516: Says the Billionaire...

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

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Brian, we've got a one-star review over at Apple Podcasts from Jalelelelelele. All right. It said, didn't give it a chance. I wouldn't take this review too seriously. I have the show eight minutes. I have the show eight minutes. Okay. Good for you. And there were too many political jabs. I was looking for a tech show, not another political show.

And I am guessing that he was talking about us talking about vaccines, which was a technical issue on the last episode because we were talking about Facebook and disinformation. Right? Yep. Okay. And I'm also, I'm so done arguing that there's no distinction between tech and politics these days.

They're intertwined. There's not. Completely. Yeah. Okay. So I'm going to have a language disclaimer here because I am going to say some words that I, I, I'm just, I know that I will. So I'm just going to tell you right now that there are going to be words that are going to offend some snowflakes. So someday we'll have a clean show.

No, we're never going to have a clean show, especially not right now. Cause I'm going to tell you about a dumb fucking cunt influencer. See, I got it out of the way. I just gave you, I gave you the disclaimer, got it out of the way. So in my, in my spheres here in Los Angeles, I have run into, I, I share the same orbit as it were with influencers.

I'm sorry. Not, not the good influencers. Like, you know, uh, I, are there any, honestly, Neil deGrasse Tyson? I knew you were going to say that. That was the name I was thinking of too. And, uh, anyway, uh, Hey, Hey, mind meld, mind meld. Um, so, uh, this dumb fucking cunt influencer who is shy of 7 million followers, um, got a COVID test, a PCR test, not one of the, you know, just run of the mill.

She got a PCR test, uh, last week and the results came in on Friday. And, um, so we found out, yes, positive, positive for COVID-19, right? Public figure doing her thing out and about shaking her ass and her little titties everywhere.

Being an influencer. And, um, we found out that she felt a little off eight days before that, before she got the PCR test. So that was at least eight days before she got a result. So since then, little cunty McCuntalot has been out doing shows, uh, doing live, live, uh, meet and greets, uh, checking out homes, uh, basically being everywhere that one shouldn't be.

And living in a hotel and not disclosing the fact that she is COVID-19 positive to anyone or wearing a mask. So you want, you want to hear how pissed off I am. This is how pissed off I am. Because I also found out yesterday that one of my best friends in the world is a COVID-19 long hauler and has been having a shit ton of issues.

So, you know, this chick could be out there killing people, could be causing people irreparable harm, and doesn't give a fuck about what she's doing. So, yes, I am pissed off at the world right now, Brian. And cunty McCuntalot can go shoot herself in the cunty McCuntalot face.

That's all I care about. Well, look, we're never going to get out of this. I'm very saddened about it. Um, this is not the America that I grew up in, but apparently the American dream now is it's all about me, and I'm going to do whatever I want and to hell with everyone else. Uh, we have no sense of civic responsibility anymore.

That's just gone. The hell's that? Can you get likes from civic responsibility? I guess not. No, you can't. You can't. You can get likes from wearing a flag, uh, as underwear and coughing your COVID-19 breath all over the people that are taking the pictures for you and putting on your makeup these days.

That's, that's, that's, yeah, that's the way you do it. It's sad. It's, it's really sad. Um, you know, and it's just, it's, we're not going to get out of this and the, the numbers are going up and, uh, you know, it's not even just the numbers. I mean, even anecdotally, I've talked to a couple of my friends and one of my friends told me that like everybody she knows is vaccinated, but everybody's getting it.

Um, you know, obviously they're not getting incredibly ill, but we still don't even know the science on, on this. We don't know if the vaccine is going to stop a lot of these long haul effects that people are starting to see. There's now worries about increased risk of Alzheimer's. There's worried that, uh, you know, mental degradation is occurring if you've had COVID, um, which I, I would argue that might be there pre COVID hence.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. A lot of the population not being vaccinated yet, but, uh, no, but people who have, have even had it, got it after they had it through no fault of their own. We're completely careful. Yep. Do have mental degradation issues from the long haul effects, which is why I'm so fucking pissed off.

Yeah. And I'm, I'm intensely worried about that. Obviously I have a child who's too young to get vaccinated. Um, I am, I can't leave the country if I get a positive test at this point and I'm leaving the country in a week and a half. Uh, I don't trust anyone. Uh, and now it's not even not a case of not trusting anyone.

Even the people I trust, uh, through no fault. Again, like, like we said, the Delta variant is so, is so viral that through people through no fault of their own people, people I trust implicitly, people I know who are doing the right things can get it. Can still get sick. Yes. Because there's all these people running around, not giving a goddamn fuck about anyone.

I, I, I, I, I'm just done with this. I'm done. I'm done. And I'm so thrilled. I'm going to Canada, not that there aren't anti-vaxxers in Canada. Not that there are, let me finish Jason, not that there aren't anti-vaxxers in Canada, but Canada's vaccination rate has skyrocketed past the U S now.

And the people that are refusing to take it. And the people that are demonstrating in the streets are treated the way they should be treated. Like menaces to fucking society. Remember in the AIDS days, if you actually knew you had AIDS and had sex with somebody, they would treat you for, or they would charge you with attempted murder. If you spit on somebody, even if you had AIDS, they would charge you with attempted murder.

Let's let all of the fucking potheads out of prison and put in the fucking anti-vaxxers. Look, we never would have, we'd still have smallpox if this fucking new American attitude was still in existence, was in existence back then. This is ridiculous. I'm so, I, I've read a couple of great articles about it and I, here we are, we're like going on and on about something that isn't technically tech, but it is because we might all die and then there won't be another show.

I started this off with this, almost 7 million followers this person has and is out there telling everybody it's okay. Yeah. I'm done. I'm just over it. And I think everybody that has done the right thing is now just getting fucking pissed.

Yeah. Everybody's pissed. I mean, everybody's pissed. So yeah, there it is. So a little follow-up for next week. There will be no show next week because you are traveling. You're going to Canada. Maybe. Maybe. If I, if I pick up a, if I pick up the COVID somewhere, I'm not going anywhere.

So we'll see. Yeah. But yes, theoretically that, that'll be it. So yeah. And I need some time to settle in and get all my stuff there and God damn it. I'm just so, I'm so tired, Jason. It's one, it's already enough just to be packing up your entire house with your kid and everything and moving to a different country.

And I'm just depressed constantly because we see the wave coming again. And I can't believe we're here. Six months. They're giving, you can walk into a Dairy Queen and get vaccinated in this country completely free. And we can't get it done. I know.

I know. Okay. Anyways, let's move on to other things that are pissing me off. And I'm taking the week off because it's my 50th birthday week. And I said, fuck it. I don't care. Good. I'm glad you're doing it. I'm going to have a week for me. Go party with that influencer. Well, the thing is, no, I'm staying the hell at home and I'm going to read books and enjoy myself because, you know, this is the last, this is the last one.

You know, it's like, you look at all the different milestones as you grow older and 50 is really the only one that anybody cares about. I'm not making it to a hundred. We all fucking know that. If I made it to 70, I'd be amazed. So this is the last great one. So I'm going to take time for me.

I'm going to have some JC poo time. And that's what we're going to do. Good. I'm happy for you. And then we'll be back after that. You're not going to be back the week after, but we will have a guest host to fill in for you. Excellent. There we go. All right. All right. Other things that are pissing me off. Now, I'm not going to spoil this.

This is about the, we talked about the Anthony Bourdain documentary and the, the voice manipulation thing that occurred where they used lines that he never actually said because he used one of the, uh, artificial language thing programs that are out there to read off lines in his voice, which they never should have done. Uh, but, uh, and again, I'm not going to spoil this, but apparently it's not the only thing that's faked.

The entire ending, which pulls at the heartstrings was completely constructed and made up and it didn't happen organically whatsoever. If you want to know what it is, the link is in the show notes. If you want to go into the movie, not knowing about what's going on, other than the fact that I just told you it's completely faked and bullshit, um, you know, don't read the link in the show notes, but it's, uh, it does, you know, I understand that documentaries are often play with the truth a little bit.

Uh, but I do think at this point in time, as we've all become more and more media savvy, some sort of, uh, declaration should be made about things that are created rather than happened organically and aren't part of an actual documentary that then it travels over into what scripted reality or whatever we're going to call it these days.

Uh, and the other thing that just completely drove me nuts is, of course, they called it AI that the, the voice manipulation, it's not AI. It's a machine learning algorithm. That's how it is. Yeah. They probably use descript in the one that we used to talk about, like Sparrow is had some bird name or whatever that you can just feed in stuff.

And yeah. Yeah. I don't know why that stuff still bothers me, but when I read it in this article, I just wanted to bang my head into a brick wall again. So there you go. And a little bit more follow up, uh, about the whole returning to work thing, uh, companies that make people return to the office will lose employees.

Okay. That is what all these, uh, professionals now in the industry are saying is basically if you're not going to be offering some work from home aspect of it now that people have gotten used to it and gotten used to the fact that they don't have to sit in a car for two hours for commuting and they, you know, they're able to be a little bit more flexible with their time because again, if you have a child, you understand that this country provides zero, zero assistance for raising children.

So I guess the USA just doesn't want to have another generation seems to be trying to kill people anyways. So yeah, that's basically it. It's they're basically saying if you do not offer some sort of option, good luck getting good talent. Okay.

So be it. So be it. Unemployment will go up. That's the way it's going to be. Um, speaking of unemployed people, uh, Jeff Bezos is an unemployed astronaut because he technically is not an astronaut. The FAA said, lick my sweaty balls, Jeff, because you're not an astronaut to be an astronaut.

There are specific guidelines where you actually have to do something on the flight. You have to be part of the crew. You have to either fly the ship or be part of the safety protocols or blah, blah, blah. That, but the FAA says that there are, there are, you know, guidelines to being an astronaut, not just going up in your fucking space Uber, which is what you did.

You can't just be a passenger. Yeah. You can't just be a passenger. So, uh, the FAA said, no, uh, sorry. And they came out with this like right after it's like, no, you're not getting the wings. So the wings that they got at the, the pinning ceremony, same with Virgin Galactic, uh, we're just, you know, they are akin to the little TWA plastic wings you would get as a child when you flew on a plane.

It's like, fine, fine. You know, I, I, just because I flew on a plane does not make me a fucking pilot. So there you go. Yeah. I agree. I agree. That's, you know, Hey, isn't the whole point of this, the fact that they wanted to start space tourism. So, you know, shut up.

Don't pretend you're an astronaut. You're the first tourist. Tourist badge. Yeah, exactly. You get a lay and a kiss on the cheek when you get off the plane. And that's it in the news. Our first bit in the news is from Barrett who wrote in what the fuck.

And this is a whole story about YouTubers who blew the whistle on an anti-vax plot. So there was apparently a mysterious marketing agency. I wonder who might've been funding them. I wonder. I wonder. And I wonder. I wonder. I'm sure it was the Democrats, uh, who offered to pay social media.

Stars to spread disinformation about COVID-19 vaccines. Their plan only failed when some influencers actually grew a set of balls and instead of taking the money, went public about their attempt to recruit them. So I'm finally actually impressed with a bit of YouTubers. Yeah. The influencers here, I think they were German influencers.

The Germans have been well. Yeah. Yes. My influencer is definitely not German. And, uh, a bit more news in the, uh, genetic screening area. We've been talking about, uh, all these, all these different, uh, companies for a long time now and how they're kind of bullshit.

Uh, and here we go again. In August, 2020, the first American child was born after using a new kind of genetic test in hopes of reducing the risk of heart disease. In vitro fertilization offered her father, the physician, an opportunity to use pre-implanting testing to select that embryo. According to this test from genomic prediction.

So they are doing these new embryo tests now, uh, theoretically to try to lower risk of certain diseases and conditions and things like that. However, genetic professionals have concerns about this high-tech solution to have healthy babies as orchids tagline puts it.

So they're basically, you know, trying to sell fear to get you to do stuff. They're saying the tests aren't necessarily bad or inaccurate, but rather the science is complete, we do not know how all these things work out. Uh, and as they point out again, though, yeah, correlation has never been causation and this is not a crystal ball and they are selling basically junk science again.

I don't know if this is junk science. I mean, they get a test on something. It's unproved science, but you have to test. So yeah, I mean, Hey, you gotta, you want to make an omelet, you got to break some embryos. So go on, you know, that's the way it goes.

Um, yeah, I mean, look, it's random. Whoever gets picked anyway from the eggs and the sperm. So what, what harm is there in this by giving it a little, you know, little test? I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't really see the problem with this. All they're doing is selecting, selecting embryos that were, you know, ready to go.

So, but if they're selling it as this is the solution, we can guarantee. I don't think they're saying that. I guarantee, I guarantee that their lawyers said that there's no guarantee. I was exactly going to say, I guarantee you that their fine print is saying that they're not guaranteeing that, but certainly their promotional materials are saying that.

But offered her father, a physician, the opportunity. So they're telling a doctor. So the doctor is making the decision here. He's not, he might not be a great doctor. You know, we know a bunch of quacks out there, but he's at least a medical physician that's making this choice, which is probably why they chose him to begin with, you know, to give themselves a little bit of cred, but you know, this is, look, I've seen Gattaca.

This shit's going to happen no matter what, whatever. Uma Thurman was great in that movie. She's great in everything, but still it was a crappy movie. You could still have crappy kids, you know, nature versus nurture. Who knows? But if the kid's heart's not going to explode when he comes out of the womb, then that might be a plus.

That's all I'm saying. Bold statement. It is a bold statement. And the FTC has voted unanimously to enforce right to repair so you can repair your in vitro embryo when it comes out of the womb. Yeah. I mean, that's great. And again, at this point in time, it no longer, unless we're Adam Savage is at home, it no longer applies to the normal people at home because good luck pulling apart your iPhone and fixing it yourself.

But it does open up to third party vendors to be able to do it a lot better and a lot cheaper and opens up the competition aspect of it. And we're looking at John Deere here. Honestly, I think this comes down. It's not this is not the apples and the high tech stuff. This is John Deere saying you can't fix your fucking tractor.

Yeah. Come on. You know, those guys need to be taken to task. And then I think this is what this is geared towards. I bet this is more farming than it is, you know, cell phones. Yeah. Well, it's all of it. And it's it's good. You know, we've been behind this the whole time.

So I'm happy that that's happening. We have some news from Snapchat. One of my favorite punching bags from social media over the years. They've announced their largest user growth in years. According to its latest earnings report, daily active users have increased to 293 million, which is 23 percent growth from this time last year, which is the best it's seen in a while.

It tops the company's prior best of 22 percent, which happened over four years ago. They are even the number even tops Twitter, which recently reported 206 million daily users in the second quarter. So, of course, most of this growth can be attributed to pandemic lockdown's ending, as well as a much improved Android app.

However, there's another surge coming. So we'll see what happens. But good on them. They actually they're still hanging in there against all the odds. Yeah. When was the last time you said send me a snap? You know? I don't know. Yeah. You would have thought TikTok totally would have taken over their thunder.

But apparently there's still a dedicated group of 293 million people that are still using Snapchat. So good on them. I have an anecdote about this because this I was down. I've been back and forth between my mom's a lot recently, obviously, as we're getting ready to move. But we weren't even really talking about anything.

And my mom out of nowhere basically said, I can't use Facebook anymore. It's useless. I don't I don't see any of my friends updates. All I see are basically ads for things or whatnot. Like I scroll and I scroll and I don't I used to see my friends updates.

I don't see my friends updates anymore. And I've got to say, Facebook, when you're losing the olds, you're in serious trouble because you've already lost the youngs. The only people that are still on Facebook on a regular basis are us old people who want to see our friends updates. If you lose my mom, I don't know who your user base is going to be pretty soon.

Yeah. No, well, I do. I do. I had to actually reshuffle the show notes here. Mark Zuckerberg says he wants to transform Facebook from a social media company into a metaverse company because he's had a good run here in the real world. And Mark wanted to be the master and commander of all of his domain.

But that just didn't really work out the way he thought it was going to be. He is not the king of the world. And so instead of being a better person and creating a better company, he just decided, said, fuck it. Let's go into cyberspace where he can then be king of the world. So I don't even understand what a metaverse company means.

Well, go back and read Snow Crash. Go back and read Snow Crash. That was the metaverse. So it's basically, you know, this – and the way he describes it is, you know, he said they're going to focus on building the internet successor.

Yeah, good luck. From infinite offices to egalitarian societies, peek into the social network's future plans, which is basically that there's going to be companies everywhere. He wants to build the spec. He wants to build out the infrastructure and get all the other companies in the world on board so he can be lord god of all, you know, over his domain.

Because, you know, there's probably no regulations in the metaverse. But anyway, yeah, that's his new grand plan. All right. Definitely time to divest from Facebook if you've still got money in it. This is a sinking ship. No, no, no.

But to fund the metaverse, he's going to the religioverse. So, yes, they are targeting faith groups and churches right now to do paid live streaming and things like that. Apparently, Sheryl Sandberg is a big faith-based person, which you've got to be, I guess, to work with Mark Zuckerberg.

You've got to have faith. My own personal Facebook. Yeah. Got to have faith, faith, faith. See, I went to Peshmer. I was hoping you were going to chime in with a tune, but you didn't. Anyway, so, yeah, that's what they're doing. They're charging like $10 a month for people to go to online Facebook Live religious services.

They've been working with different churches and pastors and things like that. So, basically, they're, you know, the scammers are going to the bigger scammers to find money, to find ways to get money from the rubes. Reach out and touch Zuck. There you go.

See, I knew you had it in you. I knew you had it in you. And this one just, again, I'm just bleeding from the forehead this week. This, again, had me smashing my head into a brick wall. Jack Dorsey hopes Bitcoin can bring about world peace. Yes, he's so optimistic about- He can buy beard oil with Bitcoin.

Oh, my God. He looks so terrifying. He's so optimistic about the cryptocurrency, he reckons it could bring about a more peaceful planet. The billionaire suggested Bitcoin could help address financial inequality. The billionaire suggested Bitcoin could help address financial inequality. The billionaire suggested Bitcoin could help address financial inequalities and allow humanity to concentrate on bigger issues.

Like ransomware. My hope is that it creates world peace or helps create world peace doors, he said. We have held these monopolies off balance and the individual doesn't have power. The amount of costs and distractions that come from our monetary system today is real, and it takes away attention from the bigger problems. The reason you are a billionaire, the very reason that you are a billionaire is because of all this stuff.

So, it's real fucking cute that you think you can fix it now by pumping up your own Bitcoin to make yourself more money. Also, you can't even seem to fix fucking fake news on Twitter. You think that you're going to fix the world now? I'm so sick of the fucking complex that these fucking tech billionaires have.

They don't fix shit. No, it's endemic from this. They go insane. People are not supposed to have this much money or power, period. It's not natural. And when these people get this, they turn into like an Austin Powers villain. You know, that's the way that this works, period.

Nobody is meant to have this much money or power, period. And especially a dumb fuck like Jack. Seriously. I mean, the guy is not a fucking genius. He's not. He's an introverted little square kid. That's why he named his company Square, because he is one.

Yeah. It's a mess. It's a mess. But yeah, he's not. He's obviously not looking at the, you know, most of the transactions on Bitcoin, because it's either people who are hedging their bets to make money on it. Or it's ransomware fuckers who are actually making money on it.

You know, that's since the Silk Road is shut down, you can't buy drugs or murder anymore. So at least you got to get some ransomware money in there. But, you know, Bitcoin is going to save the world, says the billionaire. Fucking twat. Speaking of twats and billionaires, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk both want to colonize space.

Here are the six biggest problems with their plans from thinning bones to toxic plants on Mars. Actually, let me go ahead and condense this down to the one problem. Space wants to kill you. It's like Australia. Yes. Space is like Australia. Yeah. So the TLDR is basically biology.

Yeah, biology in space is hard. We're not meant to live there. We are not gelatinous pieces of goo that can float in, you know, zero gravity forever. We are built to live on a planet with gravity and oxygen and food and water.

And Bitcoin. None of which fucking existed in Bitcoin. Yes. None of which existed in space. And Facebook churches. Come on. Can I get a hallelujah up in here? Well, speaking of space and Elon Musk, everybody in the world sent this to us, but I'll give credit to Martin who sent it first and said, wow, even the moon can trick a Tesla.

We have talked about various ways that self-driving cars are a cluster F that will always be 20 years away. But this one is probably my favorite of all time. So Tesla, as we talked about, recently announced that any Tesla user can subscribe, not buy, subscribe to Autopilot's full self-driving feature.

Read that again. Yes. Full self-driving feature, which is not a full self-driving feature. In fact, even the moon made the car slow down. It turns out that the feature mistakes the full moon for a yellow light and slows down the vehicle. And now the article says it should be noted.

This is an extremely yellow and quite low moon, to which I would say it should also be noted that it was the moon, an object that is 238,000 miles away. See, this is what happens when you use photography instead of LiDAR, because LiDAR would tell you that it's 238,000 fucking miles away.

There is no yellow light. Now, I get that the Tesla can go pretty fast, but if it needs 238,000 miles to slow down, I'm not getting in that car. You know, the Tesla guys might need to talk to the SpaceX guys to work on their software.

That's all I'm saying. To the moon, Elon. Yes, and you can go to GOG.show slash shop. Coming soon, we will have our stoplight stickers for your back window any day now. I think we just make moon stickers at this point. That's true. That's true.

Shoot the moon!

At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering something new every day. Start with today's special value. Then, explore exciting finds across the brands and categories you love.

From beauty and fashion, to home, culinary, and outdoor living. Shop now at QVC.com.

Some sort of geek fest is going on right now because a shit ton of trailers are dropping. Is it comic? I don't even know what it is anymore. They're all virtual. There is no Comic-Con. Is there anymore? I think it's a virtual Comic-Con because there's a whole bunch of stuff.

Yeah, it is. Is there a Comic-Con anymore? No, of course not. Because virtual Comic-Con is the internet. Yes. Every day. So we got a trailer for Star Trek Prodigy. I actually watched it. I liked it. I think I would watch this show. We also got another trailer for the second season of Lower Decks.

Will not be watching that one. No, no. I watched the Prodigy trailer. I'm not in. Nah. I think it's, you know, I watch so much kid stuff these days that I'm kind of immune to it and see it as cute. So I'm kind of looking forward to it. Maybe the kid will watch it. Is there a Baby Janeway song coming?

No, there's no Baby Janeway. But she is a hologram. So maybe her and Wheezy can get together and do holographic performances in the future. It should be fun. Did you see the picture of him with the fucking panty-oes on his head? Yes, I saw that. Walking around the soccer game. Oh, God.

We also got a new Dune trailer, which I forgot to put in the show notes, which, man, I am cautiously optimistic. I know I'm going to end up disappointed, but the trailer looked great. And we got the Dexter Revival revealed their first trailer at Comic-Con. I haven't watched it yet.

I'm kind of torn. I think I want to go in cold. Well, that's the same with me in Dune. I'm going in cold. I don't want to watch the trailer for Dune. I can't go in cold for Dune. I've read the book 7,000 times. No, but I mean the trailer. You know, this interpretation thereof. Right. Gotcha.

Yeah. So I'm waiting on it. I'm just going to power that one through, and then I'll just watch it when it comes out, and then I'll wait a year and a half for part two, or three years, or seven years, or maybe they'll just cancel it after part one because it failed so miserably. Who knows? We shall see. We shall see.

And Barrett wrote in and said, I found this via Reddit. It works perfectly. They even have an app for my Fire TV stick, and this is locast.org. Watch your local broadcast TV for free. Locast is a not-for-profit streaming service offering users access to broadcast television stations over the internet.

It's some select US cities. They're not all over the place yet, and I don't know if they will be. I would also like to point out that even though they say watch your local broadcast TV for free, it is $5 per month. Oh, okay. There you go. If you can't afford to contribute the $5 per month, and you would like the uninterrupted version of Locast, you might qualify for the Locast Cares program.

Click here for more details, it says. So I would argue that is not free, unless you're in a very special case and you apply for it. Well, nothing is free. Somebody's got to pay for the damn servers. I agree completely, but I think your headline on your website should not then be watch your local broadcast TV for free.

No shit. I'm just saying. Yeah, not-for-profit does not mean losing all your money. But we covered this before when it first came out a couple years ago, and it seems to work. I watched it for free for a few seconds, didn't get any upsells or anything, but it was just a few seconds.

And if I wanted to leave it on all day, I'm sure they would say, uh, excuse me, I want my five, I want my five dollars. I love that movie. I watched Won't You Be My Neighbor, the Fred Rogers documentary. I'd never seen it. God damn, I love that movie.

Right? It's just great. See, this is the case of a documentary where I don't give a fuck if they made anything up, but I know that they didn't because there's so much anecdotal evidence that Fred Rogers was Fred fucking Rogers his entire life all the way through.

Yep. You know? But man, I feel like we're just a piece, we're a bunch of pieces of shit because all we do is shit on everything. And, uh, Fred is out there saying, lift it, lift up your neighbor. We don't, we shit on our neighbor here. So kind of made me sad in that way, but I loved it.

I absolutely loved it. I was just stuck to the TV and, uh, Ted Lasso season two is out. I know I'm, I'm waiting. What? I'm waiting until I get to Canada to watch it. Too much going on right now. What the fuck's wrong with you? Need, need too much going on.

It's 22 minutes. Can't do it. Can't concentrate. 22 minutes. I'll get around to it. I can't do it right now. I'm surrounded by boxes, man. I want to enjoy it. I want to be able to crack a beer and sit there and watch it. You can for 22 minutes and, uh, it's fantastic.

So you, when you get to Canada, you'll be very happy. It's the same show. I can't wait. It literally picks up where it left off. Everything's the same. It's perfect. Good. Cause the same in this case is exactly what I want. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They didn't. Here's the, here's the deal.

They didn't fuck it up. It's a great recipe. Don't fuck it up. Ups and doodads. Uh, we get a lot of email, um, from PR companies that never, ever listened to our show requesting interviews and, uh, for us to talk to people about their silly projects.

I kind of want to start doing that though. Should we? I think we should. I mean, we should take every person that comes in here and just, just take the piss out of all of them. Just do a, do a five minute interview with them where we're like, I mean, every single idea that's come through has been horrid, horrible, horrible.

Absolutely. Okay. Anyways, nobody listens to our show. So obviously they're not going to hear this to know that we're going to tear down anybody that comes on the show. So anyways, uh, so we got, we got one yesterday that I was just, I had to have a chuckle after because we talked about that, uh, app hollow, uh, the other day, which is the privacy focused, uh, social media network that they're attempting to launch.

And you know, I, I have no problem with the concept, but, uh, once you have one, here comes the run of Don Quixote attempts at social networks that are privacy focused. We got a request to interview, uh, the founder of Panquake. Panquake. Panquake. I'll have mine with blueberries, please.

It's a new social media option designed to address the worst problems that we see with big tech social media platforms. They will never collect or sell user data. First off, you have to collect some user data. So saying you will never collect user data is inherently false. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to log in.

It will be ad free, so not controlled by advertisers and will be transparent and free of the censorship and manipulation by algorithm that we all experienced daily. I would like some censorship, please with my pancakes. Yeah, seriously. Uh, just a quick side note. Um, I was worried about today's, uh, show because they're filming a VW commercial on my street and I just got a text from our friend, Brian Blondell that said, Hey, what's going on with your street?

There's a crazy camera car right in front of your house. So I just opened the blinds and I looked out, holy shit. There's a crazy camera car in front of my house. So if you hear the dogs barking, that's why this is one of those big boom rigs. I should, I'll take a picture later. I'm going to go fuck with them with my drone just to piss them off because it's VW and they're an evil ass company.

So why not? Okay. But I got to close the blind one second, but holy shit, that thing's huge. Wow. It's like they're filming the next Batman movie or something. Sponsored by VW. The future of movies. Sponsored by VW. It should be the Joker movie then.

Um, I got Alto's Odyssey, the lost city. So, uh, basically Apple Arcade bought up some, um, some rights to Alto. And what they did was they took Alto's Odyssey and then added on an extra level and made it free.

If you're an Apple Arcade user and I love it, you know, it's great. I'm glad they're doing it. I started at the beginning, but then I found a little button that said, import your Alto's Odyssey progress. I'm like, well, shit, I'm on level 60 on Alto's Odyssey. What? Or yeah, 59 on Alto's Odyssey.

Why not? So then I imported and then I'm like, oh, I'm kind of bummed now. Cause I skipped all of the middle levels and stuff like that. I have to say that Alto's Odyssey is like a great book. And I've talked about this before on the show for years, uh, that when, when I get to the end of a great book, I almost never want to finish it.

Like I've never finished reading Sandman out of 35 fucking years later. I've still never read the last five episodes of Sandman and I'm going to have to soon because they're making it into a damn TV show. So I guess I should finish the wake, but so I never finished the game and, uh, I think I'm just going to have to finish it finally, but it's great.

If you're on Apple Arcade, just go grab it. Cause it's free now. Cool. Yeah. You've loved that series. You've been talking about it nonstop since we've started the show or since it came out. So yeah, and, and most of our friends on the discord channel also agree that it's the best game that's been on the, you know, iOS ever.

So cool. I'm not, I'm not alone on that. Yeah. All right. And, uh, Barrett sent this in finally, some good, interesting tech news this time batteries. And this is a startup that claims a breakthrough in long duration batteries. A four-year-old startup says it has built an inexpensive battery that can discharge power for days using one of the most common elements on earth, iron form energies, iron air battery, breeze in oxygen and converts iron to rust.

Thank God they're not claiming it's artificially intelligent and then turns the rust back into iron and breeze out oxygen, just charging and charging the battery in the process. Uh, that's pretty cool. It's going to be too heavy for electric cars, but it will be capable of solving one of the most elusive problems facing renewable energy, cheaply storing large amounts of electricity to power grids when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing.

So we'll see, uh, there, there basically came out like this has been shrouded in secrecy and NDAs forever with some investors and all that, but, uh, they're coming out and making it public because they want to make regulators and utilities aware that if all goes according to plan, they will be, yeah, thank God for that.

Uh, they should be ready by 2025. So I like to quote the X-Files. I want to believe. Security. Ha! Dave Bittner is back.

Dave is the co-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 and surveillance and privacy. And finally, he's the co-host of Recorded Future, where he takes you inside the world of cyber threat intelligence. I would have made that my own, but as per usual, Jason springs it on me about five seconds before we do it.

And Dave is the host of the Cyber Wire podcast, not the co-host. Always a co-host, never a host. Yeah. Except for all the other ones. Yeah. You've only heard me do it a thousand times, so. Heard you do it. If you think I pay attention when we're recording this. Fuck no.

We live it, we live it, we live and breathe it. In the moment. I was going to put this in media candy, but I felt it kind of belonged here because I have a feeling that you, Dave, will be with me on this. Disney Plus has been pumping the material and mining their own backyard very, very well.

They came out with a new show called Behind the Attraction. Now, obviously, this started as a, it's executive produced by Dwayne The Rock Johnson, and the very first episode is The Jungle Cruise, which is basically an extended trailer for the movie that is now coming out. But they have kept it going.

They've done five episodes so far where they basically go in-depth on rides from Disneyland. A particular interest to you, I think, would be the Star Tours slash Star Wars Land episode where they, you know, they go back in time to the original, like, groundbreaking and how they came up with the concept of the rides.

And then this one, they get into Star Wars Land as well. They've also done Haunted Mansion, Twilight Zone, Tower of Terror, which is no more, Space Mountain. It's really good. The production is top-notch. The writing and voiceover work are cheesy as hell, but it is Disney. I think you'd get a kick out of this.

Yeah, I'll check it. So this is on Disney Plus, I suppose, right? Yes, on Disney Plus. Yeah. I mean, I know you didn't grow up three blocks away from Disneyland and go there every single day. But as I did, which is why this is of particular interest to me. But I thought you would enjoy it.

You do like your theme parks and I like, I know you like Disneyland. And so, yeah. Well, and I love all the behind the scenes stuff too. I'm, you know, when I'm, I'm always interested in looking at the blueprints and the, you know, the overhead maps of how the rides work and how they, you know, and all that sort of thing.

So, yeah, this would be a lot of fun. It reminds me that, oh, I don't know, in the past year or so, I saw someone found in an old, like, theme park trade magazine an ad from the company who made the simulator that Star Tours uses.

Ooh, that'd be cool. They get deep into that in this episode, yes. Is that right? Okay. Yes, they do. They show, like, the Imagineers flying over there to test it out to see if they could figure out a way to use it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, so this ad was predated Star Tours.

So, it was just kind of like, hey, we built this thing and you should use it, you know. And little did we know that, yeah, it was going to get a hell of a launch, right, with Star Tours. Yeah. Star Tours is the one that I definitely want to watch because that is my favorite thing in Disney ever.

Oh, man. So, yeah. I mean, just, again, I went, they talk about the 48-hour or 72-hour party that they did where they had never done that before. They kept the park open 24 hours a day for three days when they launched that ride. Wow. Because they knew the demand would be so huge.

And I was quite young at the time, far too young to have been there 24 hours straight, which is what, of course, my friends and I all did. We hopped on our bikes, snuck out of our houses, and went to attend the party. And that was the one and only time I ever got grounded. Wow.

That's it? Seriously? You got grounded once? Perhaps that says more about your parents than it does about you. Well, you know, getting straight A's and all that buys you a bit of leverage. Ah, okay. Yeah.

So, there was that, you know. You know, it worked out. But, yeah, I mean, it's very, very well done. And what I didn't know is, you know, they talked for years about, oh, well, you know, Star Tours is basically, you can program that machine to move it any way you want, and it's just a film. So, in the future, we're going to change it with different adventures, and they never did the entire time I was, well, they have now.

They have, Jason. But, yeah, but how long did it take? It took 20 years. Oh, yeah, forever, forever. Like, they waited until the prequels came out and all that sort of stuff. Yeah, I mean, and by the way, I've never done Star Tours at Disneyland. I've only been to Disney World, the real one. Do they have the big at-at here, like, when you come out?

You mean the real one? The real one's at Disneyland. No, the real one is Disney World. I'm sorry. The janky rundown one is here in Southern California, but the real one is in Orlando. Yeah, Orlando's the one with the COVID.

Okay. I got to say, I got to side with Jason here in that. Walking underneath of the scale at-at is pretty kick-ass. Yeah, that is better. They have the space in Florida.

Yeah, they have a speeder bike outside that you can sit on and have your picture taken. One blown into the tree. Remember, you see the one that was, like, wrapped around the tree? Yeah. Because my dad and I went there on, I was 18. So, it was 32 years ago. My dad and I went. We took this road trip from Chicago to Florida because we were going to Kennedy.

He wanted to go see the Rockets. And then we had our day at, we did a day at Universal. We did a day at Disney, and we did a day at Epcot and all that stuff. And when we came, we did Star Tours, and we were blown away and we came out, and we about shit our pants when we saw the at-at and everything.

And I have the, okay, this dates it properly. I took a picture of it on Kodachrome with my Nikon 8008. So, it's on slides. I have a slide of the at-at when it first launched.

So, yeah. I mean, I agree. It is, I think, it is one of the, it's probably one of the greatest, I don't know, I keep hedging. But no, it is the greatest ride experience I think I've ever had in my life. Exactly. And I remember the moment when, because it's just all of your childhood dreams realized, you know.

And the moment when Rex, the pilot, says, I've always wanted to do this, as you're going down into the trench, like, I was just like, me too. You will really, really, really enjoy this episode then, because they get into, because George Lucas himself was getting involved, and they get into the ideas that George Lucas had for the ride, and how they had to steer him away from his concepts.

Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah. And how they finally landed on the actual concept. And yes, it was the Imagineers basically going, we were Star Wars geeks as kids. We want to build this ride for us. We want to make it, we want to be there. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. The other thing I remember after the first time I rode it, I was so convinced by the simulator itself that I really thought that they were somehow accelerating you forward when you were doing the jump to light speed, that you weren't just tilting back.

Yeah. You know, it was so convincing to me. And I was trying to think in my mind, like, how big a space must it be? How is this moving around? You know, is it working? No, I mean, they're just tilting you around. Yeah. When you get off, you get to see it, and it's just like, oh, okay. Right.

Right. Yeah. But I was totally convincing at the time. One of the times we were there recently, I think it was, we were at Disneyland recently, and I was chatting with one of the women who was operating the ride. And we were talking about, I was asking her, how much control do they have over what we see?

We call them cast members, Dave. Well, yes. I realized that since my wife was one. He just called them later. I married one. So there you go. So because now there's three segments, right?

There's three segments to the ride, and they can either have it be totally randomized or dial it in. They can choose which ones you go to see. And so at that point in the conversation, she was like, well, have you been to Kashyyyk yet? And I was like, no.

She's like, all right, that's where you're going to go. Nice. And off we went. Yeah. Very nice. So you can request where you'd like to go if you're friendly and strike up a conversation. They do have some control over it. I wish that every now and then you would go on and it would be the original.

Oh, yeah. I don't think that they run the original anymore because I guess the assumption is everybody's done it except for the kids. Yeah. I wish either that or maybe if they would run like a couple hours a day, they would run one of the simulators. They would run the original. So those of us who have great affection for it could go back and experience that.

I've never seen anything but the original. Me either. I've not seen any of the new ones. I have not been back since they switched it up. So I'm looking forward to it. They're good. Great show. I mean, yeah, they're good. C-3PO is the pilot now.

Yeah. I like the new one. And it's in 3D. Well, you find out that Rex has been moved to Star Wars land. He's a DJ in the bar, apparently. Oh, right. Driving the Wedway People Mover. Oh, man.

Now I want to go back to Disney World, but I don't want to get COVID. Yeah, you're going to have to. Because I have a feeling like what Jason was describing, I've seen the AT-AT for the first time. That's going to be me when I see the new Millennium Falcon. Yeah. Yeah, Star Wars land. I'm just going to get all misty, and I'm ready for that.

Yeah. And the funny part was, because we were doing that whole tour that day, we went and saw, right before we got on Star Tours for the first time, we saw Captain EO. Oh, yeah. That was the thing we saw right before that. Oh, Captain EO. Yes. Yeah. I do remember that well. That was something to see, too.

That was an experience. That was a really cool experience. It's dated, but boy, in its time, it was really something. I saw it in its time. It was really something. Yeah, me too. Yeah, it was. It was. And as far as I know, it is no longer at any park.

You think? No, it's not. Yeah. It's not questionable, that one. Yeah. I wonder why. Well, I think we've set a new record. We've fully gone half the segment without once talking about anything security related. I'm wondering if we should just call it a day. Oh, it's your show.

All right. Let me move on to it here. On July 14th, Fight for the Future helped launch a nationwide campaign to document which of the country's biggest retailers are deploying facial recognition and which ones have committed to not use the technology. I think this follows solidly in the we knew it was happening, but now we really know it's happening category.

So a bunch of huge companies, Macy's, Albertsons, and to tie it together with what we were just talking about, I'm sure Disneyland have facial recognition throughout the entire areas. Oh, hell yes. Yeah. The aim is to draw attention to retail stores using facial scanning algorithms to boost their profits, intensify security systems, and even track their employees.

Now, I think you'll both probably agree with me that this is a technology that I'm sure isn't going to go away anytime soon. But what I would like is just the knowledge that it's being used. Why? Maybe some sort of sign. I don't know.

Because then I could choose to go in or not. I could vote with my wallet. I could say, well, I don't like the fact that they're using this, so I will go to a competitor's store. There's no competitor to Disney, though. Where are you going to go? I'm not talking about Disneyland specifically. Hey, Knott's is a good time.

Okay. Not as good. You know, I'm just talking about just in general, you know, your Macy's, your Albertson's. Like, if Ralph's is not using it and Albertson's is, then perhaps I will go to Ralph's. Okay. Give me the choice. I mean, you know, if we go anywhere, you and I, Jason, both know this very well, living in Los Angeles and what you were just dealing with today with the VW commercial being shot out your house.

There are signs up saying, if you come into this area, you agree to be blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm asking for the same sort of thing from the stores that I go to. Yeah, there are, and by the way, in my local grocery store, my Ralph's here, there are video cameras everywhere, and they do have in the high security aisles, aka razor blades, for some reason.

And booze. And booze. Actually, no, it's not in the booze aisle. Razor blades and laundry detergent. Yeah, no, dude, they actually started putting Tide Pods in the back behind a glass case, and you have to take a ticket up to buy Tide Pods now. Yep. Yep. What the hell's up with that? I did not know that there was a black market for Tide Pods.

I mean, I thought we killed off all the kids that really cared about them a long time ago, thanks to social media. Come on. No, laundry detergent is a hot black market item. Wow. Because everybody needs it, and so it's easy to sell, and it's not cheap.

So if you can get it, you can turn it over quickly at a discount, and you'll find lots of customers. But it's not like you can stuff it down your pants. Come on. These things are huge. I know. I've got to say, I remember back in my college days, walking around campus and then just starting to get outside of campus into the area where all the students shop and things like that.

Vans would regularly pull up, open their doors, and sell speakers. That was the big commodity back then. Oh, yeah. That was a scam. The speaker scam. Yeah. You know, I'm just saying if one would have pulled up at that point with half-cost laundry detergent, I would have bought it too. Okay. Did not have a lot of money in college.

There was a story I saw about a couple weeks ago, I guess now, that was about a young girl, teenage girl, who got denied entry to a roller skating rink because as she was waiting in line, she got tagged by a facial recognition system that tagged her as being someone who had gotten in some sort of scuffle at the roller skating rink.

I'm going to give you a couple of guesses now as to what color skin this young teenage girl had. Well, she was black and apparently has a time machine because who has a roller skating rink anymore? You know, I was going to go Scandinavian.

Right, right. She's tall, blonde. Yeah, that's right. Well, the money goes to Jason. Yeah, young African-American girl, and she had never been to this skating rink before, and that's the way it goes.

You know, that bias in facial recognition software just might be there. Hmm. Yeah. Would have thunk it. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So. It is private business, yes. I don't think they're, you know, required to disclose anything.

I am glad that a lot of places are saying you cannot use this for law enforcement anymore, which is what it should be. But here's the deal. Did she sue and win a bunch of buckets of money? You know, because that's what I would be doing right now. Yeah, I mean, they've, last I saw, they were in the process of that.

Of just giving her a bucket of money saying, shut up. No, I mean, they were, yeah, they were, negotiations were underway. Of course. So I suspect she will probably get a bit of a payday and go on her way and find another place to.

Buy a cool new pair of blades. Right, exactly. But she will have the highest quality roller skates from now on. That's right. No, no roller blades, period. Not on this show. Damn it. Aren't they still called blades, whatever they run? No.

Those new ones? Well, no, they're roller skates. Roller skates have four wheels. No. Two and two. Two and two. All right. Whatever. You just can't, you can't, you can't do roller blades at a skating rink. That's just verboten. Sorry. I don't care what color your skin is. No way.

Anyway, what is way is, uh, I, I saw this over on the Washington post, uh, or actually I didn't see it on the Washington post, but, uh, sites like the Washington post, the New York magazine and a bunch of others have a bunch of porn embedded in them because a, uh, uh, this site that used to be called, what was it?

It was called Vidme. Vidme. Uh, let their domain lapse and a porn company bought it. Five star porn HD bought it and, uh, basically threw up a bunch of porn links for all the embeds that were out there and good on them for doing it. Because that's all I have to say about that.

It must've been more work for them to get all the embeds to match than to just wipe the database and start clean. But why would they do that? That's free press. It's free press. It's quite a troll. It's quite a troll. Yeah, it is. You know, and here's the thing about embeds, you know, they also get all the, all the data from all of the people that are coming to that site.

So they have all your tracking data, you know, everything that comes with getting an embed on your site without them having to actually sign anything, you know, cause the deal with was the original Vidme. So now these, these sites just have embeds for a dead site that has a completely new corporate structure and those people can take all that data and track as, as they see fit willy nilly.

I love all the data collection that might be happening right now. Like, especially like personalization for ads. Cause it's, it'd be like likes articles about sociology, local news, and hardcore pornography. Exactly. That's it. Yeah.

Yeah. Link rot. Yeah. It's a thing. It's a thing. I mean, and, and, you know, it's easy enough for these people to just do a quick sequel search and pull them all out and find them and pull them out. But, uh, yeah. Which I suspect many, there were many people frantically doing on the day.

Exactly. What's that select statement for star slash? What's the regex for Vidme embed? Right. Shut them all down. Hurry. Yes. I do declare.

Anyway, that was fun. It was a fun one. And, uh, listener Joseph sent a link in here. So he wrote, oh dear, somebody should have been listening to the GOG podcast. Well, nobody does. So people never seem to understand how little privacy and non-adminability there is. Psy hypocrites deserve to get slapped upside the head.

But this also shows once again, how many vulnerable and closeted individuals can be out and doxed. And this is the Catholic priest who quit after anonymized data revealed alleged use of Grindr. No anonymized data. We know this. There's no such thing. Scream it from the, there's no such thing. Uh, data sets can be matched up.

They will find you. They will target you. It will happen. It's unfortunate. Um, you know, there you go. Yeah. And it's. I got nothing else. We know that there's no anonymized data. Mm hmm. Yep. Uh, yeah. He should have just bought a burner.

I'm sorry. If you're going to go on Grindr, buy a burner. Period. But guess what though? Guess what though? Burner wouldn't have actually helped. I just, as I was saying it, a burner wouldn't have helped because the data from the burner would still point him back to his home. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. Unless he left it at the church. Yeah. The thing I wonder about this is, um, so if this, this was done by a reporter, um, and the reporter was able to buy the data on the commercial market, nothing illegal about anything the reporter did is all available.

Um, and I suspect, why wouldn't this become standard operating procedure for every political campaign from now on? It's going to be. There's no doubt. Yeah. I mean, why not? This has got to be part of opposition research already.

I'm sure it is. Yeah. I'm totally sure it is. Yeah. Yep. So my point is when, when we have that happen and it becomes public, that will be the point when the laws start to get written. Yes. This is what you say all the time on this show.

It is when, when the lawmakers themselves get hung by, hung by their own petard that we will actually get some laws about this. Uh, they have been hung by their own petard many times and it hasn't happened. So, yeah, I wasn't going to point that out.

I stand by my statement this time. We'll see. It just hasn't gotten high enough yet. Right? That's, that's right. That's right. Well, I mean, look, I mean, look, if Biden can get hung by his petard for his, you know, uh, what was it?

It's not Vimeo. Uh, what was the, the horrible payment app that we all hate? Uh, Venmo. Venmo. Venmo. Yeah. You know, if, if, if his entire finances, yeah, public finances, it's like, okay, well, they changed it a bit just from public shaming, but there were no laws put into place, you know?

Yeah. And they're still horrible. Do you mean, if somebody asked me for my Venmo the other day and I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? What? You still use that? What are you, a dinosaur? But, um, yeah, people still use it no matter what. Anyway. Yeah.

Ah, man. And this one just, this, this chaps my dazzle, as I like to say, uh, QR codes are here to stay. So is the tracking they allow. And this comes from the ACLU. I've got, I've had, I've had many problems lately with the ACLU. A lot of problems.

Um, the, the biggest one was them trying to get all the prisoners released from Orange County prison or jail because of COVID and just letting them out on the streets because it was a risk to them, even though they were a risk to society. That was a big one.

But now they say, people don't understand that when you use a QR code or didn't search the entire apparatus of online tracking between you and your meal, says Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the ACLU. Suddenly your offline activity of sitting down for a meal has become part of the online advertising empire.

Fuck you. QR code is a URL. That's it. Yes. I understand that, you know, you're going to get tracked if you have a URL, but that's up to the individual place and what they're doing. Cause as we know, when you get a QR code for a menu, it just shows you an outdated PDF.

Restaurants can't even update how menus work, let alone throw you into the online tracking apparatus. Give me a fucking break. You moron. It's like, come on. I would just like to ask Jay Stanley, when was the last time he sat down at a meal that was offline?

I don't, I've, I've yet to be at a meal recently where people haven't had their phones out, which means they're getting the location data of which restaurant you're at. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, where is this guy eating? Who's he eating with? He's obviously eating at Faraday fries, you know?

So. He's getting his freedom fries. Yeah. Freedom fries at Faraday's. That's it. If you're going to, if you're going to tilt at a windmill, QR codes is not the one to go after. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I mean, I pulled my, my support for the ACLU a while ago, and this just makes me kind of happy.

I've done so because you, Mr. Jay Stanley need to get a real fucking job. If you're a senior policy analyst, come on. This is ridiculous. QR codes are URLs. That's it. Oh, you know what? Next time Jay walks into a bar, hand him a COVID soaked menu and see how he likes it.

Sometimes you just got to sit back and let Jason go. Yeah. I'm sorry. Fuck this guy. It's just ridiculous. Every time you think he's going to hit tap on the brakes a little bit, boom, gas. No, it's just a snowball rolling downhill.

Am I wrong? I saw. Am I wrong? That's all. That's my only question is, am I wrong? Jason, as with so many times, it's not what you say. It's the way you say it. It's how you say it. With vim, vigor, and panache, I would like to say.

With complete confidence in every word. Every goddamn word of it. Yeah. I saw a guy on Twitter recently, just this last week, who was bragging about how he has a QR code on his back bumper, and he uses it to rickroll people.

So he enjoys being at stoplights, and suddenly he'll hear the car behind him start blasting, never going to give you up, because they couldn't resist. They put the QR code in, and now it's playing through their stereo system. Love it. So hats off to that guy. That's genius. But in terms of just, again, the three of us here, I've never, ever taken a picture of a random QR code anywhere, because it is a URL, and who knows what that URL is going to do

to you, I've had, I used to have, when I ran blog rolling, I had a blog rolling URL QR code on my car, and people would get out of their car, run up and take a picture of it and go back to their car. You know, I've seen this happen in real life. So, you know, I don't know why we don't have GOG on our cars right now, because obviously it works.

Well, just at the risk of actually talking about something security related in this segment today. Why? Why? I mean, the real, the legit risk is that, let's say you pull up to your local gas station and you decide, hey, I want to try out this app that they have to pay for my gas, and there on the pump is a QR code.

Somebody could have very easily have driven up to that pump. Never going to give you up. That's right. And they could have put their own sticker over top of the sticker with the legit QR code, and it could just be a man in the middle attack.

So they're gathering all your information, and it looks like the Exxon or whatever gas station it is. It looks like the legit site, but they're just gathering up your information, your password, whatever. Well, goddammit, Jay Stanley's right. Fuck that guy.

I'm sorry. We talked about this seven years ago when China was going to all QR code payments, and we're like, what's to stop somebody by, I don't know, making a sticker that goes on top of it? Come on. Right. Right. Right. So what someone needs to do is they need to make fake menus for restaurants that people go to.

So you replace the QR codes, people go there, they scan it, and then everybody starts ordering things that are not actually on the menu at that restaurant. See, I was going a little bit. If I were a teenager. Yeah. See, Dave, I was going a little bit more dark, because I want a QR code that immediately opens a website that just has a progress bar saying, your files are now being encrypted.

Please send us X amount of Bitcoin, and boom. And then it just shows them that screen. Obviously, it doesn't do anything. And then after that is an affiliate link to some kind of security service that we could make money on. But that's just me.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, did I tell you about the time when a security company sent me a box full of cookies that had QR codes printed on them? No. Yeah. It's somewhere. There's a picture of them somewhere back in my Twitter history.

There's a picture. I posted a picture of them. And it was kind of exactly that. They sent me a box of these delicious cookies, and printed on the cookies were QR codes. And of course, I ate the cookies, but I also scanned the QR codes, because I knew it was from a security company.

And so how bad could it be? But when you basically clicked through to their website that said, ha-ha, QR codes are dangerous. You're lucky that it was us, the good guys, and not some bad guy. And learn more about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the way to a vulnerability, for me anyway, and I would dare say for most men, is through our stomachs.

And it worked. It absolutely worked. Your stomachs and your other parts that are a little lower. That's right. Cookies. Woo. All right. Yeah. Our base instincts. Yep. Never fails. Oh, man. Okay. We're making some QR code stickers today.

There you go. Sticker Mule's going to really love me soon. Oh, guys. Well, this was fun. It was fun. We got some Star Wars. We got some Disney. And we actually had some fun. There was some porn involved. And all something for everyone.

These are a few of your favorite things. Exactly. Okay, gents. Talk to you in a couple weeks. All right. Bye. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we've got Wayne and Fun Day Paw Pet Show.

Hello. Okay. Fun Day. Over at PayPal, we've got Joseph, Josh, Mark, Adam, Thomas, and Charlie. Thank you all so much. All right. Over at the tip jar, we've got Keith R. for a one-time donation. We've got Desiree from Sweden, our super fan. Love you, lady. You are a crazy birthday girl.

And she gave a one-time donation. And Jennifer C. started a subscription. So, hey, thank you, everybody. Thank you so much. And a super shout out to Desiree for our super fan. We love you. And we have a whole slew of five-star ratings from people that actually listened to more than a few minutes of the show, which is nice.

Actually, we have so many of these, I feel like I should just never come back. Go out on a high note, Jason. I think that you should go to GOG.show slash reviews and read all of these because they're pretty good. But some of them are novels. Yeah. Yeah. So, the first up, and this is a shorter one, is from Claudia, who gave us a five-star rating.

My must-have on Wednesdays. Entertaining, informative, helped me through 2020. Me not being a tech girl, I learned a lot and had as much fun. Thanks, guys, and keep going. And Adam with a five-star says, looking forward to the show every week. I love the take the Grumps have on News & Tech every week. I always cue it up at the top of my Wednesday morning commute.

All right. And the next one is one of the novels. This is from Electrocrat71, who gave us a five-star rating and apparently knows us and wants to tease us with that knowledge without letting us know who he is. Oh, this one. Kind of a dick move. Yeah, we got to read this one. We'll skip the rest.

You can go to the show for the rest from Barrett and Tapper99. But this one is important because this is a dick move. Go ahead, Brian. All right. Look, I've actually met both of you. Snark is in our blood. But somehow I managed to escape L.A., Santa Monica. So not only do we know him, he lived or she lived in the exact same place I live.

Back in 97, my cynicism grew while yours only seems to have festered. Brian's leaving for another country like I did gave me great hope that he might develop a level of callousness the show should definitely have. Not to mention any names here. Yeah, you're doing a good job with that. But certain other co-hosts could learn something and flee the lunatic asylum after all these years and see that there is indeed no reason to hold back anymore.

Seriously, you guys are and have been great. Brian, you shouldn't have a problem wiring in once you've settled in Canada. It's not like broadband isn't better outside the United States. It generally is. And Dave manages to do it even during cicada season. Keep up the good work. P.S. I do miss running into you fools.

Now you will really wonder who wrote the review. W. Who left for Scandinavia but was too stupid so came back in the U.S. in time for President Orange Stain. So there you go. And please don't make it sound like I've never left the country. I have. I know what it's like out there. I have too. Since 97, I've been around the world a couple times.

So come on. I just don't want to move because I have shit. W. Thanks, W. I do appreciate the review. But come on. At least send us an email saying who you are. Yeah, this is 97. So this had to be box top days when we both worked together because since then, we're never seen in public together ever.

You know, we could be Batman. You know, I could be Bruce Wayne and you could be Batman or the other way around. Who knows? I have more weapons, so I'm probably Batman. Didn't you wake up and discover a machete by your bed the other day? I did wake up and found a machete. Well, no, I was packing and I found a machete.

Then I put it next to my bed because I'm like, this should be next to my bed because I own a machete. One of those COVID purchases. No, it shouldn't. Yes, it should. Sometimes you wake up sad. I mean, yes, it's next to my killer attack dog and my, you know. Look, yes, I have lots of things that keep people out, but I have nothing to keep out anymore or to protect anymore.

So I've Spartanized again. Okay, let's wrap it up. No show next week. I got to tear down all this stuff and put it in a box, Jason. I got to go watch them film a VW commercial with this crazy-ass camera truck out in front of my house. So, yes. All right. I'm Jason DeFillippo. See you guys next time. Until next time, whenever I come back.

I'm Brian, Canadian, A, Schillmeister, A. 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. And seriously, share the show with your friends and enemies.

Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 516. 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 that we can read on the air except for these 17 million line reviews.

But if you do want to leave a review, go to GOG.show slash review and toss us a snarky one and preferably five stars. Stay grumpy and we'll see you in two weeks. At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out.

It's discovering something new every day. Start with today's special value. Then explore exciting finds across the brands and categories you love. From beauty and fashion to home, culinary and outdoor living.

Shop now at QVC.com. you