514: The Carmen Sandiego Line

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. We got some email from our Norwegian listeners. Yes, we did. Three of them even. Three? I counted two. I missed one. Wow. All right. Well, we have more than we thought. Yeah, so Snoldus sent us in an email that is very long, but kind of described how the regulations work that we talked about last episode on the people who had to put in the label of, this image has been edited.

Yes. Basically, it's just supposed to get young girls. Yeah. So. But I do like the last one here. Number five. I agree. Fuck Norway. You live there. I personally believe that this ice-ridden hellhole should be closed down and evacuated every year between October and April.

The summers are occasionally quite nice, though. Not nearly enough to make up for the rest of the year, but worth mentioning. And don't even get me started on the price of alcohol. Anywho, love the show. Keep groping on. Well, I got to say, if the price of alcohol is high up there, that's not good, because you need it for those dark days, those dark days of winter.

Those chilly nights, yes. Yes, those very long ones. So I got to say, Brian, I think the internet has a new, hey, man, will you help me move? Or, yo, dude, can you give me a ride to the airport? Oh, it does. Those questions that we all love to get from our friends that we cringe when you get them, because you try and find a way to say no.

Going live in five minutes. Hey, I'm going live now. Hey, check out my live stream now. I'm going live. I get those all day long now. All day. I think it might be a bit of a self-selecting sample in terms of the people you follow there, Jason. It could be. It could be. And now I feel guilty because I did it, you know, when I was doing the Adorama show.

I kind of feel, I feel a little dirty now. But every time I see that, I'm just like, oh, man, really? It's just a little guilt bomb. Like we've discussed, the internet now is an on-demand situation, not a live situation. Yet the metrics still require, please, for the love of God, if you want to keep doing a show, you need more than three people there.

I know. I know. Especially on Twitch, where you can't even monetize unless you've had at least five people chatting at one time. Yeah. And good luck getting five people in a room at one time at this point. I know. I know. My first live stream went out. Literally, the reach with all the quote-unquote influencers and friends that retweeted the links and everything about my live show, like, you know, 30 people showed up.

And the reach was well over a quarter million people. So you run the numbers on that one. Right. Not good. So, Brian, I don't know if you've turned on the news lately, but Austin Powers has kind of made it into space.

Yeah, baby. Which one's Austin Powers? That would be Richard Branson, the actual one that flew. Oh, okay. There you go. Yes. He didn't quite cross the Carmen line, but, you know, rich people just say, well, it's spacey. Space enough. It's space-ish. You know, it's better than the Carmen San Diego line.

That's true, because you could never find it. Yeah. I mean, I've watched the news. I heard he made it to wherever he made it, and, you know, there was some snark that he didn't really make it anywhere. And, yeah, good on them, I guess. There's an awful lot of backlash.

Oh, yeah. We'll talk about that. We've got lots of that in the show today. It'll be fun. Bezos is getting ready to do his thing, go deeper into the Black Void. I think he's going to 60 miles, which actually does cross the Carmen line, but we'll see. But you never know. They may have a rapid, unscheduled redistribution of wealth on that one.

So who knows? I'm not too worried. They're going to be packed in Amazon boxes with lots of that plastic bubble wrap, so it'll land fine. Yeah. It just might be three days late and at the neighbor's house when you want it. Yeah. That's okay. Yep. So, you know, he's going to have grandma and baby bro on board, so we'll see how that goes.

But, you know, their big selling point is, look at the size of our windows. You know why supersonic vehicles actually have small windows? So they don't blow out and explode. Yes. That's kind of funny. And I just think it's funny that Musk is just kind of kicking back, sort of, and just watching, you know, everybody else do it.

He did book a trip on Virgin Galactic, but I think that might have just been a press play. I don't think he's ever going to go. Do you? There's no exact date. So when you're playing this game, you give the date if you're really going. Actually, Virgin Galactic doesn't even have a date for their actual first paying customers to go up.

True. That's fair. So he can, I don't know. We'll see. I can see Musk going. I can see him, you know, token, taking a big bong rip right before he puts on his helmet. They should get Rogan on there, too. They could do a podcast from space. If they get Rogan on there, just keep that thing going.

Yeah, seriously. Can you put a little more gas in the tank? Yeah. And like I said, there is quite a lot of backlash. I saw two things on Twitter that actually really made me chuckle. The first is, science is in such a sad state that 52 years after landing a man on the moon, people are getting excited about a billionaire reaching the Earth's upper atmosphere.

And the other one, which really kind of hits home to most people. Oh, hey, the billionaire tax evader who asked his employees to take eight weeks of unpaid leave during COVID made it to space before the billionaire whose employees rely on food stamps and pee in bottles. Pretty cool system we've got here. Yes, it is. Yes, it is.

So back down here on Earth, Biden has taken over the executive order pen from Trump, except you can actually read his name and there's stuff on it and he doesn't wave it around the room. And he's put out a big, wide-ranging executive order for big tech, net neutrality and more.

So we'll see. He's going to sign the new executive order, or actually he already did a couple days ago, that will establish a whole-of-government effort to promote competition in the American economy. In other words, it's targeting anti-competitive practices across a wide range of industry, which includes internet services and tech.

There are 72 proposals and actions involved in this. A lot of it is to get to undo the things that the Trump administration did, particularly with the FCC and net neutrality. So we'll see what happens there. A bunch of boring blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah things in there.

But we'll see. I mean, this sounds interesting. It's something, right? Yeah, I think he still needs to get somebody else on the FCC board before anything can really happen. So he's got to pick somebody and get them on there. So that'll be good. Some right-to-repair stuff. There's a whole bunch of stuff in here that's actually pretty good.

We'll see how it plays out. But yeah, the net neutrality thing is the one thing that I think that us and all of our listeners really care about the most. Well, I think right-to-repair is a big deal. Like we talked about it a bit on the show a couple of years back when there was kind of a push for it.

And then, you know, obviously there was four years of, holy shit, we've got bigger fish to fry here. Right-to-repair our democracy is what we were worried about. Exactly. But I mean, that's kind of a big deal. And it's going to change the way that all – Apple is going to have to look at their business model if this stuff goes through.

And I fully support it. I think it's great. I'm not sure how much DIY repairs we can actually do anymore because these devices are so fucking complicated and the pieces are all so tiny and they're all put together in such intricate, massive ways. But on the larger perspective, I think it's a good thing.

And the idea that companies would have to keep this in mind while developing new products I think is a great thing. Plus, you know, it also would stop Google from doing things like, oh, I don't know, hiding microphones in their devices and not telling people. Yeah. No, but it's not turned on, Brian.

We promise. We promise. But it's not turned on. Right. No, it's just there for, you know, future, future expansion. So whatever. Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of the stuff, especially with Apple stuff, you know, the right to repair thing for that really comes down to mom and pop shops because you do need specialized equipment to take these things apart and put them back together.

You know, but you can get it, you know, it's not super duper expensive. Go to Shenzhen and Shenzhen, whatever the name of it is in China. And there's people in malls with little kiosks that'll do it. They're right there for you, you know. So it is it is doable.

So we'll see. But Apple's been getting better, I think, with I think so. I mean, the past couple of times that I've had anything wrong with one of my phones or iPads or my wife's, I've I've gone to the local you fix it shop and they take care of things pretty quick and pretty cheap. Yeah, because what it came down to before with them was the ability, like the availability of parts for these mom and pop shops and getting certified on the actual equipment.

So here's here's hoping fingers crossed. Yeah. And speaking of right to repair our democracy, Trump's back in the news because he's suing everybody. Well, it's it's for show. The whole thing's for show. So, yeah, the best analysis I heard the other day, I was I was listening to the radio.

I can't even remember what station. It was probably NPR. So go ahead and call me a liberal because I am whatever. But they had a lawyer on and they asked, well, what is the biggest what's the biggest obstacle for for Donald Trump with these lawsuits? And the lawyer just said, well, the law. Zing.

Because he's suing for something that the law's against him. Yeah, it's ridiculous. But, you know, he's fundraising on top of it. So. Of course he is. Yeah. Because he's going to run again. Actually, you know, he's going to be back in August or October or whatever or shadow government or whatever.

Who knows? Who knows? Who cares? Go away. Go the fuck away. I saw this one. I thought it was pretty funny. Black Mirror in real life. Facebook now owns and is developing a city. They should have just called it the circle, but they're going to call it Willow Village. Willow Village.

Oh, isn't doesn't that just, you know, warm the cockles of your heart? It's very little house on the prairie, except with 24-hour surveillance and ping-pong tables and free beverages and everything like that. Good night, suck.

Good night, Sanders. Oh, can you come tuck me in, Cheryl, please? Look, this is straight out of, like, Gibson-esque sci-fi. This is like the corporations basically walling off themselves from the world.

Everybody lives in here. Everybody eats in here. Everybody dies in here. You're not American anymore. You're Facebookian. Well, I mean, this isn't even Gibsonian. This goes back to, you know, the 30s and 40s and 50s with company towns. You know, this is not a new concept.

You know, you'd get a script that you can only spend in the company town when you work for the company. They pay you in it. You have housing. Spent all the money at the company store. Exactly. Exactly. So it's not a new idea, but it's one that, I mean, they're throwing Hail Marys now because everybody's quitting. Everybody else, and it's like they have a hard time keeping people around, I guess.

So let's put them in a walled garden. One good way to keep people around is you give them a nice apartment that's rent-free. Yep. Or seems to be rent-free. Seems to be. Yeah. Yes. I mean, they really got to call them panoptic condos just because.

I know. You coined that one. I know. That's just fun. And speaking of people quitting and leaving and moving out of big cities, there have been a study. Now, we have talked about this, and everybody was saying some have suggested that remote workers, now that they don't have to go to their offices in big cities, could move to and revitalize beleaguered cities and towns in the heartland, bringing their big paychecks and big spending.

We talked about that a lot on this show over the last year and a half, and we've also talked about how those big paychecks will actually become smaller because they'll be adjusted for cost of living in the places that they're living if that even happens. However, it's not happening. Okay. There's a new report from the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program.

People did not move from the coastal cities to the Midwest in any meaningful way. They may have done so for a time just to move home with their parents to save money and things like that. But now that cities are back, people are coming back to them. Everybody is coming back. There is some movement, but the movement has been to suburbs rather than downtown areas.

Yeah. So, you know, if you're now only working two to three days a week in an office, you can live in the suburb and do that commute, and it isn't quite as bad as it was before, and you get the more space. And if you're planning to have a family, you've got the yard and all that sort of stuff. So cities aren't dead.

They're just expanding and sprawling out even further. Yeah. They just went sploosh. That's about it. Yeah. I don't see many people rushing to go to Des Moines from New York or San Francisco. No, that didn't happen. In the fantasy world of, you know, tech writers, it did for a little while.

But now we have proof it didn't. And in the realm of bad ideas, this one is right up there at the top. TikTok now wants you to send your resumes, video resumes, to get a job. Okay. So what could possibly go wrong with this?

Because, you know, yeah. TikTok is not really a place where you discuss your master thesis about why you're a qualified candidate for a job. It's where you do fart jokes and dance moves and pranks on your friends and tell really bad jokes. I was about to say, is there a resume dance that I'm not aware of?

It's got to be one of those little trip hop dance things that, you know, that everybody does. And, you know, that's probably it. Got to do a backflip over your briefcase. Yeah. Those little dance troops and shit like that are the only people that are going to get resumes. It's going to be bad. You know, it's like you want to hide your social interaction at some point until you get the job.

Yeah. You don't want your job. You don't want your potential future boss to see your TikTok feed. Right away. You know, you got to ease into that. It's like, hey, I'm a really good candidate. And then all they have to do is just click on your name and see all the dumbassery that you've done for the entire pandemic.

You know, if this does go out, it really needs to come with a wipe my history button, which, of course, they charge you $20 for. Well, luckily, it seems like TikTok might be doing that for you. So if you're dumb fuckery in the past related to violence or nudity or sex, they've got a new AI tool that's going to be pulling all that stuff.

So they're doing a little whitewashing for you. You know, I was thinking about this when I saw this article. They're in the best place to possibly do this because their matching algorithm is so good. Yep. All they have to do is point that at really terrible videos with, you know, exactly what they're talking about, violence, nudity, anything that's, you know, in the terms.

And they can probably train that AI to be just damn near perfect. We might have a net police here, Jason. We might. Especially since, as we've discussed, they're now selling their tech and their AI. You know, they do have the best tools. They have the best automation. They have the best machine learning about this stuff.

If YouTube really wants to fix itself or Twitter or Facebook, maybe they should be buying this tool that they're about to roll out. Yes. Yes, they should. Because now after a Mozilla investigation, they found that YouTube is recommending videos that violate their very own policies.

Didn't need to do an investigation. I could have told you that. Yeah. All you have to do is turn on YouTube. Use the service. Exactly. It's working as planned. This is in the No Shit Sherlock department. YouTube is terrible at this. They've always been terrible at this.

By design, I might add. Yeah. Really. It's all about engagement, people. It's all about engagement. I did find it funny that the research found that people in non-English speaking countries are far more likely to encounter disturbing videos. Yeah. Because they don't hire locals to help train things.

And, you know, I'm sure it's all English all the way down, you know, from the engineering perspective, at least. Right. There you have it. And something that we've been talking about for two years, we get to at least have a brief pause talking about after two years, the Amazon's legal feud with the U.S. government over the Pentagon's decision to award Microsoft the $10 billion cloud contract, a.k.a.

Jedi, is over, finally. Yeah. Finally. Until it starts again. Well, no. I mean, now they're going to come back and the Department of Defense is going to say, here, you get a slice and you get a slice. So Amazon's going to get some. Microsoft is going to get some.

No mention of Google in there anywhere, which is interesting. I actually think it's a really great idea that they're splitting it up over the two companies. You know, you don't put all your eggs in one basket. Yeah. It's called a spoff. You don't want to have a spoff when you're dealing with, you know, top sensitive government materials, I guess.

Or at least, you know, government military infrastructure. Right. So that's good. And no canoes is good canoes is how I like to call this one. Rupert Mardock's answer to Google News is dead after only 18 months. I read this headline. I was like, oh, good. Rupert Mardock's dead.

No, I know. Sadly not. Sadly not. So I don't know if you ever heard of this site. It was called Canoes. It's probably pronounced news, but it was K-N-E-W-Z. So it was a news aggregator, kind of like Google News. But yeah, it finally shut down.

And there are a couple of reasons for it. One, and I love this. Their farewell message said, we certainly had provenance, but no profits. Okay. Well, it turns out they ended up doing a bunch of side deals with other companies that turned them profitable for their news.

So they just shut the site down and said, we're going to call it a day. I just find it funny that nobody had, I know that, I mean, it was a conservative version of Google News, sort of. Right. Sort of. But, you know, there were a lot of things from the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times in there because they were supposedly fair and balanced.

But, yeah, whatever. Good riddance.

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Media Candy. Andy wrote in, hey, Grumps, I know you're always looking for something new to check out to watch. Check out Wayne on Amazon Prime. It's John Wick meets John Hughes. Imagine a teenage version of SNL's Chad raised in South Boston with a chant to solve problems with violence.

Wasn't that gross point blank? Yeah, could have been. I didn't like that movie. I barely remember it. Yeah. You know, as I've gotten older, I really don't care about the John Hughes movies anymore. They were perfect at that time in my life. But, yeah. Also, Ready Player Two kind of ruined me on John Hughes as well.

It's such a horrible storyline. That's true. And Tony from Australia also wrote in, being only a recent listener, I'm not sure if you've covered Halt and Catch Fire, a drama series about the computer industry in the 80s. If you haven't seen it, I would highly recommend adding to your binge list. We have talked about it, and I could not get into it.

I couldn't get past the first episode. I couldn't get past the first five minutes. I know everybody said that it was, you know, good, but it was just way too over-dramatized for me. Yeah. Yeah. No thanks. That wasn't my thing either. Yeah. I finished Star Wars Rebels. I am sad that it's over.

I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was so much better than the last six movies we've gotten. All right. That's not hard. No. Low bar, but it was great. I really enjoyed it. Monsters at Work. Now, I talked about this a while ago, and I love the Monsters movies. And my kid, you know, I watched them because of the kid and all that.

But they're phenomenal movies. I really enjoyed both of them, and they had announced that we're going to get a third movie. Monsters at Work is coming. Turns out, not a movie. We're getting a whole series. Oh. A couple episodes are out already, and they're just as fun as the movies were. Oh, good. I'm really happy about it. Good. Who are the main characters in this?

Same ones. You got all the big people have returned. Oh, nice. I might actually have to watch that. No, they didn't cheap out. They've got all the real people back. So, you know, they got Disney money, man. Yeah, it's really, it's like, yeah. This is what happens when you have all the monies.

It's VO work. This is not a hard, hard push for these people. No, not at all. They probably all, you know, they're all rich enough that they have studio. They probably don't even have to leave their house. They go into a room. I'm sure they have it all set up at home. Absolutely. And The Witcher Season 2 has announced that it is coming and will hit Netflix on December 17th.

I really did enjoy that first season. So I'm looking forward to this. Okay. Yeah. I might go back and watch it because, yeah, you said it was good. I like your opinion some of the times. So maybe I'll check it out. You know, it's a watered down Game of Thrones. Okay. Well, I mean, after the ending of Game of Thrones, you know, I don't know if that's a compliment or not.

Oh, God. That was so bad. Anyway. Yeah. Black Widow came out, speaking of big Disney money, and they made a shit ton of cash on this flick. Of course they did. But the real winner here is that they made over $60 million on people spending $30 to buy it at home.

So that's 2 million people ponied up $30 to sit in their home and watch it on, you know, release day. So it's point, set, match. There's no excuse anymore to not have simultaneous releases. I know it's different for different types of movies and things like that. But, you know, some people just don't want to go to the theater.

I hate the theater. I hate people. I hate popcorn because it smells like feet. I just want to sit at home and not have to worry about the guy behind me talking and farting and eating his chips. I hate dying from a virus. I'm vaxxed. I'm good. I don't give a shit about that. I just hate people.

Yeah, no, I mean, yes, it changes the paradigm and everything and all that. But I agree. There's no reason not to have a simultaneous release now. If people want to go see it in the theater, they will. If they don't, you're still getting $30. Yeah. And, you know, you don't even have to split that with the theaters anymore.

I did not watch the movie. Did you? No, no. Yeah, I don't care. I'm done. I'm done with the MCU for the superhero movies for the most part. But I see the next item in our list here. And let's talk about that. Yes, that would be for the most part. At your recommendation, I went ahead and watched an episode of Loki and then immediately watched a second episode of Loki because it's good.

It's great. And it's not stupid fucking MCU tight pants things. Yeah. I really, really, really love this show. I finished episode five. I watch it as soon as it comes out. So that's my Wednesday treat when it comes.

So I just wish it was longer. But I think the shorter format actually makes it tighter and better. But yeah, I think so, too. And it's very clever. It's very funny. And that's what actually makes it, you know. And there are some big questions in there, which I like, you know, the exploring the nature of the universe in time itself.

Like, it's smart and it's clever and it's not just people in spandex running around and flying and beating each other up. Right. The nice part about it, too, is they thought about this from the get go. They're like, we don't want to just do the basic time travel crap that everybody else has done. We really want this to be different.

And I think they pulled it off. I really do. So far, so good. I like it. Yep. And I saw this and I just had to laugh. Barry Diller says streaming services killed the movie business as he knew it because he's an old fart and I love it. These streaming services have been making something that they call, quote unquote, movies, and they ain't movies.

They are some weird algorithmic process that has created things that last 100 minutes or so. Well, Barry, listen to me for a second here, Barry, Barry, Barry, Barry, you're you're in media, right? There's this whole other part of media called music.

Have you taken a look at that industry over the last 20 years? Did you not see this coming to yours? Yeah, we all did. Thinking the same thing. Barry, it's time to take your bags of money and just go retire. Seriously. I mean, he's run big studios.

He ran Paramount for a while. I wasn't there when he was there. But yeah, he's had his time in the sun. And I have to say that from everything I know from at least from an audience perspective, I'm happy with the way things are going. As creators, more creators have more opportunities to make algorithmically generated movies at this point than any time in, you know, history.

Crews are getting hired more. It's it's I think it's a net win with everything that they're doing with. I don't care if it's algorithmically processed or whatnot. I mean, I think it is, too. And I think the real struggle, which we've seen in the music industry as well, the real struggle for for media companies in general is going to be OK.

Yes, there's going to be the crap and the crap is going to make the most money. We got to figure out how to funnel some of the big crap money to the smaller projects that are actually really good. And, you know, that's that's the that's the challenge that's going on in the music industry right now and the movie industry and TV that that's what they're going to have to figure out, too.

You know, it's the old school, the old school record label model. You know, the the big band, the Britney Spears, you take all that money, you put it in a pool and you use you're supposed to use that money to fund the smaller bands. And that's what the movie industry needs to do, too. Yeah. And it's I think it's great.

I mean, we have been, quote unquote, in the golden age of television for the past decade. Look at all the great shows that have been made, you know, so I hope I hope it continues. So all good. And I did watch Summer of Soul on Hulu, of all places. This will be the last thing I watch on Hulu because I'm canceling my Spotify account and with it goes the Hulu.

Right. It was fantastic. It's a a quest love joint. What it basically is, it's kind of like it's the Woodstock of Harlem. And the footage of this has sat in the basement for 50 years and they pulled it out. They, you know, remastered it, restored it.

And we figured, you know, we were joking because my roommate comes from the music industry and she's like, how the hell did they get the rights to all this for this movie? This is amazing. And I'm like, that's where all the Hulu money goes probably to get the rights to all the music. It was phenomenal. It was absolutely phenomenal.

I loved it. Have you had a chance to check it out? I did. It was amazing. It was just flat out amazing. And I love, I love the fact how it just ties in right now to what's going on in the world, because as this was going on, then we landed a man on the moon and everybody in Harlem was just like, who gives a shit?

You guys put some crackers on the moon, but we don't have crackers to eat. So what the hell's going on here? And, you know, and now with all the backlash to the billionaires going up into space, it's a really nice juxtaposition of the times back then and now. And, uh, and I, I posted a picture here in the notes, which I'm sure you'll probably use at some point on the socials, uh, Richard Branson, uh, juxtaposed with the, uh, the tent cities flying by.

And I'm not sure exactly which tent city that is, but it could very well just be the one that's about, uh, five, six blocks for me on four. I know it could be it very well. Probably. Uh, and I want to be clear though, you know, there is a big difference between what happened back then and what's happening now, because back then NASA was spending taxpayer money to put people on the moon.

And this is just private rich guys, you know, getting their rocks off and it would be fantastic if they gave a shit about what's happening down here, but they are under no obligation to do anything that they don't want to with their money, except me, I don't know, maybe pay some damn taxes.

That would be nice. I could, I was about to say, I think, you know, if we wanted to go that route, I could probably argue with you about that. They are under extreme obligation to do so, but that would be a whole different show. Yeah. Yeah. No, I just pay your taxes so we can do with it what we need to do with it. I'm fine with it.

Once you pay your taxes, go to the moon, go to Mars, go to Uranus and be an anus. I don't care. I actually, I would like you to go to Mars or Uranus and just leave us the hell alone. But, you know, rich guys doing rich things are always going to be around. But Andrew Carnegie building libraries, you, sir, are not.

Anyway, I saw this and I thought it was just hilarious. Exclusive TED chats are coming to Clubhouse. A, Clubhouse is still a thing. B, TED is still a thing. TED is so watered down their brand. It's unbelievable and this is just another, another move on their part and another desperate Hail Mary from Clubhouse to get any press.

Yeah. You know, um, TED's going to be allowed to run ads on their, their, their Clubhouse, um, and not give anything back to Clubhouse because the Clubhouse just needs the press. Honestly. Yep. TED is huge with the TED radio hour because it's just distributed everywhere. But I mean, once they went to TEDx, every influencer douchebag with a rehashed idea got a TED talk.

And I'm sorry, a TEDx talk. Now, if people get a TED talk, there's actually some, some cachet that comes with actually doing a TED talk. But TEDx talk is just something you can put on your LinkedIn resume. Exactly. I went to one.

I, I, I was working with somebody for a while who, uh, had a side gig that was really involved with, um, some different environmental things. And he had a TEDx talk and he invited me to it. And I was, and this is way before, you know, TEDx really watered down the whole brand. And I was like, Ooh, a TEDx talk.

That's interesting. Of course I'll come. There were three other people there. Yeah. Um, Brian, you and I can do a TEDx event. We could do TEDx. Of course we can. You just got to follow the guidelines and anybody can do one. And that's the, that's the problem. That's where they watered their brand down.

When they first started doing it, I thought it was a great idea, but then they just let every schmuck on the planet with a video camera do one. And it's like, there was no vetting. No. So this is going to be a big fail. And speaking of other failed things, I watched something on Peacock this week.

I actually signed up for Peacock to watch one show. Uh, I watched Epstein's shadow, Ghislaine Maxwell. Yeah. Um, yeah, it's the same shit, different show. You know, it honestly was the same stuff that I've seen on all the other Epstein, you know, uh, documentaries.

Uh, so I went ahead and immediately canceled it, but that doesn't mean I still don't get the emails every 10 seconds because apparently you can cancel your account, but you can't cancel the emails. Oh, by the way, I'm not, what am I thinking? No, you can't cancel the account. You can go to a free account where you can get a subset of the content, but try and find a cancel button.

It's going to take you more time than it's worth. So, uh, that's why Google has created email filters. This has anything with the word Peacock delete immediately. But yeah, that, uh, the, the content on Peacock is just, it's reruns to NBC reruns that I don't care about.

Um, I do have one though, finally for our friends in Norway, an old show called Lilyhammer with, uh, Steven Van Zandt. He played a gangster on the run that was hiding out up there in Lilyhammer, Norway. Uh, they did only did three seasons of it. I talked about this on the show, like, cause I mean, we were new when this was coming out.

Um, cause I think it ran from 2011 or 12 to 14 or something. Um, I loved it. I always loved that show. I was sad when they canceled it, but, uh, yeah, it's worth, it's worth watching. It's a really fun and you know, little Steven is a pretty good gangster.

He's a pretty good actor. I have to say. And it was a funny show. He was in Sopranos too, wasn't he? Yeah. I think he was. Yeah. Yeah. He had a couple bit parts in there, but, uh, yeah, I really, I really enjoyed Lilyhammer. And one thing that I can say is after watching that show, I'm never going to Norway.

Tops and doodads. Brian, in my attempt to wrangle the hedonic treadmill of reward and sadness and happiness, I found something new to keep me, keep me happy. Last week, last week, last week, I went into, uh, into a funk when my iPad pro, uh, ran out of space.

Cause I usually get them with, you know, 64 gig of RAM or a gig of space on it to just, just to be able to use it, have apps and stuff like that. And I keep running out of space on it and I'm like, okay, let's, let's do the trade in trick. Let's see how much I'd get for this one to get a new one.

And I looked up the new one with a terabyte. I'm like, Ooh, let's go big. Let's go big. It was a $2,000 iPad. And I'm like, that's ridiculous. But they do last forever. And then I checked and I was like, okay, what's the resale on this? If I trade my other one in, it was like 600 bucks. I'm like, okay, well that brings it down to 14.

And then I can do the Apple card payment plan, which only brings it down to $150 a month for a year. I'm like, Oh, that's an extra hour of work a month per, you know, for the rest of the year. And then I get my shiny new iPad. So I ordered it. Then I was happy. I was ecstatic. I'm like, I'm getting a new iPad.

And then the next morning I'm like, why am I going to spend this much money on an iPad that I use about four hours a week? Payment regret. Yep. And here's the fun part. I canceled it and I got just as much joy from canceling it as I did from buying it.

So here's the trick. You are an odd man. Don't buy anything that ships immediately and you can get double your pleasure by buying it and canceling it in 48 hours. So it was fantastic. I felt great. I felt great when I bought it.

I'm like, yay, new iPad. Oh, that sucks. Cancel. Yay. I saved money. The Apple store algorithm is just going to start popping up a little window when you buy something new and say, step away, Jason, you're drunk. They're just going to put it. They're going to send me the thing that it's like, you know, in the queue and they're just going to put it off to the side and say, he'll be back tomorrow.

Because eventually I do buy some stuff. But yeah, I found this great little Chrome extension because I was feeling nostalgic. It's called Throbber. And what it does is it, sadly, the menu bars on modern browsers are very narrow now.

They're very tiny. You don't get big icons like you used to. But Throbber puts the little Netscape loading icon in your bar. So when you're loading a page, you get to see the stars fly by the N. That's it. That's all it does. I want to try and hack it and put in the original alpha version of Netscape, the throbbing, the real throbbing N, where the name comes from.

But that takes work and I don't really have that much time on my hands. You're not going to do that. No, I'm not. But hey, what are you going to do? And Tony from Australia wrote in, love your show. I've been listening for about two years, but this is my first time commenting and donating. I vaguely remember a listener recently asking about problems opening old Word or WordPerfect files.

I have a similar problem. And today I was ferreting through a box of old software CDs and found a copy of Windows XP and Office 97. I managed to load Windows into a virtual machine and install Office. Problem solved. See, I love this. I love this. The only problem is he found CDs.

Who the fuck has a CD drive anymore? Well, Tony from Australia. Yeah, I guess so. I use Parallels and Parallels 16 is out right now, which is interesting because every time I used to go into Parallels, I'd use it like three times a year and every time I'd go in, there'd be a new version.

That's where they're on 16 now. And didn't do much else, but speed improvements, blah, blah, blah, upgrade. I'm like, okay, might as well do it now because I'll have to do it later and then it'll cost me more. And now I just have a fucking subscription. I'm like, just keep it up to date. I don't care. And I follow the general rule of if I haven't needed a file for 20 years, I don't need it now.

No, but I use Windows for other things that I need for my job for testing stuff just to see how things look on different Windows apps for podcasts and stuff like that. So every now and again, it comes in handy. And on my Super Ding Dong MacBook Pro, it actually runs really fast in Windows.

So you can kind of play stream on it and play games, but that's neither here nor there. But the thing is, it's like a lot of people would just go download a version of Windows XP from a torrent site and go from there. And I'm like, okay, well, that just comes pre-hacked. So you can't do that.

But if you do have parallels, there is a one-click install Windows button and you can get a developer version to run Windows 10 in like five minutes, which is great. All right. It's just a fun app. I have Kali Linux running on it too for those times when I get nostalgic and pop into it and go, yeah, this has given me PTSD.

I'm out of here. I'm out of here. But that also made me think of the other app that I always have to update whenever I log in is ScreenFlow. ScreenFlow Pro. It used to be called ScreenFlow Pro, which is a screen capture utility for the Mac. And it's also got a pretty nice video editing setup in there.

So if you don't want to learn Premiere or Final Cut and you just want to do quick videos, it comes in really handy. And I use it every week now because we post videos on YouTube. And that's the program I use to rip out the audio and the video to post up to YouTube.

If you've never used it and you need some screen recording software on your Mac, it is hands down the best. And also, I like it for just straight up video editing. It's much easier than most of the big ones. There's not that many options, which makes it fantastic. And it's cheaper. It's like 150 bucks.

So good stuff. But speaking of videos, I found this this morning and I wanted to get your read on this one. Does your video need a better soundtrack? Ask an AI to write one. This is a new app called Dynascore. And what they did was they trained it on a bunch of different songs and then learned how to break it apart.

And then you can put in different points where you want the tempo to change or things like that. It takes it, it remixes it and gives you a royalty free version that you can then use in any project. Yep. So you sign up, you get 20 songs for free just to try it out.

And then after that, for personal use, it's 20 bucks a month for unlimited songs. I downloaded it and I tried it this morning. It's really fucking good. It's really good. It's what I would call good enough. It is absolutely good enough for and yeah, you know, that that's fine.

That's fine. You're putting together a TikTok video and you want some music to go along with it. Great. Go ahead and use something like this. That's great. It's this stuff is getting really, really good. I'm not going to lie. But here's the paragraph that leapt out of this Wired article at me. Okay. I think it's incredible, says professional videographer Joseph Di Giovanni, who spent months testing the software before its release.

The truth is, the playing field has 100% been leveled, he says. The kid with the cell phone is up for the same job at Vogue that I am. You've spent your life doing this, studying it, knowing how it works, and now you've got to compete with a kid with a cell phone that basically has never studied anything.

Welcome to our world. Welcome to the world that we live in now. That's it. And it's true. That's it. It's absolutely true. And it is true. So why spend money licensing music when you don't have to? I mean, for different projects, you definitely want, you know, bespoke music when you can get it.

But I mean, even for a lot of the big name projects that I work on for podcasts, and they just need like an opening theme, they'll spend 50 bucks and go get it from one of the, you know, one of the main music sites. Look, I want to again say, and we just talked about this with Barry Diller a little bit earlier, music is a bellwether.

And nobody seems to give a fuck when the musicians get screwed or the music industry gets screwed. But what you don't understand people, and you need to start paying attention to, is music goes first. You follow. There will be outcry when there's AI that puts the actors in there. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Well, we have that already. It's called deep fakes. Yep. And people are fucking pissed off about it. Exactly. Music? Yeah, fuck them. Yep. And you know, there's already places that are doing algorithmic voices that can take over our job too. So. Yep. It's all coming down to the AI.

Pretty soon. We're all just going to be sitting on a couch, getting our UBI and eating our Soylent Green. I'm down. Fuck it. I'm over it. I don't want to work anymore. Give me that UBI. I was rooting around for something new to read, and I just searched and searched, and the algorithm threw up a couple things, and I saw something called, There is no anti-memetics division.

And interesting cover, interesting blurb. The author was given as QNTM. Obviously, that is millennial for quantum. Mm-hmm. So that gave me pause, because I'm like, oh, fuck, what's this going to be all about? So I downloaded the sample from the Kindle library, and I read through the sample, and then I did a quick Google on quantum to see who he was.

And quantum is Sam Hughes, who explains, I also write under the name QNTM, but Goodreads doesn't allow one author to have multiple pen names. Since when did you make your decision based on Goodreads that nobody uses anymore? No, seriously. So his bio goes on, I'm a writer and software developer.

I invented and discovered anti-memes. I wrote raw, fine structure, the difference, blah, blah, blah, blah, some other books. He's enthusiastic about time, time zones, time travels, and calendars. I think Unicode is the best thing in computers, and I believe that correctly structuring and normalizing data is an important social issue. Blah, blah, blah.

Not somebody I'm going to invite to my fucking dinner party, I tell you right now. Well, it's also somebody that you may not want to read books by, because I am as thoroughly geeky as they come. I am an ex-programmer. I have been into sci-fi all my life.

This sample of even the book was so fucking up its own ass. Look how clever I am. I'm a fucking programmer and developer. I love computers more than I love people that I couldn't take it. I don't know what he writes under his real name, and if it's better sci-fi, he seems to have some accolades as far as that goes.

But I will be avoiding the QNTM books from now on. I could have told you right now, just looking at the end, the last sentence tells you everything you need to know about this person. And while you should never listen to a word, he says, I love JavaScript and I don't care who knows, no sane person on this planet loves JavaScript, period.

I'm surprised he's got four and a half stars with 1,235 ratings, though. Yeah, it was an intriguing concept, but I just couldn't handle the writing. So we'll see. Like I said, I will go back and give his nom de plume, his real name, Sam Hughes, and the books he writes under that name.

I might give that a go and see if it's any different. Who knows? Stick with the sample. Because you'd think there has to be a reason. Why would you use two different pen names? Yeah, maybe this is his avant-garde type of stuff. Yeah, exactly. That's kind of what I'm thinking. So to wash the taste out of my mouth from that and desperation and three glasses of wine, I discovered that one of the authors that I read a lot, Matthew Mather, had a new book out called Polar Vortex.

Matthew Mather writes the kind of what I lovingly call shitter sci-fi. Nothing terribly groundbreaking is ever going to happen. It's just going to be a straightforward sci-fi story. And as every single book under his name on Amazon says, every single one of his books is in development by a Hollywood studio, which just means that the studio tossed him five to ten grand to hold the rights to it.

That doesn't mean it's actually in development because I have yet to see a movie based on any of his books. And I've been hearing that all of his books are in development for about ten years now. We call that optioning. Being optioned is not the same as being in development. It's not the same as being in development at all. So most of his books have been optioned.

And even though this book is relatively brand new, this one, of course, is also in development by a major Hollywood studio. Optioned. Optioned. And I have to say this book sucked. Uh, I've enjoyed. That's why it's in development by Hollywood. Yeah.

Uh, I have enjoyed an awful lot of his books. I've thought they've been pretty clever and, and fast paced and like good shit or sci-fi reads. Uh, this one was not, uh, this moves slowly. I don't understand what the point was that they were going to get to. There wasn't terribly, there wasn't a real sci-fi kick to this one at all.

That was, uh, plane goes down, people have to figure out there's a whodunit on the plane about why it may have happened. And it, none of it just, I just didn't give a shit at all. I'm starting to get that vibe.

Yeah. I mean, I finished it. I finished the book because at the end I wanted to know the whodunit part and what happened. And it was so unsatisfying even at the end. Oh, I need a good book. Okay. Well, uh, I read How to Live by Derek Sivers. Derek's an interesting cat.

You know, he's the guy that created CD Baby. And, uh, um, there's a, it's, it's a, it's a lot of contradicting ideas about how he lives his life and things like that. It's a fun read. There's some things in there that I agree with. There's a lot of things that I don't agree with. This is one of those books.

And I, I'm noticing this from people who become quote unquote post-economic, you know, the people that I don't know are rich and don't have to do shit anymore, but still want to do something. Um, like one chapter is get rich. I'm like, okay. Yeah. Well, says the rich guy.

If we could do that part. Says the rich guy. Perfect. But there were some, there were some fun bits in there. I mean, I liked Derek. I, I enjoyed the book. It was a fun little read. Um, you know, took him two years to write it, but, uh, I, I, I, and like I said, I'm, I'm half in half out with it just because of the, if he'd have left out the get rich chapter, I'd have had much more respect for the actual book itself because it just, it brings into sharp relief how rich he is.

And I mean, he's not rich, but I was about to say he did not get rich enough to launch himself out into space. No, he didn't. Which is what the super rich do. Yeah. And, and to his credit, when he sold the CD baby, he kept enough money to keep him comfortable for the rest of his life.

And then he took the rest of the money and put it into a trust for, um, music education. So, you know, that's why, that's why I like the guy he's got, you know, he's got a lot of cred for doing that. Um, so that's cool, but, uh, I, I recommend picking it up.

He's got a bunch of other books that I really like, uh, is it hell no or yes. And, uh, one on the music industry too, which is kind of interesting, but also goes to people who are creating their own content, stuff like that. Um, like I said, I really liked Derek. I recommend signing up for his newsletter. He only does it like once a year.

So it's, it's an easy read. Then I started reading, do nothing, how to break away from overworking, overdoing and underliving by Celeste Headley. I never knew she wrote this book. I know Celeste, uh, she was on the Jordan Harbinger show one time and, uh, I talked to her every now and again on Twitter.

And, uh, uh, for the most part, I really like it. The, there's a lot of really dry stuff about the history of work and how the 40 hour work week came to be and how now we have the 80 hour work week because we're just kind of dumb and want to work more.

Yeah. It's really what it comes down to. The history though, the history is actually quite fascinating, even though it's a little bit dry. It is very fascinating on how, you know, in the past we never used to do this. We never used to do this until the industrial age when, you know, and you know, time is money coined by Ben Franklin.

And, uh, Although that is sugarcoating it a little bit because unless you were a nobility, uh, you in the olden days, you worked 24 seven to, to survive. Well, see, that's the thing is that's not actually true. Uh, I reckon I, you should, you should give it a listen or I mean a read.

I'm sorry. I forgot. I will read it. Yeah. Um, but Celeste was an, she was an NPR host for a long time and, uh, uh, she's, she's a smart woman, very smart woman. And, uh, the research that she did is, you know, top notch. So she's an actual journalist, believe it or not.

Uh, so it's, I, I recommend it. I'm not finished with it. I just picked it up the other day. So I'm about halfway through, but I, I mean, a lot of the concepts are something that I've been working on for, you know, the past, like six months about working less and enjoying things more and doing things for no fucking reason at all.

And having fun, having an iPad to your cart and purchasing it and canceling it the next morning. That was great. I love that. That is the best thing I've done all week. I'm telling you, man, you have no idea the elation I got from canceling that thing. It's awesome. Uh, but yeah, it's fun. And of course on deck now is the ugly truth or an ugly truth inside Facebook's battle for domination.

I've heard a couple of interviews with the two ladies who wrote this. They are New York times reporters. And, um, I'm sure that the conclusion is going to be Zuckerberg's a dick. We kind of know that already, but they are the guests on the pivot podcast that came out this morning, which I will be listening to on my bike ride.

And I have a feeling that the interview that they do there is probably all I'm going to need from this book. It's a good interview. I listened to it already. Okay. Um, but I had this, I had this, this, I had this in my list before I listened to the interview, but it's a, it's a good interview. Um, I'm going to, I'm going to get it and read it because they've got so many interviews with so many people that it's really going to be kind of fun, you know?

Cool. I'm looking forward to it. It's a hate read. It is a hate read. It's an absolute hate read. It's a hate read and it's, uh, uh, it's going to back up every single thought that you've had the whole time. So it makes you feel better about yourself. I actually just feel good that I'm going to give these ladies some money.

That's, you know, they get a quarter from me. So, right. But that's why. Now this one, Brian is a head scratcher. I don't know what they're thinking, but Bill Cosby wants to do a comedy tour now that he's out of the who's cow.

Of course he wants to do one. And he's going to make a docu-series too. Five-parter. You know what? I've got an idea for him. You know, you know how, uh, uh, you know, performers that reach a certain stature, they get a little sick of going out on the road. They don't want to travel so much.

They do a residency in Las Vegas. I can see Cosby doing a residency at Mar-a-Lago. There we go. Those are the only fucking people that want to see this douche. And every night drinks are free for all the women. That's right. All the time. Women drink free. You go down one hall, you end up in Trump's room.

You go down the other hall, you end up in Cosby's room. If only Epstein were still around. He'd have a three-way. The residents could have been on Rape Island. That would have been exactly where it goes. Perfect. I'd watch that show. Uh, and I thought this one was just too funny.

Have you ever heard of a website called Tumix? I have not. I didn't think so because it's mostly anime, but they do, you know, web cartoons, webtoons. Um, they are on the. How do they do that without Flash? I know. I know. Um, so they are, they are very big on the, uh, the anti-piracy side of things.

And they're always sending down takedown notices. Now in true moron of the week, you know, hall of famers, they actually asked Google to remove infringing URLs from their own website. That's right. How awesome is that?

They need to purchase TikTok's AI. Yes, they do. Security? Ha! Dave Bittner is back. Dave is the host of the Cyber Wire 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 as well as 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, Dave. One breath. Ah! I want to hear that at two speed. Yeah, it makes me want to go out and send something via FedEx. I was going to say, I was trying to do the FedEx guy. Boy, that's an old school reference that probably half the people in our audience won't know.

Well, the old, the grumpy old geeks will totally know that. Yes, they will get that. And the grumpy old Southern California geeks will remember frederated commercials, which also do the same thing. You guys remember Joey Suzu? Oh, yeah. I saw a Joey Suzu doppelganger the other day, and I'm like, wait a minute, he's dead.

Oh, wait. So that's not him. Never mind. Moving on. Interesting. Well, speaking of cars, before we dig into security stuff today, I wanted to touch base with you guys about cars. Specifically, I'm curious to know what your relationship has been with fast cars, like sports cars, exotic cars.

When you were a kid growing up, you know, a young man, were there, do you have any recollection of the first car that caught your fancy that made you go, ooh, that's, no, that's a, that's a car I want someday. Growing up in Los Angeles with a top speed of 10 miles per hour on any freeway.

Fast cars, not so much. Deservingly enough, I think my first, like, ooh, that's cool, was the General Lee, which, you know, that show has been canceled multiple times at this point, I'm sure. And, of course, Kit from Knight Rider was the pinnacle of coolness as a child.

Yeah. You know, you do your thing where a Lamborghini is obviously the posters and whatnot, but personally, I've never really passed that, you know, six, seven, eight-year-old period or age. Cars have never really been that big of a deal to me.

What about you, Jason? I would have to say the Bandit's Trans Am. Yeah. Yeah. That's mine, too. I always wanted one. I think I missed that one. No, that was definitely the, that was the first one for me. In fact, to the point where I remember a buddy of mine in middle school was telling me about this new TV show he'd seen called Knight Rider and how the hero drove a Trans Am.

And I was like, oh, yeah, Trans Am, that's cool. He said, one of the new Trans Ams. I was like, oh. Exactly. I had the same reaction. I'm like, what is this happy horse shit? Right, right, right. But eventually they won me over. And, yes, Kit was pretty cool. And I certainly like, you know, I have a thing for Kit.

Well, the reason I ask is I would say in my, certainly in my adult years, I have been more of a wolf's and sheep clothing kind of guy where if I were going to get up. Well, we already know about your furry thing. That's been covered ad nauseam.

We established that. I know. That's not, tell me something you don't know. So, oh boy, paging Dr. Freud, Dr. Freud, paging Dr. Freud. So, I would have preferred, for example, like a BMW M5, you know, something that looks to all the world like just a regular four-door sedan.

But under the hood is a high-performance car. Mercedes made a few- I was going to say, I have the dad version, the X3. Yep, yep, yep. Exactly, exactly. You're right. And today, everything has to be an SUV. Mercedes has made some wagons that were ridiculously high-performance, you know.

So, that kind of thing has always been more attractive to me than, for example, lusting after a Ferrari or a Lamborghini or something like that. Although, I have DeLoreans. So, you like the German cars? I do like the German cars, yes.

Ausgezeichnet! I have to admit, I've always wanted a Porsche. I mean, that is kind of a- I'm not a big car guy, but had I lived in a place where one could do such things and had the space for an extra car that does not matter, a Porsche would be very cool.

Yeah. I say, I really liked the 944 when it was in 16 Candles, as we all did. But I- and the shape of the 9-11 never really did it for me. As these days, I certainly appreciate the 9-11.

And I have friends who have them and have driven them and I've driven them and they're wonderful. But that's not- it doesn't move me. It doesn't- I don't feel emotional when I see a 9-11. I certainly appreciate them. But I say all this to bring me to the point of my story, which is that yesterday, I was stopping by my parents' house to visit my folks.

They were having some computer issues. And as we all know- Did someone leave a Mercedes with a sign that said, please take me? Because I thought we had covered this and you had learned your lesson, Dave. Yes, this is why- this is my one phone call that I'm burning to do this show with you right now.

Patreon.com slash GOG for Bittner's Bail Fund. Right. So I had stopped by the store on my way to buy my mom some flowers because I'm a good son, right? And outside the floral shop was one of the new Corvettes.

Oh, yeah. The 20- Oh, yeah. So I saw one drive by the other day. They look like Lamborghinis. They do. Yes. And I have to say, this car moves me. And I never- if you said to me, in a million years, Dave, would you ever be interested in a Corvette?

I would laugh at you. I'd be like, ha, what am I, Sam Malone? No, I'm not interested in a Corvette. That's a- that is not at all me in any way, shape, or form. Not my- So you're looking for European style with shitty American execution.

Well, let's not forget price. Yes. I'm looking at the prices now. Well, there is price, yes. Right, right. So that's- I think that's part of it is that you've got this mid-engine supercar look to it, but it is achievable.

Like, if I- if I, you know, I could probably stretch and- well, I guess if young Jack decided he wasn't going to college, there's probably a way I could make it happen. But- Or you do seven or eight more podcasts and you're right there. Yeah. That's true.

That's true. But then I wouldn't have any time to drive it. Anyway, I'm as surprised as anyone by how this car moves me and how I look at it and I go, oh my God, I want that. And it makes no sense because where would I drive it?

As you said, I mean, where can you drive a car like that anywhere today? The roads are so full- Also, there are potholes everywhere. A crumbling infrastructure also doesn't help. Right. You don't want to take it over a bridge because God knows. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So it's sort of a folly thing to even think about.

But I was just, I surprised myself with thinking about how much, for whatever reason, the look of this car just, it makes me feel something. And I would say if any of our listeners have an opinion about this, write it down on a piece of paper, put it in the glove box of a 2022 Corvette Stingray and leave it in the parking lot outside of Cyber Wire headquarters and put the keys under the front seat.

And I will go out and I will read that note and enjoy driving that car. Midlife crisis much? You know, that's the other thing, right? Right? I mean, that's, you know, and I'm sure my wife would say something like, well, you know, could have been worse.

It could have got a girlfriend or something like that. Exactly. Well, who do you think I'm picking up in the Stingray, honey? Lesson for all the wives out there. Let them get the car. Yeah. Yeah. But I think this, for me, this is such an example of my rational side of my brain versus that side of the brain that somehow just wants this thing.

That's definitely a sign that you are diving headlong into middle age as well, because that is the, you know, we do start to reach back to the things that moved us as children. And they resurge in our brains a little bit as we realize that we have reached a point where, you know, we're not going to be able to change our lives too much anymore.

And we're on a clear path. And here we go, sliding into death. Right, right, right. And Brian, you're the young one. As you get closer, Dave has passed the 5-0 mark. And I am there in like three weeks. I understand, Dave.

I understand very well where you're coming from. There ain't much time left to have fun. So, well, fuck it. Let's go. That's right. That's right. And as the realization sets in that chances are I will never be a professional athlete. God, that hits me all the time now.

It's like, as my wife and I are like, we were watching the All-Star, whatever, the home run tournament the other night and a little bit. And like they talked about the grizzled veteran that is still hanging in there at 36. Right. I'm like, oh, Jesus.

Yeah, I know. No, it's a real thing. But part of me is mad at myself for falling into such an obvious stereotype as being attracted to a sports car in my midlife. Like, come on. Am I better than that? Evidently, I am not. I am not.

Well, give yourself a pat on the back here, Dave, because your first obsession was with a full Stormtrooper outfit. So, you know. This is a step in the right direction. You came out of the gate hard and odd. So now you're just going a little more mainstream. Yeah. But imagine how good I would look in the Stormtrooper outfit in the Corvette.

Oh. Yeah. And the black and white one definitely would match. I would kill for the photos. I really would. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, well, listen, guys, thanks for having me on this week. Sure thing. What's the name of that car show that was so popular?

The Clank Show or whatever they were called. Oh, Car Talk. Yeah. Car Talk. Yeah. We'll be back. Right. Exactly. You've wasted another hour listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. So I'm looking. This thing's got 490 horsepower. Who's counting? I had a 510 horsepower 300ZX.

Wow. It was heavily modified. And, yeah, that thing tried to kill me every minute of every day. So, honestly, if you do drive one, be very careful. Be very, very careful. Right. That's the other thing. I don't need to introduce an additional way to die into my life.

We have plenty of them already. It's called getting out of bed. Yeah, exactly. Right. It's like every time I sneeze, I'm like, is this the sneeze that's going to throw my back out? You know. But then to your earlier point, Jason, do you want to die from a sneeze or do you want to die in a blaze of glory, Thelma and Louise style, going over a bridge as it collapses?

I am going Thelma and Louise because I pulled my shoulder out with a trowel, putting like a little potted plant in the ground this week. So, you know, I'm like, yeah, let's just let's say screw it and let's go. I've got a matching one, Dave. I could probably make it over that drawbridge.

Yeah. Yeah. And here's the thing. We can rent them. All right. Next week, let's do a cocaine show. Come on, kids. All right. I mean, if it's your last hurrah, just rent one. Screw it. You don't have to buy it. Well, that's true. Yeah, that's right.

I guess I'm not getting my deposit back. Oh, wow. Shucks. Sorry, Chad. That's pretty good. Oh, well. Should we do some security then? Sure thing. I guess. That was more fun. Back to the normal, boring. Hey, at least it wasn't Star Wars.

We did slide a little bit in there, but I'm good. I'm good. So Audacity, that really horrible audio program that a lot of newbies use because it's free. It was great when it first came out. Audacity 1.0, given the competitive software at the time, was actually really good.

Okay. Let's give him credit for that. Okay. And it was written in Java back then. Yay. On a PC, I got to say, on a PC, it worked. On a Mac? No. No, it was terrible. Well, I was a PC user back then. So it was a very good piece of software at the time, given you had a PC. Yeah.

It's been shit since then. Don't get me wrong. Well, it's gotten even worse because Audacity 3.0 is now owned by a Russian company called the Muse Group. Not to be confused with a moose-boosh. Not to be confused with a group, Muse. Yes, that either. So they've added a whole bunch of things in there that are making a lot of people upset, including phoning home to Mother Russia, sending user data back and telemetry on your machine,

your IP address, your configuration, and things like that. They've changed the license, and kids under 13 are not allowed to download it anymore. There's all sorts of fun things that are happening with it. Okay. So be sure not to record your top secret military B2B podcast that's only meant for distribution within the military with this program.

Yes, definitely not. Yeah, but I think a big part of this story is just how people lost their stuff when they heard this. Oh, yeah. Even though it's crappy, it is popular.

It is a popular program because it's free. It is popular, but I think – but my point is that people overreacted, I think. I think the initial fear that this – that they'd completely turn this program into spyware and so you could no longer use it and get it off your computer, a bit overstated.

Are you telling me the internet overreacted, Dave? I know it's hard to believe, Brian, but it's true in this case. And so I think cooler heads have since prevailed, and it's primarily they updated their EULA to match really whatever everybody else has in their EULA.

Well, but it's just – it's a lot of boilerplate stuff that says, should we choose to do this we – you grant us the permission to do this, which everything says these days. They cover all their bases. There's some other issues, though, with the developers. Since it was open source, and it's still technically kind of open source, they are taking a very draconian approach to contributors to the project, saying that they now own the code and can do with it what they will.

You still own a license, but you're giving them a perpetual full-use license to it as well, which I can see ruffling feathers. But again, that's true, right? Mm-hmm. Well, yeah. I mean, it's their software. They bought it. Yeah. They own it. Yeah. They can do what they wish with it.

I've seen – I mean, there's been some talk of that someone could fork it, right? I mean, so – That's what they're talking about now, yeah, is to do a fork and revert it back to pre-muse days and just fixing it, which – open source, go for it. And apparently, they are in breach of the licensing that they're using because they have added those things with the 13-year-olds and such like.

So, yeah. I mean, a lot of times – like the 13-year-old thing, a lot of that is sort of preemptive GDPR stuff. Exactly. You're not even supposed to be on Facebook if you're under 13, so – Right. Now, Jason, I don't know that I have ever opened Audacity.

Well, don't. What about it sucks? Why in particular do you not like it? Just the interface is terrible. It's absolutely terrible. The interface is very, like, early 90s. Yeah. And they've never updated it because it is open source and a bunch of coders are doing the design on it.

It's – I mean, like I said, I haven't used it in quite some time. Because I don't want to. I'm still pretty sure that it is just a waveform editor, a destructive waveform editor. It's not non-destructive, which, you know, as a professional, you can't do anything that's not non-destructive.

Right. So, as a thing – I know a lot of people that use it because they're – the filters that they have for removing noise from vinyl, that's – 90% of the people I know that use Audacity, like, rip their vinyl and use the filters to get rid of the pops and the scratches. That's the main thing.

Because they do have a lot of built-in filters. It also has a good filter to actually put pops and scratches back in, which is the one time that I actually used it for something because I wanted to make a piece of MP3 audio sound like it was playing off vinyl. Oh, my God. I got – you reminded me of something. We had another garage sale the other day, and the girl that runs the garage sale for us brought a bunch of stuff over, and I ended up buying something from her.

She had a Mint Condition General Electric tape recorder, like the old-school tape recorder. Oh, that's cool. Oh, wow. Mint Condition – like, I checked the battery compartment because that's where they usually are crap. You know, somebody had leaky batteries. Whistle clean.

Works like a charm. So now I have a classic cassette recorder. So if anybody knows where the hell I can find a cassette, let me know. I was just about to say, so in about two months, if you want to swing by Jason's house, you'll be picking up a brand new tape recorder. That's going on the wall of old crap, so that goes with my old film Nikon cameras.

I'll put that up with that stuff as a display item, but I wanted to try it because it comes with a microphone and everything. I'm just like, ooh, you might be able to get some good-sounding stuff, or now I guess I could just use Audacity and throw the filter on it and make it sound like a cassette player. Just add some hiss. Yeah. Pretty sure Logic can do that.

I think I've probably got a filter for that already, but anyway. Anyway, I thought you guys would get a kick out of that. I'll take a picture of it and post it somewhere. Yeah. Now, Dave, I don't know if you guys covered this next one, but I thought it was kind of interesting. Cyber attack disrupts Iran's national railway system.

Did you guys cover this one at all? We did. Was it a big thing, or was it a tempest in a teapot? I think it was a big thing if you were in Iran. Yeah, it probably sucked. If you were waiting for a train to get somewhere. Yeah, then your day was ruined.

I mean, everything's relative, right? I think the big thing about this is it starts the conversation of whodunit, and the two most likely suspects are either Israel or the US.

Of course. I just didn't know if anything else came out, because I saw this when it first happened, and I didn't know if there were any big news bombs since then, or if it was still like, yeah, we don't know who did it. I haven't seen any signs of attribution, and I haven't really, other than this initial report that you've got here, which is basically what we reported on, that the trains weren't running.

Right. Other than that, I've seen no real follow-up on it. Because this is a major infrastructure attack. Well, I was going to ask, is this train system like the Chinese train system that we discussed a few months back, running on a hacked version of Flash still because Flash was discontinued, and they had to create their own Flash server to keep the trains running?

I don't know. That's a good question. I really, I don't have a clear sense for what kind of infrastructure they have on Iran's system. That's another thing I really haven't seen reported with this story, but you're right. I mean, it's a good point.

There's a wide spectrum of infrastructure around the world. Many of these are held together. We think ours are bad, and they are, but a lot of these are held together with bailing wire and spit and tape and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah, definitely. So this comes from Alan Liska, who is one of the researchers over at Recorded Future. He actually has written a book on ransomware, so kind of knows what he's talking about when it comes to this stuff. But he tweeted this morning that all of the R-Evil sites, all of their infrastructure, appears to have gone offline at about 1 a.m. Eastern time, which, wait for it, is 8 a.m. in Moscow.

So it showed up with your badges and couldn't get in the door. Yeah, it's as if at the start of the day, it got shut down. Now, of course, what we don't know is what was the cause of this.

It could have been it could be a temporary thing. It could be a system failure. They could be running off with the money. It could be an exit scam. It could be that the Russian authorities told them to just lay low for a while. It could be that the Russian authorities have said, OK, we're done here.

It could be that the U.S. or another one of our allies reached in and took some action on our own. Interesting timing after the Biden-Putin summit in which Biden basically said, you guys better fucking knock it off. That's right.

That's right. And it's interesting to see the speculation of InfoSec people who it seems like what they're wishing for is that we went in and turned the lights off ourselves. We being the U.S., rather than President Putin telling them to knock it off.

I think people are hungry for a demonstration of capabilities rather than a diplomatic sort of giving in to our wishes. So I don't know. I personally always kind of prefer the diplomatic solutions, but OK.

Well, sure. Yes. I agree. I mean, overall, for the world, it's the best thing, but it's interesting that we have Team 6. Come on. A little bit of war hawking going on from our InfoSec community here. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's the thing. I mean, you know, the thing is when you demonstrate a capability, you burn that capability. Now the bad guys know what you're able to do. So that's a big reason why we don't like to do that. But I think, I don't know.

My sense is that I think people are tired of seeing all the losses and no wins. Yeah. And the Russian sort of crying wolf of saying, oh, is that us? I guess crying bear in this case saying, oh, that wasn't us.

We don't know any. We don't know what you're talking about. This is where we respect the rule of law. And surely this is someone else. So I don't know. I think people are ready to have it have something decisive happen and not having a smoking hole in the ground.

This could be the next best thing for a lot of folks out there. I'm with you. I think a diplomatic solution is probably best and probably will lead to the best long term outcomes. But it seems like a lot of people are smelling blood in the water.

I'm sure you guys can figure out which side I'm on. Yeah. I have a guess. Burn them to the ground. You want a smoking hole inside the smoking hole.

Exactly. After they dropped the 10,000 pound bomb, I want a 20,000 pound bomb right behind it. Let's go. Right. Yeah. Take that rootin' tootin' Putin. And this is why I'm often glad you didn't go into politics, Jason.

There you go. Well, I did. It only lasted five minutes. One campaign rally and everybody's like, oh, Jesus Christ. Yeah. Wow. What, yeah. Be careful what you ask for. This guy wants to bomb Reseda.

Have you been to Reseda lately? It could use some cleansing. Actually, to be fair. I mean, if you're going to bomb something. Yeah. Okay, gents. All right, guys. Well, I need to run along. I have an appointment at the local Chevy dealer. You 100% need to go take it for a test drive.

Yeah, you know what? And the thing is, like, I guess that's the one. One good thing about being a middle-aged guy is that nobody's going to question my desire to take a test drive of this thing, right? They're going to see me walk in the door and they're going to say, the Corvette is right over here, sir.

Yes. As opposed to, you know, 19-year-old version of you that would show up with wanting a test drive. No. Right. Right. Yes. Yes. Dave, you are squarely in what they call the target market. I am. Absolutely. Desperate enough to want it and rich enough to afford it.

Yep. Yep. All right, guys. Good catching up. I'll talk to you guys next time. Closing shout outs! Over at Patreon, no new subscribers. Boo. Boo. Boo. Over at PayPal, we've got Simon, Andrew, Breed, Ralph, Miles, Mark, Linda, Natalie, Tony, and Andrew.

Thank you. Thank you. No new iTunes reviews. Nobody. And over at our tip jar, we've got a couple people, but Jason knows these stories since there's quotes. Justin T. gave us a double. Woo-hoo! Thank you, Justin. Thank you. Peter. Peter.

Peter. Peter. He says, fuck you and fuck Stripe for not letting me add a comment to my $5 donation. He's a listener from Norway. So thank you very much. Wow, see? I guess if we insult countries, we get actual feedback from them. So fuck you, Sweden. Well, no, that's how we got our Swedish listeners already.

Oh, shit. Okay, we're going to be in another country. I mean, that's case in point. That's the only reason we've got such a big group of awesome people in Sweden. Let's finish our triptych up there. Fuck you, Denmark. Yeah, fuck you, Denmark. And Anne Q also donated to the tip jar. Thank you very much.

Thank you all so much. We really do appreciate it. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks for listening to Gropia Old Geeks. If you enjoyed 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.

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