybe these are the people that got Dane Bramage from hitting the glass too many times. Like a sparrow trying to get out of a home.

But media candy. Hey, Brian, Shamalama Ding Dong is back. Woo. Did he ever really go away? No, he hasn't gone away.

So, you know, I'm talking about M. Night's Shamalama Ding Dong. He's got a new trailer for his new movie called Old. Yeah. Most of the movie's probably in that trailer. Did you watch it? No, I'm so over him. Yeah, you know, at this point it's like, it's a fascinating thing for me.

I mean, he took the unbreakable story and made the trilogy out of it. And like, you know, Glass was terrible. Absolutely terrible. The final one, also really not a very good movie. Well, Glass was the last one, I think. I can't remember. Here's the deal.

He screwed it up. Let's just say he screwed it up. Yeah, he broke what was unbreakable, sadly. This one looks interesting. I'll watch it for free at some point when it comes on TV. A ringing endorsement. I will catch it for free.

Just to see what the quote-unquote twist is. Twist, yes. One trick pony. Yeah, what was the one? Water kills them. Water kills them. So they went to a planet that's 90% water. Yeah. My whole theory on that was they could have thwarted the alien invasion by turning the sprinklers on.

Great movie. Well, Danny Elfman is back, too. He's got his first solo album in 37 years. And I listened to the first song. Did you get a chance to listen to the first song yet? Well, one song came out quite a while ago, and I sent that to you.

We talked about it on the show, I think, two to three months ago. I have listened to this one as well. It's fine. It's not Oingo Boingo. No, it's not an Oingo Boingo song. It's kind of like a nine-inch nails ripoff, almost. Or Gary Neumann.

Yeah, I mean, he definitely, I mean, you know, he knows the tech, and he's immersed in it, so it's not surprising that it's super tech-heavy in terms of production. So it's just, you know, all I want to hear is a new Oingo Boingo song. I know, I know. I listened to his interview on Marc Maron this week. That's how I found out about it, or like that it was coming out very soon.

And it was a really good interview. It was a really good interview. He's a fascinating guy. I like him a lot. Oh, yeah, totally. Yeah, but I do want some more Oingo Boingo. I really do. I really do. But speaking of Gary Neumann, friend of the show Bob surprised me yesterday. He bought me a ticket to go see Gary Neumann in September in San Diego.

So I'm actually going to go to a show. Nice. Yeah. One show I... I like the new album. So... Yeah. No, I'm a fan. I'm a fan. One show that I will not be going to, though, is the Cruel World Festival. Oh. The rescheduled Cruel World Festival.

Oh, it... Because this was supposed to be right pre-pandemic, and I actually did have tickets to go to it. I will not be going to this one because I will not be here. But I would if I was going to be here. Because if you threw a couple more bands in there, this would be my dream high school lineup.

Yeah. Well, it's missing The Cure for you. It's missing The Cure. It's missing Depeche Mode. It's missing The Mary Chain. It's missing Susie. Well, basically anybody that's mostly still around. But, you know, Morrissey, Bauhaus, Blondie, Devo, Echo and the Bunnymen, Psychedelic Furs, The Violent Femmes, The Church, The English Beat, Public Image Limited, The Damned.

Come on. Gene loves Jezebel, or at least part of it. I mean, this is amazing. Yeah. No, it's going to be fantastic, but I just won't be there. I know. You'd have to... I don't like festivals. Sell a child you don't have. Well, that's the other thing. That was my tweet about it yesterday. I'm like, I do not want to go to a concert that has a payment plan.

I mean, come on. Some of these tickets are almost 800 bucks plus fees. Payment plans as low as $29.99 down. Give me a break. It's funny because they have a level called Clubhouse, and I immediately thought, what, I just listened to it on the fucking app?

Exactly. That's all it is. Somebody's in the front row with a phone holding it up so you can hear. The quality would probably be just about as good. I think it'll be an amazing show and well done to all the people that can afford to go. Yeah. Saturday, May 14th, 2022 in Pasadena.

So start saving now, kids. Start saving now. Sell a kidney if you can. I watched a movie called A Glitch in the Matrix. I'm not linking to the movie in here. I'm linking to a review over at RogerEbert.com because this guy, Nick Allen, gave it two and a half stars and kind of summed up everything I thought about it.

So it's a pretty good read. It's from Rodney Asher. He's done other documentaries like Room 237 and The Nightmare. Room 237 was about hidden messages in The Shining, and The Nightmare was about sleep paralysis.

And A Glitch in the Matrix is about people who really think that we're living in a simulation. And it's- Elon Musk. Yeah. Well, Elon's just one of many. One of many. And it's interesting because, you know, I don't know anybody that hasn't had that thought, at least at some point in their life.

Is this the Truman Show? Am I just a brain in a vat, you know? Most of us had it in college while stoned. Exactly. And to my point- As opposed to Elon Musk who had it on the Joe Rogan show while stoned. While stoned. I never knew this about Philip K.

Dick. He believes that he was a total believer in it. And it came after he had, I think it was sodium pentothal or something, when he was getting his teeth fixed. And, you know, I had a very similar experience. I had a double root canal one day.

And they gave me so much nitrous that time was messed up for me for like a year. I had this crazy infinite loop while I was still on the table. And I kept waking up over and over and over again. And it took me a while to finally realize that I had actually woken up.

And by that point, I was walking down Rodeo Drive, just going back to my office. Because this was a Beverly Hills doctor who did these for me. Oh, yeah. They got to up the drugs for those people. When you're in Beverly Hills, man, you get what you ask for. You really do.

She just unloaded a tank on me. And, yeah, I really felt like I was living in a simulation for like a year. It totally screwed my brain up. But I wasn't a science fiction writer. I was just writing code. And that was the real one. I was like, I went back and I had to work on that Mel Gibson movie, What Women Want.

And I wished I was in a simulation and could wake up. But I like the psychology behind this. And I don't think this movie went deep enough into it. Yeah, I was reading the review. And to quote a barbecuing term, seems like all smoke, no meat. Yeah. It was interesting, but I wish it was deeper.

You know, I just wish it was a bit deeper. And I found this one over at Mental Floss. Here's how long it takes to binge watch more than 50 popular TV shows. And I was looking because for some reason, Netflix popped up, Downton Abbey is something I should rewatch. And I'm like, oh, man, how long is that going to take?

And I went and looked it up. And it was 56 hours, which is two days and eight hours. So I was kind of curious that I was going through some of them. It's pretty interesting to see what the breakdown is for a lot of these. But the one that you generally don't want to watch is General Hospital because it's got 11,398 hours.

Wow. Days of Our Lives, which I used to watch, is 11,281 hours. It will take you 470 days, one hour. And that was just when this article was written because since then, you know, they put out an hour a day. And so you're in the 11,000 hours for those soap operas that have been around for decades, right?

The next one down is Saturday Night Live at 1308 hours. Right. So that sounds like, you know, if I could get out of The Matrix, if I was stuck watching 54 days and 12 hours of Saturday Night Live. Oh. But it's a good list. It's a good list as a back of the napkin thing.

If you're like, oh, I want to really jump into a series. How long is it going to take? Because I thought, oh, Dexter's coming back. Maybe I can watch this. Nope. 96 hours. Yeah, that's a lot. Fuck that. Oh, that's excellent. So I found this on Twitter and I'd love to give it some appropriation, but I can't because Twitter, you know, I opened up the link and then I ran around to do something else.

And then when I came back, I could not find it back in my Twitter feed anywhere. But it's pretty cool. It's over on a Google Drive. If you'd like your Apple Watch to be assimilated, here you go. Somebody has made a bunch of Star Trek related Apple Watch faces, including one that's a Borg one, which is pretty nice looking.

So obviously this is not endorsed and could disappear at any time because, you know, intellectual property. But if you want to steal something while you can and put something fun on your watch, they're kind of cool. I did put the Borg one on my watch and I like it. Okay. Downloading now. And speaking of old bands, this popped up in my feed at some point.

One of the members of Lush made a bunch of whole movie type stuff with a really cheap old camera at some point and edited it together and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And if you just want to watch a fun kind of weird tour movie from Lush with no plot whatsoever, if you're a big fan of Lush, you'll enjoy watching it.

All right. It's cute to see them behind the scenes. And Fred wrote in, as you really love crypto stories, here is a quite well-produced podcast that I enjoyed listening to, The Missing Crypto Queen. And this is by the BBC, so Jason is going to argue it's not a podcast. I'm not. Go ahead. Move on. I give up.

And it's about... It's made with AI. I don't give a shit anymore. And it's about this woman that persuaded millions of people to join in on her bullshit scheme of crypto. Elon Musk? I can't remember which one. No, not Elon Musk. I can't remember which particular coin she did, but yeah, she basically just disappeared with all the money.

So let's see. It was called OneCoin. It was OneCoin. So she ran away with it. But it is not one episode. This is like 12 episodes long or something like that, and it's a pretty deep dive. So it kind of looks like it's serial for nerds. All right. I won't check it out.

I think I will. It looks interesting. Okay, maybe I will then. I need something new to listen to. Everything else has been just like, I don't want to listen to true crime. I don't want to listen to celebrities being interviewed. So maybe I'll give this one a shot.

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We got this one in from Amanda Keene. Love the shout out to Drafts. I came to macOS about two years ago, and I was lucky enough to have my Mac mistress. That sounds like something from McDonald's. Point me at Drafts as one of the most useful apps for high intensity information workers.

I use it to collect information and fire it off easy peasy into about three different formats to keep all my evil overlords pacified in the medium of their choice. Markdown was new to me, but by now my brain needs all the exercise it can get. Also, stop shilling for Chrome. Stay grumpy. I'm glad you like the Drafts.

I'm loving it. I need to dig into some of the automation features in there for sure. But, yeah, I'm really still digging it. It's on all my machines and works like a charm. What doesn't work like a charm, though, is the Zoom PodTrack P8 and Bluetooth module that I talked about, I think, on the last episode.

I did my live stream on Adorama last week, and we did some microphone tests, and I used the Rodecaster Pro, and I used the Zoom PodTrack P8. And it turns out the Zoom PodTrack P8 is a giant piece of crap. The preamps are just terrible.

I mean, absolutely terrible. Same settings, I would take the same mic, plug it into the Zoom, then I would plug it into the Rode, and it was just night and day. Night and day. So that is boxed up and ready to go back to Amazon as we speak. And I mentioned a while ago that I kept getting these emails from Apple saying, you've got a $4.99 credit for, you know, Apple TV+.

Go buy a movie or something. And I've been getting them every single month, and I think it's because I'm a whatever the iCloud Plus family plant. Yeah, Apple One, the big one. I pay $30 a month and get everything. And I think it's because of that that I'm getting some credit back.

Well, they say I'm getting some credit back, but in the email they say, hey, here's a way to go check your balance. So I press the 17 menus to get to where I can find my balance. Zero. Absolutely zero. So they're sending me all these things telling me I have all this credit on Apple TV+, but I don't.

And I wrote them back and said, no, I don't. Fix your database. So I'm waiting to hear back, which I know I never will, you know. But I just thought that was interesting that they kept telling me I was getting all this money. And in fact, they were giving me bupkis.

Way to go. Way to go. Maybe it's one of those 80 people that are working from home. They can't get it right. And in coming end of the world news, dogs and cats playing together and getting along just fine. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla are working together to advance a common browser extension platform.

Wouldn't that be nice? This newly formed web extensions community group explained what it doesn't plan to do. Plan to specify, standardize, or coordinate around extension signing or delivery while still making it easier for developers to write the tools with a common core of functionalities, APIs, and permissions. So theoretically, plugins will work the same across multiple browsers from now on.

Okay. And it'd be easier for developers, theoretically. Theoretically. I just want Apple to let other browser engines onto iOS. That's all I really want. That'd be nice. It would be nice. And when we went to lunch this week, I let you play with my new Apple iPad keyboard thing, that super swanky one.

And I pointed out, like, how nice it was to type on. Mm-hmm. And it was. Yeah. Really nice. It was by far my favorite. I mean, I only spent about a minute typing gibberish into your iPad, but it was by far my most favorite keyboard. I was like, I want this instead of my super expensive USB Apple keyboard I have now.

Yeah. And I have one of those swanky extended wireless Apple keyboards that I use in my room. And I got the space gray one because I wanted to be fancy. Well, the problem with it is, and the problem with all of the Apple keyboards, the wireless keyboards, is there's no backlight.

Yeah. And the way I've got my whole system set up in my room, I really need a backlit keyboard. You know, that space gray Apple extended keyboard is almost impossible to see the letters and numbers on. They made it so low contrast that you, I mean, unless you put a spotlight on it, you cannot see the keys.

And I'm a pretty good touch typer, but I still need to look at the keyboard because I am a Neanderthal at heart. So I went in search of, and I found the Logitech MX Keys Advanced Illuminated Wireless Keyboard for Mac, Bluetooth slash USB. And this is the same family as my beloved MX Master Series mouse.

And I got to say, it's awesome. It's just awesome. It's cool. Yeah. You charge it with USB-C. So it's, you know, basically got a battery in it. And it's nice and backlit. You can hook it up to three computers just like you can the mouse, which is really nice because I've got two little PCs on my desk that are sitting there mining away at Chia.

So when I want to look at them, I just flip the monitor input and press the buttons on the keyboard and the mouse to switch over to whichever machine I'm using. So I've got, it's kind of like, you know, a modern KVM switch without all the cables. Thank God those things are gone.

But for a hundred bucks, this is... That's nice looking. Dude, and the action on the keys reminded me of the iPad case, which is why I thought of you when I was, after I bought this thing. I'm like... Very nice. I'm going to have to get this. I'm a huge fan of Logitech.

I mean, I've always used their stuff, you know, until I switched to Mac and I tried the Mac mouse, screw that thing. I went back to a Logitech. I've got the MX mouse. It's phenomenal. But I have been using the bog standard, super expensive Apple extended keyboard and I don't love it. No, I don't.

It's just, it is what it is. So I think I'll be grabbing this. Yeah, I'm telling you, man, it's worth it. It really is worth it. So, yeah, it was just a happy find because I'm like, is it going to be decent enough? And it turns out I like typing on it a hell of a lot more than I like typing on the standard Apple keyboard.

So well worth checking out. Cool. And I got a new watch band for my Apple Watch. I went to Airport Tag. I don't know how you pronounce this. It's Airport AG, like Airport Tag. But whatever.

I got the TWA retro band because I was a big fan of TWA and I changed the color on my, the accent color on my watch to be red. It's actually quite stylish, I must say. But it was like 50 bucks. And I took this thing out and I'm like, oh, this just feels cheap.

It just feels cheap. And I'm like, what is this made of? So I went to the website and I looked it up. Made from quality vegan leather designed to last. Now, Brian, what the fuck is vegan leather if not just plastic? I think they just take some old strips of that vegan bacon that never did very well in the early days.

I'm wearing Tofurky. I'm wearing Tofurky. There is no such thing as vegan leather. You know, it's funny because like some of the reviews that pop up are super high quality materials and apparently no, at least not for the bands. I have to say they have some pretty interesting and funny products.

They have a t-shirt that says world's okayest pilot. I think I'm going to have to buy that. They've got great stuff there. I totally, I totally love that site. They've been around since, I think, 2015. So, and I'm an airport nerd. I hate flying, but I love, I mean, because I got the TWA because I flew that when I was a kid the most.

And the stewardesses and the pilots were really cool to me when I was a kid. I'd always get wings, a deck of cards, and a trip to the cockpit. It was always fun. But like I said, this is a very stylish band and I'm hoping it breaks in a little bit because it's very stiff and plasticky feeling.

The other big problem with it is the clasp. The hardware on the clasp also feels cheap. It's very thin, very thin metal. So, I'm not sure about this one. Like I said, it looks really good and there's some really fun stuff on the site.

Highly recommend checking it out. But, you know, caveat emptor on the watch bands. I'll let you know in like a couple weeks how this thing breaks in, if it breaks in. Because I'm curious about all their products because like you, I'm a bit of a flying nerd and an airport nerd. My dad worked for airlines all of his life.

So, you know, I was always like, I would go with my dad to work every now and then. And he would take me on the planes and go into the cockpit and all that sort of stuff. And we flew all the time because back then you had like good, you know, benefits from working for an airline. So, we would be able to fly standby anywhere. So, I did a lot of flying as a kid, was around planes all the time as a kid.

So, yeah, I'm a bit of a nerd for this stuff too. So, I'm loving this site right now. Yeah, the one thing I do want to get, I'm going to wait until I get a new phone, but their phone cases, they have the flight computers for different jets on there. So, the back of it is made, it's like the printed version of what the flight computer looks like.

And they're really cool. They're just really cool. I just saw another shirt. Do I look like I fly economy? So good. Oh, you've got to wear that next time you fly first class. I'm going to wear it next time I fly economy. Oh, that's even better.

That's even better. Got to go meta there, Jason. Yeah. I found this one. I thought it was interesting. A SpaceX fanatic created a website to find out when Starlink satellites were visible in his location. After five days, it went viral. Yeah, all you have to do literally is look up.

Unfortunately, his site crashed out of the gate because he got too many hits, as it were. But there was a, when I first went to the site, there was a big warning that popped up. Hi there. Based on user reports, Starlink trains are not very visible right now.

This is because Starlink's company has reduced their brightness to avoid disturbing astronomers. More details. Link to that. But a few reports of successful sightings come in every day, so you can try your luck. I'm working on predicting this better. Sorry. The next Starlink launch is planned in a few weeks and will be very bright for three to four days after that.

Good luck. I don't want good luck. I want them to be invisible. I don't want them to be screwing up the night sky. That would be nice. Yeah. Watch. This is how Bezos ends. He basically flies up and gets hit by a train. They run a train on him of Starlink satellites and he blows up.

At the library. I was looking for something new to read after I finished the history book, so, you know, I want to go back to the well of cheesy sci-fi. And I picked up One Day, All of This Will Be Yours by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Now, I've read a series of his before, the Children of Time and Children of Rune series.

I have to say I don't really remember it too well. I know I read it because when I was looking to read another book after finishing this one, I saw that this was his best-selling book, The Children of Time one. And it said, read now. You already own this item. Okay. When I went to go buy it, so I guess I did read it and I'm sure I looked at it and I was like, oh, yeah, I kind of remember it.

This was good. I mean, it was a very fun book. It's hard to write a good time travel book that's also funny but kind of stays within its own universe. And he did it and it was very clever and very well done and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

And it's pretty quick. It's a pretty quick read. So I can't say anything about it because it will totally spoil the book. All right. Buy now with one click. Done. Because I remember the name. I remember Adrian Tchaikovsky probably when you did the review on the other books.

Yeah. So is it – I should have asked you this before I just bought it. Is this crapper sci-fi in your crapper sci-fi series or is this good sci-fi? No. There's no like – this isn't like the strong professor with the very smart woman that he runs into and then they have to run around and save the world.

Not at all. It's way more subversive than that. Okay. Good. I'm in. I'm in. Well, I'm in whether I like it or not because I just pressed buy and you can't return Kindle. I think you'll like it. I really do. This is – this is – I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. All right.

Great. We're on of the week. I saw this one, Brian, and I was just scratching my head. If I was – if I bought this guy's product, I'd be scratching my third eye because South Korean designer creates third eye for smartphone zombies.

This is literally a strap-on eyeball for the middle of your forehead. This has gone so viral, Jason. I heard this story on NPR yesterday. Really? Okay. I just – this came across my Twitter feed and I'm just like, oh, you've got to be shitting me.

Now, at least according to NPR, they said that he did this initially as a joke to bring – to point out how people have stopped paying attention when they're outside and out and about and pay way too much attention to their phones. But it apparently stopped being a joke as soon as people started buying it.

Exactly. As soon as the money started rolling in, he's like, okay, what's in version two? What's in version three? Okay. So now I'm going to really market this thing. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So basically what it does is it's got motion detection or like object detection so it vibrates if you're going to run into something.

I think it should give you an electric shock personally. That would be awesome. That's just me. That's just me. Surprise feature. Yep. Security? Ha! Dave Bittner is back into his house.

Dave is the host of the Cyber Wire podcast, co-host of the social engineering podcast Hacking Humans with Joe Kerrigan, and co-host of Caveat with Ben Yellen where they discuss law and policy and surveillance and privacy. And finally, he's the co-host of Recorded Future where he takes you inside the world of cyber threat intelligence. I've been doing cardio and I thought I could make it all the way through on one breath.

Not quite. Not quite. I actually want to interrupt quickly, appropriate to the discussion that we just had off the air, but I'll bring it in here a little bit here because we do tend to talk about ourselves quite a bit in this segment. And sometimes Jason gets the brunt of some of our humor, as it were, for his particular foibles.

And as we all know, Jason has a policy, I would call it scorched earth, when he tends to leave situations or exit relationships. Me? He doesn't just burn the bridge. I knew the people that built the bridge.

Right. And I want to point out something that happened. Well, off the air as well, there was a situation in which Jason moderately scorched earth, I would say. Not so much, but it was kind of nice. But we as podcasters at the Grumpy Old Geeks podcast had to exit a business relationship earlier this week.

And I left it to Jason to handle. And I saw that an email went out, and with a little bit of trepidation, I went to go look at it. And it was unflinchingly nice and pleasant. Go figure. First, I took a seat.

And then I took a deep breath. And I have to say, Jason, I was very impressed. You are not always the scorched earth that you imply. So well done, Jason. Well, truth be known, I actually used GPT-3 to write it for me. I said, write a nice breakup email.

And that's the AI that did it. Okay. Well, that explains quite a bit. Yeah. I was going to say, who is this person? What has he done with our Jason? You see, I'm a nice guy underneath. I'm soft and squishy. Way, way, way. I guess being fat has nothing to do with my vitriolic nature by heart.

But, hey, whatever. It can happen, people. You have a good heart inside. Yeah. Your small heart grew three sizes that day. Great. Now I have to up my pill dosage. I was going to say, now I've got to take more fucking meds.

Great. Yeah. Downside to everything. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, God. Now I can't. I mean, I already can't eat eggs. Now what? Can't eat celery? Jeez, water only. Okay. Well, I got this one as a little bit of follow-up because I thought it was pretty interesting. Ring launches request for assistance posts on the Neighbors app.

So in previous days, long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, which was three weeks ago, we talked about how Ring basically just gives up the ghost to all of the local law enforcement. Once you've said, okay, you can watch one video now, you can watch them all, blah, blah, blah.

You know, we followed this for over a year now. Well, they've changed their tactics. And I found this very interesting. Now you have to make a public request. So I guess it could be seen as being, I don't know, on the blockchain and everybody gets to see the request that law enforcement makes and whether it's been granted or not.

So this is an interesting turnabout from Ring, I think, in response to all of the negative press it's been getting about, why are you giving to Popo my shit, bitch? Well, it's interesting. I mean, it's a bit of transparency, which I like, the fact that everybody, if you're on the Neighbors app anyways, or using that, can see when law enforcement is requesting it.

It does kind of feel also a little bit like you want to be a good neighbor, right? I don't get that. But I don't get that so much. I could feel that a bit. I could feel that a bit, but I'm paranoid that way. Yeah, I think this is a good move.

I agree with you, Jason, that I think this is probably in response to all the criticism they've been getting. I don't really see a downside to this. Why not have those requests be there in public and everyone be able to see what happened? I think, if anything, this will help build more trust between the various parties who are using this.

And I think it's a move in the right direction. Imagine if they would have just done this from the get-go. Yep. Well, come on. As we all know, people need to be shamed into doing the proper things these days. So, you know, first you have to do it totally wrong and try to get all your datas.

And then eventually, when there is public outcry and it starts to look bad, then you go, well, look at this new program that we had right behind our back the whole time. Here you go. Yep. So, hey, good on Ring for doing something right for once. Now if you can just fix your cameras. Still not going to get one. Yeah, yeah, you still shouldn't get one because they're terrible cameras.

So, yes. Mr. Law Enforcement, would you like to have the three-pixel image of the criminal who just was about to rob my house, but then the camera shut off? So, we can have that. Here is the cat that walked by after my house was broken into. Yeah, my cat that the burglars let out. Proof positive that someone was there.

So, I saw this one come through. It's been everywhere. The Justice Department has quote-unquote clawed back $2.3 million paid by Colonial Pipeline to ransomware gang. So, hopefully that $2.3 million will go to, I don't know, IT to help maybe fix their shit.

But, yeah, yeah. Hope springs eternal. So, there's a lot to this story that is pretty interesting. Isn't there? Yes. There is. And we covered this today over on the Cyber Wire. And, you know, the FBI says that they had the private key to this Bitcoin wallet, which is how they were able to get the claw of the money back.

But there's also some interesting speculation that Ars Technica has been reporting on that Colonial paid not to gain access to the decryptor that the gang had offered, which – and that decryptor, by the way, turned out to be essentially worthless because it was a piece of crap.

It was slow and didn't work very well. But rather that Colonial paid to aid the FBI in tracking the money. Oh, that's an interesting plot twist. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So, who is it?

Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco made a statement yesterday about following the money. She said, we thank Colonial Pipeline for quickly notifying the FBI when they learned that they were targeted by DarkSide. So, that's an interesting possibility that, you know, DarkSide – or Colonial, rather, got hit.

They went to the FBI. They powwowed. Colonial said, well, if we make a payment, you'll be able to keep an eye on these folks. You'll see where the transaction happens and then be able to do your thing in terms of tracing the money. That may have been what happened here, which I think is pretty interesting.

How much for that anonymity with the Bitcoin there? Yep. Right, right. Well, I mean, that's another interesting point, isn't it? That, you know, the law enforcement has quite a bit of capability when it comes to unwinding these transactions, which I don't think is that surprising, really.

Because it's on the blockchain. Every transaction has been recorded forever. Unless it's a brand-new wallet, then you have a transaction history that can be traced back, which also gets me to the point of, why don't you always use a new wallet? But I guess you do have to transfer the funds somewhere, unless it's a Tumblr.

You know, there are ways around it, but it sounds like there was probably a wallet that was in use that they were able to follow to. I want to know how they got those keys. Yeah. I saw quite a lot of Twitter threads going, you know, if they would have put a little bit of effort into this, they could have hidden their tracks much better.

But as we've always said on the show, criminals are lazy. You know what? See, if the criminals just had minted an NFT and then had Colonial Pipeline buy it, then. Right. But crooks are stupid. Yes. Yeah, which also brings me to the other point where you said that the decryptor was, you know, didn't work very well.

I'm like, oh, ransomware people don't know how to write very good software. Shocker. Mm-hmm. Yeah. No, it's kind of like the contractors who are really, really good at getting started on the work they're doing on your house, but not so good at finishing it. Every contractor in existence. Yeah. Right.

No, they all want us to get started. They want that first payment, but yeah, hard to get them to wrap up. They're still working on the house across the street for the Property Brothers, by the way. Really? Which the people had to move back in, and we still have contractors coming by because they're so damn slow.

Huh. Interesting. I'm guessing TV production budgets don't really afford the best in the business when it comes to high-end labor. You know, they were promised, you'll get exposure. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Except they don't want exposure because they're all illegal.

Yeah, I've heard plenty of stories about how, well, first of all, my folks in the production world, how about how, on what a shoestring those shows are made, but then also when they leave after they've done whatever renovation they do, that it just turns out to be crap underneath.

Like, the work is shoddy or isn't, it's only designed to do one thing, which is to look good during the reveal on television. And then after that, it's not designed to last. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, the other big story today is how the FBI was secretly running a phone network for criminals.

I don't know if you guys have been following this story. The FBI, who was working with the Dutch National Police, the Swedish police, led by groups in Australia, the AFP, which is the Australian Federal Police, they basically made their own encrypted app that ran on a custom phone.

They ran an affiliate network where bad guys could buy and sell these devices, and over the course of about three years, they had at least hundreds and possibly thousands of these out in circulation. And the whole time, the FBI was behind the scenes, along with other law enforcement agencies, monitoring all of the traffic, all of the communications on these devices, which the bad guys thought was all encrypted, end to end.

And it was not. I'm sorry. That is just genius. That's awesome. That is genius. Here's your discount bad guy phone. Right. Right. And evidently, the criminals who were selling this, the ones who did not know that this was just a honeypot, they were out saying this was a system that was built by criminals for criminals.

Some people would agree, but. Yeah. And now the FBI, in addition, so they've already made a few hundred arrests. They started in Australia. There's speculation that the bad guys started to catch on to what was going on here. So, but Europol says we should expect a lot more arrests in the near future.

And the FBI is actually now going after the folks who were the affiliates, the folks who were selling the devices. They're going after them as well. But boy, who can you trust these days? If you can't trust criminals who are selling you end-to-end encryption, who can you trust?

In my mind's eye, I see the Swedish police going to break down a criminal's door with the battering ram, and they knock on the door and they go, bork, bork, bork, boom. I know. I watch too many Muppets.

I'm sorry. To any of our Swedish listeners, you must know that everybody in the United States only knows about Sweden through the Muppets. That's it. No offense to be made there, but I just, yeah. One horrible stereotype, but that's okay.

It's all right. It's adorable and funny. Yes, it's a lovable stereotype. That's why we love you. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That's a pretty good one. That's a pretty good one. It is. It is. There was one time when it got a little bit dark. There was a Muppets Christmas special where the, I don't know if you guys have seen this one, where the Sesame Street gang visits the Muppets gang.

They all get together at Fozzie Bear's grandmother's house for Christmas. Oh, I thought they were going to have like a Jets versus Sharks. That's exactly what I was thinking. I'm like, who gets shimmed? Rumble. Rumble in the street. Here's what, so the one dark thing is that the sweetest chef who, he spots Big Bird.

Oh, that's delicious. And he wants, yeah, he wants to cook him. I remember that. I remember that. Yes. Right. So, it's pretty funny, actually. I still, I still remember when I was a kid, I was terrified from the Phantom of the Muppets, the, that one, like.

Oh, yeah. Uncle Deadly. Yeah, me too. Scared the shit out of me. Yeah, me too. Absolutely. That's why I became goth. No, I, I mean, I was seriously, I had nightmares about that guy and that Phantom of the Muppets show thing. Oh, dude, when I went back and I watched it again for the first time when I was like 40, I still got chills.

I'm like, oh, shit, it's him. He's back. Well, you know, they brought him back now on the modern show. He's, he's basically Miss Piggy's personal assistant. His name is Uncle Deadly. And he's sort of a gay icon, a gay fashion icon.

And he's, same, same sort of character, but not so scary anymore. But, you know, he's, he looks the same. As with all of them. Way to flip the script. Well, and they've brightened up all the colors. Like, I don't know if you've noticed, like, you know, Cookie Monster is a much brighter shade of blue than he used to be.

And it's the same with Uncle Deadly. Okay. Anyway, yes, used to scare the crap out of me. Yeah, that one in The Space Vampire from Buck Rogers. That one got me, too. Hmm. I don't remember that one. Oh, I highly recommend going back and watching the Gil Gerard Buck Rogers.

Really? Because, oh, my God, it was amazing. And Aaron Gray. Well, yeah, there's that. Yeah. Oh, there's that. Jesus. Yeah. It was a great, it was a great series. It was an absolutely great series. I watched it, like, 10 years ago and just binged it. And it was fantastic.

But, yeah, The Space Vampire freaked me the fuck out. Big time. Yeah. Isn't that funny how some of those things just stay with you? And, yeah, absolutely. Well, we got some good news out of your neck of the woods, Dave. Yes. Maryland and Montana. That would be Maryland for you, not Montana, unless there's something I don't know.

That's where your prepper retreat is. Maryland and Montana passed the nation's first laws restricting law enforcement access to genetic genealogy databases. So now you have to have judicial authorization to go through these consumer DNA databases for criminal investigations, which, yay, this should be federal, not just statewide.

This should be a federal law that you have to have judicial authorization to look at this stuff. But then again, I feel the same way about cell phone records. So you shouldn't be able to just buy your way in. I agree. Yeah, I agree. I agree. That's good. Yeah.

Another thing that they pointed out in the coverage of the passing of this law is that there was a case where the police went to a woman and said that they were trying to tie up loose ends on like a murder case or a missing persons case or something.

And would she be willing to provide a DNA sample? And she did. But that's not actually what they were after. They were after her brother who they had suspected of committing a crime. And one of the things I believe this new legislation covers is they're not allowed to tell those sorts of lies to people.

I was going to say the police lie. What? Oh, yeah. Shocker. No, I'm with you. I think any of this stuff, get, you know, get a judge to sign off on it. Make your case in front of a judge before you go digging through any of this private stuff. I just think that should be the standard.

Yep. I agree. Yep. 100% agree. And finally, TikTok has quietly updated its privacy policy to collect users' biometric data. Wait, what? Yeah, they're going to start collecting face prints and voice prints from your uploaded content. I think you're safe, Brian, because you're not really big on the talk.

I know Dave. I've never even downloaded or installed it. I've never touched my phone and never will now. Yeah. Dave, do you have furrometric data for your? Yes, I do. Yes. What if I, yeah, got a problem with that, buddy?

Just saying, you might want to, you might want to, you know, dial back the talking. That's all I'm saying. That's true. Yep. I've seen you on those dance challenges. Right. I'm with Brian on this. I have never installed TikTok, nor will I ever install TikTok. I believe my youngest Jack has it on his phone.

Well, that's going to be always the problem is the kids, right? But hopefully by the time my kid is old enough to be interested in this, TikTok will be no more as all these things kind of eventually have their moment in the sun and go away. But I mean, TikTok, I mean, I just even remember when it was first becoming kind of a big deal.

I think we talked about it on the show a couple of times. Some privacy researchers had kind of taken a look at the code and tried to pull it apart and said, this thing is a privacy nightmare. So, you know, that continues. Like TikTok is, after Facebook, TikTok has just got to be one of the most horrible companies out there in terms of trying to get all the datas.

But their algorithm is amazing. I wouldn't know. I don't care. Their suggestion algorithm is the gold standard in the business. It's amazing how well it works. Really? Yeah. No, I can sit there for an hour on TikTok and it just feels like five minutes.

And there's just really good stuff on there. I'm telling you. People do say that about the algorithm. I can't remember who I was listening to. I think it might have been the Prof G who was saying that I had no idea I was into this until TikTok showed it to me and now I can't stop watching this stuff. I'm telling you. Yeah. They know people better than people know people.

People know people. Which is also cause for concern. Well, you know, here's the thing. It's like the funny part about this is TikTok's got their algorithm. YouTube has their algorithm. YouTube's algorithm sucks and is evil. TikTok's just makes me laugh.

So there's a big difference. So it's a delightful algorithm. It is a delightfully evil algorithm. Show title. You know, just this past week I was thinking I wish there were a way on Twitter to opt out of things that news items that do not affect my life and have taken place nowhere near me.

For example, something scrolled by and it was some horrible story like, you know, two young children killed in car crash in Brazil. I don't need to see that. Nope. It doesn't affect my life one bit. All it's going to do is make me sad. So how do I, I would love to have the option to somehow train it to say, this has nothing to do with me.

It is geographically far away. Don't show me this. Now, I understand the flip side of that is that I am less likely to get the things that do surprise and delight me in a positive way. But that may be something I'm willing to give up.

Right. Yeah. There's enough out there. There's enough out there where you can like take that risk. Right. Right. Exactly. What we all need to have is our own personal algorithms that we can use like a key to plug into social media networks and then they can just feed us the things that we want. And if they pay us to let us use that algorithm, use that data, that training set, say, here, I want to use your network and I will let you use my training data to show me ads, but you got to cut me in.

You got to cut me in. Well, I'm glad we've solved the internet today. Kind of like CarPlay where you can, you know, you can, the car is the car, but you can plug in your iPhone and have it take over the screen and sort of personalize, have a plug-in personalization within your car.

If you could do that on the major social network platforms, that's an interesting idea. Yeah. That will never happen. No. Nope. Because it would be nice. And we can't have nice things. No, we can't have nice things. It's funny. My, uh, we were watching a TV show the other day and, uh, somebody was wearing a Versace robe and we, we talked about it and then not a day and a half later, I'm getting Versace robe ads everywhere in my feed.

And I'm like, I'm like, I'm waiting for her to say, they're listening. See, they're listening. See, they're listening. And I, my retort is, um, remember when you told me how much that robe cost? Well, at one point you went and Googled that robe. How'd you find that information out?

Exactly. You, uh, you eventually went and Googled that robe and now we're all getting ads for it. Thanks a lot. All right. And finally, Highlander wrote in and said, if you have ever come across any really sensitive materials, but still need an anonymous way to submit the goods to the media, have a look at this. And it's a link to the CBC secure drop, which is the Canadian broadcasting company.

Uh, there may be other news sites or news networks that follow along the security pattern. Now the question is, did you already know about these kinds of websites or is this the first time you've seen this? It's been around for a long time. Um, yeah, I've assumed that networks have these sorts of things. Um, of course they do, you know, they've, they're, they're smart, they're digital and, uh, they know how to, uh, get anonymous information.

So yeah, no net, uh, not Netflix, uh, WikiLeaks started this kind of software. It was open source. I think the New York times has it as well. Any major, uh, news operation has a way to send them stuff anonymously. A lot of the times it's through tour. Um, but there are, there are, there are definitely lots of ways to do this.

This is definitely nothing new. So, but if you want to check it out. Or you can use the very special phone that the network provides. That's right, right, right. Yeah. The Freedom Business Information brand phone. Um, don't call us.

We'll call you. Yeah. What's, I think what's interesting about this link that Highlander provided is it is a nice step-by-step description of exactly what's going on. So if you're curious about this sort of thing, the other thing I'll note is that, uh, all big time reporters, you know, they'll have their, their signal contact information along with their phone number and email.

So if you need to reach out anonymously in an encrypted way, that's a good starting point. And they all say, do not use your work phone. Do not use your work computer. You know, do not use your work wifi. Go somewhere, uh, where you have not been before. Go to a cafe or something that you don't usually visit and, and have that be the, the point of entry.

And leave your phone at home when you do, you know, right. Uh, yeah. And this is tour based, you know, so they give you the, they give you the, uh, the onion address to go, uh, use the secure drop. But yeah, it's, uh, that's, that is the thing.

It's like, you have to leave your phone at home if you're going to do this stuff because the triangulation is drop dead easy. Yeah. Yeah. All right, gents. Well, it's actually a busy news week this week. Yeah. We actually talked about security. How long with, I know, right?

All right. I'll catch you guys next time. Catch you on the flip side. Over at Patreon, we've got Chloe, Don, Ian, Aaron, M, Aaron S and Phil. Thank you all so much. Thank you. And over at PayPal, we've got breed, David, Melissa, Andrew, Shaleen, Doug, Jonathan, Andrew and Blair who wrote in, uh, thought you might enjoy my experience with Robin hood, a little long, sorry, but hang in there till the end about plaid.

Actually, we'll just go ahead and skip to that to fund your refund to fund your Robin hood account. They want you to use a third party vendor to transfer funds called plaid picked my bank from the list. And up came a prompt to enter my bank username and password. I'm pretty sure this violated the terms and conditions at the bank.

Not to mention seems like something no rational person would do. Well, I've got, uh, I've got some info here for you. Uh, I've used plaid a bunch of times. Uh, plaid actually works with the banks. Your information is safe with plaid. Um, and it is all end to end encrypted, blah, blah, blah.

But this is a, an actual official thing that the banks use. It's actually safe and it's not violating any terms. Yeah. And Robin hood has way too much scrutiny on them right now to do anything, uh, too dodgy. Yeah. I mean, any, any account where I have to link my bank account, they all use plaid. And the first time I was just like, are you kidding me?

And then I did my homework and I'm just like, nah, this is safe, safe as houses, unless you live on the San Andreas fault and then not safe. We're going to fire zone. Yeah. I don't know. California. I was in California. Nevermind. Okay. Bad analogy. And, uh, we have our new tip jar.

So if you go to gog.show slash donate, you can now tip us directly through Stripe and we have some new people on Stripe. We got $5 from Gail and a $5 recurring from Glenn, 10 bucks from Chloe and a $10 recurring from Linda and $20 from Nicholas. Now I wanted to point out the numbers here because you can pick your poison.

So I only have $5 and $10 increments up there because you can actually up it in the dropdown. You can do, uh, that's how Nicholas gave us $20. You can select multiples of five or multiples of 10. If you are so inclined, this money comes directly to us. We can actually start tracking who's doing what because with PayPal, we can't even tell who's subscribed and who's not.

So this makes it very easy. So maybe in the future we can do more perks and things like that. If you are a Patreon subscriber or a Stripe subscriber. So, uh, PayPal, we're still kind of screwed. PayPal, they give you no tools to do anything useful with. Exactly.

Way to go, PayPal. And over at iTunes, we have a five-star rating from Callie Piggin. Exactly the right amount of snarky confession time. I've been starring each episode in Overcast from the start, but that's not enough. I want to live in a world where artists and journalists are able to make a living from their patrons.

I have no excuse for not signing up for monthly donations before today. I added a couple extra bucks as a penance. Seriously though, GOG is the best tech news podcast out there. Keep up the great work. P.S. Thank you for ignoring the idgits telling you to stop talking about politics. Democracy requires participation.

And that means sometimes we have to talk about stuff. Well, thank you for that because just minutes before you sent that one in, we got a different review. We got one over at Podcast Addict. We got three stars from I Listen to Much. I think he doesn't know the difference between 2-2 and 2.

Anyway, good podcast to stay abreast on current technology. But like most podcasts, they manage to drag politics into the mix way too much. And 2 is spelled wrong. At least he or she or they or whatever stayed consistent with the misuse of 2.

Yes, that is true. That is too true. But it's funny. We haven't talked about politics very much at all lately. They must be going through the back catalog because... Whatever. Look, we get reviews that say that we love Chrome and Ring. I know. I don't trust these people anymore.

I know. The only people I trust are the five-star ratings. Absolutely. And the people who donate. Yes. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFilippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. If you enjoy the show, visit GOG.showslashdonate to help us keep the lights on and we'll love you forever.

You can also help us out by sharing the show with your friends and enemies. It's easy and absolutely free. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.showslash510. From there, you can find links to everything we talked about in this episode, as well as links to our swag and Discord channel if you want to buy some stuff or chat with us and other show fans.

You can also head over to GOG.showslashcontact and send us your feedback or questions that we can read on the air. And if you're so inclined, please, please head over to GOG.showslashreview and toss us a snarky review and preferably five stars. Stay grumpy. At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out.

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