519: Can Someone Loan Me a Toddler?

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. This episode of Grumpy Old Geeks is brought to you by Hover and ButcherBox. Hover is the place to get the best domains with over 300 top level domains to choose from. Go to Hover.com slash GOG and get 10% off your first purchase. ButcherBox is giving new members a special offer of three pounds of chicken, two pounds of burgers, and one pack of hot dogs for free.

Sign up at ButcherBox.com slash GOG. So, Jason, I got all my stuff. There are boxes everywhere still, but my studio is set up so you can now hear how boomy the room is in even better quality. Yeah, you sound like you're in a freaking cave.

Well, yeah, there's no wall hangings or anything up yet. Just stuff. Okay, well, somebody will be using iZotope today to clean that up. There goes the afternoon. Yay. I also got my work PC this week. It has been a long time since I used Windows.

Yeah, it's not bad. I've just now fully indoctrinated into the cult of Mac, and I finally have all the key commands of second nature, and now I have to go back and figure out Windows. Okay, it's not that hard. It'll take you an afternoon, really. Yeah, yeah. I had to go through the whole process because it's also not just like a personal PC.

Like, I have to do the whole corporate sign-ins and installs through different things and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That is stuff I haven't had to do in 20-plus years. Yeah. And I have to say, the process has not gotten any easier. No, it doesn't. It doesn't. That's what happens with Microsoft.

Yeah, yeah. So, good times. We have a bit of follow-up here. The Poly Network cryptocurrency heist that happened. This is a decentralized finance platform that saw a hacker named Mr. White Hat exploit a vulnerability in its code and stole over $610 million in random cryptocurrencies.

They say they've gotten all the money back. Wow. Mr. White Hat, indeed. It's unclear why the perpetrator had a change of heart, though some experts believe they may have found it difficult to launder and cash out the money they had on their hands. It can sometimes be hard to hide and launder $610 million when people are looking.

But, Brian, it's crypto. Come on. Isn't that the promise of crypto? Apparently so. So, what we have so far is the hacker is apparently saying that they were actually trying to help. They were pointing out the security holes in the project in his own personal style or his or her own.

We don't know. Yes. Yeah, their own personal style. You know what happened? They got the money, and then they're like, oh, shit. Oh, shit. That's the rest of our life. We're going to be on the run if anybody were in jail. No. Yes. Yes. People get killed for $610 million. People get killed for $610 nowadays.

So, it's $610 million. Yes. Yeah, I think, yeah, I would have given it back, too. Yeah, me, too. Maybe I'd have given back $609. Yeah, keep a cool mill finder's fee. Finder's fee for pointing out your security. Just think of it as a bug bounty. Exactly.

And I saw this one. Elon Musk joked about Tesla autopilot mistakes as technology faces scrutiny. He says, I actually have a T-shirt with a stop sign on it. If you flash the car, it will stop. Well, I would like to call first on that because that's ours, fucker. Also, ha, ha, ha.

Oh, boy. That's hilarious, Elon. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you're not supposed to be joking about that. That'd be like, you know, a Boeing pilot. Some people have actually died. So maybe we shouldn't be making jokes about this sort of thing.

Oh, good point. Good point. That's right. Tesla's do kill people. Yeah. Yeah. And speaking of that, I saw this article, the first step toward protecting everyone else from Tesla's. On Monday, the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration announced an investigation into Autopilot, Tesla's driver assistance program, which allows the vehicle to manage certain blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

We all know this. We've talked about this a gazillion times. This seems to be a good thing because as we've been pointing out, and they point out in this article, Tesla has given misleading names to the two systems that create driver confusion about their capabilities. They have refused to install high-quality driver monitoring systems and enable drivers themselves to determine whether it's safe or not to deploy Autopilot in a given road situation.

Tip, it's not. Yes, it's not. And yes, we've talked about the misleading names given to stuff and how words matter, and people are just going to go on. If it says Autopilot, it should be an Autopilot, right? Yep. You'd think. Yep. You'd think, but it's not.

And as this article points out, Tesla's competitors have been considerably more cautious in crafting their own so-called advanced driving assistance systems, and a smackdown from the feds could force Tesla to change course. We'll see. While dissuading other automakers from emulating its risky behavior. And they say there's actually a part of this investigation that looks promising in terms of actually getting something done and perhaps finding Tesla and making things change.

It's focusing on a specific group of people who are outside a Tesla during a collision. If an EMT is pulled over to check on people involved in the crash, there isn't much she can do to protect herself from a Model Y bearing down on her. And the same logic also holds true for cyclists and pedestrians, many of whom are being killed on American roads by all kinds of automobiles, more so than any other time since George H.W.

Bush was president. And I can probably tell you most of that was in Santa Monica. Yeah. You know what? That's advanced murder bot mode. Yes, it is. Yeah. So, yeah, hopefully something will come out of this. At least, you know, at least change the damn name.

Seriously. Because, you know, people are dumb, even people that buy Teslas. I know many rich people that are dumb and they read what's on the tin. They read what's on the tin and they assume that's what it does. And God knows there's not a manual that says in big letters, not a true autopilot.

We talked about the kerfuffle that was going on with Anthony Bourdain and his movie where he got like, what was it? Three sentences into the movie from the director that he didn't speak. Well, Val Kilmer says, hold my beer. Well, Val Kilmer basically can't speak anymore thanks to throat cancer.

So in his new documentary, Val, which I haven't seen yet, but I heard it's pretty good. They used, quote unquote, AI to give him a new voice. I don't have a problem with this one because he's involved and was able to sign off on it and he can't speak.

And so there you go. This is completely different from the Bourdain thing where words were put into a dead man's mouth. Exactly. But, you know, the technology is there and it can be used for good, which is what I wanted to point out. And did you get a chance to hear it? No, no, I haven't.

I don't know. Val Kilmer has not crossed my brain's consciousness in 20 plus years. OK, well, I like the guy. So I did a little little clip of it. I think CNN had a pretty good clip of it. It sounds great. It really does sound sound good. You know, I mean, he's got enough material out there for them to build the voice on.

And I think they did a pretty damn good job. So I will give my review of Val when I get to it. The news today is brought to you by Hover.

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This is a big one over here in California. Prop 22, the one that we, the proposition that we talked about and screamed about. I even had fuckprop22.com, which I got from Hover.com slash GOG. Finally, let that go. This came in originally from Darkfire over on Discord.

It has been deemed unconstitutional by the High Court of California. All right. Well, good. I think it's bullcrap. And we know the main reason it passed is because Uber and Lyft and basically poured gazillions of dollars into a campaign that made it seem like all the drivers wanted it.

Yep. Yep. DoorDash was in on that one, too. And it was, I think, $200 million they spent on it instead of giving it to, I don't know, the drivers. The drivers? The employees? Yes. I'm sorry. They're not employees. No, no, no. They gave the money to their real employees.

Self-actualized bots that take care of everything for them. Yeah. So it's obviously going to go into appeals and they're going to start fighting it, which they already have. But I don't think Uber and Lyft are going to make it that much longer anyway. I don't think so either.

Look, they've never made money. Exactly. Let's keep this in mind. They have never made money. Now, what we need to have happen is we need gig workers to rise up in every single state and every single country and I'll hit them with lawsuits at the same time. And whatever money, whatever angel money they keep getting that somehow manages to keep them afloat, they'll have to spend on lawyers and then they'll just go away.

I was listening to This Week in Tech on Sunday and they actually had some, they looked at the numbers and they give it about 18 months with the current runway and the current loss because for every dollar they make, they lose 30 cents, which, you know, yeah, that's some good business right there.

Seems to be, Jason. Seems to be the business to be in. Luckily, we lose money on this podcast too. Yes, we do. We lose a dollar for every 30 minutes. But yeah, they were predicting with pretty good numbers behind it that about 18 months to two years, they're going to be kaput.

Good. I mean, again, there's no business model there. Nope. None whatsoever. And they're horrible. They're horrible to consumers. They're horrible to non-employees. They're horrible to everybody except for, you know, the white collar employees that are working there. Yep. And who even knows that?

They were pretty horrible to them when Travis was in charge. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Speaking of horrible companies, Facebook said Saturday evening that an article raising concerns that the coronavirus could lead or corona vaccine could lead to death. I love that excuse. I'm just asking questions.

Go fuck yourselves. It was the top performing link in the United States on its platform from January through March of this year, acknowledging the widespread reach of such material for the first time, meaning they actually said what all of us have seen and said millions of times, that Facebook is the reason that this is happening, that Facebook is the top COVID-19 misinformation pusher.

It also said another site that pushed COVID-19 misinformation was also among its top 20 most visited pages on the platform. Yep. It's shelved this report and it's finally releasing it in an attempt to push back against critics, arguing that the definition of health misinformation is often less black and white than some would make it seem.

And their example being that they, talking about one particular factual article from the South Florida Sun Sentinel, that was later rolled back because there wasn't enough evidence to prove what they were trying to say in that article. I just want to say, though, the only reason this got out is because it got leaked to the New York Times.

That's the only reason that this is out. They were going to bury this thing. And that just shows you what type of people they are. Transparency, my Aiken ass. Yes. As it says at the end here, for months, executives have been debating releasing both this report and other information, according to a person familiar with the company's thinking.

In those debates, the conversations revolved around whether releasing certain data points were likely to help or hurt the company's already battered public image. In numerous instances, the company held back on investigating information that appeared negative, the person said. I think the only debate going on was, should we burn it or should we shred it, then burn it?

Yes. That's it. So, you know, now we know what we already knew. But Facebook is finally admitting it. And speaking of Facebook, Slate asked a question of Facebook this week. Why did Facebook let a man live stream his bomb threat near the U.S. Capitol for hours?

I also would like to know the answer to that question. Why did they let Florida or what's his name? Floyd Ray Roseberry from Grover, North Carolina, who parked a pickup truck on a sidewalk near the Library of Congress in the U.S. Capitol on last Thursday and threatened to set off a bomb?

He, of course, was live streaming this whole thing from his car. The apparent answer seems to be our AI couldn't pick up on the fact that somebody was just live streaming from a car because lots of people live stream from cars. We're not supposed to be live streaming from cars to begin with.

We're supposed to be fucking driving them. Exactly. But talk to Tesla. You know, there's a loophole there. Yeah. So there you go. So they're not doing a great job of any sort of moderation outside of the fact that this was all over the news. I know. It's like, OK, our AI didn't need it.

But Joe Schmo in the break room who was watching CNBC probably could have seen it and said, you know, we probably shouldn't be doing that. Oh, well. Yeah. If you're a moderator at Facebook and on CNN, you see Facebook's feed from this, maybe you should go ahead and shut it off. Or at least, you know, talk to a manager.

Something, you know, run it up that old flagpole. Try it. You never know what's going to happen. And Highlander wrote in. He said, too late. People who are arrogant with their use of social media shall reap the results in full measure. And he sent a link from Global News Canada. Global Affairs Canada is purging websites, social media amid Taliban takeover.

So I guess they're going through and officials are saying this is a bid to protect Afghans at risk of reprisal from the Taliban. But some of the content being removed or hidden also appears to include tweets that condemned the Taliban for violent, destructive action and others that promoted gender equality initiatives.

Obviously, there is fear that people like interpreters and anybody that was helping our allied forces will be targeted for reprisals by the Taliban. And so I'm not sure I see what the problem is here. I kind of get why they're doing that. I would, again, like to point out that there is absolutely no reason for everybody to leave their Twitter accounts from their full timeline.

Tweetdelete.net, which Jason and I both use. Tweets are done in context and in time. And do we need to see a picture of an Afghan interpreter from two years ago? Why not just keep the feed current? Yeah, yeah.

For everyone. Yeah, well, here's the deal. If it has the word Taliban in it and it's not from, I don't know, two weeks ago, just delete them all. Every one of them. And that's kind of what they're doing. So what's the problem? I don't see the problem. Well, I think Twitter needs to do this at the source level, personally.

And then they're still going to leave all the Taliban accounts up because, you know, it's Jack.

Media Candy. This week's episode of Media Candy, or segment of Media Candy anyways, is brought to you by ButcherBox. Believe it or not, summer is almost done. If you're like me and you've just moved somewhere that gets cold, that means there's not too much longer to get together with friends and families and spend time outdoors.

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I love this article. It was so good. The same tricks that nearly destroyed online journalism now threaten to take over the streaming service. In these late pandemic days, there's woozy familiarity to the screen where we make most of our entertainment decisions. Basically, they're going through and saying, holy crap, Netflix has totally clickbaited their homepages.

Okay. So, I've taken a look at it, and I have to agree. There's a lot of skin. There's a lot of misleading thumbnails. There's a lot of misleading everything. I actually did not realize that they had gotten so far into doing it that they now basically, when you submit a movie to Netflix, you submit a whole bunch of different thumbnails, and they will change the thumbnail based on your movie preferences.

They said they have one of their examples. If you watch a lot of romance, the company might serve you a thumbnail for Good Will Hunting that features Matt Damon and Minnie Driver kissing. If you love comedies, you might get a Robin Williams thumbnail from it, et cetera, et cetera. And as they point out, if you happen to be black, you might get a relatively minor character in a movie that's black as the thumbnail.

Ain't that great? I have noticed. I do get the Robin Williams one when they show me Good Will Hunting. That's funny because I watch mostly comedy. And they're saying that over the spring and summer, things have looked a bit different. They've gotten a bit more brazen in their strategies and are just like full on like – I think they said that there was something like – there's a documentary called Ragnarok, right?

Which is basically just about Norse mythology. They use Thor's hammer to try to get you to click into it because, you know, why not? Yeah. Even though there's no Marvel, there's no Thor, there's no nothing. And a lot of sex, a lot of all that. But they said that something is starting to change over there.

They were basing their metric on if a viewer had seen two minutes of a show or not, and obviously that's a stupid and bad metric. But what they're starting to do is they're starting to shift away from that and basically saying, did they watch 80% of the series or 80% of the movie?

And that's the new metric that show creators are starting to get. And that's good because that can kind of stop the clickbait. Maybe they've had a change of heart and realized that short-term gains are not good for long-term profit. You know what they also do, which drives me absolutely insane?

Your list moves every time you log in. Sometimes it's at the top. Sometimes it's two down. Sometimes it's like seven down. Yeah. And they change the order of recently watched all the time, which is especially annoying because my kid will like get into one show and like basically, okay, now I'm just going to go to Paw Patrol or now I'm just going to go to whatever the hell other thing he's watching.

And it's always moving around and especially now that my kid has a rudimentary understanding of how to use the remote. It's driving him butt nuts because he can't find it, which means now I have to walk downstairs and find it for him. Just leave it in the same damn place. I know. Stop it. Leave it alone. What's wrong with people?

I forgot to put this in one in before. Did I mention The Hustler Season 2 is back? No. I didn't think so. We just found out about it on accident because I was like, oh, is The Hustler coming back? It's the Craig Ferguson show where it's like a game show with four people or five people.

And one of them is like the inside person trying to steal the money from the other people. It's a great show. I love it. But yeah, there's like seven episodes into Season 2 already. So if you like Season 1 and you didn't know that Season 2 was back, definitely get on it. And if you – I just like the show.

I think it's a really fun show. It's kind of like The Mole, but it's funny because Craig Ferguson's in there. But it's good. It's a really good show. I quite enjoy it. Well, speaking of finding out things by accident, while I was scrolling around trying to find a show for my kid, I scumbled across the fact that Season 7 of Grace and Frankie has come out.

And I do love that show. Not the entire season. So far, it's just four episodes, thanks COVID, since all four main cast members are about 3,000 years old. They're taking it safe. So this seventh season will be the last, and apparently we will get more than just the four episodes someday.

Okay. Hopefully. When they get around to it? When they get around to it. I've watched the first one. It's very good. Okay. Maybe they're on the same schedule as the guys from Billions are because they finished the first half of the last season and then COVID hit.

And it's like, okay, they said they were going to get back to it, but no timeline, no nothing yet. I'm like, come on, guys. They've already done another season of Succession that comes out in October. Right. I want all my dystopian, crazy, evil people, and I want it spread out.

But I don't want them all to come at the same time because then I just might get happy when they're all off the air. It's not fun. I'm sorry. Speaking of that, I still have not watched Ted Lasso Season 2, and now I shall tell you why. We currently do not. Even though we just buy Apple products left, right, and center, and they give stuff away for free, they have not been giving away Apple TV for free recently.

We don't have it currently, and I am waiting to purchase it for Foundation so I can watch Ted Lasso Season 2 and the first season of Foundation, and my wife wants to watch the second season of The Morning Show. But, ugh. Yeah. They made another season of that thing? It's coming, yeah.

So when both of those things drop, we will actually pay for Apple TV again and get everything done at once. And I was going to say, it doesn't really matter if I've seen it or not because things have shifted so much and the zeitgeist is so fast. Like, people that watched Ted Lasso Season 2, right when it came out, talked about it for a hot week.

Nobody's talking about it anymore. So, whatever. I'll watch it when I watch it. Well, everybody in there is talking about it, but we just talk about it in chat or on Discord or other places. We don't post about it anymore. But, I mean, it's better than Season 1 as far as I'm concerned. So, I don't know.

Well, I'm looking forward to it, and I will see it. I actually watched John Oliver's episode on Afghanistan last night. I generally try not to watch the show anymore. I'm sure that was cheerful. Here's the thing. Once you know the shtick and you know that he is nothing but outrage and sadness porn, I can just let it go in the background and at least get some information out of it.

But, you know, his acting style now is really borderline coming up to the girl who plays the main character on Discovery. Miss Exasperated. Everything is so, oh, dangerous, and we have to do it now.

John Oliver is in the same bucket now. Because once he gets started, he does the same damn thing. And I'm just like, okay, John, whatever. Can you give me some information on the timeline on why I should be upset about something? And then I just go, okay, doesn't affect me, whatever. I think he's down to his last episode at home.

Yeah, that's done. So, maybe when he gets back inside, things will shake it up a bit. I mean, I get it. Yeah, I think they're back September 12th. Right. But that's that. And I saw this one come across the wire this morning, and I just had to chuckle. Spotify spent $230 million on Gimlet, but leaked data shows the podcast studio has lagged behind others at the studio giant or the audio giant.

And insiders cite unclear strategy and internal tensions. $230 million for a podcast studio. Okay. Get that. They had Reply All, which was their biggest show, also called Shit We Already Knew. But we didn't know at the time was that it was a horrible place to work, and the people there were racist and misogynistic, and one of them got the boot, and they're retooling the show now, as if anyone cares anymore.

But it turns out everybody else that they picked up, like Parcast and The Ringer, if you look at the graphs in this article, like, their output has gone through the roof, you know? These guys are doing 200 hours of programming a month, which is ridiculous. That's more than any one person would ever listen to.

Why would you do that? See, that's the biggest problem. Everybody's shitting out so much stuff. Little guys like us can't get ahead anymore. It's terrible. It's terrible. But I just think it's funny that, you know, Gimlet, who I always thought was overrated to begin with, finally has their thing.

But, you know, it doesn't really matter. The only people that are going to get, you know, hurt in this are the low-level employees. But at least they're unionized now. So... It's true. Yeah. Yeah. The associate managers or the associate producers there now start at $73,000. I'm like, I should go work for Gimlet.

You might want to dust off that resume. Yeah, I'm not going to Brooklyn. Fuck that noise. Cups and doodads. I just want to do a quick shout-out last week. Josh asked me about his girlfriend's computer setup, and I gave some recommendations.

Remember that one? I do. All right. Just making sure I'm not making it up in my head, because things like that happen sometimes. But he asked for a shout-out to his girlfriend, Anne. So, Anne, shout-out to you. And hopefully he hooked you up with something nice. And you're streaming like a champ now.

So, I moved, obviously. And when I arrived, I discovered there was a little note in our doorbox for Nextdoor, for a private group for the area, which I signed up for and immediately have never checked again. But Nextdoor seems to have realized that my account has been activated, and I'm somewhat tied to a business, apparently.

So, Nextdoor is now trying to get businesses to claim pages on their app. And I've gotten multiple emails asking if my business, which I shut down three years ago, wants to claim the page on Nextdoor, because it's very important. Why is it very important? Why is it very important?

I don't know. Oh, because you can advertise. You can advertise for as little as $20 with a local deal and grow your local customer base. And every neighbor on Nextdoor is verified, so you can trust that you're reaching real people who are real racists, who live in real zip codes that matter most. Exactly. And for $50, we'll not tell anybody that you hate black people, which is the only way Nextdoor makes money.

If I had a business selling Confederate flags, I'd be all over this shit. No doubt. No doubt. Oh, my God. Silly people. Silly people. Speaking of silly people, Elon has unveiled the Tesla bot, which was technically a dude in a suit.

Okay. This was during the company's AI day, a day that technically doesn't exist. That's right. I thought that was funny. Get back to be on ML day. Yeah. Not MLK day. Yeah. Don't confuse the two. Which is not celebrated on Nextdoor.

No. Not at all. Just tying it all together. The Tesla bot, they say, will use the same AI systems that help power the company's full self-driving systems. Oh. So it's going to – so if I wear a stop t-shirt. Yeah. If you don't, it's just going to kill your family.

Way to go. Way to go. Yeah. Whatever. Yeah. I mean, half the time when I read the stories and just go through the news, I'm like, I can't believe we live in this world right now. But you know that – this is tongue-in-cheek. There's no way they're going to make a fucking robot. No, of course not.

No, this is a joke. If they do, I hope they just use the flamethrower on it. Exactly. Yeah. Well, I hope they don't equip it with it. That's for damn sure. That's true. That's true. Yeah. The robot delivers your flamethrower V2. And speaking of stupid stuff, I saw this in the news, and I was just going to let it go by, but I can't.

I can't not talk about it. Lumen. Lumen is a crowdfunded tracking device which purports to analyze your breath to determine what state your metabolism is in so you can lose weight. Okay. No. No. No.

People have spent millions of dollars. There have been countless years of research into trying to unlock the secrets of metabolism. No one has figured it out. And you know what, Lumen? You fucking haven't figured it out either, and it certainly isn't done by blowing into a fucking tube. Theranos 2.0.

Yep. What a load of shit. That is such a load of shit. That's great. And I saw this one that was pretty fun. Steve Jobs inscribed and signed Apple II manual has sold for $787,484, and it wasn't even an NFT. You know what I would do if I bought that?

I would immediately turn it into an NFT and get my money back. Take a picture of it, make a video of me burning it and then selling it immediately because I don't know if you've noticed, NFTs are making a comeback. That's what people keep telling me on Twitter.

I know. It's so funny. I'm like, okay. I'm like, I don't care. People are bored again. Just the rich people are playing in that. If you're not rich and you're buying an NFT, you're – well, I can't use the words that I would usually say anymore. Just go with dumb, Jason.

You're just dumb. Yes. But the inscription was, Julian, your generation is the first to grow up with computers. Go change the world. Stephen Jobs, 1980. Pretty cool. Pretty cool. Not $787,000 cool, but neat.

At the library, who and the – Joey wrote in. That's Joe E, not Joe Y. You know, last name. Just trying to point that out because it just confused my brain. How about we just go with Joe and get onto the bit?

Okay. Hi, guys. Relatively new listener but love the show. I wanted to turn you on to an audio book, which is probably the best book of a – I'm just going to go to the TLDR. Listen to A Gift of Time by Jerry Merritt. Never heard of it. So I will take a gander at that. Never heard of it. I finished Stand on Zanzibar this week because it was a long book.

For audio, it was 21 hours. So definitely a long book. It was fun. It was really fun. I enjoyed it. Like I said, I want to go back to the beginning now and start to – because the first couple chapters were a little confusing. And I started to listen to him on my walk yesterday and I'm like, oh, now it all kind of clicks back in.

But it was – I thoroughly enjoyed the book, especially for something written in 1968. There's some really – I mean, old science fiction, man. It's good stuff. It's good stuff. And I saw this over on Twitter from Dennis E. Taylor, our man with Bob.

He says, for those who have been asking about future books, I've just signed a four-book deal with Audible. Two Bob and two non-Bob. All right. Bob's – cool. The Bob shall live. I'm looking forward to more Bob books, actually. I'm pretty excited that we're going to get some.

And I read a quick little book, The Cellar by Catherine Lowe. Now, why would I have read this? This is not in my particular milieu. It's kind of an interesting book. It's a bit young adult-y. It's a bit time-travel-y. It's a bit history-y. It's a lot of stuff.

It's very well-written. Catherine Lowe was one of my classmates in high school. And she released a book, so I, of course, read it, and I really did enjoy it. I seem to have a strange amount of authors that came out of my high school and my class. There's also a romance writer, a very well-known romance writer, that was in my class in high school.

So we seem to have a preponderance of authors that came out. But I can highly recommend this book, particularly if you happen to have a teenager. It's good stuff. The Cellar by Catherine Lowe. Well, well done, Catherine. We're on of the week. Ryan, we were just talking about NFTs, and there's a new one here that is just – it's the first NFT restaurant in New York City.

Okay. Do I buy an NFT of a hamburger I can't eat? No, you buy your NFT as a membership, and then you can transfer the membership through the blockchain. So this is literally something that does not require any blockchain technology, does not require – you know what it requires?

A card that you can then give to somebody else if you don't want to use it anymore. Okay. This is the stupidest fucking thing that I could have ever thought of, and it comes from VCR Group. Now, the V in VCR Group is where the plot thickens.

That would be Gary Vaynerchuk. Of course. Hustle porn superstar and godfather of the work-till-your-dead crowd. He's the one that came up with this. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Slated to open fall of 2022. So who wants to place bets that this is actually ever going to open now? Yeah. Yeah. You know, Brian, we could have said that this was going to be – we could have done the first NFT restaurant and got the press off of it.

What this actually is is this is the first vaporware restaurant. Ah, yes. Knowing Gary, he'll probably come through with it, but it makes no fucking sense. Okay. The membership is in the blockchain as an NFT. Yeah.

Why can't I just get a fucking membership card like every other restaurant that I go to? Because it's – Okay. That's what I mean. You can't fucking wrap your mind around how stupid this shit is. There's absolutely no point for this, but, you know. Okay.

None whatsoever. Yeah. Moving on. I'm hungry. Brick-a-brick. So I saw this link cross my feed. A couple people had posted it, and I got – it's an intriguing title.

Science confirms that forgetting things is actually a sign of very high intelligence. So first I forgot to click on the link a few times, but it kept appearing. And I'm, you know, somebody that is of very high intelligence. So I clicked on it finally to go read it and, you know, maybe learn something interesting. It's at physics-astronomy.org.

Promising, promising URL there. Probably got it from hover.com. And lo and behold, I don't know if anybody else has gone to look at this link yet. This is an article in which the person forgot to remove caps locks, so they must be very smart indeed. I won't bother with any quotes. Just go to site and read in strong, bad voice.

Strong, bad. Science confirms that forgetting things is actually a sign of very high intelligence. There's actually no link to the actual study in here. There's no actual information in here. There's no real English in here. I don't know what the fuck this is.

Dude, okay, okay, here we go. Open image and new tab. Let's see here. Okay. The physics and astronomy zone, home of the latest discoveries, common knowledge, no comma, and wisdom, no period. Okay, there's a winner here.

What's really great about this is when you go to the website, obviously a WordPress site, the logo is very small in the top corner, so you can barely read it, but you have to right-click on it and you can expand it. And then you'll see it in all its glory. And there's a really weird background tile that looks to be maybe Hong Kong.

I don't know where exactly this might be. South Paul. Oh, you can make it bigger. Who knows where the hell that's at? This is some prime, prime website building here, Brian. I don't know why you don't believe this. It does make me question which friends of mine posted this link because obviously they just read the headline and posted it and didn't bother checking it out.

I do like one of the comments made. Someone also forgot to include links to original studies or traceable citations, making this a non-compelling piece. However, it does a great job pegging the irony meter. Okay. Oh, yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. Tylon bombs the country with tree seeds.

Scientists at CERN may have detected a new ghost particle. This looks like something that would be on the screen on Mulder's computer on an over-the-shoulder shot on the X-Files. Right. Yeah. This is good. This is really good.

I highly recommend, Brian, that you go get this banner and we make a Grumpy Old Geeks version of it for sure. We are back this week with Dave Bittner.

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 back, Dave. Thank you very much. Before we get into things, if you'll indulge me, over on Caveat, Ben and I did a special episode just talking about Apple's whole CSAM thing.

So if that's a conversation that interests you and if you haven't checked out Caveat yet, that's a good place to check it out. And I'm particularly pleased with how the show turned out. So, yeah, give it a listen. All right. I won't ask for any spoilers.

Don't tell me how it ends. Well, we don't really know yet, do we? We do not. We shall see. More to come. Stay tuned. Time will tell. Speaking of endings of a sort, did you finish The Bad Batch, Dave? It has come to its first season conclusion.

No. Okay. No. Well, let me ruin it for you. No. Well, so we sampled the first episode of The Bad Batch and then we bailed on it and went back to Clone Wars. And we've been going through Clone Wars using someone's guide to the episodes of Clone Wars that are worth your time, basically, that sort of list.

So we've been making our way. Can you put that in the show notes? Because I kind of want to watch the Clone Wars, but I don't want to watch all of it. Yeah. My son Jack is the one who manages the list, so I'll ask him for a link and I'll send that along. But it means – it's great because it means we're skipping four or five episodes at a time where evidently nothing happens.

Ah, filler. And yeah, which The Clone Wars seems to be full of. Yes. And I guess that's a show where you know – it's a problem with these prequel shows where you know there are going to be no consequences for any of the characters because they have to survive to be in the big blockbuster movie that we know happened, right?

Yeah. But anyway, long story to say that we checked out the first episode of The Bad Batch and kind of went, eh, okay. So I think we will probably get back to it when we make our way through Clone Wars. But we were kind of – Bad Batch didn't blow us away with that first episode.

So how has the rest of it been? It didn't blow us away all the way through. It seems like they're setting them – it seems like they're setting themselves up for a much more interesting second season. I found myself as I continued to watch liking the characters more.

They actually spent a little time doing some character development. But it's no Mandalorian. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Fair enough. And it seems like those – I think we discussed this. One of the shortcomings of the animated versions of the Star Wars universe is that they're quite often illustrated radio where the scripts are written in such a way where the visuals don't really matter much.

You know, you say, oh, let me walk over to this door and open it. You know. Pew, pew, pew. I got him. Right. Right. That sort of thing. Stormtroopers, why can't I hit anything with this blasted phaser? Yeah.

Yeah. Exactly. Oh, I'm sorry. Phaser, wrong universe. This blasted blaster. That's right. You're going to lose your street cred there for Star Wars, Star Trek. It's funny you mention that though because that is like one of the bigger debates that's going on online right now and they think they've solved it.

The why can't stormtroopers hit anything when the clone troopers seem to. And that is actually the almost canon reason that is being given out there is the clone troopers were trained, you know, military clones and they were good shots. And that's why Obi-Wan, like Ben Kenobi on Tatooine, thought that, you know, stormtroopers could actually shoot really well.

And then, you know, they switched over to basically conscripted military with the Empire and they're not as good as the clone troopers and they can't hit shit. That is basically almost canon. I wonder if there's anything to the change in helmet design that they actually have worse view out of the later helmets than they did out of the clone helmets.

Because if you look at the plastic part where you can see through, it's you have the two little portholes in the stormtrooper helmet versus the long strip that wraps around the side in the Mandalorian helmet and the clone trooper helmet. I'm getting far too deep into this.

I'm reasonably, I'm reasonably sure it was meant to sell more merchandise, Dave, but sure. I mean, the simple answer is it would be a really short series if they knew how to aim, you know? Yeah, that's true. Yeah. That's true. Luke and Leia get shot down swinging over in the Death Star in the first movie, end of series.

Exactly. Well, not even that. Leia gets shot on the boat at the beginning. Boom. Done. Okay, Bob's your uncle. Let's go. The boat? Definitely the wrong series. Ah, well, you know. I think of it as a lifeboat because that little ship that got sucked up into the Duba Hickey, you know, it looked like a little lifeboat that she was on.

I know it was an imperial, whatever. I don't give a shit. Why are you nerds? All right. Don't you dare try to put us in a separate category from you. Don't you dare. How dare you, sir? Oh, you have offended my honor.

Jason storms off to go look through his Sandman comic books. Those stupid nerds. Right, right. Exactly. Oh, God. All right. I found this one from Alexandria's Tech on Twitter, and it is a Twitter thread.

Here are some beginner cybersecurity and information security resources that are free. And people always ask us about these types of things, and it looked like a pretty decent list, so I tossed it in the show notes. Excellent. So if you're one of those folks trying to get into cybersecurity, go check them out because they're free.

Free. And I think it's also worth mentioning that cybersecurity is one of those areas where if you are self-taught, that does not necessarily put you out of the running for good, high-paying jobs. Oh, not at all. I think there's a tradition of respect for folks who came up that way.

So I guess my point is don't let that discourage you if there's so much available online. If you're one of those folks who can go out and be a self-starter and teach yourself a lot of this stuff, you could save yourself a lot of money by doing it that way and not going through the traditional ways.

Yeah. I mean, Brian and I are self-taught. We had long careers. It wasn't in cybersecurity, but we still used a keyboard to make money. Right. That's true. Yeah. Absolutely. So I put this video in here.

Are you guys familiar with the series from Wired on the five levels of difficulty where they have an expert come in and explain some topic of technical complexity and they start off by explaining it to like a toddler?

Yes. We actually had one of these on the show before I think you brought. I remember checking it out. Yeah. It was pretty good. I think we did. I really enjoy that series and they just released a new one. And Brian, I put this in here for you specifically. This is five levels of difficulty explaining machine learning.

And it's quite good. I would actually really enjoy the video if it was somebody who kept saying AI and then getting slapped in the face. With a trout. Funk. Funk. What are those boxing gloves on a long spring?

Yes. I'm sorry. Machine learning. So as I was saying, artificial intelligence smack. Bonk. Yeah. But one of the things I like about this series is that even when you – because they start at such a low level, I find that with a lot of these technical things, when people take certain bits of information for granted, that it's easy to miss things.

And so I enjoy starting at the very low level. Even in this one, there are little things that I picked up along the way that might not have been really solid, clear understandings that I had. And so coming through this way, I just find it's a really interesting and effective way to learn about this stuff.

I enjoyed it very much. Cool. Can we get them to do a version of vaccines? Or Tesla auto drive? Uh-huh. Sure. Sure. No, they're a good series. And it's always nice to go back because you build up certain preconceptions over the years, and sometimes those are wrong, and you can get them corrected very quickly when you watch these sorts of things.

Yeah. Yeah. Jason, you should volunteer to do one about podcasting. Uh, no. I don't volunteer for shit. I'm just picturing you explaining podcasting to a toddler, and then eventually just having a smackdown brawl with whoever they bring in to be the so-called expert.

Here's the opening 10 seconds of the video that gets cut immediately. Jason's sitting across from a five-year-old. Fuck Gimlet. Right, right. No, no, no. Take two. Listen, you little shit.

It's called mic technique. Yeah. Yeah. If you're on Spotify, you're not a podcast. God damn it. Wear your headphones. All right. Anyways. We do have a little security. Maybe I'm just doing those for fun now. You got it. Can someone loan me a toddler, please?

Mine is predisposed. You could just use Bammers and have them sitting in the other seat, you know. That would actually be quite funny. I would watch that. Yeah. All right. So around 38 million records from north of 1,000 web apps that use Microsoft's Power Apps Portal's platform, I say that five times fast, were left exposed online, according to researchers.

This is said to have included data from COVID-19 contact tracing efforts. Well, at least finally somebody gets to look at it. I guess that's a good thing. Vaccine registrations and employee databases, such as home addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers, and vaccination statuses. Data from some large companies and institutions were exposed, including American Airlines, Ford, the Indiana Department of Health, and New York City public schools.

The vulnerability has mostly been resolved, except, of course, this data is probably out there now. Microsoft provided a statement, our products provide customers flexibility and privacy features, designs, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Basically, what you end up finding out is, much like Amazon web servers, they left the default to not protected.

And you're supposed to switch it on yourself. Yeah, that works. Yes. Well, I think the good outcome of this is that Microsoft is changing that. They are no longer going to have it default to having everything open to the wind.

And they've also released a tool where you can scan your own instances here to see if they are vulnerable. So, pretty decent response from Microsoft, but it's sort of, you know, the horse is out of the barn. Yeah. This next story I put in here, this is about sort of a follow-up on the Poly Network hack.

That was the guy who they're referring to as Mr. White Hat. We talked about this at the top of the show, yes. Oh, did you? Yeah. So, give us some more deets, Dave. Well, all the money's been returned. So, not only did the thief return the $600 million, the thief returned the $500,000 bounty that they received from Poly Network.

So, returned the reward. Right. Return the reward, not just the money. So... Because, yeah, we were talking about this at the beginning of the show, saying that he got $610 million and he returned $610 million, but he should have kept one for the bug bounty.

But, apparently, they gave him half a mil for the bug bounty and he said, no thanks. Now, that's interesting. That's very interesting. Yes. Because, for one simple reason, somebody's got to cash that check. And then they'll know where to find Mr. White Hat.

Mr. White Hat with Mr. Brown Shorts, because I'm sure he's somewhere shitting his pants right now. Well, and that's really the interesting part of the story, isn't it? That what's going on behind the scenes here? Is this person...

Has the heat been put on this person from whatever powers that be to say, okay... Sorry. Sorry. I had a frog in my throat. Knock it off. Give the money back. And go away and don't ever come back.

Or who knows to what degree. But it sure seems like that, that this person was under some pressure because, I mean, to give back the... Well, it's also... It also makes me wonder if this person gave back half a million dollar bounty, is that chump change for them?

Could be. Yeah, which, I mean, if that's chump change, why are you doing this for... Why aren't you just on an island sipping Mai Tais? I don't quite understand. So, yeah. Okay. Well, you have to go to an island that doesn't have an extradition agreement with the United States.

That's the tricky part. There's plenty of those. Moscow. Right. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. So, yeah, I thought this is... Earlier today, I hadn't seen the news about him returning the bounty, or even that he had gotten a bounties, or she, we should always say or she, or they, or whatever pronouns anybody's using these days.

I'm betting this is a group. That's why I'm saying they. I'm not saying it's a trans person. I'm just thinking this is a group, not an individual. Right. I think that's right. My suspicion is that this was another one of those things that got a little bit out of control.

Somebody was using some automation, found themselves with more than they had bargained for. Holy shit, we have $610 million. Right. Right. Exactly. We got ourselves in a little four-next loop that got out of control here. Yeah. I think of that scene in Hackers, where like, you hacked a bank across state lines, you know?

It's like, Joey, Joey, Joey, what were you thinking? Mm-hmm. Exactly. So- I just, I really want the real story on this. I really want to find the real story on this, because you know it is so much more interesting than anything we can come up with.

Yeah, could be. I doubt we'll ever hear it, though, but who knows? Maybe someone's memoir someday will give us the real story after someone retires, when we're all old and gray, or older and grayer, I guess, is the way to say it. Yeah.

I would think about that if it was a spy story, but I think this will probably come out sooner than later, because somebody's going to fuck up. You know this. I mean, if this person was smart enough to get this money out, then they're smart enough to do something else dumb. That's the thing about hackers.

They're very smart, and they do dumb things, so- Lazy is also a big part of it, so yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Not a whole lot of discipline there. Mm-hmm. Not from, yeah, not from the Russians, anyway. It's interesting. So this next story I put in here, there's a new zero-click iPhone exploit being used to deploy NSO spyware.

All right. This is a report over on Bleeping Computer, found actually two different zero days that have been found. This one is an iMessage exploit. What's most interesting about this is Apple seems to be saying, yeah, iOS 15 is right around the corner, so...

Don't click anything for just a little bit. Right. Please don't click. Yeah. You might want to put your phone down until we release that. Yeah. But this is a zero-click vulnerability, so this is, you know, no clicking required for this one.

So Apple seems to be signaling that iOS 15 will take care of this, or I suppose another way to say it is that if and when a fix comes for this, it will be in iOS 15. That's not a sure thing. It's possible they could come out with something in the next few days.

They're going to have to backpatch 14, because 14 is going to be out for a while. They can't just leave that out there. Yep. Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. But it's interesting that these are still coming, and... I think everybody's looking at Messenger now because of, I mean, that's where all these bugs are coming from lately.

Seems to be. Yeah, they're all targeting that. So everybody's kind of focused in on, like, oh, well, the Messenger guys weren't very tidy. Let's see what else we can find. Christmas! Yeah, that's a really good point. That's a really good point. And how much of it is their own, as you say, tidiness, or just how big a surface area is Messenger to begin with?

Exactly. I don't know the answer to that, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But they're having a lot of success over there, so it's got to be an interesting team to be on at Apple right now. Yeah. I would imagine. We're going to need you guys to come into the office. Yeah, listen, about those weekend plans.

Yeah. At least you get those TPS reports done. Right. Right. Right. And finally, I just put this in here for you, Jason. This came across on Twitter, and I couldn't resist. This is a scholarly publication. Looks like someone's PhD publication.

It's called Skateboard Tricks and Topological Flips. Yes. I'm looking at it now. And it is a formal explanation for basically how skateboard tricks work. And my understanding from this is that there are only four.

Yeah. It is – skateboard tricks are a combination of some very basic building blocks. Now, I'm not a skateboarder, so maybe, Jason, you're going to say, well, duh. No, I'm intrigued. I'm very intrigued here.

Okay. All right. So tell me more about it. One of the comments in the Twitter thread was that it seems like maybe this was written by someone who is not as good a skateboarder as the rest of his or her buddies. So they wrote this as just a bitter way of dismissing them.

They did a whole PhD dissertation to dismiss them out of bitterness because he was jealous of those friends that could do more tricks than he or she did. Very well. Could be possible. Could be possible. I'm trying to get some of the gifts to load here. They've actually animated some of the mathematical formulas here.

And, yeah, there's only so many ways you can flip a plank, you know? So it really is only so many ways you can flip a plank with your feet. Right. But if you understand these mathematical formulas behind what's going on, will that make you a better skateboarder?

Hell no. No. Busting your ass for years is what makes you a better skateboarder. Okay. I'm sorry, it took me six years to land a tray flip. So, yeah, I know how hard this stuff is. It's not, you just, okay, I can't sit there and go, I can't, was it a beautiful, I can't beautiful mind my way into, you know, a double kickflip grind down the stairs.

You can't just think about it and just do it. Well, I was thinking like the class I took in college on the physics of light that was all about lenses and that sort of thing, that understanding all of that did make me a better cameraman back when I was a TV cameraman.

So, that was my line of thinking for this. But that really was more of a understanding the underlying principles here rather than anything requiring any sort of athleticism, which skateboarding requires. Yeah, you're talking about apples and bricks here.

It's like totally different, totally different realms. But it's funny. It's cute. It's cute. But yeah, it's, you know, this actually, these formulas are probably pretty good for video game developers who want to use these formulas for the actual flip tricks.

But, you know, you can just stick a couple of motion sensors on a board and let a 15-year-old go out and do every trick known to man, which they can all do now. And you got your data right there. You don't even need to bother with it. But it's fun. It's fun. You know, that's an interesting question, Jason, because, so as someone who grew up skateboarding, when you look at the things that the kids are doing today, is it amazing to you the things that they can do?

It's flat out incredible. And, you know, we have one single reason why these kids can do this stuff nowadays, and it's Tony Hawk Pro Skater. Because there are so many amazing tricks that these kids are doing that you could never even fathom doing until you started playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater.

And then that showed people in their mind's eye that these things can be done. It is possible. And so they went out and did it. And, you know, it's like the four-minute mile. You know, it is just like the four-minute mile. Once somebody sees something, somebody do it, even though it's a video game, you can figure out how to do it.

And, you know, just with a lot of time, a lot of practice, a lot of falls, a lot of bruises, and a lot of broken bones. A lot of concussions. I never got concussed. I got a lot of broken bones and bruises and things like that from skateboarding, but I never got concussed, surprisingly. But, yeah, it's...

Well, I think the equipment is also so much better, too. No, it's not. Let's not completely discount that. No, it's the same. Okay, now Jason's going to tell me it's the same. Here's what's going to... They're made out of completely different materials now. Come on. No, they're not. They're wood. They're exactly the same.

All they've done now is they've lowered... They've taken out the risers that we used to have. Basically, the trucks use smaller wheels, but the bearings are the same. The wheels are still urethane. The trucks are exactly the same. They've just kind of scientifically made the boards a little bit smaller, and the nose and the tail...

So you're saying they're different. No, no, no. It's exactly the same board, though. They're exactly the same, except for all the changes that they made. No, no, no, no, no. But they're pieces of wood with fucking metal and wheels on them. It's not like they made them out of space and shit. Well, I didn't say they made them into spheres, Jason.

Jesus. No. Well, let me interject here, and cause much consternation by coming to this from my position as a rollerblader, which I know you skateboarders love.

Oh, Dave. So having come up during the rise of rollerblading, right, when it was the hottest thing back in the 80s, and the reason I asked this question was because when I look at the things that kids are doing on rollerblades today, particularly just like going down sets of stairs backwards

at incredibly high rates of speed, just things that, as you say, I never would have imagined trying. Well, to skateboarding's Tony Hawk, there was Xanadu for you, Dave. There you go. Thank you very much.

Yeah. No, there was Bladen. The movie was actually called Bladen. Yeah. Try doing that without lacing up your blades. That's what skateboarding's like. No, I know what you're talking about, though, Dave, because I remember people that were rollerblading and things of that nature when I was a kid, and then obviously living in Santa Monica and being right off the beach path and the boardwalk there.

People are nuts. Like, they're doing crazy-ass stuff on those things now. Yeah. Yeah. These kids today. Kids today. I tell you. Get a skateboard. Can't believe you are a blader, Dave.

I just lost so much respect for you. It's not cool. No, no, no. Oh, God. No, no, no, no. Next thing I know you're going to be saying, you like the prequels. Let's see what's coming next. Padme is so much better than Leia.

Well, there's a case to be made for that. Let's be honest. All right. All righty, then. I guess that's it. Misa, see you guys next week. I'm going to go hop on my skateboard that was just manufactured yesterday, but is absolutely the same as when made in 1980.

It's pretty much this, yeah. Unless you have a banana board that's made out of plastic. The wood is exactly the same. Seven ply. Trucks are the same. Wheels are the same. Bearings are the same. Just a little bit different shape. And you can still ride the same board. Doesn't matter. Still do the same tricks.

Just saying. Someday you'll have to explain them to me because I really do not understand skateboarding. Like, just the physics of it eludes me that the things that seem to be done are possible. Well, luckily there is a Twitter feed that you yourself put in here, which explains that to you. I was trying to put out a little bit of an olive branch there, Brian.

So thanks. I was going to say, Dave, next time you're in town, you can come and ride my board and I will show you how it's done. And I will take you step by step. I will show you the five levels of skateboarding. I would like a video of this, but I also, Jason, then want you and rollerblades going along with them.

I can't. There you go. I would try it. I would absolutely do that for the video, but my leg is broken and I can't stand up on it anymore. So if I can do it with one foot and a rollerblade and push with the other foot, I'm in. We'll get you a ski pole.

Exactly. I can do it. I can do it one legged. I think I would enjoy a long board. I think that would be fun for me or more fun. I just worry about those little wheels and just, because for me, like the skateboard just stops out from under you and then you're flying forward.

See, that depends on the softness and hardness of the wheels. So for street riding, you have softer, you get like 80, 85A wheels, which suck up the rocks, but are stickier. So our friend David Teeter, who got a long board for his 50th birthday and then went barreling down the street and dislocated both of his arms on his inaugural day.

Yeah. You don't want to do that, but you're in Maryland, so there's not that many hills. So a long board would be fine for you, but you have hard wheels when you're on ramps and riding pools because they're faster. Yeah. And these are not new technologies, Brian. These are not new. These are old. Just saying.

All right. Let's get out of here. Fuck this noise. Yeah, enough is enough. We can agree. We can agree to hate each other. It's fine. All right. Dave, I love you. I love you, too. Now, we just got to find out, like, I feel like Brian's holding back on us.

Like, he had some secret 80s hobby that he's just, he's just not, hasn't mentioned yet. But he's very shameful. Yeah, trying to bang girls at Disneyland was his 80s hobby. We all know that. Not trying, succeeding. Not trying. Succeeding, my friend. Yeah. Right. Okay. That's why it's called The Happiest Place on Earth.

Uh-huh. It was for me. Right. Christening the Haunted Mansion. Many times. They didn't call it the people maker for nothing. Closing shout outs! Over at Patreon, Martin has upped his pledge.

Thank you very much. Thank you. And over at PayPal, we've got Michael, John, Andrew, Tom, Joseph, John, Andre, and Mark. Thank you. And we got no tip jars this week, people. What's going on? We did get a five-star rating from Belgium, though, from Q3671.

I love the show. And then I had to Google translate it. It comes out to, the geeks are witty and funny. I can't live without. Yes. The geeks sind wir gerade in Grappen, ich kann gehen zonder. I don't know if that was close or not, but I'm giving it a shot.

Sounded better in the original Dutch. It did, probably. Because I did it a little more German, I guess. The geeks sind wir gerade in Grappen, ich kann gehen zonder. Full star. We took over Belgium and the language.

Too soon. Too soon. I know. And then I broke into Arnold, who's Austrian. I don't even know where it's going today. Brian, can we put a fucking bow on this? Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFilippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. If you enjoy the show, visit GOG.show slash donate to help us keep the lights on, and we'll love you forever.

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