513: Fury Road

Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFillippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame. Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFillippo.

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. I am constantly in the state of near panic now. This is my last month here in Los Angeles and it's weird, man. I mean, you're pretty used to just like picking up and going. I don't move all that often. I've done it a couple times in my life, but it's been quite a long time.

110. 110 for me. Well, there you go. This is my first time moving with a wife and kid. And to another country. And moving to another country and the psychic like weight of just everything right now. Like anytime I go anywhere in the back of my mind, I'm like, is this the last time I'm ever going to be here?

And then everything in my house that I pick up, I'm like, do I need to pack this now? Or do I need this for the next couple of weeks? What do I do? What do I do? It's like constant. And then there's also like the whole, like, I should be going to see people, but. No, no. But, okay. Well, let me give you Jason's tips for moving.

One, you will be back. Two, you will see these people again. And three, pack it. Just fucking pack it. That's it. Those are, those are my tips right there. That's kind of where I'm at now. Exactly. Yeah. So thank you for that. Also, you know, the COVID thing helps because in the back of my mind, I'm also like, I haven't seen this person for a year and a half anyways.

Why start now? Exactly. Exactly. So there's a bit of that. And yes, I will be back to see people and I'm kind of giving up on it. And there's even a, there's a more practical reason to not see people at this point, because we do have to take one of those rapid COVID tests before we get on the plane.

And we have to show that we don't have it. So I need to not be exposed to any, even though I've been, I've been vaccinated. I need to not have it. Otherwise I don't leave. So. Exactly. And the Delta variant, you know, is out there right now. So just stay the fuck at home, stay the fuck at home, stay the fuck at home where it's at.

Yeah. Just do that. Pack your shit up and get it out the door. And yes, you will be to these places again. Look, life is long. You are coming back. You have family here. Yeah, hopefully. Look, it's longer than you want it to be. Sometimes let's just get that out of the way.

That's kind of how I'm feeling at the moment with this overwhelming sense of everything. So yeah, it's going to go a bit faster. Yeah. And if you haven't seen it, touched it, liked it, or used it in over, I don't know, a year, throw it away.

Don't spend the money on moving it because you can always buy it again and you probably won't need to, you know, that's, that's honestly it. There you go. Says the guy who has bought the same things multiple times. Exactly. But I have saved money then, you know, because I used to put the shit in storage.

Oh, that's, you know, that's a time suck and a waste. Yeah, that's a money pit. Yeah. Yep. That's a money pit. I've got a storage locker right now, you know, got stuff in there. You have to do the algebra on. Is it going to cost more to store it or buy it again? And if they're keepsakes, I mean, basically I have my gold records in my storage unit right now, which I don't want to have to rebuy.

And a lot of the movie posters I have are signed by, you know, very famous people. So, like, like I can't replace the Mission Impossible 2 poster that signed it to me from John Woo. I can't replace that. So, but I can roll it up and stick it in a tube somewhere and throw it under a bed.

I don't need it in a frame that's ready to go. But yeah, you have to do that, that balance. Agreed. All of that shit is going to be hung lovingly in my garage. That's where it goes. That's where it eventually ends up, you know. Yeah, and speaking of keepsakes, we have a bit of follow-up here from famous people.

Tim Berners-Lee has sold the NFT of his source code for the World Wide Web for 5.4 million. Now, I think you and I both felt like good on him. Take the money. This is an NFT we don't mind selling for stupid amounts of money. And it did. If you can get money on an NFT, take it.

Because the people who are buying it are morons. Yes, he says he has plans to donate the money to a yet unspecified charitable cause. The Tim Berners-Lee Foundation. The Tim Berners-Lee Monaco Foundation. Yes. You deserve it. The price represents nearly twice the value of Jack's first tweet, 10 times as much as the Disaster Girl meme, but one twelfth of Beeple's collection of 5,000 digital images, to which I could argue there were 5,000 of those.

Yeah, 5,000 images in one image. But let's be honest here. Beeple won the lottery. Oh, yes. He is the Powerball winner. So nothing is ever going to come close to it because nobody gives a shit about NFTs anymore except really stupid crypto bros who have too much money and not enough common sense.

There's been an uptick in us getting tweeted about that, though. People that are super into it are, of course, trying to make their case and tweeting us examples. And I'm just like, whatever. You want to throw your money away? You throw your money away. You do that. Exactly. Yeah, I don't give a shit. I seriously don't give a shit. But there was an HTML error in the actual NFT that was getting sold that they fixed.

And there's a great article on Ars Technica about, well, did they reissue the NFT? And if they did, then is there an NFT that's out there that has the actual, the wrong HTML code in it? And is that now more worth, you know, is that more expensive now?

What's the deal? Oh, my God. Mind blown. I would argue that there being an HTML error is very on point for the original code for the web. Exactly. I mean, that makes it more authentic as far as I'm concerned.

We were all hand coding back then. There were shit tons of errors. Well, that's the thing. There were no, like, you know, basically they escaped the less than and greater than signs in the include files. I've done it myself many a time. Well, I've never done that.

That's kind of silly. But, yeah, no, it's just, it's very funny to see that. I have a little bit of follow up as well. We were talking about, oh, God, the whole, the whole concept of this was in our science fiction section.

The concept of multiple universes. And are we in a, you know, yes, simulation, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, and we talked about, what's his name, who wrote Blade Runner and all that. How he, like, went under and had his time dilation thing happen.

And I said there were two times that it happened to me. One was when I had a double root canal on the same day and it was in Beverly Hills. So, they gave me all the nitrous I wanted and then some and some I didn't even want and it screwed me up. And the other time that I had it was when I had food poisoning and then ended up spending two weeks in bed watching the Big Bang Theory.

Well, I had food poisoning again this week, which sucks. I will not, I will not sugarcoat it in any way, shape, or form. It just sucks. I was taken down by some bamboo shoots that I bought at the beginning of COVID that were in a can.

So, you'd think it would be fine, but no, got me, got me. And I experienced it again. I experienced the crazy, weird fever dream time dilation. But when I was in bed, we had talked on at the library a couple weeks ago about, was it Ted Chang?

The guy who wrote the short stories? Well, I was listening to his first collection of short stories that I had on my iPhone playing. Well, I was in the middle of the fever dreams. Bad idea. That must have been fun. Bad idea. Really, really bad idea.

Because I was living them as I'm hearing them. I had, you know, coming in one ear, coming out all the other orifices with the other stuff. And then just my brain exploded. I'm just like, oh, God, this is so bizarre. And I'd wake up out of the fever dream and smack my phone.

I'm like, shut up, Ted. Shut up, Ted. Shut up, Ted. It's been a weird week, man. It's been a really weird week. That's all I got to say. In the news. In the race to unzip billionaire's pants and send the rocket out into space, it looks like Virgin Galactic and Richard Branson's pants are going to win.

He set his date. Sorta. He set his date for the spaceship to Unity's next rocket-powered test flight on July 11th, which is a week before Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin's first tourist flight is scheduled to launch. Thus, you know, giving Bezos sloppy seconds, apparently.

Well, here's the thing. Here's the thing. July 11th, that's 7-Eleven. If he does not have this sponsored by Slurpee, I would be amazed. I don't believe he does. So Virgin will be broadcasting a live stream so you can watch it happen everywhere, basically.

And if the mission succeeds, they will restart ticket sales soon and conduct two additional flights before it starts paid flights next year. So Branson might win the bigger dick or at least the faster dick race, but Bezos is winning the bigger dick PR here. I don't know if you heard, but this was a very good move.

It's not – it's no Slurpee, but it's good. Mary Wallace Funk, an 82-year-old pilot who was prevented from becoming an astronaut in the 1960s because of her sex, will join Jeff Bezos on his rocket ship company's first human flight into space. So nice move there. Yep.

Yeah. No, that's good. And also Jeff Bezos' PR also came out with, Branson may be going first, but we're going deeper. Seriously. I'm not fucking with you. No, really? You didn't make that up? No, I didn't make that up. Wow, I was going to give you a round of applause for that one.

Nope. I didn't have to. They're going deeper into space. Okay. So Jeff Bezos is going deeper with Wally Funk. I'm not making that up. Yep. Meanwhile, Musk is just masturbating on a couch, apparently. No, he's smart, man.

He's just kicking back and going, I make the rockets. I don't ride the rockets because I would like to keep the money. Because I have life. Yeah. Yeah. You dumb shit to get up in your rockets. Let's see which one blows up. I know that there are these, what is it? What is it?

Unscheduled, rapid. What the fuck is it? It's like unscheduled, rapid deconstruction or something like that. Basically, the shit blows up. He knows the rockets blow up. Yes. Well, in more terrestrial news, Facebook is testing warnings for users who may have seen harmful extremist content.

They have two new prompts that pop up. That should be on every Facebook page that you've ever looked at. Pretty much. Simple. It's like the fucking GDPR cookie shit now. Yes. One pops up aimed at people who may know someone who is falling into extremism.

Are you concerned that someone you know is becoming an extremist, it reads. Too fucking late, I reply. Another prompt appears to warn users who may have encountered extremist content on the platform. Violent groups try to manipulate your anger and disappointment, it says. You can take action now to protect yourselves and others.

To which I replied, yes, the violent group is Facebook. Exactly. That is trying to manipulate my anger and disappointment. Uh-huh. Yeah. So, instead of trying to block or ban or remove content, they are throwing up little pop-ups that say, go talk to these people instead.

And they're sending people to a group called Life After Hate or Other Resources, according to CNN. Oh, Jesus Christ. These fucking idiots. You saw the video, I'm assuming, of Zuckerberg on his little wakeboard thing with the flag. Yes, my God. Never before have I wished I owned a bazooka.

Oh, my God. So, I mean, the funny part about that is he's out there riding his little thing with his flag. And at the same time, Facebook was blocking the hashtag revolution because, you know, we won the Revolutionary War. Yeah. Fourth of July.

Fourth of July is for. Exactly. We, you know, sorry, Brits. Fuck off. We won. And, yeah, they banned the hashtag revolution in the middle of the celebration for the revolution, which Zuckerberg was out riding his little twat toy for.

So, there you go. Yeah. Well, TikTok has decided they need to make some money. They are being, they're selling their AI now on the open market. The Financial Times has learned that parent company ByteDance has quietly launched a Byte Plus division that sells TikTok technology, including the recommendation algorithm, which I believe we have all stated is probably the best recommendation algorithm out there.

In fact, frighteningly so, so, but they all, you can also buy computer vision tech, real-time effects, and automated translations, among other features. So, yeah, I think they basically kind of figured out, well, we've taken the social media thing about as far as we can go money-wise, so let's figure out another way to make some money.

And it makes sense. So, it's going to help them compete with other big companies, and they're going to turn themselves into a big tech powerhouse with this. Yeah. Maybe. Makes sense. It totally makes sense. You know, I would do the same thing. You know, if their revenues are flatlining, then that's the next step.

That's the next step to take. And, yeah, I think YouTube should maybe be a subscriber to that. I'm just saying. I can think of many companies that we use day-to-day that could probably use a little help from these fine-tuned tools.

The AI. Speaking of the AI, I want to hire George Takai. I think, is he on Cameo? Because if he is, I'm going to. We need an oh my that's AI. Yeah. GitHub previews new AI tool that makes coding suggestions.

And this is not just autocomplete. This is a new system that will learn your coding style and start filling in blocks of code for you as you go. Well, hopefully they don't go with Tim Berners-Lee and his broken HTML. I know. Seriously. Unescape.

Unescape. Unescape. Please. Please. Unescape. So, this is like a pilot program right now, but it is called GitHub Copilot, which is great. They're saying that it's like having a, it's like pair programming, but without another human next to you.

Right. And I, I mean, I love pair programming. Pair programming is awesome. I, I've only done it a couple times and, you know, I wish this was one of the things that existed when we were working together. Instead of just being in the same room and yelling at each other. Exactly.

How do you get this fucking table to close? I can't get this fucking table to close. I don't know. Let's print it out and put it on the door and look through the code. Jesus. I literally did more than once. That, what was that? That was for soccer, right?

What was the? I think so. I can't even remember what it was for. I think we were just playing result. I can't remember. That was the table that was for the, was it a world lead soccer or what was it? What was the soccer company? Yeah. I can't remember. But, but the other, the dev that did it, the guy, the jock guy that we didn't really like that much.

He, I remember him printing it out and it was one table and it was six feet long of a printout to get the homepage of just one table. And I'm just like, bravo, bravo. You win today. Peak table.

Oh my God. That was bad. But yeah, and GitHub does plan to launch commercial product based on GitHub Copilot. It currently works best with Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Ruby, and Go. And look, here's the deal. Anything to make typing JavaScript easier?

Fine. I'm, I'm with you because that is the worst language in the history of the fucking world. Fuck you, Brendan Eich. I'm using your browser, but begrudgingly, but God damn you. Right. Well, the FTC is also continuing its resurgence into actually doing something.

They've charged Broadcom with illegally monopolizing the chip industry. So I guess they've been doing that. This is for broadband and TV chips, including Wi-Fi parts. They are claiming that the Broadcom struck exclusive deals with vendors and service providers that prevented them from buying chips from rival suppliers.

Yeah. They've also accused them of, yeah, you can't do that, of obtaining exclusivity and loyalty commitments. I wonder if they had a Broadcom loyalty card that you could, you know, get points for and cash those in on subscriptions to magazines that still exist. Maybe that's what their plan is.

I don't know. It could be. So there you go. They have a proposed action that would forbid them from basically doing the shit that they were doing, which makes sense. Okay. What's the, is there a fine? No mention of a fine. Just knock it off, guys. Knock it off.

We can't ask too much from the FTC. Why would we? No, of course not. Hey, look, this is still better than Ajit Pai's reign. Come on. At least they're saying, come on, guys, knock it off. Yeah. So I've got a crypto pump and dump scheme.

Now, a lot of this isn't even English to me because I don't understand any of this stuff. So Decrypt notes that Fazee, or FaZe, I'm not sure how that's pronounced, has punished four players on its eSports team for alleged involvement in pump and dump scheme involving the Save the Kids cryptocurrency project.

At least it's not cars for kids. I don't. I hope they have a jingle. The eSports team suspended Jarvis, Nikon, and Tego, and has permanently removed Kay from the organization. Save the Kids, a.k.a. kids. Way to go, marketing department.

Yeah. It was pitched as a charity that would donate 1% of each transaction fee, which itself is 3% of the total transaction, to a child-oriented foundation. The creators got influencers at Fazee. I'm just going to say it that way because I like it. I like Fazee better. Fazee the Bear.

Waka waka. Waka waka. To promote Kids ahead of its launch in early June, only to watch as the price crashed by almost 90%. And this isn't even the first time that this group has faced accusations of joining in on scams. They've done it before. They were paid to promote another coin, Bank Social, in May, only to sell shortly before exiting the partnership.

Oh, way to go, Fazee. Waka waka. And the final article I have is the cost of Robinhood's success from Slate, which is a really, really, really great article that basically said Robinhood has agreed to pay the largest fine in the history of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, $70 million.

Should have been $700, should have been $700. Yeah, add a zero. It's always add a zero with these fines. Yep. On Thursday, they also filed to go public, which will raise billions. Oh, there's those extra zeros of dollars to make the company's founders and inner circle wildly rich. And as the article points out, and this really gets into it, and if you're using Robinhood or think these things are a good idea, you need to read this whole article.

These two events are related. There is no such thing as a fine for not caring at all about your users while you pursue growth as quickly as possible, but that's what they're doing. And that's the problem, and that's why they got fined, and it needed more zeros at the end of that, because all they did is make a shit ton of money by going public, and they can pay that fine with, like we always say, the coffee money.

Yep, yep. Did we ever find out how much they paid to the family of the guy that killed himself? I don't know if that was ever made public or not. I don't know. Actually, I'm not sure. That $70 million should have been to that family, and then $700 million should have been back to everybody else.

Yeah, and they get into how Robinhood actually makes money, and if you think that you are the actual customer by signing up and trading, you are not. You are the product, and it really does a pretty good deep dive in getting into how and why and why you should not be using Robinhood.

Yep. I don't use Robinhood. I never will use Robinhood. I use E-Trade for all my trades, which somebody will probably write in and tell me that they're the fucking devil, too, but hey, whatever. Look, yeah, preemptive on the tweets here. We understand that every company sucks to some degree.

This is like the browser. As soon as we mention a browser, all we do is start getting tweets about how every browser that we mention sucks to some degree. Yeah, they all suck. Pick and choose. Yeah, except if you're on Firefox, then all the Firefox employees will tell us how great Firefox is. Thank you.

Dumb shits.

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Media Candy. So, because I've been packing, I have not been able to really sit down and watch anything. I'm not even sure if there's anything I wanted to watch, although I'm looking over at your list and there's a couple things in there. But I've been powering through as soon as I, basically, I finish for the night.

I give myself a 22 and a half minute treat before going to bed. Talk about adulting there. I am living the life, Jason. I get 22 minutes a day for me. I am living the life and all should be jealous. So, I've been powering through Star Wars Rebels.

And I have to say, it's very enjoyable. This is, this is, if this were live action, this might be my favorite Star Wars thing ever done. It's not. It's a cartoon and it has cartoony elements. But it is very good, very well thought out. And I can see where a lot of the Mandalorian came from and David Filoni's style, definitely.

So, really liking it. It's good. There's four seasons and I've worked through three of them already and it's good stuff. I thought this was new. How are there four seasons? This has been out for a while. Star Wars. No, the other, the show that you're thinking of is a different one.

I can't even recall what it's called right now, but this is an older one. This is, this was after Clone Wars and, oh, the Bad Batch is the new one. Yeah, that was the one. That's the new one. Okay. That's the new one. Yeah, because you said it was where you saw the Mandalorian from.

I'm like, I thought this came out after that, but yeah. No, this is, this is pre-Mandalorian. Yeah. Okay. Pre-DeLorean. That's right. Pre-cocaine in the wheel. Oh, God. Cocaine. I miss you. I'm old. Nevermind. Yes, we're adulting now. Well, those days are long gone.

I can barely walk up three steps. Cocaine. The only way to work through HTML tables that are printed out. Exactly. How the web was built. One eight ball at a time. I can barely walk up steps without a heart attack. I don't need any help now.

So, Bosch, I saw on TV the other day that they were coming out with their final season. Yes. Season seven. And I was just like, aw. And then I realized, wait, I haven't watched Bosch since season three. So, I'm probably part of the problem here.

The issue was, back in the day, I was reading all the novels at the same time as when the show came out, and then that season that came out, season three, I'm like, oh, I've seen, because they merged two novels together in each season. And I'm like, I just read both of those books.

So, I'm like, I don't want to watch this because I know how it ends and whatever. So, I'm going to give it some breathing room. Well, I gave it like seven years of breathing room, and now they're on their final season. So, I've started to go back, and I've forgotten all the novels, and I went back and watched those seasons.

I'm up to season five right now. Because here's the deal. All of the stuff that's here on my list this week is, thank you, food poisoning, and fuck you, bamboo shoots. Because I have not been able to get more than seven feet away from a bathroom at any time this week.

You and my mom can sit and have long discussions about Bosch, because she reads the books as well, and she is catching up on the show and absolutely loves it. Oh, it's amazing. I've heard it's very good. There's some Star Trek crossover as well, which I kind of like. You've got Jerry Ryan and Linda Park have both been on the show for extended stints, apparently.

So, yeah, very cool. Well, maybe that was in the previous seasons. I haven't seen Jerry Ryan in, well, not in the stuff that I've been watching at all. I know Linda Park is in the current ones, because I follow her on the IG, and she's always posting about it.

Who's Linda Park again? She was from Enterprise. Oh, I didn't watch Enterprise. That was the one I didn't watch. But here's the deal. The cast is stellar, no matter what. Titus Welliver is just awesome. I love that fucking guy. And yeah, I mean, seriously, it's one of those series that I'm sad that it's gone, but I'm glad that it brought me back to it, at least for the 10 episodes per season that I get out of it.

So that's my evening that I don't have 22 minutes. I have two and a half episodes a night. Right. So, and the mole has finally come to Netflix. Right. This was, it was a reality series that was hosted, it was hosted by, oh, Anderson Cooper.

That's where I was going. Anderson Cooper. This was in between the time, but this was really before he became Anderson Cooper. He was a war reporter. If you remember, his brother killed himself and then he like dove into doing a really heavy duty war reporting, like in Myanmar and Vietnam and all this shit like back then.

And, uh, somebody, there was a, it was a story about how they had him pull over, like he had the driver pull over at the side of the road because there were like five bodies there. And he was taking pictures of this woman's hand, whose skin was peeling off like a glove, as it says.

And, um, he just wanted it with his little snapshot camera. And then somebody in the truck said, dude, you need to like, take a break because you are so desensitized to the shit right now. It's ridiculous. So he took a break, went back to normal news.

And in between that, um, the mole came out and he was the host of it and he was a great host. And the mole is a great show because it's one of those shows where it's like, okay, we got 10 people. One of them is a trader to the entire group and it's really fun.

They go all over the world. It's, it's a really well done show on a pretty tight budget. You know, it wasn't big money back then. I can see them doing it now and making it like huge, but, uh, we're watching the first season because we, we forgot, we watched it back then, but we forgot who the fucking mole is because we're old and brains don't work anymore.

I highly recommend it. The first two seasons are on Netflix. It's, you know, four, three aspect ratio. It's not great looking, uh, but it's still really fun. And this is, um, uh, Anderson Cooper did the first two seasons and then he left because nine 11 happened.

And then he went to CNN and became Anderson Cooper. So it's a fun show. It's a really fun show and, uh, a huge shout out to every single listener who has talked about the missing crypto queen. Um, I, I went and I did the, the Lazarus group one, uh, it before I did the missing crypto queen.

And I thought that was fucking amazing. Then I started listening to the missing crypto queen. Have you started listening to it yet? I have not, it is on my, my list of things I can do when I don't have to pay attention to anything else. Holy fuck nugget. It is hands down just fucking amazing.

I mean, it's amazing. And yes, it is a quote unquote, a podcast, but they say it is a BBC audio documentary production, you know? There you go. So it's a rerun that they repurposed because BBC audio is, you know, top notch. Um, it's the NPR of England, as you will.

Um, but shit, it's good. I mean, it's really fucking good. And the story is amazing. So, uh, Brian, yeah. Add that to your queue. We'll do. And the BBC always does better music beds than NPR, which is always using mallets for some reason.

I don't know why. Okay. The missing, um, shit. What is it? Is it that show? No, it's not that show. I was listening to another show. Oh God. Maybe it is the missing crypto queen. No, I got, I'm getting so confused.

Cause I listened to so many podcasts. There's one show that has like the Prague orchestra or whatever, doing actual music for it. That really works. It might be this, um, but I'm gonna have to dig that up. Um, like I said, fever dreams, brain is fogged as fuck this week.

Um, there's another podcast I want to talk about called here in LA by Tony Pierce here in LA. H-E-A-R in LA. Um, he's only got one episode out so far. Tony Pierce was kind of my R for Metblog.

Like we ran Metblogs and blogging LA back in the day. You remember that, Brian? Um, back when I was a blogging mogul long before fucking Huffington. Um, Tony ran LAist at that time and he has been doing LA just journalism like nobody's business since then.

He's, he's like the go-to guy for LA journalism, worked at the LA times for a while. He's done a ton of stuff. So he's jumped into the podcast world. And, uh, the first episode is with this club girl turned, uh, yeah, I think she's a booker for reality TV.

Now her name's Lenora Clare. She used to go to all the same clubs that we used to go to. You would, you would totally remember her. Brian looks familiar. You would, you, you totally would remember her. I remember her. I've got, I've got tons of photos of her from different art events that we went to together.

You know, um, great story, great story. And, uh, Tony sent me the next episode and it is a fucking blockbuster. Um, but Tony is going to 250 of the 250 plus neighborhoods in LA and he's got it planned out over the next seven years.

Okay. So it, I mean, he's, he's like gone balls deep in this one and it's awesome. So definitely go check it out. The link is in the show notes. It's, it's at anchor right now, but I've had a, I had a long conversation with Tony this weekend and we're going to fix that for him. So he's not going to be at anchor very long.

Um, but, uh, where it is right now, go check out anchor.fm slash Tony dash Pierce. It's in the, in the notes, but, uh, it's a, it's an amazing show. Cool. And, uh, have you been watching Loki? No, um, you know how I feel about the superhero stuff, but people are telling me that this is worth watching.

Yeah. You, you didn't watch the other superhero. Wanda. No. Wanda. Yeah. No. You didn't. Okay. Nope. Well, I think this is better than Wanda. Okay. I'm, I'm, I'm like a Tom Hiddleston, like super fan.

So I, and I'm also a Loki super fan just in general, because my love for the, uh, you know, the bad boy. Yeah, that's me. Um, it's, it's, it's fucking Jason's heart goes pitter pat. Anytime anybody rides by on a motorcycle with a leather jacket.

No, I don't. I'm just like, turn that fucking thing off. That's too loud. Um, but, uh, Loki is amazing. It's, it's just flat out amazing. Four episodes in next episode drops, uh, the day the show drops. So, um, anybody that's been watching it will be like, oh yeah, we're watching.

Um, Owen Wilson is awesome in it. Uh, it, it's really, it, Brian, it's worth the watch. It really is. All right. It is nothing. Disney plus. So it is nothing you'd ever expect. It's not even that superhero-y, you know, it's just really cool.

It's how they figured out how to do this. Cause Loki's dead in, you know, the, in these movies, nobody's dead. Exactly. Exactly. The, the doorway to heaven is a revolving door in the MCU. So, but, but watch it, man.

I'm trust me. It's funny. It's short. It, it, it hits your 22 minute mark. So it's really fun. Even the credits at the end. Like, I'm like, why is this 40 some minute? Oh, the credits, the end are eight minutes long. Right. Cause, cause what they do is they play the credits at normal speed where you can actually read who built the show, which I, I love, I love that they do that.

Anyway, what I also love is Quentin Tarantino has bought the LA Vista theater. You know, this theater. Yes, I do. Yeah. It's right next to the Branch Davidian building, uh, over there in, in Silver Lake, uh, cause he bought the Beverly Glen and that's been doing well for him, but now he's bought the LA Vista.

And, uh, I'm very happy about this. Cause it's a nice theater. I remember it. I've, I've seen a movie there. I've never been in it. I've never been in it. I've been in the Branch Davidian building. Cause I almost read it. David Koresh's office for my first ISP. They just couldn't get the phone lines jacked in.

The price was right, but they couldn't get us enough, uh, um, twisted pairs in there. We needed to do a T1. And so we needed like, you know, uh, a group of 12 twisted pairs run into there and they couldn't do it, but it was like 800 bucks a month to get literally David Koresh's office in the Branch Davidian building to be our ISP.

And we wanted it so bad, but, uh, yeah. So, uh, good on Quentin. I'm happy about that. Ups and doodads. I am continuing to order stuff that I may or may not need in time for the move.

And I realized I didn't have another USB, uh, flat wall charger. So I ordered the Nekmet dual port, ultra thin flat USB wall charger with smart IC from Amazon. Um, does what it says on the tin. Pretty nice looking. It's white. So it fits in with everything and you barely even see it.

And, uh, until I can actually replace all my outlets with the ones that have the built in USB chargers, this is fantastic. So it does the job. I also wanted to make sure I had enough charging cables for everything around. So I ordered a multi-USB fast charging cable, our spurred 413A charger cord connector with dual phone type C micro USB universal port adapter compatible with cell phones, tablets, and more four foot two pack.

So I've got a bunch of these cables sitting around that can charge absolutely anything that I need to have charged. So I feel like my charging game is now on point. Okay. Uh, why did you go with, why didn't you go with, uh, uh, what are the super fast chargers? I wanted the one with all the connections because I have like some weird shit that uses micro USB universal, like the sound machine for my kid and all this other stuff.

So this is, this is a good middle of the road solution that charges absolutely everything. So I never have to go to my bag to find a fucking charging cable for the right thing. Okay. It says it has smart IC. So we'll see. Cause I have the, uh, the anchor, uh, super plugs and they work, they definitely work a lot faster.

But what I found is, um, I don't need them to work that much faster because I plug them in at night. That's kind of the thing for me. This is more, uh, convenience over speed. I don't need the speed either. I'm never sitting there going, come on, bitch, charge.

Things are always just sitting for a long time. So, yeah, I do have to say though, that I've started using, uh, remember I bought all this anchor, um, uh, was it G charging pads? Yeah. Yeah. I gave you one when I sold you the phone. Yep. And it never worked for shit.

Oh, it works. It worked great for me. I don't know what you were doing. Maybe your case was too thick, but, uh, I've got them. I, I, I just put them back around the house. They work great. I just throw a phone on when I'm in a room and just let it go. If I'm cooking, I'll just slap it on there and I'm always charged.

That's why I don't need those like superchargers anymore. Right. And Nick wrote in, I'm sure you'll have seen this, but in case you haven't, here's a story about how companies really should check out the connotations of works before they happily register their names. And this is a, uh, company, uh, of course, it's a crypto term.

That is also a UK term for child rapists. Nance. Yeah. Nance. Don't, don't name your finance company after a slang term for a child rapist. Bad idea. Uh, that's weird because nonce was also another, um, it's a one-time usage type of thing.

I mean, that was, that's a programmatical term. So I, I, I never heard it used as anything other than British. Um, okay. Yeah. Okay. It says in this article too, that pop star Phil Collins has been fooled by producers into wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with a fake anti-pedophilia slagging nonsense.

I actually kind of want that shirt. Okay. We'll put a link in the show notes where we can buy it. Um, I, I, I, that's just so weird that nonce is a child rapist term. I don't get it. I really don't. Um, I guess.

Depends on where you live. Fuck. I don't know. Many, many things do. Oh God. What, what, what, what did, what did Elon Musk call that guy? He just called him a pedo, right? I think so. Yeah. Well, you know, he's South African. He's not British. Exactly. In South Africa, pedo just means weirdo.

It means guy, guy who wants to go to space. Duh. Okay. Next. Moran of the week. Brian, we have a new law in Norway that mandates social media influencers disclose photo editing.

How do you think that's going to work out? Nobody's going to do it, but I like the idea. I'm down for it. I think you have to hashtag your shit if it's a paid ad. I think you should have to hashtag your shit if you've, uh, if you've like removed 10 pounds of cellulite or made your boobs bigger or whatever. Yeah, I'm down with it.

But, but do you have to do that if it's not an ad for weight loss? If, if it's just your own thing, if it's just some dude on a beach and you want to add some abs, does it really matter if it's just like tagged with a, you know, a stupid slogan that says, live your dreams?

You know, some shit like that. Does it really matter? No, I think it only matters if you're actually making money or attempting to deceive the public. Weight loss programs, all that sort of stuff. Who the fuck's going to enforce this? The internet police? The Norwegian internet police. Are they going to enforce it? Well, they've been hiring up.

No, this is the stupidest fucking thing I've heard of. We tried to have that here. The FTC tried to do shit like this. I'm sorry. Every single photo that comes out of your camera that goes on the internet has been edited in some way, shape, or form, deceptively or not. If this is advertising, it should have been run through the, their version of the Federal Trade Commission because then it would have been false advertising.

But if it's fucking for influencers, just know that it's bullshit to begin with because influencers have nothing new to say. So fuck them. Fuck Norway. Fuck the whole lot of them. There are Norwegian listeners. All two of them. Look, man, we're, we're bigging with the Swedes.

I'm sorry. I don't, I have not gotten an email from a single Norwegian listener. Have you? You will now. Fuck yeah. Rock on. Security? Ha!

Dave Bintner is back again. Dave is the host of the Cyberware Podcast, co-host of the social engineering podcast, Hacking Humans, with Joe Kerrigan, 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.

Welcome back, Dave. Hello. Hello. Good to be back. Happy post-4th of July and all that good stuff. Yes. My dog survived once again this year, despite his thinking he would not. I either now know a lot more dog owners than I ever once did on social media or the tide against fireworks has changed because all I saw for the week leading up into the 4th of July was, I hate all you people that launch fireworks.

Yeah. Posted everywhere. So I, for one, enjoy fireworks. Lit off some with my son. It's technically going to probably be my last 4th of July in the United States, so I figured go out with a bang. Turncoat! Still have all my fingers. All good. That's right. That's right.

That's right. Yeah. Well, we got the dog high this year, so that helped a lot. Did you do the CBD treats? Yeah, exactly. Yep. Actually, THC. Yeah. Oh, you got him stoned. Yeah, exactly. Just gave him a half a little- Did he just sit there staring at his paw in the corner the whole time?

Yeah, pretty much. The colors. For a little while, he stood at the doorway to our screened-in deck and just kind of stood there and stared outside while things were- We could hear them. We couldn't see any from our house, but we could hear a lot of them.

But he was remarkably chill, and he is a very excitable dog, so it seems like we dialed in a good dose for him where he wasn't stumbling around or anything, but he was just kind of chilling, and so nice to have that dialed in for the future.

It sounds like you were definitely in kind of a more laid-back area where it wasn't too bad. Los Angeles was a war zone. I mean- I saw an aerial video, and it did look like a war zone. It's as if illegal fireworks were on sale at Costco for the last two months.

That's- Right. It was fucking insane. I don't know. I personally have never bought- I can't say I've never bought. When you were a kid, you know, getting a hold of those firecrackers, those- What were they called? M-80s? I mean, it's the whole reason to stop at south of the border. M-80s, yeah. Getting a hold of an M-80 made you the big kid on campus during recess, you know, so that was- But as an adult, I've never bought any of these launch into fucking space beat Jeff Bezos rockets that everybody had.

Right. Right. They look like a Wile E. Coyote device. Yeah, they do. And the names of some of them are very much like, act me, fuck you up. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And it was kind of a- It was a strange thing because my son, you know, we kept him up way past his bedtime just to be able to launch our safe and sane fireworks.

And as we drove through Los Angeles from my mother's house in Orange County to our place in Santa Monica, I mean, it was like, am I on a road in Iraq somewhere? What the fuck is going on? Yeah. It was just nonstop. The car would shake because so many people were shooting them off near freeways because, you know, I don't know, less houses to burn down, so- Well, even audience.

It was pretty intense. Yeah. We saw some video from near us in Ocean City, Maryland, where evidently the truck full of fireworks for their display went off early. Yes. In the truck. In the morning.

In the truck. In the morning. And so no fireworks celebration for Ocean City, Maryland that year. No boom for you. Mm-mm. Well, one big boom, but no little booms. Yeah. Oh, what a nightmare. Yeah.

We had an illegal fireworks arrest early in the week that they tried to do a, quote unquote, scheduled demolition of that blew up half the neighborhood. I saw that. I saw that. Yeah. It was bad. Oh, my goodness. And the funny thing is, the guy got arrested and he got out on $500,000 bond, and within 10 minutes, ATF came and arrested him again.

Oh, jeez. Wow. Yeah. Wow. He had 30,000 pounds of fireworks in his backyard that he would drive to Nevada and buy and bring back in, like, moving trucks. Well, I mean, that's, you know, that's a single consumer's use on the 4th of July.

Why not? Yeah. Yeah. Apparently, what stays in there, what happens in Nevada does not stay in Nevada. I guess so. Wow. Stop at the border. So, before we dig into stories this week, I have to share that there is something that I am indeed grumpy about.

Ooh. There might be a motivation for a new song from one of our listeners. All right. There you go. Brian, let's beatbox. Well, my name is Dave, and I'm here to say that there's something making me very grumpy today. All right.

So, last week, I noticed that I could no longer connect to any of my smart devices in my home through my smart app. I use the SmartThings app on my phone.

Yeah. And as we have discussed here many times, I have many things in my house that are connected to this. I have my smoke alarms. I have my water sensor for my hot water heater. I have doors. I have a thing on the liquor cabinet, although since Scott moved out, that's not really as big a deal as it used to be.

So, all sorts of things all over the house. Light bulbs connected. And they all went missing this week. And I thought, that's strange. So, I look, and they pushed a software update. And, oh, great. You know, sort of typical.

So, I couldn't – despite trying everything, I could not get to see anything. I couldn't connect to the hub from the app. So, I sent a message to Samsung tech support and I heard back from them. And they said, oh, as you undoubtedly had seen in our many communications to you, we've end of life to the version of the SmartThings hub that you have.

We recommend you purchase one of these new SmartThings hubs that are very expensive. So, I got that ahead of me now. Because I've invested in all the infrastructure, I'm kind of trapped in here. I think the technical term is fucked.

Yeah, I think that's right. To some – especially with the Internet of Things, I do feel that we were all punished for being relatively early adopters because I've had this sort of thing happen to me many a time. Well, I do have to give Amazon props for this. If you use an Alexa device, they do a remarkable job of connecting to just about everything and not requiring the hubs and whatnots that you need.

So, you could maybe make an attempt just to buy a cheap and cheerful Amazon device and see if that will do the job. Oh, really? Oh, that's interesting. Because I do – I have a – I don't remember what the name of it is, but I have a spare – the one that has the video screen on it.

A show, yeah. Yeah, you're supposed to sit on your kitchen counter. I have one of those not plugged in. So, you're saying that there's a possibility that that could connect to my SmartThings around the house? Yes, yes. The app, the Amazon Alexa app is horrible. So, I have that to look forward to.

It's a study in what not to do for user interface, but if you work your way through that to use it to kind of connect to everything, you can use the app to connect to things. If you're using the show, you can actually even pull up a touchscreen to get all the controls for everything, and obviously, you can use your voice as well.

So, I would recommend giving that a go before investing in another hub that will be end-of-life shortly. Yeah, check the specs on that one. I know that like the lady in the tube, the tube tube version, it took me until version three, I think, until they integrated smart home accessibility.

Yeah, you got to have the smart home from Amazon as part of it, but if you do, you should be golden. Wait, wait, wait. What is – oh, so smart home could be – it may or may not be built into the individual device? Yeah, you got to look at which one it is. Yeah, I'm not sure how old your show is, but yeah. I see. Right. If you've got a show seven and above, you should be fine, I think, is where they started to really integrate it.

This is scintillating podcasting right here. I know. Exactly. Thrilled. Coming up next, we're going to go through my kernel panic logs and try to figure out – Well, you know, one way we could actually try to spin this is you've just listened to basically every conversation we have with our friends and family.

Yeah. Welcome to Christmas, grumpy old geeks. Welcome to Christmas. Yeah. How nice to be on the other side of it for a change. So I'm glad I brought it up, actually. That's great information. So thank you, Brian. You may have just saved me several hundred dollars.

I hope. There you go. We'll see. Oh, man. So it turns out on the Western Digital thing we talked about last week with the MyBook Live, it wasn't some kind of new – well, it was a new hack. It was an O'Day that nobody had found before.

There were security holes in it already, but this was a new security hole that they found. Right. Yeah. And if you're a Western Digital owner, you've got some other things to worry about. I have a hard time following up with their product names. They're also benign and silly, MyBook Live.

And in this case, it's MyCloud OS 3. So these are NAS devices. And basically, Krebs, as always, has published a report of another zero-day vulnerability that affects those products. So basically, they've been end-of-life as well because their tech support solution from Western Digital is, well, you should just get the MyCloud OS 5 and forget about your 3s.

We patched OS 3 with OS 5. That's the patch. Patch is a new product. Right. Yes. So there you go. So if you've got Western Digital fuel, the solution is buy a new car. Exactly. I got a flat, get a new car.

That's how it is. So, yeah, it's a hard drive. This should not be a thing. It's a hard drive. It really should not be a thing. It should run until it stops running, and you should support it until people don't have them anymore. Well, this is how they get you. Under that, you know, theory, Windows XP would still be supported because, you know.

Well, I mean, you know, one could argue. So the big news this week is there's been another massive hack, the largest supply chain cyber attack to date, as reported by Financial Times in the Wall Street Journal. It's the IT management software giant Kaseya, which has fallen victim to a ransomware attack that compromised its VSA remote maintenance tool.

The company initially claimed fewer than 40 of its customers were directly affected, but it quickly found out that it's at least over 200 at this point and could be much higher because there are eight affected cloud service providers potentially affecting many more firms. So, you know, it's cyber attacks all the way down.

Yep, yep. So this is a biggie, potentially the biggest of the biggies, but we'll see how it plays out. As you say, Kaseya got hit and there's some, you know, folks in cybersecurity are nothing if not pedantic.

And so there's been lots of arguing going on as to whether it was a zero, whether it was a supply chain attack, whether because they did make use of a zero day. So they didn't actually alter Kaseya's code. They made use of a zero day in their software, something that had been previously responsibly disclosed.

But Kaseya was in the process of fixing it and they don't know how the attackers learned of the zero day. But at any rate, it's bad. And as you say, where it's really trickling down is the customers of their customers.

So because Kaseya's customers are managed service providers, they have thousands of customers. And so it's hitting small businesses in particular because those are the folks who don't have on-site IT staff and they rely on the MSPs to do that for them.

So they can claim, you know, technically fewer than 40 of our customers were affected, but those customers had hundreds of customers who had hundreds of customers. Right. Yeah. And to me, this is – to me, this is a supply chain attack because it's coming to you from the people you get your stuff from.

So that's your supply chain, right? That tracks for me, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So the other interesting thing is that this is from the gang Arevil, who's a Russian gang. They have an affiliate model.

So we don't know who of their customers may be behind this. But they have put out the call that they want – well, originally they asked for $70 million to decrypt everything. They were going to give away a master code that would decrypt everything.

They've lowered the price to the low, low price of $50 million in Bitcoin. Ooh, 4th of July sale. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. If you act now, you get two. Right. So the speculation is either maybe they don't have the infrastructure to handle the payments of all those different – the thousands of people who are potentially hit by this.

Or maybe they want to reduce the surface area of their Bitcoin so that it's harder to track all the different payments from all the different places coming into a bunch of different Bitcoin addresses. There's speculation about all of that.

But I suspect it's going to be weeks before we really know the true extent of this. But yeah, it's a bad one. I also saw – actually a couple minutes before we started recording here, I saw that in their latest press briefing, the White House was responding by saying that there could – that there will be appropriate response.

But the highest levels of the White House have been informed of this, and if necessary, there will be appropriate response. Again, there's speculation that this coming just a couple of weeks after Biden and Putin got together that this may be the Russians kind of thumbing their nose at us, which is possible, but it could also just be – Russian shenanigans.

Yeah, Russian ransomware folks being Russian ransomware folks, and away they go. Right. Yeah. If the proper response doesn't include bullets, then it's not a proper response, in my personal opinion. It's getting to the point where we need physical response to these virtual attacks.

Yeah, I mean, I guess – I mean, it's an interesting point, and certainly lots of people talk about that. The danger there is now you're – things could spin out of control in the physical world. I've heard folks say that you want to get these people's attention, shut them down on the financial market, so go after the Russian oligarchs and freeze their funds.

And so now they get mad at Putin for having their money taken away from them, and that could get their attention and have them knock it off. But we'll see. Yeah, we do that on a couple of different levels already, though, and it hasn't really helped a lot. Yeah, I think you're right.

I think you're absolutely right. Yeah. Yeah. I did include a link here that we can put in the show notes. I thought the folks over at Malwarebytes had a particularly good explainer of exactly what's going on here, and they include both the technical for folks who are into that, but it's also written in very approachable plain English.

So if you really want to try to get a sense for what's going on here step by step, they did a nice job of that. So I'll include that link as well. Cool. Very cool. Finally, something we covered today over on the CyberWire that I thought might be – well, there's sort of a fun element to this.

Ars Technica had a story that Google had kicked nine apps out of its Play Store, and they were discovered by the folks over at Dr. Webb to be stealing Facebook credentials. And I just thought the rundown of the app names was worth a chuckle.

They are PIP Photo, Processing Photo, Rubbish Cleaner, InWell Fitness, Horoscope Daily, AppLock Keep, LockIt Master, Horoscope Pie, and AppLock Manager. There's a pattern there, yes? Yeah.

I mean, you put crap all on your device, get what's coming to you maybe is the ungenerous way to say it. But these are all cheap little apps that don't do much. Well, I'm sorry. If you're downloading Horoscope Daily, you get what you deserve.

You get to have your Facebook credentials stolen. Yeah. Sorry about that. But yeah. Yeah. I mean, I suppose it's a good thing that Google is paying attention and expelling apps. I, for one, will stick with my sure-I-can't-get-porn-on-it Apple device.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And Google also kicked the developers off the app stores as well. So it's not just the apps. It's the folks who's making them. But as, of course, these things go, though, they will be back under a different name probably by the time I finish this sentence.

Yes. And were they fined? Has there been any, like, is there litigation pending against these people or? No. No. No, exactly. Come on. That's adorable. That's an adorable idea. I know. I know. This is exactly the same as FTC with broadband this week.

The end result is, hey, knock it off. Knock it off. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, dear. All right. Well, I mean, it is a busy week. I mean, the supply chain attack is a big deal. So we'll see how that plays out.

It's sort of been dominating all the other stories. So stay tuned on that one. All right, Dave. Well, thank you for joining us. And we'll talk to you again next week. All right. Thanks, guys. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we have Ted.

Be like Ted. Join Ted. Ted's lonely over at Patreon. Over at PayPal, we've got Matthew, John, Nicola, David, Chris, Judge, Melissa, Jonathan, Doug, Shaleen, and Nikolai. Thank you very much. And over at our tip jar, where you can pay us directly, we've got John L, Florian G, Andre E, Glenn B, Brett R, and Linda M.

So thank you all very much. And over at iTunes, we have a new, I'm assuming, five-star rating here from Axe Coach David. Says, great podcast. Do you enjoy the two old guys from the Muppets that sit up on the balcony and heckle the stage? Boy, do these guys have a show for you. They sit upon their podcast balcony, heckling the tech world with an unfiltered wit.

My favorite is the security portion with Dave. Dave, an unapologetic furry. Actually, that just says fury. Dave is not fury. We have seen Dave furious. Actually, no. If you keep going, I think maybe fury is the right word here. All right.

Brings industry insider knowledge on security going on in the digital world. Last week's remix of Dave, I'm Very Grumpy, had me laughing out loud in my car during my morning commute. Keep up the great work, guys, and stay grumpy. Yeah, that was a very fury-driven rant. All right, everybody.

Well, I do have two final shout outs. Happy birthday to my roommate and great friend for 20 years. It is her birthday today. And on July 11th, 7-11-69, the fakest birthday in the world, friend of the show, Bob Fogarty.

Yes. Nice. It is his birthday. Yes, he was born on 7-11-69, which is a curse and a blessing, but also quite awesome. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFellippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. If you enjoy the show, visit GOG.show slash donate 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.show slash 513. 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.show slash contact and send us your feedback or questions we can read on the air.

And if you're so inclined, please head over to GOG.show slash review and tuss us a snarky review and preferably five stars. Stay grumpy and fury. Well, my name is Dave and I'm here to say that there's something making me very grumpy today.

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