523: More Buggy and Less Stable

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 are now a value for value enabled podcast. Buy one, get the second one free? Exactly. That's what I'm talking about. Bogo. No, no. It's one of the things we talked about a little bit ago with the new podcast index, you know, crypto scheme that they've been working on, on the Lightning Network.

And you can tip people Satoshis, which is the smallest fraction of a Bitcoin that's out there, which is not a lot of money. But over time, it can add up. And I did this and just let it sit. They have a search engine now, which lets you see all of the value for value enabled podcasts.

Very few players support it. It's just only the new players. But we got some. Okay. Somebody actually sent us some Satoshis already. And they even boosted. I'll take your Satoshis. I don't know what they're worth, but I'll take them. Sure. Not a lot. Not a lot. That's why it takes time.

But I just wanted to let people know that we are now value for value enabled because why not? You know, we've lost most of our advertisers because we have dropped through the threshold thanks to the COVID-19 and the Apple download pandemic Armageddon that happened.

So we are really a listener-supported show for the most part right now. So we need all the help that we can get. So if you love the show, head on over to gog.show slash support and give us a little love. Support. If you want to keep the show going, yes, support us, please.

We really do need it now because, you know, we can't plug crap anymore. Yeah. Seriously. And we do have a little follow-up from Raf here. He sent us the Bitcoin Pizza Day 2021, and it's about some interesting facts that surround this special day in crypto.

At the current price in the 11th anniversary of the pizza purchase, those two pizzas were worth $630 million. So we kind of underestimated that one. If we were on the prices right, we would have been really low on the showcase showdown. Yes, we would have been. All right.

And Barrett writes in, How can AMC tell me they plan on going bankrupt soon without telling me they're going to go bankrupt soon? Well, AMC says it will accept Bitcoin as payment for movie tickets by year end. I'm not sure how that ties in with us now taking Bitcoin. Hmm. Interesting. Well, we're already bankrupt. So, yes, they're going to start taking some Bitcoin.

And, again, do you want to be known as the guy who bought two tickets for the Matrix for $630 million in 10 years? Who are these people spending crypto as if it's cash when you have, oh, I don't know, cash? Yeah. Yeah. For the movie tickets, it makes no sense. It makes less than zero sense.

Publicity stunt. It worked out really well for Elon, too. I guess they missed that news cycle. Yeah. And you remember Oumuamua? Oumuamua? Oumuamua, the mysterious 650-foot-long tube-shaped object that went through our solar system in 2017.

Yes, I do. And I read that book by Avi Loeb all about it, arguing that it had to be aliens. Well, most people still disagree with that. And they're still all fighting about it. And Avi Loeb is basically just saying, oh, you people that deny me with your science, I checked your math. It doesn't work. And then other people check the math and say, yeah, it does.

And then he says, no, it doesn't. And on and on it goes. Great. He said, she said, eggs are good for you. Eggs are bad for you. Oumuamua, Oumuamua, Oumuamua is a spacecraft. No, it's not. Okay. Tune in next week. Eggs in space. I like Avi. He's a smart guy. I mean, look at his list of credentials.

He's no slouch. So, I mean, maybe he's just forgetting to carry the one somewhere. Or maybe everybody else is. Who knows? He'd be fucked up if he was right. Yep. In the news.

Okay, Brian. Facebook has been back in the news thanks to the Wall Street Journal's special reports called the Facebook Files. Hold on, hold on, hold on. I haven't paid any attention to this. Let me guess. They're fucking awful. Yep. They are fucking awful. So, this has been out for a little bit now.

We could have covered it on last week's show. We could have covered it on this week's show. But I'm going to say something. I know it's controversial. But I purposely ignored these articles and the discussion around them because, Brian, you and I have been doing this for eight and a half years. And I'm just fucking exhausted about telling everyone that Zuckerberg, Sandberg, Teal, the entire fucking lot at Facebook should be put on trial for crimes against humanity.

You know, it just happens again and again and again. You know, it's another day, another revelation, another spin from Facebook. We're trying our best. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm just tired of it. I'm really fucking tired of it. And it's getting just boring. So, that's why I didn't even bother covering this.

So, welcome to 2013, Wall Street Journal. Well, we've been here all along just saying the same damn thing. Yeah. It's every article that comes out, every revelation. None of this is surprising to any of us anymore. We know they're fucking horrible people. We know they don't give a shit about anything except their bottom line.

Facebook continues to just drive itself further and further towards irrelevance, as far as I'm concerned. My Facebook usage has dropped dramatically, and not just because I'm disgusted by them as a company. It's all I see on Facebook anymore is password mining.

That's it. Like, it's just constant posts of, how old will you be in 2050? I mean, they might as well just post images saying, tell us your mother's maiden name and your social security number at this point. I think they probably have. As far as I can tell, Facebook has just been completely overrun with these things over the last couple of weeks.

It's useless. Well, you know, it's a filter bubble. You have obviously, you know, you enjoy it. You stay on it too long. You look at it. You read it. And then they think, oh, he must really like this type of content. So, you know, that's the thing about it. It's the filter bubble in action. And the AI, this would have never been a thing if we just had a non-algorithmically derived timeline.

You know, a timeline. Timeline. Yes. Oh, yeah. By the definition of the word. That's a definition to it. That's right. Yes. Not a feed. We want a timeline. And I also didn't add any stories about the inspiration for Dog and Pony Show because rich people are just going to rich and I just don't care.

Okay. It's just not that funny. I mean, it really just wasn't that funny. What is funny, though, is Rivian is out now. They're launching their e-truck, which is a pretty cool truck, I got to say. But speaking of rich going to rich, I can't afford one. But you now have to buy a membership.

You don't have to, I guess, technically. But you can buy a membership for your truck that has complimentary charging on a network that has yet to be deployed. Excellent. And then you get LTE with it as well. I just hate this trend.

There doesn't seem to be any stopping it. You know, I'm sorry. I'm old. When I buy something, I've bought it. Why do I have to have a subscription to it? Why do I have to keep paying for it? It's ridiculous. Yeah. It's also why I didn't cover those damn Amazon TVs. I'm like, no, there's no way in hell that you would get me to buy one of those.

I mean, I am pushing the limits of what I've got with my Roku TV, and even that makes me queasy. But putting Alexa in a TV? Oh, hell no. All right. Well, there's some cracking down in China on this sort of stuff. And sometimes, you know, China going to China, but China sometime right.

There are cracking down. Following the crackdown that we talked about, about gaming by Chinese authorities, ByteDance, which is, you know, TikTok's parent company, is introducing new youth controls for Doyin, which is their TikTok equivalent app in China. Any users confirmed to be under 14 will enter a new youth mode, limited to 40 minutes of usage per day.

That's it. They've also unveiled a new app called, well, I'm not going to even attempt the Chinese here, but the translation is Little Fun Star, which is a TikTok-style short video app with limited subject materials, mostly educational. So that is the point of that one. So, you know, restricting gaming for kids, restricting social media for kids, dropping time down, and time restrictions.

They can't use it between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. when they should be in bed anyways. And not the worst ideas? No, it's not. I wish I could put TikTok limits on most of the adults I know, and myself.

Yeah. Yeah. It's not a bad idea. So I'm all for this. And unfortunately, you try to do it here. I mean, here we can't even get people. Here, here in North America, where people spend $400 to get a fake vaccination card when they could have gotten fucking vaccinated for free, and then they bitch and moan about it.

Yeah, freedom gonna free, so this shit's never gonna fly here, I suppose. But, I mean, it's a—God damn, it's a damn good idea. It is a very good idea. And speaking of China, Amazon has now banned over 600 Chinese brands as part of their review fraud crackdown.

So all these 600 different brands spread over 3,000 seller accounts have basically juiced the system by giving people—offering people free rewards, gift cards, et cetera, for leaving reviews. Which, you know, I mean, again, a lot of people just call that the cost of doing business.

Yep. Yeah. And the thing about that is, too, I wish they would share this list with Instagram, because I'm sure it's the same people over Instagram. Yeah, exactly. It's the same companies that have figured out the system and have it up and running, so. Yep.

And speaking of Amazon and their hardware, they are going to hold a hardware event on September 28th. We have no idea of anything. They promised to share news about its latest devices, features, and services. But that's it. So. Okay. Fire Phone 2 coming to— And speaking of the whole masking, COVID testing, and all of that, Apple has stepped up to the plate a little bit here.

They are mandating more frequent COVID-19 testing for unvaccinated employees. So you don't want to get vaccinated? Fine. But you're going to test up, and you're going to test up often. Oh, man. You know what would be so great? If they got rid of the nasal swabs and all of the COVID testing were anal swabs.

Well, considering I am doing rapid COVID tests, part of what's happening in my office here that I go into is the government is subsidizing rapid COVID tests, even if you've been vaccinated. So twice a week when I go into the office, usually the first day and then like two or three days later, I'm doing rapid COVID tests.

And, I mean, they're not that big of a deal. It goes pretty quickly. It's pretty simple. Yeah, yeah, but I still say if we switched over to anal testing, I mean, it's a small price to pay for you, Brian, for the guaranteed survival of humanity.

Right. That's all I'm saying. A little goose before work certainly wakes you up. Better than coffee. I was going to say, it might save you on coffee. That's for sure. Your Tim Hortons bill will go down. And I love this next one. Social media influencer slash model created from artificial intelligence lands 100 sponsorships.

You know how many more sponsorships that's landed than us? 100. 100. 100. Brian, we just need to become virtual AIs. That's all. I'm all for it. Yes. Rosie. She's a virtual human that was created by Citus Studio X in last year.

And this is over in Korea. And she is going to bring in about $854,000 and seven cents approximately. I love that. Approximately $854,000 and seven cents by the end of the year. And this is what they love about her.

She won't get canceled because she's not caught up in any scandals. She'll always be young. She'll always be young. She's never going to go out of fashion. And if she does, all they got to do is re-photoshop her and boom, Bob's your uncle. Give her the new cool haircut. People are obsolete. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. We are now obsolete. That's fine. I'm tired. No shit.

I have made my way almost to the end of Clarkson's Farm Season 1. It's delightful. Mm-hmm. You know, he actually takes it on the chin more often than not. He realizes he's an idiot half the time. And it's kind of good.

I'm really enjoying it. Yeah. His farmhand just loves to take the piss out of. And that's the best part of the show. Oh, I know. It's the best part. It's the best part. And I watched a documentary on Netflix called Count Me In, all about drumming. If you're into music and if you're into drums, it's pretty phenomenal, actually.

I really, really enjoyed it. Okay, cool. I watched Into the Night Season 2. Mm-hmm. Don't. Oh, damn it. Dude. Really? It is so fucking bad. It is so bad. It is beyond bad.

Oh, man. I mean, like, they didn't even try. That actually bums me out because I really enjoyed the first season. I did, too. Do they wrap it up? Do we know what happens? Or are they leaving it for another crappy season three? Oh, they left it totally open for a crappy season three. But they moved the ball forward almost nothing in this one.

It's, I mean, dude, it's six hours of bad. But it goes quick because there's really not a lot of plot and it just kind of plods along. Maybe I'll skip season two. This is nothing like the first season. Yeah, I seriously. Skip season two. And when season three comes out, watch the recap.

Okay. All right. That's kind of a bummer. But actually kind of good because I'm very far behind in my media consumption. Yeah, yeah. Swap that out for Ted Lasso. It's much better. Okay. I watched a couple movies, too. I watched The Card Counter, which is a new film.

It's kind of a slow burn. It's a weird movie. But we thoroughly enjoyed it. It's not what you think it is. It's not even remotely about poker that much. It's about a guard from Abu Ghraib who gets out and just tries to make a living at poker without letting anybody know it's him and all sorts of stuff.

It's weird. It is very weird. But I thought it was thoroughly enjoyable. It's got a really nice slow burn on it. Good cast. So I give that one a seven and a half. Maybe an eight. About that. All right. And I watched the new M. Night Shyamalan Ding Dong. Old.

Uh-huh. I really, really liked it. I couldn't believe it. I could not believe it. The movie was really good. It was really suspenseful, really creepy. And the twist at the end was finally a really good one.

I mean, he nailed it on this one. I think it's probably been ruined for me because I know what the twist is. So it may not be worth watching because I read some of the funny reviews on it that were very spoiler-filled. I enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it.

Because I knew nothing. I knew what the premise was, but I did not know. All I saw was the first trailer. And that's all I went into it with. And I thought it was pretty good. Cool. Okay. Well, good for him. And I watched Kate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he was pretty good in it. In his, you know, his standard Hitchcockian role.

And I watched Kate on Netflix. Oh, my God. That's a fun movie. It is so fun. It's just ultra-violent fun. Okay. So it's not even that ultra-violent. It's just violent. It's probably got about as much violence as the first John Wick.

Okay. So, but it's funny. It's well shot, well acted. And I swear, it's so weird. Woody Harrelson has just come out as one of the greatest actors of our time. I know. He is just so damn good. Yeah. I mean, he definitely picks roles to his strengths, but yes.

Yeah. He's fantastic in this, so highly recommended. And I do have to say that the Apple TV Roku app is a piece of fucking dog shit. It is so bad. I'm tempted to pick up an Apple TV just so I can watch Apple TV and resume a show. If you, like, seriously, if you pause it, go to the bathroom, and take an extra long Wii, you come back, it already resets, and you can't resume.

You have to go back and fast forward and kind of guess where you were already. Gotcha. Every time. That sucks. Yeah. It's really awful. And I don't even have an Apple TV anymore, so damn it. I love my Apple TVs. Love them. Yeah.

I think I might, because in my new studio here, I do have a giant TV in a big area to do some of the Apple fitness stuff, finally. And I have a yoga mat, so I might get on my yoga, finally. All I have are Apple TVs. That's all. I've got an Apple TV on both our TVs, and we watch everything through that. And it's pretty solid.

Yeah. I normally wouldn't be using it for much, except for Ted Lasso, but Billions came back out, and it's so easy to get Showtime through Apple TV Plus and cancel it. It's actually not about getting it. It's about canceling it. Yes. Super simple for Apple to cancel any of your subscriptions.

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As you probably know by now, Apple has rolled out iOS 15, iPad OS 15, watch OS 8, and TV OS 15. So go get them. We could talk about it, but why? There's seven gazillion articles everywhere about the minuscule little features that they've added.

Yeah, the Accidental Tech Podcast will probably spend 12 hours on just those features. So go ahead and listen to those guys. So do your updates because you've got to do your due diligence and make sure you have the latest security features and all that, and I'm sure there'll be an update in another week to fix the things that people are finding. So there you go.

Yeah. I updated my watch. I don't know what changed. I honestly have no idea what changed. Well, I do notice that when I get a text notification, a little picture of people's text icon, the photos come up with them now. That's the only thing I've noticed. Oh, great. Which is actually annoying.

That sounds like it. Okay. And on the heels of their big hardware announcements last week, I did end up ordering the iPad mini because after eight years of saying, man, I really wish they'd rev the iPad mini, they finally did. So I felt morally obligated to buy one.

And there's a reason for that, too, is because I had that iPhone 12 Pro Max that I got about a month ago, I'm never getting another big phone. I went back to my 11 and put the 12 in a box to wait for the 13s so I can trade it in and just take a bath on it. Right.

So my 13 Pro will be getting here soon. But I mean, the size difference is just I love a small phone. Yeah. I really do. They've just gotten too big. They've gotten ridiculous. Yeah. So I figured a small phone, iPad mini, and then a laptop, and they've got the big iPad for, you know, big stuff when I need it.

But the iPad mini was always just, you just keep it with you at all times. It's just like your little, like, Moleskine notebook that you just always have. You can do everything in it. And it's perfect for reading at night. Perfect. Oh, yeah. Exactly. That's what I love. It's the same size as my little Kindle Paperwhite, but I'd rather read on an iPad, you know?

So, and the pencil, the Apple pencil fits just perfectly with it. And I ended up getting it in purple with a purple cover because I'm festive that way. Just saying. I did, I got it. I want to talk to you about the bridge dock and hub real quick.

Okay. So I got, I got both of these. I had the hub for a while and I've had some issues with it with hard drives unmounting while I'm like, oh, say in the middle of a copy, which is really annoying. So I had all my hard drives have to get plugged directly into the laptop anyway, but then I got the bridge dock so I could keep it on my desk vertically and save some desks.

I can't recommend either, anybody buy either one of these. Okay. Seriously. The, um, the dock is overpriced. It's really nice. It's heavy. But the problem is, uh, if you have, um, uh, file vault turned on, on your Mac and you have to reboot, you still have to take the thing out of the dock, use the keyboard, log in because USB doesn't kick in until after you log in.

So none of your USB devices are, can actually get to it. Right. So you're just sitting there, like you just wave your arms around like a crazy person. Go, why the fuck don't you work? And Oh, file vault. That's why. So, and I've also noticed that it crashes my Mac a lot when I take it in and out of the dock.

Like this thing is a crash machine when I take it in and out. And I don't know why, but if I just come here and I plug the computer directly into the hub, it works fine. I never crash period. So I don't know what it is about that, that docking station that causes my, you know, $4,000 fucking laptop to crash, which is ridiculous in itself.

Um, so I can't recommend that the hub. Like it there's, it's overpriced for what it is. It's hot as hell. There are a bunch of other hubs out there that are probably in a similar lower price point that does the exact same thing. So my bridge stuff, I got to say, definitely not a huge fan. Okay.

All right. Yeah. It's sad. It's sad because they really look nice. And if they worked, I'd be all over it, you know. But they don't. No, they don't. And, uh, I do sound a little different today because I'm on my new Neumann TLM 102 Black Studio Microphone.

Woo! Woo! So if it, uh, if you can hear the mouse farts down the street, it's because I redid the studio this week and we have very, uh, very, uh, you know, reflective floors. So I'm covering, I'm literally surrounded by blankets and pillows and I've got everything in here to try and dampen it down.

But I wanted an upgraded mic. I've been using that RE20 for six, seven years now. Uh, so I'm going to unload it. So if there are any GOG and Jordan Harbinger show fans out there who want a piece of history, hit me up on the discord channel, send me a DM and, uh, we can talk about pricing for that puppy.

All right. And you could be, there's enough DNA from me and Jordan in that thing where you could probably clone the both of us. Have your very own anyways. Oh boy. Uh, we talked a couple of weeks ago about a new feature that Clubhouse was unrolling and we kind of said, you know, this is just what they've got to do now because nobody gives a shit about anything and they've got to try to keep money coming in the door.

So you roll out useless updates. Uh, there's another one now. This was obviously written by their PR person. Clubhouse isn't just an app. You can fire up to attend talks by famous people. It has different types of rooms you can use, including ones where you can have intimate private conversations with friends. And in the future, you may be able to invite those friends to chat by waving at them.

So somebody has reverse engineered certain things in the app to find hidden experimental features. And they found something called a wave button on users' profiles that looks similar to the wave button you see when you first connect to someone on Messenger. Tapping on it will let a friend know you want to chat and the app will only open a room for you if they respond.

So they added a poke. Woo! That's really going to up the valuation on that Clubhouse. Oh. I've been waiting for a reason to get into Clubhouse, and I think wave is the job. Ride the wave, Brian. Ride the wave. Jesus. Just shut the place down already.

At the library. Brian, I found this article, and I thought it was an interesting title. Five real AI threats that make the Terminator look like kindergarten cop. I'm like, okay, that's a little clickbaity. But what it is is it's some bits from a new book called AI 2041, 10 Visions of Our Future by Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Kui-Fan.

Okay. Now, Kai-Fu Lee previously wrote AI Superpowers, which we covered on the show, China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order. Right. And I thought it was an interesting book. He knows his stuff when it comes to, quote, unquote, AI. This book is different because what he does is, him and his co-author, Chen Kui-Fan, he's, like, Kai-Fu Lee is the futurist and AI theorist.

Right. Chen is a science fiction writer. Okay. So what they do is they created these 10- Speculative fiction. Yeah, 10 different speculative fiction stories. But I've finished the first three, because I'm taking my time with them, because they're actually really good stories, just from the sci-fi perspective.

So I'm enjoying the stories. But when the story is done, Kai-Fu Lee comes on and explains all of the AI that was used in the story. And thank God, the first one, he's like, this story talks about machine learning, everything around it, and talks about, you know, how it was invented, what it does, talks about, you know, large data sets and things like that.

And it's, you know, it's done in a very cool way. I might have to pick this up. So far. It's really good. I'll finish it first before I give the full recommendation for it, but I'm enjoying it so far. Okay. Because I like the stories. The stories are really well done. The third one I'm into right now is about deep fakes.

And, uh, it's, it's really good. It's really good. Yeah. And I want to give a super shout out to Nick Crane for sending me a Kindle copy of Darren Brown's new book. Uh, it's the one I mentioned on the show last week, Brian. So they sent me a, uh, a login for a burner Kindle account that I just popped into my, my iPad and downloaded the book and I'm reading it.

And, um, it's really good. It's Darren Brown. I love his stuff. So I have hope to have a thorough review next week. So, but thank you, Nick, so much. That was so awesome of you. Excellent. Dave Bittner is back.

Dave is the host of the Cyber Wire podcast, co-host of the social engineering podcast, Hacking Humans with Joe Kerrigan, co-host of Caveat with Ben Yellen, where they discuss law and policy and surveillance and privacy. And finally, he's the co-host of Recorded Future, where he takes you inside the world of cyber threat intelligence. Welcome back, Dave.

We missed you last week. Yeah, it's good to be back. I was, uh, I was actually on site for three days, uh, being the host of a virtual summit. It was a insider risk summit hosted by a company called Code 42, who's in that business.

Wait, so you were on site for a virtual summit? Well, I was on site because, uh, they had us in a studio. It was very swanky. I had a video wall behind me and, you know, a real crew with real cameras and real audio. And I had a makeup person and all that kind of stuff.

It was very, very, very swanky. Uh, so, and, uh, by all accounts, it went very well. I was, I was, uh, pleased. My job was basically to be the MC and kind of be the glue to connect all the different segments and did a few Q and A, uh, segments, audience Q and A, stuff like that.

But, uh, it was a lot of fun. It was nice to be out there working with a nice crew of people and the folks who organized it were very well organized. So my part was, was easy to do. I had everything I needed. So, uh, sorry to miss our show, but I have to say it was a nice little change of pace. But the important question, how was craft services?

It was delightful. They brought in food every day. Uh, we had a lovely Mexican taco bar one day. Uh, we had, uh, brick oven pizza another day. So, yes, they, they take, they took good care of it. I, I tend not to eat very much when I have to go on stage because the last thing I need is in the middle of, you know, something letting out a gigantic belch, but, so I tend to eat light, but it was very nice.

I was very well taken care of. So first class all the way. Excellent. That's, uh, that's the only thing I really miss from productions. Right, right. So I was thinking about you yesterday, Dave. Remember when you got your new iPhone and you had to do the dance of the authenticator apps?

Yes. Yes. Uh, well, I've been switching phones around and I had to do that dance yesterday and oh my goodness, Microsoft, Microsoft, Microsoft. What happened? All I wanted to do was log into my Xbox account and give them money for the pre-order for Far Cry 6, you know, thoroughly reasonable thing to do.

Last time I checked, I was still logged into my Xbox, which was two days before. Pull it up, press buy. Okay. You got to sign in again. Okay. Credit card details. I get it. Even though it's my account, uh, whatever. Uh, nope, no, no, no. You, you have to get the authenticator app and do that.

And I'm like, okay, well, I haven't had my authenticator app for a while. So I go to the authenticator app, try and log in there and no, I have to reset the password seven times and, uh, back and forth and back and forth. It took me an hour of going back and forth between the Xbox, the app and the website to finally get logged into the point where I could give them money.

Oh, so aggravating. So aggravating. I mean, a certain degree of it, I can stand and I can remind myself that this is a good thing that this is for security. But when it gets to the point of everything you went through, I, my, my patience runs out.

Oh, it was long gone. It was long gone. I'll bet. I'll bet. Five minutes in, it was long gone. Oh yeah. Then, then comes the, just like, you know, remove things from around you so you don't fling them at the TV and do something you'll regret, which is hard because the laptop almost went through a couple of times.

Oh man. Yeah. I'm in all Microsoft shop with my, my new date gig and boy, oh boy. I, I, it's just constantly signing in, constantly getting phone calls to confirm that it's you and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And yes, it's, it's all for a good purpose.

It's to ensure that it is really me signing into these things, but it is a, such a pain to get set up. And yeah. Are you using any of the new password list stuff from Microsoft? That's what I was getting ready to say. And now they're pimping all this password list stuff.

So have you guys had that yet? Not, not yet. But apparently I've been informed we will be upgrading to that shortly, to which I just said, well, there goes three to four days of work. Yeah. Let me, let me, let me explain what the word upgrade means. I think you mean. Yeah.

You, the best you can hope for is some sort of lateral move, right? Yeah. Pretty much. Pretty much. At best. Yeah. So, uh, so Vincent wrote in, he likes to keep us up to. I'm not done yet. You're not done complaining? I'm not done yet. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. My bad. No, no, no.

Don't jump the gun here because I have another site that I want to, I want to bitch about for a second called Auth0. Now I'd never heard of these guys and I got a surprisingly an Instagram ad about them and I'm like, hmm. Okay. Federated authentication. Let's go take a look at it, see what they do.

And this is, this is the line from, from their website or their pitch. Auth0 is an easy to implement adaptable authentication and authorization platform. Basically, we make your login box awesome. No, you fucking don't. Now I see why I see so many people using this now.

And in the old days we had username box, password box, entry, right? Now, no. Now you have to put your email address in or your username. Then you have to go to another page, then put in your password. Then maybe you can get to authenticate.

They added clicks to the entire process, which is so stupid, but it gives you, like, if you look at their page, it tells you all the different ways that you can, you know, customize your login box. None of them make any sense except for username and password in a box that says enable two factor authentication.

That's it. Plus click on all the things that are planes. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Is there a duck in this photo? I think not. And it's like, come on, guys. Are they trying to outsource every little bit of website development nowadays?

We've all, all of us web developers have built authentication systems. It's not that hard. Ah, but if you use a third party service, you're not responsible for it. You got to be responsible somewhere along the chain, I'm sure. No, you don't. Because, well, it doesn't even matter if you build your own.

You're not responsible anyway. So save the money. But now I know why this was like, you know, just bugging me. Why so many people have, have gone to this new system of username on one page, password on another page, adding to the time it takes to actually log into something. And it's these guys.

These are the bastards that caused it. Oh, I see. So people are using their system. Yes. So they don't have to. Okay. Yep. That's interesting. Well, because that's the way Google has their login. It's two different pages, username, password, and then, you know, a second factor if you use that.

So that, I mean, that's a big player using that, that cadence. Maybe they started for a reason back in the day to slow down, basically like, you know, kind of add in a speed bump to rate limit. Some sort of rate limiting. Yeah.

Yeah. It still sucks on Google too. I'm not saying it's right. I don't care how big they are. It still sucks. No, I agree. I agree. Yeah. It is definitely a speed bump. Interesting. Yeah. So there we go. Now, Brian, talk to us about Vincent. Well, Vincent likes to keep us up to date with the goings on in Ireland.

And in this particular case, this is the data privacy regulator, which is open to inquiries into the Chinese owned short video platform, TikTok, or, you know, Jason's dog site, basically. And so this is about processing a personal data of users under the age of 18 and transfers by TikTok of personal data to China.

Ireland is taking the lead here because like most tech companies, they're based in Dublin. At least their European headquarters are based in Dublin for TikTok. So, you know, tax reasons. But then you get hit with the hammer of the data privacy regulations there, which, you know, again, they'll get a small fine.

Most likely. And, yeah, and appeal it and not pay it or pay it. Doesn't matter. It's not that much money. Yeah. I wonder, like, when we get into these, I don't know, pissing matches, I guess, between the EU and China, it's interesting to see how they play out because, you know, China's going to China.

There's no getting around to their rules if you want to be there. And the market's too big to not be there. So, you know, what are you going to do? It's tough. Yeah. Yeah. And China's not going to back down like some of our tech companies do in which they, you know, play with local rules a little bit better.

China is, like you said, going to China. We're going to go ahead and suck that data back to the mothership. Right. Absolutely. Hmm. Interesting. Have you guys updated to iOS 15 yet? Indeed. I spent a lovely three hours doing all that yesterday, yes. I kicked mine off to start the process as I was drifting off to sleep last night.

So when I awoke this morning, it was updated and ready to go. And I, you know, breathed a sigh of relief that my phone had not been bricked in some way, shape or form. And everything seemed to have gone well. But came in this morning and saw a report from the folks over at the record that a researcher has posted a video of an iPhone lock screen bypass on iOS 15 on day one.

And yeah, first. Right. Exactly. It's interesting. Basically, I recommend you go watch this video. It's about five minutes long and this person outlines how he does it and he uses some of the accessibility features on the phone to get access to and exfiltrate data from the notes app on a locked phone and just walks through it step by step.

And sure enough, there's definitely some buggy behavior in there. And he's able to use FaceTime to get data out of the notes app. That's part one of the story. Part two of the story is that this gentleman is upset with Apple because he has reported these sorts of things to them and he doesn't feel like he's getting the bug bounties that he deserves for things that are as serious as these are.

And there's been a lot of criticism lately of Apple of about how they run their bug bounty program and, you know, the company with all the money in the world. I was going to say, come on, man, they're broke. They can't really be able to spend this much money. Yeah, right.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, they should probably be upping that a little bit because these are pretty serious issues. Yeah, they should have taken a line from the Bose Connect update because that's one of the things that comes along with these iOS updates is the slew of app updates that you get. And I just had to chuckle at the Bose Connect one this morning.

And their release notes were, a few tweaks to make the app more stable and less buggy. Well, isn't that kind of what you're supposed to be doing every time you do an update? Yeah. Yeah. I think, yeah, if you swapped it to make the app more buggy and less stable, I think that maybe would be kind of the wrong way to go about it.

But whatever. I just thought that was funny. And yet that seems to happen pretty often. Yeah. Yeah. I'm all for companies every now and then doing an update cycle that is just to fix bugs.

Mm-hmm. Don't add any features. Snow Leopard. Yeah. I would love to see... Like Microsoft's hourly feature? Well, I'd love to see a TikTok sort of cadence where you have one feature update and then you do a bug fix. And the feature update, then a bug fix.

And I know there are lots of bug fixes along the way for many companies. But to have your upgrade cycle be focused on bug fixes, you know, first do no harm, I kind of like that. I realize there are market forces against that sort of thing and it's hard to justify it.

But I don't know. Ultimately, it seems like a good way to go about things. Yeah. I mean, considering the lack of features in the 15 update, you'd think that they would have fixed a bunch of stuff. But... And maybe they have. Yeah. Could be. Could be. I got to say, though, that the smartest thing that they did, they got so much flack for the Safari update about the new tab system and how horrible it was.

And they went back and forth. But I got to say, the smartest thing that they did was put the address bar at the bottom of the screen. That is really, really nice. Really nice. So... Just because you don't have to... You can one-hand it and don't have to reach it. Yeah. It's right there. It's like, boom, done. Yeah.

Boom, done. Yeah. I haven't played with that yet. So we'll see. People are just resistant to change, you know. Really? No. I mean, nobody here. No, of course not. General people are resistant to change.

Yes. Yes. So we've talked a lot in this segment about how criminals are inherently generally pretty lazy. Let's talk a little bit about some guy who basically... He had some real goonies never-say-die spirit here. U.S. District Court has sentenced the man who has unlocked 1.9 million AT&T phones to 12 years in prison.

His name is Muhammad Fahd. And this is a seven-year scheme he was running to defraud the company. Even after he learned that an investigation had been opened up against him, he continued, this is pretty amazing, he contacted an AT&T employee through Facebook in 2012 and bribed them to help him unlock customers' phones with significant sums of money, according to the DOJ.

And this continued going on. He then recruited an engineer to build malware that would be installed on AT&T systems to keep the system going here. And, wow, 1.9 million phones he managed to unlock through this scheme and, yeah, just kept going even though he knew that they were coming after him.

So, I mean, you know, not lazy. Not lazy at all. No. He's either stupid or ballsy. Not sure which. Or both. Maybe both. Maybe both, yeah. But also clever and industrious, too. I mean, talk about your insider threats.

You know, you think about if you're AT&T and you have all those AT&T stores and you have all those employees and that, I suspect, can get to be a pretty monotonous job, right? Updating people's phones, selling them new phones, all that kind of stuff.

And so if somebody comes along and says, hey, I'll pay you – here's a pile of money in exchange for making a couple clicks on that computer. You can see how folks – folks in that position wouldn't necessarily have a whole lot of loyalty to AT&T, the company.

Well, I'd take the money in a heartbeat. Yeah, I would just make sure – You know, Mohammed? Yeah, exactly. I would just make sure I logged in with, you know, one of my buddy's credentials who's on a different shift. That's all. Right. I see.

I see. One of your former buddies. Your former buddies, yes. Yeah. Wow. Hey, man, you got to earn. You got to earn. That's all I'm saying. Okay. Yeah. Well, we got another guy here, Matthew Gattrell from St. Charles, Illinois. He was finally found guilty in a DDoS for hire scheme.

Now, you know, we used to call this evil as a service, and he's 32 years old, so he's a young guy. He hasn't been sentenced yet, but he can get a maximum sentence of 35 years in prison. And this guy – this goes along with, you know, the stupid criminal.

His buddy had already pleaded guilty and got a much lighter sentence, but he said, let's fight it. And he went to court. He went to trial with public defenders backing him up, and we wonder why he lost. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So he's going to do some time. Yeah. No, I'm trying to remember some of the details here. I mean, the part of their defense is that these tools could be used for legitimate research purposes and so on and so forth. They refer to them as booter services rather than DDoS for hire services.

But, yeah, everybody's hip to what's really going on here. It's interesting to me how much DDoS is being purchased by people who want to take down their rivals in online games on, like, Xbox or things like that. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's just not something that I think would strike me to do.

I've never – I guess I've never been that serious a gamer that I wanted to invest in the failure of one of my online rivals. Yeah. You definitely didn't play enough games then because that's – Well. Yeah. That's the thing. I think by the time I stopped playing games – I stopped seriously playing games before we had these massive online games.

I think the last game I really played all the way through intensely was the original Halo. Larry. Right. Yes, exactly. But I mean, you got to say, though, yeah, the funny thing about it is, you know, just taking down somebody's computer and DDoSing them is like the least people do nowadays.

I mean, this swatting came from gamers, you know, when you care enough to kill the very best. Yeah. So this is just getting DDoSed is pretty easy. Oh, oh, my God. I forgot. I forgot to put this in the notes. I got a great story for you guys. You're going to love this one.

So my roommate's mom, who is 93 years old, she gets a text message, which she calls a memo. I got this memo today. We're like, what the fuck's a memo? That's funny. So it's a it's a note from AT&T with a URL to click on.

So she goes to her Gmail and types in the URL exactly to send it to my roommate and say, is this legitimate or not? So she's doing the right thing, theoretically. Well, since she basically pasted a malware URL into her email and sent it to somebody, the gods of Spectrum Internet said no, completely shut down her entire Internet account right then and there as soon as she sent it.

Wow. That's intense. That's too bad. It came back on in an hour, but it was still really funny that she was like, you know, she was trying to be good, but she turned out to be she was an inadvertent hacker. Right. Right. Right. She didn't know any of the tricks of, you know, replacing any of the characters or putting in extra characters or take a screenshot the link or take a screenshot.

Yeah. Yeah. She doesn't. I mean, she doesn't even know what a URL is. She just knows that there's a whole list of things. And she she typed it in perfectly with all the caps and everything and then just got booted. I thought you guys would get a kick out of that. Yeah. I mean, she's way ahead of my parents who are in their late 80s.

And my attempt to switch them over to iPhones, which was primarily motivated by the horrible audio quality of their flip phones, like I can barely understand what they're saying on these ancient phones that they both have.

So I figured, oh, we'll just get them some cheap iPhones and, you know, older generation iPhones. And at least then I can hear them. They can't handle it. They cannot handle the touchscreen interface of an iPhone. Just it's too much. That's funny. Yeah. My roommate's mom, we just bought her a new iPad because, you know, she's blind, can barely see.

But now she can pinch and zoom on the iPad. And we're like, OK, we're going to start off with the basics and got her the local newspaper. Now she can read the newspaper and zoom in on it every day. And within, you know, half an hour, she's like, OK, I need my online banking on here. I want to get my mail. It's just like ready to go. Yeah.

That's an interesting point, Jason, because actually my mother does fine with an iPad. And she does have an iPad and she likes she looks at Facebook and she sees pictures of her grandkids and stuff like that. But the phone, I don't know if it's the density of the information. I think it's it's too easy to to fall out of some mode and not know where you are and not be able to to get back.

But it just we couldn't get it to stick. And it's frustrating. That would be a good mode for iOS 16 when they come out. Old people mode. It has like four buttons, like those giant remote controls for your TV. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've said it here before. I remember back in the day, Sony had that line of products, my first Sony, and I thought they should come out with another line.

My last Sony. Yeah. For old people. That's so good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I want to be in the pitch meeting for that. Trust me. OK, so this next story I've got made me think about actually two different two different bits of media.

First, I thought about Adam Savage on Mythbusters, who was like, you never put a firearm on a drone. And then I also thought about the very end of Breaking Bad. And I won't spoil it for anyone, even though it's been out for 10 years. But this is a Israel has reportedly used a remote controlled gun to assassinate a top Iranian nuclear scientist.

So they're calling it a remote controlled AI assisted machine gun. Now, they reportedly mounted this gun on a pickup truck by the side of the road and had a distant operator fire the gun using a satellite link. I'm not entirely. I guess the AI is they used facial recognition to assist with aiming, making sure that they only shot him and not his wife, who was also in the car.

Did it work? Apparently. Well, nobody's, you know, nobody's going to come. They did spare his wife. Yeah, he's dead. But OK, yeah, yeah, yeah. I just didn't know if it got the wife, too. No, she's OK. So this hardly worked. They used AI to compensate for the satellite system lag and gun recoil.

And they staged a decoy car with a camera to force a U-turn to get a clear image to use the facial recognition. So pretty sophisticated assassination techniques these days. Yeah, that's wild. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. Yeah. And I just threw this last story in here because it made me laugh a little bit.

Well, apparently our government is wasting a lot of time trying to decide if these Honor smartphones, which is spun from Huawei, it's their like lower level version of phones, are a national security threat or not. And at the end of the article, they do point out the fact that they do not sell telecommunications equipment to carriers, which means it's not involved in the 5G network build outs, which was the whole point of all of this to begin with, with Huawei.

And these products are not even available in the United States. So who gives a shit? Yeah. Why are they arguing about this? Slow day? Bob just snuck it into the meeting notes, I guess.

I don't know. Yeah. Right. I read this on the crapper this morning. What do you guys think? Does this have legs? Yeah. Somebody came back from an overseas trip and brought one back with them. So now they have to talk about it. I guess. I'm not sure. And so this is one of those articles that I was like, oh, this is right up security alley.

And I got to the end of it. I'm like, why is any of this happening? Thanks for our government money. Well, not my government money anymore. Yeah. It's interesting that the different departments were split, that the Pentagon and the Department of Energy wanted to put them on the list of what's the name of the list, the entities list, and that Commerce and State Department didn't want to put them on the list.

I wonder who's the tiebreaker in a case like this. The guy who stood up and said, it doesn't matter. Yeah. Yeah. Somebody needs to bring back the decider. Right. They bring in somebody from the Department of Education to just break the tie.

I was just thinking they called George Bush back up. He's not doing much these days. I'm the decider. I'll paint one of those phones for you. Yeah. So before we go today, I just want to do a quick check-in, a quick little media candy and at the library with a couple of things that I've been enjoying.

One of them is the show Only Murders in the Building, which is on Hulu. That's the Steve Martin, Martin Short, Selena Gomez, Murder Mystery podcast comedy show. Yes. Have you guys been enjoying that? I have not watched any of it yet.

No, you've checked it out? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, a fan wrote in last week and told us that we should watch it, but I don't have Hulu and Brian's stack of shows to watch is growing longer than the heat death of the universe, so I don't know if he'll ever get around to it. But it's good? It's good.

I mean, it's written by Steve Martin or co-written by Steve Martin, and he's a very good, smart writer, so it's well-written. It's fun. They do a good job of mixing the comedy with the actual murder mystery stuff, and they poke a lot of fun at podcasters, which is enjoyable, too.

That's enjoyable, yes. Tina Fey plays the sort of the alpha true crime podcaster, and so there's some funny things that happen with her. Yeah, it's quite good. There's a very, very funny episode that involves Sting, and it turns out that these folks all live in the same New York condo building as Sting, and so there's a whole funny episode with Sting.

It's pretty good. I'm going to float a super unpopular opinion here right now. Not a fan of Martin Short. Yeah. No, I'm not either. I find him too cheesy, too, like, he just always takes the joke too far and too silly and too lame, and I've just never really got, other than Three Amigos, which is a work of comedy masterpiece, never really enjoyed Martin Short.

Yeah. I certainly understand that opinion, and actually, my co-host Joe Kerrigan was expressing that same opinion last time he was in, because I was telling him about this show with him, and he was like, I hate Martin Short. And I get that.

I understand why he's not everyone's cup of tea. I enjoy the old show-busy, over-the-top kind of thing of Martin Short. I think he's sort of winking at himself. I enjoy the types of jokes that he tells. The cutting humor, I think, is pretty funny.

His book is quite good. He has an autobiography that's quite good. Very funny. But I do see how he's not everyone's cup of tea and how he can be over-the-top. The character that he's playing in this show fits his personality very well.

He plays sort of an old-failed Broadway director who can't get any more shows made. That sounds perfect for him. Yeah. And it is. It's perfect for him. It plays, you know, it's written to play to his strengths. So, you know, give it a shot.

But, yes, there's definitely some Martin Short excessiveness in there. Brian, you have to be careful talking about Martin Short like that. I think he's like a Canadian treasure, so they might kick you out if anybody hears this. They might. They might. That's true. But they would do it in a very over-the-top, silly way.

He's the host of the Canada movie at Epcot Center. So, you know. Yeah. It doesn't get a higher Canadian honor than that, I suspect. Right? The other thing I wanted to recommend was the book Fuzz by Mary Roach. I don't know if you've read any of her previous books.

She wrote Stiff and Spook and Bonk and – I read Stiff. I read Stiff. As well. Space. Yes. I read Stiff. That was a good book. Yeah. I enjoy her writing very much. She's very funny and she goes off on these sort of scientific investigations of interesting things.

This book is about when humans and wildlife interact in dangerous and often fatal ways. So, it's about people getting attacked by bears and bobcats and things like that. From the name, I thought it was going to be police.

Well, it's kind of like how the powers that be try to keep these interactions from being dangerous but also figuring out after the fact like if you find a dead guy in the woods, was he actually attacked by a bear or did a human kill him and a bear came along and said, oh, free snack.

Right? So, it goes into sort of that kind of stuff as well. But it's hard to imagine how she does it but she does manage to make this subject matter quite funny. So, again, I recommend it. It's Fuzz by Mary Roach. I will check that out.

Yeah. All right. All right. That's what I got this week, guys. We'll see you next time. Excellent. Good to have you back. Yep. Good to be back. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we've got Kevin, Wesley, Giuseppe, and Tony.

Welcome to the Patreon family. Thank you so much. It's nice to see those coming back up again. Over at PayPal, we have Nathaniel, Michael, John, Andre, Giuseppe, Tom, Michelle, Andrew, Tom, two Toms, Joseph, John, Pedro, and Melanie. Melanie, who gave us a very generous donation.

Thank you so much for that. Thank you so much, Melanie. That was very generous of you. We've got two. Did Giuseppe give us on PayPal and Patreon? He may have. Because I find it very odd that we would have two Giuseppis in one week when we've never had any in eight years. This is a good point.

We should research this. Yes. Thank you, Giuseppe and Giuseppe, or Giuseppe, whichever one it is. Over at the tip jar, we've got $10 from Matthew S., $10 from Dennis B., and a $10 sub from Sean M. Thank you all so much who donated this week. You guys are literally keeping the lights on right now.

Yes, and over at iTunes, we have a five-star rating from J. Boucher 9, Older and Grumpier. Sage advice from two travelers still on the digital journey. Listen and learn. Too bad they are old enough to remember programming in Fortran and grid laptops that have a total memory of $362K.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. 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 keep the lights on. No, to 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 absolutely easy and free. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 523. 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. We also have a voicemail feature on the website, Brian, that I keep forgetting to talk about. So if you want to send us a voicemail, too, we can use that. And if you're so inclined, please head over to GOG.show slash review and toss us a snarky review and preferably five stars.

Stay grumpy.

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